Rick Hall’s claim to fame 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 | This Time Tomorrow 

β€œMy whole life has been based on a lot of rejection and to be honest with you rejection played a big role in my life because I thrived on it. I wanted to prove the world was wrong and I was right.”

β€” RICK HALL
 

β€˜The World Is As You Are’

I’ve been getting up close to this adage on my evening visits to Castelo de SΓ£o Jorge. Overrun with tourists during the day, the historic space is all but deserted come sundown. Beyond the panoramic views, it’s a picturesque place to enjoy a cold beer amongst the peacocks or meditate under the gargantuan stone pines. Because whether I’m riding high or down in the dumps, this crumbling landmark helps me to take solace in the fact that everything is but a moment in time. That what is here today will likely be gone tomorrow.

Believe it or not my monthly playlist is celebrating its first anniversary! Here’s to another year around the sun 🍾

 

Muscle Shoals πŸ“Ή

Robert Harrison’s Entitled Opinions turned me onto this love letter of a doco in an episode on the Spirit of Rivers. FAME Studios, home to the Muscle Shoals sound, is one such benefactor. Perched on the banks of the Tennessee River, a tributary formerly known as Nunnahsae or β€˜the river that sings’, this humble studio’s bespoke sound would define a generation. Which goes a long way to explaining how this backwater town collapsed the color line in the midst of Alabama’s cotton plantations. While I was held spellbound by the music, I kept drifting back to the man behind the magic. Rick Hall, FAME’s founder, was a singular personality who churned a pail of sour milk into creamy butter.

β€œPeople arrived at Muscle Shoals expecting to meet these black dudes and they’re a bunch of white guys that looked like they worked in the supermarket around the corner.” β€” Bono
 

Civil War πŸŽ₯

A Saturday night screening of Alex Garland’s dystopian drama had me all shook up at an unfolding narrative that felt a little close to home. Not the shoot-em-up spectacle so much as the more sinister vision of drawing lines in the sand. In Kirsten Dunst, a grizzled war photographer, Garland offers up a parable of war as addiction. Cailee Spaeny, Dunst’s fresh-faced disciple, becomes the latest victim to the cause as her naivety gives way to horror, and eventually, a perverted pleasure. Perhaps what unnerved me most was the way these characters were the human embodiment of doomscrolling. Gorging on vicarious violence to keep from asking the real questions.
 

Shogun πŸ“Ί

This lavish limited series, set in 16th Century Japan, offers a thrilling education on my new home. Stormy seas were to blame for Portugal’s good fortunes, chancing upon the southern tip of the Japanese archipelago in the year 1543. This happy accident would pave the way for a most unlikely alliance, forged through the sale of Western firearms, that introduced Christianity and culinary delights like Peixinhos da Horta that inadvertently inspired the birth of tempura. Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power has become the perfect compendium for this feudal drama. The brooding power struggle, Succession meets Ran, seduces with a slow-burn.

 

Life With Picasso πŸ“š

Françoise Gilot was so much more than The Woman Who Says No, a loving moniker conferred on her by her first lover and mentor Pablo Picasso. She was a fiercely independent spirit, raised with values and ambitions deserving of a man, and consequently disowned after dropping out of law school. There is latent irony in her trading in one father for another. And while Picasso, forty years her senior, would subject her to some serious emotional turmoil, he also instilled a deep appreciation for the creative process. The late painter, whose own collection is truly captivating, holds the unique distinction of being the only woman who left on her own terms.

β€œMost women who do something with their lives have been disliked by almost everyone.” β€” FranΓ§oise Gilot
 
 

The Unbearable Lightness of Being πŸŽ₯

Some films just speak to you. Thanks to my YouTube algorithm and this video on Daniel Day-Lewis and his consummate voice acting, Phillip Kaufman’s 1988 adaptation found its way back into my life. To this day, I remain enraptured by Day-Lewis and his ability to charm the pants, quite literally, off an ensemble of beautiful women in 1960s Czechoslovakia. And while he’s truly electric in the company of a baby-faced Juliette Binoche, it’s his amorous affair with Lena Olin that lingers longest. Milan Kundera’s book of the same name takes its cue from Choderlos de Laclos’ Dangerous Liasons and illuminates all the things that make life so endlessly fascinating.
 

Catching the Big Fish πŸ“š

David Lynch, the iconoclastic American filmmaker and creative maelstrom, offers a window into the power of transcendental meditation. Because when we surrender to the 20-minute practice, we cleanse the mind, inviting a tidal wave of inner bliss to wash away the detritus of everyday life. In the last few years, I’ve learned to harness my anger and frustrations, transforming that toxic energy into prescriptive creativity. As Lynch tells it, the answers we seek lie within and when we have the courage and patience to dive inside we can begin the real work of living. This viral video is ecstatic viewing. 

β€œIt comes from within. It has to start from deep within, and grow and grow and grow. Then things really change.” β€” David Lynch
 

Eleanor Coppola πŸ‘€

A rewatch of Eleanor Coppola’s landmark 1991 documentary Hearts of Darkness on the making of Apocalypse Now helped me better understand why I live by a mantra of asking forgiveness over permission. Eleanor’s captured confessions, recorded without her husband’s knowledge, proves that audacity runs in the family. To hear Francis Ford Coppola, the last of the romantic filmmakers, (who staked his fortunes on a runaway production) contemplate suicide in one ranting soliloquy is simply astounding. Her BTS documentay for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette is on my bucket list.

β€œWhen you stop looking for something, you see it right in front of you.” β€” Eleanor Coppola
 

On Giacometti 🎢

Hania Rani has come into my life in a very big way. In fact, On Giacometti, her early 2023 release, has become my favourite afternoon accompaniment, serenading my daily outing to a local park bench. It has become the sonic equivalent of a psychedelic, helping me get out of my head and into the present moment. There is a seductive power to these piano works, laced with an ethereal beauty that enlivens the senses. The Polish pianist has captured something so delicate and delicious. Every re-listen leaves me brimming with life.
 

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
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