These Are a Few of My Favorite Things: December/January/February
What I've loved this winter, with many links
February is always the hardest month of the year for me, followed closely by November, and this year it has been particularly brutal. I haven't had a single spoon left over for anything other than the daily work of survival. But I wanted to write something here, because it has been a year since I started Keep Hoping Machine Running and I couldn't let that go unacknowledged. It may have fallen apart a bit later in the year and I may not have stuck to my self-imposed schedule of one post every week, but I'm still here writing and you're still here reading, and in a world where everything feels so precarious and uncertain and terrifying, that seems like something to celebrate. So let's celebrate it.
Thank you for supporting my words and, by extension, for supporting me. Whether monetarily or just with your attention, it all matters to me and helps to make this feel like a thing worth doing. My hope is that 2025 will be a year of more creativity, somehow, in the midst of hell, more writing and singing and crafting and tweaking my physical appearance and legally renaming myself and living as fully as I'm able into the version of myself I want to be. This newsletter has been an instrumental part of that so far and I want it to continue to be, for as long as you want to continue reading it. To that end, if you're a paying subscriber and you haven't already, I would very much appreciate it if you would read this post.
For now, here is a roundup of things I've loved over the past few months. There are a lot of them, which is nice to remember and share. It won't change the world, but maybe it will at least make it feel a little more bearable, and maybe you'll find something here to love too.
First let me tell you that while I don't think it's good, necessarily, I am currently obsessed with Fat Juicy and Wet by Sexyy Red and Bruno Mars. A friend sent it to me as a joke, a kind of here's a song you'll hate, which is a thing he does, and at first I did hate it. The lyrics are absurd and off-putting. But it quickly grew on me and now I have added it to my favorites playlist. I'm sorry, I never claimed to have good taste. Maybe it's Stockholm syndrome. Maybe it's the swagger of Bruno Mars's voice, a way I've never heard him sound before. Maybe it's a good song. But if it helps at all, I've also recently discovered Father John Misty, or rather I've finally given his catalog a real listen after knowing of him for years, and Real Love Baby is one of my favorite songs of the last few months. I love it and it's been on constant repeat over here, along with Home by Good Neighbours. Tiktok and I rarely agree on what good music is, but on this we do. That's apparently where it blew up and it deserves even more notoriety. It's so sunny and catchy and kind of feels like a throwback to 2000s indie, an era I'm always longing to return to.
Doechii deserves her own paragraph, so here it is. She is an incredible force. Watch her Tiny Desk concert and be blessed. Nissan Altima is a banger that has gone on my playlist of main character anthems, and Black Girl Memoir is beautiful and aching, and Bitch I'm Nice is a quick little jab of a song, and Catfish is so angry and forceful and catchy. I love when a female rapper comes along and does what male rappers have been doing for decades but better, and I saw a Youtube comment that said Doechii makes music for all the black girls who were told they were too much growing up and that's powerful.
I've rhapsodized about Grady Hendrix in this newsletter before, but his newest book, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, is quite possibly my favorite of his works to date. It was formerly My Best Friend's Exorcism, and this is a testament to how well he writes girls and women. Both of these books are women-focused, few men in them and those that are present aren't very relevant, and he affords his female characters so much agency and humanity and complexity, and he writes them with such clear empathy and care, and there aren't many men I trust to write these stories but he is one of them. This book made me weep. It's the best book I've read so far this year and I recommend it so much to everyone, even those of you who aren't horror-inclined. It's not really horror in the traditional sense, although it does have horror elements and childbirth is depicted as its own kind of horror.
I also recommend Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll, a character study with some thriller elements based on Ted Bundy and other serial killers of the age. Many reviewers have criticized it for being too slow and not thrilling enough, so bear that in mind, but I thought it was beautiful and tender and justifiably furious, and while the only thrilling thing happens almost immediately, it's not really about that. It's about the aftermath and the victims of the crime and how the justice system fails them. I loved it.
I finally watched What We Do in the Shadows, the TV show, only years after everyone else and one month after it ended for good, and it now occupies such a special place in my heart. It is so, so funny and brought me a lot of joy during an exhausting month, and I was very sad when it ended, both because I know there won't be any more to come and because it left a void I haven't found a way to fill. I love finding media that I connect with so strongly, but replacing it when it's over is a difficult task. I'm sure everyone already knows it exists, but in case you don't or if you, like me, haven't watched it yet, you should watch it. It's delightful and very silly and I know I'm not the only one who needs that kind of escapism in my life.
I wanted to include some links to things that have given me a little bit of hope about our political landscape, so here are those. A couple of them are from Bluesky because since I've left Facebook and Twitter, that's the primary way I'm keeping up with news these days. You should still be able to read them even if you don't have an account. There's this thread about ways people have already worked to fight back, which is short but powerful, and this thread where a judge in a court hearing about trans people in the military absolutely obliterates the bigots arguing to exclude them. There's a Patreon post with an organized list of books and news sources that are more reliable and honest than doomscrolling on social media and parroting whatever nonsense you might read there, which, for me, also serves as a way to find the sources that are still speaking out in defiance of attempts at censorship. There's this Google doc of things to do to help that aren't protesting or voting, and this lovely short post about how to survive online life during this time (hint: it's by getting offline more often). And last but not least, there's Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop who spoke out against Trump's hate and evil in the mildest, kindest, most generous way possible and still received pushback and death threats. This one gives me hope not because of the response, but because this woman, who is in her 60s and, in her own words, not part of the radical left, still felt called to say something and did so despite her difficult position as a church leader and someone who wants to keep the peace, and who refused to apologize when an apology was demanded of her by the literal president.
I'll leave you with a couple of miscellaneous links I've collected and haven't shared. First, this collection of short essays by trans people for trans people, an encouragement and inspiration to keep living and thriving in spite of and to spite those who want you to stop. And then, this beautifully written essay about being a queer woman and falling in love with a straight man and what that means or doesn't mean for identity. I know this one might ruffle some feathers, and it doesn't come to any neat conclusions about anything, but I felt very seen and known and understood by it and that's important to me, and I also just really enjoyed reading it. I know nothing about Rachel Parsons, but now I want to.
That's all for this installment. I hope something in here speaks to you or makes you laugh or brings you even a small spark of joy, and I hope you're getting through February relatively unscathed. We're so close to spring. I can feel it quivering to burst forth, if we can just hold on a little bit longer. A little more cold, a little more dark, a little more stagnation, and then, blooming and growth and warmth and birds and water and all the things that make the world feel like an embrace instead of a vise. We can do this. I'm speaking to myself as much as to any of you, which is the way of this newsletter and all my writing. Thank you, again, so much, for still being here. One year down, many more to go.
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