#12 Weekend Bites 🍪
Music is saving my life this week
I am tired my friends. I started writing a paragraph analysing why I felt that way (end of year rush, headless chicken, loose grasp of priorities, blah blah blah) but honestly, I feel too tired to formulate multiple good sentences. Hopefully that was a good sentence and it will suffice. Music has been helping my mood as I stagger around in the usual end of year existential/business/retail stupor stemming from stress and self-doubt. So there’ll be a lot of music in this Weekend Bites. Enjoy.
This might be a bit grim, but I’ve been enjoying it so have a listen while you read this weekend’s newsletter:
I love Olivia Dean’s voice. That’s it.
Every so often, I’ll watch a student performance from an international dance competition like Prix de Lausanne. The nervousness in their faces before going on stage, their (hopefully) triumphant performance, the applause of the audience at the end - it always makes me feel hopeful. For these young people, this moment is it. It’s everything they’ve been working towards and the focus on this single moment somehow suspends time for me as well. It helps me to slow down and, perhaps weirdly (although a line can definitely be drawn between the two), it prompts me to think that I could do what they’re doing. Not ballet - I’d break an ankle straight away - but the idea of focusing on one craft, one talent, one project, rather than be distracted by the many I usually have swimming around my brain. Maybe that could be good and I’d make progress and I’d then be able to show something for it, like this beautiful performance. Anyway, I’m like a goldfish and this is food for thought. In many ways, my brain is a blank-eyed sea creature going ‘yum yum’ as it gobbles bits of information, simultaneously realising that I don’t need to give myself so many things to do. What a concept.
Really looking forward to this new series from StyleLikeU. So far on the Youtube channel they’ve focused on vulnerable chats with women, from every day people to celebrities like Janelle Monae. This time they’re exploring concepts of masculinity. I love that they’ve got Mark Bryan on, a cis man who loves wearing heels and skirts with his business shirts and jackets. Quite a few of the episodes are already up, so go take a look if you’re keen!
Amongst the many hobbies or skills I want to learn at some point is book repairing. It amazes me how good an experienced restorer can make an old book look. I’m particularly amazed by how they repair ripped pages. Also, you can wash pages?? She just gives it a little bath and I love it.
If you’re feeling the pinch of paying for multiple streaming services, can I introduce you to Beamafilm? It’s a free platform stocked with interesting movies that you can access through your library account. Beamafilm is particularly great if you like docos, art or classic films that are a bit hard to come by, like The Artist is Present, about artist Marina Abramovic, or Metropolis, the iconic German Expressionist sci-fi film from 1927. Right now, they even have a category called ‘Palestinian Perspectives.’ For Christmas, Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life is also streaming.
Finally, a bit of an infographic nerdy lol for you. This fun article goes through the changing designs of Romance book covers - how they went from sexy, barely clothed lovers to a more cartoonish vibe. Packed with interactive data sets, this was a fun way to spend some time with a topic that I hadn’t thought about much, but thoroughly enjoyed exploring anyway.
Not as grim as the last song, but you can see why Spotify keeps recommending Sad gurl/boi playlists to me. Have a lovely weekend!
