46: Sky Ferry
I can fool myself that the white-painted wall of the back of my house is the sunbaked stone of an unfamiliar place, for a moment, when I wake up in the garden. Dredged resisting like ocean mud from groggy sleep, I squint confused at the chalk-white tower rising on my right, and the box of clear blue above, and feel the buzz of high UV, pollution-free sun, and momentarily I am elsewhere.
At this new perspective, wispy clouds drift across the blank blue sky like the exhaust fumes of an island ferry and I remember I am trapped here.
Other Stuff
The Hay Festival is cancelled, but sometimes good things happen to bad times. It's heading online for Hay Festival Digital from the 18 - 21 May. This actually makes it more accessible to me, and I assume, for many other people too. You can register for any of the online events here.
I have become a huge fan of Elizabeth Taylor's writing (the novelist, not the actress) and this biographical piece from the New Yorker archive is particularly interesting because it speaks about her apparent conflict and refusal to choose between home and creative burdens.
I love sitcoms, and I love detail, so when I noticed that the pigs in Brooklyn 99 (sorry Amy) were drinking the same beer as Ultimate Man Nick Miller from New Girl, I had to investigate. It turns out that Heisler is a totally invented beer brand, designed by a prop company. This article on TV's favourite fake beer by TV writer Shannon Carlin is fantastic and full of great quotes and I urge you to read it. "You can do anything with Heisler, and that's part of the joy of it."
Starting an article in this current climate with a quote from Day Of The Triffids, is it? Describing swallows as "dark scythes", are we? Okay I'm into it. "Finally, as if a veil has been lifted, people are noticing that – even in the heart of the so-called urban jungle – nature has found a place to live."
Lian van Leeuwen at Bikepacker.com writes about the eerie, empty streets of Amsterdam, and thinks about what positives could be gleaned from the epidemic. Her photos are incredibly resonant, but rather than empty, they seem to turn the silent streets into her private playground.
Sarah Perry, being more honest and wise than any of us put together. "What I felt when I looked at my shelves was not consolation, but contempt. What good were books, in the end?"
I read "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud" by Carson McCullers this week, and I was stunned by it. It seemed so perfectly timed in that moment. And I wasn't even drunk at the time.
Mayukh Sen has written furiously and eloquently about the tragic death of chef and restauranteur Garima Kothari for Eater. In the process he asks why the industry focuses on polishing halos rather than seeking out and championing new and undervalued talent. (I found this article really interesting for many reasons, but the parallel between some of his points and what has been said about the beer industry over the years stood out. Adding media and PR skills to your armoury may get you further than talent and graft alone, but should they? It's a tough one, and as a marketing and journo hypocrite, I don't have any easy answers.)
Sports writers, including my fave Jonathan Liew, talk about how they're writing about sport when there is no sport to write about.
There are some gorgeous exhibits to scroll around at the BALTIC. Abel Rodríguez's botanical illustrations come from his role in the Muinade community as "el nombrador de plantas" in the Colombian Amazon.
I spent my Sunday morning reading The Wish For A Good Young Country Doctor by Allan Gurganus and I haven't stopped thinking about it ever since. Midwestern Gothic meets folk horror in a dark tale of human nature, betrayal, mass hysteria, fate and shadows falling on the long, slow passage of time. Oh and for relevance's sake, it's also about a cholera epidemic. I'm gonna read it again just now, just quickly.
Once you've read that, you might like to read why Allan Gurganus finds epidemics so fascinating, and what drove him to write it in the first place. "...if history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, it sometimes stutters. We all think it’s happening solely to us. It never is."
My Stuff
Remember when I used to write stuff?
That was alright wasn't it
Don't worry there is stuff on the way in the next issue of Ferment.
Also I'm working on a couple of things for Pellicle.
I've been working on fiction a lot this week too, I have a new schedule and it's working well for me. It's based roughly on Ursula K. Le Guin's.
Abel Rodríguez -- Photo taken by Rob Harris for BALTIC