Issue 3
morecaseevie
August 2026
August 2026
In this issue...
What I’ve been thinking about
What I’ve enjoyed
Where help would help
Final notes and goodbye until next month
Helloooooo from Amsterdam. Although really I should be saying hallooooo or hoi!
Welcome to the August newsletter! I wanted to begin by thanking you all for your kind and thoughtful responses to the debut newsletter last month. It was really cool that so many people took the time to read it. However, what made it truly special was the lovely thoughts and feedback from so many of you, and just hearing from people more generally too. It’s awesome that the newsletter is already achieving the aims I set out for it to.
And here we are with another month and another newsletter!
As with the last one (and every newsletter to follow), if you have any thoughts, please don’t hesitate to share via text / email / phone / mail by carrier pigeon - whatever. Every message in response to the first on filled me with little bits of joy that coalesced to some pretty big joy. I’d love to hear from you, in any context and any form.
Here’s what I’ve been up to, thinking about, and enjoying all of August:
August rundown
August was somewhat of a prefatory month. A prologue to a new book or chapter, perhaps. I feel slightly bad for reducing it to that, but at the same time most of my time has been spent saying goodbyes and doing stuff to prepare for the Big Move.
I got shouted at while cycling a couple months back (admittedly, I was slightly at fault) so I got on the bike a lot more to try and improve at least a little bit before cycling becomes my main mode of transport. I did this one ride around Richmond Park and, while it was really fun, it made me glad that Amsterdam is pretty flat! As beautiful as the park still is, I find it really weird how dead and yellow it’s become - almost Martian looking. England should not be this hot!
I also started learning Dutch at the beginning of this month. Wow, what a language. Although it looks like it would be easy-ish to speak, looks are deceiving as ever. It’s so guttural and you have to roll your Rs and I’m just not good that - yet! I’ll persevere. The least favourite word I’ve learnt so far is growth - groei - which involves the guttural ‘G’ along with a rolling of an ‘R’ immediately after. I sound ridiculous trying to say it. But, even so, I’m having fun with learning something completely new.
And, after months of anticipation and weeks of preparation… I’m finally in Amsterdam! I’ve only been here for a few days and even those have felt prefatory too. I’ve largely just been preparing for life here: setting up my flat, getting my bike, doing admin, and whatnot. I’ll fill you in on all the excitement and experiences of living here once I’ve actually found my feet!
What I’ve been thinking about
I do the bulk of my reading for the year during summer. Every year, summer rolls around and I somehow repossess the ability to sit all day and do almost nothing but read. It’s lovely. September roles around, and this ability - and the time for it - is long gone.
Two summers ago I really committed to an over 150-year-old 800 page book (my most impressive feat of reading yet and since). Up until reading it I was fervently not a “classics” person. Perhaps not fervently, but I had never understood why people liked “classics” or what made them good. Ironic, I know, for an English student.
Despite how bulky it was and my want to just power through it, as the novel went on, I found myself enjoying it. Shocking stuff! The writing was excellent and described feelings that I had felt before, feelings that I (perhaps naively) didn’t think could have happened centuries ago, let alone be carried and communicated over centuries.
I feel pretty inept at using language in comparison to this author and other writers I have read (studying literature is both a blessing and a burden!). Whether day to day or in actual writing, I feel like I can’t convey things exactly as I want to. Which is really frustrating because I enjoy writing, I enjoy reading and I enjoy language. Yet, it feels like I’m not doing justice to the language I know and study.
As I head into a new period of my life and in the process of spending too much time dwelling over the language we use, I’ve also been thinking about how we use language to describe our lives more specifically.
Over the past few months when I pictured what my life would look like in Amsterdam, there were scenes that played in my head - like a montage at the beginning of a film. A lot of my friends (hello!) and I are heading into new chapters of our lives at the moment. I’m going to have stories to share and new characters who will come along. Can you tell where I’m going with this?
Scenes, montages, films, chapters, stories, characters… I did that on purpose, but I wanted to collect those kinds of words in one place to consider this narrative impulse we have when describing our lives and how that impulse is implicit in the language we use.
This narrative impulse isn’t just in the language we use to describe our lives, but in how we describe them too. When verbalise our lives, we inadvertently describe them as factual fictions. Because when tell people about our lives, we tell events and happenings as stories - as an experience; something with emotion involved, not just facts.
That narrative impulse is everywhere. I feel like I’m doing it with the newsletter by attempting to capture my life in writing. Even the monthly rundown is a kind of storytelling: shaping a month into a neat few paragraphs-long summary. While, yes, I’m not fictionalising it in the typical sense, there is no way I can tell you the truth of my experiences. It just can’t be done, because you haven’t experienced it.
And so even though we tell stories about our lives because we want to convey how we’ve experienced something, we actually can’t because of (going back to the beginning here!), language.
Because, even if someone does come close to capturing an experience (as I felt the author of the book I mentioned above did), even then, your experiences shape how you understand the words, and so change how you read a novel or hear a story. For example, even though cerulean means a certain kind of blue, everyone’s going to have slightly different ideas of what that kind of blue is. Or fervently, you might have read that before in a different context to me and have a slightly different understanding of it. And so, I’m inadvertently miscommunicating with you just slightly when I use it.
It’s an awful but beautiful mobius strip of miscommunication: I have an experience that imbues something (as small as a word) with meaning and value. But then you have a different experience which imbues that something with a slightly different meaning and value. And so it becomes I cannot convey a true sense of what my individual lived experience is like to you.
