MY FAVOURITE THINGS
(Love Is) Thicker Than Water

“Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

— MICHAEL POLLAN

It’s been a whirlwind of a week, my obligations sporadically interrupted by the fun and games of moving into a cute little pad overlooking Bondi Beach with my lady. While it has brought about a lot of short-term stress for the both of us, waking up to that deep blue horizon has made it all bloody worthwhile.

Food Rules

When I was living in Romania a few years ago I saw much that left me disheartened, the cultural norms standing in stark contrast to my own. One thing that I rarely ever saw however was obesity. It was a rare occurrence to witness Bucharest civilians waddling down the sidewalk or motoring along in battery-powered chairs. For as much as Romanians vexed my better nature, their eating habits always left me impressed with the average diet modeled after their Dacian ancestors. Michael Pollan’s short and sweet manifesto on the importance of real food helped me to appreciate why the Iron Curtain was good for something after all. It helped to shed light on my struggles to hunt down a loaf of bread that hadn’t been tainted with artificial sweeteners in America. Pollan’s eighty-three commandments offer so many truths that will make the average sucker (moi) acknowledge their shortcomings. I for one am a deer in headlights for a well-executed marketing campaign and will be the first to dive into a new line of flavour-additive crisps. As Pollan makes clear there is a reason why the marketing budgets for these multi-national conglomerates stretch to infinity and beyond. They know that with the right message their latest creations will always satiate our ancestral crutches for salt and sugar. With the help of Pollan’s teachings, we can finally acknowledge these products for what they are and put them under our thumb.

Dirty Dancing

Okay, I get it. You’re sitting there thinking; ‘What on earth is this ding dong doing discussing this beloved classic?’ Well cue the eye rolls ladies and germs because I (finally) joined the Dirty Dancing club. On the final day of my weekend away with some beautiful amigos, exhausted and wrinkled from a night of debauchery and hot tub times, we decided to put on an afternoon movie. I must confess to enjoying myself. Sure, its setting and supporting cast felt a little weak at the knees and yes the campy vibes came on strong at the best of times but this flick was so much more than an off the shelf concoction. Jennifer Gray, hot off the heels of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, carries the film with a quiet strength but gets lost in some extreme shade thrown by Patrick Swayze whose likeness is purely magnetic. Watching him fill the screen with his rhythmic dancing and gyroscopic hips instantly helped me comprehend why this film refuses to disappear from the cultural conversation. It’s a landmark of an era. It made me nostalgic for a time for when such wholesome stories could and would deliver at the box office.

The Original Man

I loved this New Yorker profile on Adam Driver and his unlikely rise to the top of Tinseltown. There are so many films that have shone that much brighter with the help of the Indianan talent. Films like Inside Llewyn Davis, Lincoln, Tracks, J. Edgar and the Star Wars reboot. While the Brooklyn-based actor only makes fleeting cameos in many of these pictures, he leaves a lasting imprint on the imagination. At the age of thirty-five, Driver has now had the honour of working with the roster of directing talents the world over from Clint Eastwood to Martin Scorsese. Whenever asked to justify their fascinations in the actor, all confess to falling under the spell of his aura. What was most illuminating about the piece was tracing the origins of Driver’s early years. I was a little shocked to learn that Driver spent his early adult years wallowing in the pain and isolation of the Marines. Having signed up in the wake of 9/11, Driver was an aimless young lad who had distant dreams of taking the stage yet was unsure how to take the first step. He was filled with a burning desire to prove himself, to show that he had what it took to conquer his foes. It is this very essence that has captured the imagination of Hollywood’s gatekeepers, an inner hunger that translates so accurately to the characters he portrays. I for one am excited to see him star opposite Scarlett Johanssen in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story debuting on Netflix in December.

Catching the Big Fish

I came across this book during the move this week, a present I’d gifted my lady yet never gotten around to reading myself until now. Boy is it a gift to the world. Written by David Lynch, the iconoclastic American filmmaker and creative maelstrom, it offers a beautiful look at the power of transcendental meditation (TM) and its ability to help us truly flourish. As I approach a full year of practicing Vedic meditation, an off-shoot of Lynch’s practice, I must confess that his insights couldn’t be more spot on. In the last twelve months I’ve learned to harness my anger and frustrations, transforming that toxic energy into prescriptive choices that have allowed me to build upon my spider’s web of creativity with ever greater intricacy. As Lynch tells it, the answers we seek lie within and when we have the courage and patience to dive inside we allow ourselves to truly grow in profound new ways. A daily practice like TM helps to scatter the noise, allowing us a window into how we truly feel. By normalizing this ritual into something as necessary as showering or shaving, we come to discover our endless potential in the process. Reading this has made me want to dive back into some of Lynch’s classics, films like The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet. While these films brought my deepest fears to the surface as a teen, their transcendent message elevated my consciousness like nothing else. Catching the Big Fish is a must read. X

“The thing about meditation is: You become more and more you.” — David Lynch

Kourosh Yaghmaei: Back From The Brink

My brother from another mother Adrian Price put on this killer playlist over my birthday weekend that left me feeling good all over. As these things often happen, a voice came over the loud speakers that stunned me and left me hungry for answers. Kourosh Yaghmaei is an Iranian singer-songwriter whose music captured the voice of his generation during the early nineteen-seventies with his success spilling over to the Western world. With the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini subsequently outlawed Yaghmaei from the airwaves, a ban that carried over seventeen years. While I have no bleeding idea what he is singing about, there is something so relatable about the Persian’s inflection, the longing in his voice. After re-listening to certain tracks it became clear I wasn’t alone with certain elements of Yaghmaei’s sound having been sampled by the likes of MF Doom and Tame Impala. This interview with the Iranian George Harrison offers some fascinating insights into the musician’s backstory and passions. While he comes across as a rather irascible codger, Yaghmaei’s true essence shines through in his music. The man is a living legend.

Theodore Roosevelt

I got stuck into the pilot episode of History Vs., a new podcast series from iHeartRadio. The first season delves into the life of Theodore Roosevelt and offers up an endlessly fascinating look at the life and times of the twenty-sixth President of the United States. I’ve come across so many fascinating stories about Roosevelt in my life to date, so many of which reinforced values that mirror my own. Born into well-to-do opulence in 1858 in New York City, Roosevelt was a sickly child, afflicted with chronic asthma and other bodily ailments that troubled him well into his teens. Ignoring the sage advice of doctors to live a ‘quiet and sedentary life’, Roosevelt healed himself through strenuous exercise and weight regimes. With the help of his father, Theodore Roosevelt Sr., he turned his early struggles into an obstacle, instilling a lifelong devotion to rigorous physical exercise on his family (and then the nation). He was a lover of the outdoors and an avid conservationist, setting aside more federal land for national parks and nature preserves than all his predecessors combined. He was the original Wim Hof, a man who never backed down from a fight and made it his business to push harder and farther than anyone believed possible. Here was a man who scaled the Matterhorn, simply to prove to some snobby English climbers that a Yankee was just as capable. I’m excited to dig into the rest of the season as it unravels in the coming months. Roosevelt’s legacy has so much to teach us in this present moment and offers so many answers to our cultural quandary.

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” — Theodore Roosevelt

Thanks for tuning in.

If you like this newsletter and want to support it, forward it to someone who’d like it.

Until next time.

Xo

WRITING | @jamespillion
FILM | @jamespillionfilm