Things that made laugh, cry, cringe, think, take a deep breath... this week

in case you also need an escape

The past couple of weeks have been hard. Between the heartbreaking loss of life on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the ongoing collective punishment inflicted on the people of Gaza, and some health issues that I will not bore you with here, I found myself looking for comfort and escape in media. 

I don’t remember who exactly said it, but not long ago I came across an argument that in times of crisis, people tend to look to the past for comfort. We’ve seen this in the rise of nostalgia content during and immediately after the pandemic: shows have been rebooted and spun off, unflattering ‘00s trends brought back into the mainstream and what was once cringe among then-teen millennials has been reappraised by the TikTok generation. As if to keep up with the Gen Z (how do you do fellow kids etc.) earlier this week my brain reached back into its first decade on earth and, after a good rummage, plucked out one of the least age-appropriate things I watched as a child. Sex and the City.

I first found out about Sex and the City from my mum who was obsessed with the show when I was little. In 2001, when it first aired in Romania, my mum was around the same as Carrie in the first season and also a single gal in the city. Of course, there were some differences: she was also a single mother of two, and the city was Florence, where she worked as a waitress seasonally to support us. Still, the show spoke to her in ways that I, then 8, could not understand. I was also too slow of a reader to keep up with the Romanian subtitles (not that any amount of subtitles would have helped me fully understand what was going on), but in the evenings she let me stay up late and catch a glimpse of those glamorous New York women I considered myself lucky. 

I revisited the show in my teens and, like most of us, romanticised Carrie’s incredibly dysfunctional relationships to no end, so it’s been refreshing to come to it again, with fresh, critical eyes (thank you fully developed frontal lobe). Like most shows coming out of the nineties and noughties, it’s not without its poorly-aged bits. But we probably shouldn’t go to comedy sitcoms for praxis. And if you watch it with the right people even the more alarming bits (like in one of the early episodes when Carrie compares the “rivalry” between married and unmarried people to the troubles in Northern Ireland!!!!) become hilarious, albeit not in the way the show wanted them to be. 

If Sex and the City has taken over my evenings, the first thing I interact with in the morning is The Idiot. No, not Siggy - Dostoyevski’s Idiot. Years ago I tried really hard to get through an Italian translation of it and struggled, for reasons I couldn’t quite put my finger on. So I gave up and didn’t think about it again, until a couple of years ago when everyone on Instagram and their mother began reading Elif Batuman’s Idiot. I wanted to read it too, but the knowledge that there was another, older, and more famous Idiot I hadn’t tackled yet held me back. Ironic for someone who opposes the idea of literary genealogies as much as I do. Still, I’m glad I picked it up. More than halfway through the novel, I find myself amused and frustrated by Dostoyevski’s characters. Turns out capricious people piss me off- even the much-lauded “Christ-like figure” of Prince Mishkin (the titular idiot) grinds my gears at times. But the book remains a classic for a reason and the David McDuff translation is so incredibly readable that I can’t be anything other than super happy I picked it up again. 

Another thing I gravitate toward when looking for escape is mythology. There’s something reassuring in the stylized world of myth, with its archetypes and simple good vs. evil dynamic. I’m not one to look at the past, real or imagined, through the romantic lens of a “simpler time”, but I have to admit I spent a considerable amount of time scrolling through paintings of swan maidens and Diana the Huntress this week. 

Swan Maidens by Walter Crane (in full above and detail below)

There’s something about the metamorphosed female body and its complexity that is full of potential for me at the moment. But I think the ethereal colour palette - the complete opposite of currently gloomy London - is a big reason why I gravitate toward these images.

Lilies by Walter Crane

As for the huntresses, I don’t have any particular The fact that so many of these images include a sighthound, which happens to be the breed of my inseparable companion, is no more than a coincidence 🙃.

Diana the Huntress, anonymous and Nymphs Hunting by Julius LeBlanc Stewart

I mentioned in the intro that my health has not been the best recently (more in this Sunday’s newsletter). Although I’ve had a chronic illness for years, it was never a huge impairment to my day-to-day. Until this spring. Despite this, I can’t but acknowledge how privileged I am. I have the luxury of chasing up doctors, going to appointments, and changing my lifestyle to meet my body’s new needs. I have time to sleep when my brain goes foggy, time to do yoga when it’s stiff, and time to go for walks when the side effects of my meds kick in and make me restless. I walk a lot, with Siggy and on my own, and because of this, I’ve been consuming an inordinate amount of audio content - podcasts, mainly.

My recent favourite has been Celebrity Memoir Book Club. I have an aversion to memoirs because I think that good memoirs require the writer to, first, have lived an interesting life and second, possess a level of self-awareness most of us lack. This is why the idea of memoirs penned by celebrities has never been particularly appealing to me. Not only are celebrities some of the least self-aware people on the planet, but in the aftermath of last year’s nepo-baby exposés, it’s safe to say that most of them didn’t have the most interesting journey to success either. But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in how these people live and what they have to say for themselves. So, the hilarious readings by hosts and comedians Claire Parker and Ashley Hamilton have been a godsend - I get to be nosey about these people’s lives but don’t have to put up with the self-aggrandizing and poorly written prose. Highly recommend it if you’re also into light-hearted gossip with a touch of snark.