Hello friends! I am alive and still writing. I’ve recently been clarifying my intentions with this little newsletter. My goal is, as always, to explore the topic of art, especially the ways it adds practical value to our lives: How consuming art can act as a lens for understanding the world, and how creating art can act as a tool for self development, to cite two examples.
First, imagine you’re at a party introducing yourself to a hot stranger. Add a song that reflects the first impression you’d like to give off.
EM: I picked "Attention Whore" by Tove Lo. This song has been on my rotation heavily since the album came out, and I just love the lyrics "need your eyes on me to win / I'm an attention whore
And I want what I'm asking for" ICONIC. It feels so empowering.
Now it’s time to be more real. Add a song that reflects who you are or what you’re going through right now.
EM: "Oh What a World" by Kacey Musgraves. I just celebrated a birthday, my friends came over, the far away friends called, I feel fueled and full by all the love and so appreciative. I just feel very at peace right now and amazed at how good everything feels.
Add a song that reflects the place you lived this year.
EM: "The Good Side" by Troye Sivan. I traveled to CA twice this year, and I enjoy CA, enjoyed my time there and love that I grew up there, but I am so in love with the East Coast. It definitely feels like "the good side".
Add a song that makes you feel connected to the people in your life (friends, family, community).
EM: "Stay Gold" by the Knocks & Powers. I think this reflects the moves people have made, the troubles that we go through, but that we still make the best of it with each other and that these people still make me feel golden as I hope I do for them.
Add a song that reflects the general vibe of this year for you.
EM:"Give it 2 Me" by Madonna. I think I've been focused on chasing what I want and so I love this "give it to me/'m fucking ready" energy. Also the part where it's like "get stupid" which is no doubt the worst part of the song even resonates because I've been so silly this year and loving every second of it.
Add a song that reflects the most meaningful or impactful event in your life this year.
EM: "Venus Fly Trap" By MARINA. I just has a lot of solidifying moments where I felt very confident in what I was growing and what I was doing. I trusted the things I have built, I trusted the people I built this life with. I really love the lyrics "I should be motherfuckin crazy / nothing in this world can change me". We know I've been handed a rough hand but I've turned shit into silver.
Lastly, add a song that reflects the vibe you’re going for next year.
Joy and dancing and art as the seams of the world split open. A major defining vibe of the year I think was descent into madness, and acceleration, and the strain of that. And given that, a healthy thread of be absurd, be loud, love your friends, dance, be silly, and intentional, cultivate pleasure and light, etc.
Honorable mentions: ‘Rain Rain Nature Rain’ and ‘Earth Worship’, Rubblebucket
I've been thinking a lot about the importance and beauty and power of water this year. And it was a rainy year for Boston! Which has been defining - floods in the region, not great, but I found the wet summer to be a huge relief from the sadness and fear of last summer's drought, which just offered views of thirst and death of plant life everywhere you went.
And besides the Earth worship ethos (listening to a chant of 'rain rain nature nature rain rain rain nature nature rain' in a concert hall full of people feels like a modern spell or prayer, and I love it), these songs have that absurdity, and earnestness, and fun, and motivation to dance and jump. Nice!
Honorable mention: ‘It’s Not Just Me, It's Everybody', Weyes Blood
"Has a time ever been more revealing / that the people are hurting"
And of course, no one's alone in this. It's everybody, it's systems, and that's really sad, but this song feels both honest with sadness and also transcendent of it.
6. ‘Mohabbat’, Arooj Aftab
Probably the most impactful experience of my year was my trip to India in February/March. It filled a calling in my heart, both to memorialize my grandma and her 1 year anniversary of passing, and to connect to country and culture and family. It changed the way I saw my dad, changed the way I relate to him. It changed the way I see myself. It changed my brain, improving my beginner's Hindi and vastly improving my native but basic and long-neglected Bangla. It opened my eyes and mind to so much, so many trees, so many birds, and names and places, and it was nourishing, and interesting, and sometimes very sad and sometimes so fond. I still, ten months out, haven't quite processed those experiences and feelings. 'Mohabbat', filled with the sounds of South Asia, and the words that Hindi and Urdu share, and the beauty and pathos of longing and love (which grief is made out of), is just the right song for this.
Honorable mention: ‘Jaago’, Lifafa
For the Hindi, which it's been awesome to learn, though I still don't know enough to understand his lyrics yet. And like what a voice, what a guy.
