'Folk Tits,' Perfume & Agnes Martin Poetry

Why I'm appreciating Martha Wainwright and fragrance this week

Sep 19, 2024

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Personal finance writer Charlotte Cowles wrote a viral piece in New York magazine called “I Fell for an Amazon Scam Call and Handed Over $50,000.” We talk about what happened after that. Sign up for Slate Plus here.

In this week’s new Death, Sex & Money episode, I talk with Martha Wainwright, the songwriter, performer, rockstar, and famous family member. A few years ago, she published a memoir called Stories I Might Regret Telling You, which is a raucous, hard-charging tale of building a music career and finding space for yourself in a family of striving creative makers.

In our conversation, we talk about all that and about “folk tits,” something you can probably picture if you’ve spent any time at a music festival.

Listen to the episode here.

Her clear-eyed descriptions of the dynamics within an extended family really stuck with me. They are both loving and piercing at the same time. Like here’s how she describes her response to her mother Kate McGarrigle’s illness and eventual death from cancer, compared to her brother Rufus’:

MARTHA: I was sad because I, I wish I had had more time with her because our relationship was more strained. You know, when I was a teenager and in my twenties, I pushed her away somewhat, you know, and then very quickly she became, you know, um, very sick. And so I had to make up for that.
And so I really quickly had to sort of, um, With the time that I had left, try and, um, have all the good experiences I could with her, because I knew I wasn't going to have her for very long. And so that was sad to me to have to sort of, um, to sort of have three years to have a great relationship with my mother. You know, when I, when I thought I would have, when I thought I would have 20 or more to fix, you know, our difficult years,
ANNA: Was it difficult for you that other members of your family didn't respond with that same tenderness?
MARTHA: No, I think everyone responded the way that they needed to with the short period of time that they had, you know, Rufus Who had always adored my mother and had was very close to her and they were very very tight now When those three years of, of illness resented her and became angry with her, you know, because that was, he only had three years to do that, you know,
ANNA: Hm.
MARTHA: to, and to, you know, um, blame her. Whereas I had blamed her always before.

Hre is a beautiful performance from last year of Martha singing together with her brother on The Tonight Show:

If you want to keep listening along to Martha as you move to other things, here’s a playlist of songs featured in the episode on Apple Music or Spotify.

Have You Been Scammed?

As an extra treat this week, I have a conversation with a writer I really love — New York Magazine’s personal finance columnist Charlotte Cowles — about the aftermath of being scammed out of $50,000 and then telling the whole internet you were scammed.

In our conversation, Charlotte talked about making sense of such a terrible mistake; one made because she believed someone lying to her, and also how scammers were effective because they preyed upon her desire to keep her family safe.

I had made contact with a person, I was like, who was that guy? Like I just couldn't, there was sort of this like peeling away of everything where I was just like, so what, like, was literally all of it a lie? And then there was honestly this huge relief that my family wasn't in danger because that was my biggest concern the whole time, um, you know, like my assets weren't going to be frozen, my social security number was not going to be shut down, you know, they, they probably did not actually have access to my bank accounts and so there was, there was a weird relief in there as well. But then, obviously, I had lost a huge amount of money and that was devastating.

Listen here -- or if you’re not yet a Slate Plus member — get on that! Sign up here on Slate’s website or just click “Try Free” on the Death, Sex & Money show page if you listen through Apple podcasts.

Another Way to Appreciate Agnes Martin

I wrote last week about how writer Cody Delistraty found solace in the art of Agnes Martin. Since then, I’ve been plotting a personal field trip to the Agnes Martin room at SF MOMA, and now I have a book to bring with me. A listener let me know that the poet Victoria Chang has a new collection out called With My Back to the World that is inspired by Martin’s work.

Yesterday I slung my depression on my back and went to the museum. I only asked four attendants where the Agnes painting was and the fifth one knew. I walked into the room and saw it right away. From afar, it was a large white square.

Find Victoria Chang’s new poetry collection here.

Other recommendations

Some other things you might enjoy:

Perfume! I’m not much of a makeup person but I have been getting into fragrance as a way to add a little zip! to my daily routine. I have been wearing de Kloka perfume, made by a former cocktail mixologist in Berkeley, and have also learned a lot about perfume from Christina Loff’s substack. (She wrote a great post called “How To Get Into Perfume.”) If you REALLY want to get into it, I also loved visiting the wonderful PERFUME MUSEUM in Berkeley, the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents. It’s fun to sniff!
If you consume a lot of news like I do and find yourself muttering to yourself about an editorial choice or ethical approach that you find unsatisfactory, you may want to join me in listening to Brian Reed’s new podcast with KCRW about journalism called Question Everything. In the first episode, Brian talks about making his hit podcast S-Town with Australian journalist Gay Alcorn, who was a critic of S-Town. The conversation is a master class in mentoring and editing as Alcorn draws out the mixed motives journalists have when you’re making splashy journalism about someone’s real life.
If you do any of your listening through Audible, there are two new shows to check out. There’s a new show about Stevie Wonder called The Wonder of Stevie produced by Higher Ground, the Obamas’ production company, and Shereen Marisol Meraji, the former host of Code Switch, hosts a new show with The Cut called How I Get It Done about how different prominent women organize their professional and personal lives.