things ive been enjoying lately

People keep asking me how I am feeling about the book coming out (which happens to be in six days oh Jesus) and I say I’m fine, but then I mustn’t be because this is the first month all year that I haven’t read a book. I think my brain is saturated and anything new will push me over the edge. And it’s a funny state to be in because it’s how I felt when we were actively writing the book — this prolonged state of feeling like my hands were full so don’t get me to carry anything else. I’m back there now, like Buckaroo, or the taps turned off just as the bath is about to overflow. A balloon about to be taken past its obvious capacity. The balloon being my massive racing head. There is still culture in my day but it’s more about bringing me down, or resetting me somehow. So here are a few things I’ve been enjoying lately in normal life, not critic life:

1. Cotton yarn

I’ve been knitting for just over a year and that’s it! I’ve had my practice now. I am ready for grown-up knitting!!! I recently donated all my acrylic yarn to a charity shop nearby. I am currently knitting a neckerchief for my boyfriend using this free pattern which he is getting in Rowan’s Summerlite DK in shade 00453. In place of taking a deep breath, I knit a row. I feel better. It’s always there to punctuate the day. Little commas urging me forward. A light push on the lower back. And cotton just feels nicer than acrylic. I prefer the look — the way it falls more like fabric, drapes with a bit less of that stiff plasticky edge. I hate it when expensive things are better!!!!! Plus, Prestel just sent me Laerke Bagger’s new book so I’m gonna knit everything in it in beautiful natural fibres and just feel really good about myself. Or better than I’m feeling now; I usually knit while I’m listening to audiobooks but I’m knitting in silence at the moment because my brain is that loud lmao.

2. A Four Chambered Heart

Speaking of more expensive things being better — how about some porn. Four Chambers is a project by porn performer, director, filmmaker, and art school grad Vex Ashley. You know the kind of artist moving image that lingers in the macro, and feels intimate for bringing you so microscopically close to the subject? The kind of artist moving image that is inherently somatic for dealing in haptics – in liquid, sound, touch, rhythm, weight, light, taste, senses. I think it is genius for an artist to give that same filmic treatment to porn. Four Chambers dresses scenes with real atmosphere through this shifting artistic design where, more often than not, porn is just a body undressed and left to its own devices. The project is art and it’s porn, and it’s both, and it can just be porn if it’s not helpful to think of it as art as well. But I like it. I like that it is independent, small scale, collaborative because the opposite of those three things — corporate, institutionalised, unilateral — can make for some pretty unsexy pornography. I’m not going to tell you which Four Chambers films I like though. Shhh that’s a secret!!!

3. Linkin Park Revival

I kind of can’t believe it. I am so happy. In case you missed it, after 7 years since Chester Bennington’s death, Linkin Park are back. They have a new singer in Emily Armstrong, two new songs out, an album on the way. If my health was maybe 40% better I would have got a ticket to the London show they just did but I am not too sad about that because they are churning out YouTube videos in real time. The making of the songs, their experience going on this current tour. I liked the Zane Lowe interview a lot, and how Mike said he knew Emily was the right person to join them when she was singing next to him on the couch and it sounded like she had an effect over her voice — but she couldn’t have because she was just sat next to him. For the same reason I like actors best when they have weird faces, I love a unique voice in a singer. I am gonna just sidestep the fact she is a scientologist (or not really: I’m convinced people who join scientology are vulnerable people who are just getting scammed, and I hope they are all saved from its cult). But yeah. Grateful for YouTube. Grateful for new music. Emotional for all the obvious reasons, too.

4. WHOLESOME EVIL FANTASY

Indigo de Souza just released a three-song EP and the beat on the last song is what it sounds like inside my brain. Not so much with this mini album, and more her other stuff, but I generally feel like Indigo de Souza’s singing is what I want my writing to sound like? I dunno how else to put it. Some really dark shit in there, a lot of ‘well things are pretty fucked up right now in our minds and in our bodies but I guess we gotta get on with it somehow oh well !’ I don’t often feel the need to sing along to the stuff I listen to, but when I am alone in the house and I’m struggling with chores and I feel my heart rate rising to that level where I feel really nauseous, I sing very badly to her albums and it feels like a beautiful way to moan about the state of my existence without letting those moans become too serious.

5. Bonus list I cba writing about:

-> I’ve been falling asleep watching Aspen play Overwatch and Dress to Impress on Twitch

-> I just rewatched The Lord of the Rings and I don’t think it is long enough

-> I’ve made a new Downpour just to track the things I like and you can click through those things here

-> bacon jam

bye bye