3 Things I Loved, April 2026
Since I have this space, I want to keep a record of the things I loved each month. It can be a book, a movie, a song, an album, a manga series, something I saw on TV, or heard, a new recipe I tried, a dish I ate, or even a material object. Why? Because it’s fun to talk and read about beloved things!
So, in April 2026, I got really into:
1. MAD HOPE MAD MUSIC, Hoshino Gen
Hoshino Gen’s music has a special place in my heart, and getting into the reasons why would be a whole essay deserving of its own post, but needless to say I was looking forward to this the moment I heard it would stream on Netflix.
The two-hour programme is a supercut of the entire set of Hoshino Gen’s MAD HOPE concert, filmed at the Osaka performance. Though I had the great fortune to watch the livestream of the final concert of the tour in cinemas last year, this version reveals things that I missed in the theatre livestream, such as the Nintendo Switch played by the live band during Create, as well as a spectacular cut of Mad Hope that blows the (already incredible) YouTube version out the water. Honestly, the entire set is great, but it would be worth it just for the incredible transition from Sayonara to Mad Hope.
Hoshino Gen—singer-songwriter, musician, author, actor, radio personality—stands out to me because of how close he has come to death, how much he has struggled with despair and depression, for his joyous nihilism and how much he doesn’t shy away from the shittiness of the world. This world is hell, the voiceover announces at the start of the concert. So what do we do? Hoshino Gen’s response, having nearly died twice to a subarachnoid haemorrhage, is to keep living. If the world is so shit, just live and find joy where you can, because the alternative is non-existence— devoid of suffering but also of joy. As he writes in Why Don’t You Play in Hell, only those who keep going through the blazing hell spreading out in front of them will overcome their sad memories.
But never mind all that for now. For now enjoy the music and the sight of this man filling Japan’s largest stadiums with the sounds of a jazz saxophone and electric guitar as he sings about how there is no need for hope.
2. The small acts of staying alive
What got me thinking about this was a vlog by a knitter detailing the two weeks she spent on Scotland’s Fair Isle island for an artists’ residency. In modern times, we think of working to live, of making a living— by which I mean, we hold jobs that pay us a salary so we can in turn pay for the things we need for life. But there is also the actual labour of living, the acts we must perform for our lives to continue. In the frigid Fair Isle winter, this was tending the coal stove for heat, keeping the fire burning (to let it go out means death in the cold, the island’s residents remind us), walking to the island’s one grocery store to restock supplies, cooking chicken stew, keeping inventory, and so on.
Coincidentally, I found myself feeling more fulfilled during the weeks of this month where I had to watch the house alone. My mornings became clockwork-busy with the many chores my mother-in-law usually took care of. Watering the plants, taking out the previous day’s rubbish, cooking the dog food, airing out the house and then closing it back up again against squirrels and the day’s heat, slicing fruits before they went bad and putting them in the fridge for later. And it was pleasing beyond belief to finally close up the house for the night, everything done and in its place.
We reduce these acts to “chores” or the euphemistic “care work”, but this is labour needed for making a life. It is work. Yet some reason, it is devalued in favour of paid labour— for work performed in an office, at a desk, in service of some greater capital market rather than the home. Why?
And sure, we can now outsource most of this labour to technology or to others, but what then do we do with the time freed up to us? If we enjoy the small, mundane acts that keep us alive, what else do we need to do?
(And yes, I know paid labour pays for the house in which we perform these acts of living, but I suppose that’s why Hirayasumi starts with and revolves around the inheritance of a house.)
3. A poem from a friend
This is without question what I loved most this month, and something I never expected to receive: a found//fount sonnet written by a dear friend based on a piece of writing I published two years ago.
While I can’t publish the poem in its entirety, I did ask for permission to share my favourite line here:
Am I the shore, the island for him to crash on? Let him be the rolling waves. / Let me watch him come home again in the dark, feet rough on tumbled pebbles,
These lines like the rest of the poem are beautiful, and so are the tender, piercing emotions they evoke. Hope and the gentle pleading (let him; let me) of wanting a loved one’s freedom and safety. The canon-correct imagery of oceans and dark unknowable depths. But more than that is what the poem itself signifies and all the different loves it pays homage to: love for creation, love between friends, love for the written word and poetry, and love for the roots of a friendship formed over fannish love.
What a special gift it is to be read, to be seen, to have your own love reflected back at you with so much love and sensitivity, for creation to beget creation.
30 April 2026