It was especially impressive considering, thanks to the more prosaic magic of Zoom, Mr. Scott was in Atlanta and his audience was miles away from each other. The show was filmed in his basement studio and streamed in real time. Whether the 54 people tuning in were seeking a sense of normalcy in isolated and disconnected times, or just couldn’t figure out that last trick, they were applauding from living rooms and kitchen tables in North Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, California and Georgia.
As the coronavirus snuffed out live entertainment, magicians, like so many others, have been forced to adapt, trading traditional in-person performances for virtual shows. The shift has been particularly jarring for people of this specialty, who’ve long argued that magic is best experienced in person.
In 2017, an internet friend sent me a message: "Would you be interested in a PDF copy of Tikim?" She was referring to Filipino food scholar Doreen Gamboa Fernandez's 1994 book: over 200 pages of essays exploring the culinary culture of the Philippines, from home cooking to street food to restaurants. "I have access to it and I'm going to scan it, then put it on those book sharing sites […] because it's not fair people can't have access to it unless they wanna pay $500. I got mine from the library."
I'd read Tikim, which means "taste" in Tagalog, in college a few years earlier during an independent study on Asian food. My professor, a Filipino food historian, put the book on our syllabus, and we talked about the ways Fernandez's writing helped the country—and the world—take Filipino cuisine seriously. With academic libraries at my disposal, I skimmed the book not realizing that I wouldn't read it again for years.
“Serpentine” is a trifle, but it brings with it all the familiar delights of Pullman’s work: its effortless clarity, its intelligence, its ineffable mix of coziness and darkness, innocence and experience. By the end one feels dark shadows gathering around Lyra, not because of anything that has happened to her, because hardly anything has, but because of what she has learned, which belongs to that particular satanic kind of knowledge that leaves one less innocent, and that once known can never be unknown.
But it’s so much more, too. It folds and unfolds its stories, rearranges the alliances and alignment of its sixteen main characters, rather like a Rubik’s Cube. Containing multitudes, it can become an entirely new thing, when looked at from a new angle. It is a murder mystery, a tribute to American labor history, a farcical indictment of capitalism, a book of riddles, a large-scale family drama, a bildungsroman, etc. And it is also, in its way, a ghost story. But not a kind of ghost story you’ve ever read before.
These little structures symbolized something to them: shucking debt, unloading a home mortgage or the overbearing accumulation of stuff, all forms of modern bondage. Having lived in a van, I appreciate the appeal of downsizing. Whether you’re dreaming, hoping or planning, “Off Grid Life” is a good place to spark — or park — your dreams.