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vanillacup-cakes · 5 years ago

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This is, by far, the latest I’ve ever written one of my year round-ups, and by far, the messiest post.

2019 was a year guys, so have a really messily written year round up. If I try to tidy it up we’ll be here until December.

TL;DR

2019.

2019 was a year of love; happy, sad, somewhere in between.

My heart got broken.

Hera got married.

My friends are in love.

At the end of the Barat, in Pakistani wedding traditions, the bride goes home with the groom. Any events before that the bride always came home with her family. But for this main event, after the actual marriage contract has been signed, after all the festivities, she goes home with the groom. We took it in turns to hug Hera goodbye, I pushed myself to the back of the queue being the crier of the group.

When I was talking to Hera’s cousin she mentioned that some people have questioned why this little bit of the wedding celebrations causes such emotional responses from the bride’s family and friends, after all, we’ll see her again the next evening for the reception. And it’s not like she’s gone forever, she has just moved out of her parents house. She said that the reason for this was not because we will never see her again but because things will never be the same from that moment on. Not in a good, nor a bad way, it just is.

Changed.

Life changes and when one of your close friends get married it changes your relationship with them. Not that you or they love you/them less, not that you or they are less important, not that you or they care less. It just changes.

it doesn’t even have to be marriage.

In October, one morning in Peak District I was stood in the kitchen of our rented apartment and in front of me were two of my best friends with their other halves going on about their day eating their breakfast. It was a picturesque little scene I tried to capture as a photo, I was scared of ruining the moment though and my sly camera skills were terrible so I just have a blurry evidence of that moment. Throughout that holiday I caught little moments of the two couples, little moments I can’t really describe but you know it when you’re around it, little moments that made my heart swell and hurt at the same time. Because things are different. Things have changed.

Change isn’t bad, it can be really, really good. In fact I hope it’s a really, really, really good change for all of them, I just need a moment to accept that we’re no longer in our early 20s and our lives are going to change a lot before more.

2019 was a year of love; the good, the bad, and the bittersweet.

I started 2019 falling asleep as the fireworks went off. We had gone out for dinner earlier that evening with a friend from work and his missus, to a nice fancy restaurant where desserts are always perfect. I’m not one to go out on New Year’s so I worried that we’d be out long but, fortunately for me, the other couple we’re not up for a long one either so, after dinner, we tried to see if we could grab a couple of drinks in a bar before heading home but, as it was NYE, we had no luck. The other couple went home, we tried a couple more before we gave up and called it a night.

We were falling asleep when the fireworks went off. In our 20s, supposed to be the prime of your life, and I was cuddled up and happily falling asleep before the new year rang in. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

January meant Hamilton and birthday boardgames and lots of ballroom classes. I think this may have been the year that we also started, or tried to, regularly schedule in time for face masks.

Then it was suddenly February and I received the best Valentine’s day card in existence, I continued to dance, finally saw a Footlights performance and even caught a show put on by CUMTS. Cirque du Soleil was okay too…

March was when Amy, Izzy and I decided to start our own tradition, every year, no matter what, we’d get together; us and the boys, with the dogs, or kids or goodness know what else life gives us, we’d meet up. We’d meet up somewhere in the UK for a long weekend, where we’d go for walks and cook dinner, and just overall relax and unwind and catch up with each other. Each year starting that October at the Peak District.

March was when I forgot my water bottle at our last dance class and we had to turn the car around. March was when I got no sleep and still chose to go to work the next day.

For the three months we had worked in the new building together we had never bumped into each other in such close proximity, and then, suddenly, there he was coming out of the showers as I tried to find an empty stall to check how I tired I looked. I smiled, I can’t remember if I said anything but my heart dropped.

March was when I got my promotion and all I wanted to do was tell him.

I gave him his stuff back and I gave him his birthday present; an embossed leather notebook, dotted not lined, perfect for both writing and drawing, he was a design engineer after all.

In July he wished me a happy birthday.

In my head, people judge how much it hurt me when we were only together for nine months. But no one has the right to dictate how you feel.

Back in January, Hera started sending me dance videos, videos she wanted us to learn for her wedding.

By April, the Kate, Olive, Sam and I were in the full swing of Friday on a Monday: Dance Edition. We’d cook a spicy meals (the spice increased in level as we went along, yoghurt or cream became more for taste than for firefighting) then we’d dance. Every Monday, where possible. Sometimes we’d skype Charley, sometimes Charley would be with us in person.

As per usual we celebrated birthdays not in the correct months; Kate’s November was in January in form of birthday boardgames, face masks and hand massages by Olive. Charley’s January was in May in Claydon house where we discussed medieval fayres and the Jane Austen festival, where we sat in a private chapel and spoke as we wished until a lady came into actually pray and we tried our best to exit quietly. Sam gave Olive a piggy back in the gardens and there were some happy screaming and laughter. Olive’s March preceded Charley’s as we went to Bath in May and had ourselves our own very luxurious baths. Preceded and proceeded by enough Sally Lunn buns to feed a small army.

My mum randomly won tickets to Look East festival so Charley and I went on an impromptu trip to London and saw Mumford and Sons live. Next time we’ll be prepared with a picnic blanket and more sunscreen for Charley. Indeed we were more fully prepared a month later for West End Live, armed with a cool bag full of food and drinks. What we weren’t prepared for, though, was the vast amount of people queueing. We knew it was popular and we knew there would be a long queue but we didn’t quite anticipate just how big. Having said that, after we admitted defeat we found a little section to the side of Trafalgar square with deck chairs facing a huge screen live streaming the whole event. We didn’t get seats straightaway but sure enough a family with kids left slightly earlier. Instead of standing under the sun for hours on end, Charley and I sat on our deck chairs in the shade in a lovely June day eating our food and drinking to our heart’s content. We decided that in 2020, we’d just do the exact same. We also come out wanting to watch ever single musical there was.

Speaking of getting the right picnic spot, we are starting to have this ‘Singing on the river’ thing down; picnic blankets a plenty, napkins, cutleries, takeaway for dinner by the river listening to the wonderful King’s men perform renditions of old and new songs. It’s a Cambridge tradition we just can’t miss.

We did try to keep up monthly dinners in 2019; we went to Varsity, The Red Lion and Petersfield before we had to suspend the dinners as it was time to fly to Pakistan.

After the vaccinations were done, after the visas were sorted, after all the clothes were bought, after all the make-up and hair trials were done, after all suitcases were packed, after all the dances were mastered (somewhat), after the incredibly long wait to see Hera again it was time to get in the taxi and slowly but surely make our way to the train station. Slowly because we had a flat tyre. But it was going to be faster to get on a slow car than wait for another taxi.

For months on end, as a group, we all had a phrase “After Pakistan”. The amount of things we said we’d do ‘after Pakistan’ and suddenly we were there. Suddenly it was all gone.

I’m not sure life kept going after Pakistan, you know.

And yet it did. I came back to work with my new manager fully into the swing of things, nothing had exploded and everything was still chugging along. Suddenly I was being invited to more meetings and prospects of going business trips became a thing.

I also started sewing classes, along with Olive and Sarah. I stopped ballroom classes and continued with krav maga.

In October, Amy and Tom picked me up in Cambridge and we all drove to Bakewell together to meet Izzy and Zack. The weather could have been nicer to us but it was the UK in October, we should have known better. So off we went, in the rain, walking down an old railroad track (we did consider cycling but that got confusing and expensive), climbing hills for loo breaks and risking ankles and necks for a hope of a nice warm lunch only to be disappointed because pubs in the middle of nowhere is far and few in between and only serve food at specified hours. Having walked for hours with a small amount of sustenance we took the taxi home and enjoyed a meal at the apartment instead.

In November, we flew to Bulgaria and what an experience it was. Beautiful sceneries and definitely a hidden gem, but take it from me, don’t take the jeep up the mountain. Find a different mountain, there’s plenty. Explore the gorgeous towns preserved to their original glory and feel like you’ve been transported back in time. Try the local cuisine! Dress up in traditional Bulgarian outfits, it’ll make a wonderful family photo.

That same month, Hera visited England again. For a mere few days she stayed in Cambridge and we tried to make the most of it as possible. Butch Annie’s was obviously a requirement. And at last, once again, Kate’s November birthday was celebrated in November. In a once in a lifetime opportunity where all six of us were finally back together again to tackle not one, not two but three escape rooms! We got out of every single one of them. No biggie! But just like that, we were all split up again.

But no rest for the wicked because the very next day I was off to Austria on a business trip. My first ever business trip. It wasn’t all work and no play, in fact, at one point we were chucked out of the office so we can explore Vienna further so we did. We went to Christmas market after Christmas market and I stocked up on Christmas baubles and Christmas presents. My favourite bauble though? Came from the Bury St Edmunds Christmas Fayre. I’ll be on the look out for you again next year!

Before long it was December. With all the hubub of 2019 and the hubub that 2020 will bring (in form of a NYE party) I decided it was best if we had someone else cook for us for Friends Christmas. Secret Santas were exchanged and extra sticky toffee puddings were ordered, no dishes were cleaned by our hands that evening,

And then it was time to party. 1920’s themed party to ring in the 2020’s…

When I really think about it 2019 was one helluva year. So much has changed, so much will change. There isn’t one month similar to the one before, it’s terrifying. Growing up is terrifying. Changes are terrifying.

But we have to bury broken hearts and raise a glass to falling in love, we have to hug memories goodbye and smile at the new ones. We have to accept things won’t be the same but that’s not a bad thing. There are still songs to dance to and movies to cry at, rooms to escape and snacks to share. They’ll always be there no matter what… no matter what 2020 will bring.

#personal #end of year #end of year 2019 #yes I have written this as if I don't know what's happening in 2020 already

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sweetdreamsjeff · 5 years ago

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That Was So Real: Jeff Buckley's Collaborators Tell The Story Behind 'Grace'

8/23/2019 by Steven Edelstone

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the album is being reissued today alongside the release of four full live sets.

“Hey remember that riff you played me at your parents’ place when we were playing guitar on your bed?”

It was April 1994 and singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley’s classic debut album, Grace -- which turns 25 today (Aug. 23), and is being celebrated with a major reissue via Columbia/Legacy Recordings -- was essentially done, set to come out in just a few months. Buckley, then 27, had recently enlisted his friend Michael Tighe, just 19 at the time, to play guitar in his live band as he was gearing up for what would become a grueling, almost two-year world tour.

He convened the rest of his band, made up of bassist Mick Grøndahl and drummer Matt Johnson, to record some B-sides at Sony Studios in Midtown, Manhattan. It was Tighe’s first rehearsal and it began with Buckley asking him to play a guitar riff he showed him at his parents’ place in the West Village about a year and a half prior.

The song quickly became “So Real,” a track that would eventually be situated at the heart of Grace, a stunning alt-rock track that would break up the hushed fingerpicked guitars of “Lilac Wine” and “Hallelujah" -- the latter of which has remained in the public memory long after his death, and still serves as the introduction to his back catalogue to many.

“I played it, and he got behind the drums and started singing the melody to the chorus, and we kind of knew it was something special,” Tighe remembers. “We did the instrumental and that night, he just took a long walk around Hell’s Kitchen and came back and had the lyrics and the melody for the verses and he laid it all down in like two takes. Afterwards, he was like, ‘I want this song to go on the album.’”

“When Jeff took what he did and put his vocals on it and his lyrics, I couldn’t believe it,” Johnson adds. “I thought it was unbelievable. I was like, ‘Oh my god, this guy is amazing!’ I loved what he did, and I was so impressed with the way his melody was so unimaginable, given the instrumental track. In a million years I never would have thought about that.”

But there was one issue: Buckley wanted to add “So Real” to the tracklist in the place of “Forget Her,” a sorrowful and dark, yet direct song that higher ups at the label, including producer Andy Wallace, wanted as the lead single. Buckley now wanted it to remain unreleased entirely.

“It’s the one thing with the album that I wasn’t happy with, that “Forget Her” was left off -- because it was absolutely intended to be part of the album,” Wallace explains, noting that the song was 100% done at the time. “I remember we took him out to dinner, Don [Ienner, Chairman of Sony Music Label Group], Steve [Berkowitz, A&R executive at Columbia who signed Buckley], and me. If I recall correctly, the main point of that dinner was, ‘Reconsider Jeff, blah blah blah.’ He was adamant, and God bless him, he stuck to his guts.”

Jeff Buckley's Manager On Why He Waited 21 Years To Release Memoir: 'It's Raw To This Day'

For as great as the ultra-personal “Forget Her” was -- the song was eventually given a legitimate release years after Buckley’s tragic 1997 death on the Grace (Legacy Edition) compilation in 2004 -- it wasn’t necessary to launch the New York-based singer from legendary local live act to a worldwide cult phenomenon. Though the album was dogged by slow sales Stateside, eventually peaking at No. 149 on the Billboard 200 albums chart almost a year after its release (he was initially much more successful in Europe and especially in Australia), it was eventually certified Platinum by the RIAA in 2016, 22 years after it hit record stores.

Now, 25 years after its release, the album is being reissued by Columbia/Legacy Recordings, complete with the release of four full live sets: Live at Wetlands, New York, NY 8/16/94; Live From Seattle, WA, May 7, 1995; Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, May 13, 1995; and Live at Columbia Records Radio Hour.

But what became Grace was almost a radically different sounding album. Signed on the strength of his renowned residency at the now-closed East Village venue Sin-é, which saw Buckley perform a wide array of covers and original material each Monday night beginning in April 1992, Columbia initially mulled the idea of a debut release that would have reflected the sparse, solo-electric spirit of the shows, which were marked by his sense of humor and incredible crowdwork (check out his mini cover of Pakistani legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, sung over the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” riff). Though some songs in that vein would make the eventual album -- his covers of “Hallelujah” and “Lilac Wine,” originally by Leonard Cohen and James Shelton (and made popular by Nina Simone and Eartha Kitt), respectively, were the most prominent examples -- Buckley, as well as Wallace and Berkowitz, decided to go in a different direction.

“He wanted to do a band album; he didn’t want to do a solo thing,” Wallace says, who has since worked with Coldplay, Paul McCartney, and The Strokes, amongst dozens of other high profile bands. “There was some talk about that, whether it was best to do something that reflected what he was doing at Sin-é, because he was so good at it. It’s hard to do a full album of just the solo thing, especially because so much of his magic had to do with his persona and his live interaction with the audience. That’s virtually impossible to capture on a record, at least with the same impact.”

The label agreed on the condition that they would put out an EP recording of one of the Sin-é gigs, which was later stretched out into a full LP in 2003. Released in late 1993, it included two originals, as well as stunning renditions of Van Morrison’s “The Way Young Lovers Do” and his take on an old French song, “Je n’en connais pas la fin.” This served as a way to introduce Buckley to an audience outside of Lower Manhattan, hint that more music was on the way, and allow him to pursue forming a real band.

“He just always wanted to be in a band, that was his dream,” Tighe says, who has since written songs alongside Andrew Wyatt for Liam Gallagher, and worked with Adele. “He idolized Led Zeppelin and the chemistry that bands have -- to a degree, the family unit that a band has. I think he really wanted that for a long time.”

Though he now had a trio, made up of Grøndahl, Johnson, and himself, to record with -- Tighe wasn’t added until the recording sessions were largely completed -- Wallace still wanted Buckley to record a bevy of paired-down solo versions of all of the songs. Most nights while recording in Bearsville, New York, a small town in the Catskills, Wallace would have him go out to the live room after dinner -- maybe with a glass of wine -- and perform his Sin-é gig without stopping.

Live Jeff Buckley Recordings Will Soon Be Available for Streaming

It was in this setting that Buckley was most relaxed (“He definitely seemed like he was most comfortable when he was playing live in general,” Tighe believes), and it allowed him to unwind a bit, while still recording. This is one of the main reasons why so much solo material has been released since his death on various legacy albums and compilations: There’s a still-unreleased version of “Hallelujah” with an extended minor key intro floating around somewhere, Wallace says.

While a lot of the song arrangements were hammered out in pre-production rehearsals, this was an incredibly new band, very much still feeling each other out. Some of these songs were born in the recording studio, including “Dream Brother” -- which, like “So Real,” was marked by the instrumental track being recorded before Buckley had even written the lyrics or melody.

“My musicianship I wouldn’t say was great at the time, but I did feel like I was resonant with Jeff emotionally -- and just in terms of the raw quality of listening to music as music,” Johnson remembers, now the drummer for St. Vincent since 2011. “The depth of his listening showed me how to play music in many ways. The sensitivity to his voice… It was kind of scary sometimes. I felt like a bull in a china shop. I felt like I wasn’t good enough to be in his band. It was formative, and it made me who I am.”

Song after song was then cranked out in that big, ambient room in Upstate New York. From the wild quiet-loud dynamics of “Mojo Pin” to the magical Kerl Berger-arranged strings on “Last Goodbye,” it was obvious that they were working on something extraordinary.

“There’s never a turning point where a light goes on, and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, this is an incredible album!’” Wallace says. “But I can remember the first time that I really went, ‘Wow, this is not just a young guy with a great voice and a great ability to entertain an audience. It was probably the first time I went to see him at Sin-é and he played ‘Grace,’ which I had never heard before... I remember very specifically, looking over at [Buckley’s manager] George [Stein], ‘Where did that song come from? I’ve never heard that!’ And he said, ‘Oh that’s one of Jeff’s originals.’ That was the first time I felt, ‘Wow, there’s something really special going on.’”

The album would take Buckley and his band around the world multiple times over, even returning to play the same metro areas multiple times in the same year to develop his fanbase, with a heavy investment by Columbia. Always the consummate live performer, Buckley would sometimes leave his own bandmates stunned.

“There would be some nights where he would do some things with his voice where it would completely blow me away,” Tighe remembers. “The thing about performing with him is that he managed to cast a spell over the audience and because of that voice he had, he did the same with the band members. It was like we were in a bit of a trance most of the time. He really had that kind of power to his voice.”

If anything, those around him remember Buckley most for his passion and his sense of humor. Whether it was seeing him light up when meeting his hero, Jimmy Page, after a show at a beautiful theatre in Melbourne or just joking around in the tour van, he had a sensitive and magnetic personality that lives on in everyone that knew him personally.

“There’s a line in one of his songs on [the posthumous release, Sketches for] My Sweetheart the Drunk, ‘I miss my beautiful friend,’” Wallace says, tearing up over the phone as he recites the lyric from “Morning Theft.” “Every time I think of that, I miss my beautiful friend. And I’ve never stopped missing him.”

#Jeff Buckley #That Was So Real: Jeff Buckley's Collaborators Tell The Story Behind 'Grace'#the story behind grace #release of four full live sets #Grace reissued #Grace 25th anniversary

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frenchibi · 6 years ago

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top 5 books

Hello friend!!!! This is areally really tough question bc I read so many different genres and have SOMANY FAVORITES so I’m going to cheat a little bit… I’ll give you Top3 or 4 (I have no impulse control) for several genres so you’ll get more than 5total but not like.. an inordinate number of books, ok? xD (Who am I kidding I’mgoing off the rails, no apologies)

Fantasy

The Name of the Wind(Kingkiller Chronicles Book 1) and sequel(s) by Patrick Rothfuss. Has beentalked about loads in fantasy circles and I have nothing to add other than“this is the best fantasy book I have ever read, and probably in the top 3 ofbest books I have ever read, period.” The style blew me a way, the characters are fantastic, the system of magic/power in this world is the coolest I have EVER SEEN and… yeah. I’m invested.

Howl’s Moving Castleand sequel(s) by Diana Wynne Jones. Y’all remember the ghibli movie? This isthe book this is based on and it is way, way better than the already fantasticmovie. It is ridiculously charming and witty and lovely and I recommendeveryone read it. You will not regret it. This is my ultimate comfort book, if that makes any sense.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett – a hilarious bookabout the apocalypse with absolutely amazing characters and incredible styleand wit. We’re getting a TV series this year and I am beyond stoked. Pleaseread this. It’s… just… yes. British fantasy is SO GOOD.

Honorable mention: Die Stadt der TräumendenBücher by Walter Moers. Theremight be an English translation of this, but honestly I only recommend you readthis if you can read it in its original German – I’m not gatekeeping, it’s justthat so much of its brilliance relies on in-depth knowledge about German culture,history and language and it’s inevitably gonna lose that in translation. It’sone of my absolute favorite books ever and it pains me I can’t share this withmy English-speaking friends :/

The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking Book 1) by Patrick Ness. It’shands down the coolest YA book I have ever read and it doesn’t even… feel likeYA at all, more like sci-fi? It could just as easily have gone in the “experimental”category and I don’t wanna give too much away but… the typeface of this book ispart of its charm? Different characters have different fonts and shit? Definitelyread a physical copy of this. Also, the narrator is illiterate so he writeswords by sounding them out – and I know that sounds like that would bedistracting but trust me it’s fantastic??? Please please PLEASE give this atry.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley. Y’all want a good queerstory that’s not romance-heavy but instead has intricate worldbuilding and really cool magic? Pleaseread this, you will not be disappointed. This is a more “adult” version of YoungAdult Fiction and I absolutely love it.

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab. Is this fantasy, actually? Probably. Does it haveissues? Yes. Is it still a very fun ride with a cool magic/power system? HELLYES. Also the characters are a bit older, which works very well. It’s like YAafter you’ve kind of outgrown YA.

Murder/Mystery

The Strings of Murder (& sequels in the “Frey & McGray” series) by Oscar de Muriel –listen, the main character is a little SHIT and that’s absolutely fine? Themysteries are kind of convoluted but not in a distracting way, it’s just a funseries with fun characters that I really enjoyed!

The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie (and honestly pretty much everything she has everwritten) – I have nothing to say about Agatha Christie that has not been saidbefore :’D

Phantom bySusan Kay. Now this is kind of also a drama and it’s been a while since I’veread it so idk how well it fits into the murder/mystery category but it’s aboutthe Phantom of the Opera before he became the actual Phantom (or rather, thepath to how he became the Phantom), and I have endless love for this verydramatic and mysterious and misunderstood character so… yeah :D

Collections of Short Stories

Topics About Which I Know Nothing by Patrick Ness. Yes, this is the author of “ChaosWalking” (see above), and this is a collection of a VAST variety of shortstories he has written, all of which are insanely creative and so, so fun??This man has an insane imagination and I love it, instant recommendation toanyone honestly.

Dear Life byAlice Munro – another one that I read a while ago and don’t remember that muchabout, but I remember absolutely loving this book, and that it’s one of thebooks that made me want to read more short story collections :D

The Refugeesby Viet Thanh Nguyen – an interesting bit of perspective, this book centersaround different characters who are Vietnamese or of Vietnamese descent in theUnited States. I loved how eye-opening it was tbh?? I love reading books byauthors from cultures vastly different from my own and this was wonderful.

Poetry/Experimental

Milk and Honey / The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur – two collections of very personaland touching modern formless poetry that honestly blew me away. I’m not a bigfan of classic poetry, or poetry in general, but these two books are justincredible.

Good morning, Good night by Lin-Manuel Miranda – a collection of Lin’s “good morning”/ “goodnight” tweets that, idk, give me hope for humanity? Ideal for perusing if youneed cheering up and just an all-round wholesome book to own.

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn – a “novel without letters” I wouldn’t know where to placeexcept under “experimental” because its premise is basically… an island thatslowly bans more and more letters from everyday use? It’s told in the form ofletters between the characters and it’s just… such a FEAT of writing, the waythe author forces his characters (and himself) to get by with fewer and fewerletters of the alphabet? Fascinating, from a writer’s perspective, and anabsolute recommendation!!!

Sleeping Giants (Book 1 of the Themis Files) by Sylvain Neuvel. This is a sci-fi book,but it’s under “experimental” because, well – it’s told through interviews. Iwas a little confused/put off in the beginning by this style, but the jaw-droppingstory pulled me in and hooked me. It’s a sci-fi EPIC… don’t get too attached toanyone because the apocalypse is coming for them all - and you’ll be at theedge of your goddamn seat. This is a fantastic series.

Drama

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Honestly, anything by Khaled Hosseini, unsurpassedauthor of dramas that will rip your heart to shreds, and you’ll never be thesame after reading them.

Everything I never told you by Celeste Ng. This is one of those books that will never leave you afteryou’ve read it. It starts with “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” –unravelling the mystery and consequences of the death of a Chinese-Americanfamily’s teenage daughter in gut-wrenching detail. A family story that willleave you sobbing on the floor but also filled with such profound hope forhumanity – I don’t even know. This book eviscerated me.

Homegoing byYaa Gyasi – the story of two sisters, one a slave and the other a slave-owner’swife, and their descendants. A family history of choices and consequence thatis… raw and personal and a very, very important book.

Home Fire byKamila Shamsie. The story of a British-Pakistani family – more specifically,the story of three children whose father was a terrorist. I am weak for familystories, and this one is politically charged and relevant and gut-wrenching aswell.

Novels/Fiction

The Hours byMichael Cunningham. The first book I read in a stream-of-consciousness style,and I still really enjoy the plot of it, too: The story follows three women;Virginia Woolf writing a novel in the 1920s, a woman reading this novel in the40s, and a woman basically living the plot of this novel in the 90s. It’sfascinating, really? I highly recommend it.

The History of Bees by Maja Lunde. Another story told in three time periods – a man whoinvents a new type of beehive for beekeepers in the 1800s, a beekeeper whosebees are dying in approximately present day, and a woman 100 years in thefuture who pollinates plants by hand because all the bees have vanished. It’s…fascinating, again, and a really good story. I also feel like it was quiteeducational? I enjoyed it a lot.

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult. Technically this is a drama too (but shh) – it followsa black delivery nurse who is charged with a serious crime after an incidentinvolving the baby of a White Supremacist couple. It’s an explosive topic butit’s handled with a lot of nuance? Reading this book will frustrate you greatly,but I think it’s… idk, important? It shook me.

Eyrie by TimWinton. I have never seen depression portrayed more accurately than in thisbook. I was highlighting passages on almost every page – also the style ispretty cool? Snappy? Sharp? I’m not good at describing it but… yeah this leftan impact.

Non-Fiction (listen I knowthese are all by youtubers but hear me out)

So Much I want to Tell You by Anna Akana – letters written by Anna to her sister, who committedsuicide when she was 13. It’s raw and personal and important, stories aboutpersonal growth and lessons learned, about grief and regret and moving on. Irecommend this 100%.

Secrets For The Mad by Dodie Clark. A collection of charming stories and anecdotes and songlyrics and doodles – a book that reads like what watching dodie’s music videos andvlogs feels like. Safe and soft and personal. I love this.

Doing It byHannah Witton – a book about sex education that honestly everyone should read.Hannah blazes through taboos like they’re nothing more than hot air – as theyshould be. (Also, watch her videos.)

Bonus

The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho. I don’t even know what category to put this in? It reads like a fable and it is just... so beautiful and enchanting. Please read it, you will not be disappointed. It’s a story of chasing your dreams and self-discovery and it’s... just wonderful.

Did I make this entire listas a means of procrastination? Yes. Am I sorry? No.

Listen I have been wantingto blog about books for the LONGEST TIME but I never took the time to because…idk, I am not involved with the book reviewer community on any platform andhonestly I’m intimidated? But I do have a lot of Thoughts so if you’ve read anyof these and want to yell about them with/at me please dm me??? Or send me anask if you want to hear more detailed opinions about any of these from me????

…yeah. Thank you for this question,man. I love books.

Send me “top 5″ of anything and I’ll respond with my favorites!!!

#French speaks #books #book recs #rec #answered #ask me stuff

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layaltheblogger2019 · 5 years ago

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A compilation of your favorite songs this semester: what experiences do they remind you of? when you like to listen to them?

A year in music

Aka freshman year was pretty wild.

Note: I’ve linked the music that I mention to start at around the time the quoted lyrics start playing but feel free to listen to the songs from the beginning!

Music. Whether you’re the kind of person that rarely listens or the kind that always has a soundtrack playing in your head, you can’t deny that music is sort of everywhere you go. I myself am not a very regular listener, but I can appreciate a good chorus or beat when I hear it. When I listen to music, I close my eyes and allow myself to be carried away by the poetry of the lyrics and pulled under by the hidden meanings of certain verses. When I listen to music, I envelop myself in a song like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and invariably attach a feeling, person, or life event to it. Particularly when I am at the highs and lows of the sine graph that is my life do I look to music to find some way to explain how I feel.

Freshman year at MIT was one of the craziest sine curves I could have ever imagined; it was one of the most life-changing years of my life. I transformed so much that there were times I didn’t recognize the girl in the mirror. I morphed in such a way that sometimes others didn’t recognize me. I made a lot of mistakes. But I also grew up, became more experienced, found my identity, and blazed my own trail. This is my freshman year in music:

September – Phone by Mickey Singh Making new friends

I was in Aliza’s room. After a good venting session on my part and some delicious pudding, courtesy of her snack shelf, we each began to work on our own assignments and responsibilities, her at her desk, me sitting on her bed. She asked if she could play music, to which I agreed. There were awkward pauses in the flow of interaction between us, but it was endearing, as is typical on the path of new friendship. Everything was quite normal, until a song I didn’t recognize began to play. It was poppy; it was intriguing. And it was in a different language. ‘Do you want me to skip this’, she asked quickly. ‘My YouTube is on autoplay and it automatically played desi music’. As it stood in that moment, we were two people from unlike backgrounds who didn’t know that much about each other yet. I was an Arab from Florida, she, a Pakistani from New Jersey. I hesitated momentarily before I replied with ‘no, I like it’. And I did like it.

