The Art of Seeing Big, Seeing Small
“The color of truth is grey.”― Andre Gide
I woke up to reading that the ceasefire hinted at between Hamas and Israel might actually be happening…with the return of some hostages. With all the complexities around the unfolding events since Hamas’ Oct 7th brutal massacre of innocents, the inner hippie in me has one response to this morning’s news: may humankind take more steps towards laying down our arms and embracing peace and love. Just love each other. And be thankful for all of the diverse groups of people who live together on this crazily heating up planet.
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It is 60 years to the day since Aldous Huxley passed away. He died within hours of John Kennedy and CS Lewis. Famously, the psychedelic pioneer, who in his last days due to throat cancer could no longer speak, had written to his wife the request that she administer LSD to him so he could approach death as the ever elevated journeyman. I had once heard that she administered the drug through his eyes…although a more common story is that she injected him with the psychedelic but regardless, he supposedly died with a smile on his face. Even in his moment of death, he highlighted the potential that psychoactive experiences can have on us, on our lives…on our deaths!
In honor of this day, I spoke to my friend Trev Huxley, his grandson, asking for a nice story about his grandfather to share. And he sent me a sweet one.
Take it away Trev…
As you probably know, Aldous went blind at the age of 16 and only recovered some of this sight later. He wrote a very interesting essay/book called the Art of Seeing…well worth reading. Anyway, he had come to New York and my mother and I went to the Metropolitan Museum with him. I was probably 10 years old. Aldous spent the next two hours inspecting paintings through a large magnifying glass. I suspect that his field of vision was maybe 2" x 2".
No conversation was had, and as you can imagine I was an extremely bored 10-year-old boy.
My grandfather liked to walk, and he stayed at the Plaza Hotel, so we started walking down Fifth Avenue to the hotel at which point, he proceeded to describe every painting and gave us an art history lesson on each one. It was at that moment that I was so astonished! The fact that he could assemble the entire painting, looking at it in 2-inch sections, and then of course, give us a history lesson on each one. It was at that moment I realized he was “different”.
Happy Thanksgiving. I am very thankful to all of you for keeping on reading this newsletter!
Black Folk Musicians Are Reclaiming the Genre
I connected with Dom Flemmons a few years ago when he wrote a piece for the Specialty Box Set. Great seeing him and other significant musicologists/players getting the recognition they deserve for the work…
Good Deed Entertainment Acquires Alex Grossman Comedy ‘That’s Funny’
My dear (crazy) friend Alex Grossman’s new film “That’s Funny” is on the stream and hitting the theaters! Anyone familiar with Alex’s work (just watch The Woman Who Can’t Watch Movies) understands his unique, biting wit. He put down the camera and hit the comedy clubs a few years ago…and then wrote a movie about it…and it is a great one…
Private island in San Francisco Bay for sale for $25 million
“Red Rock Island was settled by Russian fur traders in the early 1800s and has only had one known resident ever”
For anyone new passing over the Richmond Bridge, this Island is a conversation starter…what IS that Island? I had a friend who had a friend who used to dock there…I knew of someone who knew of someone who knew of someone who used to live there. If I had a space 25M, I’d buy it….why not?
Holy Matrimony: George Eliot’s secular sacraments.
On this day, Eliot’s 204th birthday, this New Yorker article from a few months ago felt a great way to celebrate….
Virginia Woolf…wrote, in 1919, that the long-faced, oracular Victorian had become, for Woolf’s generation, “one of the butts for youth to laugh at.” Even now, in a world of quite different pieties, it can be difficult to disinter George Eliot from our reverence, to rediscover the writer who had enough radical daring and agnostic courage to take on the whole sniffing righteousness of Victorian England.
Banksy’s Identity Finally Revealed in Lost BBC Interview
Many articles about this news story…but it still seems a bit of a mystery to me.
This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of David Cook. RIP.
In the Beginning
By: David Whyte
Sometimes simplicity rises
like a blossom of fire
from the white silk of your own skin.
You were there in the beginning
you heard the story, you heard the merciless
and tender words telling you where you had to go.
Exile is never easy and the journey
itself leaves a bitter taste. But then,
when you heard that voice, you had to go.
You couldn't sit by the fire, you couldn't live
so close to the live flame of that compassion
you had to go out in the world and make it your own
so you could come back with
that flame in your voice, saying listen...
this warmth, this unbearable light, this fearful love...
It is all here, it is all here.
“Everything's already been said, but since nobody was listening, we have to start again.”― Andre Gide
Great issue David! Love the reference to the piece on black folk musicians!
And "Yay, George Elliot!" (Read Middlemarch (again) earlier this year.)