So why do I find all this so disturbing? Why should I begrudge an entrepreneurial influencer her right to hawk sevruga-on-a-Pringle? Why should I not let every Wall Street titan have their gilded slice free of guilt?
I’m not sure at first, but I think it’s something coarse and fancy at the same time—something that is as bad for nature as it is good for a restaurant’s bottom line. In short, I think it has something to do with the Russian word poshlost’.
But these stars in the Gaia Sausage haven’t remained clustered together. They are currently scattered all around the Milky Way, their thin threads of commonality all that betrays their shared history. They have a common proportion of heavy elements, or “metallicity.” And their orbits are extremely elliptical, bringing the stars brushing up against the core of the galaxy then flinging them back out more than 60,000 light-years away. In their commonality, they tell the story of a once-mighty galaxy eventually consumed and obliterated.
Cosmologists give this process an innocent-sounding name: hierarchical galaxy formation. But what that means is that our contemporary Milky Way, like all massive and proud galaxies in the universe, has lived a violent life, and only acquired its present-day bulk through devouring its neighbors.
The bag of hummus chips was stashed in the hidden half of the waiting station and left open for us. Relaxing into this situation the assistant manager would sometimes stick her head out from the waiting station, hummus chip between finger and thumb, to see if anything was needed in the dining room. Then we followed suit: she was above us in the staff hierarchy after all. We became used to the practice. Then the assistant manager would sometimes lean against the drinks fridges, the bag of hummus chips in hand, eating them and offering them to fellow waiters. We enjoyed the spell of conviviality; we were eating together now. But of course it was a category error. On one such occasion, a customer must have caught sight of the phenomenon and complained to the manager. I am not sure how the complaint was made, whether by email or phone. We didn’t know which customer had been moved to complaint by the sight of us eating. They knew that they were the diner, and we were not. That was the end of eating hummus chips at the waiting station.
What It’s Like in Words by Eliza Moss is an astute depiction of toxic relationships and the devastation often left in their wake. However, it is also a testament to the healing power of art, the importance of comfortable love, and learning to always value oneself, flaws and all.
In a world that often valorizes the myth of the solitary artist toiling away in a secluded studio, Day Jobs offers a refreshingly nuanced perspective on what it means to make art while navigating the pressures of everyday employment. Edited by Veronica Roberts and featuring a foreword by renowned art critic Lucy R. Lippard, this richly illustrated and thoughtfully assembled volume examines the less-visible aspects of creative production: the jobs that pay the bills, the mundane routines that keep the lights on, and the delicate balancing act that so many artists maintain.