Little did I know that this would become a common soundtrack throughout my fall, a beat that reminded me of my first naïve but confident steps into independence. A beat that reminded me of true happiness and freedom. A beat that reminded me of my first, wonderful group of friends.

October – My Blood by Twenty One Pilots Making a home somewhere new

Homesickness. If you asked me in December, freshman fall was like heaven on earth. At least that’s how it felt like when it was ending. But near its beginning, I wasn’t totally happy. I missed home, my family, and my friends. Everyone I loved was together back in Florida, I was much further north. It was colder here, lonelier here. Sometimes I got impatient that I wasn’t good at conversation, that I somehow couldn’t make as many friends, that I couldn’t figure out my academics, that I just couldn’t do anything—as well as my peers could.

I just felt at a loss sometimes.

Stay with me, no, you don't need to run Stay with me, my blood, you don't need to run

(I may be biased because I went to a Twenty One Pilots concert at the end of October)

November – Still Feel by Half Alive Making it through

I was kind of killing it: getting psets done, practicing swimming (to pass the boat test), going to the gym. This was the beginning of what I guess I could call my sprint to the finish. I had my life together – for like the first two weeks anyway.

But then I was barely holding on. Psets were crammed hours before they were due, swimming turned into sinking, and things weren’t going too well. Then I found a medium place, where I was just making it. I was half alive, and I was okay with that.

I still feel alive When it is hopeless, I start to notice And I still feel alive Falling forward, back into orbit

That’s what November felt like.

December – Castle on the Hill by Ed Sheeran Made it

December was hugs farewell and tying loose ends. December was last assignments and final exams. December was crossing the finish line with a second to spare. December was the feeling of belonging somewhere. (And then shortly after, having to leave it)

I said goodbye to a good friend, Samar along with a few others as we drove her to the airport, Castle on the Hill playing in the background. I made a semester recap video to the same song, which brought back nostalgia for times I had only experienced a few weeks prior.

Found my heart and broke it here Made friends and lost them through the years And I've not seen the roaring fields in so long, I know I've grown But I can't wait to go home

And going home for winter break, my last view of MIT in 2018 was a room filled with people I really cared about, all playing the same game, eating pizza and laughing, all smiling and waving back at me.

Since when could you feel homesick for two places at once?

January –What You Know by Two Door Cinema Club Making a new path

I don’t remember much about January except that it was very cold and very dark. Over IAP, I was still surrounded by the warmth and light of friends who were here, and I was also taking more classes than humanly possible. This song reminds me of waking up on a lazy and dim IAP morning, looking at the gray sky and frosty-covered outside as it snowed, wrapped up in navy bedsheets.

February –100 Bad Days by AJR Making mistakes

A rough start to a semester. But it’s too early to give up isn’t it?

When all is going wrong and you're scared as hell What you gonna do? Who you gonna tell? Maybe a hundred bad days made a hundred good stories A hundred good stories make me interesting at parties

March – Connection by OneRepublic Making choices

Things are moving too fast, I’m changing too fast, there’s so much to do and so much to think about. I don’t know what I’m doing. I am an impostor. I wish I could take a break. I need help. Who do I turn to? Why do I feel like such a burden?

Maybe I should try to find the old me Take me to the places and the people that know me Tryin’ to disconnect, thinking maybe you could show me If there’s so many people here, then why am I so lonely? Can I get a connection? Can I get, can I get a connection?

April – Viva La Vida by Coldplay Making progress

There was one very special Sunday in April. I made time with some others to go to Revere Beach. And to say it was a welcome distraction from the stress is an understatement. We were there for maybe a collective hour, but the entirety of the trip gave me a feeling of love I didn’t know I needed. Self love. Love of nature. Love from others. Love for others. Loving the small moments of bliss and joy that I can get in these busy times.

On our way there, we sat in the car singing along to the sound of nostalgia, laughing our responsibilities away, and putting our arms out the window to feel the wind on our skin: all to feel something again.

And once we were driving on a bridge we heard this:

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing Roman Cavalry choirs are singing Be my mirror, my sword and shield My missionaries in a foreign field For some reason I can’t explain Once you go there was never, never a honest word And that was when I ruled the world

For a brief moment, we did rule the world. All of us in that car. That is what happiness feels like when you most need it.

May – Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol Breaking down

May was hugs farewell and tying loose ends. May was last-minute projects and final exams. May was crossing the finish line with two seconds to spare. May was loss, heartbreak, and unstoppable tears.

Aliza was killed by a drunk driver shortly after we all said goodbye to her for the summer. We didn’t realize how long we’d be saying goodbye for.

The night before she left MIT to go home we got late night from Maseeh dining and then, because of the beautiful weather, decided to sit on the sidewalk, right between Maseeh and McCormick. And we sat there for a wonderous half hour. I had a final the next morning, but the weather was too good, the company even better. We could see the remains of the full moon in our periphery. We didn’t know what would happen when the sun rose, but we focused on the cool breeze on our faces, the stars in our eyes. I never wanted to leave.

If I lay here If I just lay here Would you lie with me and just forget the world? Forget what we're told Before we get too old Show me a garden that's bursting into life

I am so lucky to have met her.

June (encore) – Good Grief by Bastille Making it through life, one step at a time

A summer in Boston that I put together very last minute, my life is slowly rebuilding. It’s a mess, but what life isn’t? I’m nervous to see the outcome, and I worry about tomorrow before I get through today. What can I do except try my best then hope it all works out?

Watching through my fingers, watching through my fingers In my thoughts you're far away And you are whistling the melody, whistling the melody Crystallizing clear as day Oh, I can picture you so easily, picture you so easily What's gonna be left of the world if you're not in it? What's gonna be left of the world, oh Every minute and every hour I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more Every stumble and each misfire I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more

(I still miss you)

Since my freshman year has ended, I haven’t really been able to slow down and reflect on everything that has happened. Until I sat in front of my computer to write this.

From where I stand now, I know things will get better again. Then they will inevitably get worse. It’s kind of how sine graphs flow. But I am the producer of my own track, I am the composer of my life symphony. There are three more years of new people to meet, interesting classes to take, difficult problems to face, and melodies for me to piece together. And once it’s all over, I can’t wait to take a look at what has been created. Once it’s all over, I can’t wait to press play.

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heheals · 6 years ago

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y’all don’t need to read this, this is me just explaining why i love rizwan ahmed so darn much

aight, so ??? i first discovered riz as a rapper back in 2016. like ... i didn’t even know the dude was the actor in those rogue one interview clips bc i didn’t watch rogue one until like a solid year after its release. i heard him on the hamilton mixtape, and then it all kind of clicked for me, and i was like, “hold up, i’d like to know more about this guy.” so i ended up watching a ton of his interviews, and i became a fan of his without ever watching any of his acting because i really enjoyed how candid he was about how his national, religious, and ethnic identities did not contradict each other. i then like ... forgot about him. somehow. for a few months. i re-remembered him after watching rogue one in march 2017. i then proceeded to uh. forget him. again.

recently, you know, i rediscovered him since i figured, “ah, what the hey, i’ve seen his rap battle with james corden a few times already, so i might as well listen to his solo rap music.” uhhh i then proceeded to fall in love with him because he resonated with me. which is a crazy process that demonstrates how all everything we experience is a result of that humanity we share because there’s no reason for the words of a muslim british pakistani man in his 30s to mirror the life experiences of a 20 year-old christian chinese american girl. and like. the way he described depression ? it hit me hard because, y’know, that’s me. i hadn’t felt like anyone else had gotten me that hard in a while. and some of the bits of double lives reminded me of not only the general false dichotomy of western vs. eastern, but a relationship that had recently ended. in my journal, i’d copied down his lines it all gets deep when your demons don’t let you sleep / and your girl is a heathen.

yeah. so. the reason i love him is because when i look at him, even though we in no way look the same ( i’m not about to grow a beard ), he’s still out there, repping people like me. and he’s succeeding, in both asian success (upward economic mobility, brilliant education) and western success (upward economic mobility, personal accomplishment). i’m inspired constantly by the clever ways in which he imparts his very, very human experiences. he’s someone who i do look up to ... because he did it. he’s not the western conventional kind of beauty, but he’s romanced several girls on television and film. he’s a funny actor and a serious actor, and he’s also a rapper who wears stupid shirts. and he’s also that guy from wembley and that oxford alum, with his economics degree. i don’t know. he just does it. knowing that he’s made it and continuing to make it makes me so excited, and i hope we get to see more of that in the future.

#tbd.#imma delete this later whoops #long post for ts #✧ ✦ ▌ i’ll do what i must if i’m bold in real time / ooc

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concertcrack · 3 years ago

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Mary Jennings & Ali Aslam LIVE at Rockwood Music Hall

Mary Jennings doesn’t shy away from her emotions. She is absolutely vulnerable in her music and equally so when she performs live. She performed in New York City (where she used to live and appear frequently) for the first time in 6 years at the Rockwood Music Hall on July 23rd, where she packed in a crowd of devoted fans who came to hear her share her most impassioned album yet, “Matriarch.” She shared the stage with the talented Ali Aslam, with whom she collaborated on “Hard” and befriended during quarantine through a Zoom open mic she has hosted every Monday since the spring of 2020.

The venue was packed in, people from wall to wall. The wait staff couldn’t even move around. Mary proved to be a popular artist, and no wonder. Her music is honest and her performance is collaborative. It felt like talking to an old friend. I knew her somehow. She was friendly and humorous which made her stage presence all the more inviting. What was most unique was that she made music right in front of us. Like Ed Sheeran does live, she employed a loop pedal that allowed her to be her own band. We watched her creative process; it was like we were all let in on a secret.

She sang six songs from her new album “Matriarch” and didn’t hold anything back. You could feel the passion and rawness in her music which was infectious to the audience. Everybody cried at least once during her performance. She was inspired a lot by COVID and its effects on society and herself. She writes the best music when she feels the most pain and anguish and COVID really brought that out.

It was a privilege to see her perform. When she returns to New York City, I would like to see her again. She has this presence that makes you feel safe and welcome even though you may not know her or her music. She is warm and kind and a beautiful woman all around. We hope she returns soon and will be listening to “Matriarch” on repeat until then.

How did it feel to perform live again? How was this time different, if at all?

To say it felt like magic would be an understatement. I feel so lucky that we’ve had access to livestreaming during this isolation but nothing compares to the energy of performing in person. There was a sea of both old and new faces but everyone felt like family that night. I don’t know that I have ever cried that much on and off stage. It was just awesome. In so many ways it was “just like old times” because Rockwood has become a second home to me over the years, but this felt different because of the longing. I have missed all of these people so much. I have missed playing live shows. I think we all just missed so much over the last year and at least that night we got a lot of it back.

Which song of Ali's was your favorite in this show?

OH my gosh I can’t choose! All of them because they became my soundtrack for the entirety of 2020! To hear them live elevated everything. If I had to choose though, it would be “Hold Me Close.” Not only is it one of my favorites, but Rachel Epp and I got to sing backup vocals with him on this. We have sung backup from our homes (on mute of course) through the Zoom open mic for ages so to get to actually sing with him was pure joy. How I made it through without sobbing is still beyond me.

I understand you have "known" each other a long time and collaborated with an open mic via Zoom all through the pandemic but you had never met until this very special show. (if you BOTH want to collectively answer this that would be GREAT!)

Correct! We had never met in person but had become friends, support systems and advocates for not only each other’s music but for each other in general. Eliza (my 5-year-old-daughter) also feels like she knows Ali from listening to his music, seeing him on the open mic, and just hearing us talk about him around the house. I think without the distractions of life, crowded bars, work, etc, all of us on the Zoom open mics were all able to connect on such a very deep level of friendship that we wouldn’t trade for anything. We became a family without ever meeting in person. The bond that we all built during 2020 created friendships that will last the rest of our lives. Many of the Richmond, VA open mic crew, including one of my besties, Rachel Epp (she was also a bridesmaid in my wedding), drove up to NYC to be there that night. We had a huge showing from all over from that open mic there that night singing back to both me and Ali during our sets. It was incredibly special.

Do you have a song that you always do live? If so, what is it and why

I have been writing and playing music for 20+ years now so it has changed over time haha. I feel like there is always one song off of every album that is the song you always come back to because of it’s relatability, connectivity, and live translation. I think for this album it will be “Hard” or “This Ride.” Both sum up the past year and a half. However, I am still rocking “Home” off of my last album “Metamorphosis” because even with a theme of a zombie apocalypse it still feels SUPER relatable these days.

What goes into preparing this set list? Are there any factors that impacted this one as it was such a special show?

I want to keep the audience engaged from start to finish and have them feel the highs and lows of each song right along with me. Similar to the albums I put out, I want each set list to tell a story and keep a listener captivated from the first song to the last. I don’t want them to think “Oh this is the song where I should go to the bathroom.” I want you to hold it until the end! But in all seriousness, I don’t ever put together a set list with “filler.” I would rather play less time and have all of the songs be super important to the set than just play for the sake of playing. This set was super important to me because not only was it promoting a new album and sharing songs that most people in the room had never heard live before, but it was also welcoming so many (including myself) back into the live music scene after a dumpster fire of a year and half. I wanted everyone to feel in it with me so I put the songs that I felt everyone could connect with the most.

Live music is making a comeback to New York City. After a tumultuous year and a half, we can finally enjoy music in its truest form. On Friday July 23, Ali Aslam made his triumphant return at the Rockwood Music Hall. He shared the stage with Mary Jennings, whom he virtually met in quarantine and physically met that day, in a shared album release performance.

The place was packed, a you-wouldn’t-even-know-we-were-in-a-pandemic packed. But it was beautiful. People came to see the artists they love, and because the audience was so deprived, it was like a reunion. We may not have known everyone there, but it felt like we did. It was joyous, engaging, and empowering.

Ali followed Mary’s set as a 5 piece band. In contrast to Mary’s performance, Ali got you dancing. You could physically feel his music through the floors and his energy. He performed some of the songs to his album The Last American, which is a compilation of songs about his examination of being a Pakistani-American Mulsim and American culture. He sings about the idea that we are responsible for the world and society that we create. You could tell this album means a lot to him from his performance. He sang every lyric and played every note with a purpose. He felt the music with the audience and danced the night away. He was having fun, which, ultimately, is what live music is about.

If you ever get a chance to see him live, do it. His presence is that of an old friend. He’s open about his music and a free spirit on stage, like he was meant to be there. You can listen to The Last American anywhere you get music.

Questions for Ali:

How did it feel to perform live again? How was this time different, if at all?

Joy is the overwhelming emotion. This was a show that we had delayed for months but also one that I had been thinking about for years. The moment you start working on a record you start thinking about the release show, and we poured a lot of precious heart and energy into “The Last American.” It felt really special to perform these songs at long last and do them justice, and also to play the show I’ve been building in my head after so long. There’s this feeling that live music is this sacred thing that we had almost lost, I think everyone can feel it. So the excitement and joy of being able to do that again and have that communal experience with the band and with the audience is that much more special.

Which song of Mary's was your favorite in this show?

