From Swim to Into the Sun, what a run.

I told my work friends last week that my two favourite BTS genres were ‘obnoxious Korean hip hop’ and ‘introspective power ballads’ and that’s why Arirang is the best thing I’ve ever heard. Every song has multiple moments that scratch my brain just right. I’ve decided to timestamp them. Think of it as an interactive tour of the album. I read a Guardian review of Arirang which called it a ‘dumb fun pop album’ and the writer is not wrong but also not remotely right. Therin lies the genius of Arirang. If you only dip a toe in you can have a great time pretending it’s a silly, horny, fun hip hop / pop album. But if you dig deeper you realise that it’s still fun but also smart, clever, outrageous, ironic, angry, sad, hopeful, beautiful, replete with yearning. In short, a modern no-skip masterpiece.

It must be weird to be married to me right now.

I’ve been reading a book of essays on writing by Phillip Pullman and there’s one particular nugget of wisdom he imparts that will not let me live. Don’t burden your readers with your embarrassment. It’s safe to say he would hate whatever it is I’m doing here. In a desperate attempt to heed his advice I’m going to stop explaining this so much, but before you continue, you should know about the line between fact and fiction in this story. The source of the narrative is a real person experiencing true events, but by necessity I’m inventing some of the nuance since I’m not in Willa’s head, just her DMs. Did I even need to say that? Am I not respecting your intelligence enough? I agree I’m not off to a good start.

The world seems on the brink of another World War, so what better time to write about Harry Styles? I’ve watched a few performances from the Brits this week, and I cannot stop thinking about Harry and Rosalía. Both performed, but only one artist felt electrifying to me. Why? Let’s explore.

This is meant to be part 2 of a ‘performance of fandom’ double shot but as I was writing it I realised the ‘performance of belonging’ was a more apt name. The first part was about my most recent concert experiences and the give and take between artist and audience. When you tackle this idea with large global fanbases like Swifties or BTS ARMY, the performance becomes much more than one fleeting moment of connection. Each experience builds upon the next, creating an entire universe of narrative threads and emotions for millions of people around the world.

I’ve been to three concerts in the past month and they’ve got me thinking about the performance of fandom. In the age of streaming, we have such instant and high quality access to music that we don’t really need live versions. So why do concerts exist? In my mind, it’s because we’re all in constant pursuit of moments of magical reality. When I go to a concert I’m hoping to find the bridge between the inner kingdom that internalises and canonises music, and the outer kingdom within which I pay bills and fully expect to eat / sleep / work until I die. Finding and crossing this bridge comes at a cost, and that cost is a performance of appreciation to an artist.

I’ve been very happily distracted by all the #bunnybowl content today — on one side of the American culture wars you’ll find the most wholesome place on the internet, on the other, the most unhinged. You know I’ve no interest in feeding the rage funnel so let’s talk about the wholesomeness.

Although I was pretty offline (for me) in December and January, the rising clamour of Heated Rivalry mania still reached me.
“Have you heard about the gay hockey romance?” My husband asked. I hadn’t, but next time I scrolled TikTok the algorithm fed me a 42yo Australian mother of 3 who’d just got her second Heated Rivalry-inspired tattoo and I knew I’d be watching it.

I finished Stranger Things a few weeks ago and my first thought was: it’s no Succession. Ending a beloved series that’s been running for almost a decade can’t be easy, proven by the fact very few have done it successfully. In one review I read, the Stranger Things finale was applauded for playing it ‘straight down the middle.’ Not a dumpster fire like Game of Thrones, not a masterpiece like Schitt’s Creek. It was fine.

Following my holiday I felt the same way as Lorde. Sad news for her, the feeling only lasted about a week. Now I’ve fallen SO DEEP back into the inner kingdom that I can tell my husband is considering sending in a search party.

I’ve spent so long away from SOTM and I have ideas coming out my ears but it’s taken some time to transition back to the inner kingdom of thought that enables me to wrangle them into a digestable format. That’s a novel way of putting it, you might think, but actually I’m stealing it from The Rose Field, the third Book of Dust by Phillip Pullman.

I’m at my family’s bach (holiday house) beside a lake. A place I’ve been coming to since I was a baby. A place my dad came to every summer from the age of 9. It is such a privilege to have a place like this in my history and in my heart. It’s fundamentally grounding. So many of my origin stories are bound up in this place.

We’ve made it. It’s taken me 3 days to write this because it’s December and I’m forty and I’m so. tired.

I’m finding this listicle marathon to be quite a cathartic experience. It’s actually a really nice way to reflect on your life. Highly recommend. Anyway, shit’s getting real now. We’re down to my foundations.

I’m back for night two of this trip down a nostalgic and oft traumatic memory lane. Let’s hit it.

I’ve been trying to narrow down the 40 things* I’ve loved in my 40 years of life. The best way to define “things” in the context of this listicle is: cultural artefacts - books, films, music, TV shows. I had a few games in there initially but they dropped off after I had an epiphany that games consume me, they don’t nourish me. What I wanted from this list was cultural artefacts that have given me comfort, escape, hope, joy, a sense of belonging, a thread of connection with other human beings and/or the world.

Most people who know me are aware that I’m a very committed Formula 1 fan. Committed enough that I’m up at 5am every second Monday to watch a race before work (Southern Hemisphere fans unite in sleep deprivation!) It’s funny being a motorsport fan as a woman. Men usually assume I’m in it for the drivers and don’t have any wheel knowledge. Meanwhile I’m poring over the telemetry and watching strategy deep dives — but don’t worry — this post isn’t about the baseline misogyny within male-dominated sporting fandoms. It wasn’t actually aerodynamics, engines, or babes that got me into F1. It was stories.