For this guide, I looked at fictional full-length adult-audience television series that I watch.
GENRE: categorization of tone, format, and thematic elements in terms of primary genre recognized through the network/streaming service, awards, and reviews, where the “procedural” category includes medical and legal dramas and takes precedence over another sub-facet.
Fantasy
Science Fiction
Paranormal
Comedy
Drama
Mystery
Action/Crime
Procedural
AIR DATE: initial date the first episode [pilot] aired on a television network (or streaming service if streaming only), by decade.
1960-1969
1970-1979
1980-1989
1990-1999
2000-2009
2010-2019
2020 onwards
SEASONS: numerical value of seasons contracted and filmed, including unaired seasons.
1-2
3-5
6-8
9-12
13 or more
END DATE: initial date the final episode aired on a television network (or streaming service is streaming only), by decade.
1960-1969
1970-1979
1980-1989
1990-1999
2000-2009
2010-2019
2020 onwards
EPISODE RUN TIME: length in minutes of the majority of episodes without advertisements (excludes specials and multi-part episodes).
under 30 minutes
30-54 minutes
55 minutes and above
PLACE OF ORIGIN: country where the series was primarily produced and funded, selecting for highest market impact where more than one continent is applicable.
Europe
United Kingdom
Ireland
England
Scotland
France
Germany
Italy
North America
United States
Canada
Mexico
Asia
South Korea
India
Japan
Philippines
South American
Brazil
Columbia
Argentina
Oceania
Africa
South Africa
Nigeria
COMPLETION STATUS: where “completed” refers to a final season completed with knowledge of the series’ end (regardless of whether all episodes have aired), “cancelled” refers to a series that was not renewed after its last aired seasons, “change in format” refers to a series that concluded in order to continue in a feature film (does not include reboots or stories that continued after formal cancellation), “ongoing” refers to a series that continues to air new episodes, and “pending” refers to a series not renewed or cancelled following the previous season.
Completed
Cancelled
Change in Format
Ongoing
Pending
ORIGIN: where “adaptation” refers to a series adapted from a distinct fictional textual material (or series), “franchise/spinoff” refers to a series with overlap in characters or universe with a prior series, and “original series” refers to a series which does not meet the conditions above.
Adaptation
Franchise/spin-off
Original series
Examples
I did not create a working classification guide that would enable a user to filter by a facet, but I’ve organized a few examples of isolates that, when selected, would show the televisions series’ they describe in the results:
I have social anxiety but I wouldn’t call myself shy. In school, I often raise my hand and answer questions or contribute to discussions more than most people. After a public lecture, I often work to think of questions to ask, and not infrequently, will ask a question. This is because of, firstly, having learned that having a voice in a learning environment is good. Grades are often partially based on participation, instructors wait for students to add to discussions to the point of discomfort, and “are there any questions?” is generally part of a lecture; these behaviours carry an expectation of asking and responding as part of active listening.
I don’t like being looked at when I raise my hand, I don’t like the process of live verbal phrasing, and I berate myself for how my language and ideas appear as I voice them, but the script is “talking in academic settings is correct,” and I enact that script. I worry that not speaking will show that I’m not prepared and attentive, enough that I jump to say almost anything. Anxiety about talking too much and sounding stupid, pretentious or strange, comes after the fact.
There’s also a different scenario: If I don’t understand something, want more information, need help (in a work setting, while shopping, from a doctor or teacher), or have to make a phone call, I become extremely tense.
I will repeat the question in my head, will write out what to say, will sit in place unable to do anything for long periods (not working at all, or with a finger hovering over a call button). I prefer email but will put that off too, will expend huge amounts of energy to write an email, will often take weeks to reply when I hear back, and hours to even read the response.
I will consider how bad it’ll be if I don’t talk to someone. I run through scenarios of avoidance repeatedly. I often will choose not to ask for help, and my heartbeat will speed up, my hands will grow sweaty. I will lose focus as I worry about doing something wrong, that someone will find out and think I’m incompetent. In cases where I do eventually ask for assistance of more information, I also worry that my ignorance is a failure.
I can’t think of a time when I’ve willingly, individually introduced myself to another person. Most of my friends (not met in work, party or school groups) are people who’ve said hi to me. Often, I’ll think people are cool and proximity will make an introduction viable, but the idea of starting contact with them is trepidatious and worth avoiding at all costs.
I’ve been lonely for long periods in my life. I haven’t always had no friends, but more than once, I’ve had friends who were uncaring or took advantage of me since they were the ones who chose our relationship. I dated my first and second boyfriends, because I was afraid they’d stop talking to me if I refused them. Many times, the relationships I’ve developed with people who said hi first have been good, but there are other, equally wonderful people that I’ve missed meeting.
I’ve tried hard to develop an interesting outward appearance, to make my clothing look sophisticated, responsible, yet zany and cool. I like bands and shows for myself, but I’m aware of social capital around these interests: I hope others will notice my pins or books I carry, and will want to know me.
What I’m trying to say is that social anxiety and autism are complex things that don’t look one way. When I’m uncomfortable, I hide behind complex language. When I’m upset, I become less responsive. When I’m tired or my mental health has destabilized, I’m likely to talk in depth about topics of more interest to me than most people.
I can go hours in my own head, not feeling lonely. I mindlessly complete tasks on my own, or distantly react. I often startle when someone says my name, because I’ve forgotten people and the world outside my mind. So much of the world is unfamiliar to me. I struggle to trust people, to trust systems and expressions and behaviours. I’m not “shy” but I need scripts to help me along. There are so many gaps in the guidelines for how to be a person, and these gaps show me to be social anxious and autistic.
Some thoughts about diagnostic tests for autism, which I identify as having, but am terribly anxious and frustrated about assessments for:
Are you more interested in people or objects? is a false dichotomy [for me] as they can’t be mutually exclusive.
Most objects, whether artwork or building or machine or music or puzzle, are designed by people. When I hear a piece of music that moves me, I am aware that someone has created it with their individual way of thinking, their life experiences and intentions. What I like in the music is the way my history and self relate to it, but I think of music as human connection, though secondary. When I am delighted by a certain word, the delight is for an etymology that comes from centuries of language development, cultural trade, and evolving necessity in categories of naming. The words are literary objects, but also anthropological and sociological.
In my first year of university, I took all the intro human-study courses that were offered: sociology, criminology, anthropology, and psychology. This was on top of an already established interest in mythology. I expect that my core reasons for this array was because I didn’t understand how humans worked but I wanted to, and I was fascinated by considering how brains functioned and how people organized and how rules and beliefs came about: the study, that is, of humans as objects.
