2023: The Year in Review

It feels weird that the year is over. It also feels weird that I don’t think I have much to say about it. For me, it revolved around a wonderful early summer — six weeks across May and June — when I found my own place to live, helped raise a load of money for my friend’s top surgery, and then went to Bang Face. (All chronicled on Instagram.)

The months before that are a stressful blur; the months after are a blur of hospitality work, re-learning the guitar, and wrestling with my sleeping pattern. There was a lot of joy there, and a lot of poor mental health as well. But I made it. After spending most of 2022 flirting with death post-lockdown and post-long-term-relationship, it is nice to think of 2023 as my attempt at “having a normal one”. I hope in 2024 I continue to find more of a rhythm and reconnect with the wider world a bit too.

What I am very conscious of at the moment is how local my life feels. I can’t claim to have logged off, but far more of my life than ever before revolves around a small group of people in a small part of a city that I rarely leave. My time in London was perhaps similar, but that felt necessary in the belly of a big city. This has felt like recovery time. In lots of ways, I feel more anonymous here than has felt possible for a few years. I’ve rebuilt myself in the peace and quiet, and I don’t think of myself as a broken person anymore. I also feel like myself for the first time in a very long time. It’s nice.

All that being said, the year has hardly been quiet. Below are a few highlights from the past twelve months, with links to relevant posts, taken from the now-updated “Archive” page.

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I started the year by doing a load of MDMA in January and it did more to improve my mental health than the previous four months on sertraline put together, so that’s highlight number one. (Sorry, Mum.)

In February, I was invited to Dublin by Kasia Boyle and spoke to undergraduates at the National College of Art and Design. I read an abandoned preface to the then-forthcoming Narcissus in Bloom and had wonderful conversations about the scene in Dublin and peoples’ hopes for the future — postcapitalist and otherwise. I’m not sure what it was about that flying 24-hour visit — my first time in Ireland — but I think it was my favourite speaking engagement since I started talking abroad. Kasia has since become a firm friend as well. I was exhausted the day we met, but I felt briefly taken in by a community reminiscent of the one we had at Goldsmiths in 2017. I will never forget it.

I finally finished Narcissus in Bloom over the weeks that followed. I say finally — I’m surprised it only took me two years, but they were two years of utter chaos and personal turmoil and felt a lot longer. And I was technically homeless for about six weeks after I handed it in, so it’s not like everything stopped being shit either. But it felt like a real achievement, and I remain immensely proud of it as a book that appears to be a radical (even regrettable) turn away from my first book, Egress, but which I think is a natural successor to its concerns and I hope it finds its audience.?

I went to see Edward George perform at Newcastle’s Lit & Phil, writing up my thoughts shortly after, which Edward himself read and seemed to really enjoy and appreciate.

I had a bit of a manic moment and wanted to start a million other shelved projects after Narcissus was done. I wrote the introduction to the Greek translation of Mark Fisher’s The Weird and the Eerie in that time, and pitched another book idea (shot down as a kindness), which turned into an essay for the Walker Art Center on the Ccru and ChatGPT.

I started DJing more and really loved making shows for Slack’s this year. Between going to Bang Face and Kitty’s top surgery fundraiser, I put together two sets (in June and in July) that I spent a lot of time listening back to over the sunny days that followed.

I attended the premiere of Jake Chapman’s accelerationism documentary, Accelerate or Die, which I was interviewed for.

Narcissus in Bloom came out in August and I loved talking about it with Michael Waugh — a beautiful and fast friend who has been a highlight of this year in his own right — in London and Newcastle.

In September, I was invited to write about Mark Fisher’s relationship with Russell Brand in the New Statesman. Rather than posthumously lump Fisher in with Brand, following the allegations against the latter, it felt necessary to reiterate Fisher’s more emboldened feminism toward the end of his life, and further demonstrate the ways that Fisher did not become one of the “resentocrats” he so obviously hated. It was an essay that terrified me, assuming many would think a defense of Fisher was inappropriate in that particular context, but I was relieved that all those who read it — friends and otherwise — saw it as useful and necessary.

In October, I wrote about Oneohtrix Point Never’s latest album, and I’m very grateful to Dan for reading and sharing it. There is no experience more affirming and humbling than having someone admire enjoy what you write about their work.

The last few months of this year have been defined by Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza, which seems likely to spread to the West Bank with a similar ferocity in 2024. I got sick as it all unfolded and have spent most of the last few months in my flat thinking about it all whilst storms batter my windows. I wrote two posts on this — here and here — and later made another Slack’s show that captures this strange experience of global chaos and local quietude.

We’ll see what the new year brings. I’ll be in Spain in May to talk about the work of Mark Fisher, but aside from that, my only plans are to get my PhD done.

See you on the other side.