Category Archives: Hedonism

There are very few things that ngel Len hasnt done with the fruits of the sea.

In 2008, as a young, unknown chef, he took a loin from one fish and attached it to the loin of another, using collagen to bind the two proteins together. He called them hybrids and served them to unsuspecting diners at Aponiente, his restaurant in the southern Spanish port town of El Puerto de Santa Mara, just across the bay from Cdiz. He discovered that fish eyes, cooked at 55C in a thermal circulator until the gelatin collapsed, made excellent thickening agents for umami-rich sauces. Next he found that micro-algae could sequester the impurities of cloudy kitchen stocks the same way an egg white does in classical French cooking. In the years since, Len has used sea bass to make mortadella; mussels to make blood sausage; moray eel skin to mimic crispy pigskins; boiled hake to fashion fettuccine noodles; and various parts of a tunas head to create a towering, gelatinous, fall-apart osso buco.

It is these creations, and the relentless curiosity behind them, that have helped turn Len into one of most influential chefs in the world. The Spaniards call him the Chef del Mar, a man singularly dedicated to the sea and its bounty. But Aponiente isnt anything like other gilded seafood temples around the world. You wont find Norwegian lobster there. Or Scottish langoustines. Or Hokkaido uni. In fact, unless youre an Andalusian fisherman its unlikely youll know most of the species Len serves to his guests.

Thats because Len isnt interested in plucking from the sea its most celebrated creatures. He wants to go deeper to find something you didnt know existed: Whats more hedonistic, eating something no one on the face of the earth has ever tried, or eating another f-cking spoon of caviar? Jellyfish, sea worms, a bounty of sea vegetables foraged from the ocean floor: all have found their way onto his menu.

But for Len, hedonism is beside the point. Everything that he does communicates an unshakable -commitment to honoring the ocean. He thinks about the sea the way a physicist or an astronomer thinks about the sky: as an infinitely discoverable space, where the right mix of curiosity and discipline can yield solutions to some of the most pressing problems of the 21st century. In his wide-eyed enthusiasm and boyish curiosity and fierce marine mania, he comes across as a mixture of Captain Nemo and Willy Wonka.

Follow Len long enough, and youll learn that his venture ever deeper into the abyss isnt a gastro free-for-all but part of a very specific dream thats been taking shape in his head for years. A dream that extends well beyond the walls of his restaurant and into the coastal plains of Cdiz. In this dream, he sees men with long wooden brooms scraping the surface of the marshes, piling up coarse salt crystals in little white hills that shimmer in the Andalusian sun. He sees the regions vast network of estuaries overflowing with flora and faunatiny, candy-sweet white shrimp, edible seaweeds like marine mesclun mix, sea bream and mackerel in dense silver schools. He sees a series of mills, stone-built and sea-powered, grinding through grains for the regions daily bread. A wind-swept, sun-kissed saltwater economy, like the one that once made Cdiz a center of the world.

Founded by the Phoenicians in 1100 B.C., Cdiz is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in -Europe. Over the course of three millennia, many of the worlds greatest empires have settled here, attracted by the strategic location: a narrow appendage of land at the edge of the Iberian Peninsula, just beyond the mouth of the Mediterranean. The Romans, Visigoths and Muslims all had their Cdiz years, -fueling their empires with the wealth of this teeming water world. But it wasnt until the Age of Exploration, when the city served as the launchpad for Spains greatest ambitions, including the second and fourth voyages of Columbus to the -Americas, that Cdiz became one of Spains wealthiest cities.

Those days have long passed. After Spain lost its American colonies in the 19th century, Cdiz never recovered. Today, it has the highest rate of unemployment of any region in Western Europe. Len wants to fix that, to help rebuild the robust sea economy that defined Cdizs most storied years. His career has been a slow, steady fight to do just that.

Juan Martn, center, of Aponiente works on the seagrass fields planted near Lens restaurant

But now, he believes hes discovered the centerpiece of his ambitious dream: fields of rice stretched out for miles of paddies, the feathery stalks -protruding from the sea itself. Scientists have long identified seagrasses as one of the most vital ecosystems in the fight against climate change, but what few knew is that those blades of grass also contain clusters of small, edible grains with massive potential. Of all the dreams Len has chased in this quiet corner of southern Spain, this is the one he plans to build his future around. This, more than the Franken-fish or mussel sausage, is the one that could help rebuild his beloved region and, with any luck, even change the way we feed the world.

The sea saved me, Len told me one morning in 2019 aboard his 26-ft. fishing boat, Yodo. The sun had just peeked above the horizon as we made our way past the tip of Cdiz, its church spires and mosque domes casting a silhouette of the citys multi-layered history.

I was a terrible student. Couldnt sit still, always in trouble, he said. But when my dad took me out here on his boat, everything changed.

Len was born and raised in Cdiz, along with two older sisters and his younger brother Carlos, who helps manage Aponiente. Their dad kept a small fishing boat, and after school and on weekends, he would take his two sons out fishing in the Bay of Cdiz. ngel Len Lara, a hematologist, had high expectations, and often clashed with his son over his terrestrial troubles. But once we were out on the water, we werent father and son, says Len. We were friends.

His brother Carlos saw a different sibling out on the water: The boat is where the barrier between father and son broke down. Wed smoke a joint, tell stories, things that friends did. ngel couldnt sit still long enough to be in a classroom, Carlos told me, but he was captive to the sea. Most kids are scared to touch creatures from the sea. But ngel would smell them, touch them, rub their scales, poke their eyes.

Lens success at sea only served to underscore his struggles on land. His hyperactivity made him a menace in the classroom; he went to five high schools and barely graduated. He enrolled in a hotel school in Seville, where he studied cooking for three years and began to find his footing on terra firma. In 1996, he moved to France to cook at Le Chapon Fin, a Bordeaux institution that opened in 1825.

Len remained quiet as we passed fishing boats and jetties on the outskirts of Cdiz, an espresso pinched between his fingertips. Since those early days with his dad, hes rarely missed a sunrise on the water. His first goal when he fires up Yodo is to get outout of cell-phone range, out of reach of his restaurant team and his family. The truth is, he said, staring- at my notebook, I like to come out here alone.

When we hit the open seas, the spell of silence was broken. Turn left and you hit the Mediterranean, turn right and youre in the Atlantic, said Len. Two totally different worlds. This nexus of two great bodies of water, where two vastly different ecosystems mix into a special cocktail of ocean life, continues to be a chief source of inspiration for Len.

Len in the marine plankton lab with its director Carlos Unamunzaga, left

Len turned on the fish tracker and showed me the schools of fish swimming some 20 m below us. He opened up the bait storage in the rear of the boat, grabbed a squid the size of his hand and worked it onto a giant hook. He rolled another cigarette, put it to his lips and sank into his chair.

Some days I dont even fish. I come out here to clear my head. I used to be a -psychopath-Id go way out into the ocean on my own. But now I have a family to think about. Len and his wife Marta, who runs the more casual Taberna del Chef del Mar down the road from Aponiente, have a 5-year-old boy, ngel. Easily the best dish Ive ever helped create.

France taught Len disciplinehow to clarify a stock, how to debone a quail, how to cook 14 hours a day without complaining. Afterward, he bounced around, cooking in Seville, Toledo, Buenos Aires, preparing to start his own venture.

Back then, El Bulli, on the coast of Catalonia, was known as the best restaurant in the world, and its virtuoso leader, Ferran Adri, was busy rewriting the rules for fine dining. By the time El Bulli closed in 2011, a generation of disciples had dispersed across the country, spreading the gospel of technical, modernist cuisine that shaped Spain into the gastronomic center of the world for the first decade of the 21st century.

While Len is one of the few prominent chefs in the country who did not emerge from the El Bulli system, he carries within him the restaurants most enduring legacy: the need to question all conventions. When he opened Aponiente in 2007, Len set out to change the way people thought about the ocean. Not just through a radical reimagining of what to do with familiar fish, but by looking for ingredients nobody had ever tasted. He built his menu around pesca de descarte, trash fish: pandora, krill, sea bream, mackerel, moray eel. But in Lens mind, these are some of the most noble and delicious creatures in the sea. He did this as much for the culinary challenge as for a growing streak of environmentalism.

For the first three years, people stopped by, read the menus and turned around. They didnt -understand what this strange restaurant was trying to do. Len found himself teetering on the edge of ruin.

He remembers a talk with Adri in those early years that helped him trudge on. Nobody understands me, he said to the famous chef. Perfect, said Adri. Thats because youre pushing the vanguard.

