August Gone With A Gust
End of the Month Round Up
August was tough. It was a mostly unpleasant month, which felt as though dominoes continued to fall and I was somehow caught between every single one, crushed again and again. But after one particularly horrible weekend, I was sat alone after watching a horror film with my sister and I could hear the neighbours radio blaring some talk show. On another other night I would have been annoyed, but I found it comforting knowing I was not alone in this building. The vibrations felt golden.
We lost our beloved cat Peter this month. He was old but I had still hoped to have more time with him. I keep waiting for him to appear as he would, out of nowhere and stare. I miss seeing his little eyes glowing in the dark. He’d taken to drifting through the apartment, running as fast as he could and cutting turns with ease, like a cartoon for a moment running in place. You would have thought him not as old as he was. I knew as I put him in the carrier to the vet that he was not coming back, his body felt different after a quick turn in health. I still told him “You come back now.” But instead the vet had put some of his hair into a jar, which I found incredibly strange. It’s sitting on a shelf. I miss him and I’m sure will miss him for a long time.
I’m late to the Bar Italia train but I arrived. Really been loving their 2023 album Tracey Denim, more bands need dual singers. Every song I think “this is my favourite” then the next would start and repeat. It doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be a band from the 1990s, they just do without the posturing which a lot of modern bands seem to be doing. And I say they sound like a band from the 90s because there’s a great quality to the music. It feels like a pre-streaming era album. It’s too early to say it will become a favourite on the usual rotation but it might get there. I also fell in love with Insides 1993 album Euphoria, which has this cool vibe, reminds me a lot of Bjork and Portishead. Am I just thinking of early 90s music? Yes. But the album have become a quick favourite, when listening for the first time I just knew it was special and now I never second guess when I put it on.
I really haven’t been up to much this month, in a positive sense. Well, I guess I’ve enjoyed purging my material possessions, anticipating a big move. It’s all happening and I went from thinking about turning 30 for 24/7 to completely forgetting I even had a birthday this month, it’s priority plummeting. I also think I got over the birthday blues a month early, ruminating on it a good while mid July. Then I was ready for it to be over with.
Two nights before my birthday, I was sorting my extensive tea collection, having hardly touched it since the start of summer. I only had three tea bags of my favourite left and saw one of the packets was slightly ripped and took it as a sign to put the kettle on. It was going dark, I’d just showered after deep cleaning the apartment. I put on a playlist I made called “Rain Walk”, sat with the hot mug and began reading Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid. I’d not felt so at peace in a long while. The evening was cool, the false fall giving a glimpse of the proper fall to come. Called a friend, told them I felt excited for my birthday, even if the plans were quite relaxed. I don’t feel like the rug is about to be swept from under me, more like I’m about to jump as a friend hits the trampoline.
The day before my birthday I had several panic attacks. In the middle of the grocery shop I stood with my sisters hand in mine and I did something I never do, I closed my eyes, I waited. In the red and yellows sways behind my eyelids I thought “This is quite nice” and my body simmered down. From a mindset thinking I wont get anything I want to get done that day to moving on, doing even more than intended, was not a lovely feeling, it was a non-feeling. I was enjoying my walk with my sister and mom to the cheese monger, then popping into a thrift shop for plates, then down to the record shop. There I grabbed Four Tet’s Three and Malibu’s One Life, the later being the album I listened to as I finished the first draft of my novel. The owner, a cool guy, probably in his mid-40s, and I chatted. He fosters cats who wander in the shop, one being a sweet big boy who liked to use the card reader as a pillow. The owner’s birthday was a week before mine and we commented on needing more Virgo’s in the world.
My birthday was perfectly uneventful. It was lots of good food, card games and was pleased by the leisure of it. As much as I enjoyed my birthday, I’m glad August is over, as it had been quite a slog for the most part. Things have at least settled down and I’m ready to get moving on to the next thing.
Thank you for reading,
Enya x
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry -“October 1891. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city of Butte, Montana is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and ballad-maker of the town, but also a doper, a drinker, and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the extremely devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington. A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen horse, moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho, and briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunmen are soon in hot pursuit and closing in fast. With everything to lose and the safety and anonymity of San Francisco still a distant speck on their horizon, the choices they make will haunt them for the rest of their lives.”
Barry never fails to make an enjoyable read, I’m a sucker for a western too so I was bound to like this book. I will add though, why does no one use quotation marks anymore? To me it’s not style, just a bit annoying when I don’t know if it’s a character or the narrator talking. But beyond that I quite enjoyed the story, the characters were well established and had chemistry. I think it got a little lost towards the end, a bit like Mad Max: Fury Road, they turn around. The ending felt a bit off, not rushed, but it didn’t need an epilogue. The more I think on it the more I stand by it being good not great.
Brat by Gabriel Smith- “Left alone, Gabriel becomes convinced something strange is afoot; he feels as though he is constantly being watched, strange figures lurk outside his window, and the pieces of his parents' life, their manuscripts and video tapes, continue to change with each viewing.”
I tried to explain this book to someone and felt like I was grabbing random strings in the air, I kept forgetting plot points and thought how the hell did it all flow together so well? This is one of my favourite reads of the year, it took me two evenings before bed to finish it. There are some great body horror moments that made my skin crawl. It’s body horror and a haunted house, how those two types of stories and themes compliment one another, rather than set as a contrast. A haunted house is typically haunted by memory and memory is a huge aspect of the book. Who remembers correctly and who’s perspective is most fitting to narrative and conclusion. How life often does not play by those narrative rules which is why often the haunted house story ends in tragedy because the traditional arc does not fit. A tragedy is anti-resolution, the unknown remains unknown. But it is not always loss, sometimes it is just a shift.
