I hope you’ve all had a restful winter break. I spent most of mine with my family playing board games, doing puzzles, and watching old rom-coms. It was a quiet one but it was probably exactly what I needed. If you asked me at the time, I might have complained about being bored, but in hindsight I really just needed to be still for a moment. I think there’s almost something ceremonial or ritualistic about winter break boredom, and the way it slowly prepares you for the year ahead. It might feel excruitiating at the time – watching the days go by while your energy levels are at an all time low – but the abundance of time (even if it’s just for a week or two) also leaves room for introspection and reflection, particularly as New Year arrives. So even if this season is horrible in many ways (I’m looking at you weather god), it can also be a refreshing new start.
The lifestyle section of this issue explores these kinds of questions,with Ella Duff contemplating New Year’s Resolutions, Georgia McHaffie sharing a rundown of the best ways to enjoy the winter months, and myself considering the concept of Slow Living. Other highlights of the issue include Hannah Wylie’s expired film photos (as seen on the cover), Grace Murray’s feature on art curation and two fantastic creative writing pieces by Harvey Olden and Ailbhe nì Mhurhcu. You’ll also find several great reviews such as of the 2022 Great Western, written by Felix McIntyre and our very own music editor Rosie Lowndes, among many other fantastic pieces of writing.
I hope you like the issue as much as we enjoyed making it! Keep your eyes on our socials for future events, and in the meantime, please join us on our weekly meetings on Wednesdays at 5:30 in the 3rd floor QMU Board Room.
PS.I promise we’ll organise a poetry session in the park or something like that as soon as it gets sunny! Stay tuned. DS.
Dear qmunicate readers,
by Ursula Le Guin
“It’s a giant thought experiment and a cracking read about gender.” Reads a quote from Neil Gaiman on the back cover of my copy of the Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. This is high praise indeed from the mind behind some other pretty giant (and pretty brilliant) thought experiments like American Gods and Good Omens. But what exactly does he mean by “cracking read about gender”?
This certainly appears to be a left-field compliment for a novel that, at first glimpse, seems like a classic Science-Fiction adventure. The set-up is that an envoy, called Genly Ai, has been sent by a distant and highly advanced human government to an isolated planet and tasked with persuading it to join the seemingly intergalactic equivalent of the European Union. So far, so Star Trek-y. The planet, called Winter (or Gethern, as it is known to the inhabitants), is gripped by a torrid ice age, complete with sub-zero temperatures, regular snowfall and vast glacial landscapes that shapes the lives of both the sparsely populated peoples and the envoy throughout the novel.
Beside the weather, the distinctive feature of life on Winter which caught my, and obviously Mr Gaiman’s, interest is the ambisexual nature of its inhabitants. Getherians are both sexless and genderless human beings. There is no concept of male or female nor preestablished societal roles between the sexes. In fact, there’s no word in any of their languages denoting man and woman and no person is predestined for pregnancy at birth. What happens is that they each have a monthly cycle, which, twice monthly, they randomly assume gendered body parts to reproduce
(known as Kemmer). However, outside of Kemmer, there is no sex drive nor reproductive organs that can distinguish them from other Getherians.
Even outwith the frankly quite in-depth description of the Getherian reproductive system, Le Guin sketches out the implications of sexless population into a complex portrait of a genderless society that artfully intersects with the artic environment, into a seamless terrarium of human culture. Through the exploration of her extraordinary and (sometimes) outlandish world, Le Guin forces the reader to see through the eyes of the Getherians who, in their total ambisexuality, see the protagonist’s (and thus our own) sexed society as alien, absurd and ultimately perverted.
This feeds into the broader theme of cultural investigation and exchange that permeates the exactly 300-page novel. It itches the hidden inner Anthropologist inside all of us with the world’s customs, architecture, politics, folktales and even cuisine all vividly illustrated in an artful fashion that never fails to grasp the reader’s interest (a common stumbling block for many speculative fiction writers).
Meanwhile, the plot itself is well-crafted but quite thick, especially for readers new to speculative fiction. The vocabulary becomes quite Dune-esque at times as various unfamiliar places, organisations and character names are added to the mix. Fans may say that it adds to the “stranger in a strange world effect” of the novel (and I’m inclined to agree), but at some points it feels immersion breaking, especially when having to frantically turn back pages to recall the name of the minor territory the characters amble past or the light refreshment the protagonist is offered before an audience with a king. A wee glossary on your bookmark may not go amiss.
Realistically, though, this is only a minor flaw in what is otherwise an absorbing and thought-provoking novel. Le Guin’s masterful world building is certainly a feat to be experienced, not to mention her artful character development that shines worldly emotions through the fantastical and incongruous setting. I would highly recommend reading Left Hand of Darkness during the short but unbusy days of winter to escape into a vivid and challenging world, as the one outside the window slips into our own (but thankfully seasonal) ice age.
[Luke Hills - he/him]
Look up ‘#food’ online, and you’ll be greeted with a dizzying wall of fried, cheesy, and trendy dishes. That doesn’t sound too bad. Like many others, I actively crave this genre of cooking that can only be found online or at overpriced food trucks. The issue is trendy, but frankly impersonal, cooking. A bacon biscoff burger or bubble-gum freak shake does little to tell me about the food culture of European cities but speaks volumes on the Americanisation of our global food culture. And no, adding haggis to a burrito doesn’t make it Scottish - it makes it gross.
It’s the tendency to want everything to be new, popular, now that hints at a distinctly American style of consumerism. Food trends, like every other, are cyclical. This cycle is speeding up, and microtrends of foods are becoming obvious. What was once a process of diffusion of ingredients and ostracised food cultures into the mainstream has started moving too quickly to follow. But food isn’t clothing or furniture. In the everyday it shouldn’t be styled and modern, because sometimes you just want breakfast. At those points of simple craving, the lack of simple restaurants becomes abundantly clear. Maybe I’m naïve, but I want to eat something plain, but even that is impossible now.
A couple of years ago, I heard about the Cereal Killer Café in London. The thought of a café that served only cereal was intriguing, until I found out they charged £4.50 for a bowl! Then I got a bit angry. It was almost boring, yet they fell at the last hurdle. How could a bowl of cereal ever cost that much? Obviously, they must make profits but still... £4.50? And everything is priced in the same way; skill doesn’t matter, taste doesn’t matter, even location doesn’t matter. But does it have a churro in it? That’ll cost a weekly shop at Lidl. So even when the concept is fine, and there’s no cheese stuffed anywhere unholy, and no unnecessary modifications made to classic dishes (I’m looking at you rainbow bagels), it still costs your right kidney because in its absence simplicity has become a trend.
It would be a disservice to say that every restaurant is trying to create the newest most gimmicky dish. Many of them simply follow in the footsteps of their stylish counterparts. Either they’re stealing a recipe from another cuisine and making it incorrectly or blindly drizzling everything in hot honey. They won’t stop until every cheesecake in the country has Oreos in it, which is messed up because I don’t like Oreos that much. By copying each other and trying to ‘keep up’, we, in a way, get the opposite of what they hope to do. Rather than everything being fresh and exciting, it’s just stale and like every other restaurant.
Despite everything I’ve just said, please don’t think I hate all new foods. I’m actually a little obsessed with them. The cronut - a cross between a croissant and a donut for anyone not on the forefront of food science - blew my little food-obsessed mind. Dominique Ansel, the creator of the cronut, didn’t try to make a new genre of cooking. He just wanted to cook something delicious, incorporating the skills and experience he already had.
This is how new foods used to be created, before it was about making something new for the sake of having the ‘new thing.’ Cuisines and techniques would be combined naturally, and everything we eat now is the result of thousands of years of this kind of human ingenuity. Maybe it’s because new foods now are the product of abundance rather than resourcefulness, but they don’t impress me as much and simply don’t bring the same joy.
Restaurants and the whole food industry need to stop trying to do something new and start trying to make something tasty. They’ll find something interesting in the process and if they don’t, who cares? I’ll still probably eat it.
[Jenny Macdonald - she/her -
One summer’s day a few years back found me and my friend Ella on Carnaby street in London. The candy-coloured boutiques framed the aloof, white façade of the building we were about to enter: the Museum of Youth Culture, a pop-up museum with a shop upstairs, and an exhibition space underneath. Weaving our way downstairs through photography catalogues, t-shirts and posters, we had high hopes for an exhibition of photography of the past century’s youth cultures in the UK. Instead, we found a room – a single introductory paragraph about something or other, which included the curator’s name, and a few walls of photos, all neatly labelled with the photographers’ names and nothing else. We made a polite turn of the room, occasionally pointing out interesting hairdos or a picture of a child making a defiant face to the camera, and then we left, feeling vaguely disappointed but mostly bored and unfulfilled.
In a sense, the exhibit had done exactly what it was meant to – it had shown us pictures of youth culture in the UK over the decades. But it had done little more than that. It pointed, it said Look at this, isn’t it cool? and had nothing more to say on the matter. There was no explanation for the pictures, no history or context provided, or even a description of where, who, or what. There was no rhyme or reason to what we had been shown – there was no story.
The art of curation, of good curation, is the art of telling a story. It is the weaving of history, context and objects (whether that be art or artefact) and bringing them together into a tapestry that presents an overall narrative. The audience should start at one end with the set-up of a story and be led by the curator to its conclusion. . It is not enough to simply fill a room with things that all vaguely fall under the same header, a google image search could do that.
To demonstrate what I mean, it would help to compare this exhibit with another. In 2015, the V&A museum in London held an exhibition that had previously been on at the Met in New York –Savage Beauty, an exploration of the career of fashion designer Alexander McQueen. The show’s curators at both the Met and the V&A displayed an intimate understanding of both the themes of McQueen’s work, and the progression of his work, techniques and ideas. Most importantly, they understood that the audience needed context in order to appreciate what they were looking at. The curators displayed McQueen’s work in its proper context; they explained both through text and visuals how the gothic, the natural world, Romanticism, Scottish nationalism, combined with the events of his own life were all integral influences on his work over the years.
Furthermore, the exhibit at the V&A, in particular, lent a sense of chronology and order to the story of McQueen’s work by focusing on the progression of his career, beginning with his earliest collection and ending with his final collection before his death in 2010 Unlike the exhibit at the Museum of Youth Culture, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty had a story which was strengthened by, a demonstrated, understanding of McQueen’s personal life and history, his inspirations and, importantly, of his work itself.
Of course, Savage Beauty had a pool of resources, staff and money that the Museum of Youth Culture’s exhibit did not – I cannot fault the curator for not being able to pull off the scale and spectacle that Savage Beauty’s curators were able to, nor can I deny that the curators almost certainly had more time, and certainly more funds, to research the exhibit. However, the ethos of the exhibit is one that is transferrable.
An exhibit does not need beautiful set pieces or soundscapes to tell a story, although they do add to the theatre of curation. What it needs is coherency and cohesion. Why are these objects being displayed together? Why are they being displayed in the order and manner that they are? Where do they come from? In the context of youth culture, it could have been a story of the rise and fall of different youth subcultures. It could have done a deep dive into a particular time in history. It could have focused on festivals, raves, punks, goths, mods, teddy boys, rude boys, northern soul. It could have featured more historical information, more context. It could have explained the reasons why any of these subcultures came to be. It could have been a study on the very need for a youth culture in the first place.
Images, artwork or items out of context mean very little to the casual observer, such as myself and my friend. It was as if we were shown individual frames of a movie and were expected to understand the story from that. Perhaps if we had come with a preexisting knowledge base, we could have made the connections about what the curator had been trying to tell us – as I don’t doubt that they understood the connections between the images they had chosen. Unfortunately, however, we didn’t have such knowledge, so instead of being taken on a journey, given a history lesson or, indeed, told a story, we looked at some pictures, shrugged, and then resisted the urge to buy overpriced artbooks as we made our way out of the gift shop and back onto Carnaby street to find something else to do with the rest of our afternoon.
[Grace Murray - they/them]left image: expired film by Hannah Wylie
theThe moon fills half the sky, yet seems smaller than usual. Perhaps it’s nearer. Through a translucent wall I can see myself; more a fraction than a true representation, face fuzzy, hair rendered in a single, solid block. Opposite me a woman is seated. She is far more detailed – short black hair contrasts with her pale face, around her glows a blueish hue. She seems to have been painted with a thick brush, all her features are strong, yet none dominates the other. My mind knows she’s important.
“
– and you’re certain that I exist?” she asks.
“You’re right before me,” I answer, the words flowing through me. I have not chosen them.
“I am forced to bear your presence – I can’t see how that makes me real, however.”
“How else could you be here?”
“Perhaps your mind has created me” she said, sipping from a glass of wine which has appeared in her hand.
“Why it would inflict such torture upon me, I don’t know.”
“I’m not sure that my mind could create one greater than my own.”
“You flatter yourself.”
And with a faint laugh, reality begins to fade. All around me grows white, shapes merging. For a moment only her smile remains, and then the light pierces my eyes. I awoke to a levity in my chest, my heart buoyant. The memory of her lightened my steps. Of course, I knew she wasn’t real, but I reveled in this foolish, hopeful joy.
The next few days passed quickly, recalled only as brief flashes of autumnal colors and vague murmurs. The nights, however, grew far more interesting; my modest room became freely molded by my dreaming mind into impossible vistas, full of the words of deranged characters. She appeared in all my dreams, always a source of comparative lucidity and insight. I remember a dream in which I was attempting to steal the Mona Lisa. She was a security guard, convincing me with a detailed argument that the piece was not the original. Her rationale was delivered with a logic that might’ve convinced most scholars. In each dream her surroundings were only impressionistic renditions of reality, yet she was always in perfect detail. The days passed me by, as if I were merely peering into their warped reflection in a river. Only one moment remains within my memory.
I was waiting in a long bakery queue when I saw her. I looked once more, then twice again. There was no mistaking the figure. Few things can excite me more than a croissant, but I abandoned my sentinel in the queue and ran to her.
“I knew my mind couldn’t have produced you!” I say, unthinking.
She stares at me, puzzled, faltering to find any adequate response. I suddenly realize what I’ve said, feeling my insides contort into a ball of embarrassment. She laughs, her voice deep yet melodic.
“Just kidding, I know what you mean,” she said. “I’ve appeared in your dreams, too?”
“You have,” I say. A part of me understands how bizarre this situation is, yet it feels entirely natural.
“Sorry,” she chuckles, amused. “Your dreams are quite entertaining, exceptionally childish.”
I’m not sure whether to take offence or thank her.
“I have to tell you something,” She says, growing serious. “Meet me tonight.”
I agree and walk home with a spring in my step. I head out onto the balcony, vaguely aware that I never even knew I had one, and she’s waiting there for me. The city lies beneath us, thousands of lights drawing its faint outline. The moon is large tonight, or perhaps it’s simply near.
She looks at me. “You still haven’t convinced me that I’m real.”
I’m startled. “I’m wide awake, I’ve seen you interact with others – how couldn’t you be?”
“Perhaps your eyes deceive you, and nothing exists.”
“I know not to trust my eyes when I’m asleep, but this seems to match reality.”
“But your eye tells you what surrounds you is real; it identifies the reality it wants to.”
I open my mouth to retort as my surroundings begin to fade. The moon grows brighter until its light consumes me. Once more I am awake. I check the date, and realise the last few days have not elapsed.
I leave the house for some air, and the chill night pierces my bones. A loss fills me; my heart is light again but now with a hollowness. For a moment, I feel as if she’s behind me – I turn my head to see only empty space. Half of me is convinced she’s real, the other knows she never existed at all, that she never will. I stare at the sky. The moon is small tonight, or maybe it’s distant, unreachable. No trick of the mind can draw it nearer, no thought could compel it to change size. Reality stands still, and she sits just beyond.
[Harvey Olden - he/him
- @dapperyoungfool]
Every year I make myself promises to grow or improve some aspect of my life. And every year, most of these promises end up being unfulfilled. I won’t be the only one to go through this same cycle of wanting to better myself, and ultimately leaving them in the dust with the old year. So why do we continue to make ourselves half-empty promises, and how exactly can we truly make good on them?
Personally, I love making New Year’s Resolutions. I like the idea of constantly growing as a person and setting myself goals to accomplish. Whether that is related to getting fitter and stronger at the gym (not going as planned), saving for a house (on track), getting an A1 on an essay (yet to be seen), or writing my novel (what novel?), I pretty much make a resolution for everything.
The one resolution that I am particularly feeling the pressure to complete this year is one I’m sure many other bookworms are feeling too: the Goodreads Reading Challenge. Reading, for me, is a form of escapism, and one that brings a sense of calm and pure joy, which is why falling behind on my Goodreads Challenge stings a little (okay, a lot). I reluctantly admit that I am failing spectacularly at completing my reading goals for 2022, with my total currently sitting at 45 books out of 60 (bumped down from 70) – and even more reluctantly admit that this total has not budged since September! With university readings taking priority, I fear I’ve hit a reading slump, and as the end of the year grows nearer, it seems more unlikely that this year I will not have read what I intended to. However, I will not be disheartened just yet as the Christmas holidays are just around the corner, and even if I don’t complete my goal this year, what fun I will have had reading them anyway!
Perhaps we put too much pressure on ourselves to fulfil our grand New Year resolutions. They become this big, scary thing looming over us which can leave us overwhelmed. Resolutions, at their heart, are about change, so let’s embrace that: let’s change how we tackle our resolutions to make the most of them, and let them reflect who we are now and who we want to become in the future.
Resolutions are just like goals, and there is a mountain of information out there about goal setting and sticking to them. Being able to stay on track with your goals is about finding the right way for you, as we’re all different. If you are a little like me, organised to a tee and obsessed with notebooks, then a good first step is writing down your resolutions. This also means you can keep track of how you’re getting on with them later down the line. Breaking down your resolutions into smaller, more manageable weekly and/or monthly goals is a great way to reduce the pressure of the grand resolution. Reward yourself when you complete a milestone in your resolution journey. Whether that’s buying a chocolate treat, a new top, or binge-watching your favourite tv-show – just celebrate yourself and what you’ve achieved! My final tip is to let go of the pressure and forgive yourself if you don’t manage to complete your goals. At the end of the day, you’re trying, and doing something good for yourself, so remember if things don’t go to plan, it’s okay!
As for my resolutions for 2023, you can certainly count on me to have my list ready for the 1st January. But next year will be different. I want to break the vicious cycle of unfulfilled resolutions I set myself. And to do that, I’m going to take my resolutions one step at a time, forgive myself if I fall behind, and just enjoy the year. Who knows, maybe 2023 is the year I write my novel? Learn Spanish? Read 100 books? The possibilities are endless.
[Ella Duff - she/her]With Christmas cheer and New Year’s parties very suddenly a thing of the past, the last weeks of Winter can feel like a year in themselves without the festivities to brighten the cold days. So, here is a list of things that are helping me get through this final stretch before spring!
I had to start here because these have been one of my favourite discoveries this winter. I don’t know whether I’m just late to the party, but I have become obsessed with oversized, fluffy scarves. I am guilty of wearing all black throughout winter, and the splash of colour is a great addition to any basic outfit. Mine became even better when I worked out I could stretch it to its full size, turning it into a make-shift blanket. I feel like this will be excellent for trips to the library or the JMS building when uni starts back, and I’m still not over that sleepy holiday feeling.
I have been relying heavily on my hot water bottle this winter, and have taken to personifying mine as a ‘cozy little man’ because of his adorable grey jumper cover. Whoever invented hot water bottle jumpers was the master of practicality and cuteness. Kudos if you get yourself a matching one!
It has always been appalling to me that gingerbread coffee doesn’t get the same recognition as its pumpkin spice counterpart. A cookie in a mug is perfect for me any day. There are also plenty of recipes online for making these at home yourself, some using maple syrup or Biscoff spread with cinnamon, ginger, and allspice, which you might have lying around. If not, I’ll take any excuse to drink a traditional hot chocolate, and the cold weather is a perfect one. These cozy drinks also provide an excuse to use the thousands of thermoses I seem to have stockpiled for the apocalypse. Throughout the year I convince myself I’m going to become one of those people that carry a reusable coffee cup, yet they continue to gather dust in my kitchen
cupboard. Luckily, the second it gets a bit colder I am cozying up in work, at uni, or during any drive anywhere with a warm thermos of tea, coffee, or hot chocolate. Positives when they have a fun design too!
I am a much bigger fan of frosty, winter walks than hot summer ones. The crisp air is great, especially when it’s sunny out. Even when it’s not, the coldness means you don’t have to deal with the uncomfortable sticky sweat that appears the second you try to exercise in the warmer season. Also, the parks aren’t as crowded, so you can really enjoy the peace. Or listen to music and dance around without worrying about anyone seeing you. I also enjoy the process of bundling up in my winter coat, and colour coordinating my scarf, hat, jumper and gloves before leaving (although according to my friend that is just me being the Libra that I am).
Equally, with the weather turning to ice and rain, the introvert I am gains plenty of excuses to stay at home. Whether it’s ‘too icy to drive’ or ‘too windy to risk a trip into town’, I have had plenty of reasons to stay home and take time to rest and recuperate from the chaos of assessments and the festive period. It’s an added bonus when I don’t feel an overwhelming guilt for missing out on the sun, which I experience every summer when I try to do the same.
I feel like the whole place smells nicer in winter. Probably because I have a habit of lighting candles the second it gets dark at 4pm, or even earlier on rainy days when the world outside exists in perpetual greyscale. Just make sure to watch your essential oil use if you have pets!
There’s something for everyone in the coming weeks as the days slowly but surely lengthen, and we start to see the first spring flowers pop up. Whether it’s the simple act of lighting a candle, or wrapping up warm on a brisk park walk, we can still find the good in the season!
