The Valedictorian Perspective

A semi-regular dispatch on culture, music, design, nature, and the world we’re building.

They weren’t going to make any videos to look back on.

I f you’re reading this, it's not too late.

Awards season has a habit of confusing visibility with value. What gets rewarded is often what’s amplified best—an achievement in its own right—but not always what’s built with the most care, meaning, or longevity.

February comes and goes with trophies, roses, and the familiar pressure to declare what—and who—matters. Valentine’s Day folded into awards season. Some of it is celebration. Some of it is performance. All of it demands a choice.

Within those choices sits a recurring tension: recognition or endurance, display or devotion. Do we reward what announces itself loudly, now—or what proves itself quietly, over time? How often, and for how long, must someone be great? That question shows up everywhere—culture, work, and anything creative that hopes to outlive the moment.

In this issue:

– Arrival, now in presale
– Clipse, Bad Bunny, and a return to Aja
– Best Picture, this year—and twenty-five years ago
– Stoner and the cost of an unexamined life
– Shakshuka, simply done
– Attention, and what’s worth keeping

01 / Valedictorian Updates

T his month marks the most sustained period of building since Valedictorian first took shape. Six new SKUs. A redesigned site. Our first photoshoot. And now, for the first time, presale.

The result is Arrival—a small collection built around a familiar recognition: realizing you’re exactly where you’re meant to be.

Arrival names the space Valedictorian has always held—between city and mountains, movement and stillness. It’s about presence. The collection draws from academic nostalgia and quiet interiors, grounded in a belief we return to often: culture shapes what we value. Content fills space. Culture gives it meaning.

Arrival is available by presale for three weeks. Production begins once the window closes. Each piece is made in limited runs, released with intention, and designed to be worn often and returned to.

I hope you enjoy.

There’s no difference between 8-12 or 1-5. It’s 12-1. 12-1 is the hard part.

02 / New Music and What We’re Playing On Repeat

E very great experience deserves a soundtrack. This month we have Clipse in focus, Bad Bunny and DTMF defining the present, and Aja holding the long view.

New + Notable Album: Clipse- Let the Lord Sort Em Out

Let the Lord Sort Em Out would matter even if it didn’t sound as good as it does. Clipse’s return after fifteen years—reuniting with Pharrell and collaborating with Kendrick Lamar, Stove God Cooks, and Tyler, The Creator—created a cultural moment rooted in authorship rather than reinvention. The album makes a clear claim: Clipse don’t follow culture, they generate it. The year that followed its release has borne that out, a point made unmistakable by their performance in St. Peter’s Square—a setting that underscored the record’s moral seriousness, sense of consequence, and long view.

The music itself is controlled and grounded, revealing the full range of Pusha T and Malice. Each track is a reminder that Clipse can make a hit on their own terms, in any register they choose. But the album’s deeper significance lies in what it unlocked. Renewed collaborations, public engagement, sold-out shows, and an expanding set of creative and product partnerships reinforce what the group has always maintained: the work operates beyond music alone.

Faith, loss, commerce, loyalty, family, and perspective move through the record not as themes, but as lived experience. The music holds because the foundation does.

Bad Bunny & Debí Tirar Más Fotos

Bad Bunny’s Album of the Year win feels both overdue and precisely timed. After years as the most streamed artist in the world, the mainstream has finally caught up to what audiences already knew. The recognition matters not only for the award itself, but for the path it continues to open—proof that artists don’t need to dilute language, culture, or perspective to be heard.

DTMF is rich, warm, and generous, full of melodies that play long after the music stops. The record moves easily between joy and reflection, grounded in gratitude and forward motion, returning again and again to what’s good in life. It’s celebratory without being escapist, confident without hardening. Well deserved, well earned—and like all great art, we’re the better for having it.

Album to Revisit: Steely Dan - Aja

Aja is what happens when ambition is held in service to taste and craftsmanship. Released in 1977, the album is precise yet playful, indulgent yet structured. Every note—from the Purdie Shuffle to the stacked harmonies on “Peg”— is considered, every arrangement intentional. Steely Dan’s obsession with craft—elite session musicians, sonic balance, structural clarity, and narrative detail—isn’t incidental here; it is the project. The album never announces itself as important. Its commitment to excellence earns authority quietly, through execution.

What gives Aja its longevity isn’t technical mastery alone, but how lightly it’s worn. The songs glide rather than push. Complexity hides inside ease. Cynicism is present, but it lives in the diner scenes of life—tempered by humor, elegance, and extraordinary bass lines. Decades later, the record stands as a reminder that when care and patience guide the work, substance becomes style. Aja doesn’t chase relevance. It waits for it—though it never really had to.

