It’s been a little while since I made one of these posts and as this newsletter really is all about tiny narratives I wanted to share a few I’ve experienced recently.
Design for a Carpet from Dominant Animals by Kathryn Scanlan - reading time: < 5 minutes
Kathryn Scanlan’s short stories are short, a page or two at most, but that is always enough. Maybe not enough for the reader, but enough for her to demonstrate what it is she is trying to say. The cruelty of a relationship, the fraught mother and daughter bond, the betrayal of a beloved pet. The stories are heavy with subtext and misunderstandings. Often they left me feeling uncomfortable, a little unsure of the world now tilted slightly to a new perspective Scanlan had just revealed.
Design for a Carpet is on the face of it a more banal story in the vein of Lydia Davis. A domestic scene, written in the first-person plural — a couple we suppose — in the quest for a new carpet for their house. But what it reveals about ourselves and our relationship to consumerism and the goods we seek to surround ourselves with is more profound than a quest for an unattainable piece of new flooring. How easy we demand our lives must be now.
My wife and I recently went pillow shopping, up early one morning to head to John Lewis before the crowds. I laid my head on many different pillows set out for customers such as myself. Synthetic, allergy-free, real down, soft, medium, firm, medium/firm. The choice was overwhelming but still I approached the task with gusto, bouncing my head down onto the pillows, goofy enough to make my wife laugh. It was a monumental task that made me think of Scanalan’s short story. In the end I picked the same pillow as her.
You can read Design for a Carpet in The Dominant Animal, published by Daunt Books. Or read online here.
Nou Fè Pati, Nou Se, Nou Anvi (We Belong, We be, We Long) by Widline Cadet - looking time: as long as you like but much can be communicated in even a few seconds
Widline Cadet’s work encompasses many things, according to the text I read at her first European exhibition, Take This with You / Pran sa avèk ou, at Huis Marseille in Amsterdam. Her Haitian heritage, unnatural body doubles, the photographic process, the idea of the family archive and layering of histories. Her photographs drew me in — they told a story both singularly and together. Some quite literally: where a large scale photograph contained a small screen showing an interview between her and her mother or a wedding party. A story within a story, a world within a world. In Nou Fè Pati, Nou Se, Nou Anvi (We Belong, We be, We Long) two girls in matching gingham dresses bend over against an artificial backdrop of the same gingham, blending in to it but also overreaching it. The gingham we are told is what Cadet wore often to school, a staple of Haitian school uniforms and a reminder of Haiti's French colonial history. Look again at the image and you’ll see there are slightly too many limbs for just two schoolgirls. The background too tells us this is not real. What we are seeing is staged and intentional: a story open for interpretation. Is this one girl, or two? Or many? What lives have they lived so far with their faces turned away and posed just so. Where might they go next?
Widline Cadet is on display at Huis Marseille until 22 October 2023
No Longer Home by Humble Grove - play time: about 2 hours
No Longer Home tells the story of Cal and Ao as they prepare to move out of their shared university home in South London. It is I believe partly based on the experience of two of the game developers themselves and this really does shine through in just how relatable the game can be. Anyone who has ever wondered about their future or what it means to be creative will find themselves nodding or wincing in recognition at some of the dialogue.
It takes a turn for the strange and unusual but presents such things as another mundane part of life. I don’t want to spoil too much as these moments were for me the bursts of insight into each of the characters. There’s a lot of nuance packed into its two-hour run time and for me what really hit home (pun: intended) was how familiar the conversations felt — or rather the nostalgia I felt for such conversations that I remember having as I left uni and tried to figure out my own life. No Longer Home is a fine example of when you tell a specific personal story you actually allow others to be able to reflect on their own lives and experiences.
No Longer Home is out now on Switch, PC, Mac, Playstation and Xbox.
Review, Series 1, Episode 7 of The Bear, dir. by Christopher Storer - watch time: 20 minutes
The Bear is about a Michelin star chef, Carmen Berzatto, returning to his Chicago hometown to look after his deceased brother’s restaurant and what happens when you actually try to make things better. In the episode Review the entire cast is shouting at each other for 20 minutes in real time. Somehow this does not feel long, although it is stressful. They are shouting because everything is going wrong in the kitchen like it usually does and that is the only way they know how to fix things. Someone gets stabbed in the butt. Someone else quits their job. By the end of the episode you will be glad you are not a chef in a kitchen somewhere in Chicago that may or may not be about to close because half the staff are distracted and they never seem to catch a break. There is also the fact that, Carmy, as Syndney, his sous chef, points out, is ‘a piece of shit’ at times. The Bear is a TV programme to watch if you like shouting, close up shots of people chopping things and some of the best character development you’ll ever see.1
The Bear is streaming on Disney+ in the UK
Mother and Daughter take the bus by strangers - watch time: eight minutes (never to be repeated)
Late on Friday night and we are on the bus, drunk but only a little and giggling. We sit at the back because we can. A mother and daughter get on the bus at the next stop, the busy one opposite the tube station. At first we think they do not know each other and the look the younger woman gives the older one is just that banal annoyance we all feel at someone sitting too close to us on public transport. But no, they know each other, because soon they are exchanging fraught words and gestures of anger that are too personal, too well worn to be anything but mother and daughter. We cannot hear the actual words said because the man next to us speaks loudly on his phone and the bus rumbles and screeches at every turn. We only catch little snippets, accusations and sighs that spill around the gaps in the clutter of noise. Our stop approaches too soon. We leave the bus none-the-wiser. Happy to delude ourselves that we would never been so angry as to be unable to stop our hurtful words from firing out when on the bus, so late at night, with so many people around. We tell ourselves that would never be us and laugh.
Except for Claire in Series 2.