#semiotics 'verse

[stobinesque]

phryctoria | chapter 1: pyrseia (torch)

Sometimes your gay awakening is just having someone to show you it's possible. Steve comes out to Robin, and the two of them figure out how to weather being two gay teenagers in rural Indiana together.

[1][2][3][4][5][6 & 7] | [Read on AO3]

They’re both sitting in the beamer, engine idling in the Buckley’s driveway, when Steve finally works up the courage to ask the question that’s been burning a hole in the back of his head for weeks. 

“Hey. Robs?” Steve drums his hands against the side of the steering wheel to give all the restless energy a place to go.

“‘Sup, dingus?” Robin shoots back on autopilot—but when she turns to look at him she must see…something on his face, because her tone drops into something more sincere. “What’s up, Steve?”

“I—uh.” He swallows, trying to work the words past the lump in his throat. “How did you, uh, know?” the second they escape he wants to snatch them back out of the air because—really, is that not the stupidest thing he could have said?

Robin frowns. “Know what?”

Steve closes his eyes and pinches at the bridge of his nose, pushing down tears, and nausea induced by what he knows to be unnecessary fear. His face is hot with shame and all he wants is to fold himself up and hide in a corner. But. It’s Robin. It’s just Robin. He can talk to Robin. His head knows it, his stomach and heart are just having a hard time catching up right now. 

“H-how did you know that you…that you like girls?”

Steve knows that she can hear the weight behind the question, because she doesn’t poke fun at him at all—doesn't shoot back the easy 'well how did you' that sits like low hanging fruit—instead she goes quiet in that way she does when carefully considering something.

“Well…I guess I don’t know exactly when I knew, you know?”

Steve shakes his head. If he did know this would all be a lot easier. Instead it feels like he’s been turned inside out and knotted up. Like none of his pieces fit together the way he thought they did. It’s a feeling he thinks he ought to be used to by now, even if he knows he never will be. Each time his entire world is rewritten feels like it ought to be the last. (Sometimes Steve wonders what this must be like for Will. Or El. He’s got some (suspected) traumatic brain injury and a little light torture to cope with, but he was, at the very least, on the other side of puberty for most of it. He can’t wrap his mind around what it must be like to just be a kid who keeps having their life ripped away…) 

Steve is pulled from his thoughts by Robin reaching over him to turn the keys in the ignition, so that the car sits still and silent beneath them.

And then Robin—light of his life, master of his heart—continues talking. “It was all just a…gradual realization, y’know? Like—there were all these bits and pieces falling in my path along the way until one day it all kind of came together. But I guess the first time it went from this sort of, like vague awareness that I thought women were really soft, and–and pretty, and cool, was when I kept thinking about how nice it would be to hold Hailey Carmichael’s hand. Or, uh, kiss her, or…um. Other stuff.” Robin cuts the train of thought off with an awkward huff. “I think that was the first time I really thought about what it would be like if I was with another girl. But after that I thought back to other girls I’d been friends with—how I was always just a bit more cuddly with them than it seemed like I was supposed to be. Or–or how I got jealous if a girl I really liked suddenly had a new friend. And I realized there were also, like, a lot of actresses I had just thought were ‘objectively’ pretty, but actually I think they’re, like, super hot.”

Steve nods slowly and tries to catalog all of the examples Robin just listed against his own memories. He thinks about the way he used to get teased by other boys about his hugs being too soft and girly because he’d lean into them just a little too much, and linger in the embrace for just a little too long. (And, okay, it’s possible that had a little more to do with the fact that he could count on both hands the number of times either of his parents had hugged him in his memory and still have a few fingers left over but he’s going to save that crisis for another day and maybe also a shrink if he can find one that won’t try to lock him up for talking about fucking demodogs and drowned teen girls in his pool, and—right. Having one crisis at a time.) He remembers when Tommy started dating Carol and he was sulky and bitter for weeks, and it had nothing to do with wanting Carol for himself like Tommy had thought at the time. He conjures up images of Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise with no effort at all and realizes he definitely has more than a benign aesthetic appreciation for them. 

