Goodbye 2020
I had a plan to end the year with a little wrap-up newsletter, nothing special. I considered making a list of faves — music, books, additional things — before I realized that one of the biggest reliefs of this otherwise pretty bleak year was that I was not professionally required to do any kind of list-making. There was no one expecting me to round up anything.
Listen, I like list season. The implication, to me, is that best means as decided by staff and friends, not best as in universal apex. It’s fun to see how that all shakes out. (I’m talking, of course, about lists of tracks and albums.) It was exciting to do it at the place where I used to work because we were producing something that wasn’t going to look like everyone else’s lists. One of my favorite things about working there was seeing stuff we’d covered early or a format we’d done pop up on other websites — not necessarily because of us — knowing that we had foresight, that we’ve been there all along. But it’s also SO MUCH WORK TO COORDINATE AN ENTIRE MASSIVE YEAR-END PACKAGE. So, like, I’m not rounding anything up. If you want to know what music I liked this year, I’m sorry to tell you, I pretty much only listened to Chromatica! Sorry! I don’t know why but Lady Gaga, who I have never had any real interest in, hit a real nostalgicky sweet spot for me with this one, so much so that I’m now also on Team Justice For ArtPOP, which was the only other album I listened to regularly this past year. (Probably some pathos there but whatever!! My biggest enemy is me!)
So anyway, I’m just here to say hello, thank you for being here, and that, as of today (today!), we’re be back to our regularly scheduled Wednesdays with, whoa, consistent delivery to your inbox. In 2021, there will be discussions with many multifaceted authors who I admire and appreciate! There will be dispatches from my reading and writing in 2021!! There will be documentation of the process of going through all my workshop/seminar/lecture notes from 2018-2020 to make a reference guide for myself going forward which is basically just scrapbooking but we’ll make it fun!!!
See you next week <3