Sunday

Today's newsletter went out early, and like the heavy Sunday papers I used to carry on my paper route back in the day, today is heavier. David Brooks talks with Andrew Sullivan about his new book about transcending. The discussion is one I listened to twice, and it's one we need to continue to have. Deep discussions around health, clinical depression, and how we communicate. It is a hard to talk, but we can do hard things; today, we do some hard things. Grab an extra cup of coffee this morning; let's get started.

-

🤘We are here every day, and every minute you spend with us sends ripples of gratitude through our souls! 🤘

David Brooks has a new book out this week called How to Know a Person, and it goes into our personal conversations and how to see people and develop deeper relationships. With a new book, Brooks is on the promotional circuit and popping up in multiple places on my feed. Brooks is a long-time journalist and author; he is also a weekly commentator on the PBS News Hour, spending the last decade scratching his head as a conservative, trying to figure out what's going on. Today, I am highlighting part of a podcast Brooks was on with Andrew Sullivan, a well-known writer. I am a fan of Brooks, and that's what brought me to Sullivan's podcast. The discussion was incredible; I've listened to it twice, and in this highlight and reflection, I will only go through a few of the ideas they discussed, and I'll save the rest for future reflections.

Here are a few quotes pulled from the discussion; all of them will give you a sense of the discussion:

Talking about a book called Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High,

In any conversation:

Brooks talks about losing one of his oldest friends to suicide at 57 and walking with him as well as he could for 3 years before he died. If you have ever been clinically depressed or have known anyone who has, it is a horrific place to be. He starts this part of the conversation by talking about how all his definitions of depression were wrong. He thought about depression as sadness, but it was his fellow journalist Michael Gerson, who also suffered from clinical depression, that gave Brooks the best definition. I pulled the definition and a quote from a piece on PBS; these are Gerson's words.

Like Brooks, one of my oldest friends also died from suicide, and everything he describes in the interview with Sullivan resonates with me. I got it all wrong… I experience sadness but have never personally experienced clinical depression. After my friend died, I tried to explain it to my kids saying, we all see our reality like a movie played out in front of our eyes; the movie in front of my friend's eyes was a hallucination caused by something in his brain.

The hardest part of being on the other side of seeing a loved one suffer from this disease is how helpless you feel, in the second part of the discussion Brooks talks about how he tried to help hid friend. Often, we think we are helping and we are not. Simply put, a clinically depressed person does not lack ideas. They lack energy, and every idea we try to provide to someone going through clinical depression screams to that person, "You don't understand."

Walk with them, walk with them and their pain, don't ask questions, and if they ask questions, be mindful of your responses. Tell them you love them and are proud of them for being here, knowing how hard it is to be here. Life is hard, but you are here, you have value, and life still expects things from you.

The discussion between David Brooks and Andrew Sullivan is hard and beautiful, just like life.

5 minutes of good cheer every day. Become a Fan to get daily posts and updates.

With a little irony, let’s go from reality to better writing. In Sahil Bloom’s The Friday Five, a writing concept called Chekhov's Gun is explained by Dalton Mabery.

In short, if an element in your story isn't necessary, cut it out. Mabery describes a scene in the 90s movie The Firm, starring Tom Cruise. In the scene, a cotton truck is discussed several times in the movie for what seems to be no reason until there is a reason. Cruise jumps out a window, and if the cotton truck wasn't there, the movie would have ended earlier.

Keep that in mind when you are going through your own edits; try to find the guns you've left on the stage that you do not intend to fire.

Some people consider themselves analog; they write in notebooks; others are digital, and they type, text, and record. I am both. Unfortunately, I'm not even the good kind of both, more a mess of analog and digital. I have pages of paper I write on daily, and at the top of each page, I write…

If you read the above section on Chekhov's Gun, you might ask yourself, did he really need to tell us that? Below is a quote that I wrote down on a piece of paper, and I don't know where I read it or what prompted me to write it. I sent the quote through several searches looking for attribution, but it was not found. ChatGPT did tell it liked the quote though 😎.

Next to the quote, I wrote:

Instead of me telling you what I think that means, what do you think it means?

Another one of my heroes and almost anti-punk rock guitarists, Johnny Marr, published a new book on my favorite instrument, the guitar. I was fortunate to see a live taping of an interview Johnny did with The Guardian a couple of weeks ago, talking about the book and the history of Marr's music through various guitars. Marr plays the guitar in a way that few, if any, have ever been able to imitate. Early in the discussion with journalist John Harris, Marr discusses his early influences and style. While he appreciated hard-edge punk rock like The Pistols and The Ramones, he liked The Pretenders and Roxy Music. Marr's found that interesting melodies and unique riffs gave the sounds a feminine slant, more understated, yet unmistakable when you hear it.

Please, Please, Please... - The Dream Academy.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

-

-

🤘We are here every day, and every minute you spend with us sends ripples of gratitude through our souls! 🤘

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

5 minutes of good cheer every day. Become a Fan to get daily posts and updates.

O/X