Shuggie Bain, Ahmad Zahir, and Nan Goldin [September 23]
Five Curated Recommendations from Others
Rowan 2023
‘Aubade with Burning City, by the poet Ocean Vuong.’'
Ellie 2022
'Taking MDMA with someone you’re in love with. And, in general, falling in love (it’s pretty nice).'
Ayse 2019
‘Crac! by Frederic Back (1981). 15 minutes long: cry and laugh.’
Nia 2021
‘Wearing BRIGHT clothes makes you HAPPY.’
Suzy 2023
‘Partly-hypothesised ways to achieve transcendent states: painting, film, music, literature, poetry, mastery, performance, meditation, rites+rituals, breathwork, altruism, physical touch, drugs, dancing, companionship, sex, nature, prayer, singing, philosophy, exercise, food, authentic relating, dreaming, teamwork, pilgrimage, solitude, contemplation of death, asceticism, craft, travel, child-rearing, self-sufficiency, love, homemaking.'
Five Recommendations from Me
Nearly 50 years after his death, Ahmad Zahir remains one of the most widely cherished Afghan singers. His devotional ballads — sung in Pashto and Dari — are haunting and hypnotic. Khuda Bowad Yarat is a favourite of mine.
No novel has crushed me so completely as Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. Helplessly tender Shuggie, and Agnus, his (vulnerable, alcoholic, noble) mother face the brutality of Glasgow’s poorest districts in the 1980s and 1990s.
Damien Barr’s wonderful debut novel transposes the same theme to explore masculinity in South Africa. Here, the internment camps of the Second Boer War assure refugees that ‘You Will Be Safe Here’, and post-Apartheid training camps promise to turn effeminate boys into real men.
Barbra Copple’s documentary ‘Harlan County, USA’ sympathetically portrays the men and women at the centre of a half-century long struggle for labour rights at a coal town in South East Kentucky. This excellent film, and the wonderful music (‘Which Side are you on’, ‘North Country Blues’) from this period, gave me a new visceral perspective on the experiences of working class Americans.
For me, Nan Goldin’s visual diary, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, was revelationary. Rather than stalk through city streets, photographing strangers, Goldin is largely dedicated to taking intimate pictures of her close friends. There is a softness to her photographs that a different approach would have curbed. Some SFW favourites: Picnic on the Esplanade, Self-Portrait in Kimono with Brian, Jimmy Paulette and Misty in the taxi).
