i never did one of those 2015 year in review kind of things so here goes nothing
2015 was actually a huge year for me, quite possibly the most important year of my life so far.
so i mean the biggest thing that happened this year is i got engaged to my best friend which is super cool. i asked hannah to marry me on a hike in a canyon in shenandoah. its really nice to have such a definite relationship status. i have a lot of friends who are opposed to getting married and the more i think about that the less i understand it. not that i am judging anyone about that, but for me its the nicest feeling to know that you and your partner are committed to each other and want the same things. maybe i was just bad at relationships or something, but the fear i used to have of being alone again at any moment is gone.
probably the next biggest thing is moving out from my parents. i suppose i moved out briefly for my first semester of college and then returned, but i dont really consider that truly moving out, especially considering the number of people who go to school god knows where and come back to live with their parents. anyway i live in an apartment attached to a gas station surrounded by corn fields with my fiancee and blind cat. its great.
probably an equally big thing is that i stated at the university of delaware in the direct to phd english program. it was more work than i could imagine but was really worth it. i have never read so much in my whole life. it was like professional book club. i was pretty happy with the term papers i wrote. i wrote one on the gender implications of humoral theory in shakespeare’s history plays and another on the detrimental attitudes taken toward the environment in american tall tales. i also presented a paper at a conference for eighteenth century studies on william bartram and new materialist theory. (if anyone wants to read any of these i would be happy to send it to you)
musically this year was somewhat disappointing. ratburn only put out one album, but i do think it was probably the best we have ever put out so i supose i cant be that disappointed. we played a few good shows. its just very hard to record anything now that i am busy with grad school and steven is in up state new york for months at a time. whats worse is that our parents moved out of our old house so we no longer have our home studio. luckily though in the past couple weeks we have actually managed to get some recording done so keep your eyes and ears open for that.
i probably went to fewer shows than ever before this year which i am ok with in my old age. i have a bed time. but the shows i did go to were fantastic. my brother and i went to see ariel pink and it was one of the tightest and most high energy performances i have ever seen. i wasnt sure what to expect because ariel has said and done some questionable things, but when you see him with his purple studded high heels and bleached jeans holding a guitar that isn’t plugged in it becomes very obvious how much its all an absurd performance. the boundary between authenticity and satire was blurred to oblivion. another notable show of this year was lilys. i went with joe and it was somewhat of last minute decision, but one of the best decisions i have ever made. it was at the lithuanian music hall which is the coolest venue i think i have ever been in the city. they played all the hits that have meant so much to me in the past couple years and i felt like i was somehow transported back to 1992. also as far as i can tell they had every type of electric guitar present in the band: hollow body, solid body, bass, baritone, 12 string, pedal steel. that meant something to me i guess. i also finally got to see no age and all of my high school energy flooded back to me in a storm. it was great.
some books i read this year worth mentioning: leavings by wendell berry, american primitive and dog songs by mary oliver, tao te ching, the 1826 journal of john james audubon, the outermost house by henry beston, the song of hiawatha by longfellow ------- there are a lot more but i won’t really go into stuff i read for school because its just too much. so yeah this was a year where most of the stuff i read on my own was poetry or some dude writing about nature.
i didnt spend a lot of time listening to or looking for new music this year but one album that someone surprised me that i listened to again and again was sauna by mount eerie. it sounds like a sauna feels. other than that i listened to a lot of finnish folk music, hindu classical music, drone, tom petty, and george harrison.
i dont know if i saw any 2015 movies to be honest.
that probably mostly covers it.
prguitarman
yousharknotpass
gamechangershow
vaporwave
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
