A cartoon by Liana Finck

Liana Finck is a cartoonist. She is @lianafinck on Instagram.

Feel that despair? That’s Monday, baby!

Now this is what a Monday morning toward the end of September should feel like. I’m not saying you’re supposed to enjoy it, I’m just saying this mood — gloomy, depressing, and pervasive to an extent that drains the color from all the happy feelings you might have had — is the way it’s supposed to be. It’s an achievement just getting through it. You know, like life.

You know what won’t make you want to die? The new Kornél Kovács album. This unrelated remix (backstory here) will also let you ever so briefly believe that things will be okay. Just don’t look outside and you might make it to the evening, which should be your only goal right now. Enjoy.

★★★★★ The four-year-old’s protestations about having to wear a long-sleeved shirt paused just long enough for him to pull the pushed-up sleeves back down again when the morning chill hit, before he went back to complaining that his arms would sweat. The humid uniformity of summer had split into fully separate warm sun and cool breeze. From the office building roof, Fifth Avenue looked narrow. The breeze plucked at shirttails. In the evening, at the edge of the schoolyard picnic, kindergarteners grappled and spun each other around, then threw themselves against the chain-link fence and shook it together. The wisps of cloud above grew pink. One thing the parents could say to one another, without hesitating, was how very very nice the weather was.

This sestina is directed at all the high school football players around the country who are pulling a Kaepernick

Oh say can you see how immature you are

Those spurning our national anthem should undergo the same intense moral

self-searching I’ve subjected myself to. Recall that this country

was once populated by men who watched slaves work and cried

into their weather-cracked hands “God,

please make me a better American.

Please teach me how to be the living embodiment of solidarity

with other white people.” I try to show solidarity

like this in the Times Cafeteria every day, to provide moral

leadership, to clear out once I’ve helped myself to chick peas. An American

like Ta-Nehisi Coates — while I welcome his having arisen in this country,

I wonder if he really understands that God

himself very likely metaphorically personally cried

tears over the very nation Coates negates the value of. That Coates has cried

for justice is fine, but one wonders: should justice trump solidarity?

Let’s try a football analogy: Think of, well, not God

so much but think of Judeo-Christian values (all things moral)

as the winning head coach of this country.

With his leadership, everything is in place for every American

to be a star player! But only if every American

listens to that coach and follows his plays. Today I cried

over inspiring photos on the IDF website, wishing to be worthy of my country.

To earn my place in this nation today I sell solidarity.

I must beg you to consider the moral

failure inherent in prioritizing your lived experience over antiquated rituals. I am aware God

is exclusionary but let’s not throw out doctrine with God:

If you want to be a good American

you must adhere to the idea that we all share a set of values and morals

He (or She) might sponsor. I know — many people have died and cried.

But injustice doesn’t entitle you to ignore rote rituals of solidarity

which we’ve all agreed are the best way to come together as a country.

And if you’re not feeling gratitude for this country

well then by God

try uttering those syllables from which Francis Scott Key crafted solidarity

It works wonders for any American!

Last night I pondered these kids’ refusal to sing our anthem and cried.

Then I realized that for a column I just needed to plumb a moral

And have two big thoughts about the country. I realized it was unlikely that another American,

especially Ta-Nehisi Coates, would ever say to these kids, “Look at all these people who cried

over your lack of solidarity.” Then I told myself “David, one thought is enough since you have a solid moral.”

Maybe you’ve been chopping vegetables while tipsy?

Nick Bateman is a California-based writer and illustrator.

Behind the bogus “world music” sound

Do you know who the most-performed living composer in the world is? That’s ok — neither do I. There is one composer, however, who’s pretty sure that he’s the globe’s favorite. As the first sentence of Welsh composer Karl Jenkns’ official “biog” (that’s what his website calls it) reads, “a recent exhaustive survey shows that Sir Karl Jenkins is now the most-performed living composer in the world.” But a funny thing about Jenkins is that you’re very likely to think that “Adiemus,” his most famous piece, wasn’t associated with him at all.

Google the title of said piece and neck-and-neck with Jenkins, auto-complete wonders if you’re looking for “Adiemus” plus “Enya,” the Irish New-Age singer-songwriter. Search YouTube and you’ll find plenty of uploaders who — somehow despite possessing a copy of the recording (thanks MP3s) — also credit Enya with the song. In a world with fewer and fewer record-store clerks, it’s as if we’ve come to sort music like the Pandora algorithm run amok: “Prominent female vocalist?” “Relaxed, New-Age feel?” Must be Enya!

If Freud thought he could access the human subconscious by studying psychological misfires and accidents — neuroses, dreams, jokes, slips of the tongue — we denizens of the internet age have these kind of digital errata as our own index of a larger undiscovered country: that collective unconscious home to conventional wisdom, hidden assumptions, and widely held beliefs that turn out to be all wrong.

The cause of the Enya–“Adiemus” conflation, however, is easy enough to locate: the 1994 new-age compilation CD Pure Moods. In the mid-90s, a commercial hawking the record was ubiquitous on afternoon cable TV in the US. (A UK version called just Moods preceded Pure Moods by a few years.) “Imagine a world where time drifts slowly,” the voiceover begins. The ad first features Enigma’s “Return to Innocence” before seguing into Enya’s “Orinoco Flow (Sail Away),” which in turn gives way to “Adiemus.”

Just as that transition occurs, a scrolling track list rises from the bottom of the frame. Importantly — confusingly — the ad credits as the track’s artist not Jenkins, but rather some entity also called “Adiemus” Whence, perhaps, the mix-up; Jenkins’ name appears nowhere in the spot. Meanwhile, Enya was by far the most famous artist collected on the CD. So it’s entirely reasonable that many of us, recalling a swatch of melody or the soothing soprano from “Adiemus,” would ascribe it to the most notable figure in the ad, the prima donna of New-Age vocals.

For Jenkins, this one composition would spawn a much larger project that took on the Adiemus name (five albums numbered I through V, one live record, one “best of,” and Essential Adiemus to date), which was also used to denote the ad hoc group of musicians who recorded and toured his music. What else could you call them?

The reason for this explosion in Adiemus activities is a tale in itself. A page featured on Jenkins’ website until at least 2010 explains: “the Adiemus project ‘got off the ground’ initially due to a television commercial for an airline. Said Jenkins: ‘I’d been toying with a new idea, completely separate to my work in advertising. At this time, Jenkins Ratledge [the advertising music arm of his operation] were commissioned to come up with the music for an airline commercial. We presented the agency and the client with a demonstration tape of one of my completed compositions. They loved it.’”

I think it’s possible to know what they loved in particular. Here’s one of the Delta ads featuring “Adiemus,” which began appearing in 1994:

And here’s the celebrated 1989 British Airways commercial known as “Faces:”

The latter ad uses for its accompaniment a track called “Aria” by Yanni and Malcolm McLaren (erstwhile manager of the Sex Pistols), which was itself a re-working of the so-called “Flower Duet” from the French composer Léo Delibes’ 1883 orientalist opera Lakmé. If you were an airline VP of marketing in the early ’90s looking to answer British Airways, “Adiemus” offered an irresistible chance. Both pieces highlight the same musical topic of a pair of sopranos duetting in lovely harmony.

In fact, both duets lean on the same harmonic hue, if you will: a preponderance of the interval called a third. (That is, spacing the two voices so that there is one full step between them — if I sing A, you sing C#; if you sing D, I sing F.) This sound, for those of us acculturated to the system of western tonality, tends to register as something particularly lovely — from pretty to ravishing depending on other factors. And it has for some time. Here’s Johann Joseph Fux in his influential 1725 counterpoint treatise Gradus ad Parnassum: “The imperfect consonances [thirds and their mirror-image sixths]…are more harmonious than perfect ones [unisons, fifths, and octaves].” In the airborne contexts of the two ads, the sopranos invoke the angelic, their intertwined melodies celestial and serene.

But the romance of air travel is only in part about the magic of being aloft the clouds; the other part is about visiting an elsewhere. Jenkins (and Yanni and McLaren, in a different way) offers a musical evocation of that, too. As he noted on his website, “My intention was to compose a work based in the European classical tradition but with vocal sound more akin to ethnic or world music.”

So-called “world music” — never mind the dubious connotations of “ethnic” music — has been a fraught category. The label was apparently concocted at the Empress of Russia pub in London during meeting of British music-industry types in 1987. And rather than signifying “every kind of music,” as a literal reading might suggest, in practice it typically means “what (especially white, bourgeois) Europeans and Americans take to be exotic.” As fashioned by the music industry, “world music” has produced nearly as much controversy over appropriation, bum financial deals, and the convolution of international copyright as it has music; Paul Simon’s Graceland remains one of the classic cautionary tales. From how it addressed (or didn’t) Apartheid, to how it doled out (or didn’t) songwriting credits, the album remains controversial even in its 30th anniversary year.

Paul Simon’s Graceland Turns 30: A Bridge Over Troubled Waters

In the case of “Adiemus,” as the scholar Timothy D. Taylor observes in his discussion of the song in his 2007 book Beyond Exoticism: Western Music and the World, the attempt seems to be “to make a kind of timeless, placeless, unidentifiable sound that can stand in as the music of the world, or better perhaps, any music of the world.” In other words, a musicalization of the potential of human flight to take us anywhere we’d like to be. Of course, neither of these ends is actually possible. What would a music from everywhere sound like? How can one thing sound like everything?

Unsurprisingly, as Taylor quotes “Adiemus’” lead singer Miriam Stockley (not Enya) recalling, behind the scenes a particular — indeed, offensive — sonic imaginary guided production: “The advertising agency liked the lead vocal but wanted much more of an ‘African/child-like’ approach. So I suggested brining in Mary Carewe, who has a much brighter younger sound to sing with me in the choruses.”

The completed “Adiemus” bears the trace of this choice, with the color — or timbre — of its vocals varying starkly between sections: a darker, more “rounded” sound for the duet on “ariadiamus late / ariadiamus da…” versus a brighter sound in the choral section beginning “anamana coole ra we /anamana coole ra.” And so the “fusion” between “European” and “World” (read, we know, “African”) musics that Jenkins sought is really the reconciliation of an imagined, manufactured difference. The assumptions and associations are classic: a “European” sound is dark; a “World” sound is bright. It’s true that connoisseurs of certain European “classical” genres have tended to value darker vocal sounds. And many styles throughout the world (including in Europe, by the way) tend toward vocal brightness. But the canard that “Adiemus” relies on both overgeneralizes and essentializes a subtler and more contingent reality.

Various ways of singing are complicated stories of local history, accident, even environment. Think of, say, Alpine yodeling’s use of the acoustics of the high country. The kind of Euro:dark::World/Afro:bright theory of vocal timbre that “Adiemus” trades in shrugs off the really interesting questions about human difference in favor of a lazy heuristic. And as Stockley’s bracing remark conflating “African” and “childlike” in characterizing the bright choral passages makes clear, these kinds of pseudo-musicological rules of thumb almost always bear the mark of Euro-aggrandizing, colonialist thought: only Europe (and, of course, North America) is mature like a woman soprano, the rest of the world sings brightly, like a child.

