2025 with sleet

Hello all and welcome back, hoping the festive period was restful, and if not, bearable. I took some time off here to truly disconnect, though I failed miserably at avoiding scrolling doom. Most days it did feel like a true holiday, forced to surrender the hope of any significant news. There is something rather occult about living the way I do, where any material change ends up being forecast through the oracle of an email inbox; it takes some doing accepting that for a few weeks no news will reach you. But today’s the day most poke their head out of hibernation properly, and many will find me popping up in their own inbox to pursue last year's pursuits, as you find me now.

All this to say, I mostly use Substack to tell you what I’ve been up to, and the truth is I’ve not been up to much, bar cooking and watching movies. I had wanted to write out a big year-end round-up, but as previously expressed this past year was warm up, and it broke my heart a little to realise that I didn't have much to share that hadn’t previously been shared. Still, I finished writing an album, and spent much of my time trying to find a voice to write fiction with. These things are huge, and I’m very proud of both, it’s just that they’re still incubating for the time being.

It’s freezing today as I’m reminded, like every year, that the most brutal months in London arrive after the winter break; the tips of my fingers still sting and tingle as I type this even though I’ve been inside for the better part of 20 minutes. I remember now that winter is a marathon during which secret tricks and routines really turn to survival techniques. I’m inspired to be more diligent with my rising from bed, my writing and my reading, my cooking and my sleeping, to make it through. Snow sometimes feels like a little reward for remaining active, but this weekend’s fall was only sleet, a sleet that told me I have a hole in my boot again and I am extremely vulnerable to discomfort as I trudged out of Rio Cinema after watching Nosferatu which I found to be quite disappointing, mostly due to my inability to find anything much to say about it. I couldn’t find it in me to care, as it neither scared me, nor offered me much insight into the characters’ psyches. Most of the positive praise of it that I’ve seen read to me as pure projection, to be honest, though maybe I just didn’t get it, as the seat I was sitting in was madly uncomfortable and the crowd in my screening appeared as completely alien, laughing when I saw no reason to laugh. (What is it with British audiences? I had the same experience with a few films this year.)

I really preferred the Barbie to its Oppenheimer, Better Man, as its animated monkey did, at its peak moments, elicit more pathos from me than the anachronistically British inhabitants of the pseudo-German setting in the vampire flick. Other than Christmas blockbusters, I revisited some all timers, my favourite Radu Jude flicks, Memories Of Murder, and of course Narnia, to preserve some of the holiday mood.

As for reading, I’ve delved into The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk that I was given for Xmas, as I’m sure many others have. I’ve previously very much enjoyed Drive Your Plow…, I loved inhabiting the headspaces of her characters, their idiosyncrasies, and the little fact-based anecdotes she offers up, though it lost me as soon as it became more ‘plotty’, so I’m waiting to see how the third act of this new one pans out. To be honest, I often find myself disappointed when a novel begins to tie up loose ends and I can see the wheels and gears of a true story start to churn, I mostly read to inhabit a space and a mood. On that note, I’ve gone back to reading some Joy Williams, who I can’t recall talking about here, as I think the peak of my time with her writing was before beginning these newsletters. She may well be my favourite author of all time, and avoids a lot of the story mechanics that lose my interest. Her work, in fact, refuses to explain itself, and exists where the threads of a tale become frayed. Breaking And Entering was a revelation, and her short stories are just, well, perfect. She has a knack for presenting synchronicities as they appear in real life, far more often than is conventionally accepted in a novel. It could so elicit an eyeroll, coincidences so often come across as a deus ex machina in the written form, but as anyone who’s lived a little knows, parallels and serendipity is actually the epitome of realism.

I’ve been reading her works of micro fiction, 99 Stories Of God and Concerning The Future Of Souls. They’re heavy, and funny, and everything I could aspire to giving to the world as a writer.

Here’s one of those 99 stories for you to give you an appetiser:

38

The child wanted to name the rabbit Actually, and could not be dissuaded from this.

It was the first time one of our pets was named after an adverb.

It made us uncomfortable. We thought it to be bad luck.

But no ill befell any of us nor did any ill befall the people who visited our home.

Everything proceeded beautifully, in fact, until Actually died.

ACTUALLY

I love these so so much.

On the music front, I’ve been revisiting some golden oldies, which means a lot of Warren Zevon and Randy Newman have been on rotation. I don’t think I can offer anything to the conversation that hasn’t been said in the much ink spilled, so I’ll just leave you with this classic Randy track that you may indeed know, but is always worth a re-listening. Welcome to 2025.