Stuff I have been watching and listening to

The first in a regular series

I have been writing a column entitled Stuff I’ve Been Reading in the Believer since 2003, but there is so much more to me than books. I also watch TV, and listen to music, and occasionally go to the cinema and even the theatre. This, I suspect, makes me unique among Substackers, maybe even the whole human race, so it would be foolish not to report on my experiences. I owe it to you all to describe what it’s actually like to have a Netflix account, and access to the BBC iPlayer, and Spotify - not just any Spotify, either, but Spotify Premium - and a turntable. Think of me as your war correspondent, except I report mostly from the sofa.

And I have been sick, the last week or so, which means that there has been even more idleness and pointless consumption than usual. It was the kind of annoying sickness that made reading and writing impossible, or at least turned words into an indigestible soup: every attempt to work was accompanied by the internal chant this is crap this is crap this is crap, and eventually I listened. So on occasions the TV went on in the afternoon. The one thing guaranteed to make your symptoms worse is daytime television , so I tried to watch something that stretched my comprehension as far as it would go without snapping, and I found myself drawn to the short documentary section of the Oscar nominations: films about things that matter, made with love and craft, and usually no longer than thirty minutes. And I saw two back-to-back that made me grateful for my illness.