change the pear vol. 17 15 Sep 2023

hello! it’s been over a year since i started this substack, which feels absolutely wild. thanks for sticking around all this time. here’s what i’ve been thinking about so far in september—a month that always feels new to me, somehow.

on repeat

a few weeks ago hayley messaged me this tweet, a challenge i took to with enthusiasm and much stress:

obviously i ended up with two versions: a 20(ish) long one and a 50 song extended edition. sorry but i am a girl of chaotic taste and an expansive heart!

if you haven’t done this yet, please do and send it to me. that’s a serious request! as fun as it was to build my own playlists, listening to other people’s versions of this playlist has been my favourite part of this exercise. they are all so different! sometimes i share artists with people, or even specific songs; other times our playlists are more like siblings or cousins (as kallie said, it’s the tumblr). i’ll click on a playlist and think of course seeing a particular track someone’s picked (kallie choosing casanova baby, hayley choosing dis-ease, siyang choosing up the wolves, alfie choosing eight, em choosing criminal). but i love being surprised by people’s choices too! as i type this, i’m listening to this song, which i found by listening to zoë’s 20 songs and fixating on it.

music always gives a profound insight into our psyches, but i love this particular challenge for how it asks people to consider what songs give them the most feeling. it’s not the music that you think is cool or technically “the best”. it’s teenage dream (glee cast version). it’s the ketchup song by las ketchup. it’s woof woof by shinee. it’s nine inch nails by closer. it’s feel by robbie williams. it’s shine by hilary duff. it’s bet on it from high school musical 2. it’s weightless by all time low. (not all of these are my choices, fyi!!!) it’s the songs that make you say, god, turn that up, that spark something deep in you, that you would know any time, anywhere. and what a joy it is to learn what those songs are for other people.

currently watching

only friends is currently rotating around and around inside my brain like a pig on a spit. excuse the visceral simile but i don’t know how else to emphasise how i’m feeling right now!!! i think i last wrote this newsletter when i’d only seen episode one; there have now been five episodes, each more insane and messy than the last. of our six main characters/pairings (boston-nick, top-mew, sand-ray) it’s ray and sand that are driving me to distraction in particular. their chemistry alone would be enough to have me obsessed, but the details of their dynamic are what is truly making me want to chew glass. briefly: we have ray, a fucked up rich boy who has been in unrequited love with his best friend mew for years and has developed several unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with years of his friends and family making him believe that he is a burden on them. feeling adrift from the group, particularly when mew gets a new boyfriend, he becomes fascinated by sand, a spiky, moody bar singer who dreams of being a rock star and who finds himself drawn to ray’s charms even as he’s desperately trying not to be. in the last episode, they have a 24 hour long date—ray goes home with sand the night before, sand cooks him breakfast, and ray proposes going along with sand for his whole day, “to get to know him better” (devastatingly romantic. in MY opinion). anyway, everything is going great: they go shopping, they go to a concert, ray does karaoke at sand’s mother’s bar (cue sand’s mom leaning over to him to go, “i don’t think he’s just a friend….”), they end up back at sand’s again, ray tells sand about his trauma, they start hooking up. and THEN sand’s roommate nick brings home ray’s friend boston, who, in a truly asshole move, starts taunting sand that he’s always going to be second best, because “ray’s entire ass is owned by mew”, and everything blows up spectacularly. woof.

it’s so painful to watch ray in these scenes. how he can’t see how much sand does like him because he’s blunted his ability to discern when people think he’s special, having spent so much time believing he was special to mew and being proven wrong. opening yourself up to something new after an experience like that is tough! it’s not easy to risk the heart! and ray is trying, in his way. he feels this irresistible attraction to sand, and he wants to understand him; he wants to be a part of sand’s life. i believe the heart is a capacious thing and there can be room for both an old love of a best friend (dwindling, but still there) and a new love arriving on the horizon. but ray’s problem is that he’s too mired in his own self-loathing to recognise that arrival or believe that it’s something he can have. sand doesn’t exactly help, with his i’m-better-off-alone self-protective armour making him say stuff like, “i’ll never take someone like you as my boyfriend”; “i wouldn’t trust you with my life”, even as his expressions and general body language are expressing the exact opposite. but the worst part is that if not for boston’s interference, they might have been able to escape the boundaries they’ve set on themselves as they spend more time together. instead, ray’s drawn back into his old belief that he’s so fucked up that the person he loves most will never love him back and sand is made to feel like he’s not special to ray and never will be. and then, lying in the dark afterwards, ray’s too scared to openly talk about his feelings for mew and sand’s too scared to ask. so they don’t talk about it. oh, and it’s sand’s birthday, which they’re both aware of. by the way! just another twist of the knife for them. ugh! pain! agony! i’ve rewatched all of their scenes at least three times this week!