[Georgia McHaffie - she/her]thoughts, images of imagined infidelity, are bathed in blue. Furthering this, red is sexualised most overtly by the red bed, a nude woman on the red sofa, and by the prostitute Domino’s (Vinessa Shaw) apartment. Returning then, to my opening line of inquiry, perhaps ‘Where the rainbow ends’, and the purple theme, is simply a reconciliation between ideas of masculine and feminine sexuality – a mixture of two halves in a heterosexual relationship. Cut to the end of the movie, you can’t help but see purple imagery of ‘settling down’: purple babies’ prams are placed within the frame, uniting red, blue, and the end of romance in childbirth.
So, what’s with purple in Eyes Wide Shut (1999)?
Very early in the movie Tom Cruise’s character Bill asks a question, which I like to think is on behalf of the audience: “Where are we going?”. The response: “Where the rainbow ends”. Now call me naïve, but isn’t that violet? That’s the colour that defines most of the artwork and advertising around the movie and so we may expect it in some sense to be representative of the film’s content – Kubrick after all is known for his rigorous detail.
Despite this, it’s not obvious where purple factors into this psycho-sexual drama. A quick search for colour and Eyes Wide Shut leads to a few reddit threads and independent articles, analysing the function of red and blue. Here, much like Punch Drunk Love’s (2002) use of colour, colour is gendered with both Cruise’s Bill and Adam Sandler’s character Barry attached to blue. Furthermore, Nicole Kidman’s character Alice is introduced to us alongside red and Emilia Watson’s character, Lena, wears red. However, my interest in this comparison is to underline differences in how these gendered colours interact.
Punch Drunk Love is undoubtedly more simplistically gendered. For instance, in Barry and Lena’s relationship, colour theory represents the progression of their feelings for one another; the closer Barry comes to accepting his love for Lena, the closer his outfit comes to embrace her: his tie, shifting from blue, to yellow, and eventually to red. In Eyes Wide Shut, the boundaries are hazy. It appears Alice is characterised by red and Bill by blue. However, these notions are complicated throughout the film.
Most theories I have encountered on Eyes Wide Shut maintain colour as explicitly gendered, with blue as representative of male sexual jealousy. Bill’s jealous
Unfortunately for Bill and Alice, as well as the argument for purely gendered colour in Eyes Wide Shut, the rainbow’s end is notoriously difficult to reach. This is something explored with the addition of the costume shop, ‘Rainbow’, where Bill creates a disguise, which to him, is a convincing alternative to his jealous life and sexual frustration. Here, Kubrick shows the end of the rainbow as an elusive location beyond identity. Indeed, purple becomes a complex stage, where illusion and tangible reality meet, there is a conflict between truth and fiction that begins to attach to selfhood more generally, not just gender. Take for instance, Bill’s return home to find Alice asleep on the now purple bed, next to his costume’s mask. It’s a crucial moment where Bill witnesses a cross between the life he took as fabricated and his life with Alice. Rather than a purple bed signifying a mixture between the two halves of this relationship, it shows a split in Bill. The subversion of this typical narrative of colour is pulled into the final act as previously discussed, where purple imagery, signifying childbirth, is nevertheless complicated by both Alice and Bill’s disillusionment with marriage and the future roles of their relationship.
Ultimately, colour in Eyes Wide Shut subverts the conventions of gendered colour to push toward a more complex conception of identity. The colour purple becomes central to the film in probing questions regarding gendered conceptions of the self and the boundaries that are crossed through disguise and the manipulation of identity. Ultimately, I’ve suggested that colour theory does not simply act on individual films, but that there can be a shared discourse between movies through colour. Indeed, whilst colour acts silently, it can thematically portray intentional continuity, adding to interpretative discussion and fostering more complex stories and visions of the world.
[Harry Pollock - he/him]The second instalment in the Knives Out films written and directed by Rian Johnson follows the charming detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) in another modern, camp take on a murder mystery. This instalment centres around tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton), CEO of the all-powerful ‘Alpha’, a thinly veiled parody of Elon Musk. Each of the other characters - his loyal friends of two decades - receive a cryptic puzzle-box invitation, marked by an evil eye, requesting their presence on a private Greek island for his birthday party, in which they’ll play a murder mystery game.
Head scientist of his company, Lionel (Leslie Odom Jr.), Governor Claire (Kathryn Hahn), fashion designer/ previously 90s it girl Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson), men’s rights streamer Duke (Dave Bautista), and Alpha co-founder turned lawsuit instigator Andi (Janelle Monáe) all receive an invitation, as well as Benoit Blanc, Birdie’s assistant Peg (Jessica Henwick), and Duke’s girlfriend Whiskey (Madelyn Cline).
Before the friends’ first dinner together in the Glass Onion, the name of his ultra-modern mansion topped by a glass dome, Miles reveals he has the genuine Mona Lisa on loan from the Louvre (the Louvre were apparently desperate for finance; the film takes place during the first wave of Covid-19). The unforgiving, omniscient Mona Lisa becomes a prevalent motif of the film.
Rian Johnson and the drawling, deep Southern master detective keeps us in suspense for the first two-thirds of the film, before unravelling the baddie in a masterful and suitably whimsical climax. Once Miles is ‘killed’ in the game and Benoit Blanc solves the riddle in a matter of minutes, a very real threat to life comes to light and each character turns to Mr. Blanc for salvation: the ever-pathetic Miles literally attempts to use him as a human shield.
The use of art in the set is particularly notable; the wall of Miles’ home-from-home is full of visual gags. Likened in the film to Tate Modern, the walls are over-adorned with so-called subversive art that every radicalised tosser with millionaire parents...
...thinks is groundbreaking, as well as some actual high-end, expensive art. Francis Bacon’s The Crucifixion is hung right by a triptych of Ronald MacDonald painted in Bacon’s style. A shirtless portrait of Miles himself hangs front and centre in the living room. The Rothko is hung upside down. Matisse’s La Joie de Vivre mockingly hangs in one of the guest bedrooms.
The outcast Andi mirrors Marta in the first film, both women of colour excluded from the rest of the ensemble. While this is an admirable attempt at political subtext from Johnson, his writing of leading ladies leaves a little to be desired - Andi’s cadence is a little too girlboss-ified for a woman of her apparent intelligence and class.
Some very obvious symbolism holds up the film, but is no doubt charming all the same. The film gets its title from the Beatles song of the same name, a tune written by Lennon to confuse those who read too much into his lyrics, a perfect and fun homage that shapes the plot and theme of the film. Johnson takes the viewer - and the characters - on a twisting, sometimes confusing, flashback-filled journey full of red herrings, before culminating in a simple conclusion, hidden in plain sight (thus, the Glass Onion).
As is its predecessor, Glass Onion is an absolute romp, with a charming, likeable protagonist. Rian Johnson’s style is less Poirot, more Pink Panther, fun for all involved but most notably for Daniel Craig, strutting around the pool in his little sailor-boy outfits. Glass Onion is a fun, camp take on the whodunnit, ultimately thanks to the enigmatic Blanc.
