Do you remember 1989?
This is not a post about Taylor Swift.
Hi! I’m Keris. I’m an author writing about writing and books and music and life, and the last song I listened to was Daydream by the Gunter Kallmann Choir after I sang along with it on a TikTok and the 16yo asked how I know it. I don’t know how I know it. An advert maybe? Do you know it? Do you know how I know it??
Last night I watched Heart of the Angel on the iPlayer, a documentary about London’s Angel tube station in 1989. It was so interesting and sad and funny. Startled me to think that I moved there that year.
Last week, I listened to an episode of a podcast called Scarred for Life (about “the dark side of 70s and 80s pop culture”) featuring Joe Cornish of Adam & Joe, and they talked about exactly this: watching documentaries or videos from the eighties and thinking I was there. Not in the films themselves, but existing at the same time and could in theory walk around the corner and appear.
I never went to Angel tube in 1989 so I knew I wasn’t going to be in the film (not that it stopped me looking) but I was there! Little me. Living in London. At 18. Unbelievable really.
When the film finished, a short film about Soho in 1985 started auto-playing but I was close to auto-crying so I turned it off. I’ll try that one tonight, I think.
I just saw this on Instagram, posted by Amy Sedaris and… yes. If only sleep wasn’t anxiety-filled too.
Anyway, last time I wrote about how I always wanted to follow instructional schedule things in magazines. As I was writing, I kept thinking why am I like this? but I didn’t want anyone to answer so I didn’t actually ask.
And then I was reading Mediations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman and
We want a rule to shoulder the burden of living on our behalf. It's a quid pro quo: we'll follow it religiously and, in return, won't have to take so much moment-to-moment responsibility for making the most of our lives.
Yet, on reflection, no such rule could possibly exist; however much we might sometimes long to outsource the task of living, we never can.
We yearn for such a rule, not generally because we're lazy, but because we don't fully trust ourselves to get the right things done without one.
Maybe you lack confidence that you know how to do your work, so you hope that rigidly following a rule might serve as a substitute for that missing knowledge.
Maybe you're a self-punishing perfectionist, who demands from yourself a flawless track record, so you want a rule to help ensure you never put a foot wrong.
Maybe all of the above, SHUP UP, OLIVER BURKEMAN.
(It’s actually very helpful to see it set out like that, thank you.)
The Harry Styles Effect is out THIS MONTH in the UK
and over the weekend I went viral on TikTok with this post about Harry Styles (obviously) and Van Morrison (less obviously)
Not sure any of it is working as promo for the book - which you can preorder from Waterstones in the UK and Barnes & Noble in the US - but I’m enjoying myself anyway. And yesterday I got an email from a reader who said it’s changing her brain chemistry, so that’ll do for me!
What were you doing in 1989? (Please don’t tell me if you weren’t born.) Please share your eighties pop culture traumas (and definitely do not watch the Dancing With Tears in My Eyes music video).
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I did an interview with this lovely Substack about writing, publishing and children’s books:
And Noodles did an interview with MeowStack! She’ll be wanting an agent before long, no doubt.
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THIS WEEK’S POST ON THE LADYBIRD PURSE, MY OTHER SUBSTACK ABOUT WOMEN AND MONEY…
Links to a few brilliant recent money reads and an interview with wonderful Noha Beshir.
1989: I was coming up to my 8th birthday, just starting to discover pop music via Smash Hits magazine and Top of the Pops on telly for the first time, helped in no small part by Scott and Charlene from Neighbours becoming singers 🤩
That quote about wanting to outsource day to day decision making is so spot on. It explains every diet I’ve ever been on, my religious phases, every organisational technique I’ve tried to bolt myself on to, and so many more things.
And it explains why people join cults. Sorry, I got way too deep there…quick, back to lighthearted Kylie and Jason whimsy 😅
In 1989 I was 4 years old and enjoyed bopping round the living room to the Care Bears theme tune (from a VHS on the big TV) or Jason (on record) and Kylie (on cassette). Obviously the genres my interests fell into was varied, even then. Ha!