I have to say “Hard.” Mary’s songs are so essential for me. They are emotional touchstones. And like so many of her songs, the power of it is in it’s honesty. You can’t run from it. That’s one where I got sing on her record so to see it live and hear so many of those voices that were once isolated and distant across the internet now in the same place at once was really powerful

How did you survive a global catastrophe? My answer when things get hard is always music. I write songs to try and make sense of the grief I feel in the world, but I couldn’t make sense of this one. I was spiraling, like so many of us, putting on a brave face to tell everyone “I am ok.” But on the other end of a zoom call I heard a voice that maybe COULD make sense of it. I got to hear so many of the songs on Mary’s ‘matriarch’ in their earliest forms. Those songs have carried me. This show, and meeting at last is like symbol for me, we’ve made it this far, and we can keep going. But more importantly I’m just so happy to finally meet my friend. “There’s not a word yet, for old friends who’ve just met.”

Do you have a song that you always do live? If so, what is it and why

I do try to have some variety in the set list depending on the occasion, but “Wise Man and the Fool” seems to always find its way on there. It’s kind of a template for what all of my songs are about; this disconnect between who we are and who our communities want us to be. Playing it withthe band it just has so much energy that it’s a reliable movement. It’s an integral part of my story, and I enjoy telling it.

What goes into preparing this set list? Are there any factors that impacted this one as it was such a special show?

I am always trying to build an experience, and have specific moments of tension and release. In this digital era, a live show might the only time someone listens to your music and only your music for and hour, so I want that experience to be more than the sum of its part. For this show, the biggest moment was probably “hold me close.” It was a song written during the darkest days of the pandemic, right when I met Mary online. And now to have her and Rachel Epp standing behind me singing through this moment with me… I can’t describe how magical and moving that was for me…but we built our setlist for that moment and that song so that when we finally played that song together, I think everyone could feel some of that magic.

Find Mary Jennings online:

https://www.maryjennings.com/

https://www.facebook.com/maryjenningsmusic?ref=notif&notif_t=fbpage_admin

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNJsbS779uIxhkXm4HldkWg

https://twitter.com/jenningsmusic

https://music.apple.com/us/artist/mary-jennings/521359594

Find Ali Aslam online:

https://streetlightshaman.com/

https://www.facebook.com/AliAslamMusic/

https://www.instagram.com/streetlightshaman/

https://twitter.com/StLightShaman

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0nlWIHNriif5fSqDMpEOjo?si=5EnJUb-8SOCfCu9I-Yf1yQ

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independentartistbuzz · 4 years ago

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INDIE 5-0: 5 QUESTIONS WITH ALI ASLAM

New York based designer, songwriter, supersonic folk singer Ali Aslam has just dropped a new single “Photocopy”. We got the chance to interview him about how his background as an architect has effected his musicianship, amongst other things.

1.) Does your life as an architect inform or influence your music making process? How do you balance these two avenues of creativity?

The way I think about it is that I am a storyteller, and I have different media in which I pursue that craft. From my perspective the music and architecture are really the same. The technical skills required might be different, but the underlying desire is the same. You’re trying to communicate something that words alone can't capture. In music you say something true about yourself and hope that rings true for anyone else out there, in architecture you dream something up and hope that when a stranger walks through it they feel some of the things you felt when you first thought of it. In both cases you’re hoping to see yourself in a stranger, make something from nothing but an idea.

2.) Your latest single, "Photocopy" is a pretty emotional record, beautifully illustrating how our past mistakes or pain does not have to define us as people. Tell us about the writing process as well as the recording process, was this track particularly more emotional to create?

We get stuck sometimes, in pain and in doubt. Then we start to think that that is all we are…just the sum of our most painful experiences. It’s so easy to convince yourself that you don’t deserve the best things in your life. This is where I was when I wrote this song. I wanted so badly to write about joy, but I couldn’t get past this grief and doubt. I think the older you get the more grief you have to work through, and it just gets harder. Joy is hard. You don’t get to choose what you feel but you do have to fight for some things. Joy is one of those things. Photocopy is about choosing to see yourself as more than your grief, more than your doubt. In the production, I wanted to capture how hard making that choice can be, and how triumphant that can be, without disregarding the pain of it. I want you to feel all of it, acknowledge all of it. I don’t think this song gets to joy, but it does light the way for me.

3.) Your debut album, "The Last American" tackles the idea that we, as people, are responsible for the world we create. Was there a particular moment in your life or in recent news that inspired you to write an album about this?

So many moments…Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Khizr Khan’s speech at the DNC in 2016, and a thousand more personal experiences…but I think the women’s marches in early 2017 really tipped the dominos. The president had just announced his “Muslim ban” and it was a moment of such extreme uncertainty for me. The things that could go wrong were not abstract anymore for me. In that moment, I am thinking about what would happen to my family, what might happen next. And then the next moment, I am inundated with messages from people, mostly women, telling me that they were going to fight it, they were going to protest. They were going to take responsibility for my well being, AND the government that might harm us. I’m grateful for those people. I think we have to do that for everyone. For whomever it is within our power to help. That’s what power is for.

4.) You're extremely transparent about your struggle with your Pakistani- American identity and feeling like you've got one fit in each culture, never fully feeling accepted. What type of advice do you have for some of your listeners who feel similarly, or are straddling two or more different cultures/ identities.

I’ve always bristled at being told who I am or what I believe in. I want a chance to decide for myself. But to have that for me, I have to extend that grace to other people as well, including the people who may ask you to choose who you are. The people who I grew up with who taught what it means to Pakistani, or Muslim, or American all want what they think is best for me. I see love in that. They may not actually know what’s best, but you have to at least respect that love.

You have the opportunity to live a rich, manifold life. I think that is an obligation. You don’t have to choose one thing to be another but, most of the time, you don’t have to be cruel in order to be yourself. It is so much harder to live a half life. Some people might deserve your anger for trying to box you in, but in my experience, that is not most people.

5.) What can we expect from Ali Aslam in the next year, post- "The Last American." Has COVID had a particular effect on any plans?

I want to tour these songs, desperately, and I can’t wait till that is possible. I think the physical isolation has exacerbated the cultural divide. These songs are about belonging. I want to sing these songs in person, in as many places as I can, and know that wherever we find resonance, we can belong there. Music has taught many things but maybe the most important thing is that it's easier to connect with people than you think.

Listen to “Photocopy” - https://open.spotify.com/track/0PabGNXNsRkK0VmsEYZucr

Connect with Ali via:

https://facebook.com/aliaslammusic

https://instagram.com/streetlightshaman

https://twitter.com/stlightshaman

#ali aslam #photocopy #photocopy ali aslam #music review #indie music #indie artist #music blog

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nu-blessed · 7 years ago

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Get to know the Admin :)

tagged by @all-about-wannaone

Nicknames: amins, amino, bibi, snoop dogg (my actual name is Amina)

Gender: Female

Star Sign: Taurus

Height: 152 :((

Birthday: 29th April 1998

Time: 6.25pm

Hogwarts House: I DID THE QUIZ BUT I FORGOT

Dream Job: I know it will be hard but someone working in the art and design world, im in a pretty vague degree (starting late next week cos of the operation i told you guys about) so im tryna figure out what I wanna do on the way but I definitely want to travel, because I’ve even been on holiday in my life

Dream Trip: Korea to be a tourist and see NU’EST, Japan, Dubai, Malaysia

Favourite Animal: Dwarf Hamster, bugdies, DOGGOS, CATS BUT THEY HATE ME

Favourite Bands: Have you ,,,, heard of.... NU’EST?

Favourite Solo Artists: I listen to so much my brain blanks out when I get a question like this.. erm I love Lady Gaga thanks to Ren, Solange, Frank Ocean, Janet Jackson is queen, Jessie J her first album got me thru some times... and 1 million more i cant remember

Song stuck in my head: Change up and the weird ass background music in nu’est w’s teasers

Favourite song right now: My favourite song will prob always be Overcome by NU’EST cos it saved my life

Last movie watched: Erm im watching a netflix doc about Marsha.P.Johnson

When was nu-blessed born: the actual blog was made in like 2011 when about a bunch of stuff, but I changed to a NU’EST blog about 2 years ago

What do I post: edits gifs sometimes, info, theory, updates, but I guess im mostly known for my long af very emotional posts about nu’est

Last thing I googled: ‘nuest aron hello running’ i didnt find it tho i had to watch the MV again and get a screenshot

Do you have any other blogs: @aaronkwak but i didnt start it yet bc I could hardly keep up with this one, I felt bad bc Aron is my baby but no one has made a new Aron blog in like 3 yrs :(

Do you get asks: I wondered for so long why I never got asks... then i realised it was bc I didnt allow anon (i didnt know i had to enable it) LOL so now i get like maybe 1 ask every 2-3 days?

Why did you choose your URL: BECAUSE WE ARE BLESSED BY NU’EST EVERYDAY DAMMIT

Following: TOO MANY

Followers: erm... compared to bigger fandoms not a lot, but I guess cos I posted about nuest every single day for like 2 yrs.. and bc pd101 nu’est blew up, kinda a alot? im hoping all nuest blogs gain more cos i noticed nu’est notes reached their peak after pd101 and now they have returned to being quite low (but thank god not as much as b4 pd101)

Favourite colours: Pastelsss but I think Red

Average hours of sleep: like 8 but i still feel tired

Lucky number: idk??

What am I wearing: PJs

How many blankets do I sleep with: 1

Favourite food: Biryiani or kidney beans

Nationality: British nationality, ethnicity is South Asian (Pakistani)

I tag @fuckyeaharonkwak @clickthelikeit @androren @nuestlovestory @hyun95 @cafewoozi

#NU'EST #nuest #nu'est w #admin #about me #tagged #tags #personal

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fictasian · 8 years ago

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Asian YA Anticipated Reads: May Edition

School has made me neglect Asian YA for a while now, but now that it's May, one of the best book release months this year in my humble opinion, I decided to launch this new feature. I'll be highlighting book releases I think are especially notable each month. Feel free to contact me with future releases you think are valuable as well, I'll try to cover as many as I can.

May is a really strong month for cute contemporaries, the highly anticipated Flame in the Mist aside, which is amazing considering that cute and fluffy reads are much harder to find with diverse books in general, although 2017 is proving to be a strong year for diverse books. Here are a handful of books that you should keep your eye out for, especially because it is Asian-American History Month!

Always and Forever, Lara Jean (To All The Boys I've Loved Before #3) by Jenny Han

Published: May 2nd 2017 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers Purchase: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Book Depository

Lara Jean is having the best senior year a girl could ever hope for. She is head over heels in love with her boyfriend, Peter; her dad’s finally getting remarried to their next door neighbor, Ms. Rothschild; and Margot’s coming home for the summer just in time for the wedding.

But change is looming on the horizon. And while Lara Jean is having fun and keeping busy helping plan her father’s wedding, she can’t ignore the big life decisions she has to make. Most pressingly, where she wants to go to college and what that means for her relationship with Peter. She watched her sister Margot go through these growing pains. Now Lara Jean’s the one who’ll be graduating high school and leaving for college and leaving her family—and possibly the boy she loves—behind.

When your heart and your head are saying two different things, which one should you listen to? - Goodreads

Noteworthy by Riley Redgate

Published: May 2nd 2017 Publisher: Amulet Books Purchase: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Book Depository

It’s the start of Jordan Sun’s junior year at the Kensington-Blaine Boarding School for the Performing Arts. Unfortunately, she’s an Alto 2, which—in the musical theatre world—is sort of like being a vulture in the wild: She has a spot in the ecosystem, but nobody’s falling over themselves to express their appreciation. So it’s no surprise when she gets shut out of the fall musical for the third year straight.

Then the school gets a mass email: A spot has opened up in the Sharpshooters, Kensington’s elite a cappella octet. Worshiped ... revered ... all male. Desperate to prove herself, Jordan auditions in her most convincing drag, and it turns out that Jordan Sun, Tenor 1, is exactly what the Sharps are looking for. - Goodreads

That Thing We Call a Heart by Sheba Karim

Published: May 9th 2017 Publisher: HarperTeen Purchase: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Book Depository

Shabnam Qureshi is a funny, imaginative Pakistani-American teen attending a tony private school in suburban New Jersey. When her feisty best friend, Farah, starts wearing the headscarf without even consulting her, it begins to unravel their friendship. After hooking up with the most racist boy in school and telling a huge lie about a tragedy that happened to her family during the Partition of India in 1947, Shabnam is ready for high school to end. She faces a summer of boredom and regret, but she has a plan: Get through the summer. Get to college. Don’t look back. Begin anew.

Everything changes when she meets Jamie, who scores her a job at his aunt’s pie shack, and meets her there every afternoon. Shabnam begins to see Jamie and herself like the rose and the nightingale of classic Urdu poetry, which, according to her father, is the ultimate language of desire. Jamie finds Shabnam fascinating—her curls, her culture, her awkwardness. Shabnam finds herself falling in love, but Farah finds Jamie worrying.

With Farah’s help, Shabnam uncovers the truth about Jamie, about herself, and what really happened during Partition. As she rebuilds her friendship with Farah and grows closer to her parents, Shabnam learns powerful lessons about the importance of love, in all of its forms. - Goodreads

Flame in the Mist (Flame in the Mist #1) by Renee Ahdieh

Published: May 16th 2017 Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers Purchase: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Book Depository

The daughter of a prominent samurai, Mariko has long known her place—she may be an accomplished alchemist, whose cunning rivals that of her brother Kenshin, but because she is not a boy, her future has always been out of her hands. At just seventeen years old, Mariko is promised to Minamoto Raiden, the son of the emperor's favorite consort—a political marriage that will elevate her family's standing. But en route to the imperial city of Inako, Mariko narrowly escapes a bloody ambush by a dangerous gang of bandits known as the Black Clan, who she learns has been hired to kill her before she reaches the palace.

Dressed as a peasant boy, Mariko sets out to infiltrate the ranks of the Black Clan, determined to track down the person responsible for the target on her back. But she's quickly captured and taken to the Black Clan’s secret hideout, where she meets their leader, the rebel ronin Takeda Ranmaru, and his second-in-command, his best friend Okami. Still believing her to be a boy, Ranmaru and Okami eventually warm to Mariko, impressed by her intellect and ingenuity. As Mariko gets closer to the Black Clan, she uncovers a dark history of secrets, of betrayal and murder, which will force her to question everything she's ever known. - Goodreads

I Believe in a Thing Called Love by Maurene Goo

Published: May 30th 201730th 2017 Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)Straus and Giroux (BYR) Purchase: Amazon / Barnes & Noble /

Desi Lee knows how carburetors work. She learned CPR at the age of five. As a high school senior, she has never missed a day of school and has never had a B in her entire life. She's for sure going to Stanford. But—she’s never had a boyfriend. In fact, she’s a disaster in romance, a clumsy, stammering humiliation-magnet whose botched attempts at flirting have become legendary with her friends. So when the hottest human specimen to have ever lived walks into her life one day, Desi decides to tackle her flirting failures with the same zest she’s applied to everything else in her life. She finds her answer in the Korean dramas her father has been obsessively watching for years—where the hapless heroine always seems to end up in the arms of her true love by episode ten. It's a simple formula, and Desi is a quick study. Armed with her “K Drama Rules for True Love,” Desi goes after the moody, elusive artist Luca Drakos—and boat rescues, love triangles, and fake car crashes ensue. But when the fun and games turn to true feels, Desi finds out that real love is about way more than just drama. - Goodreads

When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon

Published: May 30th 2017 Publisher: Simon Pulse Purchase: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Book Depository

Dimple Shah has it all figured out. With graduation behind her, she’s more than ready for a break from her family, from Mamma’s inexplicable obsession with her finding the “Ideal Indian Husband.” Ugh. Dimple knows they must respect her principles on some level, though. If they truly believed she needed a husband right now, they wouldn’t have paid for her to attend a summer program for aspiring web developers…right?