Not that “Adiemus” ever admits to this dialectic of Euro and World in so many words. In fact, the song’s (non)words would try to throw us off the case. As Jenkins once explained, “The text in Adiemus is written phonetically, with the words viewed as instrumental sound. The human voice is the oldest instrument and by removing the distraction of lyrics, we hope to create a sound that is universal and timeless.” That is to say that “Adiemus” is in no language at all.

In the “European” duet, the sopranos sing “Ariadiamus late / Ariadiamus da / Arianatus late adua /Aravare tue vate / Aravare tue vate latea.” It’s hard not to hear this as a kind of faux-Latin, as many listeners have before, even suggesting that the song’s title could be construed as a barbarism (the term used by some Latinists, I’ve learned, for an anachronistic coinage) meaning “we will draw near.” Never mind that the word “adiemus” never actually appears in the song; nor that the actual Latin term “audiemus” — “we will hear/listen to” — might be a better candidate.

This invocation of Latin might carry several associations; perhaps with the Church, with classical antiquity, with the medieval university, with Erasmus and the Renaissance. In all cases, it seems to gesture toward an idealized, classic, European past of learning, civilization, and elevation, whatever the realities of actual history. For its part, the choral section is sung to these words: “Anamana coole rawe / Anamana coole ra / Anamana coole rawe akala / (Aya doo aye).”

The shift is subtle, but for my part, I no longer hear the Latinesque. Nor do the phrases gesture toward the Germanic languages, which, at least in my own mental linguistic-geography, seems to propel the passage out of “western Europe.” Not surprising, since this fits neatly with the bifurcation of vocal techniques we already know about. Likewise, the suspect anthropological theory suggested by these faux languages is familiar: European civilization and “other” cultures are different, you see, but here, in this music, they can commune.

Jenkins is far from the first composer to try his hand at this kind of verbal invention. A favorite example: in the “Pandemonium” scene of his 1846 légende dramatique (more or less an opera) La Damnation de Faust, the composer Hector Berlioz has a choir of “devils and damned” intone obscure and apparently hellish phrases like “Irimiru Karabrao!” and “Tradioun Marexil firtrudinxé burrudixé.”

In a footnote to the published libretto, Berlioz explains that (my trans.) “this language is that which Swedenborg called the infernal language, and which he believed to be in use among the demons and the damned,” pinning the strange tongue on the eccentric eighteenth-century Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. That claim remains nearly as obscure to Berlioz students as the text itself, since the language seems to be entirely the composer’s own creation and not Sweedenborg’s at all.

Where Berlioz invented a language to depict a world beyond the human, Jenkins’ seems to imagine a latent human possibility. Namely, the possibility of unmediated mutual understanding, of fundamental sameness. “A sound that is universal and timeless.” This, too, is a creed of certain strains of “world music:” a faith in music as a kind of universal language.

“Adiemus” wants to have it both ways. Like the airlines, it wants a world dotted with sexy (and marketable) human differences. Like music-is-the-universal-language true believers, it wants to think that we’re all trying to say the same thing, despite the different languages we use to say it. Historically, attempting to square the circle in this way hasn’t worked out well; if we’re all playing the same game, it’s all too easy to get to drawing up rankings. Before long I’ll decide that my way of being different-but-the-same — the way I talk, the way I look — is superior to your way. I’ll hear your singing as child-like and mine as fully grown-up.

But if “Adiemus” gives an unsatisfying answer, it at least asks the right question. Looking out the airplane window, we can’t deny it: the human family is at once irreducibly one and irreducibly many. How on earth do we sing that song?

Brian Barone is a graduate student in Boston. He co-hosts the music podcast Tuner.

From Everything Changes, the Awl’s newsletter:

Here are all of the things readers of Everything Changes are looking forward to. It is a long list.

