Sarah Hotchkiss: [00:02:46] My name is Sarah Hotchkiss. I’m a senior associate editor for the Arts and Culture Desk. And my beautiful thing was about taking piano lessons as an adult.
Sarah Hotchkiss: [00:02:57] Earlier this year, I. I found myself really thinking a lot about sheet music, which is a strange thing to say, but I come across like some description of a type of notation, and it had this really beautiful language attached to it. There’s a lot of Italian, and I was like tumbling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole about musical language. And the thought just stuck in my head, I could learn all this while learning to play the piano again. I took piano lessons until like fifth grade, I think. And I wasn’t a very good student. I think as a kid, there’s this sense that you are not necessarily doing it, especially piano lessons. This is like a very common thing that your parents sign you up for. It’s like an expectation. And then there’s at least for me, there was like a lot of guilt attached to piano lessons. Like I wouldn’t practice. And then I would show up in class and I would feel bad that I had in practice. And as an adult, I think I have a little bit more awareness and I don’t know, just the self-motivation to make it worthwhile. I live in the mission and there’s a local music center, the community Music Center, that’s two Victorian houses connected to a courtyard. And as you walk by, you just hear this cacophony of someone practicing the saxophone like someone on the drum kit who’s really offbeat or this like jazz group that’s stopping and starting as their conductor is telling them how to play a piece. They make it really easy to sign up for like a 30 minute class, an hourlong class or whatever, and they have terms. So I signed up for the summer term and I. I took classes once a week for half an hour. It was very exciting. All of this has been really fun. And I have a little corner in my apartment where I set up my electric piano and I practice like at least half an hour a day. And as my lessons progressed, I moved on to a different teacher, and we were working our way through Adult Piano Adventures book to. When I start working on a new piece, it’s just like plunk, plunk, plunk. So slow. So bad. And by the time it comes to something that actually resembles the song that you’re supposed to be playing, it is so satisfying to have achieved that benchmark. I think a lot of. What defined my younger self. Not being able to stick with things that were harder is that I didn’t enjoy being bad at something and I couldn’t see the benefit in sticking with it and improving. I wanted everything to be easy immediately. It’s nice now to not care about being the best at something and to just kind of really muddle through. The punky Punky, I’m going to improve slightly and playing the piano over these weeks. I think I’m at an age where, you know, I’m I’m set in my career. I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing for a while. I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I’m also set in my personal life. And so every day kind of looks a lot like the day before it. And it’s a Wonderful Life and I’m very happy. But I was starting to feel like I might need to add something to this in order to have any markers of growth or accomplishment or personal satisfaction. That’s like above and beyond my very plateaued existence. It’s like a good plateau. I want to emphasize that. But but it didn’t feel like anything was going to change between one week or the next or one month in the next. Besides time passing. And so piano is a way to bring something into my life that takes up time but takes it up in a way that is so distracting and so pleasurable that it it like, eats that time up and then it makes you feel better. I think there’s a lot of things in this world in technology, especially with social media, that eat up time and then afterwards you feel bad. And I never feel bad after playing the piano.
Pendarvis Harshaw: [00:08:00] My name is Pendarvis Harshaw. I’m a columnist with KQED Arts. One beautiful thing has been seeing the rise of Kendrick Lamar and the West Coast as a whole.
Kendrick Lamar: [00:08:12] *Music Plays* They not like us. They not like us. They not like us.
Pendarvis Harshaw: [00:08:16] So it hit me while I was standing in line at a little Caesars when in the back of the restaurant, a person was standing next to an oven screaming mustard! At the top of his voice as no music played. And that’s when it dawned on me that the most beautiful thing that I saw this year was the culture.
Kendrick Lamar: [00:08:40] *Music plays* Turns TV off. Turns TV off.
Pendarvis Harshaw: [00:08:43] Nothing’s going to be standing in line at that Little Caesars and hearing that person, that hourly worker, just clear the airspace, screaming DJ Mustard’s name , knowing what song it’s from, and really understanding that this person is is goofing around. He’s, you know, just having fun. The songs probably stuck in his head, but in full context, I know that this the institution that he works for is this extremely wealthy organization. He’s a low wage employee and he’s getting through his day by way of the culture, the music, the art. And that’s what it’s for. It’s for people to, like, get by. And that’s it’s so very hip hop is so very West Coast is so very me.
Kendrick Lamar: [00:09:28] *Music plays*
Pendarvis Harshaw: [00:09:38] This year Kendrick Lamar battled Drake one of the biggest artists in hip hop and clearly won Kendrick Lamar got awarded the position of performing at the upcoming Super Bowl. Kendrick Lamar dropped a notoriously good album, GNX Grand National, which I heard described as street food, cooked by a michelin star chef, which it is. It’s very like relatable and it’s high quality. He just had an immaculate run.
