Hello my dearest qmunicate readers! I hope you are all keeping well in the dark, gloomy, rainy reality that is our beloved Glasgow in November. Living in this city is a hate-love relationship isn’t it? If someone from somewhere else asks, I tell them Glasgow is the best place in the world. But honestly, who hasn’t screamed ‘I HATE THIS PLACE!’ at the top of their lungs after being soaked to the bone on a cold windy night out? The great thing about Glasgow though is that it gives you plenty of reason to brave the rain! So if you’re new to the city, and to qmunicate: welcome!
qmunicate is Queen Margaret Union’s very own in-house publication, and with a special focus on any and all kinds of art, we publish writing on everything from film and music to lifestyle and politics. If you’ve been thinking about getting involved with student journalism, I urge you to do it! I can easily say that being a part of qmunicate has been by far my best experience at university. Whether you write poetry, make art, like reviewing films or gigs (who can say no to that sweet guestlist?), or if you simply want to meet like-minded people, qmunicate is the place for you. We hold open contributor meetings on Wednesdays with brand new pitches every week. Apart from these meetings we run a monthly poetry night in collaboration with Aloud, host amazing launch parties, and a lot of other events such as arts & crafts nights.
I really hope you all enjoy this autumn issue, our first printed issue of the academic year. For some of our newer contributors it might even be the first time seeing their writing in print– which is undeniably a magical experience! Being able to celebrate the publication with a launch party is also something I’m not taking for granted after the pandemic. It is so lovely overall to see the campus regenerate after these years, and to see so many new faces at qmunicate.
In this issue you will find, for instance, Zohra Iqbal’s fantastic feature article on the Glasgow Zine library (one of my favourite places in the city). If you’ve been thinking of visiting, I promise you will be even more keen to go after reading this piece. In the Arts & Culture section Jessie Campbell discusses contemporary art. Over in News & Politics Jamie Martin considers the concept of ‘armchair activism’. In the Music and Film sections you will find reviews of everything from a Grace Petrie gig to the new ‘Blonde’ film, and more. There’s art and poetry too, of course. We hope you like it.
Lots of love,
Join our weekly contributor meetings on Wednesdays at 5:3o in the QMU. @qmunicate www.qmunicatemagazine.com
There’s nothing quite like it the feeling of being in a stuffy gallery, dodging tourists, craning your neck to get a glimpse of the piece in front of you. And there it is – a banana taped to a canvas. You stare at it. It seems to stare back. In that moment, you’ve never felt so far out of the loop.
It’s safe to say that for many of us, contemporary art feels largely unattainable. Roped off and untouchable in galleries or hidden away in the collections of the rich and famous, the walls have been built so high around contemporary art that they feel impenetrable. Much like any market that tries to capitalise off of creativity, the art market draws in billions each year. Following the same pattern of wealth and elitism that has existed throughout art history, contemporary work has become a symbol of the rich and influential. This, confounded with the experimental nature of contemporary art, can leave many of us feeling disconnected from something that should promote authenticity and feeling.
To understand why contemporary art equals money, we need a quick history lesson. Art has always been in the hands of the rich and wealthy: Kings and Queens commissioned pieces for the Royal Court, the Medici family funded the Florentine Renaissance and more recently, the Parisian bourgeois went mad for Impressionism during ‘La Belle Époque’. In an age where commissioning or patronage was the natural way of things and an interest in art was just a rung to climb on the ladder of social hierarchy, the link between art and elitism was born
In an attempt to reject artistic tradition, he finds himself becoming only more engrained within it. And if Banksy, one of the world’s most famous contemporary artists, can’t shake off this culture, then how can we?
The answer is simple: perhaps we never will. But as with Banksy, much of contemporary artistic culture seeks to deconstruct or reject the canon. Prior to the invention of the camera, artists were employed to create visual representations and tracings of the world. As technology developed, we lost the need for realism and instead artists began to engage with their innermost thoughts and feelings, creating abstract and individual views of the world. And this is what they want you to see– each piece is personal, shaped by the viewer as much as the artist. Your feelings are as vital as the person who put paintbrush or body or any other crazy means to canvas. With this in mind, contemporary art is more democratic than ever.
Take Mark Rothko’s large painterly rectangles on canvas. It’s the kind of art that people snort at, proclaiming ‘Anybody could paint that!’, but the very essence of his work is that it is a spiritual experience, transportive for the viewer. Rothko knew his job in the artistic canon well, saying
‘I realize that historically the function of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint them, however ... is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human.’
It seems that there are some eternal truths: the art market will always be incredibly saturated, and will always be driven by money. But despite the money, the pomp, and the gallery culture, contemporary artists show us that art can still be a democratic experience. After all, most galleries are free– we can enter, we can engage, and we can find inspiration. Many artists seek to share their work, and with it, open up a dialogue. If you believe in looking past the tradition, there is still joy to be found in contemporary art.
This begs the question: with such an engrained link between art and wealth, are we now simply creating art for art’s sake? Well, a lot of contemporary artists actively seek to reject this culture that has been forced upon them. Think of Banksy’s ‘Girl with a Balloon/Love is in the Bin’, the 2006 painting which self-destructed using a pre-installed shredder in 2018. The piece had sold for over a million pounds only moments before shredding, and in doing so, Banksy had made a statement about the value, both culturally and monetarily, of art in the current market. While his statement was an attempt to defy these standards, it resulted in the piece gaining value, eventually being priced at almost £23 million.
The trend cycle of television keeps on turning and as the draw of an over-saturated superhero market dwindles, screens are welcoming back the return of a king. 2022 has seen audiences entering The Dreaming in Netflix’s ‘The Sandman’; Returning to King’s Landing in ‘House of the Dragon’; and exploring the shores of Numenor in Amazon’s ‘The Rings of Power’, all in the space of a few months. The casts, the character names and the budgets of these new fantasy productions are all bigger than ever before, but are they necessarily better?
Compared to the rigid, lore heavy high fantasy of ‘House of the Dragon’ and ‘Rings of Power’, ‘The Sandman’ moves fast, cramming in action and characters just like the 90s fan favourite DC comic. The show does everything in its power to show its devotion to the original: Each episode shares the title and plot of a comic issue and many scenes are taken shot for shot from Dringenberg’s illustrations. Sadly, in its quest to stay anchored to the source material with complete earnestness, ‘The Sandman’s’ tone can come across dislocated. The atmosphere in the darkly inked pages of the comic falters in the light of bigbudget TV. Tom Sturridge is the perfect ethereal Dream, but in some scenes he looks more like the fifth member of MCR than an omnipotent immortal. Desire, Lucifer and the episodes ‘24/7’ and ‘The Sound of Her Wings’ are total highlights but they stand beside the unintentionally silly. It’s hard to explain to someone new to ‘The Sandman’ that no, Merv Pumpkinhead is not meant to be funny and no, you shouldn’t be giggling at him. The show is darker than some of Gaiman’s other fare and the horror aspects are strong, but the show is unsure of what genre it wants to land in. With a second series yet to be announced, it is unclear whether we’ll get to see ‘The Sandman’ really find its footing.
