Sunday Scoop #37

Halloween Edition

Oct 19, 2025

Sunday Scoop is where I share 3 weekly inspiration including art, books, culture, history, and people that are shaping my creative journey 💚

👋 Hi friends! Halloween decorations are popping up all over my neighborhood. I don’t usually go big for Halloween, but I love seeing how creative people get!

1️⃣ How viewing art can heal us—from a Met guard’s 10-year journey to my moment with Monet’s water lilies
2️⃣ My neighborhood’s creative Halloween decorations
3️⃣ Nightfall at GreenWood Cemetery: where a centuries-old cemetery becomes a stage for live music and performance art

✨ Quote that stuck : Art as Healing

Do you like going to art museums? And when you do, how do you actually interact with the art? What do you feel when you’re seeing the arts?

I’ve been digging into how art and healing can connect. Making art is one thing, but what about just seeing it? How does that heal us?

I listened to an interview with Patrick Bringley, who wrote All the Beauty in the World. He spent ten years working as a security guard at the Met and it became a healing experience from losing his brother.

“Art museum is a wonderful place to contemplate those things for yourself to think that what is it that I believe, to sort of look at works of art say does this sharpen my thinking?” — Patrick Bringley

His story reminded me of a few pieces I’ve felt really connected to without knowing much about their context or history. The most recent was at the Orangerie Museum in Paris. There’s this room dedicated to Monet’s water lilies across curved walls with natural light coming in.

I was there during my brief working for startup phase after deciding to change careers. It wasn’t a move I genuinely wanted, but I took the opportunity because I felt like I had to prove to others that I was progressing with career change. The work and environment weren’t working for me, so I was living with constant anxiety every day. So even when I was in Paris, I was working all day out of panic to perform and in the afternoon I decided to just shut my laptop and go see Monet’s art.

With all these people walking through the room, I found a seat and stared at the water lilies series. During that time, so much emotion came through. Anger, sadness, frustration. But under it all, there was calm. I finally asked myself the question I’d been avoiding: is this really the path I want? What values did I want to pursue when I left corporate life?

Claude Monet - Matin — © Musée de l’Orangerie

“It makes us feel less alone. This interplay between the world out there what we deal with and our internal world what we can apprehend about it what we can make of it and maybe even what we can be inspired to push through our hands like that master did and make something of it.”
— Patrick Bringley

A Slack notification popped up soon after, pointing out something I’ve done wrong. That was it. That’s when I decided to put an end to this path. I drafted my resignation message and sent it a few weeks later. Being surrounded by those beautiful water lilies gave me comfort and warmth to breathe again and see what was actually happening inside me.

👀 What Caught My Eyes: How my Neighborhood is prepping for Halloween

This week I was scattered across different projects, so the main thing that caught my eye was all the Halloween decorations! Like I mentioned at the beginning, I’ve been amazed by how creative my neighbors get with their spooky Halloween setups. I’m just going to let the pictures do the talking!

Hope this brings a little inspiration your way especially if you’re planning to decorate this weekend! 🕸️💀🎃

📍 Field Trip: Greenwood Cemetary x Nightfall

Nightfall became our annual tradition around Halloween for about 5 years now. It’s held at the centuries-old beautiful Green-Wood Cemetery. The event transforms the cemetery into an immersive art experience, with live music, dance, and circus performances scattered along the moonlit paths. It’s organized by a mix of NYC art and cultural collectives, including Death of Classical (they also curated this fun event with Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra).

We didn’t stay for the whole event this year because we were pretty wiped from the week, but it’s become this tradition I genuinely look forward to. There’s something really special about hearing live jazz and classical music while walking through this old cemetery at night. It sounds weird when I describe it, but it’s actually really beautiful and peaceful.

I’m sharing clips instead of trying to capture it in words because some things are just better felt than described!

✨ Until Next Sunday…

Have you ever had an experience where art helped you heal or see something clearly about your own life?

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