Take That Step #47

Sade, who turned 67 this month, in one of the coolest photos in music history

1) I cry every time I listen to Anderson Cooper’s podcast on grief, All There Is. In last week's conversation with Patti Smith, Cooper read a text by Andrew Garfield, from when the actor lost his mother.

I went for a walk on the beach. The sun was setting and it was freezing. I found I needed to jump, so I just jumped into the ocean. And it’s funny: as soon as my full body and head were submerged, it was like I got the medicine, and my chest released, and I let it all go. My interpretation of that moment was that it was the wisdom of nature, the wisdom of the earth, the wisdom of the ocean letting me know, Hey. Yeah, it’s hard, it’s horrible. I’m not taking away this unique pain you’re feeling, but just so you know, us out here, us water molecules—we’ve been seeing this for millennia. And actually, this is the best-case scenario for you to lose her, rather than for her to lose you. This is a much better situation.

And, again, my ego was holding on; my ego thought I knew better. My ego said, No, this doesn’t make sense. No, no, no, it should be this way; it should be that way. But actually it took the ocean, the greater opponent, to just hold me under and say, It’s really horrible. And sons have been losing their mothers for thousands and thousands of years, and they will continue to, and you’ve just been initiated into that awareness and into that reality. Some illusion has been lifted. You’re in a realer version of the world now, and it’s painful.

Elizabeth Catlett. Mother and Child. 1956

2) The New York subway distracts its hurried passengers with poetry. To illustrate the verses, they call an artist. To give color to Essex Hemphill's poem below, they invited Jeffrey Gibson.

3) Chloe Zhao — Hamnet’s director:

And that’s why when we’re going through our greatest heartbreak and most difficult time, we don’t look for facts, we look for poetry, because it allows us to stay in the mystery.

4) Via Cosmos:

In “Wandering Position” by Yukinori Yanagi, the path of a single ant is traced within a defined space, creating a drawing that documents an otherwise unseen journey. The resulting line captures the ant’s wandering as a direct and unedited observation. The work reflects Yanagi’s ongoing interest in movement, boundaries, and the ways in which simple actions can reveal larger patterns in the world.⁠

PS: were they inspired by Strava? This one made me laugh. Haha

5) Mia Couto:

We set sail, we dream the journey: the sea is the one who travels.

6) My former therapist, Galit Atlas:

Acceptance is an active emotional stance of letting go that facilitates both grief and growth.

Red Roses Sonata de Alma Thomas, 1972

7) Substack suggested a great post about reading: "Text is King". I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested, here.

Fact #1: there are signs that the digital invasion of our attention is beginning to stall. We seem to have passed peak social media—time spent on the apps has started to slide. App developers are finding it harder and harder to squeeze more attention out of our eyeballs, and it turns out that having your eyeballs squeezed hurts, so people aren’t sticking around for it. The “draw people in” phase of the internet was unsurprisingly a lot more enticing than the “shake ‘em down” phase—what we now refer to, appropriately, as “enshittification”. The early internet felt like sipping an IPA with friends; the late internet feels like taking furtive shots of Southern Comfort to keep the shakes at bay. So it’s no wonder that, after paying $1000 for a new phone, people will then pay an additional $50 for a device that makes their phone less functional.

Fact #2: reading has already survived several major incursions, which suggests it’s more appealing than we thought. Radio, TV, dial-up, Wi-Fi, TikTok—none of it has been enough to snuff out the human desire to point our pupils at words on paper. Apparently books are what hyper-online people call “Lindy”: they’ve lasted a long time, so we should expect them to last even longer. It is remarkable, even miraculous, that people who possess the most addictive devices ever invented will occasionally choose to turn those devices off and pick up a book instead. If I was a mad scientist hellbent on stopping people from reading, I’d probably invent something like the iPhone. And after I released my dastardly creation into the world, I’d end up like the Grinch on Christmas morning, dumfounded that my plan didn’t work: I gave them all the YouTube Shorts they could ever desire and they’re still...reading!!

8) Hot partnership: Pamela Love x Metropolitan Museum. The jewelry designer created a limited edition inspired by the museum's Egyptian collection with sacred symbols reimagined for today. For sale at the Met store (here):

PS: There’s also a Adidas x Bad Bunny colab:

9) I know it's nothing new, but as a Brazilian based in New York for almost 20 years, I laughed really hard with comedian Marcello Hernandez's special on Netflix. Here.

10) I spent the week obsessed with Paul Simon and enjoying the playlist that The Guardian newspaper made with songs played by drummer Sly Dunbar, it's hit after hit!: