I picked up the language of the fiscal year from my time in creative agencies, and it’s a habit that I’ve been unable to shake off. I never used to look at time like this - in chunks, as if calling three months “a quarter” gives it more shape.
As is my habit, I’ve kept track of things: it keeps me grounded to have a list. At least now, I can look back at the first quarter of 2023 and reassure myself that I didn’t just spend 90 days pacing.
The Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra: Metamorphosis (27 January, at the Metropolitan Theater)
I’ve been struggling to write about music, because I still can’t seem to get a handle on how to describe exactly what about it I enjoy. K and I first watched the Manila Symphony Orchestra perform famous opera pieces together back in 2018, and recently we got to talking about watching the Philharmonic, should it fit our schedules. I was running late from work (why did I think that I could juggle two jobs, I’ll never know) and we ate sandwiches by the fountain outside of the Met. I never would have imagined this scene, three years ago, even before the pandemic. The area was well-lit and free from obvious signs of danger, which was a pleasant surprise. Sitting in the balcony of the Met, surrounded by sound, I was once again reminded of how deeply music can move me. I didn’t know all the pieces performed, but it was all for the better; something about violins, and clarinets, and perfectly timed percussion makes my heart swell. I loved it. I loved it so much that I could barely stop smiling throughout the entire performance. Maybe when it comes to classical music, that’s enough.
Favorite piece: The Mindanao Sketches
The Last of Us
It’s been a while since I’ve felt FOMO over a piece of media, or felt driven to watch a show as it aired. But The Last of Us struck me as something everyone was talking about, and for an hour every week I got to turn off my brain and be delighted (and devastated) by fantastic storytelling and acting. I don’t think I even need to tell you what this show is about—humanity and its failings, and the small, beautiful wins despite it. (Yes, I am referring to Episode 3, “Long Long Time”. Of course I am. God bless Pedro Pascal & Bella Ramsey, but Jesus Christ you guys. I am so thankful to be alive in a time where Episode 3 can exist.)
More than that, TLOU also cemented my fear of zombies. I enjoy horror and suspense, but something about zombies really skeeves me out, but not as badly as body horror. And because this is me, of course I read up on the body horror genre and discovered that zombies fall under that umbrella. Supposedly, body horror activates our (my?) anxieties of physical vulnerability and loss of conscious control over our bodies. Hah. Me? Afraid of losing control? Never. I write everything down because I enjoy it.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
It takes a lot to be vulnerable, and I realized as I was reading this book that that’s why I love meeting new people and making new friends. It challenges me to be vulnerable with people, and it’s just such a joy to earn someone’s trust. But even before all that, I love hearing people’s stories—no matter how shallow or deep they are. This book, at its core, is just that: people’s stories about themselves, and the people that they love (and maybe love them back). Gottlieb writes with such care and fondness that despite the intensity of the material, it still struck me as bright. Gottlieb, a therapist in her own right, seeks out a therapist and learns about herself and what she’s capable of as a therapist, as well as how far she still has to go as a human being. It’s wonderful.
Also, of course, this book is basically shining a light on the fact that we all stand to benefit from a bit of therapy. Especially these days, when even therapists may be struggling with how to uplift people when the world is on fire.
It’s Wendell’s job to help me edit my story. All therapists do this: What material is extraneous? Are the supporting characters important or a distraction? Is the story advancing or is the protagonist going in circles? Do the plot points reveal a theme?
(…)
But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you’ve told yourself about who you are so that you aren’t trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you’ve been telling yourself about your life.
(…)
The second people felt alone, I noticed, usually in the space between things—leaving a therapy session, at a red light, standing in a checkout line, riding the elevator—they picked up devices and ran away from that feeling. In a state of perpetual distraction, they seemed to be losing the ability to be with others and losing their ability to be with themselves.
