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Rachel Syme on the agonising ecstasy of deadlines and much more! $$PLAIN_TEXT_PREVIEW$$
MY FAVOURITE THINGS | She’s My Baby
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“The happiest, most fulfilled moments of my life have been when I was completely aware of being alive, with all the hope, pain, and sorrow that that entails for any mortal being. In those moments, the idea of success as a teleological goal would have made no sense; the moments were ends in themselves, not steps on a ladder.” — JENNY ODELL
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Billie and I welcomed an eight-week old Sheepadoodle puppy into our home just over a week ago which we’ve named Ridley. It’s one of the strangest feelings to cradle something so vulnerable and accept that the road ahead is far from certain. As any fellow parents — furry or otherwise — can attest, such responsibility is both a blessing and a burden, depending on the level of sleep-deprivation that day. While Ridley’s arrival has turned our well-kept home into a state of frenzied chaos it has also shaken me from the slumber of routine and given me a new appetite for mayhem. You can tune into this week’s episode of Popcorn Therapy to hear my stream-of-consciousness rant on the bold and beautiful realities of puppy life.
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A curious concoction of feelings arose while tucking into this wonderful little write-up from New Yorker staff writer Rachel Syme. Haunting memories of delivering deadlines at the eleventh hour and the accompanying self-contempt from leaving it all to the last second. As this global pandemic has stolen millions of lives and confined our waking hours to our living rooms the importance of ticking boxes has come into question for me. It has helped me take stock of Jenny Odell’s prescriptive advice in her celebrated How To Do Nothing and revel in its simple truths. And yet for all my deliberating I’m still a slave to the ticking clock and can acknowledge that every single creation of mine — including this newsletter — are only ever delivered when deadlines are struck and met. The challenge ahead lies in encouraging a sense of harmony over hand-wringing.
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This 2008 masterpiece has stayed with me for the past few weeks. A phenomenal examination of the war crimes committed during WWII as seen through the eyes of young love. What makes this film, adapted from Bernhard Schlink’s novel of the same name (Der Vorleser), so profound is its lack of moral clarity. Kate Winslet is sublime as a middle-aged spinster, a woman with the kind of sordid past that would induce insomnia in the best of us. And yet her ultimate humanity, brought to light in such sparingly intimate moments with a teenage David Kross, helps to murky the waters and accept that evil never wears the same mask twice. It also seeks to assess how the possibility of love can ever return in the face of genocidal hate and cultural devastation. Stephen Daldry milks the humanity out of David Hare’s touching script and leaves you asking all the right questions.
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Bob Gruen’s autobiography on his life behind the lens is one hell of a reprieve from the current state of things. The New York native came of age in one of the most exciting moments of the twentieth century and would document the rapid evolution in culture through his intimate photography. As live music continues to be maligned by this shape-shifting pandemic, its been a joy to vicariously experience life backstage with The Who, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Ike & Tina Turner and The New York Dolls. A golden rule for life comes into focus with every passing chapter. Namely that who you know is how you grow. And that the only real way to truly reach greatness is to confront your dreams head on with consistency and implacable desire. The living legend inspired me to put a new playlist together dedicated to the formative chaos that was the early seventies. You can listen to Section 8 here.
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Jon Hassell’s recent passing left me contemplating the transformative effect that ambient music has had on me. It’s helped me to better appreciate the power of silence and stillness in recordings, samples that demand reflection and instill a sense of inner calm. The Tennessee native’s passing turned me on to Brian Eno’s lovely op-ed in the Guardian from 2007. As he tells it, Hassell’s 1977 Vertical Equinox LP inspired the young English artist to reach out while visiting New York and would eventually lead to this phenomenal collaboration. Re-listening to this classic 1980 LP reminds me that the most innovative artists are forever chasing inspiration and stretching their ego in service to the work. “Jon's experiment was to imagine a "coffee coloured" world - a globalised world constantly integrating and hybridising, where differences were celebrated and dignified - and to try to realise it in music.” — Brian Eno
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Rose Byrne is the first and last reason to sink your teeth into this eye-popping Apple TV+ period drama. The Sydney-sider takes us deep into the mindset of a brilliant woman whose talents have been squandered on a self-obsessed chauvinist husband and a lack of self-belief. The nineteen-eighties setting is the perfect visual decoy for the show’s focus around body shaming and self-sabotage. It also sheds new light on the essence of male power, helping us to remember that the success of any public figure (past and present) could only be made possible through the thankless dedication of their silent partners. It also perfectly captures the healing process of listening to and enacting the burning desires that won’t let us alone. Byrne was born to fill the shoes of Annie Weisman’s leading heroine and I can’t wait to see what lies in store for Season II.
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When Billie suggested we put on this 1980 classic to celebrate another end to the working week I was left dubious. By the end of the opening credits — a fantastic assembly of the morning rush as seen through the eyes of working women — I quickly understood what all the fuss was about. The film’s conception, beautifully unveiled in Susan Lacy’s incredible doco Jane Fonda In Five Acts, was the brainchild of the Hollywood heavyweight who hungered to bring women’s liberation to the big screen and jumped on Patricia Resnick’s original idea of three working women taking revenge on their ‘sexist, egotist, lying hypocritical bigot’ of a boss. While the visual antics were made all the more timeless by Fonda, Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin, it was the tightly-woven screenplay that kept me hooked into the dramatic action. I’m excited to screen Colin Higgins’ previous film Foul Play which arrived in the mail last week.