Sandman isn’t the only one contending with the long shadows of its predecessor either, though ‘House of the Dragon’ arguably has the easier job. The final series of its companion show, ‘Game of Thrones’, had a famously poor final innings that left even the most devout feeling sour. First impressions have been better for the current run but it is missing some of that Tyrion wit. The show is overwhelmingly serious, sometimes misguidedly so. ‘House of the Dragon’ has already had it’s share of misogyny and graphic births, in a franchise which already has poor form with the treatment of women and the topics of sexual assault and abuse. However when fears were raised again, the showrunners defended the scenes in the name of ‘historical accuracy’. It’s pretty hard to not be angered at the insistence on depicting the abuse of vulnerable people for the sake of realism, in a show which sees the 11th
Doctor in a bad wig flying around on a CGI dragon’s back. But both shows are metaphorical hobbits to the Smaug that is ‘The Rings of Power’. With each episode boasting a $58.1 million price tag, Amazon is pulling out all the stops to have the series match up to Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning trilogy. Speaking as a truly dedicated Tolkien fan, there is a lot to feel conflicted about. Firstly, no story, no matter how good, can be fully separated from its production. Not only does a billion-dollar TV show seem wrong in the current global climate, but it is made worse after realising that the show has become notorious billionaire tax-avoider Jeff Bezos’ pet project. Each aspect of the show is as conspicuous a show of wealth as any media has the right to be and while it makes for beautiful telly, it doesn’t always sit right morally. The real sadness is that ‘Rings of Power’ is making some real strides in representation for people of colour in fantasy and finally bringing the great women of Tolkien to screen. The show is working hard to find the heart of Middle-earth, but is going against the pantheistic message of its creator in the process.
High fantasy may be all grandeur right now but watching these new million-dollar productions, I can’t help missing the shows of my younger years.
I grew up on a diet of ‘Merlin’ and 2010s ‘Doctor Who’, where the costumes were questionable and the CGI even more so. They were never focused on aesthetics, or even being taken very seriously, but on giving viewers a fun, daft and lovable 45 minutes to escape into. Watching the fantasy renaissance, I can’t help but realise I would trade all this extravagance for one light-hearted romp. Hey, even ‘Lord of the Rings’ needed Tom Bombadil.
So, how was Freshers’ week for you? Heaven, Hell, or perhaps somewhere in between?
For autistic students like me, the hype surrounding Freshers week can induce a particular kind of anxiety, starting weeks before as a distant hum, becoming louder and harder to push away as the
week approaches.
The overall concept of Freshers’ itself is already inaccessible: a week of constant partying, drinking, large scale events in rooms full of strangers, changes in routine and sensory-hostile environments– the list is endless. Naturally, moving to a completely new place is a daunting experience for anyone, neurodiverse or not. There is so much felt but that goes unsaid– behind the chaos of Freshers’ events is a room full of insecure, nervous and intoxicated teenagers.
Before I arrived, the thought of meeting my new flatmates was terrifying, but I hadn’t anticipated the constant and debilitating FOMO that I felt over the course of the week. I was so anxious to bond with my flatmates and dreaded being perceived as the ‘weird’ introverted kid all over again. Some events they were going to together were my idea of hell; things like ‘UV Light Party’ would’ve been a sensory nightmare for me. Despite my spiralling anxieties around my flatmates’ approval, I realised that me spending one night in when they were going out, was not going to destroy the friendships we’d formed in the course of a few days. What Fresher’s week taught me is that you end up bonding in the strangest of circumstances: drunk conversations in the kitchen at 3am, collectively dying of freshers’ flu, and, my personal favourite, accompanying each other on a scenic trip to Glasgow Royal Infirmary at 2am.
My own method of getting through it was to just power through and force myself into going out every night. Whilst this is a shared experience for many freshers, most people are able to gradually recover in the days or weeks subsequent. For my neurodivergent pals out there, it doesn’t quite work the same. Forcing myself to persevere when I’m mentally and physically exhausted means I feel like I’m constantly playing a game of catch up with my brain, even two weeks later. To me, this begs the question: Is the burnout worth it?
So, what could Glasgow Uni do to help? Some universities have schemes in place to support neurodivergent students in their transition to university, such as allowing them to arrive a few days early to familiarise themselves with their surroundings, or creating mentoring schemes, groups and safe spaces to meet other neurodivergent students. Whilst it obviously is not the university’s role to dictate how freshers socialise with one another, they do have a degree of responsibility in making Freshers’ Week accessible.
The numbers of diagnosed autistic students in the UK is increasing but one study showed that the degree completion rate is still on average 10 times less than that for a neurotypical student.
Despite this, I don’t want my take on Freshers’ Week to come across as solely negative. Through the chaos I met so many different, amazing people and thoroughly enjoyed many events and nights out. Moving to a new city was of course daunting, but I have found Glasgow to be welcoming, inclusive and vibrant.
Sophie Taylor-Davies she /her @sxphie .tdI will not give into lost love; my mother’s harsh edges will not scrape me
Impenetrably morphed into a sculpture unrecognisable.
Where you are hard, I will be soft in protesting reclamation.
Where you scream, I will whisper
Into the Moon, gentle sunrise’s witness, that watches
The fractals of your empire tear apart in gentle fissions
That I stick my fingers into, pry out the last morsel
Of my heart’s own kindness stolen from me.
Faithful, my heart beats on where yours never was I dress in a gas mask of hope as everything you are
Crumbles to choking ruins that creep inside my trachea,
And the abusive marble tomb that I once called Home crumbles to empty
Dust.
Glasgow Zine Library is immediate and unassuming. It sits just off a junction in Govanhill in a quiet area populated by tenements in various hues of brown, South Asian bridal boutiques, off-licences, halal meat shops, Pakistani sweet shops and continental grocers. For lovers of collection and archive as broader categories, both the library and its surroundings are examples of how places can embody these concepts, as locations where people, objects and texts sit side by side, converse and collide. The library space itself is small, a single room painted dark green, contrasted with the possibilities implied by the shelves of slender zines, and the large table and seating area by the window. When I visited to look around and interview Martha, the Programme Coordinator, we sat and spoke in two mossy green armchairs at the back of the room.
In the foreword to ‘Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism’, Andi Ziesler writes that (feminist) zines are part of an ‘ongoing conversation.’ From visiting Glasgow Zine Library, it became apparent to me that this conversation takes many forms, and more closely resembles a network than a dyadic interaction. Hands cutting paper to make badges at a workshop, zines overlapping and nestling, glancing over to see what someone else is reading, being drawn repeatedly to a shop sign, lyric, or patch of pavement and wanting to lift, handle, stick and print those things onto paper to share with others– these are all ways in which we can speak to, and through, one another.
programming is similarly one of co-production, with much of the collection being donated, and the focus of events being to build relationships and provide opportunities and spaces for people to pursue the things they are passionate about. When I asked Martha about her favourite produced event, she spoke about a partnership in 2021 with Glasgow Artists’ Moving Image Studios, in which outdoor screenings of local short films were staged outside Govanhill Picturehouse, with the programming done by young people interested in film programming. One of the films projected featured the Picturehouse itself, in a multi-layering of meaning evoking the cut and pasted paper layers of a zine.
Engaging more deeply with the radical tradition of zine making is one of the areas which Martha mentions as wanting to develop in the library's practice moving forward.
