I heard the news about David Hockney yesterday from a push notification, the way we hear most things now. It was early morning in Los Angeles, the light already filtering through my bedroom window — that particular California gold that Hockney spent decades painting, that he crossed an ocean for.

I am, in some ways, an art world person — I’ve curated shows, worked art fairs, moved in those circles long enough to know I didn’t entirely belong in them. Hockney would have understood that. He once said: “I feel myself a bit on the edge of the art world, but I don’t mind. I’m just pursuing my work in a very excited way.”

His work always found me anyway, outside the white cube context, in the places art lives when it escapes the industry around it: in coffee table book reproductions, in paintings of swimming pools hanging on strangers' walls, in the iPad drawings of Yorkshire blossoms he sent to friends during lockdown — a man who couldn't stop making beauty, even at eighty, even in a pandemic.

His art has a quality I rarely encounter: it is exciting and calming at the same time. Looking at a Hockney is like stepping into a room where all the light sources have been perfectly arranged. You don’t know how he did it. You just know you want to stay.

What I love most about him has little to do with painting. It’s that he lived as though he had decided, very early on, exactly who he was — and then refused to revise that decision for anyone.

He was born in Bradford in 1937 from a working-class family, the fourth of five children. He walked into the Royal College of Art and refused to submit the required life drawing of a female model. Instead he drew a male bodybuilder and titled it Life Painting for a Diploma. The school folded. That was the blueprint. He spent the next sixty years doing things his own way. The art world had no choice but to follow.

He moved to Los Angeles in 1964 because he’d read about it in a magazine and liked the sound of the light. “I spent the first twenty years of my life in the gothic gloom of the North. Here [in Los Angeles] I felt free.“

He described his journey to California: “I remember flying in on an afternoon, and as we flew in over Los Angeles I looked down to see blue swimming pools all over.” He painted the swimming pools because they delighted him.

He came out as gay when it was still a criminal offense in Britain. He turned down a knighthood. He smoked a pack a day from age ten until the end, extinguishing cigarettes on his studio carpet. “I’ve had three doctors in the past forty years,“ he once said. “They all told me to give up smoking and now they’re all dead.”

He was also going deaf — a hereditary condition inherited from his father, worsening for decades. Most artists would mourn this privately. Hockney announced that it had sharpened his vision. “If you lose one sense, you gain other senses. I can see space clearer. I put it down to the hearing loss.”

It’s impossible to not admire that level of equanimity and persistence. For him, the glass was never half empty, it was always overflowing – with colors, with light, with expansive space. He reorganized his life around the silence and painted better than ever. He wrote that he “can paint and draw in silence for days on end.”

What makes Hockney different from most celebrated artists is that joy was his medium as much as paint. Not naïve joy — he wasn’t simple — but the specific joy of someone who has looked very hard at the world and found it, on balance, astonishing.

For him art-making was an exercise in paying attention: “Drawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer, and clearer still. The image is passing through you in a physiological way, into your brain, into your memory — where it stays — it’s transmitted by your hands.“

He moved to Normandy partly so he could eat and smoke at the same time. He spent lockdown in a French orchard sending his friends iPad drawings of spring blossoms with a note: “Do remember, they can’t cancel the spring.” The man was eighty-two years old in a global pandemic and he was dispatching color to people’s inboxes like a one-man weather service (which reminds me of David Lynch and his weather report recorded from his studio in LA during the pandemic).

“I think I’m greedy,“ he once said, “but I’m not greedy for money — I’m greedy for an exciting life. I want it to be exciting all the time, and I get it, actually. I can find excitement in raindrops falling on a puddle, and a lot of people wouldn’t. I intend to have it exciting until the day I fall over.“

He kept his word. He died yesterday in London, at eighty-eight, still creating.

The light in Los Angeles this morning was warm and bright. I noticed it the way you see things differently when someone who spent their life truly looking is suddenly gone. I think that’s the gift artists like Hockney leave behind — not just the work, but the upgraded vision. The capacity to look at a swimming pool, a Yorkshire hillside, an orchard in March, and see it as if it were the first and last time simultaneously.

I’ve decided to dedicate this week’s Present Sense edition to David Hockney, inviting you into his sensory world — with something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

In Joy,

Sabrina

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SEE

Hockney | documentary directed by Randall Wright (2014)

Available for free on Tubi (and Plex, Paramount +, Prime Video)

Hockney was constitutionally, obsessively a looker. His core thesis was that most people don’t actually see — they glance. He spent his career trying to solve the problem of how to represent what the eye actually does, which is move, scan, accumulate time. “The eye is always moving; if it isn’t moving you are dead.”

His literary passions fed directly into his visual work. His artistic journey was marked by a deep engagement with literary texts, including the poetry of C.P. Cavafy — erotic, melancholic, Greek — whose fourteen poems he illustrated in 1967 as a form of queer advocacy before queer advocacy had a name. He also drew on T.S. Eliot, the Brothers Grimm, and William Hogarth.

His early paintings incorporated his literary leanings, and he used fragments of poems and quotations from Walt Whitman in his work — literally painting the lines over the bodies of embracing figures.

HEAR

Desert Island Discs with Hockney | BBC radio program

Listen online

Hockney had synesthesia — he saw synesthetic colors in response to musical stimuli. This didn’t show up prominently in his painting or photography, but was a common underlying principle in his stage-set designs for ballet and opera.

He listened to the score of each production he was designing and then used the colors he saw in his set designs. His theatre set for Tristan und Isolde in 1987 and his Yosemite series from 2010 share a strikingly similar palette — the same internal color-sound logic threading through decades.

Then, progressively, silence took over. His deafness was hereditary, inherited from his father, worsening over 40 years; he eventually wore powerful hearing aids. His response to this loss was characteristically contrarian: “If you lose one sense, you gain other senses, and I feel I could see space clearer. I put it down to the hearing loss.“

SMELL

Cigarettes, fruit trees, and elderflower patches

The most Hockney smell is cigarette smoke — his constant companion from age ten until his death. He affirmed: “I smoke for my mental health. I think it’s good for it, and I certainly prefer its calming effects to the pharmaceutical ones.”

He relocated to Normandy partly to smoke freely — “The French know how to live. They know about pleasure.” From his LA studio, surrounded by cigarette butts he reportedly extinguished on the carpet, he once said: “I’ve had three doctors in the past 40 or so years. They all told me to give up smoking and now they’re all dead.“

The other smell: Normandy earth, seasons, the orchard. His Normandy house featured cherry, pear and apple trees, hawthorn thickets and elderflower patches — all of which became source material for paintings. Spring, for Hockney, was visceral and almost sacred.

TASTE

Langan's Brasserie | London restaurant

Eat and see Hockney paintings at Langan’s Brasserie

Hockney said: “The only real things in life are food and love, in that order.”

In Normandy, his routine included an early start to watch the sunrise, a morning’s work, followed by a four-course €13 lunch at a local café in Beuvron-en-Auge — his only meal of the day. Monastic simplicity in the service of pleasure.

Back in London, he was a fixture at Odin’s restaurant in Marylebone, where owner Peter Langan — who lived in the same building as Hockney — allowed artists to exchange artwork for meals. Hockney drew the patrons, documented the tables, paid in paintings.

Odin’s is now closed, but Langan’s Brasserie in Mayfair — Langan’s later venture — still has Hockney’s work on its walls.

TOUCH

A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney | book by art critic Martin Gayford

Available at bookshops and online

Hockney worked across nearly every tactile medium that existed, and then invented new ones. His early work included etchings, aquatints, lithographs — he paid close attention to the thickness of lines on paper, the texture expressed through drawing. Then acrylic — fast, flat, electric — for the California pools. Then oils for Yorkshire: alternating between acrylics and oils, he achieved a balance of vibrancy and texture, using oils’ slower drying time to blend and manipulate paint and create rich tactile transitions.

Then, improbably: the iPhone. Then the iPad. He leveraged the iPad’s responsiveness to pressure and movement, varying the thickness, opacity, and texture of strokes — using his thumb for broad sweeping backgrounds, his index finger for finer detail.

In the mid-1990s he returned to more tactile work, including a series of paintings of his dachshunds Stanley and Boodgie — intimate, textured, affectionate, capturing everyday moments with warmth. The dog paintings are among his most tender works.

BALANCE

David Hockney | four-part interview series with Melvyn Bragg

Available on Sky Arts

Hockney’s equilibrium was entirely structured around work. His mother was a Methodist, his father an antiwar activist — he absorbed a moral seriousness without becoming puritanical. His balance was pleasure plus purpose, always.

His Normandy routine: early rise to watch the sunrise, a morning’s work, a four-course lunch, an afternoon nap, then work into the evening.

His balance was also his stubbornness — a refusal to be told what mattered. He turned down a knighthood. “I don’t value prizes of any sort. I value my friends.”

Swimming was his physical practice. Back in London in his final years, he reportedly maintained a daily swimming routine.

And smoking — perversely — was part of his equilibrium. Not self-destruction but self-regulation. He was unapologetic: “I can honestly say that, for the last 60 years, every day I’ve done what I want to do.”

ENVISION

Secret Knowledge | book by David Hockney

Available at bookstores & online

Hockney believed most people moved through the world half-blind — glancing rather than seeing, consuming rather than noticing. His lifelong simple doctrine: art should depict beauty. “People are dismissive of the word pretty. I like pretty and I think most people do too.”

Because beneath the prettiness was something more profound: “The world is very, very beautiful, but you’ve got to look hard and closely to notice that beauty.“

When asked how he survived deafness, loss, age — his answer was disarmingly simple: “I am OK because I have that purpose in life. I can paint and draw in silence for days on end.”

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It’s a Full Moon, my monthly deep dive on a theme along with 7 sensory recommendations to further explore that topic. If you rather listen to the essay, an audio recording is included up top.

All my friends are becoming therapists.

They had other careers before that: one of them worked in wellness tech (which it turns out makes you very unwell), another was in the music industry (a field that’s almost guaranteed to give you a mental breakdown), and one is an artist (fulfilled creatively but stressed financially).

They came from various backgrounds but somehow all found themselves drawn to psychotherapy. And each one of them loves what they do: they feel engaged, fulfilled, and challenged in interesting ways.

I thought this professional reconversion was specific to my social circle: they’re people who are empathetic, good listeners, and sensitive to other people’s needs. But it turns out that it’s a more general trend – so much so that last month The New Yorker published a humorous article titled ‘What I Know About You Based on How Many of Your Friends Are Becoming Therapists.’

I can’t tell if this is a sign of people’s mental health getting worse, or if the stigma around getting support is finally being lifted. Probably both.

Some mental illnesses are linked to genetics, and others are circumstantial – often a mix of the two. But mental illness rarely lives in a silo. We tend to put the emphasis and the responsibility on individuals to heal themselves from their past traumas, but rarely do we shine a light on the larger societal issues that feed those conditions. Hypercapitalism, colonization, political marginalization, institutional racism and homophobia, and countless other issues play a crucial role in mental illness.

I remember a few years ago, my acupuncturist told me something that stayed with me ever since: “We are symptoms of a sick society.”

Indeed we are. But society would rather point the finger at the person, not realizing that three fingers are pointing back at it. It’s easier to blame someone for their addiction than to hold accountable the pharmaceutical companies profiting from it. The case of Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family — who aggressively marketed OxyContin while suppressing evidence of its addictive nature — is one of the most devastating examples of this mechanism. When corporate lobbies are in charge of health and ethical decisions, our mental (and physical) wellbeing is bound to suffer.

Nothing is black and white, and I don’t believe that “all pharma is evil.” Medicine saves lives, and it also saves minds. Many people I love have suffered from various forms of mental illness – from anxiety to depression, from bipolar disorder to OCD, from addiction to schizophrenia. For some, medicine has enabled them to remain on this earthly plane when they were in the depths of despair. Sometimes establishing a chemical equilibrium necessitates a chemical pill.

If someone is a threat to themselves or others, then medical and human intervention is often required. But what constitutes a threat has changed over time.

For hundreds of years in Western Europe, women were diagnosed with “hysteria” if they exhibited a wide array of symptoms, such as nervousness, sexual desire, insomnia, irritability and a “tendency to cause trouble for others.” Even tears and laughter could be considered indicators of female hysteria. In other words: any sign of being human.

Many women were susceptible to this diagnosis, but particularly those without children. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the recommended treatment was “marriage, and regular sexual encounters with her husband.”

It wasn’t until 1980 that hysteria was officially removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

Female hysteria isn’t the only “mental illness” that was once included in the DSM. Others include Neurasthenia (”American nervousness”), Lunacy (full moon-induced psychosis), Homosexuality, and The Vapors (misaligned humors).

Historically, our definition of “crazy” has often proven to be nothing more than natural expressions of being human — viewed through the lens of misunderstanding and judgment.

Still today, I wonder if our approach to mental health is too quick to intervene — whether through drugs or hospitalization — not because people are genuine threats, but because they are inconveniences to our rigid behavioral expectations.

In a fast-paced, production-driven society, we need people to fall in line. When someone’s behavior doesn’t fit the mold, we tend to put a label on them, hand them a prescription, and hope they’ll follow the program.

As the late philosopher Alan Watts stated:

“Whenever the therapist stands with society, he will interpret his work as adjusting the individual and coaxing his ‘unconscious drives’ into social respectability. But such ‘official psychotherapy’ lacks integrity and becomes the obedient tool of armies, bureaucracies, churches, corporations, and all agencies that require individual brainwashing. On the other hand, the therapist who is really interested in helping the individual is forced into social criticism. This does not mean that he has to engage directly in political revolution; it means that he has to help the individual in liberating himself from various forms of social conditioning, which includes liberation from hating this conditioning — hatred being a form of bondage to its object.“

This tension between individual healing and collective transformation isn’t unique to Western thought. Many Indigenous cultures hold a fundamentally different view of what we call mental illness — one that treats it not as a malfunction to be corrected, but as a signal to be interpreted.

Dr. Malidoma Patrice Somé, a West African shaman who also holds three master’s degrees and two doctorates, explains that in the shamanic view, “mental illness signals the birth of a healer.” Mental disorders are understood as spiritual emergencies — crises that, properly attended to, midwife something larger into being.

The Dagara people — an ethnic group located at the convergence of Ghana, Burkina Faso, and the Ivory Coast — regard mental illness as “good news from the other world.” The person going through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message that needs to be communicated to the community from the spirit realm.

Dr. Somé explains: “Mental disorder, behavioral disorder of all kinds, signal the fact that two obviously incompatible energies have merged into the same field.” These disturbances result when the person does not receive assistance in integrating that energy.

When Dr. Somé came to the United States in 1980 for his graduate studies, he was struck by how this country handles mental illness — the focus placed entirely on pathology, on stopping the condition rather than listening to it. For him, this represented a profound loss: “a person who is finally being aligned with a power from the other world is just being wasted.”

In his view, “the spirits are drawn to people whose senses have not been anesthetized.” But in the West, “it is the overload of the culture they’re in that is just wrecking them. The frenetic pace, the bombardment of the senses, and the violent energy that characterize Western culture can overwhelm sensitive people.”

The shamanic approach, rather than containing that energy, seeks to align it — so the person can become the healer they are meant to be.

Obviously our Western approach is so far from that Shamanic way of healing. And adopting that perspective would necessitate a profound rearrangement of deeply ingrained beliefs and scientific modalities.

But in recent years, there has been increasing openness within psychology to incorporate other modalities: psychedelics, somatic movement, music therapy, and other shamanic-adjacent tools. Mental illness is no longer automatically seen as something to be tempered and straightened out — it can sometimes mark the beginning of a deeper transformation. As psychotherapist Astrid Schmidt puts it: “Depression is not a condition or disease, but a healthy response to personal and collective trauma” — a signal, and an invitation to absorb more of our own power.

Therapy, in its various forms, is often the approach the Western world takes. Shamanic healing is the route many Indigenous traditions follow. But there is a third way — one that feels like a middle path between the two: creative expression.

I’ve heard more than once that the opposite of depression is expression. The quote is credited to Edith Eger, a Holocaust survivor and psychologist who specialized in treating post-traumatic stress disorder. She stated: “What comes out of you doesn’t make you sick; what stays in there does.”

Expression can take many forms: words, movement, and art.

If, as Dr. Somé suggests, those who are sensitive tend to develop so-called mental disorders, then artists often fall into that category. That sensitivity can be the source of their creative gift — and also the cause of their most destructive tendencies.

The “tortured artist” is almost a cliché — but also a reality. Vincent van Gogh died by suicide at 37. Camille Claudel spent the last 30 years of her life committed to a psychiatric asylum, her family’s decision, not a doctor’s. Agnes Martin checked herself into a psychiatric hospital in New York in the 1960s and later disappeared from the art world for years. And Yayoi Kusama has lived voluntarily in a Tokyo psychiatric facility since 1977 — emerging every day to walk to her studio next door to make work.

I don’t believe one needs to be mentally ill to be an artist. But I do think that if one is struggling, art can help channel those impulses. It may not heal our chemical imbalances, but it can transmute inner pain into outer form — and in doing so, make it not just bearable, but meaningful.

As Kusama herself put it: “I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art. I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live.”

For this full moon, I turn to the artists whose mental struggles manifested through their senses — the way they see, hear, smell, taste, touch, balance, and envision — and the art that came from it.

In Joy,

Sabrina

Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please reach out to a professional or contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988 (US).

