Sufjan Stevens SEVEN SWANS [DELUXE EDITION] (2024)

 

my favorite of his, always puzzled why it got a backseat to the more gimmicky stuff. back in 04/05 I had Dress Looks Nice on You on a burned CD, think the MP3 was free on Pitchfork back when they posted those. absolutely insane that it has been 20 years 20 years ago we were starting senior, assembling the best damn lunch table the world had ever seen. i miss you guys. one of the best feelings in the world was walking into an after-dinner twilight, hopping in the car, cranking the music, and driving somewhere to go see my friends. 10/10 no notes

North Americans LOST TRACKS (2022)

 bathed in catalpa blossoms, bombarded by cicadas, their husks hugging every lily stem

The Templars: The Secret History Revealed by Barbara Frale
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

wonder if she feels compelled to a Vatican-absolving narrative or is predisposed to an anti-French bias. nevertheless, a breezy read with nice historical context, though I would have liked to know what befell the banking network following the dissolution of Templars. Frale also doesn't go into the detail on their innovative cryptographic methods, curious how much state seizure occurred.

Harold Budd THE WHITE ARCADES (1988)

 

how strange not to hear churchbells, to go weeks and months, hearing more sonic booms from fighter jets than belltolls. a gentle reminder if not for penance, for wakefulness, a frisson that might remind us of a duty left lagging, a call unmade

  The Dog of the South by Charles Portis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

dogs don't get much shaggier

Loscil/Lawrence English COLOURS OF AIR (2023)

 

light snow on and off since Christmas. start work tomorrow. praying for peace in the new year.

Walkman by Michael Robbins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

favorites: "What They Mean" "Prayer" "John Says the Elders Came Over"

Hiroshi Yoshimura SURROUND (1986)

 

pray for your boy hanging out in an ambiguous state re: job offer, truly schizogenic way to live

Nathan Bowles PLAINLY MISTAKEN (2018)

 

a quarry, largely abandoned, plateaued and graded, cranes rusting on the shore of a lake that may be dug deeper, or may be stocked with fish in secret, fish not for men but for the birds of prey, or other creatures to come

Nathan Bowles WHOLE & CLOVEN (2016)

 

“Learn the true topography: the monstrous and wonderful archetypes are not inside you, not inside your consciousness; you are inside them, trapped and howling to get out.” – R.A. Lafferty, The Devil Is Dead (1971)

Nathan Bowles A BOTTLE, A BUCKEYE (2012)

 

I've been thinking about my compulsive book-buying, and I think it is a collector's urge I've always had, but maybe moreso it is a promise to myself that I'll have time to read, it's some blind swing on a 3-2 count that hours will be made and provided, hours beneath trees, beside rivers

Nathan Bowles NANSEMOND (2014)

 

It does not seem to me … that we understand the laws governing the return of the past, but I feel more and more as if time did not exist at all, only various spaces interlocking according to the rules of a higher form of stereometry, between which the living and the dead can move back and forth as they like … – W.G. Sebald, from Austerlitz (2001)

Daniel Bachman WHEN THE ROSES COME AGAIN (2023)

 

God save the Gazans because God knows we won't

Eluvium (WHIRRING MARVELS IN) CONSENSUS REALITY (2023)

 

sometimes I wonder if I've been alienating people in my sleep, because I don't remember doing it while awake

Allison Lorenzen TENDER (2021)

 

make me a heaven

Old Fire VOIDS (2022)

 

all hail west texas

Old Fire ITERATIONS (2023)

 

driving past disasters in the dark

Tim Hecker NO HIGHS (2023)

wish my other granddad lived long enough to teach me to hunt

The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome by Michael Parenti
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Invaluable crash course in Late Republic Rome for the layman. Read it mostly on the beach, so when discouraged at how little has changed in politics and class struggle, I could at least stare at something calming and beautiful. The plutocratic playbook is essentially unchanged for millennia, wild!

Fred again... & Brian Eno SECRET LIFE (2023)

:-)

Midwife & Viva Melinkolya ORBWEAVING (2023)

I wish my granddad had lived long enough to teach me to sail 

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

apparently sometimes conspiracies are real??

The Hold Steady THE PRICE OF PROGRESS (2023)

Craig Finn is a king among men, if I could join one band and play my saxophone like I had a month to live, it would be the Hold Steady, we'd turn the Springsteen knob up to 11 

The Big Lebowski by J.M. Tyree
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

essential for anyone who loves this film or is a fan of the Coen brothers. two of the giants of modern art, deserving of deep inquiry and exegesis. I'm pairing this with Tyree's excellent book on Pynchon's Inherent Vice, The Counterforce.

Braid FRAME & CANVAS 25th Anniversary Edition (2023)

 collect from clark kent

22 Favorite Films of 2022

2 of the 3 local theaters are shuttered, rough scenes for your boy 

here goes:

1. Babylon (dir. Damien Chazelle)

2. The Banshees of Inisherin (dir. Martin McDonagh)

3. Everything Everywhere All at Once (dir. Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert)

4. Tár (dir. Todd Field)

5. The Batman (dir. Matt Reeves)

6. Nope (dir. Jordan Peele)

7. Stars at Noon (dir. Claire Denis)

8. The Menu (dir. Mark Mylod)

9. Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special (dir. Norm Macdonald, Jeff Tomsic)

10. Decision to Leave (dir. Park Chan-wook)

11. The Northman (dir. Robert Eggers)

12. RRR (dir. S.S. Rajamouli)

13. Vengeance (dir. B.J. Novak)

14. White Noise (dir. Noah Baumbach)

15. Corsage (dir. Marie Kreutzer)

16. Confess, Fletch (dir. Greg Mottola)

17. Triangle of Sadness (dir. Ruben Östlund)

18. Emily the Criminal (dir. John Patton Ford)

19. Amsterdam (dir. David O. Russell)

20. Spin Me Round (dir. Jeff Baena)

21. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (dir. Eric Appel)

22. Barbarian (dir. Zach Cregger)

honorable mention:

Cha Cha Real Smooth (dir. Cooper Raiff)

Crimes of the Future (dir. David Cronenberg)

All Quiet on the Western Front (dir. Edward Berger)

Men (dir. Alex Garland)

Ambulance (dir. Michael Bay)

pas pour moi:

Top Gun: Maverick (dir. Joseph Kosinski)

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (dir. Sam Raimi)

MK Ultra (dir. Joseph Sorrentino)

See How They Run (dir. Tom George)

Death on the Nile (dir. Kenneth Branagh)

in progress:

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (dir. Dean Fleischer Camp)

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (dir. Rian Johnson)

next up: 

The Civil Dead (dir. Clay Tatum) 

Funny Pages (dir. Owen Cline)