Forté #19

A few things that have inspired me lately and what I've been working on..

Hi you, in my last letter here on Substack I delved into a couple of the layers that make up my latest piece of music Gloaming, whilst talking about my new sound as a composer. Please check it out here if you haven’t already.

And now here's another fortnightly collection of things that have caught my attention:

🍃 Recently I was having a chat with a stranger and we were talking about how beautiful the cherry blossom season is in Japan, how the whole country celebrates and how she’d love to visit one day but then she became very animated about the lesser-known, but just as incredible, orange blossom in Tunisia and the traditions that surround the yearly bloom. She remembered, with a nostalgic glaze over her eyes, reaching out of her window and plucking a few petals from the trees in her garden to enjoy their powerful scent. Here’s a video of how they distill the orange blossom water which is so crucial to their culture in Tunisia.

🍃 I enjoyed this list of 100 ways to share your work + life that aren’t social media. I’ve felt there’s a big push towards moving away from social media recently, so thank you Amelia for making this! I love everything on the list, but particularly brilliant is number 81: “Write yourself a theme song”.

🍃 This self-titled record from Christina Vantzou, Michael Harrison, and John Also Bennett is a seriously gorgeous piece of ethereal ambient music. The description on Bandcamp lets you know that you’re in for a good ride before you even hit the play button: A suite of raga-inspired compositions and improvisations that grew from a fertile collaboration between Christina Vantzou, Michael Harrison and John Also Bennett centered around a devotion to just intonation tuning, deep listening, and resonant spaces. 

🍃 A wonderful project from Ben Moren that turns your browser window into a garden: drawing.garden. Actually, his website is full of wonderful projects. Like this Wave Machine synthesiser.

🍃 I’ve never actually watched the American version of The Office for more than a couple of episodes, but apparently in the season finale Andy Bernard (one of the main characters I guess?) shared this brilliant nugget of wisdom when he said:

“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about exactly this sentiment recently, so I was glad when I stumbled upon this thought—even if it did come from an unlikely source! I’ll be writing about this here on Substack soon. Here’s a speech that Ed Helms (the actor who played Andy) gave at Cornell University where he talks about this line. It starts at 22:50 if you’re not interested in watching the entire speech!

Thank you for being here, let me know what’s inspiring you recently. Hitting subscribe is always welcome and please do share with someone who might enjoy. If you'd like to support this newsletter please buy one of my albums over on Bandcamp, or consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack.

SJF