Michael Pollan on mankind’s God Complex 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 | Sweet Little Mystery

β€œFor look into a flower and what do you see? Into the very heart of nature’s double nature β€” that is, the contending energies of creation and dissolution, the spiring toward complex form and the tidal pull away from it. Apollo and Dionysus were names the Greeks gave to these two faces of nature, and nowhere in nature is their contest as plain or as poignant as it is in the beauty of a flower and its rapid passing. There, the achievement of order against all odds and its blithe abandonment. There, the perfection of art and the blind flux of nature. There, somehow, both transcendence and necessity. Could that be it β€” right there, in the flower β€” the meaning of life?”

β€” MICHAEL POLLAN
 

All you have to do to change your world is change the way you think about it.   

I gave my first public talk this week at Well Read, a beautiful new bookstore, the first in a new series I impulsively called Conversations in Creativity. The Susan Jeffers line, quoted above, emerged as the fulcrum around the power of creative thinking. Trading in the spotlight of the adult mind for the lantern of childhood to stop taking it all so seriously. And in approaching the β€˜making of’ process, I kept the lantern close at hand and with it Aldous Huxley’s advice to tread lightly. Which is how I was visited by certain ideas and discoveries that had me howling in wonder; β€˜where did that come from?’ 

Another month gone. Another playlist to get lost in. Happy September!
 

The Botany of Desire πŸ“š

Michael Pollan unravels mankind’s God complex from a plant’s perspective, a rather absurd premise for those unfamiliar with the gifts of psychotropic drugs. Because to get β€˜high’ is to be lovingly reminded that we belong to a truly intelligent universe, comprised of the same matter that makes up the forests we fervently raze to the ground. And in exploring the evolution of the apple tree or cannabis plant, the acclaimed nature writer puts forth a bold question. Just how superior are we to the bees pollinating spring flowers? In other words, just how much agency did we had in the artificial selection of the tulip or potato when their unique gifts made our obsession inevitable. In penning this page-turner, Pollan reminds, over and again, that the magical mystery of Mother Nature holds the cure for the disease of human self-importance.

β€œThough we self-importantly regard domestication as something people have done to plants, it is at the same time a strategy by which the plants have exploited us and our desires β€” even our most idiosyncratic notions of beauty β€” to advance their own interests.” β€” Michael Pollan
 

Tape Notes πŸ“»

For far too long I treated my creative projects like school assignments, approaching this sacred time with a seriousness that sucked the wind out of my sails. In next to no time, I inevitably found reasons to do anything but β€˜create’, leaving a void in my heart. Kieran Hebdan’s interview for Tape Notes is music to a young artist’s ears. For as the acclaimed producer shows, inspiration is best served with a side of possibility. Because in leaving the door open to curiousity and inviting a boatload of β€˜what ifs’ into the process, we inadvertently turn worktime into playtime. And it’s here, in this heightened state of pregnant possibility, that we can truly serve the work and our self worth. 
 

Mr. X πŸ—ž

Now, wait just a minute! Carl Sagan penned an op-ed on the wonders of Cannabis? The thoughtful essay, published in 1969, was worth the hunt, littered with remarkable insights on the gifts of the β€˜switch’. A shift that gently overrides cruise control to remind us how, and why, there’s no limits to our love. Everyday banalities whet our appetite. A ripe apple inducing a rush of ecstatic delight across the palette, leaving us to wonder, to no one in particular, if this is what Eve felt upon that first bite. While I’m hardly surprised that Sagan published anonymously for fear of career suicide, it does leave you wondering. Just how many of our heroes savour in silence?

β€œIf I find in the morning a message from myself the night before informing me that there is a world around us which we barely sense, or that we can become one with the universe, or even that certain politicians are desperately frightened men, I may tend to disbelieve; but when I’m high I know about this disbelief. And so I have a tape in which I exhort myself to take such remarks seriously. I say β€˜Listen closely, you sonofabitch of the morning! This stuff is real!’” β€” Carl Sagan
 

Dances With Wolves πŸŽ₯

I didn’t suffer through three-hours of Kevin Costner’s god-awful Horizon: Chapter 1 just to get my money’s worth (nice try, Kev) but because of a constant whisper that became ever more desperate. β€œBut he directed Dances with Wolves!” Costner’s directorial debut ages with true grace, a lavish production about a man turning away from society and finding meaning amongst the β€˜savages’ on the prairies. The 1990 production is the equivalent of a walk in the wood, the languid pacing seeping under the skin and inducing a calm that felt just right. To watch this film in present day is to wonder how we lost our way. A relic of a bygone era.
 
 

The Deepest Breath πŸ“Ή

To submerge to the depths of a pool is to be reminded, within seconds, that we don’t belong down there. In bearing witness to Alessia Zecchini at opening, sucking in a final breath before dipping below turquoise waters, we come to experience an entirely new vision of discomfort. To watch this free-diving heroine descend into creeping darkness, a single breath of trapped air in her lungs, is to be reminded of our own limitations. I found my lizard brain growing very aware of every passing second with the gnawing anxiety of a horror film. I dare you to take your eyes off Laura McGann narrative coup of a documentary. It’s left me hungry to get hold of James Nestor’s Deep.
 

The Concise Laws of Human Nature πŸ“š

Call me clichΓ©d but this abridged book has brought me closer to myself, giving voice to instinctive choices I’ve been stumbling towards in the dark. Much to my ego’s chagrin, Robert Greene has become my trusted advisor, each chapter gently reminding how the answers I seek lie within. For far too long, I toed the line of collective logic, couching my authentic self under a polished veneer. But as the acclaimed writer and historian makes plain, life is best lived in the headwinds, echoing Joseph Campbell’s insistent belief that the very cave we fear to enter holds the source of our deepest desires.

β€œThe greatest discovery of my generation is the fact that human beings can alter their lives by altering the attitudes of their mind.” β€” William James
 

Alain Delon πŸ‘€

Duncan Hannah’s 20th Century Boy got me all hot and bothered for Alain Delon and new-wave classics like La Piscine, Le Samourai and Borsalino. But it was a recent Saturday night in with Plein Soleil, a 1960 adaption of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, that will linger longest because of the headlines that filled my inbox Sunday morning. To think the handsome cad seemingly passed over to the other side as I savoured his screen debut is some kind of coincidence. The young thespian was the very definition of β€˜effortless’ and while Delon’s talents were often overshadowed by his looks, I spy true charisma behind those sparkling blue eyes.

β€œThis insanity gets to the point where β€˜Delon’ becomes a label, and you must keep being it, play it, remain and dwell in it, because the public wants it, because you want it a bit and because that’s the rule.” β€” Alain Delon
 

WEB MAX 🎢

When my bestest friend shared Meskel Flowers, an alluring Mulatu Astatke x Web Web collaboration, I quickly fell under its alluring spell. The hypnotic syncopation of the single giving my imagination over to a snake charmer luring his slithering friends up from a woven basket.  And in following my curiousity down a rabbit hole, I was held captive by Yusuf Lateef’s hauntingly beautiful Akinuba / The Heart and Brandee Younger’s delicately delectable Satori Ways. Web Web, a German-based jazz ensemble, aims to make music in the vein and spirit of nineteen-seventies recordings. Sometimes, they really do make β€˜em like they used to.
 

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.
 

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