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  • “After Yang” was a beautiful, sensitive, and contemplative movie. Quiet, unrushed. The characters' world is strikingly, confidently created — of the future, but earthy, calm. Written and directed by Kogonada, whose “Columbus” I also loved. He’s got a singular vision and vibe. I’ll watch whatever he makes for however long he makes it.

    → 12:35 PM, Jan 14
  • Since 2000, I’ve been publishing a kind of year in review — mainly cultural highlights from the prior 12 months, along with a few personal notes. Here’s my post for 2022.

    → 7:48 AM, Dec 30
  • Julie Blackmon and Convergences

    In the mid–2000s, I was completely taken by the book “Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences,” written by Lawrence Weschler and beautifully published by McSweeney’s. Weschler surfaced “strange connections” between images and wrote about them intriguingly. I still think of the book when I come across an image — a photograph, a painting, a movie moment — that brings to mind another one.

    I spent part of this evening with Julie Blackmon’s absorbing book of photographs, “Midwest Materials.” Blackmon has some intentional allusions in her photographs, but others I think just come from the consciousness of the viewer.

    There’s something, for instance, about the turf and peculiar (and menacing) objects in her photograph “Spray Paint” that brings to mind Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” (picture the poster, and the final 30 minutes).

    Or, seen below, “Snow Days,” which immediately brought me back to a moment in Tarkovsky’s “Mirror,” which I recently rewatched and posted about early in the month:

    I realize there’s a risk in it seeming like I’m undervaluing the originality of one work by graphing it over another. But one of the pleasures I get in taking in art of all kinds is not just the pieces themselves — which I’m grateful for individually — but for how they intermingle in my mind.

    → 8:33 PM, Dec 27
  • Rewatched Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Mirror,” a dozen years after first seeing it. Some unforgettable moments, meditative and life-enriching.

    → 10:00 PM, Dec 6
  • Year in Review: 2021

    [em]Family selfie in Forest Park’s new Anne O’C. Albrecht Nature Playscape. Grateful to all those who made pandemic year two more livable, from caretakers of outdoor spaces like this one to the healthcare workers, educational staff, and local librarians we so depended on. [/em]

    Since 2000, I’ve had a year-end tradition of sharing my cultural highlights of the past 12 months. For this year’s post, I’ll first note the major life change I had in 2021.

    After eight years leading comms and marketing for the nonprofit conservancy Forest Park Forever, I re-entered the agency world this summer by joining The Stoke Group, a fully distributed digital marketing and content studio that focuses on the B2B tech sector.

    As the Senior Director of Editorial Content, I spend most of my time on editorial projects for Adobe (a key client, and one that values great writing and design), as well as helping produce the video podcast Real Creative Leadership with its host, Adam Morgan. While I miss the connection to my St. Louis community, I’m enjoying working with strategists, writers, and designers on content work for large global clients. I hadn’t worked with clients at this scale or in this specific sector, so it’s been broadening in the way I hoped. The team’s packed with interesting, talented, upbeat people.

    With that 2021 milestone covered, here’s a look at some cultural-intake highlights from the year:


    Books: Fiction

    1. Lanny, Max Porter

    2. Second Place, Rachel Cusk

    3. Leave the World Behind, Rumaan Alam

    4. The Copenhagen Trilogy, Tove Ditlevsen

    5. Whereabouts, Jhumpa Lahiri

    6. The Morning Star, Karl Ove Knausgaard

    7. Beautiful World, Where Are You, Sally Rooney

    8. The Sellout, Paul Beatty

    9. Tenth of December, George Saunders

    10. My Heart, Semezdin Mehmedinović

    11. Fox 8, George Saunders

    12. The Carrying: Poems, Ada Limon

    13. New Teeth, Simon Rich


    Books: Non-Fiction

    1. Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning, Philip Kennicott

    2. The Most Fun Thing: Dispatches from a Skateboard Life, Kyle Beachy

    3. Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design, Michael Bierut

    4. Suppose a Sentence: Brian Dillon

    5. Hannah Wilke: Art for Life’s Sake (Eds., Tamara Schenkenberg and Donna Wingate)

    6. Three Women, Lisa Taddeo

    7. They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Hanif Abdurraqib

    8. The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, Louis Menand

    9. Of Human Kindness: What Shakespeare Teaches Us About Empathy, Paula Marantz Cohen

    10. Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres, Kelefa Sanneh

    11. The Monocle Book of Homes (Monocle)

    12. The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time, Jim McKelvey

    13. Studio Culture Now (Ed. Mark Sinclair)

    14. The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel, Kati Marton

    15. Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks, Adam Nayman

    16. This Isn’t Happening: Radiohead’s “Kid A” and the Beginning of the 21st Century, Steven Hyden

    17. After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made, Ben Rhodes

    18. Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald

    19. An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang

    20. The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer, Christopher Clarey

    21. Proustian Uncertainties, Saul Friedländer

    22. Seeing Serena, Gerald Marzorati

    23. Graphic Life, Michael Gericke

    24. How to Raise an Adult, Julie Lythcott-Haims

    25. Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson, paired with Twelve New Essays by Jessica Helfand

    26. Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century, Tim Higgins

    27. The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, Jonathan Alter

    28. No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention, Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer

    29. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, Adam Grant

    30. Sorry Spock, Emotions Drive Business, Adam W. Morgan

     

    Movies

    1. The French Dispatch

    2. Cold War

    3. Certain Women

    4. Meek’s Cutoff

    5. The Power of the Dog

    6. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

    7. Let Them All Talk

    8. The Farewell

    9. To the Wonder

    10. Citizenfour

    11. In One Breath: Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark

    12. Biggie: I Got A Story to Tell

    13. Mies

    14. Untold: Breaking Point

    15. WeWork: or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn

     

    TV

    1. Succession, Season 3

    2. The Bureau, Season 1

    3. Ted Lasso, Season 2

    4. Great British Baking Show, Season 12

    5. The Chair 6. Only Murders in the Building

    7. The Other Two, Seasons 1 and 2

    8. This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist

    9. Lupin, Season 1

     

    Podcasts
    New finds I enjoyed this year: A Change of Brand, Conversations with Tyler, and The CMO Podcast. The Two Month Review’s podcast series on William Gaddis's J R delivered a ton of insights and smiles during the first few months of 2021.

    Visual Art
    This was the second year in a row with little travel (which often prompts new art-viewing) and sadly little museum-going here at home (that’s on me). That said, and acknowledging my bias, the exhibition Hannah Wilke: Art for Life's Sake — curated by my wife, Tamara H. Schenkenberg, at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation — gained in richness and meaning every time I saw it. If you’re here in St. Louis, I highly encourage a visit before its January 16 close.

    Music
    A million years ago, my year-end lists included dozens of individual albums and concerts. While music’s a daily essential for me, I see almost nothing live and dip in and out of all kinds of new things I learn about, often without good record-keeping.

    I usually work listening to classical, then jazz is on in the evening. The only specific new recordings I’d surface this year are the terrific records from Tyler, the Creator, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker. Phoebe Bridgers didn’t have a new album, but I loved her live Pitchfork Festival set that I happened to catch the evening it streamed.

    In terms of new discoveries, there was one artist — and one song — that I’ll long connect with 2021: “A Lot’s Gonna Change” by Weyes Blood (Natalie Laura Mering). I was introduced to this singer/songwriter through a Spotify station as I drove on an errand of some kind. I was transfixed.

    At about 1:20, Mering sings the title phrase — “A lot’s gonna change / in your …. life / … time.” — and it swallowed me up in the way great song moments do. Likely because my wife and I spend so much of our non-working time focused on raising our young kids and thinking about what their future lives will be like, the line took on all kinds poignancy and significance in the seconds I heard it.



    Later on, the second time that part of the song comes around (2:55 in the video above), Mering sings, “‘Cause you’ve got what it takes / in your … life / … time.”

    Here’s to the time we’ve got ahead of us in 2022.

    → 11:00 PM, Dec 31
  • Year in Review: 2020

    *Sylvie, sipping through a backyard quarantine concert by a friend and SLSO musician*

    Year 20 of my annual cultural-recap tradition was quite something.

