hey hey hi!!!! It has been a HOT MIN. That is bc I’ve had covid, which is obv a literal nightmare, but (thank fuck) I am all healed and able to type again now, and I’ve also been busy making loads of flowers, and eating at restaurants again!!!! How are all of you?! What have u been up to?! This one has lockdown vibes, tbh, which is kind of already nostalgic??? No? Too soon?
One of the things that comforts me when I’m down is scrolling Deliveroo. I sort by top rated, or by quickest delivery, and I look at menus of places I’ve both eaten and not eaten at, and I add stuff to my basket and I hardly ever purchase it. I like seeing the pictures, I like seeing the different foods. I like looking at the prices, seeing where I can get summer rolls for £6 and what rating that place has. Imaginary shopping, like window shopping for the city-millennial generation. I think it’s probably a lockdown thing - not being able to go out and see all these things in real life, u know - but tbh I’m reasonably sure I did it before lockdown too. I’ve always read recipe books, even long before I cooked, just to look at the ingredients and the pictures, and to read what the chef had written about why the recipe is important to them. I’ve read all of Nigella Lawson’s recipe books over and over and over. I can call to mind with 20/20 vision the gold, square, sans-serif text against the white page, and the perfectly iced chocolate cupcakes with a purple sugar violet perched on top, and the all butter biscuits with their primary colour icing, and the bits at the back about cocktails that at 12 years old I thought were a really Fucking Cool Thing to put in a cookbook (still do tbh). It has been and still is comforting to me, learning without pressure - soft learning. Podcasts, I suppose, sate that part of me, too.
I listen to podcasts relentlessly. I mean like - I don’t sit on my own without listening to a podcast. I devour them like they’re pasta. I’ve actually recently hit a new stage of comfort-listening where I’ve started searching out my favourite episodes of podcasts that I love and listening to them three, four, five times. Over and over. I do it with other forms of media, too - I re-find Dolly Alderton’s years-old blog post on creamy prawn lemon pasta, which is harder to find each and every time I scour the internet for it (and which I’ve written about in Fax Me Harder before), just to look at it, even though I have it written down and memorised completely. My favourite video in existence is Paul Heaton, Jacqui Abbott (and co.) in a hotel room doing an impromptu performance of Happy Hour (for themselves and themselves only) just on acoustic guitars and a drum (might even be an upturned bin), filmed badly by Jacqui on her phone, Paul still wearing his jacket with his hands in the pockets. And yet the song soars; it makes me tear up and makes my heart do a little flip every time I locate it and press play again, and again, and again. It disappears off the internet every time Jacqui Abbott deletes her Twitter, so I rewatch the version of it that’s seared into my memory, smiling at the inaudible song, the unseeable image. I rewatch Schitt’s Creek, and Arrested Development, and Friends over over over over until every word rings through my head before they say it on screen, the soft American comedy soothing my tangle of thoughts. And these things - they don’t wear thin the more I experience them, like a mediocre album you thought was good for a week might. They’re not Mayday Parade. They become more precious the more I know them - like a friend or a lover does. Like a myth does. Like anything David Beckham owns does, tripling in value every time he touches it. Like a plant, growing and changing and turning towards the light the longer you nurture it. Like a toilet door in a rock n roll bar with words carved into it, more added every visit. As if I were stroking them with polish every time I pressed play or locked my eyes into the first sentence, getting brighter and brighter with each touch.
I was saying to Kiera yesterday that this constant podcast listening is the byproduct of being an extrovert; I get my energy from being with other people, and if I’m not I need a hit, u know. It’s white noise that keeps me sane (and safe). Warm noise. Psychiatrists might determine that this isn’t a healthy way to function, as a real person which unfortunately we all are, but for me - it works. I think I danced around this idea last time - my meditation isn’t necessarily silent. Being solitary for me isn’t necessarily being alone. Sometimes a mildly annoying American accent in the background is the only thing that keeps my brain driving straight.
