2024 - Year in Review
The first thing I notice, looking back on 2024, is how deeply uncreative I have been. After 2023’s banner year, releasing a book and writing a new song every month, the demands of life got in the way this year and, sadly, work took up most of my creative energies. The 2023 year that I started working at the school I was only doing a temporary maternity cover. But from September I was full-time and fully in charge as Head of Department. Lots of changes were needed, especially in regards to schemes of work and classroom resources. From January 2024 I was consumed with putting together new lessons and curriculum maps, and producing new sets of study notes for my students. These things take time, and the precious moments after work where in previous years I might write a song or pick up a pen became fewer and fewer. My last few years at my previous job had none of these demands. Having been there so long I had already done all of that important foundational work in my earlier years. And during the months of my sabbatical in 2022, and those months working the new job merely as temporary caretaker for someone else, I was fairly footloose and fancy-free in my responsibilities. Now though, I had a job to do, and that job sadly prioritised much of my evenings and weekends.
I go through phases like this. The creative energy is still there, but is directed away from music or writing. Dull as it might sound to some, I do get genuine creative fulfilment out of planning good lessons and producing interesting classroom resources. Especially when the content being covered might be new to me, or something I haven’t thought about in years. It happened, I remember, when doing my PhD. Suddenly I put my bass guitar down as all of my rage against the state of politics was funnelled, instead of going into angry punk songs, into my research and thesis. I was creating arguments instead of melodies and writing chapters instead of verses, but I was still producing something which expressed that inner drive to create. But once the thesis was written, I quit academia and spent a year and a half writing novels instead. The guitar returned to my hands. Art trumped philosophy. Or at least that dull brand of academic philosophy so removed from the arts. Good philosophy, for me, is art. As is good teaching. My creative canvas this year has mainly been the classroom rather than the blank page or the untapped potential of a guitar string.
Which is not to say there hasn’t still been creativity outside of work, just not as much as in 2023. I actually started the year with a vow to return to writing fiction and produced several short stories I was very happy with, which I submitted for a collection themed around punk and horror. I still haven’t heard back from the editor about them - and the collection’s promised release date of October 2024 came and went without mention of the project - so I have no idea if the thing is actually happening and, if it ever does, whether my stories will appear in the volume. But that wasn’t the point. The point was simply writing them. Reminding myself why I used to love escaping from this world and living for a few hours at a time in a world the other side of my keyboard. The stories did exactly that. The problem became not having sufficient time to keep the momentum going as the school year returned at full pelt. But I didn’t forget how enjoyable it was to work with words that weren’t trying to convince someone in philosophical argument, or share real world truths and opinions. How fun it was to wear other skins and pretend to be someone I’m not.
The memory didn’t fade. It got stronger. And midway through the year I made a decision about the book I have been working on since 2022. The philosophy book I have been writing about prisons, schools, abolition and ideology. The one I took my initial sabbatical to write and ended up putting on the back burner as I wrote Anarchist Atheist Punk Rock Teacher in a bit of a frenzy. The book I have been dabbling with on and off for two years now, and researching for over a decade.
It has long bothered me, the impotence of philosophy. Of reading phenomenal arguments in print and seeing how little they impact the world. Of seeing my own academic arguments going out into the world and being met with only deafening silence. And, to be completely fair, my own daily ignoring of brilliant ideas which I either don’t read at all or, if I do read them, just smile and nod about to myself before completely forgetting. The ones which do linger and get through into wider consciousness, do so only to be equally torn down and disputed by other philosophers. That is, after all, the disciplinary norm. Share your ideas and ask for criticism. Criticise ideas and ask for something better. And repeat. I have often, therefore, found myself asking what the point of producing academic philosophy actually is, beyond simply creating an ever-churning output of call and response to keep the academic philosophy business itself running? How often does philosophy really change the world through the means of a journal article or academic book?
Philosophy itself, is fantastic. Sharing arguments and ideas is something I have happily made my life’s work. But part of my life’s work as a teacher is to make those complex and arcane ideas accessible to my students. To recognise how impenetrable and alienating much of formal philosophy is and how it needs to be transformed in different ways to get the ideas across to more than a handful of specialists.
