Getting up off the floor

A winter's lament, my year in writing and things to look forward to

Yesterday I stood under the shower a little longer than usual, like I was trying to rinse away all the rejection and disappointment that had clogged up my pores in 2024. This habit of accounting for the year is a trap I keep falling into and extends beyond earnings.

It’s like the spiritual equivalent of the annual self-assessment we freelancers complete in the UK. Only it’s a measure of self-worth, determined by how far one’s skills and effort are acknowledged and reciprocated. Let’s just say, the net balance looks … unhealthy. I/we need a new value system.

The context of this review is also important. In recent years, December has triggered waves of melancholy. The inescapable fact that my heart aches at the absence of close family. It was around this time 14 years ago that my mother became seriously ill and passed the following autumn.

Three weeks ago, we also lost my uncle Vijay who grew up with her in Uganda. He also used to hang out with my father – a fellow dandy in 60’s Britain – before my parents met. Paths sometimes cross in an order we don’t expect, changing the course of life.

The service overflowed with love and was a triumph of perseverence but the weight of his loss hung so heavy. He was a chief chronicler of our history, someone with whom I hoped to revisit our homeland, where his eyes would have beamed even brighter, his smile broadening with every recalled happiness, as he regaled us with stories of halcyon days in Jinja.

Being sensitive to the plight of other individuals can be a portal to empathy, particularly for artists and writers, but it taxes you. I stood there feeling the passing of time more acutely and lamented that, for another family, December will forever be tarnished.

Christmas would also become a time to miss my brother who preferred to remain in Scotland with his adopted family, than spend a few days as a personal physician and captive audience to our father. A man who struggles to have a good time, often exhausting in his asceticism. Hemal has also gone.

This leaves two guys thrown together each winter and I can’t, as yet, summon the affection or grace to look past dad’s faults and close the distance. Perhaps I poured too much love in my mother’s direction in my youth instead of cultivating a closeness to him.

But then again, certain people are just easier to adore than others. They dare to love you out loud, and too much, especially the women, who give so much that they leave little for themselves. So often, they have held things together in our family with their care, tenderness and fortitude.

Some might say, well the grass is always greener, as if you should be thankful it’s just the two of you instead of having to attend some volatile family gathering that’s always on the cusp of kicking off. I would say the prospect of having a connection with just one person in that rabble is worth the risk.

All this is to say that December feels like a period of mourning to me. Sorry if that sounds morose but I mean it in an unconventional sense too. In other words, it’s necessary.

I think back to all those applications or pitches that went nowhere. The posts that couldn’t find their audience. The radio shows that gave artists a lift, whether they needed it or not. So few would return the favour. Where is the team spirit in DIY culture? Capitalism has separated too many of us into individuals competing with one another, too easily swayed by numbers before integrity.

Being freelance can be liberating, the self-determination it offers you, but it will test your resolve again and again. Your desire to commune around passions becomes a desperate scramble for attention, which the digital overlords have capitalised on.

I’ve had a physical response to this month for years. It often manifests as flu but a numbness also takes hold alongside plummeting energy levels. I retreat further inwards, finding fault and seeking solutions, incapable of proper rest until incapacitated. “December is my expiry date,” I would quip to friends and family, but perhaps there’s some truth in that.

It feels like something is being purged and you have to let nature take its course. What if this fallow period is a necessary part of renewal? Drawing out our negative thoughts so we can expel them to make way for new possibilities. Letting them decompose like the crumpled leaves I was kicking around on my walk the other day…

To feel frustration or anger at slow progress is not to disregard the 100 people who receive this newsletter or those who I have had meaningful exchanges with on Substack over the past year. I am grateful to anyone who reads my work or gives me time.

However, the unvarnished truth is that sustaining yourself as a writer feels harder than ever. The notion of an audience feels more nebulous and fickle than ever. We live in a world where there is an unprecedented amount of stuff to read. Too many people expect it for free, while dealing with numerous distractions and coming to the ‘page’ with fragile attention spans. That is a dreadful combination.

How much of that can we solve with a change of strategy? My best friend was kind enough to listen to my career woes the other weekend. He’s a senior architecture consultant in IT so very left-brain and analytical. His analysis? You either change the bait or the pond. Yes, the former is a pejorative term in digital culture but this is still a useful analogy.

Which is the right pond? It could still be here but discoverability is an issue on Substack. The Notes algorithm holds sway for writers in my league, something more popular writers who import followings do not have to contend with.

There is a content agency called Storythings whose newsletter I have been reading for years. They talk about formats a lot and one could argue that finding the right format is just as important as the platform we choose as a hub.

I look at Hot Ones, SubwayTakes, Criterion Collections’ Closet Picks, Vogue’s 73 Questions, The Rewatchables, Over The Top Under The Radar podcast, Blindboy Podcast and Trash Theory’s video essays. You need a twist whether the priority is to inform or entertain.

We could all offer a higher quality of bait, right? The originality of an idea, how well it’s articulated and how often we step up to the plate. This we can control. So that’s the plan for next year. Find those ideas that I can turn into big flag-in-the-ground work as I am describing it on doorsteps across the nation. Well, to my neighbours in SE London and Horsham anyway.

A play. A short film. A new radio show. A novella or photobook poetry collection. Something with more heft and permanence.

My guiding thought: once this fallow period has passed, we have to find a way to channel our anguish. I keep Ocean Vuong’s words close to my heart when I feel restless, frustrated and think I’ll never write something that resonates ever again. That I will never feel compelled to put an unfamiliar feeling into words.

“Anger gets a lot of things done. When I’m angry I exhaust myself and I lose myself in it. But as I track the lifespan of anger, I realise that care is the second wave or phase. It is anger … grown up. Anger evolved, if you will.

“When you’re on the floor and you’ve thrown everything out the window, you’ve cursed the people you love even, you realise I have to get up and I have to say ‘now what’? Now what can I do with what I have felt? The storm has entered me and it has left. Now I have to get up off the floor and make something.”

Now what? – the writer’s reflex. It has to be.

An impulse that brings to mind Toni Morrison’s call to arms for anyone who has moments of despair, feels “paralysed” and might forget how others have suffered to give us their truth, “in prisons, in gulags, under duress”.

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.“

I was going to call this dispatch “Remember who the f*ck you are” – a full-blooded headline that’s also become a personal mantra in a world that makes you so quick to doubt yourself. Credit to Sly Stone here for setting the tone years ago in my youth.

Ever feel like nobody?
Remember you're nobody else, too
Know you tried too hard to get along
When you're only being yourself

Remember who you are
Remember, that's who you will be
Remember who you are
Remember, that's the person
Who's gonna be free

But it made more sense to echo Ocean here. His sentiment is a better accompaniment to Tim Robbins’ torrential redemption (see above).

One other thing we can do is give everyone another opportunity to read what we have written. Tell ‘em again, my inner coach is saying. Few of you have been here from the very beginning. So here is a month-by-month recap of my best work this past year. Plus a few little extras to raise your anticipation for 2025.

What are you feeling right now? Can you relate to these winter blues?

Do you write through them or take a complete break?

What are you excited about doing or seeing on the other side?

I hope you are getting the rest you need and new shoots of hope and gentle expectation are beginning to rise. Let’s see what happens next.

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January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

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Bonus treats

Somaya Critchlow’s Triple Threat at Maximillian William, London

amarofpatel

A post shared by @amarofpatel

Somaya Critchlow

Even in miniature form, these portraits have such presence and hold attention. Intimate moments of black femininity and sensuality that confront and complicate attitudes to nudity and the bounds of ‘beauty’.

Whether riffing on voluptuous pin-ups or the more demure subjects of the Old Masters, these diminutive figures are almost deified in the frame. They have such poise and some project a fierce, unapologetic power like a Cardi or Nicky of their time. They are taking up their space.

The exhibition notes refer to Goya’s The Disasters of War as an inspiration (as well as Hogarth) and I can see that. Woman Hitting Another Woman with a Shoe is an old favourite. Harnessing a tension between caricature and portrait, and the story that lies somewhere between. Free-flowing, expressive strokes that give life to these characters and set them in motion. Scenes or worlds we can step into.

More

Moonbeam Levels / December 2024 🎧

My world in sound over the past four months or so. Mixtape meets record club™️ If you’re looking for music recommendations, a new feel or fascination, then dive in. It may be December but this is NOT a best-of. We are timeless.

Featuring Quincy Jones 🕊, Skee Mask, Dawuna, Nilufer Yanya, ML Buch, Rapsody, Damon Locks, KA 🕊, Rosie Lowe, Semiratruth, Prince x Osunlade, A Guy Called Gerald, Demae, Maze with Frankie Beverly 🕊, Tenderlonius…

Remember, if you don’t recognise most of these names, that is a very good thing. It’s an adventure.

Listen

A tearful moment at the Taylor Wessing Prize, National Portrait Gallery, London

Walking among the finalists, I stopped in front of Phil Sharp’s portrait of actress Grace Cooper Milton. It reminded me of Cecilia Zalazar’s Crying Men series in how we are privy to a moment of fragility that is often private or fleeting.

And unique: we all cry in different ways and for different reasons. The tears of some people accumulate – “well up” – and then flow like a gentle release, which could be in sorrow or happiness.

For others, they pour out like a bleeding emotion that shakes their whole body, their very existence. Each time is an admission of vulnerability that changes us somehow.

The tenderness in Grace’s gaze and her poise make this portrait feel like an intimate encounter. You commune with it.

After reading the caption I played Nina Simone’s ‘Lilac Wine’ twice and just stood there, sharing that moment with her, however fleeting. The eyes moistened.

