Inside the mask

10 things worth sharing: Portraits of masks, The Heroine’s Journey, the coincidence of opposites, the power of aphorisms, The Mandalorian, why music is the greatest art form, and more...

Hey y’all,

A huge thank you to everyone who became a paid subscriber in the past week. Means a ton! Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing (and a playlist to go with them):

1. I wrote about how much I love photographs of people wearing masks.
   
   

2. I’m enjoying novelist Gail Carriger’s The Heroine’s Journey, a book that explores a narrative alternative to The Hero’s Journey in which characters gain strength and find happy endings through networking, sharing, cooperation, and compromise. (Lots of connections to Show Your Work! and my ideas about comedy.)
   
   

3. Iain McGilchrist on the coincidence of opposites.
   
   

4. The poems of Denise Levertov. (See also: her poems as comics, this Meatyard photo of her hanging with Berry and Merton, and how she thought writing is like prayer.)
   
   

5. The work of text-based artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed.
   
   

6. A collection of aphorisms by composer and musician Pauline Oliveros. (In a recent newsletter, Oliver Burkeman wrote about the power of aphorisms and Sheldon Kopp’s 43 eternal truths.)
   
   

7. Eye candy: I’m two years behind everyone else, but I’ve enjoyed The Mandalorian way more than any Star Wars prequel or sequel. (See: its Western and Samurai influences.)
   
   

8. A profile of one of my favorite musicians: harpist Mary Lattimore. (From the Dept. of No Coincidences: I once suggested her album Hundreds of Days as the perfect soundtrack for driving the Pacific Coast Highway. Turns out she made that album during a residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts.)
   
   

9. Ear candy: Bach’s cello suites have kept me company while writing for a few decades now. Here’s 3 hours of Yo Yo Ma playing them and piano transcriptions by Eleonor Bindman. (I love Vikingur Olafsson’s performance of “Prelude in G Major.”)
   
   

10. To tie those last two points together: Why Schopenhauer thought music is the greatest of all artforms.
    
    

Thanks for reading! Comments are open to all for the next few weeks, so feel free to share what you’re loving, too:

If you’d like to support this newsletter and get an extra special edition on Tuesdays, become a paid subscriber! (The first Tuesday edition was about the magic of brush pens.)

xoxo,

Austin