✮Five Brilliant Things✮
Eminem, wilderness, Elmo and pets
Hello,
I actually managed to hit five things this week - not six, not eight, but five brilliant things from me. Please share your wonderful Substack finds in the comments!
Jillian Hess on the chaotic genius of Eminem’s lyric-writing process
‘Eminem claims he has a “rhyming disease.” He explains, “In my head everything rhymes.” But he won’t remember his rhymes if he doesn’t write them down. And he’ll use any available surface to record them.’
Freya Rohn on living in a sentient landscape
‘A collective belief in honoring the land and all it may hold—visible and invisible—would look like No such thing as a pure wilderness in the whole universe. It would be more an acceptance of surrender, an awareness of weirdness, rather than wilderness.’
Roxane Gay on the cultural signals that We Are Not Okay
‘There are times when I’m going from one meeting to the next and dealing with life stuff (a technical term), and I know I have therapy later that afternoon and I want nothing more than to cancel the session. Maybe I’m sick of myself. Or I am too tired to deal with the emotional excavation good therapy demands. Or whatever.’
You know there’s a whole Substack about the pets of great artists, right? Art Dogs on Joni Mitchell
‘When she grew up, Joni started keeping cats as pets. And from her earliest days in the public eye up until now, in her eighties, you can easily find plentiful photos of Joni with one or more cats. She’s had up to four at a time, and despite the refined artistry of her lyrics, she’s often resorted to kitschy names ranging from Nietzsche, Pansy, and Muhammad Ali to Mojo, Puss ’n Boots and El Cafe.’
Take care,
Katherine
P. S. Don’t forget to pre-order your signed & dedicated UK copy of Enchantment :)
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Thank you especially for that Eminem article. Fascinating to see visually. It reminds me in a way of Emily Dickinson's handwritten edited drafts—which are fascinating to me with her visual code. It's interesting that both poets are so visual (and Eminem has said he's autistic, as Dickinson is speculated to be, although retrospective diagnosis is flawed in process, concept, and ethics, I realize).
Thank you. You make very day better!