August

The things I enjoyed this month.

I have bee neglecting you, I know. I have had many ideas and wanted to post, but my own perfectionism has held me back. Perhaps a hangover from my dalliance with academia, whenever I’ve had a thought to write my mind has been like But what is the central thesis? as if everything I have to write needs to be a researched essay. I'm going to try to counter this by just posting when and what I feel, even if that’s just a little paragraph of a passing thought. I also think I’m going to put out on here some of the work I hoard: short stories and poems published in small obscure journals, where barely anyone has ever read them, perhaps some song demos that have never seen the light of day? I might put these behind a small subscription fee, we’ll see. But for now, here’s some of the things I enjoyed in August.

• Pleasure - Feist (especially the tracks Century and Any Party

I discovered this record, seven years late, through a mutual on instagram sharing a recent live video of Feist playing Century on KEXP. She’s playing an acoustic guitar fitted with pick ups with the gain up, creating a distorted guitar tone that made the hair on my arms stand up. I played Century on repeat for the next few days (admittedly often skipping Jarvis Cocker’s bit), and then moved onto the rest of the album. It’s brilliantly produced, in a way that feels quite timeless. It would feel new and exciting if it as released today, despite being seven years old.

• Private Rites - Julia Armfield

  “It’s been raining for a long time now, for so long that the lands have reshaped themselves. Old places have been lost. Arcane rituals and religions have crept back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their estranged father dies. A famous architect revered for making the new world navigable, he had long cut himself off from public life. They find themselves uncertain of how to grieve his passing when everything around them seems to be ending anyway.”

I loved Our Wives Under the Sea, so I had to read Private Rites immediately. I wasn’t disappointed. I had anticipated more of the arcane rituals alluded to in the title and description, instead what was most striking was the all-to-real oppressive presence of the end of the world throughout. The city is mostly underwater, yet everyone must go on with their lives as if the apocalypse is not here. She writes that anxiety masterfully, really grasping that feeling we all have of having to carry on…because what else can you do? She’s incredible at slow building tension, which you’ll know if you’ve read Our Wives Under The Sea. There were a few structural things with it that I didn’t fully get on with, but I’d still absolutely recommend giving it a read.

• Scavengers Rein

  “The series follows the survivors of the damaged interstellar cargo ship Demeter 227 who are stranded on Vesta, an alien planet bustling with flora and fauna but filled with dangers”

This show is so fucking good. It’s like Annihilation (the film) meets Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. The animation is gorgeous, and the creature design is some of the best I’ve ever seen. The planet they’ve created feels like a real, living biosphere. I really enjoyed the gradual realisation that it is the planet that is full of scavengers, not just the humans stranded on it. The planet feels like a character, a complex one; at once beautiful and terrifying. I think it will be a show I was again and again and has made it into my favourite of all time.

• Gardening

After telling my uncle that I wanted to expand my flower beds, he came over and did it all for me. He expanded them and planted them up with plants he'd taken from his own garden after his yearly thinning out. Having a garden is a dream, and I have loved pottering around in it the year and a half I’ve been here. But now having it arranged how I want it, I feel so excited to see how it grows and to tend to it as it does. Planting a garden in August was a risky move, and i’ve been watering it every morning. This ritual has become one I love, and will miss as it gets colder and wetter. Seeing the (very dry and worryingly inhospitable) soil turn from a dry sandy brown to a deep drenched almost black is so satisfying. The smell of the wet earth mixed with the lavender and mint is heady and fresh all at once (I have especially been loving the chocolate mint I have planted in a pot. It has the most delicious smell of any herb). I like when you can feel a garden sigh.

I’ve also just finished listening to the audiobook of Olivia Laing’s The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise.

I love Laing’s writing, how they weave stories together. It’s how I hope to write when I write personal essays. Her research flows into each other and you can feel the meandering of their brain as it fixated and learns. I didn’t love this book as much as I did her previous three non-fiction (Everybody was especially brilliant, but Funny Weather and The Lonely City were both also five stars for me). This was a solid four starts, but I did enjoy listening to it during the transformation of my own garden. I had been struggling with the idea of preserved order versus the cycles of life and death, cultivation verses wilderness. And Laing has been experiencing the same.

I also got an electric hedge trimmer, it is a life saver.

• The Boy And the Heron

I adored Miyazaki’s lasted (and apparently final) film. It was the first of his films that felt like it holds the magic of Howl’s Moving Castle, my favourite. It has a similar maximalist, whirling storytelling that feels more symbolic than linear. It might take you a few watches to understand what is going on but the feeling is there immediately. I do with they’d kept its Japanese name “How Do You Live?” as it’s title here is somewhat misleading, and didn’t entice me to watch it as much as the original would have! I watched it at Baby Cinema where I took my eight month old nephew for his first cinema experience. I was stood up with him in the carrier for most of it, and he slept through the second half.

• Heist Films

I have been quite unwell for much of this month, so I’ve turned to my favourite comfort genre: heist (or heist adjacent).

I watched my favourite Oceans Eleven, and then all of the sequels, none of which match Eleven, but are fun nevertheless. I watched Christopher Nolan’s Prestige which I still think is probably my favourite Nolan film. A feat which is manages despite some questionable accents and performances from usually excellent actors. A new to me Heist/Crime film I watched is Layer Cake. I enjoyed it thoroughly and couldn’t quite believe I hadn’t seen it before!

• Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023)

“Fran is a socially awkward office worker who spends most of her time in isolation and daydreams of her own death, when a new colleague pricks the bubble of her own isolation.

I have not seen or head anything about this film before going in to watch it blind. This is proof of my susceptibility to a good font and title. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It’s a strange, slow, very indie feeling little film. It really made me feel something, both sadness and strange comfort. Daisy Ridley is perfect in it, and it is entirely not a part I would have expected to see her in. I got the same feeling from watching it as I often do when finishing a good short story.

• Season Two of House of The Dragon

I thought ending on two women having a conversation was a bold and brilliant move. Perfect for the tone of the show. People who wanted it to end on war just don’t get it! I direct you to this Ursula K le Guin quote about writing The Left Hand of Darkness “‘trying to imagine a world without war, arrived at a world without men . Without men as such , without men who had always to be, to prove themselves, men.”

• Snuffkin: Melody of Moominvalley

“Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley is a story-rich musical adventure game about Snufkin restoring the valley; helping the quirky and memorable characters and critters calling it home. A series of hideous parks have cropped up in Moominvalley, disrupting the landscape and its harmonious nature. As Snufkin: distract police officers, pull out signs, and knock over misplaced statues as you vigorously try to restore nature and the inhabitants’ home while putting an end to the industrious Park Keeper’s plans...”

Snuffkin really said ACAB. Courtney and I played this adorable game together on Switch, taking it in turns with the controller. It’s so beautifully painted, and the soundtrack by Sigur Ros is gorgeous. There are points in the game where you can just lie down and watch the painted sky. Those little touches are what make games like this really special. It’s short but very sweet and it’s message is so overtly anti-establishment it’s quite amazing that it exists! Once my niece is old enough to use my switch, you know she’s going to be learning to be an anarchist from Snuffkin.

• Chess

I’m still on my Chess.com bullshit. I’m now up to a blitz rating of 630. My dad says he wants me to get to 1000 so he can bring me to his chess club…we’ll see.