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Mister Rogers' lessons of kindness and much more! $$PLAIN_TEXT_PREVIEW$$
MY FAVOURITE THINGS |Everything’s Coming Our Way
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“Obviously he has a lesson to teach about kindness, but I think that he also has a lesson to teach about the attainment of kindness, that kindness is a practice.” — TOM JUNOD
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I’ve been working my way out of a pretty serious funk, tunneling back into my passions in pursuit of perspective. It’s an awful thing to be consumed by negative thoughts and feelings, to look at life and the world around us with cold indifference. It was as if my body and mind had been poisoned, leaving me in a state of emotional paralysis. When we’re consumed by this mindset, it’s so hard to find the exit sign or simply shake ourselves from its grasp. In fact the best thing we can do is simply surrender to the moment and hope for a speedy recovery. And while I’m grateful to be back in my happy-go-lucky mindset, this emotional speed bump has served as a sobering reminder to savour the sunshine.
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I wasn’t all that interested in watching A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the narrative re-imagining of Fred Rogers, green-lit off the highly successful documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Directed by Marielle Heller, it tackles some fascinating territory around the subject of the celebrated children’s TV personality Mister Rogers and left me feeling emotionally vulnerable in the best way. It inspired me to seek out Tom Junod’s tender-hearted Esquire article from the late nineties, on which the film is based. Junod fleshes out some fascinating ideas through the piece and helped me to appreciate the diligence and work ethic that went into shaping the man we came to know as Mister Rogers. To accept that his preternatural kindness and vulnerability didn’t come naturally to him. In fact it was something he worked at each and every day of his life, alluding to the fact that if we want to be better, we need to practice at it, to invest the time and patience with the people that test us the most.
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My sister from another mister Kelly Geddes kindly shared this incredible interview with Jay Chetty this week and helped to expand my consciousness in all the right ways. I’d never heard of Shetty but after hearing his take on the inherent mysteries of the mind and our ability to master it for good I was hooked. Shetty speaks to a powerful duality in all of us, namely the fact that we’re wired for generosity but educated for greed. This sentiment touched a nerve and helped me to understand myself and my own upbringing in a new way. As Chetty speaks to his purpose, shedding wisdom through viral pursuits, it helped me to accept him as a kindred spirit of sorts. Much like the London native, I’ve been slowly accepting my own purpose, imparting my own unique joys and fears (through this newsletter and other pursuits) to help inspire others to seek out their own. While I’m only at the start of my journey, it’s exciting to know there are special souls like Chetty helping us tap into our full potential.
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I came across this stellar LP by Ahmad Jamal earlier this week and have had it on repeat ever since. Count Em ’88, released in 1956, was recorded in the wake of meeting the legendary producer John Hammond whose blessing brought Jamal under the wing of Okeh Records. There is so much warmth and sophistication within the underlying rhythm of this album, a pulse that makes me feel right where I need to be. A debt of gratitude goes out to Nile Rodgers who turned me onto the elegant sound of this musical legend, a pioneer who had previously eluded my clutches. Every time I come across new music that elevates me, I feel a strange surge of energy run through my veins as if i’ve been born anew. For my money, this is the true power of creative expression.
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I was turned onto this GQ feature after digesting this week’s Red Hand Files newsletter in my inbox. There is something so very special about Nick Cave and the many lives he’s led through the years. From being a down and out junkie living in London and Berlin through the 1980s to publishing novels and screenplays for independent and studio flicks in the nineties and noughties. Every time I happen upon a new side of the Australian’s output it lights a fire under me. The article sheds light on his long-term friendship with Andrew Dominik — one of my cinematic heroes — that extended all the way back to 1986 after a chance meeting at their drug dealers house. That relationship led me further down the rabbit hole to this incredible conversation between Cave and Dominik for Interview Magazine a few years back and has inspired me to re-watch his 2016 documentary One More Time With Feeling.
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I’m currently hooked on this incredible mini-series in advance of chatting with Shannon Murphy next week. The Australian writer and director helmed this four-part series (available to stream on SBS on Demand) that sheds light on a headstrong young Muslim woman and her dreams of becoming a boxing coach. What makes this series all the more relevant is its stark and poignant portrayal of the Muslim community in Sydney’s western suburbs. Igal Naor and Nicole Chamoun shine bright as father and daughter, helping to cement On The Ropes as a series to be reckoned with. Murphy recently directed two key episodes of Killing Eve’s season three (they’re so much fun!) and is due to release her star-studded directorial debut Babyteeth later this year. It’s exciting to see an Australian talent tunneling into such strong female narratives and I look forward to picking her brain on all things Popcorn Therapy.
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While listening to some incredible live recordings of Miles Davis this week, my curiousity left me searching out old YouTube clips before stumbling over the trailer to this recent Sony Pictures Classics release. Renting this week, I found myself absorbed in its fragmented portrayal of Davis, a technique directly inspired by the Illinois native’s discography. Davis was a fascinating, larger-than-life personality, someone who seemingly mutated through the decades and always defined the essence of cool. Don Cheadle excels in his directorial debut, shrugging off the well-trodden road of the biopic in favour of something far more compelling. Adopting a free-jazz approach, Cheadle blends so many aspects of the composer’s life to help us better understand his expansive perspective on music and his place in its illustrious history. Watching Cheadle disappear into the title role has helped me understand just what Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg saw in him for their series Black Monday. The man is electric.
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Re-watching this early nineties classic makes one thing abundantly clear. Robert Zemeckis can do no wrong. I don’t know of any other Hollywood hitmaker that could have churned such dark and twisted material from the minds of David Koepp and Martin Donovan into a picture with such broad crossover appeal. Not to mention its bold use of visual effects which left me squealing in ecstatic horror. It’s so much fun to see the likes of Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn pushing the bounds with these outlandish characters and putting the middle finger up to Tinseltown’s unhealthy pre-occupation with youth. In the age of the Kardashians’ and Vanderpump’s, this movie was well ahead of its time and stresses the fact that youth just never gets old.
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I devoured Adam Buxton’s latest conversation with Nile Rodgers and found myself enamored by the historical portraits painted by the Harlem native. Rodgers doesn’t hesitate from airing some personal tidbits, from Rodgers mothers conceiving him at the age of thirteen (!!) to taking acid with Timothy Leary in the Hollywood Hills at age fifteen (or Thelonious Monk visiting their Greenwich Village apartment to buy a fur coat off his step-father). It’s so heartwarming to hear such a distinguished man open up with good-natured humility, to share his career highs — from working with CHIC, David Bowie, Madonna and Diana Ross — with a sense of pride. While Buxton is sincerely out of his depths on this chat, I find many of his rambles to be the audio equivalent of comfort food, his recent chat with childhood pal Louis Theroux a sweet rollicking ride.
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I stumbled over this amazing romantic comedy while perusing the rental specials on iTunes last weekend. The film features the star-studded cast of Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino portraying down and out losers at risk of falling through the cracks. While the film offers a beautiful time capsule of 1980s New York, its narrative is timeless and sheds so much light on the power of grief and heartache. Garry Marshall delivers a potent outing from the director’s chair. Coming up through television, the creator of laugh-track hits like Happy Days, Mork & Mindy and Laverne & Shirley (starring his sister Penny Marshall) would go on to direct some of the biggest romantic pictures of the eighties and nineties.
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I gained such a clearer understanding of our current moment through this enlightening conversation with Mo Gawdat on Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast series. He sheds so much light on the illusion of control and time that has been challenged in the face of COVID-19. Yet to think that we ever had any semblance of authority over these two ideas was pure lunacy. When have we ever had any preconception over how long something will last? Whether we will still have our job in a year’s time. Or whether our current relationship will blossom into a family affair. The fact that there are no end-dates to this pandemic — a given deadline when things will return to ‘normal’ — is a reminder to live in the present. To stop looking at the calendar with anxious hesitation and take care of ourselves today.
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When Kane Senes, my podcasting partner in crime, sent me news about Lynn Shelton’s sudden passing last weekend it felt like I’d been suckerpunched. It was only days earlier that I’d read a sweet little trade article on how Shelton and Marc Maron, her romantic partner, were hard at work piecing together their new project. The news made this latest episode of WTF with Marc Maron all the more unbearable. In fact it’s the hardest ten minutes I’ve ever listened to. Hearing Maron bare his soul days after losing the love of his life helped me to appreciate just how much she meant to him. What makes Shelton’s passing all the more unsettling is the fact that she was someone facing her fears, leaning into the power of love and kindness. An indomitable spirit who fought tooth and nail to bring her dreams to bear. The tragic event is a reminder to cherish what we have and to never take it for granted.
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I had a hankering for some classic rock n’ roll and Santana’s follow-up LP helped scratch that itch. While it’s been many years since I put this bad boy on from cover to cover, its charm and potency has aged like a fine wine. I had no idea that Carlos Santana was a fan of Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac and decided to cover their version of Black Magic Woman as a fitting tribute. Nor did I realize that their now famous Oye Como Va was initially conceived by Tito Puento, the Spanish Harlem crooner, in the early sixties. What makes Abraxas all the more remarkable is the fact that Santana was forever leaning into his curiousities, forgoing his pride and following his heart in the pursuit of his art. Now that’s something worth celebrating.
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