This is an ever-growing 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. I’ve organized by category; books and music are alphabetized by author/composer, everything else is alphabetized by title.
Books+Essays
Platform for Change by Stafford Beer
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.
Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
Twelve Months of Monastery Soups by Br. Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourrette: anyone who has eaten in my home knows about the Monk Soup Book.
Behind the Curtain: An Enquiry Into Science by H. Michael Fried
Limits to Medicine, or Medical Nemesis by Ivan Ilych (I’m coming out as an Ilychian. Also a fan of Tools for Conviviality)
Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation by Janina Fisher
The music theory textbook we used in college by J. Merritt and D. Castro. If I could recommend one music theory book, this would be it.
the work of Clementine Morrigan
The Tragedy of Stafford Beer by Kevin Munger
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman: up there with McLuhan’s Understanding Media as one of the most famous books on media theory (or as Postman would call it, media ecology) for good reason.
Music As A Gradual Process by Steve Reich
The Complications: On Going Mad In America by Emmet Rensin
Joy of Cooking (1931) by Irma Rombauer.
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty
Conflict Is Not Abuse by Sarah Schulman
Within The Context of No Context by George W.S. Trow
A Metaphysics of Psychopathology by Peter Zachar
Movies
Arrival (2016)
Mädchen in Uniform (1931). The 1958 one is aight.
The Secrets (2007): הסודות hasodot in the original Hebrew.
The Trouble With Angels (1966)
Music
Opheliac (2006) by Emilie Autumn
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.
DEVO’s performance on SNL in 1978. I can’t believe people didn’t drop dead when this was beamed live into their living rooms.
Le Banquet Céleste by Olivier Messiaen. I wrote a little bit about it one time.
Electric Counterpoint by Steve Reich
TV
The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
Lost (2004)
少女革命ウテナ (1997) (shōjo kakumei Utena, Revolutionary Girl Utena) 絶対運命黙示録
Radio+Podcasts
Get In, a podcast episode by The Relentless Picnic
The now-defunct podcast Reply All up until episode 158ish.
The Revolution Will Not Be Psychologized, a podcast episode by Josh Schrei of The Emerald.
This discussion by Sarah Marshall (and Michael Hobbes) of the 1980 book “Michelle Remembers”
A Therapist Can’t Say That by Riva Stoudt
Miscellanea
shooting the shit with the other genius named Phil in my life
homestarrunner.com
weird facebook groups in the 2010s
this video I am always trying to make you watch
my dead grandma
my sweet, loving girlfriend <3
SORBCORE