Rishi Patel is a hopeless romantic. So when his parents tell him that his future wife will be attending the same summer program as him—wherein he’ll have to woo her—he’s totally on board. Because as silly as it sounds to most people in his life, Rishi wants to be arranged, believes in the power of tradition, stability, and being a part of something much bigger than himself.

The Shahs and Patels didn’t mean to start turning the wheels on this “suggested arrangement” so early in their children’s lives, but when they noticed them both gravitate toward the same summer program, they figured, Why not?

Dimple and Rishi may think they have each other figured out. But when opposites clash, love works hard to prove itself in the most unexpected ways. - Goodreads

This post is also posted on my blog

#asianya #anticipated reads #we need diverse books #may #young adult

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thesnhuup · 4 years ago

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Pop Picks – June 15, 2020

What I’m reading:

I am almost in despair for the way the pandemic has reduced my reading time, some combination of longer days, lack of plane time, and mental distraction, I think. However, I just finished Marguerite Yourcenar’s magisterial Memoirs of Hadrian, a historical novel, though I hesitate to call it that because A) she would likely reject the term, B) it is so much more, and C) it stands among the towering pieces of mid-century literature for so many. It’s that last point about which I feel so sheepish. As a reasonably well-read person, how did I miss this one? It is a work of stunning achievement (don’t miss her exhaustive bibliography or end notes), highly refined style, and as much philosophy as anything else. It won’t be for everyone and you have to power through the first chapter, but it is a remarkable book. I’m intrigued to use it as a reading on leadership.

What I’m watching:

When I can finally turn off the computer screen, I find myself drawn to the television screen for its less demanding passivity. Pat and I absolutely reveled in the ten-minute installments of State of the Union (Sundance Channel), written by Nick Hornby, one of my favorite writers. It is stunningly good – witty, smart, warm, painful, and powered by the chemistry of its two utterly charming leads, Rosamund Pike and Chris O’Dowd. It’s just two people – funny and smart – trying to salvage their marriage and talking, in ten-minute snippets, in a pub and no one writes dialogue like Hornby. We devoured it. If you asked me to watch two people talk about their marriage for 100 minutes, I’d have said “no thanks.” But this was sheer, unequivocal delight. And because all great comedy is closely related to tragedy, there is more substance and depth and complexity here than sheer delight might suggest.

I don’t usually do two recommendations in my categories, but we also watched Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods. It is long, flawed, and uneven – but Spike Lee remains one of our most brilliant directors and Delroy Lindo already has my vote for Best Male Actor for his Shakespearian performance as one of the four buddies who go back to Vietnam to reclaim treasure, find the remains of their friend, and address the trauma of the war they fought then and the war fought against them as Black men in America. Even flawed Spike Lee is better than 95% of what makes it onto the screen and while made before George Floyd’s death, it feels so well suited for the time. Powerful.

What I’m listening to:

Protest music. Chronological and cleaned up for listening at home (if we could include the f-word, it would be a lot longer (see Nipsey Hussle or Kendrick Lamar), Pat put it together and you can find the playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3z1W5Dbfcn7F9LBFcayTqa?si=u2oxkMTkSFef7_sQy3cNXw

Archive

April 1, 2020

What I’m listening to:

Out of nowhere and 8 years since his last recording, Bob Dylan last Thursday dropped a new single, the 17-minute (the longest Dylan song ever) “Murder Most Foul.” It’s ostensibly about the murder of President John F. Kennedy, but it’s bigger, more incisive, and elegiac than that alone. The music is gorgeous, his singing is lovely (a phrase rarely used for Dylan even in his prime), and he shows why he was deserving of his 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. It’s worth listening to again and again. The man is a cultural treasure and as relevant as ever.

What I’m reading:

The Milkman by Anna Burns, the 2018 Booker Prize winner, felt like slow going for the first bit, a leisurely stream of consciousness (not my favorite thing) first person tale of an adolescent girl during “the troubles” in 1970’s Northern Ireland. And then enough plot emerges to pull the reader along and tie the frequent and increasingly delightful digressions into the psychology of terror, sexual threat, adolescence, and a community (and world) that will create your narrative and your identity no matter what you know and believe about yourself. It’s layered, full of black humor, and powerful. It also somehow resonates for our times, where we navigate a newfound dread. It’s way more enjoyable than I just made it sound. One of my favorite reads of this young year.

What I’m watching:

I escaped back in time and started re-watching the first season of The West Wing. It is a vision – nostalgic, romantic, perhaps never true – of political leadership driven by higher purpose, American ideals, and moral intelligence. It does not pretend that politics can’t be craven, self-serving, and transactional, but the good guys mostly win in The West Wing, the acting is delightful, and Sorkin’s dialogue zings back and forth in the way of classic Hollywood movies of the 50s – smart, quick, funny. It reminds me – as has often happened during our current crisis – that most people are good and want their community to be a better place. When we appeal to our ideals instead of our fears, we are capable of great things. It’s a nice escape.

February 3, 2020

What I’m listening to:

Spending 21 hours on airplanes (Singapore to Tokyo to Boston) provides lots of time for listening and in an airport shop I picked up a Rolling Stones magazine that listed the top ten albums of the last ten years. I’ve been systematically working through them, starting with Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. I just don’t know enough about hip hop and rap to offer any intelligent analysis of the music, and I have always thought of Kanye as kind of crazy (that may still be true), but the music is layered and extravagant and genre-bending. The lyrics seem fascinating and self-reflective, especially around fame and excess and Kanye’s specialty, self-promoting aggrandizement. Too many people I know remain stuck in the music of their youth and while I love those songs too, it feels important to listen to today’s music and what it has to tell us about life and lives far different than our own. And in a case like Twisted Fantasy, it’s just great music and that’s its own justification.

What I’m reading:

I went back to an old favorite, Richard Russo’s Straight Man. If you work in academia, this is a must-read and while written 22 years ago, it still rings true and current. The “hero” of the novel is William Henry Devereaux Jr., the chair of the English Department in a second-tier public university in small-town Pennsylvania. The book is laugh aloud funny (the opening chapter and story about old Red puts me in hysterics every time I read it) and like the best comedy, it taps into the complexity and pains of life in very substantial ways. Devereaux is insufferable in most ways and yet we root for him, mostly because A) he is so damn funny and B) is self-deprecating. But there is also a big heartedness in Russo’s writing and a recognition that everyone is the protagonist of their own story, and life’s essential dramas play out fully in the most modest of places and for the most ordinary of people.

What I’m watching:

I can’t pretend to have an abiding interest in cheerleading, but I devoured the six-episode Netflix series Cheer, about the cheerleading squad at Navarro College, a small two-year college in rural Texas that is a cheerleading powerhouse, winning the National Championship 14 times under the direction of Coach Monica Aldama, the Bill Belichick of cheering. I have a new respect and admiration for the athleticism and demands of cheering (and wonder about the cavalier handling of injuries), but the series is about so much more. It’s about team, about love, about grit and perseverance, bravery, trust, about kids and growing up and loss, and…well, it’s about almost everything and it will make you laugh and cry and exult. It is just terrific.

January 2, 2020

What I’m listening to:

I was never really an Amy Winehouse fan and I don’t listen to much jazz or blue-eyed soul. Recently, eight years after she died at only 27, I heard her single Tears Dry On Their Own and I was hooked (the song was on someone’s “ten things I’d want on a deserted island” list). Since then, I’ve been playing her almost every day. I started the documentary about her, Amy, and stopped. I didn’t much like her. Or, more accurately, I didn’t much like the signals of her own eventual destruction that were evident early on. I think it was D. H. Lawrence that once said “Trust the art, not the artist.” Sometimes it is better not to know too much and just relish the sheer artistry of the work. Winehouse’s Back to Black, which was named one of the best albums of 2007, is as fresh and painful and amazing 13 years later.

What I’m reading:

Alan Bennett’s lovely novella An Uncommon Reader is a what-if tale, wondering what it would mean if Queen Elizabeth II suddenly became a reader. Because of a lucked upon book mobile on palace grounds, she becomes just that, much to the consternation of her staff and with all kinds of delicious consequences, including curiosity, imagination, self-awareness, and growing disregard for pomp. With an ill-framed suggestion, reading becomes writing and provides a surprise ending. For all of us who love books, this is a finely wrought and delightful love poem to the power of books for readers and writers alike. Imagine if all our leaders were readers (sigh).

What I’m watching:

I’m a huge fan of many things – The National, Boston sports teams, BMW motorcycles, Pho – but there is a stage of life, typically adolescence, when fandom changes the universe, provides a lens to finally understand the world and, more importantly, yourself, in profound ways. My wife Pat would say Joni Mitchell did that for her. Gurinder Chadha’s wonderful film Blinded By The Light captures the power of discovery when Javed, the son of struggling Pakistani immigrants in a dead end place during a dead end time (the Thatcher period, from which Britain has never recovered: see Brexit), hears Springsteen and is forever changed. The movie, sometimes musical, sometimes comedy, and often bubbling with energy, has more heft than it might seem at first. There is pain in a father struggling to retain his dignity while he fails to provide, the father and son tension in so many immigrant families (I lived some of that), and what it means to be an outsider in the only culture you actually have ever known.

November 25, 2019

My pop picks are usually a combination of three things: what I am listening to, reading, and watching. But last week I happily combined all three. That is, I went to NYC last week and saw two shows. The first was Cyrano, starring Game of Thrones superstar Peter Dinklage in the title role, with Jasmine Cephas Jones as Roxanne. She was Peggy in the original Hamilton cast and has an amazing voice. The music was written by Aaron and Bryce Dessner, two members of my favorite band, The National, with lyrics by lead singer Matt Berninger and his wife Carin Besser. Erica Schmidt, Dinklage’s wife, directs. Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play is light, dated, and melodramatic, but this production was delightful. Dinklage owns the stage, a master, and his deep bass voice, not all that great for singing, but commanding in the delivery of every line, was somehow a plaintive and resonant counterpoint to Cephas Jones’ soaring voice. In the original Cyrano, the title character’s large nose marks him as outsider and ”other,” but Dinklage was born with achondroplasia, the cause of his dwarfism, and there is a kind of resonance in his performance that feels like pain not acted, but known. Deeply. It takes this rather lightweight play and gives it depth. Even if it didn’t, not everything has to be deep and profound – there is joy in seeing something executed so darn well. Cyrano was delightfully satisfying.

The other show was the much lauded Aaron Sorkin rendition of To Kill a Mockingbird, starring another actor at the very top of his game, Ed Harris. This is a Mockingbird for our times, one in which iconic Atticus Finch’s idealistic “you have to live in someone else’s skin” feels naive in the face of hateful racism and anti-Semitism. The Black characters in the play get more voice, if not agency, in the stage play than they do in the book, especially housekeeper Calpurnia, who voices incredulity at Finch’s faith in his neighbors and reminds us that he does not pay the price of his patience. She does. And Tom Robinson, the Black man falsely accused of rape – “convicted at the moment he was accused,” Whatever West Wing was for Sorkin – and I dearly loved that show – this is a play for a broken United States, where racism abounds and does so with sanction by those in power. As our daughter said, “I think Trump broke Aaron Sorkin.” It was as powerful a thing I’ve seen on stage in years.

With both plays, I was reminded of the magic that is live theater.

October 31, 2019

What I’m listening to:

It drove his critics crazy that Obama was the coolest president we ever had and his summer 2019 playlist on Spotify simply confirms that reality. It has been on repeat for me. From Drake to Lizzo (God I love her) to Steely Dan to Raphael Saadiq to Sinatra (who I skip every time – I’m not buying the nostalgia), his carefully curated list reflects not only his infinite coolness, but the breadth of his interests and generosity of taste. I love the music, but I love even more the image of Michelle and him rocking out somewhere far from Washington’s madness, as much as I miss them both.

What I’m reading:

I struggled with Christy Lefteri’s The Beekeeper of Aleppo for the first 50 pages, worried that she’d drag out every tired trope of Mid-Eastern society, but I fell for her main characters and their journey as refugees from Syria to England. Parts of this book were hard to read and very dark, because that is the plight of so many refugees and she doesn’t shy away from those realities and the enormous toll they take on displaced people. It’s a hard read, but there is light too – in resilience, in love, in friendships, the small tender gestures of people tossed together in a heartless world. Lefteri volunteered in Greek refugee programs, spent a lot of interviewing people, and the book feels true, and importantly, heartfelt.

What I’m watching:

Soap opera meets Shakespeare, deliciously malevolent and operatic, Succession has been our favorite series this season. Loosely based on the Murdochs and their media empire (don’t believe the denials), this was our must watch television on Sunday nights, filling the void left by Game of Thrones. The acting is over-the-top good, the frequent comedy dark, the writing brilliant, and the music superb. We found ourselves quoting lines after every episode. Like the hilarious; “You don’t hear much about syphilis these days. Very much the Myspace of STDs.” Watch it so we can talk about that season 2 finale.

August 30, 2019

What I’m listening to:

I usually go to music here, but the New York Times new 1619 podcast is just terrific, as is the whole project, which observes the sale of the first enslaved human beings on our shores 400 years ago. The first episode, “The Fight for a True Democracy” is a remarkable overview (in a mere 44 minutes) of the centrality of racism and slavery in the American story over those 400 years. It should be mandatory listening in every high school in the country. I’m eager for the next episodes. Side note: I am addicted to The Daily podcast, which gives more color and detail to the NY Times stories I read in print (yes, print), and reminds me of how smart and thoughtful are those journalists who give us real news. We need them now more than ever.

What I’m reading:

Colson Whitehead has done it again. The Nickel Boys, his new novel, is a worthy successor to his masterpiece The Underground Railroad, and because it is closer to our time, based on the real-life horrors of a Florida reform school, and written a time of resurgent White Supremacy, it hits even harder and with more urgency than its predecessor. Maybe because we can read Underground Railroad with a sense of “that was history,” but one can’t read Nickel Boys without the lurking feeling that such horrors persist today and the monsters that perpetrate such horrors walk among us. They often hold press conferences.

