Sunday Candy Issue #15
Pretty Prose, Simplicity in the Chaos, Dinner in America, Watermelon
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Hi friend,
I hope this weekend brought you plenty of rest and inspiration to carry you into this first week of October! This quote about creativity from Mary Lou Cook has been top of mind for me lately.
I like it. I agree with it. So I’m sharing it with you:
Pretty Prose: Just Kids
Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids, is a book I find myself coming back to again and again. She drops us into her world, as a young starving artist, through the use of intimate and colorful details. It's captivating. The storytelling is both gritty and vulnerable.
Her writing is also deeply poetic.
Sometimes I reread to admire my favorite paragraphs. Sometimes to remind myself what a good sentence looks and sounds like. Sometimes to witness the impact a single word can have.
Here’s one of my favorite passages. In eight sentences, Smith gives us tons to chew on. But it’s so lyrical that it must be chewed slowly and mindfully.
Every word, a morsel, that demands to be savored.
Simplicity in the Chaos
People overcomplicate everything.
You ever see someone overthink and obsess over what tool to use for literally, all the things?
As if you need the fanciest pen. Or the best journal for your Morning Pages. As if a perfect platform exists for your blog or newsletter.
In a world of endless options, it can feel like that stuff is super important, even the most important, but it’s not. It’s distracting. And let’s be real, nothing we use or do will EVER be absolutely perfect. Ever.
Cue MarcPaperScissor, an artist who “draws with scissors.”
Although no longer a collage artist, his work and process is a superb example of what embracing simplicity and imperfection can look like.
Marc’s tools were simple: paper, scissors, a glue stick, and sometimes a Sharpie.
With no preplanning, he would dive right into the chaos of paper scraps he saved and used over the years.
And through the meditative process of cutting shapes and choosing colors, he would produce perfectly imperfect compositions.
For years, he focused only on this craft. Cutting paper. Starting with basic shapes, using simple tools. And check out a couple of his results:
Kind of amazing what you can do with just a few simple tools and a whole lotta patience, concentration, and an openness to imperfection, huh?
Hear more about his collage process from the paper wizard himself, in this short 3-minute video from several years ago:
Dinner in America
I’ve heard the movie Dinner in America described as a sort of “delayed coming-of-age-story,” which feels right.
Angry punk boy starts fires. Boy runs from cops. Boy meets weird lonely girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Plus, painfully awkward white family dinners and a dead cat. You know, the usual.
If the movies Napolean Dynamite, Welcome to the Dollhouse, and SLC Punk had a baby, this would be their love child. It’s bizarre, but it works. I love it.
Here’s why: it manages to be like “I’m going to be simultaneously sooo over the top and wonky, and sometimes annoying, and then SOMEHOW I will manage to pull off these small moments of immense tenderness that will make you love and root for these two complete weirdos.”
It’s also one of those movies that I would say is absolutely not for everyone. In fact, it’s definitely probably not for you. But I think that’s important.
It embraces what it is earnestly and wholeheartedly, with zero desire to cater to everyone. And that, I think, is a beautiful thing.
May you release yourself of any impulse to be for everyone, too.
Watermelon
Alright, I’m sending you off this Sunday evening with the song Watermelon from Dinner in America. It’s living in my head rent free so I’m passing it on to you. Maybe it’ll play on loop in that big beautiful brain of yours, too.
That’s all for issue #15 of Sunday Candy!
Thanks for reading, friend.
Until next time,
Sandra
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Great edition, Sandra! Love how dynamic your ideas are and how you share them with images in different formats.
Also that paragraph you shared is amazing.
The WOP crew is in for a treat with you as an editor! :)
You really nailed it this week.
“May you release yourself of any impulse to be for everyone, too” - those words are music to the soul.
“Every word, a morsel, that demands to be savored” - what amazingly descriptive writing. More proof you were a perfect pick for the WOP editing team.