Some Reads // OCTOBER 2020
How Do We Know We're Doing It Right? by Pandora Sykes
+ Soufflé Souls
"How Do We Know We're Doing It Right?" is a collection of essays on modern life by Pandora Sykes. She covers loads of topics: authenticity, fast fashion, the internet and religion. The first essay is about *bing bing bing* you guessed correctly, wellness. Pandora speaks about the wellness industry and asks what the heck does wellness even mean? Is it health but for the wealthy? Can you be 'healthy' but not 'well'? She speaks about how diet culture has been rebranded as wellness - for example 'Weight Watchers' is no longer, but instead simply, 'WW' with the tagline 'Wellness that Works'. “We are savvier and more cynical than ever – with a meticulous eye for wrongdoing and injustice – but we are also incredibly naïve. We are desperate to believe that there is a universal cure for the incurable human condition.”
BUT ANYWAYS GUYS I am going to get straight to the bit that hit me right on the head because it’s just so true and sometimes can be oh so tough. Ok, I digress. Here’s the final paragraph of the essay:
In her 1961 essay ‘On Self-Respect’, Joan Didion writes that, ‘there is a common superstition that “self-respect” is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation.’ It strikes me that what we should be seeking is not self-care, but self-respect. Dignity and faith in ourselves which is more than skin-deep. Something that does not offer a dream catcher – a false protection against ambivalence or trouble – but that seeks a sense of peace and private reconciliation.
GOOD RIGHT?
Another bit I enjoyed was the term ‘pancake people’ (coined by Richard Foreman). Yeah doesn’t sound good does it? Richard Foreman defines it – ‘Spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.’ During lockdown this year, I found myself alone a lot of the time and I acquired quite an intense habit of needed some form of podcast on during all the ‘in-between’ moments. For a while, I was enjoying it so fully. I liked having access to different opinions and points of view. But after a while, I realised I was forgoing things I really needed, like calling a friend for a chat or finishing the book beside my bed. My brain was in this weird trance, and I’m not even sure I was even enjoying the experience anymore. I think a lot of us are like this with social media as well. PANCAKE PEOPLE. Trying so hard to get all the information we can, while simultaneously not actually ingesting any of it. So instead, I’m aiming for the term I have just coined – souffle souls – light and airy and bouncy. Let’s dip in and out of what can bring great joy to our lives, and leave the rest on the internet.
Some Reads // JULY 2020
Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid
I read Kiley’s book, Such a Fun Age a few weekends ago and then, subsequently listened to every podcast on the interweb about it. It's about a 25 year old black woman named Emira and the two white people in her life at that point, her employer and the guy she starts dating. The story is just so real. I enjoyed listening to Kiley herself talk about the complexities of the characters, and how we know people just like them in our lives. Throughout the book, I noticed my brain trying to figure out which person was “right” and which person was “wrong” until I realized that that is such a horrible way to look at a story, and just generally at people. People and evidently, characters (unless they’re in a Disney movie) aren’t that simple. It is such a captivating yet truthful story about the biases we hold, the agendas we can have and, as the podcast Nerdette puts it, “the healing power of whiteness”.
Kiley also speaks about how the novel was based in 2015, and how that was a strategic choice. It was before Trump was elected. She speaks about how having such a 2D, homophobic, racist, and just outright mean figure in office has led to a lot of progressive people getting to say “oh well I’m not like this person, and so I must be fine. I must not have these biases because I would never do these things that this person does.” She continues on, “I don’t think this is how humans operate. I think that you can be a really charming, loving person and also carry all these biases with you everyday.”
I also loved this bit Kiley added: “Alex kind of forgets that to empower other people you have to lose power a lot of the time. She’s the equivalent of ‘Oh my gosh I really love these people, how do I help them? Maybe we’ll paint a mural on their school’. It’s fun for an hour but it has no lasting effects. Do I think she’s a bad person for not having that foresight? No, but I think that bad things can happen when your foresight is so short.”
It was one of those books that I couldn’t put down and made me think a lot; about my own life and how I act with my own biases. You guys should give it a read!
Links
Nerdette: Book Club: 'Such A Fun Age'
Ctrl Alt Delete: #242 Kiley Reid:When Fiction Does What A Thinkpiece Cannot
Some Listens // JULY 2020
Podcast Reco
Pardon my French with Garance Doré
Carte Blanche: Turning a Creative Passion into a Business
Garance has a conversation with three women that are at different stages of starting and owning small businesses. I liked this conversation because of the honesty they brought to it and how they agreed to disagree on some things. Some were open about wanting their businesses to become large businesses, with flagship stores all over the world, while others said that wasn’t important to them. Some said they wanted a hand in everything that happened at their business, that they found it difficult to hire people, others were not as fussed about that.
Clare, founder of Clare V. talks about how she tells people her business started 10 years ago, but in truth it started 15 years ago. She says, “when you’re starting a creative business on your own, we don’t know if it’s really going to turn in to a business or not. We have dreams and we have aspirations, and you have the intentions that it’s going to turn into something. I never wanted to jinx myself by calling it a business too early.”
Another bit I really enjoyed was Ellen Marie Bennett, founder of Hedley & Bennett, talking about how she came up their logo:
“One thing I did about 8 months into Hedley & Bennett was I was really inspired by the Lacoste alligator, the little patch. I loved it. I loved that it was a symbol but it wasn’t a giant billboard of Abercrombie & Fitch. It was just so clean and subtle and there. It was an element but it wasn’t the thing. And so, I decided to take the ampersand and symbol from our logo and to put a little box around it and make it a patch. Like the Lacoste alligator. And I situated it right on the top, right chest pocket of the apron, so now if you see it on any TV show that we outfit - we are on most shows on the food network and things like that - you’ll see the little square patch.”
A great listen!
Link
Potatoes and Quarantine: Some Reflections
When I opened the brown bag of potatoes yesterday and they were sprouting and looking particularly sad, a bit from Nora Ephron's, Heartburn sprung to mind. It's on page 124, entitled Potatoes and Love: Some Reflections.
The first time I read it, I laughed out loud. Then I went to read it to my sister and it made her laugh out loud. True to its theme (the lead character is a food writer), it has a kind of balance that is akin to an excellently executed culinary dish.
That being said, I guess I'll just get right in there and add a quarantine twist.
Potatoes and Love Quarantine: Some Reflections
The beginning
I have friends that begin with pasta, and friends that begin with rice, but whenever I fall in love find myself in quarantine, I begin with potatoes. Sometime meat and potatoes and sometimes fish and potatoes, but always potatoes. I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love while in quarantine, and regretted most of them, but never the potatoes that went with them.
Not just any potato will do when it comes to love quarantine. There are people who go on about the virtues of plain potatoes – plain boiled new potatoes with a little parsley or dill, or plain baked potatoes with crackling skins – but my own feeling is that a taste for plain potatoes coincides with cultural antecedents I do not possess, and that in any case, the time for plain potatoes – if there is ever a time for plain potatoes – is never at the beginning of something (such as quarantine). It is also, I should add, never at the end of something. Perhaps you can get away with plain potatoes in the middle, although I have never been able to.
All right, then: I am talking about crispy potatoes. Crisp potatoes require an immense amount of labor. It’s not just the peeling, which is one of the few kitchen chores no electric device has been invented to alleviate; it’s also that the potatoes, once peeled, must be cut into whatever shape you intend them to be, put into water to be systematically prevented from turning a loathsome shade of bluish-brownish-black, and then meticulously dried to ensure that they crisp properly. All this takes time, and time, as any fool can tell you, is what true romance quarantine is about. In fact, one of the main reasons why you must make them in the beginning is that if you don’t make them in the beginning, you never will. I’m sorry to be so cynical about this, but that’s the truth.
The middle
One day the inevitable happens. I go to the potato drawer to make potatoes and discover that the little brown buggers I bought in a large sack a few weeks earlier have gotten mushy and are sprouting long and quite uninteresting vines. In addition, one of them seems to have developed an odd brown leak, and the odd brown leak appears to be the cause of a terrible odor that in only a few seconds has permeated the entire kitchen. I throw out the potatoes and look in the cupboard for a box of pasta. This is the moment the beginning ends and the middle begins.
The middle (II)
Sometimes, when a loved one has announced that he has decided to go on a low-carbohydrate, low-fat, low-salt diet (thus ruling out the possibility of potatoes, should you have been so inclined), he is signalling that the middle is ending and the end is beginning.
The end
In the end, I always want potatoes. Mashed potatoes. Nothing like mashed potatoes when you’re feeling blue. Nothing like getting into bed with a bowl of hot mashed potatoes already loaded with butter, and methodically adding a thin cold slice of butter to every forkful. The problem with mashed potatoes, though, is that they require almost as much hard work as crisp potatoes, and when you’re feeling blue the last thing you feel like is hard work. Of course, you can always get someone to make the mashed potatoes for you, but let’s face it: the reason you’re blue is that there isn’t anyone to make them for you (especially if you, like me, are quarantined alone). As a result, most people do not have nearly enough mashed potatoes in their lives, and when they do, it’s almost always at the wrong time.
For mashed potatoes: Put 1 large (or 2 small) potatoes in a large pot of salted water and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for at least 20 minutes, until tender. Drain and place the potatoes back in the pot and shake over low heat to eliminate excess moisture. Peel. Put through a potato ricer and immediately add 1 tablespoon heavy cream and as much melted butter and salt and pepper as you feel like. Eat immediately. Serves one.
Untethered Productivity
Untethered Productivity?
An unexpected thing I’ve noticed while reading these two books in tandem, is how similar a lot of the ideas are. I would not have originally thought this, just taking in their covers and their titles. The Untethered Soul was recommended to me by a yoga teacher. She is someone who mediates every morning and has “morning tea thoughts” on her instagram page (which are always very insightful and wonderful, check her out @livingroomyoga). When I first read The Untethered Soul, it completely changed the way I thought and acted around certain situations that once, would send me into a frenzy.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was passed on to me by a very successful business woman. I was slightly intimidated about opening it up when I first received it. I assumed it would be about all the things I have managed to be terrible at my whole life. Going through cycles of striving for them and then giving up because I thought maybe it just wasn’t for me. I wouldn’t have looked at that cover a year, or even a months ago, and thought, this book could help me become more myself. It’s a business-y book! But alas, the ideas throughout the two books are overlapping. They echo each other.
It’s the assumption that left and right brain people are so polar opposite that they can't leave marks on one another, they can’t feed each other with knowledge. What a strange thing to assume? Maybe that is the piece I was missing for so long during my early 20s and have been grappling with in my late 20s. To become our “best self”, we can’t just lean on the comfortable side. We must dip into sides of ourselves that we haven’t developed, we might not even know they are there at all. Hence why, they feel unnatural at the beginning.
The artist should read the books they think their accountant brother would read, and the CEO should read the books that proclaim, “spiritual awakening” and “radical healing”. The people that are way ahead of the rest of us, are already doing this! Here’s the thing that might seem quite obvious to many of you already: when your soul is untethered, you are able to be your most productive – in work and in life.