Dawoud Bey: An American Project — at The Whitney Museum
Today was the last day to see Dawoud Bey’s photography at the Whitney and I am so glad I went yesterday! Reading about his work was very insightful, particularly when it came to how he views photography as “an ethical practice requiring collaboration with his subjects”. He views photography as an act of political responsibility, hinging on what it means to create visibility for primarily Black communities. Read more here and here.
The Secret Lives of People in Love by Simon Van Booy
This collection of short stories focuses on, yes, love, but I think what’s striking about it is that it seems to focus on grief and longing as the engines of that love. The Illusion of Separateness is one of my favorite books of all time, so I was excited to read another book of Van Booy’s— I didn’t love all of them but I was very moved by “Where They Hide is a Mystery”, which follows a young boy searching for a way to honor his mother on the anniversary of her death, and “The Still but Falling World”, which encounters the necessity for family and connection through the the life of a gay Italian man with OCD. The others aren’t as memorable to me but perhaps they would be if I didn’t read the entire collection in one sitting! As always, his writing is rich with imagery and beauty.
Favorite Quotes: “My father told me when i was a child that butterflies are just flowers that have come loose. Childhood was hard for me because I worried about everything. I worried about the end of the world, diabetes, earthquakes, asphyxiation, each of my family members slipping into a coma, one by one (as if going off to look for the others)” — Pg. 141, “The Still but Falling World”.
“‘When somebody leaves this plane—or, if you like, goes into another room—those left behind sometimes try and stop loving—but this is a mistake, because even if you have loved only once in your life, you’re ruined’” — Pg. 37, “Where They Hide is a Mystery”
Sex Education, season 3
This show!!!! :,) I cried a lot because all of the characters are so sweet to each other and it’s so endearing. The necessary conversations and dialogues that this show implements flow so seamlessly into each other since the show is primarily about sex ed and nothing feels forced the way a lot of other shows seem to write in queer dialogues just to check the boxes. And the writers clearly care about representing a multitude of people within X identity, not simply having a token non-binary character, token gay character, etc. I wondered if at points the non-binary dialogue was a little subtextual in a way that cis people are less likely to grasp, but I think we were getting somewhere by the end of the season— hoping this will continue into season 4 as well? My other fave parts of this season were Ola and Otis rekindling a friendship, the conversation where Aimee and Maeve pledged to be each other’s mums, and Adam’s dog show.
Music album: Better Oblivion Community Center
Okay continuing on my Phoebe Bridgers addiction I decided to finally give this album a full and in-depth listen and just had it on repeat for the week. My favorite song in terms of composition/sound is “Big Black Heart”, my favorite song lyrically is “Chesapeake”, and my favorite lyrics from Chesapeake are “I was all covered in sound” and “My hero plays to no one, in a parking lot / Even though there’s no one around”.
Ted Lasso Season 2, episode 10
Okay this episode is devastating but, in true Ted Lasso fashion, still leaves you feeling full. It offers a beautiful balance of humor within grief while also putting a spotlight on how grief, when unattended, can have a devastating impact on the surviving years down the line. I feel like most stories about grief center on the immediate time after the loss, but few give room to the grief of 20 years later. This episode does both. And also focuses on what it means to grieve complex people who have caused harm— and, it doesn’t provide solutions, because there is no solution, but yet we still feel some resolve.
Catechesis: A postpastoral by Lindsay Lusby
This collection of poetry is rooted in nature, womanhood, and beauty. I felt like the hybrid elements at times felt forced but when they were effective they were really effective! Some beautiful erasure poems in the scanned artifacts. I loved the poems pictured below (“Interlude (again)” and “Do you spook easily, Starling?”)
Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay (with an Introduction by Olivia Gatwood)
It takes me a definite mental shift to be able to get into poetry that was written before like, 1960, but these poems are really soft and lovely to read. They’re very rhythmic and full of dreaming, yearning and questioning. Olivia Gatwood says it best in her introduction: “The trajectory of these specific poems honors Edna’s core emotional evolution—a girl growing into the world, a girl resisting the world, and a girl mourning the world”.
So far, my favorite one is titled “Spring”, and I will transcribe it here:
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
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