2023

All missiles deployed

“Do it to you. I had to do it to you.” - SZA, “Seek & Destroy”

I’m typing this as the two white girls in the apartment above me are playing SOS on loud. I’ll probably be called in as a witness when they kill their prospective boyfriends they’re always fighting with (I’m talking screaming matches, slamming doors, and loud crying to Ashanti’s “Foolish”). But I don’t snitch!

It’s been a long time, I left y’all without a dope beat to step to. Ostensibly I was writing my book during that time. Mostly, I was not. 2021 was a very depressive year and 2022 was a rebuilding year. I have finally emotionally bounced back from the worst year of my life (but I still listen to Ctrl on repeat twice a week, because I have not found a new therapist yet), but it took a year to do it. Last year was my Ottessa Moshfegh year, but the time for rest and relaxation is over. I have the first draft of Pure Innocent Fun to finish. Having a title already maybe makes it a bit too real. A bit too real for people to ask me where it is and when it’s coming out. I haven’t even gotten to the fun part. But that’s what this year is for, among a host of other things that I will document now that Frank has returned. More or less. Less forcing myself to write essays (particularly while I’m gonna be working on this book of essays all year), but more a documentation on my thoughts on culture, what I’m watching, seeing, reading, which is what you probably signed up for this blog for anyway.

Everyone’s made a list of what’s in and out this year because social media has made all of your friends believe they’re tastemakers. I made a small list for Cultured, and a longer list for Instagram.

I believe these kind of lists are organic however and I’ve already added new items:

• Mediterranean food

• West coast oysters

• Blogging (look at me, blogging at this very moment!)

• magazine columns (if you’re a magazine editor e-mail me, i miss my 2017/2018 GQ era)

• Manhattans

• House parties

• Dinner parties

• cookbooks

• reading

• inner circles

• Criterion (my first film of the year and first Criterion film was Claire Denis’ Beau travail, more on that this week)

• stanning Tom Cruise (if you don’t care about Mission Impossible I don’t want to hear about it, don’t email me)

• writing plays

• standing restaurant reservations

• romance

• Denmark, but also Scandinavia in general (the latter from Jeremy O. Harris’ list)

• micro dosing

• crippling self love (because enough of my friends have had to give me pep talks at 3am when i’m on ecstasy and suicide attempts are out in 2023)

• midday cocktails

• smoking cigarettes (i have never managed to recharge a vape in my life)

• keep it, season 6

I’m back in New York. I’m feeling like a writer again, whatever that means. Welcome back to Frank.