⌾ Recommendations | 4 Things
As we approach the end of the week, I'm sending out a list of things that I think will bring you some surplus enjoyment.
- READING (short): I posted about the beautiful email newsletter, The Convivial Society, written by L.M. Sacasas, a few times this week. Here is a short description from TCS's About page:
The Convivial Society is a newsletter exploring the relationship between technology and society. It’s grounded in the history and philosophy of technology, with more than a sprinkling of media ecology. No hot takes, only shamelessly deliberate considerations of the meaning of technology for human experience.
- READING (long): I've been reading the book Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors by Ian Penman. I was drawn to it because Warren Ellis referees to it rather often, and I like Ellis's work. The book is a... Hmm... I don't really know what to call it. I was going to say "study," but I don't think that's right. Perhaps a reflection on the work of the artist Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who would make lots of things very fast.
From RWF's Wikipedia page:
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (German: [ˈʁaɪnɐ ˈvɛʁnɐ ˈfasbɪndɐ] ⓘ; 31 May 1945 – 10 June 1982), sometimes credited as R. W. Fassbinder,[1] was a German filmmaker, actor, and dramatist. He is widely regarded as one of the major figures and catalysts of the New German Cinema movement. Versatile and prolific, his over 40 films span a variety of genres, most frequently blending elements of Hollywood melodrama with social criticism and avant-garde techniques.[2] His films, according to him, explored "the exploitability of feelings".[3][4] His work was deeply rooted in post-war German culture: the aftermath of Nazism, the German economic miracle, and the terror of the Red Army Faction. He worked with a company of actors and technicians who frequently appeared in his projects.
From the description of the Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors on Amazon:
Melodrama, biography, cold war thriller, drug memoir, essay in fragments, and mystery, Thousands of Mirrors is cult critic Ian Penman’s long-awaited first full-length book: a kaleidoscopic study of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Written over a short period "in the spirit" of RWF, who would often get films made in a matter of weeks or months, Thousands of Mirrors presents the filmmaker as Penman’s equivalent of what Baudelaire was to Benjamin: an urban poet in the turbulent, seeds-sown, messy era just before everything changed. Beautifully written and extraordinarily compelling, echoing the fragmentary works of Roland Barthes and Emil Cioran, Eduardo Galeano and Alexander Kluge, this story has everything: sex, drugs, art, the city, cinema, and revolution
- WATCHING: I've been watching the Apple TV+ show Criminal Record. When I saw that Peter Capaldi was in this, I knew I'd watch it, because Capaldi is one of my favorite actors today. The (first?) eight-episode season will wrap up this week on Wednesday. If you like gritty stories with moral ambiguity, this show would be right up your alley. Below is a video to give you a sense of the series.
- LISTENING: This new album, Weird Faith, by Madi Diaz (Apple Music, Spotify), showed up in the new music section of my Apple Music app this week. I started to listen to it while doing random things, and I found that after just a little bit, I had stopped doing the other things and started to pay serious attention to the music and the words in the songs. I used one of the songs from it in my Monday Mix-Tape (Apple Music, Spotify).
Till next time – Take care, but make those glorious mistakes.
-N