Top Thirteen with Thirteen Honorable Mentions from 2013

I struggled to write a "best of" list this year, because I can't with the "10 songs, 10 films, 10 books" view of media anymore.  It's incomplete and untrue to my actual favorite moments...moments of commanding performances, so full of laughter and inspiration and lordly wit that I can barely stand it. 
2013 was a good year for those moments.  
And so, here's my better-late-than-never short list of moments watched and lived in 2013.
 

THIRTEEN:

Youtube Awards live music video of Afterlife by Arcade Fire

Greta Gerwig, a queen among us.  Isn't she lovely and wild and free?

(Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha starring this lady is my #13 honorable mention).

TWELVE:

Yeezus

Six months later, still Yeezin.

(Honorable mention #12 is so good I have to post it too...Jenny from the Block honoring Celia Cruz.  Yeah girl.)

ELEVEN:

The Kinfolk Table

Not an overstatement:  I rejoiced when this book was announced.  And so did longtime Kinfolk lovers across the globe.  Every bit as elegant and insightful as we'd hoped...

 (#11 honorable mention is a completely inelegant change of pace... Andy Samberg at the James Franco roast.  He flipped the evening masterfully.  Quote: "Guys seriously, don't be homophobic, it's 2005.")

TEN:

Son of Rogues Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys

 Beth Orton, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Tom Waits; a coalescence of musical fantasies and good pirate-y fun for all.

(My #10 honorable mention is this album art.  #obsessed.)

NINE:

The Way Way Back

Jim Rash, Nat Faxon, Toni Collete, Allison Janney, AnnaSophia Robb, Steve Carell, Maya Rudolph, Rob Corddry, Amanda Peet, Liam James, NEED I GO ON?!?!  Well I can't, that's damn near the whole cast.

Away We Go, Seeking a Friend..., and Little Miss Sunshine are three films (and scores) I could repeat perpetually.  When I found out there was a sampling of leads from those three in The Way Way Back, it was rain on desert sands; a summer miracle.  And it didn't disappoint.

(Honorable mention #9 goes out to a moment in Take This Waltz.  The film was released in 2011, but for nearly two years I searched for Feists cover of Leonard Cohens Closing Time, which is echoing in one of my favorite scenes.  I couldn't find it anywhere until this summer, some Danish saint made it available online...forever grateful).

EIGHT:

Stephen Merchant, JGL, & Jimmy Fallon

...because "Hold me closer, Tony Danzaaaa".
 

(Don Jon is honorable mention #8.  I paid real dollars to see it in theaters three times.)

SEVEN:

Lorde Pure Heroine

It was everything.

  (#7 HM: Agnes Opal Aventine.  It was a close second everything.)

SIX:

Adelaide Ames

Sweetest little rosy-cheeked cover you'll ever see.

(Big honorable mention #6:  Another daughter and dad moment, Roseanne Cash was through Austin this past October performing a few records from her new album The River & The Thread.  She told some pretty moving stories about Johnny, about Arkansas, and about why she had to leave the South.  She did a similar interview here).

FIVE:

Sam Amidon's Bright Sunny South.

 I love everything Sam Amidon has ever done (and I've done everything I can to get my hands on all of it this year).  Plus, he had the good sense to marry Beth Orton.

(Ain't them Bodies Saints, while we're on the subject of the South, is my #5 honorable mention.  No one said it better than Paste contributor Michael Dunaway when he said this film, "is not a movie; it's a feeling.")

FOUR:

rob delaney  

Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage.

Yes, that's the title.  My review?  

Brilliant. Gross. Funny. Brave. Sad. Uncomfortable. Comforting. Handsome. French.

(#4 honorable mention...English comedian Simon Amstell.  I fell in love with his introspective storytelling/monologue after he wonderfully insulted the crowd of Austinites at Radiolab's live event [see #2] this past fall.)

THREE:

her.

 Joaquin Phoenix is the sweetest soul I (don't actually) know.  How dashing is he with that mustache?  All the pieces of my heart are still on the floor of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.

(Honorable mention #3: Christian Bale.  I'm the idiot who never paid attention to his acting chops until one afternoon while waiting to see Don Jon for a third time, I noticed back-to-back previews for American Hustle and Out of the Furnace.  And then I remembered he's English.  Floored.
I cannot wait to see him as Moses, which is my most anticipated moment of 2014.)

http://www.herthemovie.com/#/video

TWO:

Apocalyptical: Radiolab Live in Austin, TX.

Fortunate enough to have the most amazing roommate in the world.  She landed third row tickets to the event, sitting us stage left of the Brontosaurus.  Yes, Brontosaurus.... Apocalyptical was dynamic, generous, thought-provoking, science-y, and can boast a live score.  Also, DINOSAURS.  Watch it in completion here.

(Second to last honorable mention...Apocalypse Jam, live.)

ONE:

Bo Burnham's "We Think We Know You."

Number one looks like this: most caliber, most cathartic, most right.  The density and motion of Bo Burnham's show is unparalleled.   I think he's brave and raw and honest AND talented enough to not only capture a real moment, but to also perform at a level that takes an audience to that place alongside himself.  Hands down #1 moment of 2013.

(Bo's book Egghead is honorable mention #1.  You can also see him on Vine).

Election season and my brain.

I have a few rules, or ideas I've made up for myself to protect my mental health during election season. 

Numero Uno is, of course, to deactivate Facebook for the months of September-Thanksgiving.  It seems that no matter what sort of link I might share, whether it be sarcasm, light-hearted fun, or that oh-so rare unbiased news gem dug up from some am-writer in Potosi, Missouri, nothing is more depressing than knowing my "friends" (read: parents, grandparents, second grade teacher, rando who's generous with his conspiracy theory media, guy that knew a sibling and has infiltrated my news feed, girl who is ill-informed and doesn't know that choosing to ride her bike does more for gas prices than the POTUS, etc) are trolling my posts waiting to discern my political leanings, and feel that a public forum is the best possible place to leave me with an elaborate, electronic expression of their approval/disapproval, even if they haven't seen me in a decade.  I apologize for that paragraph being only two sentences.

But there's one thing even worse: Guy who says, "Can't we all just get along?!" and shares something about "Unity... anger is bad... disagreements are dumb... and that's why I'm not voting!"  Because his opinion of not having an opinion is, in his opinion, the ultimate opinion.  Then people "like" that status and I'm left wanting to throw my Mac out the window and move to an island of population me and my dog...  It's not your fault Facebook.  I have no willpower and can't bring myself to sift through the looney bin that has become my friend collection.

#2:  I want to read everything.  This one's hard because, like most everyone else, my life gets busy.  But I believe that if I really try to read everything, then I will feel more and understand more about Libya and Syria and Pakistan and Egypt and Spain and Greece and Venezuela, and will never, not even for a moment, let something dumb like "I'm not voting" occupy one ounce of my brain space.

#3:  I want to listen more than I speak.  And when I do speak, I have sub-rules:
   a) Don't repeat things that have already been said.
   b) Don't be overly condescending, or state the obvious, specifically like This Guy.  (If you don't understand where to put your hope or how to express it, you haven't understood the gospel.)
   c) As much as possible, and wherever appropriate, be funny.

#4:  I want to be honest, and this extends well beyond November 6th.  My pinch is that very little in the world feels honest enough.  Some are afraid to feel their feelings, to have hard conversations and say real things.  It can be hard to be vulnerable, or to be wrong.  Using your keyboard to say some things is okay; using your voice is better.  I continually want to be more aware of the living: my friends, and people, and the plight of people, and of my free time and wallet and public policy and my faith, and I want to press in to the full weight of heavy things more than I press in to comedy and fun.

I hope you vote.  I hope you've put in place ways to protect your mental/emotional/spiritual health as you decide who to vote for.  I hope you wrestle with what it is to be American, what it looks like, what responsibility it carries.  And mostly, I hope you are patient with me as I will surely fail at some or all of these ideals I aspire to uphold for myself.

Flula!

Y'all, I have kept Flula Borg a secret for too long.  This is the funniest, most adorable (and quotable!) German you'll ever meet... see on YouTube.



Angry Birds (of NYC)



Cats Pajamas, you do kill me.



Chip on a shoulder?



Balls to the Wall.  This is not effektive.



Name Three Germans!



And a bonus...Flula's Austin Texas Interview.

Families.

I don't know what normal parents do with their children on the weekends.  I suppose they take them to ball games, invite the neighbors over for a barbecue, and attend church.  My Saturdays were more like this:

"Okay, get your tennis shoes on and load up!"

"Where are we going?"

"Prairie State Park.  Gonna learn about the American buffalo and Westward Expansion."

The most terrified I've ever been.  Yellowstone, '94.

And that is a real conversation.  I was nine.  My mother had just remarried and moved us from Carthage to a town I couldn't pronounce (Oronogo), population 227.  I kept telling everyone we were moving to Oregon.  

My stepdad, Bob, is such a good man.  I mean "good" in the purest, most full sense of the word.  I once told him that when I became a millionaire, I would build him his own personal Bass Pro, and I meant it.  There were a few quirky things I learned growing up with him though.  I can name every historic home, battleground, and state park in a 50 mile radius, and I know how much zinc, sulfur, lead, etc to load into a buckshot casing.  I know the difference between strip mines and shaft mines, can name hundreds of them in the four-states, and know about their surrounding sub-watershed drainage patterns and potential to become sinkholes.  So...that's different than what you all did on Saturdays?

All day today I've been thinking about the wide array of (seemingly useless) things we learn from our families.  Here's a snippet of mine.  I leave their usefulness to your discretion.

My great great great grandparents, James & Hilda.  The oldest known family photo, 1882.

Our new house had a big yard with a wall of honeysuckle separating ours from the neighbors, a large vegetable garden, and eleven types of trees: Sassafrass, Pear, Red Bud, Loblolly (my least favorite...totally unclimbable), Maple, Silver Maple, Dogwood, Walnut, Lilac, Oak, and Alder.  I learned leaf structures, coniferous from deciduous, and the seasonal affects on them.   I know that early summer pear blooms bring bees in droves, and the sweet midsummer fruits that fall to the ground bring the largest assortment of butterflies I've ever seen.

I know that cucumbers need a fence to grow up on, zucchini plants need space, and that burning your garden after harvest releases nitrates back into that impossible rocky Missouri soil.  I know that garden spiders like their webs high between corn stalks, turtles prefer the taste of low hanging tomatoes, and small snakes eat mice and insects and are actually good for your garden (though once August hits and I can't see over the plants, I don't go near it).  I also know that instead of using chemical pesticides, you can plant peony bushes on the four corners of your garden to attract devouring insects.  Peony bushes bloom most of the summer and are among the most succulent, beautiful blooms I know, until of course they are eaten up.  

Bob in his garden with my neice, '03.

I know that Daffodils glory in March and April, wild orange Poppies in May, Naked Ladies in June, Tulips and Flags in July, and my all-time favorite flower/tree/scent, the mighty Magnolias in August.  My grandparents Floyd & Ginny had a Magnolia tree.  I loved the stout trunk, the thick, crunchy leaves, the pineapple-looking buds that littered the branches, and then finally, that big, beautiful, silky white flower that inoculated the air with its sweet redolence and blew right down into my face.  I was four, and in love with a tree.  It has proven to be a lasting love.

I know strange survival tips, such as the white cambium innards of Pine are edible, rich in Vitamins A & C, and can be eaten raw or dried for a quick immunity boost.  In addition, many poisonous snakes dwell in the mid-south.  Their venom coagulates the blood, and willow bark is not only edible, but contains aspirin (more specifically salicin) which functions as a blood thinner.  Native Americans also used to chew willow bark to relieve headaches and toothaches.

I know that sulfur burns blue, has more allotropes than all the other elements, and can crystallize into a pretty yellow stone. (Roche Jaune. Yellowstone.)  And yes, it is debated if that is how the river, and thus the park, got it's name.  Of course Bob swears by it, pointing to the cave systems discovered in the Rocky Mountain mines during the settlement, but the other, more widely accepted lore is because of the area's yellow-tinted sandstone bluffs.  

Yellowstone '92.

We visited the green walls of "Hardscrabble" just outside of St. Louis, and learned that Ulysses S. Grant, before Vicksburg and Chattanooga, and well before his Presidency, had a financially strenuous decade of failed farm life in Northern Missouri.  Regardless, when he moved his family, Grant chose to free his slaves instead of profiting a sale well before that was the norm.  This was an honorable man.

We toured the Badlands and Black Hills of South Dakota, and I learned about General Custer and the Indian Wars, in particular Little Bighorn (obvs).  I know how he split his troops into three battalions, how Reno's troops were outflanked from the South, then Crazy Horse and White Bull drove through the heart of Custer's northern skirmish line, and drove the remaining men up on the ridge.  And I know all of the disgusting details of how this battle ended.  This was a dishonorable man.

I didn't formally collect things as a child, but a strong case could be made for languages.  I learned very basic conversational French and Spanish, numeral German and Cherokee, and a bit of Tagalog and American Sign-Language.  French because, well, my birth parents are Kenneth LeRoy Sullivan (Cherokee, French, Irish) and Vicci Lynne Ball (French, Irish, Welsh).  As well, Floyd & Ginny lived in France in the sixties, with their then seven children (there would be eight).  Spanish was orally handed to me from my mother's acquisition of it in Colorado, German numerals from Ginny Max, Cherokee numerals from my dad Sullivan, Tagalog from my Filipino Aunt Adelina, and American Sign-Language from our Carthage neighbor Kim, who was deaf. 

Occasionally while driving you could see the hills blasted out to make state highways.  I would hear about the different sediments, about how that area was once a glacier, then an ocean, and now vastly prairie.  The base sediments contained denser, pressed volcanic stones, the middle ones fossils of prehistoric oceanic things I can't name, and then the malleable yellow and red clays, and finally, just a few layers down, you could find things like bison bones and arrowheads. 

Men and their cars.  Uncle Steve, Great Grandpa Charles, Grandpa Floyd.

And then there's the State of Missouri.  Oh high heaven, how much I was taught about my home state!  

There are the famous Missourians; Harry S. Truman, George Washington Carver, Langston Hughes, Scott Joplin, and of course, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), who once wrote of Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn, of youth and adventure.  I learned that everything else he wrote was snarky and condescending, and the better writers/poets that exposed the soul of nature and adventurous men were Whitman and Frost (Bob's direction).

Then there are the caves.  Six thousand caves, no telling how many of which we visited.  Show caves, like Fantastic Caverns and Branson, were the best, because you wouldn't unexpectedly run into a bat colony or those terrifying tiny albino lizards.  People did weird things in caves.  Many were used as speakeasys during the Prohibition.  I remember a radio show regularly broadcasted out of one in the Boothill, and one particular cave west of Carl Junction hosted an Easter morning sunrise service-- the only time I remember attending church with my parents.  There is no doubt we went simply because it was a cave.

We have swamps, wetlands, and all three types of prairies (dry, wet, mesic...is that takin you back to 5th grade?).  We catch drift rains from Gulf hurricanes, sit on the shaky New Madrid fault line, and are the head pin of tornado alley.  We also hosted the first summer Olympics in America.  St. Louis, 1904.

We like wine.  In fact, we're the third largest wine producing state.  We can't help it...we were settled by Frenchmen.  We don't make Napa wines though; we make wines from breeds of grapes that grow in rocky soil and fluctuating weather.  Keltoi winery in Oronogo was my first ever wine tour.  I've visited countless times since.  Go if you're near.

We also like beer.  A lot.  The German's settled in the Lou, and the rest is history.

I can't even begin to account for the nuanced knowledge I acquired in my childhood, but that, I feel, is a pretty fair snapshot.  I'm sort of glad for growing up in this way, away from television (save PBS and Nickelodeon), learning real things, even if I have no applicable use for it.  So cheers to fall, when the Magnolias fade and the last harvest comes, when the annual rainfall increases, and the river's pitch rises.  Cheers to cool weather and hard cider and bonfires and friends, and all things good in this season.

Great Grandparents & friends, '34.

Decade.

Today, I've been a Christian for ten years.  

One July night in 2002, mostly against my will (I'll save you the details), I found myself sitting front and center on the balcony of Shryock Auditorium in Carbondale, IL.  I was at a summer conference run by Christ in Youth, and the event theme was The Journey, which is about the most apt title it could have been given.

I was 14, and it was the summer before my freshman year of high school.  I was not a Christian, and despite growing up in Southwest Missouri, we can suffice it to say that I had next to no background in the church or understanding of the gospel.  Two nights of conference had come and gone.  Monday was entitled, "Coming to the Cross," and then there was Tuesday's, "Yielding to the Spirit," which upon reading my brain screamed, "WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN!??!"  Then Wednesday morning came.  I was given a small card the said something to the effect of "My Sin:___________."  The little unreformed philosopher blooming inside of me thought "sin" was a stupid concept, but there was something special about that day that compelled me so much that I spent all afternoon analyzing my personal tenets on the matter.  Sin, naturally, implies there's a standard to be sinned against, or as Christianity further teaches, there is a Being that I have personally sinned against.  For the first time all week, I was fully engaged.

