…Is not what I thought it was.

I'm a writer and an artist, and I've been listening to Sunday in the Park with George, Stephen Sondheim's musical about the creation of art, for at least 35 years, and I had thought that I knew what it was saying.

I obviously can't recount the whole thing here, but there is an artist in the second act who creates giant light-and-laser machines called Chromolumes, and he sings a well-known song called "Putting It Together."..

This newsletter is not about Star Wars.

So Andor: amazing. Here are spoilers, but read it anyway.

If you haven't been watching the show, it's all of the lead-up in the five years before Star Wars Ep IV: A New Hope. It's all about the Rebellion forming and the sacrifices that people made so that, in A New Hope, Luke Skywalker could blow up the Death Star.

The show is amazing. Dare I say: it's my favorite Star Wars ever? Better than Empire Strikes Back? It is….

Mr. Universe: Can't stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere.

So, the world is really tough right now, something which I don't need to tell any of you. Everyday the news seems to bring not just one, but a whole bevy of new issues we have to care about. (This is part of the plan: overload us with issues; we can't possibly care about everything all of the time.)

It's all around you, but you can't touch it.

There's a song that I like a lot by Arcade Fire, called "Creature Comfort". It's a pretty heavy song in parts, and last week's email about depression was heavy, so I'm not going to get into the details (though the video is below). But the song is aimed at young people, and about how they are trained to hate themselves. The opening verse says: