Much More Artist Than Muse
On life drawing and perception, books and broken attention spans, writing as cognitive architecture, summer light, sad wives, and the season I wait for all year
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Once, an artist whose work I greatly admired asked me to sit for him. I wasn't sure whether it would be nude, but it never came to anything. I was either too busy, or too shy, or both. Hadn’t thought about since, until a few months ago, when I considered volunteering as a model at a local art studio for their life drawing classes, but truth be told, I’m much more artist than muse.
This week's letter is filled with many wonderful things: thoughts on treating the entire universe as a (good) algorithm; the best food pairings for nutrient absorption according to science; a new podcast I've only just discovered despite it having been around since 2024; a few things I'm shopping for the flat in celebration of my very favourite season, and so much more.
LAST TIME /at hyperreality
A Big Part of Who I Am Is Who I Am Not Anymore
Oliver Sacks on perception, digital diaries, Francine Van Hove’s nudes, parasocial intimacy, sleep, analog nostalgia, and the selves we leave behind
One of the best compliments I’ve ever received was from an editor of Martha Stewart Living, who said that I had an “unerring eye”. Today, good taste is discussed constantly – especially here on Substack – as something social, debated, performed, and endlessly theorised. But what this editor meant was a perceptual quality. An eye, not an opinion. Perhaps taste isn’t quite the right word, and all this discourse around taste is actually talking about something adjacent to the real thing. The compliment I received points to something pre-verbal: a capacity to see before you evaluate, to recognise rightness before you can articulate why. It's this eye I bring to these letters each week: a refuge from the noise, the same as it ever was.
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Below, for Paid Subscribers: if you quit social media, will you read more books?; this week’s interesting newsy bits; how to get high on your own hormones; the sad wives of AI; how to remember everything you learn, and more.