• Thanksgiving with my family
• getting pregnant (finally) (fingers crossed)
• My House Warming Party and Riot Fest Chicago 2016!
• Sleep
• Halloween and beautiful fall weather
• Retirement
• The new Gilmore Girls.
• Finally being able to afford to take my daughter to Disney this year.
• The weekend.
• seeing my dog
• My Canada Goose down coat and cashmere scarves.
• (pumpkin, frost)
• soup cooked in the fireplace & cornbread
• November 9
• Getting started
• Charles Bradley at the Georgia Theatre on Halloween Weekend
• My morning coffee!
• Finding a place to work where I don’t have to pretend to be somebody else. 12 years and counting.
• My son breaking up with his horrible girlfriend.
• Raw autumn air
• seeing the world.
• Living in Berlin for a month. I know only a few people here, and I’ve never taken advantage of my freelance schedule like this… will it help me be more productive, professionally and creatively, or less? I am looking forward to seeing what kind of person I am at the end.
• I am looking forward to getting into a bed made with freshly washed sheets tonight.
• Halloween! Horror movies, costume parties, pumpkin carving, and all the candy corn I can stuff into my face 🙂
• Having this baby pretty soon, and then going back to work eventually.
• California sun
• Putting up the Christmas tree with my mum!
• Getting out of work in an hour and a half and visiting friends & family for the first time in far too long.
• Eating cider donuts and not sweating my face off
• Saturday afternoons, generally. They are magic.
• a day when everything makes sense like it did when i was a child
• All my friends are having babies, I am going to try starting soon. I look forward to sharing the crazy chaotic years with all these people I love.
• New Gilmore Girls and for the buzz around the iPhone 7 to die.
• listening to records with my kids tonight while we get ready for our stoop sale
• Fall weather and being able to wear scarves and boots again
• Dinner
• The election being over, Hillary Clinton being President, getting to plan my wedding, and sleep.
• The first female POTUS.
• A British show called Fleabag, cool fall breezes, and a nap.
• I’m getting married in a little less than a year! It’s going to be great!
• Sweatshirt time
• This damn election being over.
• Paying off my debts before I’m 35.
• October, when it’s spooky out
• the death of my abuser
• hugging my parents, hugging my sister, telling my boyfriend that I love him, making garlic soup
• Hot hot heat. Cool cool. Neat.
• A neat Scotch when I get home from work.
• wearing jackets again, fall day trips and trying the new burrito place in my neighborhood
• Seeing my brother in California
• I’m excited about seeing my first New England Autumn and watching the leaves turn red and orange and gold.
• The defeat of Donald Trump
• my son having full head control
• I’m going on my first solo vacation! Going to the UK and am very, very, VERY excited.
• I am bad at looking forward to things. Instead of thinking about the destination or goal I think about all the obstacles, small and large, that I will have to overcome to get there. Even while nice things are happening I’m busy thinking about that happens when they end — i.e. my first thought on any departing plane is that soon I’ll be on a returning plane wondering where the time went. All that said I just booked travel to Sweden for my first international vacation in 10 years and really my first week long vacation in I don’t know how long. Doing my best not to sweat the small things in the meantime.
• a relationship
• cool weather
• Being in the same country as my partner and sharing not only our lives, but a bed, library and home.
• The heat death of the universe.
• The possibility of spending Thanksgiving with my whole immediate family for the first time in a decade.
• Going back to my home city after a summer living in an alternative housing project in a decrepit, fun, kind of punky city nearby. Sure, I learnt a ton and I’m not such a privileged asshole anymore (I hope!). But… oh my god I miss luxury. Not luxury-luxury, just, like, BRUNCH. Buying salad and nobody eating it before I get to it. Casual home nudity because I don’t normally co-habitate. Early morning solitude. Jogging (seen as kind of yuppie-ish here).
• Seeing my family
• Basking in the glow of the unstoppable Dolly Parton at her upcoming show.
• Eating healthier food and prioritizing sleep so I feel like a goddess queen and not a slug.
• A wintry trip to Yosemite
• Gilmore Girls, Christmas, Trips to San Francisco and Ann Arbor in October, submitting all my R1 applications in early October, not feeling sad about my breakup any more, biking 100mi tomorrow!
• Cool nights
• Eloping in NYC, finally getting to visit Paris (on my birthday!), and a new phase of life.
• This election being over.
• The end of humidity season (aka summer) and the beginning of fall
• My boyfriend getting a job he loves.
• Trying to improve my career prospects by starting a blog
• the end of this goddamn election
• The dog, our bed, and love is at home.
• Getting away by myself for a whole weekend
• Dunkirk and Dunkirk promo
• hiking in killarney
• biking in fall
• I’m going sailing tomorrow morning and the weather looks nice
• Also adopting a dog, possibly early next year!
• The discovery of a habitable planet outside our galaxy. And visiting it.
• Spending more time with my significant other, less time worrying about health and finances.
• I’m using this opportunity to send my goals out to the universe in hopes they happen: Exercising more, layers of clothing and crisp air, hot drinks, pregnancy, not freaking out about pregnancy or lack of, more positive vibes in general, saving money and buying a car
• Sleeping with the windows open
• Sailing
• Leaving this job far behind.
• Ski Season!
• I’m looking forward to hearing from u. (Hope this one is no too trivial…)
• The LeFrak Center having ice skating again.
• People I’ve missed visiting
• New plays by Annie Baker and Will Eno at the Signature Theatre
• My next move, wherever it takes me.
• Soup-cooking season
• New artistic collaborations.
• Going up the new observation tower at Brighton seafront
• iPhone 8
• Not being stuck in a perpetual state of A/C shivers or drenched in sweat
• I’m going to Nashville this weekend for the sole purpose of eating a bunch of DONUTS. Hoo boy!
• Becoming SCUBA certified.
• Starting my blog
• the new how to dress well record
• Moving out of my parents house.
• The dysfunction at my job to end
• paying off my house, my new washer and dryer, getting married, traveling to zimbabwe
• The end of this upcoming winter, when I’m yearning to feel the sun on my legs again.
• That next cup of coffee.
• My grandmother & great-aunt coming to visit next week
• OCTOBER. THANKSGIVING. SEEING MY COLLEGE FRIENDS AT HOMECOMING

• I’m looking forward to getting married in October, with crunchy leaves and bright sun and a cool breeze. (And I’m looking forward to quitting my wedding diet, ugh)
• Florida beach, hugging, cool days, the child’s questions
• YOUR BOOK, WHICH I PREORDERED! (Ed. note: ✨ )
• starting a podcast with my sister
• going to the beach in two weeks
• Sipping whiskey by a roaring peat fire
• Finally nailing the art of riding a (my) motorcycle. So freeing.
• Moving to Santa Fe and getting away from the ocean.
• turning 30!
• being reunited with my roommate’s dog after 10 days apart
• GETTING TO VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON
• Visiting New York again soon from Manchester, UK! Suggestions most welcome. (Ed. note: The Met Breuer is great right now!)
• Installing Fuchsia on Acer12, Raspberry Pi 3, and Intel NUC this weekend
• The changing leaves of the fall!
• fall movie season
• Thanksgiving and quitting my job
• Visiting my family in Chicago in two weeks 🙂
• Travelling to Detroit for No Rest Fest
• Lila Bowen’s A Conspiracy of Ravens
• Spending time in Italy and France soon.
• A second date tonight with a guy who apparently doesn’t think I’m crazy even though I drunkenly poured my soul out to him on our first date.
• Living by the ocean
• The swing back, eventually, to civility and higher expectations, from our current situation, in which overt hate is touted as free speech and an expression of freedom of religion.
• if I ever get to escape from my current living hell
• I have been working to adopt a child for years, taking classes and learning to see things from the children’s perspective. Something that comes up very frequently is the pain many children feel when people equate adopting pets to kids. Please try to put yourself in an adopted child’s place and use another word when rescuing a pet. Words hurt, intentional or not. Imagine a child seeing pets in cages, potential owners picking and choosing and eventually ‘adopting’ the cutest one. Now imagine that child thinking that was how her adoption happened. Pets are animals, children are human, they see and hear and read and hurt, please keep the terminology separate. (Ed. note: I had honestly never thought about this before — thank you for bringing it up.)
• Harvesting one or two fat leeks out of the garden this winter, every week, even in the snow, and turning them into different kinds of soup.
• Getting in shape!!!!!
• Sweater weather
• Recovering enough to hike again.
• having one day where everything falls into place
• Phones with longer battery lives
• I’m looking forward to either securing full-time employment or becoming more comfortable with cobbling together a living from various part-time gigs. Either way, I think I’ll feel better in two months than I do now.
• Getting better at my new job so it isn’t so bewildering.
• Biting into an apple on the first cool day of fall, and getting that excited/anxious feeling like school is starting even though I’m way too old for school, but that feeling is one of endless possibilities. With a tart crunch.
• I am lucky — I have more to look forward to right now than usual. I’m wrapping up my M.A. in December, moving in with my boyfriend next month (and eventually to Pittsburgh next year), and I’m going to Seattle next week for a long weekend. And it’ll be my birthday while I’m there! Plus it’s fall, which means there will hopefully be some autumnal treats/apple-picking to do soon. It’s the best time of year to be outdoors.
• Seeing all my friends at Interbike in just over a week!
• to finally being a doctor in 1 year!
• eventual confirmation of my life choices
• Having a schedule again after a summer of freedom
• Seeing my friends in New York more often and more leisurely now that I live here. Going to New York’s museums. The cool weather in fall. The end of the American election.
• The first time it snows
• Fidget Cube
• Taking a very belated honeymoon.
• Finding the time to read through my Pocket library
• Relaxing time to myself
• Fall weather
• Seeing the Alabama Shakes play in Portsmouth, VA
• My wedding!
• 5 o’clock
• Fall
• Visiting New Zealand’s South Island for the first time
• a quiet mind without burden
• Sitting in the quiet
• APPLE PICKING. SUBSEQUENT APPLE PIE BAKING.
• Looking forward to going back to London in October, because I feel happier and filled with curiosity when I travel. And, somehow the people I know in London are super kind and fond of me. Maybe that’s my city.
• Camping in the Adirondacks and mac & cheese weather
• Getting over with 2016. Academics. Doing something creative. Taking control of my life. Music? More books. Quality time with friends.
• Taking a trip to Cameroon to see my friend who is in the Peace Corps there!
• Crisp fall afternoons with beautiful October light
• Completing the sale of my business.
• Christmas decorating!
• Having more time to spend with my kids.
• Crawling out of my own asshole so I can write something again.
• Finding a college for my daughter
• Going to Austin for the first time for Austin City Limits!
• Going to Seoul in 4 weeks — placenta face masks though!
• The day I can afford to take my mom on vacation
• Traveling this winter!
• the weekend
• Sweater weather
• lunch
• (consistent) turtleneck weather
• My vacation in Monterey!
• Getting my own place and a hedgehog or guinea pig
• Fall, Gilmore Girls, and finally being done moving
• Traveling to Marfa, TX, at the end of September to sleep in a teepee and look at giant sculptures.
• the projected date by which I’ll pay off my student loans (Jan 2019)
• I’m looking forward to the morning when I don’t get off the train and walk out of the station simultaneously hoping and dreading to see my ex-boyfriend after having traveled to that station with him for so many mornings. I’m looking forward to starting my day with clarity and an inward focus — not anxiety and unwarranted expectations.
• The State fair
• taco night
• Looking forward to volunteering at a dog shelter starting next month and for fall breezes
• Thai food in Thailand
• weekend coffee on the patio with my dog
• Seeing the face of the one I love
• Crunchy fall leaves
• Going on my yearly cheapie Costa Rican vacation with my bf
• Cooking big western thanksgiving for ‘foreign’ students from my friend’s university where he teaches
• Self Driving Cars
• sweater weather
• I am looking forward to wearing sweaters and tights again soon.
• Time alone
• When my heating oil gets delivered on Monday. I’m in Fairbanks, Alaska and it’s almost winter.
• An exploratory weekend with an old, true friend
• Fresh bread
• Seeing the puppet show tonight.
• Spending the winter huddled together with three of my best friends in a new (to us) house filled with art that we love.
• Seeing James Bay live
• Apple Picking!
• feeling better
• That time of the month when my period comes as expected and I know my body are balance and healthy.
• My cool new job at an environmental nonprofit
• My husband has spent two years taking care of me (and everything else) as I’ve been sick, so in two weeks I’m taking him to Wisconsin to see the Packers home opener against Detroit. It’s time to make one of his dreams come true.
• Weekend away with my daughter at the end of September
• I’m looking forward to the presidential election being over and done with
• Autumn!!! It’s so pretty!!
• making myself happier
• The fall (the crisp fall, not the soggy fall)
• Going to bed.
• Peace in my life
• I am looking forward to experiencing new things.
• Things!
• I am also looking forward to adopting a dog soon! But first, finding a pet-friendly place to live.
• Kissing my boyfriend after coming back home in three months.
• A new Connie Willis novel
• Returning to Leo’s 1$ al pastor taco after half a decade in the greater midwest
