right now 🔥

Learning

I started learning piano very recently at School of Rock, in Lisbon, and it already feels like one of those decisions that rearrange a week in the best possible way. Between lessons, I'm also using Simply Piano to keep practising at home.

I also recently started the creative writing course at Escrever Escrever. It's still early, but it's already asking more of me than comfort ever could.

Reading

Lately I've been trying to pay closer attention to Portuguese writers. Right now I'm reading Campo de Sangue by Dulce Maria Cardoso, and next in line is Autobiografia não escrita de Martha Freud by Teolinda Gersão.

Just before that, I was reading Elizabeth Strout's Conta-me tudo and Caderno Proibido by Alba de Céspedes. And among many others, I also read a book that echoed in me too deeply to forget: A Outra Filha by Annie Ernaux.

A few months ago I also fell into a full Virginia Woolf spiral. At the moment she is my favourite "rock star" and, to be honest, I think she may never stop being. So far I've only read A Room of One's Own and Orlando, but I almost don't want to rush the rest because I want them to last. If you know essays, interviews, documentaries, lectures, archives, podcasts, anything at all, in any language, send them my way. The obsession is real.

Listening

Podcast-wise, Beleza das Pequenas Coisas has been my usual company, along with Reparação Histérica by Tati Bernardi.

I've also been listening closely to the recent release Maria by Carolina Deslandes, a song that, in some quiet way, showed me what my life might have looked like if I hadn't had the courage to choose it fully.

Watching

I recently watched the documentaries Loving Highsmith and Regarding Susan Sontag. They felt like perfect company for this phase of mine: all books, language, and fascination with the lives writers build around their work.

In films, I have to single out Hamnet, Sentimental Value, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire. And in series, I want to leave a special note for the Spanish series The New Years, which, for me, is a masterpiece.

Enjoying

I also can't leave out the Garota Não concert I went to at CCB in Lisbon. It moved me deeply; it felt like a poem sung from beginning to end.