Notable Singles

Fred Again… Sammy Virji, Reggie - Talk of the town
Timbaland and Magoo Ft. Sebastian & Rajé Shwari - Indian Flute
10cc - Deadlock Holiday
Karriem Riggins - Summer Madness S.A.
Your Old Droog ft. Heems - Bangladesh
The Growlers - Going Gets Tough

Find these and our pinned seasonal acts on the Valedictorian Playlist.

We bundled up and followed the path through the snow to the spa.

03 / Books We’re Into Right Now

A curated shelf for clearer thinking, deeper feeling, and sharper creativity.

Stoner — John Williams

Stoner is a novel about an unexamined life and the cost of allowing it to unfold without intention. The reader follows William Stoner through the familiar markers of adulthood—education, work, marriage, parenthood, decline—watching as days accumulate and decisions yield to inertia. What emerges is erosion: a life shaped by acquiescence, where meaning is never pursued and care is rarely directed with purpose.

What makes Stoner unsettling—and worth reading—is how ordinary it all feels.

04 / Film: The movies we've watched and returned to

A wards season rewards scale, clarity, and consensus. This year’s Best Picture slate reveals a tension between ambition and containment, between spectacle and emotion.

Best Picture, This Year

One Battle After Another

Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest is confident, rewarding, and unusually fun. The ensemble—Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor, Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, Regina Hall—operates at full capacity, carrying a story that’s engaging without being self-serious. Ambitious but accessible, meaningful without insisting on its own weight—the film understands that seriousness doesn’t require austerity.

Sinners

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is both a technical achievement and a cultural marker. The cast—Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Delroy Lindo, Miles Caton—is uniformly strong, and the film’s scope is undeniable. It’s the rare nomination that feels important beyond the awards conversation, both for what it accomplishes on screen and for how it recalibrates what scale and authorship can look like in the industry. Despite its record-setting 16 nominations, it already feels slightly out of step with what Best Picture tends to reward.

Frankenstein

Nomination secured, confusion remains. As a Best Picture contender, Frankenstein feels misaligned, though its recognition for production and set design is easier to understand. Even skeptics may find themselves lingering on the craft—rooms that feel designed rather than decorated, atmosphere doing more of the work that narrative should be.

Sentimental Value

Sentimental Value is less about repairing a relationship than about what happens once enough time has passed and people have learned to live without each other. The film contrasts two sisters raised in the same home but with very different responses to absence—one grounded in stability and connection, the other publicly successful yet inwardly anxious. When their estranged father reenters their lives after their mother’s death, the film shows that healing is not always restorative. Sometimes it is simply permissive—allowing coexistence without repair, acknowledgment without reconciliation, even cooperation without commitment.

The Secret Agent

The Secret Agent is a political thriller about the banal inefficiency of military dictatorship—corruption without intelligence, violence without purpose, vendetta invented and sustained by entitlement. It’s also about how meaningless all of it can feel once what was momentous has passed. Set in the sunlit streets of 1977 Recife, the film unfolds largely in daylight, allowing uncertainty and tension to build in the open air. At its core, it bears witness to a life lost in the attempt to prove another once existed. What’s most unsettling is how easily that loss recedes into the background. The scale of violence reveals itself only in brief reminders, because life—mundane, persistent, indifferent—continues uninterrupted.

Bugonia

Contained and well-executed, Bugonia succeeds on atmosphere, performance, and momentum. The film raises questions about loneliness, belief, and manipulation—particularly in how it frames young, isolated men—but stops short of interrogating them fully. Still, it remains compelling throughout, anchored by strong characters and assured direction.

F1

Fast cars, global settings, beautiful people—and just enough access to feel immersive. F1 is not trying to be Citizen Kane, and that’s part of its success. The story is serviceable, but the real achievement is tonal: a polished, entertaining film that understands exactly what it is.

Hamnet

Hamnet is controlled, emotionally literate, and beautifully realized. It handles loss without melodrama and devotion without sentimentality. The film’s strength lies in its patience—allowing reason, feeling, and grief to coexist without forcing resolution.

Marty Supreme

Marty Supreme is expertly made and watchable, even if it isn’t the film it initially presents itself as. As discussed in Issue 002, its real interest lies in erosion rather than ascent. It may collect awards, but Best Picture would feel like a misreading of its quieter, more cautionary core.

Train Dreams

Interior lives are having a moment, and Train Dreams really leans into it. The film is less concerned with plot than with solitude, memory, and the slow accumulation of feeling. Loneliness, here, isn’t sensationalized—it’s simply observed.

