Sunday Souvenirs // 7

Summer has potential energy bursting at the seams. Just underneath sun-baked skin is a powerful force of nature ready to try new things, reach deeper, and savor every second of daylight.

On summer school breaks, I would make lists of all the things I wanted to do, needed to do, for it to be a Perfect Summer. Perfection is not the name of the 2020 game, but Savoring and Appreciating can be. These are difficult times, full of discomfort, grief, and anxiety. But we can do many hard things if we approach them with hope and grace. As if they were part of the dance. 

Baba Ram Dass wrote in Be Here Now, "You can do it as if it's a big weight on you, or you can do it as part of the dance." I choose the latter. 

In this part of the dance, we push hard, we sweat, we carry each other. 
We lay down in the grass, we let ourselves float on the top of the water, we lift a cup among friends and speak with our wholeness.
Other parts of the dance will look different, but right here, right now, these are the motions. And, like any huge moment in choreography, you have to commit to it fully in order to pull it off. There's no half-assing this beautiful leap into our future.

xx,
Callahan

LISTEN

Weekly Playlist No. 10 (Spotify)

Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason plays "The Swan" from Elgar's "Carnival of the Animals" (YouTube)

WATCH

Agnes Varda's "BLACK PANTHERS" film - half an hour of power (Criterion Collection)
Interview with painter and 2018 MacArthur Fellow Titus Kaphar (YouTube)
More of his work here
And you can’t talk about dance and Black art without Alvin Aliey (Nowness)

READ

What it means to "defund the police" (Washington Post)
Again, why we should defund the police (NYTimes)
There is a lot of nuance and conversation to be had (New Yorker)
But it is URGENT to save BLACK LIVES #8toAbolition steps forward

RESET

This week on the blog, we took an imaginary trip to Santorini, Greece with a special guest blogger, Nicoletta (@onequartergreek)

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