Happy Wednesday, friend!

You are reading The How to Live Newsletter: Your weekly guide offering insights from psychology to help you navigate life’s challenges, one Wednesday at a time.

Thank you, readers, for all your kind and generous notes last week. As regular readers know, last week I marked one year without therapy, and wrote about how I’m doing and how I’m not doing. SPOILER: not well.

I’m starting to feel a bit better, and a lot of it is thanks to you! ❤️🙏🏼

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You asked me to do more of these, and I listened!

MUSIC

Many of you are ridiculously talented, and nothing makes me happier when you share your work with me. One of my subscribers, Binnie Klein, is multi-talented, and looks equally fabulous in the many hats she wears.

When she sent me her album months before it came out, I listened to it immediately, and could not stop.

In These Trees and Tartie is a collaboration between two women who are over three decades and 10,415 miles apart.

They came together when younger Australian singer/songwriter Tartie, sent some of her tracks to writer and U.S. alternative radio show producer Binnie Klein. 

Tartie’s song, "Winter's Girl," so captivated Binnie, that in a wild leap of faith, she sent Tartie a poem she had just written.

Could it become a song?

“I’ll give it a go” was Tartie’s response and began what was to become a multi-year remote collaboration (they have yet to meet in person.)

The results of that first effort were magical and "Orchard" (link to official video, with over 400k views) was released as their first single.

More songs followed, with lyrics, melodies and demos being sent back and forth via emails and Zoom.

The 10-song album “The Quiver” is the result.

If that wasn’t enough, they made a beautiful Flipbook for the album!

Ralph Beaubrun is a French musician, dancer and choreographer. This song came to my attention when I saw a dance that I wanted to learn (see below). When I went to find it, I discovered that the song was the dance teacher’s and he’d choreographed the dance for his classes in France!

The song is called La Madame.

Enjoying this post? Please 👇

DANCE

This is a small segment of the dance.

4 years on and Anisha Thai is still my favorite dancer and her version of the viral Jerusalema Dance Challenge is still, hands down, the best.

I vowed to learn this dance in a year. That was in 2020.

Whoops.

BOOKS

My friend Leigh Newmann told me about Susie Boyt’s Loved and Missed at a dinner party in March. She said she’d been savoring it; reading it slowly, a few sentences at a time because the language was so stunning. I was sold without even knowing the story.

That recommendation, out of many over the course of knowing Leigh for 20 years, solidified her role in my life as a literary taste-maker.

This book, Susie Boyt’s eight novel, and her first published in America—an absolute shocker—is an exquisite, sonorous, glory. It’s the sort of book you read multiple times: first, to float within the language, second for story, and third, for the vast richness of both.

It’s about parenting and care, mothers and daughters, aging, and how we cope when our lives derail in ways we never imagined.

I think this book is an absolute classic. Fun fact: Susie Boyt is Sigmund Freud’s granddaughter (Lucien Freud’s daughter).

A very different book that I’m loving and will write about eventually is A Work of Art by Adam Moss.

If you’ve ever wanted to take a guided tour inside the artist’s head with the artist leading the way, this is your book.

Moss traces the the evolution of transcendent novels, paintings, jokes, movies, songs, and more. Weaving conversations with some of the most accomplished artists of our time together with the journal entries, napkin doodles, and sketches that were their tools, Moss breaks down the work—the tortuous paths and artistic decisions—that led to great art. From first glimmers to second thoughts, roads not taken, crises, breakthroughs, on to one triumphant finish after another.

Featuring: Kara Walker, Tony Kushner, Roz Chast, Michael Cunningham, Sofia Coppola, Stephen Sondheim, Louise Glück, Nico Muhly, Thomas Bartlett, Twyla Tharp, Barbara Kruger, Marie Howe, George Saunders, Suzan-Lori Parks and so many more.

WEBSITES

GUIDED MEDITATIONS & TALKS

Josh Korda and Kathy Cherry have been running Dharma Punx NYC for a LOOOONG time.

If you need to rest and restore your soul, start here.

THIS POEM

A subscriber sent me this poem last week to cheer me up, and it did.

Until next week I will remain…

And what are YOU loving right now? Let me know in the comments.