Some Things I've Liked Lately
There have a been a few times over the past weeks where I sat down to write a new post and then …. didn’t. Or did, a bit, and then lost interest. Or tried, and couldn’t find the right way in. Maybe someday I’ll inflict my Into the Woods Original Broadway Cast PBS recording + Barbie thoughts on you (but probably not). Or notes on my abusive relationship with Goodreads. But not today.
Today, I just want to share some things I’ve been enjoying lately. I’ve been having a good summer. A summer so good it makes me want to close the laptop and just exist in it. So I’m going to do that for a bit. But not before throwing a few unsolicited (though are they unsolicited? You did subscribe to this thing) recommendations your way.
Goop at Sea
This cover story from the May issue of Harper’s, about Lauren Oyler’s experience on a nine-day “Goop cruise,” is a real tour de force. The opening paragraph:
They told me they couldn’t offer me an interview with her at this time. Fine by me—I didn’t want to talk to her anyway. She talks a lot and doesn’t say much. A Financial Times profile published on the occasion of her fiftieth birthday suggested we have her to thank for spirulina, celebrity skin care lines, the good divorce, blended families, sex positivity, and dry skin brushing (just what it sounds like). I’ve also heard she made yoga happen. This is all obviously ridiculous, flatly ahistorical, except maybe the celebrity skin care line thing, but that doesn’t matter—even if someone thinks she’s done more harm than good, and that a lot of it is an upscale scam, they will comment, wearily, pragmatically, just a little bit enviously, that you have to respect it, don’t you, what she’s done. She has successfully integrated her imperial wellness company into American life. Memories of a time when gut health wasn’t something you discussed at parties are distant. Moms are microdosing. Vulnerability reigns. The countervailing spirit of resistance to quackery and “fake news” that characterized the Trump era is over, and eggs made of jade that you’re supposed to put in your vagina are still for sale. Everybody knows about the vagina eggs. The elderly know about them. People from Belgium know about them. What comes next, epochally, is still unclear. In the meantime, she has been, for some reason, partnering with a cruise line.
Funny as hell, existing in the shadow of and in conversation with David Foster Wallace’s cruise piece for the same publication, the piece manages to take on the wellness industry and the cult of celebrity while including a brief history of how we came to use ‘knots’ as a unit of measurement (and what exactly knots measure) … with some anti-vax sentiments and meditation on polyamory thrown in for good measure. I laughed so hard. It really wowed me.
“Wagner in the Desert” by Greg Jackson
I remember reading this story—the first story in his stunner of a short story collection, Prodigals—when it was first published in The New Yorker nearly ten years ago. The story features a group of thirtysomethings who go to the desert for one last holiday of debauchery before getting married or having kids or financing their movie or doing whatever it is they’re supposed to do next. The opening lines:
First we did molly, lay on the thick carpet touching it, ourselves, one another. We did edibles, bathed dumbly in the sun, took naps on suède couches. Later, we did blow off the keys to ecologically responsible cars. We powdered glass tables and bathroom fixtures. We ate mushrooms—ate and waited, ate and waited. Then we just ate, emptied the Ziplocs into our mouths like chip bags. We smoked cigarettes and joints, sucked on lozenges lacquered in hash oil. We tried one another’s benzos and antivirals, Restoril, Avodart, YAZ, and Dexedrine, looking for contraindications. We ate well: cassoulets, steak frites, squid-ink risotto with porcini, spices from Andhra Pradesh, Kyoto, Antwerp. Of course we drank, too: pure agaves, rye whiskeys, St-Germain, old Scotch. We spent our hot December afternoons next to the custom saltwater pool or below the parasols of palm fronds, waiting, I suppose, to feel at peace, to baptize our minds in an enforced nullity, to return to a place from which we could begin again.
This was a few years ago in Palm Springs, at the end of a very forgettable year.
