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.

I’ve had a full-on, kind of overwhelming week, but here are some things the internet has given me to make up for it.

Years and years ago, I went to an incredible talk by a woman named Sacha Judd called “what you love matters”. It really struck a chord with me, so much so that I still vividly remember parts of it 8 years later. You can read her full explanation of the talk here, but the gist is: people (predominantly young women) who participate in online fandoms have incredible creative and technical skills that the tech industry overlooks because they’ve been honed in service of something socially embarrassing. Think: One Direction, The Lord of the Rings, or My Little Pony.

I’ve had one of those weeks where Spotify just can’t get it right. Everything is off. My AI DJ sucks. My song radios are weak. My finger is tired from hitting the skip button and I’ve been thinking that either I’m in my luteal phase or the algorithm is dumber than I’ve been led to believe. Or both. I thought our digital overlords were supposed to be observing our every move and adapting in order to keep us plugged in?

I’ve been listening to the new Florence + the Machine album and it’s soooo witchy and intense and majestic that I wanted to know more, so I read this interview in the Guardian. There are many nuggets in the piece that I’m obsessed with, like, “I had a Coke can’s worth of blood in my abdomen,” and, “I was very interested in the Bible and Greek myths and Goosebumps.”