Still one of the most beautiful albums of this (or any other) decade.
Myriam Gendron - Ma délire - Songs of love, lost & found (2021)
16.01.2026 16:42
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Still one of the most beautiful albums of this (or any other) decade.
Myriam Gendron - Ma délire - Songs of love, lost & found (2021)
Jennifer Kelly is facing a tough battle against cancer after her diagnosis on Christmas Day, and the costs are overwhelming. Please consider clicking the link below to donate or share it with others who might help. gofund.me/7a7486b6b
Thank you!
My fiancé, Emily, on the night of my proposal and our cat, dressed up for the occasion.
I’m engaged now, by the way!
One of the unexpected and very sweet, moving perks of getting engaged is that when you tell people you’re engaged, you get to hear their engagement stories. I delight in each one!
snow-covered street with a single vehicle's headlights cutting through the blue-tinted atmosphere
The Quiet American
Pete Turner, 1958
The Night Cry Not with my full strength O not yet with my full strength Kneeling down to be closer to the water At night He had been drawn from his home by the gray fields To the black water Whose far runnels sounded distinct In the dawn of the gray fields The night standing The principles he'd fought for The dog saving him All a dream Which had comforted him without meaning to 1961 (written ca. 1958)
John Ashbery
2020: First Cow
2021: Memoria
2022: The Fabelmans
2023: The Plains
2024: La Chimera
2025: One Battle After Another
For the past few years, I’ve always started the new year with a
Bach recording I haven’t heard before. Today’s is this one, arranged for two violins using Just Intonation tunings:
anothertimbre.bandcamp.com/album/bach-t...
Books Read, 2025 1. Henry James - The Beast in the Jungle (bolded) 2. Brian Evenson - Good Night, Sleep Tight (bolded) 3. Richard McGuire - Here 4. Aminder Dhaliwal - Woman World 5. Jillian Tamaki - Boundless 6. Hilary Leichter - Temporary (bolded) 7. Olivier Schrauwen - Sunday (bolded) 8. Daniel Clowes - Monica (bolded) 9. Olivier Schrauwen - Mowgli's Mirror 10. Olivier Schrauwen - Parallel Lives 11. Fyodor Dostoevsky (trans. Michael Katz) - Notes from Underground (reread) (bolded) 12. Daniel Clowes - Patience 13. Adrian Tomine - The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist 14. Olivier Schrauwen, Jérôme Mulot, Florent Ruppert - Portrait of a Drunk 15. Georgia Gospodinov (trans. Angela Rodel) - The Physics of Sorrow 16. Daniel Clowes - David Boring 17. Daniel Clowes - Ghost World 18. Daniel Clowes - The Death-Ray 19. Hilary Leichter - Terrace Story 20. Stephen Greenblatt - Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics 21. Daniel Clowes - Ice Haven 22. Dag Solstad (trans. Sverre Lyngstad) - Shyness and Dignity (bolded) 23. Pushwagner - Soft City 24. Sidney Lumet - Making Movies 25. Lorrie Moore - I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home 26. Daniel Clowes - Mister Wonderful: A Love Story 27. Daniel Clowes - Wilson 28. Solvej Balle (trans. Barbara J. Haveland) - On The Calculation of Volume I (bolded) 29. Yõko Ogawa (trans. Stephen Snyder) - The Memory Police 30. Stefan Zweig (trans. Alexander Starritt) - A Chess Story (bolded) 31. Paul Lynch - Prophet Song 32. Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell - From Hell (bolded) 33. Charles Burns - Final Cut 34. lan Penman - Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors (bolded) 35. Julia Gfrörer - Vision 36. Briana Loewinsohn - Raised by Ghosts 37. Fernanda Trías (trans. Heather Cleary) - Pink Slime
