I’m late to the party. I love end-of-the-year best-of lists. I wrote this a couple weeks ago and kind of forgot about it because life has been a little chaotic.
Anyway, I don’t care if you are someone I barely know or care to know, I find these lists so interesting. It is so satisfying to see someone gather their experiences over a year and try to catalogue them in some thoughtful way, to give them some kind of order, some gravity. A gentle act of self-assertion. So I’m here to give you a reminder: take your small and precious life into your hands and know it is all that you have and, today, today, today, unabashedly celebrate the moments and things that linger long after they should. There’s reasons why they do.
Here are my 2021 “bests”. I’m cheating a little as not everything I’m listing will have been a product of 2021 but just things that have affected me the most this year. Take the word “best” lightly.
Best music:
Die 4 You by Perfume Genius. Sade meets Portishead meets Cronenberg feels like a fair response to this video. Maybe it’s a little bit final-year-in-art-school, at a glance. But the track sets me on fire. 2017. I listened to this a lot over the summer and will forever associate it with small patches of urban green, hazy sunsets and eating berries drenched in yoghurt at the window.
Measure of a Man by FKA Twigs. If I hear another person complain that everyone sleeps on FKA Twigs, I’m going to scream. She’s always been the enigmatic and experimental queen of contemporary EDM/R&B for me but she’s on American turf these days, collaborating with the likes of Kanye and The Weeknd and there is some serious high level production and marketing going on these days, so…huh? Anyway, she’s known to the people who need to know her. This track feels right at home in a Bond film, minus the cringe rap that just ruins the song. I like it far far FAR less than her genre-bending early stuff, which is such a predictable thing to say, I know, but she really blew my mind and managed to water the music drought I was experiencing years ago. Still, I have to give my girl her praise. She has an innate sensuality reserved for dancers that I am completely transfixed by and she effortlessly infuses sincere vulnerability with the most serious swagger in all she does. I find her sort of terrifying. I’m scared for her, quite honestly, but at the same time I have a feeling she’d never really be fully indoctrinated into the “American ideal” even if she tried really hard. She’s ultimately happy underground. She’s too…herself. Whatever that is. We’ll see. Also, fuck Shia. 2021.
EDIT: twigs has since released a new album this month which feels much more “British” (I’m mostly basing this off of the voice samples/interludes and the nostalgia was very real when I heard Olive’s You’re Not Alone) and the almost DIY “mixtape” feel of the project is dripping with intimacy. Perhaps the better description is that. It’s intimate, it’s personal, it’s distinct. It’s British. It’s twigs. Admittedly, not my favourite from her but I’m always curious about what she’s up to (and that is incredible in this day and age…) and I see longevity.
Anhedonia by Chelsea Wolfe and Emma Ruth Rundle. Love them both and to see them collaborate was a special moment of joy for me. ERR’s latest album has been on rotation, too. It has been a kind of spiritual balm for me, honestly. 2021.
Oh My God by Sevdaliza. Graphic content warning. I only learned about her a couple years ago. Video is gross and wild as fuck. Some old school IDM sounds going on. Makes me want to relive my Pashmina wearing, SE London living, greasy spoon visiting, Aphex Twin/Autechre loving days. I can’t get on public transport these days without experiencing some kind of low level auditory hallucinations from all the music I drowned myself in back then. 4:30 onwards - arrghh. I almost…hate this, actually. 2021.
Best books:
New and Selected Poems, Volume One by Mary Oliver. 1992.
A sweet love letter to nature and, perhaps specifically, coastal New England. I bought a copy at a cute book shop in Vermont and I still have a few maple leaves stuck inside the pages. I love picking it up and reading a few poems to settle me before bed. I daydream of that picturesque New England life often, particularly when the city and all that I often unfairly associate with it sours my mood. Yesterday I saw a pigeon squashed completely flat, wings spread and head gone, on the road. I walked past it, holding my breath.
Shadow and Bone trilogy by Leah Bardugo. 2012.
I often think I would be the kind of grown person who could get a little *too* lost in YA reading but quite honestly, these were the first books to really have that effect on me. Tsarpunk is the most wonderfully ridiculous word I’ve heard in awhile and I’m here for it and wish, like, Vivienne Westwood would release a Tsarpunk-inspired ready-to-wear collection for Hot Topic and I was still 14 years old and desperate to explain who I am to everyone. The huge spiritual journey the lead character Alina Starkov made from lowly Cartographer girl to magical Grisha to all-powerful Saint was exciting and, at times, profoundly sad. I gobbled up all three books rather quickly. The first season of the Netflix show has a certain British tone I find quite annoying that has dominated so much of popular British television. I personally wouldn’t write it off as just British sensibility, it’s a particular voice…it’s like everyone attended the same tired BBC writers workshop and carry around the tricks of the trade that reliably sells to anglophiles around the world or something.
The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang. 2021.
