Every Thing I Love
As life passes by, I often return to certain songs, albums, objects, books, articles, places, activities, or foods that continue to strike me as worthwhile. There is no place to pay tribute to all these small things that bring me joy in this life. So, I’ve carved a home for them here. On this page, I add ongoing entries about everything I love.
Des Visages des Figures by Noir Désir
The couple of times I went to Europe before I lived in France, I returned with one song that was on the radio constantly. One year, it was the song “Le vent nous portera” by Noir Désir. Like most of France, that song must have captivated me, and it was all over the radio and on TV. I bought the album at a FNAC and took it home with me. I don’t think I listened to the album Des Visages des Figures until I moved to Bordeaux in 2004, from where the band hailed. And then every song on that album became the soundtrack for my time there for the entire year. The album cover could be designed in the 1980s, and the music has an anacrhonistic sound that I later came to appreciate about French indie rock, most of which never made it outside France, and today would probably be obscure even in the country. In particular the song “Des armes,” using lyrics from a poem by Léo Ferré inspired by May 1968, still hits everytime I’ve listened to it, and strikes me as perhaps one of the best adaptations of a poem to music.
The Clock by Christian Marclay
It’s probably not unique to say that The Clock is one of your favorite artworks. The video installation that uses different clips from movies across the decades to tell the time of day is unlike any other work ever made: it’s beautiful, entertaining, inspiring, surprising—and it fucking works like a real clock! I’ve never seen the entirety of The Clock, and I don’t think you have to to love it. But that’s another thing about this artwork, unlike others you can usually look up online, it’s really hard to see. I first learned about The Clock when I was 26 and it came to New York in 2010 where it played at Walter Reade Theater. In the first weeks, not that many people seemed to know about it. I worked at a gallery on the Upper East Side at the time, and for a few mornings, I would go earlier and earlier in the day, see a bit of the piece, then walk across Central Park to work. It was summer, and I remember one morning there was a low layer of fog just dissipating off the park. One night, my friends and I were drinking in the area during the weekend. It was past midnight, and I suggested going to see The Clock. Coming into a half full theater at 1, 2 o’clock in the evening, now in my memory, parallels what I imagined it felt like to live in New York in the 50s. The differentiation between the loud, boisterous bar environment with the quiet spaces, maybe just off 42nd, of an sparsely populated theater. The video, itself, is rife with imagery like this too. I stayed til 3 or 4 in the morning. At times I drifted to sleep. Later, in the course of that appearance of the work, it became too popular to see without standing in line for a while. I felt like it was a popular friend who drifted away. I would like to see it again, but even with that distance, it remains one of my favorite artworks of all time.
“Diamond Bollocks” by Beck
Beck’s album Mutations was one of my favorites in high school already. But the secret song at the end of the album, found if you leave the last song on for 5 minutes, called “Diamond Bollocks” remains one of my favorites ever. First of all, there’s the magic quality of the secret song itself, an olde media easter egg that cannot be reproduced today. You expect the secret song to be a parody or joke, like Green Day’s Dookie finale, or maybe experimental, like Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s. But to me, “Diamond Bollocks” is one of the best songs on the album. A head-banging track of mashed up genres—it starts with post punk guitars, and ends with a vamped harpsichord. In the middle of it, before it heads to a sixties bass bumping bridge, it cuts to birds chirping over a deep silence. I read that the song style didn’t fit anywhere on the album so they put it at the end—now it defines the album.
Painting of the Golden Apple diner by Steve Connell
The “24 Hours at the Golden Apple” episode of This American Life
I wasn’t a religious listener to This American Life, but sometimes I would happen to catch an episode that blew me away. Such was the case with this one that tells various stories captured by reporters as they log a full day’s time at a 24-hour diner in Chicago. Anyone who has read this website knows I’m a fan of the 24-hour period. Whatever happens in the world happens within that time frame: a full day has the capacity to encompass anything that’s possible. The very premise of the episode excites, and it doesn’t let you down. It is a true microcosm of the world and its activity. Listen to the episode.
The Macaframa in New York video
During my last year in San Francisco, my friend group was tangential to another group of fixed-gear bikers, called Macaframa. They centered around one leader, who sold marijuana (by bike of course), and he had a collection of top of the line video recording equipment. I knew their names and faces before I knew them in person. Many of them I never met. My friends, occasionally gathered haphazardly in one of those dark living rooms in San Francisco where they would play videos they made of one of the Macaframa bikers bombing a hill in the city at unbelievable speeds. Then, I moved to New York, and they drifted back into the fog without ever having fully emerged from it. But one week, they all decided to go visit the east coast. It was like a band that was on tour—it had that feel that week they arrived, like an air of celebrity in town. I knew a couple of them in the group, though they weren’t officially Macaframa sponsored, so I met up with them. We drank at bars that no longer exist, went to house parties, and they were interested in playing dice. Later, a video surfaced on their webpage that was like a music video about their time in New York. It was so perfectly edited along with a song by the Oh Sees (the video turned me on to the band), it captured the feeling of their visit. Most of their footage was shot from a bike. It felt so non-New York, because they were a big group of friends biking around the city, something that you still don’t even see outside of San Francisco. I loved the video, and referred to whenever I was getting ready to go on my own trip. I always wanted to capture and edit video that held the wonder of a voyage so accurately as that.
