Digging in deep, really deep, to compile year-end lists is both exhilarating and exhausting, illuminating and intimidating. Crucial challenge: Recall the impact of things that happened many months ago, then balance against impact of things that just happened.
— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) December 12, 2018
And you also want to try to ignore the plethora of other lists that already have appeared… while being incredibly curious about what colleagues & peers selected.
— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) December 12, 2018
One thing's clear: This is as good an excuse as any for the weekly playlists I post on @thelogjournal – they certainly provide a decent overview of how and where I spent my time.
— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) December 12, 2018
If anyone's curious, I'll be posting my year-end lists for @thelogjournal on Dec. 26 (conflict-of-interest citations), 27 (live events), and 28 (recordings). None of which are meant to represent "BEST" of anything, just what impacted me most over the last 12 months.
— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) December 12, 2018
Last thing I'll say is that I've rarely found it so easy to select my favorite albums of the year – one for so-called "classical music" and one for "everything else." My choices felt unusually clear this year, and haven't wavered.
— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) December 12, 2018
One more observation, on further reflection: Hardest thing about year-end process might be accepting that you sometimes are utterly unmoved by certain things lauded seemingly universally by friends, peers, colleagues. It's happened a few times during my process… and it's fine.
— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) December 12, 2018
An obvious point that still bears repeating: There is NO SUCH THING as an objective assessment of the year's best anything—even in some conglomerated poll selected by committee and scienced to the nth degree.
— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) December 12, 2018
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