WORMS DIGEST
Arcadia Molinas
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
Finally got around to reading this after thoroughly enjoying her incredible incredible incredible In the Dream House, which I fervently recommended to everyone who crossed my path and was definitely one of my top reads of 2021. Her Body and Other Parties is Machado’s debut, a dazzlingly eerie collection of short stories. Once again, Machado shows she is a master of form. Her experimentations are bold and overwhelmingly successful, drawing clear inspiration from her literary predecessors: there’s strong whiffs of Angela Carter and Shirley Jackson permeating her voice and stories. The opening story of the collection ‘The Husband Stitch’ was mind-blowingly good.
“I have heard all the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them.”
I’m currently about to finish the story “Especially Heinous” which I’m quite mystified about however. Using Law and Order: SVU as a template, Machado divides her story into the 272 episodes and 12 seasons of the popular show to weave a disturbing tale of sexual assault, crime, repressed desire and hauntings. The episodic nature of the story, the apparitions that haunt the characters, the city, New York, which is alive under their feet, lend the story a very effective atmosphere but I find myself somewhat grasping at straws. It doesn’t help that I literally know nothing about Law and Order, I don’t know who the characters are, or even the most basic of the premises even though I suspect police and the court are involved. There’s no doubt the story is unnerving, the world she creates is one of constant tension which is an effect I admire greatly in any form of media (love me some scary movies) but I’m not sure where it’s getting at. Perhaps all will be revealed.
Oh.my.days. I’m STUNNED with this show. Absolutely FLOORED.
Based on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, this TV show has gone far and beyond expectations. Such intelligent story-telling that honours its source material while expanding the universe with riveting decisions, blood-curdling twists and moving backstories that amplify their characters' livelihood.
It’s fucking scary and I’m actually so proud that I’m watching this in bed at home alone at night (humble brag) but I’m a big girl I guess and no mirror-demons will get the best of me B).
No Bears
I went to see Jafar Panahi’s new film No Bears back home in Madrid. I didn’t actually know this director but my mother did and filled me in on his impact and lore. From his Letterboxd page:
Jafar Panahi is a representative of Iranian “New Wave.” He is one of the leaders of contemporary Iranian cinema. Panahi’s work, from his first attempts to discuss social issues to his later and braver discussions of taboo topics in Iran are a creative reflection on the nature of cinema and human society, and are imbued with humanity. In 2010, the court in Iran sentenced Jafar Panahi to six years in prison. In addition, according to the sentence, Panahi was banned from making films for 20 years, giving interviews to local and international media outlets, and leaving Iran.
Panahi himself is the subject of No Bears, which tells the story of two intertwining romances. As Panahi settles in a border town between Iran and Turkey and directs his new film at a distance, shoddy internet connection getting in the way most of the time, he sees himself embroiled in the drama of the village, as a girl, betrothed to a man at birth following an ancient village custom, is seen with another man. The film he is directing shows a couple trying to flee Iran in search of a better life. Mixing reality and fiction, absurd and deadly serious, this film is a poignant depiction of life in Iran: love, fear, repression and a burning desire to live, persevere and transform suffering into art.
Wittgenstein’s diaries. Big mood.
Ghost In the Shell
In my continuing efforts to Anime-fy myself I tackled this classic. Transhumanism, what it means to be human, what separates us from machines, are the questions at the heart of this breakthrough film. I was a tad tired coming into the film, a late night viewing curled up with my mum while back home so I don’t think it went in as smoothly as it could’ve. Undeniably a cool as hell film though.
CLEM MacLeod
I’ve been listening to No Bounds Radio since Enya, who runs it, came to one of our Compost workshops. It’s a literary radio show and the ‘Pests in Poems’ episodes are especially great. Listen to Episode 2 - the worms episode. It’s spectacular.
I’ve got covid and have spent the last 6 days in bed, which I thought meant reading copious amounts of books and watching lots of profound television, but actually it’s been mainly sweaty shivering fever dreams all day. I did manage to finish two books - A Girl’s Story by Annie Ernaux and The Healing by Gayl Jones. I thought they were both amaze. The Healing is pretty strange and I’m not going to lie I didn’t reeeeaally know what was going on for the entire book, but in the last 3 pages EVERYTHING made sense and it turned out to be a really profound and meaningful read. I’m glad I persevered with it because a few times I couldn’t see where it was going. As for movies I watched Force Majeure - hilarious but also kind of infuriating (same director as Triangle of Sadness), I think I would have found it more tiresome if I was in good health and I also watched One Fine Morning which was soooo beaut. Many lovely bookshelves in it. Very wholesome and touching. I thought the relationships in it were really well written and developed. I posted a nice video of it on the Worms instagram.
