A Network of Lights

Housekeeping: I’ll be in conversation with Cherry Coombe today, 2pm BST. Subscribe now, or keep an eye 👀 on Notes for when we go LIVE.I noticed Cherry’s skill in the way one does here, while wandering along, perusing something else, her phrases arrested me. I told her so and she took the hint, girded her loins and started serialising her novel, Rivering. So far so normal. It was only later, and I can’t remember how it came up but perhaps she’ll remind me, that we discovered she used to baby sit for my cousins. I mean, what are the chances? I’ll tell you.Because the reality of this world is a network of lights connected by instinct and we find each other. I’m working on an essay about this, god knows I mayn’t have it ready before Christmas, but it’s uppermost in my mind. Substack is littered with these connections. I have met family here and I’m not talking about blood. We have joined hands and been mightily relieved. S.E. Reid echoed it when she said Substack has changed her life. Mine, too. Whatever conversations took place back in 2017 when Chris Best & Hamish McKenzie and the collective team of brilliance hatched this place, they embedded it in a starlight that we get to rove about in. The key, for those new here and wondering how to find their tribe, is to follow what fascinates your heart and thrills you; seek out what lights you up. Don’t worry about the huge wash of ocean, we are millions now but the system remains the same. Write what makes you happy and read what makes you curious, and swap those about consistently. Something is afoot. We can feel it.And while we’re on the subject, I’m also deeply loving the work of Jim Acosta. His show generally coincides with my bedtime, and he’s become my nightly watch. His interview with Epstein survivor Jessica Michaels is essential watching. Here in the UK, memories of Jimmy Savill and the institutional refusal to heed the multitude of warnings and evidence which stretched back over 50 years before his abuse was posthumously recognised and his victims heard and believed represented then how and why such violence is left unchecked. And yet, here it is all over again. It is a severance. It is the essay I’m working on and the subject I have in mind. It is the British public school system and empire and the dying of the light. It is a divorce from reality. (❤️C). Maybe that essay is surfacing sooner than I thought.Eleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe