The weeks that were: Mar 1st-14th
The field of crocuses at Frederiksberg Have
Working on…
One of the things I'm enjoying about being in my 'betwixt-project liminal space' is having the opportunity to roam unfettered through the rooms of the Haus. Whilst the Haus was in production I bookmarked a bunch of cool stuff, but now I've gone back to some things - refining and expanding my thinking, and explaining why they have a place here. I love, love, love being able to have an iterative process like this, and joining up all the dots in this way has meant that the Haus is feeling like more and more of a resource. It’s deeper, richer, more valuable, and makes more sense to anyone who isn’t actually me.
It’s also a real pleasure to stretch my writing muscles again and indulge that facet of my creative process a little more deeply.
Thinking about…
The process of externalising your thinking, and translating it into something intelligible for others. Anyone who creates butts up against this at some point, and those of us with neurodivergent wiring more often than most! I’m always astonished by how wildly differently the same piece of art or writing or video content will land with different people, and how varied their interpretations of it are. I find it simultaneously absolutely fascinating, deeply annoying (I’m such a control freak) and intensely liberating.
Reading…
Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein
This is not only a fascinating exploration of how radicalisation works and why the world has become such a crazy warped parody of itself, it also contains a chapter on autism which features this sentence:
“Asperger's claim that autistic children were pathological because they lacked the capacity for Gemüt was less a medical diagnosis than a highly ideological one about what should constitute normal behavior: he was diagnosing them, quite literally, with a deficit of fascism.”
I feel enormously proud to have an official ‘deficit of fascism’ diagnosis. Being autistic does come in handy for some things, and being immune to groupthink is one of its best perks, if you ask me.
Watching…
Steven Universe (the series - skip the movie, it’s a miss)
Lars has been on at me for AGES to watch this and I finally relented. And I have to say, it’s wonderful, albeit with a slow start (which makes sense once you’ve seen the whole thing). I was talking with my book club recently about how stories shape our culture, and we were lamenting that all of the mainstream stories about ‘saving the world’ involve individualism, fighting, and ultimately maintaining the status quo i.e. very patriarchy-coded. We have far fewer stories about ‘saving the world’ through conversation and care and understanding. Steven Universe is one of those stories, and it’s beautiful. It’s also queer as hell.