This piece is kind of about never being alone, and about podcasts, and some kind of comfort, but it’s rly about The White Pube. I’ve been listening to The White Pube’s podcast recently - have you heard it? There’s very few podcasts I’d describe as beautiful, but it’s properly, properly beautiful. I don’t play any video games, and I’ve never (!) sought out game reviews, but Gabrielle de la Puente’s readings of her game reviews are actual poetry. They’re luscious with description but not wanky in any way. Thoughtfully composed, casually spoken. Engaging, but not like recently-got-a-column-at-the-New-York-Times engaging. Also hearing a scouse accent on a podcast is blessed relief. I listen to Gab’s softly harsh - or harshly soft - lilt and I allow myself to sink into her descriptions, which incidentally feel like the only bit that I do like of a game: where you’re walking down a wooded route in the first bit and nothing bad has happened, or can happen, yet. Maybe it’s my anti-depressants or maybe it’s Gabrielle De La Puente’s voice, but her podcast makes me feel like I’m floating - you know like when you fully lie down in the park outside when it’s sunny and there’s a tiny breeze, and the heat is resting on your skin and your closed eyes go red as the light shines through them and you feel like you’re not lying on earth anymore? Like that. Like a sip of tequila lemonade when you thought you were over n out, where the sugar shimmies through you and revitalises your spirit, and the alcohol warms your throat. I suppose that’s what meditation feels like to those who’ve cracked it - for now, as I’ve mentioned, comforting, familiar voices are my meditation. I love the way Zarina Muhammad says simply “oh, sorry” and carries on when she says a word wrong. It makes me feel like I could just do that, too. I love the way she calls herself ZM, and the way she talks in detail and without holding back, where you can feel that she agrees so strongly with her own point that she’s making that her voice almost cracks. She feels free. It feels free. It makes me feel fucking free, for god’s sake!!!!
It’s something in the way (Something In The Way) Gabrielle allows herself to become a part of whatever world she’s describing, falling instantly into the imagination of it. There’s something, I’m sure, spiritually about connecting with your inner child, and how Gab and ZM have done so in their honesty and that’s why listening to 20 minutes of them talking about a subject they’ve chosen feels so freeing that I’ve compared it to floating in the park, but I’ll leave it for u to make that connection. In one of her reviews, Gabrielle says “playing is a way to read the story too, to feel the story” and when I heard her say that, I was floored. It’s fucking poetry!!! Playing is surely the only way to feel the story, no?! And there’s a BIG FUCKING METAPHOR there for how Actually Living is the only way to Actually Live, and it just tumbles out of The White Pube’s perfect perfect reviews with a simple “oh, sorry” and carries on. I fucking love it. “I couldn’t hide behind my hands in this situation - my hands were busy creating the story and making it happen.” <3 <3 <3
Gabrielle actually did a piece one time about relistening to her favourite podcast episode, and falling asleep to it every night, and why it comforts her so much and why she never wants to get to the end of it. It’s a fucking amazing piece. As if you needed any more evidence that The White Pube are, rly, creating the story - let them clarify the point I’ve clumsily made in this newsletter in their review. Or - better still - make your own point based on both. It’s your story, baby.
Obviously I have to end this newsletter with my favourite podcasts. Some of them (ok, Reply All. I mainly mean Reply All) are undergoing a reckoning (rightly so!!!) but they (it) still rly meant a lot to me at a lot of times in my life, so I’ve left it in. Just so u know heheheh
Maybe Baby
Stuff You Should Know
Home Cooking
Reply All
The Other Latif
Winds Of Change
The Missing Cryptoqueen
Last Seen
The Adam Buxton Podcast
Off Menu
The White Pube
Spilled Milk
Hip Hop Saved My Life
Longform
Song Exploder
The Cut
Invisibilia
That Peter Crouch Podcast
The Great Women Artists
99% Invisible
The Sporkful
Out To Lunch
Endless Thread