wilt | the christmas spirit
"don't try to fight the feeling"
one
I went to two memorial services over the Thanksgiving holiday, one for someone in their 70s and one for someone in their 20s. Both were impossibly sad and I’ve been thinking of everyone for whom the holidays are a time of grief. I want to say more but this isn’t the venue.
I will say that I’ve had this song on repeat.
Thanks for it, B. You were a real one and I’ll miss you.
two
I just finished a book called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. One story about listening habits from the early 2000s surprised me. Apparently radio listeners didn’t like “Hey Ya!” when it first came out!
It was too different from anything anyone had heard before and listeners valued familiarity.
But music industry people, people who studied the algorithms of hit songs, insisted people should like “Hey Ya!” It had all of the ingredients of something great. All they needed to do was to help people get over the familiarity problem.
So they got radio DJs to create playlists that would sandwich sonically familiar songs — by Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Maroon 5 and the like — around plays of “Hey Ya!”
They slipped “Hey Ya!” into people’s ears like vegetables in a smoothie until people got used to hearing it. And it worked!
One of the songs they used to do that was a song that was sonically “familiar” to people around that time, but that I had no recollection of until I heard it again: “Breathe” by Blu Cantrell, ft. Sean Paul.
three
TIL the world’s population will peak in 2080 at 9-10 billion people.
four
“We all get stupid when we’re under a lot of stress.” - James Pennebaker
five
I don’t have a lot of nostalgia for Christmas. I didn’t grow up in a home that exploded with presents or lights or decorations or cookies. We went to church, came back, opened a present or two and went to bed. But I do have a ton of nostalgia for this Sesame Street song I watched on VHS on repeat as a kid. It’s about the grief of the Christmas season ending and what to do with that grief. Still get misty eyed watching it (despite the intrusive Napoleon Dynamite thoughts).
hug your people. take care of yourself for them, will ya?
love,
b
Love Joni. Love OutKast. Love to you, Bethel!