Curate, connect, and discover
Another point for why it’s important to own your own copies of music and media, and not use streaming services, is because the copy you own can’t be taken back.
(This is also a good time to remind people that yout*be to mp3 converters still exist).
do you have any favourite love letters from the past?
“You have fixed my Life – however short,” Wilfred Owen to Siegfried Sassoon
“I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia” / “Throw over your man, I say, and come,” Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf
“Love is my religion – I could die for that, I could die for you,” John Keats to Fanny Brawne
“I know Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly, was you in Greek days,” Oscar Wilde to Alfred Lord Douglas
Here’s what I’ve been reading (and also thinking about) these past couple weeks
Friendship is not a pale imitation of sexual romance. It is a romance unto itself: The art of loving and losing female friends
“Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us—a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain—it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves,” from Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison– this made me immediately want to read her similarly titled essay collection because holy !!! shit !!
Ever read a book you’re indifferent to and then read a review of that book and it’s everything? Everything that appeals to you, makes sense to you, draws you in? This one talking about Normal People, drawing a parallel to (my favourite) Jane Austen and the ordinary, intimacies of romance is it.
“Once you reduce all living beings to the equivalent of market actors, rational calculating machines trying to propagate their genetic code, you accept that not only the cells that make up our bodies, but whatever beings are our immediate ancestors, lacked anything even remotely like self-consciousness, freedom, or moral life—which makes it hard to understand how or why consciousness (a mind, a soul) could ever have evolved in the first place,” from David Graeber’s what’s the point if we can’t have fun?
The rise of therapy-speak: how a language got off the couch and into the world
I tried watching Pretend It’s a City (mostly out of my love for Scorsese) but reader, I couldn’t do it. I left it mid series and I don’t plan on going back to it. So here’s a review of Pretend It’s a City that doesn’t entirely get my feelings on it but one I can definitely get behind
“The lasting effects on suicide rates, depression and anxiety are still being measured, but in interviews, a dozen mental health experts in Europe painted a grim picture of a crisis that they say should be treated as seriously as containing the virus.” Young people’s despair deepens as covid-19 crisis drags on
Some warm poetry, for cold evenings:
Molly Fisk, “Winter Sun” (We can make do with so little / just the hint of warmth, the slanted light.)
Pat Schneider, “The Patience of Ordinary Things” (It is a kind of love, is it not? / how the cup holds the tea.)
Barbara Ras, “Bite Every Sorrow” (You can speak a foreign language, sometimes / and it can mean something.)
Jack Gilbert, “Failing and Flying” (Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.)
Lisel Mueller, “Things” (Even what was beyond us / was recast in our image; / we gave the country a heart, / the storm an eye)
Rabindranath Tagore, “On the Seashore” (The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach / On the seashore of endless worlds children meet)
John O’Donohue, “Matins” (May I live this day / Compassionate of heart / Gentle in word / Courageous in thought)
Wallace Stevens, “The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm” (The summer night is like a perfection of thought. / The house was quiet because it had to be)
Brian Patten, “Inessential Things” (Cats remember what is essential of days)
Emily Dickinson, “Simplicity” (How happy is the little stone / that rambles in the road, alone)
Yi Lu, “Valley’s Green” (flowers like tiny saucers — little bowls — little cups / filled to the brim with their own colors)
Jacques Prévert, “How to Paint a Bird’s Portrait” (When the bird comes / if it comes / observe the most profound silence)
Archibald MacLeish, “Eleven” (Happy as though he had no name, as though / He had been no one: like a leaf, a stem, / Like a root growing…)
Denise Levertov, “A Woman Alone” (Then / self-pity dries up, a joy / untainted by guilt lifts her. / She has fears, but not about loneliness)
Richard Brautigan, “Your Catfish Friend” (I’d love you and be your catfish / friend and drive such lonely / thoughts from your mind)
Linda Gregg, “The Letter” (I’m not feeling strong yet, but I am taking / good care of myself)
Andrew Lang, “Ballade of True Wisdom” (And I’d leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray, / For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers)
Ada Limón, “The Raincoat” (my whole life I’ve been under her / raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel / that I never got wet.)
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Just” (These people, unaware, are saving the world)
Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things” (I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.)