Notes
I really appreciated ’s close reading of my “Aesthetic Subcultures” essay. She makes a good point which I had neglected to notice; that all of these subcultures can become so life-defining that we forget to be whole people. This can happen to anyone, along any axis. Does “substack writer” define you so much that you can’t relate to the world in any other way? Speaking for myself I know that on my bad days I can’t look at a picture or listen to music without thinking “how can I pound an essay out of this” and I forget to just let the art soak into me. Thanks as always, Kathryn, for the work you do in these roundups—you are an especially perceptive reader!
“That last point is true about so many subcultures and groups and even in self-definitions … we can get so wrapped up in the ways we define ourselves, internally or externally, that we become a narrow slice of what we really are all about.”