What I’m watching:

Queer Eye, the Netflix remake of the original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy some ten years later, is wondrously entertaining, but it also feels adroitly aligned with our dysfunctional times. Episode three has a conversation with Karamo Brown, one of the fab five, and a Georgia small town cop (and Trump supporter) that feels unscripted and unexpected and reminds us of how little actual conversation seems to be taking place in our divided country. Oh, for more car rides such as the one they take in that moment, when a chasm is bridged, if only for a few minutes. Set in the South, it is often a refreshing and affirming response to what it means to be male at a time of toxic masculinity and the overdue catharsis and pain of the #MeToo movement. Did I mention? It’s really fun.

July 1, 2019

What I’m listening to:

The National remains my favorite band and probably 50% of my listening time is a National album or playlist. Their new album I Am Easy To Find feels like a turning point record for the band, going from the moody, outsider introspection and doubt of lead singer Matt Berninger to something that feels more adult, sophisticated, and wiser. I might have titled it Women Help The Band Grow Up. Matt is no longer the center of The National’s universe and he frequently cedes the mic to the many women who accompany and often lead on the long, their longest, album. They include Gail Ann Dorsey (who sang with Bowie for a long time), who is amazing, and a number of the songs were written by Carin Besser, Berninger’s wife. I especially love the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the arrangements, and the sheer complexity and coherence of the work. It still amazes me when I meet someone who does not know The National. My heart breaks for them just a little.

What I’m reading:

Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls is a retelling of Homer’s Iliad through the lens of a captive Trojan queen, Briseis. As a reviewer in The Atlantic writes, it answers the question “What does war mean to women?” We know the answer and it has always been true, whether it is the casual and assumed rape of captive women in this ancient war story or the use of rape in modern day Congo, Syria, or any other conflict zone. Yet literature almost never gives voice to the women – almost always minor characters at best — and their unspeakable suffering. Barker does it here for Briseis, for Hector’s wife Andromache, and for the other women who understand that the death of their men is tragedy, but what they then endure is worse. Think of it ancient literature having its own #MeToo moment. The NY Times’ Geraldine Brooks did not much like the novel. I did. Very much.

What I’m watching:

The BBC-HBO limited series Years and Years is breathtaking, scary, and absolutely familiar. It’s as if Black Mirrorand Children of Men had a baby and it precisely captures the zeitgeist, the current sense that the world is spinning out of control and things are coming at us too fast. It is a near future (Trump has been re-elected and Brexit has occurred finally)…not dystopia exactly, but damn close. The closing scene of last week’s first episode (there are 6 episodes and it’s on every Monday) shows nuclear war breaking out between China and the U.S. Yikes! The scope of this show is wide and there is a big, baggy feel to it – but I love the ambition even if I’m not looking forward to the nightmares.

May 19, 2019

What I’m listening to:

I usually go to music here, but I was really moved by this podcast of a Davis Brooks talk at the Commonwealth Club in Silicon Valley: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/david-brooks-quest-moral-life. While I have long found myself distant from his political stance, he has come through a dark night of the soul and emerged with a wonderful clarity about calling, community, and not happiness (that most superficial of goals), but fulfillment and meaning, found in community and human kinship of many kinds. I immediately sent it to my kids.

What I’m reading:

Susan Orlean’s wonderful The Library Book, a love song to libraries told through the story of the LA Central Library. It brought back cherished memories of my many hours in beloved libraries — as a kid in the Waltham Public Library, a high schooler in the Farber Library at Brandeis (Lil Farber years later became a mentor of mine), and the cathedral-like Bapst Library at BC when I was a graduate student. Yes, I was a nerd. This is a love song to books certainly, but a reminder that libraries are so, so much more. It is a reminder that libraries are less about a place or being a repository of information and, like America at its best, an idea and ideal. By the way, oh to write like her.

What I’m watching:

What else? Game of Thrones, like any sensible human being. This last season is disappointing in many ways and the drop off in the writing post George R.R. Martin is as clear as was the drop off in the post-Sorkin West Wing. I would be willing to bet that if Martin has been writing the last season, Sansa and Tyrion would have committed suicide in the crypt. That said, we fans are deeply invested and even the flaws are giving us so much to discuss and debate. In that sense, the real gift of this last season is the enjoyment between episodes, like the old pre-streaming days when we all arrived at work after the latest episode of the Sopranos to discuss what we had all seen the night before. I will say this, the last two episodes — full of battle and gore – have been visually stunning. Whether the torches of the Dothraki being extinguished in the distance or Arya riding through rubble and flame on a white horse, rarely has the series ascended to such visual grandeur.

March 28, 2019

What I’m listening to:

There is a lovely piece played in a scene from A Place Called Home that I tracked down. It’s Erik Satie’s 3 Gymnopédies: Gymnopédie No. 1, played by the wonderful pianist Klára Körmendi. Satie composed this piece in 1888 and it was considered avant-garde and anti-Romantic. It’s minimalism and bit of dissonance sound fresh and contemporary to my ears and while not a huge Classical music fan, I’ve fallen in love with the Körmendi playlist on Spotify. When you need an alternative to hours of Cardi B.

What I’m reading:

Just finished Esi Edugyan’s 2018 novel Washington Black. Starting on a slave plantation in Barbados, it is a picaresque novel that has elements of Jules Verne, Moby Dick, Frankenstein, and Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad. Yes, it strains credulity and there are moments of “huh?”, but I loved it (disclosure: I was in the minority among my fellow book club members) and the first third is a searing depiction of slavery. It’s audacious, sprawling (from Barbados to the Arctic to London to Africa), and the writing, especially about nature, luminous.

What I’m watching:

A soap opera. Yes, I’d like to pretend it’s something else, but we are 31 episodes into the Australian drama A Place Called Home and we are so, so addicted. Like “It’s AM, but can’t we watch just one more episode?” addicted. Despite all the secrets, cliff hangers, intrigue, and “did that just happen?” moments, the core ingredients of any good soap opera, APCH has superb acting, real heft in terms of subject matter (including homophobia, anti-Semitism, sexual assault, and class), touches of our beloved Downton Abbey, and great cars. Beware. If you start, you won’t stop.

February 11, 2019

What I’m listening to:

Raphael Saadiq has been around for quite a while, as a musician, writer, and producer. He’s new to me and I love his old school R&B sound. Like Leon Bridges, he brings a contemporary freshness to the genre, sounding like a young Stevie Wonder (listen to “You’re The One That I Like”). Rock and Roll may be largely dead, but R&B persists – maybe because the former was derivative of the latter and never as good (and I say that as a Rock and Roll fan). I’m embarrassed to only have discovered Saadiq so late in his career, but it’s a delight to have done so.

What I’m reading:

Just finished Marilynne Robinson’s Home, part of her trilogy that includes the Pulitzer Prize winning first novel, Gilead, and the book after Home, Lila. Robinson is often described as a Christian writer, but not in a conventional sense. In this case, she gives us a modern version of the prodigal son and tells the story of what comes after he is welcomed back home. It’s not pretty. Robinson is a self-described Calvinist, thus character begets fate in Robinson’s world view and redemption is at best a question. There is something of Faulkner in her work (I am much taken with his famous “The past is never past” quote after a week in the deep South), her style is masterful, and like Faulkner, she builds with these three novels a whole universe in the small town of Gilead. Start with Gilead to better enjoy Home.

What I’m watching:

Sex Education was the most fun series we’ve seen in ages and we binged watched it on Netflix. A British homage to John Hughes films like The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Pretty in Pink, it feels like a mash up of American and British high schools. Focusing on the relationship of Maeve, the smart bad girl, and Otis, the virginal and awkward son of a sex therapist (played with brilliance by Gillian Anderson), it is laugh aloud funny and also evolves into more substance and depth (the abortion episode is genius). The sex scenes are somehow raunchy and charming and inoffensive at the same time and while ostensibly about teenagers (it feels like it is explaining contemporary teens to adults in many ways), the adults are compelling in their good and bad ways. It has been renewed for a second season, which is a gift.

January 3, 2019

What I’m listening to:

My listening choices usually refer to music, but this time I’m going with Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast on genius and the song Hallelujah. It tells the story of Leonard Cohen’s much-covered song Hallelujah and uses it as a lens on kinds of genius and creativity. Along the way, he brings in Picasso and Cézanne, Elvis Costello, and more. Gladwell is a good storyteller and if you love pop music, as I do, and Hallelujah, as I do (and you should), you’ll enjoy this podcast. We tend to celebrate the genius who seems inspired in the moment, creating new work like lightning strikes, but this podcast has me appreciating incremental creativity in a new way. It’s compelling and fun at the same time.

What I’m reading:

Just read Clay Christensen’s new book, The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty. This was an advance copy, so soon available. Clay is an old friend and a huge influence on how we have grown SNHU and our approach to innovation. This book is so compelling, because we know attempts at development have so often been a failure and it is often puzzling to understand why some countries with desperate poverty and huge challenges somehow come to thrive (think S. Korea, Singapore, 19th C. America), while others languish. Clay offers a fresh way of thinking about development through the lens of his research on innovation and it is compelling. I bet this book gets a lot of attention, as most of his work does. I also suspect that many in the development community will hate it, as it calls into question the approach and enormous investments we have made in an attempt to lift countries out of poverty. A provocative read and, as always, Clay is a good storyteller.

What I’m watching:

Just watched Leave No Trace and should have guessed that it was directed by Debra Granik. She did Winter’s Bone, the extraordinary movie that launched Jennifer Lawrence’s career. Similarly, this movie features an amazing young actor, Thomasin McKenzie, and visits lives lived on the margins. In this case, a veteran suffering PTSD, and his 13-year-old daughter. The movie is patient, is visually lush, and justly earned 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (I have a rule to never watch anything under 82%). Everything in this film is under control and beautifully understated (aside from the visuals) – confident acting, confident directing, and so humane. I love the lack of flashbacks, the lack of sensationalism – the movie trusts the viewer, rare in this age of bombast. A lovely film.

December 4, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spending a week in New Zealand, we had endless laughs listening to the Kiwi band, Flight of the Conchords. Lots of comedic bands are funny, but the music is only okay or worse. These guys are funny – hysterical really – and the music is great. They have an uncanny ability to parody almost any style. In both New Zealand and Australia, we found a wry sense of humor that was just delightful and no better captured than with this duo. You don’t have to be in New Zealand to enjoy them.

What I’m reading:

I don’t often reread. For two reasons: A) I have so many books on my “still to be read” pile that it seems daunting to also rereadbooks I loved before, and B) it’s because I loved them once that I’m a little afraid to read them again. That said, I was recently asked to list my favorite book of all time and I answered Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. But I don’t really know if that’s still true (and it’s an impossible question anyway – favorite book? On what day? In what mood?), so I’m rereading it and it feels like being with an old friend. It has one of my very favorite scenes ever: the card game between Levin and Kitty that leads to the proposal and his joyous walking the streets all night.

What I’m watching:

Blindspotting is billed as a buddy-comedy. Wow does that undersell it and the drama is often gripping. I loved Daveed Diggs in Hamilton, didn’t like his character in Black-ish, and think he is transcendent in this film he co-wrote with Rafael Casal, his co-star. The film is a love song to Oakland in many ways, but also a gut-wrenching indictment of police brutality, systemic racism and bias, and gentrification. The film has the freshness and raw visceral impact of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. A great soundtrack, genre mixing, and energy make it one of my favorite movies of 2018.

October 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We had the opportunity to see our favorite band, The National, live in Dallas two weeks ago. Just after watching Mistaken for Strangers, the documentary sort of about the band. So we’ve spent a lot of time going back into their earlier work, listening to songs we don’t know well, and reaffirming that their musicality, smarts, and sound are both original and astoundingly good. They did not disappoint in concert and it is a good thing their tour ended, as we might just spend all of our time and money following them around. Matt Berninger is a genius and his lead vocals kill me (and because they are in my range, I can actually sing along!). Their arrangements are profoundly good and go right to whatever brain/heart wiring that pulls one in and doesn’t let them go.

What I’m reading:

Who is Richard Powers and why have I only discovered him now, with his 12th book? Overstory is profoundly good, a book that is essential and powerful and makes me look at my everyday world in new ways. In short, a dizzying example of how powerful can be narrative in the hands of a master storyteller. I hesitate to say it’s the best environmental novel I’ve ever read (it is), because that would put this book in a category. It is surely about the natural world, but it is as much about we humans. It’s monumental and elegiac and wondrous at all once. Cancel your day’s schedule and read it now. Then plant a tree. A lot of them.

What I’m watching:

Bo Burnham wrote and directed Eighth Grade and Elsie Fisher is nothing less than amazing as its star (what’s with these new child actors; see Florida Project). It’s funny and painful and touching. It’s also the single best film treatment that I have seen of what it means to grow up in a social media shaped world. It’s a reminder that growing up is hard. Maybe harder now in a world of relentless, layered digital pressure to curate perfect lives that are far removed from the natural messy worlds and selves we actually inhabit. It’s a well-deserved 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and I wonder who dinged it for the missing 2%.

September 7, 2018

What I’m listening to:

With a cover pointing back to the Beastie Boys’ 1986 Licensed to Ill, Eminem’s quietly released Kamikaze is not my usual taste, but I’ve always admired him for his “all out there” willingness to be personal, to call people out, and his sheer genius with language. I thought Daveed Diggs could rap fast, but Eminem is supersonic at moments, and still finds room for melody. Love that he includes Joyner Lucas, whose “I’m Not Racist” gets added to the growing list of simply amazing music videos commenting on race in America. There are endless reasons why I am the least likely Eminem fan, but when no one is around to make fun of me, I’ll put it on again.

What I’m reading:

Lesley Blume’s Everyone Behaves Badly, which is the story behind Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and his time in 1920s Paris (oh, what a time – see Midnight in Paris if you haven’t already). Of course, Blume disabuses my romantic ideas of that time and place and everyone is sort of (or profoundly so) a jerk, especially…no spoiler here…Hemingway. That said, it is a compelling read and coming off the Henry James inspired prose of Mrs. Osmond, it made me appreciate more how groundbreaking was Hemingway’s modern prose style. Like his contemporary Picasso, he reinvented the art and it can be easy to forget, these decades later, how profound was the change and its impact. And it has bullfights.

What I’m watching:

Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is just exceptional. It’s filmed on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which provides a stunning landscape, and it feels like a classic western reinvented for our times. The main characters are played by the real-life people who inspired this narrative (but feels like a documentary) film. Brady Jandreau, playing himself really, owns the screen. It’s about manhood, honor codes, loss, and resilience – rendered in sensitive, nuanced, and heartfelt ways. It feels like it could be about large swaths of America today. Really powerful.

