Civilization spurns the leopard
50 newsletters down
I’ve learned the sound of nestlings being fed, their mad chirping now clear in the oak trees I walk beneath. House sparrows. There are languages I didn’t know I wanted to know. I’ve learned the sound of jets over Oakland for fleet week. Something about a nest. Something about a tree scared bald so all its empty nests are exposed. Something about my neural pathways like that. Like, I’ve decided, is the cruelest word. To step out of my door and hope to see something like a life, something passably me. Like the caged canaries baba put out to sun in his Shiraz courtyard and who dropped dead, falling onto shit-covered newsprint with a thud when a cat slinked by. Researchers sent me into the MRI and said Imagine these things: home, mother, child and nothing lit on their screens. O, I asked for the smallest happiness today, a pool of water in an Oakland pothole, a single likeness to see—feathers lifting, then shaking free. Then something like a cat I became to frighten dead any hopeful thing. Some days, I am almost happy. To lose even the loss. Some days: pity this pard. Just to think of washing some dishes—mismatched and in a rust-stained sink—touching things I have spent my whole life touching—
Solmaz Sharif, “Civilization Spurns the Leopard”
This is the 50th newsletter I’ve written.
Things are different. This newsletter’s changed. I started this thinking I’d write about men’s wear. About baseball, soccer, basketball, and football. Sharing what I knew and thought about technology. And mostly, how to be a better man.
It hasn't just changed in terms of subject matter; it’s changed in tone, as the relative lightness of how things gave way to writing about the myriad horrors of this year, barely three months old. Three days into the year, war nearly broke out with Iran; three months in, we are laid low by a devastating pandemic.
How low? That’s the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, converted into a field hospital, because we simply have no hospital space left to treat people. That’s how awful things have gotten here in New York City. We’re getting to the point that the number of Americans dying from COVID-19 every day equals the number we lost on 9/11. Think of how horrific that is. Think about it!
And we’re not quite at the worst of it, let alone past it.
That horror, that grief is probably why I was so exhausted Thursday and Friday. It’s probably why I started crying quietly when John Prine’s cover of Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You” started playing on my speakers, as I devoured his songs. We lost him, and we’ve lost so many more wonderful, beautiful people who breathed their last, and we will lose so many more, and I just can’t bear the thought that soon, now, we’ll be urged to forget it all, leave it all behind, that nothing could’ve been done.
I cannot do that. Maybe you can, but I cannot.
Anyway: I hope the 75th and 100th newsletters I write are happier, because I’d love to get to that. But not right now. Now, I mourn.
It’s Easter Sunday, so it’s only appropriate that I lead off with a video featuring religious music. This is a recreation of what choral singing would’ve sounded like in the legendary Hagia Sophia. Absolutely lovely.
TIC-80 tiny computer — new-to-me fantasy computer, a free alternative to the wonderful PICO-8.
Russians recreate famous works of art in quarantine — the Getty launched a similar project last month.
Radiohead’s putting some of their classic shows on YouTube during the Pandemic. They’ll be updating weekly.
If Radiohead or religious music aren’t your jam, check out former beatboxing world champion Butterscotch explaining the 13 levels of complexity involved in beatboxing, from the simple “bass drum” to how to breathe while beatboxing to singing to emulating real instruments. She’s so good, it’s mind-blowing.
“Anybody want to hear about how a Catholic church had me, a nice Jewish kid, re-write their Passion Week play and I inadvertently got the parish hooked on 3rd century Gnostic heresies?” This thread is amazing.
Finally, Italian global music icon Andrea Bocelli gave a solo performance representing a message of love, healing and hope to Italy and the world. From the Duomo in Milan.
I love you all so much; I wish you peace and calm this coming week. Please reply if you need anything.