I don't remember a word of the sermon that night, and I don't remember who was leading worship.  What I remember was that on the first floor, there were two large wooden crosses with buckets of nails and hammers nearby.  Then, somewhere over the course of two songs, "Here I am to Worship," and then "Oh the Wonderful Cross," the gospel was made clear... which is a really insignificant way to phrase it.  I was so overwhelmed that my heart felt as though it might burst through my chest!  Tears, snot, guilt, grace, the whole nine yards.  I penned "All of it" on my blank card, walked downstairs with two friends, and in the most blatant illustration I could have been given, I nailed my sin to the cross.  

** A little, but significant side note that I must interject here: God saved a 14 year old girl, from Missouri, at a youth summer conference, through an emotional worship experience.  That's when the veil was lifted.  Some of you hate that, because you or someone you know have had a perceived (or even more terrifying, a real) manipulative, emotional experience.  That is not my story.  And summer after summer, year after year, I see God continuing to transform and grow students through events like the one I attended.

The story advances.  About a week later, I came home from practice and went straight to my living room to watch MTV's TRL, per the usual.  But I couldn't focus.  I remember getting up, turning off the television, going into my bedroom, and thinking that since I was a Christian now, I should probably read the Bible.  So I did.  I opened up Genesis 1 and started reading.  About 10 minutes later my brain caught up with my actions, and I realized what I was doing, and thought, "Something changed.  Something has really changed because I would rather be doing this than anything else right now."  

Reading Scripture for the first time was crazy.  I journaled it, and here are my five favorite excerpts from summer/fall of '02:

"I read Genesis today.  I know I've heard of Noah and the flood, but I guess I just thought the whole God-destroys-humanity thing would've been a little later in the Bible, not chapter 7."

"So Jonah disobeys, gets swallowed by a whale, changed his mind, mission accomplished, and he's pissed?  And then the story just ends?"

"Did I just read about rape? In the Bible?"

"Today I read about humility, and all I keep thinking about is how terrible that sounds.  Humility.  Humiliated?  Surely they're different?"

"The more I read about Paul, the more I think I wouldn't like him in real life."

So I asked a lot of questions and got a lot of answers, and four months later was baptized (which was also my 15th birthday).  And now here I am, ten years later.  Last week I wondered what 14 year old Heather thinks about 24 year old Heather.  Then I imagined 34 year old Heather (ugh, 30...), and thought it must be the same: She's better, more put together, is accomplishing more for the Kingdom, and is definitely "holier" than the current me.  That was very revealing, and showed that I still have a long way to go in fully grasping the gospel, because I still want to trust in a better future me rather than the reality of grace today.  And by God's grace I will be better, but it shouldn't be where I direct my hope.  

Today marks a decade for me... one decade into eternity.

Truth.

It's funny that a great deal of suffering can bring about deep, lasting, unshakable joy. It's funny that death to self is life, and life abundantly. It's funny that war somewhere ensures peace elsewhere. It's funny that hope is birthed out of the depths of tribulation. Emptiness and fullness, gathering and scattering, slavery and freedom, on and on and on. It's funny, the incredible paradoxes that are life in the Kingdom.

Contrary to popular belief...

...I'm still alive. Friends, it's been a while!

All I have for today is this:

"Miss Heather Sullivan,

I have joy to greet you in the name of the Lord Jesus. I am fine and getting on well with my holiday of four weeks. I am getting on well with tuition there at school. My family is happy that you are communicating well with me your son, and God bless you so much. Pray for me and I will pray for you. Read Bible in Jeremiah 33:3. Thank you so much. Yours in love."

Jeremiah 33:3 says "Call to me, and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know."

That is a letter from Abdallah Shabani Kulule, an 11 yr. old from Tanzania that I've sponsored through Compassion Int'l for four years now. His letters are usually very long and include stories of soccer matches, his sisters, and schooling. This one just sounds so grown up. "Pray for me, and I will pray for you. Read Bible in Jeremiah 33:3." God is so good, and so providential, that He would use a young boy, half the world away, to bring me a timely word of encouragement. My heart is full of worship. How good is our God?! I can't wait to write him back...