When I was 20 I would commute from my apartment to Hunter College where I was a student studying English. I had a mediocre microscopic apartment in Two Bridges for which the only train close was the F. The F being a mediocre little train. It was on that train one afternoon I felt incomparably lonely, so lonely I felt invisible. It was as if you could only see me when you were standing right in front of me. By the time people approached my subway seat they were upset to learn the spot wasn’t open at all, there was actually a glum-looking 20-year-old sitting in it reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac. They sighed audibly and I receded into my own universe where only I existed. After two stops a man saw the open seat next to me and sat. We didn’t exchange names but in between one stop from the next the handsome businessman, who looked no different from the other handsome men I spent my afternoons and mornings to and from school falling in love with, noticed I was reading Kerouac. He said how much he loved that book. Before I could think about what I was doing I turned to him and said,
“I hate this book.”
There was an article by Repeller a few years ago about embracing our own mediocre existence. It was about doing things badly just because you enjoy doing them. Talking to this man I think it was the first time I ever embraced mediocrity, but I mean mediocrity in a sort of different-side-of-the-same-coin kind of way. How I mean the concept isn’t the things I consume or the opinions I have are bad, but in some ways, they deter from an image of myself I have been made to feel is respectable. An image I have curated to hold up to certain scrutiny. While trying to pinpoint individuality there has come a point where what’s pleasing to share, what feels highly respectable and aesthetically acceptable, has outweighed the reality of what we consume. We are more defined by defining ourselves than the honest fluidity of our one desire to the next. In some ways, we have become inseparable, even indistinguishable, from our own aesthetics.
After saying I didn’t like the book the man asked me why.
“It’s so boring. I will probably stop reading it after today.”
He laughed at this answer, but not in a way that was patronizing, in a way that we were two people with completely different reactions to a book we had both read or tried to read. I return to this memory frequently, I write about it often, because until that point I felt there wasn’t enough room in my world for both what I believed and what was respectable to say. Those were two different things. It wasn’t that I didn’t have my own thoughts it was that to be smart was to me a performance and a static state. There was no room for error.
I truly dislike scapegoating the internet or social media as the cause of a problem, something I think done too liberally, but I think it does play a role in the inflation of this tunnel vision on aesthetics. It feels like you cannot be part of something if you so much as veer even to the left or right of it. There’s no room for grey. All areas of our lives now have to look presentable. We have websites like Goodreads and Letterbox displaying our every last consumable privacy. There is no movie or book we cannot pursue which is not immediately capable of being witnessed by others. It’s hard to not want to play pretend, to be aware, and to make decisions off of the awareness that someone might see you. Our private lives even have been turned into a sort of curated consumable anxiety.
My internet footprint has entirely been me playing the long game of convincing people I’m cool, I’m smart, and I’m talented. I don’t wish to excuse myself from the cycle of deceptiveness. I think my Goodreads makes me look smart and that’s what I want it to do, but some of those books I wonder if I read them because I wanted to or because I wanted other people to know I had read them. Or even because I had seen other people read them and I was hoping to curate my life to look like theirs which got more likes and views and respect. Sometimes I feel trapped still by the growing delusion that everything I do must make me look good, must contain some clear benefit.
In some sense too we are at a time where more people than ever have their degrees and are more than willing to make you feel embarrassed for liking what you like. If you asked me to hit shuffle on my music I think I would die before I got the chance to be embarrassed by what turned up (probably a glee song). In some ways, we all want to look cultured perhaps more than we want to be cultured or can commit to it in certain areas of our lives. There is a certain joy in having an opinion that feels smart, but too much weight I feel is attached to it. It feeds into a kind of self-worth. If we look the part we want to play we are entitled to feel we have done something or we have something worth talking about. The aesthetics of intelligence, of Instagram and other social media, don’t seem like such a big deal until eventually doing something just because you want to becomes difficult to do, too uncomfortable to bear. When joy for the sake of joy starts to look like shame.
Let me be the first to disrupt the illusion. It might shock no one to learn not everything I like is purely intellectual. I have mediocre taste at best. I watched three seasons of Riverdale, I spent my own hard-earned money to watch Pride and Prejudice with Zombies, and I hated reading Sense and Sensibility. I also have opinions on authors I have never read and books I never finished. Even worse, I can be a total snob about books. I don’t exempt myself from creating too an environment where our favorite books are kept hush hush. I apologize to all the friends who wanted to read an author I didn’t like and got a glaring look from me.
The internal revolution of being isn’t easy. In some ways, it’s scary to admit we don’t live up to an expectation we have made for ourselves. But to want to be so deeply seen by an imaginary look or even the desire to be totally defined by trends I fear makes us more two-dimensional than three. The contrast of our real and human instinct our joys and our fears and our totally off-base strangely enjoyed activities are our most important traits. I don’t know if there is power in the mediocre so much as there is power in allowing ourselves the freedom to stray. To be dictated by a number of currents and to be contradictory and alive. The various avenues of joy are equally respectable. I didn’t enjoy Pride and Prejudice with Zombies because I expected it to be the greatest movie ever made. I wanted to be part of that world, that universe again. I enjoyed my time there, for a minute, for an hour. Having the opportunity to once again not know exactly how things were going to work out but to enjoy the two proposals by Mr. Darcy, to see it in a different mediocre context was fun. An acceptable thing, though I have been made to feel it isn’t.
