Alison Gopnik’s childish thinking and much moreΝβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ 
James Pillion
 

MY FAVOURITE THINGS | My Love Is Waiting

β€œWe say children are bad at paying attention, but we really mean they’re bad at not paying attention β€” they easily get distracted by anything interesting.”

β€” ALISON GOPNIK
 

One of the unexpected benefits of Lisbon being overrun with tourists all year round is the ability to constantly see the city through new eyes. Following the impassioned eye-line of a given visitor and gazing across at a breathtaking piece of history. The reason we love being tourists is not just that we can sleep in or spoil ourselves silly with a cocktail or three at lunch. It’s that we give ourselves permission to break our habitual cycles and appreciate the simple joys that we’re often too busy or distracted to savour in our β€˜real’ lives. While it’s a stretch to say that holidays make us better, they certainly bring out the best in us.

Here’s my Top Ten June playlist to kick off the summer xo
 

Why Adults Lose The Beginner’s Mind πŸ“»

A few weeks back, I was invited to share a section from Putting Yourself First, my self-help book on unlocking your inner child, for an educational platform called Uptime. In the process, I was reminded how much these principles have rescued me from despair time and again. After coming upon this archived episode of The Ezra Klein Show, I was stunned to discover that my homegrown remedies aren’t completely bonkers. Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology and philosophy argues that we can learn so much from our old habits. Harnessing spontaneity and new information with delight in place of judgement. Of course it’s hard to be awe-inspired by the ordinary but Gopnik reminds that magic only happens when we remain open to world around us. You can read my five-minute hack for Uptime here. 
 

How To Blow Up A Pipeline πŸŽ₯

I’ve been waiting for a film to come along that confronts the hot-button issue of climate change with an alluring poignancy. Described by one anonymous fan as the lovechild of William Friedkin’s Sorcerer and Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves, the film is adapted from Andreas Malm’s 2021 non-fiction book of the same name, and offers a Reservoir Dogs style narrative on how to wage war against climate inaction. While director Daniel Goldharber and his writing team go to commendable lengths to legitimize the action through flashbacks, I didn’t need a motive. Not when every new year brings a fresh tide of unprecedented storms and melting ice caps threaten to displace billions. This interview with the director and his leading lady finally got me to curate my very own Letterboxd account. 
 

Better Living Through Criticism πŸ“š

The universal attraction to art, argues A.O. Scott, is founded on our God given right to mercilessly tear it to shreds. Yet, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’re intuitively drawn to art for a bigger reason. To stop time in its tracks and get lost in the moment. Our favourite TV shows and podcasts don’t just nourish the mind. They whip up feelings that reconnect us with our underlying humanity. Film criticism, like the kind Scott offered by way of the New York Times, doesn’t just offer fresh perspective but shades my inner life. Which is just how Alain De Bottom’s rounds out the afterword in Essays in Love, noting how art is there to β€˜make us feel less lonely, to make us understand our pain precisely when love has failed us.’

β€œIt would be too much to say that every artist is a failed critic, unable to appreciate what already exists without adding to it, but it does not seem to me inaccurate to say that all art is successful criticism.” β€” A.O. Scott
 

Dear Mama πŸ“Ή

I have KCRW’s The Business to thank for turning me onto Allen Hughes’s new five-part series on the late Tupac Amaru Shakur and his tempestuous relationship with his mother. I first discovered the incredible story of Afeni Shakur in Adam Curtis’s landmark series The Century of the Self. Much like her son, Shakur’s brilliance and dogged determination led her to rub shoulders with the rich and famous. An opportunity that radicalized her passion into political activism. It’s fascinating to discover how her son, named after an insurgent indigenous chieftain, got one over on the record labels, bringing hit singles to market that revived the discarded legacy of The Black Panthers.

β€œHe was teaching us to understand each other and to communicate. To make more of an impact on the people coming behind us. He got that from the Black Panther party.” β€” Snoop Dogg
 

Succession πŸ“Ί

The final season of this billionaire bonanza throws some deathly curveballs into the mix, unspooling juicy narratives of spoiled children swimming in the shoes of their father. Jesse Armstrong, the show’s creator, cut his teeth during my favourite period of English comedy, penning scripts for Armando Iannucci’s In The Loop and Chris Morris’s Four Lions. I love how this premium series can be enjoyed on so many levels. You can snack on the dialogue-heavy episodes while folding the laundry or else bury your phone under the mattress to better immerse yourself in the diabolical wit of its richly drawn ensemble cast. Naomi Fry’s commentary on the finale says everything I can’t. 
 

