Saturday Six: April 12, 2025

Oops, I did it again.

Apr 12, 2025

Hi Consumers! It’s a strange thing to be the boss, creative director, author, and promoter of this newsletter all in one. When I don’t put out a Friday Five on time or I don’t keep up the cadence of posts that feels right in my head, I feel guilty! Life has been busy so accept this belated special edition of the Friday Five, your roundup of joyful and cathartic content from across the cobwebby corners of the digital universe.

Reading: Mariah Carey’s magnum opus, The Emancipation of Mimi, turns twenty years old this year. I loved this interview with her in Harper’s Bazaar on the enduring impact of the album, and how making the music that felt right and freeing to her ended up being a massive success. Now, I might be making assumptions that you all enjoyed this album as much as I did, but I’m putting in a little poll here out of pure curiosity (and a nice chance to test this feature!):

I feel very strongly about this question but I will hold off on sharing answers until y’all respond. I may be the multi-hyphenate behind this newsletter but I am certainly no dictator.

Song: Spring is the peak season for Q-Tip and A Tribe Called Quest in my mind — their music is impeccable year round but there’s something about the springy sunshine, birds chirping, and flowers just starting to blossom that feels perfectly suited for it. It’s got a perfect J. Dilla-produced beat, and it’s the sort of song that almost makes me wish I was a good driver, because I know this would reverberate perfectly with the bass turned up (ideally in someone’s old Honda Civic).

Also, as mentioned in a previous letter, I have a working hypothesis that songs that came out before 2005 have good vibes only in the comments section, and this holds up here:

Poem: Sharing an excerpt of Edward Thomas’s springtime ode, The Thrush, which you can read in full here. It feels like a timely, gentle reminder of where we are in the year and maybe this is a moment forget in all that’s ahead and behind.

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But I know the months all,
And their sweet names, April,
May and June and October,
As you call and call

I must remember
What died into April
And consider what will be born
Of a fair November;

And April I love for what
It was born of, and November
For what it will die in,
What they are and what they are not,

While you love what is kind,
What you can sing in
And love and forget in
All that's ahead and behind.

Work of Art: Emil Nolde’s 1908 masterpiece, “Flower Garden. Kneeling Woman with Hat.” sits in DC’s National Gallery of Art and it’s one of the most springy images I can conjure up. You can practically feel the sun radiating on the canvas, with the flowers in a sweet spot between one blended mass and their own distinct parts. I want to be the kneeling woman with a hat! She’s practicing sun safety, she’s in the most gorgeous field of flowers, and she somehow reminds me of both ‘Man in the Yellow Hat’ from Curious George and Miss Clavel from Madeline.

Madeline, Mrs. Clavel and all the girls in a taxi. — No one came here for my poor art commentary

Bonus Bits: 1) I have found the best damn falafel plate in London, run by a lovely man from Gaza working out of the corner of a French cafe. I made a lil video below because I want this hard-working man to have more customers and more people trying his incredible food, but for any Londoners it’s at Doree & Co in Lower Clapton.

@royashariat The most incredible falafel plate is at Dorée & Co in lower Clapton #fyp #london

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2) Something I’m missing from my old apartment is my shower filter, and now living in a country where the limescale in water makes me look like a greaseball most of the time, I really wish they shipped to the UK! Jolie makes a damn good shower filter and this is not something they asked me to share (though I do have an affiliate link) — I am just missing the feeling of my hair!!! Alright, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Joyful Internet Content: