Weekly Digest #88
Good morning, Digester! Happy Friday!
I've been thinking a lot lately about the many diaries I kept during my life. Writing has, ever since I can remember, been my thing but my relationship with it has shifted a lot throughout the years.
For a long time, I wrote only for myself. But when my teenage years arrived, there came also the need for validation and I started sharing my thoughts with the world. The internet became a powerful tool for that: I wrote MCR fanfiction in Orkut forums, posted on Fotolog on a daily basis, kept a poetry blog, had a packed Tumblr and so on.
Nowadays, I write you letters every now and then (lately, less frequently than I'd like). But this constant exposition has also shaped the way I write. I got used to keeping some thoughts out of my texts because they're either too personal or too repetitive - my life is not that interesting, after all. Also, I got used to the validation that comes with online interactions and ended up becoming a social media addict.
So I've been trying to reinvent the way I interact with the internet - and I started doing so by temporarily deactivating my Instagram account. It may be a silly and simple action, but I'm hoping it will help me remember what else is available on the internet - and use these tools in a better way.
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It’s been a while since I wrote about the books I recently read because, honestly, I haven’t been reading much. The last months have been very busy and I’m dedicating every break I take to taking a nap or contemplating my existence. But I found out that listening to books can also be quite pleasing - and an easier fit for a busy routine.
Do you remember issue #74, in which I talked to you about A Room of One’s Own, an essay by Virginia Woolf?
In case you don't remember, Woolf’s thesis in this book is that women must have a fixed income and a room of their own with a lock on the door. She argues that only with independence and solitude women can finally be free to answer to their own needs and wills.
So, I found this audio version of it on Youtube and “read” it again.
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Read if you’re into: women, bookshelves, modernism, smashing the patriarchy, university campuses
• Listen to A Room of One's Own here and read it on pdf here.
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This month has been a very good month to the indie emo girl inside me. Blink 182 confirmed they’re coming to the next Lollapalooza (and the tickets cost an arm and a leg, but still…). Also, José Norberto Flesch, the most trustworthy Brazilian music reporter, posted about My Chemical Romance coming to Brazil in 2023 (YAY!). Then, after four long years of waiting, the Arctic Monkeys have finally released a new album, The Car, - and, as usual, I first hated it and then proceeded to fall in love with it.
If you’ve been living on the moon for the past 20 years, I’ll tell you a little about the Arctic Monkeys:
They are a British indie rock band, formed in 2002. Their first album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, besides having a great name, held the record for the largest first week sales of a debut album in the UK - according to Last.fm, in its first week, the album sold more than the rest of the Top 20 albums combined!
Their new album, The Car "is an album of love, longing, and doubt, and the obfuscation serves to bolster its core belief that the simplest truths are the hardest ones to discover”, according to a Pitchfork review.
My favorite song so far is Body Paint. Listen to the complete album here.
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Could Thin Be in Again?
“The aughts-fashion revival — typified by low-rise “whale tails” and the ubiquitous Miu Miu miniskirt — requires a narrow waist and flat stomach.
And the cryptic “pro-ana” language of yesterday’s Tumblr sad girl has made its way onto today’s TikTok” - from The Cut. Read here.
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Take care!
F.