One of the highlights of the last week is “hobby night”, where we took a couple hours just to scratch a creative itch. I pulled out my new loom and weaved a couple inches of progress. Then pulled out my old guitar, basically the first time in several years.
One thing that struck me was just more awareness of my body, in a different way than the everyday stuff I can do on auto-pilot – laptop work, cooking, running, chores. When weaving, so often something would feel difficult and I’d realize it’s because my shoulders had gotten all scrunched up, or posture was wacky, or fingers too tense. (It also felt difficult because I’m new and bad at it.) Ditto when playing guitar. I know enough to get too far ahead of myself, so I had to stop, rewind, force myself back to basics: focus on simple finger placement, just enough tension, making clean transitions, staying relaxed, etc..
The creative outlet felt really good. Keep your hobbies available to you!
Books
War and Peace. Down to the last 30%.
Running
Trying to find my morning flow again. Still not adjusted to the time change, and it’s been hard to get through everything efficiently. For the weekend long run, more exploration in Bushwick/Ridgewood.
Around the Web
A glimpse of my future, I hope: “Years may wrinkle skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”
Middlemarch is a novel about sympathising with everyone and The Moral Beauty of Middlemarch. (Thanks James!)
The Best Guide to the AI Revolution May Be Victorian Fiction.
What do Americans consider immoral?
It seems that youth sports promote zero-sum thinking in parents.
“Humans tend to over-index on this presumed precision of language, as if it were like a laser pointer aimed at a Rembrandt. It’s more like lobbing water balloons at cave shadows.”
Music
Ivo Jannsen, Mallet Collective Amsterdam, Canto Ostinato: Live at the Concertgebouw.
Oren Ambarchi, Shebang. The momentum in “III” makes me want to get stuff done.
Biosphere, The Way of Time. I like the bass pulsing in “Like the End of the World“.
Little John, Sly & Robbie, Give Thanks and Praise.
Three works by Anton Bruckner, from Orchestre de la Suisse Romande cond. Marek Janowski. Bruckner remains an unsolved puzzle…
- Symphony No. 1 in C minor, WAB 101
- Symphony No. 2 in C minor, WAB 102
- Mass No. 3 in F minor, WAB 28. The fifth movement Benedictus may be the only thing that stuck with me.
Three from Scott Tennant and his classical guitar…
- The Segovia Sessions
- Mysterious Barricades
- Wild Mountain Thyme – Celtic Music for Guitar. When the title track came on I thought, “Hey I know that from somewhere…”
Movies
Best in Show. DNF. Couldn’t hang with it. The quirky characters semd to trend in the same direction, maybe the tone flattening them. Too unmotivated to reel me in this time.
Sorry, Wrong Number. Loved this one! Suspense and intrigue, and an immobile protagonist like Rear Window a few years later. NYC movies hit different when you’ve lived here a while.
After Hours. Fun little film. Scorsese! A weird-as-dreams or sharper-than-life Oz-/Odyssey-like attempt to get back home over the course of a long night, thwarted again and again.
The Pelican Brief. Solid thriller. Roberts and Denzel just leap off the screen in ways that few others do.
TV
The X-Files, s6e2 “Drive“. Really fun episode, great pace.
Hannibal, s3e1–2
Mark Larson 