[Note: I’ve paywalled a very small part of this post at the end to thank subscribers but as a free reader you’re not missing anything. Essays, announcements and poems will remain unpaywalled for the time being. I’ll be crossposting monthly podcasts with Louise Perry which will be paywalled, and there are plans afoot for other collaborations/experimental productions…]
Summer seethes over like boiled milk before splashing everywhere. Post heat, post rain, the city relaxes into a quieter mode: everyone seems to be cleaning house. The Uniparty are even more shambolic than usual, and the sense that carrying on is not really possible seems to have descended like a cloud of knowingness over even the most previously reality-denying.
Things are happening at Verdurin, Pierre’s place in East London. The event I organised on Cults at the end of May was everything I hoped it would be: serious, informative, reflective, funny. My history course (which we’ll run again soon) also spurred great discussion as we attempted to work out what the collapse of the post-war liberal order might look like with reference to everyone from Thucydides to Koselleck to Spengler. The online version of the lectures (Chaos, Stasis, Progress, Providence) are available to buy here for non-Londoners.
I spoke to several wonderful people lately, including Louise Perry and Sebastian and Brain on the Gnostalgia podcast. The film podcast I co-host with Benjamin Studebaker is still going strong, with recent discussions of Anora, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Living in Oblivion (with more than a hundred films in the archive). The B side is usually more conceptual/personal and if you like that sort of thing you can subscribe here (the A side is always free).
There are some more great events coming up at Verdurin and elsewhere. Philip Cunliffe at Verdurin discussing his new book The National Interest on July 23rd (details here).
The night after, July 23rd, dear friends The Base are hosting their writing competition AGON II, where extracts from shortlisted plays will be read and a winner decided by the audience (details here).
On July 31st, there’s a new reading night, Recitations, with Olive Parker, Kas Pietrzak, Sophie Barshall, Jane Cooper, Alexander Raubo, organised with Rose Lyddon.
There’s an electronic open mic afternoon organised with Charles Lambert and Stefano Parrella of EMOM Roehampton on Sunday August 10th (details here).
More to come, as ever…together we will make London liveable!!!