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SEE

Louis Wain (1860-1939) | Painter

Watch: ‘The Electrical Life of Louis Wain’ | film directed by Will Sharpe

Read: ‘Louis Wain: The Man Who Drew Cats’ | biography by Rodney Dale

British artist Louis Wain spent his entire career painting one subject: cats. He began drawing them to comfort his young wife as she was dying of breast cancer, the family’s black and white kitten Peter her only solace. After her death, his portrayal of cats — anthropomorphic, wide-eyed, dressed in human clothes, playing cricket and attending tea parties — made him famous.

Then, in his late fifties, Wain’s behavior became erratic and paranoid, eventually violent, and he was committed to a psychiatric hospital in 1924, where he spent the rest of his life. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, though the diagnosis has since been contested.

With time, his cats changed: illustrated with fractal patterns, their bodies dissolving into kaleidoscopic geometry. He continued painting his sole feline subject until his death.

HEAR

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) | Painter

Read: ‘Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream’ | book by Sue Prideaux

‘The Scream’ (1893) is one of the most recognizable paintings of the Expressionism era. It is also one of the most thoroughly documented cases of art born directly from psychosis.

Norwegian painter Edvard Munch recorded in his diary the experience that inspired his painting:

“I was walking along the road with two friends — the sun was setting — suddenly the sky turned blood red — I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence — there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city — my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety — and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.“

Munch had received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder with psychosis. In 1908, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for an intensification of auditory hallucinations, depression, and suicidal urges.

Yet, to him his mental condition was intrinsically linked to his art. He wrote: “My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art.“

SMELL

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) | Philosopher & novelist

Read ‘The Sinner and the Saint’ by Kevin Birmingham

Fyodor Dostoevsky suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy — a condition so closely tied to his experience that neurologists now use the term “Dostoevsky’s epilepsy” to describe a variant characterized by ecstatic auras.

His seizures were often preceded by an ecstatic aura consisting of pleasant odors, lights, or other sensations. His friend Strakhov recorded his own words: “For several moments I would experience such joy as would be inconceivable in ordinary life — such joy that no one else could have any notion of. I would feel the most complete harmony in myself and in the whole world, and this feeling was so strong and sweet that for a few seconds of such bliss I would give ten or more years of my life, even my whole life perhaps.”

His experience inspired his work and he gave his condition to his fictional characters – such as Prince Myshkin in The Idiot, and to Kirillov in The Possessed.

TASTE

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) | Painter

Read: ‘Memoirs of My Life’ | autobiography by Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico’s visual language originated from illness. Starting in 1906, while studying in Athens, de Chirico wrote of “frequent intestinal troubles“ that made him “feel tired, melancholic and discouraged.”

His abdominal complaints were accompanied by unpleasant gustatory hallucinations, anxiety and fear. In his own words: “In my mouth I could taste something like phenic acid.”

He captured this hallucinatory taste experience through his paintings of oversized artichokes, Ferrarese biscuits, bananas placed in empty piazzas like monuments.

The founding moment of his entire career came directly after a bout of illness: recovering in the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence, he wrote: “I had just come out of a long and painful intestinal illness, and I was in a nearly morbid state of sensitivity. The whole world, down to the marble of the buildings and the fountains, seemed to me to be convalescent... then I had the strange impression that I was looking at all these things for the first time.“

TOUCH

Yayoi Kusama (b.1929)| Visual Artist

Read ‘Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama’

Kusama’s first hallucination was at the age ten when she saw dense fields of dots that came to life and consumed her surroundings, threatening to obliterate her. But her condition was not purely visual: her hallucinations crossed the boundary of skin — they migrated from surface into body.

She describes what happened while painting her Infinity Nets series in New York: “I would cover a canvas with nets, then continue painting them on the table, on the floor, and finally on my own body. As I repeated this process over and over again, the nets began to expand to infinity. I forgot about myself as they enveloped me, clinging to my arms and legs and clothes and filling the entire room. I woke one morning to find the nets I had painted the previous day stuck to the windows. Marveling at this, I went to touch them, and they crawled on and into the skin of my hands. My heart began racing. In the throes of a full-blown panic attack I called an ambulance.”

Her self-reported experience of touch was one of dissolution: the net pressed in, the body pressed out, and the boundary between the two was unreliable. In 1977, she admitted herself into a psychiatric facility in Tokyo, where she has lived ever since.

She describes her mental state: “I am deeply terrified by the obsessions crawling over my body, whether they come from within me or from outside. I fluctuate between feelings of reality and unreality. I, myself, delight in my obsessions.“

BALANCE

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) | Visual Artist

Read: ‘The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí’ | autobiography

Watch ‘Dalí’ | documentary directed by David Pujol

Salvador Dalí did not wait for altered states to arrive — he engineered them.

Dalí suffered from paranoia and built his entire practice around it rather than treating it as something to be managed. He called this the “paranoiac-critical method” — a self-induced state of irrational association in which the paranoid mind, freed from logic, could perceive hidden connections and double meanings invisible to rational consciousness.

To do this, he relied on hypnagogia, the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep, which is characterized by hallucinations that are fundamentally vestibular in nature: falling sensations, floating, spinning, and body-location disorientation, the sense that the physical self has become untethered from space.

Dalí devised a precise method to induce this state: he would sit in a chair holding a large metal key above a bowl on the floor. As he drifted toward sleep, his grip would loosen, the key would fall, the clatter would wake him — and he would harvest whatever images had arrived in that suspended threshold before full consciousness returned.

He would then draw from this hypnagogic imagery: melting watches crawling with ants as depicted in ‘The Persistence of Memory.’

ENVISION

Egon Schiele (1890-1918) | Painter

Read: ‘Egon Schiele: The Midnight Soul of the Artist’ | book by Reinhard Steiner

Watch: ‘Egon Schiele: Death and the Maiden’ | biopic film directed by Dieter Berner

Egon Schiele died at 28, having produced over 300 paintings – most of which are self-portraits. He would often depict multiple simultaneous selves on the same canvas. Academic research has connected this obsession to heautoscopy — the neuropsychiatric phenomenon in which a person perceives a double of their own body in external space, creating ambiguity about where the self is actually located.

The phenomenon involves illusory multisensory self-reduplication, connecting to severe conditions involving the loss of self-identity in psychiatric disorders, and to Schiele’s unprecedented double and triple self-portraiture.

Proprioception (our seventh sense) — the ability of knowing where our body is in space — is precisely what heautoscopy disrupts: the body appears to exist in two locations simultaneously.

Schiele wrote: “Bodies have their own light which they consume to live: they burn, they are not lit from the outside.”

His self-portraits are attempts at cartography. The twisted limbs, the fractured poses, the figures that seem to observe themselves from a slight displacement, are the visual record of a self that could not locate itself with certainty in a single body.

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My Seven is a guest series where friends and artists I admire share their sensory recommendations — something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION

In 2020, I started noticing a special publication at my favorite bookshops. It was a very seductive volume (both for the eye and the mind) on the Tarot, published by Taschen. It was beautifully designed, curated with incredible imagery, deeply researched and thoughtfully written.

And then more books kept appearing year after year: one on Astrology, another on Witchcraft, one dedicated to Plant Magick, another on Sacred Sites and Spirit Worlds— each one was more mesmerizing than the last and together they formed a multi-volume encyclopedia of ancient divination practices: the Library of Esoterica.

So it was a real treat to finally sit down with the mastermind behind the beautiful pages: . It turns out that Jessica and I have many many friends in common so it’s wild that it’s taken us so long to meet in person. But on a sunny morning (the only kind that exists in Los Angeles), Jessica invited me over for tea in her creative yurt (!) to discuss her sensory world; the inspiration that led her to create the Library of Esoterica; and her own creative and esoteric rituals.

First off — you can’t mention a creative yurt without showing it, so here’s a little glimpse of the space Jessica dedicates solely to her writing and creative explorations (she has a separate office for everything that pertains to emails and production). How can you not get inspired in this kind of environment?!

I asked what led her to creating the Library of Esoterica. Like any creative journey, it’s a winding path filled with synchronicities. Our whole conversation was so fascinating and I learned so much from it, that I’ve decided to share a longer form essay for today’s MY SEVEN.

First love: music writing

Jessica started her career writing about film and music and art. She was an editor at The Fader and the LA editor for Dazed & Confused. Like she says “music writing is my first love.” Beyond writing for magazines, her first book was a biography on Gram Parsons. She’s also worked as a creative director with musicians (including John Legend), directing music videos and commercials.

On working with Dennis Hopper (and the first spark with Taschen)

Jessica started working with Taschen (which later became the publisher for the Library of Esoterica) on a book of Dennis Hopper’s 1960s photographs. Originally, Jessica was supposed to complete the project in three months. She ended up spending three years with Dennis, going through his entire archives. She describes the project:

“It was an amazing experience, because he [Dennis Hopper] was someone that I had always admired and kind of like, you know, this idea of an early multi hyphenate. He was an artist, he was a director, he was an actor. He loved music. I had an amazing time on that project, and got to know Dennis and his world very well.”

Sadly, Dennis passed away six months after the book came out. Jessica has continued to work with his estate and his legacy, reissuing a film he made after ‘Easy Rider’ and also a couple of sound albums.

The Dennis Hopper book was the door opener to working with Taschen — the beginning of an on-going partnership. Jessica ended up editing several Taschen books including one on John and Yoko Ono, a Bob Dylan book, and contributing to some of their other music and film books.

The New New Age: when crystals shine the way

Jessica had always been interested in esoteric philosophy, tarot, ritual, indigenous spirituality of all our cultures. She also loved crystals but all she was finding were either geology book or they had a unicorn on the cover. She wanted to create something different so she interviewed people, jewelers, artists who work with stones and minerals — and created a list of the attributes the stone are known for throughout different cultures.

Her goal was to create a book on crystals where the design would be elevated. She felt like “a lot of these topics get are made sort of obtuse or scary or obscure, partly through the writing — either densely academic writing or too dogmatic writing — or also through the design.”

The book on Crystals came out and then her next book was going to be on Tarot. That’s when her editor suggested she pitch it to Taschen…

Building the foundation + The Evolution of Library of Esoterica

Each book in the Library of Esoterica series is structured in the same way: starting with the history and ending with the contemporary expression of that practice and philosophy.

Jessica also explains that there’s a through line that tells her what the next subject should be:

“There’s always something from the last book that is threaded through the next book: Tarot is, in some philosophies, connected with astrology. Astrology is obviously connected to witchcraft. Witchcraft, in many cultures, is an earth based practice, very connected to working with herbs […] So the book after that was ‘Plant Magick’. And then from plant magic, which talked a lot about the sacredness of Earth, came ‘Sacred Sites’… “

The Research: worldwide archives + social media

The amount of research that goes into each book is astounding and I asked Jessica her process. She talks with scholars around the world, and also gets to visit archives, including the Morgan library which holds one of the oldest known tarot decks.

Every book includes a mix of deceased and contemporary artists, so she works with numerous museums including the Met, the Tate, the Getty as well as image agencies. She also discovers many visual artists through social media.

Her dream is to one day “do a traveling library of esoterica museum show.”

Her own ritual practice

When I ask her which of these rituals she engages in herself, Jessica shares that she’s always been an avid tarot lover and reader, and has been going much deeper in her Tarot practice.

The ‘Witchcraft’ book also taught her “the power of the circle and community and grounding into practices that relate to the earth.”

She’s been engaging with nature and practices that incorporate herbs and the ritual around the directions and the elements. She’s also very interested in going deeper into “the sort of idea of archetypes, the archetypes of the Tarot are the archetypes of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, and the archetypes of Jung.”

As she explains: “all of these archetypes exist within ourselves and understanding the ways that you can embody them at certain times when you kind of need to express yourself in different ways. Sometimes you need to be the hermit. Sometimes you need to be the fool.”

The Learning: all roads lead back to true self

When I ask what she learned from he process of creating this multi-volume series, Jessica explains that:

“All of these concepts are tools to tap into self and then allow you to offer the truest voice, offer what you were meant to offer in this life, and to have that channel clear, in order to connect with with the stars, with the movement of the planet, with our connection with source spirit, whatever that is, and to connect with the earth, and with each other.”

She shares how everyone is different and may resonate with various modalities. Her goal is to introduce people to these ideas in a way that feels introductory. She states that she’s not an expert but a culture journalist. Her approach with the books are “a celebratory means through the art and beautiful and sensual, because ultimately, it is all about the senses, about connecting to the here and now and somatics and to your body and to your relationship to this plane.”

She adds that “there’s information that we’re receiving from the unseen constantly, whatever you want to call it, but it’s and if you can open yourself up to that, then you can really kind of move through the world in a different way.”

Ultimately, “what all of these practices are trying to tell you is to trust your intuition and trust yourself, and also not be afraid to express yourself and be moving through the world in with your true voice. It comes back to the same message, no matter what the method is.”

Discover below ’s seven sensory recommendations, including something to SEE, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

In Joy,

Sabrina

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SEE

RECORDING ANGEL | Bruce Conner retrospective

More info online

Right now, the incredible Bruce Conner retrospective at the Marciano Foundation in LA. I also never get tired of standing in front of the Agnes Pelton's 'Passion Flower’ in the collections at The Huntington.

HEAR

Jesus is Waiting live on Soul Train | song by Al Green

Watch on Youtube or listen on Spotify

Al Green singing ‘Jesus is Waiting live on Soul Train.’

SMELL

Palo Santo, Rosemary, Hinoki Wood oil | by Godseye

Available online

Godseye Oils Palo Santo Rosemary Hinoki body oil.

TASTE

Back bar steak and duck fat fries | Dunsmoor restaurant in LA

Reserve in Los Angeles

Dunsmore back bar steak and duck fat fries.

TOUCH

Ceramics | art by Niki Ford

Available online

Niki Ford's ceramic artworks.

BALANCE

Moon Canyon Herbal work + Spirit Guide Oracle Deck by Aja Dashuur

Available online (moon canyon + spirit guide deck)

Kristen Cassie Moon Canyon somatic herbal work and Aja Dashuur's Spirt Guide Portal Oracle Deck.

ENVISION

The Woven Wheel collective | podcast

Available online

Everything discussed on wonderful new podcast from The Woven Wheel collective.

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Happy Full Moon! Instead of my monthly deep dive on a theme, I’m sending you a short missive from Paris.

I arrived a month ago and I’ll be here until early June. It turns out that there’s a time to experience things and a time to create. Right now, I’m in a phase of input rather than output. I’m trying to respect the natural rhythms of creation, so my publishing schedule might be a bit irregular this month.

Being here is like a homecoming: I grew up in France but I’ve been in the States for 20 years. It’s also a time of discovery: I never lived in Paris (my childhood was spent in the French Alps). So I’m like a tourist with the advantage of speaking the language.

I’m walking the cobbled streets, sitting hours at cafés people-watching, working from the oldest public library, picnicking in parks, catching up with friends and meeting lots of new people. There is no better place and time than Spring in Paris.

I’m sharing with you my current sensory recommendations from the City of Light, with something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

In Joy,

Sabrina

PS: paid subscribers can also access my Parisian Travel Guide (which includes more than 40 sensory recommendations!)

PPS: You can explore past Full Moon editions, with themes such as Inspirations from Beyond, Art & Morality, Late Bloomers, and Artist Hobbies, amongst others.

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SEE

Leonora Carrington | art exhibit

More info online

On my first week here, I went to see the Leonora Carrington exhibit at the Luxembourg Museum — which is the first major exhibition in France devoted to the Surrealist artist. I’ve been fascinated by Carrington’s path, which brought her from England to France and then Mexico City, where she spent most of her adult life.

I’ve written about her before, particularly about her creative friendships with Remedios Varo and Kati Horna, which you can read more about HERE.

There’s a lot of other exhibitions I plan on seeing next week including: Henry Taylor at the Picasso Museum, Nan Goldin at the Grand Palais, and Henri Rousseau at the Museum de l’Orangerie.

HEAR

A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous | book by Caspar Henderson

Available online

I’ve been hearing so many music street performances: violins played in small alleys, pianos in the park, and accordions in front of cafés.

In terms of sound-related recommendations, this book which literally translates to ‘A Natural History of Sound’ caught my eye at one of my favorite Parisian bookstores. The author is from the UK so it was originally published in English as ‘A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous.’

SMELL

Cherry Blossoms at Parc de Sceaux

When I arrived the cherry trees were in bloom so my friends and I made a little trip to the Parc de Sceaux, which is right outside the city center. We packed a picnic (homemade focaccia, salads, flower crusted cheese, and other delights) and spent the afternoon on the beautiful grounds of this 17th-century chateau. I felt so relaxed (and jet lagged) that I ended up napping on the grass, liek a scenee from a Renaissance painting.

TASTE

French Pastries

Food is art in France and it’s also its own past time. Growing up, I remember weekend meals could last for 4 to 6 hours — a full day activity! I’ve been relishing the delicious food here and particularly the gorgeous pastries. I have a whole list of my favorite restaurants in the Paris Travel guide.

TOUCH

I Saw Wild Clothes | book by Ines Rousset

Available online (in French)

There are so many independent bookstores here! One of the books I bought as a gift (but tempted to keep!) is a beautifully illustrated book of “poorly translated advice.’

During a trip to Japan, the author is astounded by the Google reviews of various sites, such as “I saw some wild clothing. Drink natural fresh water.” The reviews are poorly translates but end up becoming a poetic journey. Rousset is so inspired by this “lost in translation” that she decides to turn the wild phrases into art.

