Regal Chrysler, slang, theorists as magicians, John Donne on letters, and more
Seven thin(g/k)s I explored this week
Hello dear reader,
Hello hello hello from a gal who had a full-on mental spiral two days ago at the possibility of having eaten undercooked chicken. Does technology have feelings? I cursed the air fryer I had used for the chicken, because I needed an instant scapegoat for my blunder, and lo and behold, it is no longer functional as of yesterday.
In more interesting news, I started reading Fumio Sasaki’s Goodbye, Things and realized that although the book’s message is clear, its execution is difficult. Typing this as I give my closet the death stare. It struck me as poignantly clear that we all start out our lives as minimalists, born with not a single possession of our own making to our name, and we then somewhere along the way begin coupling happiness with the accumulation of “things,” sometimes to the point of ending up the walking embodiment of Tyler Durden’s observation from Fight Club, “The things you own end up owning you.” Cheers to the concept of spring cleaning—of things, of ideas, of projects, of people who no longer sit well or fit well with you. Decluttering that leaves more room for Hope to freshen up your doorstep with the season’s splendor.
Spring drew on...and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps."
—Charlotte Brontë
That said, here are seven links to bits of the world I explored this week, shared with the hope that you will find them to be an inspiring springboard for deeper thinking.
Art Deco gushing—The Chrysler Building in NYC stands as my favorite beacon of light in the entirety of the city. I saw it every evening on my walks home from lectures at Columbia, it was my North Star when out and about with friends, it lit up my face during post-dinner strolls with my husband. It continues to mollify me each time I see it, and I suspect it will continue to instill in me the same sense of awe I had when I eyed from below its majestic, piercing glance and regal crown-top grandeur from up above for the very first time as a freshly-minted New Yorker at the tender age of 22. I thoroughly enjoyed viewing this video on some of the building’s details courtesy of Architectural Digest. Loved learning about skyscrapers’ wedding cake base, used as a technique to appease setback laws and allow sunlight to penetrate the streets. I also had fun comparing its elegance to the bulkier, muscular body-builder sibling, The Empire State Building.
Young students defining slang terms that confuse their older teachers (I was left just as confused as before watching, and am grateful I’m insulated in an oldie bubble).
An interview with writer Lauren Oyler, and a bit from it that resonated:
“I don’t know if it’s a biggest fear, but I think everything is really boring right now. I find it hard to muster the energy to write about contemporary culture anymore. There is also a lot of droning competence—work that is pretty good but that lacks a sense of purpose or strangeness, or any reason to actually look at it. Nor does any of this work seem to represent some horrible trend or tendency that it’s nevertheless fruitful to discuss, as bad writers of the very recent past did. Everyone seems to be going through the motions.”
Reading this solidified my “meh” stance on contemporary writers, and made me think of a recent book I added to my soon to-be-read shelf, a new biography on the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard called Philosopher of the Heart.
Although I must admit, I laughed out loud at this observation from Ali LaBelle on celebrities+flowers in our modern world:
“The newest trend in celebrity relatability photography is the flower haul. Just this month we’ve seen both Jeremy Allen White and Rhianna with armfuls of bouquets (à la that iconic Meryl Streep photo), and I don’t think it’ll be the last of it; I’d bet money that shots of Ben Affleck emerging from the Brentwood farmers market will crop up any day now. (Tangentially related: I saw Jeremy Allen White in the flesh in my neighborhood a few months ago and I am 99% sure he called the paparazzi on himself. Do with that what you will.)”
The magic of the blackboard, which has one commentator observing, “Blackboards are the best tool for getting unstuck.” I feel the same about notebooks. And I loved the comparison drawn in these endeavors to Socrates suggesting that philosophy is to be done via dialogue, which theorists and chalkboard-users took to mean chalking up arguments on a board :-)
I’ve been having a field day with the number of times I’ve used the word love, but sorry not sorry, Spring is in the air! I love John Donne, and here’s a few lines penned by him on the beauty of letter-writing:
Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls,
For thus, friends absent speak. This ease controls
The tediousness of my life; but for these
I could ideate nothing which could please,
But I should wither in one day and pass
To a bottle of hay, that am a lock of grass.
Life is a voyage, and in our lives' ways
Countries, courts, towns are rocks, or remoras;
They break or stop all ships, yet our state's such,
That, though than pitch they stain worse, we must touch.—John Donne
Here’s director Steven Soderbergh and his year in reading (he also explores elsewhere his consumption of film and TV, yum). It was great to see Sarah Bakewell’s Life of Montaigne as one of his highlights, as was his note that he reads to calm down (this notion has been particularly soothing for me, as I get the same mental ease and tenderness from reading as I do from the physical ease and tenderness of, say, drawing a soothing bath).
Got Mark Larson’s weekly posts on my radar and am so thankful—such great fuel for curiosity and education; and from his latest post, I found the following two articles informative and exciting to dive into. One is a deep dive into how Gotham got its grid, and the other is a bit about Mark’s observations on the film Anatomy of a Fall, on which he writes,
“Loved this movie. I need to find more French courtroom drama. There’s some flavor in their trial system that feels more cinematic. I like the physical layout of the courtrooms. More confrontational and interactive, a little less speechy? It feels dynamic. (Saint Omer is another excellent French one where we don’t see the crime and must draw our own conclusions during the trial – one of my favorites from 2023.)”
Although gotta say, I’m a total sucker for speechy moments in film (not as nerdily so as my husband, though, who forces no less than four rewinds of speeches in movies. Yeah, I have to break my immersion outside of reality and sit through tens of hundreds of replays of film/TV monologues, but I still love him).
See you soon! Sunday subs, I’ll see you closer to nighttime and hope you’ll find tomorrow’s post more magical than I can possibly express in words :-)