"My New Year’s Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envys, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle — may they never give me peace."

Wrote Patricia Highsmith "well after midnight on what had been Dec. 31, 1947," quoted by Dwight Garner in his NYT review of her book "Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995."

X is my religion, I googled, because I'd just read "Sex, to me, should be a religion."

I was rereading the previous post, which included that quote, from the diaries of Patricia Highsmith, and it called to mind a subject I blogged 2 weeks ago.

John McWhorter has a new book — "WOKE RACISM/How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America" — premised on the idea that wokeism is a religion:

"I do not mean that these people’s ideology is ‘like’ a religion. I seek no rhetorical snap in this comparison. I mean that it actually is a religion. An anthropologist would see no difference in type between Pentecostalism and this new form of antiracism."

In my post about that, I quote Bob Dylan: "To her, death is quite romantic/She wears an iron vest/Her profession’s her religion/Her sin is her lifelessness."

So now I had 3 statements — sex is a religion, a political ideology is a religion, and a profession (prostitution?) is a religion. Looking for more things that fit this set, I googled "X is my religion." I landed on a Know Your Meme entry, "What's Your Religion?" 

What's Your Religion is an exploitable image series featuring a screenshot of a text message conversation in which a bizarre image in sent in response to the question "What's your religion?," leading the recipient to say "I'm interested."...

On August 31st, 2016, Redditor cortexer submitted a screenshot of a text message conversation in which a person asks "Are you religious? I'd like to introduce you to my religion" followed by a picture of a Teletubby doll hung on a crucifix and the reply "I'm interested"...

Later, on Reddit, there's a discussion of whether this really is a meme, and somebody says it's "never been used widely enough to be normified" — the test of whether something's a meme? — and somebody else says "No, its too offensive for the normies to use." It doesn't strike me as offensive at all. It's silly, and it's a way to be playful about saying that you're not serious about real religion. 

When someone says "What's your religion?," they are introducing the subject of religion. They're surprised by a response that isn't religion at all. It doesn't have to be a "bizarre image." Texted "What's your religion?," if you are not traditionally religious, you could reply with a photograph of your children or of delicious food or the sunrise. 

But in the 3 examples above — Highsmith, McWhorter, and Dylan — no one wanted to talk about real religion. Everyone wanted to name something other than religion and to elevate and intensify its importance from the perspective of the person who is dedicated to it. 

One reason to have a religion is to put religion in the place in your psyche that could otherwise get filled with something unworthy of that kind of devotion. But perhaps you want to live dangerously, leaving that place gapingly open, capable of getting filled with something profane.

"She was always half-broke. When you date women, she joked, there’s no man to grab the check...."

"If you are made nostalgic by the mention of defunct Manhattan bars and restaurants, this book will be like reading the liner notes to a Billie Holiday or Frank Sinatra album at midnight through a glass of bourbon....  'Sex, to me, should be a religion,' Highsmith wrote. 'I have no other.... As long as beautiful women exist, who can be really depressed?'... She was a powerful and systematic drinker... 'The world and its martinis are mine!... I wonder if any moment surpasses that of the second martini at lunch, when the waiters are attentive, when all life, the future, the world seems good and gilded (it matters not at all whom one is with, male or female, yes or no)'.... Writers drink because 'they must change their identities a million times in their writing... This is tiring, but drinking does it automatically for them. One moment they are a king, the next a murderer, a jaded dilettante, a passionate and forsaken lover; other people actually prefer to stay the same person, stay on the same plane, all the time.... Without liquor I would have married a dull clod, Roger, and had what is called a normal life.'... She kept snails as pets, and would smuggle them through customs in her bra."

Writes Dwight Garner in "Patricia Highsmith Lived Extravagantly, and Took Copious Notes" (NYT). The book he's reviewing is "Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995."

What's the deeper meaning of wearing a fur coat to sing "Natural Woman"?

"[Aretha] Franklin performed in her floor-length fur coat until stepping away from the piano to absolutely slay the final moments of her staple song, tossing her coat to the ground as the crowd jumped to its collective feet."

I lot can be said about this song. What does it mean not to feel "natural" as a woman? Are women unnatural without the man? If she only feels "like a natural woman," is that like the way Madonna felt "like a virgin." She wasn't a virgin, but she felt like one (for one reason or another).

So, it's already a puzzling song, subject to many interpretations. Okay: What does it mean to sing it in a fur coat?

And can you think of any other occasions when what the singer wore affected the meaning of the song? The first thing that crossed my mind was Marlene Dietrich singing "Give Me The Man" while dressed in a tuxedo. But I don't think that's a good answer.

ADDED: "Her mouth was as wise as her eyes … and her voice was like her coat, rich and supple, and somehow full of secrets," wrote Patricia Highsmith in "The Price of Salt," which is now a big Oscar-begging movie called "Carol." The coat, a fur coat, looms large, as the costume designer Sandy Powell explained. It was "probably the most important item to get right."

"It’s those descriptions that don’t say what colour or shape it is or anything like a clue.” To interpret that impression of sexy, conspiratorial opulence, she says, she knew it had to be a blond mink, not brown, and not light or flashy.

Fur is big now and deeply meaningful.