BALANCE

French Public Libraries:

Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris + Bibliothèque de l’Hôtel de Ville

I’ve been working from libraries in my neighborhood, including the oldest public library in Paris (established in 1871). With wooden and leather chairs and tables, beautiful natural light, and access to incredible archives, these libraries are some of the most calming and inspiring spaces to work from.

ENVISION

Here’s a few photos from my trip thus far — a feast for all the senses.

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My Seven is a guest series where friends and artists I admire share their sensory recommendations — something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

One of the best things about doing this guest series has been discovering so many incredible sensory experiences. Each time I interview an artist, I learn about a book, a music album, an olfactory treat, a food recipe… And that’s how I first came across : based on a sonic recommendation from Orfeo Tagiuri. Since then, I’ve been listening to Lael’s music on loop and singing the lyrics of ‘Blue Vein’ in my car.

So it was a real treat to be able to connect with Lael in Los Angeles a couple weeks ago. She invited me over to her bungalow for tea and we spent the morning discussing her creative process, her inspirations, and our mutual love for letter-writing.

Lael was raised in a music-loving family — Grateful Dead heads – so music was always very present in her household. She grew up going to Bluegrass festivals and surrounded by the sounds of Appalachian music. She’s still very drawn to the spiritual themes of that music.

When Lael was a teenager, she discovered Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan and it was a revelation. She recognized her own voice within Joni Mitchell’s peculiar tone and lyrics. She credits Joni’s music as the reason she stuck to music and learned the guitar.

Both Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell inspired the poetry-word aspect of Lael’s music. As she states: “It’s really important what you say. Music to me isn’t just about sound – it’s also about words.”

When I ask her if music or words come first in her process, Lael explains that they go together. She sits down and plays an instrument and the feeling that she gets from the sound starts pulling words through.

For many years, Lael was writing music without getting attention from the music industry. When I ask her what kept her going during those challenging times — when the world doesn’t respond to your art — she credits working as an assistant and nanny for a lovely family. That environment was grounding for her and offered her the free time and space to continue making music. She explains:

“So during that interim time when nothing outward was happening, I was playing music everyday and writing. And I was so satisfied with that process. I was content making music. I didn’t feel like I needed to be touring. And I feel like on some level I kind of knew I needed to get better… to quantum leap a little bit. It took a really long time. But I think the satisfaction of making the work was keeping me going for sure.”

We discuss how “being content without any external validation” is an important compass to continuing on your own creative path. And when those “WTF am I doing with my life?” moments come up, it’s important to be present with the day-to-day. As Lael notes: “there are no shortcuts to dark periods, they just eventually pass.”

In 2019, Lael’s discovery of the omnichord revolutionized the way she approached her music: she felt like she had finally found her soulmate. Here’s a little audio clip of Lael demonstrating how the omnichord sounds:

Shortly after, Lael signed with sub pop label and the omnichord became a core element of the last three albums she released with the label. Since then, she’s toured in the US and also across various European cities.

For Lael, touring is a “romantic journey” as she gets to play on stage with her musical and romantic partner Guy Blakeslee. Touring can also be a pretty arduous sensory experience: with various (often unpleasant) smells and the extended hours of sitting in travel – the liminal space of airports and train stations.

But there’s also the other side: to be in a new place and have a crowd of strangers sing back the lyrics you wrote. Connecting with an audience is what gives true meaning to the music:

“The people at the shows, and talking to them afterwards is really energizing and enlivening. That’s the whole point. It’s really helpful to be reminded that it matters to people.”

When I ask Lael how she balances expanding all that energy with grounding herself, she credits Qigong, breathing, meditation and reading – she has a sweet spot for fantasy fiction novels as it’s “completely escapist” and totally absorbs her attention.

She also turns to painting when she feels “frustrated or hopeless with music. That really fills that void and the kind of dark existential questioning time.” She often flip-flops between the two mediums. For her, music writing is pretty demanding and required a really specific setup, so she does it in more concentrated smaller spells.

When her creative cup is empty, she finds that “walking always really helps. Reading is really good. Sometimes I forget how much reading poetry helps when I’m writing songs. Because they’re such concise deliveries of a theme, or message or moral.”

Her ideal sensory environment to create is “to be totally alone” and working on music first thing in the morning. When she visits her family in rural Virginia, she also gets to work into a converted barn-music room with a piano.

Lael has been working on new music and when I ask her whether there’s a central theme for the next album, she shares that it’s about the mind: how destructive but also powerful it is, and how to tame it.

She explains that “Writing songs is processing for me. I often don’t know what I’m going through until afterwards.”

“I don’t know my feelings until I write a song. So that’s really healing for me, and hopefully for people who listen to it. That’s one of the purposes of the music I make: I know that what I’m going through isn’t just a personal thing, it’s universal.”

Lael is heading on a US tour (starting today!) supporting Cass McCombs. She’ll also be playing at Public Records in New York with Marina Allen on May 21st. And then in Europe in August. I highly recommend you catch one of her shows. Tour details available here.

Dive into Lael’s wondrous sensory inspirations with something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

In Joy,

Sabrina

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SEE

‘Medium is the Message’ | exhibit at The College of Psychic studies in London

More info online

There was an exhibit at The College of Psychic studies in London called "Medium is the Message" exploring the artist as a channel between worlds. The artist whose work stood out most to me was by Ethel Le Rossignol. She made these ornate, gilded pieces with angel-like beings. She claims that she did not paint anything & her hand was guided by a spirit known as J.P.F.

HEAR

‘Nascer, Viver, Morrer’ | song by Tim Bernardes

Listen on Apple Music, Youtube, Spotify

The first time I heard Tim Bernardes was at a festival in Brussels that we were both playing last May. I was at the back of a packed room in which he sang & played by himself on guitar. I was deeply affected by the performance. His songs were like living beings, like rivers, meandering, building, rippling, waterfalling, calming, quieting, and building again. It's maybe also the language and musical lineage, but the songs are imbued with sunshine. Although I don't speak Portuguese, I had the feeling that I knew exactly what he was talking about just from the tone & tenor of the music. This song "Nascer, Viver, Morrer" has been on repeat for day and days.

SMELL

Zambia espresso

Available online

Stereoscope, a coffee shop in LA carries the Zambia espresso. The smell is half the pleasure of coffee for me. Sometimes coffee can have a jarring impact on the nervous system, but I've found that when I slow down & smell it a few times before drinking it, it becomes a sensory ritual that helps to calm, ground & focus me. This one had some sweet note - maybe cherry - that hovered over a rich chocolate scent.

TASTE

Indoor fireplace cooking

I had dinner at a friend's house & she has an indoor fireplace that is waist-level with a grill over it. She built a small, powerful fire & cooked Branzino in a cast iron skillet with olive oil & salt. Served with dill from her garden. The way it was cooked over fire felt ancient & the taste was so simple and pure, it reminded me that nourishment comes from much more than the food itself.

TOUCH

Eggshell

I recently found a half of an eggshell beneath the tree by my house. It must have been from a songbird's nest. I picked it up and recalled how enamored I've been with eggs, the shells, the texture, the shape since I was a small child. It always felt like finding a precious jewel to discover a chicken's hidden egg in the haystack of our barn. Especially if it had recently been laid, still warm, smooth and both fragile & strong enough to hold and nourish a new life.

BALANCE

Qigong

Qigong has been a saving grace for me lately. I do 10 minutes every morning & 15-20 minutes nearly every evening. It's moving meditation - linking breath, simple motions & attunement to our subtle energy bodies. I live in my head a lot (as many of us do) and this is the first practice I've found that brings me back into my body and actually works to change my state of mind.

Here are a few Qigong videos that I like:

• Qigong with Kseny — this was the woman I started with. It's a super simple, straightforward practice.

• Brother Insight — when I'm in a really acute experience of anxiety or stress I do this one. It's helped me countless times.

• Nick Loffree — this is one I discovered more recently and this longer series has humming and specifically targets stagnation in the organ system - it's more TCM oriented which I like sometimes.

ENVISION

The Coherence | shamanic course

More info available online

I have just completed a 5 session course called The Coherence with incredibly gifted intuitive practitioner and artist, Lizzy Waronker. I have had a long history of bouncing from one healer, therapist, naturopath, psychic, astrologer...etc to the next to get “help” with this or that symptom or issue. Nothing has actually created any deep foundational change until this.

In the 1-3 hour long session she teaches how to reach shamanic states & journey to contact your own spirit guides. I’ve gotten messages, healing & insights that I can actually integrate because they are coming from me, not an external source or authority. It’s shifting my world view from one of subtle, subconscious victimhood to one of empowerment. In our modern social media era, people are making a living off of us abdicating our personal power to them & their knowledge, this work has given me a direct line to my own sovereign guidance system.

And Lizzy is there, 100% present, helping to find the right questions that dig deepest. While the journeying is completely solo work, she is on either side, empathically guiding & holding space as you uncover layers & assimilate the experience. It’s changing me on a fundamental level. In an increasingly chaotic, incoherent world, our power lies in creating coherence on a personal level & letting it ripple out far and wide.

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My Seven is a guest series where friends and artists I admire share their sensory recommendations — something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION

It’s such a treat to get to know . I’ve followed her visual art and animation work for years on Instagram, and a few months ago I signed up for one of her experimental animation workshops.

What I love most about Tala — both as a person and artist — is how natural and free-flowing she is. Her work and outlook on life is playful, imaginative, and innocent. But it turns out (as I’ve learned first hand!) that creating such whimsical artworks takes a lot of technical skills.

I’m so inspired by Tala’s artistic origin story because it shows the unexpected ways in which life opens new pathways. Tala found her way to animation after being fired from a waitressing job. She was in a period where she felt lost and decided to signup for an animation course. As she explains: “Sometimes when things don’t work out, you’re pushed towards something that does work out.”

As a child, Tala always loved drawing and making videos so learning animation was like a creative homecoming (note: always return to your childhood instincts!). In college, she studied math because she “loved the problem solving.” And when she found animation, a lightbulb went off. As she says: “I was able to use both the analytical part of her brain and the whacky creative side.” It unlocked something in her and freed her to express myself.

After college, she made her way to New York City where she ended up working for The New York Times as the member of an inaugural fellowship class. She got a crash course in video production and got to pitch her own videos, animate and edit them. After that, she ran a creative studio for a couple years with her best friend.

Last summer, Tala decided to leave New York, bought a car in Wyoming and drove out to Joshua Tree. She loved how the desert made her feel — a space so relaxing and grounding — that it “opened a thread of curiosity” which eventually led her to move to Truth and Consequences, a tiny town in New Mexico.

She’s currently in a deep exploratory phase, where she’s “trying to express myself and my creativity and bring the fullest of my ideas to the world.” As she states: “I’m becoming more free in my process: I didn’t even see the wall of boxes I was in and I can work outside of it!”

Even though Tala is most known for her experimental animations (which incorporate a lot of analog elements), she also writes essays, makes songs, paints, photographs. She explains to me that she works “rotationally.” Her goal is to try to “figure out how to collect the different corners of my mind.”

Her inspiration comes from being out in the world. Indeed her “whole work is based in life and being present in life and looking at things and engaging with it.”

Like the rest of us, Tala isn’t immune to creative self-doubt. She describes her internal monologue as an imaginary art critic who critiques her art. The inner voice will say things like “Tala was never one for patience” and make various judgements on her decision-making.

When I ask Tala how she tackles that critical voice, she offers two pathways:

1. “Either lean into it (when it’s really bad). The most direct way to quiet the inner critic is to write it down — you can see your patterns on a piece of paper — and it’s so ridiculous that I’m free.”

2. “Or a lot of times the inner critic can mean I’m too in the weeds with the thing and not in a good mood. I have to come back to it when it’s lighter.”

Tala and I discussed her relationship to freedom and discipline. She wisely points out that it’s easy to misdirect discipline. Like me, she falls into the trap of being disciplined in setting rigid goals (for example: “I’m going to make 3 shorts this week, I’m going to spend 12 hours on this project, etc“). When she tries to structure herself in that way, she ends not accomplishing those goals and then feels “bad and it really sours my relationship to creativity.”

On the flip side, there’s a paralysis with total freedom where you don’t know how to spend your time. Ultimately, “Neither one is really creatively productive and free at all.” As she notes: “too much time is the most brutal way to create ever.” She finds it really helpful to work with the natural constraints of life.

For Tala, her most productive approach is around social discipline and setting time aside for herself to creatively explore. Her best work comes from nights when she can really focus without distraction.

She tries to pay attention to what she’s naturally drawn to, whether she’s feeling good and being present in her day to day. Her goal is to build a life and ecosystem where she spends her days around what she likes to be doing: “All the things that I like to do are the things I should be doing.”

Discover below ’s seven sensory recommendations, including something to SEE, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

In Joy,

Sabrina

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SEE

‘Playtime’ | film by Jacques Tati

Watch on Kanopy (free), Youtube, GooglePlay, Apple TV

I just watched the movie Playtime, it's a wonderful constructed reality

HEAR

Frogalog | song and music video by Tala & friends

Watch on Youtube

Am I allowed to share something I was a part of? I just got together with a few friends and we created a whole song and music video in 3 days. It was such an inspiring experience and reminder of the power of working together.

SMELL

Desert sage

I just got back from spending time in Sun Valley - the smell of Sage in the hills is magnificent

TASTE

Brownies

I have eaten a different brownie every day this week. I'm not really sure why that ended up being the case but it's been a really interesting comparison test. Most have been very good.

TOUCH

Collecting sticks

I went walking through the hills and really enjoyed picking up various sticks I saw on the ground. They were all so different in feeling – the shape, the weight, the texture.

video by Tala Schlossberg (sticks and water reflection)

BALANCE

Running

I've recently been re-inspired by running. I love running, but it's hard for me to motivate myself to go consistently. Running always makes me feel more balanced and inspired.

video by Tala Schlossberg / walking in the desert

ENVISION

The desert

Being out in the world is always what inspires me the most. I love spending time in nature. I've been in the desert these past months and the light is magnificent.

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It’s a Full Moon, my monthly deep dive on a theme along with 7 sensory recommendations to further explore that topic. If you rather listen, I’ve included an audio recording of the essay (up top).

He made funny noises - ranging from high pitch squeals to low growls. His arms flailed as he walked with bent legs before switching to high hops and twirls. It’s like he was testing the aptitudes of his body - the range of motion and the variety of sounds.

Then suddenly, he started singing – the words were real but strung together they didn’t make sense. He didn’t care. He was having fun.

He skipped over to his mother who was hovering over the poultry section, deciding between chicken thighs or ground turkey for tonight’s dinner.

Those decisions were boring to her young son, who rather twirl in between the produce aisles, and make up songs from his newly developed vocabulary. For him, words weren’t yet fully locked by meaning but selected for their phonetic amusement.

I envied him. “I wish I could be like that.”

Of course, if I copied that behavior as a grown woman, there’s a chance I might spark fear amongst the Trader Joe’s shoppers, and potentially be institutionalized.

I don’t necessarily want to imitate jumping monkeys or crawling lions in the supermarket. But I do want to set the wild animal in me free – free of judgement and “correct behavior,” free of cautious and restrictive movement, simply free to be.

Like the young boy, I want to be a fool.

Apparently, we start becoming self-conscious at the age of seven. And I imagine that increases with each passing year. That self-consciousness veers into self-absorption in our teen years. We may unclench the grip a bit in our twenties (at least I did) to only pull stronger on the reigns as we enter the following decades. I’ve noticed that it’s only in the last chapter of life that people completely loosen up again, and stop caring what society and other people think. At that point, there’s nothing to lose and no one to impress.

Yet there are so many years lost to self-imposed confines. At the fear of ending up in the looney bin, we end up living with our own straight-jackets. Draw our life within the lines. Speak at a reasonable decibel. Work within respectable spheres. Keep a tidy house and wave (at a safe distance) to our neighbors.

Recently I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about how everyone is scared to dance in clubs and concerts, as they’re worried “about looking goofy on camera.” The fear of someone filming them and shaming them on the unforgiving internet is literally stifling their movement. No one wants to make a fool of themselves because all eyes are (seemingly) on them at all times. We have become the surveillance state we fear, each of us with an iphone in hand and the ability to broadcast anyone’s behavior online. Each moment of foolishness can be kept (and replayed) into eternity.

While everyone is avoiding being cringe, I want to be a fool.

The word fool derives from “follis” which refers to an “inflatable sack” or a “windbag” in Latin. Calling someone a fool meant they were devoid of substance.

But isn’t it more substance-less to stand still at our favorite concert? We rather remain on the surface of life for the sake of other people’s approval – most of which are strangers – in order to avoid embarrassment.

And what’s wrong with being an inflatable sack? To float with the wind, instead of being pulled down by the weight of the world?

We spend so much of our time following a code of conduct and driven by how things look, but the fool shatters the rulebook and invites us to play, to laugh at ourselves – reminding us that humor and humility have the same root as humus, which means earthiness.

We may laugh at the fool, but the fool embraces a freedom and a wisdom that escapes most of us. Through the fool we find vicarious release for what we repress in ourselves.

As a royal court figure, the fool offered comic relief by saying in jest to the monarch what civilians could not. The monarchy would laugh at his performance but the fool was conveying an important message – often a critique – of oppressive systems.

“The fool allows for a figurative representation of questions troubling society,” explains Elisabeth Antoine-König, a curator for the Louvre’s recent exhibition on the fool figure.

