In loose order of reading. This year I made a vow to not let work ‘get in the way’ of reading. I was talking to a colleague about how every subject/specialism has one thing they are supposed to be really good at and actually kind of suck at. We agreed English & Creative Writing staff are often pretty bad at this thing that should be their lifeblood: reading. To prioritise reading is to affirm the necessity of thinking. I felt so burned out with the circuitry of the 2010s and the zoomageddon of lockdown, all those screens. Reading in scroll-time. I still love reading in scroll-time, but on the move only. Or in the midst of something else doing. It took me three years to get back into immersive, situated, FOCUSED reading again. I mean staying up all night to finish a book, crying at sentences, holding something to the light and putting it down and stopping and starting because you want to savour something and all the world of it following you into dreams. All reading started to plug into work. Good work. Channels. If I’m honest, I haven’t written a lot this year. I needed a break from concepts. I did a lot of editing and proofing and reading. I wrote a lot of emails and did a LOT of marking. I think of marking as writing time. It eats into writing time but it’s also a practice of sentence-making, observation, editing, rewriting. Eileen Myles says somewhere that when they write people recommendation letters and do interviews etc that’s a form of writing. So really there are very few ‘fallow’ periods. You’re always writing something to someone, for something or not. I have written over a monograph’s worth of student feedback this year, maybe more. Each paragraph of feedback is a micro-essay, a snapshot of orientation, a patchwork sample which stitches multiple discourses (genre, criteria, instinct, history) in ascent to encouragement and improvement. So all that feedback, I’m trying to say, means I also read a hell of a lot of student work. Hundreds of scripts. Marking trains my eye as a reader and writer. Still learning to toggle between different kinds of reading. Refusing the active/passive binary in favour of a continuum of generative involvement. A lot of what I read below was in-between other reading, but some of it is more explicitly ‘work’ reading. Or: reading as a way of connecting with friends, colleagues — their beautiful brains. Or: preparation for something as yet unknown. Working through personal syllabi. Refreshing the palette.
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Robert Glück, About Ed (2023)
Jacques Derrida, H.C. for Life, That Is to Say…, trans. by Laurent Milesi and Stefan Herbrechter (2006)
Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller: Tales Out of Loneliness, trans. by Sam Dolbear, Esther Leslie, Sebastian Truskolaski, Antonia Grousdanidou (2023)
Marie Darrieussecq, Sleepless, trans. by Penny Hueston (2021/2023)
Joey Frances, Takeaway Night (2024)
Teju Cole, Black Paper (2021)
George Saunders, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain (2021)
Megan Ridgeway, The Magpie (2024)
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, trans. by John E. Woods (1924)
Andrew O’Hagan, Mayflies (2021)
Tabitha Lasley, Sea State (2021)
Zadie Smith, Intimations (2020)
Jean Genet, Prisoner of Love, trans. by Barbara Bray(1986)
Donna Tartt, The Secret History (1992)
Oli Hazzard, Sleepers Awake (2024)
Courtney Bush, Every Book is About the Same Thing (2021)
Hélène Cixous, Abstracts and Brief Chronicles of the Time, trans. by Beverley Bie Brahic (2016)
McKenzie Wark, Raving (2023)
Rachael Allen, God Complex (2024)
Elle Nash, Deliver Me (2024)
Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus (2021)
Andrew Meehan, Instant Fires (2022)
Michael Eigen, Ecstasy (2001)
Noah Ross, The Dogs (2024)
Jennifer Soong, Comeback Death (2024)
Barbara Browning, The Gift (2017)
Cynthia Cruz, The Melancholia of Class (2021)
Courtney Bush, I Love Information (2023)
Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star (1977)
Barbara Browning, The Correspondence Artist (2011)
Hilary White, Holes (2024)
Laynie Browne, Everyone and Her Resemblances (2024)
Deborah Meadows, Representing Absence (2004)
Holly Pester, The Lodger (2024)
Terese Marie Mailhot, Heartberries (2018)
Kim Gordon, Girl in a Band (2015)
Lauren Levin, Nightwork (2021)
Oddný Eir, Land of Love and Ruins, trans. by Philip Roughton (2016)
Danielle Dutton, Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other (2024)
Elvia Wilk, Oval (2019)
Nisha Ramayya, Fantasia (2024)
Joanne Kyger, On Time (2015)
Jean Day, Late Human (2021)
Lisa Jarnot, Black Dog Songs (2003)
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (1980)
Mariana Enriquez, Things We Lost in the Fire (2016)
Ben Smith, Doggerland (2019)
Ricky Monaghan Brown, Terminal (2024)
Wendy Lotterman, A Reaction to Someone Coming In (2023)
Joseph Mosconi, Fright Catalog (2013)
Tao Lin, Taipei (2013)
Haytham El Wardany, The Book of Sleep, trans. by Robin Moger (2020)
Lucy Ives, Life is Everywhere (2022)
Maria Hardin, Cute Girls Watch When I Eat Aether (2024)
Brian Whitener, The 90s (2022)
Jamie Bunyor, A stone worn smooth (2022)
Lucy Ives, The Hermit (2016)
Brenda Hillman, Cascadia (2001)
Bhanu Kapil, Incubation: a space for monsters (2006)
Peter Reich, A Book of Dreams (1973)
Steve Orth, The Life and Times of Steve Orth (2020)
Lindsey Boldt, Weirding (2022)
Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T. (1970)
Hannah Levine, Greasepaint (2024)
Joe Luna, Old News (2024)
Maggie O’Sullivan, earth (2024)
Ian Macartney, sun-drunk (2024)
Sébastien Bovie, Longing for Lo-fi: Glimpsing back through technology (2023)
Steven Zultanski, Relief (2021)
Lionel Ruffel, I Can’t Sleep. trans. by Claire Finch(2021)
Noémi Lefebvre, The Poetics of Work, trans. by Sophie Lewis (2021)
Cynthia Cruz, Disquieting: Essays on Silence (2019)
Marie Buck and Matthew Walker, Spoilers (2024)
Ed Steck, David Horvitz Newly Found Bas Jan Ader Film (2021)
Ammiel Alcalay and Joanne Kyger, Joanne Kyger: Letters to & From (2012)
Lyn Hejinian, Fall Creek (2024)
Etel Adnan and Laure Adler, The Beauty of Light: Interviews, trans. by Ethan Mitchell (2024)
Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries (2022)
Stephen Collis and Jordan Scott, Decomp (2013)
Miye Lee, Dallergut Dream Department Store, trans. by Sandy Joosun Lee (2023)
Barrett Watten, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, Ted Pearson, The Grand Piano: Part 1 (2006/2010)
Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)
Ian Macartney, Darksong (2024)
Chris Tysh, Continuity Girl (2000)
Barrett Watten, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, Ted Pearson, The Grand Piano: Part 2 (2007/2017)
Andrew Durbin, Mature Themes (2014)
Johanne Lykke Holm, Strega, trans. by Saskia Vogel (2022)
Anthony Low, The Georgic Revolution (1985)
Robin Blaser, The Fire: Collected Essays of Robin Blaser (2006)
Daniel Feinberg, Some Sun (2024)
Maria Hardin, Sick Story (2022)
Lieke Marsman, The Opposite of a Person, trans. by Sophie Collins (2022)
Nadia de Vries, Thistle, trans. by Sarah Timmer Harvey (2024)
Rodge Glass, Joshua in the Sky: A Blood Memoir (2024)
Sarah Moss, My Good Bright Wolf (2024)
Giovanbattista Tusa, Terra Cosmica (2024)
Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad, Poor Artists (2024)
Andrew Meehan, Best Friends (2025)
Courtney Bush, Isn’t this Nice? (2019)
Meghann Boltz, Cautionary Tale (2021)
Ariana Reines, Wave of Blood (2024)
Dalia Neis, The Swarm (2022)
Ian Macartney, Secret Agent Orca Twelve (2024)
Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine (1988)
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (1963)
Molly Brodak, A Little Middle of the Night (2010)
Bernadette Mayer, Midwinter Day (1982)
Anna Kavan, Ice (1967)
Molly Brodak, Bandit (2016)
Charles Bernstein, Content’s Dream: Essays 1975-1984 (1986)
Friends, I was so close to not doing one of these this year, but my bad case of archive fever was too strong to resist. For the first time since the depressive loops of my early 2010s, I’ve really struggled with music this year. Yo-yo’d between extremely intense relations to music (listening to Grimes’ ‘IDORU’ three times in a row in spring’s post-cycle endorphin twilight, crying to Mogwai in the supermarket, thrash dancing to old Boiler Room sets alone in my bedroom, knocking everything over, basically living inside Phoebe Bridgers’ ‘Garden Song’) and a very numb sense of trepidation about listening altogether. Have gone whole weeks without listening to anything except ’10 hours sounds of a meadow in june’ on youtube. Have gone whole months without noticing new releases. Music has anchored the year in strange ways. I think about the man in my block who kept singing/screaming Oasis’ ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’ in the shared garden, and did this several times throughout lockdown 1.0. I was so concerned. Boards of Canada albums I fell into, haphazardly studying. The conditions of lockdown, not to mention PhD and other pressures, have slowed down my output of published music writing, but I continued to diarise my listening habits and it was a pleasure to write on occasion for GoldFlakePaint, Secret Meetingand other places on new releases from Jason Molina, Phoebe Bridgers, Katie Dey, Superpuppet, Fair Mothers, Modern Studies. As ever, you can dive into the music journo archive here.
What follows is a selection of albums I’ve managed to dip in and out of, form some kind of bond with or which otherwise stayed with me. One of music’s main attractions this year was its provision of sociality: whether through late-night Instagram DMs or seeing everyone’s Spotify listening (pale vicarious experience of sonic simultaneity as commons), running Pop Matters workshops with the inimitable Conner Milliken or losing myself in heartfelt comment sections, music was a kind of touchpoint for contact when other kinds of talk or response seemed impossible. That you could screenshare FKA twigs’ ‘Cellophane’ video and all silently hold in tears while free-writing together on Zoom, that you could send some kind of bedroom performance to a friend when words were scarce, that you could buy stuff for Bandcamp Fridays and feel like you were doing *something* for artists while our livelihoods were otherwise being stripped away by lockdowns, recession and endless government (in)decisions. That you could send lyrics in acts of solidarity. That you could sit round a fire in the Trossachs and listen to ‘Farewell Transmission’ with smoke in your eyes or be in Hackney with a heatwave and Lucinda Williams; that you could cycle past psych buskers on Kelvin Way, or lie on the floor with Grouper recordings from 2018; that you could breeze down Sauchiehall listening to ‘Gasoline’ in a world without cars; that you were lucky enough to see your cousin, Hannah Lou Clark, play The Hug and Pint before lockdown; that you could micro-analyse Angel Olsen remixes with Douglas, lamenting another postponed gig or remembering an old one; that you could walk yourself into autumn melancholy with Grace Cummings, longing for the wind and sea; that you could read Amy Key’s excellent essay on Joni Mitchell’s Blue and remember the first of January, sober as a trembling bell and listening on repeat as everything refused to wake, and wine. Admittedly, I may have missed many significant things. Tell me!
It’s not all about realising you can get 10% off at Topshop again (although my ID photo is so bad this year I’m no sure I can brandish it in public). I didn’t know what to expect, going back to uni after a year out. It all happened so fast. Working for over a year as a full time waitress, doing 35-55 hour weeks, I didn’t really give myself the headspace to prepare myself for what uni entails. Despite knowing for several months that I had secured my place, a Masters in MLitt Modernities at Glasgow Uni just seemed something far in the distance, the uncertain plane which I would embark upon after an endless summer.
No matter how it feels at the time, summer is never endless. August was a strange old month, and horrible, tragic things kept happening around me. Amidst all that, it didn’t seem real, making my way through the infernal labyrinth of MyCampus; applying for scholarships, spending inordinate time staring at screens again, making lists of things to be done. I found myself in a room up high in the Boyd Orr building, listening to the inimitable and infectiously enthusiastic Rob Maslen give a speech about the strange history of these hallowed walls; being introduced to the university as if it were the first time all over again.
It is weird going back to the same university after a year out, especially if you’ve not gone far. I walked up the hill listening to Tigermilk feeling blissfully like a total Glasgow cliché and it was like nothing had changed at all; it was my first seminar of the semester and I felt bright and hopeful. Glasgow gifted us with a particularly gorgeous autumn, trees bronzing languidly into darkening violet as twilight fell and I was still sitting by the fountain, making notes on poetry. I tried to take walks in Kelvingrove as often as possible. Quite quickly, however, the daylight ran out. Nights drew in. Still stuck in waitressing mode, such thing as a sleeping pattern proving an elusive remnant lost somewhere back in 2015, I found myself going to sleep at 5am every night, often staying in the library till everyone on the floor had left and the lights kept going out automatically. There I was, alone in the dark in front of a dull-glowing screen (though one must note the upgrade in PCs at Glasgow Uni Library, which are much preferable). It’s easy to spiral into that maddening routine, trying to do all the reading, make notes on everything. I’ve never been a meticulous note-taker, not by a long shot, but I like to handwrite things and have a tangible record of ideas and theorists and possible avenues for further study.
I would walk home at 2am, stumbling tired-eyed through Kelvinside, hoping for a glimpse of the river, some tangible reminder of nature. How long had it been since I’d seen the sea? During reading week, I allowed myself a cheeky day trip to Arran, which felt so unreal it was almost magic. The days passed and ideas started to percolate in my head. The power of procrastination unleashed itself again. I did more creative writing in the past three months than probably I’ve done all year. I guess the more you read, the more you want to write. I sat on level 11 and watched the sunset over Park Circus, making airy, vague notes about queer temporality and thing theory on a 60p sketchpad. I went to seminars and was reminded of how nice it is to listen to people share a subject, to listen to experts talk with passion about something they must have covered a thousand times before and yet still they can find fresh things to say about it. To actually talk to said experts about such interesting topics (instead of merely serving them glasses of wine and plates of fish, as the Oran Mor waitress will often do for GU academics). Although a bit scary at first (not least because I had a screenwriter and published author in one of my seminars!), it was nice to actually have proper formal discussions about books again. Often we veered slightly off-topic, with Trump becoming the proverbial wall against which we hit our heads in frustration, but everything felt prescient, useful. I went to visiting speaker seminars with the likes of Stephen Ross, Graeme Macdonald and Darren Anderson, who talked about all manner of interesting topics: Beckett’s invention of the teenager, petroculture and the politics of space and architecture. Having been at Glasgow Uni four and a half years now, I was still struggling to find half the rooms and buildings I needed to get to.
I went to a couple of nights at The Poetry Club in Finnieston and actually read poems aloud to real humans. Got a few wee things published here and there. Went to a ceilidh. Realised that I want to do lots and lots of creative writing and really try and learn from people. Started writing music reviews for RaveChild which has been really rewarding, not least because it’s encouraged me to broaden my musical horizons and go to more gigs. Started tweeting again. I managed to go to a few Creative Writing Society workshops, wrote a collaborative sonnet and played around with tarot cards. Went to Creative Conversations at the Chapel and saw very smart and fascinating people talk about writing: Amy Liptrot, Liz Lochhead, Mallachy Tallack, for example. Developed many creative crushes on various academics.
Necronaut: Tom McCarthy looking fit in flip flops. Image Source: Fitzcarraldo
My stress levels tend to rise in tandem with the library’s rising busyness and so I stopped going altogether about a month ago. I’ve more or less forgotten what sunlight is, except for the wee slant that comes through the window of the building in Professors’ Square where every Thursday we had our Modern Everyday seminar. I sit in bed everyday and try and write and write. I spent the first four weeks of this semester trying to read a section fromThe Derrida Wordbookeveryday, until my brain started to melt a bit too much and I was thinking in riddles. One day I was so tired I woke up at 10.46 for an 11am seminar but somehow still made it on time, looking like something the cat had dragged in. I tried to get my head round Blanchot, and even went to a reading group where we poured over The Space of Literature and maybe I came out with some sense of the link between writing and death. I wrote reflective journals for my core course seminars and every time came back to Tom McCarty references. The man and his ideas are just so seductive.
Coming to the end of my first semester as a postgrad student, I’m not sure how I feel. I didn’t wash my hair for nearly four weeks. On the one hand, my brain feels heavier, I’m exhausted, probably much less fit; I’ve lost contact with a few friends. On the other, I’ve got ideas all the time, I’m meeting new people, I can understand a little bit of Heidegger. I’m extremely lucky to be able to study at all, especially on such a well-run, exciting course like Modernities.
Cutlery: an everlasting source of inspiration
Things I miss about waitressing:
Being on my feet all day. Coming home feeling like an honest hard day’s work has been done, that I really earned that massive block of chocolate.
Gossip. Constant streams of salacious stories.
The visceral fuck-strewn quality of hospitality patter.
Unlimited access to coffee at the point of need.
Making strangers happy through simple acts of kindness.
Being with friends all day and plotting grand schemes.
Minor dramas.
Telling ghost stories to tourists.
Having a reason to put makeup on in the morning/having a reason to get up in the morning before 10.
Spontaneous drinking.
That amazing post-coffee rush feeling when you know your break is due and you’ve got a good book on you.
Finishing a shift and leaving it at the door for a Netflix binge.
Meeting new people more or less constantly.
Having actual muscles from plate carrying.
Playing the game of concocting life stories for strangers.
Teamwork! (which is sorely missed on an English Lit degree…)
Solving completely unsolvable problems, like trying to find and polish 50 champagne flutes in five minutes, or sourcing pathologically evasive salt shakers, or convincing the kitchen not to slaughter you because your table’s arrived 45 minutes late, just in time to clash with every other function in the building.
Unexpectedly deep conversations about love, life, literature, music, family, mental illness, travel, astrophysics, the ethics of illustration, Tumblr, queer theory, feminism, television, childhood memories and sleep deprivation all while polishing cutlery.
The thrill of days off.
Going part-time, I still get some of these fun things, and less of the bad things. Maybe that’s a nice balance. The Christmas period is always a test for our sanity and endurance. Still, hopefully the feeling of handing in my essays will get me through the rest of the season, and if not god knows I have enough books to read to escape into! Maybe I should tidy my room first.
mariaology 