Hello! It’s been a while. I hope you’ve been well and haven’t found the transition into Autumn too cold and sad. I find the in-between seasons viscerally nostalgic, almost painfully so; a warm scent on a cold wind or the feeling of a metal gate can make me ache. By and large I crave two things: sitting in Campo at night with friends, ass frozen and cheap drink in hand, and sitting in a warm pub gossiping with friends cradling a glass of shitty house red.
Here is a list of things I’ve been enjoying, maybe you’ll enjoy them too.
Patrick Radden Keefe (and my ongoing New Yorker obsession)
(a word to the wise: before you click on any link, think carefully…the bastards only let you read 3 free articles per month)
Last year I caved and purchased a New Yorker subscription. While I shudder to think how much it will cost me to renew it, I have no regrets. What I love about the New Yorker is the guarantee that whatever I chance upon will be well-written and well-researched – and will quite possibly shift my thinking, reading, and listening habits completely.
So I read a lot of articles. And when something really excites me I email it off to my nearest and dearest (now you, too). One of my most delightful discoveries has been the work of Patrick Radden Keefe. I was captivated by his long and incredibly satisfying profile of New York art magnate and gallerist Larry Gagosian, and then discovered a whole cache of treasure. I devoured his most recent deep-dive A Teen’s Fatal Plunge into the London Underworld, then The Surreal Case of a C.I.A Hacker’s Revenge and How a Notorious Gangster was Exposed by His Own Sister. All are completely fascinating and genuinely thrilling to read.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of some of my other favourite articles:
Fiona Apple’s Art of Radical Sensitivity - Emily Nussbaum
They Studied Dishonesty. Was Their Work a Lie? - Gideon Lewis-Kraus
The Villa Where Doctors Experimented on Children - Margaret Talbot
What Happens to a School Shooter’s Sister? - Jennifer Gonnerman
Off the Street: A Journey from Homelessness to a Room of One’s Own in New York City - Jennifer Egan
What a Major Solar Storm Could Do to Our Planet - Kathryn Schulz (including this because of the solar flare which caused the crazy power outage in Newtown the other week!)
Francesca Woodman
Francesca Woodman is remembered for her hauntingly beautiful photographs and throwing herself off a building when she was 22. She was born to artist parents, travelled around Europe and lived in Tuscany for parts of her life, took photographs from a very young age. A lot of her work is from her years at art school - self-portraits, experimental series. She worked a lot with her own body, crumbling architecture, and ghostly long-exposure.
I stumbled across a New Yorker article about a new exhibition of her work at Gagosian (I am a parody of myself I know), and immediately bought a catalogue from a Moderna Museet exhibition in 2015. As a slight tangent - I particularly loved the opening of the essay by Anna-Karin Palm included in the book:
When I was young I moonlighted as an artist’s model. The work was at once easy and demanding…To this day I recall the unexpected, almost breathtaking liberation of being seen but not sexualised. To be scrutinised, standing there being gazed upon by everyone with the anonymity of a thing. Invisibility in visibility. A body on a podium bathed in light. A task. An outstretched leg, toes touching the floor. Muscles and skeleton and an overlay of skin. The peculiar freedom of this. The first time I saw Francesca Woodman’s pictures, I recalled that strange, elating feeling of freedom.
A couple of years ago now I life-modelled as a favour (and as a thrill) for a group of HSC students at my work (the model never showed up…I find life models such interesting creatures, such fickle exhibitionists). The feeling Palm describes is exactly how I felt - how delicious to be object-ified. Funnily enough I didn’t feel nervous, but as I stood there naked in various poses great rivulets of sweat dripped down my body - like nothing I’ve ever experienced.
What’s Tonight to Eternity?
It’s probably no surprise that I love hauntological/hypnogogic music - I enjoy the weightless feeling it gives me, a sense of boundarylessness. I have become obsessed by this album from 2020 - it’s part of an ongoing solo project by Patrick Flegel, who performs as their drag persona Cindy Lee. The album sounds like a late-night radio broadcast from a bygone astral plane.
It also falls into a genre I personally call ‘post-movie music’. This is very specific to my habits, in that I love to listen to dissociation-inducing music after I’ve seen a good film. Watching the world go by catching the bus home on a rainy evening…feeling connected to some arcane force beyond the slap of the everyday…it is one of my favourite sensations.
Death in Venice
When my brother left for a 3-month-long internship in Venice I gave him my copy of Thomas Mann’s 1912 novella Death in Venice and said watch out for the miasma!!!!!!! As it turns out, everyone he is working with has been sick (some even in hospital!), but this isn’t the result of disease-ridden vapours lurking in damp corners but rather plain-old art-world exploitation of free labour (how boring and predictable).
I’ll let my Goodreads review speak for itself…
Alan Warner
Alan Warner must have been a teenage girl in a past life because he really gets it. I read his novels Morvern Callar (1995) and The Sopranos (1998) at the height of summer and was gobsmacked by how good they were. He is one of Scotland’s most beloved writers for a reason! They are such fun books to read – not just because they are written in Scottish (I love that whenever Morvern cries she’s “greeting”). Morvern is one of my favourite characters I’ve ever come across - a young, largely uneducated girl desperate to escape her life and experience the world, but unsure how to do so without self-destruction. The way Warner describes the landscape, conversations in pubs, the rave scene in Spain in the 90s – it is all so incredibly vivid. In The Sopranos the web of personalities and dynamics between the protagonists (a group of teenage girls – the sopranos in their school choir) is so intricately woven. Warner is so attuned to the desires of young women - to get out of their port town, to work at the CD counter at the supermarket, to have a baby, to get railed before they die - all of equal weight and importance.
As a note I also truly adore Lynne Ramsay’s 2002 adaptation of Morvern Callar, it is incredible and the soundtrack (…if you too enjoy post-movie music), is to die for too.
Baked Potatoes
Here’s something nice and warm to end on. I love baked potatoes - such a simple yet perfect food. A key primary school memory was the baked potato special every Friday at the tuckshop…a gargantuan spud with butter, sour cream, cheese, and a sprinkling of chives. Literally freaking YUM. Also love them with tonnato sauce (extremely chic tuna mayo - so easy so delish I use this Ottolenghi recipe).
Alright that’s all. Go to a pub and order a house red, and get them to fill it right to the top. Sending you love!
Dead-ripe indeed xxx