last seen

alfie and i saw boygenius twice in the last week of august—once in halifax and once in kingston at a small acoustic set. i’m glad i went to both, because they were such different atmospheres. loved the festival, open-air energy of the halifax show, the big stage and the guitars and the rocking out. but the acoustic set was much calmer, and it really let the quieter songs breathe. i particularly loved ‘we’re in love’—i couldn’t see lucy as she was singing but i could see phoebe and julien, and it was clear how much the song meant to them. when they came in on the line, the hummingbirds, you know the ones (i know the ones), i started crying_._ i’ve been thinking a lot about the vulnerability inherent in the boygenius project—what it takes to collaborate with your best friends, to share the process of creation with people you love so deeply. but not only that—to also explicitly write about the feelings you have for one another, and allow that to be seen by an audience. as a big fan of public declarations of affection, i always love seeing the way people love one another writ large. but what i admire so much about boygenius is that their songs aren’t just about the beautiful, tender moments. they acknowledge that there’s pain in loving people, too. there’s hurt (unintentional and intentional) we can do to one another when we’re so deeply intertwined. and they’re open about that! what an incredible thing, to be trusted with all the facets of such a deep relationship.

reading

i just finished reading ancillary justice by ann leckie. i tend to prefer sci-fi that’s character-motivated and driven rather than stories that focus on intricate worldbuilding, which is why it’s taken me so long to read, despite it being a classic. the worldbuilding is incredibly detailed and involved but i was pleasantly surprised by how much i liked the characters here, especially the relationships breq/one esk forms with lieutenant awn and seivarden. really enjoyed the way the backstory is revealed in tandem with the main plot. also thought breq’s narrative voice was very well written and delicately done—just the right level of detachment and impartiality, with the reader being allowed to draw their own conclusions as to her emotional state and motivations at moments where she can’t/doesn’t reveal them to us. particularly liked how it’s slowly revealed that one esk sings all the time, something that sets her apart from other parts of herself, and from other ships and AIs_._ anyway i was impressed with how it’s wholly believable that she’s an AI severed away from the multiple parts of herself. i think seivarden could have done with a little more focus and development, tbh, but i’m hoping that might happen in the second/third instalments of the trilogy. one thing i appreciated a lot about leckie’s writing is how well she understands that the socio-cultural environment someone is raised in will shape their actions and beliefs really deeply. her characters aren’t humans who have been transported into a new setting in space. they are radchaai, they are AIs, they are non-radchaai conquered by an empire that wishes to subdue and civilise them. it’s an impressive, confident and assured work.

i also reread confabulations by john berger this week, and have been struck anew by how good it is, how intelligent and observant he is. he touches on lifelong friendship, on the making of art, of witnessing, of the power of songs and music to move us. reading it, i feel the intentionality of his language, how each word is exactly the right one. i feel the fullness of life, and all that it holds and can offer us.

miscellaneous

finally cooking mushrooms for elete. the bountiful produce in my parents’ garden. the catharsis of, once again, crying in arenike and lee’s kitchen. making claire a pasta sauce with the sweetest, ripest orange cherry tomatoes. drinking an indulgent amount of wine. wandering the henry moore sculpture gallery with alfie. the absolute joy and excitement of writing collaboratively with zoë. finding pleasure in telling a story again! rereading good omens. hiking with jocelyne. seeing mont blanc from all angles. breathing in huge lungfuls of the crisp clear air of the alps. how cold the lakes were and how good it felt to jump in them. fresh bread and frozen margaritas and good wine and delicious charcuterie. akua bringing her ateez dvd to the park on a swelteringly hot day. poetry reading with agnes on the theme of “things from the room in the back”. tins with claire on a warm evening. abeera teaching me how to cook lamb mince and spiced cauliflower. watching the paradigm music video with zoë. plotting out [redacted] with alfie. this adrienne rich quote. this dianne seuss poem. this extract on hamlet. this mary biddinger poem. this ursula le guin quote. reading marisa’s brilliant, insightful dissertation on fanfiction. bouldering in the peak district. burgers and grilled vegetables on an open fire. a gorgeous sunrise after a night of rain. a long conversation with laura on the way home about vulnerability and honesty and trusting people to hold the worst parts of you.

a whole year of these! thank you for reading, as always. see you soon.