I began to wonder, in 2024, what the point of my book would be? I wanted to write a convincing and compelling argument about why we need to abolish prisons and the role schools play in our continued acceptance of such a morally reprehensible and unjustifiable institution. But who would read it? A handful of scholars working already in abolition movements if I was lucky. A few pro-prison scholars looking to write a response and get another publication credit on their CV? Even if it randomly hit the jackpot none of my other work has ever done and was read by a wider-audience (a ‘smart thinking’ book at Waterstones, rather than a ‘Philosophy’ one, as I discussed in Anarchist Atheist Punk Rock Teacher) - what would the impact really be? Some discussion by journalists about the need to take the ideas seriously? Counter op-eds by school leaders and prison workers explaining why they thought I was wrong? Another empty public debate that touted big transformative ideas the same way Lucy holds the football for Charlie Brown, only to inevitably pull it away the minute he takes the bait and goes to kick it?
I have read so many big debates in the pages of websites and newspapers about world-transforming ideas put forward by scholars or activists in their books, only to realise a few years later that the debate had quietly slipped away and the world remained unchanged. Or, worse still, the debate was still ongoing and the world was carrying on as it was regardless.
This didn’t mean we ought to stop trying. After all, I am a firm believer in the power of slow and steady winning the race, and sewing seeds today that might not take bloom until long after we are dead. Indeed, the one and only new song I wrote and recorded all year was about this very theme:
WHAT MIGHT BLOSSOM
I work within the gaps
One mind at a time
Seeds sown into the dark
On ground infertile and malign
My progress rate is slow
And mostly I’ll never know
If what I’ve sown has taken root
If what I’ve sown will even grow
And though it likely will take more than my lifetime to yield the harvest
I’m nourished by the thought of what might blossom after I am gone regardless
The world that’s always been
Sometimes it looks the other way
That’s when I find we can slip in
And try to show another way
I am the change I want to see
A living elevator pitch
There’s something’s broken underneath
But it is something we can fix
And though it likely will take more than my lifetime to yield the harvest
I’m nourished by the thought of what might blossom after I am gone regardless
Other worlds than these are possible, and we just have to show them
And recognise that they’re worth fighting for even if we won’t live to know them
But it has made me think about how exactly I sew those seeds and what the best kind of seed might be for the sort of soil we have. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that a big decision I made in 2024 was to stop writing this as a philosophy book, with a careful and meticulously evidenced argument, and write it, instead, as a novel. A novel which will be messy. Which will not just be a one-sided battering of a point, but allow for creative exploration of many views different from my own. A novel which might be able to make its argument more subtly than pure philosophy will allow, but which has far more likelihood of taking root in the minds of its readers than a densely footnoted philosophical text would.
So far I have written the first three chapters. Nearly 12,000 words! That has where my creative efforts have been going while my guitar has lain silent. And it’s exciting to be working on a novel again. My first in nearly ten years. Perhaps it will be another to file alongside all the other unpublished and unwanted novels I attempted in my earlier life? Or perhaps this will be the one that all those earlier attempts were getting me in practice for? All I know is it is a lot more fun to be writing than any of the work I did on the original philosophy book over the last two years. And I hope in 2025, as the work pressures ease off a bit, the writing will continue.
In many ways, that is what I see 2024 as being: a year of laying foundations for a better 2025. Rekindling my fiction writing is one element of that. Playing my guitar more has been another. While I haven’t written more than one new song, I have been playing more regularly at home and trying to record those performances more to get myself potentially gig-ready for the future. It’s been so long since I played in front of people. I had hoped to try and book something for 2024, but as I said, life has been busy. I definitely want to do something in front of other humans at some point, even if I don’t really know where to begin with booking that these days. I also decided that I missed the fun creative pressure of challenging myself to write a new song each month that I had in 2023. I decided that in 2025 I shall try and write the sequel to my ‘Playing With Electricity’ album.
2024 set the foundations for 2025 in other more boring ways too. After 13 years in our house promising to get it done, we finally got a new kitchen this year - which was a massive headache (and financial hit) but well worth it in the end. We also got gutters fixed which had needed it for ages, some new windows we needed and some plastering done. This stuff is dull and domestic, but it consumes a lot of energy to get sorted and, again, has been a free-time suck. We also radically reorganised a few of the rooms in the house. All stuff that will make it nicer to live here in 2025, but took a lot of time and effort out of 2024. (And let’s not talk about the mushrooms growing on my office carpet after the kitchen fitters broke our stopcock in there and we didn’t notice the constant drip it had been doing for weeks until we moved some furniture! That had to be all cleaned and sorted too, as well as the psychological process of braving going into the room ever again after the gruesome discovery!) 2024 has been very much about getting shit together, both at work and at home. Chores that need doing, whether we want to do them or not. Necessary things rather than desired things, but all worthwhile, albeit a little bit boring. It was also the year that the tadpoles of 2023 became the frogs of 2024, providing great joy to watch in our garden pond during the warmer months.