Paul Schrader Wants To Make Another Movie πŸ—ž

After gorging on Alex Abromovich’s profile on Paul Schrader and his latest film, Master Gardener, widely rumoured to be his last directorial outing, I decided to go back to where it all started. Blue Collar, Schrader’s comedic romp of a directorial debut, enjoys a cult following for a good reason. Brilliantly built around Richard Pryor’s Zeke, a hard-working chump who just can’t catch a break, it reveals the dark side of life in the industrial age. While I like to think of myself as an American New-Wave junkie, it never dawned on me that the 76 year-old writer-director has been making the same movie since American Gigolo. For all his bravura, I’ll never forget this confessional moment when Richard Pryor brought him to tears.
 

Army of Shadows πŸŽ₯

Thanks to this Letterboxd interview with director Daniel Goldharber, I hunted down a copy of Jean-Pierre Melville’s opus on a rainy Sunday in Marseille. As I absorbed this sobering Nazi occupation drama, it dawned on me that this was the first film that truly bottles the French tricolor ethos of libertΓ©, Γ©galitΓ© and fraternitΓ©. The film, a vΓ©ritΓ© examination of the French resistance, revolves around a triumvirate of personalities. Lino Ventura is our gateway into this hardboiled world, whose emotional intelligence draws you in from the jump. Jean-Pierre Cassel and Simone Signoret pull up the rear, fully fleshed out personalities made more real for the fact that they’re based on the real heroes.
 

Wiser Than Me πŸ“»

Ever since I laid eyes on Seinfeld as a teenager, Julia Louis-Dreyfus has held a sacred space in my heart, her humility and humour giving her a pass for life. Which makes her brand new podcast series that much easier to savour and share. It was the 2018 documentary, Jane Fonda in Five Acts, that first rocked the boat and had me baffled as to how one person - let alone one woman - enjoyed such continual evolution in a single lifetime. Hearing Jane Fonda speak to the joys and pitfalls of aging was strangely exhilarating, especially when the conversation landed on sex and self-pleasure. Love her or hate her, the 85 year-old actor and activist knows her to shed dead skin.
 

Blue Is The Warmest Colour πŸŽ₯

A sudden urge compelled me to seek out Abdellatif Kechiche’s controversial coming of age film once again. I remember being swept up in the critical backlash around its 2013 release and losing myself in the torrid love story. While I can certainly see how the film can rub the wrong way, Kechiche’s portrayal of a young woman’s sexual discovery left me soaring yet again. I personally loved his fly-on-the-wall approach, picking up elements that indirectly colours AdΓ¨le Exarchopoulos’s interior landscape. Exarchopoulos radiates opposite LΓ©a Seydoux, whose art-school chic character inspired me to revisit Jean-Paul Sartre 1946 lecture Existentialism Is A Humanism.
 

Trauma Zone πŸ“Ή

There’s nothing quite like a good dose of existential dread to get the mind churning. Which is how I found myself lost in Adam Curtis’s Hypernormalisation on a particularly sullen Paris afternoon. The three-hour doco proved the perfect entree for Trauma Zone, his seven-part series on living through the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Watching this docuseries, a compilation of A-grade BBC footage, feels like a waking nightmare that inspires occasional bouts of delirious laughter. Marina Hyde’s Guardian write-up gets the story straight and strangely inspired me to rewatch Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. You can watch part two here.

β€œWhat I’m doing is taking these fragments and I’m trying to create a world for you to get lost in, a sense of what it was like to live through that world.” β€” Adam Curtis
 

Tina Turner πŸ‘€

Reading the obituary for this larger than life icon shook loose memories of taking home first prize at the school line dance. Shaking my little tush to Tina Turner’s Nutbush City Limits (catnip for Australians). Little did ten-year old me realize he was boot-scooting to a song set in Turner’s backyard. Wesley Morris’s love letter of a farewell sets the record straight on just how a 5’4 middle-aged divorced woman from the backwaters of Tennessee, decked out in leather and a shimmering Shih-Tzu wig, turned audiences into dancing putty. If you’re looking for a feel-good watch than look no further than the recent HBO documentary Tina. Inspiration in motion.

β€œI got to thinking that maybe I was such a mixture of things that it was beyond black-or-white, beyond just cultures β€” that I was universal!” β€” Tina Turner
 

Tracey Denim 🎢

Roy Chukwuemeka Nnawuchi, better known by his public psuedonym Dean Blunt is a prodigious motherfucker. An artist with fingers in all the pies. A music producer (Hype Williams, Babyfather) and head honcho of World Music. bar italia, a three-piece band from the English isles, was one such passion project on the independent label before being signed to Matador Records earlier this year. I found myself transported back in time listening to this album, traces of shoegaze β€” Slowdive, Ride, Jesus and Mary Chain β€” pulsing throughout. Nina Cristante, better known as NINA, fronts the group with sultry vocals that I’m excited to witness in the flesh at ZΓ© dos Bois tonight. 
 

Thanks for reading. To show your support, forward it to someone who’d like it or treat yourself to one of my books.

If you’re seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can read previous issues and subscribe here.
 

WRITING | @jamespillion
FILM | @jamespillionfilm

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