63: The Past

Nostalgia was a word created from Ancient Greek by 17th Century Swiss physician Joannes Hofer to describe a disease. His patients, soldiers stationed far from Switzerland, suffered nausea, appetite loss, hallucinations, severe depression and fainting, caused by long periods of time spent away from home. Nostos -- homecoming. Algia -- pain.Throughout the 18th and 19th Centuries a physical cause for nostalgia was searched for. The detrimental effects of the disease that swept through troops engaged in wars and occupations overseas made it a priority to find and cure for this "hypochondria of the heart"; a sickness that seemingly thrived on its own symptoms, worsening and strengthening of its own volition, with no cure except the obvious; sending patients home saw immediate improvements.Nostalgia is looked at now less as a disease and more as a common curiosity. We miss things we can't return to, and we talk about them often: the past, our childhoods, homes we used to live in, food and drink we used to enjoy that have changed their recipes or disappeared from our shelves forever. How did listening to Layo and Bushwaka! get me to this train of thought? It took me to a place that never existed. There are certain songs, and certain types of music (usually mid-late 90s/early 00s house) that force me to understand, more than anything else does, that there are periods of time I will never experience. There are lives parallel to my own that I will never know. Songs like Little Fluffy Clouds and Voodoo Ray make my heart ache. Beth Orton's She Cries Your Name sounds so quintessentially 90s, and it pricks my heart with bittersweet longing, and the older it becomes, the more intense the experience. I don't see these songs as embarrassingly out of date. They represent a snapshot of time, a time I love revisiting, that I didn't even experience in the first place. This Quartz article on nostalgia is where I got most of the above info, and it's a really interesting read if you're into etymology and how language is linked to the psyche.Other Stuff

• “Maybe the value of art, to artists and everyone else, is that it upends other value systems. Art unmakes the world made by work.”

• "Sonder" is a delicious word, it means to describe the moment you realise there are other people out there living complex, rich lives that have nothing to do with you or your narrow frame of reference. I might do next week's newsletter on it.  Anyway, this piece on looking through strangers' windows during lockdown really is a perfect summation of it.

• Columnist and artist George McCalman painted the words white people sent to him during lockdown and the Black Lives Matter protests, highlighting at once how rather than meaningless, these flippant apologies and selfish emotional revelations were harmful and upsetting. What I found particularly revealing was how many of these messages were presented in Instagram posts at the time as "suggested messages to send to your Black friends".

• This week's J'Adore Le Plonk is a real gem. Sign up now, you clown.

• Vittles being awesome again, this time on how the imperial food system can be dismantled.

• A 2,600 year old wine factory has been unearthed in Lebanon, revealing secrets of the wine trade from antiquity. Super cool.

• Here's a book I want to read but for now will make do with reading reviews of it: Susan Oothuizen's "The Emergence Of The English" discusses a post-Roman England which, far from consistently raided and abused, may have been (according to her multi-disciplinary research) a land of integration, trade and the sharing of ideas. Susan also chose to publish with a new press at an accessible price -- which I found just as interesting, given the backlash she has received from certain gatekeepers of her field.

• When does a model own her own image? Model Emily Ratajowski writes eloquently about her experiences as she tries to regain autonomy and control of her own physical appearance, and of herself. (Content warnings for abuse, exploitation, revenge porn, sexual abuse)

• A Facebook whistleblower has leaked a memo in which she outlines how culpable she feels as part of Facebook for political unrest all over the world. Honestly, read it.

• Will Hawkes on Anspach & Hobday is the calming, chill read about beer artisans you need today, and Matthew Curtis' warm, evocative photos are the eye candy you need today too. 

My Stuff

• I'm obsessively researching tiles and flooring and POS systems at the moment so I've not done much writing, I'm afraid.

• ICYMI: I wrote about country wines for Ferment magazine recently.

• I wrote about real cider for my new bar's blog -- it's aimed at newcomers to real and natural cider but I'm really happy that it got a positive reaction this week from cider fans too.

Here If You Ever Want To Talk by George McCalman