Friday, 7.25
A mystical notebook . . .
Hello everyone—and thanks for continuing to open the Misfit emails.
My plan for today was school supplies and second childhood, but fate intervened. So instead, the topic is:
Jillian Hess’s Noted
My Inbox is sort of like a carnival, brimming with every sort of newsletter you can think of. They cover politics, science, tech, marketing, products from my stack—and of course, writing/publishing.
I couldn’t possibly read them all, but I skim through the new arrivals several times a day because I’m convinced my Inbox subject list offers subtle signals, and I need to be attentive.
Which brings us to a quote from (auteur!) filmmaker Guillermo del Toro that offers the most perfect description of my personal world that I’ve ever heard from someone else:
I always say, everything that happens is a ciphered message…
I found this in a recent post from Jillian Hess brilliant Substack Noted—which is one of the very few newsletters I always open the moment they arrive. If someone published a Substack with just me as their intended audience, this would be it.
And if I could spend umpty hours just pouring through its archived posts, nothing would make me happier. But for now, I can have the pleasure of highlighting this one:
Hess’s discussion of the notebooks gave me a new perspective on del Toro’s work, which I admire but haven’t really delved into—except for his remake of Nightmare Alley.
And here’s where my enthusiasm for Noted connects with another of my focus areas: Tarot.
The 1946 novel Nightmare Alley, by William Gresham, was structured like a Tarot deck, and Tarot played a role in the story. The first film made from the book (in 1947, starring Montgomery Clift) left most of that out, but Tarot has a more prominent place in del Toro’s remake.
So I wrote “Tarot Noir,” a post about Gresham’s complex life, and del Toro’s visually intense film. Looking back at that story now, I see deep connections between the director’s interest in Tarot as a creative medium and the way he combines texts and images in his notebooks.
I’m continually amazed by how many writers and artists have a relationship with Tarot—and I’ll share a few more examples in future Misfit posts.
But for now I’ll return to Noted, with a big-picture snapshot:
Hess offers a very generous amount of free content, and rewards paid subscribers with “P.S.” posts containing extra content about featured note-takers, as well as access to community features and an extensive archive.
In short: I think you’ll love it.
Today I discovered/remembered that when I originally set up Misfit Writer, I created more than a hundred (!) drafts I planned to develop. Some are just titles, some have a few notes and/or links, some have several paragraphs of text—and a few look to be nearly complete.
So . . . I’ve started going through them to recover anything of value. Slow sledding due to Substack’s awful user tools, but it will be entertaining to review my original vision for Misfit, and decide what still fits.
I’ll keep you posted—and if fate smiles, I’ll see you Monday for school supplies and second childhood. C