For the kaleidoscope hearts

One you 1000 ways

Illustration by renée clarke for EV

You know when you decide that something is a good sign—like a butterfly, a heart-shaped crack in the sidewalk, or a particular time of day—and suddenly you see it everywhere? That’s what happens when I’m in conversation with an idea: I keep running right into it in things that I’m actively seeking out or accidentally stumbling upon.

Today’s Review includes 11 of those on the theme of integration, including one of my favorite poems, a genre-spanning playlist, a brand-new word and how to use it, and lots of other goodies—some that you’ve shared with me as we’ve been in conversation together over the last few weeks.

Why 11? It’s my favorite number, and I’ve got to cap this somewhere or we’ll be here until the 2028 Olympics arrive in LA.

If invitations are the introduction to our thematic party, think of this as the parting gift: except it’s more accurately a “see you soon” gift with an open bow on the top, because integration will continue to thread through our conversation as we go.

Before we begin, a big thanks to renée clarke for our integration illustration! It’s been a total delight to work with renée on bringing the letters of ECSTATIC to life in purposely reverse order, and each one feels like a gift. If you missed C for celebration, be sure to check it out.

While talking with renée about the confetti you’ll find sprinkled throughout and wondering if we should in fact refer to it as “confetti,” I discovered that the root of confetti means “to put together.” So you’re telling me that confetti, historically associated with being scattered, is actually about putting stuff together? If that doesn’t speak to a gathering in of kaleidoscopic proportions, I don’t know what does.

As I enthusiastically wrote to renée: “Words!!! Words are magic.”

1.

I like to kick things off with a poem whenever I can, and I found myself returning to one of my favorites this month: “Poem Number Two on Bell’s Theorem, or The New Physicality of Long Distance Love” by June Jordan. The poem has just three more words than its title:

There is no chance that we will fall apart
There is no chance
There are no parts.

Bell’s Theorem makes a case for non-locality, which is a physics way of saying that objects in space that are light-years apart can still affect one another in real time. Jordan’s poem has always felt to me like a beautiful case for collective wholeness.

2.

I looked at a lot of kaleidoscopic books and imagery this month with the help of Meaghan Mein, who you might recall curated the first-ever playlist for the Review. One of my favorite references that Meaghan found is Kaléidoscope: Ornements Abstraits, a 1920s gem full of vibrant textile designs in the style of Art Deco.

I shared a few over on Notes:

3.

My friend Jonathan sent me the following exchange from a Fresh Air interview with the multidisciplinary writer Paul Auster. To bring it back to Nora and quote You’ve Got Mail: “Just read it. I know you’ll love it.”

GROSS: You seem to be someone who is just filled with stories. I mean, even your novels, they have stories within stories. So it’s not just one story.

AUSTER: No. They’re bouncing off of each other.

GROSS: Yeah.

AUSTER: I’m very interested in—I don't know—what you might call the magnetic field that is created by rubbing two stories against each other and the kind of sparks that are emitted and the way it can lead to reflection and questioning on the part of the reader. It’s almost what you might call the effect of collage, I think, where if you have several elements interacting with one another, something interesting is bound to happen. Some new entity is created that’s greater than the sum of the parts.

4.

I went back and listened to a conversation I had with the artist Natalie Settles on my podcast in early 2020, which is the one I referenced in “Prismatic on purpose” that began to give words to the theory I share in that piece. I really enjoyed it the second time around—Natalie speaks like no one else I’ve ever heard, and I’m struck by how she shares her perspective with equal parts ownership and generosity:

5.

I know I’m not alone in feeling the Olympics reignite my obsession with artistic swimming: The synchronicity! The power of many moving parts! The moonwalking!!!

usaartisticswimming

A post shared by @usaartisticswimming

In a video of one of Team USA’s routines last month, the commentator says:

The musicality. Every sound has a move. The coaches told them to imagine it’s their bodies making the music. If you don’t swim with your heart, then the routine won’t work.

Related: This photo by Robbie Lawrence of Simone Biles looking like a prism in motion.

sporarts

A post shared by @sporarts

6.

Despite writing about the integrative benefits of floating in a kayak, I didn’t get anywhere close to a lake while immersed in EV’s full slate of projects. Maybe I’ll figure out a way to build a floating studio in the future? In the meantime, I did get to see one of my favorite bands Lake Street Dive at the Greek in LA, which was a joyful study in something else I wrote about: the power of harmonizing.

Lake Street Dive, riffing together.

