New Year’s is a wonderful time to facilitate fresh starts by…drinking to hungover paralysis, lip-smacking a mild acquaintance when a big Hard Rock Cafe-adjacent ball descends a few feet, and waking up to spend two hours wondering how and why the Tournament of Roses exists. Since it’s clear that the notion that New Year’s is a time for change and self-improvement is completely arbitrary, perhaps it is actually the best time to lay goals out. Because their fulfillment or lack therein will probably have nothing to do with the fact that they were or weren’t your resolution, it’s a pretty pressure-less task. Thus, below you’ll find Flavorwire staffers’ cultural resolutions for 2016 — from listening to newer music to sleeping more in order to read more to watching more foreign films. We promise we either will or won’t fulfill them this year.
My moviegoing to art exhibition attendance ratio was imbalanced this year, so I’m planning the gallery/museum shows I want to visit ahead of time for 2016. — Alison Nastasi, Weekend Editor
At risk of sounding like the 40-year-old man I recently became, perhaps I will try this year to hear more of the music that the young people enjoy (if for no other reason than to have a better grasp of wtf my colleagues are talking about on Slack). — Jason Bailey, Film Editor
See more theater and write more theater, and use the seeing of the theater to inspire the writing of the theater. Write about theater and use the writing about the theater to understand why I want to write theater, then make said theater. Which I’ll try to make sure means actually presenting a work of theater in 2016 and not just being more theatrical in social situations, thus alienating myself from people who’d want to see the theater. — Moze Halperin, Associate Editor
If things go as planned for me personally (knock on wood!), in 2016 I’m going to find myself with four months in which I’m devoted to nothing but feeding and caring for a tiny new human being. This means I will have a long period of intermittent down time in which I’ll be able to stare at an e-reader or another kind of screen while simultaneously rocking and soothing. I know friends who have binged on Netflix shows or read all of Ferrante during this period in their lives. So I’m debating between two simple resolutions: re-read all six Jane Austen novels, or read all of War and Peace. This choice seems like the way of pure pleasure vs. the way of pleasurable pain, but either way I get to read 19th century literature, so I win. I should add, if I do nothing but survive this period with zero cultural benefit, that will be totally fine too. — Sarah Seltzer, Editor-at-Large
This sounds ridiculous coming from someone who edits a culture publication, but I need to stop letting old classics and obscurities distract me from all the new movies, books, and music I want to check out. There’s nothing I love more than taking a deep dive into the oeuvre of a particular director or author — and while that’s great, it comes at the cost of keeping up with all the fantastic new work that’s being produced in every medium. — Judy Berman, Editor-in-Chief
Read more. Sleep more. Sleep more in order to be able to read more. Et cetera. — Tom Hawking, Deputy Editor
After seeing a beautiful 70mm print of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight this month, I made a resolution to go to the cinema more. I’ve spent some time and money investing in a home theater, but there’s nothing quite like a high-resolution print on a giant screen, and there’s something to be said for the shared experience of watching a film in the theater, whether its through sharing a sentiment, or even just repulsion at others reactions. And with the embarrassment of riches that New York City has to offer in terms of screens, there’s no excuse. — Matthew Ismael Ruiz, Music Editor
I actually did a decent job keeping up with the movies this year, probably because 2015 was also when I discovered the joys of hitting up the multiplex solo. But as the year-end movie roundups have come out over the last week or so, I couldn’t help but notice a major blind spot in my otherwise solid viewing record. I never made it to The Assassin, or Mustang, or Timbuktu, or Girlhood — in other words, I never made a good faith effort to look at all the incredible cinema the rest of the world has to offer. Given that one of the great virtues of film, as with all art, is expand a person’s perspective from the limits of their own, de facto ignoring most of the planet’s output was a poor, if unintentional, strategy. In 2016, I plan to branch out. — Alison Herman, TV Editor
To reconstruct my library, mostly by not moving every year. My entire library, which I’ve cut down to about 1,300 books, is in boxes in various apartments in Brooklyn. I’m moving back to Greenpoint, so maybe I can get it all in one place. I hope doing so will make me a better writer. — Jonathon Sturgeon, Literary Editor
To really try to experience the abundance of live art in NYC, whether it be music, theater, or that which is beyond easy categorization. Specifically, I hope to see six things in 2016. I only saw, maybe, five things in 2015. — Shane Barnes, Associate Editor