The Danish Dispatch
A newsletter in which I walk you through my summer in grave detail
As August wanes, I find myself getting preemptively nostalgic for the feelings I had mere weeks, days, even hours ago - the feelings of (insert very specific adjective and or noun here) summer.
There was carefree Los Angeles summer, where I drank haunted Erewhon smoothies and discovered that Venice, CA is a place where I do not want to live for more than one week at a time.
There was endless gemini season summer, when I celebrated the birthdays of me and beloved family members with five different cakes and only an inkling of existential dread about the passage of time.
Most of July was spent in a state of get tan and perfect the beachy wave summer. I don’t recall doing anything besides sitting or laying in the sun, and combing through my hair in the reflection of windows.
I really do love summer. The season, and actually the name Summer. I named the main character in one of my screenplays Summer. If I ever become a real mom, not just the teen kind, then I would highly consider naming a daughter Summer.
Disclaimer: if you are reading this and name your daughter Summer, you are a copy cat so please know that in your heart. I don’t care, to be clear, but yeah you would be absolutely Shayla-ing me (see Sex and the City, Season 2 Episode 10).
On August 1st, I embarked on a month-long world tour - from Texas to New England to Northern Europe. Just to offer the haters some proof that I am so crazy and adventurous!
This trip is when the season really hit its stride for me. Every day has felt like its own little micro summer experience. There was Dallas teen mom summer. There was London Fields al fresco aperol spritz summer. Oxford uni cosplay summer. Nantucket hydrangea fever dream summer. Coastal NH live laugh love-fest summer. Right now, I’m living in a state of Danish hygge orange wine summer and it’s pretty perfect.
Each phase of the trip has been accompanied by it’s own unique pieces of content to mark it in my memory - the songs I listened to, the movies I watched, the memes I laughed at.
Like in Dallas, Texas - famously so beautiful and temperate in August - I spent lots of quality time with my niece and nephew in the fresh AC, showing them Disney movies that I hadn’t seen since I was a child.
Pocahontas was always one of my favorites, but watching the Disneyfied version of the colonization of the Americas with adult eyes and the children’s confused questions hitting my ears - i.e. “Who are the bad guys?” - I realized that the movie is not one that will be added to the aunt zoid approved rotation at this juncture. I will say the raccoon and hummingbird are unbelievably cute and walked so other animal sidekicks in future Disney films could run - salamander in Frozen II, I’m looking at you. And of course, Colors of the Wind still slaps!
My little buddies never cease to surprise me with their requests and tastes. Imagine that you’re sitting on the couch with an adorable five year old girl wearing a pink butterfly dress, and you put on the song Cruel Summer by Taylor Swift because you happen to know that she loves it. Then, just a few seconds into the song, she quips, “Actually, can you play Master of Puppets by Metallica instead?” My heart!
I’m more of an Enter Sandman girl myself, but of course I put it on with haste. Those are the sacrifices I must make as a 29-year-old teen mom who doesn’t have any kids.
Next stop, Nantucket. Somehow so sleepy and so in-your-face at the same time. So quaint yet commercial. So laid-back yet uptight. The amount of hydrangeas cannot be overstated.
This island gave me the overwhelming urge to be a teenager again. I spent most of my time there biking around, imagining the type of Summer I Turned Pretty nonsense I could have gotten up to back in the day.
The weather was quite cloudy and grim, so that called for pensive music to match the mood. I listened to lots of Modest Mouse and Yo La Tengo - because in my Nantucket teen summer fantasy, it is 1998 and being emo has nothing to do with the amount of likes your latest instagram story happened to receive.
There was a fleeting moment of sun one day on island, and I queued up an absolute classic - Soak Up the Sun by Sheryl Crow. It does give me war flashbacks to the time I performed a lip-sync to this song at an age when I was arguably too sentient to be doing so, so I need to listen to it sparingly. But when it hits, it really hits.
Then, a brief stint in Oxfordshire that was plagued by jet lag and listening to the album of the century, Silent Alarm by Bloc Party because…when in Rome. My visit to Oxford made me think maybe its time for me to revisit Saltburn. Now that it’s out of the cultural conversation, and I can fully focus on what is important to me - Jacob Elordi’s eyebrow piercing.
London up next. I have auspiciously avoided the topic of Brat summer until now because I don’t feel qualified to speak on it. Brat summer, to me, exists in a vacuum in Brooklyn. I did wear a chartreuse green dress AND eat at a restaurant in London called Brat, but I still didn’t feel it. For all of you that do, though, I am literally brat green with envy!
I did cave and watch all of the new episodes of Emily in Paris during this leg of the trip. Of course, they did it again. And by it, I mean they made a deeply cringe show that brings me so much joy to watch. I found myself wondering how these actors say these lines with a straight face - honestly, they are so talented. Because I really could never. The outfits were more unhinged than ever. They continue to make Ashley Park sing when it’s clear that no one wants that. Ultimately, it is a show about a marketing agency and its work with clients and it is very impressive that they are able to make that entertaining. Give me ten more seasons, please.
While the seed was planted on a road trip from Nantucket to coastal New Hampshire, I became officially obsessed with the song Femininomenon while walking around London. It’s the electric album opener from Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, and I have been listening to it on repeat. Literally every morning when I wake up, and every night before I go to bed.
Currently I’m in Copenhagen and feeling off. Maybe it’s the cemetery that I’ve been walking through every morning, or the amount of orange beverages and unpasteurized cheese that I have consumed, but I have been a tad sluggish. In a funk akin to that you might taste in a skin contact wine from a place like Sicily or Georgia, the country.
Luckily, I know the cure that works for me every time - and that is to watch the film 10 Things I Hate About You. We are so lucky to be alive in a time where this movie is available to stream on Disney+. Thank you Bob Iger (pronounced like Bon Iver). 10 Things just holds up so well - it’s funny, it’s dramatic, it’s clever, it’s romantic - I shudder to think what my life would be like without this movie. My next screenplay may just have to be a teen rom-com of that ilk.
My last stop on the trip is Paris, of course! In Paris, maybe I will watch the Mindy Kaling created Four Weddings and Funeral show on Hulu just to balance out the cultural clashing of the watching Emily in Paris in London. Or maybe, I will have taste and pretend I’m in a Wes Anderson movie and listen to These Days by Nico on repeat. Or, most likely, both!
I could lie to you and say I’m the type of girl who rolls out of bed fresh-faced, gets all her little writing projects done by noon, eats blueberry vanilla ice cream while wearing a white Ganni blouses, and skillfully avoids staining said blouse with a drip of bright purple.
But in reality, I am the girl who wakes up with a headache because she hasn’t been drinking enough water, takes a Zyrtec because her allergies are acting up, and yes, eats the delicious blueberry vanilla ice cream for lunch - but obviously it drips on that white Ganni blouse!
And that is okay. Inevitable, even. Just like it’s okay and inevitable that summer will end.
It’s a theme I go back to often, but my niece reminded me of how universal it really is. Why should we have to choose between Taylor Swift and Metallica? Emily in Paris and The French Dispatch? Summer and all the other seasons? We can love it all, if we want to.
Just now, I made the choice to be excited for fall, and I think you should, too!
And that’s that on the radical reframing of one’s own reality and preferences to get through the goddamn day :)