Steve’s mouth is dry when he goes to speak again. “A-and how did you know that you...don’t like guys?" Steve is shaking and he seems to lose the connection between his brain and his mouth as he rambles out the totally unnecessary clarification of— "Boys. Men. Whatever.”

At that Robin cocks her head at him, a curious look on her face. “You know it’s possible to like both, right?” She asks the question so gently. Like she’s talking to a spooked animal. Like he really might not know, and like it'd be okay if he didn't. 

(He bitterly thinks for a moment that it'd be better if the problem was just that he didn't know that was an option open to him. Except he knows that in some ways, for him, that might have actually been worse.)

Steve’s knuckles go white as he clutches the steering wheel tightly. “Yeah, I know. Just—answer the question, Rob.” His voice is hoarse and he sounds scared to even his own ears.

Robin’s eyes widen slightly, but she nods. “Y-yeah, okay. Well, uh. I guess I just never really thought I did? Like, I’d tell other girls I had crushes on boys because I knew I was supposed to. But I never really got what other girls meant when they called so-and-so hot or what’s-his-face sexy, y’know. I’d just, like, pick a guy to say I liked so that I didn’t stick out too much.” Robin is silent for a moment, but Steve doesn’t make any attempt to fill it. After a few beats of silence Robin continues on. “But that—Steve, that’s just my story. And, like, I don’t really know other, um, not-straight people, but I’m pretty sure it’s different for some people? Like, some people get married and have kids before realizing that oh, actually, maybe the love they have isn’t actually romantic, or something.”

Steve nods again. That…almost makes sense—after all, that's what happened with his feelings for her, wasn't it?—except… “What about, like, sex, though? How does someone have sex with someone for years without being attracted to them?”

Robin’s brow furrows. “Steve…you know I’m a virgin, right?”

Steve is nodding with embarrassment before she finishes the question. “No, yeah, I do. I’m sorry that was dumb—”

Robin is shaking her head. “Nope! This is a no-dumb-questions type of convo.” Robin takes a deep breath, like she’s bracing herself. “Okay. I can do this," she says to herself. And then she fixes all the intensity of a Robin Buckley Stare on him to say, “Just this once I’m gonna let you talk to me about your—” Robin wrinkles her nose “—sex life. And then never again—understood, Harrington?”

That manages to get a smile out of him and Steve turns to look at Robin fondly. God, he loves her. “Understood, Buckley.” He throws in a mock salute to really sell it. 

 “Okay, so: If, hypothetically, you have had sex with someone you weren’t attracted to, why do you think that would be?”

Steve drums his fingers against the wheel again as he considers the question. “Well, I guess…I mean, I’m supposed to like girls, right?” Steve almost expects Robin to contradict him, but when he steals a glance at her, the expression she’s sending his way just looks sad. It bolsters his resolve to keep going somehow. “Like, Steve Harrington: Golden Boy; Captain of the Swim Team; King of Hawkins High. Everyone just…expects that from me, right? And if—hypothetically—I actually didn’t want that—what I was supposed to, then the best way to make sure no one—” (even me, he thinks, but doesn't say. He thinks Robin will hear it anyway) “—that no one looks at that too closely would be to, like, throw myself at girls, right?”

Robin nods along like everything he’s saying makes sense, rather than being batshit insane. And how would she know? She doesn't have any more of a frame of reference for this than he does, really. And he thinks he has the shape of the rest of it, but it's hanging formless at the periphery of his mind. He really wishes learning things about himself didn't require so much fucking messiness and honesty, but he manages to find the courage to fight through the awkwardness to tack on, “Plus, I mean…sex…feels good? Like, regardless of if I think the person is hot or whatever.”

Robin wrinkles her nose again, but takes it in stride. She bites her lip and looks at him hesitantly—like she’s afraid of how he’ll take whatever it is she’s about to say next. “And…what about Nancy?” The question is almost a whisper. Said softly so as not to break him.

Steve blows out a shaky breath and squeezes his eyes shut. “I…Nancy Wheeler is the girl I could have lived a happy enough life with, even if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. Or, at least, that's what I thought she was.” Steve leans back in his seat, fighting down tears. “And, Rob—I want kids. I–I’ve always wanted to be a dad, even before I wound up stuck with all the little rugrats I currently cart around.” The car is silent for a few charged beats and into the space he whispers, “How could anyone not love Nancy Wheeler?”

