> 167: Welsh-on-Welsh poetry readings, chansons d'ennui, drying rack influencing
Inge Morath, Times Square, 1957
Howdy. Here's some art, ideas, and internet for you:
Min Jin Lee with some words to live by: "Showing up every day and having integrity about the way you live your life: that’s really the magic, because the ending and the beginning and the expectation and the outcome—all that stuff is nonsense. It really is. I know so many people who work really hard and don’t get those things. If you show up every day, keep your word, be somebody who has dignity in the way you comport yourself, that’s quite astonishing."
Kinda needed to hear this, via a commencement speech Hannah Gadsby gave recently: "I don't know how it's possible not to be anxious in this world in this moment unless you're dead inside, and we don't want that." The whole thing is excellent.
Newsletter Fave Jia Tolentino talking about the internet for an hour.
Can I be a drying rack influencer for a second? This one from Food52 is great because it rolls up when not in use. And it's on sale this week. End of drying rack influencing.
Jarvis Cocker wrote a companion album to Wes Anderson's "The French Dispatch" that is all him singing '60s Serge Gainsbourg-style chansons in slightly awkward French and I highly recommend it.
"If I listen to fast songs, I try to run at the pace of the music and can’t keep up. So I like to listen to songs that go at a steady clip, or ideally craft a playlist that starts a little more hyper and then reaches some kind of slow catharsis, with everyone in Prospect Park loving and understanding that I’m having a meaningful experience." A pleasing Q&A with Tavi Gevinson. (thanks, Ezra)
A genius garlic solution from Julia Turshen.
Tools: Remove any object or person from a picture; get a kitten for every 100 words you write.
Michael Sheen performing fellow Welshman Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood."
In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think
of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.—Mary Oliver, "Song for Autumn"
Bye,
Laura