Angelique Power’s Obsessions

Music as Time Travel

My daughter is 14 and currently in art camp at the College for Creative Studies, an incredible art school in Detroit. During our commute, we switch on and off who’s the DJ. I’ve come to realize that a lot of my music choices are journeys back in time for me—a study in nostalgia. My father knew many classic jazz musicians personally, and I grew up with jazz filling our home. Now I find myself filling my family home with that same jazz, transporting me back to being a daughter again (my father passed in 2010). Bringing back the smell of lemon Pledge and Sunday morning cleaning, creating a sense of order, comfort, and security. My daughter, however, doesn’t follow artists or music genres as much as she surfs a wide range of songs via Spotify, constantly finding new sounds, new textures, and landscapes. She is my futurist-in-residence while I provide the history and context for her.

Word Games

As a writer, I find I am obsessed with words in all forms, even when I’m decompressing and playing a game on my phone. Truthfully, I’m obsessed with the game Wordscapes! My sister and I are on the same team even though we live in different states. We compete in tournaments on the weekend together—and I pity the fools who compete against us. The New York Times games—Wordle, Connections, and Strands—are also a part of my morning rhythm. It’s both a solitary practice and a social experience as you complete it on your own and then send your results to friends across the country.

Love of the Craft and Love of Love

I read a lot. I am an equal opportunity lover of writers across all platforms. As all writers know, it’s not possible to only read something—you are always hovering above the words, observing the craft of writing as well. I read things from longform articles, to investment briefs, to poetry, to novels. I will often stop mid-sentence to just kvell over the skill being employed, often saying “Damn, I wish I wrote that!’ I love having to look up words, even at this stage of my life. I collect words in my Notes app. I collect great lines. I might even be in a meeting and have someone say something that blows me away and I’ll write their words and attribute their quote to them in my notes.

One of my latest obsessions is reading books that are primarily about love. I’ve always avoided these because they are thought to be a lower form of writing—a book about happiness? How gauche! But what I’ve found is that like writing a haiku, there is a structure to follow that’s difficult to truly master. Yes, you must resolve the story in some way at the end, but before this there must be a true rugged journey. There must be authentic hardship, recognizable pain, innate sadness, difficult self-reflection, raw and real forgiveness, and then, miraculously, people must choose to believe. To leap. To have wild optimism and faith. When done right, it is ultimately a story that explains what makes us human.

Poetry as Oxygen

I often begin my monthly staff meetings with a poem. I do this because I work with incredible people who work on complicated issues and bring their full selves, and we know that life is complicated and nonlinear. Sometimes a poem is the best way to capture a moment we are living through. I also write poetry to my staff at least once a year. A love poem to them of sorts.

We are living in a time where one can find poetry floating in the atmosphere all around. For instance, the beloved Poetry Foundation will send you a poem a day if you’d like. You can become a member and receive a monthly book of poems from around the world. Or you could interrupt doom scrolling on your phone by following poets from all walks of life on TikTok and Instagram. Let your feed feed you instead of deplete you, I say. It rearranges your molecules and you begin to float through your days as well. I promise. ■