Weeknote 43+44/2024
Penguins, mycelial deep-dives, Hamlet chat, Lords Russell, and the wrong trousers.
Many scientific concepts – from ‘time’ to ‘chemical bonds’ to ‘genes’ to ‘species’ – lack stable definitions but remain helpful categories to think with. From one perspective, ‘individual’ is no different: just another category to guide human thought and behaviour.
Verbs
Reading: Entangled Life, by Merlin Sheldrake
One of the small moments of everyday joy I experience is when I’m walking Teddy the Dog and we happen upon some mushrooms in a patch of grass, or clinging to some tree. Normally they’ve popped out of the earth overnight and where, yesterday, there was nothing but leaves and branches, now there is a cluster of plump, pale fungi. It seems like a sort of magic and the shapes and forms the mushrooms take are always interesting to me. Merlin Sheldrake’s book Entangled Life is all about showing just how deeply, deeply, weird fungi and mushrooms really are. Across the book Sheldrake has chapters on mycelial networks, psychotropic mushrooms, the absurdity that is lichen, and the role mushrooms have played in cultures and civilisations throughout human history. It’s wide-ranging, totally captivating, and immensely pleasing for a mushroom nerd like me.
Rabbit hole-ing: The great and the good of the British stage, and Lord Bertrand Russell
YouTube rabbit holes often prove to be little better than a great way to lose a full afternoon whilst gaining an entry-level migraine. But not always. My most recent tumble down the internet’s tubes has been hoovering up interviews, round-tables, chat show appearances, and discussions featuring some of the hallowed names of British theatre and, not British but still in the club, one American actor/director. In particular, I’ve been having a ball watching Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, Oliver Reed, and Orson Welles. There are a lot of the classic ‘hellraiser’ stories of their booze-soaked days in London, but scratching beneath that surface, there are acres of scintillating stuff where they talk art, theatre, life, and more. A real favourite of mine is Orson Welles, a young Peter O’Toole, and a slightly bewildered Ernest Milton chatting about Hamlet in ways that show fathoms upon fathoms of depth and insight. I also really loved this interview with Welles about the making of Citizen Kane in which he attributes his ability to make the film at 26(!) to basically knowing nothing - something I’ve spoken about often in the past!
In contrast, in some ways, to those is an interview with Lord Bertrand Russell - philosopher, mathematician, reformer, and activist. Russell was born in 1872 and died in 1970 - having seen an extraordinary period in world history. His life is fascinating and extraordinary in all sorts of ways - not many people get to say “My grandfather was born during the French Revolution” after all. Oh, and that’s the same grandfather who was prime minister of Great Britain and chief architect of the Great Reform Act… Whilst this interview is very dated in style and form, the ideas and commentary Russell gives are as pertinent, insightful, and vivid as can be.
Revisiting: The Wallace and Gromit oeuvre
I was pretty excited to hear that this Christmas there will be a new, feature-length, Wallace and Gromit film coming out. I loved the original short films when I was a kid and was all the more excited when Anja told me she didn’t think she’d ever seen them. Apparently, clay-based stop motion animation from Bristol wasn’t a big thing in 1990’s Yugoslavia. That meant, naturally, that we needed to re-watch them - and so we went back and (re)visited the original short films with The Curse of the Were-Rabbit yet to come. They’re just as brilliant as I remember and the artistry and creativity are present in spades from the very first frame.
The Wrong Trousers will forever be my favourite as the noir-ish cinematography and slightly dark tone really sets it apart. I might even go so far as to suggest that Feathers McGraw is cinema’s greatest villain. What struck me most was that within 5 minutes of the film opening a whole world had been built, characters firmly established, jeopardy introduced, and motives laid bare and all with only one speaking character! That level of storytelling mastery is so easy to overlook but it’s nothing less than genius.
Watching: The Penguin
I’ve not really watched any Batman TV or films since Christopher Nolan’s incredible Dark Knight trilogy. I’ve not even seen Matt Reeve’s The Batman, of which The Penguin is a spinoff/sequel. This, though, could well be one of the best shows of the year for me. The central performances from Colin Farrel and Cristin Milioti are utterly dazzling and if awards are not showered upon them whilst TV bigwigs genuflect, weeping unworthy tears all the while, then there truly is no God in the DC universe. I would like to strenuously turn the heads of any and all TV writers and showrunners in the direction of this show whilst volubly shouting “SEE! This is what you can do if you just bother to THINK!” It’s pitched as a limited series which, in theory, means it’s one season and done and that’s a heartbreaking thing to believe as it’s just so damned good but, with the grubby machinations of contemporary capitalism churning away in the background, I’m hoping that the success the show is deservedly accruing might see it through to something more in the future.
Novi Sad is still clinging on to some beautiful autumnal weather - 20C and bright and clear most days, with only a little mist and dampness in the morning (the weather, not me.) I think we’re due for some colder times pretty soon but it’s been great whilst it’s lasted and it means fewer post-walk showers for Teddy the Dog or, as he thinks of them, brutal crimes against the Lord’s sweetest boy. I’m hoping, in the next week or two, to get a day up in the Fruška Gora National Park as this time of year is such a gorgeous one for walking in the trees there and I may even take a hairy companion along with me, too.
There are some nice developments across the various work projects I've got underway and a really lovely mix of long-form and shorter-form commitments as well as an unusual variety of topics and focuses. Along with an ongoing project with some colleagues in Romania, I’ll also be leading another workshop next month in relation to the International Baccalaureate, and there’s some provisional talks about one or two other things, as well. It definitely feels like a time of germinating seeds and brewing possibilities.
- Mitch.