New Year's meme by Carl & Hilary

Hilary and I each did the New Year’s meme. We got it from John. Me first:

1. What did you do in 2005 that you'd never done before?

I started a weblog. I did lots of Heraclitean things that I’ll never do again.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Yes—I had resolved to write more. During 2004, the only thing I wrote other than e-mails and discipline referrals was a long dependent clause about a photograph of a professor sitting in his office. I hereby resolve to write yet more in 2006.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

I skipped the Hall-Dale Class of ’95 reunion because Hilary’s parents and grandparents were staying at my parents’ house that night, so I missed a lot of good gossip. I met my cousin Nicky’s baby daughter, Skyler, who I don’t think was born in 2005. This made me very happy.

5. What countries did you visit?

I never left the country, though I visited the New England states of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

6. What would you like to have in 2006 that you lacked in 2005?

Encounters with machine elves. The opportunity to decide for myself whether time is a fractal wave of increasing novelty.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Not figuring out a life plan or life goals or really advancing my interests in any objective way. Not fearing oblivion enough.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

I got my feelings hurt a couple times, but that was it.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

New brake lines for my '88 SAAB 900. I’m sorry I didn’t buy them sooner. A friend and I had a harrowing ride back from the Biddeford tidepools on US 1.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Kids who found weird ways to survive.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

People who complained about high gas prices.

14. Where did most of your money go?

The plum pudding I made on Christmas.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Take out some reallys and I got excited about riding my bike. Not so much as a form of exercise as a form of exploration. Walter Benjamin. I got multiple-really excited about the mind. What it feels like when it meets itself and sets all of its hypothesis-framing and –testing and variable-isolating functions to work on its own operations. How much the mind remembers about the world when it’s not looking. Or when that world isn’t there anymore.

16. What song will always remind you of 2005?

“Submarine” by Björk, which didn’t come out in 2005.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Making other people feel good.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Having temper tantrums.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

I was at my parents’ house in Hallowell with my brothers. It was the perfect Christmas day: playing with new toys, reading new books, cooking, eating.

21. Did you fall in love in 2005?

Every day, just about.

23. What was your favorite TV program?

Hilary and I rented several episodes of two PBS mini-series: The Mind and The Brain. These shows are fucking awesome, and so is the mind, and so is the brain. We watched a good special on the Symbionese Liberation Army. I saw some of the new Doctor Who series, and I’m sorry that Christopher Eccleston has left already. I become a slave to the tube any time I’m at a friend’s house with Classic VH-1.

25. What was the best book you read?

I finished reading Remembrance of Things Past in January, though I did most of the work in 2004. I can’t say how much that book has meant to me.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

It would be presumptuous to say I discovered it, but rap music is my big new musical interest. “Musical” in the full sense—not “rap as a social/political phenomenon” or “rap as literature” or “rap as rhythmically interesting,” but rap invested with the full power and aesthetic spectrum of musical art. Dr. Dre’s The Chronic is my favorite rap album, though it goes way past anything genre-specific. Sgt. Pepper-caliber music of the imagination.

I saw Feathers for the first time, at Strange Maine. They’re really good, way beyond their psych-folk image, and their record belongs between Led Zeppelin III and Led Zeppelin IV, and they will be famous this time next year. Kelefa Sanneh will be bumming that he didn’t find them first.

The Chris Weisman IntelliGents started discovering themselves at the Red Door in Portsmouth, and pretty much every jaw in the audience dropped. Power trio. Comparisons worthless. Fucking hardcore rules. Chris wore a green dashiki. Here’s a demo of the opening number from that show, Abeline, minus the Gents.

I figured out the chords to “Sweet Love,” a Commodores song, and felt that I had penetrated the core of Lionel Richie’s musical intelligence, though Chris and I disagreed over whether the chords were better characterized as sus chords or slash chords.

27. What did you want and get?

An acrylic polymer clay statuette of a meditating Buddha, though I had to make it myself.

28. What did you want and not get?

Karl Rove on Fitzmas morning.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

My dad and I went to see The Edukators for his birthday, and we were the last two people admitted to the cinema.

32.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Finishing just one of the many books I tried reading. See, after reading Proust, I felt like I could do anything. I made it pretty far in Gravity’s Rainbow and The Magic Mountain before fading out. I’m halfway through Bleak House and perilously close to letting fall all the threads I’ve painstakingly gathered.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2005?

I wore a magenta “One Great Kid from Hall-Dale” sweatshirt pretty much every day it was cold. I bought two pairs of New Balance. Hilary got me an apparently homemade Steelers patch at a junk shop, and I crudely sewed it onto a gray hat.

34. What kept you sane?

Taking baths.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I cut more out more pictures of Hugo Chávez than anyone else, and I was the most imperious about silence when stories about him came on the radio.

My favorite US celebrity during 2005 was Jay-Z. “I’m like Che Guevara with bling on, I’m complex.” You could write a dissertation on that line.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

My own tendency to naturalize and regard as ordinary and inevitable and justifiable things that are in fact unnatural, unsustainable, within the control of human agency, and morally suspicious, although this issue stirred me only when I wasn’t busy naturalizing away, dazzled by the 1,000 things. The fragility of economic/historical consciousness.

37. Who did you miss?

I missed John, who missed me.

38. Who was the best new person you met?

Students I cannot name, due to what the Director of Special Services calls “confidenshuality.” Hilary’s friend Kazumi. The directors and staff of the Upward Bound program I worked at.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2005.

That pretty much everybody is motivated by self-interest to do things that compromise the legitimate interests of others. I don’t know if this lesson is valuable.

Hilary’s answers:

1. What did you do in 2005 that you'd never done before?

Bought a giant bottle of liquor (Campari).


2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Do not remember old resolution, so must not have kept it. New resolution is to be a less negative and sarcastic person.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

My friend Angela may have given birth by 12/31/05—it is likely.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No.

5. What countries did you visit?

None.

6. What would you like to have in 2006 that you lacked in 2005?

A dazzling landscape technique that makes it into real paintings instead of just practice pieces.

7. What date from 2005 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Date toward end of March when I found out I got into Skowhegan. First I got the e-mail, then I called the office to see if they made a mistake. When I found out it was not a mistake, it was the biggest shock.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Learned how to paint tie-dye (kind of).

9. What was your biggest failure?

Spent hours picking out perfect birthday present for sister, then had to give it up (I had an extra) when brother failed to produce a gift. Brother presented perfect present (set of silk/brass/mirror Indian bangles) as his own, stealing the present-giving show.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

New cat allergy. Unfortunate but Carl had one anyways.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

New clutch for my 1990 SAAB 900.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Carl was a selfless, noble helper throughout my grad-school applying process, other than asking constantly where I would take him for dinner as a reward.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Portland Parking Authority.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Money went for photography and developing and duping of slides, car repairs, and two three-month sessions of being unemployed.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Trip to Japan, subsequently cancelled.

16. What song will always remind you of 2005?

Spaghetti Royal

17. Compared to this time last year, are you

This time last year my future was less uncertain.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Exercise, good eating, positive friendly attitude.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Drinking, swearing, unpleasant sarcastic jokes and fits of temper.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

Christmas was at Mimi and Papa’s in White Mountains, together with Mary, Henry, Asa, and Lydia. Watched approximate total of 10 hours videos/television.

21. Did you fall in love in 2005?

Was already in love since 1995.

22. How many one-night stands?

Zero.

23. What was your favorite TV program?

New Hampshire Crossroads.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

Forgive me landlords but you sold our building for condos.

25. What was the best book you read?

Elizabeth Costello

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Made none.

27. What did you want and get?

Wanted an art studio and got one!

28. What did you want and not get?

Wanted to get good at watercolor. Hasn’t happened quite yet.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

Educators pardon me Edukators

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

My birthday party was a cheese party. I was 26.

32.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

If I had gotten into de Ateliers. I would be Dutch by now.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2005?

Fashion is—same clothing since 1999 thus a kind of worn-out look.

34. What kept you sane?

—

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Do not “fancy” but am devoted to Martin Lukes—I hope a made-up celebrity counts.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

Riots in Paris (I lived in Paris January to June of 2001).

37. Who did you miss?

Missed Chris Forgues, who I did not see even once.

38. Who was the best new person you met?

Carl’s high-school friend Zach Tyler, his wildlife artist mother D.D. and his dad Hank and his (Zach’s) girlfriend Bev (all in one family so counts as one person). Also: Kazumi Shiho.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2005.

Life lesson: Things will be easy if one does not subconsciously wish for a disaster.