Well, well, well.
Since my last newsletter I’ve been busy with a mix of scheduling the next round of interviews and disconnecting at the lake.
Result: We’re ready to rock for the next season. 3 interviews scheduled for today and at least per week for the next month!
Thank you to everybody who suggested somebody, and please keep them coming.
These days I can see this show as a research project into the role Purpose plays (could play? should play?) in capitalist society. And every interview helps me understand the varieties of ways we all embrace and reject the call to Purpose.
But really, I have a few gifts for you today.
5 to be precise.
The first is a morsel from Jason Taylor, a 10kh listener and future interviewee.
Two, Three, and Four are musical pieces from live shows I saw last week.
Five is an excerpt from a book my friend Erik read in middle school, that continues to touch his life.
I call them gifts because the aim in giving them is to contribute your life. The quality of your conscious experience. Your self-understanding. Your apprehension of beauty and awareness of the incredible fragility of this one, precious moment.
ONE
From Eastern medicine practitioner Jason Taylor:
“
In my world, your definition of purpose does not apply to everyone.
Certain types of people find purpose from different sources.
As you may (or may not) know I am a five element acupuncturist. In a nutshell the five element system is a way to categorize nature based on certain correspondences or tendencies. In humans this relates to a general ‘constitution’ that certain people hang out in. A down and dirty, back of the envelope, chart based on what would drive a certain constitution to find purpose would go something like this:
Wood/Spring Constitution: curiosity and drive
Summer/Fire Constitution: creativity, joy, connection (sound like someone you know?)
Late Summer/Earth Constitution: Caring and helping others
Autumn/Metal Constitution: Big Vision, seeing both the big picture and little details, finding the gem mired in the shit
Winter/Water Constitution: Imaginative, thinking outside the box, sitting with the mystery
We all have all of these in us AND there are typically one or two that drive us to purpose and health.
“
TWO
I saw Shakti play last week in a gorgeous old theater in Seattle, and was really moved by what humans who practice for decades can do. With their fingers, their ears, and their sense of space and time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rbE1Z-ADPs
But perhaps best of all was the hug that Zakir and John shared after the concert. It’s their 50th anniversary tour. 50 years of virtuosity and friendship and travel and communion in that hug. It was a masterpiece.
THREE
As Jasmine is learning Ukulele, I was looking for a young inspiring female Ukulele player and couldn’t believe what I found. Check out this NPR tiny desk concert with Taimane and her ensemble. When we saw her perform live on Vashon Island, I couldn’t believe her humility and desire to connect personally with every member of the audience.
https://youtu.be/tXUCJKto68Q?si=4jPmWgZP7w8kzLBH
Let the dancer stir your soul.
FOUR
I can’t get enough of Lapidus and Myles. They’ve been on this show twice and I hope we can do twice more before the end of the year. A week ago they played a live show over zoom and I was brought to tears, as always.
I guess it’s no surprise that a band whose tagline is “music for people of conscience” would bring me to tears…
https://www.lapidus-myles.com/our-music/
^ ^ ^ This is the song I’m going to learn next.
Check out Swim, Swim, Swim ^ ^ ^
FIVE
From a letter at the end of “Death Be Not Proud”:
“
Today, when I see parents impatient or tired or bored with their children, I wish I could say to them, But they are alive, think of the wonder of that! They may be a care and a burden, but think, they are alive! You can touch them — what a miracle! You don’t have to hold back sudden tears when you see just a headline about the Yale-Harvard game because you know your boy will never see the Yale-Harvard game, never see the house in Paris he was born in , never bring home his girl, and you will not hand down your jewels to his bride and will have no grandchildren to play with and spoil. Your sons and daughters are alive. Think of that — not dead but alive! Exult and sing.
All parents who have lost a child will feel what I mean. Others, luckily, cannot. But I hope they will embrace them with a little added rapture and a keener awareness of joy.
I wish we had loved Johnny more when he was alive. Of course we loved Johnny very much. Johnny knew that. Everybody knew it. Loving Johnny more. What does it mean? What can it mean, now?
Parents all over the earth who lost sons in the war have felt this kind of question, and sought an answer. To me, it means loving life more, being more aware of life, of one’s fellow human beings, of the earth.
It means obliterating, in a curious but real way, the ideas of evil and hate and the enemy, and transmuting them, with the alchemy of suffering, into ideas of clarity and charity.
It means caring more and more about other people, at home and abroad, all over the earth. It means caring more about God.
“
Yours truly,
Ankur
Ankur Shah Delight: Community and Conflict 