Five Bullets 2.21.25
Amalgams, Chess, Data & more.
Good morning and happy Friday friends.
This morning is cold and sunny here in New York City. Temperatures have been pretty low this week and it feels like we’re in the deepest part of winter but the sunsets are happening later and spring with warmer weather will be here soon.
This week my unfinished creative projects are swirling around in my head. It’s a constant balance of finding the time to work on them though lately I’m instinctively relaxing into working on and reading whatever I like. I’ve spent the beginning of this year reading about the Endurance rather than plugging away at projects I had planned. And that’s ok because I think it all informs other aspects of my writing, even if feels like procrastinating. (Or is this resistance Stephen Pressfield writes about?)
Those in-between projects have been making their way into my recent Notes. From drumming and music to exploring lower Manhattan (being a tourist-in-my-own-city again) and also discovering inspiring work by my fellow Substackers.
Here’s five bullets which caught my attention this week:
Art: Nick Cave’s Amalgams and Graphts exhibit features a 26-foot tall ‘amalgam’ of Cave’s body with a tree adorned by flowers, branches and birds in place of a head. Also included in the exhibit is Cave’s piece on the Rodney King beating, in which two figures lie on the floor with metallic flowers sprout from their bodies. Wall-mounted art combining embroidery, metal serving trays decorated with flowers and portraits of Cave’s face is located throughout the exhibit. The gallery is located in the former bank hall of the Clock Tower Building.
Essay: This week I’ve been thinking a lot about Jill Lepore’s essay The Data Delusion which I shared back in April 2023. Lepore asks the question: what happens when people stop looking at other forms of knowledge and instead rely on data alone? Using the clever metaphor of a filing cabinet, Lepore tracks how we moved from a “culture of numbers to a culture of data” from the technocracy movement to cold war espionage right up to our current era of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. Where are we headed? What are the dangers of our data inundation? Lepore reminds us of the inherent problems with using data and algorithms to predict human behavior.
Movie: For this month’s movie club with friends we watched Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 film The Seventh Seal. Antonius Block, a knight returning home from the Crusades, has a crisis of faith and challenges Death to a chess match. The movie’s dialogue and acting feels like a play; Bergman wrote the play Wood Painting which later became The Seventh Seal. I loved the Middle Age imagery and rhapsodies on life, death, religion and God. Bergman said the film was inspired by this church fresco of a man playing chess with Death.
Music: The other night I caught a replay of Christian McBride’s Jazz Night in America showcasing the work of jazz pianist Isaiah J. Thompson. I really enjoyed Thompson’s piece Burial Scene included in the program but unfortunately can’t locate anywhere else. Thompson’s playing evokes the sound of the classic jazz eras while pushing the music in a new direction.
New York City: Photographer Joshua Charow’s series of documenting artists in their New York City lofts continues with artist Crista Grauer. Grauer’s SoHo loft is filled with her motorized boxes, art pieces which display a moving image inside. In this series, Charow interviewed over 50 artists who still occupy downtown rent-stabilized lofts thanks to a 1982 building law.
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That’s all for this week! Thanks for reading. I really enjoy getting this newsletter out each Friday. It gives me reason to dive into my interests, learn more, and share it with you.
Have a great weekend,
Keith.