Sarah Fonder

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[sarahfonder]

SOUNDTRACK TO 2016

2016 was... well, pretty inarguably hard on most people-- myself very much included-- but looking back, I’m surprised how much enjoyment I managed to pull out of it. I guess that’s the most any of us can hope for from any year, the pointlessness of measuring time be damned. Here are the songs that got me through 2016.

Curve “Fait Accompli”

Broadcast “Goodbye Girls”

The Smiths “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”

Talk Talk “Life’s What You Make It”

Julia Holter “Lucette Stranded on the Island”

America “Ventura Highway”

David Bowie “Soul Love”

Pat Benatar “We Belong”

Googie “Refresh”

Car Seat Headrest “Cosmic Hero”

Click the picture or the link here to download.

[sarahfonder]

Life sometimes fails to flee from the shades of death. It allows them to grow within it, to the point of exhaustion, to the point of death itself. The constant recurrence of abominated elements, the opposite of those of which the impulses of life are directed, exists to a mitigated extent in normal conditions-- to an extent too mitigated for the shades of death to be reborn in spite of ourselves. We must still revive them voluntarily-- in a way which corresponds precisely to our needs (I refer to the shades, not to death itself). It is to this purpose that we put the arts: they manage, on the stage, to arouse in us the highest possible degree of anxiety. The arts-- or at least some of the arts-- incessantly evoke these derangements, these lacerations, this decline which our entire activity endeavors to avoid. Indeed, comic art itself confirms this theory. However little weight the elements which we want to eliminate from our life, but which the arts bring back to us, may have, they are nevertheless the signs of death. If we laugh or if we cry it is because, as victims of a game or depositories of a secret, death momentarily appears light to us. That does not mean it has lost its horror: it simply means that for an instant we have risen above it. The vital impulses provoked in this way no doubt lack practical consequences: they do not have that convincing power of impulses which stem from aversion and which reminds us that work is necessary. Nevertheless they have a value. Laughter teaches us that when we flee wisely from the elements of death, we merely want to preserve life. When we enter the regions that wisdom tells us to avoid, on the other hand, we really live it. The folly of laughter is superficial. It burns as it comes into contact with death; from the symbols of the emptiness of death it draws a heightened consciousness of being. As it violently introduces something which we should have cast aside, it brings us out, for a time, from the impasse in which life is enclosed by those whose only concern is to preserve it.

Georges Bataille, Literature and Evil

[sarahfonder]

SOUNDTRACK TO 2015

2015 was, without a doubt, the hardest year of my life so far. It was also the year I grew up, fell in love, and came closest to understanding myself. Here are the songs that got me through it.

Erykah Badu “Penitentiary Philosophy”

Big Sean “I Don’t Fuck With You”

Arrested Development “Tennessee”

Colleen Green “Cujo”

Colourbox “Tarantula (12″ Version 1)”

Mazzy Star “Look on Down from the Bridge”

Open Mike Eagle “Ziggy Starfish (Anxiety Raps)”

Parquet Courts “Uncast Shadow of a Southern Myth”

Colleen Green “Whatever I Want”

Ballet School “Cherish”

Duran Duran “Ordinary World”

Jeremy Gluck “Gallery Wharf”

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark “Of All the Things We’ve Made”

Click the picture or the link here to download.

[sarahfonder]

Just because you know where your arm is broken doesn't mean you know how to fix it.

Fiona Maazel, Woke Up Lonely

[sarahfonder]

I teach memoir writing occasionally. I always ask my students to answer two questions about the work they and their peers have written: 'What happened in this story?' and 'What is this story about?' It's a useful way to see what's there. A lot of times, it isn't much. Or rather, it's a bunch of what happened that ends up being nothing at all. You get no points for the living, I tell my students. It isn't enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of what the story means.

Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things

[sarahfonder]

SOUNDTRACK TO 2014

2014 has been one of the craziest years of my life. I felt very powerful and very weak, experienced dizzying highs and got knocked on my ass a few times. It has been terrible and exhilarating and the best shitty year of my life to date. Here are the songs that got me through it.

Kendrick Lamar "Backseat Freestyle"

Daughn Gibson "Phantom Rider"

Queen "I Want to Break Free"

Blondie "Dreaming"

Lil Wayne "Let the Beat Build"

Grimes "Go (feat. Blood Diamonds)"

Bjork "Joga"

Billy Idol "Eyes Without a Face"

Hall & Oates "Rich Girl"

Mannequin Pussy "Piss Drinker"

Steve Winwood "Higher Love"

Tacocat "Bridge to Hawaii"

Waxahatchee "Lively"

Zola Jesus "Dust"

Delta Spirit "California"

Click the picture or the link here to download.

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wait is it 2015 in australia already?? wtf slow down

[sarahfonder]

If you're looking for something to hold your attention on these slow, weird last work days of the year, I highly recommend reading Forming by Jesse Moynihan (Adventure Time). It's basically super outlandish, funny mythological fan fiction your dorky little brother might've drawn if he were really into the classics. You can tell Moynihan has a genuine zeal for the batshit nature of religious literature, and he has a lot of fun rebuilding and subverting some of earth's weirdest potential origin stories. It's profane, graphic, super intricate, really funny, and often gorgeously illustrated. Its last installment, Forming III, will start in 2015, and I can't wait to see where it all goes.

Read all of Forming online now or buy it in print here and here.

[volodena]

Opus III - It’s a Fine Day (1991)

[sarahfonder]

Let me make this clear: I'm not difficult, I'm just 'bout my business I'm not into fake industry parties and fake agendas Rock with people for how they make me feel, not what they give me Even the ones that hurt me the most, I still show forgiveness

[sarahfonder]

I think 15-year-old theatre weirdo me would be SO REVVED about how everything is going right now, so I try to remember—even when I'm stressed—that that girl is me, and I should be revved too.

Monica Heisey, "How Have You Made Yourself Proud This Year?" (The Hairpin)

[sarahfonder]

[doubleclutch]

[sarahfonder]

I think becoming a personal brand was uncomfortable for me. I found it on some level dehumanizing and disassociating. To put it in the most rudimentary Marxist terms: I had become alienated from the product, and the product was me.

Erika M. Anderson, "Back to the Void"

[sarahfonder]

EMA, "Back to the Void"

[sarahfonder]

My biggest successes of the year are all intrinsically tied to failure. In 2014, I stopped letting my intense fear of failing have complete ownership over my actions. I pursued professional, creative and romantic long-shots with intensity, poured everything I had into them, failed repeatedly, and somehow managed to survive the whole thing and (most amazingly) grow as a human being. It was a fucking brutal learning curve, but in the end, I'm immensely proud of the bravery it took to be vulnerable, try for the sake of trying and fail completely. This is why I'm Woman of the Year (and the proud Queen of Failure).

Madeleine Davies, "How Have You Made Yourself Proud This Year?" (The Hairpin)

[sarahfonder]

I don't take anything personally anymore because there's nothing special about your crazy when everyone everywhere is out of their fucking minds. I am grateful to my vast stores of procedural memory for knowing how to deal with every possible human indignity. I do not need to learn those lessons again. My governing principle isn't to acquire things or get rich or be known, it's to first do no harm. When you're being buried alive in other people, it takes real work to be kind. Being kind is how you get happy. Being happy is how you make work that's worth it. If you can only make valuable work when you're sad, do something else.

Mary H.K. Choi, Oh, Never Mind