Erika has still been wrestling with a difficult piece of writing, and getting ready for the new Thursday Night Writes group. Cats, visitors and her media choices have definitely provided some solace from writing this week. Working on such a difficult piece has shown Erika some new things about her own writing process and about what it feels like to release some precious pieces onto the world.
The new season, season 3 of The Movies That Made Us premiered this week. The stories behind the movies are sometimes better than the movies themselves. There was some binging of season 3 of Sex Education, too. It’s impressive the way that the show has addressed some things that people really don’t know how to talk about. There are some interesting storylines featuring nonbinary characters, about gender presentation and about sex and disability–while there are people who are both asexual and disabled, disabled doesn’t mean asexual. Dot Gay featured an episode about intersectionaity recently as part of their “The Library” series. The whole series is worth viewing, but here’s the intersectionality segment.
Bunheads also captured Erika’s attention this week. The first episode was interesting, but when she heard the line, “I promise you I won’t flee. I’ll be the scientist that understands you. The one who knows that you’re not burning the city down because you’re evil, you’re burning the city down because you’re protecting the giant lizard eggs you just laid in a cave by the ocean. The cave that no one knows is there, but me,” she decided she had to watch more. Considering how much she didn’t care for Gilmore Girls, she’s really enjoying this show, with writing like that and dance scenes like the one below set to the Tom Waits song “Picture in a Frame,” It’s been a good choice this week.
It’s Friday too, which means that the next day or two will definitely include the new episode of The Great British Baking Show. Rumor is that charoset is somehow involved this week…and while charoset is delicious, and definitely has flavors that are baked, Erika has never had, nor thought of baking charoset before, although the components have all been included in things she’s baked.
It’s been a guitar themed week, too. There’s some incredible Bach guitar performances on YouTube…if you’re not familiar, either with Bach, or with the incredible performances of Andres Segovia, here’s a sample to get you started.
There’s also been Simon and Garfunkel, Cat Stevens and Peter Gabriel, and definitely a lot of Playing for Change, who put out great music, and have an admirable mission.
Erika has just started reading Greedy:Notes from a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much by Jen Winston. It seemed like a good choice for LGBTQ History Month, especially having just observed National Coming Out Day at the beginning of the week. So far, it’s been an enjoyable and entertaining read, and Erika is looking forward to reading more of it.
Florida is just getting to the part of the year where the weather is tolerable, and that, combined with seeking out some really calming things, led Erika to a book she had purchased months ago and not opened, Nowik Gray’s New World Haiku. Haiku is not a format Erika typically would voluntarily try to write in, and this book definitely reminds her why. “First Comes Breathing,” was particularly captivating. Writers’ gossip also provided some entertainment… Erika’s been hooked on the Bad Art Friend saga, too. Do people who aren’t writers realize just how much drama can happen in writing circles?
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Adam has been having some amazing reading-days lately. It seemed like The Powerbroker would be a difficult book to follow, but it turned out not to be. There’s an adorable little bookshop in Camden Market that turned out to be selling a second-hand copy of the Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll, translated by Leila Vennewitz. This has been one of Adam’s favorite books since college, but until now he’s never owned a copy.
There hasn’t been much time for listening lately, with every day consisting either of working from home or exploring the parks and other tourist attractions, but Bach is never far away, and a lot of great music has been playing in Adam’s head. Also, with Adam and Anuja together for the first time in 18 months, the nonsense-songs they’ve improvised to make each other laugh have been on repeat like Top-40 pop-songs.
As for watching? Well, Adam is a human being who is alive at this moment so of course he succumbed to peer pressure and watched Squid Games. It was really good! But what happens when TV studios have the inevitable bad take: “people want ultraviolence” instead of “people want well-realized characters”? And Little Things came out with a new season, so that’s on the docket, too. The new season feels more expensive than previous ones. There are a lot more panoramic camera angles, more ambitious locations. The show, in its first season, seemed to be arguing, as the title of the show and its theme song suggest: “nothing really matters but the little things.” But if the two characters are steadily becoming more successful and the production values of the show are becoming more costly, what does that do to the thesis of the show? Stay tuned for the answer.|
Oh, and this weekend Adam is seeing Twelfth Night at the Globe Motherfucking Theater. Stay tuned on that as well.