18: Faces on the Wall
I had a poster of a Radiohead concert on my wall when I was a teenager. Nothing weird about that really, except that it wasn't of Radiohead. It was a photo taken from behind and slightly above and to stage left of them as they played to a huge crowd, and the lights revealed faces in the crowd. It fascinated me. Seeing all those expressions staring up at the band I loved, and nobody was looking directly into the lens. I used to lose myself in it, imagining being there, imagining being one of those people, or being stood beside them and hijacking some of their energy.
Even though I took that poster down when I moved out in 2006 and it ripped and I put it in the bin, I can still remember some of the people on it. Their total happiness, or how overwhelmed they were, or how their eyes were closed and their arms were outreached towards the band who were just shadows to me. It was my favourite poster, and I used to think about why that was all the time.
Surely I would, if I really liked Radiohead, prefer a photo of them performing Creep for the first time (a song I've never really liked), or a framed piece of their artwork, or even a shot of the band doing one of those 90s/00s band-photo things like standing around a battered old oil drum in a warehouse car park while wearing moth-eaten jumpers. But why would I want that, when what I had was something that showed thousands of people feeling the same way I felt about the band that I loved? It makes sense to me now.
Other stuff
Please read this by Nicci Peet for Pellicle on Roger Wilkins the cider king. Gorgeous photos -- of course -- but a poignant story well told too.
This piece on how brewers move on after their flagship beer becomes defunct is interesting, but it's also kinda sad in a way. I don't like it when things disappear.
“We’re all friends with each other, and I don’t know how to define that in a business structure,” is probably the nicest sentence I've ever read in an industry-based article. Read this now on natural wine-making in Santa Cruz.
A history of Lake District climbing on slate because why not? It's my newsletter and I wanted to read about Hodge Close.
My Stuff
I've been revisiting my piece about Black Hand Wine this week because it has shaped where my life has gone ever since. Meeting Sam Jary changed my perspective on wine, and it's down to his stories and passion about his own harvests that I even considered doing my own this past week. So from mid-Mosel, prost Sam.
I wrote a blog post last week about the Spanish craft beer term "cerveza artisanale" and how it means much more than "craft beer".
I didn't just watch the TT when I went to the Isle of Man. I also drank really delicious cider made from local crab apples. And now I've written about it for Ferment mag.
