from a vibes perspective
nNnnOOOOooooOOOo
first off: Over the weekend, my book club met and discussed marriage, Geoguessr, and Eileen Garvin’s Crow Talk. The book was fine. I gave it a 4/5 on StoryGraph despite some discomfort with some of the author’s other works (tl;dr - some “my family member has autism and it’s really affected me” weirdness, a small amount of which appeared in this book). To uncharitably sum it up, it’s an outdoorsy Pacific Northwest book, and although the plot left something to be desired, the descriptions of animals and weather and flora were immersive and often beautiful. I said to my book club that any book that makes me, noted indoorsy person, want to spend time outside has something going for it.
Crow Talk was, improbably, my second foray into vibes-based nature escapism this year. Some people know I will watch any Saoirse Ronan film. A special subset within that know I will definitely watch any Saoirse Ronan film in which she has unnaturally colored hair (spoiler alert: Lady Bird shoutout at the bottom of this newsletter). So when I got on a flight on New Year’s Eve and the inflight entertainment offered a Saoirse Ronan film I’d never heard of — The Outrun, based on a memoir I’d also never heard of — I pressed play immediately. And it was really beautiful. Not only is it an impactful, heartbreaking portrayal of alcoholism and addiction, it’s also a funny, poignant portrait of a woman who has a master’s degree (oh no) and needs to give herself a chance to sort herself out (oh Noooooo) so she can slay her demons and carve out a better future and finally put herself first (nNnnOOOOooooOOOo). In this case, this meant Ronan’s protagonist got a temporary job in bird conservation and spent several months in a cottage on Papa Westray, one of the smallest of the Orkney Islands. I appreciated how accessible the film was just from a vibes perspective — I think I felt every beat exactly as everyone intended me to feel it, and by the last scene I was so invested and so shocked that I sobbed on the plane (and again when I watched it again a few hours ago as I’m writing this, Jan. 13). I don’t think I’ll ever be able to not live in or near a city, but the idea that I can engage with something like Crow Talk or The Outrun and feel inspired and excited isn’t nothing.
to the letter: the new, possibly recurring, section of this newsletter where I talk about what I’ve learned from my project where I’m writing a letter to a different person every day!
I wrote previously that I found myself writing more in the “personal essay” genre — that is, writing scenes and attempting to wrap everything up neatly, and not really writing an interesting letter in the process. Another thing I’ve noticed lately is how candid I’ve been, which I think makes these letters fall more under journaling than letter writing? If some of the people I’ve written to so far asked me to send them what I’d written to them, I’d resist — it’s felt at times more like I’ve written about them than to them. This dynamic of writing unsent letters is still so interesting to me, because while I’m trying to maintain some aspects of letter writing, like a casual, personal tone, the knowledge that the person will never see their letter is causing me to take risks I might not otherwise.
wholesome scroll: film soundtracks that are bangers from start to finish (but in a cool, mysterious way)
Synecdoche, New York (2008 - Jon Brion)
“cool, mysterious” cred: Jon Brion is an experience you just have to have. He also scored Lady Bird and I think a John Mulaney special? His work makes me uncomfortable, but in a way that’s so interesting, because why am I this uneasy listening to instrumentation I’m so familiar with? Certainly in Synecdoche, a deeply discomforting film, the uneasiness of the score absolutely pushes the story along. But his sound is so distinctive, even across film genres, that I’m a little taken aback that it hits every time. (I really liked this article about how he scored Lady Bird, especially since it’s so different from Synecdoche but so undeniably Jon Brion.)
Asteroid City (2023 - Alexandre Desplat)
“cool, mysterious” cred: Motifs! Repetition! Instrumentation! So much repetition! “Dear Alien Who Art in Heaven”! God, I would read a dissertation on this score.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005 - Harry Gregson-Williams)
“cool, mysterious” cred: I just remember being in tenth grade or whatever and thinking this soundtrack was cool, but not in a Lord of the Rings way (the coolest soundtrack of the early- to mid-2000s, but not as mysterious), just in a “wow, this sounds like it was made in a lab, but it really works for the material it’s accompanying” — that is, the only good Narnia adaptation of this century.
Call Me By Your Name (2017 - various artists)
“cool, mysterious” cred: Luca Guadignino picked all of the pieces for this himself, iirc, which means you’ve got songs of the time (the film takes place in 1983), older classical works by Bach and Ravel, newer classical works by John Adams and Ryuichi Sakamoto, and a couple of Sufjan Stevens originals written for the film. Songs are both diegetic and non-diegetic, and then there’s the final scene — in the video above — where that line gets really blurred. (Especially since Timothée Chalamet had the song playing in an earpiece while filming it?? Like??) Plus after seeing the film, listening to all 71 minutes of the soundtrack — since not every song is heard in the film in its entirety, of course — is heartbreaking in a different way. To me, it felt like experiencing an extended edition of the film. So if you think you might want to be depressed for another hour-plus…