Things to pay attention to in January

Introducing a new project

Hello folks, and happy new year.

I’ve decided to start a new offshoot of the Babbling Brook, in addition to my fortnightly essays. It’s something like an almanac, I suppose—a monthly list of things to pay attention to, inspired by the seasons, the astronomical calendar, ancient and/or obscure festivals, seasonally appropriate music and art and poetry. It will by no means be exhaustive or prescriptive. But recently I’ve been finding quiet ways to observe things like Samhain and the winter Solstice, which it never even occurred to me to bother with before this year. I want to carry on in this vein, so I’m starting work on a continually evolving calendar of meaningful moments in the year, along with ideas for how to mark them.

Because I have no sales nous I feel obliged to tell you now, as opposed to when you’ve read to the end and hopefully got a taste for the idea, that this project is going to be for paid subscribers. Nevertheless, I encourage you to read this expliqué and first instalment—which are and will remain free for everybody—even if you have no intention of taking out a paid subscription. You may not want to follow along with my version of this project, but you might just fancy starting a version of your own, which would be just as good.

So. Why?

If you’ve been here for a while, you may have surmised that I am a changed person since making my first foray into the world of psychedelics a little over a year ago. Magic mushrooms gave me an experience of awe and transcendence that transformed my understanding of what a human life could contain. But I don’t believe hallucinatory pyrotechnics are the only way to experience awe, and nor do I think drugs are the only way to access it (although they can certainly give us a leg-up).

Awe and transcendence on the scale of a psychedelic trip, or a religious experience, or an experience of the sublime, are big, powerful, potentially life-changing, and as such, rare. But moments of micro-awe—magic, wonder, connection, presence, being moved by beauty—are available to all of us, I think. I would even be so bold as to claim that they are our birthright, and I like to imagine that they add up: that the more you make space for micro-awe, the more you create the conditions in which experiences of macro-awe can arise. The problem is that modern Western culture has developed all manner of tools and tricks by which to cut us off from awe of any variety.

One such trick is divorcing us from the cycles of the year and the seasons. People used to live in harmony with the seasons because they had no choice in the matter. Nowadays, paying attention to the natural world and its cycles is more often a hobby than a necessity, thanks to global supply chains, electric lighting, vast expanses of urban concrete, centrally-heated and -cooled buildings, digital life, and so on.

I’m not saying these are inherently or unequivocally bad things; I’m as dependent on them as the next person. But they have steadily driven a wedge between human beings and the natural world to which we were once deeply connected. I’m not sure we ever consciously opted out of that connection, but if we want to feel ourselves to be part of the ecosystem on which our survival as a species depends, we do have to consciously opt back in.

Another trick is the rapid secularisation of society. I’m not suggesting we should all go back to being God-fearing churchgoers, but I do think that, while things have certainly been gained by the general waning of religion, things have also been lost, and secular society has not yet figured out a way to replace them.

Among the things religions bring to people are structures and frameworks for meaning: calendars of ritual and observance by which to feel connected to something larger than yourself, as well as to the generations of people before you who have observed and ritualised the same things. I currently have no plans to involve myself in religion as anything more than a respectful dabbler (‘Buddhist-curious’ is the one label I flirt with), but I do feel the lack of such a structure in my own life. And so I’m developing one for myself.

Yet another of modernity’s awe-diminishing tricks is the constant deluge of things to read, watch and listen to. Infinite choice sounded like a great thing until we got it and found ourselves overwhelmed and fatigued and dissatisfied. Art is one of our primary entry-points into awe and magic, but it’s harder to access those states when an algorithm is deciding which art you should consume, or when part of you isn’t sure you’ve made the right choice among all the other endless choices and another part of you is already thinking about what choice to make next.

One of the things I want to do here is remove some of that choice by selecting one or two pieces of music and poetry and visual art that tie in, in some way, to the broader cycles of the year, and which can be read or listened to or looked at slowly, repeatedly, with deep attention—in effect, as objects of meditation. My favourite way to immerse myself in music is to listen to it while lying on the floor, as I wrote about once before. I intend to read the poetry using

Ellie Robins

’s method of lectio divina, as defined and explained in this most excellent essay. And to the visual art I will try and bring something of the spirit of Jennifer Roberts, the Harvard art historian who gives her students the assignment of looking at a painting for three hours straight.

I’ll be learning and exploring as I go. If you decide to join me, I hope you’ll share ideas and reflections in the comments about your own observances, traditions, rituals, favourite poems and pieces of music and visual art.

This isn’t an original idea, by the way. It’s just my personal version of it. There are lots of other more experienced and established people on Substack and beyond writing in this space, like

Lia Leendertz

,

Victoria Harrison

,

Katherine May

,

Eden Ariel

,

Sarah Kokernot

,

Jennifer Lane

and doubtless many more I don’t know about. Some of my ideas will overlap with theirs and others won’t, but if you find yourself intrigued by this project you’ll probably enjoy their work too, if you don’t know it already.

I think of this a practical way to address my belief that we are diminished and impoverished by our culture’s obsession with productivity, money, achievement, getting things done, over and above all the other things that used to bring us meaning. Mostly, I’m doing it for myself. But if you’d like to get involved, I would of course be delighted.

And so to January.

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January 2025

This year I will be starting what I can’t believe hasn’t already become my own personal New Year’s Day tradition: taking a quiet couple of minutes to listen to this recording from the early 2000s of my dad singing ‘The January Man’.

It’s not a great recording but it’s a beautiful song, beautifully sung, and the words are perfect for the season. Perhaps I’ll learn the words too and add it to my rotation of shower songs. I could even record a harmony over the top, eventually—now there’s an idea, duetting with my dad across the decades. We played this recording at his funeral in 2019, so its wistful acknowledgement of time passing has particular poignance for me. May it serve as a reminder to us all to keep honouring the spirit of our lost loved ones and including them in whatever our personal rituals and observances and projects happen to be. Perhaps with sorrow, but also with gratitude, even joy. And always with love.

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I have never before seen a meteor shower, but now is my chance. The Quadrantids Meteor Shower peaks between midnight and 5am on January 3rd, when it just so happens that I’ll be away from light-polluted London, visiting my mum in the countryside. This will be an early test of my commitment to this project. There is no way I will accidentally find myself up and about at this hour, but if a clear night is forecast (which is, frankly, a big if) I hope I can muster the willpower to drag myself out of bed and into the garden.

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Wassailing has been on my mind lately because I sang ‘Here We Come A-Wassailing’ so many times in December (which was no hardship—it’s a banger). Wassailing is an old Twelfth Night tradition in the UK and across Europe more broadly in which people gathered to bless the orchards in hopes of a good harvest, traditionally pouring cider on the apple trees and banging pots and pans to keep evil spirits away. These days it’s a very niche pursuit, but wassails are still held throughout January, including in my local area, and I intend to investigate.

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Sometimes I forget, because it doesn’t play a huge role in my life at present, but I spent the best part of a decade studying French literature. This 5th January, I would like to honour that part of myself by baking a galette des rois, the traditional French Twelfth Night cake.

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Whether or not I catch the Quadrantids meteor shower, I ought to be able to get myself outside to look at the full moon on January 13th (the Wolf Moon, this one is called).

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In this year’s instalment of The Tree Almanac, Dr Gabriel Hemery suggests that we should all plant one tree for every year we’ve been alive. This is a great idea, but also sort of annoying because some friends and I joined a tree-planting effort on the Solstice and I completely lost track of how many I’d planted. In any case, I must have at least a couple of dozen left before I hit my quota, and January is still peak tree-planting season. My local tree-planting group are called the Tree Musketeers, which endears them to me greatly. If I can give an afternoon to helping them reforest East London, I surely will.

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I dream of witnessing a big starling murmuration. A friend and I went on an expedition in November in hopes of seeing one of any size, but we managed to pick the weekend Storm Bert was raging. There were no starlings in sight, and the rain was so vicious it was like having our faces pelted with pins. I am nonetheless prepared to try again this month, though perhaps I will pay more attention to the weather forecast this time. If you’re in the UK and would like to try and see one yourself, use this Starling Murmuration Location Map. Its very existence delights me.

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Here is a picture to stare at:

James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: The Thames at Battersea, 1878

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And here is a poem to contemplate:

Canopy

Emily Berry

The weather was inside.

The branches trembled over the glass as if to apologise; then they thumped and they came in.

And the trees shook everything off until they were bare and clean. They held on to the ground with their long feet and leant into the gale and back again.

This was their way with the wind.

They flung us down and flailed above us with their visions and their pale tree light.

I think they were telling us to survive. That’s what a leaf feels like anyway. We lay under their great awry display and they tattooed us with light.

They got inside us and made us speak; I said my first word in their language: ‘canopy’.

I was crying and it felt like I was feeding. Be my mother, I said to the trees, in the language of trees, which can’t be transcribed, and they shook their hair back, and they bent low with their many arms, and they looked into my eyes as only trees can look into the eyes of a person, they touched me with the rain on their fingers till I was all droplets, till I was a mist, and they said they would.

from Stranger, Baby (Faber, 2017)

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And that’s it for January. Are you intending to honour the season in some way, aside from imposing new exercise and dietary regimens? Let me know in the comments.

Take care,

Kx