salt in the wild

February is a short, cheeky little month, isn't it. It just ends, there, three days before it should. I almost have whiplash from it. But, look, by now the daffodils have opened, and that helps. The sun is starting to set around six in the evening, which really helps. I really wish I wasn't so governed by light and the elements, you know, but something in me is also glad that I'm really no more complex than a houseplant, when you get down to it. Always thirsty. Enjoys the sun. Likes being talked to, sang to.

This is by way of a partial apology for this newsletter coming so close to the call: it hasn't been hard to get the four a month out generally, it's been a real pleasure, but this last week has been a little tricky, what with the cat revealing some of the secrets of his life to us, so I'm nose to nose here with March, sending this to you. Thank you for being so patient.

Also, to be completely honest, this is the second complete redraft of this newsletter. I had started to write a bit about what's been happening with my reading, and my life, and my writing lately, but it all got a bit heady and then I was linking Bo Burnham interviews and that was when I realized, babe, you are turning this into a really weak internet and semiotics lecture, and that is going to kill the vibe stone dead. So, instead, I'm going to talk to you about some things I loved this last fortnight. Some perfect little escape roads out of dicey times, some good old fashioned entertainment.

I've been reading a lot and writing a lot: in 2023 so far I've felt more receptive, or something. My momentum was juddery, for a while there, inconsistent in a way that kind of freaked me out - but something just really switched on in me recently, and I've got a better handle on things. The hope really does hit you like a brick sometimes. This doesn't go to say there aren't challenges at hand: there are. But I think I've gone from feeling a bit helpless, to feeling capable, and I don't know if that's the extra couple of minutes of sunlight a day, or the passing of a birthday, or the feeling that this book I'm working on is crackling, and alive under my hands - at last. It could be anything, or everything, and I won't take it for granted.

So I'll talk a small bit about some things I've been enjoying, some buoyant things, some gems . I've read a swathe of books, but look, two of them aren't out until April, so I'll leave talking about them in detail until then.

I have some events coming up in March, too, which I'll lay out at the very end. I stepped sharply back from public facing work just before the pandemic, as some of you who have been reading or following me for a while might have noticed. I was rereading some of my old Girl Offline column at The Gloss today, and remembered how I felt like I was ready to come apart at any moment. How saying 'no' felt like it could ruin what I had scraped together for myself. In the years between then and now, I've said no a lot: some big nos, some small ones, and you know, it absolutely did change things for me. Some of the things I worried about did happen, but realistically, they weren't the end of the world, even if there were moments where it might have felt like it. There was a lot of good, more good, than I could have imagined when I started to draw back, too. So I'm taking tenetative steps out into the world again, in terrific company, in good hands.

Right. The last few weeks, then.

I've just finished the 2016 banger, The Power, by Naomi Alderman.

I knew this was a book I was supposed to be reading, years ago. It stared at me from shelves in other people's homes, from tables in bookshops. This, and Station Eleven, and a whole score more that I will read this year as part of my Late To The Party journey. I went in with no expectations, other than the vague understanding that this was a story about a world wherein one day, women simply woke up with the power inside them to exert electrical pain onto others. I didn't expect the whirlwind of a story, laid out across countries, the multiple interlocking perspectives. I love a story told through many eyes, Jennifer Egan's gorgeous, strange duet of books A Visit From The Goon Squad and The Candy House being two I'd hold up as near perfect. Alderman's different characters braid over eachother's lives, encountering eachother during a really dramatic, truly intense final movement. I am not a reviewer, and I think Amal El-Mohtarr gave a really great and interesting review of the story here, and asks some challenging and good questions of it - how and why it chooses the avenue it does. I am, as always, operating here without spoilers, just in case. But I felt like I learned something about the craft from it, as a work, as well as being held breathless by the pace and locations and innovation. Also, apparently the TV series is out at the end of this month, which is handy enough, and might offer an interesting walk back into this strange and intense world.

Speaking of telly, I've been watching Pokerface.

As a distinctly not-really-into-true-crime person, I am a very-much-into-camp-detective-stories person. I was raised on Midsummer Murders, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) and other slightly off the beaten track eveningtime crime solving shows. Pokerface wonderful. Big characters, big sets, murder-of-the-week setup, a riot - not without heavy moments, but those are tempered really neatly with levity and style. Natasha Lyonne is immaculate as the supernaturally talented human lie detector Charlie - she is a gorgeous, playful gremlin and distinctly is NOT a cop. I know it's an oft-made tweet, but I really wish there were more Lyonnes, or that there was more room for stories about characters like the ones she plays here, or in Russian Doll. They feel distinct in their appetite for chaos, their poor choices, their relationship to whatever a moral compass is. This is also, critically, a show full of people that look like people. I like it a lot. Just halfway through the current season, which is still unfolding. It's nice to have television to look forward to in the evenings, rather than just soothing reruns of Knightmare or Crystal Maze, though they have been extremely helpful - as was The Traitors, which deserves an entire newsletter of its own.

