The Bluestocking, vol XXXVI: Dark days, dad duds and digital detox

Happy Labour conference eve! Still a few tickets left to see me and Stephen Bush present the New Statesman podcast LIVE on Sunday.

Helen


A Decade Lived in the Dark

Lyndsey also asks reporters not to bring recording devices, explaining, “I can record the interview using my own technology (this is to avoid dictaphones, mobile phones, etc.)—a special microphone on a long cable attached to our laptop in the next room (the microphone is an electrically passive fibre-optic mic).” She requires that “all electronic gadgets” be left at home or in the car, and adds, “Please can they not wear strong perfume or aftershave.” The display of my dictaphone, a tiny Olympus that uses two triple-A batteries, emits a very faint yellow light. Thomas Ruenger, a dermatologist at Boston University who specializes in light-sensitivity disorders, told me that he found it “very, very hard to believe” that such a display could cause discomfort to even the most acutely light-sensitive person, because the energy level would be “so low” by the time the light reached the skin.

This New Yorker profile of "Lyndsey", a woman who claims to be allergic to light, dances round the idea that it's a psychomatic illness. (It certainly seems quite a convenient one, disappearing now her book has been published.) If the subject interests you, I would also recommend Leslie Jamison's dispatch from a convention of Morgellons sufferers; Dr Phil Whitaker on the "matchbox sign"; and the Guardian report from the town of Snowflake, a wifi-, perfume- and other modernities-free town for those who are "allergic to life".

The common link between all of these people is that they have found an illness which expresses their desire to escape some of the worst bits of modern life: feeling unimportant, unheard, one of a huge crowd... and also feeling overwhelmed, not able to cope. Having suffered anxiety myself in the past, I find it hard not to see the physical symptoms as your brain screaming at you: STOP DOING THIS TO YOURSELF. Perhaps we're only just beginning to understand how profoundly illnesses can affect us without any obvious physical cause.

Lin-Manuel Miranda is ready for his next act

Obviously, going to the White House was a very big deal. But often, it's the little things. I'm such a pop-cultural junkie. Alex Trebek came backstage, and the first thing he said in that voice was, "Answer: This is America's favorite play." "What isHamilton?" And I was like, "Did that really just happen? Is that how he starts every conversation?"

Lin-Manuel Miranda is like a pure injection of cheeriness into your day. If he turns out to be a serial killer, or have terrible opinions on the Labour party, I don't think I'll be able to cope. Real talk, though: those photos, Lin. No. You are better than checked 7/8ths length pants.

I Used to Be a Human Being

By the last few months, I realized I had been engaging — like most addicts — in a form of denial. I’d long treated my online life as a supplement to my real life, an add-on, as it were. Yes, I spent many hours communicating with others as a disembodied voice, but my real life and body were still here. But then I began to realize, as my health and happiness deteriorated, that this was not a both-and kind of situation. It was either-or. Every hour I spent online was not spent in the physical world. Every minute I was engrossed in a virtual interaction I was not involved in a human encounter. Every second absorbed in some trivia was a second less for any form of reflection, or calm, or spirituality. “Multitasking” was a mirage. This was a zero-sum question. I either lived as a voice online or I lived as a human being in the world that humans had lived in since the beginning of time.

And so I decided, after 15 years, to live in reality.

"Digital detox" is a buzzphrase ruthlessly abused by marketing people who want to sell you stuff. But I have to say I relate to a lot of this Andrew Sullivan piece about not feeling quite satisfied by a life where my interactions are mostly online.


Quick links: The care and attention that goes into Mick Jagger's stage clothes. I think "deadpan" is a generous way to describe Hillary Clinton in her Between Two Ferns appearance. What a sentence: "At an emotional jury selection, the majority of female candidates said they couldn’t remain impartial at Alex’s trial, citing a personal account or relationship with a woman who had been raped under similar circumstances." Chris Deerin on Stefan Zweig and the fragility of civilisation is beautiful and horrifying.

Also: FLEABAG FLEABAG FLEABAG EMILY NUSSBAUM ON FLEABAG YES PLEASE.

Until next time...