I Feel It All

Stranded in the fog of words.

May 10, 2026

Laughter is not our medicine. Stories hold our cure. Laughter is just the honey that sweetens the bitter medicine.
-Hannah Gadsby | Nanette

I stood chopping vegetables in the kitchen of the King Field home I shared with two friends. Openly sobbing. Though I might have played it off had someone walked in on me, my tears did not actually form from the shallots I was slicing for my go-to comfort meal of Sauteed Mushroom & Spicy Sausage Risotto. My tears were conjured very unexpectedly by the comedy special I had put on to entertain myself while I babysat my arborio. Because, like I always say, nothing says good times like a queer, feminist take on mental health through the lens of an Art History degree. But to be as serious as their subject matter, Hannah Gadsby’s 2018 special, Nanette, remains one of the tightest pieces of writing I have ever experienced.

I was recently reminded of Gadsby’s comedy special when I watched a video about Vincent Van Gogh’s last seventy days living just outside of Paris in a little village called Auvers-sur-Oise. I had added this town to my To-Do-List long before this cultural video made its way in front of me, but I had not made actually visiting there the priority it seems to be persistently motioning me towards in the past week.

Gadsby goes off on a tangent about how someone once approached them after a show to share some unsolicited advice. The man was insistent that Gadsby should stop their current mental health medication because it might interfere with them being able to feel, and this, as the man put it, is what is most important. He went so far as to say, “If Vincent Van Gogh had taken medication, we wouldn’t have the Sunflowers.”

Gadsby then proceeds to tear that man a college-debt-sized- new asshole by demanding, “What do you honestly think? That creativity means that you must suffer? That is the burden of creativity? Just so you can enjoy it?” They go on to deliver a mini-lesson on Van Gogh’s lore and the falsehood of misunderstood genius. Detailing that Van Gogh was not in fact ahead of his time. Reminding us, that in reality, he was “a post impressionist painter, painting at the peak of post impressionism.” The story surrounding his work romanticizes his mental illness and the unstable energy that made networking nearly impossible. Gadsby references the paintings Van Gogh made from his hospital stay and of the doctors and nurses that provided his care. Though his illness predates the modern DSM-5, hundreds of letters document Van Gogh’s correspondence with friends and family during his life and what could be attributed today to some combination of bipolar disorder, epilepsy, alcohol-related illness, and malnutrition. Gadsby calls into question one particular portrait where Van Gogh famously captured one of his doctors, Dr. Paul Gachet, holding a stem of Foxglove, a derivative of which is known for treating epilepsy. In their own personal mic drop moment, Gadsby informs the insolent man that a known side effect of an overdose of the Foxglove derivative is that,“You can experience the color yellow a little too intensely. So perhaps we have the Sunflowers precisely because he medicated.”

I love this so much.

Hannah Gadsby created a comedy hour that strings together a series of self-deprecating jokes, creating an engaging story that simultaneously challenges “our obsession with reputation at the cost of humanity,” wherein they explain how tension isolates us and laughter connects us by releasing that tension. Jokes are formed by two parts, a beginning and a middle:

The Setup (The Question) → Punchline (The Surprise Answer)

Gadsby warns that, “In a comedy show there’s no room for the best part of the story. Which is the ending. In order to finish on a laugh you have to end with punchlines. Stories, unlike jokes, need a beginning, a middle, and an end. Punchlines need trauma because punchlines need tension. Tension feeds trauma.” Then they continue on with highbrow Picasso and how Cubism “freed us from the slavery of having to reproduce believable three dimensional reality on a two dimensional surface” concluding their hour-long creative deep-dive in the most essayist style I could ever hope to strive towards. The stand-up becomes a full story and I am left standing in my kitchen holding my wooden spoon and wiping away my tears with my t-shirt. Tension and release. Tears create connection too.

You learn from the part of the story you focus on…Ignorance will always walk amongst us because we will never know all the things.
-Hannah Gadsby | Nanette

Like many people, I was previously drawn to the rags to riches tale of Van Gogh having sold only one painting in his lifetime and then coming into immense notoriety after his death. The rumors surrounding his self-mutilation and the drama that is the tortured artist have historically been the bullet points in most of the information I have come across. The story of Auvers-sur-Oise made me focus on something else entirely. I never took the time to understand that most of the images that we have come to know and love were made during his stays in mental health and psychiatric facilities. Like a world discovering cubism, this new information imploded my three point perspective, that illusion that gives the perspective of a single, stable world view. It suddenly became very important to me to understand Van Gogh’s relationship with his younger brother, Theo, and to see, in person, the places that inspired some of his greatest masterpieces. I’ve made plans to visit the site of his last seventy days of life where he created a surreal seventy+ paintings like he somehow knew he was running out of time. But I want to sit in his room and stare out the window. I want to understand how some madness steals everything from a person while others manage to stay afloat just enough to engage reality. And how others still can find long stretches where they are anchored. I want to know all the things.

