To be better
Greetings,
Over the years, I have tried to be better. A better father. A better husband. A better friend. A better brother. A better man. I have tried to be a better version of me from the day before. It is an interesting journey because I am sure that if you asked people around me, the parts that I am working on are probably not the parts that they think need to be improved on.
Tim Ferriss’ book The 4-Hour Work Week, which I first read around 2011, changed my outlook on how to live life and what I want my life to look like. It also introduced me to the concept of ‘lifestyle design.’ For some, it didn’t seem realistic but I believe that was because they took the title literally. The Great Contemplation, which looks at the book 15 years later, within context of the global pandemic puts a lot into perspective. I am overdue a reread.
I have been wanting to read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci and finally started it a month ago. It is dense and slow read but insightful. Da Vinci was a true polymath. There are lessons to be learned from his life and his work, especially in the era we live in where the idea that ‘we go to school to learn enough to get a good job that we do till we retire and hopefully live afterwards’ is still dominant.
If you have followed this newsletter for a while, you will know I am a fan of Questlove and the podcast Questlove Supreme. I just finished listening to the episode with Shaggy, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The height of his popularity coincided with my early twenties and he forms a part of my life’s soundtrack.
The mind and hands are willing but time is not. I keep promising myself to do more writing but never seem to get round to it, with all the things that occupy my time. One of the things I enjoy writing about it music but Music writing is not easy.
Reading The Musical Legacy of Amiri Baraka, I was reminded of one of my favourite poems, Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note.
I recently did a talk on the storytelling at a business school and was struck by this quote by Elana Ferrante on Advice To Writers: “There is one form of power that has fascinated me ever since I was a girl, even though it has been widely colonized by men: the power of storytelling. Telling stories really is a kind of power, and not an insignificant one. Stories give shape to experience, sometimes by accommodating traditional literary forms, sometimes by turning them upside down, sometimes by reorganizing them. Stories draw readers into their web, and engage them by putting them to work, body and soul, so that they can transform the black thread of writing into people, ideas, feelings, actions, cities, worlds, humanity, life. Storytelling, in other words, gives us the power to bring order to the chaos of the real under our own sign, and in this it isn’t very far from political power.”
That’s it for today. If you enjoy receiving the Zebra Culture By Kojo Baffoe newsletter but are not subscribed, please do subscribe.
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I welcome comments, thoughts, etc. A big thank you to those of you who have sent me messages. I am looking to use Substack Chat a lot more this year, which I find a great tool for interaction and discussion.
And if you would like a copy of my book Listen To Your Footsteps, it is widely available online and in bookshops (primarily in South Africa but also on Barnes & Noble and Amazon) both in digital and physical form.
Easy
Kojo