Almanac of Birds, Comfort Viewing, The Idler Wheel, etc.
In which like a butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high...
💌 In case you missed last week’s newsletter, a compilation of some of the best reflections, advice and ideas I’ve shared here thus far.
👾 RetroDuck Presents: ‘80s Night went off without a hitch and I am already thinking about next year’s.
❤️ Among my oldest and closest friends are currently in first place for Variety’s America’s Favorite Couple. If you have Facebook, go vote for them to enter into the final round, and then vote for them again. First place is $20k, of which they’ve pledged $10k to charity.
🙏 Rest in peace, Malcolm-Jamal Warner.
📺 What’s your comfort viewing? I’ve a few, but I have likely returned to Seinfeld, Parks and Rec, Frasier and Boy Meets World the most.
🌈 A look at Reading Rainbow, a wonderful show and cornerstone of my childhood, created in 1983 to combat summer reading slumps. When asked if he was fine with the show defining him, host LeVar Burton replied with a resounding yes. “As a son of an English teacher, as a Black man, coming from a people for whom it was illegal to know how to read, not that long ago, I’m good with that.”
🎶 …and a behind-the-scenes look at Tiny Desk Concerts (included a few of my favorites, would love to know yours).
🎧 (25/50) Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel…: This week I was drawn back to this raw, percussive, and emotionally unfiltered masterpiece. Stripped down to mostly voice, piano, unconventional rhythms and found sounds, the record eschews lush production in favor of intimate intensity. Apple’s lyrics are fierce, vulnerable, and startlingly poetic. Songs like “Every Single Night” and “Werewolf” dissect relationships and neuroses with surgical precision, while “Daredevil” and “Regret” feel like outbursts from deep within the psyche. It’s an uncompromising work that challenges listeners to meet Apple where she is: in chaos, in love, in fear, and in motion. “Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key…”
💿 More music: August 14 will see the release of a new Woody Guthrie collection. Woody at Home (Vol. 1 & 2) “collects 20 songs and two spoken-word interludes, including a version of “This Land Is Your Land” that adds extra verses, as well as 13 newly unveiled songs.” It also features liner notes by my old friend, writer Jason Meyers. Keepin’ the hopin’ machine runnin’!
📖 Speaking of Jason, he was kind enough to send me The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which I need to read ahead of its showing at The Met this fall. Unfortunately my friend Ben won’t be performing in that one.
🎾 The art of Roland-Garros.
🕊️ I will leave you with an excerpt from the forthcoming Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days, “a handsome deck of oversized cards nested inside a “book safe” — a popular Victorian decoy for concealing valuables and love letters inside a box built into a thick tome to be shelved in the family library, passing for an ordinary book.”
Blessed is the person
who delights in seeing
the inner child in every one
and the magic in all creatures
who does not shun difficulty
and can turn with equal reverence
toward sorrow and joy
who can trust fear as
the balsam of courage
and pain as an instrument
for opening the heart
who can pause to notice
the delicate lustre of a lichen
and the undulations of the light
who dares to make hope
an axiom of being
and is strong enough
to be changed by love.
✌️ ‘Til next week, keep the Hoping Machine running.
Love,
Luke