Nothing was biting aboard Yodo. We were waiting for the tidal bulge, that moment before the tide turns when gravity and inertia cancel each other outeight minutes of equilibrium that, according to Len, is when fish are most active: If were going to catch anything today, it will be then.

When it hit, Len cast his rod off the back edge of the boat and set the line, then ran inside and used the radar to try to position the boat -directly in the middle of what looked like a smudge on the screen. This is where the action is.

We sat in silence, waiting for the action, but the action never came and slowly the boat began to be sucked back toward the coastline. The tide had turned.

The grains of the sea rice

In 2010, after years of serving just a handful of guests a day, Aponiente won its first Michelin star, a recognition that Len says helped change everything. In 2014, it won a second star, and suddenly people began to travel to Cdiz specifically to eat at the restaurant. By the time it received its third Michelin star in 2017, Aponiente had gained a strong international presence. Len used the growing platform to sharpen his message, working with universities on sustainability projects, organizing events with chefs and academics to discuss the fragility of our ocean ecosystems, developing commercial products like sea bacon, made from the discarded bellies of sea bream and smoked over pineapple.

For all his success, Len is not your typical celebrity chef. He rarely leaves his hometown, eschewing the international circuit in favor of long mornings on the water and long evenings in the lab. His clipped-consonant Spanish and small-town humility are more befitting of a fisherman.

Hes carving out his own path in the food world, said Cristina Jolonch, one of Spains most respected food critics, but its his defense of the sea that -matters most. Len is aware of that. The day that I have nothing more to offer beyond being a good cook, Aponiente will no longer make sense.

Every year in January, Len and his R&D team travel by train to Madrid Fusion, the food worlds pre-eminent culinary conference, to dazzle auditoriums of journalists and chefs with their latest discoveries. In 2009, he unveiled an edible form of phytoplankton, now used in kitchens across the world. In 2011, Len announced the first line of seafoodbased charcuterie, using discarded fish parts to make mortadella and blood sausage and chorizo, all dead ringers for the real thing. In 2016, the auditorium went dark as Len emerged on the stage with a special cocktail filled with luz de mar, bioluminescent bits found in the bellies of tiny crabs that glowed like a galaxy of stars as he swirled his gin and tonic.

In 2018, Len and his team decided to take a different approach. He explained: We turned the sea upside down. We wanted to really look at the ocean floor to see what secrets it held. What they found in the murky depths was a vast and varied garden of ocean flora: roots, fruits, leaves. Len has a tendency to liken everything he finds underwater to a terrestrial analog, and soon his menus were brimming with sea pears, sea tomatoes, sea artichokes. The so-called vegetables didnt have the same impact as sparkling crab guts or fish-belly bacon, but Len knew he needed to keep his focus on the ocean floor.

Thats how he found something he had been staring at all along. Len remembered as a kid in Cdiz seeing vast fields of rice along the fringes of the bay. As he talked to his team, he realized that what he -recalled as rice was actually Zostera marina, eelgrass that grows in coastline meadows around the world.

Juan Martn, Aponientes resident biologist who has worked with Len for years, knew the plant well. I had been studying seagrasses for 15 yearsbut always from the standpoint of the ecosystem. It never occurred to me or anyone else studying it that it was edible. That is, until Len showed up one day at Aponiente with a printout of a 1973 article in Science documenting the diet of the Seri, hunters and gatherers of Sonora, Mexico, who have eaten eelgrass for generations. Like many grains, it required an elaborate process of threshing, winnowing, toasting and pulverizing before being cooked into a slurry with water. The Seri ate the bland paste with condiments to punch up the flavor: honey or, preferably, sea-turtle oil.

Len on his boat, Yodo, in the early morning of Dec. 15

Lens R&D team set out to study the plant in detail, signing an agreement with the University of Cdiz to partner on the research. Zostera had been gathered and consumed before, but it had never been cultivated, said Martn. Thats a whole different proposition. They worked with the university to define the ideal growing conditions: water current, temperature, salinity, depth, sunlight.

In the summer of 2019, Len and a small crew of cooks and scientists waded out into an estuary a few miles east of the restaurant and pulled bushels of eelgrass from the ocean bed. In total, they collected 50 kg of grains, more than enough to run nutritional analysis and experiments in the kitchen.

When we first started this process, so many things could have gone wrong, said David Chamorro, the head of R&D at Aponiente. But one by one, the variables fell in their favor: a perennial plant with exponential growth and a stout nutritional profile, including a payload of fiber and omega-3 fatsand gluten-free.

As for the taste? For a year, we were working on this grain and we had no clue how it tasted, said Len. I was nervous. What if it tastes like sh-t? The day I ate it, I was relieved.

I first tasted eelgrass on a rainy afternoon in late 2019 in the upstairs research laboratory of Aponiente. Downstairs, the staff cooked and served what would turn out to be the final meal before the COVID-19 pandemic kept the restaurant closed throughout the spring of 2020 until it reopened in July. Zostera grains look more like amaranth or a chia seed than ricea short, pellet-like grain with a dark complexion. Len boiled it like pasta, passed me a spoonful, then watched me closely as I processed. The first thing you notice is the texture: taut-skinned and compact, each grain pops on your tongue like an orb of caviar. It tasted like the love child of rice and quinoa with a gentle saline undertow.

I asked Len about the ideas the grain inspired in the kitchen, but he didnt seem ready to talk. Chamorro, for his part, was positively giddy about the possibilities: pressing the grain to make oil, fermenting it into sake, grinding it into flour. Imagine if we gave 10 kilos of flour to the 10 best bakers in Spain. The types of breads wed seeand all of them gluten-free.

But before the world sees eelgrass baguettes and eelgrass wine, it will first need to see more eelgrass. Having partnered with Esteros Lubimar, a fisheries company based out of Cdiz, Len and his team have drawn up an ambitious plan for domesticating eelgrass. Rather than starting from seed, a process that requires patience that Len doesnt have, they are harvesting eelgrass from different coastal areas around Spain and transplanting it to the Bay of Cdiz.

If all goes according to plan, they will harvest 12 acres of eelgrass in the summer of 2021. Len and team will use most of those seeds (about 22,000 kg) to expand the eelgrass significantly in 20222023, and he will keep about 3,000 kg to cook with at the restaurant and experiment with in the lab.

With more than 5,000 hectares of estuaries and abandoned salt beds strewn across the region, if Len and team have their way, Cdiz could soon be home to one of the largest eelgrass meadows on the planet.

From top left, clockwise: A plankton rice dish at Aponiente; Len performs Luz del Mar, mixing two proteins to get fluorescence; a halophyte plant at the restaurant lab; Len performs the Sal viva technique

The only thing less sexy than grass is grass that grows in water. When Robert Orth, professor of biological sciences at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, started researching seagrass in 1969, he found it a very lonely field: You could literally count the number of papers published by scientists on one hand. According to Orth, people either think seagrass is gross, a nuisanceor that it doesnt exist at all. Seagrasses are the ugly duckling of the environmental movement, he says. Theyre not colorful like coral or beautiful like mangroves.

But there is something extraordinary about seagrasses: they are the only plants that flower fully submerged in salt water. They have all the equipment of a terrestrial plantroots, stems, rhizomes, leaves, flowers, seedsbut they thrive in under-water environments. Seagrasses like Zostera marina are eco-system engineers: the meadows they form along coastlines represent some of the most biodiverse areas in the ocean, playing host to fauna (like seahorses, bay scallops and sea turtles) that would struggle to survive without seagrass.

But anthropogenic forcesclimate change, pollution, coastal developmenthave threatened eelgrass meadows across the world. As Len and team refine the conditions for large-scale cultivation, they hope to facilitate its growth along coastlines around the worldAsia, North America and, above all, across the Straits of Gibraltar in Africaturning millions of hectares into a source of food, protection against erosion and a weapon against climate change.

In terms of the ecological importance of seagrasses, its impossible to say too much about them, said Jeanine Olsen, professor emeritus at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. They dont have the poster-child appeal of coral reefs, but they are just as important in terms of -productivity, biodiversity, carbon sequestration and habitat.

For all the talk about the Amazon being Mother Natures lungs, rain forests are only the fifth most efficient carbon sink on the planet. Seagrass meadows are second only to tundra in their ability to sequester carbon, absorbing carbon up 35 times faster than the same area of tropical rain forest.

But, like many of our best tools for combatting rising temperatures, seagrass meadows have been dying off at an alarming rate over the past several decades, thanks to a combination of rising water temperatures and increased human activity along coastlines. The lack of awareness has only accelerated the decline.

