diana ross + beyoncé + clove-scented chaos

+ merlot fingernails, and the embroidered cuffs of velvet blazers

Finally, nineteen days in, and I’ve decided on my theme for 2024. My theme for 2022 was borrowed from Shonda Rimes: it was my year of saying, Yes. My default is “probably not,” so saying Yes to major and minor offers, suggestions, invitations, trips, opportunities, new music, fun snacks, all kinds of stuff — was freeing.

My theme for 2023 was This Is A Writing Year. My Shine Bright had been published Spring 2022, so in addition to saying Yes a lot that year, I was also promoting my book all over the country. It was glorious, and a profound learning experience — but I wasn’t doing a lot of new writing.

I ended 2022 doing the reporting for this SZA profile, and the process of writing that story led me declare 2023 one in which I would be all about my words and sentences. And I have done that. It was an intense year of living studiously and bravely, of aiming for precision, context, and saturative detail. Of taking on subjects and topics I otherwise might not. Of relaunching this newsletter. And of and trying to back way up off of overwriting (which is what happens when my confidence wanes). I’m currently sitting on assignments and projects that fill me with intrigue, fear, and curiosity.

So: my theme for 2024 is On The Move. On the move pedaling my bike, on the move away from withered and or unhealthy relationships, on the move in and out of the United States, on the move with my dog in agility training, on the move in hot yoga. On the move far away from allowing the energy or actions of others to deactivate my creative and wellness disciplines — or my unadulterated fun. Already this week I went to New York for a long-ass meeting for which I could have jumped on Zoom. But it was so much better to see friends, to cocktail with an inspiring editor, to have a solo dinner at the bar of a beloved restaurant, to talk music in real life with passionate, brilliant people. To squeeze in MoMa! And be there for NYC’s first snowfall in seven-hundred-and-something days? Whirlwindy an wonderful.

I’m a tiny bit tired, but I’m checking in with you today from Park City, Utah. I’m posting a picture a day at Notes, and also just generally sharing images and energy from the Sundance Film Festival at my IG feed and stories. What’s Tupac say? Picture me rolling? Picture me on the move.

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square one.

Beyonce’s “Diva” was released January 20, 2009. I think a lot about women —and particularly Black women — being derisively labeled “divas.” I’ve been thinking about it since I was a little girl. Let’s take it back to my favorite Diana Ross, and a house party that scorned her:

I balance trembling drinks. We are beaming and careful in our dresses—my mother made them herself. I’m 11, a year away from fearing joy, so the sound of ice-filled bags crashing into a bathtub, the loudness of Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder and Barbra Streisand on the stereo, the clove-scented chaos of arrival after arrival—this is all pure possibility. I watch merlot fingernails and the embroidered cuffs of velvet blazers. Fringed and ginned, party people sway above us like trees.

The debates unfurling in the sunken living room were about whether Diana Ross had cheated the other Supremes out of money and legacy. And about whether or not Ross had basically killed Florence Ballard. Ballard, a Detroit-born mother of three, had given interviews about being on public assistance. She was the eighth of thirteen children. Her father died of cancer when she was a teenager. In 1976, Ballard herself died of cardiac arrest, at the age of thirty-two.

“The bitch died of a broken heart!” So went the hollers at the house on Hi Point Street. Diana and Berry Gordy snaked her! Flo started the Supremes! If Flo did drink — everybody’s drinks, so what? All of them doing way more than drinking, anyway. They might as well have shot her. The Supremes’ breakup was likely locked in near the beginning, when roles were cemented. Flo the Talented Addict. Mary the True-Hearted. Diana the Machiavellian. Diana the Least Talented. Diana the Dream Girl. “We,” says Diana Ross, “started very young.”

I sucked cream cheese from rolled salami slices. Diana is a diva, that’s her problem. That’s what I heard, lurking among the revelers.

“Diva” was new for me. “Diva” was hawked like “tramp,” like it ended