2019 in review
hello. i hope this new year, decade, and YOU will forgive me: i've only just gotten around to making black-eyed peas and collards, so i'm taking things a little slow. i was toying with writing or drawing some grand decade retrospective. ultimately, i wasn't up for all the rehashing, the excavation in search of a pattern. it feels more to me that the past ten years was a random collection of time--a set of mismatched silverware. but as far as retro'ing the past year, i figured, why the hell not?
2019 was alright
i spent 2019 surrounded by many animals and friends, predominantly in portland (though a few other places, too). i traveled exclusively in north/central/south america, except one jaunt to japan. overall, i spent the year doing a lot of the things i've been doing for years: i put my body in water and in steam; watched films and theatre; drew and wrote; worked and volunteered and biked and ate and drank just about the right amount, but in some cases, too much.
i also turned forty this past year, so i, at some point last spring, set out to do "forty things i'd never done before." sure, jan. the list i started was both too esoteric and self important, so i lost my way somewhere before or after the intended milestone. a few things that were cool, though: i learned kate bush's wuthering heights dance and how to make an egg white cocktail; i went to a psychic; i visited a new-to-me continent, as well as the last blockbuster on earth; i gave a couple casual/terrifying talks; i micro-dosed shrooms and micro-bladed my eyebrows; i drank wine from my birth year.
2019 was a pretty good year. it's hard to say so when things are good. even here: it's only pretty good, though that's equal parts self-deprecation and a tori amos reference. we have a tendency to caveat, to over-detail the negatives. i'm working on that, too. the worthiness.
2019 in numbers
# of pets fostered: 9
# houseguests: 11.5
# of DJ gigs: 10
# freelance clients: 6
# miles walked: 513
# countries visited: 5
# nights spent in Portland: 242
# nights spent elsewhere: 123
books i read in 2019
Nothing Good Can Come From This - Kristi Coulter
The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture - Joshua Kendall
Where are you - a book of maps that will leave you completely lost (collection by visual editions)
War of the foxes - Richard Siken
Crush - Richard Siken
The Toothmakers’ Daughters - Kate Fallon
Sweet Machine - Mark Doty
A Coney Island of the Mind - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City - Nick Flynn
Rat Bohemia - Sarah Schulman
Edinburgh - Alexander Chee
Unfuck Your Brain - Faith G. Harper
Once - Wim Wenders
Falling Awake - Alice Oswald
A manual for cleaning women - Lucia Berlin
Writing down the Bones - Natalie Goldberg
Dryer’s english - Benjamin Dryer
I loved you more - Tom Spanbauer
This bridge Will Not Be Gray - Dave Eggers
Lovers of the deep-fried circle - Baruch Porras-Hernandez
Nature Poem - Tommy Pico
The Mobius Strip Club of Grief - Bianca Stone
The Economy of Nostalgia - Cooper Lee Bombardier
Waking the Witch - Pam Grossman
Swamplandia - Karen Russell
Where we Know: New Orleans As Home (2010 collection)
Time is a Thing a Body Moves Through - T Fleischmann
Sula - Toni Morrison
Some Words to Socialist Women - Dora Montefiore
The Four Hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss
Boy with Flowers - Ely Shipley
Sex, Art, and American Culture - Camille Paglia
Today Will Be Different - Maria Semple
Rise of the Trust Fall - Mindy Nettifee
Slow Man - John Maxwell Coetzee
Ordinary Cruelty - Amber Flame
On Writing - Charles Bukowski
Tinderbox - Robert Fieseler
Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas - Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedeker
Flesh and Blood - Michael Cunningham
13 faces in different places
(l-r: nola after midnight, a ski condo in utah, col. summer's park, bend, home, DJing, home, the outskirts of disneyland, the bathroom floor of a chicago venue, an apartment above boystown, a convertible in northern california, the monster cafe in tokyo.)
6 great albums released in 2019
orville peck - turn to hate
prince - originals
nick cave - ghosteen
bat for lashes - lost girl
solange - when i get home
boy harsher - careful
best songs of 2019
it's WIP, but in a tradition of BestOf playlists (previous years' BestSongs: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018), I'm slowly making my way through the big bucket playlist of all new songs/LPs into making selects: 2019BestSongs. i'd love to hear your playlists if you made them.
2020
(i was looking for a 2020 moon chart and found this charming illustration. linked to the artist/original site above.)
happy new year, friends.
<3 as ever,
rhienna