I'm practising "radical honesty" and you're welcome

I'm making a newsletter. Every other fucker has a newsletter. All of that attention should by rights be going to me, Jamie Drew.

I love attention. I'm comfortable receiving it. People have described me as "normal" on stage. At no point in my life was I replaced in the middle of a friend's short film shoot with a taller and more handsome actor in the role of "Jamie Drew, playing himself." This is the only time that story will come up in this newsletter.

Three things collided in my head recently.

First: I got into a hyperfixation on the work of Caveh Zahedi, a filmmaker who informed the mumblecore film movement: Joe Swanberg, Greta Gerwig, the Duplass brothers, associated acts. He makes these low-budget documentaries about his life using duct tape and film students, and he believes in radical honesty, the practice of never telling even a little white lie. So this is how he communicates with the world. For example: he's pretty up-front about practising radical honesty unless there's a chance he might get laid. A weird, flawed, fascinating guy. Exactly the kind of guy we should be encouraging to make films.

Watch The Show About The Show and/or listen to his year-long, short-form, thought-a-day podcast 365 Stories I Want To Tell You Before We Both Die. You might hate it, but you might also love it. Great art, I think, is unconcerned with mass appeal.

Second: I was thinking about how the internet used to be that you'd log into your Livejournal and you'd click a little button to say how you were Feeling: and you'd tell a little circle of your closest friends that you were Feeling: kind of sad, actually; it was 2008, and you were about to finish your undergraduate degree, but Northern Rock had just collapsed. You didn't know what that meant. You weren't a numbers person. Northern Rock had collapsed and that meant, via a long chain of bank runs, bailouts, legal precedent, and full-throated corruption, that you were being set free into a world that didn't have the need for your skillset any more. You were Feeling: like you were now being handed the reins to a horse you really ought to just shoot.

You were Listening: to the Kings of Leon.

And I miss that. I know you miss it too. Remember how you used to log on to the internet and see your friends' weirdest thoughts? Some of those friends you'd never even made eye contact with, but you also knew each other a little bit too well. When you edited your MSN status text to an InMe lyric you were practising radical honesty without realising it. You were dipping into what Werner Herzog calls the "ecstatic truth" beneath all things, older than time and more complex than words. We can go back there, you and I, but only if our hearts are true and our spirits unyielding.

Third: I've been idly leafing through a copy of My Lunches With Orson, a book of transcribed conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles, once a week at the same restaurant, where they'd gossip and bitch and argue. It's a great book to keep on a shelf when you need a quick pick-me-up. Open it up to any random page, you’ll find a banger of a quote. For example, from page 37:

Sometimes lunch and conversation is just fun. I'm getting old and my doctor says I have to get out and move around more, so I've been walking and talking a lot. I've been getting to know friends better, old and new. The great experiment that is civilisation grinds its last gears beneath our feet; let's get coffee and walk in the woods. Maybe we'll see a deer, and then much later when there's no such thing as a deer any more, we can describe it to our grandchildren. Or we can do newsletters, I guess.

༄ؘ ۪۪۫۫ ▹ you don't see me laughing but I'll still be here waiting for you ◃ ۪۪۫۫ ༄ؘ

In order to make this thing tax-deductible I have to tell you about what I'm up to. The other week I took pictures with my friend Marie on what I call my "little camera" - a Fujifilm X100v beloved of Instagram and TikTok users alike, impossible to get hold of until the X100vi came out earlier this year and all of those users offloaded their old models.

I got this camera because I need to walk around more, and travel more, and I've been able to take a bit of time to do these things. I'm returning to my street photography roots, the medium that I fell in love with back in 2009 or so. That Saul Leiter-y, Gordon Parks-y sort of stuff. You get some interesting stuff if you're ready for them, and that means carrying around something light and easy to use, wandering, exploring, walking new pathways.

Also, more importantly, Marie lives on the 20th floor and sometimes the elevator is broken so there was no chance I was going to take all my lights and equipment; on a less concrete level, I wanted to remove all of that futzing about with lenses and lights and streamline that photographer-subject relationship, leave myself agile and open to improvisation.

Marie is one of my favourite people to work with. She's got a similar brain, I think. She's very open to wild and insane ideas but she has a strong sense of when something is or isn't working. Also, she has the most eclectic collection of clothing I've ever seen. She's got a knack for putting an outfit together from disparate parts.

And don’t think I can’t hear you over there, grumbling about how this is three pictures and that’s my whole job. It’s not my whole job. Some great stuff is behind the wall of “not available to the public.” Not everything goes on the ‘gram.¹

So this is a newsletter. I know you didn't read it, you fucking liar. I know you skimmed it. There's a secret word and the secret word is "photosynthesis." If I see you in real life I'll expect you to say it so I know you actually read it. I'm going to tell you I don't know what you're talking about. This is a test. You have to say it three times.

And then - pay attention, this is important - then we'll laugh like it's the funniest thing in the world. We'll really bust a gut. When people ask what's got us so tickled, we'll tell them it's an inside joke, and they wouldn't get it because they didn't read the newsletter and now they're forever a little bit outside of the grace of your friendship. This is just as good a marketing strategy as any other. This is how we corner the market after social media collapses. Everybody else in the game is scrambling right now. They're still tied to the old ways; they're living in the world of "influencers" and "influencer marketing," but that world is dead and the new one struggles to be born. I'm telling you: this is a sure bet. I just need a little startup money.

1  Thinking about it, this could be a good monetisation strategy. I know what you people like to see. I know how to use Instagram analytics. I can see your likes, you filthy animals.