[Hannah Wylie - she/her@hannwylie]
Rating: 4/5
I first came across Slow Living on TikTok a year or two back. As I scrolled through my feed, there it was: an escape from the never-ending loop of social media. The video, which I can no longer find, suggested some ways of incorporating slowness into your everyday life. For instance, the creator said, instead of watching TV while eating, you should pay attention to the textures and flavours of the food. And when you do end up watching a film, put down your phone. I have always been that person who annoyingly deletes and reinstalls social media apps, turns to flight mode every time I want to get stuff done, and always complains about being so dependent on my phone. Discovering slow living felt like a reminder that there are other ways to live
Slow living comes from the Slow Food movement, which emerged in Italy in 1980’s as a reaction to the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in the centre of Rome. Its aim was to maintain a traditional, sustainable, and slow food culture, staying away from the consumerist overproduction habits of fastfood companies. Slow living encompasses various practices, not only slow food, but also slow travel, slow fashion and slow working. Slow Living LDN, a website founded by Beth Crane in 2018, describes the movement as a way of “switching off the autopilot”. It is about living your life intentionally and consciously— savouring moments instead of rushing through them— aligning yourself with the earth and with nature, stepping away from this fast, fast world.
Taking time to yourself, living intuitively, unlearning biases about productivity and self-worth, it all sounds great, doesn’t it? I wish I could say that it changed my life, but honestly, even if that first TikTok was truly eye opening, I haven’t done much to change my habits. Even though I crave a more meditative approach to life, I still watch TV when I eat, and I still spend way too much time on my phone. And if I’m being honest, going in autopilot mode can be really nice. Perhaps a little mind numbing, but if you have
about five deadlines fast approaching, zoning out is kind of a relief. I mean, it is not always a blessing to be alone with my sleep deprived, over-caffeinated thoughts.
In some ways, it feels ironic that it was my excessive use of social media that made me come across slow living. All these people, making videos of their slow, wonderful, serene lives. They harvest their own vegetables and bake their own bread. They make a beautiful looking breakfast and I watch them really savour the moment– that is, when they’re not busy adjusting the camera angles. They are so much better than me, while I sit here and scroll and scroll and scroll, they tell me that they never ever use their phones and laptops– as if they don’t need to edit the video, find the trending sounds, find the right hashtags, build up a follower count, respond to comments, etc. I don’t blame these creators though, because I think a lot of what they are saying is valuable; it’s just a shame it’s coated in an unattainable level of cottagecore perfection.
While I am somewhat sceptical towards these videos, they do inspire me to try to live more slowly, but I wonder to what degree that is possible. I try to breathe a lot as I write this. I listen to the click of my keyboard as I type. The clinking sound as I put down my teacup on the new ceramic coaster is quite beautiful. I like the feel of this blanket on my body. The dancing flame of my new candle is kind of mesmerising. I like noticing these things which I am not normally aware of. I feel calm. However, I also know that as soon as I finish writing this piece, I will rejoice in being able to tick it off my list, hurrying on to the next task.
text & photograph by [Matilda Eker
Now, as students of Glasgow University we all must admit that the city’s West End (where the majority of us study and live) is not historically the most culturally vibrant side of town. Like the ‘West End’ of most cities throughout the U.K, that belonging to Glasgow is widely regarded as the gentrified, well-to-do stomping ground for the Waitroseshoppers of Scotland’s finest city. This is, by no means, a bad thing. The West End provides us students with a wonderful bubble of architectural splendour, outrageously-priced meal deals and housing crises. However, there has undoubtedly been a notable effort over recent years to inject some of the cultural and artistic electricity that one might find in the centre of town into our beloved West End. Not least of which is the annual Great Western Festival, a one-day celebration of the best alternative music from Glasgow; Scotland; the U.K.; and the whole wide world. Employing locations along and around the West End’s own Great Western Road (as you may have gathered from the name), the festival aims to bring light to Glaswegian artists with a particular emphasis on supporting local gig venues, pubs, and cafes (a much-needed effort following the unthinkable losses the city has suffered throughout the covid years).
This year, I was lucky enough to get my ears and eyes on some of the most exciting live acts going. Headlining were Russia’s notorious anarcho-punk-cum-hyperpop extravaganza Pussy Riot, alongside the likes of groovy Spanish instrumentalists Los Bichos and the infectious hardcore big beats of SCALPING, an act I was devastated to miss due to a clash. This said clash, however, made the devastation fade away in an instant; the smooth, clean tones of a lonesome guitar hung against the sultry croon of the most heart-breakingly powerful voice the U.K. has to offer in its place.
Into Maryhill Road’s finest and only church, containing no more than around 30 people, walks Anna B. Savage, barefoot and humble. For those of you unfamiliar with Savage’s genius, I will provide you gallantly with a brief run down. Hailing, probably, from somewhere in the south of England, Anna is a singer-songwriter with a uniquely guttural and delicate voice that can often make her sound like she’s on the verge of tears (she, in fact, often is – I have now seen this total stranger cry in front of me at least thrice). The real draw, however, is her harrowing melodies combined with beautiful yet devastating lyrics that talk of love and loss with such straightforwardness one might assume her a sociopath. She is, however, as I shall hereby decree, far from that. She looks around, and rather timidly announces herself. ‘Hi.’ She begins to play. This shocks me a little – having seen Anna B. Savage before play to a crowd of around ten times the size, I was expecting a little more audience interaction from the get go – such has become a staple of her shows. Perhaps, I think to myself, she just needs to get warmed up.
Oh, and warm up she does. Woven between a host of her most well-known songs (the likes of Corncrakes, Baby Grand and Since We Broke Up among further deep cuts and fantastic unreleased tracks) is found an exercise in establishing a community, one undoubtedly of music but also of friendship and sadness and Glasgow, like nothing I have seen before. Savage, noting the sparsity of the crowd and the brooding atmosphere of the church, decides a few songs into the set that all the lights in the room are to be turned off, to add a little mood. At some point in the set, among her sharp-witted jokes and casual flirting with a charming heckler named Owen, she also announces that, at some
point during the set, she is going to try something ‘experimental.’ This experimental thing, it turns out, is a communal singing exercise, in which everyone in the crowd takes part. Anna steps down from behind the microphone and, rather like a preacher, begins to stroll down the aisle, explaining the rules of the exercise. Everyone must pick a note – any note – and hold it for as long as possible. They must then choose another note – one they cannot hear in the room, and do the same thing. Finally, they do the same with a note they can hear in the room. What emerges from this is a three-minute-long slice of heaven. It didn’t sound particularly nice, admittedly, but the sense of connection and communal passion in the room was indeed a feeling to behold. This was the cherry on the cake of Anna B. Savage’s capture of the very spirit of Great Western Festival – the desire for a community drawn together by the power of music
‘Fit For Work’, released last year, is another characteristically powerful song that has the audience screaming the hook back at Frontman Zak’s snarled vocals. It’s at this point, looking round that I’m thinking, come on people get moving! Alas, it was too early in the day, and too cramped a fit for the archaic moshpits I wished were occurring. That is, until Zak clearly gets tired of this and steps into the crowd, pushing us around in a frenzy. The message is clear - DO SOMETHING. About four of us oblige, jumping and pushing as instructed. An excellent start to the Festival that again, I believe deserved a later slot. It’s all hilarious fun. Until someone, irritated by our exploits, pours his drink on my head. Ah well, you can’t please everyone. All’s fair in love and mosh.
