Year in Review: 2017
Jan. 12th, 2018 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinue2016, 2015 (limited-access appendix), 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007
1. What did you do in 2017 that you'd never done before?
I inherited money. I wrote a screenplay in which most of the (sparse) dialogue was not in English. I produced a short film in Italy. I dyed my hair black, which is the only color it hadn't been yet. I was interviewed on New Hampshire Public Radio. I began a tradition called Cocktail Friday to mark the end of my workweek, since I work from home. I reached out to Arab League diaspora poets to commission work for a Strange Horizons special issue, which is unusual since I normally pull from the submissions pile. It involved a lot of research and networking.
Songs:
"The Legend of Ed," not currently available online, a Western ballad about a truck-driving Texan sculptor who is a dear friend. It's the first thing I've written for ukulele specifically and involves a fair amount of whistling.
Screenplays:
"Tick Tock Toe," a wizard's duel which is a precursor to the Urban Fantasy Feature that keeps getting pushed back, and "Unidentified Objects, or Somewhere, Something Incredible," a sci-fi short which is a collage of conversations about alien first contact.
Shoots:
"Tick Tock Toe" and a music video for Chris Blacker's "Thread to Thread." Both of those are still in editing/postproduction, and I'm the producer and editor on both of them.
Nonfiction:
"Social Trust in a Cash Economy" and "The Opportunity Cost of Moving 23 Times in 36 Years" at The Billfold, collections of personal anecdotes about doing money in Italy and about having the sort of lifestyle where you move to, and from, Italy.
However, most of my nonfiction work was conversational, politically-focused news gathering and punditry published to facebook, where I felt it would have the most immediate reach. I mirrored some of it onto wordpress, but I fell behind on that at around the time of the Italy-Boston relocation because there aren't enough hours in the day and I couldn't work out how to automate it. I'll catch up someday, maybe. The strongest piece is the one on Crispus Attucks and Black Lives Matter.
Fiction:
"Outlaw Story" in Grasslimb issue 15.2, a short feminist Western which involves board games. And I did make a handful of additions to postorbital.
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Yes, with the exception that I decided not to write the Siege feature because it's an idea for a European production and I'm back in the U.S. Instead, I'm working on a novel that lays the groundwork for a feature set in the U.S. There is no way I get said feature greenlit unless I can show through book sales that there's an audience for it. My plans for this year:
- finish the novel and submit it for publication. It's currently around 26,000 words and I expect it'll finish somewhere just above 100,000. It's about King Arthur and about contemporary art.
- edit and do postproduction on "Tick Tock Toe," which probably involves me or Ciro learning After Effects. Ciro is on the tail end of building a powerful computer that we're going to need for some of the rendering.
- deliver "Thread to Thread," which still needs a color grade
- paint my office
- go to my high school reunion
- read a book in Italian and just in general try not to lose my already-limited command of the language. I don't think I'm going to have the time to get better at it, but I aim to not get too much worse.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth or get married?
My friends Roberto and Cristina had their first baby, who is very cute. It was a risky pregnancy that came after several early miscarriages, and Cristina was on house arrest, essentially, for probably seven months of the pregnancy. During the couple of months I had off to facilitate the move back to the U.S., I sometimes kept her company during the day when everybody else had to work, and we played lots of two-player board games, which sounds like a great inspiration for "Outlaw Story" but I'd already written that story several years beforehand. (There is usually a multi-year gap between when I write something and when it's accepted for publication.)
Ciro's childhood friend Rabea got married in September in New Mexico at a commune on a mountain, and my childhood friend Kristina got married in November in New York City in a Greek restaurant, and they were both very fun weddings.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Ciro's great aunt Jean died. She was very kind to me and I use things she gave me all the time - a necklace, a scarf, a blanket - and I admired her. She was undoubtedly the relative of his (aside from his brother Antonio) to which I was closest. And my friend Ruth died unexpectedly and suddenly. She was in her 80s but not noticeably in decline. She died very soon after I got back and before we were able to get together; I was putting off making an invitation until I didn't have a living room with boxes strewn everywhere. I wish I hadn't put it off.
