Cultural Resolutions for 2014

Last night, a bunch of us were sitting around after midnight, trying to give a slightly inventive spin to the business of new year resolutions by coming up with a list of things we will not do in 2014. All I could come up with is that I will not cut my hair and thus will give the business of growing my hair a valiant shot. It was observed that mine was the lamest resolution of the lot, with good reason. 

After seeing this Flavorwire post, I’ve decided I will attempt to add a little gravitas to my 2014 plans. So here beginneth my cultural resolutions. 

I will generally try to read more, and read more poetry in particular. This year — usually at odd hours of the night — I’ve found myself wishing I knew a good poem. That leads to me doing idiotic google searches like “poem + modern + english” and “poem + translation”. Surprisingly, some really lovely stuff tends to pop up if you end up waffling through Tumblr, rather than Google. But rather than blundering around the internet like this, I’m going to try getting hold of books and volumes of good poetry. (Suggestions are always welcome, by the way.)  

I will listen to more music. Somehow, this year has been singularly unmusical. I barely heard any new music and my phone has actually had the same songs in it for pretty much the whole year. That’s appalling. It was while watching The Great Beauty that the tunelessness of 2013 struck me. The film has a gorgeous soundtrack and one song in particular has haunted me. When I finally did manage to get hold of it, I realised it was the first addition to my iTunes in months. 

I will not watch crap movies (unless someone pays me a fat lot of money to do so). You know how we (i.e. I) keep saying about bad films that they’re so bad that they make you (i.e. me) stupider? It’s not a lie. They really do make you stupider. I know because at the end of almost a year of weekly doses of ghastly filmmaking, I can feel the dead weight of the brain cells that have given up the ghost.

And now, a happy gif because hell, it’s new year’s day and all that jazz.

Happy new year, everyone.