Good Things for Inward Journeys
If fall has a mood, its introspection.
Taking stock of the good harvest and giving thanks for the sunny days. Steeling ourselves for the coming winter. This week I've got a collection of Good Things all about taking a journey without leaving your own head and heart. Enjoy the trip!
Thing to Listen To: Wishing by Deep Sea Diver
In these strange pandemic days we're all doing a lot of wishing. It may be hard to find the line between wishing and hoping. Maybe the line doesn't matter. Anyways, this video from Deep Sea Diver got me all choked up.
The song is great - a crunchy driving indie-rock anthem of introspection. But that video.
The video is nothing more than a series of closed music venues and their owners. Something about these real places and real people is incredibly touching and reminds me just how much people sacrifice to create spaces for community and art.
As we're all home, making beauty where we can and wondering what comes next, this is a great reminder that we're not the only ones. Watch the wishing video here
Thing To Explore: Find A Book By Its Setting
One summer my family was driving through Alberta when we stopped to pee and stretch our legs in Nanton. It turns out the place to pee in Nanton is the used bookstore. I wanted to support their generous toilet policy so I browsed the shelves looking for an escape. I found a mystery – not something I normally read – set in Santa Fe – a place I normally visit. The opportunity to travel back to Santa Fe while I was curled up in my cabin chair over the coming days was too good to be true. As I read the book I'd get a little thrill everytime I recognized a place name or a described landscape I'd experienced myself. I was transported to one of the "places we can't live".
Want to take a similar trip? Where to begin?
The Booktrail allows you to search for a book by a destination and/or setting. How awesome is that?
Say you want to read a story set in Berlin? You'll find several. How about a bar in Berlin? There's a few suggestions there, too.
See where a book could take you at thebooktrail.com
Thing To See: Dürer, Father of the Selfie
I really enjoyed reading Jason Farago's recent New York Times piece, "Seeing Our Own Reflection in the Birth of the Self-Portrait". The writing is insightful, but the real magic is in the presentation. They've managed to create an interactive article that takes you deep inside the works of Dürer and draws your eye to exactly the sections Farago is engaging with, exactly as he's mentioning them. You've got to experience it for yourself to see what I mean.
The further we go into the eyes of Dürer the higher his own ambitions appear. Farogo tells us that his ultimate self-portrait is declaring something bold ...
"I am no mere skilled craftsman, like my father, the picture says. I have imagination, I have learning, I have a gift. All of which elevate me out of the workshop and into high society — or even higher."
Give yourself 10-15 minutes to get lost in Dürer's vision of himself here.