5. What countries did you visit?
Just Italy and the U.S., unless you want to count a plane change in Dublin. Ciro went to Germany and I forget where else.
6. What would you like to have in 2018 that you lacked in 2017?
I'm going to do my piece to help the Democrats take the House in the midterm elections. I'd like to go out on more dates, and I'd like to see more movies in the theater, but it is currently way too cold for me to consider leaving the house.
7. What date from 2017 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
The international women's march. I was in Italy watching the livestream of the march on Washington and helping explain the manifesto to people who were having first encounters with a lot of feminist concepts. I grew up around a lot of feminists with activist/academic backgrounds and was part of a short-lived college-within-a-college as an undergrad, specifically constructed to develop future female leaders, so I've been able to be a resource. I was caught a little by surprise when a friend of mine from Mexico City, a film director I admire, sent me private messages to essentially say "Are these really concessions women in the US achieved through x and x protest strategies in the 1970s? That is something I want here in Mexico and I haven't known how to go about it." and I was able to say "yes, absolutely. Here are frameworks."
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I don't know the exact date, but early in 2017, maybe after the white supremacy marches, when someone was talking about feeling helpless because Trump wasn't doing any of the things a president is supposed to do, I said that since we didn't currently have an acting president, I would do my best to fill in and be president during the emergency, and I encouraged everyone else who felt capable to step in and be president with me. Obviously, I do not have any of the powers of the presidency, but I have sincerely done my best to serve as president this year and will continue to do so as needed. It's a lot of work. I mainly try to:
- comfort people when they are scared
- support the institution of Congress
- advocate for the common welfare
- provide explanations of U.S. history and laws
- remind my constituents of their powers in a constitutional democracy
- connect them with resources as needed
- place current events into a context that promotes hope
I salute any readers who are also acting as president.
9. What was your biggest failure?
I'm writing an article about shifts in popular music during WWI and I've had to push the deadline twice, which annoys me because I don't like asking for extensions. It's been surprisingly hard to research.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
My eyes have bothered me this year, but any time I start to think I should go to a doctor, they clear up. It's probably either allergies or eyestrain. It's better when I wear mascara, which supports a pollen/dust theory, and I've been trying to practice better screen hygiene.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
Cakes every Sunday in Italy at Dolce Passione. I miss that café a lot.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Val has had to deal with a lot this year, including life-threatening illnesses of both her parents. She is still graceful and generous and my favorite person, all the years always.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Life is long, so we'll see how it goes, but we've severely curtailed contact with Ciro's mother, and it's difficult and tiring. She's gone pretty far down the rabbit hole of white supremacy in a way that takes for granted that non-whites are murderers who should be jailed or kicked out and whose property should be repossessed and distributed to increase benefits to whites like herself. According to Ciro, she's always pretty much thought this way, it's just that now she has social encouragement to express it openly, which gives her confidence in what she's saying.
It's tricky to manage because she is very ill and very poor, and comes from a childhood background of racism and abuse, so our instinct has always been to treat her as a crazy person who needs assistance and sympathy while also acknowledging that she has persistent delusions which are dangerous to her and to others. Ciro, Antonio, and I have similar perspectives and enough shared background with mental illness caretaking that we've been able to be a fairly united front.
However, we do confront her delusions every time, and the bulk of that fell to me because it was less emotionally tiring given the lack of blood connection. Every single time. Gently, sympathetically, with top-level factual information, reminders of personal connections and anecdotes from her own history, and with redirections toward non-racist things she could do instead. I could have kept that up indefinitely, but she decided it was too overwhelming and she didn't think I should question her anymore. We have withdrawn all aid and almost all communications until she reconsiders, which I don't expect her to do.
It would be much easier emotionally to cut off all contact and say "nope, villainous, don't care," particularly given how much she exhausts Ciro, but he decided (and it's his call) that essentially we should approach it like cult extraction where there are occasional glimpses of what she's choosing to exclude herself from.
14. Where did most of your money go?
An intercontinental move isn't cheap even when it's cheap, but the bigger expense was the editing computer which is still in the process of being built. It's like being a drag racer.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
I got to see my cousin Scarlett! It had been a couple of years but she was part of Kristina's wedding. I wish she still lived with me even though I know she has her own liiiiiiife.
16. What song will always remind you of 2017?
DNCE's "Cake By the Ocean." It's an awful song, and it came out in 2015, but Good Morning America used a clip of it for guest intros and outros and I heard it a lot. It was annoying every time.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
Happier.
ii. thinner or fatter?
About the same.
iii. richer or poorer?
Richer. I've alluded to Aunt Jean's death and to an inheritance. We were not expecting more than a token remembrance because it was her stated intention to leave most of her money to charity. However her estate was large enough that to our surprise, quite late in the year, we inherited enough (I'm in the will too) that we actually have to think seriously about what we want to do with it. It's not "quit your job" money, but could be "retire in 10 years instead of 30" money, if we save all of it (which we probably won't) and I continue my current savings rate (which I probably will). I'm doing my best right now to not think about it because I'm a saver and Ciro is a spender and it seems likely to lead to conflict, which would be stupid. My big goal here is to not turn into a Steinbeck story.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
I wish I'd made it over to visit my friend Faith in Paris, but it wasn't in the cards. She's had a lot of health problems and hospitalizations this year, and I've remained fairly housebound by caretaking duties of my own.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Throwing away litter. I spend a lot of time picking up other people's candy wrappers and tissues and things, and putting them in the trash can, which is right there. Given that everyone clearly has to know better, I don't have a way to reduce this responsibility other than accepting trash everywhere and surrendering the usability of the surfaces which are become impromptu experimental trashcans instead of the actual trash can right there. I certainly understand why people prefer Blade Runner to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but the descriptions of kipple in that book are resonant in my life.
20. How did you spend the holidays?
In Boston. We had friends of my parents over for Thanksgiving, including an engineer who is very good at origami and a food chemist who invented the blue that blue mouthwash is. Rex and briefly Raiff were over for Christmas. My sister didn't make it up because she's been depressed, which is understandable but I missed her. I think she's going to come up sometime in the next few months when it's less Capital Letter Holiday Visit.
23. What was your favorite TV program?
Still a big Seth Meyers fan. In fiction, I liked American Gods.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
It's pretty much the same lot, although now I know even more of their names.
25. What was the best book you read?
As I predicted a year ago, My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. The whole series is excellent, but the first one is my favorite. I tend to like beginnings. The ending and the middle are more profound and more important, but the first one is the most purely enjoyable.
26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Son Lux. Here's an example. They're contemporary LA/NYC trip hop. I can't remember how I found them.
27. What did you want and get?
A fair amount. I shot two films and went to two weddings of people I like a lot.
28. What did you want and not get?
Although moving back to the US enabled me to do and have a lot of things I would otherwise have missed having, I liked my life in Italy, and I'm sad that they're mutually exclusive.
29. What was your favorite film this year?
I didn't see very many 2017 films. I saw Split, Wonder Woman, Dunkirk, Baby Driver, and Get Out. Get Out was head and shoulders the best. I caught up on Hidden Figures and The Nice Guys. There are a lot of movies I want to see, but as is increasingly true, they're all released in November/December/January, which is when I have the hardest time getting to a theater because of guests and weather. It's frustrating.
30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Ciro cooked a fancy dinner which included squid ink and it was very good. I think we also went out to a fancy dinner. We just like fancy dinners. I turned 37.
31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
I wanted to edit "Tick Tock Toe" right after we shot it, but that's obviously been delayed. Until I fit it together, it doesn't exist.
32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2017?
For political reasons, I've tacked in a witchy/mori direction, although since I like high glamor and rich colors it's probably more enchantress/academic magician. A lot of long skirts, pendants, layered dresses. Fluorescent magenta lipstick.
33. What kept you sane?
Me. Just me. People are depending on me to keep my head. So I do.
