Hi, doll.
Today’s Ruby Report focuses on the Netflix documentary American Symphony, but I’m not going to review it—not solely anyway. I’m going to discuss the creative ethic modeled by its subjects Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad, and how that ethic saved my heart.
Originally this post was queued for last week. I got shy because it felt too messy and confessional, especially on the heels of my behemoth Hilma essay. But now that it’s Hanukkah, the Jewish commemoration of light in the darkness, I need to get out of my own way.
It’s time to share the light of these extraordinary creators.
The best documentaries never tell too neat a story. Instead, they explore an ecosystem—a subculture, an era—to advance our understanding of the human condition.
American Symphony’s ecosystem is the art colony of two doubling as the marriage of musician Jon Batiste, 37, and writer Suleika Jaouad, 35.
The film begins as Jon’s eleven 2022 Grammy nominations are announced and Suleika’s leukemia, first diagnosed when she was 22, has recurred. It concludes when she has healed enough to attend the Carnegie Hall debut of Batiste’s titular composition, a gate-crashing fusion of Native American percussion, jazz, opera, spirituals, traffic sounds, orchestral strings, and straight-up funk.
Along the way, these two save themselves and everyone in their orbit by making art out of whatever life puts in their path.
“The power of story is to heal and to sustain. And if we are brave enough to tell our own story, we realize we're not alone, again and again.”― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
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