It’s one year later. Welcome back to the proverbial dinner table. I’ve been meaning to write for some time.
This past Saturday morning, I opened MailChimp. It's meant for large-scale marketing campaigns, but I use it for this humble newsletter all the same. My account has been dormant since the last edition, published a day or two before New Year's Eve 2023, though they’ve been happy to bill me monthly regardless.
I clicked on the Audience page the other morning, hoping to remind myself who’s behind the 189 subscribers. Accountability is as good a spark as any when rekindling a fire. The first three, when sorted by oldest, are my own test emails for automated welcome messages. The next three are my brother Ben, my Mom, and Dad. Then follows 183 names and emails. This includes friends, former high school teachers, university professors, travel companions I met at eighteen while volunteering my time and camera across Asia, members of my extended family, colleagues through the years using their personal email addresses, brief acquaintances whose origins I don’t fully recall but names I recognize because we follow each other on Instagram. Each name sparks a slew of memories I'd forgotten were mine.
There’s my uncle Alan, using the first and last name fields to make an inside joke that brings a wry smile to my face, and with memories of the Christmas Ben and I spent with him in England. There’s Diana, who shared so many steps of the Camino with me last summer. Then there’s Damian, who I met a few miles from Colombia’s Caribbean coast, high in the Sierra Nevada mountains, above the small town called Minca at one of the eco-tourism fincas with a pool poised on the edge of a cliff.
Damian and I spent 36 hours together—just enough time to know we’d found a friend. Since then, we’ve exchanged at least as many hours of voice notes, a winding conversation that ebbs and flows across continents. Damian has told me he enjoys the way I write about people (or, in the case of those voice notes, speak about them). Last year, his encouragement nudged me to the page for a time, in turn producing this newsletter.
Still, the habit didn’t hold. Words fell away in the first half of this year, muscles atrophied. I’d return to this newsletter every so often, hoping to stretch those muscles again, but with each attempt, the words felt wrong. My mind was elsewhere.
In July, I met Damian in Cologne, his home city before he committed to the nomadic life that had seen our paths converge in Colombia. It was his birthday, Germany was playing Denmark in the EUROs, and he’d just gotten off the plane after months of backpacking through China. We met at the Biergarten.
Over the next few weeks, we explored Berlin, Lithuania, and Latvia together. I watched with admiration as he brought curiosity to every conversation—whether it was with old friends or strangers we’d just met—and often, within an hour or two, we’d come to know the stories of their lives intimately.
With each encounter, I felt the desire to write again. I filled my journal with scribbles, fighting for the preservation of people, places, and moments against time's memory's inevitable distortion.
In November, Damian caught up on a backlog of my voice notes while heading to Panama. He replied with a bullet-point list of topics he wanted to discuss when we next crossed paths. The ninth point read, “You should write portraits of people.”
I return now to the habit of writing with that intention.
Damian on the Phina, docked in Nida, Lithuania
Looking through the list of names subscribed to this newsletter, there are at least 183 portraits to paint in prose. If I give myself time to consider which story would best paint a picture of each of you, I find myself smiling a nostalgic smile at my laptop.
(And while I’m citing my list of Reasons To Write, I’d be omitting key instigators if I didn’t go deeper on the mentioning of my brother and uncle. Over the past year, I’ve worked freelance while traveling—a lifestyle I’ve seen many, Damian included, embrace fully. I’m still unsure if it’s right for me, but I have a real taste of it now. Before I set out traveling, my brother encouraged me to continue writing. “Gallivant all you want,” he seemed to say, “but don’t stop writing.” Between his enthusiasm for my creative exploration and the small matter of my uncle completing his first manuscript, I’ve been meaning to write all year. Nothing like your cool uncle doing cool uncle things to motivate you.)
Regardless of the Reasons to Write, it means a lot that y’all signed up for this newsletter. I hope that in bringing it back to the top of your inboxes I am able to share stories worth reading, thoughts worth discussing, and art worth appreciating.
Right. Explanations out of the way. Now for the “meal”.
As it’s the end of the year and I’m wildly backlogged with art to share, we’re kicking off this reboot in obligatory end-of-year listicle fashion. I’ll do my best to bring portraits and stories to life in the next edition.
If you’re new here, the newsletter is divided into “courses,” each featuring its own food for thought. The appetizer typically comes in the form of a quote or a poem, something to set the tone. The main will typically be a short story, but in this case, it’ll be a deep dive into my favorite albums of the year. The desserts are usually ideas and questions to contemplate, but for today’s contemplation I’m serving my favorite films I watched this year. The to-go box features my favorite reads of the year, which tracks given that section is usually reserved for a work of art I stumbled upon in the wild. Enjoy!
appetizer.
Let’s begin with a morsel of advice I’m still learning to follow. Consider it the prelude to the meal ahead.
Behave as though life is short, and you will be forever chasing a short life made full. Behave as if life is long, and the fullness of life will be forever unfolding before you.
Behave as if the world is small, and you will think nothing of stepping on one continent today and another tomorrow. Behave as if the world is vast beyond comprehension, and each step will be one into the great unknown.
Behave as if you’ve got life figured out, and you’ll never learn anything new. Behave as though you know nothing, and you’ll find lessons in everything.
main.
my Favorite Albums of the year
With the table set and our appetites warmed, let’s move to the heart of the meal. This main is collection of sounds that shaped my year, albums that deserve a space at the table.
Two Star & the Dream Police, Mk.Gee
If this album is news to you, give it more than one listen-through. Mk.Gee’s voice reverberates through a cavernous dream like a plea to a more earnest, youthful self. The album conjures a sonic dreamworld textured by grainy layers of synth, vintage riffs, and emotive refrains. It is as vastly expansive as it is intimate. The songs are lyrical autostereograms – stare at them long enough and the cryptic lyrics reveal lush three-dimensional synesthesias; the music becomes feeling. The feeling is longing.
I had the privilege of seeing him live in Nashville at Marathon Works in early September. By that point, I knew I loved his music. I’d been introduced to his “Pronounced McGee” album in 2022, and though that sound was so different from this new album, I was growing to love the new sound even more.
He (Mk.Gee is the stage name for a 28-year-old kid from Jersey [I say kid because I too am 28 and often still feel like a kid]) was accompanied by two fellow multi-instrumentalists on stage. As good as the record is, it is orders of magnitude better when performed live. At times he sounded like Sting, carried himself like The Boss, and played a show with as much swagger, stage presence, and command of his audience as I imagine either had in their early days.
The audience was right there with him, belting out every austere word. When he played DNM (not his best in my book, but a viral TikTok success all the same), it was met with such a reception that as the last notes landed, he looked to his bandmates, nodded, and played the song again.
“We’ll do this all night,” he told the crowd.
Through a crowd of waving limbs lifted skyward, I counted ten DNM playthroughs. By the encore's final rendition, the crowd-surfers looked like tiny boats caught in Hokusai’s Great Wave.
Tale of My Lost Love, Female Species
I admit, I am disregarding the assumed rules when assembling a list of “Albums of the Year” with this one. “Tale of My Lost Love”was released in 2021. I first listened to Female Species in 2023. But being late to the party with this one is fair play, and the band’s remarkable story will back me up here.
Female Species was formed in the 1960s by two sisters. Vicki and Ronni Gossett began their musical journey in high school, inspired by the burgeoning rock 'n' roll and girl group scenes. Their debut album "Tale of My Lost Love” was recorded later that decade. But it was shelved, and without a major label backing the band, it remained unreleased for decades. As time passed and music changed, no label would get behind an aging time capsule.
Despite this, the duo became fixtures in the Southern California music scene, performing regularly as backup singers and occasionally as a duo. They would eventually move to Nashville, where they became regular credits in the country-industrial songwriting complex. In 2021, the label Numero Group released "Tale of My Lost Love,” bringing the sisters’ story full circle some five decades later.
Listen to Till the Moon Don’t Shine, and you’ve stepped back in time.
If you’ve ever lost a loved one, good luck keeping control of your emotions when listening to Tying the Leaves (my most-listened song of 2024 according to Spotify).
There’s a different favorite song in here for everyone. As a double LP detailing a lifetime of cowriting between two sisters, this is a monumental listen. The greatest hits of two stars who went most of their lives 20 steps from stardom.
How fortunate we are that this got the release it deserved, and how many more works of art are hidden just beyond the spotlight?
Open This Wall, Berlioz
A lot of folks are hip to Berlioz at this point, but if you haven’t given him a listen yet, please do. Get a dinner party planned, invite some friends around, make some pasta from scratch, and put this album on. Dancing in the kitchen guaranteed.
He’s been at the forefront of the Jazz House wave that’s swept plenty of us up these last eighteen months, and this album is our first opportunity to sink our teeth into a substantial catalog of songs. While I maintain some of his best works are the singles that preceded this album, “Something Will Happen” and “Ode to Rashan” alone make this an album worth returning to time and again.
It also has to be said, “If Matisse made House Music,” is as special a description of self as I’ve found in the Spotify About sections. His album covers have certainly been a source of inspiration in my watercolors.
Beta, Peter Cat Recording Co.
Long-time readers of this newsletter (lol) may remember me waxing lyrical about the first time I saw Peter Cat live. Alongside the aforementioned Mk.Gee show, and the 10th-anniversary show of Alt-J’s An Awesome Wave, Peter Cat at the Basement East in 2023 remains my favorite show in recent memory.
So when “People Never Change” came out as the first single of the upcoming project, hopes were set high. It’s a song in no rush, an unapologetic embrace of the sounds one would expect of a 5 man band of multi-instrumentalists from Delhi. Optimistic and nihilistic lyrics sung in Sawhney’s Sinatra-like bravado charm and amuse. It’s one of my favorite songs of the year, and a whole lot of fun to dance to.
Beta, the album that followed, featured plenty of other highlights. “Suddenly” tells a haunting family story of immigration and the inter-generational responsibilities of honoring the sacrifices parents make.
Compared to the band's past catalog though, I don't think the highs on Beta are as high. That’s ok. I was fortunate to catch them at another great show on the Beta tour, and it’s a joy to see them touring bigger venues. These guys deserve all the traction and fandom we can give.
I know nothing about this album other than it’s in Danish, and it’s beautiful. I found it by accident two weeks ago the day of its release, down some Spotify algorithm rabbit hole. It’s already the album I’m returning to when I need soothing.
Meet the loveable jazz duo of brothers making some of my favorite music of the last two years. I didn’t do albums of the year last year, but Quiet Music for Young People would have been on it, and this year’s release certainly deserves a mention. Give their entire discography a go if you can.
A gorgeous debut album that feels like Americana at its genre-blended best. Characterized by the retro charm of rich harmonies and storytelling worthy of country music’s golden days, every listen brings with it the feeling that this duo deserves a whole lot more attention.
This is as lovely as any of BADBADNOTGOOD’s collaborations has ever been, but the magic of this is all about Baby Rose. Her voice seems to reach out across genres and generations, offering a glimpse of her deeply emotional world, which she sings as one could only hope to sing the gospel. As much as I wish the EP was an LP, all six songs shine in their own right, with the final track “One Last Dance” among my favorites of recent years.
I’ll admit bias here. I’ve heard Isaiah (Baerd) play a number of these songs around campfires, and I’m so glad he pulled them together for a live album. His voice comes from an unknowable place to deliver the wisdom only a profoundly thoughtful person can conjure. “Look Out Look Out” is the opening track, and if it finds the same thing inside of you that it does in me, keep listening.
If you like Adrianne, which hopefully you do, her latest album is worth sinking your teeth into. When you do, hopefully you’ve got some good windows to look out of wistfully.
Watching end-of-year lists, this record seems to be going under the radar, this one is so free of skips that I have a hard time knowing which song to play when introducing someone to Ducks Ltd. If you’ve got any sort of soft spot for indie rock with some bright, driving guitar and lyrics of parallel melancholic optimism, give this one a listen.
Ok. I’ll stop there. There’s always more. I’ve got a songs of the year sort of playlist in the works. With any luck I’ll have that ready to share before New Years, and plenty more rambling to do about the songs that weren’t mentioned in this list.
Dessert
After a hearty main course of soundscapes and stories, let’s indulge in something a little sweeter. These are ideas to linger on, small contemplations that pair nicely with the final sips of coffee or wine.
The heart heals, but never completely. In the end, my heart will be as wrinkled as my brain, carved by the winds and waters of love. Weathered, but never broken.
I’ve wanted to share that one for some time. It was born out of a conversation with a friend last year. It feels like a good segue into my favorite films of the year, many of which center on topics of love, relationships, and understanding.
My favorite Films of the Year:
The Taste of Things
I feel tender just thinking about this one. It was a rainy night in March when I went to the much beloved Belcourt Theater in Nashville. I took the stairs up to the smallest of the three projection rooms and was glad to have the space mostly to myself.
What followed was, for long stretches, and an exercise in salivation. Chef’s Table leaves me hungry and inspired. The Taste of Things left me ravenous and teary-eyed. The film is as French as the cuisine it depicts, the relationship between the leads as rich as the food they cook together, and the way this thing looks – my goodness.
Make a reservation. Have a feast waiting for you. Then watch this film. And ideally, bring a loved one to share it all with.
Motorcycle Diaries
Twenty years on, and at least three years late on fulfilling a promise to a friend that I would see it, I finally watched Motorcycle Diaries. It’s timeless of course. A true adventure. And like a true adventure, you are different for having gone through it.
It gave me a longing for the friends I made in Argentina, their accents, and that distinctive cheeky smile. It made me think of my time in Peru, some twelve years ago now. It brought back the writings of Eduardo Galleardo, and all the injustices this continent has seen.
I laughed often watching it, and am left to think deeply at the end of it. If you haven’t yet, or if it’s been awhile, give it a watch.
Past Lives
Ok, one year late to this one. I put off watching it for a long time. Based on the trailer and what I’d heard from others, I suspected Past Lives would remind me of that perilously melancholic feeling when love – or what feels like love – doesn’t work out how you hoped.
It did just that, and it did it beautifully, tackling topics of foreignness and the nuance of relationships between multi-lingual partners in a way I really appreciated. If you’re late to this one like I was, I encourage you to watch it.
