Recs & Links
some spring things for you
Dear friends, I hope you’re lying in a field somewhere watching the clouds. But if you’re, like me, starting blindly at a screen and your rapidly-expanding to do list, I have some things for you to listen to, read, or watch that can offer you some respite from the hustle. I hope you find something good here. And, at the end, our Do Nothing accountability thread. I’d love to hear about your “nothings”! 💛
LISTEN
My current Spring playlist, which tracks the ups & downs of coming out of the grey and into the sun (Beyoncé, Caamp, SZA, Salt-n-Pepa, Chappell Roan, AC/DC…).
Lyss Cypher’s excellent Transitions playlist (I also recommend their substack, Poems that Injure)
This EP by Horace Whisper & the Empty Hand is so so good. Apparently, there is a term “cosmic country” and that’s what you could call them, and I am now obsessed with that term. Current fave is “Giant Eagle Jackie”—Pittsburghers: IYKYK)
This Code Switch podcast: “Who Does Language Belong To? A fight over the Lakota Language”: “We can all think about the situation and try to make sense of it and debate who's right and who's wrong, but maybe there's a truer, deeper, more fundamental part of the story that we'll never be able to quite capture because it's not ours and we don't have the words to hear it.”
This Tara Brach talk on overwhelm tangibly helped me last week.
Kaira Jewel Lingo is a Dharma teacher I’ve been following for awhile now and learning from and I just want to share the resources page of her website HERE. You can access many of her talks, meditations, and articles here for free. I highly recommend her book, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption.
READ
I loved Clare Beams’ short powerhouse of a personal essay in Vogue, “The Unbearable Uncertainty of Pregnancy”—& I’m anxiously awaiting the arrival of my copy of her new novel, THE GARDEN. Her book is literally everywhere (see this glowing NYT review). Kelly Link said of the book, “The Garden renders beautifully the uncanny, haunted space that pregnancy both occupies and creates. Beams’s glancing, needle-prick prose reminds me of Shirley Jackson’s work...I loved this novel.” Get a copy from your local bookstore, White Whale Bookstore, or Bookshop.
Cameron Barnett’s second book of poems, MURMUR, is just out from Autumn House Press, and it’s a stunner. You can watch Cameron’s Release Reading HERE. You can also read & hear Barnett read his poem, “Grandpa’s Gavel” HERE at The Sun.
Erich Schwartzel’s WSJ article, “Can Warner Bros Uncancel J.K. Rowling?” is brilliant as usual. (If you don’t know Erich’s work, check out this Fresh Air interview with him as well, about his first book, Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy).
Thank you, Nancy Reddy, for helping me to keep writing: Whatever you can do is good enough: “You can modify. You cannot quit.”
Aubrey Hirsch’s newsletter, Graphic Rage, is brilliant; she shares comics about “gender, justice, aging, and life as a woman in America.” Loved this one about “The Trouble with the Male Gaze” (from The Audacity) and this one on making comics with a uveitis attack.
Sam Sax poem, “Everyone’s an Expert at Something”: “the slow-cured meat of empire”
WATCH
Musicá: (watch the trailer here) I’m excited for Nico to come home from his work trip because I miss him and also because I’m dying to finish watching this movie with him. It’s a coming-of-age romantic comedy that’s artistically and sonically beautiful, funny, quirky, and surprising.
The Last Repair Shop: (watch the trailer here) Thanks to my friend and our kids’ piano teacher, Polly, for the recommendation to watch this film. It’s a short film that won the Oscar for Best Documentary short; it’s based in LA and it “tells the story of four unassuming heroes who ensure no student is deprived of the joy of music. It is also a reminder of how music can be the best medicine, stress reliever and even an escape from poverty.”
GO
If you also loved Millions of Sun: On Writing and Life by Sharon Fagan McDermott and Christine Benner Dixon, they have a few events this Friday, April 12th and Sat, April 13th with Constance Hays Matsumoto and Karen Debonis. Check out the details HERE.
City of Asylum is hosting an event I’m planning to tune into this Sun, April 14th: Susan Muaddi Darraj: Writing & Literature as Forms of Care. Get in-person & livestream tickets here.
City Books is holding their first Writers-in-Residence Reading this Mon, April 15th at 7 pm!
There’s a Children’s Book Festival in Johnstown, PA this weekend that looks really cool.
I’m grateful to Rachel Ekstrom Courage, Nick Courage, and Katie Kurtzman at Littsburgh for gathering and sharing all the many literary events in and around Pittsburgh; you can find them listed HERE! (I’m going to need to find who curates this info in LA…)
DO NOTHING THREAD
I’m an April-Aries baby and spring is my TIME. I’m trying to do more nothing, but it’s hard because it feels like literally everything is due right now and next week and the week after…
So, as our act of resistance to the constant doing, the attention economy, the workaholic air we breathe: What “nothing” did you do? What “nothing” have you done or will you do today in order to open up time and space?
In the comments, please share a brief report from the field…
Love that picture of the cave. I have a few similar pictures :-)
Thank you for sharing my playlist and newsletter! :)
My nothing this week was feeling present and proud with a job completed - I built a wooden outdoor weightlifting platform over the last few weeks. I took a moment to stand on it, and watched all these cherry tree blossoms fall down on it and twirl around in the wind, and felt a lovely sense of accomplishment (while also ready to rest and not work construction for a bit)