Now Playing: Part 22

Welcome to the brand new Split Lip the Mag site, and welcome to Now Playing! Here, a few of our August contributors share what they’ve been playing recently and their connections to those works:

Lesley Wheeler

My favorite art generally has something uncanny in it. On TV right now, that’s the Australian show Glitch, set in a small town where several people have returned from the dead. They died in different eras and it’s interesting to see historical periods collide, plus the undead start bleeding from the eyeballs when they cross the town limits—I live in a small Virginia town and can relate to the claustrophobia. I also just finished a haunted house novel by Sarah Waters called The Little Stranger. It’s rivetingly creepy and all about how desire and anger can coincide, how easy it is to destroy what you love when you seek to possess it. For uncanny poetry, I strongly recommend Franny Choi’s cyborg-themed collection, Soft Science. I won’t say more now, because I have a review of it forthcoming in Strange Horizons, but it’s weird and thrilling.

Jenny Wortman

I’m slowly making my way through Grey’s Anatomy, Season 15. It’s contrived and tedious but I’m watching out of sentimental attachment to the halcyon days when it was contrived and addictive. I remember devouring an early season on Netflix disc while I was recovering in the hospital after my daughter was born by C-section. My daughter, now 13, is currently binging her way through the whole series and it feels like a combination parenting win/fail.

Marcie Friedman

I recently started a job that comes with an extended commute so I decided to use the extra time in my car to catch up on audiobooks for titles that have lingered on my "to read" list, starting with The Nix. Although I'm only 2 CDs into a 21+ hr journey, the satirical tone is proving to be a perfect driving companion, especially when I find myself in gridlocked Bears traffic on the near South Side (because who thinks to check a football schedule at the beginning of August).

For the past few days I've been haunted by Amanda Palmer's video for "Drowning in the Sound," from There Will Be No Intermission. Even before the video release, the song had entered what I think of as broken cassette status. (From when I'd rewind a cassette tape to a favorite song so many times the tape snapped.) Less intense but also intensely rewindable is Palmer's "Judy Blume." After hearing it, I had to stop myself from raiding my daughter's bookshelf and indulging in an afternoon of nostalgic reading. Still tempting though...

Chris Gavaler

The CDs currently rotating in my CD player (and, yes, I know it’s embarrassing, but I still listen to and even continue to purchase actual physical CDs because I’m old and crochety): Vampire Weekend’s Father of the Bride (a brilliant Ezra Koenig solo album but I still miss Rostam’s keys and production); Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (which turned out to be mellower than I expected and that’s not necessarily a complaint); Hadestown (oddly both the original album and the Broadway soundtrack, which are not as identical as you probably think, and I’m not sure which I prefer, though I loved that Ani DiFranco appeared on the original and am disappointed that Tom Waits never sings the obviously-Tom-Waits-like part of the devil); The Best of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (a belated response to enjoying Peaky Blinders); and The Beatles’ Abbey Road (because, like I said, I’m old, plus I had to prep my eighteen-year-old before seeing Yesterday).