In 2006, Orth and more than a dozen scientists published a paper in BioScience on the alarming decline in seagrasses around the world: Salt marshes, mangroves and coral reefs receive threefold to 100-fold more media attention than seagrass eco-systems, although the services provided by seagrasses, together with algal beds, deliver a value at least twice as high as the next most valuable habitat.

It appears Orth and his colleagues message got out. In the years since, the field has grown precipitously, with more money and more research. Restoration projects are under way all over the world, including one in the coastal lagoons along Virginias eastern shore, overseen by Orth, that has regenerated more than 3,500 hectares of seagrass meadows.

Up until this article, Lens project has been a closely guarded secret. Not even the local Spanish marine biologists know whats happening. I spoke and exchanged emails with half a dozen of the top seagrass experts around the world, and each responded with their own version of surprise. None more than Carlos Duarte, whose broad base of marine expertise has brought him from the tropics to the North Pole, from dense coastal ecosystems to the unknown depths of the dark ocean.

Len in the sea rice plantation

What Len is doing is unprecedented, Duarte told me on the phone from Mallorca. I had just shared the news with him. This will be the first eelgrass that will be domesticated, he finally said, more to himself than to me. They will be pioneers. Then, after another pause. Its a big achievement.

Duarte knows the area and the conditions well, and though he stressed that the yield for eelgrass tends to be low, he said italong with other factors like taste and nutritioncan be improved through genetic selection. The things that have gone wrong with traditional agriculture wont be affected in the sea. No fertilizers, no pesticides, no insects, he says. It will be by default a green sustainable crop. Youre not taking an exotic species and bringing it here. Youre taking one of the jewels of the Bay of Cdiz and just making more of it.

But theres another side to the equation that wasnt part of any seagrass scientists -environmental -calculations: the water itself. Nearly 97% of all water on earth is salt water. For all our brains and ambition, humans have never figured out much to do with salt water. We use it to cool thermo-electric power plants. We use it in some forms of mining. Most of our efforts and resources have been focused on turning salt water into fresh water, but desalinization remains expensive.

Just 1% of all water on earth is readily available fresh water, and the planet is growing thirstier by the day. According to the U.N.s Food and Agriculture Organization, humans will need to increase agricultural output by 60% to feed the nearly 10 billion people expected to live on earth by 2050. But just as our demand for fresh water has never been greater, our supplies have never been in more doubt. Climate models predict that rest of the 21st century will be a roller coaster of historic droughts and historic floods, jeopardizing the worlds food supplies. Finding a way to use salt water in agriculture would dramatically alter the calculus for feeding the planet.

The Dutch have taken the lead in saltwater agriculture. Government funded efforts to introduce salt-water-receptive genes to traditional vegetables like potatoes, tomatoes and carrots show promise. For the Chinese, the worlds largest consumers and growers of rice, saltwater rice has been the holy grail for nearly four decades. Yuan Longping, the agronomist who first developed high-yield hybrid rice back in the 1970s, has been trying to crack the code since the early 1980s. In 2018, Yuan and his team successfully grew salt-water rice in the desert flats outside of Dubai, achieving more than double the average global rice yield.

But they did this through decades of crossbreeding, and by diluting salt water with fresh water. What Len is after is something different altogether: a -native plant, capable of delivering immense nutritional and ecological benefits, grown directly in ocean beds.

Rice may be the worlds top source of calories, but it also requires two increasingly scarce resources: land and fresh water. And the cocktail of gasescarbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxidecreated during rice cultivation has been found to contribute to climate change. Lens sea rice, by contrast, has a similar yield as terrestrial rice but can grow in any temperate coastal area in the world, all the while sequestering excess carbon.

A few of the experts I spoke with expressed concerns about the logistical challenges of cultivating Zostera marina. Eelgrass is a complex problem, Orth told me. You have to have all the right conditions: light, temperature, current.

The challenges arent lost on Juan Martn, but Martn points out that the estuaries where theyll be planting the eelgrass give the team full control of the elements. Len and team have also been working with geneticists in the hopes of improving some of the core characteristics of Zostera.

Rice has the advantage of 7,000 years of genetic modifications, said Martn. In very little time, we could make huge improvements.

Lens Aponiente restaurant, in a centuries-old mill, surrounded by the estuary where he will cultivate his underwater garden

Len is thinking ahead. Not just to a supercharged version of his saltwater rice, but he and his team have discussed the possibility of isolating the saline genes in Zostera marina to crossbreed with other staples: corn, lentils, lettuce.

Its not just the rice, said Len. Its the dream of having an underwater garden for human beings.

This is where well plant the rice, out there in the distance, said Len, pointing from the second-floor terrace of the old mill that houses Aponiente to the sunbaked estuaries below. The waters will be packed with life: shrimp, oysters, sea bream. Next year, the guests wont start their meals in the restaurant, but right on the water, catching the first bites of their meal.

He gave me this tour over FaceTime in the early summer. It was supposed to be in person, the two of us taking in the young eelgrass meadows he hoped to plant in the late spring, but then COVID-19 crushed Spain and the country shut down until late June. Len had his shirt off, a cigarette pinched by the boyish smile that had all but disappeared. The restaurant was slated to open the following day, and he had just done a final tasting for a menu nine months in the making. The unifying concept would be an edible interpretation of the tidal marshes. There would be emerald puddles of plankton butter and marine bone marrow and burrata forged from sea snails. For Len, the star of the season was the gusana del mar, a species of sea worm.

Despite concerns from his staff and partners, Len has insisted the worm be a central part of the menu. After a dozen different experiments, he settled on a grilled sea-bream cheek with a rich herby fish broth and a crunchy sea-worm garnish.

But even as he talked me through the details of the final menu, I could tell his mind was elsewhere. He sounded relieved when I asked about the plants. Its finally happening, he says. On July 17, we have our crews going out to collect Zostera from Galicia and Cantabria. We should have it all planted by the early fall.

With the meadow finally taking shape in his mind, he had a new problem to worry about: What am I going to cook with 22,000 kg of sea rice? he asked, his wide-eyed grin swaddled by a cloud of smoke. This whole process has been like giving birth, and the cook in me died somewhere along the way. I had too much fear, too much respect for every f-cking grain.

He had come back inside now, taking a seat at a long table inside the office he had renovated during the lockdown. Behind him, on a long white wall, a local artist had mounted the heads of the major species of fish in the Bay of Cdiz, 35 in total. It had the effect of making Len look like a cartoonish hero, with an army of sea creatures at his back.

Imagine making a mochi made from ground Zostera flour and pulverized shrimp Or playing with textures of al dente Zostera pasta Serve it in two rounds: first the husk, then the grain itself We can harvest it early, when the seeds are like baby favas, and use it like spring peas but with the flavor of the sea Len kept going, ticking through half a dozen other ideas before taking a breath.

Len likes to say that hes just a simple cook. It doesnt read as false modesty as much as an expression of his abiding disbelief that a piratemouthed kid from one of Spains poorest regions who barely graduated high school could find himself in a position to do things no one else ever has. But there he was, on the brink of another breakthrough.

He explained: How much do we miss from scientists who have spent their entire lives studying one thing? Sometimes you spend all day staring through a microscope and you dont look up long enough to remember that youre hungry.

As he was talking, he began to run his hand over the heads of the sea creatures hanging from his wall: mackerel, squid, dogfish. He settled on the spotted snout of the mounted moray eelthe same species fishermen since the dawn of time have given back to the sea but with which Len had built a career fashioning crispy chicharrns and souffl potatoes and suckling pig of the sea.

You need the science, but you also need the hunger.

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Seeding the Ocean: Inside a Michelin-Starred Chef's Revolutionary Quest to Harvest Rice From the Sea - TIME

Emma Luck on the singer who shook up Italy.

When the long-awaited call came for a meeting with Elvis manager Colonel Parker and the King himself in Memphis, Little Tony leapt at the chance.

Known as the Italian Elvis, the performer had always acknowledged the influence of his American hero. It was not hard to detect, in his impassioned singing voice, his impressive quiff and taste for flashy suits and chunky sunglasses... not to mention his voracious appetite for hedonism.

Indeed, just as he was due to set off to meet the real Elvis, in came a rival offer to fly to New York instead and hang out with some Playboy Bunnies. He jumped on a jet to head for the Big Apple, planning to reschedule his visit to Graceland. Alas, before he got round to it, the other Elvis was dead.

It wasnt just the superficial details of style and personality that had connected the two men, but the impact on their respective countries. Just as Elvis Presley revolutionised American popular culture from the 1950s onwards, so his Italian Mini-Me had helped transform post-war Italy.

