Here are some lists to entertain and distract you. They are not all that interesting if you have heard any pop music this year, but they may be interesting insofar as I have not written much about liking lots of these things this year. I don't condone these lists, at the moment. I happen to have them done for two reasons, though. I asked my students to submit their top ten lists to me at the end of the year, so I thought I ought to have one done to show them in case they asked, too. Also, I got an invitation to vote in the Village Voice poll, and it excited me more than I expected it to. They never sent me a ballot, though, even after I wrote in and asked why they never sent me a ballot. (They also never wrote me back in the first place.) This crushes my spirits and makes me bitter. So, fuck the Village Voice. Now that I have said that, someone from the Village Voice will write to me explaining such and such and this and that, and I will be obligated by social conventions beyond my control to show some slight amount of remorse for saying 'fuck the Village Voice'. But fuck the Village Voice. Anyway, I don't like these lists any more but here is what they were, a few weeks ago.

Albums: 1. Sonic Youth - Murray Street. 2. Herbert - Secondhand Sounds. 3. Eminem - The Eminem Show. 4. Tom Waits - Alice. 5. Dave Holland Big Band - What Goes Around. 6. Missy Elliott - Under Construction. 7. V/A - 8 Mile OST. 8. V/A - Kompakt Total 4. 9. LL Cool J - 10. 10. N.E.R.D. - In Search Of...

Singles: 1. Eminem - "Without Me". 2. No Doubt feat. Lady Saw - "Underneath It All". 3. Louie Austen - "Hoping (Herbert's High Dub)". 4. Cee-Lo - "Gettin' Grown". 5. Nelly feat. Kelly Rowland - "Dilemma". 6. Missy Elliott feat. Ludacris - "Gossip Folks". 7. LL Cool J - "Luv U Better". 8. Nappy Roots - "Po Folks". 9. Eminem - "Lose Yourself". 10. No Doubt - "Hella Good".

Yes, I had reasons. Don't I always? Some are non-reasons, but still. Things will change a little bit but I'll try to write about these in the future.

Disconnecting is bad, I know that much. That will matter, because it's part of what I was drawing a circle around myself for. Against. The spatial metaphors get complicated there.

There are two songs I have in mind now. One is "Get By" off of Talib Kweli's last album, Quality, and the other is I think "Follow the Light" off the Dungeon Family album. The latter opens with someone saying: "people don't use our music to get high, they use our music to get by". Or maybe I'm misermembering it, perhaps selectively. It could be "people don't just use our music to get high". Either way, getting by is, I think, seriously underrated.

Also misunderstood, or maybe misrepresented. For example, as being something one does with 'inspirational' or 'uplifting' records. I realize that talking about Murray Street, or those two songs more explicitly about getting by (which I like, but which I don't really listen to looking for anything along those lines), it might seem like I'm thinking about a certain kind of record. I'm not.

There are lots of parts in Wittgenstein's later writing about psychology where he pushes the idea that we may often only talk about, for example, intentions (like, I intended you no harm, or I meant to say this, or you didn't understand what I intended, or I intended to finish that on time) when things go wrong somehow. It's only in retrospect that we attribute intentions to ourselves, or other people. Often, we go along and do things just fine, we're understood, we do what we need to, nothing goes wrong. We could talk about what our intentions were in cases like these, too, but that might lead to problems. That I'm not going to explain right now.

And the same with getting by?

In the summer, I had a job grading homework and exams for a logic course. The work required me to travel in to my office every day, yet only do two to three hours of work. If it weren't for the fact that I was more or less miserable by the time I started working, late in the summer, I might have viewed the schedule required of me as a nuisance. But, really, I had nothing else to do and was unable to do anything else, so having to come in every day and exert myself just so much actually helped me to slowly become less miserable. (Other things - people - helped too, but I can't write about them here because that would mean writing more about being miserable, and I can't do that right now. But F, E, J, and G meant more to me than they know.)

I don't like the sun. As a rule. But for a while, summer in Minneapolis was actually hot and dry instead of hot and humid, and for some reason I actually tried to leave my office one day to grade, to sit out sweating and holding down papers so they wouldn't blow away. And to look at girls (of course) and the clouds and the horizon (of course), and to just sit and be and try to be happy, or at least not miserable. I think it actually worked. Some.

I have to work up to writing about a record here eventually, but I also have to break off now because I don't know what I want to say yet, and I don't want you to think that I have a big story to tell here about why the record is my favorite record of the year. They just go together, because that's what happened.

Records that have been helping me not lose it (it is finals week):

Stereolab, Dots and Loops. Missy Elliott, Supa Dupa Fly. Herbert, Bodily Functions. The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs. Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life. Miles Davis, Filles de Kilimanjaro. Stereolab/NWW, "Animal or Vegetable". No Doubt, "Underneath It All". Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening.

Records are not enough. No further comments to follow.

Though now that I think of it I'm not sure Stephin Merritt would want any of those.

Like Bob Dylan records.

And also records. Mustn't forget records.

That is, worldly because of books.

In a suitably morose, bedroom pop way.