The bodies of people and their movements are of a natural design, and appearance or expression is a combination of the object of flesh and human animation. Being taught not to stare is being taught that the visual stimuli of a person is not simply an object. An interest in someone’s brightly-coloured hair; the way their clothing looks with the shape of their body; individualities like a broken blood vessel, a tattoo or piercing or scar; physical disability or atypical gender appearance: that is viewing the object that the person is connected to.
To be interested in dance, mime, photography of people, or artistic porn (all of which do interest me) is to be stimulated by the physical form of a person. Fashion and makeup are fascinating because the person is the artistic canvas. These all speak to humanness, as a person resides in and has agency over the body they possess; however, they all speak to the appeal of the body [as object] too.
This is separate from the urge to objectify or fetishize a person’s body. That urge is rooted in the desire for ownership or possession of another. Interest in bodies is not a need for them. I think of this every time I go for a massage, and I am impressed that the profession is one of understanding muscles and manipulating bodies with respect for, but without needing to connect with, the person whose body it is.
Do you I have an interest in talking to people? A lot of the time, no. But honestly, it’s can be hard to distinguish between interest and need. Humans are a social species: friendship can be support, entertainment, fulfillment, and stave off loneliness. I spend time with only a small number of people, preferring to be around a few whom I share a connection with instead of groups or interchangeable companions. With the friends I do have, my idea of a good time generally involves activities I like on my own—movies, a walk, food or drinks, a concert, thrift shopping—that benefit from the right person to share them with.
I like sharing information, though. In classes, I’m often eager to comment on what I thought of readings or contribute to discussions. In some cases, this is because I feel my perspective is different from others in the class and I want it to be represented. In others, I just have an urge to share. I look for peers’ respect of my intelligence and views, but I don’t know that I want to connect with these people as friends. There are many people whom I enjoy talking with in an organized setting (like a class) but seldom do I have an urge to see them outside of that setting.
It’s confusing to think about, but many questions on standardized tests are confusing. They have an expectation of the correct answer, in this case for someone on the autism spectrum, that is based on a set of assumptions that may not be true. A lot of the questions are ones I’ve never considered—one of the most bewildering is Are you a diplomat?—and others send my thoughts spiralling like this. I presume it’s a difficulty that based in a presentation of autism that is often masculine, one that doesn’t take account the diversity of the spectrum or its broadened definitions.
The correct answer here is objects and not people, but that assumes that the subject isn’t concerned about people; where most AFAB people are socialized to be personable, an interest in people may be more likely, but perhaps through art, medicine, and humanities where people become the object of study. While I have a deeper interest in objects, they are people-adjacent objects like movies or mythology, which use beauty and creativity to illuminate the mysteries of the human world I am detached from.
Act III: Motte (which stands for Moment of Truth The End) follows renowned K-pop star Kwon Ji Yong, stage name G-Dragon. The performer signed with YG Entertainment at age 12, in 2001, and has been the leader of YG group BIGBANG since 2006; the 2017 documentary follows him on his final world tour before joining the South Korean military for two years of compulsory service. The transition from the spotlight to civilian defence is something the media and BIGBANG fans were aware of and apprehensive about in the years that preceded it, both out of concern for the band members and the country’s politics, and because the hiatus made the future of the group uncertain. As such, the Act III: Motte tour offered an opportunity for Kwon Ji Yong (whom I’ll refer to informally as Ji Yong because the documentary offers this familiarity) to give his all to fans as both an ending and a promise of dedication, and to look at something outside of celebrity accoutrement: himself. More on that later.
Fig. 1 and 2: screenshots from Act III: Motte, end credits
The most interesting moments in the Kwon Ji Yong documentary are those that are psychoanalyz-able, either in what they suggest about Ji Yong himself or what they presume may be entertaining or captivating for the audience: Ji Yong crafting in a hotel room, riding a plastic scooter, talking of dreams and loneliness, taking back the idea that he may be lonely, chiding a fellow performer for sighing, looking lost when surrounded by cameras and high-decibel cheers.
Fig. 3-6: screenshots from Act III: Motte, Ji Yong muses on loneliness after a Facetime call to band mate Daesung
There are sympathetic moments when he is on his own, but they come with the reminder that he is never is on his own: his security detail, documentary manager, hair and makeup, and camera person are stuck with him even when they aren’t in the frame; their presence lightens his lonesome demeanor, but doesn’t give him the intimacy, leisure, and freedom he (in a narrative production that may not be reality) seems to crave. Translated onscreen from Korean, Ji Yong says he is “haunted by a camera.” He “lock[s himself]” in a hotel room during tour to be alone. He takes to crafting clothing and accessories throughout the film, something he does to “relax,” and by turns explains his process and shoos away the camera.
Fig. 7 and 8: screenshots from Act III: Motte, Ji Yong comments on being recorded. Left, he is caught writing song lyrics during a plane ride. Right, he takes markers to a pair of Balenciaga sneakers (side note: wealth is painful)
Secondly of import are Ji Yong’s outfits, seemingly no less aesthetically finicky, expensive, and successfully outlandish when he is in a car or airplane or rehearsal stage all day than when the world sees him, though in the former cases, the makeup and clean-shaven look he reps in music videos, magazines, and performances is relaxed. His looks when unintentionally before the public often have a covertness to them, where bucket hats, sunglasses, and surgical masks art both as fashion accessories and camouflage.
Fig. 9: screenshot from 2017 music video for “We Like to Party,” where the band pretends to be the kind of regular guys who vacation in extravagant houses and custom suits. Ji Yong doubles down on this look to the point of parody by wearing all three at once, to frustratingly little avail
In Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche discounts the philosophical beliefs of his contemporaries that he considers incorrect, and lays out his own suggestions for seeing the world. At the beginning of Act III: Motte, these words, paraphrased (or translated back and forth) from Nietzsche’s 41st aphorism:
Fig. 10: screenshot from Act III: Motte, epigraph
Since this quotation is applied with Ji Yong in mind—a man who wears tattoos inspired by Sid and Nancy (1986) and Jean-Michel Basquiat, has sampled Gill Scott-Heron’s anti-racist/anti-capitalist anthem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” has a whole career of media referencing that suggests more of an aesthetic relationship than a critical one— it is difficult to know what depth of intent the quotation is meant to have: that is, whether Nietzsche serves the documentary from a broad philosophical perspective, or only within the significance of a single, decontextualized phrase.
Nonetheless, this benediction is curious in conversation with Ji Yong’s celebrity, as he names the documentary as a discovery of himself but the viewer never sees Ji Yong in the solitary physical or mental spaces that would facilitate self-exploration. Always, there are outside forces at play. The premise of the film is greatly paradoxical as it suggests an intimacy and reality to the person we see on-screen while ignoring the effect of a camera—the effect of an expectation of public consumption—in the ways in which personhood is conceptualized within Ji Yong as the subject and related through him, through the camera as a machine witness, through the cameraman as a human witness (in footage), and through editing and a combination of human and machine aftereffects.
What we see in the central figure is not who he is, necessarily, but the juncture between who he is seen as and who he could be; the constant surveillance used to patched together Ji Yong’s reality is a hint of who/how he might be in a self-exploration that does not include highly publicized observation. In a filmed brainstorm session for the production, Ji Yong says he desires the film process to emulate The Truman Show (1998), which is indeed one of the best social commentaries on surveillance, commodity, and performance in mainstream awareness.
Fig. 11: screenshot from Act III: Motte, documentary brainstorm meeting
What Ji Yong doesn’t state, but which his mood and preoccupations in the film indicate, is the psychological stress of representing a nation and an entertainment industry with such unrelenting visibility that it effaces himself. It’s impossible to peel back the layers, and it would be somewhat useless to do so given that the meaningful attachment that fans have to Ji Yong is in his persona as G-Dragon, a performer whose behind-the-scenes are interesting but are no replacement for our desires of extravagance.
G-Dragon builds a reminder into his performances, ending every show with an English recitation of, “In case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night” (see the trailer above and “Divina Comedia—Outro”). It’s a wink to the Truman-like surveillance and control he exists within, perhaps a gesture to his own position as a “child owned by a corporation;” it’s also an acknowledgement that he’s a product of the pop industry, and makes the choices and creative decisions he can, within that structure. In his reference to The Truman Show, Ji Yong argues that we all create ourselves, an assemblage of what we desire and what we are made into. For every concert and recording, he reverts back to the character he has build alongside a manager and production team for years, but this reading ignores his input in the process. If he desired success as a performer, was trained into that role, and achieved it, something of who Ji Yong is may be what G-Dragon projects.
This attempt at intimacy-within-celebrity is not unique to G-Dragon; I’d suggest this is the elusive desire of all who take note of/enjoy/obsess over the famous and acclaimed: to have something of them that the lights, the media haze, the paparazzi and talk show hosts don’t have access to. The gift of a celebrity is that there is a person somewhere at the center of the manufactured product of an idol, beyond the wealth and beauty and success and skill and luck and attention that come together in the package of them. Miley Cyrus and Janelle Monae follow Sinead O’Connor’s lead when they exploit this with tear-stained close ups in music videos. Britney Spears taps into the discomfort of acting a celebrity role separate from the self in her song “Lucky.” Lana del Rey is a cauldron of diaristic revelations and cultivated secrecy that imbues a similar fascination as the Lisbon sisters do for the boys and the audience of The Virgin Suicides.
G-Dragon and BIGBANG look at a similar lonesome sadness to Britney’s in the media for “Crooked” and “Loser,” where they play roles of extreme situations and emotions that suggest, honestly or not, an autobiographical element. All of these singers continue to give the intimacy, vulnerability, and provocative displays of emotion, which seem to be the morse code of their inner realities; but, these representations are always hard to pinpoint as either truth or marketing tactic given how readily that are devoured, how thirsty fans always are for more. This sort of lyrical oath to truth-making becomes, whatever the actual truth of it, a testament to the business of celebrity as giving the people what they want. We all want to see beyond the veil, and we all believe we can, so when we are presented with the MOMENT OF TRUTH THE END as everything there is that matters, we choose to accept it as the whole truth and nothing but, because it is the best we have.
Is the documentary a bit long for how often the camera is trained on our hero while he walks down a hallway or sits quietly in a BMW on a long drive or gets his hair done? Definitely.
Are certain heartstring-pulling scenes made to appeal to our sympathies through piano music and glitch effects and tinnitus-like ringing added in post-production? Absolutely.
Is Kwon Ji Yong any more earthly and known by the film’s end than he was at the beginning? Except for a few anecdotes about band mates/friends, exclusive footage of his creative process (admittedly very cool), and quickly-revoked musings on loneliness, not really. It’s the kind of information you can get through other interviews, editorials, variety show specials, and live concerts over the years.
Is it a lovely look at a talented, problematically self-insulated, childishly innocent, commercially cultivated, wealthy, fashionable, pretty, cynically and possibly unstable K-pop singer that manages to provoke empathy and a deep sense of love for its subject despite the artificiality of its production? Yeah, yeah it is.
2) Performance and Observation in “Who You?”
The music video for G-Dragon’s “Who You?” excites me with all it does to bring together performance and surveillance, and the labour of fans to create the product that will be consumed by a wider group of fans. Of course, the politics of labour are complex, there is benefit for both consumers and producers of pop media (though its structures of power are unequal and rest most often with a third party behind the pop idol), whether in wealth, entertainment value, social meaning, or cultural identity. This production, both a live event and an object compiled during and out of the event, is fan service with the greater benefit of distribution as a video.
G-Dragon performs a single in close proximity to an audience, across a glass wall and hundreds of video screens that convert live performance into an image of surveillance: the person appreciates what they see and hear, but the camera only records, and captures the image for more public viewing at a later point.
The architecture of the stage is like that of a zoo or cage, settings which allow those on both sides to observe and respond to the other, but where the authority is centered on those outside and taken from those inside, through capture and containment. In this scene of connection between audience and performer, their separation is accentuated, in terms of physical position as well as role. (Though not a parallel example, this relationship brings to mind the imagined architecture of the house Adolf Loos designed for Josephine Baker, wherein internal windows and mirrors allowed observation between Baker and possible guests, with fluctuating positions of object- and subject-ness, separations and self-reflections.)
In this case, the artist enters the arena willingly, performs for the pleasure of others and captures interest—which can be converted to monetary gain—and leaves when the song ends, through a panel which opens for him to drive though. Within the visually permeable barriers of the structure, the human figure of G-Dragon extends outward to the edges of the enclosure. In the video, he is the entertainer in his action, but also the entertainer in his presence.The Lamborghini, graffiti’d lyrics, rabbit and pink lip blow ups, white piano, eyeliner and gold, etc. become a habitat for, and a tangible manifestation of G-Dragon and Ji Yong; all the objects he is surrounded by are his own, brought into the space of his public persona, which results in an indivisible meshing of the person with the concept. He is a curiosity and a symbol, rich and colourful, lively and attractive, a person who resembles or equals something more significant than a person: a representation of K-pop’s economic desires and a national cultural reference point.
A person who resembles or equals something more significant than a person:
BTS is pretty on the nose about the “idol” bit, but the lyrics suggest that what makes them deserve idolatry is internal and inherent, and not a construction which they, building on a foundation of talent and conventional beauty, are manufactured into idols within.
As Cynthia Green writes, K-pop plays a vital role in transmission of Korean culture outside of the country, and has done since 1997’s financial crisis; its focus is often on East Asian and worldwide tourist markets, and shares a culture that is branded as Korean as an intermingling of elements from the West as dispersed by Japan.
In this music video, G-Dragon is made a subject by 1000 separate people with phone cameras; in another music video, or in an interview, a news article, a paparazzi photograph, G-Dragon is captured by a small number of observational machines that broadcast his image to millions of people. I would suggest that this concept allows G-Dragon to realize himself as a subject on view, and for audiences both present and external to see his image as filtered by a set of corporate expectations and fan responses.
G-Dragon and Kwon Ji Yong point towards valid questions about overlap between performance and surveillance, about the individual as culture, about the allowed and disallowed of a cultural symbol, and the possibility of commodity as greater than humanity. In every case, the line between artist intention and projection is blurred, especially given that the person behind the artist behind the creation is a spectre.
3) Further Questions
What happens when we look wider, at the phenomenon of the individual popular music star as part of a grouping of celebrities with influence on the culture, the style, the construction of coolness and intrigue in the people closest to it? In a global economy where K-pop cultural hybridity continues to gain dominance, what do K-pop music artists like G-DRAGON mean for Korea?
Why are BIGBANG characterized as fashionable, pretty, sympathetic, hardworking, and introspective bad boys? How are Korean values and aesthetics, and on the other side, capitalist ideology, represented through South Korea’s most globally popular music?
I am interested in looking at the role that Korean popular music plus as a national cultural phenomenon, the meanings and articles it depends upon for success, the intentions that run through it for Korean audiences, and how this music shapes and is shaped by global and local perceptions of Korea in the 21st century. With this in mind, I will look at BIGBANG’s fourteen-year navigation of the music industry and celebrity worldwide (set to continue, as four of five original members recently signed a new contract), as well as other popular groups’ experiences and influence.
I’ve realized in my considerations of pop music for this playlist that I don’t know all that much about music and its ways, beyond my chosen catchments of information. I can name my topNickiMinajtracks and appreciate “Watermelon Sugar,” but the pervasiveness of pop music makes it difficult to observe with any kind of critical distance. What I see and say is what this music means as a cultural object, for me.
I arranged this playlist around histories, legacies, and subversions, and how this contributes to our cultural swarm of information, often in conversation with other kinds of pop media. When writing this, I kept thinking of Theodor Adorno’s struggles with the influence of pop, and it’s important to recognize how popular music can be invested in capitalism, racism, classism, sexism, and other negative social paradigms, as well as their joys and possibilities.
“I Will Not Return as a Tourist” by Boniface
As Hanif Abdurraqib relates throughout his essay collection, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, the way a band from your city sounds to you is different from the way anyone else will hear it. He’s talking about Defiance, Ohio and small town celebration and punk youth, but his point strikes true with Winnipeg, a city overrun with bands, hip in-groups, and pleasure edged with disdain; a city with its own real, rich, often white and male and shoegaze-y identity, at the center of everything but dreary and isolated.
Out of this energy, one of our most recently successful groups is Boniface, fronted by Micah Visser in a rework of his previous eponymous band. With college-radio tunes somewhere between mellow and upbeat and a stage presence that is all awe, gratitude, and a soft sheen of satisfaction, Boniface is doing well. I see two things at work in their new music. The first: a revamping to something more poppy, with broader reach, picked up in tone. The second: the act of Boniface being molded and discovered out of the old band, covering themselves to intricate perfection in the style of who they think Micah Visser was, but better.
This is notable in relation to When Karen Carpenter Matters, where Karen Tongson discusses the Carpenters as highly successful at copying, at broadcasting an image of themselves through an already created image, and at shaping their work and performance into the perfect form. In Visser’s case, the image is one of relatability, trumpets and keys to amp it up, visual cues to cultural group in their videos and onstage style.
listening to boniface demos from 2016 is such a trip we were literally this close to becoming a 90s emo band
They are a band of recall and layered memory. In older tracks, Visser sings of climbing a fire escape, of waiting at bus stops, of wanting to leave the city, all sentiments that have felt familiar as a Winnipeger who’s been to some of the same parties and had some of the same friends as him. Now, his band bears the name of his part of town, a home space within a city; he sings of “late night CBC radio” and driving to a small town (a friend tells me this is meant to be Brandon). Visser has called himself out on his old music a few times, but still sings like he’s trying to get the best of his old self into his new sound. He’s a prairie kid who plans to “return” to this place as familiar, like Downey may have been as a constant marker of the Carpenters’ sound. The uniqueness in his pop-indie melodies are the prairie fields underfoot, the “city on [his] mind” is soft neon Winnipeg.
Photo of the band, from the music video for “Keeping Up”
“FourFiveSeconds” by Rihanna, Kanye West, and Paul McCartney
The existence of this song is a strange phenomenon, an intersection between two very different eras and styles of pop music-making that works way better than it seems like it would. When I listen to the track, which I do often, I wonder what McCartney’s interest in these two modern pop idols is, what drew them to work with him (and each other, though they are often represented in the same cultural spaces and have collaborated a few times), where they come together in expression and cultural spaces; I think Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of capital is pertinent.
McCartney has continued to be a successful artist since his Beatles fame, and lacks nothing in money or fame; neither do the other two, as West is proclaimed a rap genius and Rihanna is acclaimed for her music, fashion, and makeup line. However, I’d suggest that there are facets of their cultural capital individually that aren’t shared. McCartney’s influence is that of British 1970’s pop, folk acoustic melodies, and the older audience that brings, while West and Rihanna are at the vanguard of hip-hop and R&B on the American charts, representative of Black fame and glamour in the music industry (support for West grows a bit sketchy with every tweet, interview, and public choice, but his place in the popular consciousness a few years back was the inspiration of the Chicago roots, pride and depth of his earlier albums).