How easy it is to make our lives more difficult by accident. I don’t know why that businessman had such a profound effect on me. Enough still that I still think of him, still refer back to reflect on my life four years after the fact. I’m grateful for the domino effect it has caused. How now I have begun to ask myself what if I just liked something? What if I did it just because I want to. What if I leaned in on my mediocrity, took a break and read a trashy romance novel, and had fun while I did it? Better yet what if when the question of my simple pleasures came up in conversation and I was totally honest about everything and laid my mediocrity out on the table. I’m in favor of its authenticity, the contrast to my other equally real and respectable taste. I think that might be nice, a relief even.
I tried to read Kerouac once more and about 50 pages in I stopped. I was sitting on my parent’s porch when it happened. I kinda imagined that businessman laughing at my repeat attempt to enjoy what I clearly didn’t enjoy. If I had it my way I’d never run into him man again. Not in this lifetime at least. I was able to step out of my lone universe and by his introduction entered a bigger more populated one. A universe made to be real in, three-dimensional. If a letter could reach an unnamed patron in this far-off universe I’d send it out to the void right away, knowing somehow it would make its way to him. In it I’d write something like this:
Thank you for seeing me, for remembering, unlike so many people, an open spot next to me meant you could sit. And before I forget, my name is Chloe Williams.
In honor of mediocrity, how could I make it the theme and not share with everyone my own library of mediocre art. A couple of holiday seasons ago my sister got me a film camera and truly I don’t know anything worse than what I shot those fateful months. Let’s embrace the unpleasing unartistic eye that is these photos.
The only gallery that’s taking this film is this made-up one and I’m forever grateful they decided to.
“Some part of me knew he would show up, that if I stood in one place long enough he would find me, like you’re taught to do when you’re lost. But they never taught us what to do if both of you are lost, and you both end up in the same place, waiting.”
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn
I feel his continual going to be better, easier to manage, more familiar to anticipate, than accepting he may actually just be gone. If he is still in its action then there’s a chance he may turn around and say
“Actually, I’ve changed my mind.”
June 15th, 2021 1:18 PM
I might almost mistake you, for 22, for fall, or even 16 dreaming of love.
June 10th, 2021 5:05 PM
I think it’s pretty fitting that, despite my best efforts to give a phenomenal account of mediocrity, I still feel this newsletter itself is mediocre. Of course, I come to each newsletter with great fervor to deliver something I’m proud of. And of course, as it happens due to various circumstances I feel by that first Friday morning it is still not up to par. The circumstances this month being this immense build-up of pressure, this tension in me to be a certain kind of writer. In some ways having gained a lot of traction in a short amount of time, I feel like a failure already. Why didn’t it keep going? why do my videos not get as many views as before? Why am I losing followers? It’s difficult to be so aware of your internet presence and I’m trying to be more comfortable and okay with the fact I’m still working towards something. I still have goals and ambition to reach for change and growth. While it’s scary in some ways to be in this feeling of in-between I’m so happy I have a moment to pause here, to get to know the people who are reading even when I feel it isn’t all that good of a read. That is the secret beauty of mediocrity. It would be in its own way easier not to hit publish at all, but the weight of commitment is one I find more important. And how happy I am to have mediocrity to come back to rather than nothing at all. So with this, I deliver you my best attempt, perhaps not the most profound, but it is a delivery I made months ago to do this thing I’m trying to do. As always. I hope you’ll stick around.
Speaking of how terrible aesthetics are, here is this months mood board (consult with caution and recreate with mediocrity)
That’s all this month! If you enjoyed the little conversation we had let me know! Save +share your favorite parts and tag @chloeinletters
My Instagram is @chloeinletters where the DMs are checked, cared, and loved for.
My Goodreads where I sometimes write reviews but keep updated is right here where more of my library is contained as far as books go.
My website is where you can check out my portfolio and contact me
My email, if you want to cut to the chase, is letterstochloew@gmail.com where you can let me know what you think or ask me a question about what you saw here!
Here’s to Starbucks Fridays, Glee songs, embarrassing taste, and handsome businessmen
Love always,
Chloé
Ps. Next Friday my paid newsletter comes out with exclusive content. For 5$ feel free to join me. If not no worries, we’ll still see each other soon!
Who knew accepting mediocrity could be so liberating? In all seriousness, i feel like facing it can be so daunting and a bit existential (in a scary but good way).
"And how happy I am to have mediocrity to come back to rather than nothing at all."
I think this sentence wonderfully sums up everything I've been battling in my own head recently - being afraid to do the wrong things so that I end up not doing anything at all - neither responsibility or pleasure. I just sit there or wander aimlessly like a Sim. But the focus and motivation and whim is swinging back around. And reading things like this helps. Now if only I could remember to eat.