Constraints

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The spring has put me in mind of a little Covid-era project, and I want to share it, with a slight preface about creative constraints.

The year was 2020. The mood was isolation, breakup, irresolution, despair—but also novelty. Life looked and felt different from anything I’d known.

Streaming a TV show or two most nights, I took notice for the first time of a hyperspecific genre of writing: the episode description that shows up in the menus on your screen. These are written under heavy constraints. They have to be short, they have to avoid spoilers as much as possible, and yet they’re still a kind of marketing copy—you want people to be drawn in. The result can be comical for its sheer abbreviation. Remember the Bill and Frank episode of “The Last of Us,” one of the great love stories ever told on screen? This is the description: “When a stranger approaches his compound, survivalist Bill forges an unlikely connection. Later, Joel and Ellie seek Bill's guidance.”

So I started writing episode descriptions for my own life, starting when things had first shut down and going for about a year. I posted them on my Instagram story, just screenshots of the text. One of the things that reading them makes me think about now is how many conversations I’ve had with people who think they have something to write but aren’t sure how to go about it. Here is a possible answer: fifty words a day.

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(Tommy and Joan are my cats.)

Season 1, Episode 18

Michael tries to go for a bike ride but is turned back by the rain. Brooklyn streets have become empty, but sirens suggest ominous activity elsewhere. Tommy and Joan wrestle, leaving a trail of fur. Is frozen chicken tikka masala ever going to be as good as the real thing?

Season 1, Episode 19

Michael wakes up early on a weekend, but the apartment is already clean. In Peloton class, Robin shares a personal truth. Fog sets in over Bushwick. No one is sure if Manhattan is still there.

Season 1, Episode 20

The woman who got too close in the grocery store line makes a surprise appearance at the bodega. Michael is nearly struck by an ambulance. Joan grapples with a mystery she can’t articulate. With everyone distracted, the L subway line is quietly buried forever.

Season 1, Episode 21

Michael starts to wonder why he’s never seen anyone enter or exit the funeral home across the street. He procures a baseball bat, and makes a new batch of soup. A healthy plant starts to wilt. The dry cleaner is still closed.

Season 1, Episode 22

No one can find the charging cord for the pepper grinder. Joan refuses to wear a mask. An English gardening show hits a little too close to home, and a significant book falls off the shelf. Why are there so few sirens?

Season 1, Episode 23

A rare craving for a croissant goes unmet, and Michael wonders how to throw away a lighter without possibly igniting the garbage can. For the third time since moving to New York, he does his own laundry. Later, a single ray of sunshine shows the way.

Season 1, Episode 24

Michael wonders if his favorite incense brand is the kind of thing that wouldn’t make it through a global economic collapse, and looks up a recipe for bathtub gin. He ponders using a lint roller on one of the cats—just as an experiment. Dropping into a melatonin dream, he sees the face of a little-known saint.

Season 1, Episode 25

Michael notices something new about the neighbors. Tommy is shaken by a noise. The organic grocery still has paper towels—for a price. Yoga practice ends early.

Season 1, Episode 26

It’s too cold inside, so Michael goes down to see about the boiler. He listens to the St. Matthew Passion, then pours a large glass of wine. A hard-won athletic victory is quickly eclipsed. Joan wonders what it would take to adopt a dog, and the cool plant unfurls not one but two new leaves.

Season 1, Episode 28

At work, someone forgets an important comma. A Chipotle delivery highlights the value of ordering in person. The weightlifting app demands a 55-pound dumbbell, impossibly. Joan dances with the moon.

Season 1, Episode 29

Relations with Amazon slide toward war. The cement factory next-door appears to be making less cement, but not none. A friend wisely counsels that now is exactly the right time to get drawn into a seven-season network legal procedural. Michael discovers the origin of the weightlifting term “skullcrusher.”

Season 1, Episode 31

Tommy meditates on themes of resurrection, and Joan eats a cockroach. Michael rides a sanitized bike to the grocery store. The apartment is visited by a wave of pestilences. Somewhere just out of sight, a pigeon is lowing. Empty buses pass all day.

Season 1, Episode 33

Tommy is composing a secret gospel. Joan finds an Easter egg. Michael rides a racing bike through empty streets, then winds his watch. Everyone suspects the answer lies in Bach. But which Bach?

Season 1, Episode 37

In spite of everything, Michael considers taking up cigarettes. Working on a lentil recipe, he substitutes one extremely large carrot for two large carrots. The silverware isn’t getting as clean as it used to.

Season 1, Episode 39

An airplane—one—flies over the house. The ants invade the kitchen tree. Michael rides an electric bike through the masked and blooming city that has become his deep home and wonders what will fill its silences.

Season 1, Episode 45

Michael wakes without prompting at 5:25. He thinks, in short bursts all day, about the stationary bike that sat in his grandparents’ basement for decades. It’s cold, but winter is over. Joan sleeps.

Season 1, Episode 61

The piano sounds old. Days after cooking off-brand artificial meat, everyone can still smell popcorn. “Gin” gets autocorrected to “gun” in a text message, echoing the course of history.

Season 2, Episode 1

Whatever may have been true before, now there are only fireworks.

Season 2, Episode 2

Suddenly people are wearing real clothes. Michael learns a new piece on the piano, then hears it echoing back in the dark. Joan steals a chess piece, and pink lightning flashes for hours high up in the southern sky.

Season 2, Episode 3

Michael reaches the seventieth episode of a TV show he’s been watching for only a season. The neighbors expel hundreds of cardboard boxes, and ivy grows thick over the kitchen window. The bar backyards down below are open for business. 5G shows up on a nearby roof. Tommy is hesitant.

Season 2, Episode 4

A flashback shows a time when everything seemed OK, but wasn’t. Joan is reunited with a friend of years and years. New candles burn into the July twilight. Future selves have things to say to present ones. Tomorrow will be hot as well.

Season 2, Episode 5

The river runs through it. Animals sing. Glassware is debated energetically. Madonna made something durable. What would you do?

Season 2, Episode 6

Michael soothes some antique audio equipment, then window shops at an upstate thrift store that is closed because of a hurricane.

Season 3, Episode 1

Michael meets some friends at the museum for a celebration of Easter 1899, then puts on a symphony and visits the bodhisattvas. They’re smiling too, but not broadly. Two adult siblings sit outside by the fountain, reading quietly in their Sunday best.

Season 3, Episode 2

Michael returns home to a Salt Lake City that is 100 percent under construction. Lunch with Aunt Tricia is complicated by the presence of a hot waiter. Old friends and new revolve around the high school. A rogue bartender pours a standard-sized drink, and biblical winds signal that it’s time to go.

Season 3, Episode 3

Michael must resign himself to owning a pair of shoes that is one size too big. A puddle of pink vomit appears outside the bar downstairs, which is also pink. The line for the post office extends into Queens, and everyone in yoga class is moving flawlessly.

Season 3, Episode 4

With faces in the mix again, it’s time to grow some hair. The ants are back. Michael survives an interrogation over plans for his birthday by drowning gently in watermelon froju. Joan creates a dating profile for Tommy; Tommy hides behind the stove; the city breathes a long, audible sigh of relief.

Kindly send me your thoughts, questions, and provocations: dmichaelowen@gmail.com.