#RR5 Rapid Review of Rapid Reviews (Among Other Things)

On being human, making a home of the world, and working toward a vision.

Well-well-well... Half a year in with the Rapid Reviews, and only three of them were proper. So I sat down (or lay down in anguish if we're staying true to the facts) and got real with myself. I like writing. A LOT. What I dislike is the formulaic nature of every piece and the self-imposed regularity. Shocker! What is there not to like?

I've struggled with routines my whole life, either irrationally obsessing over something for years or needing things to change a bit every other month. And the additional curse is that the first scenario never works for anything that goes public, that I've made myself even slightly accountable for. If I "have" to do it, I'm no longer manically obsessed with it.

I hit a wall at the end of May when gathering ideas for the next Rapid Review and its possible theme. Two occasions made me question my method:

• My workplace has subscribed to The New Yorker, and every week I glance over Briefly Noted, their quick pick of four books. I've realized it's rarely more than one that interests me. If any. And someone still picks them Every Single Week. I could never—and I wouldn't want to, because I'm not The New Yorker (I'm just a girl 💅).

• I caught myself wanting to talk about a book that I didn't even like, simply because it would work with the potential theme. Woah-woah, easy there. This was supposed to be enjoyable and worthy of my and my readers' attention. Feels inauthentic? À la poubelle (to the trash), as Gstaad Guy puts it.

My first reaction to noticing the problem was, “That's it, discontinue the series and let the Substack collect dust for a few business months. If you're not passionate about it, don't waste anyone's time. Figure out something else later.” However, I do like the initial idea—talking about culture I consume naturally and sharing art that had an impact on me in a few paragraphs.

After I left myself the f*ck alone for a week or so, a more practical and realistic idea came to mind. Which brings me to update about the series:

1. Rapid Reviews will get rapider. I will heming-my-way into shorter, simpler writing that captures the essence of my experience and gets to the point fast.

2. I will try to keep it monthly, but it may not always be possible. If I haven't enjoyed a single book in a month, I may mention two songs—or I may come back a bit later with an actually good book.

3. I will reduce categories to 3, with Visual Art combining paintings, photography, films, etc.

And without further ado, let's get into RR5 (finally).

📚 Literature

I had a month of infuriatingly three-star reads. The sort of overall meh books that have 3–5 incredible bits sprinkled throughout, and therefore are impossible to give up on entirely. Such were:

• Exteriors by Annie Ernaux (cool concept of bite-size anthropology, but not much substance or food for thought)

• Second Place by Rachel Cusk (breathtaking writing, but insufferable characters, except maybe Tony, who said about three words in total)

• Philosophy of the Home by Emanuele Coccia (half of the chapters were resonant and to-the-point, and half were him remembering he's a philosophy professor).

Goodreads

Of these, I would give lukewarm kudos to Coccia, because the chapters that were good were really good. One line in particular stuck with me:

"Moving demonstrates this: homes do not exist per se. Only homemaking exists: an extended minuet of mutual domestication of people and possessions."

I had to move around Riga and domesticate my environs all over many times. He described it exactly the way I felt it. My sandcastle and I, always in the making. So here's the first time Ever™ that I'm recommending a random non-fiction book I bought for the pretty cover over praised litfic (Cusk) or Nobel-winning vignettes (Ernaux). Coccia’s book helps build a healthier paradigm for perceiving home as a space for being yourself and making sense of the outside world at the same time.

🎥 Visual Art

Note: There are a few gory scenes, so please look up trigger warnings before watching.

Speaking of making sense of the world, Sans Soleil, or Sunless (1983), directed by Chris Marker, single-handedly compensated for my recent lack of luck with books. It is an artistic documentary / visual essay about human memory, clashing internal and external powers, technological breakthroughs and tradition, and the violent force of survival pushing people forward.

The film is a multiplied image of humanity watching itself, fighting itself, loving and destroying itself. And while Marker, or his fictitious narrator, is observing the world, the world is staring back at him, even if just for the length of one frame.

Image source

He managed to explore so much in so little time! That globalization makes us more foreign to custom, and to the subliminal knowledge that comes with it. That anything at all can become ceremonial. That when analog was first butting heads with digital, we still lived amid burning celebrations that run on our fragile memory. I looked up the script after watching. It reads like a poem, or a confession.

Image source

🎶 Music

Emma Ruth Rundle entered my regular music rotation a while ago, and recently I was pleased to find out that she is not just a great singer-songwriter, but a multidisciplinary artist. She released her debut poetry collection, The Bella Vista, and an accompanying album of piano sketches, Music from The Bella Vista, earlier this year. I've practically been living inside the album and reading the book in parallel. She has an extremely cohesive aesthetic, all while experimenting with genres and media. My favorite piano sketch from the album is Leirian, and the respective poem also contains a memorable passage:

"Seeking a relief
that cannot come by action.
But only in waiting out the day
and its searing shards."

Harold Budd, a renowned '60s composer, was a major inspiration for this project of hers, so I'd also like to recommend The Pavilion Of Dreams, Budd’s 1978 collaboration with Brian Eno. If the aforementioned Sans Soleil film had a music brother, this would be it. Both Rundle’s and Budd/Eno's albums are great accompaniments for slow, relaxed writing (empirically tested by yours truly).

As always, thank you for reading. See you in the next one, shorter and perhaps sweeter.