The highlight for me was getting to see Akie Bermiss play “You’re Still the One,” which I shared in “Arriving” last summer. I’ve listened to that cover countless times, but hearing it live was a whole other experience as Akie’s voice seemed to fill all of Griffith Park, including my emotional soul all the way back in Row W.

It made me think of a line from Freeing the Natural Voice by the voice teacher Kristin Linklater, which I’ve edited a bit for readability and relevance:

The sensitive sound waves of a voice can tune into and transmit thought and feeling, enveloping an audience in invisible streams of energy. The singer is on the stage and in the auditorium at the same time.

Those invisible energy streams made the visible tears stream, let me tell you.

7.

Speaking of riffing, we made up a word at EV HQ this month while talking all things scatter plots and kaleidoscopes. Meet the latest entry in the EV lexicon: scatterscope!

L: working definitions; R: origin story in the Notion comments

A couple of ideas for bringing it into conversation:

“My creative process is purposely scatterscopic, which is how I’m able to bring a lot of range and depth to my work.”

“Our brand’s evolution is reflective of a scatterscope: we tried a bunch of stuff and then began to see how it all connects.”

One of my favorite things about words is that they’re as playful as they are powerful. A portmanteau might sound like a fancy thing, but it’s really just a word sandwich. We use them all the time, e.g. “motel” (motor and hotel), “brunch” (breakfast and lunch). Portmanteau itself is a portmanteau, of “porter” (to carry) and “manteau” (a coat); in French, a portmanteau is a large suitcase.

Huge kudos to Meaghan for riffing two core EV ideas into linguistic magic. What words might you blend together in the name of creating something new?

8.

Three words: kaleidoscopic bathroom walls. I squealed when I saw this corner of Alexis Tompkins’s house, who cofounded the SF design firm Chroma:

photo by Stephen Kent Johnson for AD

9.

Next up on my watch list is “Think like a prism,” a CreativeMornings talk by Lea Redmond that was recommended by

Sarah Jutras

of Huzzah Studio in the comments of “Prismatic on purpose.” If you’re a fellow Angeleno looking to boost the hues of your LA experience, or you’re just in the mood for a visual vacation, check out Sarah’s recent piece: “Living in full color.”

10.

In the comments of “Why the term generalist falls short,” Heather Moore of Skinny laMinx shared the work of BDDW and artist Tyler Hays, who in Heather’s words, “clearly has no problem with being everything all at once.”

Naturally, I scoped out Tyler’s about page. An excerpt from his bio:

Throughout his life, Tyler has worked creatively and professionally in a wide array of mediums—painting, food, music, art, furniture, ceramics, fashion—with a through-line focus on material science and engineering. He often says the true unifying subject of his work is finding the lines between things. “The harder you look, the more similar everything becomes.” Much of the art, for Hays, is the alchemy of finding these connections.

Big kaleidoscope energy! And speaking of playing with words, I love how Tyler turned “through line” into a compound adjective. Why not?

If you want some guidance in identifying and articulating your own through lines, consider upgrading your subscription and working through the exercise available to paid subscribers in “Prismatic on purpose.” Yearly paid subscriptions are discounted through August:

11.

I kept thinking about a quote by Cate Blanchett from an old Vanity Fair interview, which I referenced in my MFA thesis many years ago:

“There are 1000 me’s.”

Sidebar: I know that apostrophe doesn’t really make grammatical sense, but “mes” didn’t really make visual sense. Me-s? Mees? Help.

ecstaticvoice

A post shared by @ecstaticvoice

Anyway, that quote spoke to me back then, as someone who very much felt like very many someones. As I dove deep on integration this month, I realized that somewhere in the process of integrating my work, and supporting people and places in doing the same, the quote lost its original resonance.

With respect to the other Cate, here’s how I’d update it:

“There’s one me, 1000 ways.”

I hope that in everything I’ve shared this month, you’ve found a few ideas to riff on and evolve into your own, in the uniquely multifaceted way that only you can.

If you’d like a soundtrack, enjoy EV’s latest collaborative curation featuring the type of diverse mix of genres that we aim for around here! The flow, one might say, is scatterscopic.

All of it,

What just happened:

• We eased in with five invitations to integration, including Just Float, Soft Focus, and Harmonize. Have they helped you feel a little more harmonious?

• I shared a three-part series called What To Say You Do When You Do It All, about exactly that: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

What’s on the way:

• Our next theme is trust, as we move backwards on purpose through the acronym of ECSTATIC. It promises to be full of intuitive logic.

• If you found this month’s series helpful, I’m teaching an upcoming workshop all about connecting the dots! I’ll be sharing more soon, but if you want to get on the list now, you can do so right here.