Born Antonio Ciacci in 1941 in Tivoli, near Rome (six years after Presley, in Tupelo, Mississippi), he came of age in what came to be known as il boom economico, as the country enjoyed a period of growth from the mid-1950s onwards. It was also a critical period for Italys popular culture, with the advent of the musica leggera (pop scene).

It owed a huge debt first to swing and then rock n roll, and American artists like Chuck Berry became incredibly popular. Indeed, it was in homage to another American star, Little Richard, that Ciacci took his name, Little Tony.

He had had an interest in music from an early age thanks to a family passion that united his father Novino, a singer and accordionist, a guitar-playing uncle Settembrino and Antonios brothers, guitarist Enrico and bassist Alberto.

In 1957, the group Little Tony & His Brothers was born. The following year they were signed by Durium Records and released a series of US rock n roll covers including Johnny B. Goode, Splish Splash and Shake, Rattle And Roll.

He was convinced that singing in English helped him to stand out from rival Italian singers although at this point he did not understand a word of the language.

Despite his enthusiasm for all things American, it was Britain that provided his big break. In 1959, Italian singer Marino Marini of Volare fame was in London to appear on the TV show Oh Boy! and recommended Little Tonys group to the producer Jack Good, insisting that they were even better than a certain chart favourite of the time, Cliff Richard.

Intrigued, Good went to Italy to see the brothers in concert and was so impressed he signed them on the spot. They moved to England where they performed for 18 months. They made their first appearance on Goods new programme Boy Meets Girls in September 1959, and released their first single in the UK, I Cant Help It the 11th of their Italian career on the Decca label.

Their third British single saw Little Tony record in London for the first time.

The result, the angst-ridden teen ballad Too Good written by Elvis hit-makers Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman spent three weeks on the UK charts, peaking at No.19 in January 1960.

It was the groups only chart success in Britain but this and regular appearances on Boy Meets Girls and its replacement Wham! made sure that Little Tony continued to have records released in Britain well into the 1960s, even when he reverted back to singing in Italian. The group remained a British TV fixture until 1962.

That year, they returned permanently to Italy and Antonio went solo. Singing in his native tongue, he had his first No.1 in his homeland with Il Ragazzo Col Ciuffo (The Kid With The Quiff) that same year.

He also began working as a film actor.

He would ultimately appear in more than 20 Italian movies in the musicarello genre, which featured young singers in the main roles (think Elviss film career).

The films generated several hit songs for Little Tony, including I Teddy Boys Della canzone (The Teddy Boys From The Song) and the spoof Rocco E Le Sorelle (Rocco And His Sisters), and the 1960s saw him recording regularly and shifting millions of records in Italy. One, Cuore Matto (Crazy Heart) was No.1 for nine consecutive weeks. His successes led to him launching his own label, Little Records, in 1969.He fully embraced the rock n roll life.

In the late 1960s he moved into a villa on Romes star-studded Via Appia Antica where his neighbours included Gina Lollobrigida, Valentino and Franco Zeffirelli. Tonys property had a juke box, a bed with mirrors, a four-metre high statue of Presley on the front lawn and photos of the King, and Marilyn Monroe on the walls. He embraced the freedom of the era and his home was always open to his many friends, male and female.

From humble beginnings himself, he liked to hang out with people from all walks of life. To burnish further his rock star image, Antonio a lover of cars in general and sports cars in particular built up an impressive collection of Ferraris and Lamborghinis over the course of his career.But just as Elvis found himself overtaken by changing trends and tastes, and falling out of fashion, so Little Tony saw his own star fade as the 1970s wore on. Indeed, one symptom of his creative struggles was the 1975 album, Tony Canta Elvis, a kitsch tribute to the King.

The decline in his career coincided with a turbulent period in his personal life. In 1972 he had married Giuliana Brugnoli, a flight attendant he had known for 12 years after spotting her on the beach at Ostia.

He had pursued her for six months before she agreed to go out with him and was much heralded in the Italian media as his great love, despite his many infidelities that followed. It was a complicated and turbulent relationship and the pressures of Tonys public life took their toll on his private one.

Two years after the couple wed their daughter Cristiana was born, even though they were pretty much living apart by then. In a parallel with Elvis and his wife Priscilla, the union seems to have fizzled out completely after the birth of their child.For the first two years of Cristianas life, the spouses lived in two separate households and their daughter was placed in a third with a succession of nannies. Not unsurprisingly, Tony had a troubled relationship with Cristiana who only saw him sporadically throughout her childhood. (Tony did remain on civil terms with his estranged wife, however.

He was by her bedside when she died of cancer in 1993, and after her death Cristiana and Tony were reconciled.) Meanwhile, Tony was trying to revive his musical career. In the 1980s, he teamed up with close friend Bobby Solo and Rosanna Fratello to form the group Robot (from Rosanna, Bobby, and Tony) to try to re-boot his flagging sales. But it was a flash in the pan: the golden age of Italian rock n roll was gone.Tony himself wasnt finished, however.

He provided the voice for the theme song of the Italian version of the popular daytime TV series The Love Boat apt given his Casanovan reputation and, in the 1990s and 2000s, turned his attention increasingly towards television and film, once more.During this time, he starred in dozens of Italian productions. British cinema audiences might recall him for his cameo as Cliff in Ken Loachs drama Raining Stones in 1993.

He hadnt given up on music, though, and continued to record and perform into his sixties. Even at this stage of his career, he still had the rock n rollers ability to shock. In 1999, at the age of 58, he married for the second time.

His bride was backing vocalist Luciana Manfra, who at 25 was the same age as his daughter. The union was not announced until the day they were wed, and the age difference scandalised his fan base.

Seven years later, he suffered a heart attack during a concert in Ottawa, and although he recovered and returned to the stage, his career was entering its end game even if he raged against it. His last album was titled, poignantly, Non Finisce Qui (This Is Not The End). It was released in 2008, but spent only a single week in the Top 100 chart.

If he wasnt the star he once was, Little Tony remained a popular figure on Italian television until he was forced to retire after receiving a cancer diagnosis which he kept quiet from friends and fans alike.

To the surprise of many, Antonio Ciacci passed away on May 28, 2013 in Rome. He was 72, and had enjoyed a longevity denied to his idol, Elvis, and secured in Italy at least a legacy that stands comparison with the King.

Visit link:

Little Tony, the Italian Elvis - The New European

Its been a long wait, but series two of Discovery of Witches is finally here. Georgia Humphreys met some of the stellar cast on set.

The latest instalment of Discovery of Witches has a lot to live up to.

The fantasy drama, about a closet witch named Diana Bishop, and Matthew Clairmont, a centuries-old vampire, is based on much-loved books Deborah Harknesss bestselling All Souls trilogy and series one was Sky Ones most popular drama of 2018.

Matthew Goode, the Downton Abbey star who plays Matthew, was certainly feeling the pressure, what with the show becoming a period drama this time around.

There are many more things to think about, notes the 42-year-old actor. I dont think we are sitting on our laurels.

But theres no need to worry; the ten new episodes are just as gripping, romantic, and spellbinding as youd hope.

They follow star-crossed lovers Matthew and Diana (Hacksaw Ridges Teresa Palmer) as they travel back to Elizabethan London, where they try to find a powerful witch teacher to help Diana control her magic, and search for the elusive Book of Life.

Intertwined throughout theres plenty of drama in the present day too a world where witches, vampires, and daemons secretly live and work alongside humans.

Here from interviews in November 2019, on set in Wales lead stars Goode, Palmer, plus brand-new cast member Tom Hughes, tell us more.

NEW ANGLES

How will we see Diana adapt to a new time period? Aussie actress Palmer, 34, says: To be thrust back so many years is incredibly confronting and challenging, and shes in a very vulnerable position, so shes having to navigate lots of different things.

We also see a different side to Matthew, she adds, as we explore his past as Matthew Roydon.

Matthew Roydon is a really complex, broody sort of dangerous, dark character and she hasnt known this person before, and she feels like shes getting to know this whole other side of him. She wants to learn more about him, which I think is very romantic.

FAMOUS FACES

A whole set has been built, in the Welsh countryside, purposefully for this second series. As we walk around, its bustling and atmospheric, and it really does feel like weve been thrust back in time. Then there are the new characters that immerse us in the time period too, including Kit Marlow, the English playwright, poet, and translator of the Elizabethan era, played by Victoria star, Tom Hughes.

There are elements of the real Christopher Marlowe in there; theres a kind of Mercurio quality to him, and theres a hedonism to him, theres a lyricism to him, notes Hughes, 35. And then bring that in with obviously whats in the books, and how thats adapted for this story, hes slightly infantilised at times.

