Pieces of April

Originally posted May 1st 2023

The month ended with a rainy weekend but I still went outside and enjoyed the quiet streets. Made many dinners that got me through this long month and even caught up on some painting. I’ve been making a point to listen to my records more often. Really sat with the newest Daughter album and I think they must’ve listened to a lot of U2 while making it (in a complimentry way), it’s a beautiful album and maybe even contender for my favourite of the year? Unexpected but a delight to have up there. I’ve been listening to more albums, trying to really make an effort to engage rather than passively let playlists take over my attention span. A lot of songs can surprise you on the 3rd or 4th listen, something clicks. It was easier back when one was limited to their CD collection, you kinda had to relisten to stuff over and over and give things second chances. I’m trying to not obsess over the new.

At the beginning of the month my parents were in the city and I watched Inside Llewyn Davis with my dad. He couldn’t stand the titular character Llewyn and scolded his behavior the whole time, while I sat feeling bad for the guy. Not that my dad’s opinion was wrong, he was correct, but I couldn’t help but sympathise with a frustrated musician. I like Coen brothers characters because even the nice ones are just people, they’re never very remarkable. There’s so much failure in their stories and it’s funny and cruel. My dad commented on how arrogant Llewyn was, and again, he was correct, but I saw a very sad man, unsure what to do with himself. He tries to make decisions but the results are never what he intended. He’s angry, lost, mourning and he cannot imagine a different life for himself. He does not want one. There are moments in the film, where he could make a choice and drastically change his life but that would require giving up his pride (even when he tries to, life puts it back). So cycles go on and the tragedy is he doesn’t seem to be aware of it (or maybe he is and is that worse?).

April was primarily a month of reading, I mentioned in a previous substack my mixed enjoyment of Big Swiss by Jen Beagin. Immediately after that I finally got around to Psychopolitics by Byung-Chul Han which I enjoyed even if I’m not great with theory, I recommend it for a train ride as it’s rather short but will be enough to chew on mentally for the rest of whatever journey. I’m working through Saving Time by Jenny Odell, though not far in, it’s very good. Time is something I’ve been discussing a lot in my own life and to read about how our perception of time is a very new thing and how the clock has affected our day to day lives is refreshing. Things click into place and make more sense. Time is almost tyrannical, seconds, milliseconds, glaring down on us from above, it’s all about efficiency or what we think is efficiency. It’s frightening and freeing at the same time. I’ll write more on it once I’ve finished it.

Porn: An Oral history by Polly Barton was good but similar to a short story collection, it’s hit and miss. Each chapter is Barton talking to a different anonymous person about their relationship with porn and how it impacts their lives and relationships. So naturally some conversations were more interesting than others but overall I enjoyed it as a conversation starter. I felt it could have gotten deeper with the subject and conversations, it was fairly surface level due to the nature of how Barton went about it. Also Barton only talked to people they knew, which for the thesis of the piece, which was to talk more to their friends and acquaintances about porn, makes sense, but I think you end up with a lot of the same vague sentiments coming up again and again. Like, if you’re going to write a book about porn, you got to interview a proper pervert, don’t you? Or maybe Barton wanted to not look at extremes but more her everyday people? I just talked myself out of my own point. The internet is full of extremes and Barton, I think, wanted to not do the easy thing which is talk to those on the far end of either side, but with people who don’t spend most of their time thinking about the ethics of porn or even have a much of a relationship to it at all. I find porn to be an interesting example of how workers are exploited and how the internet seems to exaggerate things so it’s an easy target for conservatives and leftists alike. It’s a question of consumption, critical thinking and labour. How, in the 21st century, do we talk about porn?

I read Go Home, Ricky! by Gene Kwak which was like the clip from The Simpsons where Sideshow Bob keeps walking into rakes, be that not as funny. It would be easy to say that the character Ricky is kind of pathetic and I think that’s what Kwak intended, but he’s also a very tragic figure. Wrestling, jobs, girlfriends, parental relationships, you name it! The book is a never-ending list of things going wrong and Ricky will not stop stepping on bloody rakes.

Thank you for reading,

-Enya xx

Books read:

Wabi-Sabi by Leonard Koren

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin 

Psychopolitics by Byung-Chul Han 

Porn: An Oral History by Polly Barton

Go Home, Ricky! By Gene Kwak

Films watched & recommendation:

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)—Recommend

Rye Lane (2023)—Recommend. I spent the bulk of the film yelling at the amount of places I recognised, restaurants in the background I’d recommend and the absolute delight of seeing Peckhamplex again.

Escape From New York (1981)—Recommend. Kurt Russel is Snake Pilskin and he needs to be in every western until the day he dies. Also let John Carpenter (the director), make an actual western before he dies.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)—Recommend. It’s very campy.

On the Count of Three(2021)—Don’t recommend. Tonally confused. Indie dark comedy that isn’t really either. It’s just kinda sad but not in the way it meant to be.

The Worst Person in the World (2021)—Recommend. I feel like a different person after watching this and I’m not sure why.

C’mon C’mon (2021)—Recommend, kinda. Not my favourite Mike Mills film but he’s so earnest I can’t help but appreciate it.

On the Beach at Night Alone (2017)—Recommend for the slow cinema lover and no one else.