Good Culture: More Wendell Berry / Understanding Your Attention

I’ve talked about Wendell Berry a good bit. If you know me in person there is no doubt you’ve seen me with a book of his work or I’ve bought you a copy of something that I hoped you might read. Just this week I’ve started the fourth novel I have read of his and aside from these I have read several of his short stories and poems. The guy has a huge body of work (a lot of which is in the Library of Congress btw). Whether you choose to read his novels, essays, or poems, you really can’t go wrong. They are exceptional, truly a balm to the festering wound we call “American Culture”.

Often I find concerned people talk about how the culture needs “x,y,z” and while I don’t entirely disagree, I am not so optimistic that the solution is “more”. It might just be using restraint in what we give our attention to. I’m sure there is probably plenty of quality culture—even in our day and age—that rests just outside the mostly toxic hurricane of the “algorithm”. It really is the blind leading the blind out here fam and it's nonstop for most people; check your screen time and take a moment to reflect how you are being nurtured. And when you consider your attention ask yourself how much it is worth? Good things are earned, not stolen. So be careful what you are giving you attention to. Your life will tend to follow.

Anywhooo, I just wanted to be a good friend and put y’all on to someone who I consider a good artist. If you wanna check him out, I’d start with Hannah Coulter. Below is an excerpt from it that I thought was really beautiful…

If you’re tight on cash, consider buying a used version on www.thriftbooks.com or HMU and I’ll lend you a copy.

Peace,
Dillon


“The room of love is another world. You go there wearing no watch, watching no clock. It is the world without end, so small that two people can hold it in their arms, and yet it is bigger than world on world, for it contains the longing of all things to be together, and to be at rest together. You come together to the day's end, weary and sore, troubled and afraid. You take it all in your arms, it goes away, and there you are where giving and taking are the same, and you live a little while entirely in a gift. The words have all been said, all permissions given, and you free in the place that is the two of you together. What could be more heavenly than to have desire and satisfaction in the same room?”