Issue 56
The Boring, Soul and Rabbits edition
A weekly dispatch from What We Seee. Part of an ongoing mission to fulfil the cultural promise of the internet. An enriching and eclectic collection of music, art, film and stories. Think of it as your digital 5-a-day.
A prayer to the power of song
In this his song (No One Knows Me) Like The Piano, Sampha shares how a piano that appeared in his mother’s south London home shaped his life profoundly, providing him with his future and how he found his true self at the piano bench.
“You would show me I have something some people call a soul,”
“And you drop-topped the sky, oh you arrived when I was three years old.”
You’ve been tired recently, haven’t you old friend?
In this final scene of the BBC/Netflix adaptation of Richard Adams’s Watership Down, a quietly heartbreaking sequence in which Hazel (played by James McAvoy) goes to join the Black Rabbit (Rosamund Pike) in death.
There is a place that I call home, but it’s not where I am welcome.
Sudan Archives is a truly singular artist, inspired by Irish and African music, especially Sudanese music.
In this beautiful NPR Tiny Desk concert she performs three songs accompanied by two violinists and a cellist.
She was never bored because she was never boring
Being Boring by The Pet Shop Boys is a song about growing up, their ideals you have when you are young and how they turn you. As we look to the second half of a dystopian year, a period of post-normal discovery, our physical selves may remain distanced and isolated, but our spirits can soar.
If The Pet Shop Boys don’t lift your mood, this completely addictive video of Oumi Janta will do the trick.
Whatever a sun will always sing is you
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
By E. E. CUMMINGS
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
Cover photo
Photo: A contemplative Audrey Hepburn with a dove perched on her shoulder, 1966. by Terry O’Neill, 1966