Les Fleurs by Minnie Riperton
I first heard this song sitting at a cafe in Davis, California probably in 2006. On my way to the cash register, I looked over the shoulder of the dj to see what he was playing. I’ve taken that song with me ever since, and have learned more about Minnie Riperton and her four octave range, and the fact that she was nearly retired in the 70s, rediscovered by a colllege intern at a record label. Les Fleurs was one of her first songs she recorded solo after leaving Rotary Connection. It seems amazing to me that it sat there undiscovered for many years—her first solo album didn’t make much of an impact until later. The lyrics are pastoral, subtle, maybe too saccharine, a product of the ‘60s that fell out of favor by the next decade. To me, they match the melody perfectly. And even though this song has been discovered by many, featured on commercials, and played often, it hasn’t lost its power for me. It hits me the same it did back in 2006.
A scene from Tampopo in which the master of ramen eating, played by Ryûtarô Ôtomo on the right, teaches his pupil.
The Making of Tampopo
The Japanese food-obsessed film Tampopo, made in 1985 is, of course, a classic. But the accompanying documentary from 1986, narrated by director Juzo Itami, of the making of a film is an eccentric ninety-minute film that is perhaps in a class of itself only because it is so overlooked. Itami narrates the film with a readerly static tone, as if reading from his diary. His voice doesn’t shift whether he’s speaking about the amount of times it took to shoot a certain scene, or if he’s talking about how a famous Japanese’s actor’s two minute role at the beginning of the film was his last, as he later committed seppuku. That last fact sort of sets the stage for this strange documentary, showing it’s not your everyday “making of” film. Ryûtarô Ôtomo was an accomplished actor famous for his roles in Jidaigeki period-drama films, and was tasked in Tampopo with playing the “master of ramen eating,” in the unforgettable introduction scene of the film. According to the “making of” film, he wasn’t happy with his acting. Itami says the aged actor was eager to please, but even though he performed with grace, he ended up feeling depressed. Just after filming the scene, he took his own life. The “making of” continues merrily along at a rigorous pace after narrating this story, and it’s not the least in a series of surprising facts about the creation of this masterpiece.
Kaytranada’s 2011 Boiler Room Performance
I happened upon this recently, and have since learned that it’s a legendary video. For good reason, while Kaytranada performed in Brooklyn in 2021 to an audience of 4,000 people, this Montreal performance ten years before looks like it’s a room of about 50 people. Characters drift in and out of the camera’s window throughout the 45-minute performance. Stories unfold. Questions arise. The mix itself is great, but the narrative of people enjoying the music in real time makes it an unforgettable moment of real life storytelling.
The Little Hours
I love the movie The Little Hours. It stars many famous people. It’s very funny. It’s based on stories from The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. And yet no one knows it. No one ever talks about it. The one person I know who saw it thought it was stupid. So, it feels like a movie that’s just for me. I think that’s what I like best about it.
Femme Fatale by Digable Planets
This is one of those songs that, every time I listen to it, strikes me as a masterpiece. First, I am always intrigued by the lack of narratives about abortion in our culture. It seems like one of the last taboos of our age—you could probably count on one hand the movies where a character actually goes through with an abortion (usually it ends with the person deciding to keep the child, even in as progressive a show as Girls). So the fact that this song was released in 1993 is extraordinary. The story begins as the narrator goes over to a young girl’s house. She is fretting because she is pregnant, and wants an abortion, but is scared to do it because of all the stigma around it. The narrator comforts the woman, and says not to worry about it if that’s what she wants to do. The politics around the scenario could very well describe today in 2021. Nothing has changed. It’s the final lyrics that always haunt me. The song began about justifying legal abortion, but it ends up being about something far greater—it could apply to any number of human rights: “So, whatever you decide, make that move with pride/ Sid will be there and so will I/ An insect 'til I die.”
Going to Europe Without An International Phone Plan
It’s increasingly easy to get a temporary international plan whenever you go abroad, but in August of 2021, I decided not to do it. After a few days walking around Denmark, and I realized I hadn’t looked at my phone all day. I felt disconnected, severed, lost—free! It was like going back in time. Every time I went out alone, I knew that anything could happen on my journey, and I wouldn’t be able to improvise through a text message or GPS. Plans to meet people had to be made well in advance. There was a certain level of trust that had to go into planning ahead that everything would work out, and that people would be where they said they would meet you. Of course, Denmark is full of cafes with wifi, so I was able to get some service occasionally. But it was more like island hopping in a vast abyss of disconnected bliss.
Neo Yokio
Neo Yokio has a mix of elements of everything I would normally hate and love. I love: anything about New York, animation, satirical and critical displays about the upper class, subtle insertions of fantasy into otherwise realist fiction. I hate: most things on Netflix, star-studded casts, Vampire Weekend. Despite this, in the few short years that Neo Yokio has been out, I have grown to love it more than any television show of recent memory. It’s short and almost perfectly scripted—like a two minute song that you feel ends too soon. And like a two-minute song you love, it’s perfect for multiple viewings. I’ve already watched it 4 times, and once on consecutive viewings. Yet, I’m always surprised to hear that no one has heard of it or seen it. I wonder if that means it has the makings of a future underground classic?
My grandmother’s succulents
My grandmother (who I call yia-yia) always had a preternatural green thumb. I use the word preternatural (a word that always strikes me as merely an excuse to show how learned the writer is) because she never went to school, or learned from anyone how to keep plants alive, but she’s exceptionally good at it. When I went to college, she gave me a bonsai plant that I always killed. Whenever I returned home, I brought it with me and she would nurse it back to life, only for me to kill it again. Her backyard garden was always teeming with succulents. It was pleasing to be there not only because the succulents were numerous and big and beautiful, but because the plants seemed veritably happy, as if they couldn’t imagine a better place to live. It reflected on yia-yia as it was the exact feeling I had in her care.
