mixtape no. 6: sunlight & shadows
What I've been up to, thinking about, inspired by, or obsessed with lately
Hello my friends. Sorry for being MIA, I was contemplating my place in the universe, moving into a new apartment, furnishing said apartment because we don’t own a coffee machine or a lamp or a mattress or a chair (lol), processing newly surfaced grief, staring in dismay at the state of the world, and thinking a lot about being an Online Person for 12 years now and what that means and if I like it.
For now, here’s another mixtape where I share what I’ve been reading, thinking about, inspired by, or otherwise into at this moment. We’re doing a new format this time so enjoy.
Over on the Rewilding podcast recently:
Merging Mystery and Medicine with
Strengthening Our Friendships with Danielle Bayard Jackson
Sunlight.
The warm spring sunlight on my bare skin reminds something in my animal body that this is the very star that all my ancestors and their ancestors and the ancestors of every living being on the planet that has ever lived was grown under, incubated by its life-giving heat. This electromagnetic force that summons tulips out of the cold brown earth, splits itself into rainbows, and makes all my cells buzz with delight on contact — cells that were themselves made by and for this very light, of course — is something I’ve always been charmed and grounded by, but witnessing (and feeling!) my first spring unfold in a long time has renewed this love affair with light.
Sunlight is the most powerful circadian zeitgeber, with each wavelength offering immense benefit to human health. These wavelengths are packaged together perfectly for a diurnal, circadian species such as human beings. Even better, they work synergistically. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
-Zaid K. Dahhaj
We recently moved to a small apartment downtown, and while normal people look for features like closet space or dishwashers in a place, I mostly care about the orientation of the building and its windows. It’s extremely important to me that I bear witness to a stretch of sunlight through my home at some point in the day, most days. The low orange kind that warms the walls with stretched golden bands or the white panes of broad noon sun on the floors that the dogs (and I) love to lie in.
Which reminds me, would you look at these paintings? I stumbled on them on Pinterest and I stared in awe for probably way too long but have you ever seen anything more beautiful? I could read the stories told by these simple patterns of shadow and light forever.
Responsiveness.
A couple years ago I read an essay by Sascha Chapin that low key wallpapered the inside of my brain. (I included here it in mixtape no. 2 and side note, wow we’re only now on mixtape no. 6 literally two years later? DM me for tips on consistent writing and publishing). And then a few weeks ago I read this essay by Michelle Pellizzon Lipsitz, and the fountains lit up and the chorus sang as a new neural pathway was born and it all hit me like a ton of bricks.
Since closing my professional Instagram account due to its obvious ruinous effects on our wellbeing both individually and collectively, I’ve spent most of the past 4 years feeling like I left the party where everyone’s still hanging out while I’m in the weird side alley by myself staring blankly at a blinking cursor, trying to strap my work to an uncooperative carrier pigeon, and mostly just wondering what the fuck I’m actually doing. Generally it’s been fine, albeit different, but it wasn’t until recently that I realized why it’s felt so. damn. hard. lately and why whenever I want to produce a piece of work I have to first sit down for a weeklong council with my shadows, my grievances, every piece of my personality and every last ounce of my impressive stubbornness and smother them with chloroform politely try to create anyway. It’s been … a struggle, you might say.
It’s felt so unnecessarily grueling because outside the social media party, in this quiet, one-way world of newsletters and podcasts (at least at my modest levels), there is no real responsiveness. As Sacha says, this is something humans need. And as it turns out, I am human. Who knew!
When we put something out into the world (behavior, art, a comment, anything), we need to sense that it actually makes some sort of real contact with the fabric of reality — that it is registered or acknowledged in some way, somewhere. We have to feel there is some result of our actions. And as both of these essays point out, when there’s a persistent imbalance between output and input, or effort and response, we burn out. Burnout. That’s what’s been making my usually beloved work feel like a tiresome chore lately, where I wade around in indifference with no inspiration in sight.
It's not that your inner wisdom has abandoned you — it's that the signal can't get through all the static created by exhaustion, resentment, and that peculiar empty feeling that comes from giving more than you receive.
-Michelle Pellizzon Lipsitz
So, in light of this stunningly simple but nevertheless personally groundbreaking revelation, I have been focusing more of my efforts on high-responsiveness activities right now. This mostly means IRL things: doing local work, having in-person conversations, taking on little projects that yield immediate shifts in my little world.
But this responsiveness lens has been interesting and useful far beyond work and burnout conversations.
I see this dynamic (or lack thereof) everywhere, and maybe now you will, too. I understand why people are drawn to or turned off from specific people or activities, I see the ways we try to go out and get responsiveness when we’re not experiencing it where we are (for better or worse), and I understand yet another reason why dogs are our favorite: they are extremely responsive.
Spring sensory immersion:
Human authentication.
In a world increasingly dominated by automated phone trees, self-checkouts, face filters, website chat bots, Siri/Alexa, Meta glasses (????), AI “art”, email and word doc prompts to “polish” or read or write or summarize everything, CAPTCHAs, and ChatGPT slop everywhere across the internet and my inbox, I find myself more drawn than ever to things that are evidently and honestly human.
In the face of all this poreless, soulless, robot-generated, polished, plastic AF content, I’ve found myself particularly inspired by business owners who are bucking the Instagram-era personal branding show and leaning into their unique, multifaceted humanness.
I don’t want to hear from an AI, I want to hear from the people who go and sit with the trees and wonder what the wind has to share with them, who study the patterns and whims of their bizarre human condition and try to make it into something for us out of it. I don’t care about niching down, I want to hear the weirdest, wildest stories and dreams that live in a person — I want to see the craft, the curiosity, the creative moves chosen by a being in a perishable body, not a hunk of metal and plastic running an algorithm. Show me the ache, the awkward, the mess. Show me typos, show me a forehead that wrinkles, show me work made with hands and heart.
The gym.
Just after moving into our new apartment in our new bustling little downtown area, I walked 3 blocks and joined a gym — and today I used a barbell for the first time in 6 years. Those of you who have been with me for a long time will know just how a big a deal this was, and honestly I absolutely freaking loved it. I still need to move carefully and much, much, much slower than I used to, but man alive it feels good to be back in a place where I can lift some heavyish things again! (Dumbbell workouts on a bouncing sailboat just aren’t quite the same). I forgot how much I love it, and I’m so excited to be able to (gently) get back into it. The stoke is high.
Some other things I loved:
The Green Dreamer podcast with kaméa chayne
Everything I hated about the world lived inside me by
borderless by
That’s it for today friends, thank you for reading, and I hope to be back soon.
xo
Taylor
What are you obsessed with these days? Watched or read something good that’s still stuck in your mind? I’d love to hear about it!
Taylor. Another beautifully written and highly personal set of observations of self, the world, human nature and authenticity. Sunlight--I share your love of light and its necessity in my day. The photos of light and shadow--wondrous. I am going (to try) to look up the references. Enjoy your slow gentle return to the gym and weights and appreciate it all. we are all better for learning what you are thinking about, inspired by or obsessed with. Love you. M.