    Thus far my family’s had good fortune amid the global pandemic, so we’re spending most of our time feeling grateful, yet exhausted, then grateful, yet exhausted.

    With lots of time at home, there was some enjoyable culture to take in. Here’s a look at some highlights:

    Books

    1. The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches & Meditations, Toni Morrison
    2. Uncanny Valley: A Memoir, Anna Wiener
    3. Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, George Packer
    4. Having and Being Had: Eula Biss
    5. My Parents: An Introduction, Aleksandar Hemon
    6. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, Cathy Park Hong
    7. Weather, Jenny Offill
    8. Promised Land, Barack Obama
    9. Then the Fish Swallowed Him, Amir Ahmadi Arian
    10. Jack, Marilyn Robinson
    11. My Life in France, Julia Child
    12. Severance, Ling Ma
    13. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson
    14. Luster, Raven Leilani
    15. Intimations, Zadie Smith
    16. Monocle: How to Make a Nation
    17. The Passion Economy, Adam Davidson
    18. These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson, Martha Ackmann
    19. Wine Simple, Aldo Sohm
    20. Normal People, Sally Rooney
    21. The Lying Lives of Adults, Elena Ferrante
    22. Girl, Edna O’Brien
    23. Lurking: How a Person Became a User, Joanne McNeil
    24. How to Be a Family, Dan Kois
    25. Mies van der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth, and the Fight Over a Modernist Masterpiece, Alex Beam
    26. The Secret Lives of Color, Kassia St. Clair
    27. No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram, Sarah Frier
    28. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, Hanif Abdurraqub
    29. How to Write One Song, Jeff Tweedy
    30. How Architecture Works, Witold Rybczynski
    31. Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State, Barton Gellman
    32. To Start a War, Robert Draper
    33. The Spy Masters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future, Chris Whipple
    34. Agent Running in the Field, John le Carré
    35. The Monocle Guide to Better Living
    36. Hell and Other Destinations, Madeline Albright
    37. The Ride of a Lifetime, Robert Iger
    38. Bitter Brew, William Knoedelseder

    Movies

    1. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (exquisite, perfect)
    2. Parasite
    3. Booksmart
    4. Marriage Story
    5. Little Women
    6. Uncut Gems
    7. 1917
    8. Meyerowitz Stories: New & Collected
    9. The Irishman
    10. The Trip to Greece
    11. Palm Springs
    12. Rams
    13. Knives Out
    14. The Other Guys
    15. Maggie’s Plan
    16. Shoplifters
    17. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
    18. The Price of Everything
    19. Ford v. Ferrari
    20. Despicable Me

    TV Shows

    1. Better Call Saul, Seasons 4 and 5
    2. Atlanta, Seasons 1 and 2
    3. Schitt’s Creek, All Seasons
    4. Never Have I Ever
    5. Call My Agent, Season 1
    6. Roadkill
    7. Devs
    8. Great British Bake-Off, Season 6 and 8
    9. Ted Lasso

    Visual Art
    I can’t recall a year when I saw less art — whether here in St. Louis or in cities we didn’t travel to. With that unfortunate reality, I’m especially grateful to have been able to see the fantastic exhibition “Terry Adkins: Resounding” at the Pulitzer this summer.

    Podcasts
    Favorite new discoveries: The Modern House Podcast, Distributed, with Matt Mullenweg, Siegel+Gale Says, and Simplicity Talks. Valuable mood-improver for 2020: Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.

    Music
    My Spotify’s a shared-with-kids mess, and for loads of weekly hours I stream jazz and classical music that I don’t make a note of to be recalled. That said, I did especially enjoy new records from Fiona Apple, Phoebe Bridgers, Adrianne Lenker, Jeff Tweedy, Lomelda, Bob Dylan, Run the Jewels, and Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist. I’m grateful to have been turned on to the music of Big Thief, Harold Budd (via the e-newsletter Flow State), Eleanor Bindman, and Haley Heynderickx, whose “Oom Sha La La” always brightened our family’s quarantine, with the kids screaming and jumping along to the swelling refrain, “I need to start a garden!” Here’s to what’s to come.