Maybe it’s that I myself am a thirtysomething or that I’m going to Palm Springs in a few weeks or or or … but this story is one I’ve returned to every couple of years and each time I find something new in it. The knowing, ironic tones shouldn’t go so well with the sincere searching in the story, but they do. And there are some shining insights here: about relating to other people, about growing up, about doing drugs, about a particular kind of thirtysomething sadness:
It was sadness about a lot of things, but perhaps, most simply stated, it was regret that we had grown self-knowing enough to avoid our mistakes.
The whole collection is great—I’m re-reading it now—but this story is a standout.
Passages
I saw Ira Sachs’ new film at IFC a couple of weeks ago and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. It is, essentially, the story of a film director who cheats on his husband with a woman. Franz Rogowski gives one of the best performances I’ve seen in years—human quicksand exerting its pull on anyone foolish enough to get close. A movie about adults made for adults! That is interested in relational dynamics and allows for complexity and ambiguity and ambivalence! I fear I’d blow up my life for any of the three participants in this psychosexual dance.
Eric Rohmer’s Summer Films
Putting my Criterion Channel subscription to good use, I’ve been making my way through the summer films of Eric Rohmer. I’d never seen any of his stuff, still haven’t seen some of his major works (My Night at Maud’s, Love in the Afternoon, and Claire’s Knee incoming!), but was intrigued by this piece in the Times. So far I’ve watched The Green Ray, La Collectionneuse, and A Summer’s Tale and have loved all three.
These are all holiday films. No one has a job or, if they do it exists purely as a jumping off point for the holiday or as a manifestation of ‘real life’ looming in the future. These are some of my favorite kinds of films: particular people bouncing off each other. Watch them and then talk about them with me and then help me populate my closet with Rohmer-inspired outfits.
Lilah Raptopoulos Interviews
This weekend, Jenny Lewis posted a link to a podcast of an interview she did with the Financial Times—a publication I, admittedly, hadn’t ever spent much (any) time with. I’ve listened to and read a lot of interviews with Jenny over the years, but this one immediately felt different. Over the course of the half-hour episode, I came to admire the interviewer’s—Lilah Raptopoulos’—style more and more. She’s so disarming and present and personable. Her questions feel borne of actual curiosity. Upon finishing, I immediately listened to her conversation with David Byrne, where she creates the space for him to reflect back on the person and artist he was while making Stop Making Sense and how different a person and artist he is now. Lilah’s interviews feel like magic tricks. I will listen to as many as she shares.
Here’s the opening of the Jenny episode:
Vampires
I’m finding myself into bloodsuckers lately. Or, at least, songs with vampires in the title. The new Olivia Rodrigo song is a quintessential lead single from a sophomore album. A little darker, a little wiser, but just as catchy and confessional as before.
I’m ready to crown her the queen of the bridge. “Driver’s License,” “good 4 u,” and now this?! Undeniable.
And recently Big Thief released their new single, “Vampire Empire.” Pitchfork says it better than I could:
The song, simply put, is another marvel. [… Singer Adrienne] Lenker pours out a torrent of words aimed at a lover in an overwhelming tangle of love, lust, compassion, frustration, weariness, and anger. The song peaks with a cathartic declaration—“I am falling”—but in the context of Lenker’s catalog, the moment is just another crag in an emotional landscape the size of a mountain range.
Horny Summer Songs
It is summer and I find myself falling in love with everyone who crosses my path. Tank tops and tanlines and sweaty skin and the transition from outdoors to a chilled room. I can’t stop listening to love songs. Or maybe not love songs, exactly. Lust songs. And no one does horny lust songs better than queer femmes.
I only know one person in my life who doesn’t like Muna (and that person is very lucky they are grandfathered into my good graces). Their song “Silk Chiffon” is a perfect encapsulation of the horny summer song:
But the horny summer song that’s really speaking to me this year is Chappell Roan’s “Red Wine Supernova.” It’s a song with gears. It winds up. Then it lets go. Then it soars. The “wellllllll” that leads into the bridge feels like a revving engine. It’s silly and sexy and it rhymes “I don’t care that you’re a stoner” with “Red wine supernova” and I honestly don’t know what one could possibly want more from a horny summer song. You should listen to it now.
I hope you’re all having a great summer, horny or otherwise.