Amid the daily deluge of bleak, enervating news about the effects of climate change, we’ve been noticing a strain of defiance: Messages that engender energy and activism rather than despair and paralysis. They offer a thought-provoking and heartening view.
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It took over five years for Leonard Cohen to write Hallelulah, arguably his most beloved song. Although we’ve listened to Hallelulah many times, we did not get its simple message as powerfully as hearing Cohen’s words in an early interview, featured in the trailer of the just-released documentary about him.
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It is enough to have recognized some of ourselves in comedian Bill Bailey’s astute commentary on the British psyche (which applies to MANY others as well). When he segues into a wild riff on the expression “All things considered” at 2:37 in, we found our view of the world mightily expanded, AMAZING…
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The most astonishing runway show we’ve ever seen is Shaheel Shermont Flair’s deeply improvised TikTok series made at his somewhat bedraggled home on Fiji. With the serious, stylized prance of traditional fashion shows, he models his mind-blowing fashions that offer astute, really funny commentary on way more than the runway.
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As I was contemplating the mighty big birthday I will be celebrating this week, I stumbled on this tiny video. Yeah, that’s it. Role models.
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We found this short video made for kids curiously clarifying. “Are You Normal?” explains the origin of idea that has become a source of so much modern anxiety, and deconstructs it. We are reminded of the great Betty White in this deeply wonderful Saturday Night Live sketch.
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A fragment from St. Francis of Assisi got us thinking about hands in a new way. Into our head flew images from photographer Tessa Traeger’s moving series, Voices of the Vivarais, of working people in the ancient province in south-east France. and a video about Dutch designer Bertjan Pot.
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In the weeks leading up to artist and poet Etel Adnan’s death, our instagram feed was flooded with images of her work as though the world could feel her passing. Her striking paintings have been called “talismans”, “declarations of love”, and reminders of what Adnan called “day-to-day bravery”. Seeking out her work and writing, we found her big wisdom.
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Long out of favor due to the glut of cheap clothing, products and materials, mending and repair is on the rise again. That’s got us looking into the deeper meaning of mending.
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We love this clip of abstract expressionist artist Ed Clark describing how he came defy the limitations of the paint brush by painting canvasses laid out on the floor with a push broom, the old-fashioned super-wide broom janitor’s used to wash big swathes of floor. His improvisation reminds us of the way ideas can ignite or connect in an instant to yield solutions with mighty effect.
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When Kevin Kelly’s published Cool Tools, his giant “catalog of possibilities”, five years ago, it immediately became our favorite catalogue. Its descriptions are literary, its selection attuned to creative minds. We find it relaxing to read while it makes our brains sparkle in unexpected ways. Now it’s available for $3.99.
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As tragic as the events in Ukraine are, we are deeply moved and heartened by the choices of many to confront fearsome danger, intimidation and uncertainty with astonishing acts of courage. Many are about voice. They got us thinking about our own.
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What started with the hopeful return to old ways of celebrating the holiday season suddenly turned into exhaustion and disappointment at yet another wave of a scary variant. Again. Right now, we want relief from it all: momentary escape, joy, illumination, uplift.
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What if the future of well-being is about “tipping the scales in the world away from fear and toward love”? asks On Being’s Krista Tippett in The Future of Well-Being. This simple premise feels like a guidepost for navigating the extraordinary elevation of fear the past years have brought, wrought by the pandemic, politics fueled by animosity, climate change. We were particularly struck by the idea of “microdosing of well-being”.
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Over the years, we’ve found many ways to express thanks. Close to our heart is this W.S. Merwin poem that finds a way to say thanks in the midst of our beautiful, frightening, wounded, wounding world. We offer it with a big hunk of beauty from a Mexican forest.
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Unbeknownst to many inhabitants of New Orleans, a small enclave of eccentric, often ingenious outsiders thrive in twelve homemade stilt-houses along the Mississippi, hidden from sight by the levees. Macon Fry’s book living in the “batture” is a compelling view of resourceful alt-living choices that may be the way of the future.
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At the ever-illuminating @upstate_diary, we suddenly found ourselves looking up through wintry trees into a vast moving star-scape. It transported us to a chilly night in the country. It led to reminders of cosmic views of the everyday.
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At the great Kevin Kelly’s newsletter Recommendo, he mentions “the best, most succinct roundup of productivity techniques I’ve seen”. We learned a few seriously useful tricks that compliment our current theme of deconstructing our old driven routines into a more spacious life. We are heartened by the all-time best practice…
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We love this clip of Patti Smith performing at Royal Albert Hall, in rumpled black, gray hair a wild frizz, singular, age-defying, theatrically, purposefully breaking each string until she was down to one, the broken strings shivering around like electricity. And especially, her words…
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Sixty years after the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s first visioned wrapping the Arc de Triumphe I’m fabric, the project has come to fruition for all to e see, touch, interact with, for free. In this short video, Christo gives insight into the meaning of their unusual — and ephemeral — life’s work spent transforming huge outdoor spaces at great cost in money and time.
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