Bodies of Work
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January rounded out with six (6) days in Guadeloupe (!). Alysha had been eyeing cheap flights (#NorwegianAir) and when she found sub-$300 round-trip tickets, we snagged ‘em. Weathering the 33 °F averages here in NY to 77 °F there and back again was rough. Yet, the trip was anything but. We carved out beach time, took two extended hikes, ate out the first few days, realized it was too expensive, and cooked the rest of the trip.
Here are a couple of my favorite photos: Alysha, when she found out wine was ~$3 USD a bottle (!) and me attempting parrot whispering.
On the favorites note, February1 is becoming another. It’s shorter than the rest. A stone throw from each year’s start. Usually underestimated. And—this time around—comes with a Distillations entry, Bodies of Work, which takes a moment to admire the work of some creatives I admire most.
There’s a trite-but-not-often-followed adage along the lines of “If you enjoy someone’s work, tell them. Don’t wait until they’ve left your company, town, or—more sadly—they pass2.” Bodies of Work is my attempt to do just that. I chose a subset of creatives—Jason Brennan, Above & Beyond, Justin Duke, and Indhira Rojas—whose work make my days, like those in February, that much better.
The essay explores taking the phrase, “bodies of work,“ somewhat literally3. What happens when we anthropomorphize the archives our work? I also noted a tendency I’ve seen in podcasts: formatting episode numbers with 001, 002, …, 999. That numbering scheme has two undertones. It hints at the creator’s vision of hitting the upper bound (999) and, with that upper bound’s finiteness, provides for a natural stopping point. We’re only fooling ourselves with “forever projects.”
Unmet 999-attempts might appear to be broken promises. Still, they’re a gentle acknowledgement of an end and “it’s precisely because it ends that it’s real.”
Before I go Full Existential, I hope y’all enjoy the entry and your February. I’ve tucked away some related reading below.
x,
Jas
Related reading:
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It recently hit me that an athlete’s “body of work” is—in a sense—their actual body. ↩