In the tarot, the fool is represented by a young man carrying his possessions in a bundle on a staff over his shoulder. Holding a flower in his other hand, he is blithely about to step off the edge of a cliff. He symbolises the risk-taker, setting out on a journey of self- discovery that will take him through – and energise – all the other archetypal images of the Tarot.

I want to be a fool.

Foolish enough to book a flight to Paris on an impulse.

Foolish enough to give my money to art, my time to creativity, my love to strangers.

Foolish enough to start a new career in mid-life. Or start a new home across the world.

Foolish enough to draw ugly, to write oddly, to create things others will judge or never see.

Foolish enough to take risks that don’t make sense on paper. But make my heart flutter with joy.

What about you? Where can you invite more foolishness in your life?

Let’s fool around and find out.

For this Full Moon’s edition, I wanted to dive into all the sensory ways we can embrace the Fool with something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

In Joy,

Sabrina

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SEE

Fool Disclosure | art installation by Pat Oleszko

On view at SculptureCenter (NYC) until April 27, 2026

Rooted in humor, sharp social commentary, and the defiance of all forms of authority, Oleszko’s sculptures lend themselves to raucous performances that use linguistic wit to address concerns about the state of the world. She devised some defining strategies: using her body, which led to costumes, and using air, which produced large inflatable works.
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Maysha the Fool | painting series by Maysha Mohamedi

Currently on view at Pace gallery (NYC) until April 25, 2026

Another art exhibit worth highlighting is Maysha Mohamedi’s painting exhibit at Pace gallery (also in NYC).

‘Maysha the Fool’ is titled after a short story ‘Gimpel the Fool’ by Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, which inspired the artist Mohamedi to create her new series of paintings.

Published in Yiddish in 1945, it tells the story of a naïve, goodhearted baker in Poland who believes the malicious lies of his neighbors. Tricked and deceived by others, Gimpel ultimately finds that his innocence and faith fortify him against human cruelty.

Maysha Mohamedi was inspired by the story’s message of transcendence and enlightenment.

HEAR

‘What a Fool Believes: On the Unnumbered Card in the Tarot’ | Weird Studies podcast

Listen online

I discovered the Weird Studies podcast on a roast trip a couple years ago and it’s one of the most fascinating rabbit holes on the internet.

This episode (which happens to be number 77!) takes a deep dive into the Fool card in the traditional tarot. As the podcast states: “The Fool is integral to the world, yet stands outside it. The Fool is an idiot but also a sage. The Fool does not know; s/he intuits, improvises a path through the brambles of existence.

SMELL

Ivan the Fool | perfume by Fantôme

Available online

I found this delightful perfume “Ivan the Fool”, which is inspired by the Slavic fairytale character. Ivan the Fool is sometimes a prince, sometimes a peasant, but always innocently foolish. Like “The Fool” in Tarot, he is the one who follows their heart and acts on divine inspiration.

The perfume’s notes include golden figs, oakmoss, Siberian fir, well-worn Russian leather, cedar, warm wolf fur, juniper berries, sparkling bergamot.

TASTE

Fruit Fool | recipe by

My friend shared this recipe with me in 2024 and I’ve been meaning to feature it ever since. I’m glad I waited though as it’s the perfect sensory suggestion for this full moon’s theme.

A fruit fool is a classic British dessert featuring stewed, puréed fruit—traditionally gooseberries—folded into sweetened whipped cream or custard, often served chilled.

Jolene says she loves it because “it is easy and elegant and decadently delicious. It looks so lovely in a pretty dish. If you like whipped cream and beautiful fruit — this dessert is for you.”

Here’s her recipe. Any fruit can be used to make it and Jolene notes that if you “add cake layers it becomes very close to a Trifle!”

Ingredients (serves 2):

- 1 cup of cherries

- 1 teaspoon of sugar

- half a pint of heavy cream

Method:

- Remove cherry pits and mash up the cherries.

- No need to cook the cherries, you can just macerate them with a teaspoon of sugar to get everything nice and juicy

- Whip the cold heavy cream to stiff peak stage (no need to sweeten it)

- Lace your fruit and juices through the whipped cream

- Spoon into pretty glasses and enjoy lazily

TOUCH

The Fool (Design Collective)

The Fool were a Dutch psychedelic art and design collective that were popular in the 1960’s for designing clothing and murals for The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Cream.

The original members were Dutch artists Simon Posthuma and Marijke Koger, who named themselves in reference to the Fool tarot card.

They worked closely with The Beatles in London, painting George Harrison’s Mini car, John Lennon’s piano and a three story high psychedelic mural on the outside of the Apple Boutique on Baker Street (since painted over). They also created stage costumes and decoration to instruments used by Cream, including Eric Clapton’s famed Gibson SG guitar (also named The Fool).

After moving to Los Angeles, the Fool created the largest mural in the world at the time (1968) on the exterior of the Aquarius Theatre for a production of the Broadway musical Hair, by invitation of producer Michael Butler.

They also released an eponymous album ‘The Fool’ in 1968, in the psychedelic folk style, produced by Graham Nash. The album was re-released in 2005.

BALANCE

Fool’s Dance | therapeutic movement

The ”Fool’s Dance” movements are rooted in Gestalt practice, focusing on breaking constraints.

The Fool’s Dance Gestalt Company was formed by a group of people in Ireland who had worked with Paul Rebillot for many years and who were graduates of his Advanced Training. They came together in order to offer opportunities for people to participate in the Gestalt’s unique therapeutic approach and in new workshop structures.

ENVISION

The Fool’s Errand | computer game (1987)

Available online

The Fool’s Errand is a 1987 is a meta-puzzle computer game with storytelling, visual puzzles, and a cryptic treasure map. It is the tale of a wandering Fool who seeks his fortune in the Land of Tarot and braves the enchantments of the High Priestess.

The plot focuses on The Fool card of the tarot, who is portrayed as a silhouette of a young man wearing a peaked, feathered cap, curled-toed shoes, and carrying a knapsack on a stick. The Fool is the protagonist of the story, and he encounters various other cards from the tarot.

In the beginning of the story, The Sun gives him a map, which has been scrambled, and directs him to find the “Lost 14 Treasures of the World.” The Fool journeys through four kingdoms (each representing a suit from the minor arcana of the tarot), where he encounters other characters, who either give him more information or provide him with additional tasks.

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My Seven is a guest series where friends and artists I admire share their sensory recommendations — something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION

I met music artist Alina Pash at the Flux festival back in November. Held at the Hammer Museum, the festival showcases some of the most innovative short films and music videos. It was an inspiring night and the music video that stood out the most to me was ‘Kyiv’ by Apashe featuring Alina Pash.

Filmed on 35mm in the Ukrainian capital during the ongoing war, the video showcases an extraordinary lineup of Ukrainian artists and was directed by Montreal-based director Adrian Villagomez and Apashe.

Alina gave a powerful speech and hauntingly beautiful song at the festival, which I’ve featured HERE. Here’s another clip from that evening:

I recently invited Alina to come over to my house to discuss the role of art amidst the war, her music making process, and bridging two very different cultures.

As an only child who grew up in a small Ukrainian village of 8,000 people near the border of Romania, Alina often felt like an outcast and turned to music to help her process her emotions and be understood.

Over the years, she’s developed her own sonic style, which she called “future folk pop” and is now evolving into what she defines as “ritual rave.”

Music became a refuge and a way to spread her cultural roots when she moved to the U.S in 2023. While it doesn’t shelter her from the dissonance of living in Los Angeles while her whole family in Ukraine is under fire, it does offer her an outlet to turn pain into song, and destruction into creation.

You can watch clips from our conversation on Instagram @sevensenses.world

I’m grateful for Alina for taking time to sit down with me and share her seven sensory recommendations, including something to SEE, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

In Joy,

Sabrina

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SEE

‘Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors’ | film by Sergei Parajanov

Watch on Youtube (free) or Netflix

This film is very close to me. It shows the Carpathian culture I come from — rituals, music, clothing, relationships with nature. Many of these traditions are still alive where I grew up.

At the same time, it’s a tragic film, because this culture was almost erased. The Soviet system tried to delete it, silence it, make it disappear. Parajanov made something incredibly beautiful in a very dangerous time — beauty itself became resistance.

For me, this film is about memory, dignity, and the power of culture to survive even when someone is trying to destroy it.

HEAR

Kyiv | song by Apashe ft. Alina Pash

Listen on Youtube, Spotify or Apple Music

You can listen to a Ukrainian traditional spring song in a new release I did with Apashe. The track is called Kyiv. It’s based on an old song that people used to sing to welcome spring and life after winter. In our version, you can also hear what’s happening in Ukraine now — sirens, explosions, real sounds from the war.

It’s far for many people geographically, but I think emotionally it’s very close to all of us as humanity. Every year when I sing this song, I wish peace — for my land and for every place that lives with conflict, trauma, or unhealed wounds.

SMELL

Rouge | perfume by Comme des Garçons

Smell is very important to me. I connect people, places, and emotions through scent.

My first love, when I was 18, actually came to me as a smell. I felt it in a park, followed it, and eventually found the person. Smell stays in the body much longer than images or words.

One day I’d love to create my own perfume and incense. For me, scent is a portal.

TASTE

Matcha mochi cookies | recipe

I found this recipe from a Japanese chef, and since then it became my main sweet dish. I love them warm, with coconut ice cream and melted chocolate inside. It’s simple, comforting, and incredibly delicious.

Ingredients
• 2 cups mochiko (glutinous rice flour)
• 1/3 cup maple syrup (or sugar to taste)
• 1/2 tbsp baking powder
• 1–2 tsp matcha powder
• Cranberries, nuts, or chocolate (optional add-ins)
• 1½–2 cups plant milk or water — add until the batter is smooth and thick yet pourable
• 1 tbsp olive oil

Instructions
1. Mix all ingredients together until smooth. Let the batter rest for a few minutes.
2. Bake in a preheated oven at 425–440°F (220–225°C) for 10–12 minutes, or until the edges turn golden brown and the cookies are set in the center.
3. The tops may stay pale because rice flour remains light after baking. The bottoms and edges should brown — that’s how you know they’re ready.

TOUCH

The Screwtape Letters | book by C.S Lewis

Available at bookstores and online

It’s sharp, ironic, and surprisingly relevant today. It talks about manipulation, temptation, and how people lose themselves without noticing.

I’m working on a contemporary artistic interpretation inspired by it, through a character called Lucy Ferno — a modern devil of social media, algorithms, and addiction culture. It’s meant to be funny, uncomfortable, and very close to reality.

BALANCE

Daily routine

Balance for me is routine, not perfection. My day usually looks like this:

- I wake up around 6:30

- Drink warm water + vitamins

- Spend about 10 minutes with sunlight — either outside or with a lamp

- Write three pages of thoughts, dreams, feelings

- Light a candle while doing it

- Yoga or Pilates for 30–40 minutes

- Breakfast, then a 15-minute walk

- Before and after meals, my husband and I hum for a few minutes — it helps the vagus nerve and calms the body.

- Later, I have matcha with coconut milk as a small ritual moment. I try to move during the day — dancing, singing, being playful. I walk without my phone, hug trees, listen to silence.

- Cold showers, sauna a couple of times a week, prayer before sleep — all of this helps me stay grounded.

Balance is not control. It’s listening.

ENVISION

Words by Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus

These words mean a lot to me:

“A human being is not a title, but an obligation.

One is not born human — one becomes human.

A human being is created, self-created.

So who are you, for now?

A lump of raw, pliable clay.

Take this clay in both palms and knead it —

until something firm, shaped, and defined emerges.

Imagine that God, who creates human beings, is you yourself.

You are God.

So, like God shaping Himself,

knead your own clay in your hands

until you feel stone beneath your calluses.

For this, the best time you have is now.

Create yourself.”

— Vasyl Stus

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The weekend Present Sense editions are typically dedicated to sharing my (or a guest’s) current seven sensory suggestions – such as books, art exhibits, films, songs, recipes, meditations etc. But there’s one particular recommendation that deserves its own highlight.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the film ‘Hamnet’ since seeing it last month. Many of you have probably heard of it, and if not, you’re bound to come across it tomorrow at the Oscars ceremony as it’s nominated for eight categories.

I don’t want to give any spoilers for those who have yet to watch it, so I won’t get into the specifics of what (or whom) it’s exactly about, but I will share my own interpretation of the fascinating themes explored in the film:

• Our connection to our bodies and our environment and our (often lost) knowledge of its natural rhythms and remedies. How women have often been the safekeepers of this ancient wisdom and the pressures they’ve faced to erase this identity in order to fit within male-dominated and control-driven paradigms.

• The sacrifice required to pursue our creative talent and the pressures it imposes on relationships. Art that is not expressed can drive us to madness, and the most loving act is to set someone free to explore their creative path.

• Grief in all its complexities including the ways in which it profoundly changes (and sometimes destroys) relationships. I’ve never seen grief portrayed in such a raw and honest way.

• The power of art to heal – ourselves, our relationships and others. In fact, it’s the most fundamental aspect of art-making: besides aesthetic pleasures, beyond entertainment, above ego-acolades. Art’s most profound purpose is to help transmute pain into beauty.

I saw the film in theaters (and highly recommend watching it on a big screen) and I cried for the full 125 minutes. The tears started flowing from the first scene and didn’t stop after the credits rolled. My shirt was soaked by the time the lights came back on.

I didn’t cry out of sadness though – even though there are scenes that are heartbreaking. I shed tears of beauty, of release, of connection and surprisingly, of hope.

I felt like I was watching a painting come to life, a poem in motion, a truth set in words, a well of emotion in expression. The film was like medicine, a revelation, a gentle embrace and also a deep awakening.

As director Chloe Zhao poignantly explains: “I hope it could give people a two-hour little ceremony. And in the end, I hope that a point of contact can be made. That means that there’s a heart opening. But it will be painful, right? Because when your heart opens, you feel all the things you usually don’t feel. And then a catharsis can emerge.“

The result isn’t detached from the process. In fact, I believe the film has such a profound effect because it was crafted with thoughtful intention and authentic integrity.

Chloe Zhao (who won an Academy Award for her film ‘Nomadland’ in 2021) has such a unique approach to filmmaking. Steven Spielberg, who co-produced ‘Hamnet’ has described Zhao as “the most spiritually empathic director” who is connected to a “seismic heartbeat of the earth.”

A film set is often an extremely stressful setting, with so many moving parts, various personalities, and each minute costing a fortune. But Chloe Zhao creates a very different and unusual working environment, making “decisions from the feeling place instead of from intellect.”

In an interview with KPBS, Zhao states:

“If you’re captain of any ship, you are not just giving instructions; people are also looking to you energetically as well. Whether it’s calmness, it’s groundedness, it’s feeling safe: then everyone else is going to tune to you.“

She treats her team as a family and her motto on set is: “We gather around the mother.” She explains that “the mother” isn’t her the director, but rather “the energy of being held by something bigger than us and unconditionally loved and supported.”

Zhao doesn’t shy away from her sensitivity but rather embraces it as a strength – which in itself is a daring and courageous move in an industry that often expects domineering personalities, unpredictable tempers, and controlling atmospheres.

Speaking at a Women in Motion talk at the Palm Springs film festival, Zhao said:

“What I’ve learned from making Hamnet is that feminine leadership – and that doesn’t mean just women, it means the feminine consciousness in all people – is drawing strength from interdependence, not dominance. So it’s drawing strength from intuition, relationships, community and interdependence.”

The more I learn about Chloe Zhao’s methods, the clearer it becomes what happened to me in that theater. The tears weren’t just for the beauty of the film she created, but also for the approach she took as an artist.

Whenever someone can successfully create on such a large scale, without compromising their vision, without playing by the traditionally imposed rules, by trusting their intuition and not hiding their truest nature – it is a win for all fellow artists. Her movie is an opening, a permission and even a celebration of what makes each of us so unique.

When asked what she hopes people will talk about after seeing the film, Zhao answers:

“I feel that if they could share a little bit about themselves with the person they’re with, or just with themselves, that maybe they haven’t felt safe, or comfortable sharing, and just say to each other, and to themselves, “I see you, and all your emotions or feelings are welcome. It’s okay.”

For this weekend’s Present Sense, I wanted to dive deeper into Chloe Zhao’s sensory approach to filmmaking – the way she uses sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, balance and envision to create.

In Joy,

Sabrina

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SEE

Natural Light + Color Palettes

Chloe Zhao takes a naturalistic filmmaking approach, preferring to shoot on location – which she spends a lot of time scouting herself – rather than green screens and soundstages.

She relies on natural light, specifically during the “golden hour,” which she refers to as “god’s light.” Her goal is to give scenes a natural, warm glow and authentically reflect off real objects, which she believes adds a tangible texture missing from studio-lit films.

Color also plays an important role in her films. For ‘Hamnet,’ she associated the character of Agnes (Buckley) with red for the “root chakra” (earthy and alive), while William (Mescal) is often in blue to evoke the intellectual and ethereal.

HEAR

Ambient Sounds

Listen to Max Richter’s Hamnet score online

While music plays an important role in ‘Hamnet’ (and earned Max Richter a nomination for best score), Zhao relies a lot on nature-inspired sound design, incorporating environmental elements like wind rustling through trees or flowing water.

She also emphasizes close-up sounds, such as a character’s breathing or humming, to provide insight into their internal state. Silence also becomes a tool to allow the audience to process their own feelings and find “human truth” in the present moment.

