No. 4. In which I turn 26 and fix my sleep schedule....

In text:

• THE DRIFT published a handful of stuff on Monday; I read Mitch Therieau's "Dream of Antonoffication" first. It tracks what the whole deal is with Jack Antonoff's success as a pop producer in tandem with pop trends in general as Spotify rose to prominence. I'm amazed by the breakdown of Antonoff's multiple production styles as they relate to content, e.g. in the way we're all "content creators," not necessarily the "content" of his songs in particular. "Jack’s maximalist productions strain so hard for emotional impact that they suspend their status as individual songs and reach the listener as bits of cinematic soundtrack ... if not part of a film soundtrack, as part of the generic soundtrack of your life — in other words, according to the logic of the mood playlist, a tool to enhance or modulate your emotional state." Though Therieau doesn't take it here specifically, I wonder how this logic can extend to my own anxiety of Taylor Swift's "eras." I was also interested in the DIY born-digital pop hit argument, wherein Therieau connects the advent of nobodies-turned-pop-stars who made their first hits in their bedrooms on $30 equipment with the advent of streaming, of a commoditized music industry. It brought to mind Malcolm Harris's first book KIDS THESE DAYS, which I read the year it came out, and which stands out as a truly great piece of cultural critique-slash-theory about how children essentially function as commodities-in-waiting under "late" capitalism. (A revision or expansion of the argument might have it that all of us play that role, but I think the point stands for the assertion of the book.) More generally this essay is just really clean; I think I read it after Rayne Fisher-Quann called it "an insanely definitive piece of writing," and I appreciate that it's a little mean while being incisive at the same time. It's a type of savvy I think I aspire to.
• Also in THE DRIFT, Jamie Hood's "Bland Bloodsuckers," a short piece on avant-gardism and meaningful cultural production at the latest-late-stage of capitalism. Perhaps because of the length of the aforementioned piece on Antonoff, I think I was left wanting here; as in, wanting a longer, more specific and cutting version of this in Hood's typical affect. (Not that I think this isn't working; mostly I just mean I would be willing to read this in an extremely long form.) I loved her poetry collection, HOW TO BE A GOOD GIRL, and I love how her work across genre retains the affect I'm talking about; "Nearly all the broke artists I loved or fucked or partied and collaborated with a decade ago have been priced out of New York..." goes the start of one paragraph here, though in verse it might fit in a poem of hers, too.
• I taught a kind of bad (?) community writing class on "identity and community" as I am wont to do, and thusly spent a while figuring out what I might teach for readings. After much deliberation I landed on the opening of ZAMI: A NEW SPELLING OF MY NAME, A BIOMYTHOGRAPHY, Audre Lorde's near-perfect memoir with a perfect opening: a sort of dedication to a handful of people, including bad-actors, who preface her life story. I love Audre Lorde, and have a particularly soft spot for her after using her work to write what I think is my only great essay. If I could teach a class on this book specifically I would; instead, I'm picking it up again, for the second time in my life.
• I also continue chugging along Kathy Acker's BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL, where I've now reached a poetry juncture. Did I mention I made the fatal flaw of reading it on Kindle? It's full of drawings and handwritten pages, and I can tell I am missing out on some big revelation by looking at it on a stupid little screen all the time.
• Finally, I spent the week teaching nine year olds to write, and thusly read a lot of elementary schooler poetry and short stories and essays. I will copy my favorite haiku for your consideration:

Do you see that tree

Do you see how it bends over

Do you see it sway

In video format:

• I finally watched THE MENU after much avoidance and a failed attempt at watching LAMB instead. Knowing the popular reception of it was so overwhelmingly positive, I can't help but feel that we're collectively starved for some final say on what to think about wealth, what to make of the accelerant pace at which we approach legitimate class struggle. I get the push towards social commentary, especially post-Covid; it's embarrassing to suffer a mass trauma and get no just desserts, and in fact to get something of a more fucked up, less empathetic, more clearly class-stratified society. I think THE MENU (along with a host of others: TRIANGLE OF SADNESS and Ostlund's earlier FORCE MAJEURE come to mind, as does PARASITE, and maybe SUCCESSION) is attempting to feed that starvation. It kind of fails on all counts? Somehow there's neither any deeply evil or deeply sympathetic characters in the whole film, meaning that from the start it's unclear whether we're laughing at everyone, or meant to root for someone. When it's revealed that we are, in fact, meant to root for Anya Taylor Joy's Margot, it's implied that a reason to like her--in fact, our only reason--should be that she is a sex worker, and thus a service worker. What ethics is this? Her character is an asshole, someone with no meaningful lines or actions until she manages to "see to the core" of Ralph Fienne's menacing chef by realizing he only wants to make The Great Cheeseburger but has been relegated to the horrible life of an uber-famous, opulently wealthy figurehead chef on a private island. The movie in many ways plays out the new collective opinion that wealth is, on its own, a terminal illness, a sin for which death is the only punishment. Fine; I suppose per those terms we must accept half-baked, characterless social commentary. (This all says nothing of the weird attempt to ape MIDSOMMAR's whole big-fire freaky-synth ending, which worked there maybe especially because of our changing sympathies towards the main character... Moving on.)
• Because of my much-improved sleep schedule due to teaching for four days, I did not watch nearly as many things on screens as prior. The one thing that got thrown on during meals or spare moments was, somewhat sadly, MILF MANOR, the show that deserves a much better review than the one I'm about to give it. Not that I meaningfully know anything about Freud or the Oedipal complex--but you don't have to be a genius to see that the producers are enacting some type of freaky collective fantasy they have about young men fucking older women who are their moms. From the start of this show I've been horrified, entertained, and truly shocked by the brazenness with which the mother-son relationship is displayed as perverse. One game features a table of sex toys, fruits cut in half, and human dummies. (Who put these here? Who was touching these dildos before the MILFs and their sons? The quiet surveillance, the backgrounded prop-placers always creep into my viewings of these shows.) "Guys always think they know what you want in the bedroom," the prompting text says, read by MILF Charlene, "But do they really? The truth is if anyone knows about sex, it's us ladies. ... Now we are giving you the opportunity to share that carnal knowledge with your sons." The neo sexual revolution limits itself not at incest! Thank you THE LEARNING CHANNEL!
• I also am still watching THE RIGHTEOUS GEMSTONES as its released. I've found this season increasingly preposterous, and hit my limit with the reveal of lore that the Gemstones were Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker-type doomsday prepper televangelists who sold plastic buckets of Y2K supplies to their helpless, stupid followers. The episode has it that the Gemstones are ousted for this, and that some of their congregants turn on them, even picketing outside of the church. It's beyond ridiculous, mostly because Eli Gemstone began as an archetype closer to Joel Osteen, not a quack scammer, but also because generally speaking, public outrage against a church is virtually nonexistent; the function of a church is, to some extent, population control, which is why even when people are repeatedly wronged by their churches, you don't see them picketing outside. The idea that specifically evangelicals would do this to their own is completely unbelievable and absurdist!! But you all know I will continue watching anyway <3 (Tangentially: for a really interesting exploration of the Bakker's in real life, I suggest Fundie Fridays's video on them; Jen is my favorite YouTuber of the last two years and among my all-times because she's so clear-headed, and has a specific angle that she'll openly admit creates content for her basically perpetually.)

Other:

• I am once again in an SOS by SZA phase, a phase which I was also deeply in at the start of the year. The album is so fucking long, which in theory means room for error, and in practice means an exciting number of both really great and really bad songs. I have entire sections of the album I skip, but the run from "Shirt" through the end is nearly perfect to me; I especially love the weirdly emotional Travis Scott feature, and the closer, "Forgiveless," which features ODB and one of the best lines on the album: "I don't mind competition, it is what it is / You don't mind second fiddle, that's why you a bitch."
• "can I say something really bad?" begins a tweet which I've been mulling over this morning. "why do adults need representation? like i get why teenagers who grew up feeling isolated might feel a sense of belonging seeing people who look like them on TV. but why does an adult need that?" This question has sent me into such an incredible spiral, in part because it's a response to another type of tweet that's becoming extremely common, wherein someone takes an ostensibly-earnest (but possibly fabricated) hyper-woke infographic and uses it as the butt of a joke. A really long time ago my friend Dari said they'd read somewhere that generations younger than our own were actually much more conservative than we are (on the whole); that little comment emerges every time I see a tweet like the original. It's complicated by the reply, though, which has a whole 124 likes and seems to be asking a question in good faith--do adults need representational media? And why? What value is it to see "someone like you" in the media you consume as a full-fledged adult? I think I'm impressed by this line of thinking; I've never thought to ask it, but certainly have wondered something adjacent to it, as a lover of and participant in a facet of life (MFA, arty) that is pretty expressly populated by wealthy white people, of which I am really not one. The replies to this question--that adults can still have insecurities, that it's important to "hold media accountable to these things" (these things?!), and that adults benefit from "community" equally blow my mind. Because: community is not a person on a screen. It's the person sitting next to you. Am I going insane?