In my listening, I finished the audiobook - just over a neat two hours, broken over a couple walks - of We Had To Remove This Post, by Hanna Bervoets. I really loved it, though it isn't an easy or chill story: a tiny, razor sharp chronicle of a group of people who work as content moderators for an unnamed, fictional tech giant. I started it, then had to take a breather: it's a fierce work about witnessing violence, and the big machine we all work in. It asks what we are doing here, online, and what it is doing to us. What are we tolerating, you know? So I would both recommend it, and also give you a caveat: no faint hearts, here. The narration, by Khristine Hvam, is great - like listening to a particularly sardonic friend relate the worst thing that's ever happened to them.

Currently, as I write, I'm listening to a podcast called My Perfect Console, hosted by Simon Parkin. It's sort of a Desert Island Discs, for video games. The guests bring five games to him, from crucial moments in their lives: the podcast is still new, but the guests are heavy hitters. Dara O Briain (national treasure), Ashly Burch (who I have loved since Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin? a glorious Youtube relic), Josh Wardle (the man behind Wordle!) - a real hit list, though what drew me in was the most recent episode, wherein Parkin interviews Phil Fish, who created the indie classic, Fez, which, though it is a masterpiece, famously burned him out. He left the industry completely, so listening to this interview feels very precious. He was the focus of a documentary called Indie Game, years ago, but hearing him speak now is really compelling.

I know too well what it is like to work so hard that it sets you on fire and then one day you are buried under a heap of ash. I know what it is like to come to find the work impossible, but not be able to give up, because you need to live. To wake up one day and not be able to think. To have all the love siphoned out of the one thing - the one thing - that you had built your life around. To have no idea how to get on the right path. I really should just write an essay about it, rather than half-starting to talk about it all the time. I mean, I am pretty much always talking around burnout, and I'm interested in Phil Fish, because he burned out. Also, because I loved Fez. I loved it when I found it first, I played it again last year and loved it then. I don't really know how to be objective about it, to be honest, because it caters very specficially to my taste, and taste can interfere with clear critique, obviously. In this newsletter I'm really not writing as a critic or anything like it, I'm writing as an enthusiast. A fan. A person who enjoys things. This is a caveat I feel like I am always making when I want to say 'hey I think this is good,' but look, Fez is good. Fish is interesting to me. If you haven't played Fez, consider this a heartfelt recommendation. It's something very special. It's full of secrets.

I don't have a sauce rec, for you this time. Just things to take in. I've been cooking along the same lines I always do. Rice from the rice cooker. Pak choi, truly the central vegetable of my 2023. Nothing special. I am presently writing from my bed, long hot water bottle around my shoulders (see: Skeleton Problems from the last newsletter), unappetized in general. How about we double up on the sauces next time? Extra sauce? I'll even do a fancy Canva banner for it, because as we all know, Graphic Design Is My Passion. Let's say, the sauce of the week is Big Mo's new fancy medical kidney diet. It comes in a packet, and though it looks exactly like his normal food, somehow will do him more kindness and go easier on him. He is presently licking the patch the vet shaved on his belly, at my feet.

Just one unposted Instagram note. Maybe this counts as a sauce. Salt is the one true sauce, I suppose. A sauce of protection.

So, before we go. The events.

I am so, so excited to be taking to the live stage with Caroline O'Donoghue to celebrate the finale of her gorgeous trilogy of young adult novels, the Gifts books, which deal with spellcasting and the tarot and girlhood and curses we inherit and we carry - which makes Practical Magic a perfect subject for this live episode of her podcast, Sentimental Garbage. And I'm going to be an international gal, and go to London for it, and all. Cinema Garbage! There will be a screening, then the live podcast. The last time we did this was way, way back in 2018, where we talked about Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy at Body & Soul, on a Sunday morning, in the rain. We hitchhiked home. It was frankly, magical, and I am psyched to get to get up and get into it with Caroline again. This event is sold out, such is O'Donoghue's magic, but hey, if you have tickets - I'll see you there.

I have a couple of other events in the UK around that time which I'll post about on Insta once the last few wee details are locked in place, and potentially include in the next newsletter, too, which will come out around the middle of March.

Sooner than that, I am taking part in a gorgeous online tarot workshop with Conner Habib and Rachel True. Each of us will give a lecture on the tarot, exploring approaches and interpretations and uses, and there will be a Q&A after. There's even an option to elect a tarot reading with one of us, too. I'm really thrilled to get to talk about the tarot in this way, but also, really excited to hear what Conner and Rachel have to say about it. The nice thing about the tarot is that it just keeps turning over and over for me, even though I have been reading for twenty years, now, since I was only a scrap of a fifteen year old trying to work out what an oracle deck was, and how I could use it to tell stories about being alive. It's an online seminar, and tickets are available here!

I think that's it from me, this time, my friends. Thank you again for waiting for me. More in a couple of weeks, and for my S Tier subrscribers, your class will be in your inboxes tomorrow. This one will, I promise, not go quite so hard as the last! I'll spare your hearts this time (just about).

Take care of yourselves until then, and if there is a four legged friend in your household, give them a little pet from me & Big Mo.

This, or better!

xox

griff

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P.P.S

My usual apology if you spot any ragged spelling or bad grammar. I'll fix it in the archive.

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