Burntcoat

However! This did leave me with a specific idea that has been referenced over and over again between Erika and I. The titular Burntcoat in the book is a cheap, large warehouse that the artist acquires - it becomes a big studio space for her artwork, and the manager's upper offices in the warehouse become a bohemian apartment for her - barely heated, sparsely furnished, but obviously becomes home over time. This is honestly a kind of dream of ours now: a warehouse to make big ambitious art in, and a spot to crash in for extended periods. We looked very closely at buying a building a couple of years ago for this exact purpose, and it's still on the vision board.

So, in the way that William Gibson can capture a whole idea in a tight phrase (eg CPUs), we now talk about this future space as our Burntcoat.

Noted on February 7, 2026

This is real literary fiction, and on paper sounds like something I'd like. Loopy, meandering first-person story from a woman who makes big weird sculptures! The tough part came as it covered a global flu-like pandemic, and London shut down and just-about-collapsed. It was like the UK version of Covid but worse. It's beautifully written, but it's BRUTAL. Incredible, visceral descriptions of mental illness, sex, and death that are really impressive, but left me wondering how happy I was to actually be reading it.

Noted on September 7, 2022