Week 05
February 03, 2020
End of the month, we did it! Feels like we’ve broken the back of the year, even though mathematically that makes no sense at all.
Disaster Utopianism
Hadn’t heard this term before but it’s popped up a few times in relation to the how people are coping with the Coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. Basically it describes something that most people already know - people are basically good, and if something bad happens and they’re not in immediate danger, a vast majority of people will try and help each other out.
This review of Rebecca Solnit’s book on the concept was very interesting, goes into more detail with examples.
What really struck me is that it’s extremely weird that this feels like a remarkable concept. Whenever I’ve personally been in places where something bad has happened (for example, London on 7/7) people come together rather than fragment into dog-eat-dog chaos.
Sometimes it feels like 24 hour news has broken our image of ourselves in very specific ways.
Terrorists in your area
On Sunday we all went into London to see some friends. We used to live in Streatham Hill and still have a really great bunch of people we keep in touch with round Streatham/West Norwood. As we were eating Sunday lunch with a bunch of families someone got an ‘Are you all alright?’ message. Amazing how we’re so used to them now. Out came the phones and on came the telly.
I expected us to be more shocked. We could see the police helicopter nearly above us out the window. We’ve all walked down the street that was on the tv screen 100s of times with our kids. The local cinema is just round the corner.
But no one really freaked out. It’s unfortunately pretty standard now and everyone has a handle on how rare these things are. The news rolled on and on talking to everyone vaguely in the area and it just seemed ridiculous, so many random people on webcams saying exactly the same thing. Thankfully it looks like no one was killed this time apart from the attacker.
Massive respect to the one local lady who, when asked what happened, just said ‘A man stabbed some people and then the police shot him’ to which the BBC man asked for more detail and she said ‘That’s it. That’s what happened.’ Can she present the news every day? It’d be about 45 seconds long.
Brexitmas
It’s done. Apart from, y’know, the actual important stuff. Hard to think of it as anything but an impending disaster but no one on the left or the right has any real idea what’s going to happen. Best we get our heads down and do anything we can to help those that need it directly - it’s pretty clear they can’t rely on the government doing anything for them in the next five years.
It’s still really depressing to see such a wide swathe of left-leaning people on social media tied to the ‘If you voted leave you’re a racist’ line. It would be far easier if everyone who voted leave WAS a racist, but it’s extremely hard to see people who understand how “othering” works doing exactly that when it suits them. We’re not going to get anywhere until we’ve got over that kind of bollocks.
Tune
Was listening to Heaven 17 and clicked through to their British Electric Foundation stuff. Somehow I”d never heard this track with vocals by Green Gartside.
Green Gartside with B.E.F.- I Don t Know Why I Love You
His band Scritti Politti were always underrated, their Cupid & Psyche album still sounds like something transmitted from the future to 1985. This is similarly fantastic.
Good Things
Listened to some good podcasts this week:
Chris Morris on Adam Buxton’s podcast - for someone who’s allegedly mysterious he comes across as a regular, if wildly talented, guy. https://adam-buxton.co.uk/podcasts/ep104-chris-morris-1 https://adam-buxton.co.uk/podcasts/ep105-chris-morris-2
Andre 3000 with Rick Rubin - lots of interesting stuff in this one about success and it’s impact on creativity. It seems to not have had a great impact on Andre, hope he manages to get over some of this stuff as we could do with some more of his music, even if it’s a Bassoon album. https://brokenrecordpodcast.com/episode-13-andre-3000-and-rick-rubin-in-conversation
Still watching The Newsroom, it’s ridiculous but enjoyable if you can get over the cheese.
Finished the latest series of Mrs. Maisel, one of the best things on TV (or best things on streaming media?), could have done with another 10 episodes.
Onwards!
Feels like I’ve forgotten half the things I thought about this week, but if they’re important they’ll bubble up again. The days are getting longer, green shoots are appearing, the end of Winter is in site, keep going!