Something about his emotion is very, very raw, and that brings with it a plethora of different feelings; theres volatility, theres obsession.

That obsession is with Matthew, and it also means Kit has a fear of Diana, because when Matthew arrives back from the modern-day, the whole world has changed and shifted.

CASTING A SPELL

In this series, Diana doesnt have a choice other than to start embracing who she is the most powerful witch the world has ever seen. And Palmer says that has been really fun for her because shes getting to do so much more magic stuff and has even been doing magic classes with a movement coach.

Shes been learning about weaving and the history behind witches and the idea of like the threads of the universe and weaving them together and doing these ten different knots, she explains.

Interestingly, Diana starts to realise that one of her gifts is that she brings life into things, which will no doubt make for some exciting scenes.

There are certain elements in the book where, for instance, she has an egg and she makes the egg hatch and a live chick comes out, notes Palmer.

Theres another sequence where shes looking at someones shoe and a snake is embroidered in it and she brings a snake out of the shoe - a real-life snake.

So, shes starting to learn about her connection to life.

POPULAR CHARACTERS

There are so many stories about witches and vampires which have been adapted for TV or film. Discussing their enduring appeal, Goode says: I think we hear those stories first when were children and theyre sort of a little bit disturbing and magical and mysterious. And then I think Harry Potter helped...

Palmer adds that shows like Discovery of Witches are a departure from how we live our lives. Fantasy is a form of escapism, I think.

Sky original A Discovery of Witches Series 2 started on Sky One and NOW TV on Friday, January 8 with all episodes now available to view.

Go here to see the original:

The big interview: Return of the TV drama that casts a spell - News & Star

A Perfect Planet

David Attenboroughs new wildlife series takes a closer look at the systems which keep Earth spinning, from volcanoes and sunlight to weather and the oceans. But with perfection comes delicacy and if just one thing upsets the balance humans, for example it could spell disaster for our entire ecosystem. Beautifully shot as usual, A Perfect Planet will educate, awe and inspire.

BBC One, 3 January

i's TV newsletter: what you should watch next

In a more domestic approach to Marvel superheroes, this series follows Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) as they try to settle into a normal existence. Living in suburban bliss after the events of Avengers: Endgame, the couple desperately try to hide their powers from their neighbours but run into trouble when they realise the reverberations of Thanoss snap are still being felt.

Disney+, 15 January

Russell T Daviess newest project heads back to 80s London, just as the Aids crisis begins to unfold. Newcomers Callum Scott Howells, Omari Douglas and Olly Alexander (lead singer of Years & Years) play three young gay men who move to the capital in search of hedonism, love and acceptance despite the deadly threat.

Channel 4, January

If it werent for Covid, we might have known by now who the final corrupt officer is in the group known as H alas, the sixth series of Line of Duty was pushed back when filming was cancelled last March. A year on, AC-12 Ted, Steve and Kate are determined to put an end to the unscrupulous operation. Meanwhile, new kid on the block DCI Joanne Davidson (Kelly Macdonald) raises suspicions thanks to her unorthodox policing methods.

BBC One, March

Normal People was my favourite series of 2020, so Im incredibly excited for the adaptation of Sally Rooneys first novel to arrive on screens later this year. The drama follows exes Frances and Bobbi, two university students whose friendship is tested when Frances embarks on an affair with an older married man. Put out by Frances new relationship, Bobbi pursues the mans wife and so begins a complicated, emotionally charged mnage quatre.

BBC Three, TBC

Expect an epic of Game of Thrones proportions for this re-imagining of JRR Tolkiens fantasy series Amazon paid $250m (189m) for the rights alone. Thankfully, this wont be a simple rehash of the movies as the series will explore storylines preceding The Fellowship of the Ring and introduce characters weve never heard of before.

Amazon Prime Video, TBC

Actor Emily Mortimer turns her hand to writing and directing for this adaption of Nancy Mitfords 1945 novel. Lily James (Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again) stars as free spirit Linda Radlett whose quest to find love takes over her entire life a pursuit not entirely celebrated by her cousin (and the shows narrator) Fanny (Emily Beecham, Daphne).

BBC One, TBC

Adam Kays memoir of working in the NHS is the inspiration for this comedy-drama. Ben Whishaw (A Very English Scandal) will play a fictional version of the doctor-turned-writer, who has also written the screenplay. The witty but heartbreaking series will paint an honest picture of what its like to work in an overstretched NHS.

BBC Two, TBC

Creator of the Inspector Morse prequel series Endeavour, Russell Lewis heads these feature-length episodes inspired by two of Peter James thrillers, Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace (John Simm) has dedicated his life to police work but these two cases told in two feature-length episodes will test even his steadfast resolve.

ITV, TBC

Spoiler alert: Hopper is alive and has been put to work at some sort of Russian prison. Thats all we know for now, but anticipation levels are already sky high for the next series of the Duffer Brothers sci-fi adventure. The pandemic has delayed filming and the release date, so maybe dont expect to return to Hawkins until late 2021.

Netflix, TBC

Thei on TVnewsletter is a daily email full of suggestions of what to watch as well as the latest TV news, opinions and interviews.Sign up hereto stay up to date with the best new TV.

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The best TV coming out in 2021 and when to watch it, from Its A Sin to Line of Duty - iNews

Ego is able to convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.Chgyam Trungpa

A purported benefit of mind-body spiritual practices such as yoga, meditation and energy healing is that they will help quiet the ego, providing an effective antidote to the exalted self. Indeed, such practices do have the potential for such an awakening, allowing us to get more in touch with reality as it is right here and now, including the qualities we dont like about ourselves. Spiritual practices also have the potential to help us cultivate compassion, concern and unconditional positive regard toward othersthings that can truly evolve our consciousness as a species.

However, this is all much easier said than done. As has been observed by many spiritual leaders, spiritual practitioners and psychologists over the years, the ego has an incessant need to be seen in a positive light, and will eagerly hijack whatever flow of consciousness it can use for its own enhancement. As the Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo noted:

At every moment [the seeker] must proceed with a vigilant eye upon the deceits of the ego and the ambushes of the misleading Powers of Darkness who ever represent themselves as the one source of Light and Truth and take on them a simulacrum of divine forms in order to capture the soul of the seeker.

Likewise, in his classic book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader Chgyam Trungpa wrote:

Walking the spiritual path properly is a very subtle process: it is not something to jump into naively. There are numerous sidetracks which lead to a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spirituality when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.

Psychologists have also pointed out the potential for spirituality to serve as a tool of self-enhancement. According to William James, the father of American psychology, any skill that increases its centrality in the self-system is likely to breed a bias toward self-enhancement. As it turns out, no domain of human skill has been found to be exempt from this self-centrality principle. It seems to be an inextricable part of human nature.

This includes the domain of spirituality. Self-enhancement through spiritual practices can fool us into thinking we are evolving and growing, when in fact all we are growing is our ego. Some psychologists have pointed out that the self-enhancement that occurs through spiritual practices can lead to the I'm enlightened and you're not syndrome and spiritual bypass, by which people seek to use their spiritual beliefs, practices and experiences to avoid genuine contact with their psychological unfinished business. In my recent book Transcend, I call it "pseudo-transcendence" transcendence built on a very shaky foundation.

Just how much of a problem is all this, really? Perhaps on the whole, spiritual practices really do help quiet the ego, and spiritual narcissism isnt that widespread. What do the empirical data actually have to say on one of the greatest paradoxes of our time, which is: If a major point of yoga is quieting the ego and reducing focus on self, why are there so many yoga pose pictures on Instagram?

SELF-CENTRALITY AND SPIRITUALITY

In the past few years, a number of high-quality studies have started to unearth the existence of spiritual narcissism and self-enhancement among spiritual practices that purport to quiet the ego. In one set of high-powered studies, Jochen Gebauer and colleagues looked at both yoga and meditation practices.

In their first experiment,they followed 93 yoga students for up to 15 weeks. They repeatedly assessed self-enhancement levels among peopledirectly after participating in yoga and among people who had not practiced yoga within the past 24 hours. Self-centrality was measured by items such as "Focusing mindfully on the exercises across the whole yoga class is..., measuredon a scale of 1 (not at all central to me) to 5 (central to me).

They measured self-enhancement though a standard measure of self-esteem, as well as by asking people the degree to which they perceived themselves as better than the average yoga student in their yoga class. They also included a measure of communal narcissism, an often underdiscussed form of narcissism in which one thinks that they alone will save the world and that they are the most helpful person of them all (e.g., I will be well known for the good deeds I will have done). Research shows that communal narcissism is correlated with grandiose narcissism and all of the entitlement, arrogance and overconfidence that goes along with it (just applied to a helping domain).

