IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
Jacqui Gibson writes about how New Zealand is aiming to become the world’s first dark sky nation free from light pollution.
(BBC, approx 10 mins reading time)
As the clouds cleared, Bateman unpacked and assembled her manual telescope, laid out half a dozen glass jars hand-painted red and filled with fairy lights (to subtly light our way while not obliterating our night vision) and set to work revealing the evening’s constellations. Minutes into a description of where to find the Southern Cross (first, look for a kite-shaped constellation in the Milky Way), a shooting star flew across the sky. “Oh, wonderful. Did you see that?” asked Bateman enthusiastically. “I see 10 or so shooting stars every few hours I’m out here. Lately, though, I’m seeing more and more man-made pollution like Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellite. To me, the dark skies are humankind’s last true natural wilderness. Potentially, they won’t be with us in years to come. It worries me – there’s so much to lose in the world’s obsession with space tourism and so many reasons to preserve what’s here.”
A look at the practice of willing your goals into existence, which has become very popular in the last couple of years.
(The Guardian, approx 11 mins reading time)
A life of wealth and leisure is the first thing that springs to mind to manifest, but how manageable is that? “Manifestation can be a slippery fish to work with,” says the psychotherapist Dr Denise Fournier. “In pragmatic terms, it is the practice of translating something from thought and idea into a tangible reality. It is a nuanced way of using intention to create an image of a goal you want to achieve and then cultivating discipline and actions that keep you oriented towards that goal.” This loose definition means manifestation can align with any number of life coaching and sports psychology principles, from visualisation and intention to self-control and self-belief. No wonder those of us stuck at home and faced with the uncertainty of the Covid world were attracted to its methods of self-improvement. “Life is always happening, but when you add intention the result is more likely to happen in your favour,” Fournier says.
Ian Freer writes about the composer behind some of the most famous film scores, including Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park and Star Wars, ahead of his 90th birthday.
(The Guardian, approx 7 mins reading time)
The stats are impressive. A 28-film, nearly 50-year collaboration with Spielberg. Fifty-two Oscar nominations – the most for a living person and second only to Walt Disney – with five wins. Four Olympic Games fanfares. One presidential inauguration (Obama). For all his accomplishments, Williams has always been undervalued by the classical establishment. But with the children weaned on Williams now old enough to be composers, musicians, critics and scholars, that is finally changing.
4. The loneliest mountaineer on Everest
An interview with German man Jost Kobusch, who is attempting to climb the world’s tallest mountain solo during winter, without supplemental oxygen.
(The New York Times, approx 10 mins reading time)
In a WhatsApp phone call from Nepal, Kobusch described the surreal solitude of the landscape. “You have to picture this: There’s only one tent in the base camp,” he said. It’s his, of course. He coughed into the phone; the frigid air — which can plummet to negative 80 degrees Fahrenheit at the summit in winter — has been tough on his lungs, he said. If he succeeds, Kobusch, 29, will etch his name into the history of climbing on Everest in a major way. Even he acknowledges it is a big “if,” but his attempt reflects the push to leave a mark on the most famous mountain in the world.
At home in Dublin, Cillian Murphy talks about his career, his role in Peaky Blinders ahead of the release of the final series, and reflects on the loss of his co-star, Helen McCrory.
(Esquire, approx 24 mins reading time)
At the centre of it all is Murphy’s character, Tommy Shelby — or “Tommy fucking Shelby” as he is occasionally, and with considerable justification, introduced — the leader of the Peaky Blinders, who wears his razor-trimmed cap, from which the gang takes its name, low over his eyes and keeps his cards close to his chest. Tommy is the moral heart of the drama or, maybe, the moral vacuum: he runs gambling rackets, he smuggles drugs, he kills in cold blood. But he also defends the oppressed, would do anything for his kids, and is deeply damaged, like so many of the men around him, from fighting in WW1: can he help it if his compass is askew? “Cillian and Tommy are almost polar opposites,” Steven Knight tells me during a phone call, “and maybe that’s how it works.” Knight likes to tell the story of how, after his audition, aware his natural mien is not exactly gangster-ish, Murphy followed up with a text reading, “Remember, I’m an actor.” “Which I never forgot,” says Knight. “And boy, what an actor.”
As the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics get underway, Michael Schuman examines how China has changed since it last hosted the games in 2008.
(The Atlantic, approx 12 mins reading time)
In hindsight, 2008 seems to have been the height of Communist China’s openness, while 2022 signals that the country’s door is closing—not entirely, but enough to make getting through it an uncomfortable squeeze. That door is being pulled shut by a Chinese leadership less trustful of and interested in integration, and pushed by foreign powers more apprehensive about China’s intentions. These Games may show that China’s rise no longer encapsulates the Olympic spirit, but endangers it.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
James Joyce’s Ulysses turned 100 years old this week. Here’s a review of the book that was published on 5 March 1922, just over a month after it was first published.
(The Guardian, approx 7 mins reading time)
He makes the painter who plumes himself on putting in the warts exceedingly foolish and outmoded, for he paints not from the outside but from the inside. Obscenity? Yes. This is undoubtedly an obscene book; but that, says Mr Joyce, is not his fault. If the thoughts of men and women are such as may be properly described as obscene then how can you show what life is unless you put in the obscenity. This may not be your view or mine, but if it is Mr Joyce’s he has no option but to fulfil his mission as a writer. If I understand him aright be sets out to depict not merely the fair show of things but the inner truth, and whether it is dubbed ugly or beautiful, or is a heart-wracking inextricable mixture and mystery of ugliness and beauty, has nothing to do with him as artist.
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