The Old World Is Dying, and the New World Struggles to Be Born; Now Is the Beret of Travolta
Now is the beret of Travolta. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hi friends!
May is always a liminal month, sandwiched between spring’s early buds and summer’s full bloom. But May 2026, with its unique barrage of political, economic, social, and technological threats (both real and perceived), presented two purgatorial options: Stay frozen, watching the old world die, and have yet another menty b, OR turn your gaze toward the portal of possibility that all this darkness will turn into a beautiful dawn … one day … eventually.
Every white lady who spends too much time on the internet was promised forward momentum this year in the form of a Fire Horse, according to Chinese astrology.
“Endure the Year of the Snake,” they said.
“The Year of the Fire Horse is coming to save your sad, molted ass and gallop you off in a swirl of activity.”
Well … it seems that horse decided to stop, drop, and roll and is now off in a meadow taking a nap under a tree. I, for one, am very over this energetic purgatory. When I declared my rebirth back in March, I had no idea I was breech. I’m still reaching for new ground that has yet to appear under my little feet.
When I can muster the strength to stay in the moment and focus on what’s in front of me, I become massively grateful that everything is fine in my personal reality. But there is only so long I can stave off my own insanity about what the future holds, and that’s why I enjoy turning to cartomancy.
Over the past year, I have read my own tarot cards so frequently that I had to acquire a new deck because those fuckers started trolling me. And, lo and behold, my new deck is telling me the exact same story. So, while I await the fulfillment of my greatest hopes and dreams, I’m going to pivot to soothsaying for the people and let you all know that what we’ve been experiencing collectively (for years now) is “the Tower” — a card that represents radical upheaval — and it never strikes gently.
Tarot has been around since the 15th century, but for the first few hundred years of its existence, it was a simple card game. A series of occultists and Hermeticists imbued the deck with its divinatory meaning, an effort led by a French pastor named Antoine Court de Gébelin, who decided in 1781, with no historical evidence, that this card game was a cache of esoteric knowledge with roots in Ancient Egypt. He shared this vision as part of an ongoing series of essays published to a list of subscribers that included King Louis XVI. An iconic forefather to any writer who confidently publishes misinformation in a newsletter.
I do love me a little divination (I have never left a fortune cookie unopened), but I think tarot is most powerful when used as a tool for storytelling. Us hopeful humans do well with a little symbolism when times are this uncertain, and The Major Arcana, the foundation of a tarot deck, is a series of 23 numbered cards that tell a story of transformation when read in succession. We begin at zero with “The Fool,” shown leaping off a ledge into the unknown, and end at 22 with “The World,” a symbol of success, spiritual enlightenment, and ultimate growth.
“The Tower,” which sits at number 16, is obviously not the omen anyone is ever hoping to see, but it is an important part of the story, because after everything has collapsed, “The Star” comes next at 17. That card represents renewal and hope. So, last week, when John Travolta, with his Xenu glow, entered from stage right in a headwear choice so sublimely deranged that it burst through the smoldering rubble, I saw more than just an instantly canonical meme, I saw one of our most enduring, radiant stars ushering in healing joie de vivre right when it was needed most.
In the words of Susan Sontag: “To talk about camp is therefore to betray it.” So I will just say that John Travolta’s insanity is as remarkably timeless as his talent. He has given us: Grease, the Saturday Night Fever walk, Pulp Fiction, and Adele Dazeem. He is obviously as big of a Scientologist as they come. He was accused of sexually assaulting a butler on a cruise ship, among other wild civil lawsuits. And he has had more plastic surgery than most of the “models” on Instagram.
When he showed up at the Cannes Film Festival to premiere his directorial debut, those bitchy little glasses and his series of berets were donned in tribute to the greats. “The old school directors wore berets and the glasses,” he told CNN. “I've been around for over 50 years doing movies, but I can't tell, when I look back, the difference between the events. And I said, ‘I'm a director this time. You're an actor, play the part of a director.’”
Travolta also received a surprise Honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes, the festival’s version of a lifetime achievement award. And now I am awarding him the first-ever Lifetime Achievement in Unhingement, because wearing a beret to multiple photo calls so you can recognize the time and place when you look back at your own red carpet pics is the exact kind of crazy we honor here at Burn It All Down.
John Travolta cosplaying for his own vivid memories is the antivenom to Demi Moore’s AI bloviation. How everything in this deeply unserious culture became so fucking serious is worthy of a dissertation. But for a brief moment, we got to watch Travolta promenade en chapeau, and received a fun and cozy respite from ingesting the other things we never wanted to know.
John Travolta’s latest face may be in its infancy, but his stardom is old as fuck and predates, by multiple decades, any of social media’s parasocial lunacy. He is clearly not approaching his image or “brand” with a coherent strategy other than expressing his own luminous need to be seen. “I love it," he told People at the New York premiere of his film after flying himself back from Cannes in his own plane, I assume still wearing a beret. "Once Vogue and Harper's Bazaar voted me the best dressed at Cannes, I went, 'Okay, we've arrived.'"
We think that the counterpoint to pretense is authenticity, but it’s actually the willingness to play. Life is performative and so is our culture, and there is no way to avoid that, certainly not by performing the life of someone who is sponsored by Brick to make vertical videos about living chronically offline.
There’s nothing wrong with pretending, as long as you know you’re doing it. When you lose the plot is when you start method acting for your social media presence. If you’re playing your self in the Theatre of the Internet, you may as well have some fun with it. Easier said than done when every thespian must confront a bunch of numbers reviewing their performances.
When I started writing on Substack in 2023, the founders were still sending out propaganda emails about how their platform was different than the rest of the internet, here to save media from algorithms, etc. It was positioned as a safe haven from both AI and social media. Now, slop-dominated leaderboards rank writers based on revenue and there is cursed energy on “Substack Notes,” their shockingly humorless version of a social media app.
If “having a Substack” was a thing a few years ago, like it is now, I wouldn’t have had the magnificent balls to start writing. I didn’t even have a logo or a banner for the first year I sent my emails, because this project has always been one long and treacherous exercise in me overcoming my life-ruining perfectionism. I got to dip my toe into sharing my work publicly, with very little pressure, at a time when I was dealing with a lot of fear and shame that I still needed to handle. I do think Substack remains the best place on the internet to share writing. But it makes me sad to think that the psychological barrier to entry has become higher for other writers — we are a group prone to spiraling — who might want to express themselves, not feel like they’re competing in a Thunderdome.
Recently, a few (very talented) writers have told me that they post their writing on Substack but don’t really share it with an audience. And, yeah, I get that. I had very big feelings about being seen that only dissipated as I kept writing — even when I felt like a hack or a flop — over multiple years. It was only through all of that doing and sharing that I realized I didn’t need to hold myself to some impossible standard that isn’t real because I’m the one imposing it and I don’t even care.
It’s really not that serious. We all need to get jauntier and looser immediately. And not for some valid universal cause like the amalgamated horrors are threatening to drain what’s left of the world’s personality. This is a selfish plea from me: I need more magic and less tragic.
So, let’s all play around a little bit more, shall we?
If watching Travolta bop around the globe in a series of berets last week left me with anything, it’s that when you follow your bliss and focus on your experience, rather than how you’re being perceived, you might just get to be the acclaimed director of … your destiny.
And speaking of playing around …
You can now follow Burn It All Down on Instagram!
While my dream for expanding the BIAD universe is a bonkers three-camera cable access talk show in 1994 where you can call in on a landline and I will read your tarot cards, this is 2026 (unfortunately). And even though I miss my anthropological survey of the comments, I can’t chase the dragon on TikTok after nearly six months of sobriety. So, Instagram it is!
I’m going to make some fun things in the coming weeks that will only live there. What exactly I mean by that we will find out together because my brain is run by a cabal of bickering goblins that feed me a million ideas and then go on vacation — if you’re wondering why I get so far behind on my Unhingement paperwork. I’m still catching up on Travolta’s hats! I haven’t even had a chance to reckon with Chicago Pope’s AI decree or Spencer Pratt’s ascent to serious candidate in the race for LA mayor (was avoiding, feels too much like a BoJack Horseman plotline). If he wins, I will make Los Angeles City Hall my beat and become a reporter.
Where was I?
Oh, yes, Instagram. I want to make it easier for you to deem me worthy of the internet’s highest honor — sharing my newsletter to your story. I will try my best to be timely, but you know me, so give me 24 hours after I hit send to get my womanifestos to grid.
Bisous à tous mes amis!
Less Lessons More Blessin’s™
Liz