• Season 3 of Transparent
• The game Hiveswap getting released.
• Meeting Danny. We met online over 15 years ago and have loved each other over the miles since…. The stars are about to align.
• Autumn in Chicago
• oktoberfest
• College (9/15/16)
• fixing and decorating my new house
• Space colonization
• Working again. I’ve been unemployed for a little while now and isn’t that the great tragedy of job searching — while you’re working, all you want is some time off, and then when the days stretch endlessly before you, full of spin classes and netflix binges, all you want is to re-join the mass of commuters with their lattes and sensible shoes. I’ll be glad to be setting my alarm for 6am again once I find a job.
• My wife’s arrival home after biz travel
• Pickling, fermenting and canning, and then eating those pickles, ferments and preserves this winter. The tomato sandwich I am going to eat in 20 minutes.
• The end
• Moving apartments
• Taking my kids camping for the first time
• Seeing my sister in chicago tomorrow
• Going freelance
• Sleeping in tomorrow.
• My wife giving birth, and then whenever that baby starts sleeping through the night consistently. Also, the Leon Bridges show tonight. And taking a nap this weekend.
• Rooftop bar weather
• Fall — also known as the Season When I’m Cute Again.
• Seeing an old friend again. Tomorrow.
• My parent’s retirement (so they can stop working so hard all the time and just relax and finally enjoy)
• Seeing Kanye’s Saint Pablo tour
• The time when people realise we don’t need to work more than a few days a week and we can give up bullshit jobs and all be happier
• Lying down on the floor.
• My next five-hour-long Krav Maga test.
• Taking a trip with the band to Milwaukee on Saturday to play our first out of town show
• Being able to pay my bills on time!
• going home and taking a long, hot shower
• Winter: When the weather is cold and the days are short and grey and nobody comes to visit. Then it’s time for a pile of books and a warm sofa…
• My daughter’s winter wedding.
• saying no and moving on
• Reading my book in bed
• Snow
• Jacket weather.
• the election ending.
• I just started a PhD program and I cannot wait to have a routine again! I’m looking forward to all of the new exciting changes in my life at the moment but it will feel so nice to know where the grocery store is in my new town and how long it’ll take me to finish the mountain of readings I have already accumulated. Also looking forward to Gilmore Girls in November, of course.
• Sundays with my husband that don’t end with either of us boarding an airplane, starting as soon as this election is over
• Getting new clothes in the mail
• Death
• crisp fall days playing tennis 😀
• Starting a degree at University, in a subject love
• Seeing the glittery Palm Springs desert for the first time
• Moving into my new house.
• Fall
• My mom overcoming cancer treatment and being able to visit me at my new house.
• getting your book, coffee, opening the windows
• Three days into the school year, I’m looking forward to being three days away from the end of the school year.
• seeing my husband
• Visiting friends at a wedding!
• Radiohead live show
• Going home every day after work.
• Answers
• A friend from home’s visit whom I haven’t seen in over a year
• Gaslight Gathering, a steampunk convention!
• For all of my online orders to arrive
• my current work contract ending
• Brisk autumn days
• The first day of summer.
• Seeing my friends
• Winter and the down time that comes with it. I can watch more tv shows and read more books. Any suggestions???? (Ed. note: I’m so bad at TV *but* I am reading a novel right now called Pond by Claire Louise-Bennett that is really wonderful.)
• The rest of my 20s.
• Voting for the first female president
• Stranger Things Season 2
• Halloween
• My birthday on Monday sept 12th ( 58th )!!
• October trip to Atlanta to see the fabulous exhibit at the Botanical Gardens by Glass artist Dale Chihuly
• A drive to see oldest friend living in KY in early Nov. sans husbands for almost a week ! And best of all my youngest son Ethan arrives from CA in late November to celebrate Thanksgiving and drop off his cat for us to care for until his move to Detroit is complete in early Jan. 2017
• travel
• Renewable energy becoming boring and mainstream
• The end of this interminable U.S. election
• A slow weekend with my wife
• Zadie Smith writing a Sci-Fi script
• Vacation
• Getting into bed and reading with my cats
• Getting off this phone call
• my promotion
• The next time I’ll see my mom
• Going to Paris with my boyfriend and spend all the days together as he normally has a really packed schedule.
• Asking my partner to marry me
• Hanging out with my friends this weekend.
• change
• A new job. Going back to work
• The weekend
• Moving closer to work, so I don’t have to drive 3 hours each day.
• The end of this election! The goal of owning a dog someday.
• Not giving a shit about what Donald Trump says or thinks
• My dog’s welcome when I get home
• Looking at my girlfriend in the eyes right before turning off the lights.
• Learning more.
• Moving across the globe and taking on new challenges!
• the eradication of guinea worm
• i’m looking forward to finding my purpose. I have been trying to find the answer to the question “what does my soul want?”. I am open to life and where it might take me. I am ready to enter my heroine journey. I am eager to be more true to myself and others. And to share light, love and meaning with friends and anyone who is is the same vibration. I want to have a more collective, connected and collaborative life. I hope this comes by the end of the month. :]
• Launching my company’s new website and traveling home to meet my new nephew soon.
• Finishing my BA by next spring
• Cozy sweaters and fires
• The season change
• seeing my boyfriend at the end of every day. i’m sorry (Ed. note: Yo don’t be!)
• Seeing Jen
• cuddles
• Being surprised again.
• Coming up for air. Someday.
• My cats not having fleas anymore.
• Rebekah
• Seeing my friends from overseas gathered in Singapore
• meeting my Swiss goddaughter for the first time
• a trip to the US next year!! All the way from Asia
• The Singularity (i.e. “The Rapture Of The Nerds”)
• Laying my head on my love’s chest, and falling asleep to the rhythm of his heartbeat
• Worshipping at the altar of Beyonce, in Atlanta on September 26th
• Traveling to Nashville for Story — a storytelling conference.
• Becoming a psychologist
• Going down a waterslide with my son next summer.
• time for myself
• Moving to the Bay Area.
• Apple’s new MacBook Pro this fall.
• The BFG with my daughter
• Seeing my lover.
• Getting old, sitting on the porch, and laughing about the good ol’ days
• traveling with friends
• Another holiday like this one.
• The holidays and being able to settle down with a good book, uninterrupted for a whole day
• My nephew learning how to talk
• The new Gilmore Girls
• finishing school
• Building our own tiny house!
• Scoring some nice pot
• I’m looking forward to receiving the books I’ve ordered online. ❤
• Saying my wedding vows with the guy I really love and all our friends and family watching
• Bridget Jones’s Baby movie! I’m hoping and looking forward to the scene where Bridget realises that Mark Darcy has and will always be hers. And if it doesn’t happen, I’ll look forward to the day when it does.
• Going back to Belgium in the fall. I tear up just thinking about it. I can’t wait to see my family and friends and be in this place I love so very much.
• My mom is coming to visit for two weeks!
• a new life in LA
• Going home for winter holiday
• Thanksgiving with my siblings and probably not a parent in sight.