Gladiator v. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - 25 Years Later

Twenty-five years ago, the Academy faced two rare achievements competing head-to-head across Best Picture and the major craft categories. Gladiator and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were not only exceptional films; they represented two distinct worldviews, arriving at the same moment and asking very different questions about honor, power, and endurance.

Gladiator is about stoicism, individual will, and moral clarity through force. It is a story of personal loss and public reckoning—of a man stripped of family, rank, and future, driven by loyalty and the belief that strength can correct injustice. Redemption, here, is earned through confrontation. Circumstances are brutal, but they can be changed—if one is willing to endure and strike back.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon moves in the opposite direction. It is a love story shaped by restraint, patience, and unspoken devotion. Its characters deny themselves what they desire most out of loyalty to tradition and collective responsibility. The film explores recognition and its absence: what it costs to be overlooked, what is lost when discipline eclipses longing, and how power can exist quietly, without spectacle. Strength, here, is flexible rather than forceful, and resolve is measured by what is withheld.

Both films were recognized for their screenplays, direction, and craft. Both are beautifully made. But only one was awarded Best Picture. In hindsight, the decision feels less like a judgment of quality than a reflection of taste—a preference for action over restraint, for triumph made visible over endurance sustained quietly. Twenty-five years later, these two films still define a tension the Academy—and culture more broadly—has never fully resolved.

It was the feeling of standing up from a good table, from a great meal and a once in a lifetime conversation.

05 / Food & Drink — Taste, Texture, Atmosphere

T hese are the flavors and rituals shaping our mood this season, the ones that uplift us, ground us, and influence how the Valedictorian experience will feel.

Shakshuka

Shakshuka is the kind of dish that earns its reps by being bright, delicious, and simple. It’s warm, robustly flavored, forgiving, and built almost entirely from things you already have. A pan, a few pantry staples, and enough time to let it come together over a simmer.

At its core, shakshuka is tomatoes gently cooked with aromatics and spice, finished with eggs slipped into the sauce and set just until the whites hold. It’s hearty without being heavy—equally good for breakfast or an easy dinner.

What I like most, beyond the taste and ease, is how adaptable it is. Season to fit the mood. Go heavy on cumin, lighter on paprika. Fold in greens if you have them. Add lamb, sausage, tofu—or don’t. Finish with feta, yogurt, herbs, cilantro, or flat-leaf parsley—or don’t. In the morning it’s a bright start; at night it puts the day in perspective. Simple food just has a way of nourishing the body—and everything else.

Blue Moon Milk

Blue moon milk feels less like a trend and more like a ritual. Butterfly pea flower gives it its deep indigo hue and quiet antioxidant lift; cinnamon and nutmeg warm without overwhelming; ashwagandha softens the edges of the day. There’s no caffeine, no lift to chase—just warmth and color shifting toward stillness. Where other things extend the evening, this one closes it.

It works as a marker. A small ceremony between effort and rest. Something that says the work is done.

How to make it

Warm 1 cup milk of your choosing (whole, cashew, almond all work) with 1 tablespoon maple syrup, 1 teaspoon butterfly pea powder, ¼ teaspoon cinnamon, a pinch of freshly ground nutmeg, and ¼ teaspoon ashwagandha (optional). Whisk gently over medium-low heat until dissolved and warm but not quite simmering. Froth briefly for a latte-like finish. Pour into a warm mug and serve as-is

06 / Wellness — Mind, Body, Spirit

W ellness is shifting from aesthetics to regulation: nervous system care, breathwork, and rituals that slow you down and bring you back to yourself.

Attention Hygiene

Attention has always been finite. What’s changed isn’t its value, but our proximity to distraction—and the sophistication used to exploit it.

Leaving the phone in another room, trusting you can be available on your own terms, is less a tactic than a boundary. More confidence than FOMO.

The return isn’t productivity, but coherence. Continuity. Without constant availability for interruption, time regains its meaning. Presence returns. Thoughts are allowed to complete themselves.

What emerges is a quieter authority over one’s own mind: the ability to stay with something long enough to understand it.

Attention doesn’t need to be optimized, it just needs to be protected. Protection begins with choice.

07 / Closing Thoughts

That’s it for this issue. Films watched, books read, work released into the world. Awards will be given, opinions shared, and most of it will move on faster than anyone expects.

What’s worth keeping are the things that linger—the scenes you replay, the ideas that quietly rearrange how you see things, the objects and rituals that make everyday life feel a little more alive. That’s where the good stuff hides.

Saúde,
Haven