Writings and Letters

I’m having a bit of trouble coming up with a new post. Partly it is because I have too much I want to write. Mostly because all the neat little stories I want to write require a degree of necessary effort than I am not willing to exert at the moment (read: I’m being lazy this week). But because I’m as equally stubborn as I am sedentary, I feel compelled to post something this week. So you’re stuck reading some lists I’ve composed instead. Great shame really.

But who doesn’t like lists? Well… I suppose it depends on the list, huh? “Top Places to Visit for a Vacation” sounds like fun. Any list compiled by a Nazi: not so much. So upon further reflection we run into a certain relativism when experiencing lists. Hmm…

My lists won’t be that dramatic. Best case scenario: they are slightly enlightening. Worst case: a benign waste of your time. So let’s dig in, shall we?

Books

This first list is a collection of books I hope to get through in 2016 (in no particular order of importance), and I’m feeling so goddamned lazy I’m not even going to put the writers’ names, or links:

Debt: The First 5000 Years; Telex from Cuba; The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism; Contending Economic Theories; NW; Bleeding Edge; The Wise Man’s Fear; The Recognitions; The Pale King; Americanah; Gender Trouble; Counternarratives; 2666; Adam; Caucasia; The Price of Salt; Leaving the Atocha Station; The Condemnation of Blackness; The New Jim Crow; The History of White People; Caliban and the Witch; Grundrisse; Capital Vol. 1 (with companions); Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right; Capital in the 21st Century; The Limits to Capital; Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism; The Creation of Patriarchy; Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center; the writings of James Baldwin, that new Karen Tei Yamashita novel, Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy, and some works from the Frankfurt School…

…and probably some others if I’m so lucky. But most likely if I can get through half of these this year, I’ll be a happy guy.

Music

And here are all the artists, bands, groups, albums, songs I have been listening to for the past few months. For this category, I’m going to be a little all over the place with artist/album/”or song”…

Kelela/Hallucinogen; FKA twigs/LP1; Sunny Levine/Hush Now; Black Marble/A Different Arrangement; the entire discography of Simon & Garfunkel (but Bridge Over Troubled Water is the best); Kendrick Lamar/untitled unmastered.; David Bowie/Blackstar, Heroes, Low; the album Drool; anything by The Radio Dept. (seriously, this band is my jam) and here are some random artists I’ve been listening to: Wildcat! Wildcat!, Bjork, Cults, OutKast, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Miami Horror, White Denim, Wyclef Jean, NaS, The Horrors, Junior Senior, Lijadu Sisters, Prince Innocence, BORNS, Bob Dylan, Alpine, Fela Kuti, Panda Bear, Iamamiwhoami, Grimes, A Tribe Called Quest, !!!, Xenia Rubinos, Gwenno, Todd Terje, Ruth, Miami Nights 1984, Joe the Worker, Wu-Tang Clan, De Lux, Julia Holter, Bones & Beeker, Deep Cotton, Kate Bush, Charlie Whitten, Molly Parden, Love and Rockets, Shit Robot, Monika, Patti Smith, Falco, Stoffer & Maskinen, Santigold,  and a lot more.

And these songs are sticking to me something hardcore: Christine and the Queens’s “iT” and Kendrick Lamar’s “untitled 03” and Asgeir’s “King and Cross” and Wings’s “Let ‘Em In” and Allie X’s “Bitch” and Freur’s “Doot Doot” and Wham! “Everything She Wants” and Bogen Via’s “Kanye” and Fever Ray “When I Grow Up” and Drake’s (and Lykke Li’s cover of) “Hold On, We’re Going Home”

And this guy, all the way: