Speaking of notes. For various reasons, some of which are obvious, I've been thinking about death and mourning recently. Don't worry. Not my death. This is not that kind of thinking.
So I've been compiling notes. Some will follow. Again, apologies to the RSSers.
JLG death registers in that space where death does not lead to grief because his ways of thinking and prioritizing have so affected my own that he is no more dead today than he was yesterday I did not know him as a person all I ever had was his work and I have that still
— Sasha Frere-Jones (@sashafrerejones) September 13, 2022
(JGL = Godard)
This is from Laurie Penny's GQ piece about the queue:
"Maybe it’s a coincidence, but almost everyone I speak to turns out to have recently lost someone, or something important. Pam nursed her mother for five years of Alzheimers, but could not be with her when she died at the start of the Pandemic. She never got to say goodbye. Nor Jason and Carson, who buried their father two years ago. Jason has a ponytail, John Lennon glasses and a musical Scouse accent. In a previous life, before the Queue, he managed software that coordinates timetables and ticketing between different train lines. They came here today “Because why not? It’s amazing. You just have to be part of it.” He downs his beer. Then he remembers to add. “And, um, obviously. The Queen.
There’s Joe, who is tall and thin and quiet and lives in Devon and was born in Hong Kong and fled with his family and will never go back. He associates the Queen, and the idea of British rule, with a place he remembers, a place that has changed forever. He explains this shyly to Hillary, the fish wholesaler, who seems consumed by an urge to protect everyone she knows from anyone she doesn’t, which includes most foreigners. Hillary decides we’ve got to look after Joe. She knows what it’s like to arrive at a funeral too late. We are all here to mourn, and to have that mourning matter."
Which, if we’re honest, can be liberating as well as upsetting. https://t.co/anV1ulSX6S
— David Aaronovitch (@DAaronovitch) September 19, 2022