Quiet fullness rising in the heat. The dustiness of summer grasses and ripening hopes. By Wednesday the world was close to bursting under the full Buck moon.
It’s difficult to ignore the background noises – they’re in the air everywhere – political pressures ramping up with the temperature and prices, murmerings of climate change dampening the heatwave.
In our own mild world the shock of yet another school year coming to a close has its own swollen texture.
It’s at these moments I turn most to creators who sing from the midst of their private chaos – clear and true – alive in it. Here are a few I’ve been loving of late…
1. Fyfe Dangerfield in his pyjamas
Few have been more honest with their daily chaos over recent months than Fyfe Dangerfield – the Guillemots frontman – who took to Instagram stories over lockdown to keep us all entertained with completely freestyle performances set against the most comfortingly chaotic backdrop of hippy throws and untidied piles of life crap while his son interrupted his singing.
Before he became a little bit famous, Fyfe earned his bread playing in the upstairs bar at a small but pivotal little club in Cheltenham called Subtone. Thursday nights were cheesy classics and 50p tequila stacks and you couldn’t move on the sweaty dancefloor.
Up on the top floor, Fyfe would sit at a knackered old piano playing songs on request for the drunken middle-aged women to sing along to until they all gave up and went downstairs again. Then he’d unleash the Fyfe the world has come to know and love – playing ramblingly beautiful improvisations for the remaining hours.
It was a privilege to watch him then, and to my great joy, he’s been sharing the same wild freedom on Instagram since lockdown. I’ve just discovered the treasure trove and been hanging out with his imagination while I work – it’s the perfect antithesis to ‘normal’ life when I need to feel more alive in a routine.
Here’s one of my favourite Fyfe ramblings, but I invite you to get stuck in and find your own.
2. The capable knees of Paula Rego’s women
I had a lot to say after the Roe v. Wade announcement came out. I haven’t said it. But I feel like the artist Paula Rego conveyed most of what I feel about how we carry the weight of the world’s politics in our bodies as women, during her life, which ended in her Paula Rego earthling form on 8th June this year.
I need her women beside me at times like these. I need to hitch my skirts up and bare my knees and elbows to the world. Dig the garden barefoot. Get stronger and braver about telling truer stories with unpolished edges. Remember to call my friends and laugh with them.
Rest in peace Paula Rego, and thank you.
3. Vulnerable gods in Circe, by Madeline Miller
I didn’t expect to enjoy this recommendation for our bookclub because I’ve always had an aversion to Greek gods. They’re too confusingly mad. However, I kept picking it up, and picking it up, and eventually devoured it.
Madeline Miller’s unlikely heroine is a fully embodied ode to the messy gift of mortality. Her writing is spare and perfectly controlled, assuredly spliced with understated poetry. I came away more grateful to be alive and feeling that in some ways we are all Greek gods in search of an appreciation of time.
4. The lady in the fur coat eating the giant cheese in The Hand of God
Where do I start with this film? It’s perfectly imperfect. Perfectly messy. A beautifully filmed stewpot of heat, eccentricity, loss and the inevitability that we must each embrace our own heroic journey. There are nods to Fellini and Truffaut, but writer, director and producer Paolo Sorrentino has made this autobiographically inspired little gem of a movie his own. Make a night of it.
Available on Netflix now.
5. Hopeless families, like Here We Go
And finally, a much less high-brow little six-part comedy written by Tom Basden for the Beeb that I’ve been enjoying as an end of day flump with my darling fourteen-year-old. Here We Go is a mini sitcom that’s found its own genuinely amusing way to capture the messiness of family life with much compassion and an expertly deft touch to the humour.
It’s not Fleabag, but having waded deep out of my comfort zone this summer with a ‘Writing Comedy for TV’ course, I feel more appreciative than ever of the craft and magic involved in pulling off something as gently warm-hearted, perceptive and forgiving as this little treasure, which made us giggle a lot.
So, in celebration of all who stand openly, outwardly in their chaos, in their vulnerability, and speak proud and true from the centre of life’s muddle, I wish you all a splendidly fun, hot weekend.
May you swim and laze and laugh and indulge unrepentantly in the brief fruits of this beautiful midsummer.