The researchers found higher levels of self-centrality as well as self-enhancement (higher self-esteem, better than average judgments, and communal narcissism) among those who had just completed a yoga class compared to those who hadnt engaged in any yoga class in the past 24 hours.They also found suggestive evidence that the augmented self-enhancement of the yoga practice played a key role in the well-being benefits of yoga through increases in self-esteem. This finding hinted at the idea that the well-being benefits of this spiritual practice may actually come through boosting self-esteem, not through ego quieting.

In their second experiment,they followed 162 meditation practitioners for up to four weeks. They repeatedly assessed meditations self-centrality and self-enhancement directly after meditation and in the absence of prior meditation. This time, they directly measured well-being, including a comprehensive battery of measures of hedonic well-being (happiness and high life satisfaction) as well as eudaemonic well-being (higher levels of autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life and self-acceptance). Their self-centrality questions included items such as How central is it for you to be free from envy?; and their self-enhancement scale included items such as In comparison to the average participant of this study, I am free from envy. Again, they included a measure of communal narcissism.

The researchers found that, after meditation, self-centrality in meditation-relevant domains was exacerbated, not diminished, and self-enhancement in meditation-relevant domains was augmented, not curtailed. Additionally, increased levels of self-enhancement explained the effect of meditation on higher well-being (both hedonic and eudaemonic).

It's important to point out that they sampled Western participants, and the yoga and meditation practices the participants engaged inwhich included engagement in hatha yoga and loving-kindness meditationdont necessarily generalize to all yoga and meditation programs and practices. Nevertheless, the researchers did find greater self-enhancement in the yoga and meditation conditions even among very advanced mind-body practitioners. These findings suggest that, contrary to the purported benefits of mind-body practices as quieting the ego and reducing focus on self, they may actually boost self-centrality and self-enhancement. Furthermore, and intriguingly, it seems as though it is precisely those self-related boosts that contributed to the well-being benefits of the spiritual practices.

SPIRITUAL SUPERIORITY AND SPIRITUAL PRACTICES

In a more recent set of studies, Roos Vonk and Anouk Visser conducted an exploration of spiritual superiority. They interviewed several psychologists, spiritual trainers and lay people, and asked them to describe people who use spirituality as a self-enhancement tool. They then translated these qualities to six items:

I am aware of things that others are not aware of.

I am more in touch with my senses than most others.

I am more aware of what is between heaven and earth than most people.

Because of my education and experience, I am observant and see things that others overlook.

Because of my background and experiences, I am more in touch with my body than other people.

The world would be a better place if others too had the insights that I have now.

In three studies, they assessed the relationship between their scale of spiritual superiority and other variables. In study 1, they focused on people who engaged in some form of spiritual training. Participants were recruited via mindfulness schools and energetic training centers, which aim to train skills that classify as paranormal, such as reading auras and regressing to previous lives. In studies 2 and 3, participants were recruited via a popular psychology magazine with a broad audience interested in psychological and spiritual development. The comparison was with people without any spiritual training.

Overall, the researchers found that the correlation of spiritual superiority with self-esteem was lower among the no-training group than those participating in any of the spiritual training groups. Their measure of spiritual superiority was related to spiritual contingency of self-worth, the degree to which people derive higher self-esteem from their spiritual practices (e.g., I feel better about myself when I notice I develop myself spiritually). According to the researchers, this illustratesthat the self-enhancement function of spirituality is similar to other contingency domains of self-esteem.

Interestingly, their scale of spiritual superiority was more strongly correlated with communal narcissism than self-esteem, providing evidence for the notion of spiritual narcissism. Indeed, its important to distinguish between healthy self-esteem and narcissism. The problem isnt with self-esteem but with the pursuit of self-esteem. Healthy self-esteemcomprising a positive evaluation of ones self-worth and masteryemerges naturally and organically through the engagement of authentic mastery and positive relationships, rather than by pursuing self-esteem as the goal. Increases in healthy self-esteem as a result of spiritual practices may be a good thing, and are not necessarily indicative of spiritual narcissism, which is why its good that the researchers were able to tie their measure of spiritual superiority to a specific form of narcissism: communal narcissism.

The researchers found differences depending on the form of spiritual practice, however. Spiritual superiority scores were consistently higher among those who came from energetic-training centers than the mindfulness trainees. In fact, those who underwent energy training were more likely to claim special knowledge of mindfulness, more so than those who were actually in the mindfulness condition! The energetic healers were also especially likely to score high in supernatural overconfidence, scoring high in items such as When I randomly open a book on a page number that is meaningful to me, this is no coincidence, I can send positive energy to others from a distance and I can influence the world around me with my thoughts.

While their study is correlational, it's likely that there is a bidirectional relationship among these factors. Its likely that spiritual practices can be used as a tool to bolster the narcissistic self, enhancing ones feeling that one is special and entitled to special privileges. But its also likely that some spiritual training programs attract people with strong personal development goals that are related to Western narcissistic culture. As the researchers note, the idea of exploring one's own personal thoughts and feelings and becoming an enlightened being may be particularly attractive to people with high levels of both overt and covert narcissism.

Taken together, the researchers concluded:

Our results illustrate that the self-enhancement motive is powerful and deeply ingrained so that it can hijack methods intended to transcend the ego and instead, adopt them to its own service....The road to spiritual enlightenment may yield the exact same mundane distortions that are all too familiar in social psychology, such as self-enhancement, illusory superiority, closed-mindedness, and hedonism (clinging to positive experiences) under the guise of alleged higher values.

HEALTHY TRANSCENDENCE

Is there any way around the allure of spiritual narcissism? Its all well and good that gurus espouse the importance of quieting the ego (often while driving in their Rolls-Royces), but in practice can we ever really override the universal self-centrality principle and transcend spiritual narcissism?

I think we can, but I believe the first step is simply awareness that its incredibly difficult to do so. One serious obstacle to healthy transcendence, as I see it, is how spiritual practices are sold to the masses. Yoga and mindfulness are big businesses in America. The purported benefits of mindfulness meditation have generated a billion-dollar industry (see here, here and here). Yoga is the most popular mind-body practice in Western societies. Many of these programs offer a long list of promises, including the reduction of stress and anxiety, along with greater confidence, creativity, focus, achievement, success, eating habits, sleep and even happiness.

But heres the thing: Healthy transcendence doesnt stem from an attempt at distracting oneself from displeasure with reality. Healthy transcendence involves confronting reality as it truly is, head on, with equanimity and loving kindness. As I put it in Transcend, healthy transcendence is not about leaving any parts of ourselves or anyone else behind or singularly rising above the rest of humanity. Healthy transcendence is not about being outside of the whole, or feeling superior to the whole, but being a harmonious part of the whole of human existence. Healthy transcendence involves harnessing all that you are in the service of realizing the best version of yourself so you can help raise the bar for the whole of humanity.

This involves seeing reality as clearly as possible. As Nancy Colier, author of The Power of Off: The Mindful Way to Stay Sane in a Virtual World, notes, the point of mindfulness is to be able to see what is happening inside ourselves, without ownership, judgment or action. And simultaneously, to lose our great belief in and reverence for the productions of our mind.... The dangerous habit is this: The mindful witness itself is becoming yet another form of ego, a new identity, a new somebody that we wear with pride.

Don't get me wrong: I genuinely enjoy looking at all the varied and intricate yoga poses on Instagram. But from my reading of the yoga literature, it doesn't seem as though the theoretical intent of yoga is primarily for physically attractive people to display with pride their ability to twist themselves into a pretzel. Rather, it seems that the most growth-oriented benefits of mind-body spiritual practices occur when we arent using them as a tool for satisfying any of our basic needssuch as our needs for security, belonging and self-esteem. Instead, such practices seem to lead to greater maturity, wisdom, compassion, acceptance and unconditional positive regard toward others when we repeatedly attempt to cultivate the ability to be witness to our mind and behaviors so that we can catch when our crafty ego has hijacked the system in a way that is detrimental to our own self-actualization and self-transcendence.

Which has me thinking: Perhaps it's time for all of these yoga and mindfulness centers to chill on all of the extrinsic purported benefits they are claiming (Better heath! Better sex! Amazing concentration! Great success at work!), and just focus on the benefits of such spiritual practices for allowing us to realize that such concerns of the ego are just the ego doing its thing. That awareness, in and of itself, is enough of a benefit to last an enlightened lifetime.