PIERCE ELDRIDGE
Me and You and Everyone We Know by MIRANDA JULY is the necessary unhinged I needed this week. I’m obsessed with the dialogue of the film; the script is sincere and anxiety reducing, no-frills, say what you wanna say, get to the point, make it an ode to love, to life, to the pleasure found in pain, kinda thing which I’m still revelling in. I defs wanna be a little bird to get the little worm. I feel like pleasure and desire are so forthright in this film, and something about seeing people give reverence to lust and death reminded me that simplicity, the directional (repetition) and direct (arrow) kind, is really beneficial to the mind-body connection. I loved it. I get the sense the film considers the ‘eternity’ of things, maybe that’s just my reading, but ‘forever’ feels layered into every scene. These forever feelings we have as humans. These forever lives we live forever. Forever tasks and forever lists. Back and forth and back and forth, forever. The likeness in the likelihood of forever for everyone. One of my favourite quotes from the film says, ‘there’s not enough time for time-outs.’ I’m going to find the time to take more. I was disturbed by the beach. ))<>((
Our ‘rah rah, ooh la la’ queen (Lady Gaga, duh) is reading Dr. Joy James’ In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love and I can’t wait for y’all to read the interview we have coming up with Joy in Worms #7. Gagged. Gaga-ed. Gooped.
Currently obsessed with GASH: A Feminist Horror Zine by Gwynnie Naylor that I got (first edition, first out there, woah) at Compost last week. With bucket(load)s full of blood, this new-beauty zine lands in horror as ‘a ripe place for feminist discourse, given feminism's complex relationship with genre.’ Focusing on a particular film in each edition, the first episode critiques Ginger Snaps, an early 2000s classic which, in Naylor’s words, ‘takes the female puberty as body horror trope and gives it a lupine yellow wallpaper feel.’ We begin with the phrase, which I’ll be thinking about forever, ‘to be a woman is to know blood’ and I feel we’re talking more about death than we are about birth. The thing I love most is that it’s all handmade, giving me a scrap-book-thriller aesthetic that is for those that loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, or even Mean Girls. From mooncups, through puberty, and into gore, it’s frilly and so punk. Can’t wait for the next one.
CAITLIN McLoughlin
Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker by Jason McBride
FINALLY finished Eat Your Mind, urgh it’s so good, I miss reading it. It is insane that it’s McBride’s first book and I wasn’t surprised when I read in the acknowledgments that it took him several decades to write it. The amount of detail he documents to depict the fullness of Acker’s life is astonishing. Knowing what the end of Acker’s life looked like, I knew that the sad bit was coming, but the way McBride crafts the final chapters around her ferocious survival instinct and the way it begins to cannibalise itself, in her refusal of western medical treatment and the destruction of her friendships, is heartbreaking. But then I was so moved by the tenderness she’s surrounded by at the end and also the tenderness that McBride offers her. Her writing was her life and her writing lives on in all its fervent tenaciousness, so in a way she lives on too.
I tried to fill the Eat Your Mind shaped hole in my life with this ICONIC interview that Acker did with The Spice Girls, an unlikely match made in heaven.
I watched this on a Monday evening which was a huge mistake – not a good way to start the week. It follows a group of French dancers, beginning with individual interviews with each of them before they head off to America for a performance or competition or tour (can’t remember). Basically, the whole film takes place in what looks like an abandoned school in the middle of a blizzard. After a rehearsal they share a bowl of punch that turns out to be spiked with LSD and the vibe rapidly shifts from a threat tinged celebration to an all-out Hieronymus Bosch style hellscape as a demonic Acid trip takes hold and they start to tear themselves and each other apart – a complete unravelling of self and humanity. There’s a really long dance scene at the beginning which is insanely choreographed and incredible to watch, lots of disorientating and very beautifully (doesn’t feel like the right word??) crafted shots and the lighting is stunning but in a horrible, scary way. I like (again, wrong word) that Noe limited the use of any special effects to represent the effects of the drug, so that you feel like you’re soberly observing this disturbingly, fucked-up night. However, I’m trying not to search for too much meaning in it as I refuse to believe that Noe’s hellish world of total violence and cruelty is grounded in any kind of meaningful reality. It made me feel terrible, which I guess is what it was trying to do, so I guess that’s a good thing? I dunno.
