Doing
I’ve been in constant motion for the last two months. I’ve bounced from Gold Coast beaches with my siblings, to art galleries in Sydney, to two Victorian festivals in three days with old friends. It’s been really fun, and it’s made me reflect on why I’ve deprioritised having fun for most of the last five (!) years.
Online
As many as 50% of people with anorexia are also autistic. Fiona Wright writes on her experience of being “unseen, even to myself.”
“Calling yourself an optimist seemed like admitting that you just didn’t want to think very hard about the future and its challenges. But at the same time, what was the alternative? The usual defence of pessimism is that a pessimist is never disappointed, and can only ever be pleasantly surprised. That seemed a needlessly defensive, almost cowardly stance. And professed “realism” seemed to me to be fence-sitting, a cynical excuse to avoid engaging with the possibility that the world could be better than it is today.”
Sumit Paul-Choudhury
“We are here to sell 48 books to lorazepam zonked wine mums at a writer’s festival hosted by ABC RN’s least fireable Whitlam-era sex-pest, and we should be grateful for the privilege.”
I don’t really know what to think about Patrick Marlborough’s diatribe about the Australian publishing industry, but damn can he turn a phrase.
“I don’t think the concept of mental health is always helpful,” she says. “I believe people suffer, are in despair, feel hopeless and suicidal, and find it incredibly hard to cope on a day-to-day level. But I don’t call it a mental health problem because as soon as you do that, you’re separating the context from the person’s response.”
I didn’t know where to put this, but this video my brother sent me made me miss the internet/YouTube of the mid-00s, where weird animations were king.
“But undergirding the patriarchy is something that I didn’t understand as a teenager, riding next to my dad on our weekly sojourns to the grocery store, talking about Buddhism and boys and basketball. And that something is dependency. Our society’s discomfort with the power of women, is in part, a discomfort with dependence, and the vulnerability of it. Women still do the vast majority of the caregiving for dependent bodies—the drooling babies and the differently abled and the aging parents. Therefore, women see us at our most vulnerable. We are dependent on them for our survival. And that scares the shit out of insecure men, doing anything they can to deny their own inevitable limitations, softness, decay.”
Books/offline
Lech Blaine - Australian Gospel (Creative non-fiction). This is my book of the year (so far). Blaine grew up in rural Queensland, and three of his siblings are foster children from the same family. The birth parents were religious fanatics with mental health issues who neglected their children, and they spent years stalking the Blaine family. Lech Blaine has done a brilliant job of telling this story without villainizing his siblings’ birth parents, or sanctifying his own.
Kate Crawford - Atlas of AI (Non-fiction). A great read about the wide-ranging physical world impacts of AI, from racial bias to human trafficking. It’s a must-read for anyone who is interested in it, or uses it regularly.
Amanda Lohrey - The Labryrinth (Fiction). A woman moves to a small coastal town near the prison her son is in. She becomes obsessed with building a labyrinth in her yard. It’s a bit hard to describe (moody? brooding? not much happens?) but I did enjoy it and it did win the 2021 Miles Franklin, so…
Antonia Murphy - Madam (Memoir). An American woman finds herself in a bind when her marriage breaks down and decides to start an ethical brothel in the small NZ town she lives in. Obviously ethics are in the eye of the beholder and Murphy has a few blind spots, but flawless people generally don’t have good stories to tell. I recommend listening to the audiobook, which is read by the author.
Ta-Nehesi Coates - The Message (Non-fiction/essays). Coates travels to three conflict sites and asks himself some deep and hard questions.
I raced through the 33 1/3 books on Bjork’s Homogenic and J Dilla’s Donuts — great little books about two albums that were so ahead of their time.
Listening
My February playlist (I forgot to share it last month)
Channel Tres DJ sets (house) and Surprise Chef1 live sets (instrumental soul/funk) to get me through long and boring work days.
As a recovered Red Hot Chili Peppers fanatic, I never considered drummer Chad Smith as my favourite Chili Pepper2. However, the YouTube algorithm has Chad-pilled me and now I think he’s probably the only member I wouldn’t hate being trapped in an elevator with3. Here are some of my favorite videos: Chad giving 110% drumming in a very average Brazilian RHCP cover band, Chad watching a drumming busker play “Otherside” , Chad hamming it up playing Dua Lipa’s “Break My Heart”.
I cried watching Hayley Williams from Paramore (and Ken Andrews from Failure) cover Bjork’s “All Is Full Of Love” at the LA fires benefit. Their duet of Failure’s “Daylight” was also great.
Another Missive, another “no, this is the best Tiny Desk I’ve ever seen”. This one came courtesy of my brother-in-law, Mitch.
Did you ever wish Lana Del Rey was more Dolly Parton than Nancy Sinatra? Or wish Kacey Musgraves was a bit more Stevie Nicks4? Goldie Boutilier has got you.
I was not surprised to discover Surprise Chef is from Coburg. They are the most Coburg-lookin’ dudes I’ve ever seen (non-derogatory).
As a kid it was Flea. As an adult, it’s John Frusciante (although Dave Navarro and Josh Klinghoffer did great work too).
No woman wants to be trapped in an elevator with Anthony Kiedis.
The chorus has to be an interpolation of Fleetwood Mac’s Silver Springs, right? Maybe I’m just wanting every song to be Silver Springs.
I was at Golden plains too. I know I'm making an assumption but I bet I'm right looking at your march playlist.