Hello,

I’m still figuring out how to best format these posts. I think I’ll keep figuring it out until I finally land on something I’m fully confident and happy with. I also really want to start adding some more visual elements to them. Maybe cover images? Maybe I should redesign the index page. Maybe little visuals for each segment? Much to think about, much to explore in the upcoming months.

But for now, here’s some things I listened to and watched and enjoyed over this past month.

Music

Loooots of new music out in March which, as always, I did not get around to and I will be catching up with all the releases for a while. And that was largely due to the fact that I just mostly listened to the new Maggie Rogers album, which is excellent and I am enjoying it very much.

Maggie Rogers – Don’t Forget Me

Folks, Maggie Rogers is back and she’s crafted another summer album for us to indulge in. All ten tracks are hits and I will be listening to them all summer long. Maggie has really honed that kind of folky-pop sound with this one and she’s growing up. I know this record was written and recorded in a very short time, and you can kind of feel that, but it doesn’t feel rushed or incomplete. There’s a sense of urgency in these songs, like diary entries that you just have to get out of your system. Maggie Rogers continues to make coming-of-age albums for twenty-somethings and for that I continue to be grateful.

Movies

The Zone of Interest (2023, dir. Jonathan Glazer)

It is embedded in our collective conscience that the second world war is the greatest tragedy, that the holocaust is the worst imaginable thing people have done to other people, and that the nazi party and everyone and everything surrounding it is the ultimate evil. A movie about WW2, about the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp (and his family) does not need to introduce or establish any of that, because we already know it.

You’re watching the movie and you’re disgusted. You finish the movie and you’re disgusted and now also deeply distraught. It is genuinely stomach-turning, although there aren’t many overly explicit scenes in the movie. Because in the back of your mind, you know what it is that isn’t being shown. You know what’s happening beyond the walls, you know that that unimaginable suffering is just barely out of sight. And then a few days or weeks later you still can’t stop thinking about what you saw.

This is one of those pieces of art that kind of shattered what movies are and can be for me. (I’m still kind of at the beginning of my serious-movie-watching journey). There is nothing enticing or gripping or exciting about this movie. There isn’t really much that makes you want to continue watching. In every way, it actually makes you want to not watch it anymore. It does not evoke a single positive emotion while watching. The best thing I can say about it is that it’s happening in the summer and that it looks visually stunning. But in the very same moment I remember what it is that I’m watching. Who it is that I’m watching. And I don’t even think that evil is strong enough of a word to describe them.

The film’s brightest moments (if I can even call it that) are its visually darkest, and to me, the most visually striking as well. The inverted thermal images are unlike anything I’ve seen in a movie and are really otherworldly. These scenes are the tiniest bits of hope and humanity sprinkled throughout the movie.

And yet, what Jonathan Glazer and his team did here is an outstanding, monumental achievement in filmmaking. I also have to mention the actors’ performances in this, which are phenomenal. Sandra Hüller is absolutely incredible as Hedwig and is masterful at evoking absolutely no positive feelings towards her.

The Zone of Interest is haunting and it will stay with me for a long time, if not forever. I think people should watch it, but I don’t know what words I would use to recommend it to anyone. An incredibly relevant piece of art, and the Oscars are cowards for not uploading Glazer’s acceptance speech to the official YouTube Channel.

La Chimera (2023, dir. Alice Rohrwacher)

I was already planning on how I was going to write “I only saw one movie this whole month and it was The Zone Of Interest” but then, on the last day of April, I went to the cinema to see La Chimera and I can’t think of a better way to end the month. And although the month started with the heaviness of a movie, it ended with a lightness of another movie.

I went into this kind of vaguely knowing that it’s about an archeologist in Italy and some ancient artefacts and that Josh O’Connor’s in it and that it is apparently quite a joyful and wonderful movie. And what a wonderful movie it was! It was so whimsical and magical and I really loved it! I’m still thinking about it nearly two weeks later after seeing it and I think I’ll rewatch it at home once it’s out on digital. I might write more about it in some end-of-year wrap up but I did thoroughly enjoy it and I am recommending it to everyone.

Reading

I started reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt and I’m deep into in and genuinely really enjoying it. I see why it’s considered a modern classic and still a smash hit over 20 years after publication. I also totally get the whole dark academia aesthetic now. Will report back when I finish it!

Solving

A tweet about the linguistic olympiad problems made its way onto my feed at the end of March and reminded me how much I used to love solving those problems when I was around 12 years old and doing school competitions in logic. The linguistics problems were always my favourite ones (maybe because I was the best at them, or maybe just because they made the most sense. Logic puzzles with those people who either always tell the truth, always lie, or sometimes lie? No thanks, not for me.)

So, I found some sample sheets online and got to solving and I’ve been having a grand old time with it. I think I prefer something like this over sudoku because I start to find sudoku a little boring and monotone after a while.

Etc.

I also started drawing again and I got myself a new sketchbook. But I only filled two spreads so far so I’ll probably share that next month, when there’s a bit more to show.

Thank you for reading.

Until next time,

Mia