A Dull Roar

One post, two pieces. It's the little things either way...

Hello, friends and chewers.

I’m sharing two pieces here, both of which are online today. The first is about misophonia, or “hatred of sound,” and it will be in next week’s issue of The New Yorker if you’d prefer the full experience. The second is my introduction to The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield, up now on lithub.

Links are in the graph above, in case you fly into a rage because you’re like where are the links how will i go about my day with no links unsubscribe

I’m not sure these two pieces of writing have much in common aside from the fact that they’re both being shoved out into the world on the same day and I’m sharing them here, at the same time. The misophonia piece was like writing a little book (in terms of research). I started working on it late last year and I became like a medical student who starts to itch after reading too much about a rash. I don’t carry my pocket-harpoon to restaurants and libraries but, after writing this, I’m tempted. Whereas the Mansfield intro is much shorter, happier and a gateway to someone else’s book. I hardly itched at all while writing it.

And yet, in some ways, they share a respect for and fascination with small things. With what actually sets us off from one minute to the next, with how easily our moods can change. There’s a ton of attention to irritants in one and attention to adornments in the other. People living with misophonia can’t help but have irritating sounds like gulping and chewing and clicking take center stage. And I suppose the complete opposite of this experience would be Mansfield’s voluntary fascination with little objects, little details, of how they can take over a conversation, a thought, a whole character. At least that’s what my intro to her work is about. About who notices what and when.

So. Am I smushing these pieces together in a way that really doesn’t work, just to draw your attention to them? Yes! I hope you enjoy them both, or only one…or neither and I’ll never know. One is about torture, the other is about joy. Same same for some.

Sloane x

ps. I can’t think of any art that wouldn’t be very weird or dumb to drop into this post — please, spare yourself from googling “cool ying and yang” or “cool comedy and tragedy masks” — so here’s a picture I took years ago, one that has nothing to do with anything. It’s of one of my favorite places on Earth, the cliffs of Étretat, France: