Welcome to the July edition of Emergency Meditations Recommends… where each month I share the books, music, and other pieces of culture that I find inspiring or challenging or useful for dancing.
Friends, does it feel like you’re being pulled away from the present moment and into a nervy, unknowable future? It’s an act of self-trust to believe that we might be well-prepared to meet the moment once it comes, and that until then we can tend the ground where we stand. I am trying not to cede my precious presence to the noisy possibilities, to enjoy what I can, for now, reach. It’s July, there is still plenty of time to make a feast from fresh tomatoes. I’m hopeful that I can take some of the lessons from the following works and try to let things grow.
The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise by Olivia Laing
The brilliant essayist and thinker Olivia Laing—who has written revelatory books about loneliness and bodies—is back with this timely, time-warping meditation on gardens. To Laing, ever expansive in her scope, gardens here mean those in Eden and in your backyard; the ones built by plantation owners or the ones tended by artists as private utopias. Between lyrical descriptions of her own budding plot, Laing uproots moments in history from Paradise Lost to fascist Italy to Derek Jarman’s shoreside sanctuary at Prospect Cottage, exploring timeless themes of growth and change. We have much to learn from gardens, Laing reveals, about cycles, creation, and cooperation.
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“…there is no mystery to any creative endeavour, save for turning up each day and knuckling down to it, hour after tedious or – but this was far rarer – joyful hour.”
- Olivia Laing
Let Go - Robert Glasper
Piano great and musical visionary Robert Glasper has the kind of ranging, genre-spanning career which has helped carve out jazz’s place in the 21st century. His fluid playing and complex compositions stick out on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, and Glasper expanded the piano’s hip-hop possibilities on his own Black Radio album series. His new full-length Let Go mostly sheds the vocal layer—save a seductive contribution from Meshell Ndegeocello on the opener “Breathing Underwater”—and tunes into a dreamy, ambient wavelength throughout. Put this on and get transported to a meditative state of surrender; blissfully, as the title instructs, let go.
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Janet Planet - dir. Annie Baker
Remember what I wrote last week about the surreal possibilities of childhood summer? This movie is the time machine that will take you back there, in all of its slow, strange glory. 11-year old Lacy (the unreasonably good Zoe Ziegler) spends the summer of 1991 with her single mother (Julianne Nicholson), watching her stumble through relationships with odd men and old friends, both figuring out who they are meant to be in the world. This is Annie Baker’s first film, but she is a deservedly renowned playwright. Unsurprisingly the world of Janet Planet includes theatrical flourishes like ferocious monologues, a political puppet show (a la Bread & Puppet), and a miniature stage-set before which Lacy stands—a director—arranging her figurines into places. Becoming who she will be.
All Friends are Necessary by Tomas Moniz
It’s not easy to write about these slippery, shifty times; to do so with warmth and grace sometimes feels impossible. So Tomas Moniz’s latest novel is a small miracle: a funny, frank novel about all kinds of love. Chino Flores, freshly grieving an unthinkable loss, is lured back to the Bay Area of the just-Before Times by an old friend. From there, Chino swims against the inevitable disasters—personal and natural—with a squad of endearing characters, each with their own distinct style of care. It’s the rare pandemic novel that makes space for the ephemeral, but essential, queer joys.
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“When I feel like nothing will change, I remind myself to trust my friends, who love me. And to listen to my heart, its constant rhythm. I remind myself of the soft, lulling tides that one day will shape everything they touch.”
- Tomas Moniz
Sometimes what we need to grow is a little shade and to be left alone. While it’s easy to get sunshine guilt or fear missing out on summer fun, I’d argue that July is a perfect month for leaning into the sadness. Get comfortable indoors and enjoy the company of these downtempo, blue-breezy songs:
Thanks for reading! I’ll be back next week with a proper Meditation. Still getting the hang of this Substack project— Does three posts a month feel good for you? What would you like to see more of? I’m hoping to include conversations with featured authors and artists soon. Let me know how you’d like to see this grow.