Notes from the Peninsula
On writing, films and living a creative life
Gluteal tendinopathy (and me)
The pain was in my groin, or the front of my hip, or deep in my buttock, but it was a debacle with a Pilates machine that finally led me to Physio One.
The Stendhal Syndrome
Imaginative and clichéd, intriguing and brutal, this film is primarily about rape, torture, and insanity. Asia Argento goes insane in Florence on the trail of a serial killer and rapist.
The Black Cat/Trauma
These two odd kittens are making me wonder if the Dario Argento project is reaching its end. The Black Cat sees a deranged, beret-clad Harvey Keitel play a photographer obsessed with taking pictures of mutilated bodies.
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Early summer books
All Fours, by Miranda July. I haven’t laughed out loud so much at a book since Bridget Jones’s Diary. The unnamed artist makes terrible, hilarious decisions over and over, but she’s also just trying to have the horny creative life she wants.
Opera
Opera is the last of what’s regarded as Argento’s unimpeachable run of giallo-horror-thrillers through the seventies and eighties. For me, there are hits and misses, but Opera is one of his best.
Phenomena
Like in Suspiria, a young woman arrives at a female-run school where students are being murdered by an unseen killer, but there are no witches in Zürich, just a girl who has an unconscious connection with insects.
Tenebre
You see different things in a good piece of art as you get older. I wrote about Tenebre back in October 2020 for the #31DaysofHorror challenge. I loved it then, and I love it now, but the protagonist is far less likeable than I remember, and the twists more surprising.
Inferno
If Suspiria was a step away from the narrative rigours of a whodunnit, Inferno is a giant leap, with four (four!) protagonists in two cities — but it starts with a woman, Rose, being sold a rare occult book called The Three Mothers and coming to believe her apartment block was built for a witch.
Suspiria
Suspiria is a vivid, colourful dream where death stalks us, out of sight but ever-present. Characters die in complicated and fantastical ways to Goblin’s driving mix of Moog synths, bells, whispered vocals and a drum beat for the ages. And it’s a film filled with strong women. The men are all ineffectual side characters.
Deep Red
After making a couple of thrillers for television and a hard-to-find historical comedy that was a commercial flop, Argento returned to Giallo with a twisty, colourful, Goblin-scored mystery.
Four Flies on Grey Velvet
Roberto, an American drummer in a band recording in Milan, chases a man who has been following him and accidentally kills him. A masked figure takes photographs and begins to torment Roberto, but what is their motive?
The Cat O’ Nine Tails
A blind ex-journalist overhears a conversation about blackmail outside his apartment. A newspaper reporter investigates a burglary in a nearby laboratory. As people at the lab start to die, the two men join forces to uncover the story.
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
In Panico, Dario Argento describes himself as being of two halves — the contented person at home, and the person who is compelled to investigate the darkness inside himself through making films.
Changing
I’m six months into a new job. My father’s house is for sale. My son is living in Australia. My daughter is gearing up for GCSEs next year. My wife and I are looking at each other and thinking, this is the time we’ve been waiting for, and yet neither of us have clear plans.
Darling buds
Four days off work! My plan was to not have a plan and trust I would do what I needed to do. It’s day two and I’m excited because things are changing — my glute tendons are healing (YES), my meditation habit has bedded in (now I miss it when I can’t do it), I’ve...
Gathering ideas
The heart of this project is writing new material. I also want a mechanism to let me easily share my work as I go, including selling it (shock horror!), without getting hung up on finding an agent and getting published.
Cornish horrors
I took my time with Cornish Horrors: Tales from the Land’s End, a collection of short stories I bought in Swansea Waterstones on one of my visits to see my father. Research can quickly become procrastination.
Impatience
Making art means making a mess. It means tidying up, organising, and discovering something in doing it. There are unexpected emotions. There are doubts and dead ends. There are technical problems.
Ligeia
Ligeia, by Edgar Allan Poe, is a six-thousand-word hallucinatory tale about an intense marriage that survives beyond death. The narrator is looking back, remembering his wife, Ligeia, who he idolised.
Physical media
Continuing my interest in how fiction and films work together, I picked up Cornish Horrors: Tales from the Land’s End, part of the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series, a collection I’ve owned for a few years and never read...
Evening classes
I’ve created a reading list my gut tells me is related to my work-in-progress. I went around the house scanning shelves and pulling out the books that tugged at my attention.
Losing myself
I finally sorted the two big bags of books I brought back from Dad’s last weekend. He loved Stephen King, and he bought lots of King’s books as first edition UK hardbacks. I don’t currently have shelf space for this many books.
Writing is simple
I complicate things unnecessarily. Writing is simple. You write and edit until the piece of work feels complete and there is nothing more to do.
The joy of making things up
It took optimism to enrol on a creative writing MA — I can be a writer! I can be published! — but as I get older, I've also developed a pragmatism, tipping into cynicism, which can easily become procrastination, or even complete avoidance.
Back to the path
I spent the weekend before my father’s funeral sorting through his books. He had them on shelves in different rooms, but they were also tucked in drawers, stacked at the bottom of wardrobes and piled behind old televisions.
My father died
Dad died last week. He was eighty-eight. Looking back, it was a miracle we got him home from hospital for one final Christmas. He had a long life, he was loved, and he left peacefully.
Nostalgia
I’m in Wales at short notice because Dad’s been admitted into hospital. The co-morbidities have gathered and decided to strike. He’s in bad shape. Around visiting times I’m looking for peaceful, distracting activities.
Fidelity
I’ve deleted my Patreon creator’s account, which was beginning to feel like I was cheating on my website (or the other way around, I’m not sure). Two places for almost the same words.
Best film discoveries and fiction of 2023
My favourite ten film discoveries (ranked) and ten favourite fiction books (not ranked). (Letterboxd is a hella sexy website. I wish GoodReads made more of an effort.)
Reflections
Somehow the year has tightened all the bolts on my rickety life, and I’m hitting the Christmas holidays in a good place.
Keep the ghosts happy
I was celebrating a new job, looking forward to an unexpected week’s holiday, when my father fell at home, so I’m spending that week in Wales.
Brief bliss
I was caught in a work storm for a few months over the summer. Things settled enough for me to take a small risk, which paid off, which means I can finally tack for calmer waters.
Halloween (1978)
It has a purity that other slashers don’t have — the crisp cinematography, Laurie’s naive, nerdy charm, the simple (perfect) motif of the score. I can’t fully explain it.
Enemy (2013)
My favourite discovery of the month. Barely ninety minutes, looks beautiful, has a startling final image, and I’m still thinking about it a day later.
Cloverfield (2008)
Feeling insignificant in the face of a fictional disaster, whether natural or alien, has its psychological comforts. Sometimes you just want something big to fuck shit up.
You're Next (2011)
It’s bleak fun with some good twists. Everyone apart from Erin, our survivalist heroine, is awful. Is this where the current trend of violent final girls began?
Duel (1971)
I watched Duel dozens of time on television as a kid, as well as it’s rip-off cousin The Car, so it was a treat to revisit it. I didn’t remember the crisis of masculinity.
Return of the Living Dead (1985)
The gang of punks hanging out in the graveyard are everything I wish I’d been as a teen — vibrant, trashy, horny, loud, and sometimes naked in public.