Look long enough and you are entranced, just as Nina (or the writer James Shelton) was by the wine that makes them see what they want to see. A sweet, heady hallucination. Closer to reality, it offers solace for the denial or whatever/whoever it is we are longing for just then.

The Imaginary Institution of India, Barbican, London

You have until 5 January to get to this tremendous showcase of artists who emerged across the Indian subcontinent between 1975 and 1998.

Those dates are significant. The former was The Declaration of Emergency when democratic rights were suspended, the media was censored and those dissenting were arrested. Then the fractured coalition that followed PM Indira Gandhi failed to deliver social transformation.

On the latter date, India ran five underground nuclear tests, breaking a 24-year, self-imposed moratorium. It was India’s attempt to establish itself as part of a larger global order, says curator Shanay Jhaveria. Instead, it caused many health issues and damage around the Pokhran region.

We are introduced to 30 artists who reflected and responded to the flux, making very personal and original art about friendship, love, desire, family, religion, violence, caste and community. A multiplicity of lived experiences and expressions of dignity and strength.

The work is as good as anything I have ever seen. So why are so few of these people mentioned in the discourse around contemporary visual art in the West? Bhupen Khakhar is familiar to me, and I have seen Sunil Gupta’s work at The Photographer’s Gallery, but that’s about it.

I wasn’t able to research enough to write an expansive piece, which is what they all deserve. But here are a few of my favourite exhibits to get you on your way.

Running Woman (1979) by Sudhir Patwardhan

The larger-than-life scale of this painting and resolute glare of the subject engages you right away. She moves with purpose and determination towards us, projecting strength and defiance. Sudhir also had a day job as a medical professional in Mumbai.

A section of When Champa Grew Up (1984-5) by Nilima Sheikh

Nilima was born in New Delhi and trained as a historian before she became an artist. Inspired by reading Rabindranath Tagore, she was interested in the connection between stories and images, and the age-old connection between ancient manuscripts and murals.

This series of 12 paintings is a lateral Pattachitra-inspired narrative that goes from Champa’s early days of innocence (playing in a park where Nilima’s children would also be) to an arranged marriage and eventually a dowry-related murder. Nilima also used songs from the Gujarati oral tradition as accompanying texts, which she explains here.

A View of the Matter (1979) by Gieve Patel

A self-taught polymath who has become a recent fascination of mine, Gieve was also a poet, playwright and doctor. He made work inspired by the working-class inhabitants in Mumbai, particularly labourers.

“What motivates most of my creative activity is the need for knowledge,” he said. “My way of ‘knowing’ something is by writing or painting. This gives me a sense of having made it my own. The end result is a move towards inner clarity, however clothed in ambivalence.”

Cultural moment of the year

Watch

The Timothée Chalamet Lookalike Competition was a close second, of course. Luigi Mangione is taking it too far.

Eagerly awaiting in 2025

• Ocean Vuong’s next one, The Emperor of Gladness, which he calls “the hardest dang book I’ve written in my little life”.

  

  
  

• Sinners, Ryan Coogler's horror film set in the Jim Crow-era South and featuring two Michael B Jordans.

• Sigourney Weaver started out in theatre so it should come as a slightly smaller surprise now that the 75-year-old movie star is debuting in the West End as Prospero in The Tempest. This has to be done.

  

• Alpha, Julie Ducournau’s follow-up to the wildly provocative Titane, features Tahar Rahim and Emma Mackey. Her second feature dared you to look away either in disgust or bewilderment. The kind of film that crawls all over you and triggers new sensations. It was exhilarating. Raw also has a cult following.

• Overjoyed to hear that 2025 will be the year Solange dedicates herself to music. While the visionary has made bold moves in many areas since When I Get Home, from publishing and sculpture to film and event curation, the album is still her greatest canvas. “It’s been a very rich time, but I must say I picked up the drums again a few weeks ago, and I feel like music is meant to capture the spirit,” she told Vogue Australia. “It freezes it in time like no other art form."🤞🏾

  

• Netflix series Asura, a remake of Ashura no Gotoku (a 1979 NHK family drama about four sisters), which was based on a novel by Kuniko Mukoda. Written and directed by Palme d’Or winner Hirokazu Koreeda (Shoplifters, Broker, Monster).

• Sly Lives! – Oscar winner Questlove’s next documentary about one of the most mercurial and wayward geniuses in funk and soul. The director says his film will explore Sly’s cultural impact and shed light on the challenges faced by Black artists navigating success. Long overdue.

• Wes Anderson is close to the top of my list of world builders whose mind I’d love to rummage around. Well, come November, Londoners can head to the Design Museum and do just that on a grand scale. Expect early 90’s experiments, original props, costumes and limitless photo opportunities with poppy and eccentric backdrops. This will be a great day out. Just go full whimsy.