We’ve been watching a lot of comedy lately. Middleditch and Schwartz’s improv show (very funny), Jerry Seinfeld’s new stand up special (at times very funny, at other times “ok haha very funny”), Hasan Minhaj’s ‘Partiot Act’ (not exactly comedy so much as political commentary where you cry/laugh at the world going up in flames), among others.
Speaking of cry/laughing. When John Prine passed away several weeks ago, I happened upon some live streamed music from various musicians on Instagram, as a tribute. They were all singing his songs from their houses. I saw something then that I hadn’t seen before. People were posting this emoji 😂 while a guy sang “Lake Marie”. We’re all familiar with the sniffle-crying emoji 😢, and the bawling my eyes out emoji 😭, but I had never seen this one 😂 used for anything other than three in a row as a response to a funny picture 😂 😂 😂. I realised then that it was being used to express that contradictory emotion, a combination of sadness and happiness. Sure enough, the emoji is officially labelled ‘face with tears of joy’. This 🤣 is what we should be posting in response to bad jokes in message threads, the ‘rolling on the floor laughing face’.
Speaking of cry/laughing. When John Prine passed away several weeks ago, I happened upon some live streamed music from various musicians on Instagram, as a tribute. They were all singing his songs from their houses. I saw something then that I hadn’t seen before. People were posting this emoji 😂 while a guy sang “Lake Marie”. We’re all familiar with the sniffle-crying emoji 😢, and the bawling my eyes out emoji 😭, but I had never seen this one 😂 used for anything other than three in a row as a response to a funny picture 😂 😂 😂. I realised then that it was being used to express that contradictory emotion, a combination of sadness and happiness. Sure enough, the emoji is officially labelled ‘face with tears of joy’. This 🤣 is what we should be posting in response to bad jokes in message threads, the ‘rolling on the floor laughing face’.
It’s been hot and sunny every day here for a little while, and it is my favourite thing just to go and be in it. I feel like a solar powered calculator that has to go and charge up every few hours. Some dark things have been coming up in the news lately, apart from of course the pandemic. The shooting of Ahmaud Arbery stands out among all the home baking articles and re-opening timeline opinion pieces like a broken letter on a neon sign. Its absence is all you can look at. The words that Eckhart often uses come back to me, that ‘you can’t fight darkness, you can only bring in light’.