Culture Therapy | Part 1 Connection
“In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument, which he offers to the reader to permit him to discern what, without the book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. The reader’s recognition in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its truth.”
“Art is a social practice that helps people to locate their truth.”
We’re kicking off a new series on ‘Culture Therapy’ — the books, podcasts, music, magazines, and other media that we turn to when in need. Recently we realized that we’re the kind of people that often turn inward as much as outward when we need help (points for knowing ourselves!). We look to all kinds of things that we can do alone to shift our moods and our perspectives.
Here’s where that piece of being ‘a travel guide but for people who don’t want to actually go anywhere’ sits. There’s no pressure to get out of the house, there’s no pressure to Instagram a perfect life or enviable days, there’s no pressure to fill schedules instead of your heart and mind.
We’ll arrange our Culture Therapy posts according to the same categories of approach you’ve seen with our places, so there’s always somewhere to go — either physically or in the imaginary, whenever and wherever you need it.
We’re starting with the idea of connection, of the importance to our mental wellbeing of being around other people, which we know is kind of ironic. Yes, there are ways of pursuing connection in real time and space, in the actual world of humans; but then there’s ways of connecting through the shared experience of someone else’s life, exploring someone else’s point of view, of being consumed by the narrative of others for a while.
Writer Elizabeth Day believes in connection so much that she has ‘Only Connect’ tattooed on her wrist, because for her “that’s the whole essence of life, you need to connect.” So here goes, a Prescription for Everyday Life around the idea of connection:
Repeatedly on Best of Lists for 2018 (just see this list over on Amazon), Tara Westover’s memoir has stunned people with its true tale of a seventeen-year-old Westover entering a classroom for the first time after growing up in a Survivalist family in the mountains of Idaho. Though a deeply personal and moving account of one’s person’s struggle to navigate the reality of their own life, the universals of family, home and courage speak to all of us.
“Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. This was the price I was being asked to pay, I understood that now. What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon: it was me.”
THIS WILL BE MY UNDOING
This book blew us away. It’s courageous and open and raw and brave. It unsettles, and challenges, and moves, and awakens. Morgan Jenkins gives voice to her experiences of being a black woman growing up and living in today’s America. She talks openly in a series of essays about her experiences in contexts such as cheerleading, Ivy League college, and international travel, her take on figures such as Michelle Obama and Beyonce, the politics of black women’s hair, and how to have and sustain relationships, within ideas of identity politics and personal beliefs.
“We cannot come together if we do not recognize our differences first. These differences are best articulated when women of color occupy the center of the discourse while white women remain silent, actively listen, and do not try to reinforce supremacy by inserting themselves in the middle of the discussion.”
OK, Caitlin’s Moran’s book isn’t a memoir, but we fell in love with it and it has all the insight of one. Follow 19 year old music journalist Dolly Wilde as she deals with unrequited love for an actual pop star, the enmity of the all-male staff of a leading music magazine, and dealing with fame, London, and very, very bad sex.
“Think about how brave it is, to do this: to queue up, and meet your hero. There’s something incredibly intimate about reading, or listening, or looking at someone else’s art. When it truly moves you—when you whoop when Prince whoops in Purple Rain; or cry when Bastian cries in The NeverEnding Story, it is as if you have been them, for a while. You traveled inside them, in their shoes, breathing their breath. Moving with their pulse. A faint ghost of them imprinted, inside you, forever—it responds when you meet them, as if it recognizes its own reflection.”
CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS
Sally Rooney’s stunning debut novel feels like its keeping itself in check while trying not to fall into the intimacy abyss of female friendship and love relationships. Frances, a millennial beholden only to herself, but who is really in thrall to the self-possessed Bobbi and confusingly charming Nick, works at figuring it all out with a cool detachment that she certainly doesn’t feel. People, yup, they are complicated. It will make you question why you think what you think about people, and how your ego sometimes needs to slide right out of the way.
“Things and people moved around me, taking positions in obscure hierarchies, participating in systems I didn’t know about and never would. A complex network of objects and concepts. You live through certain things before you understand them. You can’t always take the analytical position.”