And there’s a certain impossibility in that. I doubt I will fully be able to capture the experience of moving to another country, doing a Masters in something I love and living on my own for the first time. I can try, but I can’t capture it in its entirety. Even if this newsletter was tens of thousands of words long, I don’t know that I could capture it perfectly.
Joan Didion said that to write is an inherently violent thing because you’re trying to force the way you view the world on someone else, which kind of attends to what I’m trying to get at here. But still, even if you commit that act of violence and get as close as possible, how you view and experience your world often gets lost along the way when trying to put it into writing.
It’s this beautiful impossibility and I’m just fascinated by it. It frustrates me sometimes (especially when I can’t find the right words to get to what I’m trying to say), but I’m okay with it.
So, I’ve been thinking about the fact that I am going to have this year and I’m going to have stories to tell from it and no one is going to be able to experience it but me. I can share it, and will, but I won’t be able to capture it fully. That’s kind of lonely, but it’s also just part of being human. And, I suppose, something that makes the experience all the more special.
These scenes are becoming reality, and the new chapter has begun. I look forward to sharing it with you all as best as I can.
Also, if anyone wants to dive deeper into the ‘why’ we fictionalise our lives (not just how), Frank Kermode has a great book called The Sense of an Ending. Kermode discusses how we narrativise our lives in order to give them meaning - the same way you can usually find a clear underlying meaning in the narrative arc of novel or film.
What I’ve enjoyed
Do you ever read / watch / listen to a piece of media that isn’t necessarily linked to another piece of media but is kind of similar and so you become inspired to read / watch / listen to that other thing? Kind of like the two things are distant, indirect conversation with each other, at least in your mind? I’ve had that happen quite a lot this month. Here’s some of the highlights:
Watching / listening
Beyond late to the party on this one, but I finally watched The Odyssey. Nolan is great at creating captivating films and The Odyssey is definitely one of them. While I enjoyed it, it wasn’t as much of a hit for me as Oppenheimer was. I’m not sure if it’s because of greater familiarity with the source material, but I felt like something was missing - perhaps more mythic-ness?
The Bear is hands down one of my favourite TV shows of all time. Season 5 was the final season, so I really savoured it. The writing, acting and production was as brilliant as always, handling big and small topics alike with humour, humanity and grace. If you haven’t watched it, you’re in for a treat.
I’ve had Audrey Hobart’s album Who’s the Clown on repeat recently. The sound is great and it’s such a fun album to listen to. ‘Silver Jubilee’ and ‘Phoebe’ are personal favourites, but I also just love the storytelling it achieves lyrically and as a whole unit.
After listening to Audrey Hobart’s ‘Phoebe’ and thinking about community, connection and relationships in my last newsletter, I started a sporadic rewatch of Friends. It’s easy and familiar, and familiarity is comforting at a time when everything else is changing.
Reading…
I think it’s a popular opinion these days to read Sally Rooney and then say that you don’t think her work is that good and that it’s overhyped. Admittedly, I went into reading Conversations with Friends with this kind of mindset and ended up being surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It wasn’t absolutely amazing, but it’s not not good either (especially considering that she wrote it as an MA student AND it was her debut novel. What!).
After watching The Odyssey I fancied reading something Greek myth-esque so reread Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles. I love how it uses memory as a tool to help tell the narrative and the way it bleeds nostalgia throughout. It was wonderful to dive back into a world of scenes, images and characters that my own memory has somehow held onto after all these years.
Although I’m excited to have some structure to my reading again, I’ve also loved going down rabbit holes this summer. I stumbled across this essay called ‘Looking for Alice’on one of those rabbit hole journeys and really enjoyed it. While its core topic is the idea of finding ‘the one’, it also explores rare connections, good conversation and how the best relationships are generative (a word that may have been subsumed by AI, but is wonderfully natural in this context) in the process.
I think there’s a strong case to be made for the argument that the use of literary terms to describe one’s life is increasing with Gen Z (a correlation between more time spent consuming others’ lives rather than living our own, perhaps?). This New York Times article titled ‘A Simple, One-Word Trick to Turn Everyday Life Into Grand Fantasy’touches on what I was discussing above, but with a specific focus on the word ‘lore’. If you want to read another piece of (much better) writing somewhat in conversation with what I’ve discussed above, I’d recommend it! I’ve linked it as a gift article so you should have free access, but give me a shout if not and I’ll send it your way.
If you have enjoyed any of the above and have thoughts to share (or have some recommendations too), feel free to get in touch! I’d love to hear any thoughts, differing opinions or anything else.
Where help would help
David Shrigely print 🤝 me right now
In a weird way, I’ve been feeling quite calm about moving countries. It’s definitely very new and probably going to be challenging at times, but that’s okay. I feel ready to give it my all and make the most of my year here. Lots of personal groei ahead!
Even so, to ease the transition, if you have any advice for moving to a new country (or, more generally, a place where you know no one), please do share! I think university has prepared me well, but any top tips would be appreciated. Whether it’s really niche or super general, I’d love to take any advice you think might be helpful.
Final notes and goodbye until next month
Thank you for making it to the end! Especially after that long section on ‘what I’ve been thinking about’. Putting that into words was a right pain (which is both ironic and apt!), but something that was fun to figure out too. And, if you enjoyed reading it, hopefully it will be interesting to discuss too!
As always, if you have any thoughts on any of the above or just want to chat more generally, don’t be a stranger :)
I’ve started emailing people recently and I’m really enjoying it. It feels like a slower and more intentional form of communication - much like this newsletter! So, if you would like to email too, I’ve popped a link just below.
Wishing you all all the best wherever you are reading this from,
Evie