Sport Macrame Review of 2023 [Light]
A POSTCARD
A GREETING
Happy new year! We made it alive. Let's do another one ✨
I would usually take the last few days of the year to reflect on what the year was like at large. However, this year I haven't been keeping up with stuff as much. I haven't been listening to new music, I've only read five books and watched as many tv shows. So what I've chosen to mention in this is more of a personal note-keeping than an extensive critique. I wonder if everyone else is still up to speed with culture? It feels pretty impossible.
I had a pretty good year. I spent most of my time figuring out what I want. [not technically true; most of my time I spent designing pet insurance] That means: more going / trying, and less watching / reading. I found a lot of things I don't care for and a couple things I like: pottery (handbuilding), writing (short stories), drawing. That's literally it. Nothing else. [not technically true; I've grown to like my job as well. I'm forecasting 'liking your job' a major 2024 trend.]
With the discovery phase out of the way (teehee), here's what I'm thinking for 2024: In 2024, I want to do more writing and pottery, and become an improver.
If you've got a resolution in mind, I hope it comes true. If not, you go with the flow gurl.
🎞 MOVIES 🎞
I've done a good job catching up on movies in December. By the way, let's be Letterboxd frends if anyone's still using it.
Tar ❤️🔥
How can a beautiful, talented person also be a shitty, heartless person? What if someone's two-thirds lovely and one-third piece of shit? I've no idea. This film doesn't help. It's an unhelpful film.
Searching for Sugar Man ❤️🔥
A documentary about a brilliant songwriter who never made it in America but somehow gained superstardom in South Africa. He was around 60 when his fans tracked him down. Then he went on tour, baby!
The Eternal Daughter 💘
At the face value, it's a melancholic film about a desperate attempt to turn back time. But it's worth watching for the hotel receptionist, who's artfully slagging off Tilda Swinton's character throughout the film.
My Old School 💘
A documentary about a 30-year-old man who re-enrolls into the high school he had graduated from, so that he could get good grades and go to medical school. He almost does the thing.
Poor Things 💘
A very pretty frankenstein-like creation of a mad scientist awakens to the world where steampunk reigns supreme and modernism never happened. She discovers sex and goes on holiday.
Also highly recommend:
Movies I did not care for:
🎻 MUSIC 🎻
Here's a playlist of my favourite songs of 2023. Only a few of them are this year's releases, because I prefer to live in the past my favourite playlists of new music are now hidden hell knows where in Spotify.
Spotify messed up my listening habits big time this year. It's optimised itself into a casino-like content machine – but, unlike Youtube, you can't install any extensions to unfuck it. So I've been using it less and listening to the radio more.
I've started trying out Napster. Even though Napster got limitations, it lets me get on with my life. I might also try Tidal and Apple Music later.
A MISUNDERSTANDING
one time, i was in a local cafe by myself. a neighbourhood hangout cafe, quite outgoing. a waiter who’d seen me a few times, asked if my food was all right, and then said: ‘you know you can talk to us, you don't have to be alone’ and i think i said, ‘ah that’s very nice thank you’ – and made a mental note to stop coming there for a while.
it’s two years later now. i went there for breakfast today, which i enjoyed. the waiter was there. i was by myself again, but i expressed an acceptable amount of friendliness when i ordered, i think. a lady at the next table tried to chat me up a few times, and i responded to her best i could, though i admit my smalltalk abilities are below average. she chatted to the staff, and eventually left.
when i was done with my food the waiter walked up and pretended to look out the window for a bit, then turned to me and asked abut the sticker on my laptop. 'what language is this, is this russian?' to which i said, in a friendly chatty voice (i think), 'yeah, it is in russian' to which he said, 'hm, okay' – and walked away. i made a mental note to stop coming there for a while.
i'm sure it's a misunderstanding though.
📺 TV SHOWS 📺
Go watch Ghosts, it's great! If you liked Black Books and What We Do in the Shadows, you will 100% enjoy.
Bloods ❤️🔥
A sitcom about doctors, but it's Croydon. Great cast, great writing.
Why Women Kill (season 1) ❤️🔥
Big Desperate Houseviwes vibes. Riveting! Gripping! Scandalous!
