On attention restoration
Here's an incomplete list of things that have brought me peace lately: hot-then-cold showers, cleaning out my aerogardens and reseeding the herbs and lettuce while the cherry tomatoes (see above—h8rs will say it's photoshop but it ain't!) somehow keep thriving, watching Hacks, inhaling the scent of eucalyptus, thinking about deep time, listening to a podcast or audiobook each night as I drift off to sleep, occasionally and anonymously feeding* folks in my town who haven't had the good luck I've been randomly assigned, and talking over Zoom with a writer I admire who, as I was self-flagellating over my creative tics and absurdities, said gently, "Just let your beautiful brain do what it does," which is a phrase I'll be repeating to myself and everyone around me until I am dead in the ground.
I share this because of a video I watched this week in which a man steps up in a small but impactful way for his neighborhood birds and squirrels. He does it in a manner that encapsulates who I want to be and what I want for all of us. At the end, he says, "When something brings you peace, baby, you protect it." Lately, I've been thinking a lot (and I bet you have, too) about how we protect our minds from the knife's edge of un/reality we're currently living on (something Jia Tolentino wrote about this week). I don't have all the answers. I barely have a few. Among them, though, are what I've been taught about empathy and wonder. I refuse to let go of either of those things; in fact, I think both—like cherry tomatoes, actually—have a knack for propagating themselves. Because they bring me little pockets of peace even/especially when endless screaming is understandable, I'm protecting them with everything I have. Consider this your invitation to do that, too, if you like.
On to this week's soul food sampler:
- Here's the video I mentioned. You won't regret watching it all the way—and I mean all the way—through. Protect this man at all costs.
- Here's the Wikipedia entry for attention restoration theory, which is a thing I think we could all benefit from considering these days. I've been all-in on the concepts of biophilia and intentional placemaking since forever; attention restoration and its cousin, soft fascination, feel like broader extensions of the same. I say this as a person for whom traditional meditation simply doesn't work—it just doesn't. I say this as a person who is as pissed off and tired and struggling to stanch the bleeding as any of us is. But you-know-who doesn't want us any kind of tranquil at any time of day, and something about stillness feels like power right now**.
- I wouldn't call this soft fascination since it's by definition quite loud, but there's this YouTube channel by some drumming instruction brand that sits an accomplished drummer down, plays them a wildly popular song they've managed to never hear before (e.g., a jazz drummer gets their first dose of Metallica, a pop drummer hears Rage Against the Machine for the first time, etc) and they have a choice of either: a) listening to its full studio version and then trying to replicate the drum part on their own, or b) listening to the song with the drum track taken out, then play along with it and make up their own part as they see fit. It's fun. How we just :::make music from the ether::: and level up as we go along is never not fascinating to me.
- Speaking of music, if you like the sounds of Moses Sumney and/or the sounds of Hayley Williams, guess what: they made something together and it's coming out this week.
- Let's just round this out with two more musical moments. Making dinner accompanied by this DJ set of nothing but Sadé deep cuts? I recommend it. Housecleaning and/or dancing along to this 90s r&b one? Also yes.
- Have you heard of The Loft in Minneapolis? It's a grassroots literary space with a bookstore, café, print shop, lounge area, rentable pods where writers can shut out the world and get into the zone, and more. It hosts grants, free (and occasionally ticketed) events, and an ongoing roster of writing classes, and it's also home to Milkweed Editions, the indie publisher that brought us Braiding Sweetgrass and lots of other important works. It is very, very invested in collective liberation. I visited it last year and it felt like a giant bear hug. It's a community-centered celebration of the written word and the expansion of ideas, and it's accessible to anybody who wants to stop by. What a gorgeous organizational model for the artistic community. If you'd like, you can support it here.
- Dogs forever. That is all.
*Through ATX Free Fridge, an amazing mutual aid organization I love with my whole heart.
**They can fL0Od tHe z0nE, but we can build some boats.
Go let your beautiful brain do what it does... except spin out. Don't let it do that too much. In the words of Jon Batiste: I don't know you, but I love you. (If I do know you, or ever did or ever will, of course I love you, too.)
“No more apologies for a bleeding heart when the opposite is no heart at all. Danger of losing our humanity must be met with more humanity.”
—Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard
06 May 2025
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