Recent things I can't stop talking about

“Interview with the Vampire”

Last weekend, I finished season 1 of the new “Interview with the Vampire” series on AMC+ (I know it hasn’t aired on cable yet, so I’ll try to avoid spoilers), and it has no right being as good as it is. I read Anne Rice’s first two vampire novels when I was in my teens, and they mattered a lot to me (they still do). And, much as I love director Neil Jordan, the 1994 film adaptation disappointed me, largely because of the casting; Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas felt hideously wrong for their roles. 

This time, I couldn’t be happier with the casting. And, although the writers made substantial changes to the setting (Jazz Age New Orleans vs. 18th century), the racial dynamics of the main characters (both Louis and Claudia are Black), and the relationship between Louis and Lestat (they are romantic partners, an idea hinted at in the text but never openly depicted before), all of those changes are for the better. It’s beautiful, smart and sexy. 

I also just reread probably my favorite Anne Rice novel, “The Witching Hour,” to prepare for AMC’s adaptation, which launches in January. I’m anxious about this one; the trailer makes it look substantially different from the book, and they somehow haven’t cast anyone for a main character, Michael Curry. And I wish they’d cast Mackenzie Davis as Rowan. And for Michael? Maybe Henry Cavill or Ian Somerhalder (the latter of whom is from Louisiana). 

“Blood Upon the Snow”

It’s been almost four years since Hozier released his last album, “Wasteland, Baby.” He’s got another one cooking, but he surprised us this week by unveiling “Blood Upon the Snow,” a collab with composer Bear McCreary for the new “God of War: Ragnarok” game. Regular readers know that I fell hard for Hozier’s music last year. I discovered McCreary through his soundtrack for the Amazon “Rings of Power” series; his music is a key component, a character in its own right. And this new song brings us the best of both of them.

Hozier fans often joke that he’s some kind of fae creature, calling him Forest King or Forest Daddy. In part, this is because of how deeply his lyrics feel rooted in nature and the otherworld. As the name suggests, “Blood Upon the Snow” falls right in line with those ideas. It’s sung from the perspective of someone who has spent a lifetime surviving in nature, beautiful but harsh. There are moments where it sounds like a mournful ghazal, but the music also evokes Celtic folk and Nordic elements, including what I believe is McCreary playing a hurdy gurdy. There’s also what feels like a Russian men’s chorus. It’s sublime.

Hozier also recently released “Swan Upon Leda,” a song about women’s bodily autonomy through the ages. It’s the first taste of his next album, “Unreal Unearth,” release date yet unknown. In one verse he describes a grandmother smuggling birth control pills across the Northern Irish border, which felt of a piece with some of my other recent cultural touchstones: the final season of “Derry Girls,” and “Thin Places,” by Kerri ní Dochartaigh, about how she survived the trauma of growing up in Derry during the Troubles. Many of my ancestors came from Ireland, including Northern Ireland, in and around Derry, and I’m drawn to art that connects me to those places.

“Enter the Day”

Patrick Wolf, one of my longtime favorite musicians, dear to my heart, is finally unearthing new music for the first time in more than a decade. Today he released “Enter the Day,” a hopeful ballad about emerging from difficult times to land in the places we belong. It touches on the death of his mother as well as the landscapes of eastern Britain, along the North Sea, where he now lives. 

As with Hozier, nature is a constant companion in Wolf’s work, particularly the geography of Cornwall and other coastal climes. So much so that I could hear his music in my head when I read, this year, Katharine May’s “The Electricity of Every Living Thing.” In it, she comes to terms with her autistic mind while walking the 630-mile South West Coast Path through Devon and Cornwall. I recommended the book to Wolf a few months ago; I have been a member of his Patreon this year, where he has answered listener questions, reminisced on old photos and songs, and played monthly live concerts from his home by the sea. He sang a capella version of “Enter the Day” for us recently, and one line stuck with me more than any other: “Deep in your disorder is a sleeping symmetry.” Gorgeous. 

Alcest live at Hellfest 

I love Alcest, the French black metal/shoegaze band that sings about otherworldly encounters. I especially love seeing them live, but they haven’t come through San Francisco in several years, and live music hasn’t felt safe in Covid times anyway. They just released their live set from this year’s Hellfest, performed in June in Clisson. Seeing them again is emotional, cathartic, and transcendent. 

