change the pear vol. 6 10 Nov 2022

hello! i wrote most of this dispatch in a state of delirious exhaustion last weekend, so apologies for how rambling and incoherent it is.

on repeat

i’ve been listening to a lot of fall out boy lately, due to my agonies. last week i played folie à deux all the way through in order for the first time in a while (i almost always listen to albums on shuffle). every time i listen to folie i’m struck again by how lyrically deft it is, how smart and funny and emotionally raw, but playing it in order also made me realise how well-constructed it is, track by track. like, the transition from disloyal order to i don’t care! they were crazy for that one. the fadeout of nobody wants to hear you sing about tragedy straight into the rolling drums and idgaf!! energy. the emotional whiplash is insane, and also what being alive is all about. the best of us can find happiness in misery. exactly! you can sing about being a loose bolt of a complete machine all you want but the next day you will have to get up. other transitions i love: the three song suckerpunch of (coffee’s for closers) followed by what a catch, donnie and then 27. and of course 20 dollar nose bleed (my favourite song off this album when i was 16) going into west coast smoker to round the whole thing off. just perfect.

i love this album for how self-aware it is, how well it understands narcisissm and depression, how sometimes you find yourself almost enjoying the misery because it is a coping mechanism and a way of dealing with [gestures broadly at life]. i’m in love with my own sins / why why why won’t the world revolve around me? how sometimes being sad makes you self-involved in a way that can actually be bad vibes and unpleasant to be around. but also it’s not your fault. but also, sometimes, it is your fault! these are reflections and thoughts i wouldn’t accept from anyone who doesn’t know intimately what it’s like to be absolutely fucking miserable, btw. pete wentz was in the trenches and he writes about it with such clear eyes and a heart that is always bleeding right open, and that’s what makes these songs so lyrically perfect. it’s an album about wanting to disappear and feeling fucked up and having troubled thoughts but threaded through with a resolute determination, a grit-your-teeth-and-get-the-fuck-up energy. it’s both hopeful and cynical at once. you can lose faith all you want but change will come. change has to come.

last seen

sarah and i went to see rina sawayama live a couple of weeks ago. i’d been having a bad couple of days; feeling tired, overwhelmed, untethered. but as soon as we got to the venue, the vibe completely shifted. i was standing amongst all these strangers who had come from everywhere to see this artist we all love, excited and happy and feeling good, and i just thought, wow, live music is so great. i even said this aloud which made me feel approximately 5000 years old. but it is! and the show itself proved the point further. highlights were the emotional catharsis of finally being able to scream along to my top song of 2020 (bad friend—no further questions at this time) and having LUCID on the setlist (if you know you know!!!). & in general she was just so good: incredible stage presence, taking such joy in commanding the crowd, performing her heart out. i am more of a SAWAYAMA fan than her latest album, but hearing the songs live transformed them. they felt alive, and so did i.

a few days afterwards i read an essay by john berger from his final book, confabulations. i’ve never seen such a good description of the transcendence i always feel when i see music i love performed live; of why songs mean so much to me.

“Songs refer to aftermaths and returns, welcomes and farewells. Or to put it another way: songs are sung to an absence. Absence is what inspired them and it’s what they address. At the same time (and the phrase ‘at the same time’ takes on a special meaning here) in the sharing of the song the absence is also shared and so becomes less acute, less solitary, less silent. And this reduction of the original absence during the sharing of the singing, or even during the memory of such singing, is collectively experienced as something triumphant.”

“We tend to associate intimacy with closeness and closeness with a certain sum of shared experience. Yet every day total strangers, who will never say a single word to one another, can share an intimacy. An intimacy contained in the exchange of a glance, a nod of the head, a smile, a shrug of a shoulder. A closeness which lasts for a second or for the duration of a song being sung and listened to together. An agreement about life. An agreement without clauses. A conclusion spontaneously shared between the untold stories gathered around the song.”

i also want to share this recording of the crowd singing no children by the mountain goats (& associated commentary). i think the beauty of a concert is that it takes something very individual—your own relationship to a song, the feelings you have when you listen to it—and makes it collective. you don’t even have to do anything extra to achieve this sense of collective triumph: it is included in the experience. there’s nothing quite like a shared intimacy you weren’t expecting to get.

