I’ve never been a big ‘documenter’ or ‘archiver’ of things. I think that’s because I know I’ll miss stuff, so the lack of completeness makes it less important some how. But I can’t be sure. I occasionally tend to look back, just not very far, so, under the influence of a friend, I’m giving this yearly wrap-up thing a go to see if it changes anything.
When I looked back, I saw some really weird things. I’ve accidentally consumed a lot about grief, I’ve helped 5 friends think and talk through mid-life crisis questions, I’ve accidentally read 4 books authored by Japanese women, I’ve discovered a deep interest in poetry, I’ve completed 3 picture books, celebrated 10-years of marriage, seen my artwork exhibited publicly, road-tripped with my parents, and I’ve had some incredibly beautiful and important friendships grow. I’ve learned not to see any of these as ‘achievements’ or ‘accomplishments’, they’re just how I’ve spent my time, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Things that made me cry
When I read Charles Dickens’ The Tale of Two Cities, I cried. I was in my early 20s. It was the first book that made me cry and there had been no other book since. In fact, it’s really unusual for me to cry about anything really, so, to have so many tears this year has been a completely new experience. To be honest, it actually felt really great to be moved in such a profound way by literature and art.
NB. I know I said grief was a surprise to me this year, but perhaps I should just avoid picking up books that have people who look like they’re in incredible pain on the cover?
Between a Wolf and a Dog by Georgia Blain
Georgia Blain’s writing was the absolute stand out for me this year. It is beautiful in the most heart-wrenching of ways. When I finished Between a Wolf and a Dog, it became abundantly clear to me what a ‘real writer’ is capable of and made the gap between my own writing and ‘real’ writing starkly obvious. It’s a beautifully woven story about motherhood, sisterhood, marriage, forgiveness, and grief which gives such immense opportunity to explore the depth and perspective of characters that she builds so luminously, with so few words. It’s rich with tenderness, empathy and understanding. Also, that cover!!
A Little Life by Hanya Yanigihara
When I posted online that I was about to read this book, I was inundated with really ‘supportive’ messages from strangers and friends like, “OMG, THIS WILL DESTROY YOU!” It was given to me by the wonderful Jayde from Mary Martin Bookshop who I would let curate my entire life if she had the time. Her reading taste is just exceptional. A Little Life is a beautiful, deep exploration of privilege, grief and friendship that, well, will probably destroy you.
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
I totally judged this book by its cover, which is what made me pick it up. I had no idea what it was about and although it sometimes felt ambling and slow, it was incredibly Dickensian in that it all just came together at the end. It orbits ideas about memory, loss and how we experience reality, but not in the way you think. I don’t want to say too much, because it’s the experience of reading this from cover to cover that makes The Memory Police so special.
Fleabag
Just incredible, more on this later.
Things that made me laugh
The problem with consuming so much content digitally is that I can’t look at a bookshelf and get a quick overview of everything that’s gone into my brain this year. But, 2019 was the year I discovered graphic novels and the art of the comic strip. These mediums are, right now, inherently non-digital. So, it just means I have a tax-deductible and artistically valid reason to buy more physical books.
Moomin by Tove Jansson
“I only want to live in peace, plant potatoes, and dream!” That pretty much sums Moomin up. Having been addicted to the surrealist animism of Miyazaki’s Ghibli world for many years, Moomin stepped up to the plate and knocked me out the park. It’s gentle, sweet, slow and completely engrossing. I’d be blessed if I could manage access to at least a sliver of Tove Jansson’s imagination.
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson: The complete collection
Imagine having to come up with a hilarious joke, every single day, for almost 10 years. That’s over 3500+ jokes, all in about 3-panels. Calvin and Hobbes is a masterclass in so many things. What it means to be a professional cartoonist, a craftsperson, a long-form and short-form storyteller, a philosophical thinker, a cultural critic, and despite the global success of the strip, how to say F*$@! You to licensing your work because the world doesn’t need more lunchboxes or stickers, or tea-towels with your characters embroidered on them. I have so much respect for Bill and his work. His artwork is just stunning, gentle, creative, delicate and beautiful. The moments when I’ve pored over this collection have been nearing on blissful.
Fleabag
Yep, it’s in the section too. More on this later.
The Good Place
The Good Place took me by surprise. I settled in to watch what I thought I would be a pretty simple bit of fluffy TV that I could have on while I did other things. Little did I know I was in for a much more existential journey. For me, it was TV writing at its best – using humour to disarm and relax people so they’re more receptive to the deeper questions this show asks of the viewer. What does it mean to be good? Can you change who you are? Are we all born with a particular personality or are we products of the people and places that touch our lives? Not only that, but The Good Place touches on diversity, anxiety, class, and religiosity with such expert timing, nuance and curiosity that you can’t help but want to find out where it’s all going to go.
Things that made me think
Those who know me know that I think, a lot. And if the theme of what I’ve been thinking about could be summed up in a word, that word is diversity. I’ve spent a lot of time actively curating my social media so that the walls of my online bubble are thin enough to easily jump through. I’ve spent time actively seeking out people and types of thinking that are in direct opposition to my world view or the status quo. I’ve tried hard to truly listen to what people who aren’t me have to say. Turns out, all of this is really bloody hard. But, I can feel my brain being moulded into something new. The Matt I knew on Jan 1 2019 is a different person to the Matt I now wake up to at the end of 2019, and it’s partly to do with the things that really made me think.
New Philosopher Magazine
A small press out of Tasmania is producing what I think is one of the best magazines in existence right now. It’s beautiful to look at and it’s completely changed the way I think about so much of life. Addressing the vast complexity around questions of change, death, economic growth, and what it means to live a life in balance, New Philosopher feels like the most important thing I’m reading right now, given the stage of life I’m in. It had been years since I’d engaged with a magazine format which, for this type of writing, is completely perfect. A dip-in dip-out experience that plants a new and very valuable seed in my brain every time I pick it up.
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
A few years ago, I was reading a lot of cultural criticism, but the essays were always through the narrow lens of my profession, or, even worse, the tall white men who typically dominate the platform. I’ve been reluctant to re-engage with essays because I’ve fallen so deeply for fiction and it’s power to massage not just my brain, but my interiority. But, on a recommendation of a friend, Trick Mirror arrived and reminded me what an essay (or many essays) are capable of that fiction just cannot always accomplish. Jia’s writing is incredibly engaging, insightful and commanding. She writes with equal parts authority and humility, weaving her personal stories and deep, factual research together with ease. Admittedly, the essays are SO good that this book will see me through 2020 (I’ve only read half so far), because like with most brilliant essayists, their words need time so that your brain can re-adjust itself along the way.
Twitter: Mariah Driver and Aubrey Blanche
As my relationship with the toxic aspects of social media evolved this year, I’ve found a few shining lights on Twitter. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort curating who is in my feed as I try my best to continually burst the bubbles that the algorithms are creating on my behalf. Mariah Driver and Aubrey Blanche are simply exceptional people. Whether it’s their own writing or the stuff they amplify, both of them are making me a better human. I’ve learned SO much about how to talk about diversity and inclusion at work and about the lived experiences of historically-discriminated-against people. I’ve got a long way to go, but 2019 felt like the first baby steps toward a deeper understanding of people who aren’t me.
Adam Grant’s Work/Life
I can’t remember how I found out about this podcast but boy it’s been insightful. Adam is an organizational psychologist and, in this podcast, he goes inside some of the most interesting and progressive workplaces on the planet to analyse, discuss, and share the unique ways in which these workplaces are doing some amazing things. One of my favourites was his insight into Pixar and how they use the power of a bunch of people who didn’t fit in, to make one of the most popular animated films of all time.
Fleabag
Yep, here too. I know. Just keep reading.
Laugh & Think & Cry
There are some inputs that I simply couldn’t categorize. It doesn’t make them more or less important, but as I’m writing this to my future self, it’s important they’re marked as beginning in 2019. They’ve been transformative.
Poetry
This year has been the year that I’ve prioritised poetry in my life. (It still feels weird to say). I’ve always seen poetry as something of an ‘other’. Not for me. Who’s got the time? Or the patience? Who can be bothered, right?
But I started. I started small, based on the advice of my incredibly generous and knowledgeable literary agent. She’s been feeding me books for years that, to be honest, have largely sat on the bookshelf. So it wasn’t until she said, “poetry is like music, you don’t need to know how to play the cello to know that you like the sound of it,” that the floodgate released. I was no longer trapped behind the idea of poetry.
Poetry became about a gentle exploration of the written language. I would not like all poetry, and that’s OK, I just needed to find out what I liked. Two books gave me a way in – A Book of Luminous Things and Life Support: 100 poems to reach for on dark nights. It was so special to have this experience that I even spent time writing about how others might find their way into this magical world of language.
Since then, I’ve started an online poetry archive called Words Like This with my wife to capture and present poetry in a beautiful way in the hope that it will encourage others to do the same. It means we’re both travelling on this journey through language together and it’s created a forum for us to talk in a way that we’ve never talked before. This year, the poems I still think about on a weekly are basis are Moss Gathering, The Social Behaviour of Minted Peas, and Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.
Fleabag
OK, so now it’s time to talk about Fleabag. I won’t go into too much depth about how I only watched this a few months ago, whilst staying in a prison for 5 days, because that’s a whole other story, but the timing is important. Fleabag, in a single show, seems to have summed up my entire year. It acted like a gravitational nucleus, bringing together so many thoughts and feelings that had been orbiting my brain for the year.
Fleabag seems to have covered everything. From my weird obsession with grief, family, marriage, and parenthood this year, to my growing understanding of what it’s like to live in the world as someone who doesn’t have the same privilege as me. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s writing had me completely engrossed with anticipation; there were moments that I found myself laughing almost hysterically and, in the next second, in tears from sadness. It was SO intense, and SO fast, that it begged a second and third watch (the fourth one will likely happen in 2020). How anyone writes something with such intensity across the entire emotional spectrum, with such wit, such poignancy and truth, is completely beyond me. It’s been utterly inspirational, both as a professional writer and just another human trying to make it through life with the same fears, dreams, and most importantly, a sense of hope, as everyone else.
Of all the lessons this year, Fleabag probably taught me the most important and simplest one – speak less and listen more, even if I’m not a Hot Priest.