Prince, Sprinting, & Kristjana S Williams
From Minneapolis, Minneapolis & London
Welcome to WORDINGHOUSE, #2. This is the weekly newsletter where I throw 3 things at you that interest me, and I hope they interest you, too. Let’s get to it …
What I just finished reading— Prince, The Beautiful Ones, a book in four parts.
Yes, I am a Prince fan. And, yes, fan is short for fanatic—I’m comfortable with that.
I’m well aware being a Prince fanatic doesn’t make me special—there are many of us. But I am proud to be one, and feel fortunate to have grown up during the (r)evolution of Prince Rogers Nelson.
The Beautiful Ones is an intimate literary journey into the mind and heart of Prince, with a particular focus on his formative years. In my opinion, the piece reads as a narrative and visual poem, thoughtfully divided into themed sections.
Partly written/composed by Dan Piepenbring—an editor for the Paris Review who now has a column at Harper’s—who penned the introduction, after only a handful of in-person meetings with Prince in the months prior to Prince’s unexpected passing.
The book is a menagerie of Prince-craft, including sections of memoir, photo-album, scrapbook, and is filled with his handwriting, sketches, comic-relief (he was a funny human), insights, quotes and lyric sheets.
An overarching theme throughout surrounds Prince’s passion and pursuit for creative freedom, and his desire to see others achieve the same.
The author did a great job, as the original plan was for Piepenbring and Prince to co-author the book together through-to-the-end, but then upon Prince’s passing, Piepenbring was left with both the great loss, and the weight of having this unfinished project still in his hands.
The courage and dedication it took to bring this piece to fruition while also honoring Prince’s vision are noteworthy.
I love the layout of the book. There is a great usage of white space, and large, bold, headers—it is artfully designed and fun to read. Prince’s doodles and childlike curiosity make reading this a wonderfully enjoyable experience.
Prince used his own symbolic-script when he wrote. He used 4 instead of “for,” 2 instead of “to,” U instead of “you,” eye instead of “I.”
The Beautiful Ones succeeds at bringing the reader in close to the heart of the person Prince was, focusing more on his everyday humanity—and his years of growing up—than on what came about after he achieved fame.
While this is on an ever-changing rotation, my current top 3 Prince albums are Come, Emancipation, and HITNRUN Phase Two.
What these albums won’t bring are the radio hits you know so well. But what they do offer are some incredible Prince jams from three completely different times in his life, including the songs Dark, Emancipation, and Black Muse.
I have to also show you this live performance from 1983 of the song, Electric Intercourse, recorded at the First Avenue in Minneapolis.
You can guess from the song title, this one is a little bit sexy.
Warning: Prince basically makes love with his piano (just by playing it, nothing fancy), or maybe he is making love inside his mind while playing his piano??—I can’t tell.
Go ahead and watch it, and U tell me. Feel free to leave a comment below. But please be respectful—whatever the man is doing is some kind of genius.
There is an ecstatic scream at the 4 min mark, and they light Prince up in a purple glow the whole time. IT’S FANTASTIC.
My understanding is this song was originally intended to be on the album Purple Rain, but they ended up adding the Beautiful Ones instead to take its place.
What I’m doing— Sprinting, a practice I aim to do every other day, …Ouch—
It hurts. I didn’t realize something so good for me could hurt so badly.
I’m talking quadricep soreness—while sprinting—like all get out! Of course, afterwards it aches, also. But I don’t care, I’m going to keep doing it.
I’ve been doing this for about 2 to 3 weeks. I’m obviously still adjusting.
Why, you may ask, am I doing this to myself? The answer: visceral fat.
I want to shrink it; dissolve it; obliterate it. Not all fat, just the visceral variety.
I have been following Doctor Sean O’Mara and he says that visceral fat is one of the largest indicators of poor health that leads to chronic disease.
I’ve been onto the dangers of my body hosting a belly-party for too much visceral fat (by the way, that’s the bad fat that encapsulates our internal organs) for a long time. So I thought I should start my battle to beat it.
Dr. O'Mara founded a medical startup in Minneapolis, focusing on health and performance optimization and his career is focused on helping others optimize their health.
He’s pretty big, getting lots of interviews. Not saying this makes him the absolute godhead on the subject, but I believe a lot of what he says.
Dr O’Mara said he started sprinting in his mid 40s and its one of his top methods for shedding those viscerals. I’m going to be 47 in December. This motivated me to get my feet out the door. If he can, I can, right?!
So this is how I do it: I put on appropriate shoes (actually mine aren’t even running shoes; they are New Balance 515’s; I probably need to up my game), I stretch and walk a bit at a normal pace, then I sprint at about an 8 out of 10 level of intensity for about 10 seconds. You don’t want to fall!
My goal is to do this 10 times every other day. So far, I am only able to do it 6 times each session. It just hurts too much to do any more. But I hope to work up to my goal of 10 times.
Are any of you sprinters? If so, please leave a comment below and tell me about your experiences. I’m not recommending anyone else do this. It’s just something I needed to tryout for myself.
What I’m LOVING to look at— Kristjana S Williams’ visual art, an award-winning artist who lives and works in West London.
I have followed Kristjana’s artwork for years now—I love it so much. She creates worlds I want to lose myself inside, magical places I can only dream about discovering.
I’ve always been a microcosm/macrocosm kind-a-guy. What I mean is, I love tiny worlds within larger worlds, within larger worlds, and so on.
Fractals, nature’s rhythms, patterns, webs, lifeforms, cells, planets; I’m an aficionado of all of these things, and of the way Kristjana makes so many worlds possible.
See how she creates an emotional moment between two lovely skeletons as they touch hands in a moment of understanding in Holding Hands Andi; or how she makes an anatomical human heart into a complete living ecosystems mirroring her hometown city of London in Hjarta of London; and then she shows us a world all about LOVE as seen through a pair of Victorian-winged wildcats graced by candlelight, and framed with a pair of snow-white stallions in Love Cats - Àstar Kisur.
These worlds are beautiful.
From Kristjana’s website: “Her designs are inspired by nature, and her technique involves digitally and physically layering nature upon nature to mirror the symmetry that exists in all living things. Each piece is its own magical universe of exotic botanicals and vibrant animals.”
See, that’s pretty much what I’ve been saying.
In 2017, Kristjana was commissioned by Coldplay to design the album artwork for 'A Head Full of Dreams: Live in Buenos Aires and Live in Sao Paulo.' Her beautiful cover design weaves together visuals from the band’s 20 year history.
And recently, Kristjana’s studio was asked by world renowned gin experts, Tanqueray, to create an elegant, nature-inspired, packaging design for its Tanqueray No. Ten Cocktail Gift Set, as promoted by the actor, Stanley Tucci.
A versatile artist, Krisjana uses many mediums while creating. Here are three works of art I love that go beyond the paper art print form: her globes, her wallpaper, and her 3D collage pieces.
Please do yourselves a favor and follow the Kristjana S Williams Studio on Instagram. I’d love to know what your favorite piece of hers is. Do share.
Plus,,,,,, at the end of each post, we’ll be highlighting a Weekly Word—
I think the most overused word in luxury real estate other than “luxury” itself may be (but since we were just in London with Kristjana, and this word has British origins, we’ll stay on theme):
Bespoke
Dictionary.com says of this adjective:
(of clothes) made to individual order; custom-made: a bespoke jacket.
making or selling such clothes: a bespoke tailor.
In the world of real estate and “bespoke” homes, bespoke essentially means “custom-built” but just sounds a whole lot better. A little Old World sophistication goes a long way.
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I’ll sprint with you. We could hit the sand trail near my house.