I have not been doing an excellent job of keeping up this blog. I keep doing a large body of work and then going silent for an extended period. I was telling someone about what lessons I have learned in starting this blog. I wish that I had a more precise mission statement or direction for the blog. I am all over the place. I won’t apologize because I just like too much stuff. The second is not posting enough.
Some of that comes from the ridiculous productivity movement that permeates the internet, but I feel better when creating something.
My wife is reading Nick Hornby’s How To Be Good, where the protagonist David, which is my name, writes about things he hates. I have never wanted that for my blog because it would be too easy, overdone, and not something helpful for anyone. If you are interested in what ‘grinds my gears’, I will tell you in person.
New York Times does a piece called What’s In Our Queue, and it is different staff members who put what they are watching, reading, looking at, and hearing. I am just going to copy this and hope you all enjoy what I am enjoying.
What I Have Read
Reality Is Not What It Seems – The Journey to Quantum Gravity by Carlo Rovelli
Dude, reality is a trip, right? Have you ever just thought about time or what everything is made of? I do regularly, so this book jumped out at me with its main title. Carlo Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist and one of the founders of the loop quantum gravity theory who breaks down what is. This book is excellent for the scientific novice. It has made reality even trippier.
What I Have Listened To
Promises by Pharoah Sanders & Floating Points
I love spiritual and free jazz, and Pharoah Sanders is one of the best saxophonists that came out of both movements. He has teamed up with Floating Points, composer, producer Sam Sheppard, and the London Symphony to let us float for 46 minutes and 37 seconds with the album Promises. I have gone to bed four days in a row listening to it, and the album sets me up for a soft landing into dreamland. I can’t get enough.
What I Watched
I had seen this movie in the theatre but recently rewatched it. Directed by Carlos Reygadas, this film is about a man who wishes to die at the bottom of a canyon somewhere in rural Mexico. Most of the actors in the film aren’t actors but actual locals. The man stays with an older woman, and the man finds meaning to try—one of the most beautiful films ever made. I based the Fool of my tarot deck loosely on the main character of this movie. It was on the Criterion streaming service.
Twitter Bot to Follow
Newfound Planets @I_Find_Planets
Twitter is a strange place and not for everyone, but one of the most bizarre phenomena on the platform is bots who take words and phrases and tweet them. Newfound Planets explain different planets it visits like a research ship traveling in the farthest reaches of the universe. With Twitter being people’s instant thoughts and reactions to the world around them, these tweets are a calming Zen koan that allows me to take a breath.