a personal syllabus (2022)
a personal syllabus (2022)
Lucas Samaras, Versace drawing #1-6, 1996
A friend shared the following thought with me after reading my last piece, drawing inspiration from Richard Powers:
“Time is not linear, but a series of concentric circles, like the rings of a tree. Ourselves today, our newest selves, are the outermost rings of a tree. We are comprised also of every person we were in the years leading up to today, even if those layers have compressed into the past.”
I believe the same is true for what we consume. We are each composed of a unique constellation of reference points—what we watch, read, listen to, wear, etc.
As a thought exercise, I compiled a collection of pieces I always return to—turning them over in my mind, referencing them in conversation.
By “content I return to,” I don’t simply mean favorites, though these often overlap. Many of these pieces, I’ve continued to rave about for years. Several were instrumental to me for a season or two of my life, but I’ve since outgrown. A few may even be embarrassing to share now; these are equally as important, as they still fundamentally shaped how I see the world.
Grouped by medium, but otherwise in no particular order:
The Influence of Anxiety by Daniel Smith
Out there: On Not Finishing by Devin Kelly
Status as a Service by Eugene Wei
Circular time vs. linear time by Austin Kleon
About those "letters to my Asian parents about anti-black racism" by Andy Liu
What If You Could Do It All Over? by Joshua Rothman
The Sound of Silence: Here's What Happened When I Did a Month-Long Sound Fast by Joel Pavelski
The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima
Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein
Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas
The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang
The Agony of Eros by Byung-chul Han
Radiolab: Playing God
Radiolab: The Cataclysm Sentence
Radiolab: The Bobbys
The Ezra Klein Show: The moral philosophy of The Good Place
Revisionist History: Malcolm Gladwell debates Adam Grant
Broken Record with Rick Rubin: Tyler the Creator
Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie
For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver
Blonde by Frank Ocean
BUBBA by Kaytranada
how i’m feeling now by Charli XCX
I experienced several conflicting emotions after piecing this collection together, namely a lot of surprise at how vulnerable a list like this feels. When you peek between the lines, intimate themes emerge: anxiety, fear of the unknown and the unfinished, heritage, the responsibility I owe to others and what it means to be a good person, etc. A few questions also arose:
Why did I choose this piece if I feel I’ve outgrown it? What exactly do I think I outgrew?
There’s a lot of men here… how do I feel about that and what needs to change?
Why are there no films?
These aren’t particularly high-brow or canonical choices, how does that sit with me?
I’ll keep the answers to myself for now, but if any of these are interesting (if we’ve met before, I’ve likely referenced at least one of these in conversation), let’s talk :)