As a kid, one of my favorite things was spinning in circles—on a merry-go-round, in an office chair, wherever I could. The endless motion was both freeing and intoxicating.
As an adult, I still spin—though less literally.
One of my worst habits is repeating myself. In my online videos. In my real-life stories. It seems my love for nostalgia combined with my less-than-perfect memory is both a blessing and a curse.
One of the biggest complaints I get—on Substack and on YouTube—is that I repeat photos in some of my videos. While I like revisiting old favorites in new contexts, I try my best to use them sparingly…and rarely in the same video.
The issue is I don’t always recognize duplicates unless they appear side by side. To me, they’re just two images I love.
Well, I finally figured out why I’ve been repeating so many photos.
After migrating from my older iMac to my new Mac mini, I realized my Photos library was overflowing with thousands—yes, thousands—of duplicates. Seems iCloud has had some syncing issues between devices and made a big digital mess.
Slowly but surely, I’m clearing out the clutter, which means fewer repeated images in future videos. My spinning—and non-spinning—hard drives are already much happier and healthier. And hopefully, you’ll notice the difference very soon too.
Speaking of spinning, I stumbled upon a clip from performance artist Simon Mayer’s SunBengSitting last night. In the clip, he spins in circles, completely free and nude.
The original video quality wasn’t great, so I reworked it into a black-and-white tribute to my childhood fascination with spinning in circles, as well as my current passion for remixing “found” footage and photos.
As for my stories? Well, I’ve made peace with my tendency to revisit the same tales. Some stories are like old friends—familiar, comforting, and worth retelling.
Maybe my spinning isn’t a problem at all. Maybe it’s just part of who I am: circling back to the things that bring me joy, even if they’re a little repetitive.
Spin me right round, like a record, baby. Or like a merry-go-round.
Either way, we’re all endlessly turning on this spinning globe, grooving and moving through the universe, trying to find our balance.
Thanks for reading!
Clint
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“Donald Trump and Republicans have managed to amplify their bad faith attacks to the point that people do have concerns, as misguided and misinformed as those concerns may be.
So this is a good time for Democrats to self-reflect about what went wrong and what to do better moving forward…. But during that process, it's important not to yield to manufactured panic and to align with the actual facts before making sweeping claims.
Echoing and adopting the panic from the other side is not leading. It's not meeting people where they are. It's simply falling prey to right-wing propaganda without checking the facts first.”
Jen Psaki
November 18, 2024
ON THIS DAY = NOVEMBER 20
BIRTHDAYS
1858 = Selma Lagerlöf = Swedish writer and first woman to win Nobel Prize in Literature 🌈
1908 = Alistair Cooke = British-American journalist and author
1910 = Pauli Murray = American activist and legal scholar 🌈
1920 = Douglas Dick = American actor and psychologist
1925 = Robert F. Kennedy = American lawyer, politician, and US Attorney General
1932 = Richard Dawson = English-American actor and game show host
1936 = Don DeLillo = American novelist, essayist, and playwright
1941 = Dr. John = American singer and songwriter
1971 = Joel McHale = American comedian, actor, and producer
1975 = Dierks Bentley = American singer-songwriter
1977 = Josh Turner = American singer-songwriter
1984 = Jeremy Jordan = American actor
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1789 = New Jersey becomes the first U.S. state to ratify the Bill of Rights.
1805 = Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio, premieres in Vienna.
1934 = Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour opens on Broadway.
1962 = The Cuban Missile Crisis after the Soviet Union agrees to remove its missiles from Cuba.
1969 = Occupation of Alcatraz: Native American activists seize control of Alcatraz Island until being ousted by the U.S. Government on June 11, 1971.
1983 = 100 million watch The Day After, the ABC TV movie about nuclear war.
1985 = Microsoft Windows 1.0, the first graphical personal computer operating environment developed by Microsoft, is released.
1998 = John Lawrence and Tyrone Garner are fined US$125 each after being arrested for having sex in their home. They refuse to pay the fine, resulting in a challenge which would eventually lead to the 2003 nationwide repeal of sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas.
2003 = The United States Congress passes a resolution condemning all violations of internationally recognized human rights norms based on the real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity of an individual.
2008 = The Supreme Court of California agrees to hear arguments for a possible overturn of Proposition 8.
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Repetition in art and music is one of the things that holds art and music together. To take a well-recognized practitioner of repetition, Ludwig von Beethoven used repetition all the time. Take, for example, the repetition of the: duh duh duh dummmm,. Idea in the first movement of the 5th symphony. That rhythm is in almost every bar of the first movement. If it's not used in the main melody, it's there in counterpoint in the orchestration. Other modes of repetition take whole phrases and repeat them. Verdi is great at this--in Trovatore, for example, in the aria D'amor sull'ali rosee in the last act, listen for repetition of all kinds of melodic structures. It's easy to hear them in this great perf by M. Caballe in Orange in 1972: https://youtu.be/7V07ekyIlO0?si=wQHLDexLtXkHcJEr
Her ability to sing extrtemely long breaths was unmatched in her times. Repetition is the name of the game in Western music. Basically you can't have music without repetition. Needless to say, the repetition in these shorts doesn't bother me at all. I see them as foundations of the whole videos. They're markers in a positive way. (A negative marker would be... a picture of drumpft's head photoshopped onto some naked fat body. That's be a marker, but not a positive one). Thanks, Clint, for another wonderful compilation of beautiful men.
Sometimes I notice a photograph included twice. I just assumed it was for artistic effect. Tell people that, Clint.
Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s not. :-p
The planet rotates. The galaxy rotates. The universe itself probably rotates.
Rotation is a state of being.
"In my end is my beginning."
Well said. Dunno if you’re familiar with the tarot (or its many designs). But the last card of the Marjor Arcana is the World, sometimes portrayed as a snake eating its own tail. lol
I would be vomiting if I copied this man. Watching it made me slightly queasy. This is a personal observation not a complaint. I am less travel sick as an adult and can now watch movies. As a child I couldn't deal with the flickering screen and would throw up within 5 to 10 minutes. To this day, I rarely watch movies. I can't hang upside down, either. for more than a scarce few seconds.
I’m with you on the upside down thing. Movies, depending on how big the screen and shaky the camera, aren’t my cup of tea. For some reason, I still enjoy spinning in circles on occasion. Makes my head and tummy feel funny…without feeling inebriated. :-)
I intensely dislike fun fair rides. My sister is 6 years younger and I was obliged to go on roundabouts and similar activities aimed at 5 to 8 year olds with her. She enjoyed them and appreciated my accompanying her but I was always hurling my guts up long before the ride was over. I was (lesser so now) clearly neuro-atypical as a child/youth and neurologically sensitive and vulnerable. Yet another reason for me not fitting in with boys and their activities and earning their contempt at my weakiness. These things plus my discoordination in catching, throwing, kicking and climbing had me relogated to to being inferior even to girls.
Same. The only things I had “going for me” was my size and temper. I’m usually a gentle giant, but even I don’t like being around me when I’m pissed off. Spinning calms some of those tendencies. Gives my brain a different sensation to focus on when aggravated. Yesterday, I danced in circles for a bit. :-p
https://youtu.be/PGNiXGX2nLU?si=Ra5jUzBimTTTugoq
My version 😁 Cheers DougT 🇫🇴
Doh! Looks like I enjoyed watching the video so much I forgot to say THANK YOU, Doug. Cheers too.
Glad you liked,