My Playlist

About the DJ: My name is Reanne (pronounced like the one character from My So-Called Life), and I'm currently a junior at Garfield High School. Besides artsy things, I like books, caffeine, learning languages, Asian food, and have an ambition to travel the world one day.

1. Humans of New York
Being the politically correct person that I am, I instantly fell in love with photographer Brandon Stanton’s book/blog/wildly popular Facebook page. The media so often portrays big cities as cold, impersonal places, but his photographs really do capture the (literally and figuratively) colorful side of New York and the wonderful people who are a part of it. There are so many different people with so many different ideas, and for some reason it just makes me really happy to see how they express themselves. Stanton’s work has inspired dozens of similar projects from other cities, and catching a glimpse of someone else’s life somewhere on the other side of the globe never fails to fascinate me.

2. Mad Men
I originally started watching Mad Men with pretty low expectations, thinking that it was one of those run-of-the-mill television dramas that are all about projecting a shiny image over a core of little substance. Oh, how wrong I was. Not only can I fawn over the gorgeous costumes and sets, but the storylines are superb and the acting is impeccable. Mad Men can be funny and eclectic, or dark and downright sexist. But it’s at certain moments—moments where I can’t tell whether it’s an act or if it’s real—that I realize what I am watching is art.

3. Fruitvale Station
I love Fruitvale Station because it’s the exact opposite of what I usually go for when it comes to film—I’m the type of person who enjoys the colorful worlds Baz Luhrmann or Guillermo del Toro may concoct. Fruitvale Station, which tells of the police shooting of Oscar Grant at a BART train station, is a gritty, reality-hits-you-in-the-face type of film. It’s a stark contrast to many of the films popular today in terms of both image and style, and it is especially meaningful in light of current events. Many films portray this mirage of an indulgent fantasy world, but this one does the exact opposite by bringing you back to reality.

4. Haruki Murakami
I read three of Murakami’s books — After Dark, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and South of the Border, West of the Sun — several times over, each over a period of a few months. There is something mesmerizing about the odd stories he creates out of the seemingly ordinary, modern world in which we live in, which is why I seem to find something new that I had missed before every time I reread one of his novels. His books have a very dreamlike quality to them and series of events that move like clockwork. They are inspiring to me in their own way, as if encouraging me to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

5. Little Dragon
This Swedish band has created possibly one of my favorite music videos, "Twice." Never mind your standard indie music video, with its weird psychedelic swirly shapes and vintage-y editing reminiscent of scrolling down one’s Tumblr, "Twice" is a simple shadow puppet show consisting of eerily graceful paper forms. That, along with the slow melody and Hollywood sadcore-style croon, is just perfect.