What did I enjoy in 2021?

I did a 'top ten' list of things I enjoyed in 2020, inspired by VideoGameDunkey, who does a yearly top ten of games that he played - not that were released. I was taken yesterday by a sudden urge to talk about the things I enjoyed in 2021. Enjoy:

I'll start with the big one - Serial Experiments Lain. Wow - what a show. I watched it over Summer on youtube and it totally surpassed what I had heard or read about it. Bypassing all the usual descriptions (Lynchian, psychological, existential), I found it spoke to me most about the themes of the internet as a space of interaction. Lain was released in 1998 (!!!), during an entirely different phase of the internet - before centralised social media had really taken hold. The era of Web 1.0 holds me in a hauntological nostalgia and it's part of the reason I have this website to begin with - to have a curated space which people might find, a space where I can leave a mark and not be swept away by an algorithm. Tangentially, 2021 was also the year that I got really into backing up all of my files and data frequently (partly due to encouragement by 3kliksphilip) - people call me paranoid for this, but it's the responsible thing to do - seemingly everyday you hear stories about files that were stored digitally or on social media websites being lost irretrievably - a 4000 video long youtube playlist I had was mistakenly taken down briefly earlier in the year - a really frightening experience for me. Back to Lain. In the context of the metaverse, NFTs, increasingly decrepit and panoptic social media, and so on, I think the anime could be a nice thematic jumping off point for an exploration of the internet through the scope of urban theory - analysing the internet and specific sites as if they were cities and sites of multiplicity - how could you not make that connection when so much of Lain focuses on infrastructure!?

Next. I love Dune. Amazing book and an intensely ecological one too. However, in October I decided to do a double showing of the new Dune film and The French Dispatch by Wes Anderson. Although Dune was very dramatic and epic, it focused much more on the 'Great Man' story of Paul and the power of prophecy (and a little bit on intrigue). All in all, it was alright, but not very memorable. Shockingly, I enjoyed The French Dispatch much much more. Of course it's more of Grand Budapest in terms of direction and aesthetics and acting and music - and I'm not going to complain - I loved Grand Budapest as a beautiful film about nostalgia and history. The two films are also both intensely geographical! They are about places, and people, and stories - especially the stories of people who have no place (looking at the final section of French Dispatch here especially). What really got me about French Dispatch though was the way it appreciated community and connections and - in particular - writing and journalism and storytelling. Really special stuff. Makes me cry. I wished I lived in Ennui.

Other great films I saw included the 2011 adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which was wonderful. I still make jokes that I'm like Smiley and have a 'smileycore' aesthetic. Really good film and made the Julio Iglesias cover of La Mer one of my most listened to songs this year on spotify. Love Mark Strong as always too. On a more impactful note - The Matrix! Wow! How have I not seen this film before. Probably one of my favourite films ever. Really captivating. Neo and Trinity are so cool it's unfair - they make me want to punch drywall. And also, as someone who has seen a lot of Post-Matrix action, watching the OG fight scene in the lobby with Spybreak was, and I mean this sincerely, like having a religious experience.

Moving on to music. Started listening to Radiohead properly - OK Computer is obviously amazing but I also love In Rainbows a lot, as well as the cover album Radiodread by the Easy Star All Stars. I also properly got into Mitski - love her stuff but I think Working for the Knife is her best song, and Bury Me At Makeout Creek is her best album. New Order as well obviously. Genre wise - this year I also got into techno, jungle, dnb, ambient music (nature recording especially), and slurpcore (unpleasant music) for the first time, after finding out about seapunk and writing a rather embarassing essay on jungle and utopias - the seapunk part of the essay was good though. As part of this I also started following a lot of the nostalgia/hauntology stuff for UK 90s Rave Culture. Lots of Peshay Studio Set (1996), Hours by David Bowie (1996), Leftfield, Boards of Canada, Groove Armada, 100 gecs, Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, Subaeris etc for the vibe. I also made a set of (as of now) 6 playlists on spotify called Great Vibes collating by vibe all of the electronic/ambient music I've listened to this year (find the first one here). I also entered the real depths of pretentious electronic music - city pop, dreampunk and freaky electro - the highlight was They/Them, who I randomly found on spotify. Really fun stuff. My most listened to album was still La Vita Nuova by Maria Mckee, which makes sense I suppose - I did still listen to a lot of acoustic stuff, especially Adult Standards stuff and Baroque Rock/Pop.

After getting into Mark Fisher during late 2020, 2021 was also the year that I got into proper pretentious cultural criticism and postmodern philosophy. Has defo made me more insufferable, but hey! I have a theory that a lot of this is trying to achieve some form of leftist Gnosis - that the more I read then the more I understand why everything sucks and eventually once I reach a certain level of understanding then I'll ascend, enlightened. All it does is give me headaches and make me sad. Love Da Boyz though (Baudrillard, Deleuze, Fisher, Zizek, Andreas Malm, Isabell Lorey etc). I'm also into the wackier stuff they actually push on my degree too - Planetary Urbanisation theory and Seeing Like a City by Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift is a bible for me too. I suppose you have to blame Mike Bravo at the department partly for making me like this too.