Where McCartney is an icon, the collaboration is an opportunity to meld that historic name with contemporary cultural powers and what Bethany Bryson names their “multicultural capital.” Sung mostly by West and Rihanna, lines like “might do a little time,” “I heard you was talking trash,” and “my kindness is taken for weakness” seem to be allude to racist assumptions, discrimination, and high rates of incarceration for Black Americans. Is this intentional? Rihanna has said the lyrics are ramped up with “aggression,” in contrast to the softer guitar instrumentation, and though the partnership reads as even, a stamp of approval from an long-standing legend to young legends, it’s also a cultural sector outside of McCartney’s usual world, and his embrace of it reads of maximizing the potential for a new audience and role.
Wilson, Carl. “Let’s Talk About Who’s Got Bad Taste.” Let’s Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste. Bloomsbury Academic, 2014, pp. 89-105.
“Then He Kissed Me” by The Crystals
In the novel, There but for the by Ali Smith, the character Mark remembers his first kiss with a man, after which he had gone home and listened to his record of “Then He Kissed Me,” with “one ear pressed hard against the machine’s speaker,” feeling “bigger than [him]self,” feeling as though “something somewhere has understood him.” While Mark reflects:
The song, abrupt, dies away, fades to the noise of the needle on vinyl and it’s gone. But he can lean over and do the thing with the mechanical arm so that the record will play over and over, on repeat, until you choose to stop, and you could even be dead and it would go on playing and playing.
In Smith’s writing, the song that chronicles the stages of a relationship becomes that which subverts and seeks a fantasy beyond the heterosexual. The repeating of the track, a single with relevance and pleasure largely relegated to its popular moment, becomes sealed into a memory of experience. In that scene, as well, is a host of possibilities suggested by the experience, that mirrors the track in its movement through time, but Mark subverts the lyrical intention by instead adopting “queer time.”
Queer temporality, so named by Judith Halberstam, is the notion that queer lives can be developed and practiced in ways that go against heterosexual notions of marriage, families, careers, and related milestones. Queerness, as Lee Edelman writes, is seen as an ending of childhood; Smith’s chapter can be read in this way directly, where Mark feels grown up after the kiss, but is grown into a life that contrasts the Crystals’ ideal. By repeating the track, the character sees the same heterosexual desires and standards begin and end again and again, and himself in juxtaposition, moving into another way outside of those controls.
“Your Best American Girl” by Mitski
Mitski has made waves in the indie scene recently, but one of her most potent songs (and videos!) is “Your Best American Girl,” for the way it questions western cultural and its discriminatory foundations. Mitski’s lyrics assume a stencilled version of the American boy, who is white and beautiful and judgmental of her upbringing in a way that reveals racial tensions. This song is figuratively in conversation with Stuart Maconie, who shames the pop music industry for its wash of rich, white acts and their inevitable lack of nuance; Mitski comes at the topic from a different angle, that of her alienation in white spaces and fear of fetishism, in tension with seeking the approval of white men. In this song, she comes out on top, with “approv[al]” of her own history as a strength. Though the song is melancholy in tone, it’s a voice that, with honesty and societal critique, has gained a following that makes it clear that her music and character is something we’ve been looking for.
“All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey
Christmas is the most forcibly optimistic time of the year, set to the tune of pop hits piped in at malls, remixed for advertisements, cluttering the airwaves with the same sentiments. While everyone has a Christmas song, few artists have given the holiday its due quite like hyper-festive Mariah Carey.
What interests me about “All I Want for Christmas is You” is its success as a song that is direct in its refusal of material things. Most Christmas songs don’t hinge on gifts, but many do speak of desire, converted into romance. There are so many rich readings of this song and Christmas music in general, but I go back to it as a representation of cruel optimism, the grandest of our desires and the most fundamental lack. That Carey says she “[doesn’t] want a lot for Christmas,” giving up on “snow” and “presents” for the “one thing” she “needs” makes clear her desperation with regards to the subject of her obsession. What the lyrics “wish” for, essentially, is comfort and support leading to happiness, for a holiday where happiness is the single look allowed; she is asking, then, to mirror everyone else in an image of love and a promise of satisfaction that is born from, and must always be, a fantasy. The idea of it takes from the singer her care for other joys, focusing her energy on the illusive ideal.
“Loodi” by Shenseea feat. Vybz Cartel
A childhood spent in Jamaica exposed me to one of the island’s greatest exports: dancehall. And dancehall is a fascinating genre. It places “an emphasis on “slackness” (raunch or decadence),” with its dance beats, themes of promiscuity, and loud displays of excess. I’d argue that, though it doesn’t look like Sontag’s or Wilde’s descriptions, dancehall is often a performance of naive camp. The frenzied dance style introduced in Tony Matterhorn’s “Dutty Wine” and fervent romance lyrics of many Gyptian songs, scenes of people grinding in darkened clubs and strutting their stuff—which Rihanna pays homage to beautifully in her “Work” video—in a combination of mundane island settings and those of paradisaical affluence give their best to the camp sensibility, playing with style and the overwrought.
The performance of “Loodi” fits into this aesthetic with its “love of the exaggerated.” The video is a pointed display of excess and artifice revealed through erotic close up and expensive, souped-up motorcycles. Part of this too is the desire that is betrayed by this “artifice,” its attachment to affluence that makes obvious its ambition. It is fitting as a music of Jamaica, a country rich with culture but often oppressive due to its heat, its politics and values, and its class struggles. Dancehall is a playful, joyous form of popular music where the seriousness that creates a need for it allows it to thrive in style and passion and freedom to excess.
Sontag, Susan. “Notes on Camp.” Against Interpretation: And Other Essays. 1st ed. Picador, 2001, pp. 275-292.
“Welcome to Jamrock” by Damian Marley
After a discussion of the camp aspects of dancehall, I wanted to highlight another subsection of the genre, equally vital to Jamaica’s culture but more boldly political in its intentions. Performed by Bob Marley’s son, “Welcome to Jamrock” shows the singer’s awareness of the violence and poverty that occurs at high rates in Jamaica, the power of music to speak it, and the tenderness and warmth for the country despite the systemic problems of a colonial history. Invested in the realities of society, this song is content and truth in place of the former’s style.
“You Don’t Own Me” by Lesley Gore
Lesley Gore’s 1963 tune is both a pop classic and a seemingly timeless reference point for a dialogue around feminism and gender disparity. Though specific phrasings such as “go with other guys” are archaic, the heterosexual power imbalance grows ever-more relevant with regards to 21st century dating habits, broader cultural awareness around sexual harassment and gendered violence, and the realities of subjects who reside at an intersection of marginalized identities.
