things that stayed with me

Books, films,
and music I've carried.

Not a review platform. Not a catalogue.
A personal archive of things that stayed —
and a few words about why.

currently

reading

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Haruki Murakami

watching

Past Lives

Celine Song

listening

Carrie & Lowell

Sufjan Stevens

recently added

album1998

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Neutral Milk Hotel

I resisted this album for years because of how much people talked about it. Then one night it made complete sense. The rawness isn't affectation — Mangum sounds like he has no choice but to mean every word. Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2 is the most heartbreaking song I know. I return to it when I want to feel something.

★★★★★5.0

emotionalnostalgicquietly-brilliant

stayed with me

album1971

Blue

Joni Mitchell

The benchmark. Everything laid out without flinching — the loneliness, the wanting, the California lightness that somehow makes the sadness heavier. 'A Case of You' alone justifies the whole thing. Every serious songwriter has had to reckon with this record. You can hear it in everything that came after.

★★★★★5.0

timelesstenderdevastating

stayed with me

album2016

A Moon Shaped Pool

Radiohead

Daydreaming is the best thing Radiohead have done since Kid A. The whole album feels like a reckoning — slower and more orchestral than anything before it. True Love Waits finally got its proper recorded version after twenty years of live performances. It was worth the wait and somehow sadder for it.

★★★★½4.5

emotionaldarkbeautiful

stayed with me

film2003

Lost in Translation

Sofia Coppola

Two people in the wrong place at the right time. Coppola understands that the most meaningful connections exist in the space between words — the shared glance across a hotel bar, the 3am corridor, the ending we're not allowed to hear. The loneliness here is specific and true. Bill Murray barely acts and that's the whole point.

★★★★½4.8

quietmelancholictender

stayed with me

the shelf