It’s that time of the year when retrospectives and resolutions are popping up all over on social media. What did 2022 bring? What will be new in 2023? And how many of my friends got married? I wrote a brief reflection on this past year in my “Christmas Card”, but in the spirit of the season, there are a few loose ends to tie up before I can let the year well and truly die.
Quotes
First, quotes! Here are some of my favorite sound bites since last time’s roundup.
Dr. Smith, my historical linguistics professor “This is the comfort zone, and this is the wheee! Zone.” “Let's have fun, fring frang frung.” “If you get stuck... unclench your brain.” Brandon, my everything else in linguistics professor “Denmark doesn't have letters; it has dental schwa, velar schwa, palatalized schwa...” “Ontology is talking in circles. That's what the O stands for.” “I just called the therapist on both of you.” “My body is a machine that accepts ice cream and spits out syntactically allowable but semantically useless strings.” “Are you familiar with the term twinkle daddy?” My other friend of whom these quotes may give the wrong impression “I need to make a list of my psychopathic tendencies.” (tired) “I would not pass a sobriety test right now.” “How do you harass a male?” (Do you have impostor syndrome?) “I don't think so. Maybe I should?” And my middle-aged co-worker Sherri “My children are bound by tradition. They are sentimental fools.”
Music
Last year, I picked an artist of the year (Parachute) and album of the year from a different artist (The Struggle, Tenth Avenue North). I’ll continue that tradition.
I think my album of the year was chosen for me when my Spotify Wrapped revealed that three out of my top five most listened songs were all from the Broadway cast recording of Once: A New Musical (based on the movie Once with Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová). I’m beyond hyped to see it performed live at the Hale in Orem this summer and may have it on repeat until then.
As for artist of the year, I really fell in love with The Airborne Toxic Event this year. I discovered them last year after reading the book they took their name from (White Noise by Don DeLillo) in my humanities class. I think there are basically two types of bands. There are bands who are there to have a good time and get their listeners to have a good time—and you can tell they’re having fun on stage (O.A.R., Marianas Trench, Parachute). Then there are bands that play from a deep place of emotion, and listening to them feels like getting to know someone and sharing intimately in their pain and love and hopes. I love listening to the first kind of band, but there’s something special about the second kind of band, and The Airborne Toxic Event is that kind. The bio for their most recent album calls it “at once uncomfortably intimate and unapologetically epic”, which is just what I love in music. My favorite song on the album, “All These Engagements”, “deals with the toll Jollett’s childhood took on his adult relationships. ‘I wanted to weave together the historical forces and the childhood trauma that resulted in an adult attempting to understand it.’” It might be the most profound confrontation with trauma that I’ve heard.
And then, new this year, here are my top 20 songs! These aren’t songs that came out this year (I’m not hip enough for that), just songs that I played and replayed that shaped the sound of my 2022. This list is limited to one song per artist, for variety’s sake.
- All These Engagements | The Airborne Toxic Event
- What in the World | O.A.R.
- Mended – Acoustic | Vera Blue
- Falling Slowly (reprise) | Once: A New Musical
- Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve | Taylor Swift
- Graveyard – Acoustic | Halsey
- There’s No Way – Live from Box Fresh, London, 2018 | Lauv, feat. Julia Michaels
- Lost in the Waves | Kooman & Dimond
- King | Lauren Aquilina
- Someone to Talk To | Tenth Avenue North
- Meant To Be | Ber, Charlie Oriain
- Teen Angst | M83
- Castle on the Hill | Ed Sheeran
- American Secrets | Parachute
- I Want You Anyway | John McLaughlin
- Meitheamh | Lúnasa
- Overboard | The Stolen
- The Rules for Lovers | Richard Walters
- Sailboat | Cody Fry, Ben Rector
- Stray Italian Greyhound | Vienna Teng
Yeah okay I like acoustic versions.
…And That’s a Wrap!
At risk of cliché, thanks for a wonderful year, 2022. It hasn’t been without its challenges. My friends and community have been through disappointment, divorce, health challenges, heartbreak, and death, not to mention Russia’s inhumane invasion of Ukraine, the reconquista of Afghanistan by repressive extremists, and all the suffering inflicted by evil people and regimes everywhere. Democracy in the United States seems more fragile and flawed than ever.
But despite all of that, joy and goodness have not died and will never die. We bring it with us into this world, and the best of things—whether it be a flower or a high five or a good book—keep it alive into the next year and the next and the next.
Here’s to a future we can be proud of! ∎