change the pear vol. 22 24 May 2024

hello! sorry for going awol. my thesis had its foot on my neck for the last few months, but it’s submitted now!!! you don’t understand how over it had to be before we could be this back, etc. it’s time to have thoughts again! nobody can stop me! i hope you’re all taking care of yourselves out there and getting sunlight on your faces.

on repeat

simon says by NCT 127. writing my introduction while listening to my FINISH YOUR THESIS playlist on repeat for six hours at a time fried a fundamental connection in my brain and i now think this is one of the greatest songs ever made. no further questions at this time

champion - remix, by fall out boy ft RM. in the same vein, this song has done a LOT of heavy lifting for my mental wellness over the last two months. if i can live through this / i can do anything. louder!!!

supernatural by ariana grande. ms grande you have done it again… captured the weightless feeling of being giddily in love!

cardinal by kacey musgraves. a song for feeling hopeful, a song for spring cleaning, a song for change.

moonlight by NCT DREAM. instant favourite, instant mood-lifter, instant add to the “kpop songs that could have been one direction songs” playlist.

last seen (theatre)

elete and i went to see Mother (sarah snook) in the picture of dorian grey, which was an incredible experience. i had no idea what to expect, to the extent where i didn’t realise it was a one-woman play. sarah snook plays every character, donning an impressive array of wigs and costumes and accents to be everyone from the fruitily evil lord henry to the depressive basil, artist of the eponymous portrait, to silly, innocent sybil vane and her brother james, obsessed with revenge. she also narrates the script, based heavily on the text of the book. oh it was so good guys!!! she is completely magnetic, inhabiting every character so fully and switching between personas at the drop of the hat. dorian himself is an incredible piece of acting, changing from wide-eyed ingenue to wicked hedonist over the course of the play. the staging was inventive and exciting too—i could have sat there and watched sarah snook standing against a blank backdrop doing the entire thing, but the way that the filming and effects were done was so clever. it enhanced the experience rather than overwhelming you, apart from one section where dorian enters an opium den-slash-techno club, where the overwhelm felt intentional. 10 stars! standing ovation! sarah snook should play every character in every novel! do dickens next, queen!

currently watching

young royals is back! my boys are back! and audrey and i are seated, of course. season three opens with wille and simon, now happily and openly in a relationship, navigating their new status as out at school and out to his family. simon is receiving hate messages online, which breaks my heart, while wille is struggling with what it means that he is now a Prince With A Consort. meanwhile, sara reaches out to her estranged dad because she’s lost all her friends due to sleeping with august (evil man!!) and felice is depressed because she misses sara but is also angry with her, which she immediately confesses to wille and simon (audrey: i love how they talk about their emotions / me: they’re SO emotionally literate) imagine being a teenager and openly communicating what’s on your mind. incredible. anyway i’m obviously having a fantastic time. wille/simon forever!!!

under duress (iman texting me about 300 times “when are you going to watch bridgerton?”), i have been watching bridgerton season 2, probably the most stupid television show i’ve ever seen and that is saying something. my mum raised me to be a republican and yet here i am watching these lords and ladies caper about in the most absurd american fantasy of british gentry. embarrazzing! anyway, i have to admit that i enjoy the way some of the actors absolutely relish their roles (lady danbury is eating!) and particularly the anachronistic phrases which hana and i can’t stop quoting at each other (“you CANNOT be in earnest” / “i shall see you there anon” / “we wish to discuss more intellective matters”).

reading

my life has been completely taken over by the murderbot diaries, a seven-book series about a robot-human construct that disables its governor module that controls its behaviour—and spends its newfound freedom half-assing its job and watching copious amounts of TV because it’s depressed and anxious. relatable, some might say!!!

my biggest gripe with the vast majority of SFF is that there is no humour in the books. i’m not saying they have to be laugh out loud funny, but i would like a little lightness, a touch of the droll perhaps. instead we get reams of dry (or purple!) prose with not a joke in sight. it bores me! so i absolutely ate up murderbot’s dry witticisms and snappy internal monologue. i also loved the tightness of the plots. the first four books are novellas, each with a central mystery arc/problem that resolves itself while also giving murderbot time and space for character development.

