For he had spoken lightly of a woman’s name
hello, hello
November? No!
Five things:
Years ago (actually, thinking about it, probably about 40 years ago) Anne and I bought a tape cassette version of Alan Bennett’s 40 Years On to listen to in the car. We became absolutely addicted to it. It’s probably the single thing I’ve listened to most in my life, lots of the language rolls around my head every day. And just yesterday Anne forwarded me this performance; John Gielgud reading one of the most important and affecting speeches. You don’t need the play to get something from this. It’s got everything, nostalgia, romance, poetry aristo-curious glamour, and something I’d never thought about before but think about all the time now. How there was a generation, just after the invention of the car, that ‘discovered’ speed. (Perhaps in a way that I’m from a generation that discovered global connectivity). Anyway. Watch and love, please.
This is a great listen. Especially if you’re a GenXer feeling generationally squeezed or a Millennial Woman who knows the most reliable partnership you can form is with your mother.
More Japanese DJs playing immaculate jazz. I love this genre of people playing records to their cameras. It’s the closest thing to radio that’s not radio. I really want to like NTS, for instance, but somehow it doesn’t feel live and real. Whereas, this, which clearly isn’t live and real, feels it.
The only travel tip I’ve ever wanted to try:
“Some years ago I was given a life-changing nugget of travel advice: if you visit the same café, bar, or restaurant, at the same time of day, for three days in a row, you are (more often than not) magically transmuted from tourist to temporary local.
And, amazingly, the trick works at every scale. In the aftermath of Covid, I took coffee and tramezzini every day for ten days at Bar Mio di Teso Mauro, just off Piazza San Marco in Venice. By day three they not only knew my order, they welcomed me by name.
So fixated is Instagram-obsessed travel with ticking off best-of listicles, we forget how easily domestic bonds can be forged by such an elementary act of loyalty.”
A great defense of Dan Brown and an exploration of criticism:
“…Books do not have a one-size-fits-all purpose. The best books are beautifully written, but plenty of good books merely entertain or intrigue us. We can go to the theater for King Lear and Book of Mormon; there’s enough room on the silver screen for Seven Samurai and Cocaine Bear. I read Wittgenstein and I also have organized fantasy sports leagues for countless seasons of The Bachelor and The Great British Bake Off. We contain multitudes.
And while Brown’s writing is flawed, his ideas—even the sloppily executed ones—are at least more ambitious than most thriller writers. In place of endless explosions and sex scenes, we get smatterings of religious history, philosophical explorations of artificial intelligence, the Miller–Urey experiment, neurotransmitters, fringe theories of consciousness, and code-breaking.”
I’ll give you back your evening. It has drawn in.
russell
(There are 1008 of you. Denmark has 1008 lakes.)