End-of-week treats #2
Breakfast, goûters, dinner, midnight feasts, I got you covered
My beautiful sister still lived in London when I first moved here. I remember going to visit her, somewhere south and west, on a very sad day. Can’t really remember what made it so — but here is what I have never forgotten about that journey.
I was sat on the Piccadilly line, holding a record in my hand, the cover art of which was a drawing of undulating lines in shades of green, maybe yellow and blue too*. This kid, a toddler, who was sitting next to me with her adult, leaned across and traced one of the lines with her index finger, from edge to edge. I traced another line. She drew along a third to where it joined a fourth. I followed on a fifth.
And so we had this wordless conversation, until I reached my stop and waved goodbye. When I reached Shelley’s house, we watched Felicity in that golden half-light and shadow that the show is fabled for. And somehow, my heart righted itself.
Here then, a list of tendernesses, to right your day at week’s end. With a Spotify playlist, as requested <3
and a particular big up of this newsletter by which I think is so beautifully written (“With bellies full, we gathered in a circle under the night sky and took turns bearing our souls to one another in song. We harmonized our breath into the fire. My heart settled down. I felt my skin holding me all together.”)The magnificence and intimacy of Barbara Walker’s portraits and domestic scenes. (Also, read this interview with her, on the occasion of her show at the Whitworth in Manchester).
Paula Modersohn-Becker’s Seated Child, Käthe Kollwitz’s Mother With a Child in Her Arms, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s man with a cat (In Lieue of Keen Virtue) — and this guy.
Or this Shan Daal Masala spice blend Shahanara told me to get to make dal the way she makes it (which reliably makes me cry, it’s so good. Like home in a bowl).
Breaking open cardamom seeds.
Arôme Bakery’s Honey Butter Toast …
… which I’m trying to recreate using this unbelievably detailed recipe for shokupan (Japanese milk bread) – currently on loaf six.
This guy making bread in the mountains.
Tenniscoats’s Take Away show from forever ago.
This piano and cello duo Hannah and I have been practising.
This poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, (which Lucy sent me this morning, read by Emma Thompson in a distractingly monochrome ski fit but still wonderfully done) …
… obvs the whole poem, but especially this bit:
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
… which makes me think of this Zach Bryan line, from The Boons, about “checking for ticks” (obvs ticks are gross but also the gesture is so kind. ticks are unavoidable in many places i’ve lived in and i love being up high in the hills with my people way too much to let tiny creatures have any say over where we go. i once found one behind her ear when she was about two and we’d *just sat down on a plane* to fly back to london oh my word 😳 but you know what, i just dealt with it, like a boss. i didn’t even gasp audibly. tsu tsu had no idea.):
And how I miss the Quik Stop line They say hello every time No concern for politics Come on home, I'll check for ticks
The many times Liev Schreiber mentions his children in this piece.
Watching my kid rollerskating to music.
If you live near Piccadilly Circus, K-pop Square, or Kurfürstendamm, watch what happens on the big screens at 20h24 exactly, for three minutes, over the next few months. It’ll happen in NYC too, for the month of November, at around midnight. Olafur Eliasson has made a series of video pieces, titled Lifeworld, for the electronic billboards — and the Wetransfer wallpaper — that he described to a breakfast-eating gaggle on Tuesday morning as “softness, slowness, tenderness, openness”: it’s “giving you the blur back” he said. Like when I refused to wear my glasses in high school and walked around Aix in a permanent blur, unrepentant and ignorant of everyone I knew who passed me. Also like the blurred night lights and fireworks in Michael Winterbottom’s Wonderland, which I think about a lot.
Lastly, Riyadh Khalaf <3 and his baby duck, Spike:
Notes
*All this time I’ve remembered that record as Sam Prekop’s eponymous debut from 1999, but I also know it can’t have been, because the cover art is what you see at the top of this post and the cover art on the LP I was carrying was the green lines I described. Maybe it was another Prekop release? Look at his gorgeous score-like drawings. Makes you want to play them with your fingers.
[NB added October 11 2024: Of that debut album, Boomkat gives these deets: “With Chicago Underground's Rob Mazurek on cornet, The Sea and Cake's Archer Prewitt on guitar, Tortoise/Town and Country's Joshua Abrams on bass and Jim O'Rourke handling production as well as additional instrumentation and vocals, it's a veritable who's who of the scene. Even Tortoise frontman John McEntire shows up to play triangle - it's just that sort of record. And because it's that sort of record, there's a humble, laid-back kindness to it - Sam Prekop feels like a bunch of friends getting together in the studio sharing a vibe.” McEntire just hanging out with a triangle. I love that.]