Chapter & Inverse for October 2024
Favorite chapters and inverses.
Favorite chapters and inverses.
Whenever I pick up a book, I usually open it somewhere just short of the middle and start reading. Sometimes these pages are so immediately mesmerizing that I will read straight through to the end.
Might that leave me sometimes with questions? Sure. Especially with fiction. How did they end up stranded on an island? Who cares. I’m already swept up in the action.
Which is why I’m quite comfortable recommending chapters rather than books and sharing passages instead of entire works. For things I really love and find myself returning to again and again, sometimes I take a step back to try to understand its magic. Without further ado, here is this month’s Chapter and Inverse:
Grayson by Lynne Cox (Audiobook)
The Olympics always brings swimming back in vogue but no swim will ever match then-seventeen-year-old Lynne Cox’s 5 a.m. ocean journey when she couldn’t shake the feeling that something really big was swimming nearby. As she approached the Seal Beach pier, she knew something was wrong when her friend Steve, who ran the bait shop and would radio local commercial shipping to warn them not to run her over as she did her long ocean swims “wasn’t where he normally stood. He was farther out. I knew something was wrong.”
That is where Chapter Four picks up:
Steve was jumping up and down, rapidly waving his dark blue baseball cap and shouting. The morning breeze was tearing his words apart and carrying them away from me.
Cupping my ear, I gestured I couldn’t hear him.
Quickly he pointed to something behind me.
Spinning halfway around I felt the water. Something was swimming under me. Was it a white shark?
Without hesitating, I sprinted for shore. Glancing over my right shoulder, I saw that Steve was vigorously shaking his head.
I stopped. I didn’t want to. I was confused. What was he trying to tell me?
He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “You can’t swim to shore!”
“Why not?” I was baffled and wanted to get out so badly.
“That’s a baby whale following you. He’s been swimming with you for the last mile. If you swim into shore, he’ll follow you. He’ll run aground. The weight of his body on the beach will collapse his lungs and he will die.”
That’s right, Grayson is the story of how a teenage girl races against time and battles her own exhaustion to save the life of a baby gray whale:
The baby whale rolled over onto his stomach and the wave from his movement pushed me backward. He looked into my eyes as if he was trying to understand who I was and what I was doing there.
I was wondering the same thing about him and I had to ask in a soft voice so I wouldn’t scare him, “What happened to you, little whale? Where is your mother? How did you get lost?”
If only I could speak his language. If only I could find out what had happened. Most of all, I wanted to be able to tell him not to worry, that I would try to help. Two hearts in pursuit of the same thing were far stronger than one alone.
The baby whale knew this even though we couldn’t speak. Something had brought us together; something much bigger than the two of us.
Lynne Cox twice shattered the record for the fastest crossing of the English Channel and her pioneering swims of the Cook Straight, the Straights of Magellan, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Bering Strait are epic adventures that she recounts in her memoir Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer. But nothing matches that day her morning solo training swim turned into a frantic effort to reunite a baby whale with its mother.
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport (Audiobook)
Cal Newport is one of my favorite authors and Slow Productivity’s Chapter 5 “Obsess Over Quality: The Third Principle of Slow Productivity” is a masterpiece. He begins with the backstory of singer-songwriter Jewel, focusing on the period in which she is nineteen years old and living in her car near a San Diego coffee house. Upon learning from its owner that the struggling business was soon to be shuttered, Jewel asked if it might stay open for two more months, and proposed that “If I bring people in, can I keep the door money, you can keep all the coffee and food, and, like, we’ll try to make it together.”
Cal continues: The minuscule size of the crowd didn’t stop Jewel from “bleeding my heart out.” As she recalls:
When these people came, I just bore my soul. I just didn’t pull a punch. And they liked me. I know that sounds superficial, but it wasn’t. It was so authentically me. . . . It was so raw. And people would cry. And I would cry. And it was such a real connection. For the first time in my life, I had a real meaningful human connection and it wasn’t scary, it felt good.