Another domestic, but big, change in 2024 has been the (very welcome) return of my sister to the West Midlands after over fifteen years of her living down in London. She, her partner, and their daughter moved back here this summer to be closer to family, and it’s been so nice having them just down the road and being able to play a bigger part in my niece’s life and see them all more. Having lived in Cardiff most of the time my sister lived at home, and then her moving to London shortly after we moved back to Birmingham from Wales, it’s been a while since we’ve lived so close and it’s been nice being able to do things like celebrate Thanksgiving or birthdays together so easily. (Though we will, of course, miss having the free and easy accommodation in Dalston at our disposal now they no longer live in London!)
That said, eschewing any big holidays abroad so we could pay for the kitchen and assorted household repairs, we have spent a lot of time travelling around the UK this year, enjoying our first ever trip up to the Yorkshire dales this summer, as well as several trips to Manchester across the year, our first return to Cardiff since the pandemic, and seemingly at least a monthly visit to London to take in an abundance of cultural events, from theatre, to music, to wrestling. Somehow this year we’ve managed to see Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters, AEW, Nick Cave, Idles, Rose Matafeo, Gus Khan, RuPaul, Ralph Fiennes in Macbeth, John Leader make his RSC debut, and productions of Hamilton, Slave Play, Next to Normal, The Real Thing, The Book of Mormon, Dr Strangelove, The Importance of Being Earnest and Sweeney Todd. Not to mention every Aston Villa Women’s Team home match, an away match at Tottenham Hotspur, and the Lionesses play South Africa in Coventry (and, on TV, all the other AVWFC matches, plus, this season, the AVFC men’s matches too, including their adventure in Europe). We were also treated to a big family holiday to Pertisau in Austria, to celebrate my mother-in-law’s birthday and her and my father-in-law’s golden wedding anniversary together. We had an amazing time there and ever since I got back I have been trying to learn German on Duolingo. 202 days and counting so far…
And of course, 2024 will always be remembered as the year we finally kicked out the Tories who had been destroying the country since 2010. And while the victory has, thus far, barely felt like one, given some of Labour’s choices since taking office and lack of any significant changes for the better so far, I still stand by my thesis that it changed the overall tone of our oppression in a more positive way and the country feels a little more kinder and open-minded in its rhetoric since the collapse of the Conservative government. That said, if 2024 has been about laying the foundations for 2025, then I worry what these political foundations are preparing us for given the far-right riots over the summer and general trend towards right-wing populism world wide. The Labour victory in July was significantly overshadowed by the Trump victory in November. Perhaps 2024 will mostly be remembered as they year America finally lost its mind? As the final collapse of norms which had prevented fascism since the 1940s? I guess time will tell…
Anyway - 2024 is drawing to a close. It’s been…fine. Solid. Something to build on and build from. As Larry David might say - pretty, pretty good.
For those who love lists of things (and read this far), here are the books I read in 2024 (and those in bold are the ones I REALLY recommend!):
The Warlock Effect - Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman
NoMeansNo - From Obscurity to Oblivion - Jason Lamb and Paul Prescott
Derek Jarman: Protest! - Seán Kissane
The Cliff - Manon Debaye
Making It So: A Memoir - Patrick Stewart
Resurrection Walk - Michael Connelly
The Bee Sting - Paul Murray
The Peanutbutter Sisters and Other American Stories - Rumi Hara
The List - Yomi Adegoke
Improve - Alex Graudins
Glutton - Ed Gamble
Death Valley - Melissa Broder
The Good Immigrant - Nikesh Shukla (Ed)
Hardcore Anxiety - Reid Chancellor
The Night Alphabet- Joelle Taylor
I’m Glad My Mom Died - Jenette McCurdy
Perfect Me - Heather Widdows
Dispatches from the Diaspora - Gary Younge
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma - Claire Dederer
Strangers - Taichi Yamada
Shotgun Seamstress - Osa Atoe
Race and Education - Kalwant Bhopal
Everything is Police - Tia Trafford
The House of Hidden Meanings - RuPaul
Who’s Afraid of Gender - Judith Butler
The Man: Not Your Average Average Girl - Becky Lynch
Our Fight - Ronda Rousey
The Buddha of Suburbia - Hanif Kureishi
Random - Penn Jillette
Carrie - Stephen King
Open Throat - Henry Hoke
How to Kill With Kindness - S R Masters
Prophet Song - Paul Lynch
The Book of Beginnings - Sally Page
Keir Starmer: The Biography - Tom Baldwin
Rising to the Surface - Lenny Henry
Sigh Gone - Phuc Tran
A Philosophy of Walking - Frédéric Gros
The Essential Mary Midgley - David Midgley (Ed)
What is Philospphy For? - Mary Midgley
Green Dot - Madeline Gray
You Like it Darker - Stephen King
One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up - Wes Streeting
Horror Movie - Paul Tremblay
Open Water - Caleb Azumah Nelson
The Right to Sex - Amia Srinivasan
Sexual Revolution - Laurie Penny
Wonderstruck - Helen de Cruz
Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black - Cookie Mueller
My Name is Leon - Kit de Waal
Roaming - Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki
The 392 - Ashley Hickson-Lovence
Out There Screaming - Jordan Peele (Ed)
Brooklyn - Colm Tóbin
Rainbow Milk - Paul Mendez
NW - Zadie Smith
Losing the Plot - Derek Owusu
All Fours - Miranda July
My Friend Dahmer - Derf Backderf
Stay Fanatic Vol 2 - Henry Rollins
The Last Devil to Die - Richard Osman
A Man Named Doll - Jonathan Ames
Assembly - Natasha Brown
Reality Check - Mike Sorrentino and Andy Symonds
Wrong Place Wrong Time - Gillian McAllister
Right Ho, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
The Lonely Londoners - Sam Selvon
Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt
Steady for This - Nathanael Lessore
Lean Mean Thirteen - Janet Evanovich
Londoners - Craig Taylor
My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh
The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudsley - Sean Lusk
The Trees Grew Because I Bled There - Eric LaRocca
We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
The Hotel - Daisy Johnson
Gliff- Ali Smith
The Heart’s Invisible Furies - John Boyne
New Yorkers - Craig Taylor
Rebel Girl - Kathleen Hanna
Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan
Monica - Daniel Clowes
Self-Esteem and the End of the World - Luke Healy
The Nice House on the Lake Vol 1 - James Tynion IV
Murder at Holly House - Denzil Meyrick
Christmas is Murder - Val McDermid
The Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
And, if you’d like another list, here are the movies I watched (old and new) in 2024 (same rules re: bold ones = recommends):
Pitch Perfect 3
A Haunting in Venice
Collette
Good Grief
Rebecca
True Story
Poor Things
All of Us Strangers
Goodbye Christopher Robin
The Iron Claw
The Holdovers
Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
American Fiction
Maestro
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Midnight Run
The Flash
The Zone of Interest
The Pink Panther
Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3
Challengers
The Fall Guy
Whiplash
Midsommar
Kinds of Kindness
Hillbilly Elegy
Liar Liar
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation
Twisters
Longlegs
Mission Impossible: Fallout
Deadpool and Wolverine
Batman
Kneecap
The Imitation Game
Batman Returns
Beetlejuice
Blue Jasmine
Heathers
Batman Forever
Trap
To Catch a Thief
Mistress America
Shanghai Noon
Batman and Robin
Blink Twice
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice
Speak No Evil
Batman Begins
The Dark Knight
Interstellar
The Dark Knight Rises
The Substance
Smile
Terrifier
Terrifier 2
Chopping Mall
Smile 2
Joker: Folie a Deux
Fear Street Part 1: 1994
Scream VI
Saw X
Fear Street Part 2: 1978
Hocus Pocus
Psycho
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Wicked Part I
Terrifier 3
Love Actually
Red One
White Christmas
A Christmas Story
Conclave
I guess that all that’s left to do to wrap up the year is note that the greatest thing about 2024, and every year of the past twenty since we first got together (twenty years ago today, to be exact) has been getting to spend every day of it with my wonderful wife, doing the things that we love together. I can’t believe still every morning that I get to wake up next to this amazing person and share a life with her, and that we still find a million new things to talk about every day. It’s that which makes the mundane domesticity of a year like this rise from good to great, and which makes even the shittiest day completely worthwhile.
Now Merry Christmas - and I’ll see you in 2025!