I’ll be frank, I have not yet finished this but there are so few Korean American writers that are brought to my attention and asked by the powers that be (eg the NYT) to take seriously, that I feel it important to support him, as a fellow Korean American. I know people would disagree that this mostly identity-based reasoning is unfashionable, but I think there is an ever-growing crowd floating around in this space these days. He’s Korean American, so am I, I relate. I don’t know why I feel defensive of that fact. I’m a few chapters in and I am moved by his clear affection for his mother, who sounds fascinating and utterly lovable. I’m looking forward to watching him try to untangle and define the strange, often contradictory and quiet space that Asian Americans inhabit in our social fabric while discussing his own experiences as an Asian American male in what I personally would describe as uniquely hostile territory for them. What little I’ve gathered about him, I doubt he will ask for too much sympathy but he has it from me, regardless.
I like people who have a visibly tortured relationship with class. I often sense this in my fellow Koreans.
Somewhat unrelated thought: I find myself in the company of people who intellectualise their pain more often than not so I figure it is a kind of kindness perhaps (?) to offer something softer.
Best blogs/online reading
The Black Narcissus / Ginza In The Rain - Neil Chapman has been writing about perfume since 2012 and has developed an almost cultish following and I can understand why. His writing is dreamy and obsessive, he lives in Japan and treats his readers to little snapshots of his very enviable life there and has an encyclopedic knowledge of perfume. He loves perfume - vintage, department store brands, boutique, all. He loves it and you can feel it and that’s important to me.
Suzanne Moore - Suzanne Moore has left The Guardian after getting bullied out the office for some bullshit around her position as a gender critical feminist or a TERF or whatever you’d fancy calling her at this stage. She’s seen a lot, she knows how it feels to be poor, she knows herself, she makes me secretly smile when she goes after Owen Jones - I do feel kind of bad about this one. She’s spent a lot of time in British newsrooms and I believe her when she says she never really fit in anyway. Sometimes she writes things that gets something we’d call dangerous these days stirring inside me:
“Looking back, I see that by the late Eighties and early Nineties, I had already picked up on something that perturbed me. A denial of female biology, of our ability to name and define our experience. Some of this came from certain strands of postmodern theory where objective reality gives way only to multiple subjectivities. A kind of gender tourism became possible. Everyone could be everything. A new kind of feminism came into being, one in which flesh and blood women and our desires became somehow a bit dull. Feminism without women. Grow a child inside you and push it out of your body and tell me this is a construct.”
Just saying.
I think she calls herself a Marxist. She dabbles in theory sometimes. Also: I don’t look at her Twitter. I don’t know if she has one. One thing I’ve learned is to never read someone I think I like’s Twitter. No exceptions. I once found William Gibson’s account and my heart just sank. I can’t even remember why.
Best Foodie discovery:
Sole water. Himalayan salt in your water. Potentially dodgy IG-friendly health tip, yes. Does it feel genuinely hydrating and detoxifying? Yes. Is it really? Who knows.
Best YouTube:
Tasting History with Max Miller
Some people like sexy ASMR or kind-of-gross mukbang, some like gay men teaching you how to contour, some like watching people play games. I like watching someone reimagine ancient recipes with Disney levels of enthusiasm while I drift away in the evenings.
Best beauty product:
Customisable hair care has become kind of a thing lately though I can only think of a handful. There was some TikTok drama around Function of Beauty, which I’ve never tried and have no interest in, mostly because they’ve partnered up with Target and I’m just vacuous sometimes and get turned off by things that seem pedestrian. But I’ve been eyeing Prose for some time and finally caved in. I opted for Signature, which is a floral and powdery fragrance that I found way too faint on my hair though it smelled delicious in the bottle (violet leaf, peony, white amber) and I thought at first the conditioner was too lightweight for me, however over the course of a couple weeks I found my hair genuinely easier to manage. The shampoo does a good balancing act, too. It doesn’t overclean and I feel fresh. Yeah, not bad. Surprised, actually. I don’t know how long I’ll keep up with it but for now I think it’s worth it. The older I get, the less guilt I feel about taking care of every inch of myself…in whichever way I desire, frivolous or not. The lab is in Paris, they operate out of Brookyn. $25 a bottle. 8.5 fl oz.
Honourable mention:
La Roche-Posay, Toleriane (Hydrating Gentle Cleanser). $15, 13.52 fl oz. I’ve been desperately looking for an affordable and gentle morning cleanser for my sensitive skin (I am prone to mysterious skin flare-ups and also dramatic lie-downs if I’m emotional/stressed like some kind of delicate, early Victorian era flower). This has been exactly what I’ve been looking for. It is immensely popular…I don’t know where I’ve been all this time. My porcelain-skinned dermatologist initially brought it to my attention and I ignored her for no apparent reason until I got a bit desperate as winter inched its way into my skin. Deeply hydrating, gentle, oil-free, fragrance-free with a really pleasing milky texture. The company talks a bit about the formula being infused with something called “prebiotic thermal spring water from La Roche-Posay”. I’ll take whatever French sorcery out there to keep my skin in the best shape I can muster.
Fin.
I hope everyone has a beautiful year. As much as you can. Tragic optimism is my only advice.