38. Douglas W. Tallamy - Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard 39. William Golding - Lord of the Flies (reread) 40. Thomas Pynchon - Vineland (bolded) 41. Briana Loewinsohn - Ephemera 42. Hesiod (trans. A.E. Stallings) - Works and Days 43. Katherine Rundell - Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne 44. Peter Coviello - Vineland Reread 45. Chris Bachelder & Jennifer Habel - Dayswork (bolded) 46. Javier Guelfi & Katina Paron - A Newshound's Guide to Student Journalism 47. Alan Moore, et al. - Saga of the Swamp Thing, Book 1 48. John Warner - More Than Words: How to Think about Writing in the Age of Al 49. Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely - We3 50. Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely - Absolute All-Star Superman (reread) 51. Thomas Pynchon - Inherent Vice (bolded) 52. Grant Morrison & Klaus Janson - Batman: Gothic 53. Grant Morrison & Dave McKean - Batman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House on Serious Earth 54. Edward Parnell - Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country 55. Mariana Enriquez (trans. Megan McDowell) - A Sunny Place for Shady People: Stories 56. Grant Morrison, et al. - Batman: The Black Glove 57. Thomas Pynchon - Bleeding Edge (bolded) 58. Phil Christman - Why Christians Should Be Leftists 59. Grant Morrison, et al. - Batman: R.I.P. 60. William Hope Hodgson - The House on the Borderland (bolded) 61. Agustina Bazterrica (trans. Sarah Moses) - The Unworthy 62.Shirley Jackson - The Sundial (bolded) 63. R.F. Kuang - Katabasis 64. Edith Wharton - Ghosts (bolded) 65. Sebastian Castillo - Fresh, Green Life 66. Isabel Greenberg - Glass Town: The Imaginary World of the Brontës 67. Louis MacNeice - Autumn Journal (bolded) 68. M. John Harrison - The Course of the Heart (bolded) 69. T.S. Eliot - Four Quartets 70. Anders Nilsen - Tongues, Vol. 1 71. Sally Rooney - Intermezzo
Everything I read this year, favorites bolded:
A stack of books on top of my bookshelf, from bottom to top: Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice Brian Evenson’s Good Night, Sleep Tight Edith Wharton’s Ghosts Solvej Balle’s On The Calculation of Volume I Ian Penman’s Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors Shirley Jackson’s The Sundial William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground Louis MacNeice’s Autumn Journal Stefan Zweig’s A Chess Story Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland
My favorite books of the year (that I own). The two throughlines of my reading this year: Pynchon and graphic novels. Not pictured but top of the heap: From Hell, Olivier Schrauwen’s Sunday, Daniel Clowes’s Monica, and (not a graphic novel) Henry James’s The Beast in the Jungle.
A series of movie posters, screenshot from my Letterboxd list, including: Ball of Fire Multiple Maniacs Nickel Boys If I Should Die Before I Wake GIFT Tombstone 24 City Night Moves Still Life Modern Times The Ox-Bow Incident Double Indemnity Out of the Past The Great Dictator Strangers on a Train The Wrong Man
More film posters, including: Pickpocket Stella Dallas Nashville Bad Day at Black Rock White Heat 25th Hour Shin Godzilla Tampopo Prince: Sign O’ The Times The Devils Death Becomes Her In The Dark A Nightmare on Elm Street Cherry Falls
Really hit a wall with movies this year: I spent the first half of the year unable to muster much interest in watching anything (except for Andor). Ended up on a Zhangke, Chaplin, and Hitchcock kick this summer that snapped me out of it, mostly.
My favorite first watches of 2025:
Police: have you been watching movies?
Me: a few
Police: a few what?
Was wondering if you’d be there, given your Chattanooga posts the past few months.
Definitely a good time. I’ve always liked his records, but it all clicked for me tonight.
here's another talk we want to share with you.
it's a few chats that all kind of converged around some form of nostalgia.
that, and trying to suss out what impediments in our lives are bc of our phones, and what might be just good old-fashioned self-defeat.
oh and tamagotchis — remember those?
!!!!
Magic Tuber Jam with Elkhorn, Powers/Rolin Duo, Liam Grant, and almost every other musician present at Fly Around Festival in Lansing, NC.
Poster for the Fly Around Festival featuring the lineup: Joan Shelley Myriam Gendron Magic Tuber Stringband Powers/Rolin Duo Elkhorn Black Twig Pickers Liam Grant Trevor McKenzie and Steve Kruger Sammy Osmond and the No Hellers Devon Flaherty Clover-Lynn and the Hellfires Magic Tuber Jam
Spending the last few days of summer up in the NC mountains, seeing a host of favorites at the inaugural Fly Around Festival.