August 16, 2018

What I’m listening to:

In my Spotify Daily Mix was Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman, one of the world’s greatest love songs. Go online and read the story of how the song was discovered and recorded. There are competing accounts, but Sledge said he improvised it after a bad breakup. It has that kind of aching spontaneity. It is another hit from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, one of the GREAT music hotbeds, along with Detroit, Nashville, and Memphis. Our February Board meeting is in Alabama and I may finally have to do the pilgrimage road trip to Muscle Shoals and then Memphis, dropping in for Sunday services at the church where Rev. Al Green still preaches and sings. If the music is all like this, I will be saved.

What I’m reading:

John Banville’s Mrs. Osmond, his homage to literary idol Henry James and an imagined sequel to James’ 1881 masterpiece Portrait of a Lady. Go online and read the first paragraph of Chapter 25. He is…profoundly good. Makes me want to never write again, since anything I attempt will feel like some other, lowly activity in comparison to his mastery of language, image, syntax. This is slow reading, every sentence to be savored.

What I’m watching:

I’ve always respected Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but we just watched the documentary RGB. It is over-the-top great and she is now one of my heroes. A superwoman in many ways and the documentary is really well done. There are lots of scenes of her speaking to crowds and the way young women, especially law students, look at her is touching. And you can’t help but fall in love with her now late husband Marty. See this movie and be reminded of how important is the Law.

July 23, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spotify’s Summer Acoustic playlist has been on repeat quite a lot. What a fun way to listen to artists new to me, including The Paper Kites, Hollow Coves, and Fleet Foxes, as well as old favorites like Leon Bridges and Jose Gonzalez. Pretty chill when dialing back to a summer pace, dining on the screen porch or reading a book.

What I’m reading:

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson tells of the racial injustice (and the war on the poor our judicial system perpetuates as well) that he discovered as a young graduate from Harvard Law School and his fight to address it. It is in turn heartbreaking, enraging, and inspiring. It is also about mercy and empathy and justice that reads like a novel. Brilliant.

What I’m watching:

Fauda. We watched season one of this Israeli thriller. It was much discussed in Israel because while it focuses on an ex-special agent who comes out of retirement to track down a Palestinian terrorist, it was willing to reveal the complexity, richness, and emotions of Palestinian lives. And the occasional brutality of the Israelis. Pretty controversial stuff in Israel. Lior Raz plays Doron, the main character, and is compelling and tough and often hard to like. He’s a mess. As is the world in which he has to operate. We really liked it, and also felt guilty because while it may have been brave in its treatment of Palestinians within the Israeli context, it falls back into some tired tropes and ultimately falls short on this front.

June 11, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Like everyone else, I’m listening to Pusha T drop the mic on Drake. Okay, not really, but do I get some points for even knowing that? We all walk around with songs that immediately bring us back to a time or a place. Songs are time machines. We are coming up on Father’s Day. My own dad passed away on Father’s Day back in 1994 and I remembering dutifully getting through the wake and funeral and being strong throughout. Then, sitting alone in our kitchen, Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence came on and I lost it. When you lose a parent for the first time (most of us have two after all) we lose our innocence and in that passage, we suddenly feel adult in a new way (no matter how old we are), a longing for our own childhood, and a need to forgive and be forgiven. Listen to the lyrics and you’ll understand. As Wordsworth reminds us in In Memoriam, there are seasons to our grief and, all these years later, this song no longer hits me in the gut, but does transport me back with loving memories of my father. I’ll play it Father’s Day.

What I’m reading:

The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin. I am not a reader of fantasy or sci-fi, though I understand they can be powerful vehicles for addressing the very real challenges of the world in which we actually live. I’m not sure I know of a more vivid and gripping illustration of that fact than N. K. Jemisin’s Hugo Award winning novel The Fifth Season, first in her Broken Earth trilogy. It is astounding. It is the fantasy parallel to The Underground Railroad, my favorite recent read, a depiction of subjugation, power, casual violence, and a broken world in which our hero(s) struggle, suffer mightily, and still, somehow, give us hope. It is a tour de force book. How can someone be this good a writer? The first 30 pages pained me (always with this genre, one must learn a new, constructed world, and all of its operating physics and systems of order), and then I could not put it down. I panicked as I neared the end, not wanting to finish the book, and quickly ordered the Obelisk Gate, the second novel in the trilogy, and I can tell you now that I’ll be spending some goodly portion of my weekend in Jemisin’s other world.

What I’m watching:

The NBA Finals and perhaps the best basketball player of this generation. I’ve come to deeply respect LeBron James as a person, a force for social good, and now as an extraordinary player at the peak of his powers. His superhuman play during the NBA playoffs now ranks with the all-time greats, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, MJ, Kobe, and the demi-god that was Bill Russell. That his Cavs lost in a 4-game sweep is no surprise. It was a mediocre team being carried on the wide shoulders of James (and matched against one of the greatest teams ever, the Warriors, and the Harry Potter of basketball, Steph Curry) and, in some strange way, his greatness is amplified by the contrast with the rest of his team. It was a great run.

May 24, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I’ve always liked Alicia Keys and admired her social activism, but I am hooked on her last album Here. This feels like an album finally commensurate with her anger, activism, hope, and grit. More R&B and Hip Hop than is typical for her, I think this album moves into an echelon inhabited by a Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On or Beyonce’s Formation. Social activism and outrage rarely make great novels, but they often fuel great popular music. Here is a terrific example.

What I’m reading:

Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad may be close to a flawless novel. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer, it chronicles the lives of two runaway slaves, Cora and Caeser, as they try to escape the hell of plantation life in Georgia. It is an often searing novel and Cora is one of the great heroes of American literature. I would make this mandatory reading in every high school in America, especially in light of the absurd revisionist narratives of “happy and well cared for” slaves. This is a genuinely great novel, one of the best I’ve read, the magical realism and conflating of time periods lifts it to another realm of social commentary, relevance, and a blazing indictment of America’s Original Sin, for which we remain unabsolved.

What I’m watching:

I thought I knew about The Pentagon Papers, but The Post, a real-life political thriller from Steven Spielberg taught me a lot, features some of our greatest actors, and is so timely given the assault on our democratic institutions and with a presidency out of control. It is a reminder that a free and fearless press is a powerful part of our democracy, always among the first targets of despots everywhere. The story revolves around the legendary Post owner and D.C. doyenne, Katharine Graham. I had the opportunity to see her son, Don Graham, right after he saw the film, and he raved about Meryl Streep’s portrayal of his mother. Liked it a lot more than I expected.

April 27, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I mentioned John Prine in a recent post and then on the heels of that mention, he has released a new album, The Tree of Forgiveness, his first new album in ten years. Prine is beloved by other singer songwriters and often praised by the inscrutable God that is Bob Dylan. Indeed, Prine was frequently said to be the “next Bob Dylan” in the early part of his career, though he instead carved out his own respectable career and voice, if never with the dizzying success of Dylan. The new album reflects a man in his 70s, a cancer survivor, who reflects on life and its end, but with the good humor and empathy that are hallmarks of Prine’s music. “When I Get To Heaven” is a rollicking, fun vision of what comes next and a pure delight. A charming, warm, and often terrific album.

What I’m reading:

I recently read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, on many people’s Top Ten lists for last year and for good reason. It is sprawling, multi-generational, and based in the world of Japanese occupied Korea and then in the Korean immigrant’s world of Oaska, so our key characters become “tweeners,” accepted in neither world. It’s often unspeakably sad, and yet there is resiliency and love. There is also intimacy, despite the time and geographic span of the novel. It’s breathtakingly good and like all good novels, transporting.

What I’m watching:

I adore Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, and while I’m not sure his Shape of Water is better, it is a worthy follow up to the earlier masterpiece (and more of a commercial success). Lots of critics dislike the film, but I’m okay with a simple retelling of a Beauty and the Beast love story, as predictable as it might be. The acting is terrific, it is visually stunning, and there are layers of pain as well as social and political commentary (the setting is the US during the Cold War) and, no real spoiler here, the real monsters are humans, the military officer who sees over the captured aquatic creature. It is hauntingly beautiful and its depiction of hatred to those who are different or “other” is painfully resonant with the time in which we live. Put this on your “must see” list.

March 18, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Sitting on a plane for hours (and many more to go; geez, Australia is far away) is a great opportunity to listen to new music and to revisit old favorites. This time, it is Lucy Dacus and her album Historians, the new sophomore release from a 22-year old indie artist that writes with relatable, real-life lyrics. Just on a second listen and while she insists this isn’t a break up record (as we know, 50% of all great songs are break up songs), it is full of loss and pain. Worth the listen so far. For the way back machine, it’s John Prine and In Spite of Ourselves (that title track is one of the great love songs of all time), a collection of duets with some of his “favorite girl singers” as he once described them. I have a crush on Iris Dement (for a really righteously angry song try her Wasteland of the Free), but there is also EmmyLou Harris, the incomparable Dolores Keane, and Lucinda Williams. Very different albums, both wonderful.

What I’m reading:

Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on Christopher Steele presents little that is new, but she pulls it together in a terrific and coherent whole that is illuminating and troubling at the same time. Not only for what is happening, but for the complicity of the far right in trying to discredit that which should be setting off alarm bells everywhere. Bob Mueller may be the most important defender of the democracy at this time. A must read.

What I’m watching:

Homeland is killing it this season and is prescient, hauntingly so. Russian election interference, a Bannon-style hate radio demagogue, alienated and gun toting militia types, and a president out of control. It’s fabulous, even if it feels awfully close to the evening news.

March 8, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We have a family challenge to compile our Top 100 songs. It is painful. Only 100? No more than three songs by one artist? Wait, why is M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” on my list? Should it just be The Clash from whom she samples? Can I admit to guilty pleasure songs? Hey, it’s my list and I can put anything I want on it. So I’m listening to the list while I work and the song playing right now is Tom Petty’s “The Wild One, Forever,” a B-side single that was never a hit and that remains my favorite Petty song. Also, “Evangeline” by Los Lobos. It evokes a night many years ago, with friends at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA, when everyone danced well past 1AM in a hot, sweaty, packed club and the band was a revelation. Maybe the best music night of our lives and a reminder that one’s 100 Favorite Songs list is as much about what you were doing and where you were in your life when those songs were playing as it is about the music. It’s not a list. It’s a soundtrack for this journey.

What I’m reading:

Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy was in the NY Times top ten books of 2017 list and it is easy to see why. Lockwood brings remarkable and often surprising imagery, metaphor, and language to her prose memoir and it actually threw me off at first. It then all became clear when someone told me she is a poet. The book is laugh aloud funny, which masks (or makes safer anyway) some pretty dark territory. Anyone who grew up Catholic, whether lapsed or not, will resonate with her story. She can’t resist a bawdy anecdote and her family provides some of the most memorable characters possible, especially her father, her sister, and her mother, who I came to adore. Best thing I’ve read in ages.

What I’m watching:

The Florida Project, a profoundly good movie on so many levels. Start with the central character, six-year old (at the time of the filming) Brooklynn Prince, who owns – I mean really owns – the screen. This is pure acting genius and at that age? Astounding. Almost as astounding is Bria Vinaite, who plays her mother. She was discovered on Instagram and had never acted before this role, which she did with just three weeks of acting lessons. She is utterly convincing and the tension between the child’s absolute wonder and joy in the world with her mother’s struggle to provide, to be a mother, is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. Willem Dafoe rightly received an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. This is a terrific movie.

February 12, 2018

What I’m listening to:

So, I have a lot of friends of age (I know you’re thinking 40s, but I just turned 60) who are frozen in whatever era of music they enjoyed in college or maybe even in their thirties. There are lots of times when I reach back into the catalog, since music is one of those really powerful and transporting senses that can take you through time (smell is the other one, though often underappreciated for that power). Hell, I just bought a turntable and now spending time in vintage vinyl shops. But I’m trying to take a lesson from Pat, who revels in new music and can as easily talk about North African rap music and the latest National album as Meet the Beatles, her first ever album. So, I’ve been listening to Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy winning Damn. While it may not be the first thing I’ll reach for on a winter night in Maine, by the fire, I was taken with it. It’s layered, political, and weirdly sensitive and misogynist at the same time, and it feels fresh and authentic and smart at the same time, with music that often pulled me from what I was doing. In short, everything music should do. I’m not a bit cooler for listening to Damn, but when I followed it with Steely Dan, I felt like I was listening to Lawrence Welk. A good sign, I think.

What I’m reading:

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I’m not usually a reader of biographies, but I’ve always been taken with Leonardo. Isaacson does not disappoint (does he ever?), and his subject is at once more human and accessible and more awe-inspiring in Isaacson’s capable hands. Gay, left-handed, vegetarian, incapable of finishing things, a wonderful conversationalist, kind, and perhaps the most relentlessly curious human being who has ever lived. Like his biographies of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, Isaacson’s project here is to show that genius lives at the intersection of science and art, of rationality and creativity. Highly recommend it.

What I’m watching:

We watched the This Is Us post-Super Bowl episode, the one where Jack finally buys the farm. I really want to hate this show. It is melodramatic and manipulative, with characters that mostly never change or grow, and it hooks me every damn time we watch it. The episode last Sunday was a tear jerker, a double whammy intended to render into a blubbering, tissue-crumbling pathetic mess anyone who has lost a parent or who is a parent. Sterling K. Brown, Ron Cephas Jones, the surprising Mandy Moore, and Milo Ventimiglia are hard not to love and last season’s episode that had only Brown and Cephas going to Memphis was the show at its best (they are by far the two best actors). Last week was the show at its best worst. In other words, I want to hate it, but I love it. If you haven’t seen it, don’t binge watch it. You’ll need therapy and insulin.

January 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Drive-By Truckers. Chris Stapleton has me on an unusual (for me) country theme and I discovered these guys to my great delight. They’ve been around, with some 11 albums, but the newest one is fascinating. It’s a deep dive into Southern alienation and the white working-class world often associated with our current president. I admire the willingness to lay bare, in kick ass rock songs, the complexities and pain at work among people we too quickly place into overly simple categories. These guys are brave, bold, and thoughtful as hell, while producing songs I didn’t expect to like, but that I keep playing. And they are coming to NH.

What I’m reading:

A textual analog to Drive-By Truckers by Chris Stapleton in many ways is Tony Horowitz’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning Confederates in the Attic. Ostensibly about the Civil War and the South’s ongoing attachment to it, it is prescient and speaks eloquently to the times in which we live (where every southern state but Virginia voted for President Trump). Often hilarious, it too surfaces complexities and nuance that escape a more recent, and widely acclaimed, book like Hillbilly Elegy. As a Civil War fan, it was also astonishing in many instances, especially when it blows apart long-held “truths” about the war, such as the degree to which Sherman burned down the south (he did not). Like D-B Truckers, Horowitz loves the South and the people he encounters, even as he grapples with its myths of victimhood and exceptionalism (and racism, which may be no more than the racism in the north, but of a different kind). Everyone should read this book and I’m embarrassed I’m so late to it.

