Weekly Digest #81

Good evening.

I don’t think there’s a worse discomfort in the world than not feeling like yourself. After a lifetime spent cultivating a unique sense of being, years and years dedicated to building myself, with no easily explained or identified reason as to why, suddenly nothing feels, tastes or sounds familiar anymore. 

All my life I’ve only known how to be myself and, at the same time, I now feel that I am slowly killing the idea I’ve always had of this self. 

Who am I right now? Who would I have become if only I had been allowed to do so? 

I’m tired. Many times I want to lie down right where I am. To be like a cat. To lick my wounds and heal them. As a song I love says: to fight less, live more, feel alive again and pick myself off the floor. 

There is no match for the intelligence of the body. Mine is yelling: I need to rest. I can’t rest. I’ve unlearned it. And I can’t pinpoint the problem to fix; the more I think about it, the less I like this person - the less I know this person.
But this too shall pass. So I’m waiting… sometimes it’s sooner, others it's later. Until then, I’m waiting. I’m trying to help myself first, like on an airplane. I’m putting on my own mask first. 

“If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.” - Oscar Wilde

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At the beginning of this month this newsletter completed two years of existence and I drink to that! So to celebrate this anniversary I’m bringing back a recipe that I adapted and shared with you a year ago, on Issue #49: Jam Daiquiri with a Brazilian twist.

Here’s what you’ll need:

How to:

- Put all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker with lots of ice cubes and give it a good hard shake, then strain it into a coupe or martini glass.

(If you’re like me and don't have a cocktail shaker you can put all the ingredients in any lidded glass jar you have around.)

In case you're looking for something a little lighter, pour your cocktail into a whisky glass over ice cubes and top up with a splash of soda, giving it a quick stir before tucking in. Garnish with a slice of lime, or a fresh strawberry.

Cheers!

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I feel there is no better company to a blue week than a Bob Dylan album. In my opinion, Dylan is the one who can best musicalize how it feels to be heartbroken. 

The album of the week is Nashville Skyline. A record that starts with a duo between Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash simply cannot go wrong, am I right?

Recorded in April, 1969, Nashville Skyline ended up once again subverting audience expectations as a traditional country record no one was anticipating. 

About it, Bob Dylan told Newsweek “These are the type of songs that I always felt like writing when I’ve been alone to do so. The songs reflect more of the inner me than the songs of the past.”

Click here to read 10 things you didn’t know about Dylan’s ninth studio album and here to listen to it.

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Vincent van Gogh: Hidden self-portrait discovered by X-ray

“The Dutch artist often re-used canvases to save money, turning them over and then working on the other side. (...) Experts at the gallery said it may be possible to uncover the hidden self-portrait, but that the process of removing the glue and cardboard will require delicate conservation work. Research is ongoing to work out how that can be done without harming Head of a Peasant Woman.” - from BBC. Read here.

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See ya!