Kamakura still swelters, the air outside is a thick haze, heavy sedative. We walk slowly, quietly, dream-like. Yet, early mornings and late evenings arrive with a dip in the heat, enough for me to switch off the aircon and slide open the garden door. The breeze comes in like a soft sigh trailing through the house, bringing with it the song of crickets and the faintest scent of ripening autumn as it goes. I am looking forward to the mellowing days. The sweet release from the heat and the shift into russet and golden hues. Till then, here are 5 recent things I thought were worth sharing with you…
All those anime films aren’t faking it—summer in Japan really is a time of enormous fluffy clouds that float in whipped cream stacks across the sky. I especially love it when they blush at the edges, spilling a cinematic filter over the rest of the day.
I fell in love with Eloghosa Osunde’s “Vagabonds”. It's hard to describe it as anything less than an extraordinary achievement. The novel weaves together short stories, witnessed by an unexpected narrator who serves the city of Lagos. Lagos itself is alive, and had its own agendas for the vagabonds. The connections Osunde crafts come from the margins of society—tender, sometimes terrifying, but always admirably defiant in their bravery to be themselves. I cannot wait to read it again, and again.
“Freedom will have to be imagined by the shapeshifters, actors, invisibles, ghosts, magicians, vagabonds, outcasts, outsiders. Always the only hope. I combed the country for as many as I could find and I watched them, for my own heart, for my own hope, for my own personal goings-on. Because that is my sustenance. I need hope the way people need blood, the way people need food. And they need, as we all do, somebody to see them, to bear them witness, to watch over them lovingly. So I did. And I do. I see them and I love them and I'm unashamed of my heart.”
This month, Hiro, our sons, and our records were featured in a special edition of Fine Magazine. Me? I hid upstairs until the photographer and journalist left. (FYI, Fine came out around the same time as Popeye, though it hasn’t gained the same global recognition—yet). It’s lovely that they included our boys, who are fully onboard with our love for records —tangible music that demands space and care. There’s something truly special about introducing kids to analog things. Records, books, cameras, typewriters, gardening—all that jazz. These are things that require time, commitment, and passion. No shortcuts, but plenty of satisfaction. P.S. It’s plain weird seeing my home in a magazine!
I like listening to wordless music when I write, preferably something jazzy. Listening to jazz while writing is like a conversation with the unpredictable. Lately I am enjoying Àbáse’s Awakening, which probably isn’t jazz in its strictest sense, it’s much, much wider in its embrace- holding Classic Lagos Afrobeats, Hungarian folk, Yoruba rhythms, house, techno and hiphop in its grasp. The album was recorded in just four days in my friend’s analog studio. Quite amazing! Do you listen to music when you write? What are you listening these days?
I have a small obsession with John Cage’s, Changes and Disappearances, made between 1979–1982. The series is Cage’s most complicated print project and was heavily based on his key belief that “the responsibility of the artist is to imitate nature in her manner of operations.” In this series, Cage sought to reflect nature’s complexity and randomness through a series of marks, colours, and images, all determined by a process of chance-driven decisions. I could stare at them all day.
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Have just listened to Àbáse’s album Awakening, while baking biscuits on a rainy day - thank you! 🎶 🎵