w/e 2020-07-26

Sunday already? Every day is like, etc.

§ The past three days I’ve been dipping into the Indietracks at Home substitute for the music festival which has been pleasant – nice people playing nice music! – but also not much of a substitute. Sitting indoors watching pre-recorded YouTube videos, very occasionally seeing a tweet about them. If there’s a scale that runs from “nothing” at one end, up to “being at a music festival” at the other, this experience is certainly “better than nothing”, but still.

These are my favourites of the videos, the first couple from previous festivals:

• White Town – Your Woman
• The Lovely Eggs – Have You Ever Heard a Digital Accordion?
• Captain Handsome
• Alice Hubble – Goddess
• Mayshe Mayshe
• Kathryn from Fresh
• Chemtrails
• Megaflora – Breaker and Everything I See

I noticed that Chemtrails’ video has a Wikipedia explanation of the conspiracy theory, so that automated system appears to be super robust, well done to the boffins.

On Friday evening I joined a live “disco” – music broadcast live on Mixcloud with an accompanying Zoom. At first it seemed pretty sad, in both senses: sitting at home staring into a laptop at some strangers staring out silently at me while music played. But after a while it was actually quite nice. People chatted via messages, friends greeted each other, the DJs – who we could also see – joined in, the music was great, a few people danced in their rooms with coloured lights and glitterballs. It was all rather sweet.

Update: The Sunday night pre-recorded but broadcast live set by the Just Joans, with a chat room, was a lovely thing.

§ This week we watched I May Destroy You which was good. (I keep accidentally calling it May I Destroy You? which is a more diffident, white, Home Counties version.) It’s always a nice change to hear characters talk in a way that sounds more “real” than on most British dramas, in which everyone has gone through some process of sanding off any idiosyncratic edges for fear that someone, somewhere, might not understand a very occasional word. It was, unsurprisingly, quite intense and half-hour episodes worked well. There was a lot in them. I wasn’t entirely convinced by the final one but still, interesting.

The week before we finished watching both seasons of Enlightened, which I forgot to mention in last weeknotes. We’d seen the first one some time ago but I could remember almost none of it. Very good. Funny. Absolutely excruciating to watch at many points. Amy Jellicoe’s such a great character, desperate to Do Good but oblivious to the needs of others. A shame it got cancelled.

§ We’re having a little break from the little work next week. Not going anywhere exotic but having what I understand is called, in this country, a “stayliday”. Bye for now.