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

Subscribe now

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:

Subscribe now

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

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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

Subscribe now

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

Subscribe now

“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

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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

Subscribe now

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....

Subscribe now

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

Subscribe now

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.”

Subscribe now

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!

Subscribe now

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

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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

Watch online

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.

Subscribe now

Being a beginner is both exhilarating and incredibly frustrating.

I recently signed up for an animation workshop and it’s been a steep learning curve. Not only am I learning a new skill but I’m also confronting some of the self-imposed barriers, which hold me back from fully creatively expressing myself.

Even though I’ve always loved animation – an art form that encompasses visual art, motion and music – I never allowed myself to open that doorway (until now). In recent years, I’ve made video poems, and illustrated texts, but somehow animation felt like an unreachable summit.

For a long time, I thought that investing in a class “just for fun” seemed impractical and irrational. The old refrain of focusing on things that would “advance” my career kept me from pursuing things that made my heart flutter with excitement.

But when I saw that one of my favorite artists was teaching an animation workshop, my logical reasoning went out the window and I leapt at the opportunity. I didn’t expect that beyond developing a new skill, I would also discover a lot about myself. It’s been an unexpected emotional and psychological excavation.

I’m not the most digitally-savvy so diving into After Effects is like learning a foreign language. I’m awakening parts of my brain which have been dormant, or never utilized before. The synapses are firing up! The reward is the real sense of accomplishment when seeing tangible progress, going from “I have no idea how to do this” to “wow! I can make something move!”

But I also noticed old tendencies resurface. I feel anxious when I don’t understand something. I beat myself up when I can’t immediately master one of the tools. I strive for “perfection” instead of allowing myself to be messy. I want the teacher to uphold my self-esteem by validating my work. I’m impatient in my desire to create something complex while bypassing the simple steps. Even admitting these patterns brings a level of shame.

These are deeply ingrained habits of the mind. One of my artist friends noticed them a couple years ago when we were painting on holidays. She pointed out how my attention to detail can often suffocate my creative flow. I’m too attached to making something beautiful, instead of bringing it to life. As a result, my drawings can be technically “correct,’ yet lack energy.

My sense of rigidity really came to an apex during this animation workshop. It became clear how my perfectionism gets in the way of experimentation. Not only does it constrain my creative process but it also dampens the joy of art-making.

The irony is that the artists I admire most are those who don’t take themselves too seriously. Their work is playful and unpretentious. Last week, the illustrator Orfeo Tagiuri shared with me that when he makes his illustrations he gets in touch with the “summer camp kid” energy within him.

It made me want to do the same. To let those sides of myself – the young, inexperienced and enthusiastic part — guide the process. To let go of my preconceived notions of beauty, my obsession with doing things “right,” and my attachment to the outcome. Let the art be messy, potentially ugly, but ultimately free.

The Present Sense weekend edition offers seven sensory suggestions (for paid subscribers). Find below the most enchanting documentary, inspiring thoughts from a musician, a seasonal recipe, an illustrated book, a poem, and (fittingly) an animation short film.

In Joy,

Sabrina

RELATED TOPIC:

Subscribe now

Read more

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

So far, I’ve featured my artist friends on this guest series but I’m excited to introduce you to someone I just met this week: Orfeo Tagiuri.

I discovered Orfeo’s work online a couple months ago and immediately swooned over his playful yet profound illustrations. When I found out that he was having an exhibit in L.A (his first in the U.S!), I jumped at the opportunity to see his work in person.

The work was joyful, thought-provoking and also very funny. It’s been a while since I’ve seen art that makes me laugh out loud, not for its irony or cynicism, but for its innocence and spiritual depth.

That night, I spoke with Orfeo and learned a bit more about his process and his influences. But to dive deeper, I invited him to grab coffee before he headed back home to London.

Less of an interview, and much more of a conversation, we discussed his creative process, thoughts on the art world, growing up between the US and UK, and artists he admires.

I learned that he originally graduated with a major in creative writing (including taking a class with Maggie Nelson), then worked for a documentary filmmaker and a photographer, before moving to Paris and working at the bookstore Yvon Lambert. There he met an array of artists who invited him to show his work in exhibits. Life was seemingly opening a path towards visual arts, which he decided to pursue by attending art school in London and studying painting.

Since then, he’s blended both his writing background and his visual art training to develop his signature style, illustrating his pondering on existential questions as “Little Passing Thoughts.”

If you’re in Los Angeles, I highly recommend seeing his solo exhibit, which is currently on view at Charlotte Call gallery until December 12, 2025.

You can find Orfeo on Instagram, and his book “Little Passing Thoughts” is available online.

Discover below Orfeo’s seven sensory recommendations: inspiring things to see, hear, smell, taste, touch, balance, and envision.

In Joy,

Sabrina

Subscribe now

SEE

The Garage | artwork by Michael C. McMillen

Visit at LACMA + learn more online

I just went to LACMA yesterday and saw this incredible work by Michael C. McMillen. It felt amazing the way he draws your attention to all the times when you experience something beautiful in your every life and forget to notice. To me, that’s what art is really about.

HEAR

Lael Neale | musician

Listen on Youtube, Apple Music, Pandora

I just saw Lael Neale perform for the first time during this LA trip, and I have tickets to go see her show in London in December. She has an incredible voice and lyrically is so strong. She’s kind of mystical but also awkward in a magical way.

SMELL

Hibi | incense matches

Available online

I love these Japanese incense matches, which burn for 10 minutes. They’re all so good, my favorite might be Geranium.

TASTE

Cafe Cecilia | restaurant in London

Learn more online

My favorite local spot is Cafe Cecilia (East London). Anything there is delicious, especially the mince on toast and Guinness bread ice cream.

TOUCH

Raymond Pettibon zines

See them online

I’ve never touched them but I would love to get my hands on the zines that Raymon Pettibon created.

BALANCE

Morning practice

When I wake up, the first thing I do is drink some lemon water and salt (natural gatorade!), write my Morning Pages, and then bounce up and down 100 times letting my whole body loose. I learned that jumping exercise a while ago in a yoga class and it’s really helped me.

ENVISION

For our sense of proprioception, one of the things that come to mind is an artwork I created, which says “Each of us is a never ending Universe.” It gives me a celestial sense, offering both a feeling of vertigo and freedom.

Subscribe now

I used to believe talent was the most important aspect to a prolific creative career. When I go to a museum, concert, or movie theater, I assume that those who hold the stage (or the wall, or the screen) are the ones who are particularly gifted.

But the more I look around, the clearer it becomes that tenacity is far more important than talent. With the rise of social media, I sometimes even question whether talent is even needed to succeed today. It now feels that whoever shouts the loudest gets the prize.

Since taste is subjective, talent is a matter of perspective. Each of us may have different conceptions of who has artistic talent (and who doesn’t). But no matter the creative field (music, literature, film, dance, visual arts), tenacity is unavoidable.

In 1984, The Paris Review interviewed James Baldwin, asking him what he would tell young writers about “how to become a writer?” His answer was:

“Write. Find a way to keep alive and write. There is nothing else to say. If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you’re not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need in the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real.

The interviewer then asks: “Can you discern talent in someone?”

To which Baldwin replied: “Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.”

So it turns out that even then talent didn’t matter as much as “endurance”, as Baldwin calls it.

I discovered a similar sentiment shared in ‘Art Work,’ Sally Mann’s latest memoir. She is adamant about refusing to use the word “talent,” referring to it as “the word I swore I wasn’t going to use in this book.”

To her, being an artist is a matter of “Patience, in conjunction with its sibling, tenacity, can take the place of….that other thing [talent].”

She attributes her success to those qualities, some of which, like patience she learned over time. She writes: “If I can be said to have had a small, innate spark of brilliance, it has been as tirelessly nurtured as any flickering campfire of damp sticks by Scouts desperate for warmth.”

Indeed, talent can only blossom when it is nurtured. Its existence is likely the by-product of the endurance game. The more hours we dedicate to our artistic craft, the deeper our talent becomes.

It seems that the line between creative success and failure is the difference between those who keep going versus those who stop trying. There are, of course, other big factors at play such as luck and privilege (whether in the form of gender, race, or social class).

But I do wonder how many beautiful artworks will we never see because people cede to create? I feel that many of us throw the towel right before the big (or little) break. I imagine there are plenty who stand on the precipice of success, and then turn around. Maybe that next step would have been the tilting point.

The trouble is that we don’t know how long we have to go until we reach some measure of success (whether it be monetary, fulfilment, recognition, etc). And it’s natural to doubt, tire, and consider giving up. Sometimes it’s the external world that destroys our hopes: too many rejections, precarious living situations, physical (or mental) limitations. But often, it’s our own minds that steer us away from continuing on our creative path. I recently read that “doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”

A few months ago, I wrote about commencement speeches. There’s one that really moved me that I didn’t include. It was given this year at Radio City by musician Maggie Rogers for the graduation class of NYU Tisch. There’s a particular moment that really struck me, where she says:

“And you know, that’s the thing that I always remember about standing on stage at Radio City. It’s that when the spotlight hits you and the house goes dark, the only thing that you can see are the exit signs. Turn around: there’s 47 of them last time I counted. And that’s part of what it’s going to look like these next 9 years. I don’t know any artist that hasn’t considered quitting. But you didn’t get here because you wanted to do something easy. You got here because you wanted to do something great. Art is not an industry or a game. It is a practice. And over and over again, it is your artistic faith that will save you: the unflinching belief and constant recommitment to your singular gifts and to your own unique timing. It’s the most important quality that you possess.”

For this full moon edition, I turn to those who have shown tenacity in their creative path, offering you seven sensory examples. May these provide sparks of hope and winds of encouragement to continue pursuing your creative dreams.

In Joy,

Sabrina

RELATED TOPICS (one of my most popular essays):

Subscribe now

SEE

Chuck Close | painter

Watch ‘Note To Self’ (5 min)

Painter Chuck Close knew he wanted to be an artist from the age of four. There were many obstacles along his path. He completed college despite struggling with a learning disability.

In 1988, at the age of 48, he was struck with a sudden near-fatal illness: his spinal artery collapsed leaving him quadriplegic. Even though he was bound to a wheel chair, he would strap his paint brush to his wrist in order to paint large paintings, which became sought after by major museums.

He also suffered from Prosopagnosia (face blindness), which made him unable to recognize faces. His condition drove him to paint portraiture to help him remember faces. In doing so, he developed a unique portrait style, which became his most well-known artworks.

Making art was central to his life and also a means to navigate the various physical challenges he faced: “One thing that was clear to me early on was how important it was to have something to do – something that you’re anxious to get back to. I wanted to get back to work because I enjoy what I do. I love making art… It’s largely how I see myself. I’m an artist; therefore I have to make art.”

HEAR

The Sparks Brothers | music band

Watch the documentary on Kanopy, Youtube, Apple TV, Google Play

Last year, a record label reached out to me to work on the creative direction for a band that I was vaguely familiar with, even though they had been around for decades. In order to familiarize myself with the group, I watched a documentary about them, which ended up being a true lesson in tenacity.

Sparks was formed by two brothers in the early 1970s. Since then, they’ve produced 26 albums, which have influenced so many other bands (including Joy Division, New Order, Depeche Mode, the Smiths, Sonic Youth, and Björk). No matter how much success Sparks garnered, they constantly innovated, not allowing the popularity of a previous album to dictate the direction of their sound.