This is how I felt after finishing Vineland last week and now I’m reading Inherent Vice. They pair well together, so I second the Vineland rec.
Reading Inherent Vice at the local swimming hole
Dancing On The Edge is maybe my favorite album this decade, so I’ve been eagerly anticipating the new one. It delivers.
Folgers coffee and a Krispy Kreme donut and the incredible new Ryan Davis album on the stereo this morning: sophomorelounge.bandcamp.com/album/ryan-d...
The great Ozzy Osbourne has gone through the final change on this plane of existence. Here is an arrangement of “Changes” by Black Sabbath that I humbly offer in tribute. RIP.
And for anyone who wishes that someone had recorded a blissed-out 40-minute New Age version of Planet Caravan, I give you... tuluumshimmering.bandcamp.com/album/planet...
#NowWatching
One of our local venues runs a film series throughout the year, which is the only chance around Chattanooga to see some classic movies in a theater. Seeing this for the first time tonight.
Country Western Singer I used to feel like a new man After the day's first brew. But then the new man I became Would need a tall one too. As would the new man he became, And the new one after him And so on and so forth till the new men made The dizzy room go dim. And each one said, I'll be your muse, I'll trade you song for beer: He said, I'll be your salt lick, honey, If you will be my deer. He said, I'll be your happy hour, And you, boy, you'll be mine And mine won't end at six or seven Or even at closing time. Yes, son, I'll be your spirit guide; I'll lead you to Absolut, To Dewars, Bushmills, and Jamesons, Then down to Old Tangle Foot. And there I'll drain the pretense from you That propped you up so high; I'll teach you salivation's just Salvation without the I.
To hear his sweet talk was to think You'd gone from rags to riches, Till going from drink to drink became Like going from hags to bitches, Like going from bed to barroom stool, From stool to bathroom stall, From stall to sink, from sink to stool, From stool to hospital. Now the monitors beep like pinball machines, And coldly the IV drips; And a nurse runs a moistened washcloth over My parched and bleeding lips, And the blood I taste, the blood I swallow Is as far away from wine As 5:10 is for the one who dies At 5:09.
Keep thinking about this Alan Shapiro poem that A.E. Stallings discussed in her talk on rhyme at the Sewanee Writers Conference yesterday. Never heard of Shapiro but immediately ordered one of his books when we got out.
A poster for King Vidor’s Stella Dallas, featuring Barbara Stanwyck
#NowWatching
In honor of Stanwyck’s birthday, my first King Vidor film
An overhead shot of a Penguin paperback edition of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland on my desk
Went into this with low expectations, given its reputation, but I ended up knocked out by it. Extremely funny, of course, but also mournful and angry. Has a sentence (or several) every couple of pages that I would just marvel at. I used to hate Pynchon but now I see how wrong I was.
We’re thrilled to share the jacket for Thomas Pynchon’s highly anticipated new novel Shadow Ticket, coming October 7, 2025!
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316427...
A Topsters chart of my favorite albums of the year in chronological order, including: U.E. - Hometown Girl Ambrose Akinmusire - honey from a winter stone Oklou - choke enough Richard Dawson - End of the Middle Laurie Torres - Après coup Frog Eyes - The Open Up The Tubs - Cotton Crown Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, Sam Wilkes - Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes More Eaze - no floor Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Gift Songs Circuit des Yeux - Halo On The Inside Perfume Genius - Glory Eiko Ishibashi - Antigone John Cage - Chamber Works 1943-1951 AdriAnne Lenker - Live at Revolution Hall Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas - Totality Djrum - Under Tangled Silence Maria Somerville - Luster Billy Woods - GOLLIWOG Water Damage - Instruments Friendship - Caveman Wakes Up Mariscos - 10 Canciones para Ir y Volver Caroline - caroline 2 Purelink - Faith Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer - Different Rooms
Sat down this morning and made a list of my favorite albums this year. Hard to pick a singular favorite: maybe the caroline record, maybe The Tubs (certainly my most-listened this year), maybe the John Cage recordings, which sparked a small obsession with his music (the piece "Dream" most of all).