As the political landscape, both globally and within the UK, becomes increasingly antagonistic towards working people, minorities, and those who are disabled and/or neurodivergent, it has become crucial to strengthen networks of connection and reappropriate skills, knowledge and practices which enable people to survive and live with autonomy. Thus, the appetite for independent and self publishing has grown, with the Covid-19 pandemic seeing the library’s collection grow significantly as people sought to connect and share stories as a means of navigating lockdown.
this egalitarian quality means that zines are inherently experimental and innovative, as their creators can translate their experiences onto the page without the filtering and editing of traditional print media. Rosa, the qmunicate Features Editor and a volunteer at the library, recounted to me an encounter on a shift where she spoke to someone who was making a zine about dyslexia, in which misspelt words were kept as such. As she would elaborate later in our conversation, zines can function as memories or scrapbooks, containing the being of those who make them within their pages.
This concept of ‘for, and by’ has a long historical precedent in zine culture with publications such as the post-punk second wave feminist ‘Shocking Pink’, which was published between the early 1980’s and 1990’s, establishing a precedent of young women speaking frankly about the topics of abortion, contraception, masturbation, race and lesbianism. This rebelled against contemporary mainstream magazines such as Jackie, aimed at teenage girls. Another contemporaneous zine with the same mission was ‘Feminaxe’, an anarcho-feminist newspaper from Brixton which addressed ‘international and local political issues, with a strong emphasis on intersectionality.’ In my conversation with Martha, she mentioned the acquisition of such historically significant zines as a new priority for the library.
Indeed, the library is far from static, rippling with the energy of emergent possibilities. Rosa says that in her experience, 'a lot of people don't know what zines are.' In a similar vein, Pagan Kennedy writes, in her 1995 memoir ‘Zine’, of her first experience of zine making as a process: ‘How had I forgotten that thisthis absorbed, tongue-between-the-teeth, little girl feeling- was the essence of art?’. Both quotes speak to the possibilities of the zine as a form– in its relative obscurity and naive authenticity, it enables people to seize and shape it in their own image. What surprised me the most about my visit to the library was how much I related to so many of the zines in its collection, with such titles as 'Coming Out Autistic' and 'A Blaze of Candles on my Cake: growing old when you're bisexual, black and disabled'.
All literature functions in some way as a mirror to the reader, but zines, in their fractal intimacy, are like the tiny mirrors you find embroidered into clothes or decorative boxes, reflecting small parts of the reader which would otherwise go unexamined.
The physical library space functions as a reference library, an events space and, more broadly, as Martha put it, a space to embody ‘zine culture.’ Zine culture is inherently collaborative and thus radical, taking the form of a network in which information and enthusiasm can be transmitted and circulated, providing important channels for ensuring survival, resistance, and the finding of ‘validation and reassurance’, as Ziesler put it. This occurs in myriad ways: Martha recounted stories of groups of friends forming spontaneous reading groups to discuss the zines they were reading, people emailing to share interests such as the genre of RPG zines, and the library’s zine making workshops with community groups such as YCSA (Youth Community Support Agency) and incarcerated people in Barlinnie Prison. The library’s approach to sourcing zines and events
Zines differ from commercial print media in that they do not pander to the whims of the profit incentive, and are often produced, distributed and consumed by one person, or a small group. In this way the binary between producer and audience is reshaped and the hierarchical structure of traditional print media circumvented. The sex worker-led collective SWARM, for example, created ‘BLOCKED: A sex worker's guide to stalking and harassment’. This resource is available specifically to sex workers, containing information and resources on ‘digital security, setting boundaries with clients, legal definitions of different kinds of stalking/harassment and where you can turn for help.’ A fundamental quality of zines has always been that they function as a medium through which people can take the sharing of information into their own hands. Furthermore,
Twin Peaks posters over the bed, polaroids of friends on the walls, record player blaring Nirvana, Mary Janes sprawled on the floor: all things found in my room in 2020, and my mum’s room in 1993. She always used to tell me how strange she found it that what’s classified as ‘cool’ now was just standard then–
why are all my friends and I so obsessed with the past?
We are all familiar with nostalgia: a longing for the past, maybe even a sense of displacement rooted in lack of satisfaction with the present. Nostalgia today is more common than ever, with our generation being gifted (or cursed, depending on how you look at it) with endless little time machines to transport us wherever and whenever we want. Through photos or videos, songs or movies, we can travel to the past easier than ever before. Maybe that’s why our generation so often experiences the phenomena of ‘anemoia’, or in Tumblr terms: ‘I was born in the wrong generation.’ Anemoia refers to a sense of belonging and wishing to return to a past that you have never actually lived in.
But if we have no memories to associate with a specific time, yet can still feel such a strong sense of belonging, anemoia must root itself in a sense of cultural or aesthetic belonging associated with a specific period. As a history student, I spend a fair share of my time in the past, and I experience this when engaging with past art, medias, and cultures. However, I also know that the past could be just as shit as the present. Does time then act as a filter, sieving out negative elements of the past, leaving an idyllic world of ‘authentic’ and ‘original’ culture that we can take shelter in because it can’t be changed? Really then, is Anemoia not a strain of nostalgia, but an outlet of aesthetic desire for the things we love, real beauty locked in time?
To engage so closely with the past, yet always remain separated by screen, headphone, or page, does this risk anemoia turning into a bitter rejection of the present? Do we ruminate and mourn something we never knew only because it's anything apart from what we have right now, looking through the window at the view but never to actually experience first-hand the other side of the glass? Perhaps this explains our generational obsession with categorising ourselves: from making Pinterest boards to trends of ‘types’ of girls on TikTok, our generation seem to have a baseline desire to have the aesthetic be present in our lives, and to be self-evident and original. Does this tendency to categorise ourselves and our styles into ‘genres’, ‘types’ and ‘eras’ then come as an attempt to participate in the culture we feel we have ‘missed’? Reliving and immersing ourselves in the past allows us to become cultural agents, as opposed to passive ‘bandwagoners’ on yet another trend.
Regardless of the reasons behind it, anemoia– ‘I was born in the wrong generation’, is stupid. The beauty of culture is that it is meant to be spread, integrated, personalised and edited. Once it exists, it always exists, so instead of ruminating over the past, we should continue to edit our presents to be compatible with the people we want to be.
@melissafriel_
Melissa Friel she/her
The name ‘Jean-Luc Godard’ brings to mind images of cigarettes and chic French girls, romantic Parisian cafes, and the faces of Anna Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Perhaps, to some, it may conjure thoughts about pretentiousness or film-school snobbery. His
‘Mono – it’s a lovely venue,’ starts Grace Petrie, swinging her guitar strap over her head.
‘There’s only one thing I can really say about it… it’s the American name for glandular fever, innit?’
It’s a fitting opening line for the gig to follow; a sincere compliment buried beneath a joke. Because that’s what makes Grace Petrie so special – she makes you laugh beneath your tears.