The song has been employed in multiple contexts including the 1980’s film The First Wives Club, a celeb-endorsed video in support of reproductive rights that was released during the 2008 American election, and a teaser trailer for Canadian science fiction show Orphan Black. The surface reading of Gore’s hit is a critique of patriarchal models of behaviour, but each interprets the assertion of “you don’t own me” for a particular struggle: to celebrate girl power, to fight political control over women’s bodies; in a sci-fi premise where women are patented clones owned by a scientific institute.
Lesley Gore looks at what womanhood means through the lens of romance; she navigates the territory of heterosexuality and its toxic manipulation of femininity, with a bit of a heteropessimistic stance that’s a contrast to the Crystals. The song calls out of the singer’s femininity as a passive role, and pushes against being “told what to do” and “put… on display;” against, that is, Butler’s model of an “abiding gendered self” as men have construed it. Frustrated though she is within the confines of heterosexual femininity, her critique reveals only an adjustment how gender is “constituted” and “naturalized” as inherited from the body. Though it pushes back within this the delineations of social roles, Gore’s adamant and emotional expression as she sings give the lyrics weight. It has proved a small but lasting subversive, one example of shifting the “strategies of survival” for women to defend their rights, bodies, and lives from within.
Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal, 1998, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 519-531.
“Borders” by M.I.A
As we know from the 2011 movie Hanna and a recent documentary, M.I.A. was a refugee from Sri Lanka who became a pop star in America. After gaining acclaim with gangster-style tracks “Paper Planes” and “Bad Girls”, her newest album Borders diverts her popularity into a conversation about immigration, capitalism, the nation-state, and social injustice.
Phrased mostly in the interrogative, “Borders” sweepingly critiques cultural systems, trends, and ideologies, including those related to the music industry that gives her a platform. She offers no solutions and her argument remains unarticulated in this song, but M.I.A. approach to music is to reflect on cultural factors generally outside of the range of popular listening, which appeals to Frederic Jameson’s thoughts on postmodernism as “a conception which allows for the presence and coexistence of a range of very different, yet subordinate, features.”
Jameson speaks of postmodernism in terms of a “radical break” or a “transformation” of the past through a reworking of our present time. In my view of M.I.A.’s work, she names herself as a person of worth and name and power, as a cool and smart person and a refugee from South Asia; by saying this, and showing this history and present reality through video and images, the artist attempts to bring together the sphere of pop enjoyment and that of active attention. We do, of course, live in late capitalist society, but M.I.A. presence and ability to thrive in popular consciousness outside of the streamlined, surface-level norm is meaningful and fantastic, and perhaps a tiny mark of change.
With its seemingly endless storage space and breadth of information, the Internet has become an incredibly viable venue for collections and lists. On websites (and apps) from Goodreads to LookBook (to Pinterest to Letterboxd), platforms that encourage collection are widespread and increasingly specific in the interests they capitalize on, effectively categorizing these interests as public enterprise. An individual’s music selection, as one example, has changed from physical collections, through the mid-phase of music files on iTunes and MP3 players, to a time when music is largely contained in a cloud network such as Spotify or Bandcamp, plucked for listening with temporary possession but constant access.
In a modern economy where swathes of younger generations are less able to justify purchases of music, books, or other artistic and cultural artifacts on an ongoing basis, the web’s ability to contain and share all of the above makes it possible for users to remotely “own” these artifacts online. Websites compress articles, retaining them in this representative form outside of shelves and closets and cupboards, for later consumption – to borrow from a library, stream, or to appraise on the same sites where it is catalogued. Will Straw designates the Internet as enabling the formation of “clusters of cultural knowledge,” which form on many of these categorizing sites as users collect and compare shared interests both conventional and unconventional in pockets within broader sites (4).
The “accumulation” Straw speaks of across the internet is rampant, and the internet encourages the claim to data of all kinds until it becomes virtual hoarding (4). But, as Jonathan Sterne notes, forgetting is part of archival and preservation (57). Material is both readily available and spread over multiple sites and archives, strategies around online collection leads to the subsequent and increasingly immediate forgetting of what is amassed. What we keep can be only part of who we are and what we care for, and the rest disappears into what we have once saved: what was archived in our name but is not longer attended to, and what we once had but did not (virtually) collect for posterity. The internet collects, the internet archives, and the internet moves on.
Sterne, Jonathan. “The Preservation Paradox in Digital Audio.” Sound Souvenirs and Audio Memory. Ed. Karin Bijsterveld and José Van Dijk. Amsterdam: U of Amsterdam P, 2009. pp. 55-65.
Straw, Will. “Embedded Memories.” Residual Media. Ed. Charles Acland. University of Minnesota Press, 2007. pp. 3-15.
(2) Cosmic Playlists
A reminder (or PSA if you don’t know) that @chaninicholas is the absolute queen of astrology and her astrological sign based playlists are on @Spotify and also on 🔥
Since January 2019, renowned astrologer Chani Nicholas has collaborated with Spotify to publish Cosmic Playlists, each accompanied by sign-specific horoscopes for the month ahead. As the astrologer states, “where there’s something going on or where a song resonates for a lot of people, it’s the same way that a horoscope will speak to the archetypal themes of the moment.” Each month’s playlist picks up on moods in association with an individual’s astrological chart. These compilations combine the concept of cycling playlist that Spotify has worked to hone, with the renewal aspect (fresh advice and new goals for the subject) of horoscopes.
An astrologer who goes by the name The Jeanne Dixon Effect related to interviewer Hannah Black that the practice of astrology “has many forms across many times and cultures and it has historically been widely practiced by women and gender queers of many races.” Nicholas’ playlists reach out to modern aficionados of the horoscope through a new mode of access, one that we can consume while moving, taking part in other tasks. Nicholas’ media inspiration is inevitably tailored to her music knowledge, and listeners whose preferences overlap hers. As a Black queer woman herself, who often calls back to this identity in the political urgency and humanist concerns of her tweets and the horoscopes on her website, perhaps her voice is pinpointed to reach and to draw attention to Black women’s lives, tastes, and perspectives as well as their concerns. She draws on her own subjectivity to curate selections for the ears of those who share space with her, and provide it for wider audiences without catering to outside expectations aside from the neutral expressiveness of the skies.
(3) Questions in “The Transfiguration”
How do you portray someone’s coming out in media when the experience is often anxiety-provoking and touched by trauma?
In the third season of Stranger Things, teenager Robin Buckley comes out to Steve, gently pleading for Steve to understand. The tension between confiding and response — resolved well between Steve and Robin — is at the heart of Stephan Ganoff’s autobiographical short film, “The Transfiguration.”
Ganoff’s depiction of coming out is altogether unlike this ease and clarity, with a subtle narrative eye that flows through scenes unexpectedly. Stephan‘s mother applies makeup to his face: coming out in its after-effect, an agreement between child and parent to adjust their relationship and the point where they meet. Stephan dresses in women’s clothing and explains to his uncle that he is gay: the tension, absent in the first scene, skyrockets as the man repeatedly questions Stephan on his seriousness. The elastic pulls and pulls until, abruptly, the man strikes our protagonist in the face. Immediately following this sequence, the screen goes blank and a Hungarian folk song is heard, sung by Ganoff’s mother.
After from the sharp violence of Stephan’s uncle, this music is a strange balm that attempts to neutralize the scene. In my viewing, the inclusion of this song, which Stephan sings onscreen to the film’s end, is a measure that makes it great. We see the person onscreen, as dedicated to heritage and to identity through a folk ballad and feminine clothing; his singing is a tonal change to join the previous shift. It suggests that there is a reality between the bittersweet acceptance of change and its crude refusal, offered up with its own questions in a gesture of presence and hope.
(4) “Aute Cuture” by ROSALÍA
The first sound in this video is the metal shwick of ornately designed fingernails slicing through the air like a sword. Rosalía style is avant garde and fashionable, her crew’s dancing is bold and sensual, the instrumentation is strong and bright, and the singer herself is made of confidence. Rosalía’s El Mal Querer was voted Best New Album on Pitchfork last year and #36 on their Best of the 2010’s list.
“Aute Cuture,” her latest creation, is a satirical homage to the aesthetics of haute couture fashion, with the over-the-top clothes and beauty parlor setting. In the midst of all the things Rosalía is doing well, it’s the nails that make the video. Two- to four-inch long, elaborately painted, sharpened, and gilded fingernails appear on Rosalía, on manicurists and their patrons (in a high fashion equivalent of Lizzo’s “Good as Hell” hair salon video), and on the clapping hands of gender diverse folks throughout the video. In one scene, where she is in character as a mob boss, Rosalía uses her claw-like nails to slash the face of a man bloody. With the platform of the song and its accompanying video she, whose nails are impressive at all times, recognizes nail design as a fashion statement, recognizes fashion as an art form, praises the unconventional and unrealistic of clothing and style, and claims feminine fashion choices as powerful.
(5) Public Grieving in Let Me Hear a Rhyme
Tiffany D. Jackson’s 2019 novel features Brooklyn in 1997, after the murders of prominent rappers Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G.. The book’s protagonists are the two best friends and sister of Steph, a Black teen who was shot to death, and their decision to re-evoke his life by using cassette tapes of Steph’s prodigious rap tracks to bring him recognition after death.
Grief is made personal as well as social, which is doubly true when there are high rates of Black people being killed in the USA, and popular media’s reactions are often a combination of performative sympathy and dismissive reactions to this epidemic and its racist and systemic causes. The teenagers’ grief becomes part of their wider cultural sphere when they share Steph’s music, his brilliance, kindness, and insistence on community-building over criminality, cowardice, and divisions between Black people, and eventually, his death. As a musician, Steph enters popular consciousness; he is created as a consumable product, a contained form of entertainment and sympathy, like Tupac and Biggie may have been before him.
Jackson’s message is simple, that we pay more attention to what is popular and commodified than what’s real and ongoing in many stories and lives; but it’s complicated, as well, as Jackson shows her love for 90’s hip-hop and R&B, as her characters name drop Aaliyah and The Lady of Rage alongside facts about Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line and Brooklyn slang: this is a love letter and a way to represent black culture and it’s many roots and signs, from within. Steph is part of a set of cultural workings and messages that do insist on, represent, and care for Black life at their very heart.
(6) Madeon’s Future
After his 2015 album, Adventure, it makes sense for a track from French DJ Madeon (Hugo Leclerq) to be featured in an iPhone XI advertisement. Apple seeks to stay at the forefront of the market, whether this means advancing technologies or rebranding, and to be at the top of the game in 2019 means looking forward to what will be possible and exciting in the ever-coming future moment. Like much of electronic music, with its digitized instrumentation and autotuned singing, Madeon’s “Dream Dream Dream” feels futuristic or timeless: beyond the now but without being able to pinpoint its temporal destination.
On Adventure (Deluxe) track, “The City,” Madeon sings:
The way I break this down is that the “distance” is a future time, the speaker’s imagination and expectations of what is to come. A place, for them, where some sort of freedom means that time and space are no longer constraints. In a single narrative arc overthreevideos for the album, two characters map out a secret puzzle within their walled metropolis of chrome skyscrapers, and make it to the tower beyond. The resolution unclear once the adventurers enter the tower; I think of it as a continual puzzle, where the videos show one vision of the future but leave room for the structures and culture that may come to pass — the videos are scaffolding for the imagined “place in the distance,” an ongoing setting in the future and right now.
(7) The Supernatural Soundtrack
Show creator Eric Kripke did his best to make Supernatural a modern western that delves into small town American urban legends, with a sleek black vintage car, darkened cinematography, toxic masculinity, and a soundtrack steeped in classic rock. Interestingly, a large percentage of the fan base is teenage girls (see Tumblr and fan conventions). With its mishmash of allusions and 15 seasons creating for a dedicated fan base on the cultural sidelines, the showrunners have been able to include a robust number of classic rock tracks on the show. Supernatural takes advantage of music with references to supernatural or religious phenomena, such as “Sympathy for the Devil” by The Rolling Stones and “Werewolves of London” by Warren Zevon. This phenomenon means that bands like AC/DC and Bon Jovi are being exposed to an unexpected group because of their interest in paranormal television, a sector of the population with a different set of associations than either the pop music of this decade or the histories on these artists in their heyday.
Songs from the Supernatural soundtrack compiled based on my interests (plus 4 songs not from the show).
(8) What is Poppy Doing?
The intricate brand of YouTube performance artist, pop star, and online personality Poppy was cobbled from cultural engagement, popularity, conspiracy theory. Poppy has encountered controversy more than once: in its early days, viewers of her YouTube videos claimed she was a cult member due to her lack of emotion and odd behavior, and in 2018, Mars Argo launched a lawsuit against her former partner and artistic collaborator, Titanic Sinclair, who directs the project that brought Poppy to fame, and implicated Poppy in the suit as well.