Link:

The Science of Spiritual Narcissism - Scientific American

There were few positives we could muster from the past 12 months in culture. A live music industry left in tatters; anticipated albums pulled or indefinitely delayed; big-screen movie experiences a thing of the past. Many creatives, however, have persevered throughout, lucky enough to be in situations that meant they could ride out the pandemic, waiting to release their art at a time when we could all enjoy it at its fullest. Enter 2021, a new beginning: a year of double-stacked albums, movies, tours, and TV shows.

Its bound to be a busy year all of those pop stars who were set to make their comebacks in 2020 have likely waited until now and so weve filtered through the noise to pinpoint exactly what the world will be shouting about. From music documentaries to heartthrobs marking their return to the silver screen, these are the biggest pop-culture moments to have on your radar.

Read more: 5 Exceptional Netflix Originals To Watch In 2021

Billie Eilish: The Worlds A Little Blurry, premiers globally on 26 February.

By the time Billie Eilishs feature-length documentary, The Worlds a Little Blurry, arrives on Apple TV+ on 26 February, almost two years will have passed since the 19-year-old superstar dropped her debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?. The film captures the process of making the record right up until her Grammy Awards sweep in early 2020. Its Emmy-winning director, R.J. Cutler (who made 2009s The September Issue), has been given unfiltered access into Eilishs life, both at home and backstage on tour, in what promises to be the most insightful look at the pop juggernaut to date.

When Ella Yelich-OConnor the artist known better as Lorde isnt releasing albums, she lives between New Zealand and Los Angeles, avoiding social media (she hasnt tweeted since 2017) and staying off the celebrity grid. Such long spells of silence only increase anticipation for whatever she may come back with.

After her 2017 sophomore record Melodrama wound up on a number of critics end-of-decade lists, fans have been waiting more than three years to hear from their hugely talented gen-Z leader. And in a rare newsletter sent to fans at the end of 2020, in which she discussed her trip to Antarctica, she confirmed what we had all been waiting to hear: a new record will arrive in 2021. Could it be another generation-defining masterpiece? It seems we wont have much longer to find out.

In a year that forced most pop stars to cower in fear, overthinking every element of their career and, in many cases, holding back on releasing records, there was one woman who decided to do it all: Dua Lipa. Her ascent to the top tier of pop godliness was affirmed in 2020 with a critically acclaimed album, international notoriety, hit singles, collaborations with major luxury brands and a record-breaking live-stream performance that attracted more than five million viewers in one night. There is just one thing left to do: bring that show to arenas around the world. It might be a little late, but expect Lipas Future Nostalgia tour, due to kick off in the UK in September, to be the glitter-doused cherry on a delicious disco era.

Read more: Dua Lipa Covers The February 2021 Issue Of British Vogue

There were enough blockbusters slated for release in 2020 to please everyone. Fans of musical theatre were hotly anticipating Steven Spielbergs take on West Side Story; the sci-fi lovers had their eye on Timothe Chalamet in Dune. Meanwhile, Marvel Cinematic Universe enthusiasts were finally getting their first movie about Avengers heroine Black Widow, starring Oscar nominees Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh. But as cinema was one of the industries hit the hardest, most of those crowd-pullers were postponed at the last minute. Any movie that needed packed theatres to earn back their big budgets are going to arrive throughout 2021 instead. Double the number of movies? Just when you thought youd had your solid fix of screen time, these aforementioned flicks, plus hundreds more, will remind you of the magic of the communal cinema experience.

Timothe Chalamet in Dune.

Chia Bella James. 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

When it first hit our screens in 2009, RuPauls Drag Race was a niche show for queer people, in which drag stars competed against each other to become the USs greatest queen. It was a hotbed of glamour, comedy, and pin-sharp bitchiness; the ultimate form of rivalrous reality TV. Today, not much has changed beyond the shows global, far-reaching appeal. Last year saw the birth of Canadas Drag Race; in late 2019, a UK version of the hit show launched. Now, we have two new seasons hitting screens in January: season 13 of the US version launched via Netflix on New Years Day and a second series from the UK is due on 14 January.

Ready for a hotbed of glamour, comedy, and pin-sharp bitchiness? Us too.

Two summers ago, teenagers and their parents across the world fell hard for Euphoria. The compulsive HBO series, which followed a drug-addicted high-school girl and the cast of tortured characters who lived in the same suburban town, won its lead star Zendaya an Emmy last year. Now, following a couple of standalone dives into the Euphoria universe, solely capturing the characters Rue, played by Zendaya, and Jules, played by model-actor Hunter Schafer, a new season is set to arrive later in 2021. Prepare for more controversial teen hedonism and beauty inspiration, as the shows make-up artist Doniella Davy returns to the make-up chair.

A new season of Euphoria is set to arrive later in 2021.

The K-pop industrys big-budget escapades were a tonic during lockdown. As Korea bounced back from the pandemic, the countrys biggest stars got to work making art the way they were used to: on the grandest scale possible. Case in point, the worlds biggest girl band Blackpink, who managed to squeeze in a debut studio album, multiple music videos and collaborations with Lady Gaga and Selena Gomez into their year. Next up? A live-streamed concert called The Show, so Blinks across the globe can see the group perform the bangers from their new record on stage. Streamed via YouTube Music from Seoul, expect jaw-dropping visuals and unrivalled choreography when it kicks off globally on 31 January.

Blackpinks The Show airs on 31 January.

Courtesy of YG/Netflix

Four years after making his cinematic debut in Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, pop favourite Harry Styles is currently shooting his next project, touted to be gunning for Oscar glory. Dont Worry Darling, the latest film directed by filmmaker and actor Olivia Wilde, is a domestic thriller in which an all-American housewife (played by Florence Pugh) envisions her mundane life falling apart during a psychological episode. Harry Styles plays her husband, and photos from the set suggest hes going to be captured in similar outfits to the 70s ones hes been donning during his Fine Line album era. Wildes last movie Booksmart was a big critical success could this sneak in a late 2021 release to secure some nods for next years Oscars? Here's hoping that means four years of non-stop Styles red-carpet looks.

Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard and Fionn Whitehead in Dunkirk, 2017.

Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock

More from British Vogue:

Read the original here:

8 Major Pop-Culture Moments That Will Shape 2021 - British Vogue

The turn of a year is traditionally a period of reflection and resolution. This year, lockdown has amplified that feeling as we consider a seismic 12 months and catch glimmers of hope.

Last Christmas, I wrote about the need to make 2020 a year of teamwork across football as we fight racism and discrimination. Nobody could have anticipated what transpired. The Covid pandemic and the death of George Floyd have changed us. Initially, Covid created a resurgence of community spirit most vividly symbolised by the weekly clap for carers ritual. That spirit has frayed over time with frustration and individualism rising. But football has consistently demonstrated real leadership with clubs continued work in the community exemplified by Marcus Rashfords stellar work on child food poverty.

The death of George Floyd has returned racial inequality to the front of public discourse. Again, football showed great leadership, players symbolically taking a knee to call for action. The Football Leadership Diversity Code has now been adopted by 48 clubs setting gender and ethnicity recruitment targets for coaches and senior leaders. Long term, this is potentially a game-changer.

What should we expect in 2021 and beyond? As the Nobel laureate Niels Bohr said: Prediction is very difficult, especially if its about the future.

Football does not exist in a vacuum. It is affected by broader social and economic trends. These send conflicting signals but two major themes are likely to dominate as we enter a post-Covid and a post-Brexit world. The end of the first world war and the Spanish flu pandemic presaged an age of hedonism in the roaring 20s and there are predictions that our current forced contemplation of mortality may trigger a similar era once the shackles are off. Happier people tend to hate less.

It is tempting to believe that now Brexit is done, social divisions will heal. I am sceptical. I tend to think of Brexit as more symptom than cause it reflected divisions that have been percolating for years. The usual backlash against rising demands for racial equality has commenced look at some of the responses to players taking a knee. We await more detail on the governments new equalities policy but initial noises worryingly resemble a dog whistle.

But there is reason to hope that football can rise above the noise. I sense a real mood to turn words into action and football has an opportunity to lead. We need to focus on three key areas in 2021: using data to monitor change, tackling online hate and aligning on education.

By committing to the Football Leadership Diversity Code, the game has made commitments to better reflect society. Over the next few years, we need to help football meet those commitments with talent programmes and hold the game to those promises using data to track progress. We intend to use our partnership with Sky with its global technology capabilities and broadcast platform to play our part in doing this.

