Gina Nutt: “Meaning It” transports us to a stadium show alongside a narrator and her two older friends. When did you decide to write about this concert? What about this environment inspired this story?
Ruby Zuckerman: I wrote the first draft of this story in 2022, when covid still felt much more present. This isn’t a story about the pandemic, but I remember going to big shows that year and feeling remnants of this power struggle between covid restrictions and large gatherings. The threat of illness had receded but there were new rules, including the rule about size restrictions on purses that comes up in this story. Experiencing a new level of policing made me think about power struggles in general. How do we string together reasoning for our demands? How do we enforce them? What good is an empty threat?

My friend Caitlin MacQueen, an excellent painter, once told me that live music taught her to have high standards for her own work. As someone who went to concerts as often as I could as a teen/young adult, that really resonated for me—music and live performance are able to convey such direct and raw emotion in a way that is difficult to achieve through writing and painting. I wanted to write about a concert as a way to tap into some of that energy, even though the actual performance doesn’t take up much space in the story.

GN: The narrator notes while approaching the stadium, “Good people-watching,” and the characters here do not disappoint. I’m especially curious about the woman with the wicker bag and the transformation she undergoes in the narrator’s eyes. Can you tell me about your experience writing her?
RZ: As I hope comes across, I had a lot of fun writing this character. There’s something borderline pathetic but ultimately inspiring about her. Being outside of the mainstream with style and taste can be exciting, but it can also veer slightly into the grotesque, be something that’s outside of the norms because it’s unsettling or antisocial. I wanted her to walk that line. She’s someone the narrator aspires to be, but is also scared of becoming. Femininity without anyone to entice, a performance on its own terms.

GN: The story’s title nods to questions about authenticity that emerge throughout the story: the fraught European vacation the narrator is planning with her boyfriend, concertgoers exhibiting their true selves. Do you think this evening out has landed the narrator closer to or further from what she wants?
RZ: I hope this evening brought the narrator closer to what she wants, but indirectly. The show inspires a sort of rock-bottom reflection, where the narrator feels completely powerless to assert her will in her romantic relationship, not out of adoration for her boyfriend but from childhood wounds. While the narrator realizes this, she probably feels further away from control than ever. But this unflinching clarity will hopefully help her understand how she wants to change later on.

GN: What’s in your creative mosaic? Books, music, restaurants, films, visual art, fashion, ephemera, architecture, anything that energizes your writing.
RZ: Right now I’m reading David Shipman’s biography of Judy Garland. I’m only about ¼ of the way through, but he’s already done such a great job of articulating her strange and needy psychology, constantly oscillating between confidence and desperation. Jean Rhys, Barbara Pym, Tove Ditlevsen, and Frederick Barthelme are major touchstones for me. I hate to say it, but I recently bought a FreeWrite and have become addicted to it—I can finally have gear as a writer! It helps me psychologically separate from my laptop, create a firm barrier between generating and editing, and sit more firmly in what I’m writing since I can’t see the entire page of what I wrote before. Another source of energy for me has been talking to friends who are translators. I’m not good enough at another language to do it myself, but it seems like the most rigorous way of engaging with a text. Hearing about their thought processes and decision-making strategies with word selection has made me think about my own writing with more intention.