Walking: Through Grief, Without Headphones, Straight Into Fridges
Separate items, mind you, don't attempt all at once
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Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene on the podcast
There were a couple of themes I was interested in poking at for this week’s interview on the podcast, with Kevin Drew.
One, the idea of the inner child. It’s a concept that gets razzed a lot by small-minded people for this mistaken notion that it’s about not being mature, not moving on, being stuck in the past. And that’s not what inner child is about at all. It’s about knowing how you were built, how you were programmed, and recognizing that you still need to address that programming years later. If you were neglected or shown a kind of messed up love, that’s built into your adult construction and you need to tend to that child who grew up like that. Even if you grew up being supported in a really healthy way, you still need to recognize that, maybe be thankful, and continue to recognize the relationships and habits that formed you.
The music on Kevin’s new album Aging began as an attempt to make a children’s music album but eventually it was heavily informed by things like his mother’s physical and mental deterioration and, I think, a collaboration with his inner child when faced with something like that. This is why in the introduction, I describe his music as inner child children’s music, which is not for children at all.
The second thing was something that struck me about Kevin’s grief over his now-departed mom. I often arrive back at a question of whether intense grief is a form of madness or a higher form of sanity. Like, it sure feels like you’re going crazy when you’re in the thick of it and often some good strong counseling is very much in order. On the other hand, is the intensity of your grief just a correlation to the love you had for this person? Isn’t a feeling of crushing sadness a testament to the idea that you’re actually really freakin’ healthy that you are capable of such a force?
Anyway, yeah, okay. Here’s one of the songs from Aging:
Mental illness on the streets of Brooklyn
NPR has a report on the issues surrounding mental healthcare in New York and how it comes down to a lack of resources. People who are unwell are out on the street, sometimes harassing pedestrians, sometimes being victims of violence themselves.
MAX: Ibrahim Ayu feels let down by New York City's mental health system. He has schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. And he says he's been jailed and hospitalized many times. But Ayu says it's been difficult to get effective treatment, even in psychiatric hospitals.
IBRAHIM AYU: You're just sitting there waiting. Then somebody comes by and says, are you feeling suicidal or homicidal?
MAX: If you say no, he says, then you're released. Ayu says people often label him as mentally ill and don't want to dig any deeper into who he is. He wonders if the man in Brooklyn accused of assaulting people in his neighborhood feels the same way.
The AI-generated animated Seinfeld bot is broken
Sometimes a headline is a sentence you never would have imagined. Anyway, yeah, the bot that was always coming up with an endless, pointless Seinfeld episode is now stuck on two characters constantly trying to walk into a closed refrigerator. There’s another sentence I never expected. Video at that link. Still shot here:
Take off those headphones and just go for a walk without them
I could not imagine doing such a thing but apparently YOU should. And I should too. I just like to listen to podcasts, either my own as part of an editing effort or other people’s as a way of getting away from my own work in this narrow narrow world I live in.
Psychology Today says there are benefits to a silent/ambient walk:
When rodents were exposed to different auditory environments, the researchers noticed that silent environments increased the generation of precursor cells, which are essential for neurogenesis. These cells matured into new neurons over time, specifically after seven days of experiencing silence.
This was not the case with other auditory stimuli like white noise or even Mozart's piano music, which initially seemed to have a positive effect but didn't result in the same sustained growth of neurons.
On Sleeping with Celebrities: Negin Farsad walks us around Paris without headphones on
You will enjoy this breezy stroll.
You know what might make you all tuckered out and ready for sleep? A walking tour of Paris. And who better to provide you with a friendly and funny walkabout than Negin Farsad, the comedian/director/writer and former resident of the City of Light? Negin pays particular attention to all the outdoor options of Paris, everything from the touristy hotspots to the lesser-known local haunts, so your impending doze can be taken with lungs full of fresh (and French) air.