Recently I’ve been stumbling on interesting sources of inspiration, things I wouldn’t normally find to be “my cup of tea”. Today, there’s a heat wave here in L.A. and I’m under a shade tree eating frozen cherry mouse, big chunks of chewy fruit, mixed in with cashew yogurt, and if you are serving a probiotic why not a prebiotic like flax meal? Then I sprinkle on some glucose stabilizing cinnamon powder, some organic chocolate, soaked chia seeds with a touch of coconut sugar. This concoction is a balancing mix made sweet and tangy for the weather just like my viewing subject turned out to be.

Somehow through the jungle of Bergman darkness, Ken Burns raw docos (what my Australian friend calls documentaries), and syrupy historical romances I find a four hour music biopic on Tom Petty. I was never a fan of the band but his music in the 80s and 90s is iconic so I found myself queueing up for the very long ride, Runnin’ Down a Dream saga.

In the past, I’ve enjoyed Scorcese’s piece on The Band, The Last Waltz and Albert Maysles Stone’s story, Gimme Shelter, but knowing nothing about Petty and not being a fan of the Heartbreakers may have opened me up for discovery in a way that having a preconceived idea about a subject disallows. I’m alerting you to this new favorite because it left me filled with ideas about creativity and its integration into culture. I needed that right now; a shot of adrenaline is the perfect antidote to clear a mass of conflicting directives. We’ll see what I do with it.