I’ve never been a person who does well with sincerity, either in real life or in music. I’m incapable of hearing Mitski’s whispered wailings or the opening acoustic chords of a Phoebe Bridgers song without hearing the disembodied voice of my grandma telling me to pull myself together. But we all need something to cry to, and for me, I found my sincerity the day I first heard ‘Black Tie’ by Grace Petrie. As Grace herself said from the Mono stage, everybody has a lonely teenager left somewhere within them (I say this as a wizened and world-wearied 20-year-old), and the lonely teenager that I in fact was at the time, frantically clawed onto the lyrics of the chorus:
'Cause I'm in black tie tonight Get a postcard to my Year 11 self In a Year 11 hell Saying everything's gonna be alright No you won’t grow out of it You will find the clothes that fit’
Well, this is my postcard to my year-11 self (or S4 for all you Scots), and I need you to know: one day you’re going to scream this line at the top of your lungs in the middle of Mono, and it will be well worth that text you sent to your manager telling him you couldn’t come in cause you had a very real case of flu.
Judging by the crowd entirely composed of folk-punk over30s, most of the readers of qmunicate may not be aware of Grace Petrie, and I think that’s a massive fucking shame, because everyone needs to hear her music (especially if you were ever a strange kid with a gender-non-conforming haircut, and while I don’t want to make assumptions about our readership, I’m betting at least some of you feel personally targeted right now…). She’s a butch lesbian protest singer, described in her own Twitter bio with the New Statesman’s
review ‘so sickeningly worthy I almost choked on my falafel burger’ – but don’t let that put you off. Despite what you’ve been led to believe, some leftist protest singers do have a sense of humour, and Grace’s comes through in her brilliant lyricism, delicately balancing heart-rending screams of loneliness and heart-healing expressions of love with rhymes so witty you can’t help but smile. She follows up the above tear-jerking chorus with ‘And the images that fucked ya/were a patriarchal structure’ – a line she encourages the crowd to sing, proudly declaring it to be ‘the best thing she’s ever written’ (a title I personally think goes to rhyming ‘the hard times, they will never overcome us’ with a promise to always keep her vegan girlfriend ‘in houmous’ in ‘The Vegan Song’, but I don’t blame her for struggling to choose a greatest line from her impressive repertoire).
Grace herself is an electrifying performer, perfectly riding the outpouring of emotion with lively anecdotes and criticisms of her own lyrics, taking the piss out of anything that strays too close to whining long before the crowd can think to do so. She shares the stage with folk performer Ben Moss, a man who seemingly can play any instrument, whipping out mandolin after guitar after fiddle after accordion, all while providing back-up vocals – Grace encourages requests from the crowd, safe in the knowledge that Ben can play literally anything we might throw at them. They toss banter back and forth, at each other and the crowd, teaching us call-and-response sections to bolster the choruses, a beautiful reciprocity flowing between us as we all join the song – the low stage and naturalistic lighting of Mono removing the usual enforced-separation between artist and crowd. It’s the perfect venue for such an intimate folk gig – with the stage decorated by swags of fairy lights festooning the white-washed wall beyond the bareboards stage, and a slightly Elrond-esque sketched portrait staring down from the domed ceiling, plus a large chunk of the crowd having opted to wear waistcoats, it’s no wonder I ended up shouting ‘We should have been born hobbits!’ to my friend over guitar-strums. It takes a particularly special gig to transform a cynical trad-Goth into a resident of the Shire, but that’s the power Grace carries in her lyricism and her emergency back-up guitar. Sometimes, a songwriter is capable of unleashing pure magic – and if you’ve ever felt even a little bit alone, Grace’s is a magic that you need to hear.
films seem to be made for people that know cinema, appreciated by many of us largely for their aesthetic value. Regardless of the many various opinions on the work of Godard, there is no doubt that we have recently lost an icon of filmmaking.
The pioneer of French New Wave passed away aged ninety-one on the 13th September, by assisted suicide. “He was not sick, he was simply exhausted,” said an unnamed source, quoted in the French paper Libération. It seems to be a dignified, peaceful way to leave a world where your legacy will not be soon forgotten. Godard had dedicated his life to breaking the rules of the cinema and searching for new methods, a role that has earned him a mourning period in film classes around the world. He is associated with the French cinematic movement La Nouvelle Vague, which aimed to capture French life at both its most mundane, and its most wild. Elements of the French New Wave used skilfully by Godard include unusual editing and moving cameras, show most notably in À bout de Souffle (1960). Godard and his group of young filmmakers did not try to make editing invisible. They wanted audiences to be aware that they were watching a film, a highly stylised, carefully constructed piece of art. In this way, Godard is remembered as a rule-breaker, rejecting the conventions that had governed cinema in previous decades.
I am not a film student nor filmmaker; the technical aspects of Godard’s work were admittedly lost on me until I did my research. I always found the dialogues distant, perhaps because of the poorly-translated English subtitles, so it was the beauty of his shots, the existentialism and the romance, that drew me in and compelled me to write about Godard. That stylishness and effortless cool. I don’t know if he was a ‘good’ man, or if that flippant approach to female characters in his movies was a thread drawn from his real life. His revolutionary contribution to filmmaking is what interests me.
If our readers have not yet explored the films of Godard, here are a few to begin with. The noir-inspired film that kick-started his career is ‘À bout de Souffle’, a crime drama about an impulsive petty thief and his American lover. ‘Chinoise’ (1967) is one for those interested in political theory, a witty story of Maoist university students in Paris. Another gem is ‘Pierrot le Fou’ (1965), in which an unhappy man leaves his bourgeois lifestyle for a life of crime and excitement. Godard wasn’t alone in his ground-breaking contributions to French cinema. If these films generate an interest in French New Wave, then his contemporaries, such as Agnes Varda and Eric Rohmer, are definitely worth exploring.
Jean-Luc Godard is truly an iconic name within film history, a name that had a powerful role in 20th century cinema. His original approach to cinema as an art form has served as inspiration for modern figures such as Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese. While the picture of French life that Godard’s films painted may no longer be as accurate as it was in the 60s, his work remains loved and admired decades later.
As soon as I turned 18, I downloaded Tinder. Lots of my friends already had a profile before they were of age, so it just seemed like the imminent move for me. I’d heard from my friends about various wacky trysts they’d enjoyed, one of whom ended up staying at a guy’s North London flat for an intense two days before never hearing from him again. I wanted to share in the spoils of what seemed like such frivolous fun, something that would give me some currency of my own to exchange when people divulged their funny hookup stories. Dating apps deliver express hookups to your front door in exchange for the minimal effort on your part of some formulaic, crude flirting. At first, it never occurred to me that it could be used for anything more serious than hookups.
Even one of my friends who I’d say uses Hinge in a more earnest way, has confessed to me that she usually cancels on dates right before they happen, or ‘ghosts’ people that she’s been talking to online. I reassured her that it was nothing to feel guilty about– after all, she doesn’t actually know them. The rise of the ‘ghosting’ phenomenon is surely a symptom of online interaction– the flippancy of talking online with someone, the same sweet anonymity that emboldens us to be more ‘to the point’ is also something that is a sinister barrier to true intimacy. Two complete strangers talking means it's low-risk: you feel less tethered and responsible towards the person, as opposed to if you met someone through mutual friends and are likely to bump into them again. The lack of consequences might allow for a freer dating experience, but also one that is less likely to go anywhere.
Perhaps when talking to someone online you feel that they are less ‘human’. Commenting on someone’s physical attractiveness is something quite common on dating apps (being one of the only things you can comment on when speaking to a stranger online), and less frequent in real life. The other person’s lack of tangibility perhaps encourages us to treat them as a one-dimensional image, something we’re less willing to want to get to know. This is not to mention the whole swiping left or right on someone, something I’ve never been able to conceptualise as anything other than ‘shopping for people’. Filtering your potential matches with things like distance is part of the broader internet convenience model, something that may sound like a good thing but I find slightly Black Mirror-esque. Does this mean that we are becoming less patient when it comes to finding someone? If we’re limiting our searches to whoever falls within a mile radius from us, are we limiting our chances for meaningful connection with people outside of that filter? Upon discovering online
dating, I felt shocked at the amount of matches I was getting, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t slightly euphoric. But seeing how easy potential romance is to come by surely only cheapens its value.
The dating landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. My grandparents married at 20, my grandmother already pregnant with my mum and feeling a need to get hitched so she could escape the shame levelled against her by her rural Irish Catholic community. Since then, multiple movements of women’s liberation and the lessening grip of religion’s hold on society has resulted in a culture where marriage is seen as optional, with more open-mindedness towards non-conventional arrangements such as civil partnerships and polyamory. Most of my friends in long-term relationships admit that they don’t see themselves staying with that one person forever. The days of writing letters to your husband at war are gone, and texting doesn’t seem to fill the void I can’t count the number of couples I knew who didn’t stand the testaments of lockdown.
To yah Jane St oker she/herIn her new single, Mörmaid creates a delicate, intimate environment, where her delicate vocals are at the centre of a shifting world of silky synths. Do these whispers bring something fresh – or are they sweet nothings?
Over the last half-decade or so, several artists have challenged the overbearing brashness with which much electronic pop has conducted itself – almost entirely parallel to the development of “hyperpop”, artists such as LUMP and Jenny Hval have focused on using soft, subtle soundscapes, and equally delicate vocal stylings, to convey surprisingly powerful and sometimes incisive lyrics that focus upon selfhood, love, and trauma. Mörmaid is the
latest figure to emerge within this canon with ‘We Love We Dive’, a six-minute love song with subtle songcraft that breaks further from the rock and pop tradition than her peers.
Online dating apps can be seen as a way to keep up with the changing nature of romance. I remember my initial horror at hearing that my Dad went on a Tinder date– it felt like something that belonged to my generation, not his. But perhaps online dating apps can help promote the idea that everyone deserves to find love, in whatever form it comes. After all, it proves to have a lot of success as a queer space, helping people who lie outside of heteronormativity to find each other. I’ve discussed how online dating apps can cheapen the value of romance, but on the other hand, perhaps they only serve as emblems of a changing definition of romance and love. The rigidity and permanence of marriage and long-term relationships from our grandparents’ day have softened, and the common attitude towards relationships now seems to be something that can serve as a fun addition to our lives, rather than something that we need in order to feel complete.
Someone doesn’t quite fit the bill? Onto the next.
‘We Love We Dive’ begins with Mörmaid’s vocals taking centre stage, introducing us to the thread that maintains the song’s structure. It’s an arresting beginning; while she is certainly not the first to take this approach, introducing the work in relative silence is a move that contradicts much of pop-music convention, in an age of catchy hooks, punchy rhythms, and instant gratification. Following this, Mörmaid at first employs something resembling a verse-chorus dichotomy. Hypnotic, oscillating patterns lull the audience into a false sense of serenity, broken by sparser, but bass-heavy, verses that feel heavier thanks to the contrast. After a quieter section that leads into a weighty near-silence, the earlier dialectic is synthesised into a cohesive whole, avoiding more traditional, melodic songwriting in favour of a textural, layered catharsis.`
‘We Love We Dive’s structure is compelling but its sparse nature creates a sense of detachment – it feels at once as if the listener is being embraced, and held at arms’ length; in this sense, it is a love song that captures the push and pull of modern intimacy. The use of reduced instrumentation in some passages enhances the lusher, busier sections, making them feel warmer, and means that Mörmaid can accomplish in a delicate manner what many artists cannot achieve with a weightier sound. However, this persistently ethereal nature does make it a difficult song to connect with – like the undine on the single’s cover, and indeed romance in the internet age, ‘We Love We Dive’ is as slippery as it is beautiful.
Overall, ‘We Love We Dive’ is a strong statement piece that gives credence to a new voice within electronic pop canon. While possessing some clear stylistic influences from her genre contemporaries, Mörmaid is set apart from her murmuring peers by her less immediate approach to sound and composition, which conjures both the intimacy and distance of love.
A hot pink wave could potentially hit academic institutions across the country this Autumn. Students may have already spotted the brightly coloured posters around campus bringing attention to the University and College Union (UCU)’s latest campaign: UCU Rising.
The campaign allows union members to vote on whether they want to strike on several various issues facing academics in the U.K. A similar vote was held in November 2021, which led to a series of strikes over the academic year. This was a disaggregated ballot, meaning individual institutions chose if they wanted to strike. However, this time around, UCU’s strike ballot is aggregated, meaning that if a threshold of 50% for a yes vote is passed, every university and college that has participated in the vote is entitled to go on strike. It’s important to remember, however, that strike action is not necessarily the goal here. It is the threat of a nationwide strike, as opposed to individual and localised ones, that will give the union a much stronger and more powerful voice in negotiations with employers.
Why exactly is UCU in dispute with employers? There are two primary disputes that lecturers have been asked to vote on. The first of these disputes is fairly complex but regards pay and working conditions, including the increasing casualisation of the workforce and a pay rise to match inflation. The second relates to staff pensions due to recent cuts to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS). The USS is the main pension scheme for academics in Britain, and despite strike action over several years by UCU members in institutions across the UK, the scheme received significant cuts in April of this year. On their website, UCU state that this ‘will see a typical lecturer lose at least 35% from their guaranteed retirement income, which for some will rise as high as 41%.’ Years of studying and precarious conditions mean that many academics do not have salaried jobs until at least their late twenties or early thirties. As a result, a good pension is a very important benefit of the job.
It is easy to sit in a lecture or seminar and see the person teaching you as someone who is privileged, comfortable, and in secure employment, but this is not the case for increasing numbers of lecturers. UCU estimates that nearly 54% of academic staff are on insecure contracts, with this figure being disproportionately comprised of younger academics, women and people of colour. This is the result of a practice called casualisation: where insecure contracts with no fixed hours become the norm. Casualisation leaves many academics in a very difficult position- they have no job security and face an ever-increasing workload, sometimes only paid by the hour (and in some cases even on zero-hour contracts).
Towards the end of October, staff at UofG, as well as at countless other universities, will wait with baited breath for the result of the UCU Rising vote. But staff shouldn’t be the only ones to pay attention to these results. If academics continue to work under these conditions, it is students’ education that is at risk.
As a queer, nonbinary, working-class, disabled person, my list of marginalized identities reads like a shopping list. As such, I’ve been involved in politics through necessity, not education, from a young age, and have had my fair share of run-ins with less than pleasant members of the political world (one particularly interesting occasion being the time someone said I was ‘lost like a **** in a sewer’). However, one thing that I’ve noticed that all sides of the political spectrum share is a love for protests and activism, with in-person action being seen as the Holy Grail of protest. Online, people are quick to throw around jargon, and there is one term that is becoming increasingly common: ‘armchair activism.’ But what does this mean?