34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I have a crush on Harry Enten, a data journalist for fivethirtyeight. Part one is he looks like this. Part two is he's basically the expert on polling firms in the U.S. and what makes polling data "good" or "bad." There's a social fetish at the moment for behaving as though nothing is real or truthful and all that exists is feelings and perception, and Harry is the opposite of that. He can tell you in detail what is and is not good evidence and how confident you can be about it and how he knows it, which is in general the approach of the fivethirtyeight crew and also of me. (Sidebar: I don't need to hear any more words along the lines of "but how do you know the earth is flat" like I can't get up in a plane and FLY ALL THE WAY AROUND. Show me where you think the edge is, and how you think people get back and forth from one end of the flat map to the other so quickly. This is not a profound brainteaser.) The high point of the year for me was the last segment in an August episode of the podcast (start about 15 minutes from the end) in which Harry talks about his expose of Delphi Analytica, and the emotion in his voice when he explains his initial "this has to be fake because I have never heard of it and I am Harry Enten" - I actually had to loosen my collar because I whole-body flushed. Ooof it is so romantic.
35. What political issue stirred you the most?
I'm fairly across-the-board involved, but my focus is reminding people of democratic power, grassroots up stuff, and understanding the government as being made up of people and also getting its legitimacy from people. No "the man," no "the institution," no pretending like the there's nothing we can do. Just in general, I try to guide people toward getting more directly involved and also into affiliating with organizations (collective action). I made contributions toward bail bond funds.
36. Who did you miss?
Val, usually. And the film club crew.
37. Who was the best new person you met?
Martina, my primary collaborator on "Tick Tock Toe." Unfortunately, she's back in Pescara and we are better at hanging out in person than through social media. I also met Marco Fleming, an Italian commedian, and the group of D&Ders that meets a few houses down in Winchester (combination of artists and MIT tech fiends).
38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2017.
I'm secure about how likeable and skilled I am, so there's not much that hits me personally. I guess it's the opposite of imposter syndrome. I still care a lot about whether I'm doing things right, but it's like caring about whether I'm happy with the color I've painted a thing rather than doubting whether I own the room.
39. Quote a song that sums up your year:
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won.
"Lift Every Voice and Sing" by James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson, sometimes called the Black National Anthem. Apparently a song that is not widely known by white Americans which is a shame because it's one of our best civic songs. (I grew up in a substantially black church.) Particularly early in the year, I sang it just about every day, and it works like magic words. It's been worse than this. We've made it better. There is still more to do.
1. What did you do in 2017 that you'd never done before?
I inherited money. I wrote a screenplay in which most of the (sparse) dialogue was not in English. I produced a short film in Italy. I dyed my hair black, which is the only color it hadn't been yet. I was interviewed on New Hampshire Public Radio. I began a tradition called Cocktail Friday to mark the end of my workweek, since I work from home. I reached out to Arab League diaspora poets to commission work for a Strange Horizons special issue, which is unusual since I normally pull from the submissions pile. It involved a lot of research and networking.
Songs:
"The Legend of Ed," not currently available online, a Western ballad about a truck-driving Texan sculptor who is a dear friend. It's the first thing I've written for ukulele specifically and involves a fair amount of whistling.
Screenplays:
"Tick Tock Toe," a wizard's duel which is a precursor to the Urban Fantasy Feature that keeps getting pushed back, and "Unidentified Objects, or Somewhere, Something Incredible," a sci-fi short which is a collage of conversations about alien first contact.
Shoots:
"Tick Tock Toe" and a music video for Chris Blacker's "Thread to Thread." Both of those are still in editing/postproduction, and I'm the producer and editor on both of them.
Nonfiction:
"Social Trust in a Cash Economy" and "The Opportunity Cost of Moving 23 Times in 36 Years" at The Billfold, collections of personal anecdotes about doing money in Italy and about having the sort of lifestyle where you move to, and from, Italy.
However, most of my nonfiction work was conversational, politically-focused news gathering and punditry published to facebook, where I felt it would have the most immediate reach. I mirrored some of it onto wordpress, but I fell behind on that at around the time of the Italy-Boston relocation because there aren't enough hours in the day and I couldn't work out how to automate it. I'll catch up someday, maybe. The strongest piece is the one on Crispus Attucks and Black Lives Matter.
Fiction:
"Outlaw Story" in Grasslimb issue 15.2, a short feminist Western which involves board games. And I did make a handful of additions to postorbital.
