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Vapaudesta: Neljä laulua rakkaudesta ja rajoista
Vapaudesta puhutaan paljon, monin erilaisin tavoin ja monissa eri yhteyksissä: on yksilön henkilö- kohtaisen vapautumisen hetkiä, sananvapautta ja ihmisoikeuksia, poliittista retoriikkaa, rajojen rikkomista. Arjessa vapaus on jotain, mihin länsimainen ihminen havahtuu vasta, kun menettää sen.
Uudessa teoksessa Maggie Nelson pohtii, mitä kaikkea vapauden monimutkaisella käsitteellä tarkoitetaan neljällä erilaisella inhimillisen kokemuksen alueella: taiteen tai seksuaalisuuden piirissä sekä silloin, kun puhutaan päihteistä tai ilmastosta.
Nelson käyttää teoksessaan suvereenisti laajaa tutkimusmateriaalia erilaisista teoreettisista viite- kehyksistä popkulttuuriin ja arkikokemuksiin, tutkii, kysyy, ajattelee ääneen ja kutsuu lukijan ajattelemaan kanssaan. Kirjoittaminen itsessään on vapauden ilmaus, joka vahvistaa, rohkaisee - ojentuu toista kohti.
Vapaudesta on raikas, voimaannuttava ja välttämätön teos tässä ajassa.
Uudessa teoksessa Maggie Nelson pohtii, mitä kaikkea vapauden monimutkaisella käsitteellä tarkoitetaan neljällä erilaisella inhimillisen kokemuksen alueella: taiteen tai seksuaalisuuden piirissä sekä silloin, kun puhutaan päihteistä tai ilmastosta.
Nelson käyttää teoksessaan suvereenisti laajaa tutkimusmateriaalia erilaisista teoreettisista viite- kehyksistä popkulttuuriin ja arkikokemuksiin, tutkii, kysyy, ajattelee ääneen ja kutsuu lukijan ajattelemaan kanssaan. Kirjoittaminen itsessään on vapauden ilmaus, joka vahvistaa, rohkaisee - ojentuu toista kohti.
Vapaudesta on raikas, voimaannuttava ja välttämätön teos tässä ajassa.
351 pages, Hardcover
First published September 7, 2021
885 people are currently reading
13500 people want to read
About the author
Maggie Nelson
41 books4,629 followersMaggie Nelson is the author of nine books of poetry and prose, many of which have become cult classics defying categorization. Her nonfiction titles include the National Book Critics Circle Award winner and New York Times bestseller The Argonauts (Graywolf Press, 2015), The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (Norton, 2011; a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), Bluets (Wave Books, 2009; named by Bookforum as one of the top 10 best books of the past 20 years), The Red Parts (Free Press, 2007; reissued by Graywolf, 2016), and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (U of Iowa Press, 2007). Her poetry titles include Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Jane: A Murder (Soft Skull, 2005; finalist for the PEN/ Martha Albrand Art of the Memoir). In 2016 she was awarded a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship. She has also been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction, an NEA in Poetry, an Innovative Literature Fellowship from Creative Capital, and an Arts Writers Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation. She writes frequently on art, including recent catalogue essays on Carolee Schneemann and Matthew Barney. She holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and has taught literature, writing, art, criticism and theory at the New School, Pratt Institute, and Wesleyan University. For 12 years she taught in the School of Critical Studies at CalArts; in fall 2017 she will join the faculty of USC. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 480 reviews
January 11, 2022
I've read Nelson's more straight-up scholarly work before, such as Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (literally her Ph.D. dissertation), and to a slightly lesser extent, The Art of Cruelty, which feels more like art criticism. I enjoyed both those books very much, alongside Nelson's more genre-bending Bluets and autotheory like the acclaimed The Argonauts. Yet due to the book's extremely arbitrary, empty "structuring" flourishes (if you can call them that), I wasn't prepared for the pedantic, academic text that On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint, is for the most part.
Never mind that the concept of freedom, apparently central to the book, could have been swapped in for any other abstraction and the book would still read the same way. The sections being delineated as 'songs,' with each section title further playing into some apparently musical element ("Art Song", "The Ballad of Sexual Optimism", "Drug Fugue", and "Riding the Blinds," which is a jazz reference) is extremely frustrating to me. The writing is not lyrical and it surely does not sing, nor would I expect this from an academic text. It is not a convention of the genre, and Nelson is surely operating within the constraints of convention—even if she tries to pour each section into the mould of the seemingly poetic or cross-genre, they harden back into themselves as (albeit fragmented) academic essays. This led to a feeling of distrust from me, as a reader, especially alongside other elements such as Nelson's penchant for false equivalences and her cherrypicking of examples despite the illusion of thoroughness, given the book's extensive Works Cited section, which runs for 24 pages. Then there is the lengthy, uneven 'Notes' section where she buries certain opinions or turns in her thinking that should have either been incorporated into the book proper or abandoned.
It's sort of hard to believe Nelson, a genius, doesn't already know all this. One passage from "Drug Fugue" felt incredibly loud and meta. In discussing Paul D. Preciado's cross-genre book on sex, drugs, and biopolitcs, Nelson claims that "due to Testo Junkie's headlong pitch, its willingness to contradict itself, and its raw, often comic autobiographic excursions, it doesn't proceed by way of argument alone, which is what lands it outside the realm of academia proper (a field known for articulating liberatory possibilities in language that often excites little to no felt sense of them)". Ummmm???? It begs the question—what realm did Nelson want On Freedom to land in? Surely she wants her readers to feel the liberatory possibilities she discourses on, yet why use the language of academia then?
Regardless, I did find many moments in this book fascinating and confounding (and uncomfortable, especially "The Ballad of Sexual Optimism"). I agreed, I disagreed. I took lots of notes, discovered many new thinkers and works of art. I like thinking about art! Yet despite the dense (and sometimes pleasurable) clusterfuck of references and quotations attributed to other artists, writers, theorists, philosophers, and more, I found Nelson's own ideas to be less than compelling. For as hard as some sections are to parse—again, this is a book for grad seminars—Nelson's thinking can often be boiled down quite simply, as she exalts in porousness, ongoingness, and a thinking that serves perhaps no function but to sustain itself as it goes around in a loop: Art can be reparative but it shouldn't have to repair. Drugs are freedom, but so is sobriety. Too much hope can be just as bad as too much despair. Our current historical moment is mundane, but it is also special. Etcetera.
Not only does this thinking feel cushy, self-serving, and not exactly as edge-lordy as Nelson seems to think, the reference points of the book feel in many ways dated and lacking in vitality. I empathize with the slow work of writing a book, and Nelson herself comments on the durational endeavour; she started writing the book in 2016 (six years ago) and it shows. I suppose some things about this book are challenging in a valuable way. But fundamentally I feel almost a little—embarrassed? Freedom (and captivity/oppression/constraint) is, among many other things, a fundamentally lived experience—rather than Nelson performing another feat of autotheory that would place her own lived experiences alongside her ideas and opinions—to risk something, anything—it instead reads as an over intellectualization from the safe perch of the ivory tower.
From Charlotte Shane's review in BookForum: "On Freedom made me reflect, again, on the spell of white rationality and the fetishization of conceptual thought that swerves back into the realm of the theoretical rather than exit into the material."
Never mind that the concept of freedom, apparently central to the book, could have been swapped in for any other abstraction and the book would still read the same way. The sections being delineated as 'songs,' with each section title further playing into some apparently musical element ("Art Song", "The Ballad of Sexual Optimism", "Drug Fugue", and "Riding the Blinds," which is a jazz reference) is extremely frustrating to me. The writing is not lyrical and it surely does not sing, nor would I expect this from an academic text. It is not a convention of the genre, and Nelson is surely operating within the constraints of convention—even if she tries to pour each section into the mould of the seemingly poetic or cross-genre, they harden back into themselves as (albeit fragmented) academic essays. This led to a feeling of distrust from me, as a reader, especially alongside other elements such as Nelson's penchant for false equivalences and her cherrypicking of examples despite the illusion of thoroughness, given the book's extensive Works Cited section, which runs for 24 pages. Then there is the lengthy, uneven 'Notes' section where she buries certain opinions or turns in her thinking that should have either been incorporated into the book proper or abandoned.
It's sort of hard to believe Nelson, a genius, doesn't already know all this. One passage from "Drug Fugue" felt incredibly loud and meta. In discussing Paul D. Preciado's cross-genre book on sex, drugs, and biopolitcs, Nelson claims that "due to Testo Junkie's headlong pitch, its willingness to contradict itself, and its raw, often comic autobiographic excursions, it doesn't proceed by way of argument alone, which is what lands it outside the realm of academia proper (a field known for articulating liberatory possibilities in language that often excites little to no felt sense of them)". Ummmm???? It begs the question—what realm did Nelson want On Freedom to land in? Surely she wants her readers to feel the liberatory possibilities she discourses on, yet why use the language of academia then?
Regardless, I did find many moments in this book fascinating and confounding (and uncomfortable, especially "The Ballad of Sexual Optimism"). I agreed, I disagreed. I took lots of notes, discovered many new thinkers and works of art. I like thinking about art! Yet despite the dense (and sometimes pleasurable) clusterfuck of references and quotations attributed to other artists, writers, theorists, philosophers, and more, I found Nelson's own ideas to be less than compelling. For as hard as some sections are to parse—again, this is a book for grad seminars—Nelson's thinking can often be boiled down quite simply, as she exalts in porousness, ongoingness, and a thinking that serves perhaps no function but to sustain itself as it goes around in a loop: Art can be reparative but it shouldn't have to repair. Drugs are freedom, but so is sobriety. Too much hope can be just as bad as too much despair. Our current historical moment is mundane, but it is also special. Etcetera.
Not only does this thinking feel cushy, self-serving, and not exactly as edge-lordy as Nelson seems to think, the reference points of the book feel in many ways dated and lacking in vitality. I empathize with the slow work of writing a book, and Nelson herself comments on the durational endeavour; she started writing the book in 2016 (six years ago) and it shows. I suppose some things about this book are challenging in a valuable way. But fundamentally I feel almost a little—embarrassed? Freedom (and captivity/oppression/constraint) is, among many other things, a fundamentally lived experience—rather than Nelson performing another feat of autotheory that would place her own lived experiences alongside her ideas and opinions—to risk something, anything—it instead reads as an over intellectualization from the safe perch of the ivory tower.
From Charlotte Shane's review in BookForum: "On Freedom made me reflect, again, on the spell of white rationality and the fetishization of conceptual thought that swerves back into the realm of the theoretical rather than exit into the material."
June 26, 2021
A return to the lens and style of ART OF CRUELTY - crystalizing on four key questions of freedom. I was specially drawn to parts 2 (on sex) and 3 (on drugs), and found the research there particularly fascinating. Nelson is brilliant, of course.
May 2, 2021
"In fact, one of this book’s sleeper surprises was that focusing on freedom brought me into a full-throttle reckoning with anxiety, one of freedom’s most formidable adversaries. Perhaps this shouldn’t have been a surprise: one of the lessons of interdependence is that you can’t get to know anything without getting to know its siblings or surroundings. I would not be the first thinker (or human) to discover the distressing, if potentially fertile, kinship between freedom and anxiety, even if I had to learn it anew for myself. But I can say that, through repeated, often painful excursions, I have learned which habits of mind lead to more panic, more curdled and constricted heart (dread of bad scenes or surprises; the ferocious desire to ward off pain, illness, or death; attempts to control that which dwarfs one’s ability to do so), and which ones lead to vastness, empty space, blue sky, whatever you want to call it — the silence and nothingness at the end of writing and everything else. I didn’t and still don’t know what opening onto that vastness would feel like. Sometimes I feel sure I won’t know until I die. But I’m not going for a freedom drive that’s primarily a death drive; all that comes soon enough. Until then, I want to be in, all in: all heart, no escape."
Want to read
September 25, 2023maggie nelson supremacy
January 8, 2022
I rarely write reviews here outside of the star rating but I can’t stop thinking and obsessing over how disappointing this reading experience was. Bluets changed me when I first read it and I have since been a Maggie Nelson stan. Her work, although sometimes heavily didactic, has felt in the past as if she is posing a set of questions that we will wade through together. She uses personal memoir and lyricism to make sense of the heavy critical work. I told a friend that typically a Nelson book feels like I’m being led by the hand through a magical forest; this book did not feel that way. It felt condescending, from the start- what authority does this author have to write such a book? Are the questions she’s seeming to pose answerable in a book? Especially one by a white woman who, (this is what maybe irked me the most) has the time, money, space, etc to “think before reacting” to art that may offend. The intro has a quote from a friend of Nelsons who said “freedom is a white peoples word”. It felt like a huge LOL moment because I wanted to scream YEAH, end of story… why are you the one writing this book?
The introduction was an absolute slog and it felt not only unnecessary but as if the book knew it couldn’t stand on its own. What follows are four “songs” (???) of freedom; admittedly i did not make it in through all four. The art song that follows the intro is just as sloggish- the academic jargon, secondary sources, and fragmented paragraphs make for a confusing and it seems purposefully contradicting essay on … ? I’m not sure. I don’t know what Nelsons thesis is to be honest and I am very uncomfortable at the two choices she chooses to present in her song of Art. Both art pieces are works done by white artists that depicted the suffering of POC; it’s not these works Nelson criticizes and examines but rather the uproar surrounding them. She doesn’t believe protesting work— even if it offends and misses the mark— is right, in fact she believes asking the Whitney not to show Open Casket is censorship. This is a HUGE claim and I don’t think Nelson argues successfully for it, at all. Her arguments are flimsy and contradictory, oftentimes leaning too heavily on secondary sources.
I hoped that the songs on sex and drugs would be more interesting but five pages in to the sex song I knew it wouldn’t get better. I hate to say this but Maggie Nelson sounds curmudgeonly old in the sex song. It’s judgey, out of touch, and dare I say it, harmful (she doesn’t think art harms tho hehe).
I closed the book at this line, after suffering through her making stupid oral sex jokes about the Aziz Ansari scandal (also, it’s 2021, why is she still so focused on 2017.???): “many girls are deeply compelled by their desires, but since they don’t have much practice in articulating them, often not even to themselves, they instead become expert at putting themselves in situations in which trouble (aka sexual activity) might occur, while agilely blurring our the question of what they might be looking for (alcohol often abets this project).”
… man, if you had told me 2 years ago Maggie fucking Nelson would’ve written this sentence I would’ve slapped you. What a disappointment.
Of course Nelson’s writing can be stellar and there are definitely sentences and sentiments I agree with or that at least made me wonder. But ultimately I think this book fails in defining freedom, and, as the introduction states, providing a way forward without fear, paranoia, and dread.
The introduction was an absolute slog and it felt not only unnecessary but as if the book knew it couldn’t stand on its own. What follows are four “songs” (???) of freedom; admittedly i did not make it in through all four. The art song that follows the intro is just as sloggish- the academic jargon, secondary sources, and fragmented paragraphs make for a confusing and it seems purposefully contradicting essay on … ? I’m not sure. I don’t know what Nelsons thesis is to be honest and I am very uncomfortable at the two choices she chooses to present in her song of Art. Both art pieces are works done by white artists that depicted the suffering of POC; it’s not these works Nelson criticizes and examines but rather the uproar surrounding them. She doesn’t believe protesting work— even if it offends and misses the mark— is right, in fact she believes asking the Whitney not to show Open Casket is censorship. This is a HUGE claim and I don’t think Nelson argues successfully for it, at all. Her arguments are flimsy and contradictory, oftentimes leaning too heavily on secondary sources.
I hoped that the songs on sex and drugs would be more interesting but five pages in to the sex song I knew it wouldn’t get better. I hate to say this but Maggie Nelson sounds curmudgeonly old in the sex song. It’s judgey, out of touch, and dare I say it, harmful (she doesn’t think art harms tho hehe).
I closed the book at this line, after suffering through her making stupid oral sex jokes about the Aziz Ansari scandal (also, it’s 2021, why is she still so focused on 2017.???): “many girls are deeply compelled by their desires, but since they don’t have much practice in articulating them, often not even to themselves, they instead become expert at putting themselves in situations in which trouble (aka sexual activity) might occur, while agilely blurring our the question of what they might be looking for (alcohol often abets this project).”
… man, if you had told me 2 years ago Maggie fucking Nelson would’ve written this sentence I would’ve slapped you. What a disappointment.
Of course Nelson’s writing can be stellar and there are definitely sentences and sentiments I agree with or that at least made me wonder. But ultimately I think this book fails in defining freedom, and, as the introduction states, providing a way forward without fear, paranoia, and dread.
September 28, 2021
Many of my favorite authors, perhaps pressured by the weight of politics, wrote their worst novels between 2016-2020. On Freedom, a collection of four essays centered around many of the biggest questions of our time, is fine, but wildly uneven.
This is most clear in Maggie Nelson’s first essay on art. Less than making a point, it seeks to disentangle: I see it as Nelson setting the table and preparing a meal rather than addressing issues directly. I enjoyed reading it and I admire Nelson’s refusal to apply knee-jerk reactions to her subject matter, but the whole thing comes off as too safe (ironic considering the Twitter mob has suggested it is anything but.) True to Andrea Long Chu’s review, however, it offers few original ideas of its own, and suffers from false equivalencies. I see value in questioning our readings of art, but Nelson provides none of her own, instead recycling the ideas of others. The most insightful point I gleaned is the idea of minority artists creating work not aligned around their identity being heralded as irrelevant or unimportant, causing immense dissatisfaction.
I have heard the second essay on sexuality involves misreadings of cited authors, but at the very least this piece opens itself more to varied interpretation. Again, it suffers from leveraging quotation over insight - I don’t think that the references are wrong, but where does Maggie step in? While her stance around consent is undoubtedly going to be received as unpopular, I see this piece as much more valuable than her essay on art in that it actually feels relevant to the world and raises interesting questions about desire and narrativity. Nelson focuses on many historical depictions of femme desire that are interesting, and offers a perspective on #MeToo that I found more valid than what she addressed regarding art. I actually didn’t think she went far enough in analyzing what she wanted to say, rather than being controversial as the Twitter mob seems to suggest. A quote I liked: “Our desire to treat everyone with compassion, kindness, and forgiveness and to throw harmful assholes off a cliff is a big koan.”
The final two essays are significantly better than the first half of the book, making one wonder what the editors were thinking with their ordering. The essay on drugs in literature feels like the only unique entry in the collection, offering new perspective like Art of Cruelty provided and ultimately lent as a template. While the final essay on climate change was great, I have already read a million other pieces echoing a similar sentiment. It offers a welcome arrangement of perspectives that are, again, not new.
In short, this book takes the form of The Art of Cruelty as a starting point for approaching the work it addresses, but also shows where that book succeeded and this one failed. I think what I loved about AoC was that it was a subject matter I was fully unacquainted with - the topics here are familiar to all of us. To take the same strategy towards popular subjects we all have opinions on is a weakness unless deeper readings are employed. It worked for the essay on Drugs and Literature, otherwise feeling insufficient.
I’m not mad I read it, and Nelson remains to my mind one of our greatest living writers. But she obviously has more to offer than this. On one hand, she is addressing topics expected of a great writer. On the other, she fails to offer new insight into this critical subject matter. Some people online are suggesting she crossed a line. To me, the problem is that she has crossed none, outsourcing risky opinions to others more qualified to answer than she is. My stance on her hasn’t changed, but I am dropping a hard “better luck next time”.
This is most clear in Maggie Nelson’s first essay on art. Less than making a point, it seeks to disentangle: I see it as Nelson setting the table and preparing a meal rather than addressing issues directly. I enjoyed reading it and I admire Nelson’s refusal to apply knee-jerk reactions to her subject matter, but the whole thing comes off as too safe (ironic considering the Twitter mob has suggested it is anything but.) True to Andrea Long Chu’s review, however, it offers few original ideas of its own, and suffers from false equivalencies. I see value in questioning our readings of art, but Nelson provides none of her own, instead recycling the ideas of others. The most insightful point I gleaned is the idea of minority artists creating work not aligned around their identity being heralded as irrelevant or unimportant, causing immense dissatisfaction.
I have heard the second essay on sexuality involves misreadings of cited authors, but at the very least this piece opens itself more to varied interpretation. Again, it suffers from leveraging quotation over insight - I don’t think that the references are wrong, but where does Maggie step in? While her stance around consent is undoubtedly going to be received as unpopular, I see this piece as much more valuable than her essay on art in that it actually feels relevant to the world and raises interesting questions about desire and narrativity. Nelson focuses on many historical depictions of femme desire that are interesting, and offers a perspective on #MeToo that I found more valid than what she addressed regarding art. I actually didn’t think she went far enough in analyzing what she wanted to say, rather than being controversial as the Twitter mob seems to suggest. A quote I liked: “Our desire to treat everyone with compassion, kindness, and forgiveness and to throw harmful assholes off a cliff is a big koan.”
The final two essays are significantly better than the first half of the book, making one wonder what the editors were thinking with their ordering. The essay on drugs in literature feels like the only unique entry in the collection, offering new perspective like Art of Cruelty provided and ultimately lent as a template. While the final essay on climate change was great, I have already read a million other pieces echoing a similar sentiment. It offers a welcome arrangement of perspectives that are, again, not new.
In short, this book takes the form of The Art of Cruelty as a starting point for approaching the work it addresses, but also shows where that book succeeded and this one failed. I think what I loved about AoC was that it was a subject matter I was fully unacquainted with - the topics here are familiar to all of us. To take the same strategy towards popular subjects we all have opinions on is a weakness unless deeper readings are employed. It worked for the essay on Drugs and Literature, otherwise feeling insufficient.
I’m not mad I read it, and Nelson remains to my mind one of our greatest living writers. But she obviously has more to offer than this. On one hand, she is addressing topics expected of a great writer. On the other, she fails to offer new insight into this critical subject matter. Some people online are suggesting she crossed a line. To me, the problem is that she has crossed none, outsourcing risky opinions to others more qualified to answer than she is. My stance on her hasn’t changed, but I am dropping a hard “better luck next time”.
September 9, 2021
On Freedom is a collection of linked, highly anticipated essays about the nature, complexities and paradoxes of freedom and a heady, iconoclastic work of cultural criticism that examines the concept of freedom through the lenses of art, climate, drugs and sex. Compared to Nelson’s previous books, this certainly feels significantly more academic than just casual reading. Rather than focus on moments of liberation, the book explores how we balance our need to care for and protect others with our need for individual space to move, think, organise, express and imagine. Maggie Nelson is one of the most esteemed writers of our day, and her extraordinary mind is in full bloom in this new work. It is a panoptic survey of a huge range of art and ideas. Nelson is one of the most exciting and original thinkers at work today, and this is one of those books that only comes along once a decade or so and that engages with the most complex, urgent and fascinating issues of our time, from the personal to the civic.
It is also a hugely important thinking book that will open up new ways of understanding the world, will be read for many years to come and will no doubt make a profound impact on the world of ideas and the world of letters. Drawing on a vast range of material, from critical theory to pop culture to the intimacies and plain exchanges of daily life, Nelson's On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint explores how we might think, experience or talk about freedom in ways responsive to the conditions of our day. She examines her abiding interest in the ‘practices of freedom’ by which we negotiate our interrelation with – and our inseparability from – others, with all the care and constraint that relationship entails while accepting difference and conflict as integral to our communion. For Nelson, thinking publicly through the knots in our culture – from the turbulent legacies of sexual liberation to the lure of despair in the face of the climate crisis – is itself a practice of freedom.
It is a means of forging fortitude, courage and company in which she explores ideas of queerness, care and freedom yet so much more. It is an expansive, exhilarating work and a boundary-pushing, provocative read which is fascinating and thought-provoking in equal measure. She explains throughout that the contemporary discourses she has chosen are for good reason. Art is a natural fit: she’s taught art and writes about art. She calls art, along with sexual freedom, her “most native ground.” Her section on drugs and addiction is “more niche, esoteric, but as a sober person I’m interested in substance abuse—the idea of being enslaved, enthralled.” And climate “is what’s on everyone’s mind.” This book is a contribution to the cultural conversation in which Nelson takes the loftiest ideas and tethers them to the ground; she makes important things legible and there’s a warmth to her writing. Also, she doesn’t come to answers but poses questions. The book is full of thinking and feeling and nuanced analysis written in fluid prose. Highly recommended.
It is also a hugely important thinking book that will open up new ways of understanding the world, will be read for many years to come and will no doubt make a profound impact on the world of ideas and the world of letters. Drawing on a vast range of material, from critical theory to pop culture to the intimacies and plain exchanges of daily life, Nelson's On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint explores how we might think, experience or talk about freedom in ways responsive to the conditions of our day. She examines her abiding interest in the ‘practices of freedom’ by which we negotiate our interrelation with – and our inseparability from – others, with all the care and constraint that relationship entails while accepting difference and conflict as integral to our communion. For Nelson, thinking publicly through the knots in our culture – from the turbulent legacies of sexual liberation to the lure of despair in the face of the climate crisis – is itself a practice of freedom.
It is a means of forging fortitude, courage and company in which she explores ideas of queerness, care and freedom yet so much more. It is an expansive, exhilarating work and a boundary-pushing, provocative read which is fascinating and thought-provoking in equal measure. She explains throughout that the contemporary discourses she has chosen are for good reason. Art is a natural fit: she’s taught art and writes about art. She calls art, along with sexual freedom, her “most native ground.” Her section on drugs and addiction is “more niche, esoteric, but as a sober person I’m interested in substance abuse—the idea of being enslaved, enthralled.” And climate “is what’s on everyone’s mind.” This book is a contribution to the cultural conversation in which Nelson takes the loftiest ideas and tethers them to the ground; she makes important things legible and there’s a warmth to her writing. Also, she doesn’t come to answers but poses questions. The book is full of thinking and feeling and nuanced analysis written in fluid prose. Highly recommended.
October 15, 2021
There's interesting stuff here but plenty that feels uninspired or wrong. Not just the standard cancel culture handwringing (which she equivocates over more than embracing) but as pointed out by many queer and feminist theorists (some of whom are mentioned here: Andrea Long Chu and Natasha Leonard), her premises are often tired, the arguments she is having passed their sell by date and her attacks on certain people (Leonard, in particular) unfair.
I tended to agree with much of Chu's review of the book:
https://www.vulture.com/article/maggi...
From a Leonard tweet:
"Also learned that Maggie Nelson criticizes another of my essays, in a wilfully careless misreading. She claims I state & argue things that I wholly do not about sex & porn. It's funny, but also fucked, cuz more ppl will read her version of me than will ever read my work directly."
"Also: the essay she horribly misrepresents calls upon experiences I had with an abusive ex. She ignores the abusive aspects..then claims, out of nowhere - her source being MY essay (misread)- that I “rifled” through the ex’s porn search history. Which I didn’t. Honestly fuck her."
https://twitter.com/natashalennard/st...
I tended to agree with much of Chu's review of the book:
https://www.vulture.com/article/maggi...
From a Leonard tweet:
"Also learned that Maggie Nelson criticizes another of my essays, in a wilfully careless misreading. She claims I state & argue things that I wholly do not about sex & porn. It's funny, but also fucked, cuz more ppl will read her version of me than will ever read my work directly."
"Also: the essay she horribly misrepresents calls upon experiences I had with an abusive ex. She ignores the abusive aspects..then claims, out of nowhere - her source being MY essay (misread)- that I “rifled” through the ex’s porn search history. Which I didn’t. Honestly fuck her."
https://twitter.com/natashalennard/st...
December 22, 2022
I really liked Maggie Nelson’s other books, but this was so disappointing. The whole thing reads like she is play-acting at being an academic, which must surely be one of the most tedious things to pretend to be. (I know she is an academic, but this reads like she wants to make sure you never forget that fact.) Through strings of quotations and quick asides, I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what she is trying to say, but I can tell she is trying very hard to say it and to sound very serious while she does.
September 27, 2022
Neljän kuukauden mittainen lukukokemus päättyy viimein, ja rakkaus Maggie Nelsonin upeaan, pohtivaan, ehdottavaan, avartavaan ja tiheään ajatteluun ja argumentaatioon vain vahvistuu ja vahvistuu.
Nelson käsittelee tuoreimmassa teoksessaan vapautta ja siihen liittyvää paradoksaalisuutta taiteen, seksin, huumeiden ja ilmastonmuutoksen kautta. Kaksi ensimmäistä osaa olivat sitä tajunnan räjäyttävää, vahvaa ja tiivistunnelmaista Nelsonia, jota eniten rakasta, kaksi viimeistä ehkä ihan aavistuksen epätasaisempia - kun huomasin viimeisen osan alkaessa, että Nelson kirjoittaa ilmastonmuutoksesta, pohdin hieman mielessäni, että mitähän uutta hän vielä näin pureskeltuun aiheeseen osaa tuoda, ja valitettavasti ei ihan järisyttävän kamalasti lopulta osannutkaan.
4,5 tähteä, pyöristyy tosin ylös ihan rakkaudesta kirjailijan käsittämättömän upeaan argumentaatio- ja ajattelutapaan.
Nelson käsittelee tuoreimmassa teoksessaan vapautta ja siihen liittyvää paradoksaalisuutta taiteen, seksin, huumeiden ja ilmastonmuutoksen kautta. Kaksi ensimmäistä osaa olivat sitä tajunnan räjäyttävää, vahvaa ja tiivistunnelmaista Nelsonia, jota eniten rakasta, kaksi viimeistä ehkä ihan aavistuksen epätasaisempia - kun huomasin viimeisen osan alkaessa, että Nelson kirjoittaa ilmastonmuutoksesta, pohdin hieman mielessäni, että mitähän uutta hän vielä näin pureskeltuun aiheeseen osaa tuoda, ja valitettavasti ei ihan järisyttävän kamalasti lopulta osannutkaan.
4,5 tähteä, pyöristyy tosin ylös ihan rakkaudesta kirjailijan käsittämättömän upeaan argumentaatio- ja ajattelutapaan.
October 30, 2021
I love the abundance of emotions that come with a Maggie Nelson book. It's always so thick and slow, like you're experiencing her ideas in molasses, it's just so rich!
September 21, 2021
The thing I really love about Maggie Nelson’s writing––the thing that makes her perhaps the first theorist whose entire work I want to read not because it’s necessary for an argument I myself am trying to make, but really just because it captivates me––is that, as she says herself towards the end of this book, she writes primarily to “think[…] aloud with others.” There is nothing didactic about her texts, none of the “I’ve spent years on positing this thesis, and now I’m going to defend it with all I have” so typical to conventional scholarly writing. Instead, they are meandering, unsure about themselves, full of gaps, counter-arguments, and unanswered questions. It’s absolutely amazing! It shows how writing can function as a tool to investigate the questions in your head further, and, even better, to make others engage with the questions in their heads as well without just falling into a “do I support or do I reject this” dichotomy.
This writing-as-process is clearly most evident in “On Freedom”, and it is the reason why I’d never go as far as calling this book brilliant. It’s a conversation. You sit down with a very intelligent, well-read, anxiety-riddled, voraciously interested person, have a pitcher of tea each, and start discussing. It’s a stunningly productive discussion. It brings you to questions you’ve never thought about, gives you new perspective and secondary sources on questions you’ve already thought about a lot, lets you not enthusiastically here and shake your head there. By the end of the evening, you want walk away with the feeling you’ve just witnessed genius at work. But you’ll feel inspired, perturbed, eager to meet that person again soon to pick up the threads where you’ve left them.
There’s an argument to be made that that’s even more valuable.
“On Freedom” is essentially a collection of four essays on the semantics, politics, ambiguities, and problematics of “freedom” in all its highly heterogenous manifestations, alongside its––according to her inextricably connected––cousin “care”. Nelson thinks about the use of these terms, this concept, this construct, this connotation, first with regards to art (think offensiveness, think censorship, think prudishness, think safe spaces, think cultural appropriation, think racism, think critics), sex (think homophobia, different waves of feminism, the conundrum of sexual liberty versus (un)sexual safety, kinks, judicial and extrajudicial retaliation, self-identification, the different status of sex to different people), drugs (think endorphin rushes, prohibition, gendered and racialized differences in drug narratives, think abstinence, which is a subjugation to rules as much as it is freedom from increasing destruction), and climate change (think “what on Earth is there left to think if we’re on a runaway train towards annihilation, with our children and millions of species and our children’s children shackled to us”, but think also “how can we still find the motivation to act? To not panic? How can we catch a break from all this without loudly declaring that all climate scientists are Chinese socialists?) The first two are arguably more conventional essays, certainly also due to the fact that Nelson has extensively written on these subjects before; the second two feel quite a bit more like non-fiction, and also that is refreshing.
There is not really anything groundbreaking in “On Freedom” as such, and it also doesn’t carry the same poetic punch as “The Argonauts”. Nevertheless, it is an unquestionably worthwhile read, especially if approached not so much as a source of information than as motivation to find more information, dig deeper and deeper, embrace ambivalence, complex theory, (political) care for the people around you, but also the simple and all the more beautiful realities of life, by yourself.
This writing-as-process is clearly most evident in “On Freedom”, and it is the reason why I’d never go as far as calling this book brilliant. It’s a conversation. You sit down with a very intelligent, well-read, anxiety-riddled, voraciously interested person, have a pitcher of tea each, and start discussing. It’s a stunningly productive discussion. It brings you to questions you’ve never thought about, gives you new perspective and secondary sources on questions you’ve already thought about a lot, lets you not enthusiastically here and shake your head there. By the end of the evening, you want walk away with the feeling you’ve just witnessed genius at work. But you’ll feel inspired, perturbed, eager to meet that person again soon to pick up the threads where you’ve left them.
There’s an argument to be made that that’s even more valuable.
“On Freedom” is essentially a collection of four essays on the semantics, politics, ambiguities, and problematics of “freedom” in all its highly heterogenous manifestations, alongside its––according to her inextricably connected––cousin “care”. Nelson thinks about the use of these terms, this concept, this construct, this connotation, first with regards to art (think offensiveness, think censorship, think prudishness, think safe spaces, think cultural appropriation, think racism, think critics), sex (think homophobia, different waves of feminism, the conundrum of sexual liberty versus (un)sexual safety, kinks, judicial and extrajudicial retaliation, self-identification, the different status of sex to different people), drugs (think endorphin rushes, prohibition, gendered and racialized differences in drug narratives, think abstinence, which is a subjugation to rules as much as it is freedom from increasing destruction), and climate change (think “what on Earth is there left to think if we’re on a runaway train towards annihilation, with our children and millions of species and our children’s children shackled to us”, but think also “how can we still find the motivation to act? To not panic? How can we catch a break from all this without loudly declaring that all climate scientists are Chinese socialists?) The first two are arguably more conventional essays, certainly also due to the fact that Nelson has extensively written on these subjects before; the second two feel quite a bit more like non-fiction, and also that is refreshing.
