Now Playing: January 2021

In our first Now Playing of the year, our January contributors take us from Alaska to the American South with their movie, TV, and music recommendations.

Danielle Shorr

My newest obsession is learning about Alaska. I’ve been watching the National Geographic show Life Below Zero that follows the lives of different people who live in different parts of Alaska and it’s just so interesting. Seeing how other people live has been a growing fascination of mine during the pandemic. Basically all I do in my free time is listen to Taylor Swift’s new album and lust over homes on House Hunters.

Melissa Lore

I’ve been listening to Sa-Roc’s album The Sharecropper’s Daughter on repeat for the past couple months. She’s pretty much the fiercest ever, and her song “Forever” absolutely kills me. Also, I play an embarrassing amount of Among Us on my phone every day, even though my kids assure me it’s totally not cool anymore. My screen name is Sheepy, and I’m a little black blob with ram’s horns. I like to be the Imposter, but I will also play an entire game as a murdered Crew Mate just for the trash talk in the ghost chat, if you know what I mean.

Marcela Sulak

In the transition between 2020 and 2021 I watched Mudbound, the 2017 film directed by Dee Rees (based on the 2008 novel by Hillary Jordan). The brutality of farming life in the deep south just before and after WWII, the horrific racism, and the mangled but vital hope in which the film ends seemed an appropriate way bring in 2021.

Dennison Ty Schultz

Lately, I’ve been orbiting between Mariah Carey, specifically “Vanishing,” and Rina Sawayama, specifically “Fuck This World (Interlude).” The songs are similar in a lot of ways: both from eponymous albums, both pared back instrumentally compared to the rest of their albums, both urgent in their grief, watching, feeling loss happen. I love these artists for their ability to go big, and seeing this liminal interlude contrast is striking—and, I think, crucial for both albums. The songs remind me of this painting a friend of mine did of her brother, where the focus is her brother’s eye and the rest of the face ripples out into textured abstraction, intertwined with the background. Right now, I’m struggling to translate grief into art. These artists teach me how.