lend me ur eyes 084
As per tradition, a roundup of things from across 2024 for the last mailing of the year. I’ve posted my review of music and film, and here are my games of the year. And now some other odd bits here. An exhibition: Tate’s ongoing Electric Dreams, a survey of technological art made before the internet, featuring a range of artworks made from and with code, light, punchcards, computers, sound, patterns, systems, and all sorts of other things. All of it unfamiliar and exciting, and suggestive of a range of other directions, movements, and moments waiting to be examined and explored. A restaurant: Tollington’s Fish Bar. It sounds bad. A pricey-ish Basque small plates place built inside of an old fish and chips shop in Finsbury Park, ran by the proprietors of The Plimsoll. But the food was so tasty, the staff nice, and the atmosphere good. I would go again. A book: Black Arsenal, for all the reasons I wrote in the last newsletter I sent, and more. A magazine: A Profound Waste of Time 4, maybe the best issue yet of this always lavishly made, beautifully illustrated, independently produced publication. An essay: “It’s Not What the World Needs Right Now,” by Andrew Norman Wilson for the Baffler. A podcast: Steve Maretzky, designer of the fascinating sounding 1988 text adventure game A Mind Forever Wandering, on Simon Parkin’s My Perfect Console. A gig: Chuquimamani Condori and Sunik Kim at Cafe Oto. Sunik Kim playing the crazy mouth organ and making the most incomprehensible, expansive, sometimes satisfying, sometimes ear-splitting sounds. Joshua Crampton playing the guitar, making warbling synths sounds, and repeatedly hitting the button that goes “DJ… DJ… DJ… DJDJDJDJDJ.” A hot room, great sound, and an appreciative, locked-in crowd. Everything you need. A speech: Jeremy Corbyn’s Islington re-election speech, a brief moment of positivity in an otherwise politically bleak year. A vlog: life update, by Nick Cheong, because the guy has a better sense of what magic happens when you edit together music and images well than any working filmmaker I know. And lastly. a video: Brisk God’s DnB seagull one. Feels good.
The other day SH asked me what sort of year had I had. Had 2024 been a good or bad year, all told? I said it hadn’t really been either, but instead a kind of unremarkable year, one without many notable peaks or troughs in it. PS said he was very jealous, that he would rather have a stable and consistent year that the one he had experienced in which work was turbulent and unpredictable, and stress was a constant. I take his point totally. Nothing at all wrong with the unremarkable. We’re in our thirties now: longstanding friends, small pleasures, nice food and beverages, new currents in art and culture. And some surprises if we’re lucky. That is nourishment aplenty. SH also asked me what she thought I would get into during 2025. The only answer I could muster on the spot was that “maybe I will dick about with some synths or something.” I don’t know if this will happen, but it’s an exciting prospect. In even a modest life, there are infinite possibilities. I tried one year to make actual new year’s resolutions, and I was too ambitious and unrealistic, albeit with noble intent. My hopes are more realistic now, more grounded perhaps. Those small fires that rage inside you are still there burning, but they just get easier to stoke.
lend me ur eyes is a linkdump of what i'm into month by month: music, books, games, movies, and other internet detritus, with misc editorial misgivings in the intro. lend me ur eyes friends, so that i can see.