Hello! Today: a conversation about Irish history, a rom-com starring an academic researching dead languages and a British-coded android, a poem about the Polish-Belorussian border, and a punk-rock band from Durham, England.

Article: Interview with Fintan O’Toole by Masoud Golsorkhi, published by TANK in winter 2021
“​​There’s a value in putting what we know historically against the much more complex reality of people living in two minds as they experience that process of having one foot in tradition and one foot in modernity.” Fintan O’Toole’s latest book on recent Irish history via the lens of his family’s experience kicks off a conversation about identity politics (the identity here being religion and nation), Brexit and the “mobilisation of victimhood”. I really enjoy O’Toole’s thoughtful approach to contemporary history writing and analysis. 
(In a similar vein, but more specific, I also enjoyed Ola Insett’s essay about how Norway remembers WW2, and who gets to write – and critique – its official history.)

Film: I’m Your Man (Ich bin dein Mensch), directed by Maria Schrader (2021)
This melancholy German rom-com made me laugh out loud *and* stare at the wall pondering existence, which is always a good thing. Alma is a 40-something academic who is tasked with writing a report about a new generation of androids: she has to live with Tom, an android designed to be her perfect partner, for three weeks. Tom, tall, dark and handsome, has a faint British accent — because Alma likes “someone faintly foreign yet familiar, so: British” — and can answer any questions, calculate any probability. 
This somewhat kooky premise somehow turns into an unexpectedly moving film about love and loneliness. That Alma is an academic inclined to approach everything hyper-rationally only adds to the complexity of the situation (and the relatability: no more manic pixie dream journalists, we want researchers who are getting scooped!). What do we want from a partner? How much is projection, how much is wishful thinking, how much is real? How right is Iris Murdoch, when she points out in “The Sublime and the Good” that “Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.” Even if that something is a robot?

Book: In Response to the Lady at a Reading Who Asked What the Job of a Poet Is by Jacek Dehnel, translated from Polish by Ann Frenkel and Gwido Zlatkes, published by NYRB
Not a book this time, but a poem, which I would recommend reading to the end. The job of the poet is to respond to the crimes that are committed in the name of so-called border protection in the EU!

Other: Martha (the band)
January is a particularly bleak month, weather-wise, but Martha’s brand of punk rock (punk? indie rock? power pop?) helps blow away the cobwebs. Their first EP holds a special place in my heart, but every one of their albums is brilliant and infused with Durham-isms which make me nostalgic for Durham and think of happy memories. Favourite songs include this one and this one.

That's all! Hope you're all hanging in there! Bye!