SMELL

Restricting chemical scents

As someone who is extremely sensitive to scent, I relished in the fact that Zhao restricts strong, scented perfumes on her film sets to maintain a comfortable, sensory-controlled environment, as she’s also sensitive to sensory inputs. Her working spaces, including her director’s tent, are free of overwhelming smells.

She explains that her brain “takes in so much more information,” that sensory overwhelm can lead her to “shut down and implode, or just have massive meltdowns” and that “a really strong perfume can give me a shutdown.”

Nature scents don’t bother her, but rather “chemicals” such as “cleaning products, air fresheners, things like that.”

Zhao has compared her creative process to being a “sommelier” of experiences, using scent to inform her filmmaking. She’s mentioned training her nose with vials of fragrance notes (earthy, smoky, fruit-forward) to learn how to identify them.

TASTE

On-set soup

Typically on film sets, the crew and talent eat catering and a bunch of snacks. But on ‘Hamnet,’ a new eating habit emerged: home-made soup made from one of the crew members.

The production’s key grip, Tomasz Sternicki, prepared large quantities of soup from the back of his truck using a cast-iron pot brought from Poland. The soup became a staple on set for the cast and director.

The meal was even mentioned by main actress Jessie Buckley in her Golden Globes acceptance speech in which she stated:

“I’d really like to thank our [key] grip. During shooting, [he] started to disappear a little bit ... and I found him one day at the back of his truck, and he was chopping up potatoes, and onions, and meat. He brought his ginormous cast-iron pot over from Poland, and he was making soup, and this soup started turning up on set. It was delicious.“

TOUCH

Qi (life force)

As a Chinese born and Buddhist raised, Zhao is intimately connected to the concept of qi (life force), which she integrates in her filmmaking style.

The wind and breath are central presences in her stories, and she uses Shinto-inspired ideas where every object carries a spirit.

Nature and the land she uses for her film locations also become characters with their own sensory presence. She aims to create a “sacred union” between people and the environment.

BALANCE

Somatic and Tantric Exercises

In recent interviews. Zhao revealed that she’s studying to become a tantric practitioner, and has also recently trained as a death doula.

Somatics play an integral role in her directorial approach. She believes the best acting comes from when people are truly in their bodies and can “show a full spectrum of human condition and experiences.”

She views directing as “energy management,” using dance, meditation, and breathing exercises on set to help the cast process feelings in a physical way.

After intense emotional scenes in ‘Hamnet,’ she encouraged her actors to dance to move the energy. She explains:

“Well, part that I learned in my tantric training is emotions is energy in motion. Not only the emotion you feel in the moment, but the things that trigger from your trauma and maybe not just yours, but things you held in yourself for generations. Sometimes, all it really needs is to shake it off, to move it out of you. That’s scary because when you do that, more will come. You really feel like you have to let go of that control of that emotion, and which we’ve been told to control it, but when you start dancing, you go into your body, and then the body’s going to do what it needs to do, and you have to let go of the control.”

video credit: cast and crew dancing on set after filming an emotional scene

ENVISION

Dreams & Symbols

‘Even as a Shadow, Even as a Dream’ book available online

As a believer of ceremonies and rituals, dreams and symbols are very much a part of Zhao’s approach to filmmaking, which she describes as a magical and communal experience.

The main actress Jessie Buckley introduced Zhao to dream coach Kim Gillingham, which led Zhao to integrate dream-work as part of the creative process. For ‘Hamnet,’ she asked actors to write down their dreams and share music that captured a “tone and texture” to find access points for their characters.

Zhao explains:

“In the dream-work, what we do is we write down our dreams the next morning and we come bring the dream to the facilitator. And she would drop us in — that means to guide you through a form of a meditation to allow you to get to such a relaxed state that you’re sort of between waking and sleeping, you’re between consciousness and unconsciousness. That is where you want your actors to be, by the way, when they come to set to work. You want them to just be on the edge between knowing and not knowing. That’s where presence is.”

Chloe Zhao, actress Jessie Buckley, and photographer Agata Grzybowska, even collaborated on a book ‘Even as a Shadow, Even as a Dream,’ chronicling a series of artistic rituals based on the dream-work that shaped Zhao’s creative process on Hamnet.

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It’s a Full Moon, which is typically my monthly deep dive on a theme, but today I offer you something a bit different — the latest TASTING COLOR: a Seven Senses Feast experience.

There’s nothing more special than bringing people together, around art in all forms – food, music, visual art, design, and dance.

That’s exactly what happened last week for the TASTING COLOR: a Seven Senses Feast. It was the third iteration of this on-going sensorial series I’ve been curating, which is inspired by a novel by Paul Auster and a photography series by Sophie Calle. Each edition focuses on a different color and this time it was all about ORANGE.

Orange is my favorite color and when I talked to guests I discovered that many people feel the same way. I wonder why we tend to gravitate towards this sunset hue, this bright yet comforting tone.

I invited my friend Jasmine Albuquerque to do a dance performance inspired by the color and when we discussed the mood for orange she described it as “joyful but grounded.” It’s not as light and happy as yellow, and not as intense as red. It’s the perfect in-between: a color that both elevates and roots us.

Creating these sensory dinner experiences entails a lot of collaborations. It truly takes a village to make this vision come to life and I’m grateful for each person who offers their talent, time and dedication.

For this edition, the dinner was hosted at my friend Josh’s Jodō Sake bar, a new space opening soon. It was the first time people got a glimpse of what he’s been working on for the last few years: an orange bar with hanging lanterns, communal tables with tatami seating, and a vintage sound system that surrounds the room.

The menu, created by chef Tracy Tober, consisted of seven vegetarian tastes, taking the guests through a culinary journey of various flavors and textures. The cocktail we served was a mezcal tangerine dream, and we paired the dinner with orange wine and yuzu beer.

BAUER pottery supplied all the dishes: a planoply of orange cups, plates, bowls, and vases.

I created floral installations, and even hand glued orange pearl patterns onto citrus and bell peppers. The music was curated by my partner (who is a sonic encyclopedia) ranging from Tropical Boogie to Creole Funk, French Synth Pop to Afrobeat.

Producing the TASTING COLOR series is one of the most labor-intensive and risk-taking creative endeavors I’ve ever been engaged with – and it’s also one of the most rewarding.

It’s so special to witness people connect with one another, over a delicious meal in a beautiful sensory setting. We’re all hungry for real-life experiences, a chance to put away our digital device and meet new people, to gather around beauty, have meaningful exchanges and create memorable moments.

These experiences are ephemeral and that’s part of their magic. But I’m grateful that my friend Francesca Forquet beautifully captures these evenings through her photography so that they may last a bit longer and be shared with you.

Today’s full moon edition is dedicated to TASTING COLOR with seven orange delights to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

In Joy,

Sabrina

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SEE

Setting: an apricot-pumpkin gradient

We were lucky that the space naturally had so many orange touches: from the bar to the lanterns. I accentuated the setting by adding orange covers on the tables, creating installations with orange fruits and vegetables. My friend Kristine also offered her beautiful Paz Home orange candles made artisanally in Oaxaca.

HEAR

Orange Playlist

Listen on Spotify

My partner has the most exquisite sonic taste, and has been curating the music playlist for each TASTING COLOR dinner. Colors have moods and for this one, we wanted to create a lively but grounded atmosphere with sounds by The Lijadu Sisters, Gilles Rivard and Ntombi Ndaba amongst others.

SMELL

Floral arrangement

The Flower Market has become one of my favorite places in Los Angeles. Selecting flowers for these color dinners is always an intuitive exercise, where I try to balance delicate and strong florals.

For this dinner, I wanted to use a large bird of paradise flower at the entrance of the space: a real sculptural botanical welcome when guests first come in. The tables and bar were adorned with heliconia, gerbera, lilies, and dahlias.

TASTE

Seven Taste Menu

Each dinner experience consists of seven tastes and the menu created by Chef Tracy Tober offered a wide range of flavors, ranging from savory to sweet, from fire-roasted baking to refreshing elixirs, from heart-warming dishes to surprising desserts.

My partner and I also created a Tangerine Dream Mezcal cocktail which included chili-salt rim glasses, served with kumquat ice cubes. For mocktails, we wanted to serve a smoky flavor (reminiscent of mezcal) so used a recipe that included Lapsang Souchong tea.

TOUCH

BAUER Pottery

Available in Los Angeles and online

The menu was served on the colorful ceramics of BAUER pottery, who we partnered with for this dinner. A local brand that’s been in existence in Los Angeles since 1910. Known for their colorful ceramics, coined “California Colored Pottery” the brand’s designs became well known in Southern California and around the country.

In 1960, BAUER ceased operations after the original founder died, but the company was revived after Janek Boniecki bought the patent and revived the brand in 2000. Since then, BAUER has thrived with beautiful showroom in Los Angeles. We feel lucky to have partnered with such a classic local and colorful brand and that Janek joined our dinner.

Guests also took home a Zine I made about the color orange, inspired by my ‘Ecstatic Orange’ newsletter.

BALANCE

Dance Performance by Jasmine Albuquerque

It’s the first time I integrated a performance aspect to the dinners, and I couldn’t imagine a better fit than Jasmine Albuquerque who choreographed an upbeat, sensual and freedom-seeking contemporary dance which enthralled us all. Jasmine embodied the color orange by moving throughout the space to the beat of ‘The Height of Summer’ by The Knife.

I featured Jasmine last week for MY SEVEN guest series, if you’d like to learn more about her.

PS: Thanks to our guest Tara De Silva for capturing this video.

ENVISION

Photographs by Francesca Forquet

Whenever I host one of these color dinners, we always ask guests to come dressed in the selected color and become active participants in the experience. It was so magical to witness all the various orange tones.

Thanks to my dear friend Francesca for capturing the night through her lens. For those of you who couldn’t join, here’s a little glimpse:

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My Seven is a guest series where friends and artists I admire share their sensory recommendations — something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION

I’m so delighted that today’s guest is an old friend and incredibly talented artist: Jasmine Albuquerque.

Jasmine was one of the first people I met when I first moved to Los Angeles in 2013. I instantly was fond of her authenticity, her deep presence and sense of humor. We recently reconnected as I asked her to perform at the upcoming TASTING COLOR dinner that I’m curating (tomorrow!).

Beyond her sensory recommendations, I also wanted to ask Jasmine about her creative upbringing. Her mother is the celebrated land artist Lita Albuquerque and her sister is the sculptor Isabelle Albuquerque. Needless to say she grew up in a very creative household.

When I ask her what it’s like to be raised in that kind of family, she answers: “I knew nothing else. Growing up in an art household, it’s your world, so art is what we breathed.”

Jasmine and her mother Lita have collaborated many times. Like Jasmine says: “We’ve collaborated since I was in the womb.” They’re now on their 13th collaboration together — including a trilogy of films where Jasmine plays the character of Najma: a 25th century female astronaut who comes to the planet to remind people of the things that have been forgotten.

The first film is called “Accelerando 20/20” and was shot in Hawaii (in collaboration with Robbie Williams). The second film “Liquid Light” (2018) was made in Uyuni, in the salt flats of Bolivia (13,000 feet high!). And they’re currently working on the third film.

In 2020, they also made a sculpture featuring Jasmine for Desert X in Saudi Arabia, which was displayed on a rock. It’s the first figurative female sculpture ever in Saudi Arabia in history.

Jasmine started dancing at the age of 9, studying ballet until she was 17, and started learning Jazz dance at the age of 12. While she was in college, a study abroad in Budapest led her to learning contemporary dance.

After college she met the choreographer Ryan Heffington and was introduced to “Psycho-Dance” which involved dancing in night clubs at midnight. Jasmine describes it as “a very underground scene” that entailed a full choreography, costumes and masks, performing unexpectedly in the middle of a night club. It taught her to dance “very up close” to people. It trained her to “face the audience” without having the “comfort and separation” of the stage.

Later, Jasmine was involved in the dance trio WIFE (which is when I met her), blending dance with projection mapping. Here’s a little taste of it:

Since then, she’s continued to dance in the commercial and film industry, and dance world, and has been teaching dance for 22 years (if you’re in LA, catch one of her weekly classes).

A lot of Jasmine’s work is psychological and intense. As she explains: “I don’t want my work to be so over-rehearsed that we lose the risk.” One of her most recent choreographies revolved around her losing her house in the LA fires (2018), and also processing the loss of the woman she was before having children.

We talked about the fact that she goes against the expectations placed on dancers which are to be cute, pretty, sexy, skinny. She wants to choreograph genuine real experiences. For her, the barometer of a good piece is whether it “gives you chills.”

We also discussed how the magic of dance is that it doesn’t require anything beyond your own physical form — but that it’s also one of its challenges as it takes a toll on the body. As Jasmine says: “It’s the only art form where you’re disintegrating your tool as you get older, but at the same token your emotional capacity also arises.”

I’m so happy to offer you a little glimpse into the fascinating mind of Jasmine who shared her sensory recommendations, including something to SEE, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

In Joy,

Sabrina

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SEE

Daisies | film by Vera Chytilova

Watch online

One of my favorite films ever made is Czech director Vera Chytilova’s “Daisies”. Her avant-garde work was banned by the Czechoslovak government in the 1960s. Daisies is a visual playground of two women and their obsession with food and overcoming boredom. It is utterly surreal, playful, bizarre and a deep commentary on the patriarchy, Communism and censorship. Every frame is filled with flowers, wild abandon and debauchery in the most feminine of ways. The colors, the comedy and the commentary, especially in the end will strike a cord that perhaps you did not know you even had. It is an art house masterpiece and a true feast for the eyes.

HEAR

Sound of theater seats + music by The Knife

Listen on Youtube or Spotify

One of my favorite sounds since I was a kid is the sound of theater seats flipping up after the audience stands to applaud. There is something deeply satisfying in the mechanical sounds of the metal snapping back into place and the feeling of uncontrollable joy as people stand together to honor what they just saw. The way the sound bounces is playful, powerful and yet at the same time somewhat mundane.

I feel this type of sonic satisfaction when I listen to The Knife as well. There is something bouncy about their music that mades me want to dance. I suppose it is a sound that triggers a memory from my childhood of unhindered youth and joy that my ears tend to perk up with a smile when I hear it.

PS: Jasmine will be performing to the Knife’s song ‘The Height of Summer’ tomorrow at the TASTING COLOR: Orange edition.

SMELL

Fossilized Amber and Volcano

After visiting Jónsi’s (from Sigur Rós) powerful installation “Obsidian” at the Art Gallery of Ontario, I acquired a new love of wet earth, black rock and ancient amber smells. This work is rooted in smell as you sit on a black circular pedestal surrounded by 195 speakers in almost pitch black as you listen to and smell the sweet and smoky sent of the inside of a volcano.

Jonsi is a master at demonstrating how “non-visual senses can transport audiences to different places and trigger different memories.” It is such a grounding experience and the smell of wet earth helps mekeep me feet on the ground.

TASTE

Betsy restaurant (Altadena)

Visit in Altadena

My sister recently took my family to a restaurant in Altadena called Betsy. Betsy is owned by a resident of Altadena who lost their home in the fire and is on a block that is surrounded by burned down businesses. It is a symbol of resilience and community recovery. The food is spectacular and all cooked on a large open wood fire in the middle of the restaurant.

My tastebuds were pleasantly surprised by the snap peas. They pop in your mouth and bring a perfect fresh cleanser to the palete that pairs beautifully with any other dish there. You cannot order wrong at this restaurant. Everything is delicious, presented beautifully and made with love.

TOUCH

Tips for poor circulation + Weighted Fabrics for grounding

As a 6 foot tall woman, I’ve always had poor circulation. My fingertips and toes tend to get very, very cold. I love to press my freezing fingertips into the depths of my warm armpits or shove my freezing toes in to the squish of my inner thighs. You can almost see the warmth of my body enveloping the cold.

I also love to touch and wear heavy fabrics. muslin, quilted skirts, any fabric with weight to hold me down, to ground me.

Socks and Dots

One piece of advice my 80 year old father gave me is “always put your socks on standing up.” While it may sound mundane, it’s proven to be a little trick to testing my balance every day, standing on one foot, not touching my other foot to the ground as I stretch to put the sock on. Simple, effective and a great daily balancing act.

Another balance practice I do is a bit more abstract-a kind of ritual of sorts. I have been drawing dots on my face with liquid eyeliner for over two decades years now. Sometimes one, sometimes thirteen, depending on my mood. Many people ask me why I do it and I usually answer I was inspired by Marcel Marceau in my early 20s.

What it became to be over the years was an act of balance and self check in. I look in the mirror when I draw the dots and have to wait about 30 seconds for them to dry. I place them on the side of my face that corresponds with the opposite side of my body that feels off. They are my micro-adjusters of centering my psyche and physical being as I stare into my eyes at the start of each day. A subtle cognitive and physical alignment on the daily.

ENVISION

As Above So Below

The main practice I do is something I learned from my mother. She always told us, when things get out of control, internally, externally or both, stick your hands in the dirt and look at the sky. I remember being on the phone with her in my college days, freaking out about my final exams and she made do this practice in the middle of my UCLA campus. “Find some dirt Jasmine!…Now stick your hands all the way in it and look up. Look up! Always remember your placement in the cosmos.” To this day, I still do this when the spirals get too big. Re-alignment at its finest.

