Time for a chart. Here in Athens, the city has been gripped by a heatwave for the better part of two weeks, which means that even thinking about writing causes me to break out in a Rocky-II-final-fight sweat. As a result, I haven’t done much. Ideas aplenty, but the ability to rise above this heat-induced malaise and tap away at the keyboard has thus far eluded me. I didn’t read anything about this in The War of Art. Perhaps it’s time for Steven Pressfield to add a new chapter: Conquering Your Resistance in the Climate Crisis (answer: put the air conditioning on full blast and accelerate change even further).
Publication news: The trad-publisher Quillkeepers Press has seen fit to include one of my essays, titled ‘Shrouds’, in its forthcoming anthology on grief. It’s a highly personal essay penned during a period of heightened emotion, and I’m over the moon that someone wants to put it in print. I’m unsure when the publication date will be, but suffice to say I’ll make a big song and dance about it.
Book of the month: I will pick Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman, simply because the first few chapters are a whirlwind of climate adaptation and mitigation measures observed through the lens of parody. While the story is little more than a series of side quests and the payoff falls flat for me, the idea of companies being able to buy excinction credits so they can safely eliminate animal species in pursuit of capitalist expansion is both a bold and terrifying idea (and one I wish I’d come up with).
Film of the month: Under Therapy, a Spanish comedy-drama from the heady days of 2024. It moseys along for a while, doing that European film thing where a handful of character actors are confined to a single location and act their hearts out in the form of quickfire dialogue and meaty swipes against the conventions of modern society when WAPAW it shifts into high gear and the comedy drains away and you’re left feeling both hollow (because of the climax) and satisfied (that you didn’t just spend 90 minutes watching a guy take great pleasure in blowing a bugle in other people’s faces).
Album of the month: I guess it’s Fantasy Noises & Perfect Delusions by Deathbrain (yep) simply because everything else I’ve listened to this month has been hot trash. The album is outsider house, so it reminds me a little of AL90 or Kedr Livansky, albeit nowhere near as good because it all just kind of melts together. Good for when you’re melting, though.
40-degree playlist:
3 Disclosure - When A Fire Starts To Burn
on a steel horse i ride