What happens next lies at the heart of the lessons in Slow Productivity, Cal’s eighth and most recent book, which describes how to pursue meaningful accomplishment while avoiding overload. Also check out his Deep Questions podcast for the perfect companion to his books.
Why Dreams by Fleetwood Mac is Perfect by Mary Spender
Speaking of origin stories, the amazing Mary Spender sings and story tells her way through the lead-up and writing of Dreams. It was a tumultuous time in each band member’s life, and a heart-broken Stevie Nicks wrote the song in ten minutes.
The guide vocal was the one that ended up on the album because Stevie couldn’t beat the emotion of the first take.
Mary quotes Stevie:
I walked in and handed a cassette of the song to Lindsay. It was a rough take just me singing solo and playing piano. Even though he was mad with me at the time, Lindsay played it and then looked up at me and smiled. What was going on between us was sad. We were couples who couldn't make it through, but as musicians, we still respected each other and we got some brilliant songs out of it.
Mary weaves in her own creative process: “I’ve always found that by writing about my heartbreaks, I take the sting out of the pain. I use it and feel distance from the memory. For Stevie Nicks singing Dreams transports her right back to that troubled time. Nicks said:
Love affairs are timeless. I mean, they don't change. That's why these songs on Rumours are timeless, I think. That's why I can walk out on stage today and still sing them, still feel the same way as when I wrote them. It's because I can remember so how I felt at that point, and I can remember the tears, and I can remember how hard it was for me to play Dreams the first time for the whole band. Because I know it would probably upset Lindsay, and probably really upset Chris and John, and probably really upset Mick, and really upset me. And if I could even get through it, I’d be lucky.
Dreams may well be a perfect song, which makes Mary Spender’s commentary as close to perfect as you might ever hear.
More of Mary Spender can be found on her YouTube channel, including a fun triple cloning of herself as guitarist, vocalist, bass player and drummer for the Mary Spender Trio for a Valentine’s Day take of Miley Cyrus’s Flowers.
Writing: Ken Levine is my favorite comedy writer, hands down, having been showrunner for M*A*S*H, co-wrote 60 episodes of Cheers, and host of the only podcast that I’ve never missed an episode. In Episode 376: How to Write a One-Act Play, Ken shares the live recording of a 10-minute comedy play that he wrote, and then “plays it again, stopping it periodically to explain his thought process and why he made certain decisions. If you’re a student of writing this episode is for you!” On Instagram, he shares his New Yorker cartoons. Ken is not only amazingly talented but he is always generous in sharing the craft.
Destinations: The Cannaregio neighborhood in Venice is one of my favorite places in the world, and my favorite place to go in Cannaregio is the Sullaluna bookshop and bistro. They just opened their Sullaluna NYC in Greenwich Village. Go visit them at 41 Carmine Street and enjoy a slice of Venice in NYC! Here’s a photo I took walking back from my first visit to Sullaluna:
Photography: Sometimes you come across something so authentic and inspired that it opens up your world. Micah Baldwin took a self portrait for 100 days and accompanied each with a story and exchange of his current feelings. He begins Day 1 with “This is the most vulnerable photo I have ever taken. I have body issues, which should come as no surprise, but I love my tattoos. And my scars. Especially the ones my cat has given me across my stomach.” Finishing with: “Today was a 6/10, but I have a puppy which always is a +2 modifier.” By day 95, he wrote “Life is a wondrous strange road. Who knew taking photos would change mine?” Thank you Micah for inviting us along on your journey and transformation.
Returning to Jewel: some of my favorite Jewel moments are collected here, including origin stories for two of her greatest songs. Don’t be intimidated by the length of her introduction to the song “You Were Meant for Me”. By the end, you’ll not only wish you had been there, but would happily listen to it all over again. She’s touring this summer—let’s get out to a show together!
If you have a favorite Chapter—an amazing moment in a great work, or an insightful Inverse—something that reverse engineers or otherwise gives an understanding of why something works so well, please share it in our digital garden.
Thank you for reading. Feel free to share a comment {LINK}—I love hearing from you. If you were forwarded this and want to subscribe, you can do so here. Expect to hear back from me. I’m interested in how our journeys might overlap.