Music
Quaran-Scenes: Kath Bloom’s “Come Here” in “Before Sunrise”
Just a series of scenes I’ve been thinking about while in self-quarantine.
The wonder of new attraction is restless, vacillating between excitement and awkwardness, especially when confined in small spaces. As verbally flexible as Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise is often thought of, even acrobatic in nature as Parisian Celine (Julie Delpy) and homegrown American boy Jesse (Ethan Hawke) roll from one subject of conversation to the other, their body language suggests more complexity regarding how the two feel about one another. It’s not the unidimensional, facile overblown love for one another, but rather something more searching, magnetic and strange, hopeful and winsome. Read the rest of this entry »
Perform This Way: Lady Gaga’s “Joanne”
Over the summer, I briefly plunged myself into studying camp for a couple of pieces I did. Its definitions varied, one of the great conceptual terms whose definition is as elusive as the transient nature of what it may or may not describe. For some, it’s merely the love for kitsch; for others, it’s pointed exaggeration to subvert normative values in art; and for some others, it’s the enjoyable bad, where badness does a 360 and becomes good again in spite of itself. The common connection was the role artifice plays. It’s either tool or catalyst, coding in each second of a given text a kind of language recognized and shared by a niche group of people.
And then at some point, camp was mainstreamed, and what was once kind of secret became kind of populist, even if in a tangential way. Ryan Murphy, Madonna, Hairspray as a musical, and the grande dame, Lady Gaga. Read the rest of this entry »
Children Will Listen: 100 Favorite Songs
Amongst my worst qualities as a human being are my aggressive need to be right about the James Bond movies, my habit of impulsively buying food, and my disinclination to listen to complete albums. It’s not to say I haven’t done it (LEMONADE y’all!), it’s just that my taste in music, unlike my taste in people with whom I sleep and subsequently kick out of my room, is very high and finnicky. So, most of the music I listen to I’ve heard in commercials, trailers, movies, commercials and trailers for movies, the radio, and once in a while, recommendations from friends, enemies, and former lovers’ sister’s best friends. In honor and celebration of nothing in particular, here’s a list of 100 favorite songs that I originally intended on posting last year, but due to laziness and a bout of post-Mad Men depression, I never got to. Read the rest of this entry »
BØRNS This Way: BØRNS’ “Dopamine”
That guy – the one whose hairs cascades down his back like a nymph, straddling a line between art school sexy and Bushwick eye-roll worthy; the one who waxes poetically about peace, love, understanding, the latest Gibraltar coffee ad; the one that casually quotes Descartes and whose very nonchalance about the name dropping makes him all the more intriguing – has an album out, and it is both very good and also kind of silly. That guy is BØRNS and that album is Dopamine. Read the rest of this entry »
Sleep No More: Guillermo del Toro’s Lullabies
Tinged in red – or crimson, shall we say – the Universal Studios and Legendary Pictures logos fly across the screen. Hovering above our heads and in the back of our minds, in a space where sonic beauty and horror will find comfort throughout the duration of the experience, is a lullaby. Floating in and out of the air, only lasting briefly, on settles in for an adult bedtime story, a glorious story woven from things past and present, and spun with excitement and tension by Guillermo del Toro. Read the rest of this entry »
I Like Things That Look Like Mistakes 