There is not really anything groundbreaking in “On Freedom” as such, and it also doesn’t carry the same poetic punch as “The Argonauts”. Nevertheless, it is an unquestionably worthwhile read, especially if approached not so much as a source of information than as motivation to find more information, dig deeper and deeper, embrace ambivalence, complex theory, (political) care for the people around you, but also the simple and all the more beautiful realities of life, by yourself.
September 11, 2023
Wordy, discursive, stuffed with theory and references to other literature - not an easy read, but nonetheless this was a stimulating essay collection by Maggie Nelson on freedom. Each of four essays (no idea why they're songs!) focuses on a different aspect of freedom as an ongoing practice rather than an end goal, and its tension/relationship with constraint and care: art, sexuality, drug use, and the climate crisis. Nelson's views on what might be called cancel culture when it comes to art and sexual misconduct are ultimately fairly libertarian, and are thought-provoking. Left me with lots of interesting thoughts and other things I'd like to read, as well as a burning desire never to read the much-repeated but surely unnecessary word 'doxa' again.
"...caring about art's capacity to unfold in time marshals care toward unknown audiences and unforeseeable futures as much as or more than toward present spectators and demands. We live, after all, in the present: the present is inevitably the context for our reaction and response, and it matters. Yet one of art's most compelling features is how it showcases the disjuncts between the time of composition, the time of dissemination, and the time of consideration - disjuncts that can summon us to humility and wonder. Such temporal amplitude understandably falls out of favour in politically polarized times, in which the pressure to make clear 'which side you're on' can be intense. New attentional technologies (aka the internet, social media) that feed on and foster speed, immediacy, reductiveness, reach, and negative affect (such as paranoia, anger, disgust, distress, fear, and humiliation) exacerbate this pressure."
"The whole point of reparative reading is that people derive sustenance in mysterious, creative, and unforeseeable ways from work not necessarily designed to give it, and that the transmission is nontransferable and ungovernable; the whole point of reparative making is that it is reparative for the maker, which guarantees nothing in particular about its effect on the viewer."
"Some would argue that 'nuance,' 'complexity,' 'context,' and 'gray areas' are code words employed to undermine or distract us from simpler truths, simpler charges, and simpler punishments; some would flick off the problem of 'roadkill' by pointing out that the side of the road is littered with women and queers who have been treated as such, so it's regrettable but only fair to return the favour on an infinitesimally smaller scale.
Such attitudes make sense when we are overcome with anger at people who have done unacceptable things, and at the entrenched systems that have worked overtime to enable or encourage them. But unprocessed anger makes particularly poor soil from which to grow political commitments."
"The sound of white folks making audible their apprehension that the systems that have given them dominance have also drained something vital from them, fucked them up in ways they feel strongly about but have difficulty understanding or articulating, is not usually pleasing."
"But, paranoia, despair, and anxiety are not known for helping us to 'stay with the trouble,' or to deepen our fellowship with one another. In fact, they tend to reify an already painful sense of individuation, and to constrict our imagination toward the very worst it can conjure, as if rehearsing our worst fears will lessen our future suffering. Extensive personal experience with this approach has taught me that it does not. Instead, I've come to know it as a completely understandable, extremely effective means of attenuating whatever liberation, expansiveness, or pleasure might be available in the present moment, and depriving oneself of it."
"...caring about art's capacity to unfold in time marshals care toward unknown audiences and unforeseeable futures as much as or more than toward present spectators and demands. We live, after all, in the present: the present is inevitably the context for our reaction and response, and it matters. Yet one of art's most compelling features is how it showcases the disjuncts between the time of composition, the time of dissemination, and the time of consideration - disjuncts that can summon us to humility and wonder. Such temporal amplitude understandably falls out of favour in politically polarized times, in which the pressure to make clear 'which side you're on' can be intense. New attentional technologies (aka the internet, social media) that feed on and foster speed, immediacy, reductiveness, reach, and negative affect (such as paranoia, anger, disgust, distress, fear, and humiliation) exacerbate this pressure."
"The whole point of reparative reading is that people derive sustenance in mysterious, creative, and unforeseeable ways from work not necessarily designed to give it, and that the transmission is nontransferable and ungovernable; the whole point of reparative making is that it is reparative for the maker, which guarantees nothing in particular about its effect on the viewer."
"Some would argue that 'nuance,' 'complexity,' 'context,' and 'gray areas' are code words employed to undermine or distract us from simpler truths, simpler charges, and simpler punishments; some would flick off the problem of 'roadkill' by pointing out that the side of the road is littered with women and queers who have been treated as such, so it's regrettable but only fair to return the favour on an infinitesimally smaller scale.
Such attitudes make sense when we are overcome with anger at people who have done unacceptable things, and at the entrenched systems that have worked overtime to enable or encourage them. But unprocessed anger makes particularly poor soil from which to grow political commitments."
"The sound of white folks making audible their apprehension that the systems that have given them dominance have also drained something vital from them, fucked them up in ways they feel strongly about but have difficulty understanding or articulating, is not usually pleasing."
"But, paranoia, despair, and anxiety are not known for helping us to 'stay with the trouble,' or to deepen our fellowship with one another. In fact, they tend to reify an already painful sense of individuation, and to constrict our imagination toward the very worst it can conjure, as if rehearsing our worst fears will lessen our future suffering. Extensive personal experience with this approach has taught me that it does not. Instead, I've come to know it as a completely understandable, extremely effective means of attenuating whatever liberation, expansiveness, or pleasure might be available in the present moment, and depriving oneself of it."
March 20, 2024
READING VLOG
"𝘞𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦, 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘭𝘭, 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵: 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴. 𝘠𝘦𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘳𝘵'𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘫𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘥 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 - 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘫𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘯 𝘶𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳."
For 2024, I wanted to know the difference between freedom and liberation. Here, I've realized there are so many different kinds of freedoms. And whichever freedom you choose to follow through in obtaining, is at the cost of others. Celebrates others. Hurts others. This is inevitable. Nelson shows us, through history, art, and social justice, that freedom comes with a cost.
I enjoy Nelson's academic voice, but what I loved about The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning was that it was more personal. Here, it's inserted haphazardly in hope near the end of the book to add the pretty bow, to let us conceive some kind of hope in trying to obtain more freedom for ourselves and others, but I wish this was scattered throughout to make a more wholistic work.
Nonetheless, you have to thank Nelson for doing the research, inserting thinkers, doers and dreamers in creating a packaged look at how we can better look at freedom, better see what it means for ourselves, better put ourselves in others' shoes.
Because face it. You wouldn't have done it anyway. You wouldn't have cared enough.
Here, Nelson provides the care needed to care more.
Seriously, me if you even care.
Thank you, Nelson <3
"𝘞𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦, 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘭𝘭, 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵: 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴. 𝘠𝘦𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘳𝘵'𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘫𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘥 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 - 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘫𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘯 𝘶𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳."
For 2024, I wanted to know the difference between freedom and liberation. Here, I've realized there are so many different kinds of freedoms. And whichever freedom you choose to follow through in obtaining, is at the cost of others. Celebrates others. Hurts others. This is inevitable. Nelson shows us, through history, art, and social justice, that freedom comes with a cost.
I enjoy Nelson's academic voice, but what I loved about The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning was that it was more personal. Here, it's inserted haphazardly in hope near the end of the book to add the pretty bow, to let us conceive some kind of hope in trying to obtain more freedom for ourselves and others, but I wish this was scattered throughout to make a more wholistic work.
Nonetheless, you have to thank Nelson for doing the research, inserting thinkers, doers and dreamers in creating a packaged look at how we can better look at freedom, better see what it means for ourselves, better put ourselves in others' shoes.
Because face it. You wouldn't have done it anyway. You wouldn't have cared enough.
Here, Nelson provides the care needed to care more.
Seriously, me if you even care.
Thank you, Nelson <3
June 18, 2023
Freedom is one of those concepts that continually baffles me. Beyond not being physically bound or incarcerated, I'm not sure it really has much meaning to me... Or rather, it seems to have an infinite range of grey hues. What is it to be free? Even if you define it as doing whatever you want, human wants seem suspect---following every impulse seems like a prison itself, not any sort of freedom. I don't trust my own mind and body (they have all kinds of suspect agendas and will go to great length to justify short-term actions/desires). Nelson chooses to explore the concept of freedom in four areas in this book:
Overall, I found this a little uneven compared to some of her other books, and the choice of categories somewhat disjointed but nevertheless still quite thought-provoking and well-written.
