New Life for Old(er) Things

On re-views.

Hi y’all!

This week, I’ve got repeat viewings and the resurrection of dormant things on my mind.

Thanks for being here!

What’s Old Is…Still Old, But Can Always Be Enjoyed Again

I’m writing this post on Saturday evening after a week where I’ve felt sluggish and off. There are myriad reasons for this general sense of . The biggest one is that, now that I’m back home with our two cats, Mochi and Mini, after three months in Florida with my pet-less father, my cat allergies have been unbelievable. I have a head full of wool, a nose like a basement faucet someone left on two days ago, and skin so raw moisturizer cream burns it. And that’s after mainlining Zyrtec with the occasional Benadryl chaser.

I see my GP in about a week, and I’m going to get a referral for a good allergist. So, hopefully that plus the slow but steady march toward warmer days when we can open the windows will make a difference.

So, I’m going to try and keep this short: a vow I always make that I can never quite reach. But we’ll see how it goes this time!

I’ve had intangible recycling on the mind this week thanks to a surprise email I received last Sunday. In October 2021, I wrote a piece for Polygon for their “Year of the Ring” series: a yearlong celebration of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy on the 20th anniversary of the release of the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring.

It’s one of my favorite pieces of mine: a story about Jens Høyer Hansen, the New Zealand jewelry artist who designed the One Ring and whose studio produced most of the more than 40 versions used for the films. I only knew about Hansen because I had stumbled upon the studio in Nelson when traveling in New Zealand in 2016. I was blown away at the thought of finding the jeweler who made the One Ring, though it took me a day of surreptitiously stalking the store before I decided to spend the money for a ring of my own.

(The awkward sun-blasted photo I took of the blue plaque on the storefront)

The studio sells a whole bevy of rings associated with the film, from licensed prop replicas to the studio’s own (more subtle) replica rings and engagement designs. All but the licensed prop replica can be engraved with anything you want in Elvish (other languages, too, but c’mon: we’re all here for the Elvish).

I eventually went with a sterling silver ring that cost about $300 and chose the following lines from the first book:

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;

The lines, which I picked out in a Nelson coffee shop served by a barista from Montana on a short work visa, fit perfectly for that phase in my life. I was traveling as a way to lift the depression of my failed career, a wandering that felt purposeful even though I felt pretty lost overall as a person.

The moment I received my engraved ring a week later (back in Auckland, where I started and ended my trip staying with dear friends of mine) and slipped it on my left middle finger, I’ve never taken it off. I sleep with it, shower with it, and consider it a constant companion. I genuinely love it.

(My precious)

However — the joy of the Polygon piece wasn’t just in writing about the One Ring. What I found even more enjoyable and interesting was learning about Jens Hansen himself: a Dutch-born immigrant who saw himself more as a sculptor with a hammer than a jeweler manipulating small pliers. A giant man — his son, Halfdan, described him to me as a Viking — his pieces were large and heavy, geometric and simple in design yet full of power. It’s little wonder that Dan Hennah, the trilogy’s supervising art director, thought of his old friend when they needed a ring of cunning simplicity but great, brooding power.

It’s sad that Hansen never lived to see his work on the big screen, as he died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 59 in August 1999. Although, as both his son Halfdan and Hennah noted, he would have considered the One Ring among the least interesting and important contributions he made to the art of modern metalworking.

(Nelson is so beautiful because the mountains meet the beach in such a gentle way — no massive cliff sides)

So, back to last Sunday, when my editor for this piece shared that they will be turning the Year of the Ring series into a book and that she needed me to sign some image rights paperwork for a screenshot I did of Dan Hennah showing off his wife’s gorgeous (and massive) 1970s-era necklace made by Hansen.

It was so happy to hear that Hansen’s story has new life breathed into it and will be part of its own tangible memento. I’m admittedly not a rabid LOTR fan — I much prefer the movies to Tolkein’s prose, the only time I can remember that I thought the film was better was the books. (Except for Kubrick: I’ve read neither Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey nor more than a few pages of Stephen King’s The Shining, but I am 100% sure I like Kubrick’s work better. He’s my favorite director — as an artiste, not as a person.)

(Speaking of controversial opinions: am I the only person who had the crush on Elijah Wood’s Frodo and not Viggo Mortensen’s Aragorn? Calling all fellow Frodo fangirls/boys/people!)

