5 thoughts I haven’t had time to blog about lately.
I got a new job 3 months ago and I like it a lot, but it’s a writing job. I’ve gone from SOTM being my ‘writing outlet’ to it being the least time-pressured thing I have to write each week. The desire to write SOTM stuff is still there, as are the random thoughts that usually lead to a new post. But I’ve realised that immediacy is a requirement for this place. As in, if I don’t write something within 12 hours of having the thought, the sense of urgency is gone.
Here are a list of things I’ve thought about but haven’t written about in the last 3 months.
You seem pretty sad for a girl so in love
The new Olivia Rodrigo album is so good. But why is it so good? It’s a beautiful narrative arc. The sound is very 90s-coded. It feels like something I’ve heard before, but fresher. Every album about love and loss traverses these themes and tropes, though. There’s nothing particularly new or surprising about the story, it’s the narrative voice that makes it. This era of OR makes me think about that mirrorballs vs. meteorites rabbit hole I went down earlier this year. The reason it feels new is because it’s not really about the guy at all, it’s about what falling for the guy did to her. She looked inward and created a meteorite.
TS <3 TK at Madison Square Garden
Even my Dad asked me how I felt about Taylor’s wedding. It was inescapable. The world is so mad? There were journos camped outside? Streets shut down? And a JUST MARRIED announcement on an LED billboard outside Madison Square Garden? The level of interest was fascinating to me. It’s as if Taylor’s construction of her narrative universe was so powerful that its gravity literally pulled the real world into the TS dimension. Turns out the Truman Show is real, but it’s called the Taylor Show. Taylor is both the unwitting protagonist and the mastermind behind it all. Honestly, I think she did the wedding perfectly. She turned it into the biggest show on earth while sharing nothing at all. I have a theory that she’s going to drop TS13 before the end of the year and all the artwork will just be their wedding photos. Can you imagine the sales? Way more than she’d get from Vogue.
What even is pop music anyway?
BTS opted out of the Grammys. It was BIG NEWS in the world of ARMY. The members all posted the same statement on their socials: the most polite ‘thanks but no thanks’ you could imagine. The discourse is kinda boring to be honest. The Grammys created a new ‘Asian Pop’ category this year in order to ‘celebrate’ pop music from Asian countries. The guys statement was “they wished their music could be heard and loved for what it is, rather than divided by region or language.” It’s fair. I mean, I understand genre categories. Country. Rock. Rap. R&B. Classical etc. But isn’t it getting a bit messy to start assigning regions + genres within one category? African Country? European Rock? It feels very clear that the Asian Pop category was created to capture the very engaged and motivated K-pop/J-pop audience. The Grammys is a business after all, and reach is reach. The whole thing started me thinking about ‘Pop’ as a category. It’s a bit absurd, when you think about it. I realise that it’s become a genuine genre over time, but as the name suggests, the ‘sound’ of pop is driven by what’s popular. And what’s popular changes fast, particularly for the TikTok generation. Given this, the category of ‘pop’ feels like it has a use by date. BTS opting out felt like a pretty brutal rejection of western cultural hegemony. I love to see it.
Modern fairytales
We took the kids to Disney on Ice and I had so many thoughts. Like, Disney is the reason Taylor Swift exists. She’s one of several generations of girls who were raised to see ‘happily ever after’ in one dimension. The social experiment of broadening that narrative has happened so fast. Two decades and it’s literally a whole new world. Our kids have Elsa and Ana, Moana, Raya, Mirabel. A universe of stories that are about personal growth and purpose. A kaleidoscope of (mostly) heroines who come from vastly different countries and cultures. I got quite emotional sitting at Spark Arena and seeing so many little kids with plastic Maui hook light sticks, belting out How Far I’ll Go. Representation matters. Stories matter. Soft power is hard power. I’ll die on this hill.
Dungeon Crawler Carl…
… has taken over my life. I’ve just finished book 5 and have held to put myself in time out for a few weeks so I can re-engage with reality. I didn’t think it would be for me. It’s very silly and gross and crude. But it’s so fun, and not in a dumb way. At the heart of it, through all the intricacy and game-coded madness, it is so… moving? I think Matt Dinniman is a humanist. Like Carl Rogers level humanist. An unconditional positive regard type of humanist. He’s written a post-acpocalyptic video-game inspired dungeon novel about a hapless dude and his cat, who find a new family at the end of the world. He captures the beauty and goodness of humanity just as our existence is about to be snuffed out. It’s contemporary poetry, to be honest.
That’s enough for tonight, I think.