I'm passing the mic. 🎤
Introducing a second monthly email!
Dearest one,
A year and a half ago, I began this newsletter for 2 reasons:
1. I regularly come across great work that inspires me and I wanted to start sharing it.
2. Lonely in a pandemic, this felt like a good way to stay connected.
Over the first few editions, I realized that just like the letters I write my friends and lovers, this email would also be elaborate, deeply personal, and filled with an embarrassing amount of sappy love.
Combining this sort of long-form writing with lengthy lists of reads was risky business. But over the past 18 months, you've graciously held space for me to explore different forms of creating and curating.
As you began writing back to me, this newsletter became a conversation, a correspondence, a meditation on our human conditions.
As I heard from more of you, I realized that this was becoming a community. This conversation was no longer between just me and you, it was between all of us.
So since the past few months, I've been thinking of how you can get to know each other. From shared playlists to the Creators I Love section, I've experimented with ways to make this introduction in my monthly emails. But I still wanted to give your voice more direct and unfiltered room in this space.
With this intention, I'd like to take one more leap of faith and introduce an addition to this newsletter: The Human Condition Takeovers Series.
Here is what you will now receive:
1. A regular monthly email from me with an essay, curated links, and introductions to Creators I Love.
2. A second email every month that is written and curated by someone from this community!
I know that change can feel scary and want to assure you that I am listening to you at every step. Which is why this will be a 6-month project.
From October 2021 to March 2022, I want to give this a whirl and see how we all feel about it. During this time, you will hear from fellow readers, some of my closest friends, people who've changed the way I think, and writers I wholeheartedly admire.
If you find value in these takeovers, please like and comment on Substack, write back, follow the creators on social media, and get your friends to sign up for this newsletter. Your response will help me gauge if my intention is sustainable in this format. If these takeovers become a permanent feature, I'd love to open it up even further.
This extension of The Human Condition is designed to amplify and celebrate voices that matter, so I hope you give it a chance.
Next week, you'll hear from our first guest, someone who catalyzed this project. I think you'll love her. I can't wait!
💌
Love,
Soumya
Miscellany 🌟
The best short story I’ve read in a while.
Book cover designs are far less personal than you’d imagine.
A poignant personal essay on an immigrant’s heartbreak of forgetting a first language.
Explore the joy of playful creation with artist Morgan Harper Nichols.
Graphic journalist Wendy MacNaughton’s powerful TED talk on the art of paying attention.
A project worthy of your paati’s old recipes.
“Buddhism believes that there are private selves, secret selves that we don’t even know about: the way we pick our nose, the way we position our bodies when we’re alone in a room, is very different than when we’re amongst family, very different when we’re amongst friends, very different when we’re amongst colleagues, and so on and so forth. To me, it’s never a binary of just public and private. It’s a matrix of so many performances, to the point where I think one could spend one’s whole life exploring, “What is a true self?” and not get there.”
— Ocean Vuong in an interview with E. Alex Jung
Jam 🎶
One Tree Hill fans — have you been listening to the Drama Queens podcast? Some of the episodes get me very emotional! So this month’s jam is for the OTH fam aka tell me you’re a millennial without telling me you’re a millennial gang.
If you enjoyed this email, share it with a friend or write back!
I won’t be writing to you until the end of November (we will have 2 takeovers between now and then!) but I’m thinking of you and sending you my love always.