Robin lets out a long breath of her own. “Fuck, dude.”

Steve laughs, and somehow he’s surprised to hear how shaky it comes out. “Yeah.” He reaches up to pinch at the bridge of his nose again, still keeping his eyes shut, taking comfort in the dark. (Something he can only do now, in the safety of daytime, above-ground, where light is only a blink away.)

Silence falls again, and this time it settles like the first real snow of winter.

“So…did that…" Robin's voice carefully breaks through the silence. "Did that help?” 

Steve opens his eyes and turns to look at her, his best girl. Robin looks a little uncertain. A lot out of her depth. He reaches out to take her hand into his own. 

“Yeah, Robbie,” he murmurs. “You always help me.” And maybe that's too much, too soon. A little like saying I love you after the second or third date. But everything between them has been like that. He knows that going through hell with someone is the quickest way to tie people together, if you let it. But for the two of them it feels like more than that. Even with its short existence he knows that nothing ever has or ever will be as strong as what they have. And really, that's what he means. That's what helps. Knowing that for once in his life, he has someone that'll never leave him. 

“Oh.” Robin says, like she's managed to hear all of that (she probably has). She squeezes his hand and the two of them sit in silence for a bit longer.

Robin is the one to break the silence again, and her tone is still careful, but there's a lot more open curiosity to it now. “So…when did, um. When did you—”

“Bathroom.”

“Huh?”

“Th-the…when you…” Steve stops to take a deep breath. For some reason this feels bigger than the rest of it. Bigger than the whole sky. ��Robs, you’re the first gay person I’ve ever known. At least that I know of? And, like...my whole life, uh 'queer' people had kind of been made out to be the boogeyman, you know? But I’ve, like, seen actual monsters and you—you’re just a person—the best person. And I just…if Robin Buckley can be gay, I thought…maybe it’s okay if Steve Harrington is too?”

“Oh, Steve.” Robin sounds choked up.

“Don’t you dare cry on me Buckley, or I will too.”

“I don’t know if I can help it,” Robin pulls her hand out of his to wipe not-so-surreptitiously at her eyes. “So. Did you figure it out?”

Steve looks down at his lap, staring into his empty palms. He grits his teeth. “Yeah, Robbie. Yeah, I’m…” he pauses, gathers himself up, and turns to look at his best friend—his soulmate—and prepares to shed away another layer of King Steve (fuck that guy, may he rest in fucking tatters). Robin meets his gaze head on. “I’m gay.” It’s thrilling to say. He feels euphoric.

It’s the scariest thing he’s ever done.

Robin throws her arms around him, and then it’s just two gay teens in Hawkins, Indiana, sitting in a driveway, crying about what it is to be two halves of a whole. What it is to be seen so entirely.

[dustedmagazine]

Listening Post: Kim Gordon

Kim Gordon has long been one of rock’s female icons, one of a tiny handful of women to get much play in Michael Azzerad’s underground-defining Our Band Could Be Your Life and a mainstay in the noise-rock monolith Sonic Youth. It’s hard to imagine that quintessential dude rock band without Gordon in front, dwarfed by her bass or spitting tranced out, pissed off verses over the storm of feedback.

Yet Gordon’s trajectory has been, if anything, even more fascinating since Sonic Youth’s demise in 2011. A visual artist first — she studied art at the Otis College of Art and Design before joining the band — she continues to paint and sculpt and create. She’s had solo art shows at established galleries in London and New York, most recently at the 303 Gallery in New York City. A veteran of indie films including Gus van Zant’s Last Days and Todd Haynes I’m Not There, she has also continued to act sporadically, appearing in the HBO series Girls and on an episode of Portlandia. Her memoir, Girl in a Band, came out in 2015.

But Gordon has remained surprisingly entrenched in indie music over the last decade. Many critics, including a few at Dusted, consider her Body Head, collaboration with Bill Nace the best of the post-Sonic Youth musical projects. The ensemble has now produced two EPs and three full-lengths. Gordon has also released two solo albums, which push her iconic voice into noisier, more hip hop influenced directions. We’re centering this listening post around The Collective, Gordon’s second and more recent solo effort, which comes out on Matador on March 8th, but we’ll likely also be talking about her other projects as well.