What I’m watching:

David Letterman has a new Netflix show called “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” and we watched the first episode, in which Letterman interviewed Barack Obama. It was extraordinary (if you don’t have Netflix, get it just to watch this show); not only because we were reminded of Obama’s smarts, grace, and humanity (and humor), but because we saw a side of Letterman we didn’t know existed. His personal reflections on Selma were raw and powerful, almost painful. He will do five more episodes with “extraordinary individuals” and if they are anything like the first, this might be the very best work of his career and one of the best things on television.

December 22, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished Sunjeev Sahota’s Year of the Runaways, a painful inside look at the plight of illegal Indian immigrant workers in Britain. It was shortlisted for 2015 Man Booker Prize and its transporting, often to a dark and painful universe, and it is impossible not to think about the American version of this story and the terrible way we treat the undocumented in our own country, especially now.

What I’m watching:

Season II of The Crown is even better than Season I. Elizabeth’s character is becoming more three-dimensional, the modern world is catching up with tradition-bound Britain, and Cold War politics offer more context and tension than we saw in Season I. Claire Foy, in her last season, is just terrific – one arched eye brow can send a message.

What I’m listening to:

A lot of Christmas music, but needing a break from the schmaltz, I’ve discovered Over the Rhine and their Christmas album, Snow Angels. God, these guys are good.

November 14, 2017

What I’m watching:

Guiltily, I watch the Patriots play every weekend, often building my schedule and plans around seeing the game. Why the guilt? I don’t know how morally defensible is football anymore, as we now know the severe damage it does to the players. We can’t pretend it’s all okay anymore. Is this our version of late decadent Rome, watching mostly young Black men take a terrible toll on each other for our mere entertainment?

What I’m reading:

Recently finished J.G. Ballard’s 2000 novel Super-Cannes, a powerful depiction of a corporate-tech ex-pat community taken over by a kind of psychopathology, in which all social norms and responsibilities are surrendered to residents of the new world community. Kept thinking about Silicon Valley when reading it. Pretty dark, dystopian view of the modern world and centered around a mass killing, troublingly prescient.

What I’m listening to:

Was never really a Lorde fan, only knowing her catchy (and smarter than you might first guess) pop hit “Royals” from her debut album. But her new album, Melodrama, is terrific and it doesn’t feel quite right to call this “pop.” There is something way more substantial going on with Lorde and I can see why many critics put this album at the top of their Best in 2017 list. Count me in as a huge fan.

November 3, 2017

What I’m reading: Just finished Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, her breathtakingly good second novel. How is someone so young so wise? Her writing is near perfection and I read the book in two days, setting my alarm for 4:30AM so I could finish it before work.

What I’m watching: We just binge watched season two of Stranger Things and it was worth it just to watch Millie Bobbie Brown, the transcendent young actor who plays Eleven. The series is a delightful mash up of every great eighties horror genre you can imagine and while pretty dark, an absolute joy to watch.

What I’m listening to: I’m not a lover of country music (to say the least), but I love Chris Stapleton. His “The Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is heartbreakingly good and reminds me of the old school country that played in my house as a kid. He has a new album and I can’t wait, but his From A Room: Volume 1 is on repeat for now.

September 26, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo. It took me a while to accept its cadence and sheer weirdness, but loved it in the end. A painful meditation on loss and grief, and a genuinely beautiful exploration of the intersection of life and death, the difficulty of letting go of what was, good and bad, and what never came to be.

What I’m watching:

HBO’s The Deuce. Times Square and the beginning of the porn industry in the 1970s, the setting made me wonder if this was really something I’d want to see. But David Simon is the writer and I’d read a menu if he wrote it. It does not disappoint so far and there is nothing prurient about it.

What I’m listening to:

The National’s new album Sleep Well Beast. I love this band. The opening piano notes of the first song, “Nobody Else Will Be There,” seize me & I’m reminded that no one else in music today matches their arrangement & musicianship. I’m adding “Born to Beg,” “Slow Show,” “I Need My Girl,” and “Runaway” to my list of favorite love songs.

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petitrangement · 7 years ago

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Ausaf Abbas, 55

Then: bass player, Alien Kulture

Now: investment banker

We very much believed in the philosophy of punk – here’s a chord, here’s a second, here’s a third, now go and form a band. I’d never touched a bass guitar until our first rehearsal, but that didn’t matter. It was all about the energy and the enthusiasm.

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We were probably from the more intellectual wing of punk and were very much involved in the Rock Against Racism campaign. Our name came from Margaret Thatcher, who’d made an infamous comment about how Britain was in danger of being swamped by an alien culture. We interpreted that to mean that if you weren’t white, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class, Protestant, maybe you didn’t fit in.

The reason we split up was quite classic. The drummer and I were both students at the London School of Economics. We had our finals coming up, but got an offer of a 20-gig tour with another band. Our singer insists it was The Specials, but I’m not so sure. However, our Pakistani roots reasserted themselves and we decided we’d better concentrate on passing our finals.

I loved what the band did, but I knew I wasn’t going to make a living from it. After getting my masters degree, I started working for BP as an economist. I didn’t know much about finance – it was quite an arcane, closed industry – but when Thatcher liberalised and deregulated large parts of the British economy, she set off a revolution in financial services. It seemed an obvious move to make, from oil into finance, so I joined Merrill Lynch, where I spent 21 years.

I’m sure my 20-year-old self would look at me and shout, 'Sellout!'

The money I earn does allow me to do some good – one of my friends worked for Amnesty International and knew I was an investment banker. He called me up and said, “Hi. I need you to send me £1,000, otherwise 12 people will die in Colombia tomorrow.” I agreed immediately. I stumbled into investment banking by chance, but I love the opportunities it has given me. I’ve met prime ministers and finance ministers and CEOs of major corporations. This was unbelievable for an immigrant kid who grew up in Brixton in a single-parent family.

I’m sure my 20-year-old self would look at me and shout, “Sellout!” But I don’t feel like a sellout. I’m just older and wiser. I’m 55 now. I’m old, fat and bald. When I tell people I was in a punk band, most just laugh and think I’m joking. But I’m very proud of what we did. In our own way, we helped Asian kids stand up and be counted for the first time in this country. Why wouldn’t you be proud of that?

Lesley Woods, 56

Then: singer/guitarist, Au Pairs

Now: barrister

I was a late starter. Punk had been around quite a while when I got into it, in 1978. What was really appealing was sticking two fingers up at rock musicians. People could get up and do their thing without having to be these great, macho lead guitarists. And women could do it on their own terms, without having to conform to some female stereotype of having big boobs and being really pretty. People like Siouxsie Sioux, Poly Styrene and Patti Smith were great role models.

But we were constantly met with a wall of violence and aggression. There were fights; [Slits singer] Ari Up got stabbed. There comes a point where you can’t go on any more at that level. After the band folded, my brain was quite scrambled and I needed to get my mind back, so I thought I’d do something really difficult and started studying law.

I was called to the bar when I was 32. I started off doing asylum law, working with refugees, which tallied with my political values. Although it was heartbreaking a lot of the time, when you won a case, you came out and yelped for joy. You knew you’d made a difference. I do very little asylum law now, but I still work in immigration. I’ve always had a very strong sense of justice, and working in this area means I haven’t had to compromise my integrity.

Women could do it on their own terms, without having to conform to some female stereotype of having big boobs

People were aware of my past and it probably put a lot of the more straight people off. When I first came to the bar in 1992, women couldn’t wear trousers, which gives you an idea of how backward it was.

I still muck about with music, but I wished I’d paid more heed to that particular itch about five or 10 years ago. My work is so intense that it’s hard to fit music in now. I’ve been making new recordings and I still do the odd performance. I’d love to do some collaborations, though. It’s a bit lonely doing it on your own.

Terry Chimes, 59

Then: drummer, The Clash

Now: chiropractor

I just wanted to be in a band, and this was the most exciting band I could find. Everyone else in The Clash was angry at the world and the establishment. I wasn’t. That’s why I left, actually. I felt like the odd one out.

As a child, I wanted to be a doctor, but I also wanted to be a musician; it’s kind of hard to be both. The part of me that wanted to be a musician won that particular battle – you have to do music when you’re young. But by the time I’d done it for 15 years [playing with Black Sabbath and Hanoi Rocks as well as The Clash], I was craving working in medicine more and more, so I made the big jump. In 1988, at 32, I stopped music and spent five years studying full-time. My musical peers weren’t that surprised. The Clash’s manager Bernie Rhodes once said, “You’re like some young doctor. I can imagine you saying, ‘Here are your pills, madam.’” I don’t know where he got that from, but he’d spotted something.

During my time in music, I saw how people’s health was determined by their lifestyle. I had a strong urge to heal people. I’ve now seen more than 45,000 patients, so I’ve made a lot of people better. If you don’t like people, then it’s the job from hell. I treat a lot of musicians. They say, “I’d rather come to you. You’re a musician and you understand what I do.” Some patients are interested in music and like to have a chat about it, but most just say, “I’m in agony. Can you please get rid of it?”

Everyone else in The Clash was angry at the world and the establishment. I wasn’t. That’s why I left

The experience of challenging and changing the establishment was good for everyone at the time. Whatever you do after that you bring that with you: the sense that things don’t have to be the way they are. I have another life now, standing up against massive corporations that want to ruin everyone’s health and make money out of it, whether with genetically-modified food, sugar-laden rubbish or drugs we don’t really need.

People say to me, “Don’t you miss playing in front of 70,000 people?” Well, I’ll probably see 70,000 patients before I die. Getting people well and making them happy: I don’t think I’ll ever want to stop doing that.

• The Strange Case Of Dr Terry And Mr Chimes by Terry Chimes is published by John Blake at £9.99.

David O’Brien, 54

Then: part of Manchester’s punk scene

Now: vicar

As a teenager, I dropped in and out of jobs in factories and supermarkets without having much direction, but punk gave me an energy. I wasn’t an anarchist. I wanted society to stop and think about an alternative idea. Plus, I felt comfortable in Doc Martens boots and bleached jeans.

I was an illegitimate child. My dad was an alcoholic whom I hadn’t seen since I was four and my mother was a single parent who had eight kids, although she lost two of them. She brought the six of us up by herself.

Growing up, Christianity was irrelevant to me. I used to drink too much and get in trouble at football matches. The closest I got to worship was standing at the Stretford End on a Saturday at Old Trafford.

I thought church was for nice, middle-aged people like Thora Hird. I remember carol singers coming into the pub one Christmas and, like everyone else, I was drunk and barracking them. One day, when I was on the dole and had just got my giro, me and my mate went to the pub until we got chucked out – at 3pm in those days. We were walking through some woods when we saw an occult sign cut out of the ground; the rumour was that a coven was using it for black magic. I’d had a bit to drink, so I jumped into the middle to see what happened.

When you put on a dog collar, people assume you’ve had no life before

I didn’t feel right afterwards. It frightened me and got the cogs turning with the question: what if there is something else out there? So I picked up a copy of the New Testament that had been on the shelf for years, collecting dust, and I felt better after reading it. It still took me three years to get inside an actual church.

I had this nagging thought for the next 10 years: “Become a minister. Become a minister.” So I enrolled on a one-year foundation course in theology, then completed a degree in applied theology. Five and a half years ago, I came down to Shrewsbury and became a fully-fledged vicar.

When you put on a dog collar, people assume you’ve had no life before. But the passions that got me into punk are still there, and that’s what I bring into ministry now. It’s about a desire for meaning.

I haven’t got my vinyl any more, but I still listen to one or two things on YouTube. It’s a reminder of where I’ve come from.

• David O’Brien’s book Northern Soul: Football, Punk, Jesus is published by Onwards and Upwards at £8.99.

Steve Ignorant, 58

Then: lead singer, Crass

Now: lifeboatman

Punk had a purpose. Every gig would benefit something: a rape crisis centre, a donkey sanctuary, an old people’s home. It was positive. We wanted a nice world to live in. Only, this time, we weren’t asking – we were telling.

From 1977 to 1984, I was the lead vocalist for Crass. We toured the UK, playing gigs wherever and whenever we could. When Crass finished, I continued to perform and record with Conflict and later formed the bands Schwartzeneggar and Stratford Mercenaries.

In 2007, I moved to Norfolk with the intention of living quietly by the coast. I was going to sweep up leaves and all that sort of stuff – but it wasn’t to be. The year I moved, I got an offer to do two nights at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. With every gig I do, I like to donate to a cause. I knew the independent lifeboat service in Sea Palling is always desperate for funds, so I thought that was ideal: I could see where the money actually goes. They got about £1,000 and bought new life jackets that went on to save people’s lives.

The crew took me out on the boat, dressed me up in a drysuit, threw me overboard and picked me up, then asked, “So, what about joining?”

At first, I was very reluctant – I worried about the commitment and imagined that I would have to go on parade. The idea of some bloke looking me up and down and telling me off for not shaving properly went totally against my principles. But they were all scruffier than me. Now I’m a full-time member.

Being part of the crew is similar to being in a band. You’re full of adrenaline when you’re on stage, but the worst thing that can happen is that you forget the words or the lead guitarist plays a bum note. It’s not the same adrenaline when you’re suddenly out at sea and pulling someone from the water. It affects different people in different ways. It doesn’t hit me at first, but about an hour later, it’s as if I’ve taken amphetamines. I can’t shut up about it.

Jordan, 60

Then: punk style icon

Now: veterinary nurse

People said, “You must be so brave, looking like that out in the street.” I’d often wear a mohair jumper with suspenders and stockings and see-through knickers. It was nothing to do with bravery. Quite the opposite. It was about feeling comfortable and at one with yourself. I always liked dressing my own way. When I came up to London to try to get a job at Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s shop, Sex, I was already wearing the stuff they were selling – I had just cobbled it together myself. But there wasn’t a job available straight away, so in the meantime I went to work in Harrods with green makeup on.

I eventually worked right at the forefront of punk with Vivienne and Malcolm. I styled the Sex Pistols – messing up their clothes. I appeared on stage with them, including on their first TV appearance on Granada’s So It Goes, to lend weight to their performance fashion-wise. I also managed Adam And The Ants during their punk era.

A lot of the major music moguls were extremely sexist. An A&R guy once said to my face, “This is not a woman’s job. You should be cooking and laying on your back.” I didn’t want to be there any more, so I came home to Seaford.

I wanted to work in something meaningful, so I got a job at my local vet’s. I’ve now been there for 22 years. It’s not pushing bits of paper around. It’s a real job where you can make a difference to how animals are cared for. Punk showed me you could be whatever you wanted to be, and that’s the way I’ve lived my life. I haven’t changed.

It was nothing to do with bravery. Quite the opposite. It was about feeling comfortable and at one with yourself

A lot of my old teachers still live locally and bring their animals in. They remember all the trouble I got in at school. I had a row with my headmaster. He said, “I can’t have you looking like this. You’ve got red and pink hair. You’ve got a mohican. They’ll all start copying you.” I told him, “No one’s going to copy me. Look at them. They’re laughing.” They made me wear a headscarf when I walked between lessons. Now these teachers say, “Oh, I always loved how you looked.” A bit of history has been rewritten.

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