I just finished reading The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester. When I told my friend Catherine that my TBR contained a book about the twenty volume compilation of 520,779 English words whose creation spanned 70+ years, she laughed and said, “I’m sorry. But that’s the nerdiest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.” To which, I replied in all seriousness, It’s actually the second book I’ve read about the making of the OED.1” A real-life Spencer Reid moment ;)

In 1879, James Murray, a British lexicographer2 and philologist3, was tasked by the delegates of the Oxford University Press “to capture all the words then extant (still in existence; surviving) in the English speaking world in all their various shades of meaning.” To house his work and a small team of assistants, Murray built a corrugated-iron shed on the grounds of Mill Hill School and called it the Scriptorium. Relying heavily on thousands of volunteer readers from around the world, Murray tasked these contributors with reading and reporting on works written in English from roughly 1150 A.D. (Middle English) through present day at the time; a body of work spanning centuries focused mainly on literature, philosophy, science, newspapers, sermons, letters, legal documents, travel writing, popular fiction, and technical manuals. A rough framework was laid out by James Murray’s team:

1150-1520: read everything possible because surviving texts were relatively limited
1520-1674: read broadly and deeply because of the Renaissance explosion of English printing
1674 onward: read more selectively because the volume of printed English became enormous

Works from the likes of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Walter Scott were heavily mined for words and meaning. Readers were asked to copy quotations onto slips and mail them into the Scriptorium with the word the quotation was referencing, the author, title, edition, page number, and the publication date. The slips that poured in were then alphabetized and organized by Murray’s team into a set of small open-fronted compartments. Today we use the idiom pigeonhole (verb: to assign to a particular category, typically an overly restrictive one) after these particular compartments which were originally intended for workplace organization. Over the decades Henry Bradley (1845-1923) British philologist and lexicographer, William Alexander Craigie (1867-1957) Scottish philologist, poet, and lexicographer, and Charles Talbut Onions (1873-1965) British philologist, grammarian, and lexicographer, would also contribute greatly to the compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary as we know it today.

This true story takes a particularly unexpected turn when James Murray discovers that his most prolific dictionary contributor, credited with over 10,000 word entries, was a certified madman. Dr. William Chester Minor, otherwise known as W.C. Minor, was a Union Army surgeon during the American Civil War, after which he moved to England. Affected by paranoia, delusions, and auditory hallucinations from what historians and psychiatrists today believe to be schizophrenia, Minor shot and killed a man in the street whom he believed had broken into his room. The deceased, identified as George Merrett, was in reality simply on his way to work to support his pregnant wife, Eliza, and their six children. During the pretrial period, Minor was found “not guilty by reason of insanity” and incarcerated at the asylum in Broadmoor in the village of Crowthorne, Berkshire, given comfortable quarters, and allowed access to a vast array of books and literature. During his incarceration Minor suffered severe delusions that he was being abducted nightly from his room and conveyed to such distant places as Istanbul, where he was forced to commit sexual assaults on children. He later cut off his own penis to prevent further atrocities.

Despite his incarceration, or perhaps specifically because of the unique circumstances his incarceration presented, near unlimited time and access, Minor and his enormous contributions proved invaluable. James Murray claims, “We could easily illustrate the last four centuries from his quotations alone”.

I love storytelling. Whether it be narrative or visual, constructing a beginning, middle, and end has always had a soothing effect on my nervous system. Research shows that Affect Labeling, the act of naming your emotions, lowers stress and builds emotional intelligence. Story cultivates empathy and understanding and creates connection. Owning our story provides agency while offering compassion for our experiences. It is not lost on me that the man whose support created the compilation of language that I reference everyday and use to combat stress and anxiety and bolster my mental health, could just as easily have been pigeonholed as a lunatic and left by the wayside. The same manner of illness that has affected my sister and caused my family decades of turmoil has also played a large role in presenting me with the tools to tame my emotions. You learn from the part of the story you focus on. I cannot wait to see the places where Van Gogh passed his last seventy days painting and I will write about them using language I have acquired in large part thanks to the contributions of W.C. Minor and the thousands of volunteers who saw value in recording the pieces that make up the whole of a story.

