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Standing Beside
Michael Littig
May 07, 2025
Weekly wisdom to level up your creative life in 3 minutes, for free.
Happy Wednesday!
Here’s a short story and a poem to inspire you this week.
A SHORT STORY
Utopian Hotline, Boston Museum of Science, 2025
I took a run this weekend on the Charles River in Boston and listened to an interview with one of my favorite authors, Ocean Vuong.
The interview is devastatingly beautiful in many ways, but for me, I kept returning to a thought Ocean shared near the end of the conversation.
Considering how it has felt to share Utopian Hotline with hundreds of people in a dark room, at this moment in time, these words really hit home:
“You can't just make your art for yourself in a vacuum. I mean, there's diaries and journals for that. Nothing wrong with that.
But when you make art to share, you have to think, how can I be amongst people? My favorite theorist, Trinh T. Minh-ha, said it best when she said, I do not write about, I write beside. Gosh, that's so perfect.
If I could do that my whole life, I would have a successful life as an artist, regardless of what happens. I never think I'm writing about something. I don't want to render the people around me into a meaningful nugget.
I want to just scribble alongside. That feels truer.”
That last line stays with me: scribble alongside.
It captures something I’ve been searching for but hadn’t quite put into words.
To me, being an artist has never been about explaining or lecturing—it’s about standing beside, when it’s done well.
That’s what Utopian Hotline has become for me—a space to wonder aloud, together.
In a time like this, maybe the deepest offering we have is simply to stand beside each other and listen.
Who are you standing beside right now?
A POEM
“Someday I’ll Love” by Ocean Vuong
I am still learning how to love myself.
And how to love the thing that has never left me:
the heat of a burned body.
It is nothing,
nothing to be ashamed of.
Look at the sun, after all.
What does it burn for?
The world is burning,
and I am here with you.
My body is a house,
and someday it will fall down.
But for now, it is still standing.
Someday I’ll love Ocean Vuong
the way I’ve always wanted:
in the light of day,
in the quiet of the room,
in the moments that feel like forever.
Maybe I’ll love him by the fire,
maybe in the quiet of the kitchen
where we drink each other’s thoughts,
sipping like wine,
like we are always already full.
What a beautiful thing,
this body,
this house of burning.
How we live.
Know of anyone who might benefit from these helpful creative reminders? Send them this link.
Grateful,
Michael
