2024 in review

Are you sick of these?

Happy New Year’s Eve!

the sunset in Brooklyn a few weeks ago :)

At the beginning of this year, I set out with a resolution of being more intentional about my patterns. To me, the best way to do this was to keep extensive records. I wanted to know everything that happened to me and why. I made spreadsheets for bruises on my legs and places where I cried in public. I kept bulleted lists of the articles I read and songs I liked. I had these fragmented notes and opinions on my laptop, phone, and desk, and felt very serious about them like I was conducting a legitimate science experiment.

It worked, for the most part, when it came to my taste. There was a specificity I was seeking in my routines that I finally landed on, and I’m leaving 2024 with a better understanding of the things I like and why I reach for them.

But toward the end of the year, I started to feel that through all the clarity I gained by consuming, I had somehow missed pieces of myself in all these lists. It even feels strange to write out because I’ve always been so preoccupied with my feelings. But I treated my routines and obsessions like the end of the story, forgetting to leave room to look for the truth they could bring — not just about the world, but about myself, too.

In an interview about his movie The Worst Person in the World (one of my favorite first watches of the year) director Joachim Trier referenced the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and said we can only make sense of our lives from wherever we stand.

We can only understand our life backwards, but we’re forced to live it forwards. And I think that’s the confusion we all feel, is that we always learn too late. We go through things that are completely inexplicable and mysterious. And then years later, we realize.

This lesson landed in a sore spot for me. I don’t want to realize anything too late! It’s so unlike me! I had been organizing all of these frivolous things and skipping the meaning. I ended up more confused and frustrated with myself for logging everything and somehow mulling over nothing, always moving on to the next big idea. Feeling so deeply is my greatest strength and my worst blind spot because I really had just assumed the sentimentality would come later, whether I looked for it or not.

It’s a beautiful, shifty way of getting to know yourself, piecing your life together like this. You really can only figure out everything backward. My new resolution is learning how to do it better.

I want to be more present this year and tend to my memory like a garden. To have these fragments is a gift, not just a tool or a lens. I want to remember to feel through things on my own time and not run from anything — not the past or the old aches or the mirrors I find in things I love. I’m hoping to assign meaning after feeling, standing in every corner and reaching for what I want. Taste is a reflection of weakness and funniness, too, and there’s no use in not being eager about it.

So maybe 2025 is the year I get over myself! I want to be present and unafraid. I also want to get into hiking and order more appetizers at restaurants. What are your resolutions? I’d love to hear them!

Below is my year in review. I listened to so much pop music! I laughed at so many movies! Please let me know if you loved or hated any of these things:

ALBUMS

1. Two Star and the Dream Police by Mk.gee

   I know this was everyone’s favorite album this year, but there’s a reason for that — it’s really great! Every song sounds almost like something you’ve heard before, but then he pulls the rug out from under you with every mean lyric or fuzzy guitar riff or shriek. It’s so scratchy and inescapable, I kept having this image of unearthing a new piece of a twinkly city every time I played the album in full this year. And I played it a lot! I kept coming back to these scattered ideas of wanting something so badly that it forces you into a messy and honest corner. He shoots straight through the heart with “You’re not a poet, you’re a liar” in “Alesis” and then turns it on himself immediately with “I’m not a liar, I’m just high.” He can’t help but fall short in “I Want,” my favorite from the album, admitting, “I’m not your hero but I got his desire.” It’s cluttered and shiny and he’s not afraid of overdoing it. I saw him at Terminal 5 in September and he played “DNM” five times throughout the night under the venue’s giant disco ball. He kept teasing the audience and pretending he was gearing up to play something else before the song’s unmistakable intro started, prompting cheers each time. It felt like we were all in on the joke, and listening to this record still feels like I’m laughing at a chaotic, glittering party where we’re all trying to figure out what could follow sincerity like this.

2. Manning Fireworks by MJ Lenderman

3. Going Nowhere by Quiet Light

   This album really put me in a trance in late November. The first song on the album, “Blood Pours Like Wine,” immediately hooked me. I was walking to meet my friend for dinner when I first heard it and I got there late because I kept having to stop on the sidewalk and look at the lyrics, hand over my heart, gasping, it just sounded so sharp and sad. In the next song on the album, she asks, “Does it kill you that I can’t get it right?” over a sliding, bright chorus. Each song is a specific dagger washing over the last. It’s a sugary gut punch of a record that only lasts 24 minutes but takes you all over the place.

4. Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat by Charli XCX

5. Diamond Jubilee by Cindy Lee

6. Fabiana Palladino by Fabiana Palladino

7. Bright Future by Adrianne Lenkar

8. Tigers Blood by Waxahatchee

9. What a Devastating Turn of Events by Rachel Chinouriri

10. Life Is by Jessica Pratt

11. Ten Total by 1010benja

    I’d rather be weirded out by 1010benja than bored elsewhere. Here’s an interview with him by Grant Sharples that I liked!

12. The Past is Still Alive by Hurray for the Riff Raff

SONGS

1. Right Back To It by Waxahatchee featuring MJ Lenderman

   This song soundtracked my entire year after it dropped in early January. The harmonies scratch an itch in my brain, especially when Jake’s voice breaks through on that high note in the chorus. The sweet familiarity of the song is like singing in the car with someone you love. Instant classic.

2. Docket by Blondshell and Bully

   This was my top-played song on Spotify this year. I wrote about Blondshell’s self-aware lyrics last year and this song has the same witty dryness that I love. And it’s so fun to sing with my beautiful roommate Emma!

3. Wristwatch by MJ Lenderman

4. Rockman by Mk.gee

   “Wherever you are, I want it on fire” is a perfect lyric to me.

5. Speyside by Bon Iver

6. Losing Tennessee by Fine

7. She’s Leaving You by MJ Lenderman

   It’s true, three MJ Lenderman songs mentioned… He’s got the sauce!

8. Fool by Adrianne Lenkar

9. We can’t be friends by Ariana Grande. Duh!

10. Kitchen by SZA

Here’s an unordered playlist of my favorite songs of the year:

MOVIES

1. Nickel Boys

2. La Chimera

3. I Saw The TV Glow

4. The Substance

5. Problemista

6. Challengers

7. Sing Sing

8. Dune: Part Two

9. Conclave

HARDEST I LAUGHED IN THEATERS WITH MY FRIENDS

1. Argylle

2. Madame Web

3. Megalopolis

4. Wicked

FIRST WATCHES

1. 3 Women (1977)

2. Broadcast News (1987)

3. Before Sunset (2004)

4. Brief Encounter (1945)

5. The Worst Person in the World (2021)

6. The Daytrippers (1997)

7. Reality Bites (1994)

8. Perfect Blue (1997)

9. Sisters (1972)

OTHER THINGS I LOVED

• Amanda Petrusich’s interview with Justin Vernon

• Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti

• When Meryl Streep came on stage during Joni Jam at the Hollywood Bowl in October

• Stereophonic and Job were the best plays I saw this year!

• Doechii’s tiny desk

• The shirts that people made about New York’s earthquake in April

• Haley Heynderickx at Baby’s All Right in June

• Contributing to Leonor’s perfect zine the Graveyard Review

• Jeremy Strong and Victoria Pedretti and Michael Imperioli in An Enemy of the People

• When Michael Imperioli revealed to me and Kaite outside of the play that he was also reading Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries

• I was obsessed with making vinaigrettes this year

• Rayne Fisher Quann’s essay Against Narrative

• The Bird’s Nest by Shirley Jackson

• Celebrity lookalike contests (they never got old for me)

• Chanel Beads opening for ML Buch at Elsewhere this summer

• These cookies

• Katie Crutchfield’s Substack

• Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo’s press tour for Wicked

• When the Today Show gave pickles to Peter Sarsgaard

• Mikey Madison’s hair tinsel in Anora

• I’m finally developing a taste for salmon

• Sabrina Carpenter’s whole thing!

• Timothee Chalamet and Nardwuar

• Club Chalamet turning into a Bob Dylan fan account

• The TikToks people make to That’s So True by Gracie Abrams

And I would love to give a special and gracious shoutout to how my hair looked after I ran the Brooklyn Half Marathon in April:

I would run 13.1 miles a million times if it guaranteed these locks for life

Finally, thank you for reading this year! I started this Substack in 2021 after an email chain to my friends got too crowded. I think we have a good thing going and I am so grateful to anyone who reads what I write. I can’t wait to give you more next year! Happy 2025!

Love,

C