Poppy has continued to release albums and YouTube videos without pause. Her first EP, Bubblebath, is bubblegum pop that gestures towards the occult, fame, and wealth with a layer of self-aware irony. Poppy.Computer leans in robotics, horror, and internet lingo with dancable beats, with lines like “I caught you in my interweb… maybe I’m a spider” and “the world feels smaller / when it’s at my fingers” on “Interweb.” AMIAGIRL? further develops this trajectory in what Nylon calls “sugary sweet, robotic goth-pop” that experiments with metal.
In all of her endeavours, the character of Poppy has been obsessed with her star status, the pleasure of a following, unquestioning investment in branding and trends, and airhead observations. But her latest EP, Choke, is the kawaii metal / electro-pop hybrid that she appears now to be committing to, and she’s started to make music a little differently:
So, what is Poppy doing? Well, maybe it isn’t so surprising that a persona developed to unsettle, to examine the culture within which pop music and celebrity are created, is embracing subculture as a new approach. In “Subculture: The Meaning of Style,” Dick Hebdige comments on “resistant meaning making,” styles of dress, music, and behaviour that were outside of societal norm (1264). Poppy’s aesthetic has most closely aligned with pastel goth up until this point. In her new era, Poppy’s subversive practice is no longer only a critique of capitalism by becoming the commodity and consumer; the sentiment in “Scary Mask” is explicitly antisocial with “a turbulent background of cacophonous drumming and screamed vocals,” horror costuming and masks (1261).
Poppy still carries some of her demure sugar-pop look and sound, but metal-aligned Poppy suggests development, indicates that Poppy has a further trajectory. Perhaps the project is trying to distance themselves from Mars Argo’s memory by remaking her image. Poppy keeps up her veiled critique of consumerist society, but continues to find new inspiration. Artists like Grimes and Billie Eilish, who’ve made it big with dark pop stylings, have proven that this image is hugely marketable. After all, for the project to succeed, it must sell.
Hebdige, Dick. “Subculture: The Meaning of Style.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. J. Rivkin and M. Ryan, Blackwell, 2004, pp. 1258-1267.
(9) The Living Archive
In an interview with Yitzi Weiner for Medium, Poppy says:
Poppy is social media. Goth is dead, punk is dead, and rock n’ roll is dead. Trends are dead. Nothing exists anymore because the world is spinning faster than any trend. I am creating from a place that is (hopefully) more fun than trends.
The Poppy project continues to underline that she is based on the Internet, birthed of contemporary culture online, using this network to create her name and continually reinventing her content in reaction to the new. While it may not be clear how Poppy will evolve, she may be right in saying that the genre of her brand is not the main focus: it’s the ability for her, as a product, to connect with as varied spaces across the virtual world, and reflexively respond to the cultural sediment she draws from.
The celebrity musician aesthetic is far more immersive than their platform in music. The dissonance between Poppy’s songs and her YouTube videos is striking, but both are working with the media to fall into its roles and to draw attention to its demands. Poppy the character is little more than a collection of signifiers that are confusing to some, but highly readable if seen as parody and stripped down concepts of everyday celebrity culture. Poppy is well-versed in parsing out and combining fragments of culture to create a text; she has been both the text and the creator of its meaning. Her referents are transparent in videos like “Famous People,” “Things To Google,” and “Doritos Monster Energy Drink,” each of which is a list of brands, celebrities, and market-defining companies. Poppy’s categorizing on the Internet has no substance; her endless mystery is a question of what lies between the array of commodities and signs the consumer takes in, and what they deliver back as part of their identity. Poppy’s delivery seems to have none of her own choice, and yet, she has some power. She attracts interest by what she copies, how she maps cultural material, and what she seems to lack. She saves and reflects what we, as a culture, are, in the process of our becoming it.
(10) QPOC, Bambii, and Chim
Poet Chimwemwe Undi used to go to QPOC dance parties, a queer Black girl, she used to dance and, inspired, write. She says this as a speaker at the last fundraising event for Uzoma Asagwara’s political campaign for the 2019 Winnipeg provincial election (which she gained the seat for in Winnipeg Centre!), and thanks Uzo, who started QPOC in Winnipeg in 2014. I’m white, and QPOC isn’t my space, but it is a community I celebrate and and thankful exists in Winnipeg. During 2019 Pride, the organizers of the the QPOC Black Party arranged for Toronto DJ Bambii to spin tracks on the dance floor, which made for the best Winnipeg dance party I’ve been to.
Chim’s recollection of QPOC events reminded me of the necessity of safe spaces in every community. It is vital to remember that, in our social and individual enjoyments of popular culture, of music and dance, of sports or parties, of art and other events, the perceptions of people privileged identities will have different areas of focus and see different relevance than folks of marginalized groups will. QPOC is a a space of empowerment, security, and respect, which makes it possible to be there together and make it a space of joy.
what is the difference between
the feeling of fear and the feeling of love
I am made so much of both
in the figure cut out and the paper left over
I hope one day to stop tweeting
because I can feed you straight
all these things I’m thinking
I used to sit in class
daydream
telling him each fractured moment
of my earthly life
as though with more of me
I’d draw him out
to dry his rotting flesh in sun
my mother used to call me an earwig
burrowed up inside your warmth
body losing muscle and bone
the architecture of your standing weight
when I think of you
every day
arms slide closed and your shoulder
and my head
and your hand
and your tightening limbs
and your patient heart
how asleep and still and
there and
all but gone
we seem to be
if we’re lust
he’s ice cube fire
soft skin
on soft skin
rigid bones
that fold so careful
if we’re sadness
he’s stalactite cave
where hollow echoes
obscure the day
if we’re contemplation
he’s footsteps in
crest-fallen snow
before the day
has its beginning
and if we’re music
he’s tapping the beat
muffled in a rug
an amp is screeching
his voice and all his static
pure and silent
if we’re lust
I’m dreamtime
murky heat haze
sweat
stifled dark
if we’re sadness
I’m blood on water
surface of a rock pool
numb
where
thin wind whistles
if we’re contemplation
I’m neon light
in movies only seen when
we’re lost
and tired and found and
far away
if we’re music
I’m murmuring poetry
to no one
undercurrent to a
crowded room
wish there were breach
crack of bark from solid branch
to steal you from sober
to milk pool, still as styx
soft as archer’s branch-bow
sinking in, to sweet conversation
bathing mind melodies with cat’s eyes
softening blows
in each other’s muffled warmth
wish there were cloak
cool breath of peppermint
to silver-shield you from drunk
so your dance, slippery limbs
words like chest and arms, offering
were pure and hung deep
spanning mysteries with focused eyes
books and tales and childhood
around me, bleeding warmth
Fig. 9: screenshot from 
Fragments 