First, a quick word from our 2024 sponsor; A Piece of String:
re: Loose Ends and New Years
A Quick New Year’s Eve PSA:
All strings aside, I love seeing the lists of what you read, did, saw, and thought this year. I’m a sucker for reflection and I’m proud of you! What good stuff did you find? Show me! What poisonous plants should I avoid? Thanks, I love surviving!
I took a class on the evolution of human language a decade ago and one theory that made an impression was the hypothesis that language grew from gossip; specifically language evolved when social groups of apes got too large for everyone to groom everyone else. At that point, we needed a verbal shorthand to transcend the limits of our community-hungry-hands. In some ways, New Year’s Eve feels like those pre-historic massage trains — I can’t comb your scalp for snacks, but I still want to know what’s on your mind before morning. What are you going to keep/toss/try? Need any help?
We’ve been building social webs like this for tens of thousands of years, and now that the network of everything and everyone is beneath our chatty fingers, its never been easier and harder to connect.
Next year (and tomorrow!), I’d like to retune my attention to how I’m taking in the world as much as what I’m taking in. Stepping out from beneath the waterfall of content to venture further up the trail in search of something new or very old or simply unexpected1. Of course this, like those ancient gossiping gibbons, is not a novel idea. If anything, it’s just a simple re-affirmation to create space for encounter in the new year. (Brb, lighting a candle, doing a little dance, and getting comfy.)
One such encounter came a little early. The day after Christmas I spun the new Angie McMahon album and just listened. In the past, it had been background music, dishwashing vibes, a multi-tasking underscore — but this time I read along with the liner notes as the needle traced the grooves and took it in; a delicious meal with all the other lights turned off!
Dear reader: I was moved!
I woke up and went to sleep 364 times this year, but there are countless more moments of waking up in the middle of a day to my own aliveness and agency. Music does this and so do friends and art and clouds and bumps and grief and road trips and my little dog Bean.
My hope for myself (and for you if you want it) is that 2025 is a year full of these cyclical awakenings to the world’s enmeshed beauties, injustices, and possibilities.
In my first Pillow Fort newsletter of 2024 I quoted this passage from the end of Lindy West’s Shrill:
“I will do this; I will not do that. You believe in my subjugation; I don’t have to be nice to you. I am busy; my time is not a public commodity. You are boring; go away. That is world-building. […] Fighting for diverse voices is world-building. Proclaiming the inherent value of fat people is world-building. Believing rape victims is world-building. Refusing to cave to abortion stigma is world-building. Voting is world-building. So is kindness, compassion, listening, making space, saying yes, saying no.
We’re all building our world, right now, in real time.”
As we loop back around the sun, chasing our own tails/tales, this idea of world building feels freshly useful. I’ll leave you with one more wise guiding quote as we venture forth into the unknown…
Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!
-Ms. Frizzle
As a Pillow Fort aficionado, I’ll spare you a wrap-up of what I PUT OUT THERE but wanted to take a moment to express some gratitude and enthusiasm for what I TOOK IN:
Books
I read 40 books this year and there were some absolute bangers. This was the year of Empire, anarchist utopias, far-out speculative fiction, and some all-time faves. Here are ten that I read in chronological order that really SPARKED!
This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson
All Fours - Miranda July
Elf Dog and Owl Head - M.T. Anderson
Martyr! - Kaveh Akbar
A Country of Ghosts - Margaret Killjoy
Inversion - Aric McBay
Doppelgänger - Naomi Klein
Eight Billion Genies - by Ryan Browne and Charles Soule
Movies
Didn’t watch as many flicks this year, but here are 10 that I really loved!
Poor Things
Dune II
Perfect Days
Hundreds of Beavers
Challengers
I Saw the TV Glow
Ghost Light
Tampopo
Janet Planet
What’s Up Doc
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No COLD HARD STATS on Music and TV, but strongly recommend blasting some Petey, watching some Scavenger’s Reign, going to a Dan Deacon concert, starting your day with David Byrne’s cover of Paramore’s Hard Times, and cozying up with some classic episodes of Taskmaster or subscribing and supporting the independent goofiness of DROPOUT TV.
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And now, a quick peek over the fence to ———>
~*2025*~
NEIGHBORS, my two-prov group with Caleb Fullen has two shows right out the gate. Catch us on Wednesday (1/8) at the Real Angels LSI show or Monday (1/13) at Industry Night at the Foxhole.
ABBY PAJ TRIES TO STAY ALIVE - I’m producing a full-length play written/performed by Abby Paj and directed by Sammy Ziesel! Truly a dream team. It’s going to be a part of the The Neo-Futurists’ 2025 season, so keep your eyes peeled for upcoming workshops and showings before we premiere in Fall 2025.
A TBA Web-Series about a Real Estate Agent for Miniature Houses I cooked up with
McFadden that is slated for SPRING 2025. HOT DOG!The Check-In - I edited a beautiful short written and performed by pal Becca Barish that will hopefully come to some fests and screens of all sizes in the new year.
A Perfect Pair - in the cutting room for this gem written/directed by Hannah Rehak — stay tuned!
Grocery shopping! More of a personal reminder here, but in early 2025 I plan to go grocery shopping…breakfast stuff in particular. Gotta start the day/year off right, ya know? See you in the aisles!
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And in closing, a big, heartfelt, thank you to readers new and old who have stuck around for a year of Pillow Fort.
I’m very glad you’re here.
I’m having fun and I hope you are too.
xo,
Will
p.s.
Got any guiding thoughts/words/intentions as you glide into ‘25? I’d love to hear what you’re percolating on!
p.p.s.
This was mentioned in a previous Pillow Fort, but I know my sometimes manic hyperlinks can get lost in the mix. In case you missed it, here’s PROM from the brilliant mind of Jenelle Cheyne, cooked up and served by the helping hands of Becca Barish, Caleb Fullen, Nick DiMaso, Harrison Lott, Ethan Stoller, and me!
p.p.p.s.
Ok, now I’m entering “no YOU hang-up” territory, but have you watched Napoleon Dynamite recently? I just re-watched it for the first time in maybe two decades and was truly struck by how much heart and art is packed into this much-memed-movie. Makes a strong case for revisiting some of those middle school favs! OKokokloveyoubyeeeeee
As a warm up, I started my morning with Hanif Abdurraqib’s 123 favorite albums of 2024. It’s a good antidote for Spotify Syndrome, that frictionless algorithmic fugue state that can give us a limitless stream of what we like without risking encounter with something we might love. “As a former Spotify employee once observed, the platform’s only real competitor is silence.” - Is There Any Escape from the Spotify Syndrome? by Hua Hsu