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Letter from the Editor: Head Butler wants to be your booster shot.
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Published: Dec 22, 2021
Category:
editor's letter
Last week, I had a reason to write in my calendar — I was invited to a dinner party with notable guests in smart clothes, the sort of invitation that used to come my way with some frequency and stopped completely in March of 2020. Scorn these Society events if you like; I was looking forward to this one. It was canceled. “Asking friends for a dinner at this moment isn’t the action of a true friend,” the hostess emailed. “It could easily ruin all your other plans for Christmas and the New Year.” The dinner is postponed. Until… when?
Until March, if the American experience is similar to what Danish scientists have predicted. That means three months of canceled theater and concerts, restaurant dinners in outdoor sheds, closed offices and, possibly, schools. In other words, the movie we’ve already seen, just with less fear — we’re vaccinated and boosted, we might get sick, but we won’t die — and more boredom, frustration, anger, and breakdowns.
I’m lucky. I was working on a novel during the pandemic, and my days were pretty much what they were before COVID: reading and writing and walking. This time around, I’m finishing the book, and then I’ll turn it over to the focus group, edit it and get it sold. If that doesn’t fill three months, no worries — I’ll start the next one.
I’m cautious about drawing conclusions, but I think I learned something worth sharing. In a winter like this, when so much of our lives will seem out of our control — and will be out of our control — it’s really important to have a project. Not a work project, assigned to you by others. A personal project. A project with a purpose that matters to you and may come to matter to others.
In my novel, a young monk climbs a mountain to ask a venerable lama the all-important question: “What’s the secret of life?” The lama says there are three secrets. The first: “Pay attention.” The second: “Pay attention.” The third: “Pay attention.”
Butler exists to point you to the good stuff, new and old, that you might not otherwise see. Yesterday, I reviewed Louise Glück’s book of poems, Winter Recipes from the Collective. First day sales on Amazon: 15 copies. That has to be more copies of this book than were sold by any book store in this country, including Amazon. Thrilling to me. And useful, I think, to those of you who bought it. “When minds rub against one another,” Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “the mental temperature goes up.” Louise Glück makes you pay attention.
In the language we speak now, it comes down to this: Head Butler wants to be your booster shot.
