So, you may have noticed that you…didn’t get a newsletter last Friday.
i’m sorry :(
When I started doing these Friday Fives, my goal was really to make sure that every week, I was spending at least some time focusing my own creative energy not on The Seemingly Unending Horrors, but on the various ways that people are showing up — joyfully, furiously, creatively — to make a difference. Last week was the first time since I started these in September that I just couldn’t get my brain around any kind of positive framing, and I’ll be real, I’m still in a bit of the sunken place…which is why this week’s newsletter offers you four pieces to explore instead of your usual five.
But one of the other goals of these newsletters is to put my virtual money where my virtual mouth is in terms of showing up compassionately and kindly — which also means being kind to myself. We do not need to walk on our knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting, etc etc etc. So today’s newsletter is about learning, and doing less, and finding inspiration where we can, and being okay with not being perfect.
I know it’s difficult right now, but I insist that you seek and enjoy beautiful things, even if it seems frivolous or irresponsible in the face of overwhelming horror. I want you to feed yourself artistically, spiritually, and literally, because you can’t Do The Work when you’re starving.
— Trung Le Nguyen (@trungles.com) 2026-02-26T19:25:08.332Z
We’ll see what next week brings, but for now: Let’s dive in.
your friday five four!
this week’s highlights on creating for good
“Pretty in Pink” (Nicole Froio for The Flytrap)
For someone who is generally horrendous at keeping a manicure intact for more than five minutes after leaving a nail salon, I actually have a mild obsession with nail art. It might be because my toddler’s love of anything tiny has translated into me looking at the intricate nail designs with new eyes, but there’s just something so deeply fucking cool about creating genuine art — and wearable art at that! — on such a small canvas, in so many ways.
Including as a form of resistance. Froio’s piece in The Flytrap takes a peek “inside the community of nail artists telling ICE to get fucked,” and, spoilers: it’s also deeply fucking cool.
Lacqueristas across the U.S. were writing FUCK ICE on their nails and posting photos of their message on the sub, making clear what their position was, with some feminine flair. Inspired by each other, the nail art varied from silver polish that imitates melting ice on pink to simple lettering written in a black Sharpie pen. Encouraged by other posters, Misha took a tiny brush and some white nail polish, wrote the letters on her blue mani and posted on the [r/RedditLaqueristas] sub.
"The visibility of the message lets people know that they're not alone," Misha told The Flytrap over a video call. "If you're seeing people just going about their day, posting normal manicures, and you're not seeing anyone say anything about it, you feel a lot more intimidated to speak up about things happening. But if you see other people that have said the same thing you want to say, you're more likely to to be like, 'Yeah, fuck ICE. I don't agree with that, that shit needs to stop.'"
While wishing ICE a merry fuck you is great, Froio really dives into dissident femininity and the use of traditionally feminine expressions (hair, clothing, makeup, nail polish) that defies subservience to patriarchy and expresses women's bodily autonomy, especially when practiced by women and femmes of color. She writes,
[T]he mixture of femininity with politics—which many might dismiss due to their own misogyny—is what's making these posts (and their anti-ICE messaging) stand out. And it's not just regular nail polish, nor just nail art, either. Girlies and enbies are depicting ICE agents slipping on actual ice in Minneapolis in a gel polish rendition, cross-stitching anti-ICE messaging and selling the pattern on Etsy, organizing knitting resistance events, and—as worker-owner of The Flytrap s.e. smith has done—quilting anti-fascist messages. While many deride craftivism as being performative—who can forget the backlash (some rightful when it came to biological essentialist ideas of womanhood, some not when it focused on how useless knitting is) against the pink pussyhats of the 2017 Women's March?—[Hannah] McCann points out this dismissal is common when an activity is understood as "feminine" by society.
"Femininity is often culturally associated with the frivolous, unserious, and vain, while the realm of 'politics' is coded as a serious pursuit," McCann said. "So, combining traditional feminine aesthetics (such as painted nails) with political engagement might feel like a contradiction to some. However it is precisely because this combination is 'surprising' that this phenomenon is getting attention right now. If anti-ICE nails are going viral, it is because it is an unexpected site for political activism."
How does self-expression play a role in your creativity — and the ways you show up in resistance? What are some of the most unexpected ways you’ve seen others showing up, taking action, and (literally or figuratively) wearing their values on their sleeves? How do you see self-expression as a way to subvert expectations, keep people surprised, and spark creativity?
Prompt: Take a look through some of the linked nail art in the article above. Choose one post and spend three minutes jotting down all the thoughts, feelings, or questions it brings up for you. Create about it.
“The Minneapolis brass band bringing joy amid grief: ‘When people see us playing, it gives them hope’” (Maanvi Singh for The Guardian)
A few weeks ago, I was at a community event that ended with a rousing singalong of “Crowded Table” by the Highwomen. It was my first time doing an event with that particular group, but afterwards, one of the facilitators told me that it had become their go-to closing song for community gatherings. While most of the people who had come before knew the song well, she told me, they always made sure to have lyric sheets on hand so that everyone could pick up the words and sing along.
That experience was top of mind for me as I read Singh’s piece for The Guardian about the band that’s become a constant presence around Minneapolis — and continues to show up at vigils and protests, despite the freezing weather and constant ICE presence, to offer a different way for members of the community to process, grieve, and connect.
A week after a federal officer shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, a troupe of brass players, percussionists and singers gathered at the site of the killing, to play a blaring, defiant rendition of the O’Jays’ Love Train.
Trumpeters, trombonists and sousaphonists had lined up along the ice-slicked sidewalk or were balancing on the snowbanks, blowing up clouds of condensation.
“People all over the world, join hands!” Alsa Bruno, one of the band’s lead vocalists, sang out. “Start a love train, love train.”
The group of mourners and neighbors who had gathered around the memorial obliged, forming a train. Some sheepishly giggled as they joined the chain, shuffling and swaying, singing, jumping.
Music has been part of protest movements for as long as protest movements have existed. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a march, rally, protest, or community action that didn’t have some type of music, from performance to chanting to just singing along to whatever playlist is on in the background of an event. There’s something about music that brings people together in a way that nothing else can (in fact, Martin Luther King, Jr. is quoted as saying “freedom songs serve to give unity to a movement”), which is why groups like Brass Solidarity are so important.
“Making music in a group creates a tangible sense of community and collective purpose,” David Stowe, who has studied music, religion, and protest movements for more than twenty-five years, wrote for The Conversationalist. “Singing is a physical activity; it comes out of our core and helps foster solidarity with fellow singers…[Freedom songs] create bonds of solidarity not just among those singing them in Minneapolis, but with protesters and activists of generations past.”
“In a moment when you would want to fight, to scream and shout and kick,” said Jordan Powell-Karis, a member of Brass Solidarity, “we have this creative expression, a gesture of love and compassion and connection.”
What role does music play in your creative work? What forms of music do you connect to, and does that change based on what you’re doing or what kind of inspiration you need? Do you use music as a way to connect to others, and if so, how?
Prompt: Explore Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Best Protest Songs of All Time. How many of do you recognize? Have you ever sung them in community before? What did that feel like? Create about it.
“Neuroscience offers activists lessons of hope” (Stephanie Van Hook and Michael Nagler, interviewing Dr. Marco Iacoboni for Nonviolence Radio)
So, a fun thing you might not know about me: One of the workshops I teach semi-regularly is on the science of storytelling — specifically, on the ways our brains are wired to react to and engage with stories, and how writers and other storytellers can use those insights to hook their readers and keep them connected.
A big part of that comes down to neural mirroring. Generally, this is what happens when a neuron fires both when a person or animal acts and when they observe the same action performed by another — in other words, it triggers the same response when it’s doing the behavior as when it observes it. For example, the same neural process that makes you flinch when you stub your own toe also makes you grimace when you watch your friend knock theirs onto the corner of a coffee table. Context matters, obviously, but that’s the gist of it.
Over the past few decades, there has been a lot of research and conversation about the role that mirror neurons (or what we now consider neural mirroring, because it’s more about the process than the neurons themselves) play in the development of empathy. Iacoboni talks about the “dark side” of empathy in this piece (in a way that’s very different from the way Elon Musk talks about it, fuck you very much, Elon) but what really sparked me was the idea that empathy isn’t just something you have or experience, but something that can be strengthened and practiced just like any other learned skill:
Stephanie [Van Hook]: What kinds of practices can people do that can help increase positive empathy instead of the dark side of empathy. What would you recommend that somebody who wants to make a social change be doing from a brain scientist perspective?
