Top fifty.

Oblique thoughts on a controversy too silly to link to.

I have been reading some poems lately, never mind by whom, and I've been a little sad to notice how strongly I react to the gender of the author. A man writes well about women, and I ask: "Would I say that about someone?" A woman writes well about men, and I ask, "Would she say that about me?" See when I identify with the speaker? So you ask me to make a list of the albums that have meant the most to me, and I have to admit, it's probably going to have a lot of men on it. More often than I'd like to admit, I've gotten into a book or an album or a movie because its perspective on the world was mostly similar to mine.

It's a sign of cultural privilege, I think, that I wasn't more often made (or even asked) to reckon with perspectives different from my own. It would be a sign of maturity to more deliberately seek out such perspectives. To the extent I've done this, it actually hasn't been so bad.

All this is to say that a list of my favorite music, it would reflect a lot of things about the culture I come from, in ways that even self-awareness can't efface.

(If you must know the context, I can provide this link without feeling irresponsible.)