A note before we start - I will not be using Pangram! Hopefully the countless spelling mistakes, overuse of commas and regular making up of words will be testament to the fact that I’m writing this myself. I use AI for things including holiday planning when I’m overwhelmed, store cupboard recipes if I’ve worked ridiculously late, and for checking my friend’s babies rising and moon signs. But I like writing, and it has been noted since childhood that I especially like the sound of my own voice, so it’s pointless to replace it with a machine.
I (gently, non mentally) enjoy a conspiracy theory and it makes a lot of sense to me that Substack is using AI detection both as a money making tool and as a way of increasing engagement via the discourse. Witchfinder Generals, unite!
Us writers exist in an echo chamber and have a warped sense of people’s perception of AI. We think it’s so bloody obvious. The word patterns, the syntax. But most people are not writers, and either can’t tell or - and this is something we forget - don’t really care. Every time I’ve come across an AI slop piece, I’ve checked the comments, which tend to be along the lines of
‘This touched me, thank you so much for writing'
‘Beautiful ❤️’
‘Your words always have me in tears’
etc etc. So here’s my two cents to fellow writers: write because you love writing and try to shut it out of your work.
A good old fashioned summer blockbuster, I very much enjoyed. Agamemnon at the gates of Troy! Clytamanestra’s scream as she stabbed! Sexy naked Sirens on the rocks, Cyclops’ wonky eye, Anne Hathaway letting her botox dissolve!
Obviously the discourse has crept in since, which I’ve been darkly, cheekily enjoying.
Miss Piggy’s Circe turning human men into muppet pigs? Take my money.
But the most pleasure, possibly more than even watching the movie, was derived from Emily Wilson’s now viral review in the London Review of Books. Something she certainly didn’t have to write given that Christopher Nolan insisted her translation was his inspiration. Write it she did however, and in my favourite style: deliciously mean, cruel and haughty yet still managing to make me laugh out loud. Most importantly, unboring! I’m not the only one who thinks so -
Wilson’s line ‘there are no sex scenes, and the food looks horrible’ in particular serves Dorothy-Parker-level acidic, and I gobbled it up like Robert Pattinson chowing on some carcass in Anne Hathaway’s banqueting hall.
She’s right about both points, but the point re sex is especially curious given
graphic sex is now all over the cinema screen, to the point that my overriding feeling while watching Anora was deep concern
there is so much sex/sex appeal in Homer’s Odyssey.
It reminded me of the Blood Knife piece on Hollywood ‘Everyone is beautiful and no one is horny’. It doesn’t just apply to movies either. In a world where everyone has nice teeth, everyone is wrinkle free, everyone is thin, where is the appetite, the sweatiness, the grubbiness that true passion requires?
In the book Odysseus bangs Circe for the best part of a year. It’s a pretty crucial part of Odysseus’ myth, given that their son Telegonus ends up killing him. Then there’s Calypso, who keeps Odysseus captive on her island because she is consuuumed by lust, not because she’s some unpaid therapist with any interest in war stories or god forbid, his wife back home. Nymphs want to f*ck - end of. The scenes between Matt Damon (fantastic, in my opinion) and Charlize Theron honestly put me in mind of some of the worst dates of my life, hoovering seafood as some bearded guy opposite recounts where his last relationship went wrong. Except unlike Charlize I wasn’t head to toe in Free People.
I get it I get it, Nolan/Damon’s Odysseus needs to be the true, valiant, all American warrior just trying his best to get back to his sweetheart. The way all those Vietnam guys were, just ignore the thousands of babies they left behind. To me Nolan’s version prioritised male heroism over female desire, whichisfine, it’s Christopher Nolan, the women were just lucky to have more than seven minutes screen time (combined, not each LOL). However, he missed a trick! The Odyssey is about fallibility as much as tenacity, about how men can triumph in savage war yet be reduced to nothing but a throbbing cock with a body attached when women choose to turn it on.
Aren’t men silly? it seems to say to me, as well as yes strong and brave and clever and heroic. Human, in other words. It seems to have worked. For literally thousands of years Odysseus has been a valiant leader and an egotist, a cheat, a remorseless killer. And for thousands of years, we’ve wanted him to get home to his wife anyway.
Side note: one of the best things about the entire experience was the trailer for Robert Eggers’ Werwulf. Everyone is dirty, there’s his trademark blood spatter everywhere and yes, lots of filthy looking sex. There we go.
It was the Buck Moon in Aquarius on Tuesday night, an especially big and golden one, and so called because it’s the season that male deer begin to grow their antlers.
Can you believe this is the moon and not the sun?
I put this out as a note, but including here in case anyone is feeling reflective on these hot, hot days and wanted to sack work off for some self inquiry. Full moon potency lasts for a couple of days so there’s still time. Aquarius is the planet of curiosity, of the future, of evolution, so -
I am enamoured. Note the post-it bookmarks (I bought it yesterday)
A nose into the homes of interior designers and creatives…my eyes turned into hearts. Warning: you will idly drop at least two hundred quid online after flicking through this book, on wall plates/floral throws/fringing/gingham fabric.
I love interiors, but am the sort of person who gets overwhelmed easily. Last year when we moved into the cottage I must’ve put twenty stripes of paint samples on the living rom wall meaning I couldn’t relax whenever I sat down, I was comparing and envisioning constantly. A book like this is so useful. And they let you know the exact brand and colour used on the walls!
I’ve been friends with Naomi for twenty years, and over the last few we have both become busy at the exact opposite times of the year. It means lunches and dinners and quick coffees are impossible to organise, and even phone calls have recently become a matter of scheduling. So rather than feeling badly about it, once a year we will find a crack, take each others hand and run through it in the direction of something embarrassingly extravagant, a holiday or trip where we’ll put our phones away and get entirely up to speed with what’s going on with the other. A date, some may call it, and I would let them. I believe in being romantic with one’s friends and self.
This time we had one night. And the romance was off the scale.
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