I’m enough of a Lord of the Rings fan, I hope, to have done justice to the most passionate fans’ love for the books and films — even though my real hope is to do justice to Jens Hansen as a major figure in metal art in New Zealand and beyond. His pieces aren’t just museum-quality: they’re in the collections of the absolutely gorgeous Te Papa Tongarewa/Museum of New Zealand in Wellington.

(Part of the Bush City outdoor exhibit of Te Papa, taken on my trip in 2016)

Having this piece come back into my mind more than two years since it went live has given me a chance to look back on my earlier work as a freelance journalist. I’ve gained so much experience since then, and I can’t help but feel that the piece could be even better were I given the chance to do it again.

Yet, it’s also it’s own artifact of who I was at the time: eager to do well, insecure about my inexperience, nervous every time I submitted something, flushed with relief when editors didn’t want too many changes (Susana, my editor for this piece, barely changed anything and called my draft “lovely”), and totally uncaring about the fact I got paid so little for it (I believe I made about $350 for that piece).

Not all of those traits have gone away, but I’m much less insecure. I don’t take anything personally — except insofar as when I don’t get paid enough or don’t place a story, I experience a very personal effect on my bank account. Reflecting on this story, what I think about the most is the kindness of the sources — especially Dan Hennah — and how I make these lovely connections with people who then drift away from my life so quickly.

I’ve wondered at times about reaching out to sources just to say hello, to let them know that I still appreciate their willingness to spend some of their unpaid time sharing their experiences with me and that I still wonder how they are doing.

I must admit: it’s strange to write all of this, since I’m still new enough in this new career that I feel like I’m Playing Journalist rather than actually doing journalism. I’m definitely a literary scholar living her best life elsewhere and deconstructing the first line of Moby Dick to herself on her walks rather than in front of a classroom. I don’t identify as a journalist in the same way that I do as a lit scholar, because my training for the former is three years of learning by doing with minimal instruction compared to decades of institutionalized education for the latter.

If I had to identify as anything at all, it would be a reader: a close reader. A gal who sees shit in books (and everywhere else). I’ve definitely wandered into this current career. But, as moments like this Year of the Ring book suggest, I’m not as lost as I felt I was when my future as an English professor dried up and disappeared.

I’m put in mind of some of my favorite lines from my favorite poet in high school: T.S. Eliot (sorry bud, you’ve been long eclipsed by Milton; “Prufrock” is still fucking amazing, though). They’re from the “Little Gidding” section of Four Quartets:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

I…just love this. The idea that nothing old is ever truly old, because we are never the same person when we encounter it again. No matter how familiar we think we are with something, there is always something new to see, to understand, to contemplate. The shit remains the same, but we’ve changed. And so there’s always some new shit within it to see.

Recommendations

I’ve been on a bit of a reading kick, and I finished a book that has stuck to my ribs for the last couple days : Yomi Adego’s 2023 The List. The premise is a doozy: a semi-famous (“influencer status”) Black British media couple are a month from their wedding when a list of male abusers in the industry is released — and the husband-to-be is on it. I loved how Adego shows the complexities within a seemingly black-and-white situation, and the twist at the end is quietly delivered but all the more devastating for it. No one is safe in this world.

I have a handful of pieces that I re-read every so often. My favorite is Matthew Engel’s “The Day the Sky Fell In,” which he wrote for The Guardian in 2005. It has my favorite definition of love I’ve ever read. (Content warning: it’s about the death of his teenage son from a rare cancer, so not everyone will feel up to reading it.)

This Week’s Dose of K-Pop: Twice, “I Can’t Stop Me”

I’m a bit on the nose this week with my choice, going for the band named “Twice.” But the song itself is also nicely retro with its 80’s synthesizer sound.

As a group, Twice — which debuted in 2015 — was pigeonholed quite early with an overly cutesy vibe best shown in their cringey (but very popular) song “TT.” This song was one of the first I heard that showed a more mature-up side, so it was the first one that I genuinely liked from the group. It remains one of their best, I think.

So, enjoy the tune, the retro denim fits, and the iconic “risky risky wiki wiki¹ / this is an emergency” rap that has its own page on K-Pop Wiki. (Equally iconic, in my opinion, is Nayeon’s “AAAAHAAHAAHAHH / AHHHHHAAAAAHHHHAAAAA” adlib on the final chorus at 2:36.

Love y’all,
Sara

1. In Korean, “wiki wiki” is “위기 위기,” which means danger or crisis. It makes sense, it just sounds pretty funny.