This is a list of works that I am always implicitly in conversation with. It includes media that I consumed at such an impressionable time that it was subsumed into my personality, and media that I consumed recently that undergirds the way I think, and things in between. Most of these things I have complicated feelings toward; it’s not a list of my favorite things, necessarily. It’s written in no particular order, so good luck. I will always be updating, so check this page later for more.
少女革命ウテナ (1997) (shōjo kakumei Utena, Revolutionary Girl Utena), there’s a manga but I’m talking about the anime: a surrealist (non-)shōjo, (non-)magical girl show about trying to get back something that can’t ever return. It’s very theatrical and at times very disturbing. And it’s gay sometimes, and not in the fetishistic way that’s typical of Japanese media. 絶対運命黙示録
Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation by Janina Fisher: a pretty weird textbook about what’s called structural dissociation. That’s basically the idea that the self is fragmented and different fragments come to the fore at different times, and people who have been through really bad stuff have a much more pronounced version of this, the most extreme manifestation being what the DSM calls “dissociative identity disorder”, what was once called “multiple personality disorder”.
The Trouble With Angels (1966): a film where Haley Mills plays a troubled youth who gets sent to a catholic boarding school where Rosalind Russel plays Mother Superior. It’s based on a 1962 memoir called “Life With Mother Superior” by Jane Trahey, which I also own and have read many times. The film boasts a weirdly star-studded cast, including one of the most lesbian-coded character actresses of the last century, Mary Wickes (Emma in “White Christmas”, for one).
Le Banquet Céleste by Olivier Messiaen: a 1928 organ piece about communion. It’s on the octatonic scale, which has no tonal “center”, no “do”, no “tonic”. Plus Messiaen transposes the theme constantly, which serves to double the weightlessness, the out-in-space-ness. I wrote a little bit about it one time.
Dropping the Writ, an album by Cass McCombs: Sometimes I wonder why I try to create anything when Cass has said everything I could ever hope to say. Yesterday’s yet to come, win some, lose some, no means yes, petrified forest. Also his album Tip of the Sphere. Also his entire discography.
The Revolution Will Not Be Psychologized, a podcast episode by Josh Schrei of The Emerald: You just have to listen to this one.
Get In, a podcast episode by The Relentless Picnic: you also just have to listen to this one.
Conflict Is Not Abuse by Sarah Schulman: an unusually-structured book about “overstating harm, community responsibility, and the duty of repair”.
Platform for Change by Stafford Beer: I don’t think I can start to explain this book. Publishing houses would let you do anything back in the 70’s.
Midwest Futures by Phil Christman: a book of essays about “the” “mid” “west”. Also his second essay collection How To Be Normal. Also shooting the shit with him often.
shooting the shit with the other genius named Phil in my life
the work of Clementine Morrigan.
The now-defunct podcast Reply All up until episode 158ish: It was a show about the internet, a place where I lived most of my waking hours for many years, hosted by two silly, sweet, smart guys who were once best friends.
Miss Rumphius, a children’s book by Barbara Cooney: Alice Rumphius, is a spinster who plants lupines across the countryside because it is her vocation to make the world more beautiful.
The Hymnal (1990), PCUSA: “The blue hymnal”, as it is called by those in the know, is the hymnal I grew up singing from. It’s very 90’s in that it is trying desperately hard to be traditional and 90’s-PC at the same time. It’s pretty short (605 hymns), especially by contrast to the 2013 PCUSA hymnal (853 hymns). For as much shit as I talk about PCUSA and the particular church that raised me, you know what, they made a pretty good hymnal one time.
Karl Jenkins’ 2008 treatment of the Stabat Mater: Jenkins is a Welsh composer who is kind of disowned by the classical music world for being too pedestrian. (He had a track on Pure Moods back in the day, “Adiemus”, it’s track number 8 of the 1997 release.) He sometimes sets catholic texts interspersed with other texts, as he did with the Stabat Mater, a medieval poem about Mary’s experience at the crucifixion.
Electric Counterpoint by Steve Reich: Reich (pronounced like how Sean Connery would say “rice”, not like the Nazi word) is a minimalist composer and one of the fathers of analog electronic music in the United States. He wrote this piece for Pat Metheny in 1987; I favor the 2012 Mats Bergström recording, linked above. It’s a bunch of guitar tracks on tape loops. I am also moved and influenced in an ongoing way by his work “Music for 18 musicians”. Every recording of this work is very different to the last, so do some googling if you’re curious.
Music As A Gradual Process, a very short 1968 essay also by Steve Reich: it’s about how in listening to a piece of music he wants to be able to hear the composition process.
Joy of Cooking (1931) by Irma Rombauer: I’m not linking this one because only the very old editions are what I’m talking about, and you have to scour the real world for those. My edition is from 1970something, and it’s around that time that the new editions cease to be useful it the way they once were (also the portion sizes begin to balloon in the 80’s editions). Anyway, it’s a comprehensive guide to American home cooking written by a German-descended Midwestern housewife to cope with the suicide of her husband. In its original form, it will teach you how to deal with just about any food that comes your way, including wild game and wild-foraged fruits.
This video that I am always trying to make you watch:
This discussion by Sarah Marshall (and Michael Hobbes) of the 1980 book “Michelle Remembers”, the seminal text of the Satanic Panic. It’s a 5-part series about this insane book, how memory works and fails, and how (especially psychodynamic) therapists and patients can inadvertently co-create something really terrible by becoming very emotionally entangled with one another.
Opheliac (2006) by Emilie Autumn: a very unhinged concept album ostensibly about the experience of being victimized and suicidal à la Ophelia, and then locked in an insane asylum. She wrote an equally unhinged and un-self-aware tome about the same experience that has equally influenced me, and not for the better. (I intend to write someday about what I really think these works are about from a psychosocial perspective.) As for genre, the artist self-describes as “victoriandustial”. I would describe it as bedroom-gothtronica-with-electric-violin-and-harpsichord. The album linked above is a later re-release. You can’t find digital copies of the original release, but it’s the thing I’m really talking about.
weird facebook groups in the 2010s
SORBCORE