Dr Iacoboni: Well, one thing to do is acts of kindness. Be kind to other people. Even a very simple thing like, you know, someone makes a coffee for you, just ordered an espresso at a bar. You just be thankful and you look the person in the eye. You train yourself to really connect with others for simple gestures because those are the things that unite all of us. We all have to eat and breathe and sleep and drink. So those simple things are the way we can actually reconnect with other human beings. Without talking about the high ideas, let’s talk about the simple life of human beings, our human condition.
Michael [Nagler]: What happens when we do those even physical acts like making eye contact and then follow it up with using our imaginations is that we see the humanity of the other. And that humanity of the other is identical with our own humanity, and that defuses hostility and alienation.
Dr Iacoboni: Right, exactly, exactly. So that can happen even for people that, you know, now at the moment, I would think would not have any sort of empathy, but I’m pretty sure if I actually meet that person and talk to that person, there is humanity there too. And we need to actually just steer the mind away from violence and toward empathy and compassion.
If I keep talking about this we’ll be here all day, so I’ll leave you here, but I highly recommend listening to the full interview. It’s so good. Also, brains are awesome.
What does empathy mean to you? Do you think of empathy as a skill? A trait? A practice? A combination? Something totally different? How does empathy play a role in your creative practice, your personal life, and the way you plug in to your community?
Prompt: In “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman wrote, “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” What does that bring up for you? Create about it.
“Have You Ever Tried Going on a Blind Date with a Book?” (Jess Decourcy Hinds for Literary Hub)
So, I’ll be real: It took me a long time to get on board with the “Blind Date with a Book” trend. This is partially because I’m a total control freak, partially because I’m really picky about books, and partially because I’m just kind of a suspicious person who doesn’t always trust other people’s recommendations (if you have ever recommended a book to me and I was bitchy about it, I’m sorry, I promise I’m working on it).
But one of the fun (“fun”) things about having small children is that you sort of have to get a lot more comfortable with not being able to control everything or know everything or decide everything — I mean, or don’t do that, but then you’ll go nuts, so I don’t recommend it — and that, over time, translated to me being a lot more comfortable picking up a book without knowing exactly what was in it. Slowly, that turned into a genuine love for these little blind dates. Nowadays, I try to pick up two or three a year, but I’ve also started gifting them to others, and it’s amazing the way having to figure out how to summarize a book like this makes you think about it differently.
“Distilling the essence of a 300-page book into a few pithy phrases is an invigorating activity for creative writing students of all ages,” Decourcy Hinds writes, one entry in the list of thirteen tidbits about blind dates with books she put together for this article. “Writing clues invites out-of-the-box thinking, like imagining how a book’s movie trailer would look.”
A few other highlights:
The Blind Date Book aesthetic conjures up the practice of concealing books to help patrons avoid prosecution for reading illegal materials. Ed Simon’s Lit Hub piece on “free speech, book bans and court-mandated censorship then and now” pays tribute to Samuel Roth, “the sort of bookseller whose wares came wrapped in brown paper.” Roth sold pornography. Blind Date Books aren’t usually wrapped in gift paper, but brown paper as if to suggest literary forbidden fruit. We have the right to read what we choose, but what we read is nobody’s business.
[Holly] Nickodem, one of the owners of Kew & Willow, believes that Blind Date Books help us return to our “core values” about what makes a good story or what we are most curious about. The fancy grocery wrapping sends the message that what is being presented is as simple as a chicken breast or slab of fish. We’re seeking literary nourishment like children, returning to a pure, open state of reading.
Of all of my most beloved contemporary authors, I was most curious to get R.O. Kwon’s opinion on Blind Date with a Book because Kwon writes about desire. According to Kwon, most recently the author of Exhibit (Riverhead, 2025), the novel “…explores what you’d risk to pursue your core desires.” The description of her novel echoes some of the essence of Blind Date Books: the experience touches on your “core,” the same word Nikodem used, and there is an element of risk in opening an unknown package.
Why has Blind Date With a Book taken off worldwide? Fittingly, Kwon answered my question with another question. “Maybe,” Kwon wrote in an email, “it’s just that a lot of people love mystery, and wanting to know what happens next is a powerful thing?”
How comfortable are you with relinquishing control? What does it feel like to go into something without knowing all the variables, all the information, all the potential outcomes? How does that comfort (or discomfort!) relate to the way you create? The way you experience others’ creative works? The way you show up?
Prompt: Pick up the three books closest to you. and write down how you would describe them as blind date books. What came up for you? Create about it.
See you next week!
💜Shelly
