Eyes wide open

Taylor Swift’s song Lover is one of the most beautiful pop songs I’ve ever heard. It’s a picture of two people who know each other, dance the evenings away, sit quietly and share secret moments that only they understand. This bond, lived out in the pastel-coloured rooms of their house, are the images of love we know now. “This is our place, we make the rules. … Have I known you twenty seconds or twenty years? … This is our place, we make the call. … I’ve loved you three summers now, honey, but I want ‘em all.” Love is now familiarly known as this bond. However it came about, whatever the two do together, and whatever one has done for the other, this bond—lifelong and rich—is love. But as I waded through childhood, teenage life, and then bumbled into adulthood, I was disappointed again and again by this framing of love. I’d had my share of seeking that feeling at the end of a 90s rom-com. A bit more soberly, I'd had my share in high school of longing for someone who would unde...

Current situation: In my room, as usual, just got back from Sainsbury's Eddington; happy to see that people have stopped hoarding I’ve been chugging along with my dissertation, which is due in about a month’s time. I’m more than halfway through, which is great, but I expect I’ll have to leave lots of time after I complete my draft for editing, because my writing process looks like: wing it, edit later . I’ve gotten more used to being at home all day though—found two excellent Netflix documentaries ( Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates ; Pandemic ) and have been having good laughs watching Friends . My brain has been quite worn out at the end of each day because of mind-bending discrimination law arguments I’ve been trying to untangle and express in my dissertation, and so I haven’t written any more stay-at-home blog posts since my #2. But I decided to start again today.  For the next few posts I’ve decided to write about particularly vulnerable people this Covid–19 sea...