> 173: What resonates from 2021
Berndnaut Smilde
Hi. For the last edition of this newsletter each year, I look back at what's most resonated for me from the previous 12 months—the stuff that's stuck with me most. I also asked you what resonated most with you. Here you go:
"In order to get people to throw themselves into the fight to save this broken country, we need leaders who can convince them that they haven’t already lost."
The notion of grief as unexpressed love.
This project where people have mapped the history of slavery in New York.
Bo Burnham's Inside and Phoebe Bridgers' cover of "That Funny Feeling."
How the week rules us all, and why it doesn't have to be this way.
The boat and the takes on the boat. I miss her.
Maintenance Phase, which has taught me so much about the poisoned air of diet culture and how to stop breathing it.
Sally Rooney's new one and new-to-me Exit West, which, like Children of Men, feels like a view of an uncertain future and the hope it may still hold.
Now through the white orchard my little dog
Romps, breaking the new snow
With wild feet.
Running here running there, excited,
Hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins
Until the white snow is written upon
In large, exuberant letters,
A long sentence, expressing
The pleasures of the body in the world.Oh, I could not have said it better myself.
—Mary Oliver, "The Storm"
Here's what you thought was most resonant, including:
"Nomadland definitely sparked something in me. A few months after watching it, I quit my job and have been living on the road for the past 2 months."
"This squirrel hand puppet therapist on TikTok." - J.S.
"The song 'I Have a Love' from 'For Those I Love' made me want to run through the streets at night. So I did."
"Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell. I have listened to the audiobook 4x since it came out in July. There is so much 'talking about feelings' which is my favorite thing especially when Rainbow Rowell writes it. It's romantic and exciting and sexy and funny and just so satisfying!" —Christina M.
"David Lehman's book '100 autobiographies.' The book is a memoir, written as the poet undergoes extensive (chemo, surgery) for cancer. I started to read it after my partner's diagnosis with testicular cancer, I think in hopes of seeing how someone else survived a much more advanced cancer--I wanted a kind of survival map I guess. And I did get that out of the book. But I also got so much more even--it's a book about New York, about writers he was friends with like John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch and Lionel Trilling, and about people he's been influenced by like Graham Greene and Edith Piaf. It was a really discursive and life-affirming book, and as it's written by a poet, the structure is broken into 100 short vignettes, associatively linked. I really loved the time I spent with this book. It felt like sitting next to someone brilliant and kind at a bar, sipping a second martini late at night with them, lingering a little longer because the conversation is so good before finally wandering home through NYC's familiar streets." —Kate A.
“Don’t fight forces, use them.” – Buckminster Fuller
"Wild, rousing lockdown album 'Lost in the Cedar Wood' by Johnny Flynn and Robert Macfarlane" —Hannah C.
"Tick, Tick...Boom!'s unflinching look at how much love, patience, and practice it takes to create."
"The book (graphic novel version) On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder Nora Krug (Illustrations). Absolutely incredible text and illustrations. This is so good that I think I'll be buying copies for friends and family. This would be excellent for an older teen and any adult who enjoys creative, impactful, educational pieces of art and history. I felt like this book outlines a lot of things I'm seeing online, for better or worse. It gives context to the reasons why people put up signs above freeways (and tear them down), for example, and why symbolism matters. There's simple political acts, like getting to know your neighbors, and having a private life, that I never really considered in a broader way--but that seem more important now. I loved this. It was so well done and thought-provoking and I think everyone should gift this one to someone else for the holidays." —Jillian C.
"'We love one another. We don't really know anyone well but / we love one / another.' - Franz Wright 5:00 Mass" —Maya D.
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Thanks for reading this year. Stay well and see you in 2022.
Bye,
Laura