The term ‘armchair activism’ refers to activism that can be done without moving much, or even leaving one’s armchair, hence the term. This could be organising online events, using TikTok to explain political theory, starting and contributing to discussions on Twitter – the list goes on. These are all relevant, and often necessary, parts of the political sphere (how would you spread word about protests without using things like Instagram infographics?). However, the term is often colloquially used as an insult, implying that an activist is not doing ‘enough’– that their activism is useless because they are not out in the outside world holding a picket sign and a megaphone. It has a lot to do with the rise of terms like ‘chronically online’ to describe someone involved in social issues on the internet, and ‘go touch some grass’ as a way of telling somebody to go into the real world and see things for themselves, which raises the issue: is the online world not every bit as real as what we can experience outside our doors?
Ailbhe Murphy she/her @Ailvhe
Take the Covid-19 pandemic, for example. Although in-person protests still occurred, they were much fewer and more far between than they would’ve been in a pre-pandemic environment, and almost everybody had to move some aspect of their lives to the virtual sphere, whether that was working from home, attending online classes, or networking with their friends purely through social media. People became a lot more aware of social issues: rainbow posters were stuck on windows, infographics from feminism to BLM were shared across a range of platforms, people banged pots and pans on their front doorsteps to signal their appreciation for an underpaid and extremely overworked NHS. Yet how was all of this organised, if outside contact was so limited? Through DMs, Zoom calls and social media posts.
Although most Covid-19 restrictions are now lifted, there are still those among us for whom being confined to home is the norm. For disabled people, ‘Stay at Home’ was not an emergency pandemic policy, but a way of life. Many disabled people live in the shadows of society, unseen at pride parades because there are too many people for mobility aid usage, unheard at protests because it’s too far away and the route is inaccessible. Although well-intentioned, the truth is that many able-bodied protest organisers simply forget about this marginalised
group of society. Thus, online activism is a crucial part of activism and without it an entire community, mistreated by the Government and left out of even their own advocacy, would simply fade into silence, unable to protest ableist policies or inform anybody about the ways in which change is needed.
Armchair activists have formed entire communities and had a huge impact without even leaving their homes, and that deserves commendation.
In 2018, British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor said, ‘artists are both deeply relevant and also completely irrelevant’. If we understand art as merely an aesthetic entity, then its primary function is to be observed. A pragmatist might see art as providing nothing more than the pleasure one can similarly obtain from looking at a perfectly organised bookshelf or invoked by their favourite colour. Something that can conjure specific feelings within an individual, yes, but has little power to change society in the way science and technology supposedly can. However, such a view fails to acknowledge the importance of art as a form of communication. Art’s visual essence evokes a pathos that encourages more profound feelings and deeper reflections than science or statistics ever could. Thus, art may be irrelevant until it is reflected upon, at which point its importance within various realms of society seems very powerful indeed.
In our present context of impending ecological catastrophe, the pathetic communicative power of art seems more necessary than ever. Despite climate scientists, heavily armed with statistical data about the devastating consequences of climate inaction, universally rallying for systemic change, their battle to prevent ecological collapse seems to be a failing one. The very existence of COP26, the 26th climate summit since 197 nations signed an environmental pact, is evidence enough to convey the inadequacy of science to motivate climate-conscious behaviour. The reasons for this inadequacy can be traced back to the essence of science itself as largely an epistemological doctrine; the role of science is primarily to uncover new information. This information, however, remains largely inaccessible to non-scientists. It is thus the role of cultural institutions, bodies for art and literature, to disseminate this information throughout broader society. Art is the intermediator through which science is translated into cultural significance.
Art’s role in climate activism is made more necessary by its inherent links with nature– which has been the artist’s muse for centuries. Throughout history, all forms of art have not merely been associated with nature but existed in tandem with it.
From the poetical works of Wordsworth to Blake’s paintings, the Romantic Movement seems to be the most apparent nature movement in art.
Whilst the Thames slushed with bile and clouds choked like an old smoker on every inhale, Romantic artists illustrated glassy streams, turquoise skies and mountainous landscapes– the movement spawned as the antithesis to Western Industrialisation. Witnessing this rapid environmental destruction, Romantic artists willed the regeneration and respect of nature’s power, that power to both enrich and pulverise humanity. In 1800, the ecological artist emphasised the former, though now an emphasis on nature’s destructive power is imperative, fatefully so. Unlike the Romantic movement, modern climate-conscious art is embroiled with a new urgency– an urgency that emotionally manifests in fear and anger.
Whilst the modern climate movement is fuelled by fear and anger, the most valuable forms of activism invoke these mental states. The inherent capacity for art to evoke these kinds of responsive and reflective feelings within its observer makes art a fundamental vehicle for climate activism. The relevance of climate ‘artivism’ is dependent upon its ability to forcibly confront the observer with the reality of climate change. It’s ability to take root within the mind of the audience – either visibly in their imagination or through evoked feelings –so viewers have no choice but to reflect upon it. With reflection comes the possibility of action. Though science is necessary to inform relevant ‘artivism’, statistics and scientific reports fail to ensure this mental permanence. Science encourages a kind of observation without reflection that is not sufficient for action.
For fear of seeming to diminish the importance of science in climate activism, I must also emphasise the limits of art. Specifically, the limitations of any art that requires a kind of dissociative intro or extrospection to extract any meaning from the work. Art of this kind is even less accessible than ten thousand words of scientific jargon. Climate change does not exist as something sepa-
rate from us. Thus, any work (artistic or otherwise) that seeks to spotlight the significance of the crisis must not exist solely in any scientific, artistic or literary realm. As such, artwork capable of generating action must equally blend aspects of scientific fact and artistic poignancy.
One prominent artistic movement that inhabits this middle ground is the 2016 ‘Liberate Tate’ campaign. Bridging the gap between art and activism in every sense, the movement sought to end BP’s sponsorship of the Tate through a series of performative art pieces. These exhibitions pulled art back to its core naturality, yet distorted its Romantic origins to produce work that is at once jarring, grotesque and haunting.
The ‘Human Cost’ exhibition in April 2011 saw the animal victims of the 2010 BP oil spill disaster personified and symbolised by a performer coated in black oil and curled on the floor of the Tate Modern. The exhibition lasted 87 minutes, one for every minute of the spill. The exhibition was both disturbing by nature of its anomality and in its depiction of humans as being on the other side of the human and non-human binary. In so doing, observers are forced to acknowledge the paradoxical inhumane-human brutality we inflict upon other species in our selfish exploitation of a shared planet. Art, when used to communicate otherwise inaccessible statistics, is an imperative tool for climate activists. Art is the language best suited to promote action by forcing reflections from observation. When paired with scientific evidence, art is entirely relevant to the Climate Justice Movement
slowly i build a henge on my desk of model cars and pygmy-weave hessian tokens coded as sorries and given woefully smiling, head inclining, always bent to the right and saying, ‘sorry you felt you were damaged, but i will do it again, oh boy, i will’ and like a pitiful lapdog, i photograph the bruise on the neck, memorialise the stained blotchy cheek, a testament to a time i was weak.
i pick up smoking to be just like you and pore over ‘Daddy’ by sylvia too
‘Blonde’ isn’t quite the trainwreck, faux-feminist diatribe many claim it to be, but neither is it a particularly revelatory recount of the titular star’s life and inner turmoil, failing on most levels to deliver anything genuinely substantive.
