Check your influences. You are what you consume. Books, music, movies — how are you feeding your mind?
Yes, I’m still making a meal of Diet Coke and chips, and overindulging on 1990s television, but I’m trying to balance the junk with the gems. Here are a few of my recent (better) influences:
LISTENING: March March
Just last week The Dixie Chicks renamed their band The Chicks and released this driving song and powerful video. (And catch the protest sign: Ditch Your Racist Boyfriend — that’s excellent copywriting).
See Also: Michael Franti - This World is so F*ucked Up (But I Ain’t Never Giving Up On It)
WATCHING: The End of the Tour
I’m not sure how I missed the early 2000s fanfare for David Foster Wallace and Infinite Jest. But this movie, based on an actual weekend between a Rolling Stone reporter and Wallace, is good stuff. It’s talky and insightful, with great acting and touches of humor.
See Also: This is Water - commencement speeech
READING: Astonishments
This is a quiet book of poems by Polish poet Anna Kamienska. The second half of the collection features extracts from The Notebook, in which she shows a profound and lonely struggle with faith. Line after line pierces and shines:
“In this time of anxiety and searching, one should write something, shape something. Whatever it might be, it could lead to proposing some kind of sense and order. Any situation can become a starting point. Knowledge of life doesn’t have specific beginning and an end. It is like the earth: any point on it can become the beginning or the middle.”
TELL ME:
What’s influencing you — what moves your heart & mind?
And what are you shaping?