Haruspication and Tasseomancy

The art-world's #1 thought leader brings you the Ins and Outs of 2025

We kicked off the Xmas season by sharing Wrappeds from Spotify, a corporation loathed by people who actually give us the gift of music. Apple’s photomontages helped pallbear the year that was into the family plot. Welcome to January. My holidays sucked, thanks for asking.

The genre of the personal year in review seemed to reach new levels of ubiquity in 2024, and as perhaps you can guess, I’m not a fan. The turn of the calendar has become an excuse for people to present their CVs, part of the overall metamorphosing of the human straight past the corporation into a brand. I’ll ask for your resume when I’m interviewing for an assistant.

To be fair to those who like to take a moment to reflect, the problem could be me. I’m constitutionally disinclined to looking back. Partially it’s because I fear disappointment, which for me is the inevitable gist of any retrospective glance. Partially it’s because I dislike acknowledging the passage of time because I’m terrified of death. I suspect the preference for a token amount of introspection functions for people like going to church on Easter: do it once a year and you can be heedless all the rest.

One calendrically apropos format that I do find entertaining, however, is the In/Out list. It lends itself naturally to comedy, since anyone who thinks they can proclaim the birth of the new is acting a little fatuous to begin with. Especially when the insights always end up being something like “So Over: Lavish meals at bistros/So Back: Intimate dinner parties with fwends.”

Thus I present to you Spigot’s first-annual official guaranteed 100% unerring and true turn-of-the-year So Over/So Back list.

So Over: Eras
So Back: A decade (of Steely Dan)

So Over: Shooting fish in a barrel
So Back: Limited engagements and the invasion of Mexico

So Over: Big dumb figurative painting
So Back: Abstruse sexy dialectical installation

So Over: Water
So Back: Fire

So Over: Being willfully obtuse
So Back: The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (1971)

So Over: Linearity
So Back: Riddling

So Over: Courier and snark
So Back: Default fonts and Bridget St. John live on French television in 1970

So Over: Coffee
So Back: Nodding off

So Over: Dealing with a parent’s brush with death by becoming a xenophobe
So Back: Dealing with a parent’s last rites by finally listening to Andre 3000’s delightful New Blue Sun

So Over: Art advisors
So Back: Décor DJs

So Over: Negotiation
So Back: Assassination

So Over: Magazines
So Back: Staring dully at dust motes in shafts of light through half-drawn blinds

So Over: Literary readings
So Back: Gathering to watch freaks stick pins in their cheeks, swallow swords, inhale ribbons and pull them out of their mouths, etc.

So Over: Guttural
So Back: Ghostly

So Over: Paying for one drink at a time with a credit card
So Back: An invigorating stroll to pick up the credit card you left at the bar the night before

So Over: Clout chasing
So Back: Leg humping

So Over: Economics
So Back: Witchcraft

So Over: Going down to the basement
So Back: Going to Abasement

Still from Zach Cregger, Barbarian, 2022. Pictured: Keith (Bill Skarsgård)

So Over, Metaphorically: Coma (1978)
So Back, Literally: Seizure (1974)

So Over: Thanksgiving
So Back: The 4th of July

So Over: Jacking one’s pecs
So Back: Massaging one’s adductors

So Over: Furtive drug use
So Back: Public smooching

So Over: The phrase “chosen family”
So Back: The band/cult Source Family

So Over: Debating morons
So Back: Ignoring halfwits

So Over, Sadly: Jack Hanley, David Lewis, Someday, No Gallery, and galleries I no doubt forgot
So Back: The Frick?

Always Over, Always Back: Being hot

So Over: Poker with Jonas Wood
So Back: Dogfighting with Jordan Wolfson

So Over: Joking/Not joking
So Back: Slipping on a banana peel

So Over: Substack
So Back: Filling one’s pockets with stones and walking slowly, solemnly into the sea