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My Seven is a guest series where friends and artists I admire share their sensory recommendations — something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION

Today’s Seven Senses guest is my friend Alberto Mielgo, whom I met through my partner over a decade ago. At the time, Alberto was living in Los Angeles while maintaining his strong Spanish accent. He had just quit his corporate job as an animator, working many years for big studios such as Disney and Sony. It was an in-between time in his career, and none of us could have predicted that he was on the verge of an incredible creative ascent.

In 2022, Alberto won an Oscar for best animated short for his film ‘The Windshield Wiper’, which explores the eternal question of “What is love?” within a modern context.

He also directed two episodes — “The Witness” (2019) and “Jibaro“ (2022) — for the Netflix animated show ‘Love, Death, and Robots”, which garnered him a cult following — and for which he won multiple Emmys.

The characters he develops are so unique and mesmerizing that many people have recreated them through elaborate costumes and makeup (including the Thai singer and ‘White Lotus’ actress Lisa, who recently dressed as the Golden Siren from Alberto’s episode “Jíbaro”).

Alberto is true artist: he’s been very vocal lately about not relying on artificial intelligence for his animations. In fact, at heart he’s a painter and illustrator and his 2D artwork is as mesmerizing as his motion pieces.

If you get a chance, I recommend watching all the short films he’s directed, but if you have to pick one, then dive into his Oscar winning modern love story ‘The Windshield Wiper’:

I was happy to catchup with Alberto when we were both in Paris in October, where he shared his favorite sensory experiences, including something to SEE, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

In Joy,

Sabrina

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SEE

Happiness (1965) | film by Agnes Varda

Watch on Kanopy (free), Youtube, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Max

John (your husband!) introduced me to Agnes Varda. He took me to a screening of one of her films years ago, and she was there for a Q&A. That was my introduction to her work!

Recently, I saw a few of her short films and also her feature called ‘Le Bonheur’ (‘Happiness’). I was in shock how she was using the language of cinema completely, free, no rules. What I was most impressed by is that she was discovering new things: doing strange editing, flat colors, things that were not the standard way of doing cinema. She’s one of a kind.

HEAR

Art Sonora | experimental music by Miguel Álvarez-Fernández

Listen in person (Madrid) or on Radio Clásica (RNE)

I recently reconnected with an old friend, who used to sit next to me at school when we were kids. Once a month, he does a session in a cinema, no screen, lights off and it’s all experimental music. Every time that my girlfriend and I go, we close our eyes and we listen. It usually last 45 minutes. It’s very inspiring because it’s a trip and it transports you to many places. Every session is different: sometimes it’s recorded in the forest, in the city. It takes place on a monthly basis at a cultural space called Cineteca de Matadero in Madrid and it can also be listened to on the radio weekly.

SMELL

Oud | aroma

Smell is my biggest sense — it’s very intimate. I don’t link it to art. It’s my favorite thing in relationships. It can be something repels me or attracts me. My girlfriend wears a perfume where the main note is Oud.

It’s a woody, earthy, smoky, often with sweet, balsamic, leathery, or even slightly sour nuances. It comes from infected Aquilaria tree resin. It’s known as “liquid gold” due to its rarity and high cost.

TASTE

Jamón Iberico (Iberian ham) | Spanish food

It’s not the same as prosciutto. It’s a type of cured leg of pork (primarily Black Iberian pigs) produced in Spain and Portugal, in the Iberian Peninsula. It must be made from either pure breed Black Iberian pigs or cross-bred pigs at least 50% Black Iberian.

I need it every so often. It’s very interesting in the palette, the sides of the tongue you feel them dry and they almost arouse. It’s a weird feeling and very nice.

TOUCH

Layer of paint on desk (and hand-built shelves)

I love the feel of my desk table. It’s years of paint, layered over and over. I’ve used it in my studio for so long.

Lately, I’ve also been building some shelves at home. I loved the feel of the wood, especially freshly sanded and freshly cut wood. So much so that I often stopped just to feel that sensation.

BALANCE

One leg jump + Community

I had a sports injury and now I’m doing an exercise that’s all about equilibrium. It entails jumping on one leg and then holding. And that’s literally all about balance. After I turned 40, I realized I needed more balance both physically and mentally. It never happened to me before. For mental balance, the main thing has been stopping and talking. As you know, I work a lot non-stop so I’ve had to learn to take breaks. When I’m deep in a project, I can spend weeks or even months without seeing people. And I realize that going out and seeing people, it helps make things less important and less heavy.

ENVISION

Tintin books

Something that’s always given me a sense of direction is my goals. I’ve had very defined goals from an early time in my life. The Tintin books had a big influence on me as a child and made me want to become a comic book artist. I got my first one when I was three years old and my father would read them for me. After that, I read each one of them at least 20 times. I’m crazy about all the characters. I still have the whole collection. Speaking of senses, I love the smell of books and to me the Tintin books are the scent of my childhood.

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It’s a Full Moon, my monthly deep dive on a theme along with 7 sensory recommendations to further explore that topic. I’ve also included an audio recording of the essay (up top).

“Let the cymbals of popularity tinkle still. Let the butterflies of fame glitter with their wings. I shall envy neither their music nor their colors.” — John Adams, Founding Father and second US president, in a letter addressed to his wife.

John Adams would have been an anomaly today. Because nowadays, everyone wants to be famous.

Have we become a narcissistic society? Or do we pursue fame to fulfill an intrinsic human need?

As someone who lives in Los Angeles – the epicenter of fame – I can’t escape the ways in which it seeps into so many aspects of life. What used to be reserved for public figures whose professions required the spotlight, has now expanded to the general population.

Artist Banksy was right when two decades ago he wrote: “In the future, everyone will be anonymous for 15 minutes” – a modern remix of Andy Warhol’s (also accurate) claim that “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.”

Actors and musicians were once the only ones for whom success was dependent on fame. After all, their job demanded they be recognized on the screens or stages worldwide. Their popularity meant increased opportunities, bigger paychecks and the ability to live off their art.

But conflating success with fame has now become the norm. Fame is no longer the by-product of talent: it is now the means and the end.

In the documentary ‘Fake Famous,’ filmmaker (author of ‘Fame: The Hijacking of Reality’) explains that one used to become famous for a skill. But all of that changed once media expanded and needed more and more material for its 24 hours of entertainment, including TV reality and social media, which opened a lot more avenues for fame.

In fact, the expectation is that once you build a following, you can sell anything: whether it’s movies, books, clothing, makeup, alcohol… It’s no longer about an innate talent, a perfected craft, or even a passion – but about an audience that will follow you down any consumer path.

For decades, when researchers asked kids what they want to be when they grow up, the top choices were “astronaut, athlete, doctor, teacher, engineer.” Now, kids in America say they want to be influencers more than anything.

It would be easy to judge these pursuits as superficial and narcissistic. But anthropologists and sociologists note that “being seen and valued are of paramount importance to human survival-physical and emotional” and that “it is intuitive to imagine that fame, and the visibility and value it confers, may be considered the ultimate vehicle by which to accomplish these goals.”

But they also warn that fame is a “fantasy” when it comes to “the promise of lifelong social inclusion.”

In fact, from my experience of working with musicians and artists who have reached high levels of fame, I would argue that it grants “exclusion” rather than “inclusion.” It is ironic how our desire to belong can boomerang and lead to increased isolation.

Some of that isolation is imposed by the realities of fame: it often comes with threats to one’s safety (such as stalkers — as poignantly described in this piece by actress ), and those looking to take advantage of one’s increased power and wealth (whether from strangers or even family and friends).

Sadly those real threats can also lead to growing paranoia. It becomes harder to trust the intentions of others, and as a result one’s world becomes smaller and smaller. Eventually, one’s circle is often composed of other celebrities, which further feeds a cycle of exclusion and a detachment from everyday reality.

As outsiders, we tend to equate fame with opulent lifestyles, free luxuries, unlimited access to leisure and pleasure. And some of that is true.

As wrote in a recent newsletter: “You get to go to great parties”, “wear fabulous clothes,” get free things like “phones and laptops and vinyl and trips.” But most of all: “You get to stand on stage and feel like a God.”

And perhaps that’s where the problem lies: mere humans are not Gods. And conflating the two is what distorts reality (theirs and ours). We place celebrities on a pedestal the same way we used to imbue Greek Gods with special powers, projecting our salvation (and miseries) upon them.

When climbing the mountain of fame, it’s hard to imagine the shadow it casts until one reaches its summit.

In a graduation speech at Barnard College in 2010, Meryl Streep spoke of the ways in which fame “separates you from your friends, from reality, from proportion. Your own sweet anonymity, a treasure you don’t even know you have until it’s gone. How it makes things tough for your family [...]. Being a celebrity has taught me to hide [...]”

In the incredible documentary ‘In and Around the Dream,’ Paul Simon talks about the ways in which fame “in small doses it’s like a medicine” but ultimately “fame is a poison.”

The trouble is that one can’t control the dosage of fame one receives. It usually comes like an avalanche and buries one under its weight. It seems that the more we are “seen” by others, the more we lose sight of ourselves.

I feel that we may be reaching a tipping point with celebrity culture, especially when it comes to “fame for fame’s sake.”

In researching today’s topic, I keep returning to these wise words from Dutch priest, writer and psychologist Henri Nouwen (who died in 1996 – long before we reached this apex of fame):

“There is much emphasis on notoriety and fame in our society. Our newspapers and television keep giving us the message: What counts is to be known, praised, and admired. Still, real greatness is often hidden, humble, simple, and unobtrusive. It has become difficult to trust ourselves and our actions without public affirmation. We must have strong self-confidence combined with deep humility. Some of the greatest works of art and the most important works of peace were created by people who had no need for the limelight. They knew that what they were doing was their call, and they did it with patience, perseverance, and love.”

For today’s full moon edition, here are seven sensory ways of exploring the topic of fame – through something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

In Joy,

Sabrina

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SEE

Fake Famous | documentary by Nick Bilton (2021)

Watch on HBO, YouTube, Hulu, Apple TV, and GooglePlay

This documentary was fascinating – a deep dive into social media fame, and how much it can be faked. The director (who writes a lot on technology for The New York Times) wanted to test a hypothesis to see whether anyone can be made famous.

For the experiment, three people with small social media following were selected. What followed were photoshoots that faked luxury lifestyles and a false audience of robots.

Apparently anything can be faked. For example, one can rent a made-up private jet (a tunnel with seats and windows) to take photos for $50 an hour. Or if you’re really on a budget, you can just buy a toilet seat for $12 to mimic the window of a plane.

Not only can social media followers and engagement be bought (through purchasing bots), but so can fake bidders on ebay, fake song downloads, fake sales of books and fake reviews of movies.

It’s a sobering view into the world of influencers, and the illusion of success.

HEAR

FAME | Podcast by

Listen on Apple Podcast

I listened to a few episodes of this podcast which interviews celebrities to discuss the challenges of fame. Guests include Amy Schumer, Brian Cox, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Dannii Minogue and others.

As Elvin describes: “Fame can give you a very lovely life. It can give you a shit one too. It can change you as a person - and in fact, research has been done that shows fame can alter brain chemistry. It can change everyone else around you.”

SMELL

Celebrity Perfumes

Celebrity perfumes seemed to reach their height in the early 2000’s when Sarah Jessica Parker, Jennifer Lopez, and Britney Spears released their perfume. They were once regarded as “cheap” (both metaphorically and quite literally far less expensive than designer perfumes). Afterall, what did celebrities know about the world of scent?

But the trend hasn’t slowed down. In fact, every singer, movie star and even athletes seems to launch their perfume brand: from Billie Eilish to Jennifer Aniston: and David Beckham. Even Donald Trump launched his own perfume.

For a deeper dive into the topic, I highly recommend reading this piece by .

TASTE

Star Chefs

Chefs, who were once confined behind the doors of a kitchen, have now been propelled to the spotlight. In a way, the trend isn’t new: Julia Child revolutionized the field in 1963 with her TV show ‘The French Chef.’

In the 1980s, Wolfgang Puck popularized the “star chef” concept in the US, and Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver rose to fame in the UK in the late 90s. The creation of The Food Network (1993) also propelled several chefs, such as Bobby Flay and Emeril Lagasse into the spotlight.

But in recent years, social media and TV reality shows such as Top Chef and Hell’s Kitchen have turned cooking into a high drama competition, and bringing fame to chefs often for their personality as much as their food.

According to The New Republic, Anthony Bourdain once wrote, “The new celebrity chef culture is a remarkable and admittedly annoying phenomenon. While it’s been nothing but good for business—and for me personally—many of us in the life can’t help snickering about it.”

TOUCH

Fame: The Hijacking of Reality | book by (2018)

Available at bookshops and online

I have yet to read this book but I was compelled to borrow it from the library after hearing Bateman discuss fame in the documentary ‘Fake Famous.’

I didn’t realize that Bateman was an actress and used some of her own experiences as a teen star on ‘Family Ties’ in this analytical look at the psychological effects of fame. The book explores how fame distorts reality, impacts identity, and shapes public perception.

BALANCE

Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You | installation art by Barbara Kruger (2021-2024)

Book also available online at LACMA store (on sale), MOMA, David Zwirner

“I try to make work that joins the seductions of wishful thinking with the criticality of knowing better,” states Barbara Kruger.

In her touring exhibition ‘Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You,’ Kruger explored fame, power, and consumerism. The work features immersive, site-specific installations, digital animations, and video installations, challenging celebrity culture and the surveillance of daily life in the social media era.

ENVISION

Fame is a fickle food (1702) | poem by Emily Dickinson

Fame is a fickle food

Upon a shifting plate

Whose table once a

Guest but not

The second time is set

Whose crumbs the crows inspect

And with ironic caw

Flap past it to the

Farmer’s corn

Men eat of it and die

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“Orange is red brought nearer to humanity by yellow.” – Wassily Kandinsky

I’m happy to announce that I’m curating the next TASTING COLOR: a Seven Senses Feast. This time we’ll be exploring the color ORANGE.

This is the third edition of this on-going series. The first iteration was dedicated to Green and the second one was Indigo.

As some of you know, this sensorial dinner series was born out of this newsletter. It originated from my color issue, featuring a photography series by Sophie Calle titled ‘The Chromatic Diet,’ which was inspired by a fictional character in Paul Auster’s novel ‘Leviathan,’ who ate a different color-themed meal every day of the week.

A work of literature turned into a photo series, which has now become a real life experience.

We’ll be eating a delightfulorange meal (prepared by Chef Tracy Tober), dining on orange ceramics (created locally by BAUER Pottery), listening to an orange soundscape, wearing orange fabrics, and enjoying the scent of a flower and citrus installation.

The sensory dinner will be hosted in Los Angeles on FEBRUARY 24, 2026 and you can make a reservation online. Discounts are available to Seven Senses annual paid members and attendees to previous dinners (email me for code).

Anytime I curate a TASTING COLOR dinner, it’s an invitation for me to immerse myself in the chosen color. Orange is my favorite hue, so I was excited to learn more about the influence of this bright zesty color on culture. Here are some highlights:

• Before the 15th century, the colour orange did not have a name in Europe; it was simply called yellow-red.

• Portuguese merchants brought the first orange trees to Europe from Asia in the late 15th and early 16th century, along with the Sanskrit word “naranga” — which became ‘naranja’ in Spanish and ‘laranja’ in Portuguese.

• In Ancient Egyptian tomb paintings, orange was often a central color. It was painted using realgar— a pigment made from soft minerals typically found in crystals – which was also used by medieval artists to color manuscripts.

• In certain religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, orange represents the highest state of enlightenment and spiritual knowledge.

• For visibility purposes, astronauts wear orange suits during takeoffs and reentries into the atmosphere.

• Orange has more recently become a symbol of human rights; there are a number of organisations around the world who use the colour to represent a call for peace and change.

To celebrate, I wanted to dedicate this issue to ORANGE. Since the color got its name from the fruit, it’s impossible to separate the two, so below you’ll find inspiration that blends citrus and color through all the senses — SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

In Joy,

Sabrina

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SEE

The Orange Book | children’s book by Richard McGuire (1992)

Available online

I was so charmed in discovering this vintage children’s picture book by Richard McGuire. The story follows the life path of 14 oranges from a single tree as they go their separate ways, landing in art school, a vaudeville act, and a TV studio. The book explores themes of chance and destiny through witty and unexpected scenarios.

HEAR

Ecstatic Orange | music composition by Michael Torke (1985)

Listen on Youtube

In the mid 1980’s, Michael Torke was studying musical composition in Yale University and decided to start an early series of compositions “to celebrate without modulation a single color”.

Relying on his synesthesia, he created five colors-inspired compositions for orchestra.

For orange, the tonal center of the music gravitates towards a six note melody, with two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, a trumpet, two trumpets, three trombones, a tuba, a piano, four timpani, a whole set of strings and a large percussion section.

Along with the music, color headings appear in the score, entitled “Absinthe”, “Apricot, “Terra Cotta”, “Unripe Pumpkin”, “Copper”, etc – which refer to the different shades of orange experienced by the composer.

The ‘Ecstic Orange’ score premiered on May 16, 1985 with the Brooklyn Philharmonic under the baton of Lukas Foss at Copper Union in New York City.

SMELL

Hybrid Citrus Scent

Different plants create various odor molecules, and as a result, they all have a distinct smell. When it comes to citrus, their scent comes from mixing the four naturally-occurring citrus fruits: pomelos, true mandarins, lemons, and small-flowered papedas.

