both books I read in book clubs this year that have definitely set me on a new trajectory in life. the only real common theme between them (one is about Marx’s unpublished ecological/economic work and one is about Mazlow’s unpublished expanded humanist psychology) is the theme of agency in service of communion.
individuals should strive to meet their needs and be their best/truest selves, but this also naturally allows them to aid others in meeting their needs and being their best/truest selves. this concept has been huge for me lately and I have these books to thank for that!
Dec 13, 2024
Related Recs
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Yes I realize this is far more than one book, but I read all of these stories in very close succession & I believe they shaped me into the guy I am today. These are all very sensitive-young-man-core, but what can I say? I was a sensitive young man.
I have a very complicated relationship with Mother & Father. When I was first introduced to Kafka, it was like meeting my soulmate. I don’t have it in me to go into much detail at this moment, but being condemned to death by drowning for failing an aging father who can sense a deeply felt resentment; waking up one day to find you’ve turned into a disgusting bug after sacrificing so much for a family that cares so little— these are ideas that deeply rattled & resonated with me personally at the age that I read them. I resolved to try to live differently.
Death of Ivan Ilych was simply further exhortation for me to not live my life according to convention, to pursue wealth, status, family life for their own sakes. I think every single one of us has it in us to become an Ivan Ilych without even realizing. I was totally rapt & manic upon finishing this one I still am today, to some degree.
Portrait of the Artist really spoke to me as well. When Stephen looks at his father & realizes he’s a fool, and that he wants to be nothing like him. The moment when he sees the girl in the water & he becomes so horny he decides to dedicate his life to the pursuit of beauty, to aesthetics, to being an artist. The entire ending segment written as first person journal entries filled me with a lot of hope.
Emerson is the man. Great way to shock the materialist reductionist, the comformist, the busybody, & the consistent, conventional company man out of your system. Probably made me a more annoying person when alls said & done. Oh well.
May 12, 2024
must read. this book helped carry me through a big life change. they changed their name so here’s their IG.
Sep 2, 2024
Three years ago this book returned me to myself. Or it found me as it was already happening. Or it created me.
Sep 30, 2024
Top Recs from @royallmonarch
Jun 2, 2025
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I consume a lot of music regularly, and a huge part of keeping a fresh diet of new listens going is having enough sources of recommendations that aren’t an algorithm that either 1) reinforces your existing listening patterns, keeping you stagnant in your tastes, or 2) platforms whoever paid enough to push their product to the top, serving you something that may not inherently be of inferior quality, but may not align with your tastes, may not be exciting beyond just being a new release, and realigns your current listening habits to be more in line with what the average user on the platform is also listening to — which socially might have benefits but which creates a homogeneity of consumption that can become bland since you’re listening to something really just because it’s the next product on the assembly line to have its public moment and not because anything about the music actually captured your attention. the current landscape of streaming is designed to keep you at an all you can eat buffet where you take what’s served to you, and as a result a lot of us have forgotten how to look at a menu and order.
so what does taking a more active role in your own music curation look like? for me, it’s meant not using streaming as a primary listening platform. I mostly use my local Apple Music library on my phone that I curate with the vestigial iTunes Library framework that’s still a part of Apple Music on my laptop. probably going to find an alternative soon since apple seems to be cutting integration progressively. I like this method because it forces me to choose what to sync to the limited storage space I have, forcing me to take inventory of what I actually listen to and what I can offload. the files I get are mostly from Bandcamp or Soulseek depending on whether it’s available for purchase or entirely unavailable online (as is the case for a lot of electronic music that was on vinyl only, which is where soulseek comes in clutch). I also have freedom here to change the ID3 tags to better sort and organize, rate, change track info, and track my own listening data.
Bandcamp and other music purchasing platforms are great because 1) it reshapes my relationship to music away from consumerism and back towards curation. I have to pay actual money for this thing now if I want to use it, so i’m forced to consider its value (usually i’ll stream a release first to gauge my interest). 2) having to spend money helps me to course out my meals so to speak, as i’ll buy a few releases i’ve accumulated in my cart over the month and cash out on Bandcamp Friday when 100% of my money is actually getting to the artist (TOMORROW IS BANDCAMP FRIDAY BTW!!!), and between purchases I can actually chew and savor and digest my last orders, they don’t get swept up in the deluge of new releases. my plate is full until i’m done and then I order more. also for the times of the year like now when new music isn’t coming out as regularly I take time to find older music that I would normally overlook while keeping up with new drops. currently very into early 80s/late 70s music with early digital production, kinda stuff that would evolve into synthpop and dance music.
so how do you know what to order? for me, I’m getting recs through trusted curation platforms. whether it’s bandcamp daily, y’all lovely folks here on PI.FYI, friends, or most importantly musicians who I follow on socials that share their tastes through posts, stories, playlists on steaming, interviews, etc. I like this last one especially because it’s kind of like a musical game of telephone. if I like an artist and they share their interests and influences it’s like every layer in this process is stretching my palate further from the sound that I was originally interested in and into a new territory that has some shared DNA but would never have been recommended to me by an algo because there’s no shared category or label between them, only the musical influence and interpretation of it made by the artist. as an example, I was a huge Skrillex stan, he signed KOAN Sound to his label, they collab with Asa who collabs with Sorrow, Sorrow takes huge influence from Burial, Burial makes some ambient adjacent stuff and takes huge influence from 90s rave music and drum and bass and 2000s rnb, now i’m listening to Brandy - All in Me, William Basinski, Aphex Twin, none on whom would get recommended by Spotify to me from Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites.
LAST thing i’ll say — because in yappin about this i’m realizing how actually passionate about this subject I am: MAKE LISTS! playlists are cool, but they can flatten your music into vague categories of “vibes” and “aesthetics” and encourage picking one-off songs from artists that you never form an active audience relationship with. I make a practice of making my own year end lists of top 25 albums (plus some honorable recs and top individual songs) and keeping them in a notes doc that I regularly update and rearrange over the course of the year. this forces me to consider the actual relationship i’m forming with what i’ve ordered for myself. did I like it in the moment but it didn’t have staying power? is it slowly growing on me? it also encourages taking albums as a whole. maybe I liked one or two tracks a lot but the rest wasn't resonating. that’s ok! maybe I rank it lower but now i’ve actually taken time to consider it, it’s in my library, and maybe (quite a few cases for me) something I ranked like bottom 5 albums becomes a retroactive favorite from that year as my tastes evolve. also 25 albums to take with me from each year is really more than you'd think, i struggle sometimes to even find 25 that I formed a true connection with. I think the biggest thing the itunes era ruined that led into now is the single-ification of music, the ability to separate the hits from the deep cuts. albums are meant to be taken as a whole, and then once you've really sat with the whole you can find what actually stuck. even then I like to keep the whole around because soooo often i’ll write off a track that yeeeears later I come to love. trust the artist, they made it like they did for a reason.
aaannyyyywayy TLDR: get recs organically, be more active in deciding your listening patterns, fr*cken pay artists yall, trust the artist embrace the album, really consider what you consume
Feb 29, 2024
Jun 4, 2025