I watched the indie film Never Rarely Sometimes Always last night, a languorous and beautifully rendered devastation about a day in the life of a seventeen-year-old girl from the Trumpian parts of Pennsylvania seeking an abortion without parental consent by taking a bus to NYC with her cousin. It's a harrowing, deeply personal portrayal of the travails of living in a country with no healthcare access for far too many Americans, of anti-abortion religious zealotry that forces young women (and all women) from Republican parts of the country to go to horrible lengths for a basic medical procedure, and of the complicated nature of the procedure itself, in certain instances (like this one). A really good movie, focused almost exclusively on the two young women at the center of it, and I watched it largely because Sharon Van Etten's "Seventeen" plays over the trailer shown on my screen. 

Music has changed in the last few years for me. Perhaps irreparably. 
As streaming has replaced downloading on iTunes (which replaced buying CDs, which replaced cassettes, which replaced vinyl, which replaced 8-track? I don't know, I don't remember anything before then) music has become about singles not albums and that's a loss I miss. A lot.
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Albums still come out, and I still stream my favorite bands' releases on Apple Music and I totally love the convenience of just having them appear on my phone the Friday morning of release day without me having to even do anything. But I'm busy and there's podcasts and there's Howard Stern and there just isn't enough time to sit through an album over and over again, so it's like two or three listens for me, grabbing the couple songs that really appeal and sticking them on a playlist and the rest of the album--unless it's truly amazing, is pretty much forgotten.
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​And that's a shame.

I never got around to making my Best of 2019 Music List for multiple reasons. I ended up posting a best of the decade and I can tell you without doubt my favorite single of the year ("Not" by Big Thief) and some other songs I really really loved (my boyfriend can DEFINITELY tell you what songs I played over and over again last year) but the album of the year? Less clear. The full album I played most last year was probably Deceiver by DIIV, which really was a great album and I played it so much because there weren't really any weak spots. I liked almost all the songs and the album was a tight collection of music, an absolute high point for a band that's been around at least since early in the 2010s. But also?  The quiet, melodic beach vibe of the album was a perfect accompaniment to writing or working or just walking around Hoboken when one could walk around freely without fear of a pandemic and enjoy the sun and the shade. In other words, the music of Deceiver sweeps over me, but it doesn't engulf me, and all my senses, the way the albums of Arcade Fire or Wolf Parade or Okkervil River did some ten or fifteen years ago, and other than Car Seat Headrest's Twin Fantasy in 2018, I'm not sure I can think of an album that had that kind of effect on me, recently. Songs, yes. "Not" is all-time great and Big Thief has several songs that are literal masterpieces (including "Masterpiece") but their albums are largely hit and miss for me, which is disappointing. Probably if I gave them the time, the time I could give to Arcade Fire's Funeral, which I probably listened to 200 times in 2014, all the way through, I would find more joy in them. But I don't have the time. Or I don't give the time. And that's unfortunate.

One of the many amazements of having your first novel published is getting reviews, by strangers, who enjoy and in some cases absolutely love, your book. I do not know the exact method that went into who requested and received ARCs (advance reader copies) of I WILL BE OKAY, since my publisher handled all of that, but I do know it was a big deal when Kirkus Reviews (one of the biggest--if not the biggest--book review sites) requested an e-copy when the quarantine hit and then had one of their reviewers actually review and enjoy my novel. I'm a 40-something year old man with an engineering degree and a successful career that has afforded me many pleasures in life, but the entirety of my life--from middle school through high school through college to my post-college career, I've wanted to be a "writer," and although I did always write, constantly, so I could legitimately call myself a "writer," what I really meant deep down in my heart, was that I might become a published author. Someday. And even after getting an agent and selling this novel to a publisher, it never really occurred to me that this would result in the book being out there, in the world, for anyone and everyone to read. And it never occurred to me that they might have opinions and I might not like them (which honestly hasn't really happened...yet...) or the opposite, that they might have found some little  joy from something that I wrote, literally over the entirety of the past decade, that someone I don't know or who didn't share a writing class with me, would actually give positive feedback and recommend to others that they should read it. It's been thoroughly amazing.

We've all spent a crapload of time inside over the past two months. Some of us sick, some of well, some of us going crazy, no, all of us I guess. And when we haven't been Zooming we've been watching stuff. Here is a list of some of that stuff. Yes I do not have the energy to write a better intro. I've been stuck inside for 8 weeks!

#10. Extraction (Netflix)
In different times I would probably talk about how the antagonist of the story has a much more fleshed out story than Chris Hemsworth's lead character. Or about why when things go south, he risks everything to try to save a boy we know very little about and he knows even less. But when you're in quarantine and a pretty big budget action film written by one of the Russo Brothers of Avengers fame and starring Thor himself comes on your screen, you focus on the positives - the well-choreographed and seemingly nonstop action scenes, the 10-minute "one-cut" sequence, the winning persona of Hemsworth and the surprise appearance of David Harbour from Stranger Things which not to spoil it but results in a pretty awesome fight sequence between him and Thor and... well just check it out. It's not a great film but it's good enough for quarantine.