reading

audrey and i have resumed our marxist reading group of two! this time we’re tackling the grundrisse, which is a collection of seven notebooks drafted by marx but left unpublished in his lifetime. according to marx it is the “first scientific elaboration of communist theory”, which means it sets out the foundations of dialectical materialism, outlines marx’s theory of the value of labour power, the difference between surplus value and profit, and the spheres of capitalist production and circulation. among other things! i actually read roughly 400 pages of this earlier this year, but fell off, and i’m so glad to be reading it again with audrey. discussing marxist theoretical texts brings them alive! it’s always interesting to see which parts of the chapter/text we’ve highlighted as being important or that stood out to us: usually it’s the same, but not always. & of course, often i will arrive having understood very little of the chapter or feeling confused over the key points, and it’s so helpful to have somebody else there (particularly someone as smart, insightful and well-read as audrey) to ask questions of, even ones as broad as: hey i didn’t get this, what do you think it meant? the moments of clarity that come through trying to explain concepts to each other are honestly the most satisfying thing.

i’m also very slowly reading balzac’s cousin bette. balzac’s comédie humaine, his cycle of novels depicting French society in the mid 1800s, apparently inspired marx (i think? don’t quote me on this). this particular novel is quite hard to read, i can’t lie. it’s supposed to highlight how grasping and depraved bourgeois Parisian society is, and in doing so is actually just quite depressing and full of nasty characters who are horrible to each other and bent on ruining one another for revenge/money/both. & if you’re not horrible then you must be a sanctimonious long-suffering fool. like okay, yeah, fuck the rich! fuck the bourgeoisie! they’re ruining everything! but there is not a single character in this book to root for. i don’t even know whose side balzac is on—definitely not the bourgeoisie (duh), nor the working class (also greedy, ready to become capitalists at any moment) nor the peasants either (savages, coarse-minded). it’s like ursula le guin said, it’s not enough just to orient yourself against everything! there must be something to go towards!

currently watching

i’m now on season 3 of the sopranos & this show is really carrying me through winter on its back. spoilers for the end of season 2 coming up: the last 3 episodes were some of the best television i’ve ever seen. episode 11 has tony trying to hold down a “legitimate” job at the request of his lawyer and subsequently experiencing panic attacks, mysterious rashes, and being unable to breathe, simply because he has to sit at a desk in an office. he is just like me for real. this is juxtaposed with dr melfi also starting to lose it, because of her moral dilemma over whether it’s “right” to treat tony, plus carmela questioning her marriage and whether she is happy (girl…). then we have episode 12 with probably the most shocking scene so far of this show: janice shooting richie dead. i screamed!!! i did not see it coming at all!!! i knew richie was doomed but i had no idea janice would be the one to off him. what a tense, incredible culmination of both richie’s struggles to assert himself within the mob and janice’s machinations. i hope janice comes back because i found her such a fascinating character; a grifter to her core.

and then the final episode! tony’s surreal dream sequences while suffering from food poisoning! his subconscious trying to point him to what he has known for a long time: that pussy is a rat. all interspersed with the touches of humour that i love so much about this show: meadow going, don’t be so racist when carmela says tony ate bad indian food; artie bucco having an extended back-and-forth with tony over whether it was his prawns that caused it. but eventually tony has to drag himself away from the toilet and deal with pussy. that was a hard scene to watch. because the violence of this lifestyle isn’t anonymous, unknown. it’s intimate and familiar. it’s tony, paulie and silvio standing across from pussy, paulie saying, you were like a brother to me, before the triggers are pulled. it’s these three men having to bag pussy up and toss him into the water, a man they’ve known all their lives. the bodily effort of what they’ve just had to do is visible. it has, and always will be, personal.

audrey and i also started young royals season 2, which is just delightful. a treat! the premise is ridiculous but also the exact kind of meal i eat up: wilful “rule-breaker” crown prince of sweden is sent to attend boarding school, realises he is gay, and specifically gay for “socialist simon”……inject it!!! i know that’s right!!! the leads have absolutely off-the-charts chemistry (trust me. every time they look at each other i feel it physically in my chest. when they touched hands in the last episode……). the show is full of teenagers being teenagers, which of course means High Melodrama and wayward behaviour, but i think it’s written sensitively and seems to really care about its characters. i’ll keep you updated!!

miscellaneous

this long poem of questions by matthew yeager. this poem by hieu minh nguyen. seeing dustin halloran in concert with hareem and soniya. the man who ate a rotisserie chicken every single day for 40 consecutive days (“mystique is a personal thing”, “PAIN”). flamingos flying over lake natron. watching hobipalooza with hayley. an entire concert venue screaming WE ARE THE GUERRILLAS / BREAK THE WALL. burning lavender oil in the burner elete got for me last winter. tiny dogs in winter coats. phone calls with long-distance friends. sleeping for 13 hours straight. fleece thermals.

whew. take care of yourselves & each other out there. see you again soon.