Foretaste Nº 1
An occasional newsletter as a deep dive into the minds, habits, obsessions, affairs, and influences of our friends and fam.
YES! YES!
We wanted to add a chapter to the Together & Slack we have now, by sending occasional emails called 'Foretaste'. Jordi, Chris and I thought it would be nice to let every team member write one newsletter a time. A bit like WITI’s Monday Media Diet, but different. A deep dive into someone's mind, habits, obsessions, affairs, whatever he or she wants to share. Also as a place that is more open then our walled space in slack, so more people could potentially enjoy our shared headspace.
Together & Joachim [the kick-off edition]
Introduction: The Scatter Space
Over the past years I realized I just - now and then - need to step away from the things I follow, read and see, to keep a fresh eye. Dropping a bit of sand in my routine. Doing deep-dives into unknown spaces… After reading Hyper Focus by Chris Bailey I started to call these moments ‘getting into my scatter focus’, and actively collected links, books and stories saving it in a Notion page called Scatter Space to revisit often. Way back I did this with a few friends (Hugo a.o.) sharing curated mixtapes to discover new music (yes, ages before Spotify). Later Another Something started like that (unconsciously) by opening my eyes and finding new and noteworthy things from around the globe. And our Slack group rooted from that same idea too; To get more eyes on the world, more opinions, ideas, fresh minds; you.
For this newsletter we thought it would be interesting to do the same. An overview of our intake, what we’re reading, listening, thinking, seeing, feeling. A scattered image of one person at a time. We’ll use this format as a guiding principle for every upcoming newsletter. So, let’s do this.
Currently
Creative Director at Atelier Munro, just released our new imagery with Dutch actor Benja Bruining shot by Mounir Raji.
Currently reading
Just finished Le otto montagne (The Eight Mountains) by Paolo Cognetti. A beautifully written novel that brought me back to my childhood when we were visiting the alps with the family. Just like Pietro in the book, we visited the same small alp village, the same tiny farm house, the same families, the same mountains. As it is already ages since I visited the Alps I relived them all again in this beautiful book! In Annie Proulx’s words : “Few books have so accurately described the way stony heights can define one's sense of joy and rightness...an exquisite unfolding of the deep way humans may love one another”. (and while looking for a nice image of the Monte Rosa to accompany this topic I found the Monte Rosa Hütte. Planning a visit as we speak!)
On short-reads I was very inspired by this article in Real Life Mag by Megan Marz: Easy Answers. She points out the importance of not knowing. Of realizing that we can’t have all the answers, that our google searches arent an answer but a way to dumb us donw, to make us satisfied with the search result instead of showing us the imense amount of ‘not knowing’. It is all making us satisfied, not smarter. Amen to that.
Currently watching
Also just finished Unorthodox (miniseries) on Netflix. A beautifully filmed story, loosely inspired by Deborah Feldman's autobiography, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots.
And just started with Fran Lebowitz’ Pretend It’s A City and love it already! Also, read this interview with Fran in W Magazine: Anti-Wellness! YES! haha.
Currently listening
Thom Yorke’s guest mix on Radio 6 (Mixcloud link)
And yes, Madlib’s Sound Ancestors is also on repeat.
Currently eating
My favourite own recipe for vegan Banana-bread:
Ingredients: 3 bananas, 250 g flour (part oatmeal, part almond, part spelled flour)
2 tsp baking powder, 1 pinch of salt, Cinnamon / biscuit spices / vanilla, 100 gr sugar (coconut blossom sugar is most delicious for this), 4 tablespoons coconut oil
150 ml of vegetable milk (can be a bit less if you want it less sticky), 70 gr nuts, 100 gr raisins or dates, A bit of lemon juice — Optional Extras: Chocolate, Nuts, Seeds, Blueberries — 45 min in the oven (Oven on 180ºC) Enjoy!
Currently drinking
Julien Meyer’s Alsace “Nature” 2019 is my wine of choice lately. (and yes, that’s also driven by the design of the label. You know me)
Currently obsessed about
Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World. Adam Curtis’ six-part series that explores how modern society has arrived to the strange place it is today. (Thanks for sharing Lee and Chris!)
Currently distracted by
Currently trying to avoid
Metrics. Everything around us can be measured. Let’s ditch the numbers and sail on our gut feeling again. As Rory Sutherland mentioned in his book Alchemy: “When you demand logic, you pay a hidden price: You destroy magic.”
Currently frightened by
An article on Bloomberg that this pandemic can take another 7 years. At least that will generate enough food for my Dystopian Aesthetics channel on Are.na haha.
Currently transcended by
Esther Wojcicki’s TRICK rule (Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration, and Kindness) from her book How to Raise Successful People: Simple Lessons for Radical Results. Working already with it, not only at home but also at work.
Currently fulfilled with
My half marathon distance running during Sunday’s ‘snow storm’. So wild!
So far for now. Next newsletter will be send out soon, to warm up the engines and keep our focus. And hope to see you all soon IRL!
Joachim
Quick highlights from the Slacks:
Big Village by Chris
Dude, where’s my 22nd century? by Jess
What is Influence by Joachim
SlamJam’s Circle by Roel N.
Tom Kundig, Parallels between mountain climbing and architecture by Jelle
DeliverZero by Merijn
Hope you enjoyed this one - see you in Slack!
PS1. We won’t send an email every damn week, and if you really hate it, you can unsubscribe (but you will drop out the slack too :-P) So remember, the only way in is out...
PS2. There are enough bots and ghosts in our lives and we’ve always seen Together&, human and alive. If you’re a genius mind whiling to share your inspiration, we love you. With that in mind, and our upmost respect, we will keep inviting more lovely & inspiring people and letting others go, with the only aim that by doing so this Slack group will bring us all much more than the expected. Let’s do this!