    → 11:00 PM, Dec 31
  • Weeknotes #02

    Odds and ends from the past few weeks:

    • What a fun treat to see Forbes spotlight ListenForestPark.org, an audio microsite my team launched a few years ago as a side project. It’s found a new audience these days.

    • Finished “Devs” on Hulu. Dug the style and performances; so-so on the ultimate substance.

    • The series “ZeroZeroZero” was, like one of the creator’s prior work “Sicario,” cinematically beautiful; it was just too grim and violent for me to continue past episode three.

    • Made me laugh over laundry: “The Other Guys.”

    • Two episodes into “Never Have I Ever” on Netflix and really enjoying it. Brilliant choice of narrator.

    • Two live song performances I’ve replayed a number of times recently: Clem Snide and Scott Avett’s “Roger Ebert” and Father John Misty’s “Total Entertainment Forever.”

    • A favorite new weekly listen: The Modern House Podcast. Search for it in your podcast player of choice. Also recommend the publication’s short video going inside architectural designer Jonathan Tuckey‘s family home in northwest London.

    • Delighted that we were able to snag this unusual wood and leather lounge chair from STL’s MoModerne Design Shop. Bought through an Instagram DM, now settled into our den for years.

    • Best for last: We finished season 5 of “Better Call Saul.” Tremendous television. (How in the world did Lalo just show up so late and start owning scenes with major talent that had four seasons of episode strength beneath them? What a character and performance.)

    → 7:33 PM, May 3
  • “A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.”

    Hadn’t seen this Camus quote before. (It appropriately closed a new profile on Sam Mendes in TNY.)

    → 7:53 PM, Oct 3
  • Cultural Notes: February 2018

    Continuing for month two of this recent effort to note the cultural intake of the prior month: 

    Read

    • Medardo Rosso: Experiments in Light and Form, Pulitzer Arts Foundation — (Disclosure: Married to a contributor) (A)
    • Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, Robert Cialdini  — Recommended by someone high-wattage bright in conversation, who was advising on how to nudge. (B)
    • Magnitude: The Scale of the Universe, Kimberly K. Arcand (B+)
    • The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War in the Age of Global Terror, Garrett M. Graff — An older book with Mueller at the core (B)
    • Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip Heath and Dan Heath — I can still recall being taken by this cover in the Borders I frequented more than a decade ago. Finally read it. (B+)
    • Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Cal Newport — Enjoyed Newport's interview with Ezra Klein. Found the book just so-so, but the reminder is valuable. (B-)
    • "The White Darkness: A Journey Across the Antarctic," David Grann — Another incredible novella-length gem from David Grann. After reading, don't miss an audio segment with voices from the piece. (A+)

    Watched

    • Get Out (A+)
    • Room (B+)
    • Phantom Thread (A-)
    • 45 Years (A-)
    → 10:08 PM, Mar 5
  • Cultural Notes: January 2018

    With a nod to Kottke's monthly "Media Diet" posts, I'm experimenting this year with short monthly recaps of interesting things I've read, watched or listened to. (This is as much for myself, as noting what I took in can help me better recall it.)

    Read

    • Paula Scher: Works — Terrific, from the opening essay and interview to the work itself.  (A)
    • Abbott Miller: Design & Content — Intelligent and beautiful. Especially loved reading about Miller's co-founding of a "content-based studio" years before 'content strategy' became a thing. (A+) 
    • We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, Ta-Nehisi Coates — I'd read most of these essays when they were published in The Atlantic, but they were even more powerful here as a package. I liked Coates' brief introductions to each one, noting any changes (to what happened in the world, to how he thought about the issues) since original publication. (A)
    • Obama: An Intimate Portrait, by Pete Souza (A)
    • "Old Woods and Deep: Traces of Cormac McCarthy's Knoxville" — A rare deep dive into McCarthy and in particular Suttree, my favorite novel of his.

