THE RAMBLER REVIEW: Issue #01
Damiano David, Cirque du Soleil and T.J. Klune's new book
Welcome to the first issue of The Rambler Review - a monthly newspaper covering the crème de la crème of my media and arts consumption from the past few weeks.
It’s been a tempestuous start to the new year, which saw me start work on a new fiction project, suffer a prolonged quarter-life crisis, and go from playing in the snow on Mount Cypress to swimming of the coast of Auckland within the span of two days.
I’ve also picked up regular journaling again, after getting to the point last year where I couldn’t so much as look at my journal without feeling the crushing anxiety of my self-imposed daily pages. After taking a few weeks off, I’ve picked up the habit again - courtesy of a brand new Leuchtturm1917 in Port Red and a new intention of only journaling when I actually feel like it.
It’s also been a mixed month for consuming new media. Long summer days have warred with the exhaustion of picking up regular work hours, with the end result that I’ve been consuming either nothing or everything at once and have been revisiting a lot of comfort content. Either way, I hope you’ve been having an inspirational January and enjoy this first issue of The Rambler Review.
B.
If We Were Villains (2017): One of my all-time favourites, and such a comfort read. Reading If We Were Villains in the middle of a Vancouver winter, surrounded by crows, was a deliciously gothic experience.
Somewhere Across the Sea (2024): The sequel to T.J. Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, Somewhere Across the Sea delivers the same warmth, found family joy, and classic soundtrack as its predecessor. My only issue with this book is that - in order for the narrative to exist - it had to compromise the happy ending of the first book. While Klune went on to bring the conflict to a beautiful resolution, it did hurt to see anything bad happen to those particular characters.
Yellowface (2023): My second read of this book, and I finished it within 48 hours. Even with prior knowledge of the narrative direction, it’s bitingly articulate and utterly brilliant. R.F. Kuang is an extraordinary author and I can’t wait to read Katabasis.
The Bridge Kingdom (2018): Recommended to me by a friend, I wasn’t initially sure how I felt about the plot (which felt like a peculiar mash-up of Sarah J. Maas material — hot blonde assassin reluctantly falling for the misunderstood ruler of a territory with a reputation for villainy — but realized with less plot nuance and female friendship). Nevertheless, it was a light and fun fantasy read and I’ve reserved the sequel at my local library.
The Queen’s Gambit (2020): There’s a lot to be discussed in a thorough analysis of The Queen’s Gambit, including the show’s depictions of mental illness, addiction, and American nationalism, but for the scope of this piece I’m content to say that I was entranced by Anya Taylor-Joy, am contemplating dying my hair red, and —since watching the show — have lost several dozen games of easy-mode chess against a computer.
Frances Hodgkins - Anything but a Still Life (2023): I watched this at 2am on a 14 hour flight from Vancouver to Auckland, so I might not have been in the appropriate headspace but it was a very interesting film. My two main takeways were that 1) the New Zealand art scene didn’t seem particularly interested in Frances Hodgkins until she became an established success, at which point they claimed to have adored her all along, and 2) her still-life self-portraits from the 1930s are gorgeous, and I was able to see one of them a few weeks back at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki which felt like a very gorgeous coincidence.
Twisters (2024): I don’t want to talk about it.
Friends (1994-2004): Being back at work has been eating my brain, so lately I’ve been re-watching a lot of Friends seasons one and two. I have to skip every episode that features too much Ross, but otherwise the nineties nostalgia of six people in their mid-twenties who — in the enduring words of Phoebe Buffay — don’t have so much as a ‘pla-’ is very comforting.
Cirque du Soleil: Utterly fucking spectacular. As a long-standing fan of Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus (2011), I was incredibly excited for this and was floored by every new act. The narrative was loosely based on the idea of nature vs industrialization, and without question my favourite performers were the fireflies (graceful acrobatics performed by two women suspended by their hair) and the architects (I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of clowning, but the two architects — who spent the majority of the show wearing pinstripe trenchcoats, bowler hats, and sock suspenders sans trousers — were perfectly sincere in their mishaps and devastatingly hilarious for it). The sheer athletic prowess of the cast, along with the ethereality of the music and production, made for an extraordinary event (and obviously I came away with the programme as a souvenir).
Modern Women - Flight of Time: A six-month exhibition currently on display at Auckland Art Gallery Toi a Tāmaki, Modern Women breaks the narrative of 20th century female artists into three phases - Stage, Mask, and Setting. Each of these explores the relationship between art and autonomy for women, and the ways in which female artists have helped define the modernist art scene in Aotearoa New Zealand while asserting their own power through self-representation and narration.
Pinterest: The eternal emotional support app + my go-to tool for new years visionboarding.
Damiano David: I was late to his new single but I’m here now and I love it. The music video is stunning, the Singing in the Raining - You Were Meant for Me reference was flawless, and the moment when he drops to one knee was a spiritual experience. No notes.
Ohen Lingerie: No justification needed, their fennel collection is so pretty.
Madelaine Petsch: My respectful instagram obsession of the month.
When someone you really like turns out to really suck: This piece by Teniade Topics’
is a brilliant articulation of the ‘separating the art from the artist’ discourse which turns the narrative on its head by suggesting an obligation to subtract our own affections for the artwork from the equation:But separating the art from the artist should actually go in the other direction. It should ask us to separate the good feelings we associate with the art from how we reckon with the humanity of the artist, and how we hold them accountable.
January’s Special Mention goes to the 1,000 piece Frida Kahlo puzzle I finished within four days. It’s good to know my youth is officially over.
Continue Reading:
But wait, now you HAVE to talk about Twisters (which I watched on a plane, as the creators surely intended)