Blog
Media, poetry, articles, art, videos and random nuggets that tickle me.
Jaw on the floor
This interview between Scott Galloway and Sam Harris left me beaming with admiration for the intellect and outraged for having never personally considered the obviousness of some of what is discussed. It covers topics from politics to tax policy to the tyranny of big tech to mediation as a tool for anger. It is salient and riveting. You may have to subscribe but can do so for free if you follow the link.
Shapes live forever
If ever I forget that the most important thing is to be sincere about the things I make, I watch this.
I know how to breathe
No Man's An Island When He's Had This Conversation
The Philosophy of Endurace
I’m excited to share this interview I did with my hero of a brother! Dylan Bowman runs hundred mile races. Like, professionally. Up and down mountains. For twenty-plus hours straight. He's insane. His podcast, The Well, examines the enduring spirit of humanity in all its many facets. I was so happy to sit down with him in Portland a few weeks ago and rap about the similarities between his endurance pursuit (running without stopping for a long time), and mine (sitting crosslegged on the floor without moving for a long time). We talk about the yearning to accomplish hard things, we talk about attitude problems and composure and identity and meaning-making and also: drugs and alcohol! As usual, I'm a bit too much of a wind-bag, but overall I think it was a great conversation and such a pleasure to share with my dear little brother. Give it a listen. And let me know what you think!
Thought Food
For ten years people have asked me why I don’t say namaste at the end of yoga classes. My response is usually something like, I prefer thank you. There are other reasons too, and I’ve gone back and forth about whether I should voice them. But due to an article published recently by NPR, I have, as you can see, decided it’s worth doing so. Much of my perspective is contained within these sentences from the article: “With all of the faux gravity, it's easy to see how the commercial yoga industry flipped namaste into a catchphrase. Sporting ‘namaste' on a water bottle or tote bag lets people present an essence and a persona that they believe is a part of an ‘exotic' culture simply by... buying a tote bag.” Also of great importance in the article is the documented sense of revulsion in some South Asians because of the way this word, and others, have been co-opted and misused by a culture to whom it does not belong.
I would like to add to these very valid points, respectfully. Yoga is not a persona, which is to say if you’re calling yourself a “yogi” and saying “yogi” things and wearing “yogi” bracelets and basing your life off of some projection of a “yogi” lifestyle, then you are misunderstanding the practice. There is little difference between this behavior and that of a rebellious teenager who adopts a new style of dress, talks with particular catchphrases, and hangs posters all over their bedroom after they discover how great punk rock is. This is especially distasteful when it happens in relation to yoga practice, for the simple reason that the statement “I’m a yogi” is an oxymoron. Yoga is the dismantling of ornaments of identity creation. A yogi is one who has achieved total communion with the truth. To call one’s self a yogi does an injustice to the people who have fully dedicated themselves to the overwhelming amount of effort it takes to achieve that communion. Until emptiness and impermanence are understood with unbroken continuity, until a total lack of conditioned reaction is exemplified in daily life, one is quite simply not a yogi. I’m personally very very far away from this but I can presume with some confidence that along with one’s communion with truth comes a decided lack of need to advertise beliefs and lifestyle choices to others.
As a community of people who practice yoga, we are in danger of becoming caricatures of ourselves through clear forms of cultural appropriation. A majority of the classes I’m aware of in my beloved city start and end with people chanting to gods of a religion and/or sect to which very few are devotees. This isn’t, I suppose, inherently disrespectful, but it comes close with what is often a small amount of earned understanding of what’s being said and why. It is not appropriating to learn African drumming, or Sufi dancing, or French cooking, or Indian calisthenics. But it is problematic to summarize those things with platitudes and then print them on clothing with brand names like, Spiritual Gangster, which is, I am not afraid to say, an entity existing at the pinnacle of everything wrong with the modern practice.
I would like to take responsibility for the ways that I myself have failed at this. I have yoga tattoos, which I got before I had enough earned understanding of what they really meant. I’ve imitated catchphrases used by people I look up to and I have done this as a caricature of them and myself. I’ve done things like wear mala beads to conform to a certain identity. I’ve judged people both close to me and not close to me because of their lack of desire to exalt and practice things I like to exalt and practice. I’ve also worked very hard to be honest with myself about these mistakes over many years and have taken great strides not to repeat them. Accordingly, I was so glad to see the conversation given visibility by the author of this article and the people to whom it gave voice. My goal in furthering the dialog here revolves around the need to make our culture of practitioners both take responsibility for the way we tend to fall into these pitfalls, and in doing so, soften around our edges.
There is an in-group of largely privileged people who exemplify the yoga practice to those who look from the outside. This perceived in-group is nothing but detrimental to inviting new people to learn about and experience the efficacy of the practice. I know through many conversations with people from many walks of life that the cultural appropriation, the prevalence of substance-less triteness all over social media, and the blindness to the existence of said things, are high among the reasons people choose not to approach the practice. They are very simply turned off by people purporting to be awakened by doing things that are quite un-awake. Let’s be clear that none of this is done out of malice, nor is it wholly pervasive. The people I see in the practice room day in and day out are living their understanding in ways that I’m exceedingly proud to be a part of. But/and we must also be honest about the fact there is indeed real harm done in representing the practice we love in ways that surface-skim, appropriate, and ostracize. The t-shirt “I’d Rather Be In Savasana” highlights, with exacting precision, the antithesis of yoga.
Let us learn about the human body and move it around in specific ways, let us sit still, let us study philosophical rubrics for coming to know the truth, and let us find richness in the way other cultures have refined the doing of these things. Let us then do these things not as methods of identity creation, not as tools for avoidance, and not as attempts to change our outward appearance. If we’re going to chant to someone else’s gods and use complex words and ideas that indeed come from another culture, let us give ourselves enough years of study and practice to respectfully demonstrate their digestion before we adorn ourselves with them. Let our beliefs and life choices speak for themselves through relationship and creativity so that we don’t have to walk around broadcasting to people who we are, because we very simply are that thing.
Top 10 Albums of 2019
10. Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell
Gorgeous millennial soft-pop poetry where the depth of angst meets the superficiality of the American Fucking Dream
8. RAP - Export
This is a thirty-four minute whirlwind of electronic storytelling that’s brimming with both contrast and continuity
6. Jessica Pratt - Quiet Signs
Sparse, perfect melodies that together feel like a message from somewhere fundamental and far beyond the sidewalked world
4. Moodymann - Sinner
The prolific virtuoso from Detroit strikes again with jazz house that keeps you both moving and guessing
2. Thom Yorke - Anima
Still, decades later, the master is inventing sounds and song structures that give a perfect home to a consistent and compelling relevancy
9. Bon Iver - i,i
His albums have increased in number of instruments and decreased in lyrics that make sense, but it’s still evocative and true and unequivocally Bon Iver
5. Nilüfer Yanya - Miss Universe
Still head-scratching about how a twenty-three year old can rock and roll in such a complete and idiosyncratic way
3. FKA Twigs - Magdalene
This one took me a few but upon each new listen the dance between quietness and intensity is more gripping, and telling
1. Jenny Hval - The Practice Of Love
Nothing is guaranteed when the avant-garde embraces the mainstream, but here is a shimmering success in the meeting of obscurity and ease
It Was Hard Not To Include:
Billie Eilish - When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, Aldous Harding - Designer, (Sandy) Alex G - House of Sugar, Florist - Emily Alone, Slowthai - Nothing Great About Britain, Little Simz - GREY Area
Also Good:
Max Cooper, Nivhek, Solange, Tyler The Creator, Cate Le Bon, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Toro Y Moi, Karen O and Danger Mouse, Teebs, Sofia Bolt, Big Thief, Kate Tempest, Angel Olsen, Bedoine, Daniel Norgren, Purple Mountains, Bill Callahan, Andrew Bird, Telefon Tel Aviv, Sui Zhen, Floating Points, Danny Brown, Yves Jarvis, Galcher Lustwerk
Last Year’s List
Feel
How do you know you have a body when you can’t see it? The answer is nonverbal and invisible and intimate and momentary, but it is far from empty—the answer is rich and vital and a number of other adjectives that could be used to describe a flavor, or the wilderness, or a glass of water filled until brimming. Try it. Close your eyes. How do you know you have a body when you can’t see it? The constancy with which we pose this question internally defines self-awareness, composure, and the degree we seem to be sharp of mind, both to ourselves and to others. The question and its answer also serve as an antidote to the horror of numbness, that fear-induced tendency to pixelate instead of clarify. There’s a type of seeing that relies not on light but on sensation. Looking for it is magnificent.
Vibes
Earth Drama
She Had This Dream About A Song
This is just so lovely
Humans are so cool and weird and confusing
Also, this kinda requires dramamine
Poetry
“Sometimes words are a Hail Mary, a desperate heave into the abyss of a new reality. Sometimes I believe that words can do this much, at least: overturn our mood and our beliefs, shake us free from the cage of our ideas.”
Loving Whole
All Upon Her Face Were The Lost And Strange Years
Overview
Negative Space
Keeping Things Whole
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
- Mark Strand