#19 - Out of Hours Takeover💤
On trying to unravel the global context I grew up in, clubs, Billie Holiday and watching the flowers grow.
Sasha Shuttleworth is a Brighton-born Manchester-based documentary photographer, radio presenter, illustrator and writer. She was selected as one of Bart Bogle Hegarty @_unsigned_class of 2019. With an academic background in Sociology, and reverence for honesty, her work explores themes of ecstasy, joy, love and grace in the natural and human world.
Thoughts from my Notes App
On abundance and watching things grow
I have been thinking a lot about abundance recently. I’m going through a transitional period of my life due to forces outside of my control. Parts of my week over the past few months have been highly stressful and nonsensical. I have had the feeling I am watching something dissolve around me as the structures of my working life shake and slacken from my grip. To tackle this unwinding, I have been upending my routine: walking different routes in familiar areas, reading more poetry in the morning, paying closer attention to the people weaving around one another on Curry Mile in Manchester and watching families walking along the top on Brighton beach. Rather than wrapping myself up in my thoughts with music in my headphones, I’m trying to slow down my brain, so that despite the workload I give it by juggling different projects and mediums, I am able to turn up for myself and my loved ones. Some days it works; some days I find myself lying in the grass in my garden, staring at the sky, feeling like my brain has short-circuited.
As I always do, I have been following the spring, watching the outrageously beautiful flowers grow in South Manchester. Lines of dogrose, oxeye daisy and greater burdock flow along the tramlines and over garden walls. The story goes that in the industrial era, ‘philanthropists’ got a taste for botany, and after establishing their families in less polluted areas of the city, set about planting exotic flowers. Subsequently, if you walk down any road in South Manchester in the spring, you are likely to see heaps of cherry blossom and buddleia blooms lining the streets with their delicate petals and honey smells.
I love to find the flowers; I take their photos like they are members of my family. There’s one bloom in particular which I have been visiting on my way home from the gym over the last month or so. I have watched it grow from a tiny bud to an enormous eruption of a thing. It’s now so heavy in bloom it sways slowly when the wind hits it.
As an artist, I spend a lot of time trying to hold things in place. As a documentary photographer I think my job is to say, ‘Look! Look, this is happening here. Look at this moment - see all of these things exist at once’. There’s something about this eruption of growth in the spring that reinforces that to me. It cuts up the idea that you know what you are going to see when you step out your door, as every natural being chooses its own time to grow.
ICYMI
"It isn't just a music festival; it's a vibrant DIY community, a hands-on experience, a queer celebration... a whirlwind of art, culture, and fun, where the streets become dance floors and churches become holy raves." – Louder Than War 2024
I spent nearly fifteen hours spinning around Salford, hopping from gig to gig, DJ to DJ. I don't think I have ever been to an event where I enjoyed every space so much. One to keep on your radar for next year.
Butch Revival Holds a Sexy Joyful Intergenerational Club Space
An 18+ night for butches, studs, and their queer admirers. The creators of this night are building something strong and beautiful. I just wanted to put that down in writing.
What to Listen to This Week
I devour non-fiction radio and podcasts at quite an intense rate. I (unsurprisingly) gravitate towards any radio documentary, particularly those that center around judicial or legislative reform. I'm interested in how legislative change or poor policy affects communities' quality of life. With that in mind, the following audio offerings are highly recommended if you are also predisposed to wanting to understand systems of thought, and especially if you were a child of the noughties.
A Promised Land
As a kid who grew up watching America in the mid-noughties, I have always been fascinated by Obama as a thinker and politician. Over the last few months, I have listened to his twelve-hour audiobook "A Promised Land," some parts more than once. So much so, my housemates started to ask me, “Are you hanging out with Obama again?”
The book is his recollection of his administration, written during the early pandemic and the Trump presidency. It’s a biased account, of course, one clearly written by someone with a background in law and a predisposition towards both eloquent delivery and diplomacy. What I found really interesting was his candor and his meticulous, detailed remembrance of decision-making in the White House.
As a listener, you feel as if somewhere early on in his presidency he knew he was going to write this book and, in the process, slowly and deliberately explain what he believes were his major decisions as president. It is as if he felt he had one chance to really get it down, truly as he feels those moments happened. It’s fascinating to listen to a powerful person explain their power. I would recommend listening to it, if only to understand how he presents his reasoning.
Serial
Alongside this, I have been listening to the fourth season of ‘Serial’ from The New York Times, which is a twelve-part history of the Guantanamo prison. Both ‘Serial’ and ‘A Promised Land’ touch on the 2008 financial crash, the War on Terror, the prolific Islamophobia of the time, and the bureaucratic systems which upheld and unraveled the established values of the Western world I grew up in. I think I'm at the point in my life where I can look at the global socio-economic context that I grew up in with a bit more distance. It’s important to me to understand the political shadows that fell over my childhood, just as I believe it’s important for all adults to try to understand in order to understand where they came from.
For those of you living in the UK - I get all of my audiobooks free through Borrowbox which is a part of the national library service - all you need to sign up is a library card. Happy listening!
Billie Holiday - Solitude
Since the heat has arrived, I have spent a lot of my time writing in the garden. (I am currently leaning against my garden wall at dusk, trying to finish this piece before the light fades.) For this activity, I recommend listening to Billie Holiday’s Solitude.
Things you should have on your radar
I present for Steamradio in Manchester and Platform B in Brighton, both of which are excellent community-run radio stations. I implore you to leave the algorithm behind and listen to one of them instead. They are so fun, honestly! You will discover a ton of new tunes by tuning in, hear some excellent presenters, and break out of that AI routine.
You can catch my show, GIANT LOVER’S Lighthouse, every third Saturday of the month between 6-8pm BST on Steam, or listen back to all my shows here.
Thank you for having me in your space Iman, and to you, Out of Hours readers.
With love,
Sasha Shuttleworth
FYI, you can read past letters here.
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