1. The waters are so high that we are soaked mid-calf even before we get to the swimming spot, our feet freezing in our trainers, and we change, and wade in knee-high and suddenly I am terrified of stepping off the bank I can’t even see. It’s the coldest we’ve ever felt, we agree, and all thoughts of Wim Hof vanish from my mind as we dash almost straight out again, hooting and gasping.
2. Richard Flanagan is very interesting on Open Book, talking about how we’ve ‘come to an end point of a certain sort of individualism’, and how some societies seem to be focused inwards, in a chaotic shuffle of self-fixated individuals, while others are focused outwards, each member understanding themselves to be a part of a community that needs each unit to participate. I’m sure there are benefits to each — perhaps an individualistic society enables more leaps in developments and creativity? — but in tandem with Adam Curtis’s interview on Kermode & Mayo’s Film Review in which he discusses the idea that we’ve forgotten to dream about the future, it’s clarified why aspects of our current society make me feel so drained and low.
We have plenty of dystopian visions, Curtis says, but apparently so few plans for how we might make things better, since everything can seem so insurmountable. Shortly afterwards a friend sends me an uplifting poem about learning to love yourself and fuck everyone else, and we discuss that the first part is so important, is vital to empathising with others, but the second part is a message on which we need to turn the volume down, that life is about compromise, and doing things we sometimes don’t want to; that you can love who you are and still quieten bits of yourself momentarily for the good of society; that there is a wide, wide gulf between being an abuse victim and having to do things that aren’t in our perfect day, and yes there are plenty of grey areas and difficulties and most people don’t have free choice about doing things they shouldn’t have to do and don’t benefit them in the slightest, bar just keeping them slightly alive, but my god, self-care has been joyfully co-opted by capitalism because if we’re caring about ourselves we’re a) not thinking of others, so we can’t unite to make meaningful change en masse, and b) we’re giving our money away for more shit that’s destroying the planet and filling our homes and distracting us from the hard work of discussion, and questioning, and listening, and learning, and apologising, and uniting with people with whom we might disagree. I remember the feeling of righteousness on twitter at the start of the 2010s around turning our backs on people when we thought they were morally wrong, be it about Brexit or general elections or shopping choices or careers, but I think I may only be left with my magical electric blanket if I solely hang out with those who agree with every single one of my strongly felt opinions. I am trying to ask more instead, and to listen. (Speaking of which, this is a hopeful episode of Cautionary Tales, featuring an extract from Tim Harford’s latest book, which suggests that curiosity is the glue that will bring polarised groups back together, and allow forward action to occur.)
3. I talk with a friend in advertising about a report that shows our culture at the moment is in a left-brain phase of its cycle: our music is dull and catchy and repetitive, our books middle-of-the-road, our visuals the same safe social media shades and shapes, our celebrities and interviews flat and PR’d to an inch of their bland lives (I miss Popworld so much, and this interview with Miquita Oliver is great), our adverts literal and unimaginative. For all the progress we’ve made in some areas, it makes me want to watch half an hour of weird 90’s ads, like this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this.
4. Speaking of gaming, I’m so strongly not a gamer that I feel second-hand embarrassment for adult gamers — something I’m fully aware is ridiculous, hypocritical and utterly unnecessary — but this beautiful podcast, Unplayable: Disability and the Gaming Revolution, had me crying like a tiny baby. Good on everyone who works to make the world better.
5. I’ve been reading this recently, which is so very good (besides the usual compulsory every-five-pages typos which seems to be the norm with some big publishers these days, and makes me weep for the author) and in googling some of the shows mentioned in it found this interesting Salon piece from 2011 about Galliano and what happens to someone with effectively limitless power in their field. It also contains this line, which if I was a hacker/dickhead I would leave in place of all current Instagram pages: “The Tibetan Buddhists view grandiose self-regard as not just a poor way to live and horribly embarrassing, but as a klesha: literally, a poison.”
6. This week I made this marmalade, and these lamb meatballs, and this exceptionally easy lemon ice cream. All are 100% worth it.
7. After a small Imbolc feast, one housemate asks if I want to do some Lego, and I am so flattered by the invitation that I do, and we build the ground floor of an excellent house, including swimming pond (complete with octopus) and a kitchen table littered with ice lollies. As we work, we listen to the lockdown playlist I started collating almost twelve months ago, and I discover that the housemate now knows most of the words to TLC’s Waterfalls and Florence + the Machine’s Jenny of Oldstones and Elton John’s Tiny Dancer and Buzzcocks’ Ever Fallen in Love, and, while waiting for me to finish one section of the house, sits and solves a Rubik’s cube over and over again, and I feel the luck of it fill up my whole torso until it almost tips over into panic.