Good morning!
Here is the fifth Missing Tooth.
I heard an interview with the editor of L.A Times on Slate Culture Gab claiming newsletters like this “threaten to do to journalism what Uber has done for the taxi business, i.e. destroy it.”
I look forward to crushing the fourth estate with my 72 readers.
All best,
N.
PS Comments and corrections—particularly of my spelling, grammar, and overuse of em-dashes—are always welcome.
Brown Girl In The Ring
I recently discovered—possibly rediscovered: it’s a popular song and my memory is shot—Boney M’s Brown Girl in the Ring.
It showed up randomly on my Spotify playlist and I had absolutely no context for the song when I first heard it.
Perhaps because I’d just read Sheena Kamal's kickboxing YA novel Fight Like A Girl, I assumed the lyrics were about a woman of colour entering a boxing ring.
Brown girl in the ring
There's a brown girl in the ring
Brown girl in the ring
She looks like a sugar in a plum
Show me your motion
Come on show me your motion
Show me your motion
She looks like a sugar in a plum
Plum plum
I imagine a tough, confident young woman entering the fray and the spotlight. She’s a badass, but there is something playful about her as well. She’s got nothing to prove.
Of course, that was all in my head.
In reality, Brown Girl In The Ring isn’t a celebration of female empowerment but a disco cover of a traditional Caribbean circle song.
Children make a circle and sing the first verse. One of the girls moves into the middle of the ring for the second verse. When the group sing “show me your motion” the girl in the middle does her best dance moves.
According to P. Griffin’s Afro-Caribbean Poetry and Ritual, these types of games play a role in preparing children for adult courtship. Like catch and kiss, Come Under, and Old Sister Phoebe, they set up future gender roles.
For me, learning the true history of the song sucks a little of the fun out of it.
That said, my feelings towards the song are nowhere near as mixed as Joe Simpson, the mountaineer from Touching The Void. Simpson had Brown Girl In The Ring stuck in his head for hours while lost and hallucinating in the Peruvian Andes.
Later he said: "I remember thinking: bloody hell, I'm going to die to Boney M”.
Every flying fox technique
If we arrive at school early, Bea always wants to go on the 25-metre long flying fox that stretches across the local park behind the school.
Over the two and a half years she’s been at school, she’s developed a detailed list of variations:
Sleepy Sloth: Not pullback. No swing. No twists. The flying fox should reach the end with a gentle bump.
Death Drop: Bea is pulled back and then pushed forwards causing her to rocket down the line at breakneck speeds. The key is to not pull her back too far or she’ll bounce down the line and lose speed.
Zig-Zag: A Death Drop but with Bea pulled back perpendicular to the cable. She then whips back and forth when released.
Fishtail: A Zig-Zag but beginning at a 45-degree angle rather than 90. Rather than swinging back and forth, Bea smoothly sweeps from side to side like a slalom skier. When she hits the end she swings out in an arc and squeals.
Kickback: After a successful ride, Bea stays on and I run as fast as I can back up the hill, shoving her backwards when we reach the top. The effect is somewhat like a Death Drop but with the exhilarating anticipation of a long run-up.
Super Sloth: A Death Drop but Bea sits backwards on the seat, facing up the hill. When pulled back, she has to hold on to the cable like a sloth. [see also: Reverse Death Drop]
Hammer Throw: I swing Bea around like an Olympic hammer thrower before letting go. The end result is unpredictable and I often fall over. Bea describes this move as “absolute torture.”
…with a twist: Any of the above but I twist Bea around several times causing her to spin around as she heads down the cable.
Reverse…: Any of the above but Bea is sitting backwards on the seat.
Ultimate…: Any of the above performed at maximum height/speed.
Ultra Rare…: Any of the above performed at the ideal speed. “Ideal” is defined by Bea’s mood.
Lizzo on Fresh Air With Terry Gross
This interview is eighteen months old but I think about this exchange between Lizzo and Terry Gross all the time.
GROSS: You know, sometimes when I see somebody who's nude or who's half-nude (laughter) - largely nude on their album cover or in a photo and it's a woman - and I think, like - it sometimes bothers me 'cause I think like, oh, are you making yourself into a sex object for men? When you're doing it on your album cover, I think it's a really bold statement, and it's a statement for women. And - do you know what I mean? - because you are trying to break the mold of what beautiful is. And so you're making...
LIZZO: Yeah, but are you only saying that because I'm fat?
You can listen to the whole interview here.
Sleep is a patch of death
I’ve not had a really good night’s sleep in years. It used to take me hours to get to sleep until I discovered the no-bullshit method for getting to sleep used by United States Navy Pre-Flight School:
Relax your entire face, including the muscles inside your mouth.
Drop your shoulders to release the tension and let your hands drop to the side of your body.
Exhale, relaxing your chest.
Relax your legs, thighs, and calves.
Clear your mind for 10 seconds by imagining a relaxing scene.
If this doesn’t work, kindly repeat the words “don’t think” over and over for 10 seconds.*
If this doesn’t work, return to step one.
After a few weeks of practice, my body quickly learned the cues to get me off to sleep most nights.
Unfortunately, I still wake up most nights at three o’clock and find it impossible to get back to sleep. I’m plagued with bad dreams, racing thoughts, and anxious memories.
(A school friend of Bea calls this times ‘The Devil’s Hour', a moniker that terrified Bea until we talked through the logistics of how the Devil would manage his hour when faced with time zones and daylight savings.)
While I’m awake, I often think about this passage from Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury:
Three in the morning, thought Charles Halloway, seated on the edge of his bed. Why did the train come at that hour?
For, he thought, it's a special hour. Women never wake then, do they? They sleep the sleep of babes and children. But men in middle age? They know that hour well. Oh God, midnight's not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two's not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there's hope, for dawn's just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.! Doctors say the body's at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You're the nearest to dead you'll ever be save dying.
Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you'd slaughter your half-dreams with buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep well-bottom that's burned dry.
What I’m Reading
Twenty Four Hours In The Life Of A Woman by Stefan Zweig
The Divided Brain And The Search For Meaning by Iain Mcgilchrist
Invincible by Robert Kirkman