An assorted collection of images I loved. Images interpreted very, very loosely. I love tv as an adult far more than I had any reason to believe I would as a kid. And I love visual art more than I thought I ever could as a kid. So in a way, sinking into images this year—moving icons of things I want and things I didn’t have and things I believe—was a way to grapple with things I don’t have words for. Pictures as names for wordless things.
The Big Brunch
I love love. And there is so much love in this show. The hosts love food and people. And they most specifically love this cohort of competitors and love their growth as people and artists. The chef’s love food and honor their own stories and each other. They cheer for great work and hug when things go to shit. Everyone wants everyone to be exactly as beautiful as they already are and not a pinch of salt less. There is playful sarcasm and hard truths shared and dreams cast. And all at a level of excellence that stuns everyone involved again and again. So good.
Station Eleven
This show haunts me. I think about images, lines, and music regularly. Usually, I have to see a show multiple times before it imprints this deeply. Maybe it was watching it in the raw, wintery aftermath of my own birth and mother-becoming, but this show gripped me and won’t leave me alone. It is constructed with restraint and excess in equal parts. I wept through the last 1.5 episodes.
It’s about Shakespeare. It’s about parenting, being parented, finding oneself in community, in art. It’s about the power of stories. It’s about the interconnectedness of all humans. It’s about survival. Cults and control and making sense of devastation. It’s about birth. Our relationship to the history of the human species.
The cinematography is beautiful. The acting is memorable.
This scene overlays two moments: present-day Kirstin performing in a traveling Shakespeare troupe performing Hamlet atop the moment she as a child finds out her parents have died in the pandemic that kills 90% of the earth’s population.
Bonus: This reflection on apocalypse art by my fave critic Alissa Wilkinson
Our Flag Means Death
This comedy is everything. Think Muppet Treasure Island but adult, gay, and kiwi. It is an absurd pirate romp defined by genuine sweetness and love. It feels like an instant classic, something that will gain traction with time like The Princess Bride or the first/only season of Firefly.
I want to bake bookies for all the characters and nod empathetically as they go through their relationship woes and assure them that they didn’t imagine that the other person liked them and it would be okay to be vulnerable and brave and laugh at their antics.
ps. while I subscribe and watch tv and movies on a variety of streaming platforms, all of the above are from HBO. So curious.
Fashion: the Black Jumpsuit
I realized halfway through the year that I needed clothes that did the following:
Lifted from the laundry pile and can be immediately worn
Comfy for sitting at my computer but un-pj enough to be worn as I run out the door
Hid milk leaks
Easy front access for breast feeding
Easy to get up and down from the floor
Layerable for different looks
Machine washable, machine dryable, and unstainable
No matching tops and bottoms required
Pockets for phone and other baby necessities
Didn’t wear out and rip in two seconds
Un-frumpy
Enter the black jumpsuit. I tried a bunch of pregnancy/nursing versions but it was Wild Fang that solved it for me.
Thank you, Wild Fang. I wear this damn thing every day.
Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins w. Baby
Julie Andrews was invited to be Mary Poppins while she was pregnant with her first baby, Emma. This came up on pinterest for me and I just fell down this rabbit hole learning everything about Dame Julie Andrew’s experience in her first film where she gave an Oscar winning performance and had an infant just 3 months old when she arrived in LA.
family portraits
Pippin is in love with the photo we framed from this shoot. She wants to “wave to the family” each time she comes downstairs in the morning and then check the back of the frame to make sure it’s an object and not a window into a living family somewhere else.
“Platform” by Lisa Lotito
I cried when I first saw this image. It captured the loneliness, proximity, waiting, aging, architectural, beauty of Bulgaria. Lisa gifted me the file as a birth present and I framed it. It hangs in our dining area where I see it daily.
“Majesty” by Elaine Elledge
Following Pippin’s arrival, I wanted to wrap myself in powerful art. This is Elaine’s reflection on her own birth and this felt so tender, so close, so raw and graphic and ripped open and beautiful. I bought it. It hangs in my bedroom.
“s[e]a monster” by David Spak
David is a colleague from way back when. He designed a series called “Type of Monster” where he matches a typeface to a letter and then creates a monster out of it. I bought R and D years ago as a Valentines present for Robbie. So with Pippin coming (whose non-internet net begins with an “e”), I ordered another one. He took inspiration from the fact that I called her “sea monster” in utero with the way her twists and turns moved my belly like the skimmed surface of water. This is also one of Pippin’s favorite art pieces, one she likes to look at every day and giggle at. I don’t know how she knows that this one is her’s—she doesn’t care for me or Robbie’s much at all!
Themes Noted and Felt
Shakespeare. Parenting. Loss. Love. Delight in excellence. Role of art in our lives. Joy amid confusion. Comedy. Laughter. Giggles. Design. Function. Influence. Becoming Self. Birth. Excellence. Surgery. Body. Time. Texture. Focus. Attention. Creation. Relationship. Vulnerability in loving. Careers and proving one’s place in the pursuit of said career. Changing careers (like Stede deciding to become a pirate lol). Home and the domestic, the search for home and the domestic. New beginnings. Making sense of loss and change. Pandemic and illness. Survival.
With Love,
Dana