Aggressively Cozy

The last four months of my life have been especially hectic, work-wise, between making Song Exploder, Home Cooking, and Key Change (18 podcast episodes in 4 months!), traveling with Samin for her book tour, and assorted odd jobs. Things haven’t settled down quite yet: I just put out the last episode of Key Change for the year with director Rian Johnson as my guest; I have one more Song Exploder episode to edit; a concert to perform in; and a couple more interviews to tape. I’ll reach the light at the end of the tunnel at the end of next week, and that tunnel leads directly to my couch, where I plan to plant my butt for several days and commence Operation Maximum Coziness.

Maximum Coziness is the ideal state of being. It requires discipline and effort, and to ascend to its heights, those who seek it must engage all five senses. Let’s go through each of them.

Sight
Though my wife and I have a vast overlap in our aesthetic sensibilities, I discovered one glaring difference when we first met, and I mean glaring. Lindsey shared a small apartment in New York, and one night, on one of my first visits, we walked in and she flipped on the light switch in the living room. I was blasted by a cold, harsh, antiseptic overhead light. In a panic, I looked around the room. A floor lamp? A table lamp? Any kind of gentle incandescence at all?? To my horror, there was nothing. Lindsey, meanwhile, seemed unfazed. So, now that we live together, I’m in charge of the lights, because it’s simply impossible to be cozy in a room with unsuitable lighting. In our house, I’ve put smart-home dimmers on all the light switches, and found my exact settings for each of them. And, because I’m a nerd who wants to live in the future, I have a smart-home voice command (“it’s cozy time”) that instantaneously turns the living room lights to the perfect partially-dimmed setting, and turns off any extraneous lights in other rooms.

One beautiful lamp that lets you get extremely specific with your lighting—how much or how little, and exactly where it falls—is the Nightside Lamp, which is perfect for reading.

Hearing
There’s something about lo-fi recordings that I find soothing…the ambient tape hiss of a four-track that sits on all the other sounds like a light dusting of snow. That’s part of what I love about Iron & Wine’s classic debut album, The Creek Drank the Cradle. Of course, the recording is just the container; it’s Sam Beam’s songwriting, gentle voice, and guitar playing that I fell for over twenty years ago, and keep coming back to.

Recently, I had the same feelings when I heard These Days by Emily Hines. I’ve been listening to the album a lot for the past couple of months (I added her song “Callin Ya” to the NapCaviar playlist), but man, I cannot wait until I can sit and do nothing else but listen, letting Emily’s songs wrap around me like the warmest blanket.

Speaking of blankets…

Touch
Blankets are like pizza: even the bad ones are still pretty good. But if you can get a great one—what a thrill. On my couch, I’ve got a throw from Brooklinen, and very soon, there will be a moment where I will be in the corner of the couch, feet up, with myself and Lindsey under that blanket, and our two dogs on top of it, like furry paperweights making sure it stays in place.

Last Christmas, my brother- and sister-in-law got me a cashmere hooded sweatshirt. I’ve spent more hours in it this year than any other article of clothing. It was from Buck Mason, who have foolishly discontinued it. So if you need a soft, comfy hoodie that also declares your intentions, you can order an Accept Cookies hoodie that’s printed on a Bella + Canvas sweatshirt. For Maximum Coziness, I recommend getting one size up from your usual.

Smell
Reader, you know what the name of this newsletter is. Let’s be serious. The coziest smell is cookies baking in the oven. If you need a cookie recipe and you’re ready to get a little hardcore, here’s my recipe for Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies. It’s adapted from this great New York Times recipe, but I’ve fine-tuned it to my perfect settings. I use a mix of dark chocolate and semisweet chocolate, and I add chopped pecans, a bit of coconut, plus a tiny bit of molasses for extra depth.

Taste
Well, obviously, you’re going to eat the cookies you’ve baked. But there’s more. BjornQorn just came out with a holiday popcorn flavor that’s actually called Coz-y Corn. I will be eating that, too.

Here in Los Angeles, where the high is 82ºF this week, you have to put in extra effort to get that Christmas feeling inside you. For that, I turn to this Douglas Fir tea from Juniper Ridge. It’s like drinking a Christmas tree! It’s a little uncanny, but it’s also wonderful. Ultimate hygge.

Sight + Sound, or: What to Watch
You’d think that the genre of “cozy mystery” would be perfect for me, but alas, I find a lot of these shows too silly or slight. For the holidays, I want neither the puff pastry of cozy mysteries nor the black pudding of grim, soul-crushing fare like The Killing or Hannibal. I was recommended Deadloch by a reader earlier this year, and it hit the sweet spot perfectly. I also put Slow Horses, an absolute favorite of mine, in this category, even though the “detectives” are actually spies who are trying to prevent future crimes more than solve past ones.

I recently saw the movie Wake Up Dead Man, the new installment in the Knives Out murder mystery series by writer/director Rian Johnson, and loved it. I think it actually slightly edged out the original Knives Out to become my favorite in the series. I’m a longtime Rian Johnson fan, and as I mentioned, he’s my guest on Key Change this week. We talked about his love for Das Rheingold, the Wagner opera, and how it helped him clarify what it is he’s always searching for when he’s making a film. I loved talking to him. You can listen to the episode here.

Though I put the writing of this newsletter in the work column, I’m currently typing this on my couch, dogs snoozing next to me, lights half-dimmed, and I’m feeling very close to cozy. I’d place coziness in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs on the cusp between “Safety,” which includes a stable environment, and “Love and Belonging,” which includes community and social engagement. At the risk of being cheesy (but isn’t that part of the holidays, too?) I want to send my sincere thanks for reading my puff pastry of a newsletter, for subscribing, for sharing it with others, and for sending me your recommendations in turn. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for peak coziness, and also, if there’s anything you’d like to see (or see more of) in this newsletter in the future.

Thank you,
Hrishikesh

PS: Here are some of my most recent ceramic pieces, which I finished in late summer but just got around to photographing. If I do leave the house during my break time, it’ll only be to get some practice in at the pottery studio.