Hello all :) Welcome back to the litterblog. Double month this time. October was slow and easy... so slow and so easy that I found it was quite difficult to draft an interesting update so I put it off for a while and now here we are.
Some music updates before we get into the rest: Double Dragon by Main Era is out now !! What a beast of a song. These guys are just the best and have such a clear artistic vision/voice. I feel super lucky they trusted me with this mix. Full album out in January + more coming soon from a few other projects I've been working on that are getting together release dates >:) hell to the freak yeah
Here's everything else I've been up to lately! I left a comment box at the bottom this time.. feel free to drop comments and or questions and or media recs of any kind !!!
I traveled quite a bit these months, which you can read about here!
It's that time of year when I start getting nosebleeds for no reason. The first semester of my Master's is nearly over! Time literally flew. Honestly I can't wait to go home for the holidays. But, I do really love it here and am trying to take in my surroundings as much as possible, since I know they're so fleeting. Every day is a YOLO moment.
Some of my favorite happenings: queer céilí night at Dali, WOW. So much fun. I love social dance. The band was extremely rowdy. It made me think we should start adding moshing to contra but I think it would endanger some people. It just feels so right... the constant motion in dancing and linking and spinning is just like jumping and hitting and throwing yourself... food for thought!
There was Cork International Film Festival which I did not go to much of (more on that later). There was Cork Zine Fest, which I did go to, and picked up some stuff by My Murphy and Valeria Agulló. Another HUGE highlight of my past two months was Sonic Vigil. It was this huge experimental music thing (festival? performance?) held at Fota House (which if you're from NC has the vibes of the Reynolda house. Beautiful old historic home and gardens). All the players set up a spot inside the house or travelled through different rooms playing for intervals inside the 4 hour runtime, so something was always going on and the combinations of sounds and players were continuously shifting. I fell in love with one of the back rooms and stayed there for most of the day.
I have been so pleasantly surprised by how vibrant the experimental music community here is. I'm especially not used to seeing such a diverse age range in "contemporary"/experimental/DIY or what have you spaces. It is so refreshing to see people anywhere from teenagers to in their 80s (or even older idek!) making music together and collaborating on community events !!! Feels very anti the "you must have made a masterwork by 21" "art is only for the sexy and very young" mentality that is more and more pervasive every day.
Mostly, life in Cork is much of the same. Every day I have at least five cups of Barry's decaf tea (I wish I was joking). When they are perfectly warm I press the mug to my cheek and feel the heat bloom.
Finished One Hundred Years of Solitude. Wow. What a work of art !!!! Really magical. Lots to consider.... one of my favorite riffs on cycles/prophecy/inevitability ever. It was also so high drama. Mentioned the pacing last time but truly did appreciate so much how fast things moved; that also felt in service of the general theme of time moving on with or without you.
The Ginny Suite - Stacy Skolnik
Sweet Jack let me borrow this one on the way out of Glasgow :)
Dude. So awesome. I was so invested in this world. Fever-dreamy, disorienting, really funny.
Further research on Skolnik took me to mrsblueeyes123 (content warning very nsfw). The use of social media as a medium/the poetry-ification of online language is such a dangerous game; it's too easy to come off self-important and quite frankly bad. HOWEVER... as done here I love. What better way to dig into the intricacies of sex online. Voyeuristic and never 100% forward about how "real" it is. It feels wrong to look at. All the things I love most about mrsblueeyes123 carry to The Ginny Suite as well. Perfectly balanced between irony and sincerity. Walked away feeling like Stacy Skolnik and I are judgemental in the exact same ways.
For further sex as performance art/sex-and-dating-related performance art I have been really enjoying Harriet Richardson's writing. These two writers are very distinctly different in tone, don't get me wrong. But I do think both deal with themes I have been finding especially poignant lately!
For further reading on the intersection of womens' and robots' rights, I am looking forward to getting into A Cyborg Manifesto. In short my opinions on The Ginny Suite remain nebulous at this moment but seem to be a jumping off point for one billion other things I have been thinking about lately.