Kendrick Lamar: [00:10:13] *Music plays*.
Pendarvis Harshaw: [00:10:13] His personal story is something that I relate to a lot of short kid from the West Coast. The, quote unquote good kid in a mad city. I too grew up listening to Tupac. There’s so many different parallels. We were born in the same year and so watching his rise specifically resonated with me. I’ve been listening to his music since 2010 when I was downloading his mixtapes on DATPIFF. And so I think as a fan, as somebody who supports his work, as somebody who’s like can relate to him, it’s been pretty dope to see. The Southern California scene is just dropping incredible projects. Everyone from AB Soul to Tyler, the creator schoolboy Q put out a project that could be arguably the album of the year. And so watching the evolution of Southern California from afar was a thing this year, in addition to watching everyone in my backyard blow up.
LaRussell: [00:11:02] *Music plays* I’m from the itty bitty city near the bay. Hey, I’m 50 minutes from L.A., like a six hour flight from the A I’ll be your tour guide. Welcome to the bay. You can fly in SFO or OAK. You’re even SJO. its an hour away.
Pendarvis Harshaw: [00:11:16] It’s like a ripple effect. As Kendrick Lamar’s rise happened, so many artists kind of rode that wave. Seeing an artist go on a dope run and other artists being inspired to produce content as well. That’s what I really have appreciated.
LaRussell: [00:11:31] Give me a beat, tell em bring that bass back
Nastia Voynovskaya: [00:11:41] My name is Voynovskaya. I’m an editor and reporter at KQED Arts and Culture. And my beautiful thing from 2024 was when I went to Queer Surf Camp and really felt the true meaning of collective care. I surf in the Bay Area with this group called Queer Surf, so it’s just a loose meetup group of queer and trans surfers that go out on the water together. And they were planning a camping trip in Carlsbad, near San Diego. And I had signed up months in advance, and I actually met up with my best friend that lives in L.A. to go down there together. When we signed up, we weren’t really thinking about the fact that it would be the weekend right after the election. And then, of course, Donald Trump won running on a very explicitly anti-trans agenda. So when we got down to camp the weekend after the election with many trans people among the surfers, you know, people I think hadn’t anticipated how badly they would need this gathering just of warm people supporting each other, lifting each other up and really taking care of each other throughout that whole weekend. We all cooked for each other, cooked meals. People would volunteer their skills. They would teach yoga classes or meditation sessions and things like that. And it just all came together so organically. This unexpected situation happened. I had just finished writing this really nice wave and I was super proud of myself getting off my board and I just suddenly felt this really sharp pain on my foot. And I lifted up my foot and there was I didn’t really even register what it was at first, but it was a baby stingray sticking out of my servery. Needless to say, I was very shocked and screamed and everything, and I waved people down. They waved other people down and everyone sprung into action to help me. There were people that rushed down from camp that brought down hot water so I could stick my foot in it for the stingray venom. There are other people that called a lifeguard. Someone gave me a piggyback ride because it was too painful to walk. Then everyone was just checking on me and making sure I was okay, bringing me things. And luckily, a couple hours later of soaking my foot, the pain was mostly gone. It was just so awesome to know that, you know, if anything were to happen to anyone on the camp, the people were ready to help each other and just sprung into action. With trans rights being under attack, you know, and this incoming administration, I think a lot of people are worried. And just where we were in the camp, we were in our little bubble. But at the camp next door, you know, there was a RV with a huge Trump flag. And there were times where people felt uncomfortable because passers by would stop by our camp and start asking us a lot of questions like, Why are you guys? I’m like, Because of the political climate. Some people were even scared to say, We’re queer surfers. So just the fact that we were looking out, you know, in such a tangible way for each other’s safety, it was really meaningful to me in that they gave me a lot of hope. You know, today we spend so much time online and especially as a journalist, I’m so immersed in the news and everything that’s happening, which, you know, of course is very stressful in this time of conflict and division and war. And I love surfing because you really can’t look at your phone. You’re immersed in the water. And not only that, but it’s physically challenging. And it really forces you to be present in your body. It’s also really playful. I don’t care about being the best surfer. I just want to have fun and ride waves. And it’s also allowed me to make a bunch of new friends. And it’s there’s this sense of camaraderie and as well just sharing each other on. As queer people, we talk a lot about chosen family and collective care and, you know, those are kind of always theoretical concepts that are floating around. But I really felt like I was lucky to experience that firsthand. It just reinforced for me the value of in-person connections and really taking the time to get to know people, spend time with them, extend yourself to them, and then having them do the same thing for you. That’s really the true meaning of community. And I think we throw around the word community or and here in the Bay Area especially, but it really takes breaking out of our online bubble and showing up for each other. So that was beautiful to me.