Janet Planet (2024), directed by Annie Baker - “Enthralled by her own imagination, 11-year-old Lacy spends the long summer at home with her mother and three strangers.”
There was something quite delightful about watching this film. It made me think of what it might have been like for some friends growing up living in the woods, the big houses but no like…intentionally isolating set pieces? (The house was not a plot point, not a character). It’s clearly socially isolating but that’s the point of the film. I really, really liked it. Beautifully shot, wonderfully written, the characters were never charactactures. No one is perfect, there’s no grand revelations, just moments of realisations. And it’s very, very beautiful to watch.
Late Night with the Devil (2023), directed by Colin and Cameron Cairnes-“In 1977 a live television broadcast goes horribly wrong, unleashing evil into the nation's living rooms.”
Although this is labelled a horror movie, at no point did I think it was trying to scare me. I also never bought into the found footage aspect of the film. It looked aesthetically not great either and I imagined their use of AI did not help that. This was not a bad movie, but a forgettable one. When it ended I was sort of just like “Okay.” The actors were good at least, but it all felt underdeveloped.
Re-Animator (1985), directed by Stuart Gorgon - “At the University of Zurich, Herbert West brings his dead professor back to life. Following the horrific side-effects involved in the procedure, West moves to the USA to further his studies.”
Think Frankenstein but as an 80s B-movie with a lot of gore. It’s quite camp and a lot of humour but also very dark, naturally. It’s an 80s movie too so of course there’s an instance of the weirdest instance of sexual assault that is so bizzare….it’s kind of beyond being offensive and is just the like….how and why did you think of putting that in a movie? The practical effects are bombastic, just whatever idea came to them and see if they could pull it off. It’s a cult classic film that has several sequels and even a musical, all with Jeffrey Combs who plays Herbert West, who is great.
Stopmotion (2024), directed by Robert Morgan - “A talented stop-motion animator becomes consumed by the grotesque world of her horrifying creations -- with deadly results.”
Ew. But in a complimentary way. I really recommend this and want anyone interested to go in as blind as possible, that is all I’ll say!
Longlegs (2024), directed by Oz Perkins - “FBI Agent Lee Harker is assigned to an unsolved serial killer case that takes an unexpected turn, revealing evidence of the occult. Harker discovers a personal connection to the killer and must stop him before he strikes again.”
Maybe my favourite film of the year. I am never watching it again. My sister and I made the mistake of watching with the lights off and were terrified going through our apartment turning them back on again. Perkins plays around a lot with shadows and silhouettes as well as sound, so even when there’s not something in the background, you keep expecting it because of the framing (and sometimes there IS something and maybe you screamed watching a horror movie for the first time since you were a teenager, not me though….). I’ve seen some people call this film boring and I feel like we did not watch the same film. I was very engaged and trying to solve the story as it unraveled. Feel bad movie of the year! Loved it! It’s vague enough to reward rewatches but as I said, I don’t intend to watch again, at least not for a long time and in the middle of a bright sunny day.
The Hole (1962), direct by Faith & John Hubley - “Two men discuss the nature of accidents and the possibility of nuclear war.”
I really enjoy when people animate over improvised dialogue, quite a popular subject for youtube animators, but rarely do I see one pre-internet. I’d heard of Faith and John Hubley in relation to animator Ralph Bakshi but never seen their own work until now. I always enjoy the contrast of mundanity with the profound. Two co-workers, half arguing, cutting between work and the existential reality of nuclear war. It’s on youtube, I’d recommend checking it out.
Pitch Black Heist (2011), directed by John Maclean - “Liam and Michael are professional safe crackers who meet on a simple job to relieve an office safe from its contents. The catch is a light activated alarm system impelling the men to embark on a pitch black heist.”
Another short film, always nice to see Liam Cunningham and Michael Fassbinder together, they have great chemistry (they also worked on the incredible Steve McQueen Film Hunger in 2008). I would hate this to be a full length film because it works so perfectly as a short. It’s recontextualises itself near the end, which I always enjoy, even if the twist is obvious.
Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus (2023), directed by Neo Sora - “Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto leaves his fans a final gift before passing away from cancer in 2023. Recorded in late 2022, with just Sakamoto and a Yamaha grand, the composer performs his most haunting, delicate melodies.”
I had this playing on my laptop on a sunny, hot afternoon in my kitchen. I don’t often watch a concert film, I always get the wrong impression that I can do other things as it plays, only to find myself sat in silence staring at the screen. There is something to watching an artist perform fully aware it is one of if not the last. The fact that he still makes mistakes and starts over shows that work never stops, a lifetime is not enough to perfect, it is always about the pursuit.
32 Sounds (2022), directed by Sam Green - “The film explores the elemental phenomenon of sound by weaving together 32 specific sound explorations into a cinematic meditation on the power of sound.”
I was initially put off, the introduction of the film seemed like a kickstarter video, pitching me a concept and I wasn’t a huge fan of the narrator. But give it a few minutes and it catches you. I had intended to turn it off, but I gave it an extra minute while I did something else and came back to it. Without really thinking about it I finished the film, better off than I was before.
The Beast (2023), directed by Bertrand Bonello- “As artificial intelligence reigns, emotions have become a threat; to get rid of it, Gabrielle must purify her DNA by diving back into her past lives; she finds a great love there as well as a bad feeling.”
Meh. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t like it. It seemed to be trying to say a lot of things but none of them very well. It was on the nose but off the mark, if that makes sense. And by the end I was bored, having given up trying to engage with it.