How am I even here? This place stirs my bones—which makes me wonder about how deeply our cells and DNA feel the land they belong to. I think my body knows that London, Wales, Scotland, and so forth are a part of me.
But, back to the first question, I’m here at the Blue Earth Summit with Constant Wonder. Through magic I’m still working to understand, I joined the Constant Wonder team in May of this year as a senior producer for the podcast. And I’m just thrilled, absolutely thrilled, to be part of something I believe in so deeply as the mission of our podcast to bring awe and wonder to our listeners.
And this mission isn’t something I adopted just to do my job, it’s something that has mattered to me since I was a child. Honestly, I can’t praise the world enough. So, I’m about to launch a travelogue while I’m here, but not the kind of travelogue that will highlight me, but to highlight the little things that bring me joy. And what is joy if we aren’t sharing it?
Tuesday’s bits of joy:
I sat next to a bevy of grey haired women in the airport who were wearing matching Hoka shoes and travel pants, carrying the same clear, rectangular flask-type water bottles filled with pink electrolytes, and delightedly comparing black travel bags with their various secret pockets and and locking zippers, while they took swigs of pink water.
I got onto the tube out of Heathrow and it all fell into place, like the piece of me that used to live here, still does, and the piece inside of me that belongs here, woke up.
I walked into Lush over 4 hours ago and I still smell like sugared watermelon and cotton candy and musky lavender and something else.
The bikes! Watching the electric bikes scream by in packs like the Tour de France, only more exciting because it’s not on TV.
Stumbling onto the Poetry Pharmacy — a place I’ve dreamed of visiting for years and it found me!
Having drinking chocolate at a little orange table on a side street and watching people come and go.
Wandering through Liberty of London and imagining that I could buy anything I wanted, and I kind of wanted everything.
After wandering the streets around Tottenham Court and Oxfordshire, I ended the night in Soho to see Minnie Driver in Every Brilliant Thing.
The theater is small, with an even smaller stage. I arrived maybe 30 minutes early and Minnie Driver was personally greeting every person in the theater. As I was watching her talk to the audience across the stage from me, I thought she must be saying hello to family and friends because she was so warm and kind and clearly delighted to have those people in the audience.
But then she worked her way around the theater and when she reached my end and the people around me, she said hello with the same enthusiasm.
What magnetism!
Someone near me asked her how the performances were going, and she replied that she was absolutely wrecked at the end of every night, which made the whole performance feel that much more generous
It’s a one woman show with no props besides a DJ and a cart full of paper that comes out near the end. But you don’t need any scenery. Minnie Driver brought this story to life in an absolute masterful way. The audience is involved in the performance and it made me feel like the entire story was my story, that every person in the theater was a person that mattered to me.
It’s about depression and the ramifications of depression, but it’s also about joy and life and laughter. It is, as the title suggests, brilliant. All together we danced with Minnie Driver, we laughed with her, we cried, and then we sobbed. At the end of the play, everyone in the audience was on their feet crying and clapping and cheering before she even finished the final line.
Any brilliant performance changes you, and I walked away from Soho feeling much more like myself and like a different person, carrying a lingering question: what happens next—after you’re done wishing you weren’t alive?