I've started a new Newsletter for 2023 - every Friday I'll share five quality pieces of culture or creative I'm enjoying.

Question

These were my selections from this week:

A Good Book

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

Full of beautiful passages such as...

"To be an artist means: not to calculate and count; to grow and ripen like a tree which does not hurry the flow of it's sap and stands at ease in the spring gales without fearing that no summer may follow. It will come. But it comes only to those who are patient..."

A Good Person

Cumbrian man Gary McKee, ran a marathon every day of 2022 to raise money for cancer treatment. This means, over the year, he ran 9,500 miles (15,300km) equivalent to crossing the United States three times. He did this every morning at 6am, before going to work:

"I [Gary] haven’t taken any holiday this year so have used all my annual leave on running these marathons. My company has been good about allowing me to work from home a bit too, which has been great as it takes any time out of the commute and allows me to recover quicker."

Gary raised over £1million in 2022 from his daily runs 🤗 You can still donate here.

Good words

"If you can make nature and technology friends, then you can make everyone friends; you can make everyone intact. That's what women do a lot-they're the glue between a lot of things." - Bjork

Good Content

Rain Phoenix (younger sister of Joaquin and River) founded Launch Left which is a podcast and in their words: 'an alliance of left-of-center artists. A space for art and activism.' In my words, it's a space for successful and very cool artists to be off-guard and open about the things which they think would improve the world, but that most media wouldn't drive attention to.

Good Music

I love listening to contemporary piano and recently discovered the work of Stephan Moccio. After a little light stalking I found out he co-wrote Miley's "Wrecking Ball", as well as "Earned It" by the Weeknd. Stephan if you're reading this, I think we should become friends.

And in electronic music I'm enjoying "Quiver" by SILK and house legend Kerri Chandler's latest Boiler Room set.

🌻

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Happy NY everyone, hope you're feeling inspired!