    Watched

    • The Big Sick (B+)
    • Columbus (A) — Unique and sensitive debut with such lovely and surprising  architecture.
    • The Sopranos, Final Season (A)

    Listened To

    • Lomelda, "From Here," — Stumbled on her via Spotify Discover. The last-third build-up gets me singing.  
    • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on "Discovering America" — On this recent New Yorker Radio Hour interview with David Remnick, Adichie was incisive and funny. Moved me to pick up Americanah, which I'm reading now.
    • Slow Burn — Binged-listened to this podcast about Watergate. Hard to believe.
    • Saint Louis Symphony Concert Family Concert  — First time taking Leo, who looked up with wide eyes at Powell Hall's magnificent ceiling. It was a treat that the special guest was the 442s, friends and collaborators on this Forest Park Forever project. A week since going, Leo's been loudly 'conducting' in the kitchen. 
    → 2:45 PM, Feb 4
  • Year in Review: 2017

    Continuing a 17-year tradition, I’m happy to share my Annual Favorites list for the year 2017: 

    Family
    Let’s start with the best thing that happened to my family this year, which is the arrival of Sylvia Huremović Schenkenberg in late April. We’re still smiling at her the way Leo was above, just a few days in. 

    Books

    1. My Struggle: Book 5, Karl Ove Knausgård

    2. Blind Spot, Teju Cole

    3. Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine

    4. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid

    5. Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen

    6. Swing Time, Zadie Smith

    7. Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches, John Hodgman

    8. Now You See It and Other Essays on Design, Michael Bierut

    9. Home and Away: Writing the Beautiful Game, Karl Ove Knausgård and Fredrik Ekelund

    10. Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood, Trevor Noah

    11. Obama: The Call of History, Peter Baker

    12. Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure, Bianca Bosker

    13. A Separation, Katie Kitamura

    14. Paul Rand: A Designer’s Art

    15. More Alive and Less Lonely: On Books and Writers, Jonathan Lethem

    16. Powers of Ten, Philip Morrison

    17. Freud: Inventor of the Modern Mind, Peter D. Kramer

    Movies

    1. Moonlight

    2. Lady Bird

    3. Under the Skin

    4. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

    5. Clouds of Sils Maria

    6. Life Itself

    7. Arrival

    TV/Streaming

    1. Better Call Saul, Season 3

    2. The Americans, Seasons 4-5

    3. OJ: Made in America

    4. Master of None, Season 2

    Audio
    I’m going to skip making a long list of favorite albums and podcasts, and instead note a discovery in each, respectively: Phoebe Bridgers (watch her Tiny Desk Concert here), and S-Town. They each feel a bit haunted, and they share, in parts, a gothic sensibility. (Also: I can’t not mention Black Thought’s instantly classic 11-minute freestyle video, which c’mon.) 

    Technology 
    Our SONOS Play: 1 is used every evening for listening to music as we get ready for dinner or just goof around with the kids. Things 3 finally launched, and it’s attractive and enjoyable to use. It’s only been a month or so, but I’ve been enjoying trying out Ulysses as a writing environment (despite having no interest in using Markdown.) I’ve been impressed with Airtable as a flexible, humane alternative to Excel, when you need a database of some kind but have zero needs for financial calculations. (I’d seen the fancy Sandwich video when it launched, but didn’t realize it could fit my needs until the co-founder’s segment on Track Changes.)

    Personal
    As noted on this website earlier this month, I was sad to see an end to the remarkable life of William H. Gass, who I was lucky enough to get to know over the past decade-plus. Bill lived a long and productive life, dying at 93, and working through his final year. I was honored to write briefly about him for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and speak about his life and work on St. Louis Public Radio. I continue posting notes from readers and admirers at ReadingGass.org.

    Work
    Highlights from a very fun year at Forest Park Forever include engaging the public in the final year of Forever: The Campaign for Forest Park’s Future, speaking at the international City Parks Alliance conference in the Twin Cities, launching a 2.0 version of ForestParkMap.org, and publishing Forest Park: Snapshots of a St. Louis Gem.

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    → 8:51 PM, Dec 31
  • Gregory Crewdson:

    I can still remember encountering Crewdson’s work for the first time in The New York Times Magazine more than a decade ago. Original, absorbing and haunting. Today’s “Monocle Weekly” interview with him had me heading to his website, which alerted me to this documentary. 

    → 8:41 PM, Jun 25
  • Hilton Als on “Moonlight”

    Finally saw this extraordinary movie, piercing and tender and unforgettable. Catching up on some interesting pieces about it, including this one.

    → 10:38 PM, Feb 26
  • Year in Review: 2015

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    Continuing a 15-year tradition (though one that’s gotten briefer with age and fatherhood), here’s a roundup of some of my favorite things experienced during the past 12 months: 

    Books

    1. My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

    2. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante

    3. The Story of a New Name, Elena Ferrante

    4. The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante

    5. Lila, Marilyn Robinson

    6. My Struggle: Book 2, Karl Ove Knausgård

    7. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates

    8. H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald

    9. The Balloonists, Eula Biss

    10. Being Mortal, Atul Gawande

    11. Becoming Steve Jobs, Brent Schlender

    12. Stress Tests, Timothy F. Geithner

    13. Van Gogh: A Power Seething, Julian Bell

    14. Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo, Nicholas Carlson

    15. Bark, Lorrie Moore

    16. Girl In a Band, Kim Gordon

    So-so:  Grace: A Memoir; I Think You’re Totally Wrong: A Quarrel

    Movies

    1. Ida

    2. Ex Machina

    3. While We’re Young

    4. Birdman

    5. Boyhood

    6. Mr. Turner

    7. Carol

    8. Interstellar

    9. Magic in the Moonlight

    So-so: Spectre; Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

    TV

    1. Borgen: Season 3

    2. Mad Men: Final Season

    3. An Honorable Woman

    4. Black Mirror: Season 1

    5. Master of None: Season 1

    6. Veep: All Seasons

    7. The Good Wife: Seasons 1-6

    8. Sherlock

    Podcasts

    1. Design Matters with Debbie Millman

    2. Slate Culture Gabfest

    3. The Longform Podcast

    4. The Monocle Weekly

    5. Serial

    6. The Entrepreneurs (Monocle)

    7. The Political Scene

    8. Section D (Monocle)

    9. The Foreign Desk (Monocle)

    10. Mom and Dad Are Fighting

    11. The Talk Show

    12. Connected

    13. ATP

    14. The New Yorker Radio Hour

    Music
    I used to make long lists of specific albums purchased and enjoyed, but since I’ve gone to paid streaming (and, maybe, since I’ve become a committed podcast listener), it’s harder for me to point to specific recordings at a year’s end. This is especially the case since Rdio shut down, and I’m now starting fresh with Spotify — my digital records are kind of a mess. While I listen to hours of classical and ambient/lush music through the headphones during work, a few specific artists I spent more time with in 2015 include Angel Olsen, Youth Lagoon, Sun Kil Moon, Sharon Van Etten, My Bubba, Jennifer O’Connor, Girlpool, Atlas Sound, Earl Sweatshirt, J Cole, Common, Pusha T, A$AP Rocky, Villagers, Natalie Prass, and Perfume Genius.

    NYC + D.C.
    I had the good fortune of accompanying my wife on a work trip she had to NYC, and it was incredibly culture-rich. Highlights included the new Whitney, MoMA (Yoko Ono and Bjork special exhibitions), The Drawing Center, David Zwirner Gallery (Serra show), Neue Galerie (sensational collection), the Cooper Hewitt, and “Drifting in Daylight” in Central Park (where I shot this short phone video). We also enjoyed a long weekend in D.C. with family, with pleasant dips into the National Gallery (terrific Caillebotte show) and The Phillips Collection (first time, great time).

    Work
    I’m fortunate to have a great job at Forest Park Forever, and 2015 saw a few especially fun projects ship. This includes the introduction of our new brand platform, our launch of Forestparkmap.org and the formal introduction of Forever: The Campaign for Forest Park’s Future, with a new website that features a beautiful campaign video we made with the team at Once Films.

    Family
    As referenced appropriately at top, so much of this year — and so much of every day — has been about Tamara and I raising our son. I’d been told that right around 2 is a fun age, and it’s true. This year had a ton of special moments, including — just to pick one, which we happened to catch on film — Leo’s changing expression during his first ride on a carousel at the Saint Louis Zoo. 

