can you connect the fault in our stars to tuberculosis?
Sure. The name of the band Hazel likes is The Hectic Glow, which comes from a line in Henry David Thoreau's journals: "Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish or the hectic glow of consumption."
(Consumption was the common term for TB until the late 19th century.)
One of the ideas that fascinated me when I was writing tfios was the way that cancer--in its seeming randomness, unfairness, unpredictable course, and romanticization--mirrored early 19th century conceptions of TB.
(I did not yet know that TB is a huge, ongoing crisis. So I had no way of knowing I would end up obsessed with/writing nonfiction about tuberculosis. But I guess the seed was there!)
"We’re told we’re exhausted because we’re doing too much. But most people aren’t doing too much. They’re taking in too much.
Content. Opinions. Noise. Stimulation. Advice. Outrage. Entertainment. All intake. No release.
Humans were never built to live this way. For most of history, energy moved through the body every day. People made things. Songs, tools, stories, meals, rituals, shelters. Creation wasn’t a hobby or an identity. It was how the nervous system stayed sane.
Now we call it rest when nothing leaves us. We scroll. We watch. We consume. And then we wonder why we feel weird, anxious, inflamed, dull, restless, depressed, or strangely empty even when life looks 'easy'.
Energy has to go somewhere."