Intro by Jennifer Kelly

Jennifer Kelly: I missed No Home in 2019, so I was somewhat surprised by The Collective’s abrasive, beat-driven sound though I guess you could make connections to Sonic Youth’s Cypress Hill collaboration?

The more I listen to it, though, the more it makes sense to me. I’ve always liked the way Gordon plays with gender stereotypes, and “I’m a Man” certainly follows that trajectory. What are you guys hearing in The Collective?

Jonathan Shaw: I have only listened through the entire record once, but I am also struck by its intensities. Sort of silly to be surprised by that, given so many of the places she has taken us in the past: noisy, dangerous, dark. But there's an undercurrent of violence to these sounds that couples onto the more confrontational invocations and dramatizations of sex. It's a strong set of gestures. I like the record quite a bit.

Bill Meyer: I'm one of those who hold Body/Head to be the best effort of the post-Sonic Youth projects, but I'll also say that it's very much a band that creates a context for Gordon to do something great, not a solo effort. I was not so taken with No Home, which I played halfway through once upon its release and did not return to until we agreed to have this discussion. I've played both albums through once now, and my first impression is that No Home feels scattered in a classic post-band-breakup project fashion — “let's do a bit of this and that and see what sticks.” The Collective feels much more cohesive sonically, in a purposeful, “I'm going to do THIS” kind of way.

Jonathan Shaw: RE Jennifer's comment about “I'm a Man”: Agreed. The sonics are very noise-adjacent, reminding me of what the Body has been up to lately, or deeper underground acts like 8 Hour Animal or Kontravoid's less dancy stuff. Those acts skew masculine (though the Body has taken pains recently to problematize the semiotics of those photos of them with lots of guns and big dogs...). Gordon's voice and lyrics make things so much more explicit without ever tipping over into the didactic. And somehow her energy is in tune with the abrasive textures of the music, but still activates an ironic distance from it. In the next song, “Trophies,” I love it when she asks, “Will you go bowling with me?” The sexed-up antics that follow are simultaneously compelling and sort of funny. Rarely has bowling felt so eroticized.

Jennifer Kelly: I got interested in the beats and did a YouTube dive on some of the other music that Justin Raisen has been involved with. He's in an interesting place, working for hip hop artists (Lil Yachty, Drake), pop stars (Charli XCX) and punk or at least punk adjacent artists (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Viagra Boys), but nothing I've found is as raw and walloping as these cuts.

“The Candy House” is apparently inspired by Jennifer Egan's The Candy House, which is about a technology that enables people to share memories... Gordon is pretty interested in phones and communications tech and how that's changing art and human interaction.

Andrew Forell: My immediate reaction to the beats was oh, The Bug and JK Flesh, in particular the MachineEPs by the former and Sewer Bait by the latter. Unsurprisingly, as Jonathan says, she sounds right at home within that kind of dirty noise but is never subsumed by it

Jennifer Kelly: I don't have a deep reference pool in electronics, but it reminded me of Shackleton and some of the first wave dub steppers. Also, a certain kind of late 1990s/early aughts underground hip hop like Cannibal Ox and Dalek.

Bryon Hayes: Yeah, I hear some Dalek in there, too. Also, the first Death Grips mixtape, Ex-Military.

It's funny, I saw the track title “I'm a Man,” and my mind immediately went to Bo Diddley for some reason, I should have known that Kim would flip the script, and do it in such a humorous way. I love how she sends up both the macho country-lovin’ bros and the sensitive metrosexual guys. It's brilliant!

This has me thinking about “Kool Thing”, and how Chuck D acts as the ‘hype man’ to Kim Gordon in that song. I'm pretty sure that was unusual for hip hop at the time. Kim's got a long history of messing with gender stereotypes.

Bill Meyer: Gordon did a couple videos for this record, and she starred her daughter Coco in both of them. The one for “I'm A Man” teases out elements of gender fluidity, how that might be expressed through clothing, and different kinds of watching. I found the video for “Bye Bye” more interesting. All the merchandise that's listed in the video turns out to be a survival kit, one that I imagine that Gordon would know that she has to have to get by. The protagonist of the video doesn't know that, and their unspoken moment in a car before Coco runs again was poignant in a way that I don't associate with her work. And of messing with hip hop!

Tim Clarke: “Bye Bye” feels like a companion to The Fall’s “Dr Buck’s Letter.”

Bill Meyer: From The Unutterable? I'll have to a-b them.

Tim Clarke: That’s the one.

Jonathan Shaw: All of these comments make me think of the record’s title, and the repeated line in “The Candy House”: “I want to join the collective.” Which one? The phone on the record’s cover nods toward our various digital collectives — spaces for communication and expression, and spaces for commerce, all of which seem to be harder and harder to tell apart. A candy house, indeed. Why is it pink? Does she have a feminine collective in mind? A feminine collective unconscious? The various voices and lyric modes on the record suggest that's a possibility. For certain women, and for certain men working hard to understand women, Gordon has been a key member of that collective for decades.

Jennifer Kelly: The title is also the title of a painting from her last show in New York.

The holes are cell phone sized.

You can read about the show here, but here's a representative quote: “The iPhone promises freedom, and control over communication,” she says. “It’s an outlet of self-expression, and an escape and a distraction from the bigger picture of what’s going on in the world. It’s also useful for making paintings.”

Gordon is a woman, and a woman over 70 at that — by any measure an underrepresented perspective in popular culture. However, I’d caution against reading The Collective solely as a feminist statement. “I'm a Man,” for instance, is told from the perspective of an incel male, an act of storytelling and empathy not propaganda. My sense is that Gordon is pretty sick of being asked, “What's it like to be a girl in a band?” (per “Sacred Trickster”) and would like, maybe, to be considered as an artist.

It's partly a generational thing. I'm a little younger than she is, but we both grew up in the patriarchy and mostly encountered gender as an external restriction.

As an aside, one of my proudest moments was when Lucas Jensen interviewed me about what it was like to be a freelance music writer, anonymously, and Robert Christgau wrote an elaborate critique of the piece that absolutely assumed I was a guy. If you're not on a date or getting married or booking reproductive care, whose business is it what gender you are?

There, that's a can of worms, isn't it?

Jonathan Shaw: Feminine isn't feminist. I haven't listened nearly closely enough to the record to hazard an opinion about that. More important, it seems to me the masculine must be in the feminine unconsciousness, and the other way around, too. Precisely because femininity has been used as a political weapon, it needs imagining in artistic spaces. Guess I also think those terms more discursively than otherwise: there are male authors who have demonstrated enormous facility with representing femininity. James, Joyce, Kleist, and so on. Gordon has always spoken and sung in ways that transcend a second-wave sort of feminine essence. “Shaking Hell,” “PCH,” the way she sings “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”

Jennifer Kelly: Sure, she has always been shape-shifter artistically.

The lyrics are super interesting, but almost obliterated by noise. I’m seeing a connection to our hyperconnected digital society where everything is said but it’s hard to listen and focus.

Bill Meyer: Concrete guy that I am, I’ve found myself wishing I had a lyric sheet even though her voice is typically the loudest instrument in the mix.

Andrew Forell: Yes, that sense of being subsumed in the white noise of (dis)information and opinion feels like the utopian ideal of democratizing access has become a cause and conduit of alienation in which the notion of authentic voices has been rendered moot. It feels integral to the album as a metaphor

Christian Carey: How much of the blurring of vocals (good lyrics — mind you) might involve Kim’s personal biography, I wonder? From her memoirs, we know how much she wished for a deflection of a number of things, most having to do with Thurston and the disbandment of SY.

Thurston was interviewed recently and said that he felt SY would regroup and be able to be professional about things. He remarked that it better be soon: SY at eighty wouldn’t be a good look!

Andrew Forell: And therein lies something essential about why that could never happen

Ian Mathers: I know I’m far in the minority here (and elsewhere) because I’ve just never found Sonic Youth that compelling, despite several attempts over the years to give them another chance. And for specifically finding Thurston Moore to be an annoying vocal presence (long before I knew anything about his personal life, for what it's worth). So, I’m in no hurry to see them reunite, although I do think it would be both funny and good if everyone except Moore got back together.