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Yes, with the exception that I decided not to write the Siege feature because it's an idea for a European production and I'm back in the U.S. Instead, I'm working on a novel that lays the groundwork for a feature set in the U.S. There is no way I get said feature greenlit unless I can show through book sales that there's an audience for it. My plans for this year:
- finish the novel and submit it for publication. It's currently around 26,000 words and I expect it'll finish somewhere just above 100,000. It's about King Arthur and about contemporary art.
- edit and do postproduction on "Tick Tock Toe," which probably involves me or Ciro learning After Effects. Ciro is on the tail end of building a powerful computer that we're going to need for some of the rendering.
- deliver "Thread to Thread," which still needs a color grade
- paint my office
- go to my high school reunion
- read a book in Italian and just in general try not to lose my already-limited command of the language. I don't think I'm going to have the time to get better at it, but I aim to not get too much worse.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth or get married?
My friends Roberto and Cristina had their first baby, who is very cute. It was a risky pregnancy that came after several early miscarriages, and Cristina was on house arrest, essentially, for probably seven months of the pregnancy. During the couple of months I had off to facilitate the move back to the U.S., I sometimes kept her company during the day when everybody else had to work, and we played lots of two-player board games, which sounds like a great inspiration for "Outlaw Story" but I'd already written that story several years beforehand. (There is usually a multi-year gap between when I write something and when it's accepted for publication.)
Ciro's childhood friend Rabea got married in September in New Mexico at a commune on a mountain, and my childhood friend Kristina got married in November in New York City in a Greek restaurant, and they were both very fun weddings.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Ciro's great aunt Jean died. She was very kind to me and I use things she gave me all the time - a necklace, a scarf, a blanket - and I admired her. She was undoubtedly the relative of his (aside from his brother Antonio) to which I was closest. And my friend Ruth died unexpectedly and suddenly. She was in her 80s but not noticeably in decline. She died very soon after I got back and before we were able to get together; I was putting off making an invitation until I didn't have a living room with boxes strewn everywhere. I wish I hadn't put it off.
5. What countries did you visit?
Just Italy and the U.S., unless you want to count a plane change in Dublin. Ciro went to Germany and I forget where else.
6. What would you like to have in 2018 that you lacked in 2017?
I'm going to do my piece to help the Democrats take the House in the midterm elections. I'd like to go out on more dates, and I'd like to see more movies in the theater, but it is currently way too cold for me to consider leaving the house.
7. What date from 2017 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
The international women's march. I was in Italy watching the livestream of the march on Washington and helping explain the manifesto to people who were having first encounters with a lot of feminist concepts. I grew up around a lot of feminists with activist/academic backgrounds and was part of a short-lived college-within-a-college as an undergrad, specifically constructed to develop future female leaders, so I've been able to be a resource. I was caught a little by surprise when a friend of mine from Mexico City, a film director I admire, sent me private messages to essentially say "Are these really concessions women in the US achieved through x and x protest strategies in the 1970s? That is something I want here in Mexico and I haven't known how to go about it." and I was able to say "yes, absolutely. Here are frameworks."
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I don't know the exact date, but early in 2017, maybe after the white supremacy marches, when someone was talking about feeling helpless because Trump wasn't doing any of the things a president is supposed to do, I said that since we didn't currently have an acting president, I would do my best to fill in and be president during the emergency, and I encouraged everyone else who felt capable to step in and be president with me. Obviously, I do not have any of the powers of the presidency, but I have sincerely done my best to serve as president this year and will continue to do so as needed. It's a lot of work. I mainly try to:
- comfort people when they are scared
- support the institution of Congress
- advocate for the common welfare
- provide explanations of U.S. history and laws
- remind my constituents of their powers in a constitutional democracy
- connect them with resources as needed
- place current events into a context that promotes hope
I salute any readers who are also acting as president.
9. What was your biggest failure?
I'm writing an article about shifts in popular music during WWI and I've had to push the deadline twice, which annoys me because I don't like asking for extensions. It's been surprisingly hard to research.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
My eyes have bothered me this year, but any time I start to think I should go to a doctor, they clear up. It's probably either allergies or eyestrain. It's better when I wear mascara, which supports a pollen/dust theory, and I've been trying to practice better screen hygiene.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
Cakes every Sunday in Italy at Dolce Passione. I miss that café a lot.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Val has had to deal with a lot this year, including life-threatening illnesses of both her parents. She is still graceful and generous and my favorite person, all the years always.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Life is long, so we'll see how it goes, but we've severely curtailed contact with Ciro's mother, and it's difficult and tiring. She's gone pretty far down the rabbit hole of white supremacy in a way that takes for granted that non-whites are murderers who should be jailed or kicked out and whose property should be repossessed and distributed to increase benefits to whites like herself. According to Ciro, she's always pretty much thought this way, it's just that now she has social encouragement to express it openly, which gives her confidence in what she's saying.
It's tricky to manage because she is very ill and very poor, and comes from a childhood background of racism and abuse, so our instinct has always been to treat her as a crazy person who needs assistance and sympathy while also acknowledging that she has persistent delusions which are dangerous to her and to others. Ciro, Antonio, and I have similar perspectives and enough shared background with mental illness caretaking that we've been able to be a fairly united front.
However, we do confront her delusions every time, and the bulk of that fell to me because it was less emotionally tiring given the lack of blood connection. Every single time. Gently, sympathetically, with top-level factual information, reminders of personal connections and anecdotes from her own history, and with redirections toward non-racist things she could do instead. I could have kept that up indefinitely, but she decided it was too overwhelming and she didn't think I should question her anymore. We have withdrawn all aid and almost all communications until she reconsiders, which I don't expect her to do.
It would be much easier emotionally to cut off all contact and say "nope, villainous, don't care," particularly given how much she exhausts Ciro, but he decided (and it's his call) that essentially we should approach it like cult extraction where there are occasional glimpses of what she's choosing to exclude herself from.
14. Where did most of your money go?
An intercontinental move isn't cheap even when it's cheap, but the bigger expense was the editing computer which is still in the process of being built. It's like being a drag racer.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
I got to see my cousin Scarlett! It had been a couple of years but she was part of Kristina's wedding. I wish she still lived with me even though I know she has her own liiiiiiife.
16. What song will always remind you of 2017?
DNCE's "Cake By the Ocean." It's an awful song, and it came out in 2015, but Good Morning America used a clip of it for guest intros and outros and I heard it a lot. It was annoying every time.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
Happier.
ii. thinner or fatter?
About the same.
iii. richer or poorer?
Richer. I've alluded to Aunt Jean's death and to an inheritance. We were not expecting more than a token remembrance because it was her stated intention to leave most of her money to charity. However her estate was large enough that to our surprise, quite late in the year, we inherited enough (I'm in the will too) that we actually have to think seriously about what we want to do with it. It's not "quit your job" money, but could be "retire in 10 years instead of 30" money, if we save all of it (which we probably won't) and I continue my current savings rate (which I probably will). I'm doing my best right now to not think about it because I'm a saver and Ciro is a spender and it seems likely to lead to conflict, which would be stupid. My big goal here is to not turn into a Steinbeck story.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
I wish I'd made it over to visit my friend Faith in Paris, but it wasn't in the cards. She's had a lot of health problems and hospitalizations this year, and I've remained fairly housebound by caretaking duties of my own.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Throwing away litter. I spend a lot of time picking up other people's candy wrappers and tissues and things, and putting them in the trash can, which is right there. Given that everyone clearly has to know better, I don't have a way to reduce this responsibility other than accepting trash everywhere and surrendering the usability of the surfaces which are become impromptu experimental trashcans instead of the actual trash can right there. I certainly understand why people prefer Blade Runner to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but the descriptions of kipple in that book are resonant in my life.
20. How did you spend the holidays?
In Boston. We had friends of my parents over for Thanksgiving, including an engineer who is very good at origami and a food chemist who invented the blue that blue mouthwash is. Rex and briefly Raiff were over for Christmas. My sister didn't make it up because she's been depressed, which is understandable but I missed her. I think she's going to come up sometime in the next few months when it's less Capital Letter Holiday Visit.
23. What was your favorite TV program?
Still a big Seth Meyers fan. In fiction, I liked American Gods.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
It's pretty much the same lot, although now I know even more of their names.
