2022.10.DisappearingMoment
You get to an age where you should only make recommendations about music to people who love you, and only if they ask. It happens around the same time that most people stop asking.
I like the idea of expanding my taste in music. I’m interested in spending time with styles I’ve found intimidating or unsatisfying. I want to have conversations with people who can help me understand how it affects them.
For now, my taste is still rooted in the music I loved during adolescence, which extended into my thirties. Some of us bloom early and some of us don’t bloom much at all.
Music played a larger role in my life this month than it has in many years. The most memorable events were a movie, a performance, and an email message.
The movie was Moonage Daydream, named after my favorite song by a favorite artist, David Bowie. The performance was by Calexico, a band that mixes Latin music with country, jazz, and rock.
While Bowie and Calexico sound different from each other, what draws me to them is similar. Both are generous and appreciative, creating space for their collaborators to express themselves. Both are enduring music fans, as devoted to covers as they are to originals. Both are internationalists: anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-homophobic. Their perfectionism is about experiment and relationship. It is about the perfectibility of a disappearing moment of experience.
Music gives us access to these moments. One of them took place earlier this month. It involved a good friend. The one I followed into librarianship. The one who still makes the best music recommendations, and I will always ask him for them.
He’d spent the day with his father, accompanied him to encouraging doctor’s appointments. That night, as they often did, they traded songs on Spotify. They had a good goodbye. His father died a few hours later, peaceful, at home, loved.
Welcome to October 2022’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of my experiences. I hope you enjoy it.
Podcasts
- 9/12 (I Loved It): I avoided Dan Taberski because the premise of Finding Richard Simmons didn’t sit right with me. I’m glad I gave him a chance.
- Crooked City (I Loved It): Mark Smerling takes Crimetown to another network and another city. The guy knows how to make a podcast about corruption.
- Nice Try (I Loved It): Avery Truffleman is the buddy whose voice you can listen to for hours. It’s almost an afterthought that she shares your weird obsessions, too.
- We Were Three (I Liked It): The latest series from Serial documents how Covid destroys families. I wish I couldn’t relate to it.
Nerdy Software
Brave Search is my latest recommendation for going Google-free. It’s also close to Microsoft-free, unlike DuckDuckGo and its other competitors.
Bougie Products
I like simple, sturdy, inexpensive flatware, dishes, mugs, etc. I expect our Duralex Picardie tumblers to outlive me.
Personal Finance and Investing
If I had extra cash that I wanted to invest for a few years, I’d buy TIPS. For more on TIPS, read Zvi Bodie.
Reading
- Stephan Ango, Photoshop for text (I Liked It): AI programmers are mischievous pischers. Cleaning up after their mess is going to take some doing.
- Anna and the Pirate Archive Team, How to become a pirate archivist (I Liked It): It does what it says on the label. A clear explanation of how and why they’re pirating books.
- Léonie Watson, Why we need CSS Speech (A Personal Favorite): We have simple tools for changing how digital type looks. Shouldn’t we have similar tools for changing how it sounds?
Famous people I wouldn’t recognize
- Eric Adams
- Jon Batiste
- Liz Cheney
- Ron DeSantis
- Joni Ernst
- Pope Francis I
- Andrew Garfield
- Colleen Hoover
- Enrique Iglesias
- Aaron Judge
- Kardashians (any)
- Larry the Cable Guy
- Joe Manchin
- Trevor Noah
- Mary-Kate Olsen
- Katy Perry
- Cal Quantrill
- J. K. Rowling
- Harry Styles
- Randy Travis
- Carrie Underwood
- J. D. Vance
- Kanye West
- Xuxa
- Trisha Yearwood
- Fareed Zakaria
Thanks for spending a few moments with me. I look forward to corresponding again next month.
Brett
No large language models were used in the production of the Disappearing Moment newsletter or website (inspired by RFC 9518 Appendix A ¶ 4 and Tantek Çelik).