change the pear vol. 11 17 Feb 2023

hello! it feels simultaneously like february is slipping through my fingers and also like we are never going to make it to spring. but the other day i stopped on the steps of the tate in the late afternoon and i thought, hey, it’s still light out. a small gratitude but gratitude all the same.

on repeat

as some of you may know, this is my year of starting to learn chinese again, so that if i ever meet my ancestors in the afterlife i can say more than the sum total of my remembered gcse mandarin phrases: hello, i love you; i live in england; because sport is good for your health, every tuesday and thursday i play tennis with my friends, like the world’s most boring game of two truths and a lie. anyway so far this goal has not manifested beyond me deciding to get into a spotify hole of chinese music. i was going to say “obscure” there, but i genuinely have no idea whether these songs are popular or, in fact, literally anything about them beyond finding them fun to listen to. i kind of enjoy the mystery tbh! more motivation to hit the books and learn some characters so i can actually recognise the names of the songs. here are some songs i’ve found along this journey:

1. 失眠飞行 by 接个吻, 开一枪, 沈以誠, 薛黛霏

2. 大雪 by 音阙诗听

3. 巴赫旧约 by 沈以誠

4. 芒种 by 音阙诗听, 赵方婧 (the string solo in this at 2:53??? insanity. obsessed.)

5. 我們打著光腳在風車下跑,手上的狗尾巴草搖啊搖 by 等一下就回家

currently watching

i finished happy valley season 2 in a week which is the fastest i’ve watched tv in a long while. when i tell people that it’s incredibly comforting to watch, they usually look at me like i’ve got two heads (jun’s housemates found it “perturbing”) but it is! yes, it deals with incredibly fucked up events and there are a lot of distressing  scenes. and yet it’s threaded through with moments of warmth and humour. arenike said that it’s a show that is about what it means to love people, and i couldn’t agree more. it considers so deeply how we can love each other, even through terrible tragedy, even though sometimes loving people can cause unimaginable pain. it doesn’t necessarily mean forgiveness or absolution. and it doesn’t always mean kindness. but it means holding on. it means saying to people: i’m here, and i’m not going anywhere. that’s the gift catherine gives to the people around her—her family, her colleagues, the people she meets every day. she refuses to give up on them. there’s nobody more empathetic or willing to give second chances. but the nuance of the show is that even catherine has her limits. taking care of ryan—loving him—means she confronts those every day. that’s an incredibly difficult thing to capture on screen, and the show pulls it off masterfully.

scenes that really got me: catherine and clare screaming at each other after helen’s funeral and catherine chasing her down the street. ryan asking daniel about whether his mum died because she got pregnant too young. catherine and alison in the hospital, and catherine saying i’m here. (i could not stop crying). obviously that final scene where catherine tells clare about alison’s history, and looks to ryan. absolute chills.

last seen

over the past couple of weeks i’ve been to two classical concerts at the barbican: one with matthew, where we saw beethoven’s piano concerto no. 4 in g major, rachmaninoff’s symphonic dances and a piece by kurt weill; and the other with my dad where we saw beethoven’s fifth symphony.

i love seeing classical music live. one of my favourite things about university was that dorothy was in the chamber orchestra and i went to see them play their termly concerts when i could. there’s something so profoundly relaxing about sitting and watching an orchestra (or any classical ensemble) perform. my mind wanders in this expansive, lovely way. possibilities open up. i feel creative and free. the classical pieces i’m drawn to are ones that have this sense of optimism and vitality to them. triumph, if you will, but not always a dramatic one. sometimes triumph is the final movement of beethoven’s fifth, which makes me feel like i can do absolutely anything. but sometimes triumph is quieter, more internal: sitting and feeling like you’ve just experienced hope made manifest in sound.

reading

i just finished reading dinosaurs by lydia millet. this could have been a great novel. it has all the things i love: people figuring how to live with each other, people recovering from heartbreak, people trying to live right. but the narrative style was just tooooo derivative of annie proulx for me to really relax into it, and the story itself just too obvious in places. it needed more subtlety and a bit more shades of grey, but i guess it was trying its best. also, liberal authors remain unable to satisfyingly analyse trump’s america beyond the most broad and basic brushstroke analysis. still, it had a certain charm. one of the protagonist’s best friends is introduced briefly and then enters a medically induced coma, which i found moving. i think it’s a real authorial skill to provoke such care and investment in characters and their relationships in just a few scenes.

also just finished is a collection of lenin’s writings abeera bought for me in a communist bookstore in delhi. i love reading lenin so much. there’s nobody who has such lucidity of thought and clarity of vision. he saw historical/political/economic situations as they were and managed to write about them in a way that drove (and drives) people to action. thinking about that excerpt from robin d. g. kelley’s work on the sharecroppers union in alabama, and a thousand other examples besides. his unrelenting belief in the inevitability of the power of the proletariat to bring revolution is contagious.

i can sense myself hitting a reading slump guys! please recommend me something, anything.

miscellaneous

the pure insanity of viareggio carnevale. saskia and i dissolving into manic laughter as soon as we saw the first giant float. discovering i like aperol spritz. the amount of bread and meats i consumed. the warm italian light on the faces of my beautiful friends! driving through the tuscan hills. the unhinged energy of us tucked into bed wearing our carnival masks. the number of flags bedecking viareggio. dorothy’s excitement at all the confetti. a beautiful, multi-course meal with the most incredible seafood and the shots of mysterious herbal liqueur we got after. being sent photos of sunsets. siyang’s homemade turnip cake. steaming whole sea bass! my baby cousin rachel saying “i love maths so much i could do it all day!” seeing the way hareem has decorated her new room and lying in her comfy armchair. visiting the maria bartuszova exhibition with lola. arenike telling me about the poetic responses to the lynette yiadom-boakye exhibition she commissioned. the tiny frogs jun knitted. hareem saying i remind her of her 9-month-old nephew because we both get upset when we don’t eat our daily banana. arenike cooking two beautiful curries for jun, nandini and i: the reunion of the ‘take your own advice’ group chat! sitting in the tate with alfie amongst the henry moores and talking for ages. the woman being encouraged up the climbing wall by her two daughters. getting a valentine’s day email from elete. the infinite wisdom and love and grace with which my friends hold me every day!!!

see you soon. take care of yourselves out there.