25. What was the best book you read?
As I predicted a year ago, My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. The whole series is excellent, but the first one is my favorite. I tend to like beginnings. The ending and the middle are more profound and more important, but the first one is the most purely enjoyable.
26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Son Lux. Here's an example. They're contemporary LA/NYC trip hop. I can't remember how I found them.
27. What did you want and get?
A fair amount. I shot two films and went to two weddings of people I like a lot.
28. What did you want and not get?
Although moving back to the US enabled me to do and have a lot of things I would otherwise have missed having, I liked my life in Italy, and I'm sad that they're mutually exclusive.
29. What was your favorite film this year?
I didn't see very many 2017 films. I saw Split, Wonder Woman, Dunkirk, Baby Driver, and Get Out. Get Out was head and shoulders the best. I caught up on Hidden Figures and The Nice Guys. There are a lot of movies I want to see, but as is increasingly true, they're all released in November/December/January, which is when I have the hardest time getting to a theater because of guests and weather. It's frustrating.
30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Ciro cooked a fancy dinner which included squid ink and it was very good. I think we also went out to a fancy dinner. We just like fancy dinners. I turned 37.
31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
I wanted to edit "Tick Tock Toe" right after we shot it, but that's obviously been delayed. Until I fit it together, it doesn't exist.
32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2017?
For political reasons, I've tacked in a witchy/mori direction, although since I like high glamor and rich colors it's probably more enchantress/academic magician. A lot of long skirts, pendants, layered dresses. Fluorescent magenta lipstick.
33. What kept you sane?
Me. Just me. People are depending on me to keep my head. So I do.
34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I have a crush on Harry Enten, a data journalist for fivethirtyeight. Part one is he looks like this. Part two is he's basically the expert on polling firms in the U.S. and what makes polling data "good" or "bad." There's a social fetish at the moment for behaving as though nothing is real or truthful and all that exists is feelings and perception, and Harry is the opposite of that. He can tell you in detail what is and is not good evidence and how confident you can be about it and how he knows it, which is in general the approach of the fivethirtyeight crew and also of me. (Sidebar: I don't need to hear any more words along the lines of "but how do you know the earth is flat" like I can't get up in a plane and FLY ALL THE WAY AROUND. Show me where you think the edge is, and how you think people get back and forth from one end of the flat map to the other so quickly. This is not a profound brainteaser.) The high point of the year for me was the last segment in an August episode of the podcast (start about 15 minutes from the end) in which Harry talks about his expose of Delphi Analytica, and the emotion in his voice when he explains his initial "this has to be fake because I have never heard of it and I am Harry Enten" - I actually had to loosen my collar because I whole-body flushed. Ooof it is so romantic.
35. What political issue stirred you the most?
I'm fairly across-the-board involved, but my focus is reminding people of democratic power, grassroots up stuff, and understanding the government as being made up of people and also getting its legitimacy from people. No "the man," no "the institution," no pretending like the there's nothing we can do. Just in general, I try to guide people toward getting more directly involved and also into affiliating with organizations (collective action). I made contributions toward bail bond funds.
36. Who did you miss?
Val, usually. And the film club crew.
37. Who was the best new person you met?
Martina, my primary collaborator on "Tick Tock Toe." Unfortunately, she's back in Pescara and we are better at hanging out in person than through social media. I also met Marco Fleming, an Italian commedian, and the group of D&Ders that meets a few houses down in Winchester (combination of artists and MIT tech fiends).
38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2017.
I'm secure about how likeable and skilled I am, so there's not much that hits me personally. I guess it's the opposite of imposter syndrome. I still care a lot about whether I'm doing things right, but it's like caring about whether I'm happy with the color I've painted a thing rather than doubting whether I own the room.
39. Quote a song that sums up your year:
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won.
"Lift Every Voice and Sing" by James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson, sometimes called the Black National Anthem. Apparently a song that is not widely known by white Americans which is a shame because it's one of our best civic songs. (I grew up in a substantially black church.) Particularly early in the year, I sang it just about every day, and it works like magic words. It's been worse than this. We've made it better. There is still more to do.
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Date: 2018-01-12 09:46 pm (UTC)