Andrew Dominik’s latest effort in grappling with celebrity and its interweaving personae both on and off the screen is a film which finds itself caught between two extremes. It’s galvanised by a phenomenal performance from Ana de Armas, who embodies the role of Monroe with an eerie likeness as she’s thrust through various vignettes from the star’s life, but her own deeply affecting empathy often finds itself at odds with Dominik’s removed, dispassionate sense of voyeurism. Much of its runtime plays out in glossy resplendence but this internal strife dominates any opportunity to generate an effective throughline.
There’s certainly truth to the world it attempts to expose, but some of Dominik’s narrative choices ring so odd as to undercut the insight they offer, most notably the fact that the constant shifts in aspect ratio and vacillation from black and white to colour bare no real significance to the story other than replicating exact photographs from Monroe’s life.
Even ignoring some of Dominik’s more unsavoury comments in his interview with Christina Newland for Sight and Sound, the film ostensibly revels in an atmosphere of exploitation and trauma. Much of this is exacerbated by the fact that the film itself is a work of fiction, with fictitious events taking place alongside very real, iconic moments in the actress's life. And it’s in this regard that Dominik essentially maintains the same unscrupulous exploitation of a woman that he is supposedly condemning. Equally though, it’s also been the subject of some bizarre, bad faith criticism (mostly in the twitter and Letterboxd spheres), positioning it as a piece of pro-life propaganda, a critique which only holds up when the scenes in question are completely divorced from their narrative context.
But it also isn’t difficult to see where Dominik is coming from here. If the perceived life of Marilyn was essentially all spurious presentation, why not offer up an equally plausible interpretation of events? Conversely where the film primarily falters is not strictly in its exploitation of Norma Jean, but rather Dominik’s ultimately narrow and incurious assessment of her as a person. It’s a film so determined to dissolve the confines of public image and expose the truths lingering beneath the surface that it ends up robbing Monroe of much of her agency.
Still, I don’t buy this as completely unsympathetic to Mon-
roe. There are glimmers of warmth within the maelstrom that the film depicts - her relationship with Arthur Miller is rendered with genuine tenderness and frames itself within the context of her own often cast aside curiosity and intellect, and an early scene involving a threesome is genuinely erotic.
‘Blonde’ also forms an interesting other end of the spectrum to this year’s ‘Elvis’. Both frequently visually dazzling and idiosyncratic, but equally cheapened by director’s who seem more interested in historical revisionism. Luhrmann’s blatantly propagandistic incarnation of the ‘King of Rock and Roll’ seemed to garner little criticism for its dubious racial politics and conveniently omitted details of Presley’s relationship to Priscilla. In spite of criticisms against it, it seems audiences aren’t so bothered by the inherent make-believe of biopics as they are the particular message their cinematic language evokes.
Andrew Dominik clearly never set out to make a biopic about Marilyn Monroe, her accomplishments or a truthful account of her personal life, and I don’t think criticisms levelled at this aspect of the film are particularly useful. It is also worth noting though, that what he did make is an overlong, certainly exploitative experiment that attempts to divulge the nightmarish reality of living as an American myth executed with little genuine insight. He ends up making a pantomime of the life of a woman who would have wished for the opposite. There’s a part of me that has admiration for the brazen filmmaking on display here, especially as it manages to escape the creative bankruptcy of the Netflix sheen, but I also wouldn’t deny anyone any rage that they feel towards this film. Oftentimes genuinely enthralling, Dominik’s vision is ultimately a poorly realised one, and even though any other film made about Marilyn Monroe would also be a work of fiction, no matter its authorial intent, this one happens to be remarkably incurious and complacent.
‘Atopos’ is a unique videoclip that cannot leave anyone indifferent. It evokes an out-of-this-world feeling with its dark colour palette and fungi textures. The costumes and make-up, seemingly reminiscent of drag queens, are also quite extraordinary. It seems like Björk cannot do minimalistic or conventional approaches to music. I believe it is one of the reasons why she amasses such a fanbase of loyal listeners.
Björk has described ‘Atopos’ as ‘a good intro– kinda like ‘Fossora’s passport’’. Sonically a heavy bottom-ended bass world. We have 6 bass clarinets, punchy sub-drilling, nesting and digging us into the ground’. Released this past September, ‘Fossora’ is her most recent album. The title comes from an (invented) female variation of the latin fossore, which means ‘to dig’- digging into the influences of this new album, we observe that the Icelandic singer-songwriter has been deeply affected by the recent loss of her mother. With lyrics like “Thank you for staying while we
learn” the song seems to send a message of growth as continuous, a process which we must do hand in hand with those around us. The lyrics are compassionate, an olive branch to those who have a difficulty accepting that perfection is not a given.
I had never listened to Björk before, just knew that she was eccentric and that her music leaned towards club and dance beats. However, I do not think that ‘Atopos’ can be classified as a typical club song. Sonically, the steady beat and the constant notes from bass clarinets set the base for the song, but the lyrics are melodic, and the message is profoundly hopeful. By the end of the song, you can hear a more upbeat rhythm and the videoclip depicts a group of people dancing, connecting, having fun. She sings “Hope is a muscle that allows us to connect”. This emphasis on connection in such a disjointed world is a lovely message. Again, she reflects on how we must exercise our emotions like a muscle, that nothing comes perfectly naturally, a relief for anyone who feels alien to human emotions.
After seeing the videoclip of ‘Atopos’, I understand why she’s seen as a visionary artist. Whether you like it or not, it creates an impact because it’s like nothing you have ever seen before. Personally, I’m very intrigued about her new album and her as an artist and will be following her next steps very closely
Eva López-López she/they @eva.kronos
Twisting her tongue around a swirl of cherry-flavoured gelato and batting velvet-coated lashes, her gaze is fixed on you like a pinpointed bicycle light. Once again, she yearns to stain her everlasting blushes upon your sober face
- to breathe life into your every fleeting dream.
Molten tangerine skies are interrupted by iridescent flashes of light from carnival pop-up stalls and rundown cart-rides. The crowds are heavy on their feet, feasting their fever engines on a banquet of fired lust and side plates of reveries. A tug on your arm arrives you again at that old carousel where her golden ponies dance beneath a full moon. You feel the clouds of a familiar high settling over your mind; and yet, the jester is awakening, rearing to bounce from toe to toe in his three-point hat, and laughing as she fools you again.
You sit your heavy body on the leather saddle and fold four fat fingers over your surviving seeds of rationale. You allow yourself to soar, your head falling moonward to catch dopamine bubbles with your little ‘o’-mouth, eyes rolling like a million pennies in those snatching arcade robots. As the starry night undresses herself, she teases you with her changing constellations. She is a kaleidoscope of your ephemeral daydreams, a collection of your favourite film-scenes. She is lulling you to delirium with her sweet song. It seeps through the spaces between your fingers and plays string instruments on your lower stomach. But that familiar shock of melancholia finds you again. You flinch at the memory of nausea in the wake of cosmic nightmares and the disapproval from your dentist about the ‘candy cavities’ in your ‘formally well-kept’ molars. But there she is, rejoicing with crescent lips as she flicks the big red lever back and forth, back, and forth.