For generations, farmers have hybridized these species to generate hundreds of new variants that combine the characteristics of the four ancestral citrus fruits. The cross between a pomelo and a mandarin, for example, results in a sweet orange, and if a sweet orange is crossed again with a pomelo, the result is a grapefruit.

As the plants are hybridized, their enzymes can be combined in novel ways which changes their odor molecules. The scents of various citrus fruit varieties differ as a result of the recombination of odor synthesis pathways.

TASTE

Turning Orange: the Carrot Transformation

According to the World Carrot Museum, carrots were grown in the Afghanistan region 5,000 years ago, and they were mostly white and purple in color. Egyptian temple drawings from 2,000 BC depict purple plants, which Egyptologists believe to be purple carrots.

The first orange carrots showed up in artwork in Italy and Spain in the early 1500s, and it started gaining popularity in the Netherlands in the 16th century.

Legend has it that Dutch growers cultivated orange carrots as a tribute to William of Orange, who led the Dutch in the fight for independence from Spain. But it’s more likely that Dutch growers cultivated the orange carrot through selective breeding as a sweeter and less bitter variety.

TOUCH

Mr. Birch: the Champion Orange Peeler

In 1899, The Strand Magazine, a British monthly, introduced its readers to Birch as “the one man we would wish to have as a companion on a desert island of the Pacific.”

In a photo portrait of Birch, he’s wearing an apron and holds a partially peeled orange in his hands. According to the article, Birch was a tinkerer and inventor who could make utensils from various materials (including coconuts).

​​On his voyages around the world, Birch happened to be holed up with thousands upon thousands of cases of oranges. At the time, the citrus industry was booming and worldwide trade in oranges was growing. Birch took the opportunity to apply his artistry and industry to his juicy traveling companions.

He developed a technique of quartering the peel and then slicing each quarter into a series of attached, ribbon-like strips. Loosened in this way, the fruit’s outer protection could be crafted into all manner of designs.

Birch wove the rinds into abstract, flower-like decorations. He created a Cubist-like face, a cute little boar, a Japanese houseboat and a British crown in delicate detail, amongst many others.

BALANCE

Oranges: poems by Frank O’Hara and paintings by Grace Hartigan

In the 1950’s, Frank O’Hara visited the studio of his friend, the painter Michael Goldberg, and wrote the poem ‘Why I am not a Painter’:

One day I am thinking of

a color: orange. I write a line

about orange. Pretty soon it is a

whole page of words, not lines.

Then another page. There should be

so much more, not of orange, of

words, of how terrible orange is

and life.

From that poem, a suite of others emerged titled ‘Oranges’, with no mention of the colour itself. It inspired his painter Grace Hartigan to make 12 paintings illustrating O’Hara’s ‘Oranges’ and incorporating its text. In her paintings, the colour becomes an introspection: an open window into the self and how our actions relate to our identity.

ENVISION

The Orange Show Monument | Folk Art by Jeff McKissack

Jeff McKissack was a retired mail carrier and outsider artist who transformed a small suburban lot near his house into a folk art installation. He named it “The Orange Show” in honor of his favorite fruit and as a symbol of a long, healthy life.

Built between 1956 and 1979 outside of Houston, the 3,000 square foot labyrinthine space is composed of materials McKissack collected on the roadside and in antique shops: tiles, ornamental fencing, garden statuary, tractor seats metal buggy wheels (which mimic the appearance of the segmented orange). Each piece was hand-painted and placed by McKissack.

In 1979, he opened it to the public and it has since been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The park offers various public programming, including workshops, music, storytelling and performance.

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Interrupting our regular scheduled programming to offer you a little dose of hope.

A few days ago, I was struggling with the dissonance between my creative work and the current state of the world. Trying to justify artistic endeavors during an increasingly chaotic time has been an on-going challenge the past year. It can often feel so meaningless to create (anything) when the world is ablaze.

But then my partner shared something that shifted my perspective: the Walk for Peace.

Since October 26, 2025, a dozen Buddhist monks — and a dog named Aloka – have been walking from Fort Worth, Texas to Washington D.C. They have traversed many Southern states (they’re currently in North Carolina), connecting with communities along the way. Today is the 84th day of their 2,300 mile journey.

They’re not brandishing signs nor affiliating with political parties. They’re not trying to convince anyone of any particular ideas or beliefs. They’re simply (yet profoundly) wishing “all beings be well, happy and at peace.”

They have impacted thousands of people on their journey, and have gained over a million followers online. Crowds gather along their path, offering them flowers and water, sharing a moment with them, and basking in their peaceful presence.

It’s been incredible to see how the most simple gesture – walking – is resonating with so many people. It goes to show that our impact doesn’t just derive from our actions but from the intention and energy we imbue into them.

A dozen monks taking one step after another has stirred up the hearts of millions. People have greeted them with smiles and sobs. As one of the monks said “they are tears of release and tears of joy.”

We’re all holding so much right now – grief, anger, despair – individually and collectively. And witnessing these monks on their peaceful walk has allowed people’s hearts to open, and for some of their pain to melt away.

Watching the many videos online made me cry. I wasn’t just moved by the monks, but I was particularly touched by the people showing up to witness them. It feels like a jolt of hope for our humanity. It’s been such a profound reminder that despite our seeming differences, we all want the same thing: peace.

But peace isn’t just a feeling to grasp when our circumstances are ideal. Peace is work.

As a woman wisely noted, sharing her experience of seeing the monks:

“Yesterday I drove 4 hours to go see the monks in Rock Hill, SC. It was not the peaceful experience I was expecting. There was a LOT of people pushing to get a look, with their phones on their face, and rushing in front of us. I barely got to see them rush by. I also had conflicting feelings because the more people there, the better the chance their mission has an impact.

On the drive home, something clicked.. My peace is fragile. I was tested after I waited for 4 hours and then was pushed out of the way. My peace hung in the balance of other people’s actions. My peace depended on the experience I got while there.

Peace that exists when conditions are perfect is NOT peace, it’s comfort.

Peace is not fragile for them because they don’t protect it. They carry it within them through chaos and adversity. Peace strengthens the same way a muscle does, by being used under resistance.

I thought I was going for a peaceful experience. Instead, I came out with a better understanding of peace itself and how it is something you constantly work on within you. All that to say, THANK YOU. Your mission had an impact on me beyond what I could have imagined.”

As the monks explained, the Walk for Peace is not just the venerable monks walking, but “all of us walking together – in person and in spirit – choosing peace over division, compassion over indifference, unity over separation.”

Today’s newsletter doesn’t feature my seven sensory recommendations, but I hope the Walk for Peace offers you many sensory delights and renewed presence. You can see the monk’s live itinerary on their website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

In Joy,

Sabrina

PS: The monk’s dog, Aloka, has been an added source of joy during this Walk for Peace and I wanted to share a bit of his canine journey. Three of the monks met Aloka during their pilgrimage in India, where they were walking for 112 days. On day 6, the dog started walking with them. As the monk explained: many dogs followed them on the journey but only Aloka stayed by their side during their whole journey in India. They named him Aloka, which means “Light.” When their pilgrimage was completed, they decided to raise funds to bring Aloka back to the US, who has been living at their Buddhist temple since then and is now participating on their Walk for Peace. Born with a natural heart-shaped pattern on its forehead, and a tail curled in a “P” shape, it feels like Aloka was meant for this journey. You can follow Aloka the Peace Dog on Instagram.

My Seven is a guest series where friends and artists I admire share their sensory recommendations — something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

Nora Schjelderup — also known by her stage name Ora the Molecule — is hard to describe in a few words. She’s a magical being, that seems to have recently landed on Earth. Sometimes I wonder if gravity has any effect on her, as her mind floats on dreamy clouds and her body teleports through space.

She says that “Ora the Molecule” is her Intergalactic alter-ego, but to me there’s very little difference between the public persona and the private one. As long as I’ve known Nora (over ten years!) she has always seemed otherworldly.

Nora and I met when we both lived in Venice Beach, circa 2013/2014. Despite now living in different countries, we’ve kept in touch over the years.

I got to witness Nora’s music evolve over the past decade and I was thrilled to see her perform at a sold-out show in Los Angeles this past Fall. It’s funny to watch someone whom you know intimately rise to a level of fame. She has a loyal fan base, who were basking in her hypnotic energy and singing the lyrics to all her songs.

Her music is described as disco meets synth pop. To me, it feels like dancing on a UFO with an ecstatic crowd of earthlings.

Her last album ‘Dance Therapy’ was recorded during COVID lockdown in her small cabin in Norway. After years of living in Los Angeles, a heartbreak and a pandemic brought her back to her Norwegian roots, where she spent her time making music in a forest dwelling outside of Oslo.

From a dark time came a very bright and lively album. Like a phoenix rising from its ashes, or an Arctic fox emerging from the snow, Nora has since been touring across Europe and the US, opening for bands such as Cut Copy and Röyksopp.

We recently had a video call catchup at the New Year, and talked about her music making process, the ups and downs of the industry, and the delicate balance to strike as an artist — as she puts it: “To access your art, you need to be soft. Yet you also need an armor in certain moments to protect your art.”

Nora is a multifaceted artist: not only does she write her music, but she also creates her costumes, and designs her stage visuals. She doesn’t just want to simply sing on a stage, but actually create a whole sensory world. It feels symbolic to me that she wears a disco ball helmet when she performs, which beams out a thousand rays, shining onto her audience. Everything she touches — her mere presence really — is pure light.

I’m happy to offer you a glimpse into Nora’s mind, as she shares with us 7 sensory inspirations: something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

You can catch Nora on tour (she’ll be in Germany this February) and follow her on Instagram. I’ll leave you with one of her music videos:

In Joy,

Sabrina

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SEE

Aerial Hoop performance

Follow online

I saw my dear friend Lizzy Kremers dancing and spinning in a circular steel apparatus high above the ground. I guess it´s called aerial hoop. She made it look so simple and so elegant, but I know it required significant core strength, flexibility, and so much upper body strength. She was one with the element, a true piece of art in movement. She started training for this only a couple of years ago, and I was so touched to see her dance/fly like a true fairy.

HEAR

Music by Mercedes Sosa

Listen on Apple Music, Youtube or Spotify

I’ve been listening a lot to the song "Gracias A La Vida" by Mercedes Sosa.

SMELL

Nocturnal scent Molecules | created by Rasa Gundersen

I think this answer must be the scent that was created for my "We Are Molecules" all immersive art performance here in Oslo. I was so lucky to work with the incredible scent alchemist Rasa Gundersen who created a scent using nocturnal molecules. They are obtained from the noble plant Neroli, jasmine and tuberose which release their deeply connecting scent only at night. We put the scent in diffuser in the gallery during the show, and it worked! I do feel it helped us to connect.

TASTE

Spanish jalapeño olives

Lately, I've been obsessing over jalapeño olives, a new trend I found in supermarkets in Spain. Highly addictive.

TOUCH

Moonwalking with Einstein | book by Joshua Foer

Available at bookstore or online

I recently read this book about memory, which tells the story about the author's journey into the world of competitive memory. What stuck out to me is that memory is so much about training, learning to visualize things (even words). It’s a way of scanning with our brain.

I’m scared of memory. (here I asked Nora is she’s afraid because she has a bad memory or if she remembers too much). I think I remember too much but I’m afraid I’ll forget the important things.

BALANCE

Ocean Swim

Swimming in the ocean after a long travel touring around clubs in the world.

ENVISION

Guidance from Mary Oliver and Rumi

"Attention is the beginning of devotion" — line from a poem by Mary Oliver.

And another one, a quote from Rumi: "As you start to walk on the way, the way appears." It makes me think that perhaps clarity doesn't come before action, but from action....

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It’s a Full Moon, my monthly deep dive on a theme along with 7 sensory recommendations to further explore that topic. I’ve also included an audio recording of the essay (up top).

Happy new year!

I’m so glad to usher in a fresh start. 2025 felt like rowing in a storm with no visibility of the horizon. We finally made it on the shore of 2026. What will this new year bring?

Of course, the future is unknown to all of us. But that doesn’t stop us from attempting to predict what is to come. Psychics, astrology, numerology, tea leaves, I-Ching, and tarot are some of the ancient methods we’ve used to herald knowledge of the future. Modern ones have since been developed: statistics, algorithms and now A.I. are the new speculative tools.

But there’s another way – often overlooked – that is perhaps more accurate than all: ART.

Artists have a keen ability to foretell the future. There’s ample examples of books, songs, and artwork that eerily predicted our current events.

Some artists, like Hilma af Klint, turned to spiritual means as a way to connect with a divine plan. Klint had a vision that her paintings would be shown in “a spiritual center in the form of a temple with three circular levels, built around a central tower that could be traversed on a spiral-shaped path.” In 1959, fifteen years after her death, a remarkably similar building opened in New York City: the Guggenheim Museum. And the artist’s foresight came true when the Guggenheim organized Hilma Af Klint’s first US solo show in 2018.

Similarly, Benjamín Solari Parravicini, born in 1898 in Buenos Aires, started receiving messages from the “beyond” in 1933, telling him: “From today, we will have this conversation every night. We will guide you, and it will be for the good. Always keep a notebook and pencil close. You will write down everything we dictate to you.”

As a devout Catholic, he initially struggled with trusting these invisible forces, and he discarded many drawings at first. Later, seeing that the predictions were coming true, he began to keep the drawings he made.

Between 1936 and 1972, Parravicini made more than a thousand “prophetic” drawings, which he described as “psychographies.” Those drawings accurately predicted various major world events, including the arrival of television, satellite communication, in vitro fertilization, and that a dog would be the first being sent to space.

Other artists take a more pragmatic approach. Author Margaret Atwood, for example, does extensive research and collects news clippings to create her fictional worlds. In writing her dystopian novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ she made a rule for herself that she “would not include anything that human beings had not already done in some other place or time, or for which the technology did not already exist.”

Similarly, sci-fi writer Octavia Butler, utilizes facts from the present to offer glimpses of the future. In her novel ‘Parable of the Sower,’ which was published in 1993, she described a major fire incident taking place in Los Angeles in 2025. In the novel’s sequel, ‘Parable of the Talents,’ she imagined an authoritarian leader promising to “Make America Great Again.”

Butler didn’t think she possessed any special psychic gift. As she explained: “I didn’t make up the problems. All I did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.”

She relied on education, learning about history, and ecological awareness to understand “our past and present behaviors as guides to the kind of world we seem to be creating. The past, for example, is filled with repeating cycles of strength and weakness, wisdom and stupidity, empire and ashes.”

And that may be the trick about artists’ predictive abilities: they pay attention. Whether they’re listening to mysterious voices from the beyond, or noticing the world around us, they’re sharply aware of the present. Their curiosity for life, their knowledge of our societal structures, their thirst for learning, their ability to connect invisible dots, are what enables them to paint an accurate picture of our future.

As Octavia Butler wrote:

“I don’t believe we can do anything at all without side effects–also known as unintended consequences. Those consequences may be beneficial or harmful. They may be too slight to matter or they may be worth the risk because the potential benefits are great, but the consequences are always there. In Parable of the Sower, my character put it this way:

All that you touch/You Change

All that you Change/Changes you

The only lasting truth/Is Change

God/Is Change.”

For this Full Moon edition, I turn to seven artists who were able to envision the future – in the form of something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

In Joy,

Sabrina

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SEE

The internet and Video Communication | predicted by Nam June Paik

South Korean artist Nam June Paik imagined a future where technology would be at the center of communication, art and work. In a 1974 essay, Paik proposed the building of new ‘Electronic Super Highways’ that would enable faraway cities to be connected through satellites, cables and fibre optics. Physical distance would then no longer be a barrier, he reasoned:

“Conferences between people in different locations via color video telephones will become commercially feasible. Video-teleconferences that consume no energy (though there is the initial cost of copper) will drastically reduce air travel, and along with it the chaotic shuttling of airport buses through city streets – forever!”

Though he wasn’t the first to envision a worldwide digital network, he rightfully predicted the repercussions on our day-to-day communications. He said that conferences between people in different locations via colour video telephones will become commercially feasible.

“The gains will be tremendous, environmentally and energy-wise,” he wrote. “It will become our springboard for new and surprising human endeavors.’”

HEAR

Electronic Music | predicted by John Cage

John Cage was ahead of his time when it came to music composition. And he also predicted the ways in which music would change in the future. He declared that “the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments.”

In his talk “The Future of Music: Credo,” Cage not only thought electronic music would play an important role in the future, but also envisioned centers for electronic performance years before they emerged.

For Cage, sounds and music would merge into one creation: “Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. The sound of a truck at 50 mph. Static between the stations. Rain.”

Some of these ideas were entirely his original conception. Twenty five years prior, the Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo published ‘The Art Of Noises’ manifesto, penned in 1913. In it, Russolo declared that “with the invention of the machine, noise was born” and that in the early 20th century “we find far more enjoyment in the combination of the noises of trams, backfiring motors, carriages and bawling crowds.”

SMELL

Rain, storms and winter | predicted by plants

Originally, I did research to find a botanist or olfactory artist who predicted the future – to no avail. But what I did discover is that plants themselves are predictors of the future. They can’t necessarily tell us about upcoming political events or cultural movements, but they can foresee changes in the atmosphere that the human eye (or nose) can’t anticipate. Turning to nature to guide predictions of the future was once seen as folktales, but they’re increasingly used by scientists to help navigate weather patterns. A few examples:

Dandelions, Pine Cones and Tulips: they warn of bad weather approaching by closing up when rain is coming to protect their seeds from moisture. This is because these plants are sensitive to humidity and changes in atmospheric pressure.