    → 7:55 PM, Jan 1
  • Ida

    → 11:11 PM, Nov 27
  • Year in Review: 2014

    Back before Tamara and I had our son in the summer of 2013, I used to keep regular lists of my “Annual Favorites” of the year — the best books, movies, TV shows, podcasts, exhibitions and so on that I’d consumed that year.

    To say my rate of cultural digestion changed with fatherhood would be an understatement; that said, I still have an interest in logging the great stuff (if only for myself). So while I skipped 2013 entirely, here’s a go at some highlights from 2014: 

    TheGassInterviews.org
    In May, I published a project I’d been working on for some time: The Ear’s Mouth Must Move: Essential Interviews with William H. Gass. I chose to publish this on Medium at no cost to the reader, and included a range of footnotes, photos and videos. Thanks to all the contributors who made this possible. 

    Books

    1. On Immunity: An Inoculation, Eula Biss

    2. My Struggle, Book One: Karl Ove Knausgård

    3. Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart

    4. Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays, Eula Biss

    5. What We See When We Read, Peter Mendelsund

    6. Inferno (The Divine Comedy, #1), Dante Alighieri (Mary Jo Bang, Translator)

    7. Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst, Adam Phillips

    Movies

    1. Like Someone In Love

    2. Inside Llewyn Davis

    3. Her

    4. The Grand Budapest Hotel

    5. La Notte

    6. Jane Eyre (2011)

    7. A Most Wanted Man

    8. Gone Girl

    9. Take This Waltz

    10. Enough Said

    11. The One I Love

    12. Your Sister’s Sister

    Podcasts

    1. Design Matters

    2. Slate Culture Gabfest

    3. Serial

    4. The Monocle Weekly

    5. Longform

    6. In Our Time With Melvyn Bragg

    7. The Entrepreneurs (Monocle)

    8. The Stack (Monocle)

    9. The Political Scene (The New Yorker)

    10. New Yorker: Out Loud

    Articles & Essays
    If you follow me on Twitter, you have likely already seen links to the best articles and essays I read in 2014. I use it mainly as a way to praise and recommend. 

    Music
    I listen to Rdio every day of the week — on my Mac, iPad and iPhone. A great deal of what I stream is classical, since I listen while I work. And on that front I do a poor job of logging what I like, as I hop quickly from label to composer, from soloist to trio. So for this post I’ll skip classical (and hip-hop, where I also jump around) and point simply to a handful of indie albums I enjoyed this year: 

    • Beck, Morning Phase

    • Low, The Invisible Way

    • Angel Olsen, Burn Your Fires For No Witness

    • Sun Kil Moon, Benji

    • Tweedy, Sukierae

    Life

    • Leo turning 1, walking, saying words

    • A relative I love being brave against illness

    • Tamara earning her doctorate in art history

    • Serving as Best Man as Mike and Sarah married

    • Tamara’s birthday dinner at Stone Soup Cottage

    • Attending a 90th birthday reading by William Gass

    → 2:20 PM, Jan 11
  • "The stage directions were lucid... and the color of the binder: Good choice."

    Woody Allen’s Films As Infographics.”

    → 10:39 AM, Jul 29
  • Monocle 24 Turns One

    A short film about the radio station’s first year. Can’t say I’ve ever connected with the music they play, but I enjoy subscribing to a handful of podcasts, with The Stack, Section D, and The Entrepreneurs at the top of the list. 

    → 6:47 PM, Oct 15
  • Gerhard Richter Painting,” certainly one of the finest artist documentaries I’ve ever seen. Smart, measured, surprising. Watch the trailer, then find it in your city. A big thanks to Webster University for bringing it to St. Louis.

    → 9:48 AM, Jun 16
  • "Radiohead’s Runaway Guitarist"

    Great profile of Jonny Greenwood in today’s New York Times Magazine. Greenwood’s soundtrack for “There Will Be Blood” has been a favorite of mine on Rdio for the past year.

    → 9:21 AM, Mar 11
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