107 - Antes de la Navidad, llega a nosotros la temporada de listas

1) Ranking things is dumb …

We all know this. Art isn’t a competition. I can’t really distinguish between my 13th favorite album and my 19th favorite. This is all talk. None of it really matters.

2) … but it’s kind of fun …

Of course it is! Because it’s about sharing recommendations. And I do mean share — make your own lists and show them to me, especially if you’re the sort inclined to complain about lists. Put yourself out there and let me complain about you, too!

3) … because it’s really about discovering a thing or two (or possibly more!) that you might not have known about otherwise.

These EOY (end-of-year) lists emphasize cultural consumption as a form of production; they repackage collected data points into something noteworthy for presentation. I am naturally skeptical of this as a meaningful self-portrait of taste or personality. I like to think that we are more than what we consume. Yet, in the midst of our suffocating content-media landscape, such lists might be a helpful gauge of intentional attention. What content and which artists deserve it? I recently read a quote from the French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche, which recasted “attention [as] the natural prayer of the soul.” Though capitalism disagrees, I’m trying to think of my attention less as currency — something value-driven and monetizable — and more as a natural resource worth conserving or deploying sustainably.

⚡️ Si llegaste hasta aquí: Una de las tradiciones (¡de tres años ya, increíble!) aquí es pasar la lista de las 52 cosas que aprendió en las pasadas 52 semanas el autor Tom Whitwell (versión 2020, versión 2021).

¿Quieres que haya Link Latte en 2023 para una lista más de Tom? ¡Dona al Ko-fi!