Adam & Joe Show (from the 90s) 🤠
Well, I enjoyed it a lot because I like to live in the past it's got some brilliant stuff in there, they basically invented tiktok in 96.
Did not care for:
What We Do in the Shadows 😐 – Too many seasons.
Succession 💩 – People say you gotta understand Shakespeare to enjoy it.
PANEL SHOWS
I watched Season 16 of Taskmaster twice. I might watch it again sometime.
I also watched Drag Race UK and Bake Off. They were alright.
A CHANGE
i would get bloated from seemingly everything for as long as i can remember. i could never figure out why. this summer i did the zoe nutrition test, and it said that i can't eat rice or rice-based stuff, because neither my gut nor my blood sugar can handle it.
i used to eat a dozen rice cakes on the daily, and sushi rolls every week. i quit them cold turkey, exactly the way John and Yoko quit herion I imagine. now i feel a lot less bloated and a bit more energetic. i bought a concrete rice cake sculpture to commemorate this. I eat a lot of almonds now.
📚 BOOKS 📚
This Is Memorial Device by David Keenan
My book of the year for sure. I'm just gonna copy over the review I wrote when I finished it.
Finished reading This Is Memorial Device by David Keenan.
It was challenging and weird and beautiful, in that order.
I especially enjoyed listening along the audiobook, read by author in his own Scottish accent. I’d be honest, I wouldn’t be able to understand the audio without the text. Or “hear" the text without the audio. But coming together, it’s such an immersive story.
The book is about the 80s music scene of the small Scottish town called Airdrie. Each chapter is like a mini-memoire of one of the people who lived through it. So it’s disorienting for the first 50 pages, and then the connections build up, and by the end of it, you’re fully onboard with the goss and the atmosphere, joy and pain.
One chapter in particular totally blew my mind. I think it can be regarded as a short story in its own right. One of the best short stories I’ve ever come across. It’s called
The Golden Light Coming From the Window and Spilling Over the Pavement Like a Perfect Dream: the saga of Chinese Moon as recalled by David Kilpatrick
I might scan the whole thing later. It’s the somber teenage kitchen-sink-rock-stardom nostalgia that I can never get enough of.
Another bit the book that I’ve come across while on the tube to work that pinched me almost physically was this:
We think we're walking into the future. We fool ourselves! But every last damn one of us is walking straight into the past. A shadow passes a low wooden fence. It is wearing a hat and dressed, already, for another time. The pace isn't hurried. It's a pace that says, okay, I give in, I accept it. The movement of this spectre, this would-be ghoul, seems self-chosen, willed from the deepest, most stubborn depths of itself.
It’s exactly how a morning commute feels. A little dying rehearsal for everyone involved.
Anyway. Great book. Nice font.
Other books I read and liked:
The Year in the Art World by Matthew Israel
A Beautiful Star by Yukio Mishima
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
Books I read and they were a bit meh:
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
Play it As It Lays by Joan Didion
One book that I liked but did not finish:
Art in the After-Culture by Ben Davis
TELEGRAM CHANNELS
MEMES: Random Crap I Enjoy
FASHION+CULTURE: SCOTEENA
Good trend watching, some nice archival stuff and a bit of funny – everything I thought I'd be when I started blogging in the 1890s.
COMFORT: БЛЯЦКИЕ КОТЫ
As a crazy cat lady in the making, I rely on this channel to me tell when it's time to work and when it's time to sleep, in cat pictures.
NEWS: none
i visit the web sites such as guardian and www.meduza.io once in every two weeks. i find them a bit too dense for my feeble mental kukuschechka.
i have a fair amount of righteous contempt for the bloody tories and the murderous russian dictatorship. but i find engaging with politics unsustainable ror my mental kukuschechka.
AN AFTERWORD
I wanna send everyone a big hug, and I hope that whatever is going on, you keep your spirits up and find some joy. Sending good vibes.
I told you my resolution, but my big wish is that maybe this time next year we could get together irl. For the New Year or just in general really.
I've put up a bit of a tree for the first time in my six years in London. It's really nice.
As my meditation app likes to say: