Garry Nolan on the truth out there 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 | Take The Long Way Home

β€œWhose planet is this? If something else has been here for a really long time... I mean it’s no different than a barking dog, thinking that the house that it lives in is its territory.”

β€” GARRY NOLAN
 

Ever since the sudden loss of his teenage son, Nick Cave has become an open door, sharing his innermost truths through The Red Hand Files and his music. In this confessional Tetragrammaton conversation, Cave confesses to how the tragedy has reshaped his relationship to humanity and helped him to see his fellow man as fundamentally good. In the study of redemption, the central focus of my PhD research, I came to share Cave’s outlook. Accepting that we are all fallible creatures, each of us trying to make the best of it. Choosing love, to see the best in others, isn’t always the easiest path, or the shortest route, but it does move your heart.

I hope you enjoy my February playlist. If you ever have any choice tracks to share please hit the reply button. I’d love to hear from you!
 

Garry Nolan on UFOs πŸ“»

Stanford professor Garry Nolan throws a curveball into the endless news cycle, categorically stating that our haphazard sighting of UFOs or Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon have serious precedent. Millions of years to be precise. The aliens aren’t visitors, Nolan claims, they’re the landlords of planet Earth. The celebrated immunologist first came to my attention by way of Robert Harrison’s Entitled Opinions podcast. Nolan is quick to concede he doesn’t have all the answers but believes our self-destructive tendencies might hold the answer. This new doco on the Ariel phenomenon, a school sighting in 1990s Zimbabwe, is just weird enough to be worth a pinch of salt. Just like the tagline of my favourite 1990s sci-fi series, the truth is out there.

β€œOne of the consistent messages is; β€˜You’re trashing the planet. You’re hurting yourselves. It’s not going to hurt us but you’re hurting yourselves.’” β€” Garry Nolan
 

Saltburn πŸŽ₯ 

Emerald Fennell’s Top Five films left me blushing. Not only does the London native have stellar taste buds but I love how each film has become an implicit part of her artistic voice. Saltburn follows an impressional young Oxford undergrad whose friendship with a high-born blossoms and wilts over a summer stay at his estate. Barry Keoghan is a curious foil, a fish out of water amongst Jacob Elordi and his eccentric brood. Fennell has a marvelous ability to chum the waters, luring the audience into a false sense of comfort before hooking them with a wink. Her latest film picks at the scabs of class conflict a la Joseph Losey’s The Servant, Fennell’s choice pick, in building up a leading man who is so much more than meets the eye.

 

How to Discover Your Own Taste πŸ“»

Ezra Klein’s conversation with Kyle Chayka sparked a fuse, bringing me back to basics on why I like the things I like. It’s such a delicious feeling when a piece of art leaves you with the feeling that it was made just for you. Chayka’s new book, Filterworld, takes aim at life in the age of the algorithm. I was irked by the rise of ambient culture, music and movies designed to play in the background like a log fire. Art was never meant to be convenient. As the gatekeepers green-light content off the back of focus groups, the attention economy erodes anything that flies in the face of mindless consumption.

β€œIn order to have taste, it’s not enough to see and know what is beautiful in any given work. One must feel beauty and be moved by it.” β€” Voltaire
 

Elon Musk πŸ“š

Say what you will about Elon Musk and his mission to make humanity a multi-planetary species. The man is principled to a fault. Musk builds Fortune 500 companies and breeds children to bring us one step closer to Mars. He condemns conflict, and culture wars, that threaten to take us two steps back. What makes Musk so endlessly fascinating is his willingness to lose his shirt for the greater good. His recent obsession with the game Polytopia has imparted so many teachable maxims for my year ahead. Maximize every choice. Set the strategy. Act, don’t react. The bible-sized tome, digested via audiobook, left me slamming the steering wheel in wonder. Over, and over again.

β€œWhat I didn’t appreciate is that Elon starts with a mission and then later, finds a way to back-fill in order to make it work financially. That’s what makes him a force of nature.” β€” Reid Hoffman
 
 

Bride of the Orient πŸŽ₯ 

Werner Herzog’s Every Man for Himself and God Against All was how I turned up this indie classic. The audiobook, narrated by the man himself, shares a chapter on the filmmaker’s nine lives. While starring in Urs Odermatt’s West German dramedy, he almost impaled himself on an old bridge behind the wheel of an aging army Jeep.  It was the trailer that hooked me. A bachelor who buries his overbearing mother, purchases a Thai bride, and draws the ire of the entire village. It was the all consuming world that blew my mind off its hinges, each character more absurdly compelling than the next. Herzog makes for an eerily convincing antagonist.You can rent this classic on Vimeo on Demand here. 
 

Regarding Susan Sontag πŸ“Ή

Susan Sontag’s name inspired a gnawing dread in High School, synonymous with academic fluff and intellectual jargon. Nancy Kates’s documentary went a long way to reshaping this mindset. Sontag’s formative years reminded me of Loving Highsmith, the exceptional doco on Patricia Highsmith. Much like the acclaimed author, Sontag followed her curiousities, and an exceptional collection of lovers like Annie Liebovitz, with a childlike intensity. I was saddened to learn that this curiousity didn’t extend to her very impermanence, choosing to double down on fear in the face of terminal illness. 

β€œMy desire to write is connected to my homosexuality. I need the identity as a weapon to match the weapon that society has against me.” β€” Susan Sontag
 

Hugh Sawrey πŸ‘€

An impromptu visit to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary introduced me to the spellbinding work of Australian artist Hugh Sawrey. Born in the hinterlands of the Sunshine Coast in 1919, he found his love of painting after full days of cattle droving. Sawrey is distinct for capturing a vision of Australiana that has been swallowed by time. Horses feature prominently across his body of work, once the only reliable way to get around in the bush. He reminds me of an Australian version of Larry McMurtry, the Texan cattle rancher who shunned the open range for pen and paper. Sawrey’s love for the bush is embedded in every brushstroke and the vivid pigments of his landscapes.
 

USB 🎢

Ezra Klein’s conversation with Kyle Chayka sparked a fuse, sending me down a rabbit hole of Fred Again.. I enjoyed dipping into the Actual Life installments through the pandemic but was surprised to discover that Secret Life, a collaborative album with Brian Eno marked the culmination a 15-year mentorship with the ambient producer. While Eno would take Gibson under his wing, introduced to the 16 year-old during one of his weekly a cappella evenings, Gibson paid it forward. His signature sound takes inspiration from Burial’s raw sampling and Steve Reich’s looping. In USB, Gibson raises the stakes. Baby again.., his Skrillex and Four Tet single, sets the score for this after hours album. This Tiny Desk concert went viral for a reason, and offers a window into his layered process.

 

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

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WRITING | @jamespillion
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