At 2:00 in the afternoon, in a tiny underground basement of The Hug and Pint, absolutely packed wall to wall (people literally hanging off the benches on the sides) with punters, Deadletter - the punky, jerky pride of South London kick the day off with an electric performance that I wish had involved a bigger room and a couple of pints more later. Every time I’ve seen them, they’ve given the exact same levels of tight intensity that cannot help but make you bounce on the balls of your feet. They seem to epitome the present day sound style so widely dubbed ‘‘post-punk’’ - a term which some readers may roll their eyes and shudder, it being so offhandedly applied to every band making the circuit these day, but Deadletter are incarnate.
Their explosive new releases were on parade, including ‘Hero’, a personal favourite from the set. Their growling, ‘it burns, it burns, it burns’ was absolutely incendiary, serving well the warmth of that tiny basement tucked into the bowels of the earth - it did indeed feel like Hellfire club.
Frontman Zak’s antics are hilarious and enthralling; shaking, twitching, lashing and jumping, he characterises the insane but tightly controlled energy they’re known for - snapping dogs held back with a leash of steel.
The Bug Club is another band I was particularly interested in seeing again - having watched them open for Bodega in Mono last year, I was particularly taken with their rock ‘n’ roll rhythms and catchy hooks. This year, they were situated in the slightly odd venue of Maryhill community centre, a large dance-hall type venue. At this point, it was around 5 in the afternoon, and things were slowly getting a bit groovier. People were mellow, circling, laughing and holding drinks. For the early afternoon, it was a decently comfortably filled space, Bug Club clearly having a solid group of listeners. They spark into action on stage, and I’m pleased to say that I didn’t misjudge their sound. It is very much rolling. Everyone knows the words, and it’s a pleasure to see the delight both audience and band take from that. They’ve drawn a mixed crowd - not just students, but those slightly older too, and it’s a nice compliment to the fuzzy, funky sounds from the stage. Masters of harmonising, they’re coherent and cohesive, bobbing to the beat with a really lovely and refreshing energy.
If there’s one point of disappointment, it was the omission of my personal favourite - ‘All Of The Scariest Monsters Live in London’. Its soft, slightly mournful sounds also would have broken the admittedly slightly repetitive rhythms- giving Bug Club credit where they’re due, they indeed know their sound and they stay consistent for it, but after a certain point, the songs begin to sound ever so slightly samey. A good band to catch in the middle of the afternoon.
Los. Bitchos. Are. Hot. Better yet, we catch them at a time when things are really starting to swing. Finally heating up with the night, pushing through the sweaty, weaving masses of people, we are funkified under the samba-like beats of the crew. You feel this in your body and your soul. No wonder they describe themselves as ‘Evocative and playful.’ We manage to catch a flow of people to the front, and from there it’s 45 minutes of pure funkadelic bliss. Coats are thrown off, bags are put down. Los Bitchos manage to communicate something incommunicable, fantastically with very few words in their songs. They’re hugely beat based, which adds to the party-ish, carnival energy, and the crowd absolutely lap it up. November freezes are melted under the red lights and warm sounds. A name I’ve been hearing for the past couple of years, finally seeing the ‘Panteras’, and in such a joyful and vivacious atmosphere, for a brief moment I was transported from Maryhill Community centre to somewhere far, far away. I’m delighted I got to see them, and on top form none-the-less.
From there, it’s quick-step to the other side of the community centre, and it’s like stepping into a completely different world. Where Los Bitchos were warm, fiesta filled funk, I am now in a place of cool, pounding techno. From a hot bath to a tub of ice, this is an excellent shock to the senses. In the most excellent way possible. Scalping are, for me, the unequivocally unexpected gem of the night. Like Los Bitchos beforehand, they too aren’t exactly lacking in words, because it doesn’t feel like a space that words could or would need to fill. They have come as we are, electronic noise movement. Built for tireless raving, they hit the sweet spot of the climax of the night. Some standing at the back in a mellow relaxed state, some diving right in to bounce and shape it out at the front, you could see yourself staying there forever. Just hand me a pair of sunglasses and a strong drink, I could’ve been there for hours
Pussy Riot is an interesting recollection from the festival. To begin with, they are about an hour late to begin. Seated at the sides, watching the expectant audience slowly droop and become bored, you can’t help but be disappointed with the incendiary Russian group who’ve fled arrest and their home country to create their ironic, aggressively political music. Even after about 40 minutes of waiting, their manager comes on stage, monologues about their achievements for 15 minutes, then inexplicably disappears into the crowd, like Moses parting the red sea. Except Moses is a russian manager and the red sea is a group of once expectant and now slightly wilted punters. At least Pussy Riot knows what’s going on. When they meant to go on, we were still soundchecking, and having a hilariously one-sided conversation across the room with the sound desk. If there’s one thing that cuts, it’s being publicly told to ‘please read about sound effects’. And no-holdsbarred being their style, they’re right, the sound has been fuzzy all day, and having travelled the world and traversed the law to be here, Pussy Riot aren’t going to accept anything less than what they deserve. Everything they do is for a reason, and it’s for their best interests. They are excellent. Just wish I’d been able to see more before having to leave ten minutes later to get the last subway home
[Felix Mcintyre - he/him and Rosie Lowndes - she/her]
Thanks to social media, political information has become significantly easier to access. Governments, political parties, newspapers, and more have all joined the popular online craze, providing media coverage of policies, elections, and scandals. With political discourse so widespread, lots of information has become simplified for easier and quicker access. However, with published news subject to the publisher, one must wonder what information is being missed out or altogether biased. If news can be condensed to fit into a 280-letter tweet, does this not lead to the greater understanding of politics being diluted?
With information at our fingertips, making world news increasingly accessible to scrutinise from the comfort of your own home, everyone can feel like a politician now – but should they?
The ability to argue from faceless accounts can be excellent, but sometimes only enforces the narratives of those who are unwilling to even consider another’s viewpoint. A lot of this condensed information is altered, compressed for easy access at the cost of important context. Choosing the parts that suit does sound like a positive, but at the cost of a controlled narrative. You wouldn’t miss the middle of a book, then afterwards attempt to dominate discourse over its themes. Politics can be complicated, so it’s great to have a base understanding, but so much is being taken out. In 2022, people celebrated the price of petrol going down, but many appeared quick to forget that, on average, it’s still 40p dearer than a mere two years ago. Are people reading enough into the news, or are we interpretating losses as minor victories, just taking what we can during cost-ofliving difficulties? Now that we understand the simplified version, why not simplify more? If the trend of skimming already compacted information continues, we risk many important messages being lost.
As highly condensed information is subject to the author’s desire, the reliability and trust of social media news is harder to decipher; different media sites can have different agendas, with strong, diverse opinions from left- and right-wing sites contributing to the divide of the general public. In 2021, 69% of the British public thought the ‘media is not doing well at being objective and nonpartisan’. If large
portions of social media are biased, what can we trust? The idea that social media news aims to assist in educating us, slowly diminishes when one sees that social media profits from keeping us engaged with our own opinion– algorithms are designed to show us recommended entertainment, to keep us scrolling with media we like and agree with. By doing so, we are only entertaining ourselves with information that prevents us from seeing other opinions, making us unable to leave our own echo chambers. Sure, we may not agree with each other’s opinions (for instance, differing cultural beliefs or personal values), but just understanding another’s viewpoint gives you greater world awareness and assists in developing your own arguments and rebuttals to those of others. There are, of course, many accounts pushing for positive, progressive change through social movements – but we must ask ourselves how many people are out there attempting positive change, and how many just want to troll.
Another problem that arises from oversimplifying politics is that everyone thinks they understand it: that a strong headline is enough to walk away with full comprehension, or that a Reddit meme is a strong primary source. Perhaps the greatest example of this oversimplification is through memes, and how they can be used to interpret events. That being said, many memes can be great methods of raising awareness on important issues, such as doge Ukraine memes, which have both attacked the Russian government while simultaneously raising money for Ukraine. In some ways, the ability to argue from faceless accounts can be excellent, but sometimes it only enforces the narratives of those who are unwilling to even consider another’s viewpoint. Will people ever accept they can be wrong, or do anonymous accounts only help to comfort people in their own bubble?
With the ability to show us the world, various media might use this as an opportunity to exploit our thoughts. Although media can be excellent in creating short articles raising awareness or pushing for change, much of this can get lost in an expanding online labyrinth of mockery, fake news, and trolling. Yes, short media can be effective if one is wishing to understand the foundations of their surroundings. Still, to get a true grasp and engage in noteworthy discourse, one must go further than their newsfeed.
The day we broke up, I booked a flight back to my grandmother’s country. I begged my father to let me leave, mumbling through a torrent of tears that I could not stay in this city for a single moment more. Because everything about this place was you.
We had walked these streets, kissed on these corners, laughed in these bars. It was all so intertwined. I could not find where you ended, and the city began. Every building, every tree, every hardened piece of gum on the road was a painful reminder that you were still here, in this place we once called home, but we didn’t exist here together anymore. I knew from that day that I had to leave.
My grandmother, as always, welcomed me with open arms. She, a woman who had lost her husband and her son within one year, held me to her chest as I sobbed like a child over a man who was very much alive and breathing. I thought of the irony as I wept into her lilac blouse – how could she be so strong and I so weak? I felt like a lesser being, ripped of my composure and sanity by a mere adolescent breakup.
But, I suppose, grief is a horrifying, beautiful, twisted thing that takes many forms. I learned over the months that followed that it is indeed possible to grieve someone who is still alive.
Breakups are the most fucked up, yet uniquely human experience. They are the act of mourning of one who is still here. One minute, I knew all the intimate details of your life: I met with your parents for drinks on a Saturday night, I was invested in your niche workplace politics, I cared for your hopes and dreams as if they were my own. And then it all disappeared, but these things continue to remain. The drama in your office remains unresolved, your mother continues to drink her vodka Cokes, your ambitions are still intact. Or, at least, I assume they are. Because I don’t know you anymore. I don’t know how your day is going. I don’t know if your father is well. You exist in this world without me. We are perfect strangers who were once in love.
In my grandmother’s empty house, I lay thinking about the tiny things I had loved about you. The way that you sang in the car, belting at traffic lights, imitating Pavarotti. The way that the tip of your nose pressed upwards, like Cindy Lou, when you fell asleep with your face against mine. The way that you were most charismatic person I had ever met, and yet you still worried about how you were perceived. Would anyone else come to know these things about you? Or were these intimate details that I would take to my grave?
And what about me? I told you things I had never told anyone before. I confided things to you that I could barely admit to myself. Would you simply forget them? Or would they live deep in your mind for the rest of your life? Surely it is impossible to completely erase someone you once loved irrevocably. Even if they are gone from your life, I’d like to believe that these people change the nature of our being. I am not the same person I was before we met, and that will live on beyond us.
Months later I am standing in line for a concert we had both intended to go to. I look up and catch the eye of a man who is staring straight at me. In the same moment, we both hurriedly look at the ground, pretending we didn’t see one another. We do not want to speak together. And yet we are not strangers. Strangers do not look away with that frantic urgency. Strangers do not act in that way.
Perhaps onlookers saw our harried glances and wondered to themselves if there was something between us, or if there had once been before. It is confirmation that we are no longer in each other’s lives. But it is also confirmation that we once were.
text and art by [Ailbhe nì Mhurhcu, she/her, @ailvhe]
The Climate movement threw the nation into uproar again in October, when Just Stop Oil activists were filmed throwing Heinz soup onto Van Gogh’s painting ‘Sunflowers’ in London’s National Gallery. In front of shocked spectators, activist Phoebe Plummer asked,‘What is worth more: art, or life? … Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?’ The connection between the painting and climate change may seem like a stretch, but the message is crucial. Regardless of our individual feelings about chucking soup at a Van Gogh, what this act did was secure a global platform, creating a valuable opportunity to demand change. Radical disruptive activity has become increasingly frequent in the UK: from controversial road-blockings to orange spray paint on buildings. The relentlessness of these activists is justified; the last eight years have been the hottest on record and devastating floods in Pakistan are demonstrating that the climate crisis is already here. However, this method of environmental action is not without its problems.
Twenty-one-year-old Plummer later explained the stunt, stating that they intended to get ‘the conversation going’, to ask the questions that really matter. This makes sense, the activists turn heads by doing outrageous things and use the attention to create mass conversation about fossil fuel licensing. Just Stop Oil’s statement asserted that this was a deliberate act of cultural transgression, posing the question, ‘you are outraged about this, where is your outrage of 33 million people in Pakistan losing their livelihoods’ and other devastating effects of climate change? When anger at damaged property is louder than anger at environmental injustice, we are forced to confront our own hypocrisy. We are pushed to ask ourselves where our priorities lie.
Unfortunately, the public response does not align with this reasoning. The numerous articles and the tweets made after the act weren’t talking about the cost-of-living crisis or the climate emergency. They largely discussed art or property damage, and trivial preconceptions about the activists in the video. The stunt might have gone viral, but how many people stayed to listen to the words? Some may argue that current methods of climate groups direct the conversation wrongly, distracting people from what matters rather than drawing their attention to it. Most people just don’t seem to be listening.
Those who are unsympathetic to environmental activism responded with the usual outrage and mockery, even though the painting was undamaged. Many others also responded negatively and, almost immediately, conspiracy theories began to float around social media. Their claim? That Just Stop Oil is funded by ‘Big Oil,’ pulling ridiculous stunts to make climate activists look bad. This is pretty outlandish. Yes, oil heiress Aileen Getty has publicly made donations to the organisation. However, receiving around a million dollars from an oil tycoon’s granddaughter
hardly equates to being a puppet of the oil industry, or a masterful psy-op undermining anti-oil activism. Getty most likely feels a bit guilty for the source of her family’s fortune, and there’s not much else to it. What this theory really displays is the lack of support from both sides of the political spectrum, suggesting that Just Stop Oil has failed to win over the public.
Following a series of blocked roads and angry motorists hurling abuse, the Met had to urge the public not to ‘directly intervene with Just Stop Oil protesters.’ I recognise that blocking roads can create genuinely serious repercussions, but the outrage at the soup stunt – which endangered nobody – shows that these activists just can’t win. It looks like the general population has made climate activists its enemy, but this isn’t just a result of flawed methods. Though surveys suggest that over 80% of people in Britain are concerned about climate change, the British media actively stirs up hostility towards environmental activists which limits the support they receive.
