Happy new year.

"Time isn't made of anything. It is an abstraction. Just a meaning that we impose upon motion” —Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

The Fallacy of the Wisdom of Age

Did you know that at age 43 you can make a list like this on your phone, in order to finally make an honest effort at not fucking up your wife’s clothes, and then you will probably still put the jeans in the dryer?

Did you know that there is nothing magical about January 1st? That saying Good Riddance to 20xx will not give you an automatic new start of some kind? That you are just as likely to have a shitty day or let yourself down or hurt someone you love on January 3rd as on December 29th? But did you know that you can try to change something about yourself on January 5th? or February 16th? or July 8th? or even October 21st? Did you know that you won’t get it right no matter when you start? But then sometimes you will get it right and then wrong again and then maybe you will forget about it or forget why you tried it in the first place?

Did you know that something so meaningful to you at age 25 that you feel that it has changed your entire outlook on life can suddenly make no sense at all or be completely void of any power at age 39 and you won’t be able to figure out why?

Did you know that every age you’ve ever been is still lurking inside you? That 3-year-old you is still feeling embarrassed at things you should have overcome long ago? That 17-year-old you is still heartbroken every time you feel unloved or unseen? That 22-year-old you is still overconfident and cocky and that 34-year-old you is finally learning how to find moments of contentment and that 41-year-old you is realizing that realistically you are probably about halfway there and maybe you should try to stop being so afraid of being alive?

Did you know that the adage life is short is correct but also just as correct is the sentiment that life is long and that as Bill Callahan sings no matter how far wrong you’ve gone you can always turn around?

Did you know that you can’t literally turn around (if you believe in the linearality of time) but that the turning around that Bill is getting at may be more like a turning away from the stories you might believe about yourself and turning toward the person you wish you could be and trying to allow that person into existence?

Did you know that you can have what you wanted at age 19 but that it’s also ok if you don’t want that anymore?

Spatial Sequence Synesthesia

This is not a deep dive into spatial synesthesia, but we’re talking about time and at the end of every year I reflect on the fact that in my visual brain December is represented as the longest month of the year and that in fact each month of the year is visually represented in my brain as taking up a unique portion of the circular representation of the year, and that I can actually roughly sketch out those proportions if I think about it for a few minutes. Furthermore, the visual chunk that my brain allots to each month has no real correlation to how that month actually feels as it passes. In thinking about this, I also realized that I visualize each day, week, month, decade, etc in distinct ways and though they are sometimes fuzzy in my brain, I could probably sketch them all out too. They are nearly all black and white with a few neutral earth tones thrown in.

Do you visualize the calendar year? Is it linear? Circular? Spiral? Something else? Is each month represented in the same way? Could you draw it? Would you? If you would, I would like to add your brain’s-eye year to a little gallery that we can all look at and marvel at each other’s beauty.

Oh! And if you’ve been meaning to submit something to the Bad At Art club, you can still do that HERE.

A Good Segue

When I had a Facebook account, one of my favorite bits was to work all my former high-school classmates into a rabid frenzy by, once a year, asserting that the only good Counting Crows song is A Long December. Boy did I revel in the bitter vitriol and hysterical outlash that annually came my way. My favorite thing about it is that it’s true. Not only is A Long December the only good Counting Crows song, but it’s a great song regardless of the fact that it was written and performed by one of the objectively worst musical acts to come out of the 1990s.

I love non-denominational winter songs but not necessarily holiday songs, and so I decided to make a playlist of good ones about December. There are 4 of them that I know of and one more that actually kind of is a Christmas song but explicitly names the month of December and is my favorite winter song of all so I let it in. That playlist is HERE and it’s on Tidal, because I stopped using Sp*tify over a year ago and I feel great about it and you can too if you want.

If there are songs about December that you love, please let me know.