Between the click of the light
And the start of the dream.
Poem 070: Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?
Don’t fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge
My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?
What he doesn’t know
is that when we’re walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand—Robert Hershon
Jamie xx - Gosh
There is a moment in Fred again.. & Thomas Bangalter’s USB002 set at London’s Alexandra Palace that I want to explain in detail.
The concept behind Fred again..’s USB tour was 10 shows, 10 cities, 10 weeks, a new track released every show (which becomes an album after the tour), and phones away at the door (but shows released online afterwards).
There has not been a run of live electronic shows that has matched Daft Punk’s ‘Alive’ Tour in 2006 - that was the zenith - still yet to be surpassed. The collaboration with Bangalter, one half of Daft Punk, speaks to that yearning in every electronic artist and fan to reach back to those heights. And Bangalter was the ultimate special guest, in a tour that had already seen Underworld, The Streets, Skrillex, Romy, and Skream & Benga join Fred onstage.
But back to the moment.
At 1:33:00 Fred drops ‘Can’t Do Without You’, the opening song from Caribou’s 2014 album ‘Our Love’. The album was a response to Caribou becoming a father in 2011. Fred calls out Caribou from the crowd, and he comes down onto the stage and they hug, and ostensibly, that’s what this moment is about.
But there’s a secondary layer unfolding that’s even more meaningful. At 1:33:27 you see Bangalter look over his right shoulder and smile.
27 seconds later, you see why.
Standing to Bangalter’s right is his son, Roxan, in a white t-shirt. Bangalter keeps looking back, and as ‘Can’t Do Without You’ plays, a second song - ‘Never The End’ mixes in - a song no-one in the crowd would ever have heard because it was written by Roxan when he was just 12 years old.
When he realises, he reaches his hand to his mouth, looks straight at his beaming father, and his eyes fill with tears.
“Smith landed upon a euphoric yet melancholic series of chords - Eb, Dm7 and Bb/D. This chordal motif was channeled through a chorus and reverb-soaked patch designed on Rick’s Waldorf Microwave, output via a delay in dotted 8ths. It resulted in an enormous sound.”
The story of Born Slippy, Underworld’s emotion-stirring dance classic
Artificial reef at Middleton Beach transforms Albany’s surf scene
CHEATING: A USER’S GUIDE TO THE SOCIAL CONTRACT
How to comfort someone for those who don’t know how
Jason Sudeikis explains the Ted Lasso origin story
The Walkmen - The Rat (Live on David Letterman)
Tyler The Creator discusses Timothee Chalamet
How Ben Sasse is Living Now That He Is Dying
90% of everything is sanding e.g. laundry
Why John Wilson can’t stop filming
Social Status: Down the Rabbit Hole
In Conversation with Nicholas Thompson
Demonstration of how easy it is to stop thinking
Mexican surrealist Alfredo Castañeda (1938-2010)
Youtube duet: Miles Davis improvising on LCD Soundsystem
Joan Didion’s resignation letter from Vogue magazine in 1964
Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process
Sidenote: When reading a draft of this edition, Jules asked me - should I click on all these links? My answer is yes. Every one of them. Open them all in their own new tab.
From the hundreds of links I’ve saved since the last edition of Branches, these are the ones I think you won’t have seen, and are worth your time.
“for a minute there I lost myself”
- Radiohead, ‘Karma Police’
Cameron Winter Live at First Unitarian Church | 03/07/2025
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in- Leonard Cohen, ‘Anthem’
Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve is having a moment. A24’s Backrooms, in which she stars, is now A24's highest-grossing movie. Reinsve broke through internationally with the release of ‘The Worst Person In The World’ in 2021.
But it’s 2025’s Sentimental Value that I want to recommend here - a devastating film about many things, but above all the echoes of generational trauma.
Though Reinsve (as Nora) is the movie’s star, the most heartbreaking moments are those she shares with her younger sister, Agnes. The way they briefly hold as they move past each other in the kitchen. The depth of sadness in her answer when her husband asks about the feelings of worry she has for her sister. The way Agnes quietly starts cleaning Nora’s cluttered apartment without being asked.
And then, late on, this:
[Nora] Why didn’t our childhood ruin you?
[Agnes] It hasn’t always been easy for me.
[Nora] But you’ve managed to make a family. A home.
[Agnes] Yeah. There’s one major difference in the way we grew up. I had you.
“It is easier to say my tooth is aching than to say my heart is broken.”
- C.S. Lewis
Robert Caro has spent the last fifty years writing a five-volume history of Lyndon B Johnson. Turn Every Page is the story of Caro’s writing, and the alchemy of his creative collaboration with long-time editor Robert (Bob) Gottlieb.
Both men embody doing one’s life’s work. Caro, at the end, even says - I wish I had more lifetimes to keep doing this.
Gottlieb's daughter Lizzie shot the film over five years, and its most touching moment comes from a brief exchange as she attaches his mic before interviewing him.
Gottlieb starts singing the lines to Chet Baker’s ‘Do It The Hard Way’, and Lizzie finishes them.
Bob: Do it the hard way, and it's easy sailing… Do it the hard way, and it's hard to lose
Lizzie: Only the soft way has a chance of failing.. You have to chooseBob: How do you know that?
Lizzie: Because when I went to school in Paris, every week you sent me a tape of jazz.
Bob: I was a good daddy.
Lizzie: You were.
GENER8ION - STORM starring Yung Lean
Names
She was Eliza for a few weeks
when she was a baby –
Eliza Lily. Soon it changed to Lil.
Later she was Miss Steward in the baker’s shop
And then ‘my love’, ‘my darling’, Mother.
Widowed at thirty, she went back to work
As Mrs Hand. Her daughter grew up,
Married and gave birth.
Now she was Nanna. ‘Everybody
Calls me Nanna,’ she would say to visitors.
And so they did – friends, tradesmen, the doctor.
In the geriatric ward
They used the patients’ Christian names.
‘Lil,’ we said, ‘or Nanna,’
But it wasn’t in her file
And for those last bewildered weeks
She was Eliza once again- Wendy Cope
That Bangalter story is a gem
Beautiful, eerie, hugging my mum extra tight.