There seems to be a general reluctance among people to support groups like Just Stop Oil. The popular image of the modern-day climate movement is one of privileged, out-of-touch teenagers, an image that is used against the cause to attack its credibility. Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg and now Just Stop Oil are routinely mocked and dismissed; people focus on the specifics of their actions rather than their larger message. In this case, many comments focused on trivialities, like the accusations of ‘wasting soup’. People – especially in mainstream media – are on a constant search for a satisfying ‘gotcha’ moment, aiming to expose these crazy hippies as hypocrites. Greta Thunberg flew on a plane somewhere, maybe. The activists blocking the road have hair dye and plastic jewelry and shoes imported on smog-exuding ships, so we can dismiss their words, return to our comfortable lives, and ignore this huge existential threat that impacts every last one of us. Only when people get past this discomfort about climate activism and confront the crisis will real change occur.
Finding a solution to these problems isn’t easy. The approach of UN summits is ineffective, too concerned with the interests of transnational corporations and economic development. On the other hand, radical civil disobedience seems to just make the public seethe with anger. It seems almost impossible to find a viable way forward, to mobilise the population to act against oil licensing and pollution. But I don’t want to encourage climate doom and pessimism—there is still hope. Action to protect our planet is on the rise. Look at Brazil, where indigenous activists like Txai Suruí fight to defend their land against deforestation, and the President who pledges to protect the Amazon. At this point in time it is essential to redirect anger and frustration, not at damaged property or disruptive activists, but at our government’s lack of meaningful action against climate change.
December is often referred to in the music review industry as “list season”; magazines, blogs, and social media personalities scurry to crank out ranked list after ranked list of their favourite albums. Inevitably, I’ve begun to find it rather trite.
Working on a list myself, I’m aware of the irony. Regardless, I’ve never been a fan of musical analysis being reduced to (or shorthanded by) numbers, as such exercises often retain an irritating sense of self-importance. Ultimately, we must recognise that any attempt to evaluate a year’s crop of releases is not objective but intermingled with our personal lives; we can never evaluate art on objective criteria. There is something very commercial about modern “criticism” – paintings were never rated in stars nor “reviewed” as products but analysed, perhaps thanks to the nature of the gallery. All modern music deserves intellectual honesty. It too is art.
When thinking about how I wanted to approach this column, I oft returned to the observation that we do not consume art but bond with it. The art and the perceiver never leave the same after they meet. In that spirit, I aim to be somewhat diaristic; the albums I discuss having a personal significance I will attempt to elucidate. And how better to begin than with my own yearly retrospective; a trio of picks with no pretension of objectivity?
I must begin with local heroes Ashenspire, a band who I’ve watched soar out of avantgarde black metal obscurity, and into major-league metal publications. In Hostile Architecture the studio vocalist, drummer, project
mastermind and chemistry teacher Alasdair Dunn roars lines of visceral and profound protest poetry such as
“When you can’t see the stars
You stop dreaming of space!”
addressing topics from toxic masculinity to fascist riots – a welcome confrontation with the far-right sympathies that have sometimes emerged in the genre’s history. Just as genre-confounding as the lyrics is the music; a well-woven blend of vicious black metal and lilting European folk, which occasionally thins out for gripping, profound monologues and even a choral piece.
No other band have such a camaraderie at their live shows; Alasdair and the band’s boundlessly energetic live vocalist Rylan Greaves are genial offstage and charismatic on, and I have made some wonderful friends in the pit – or the pub afterwards! After wrestling with heating bills, ridiculous food costs, and constant overdraft brinksmanship, screaming
“Only three months to the gutter
Never three months to the peak!”
in unison with an ecstatic crowd was a profoundly moving catharsis, and I’m truly grateful to be part of a community as welcoming as Glasgow’s metal scene. I’ve been lucky during this crisis; that so many people I know have suffered further perhaps explains why this record has gained the traction it has across the world, as the desperation of life “tangled in austerity” has become further intertwined with the zeitgeist.
Sometimes, music can say and mean a great deal without any words. Exemplifying this, the Czech duo of Šimanský & Niesner produced a gorgeous and enticing work of primitivist folk in the cheerfully titled Všechno Dobré (All Good), one that I’ve listened to more than any other release this year.
While its pastoral vibe has become intertwined in my memory with tranquil wanders across a campus littered with Autumn leaves, I found that the more tense sections of tracks like “Ztracená” (“Lost”) seemed to illustrate my growing anxiety over impending deadlines and exams. This tension
Hostile Architecture by Ashenspire
Všechno Dobré by Šimanský & Niesner
background by Rosa Gilder
is something that is slowly teased out in the record, the interwoven threads of complex picking creating elaborate pieces that slowly work away unease, apprehensions resolved with often cheerful deliberation. The meditative drone of “Pražská Rága” (“Prague Raga”), which nods to the devotional brilliance of David Grubbs, is particularly soothing, while dramatic 11-minute centrepiece “Lesní Chodci” (“Forest Walkers”) evokes John Fahey at his most fluid and intense.
These two musicians have a clear mastery of their genre – my vinyl copy of the album came with a brief history of the primitivist folk movement – but master above all else the ability to entice the listener and excommunicate their worries. As its arboreal path comes to an end, the record lives up to its name; all is good indeed.
The record that resonated with me most, however, is Daniel Rossen’s You Belong There. The Grizzly Bear alumnus melds bustling jazz rhythms, technical acoustic wizardry, and insightful lyrics, to create a timeless indie folk album. From the mellifluous grandeur of a “hurricane” of piano runs in “Tangle”, to the tentative stringdriven atmosphere of the title track, Rossen’s music evokes chaos, tranquillity, and everything in between, lyrics addressing Rossen’s interpersonal relationships of the last “ten years gone”. As I’ve continued to struggle with the death of my mother last year, my exegesis of his observations has been made in the harsh light of grief, his honest, almost cynical grappling with loss deeply relatable. Of an ex-partner he notes
“The diatribes and lectures left unsaid That’s you and me”
acknowledging the complex feelings we have to those now absent from our lives; while much of my grief has been, to quote Jamie Anderson, “a love that has nowhere else to go”, it is also drawn from frustrations and conflicts that are now irresolvable.
Rossen’s emotional journey concludes in a fittingly plaintive manner, with the heartrending admission
“I still need you”
The lack of closure embodies, to me, how grief is a process of adaptation, not resolution – in a way, it never really ends. Perhaps concurring, the album has one more track after “The Last One”, where Rossen widens his scope beyond personal experience. As acoustic picking, bowed strings, and plaintive woodwind weave between each other, achingly beautiful in a way that always makes me shiver, he delivers the most potent statement of the album;
“What a life
Whatever lasts
Repeat the pattern… from the beginning”
Rossen sums the absurdity of our very existence in these lines, elucidating the grand and bittersweet truth that grief has imparted to me; no matter how great our pain, the world continues, billions of other stories written alongside us, beyond us, and before us, often lost to time before long. “Repeat the Pattern” was the track Rossen opened with at St. Luke’s, initiating an intimate set where all other instrumentation was stripped away. I found myself moved to tears as the lone, guitar-toting musician gently commanded;
“Set yourself to the side
And admire this anonymous place
A riff to fill up the hours Stretched for years, the space of a day”
breaking of the fourth wall of his art to elucidate music’s power to distend time and space to its will. A magic that mere numbers could never come close to portraying.
I hope you try one of these albums, and that they come to mean something to you beyond sounds and words, as they have for me. Merry Listmas, and a happy new year.