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Not since Matt Schrader’s BlockBuster ‘bio-pod’ series has a podcast left me binge-listening like Wondery’s Business Wars space race series. The seven-part series follows the trials and tribulations of Elon Musk’s Space X, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and while I personally savoured Brad Stone’s The Everything Store, Ashlee Vance’s Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future and Richard Branson’s Losing My Virginity I was oblivious to their primal motivations. What’s so incredible about this podcast is the size and scale of the events. For while substantial sums play a substantial role in the evolution of these companies, they are eclipsed by the burning dreams and stubborn desires of these self-made men. The series has been made all the more current with Branson and Bezos’s first sub-orbital flights last month. Now all we need is Musk to show them both up with a round trip to Mars.
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One of the benefits of being locked down for weeks on end is the ability to line up new movies with no last-minute interruptions every single night. Kelly Reichardt is a filmmaker I’ve long admired but invested so little time in her body of work. With the arrival of her latest film First Cow on MUBI last month, I decided to tuck into Wendy & Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff and Night Moves. While Reichardt’s sparse storytelling has rankled me at times, I’ve found a definite charm in her meditative gaze. The Florida native loves to anchor the meek and dispossessed into lead roles and set them off on a quest that is failed from the start. Night Moves has been my favourite to date and explores a trio of eco-terrorists that bomb a hydro-electric dam in protest against rampant consumerism. Tune in to Episode 44 of Popcorn Therapy to hear me spotlight the brooding character study.
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Nothing quite compares to dancing the night away amongst a pile of friends and strangers alike. And while such nostalgia is entirely frivolous in this current moment, reading of its decline has left me altogether perturbed. Jack Cohen helps us to understand why he and his fellow Zoomers (slang for Gen Z) are simply not fussed about shaking a tail-feather like their Boomer grandparents. Cohen’s confessions turned me onto Heather Havrilesky’s thoughtful piece Why Don’t We Dance Anymore which charges that the choreographed perfection of viral Snapchat and Tiktok content is slowly killing the subconscious desire to cut loose. While I can empathize with the new generation’s dependence on social media, I hope they don’t abandon the joys of cutting loose altogether.
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It shouldn’t surprise me that James Baldwin’s acclaimed book of the same name took close to half a century to bring to the silver screen. All the same this anguishing tale of love and loss, thoughtfully rendered through its wonderful cast, shines as bright as it once did in 1974. And while it took an Oscar win for Barry Jenkins’ to receive the green light on this picture, it allowed him to infuse this tale with a genuine sense of patience. Jenkins’ third feature explores the dualities of being a black man in modern America. The pride that comes with investing in your success and the downright fear that comes from falling (or being dragged down) through the cracks. It reminded me of this powerful Toni Morrison op-ed It Is Like Growing Up Black One More Time from 1974 (which I discovered through this profile on Harlem photographer Kwame Braitwaite) and which ultimately left me grateful that such stories are finally glimpsing the light of day. “When the strength of people rests on its beauty, when the focus is on how one looks rather than what one is, we are in trouble. When we are urged to confuse dignity with prettiness, and presence with image, we are being distracted from what is worthy about us: for example, our intelligence, our resilience, our skill, our tenacity, irony or spiritual health.” — Toni Morrison
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Bob Gruen’s Right Place, Right Time is a tell-all on the grandiose excesses of rock & roll legends like The Who’s late drummer and chief larrikin Keith Moon. Yet it was a simple passage describing a photo of Meher Baba hanging from Pete Townsend’s neck that caught my eye. I’d never heard of the late Indian guru but as this article makes plain, the English rocker was a devout disciple of the Indian spiritual master best remembered for his cherished motto “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. Baba was a fascinating man who saw himself as his generation’s incarnation of God and came to attract an enormous following in India and the West as a result. I was awe struck to read that The Awakener (his nickname) devoted forty-four years of his life to observed silence, a selfless act that helped him to distill the complexities of existence into simple practicable principles. “A mind that is fast is sick. A mind that is slow is sound. A mind that is still is divine.” — Meher Baba
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I found myself down a worm hole after streaming the trailer for Gracie Otto’s new documentary Under The Volcano about George Martin’s exotic AIR studios in Montserrat. Not only did the trailer inspire me to put an early eighties synth-pop playlist together but also led me to stream Otto’s 2018 short film Desert Dash on SBS on Demand. While the kooky comedy was a little obscure for my tastes, it turned me onto the exotic sounds of Neşe Karaböcek. I’d never come across the Turkish singer and was blown away to discover that the Istanbul native was one of the most celebrated artists within the world of Arabesque music and a celebrated actress in her own right. Dost Bahçesi, released in the late seventies, is Karaböcek’s sixteenth studio LP and is littered with tracks that make me yearn for a sun-bleached Turkish vacay.
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