There were also periods – notably 6 long years – of creative hardships. Nonetheless, they still showed up to their studio every single day, continuing to create despite the circumstances. They’ve since experienced a revival of their music, with successful releases and worldwide tours.

SMELL

Wangari Maathai | nature conservationist

Watch documentary ‘Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai’

There were endless odds stacked against Wangarĩ Maathai before she became the first African woman and first environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.

After receiving her doctorate in veterinary anatomy, she founded The Green Belt Movement as a response to Kenya’s increasing environmental degradation. She also connected her ideas of environmental restoration with providing jobs for the unemployed, encouraging women to plant tree nurseries throughout the country to grow trees native to the area.

In 2010, she published her book “Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves,” where she emphasized “the importance of communities taking responsibility for their actions and mobilizing to address their local needs.”

She got divorced from her husband who thought she was “too strong-minded for a woman” and that he was “unable to control her.” As a result, she was imprisoned for six months after she criticized the ruling judge for being corrupt.

Despite continuous threats from the Kenyan government, she continued to actively protest the destruction of public land and forests. With the Green Belt Movement she planted “trees of peace,” and won the Nobel Peace Prize for her “contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.”

TASTE

Julia Child | chef

Read book ‘My Life in France’

When Julia Child arrived in Paris in 1948, she knew nothing about French culture, language, nor cuisine. Frustrated by her inability to communicate, she invested herself at the age of 36 in learning French by signing up for a language class that met for six hours each week, plus homework.

She also enrolled in cooking classes at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, where she was initially placed in the so-called housewife course, but fought hard to enter into the school’s professional program.

Prior to that, Child was an “awful” cook according to her friends and husband. Cooking was not a natural talent, but rather a skill she passionately dedicated herself to over many years. She wrote: “I had never taken anything so seriously in my life — husband and cat excepted — and I could hardly bear to be away from the kitchen.”

The first time she took the exam to graduate from Le Cordon Bleu, she failed. But she didn’t give up, changing her preparation strategy, and when she retook the exam test, she aced it.

When developing her now-famous cooking book ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking,’ she went through a number of rejections from publishers. It took years for her to hone the book’s content and find the right publishing support.

TOUCH

Barbara Hepworth | sculptor

Watch the BBC short doc (1961)

Hepworth showed a strong interest in art from an early age. Despite the gender pressures of the time, she moved to London to study art at the Royal College of Art in the 1920s.

She started experimenting with different materials, moving beyond traditional stone and wood to incorporate metals like bronze. By 1934, Hepworth was a mother to a son and to triplets - both navigating the hecticness of motherhood while trying to carve (literally) time for her artistic practice.

By the time WWII broke, Hepworth and her family fled London. She was unable to sculpt for the next three years, neither having the means, nor the time. Instead, once she’d put her children to sleep, she would spend her evenings working on a series of drawings.

The 1950s had their own set of challenges: a divorce and the death of her son, who was killed in a plane crash, which deeply impacted Hepworth’s work and left her in a debilitating depression. A trip to Greece, prompted by her friend, to look at classical sculpture and carving helped Hepworth come out of despair and unlock a new creative flow.

Hepworth enjoyed major acclaim towards the end of her life. She continued to work in her studio daily until her death in 1975 – making 500 sculptures in her lifetime.

BALANCE

B.K.S. Iyengar | yogi

Watch documentary ‘Iyengar: The Man, Yoga, The Student’s Journey’ on Youtube, Google Play, Apple TV

The founder of Iyengar Yoga, B.K.S. Iyengar was born in 1918, a sickly child who was not expected to survive. The 11th of 13 children, he suffered from a long list of childhood illnesses, including malaria, tuberculosis, and typhoid fever, and was often malnourished.

His brother-in-law, the renowned yogi Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, introduced the young Iyengar to yoga, believing it was the path to healing him.

B.K.S. Iyengar dedicated himself to the practice, despite his physical challenges. He developed other ways to approach poses, using props like blocks, chairs, and blankets. This approach made yoga more accessible, allowing students of all ages and physical abilities to perform poses with greater precision and safety.

ENVISION

Barry Jenkins | Film Director

Raised in a Miami ghetto by a crack-addicted mother, Barry Jenkins grew up worlds-away from the Hollywood fame he’s since garnered. He didn’t always know he wanted to become a filmmaker. In fact, when he attended Florida State University, he changed majors three times: from English to creative writing to finally film school.

He felt inadequate in the film program, so he took a year off, which he dedicated to his own film education by watching foreign movies from a subscription to Sight & Sound. When he returned to school, he found his voice through his 2003 short film ‘My Josephine.’

When he moved to Los Angeles, and started working as an assistant at Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films, he had “no car, no money,” and no particular ambitions. A love affair brought him to San Francisco, where he worked in retail at Banana Republic. When people asked what he did for a living, he answered: “I’m a filmmaker.” If they asked what films he had made, he would say: “None.”

Finally, he started writing what would become his first feature ‘Medicine for Melancholy.’ His college friend financed it with his own savings of $15,000. Even though it was loved by critics, it didn’t garner much of an audience. When he failed to get his next film made, he started working as a carpenter while continuing to take meetings in the film industry.

It took eight years, and encouragement from another college friend, before he co-wrote and directed his second feature ‘Moonlight’ based on Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play ‘In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue.’ The movie was shot in 25 days on a low-budget and won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2016.

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 a couple years ago at a meetup and we hit off chatting about art, moving from NYC to LA, and the ups and downs of the creative life. We were both subscribed to each other’s newsletter, where we each tackle creative topics in our own way. I had no idea at the time that Mason had written a very successful book — ‘Daily Rituals: How Artists Work’ — a major reference for artists seeking guidance about the creative process.