Howl and Other Poems - Allen Ginsberg
Had to see what all the fuss was about. I kept a list of words to look up later as I was reading this: tenement, gyzym, Passaic, etc. I was determined to try to analyze it myself but folded rather quickly and went online. Howl, the poem, and its footnote were good-- I especially liked Howl pt. III because of its tenderness. Peeling back the perhaps purposefully obtuse verse and overwhelming colloquialism shell to get to the hard boiled egg inside was fun and rewarding. I don't know where I got it in my head that poetry was easy to absorb. I was trying to read a Mary Oliver collection over the summer like you would read a regular book and, for being comparably much less dense, it still left me so tired. I think I just miss talking about books in school/socratic seminar. I had to give Ginsberg back to the library before I got to the rest but am going to give some more beat stuff a try.
Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor
Picked this up because of Wednesday I'll admit it. All my favorite imagery from this book gets quoted in Fate Is... one of the best songs ever. I had totally forgotten about that and then got to the part where Hazel puts rocks in his shoes. Mentioned last month a common theme that has been unveiling itself to me lately, of the power of denial, and absence in general. How when things are gone they create a hole in their shape. Hazel is the king of this, nobody is doing it like him.
This really should not have come as a surprise to me but southern gothic is very racist. Considering the time it does make a lot of sense-- post civil war disillusionment-- but it's been hard starting to get into the weeds with this stuff and being unable to fully love it because of that. Honestly this has been the case with most of the classic stuff I've been reading, less with big moments but full of casual hateful remarks that leave a bad taste. Trying to take in/critique books with their cultural context in mind and not write them off fully but also seek out more varied and perhaps less publicized points of view in classic writing as much as possible, recs welcome!
Parable of the Sower - Octavia E. Butler
I enjoyed this, it does feel like an abruptly relevant doomsday narrative as many people say. I loved the Earthseed prose. Howeverrr Lauren as a narrator was not super compelling to me especially in the later chapters. There's so much ambivalence in her voice. Her hyperempathy was a really interesting concept but I keep feeling like it had to mean or represent something more that I wasn't getting, at face value it was a bit unremarkable to me and I kept forgetting about it. Am gonna give the rest of Earthseed a try though!
Pee On Water - Rachel B. Glaser
Cora let me borrow this! How amazing. There were so many different voices here and all of them felt natural. I am uncovering a deep love for surrealism in all forms. My favorite stories from this collection were The Jon Lennin Xperience, The Kid, and The Monkey Handler-- so I guess the more tragic ones. Although a lot of these stories are pretty desolate. The short and pointy narration reminded me of Stacy Skolnik a bit coming out of The Ginny Suite. I think Glaser has a new book soon ? For the first time since 2017?? So this feels like a great time to get into her!
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Really really lived up to the hype. Genuinely chilling. I don't really know what else to say about it except that I am so happy a vessel exists that allowed Sheryl Lee to be Laura while alive because WOW she's just incredible. And the angel is one of my favorite visual moments maybe in all of Twin Peaks or in anything ever.
The Bear
This show is CORNY!!!!!! So many moments that left me cringing... I do think the Christmas episode is perfect but who doesn't. As Audrey aptly said to me while I was complaining about the corn: "Any show that beloved by that many people kind of has to be Like That." I did end up getting really into it though. What can I say I love the drama. Sweet Bella was in town most of October/November and we watched it together with Cora over many delicious meals that Carmy would have probably spit in
Good Boy
Ordinarily this film would not deserve a blurb. I would quietly delete all evidence it ever graced my eyes. HOWEVER... this is the first horror movie I have ever watched in theaters, the night before Halloween no less. Covered my eyes the entire time. Haven't been so on edge in a movie theater since watching that fucked up Jim Carrey version of A Christmas Carol in 3D. And before that watching Men in Black 3 where the spider comes out of that guy's hand. So yeah this was a big deal even though it was (literally and figuratively) hard to watch.
The Boys From County Hell
Watched with Cora and Bella immediately after Good Boy. Two boy movies in one night. This one was much better thankfully
Excalibur
Another piece of newly discovered surreal (perhaps?) media... this film is bonkers. It was the one thing I really wanted to see during CIFF. I missed the showing so I watched it in my bed, and I regret this decision because it is probably STUNNING in a theater! What an incredibly beautiful cast. I, too, would give up everything for Guinevere. There were at least three times they gave a man a beard to show he aged and I thought it was a new character lol. Also the costuming??? Merlin's weird little hat????? The fabric and landscapes so whimsical and beautifully soft on screen... side note I wish they would bring back practical FX for everything ever. Imagine how much worse this movie would be if it was CGI. Got lost a bit in the grail arc. Nevertheless. A perfect world sacrificed time and time again for sex and power yes please!
Song Sung Blue
The only thing I ACTUALLY ended up seeing for CIFF. Went to the premiere with Elena and Ana since they were volunteering all weekend and got extra tickets :-) Didn't really do it for me. Hugh Jackman is one of those actors that is so recognizable he's just himself every time he's on screen. That works with Cher. Unfortunately it did not work here. Kate Hudson is always great. I'm just not that passionate about Neil Diamond!
Heretic
It is so wonderful how Hugh Grant's mannerisms in a rom com and a horror movie can be almost the exact same. Dude was born for this. Otherwise strictly just okay, but another scary movie DUB FOR ME!
I really don't listen to that much music reveal. Here are three songs:
Blankenship - DIIV
Went through a brief and intense love affair with this song. Started learning it on guitar and got really into the parallel-ish lead lines. Did not finish learning it but I need to because I think it will make me better at guitar
Horror Head - Curve
Recommended by Nikita. I think this song has drugs in it
The World's Biggest Paving Slab - English Teacher
Cora showed me this and I think it's perfect. Chorus delivery so excellent
I've collected CDs for ages now and been complaining almost as long that my car doesn't have a CD player... and then my little brother asked "what is that button" (CD button). Sooo the collecting is about to go off the charts. Saw so much Coldplay while in Glasgow but was feeling X&Y in particular. I personally believe the Coldplay golden era stretches from Parachutes to Ghost Stories... this has always been the album in that array I have spent the least time with so I'm eager to revisit. The other three finds I am a lot less familar with but am so excited to dive in!!!
I have decided whenever possible I will conduct a little game of blind buying local CDs and in Glasgow it was The Big Two by Usurper. The label that put it out is actually based in Cork! Upon listening when I got home: this is great and made me laugh out loud. Not ideal for car listening but some very rich (very silly) soundscapes, and prompted research into a cool duo. Untitled (I) through Spittle Bugs is unlistenable in a way that I am impressed by.
In Berlin I picked up Royal Paint With The Metallic Gardener From The United States Of America Helped Into An Open Field By Women And Children by Kites. Rhode Island harsh noise. I have not listened to it all the way through yet but my favorite part of the video I found just clicking around goes from like 22-27 minutes. Apparently this guy also makes comics... I am intrigued
Final CD pictured is actually from December but I can't be bothered to retake the picture. BANG by Iona Zajac. Heard it playing in a record store in Dublin, originally didn't get it, then it haunted me all day so I came back for it. I LOVE Bowls and Murder Mystery. Really cool cohesive color palette all the way through
LPS: #1223
Color combination: dark red and hot pink
Card game: cambio
Artistic medium: charcoal
Dream I had: was trying to go see Clairo but ended up at a KO Queen show instead
Invasive species: kudzu
Neocities page: surface treasure
Snack: digestive biscuits....
Outfit: anything featuring my glovelets and neck warmer (scarfless scarf?). And honorable mention, the leather jacket I got in Dublin when I was stuck there after forgetting my passport for Glasgow (lol). I snuck a full bottle of wine into a bar in that jacket it's too powerful
Girl who is bundled beyond belief
Wild card: Angel Dust by Fugazzi. Omg. Smelled on someone walking by at 90mil and was ENTRANCED! Later I thought I smelled it again and I turned around to see her dancing next to me... so of course I had to ask what it was
This year was my first Thanksgiving away from home, which was unexpectedly a bit sad! I don't give even a lick of a care about Thanksgiving but the fact that it was the end of a tradition in my life that has existed since I was born was a little tough to swallow. I remedied this by calling my entire family and by having a feast with my roommates since none of us went home and it was a good excuse to all cook for each other. I made this salad and it freaking rocks! You will need:
For the dressing:
