Five Bullets 1.17.25
David Lynch, Joan Didion, Phineas Gage & more.
Good Morning and Happy New Year!
This morning is cool and sunny here in New York City. This week I’ve been working on some fiction projects, reading a bunch, and trying to keep putting in my daily work. How are your New Year’s resolutions coming along? Have you started journaling?
Here’s five bullets which captured my attention this week:
Art: David Lynch - filmmaker, director, writer, painter, musician - an artist in every sense of the word and one of our national treasures passed away yesterday at age 78. Upon hearing the news, just to hear Lynch’s singular voice I pulled up the audiobook of his 2006 book Catching the Big Fish in which he ruminates on meditation, consciousness, art and creativity. A few of my favorite lines from the book:
Theres a safety in thinking in a diner. You can have your coffee or your milk shake and you can go off into strange dark areas, and always come back to the safety of the diner.
It’s crucial to have a setup, so that, at any given moment, when you get an idea, you have the place and the tools to make it happen.
The thing about meditation is: You become more and more you.
I love Los Angeles…The golden age of cinema is still alive there, in the smell of jasmine at night and the beautiful weather. And the light is inspiring and energizing…it fills me with the feeling that all possibilities are available.
I love dream logic; I just like the way dreams go. But I have hardly ever gotten ideas from dreams. I get more ideas from music, or from just walking around.
Books: This week I finished Joan Didion’s second novel Play It As It Lays published in 1970. While undergoing treatment in a psychiatric facility, protagonist Maria Wyeth recounts her life in Los Angeles among her morally bankrupt and substance-abusing Hollywood friends. Didion packed a lot of punch in this lean novel which reminded of Bret Easton Elis’s Less Than Zero, presumably influenced by Didion, but written about Ellis’s own generation. Didion’s descriptions of the hot, dusty Californian desert as Maria drives from place to place brought to life recent reports on the L.A. fires.
Music: My favorite band Lettuce is putting out a live album and concert film recorded back in 2018 with the Colorado Symphony. Drummer Adam Deitch said the band picked songs that would work well for their ‘vision of orchestral instrumental hip-hop’. The album will feature two previously unreleased tracks from the funk band. While listening to a recent podcast with the band and wondering when we were going to get another album, I went to my email and saw an update with the new release. Praise the funk gods!
NYC: The Gothamist’s A state of Collapse details the nearly 100 year old equipment the MTA relies on to run, operate and repair the New York City subway system. Aging electrical substations, over-used pneumatic water pumps, and actual buttons pressed by an operator every time there’s a track change are all remnants of a bygone era. This behind the scenes look reveals a very steampunk version of the subway system but also helps to understand how and why commuters have been dealing with increasing delays while state lawmakers and the MTA struggle to compromise on funding for infrastructure upgrades. In case you’re wondering, the recent congestion pricing would only serve to fund projects planned in 2019, not to overhaul the entire system.
Science: In 1848 Phineas Gage was working his railroad construction job when a 13-foot long iron tamping rod shot through his head, passed behind his left eye, damaging his prefrontal cortext and exited the top of his head, landing 80 feet away. Remarkably Gage survived and lived to tell the tale, though some said he was a completely different person after the accident. The case was the first to help scientists and researchers understand the brain’s plasticity and how certain areas of the brain function.
That’s all for this week! I really enjoy writing this newsletter. I get to explore my interests, learn more, and share it with you. Get five bullets in your inbox every Friday.
Have a great weekend,
Keith.