Social media is the battleground of hate. It is partly a technological and partly a behavioural problem so we will need technological and behavioural solutions. That needs to involve Twitter, Facebook, the government, law enforcement, football clubs and governing bodies. The government can play its part by accelerating the Online Harms bill, regulating big tech, creating a duty of care on social media providers and creating rules around transparency. But we cannot just wait for that. There are things we must do now.

Clubs and players have enormous followings which can be a force for good (ask Rashford). But with great power comes great responsibility to take care. The vicious trolling of Karen Carney was grimly predictable in the febrile tribal culture of social media that rapidly escalates to misogyny, racism and other forms of hate. It was completely avoidable.

The recent abuse of QPRs Bright Osayi-Samuel and Bournemouths Junior Stanislas led to more calls for the removal of anonymity. But anonymity at which level? Anonymity on the face of social media can serve a vital protective purpose (for example, if you are gay in a country where homosexuality is illegal). The real issue is how quickly account verification information is revealed to law enforcement and action taken once that anonymity is abused. This is the heart of the problem.

There are gaps in the system between football, law enforcement and social media which contribute to the culture of impunity. Current processes are largely reliant on complaints and targeting high-profile prosecutions. But the culture of social media is set by the repeat offenders who spread hate little and often. We need to be proactive. We need to go trawling, not whale hunting. We monitored social media posts in the summer with the PFA and an AI company called Signify. I believe that football needs to invest in monitoring solutions to identify and pursue the serial and serious offenders.

What if we could identify the top 10 offenders every week and create an accelerated evidence pathway to law enforcement? The question is who pays for this kind of monitoring. Last summer, several clubs balked at the cost of a pilot scheme. The cost for an entire season across the leagues is likely to be in the region of 0.5% of the aggregate transfer fees spent during the pandemic. This is a question of priorities. Football needs to invest in real solutions or the players will continue to pay the price.

Finally, it is a truism and a refrain that education is key to countering discrimination. But educating whom, about what and when? Most people know that hate is bad but they may not realise the impact it has. There are many education providers across the football ecosystem. It is time we got aligned and focused on driving measurable outcomes.

The financial success of English football over the last 30 years has been built partly on slick marketing. But players and fans are now cynical of the PR machine. Above all else, in 2021 football needs to build on the statements of intent from 2020 and commit time, energy and resources to convert that intent into action.

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In 2021, football needs to turn words into action when it comes to discrimination - The Guardian

I

dont remember much between the hours of 3pm and 7pm on Saturday afternoon, so Ive had to rely on source materials. Specifically, the WhatsApps I sent to my boyfriend as I was (apparently) en route to meet him on the South Bank.

On be there in. Sec!, reads an early, optimistic text, though close analysis of the timeline suggests that On (I) in fact arrived 40 minutes later. I just drink London! proclaims another hyperbolic message from around the same time, though more ominous is the missive sent at circa 6pm, stating: I have died.

Rumours of my death were greatly exaggerated (by me), though the incoherency gives a clear indication of my mental and physical state during my first post-lockdown Saturday out. How had I managed this under Tier 2s restrictions? Search me. By the time of my death, my excesses included as far as I can establish a few glasses of wine and a pizza with three friends on a rooftop in Peckham, later followed by another substantial meal and drinks, at which point my memory kicks back in, and bed by 11.30pm. Pretty tame, yet apparently enough hedonism to leave me immobilised on Sunday: face down on my bed; drooling; moving only to swipe at the continue watching button on Netflix or to claw at my own tongue to get the taste of sock out of my mouth. My own ghost of Christmas past would be horrified. In fact, this lamentable display is the antithesis of the stamina on which I have previously prided myself in December managing night-after-night-out; still getting up for my 6am alarm; sneaking in the odd lunchtime spin class to preclude the creep of a mulled cider paunch. This year, with limited days to go before I bubble up with my family for Christmas, I am desperate to make the most of them: how cruel of my stamina to forsake me now!

To think, last week I claimed (in print) to miss hangovers. Obviously, this year has been exhausting, and I did turn 30 in the first lockdown, but I dont think my increasing state of decrepitude is to blame. Nor can it be that Ive become a lightweight: Ive hardly treated this year as a detox. No, I think the problem is something uniquely 2020: this December is total sensory overload for Londons army of lockdown zombies. Months of texting in front of ambient TV requiring little to no brain engagement have been replaced by proper stimuli. Menus! People! Working out how to get from A to B! It is hard to adapt to structure after shapelessness: its a big gear shift to go from nought to hedonism overnight (who knew?!). My will is strong I want a party desperately! but the flesh is weak. And does anyone know how I got to the South Bank?

The online backlash was swift for Cardi B, who has been accused of insensitivity by fans after she asked Twitter to help her decide whether or not to drop the cash on a $88,000 purse. She countered the vitriol by pointing out that shes given $1 million to coronavirus relief charities fair, but thats not really the point, is it? We all know celebrities have had better pandemics than us, because they have better lives than us. Saying that, these lives have affected their grasp on reality making them prone to acts that can ring rather tone deaf. From Cardi B dropping 90k on a place to put her chewing gum; to Rita Oras lockdown lock-in; to Kim Ks massive 40th on a private island; even Kay Burleys birthday weve seen clangers committed by people whose jobs are, to some extent, about curating their image. Think before you tweet...

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The shift from nought to hedonism overnight was too much for this lockdown zombie - Evening Standard

We are approaching the end of Advent our season of pregnant waiting, for the arrival of our Lord.

This season will end on Christmas day with the birth of Christ, just as our waiting will abruptly come to an end when Christ comes to usher in His Kingdom.

But, during this life, what is the object of our waiting? What are we preparing for during this Advent of our earthly journey?

Christ tells us the nature of this Advent time: If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.

This Advent journey is not idle time. And it is not an easy path. On the contrary, if we plan to actually follow this Christ whose birth we wait to celebrate to really step into his bloody footsteps were promised we will face hardship.

The path of true discipleship, of a true Advent heart for the coming of Christ, calls us into a radical reordering of this world to prepare His Kingdom.

Mary, the Blessed Virgin, tells us this in her Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55): He has shown might with His arm, He has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart. He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and has exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty.

That represents a complete overturning of the world as it is as it always has been if we follow in Christs footsteps.

If we are to follow Christ, we cannot allow our vision of Him to be blurred or blinded by pride, greed, fear and hatred. By hedonism. And, we must be willing to take up our cross, and face the response of a world that is threatened by the radical love of the Gospel.

In 1 Corinthians 4:11-13, St. Paul gives us a view of the identity we must be willing to take on, in the eyes of a world threatened by righteousness: To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world right up to this moment.

If we are to follow Christ in a radical movement of love that lifts up the lowly in ways that terrify the mighty we must accept opposition in the world.

We must expect the sting of the lash. We must embrace the crown of thorns, pressed onto our head by a world that worships power and is threatened by grace. We must walk with him through the spit, the jeers and condemnation of a world that speaks Christ on the lips, but reviles Him and the Gospel at heart. We must place our feet in His bloody footsteps, and drag our cross to Golgotha, where we die to the greed, envy, hedonism and hatred of this world.

In our Advent discipline, we must look within, and ask ourselves: How prepared are we to walk in this path?

Lord Christ, you do not call us to an easy path. Give us the strength and courage to take up our cross and follow you. Lord God, help us to die to ourselves and serve only you. Amen.

Neal is a News & Eagle columnist and staff writer. He can be reached at jneal@enidnews.com and online at emmauspath.church.

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COLUMN: The Advent path is not an idle, or easy, journey - Enid News & Eagle

Only 'We' can save the world

Citizens have a big decision to make. Are we a nation of "I" or a nation of "We"? Currently the nation has become a libertarian culture of "I," an Ayn Rand greed-driven, me-first society where the top 1% owns 20% of the nation's wealth, and the bottom 20% live in abject poverty. And lacking social mobility, many remain trapped in the world of their birth.

A nation of "We" has a high level of social mobility where government of, by and for the people celebrates freedom, justice and equality for all. By its very nature, democracy is a "We" form of government. "We" forms the basic core of every world religion.

Freedom and wealth for the few is the result of the current Republican "I" agenda. The Democratic Party, the party of "We," is committed to sharing the nation's bounty and caring for the sick.

So what is our choice? Enduring the inequality of an "I" society, or a "We" community that shares and cares, including everyone? "I" leads to hedonism, "We" leads to good citizenship. "I" threatens the planet. Only "We" can save it.

-- Ron Molen, Salt Lake City

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Letter: Only 'We' can save the world | Letters to the Editor - Daily Herald