--------------------------------------
TERMS & REFERENCES I HIGHLIGHTED THAT I'M PRETENDING I'LL PURSUE IN SOME FASHION
Aporia | The Myth of Freedom, by Chögyam Trungpa | Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times | The Devil Finds Work [1976], or Hilton Als’s 2014 essay collection White Girls | sempiternal | Isabelle Stengers | future discounting | Just Transition Fund | Dark Mountain Collective | Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader | Nomadic remembering
————————————————————
Just came across this interview which seemed worth adding to the review:
https://thecreativeindependent.com/pe...
"The pages that follow do not diagnose a crisis of freedom and propose a means of fixing it (or us), nor do they take political freedom as their main focus. Instead, they bear down on the felt complexities of the freedom drive in four distinct realms—art, sex, drugs, and climate—wherein the coexistence of freedom, care, and constraint seems to me particularly thorny and acute. In each realm, I pay attention to the ways in which freedom appears knotted up with so-called unfreedom, producing marbled experiences of compulsion, discipline, possibility, and surrender."She makes a careful distinction between "freedom to" and "freedom from" (e.g., freedom to protest vs freedom from sexual harassment), and then in characteristic, and mostly engaging, Nelson fashion, she mixes a broad array of personal anecdote, philosophy, research, and introspection to tackle each area often highlighting the ways our understanding and values have changed based on historical time period and gender. In each area, she carefully considers how we balance needs and obligations, how we engage and affect others, how we allow for robust cultural production and exchange without dismissing "unacceptable behavior," and how the individual and collective goods compliment and/or confront one another.
Overall, I found this a little uneven compared to some of her other books, and the choice of categories somewhat disjointed but nevertheless still quite thought-provoking and well-written.
--------------------------------------
TERMS & REFERENCES I HIGHLIGHTED THAT I'M PRETENDING I'LL PURSUE IN SOME FASHION
Aporia | The Myth of Freedom, by Chögyam Trungpa | Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times | The Devil Finds Work [1976], or Hilton Als’s 2014 essay collection White Girls | sempiternal | Isabelle Stengers | future discounting | Just Transition Fund | Dark Mountain Collective | Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader | Nomadic remembering
————————————————————
Just came across this interview which seemed worth adding to the review:
https://thecreativeindependent.com/pe...
December 17, 2021
Praticare la libertà ovvero accettare i conflitti. In certi passaggi Nelson la fa troppo facile per i miei gusti, ma spesso ha ragione.
https://www.singola.net/arti/distrugg...
https://www.singola.net/arti/distrugg...
November 14, 2021
To love this book, to participate “It does not require that we agree. It requires that we not abandon one another.”
Read
April 25, 2025 a lifetime of untangling
February 6, 2022
It seems as if this book has had a more diverse critical reception than any of her other books! I think the readers who feel let down never really stopped to give a moment's thought to her subtitle. Songs don't argue; they rarely come to conclusions. An unfriendly reader might say Nelson's use of "Songs" is a cop-out, but that would be a reader who hasn't read the rest of the work and realized its integrity. What Nelson has done here is create the process of thought -- and she is a thinker who turns the stone over to see all it's different sides, and she seldom picks the most beautiful.
(I keep Nelson's books in my poetry section because I first came to her work in her early books published by Hanging Loose Press. So I had no trouble categorizing "Bluets" and "The Argonauts" -- although I'm pretty sure she doesn't care in the least how I categorize her! The books that are more obviously critical/philosophical are quite comfortable next to her poetry.)
She is trying to understand, or understand the way she understands, the meaning of this loaded word -- Freedom. A word all of us, no matter what our politics -- use to batter each other. She is approaching it through 4 ways -- art, sex, drugs and our responses to climate change. I doubt anyone deeply committed to one political response would like any of her non-conclusions.
Perhaps my favorite of the four is the first -- mostly because, despite my work on environmental issues -- I have dwelled on these questions of artistic freedom the most lately, given the attacks on freedom of artistic expression both from the right and from the left. Here's an important paragraph that summarizes much of what is in this "song:"
"The mythos of the outlaw artist (or the megalomaniacal director, or the incorrigibly horny novelist, or whatever) should not continue to serve, as it has served for so long, as an excuse for unacceptable behavior. At the same time, it's naive and unfair to expect artists and writers to have special access to the most intense, extreme, or painful aspects of life, then to act surprised and appalled when they turn out to have a relationship to those things that exceeds that of abstract contemplation or simple critique. Thankfully, acting as if the world neatly divides (or that our task is to divide it) into problematic, ethically turbulent, essentially dangerous people who should stay "over there," and nonproblematic, ethically good, essentially safe people who should be allowed to stay "over here," is not our only option. After all, what I've just described is a prison."
Two small quibbles. The first is on her method. Nelson works by quoting extensively from her even more extensive reading. She forms her ideas by reacting to or organizing all this reading. Sometimes that can just feel like she's listing things, and the lists both get boring and might tend toward becoming meaningless. But that is clearly how her mind works, how her writing gets done. I would hate for the writing to be hindered by some negative response she develops to the method that has shaped her, despite its occasional appearance of pedantry.
Secondly, she reminds us several times that this book is written in response to "the now." And that is certainly true! Much of this book feels as if it is a response to yesterday's headlines. She would never worry about this, but I fear by quoting almost exclusively from "the now," she is limiting herself and her readership.
But those are small quibbles. Maggie Nelson is one of the important poets and writers and thinkers we have right now, and this book is a worthy addition to a life's work I, for one, intend to read carefully.
(I keep Nelson's books in my poetry section because I first came to her work in her early books published by Hanging Loose Press. So I had no trouble categorizing "Bluets" and "The Argonauts" -- although I'm pretty sure she doesn't care in the least how I categorize her! The books that are more obviously critical/philosophical are quite comfortable next to her poetry.)
She is trying to understand, or understand the way she understands, the meaning of this loaded word -- Freedom. A word all of us, no matter what our politics -- use to batter each other. She is approaching it through 4 ways -- art, sex, drugs and our responses to climate change. I doubt anyone deeply committed to one political response would like any of her non-conclusions.
Perhaps my favorite of the four is the first -- mostly because, despite my work on environmental issues -- I have dwelled on these questions of artistic freedom the most lately, given the attacks on freedom of artistic expression both from the right and from the left. Here's an important paragraph that summarizes much of what is in this "song:"
"The mythos of the outlaw artist (or the megalomaniacal director, or the incorrigibly horny novelist, or whatever) should not continue to serve, as it has served for so long, as an excuse for unacceptable behavior. At the same time, it's naive and unfair to expect artists and writers to have special access to the most intense, extreme, or painful aspects of life, then to act surprised and appalled when they turn out to have a relationship to those things that exceeds that of abstract contemplation or simple critique. Thankfully, acting as if the world neatly divides (or that our task is to divide it) into problematic, ethically turbulent, essentially dangerous people who should stay "over there," and nonproblematic, ethically good, essentially safe people who should be allowed to stay "over here," is not our only option. After all, what I've just described is a prison."
Two small quibbles. The first is on her method. Nelson works by quoting extensively from her even more extensive reading. She forms her ideas by reacting to or organizing all this reading. Sometimes that can just feel like she's listing things, and the lists both get boring and might tend toward becoming meaningless. But that is clearly how her mind works, how her writing gets done. I would hate for the writing to be hindered by some negative response she develops to the method that has shaped her, despite its occasional appearance of pedantry.
Secondly, she reminds us several times that this book is written in response to "the now." And that is certainly true! Much of this book feels as if it is a response to yesterday's headlines. She would never worry about this, but I fear by quoting almost exclusively from "the now," she is limiting herself and her readership.
But those are small quibbles. Maggie Nelson is one of the important poets and writers and thinkers we have right now, and this book is a worthy addition to a life's work I, for one, intend to read carefully.
August 11, 2025
Toen ik de eerste van vier clusteressays begon te lezen, over kunst, kwam een gevoel van 'academisme' in me op. Het deed me in elk geval over die term nadenken, want ik ben in principe huiverig om het te gebruiken, en zeker niet als synoniem van 'moeilijk geformuleerd', want dat stoort mij op zich niet. Maar deze tekst ervaarde ik als academisch omdat ze haar kennis laat voelen, maar niet te volle deelt. Uiteindelijk bleek dat vooral in het eerste essay een probleem, omdat ook de voorbeelden en de aanleidingen om te denken heel Amerikaans zijn, dus wellicht wel gekend bij haar oorspronkelijke leespubliek.
Ook academisch is het bekijken langs alle kanten van een onderwerp, het citeren van andere stemmen en zich niet erg uitspreken. Ook daar ergerde ik me aanvankelijk aan, maar op een bepaald ogenblik sprak Nelson haar voorkeur uit voor een "zwakke theorie", een waarin het luisteren naar anderen belangrijker is dan een eigen bril op de werkelijkheid opdringen. Of zoals ze het in het nawoord formuleert: 'Samen met anderen hardop nadenken [...]. Het is een voortdurend en zelfs dialectisch proces, in die zin dat het behelst dat je zowel interpenetratie als transformatie toelaat, terwijl je het vermogen behoudt om te differentiëren en te stellen.' (dus ja, bij momenten heeft ze wel degelijk moeilijke, academische aandoende taal.) Tegelijk kiest ze wel haar gesprekspartners. Ze gebruikt vaak feministische en dekoloniserende invalshoeken en stemmen. Ook dat gebeurt op een manier dat me beetje bij beetje, door het boek heen, heeft doen kantelen en mijn verzet enigszins opgeven. Al zullen ook de thema's daar invloed op hebben gehad. 'Kunst' was zoals gezegd te ver van mijn bed, ik kende de concrete gebeurtenissen waar ze naar verwijst niet en ik denk nog altijd dat dit essay ook te abstract geformuleerd is. De volgende twee, over seks en drugs, waren al tastbaarder. Maar vooral het laatste, over klimaat, boeide me erg (en is ook de aanleiding om dit boek te lezen). Natuurlijk ligt het aan het thema, maar door vanuit een persoonlijk verhaal met haar zoon te beginnen, krijgt het geheel ook meer impact. Het raakt meer.
Ik sprak hierboven van clusteressays. Elk essay bestaat uit hoofdstukken die elk een aspect aanraken, aftasten van het grotere geheel. De samenhang is losvast, bruggetjes als 'De bovenstaande paragrafen heb ik enkele jaren geleden geschreven' verraden mee dat we met een collage te maken hebben. De algemene zoektocht naar de betekenis van 'vrijheid' en naar het aantonen dat vrijheid en onvrijheid onlosmakelijk samenhangen en dat we altijd oog moeten hebben voor beide kanten, neemt niet weg dat de inhoudelijke uitwerkingen van een deelaspecten me vaak meer konden boeien dan het hoofdpad. Ook daar lijkt die fascinatie voor vrijheid, zoals die hier plaatsvindt, me eerder een Amerikaanse aangelegenheid (het boek is geschreven tijdens Trumps eerste (en laten we hopen enige) presidentsperiode).
Nelson citeert zelf enkele keren van Donna Haraway de volgende zin: 'Denken moeten we, we moeten denken.' Dat doet ze en zeker haar laatste essay doet me ook nadenken en verderschrijven.
Ook academisch is het bekijken langs alle kanten van een onderwerp, het citeren van andere stemmen en zich niet erg uitspreken. Ook daar ergerde ik me aanvankelijk aan, maar op een bepaald ogenblik sprak Nelson haar voorkeur uit voor een "zwakke theorie", een waarin het luisteren naar anderen belangrijker is dan een eigen bril op de werkelijkheid opdringen. Of zoals ze het in het nawoord formuleert: 'Samen met anderen hardop nadenken [...]. Het is een voortdurend en zelfs dialectisch proces, in die zin dat het behelst dat je zowel interpenetratie als transformatie toelaat, terwijl je het vermogen behoudt om te differentiëren en te stellen.' (dus ja, bij momenten heeft ze wel degelijk moeilijke, academische aandoende taal.) Tegelijk kiest ze wel haar gesprekspartners. Ze gebruikt vaak feministische en dekoloniserende invalshoeken en stemmen. Ook dat gebeurt op een manier dat me beetje bij beetje, door het boek heen, heeft doen kantelen en mijn verzet enigszins opgeven. Al zullen ook de thema's daar invloed op hebben gehad. 'Kunst' was zoals gezegd te ver van mijn bed, ik kende de concrete gebeurtenissen waar ze naar verwijst niet en ik denk nog altijd dat dit essay ook te abstract geformuleerd is. De volgende twee, over seks en drugs, waren al tastbaarder. Maar vooral het laatste, over klimaat, boeide me erg (en is ook de aanleiding om dit boek te lezen). Natuurlijk ligt het aan het thema, maar door vanuit een persoonlijk verhaal met haar zoon te beginnen, krijgt het geheel ook meer impact. Het raakt meer.
Ik sprak hierboven van clusteressays. Elk essay bestaat uit hoofdstukken die elk een aspect aanraken, aftasten van het grotere geheel. De samenhang is losvast, bruggetjes als 'De bovenstaande paragrafen heb ik enkele jaren geleden geschreven' verraden mee dat we met een collage te maken hebben. De algemene zoektocht naar de betekenis van 'vrijheid' en naar het aantonen dat vrijheid en onvrijheid onlosmakelijk samenhangen en dat we altijd oog moeten hebben voor beide kanten, neemt niet weg dat de inhoudelijke uitwerkingen van een deelaspecten me vaak meer konden boeien dan het hoofdpad. Ook daar lijkt die fascinatie voor vrijheid, zoals die hier plaatsvindt, me eerder een Amerikaanse aangelegenheid (het boek is geschreven tijdens Trumps eerste (en laten we hopen enige) presidentsperiode).
Nelson citeert zelf enkele keren van Donna Haraway de volgende zin: 'Denken moeten we, we moeten denken.' Dat doet ze en zeker haar laatste essay doet me ook nadenken en verderschrijven.
October 24, 2021
art, sex, drugs, climate change
“distinguishing between an erotics of passivity and afear of assertion can be a difficult charge. Keeping one’s desires amorphous can also create the conditions for perpetual letdown, if and when the nitty-gritty nastiness of sex conflicts with the pleasures of floating in a cloud of open-ended possibility (leading to the old “whatever I wanted, it wasn’t that” feeling).”
“because it reminds us that even we ourselves don’t always know what we want, or if there even exists something called “desire” that can be analyzed as separable from the situations and sensations that give it rise.”
“In fact, it may be just the opposite: that a lot of what we treat as heterosexuality is actually just desire; straight people and culture don’t own it.”
“Like many drinkers, I spent a lot of time trying to self-regulate (marking bottles with tape, taking restorative reprieves, positively comparing myself to more saliently out-of-control others, some of whom I served as a bartender, some of whom were my chosen intimates). But the simple idea of not ever drinking again seemed utterly impossible, a grim and untenable negation of all convivial life. I spent so much time warding off the idea that, when it finally breached, it seemed to have come from somewhere else. It floated down to me in the form of a single sentence that I wrote down on the back flap of the book I was holding in my hand when it landed: I won’t drink anymore. The relief in writing it down—and meaning it—was so total, I’d never felt anything like it. I was terrified of what it might mean. But wherever it came from, I knew, as I wrote it, that it was true. It was a vow to which I felt, almost despite myself, now sutured.
Lest I’m making this moment sound like a pleasant feather that wafted down from a benevolent god, I might add that, the day prior, I had awoken at a rural writing residency so hungover from cheap wine, so dejected and heartbroken, so full of self-loathing about recent sexual encounters that had disgusted me, that, while walking to the grocery store (to buy more wine, surely), I experienced the nearly overwhelming urge to throw my body into the oncoming traffic. In that moment, which also seemingly came out of nowhere, a different sentence had floated into my head, one with nearly equal force: I won’t live anymore. Somehow I managed to cross the roadway and call a friend (there were, incredibly, still pay phones) who listened as I wept. It seems clear to me now that the following day’s sentence arrived as a corrective to and displacement of the first.”
“distinguishing between an erotics of passivity and afear of assertion can be a difficult charge. Keeping one’s desires amorphous can also create the conditions for perpetual letdown, if and when the nitty-gritty nastiness of sex conflicts with the pleasures of floating in a cloud of open-ended possibility (leading to the old “whatever I wanted, it wasn’t that” feeling).”
“because it reminds us that even we ourselves don’t always know what we want, or if there even exists something called “desire” that can be analyzed as separable from the situations and sensations that give it rise.”
“In fact, it may be just the opposite: that a lot of what we treat as heterosexuality is actually just desire; straight people and culture don’t own it.”
“Like many drinkers, I spent a lot of time trying to self-regulate (marking bottles with tape, taking restorative reprieves, positively comparing myself to more saliently out-of-control others, some of whom I served as a bartender, some of whom were my chosen intimates). But the simple idea of not ever drinking again seemed utterly impossible, a grim and untenable negation of all convivial life. I spent so much time warding off the idea that, when it finally breached, it seemed to have come from somewhere else. It floated down to me in the form of a single sentence that I wrote down on the back flap of the book I was holding in my hand when it landed: I won’t drink anymore. The relief in writing it down—and meaning it—was so total, I’d never felt anything like it. I was terrified of what it might mean. But wherever it came from, I knew, as I wrote it, that it was true. It was a vow to which I felt, almost despite myself, now sutured.
Lest I’m making this moment sound like a pleasant feather that wafted down from a benevolent god, I might add that, the day prior, I had awoken at a rural writing residency so hungover from cheap wine, so dejected and heartbroken, so full of self-loathing about recent sexual encounters that had disgusted me, that, while walking to the grocery store (to buy more wine, surely), I experienced the nearly overwhelming urge to throw my body into the oncoming traffic. In that moment, which also seemingly came out of nowhere, a different sentence had floated into my head, one with nearly equal force: I won’t live anymore. Somehow I managed to cross the roadway and call a friend (there were, incredibly, still pay phones) who listened as I wept. It seems clear to me now that the following day’s sentence arrived as a corrective to and displacement of the first.”
December 30, 2021
Because I will always be a student of nonfiction, I requested the new Maggie Nelson at the library long before I read a scathing review of it in Bookforum. (I've since read another in The Nation but ultimately skimmed the review because it was quoting the book at length with brief commentary--just another cycle of itself: here let me show you how bad this is by leaving it up to the text.) So by the time it was ready for me at the library, I already had some preconceived ideas about what Nelson was going for. The introduction felt completely unnecessary and read like a book proposal. I skimmed it. Big "enough already" vibes.
There are four "songs"--art, sex, drugs, and climate--on freedom. Naturally I read the drug chapter first. It had a lot of interesting lines I'll be copying down in my writing journal. Nelson discusses the fact that people use drugs to find a sort of freedom. ...she discusses a lot of things that often don't make sense that are convoluted and hyperbolic. She discusses white women sobriety and drug memoirs and her own decision to stop drinking. It has its moments.
Throughout, there are end notes; some of them are long explanations and others are a sentence or two thanking someone who led Nelson to an idea. It was unbalanced. I started the sex chapter but skimmed through and ultimately did not finish it.
My main takeaway of this book is: it is too academic for its own good. I'm not sure any other author could've pulled off a book like this. After The Argonauts, On Freedom reads like Nelson was given carte blanche (ironic, I know). It reads as another one of those instances where famous people don't need editors. Their names are a big enough draw to sell books.
There are dribs and drabs of scolding which are unsettling... how freedom is being limited because of liberal policing of ideas and actions. There are a few (from what I read) direct mentions of how the word freedom has been co-opted by the right (freedom fries, etc) over the years and how we've (the general public, I assume she means) lost sense of the word. From what I read, this book is completely inaccessible and if the folks at Bookforum can't find a good thing to say about it, who is this book for? It seems like a good idea but probably could've been a long, viral essay instead of a 300-ish page book that rambles in bits and pieces (in her woven nature of burst paragraphs) where I often read something (with no desire to re-read the paragraph) having no idea what I just read. It helped me get to sleep. What a bummer.
There are four "songs"--art, sex, drugs, and climate--on freedom. Naturally I read the drug chapter first. It had a lot of interesting lines I'll be copying down in my writing journal. Nelson discusses the fact that people use drugs to find a sort of freedom. ...she discusses a lot of things that often don't make sense that are convoluted and hyperbolic. She discusses white women sobriety and drug memoirs and her own decision to stop drinking. It has its moments.
Throughout, there are end notes; some of them are long explanations and others are a sentence or two thanking someone who led Nelson to an idea. It was unbalanced. I started the sex chapter but skimmed through and ultimately did not finish it.
My main takeaway of this book is: it is too academic for its own good. I'm not sure any other author could've pulled off a book like this. After The Argonauts, On Freedom reads like Nelson was given carte blanche (ironic, I know). It reads as another one of those instances where famous people don't need editors. Their names are a big enough draw to sell books.
There are dribs and drabs of scolding which are unsettling... how freedom is being limited because of liberal policing of ideas and actions. There are a few (from what I read) direct mentions of how the word freedom has been co-opted by the right (freedom fries, etc) over the years and how we've (the general public, I assume she means) lost sense of the word. From what I read, this book is completely inaccessible and if the folks at Bookforum can't find a good thing to say about it, who is this book for? It seems like a good idea but probably could've been a long, viral essay instead of a 300-ish page book that rambles in bits and pieces (in her woven nature of burst paragraphs) where I often read something (with no desire to re-read the paragraph) having no idea what I just read. It helped me get to sleep. What a bummer.
December 31, 2024
J'ai lu la moitié mais j'ai du arrêter - mon esprit trop préoccupé par le travail. Je compte évidemment y revenir. Son essai sur la notion de liberté est passionnant. Maggie forever
March 17, 2022
This book took a while for me to unpack, and I have so much to say about this. I will have to take some time to think through for a proper review. At the gist of Nelson’s book, however, is the idea of freedom and what it means for us, as individuals and as a collective society. She is a fierce writer who is not afraid to explore issues of drug, sex, art, and climate change. In any case, will come to this one later, as Nelson deserves a thoughtful review.
February 5, 2022
I’m compelled to note that this body of work, much like Nelson’s previous writings, is a formulation of exquisite analysis and critique. Despite the sometimes jarring subject matters, she brilliantly dives into discourses of race, politics, sexuality, drugs in an inspired philsophical exploration of what the word "free" evokes and compels in different contexts. The thematics of “Freedom” are turned upside down and reading along the whole way through offers an enticing and brave examination of something beyond the banality of red, white and blue. Nelson ushers us into a dynamic sphere of philosophical, sociological quandaries, wherein hope and undeniable searching for what binds us is evident throughout.
November 30, 2021
wouldya believe she made me cry again!!!! ps dont skip the footnotes!!!
November 9, 2023
Reading Maggie Nelson makes me want to be a better writer, to care about my subjects, to offer something for the future I didn’t know possible.
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September 4, 2024maggie nelson writes theory and brings tears to my eyes. this was an astonishing book and one that i’ve been desperate to read since i first read “the ballad of sexual optimism” (second essay in this collection) last december.
each of these essays is brilliant as a standalone work, but they also build on each other in such a beautiful and (to me, at least) unexpected way. each essay gets more and more high stakes and existential in its subject matter, culminating in a moving essay on the climate crisis that asks (and genuinely seeks to answer) what kind of hope is possible right now, and how to exist in the space between agonizing hyperawareness and total repression.
in its own way, each essay in this collection is about locating spaces between. the space between liberty and obligation is a huge one. the space between control and abandon is another. in this way, it really is a book “on freedom” in a holistic sense. at the same time, i appreciate that it is also materially a book about art, sex, drugs, and the climate crisis. it left me with much to think about on each of these topics.
this is up there for me, in my maggie nelson ranking thus far. i think id put it a close second, beneath the argonauts. it’s hard to choose, when everything she writes is so exciting!
each of these essays is brilliant as a standalone work, but they also build on each other in such a beautiful and (to me, at least) unexpected way. each essay gets more and more high stakes and existential in its subject matter, culminating in a moving essay on the climate crisis that asks (and genuinely seeks to answer) what kind of hope is possible right now, and how to exist in the space between agonizing hyperawareness and total repression.
in its own way, each essay in this collection is about locating spaces between. the space between liberty and obligation is a huge one. the space between control and abandon is another. in this way, it really is a book “on freedom” in a holistic sense. at the same time, i appreciate that it is also materially a book about art, sex, drugs, and the climate crisis. it left me with much to think about on each of these topics.
this is up there for me, in my maggie nelson ranking thus far. i think id put it a close second, beneath the argonauts. it’s hard to choose, when everything she writes is so exciting!
February 27, 2025
I bought this a few years ago because a professor that I had a crush on recommended it but I waited so long to read the damn thing that I can’t even impress him with my superbly nuanced opinions and carefully crafted analysis! Waste of my damn time. Just kidding. I love #learningnewthings #fortheirownsake.
I did enjoy this and I learned a lot but it got to a point where it was just so completely convoluted that I kind of lost the plot. I don’t wanna be reductive because Maggie Nelson is a genius and a lot of this was really awesome but much of it to me (TO ME) felt like jargon.
I did enjoy this and I learned a lot but it got to a point where it was just so completely convoluted that I kind of lost the plot. I don’t wanna be reductive because Maggie Nelson is a genius and a lot of this was really awesome but much of it to me (TO ME) felt like jargon.
April 14, 2024
“Nearly every time we go to Travel Town together, I think, I’ve never been happier in all my life. Sometimes I say this aloud, be it to him or myself or the uncaring air. This is one of the things I’ve learned about happiness: when you feel it, it’s good to say so. That way, if and when you say later in depression or despair, “ I’ve just never been happy,” there will be a trail of audible testimony in your wake indicating otherwise.”
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