• quitting my awful dayjob, moving out of my mouldy apartment
• Summer.
• A beautiful new tattoo I can see all the time, because it will be on my arm
• The total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017
• Feeling years of hustle to increase my salary start to pay off when, for the first time this month, I didn’t have to spend every dime of my paycheck. I am looking forward to shrugging off years of money anxiety and paying off those student loans.
• having children whose faces I can see my partner’s features in, who slowly grow into their own human selves
• LeakyCon! (A Harry Potter conference in LA in October 2016)
• Election Day itself. The run up to elections can be super stressful. But on the actual day, when I’m actually voting, I always rush of pride and joy to be part of the American experiment.
• Dinner, a recipe humbly named ‘Brown Chicken’. It is a family recipe of my boyfriend’s and I am (probably unreasonably) proud to be one of the few people outside of his genepool to enjoy it. Three hours and counting!
• No more children and everything for free.
• Diving on a coral reef
• travelling with a dear friend
• The sweet release of death.
• My first vacation with all my hard-earned money to Vietnam.
• The first crisp winter morning
• death
• I’m looking forward to the Gilmore Girls reunion shows, getting baptized, my first paycheck from my new job and hopefully, meeting someone wonderful soon!
• Fall 🙂
• I’m in a wedding in October. After that wedding there are no more weddings on my calendar. After that wedding I am going out of town for a weekend and shutting off my phone.
• I’m looking forward to seeing my latest campaign for work come into fruition. Also, my parents getting a US tourist VISA, so that we can all go visit my aunt who lives there for 15 years now for Christmas — they have never visited her home in the US.
• Waffles on Saturday mornings, maybe Tuesdays too
• Going back to University
• School year anticipation being converted into school year hustle
• stable and content lifestyle
• MORE ICE CREAM
• Seeing Hamilton on Broadway in January.
• cheese.
• Food form my mind and more motivations
• Tomorrow. And Yesterday. Definitely not today.
• I am looking forward to a bright future. Every day. Also brain-uploading, space-travel and personal-universe creation.
• cheesecake!
• Fresh fruit and acarajé
• peace of mind
• Getting a t-Rex costume
• Autumn weather — hiking among changing leaves, golden light, and chilly breezes.
• Trip to Croatia
• Creating a healthier me through exercise and nutrition
• Asking my girlfriend to marry me
• Upcoming travel to Belgium and Japan in 2016 and to 3 of the Hawaiian Islands in 2017.
• A three week trip throughout Europe (cliche; still exciting)
• fall 🙂
• Twin Peaks is coming back!
• The election to be over. ughhhhh
• A long and slow road trip to the beach.
• 37
• November 8th.
• Seeing friends I have not seen in a while this weekend at a college football game.
• dancing 4 days straight at my cousin’s (Indian) wedding
• feeling strong, assured and buoyant within my relationship once more
• Running a marathon later this fall . . . and becoming an auntie for the first time!
• Next season of Game of Thrones
• Managing my fear of flying enough to get on an airplane and fly to one of my favorite places, New York City this November. I will hug my beautiful cousin who is getting married, and trade secrets with family members I haven’t seen in years, and ride in crowded subway cars trying to hide my fascination at the impersonal intimacy of it, and soak in art from the streets and galleries and museums, and see a play that moves me to tears, and basically feel like I can do anything (NYC is my favorite because it makes me believe I can be fearless).
• Every morning’s first coffee.
• Getting married in Las Vegas in October, and touring the surrounding national parks as part of our improvised honey-week (then it’s back to Spain)
• Graduating from post grad next summer. Feeling excited for the future.
• Friday night football (soccer)!
• After the election, when we can get to the business of how to improve rather than who’s going to be leading us.
• Hawaii! My first “real” vacation in too many years, and my first big trip with the man I love. I’m nervous, but excited, and looking forward to enjoying a new adventure together.
• This fall I am going back to a country where I used to live for a friend’s wedding, and I can’t wait to see this particular group of people in the place where we all fell in love with each other.
• Growing up
• Getting my 10Q back from last year and filling out the questions again for next year
• Moving into our new house! Getting a dog!
• My daughters giving themselves the gift of forgiving me for leaving their mother.
• going on vacation by myself: driving to the Blue Ridge Mountains, drinking coffee at the dining room table in a house that belonged to my grandparents, going for a morning hike and spending the rest of my day with a book.
• the moment my best friend and I finally admit we’re crazy about each other and start dating
• New Years — not because I want 2016 to end but because it was so good to me, it’ll be nice to look back
• meeting someone
• Telling my boyfriend I love him for the first time — when I get the balls to do it.
• a good coffee every morning
• The first Hillary / Trump debate
• not feeling like this (sorry — not quite in the spirit) (Ed. note: I disagree 🙂 and I hope you feel better.)
• growing old and retiring and having all the time in the world to read the books i haven’t had time to read, watch the shows i haven’t had time to watch, see the movies i haven’t had time to see, find new hobbies, travel, call family and friends (or whatever the future analog to “calling” will be when i’m old)… there’s so much!
• hiking with my dog this weekend (and how tired and well behaved she is when we get home)
• I stared at this page for a long time. Thinking it was pretty sad that I couldn’t come up with anything to look forward to, I realized that this life that I’m living, what I’m doing now and who I’m doing it with, has been what I’ve been looking forward to for such a long time. It feels weird to be “in” what I’m supposed to be looking forward to, since mostly we’re trained to think that Our Best, Happiest Selves are in the future. I guess now I feel freaked out and anxious about how I might look back on my life now, at these moments, as the happiest of my life.
• Moving out of my parent’s house to a place with people my age
• Getting to know a new city that I never thought I’d end up in
• Princess nokia
• Becoming human
• Being free.
• When I don’t have to deal with my dead mother’s estate anymore. (No offense, mom)
• Having enough money to buy an MBA and my podcast editing becoming simplified so much.
• One of my nephew’s hugs.
• a quiet day at home during a rainstorm
• Settling Catan
• Returning to Work, Moving, Love.
• Sitting down with my new husband and writing personalised thank you cards to everyone who was so lovely at our wedding! It’s a sweetly domestic, administrative thing and is giving me serious back-to-school vibes for September.
• Thanksgiving
• Finishing my grad school application!
• Finishing my book someday.
• The election being over
• My girlfriend visiting for a week
• autumn
• The day when my rabbits are fully bonded so they can have a companion that makes them both happy, someone to snuggle with and groom and love in all their rabbity ways, and so they’ll stop fighting every damn time they get close enough to touch noses
• A PhD admit.
• 6 pm
• moving abroad one day.
• a good, home-cooked meal
• To be able to do the work I love full time, and to not constantly feel daunted by the fear of failing in that work

