Letter 31. Object Permanence
And other esoteric things we love
Hi friends,
Hello from the aftermath of a week that has already felt like a year.
Whenever the news feels overwhelming, Kopi Club has always been our creative refuge – we’ve spent the last couple of days working on a little re-brand (👀) and are incredibly excited to show you guys the updated newsletter! As always, if you’d like to stay up-to-date with the latest KC content, subscribe below!
PS: this is our last week in Singapore before we both fly back to the States (!!) Here’s another 35mm shot from Justine’s recent roll; we’ll miss our beautiful city.
J:
New Year, Same Art History Lessons
To this day, one of my favorite college courses is a basic, introductory class for the visual studies major — "Eye, Mind, Image". It was everything I imagined college to be, if college was indeed a movie from the 90s. My professors still preferred drawing on old chalkboards, and their wardrobes were composed of endless versions of brown: old leather satchels, vintage overcoats.
It was through this course that I learned about the idea of pentimenti. In drawing and painting, pentimenti are the visible traces of earlier forms that have since been worked over.
It was a break from the way I've typically been taught to think about works of art. In almost any other art history course, we analyze pieces in their final form. To see only what is on the surface. Pentimenti, however, remind us that art is anything but static. As my professor described, these markers of revision are evidence that even the greats permitted uncertainty in their art: that one is always at liberty to change their mind.
I retrace the words of an old Rilke poem: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
Though it is common to liken the new year to a blank canvas, it comes with certain implications of erasure – an absence of imperfections, of history; of human presence altogether. It obscures the fact that we approach the coming months from layers of knowledge. Instead, I've been thinking about how January's arrival feels much more symbolic of pentimenti: not the act of starting over, but of starting again. It makes the thought of embracing inevitable change feel less daunting. To know that we are not building from scratch, but from experience.
N:
Liminal Spaces
Some years feel like transition years more than others. What marks the ‘big’ transition can be a graduation from high school to college, the move from one big city to another, a new job, new relationships – or old ones revived, and accompanying fresh and evolving feelings about all of these sequences of change. A year where you know at some point your whole life will look markedly different. We call this a liminal space: a vacuum where we imagine the very worst and very best outcomes occurring simultaneously.
In Marianne Cantwell’s TED Talk, she describes ‘liminal thinking’ as an ability one can cultivate for getting better at these moments of transition and actually creating transitions when you might feel stuck. Complementary to this, Dave Gray writes about Liminality as “moments or periods of transition during which the normal limits to thought, self-understanding and behavior are relaxed, opening the way to novelty and imagination, construction and destruction.”
I’ll confess that I overthink uncertainty. Into the space between now and the future, I project fear and worry: that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I won’t be happy, and most of all, things will fall out of my control. What I want is a linear threshold, where I ascend a flight of stairs and get to the next floor, the next stage in life. But I also know that transitions are subtle and imperfect. What I really need is to take Cantwell and Grey’s advice: cultivate a habit of loosening control, and accept the liminal space – maybe even learn to embrace it.
To end, nothing strikes me as tenderly as these accompanying lines I paired together from things I read this week: Fitzgerald writes about missing parties because they served as “the little breath between the imaginary end of one thing and the imaginary beginning of another... between one day and another day very much like it, between nothing and nothing”. Murakami writes in A Kidney Shaped Stone (thanks for the rec, A, it was truly serendipitous) these few lines: “everything in the world has its reasons for doing what it does. All you can do is go with those things. As you take them in, you survive and deepen.”
So in the space between imaginary endings and imaginary beginnings, I extend a hand. Happy New Year.
J:
Companions for a rainy day
Here in Singapore, we welcomed the new year with stormy weather. When the rain first started, I joked with my family that it was the heavens trying to purge the earth of 2020’s bad mojo. It took days for the rain to dissipate - there must have been lots of mojo to clear.
Anyways, some tracks I’ve been pairing with the ambient thunder:
N:
Slow Wave
On The Train Ride Home – a playlist to romanticize your life on public transportation by Maddie Burbridge (I do this WAY too often)
R&B
Always have been and always will be obsessed with Chloe x Halle, confession I’m always listening to this song by them in the gym: Forgive Me
GIVEON: Heartbreak Anniversary
+ A sneaky joint recommendation….
Catch us on a new episode of our friend Gaby’s podcast, Gabut Pod! Besides talking about some of the history behind Kopi Club, we discuss topics like vulnerability, what we actually study in university, and even stories of how we all met.
Listen to Part A here, and Part B here!
Gabut Pod also features some other incredible voices chatting about life as a young adult: from reminiscing high school days, meeting new roommates, moving to new countries or anticipating new jobs. You can check out the rest of the episodes below!
J:
Moon Lists
My new favorite place to source journaling prompts! Last year was probably the most consistent I was with journaling, and I’ve noticed the difference it can make. Still, it’s a practice I want to improve, and Moon Lists has some of the most creative questions I’ve come across.
Rituals over Resolutions
Once again, I have to thank Nicole for recommending GNI earlier this year (reason #1000 why I love Kopi Club). In this week’s volume, CEO and founder Alisha Ramos makes a case for setting rituals instead of resolutions. I loved that idea: rather than framing a static result as the goal, focus on simple behaviors you can easily return to. Things that nourish, over things that strain.
Wow, No Thank You
The funniest book I’ve read in a while. Would highly recommend Samantha Irby’s collection of essays to those looking for a light-hearted read.
N:
Books, logic, and lyricality
This week, I wrote about my favorite books + quotes in 2020
An Excerpt!
J:
Something fitting for the new year
“For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself… But that’s not the point. The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.”
- Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
N:
On the word ‘Resolution’
“We can trace the word back to the Latin ‘resolvere’, meaning “loosen” or “release.” Now this is a metaphor, an image, that I can embrace. It suggests I am enough on day one of the new year. I don’t need to do or be more; perhaps I actually need less. I’m asking myself: What can I loosen or release?”
– Maggie Smith
J:
Underland
This year, one bad habit that I’m trying to break is finishing books before starting new ones. I started Macfarland’s Underland over the summer; when I finally finished it this week, I wanted to kick myself for pausing in the first place. Another solid recommendation for lovers of Bryson, Dillard or Ehrlich.
A few of my favorite passages:
N:
Poem of the Week: Object Permanence by Hala Alyan
PS: some notes on the new design!
Heading into the new year, we wanted Kopi Club to feel a little more grown up – to bring a newer and more refined energy into our upcoming newsletters, while still keeping the same spirit of warmth and creativity.
Logo: while we’ll miss our bold, retro-inspired logo, we kept things simple for this redesign. Our new logotype features a more modern serif, with a nod to the ol’ squiggle (~reimagined~)
Colors: inspired by the first iteration of our logo, we decided to keep the subtle green accent color along with our favorite neutral tones
“Letters”: Though nothing can truly substitute the unique charm of a handwritten letter, we wanted Kopi Club to be the next best thing – an exchange of reflections between friends
Hugs,
J & N