Mimosa Pudica: Known as the “sensitive plant”, this perennial flowering plant is known for its rapid leaf movement. While it primarily closes its leaves in response to touch, it also reacts to sudden changes in light and temperature.

Maples, Birches, and Polars: the leaves of these trees flip over when humidity rises, predicting upcoming rains.

Persimmon Seeds: an ancient folk method suggests cutting persimmons seeds in the Fall to get a glimpse at the winter forecast. Each seed reveals one of three shapes: a fork, a knife, or a spoon, each symbolizing a different winter condition:

Fork: A mild winter, perhaps with a bit of wind and more temperate days.

Knife: A sharp, cold winter is on the way, likely bringing biting winds.

Spoon: Expect a heavy snow season, as the spoon suggests shoveling and digging through thick snowdrifts.

According to The Persimmon Lady’s exclusive report for the Farmers’ Almanac (Melissa Bunker, known as “The Persimmon Lady,” has been reading persimmon seeds and making predictions for the Farmers’ Almanac since 2018). She predicted that the winter 2025-2026 will be filled with “ice, sleet, and snow.“

TASTE

Liquid Meals and Lab Meats | predicted by Mary E. Lease and Marcelin Berthelot

Mary Elizabeth Lease, a 19th-century Populist leader, predicted in 1893 that by 1993, science would create synthetic food, freeing women from “their kitchen shackles.” She believed that future meals would be replaced by liquid meal replacements, that “a small phial of this life from the fertile bosom of Mother Earth will furnish man with subsistence for days. And thus the problems of cooks and cooking will be solved.”

Similarly, French chemist Marcellin Berthelot believed that science would play a crucial role in the future of food. Berthelot was famous thanks in part to his belief that all organic materials could be synthesized, and thus manufactured and manipulated in a laboratory. He predicted that by the year 2000, food would be produced in labs, not farms.

A reporter who visited him in his Parisian apartment in 1894, wrote that Berthelot claimed that:

“The epicure of the future [will] dine upon artificial meat, artificial flour, and artificial vegetables,” and enjoy the delights of “artificial” wines, liquors, and tobacco.”

Berthelot believed that artificial meat would be delivered in the form of easy-to-swallow tablets in “any color and shape.”

For Berthelot, this scientific advancement would improve human nature itself: people would no longer need to wage war over limited resources or engage in the “slaughter of beasts.” As a result, human character would increase in “sweetness and nobility.”

TOUCH

Los Angeles fires, climate change, and the rise of fascism | predicted by Octavia Butler

When the Los Angeles fires happened last January, Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable of the Sower’ was on people’s minds. Published in 1993, the novel is set in a future California (2024-2025) undergoing “a slow-motion apocalypse: global warming, economic depression, and neoliberalism’s accelerative hollowing-out of the public sphere have conspired to leave America in a state of near-total collapse.”

The story is set in a fictional Robledo which is a stand-in for the Los Angeles neighborhood of Altadena, where Butler lived. The book’s main character keeps a journal and writes that a fire occurs on February 1, 2025 — making Octavia Butler’s book an eerie prediction of the real-world Eaton Fire which occurred in January 2025 in Altadena.

In a 2000 essay titled ‘A Few Rules for Predicting the Future,’ Butler wrote: “making predictions is one way to give warnings when we see ourselves drifting in dangerous directions. Because prediction is a useful way of pointing out safer, wiser courses. Because, most of all, our tomorrow is the child of our today. Through thought and deed, we exert a great deal of influence over this child, even if we can’t control it absolutely. Best to think about it, though. Best to try to shape it into something good. Best to do that for any child.”

BALANCE

Remote Work and Leisure society | predicted by Alan Watts

The famous British philosopher Alan Watts (1915-1973) predicted that “Everything we’d ever wish to know or learn will be available on a screen right in front of us.”

He felt that the rise of technology would have a deep impact on our work. He envisioned a future where the need for massive and wasteful commuting by automobile would be gone, replaced by communications systems that facilitate work and connection from anywhere.

He also described “what happens when you introduce technology into production,” which would enable us to “produce enormous quantities of goods… but at the same time, you put people out of work.”

He added: “You can say, but it always creates more jobs, there’ll always be more jobs. Yes, but lots of them will be futile jobs. They will be jobs making every kind of frippery and unnecessary contraption, and one will also at the same time beguile the public into feeling that they need and want these completely unnecessary things that aren’t even beautiful.”

According to Watts, “technology is getting rid of the need to earn a living. And many of us will soon have to be paid not to work, at which point we can become Vannaprastha right away. So, as technology develops that means the leisure society, and we’re going to have to find ways of living in which one self-respect does not depend upon one’s productivity.”

ENVISION

Smart Phones | predicted by René Barjavel (author) and J.K. Raymond Millet (filmmaker)

Here’s a 4 minute clip of a fascinating film that accurately foretold our screen-obsessed age.

The film, which was directed by J.K. Raymond Millet in 1947, was based on a premise by science fiction author René Barjavel, which explored the evolution of television into a portable, pocket-sized format and how humans will interact with the device.

Not only does it predict handheld smartphone-like devices but also, how this would change our behaviors: people looking at screens while walking or on their work commute.

It aptly also points out the consequences on politics that “the ministers of tomorrow, instead of being chosen like those of today, for their valor, their intelligence, their devotion to the public cause, will be chosen for the seduction of their smile and the veil of their eyes.”

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Welcome to Present Sense – a weekend curation with 7 sensory recommendations: something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE and ENVISION.

A couple months ago, I came across this Ojibway Indigenous saying, and can’t stop thinking about it (which inspired me to create the featured animation):

“Sometimes I go about pitying myself

And all the while I am being carried across

the sky

By beautiful clouds.”

I deeply exhaled when I read those words. It seemed like a breeze of hope in what has felt like an otherwise heavy time. I try to refrain from labeling years as “good” or “bad” but it’s tempting to say that 2025 was challenging.

Nothing is ever all one thing. But the mind is quick to notice the valleys, more than the peaks. When I think back on the past twelve months, I tend to focus on the hardships, rather than the delights. This is why the practice of gratitude is such a powerful tool: it helps rewire the patterns of the mind (as I’ve written about here).

I often have to remind myself that we have such a limited scope of our life. We can only see what’s just in front of us, or what has just passed in our rear view mirror. We don’t have a bird’s eye view on our existence. It typically takes years before we can grasp the impact a situation, person, or specific moment had in shaping us.

What appears as a hardship can turn into a blessing (and vice versa). Whether it’s ending a relationship, losing a job, or moving homes, the silver linings are often initially hidden. They tend to sparkle from a distance, with the perspective of time.

It reminds me of a classic Taoist tale, which I originally heard years ago in a recording by the late philosopher Alan Watts:

Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “Maybe.”

The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “Maybe.”

The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.”

The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Maybe.”

The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad — because you never know what will be the consequence of misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.

The Present Sense weekend edition offers seven sensory inspirations (for paid subscribers) including:

• A film as a lesson on creative courage

• A sound experiment that blew me away

• A comforting winter beverage

• An easy recipe for a flavorful dressing

• My guided meditation on Silver Linings

• The latest memoir I’m reading (and a favorite)

• The best advice I’ve received this year

In Joy,

PS: this is the last letter of 2025. I’ll be back for the Full Moon on January 3rd. Wishing you a wonderful holiday season!

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Read more

and I met in the most modern way: through Instagram. She’s actually the only person I’ve ever befriended on the social media app. A few years ago, I saw her on a video interview and immediately felt called to reach out to her. It was a strong intuition and I’m glad I followed it. We set up a Zoom friend date, and ended up talking for a couple hours.

After that initial digital connection, we ended meeting up for coffee during one of my visits to NYC. It felt like old friends reuniting: no small talk, deep topics, and an immediate comfort and familiarity. It turns out we have many things in common: we’re both deeply interested by the intersection of art and spirituality, we’ve attended Vipassana silent meditation retreats, and have an affinity for astrology.

I’m fascinated by Allison’s work as she’s managed to merge spirituality and art in a unique way. She calls herself an “oracular artist” and an intuitive practitioner. Her signature Meditation paintings are created by imbuing each paint stroke with the energy of a repeated mantra. She also offers intuitive readings to help guide people through various phases of life transformations.

You can learn more about her work on her website, IG, and her newsletter .

Allison shares her seven sensory suggestions: something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

In Joy,

Sabrina

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SEE

Milton Avery Show | art exhibit at Karma in New York

On view at Karma (NYC) until December 20, 2025

The Milton Avery Show at Karma in New York. There always seems to be an element of surprise in his work and color choices. I also think about simplicity A LOT - and so much of his work has a kind of unfinished first draft, color wash quality to it. I think it’s easy to overlook how difficult it is to pare something down to only what is essential and still make it feel “complete”, I think that’s where his genius is. It’s the kind of thing that makes you feel like you could go home and do it, but you quickly realize this actually takes years of practice or dedication. It’s ballet.

HEAR

Stars | song by Nina Simone

Listen on Youtube or Spotify

Nina Simone - Stars (Live at Montreux Jazz Festival). Every single note, every single word she fills with emotion. It’s the kind of song that immediately sits down in the heart with that kind of gorgeous melancholy weight. She captures the beauty of burning bright, burning out, and being alive. I love artists that mean it, and Nina... she means it!

SMELL

Jasmine Essential Oil from Enfleurage

Available online

Jasmine Essential Oil from Enfleurage. I really love sensory things that your relationship to, changes overtime. I didn’t used to like the smell of Jasmine. But in the last year and a half I can’t get enough. She’s a night blooming flower - mysterious, seductive. I feel like maybe up until now I didn’t have enough life experience to appreciate her. But now I’ve loved more, lost more, and in general have been more seasoned by life. She reminds me to be curious about, and appreciate the dark.

TASTE

Aguachile from Mariscos El Submarine | NYC restaurant

More info online

I recently ordered the aguachile from Mariscos El Submarino. It’s a very unassuming place but I legitimately felt like it was a Michelin quality dish. Bright, spicy, fresh, great textures, I love foods that transport you, and tastes like being in a bikini on a beach with warm sea feels.

TOUCH

Leopard silk pants

I just thrifted the most fabulous leopard silk pants and if I’m home, I’m in them. For me it’s easy to default to linen or sweatpants, and go towards comfort over beauty at home, but when comfort meets beauty… unstoppable.

BALANCE

Oracular Paintings

Available online

I create oracular paintings as energetic tools... and I use them myself! The one I’ve worked with the most this season is for Prosperity. Since I’ve started working with it in September I’ve had so many epiphanies around the unconscious agreements I’m moving through the world with. Our whole lives are deeply shaped by our beliefs, and I belief the more we make those beliefs conscious, the more genuine power we activate. Though prosperity is about money, it’s not only about money. To me it’s about bringing Spirit and Matter into harmony, and engaging with the many ways that we are supported (and therefore prosperous) in many realms.

ENVISION

Communication beyond earthly realm

I’ve have been interested in ancestral work for years, and I dipped my toe in here and there, but never fully committed to any practices for long. But since my Mom left her body, I really dove in to the potential to continue communication with those that love us beyond their earthly life. I would offer as a jumping off point, is to ground, intend, ask, suspend disbelief, and pay attention. We all have people rooting for us, guiding us, loving us, and waiting for you to say yes.

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Today is a full moon (the last one of the year!). It’s the time of month when I do a deep dive on a topic and offer you seven sensory ways to explore that theme.

You can also listen to the voiceover up top.

‘Tis the season, again. The time of the year when everyone runs into a frenzy of more, more, more. The parties, the decorations, and of course, the gifts.

It is ironic that we spend Thanksgiving – the quintessential American holiday – going around the table expressing our gratitudes for what we have, often returning to the basics: our health, a safe home, food on the table, people to love.

But less than 24 hours later, we’re bombarded by the chorus of consumption on Black Friday. It’s as if the country declares “enough gratitude, now shop!” And we obey the marching orders: fill up the parking lots of malls, line up at the entrance of stores, and overflow our shopping carts.

The abundance, based on human connection, that we felt the previous day quickly dissolves into a scarcity mindset that can take hostile forms. One evening we’re setting the table with an extra placemat for someone in need, and the next day we’re getting into fist fights with strangers over the last flat screen TV.

Often the motive for our purchases (whether for ourselves or others) is driven by the need to ease our anxiety with more stuff. Our consumption is rarely based on pleasure, but rather fueled by fear.

The irony is that instead of reducing our angst, this accumulation often adds to it. It’s costly too. Beyond the price tag of purchased goods, we’re now indebting ourselves renting space to store it all. In 2024, the self-storage industry generated an estimated $44.33 billion in revenue in the U.S. We’re clearly amassing more than we can even contain within our own homes.

It’s not entirely our fault. We’ve all been groomed to equate happiness with prosperity which, in our society, translates to constantly accumulating things we don’t need (or even want). We’ve somehow been tricked in believing that a life well-lived is a life well-bought.

The strange thing is that this type of consumption isn’t propelled by one’s own desires: it’s driven by those of others. We’re not even sure what we like, we simply emulate our neighbors, our friends, and social media influencers. At the core of it is a desire to belong, a modern signaling that we too are part of the tribe.

This is why gift guides (which are surely invading your inbox right about now) perform so well online: we want to be told what to purchase. It seems easier to follow the shopping guidelines of the internet rather than to get to know the people around us, to get curious about their tastes and inquire about their secret wishes.

Now I’m not against gift-giving. On the contrary, I’ve often said that “gifting” is one of my love-languages. But to me, a gift is a measure of attention: it’s noticing how your mom’s feet are always cold and getting her some wool socks, it’s remembering your sister’s favorite author, or celebrating your best friend’s new born son by making them an illustration.

The most memorable gifts are rarely the most expensive ones, but rather the more personal ones. It’s the objects that we imbue with meaning, history and shared connection.

When I look around my home, there are very few things I need. In fact, my partner and I have been contemplating moving and we feel burdened by all the stuff. We both agree that when the time comes to pack up, the only things we’ll bring along with us are art, books and family objects. Everything else is replaceable.

It goes to show what’s truly valuable: the art we make (or that our friends have created) and the stories that are worth carrying around.

For this last full moon of the year, I wanted to turn to artists and the original gifts they’ve created for their loved ones, with something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

In Joy,

Sabrina

Gift Seven Senses

SEE

Christmas Cards by Andy Warhol

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Warhol started making Christmas cards when he was a student at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he first developed his blotchy “printed” drawing style. Over the years, he continued the practice and would send them to his friends.

The personal project even lead to commercial work: he approached the Museum of Modern Art and proposed that he designed the Christmas cards for the gift shop. The success of the series even led him to be commissioned by Tiffany & Co to design Christmas cards that would be sent to their clients.

HEAR

Barbed Wire Harp by Salvador Dalí

In the 1930’s, surrealist artist Salvador Dalí sparked a friendship with comedian and harpist Harpo Marx.

In 1936, as a Christmas gift, Dalí sent a surreal, full-size harp to Marx. The instrument had barbed wire for strings, tuning knobs made of cutlery, and the entire frame was wrapped in cellophane. Marx was delighted by the gift and sent Dalí a photograph of himself playing it with bandaged fingers.

SMELL

Air from Paris by Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp made many original gifts for his friends and family. One of them was a sealed glass ampoule that was filled with air from Paris, which he gave to his friend and patron Walter Arensberg in New York in 1920.

The “empty” ampoule was originally purchased from a pharmacist in Paris and claimed to fill it with air from the city. In 1949, it was displayed in an art museum and accidentally broken and repaired.

TASTE

Key Lime Pie recipe by Robert Rauschenberg

Artist Robert Rauschenberg, who lived in Captiva Island, Florida, loved making key lime pie. He would often offer the recipe to his friends, inscribing it on paper cards.

He compared his approach to food to be much like his art: “a philosophy, a sophisticated dish built out of scraps.”

TOUCH

Chess set (and iron) by Man Ray

Man Ray had a knack for creating one-of-a-kind gifts for his friends. His iconic “Cadeau” (Gift) was a flatiron with tacks glued to its sole, which was originally shown at his first solo exhibition and later given to composer Erik Satie.

He also created a unique chess set as a gift for his close friend and fellow artist, Marcel Duchamp, who was an avid chess player. Manufactured in 1926, his design was inspired by their friendship and based on a 1920 design, which was a collaboration between the two artists.

BALANCE

Olive Wish Tree by Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono met Peggy Guggenheim when she and John Cage visited Japan. The pair remained friends until Peggy’s death in 1979. As a posthumous gift, Yoko Ono gave an olive tree to Peggy, which was installed at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy.

Part of Ono’s larger ongoing Wish Tree series, the tree installation is inspired by the Japanese tradition of writing wishes on paper and tying them to temple trees, which from a distance look like white flowers.

The olive tree is a permanent installation where visitors are invited to write their own wishes and hang them on the branches. It is planted next to the burial spot of Peggy Guggenheim and her beloved pets.

ENVISION

Heart X-ray by Paul Newman

Actor Paul Newman created one of the most touching gifts for his wife, fellow actor Joanne Woodward for Valentine’s Day. He presented her with an X-ray of his heart, around which he drew another heart.

There’s no photograph of the gift so I recreated what I imagine it to look like.

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