Hannah Gadsby closes their comedy special with one final question: “Do you know why we have the Sunflowers? It’s not because Vincent Van Gogh suffered. It’s because Vincent Van Gogh had a brother who loved him. Through all the pain he had a tether, a connection to the world. And that is the focus of the story we need. Connection.

Tension and release.
All of the perspectives at once.

THIS WEEK’S NEW FRENCH VOCABULARY:
quintessense - the purest or most perfect example of something
ascétique - ascetic (abstemious / self-disciplined)
contester / remetre en question - impugn (call into question)
dipthongue - dipthong (linguistic double vowel sound)
proximité / contiguité / voisinage - propinquity (nearness in space and time)
anomie - breakdown of social norms/values
somnambulisme - sleepwalking
somnambule - sleepwalker
autodérision - self-deprication / self-mockery
inculte - ignorant / uncultivated / uneducated / unread
Je suis pas là pour parler avec toi - I’m not here to have it out with you
Arrête de me prendre pour une conne - Stop playing with me
Tu m’énerves - You piss me off
Parle même pas avec moi - Don’t even talk to me
Bof, je suis claquée - Eh, I’m exhausted / I’m wiped
Bof rien de special - Eh, nothing special / Not much
T’es arrivé comme un cheveu dans la soupe - You showed up like a hair in a boul of soup
tournesol - sunflower
Tu piges ? - You get it?
C’est osé - That’s bold / daring
beurk - ugh! yuck!
approbation - approval
convenance - propriety / decorum
la casserole - saucepan
Je suis allergique au pollen - I am allergic to pollen
Ils sont en rupture de stock - They are out of stock
le geste - the gesture / movement
Un congé sabbatique - sabbatical
Si je me mouche - if i blow my nose
Dans sa manche - in my sleeve
Le premier mai - May Day
On a fait des plans - we make plans
Il vit à travers moi - live vicariously

OTHER THINGS I LOVED/LEARNED THIS WEEK:

When your heart was open wide / and you loved things just because. - Rilo Kiley

Sauteed Mushroom & Spicy Sausage Risotto

7 cups vegetable or chicken or broth
3 uncooked sausage links, filling removed from the casing
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons salted butter
2 shallots or 1 yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 pound cremini mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 cups Arborio rice
1/2 lemon, fresh squeezed juice
salt and fresh cracked place pepper to taste
Serve over arugula tossed in balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt & pepper
Instructions
1. In a medium saucepan over low heat, bring broth to a simmer.
2. In a large saucepan over medium heat, sweat mushrooms to remove moisture. Add 2 Tbs and cook until brown. Stir occasionally. Set aside.
3. Remove sausage from casings. Cook sausage in a medium skillet until browned. Set aside.
4. Add the onion and saute in sausage fat until softened and translucent, about 5 to 7 minutes. Add the garlic and saute for 2 minutes more. Stirring often.
5. Return mushrooms and sausage to pan.
6. Add the Arborio rice, stir.
7. Add the remaining 2 Tbs butter.
8. Add the wine and stir quickly, scraping the bottom of the pan to bring up all of the flavorful brown bits. Allow the wine to cook off and absorb into the rice.
9. Ladle the simmering broth mixture into the mushroom, sausage, and rice mixture. About 1/2 to 1 cup at a time. Stir frequently and allow all of the liquid to absorb before ladling in more liquid.
10. Continue ladling the broth in until the rice becomes tender, soft and creamy, about 30 minutes. You may not need all of the liquid, but it’s nice to have.
11. Squeeze 1/2 lemon over mixture. Remove any seeds. Stir.
12. Taste and season with salt and pepper.
13. Serve over a bed of arugula dressed lightly with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and salt and pepper.
14. Finish with fleur de sel

SUBSTACK TITLE SOURCES:
”I feel it all / Stranded in the fog of words” - from Feist’s 2007 song I feel it all

The Dictionary of Lost Words | by Pip Williams

Lexicography is the study of lexicons and the art of compiling dictionaries.It is divided into two separate academic disciplines:

Practical lexicography is the compiling, writing, and editing of dictionaries.
Theoretical lexicography is the scholarly study of semantic, orthographic, syntagmatic, and paradigmatic features of lexemes of the lexicon (vocabulary) of a language, developing theories of dictionary components and structures linking the data in dictionaries, the needs for information by users in specific types of situations, and how users may best access the data incorporated in printed and electronic dictionaries. This is sometimes referred to as “metalexicography” as it is concerned with the finished dictionary itself.

Philology (from Ancient Greek φιλολογία (philología) ‘love of word’) is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology.Philology is also defined as the study of literary texts and oral and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist. In older usage, especially British, philology is more general, covering comparative and historical linguistics.

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