Lacuna Coil, “Comalies XX”

Italian metal band Lacuna Coil recently re-recorded their landmark album “Comalies.” The original is a forever classic, but the new version is fresh and alive. I love the harder riffs, and the fact that Andrea Ferro is now leaning all the way into harsh vocals. As much as I love the 2002 album, I also associate it with someone who turned out to be horribly toxic. I’m grateful for this chance to love it all over again.

'Places only hold us; they only let us in.'

I’ve just finished reading Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s memoir “Thin Places” and I can’t stop thinking about how she describes being “held” by certain places in nature. 

Her book is partly about the trauma and PTSD she suffered as a result of growing up in Derry during the Troubles, and how those experiences made it impossible for her to feel safe in most places. And it’s about how she discovered áiteanna tanaí, caol áit – “thin places” – in the landscape (which Duolingo has recently taught me is tírdhreach in Irish), where the distance between the earthly world and the world of spirit is shrunk to nothing. “They are places that make us feel something larger than ourselves, as though we are held in a place between worlds,” she writes. 

“The natural world in the wilderness on both sides of that unseen border [between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland] dragged me back to the land of the living, and it held me there,” ní Dochartaigh writes. She describes the Atlantic as her favorite body of water, “the one that held me over the last three years.” 

I know this feeling, this sense of belonging and deep safety in certain places, when it’s rare for me to feel that way among people or in urban environments. In wild spaces the land practically vibrates with energy, often a welcoming one. But I’m rarely able to visit the places that feel that way to me, and I struggle to find similar ones in the middle of my densely packed urban city. We have beautiful parks, both ones landscaped by human hands and others left to their own devices, but it’s difficult to plug into them while a steady stream of hikers, children and dogs pass by. 

"Places do not heal us; they do not take the suffering we have known and bury it in their bellies. Places do not gather the broken parts of us up and stitch them back together. Places do not make the light shine on crow-black nights. Places do not take away our sorrow; they do not unearth the words buried under frozen bog-land; they do not call the birds back when they have been long gone from our sky,” ní Dochartaigh writes. “Places do not heal us. Places only hold us; they only let us in. Places only hold us close enough that we can finally see ourselves reflected back."

Casting about last night for something soothing, I turned to a recording of Patrick Wolf performing two songs for his Patreon supporters earlier this year: “Penzance,” a B-side from years ago, written about a town near the southern tip of England, followed by a cover of “Ari’s Song” by Nico. The recording is just piano, a loop of ethereal violin, and Patrick’s clear, steady voice. Listening to it felt like coming home. Like being held. 

Like ní Dochartaigh, Patrick Wolf often writes about the wild places that have held him, places where he saw himself reflected back. They’re frequently the landscapes of the southwestern UK: Cornwall, Penzance, Godrevy Point, Land’s End, Teignmouth. Places that felt enchanted, áiteanna tanaí, when I visited them, places captured gorgeously in Katherine May’s book about circumnavigating the southwest of England and coming to terms with her autistic mind, “The Electricity of Every Living Thing.” 

“There were devils in the winds that night, walking fire among the hills,” Wolf sings. “And many voices called me out to the cliffs, but you held me safe. You wrestled me still.” And then, in “Ari’s Song,” “Sail away, my little boy. Let the rain wash away your cloudy days. Sail away into a dream. Let the wind send you a fantasy of the ancient silver sea.” Nico was singing to her son; Wolf sounds like he’s singing to his younger self. 

And, perhaps, to my younger self, too. I grew up in rural northern California, with regular visits to places like the Sonoma Coast and Armstrong Redwoods, and even the feral places near my home. The trees that grew tart Gravenstein apples and the tall silver birches that swayed in the breeze held me. The woodpile, that endless treasure trove of insects, spiders and reptiles, kept me open and curious. The gate to the field behind my house, and the ring of willows beyond it, were a wardrobe to Narnia. As I got older, music began to offer new worlds I could inhabit, in-between places where I could be held and seen just as I am. Music and nature have been my steadfast companions. 

I’m grateful for new music, or new spins on older music, from some of my favorites, like Patrick Wolf and Hozier, who released his gorgeous new song “Swan Upon Leda” Friday. (Like ní Dochartaigh, it, too, crosses that unseen Irish border in one verse.) Their songs are like cozy forts I can curl up inside, escape hatches where I can let my mask slip. But even songs about wild places, about áiteanna tanaí, are no substitute for the real thing. I feel the pull so strongly, but I don’t know where to go. I hope an answer comes soon.