Hello! I've been watching Austrian nature documentaries and dreaming about mountains. Today: mountaineering; museumeering; Beowulf; music that makes me feel like I'm in a warm bath (and that is an excellent companion when I am in a warm bath).

Article: A Single Narrow Gasping Lung by Grayson Schaffer, published by Outdoor Magazine in September 2017
A few weeks ago, in the first week of my winter break, my uncle and I went on a long, muddy walk through the woods and hills of Vienna, and halfway through being scratched by thorns and fighting our way through bushes we talked about the first known ascent of Mount Everest without oxygen, back in the day, by Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler. Messner is a household name in Austria, though my favourite story about him remains the one about how he broke several bones while trying to climb his own garden wall.
In general I am suspicious of stories of singular achievements or great people, and I have had no sympathy for Everest climbers or mountain climbing tourism since my grandfather lent me his copy of Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer when I was a teenager. But listening to this article about Messner and Habeler recently was just what I needed while going on a solo walk through a (sadly flat) wood: it's a story of ego and drive, of publicity and recognition, and also of casual cruelty against the Sherpas and each other. But it's also a story of mountains. And boy do I wish I was on a mountain.

Film: Das große Museum (The Great Museum) (2014), directed by Johannes Holzhausen
At this time of year I always want to go to the Kunsthistorische Museum, Vienna's big national gallery packed with Brueghels and Caravaggios and a beautiful Raffael Madonna that I love. Museums are complicated and strange places, and when they're based in Vienna you can bet that they also have the whiff of the gently absurd and Kakanian (to quote Robert Musil's ironic take on the empire that produced Vienna's museums, "There was some display of luxury; but it was not, of course, as over-sophisticated as that of the French."). All of that becomes immediately apparent when watching The Great Museum, a documentary about the KHM whose behind-the-scenes footage of curators, technicians, cleaners and publicists is full of the mildly bizarre. From harmless stuff – golden frogs fencing, using a scooter to get to the far-away copy machine – to the much less harmless stuff – hierarchies and more hierarchies: a senior curator who seemingly does not talk to the technicians who have to do her bidding; nobody talking to the cleaners at all – this is both exactly what you would expect from "an institution" and a trip into another world. Unless you've worked in a Viennese museum, in which case it all might seem oddly familiar. Holzhausen's film is a study of a place of employment, of the routines, processes and peculiar working relationships that define it; for me, it is also a reminder that one day I'll see some very old oils again irl. 

Book: Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dhavana Headley (2019)
Because English is neither my first language nor something I studied at university level, I've never come into contact with Beowulf until now, with this version of the poem as a bro poem. I can't speak to how "good" a version this is, but I'm enjoying it! Of course I'd enjoy a book that is both poetic and something I'd see on hockey twitter. In her introduction, Maria Dhavana Headley talks about overhearing men in bars bragging and telling each other tall tales, which is the vibe she brings to this story of people doing deeds and then talking about their deeds:
Horrors happen, I'm grown, I know it. 
Bro, Fate can fuck you up. 

Other: Ambient music: Mia Gargaret by Gia Margaret
I have felt a measure of peace this past few weeks due to a combination of being away from screens and outside more, blocking all social media from my phone, reading for hours on end and spending a lot of time in rooms with many lit candles listening to mostly voiceless soundscapes (and carols, of course). Gia Margaret's song "body", with its sample of an Alan Watts' lecture, caught me just at the right time, as did her album of optimistic arrangements. 'Tis the season for anything that'll help you get through the dark, dreary months and I fully recommend the combination of beeswax candle + tea + something compulsively readable + music that makes you dream of better times.

That's it! Until next time.