Hello! Happy new year.
I love this time of year. Not for its gloomy dark afternoons or pipe freezing temperatures, but for the opportunity for reflection and potential self improvement. I’m a sucker for ways in which I can improve my life and brain, and I like lists and plans and notes to selfs, so a new year is always a welcome occasion. I have a lot of things I want to try and achieve in life, both personally and professionally. I’ve been thinking a lot over the last month or so about trying, actually. One recent example was when I watched the film Maestro, and then googled it afterwards.
I hadn’t read much about it before watching it, which is an increasingly common occurrence for me these days as I remain off Twitter. But after it finished, I wanted to know whether Bernstein’s family were happy with Bradley Cooper’s portrayal of him, if they felt it captured him at all or if they had been involved, even - so I googled the film and was presented with a whole discourse cycle that I had missed: that people thought the film was an ‘Oscar grab’, that Bradley Cooper’s desperation to be seen as an interesting and good filmmaker was embarrassing, that he had been totally outperformed by Carey Mulligan and wasn’t that fantastically just. I thought the film was really good; I greatly enjoyed the subject, I thought the individual performances were excellent, and it was shot beautifully. I wanted a bit more sex, maybe a tiny bit more West Side Story (personal preference) but I enjoyed it a lot.
I want people to try hard to make good things. Don’t we all?! Make a stupidly high budget, expansive, obsessive ‘Oscar bait’ film about a brilliant person - I will watch it! And I will enjoy it!! If someone wants to be seen as a more interesting filmmaker and makes an interesting film then I fail to see who is losing out. I suppose if I hadn’t liked the film it would irk me less that people were snarky about the indulgence and effort of the project, and fair enough if you didn’t like it - but it does seem a lazy accusation in place of more developed criticism.
Anyway, it all got me thinking, that for 2024 (and onwards) I will really be trying. I am going to try very hard to make the things I want to make, and continue to enjoy things that other people have tried very hard to make good. In keeping with the theme, one of my favourite things I saw recently if you are after:
Something to watch
Sam Blair’s beautiful documentary about legendary snooker player and extremely hard-trier Ronnie O’Sullivan. If you haven’t yet seen it, I thought it was perfect. Ronnie is an incredible subject: a child snooker prodigy born into an East End family, his dad goes to prison early in his snooker career for murdering the third Kray brother’s driver (!), he struggles throughout his life with depression and addiction and ambition - his story alone is fascinating, but it’s the way he talks, his candidness and honesty, his humour, his introspection that make this such a compelling watch. The direction, the editing and his motley crew of seemingly random celebrity friends are all spot on too: I just loved it.
Another (shorter, older) documentary I liked recently was this BBC 2 1994 programme about the then developing jungle scene. It features this amazing clip of Shy FX and MC Gunsmoke at home, and later Shy FX’s first live gig outside of London in Wolverhampton.
I really like watching music documentaries from this era. I find them inspiring and torturous in equal measure, but they remind me to go out, to explore London, a city that’s changed a lot in many ways since 1994 but retains some spirit and magic and people making amazing things. I think I’ve recommended it before here but this LTJ Bukem doc is great too if you’re interested, very different in tone (more Spinal Tap than news item, like the first one) but a great watch.
Something to listen to
This fantastic song by Belgian synth pop group Kid Montana - I used to play their song Today out, always at the wrong speed, which sounded great - I haven’t tried that with this one though / absolutely angelic, transcendent song by Noviciat de Soeurs Missionaires / this brilliant comp called Greasy Mike’s Lost & Lonely Ladies (fantastic title) - nice blues-jazz-rnb female voices / this live version of Tenha Fé that a listener sent in to me, and told me: '“translated (from portuguese) it literally means ‘have faith, because tomorrow a beautiful day will be born’"- just under 3 minutes of pure beauty / another Baltimore club song from the Wire soundtrack, or Mica Levi’s 2012 Boiler Room, or both / good M.I.A. instrumental / late night driving CASISDEAD tune I missed from end of last year / alternate late night driving soundtrack - downtempo Sonny ISM / classic I neglected from the ever amazing The The / great Stone Roses demo (not the new Just Another Rainbow though… when Liam started singing the rainbow midway through it was the nail in the coffin for me on that one) / new old Organ Tapes / properly incredible Mack McCormick blues field recordings on Smithsonian Folkways / beautiful Eric Satie sampling downtempo song from some 90s anarcho-punk South London Dole House squatters - heaven.
Something to read & eat
I loved this Vittles piece, The Tuck Shop Diary. I don’t think I need to tell you how good Vittles is, but this essay was particularly lovely. A former secondary school teacher got some students to write their reflections on the school canteen, and although it has now been a long time since I visited my own school’s tuck shop, their recallings stirred memories within me that felt like yesterday of the chicken wrap or pizza slice I would dream all morning about. It’s inspired me to have a cheese and tomato bagel for lunch, which I don’t think you need a recipe for, but instead you might want this one which I made last night: an extremely quick, easy, high reward spicy tuna pasta from Ixta Belfrage. Perfect for a cold January Wednesday night in front of the TV…. which leads me finally to…
Something to watch (on tv)
Luckily, this newsletter goes out *at most* every two weeks, so by the time I get round to the next one, the Traitors will be pretty much over. This is a Good Thing as I am already feeling tiresome banging on about it, but I just really enjoy watching this show. I loved it last year and I was concerned about the difficult second season, but I have been reassured by the first couple of episodes that there are some immediately iconic characters (Diane the soul gazer, possibly Andrew the hunk, possibly Tracey the psychic) and some more potential slow burners (Jasmine the beautiful, Charlie the foolish, Anthony the maligned). The challenges are good, Claudia’s obviously good, and the music is the same, as is the cast's unwavering devotion to misspelling each other’s names and attaching morality to personal distaste: Diane (Dianne) saying Anthony (Antony, Antoni) displayed ‘traitor behaviour’ by not letting her have his place in the line… I’m hooked!!!
And finally, in the spirit of trying, I have been making more episodes of Digging, my podcast where different people come to the allotment and have a go at a task while having a chat. They are coming out from next week, and the first one is with Jeremy Deller, who was very nice and interesting. We spoke at length about Take That, jumble sales and William Morris, which was fun. Here’s the Apple podcast link if it takes your fancy. They will come out weekly until I run out then I will hopefully make some more (I have been shocked at how long they take to make… the process, which starts with trying to persuade someone to come to the suburban plot and ends with trimming tiny milliseconds of audio and running it through various things to get it to sound as good as possible, is much longer than I had anticipated!!) - but I hope you enjoy them!
Till next time xxx
also going to make 'try hard' my vibe for '24. love that
Yummy 🤤