Wonderbringers Newsletter with Monica Parker
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Hello wonderseekers!
Over the past week or so, street artist Banksy has been spreading his unique kind of artistic magic across London. From a goat balancing atop a building column to pelicans cheekily infiltrating a fish & chip shop, the images have popped up, one a day, and all animals. One of them was promptly stolen, but most have remained for the enjoyment and fascination of delighted Londoners. Usually, Banksy is an artist who likes to tell a story, and so viewers have been questioning why all the subjects have been animals. The final in the series, his ninth, appeared this morning, giving us all the punchline to the joke. It was emblazoned about a fifteen-minute walk from my flat, on the metal shutters of the entrance to the London Zoo — a gorilla ‘lifting’ the shutter to allow his buddies to escape. Mystery solved — the animals all across London are escapees from our beloved urban zoo.
I have always loved Banksy and was excited to see such a newly minted one just around the corner from my place. I like how cleverly he arranges his pieces as if they always belonged in the landscape. And I love how subversive and egalitarian the pieces are. It’s just simple street art for everyone to enjoy (assuming a council doesn't accidentally paint over one of them) and yet they often reveal a deeper meaning, sparking a deep curiosity and engagement with his work. But perhaps most of all, I just love the element of surprise. Like a magic trick, his work just materializes as if out of the ether.
Why do surprises delight us so? One stat that really, well, yes, surprised me was that surprise amplifies our experience of emotions by 400%! So the delight, love, excitement, or even fear that we would normally feel is hypercharged when it’s a surprise. Below, I share the four stages of a surprise and some ways surprises are good for us.
Some wonderbringers for me this week:
The surprise of a child: Five years ago, a young boy blurted out ‘Wow!’ after a concert and captured the world’s hearts.
Can you imagine the surprise of discovering the slinky?: Accidental inventions that changed the world.
Hidden Brain podcast: Why We Love Surprises.
While I was unable to make videos due to my eye surgery, I wrote longer-form newsletters. These received huge amounts of positive feedback and had higher engagement rates. I’m always trying to improve the newsletter to make it the best for you, so I have a single-question survey you can find here. Your feedback would be so helpful! (FYI, If I do remove the video, there will be other ways you can see me! I am in the planning stages of a podcast, so keep that in mind.)
Thank you to everyone who is part of the Wonderbringer community!
With wonder,
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