wilt | Hanif, Simon, Venus, Alex, John

"we can't see the future coming."

one

On a road trip earlier this week, I listened to this interview of Hanif Abdurraqib on Rachel Martin’s new show, Wild Card. I was really pulled into his description of making mixtapes as a kid, his reasoning for staying in his hometown and this story of his friend’s support for him during a depressive episode. I could listen to the guy talk all day.

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two

I also listened to Trevor Noah interviewing Simon Sinek about friendship. This quote stood out: “You don’t build trust by offering help; you build trust by asking for it.”

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three

I haven’t seen King Richard but this clip makes me want to.

(After watching, my husband showed me an interview of young Tiger Woods that rhymes).

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four

In the latest post of my other newsletter, Deconstructing Money, I make use of these lyrics from an Arctic Monkeys song:

You know that sinking feeling you feel when you do some online shopping, then navigate over to your cart, see that huge total…and then you hold your breath and press purchase anyway? Or that feeling you get when you’re having a great time at a fancy cocktail bar, and then you close out, and then just looking at the total suddenly sobers you up a little?

Tracking expenses would mean looking at those numbers again. It would mean revisiting those moments of reckless abandon and accounting for them.

Ignorance is bliss, huh?

Reminds me of this lyric from this Arctic Monkeys song:

“Quick let’s leave before the lights come on.
‘Cause then you don’t have to see,
‘Cause then you don’t have to see what you’ve done.”

I had never seen the music video for “Leave Before the Lights Come On” before (cw: suicidal ideation) but I found out that it rhymes with Baby Reindeer.

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five

Young adult author and YouTuber John Green has been doing a lot of activism around tuberculosis. He shared this incredible story out of 1950s Alaska to illustrate how seemingly intractable problems can be fixed on timelines that don’t seem realistic:

Tuberculosis was an absolute scourge in Alaska and there was no indication that things could ever get better. Like, I often think about this 1941 history of tuberculosis written in really flowery prose where the author is like:
‘The El Dorado of cures seems still far in the distance.’

But in fact the El Dorado of cure was only like nine years away!

We can’t see the future coming.

We can’t see the ways we’re going to work together to make the world better for each other.

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Playlist: wilt | sep ‘24

^ includes a cover of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” that I think is better than the original!

‘til next month -

b