For over 15 years, Mason has researched the habits of hundreds (thousands?) of artists. It’s a topic he also tackles in his newsletter , where you can learn about Erik Satie’s daily schedule, Audre Lorde’s home-office, and Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed’s rules for living.

I’m very excited to read his forthcoming book Making Art and Making a Living, which comes out on March 31, 2026. You can pre-order it now from Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon.

I recently asked Mason to share his sensory suggestions — things that have recently inspired him — and I was delighted to discover new films, music, elixirs, and textures.

In Joy,

Sabrina

SEE

“One Day Pina Asked..." | directed by Chantal Akerman

Watch online

I just saw a screening of an hourlong documentary that the Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman made about Pina Bausch and her dancers in 1983, called "One Day Pina Asked..." Akerman followed them on tour in Europe for five weeks, and the film is like a collage of moments from their backstage preparations, their rehearsals, and the final performances. Totally amazing, highly recommend.

HEAR

“In C” | composed by Terry Riley

Listen on Youtube or Apple Music

The other week I caught a live performance of Terry Riley's "In C," which he wrote in 1964 as a musician-led piece that is different every time it's performed. Knowing that you're listening to a version that will never be played that way again made it extra special—though the 1968 Columbia recording of "In C" is also really great.

SMELL

Bearss Lime | Citrus Tree

Seeds available online

I've been growing a few semi-dwarf citrus trees in containers at my house in Los Angeles, and my favorite by far is the Bearss lime (also known as Persian lime) — the smell of a freshly cut lime right off the tree is heaven.

TASTE

Bitter Aperitivo | by Scarlet distillery

Available online

Scarlet is a Japanese distillery that makes small-batch bitters and amari. I recently bought a bottle of their bitter aperitivo and it is incredible — really nice on its own but like a magical elixir when mixed with whiskey.

TOUCH

Cotton Hemp shirts | Mister Green

Available online

I just bought a cotton-hemp blend T-shirt from the LA shop Mister Green, and it feels so nice — just the right weight for a T-shirt. Now I want to go back and get a sweatshirt and sweatpants in the same material.

BALANCE

Climbing Gym

I joined a climbing gym a couple years ago, and it has been so good for me. There is a special kind of body tiredness you get from a climbing a wall over and over again that I'm finding really restorative.

ENVISION

Worm Zoom | Co-Working Club

Signup online

Through my newsletter, I run a virtual coworking club called Worm Zoom, intended as an extra dose of accountability and camaraderie for writers, artists, and anyone else trying to make progress of a creative project. Participants are invited to log their work sessions on a tracking spreadsheet, and I have to say: I find reading everybody's daily entries so validating and inspiring. Even though we're all doing our own thing, the ups and downs of the process are pretty universal, and it's encouraging to see concrete evidence that if you just keep showing up for your work good things will eventually happen.

Subscribe now

For 50 years, acclaimed photographer Sally Mann has been corresponding with her friend Ted Orland. Sally Mann writes: “He and I poured our frustrations, doubts, fears, sorrows, and, yes, joys into decades of letters from 1973, when we met in Yosemite at the Ansel Adams Workshops, until… well, until the present. Ours is a friendship based on writing–and I do not mean texts, I mean actual paper.”

Seeing some of the letter excerpts (in their typewritten form) was the highlight of reading Mann’s memoir ‘Art Work,’ as part of ’s bookclub.

There are many passages that offer vulnerable and insightful glimpses into the artist life. One particularly stood out to me:

I kept thinking about the one line where Orland writes: “You (not everyone, but you) exist to serve Truth through Art. Nothing Less.”

It had me thinking about the roles of the artist, and whether each artist has a different (cosmic) assignment. In the case of Sally Mann, her mission is TRUTH. A tall order for any artist!

It made me wonder what are the various functions of art? And how does one know the path that our art needs to take?

[ Note: when I speak of art, I’m referring to all disciplines – visual arts, music, film, literature, dance, etc. ]

I wrote down some of the many roles art plays:

1. Entertain

2. Educate

3. Decorate

4. Provoke

5. Appease

6. Enchant

7. Enlighten

I’m sure I’ve left some out – and I’d be curious to know the main purpose of art in your life? Art probably has as many personalities and life paths as humans do.

For those of us who create, the question becomes whether we get to choose the direction of our art work? Or must we obey the path it wants us to take? Just like in life, it’s the existential dilemma of will versus destiny.

Ted Orland points out to Sally Mann that she has “no choice, now or in a year or two, to take aim upon your life and discard all the debris that holds you back from doing what you know you have to do.”

It seems that, as artists, it’s our responsibility to heed the call. Art is the master and we’re its pupil. Beyond the medium we choose, or the subject matter, it’s the way we center our life around art-making (and seeing, and supporting).

As Sally Mann writes: “It is about more than technique or practice or even, yes, hard work. It is about how you live your life, because the life you lead is your art and the art you make is your life.”

This week’s sensory recommendations includes the inspiring art I experienced this past week in Paris. Every artist I discovered had a different approach and each one fulfills our various human needs.

In Joy,

Sabrina

RELATED TOPIC:

Subscribe now

SEE

Niki de Saint Phalle | Exhibit at the Grand Palais

On view until January 4, 2026

I shared Niki de Saint Phalle’s Tarot Garden in a past edition. What I didn’t know is that apparently I’ve been a fan of her work since I was a young child – my mother reminded me I was enchanted by her Stravinsky Fountain which serves as permanent installations outside the Centre Pompidou museum.

Naturally, I was delighted that there’s a major exhibition of her work currently showing at the Grand Palais in Paris. I learned so much about her process, intention, and evolution.

HEAR

“I… I… I…” | installation by Ryan Gander

Permanently on view (Paris & Venice)

It’s easy to miss this small stuttering mouse, nestled by the floor of the museum shop entrance of La Bourse de Commerce. Permanently installed at the Parisian museum, there’s also two other mice that can be found at Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana in Venice, Italy.

The mouse moves its head constantly while trying to express itself in the voice of a young child. For the artist, it’s a commentary on the challenges of expressing oneself.

SMELL

Meg Webster

On view at La Bourse de Commerce

This was the ultimate sensory artwork: a room filled with tactile and olfactory installations by Meg Webster. The California-based artist uses natural materials to create ecosystems. There was a mountain of salt, a sphere of red clay, a wall of honey, a circle of foliage. Each art work emanated delicious scents.

TASTE

“Untitled” (Portrait of Dad) | installation by Gonzalez-Torres

On view until January 4, 2026

This pile of wrapped peppermint candy was displayed on the floor of the museum’s entrance. I was shocked when I saw an onlooker grab one, unwrap it and eat it. The museum guard didn’t say anything so I assumed it was OK.

Indeed the artist Gonzalez-Torres aims to question the fixity of artworks and the control of institutions. He created the pile of candy, with an “ideal” weight of 80 kilograms, as a tribute to his father. The viewer is invited (though not explicitly) to participate: take a fragment of the artwork, modify and construct it — revealing its vulnerable and ephemeral nature.

TOUCH

MC Mitout

Learn more on her website and Instagram

My painter friend Anne Lauroz recommended this gallery exhibit and I’m so glad she did. I discovered the work of MC Mitout who has been creating an on-going series – ‘Les Plus Belles Heures’ (The Most Beautiful Hours) since 1990.

It refers to the book ‘Les Belles Heures’ from the Middle Ages where the goal was to paint the most beautiful moments of one’s life in the same gouache on the same paper size.

MC Mitout follows the same approach by making all her artwork (1080 paintings so far!) on gouache on paper in a format of 21 x 29.7 cm, where she ponders the existential question of “what to do” with art and life.

BALANCE

Lygia Pape

Learn more about the artist

As part of their ‘Minimal’ work, the museum of Bourse de Commerce presents the first solo exhibition in France for artist Lygia Pape (1927-2004), a key artist of the Brazilian avant-garde.

The main art piece on view is the light installation ‘Ttéia 1’ which consists of copper wires stretched from the ground to the ceiling and which rivals itself according to the angle of the light and the visitor’s movement. When creating this piece, the artist’s aim was to redefine her relationship to the public.

There were other fascinating works, including videos of collective performance, an object-book, and other hanging sculptures (which I’ll be sharing on the Seven Senses Instagram).

ENVISION

Film by Pontus Hulten (1954)

More info online

As part of the Niki de Saint Phalle exhibit, I discovered the work of Pontus Hulten, an artist turned museum director. He was a friend and big supporter of the work of Niki de Saint Phalle and her partner Jean Tinguely. Pontus Huelten was also the head of the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, co-created the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and was also invited to establish the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles.

Subscribe now

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.

is a dear friend and award-winning film director. She started her career in the camera and art departments, assisting director Wes Anderson. Her first short film ‘Sea Full of Hooks’ screened at the Cannes Short Film Corner in 2011. In 2013 she wrote, directed and produced her first feature film ‘Days of Gray’, a silent film set in a dystopian future.

Her latest film ‘The Short History of the Long Road’ is a road trip drama starring Sabrina Carpenter, Steven Ogg, Maggie Siff and Danny Trejo. It premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, receiving a Special Mention for Best Screenplay and was released by Filmrise. It is currently available on all platforms. She’s also a mentor for the Sundance Collab program, advising young budding screenwriters. I’m eager to watch her next feature film, which she’s currently working on – a romantic comedy set in Paris.

Beyond her film talents, one of the things I love most about Ani is how she’s deeply involved with her local community – whether helping migrants, fighting for women’s rights, participating in mutual aids. I never understand how she finds the time to be so creative with her projects and also so deeply involved with her community – she always does both without much fanfare nor expecting any accolades. No matter how dark times get, she somehow always shows up filled with hope and enthusiasm.

Her endless curiosity leads her to the most interesting discoveries, which she writes about in her newsletter ‘My Brain is a Sieve.’

In Joy,

Sabrina

Subscribe now

SEE

Catalina | novel by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Available in bookstores and online

I just inhaled "Catalina" by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio in two days. I had LOVED her first book book "The Undocumented Americans" a nonfiction memoir combining her personal story with other people in her situation. Her brilliantly hilarious debut novel also borrows from her own past. It's about a young girl from Ecuador living as an undocumented immigrant through her final year of school at Harvard University in 2010, right as Congress debates the Dream Act. Fun, devious, gut-punching.

HEAR

‘The Shocking True Story of the World’s First Seed Bank’ | podcast

Listen online

On a long drive upstate with my sister and dad, we were riveted listening to Gastropod's episode about the world's first seed bank. During the deadly siege of Leningrad in World War II, a brave group of botanists starved rather than touch the seeds and crops they were protecting. From their sacrifice grew the world’s first seed bank, which we still rely on today to feed the world.

SMELL

Biafine

Biafine is my go-to all-purpose cream: from burns to cuts to bug bites. The iconic smell has remained a secret for over forty years. It immediately teleports me back to my childhood in France...

TASTE

Perilla

I’ve been growing perilla in my backyard, transplanted from another friend's place and the deep purple leaves smell so earthy and medicinal. Widely used in Asian food food, especially Koran and Vietnamese cuisine, red perilla can spread super quickly, taking over a garden just like mint... so be warned!

TOUCH

Zohran baseball hats

I have been very inspired by the amazing Zohran baseball hats our friend Kristine designed with Chris Cruz who runs the Mexico City studio Sacrifice. Crucial for sun protection as you get the word out, canvass and phone bank for our future mayor :) The best part is that a portion of the proceeds go to Mi Tlalli, an incredible organization that helps asylum seekers and their families and is very dear to my heart. Everybody loves good merch and hats are available to purchase at cost for campaign volunteers. Follow @itsgivingprizes for updates.

BALANCE

Bhramari Pranayama (bumblebee breath)

I recently attended a somatic workshop led by Karishma and got hooked on Bhramari Pranayama, or bumblebee breath. Sit on the floor or a chair and close your eyes. Close your ears with your thumbs. Take a deep breath in and as you exhale, make a humming sound like a bee buzzing. You're going to feel the vibration in your head and throat. You have now stimulated the vagus nerve, which regulates everything from heart rate and digestion to mood and immune function. Voila.

ENVISION

The Wizard of Oz | film by Victor Fleming

"The Wizard of Oz" was screening at Brooklyn Bridge Park recently. It was my first time watching it again since I was a child. One line in particular has stayed lodged in my brain... Towards the very end of the movie, Dorothy's friends are each receiving their gift from the Wizard in Emerald City. He's been exposed as just a normal man with no special powers, but as he gives a heart-shaped watch to the Tin Man, he says: “Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.” It's a bittersweet moment where he acknowledges that having a heart is a fragile thing, even as the Tin Man has always yearned for one. To really love means opening yourself up to pain as well. It's a tender line I've been holding on to with everything that's been going on lately. I hope we don't grow callous but instead stay open to all the joys and the sufferings of the world.

Subscribe now

It’s a Full Moon and also a special anniversary edition. If you prefer to listen to the essay, I’ve also included an audio recording (up top).

Today is the 3 year anniversary of Seven Senses.

There’s a tradition that started in the Middle Ages where each year of marriage is celebrated with a specific material. The first year is associated with paper, the second year with cotton, and the third year with leather.

Early materials are meant to represent the fragile beginnings of a marriage, while later gifts (such as wood, iron, gold etc) show the growing strength of the bond.

Even though Seven Senses isn’t a marriage, I still think of it as a relationship to my own creativity, and also to some extent a commitment to you, my readers.

When I first launched this newsletter, I had a clear idea of what I wanted to create: explore cultural topics and offer seven sensory suggestions. I decided to follow nature’s rhythm, by launching a manifesto on a new moon (marking new beginnings) and publishing a new theme each full moon.

In that first year (paper), I wrote once a month and started building the foundation for this space. I went slow and steady, knowing that paper can tear easily but can also absorb the ink of creativity.

In the second year (cotton), I felt sturdier and expanded by writing every week. Apparently cotton is a water-intensive crop that requires a long, warm, frost-free growing season. So I fertilized the creative grounds and nurtured the budding sprouts. I launched new offerings such as weekly sensory recommendations (“Present Sense”), seasonal Travel Guides and a special series on Friendship. The cotton fibers of experimentation let me stretch out in various directions.

Beyond the newsletter, I also wanted to bring my ideas to life and connect in person with the Seven Senses community. I launched ‘Tasting Color,’ a sensorial dinner series and hosted two editions (with more to come). I love collaborating with fellow makers, including chefs, ceramicists, perfumers, musicians and others. Experiencing our seven senses around a shared meal has been one of the highlights of this creative journey.

This sense of community is something I want to further nurture. So I’m excited to announce a new offering – “MY SEVEN,” a Guest Series – that will feature creative friends and artists I admire, highlighting their own seven sensory suggestions. I’ll share the first guest with you this weekend.

My friendships and the artistic community that surround me are strong pillars in my life. I’m excited to introduce you to these amazing individuals and their incredible talents. This will also be an opportunity to learn from them, as they introduce us to new sensory experiences. In preparation for this series, I’ve already discovered so many interesting books, music, podcasts, plants, and grounding practices.

Seven Senses continues to expand each year and I’m grateful to share this space with such interesting makers and inquisitive readers.

It feels fitting that leather is the symbol for completing three years of this endeavor. Seven Senses is sturdier than ever but still malleable. It’s comfortable to wear but has an edgy flair. I hope that it is both relevant and timeless.

Like leather, this space has been a protective layer against harsh weather, especially this past year. When the external elements felt too intense out there, I turned to this creative anchor. When I felt untethered by the constant barrage of (bad) news, my senses kept me grounded to a reality that I can SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE and ENVISION. I hope it has offered you the same.

As a yearly tradition, I like to celebrate by reflecting back and offering you a list of my favorite sensory discoveries from the past year.

In Joy,

Sabrina

Subscribe now

SEE

• ‘The Book of Imaginary Beings’ | book by Jorge Luis Borges

• Japanese Firework Catalogue | Hirayama Fireworks Co.

• Umberto Eco: A Library of the World | documentary by Davide Ferrario

HEAR

• Luminal + Lateral | music albums by Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe

• Total Blue | Music Album

• The Sound of Forests (Tree.FM)

SMELL

• The Hidden Life of Trees | book by Peter Wohlleben

• Tōji | Japanese winter solstice ritual

• ‘Missense’ by Sean Raspet and Maxwell Williams

TASTE

• Enoteca Maria | Global grandmothers as chefs

• Indigo Menu by Seven Senses (chef Tracy Tober)

• Silent dinner by artist Honi Ryan

TOUCH

• Watercolor Shoes | Wearable art by Robin Lordereau

• ‘The Angriest Dog in the World’ | Comic Strip by David Lynch

• Bower Bird’s blue rituals

BALANCE

Jumbled Mantra

• Graduation speech by Zadie Smith:

“There will always be folks hard-selling you the life of the few: the private schools, private plans, private islands, private life. They are trying to convince you that hell is other people. Don’t believe it. We are far more frequently each other’s shelter and correction, the antidote to solipsism, and so many windows on this world.”

• Anthropometries’ | Yves Klein

• ‘Keeping Quiet’ a poem by Pablo Neruda

ENVISION

• All We Imagine as Light | film directed by Payal Kapadia

• ‘The Age Of The Possible’ | Poem by Maria Popova

• “Invisible Hands Help” | The Wisdom of Hilma af Klint

Subscribe now

Everything you’ve heard about Los Angeles is true – and also false.

Is it always sunny and warm? Yes.

Is the traffic awful? Yes.

Is everyone drinking green juice, hosting full moon ceremonies, and pulling tarot cards? Yes, yes, and yes.

Do people get salmon sperm facials, hike the Hollywood hills with a full face of makeup, and attempt to climb their way to fame? Yes, yes, and yes.

But also…

In what other major city can you trail along the same paths as mountain lions?

Where else can you hear coyotes howl from your balcony?

Is there another place where you feel like you travelled from Oaxaca to Seoul in a few minutes? (fun fact: LA is the most ethnically diverse city in the US).

Out of all the places I’ve been to, Los Angeles is the most challenging one to describe. As Eve Babitz summarized: “You can’t tell a story about L.A. that doesn’t turn around in the middle or get lost.” Perhaps that is part of its appeal and downfall – a city shrouded in mystery, with soft contours that are hard to discern.

Unlike New York City, where I was born and spent my early twenties, I don’t have a Love-Hate relationship with the city of Angels. It’s more a state of confusion about it. This week I’m celebrating 12 years since I moved to L.A, and I still can’t make up my mind whether I like it.

Why am I still here after more than a decade? I often ask myself that question. Living in L.A is like a time warp: the past 12 years have felt like one continuous day. I’m never sure if it’s October or June – or if it’s 2013 or 2025.

Los Angeles meets and exceeds its clichés. The characters here seem to be written out of a satire. There’s the alternative spiritual crowd that hosts Ayahuasca and Peyote ceremonies every weekend in Topanga Canyon. There’s the multi-hyphenate con man with no real skill beyond the art of gab, who somehow makes his way up the Hollywood ladder. There’s those who have belonged to (and escaped) more cults than I knew even existed.

People often describe LA as lonely. Or as Jack Kerouac wrote in ‘On the Road’: “LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities.” The sprawling design is largely to blame for the loneliness. People live within the bubbles of their car and home, often hopping from one to the other without interacting with anyone. It is possible to spend days – even weeks – in Los Angeles without speaking to another human soul. Something that would be utterly impossible in New York (a sense of calm I sometimes craved and could never find when I lived there).

There is a comfort yet a deep disconnection in that kind of life. It can feel like a respite to experience that deep solitude and wide expanse of freedom. But one can easily start feeling untethered, disconnected from reality. More than once, I’ve found myself driving and feeling like I was in a dream, on a hazy and mystifying journey typically reserved for our nightly slumber.

In ‘After Henry,’ Joan Didion wrote: “A good part of any day in Los Angeles is spent driving, alone, through streets devoid of meaning to the driver, which is one reason the place exhilarates some people and floods others with an amorphous unease”.

LA is hard to penetrate because it doesn’t make sense. It’s like a colorful and mismatched quilt, made of remnants of torn fabrics, rather than a consistent pattern. In Dorothy Parker’s words: “Los Angeles is 72 suburbs in search of a city.”

Indeed every area has a unique feel and the neighborhoods determine the lifestyle. There’s the hipster crowd of the East side, and the surfer vibe of Venice beach. There’s the luxury shopping of Beverly Hills, and the old time hippies in the canyon. On a recent escapade, I even discovered an old cowboy bar in Sun Valley, where horses are tied on outposts while their riders sip their beer inside.

As David Lynch remarked: “I love Los Angeles. I know a lot of people go there and they see just a huge sprawl of sameness. But when you’re there for a while, you realize that each section has its own mood.“

In many ways, Los Angeles is what you want it to be. It knows how to morph to every desire, and to dress itself for various occasions. For those, like me, who value integrity and sincerity, it can be a slippery ground to navigate.

Los Angeles is the epicenter of illusion (a close-second to Las Vegas). It’s where people come to reinvent themselves, to escape their past, or to search for a dazzling future. It rewards the performative, rather than the genuine.

L.A was built to offer spectacle and in that sense, it always delivers. It was never meant to be true: its falsity is what keeps it alive.

As an ode to Los Angeles, I offer you seven sensory suggestions to explore the city through films, books, sound, flowers, food, and poetry.

In Joy,

Sabrina

Subscribe now

SEE

L.A Story | film directed by Mick Jackson (1991)

Watch on Apple TV, Google Play, or Youtube

This 90s comedy, featuring Steve Martin, helped me see LA in a new light. It perfectly captures LA culture with its various layers of absurdity. When I adjust my expectations of the city and don’t take it too seriously, LA can be charming, weird and over the top.

HEAR

Weather forecast by David Lynch

Listen online

David Lynch shared his daily weather reports for many years. During the pandemic years, KCRW, the Los Angeles local radio, made the legendary filmmaker their official weatherman.

Beyond the facts about sunshine and temperature, Lynch would occasionally share a song he liked, or sprinkle a dash of absurdity such as delivering a report from the past or the future.

SMELL

Night blooming Jasmine

Seeds available online

If there’s one scent associated with L.A, it’s the night blooming jasmine. It blossoms in May-June and lasts several months. It’s best to plant them in the spring when the last of the frosts have passed. Because of their wide-spreading roots, space them out at least four feet apart.

TASTE

City of Gold | LA food documentary directed by Laura Gabbert

Watch on Kanopy (free), Youtube, Apple TV

Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic who wrote for the LA times was a fixture in the city. He was an adventurous eater who loved to explore Los Angeles’ diverse food scene. Not swayed by the fancy restaurants, he was known to put “hole-in-the-wall” places on the radar of Angelenos and making the city’s sprawling food landscape more approachable to a wide audience.

TOUCH

LA Miniature architecture | by Small Scale

Available online

So many buildings in Los Angeles have become iconic. Some of them due to their architecture and others because of the role they play in movies, or being the site of legendary stories.

I recently came across the work of Kieran Wright, a New Zealand artist who has been recreating miniature versions of LA’s historic architecture and iconic businesses. They’re available online (at a steep price). Also, in classic LA fashion, he lists his celebrity customers on his site.

BALANCE

Yogananda | book + documentary

Book available online

Documentary available on Kanopy (free), YouTube, Apple TV

LA is notorious for its spiritual practices, and it’s where yoga first gained popularity in the U.S. One of the most influential yogic figures is probably Paramahansa Yogananda, an Indian Hindu monk who established himself in Los Angeles in 1925, opening centers and teaching meditation, yogic practice and philosophy.

His book ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ became one of the most popular spiritual books, selling over four million copies worldwide. The documentary ‘Awake: The Life of Yogananda’ is also a fascinating portrayal of his life.

If you’re in LA, make sure to visit the Self Realization centers, particularly Lake Shrine which is one of my favorite places in the city.

ENVISION

L.A. | poem by Bert Meyers

The world’s largest ashtray,

the latest in concrete,

capital of the absurd;

one huge studio

where people drive

from set to set and everyone’s

from a different planet.

For miles, the palm trees,

exotic janitors,

sweep out the sky at dusk.

The gray air molds.

Geraniums heat the alleys.

Jasmine and gasoline

undress the night.

This is the desert

that lost its mind,

the place that boredom built.

Freeways, condominiums, malls,

where cartons of trash and diamonds

and ideologies

are opened, used, dumped near the sea.

Subscribe now

Last week I dedicated the full moon edition to my true love: books.

Taking a little summer break from publishing meant that I had more time to absorb other people’s words. I found myself spending hours flipping pages, engrossed in stories, some real and others invented.

The last two weeks of August, I stayed at a friend’s cabin up in the Mendocino Coast and brought a small suitcase filled with reading materials, including novels, memoirs, poetry and graphic novels. Deciding on which books to bring was a higher stake challenge than packing my clothes. In the end, I ran out of sweaters (Northern California was colder than anticipated!) but had a perfect reading selection.

Choosing a book is no small feat. There is no shortage of talented writers. In fact, the abundance of stories can feel overwhelming. On a recent trip to Barnes and Nobles, I was amazed that there were four floors filled with books. And that every year – actually every week – a new shipment of words arrives.

The threat that “publishing is dead” has been on-going for years, yet there are more books being printed now than ever before (up to 4 million a year in the US, including self-publishing). Too many books is a good problem to have. But they’re ultimately all vying for our attention (along with the movies, TV shows, social media, etc).

Picking what to read can feel like entering into a relationship. Which one will be “the one”? The book that will live on our shelf – and in our hearts – forever.

Not every book is meant to fulfill that long-lasting purpose. A few of them might be short flings. Certain ones are just for fun. And there will unavoidably be those where there’s no chemistry (even if a common friend who introduced you swore you’d get along). It might take many bookstore dates before meeting a book that you want to spend every waking hour with.

But when that happens, our life can truly be changed by it. If I fall in love with a book, I tend to also become enamored with its author. Not with them as a person, but with their particular literary style. I then hunt down every book they’ve ever written and devour them all. Rarely am I disappointed. It happened when I discovered Tom Robbins over a decade ago, and in the past few years I’ve experienced it with Olivia Laing.

I can always tell how much I resonate with an author’s writing style by how many sticky notes I use to mark my favorite sentences. I then create a document typing up all those favorite quotes – or write them in a dedicated notebook, which I learned (thanks to ) is called a Commonplace notebook.

So how do we find those special books? There’s of course the best-sellers list, which can seem merit-based but is often fueled by smart marketing tactics. Adjacent to those may be the celebrity book clubs, which have become increasingly popular in recent years. And then there’s the award-winning books (Booker prize, Pulitzer etc), which definitely denote special talent, but don’t necessarily match each of our personal tastes.

I’ll admit that as a visually-driven person, I’ll often judge a book by its cover (or even its title). Even though that can be a risky approach, it hasn’t always been a vain way of picking a book. In fact, many beautifully designed covers have also revealed beautifully written words.

But the most reliable way of selecting my next read has been through friend recommendations – or through people whose writing I enjoy (including newsletters).

Paid subscribers will find below a review of 7 books I read over the summer, along with my favorite excerpts.

I tried my best to organize them according to our senses: SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION. For some of them the association was obvious (a memoir that revolved around food was the perfect fit for “TASTE”), but certain senses were a bit more difficult to pin down (such as “SMELL”).

The recommendations range from memoir to essay collections to graphic novel. Some of them come from authors I’ve been wanting to read for years and others are writers I had never heard of. And one of them will be a book I’ll forever remember – one of my favorite reads from the past decade (my partner felt the same way).

I hope these literary suggestions inspire you and that you get lost (and found) within their pages.

In Joy,

Sabrina

Subscribe now

Read more