Challengers
Pure is a strange word to open with for such a sexually charged blockbuster, but it really does feel like modern blockbuster in the purest sense. Big names delivering brilliant performances, some shots that felt like achievements in their own rights, and a story that bounces through time as if the past and present are each wielding a racket of their own, playing narrative tennis. At the film’s climactic end, I stood up and applauded.
Queer
While I’m commenting on Luca’s filmography, I’ll give his second feature release of the year its flowers too. This is a weird film. This film is probably not for a lot of people. Friends who I saw it with weren’t wrong in the not-so-ironic description of the film as masturbatory.
Disclaimer done. It is absolutely beautiful. The sets and wardrobe are Pretty Things levels of luscious. The soundtrack rocks. And Daniel Craig’s character is a haunting portrayal of someone just as deserving of love – of being known – as any other. Most of all, I keep thinking about the lines of dialogue his character gave breath to.
“The difficulty is to convince someone else he is really a part of you.”
"I want to talk to you, without speaking.”
If you’re up for a surreal journey, I recommend it.
Andrew Garfield’s character in the film feels like a gift. Florence is, as seems to be her standard, equally incredible. This film will probably leave you sad. But that sadness will have been earned by as earnest and winning a portrayal of romance as any other film I’ve seen lately.
Another 2023 release I’m late to the party. Who cares. With Henry Sugar and the associated shorts, Wes proved that despite a few (fair) shouts that he’s gone too far up his own style’s ass in recent films, he remains as capable as ever of bringing Rohl Dahl’s stories to life on the screen in an appropriately whimsical, unforgettable way.
Upcoming Releases on my Watchlist + 2024’s Still-To-Do List
And before we leave the table, let me pack up a little something to take with you. These reads have been some of my favorite finds this year.
I make the following list with a caveat – my favorite read of the year was my uncle’s manuscript, most of which I read while traveling around Europe this summer. I finished it sitting in his living room in England toward the end of that journey. I look forward to when I can geek over it in the company of the general public, and tell of how his book overlapped with my adventures this summer. Until then, there are plenty of books worth reading. These are my (other) favorites from this year.
Reads of the Year:
Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr
A big thank you is due to my dear friend Lukas Cash for this recommendation. If anyone ever wants to know what type of books to get me as a gift, use this as a reference.
A multi-character historical fiction and near-future sci-fi all woven into one epic, incredibly precise story. The journeys of each character are spectacularly unknowable until the final page, and yet you feel each one of them to be as good as a real person, following their free will to its end. What a web Doerr weaves. I can’t wait to read more of his books.
The Overstory, Richard Powers
This book feels like an achievement. The prose, at times scientific in its poetic appreciation of trees and forests specifically, is a work of art. The characters are rich forests unto themselves. The interwoven storylines are a fungal rollercoaster that seems to be playing out right now all around us in the real world.
This is a book that should challenge the conscience of our species. My only critique would be that Powers didn’t seem to know how it should end. I don’t suppose any of us have that answer. What I do know is that I’d like to see the Sequoias again.
The Secret History, Donna Tartt
An old one from a household name at this point I suppose, but Ben couldn’t put it down when we were in South Africa a few months ago. I followed suit once he’d finished, and soon understood why.
The first half of the book is engrossing, and moves at such a speed as to welcome any addictive tendencies the reader may have. The second half I found more tedious, and I’m still making up my mind about the whole thing, but damnit, I couldn’t put it down.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin
The characters are what I loved (or hated) most about this one, but the form is compelling as well. My reason for reading it in the first place was an excerpt my mom shared with me from the opening chapters, a conversation between one of the main character's and an interviewer on the nature of art and appropriation. It seems as good a note as any to end on:
“The alternative to appropriation is a world in which artists only reference their own cultures... The alternative to appropriation is a world where white European people make art about white European people with only white European references in it. Swap African or Asian or Latin or whatever culture you want for European. A world where everyone is blind and deaf to any culture or experience that is not their own. I hate that world don't you? I'm terrified of that world and I don't want to live in a that world, and as a mixed race person, I literally don't exist in it. My dad, who I barely knew, was Jewish. My mom was an American-born Korean. I was raised by Korean immigrant grandparents in Korea Town Los Angeles and as any mixed race person will tell you-- to be half of two things is to be whole of nothing.”
As always, if you need more, my In Rotation playlist just got updated and there's some really special finds in there. Give it a listen here if you like.
That’s it for this edition of the Family Dinner Newsletter. Thank you for sharing this meal with me, for taking a seat at the table again.
The best part of any shared meal is the conversation, so I would love to hear any thoughts, feedback, or recommendations you have. You can share those by replying to the newsletter email. If you haven't subscribed yet, do so below, and feel free to respond to the welcome email with any thoughts!
Until next time, much love.
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