#89 The Offcuts
Scrappy, seductive, springtime satisfaction
The biggest thing I have to report from the week is, of course, my zine! A labour of love and a project that blended together this Substack, my love of writing, and creative experimentation (learning how to use Indesign, rebranding Drafting’s colours and fonts, etc.) I was a melting pot of anxiety, pride, fear, and overwhelm. Putting yourself out there, literally trying to thrust your hard work into the hands of strangers in the street, takes more resolve than I was ready for. Baby steps.
After a recommendation in Pandora Syke’s Books & Bits, I downloaded the audiobook of Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li. The book is a memoir about grief - Li lost both her sons to suicide. Her story is an extraordinary and harrowing one, and through my listening to her story, I have found myself in conversation with it. There is something Li says about cliches in grief being “flabby”, and that we cannot mimic or mirror our feelings in metaphors of nature, which I disagreed with. When my suicidal ideation was most vivid, comparing my thoughts and feelings to the patterns and behaviour of things found in nature was a pillar of belonging and rootedness for me. It was firm and solid, not flabby in the slightest. She goes on to describe these comparisons as a ‘placeholder’ for feelings that lack the comprehension of words in the moment. As writers, our view of the use and application of language is held to a higher standard. Others cannot always offer the same poetic or literary flair. They’re cliches for a reason. Despite our frustration at their overuse, they are phrases that have encapsulated shared feelings en masse.
I do not think Li is ‘wrong’ in her opinions here. Far from it. Grief exists on a spectrum, and two people can grieve in different ways, needing opposite things from the support network. It’s a conversation we should all be more open to. There is no one answer to death.
The BBC should take the blame for the lack of BAFTA safeguarding
It’s not enough not to say harmful things about people; you have to speak up when other people do
Do we need a dedicated space to be creative?
The one change that worked
A 15-year-old girl documents the vile misogyny that confronts her daily on social media
Lioness Chloe Kelly has her own Barbie
Nick Cave on grief (yes, again, but he is full of pearly grief wisdom)
Kate Lindsey - found her face on a random website
Michaella Parkes - Chef is the new chic, but ITV can’t handle the heat
If you haven’t watched the Netflix Documentary, Inside America’s Next Top Model yet, you must. Tyra Banks is a slippery fish who evades all accountability for some of the vile, disgusting things women were forced to contend with as contestants.
The Joy Gregory Catching Flies with Honey exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery ended last week, and I squeezed in a visit. I became familiar with her work after it was featured in the Women in Revolt! Exhibition at the Tate Britain. Her work is a joy. On the surface, there is a soft, feminine subtlety to her subject matter which, when paired with her thought process, makes her symbolism and motifs so striking.
I finally saw Hamnet in the cinema. I thought it was beautiful. I cried. I came on my period the same day, but I think it was a good representation of the book. Not perfect. But no film can ever live up to the expectation of your fictional construction of a book you loved.
It’s old news now, because I dropped in some thoughts on the offcuts I thought I’d be scheduling two weeks ago. Extreme adverse weather conditions made it hard to concentrate. But I’ll share my findings anyway. I enjoyed Obama saying that aliens are real on a podcast, and I also enjoyed the attention Obama’s views received
Other TikTok finds included a video of Chelsea walking straight past their mascots (a group of children buzzing to meet their heroes). Not even a smile was thrown in their direction. And another post saying that parents in Belfast were fuming because they’d booked tickets for a K Pop forever tribute show only to realise that K Pop is actually a genre and not just K Pop demon hunters lol, which is what they were expecting lol.
We are defrosting. All around, there are pockets of spring. Crocuses, daffodils, glory-of-the-snow, magnolia trees, and blossoms inject saturation back into the world. Here are the last two stanzas of Whose are the little beds by Emily Dickinson, who writes of springtime beginning to wake up.
“Hush! Epigea wakens!
The crocus stirs her lids,
Rhodora’s cheek is crimson,—
She’s dreaming of the woods.”
Then, turning from them, reverent,
“Their bed-time ‘t is,” she said;
“The bumble-bees will wake them
When April woods are red.”
