👉🏽 Register for Sober from Bullshit Recovery Club here (additional monthly date added!) February 3 + February 15 👉🏽 February writing workshop is live, and the theme is Abundance vs. Scarcity. Register here (Sunday, 2/28).
Questions? Conundrums? Ask away. Would love to see you and be together.
Wednesday I woke up to a cold California winter morning. We don’t get many of these. All week rains have been coming around here and there, and I’ve done my best to hop out with Tater in between showers and take in the cool clean air and marvel at the green everywhere. Wednesday morning about halfway through our 45-minute loop I could tell we’d get caught under one. As the rain came down - blessed, blessed rain - the cadence and fall felt friendly, and it was so good to feel water on me, all around me, because I don’t need to tell any of you how desperate we are for water. It’s been that way my whole life. I’ve never not been in conversation with drought.
Anyway, occasionally I listen to music on my walks, and this Wednesday I had a rare Spotify surprise, where a song comes on that just hits me where I need to be hit (right in the guts, duh).
What are your songs? What’s the last one that hit you in your guts? Tell me below, c’mon don’t be SHY.
I recommend listening with earphones, as loud as you can handle it. Listen to the lyrics! Made me think of all of us, out here doing what we can to grow and evolve feel all the things and shed our old stories and become our weird rad selves (sorry, there’s a dumbass ad at the beginning):
Love you all,
xxoo, dani
⛓ All zee links:
🤝 “What We Owe Each Other” from Garrett Bucks over at The White Pages (I know we’re at Peak Newsletter these days but his is so so relevant and important).
We know that regardless of who is in charge, the United States Government isn’t currently set up to be a tool of liberation. We know, then, that it is up to all of us to build experimental models of something kinder and more beautiful. But how? What does it look like to both commit to imperfect people and to have others commit to us in our imperfection? What does it look like to love with accountability? What does it look like to neither cut off relationships nor to allow those with whom we’re in relationship to continue to cause harm?
🤍 I really liked this short essay about a woman’s surprise experience in a grad school lecture:
Instead of evidence of an artist’s racism, I learn that, for the first time in my life, I am seeing a white artist—one of the giants of American art—grapple with his own complicity in white supremacy. I learn that I am seeing a great abstract painter turn his back on abstraction—and all that word contained in that moment—to engage with his whiteness and complicity in racism.
🌁 For my Bay Area locals! This is a beautiful story about a new cafe in SF “dedicated to building the largest non-alcoholic beverage selection in the world.” I’m going there for lunch tomorrow 🤓
🍕 “The Social Necessity of Restaurants and Weak Ties: The Random Conversations We Can’t Have Right Now” - “…your whole day is just this jambalaya of interacting with strangers in little ways.”
🎶 Our favorite weirdo, Nick Cave, came through with some more good advice this week.
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Gut punch songs. Songs that can make me spontaneously cry. I also like to listen to music very loud, and I often get an emotional punch from the sound itself.
Sonic Youth - JC; Public Enemy - Fight the Power; Cocteau Twins - Kookaburra; Roy Harper - Another Day; Fleetwood Mac - Landslide; Jeremy Enigk - Explain; PJ Harvey - Rid of Me; Duke Ellington and his Orchestra - Autumn Leaves (from Ellington Indigos); Tindersticks - Talk to Me (and pretty much their entire second album)
Phoebe Bridgers came out with this mini Christmas album this year- 4 songs that I played so often my whole family was like "ENOUGH with the sad Christmas songs!" But the track "If We Make It Through December" (remake of a Merle Haggard song) is quite the gut punch. The whole album was the soundtrack to my holidays this year and that pretty much tells you all you need to know about my f'ed up holiday this year. I'm fine though! :) Just glad it's in the rearview mirror...
Omg, I love that Twain song! Thanks so much for posting. I'm a huge sap for those gut-punch songs. I have too many I wouldn't know which to choose. But just the other day I was listening to "Wait" by M83 and "To Build a Home" by The Cinematic Orchestra.
Gut punch songs. Songs that can make me spontaneously cry. I also like to listen to music very loud, and I often get an emotional punch from the sound itself.
Sonic Youth - JC; Public Enemy - Fight the Power; Cocteau Twins - Kookaburra; Roy Harper - Another Day; Fleetwood Mac - Landslide; Jeremy Enigk - Explain; PJ Harvey - Rid of Me; Duke Ellington and his Orchestra - Autumn Leaves (from Ellington Indigos); Tindersticks - Talk to Me (and pretty much their entire second album)
...and a playlist because now I want to cry all night... https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3RoKqes5CittvzhgQSKAb3?si=iU9wt2kFRCKXmhUhaz5CtA
yes David! I wrote this post for you:) can't wait to listen x
Phoebe Bridgers came out with this mini Christmas album this year- 4 songs that I played so often my whole family was like "ENOUGH with the sad Christmas songs!" But the track "If We Make It Through December" (remake of a Merle Haggard song) is quite the gut punch. The whole album was the soundtrack to my holidays this year and that pretty much tells you all you need to know about my f'ed up holiday this year. I'm fine though! :) Just glad it's in the rearview mirror...
f'ed up holidays are very on brand for me. will give a listen xo
Omg, I love that Twain song! Thanks so much for posting. I'm a huge sap for those gut-punch songs. I have too many I wouldn't know which to choose. But just the other day I was listening to "Wait" by M83 and "To Build a Home" by The Cinematic Orchestra.
thank you Agata! added to the playlist <3