Some Things I Enjoy

Hi! This is just a little page about some things I enjoy reading, watching, and listening to. I update it occasionally when I find something new I resonate with but, for the most part, the art I love stays fairly consistent. Anyway, I hope something you find here touches you as it did me :)

Reading

When I have time and aren’t working on lab related things, I really enjoy reading. I love that James Baldwin quote “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” Reading is a reminder that we’re not all alone on this little spinning orb. Some of my favorite books are On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson, and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

I also really enjoy poetry. “Stanza” actually originates from the italian word for “room” or “stopping place”. I love this fact. It makes sense to me, that a poem is a place. It’s a space we can dwell in, a room of respite.

Some of my favorite poems are:

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you. by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

What the Living Do by Marie Howe

I’M GOING BACK TO MINNESOTA WHERE SADNESS MAKES SENSE by Danez Smith

Good Bones by Maggie Smith

Immunity by Mikko Harvey

Calling Things What They Are by Ada Limon

When I was in college I made a website of all my favorite poems so I could go back and read them whenever I wanted. You can find it here!

Watching

My favorite movie of all time is About Time which is a romcom that was released in 2013. It’s the only movie I own; I think I’ve seen it at least 15 times. There’s an interview with Joan Didion in which the interviewer says “There’s a certain esthetic to the way you live. You once talked about using good silver every day” to which Didion responds “Well, every day is all there is.” Life moves quickly and we all tend to get caught up in the little nuisances. Sometimes it’s nice to be reminded that our lives are made up of days and so, to truly enjoy our lives, we must make it a point to enjoy our days. If you need a reminder of that, or just want a good laugh followed by a good cry (and vice versa), please go watch this movie! And then please send me an email and tell me what you thought of it :)

Some of my other favorite movies are Everything Everywhere All at Once, Bend it like Beckham, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind!

Listening

I LOVE music. I don’t think I could go a day without listening to music. Sometimes I think about the invention of musical instruments and my heart warms a little bit. I mean, we created these intricate little machines purely for the enjoyment of it. Then, we created sentences about our lives or poems for people we loved and sang those words while playing our little machines. Humans are pretty great if you really sit and think about it. Anyway, I’m a sucker for a soft and sappy song. Some of my all-time favorites are as follows:

Jump Rope Gazers by The Beths

Landslide by Fleetwood Mac

Harvest Moon by Neil Young

True Blue by boygenius

Chicago by Sufjan Stevens

Halah by Mazzy Star

God Only Knows by The Beach Boys

Why I Share This

I wanted to make space on this site for the parts of life that feed my curiosity and joy outside of science. One of my favorite Ocean Vuong quotes goes “Is that what art is? To be touched thinking what we feel is ours when, in the end, it was someone else, in longing, who finds us?” How beautiful is it that there’s so much art in the world? There’s so many ways to find and be found. Through art we get to hold each other, over and over again.

If you enjoy similar things, have any recommendations for things I’d like, or just want to grab a coffee with me you should send me an email at nsomia@mit.edu :)