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Goodnight, sun

Got any plans over the weekend? Well, make sure you take some time tomorrow night to watch the sun as it sets, because it will be the last time in 2016 that that happens after 7PM. That’s right, winter is coming up fast. Just moments ago you were complaining about how hot it was and now we’re halfway through September and Fashion Week is over and pretty soon even the least observant Jews among you will pretending to be pious as fuck so they can miss a couple of days of work. It moves quick is what I’m saying. Don’t be surprised when the dark is all around you.

But for today and tomorrow at least we’ve still got a sun that sets after seven, and we’ve got new Tycho to look forward to. Things could be worse. In fact, they are almost guaranteed to be so. Enjoy!

Biggest, most self-defeating liberal self-delusion: White Americans would turn on Trump if media would stop ‘normalizing’ him

 — @glennthrush

Stop being deluded, liberals. You can’t be mad at the media for normalizing Donald Trump — that’s just what the media does. Besides, the fact that both liberals and conservatives get mad at the media must mean the media is doing everything right, right? Anyway, even if the media somehow stopped normalizing Donald Trump— which is not going to happen, because the media can’t help playing the same superficial games over and over again while simultaneously denying that’s what it’s doing and claiming that’s what readers want — it wouldn’t make any difference, because white Americans are immune to what used to be called reporting. All white Americans love white nationalism and lies, is what your media is telling you, so it would almost be a waste of time for them to expend any energy on actually defining the stakes here. Now you know!

★ It was still cool and peaceful out ahead of the elevator rush, and with the sun creeping into the slowly filling schoolyard. Soon enough afterward, summer was back, and it seemed as if the return of summer could be taken for granted—until, abruptly, dark summer storm clouds appeared. The new waterproof sneakers and the old water-destroyable sneakers had both been left at home, deemed unnecessary. The dimming light turned greenish, and the first rain made the pavement shine. Then the full downpour was on, with water spraying away from passing tires. The rain went on long enough to change plans, slackened enough to give false hope, then began pouring heavily again. When it was too late to do anything, clear sunbeams hit the buildings. “Water coming, water coming,” a vendor muttered in the farmers’ market, holding a pole and waiting to knock the collected rain out of an awning, as soon as there was enough space between passersby.