Come Alive and Experience Yourself

Wise words from Albert Camus, Howard Thurman and more + what I've read, watched and listened to this week

Jun 24, 2026

Welcome to another edition of The Drip Tray – a weekly selection of inspirational quotes and art recommendations for your Thursday morning.

French philosopher and novelist Albert Camus had a knack for absurd fiction, but he also offered sobering advice in the form of abstract truth every now and then:

“You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.”

American author and philosopher Howard Thurman believed passion and purpose to be the cure for apathy:

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs most is more people who have come alive.”

*Dawn of the Dead* (1978) - Credit: United Film Distribution Company

Take a second to consider how extraordinary it is that you and I happen to be alive at the very same moment in time. American author Upton Sinclair was no stranger to the horrifying wonder of the tiny miracles that make up our existence:

“Now and then it occurs to one to reflect upon what slender threads of accident depend the most important circumstances of his life; to look back and shudder, realizing how close to the edge of nothingness his being has come.”

In a recent post, George Mack of High Agency argues that recognising your heroes as regular people actually makes them more impressive:

“If only you could see the private thoughts inside everyone’s head or their internet search history — you’d never worship at the altar of another human being again.”

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The film industry has experienced a lot of drastic changes lately and the future of cinema is looking bleak if it falls into the wrong hands. But Alex Rollins Berg of Underexposed says that our lack of imagination is stunting its growth in a recent post:

“It’s a painful admission, but the most influential storytellers of the 21st century have been rich technocrats. They sold us their vision of a world that could be measured and optimized, where digital life supersedes the physical, that we will own nothing and like it.”

Perhaps the same could be said for the literary world in the digital age. Jesse Relkin of The Metropolitan Review says that criticism and censorship is actually making audiences more impulsive and fragile in a recent post:

“Given everything we have at our fingertips, naturally we should be producing the most sophisticated readers in human history. Makes sense, then, that in this golden age, we’d be living through a massive wave of book bans, self-canceling authors pressured by mobs who haven’t even read their books, and outrage over fictional characters whose ignorance is the whole point.”

What I’ve Read This Week

I’m halfway through Skeleton Crew, a collection of short stories by Stephen King from 1985, and I particularly enjoyed The Jaunt. It’s set around the year 2300, by which point we have invented teleportation and are using it to travel to Mars for its natural resources after exhausting those on Earth. The story is largely written as a father telling his children about how the inventor of the device came upon the scientific discovery in a barn, experimenting with pet shop mice until he learned that living things could only successfully transfer to the other side if they were asleep. Of course, this rule is broken by the end with grave consequences.

What I’ve Watched This Week

As a huge Steven Spielberg fan, I didn’t want to miss the chance to catch his latest film Disclosure Day (2026) at the cinema, especially one about aliens. It was no Close Encounters or E.T., but I’m glad that I went in relatively blind because I came out pleasantly surprised. Emily Blunt is fantastic as usual and I think having the face of a revolution be a weather reporter is a great commentary on our unwillingness to believe mass media. The script felt weak in parts and it’s at least 20 minutes too long, but the camerawork is interesting (the oners are particularly good) and I almost cried at the end without really understanding why. Such is the power of a master storyteller, I guess.

What I’ve Listened to This Week

Don’t you love when you rediscover an artist who you had forgotten about by happenstance and you fall for them all over again? That’s been my experience with the Texas blues hard rock band Blacktop Mojo, which a good friend introduced me to some years ago (and I probably haven’t listened to since). They remind me of a mix between early Silverchair and Chevelle with a touch of Gary Clark Jr. If that sounds up your alley, I’d recommend starting with the album Burn the Ships. Here’s a taster for the curious ones amongst you.