Friday Finds (Poetry, Ireland, Music, Censorship)

Hi friends,

Greetings from the Emerald Isle!

This is my first trip to Ireland, the home of my favorite poet: John O'Donahue.

Yesterday, I saw the Jack Yeats exhibit at the National Gallery in Dublin, visited the majestic library at Trinity College, and enjoyed my first pint of fresh Irish Guinness. Then, I had a second. And, a third. Today, I'm off to O'Donahue's hometown in the west of Ireland. While we're out there, we're also going to visit Galway and the Cliffs of Moher.

Following in the footsteps of great Irish writers, I've been writing poems during my downtime here too.

Here's what I want to share this week:

1. The Inversion of Censorship: The 20th century had two iconic dystopian novelists: George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Everybody knows Orwell, but not enough people know Huxley, whose prophecy is increasingly looking correct, as Neil Postman wrote about so clearly. You can read my thread on Twitter. ​
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2. ​Practice Analytically, Perform Intuitively: My motto for improving at just about every skill. When you're away from the practice, study it obsessively. Break it down and explore the nuances of the craft. Once it's time to perform, put all the thinking away and let the wisdom of intuition guide you. ​
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3. My Annual Review: I first published my Annual Review as a 9,000-word retrospective on 2021 with clear goals for 2022 as well. Now, it's live as a YouTube video.

Today's Finds

John O’Donahue: Let's talk about Ireland. As I mentioned above, he's my all-time favorite poet. I discovered him via this magnificent interview with Krista Tippett after he passed away. O’Donahue’s at his best when he talks about nature and friendship, and conversation. In the synthesis of all three, our souls come alive. Beyond the podcast interview, I recommend his books Anam Cara and Walking in Wonder.

David Whyte: Whyte was one of O'Donahue's closest friends. Among other things, he helped me appreciate how humiliation is a terrible feeling but a beautiful word. It comes from the Latin word humus, which means soil. So being humiliated is like returning to the ground of your being. Only by shedding those illusions of selfhood do you confront your own fragility. I recommend his interviews with Sam Harris and Krista Tippett. As you listen, your soul will fill up with the warmth of a fireplace on a cold winter night.

​Brave New World, Revisited: Brave New World is a dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley, which explores the bad outcomes of a world of abundance where we host hedonistic pleasure in the highest esteem and make people happy with happiness pills. He revisited the core themes in this short non-fiction book. Additional topics include censorship, authoritarianism, thought control, and propaganda.

​How Trends Begin: The people who are early to a trend often look so weird that people point and laugh at them. By showing one person dancing at a music festival, then two, then ten, then hundreds, this video reveals how trends — which are too weird to take seriously until they're too important to ignore — begin.

​Cercle Music Sets: Let's talk about beautiful music. If you're looking for deep house sets to listen to while you work, the Cercle DJ sets are fantastic. All of them are produced in beautiful places, from a stage on the Argentinian salt flats to a hot air balloon in Turkey's Cappadocia region. Start with this one from Ben B​ö​hmer or this one from Above & Beyond. Given the production values, make sure you peek at the screen every few minutes as you go about your work.