Russian Doll
Really? Connection? The Netflix comedy-drama created by Natasha Lyonne (who also stars), Amy Poehler, and Lesyle Headland, is about many things. We’ll allow you to debate that endlessly. But we think this twisted Groundhog Day-style series — where Nadia keeps reliving the day that she heads to an NYC party to celebrate her 36th birthday and dies, in various ways, again and again — is about figuring out that people bit. At its heart, its about learning that not being alone in life is maybe enough to solve even the most mysterious of problems.
“In the ‘60s, you would see people dropping like flies at 27 and you felt, ‘Oh that must be a drug thing. But as you move into modern times, we’re realizing that it’s very adult and very accomplished people who find that life is simply too much to bear. That’s a very real thing that we need to remove a cloak of shame around. I think we need to be discussing freely and openly the underlying brokenness of the human experience.”
How to Human has become one of our default listens with its raw, open questioning, as much of host Sam Lamott as his guests. Sam is not afraid to face his past, and his present struggles, publicly and sincerely, and he’ll admit to feeling kind of afraid or crap or lost as he does so. That’s unusual in the highly polished storytelling of most of today’s podcasts. It’s an approach that has drawn in guests as wide-ranging as sometimes controversial lawyer Gloria Allred and wise person in the world Bryron Katie.
“If you believe what you see, you believe we look like our cherry-picked profile pictures we curate, that our life is the polished story we present. But our truth, our quirky, messy, actual human experience, is captivating and magnetic, because we see our true self in the story.”
We want to tell you that everything we learned about people we learned from listening to Terry Gross interview everybody of note, ever. But we didn’t. Though we did feel smarter and more understanding after listening to her conversations. Gross somehow doesn’t push her guests to reveal too much, but she does somehow sensitively and expertly allow for their vulnerability and for them as real people to show up, whether that’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge or Zadie Smith.
“I also often ask my guests about what they consider to be their invisible weaknesses and shortcomings. I do this because these are the characteristics that define us no less than our strengths. What we feel sets us apart from other people is often the thing that shapes us as individuals. This may be especially true of writers and actors, many of whom first started to develop their observational skills as a result of being sidelined from typical childhood or adolescent activities because of an infirmity or a feeling of not fitting in. Or so I’ve come to believe from talking to so many writers and actors over the years.”
We don’t believe in must-reads (who has the time) only loved-reads, and we’d add the literary magazine American Chordata into that pile. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, art and photography approached with a beautiful design sensibility and brave emotional tenor. Make this your company for a while and it will be interesting company at that. This is a magazine that captures the ‘plurality of human experience.’
“We want to be a really good literary and arts magazine that celebrates sophisticated design and earnest expression on the same page… What interests us most is work that’s new but not smug, that’s brave enough to give us emotional detail and skilful enough to do it without melodrama.”
LOST IN TRANSLATION
We still go back to this movie, which to us defines a certain innocence of its stars Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, and of our times, when just hanging out in Tokyo and finding oneself and someone else to brush against seemed enough. Because what really happens here? Two people hang out, slight confused but content to be seen for a while as they are, maybe falling in love, maybe just holding each other for a while in time and space outside of their regular lives. Plus that karaoke scene?
“More than this, you know there’s nothing. More than this, just tell me one thing.”
Susan O’Malley was a SF-based artist who used the materials of our human connectedness to create meaningful works that engaged and inspired. This book centers on a single question — ‘What advice would your 80-year old self give to you?’ — that O’Malley asked people aged 7 to 88. Turns out you should listen to that voice. There are wise words to be heard from your future self if you listen.
“In every conversation I’ve had for this project, I’m reminded how we all are looking for similar things in our lives: meaning, security, happiness, community, and love. Your heart has reasons your head does not know; love is everywhere, look for it; do the things that matter to your heart. The words of others often express what I’m thinking but haven’t yet found words for. It’s these moments of hearing what I recognize that makes me feel alive, connected and understood. Yes, we are all in this together.’”
Amanda’s playlist for connection over on spotify. Listen to this if you don’t want to see people, or want to be inspired to be around them again! Either works.
Let us know what we’re missing, what you’d add and what you turn to when in need of more connection in your life. One note, this is not a list of everything ever written on the subject. Its our take, from what we’ve been consuming over the last few months. Its our prescription for your life for where we are, and you might be, right now. Enjoy!
