16th-22nd february

Hey everyone,

How are you? It’s been a strange week this one. (P.S. it’s a long one, you might have to click ‘read online’ in the top right corner to see the whole thing)

Like I hinted at the end of last week’s newsletter, there’s been a bit of PhD supervisor drama this week. I mentioned he’s going to Japan, what I didn’t mention (because I forgot and I didn’t proofread it…) is he’s moving there for an entire year. On Saturday.

I knew this was coming, he had mentioned his research leave starting in March back in September when I got back from fieldwork. But I didn’t realise it would be so soon (I had assumed he would leave at the end of this term) and I didn’t actually find out his leaving date from him, but from a fellow supervisee just 1.5 weeks ago. Plus there have been some issues throughout my PhD with delayed feedback and struggling to get meetings in his diary. We haven’t really hit the ground running since I got back, I am yet to write a full chapter of my thesis (aside from that book chapter I wrote last term, and some introductory stuff I’ve been writing since the new year, which has gone unmarked).

So this week involved a series of serious conversations with the director of doctoral studies and, of course, the man himself, to try and work out what on earth we’re going to do. To be honest, I came into the week wanting to change supervisor completely. I felt defeated and frustrated by the situation and I just wanted a change. After speaking with the director of doctoral studies on Monday, I learned about some more options - ways to keep communication and writing momentum going remotely, ways to bring people in without changing 1st supervisor completely. But unfortunately, on Tuesday when I was supposed to meet with my supervisor, the meeting got cut short by other commitments he had put in his diary. There wasn’t really time to discuss the bigger changes I had hoped to see, not with the respect and sensitivity that the conversation deserved. In the end, we barely had time to get a next meeting in the calendar and agree a chapter to write (on extreme heat, ironically for chilly February)

I’m relieved to have something in the diary and a new chapter to work towards for now. But I have to be honest, I felt really deflated and disappointed after that conversation, or lack thereof. It’s difficult enough to have big conversations, but not having the time to give them justice is almost worse. I didn’t get to find out whether other options would’ve been better for me. As it is, I just have to keep trying with what I have and see how it goes. Maybe remote supervision will be fine?

As you can imagine, this cast a bit of a cloud over my week, on top of me already being tired at the end of half term. I didn’t really feel like doing much PhD work, so on Monday I went climbing for the entire afternoon in an attempt to take my mind off things. Unfortunately I slipped on a climb and and smacked the top of my foot as I fell. It’s totally fine now, but it was pretty sore and bruised for a few days! I spent the rest of the session trying really difficult moves close to the ground, which was fun in its own way.

Tuesday was the day of my supervisor meeting, which was first thing in the morning. I left campus in a bit of a mood and went to eat pancakes. Which helped somewhat, although for some reason they were cold, I’m not sure if that was intentional…?

I then had to head back to campus and put on a brave face for my office hours, then listened to a good economic anthropology 101 lecture by the fabulous Ben Bowles. It made me realise I should do more economic anthropology.

And then, I went to see Florence & The Machine! A much needed respite from PhD nonsense, and I was very relieved to get off campus. The AXS gods smiled on me and I managed to get a standing ticket, and I had nothing better to do, so I went to the O2 at 4pm, scranned a burrito for sustenance and got in the queue. It was a long wait, but the payoff was SO worth it, because I was 3 rows back from the barricade!

Before I talk about Florence, I want to give a mention to Paris Paloma, the fabulous support act who is actually the reason I found out about the FATM tour in the first place, because I’ve been subscribed to her email list for ages. She writes incredible music driven by feminine energy - love, rage, and everything in between. You’ve probably heard her song Labour, which went viral a while back. Her debut album, Cacophony, accompanied the first difficult period of my PhD fieldwork and is so incredibly cathartic, and brave, and beautiful. The only reason it hasn’t made an Album of the Week in this newsletter is the fact it came out in 2024. It was so lovely to hear some of those songs again live. More recently, she’s released two fantastic companion singles - Good Girl and Good Boy. The former is about body image and how we are so much more as people than our appearance - as she says, “the water is not in love with the cup which I drink from” - and the latter is about men who blindly serve the patriarchy without realising how much it harms them and everyone around them. Singing this song with an entire arena, both women and men, was amazing. Especially given everything that’s been in the news recently about Trump and Andrew and Epstein and all of these horrible, horrible men who have been pathetic lapdogs for the powers that be.

Then before I knew it, it was time for Florence to emerge from beneath the stage! She was incredible. I’ve been listening to her music ever since her beautiful first album, Lungs, which I bought on CD from HMV in 2010 just because the cover was intriguing. I didn’t even know how it would sound before I took it home and put it in the CD player. So to hear some of those songs again, but this time in front of a crowd of thousands, was truly something special.

Her new songs from Everybody Scream were also breathtaking live. Obviously the title track was made for touring, it was so much fun to open the show with such a banger. But the rest was incredibly moving. Perhaps some of you aren’t aware of the backstory behind this witchy-sounding album - I think gives it even more meaning. Last time she was at the O2 arena for her previous tour, she danced so hard she broke her foot onstage. Then, later in the tour, she discovered she had an ectopic pregnancy and had to cancel the last few shows after being rushed into emergency surgery to save her life. Everybody Scream was borne out of this trauma, but also the way that the stage continues to call her name, and the nature of having a long career onstage as a woman.

Of course, she sang plenty of songs from her other albums, including my favourite song of all time, Cosmic Love (it’s about stars and it has both harps and drums, what’s not to like!). But the emotional crescendo of the whole show came when she sang You Can Have It All, which to be honest is totally heartbreaking, and she said herself that it’s terrifying to sing. It’s about the raw grief she experienced after her miscarriage. The whole arena fell silent. She sang it beautifully.

Before we knew it, the magical evening had come to an end. To finish the show, she has this lovely ritual where during Dog Days Are Over, she asks everyone to put their phones away and just dance. In the standing section, right in the middle of the arena, it was amazing to see the entire arena giving their full attention and enjoying the moment. There was such a great sense of togetherness.

For the rest of the week, as you can imagine after hours of standing and dancing and a very late night, I was pretty tired out! I ended up not going to the morris workshop I’d signed up for on Thursday, ostensibly for the sake of my foot but also because I was just tired and wanted to watch the Winter Olympics on the sofa. It was definitely the right choice, because I thankfully recovered my energy for a fun weekend:

Phew! What a long newsletter. If you read this far, you’re a legend. Hit reply and tell me what you’ve been up to recently?

See you next week, maybe, I might take a week off for reading week!

Stella x