7. ‘Begin Again’, Jessie Ware
Let’s close it out with Jessie Ware again, because one of my New Year’s resolutions is to go dancing more, and she’s at the top of my motivators. And because this song embodies the possibilities of a new moment, new moon, new year.
In the coming year, I aspire to ramp up my momentum and practices for trying to usher in a new world - working for survival and alignment and regeneration. And this song makes me think not all is lost, and the Earth we’re a part of is powerful, and there are many possibilities beyond dystopia, and I want to maintain connection with that purpose and keep holding that door or that window open. And the fact that rest and care is a part of that? A reminder I need at least weekly.
Honorable mention: ‘Peace’, Hozier
This is a poem by Irish writer Patrick Kavanagh, read by the lovely melodious Hozier, that reminds me of everyday miracles, and simplicity, and gives me a sense of respite and comfort. In terms of ongoing resolutions, and vibes I want to aim for, I wish to cultivate serenity. If gratitude and serenity are the guiding principles of each day, it will be a good year.
It was hard for me to choose between this or some other equally sexy and unchill Jessie Ware song, like Step Into My Life, or What's Your Pleasure?
I love the feeling of her music - it makes me want to dance and be bold and know that I can have power and pleasure ("pleasure is a right"). I absolutely want to channel that feeling and give off that aura in meeting this hot stranger.
"I've been waiting my whole life for someone who makes me feel like you do" .. yes, nothing less :)
"It's complicated I can't lie / to you" .. feelings are complicated! for sure! we love them in their intricacy and depth.
Honorable mention: 'Remind Me', Emily King
I love that feeling of recognition in a first meeting, of oh hey I know you somehow, or feel drawn to something about you.. there is some wavelength, some connection, where it feels easy, and also exciting. Something in you makes me feel more like me. And bless Emily King.
2. 'Hopefulessness', Courtney Barnett
It is really hard out here. Really sorrowful, really scary, really upsetting. Thank you music for solace, as well as the inspiration to move through, to feel, to seek out beauty, to be alive, to try.
'Take your broken heart / turn it into art / can't take it with you / can't take it with you' -- does anything more need to be said? (but like, if it's said by Courtney, I'll happily listen)
"Sometimes I get sad / it's not all that bad / pull yourself together and just calm down" ... "Sometimes I get mad / it's not half as bad…"
Yeah, I lean more toward sad, but really all the emotions, and I realize I spend a lot of my time coping and coaxing and coaching myself through stuff. I'm working on feeling and processing in the moment, acceptance and detachment with love. And like yes, I am more than my depression, but I’m not convinced all this is depression, something pathological and individual and isolated and unbalanced. Like if this is reflecting what I’m going through, I’ve been going through it, it’s not just a now thing. I do want to spend less time managing myself and more time living, but steady self care, including perspective and advice and cathartic headbanging like this song provides is all part of how I do that.
Honorable mention: 'Bug Like an Angel', Mitski
The choral voices, the beauty in the simple, the attention to creatures. Lamenting and loving. Great album.
Honorable mention: ‘Morning Elvis’, Florence + the Machine
The effort it takes to get on with life sometimes. And the beautiful idea of being saved or spared — divine grace, maybe mercy, maybe that just means relief, maybe it means miracle.
3. ‘Homesickness, Pt. 2’, Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou
Perhaps because it is the perfect walking song, and so roots me near the pond and parks, and perhaps because listening to it makes me long for (and feel connected to) the closest sense I have of the feeling of “home” — inner home, or all I’ve ever loved and felt security and belonging in. Yeah, I think it reflects the place I live in reflecting rainy days, the light on the pavement, my walks, the landscape that I love in this city.
Honorable mention: ‘to Perth, before the border closes’, Julia Jacklin
“I loved it there / that city held me / don’t you know that / everything changes”
Julia Jacklin conveys emotion so well, and the sense of nostalgia and longing and love in this song reminds me how rich a person's relationship with a place can be.
‘Everything changes,’ and in the place I live I've experienced that in all these subtle ways this year — I settled into a new apartment and living space within an established neighborhood and city, one dear friend moved out, a stranger (who became a friend) moved in, my gf and I broke up and our deeply intertwined routine in these spaces dissipated suddenly, and while not a lot changed visually around me (working from home is so weird for the sense of inner and outer, and boundaries in time), there was all this changing and weaving in my sense of orientation to the world, in relationships, in self-perception. All kinds of erosion.
People move out, move away, we change the nature of our relationships, go visit places, spend time with people we know we don’t get the luxury of every day with. And also, five years is enough to really notice changes in a city’s face and landscape, as well of course as change in my community and most immediate roots.
Honorable mention: ‘Meditation (Syncopate & Motivate Live)’, Cory Wong
Another absolute highlight for walks. To me it totally evokes the joy of a day in the arboretum with no constraints.
4. ‘The Way That You Love Me’, Emily King
I love love. Obviously. And one of the things I love most about love is how expansive it is, how my love for my friends makes it easier, deeper, more natural to love myself and to practice that. And then to have more care and support to offer others. How good it feels to care for others when it’s not obligated or coerced, but freely and compassionately given.
I love the sense Of Course in this song - of course I will stay with you, of course I will hold you, it is the simplest thing for me, and I know this deep in me because I know how to love, and you are part of how I know this, because I have grown with you. To me, this is the utter miracle and deep joy that is true friendship. Goddamn I love my friends.
Honorable mention: ‘Geometry’, Rubblebucket
This song has a great way of portraying connection and that anchoring, orienting, cheering link of friendship. Again, friendship is the most powerful thing in the world :’’’)))
Honorable mention: ‘Floated By’, Peter Cat Recording Co
Bismillah has been a favorite album for years, since I was introduced to it (by Lylia herself) in 2020 to this year 2023. The song makes me think of the spring/summer of 2020, and Rubin and our house that year in Union Sq in Somerville and picnics at Nunziato Field, and it makes me feel connected to memories in 2020 and 2021 when I’d visit my family in New York and drive around with my grandma as an excursion we could comfortably do. I played this album there with her because of course, it’s a favorite and a staple and a damn good vibe, and it thus became part of the setting of some of my sweetest and last memories with her in New York, and I suppose in life. Hence honorable mention to Floated By, Where the Money Flows, Portrait of a Time, these perfect songs for picnics.
Honorable mention: 'This Hell', Rina Sawayama
For Pride, for queer connection and joy. 'Let's go girls.'
First, imagine you’re at a party introducing yourself to a hot stranger. Add a song that reflects the first impression you’d like to give off.
EM: I picked "Attention Whore" by Tove Lo. This song has been on my rotation heavily since the album came out, and I just love the lyrics "need your eyes on me to win / I'm an attention whore
And I want what I'm asking for" ICONIC. It feels so empowering.
Now it’s time to be more real. Add a song that reflects who you are or what you’re going through right now.
EM: "Oh What a World" by Kacey Musgraves. I just celebrated a birthday, my friends came over, the far away friends called, I feel fueled and full by all the love and so appreciative. I just feel very at peace right now and amazed at how good everything feels.
Add a song that reflects the place you lived this year.
EM: "The Good Side" by Troye Sivan. I traveled to CA twice this year, and I enjoy CA, enjoyed my time there and love that I grew up there, but I am so in love with the East Coast. It definitely feels like "the good side".
Add a song that makes you feel connected to the people in your life (friends, family, community).
EM: "Stay Gold" by the Knocks & Powers. I think this reflects the moves people have made, the troubles that we go through, but that we still make the best of it with each other and that these people still make me feel golden as I hope I do for them.
Add a song that reflects the general vibe of this year for you.
EM:"Give it 2 Me" by Madonna. I think I've been focused on chasing what I want and so I love this "give it to me/'m fucking ready" energy. Also the part where it's like "get stupid" which is no doubt the worst part of the song even resonates because I've been so silly this year and loving every second of it.
Add a song that reflects the most meaningful or impactful event in your life this year.
EM: "Venus Fly Trap" By MARINA. I just has a lot of solidifying moments where I felt very confident in what I was growing and what I was doing. I trusted the things I have built, I trusted the people I built this life with. I really love the lyrics "I should be motherfuckin crazy / nothing in this world can change me". We know I've been handed a rough hand but I've turned shit into silver.
Lastly, add a song that reflects the vibe you’re going for next year.
EM: BOTH" By Tiësto. Perfect energy.
5. ‘Free’, Florence + the Machine
Joy and dancing and art as the seams of the world split open. A major defining vibe of the year I think was descent into madness, and acceleration, and the strain of that. And given that, a healthy thread of be absurd, be loud, love your friends, dance, be silly, and intentional, cultivate pleasure and light, etc.
Honorable mentions: ‘Rain Rain Nature Rain’ and ‘Earth Worship’, Rubblebucket
I've been thinking a lot about the importance and beauty and power of water this year. And it was a rainy year for Boston! Which has been defining - floods in the region, not great, but I found the wet summer to be a huge relief from the sadness and fear of last summer's drought, which just offered views of thirst and death of plant life everywhere you went.
And besides the Earth worship ethos (listening to a chant of 'rain rain nature nature rain rain rain nature nature rain' in a concert hall full of people feels like a modern spell or prayer, and I love it), these songs have that absurdity, and earnestness, and fun, and motivation to dance and jump. Nice!
Honorable mention: ‘It’s Not Just Me, It's Everybody', Weyes Blood
"Has a time ever been more revealing / that the people are hurting"
And of course, no one's alone in this. It's everybody, it's systems, and that's really sad, but this song feels both honest with sadness and also transcendent of it.
6. ‘Mohabbat’, Arooj Aftab
Probably the most impactful experience of my year was my trip to India in February/March. It filled a calling in my heart, both to memorialize my grandma and her 1 year anniversary of passing, and to connect to country and culture and family. It changed the way I saw my dad, changed the way I relate to him. It changed the way I see myself. It changed my brain, improving my beginner's Hindi and vastly improving my native but basic and long-neglected Bangla. It opened my eyes and mind to so much, so many trees, so many birds, and names and places, and it was nourishing, and interesting, and sometimes very sad and sometimes so fond. I still, ten months out, haven't quite processed those experiences and feelings. 'Mohabbat', filled with the sounds of South Asia, and the words that Hindi and Urdu share, and the beauty and pathos of longing and love (which grief is made out of), is just the right song for this.
Honorable mention: ‘Jaago’, Lifafa
For the Hindi, which it's been awesome to learn, though I still don't know enough to understand his lyrics yet. And like what a voice, what a guy.
7. ‘Begin Again’, Jessie Ware
Let’s close it out with Jessie Ware again, because one of my New Year’s resolutions is to go dancing more, and she’s at the top of my motivators. And because this song embodies the possibilities of a new moment, new moon, new year.
Honorable mention: ‘Well Rested’, Kero Kero Bonito
In the coming year, I aspire to ramp up my momentum and practices for trying to usher in a new world - working for survival and alignment and regeneration. And this song makes me think not all is lost, and the Earth we’re a part of is powerful, and there are many possibilities beyond dystopia, and I want to maintain connection with that purpose and keep holding that door or that window open. And the fact that rest and care is a part of that? A reminder I need at least weekly.
Honorable mention: ‘Peace’, Hozier
This is a poem by Irish writer Patrick Kavanagh, read by the lovely melodious Hozier, that reminds me of everyday miracles, and simplicity, and gives me a sense of respite and comfort. In terms of ongoing resolutions, and vibes I want to aim for, I wish to cultivate serenity. If gratitude and serenity are the guiding principles of each day, it will be a good year.
1. 'The Kill', Jessie Ware
It was hard for me to choose between this or some other equally sexy and unchill Jessie Ware song, like Step Into My Life, or What's Your Pleasure?
I love the feeling of her music - it makes me want to dance and be bold and know that I can have power and pleasure ("pleasure is a right"). I absolutely want to channel that feeling and give off that aura in meeting this hot stranger.
"I've been waiting my whole life for someone who makes me feel like you do" .. yes, nothing less :)
"It's complicated I can't lie / to you" .. feelings are complicated! for sure! we love them in their intricacy and depth.
Honorable mention: 'Remind Me', Emily King
I love that feeling of recognition in a first meeting, of oh hey I know you somehow, or feel drawn to something about you.. there is some wavelength, some connection, where it feels easy, and also exciting. Something in you makes me feel more like me. And bless Emily King.
2. 'Hopefulessness', Courtney Barnett
It is really hard out here. Really sorrowful, really scary, really upsetting. Thank you music for solace, as well as the inspiration to move through, to feel, to seek out beauty, to be alive, to try.
