Happy 2025! Happy blog!
Inspired by this post (and the original), here are some reflections on 2024:
What did you do this year that you'd never done before?
I went to Nevada for the very first time to see Dead and Company at the Sphere! Las Vegas was much hotter than I expected (I never knew it was in the desert) and I didn't gamble or drink, but I got to check out the super strange martian landscape at Valley of Fire and Red Rock Canyon. And the Hoover Dam!1
For new states, I also went to Kentucky for the first time, where I braved "Fat Man's Agony" in Mammoth Cave and sang John Prine songs next to the Green River. I tried to make it to Paradise, but it's all high security TVA land now and I thought I would probably get busted.
I put a roof on my cabin (and promptly fell off), built web apps with Next and Remix, navigated the New York City subway in the middle of the night, got bangs, saw a New Year's eve show, took a ski lesson, backpacked across a raging river, drove down Las Ramblas in Barcelona, and saw my sister graduate.
What a year!
What would you like to have in 2025 that you lacked in 2024?
A sick rock n roll band. Dinner parties with the people I love. Time to be outside.
And of course a totally radical blog...
What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The first afternoon I spent in New York, with my cousin, rolling my rapidly disintegrating suitcase from LaGuardia to Brooklyn. The air tingled with adventure - you just can't beat moving to a city you've never seen.
I ended up feeling very natural in New York, but it still had that undercurrent of excitement. Doing things every day was great! Hanging out with 10 or so hip young Spanish kids didn't hurt either...
What songs will always remind you of 2024?
Joni Mitchell year. Joni Mitchell year!
Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Yes, but I better not say who...
What was the best book you read?
I read 30 books this year, which was more than double of last year (yay!) but still 20 short of my perennial 50 book goal (boo!). I end up liking most any book I actually finish, so I'd rate every one of those books 5/5. But, still, these books were the highlights:
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante
- Heads by Jesse Jarnow
- Ice by Anna Kavan
- The Silver Snarling Trumpet by Robert Hunter
These five books appeared again and again in my thoughts and conversations throughout the year. All five combine excellent storytelling with a sense of change and blurred boundaries. I wish I could read 50 more like them - that's my hope for next year!
What was your favorite film?
Strong contenders this year:
- Most fun: Hell House LLC Origins - The Carmichael Manor (2023)
- Best plot: Immaculate (2024)
- Most gut-wrenching: I Saw the TV Glow (2024)
- Most relatable: After Hours (1985)
- I just love it: Before Midnight (2013)
But the best? Easy call:
What was your favorite meal?
The open-faced turkey sandwich I ate at the lil Mammoth Cave restaurant was just fantastic. But probably Star of India, any time I went there.
What did you want and get? What did you want and not get?
Got: A tuning pedal.
Not got: A DJ deck - my EDM dreams will have to live in 2025 now...
How would you describe your personal fashion this year?
Chilly sawdust sewer rat. Closet mothball clothes only. Thank god for Columbia Knits!
What kept you sane?
Running laps back and forth at the top of the driveway.
I did around 115 miles, running 1500 feet at a time - that's somewhere in the range of 380 laps on my little stretch of gravel. I'm not sure what I'm learning, but I know it's something good - I'm looking forward to a few hundred more laps in 2025!
What valuable life lesson did you learn this year?
Suck it up and spin it. And don't fall off the roof.
What is a song lyric that sums up your year?
From Robert Hunter:
Jack string fiddle to my saw tooth bow
Who loves loneliness, loves it alone
I love the dim lights like some love the dew
The only thing I wonder sometimesis does God look down on the boys in the barroom,
Mainly forsaken but surely not judged?
Jacks, Kings and Aces, their faces in wine:
Do, Lord, deliver our kind.
Thanks, Bob - and happy New Year to everyone else! Let's hope our kind can be delivered all the way through to 2026...
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My Spanish uncle Pepe is always amazed that Americans flock to see the Hoover Dam - "your country has the best salespeople in the world" - but it really was scary and impressive to look down at that dam and think about how many lives are constantly relying on some early 20th century engineering! Still, I was disappointed to learn there's not actually bodies inside... ↩