The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fisher
I think, at this point, I will allow myself One (1) Bleak Book a year. The kind of non-fiction that will fundamentally shift the way I look at and interact with the world. Last year’s book was Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber, and this year’s book is The Chaos Machine, or the reason I’ve deleted social media apps from my phone.
Since I first had access to a computer, I have been chronically online, and I had the misfortune of bearing witness to almost all the tectonic shifts of the Internet. From being on Livejournal (and Xanga, and Multiply, and Wordpress), to watching Anita Sarkeesian and reading about Gamergate, to reading Reddit threads about Ellen Pao, to Facebook during the 2016 elections… Well. Fisher talks about all those things and more, and when I logged this book in my tracker I had half a mind to note it down under the horror genre.
Fisher’s able to draw a narrative through-line through all the disparate peaks and valleys of social media—for the most part, it’s things we already know about social media and The Algorithm. But to read it all laid out, backed up with research and interviews with primary sources, made me take a long, hard look at the way I spend my time online. It’s not like I’m about to become a luddite, but this book made me want to be more conscious about the garbage I consume through my phone. Even before reading this, I’d long espoused the belief that I didn’t need to have an opinion on everything, but social media drives me towards that imagined necessity. My lizard brain is just too susceptible to it, and it’s embarrassing to admit that I do just spend too much of my time hoarding free oxytocin from short-from videos and curated Tumblr posts. I wish that wasn’t the truth, but it is. And the only way to get rid of an addiction is to cut it off completely.
(Bear with me: I had over 60 annotations in this book. A lot of them, however, were simply variations of “Oh my god.” Another one read: “there is no ethical social media consumption when faced with an algorithm built by a white man.”)
“Everyone at your company should be different in the same way—a tribe of like-minded people fiercely devoted to the company’s mission.” This, more than race or gender alone, was the rigid archetype around which the Valley designed its products: ruthless, logical, misanthropic, white, male geeks. For much of the industry’s history, this predilection affected few beyond the women and minorities who struggled to endure its workplaces. But with the advent of the social media era, the industry was building its worst habits into companies that then smuggled those excesses—chauvinism, a culture of harassment, majoritarianism disguised as meritocracy—into the homes and minds of billions of consumers.
(…)
But since the scale of the backlash to big tech, and the evidence for its harms, couldn’t be completely dismissed, the Valley settled on an internal narrative, throughout 2018 and 2019, that let its leaders feel like they were still the good guys. They called it “time well spent,” a phrase borrowed from Tristan Harris, the former Google engineer who’d warned about addictive conditioning, and quit in 2015. Now it was the Valley’s hot new thing. Facebook, Google, Apple, and others introduced new features to track and manage users’ screen time.
Monthly Playlists
Despite the insane pace of Q1, I managed to still listen to music. I think that’s one of my barometers for personal stress levels. If you remember, in one of my previous jobs I didn’t get to listen to music at all because I was overloaded. I’m glad I was able to carve out time every month just to make a silly playlist or two.
January may be one of my favorite months, mostly because of the cold and the lethargy that it brings. Also, I’ve really fallen in love with some of these Thai bands.
Two k-pop playlists, or: there are two wolves inside you. One is a shōnen protagonist and one still deeply loves emo music. (Also I just love a good guitar riff, okay??)
And lastly: for when the mania reached its peak, I made myself a playlist to turn my brain off to.
Darling Coffee — Meena Alexander
The periodic pleasure
of small happenings
is upon us—
behind the stalls
at the farmer’s market
snow glinting in heaps,
a cardinal its chest
puffed out, bloodshod
above the piles of awnings,
passion’s proclivities;
you picking up a sweet potato
turning to me ‘This too?’—
query of tenderness
under the blown red wing.
Remember the brazen world?
Let’s find a room
with a window onto elms
strung with sunlight,
a cafe with polished cups,
darling coffee they call it,
may our bed be stoked
with fresh cut rosemary
and glinting thyme,
all herbs in due season
tucked under wild sheets:
fit for the conjugation of joy.