Media from my weekend, if you count Monday morning

Monday media drop? //

A 3-song mini drop by TOPS

I've spent all morning listening to this TOPS release (ahead of the album they'll drop in August). It's three songs: Falling on my Sword  / Chlorine / ICU2, and I love all three. It sounds really fucking good.  And I think it's pushing their music in a direction I'm really excited about — very Magdalena Bay. Lyrically solid. Also visually fun! They come to DC in August and they'll be at Union Stage. 

(My favorite of their previous work is I Feel Alive.)

Two songs from Heavy Metal by Cameron Winter

I don't have much to say about Love Takes Miles / Nausicaä (Love Will Be Revealed) off of Heavy Metal, Cameron Winter's solo album, mainly because I think the sound is genuinely hard to describe. Something like sweet and wavery, optimistic and encumbered, like a walk on a humid day. 

The collab of the summer

Headphones on and full volume or car speakers all the way up for The Field by Blood Orange, The Durutti Column, Tariq Al-Sabir, Caroline Polachek, and Daniel Caesar. 

An especially good episode of Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain

Listened to the new episode of Anything Goes on underestimated relationship red flags in the shower last night and fell asleep to it (sue me). I still have this reflex to defend me watching Emma Chamberlain, but I don't think I actually need to. She's brilliant and anyone who pays attention knows that she observes deeply and thinks rigorously about the design of a good life. And she and I share a lot of proclivities and inclinations in relationships and life in general, so of course I'm biased to like what she has to say. 

What stands out to me about her approach to this episode though is how she manages to deliver these things decisively while getting me to feel comfortable, related to, and crucially: not judged. She has this humility and approachability but she also doesn't seem... sad? Like, you don't pity her. Maybe it's that she demonstrates a healthy amount of self-respect. Anyway. I agree with most of the red flags she listed; I've experienced most of them myself. I'm going to listen to it again when I get into the shower! But here are the two flags that I remember from this morning's listen off the top of my head:

1. Not arguing ever: you don't know each other that well if you aren't arguing. 
2. You feel your creativity decline around this person (past the honeymoon phase). 

A video about finding motivation no matter how you feel about the political and economic state of the world

The importance of still showing up for life even when it feels like the the world is crashing out. This one is about tragic optimism, a new-to-me phrase, borrowed from Victor Frankl's essay, The Case for a Tragic Optimism. 

Another Rajiv Surendra banger

Watching Rajiv's videos feel a little like going to a therapy appointment — you know it's going to force you to reflect, and what you find there might be painful, but it ends up being so relaxing, gentle, and valuable. You end up using it to reframe the next few weeks. I knew I probably needed to watch this one on how to be your own friend at some point, and I did, and I think it played for me at just the right time. And while I don't think I need to live a life of nearly as much solitude as he does, a lot of his points stand for me.