She is ever-changing, ever moving and mastering a modernity you haven’t so much as fingered yet. Just as you’re about to reach her, you have lost her to the dredges of recent history. Lately, the tenderness you feel for her sticks in your throat like a maraschino cherry; sweet but gorging, and oozing a liquid like your Father’s cupboard spirits. You cannot swallow it, only allow it to burn your mouth and block your voice to a sequence of incomprehensible murmurs. You know you are chasing this hellbent madwoman and her trail of tangled string-lights. You can feel your ugly skin sagging from her rotten fruit and ant-infested candies; the very same ones whose loss you’ve mourned in every mattress shared with a stranger’s lonesome stars. You have nothing left to give her because she can give you everything you ever wanted, then dance away on her golden pony to stage the next scene of her technicolour dream show.
When your heart settles to a softer melody’s tempo, you borrow two bikes with posh straw-baskets and watch the strands of her bleached hair find themselves in the evening’s breeze. You pass armies of sycamores and share kisses on the cobblestones of Little Green Street on the way home. The wind is licking your cheeks with breathy spits of rain, and she laughs at the way the tiny drops wobble and fall on your eyelashes, shocking you. She traces the buttons of your coat, moulding them into her heart-shaped candies and looks up at you with that same old tiny-dancer-pirate-smile. You remember the day she told you that ‘love is tolerating the little child drummer inside you’. You must be prepared for the noise to grow into a monstrous clangour or tire to the silence of religious mourning. You used to laugh, though it unsettled you slightly. But now, as you hear the tapping beat against your own ribcage, you revel in knowing that you and your lover are on the same team amidst this combat. You think you must be her anchor of understanding, in sharing such a profound suffering with her.
But again, she wraps her left leg back over the bicycle and rides away, without looking back, as your everlasting blushes stagger after her. You know that you are a crumb of her recent history, and she has already gone to serve as a fleeting dream to another naïve heart.
My friends are my favourite people in the world, and they often tell me that cooking is my ‘love language’– we spend a lot of time making food together, from lasagne to bean burgers and cupcakes. Cooking all together and making food for each other is our way of spending quality time and showing affection; you know, there really is no better place to gossip than a kitchen. This summer, I’d been a long time without seeing my friends, missing them, and I had been planning out the day that we would all reunite.
My sister and I had picked brambles from the roadside on the way to our village early in September, the best time for bramble picking, and had gathered a ton of them, so I decided to make jam. I wanted to make my friends something homemade and lovely, so for our first reunion we had a tea party with my jam, tea, and lots of toast. Making something from scratch, and almost totally for free, was genuinely delightful. It gave me a lot of joy to watch the berries I picked from my village become something so lovely that my friends could eat with butter.
Having never made jam before, I didn’t know what to expect at all. I had been picturing hours spent hunched over the hob like a witch, stirring a cauldron of congealed bloody fruit, a crazed look in my twitchy eye, but the jam making process was surprisingly (and slightly disappointingly, for the competitive me) easy. To all novice jam-makers: do not be daunted! I promise it will be delicious.
- As many brambles as you can handle! Just make sure it’s equal to the amount of sugar you put in.
- Caster sugar (the same measurement as your brambles)
- A little squeeze of lemon juice
- Some apple/orange (about 1/10th of the amount of brambles you have should be enough)
- Don’t forget some sterilised jars to put the jam in afterwards!
1. Gather up all your berries and give them a wash!
2. Chop up some apple, orange, or lemon. Brambles have low levels of pectin (the thing that makes jam all sticky), so it’s a good idea to add another fruit into the mix. I used some chopped up apple from my neighbour’s garden and the juice of a teeny lemon I found.
3. Pour in half of your fruit mix, then half the sugar, then repeat, so that you have equal layers of fruit and sugar.
4. Boil gently over a low heat for about an hour. Trust the process with this! I was kind of alarmed when it was looking a lot like fruit soup, with just whole brambles floating around in purple juice, but I swear it starts looking like real proper jam eventually.
5. Wait until your mixture has reduced a lot (a LOT a lot) then test to see if it’s ready by spooning a little of it on to a cold plate (I put mine in the freezer). Hold the plate at an angle, and if the blob of jam slides down suuuuper slowly, you’ll know your work is done.
6. After that, I spooned the hot jam into some warm jars that I’d sterilised by putting them in the oven for 15 mins at 110*C.
One piece of stock advice given to all students by parents, rectors and celebrity chefs who are all too old to feasibly remember their student experience, is ‘meal prep’. Grab all your oven trays, rice cookers and Tupperware because you are going to spend 2 hours making 7 portions of chicken, rice and veg on a Sunday night. But don’t worry! (they always claim) – you can ‘bring the flavour’ by adding a variety of shop bought sauces so not ‘every’ meal tastes like doing fifteen years for manslaughter in Barlinnie prison.
But that’s all nonsense. No sane person has consistently meal prepped every day of every week of every semester. No student is too busy nor too broke to only afford 2 hours a week to make a weeks’ worth of meals with under £10 worth of ingredients bought from Tesco.
To this I suggest a milder, less mechanistic way of saving time and money in the kitchen: leftovers. Making a big pot of something you love, whether that be pasta, soup, stir fry, stew or curry to eat a portion of, then squirrel the rest away for other times. This is a much more stable way to meal prep that allows freedom and spontaneity instead of the drudgery of a weekly schedule.
I am a serial leftover eater, but recently, things have changed. After three years of Covid chaos, I have finally moved in with friends with a reliable schedule and into a flat with a decent enough kitchen. Now I simply watch how, in anguish, my leftovers get eaten before they’ve made it to the fridge by two hungry flatmates. Well, not really in anguish. I’ve never had a time at university where homemade food is made and then shared at a table, but I can safely say that I enjoy it very much. It is a simple luxury to have the time, space and friends to occasionally share a meal around the table (even if I may not have a Tupperware box containing 2 metric litres of pasta to welcome me home from work anymore).
Below is a recipe for potato curry that is best made in a large batch and is shamelessly plagiarised from a TikTok food account. Initially described as Pav Bhaji, I think I have bastardised it so much that it can no longer be called by that name. Also note that none of these measurements are precise (I am not Delia
Smith, unfortunately), this is just what works for me. It is vegan and great for keeping in the fridge as leftovers or, as in my case, good fodder for hungry friends.
Potato Curry (4ish portions)
- 4 good sized potatoes diced into chunks - 4 salad tomatoes cut into eighths - An onion - 6 Cloves of Garlic - Ginger
- A good couple of handfuls of frozen peas - Coriander - Chilli powder - Garam Masala - Cumin - Turmeric - Tomato Paste - Half a lemon
1. Fry onions, garlic and ginger with a neutral oil in a large saucepan until they gain a little colour.
2. To that add potatoes, tomatoes, peas and boiling water. Then add plenty of salt. Make sure the water only just submerges the ingredients.
3. Cover and boil for 20 mins or when the potatoes become soft enough to mash.
4. Add a tablespoon or so of tomato paste and a healthy teaspoon of each spice.
5. Then mash (or blitz if you have a hand whizzer) to an agreeable consistency.
6. Bubble away on a low temperature while adding the lemon juice and chopped coriander.
7. Serve with bread rolls and enjoy!