'Take your broken heart / turn it into art / can't take it with you / can't take it with you' -- does anything more need to be said? (but like, if it's said by Courtney, I'll happily listen)
"Sometimes I get sad / it's not all that bad / pull yourself together and just calm down" ... "Sometimes I get mad / it's not half as bad…"
Yeah, I lean more toward sad, but really all the emotions, and I realize I spend a lot of my time coping and coaxing and coaching myself through stuff. I'm working on feeling and processing in the moment, acceptance and detachment with love. And like yes, I am more than my depression, but I’m not convinced all this is depression, something pathological and individual and isolated and unbalanced. Like if this is reflecting what I’m going through, I’ve been going through it, it’s not just a now thing. I do want to spend less time managing myself and more time living, but steady self care, including perspective and advice and cathartic headbanging like this song provides is all part of how I do that.
Honorable mention: 'Bug Like an Angel', Mitski
The choral voices, the beauty in the simple, the attention to creatures. Lamenting and loving. Great album.
Honorable mention: ‘Morning Elvis’, Florence + the Machine
The effort it takes to get on with life sometimes. And the beautiful idea of being saved or spared — divine grace, maybe mercy, maybe that just means relief, maybe it means miracle.
3. ‘Homesickness, Pt. 2’, Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou
Perhaps because it is the perfect walking song, and so roots me near the pond and parks, and perhaps because listening to it makes me long for (and feel connected to) the closest sense I have of the feeling of “home” — inner home, or all I’ve ever loved and felt security and belonging in. Yeah, I think it reflects the place I live in reflecting rainy days, the light on the pavement, my walks, the landscape that I love in this city.
Honorable mention: ‘to Perth, before the border closes’, Julia Jacklin
“I loved it there / that city held me / don’t you know that / everything changes”
Julia Jacklin conveys emotion so well, and the sense of nostalgia and longing and love in this song reminds me how rich a person's relationship with a place can be.
‘Everything changes,’ and in the place I live I've experienced that in all these subtle ways this year — I settled into a new apartment and living space within an established neighborhood and city, one dear friend moved out, a stranger (who became a friend) moved in, my gf and I broke up and our deeply intertwined routine in these spaces dissipated suddenly, and while not a lot changed visually around me (working from home is so weird for the sense of inner and outer, and boundaries in time), there was all this changing and weaving in my sense of orientation to the world, in relationships, in self-perception. All kinds of erosion.
People move out, move away, we change the nature of our relationships, go visit places, spend time with people we know we don’t get the luxury of every day with. And also, five years is enough to really notice changes in a city’s face and landscape, as well of course as change in my community and most immediate roots.
Honorable mention: ‘Meditation (Syncopate & Motivate Live)’, Cory Wong
Another absolute highlight for walks. To me it totally evokes the joy of a day in the arboretum with no constraints.
4. ‘The Way That You Love Me’, Emily King
I love love. Obviously. And one of the things I love most about love is how expansive it is, how my love for my friends makes it easier, deeper, more natural to love myself and to practice that. And then to have more care and support to offer others. How good it feels to care for others when it’s not obligated or coerced, but freely and compassionately given.
I love the sense Of Course in this song - of course I will stay with you, of course I will hold you, it is the simplest thing for me, and I know this deep in me because I know how to love, and you are part of how I know this, because I have grown with you. To me, this is the utter miracle and deep joy that is true friendship. Goddamn I love my friends.
Honorable mention: ‘Geometry’, Rubblebucket
This song has a great way of portraying connection and that anchoring, orienting, cheering link of friendship. Again, friendship is the most powerful thing in the world :’’’)))
Honorable mention: ‘Floated By’, Peter Cat Recording Co
Bismillah has been a favorite album for years, since I was introduced to it (by Lylia herself) in 2020 to this year 2023. The song makes me think of the spring/summer of 2020, and Rubin and our house that year in Union Sq in Somerville and picnics at Nunziato Field, and it makes me feel connected to memories in 2020 and 2021 when I’d visit my family in New York and drive around with my grandma as an excursion we could comfortably do. I played this album there with her because of course, it’s a favorite and a staple and a damn good vibe, and it thus became part of the setting of some of my sweetest and last memories with her in New York, and I suppose in life. Hence honorable mention to Floated By, Where the Money Flows, Portrait of a Time, these perfect songs for picnics.
Honorable mention: 'This Hell', Rina Sawayama
For Pride, for queer connection and joy. 'Let's go girls.'