and the character development is the heart of the series. murderbot is a SecurityUnit, considered to be a piece of equipment by the company that owns it. the company leases it out as security protection for teams on mining installations, surveyors of planets, etc. the governor module is meant to keep it in check, preventing it from doing anything outside of its contract—it will even fry the SecUnit’s brain if it strays too far from its contracted humans. when murderbot liberates itself from the module, it continues doing its job, while spending much of its processing time secretly watching media. because when you’ve never had free will, trying to decide what you want to do is difficult. it’s the question that follows murderbot through the series, as it explores its past, tries to help humans where it can, and slowly builds connections with others. it learns about having emotions, letting people in, telling them what is on your mind. it learns to make friends, and learns that its care and protection can be reciprocated. the best relationship is its one with the consciousness running a big research ship that murderbot calls ART (Asshole Research Transport)—this too is yuri!! i loved it all, honestly. i’m so sad that i’ve run out of books in the series, because murderbot is the kind of character i can never get enough of.

free palestine

the prison as a text by layan kayed (trans. roba alsalibi)

The prison wants to isolate you from your people and your homeland, just as it wants to estrange you from your dream of believing ‘imprisonment’ to be the resort of dreamers. It likewise wants to alienate you from fellow prisoners and their legacy by claiming that the withdrawal of any privilege is the result of other prisoners’ misuse of it. But you, enormously grateful, know that without the years of struggle and sacrifice, prison life would have never been bearable.

up in arms by austin bilal

However, beneath the veneer of innovation and economic contribution lies the reality that arms companies are dependent on imperialism; the arms industry is geared to reap great profits from the inherent tendency towards war and military conflict within a world system of uneven exchange, and so their role in the education system is to reproduce the ideological basis for its perpetuation. As an extension of US imperial power in the region, Israel is the recipient of billions of dollars worth of arms. One wonders without such military aid and investment from Western states, whether their settler-colonial project would last a minute longer against the Palestinian resistance.

ICC warrants both historical and cynical by ali abunimah

While Khan can attempt to market all this as demonstrating equal justice, it is no such thing: It is an outrageous and false equivalence. He could not maintain a shred of credibility if he did nothing against Israeli leaders, so he did the minimum he thought he could get away with.

But this will also be of no surprise to anyone, least of all Hamas leaders, who would have expected to be charged as the price of obtaining some measure of international justice for their people.

‘a productive language’: on western intellectual paradigms and refaat al-areer by ameed faleh

Mikhail advocated for Palestinian intellectuals to reject material incentives, joining hands with the displaced masses for liberation, a sentiment shared by V.I. Lenin who rejected the stratum of intelligentsia that rejected their historical duty towards the land and the people. For both Mikhail and Lenin, the intelligentsia has the ability to put theory into practice and to use their knowledge for the betterment of mankind, and any role outside of this is simply rejected out of revolutionary necessity.

miscellaneous

being a birthday GIRL! with elete on may 7th. hana making bibimbap and the honey roast afterwards that made everyone weep. ethiopian food at my favourite place in tottenham with alex, lydia and dorothy. lydia: “last year you had no beer and no girlfriend…how far you’ve come”. seeing kandinsky with alfie and sitting on the southbank in the sun afterwards. meeting chloe’s kitten and playing magic the gathering with her and hector. dofu gan and garlic chives with siyang. getting prescription sunglasses (life-changing). drinks with hana, ash and reb (our children). watching dorothy run in the hackney half! climbing with hana. iman texting me old pictures of us as babies. brunch with lola. audrey making shakshuka. arenike in the sun. crying because i am so proud of her and us! making spiced lamb and aubergine from the ixta belfrage cookbook lydia got me. my first conference presentation, and alice and ed coming to support me. hanging out with zoë in boston and cooking scallion pancakes together. bagels in the sun. big bright tulips. seeing a turkey (terrifying) in the park. zoë’s oatmeal. sitting outside at new river with abeera and leena. irises blooming in the community garden beside the river lea. the smell of roses in the rain. this quote from cs lewis. this poem by paul farley. this linda gregg poem. this pádraig ó tuama poem. & finally: celebrating my phd being done and honouring my beautiful friends in the acknowledgements.

love you all! summer is almost here!