This month, I was away at a writer’s residency at Joya:AiR in southern Spain, a climate-positive, not-for-profit, off-grid farm-like Moon base, where I found out that I can channel my inner Stephen King and somehow write 4,000 words per day. I also learned that being isolated on a mountain, a four-hour walk from the nearest town, with a handful of strangers to keep me company is quite the challenge. Plus, I eat more food than the average person, apparently (in service of dem gains). All in all, it was a great experience, the surroundings were magnificent, and I’ve made significant headway with the old magnum opus (no, really, this time).
In Pacific State news….there is no news. Poor baby is tanking hard and it pains my sensitive heart that my favourite of all my novels has by far the lowest audience, but such is life. Locus asked to review it, at least, and it has been submitted to a couple of awards, so there’s a chance it’ll find a new lease of life at some point. But maybe it just isn’t meant to be appreciated in its own time.
Other writing news: I translated a couple of photobooks that will be coming out this year, my own photobook is at the dummy stage, and I’ve started a new climate-related book project that - I hope - will see the light of day this year. Even so, it’s April tomorrow and things are piling up. It’ll be 2025 before I know it.
Book of the month: I’ll go with Night of the Hunter by the fantastically named Davis Grubb. The film with Robert Mitchum may be more famous (and I believe it may have provided some inspiration for Cape Fear), but the novel is tightly plotted and darkly endearing. I love the Southern turns of phrase and the quasi-oedipal battle between John and Preacher for the mother/wife’s heart. Seems like every single page has a new description of the Moon on it, but it all helps create an expressionist mood suffused in sweat and fractious energies.
Film of the month: I finally watched Fear and Desire, Kubrick’s earliest film. It’s rough and ready and the seams are extremely visible, but I found it fascinating nonetheless. There’s a spark there throughout, though the only really worthwhile scene is when the youngest of the soldiers goes insane while taunting a woman prisoner tied to a tree. I felt echoes of Gomer Pyle (Full Metal Jacket appeared a full 34 years after F&D) while watching it. It was only an hour long, too - good job, as the actor who plays the captain is unbearable.
Album of the month: Invincible Shield by Judas Priest. Pure, beautiful metal by a bunch of men over the age of 70. I don’t even really like Priest (except Painkiller), but this may end up being my album of the year because why even pretend I’m in touch with the kids anymore eh.
Lights, camera, music:
3 Will Silver - Maybe It’s Not Our Time Yet
