Issue #194: You Are What You Pay Attention To

Stepping into a well-nourished and enchanted life.

💿 Lucius’s new self-titled album: Although my marriage ended, I still have fond memories of walking down the aisle to Lucius’s cover of “Right Down the Line.” They’re a band near and dear to my heart, and I’m loving their latest self-titled album, which returns to their roots with guitar-based instrumentals, harmonies, and insightful yet irreverent lyrics. In a similar vein, I’m also enjoying Blondshell’s new album, ‘If You Asked for a Picture.’

📚 Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang: Does original thought exist, or are we all just parroting each other? Huang’s latest novel, out today, navigates the ties between jealousy, creativity, and technology through the perspective of a friendship. The book shifts between timelines, with numerous twists—good for a deep and contemplative read. P.S. I’m going to try to see my friend

Chelsea Bieker

in conversation with Ling Ling tomorrow evening at Powell’s—see you there??

🎥 ‘Sinners,’ in theaters: I’m honestly not entirely sure how much I liked this movie, though the performances (particularly from Michael B. Jordan as twins and Hailee Steinfeld) and music make it worth a recommendation. Set in 1930s Mississippi, the movie centers on a superstition that music can be powerful enough to pierce the veil between the living and the dead—in this case, vampires. It’s beautiful to look at, and fun, but the pacing was off, the metaphor didn’t quite stick the landing for me, and could have been explored more deeply. What did you think??

Welcome to the May installment of ‘Plant Studies,’ the first half in a two-parter on ‘Awe + Attention’ that I am so excited for you to dive (deeply) into. x

A woman in a linen blouse pours spices into a bowl before turning her attention to a marinade. Over the next five minutes, she makes home-strained Greek yogurt, lamb bone broth, an entire chicken, roasted sweet potatoes, quiche, pickles, shrubs, and overnight oats.

The post was exactly the sort of thing that mesmerized me before I deleted Instagram from my phone three years ago. Back then, my entire feed was filled with women who got all their food prep done on Sunday, wearing blouses pulled from their capsule wardrobes in their immaculate homes. In watching those videos, I felt a similar sense of satisfaction, as if I was the one who had just filled my fridge with matching containers of food—a feeling that slipped away the moment the video ended and I found myself standing not in my kitchen, but in my office staring at my computer screen.

A tree I spotted last fall in an idyllic courtyard in Seoul that turned out to be entirely fake

Our lives are so full of substitutes that it’s easy to forget that they’re substitutes at all. Social media has largely replaced socializing, and now Meta has taken it a step further in flooding their platforms with AI bots so that actual humans have more “friends” to engage with. Toddlers’ interactions with parents are being faded out by screens. ChatGPT has taken the place of critical academic engagement. Scrolling is eclipsing the kind of boredom that begets creativity, sunrise alarm clocks replace actual sunrises, processed foods supplant whole ingredients. The list goes on and on.

They are so compelling because they feel nearly as engaging as the real thing, while being so much more convenient. Our lives are so algorithmically curated to our preferences, that we rarely need to seek out our own. Before I made this connection, and orchestrated a real shift in my own life, I felt this constant sensation of, “I’m filling my days with all the right things. Why do I still feel so empty??” It’s like we’re all eating “Khloud Popcorn” when we really crave a hot, homemade meal. This issue is all about how, and why, to make this shift away from the shallows into a deeper, well-nourished life…