🐓 The Rooster #4

On Jackson Lamb, Sade and Colleen Hoover..

I’m writing this on Thursday morning, feeling much improved after a three day spell of illness. This morning I dropped my kid to school and took myself for a run. It was one of those impossibly beautiful Winter mornings; blue sky, low thin sunlight, mist hovering over frosted grass. I am still giddy with the gorgeousness of it all and so grateful to not feel shite anymore.

We had our second scheduled chat on here on Tuesday night. We talked about remembering and memory, the urge to document our lives, the reasons we forget and the ways we can get better at remembering. I feel a sense of connection and communion in these chats that provides a lovely internal hum of contentment for days afterwards. It’s my favourite part of Substack so far I think. Thank you so much if you took part. We’ll do another one closer to Christmas and see how we get on.

The Winter cold/flu whatever it was, meant I had to cancel lots of things this week and this meant that for the first time in a long time, I had a chance to put my head above the parapet and get some perspective. A lot has happened in the last three months; some of the most high pressure gigs of my career, the intense writing experience of finishing the first draft of my new novel, big changes to my work structures, the pausing of my Changes podcast and all the hand wringing decision-making behind that, and the beginning of Substack. Sitting in the aftershock of all this change, trying to process it all, it all felt very overwhelming if I’m honest. So I decided to slouch on the sofa and watch TV instead. Which brings me on to my first recommendation…

Slow Horses

I’ve come very late to Slow Horses, the spy drama based on Mark Herron's Slough House books. I got through series two in a few days of my sick leave this week. Each series is six episodes long, with borderline bezerk plot lines that are kept real by the very authentically portrayed inter-relations of the staff of Slough House, the office of a group of sidelined MI5 agents. Jack Lowden ( he of Saoirse Ronan husband fame) is excellent as the disgraced star boy of the spy world and Gary Oldman’s portrayal of the boss of Slough House Jackson Lamb is wildly entertaining. He is both reprehensible (rude, slovenly, delighting in the stink of his own farts) and reluctantly good hearted. He must be a hoot to play. I love how dark and macabre the humour is and getting to watch the backdrop of London, so beautifully shot is a pleasure. Also there is so much of it! It’s just been announced that it will be back for a sixth season…

Sade - Young Lion

Transa is a compilation album of 42 songs, spanning over three and a half hours long that was released last Friday. It is a project from the non profit music organisation Red Hot, made in support of Trans Rights. The tracks here are of huge varying styles, from a 26 minute odyssey from Andre 3000 to a cover of Sylvesters You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) from Moses Sumney and Sam Smith. But the track I rushed to first was from Sade. Entitled Young Lion, this new song, her first in six years, is dedicated to her trans son Izaak. It’s a piano ballad, devastating in its simplicity, that left me in tears. Why? here’s the first verse.

Young man

It's been so heavy for you

You must have felt so alone

The anguish and pain

I should have known

With such a heavy burden

You had to carry all on your own

Forgive me, son

I should have known

In a world where the validity of trans lives is constantly questioned and doubted and debated in popular culture and media and now the Supreme Court, this Mother’s words to her trans child, words that are so loving, so supportive, so unconditionally accepting, are beautiful. To have a song that cuts to the heart of it all, that we are all human, we come from the same world, the same natural habitat? It matters. And this is one song of forty two. If listening to this, the Transa project can change one persons perception of trans lives then it’s worth it. To quote Red Hot’s founder and CEO John Carlin from an interview in the Guardian about the project, “Music is a really powerful force – The reason it’s so important, particularly in terms of transphobia in the United States, is that music crosses boundaries.”

Pandora Sykes - I went on a Colleen Hoover binge

This piece really summed up the wonder of Substack for me.. Pandora read nothing but Colleen Hoover books for a month and proceeded to gift us with a long and incredibly detailed interrogation of Colleen Hoovers writing formula, her stories and the reasons for their resonance in popular culture. She broke the stories down into nine tropes and ended with some thoughts on the controversy around It Ends With Us. As someone who has, like Pandora, never read any CoHo books but marvelled and wondered at her domination of the bestseller lists, I found this piece so fascinating and insightful.

Other things of note…

Kendrick Lamar - GNX - This album has been glued to my ears! It is victory lap! A paean to the sounds of the West coast, Lamar at his very best. I look forward to listening again and again.

Miranda July is on Substack! Miranda is a multi hyphenate; artist, writer, director, actor, performer, and author of one of the most talked about books of the year, All Fours, a book I found astonishing for the fearlessness of July’s main character in her pursuit of a truthful life, her questioning of the systems we live in, and the way she relentlessly interrogates her own experiences of midlife to try and understand who she is in the context of being an ‘older woman’. If you haven’t read it yet then ask for it for Christmas. You might love it, you might hate it but you won’t ever forget this book.

I can’t wait to see what Miranda does on Substack. Also if you are a fan of All Fours, or just curious about it, then check out this episode of Changes when I interviewed Miranda July earlier this year..

Off to Dingle in Ireland today to host the Irish music festival Other Voices. I always come back from there feeling so enriched with music, good chat and world class pints of Guinness. I’m hoping for all of the above this weekend. Back next week. x