Monday Miscellany: The friction of harmony vibrating the air

Notes from April 27 - May 3

May 04, 2026

Rabbit rabbit! It’s a new week, and a new month, and I’ve been very happy with everything I’ve been reading and watching and listening to recently. We started the Margo’s Got Money Troubles limited series on Apple TV, which I’m loving so far and will say more about once it’s finished (three episodes to go). And I roped Jordan into watching Heated Rivalry with me, which I’ve already written about here. It was just as steamy and sweet my third time through. But the thing I’m most excited about right now is a new book that’s coming out tomorrow. I am always extremely side-eye skeptical about try this one simple trick to improve your health!-type claims, but in this case, the science is there, and I am shook. More on that below. Let’s get into it.

Read this week

In my ongoing quest to stop buying books only to leave them languishing and gathering metaphorical dust on the shelf, I started the week with something from my Richmond birthday stack,1 Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie. This is a contemporary novel about Skye, a free-spirited Philly native who owns and operates a Black tourism business called We Outchea. She’s almost forty with no partner, kids, or permanent residence—when she’s back in town every month or two between international trips, she stays at her best friend’s bed and breakfast. Everything changes, though, when twelve-year-old Vicky shows up claiming to be the result of an egg that Skye donated back in her twenties. Suddenly she is forced to reckon with past trauma and repair the bridges she has burned, in the process rediscovering her roots and opening herself up to a world of new love.

This is just a really good story. It’s sweet but not saccharine, and funny, and sharp, and it addresses the timely issues of gentrification and police brutality but also the timeless themes of aging and family and queerness and commitment. Skye’s voice is completely her own and it charmed me immediately. She makes some questionable decisions on her journey, but even in her messy moments she’s a true delight to be around; Skye Falling is one of those books that I never wanted to put down, that I was actively thinking about in the gaps between reading sessions and looking forward to picking up again. If you need an easy read that will make you laugh and restore some of your faith in humanity, give this one a try.

I first encountered Manoush Zomorodi’s work back in 2015, when she introduced the “Bored and Brilliant” series on her podcast, Note to Self, a project which was published in book form a few years later (highly recommend). Participating in this process, the main goal of which was to reclaim idle moments for the brain’s creative and restorative processes, was transformative for me at the time. I really appreciated Zomorodi’s attitude toward technology: realistic about its necessity and curious about its potential but also emphatic in her call for boundaries around its usage. So when I saw that she had a new book on its way this month, I couldn’t request a copy fast enough.2

Body Electric, releasing tomorrow (May 5), is also nonfiction, with the subtitle “The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being.” In short, it’s about the dangers of our modern sedentary lifestyles, how sitting for long uninterrupted stretches can cause or worsen problems ranging from physical aches and pains to anxiety, heart disease, high cholesterol, depression, strokes, increased risk of dementia, and more. Drawing on abundant medical research, Zomorodi explains the science in very accessible and easy-to-understand language that isn’t woo-woo or preachy. I felt personally attacked to find out that even “active” people like me, who exercise vigorously several times per week, are just as vulnerable to these risks if they spend their downtime parked at a desk or lounging on the couch.

Luckily, the solution is incredibly simple: once every half hour, get up and move around for a few minutes. The science shows that folks who do this see all sorts of health benefits, both mental and physical, in both the short and long term. Anxiety decreases, creativity and productivity are boosted, risk of heart disease and stroke plummet, brain fog dissipates, chance of dementia goes down, and blood sugar regulates,3 just to name a few.4 It doesn’t need to be strenuous, either, just consistent. A little bit of movement at a time, at regular points throughout the day.

I’m giving it a shot myself as I sit here writing this newsletter, and I can confirm that, though the frequent interruptions have required some getting used to, it’s a pretty easy system. Especially since the “25 minutes seated / 5 minutes up and moving around” pattern really lends itself to the pomodoro technique and gives me lots of built-in opportunities to use the bathroom, let my mind wander, bother my cats, get a snack, or work out what I want to say next. When I sit down again I feel ready to dive right back into what I was doing, and it’s easier to stay focused when I know my brain can take another break soon.

Look at all those little movement breaks 🥲

As I tore through Body Electric, I was highlighting all over the place, composing a mental list of all the people I love that I’m going to buy a copy for.5 It’s not a long read but the impact, if we pay attention and implement Zomorodi’s advice, could be enormous. If you, like so many people in this era of screens and devices, spend most of your day seated, please please please read this book (or listen to the podcast)! I can’t recommend it highly enough.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Seen and heard this week

The timing of The Devil Wears Prada 2’s release was truly perfect—I ended up seeing a matinee showing with one of my best friends on her birthday and we had a great time. This sequel begins with Andy Sachs, now a journalist, losing her job and, through a combination of coincidence and necessity, ending up back at Runway magazine. The plot is updated for our “print media is dying” times, but the general arc and the emotional beats here are very similar to those of the original; there’s the “Miranda Priestly gets vulnerable and we almost feel bad for her” scene, the “Andy tries to warn her boss of something but finds out that she knew about it all along” scene, the “Nigel raids the magazine’s wardrobe department to give Andy fancy new clothes to wear” scene, and so on. It felt fresh enough to be interesting but familiar enough to be comforting, like seeing an old friend again after many years apart. I wasn’t completely blown away, but it was pretty much what I was expecting and I liked it!

And now for my musical obsession of the week: a twenty-year-old college a cappella album by a group at a school I didn’t even go to. Hear me out.

I was randomly reminded this week of “When We Are One,” a song that Jordan and I used to blast in the car and belt along to, but when I opened my a cappella playlist6 on Qobuz and couldn’t find it,7 I worried I’d never be able to track it down again. I couldn’t remember who performed it and my googling was not turning anything up. After thinking on it for a day or two, I could eventually picture an album cover that looked like zooming into the distance and a title that was something like “xenophobia,” and the group’s name, Off the Beat, popped into my head shortly after. Turns out some of their releases are on Qobuz, but not this one (actually called Kenophobia), so I paid ten American dollars to buy it on iTunes8 and then listened to it twice in a row while I baked Jordan a ginger stout cake for his birthday.9

Y’all, it still slaps! If you are a fellow a cappella fan, you know that the main appeal of the art form is marveling at how well (or cringing at how poorly) a group covers a song that you already know. But though I had never heard “When We Are One” before encountering it on this album back in the day, I was immediately into it. I subsequently looked up the original (by Gabriel Mann) and still liked this one better. That, folks, is an indicator of greatness. Kenophobia contains covers of plenty of familiar songs too, like “Question!” (System of a Down), “Fix You” (Coldplay), “Sugar We’re Going Down” (Fall Out Boy), “Because of You” (Kelly Clarkson), and “All These Things That I’ve Done” (The Killers). But my favorite tracks (besides “When We Are One”) are the last two, “The Crowing” (Coheed and Cambria) and “Hide and Seek” (Imogen Heap).

I mean, this song clocks in at almost seven minutes. Do you know how hard it is to stay on pitch and maintain tempo with a whole choir of other humans for that long? Not to mention Coheed’s signature syncopations and changes in rhythm! It’s a marvel of coordination and endurance if nothing else.

TLDR; I am a nerd, and I used to do this kind of singing in college10 and I miss it. This rediscovery brought me a lot of joy.

Haiku round-up

This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:

Monday, April 27