While we wait things out at home, I may as well keep track of what’s keeping me engaged, thinking, and, perhaps more urgently, fending off inevitable feelings of listlessness. Feel free to follow along.
1.) Listening to Masayoshi Takanaka — An Insatiable High (1977)
This is one of those records that I heard at just the right time and couldn’t believe how tight, over the top, and tasteful it was. The next morning, I put it on at 7am. Though Takanaka’s Spotify presence is sparse, I caught one of his tracks on a playlist from the always-on-point French producer Lewis Ofman, then started browsing his other stuff on Discogs. The Japanese guitarist’s arrangements are at once cool and energetic, 40 minutes of uninhibited escape. I never said it wasn’t occasionally a little too smooth by the way, but hey, you know what you’re signing up for here. It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole of ‘70’s Japanese funk, and this is a good place to start. Think charged-up Steely Dan-style riffs over latin percussion, just right to accompany a coastal crawl on foot or by sports car. (Or, for the time being, the distance across my apartment.) Just look at those album credits; Abe Laboriel and Chuck Rainey on separate tracks, Tower of Power handling the horns. I feel the album artwork pretty well sums up the triumphant vibe here.
2.) Re-reading The Wayfarer: A solitary canoeist meets his fate (Ben McGrath, December 14, 2015 Issue of The New Yorker )
“When I am out on the water in my canoe, I do call the shots. My time is my own, it belongs to me.”
Here we meet Dick Conant, who, one day, decided to start exploring North America’s greatest waterways by canoe on his own. It’s a tale of independence, sadness, and renewed optimism. Who among us hasn’t thought of going it alone on the open road, or water, as it were, and charming everyone we met along the way?
To me this piece is a good reminder of how, given the right surroundings and a certain sense of abandon, time and space can be totally altered—hours are replaced by thousands of paddles, familiar landscapes and faces accumulate new meaning over a whimsical-but-nonetheless-taxing journey. At one point, Conant happens upon a town he used to live in, feeling, “like Rip Van Winkle, disoriented by the different sameness of everything.”
3.) Watching Northern Disco Lights
Have you ever come across a film that seems like it was made just for you? This is what I experienced the first time I saw ‘Northern Disco Lights’ (Paper Vision Films, 2017). If you’ve read this blog before, it’s no secret that I’ve spent a lot of time listening, dancing to, and geeking out about northern European electronic music and the space disco of Todd Terje, Lindstrøm et al. This film tells the story of how and why this highly-specific genre grew out of an unlikely geography and introduces a who’s who—makeshift family tree and all—of Norwegian electronic music. It’s a bizarre and quirky world, but not one without its own dramas, and after viewing it I realized I’d only really scratched the surface—Tromsø’s influence runs deep. I’d highly recommend digging into this one then hanging on to the soundtrack.
4..) The newsletter to end all newsletters: Why Is This Interesting?
This is the only email I look forward to receiving each day. Topics range from design to public health to technology, curated by two close readers and occasional guests. The format is simple and effective: they pick a topic and give a little background, then answer the question, ‘why is this interesting?’ before providing some links to further reading. They also feature a great weekly media diet with, for lack of a better word, interesting people. The newsletter always keeps me thinking and is also a great way to find stories from outlets that are usually off my radar.
5.) When we get out of this, let’s hit the road — a random thought
Obviously, travel at present is neither smart nor possible. But that hasn’t stopped me from dreaming it. Last night I was in a Family Mart stocking up on provisions (seltzer water, Ritz crackers) when I noticed a kiosk selling plane tickets—that’s a funny thing to see these days. Anyway, what really caught my eye was a direct flight to New Delhi, which I hadn’t realized was only about 4-and-a-half hours from Saigon. (The price is right, too). How about that?