Good morning. It’s that time of the fortnight again and so here I am, regular as the rising sun (a sun that rises every second Saturday) with my picks of the week. Make some toast and indulge me on a theme.
The other night I watched The Great Beauty in the bath, a film about a handful of people who have spent decades in each other’s orbit, for better and worse. And I thought about the ways we are drawn together. A group of musicians is a band (see the Brian Jones story). A group of artists is a collective (see the Tracey Emin story). A group of pigments is a palette (see the colour story). A group of virus writers is a factory (see the Bulgaria story). A group of people can be, sometimes, a friendship (see this next story).
1. ‘If there are words left, there is also hope’
Azdyne Amimour and Georges Salines both lost a child in the 2015 Bataclan theatre terrorist attack in Paris. Salines’ 28-year-old daughter Lola was at the gig, Amimour’s 28-year-old son Samy was one of the attackers. In the years after, grief, blame and hatred spread their dark tendrils but the two men forged an unlikely friendship, “a small but significant attempt to break the circle and heal the divide”, Sean Rose writes.
“I have evolved in my conception of forgiveness,” Salines tells him. “Now I think we don’t have to be too ambitious about what it means. I think it can simply mean that you no longer seek revenge. And this is a very important distinction, because it’s a way to restore the peace.”
What happened next: The pair have worked together on extremism prevention strategies – workshops, talks and advocating for the return of those already linked to Islamic State, held in detention camps in Syria. Australian citizens also remain there; you can read Ben Doherty’s coverage of these difficult cases.
How long will it take to read: five minutes.
2. ‘We chatted about trains, mainly’
The film-maker Nick Broomfield briefly crossed paths with Brian Jones when he was 14. He was struck, above all, by “how very middle-class, well spoken, polite and accommodating” Jones was. His new portrait of “the most musically gifted Rolling Stone” weighs the angelic ladykiller’s transformation into a moody, sleepy, self-destructive wreck – a story that can be traced back, he tells Sean O’Hagan in this sad and sobering read, to Jones’s “arid” childhood.
A detail to break your heart: Broomfield’s film ends with one of the mothers of Jones’s children reading out a letter to Jones from his father. No one knows if he ever read it.
***
“My dear Brian, we have had unhappy times and I have been a very poor and intolerant father in so many ways. You grew up in such a different way than I expected you to. I was quite out of my depth … I don’t suppose you will ever forgive me, but all I ask is for just a little of that affection you once had for me. This is a very private and personal note so don’t trouble to reply. Love, Dad.”
How long will it take to read: just over six minutes.
3. Bulgaria, 1989: ‘a factory in the Andy Warhol sense’
“In the 1980s, there was no better place than Bulgaria for virus lovers.” How do you not keep reading after an opener like that. If you read on, you’ll find the story of Vesselin Bontchev, a young researcher who became slowly obsessed by computer viruses, and a compatriot who would become “the most dangerous virus writer in the world” – and Bontchev’s bitter enemy.
Scott Shapiro chronicles a country gripped by mania – students writing viruses to get even with their tutors, to surprise their girlfriends, as revenge on their bosses. He delves into the weird Fight Club of the antivirus industry (many “have tinkered with viruses”, no one talks about it). And meets a woman who walked unwittingly into the deepest and most tangled corners of the whole thing. Movie stuff.
Pour one out for Bontchev, deeply disappointed by his first virus: “He imagined something wondrous – self-reproducing computer programs should be elegant, fruits of some esoteric black art. A look under the hood, however, revealed it was not so pretty. Vienna was viciously destructive, but its code was crude and sloppy.”
How long will it take to read: nine minutes.
4. ‘Art has saved me’
Tracey Emin has opened a new show in Rome, two years after getting the all-clear from bladder cancer. Angela Giuffrida describes 15 works that reflect Emin’s “volcano of emotions” – and the burst of focus and vitality the British artist’s recovery has brought with it.
How long will it take to read: a minute.
Further reading: OK, I’ll admit it – this one is an excuse to redirect you to this gorgeous March story about Emin’s new art school, the creative community growing around it, and the profound energy she draws from the collective environment. “I’m going to get old with this,” she told Jonathan Jones. “It’s so much more positive than thinking I’m going to get old and miserable and lonely on my own. I’m not! I’m not! I’m not!”
5. ‘No two people will ever see exactly the same colours’
Current wisdom is that colour doesn’t exist, per se, that it’s all in the eye of the beholder. Or as James Fox writes, “different wavelengths of light do exist independently of us but they only become colours inside our bodies”. I find this quite poetic – like his whole article, actually: a deep dive into the nature of colour, full of facts such as that bees can see ultraviolet light and therefore “elaborate patterns in flowers that we cannot perceive”, or that Ethiopia’s Mursi cattleherders “have 11 colour terms for cows, and none for anything else”.
How long will it take to read: a bit over two minutes.
Further reading: In Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series there’s a shade visible only to wizards and cats: “Octarine … the undisputed pigment of the imagination.” When new elements were discovered in 2016, nerds everywhere signed a petition to name one after it – no dice. Still, they’ll probably find some more soon. Keep fighting the good fight.
I’d love to know what you make of all these stories – and your favourite from the Guardian this week. Feel free to write in: australia.newsletters@theguardian.com
And have a lovely weekend.
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• This article was amended on 15 May 2023 to replace an image that contained unverified caption information.
