Kelly Chapman (Audrey Horne) is a culture writer and the co-editor of Secret Ballot, a Washington, DC-based “cultural salon in newsletter form” (I contributed to their issue on steak). You may also know her as X’s Audrey Horne.
#110: Kelly Chapman
Washington, DC (though often in NYC)
What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?
Being able to sleep on your back in the middle of your bed with your arms over your head. Singing for the joy of it. A generative spirit. Thinking of new things to make or do or see. Being able to do 30 pushups in a row, or hold a plank for 2 minutes straight, or run three miles without feeling like dying.
How would you describe your current lifestyle?
Civilized. I’m in a much less social period of my life. I thought I would hate it but I don’t. It’s like a temporary state of enforced rest. It’s making me become more mysterious, a quality I thought was out of reach for me in my twenties (I’m 32 now). I’ve also started working out a lot more frequently, getting my steps in, going to Pilates three times a week. I drink natural wine and wear weirder clothes than I used to. I’m trying to explain myself less, to match.
How do you start and end your days?
Every morning I wake up with the sun, get a 20oz Blank Street cold brew with extra ice and half-and-half (this counts as hydration), slather on SPF 50 (I prefer mineral, but SuperGoop’s Play is working for now), and check my e-mail. I try to walk a mile or two if I can as well. I write best in the morning. Every evening I take a long, hot shower, scroll TikTok forever, read the Psalms if I’m anxious, and pray in bed.
Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?
When I turned 24, I got all my wisdom teeth out at once, got strep throat and the flu, and fell out with my best friend, all at the same time. This triggered a years-long battle with hypochondria. I’ve noticed my health anxiety diminishes when I’m absorbed in something creative, like writing, or something romantic, like a relationship.
What’s your relationship to self-healing?
Verbal processing is a form of self-healing for me. Hence my voluminous tweeting. But that’s more like spinning my wheels. I don’t really believe in the concept of self-healing. Healing comes from God. You have to let go and accept that you can’t do it on your own. That’s why going to church every Sunday can be so restorative, because it reminds you of your need, the way being in nature reminds you of your smallness. I don’t go to church currently, but I do sit in the park on Sundays and read the Bible. It’s similar.
Physically speaking, returning to whole ingredients and active movement really helps me feel better. Being boring is healing. I eat pretty intuitively, and kind of live by my hormonal cycle, honoring whatever it’s telling me (stay in, eat a bowl of pasta, don’t trust your thoughts).
Do you work with any practitioners, texts, or modalities on a regular basis?
The Bible. God. I meet with a spiritual director once a month, and a therapist once a week. I’m obsessed with personality tests, too, and rely on them more than I should admit. I’m an ENFP, and I think an Enneagram 4w3. It explains a lot of my intensity. I have a complicated relationship with astrology for religious reasons, but I definitely identify as an Aries. I read Ecclesiastes when I’m depressed. I watch The Departed when I need to cheer up. I publish Secret Ballot every week and it helps me stay on top of things. I love watching TikToks of what girls eat and do in a day. They’re so soothing to me.
When do you feel the most nourished?
When I’m writing something honest, when I’m falling asleep or waking up to the sound of others talking and moving in the kitchen, when I’m in a full house, when someone else is taking me on an adventure, when I think of something extremely witty and then say it at the right time, when my friends stay late at a dinner party I’ve hosted, when I’m planning a huge party, when God pierces the veil and reminds me of something important, when I meet someone interesting, someone with internal structure, and they take me to the edge of an idea and we can just run and play and explore together conversationally.
A lot of deep nourishment for me is relational and receptive. To know that I don’t have to perform for people, that I’m accepted as I am and can just be, is deeply nourishing to me. It’s rare.
How do you reset?
Depending on what I’m resetting from, I love a cold brew and a really long walk, a day alone at the art museum, a barre pilates class, drinks and gossip with two friends, or a full day of thrifting and coffee with one very good friend. I’m really intense, so I find rituals soothing. When I’m at home, I buy fresh flowers every week and spend a long time arranging them. My favorites are ranunculus, peonies, and tulips. If I stay in one place for too long I get depressed. Getting out of town is a great way for me to gain new perspective. When someone is very kind to me unexpectedly, it always shocks and resets me.
Do you have a favorite meal?
My mom is from Mexico, my grandpa was a chef, and I grew up in Oregon. Everything I love to eat goes back to those three things. I love salmon, summer tomatoes, blackberries from the vine, carne asada, tamales, oysters with mignonette, fussy foods. I love beautiful foods, green foods, whole ingredients, salty, tart, raw and bitter things. I like sour candy, tamarind, salt-and-vinegar chips, Topo Chico with lime, and Geminis. They all give me the same feeling. My grandpa always said presentation is everything when it comes to food. I think that principle applies to things beyond cooking.
My current diet is pretty healthy and repetitive. I’m focused on protein and fiber-maxxing. I almost always start the day with two eggs fried in crumbled feta and chili oil, plus avocado and berries.
For so long I struggled with accepting beauty as a good thing, but now I see that it can be a divine gift.
Lunch is usually a big, herby cucumber and tomato salad with lentils or white beans, and tuna or chicken breast. For dinner I’ve been cooking salmon with Japanese sweet potato and sautéed spinach, or turkey bolognese with chickpea pasta and some roasted green vegetables. My favorite treat is cliché: a frosty dirty gin martini (two at the very most) with steak frites, medium rare. Or a glass of pink champagne, if there’s any to be had.
What advice would you give your younger self?
When people are treating you poorly, you can just leave. When you’re acting badly, you can just stop. Neither of these things have to be complicated, and analyzing them too much is a waste of time you could be spending somewhere better. I think I struggled with believing that a fresh start was available to me when I was younger. It always is. Also, start lifting weights.
What advice would you give to the person reading this?
I guess my advice is the same advice I give myself constantly, and I know it sounds like a coffee mug, but the reason quotes get printed on coffee mugs is because they’re true: Be kind, and remember that you never know what someone else is going through.
What would you like to see or create more of in the world?
I am consumed by the idea of the structure of reality, especially moral reality. I wish I had a hundred years to dive into meaning, into the intricacies of moral logic. The mysteries of the universe are vast. I would love to understand them better, to write a robust, plain defense of moral reality, to defend moral truth from forces that wish to automate it, to uncover what it is that LLMs and language and math and physics and human behavior reveal about the structure of the universe, to show people that Love is the dominant force, and that the resurrection is everywhere. I am searching for God in everything and really believe that He rewards people who earnestly seek truth.
More tangibly, I wish people would try to make things beautiful. For so long I struggled with accepting beauty as a good thing (Jesus was not “beautiful” in an earthly sense), but now I see that it can be a divine gift. We should be trying to make things pleasant and lovely for each other.
More personally, I’d like to fall in love.
Related reading:
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Enneagram 4 gang
Beautiful divine Kelly