A week filled with music! On Monday, MB, Alex, Mike and I saw André 3000’s very first flute concert, the kickoff to his 'New Blue Sun' tour. It was his first solo work in two decades, two hours of straight riffing. The show was transcendent in a way that reminded me of jaimie’s shows. In between songs, he would get on the mic for some equally free-flowing thoughts, choking up about the secret language he had with his mother, or how each concert on his tour would be all new music, because he wasn’t performing for us, the audience, but rather “the air, trees, and water.” His merch read “No bars, no phones” and delivered on exactly that - all flute all night while our phones stayed locked away in pouches.
The next night, I met Ibrahim who had just arrived to New York last week after traveling through nine countries to get here. He was in a ton of pain from a toothache that wouldn’t let up but I lost sight of him in the bustle of our meal distribution. Two days later, I serendipitously ran into him again and after getting him some medication, he shared that the hardest part of starting a new life here was leaving behind his guitar. He used to be the frontman of a band in Mauritania, and suddenly starting singing the most beautiful song, an original poem in French about water and its life-giving properties.
Then Friday night, Jared invited Cailin, Jacob and me to the Jalopy Theatre where Jontavious Willis was playing. An incredible bluesman from rural Georgia, he’s disarmingly young for the timeless music pouring out of him, and deeply charming on the mic in between songs. Three incredible performances by three very different men, all solid reminders that everyone is a creator.
Other bright spots in an otherwise gray, dreary week:
The screenplay to Bottoms, the best movie of the year, written by Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott. Even more of a delight on the page somehow!?
The German winter tradition of "Stoßlüften" or opening all your windows a few minutes every day to let the cold air in. Wakes you up like nothing else in the morning, knocks you right out at night (especially if paired with a hot water bottle heating up the bed while you lüft)
My annual tarot reading from Jessy, a birthday tradition.
The world's first malaria vaccine rollout, thirty years of research later.
Listening to FIP, the French public radio station that exquisite corpses their programming (each song is connected to the next, like John Holt’s “Doctor Love” leading into Serge Gainsbourg’s “Docteur Jekyll et Monsieur Hyde”)
The return of the Man on Wire!
This short film “Echo” by Michael Minahan and Ben Wolin about Daniel Kish, a pioneer in echolocation among the blind.
The story of Carmelita Torres, who at age 17, led what is now known as the 1917 Bath Riots. At the border in El Paso, she refused to take the daily toxic disinfectant bath of kerosene and vinegar Mexican laborers were subjected to. More than 200 women proceeded to block the entrance, throwing rocks at the agents. “The enforced bathing and fumigation of Mexican workers with toxic chemicals like gasoline, and later DDT and Zyklon B, continued until the 1950s.” Zyklon B was also used by the Nazis in concentration camps to murder millions of people during the Holocaust.
The winning short stories from Grist’s contest, “Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors.”
This twin deep dive (which obviously goes out to Kishori and Kristine) which also has me questioning… was I once a twin? “One theory holds that all left-handed singletons are the surviving members of a vanished twin pair.”
This whole thread on lichen going to space.
Betty Brussel, a 99-year-old swimmer who broke three world records over the weekend. She was born in 1924 and learned how to swim in Amsterdam’s canals and was well into her 60s the first time she entered a swim competition.
This poem by Jane Hirshfield:
Till next time,
ASK