Esoteric & Based Memo #21
The Twentyfirst
1. A Book
Jane: A Murder, by Maggie Nelson, 2005
Maggie Nelson’s eighth book, Bluets (2009), was featured in E&B memo #3 and continues to be one of my Favourites of All Time. Jane: A Murder (2005), her fifth book, is completely different in theme but similar in its particular ability to render the reader raw and beautifully aching. Bluets is a lyrical meditation on love and the colour blue; Jane explores the unsolved 1969 murder of Nelson’s aunt through a blend of poetry, prose, newspaper clippings and diary entries. If you’ve read previous E&B memos closely enough, you may have picked up that there was a murder in my own family - so Jane hit close to home in a very singular and painful way.
I am grateful for Jane: A Murder, but you don’t have to know grief (let alone murder) to appreciate this beautifully crafted book.
“As if keening on your knees
were somehow obscene
As if there were a control
so marvelous
you could teach it
to eat pain.”“Treating things lightly is indeed the answer to so much.”
“How people are often merciless
on those they love the most”“It’s too late to help her; my mother wakes with a start. It’s too late to help her, but the want still cripples the heart.”
2. An Artwork
A perfect rendering of that wrenching feeling of loss and grief, this is Just Passing Through, by Don Nace.
“I set out to see how much of human nature I could visualise with my artist's vocabulary. I did attempt over the years to think of a storyline that had the classic structures, but that was, quite simply, beyond me. So I just drew as much as I could cram into my work-a-day, raise-a-family world, like some gorilla artist sneaking out at night to create something before scurrying back into hiding. Intuitive as the drawings began, I had planted in my head that I should try to bring it home, make it about something specific and gradually over the years it just happened on its own. All those dramas of life just emerged into little drawings." - Don Nace
3. A Quote/Poem
“…death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.”
― Rossiter Worthington Raymond
4. An Audio
Album: With by Rhucle, 2021
Japanese artist Rhucle, based in Tokyo, makes ambient music. He began this project in 2013 and has released over 80 albums to date. With, featured here is my favouriteeee. I stumbled across his music during one of my ambient music rabbit hole sessions a few years ago and have been an avid listener ever since.
5. A Place
The closest forest to you. Or the Sequoia National Forest, California.
6. A Film
Fire of Love, by Sara Dosa, 2022
An exquisite, awe-inspiring, volcano-centred, true-story, love-story, tear-jerking documentary experience, narrated by renaissance woman Miranda July.