Having not kept up with Gordon much post-SY beyond reading and enjoying her book, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this record. After a couple of listens, I’m almost surprised how much I like it. Even though I’m lukewarm on SY’s music, she’s always been a commanding vocal presence and lyricist and that hasn’t changed here (I can echo all the praise for “I’m a Man,” and also “I was supposed to save you/but you got a job” is so bathetically funny) and I like the noisier, thornier backing she has here. I also think the parts where the record gets a bit more sparse (“Shelf Warmer”) or diffuse (“Psychic Orgasm”) still work. I've enjoyed seeing all the comparisons here, none of which I thought of myself and all of which makes sense to me. But the record that popped into my head as I listened was Dead Rider’s Chills on Glass. Similar beat focus, “thick”/distorted/noisy/smeared production, declamatory vocals. I like that record a lot, so it's not too surprising I'm digging this one.

Jennifer Kelly: I loved Sonic Youth but have zero appetite for the kind of nostalgia trip, just the hits reunion tour that getting back together would entail.

Jonathan Shaw: Yeah, no thanks to that.

RE Christian's comment: Not sure I see deflection so much as the impossibility of integration. We are all many, many selves, always have been. Digital communications interfaces and social media have just lifted it to another level of experience. Gordon sez, “I don't miss my mind.” Not so much a question of missing it in the emotional/longing sense, more so acknowledging that phrases like “my mind” have always been meaningless. Now we partition experience and identity into all of these different places, and we sign those pieces of ourselves over, to Zuck and the algorithms. We know it. We do it anyways, because it's the candy house, full of sweets and pleasures that aren't so good for us, but are really hard to resist. “Come on, sweets, take my hand...”

Bill Meyer: I would not mind hearing all of those SY songs I like again, can’t lie, although I don’t think that I’d spend Love Earth Tour prices to hear them. But given the water that has passed under the bridge personally, and the length of time since anyone in the band has collaborated creatively (as opposed to managing the ongoing business of Sonic Youth, which seems to be going pretty well), a SY reunion could only be a professionally presented piece of entertainment made by people who have agreed to put aside their personal differences and pause their artistic advancement in order to make some coin. There may be good reasons to prioritize finances. Maybe Thurston and/or Kim wants to make sure that they don’t show up on Coco’s front door, demanding to move their record or art collection into her basement, in their dotage. And Lee’s a man in his late 60s with progeny who are of an age to likely have substantial student loan debt. But The Community is just the kind of thing they’d have to pause. It feels like the work of someone who is still curious, questioning, commenting. It's not just trying to do the right commercial thing.

Justin Cober-Lake: I’m finding this one to be a sort of statement album. I’d stop short of calling it a concept album, but there seems to be a thematic center. I think a key element of the album is the way that it looks for... if not signal and noise, at least a sense of order and comprehensibility in a chaotic world. Gordon isn’t even passing judgment on the world — phones are bad, phones are good, phones make art, etc. But there’s a sense that our world is increasingly brutal, and we hear that not just in the guitars, but in the beats, and the production. “BYE BYE” really introduces the concept. Gordon’s leaving (and we can imagine this is autobiographical), but she’s organizing everything she needs for a new life. “Cigarettes for Keller” is a heartbreaking line, but she moves on, everything that makes up a life neatly ordered next to each other, iBook and medications in the same line. It reminds me of a Hemingway character locking into the moment to find some semblance of control in the chaos.

Getting back to gender, there’s a funny line at the end: one of the last things she packs is a vibrator. I'm not sure if we're to read this as a joke, a comment on the necessity of sexuality in a life full of transitory moments, as a foreshadowing of the concepts we’ve discussed, or something else. The next item (if it’s something different) is a teaser, which could be a hair care product or something sexual (playing off — or with — the vibrator). Everything's called into question: the seriousness of the track, the gender/sexuality ideas, what really matters in life. Modern gadgets, life-sustaining medicines, and sex toys all get equal rank. That tension really adds force to the song.

Coming out of “BYE BYE,” it's easy to see a disordered world that sounds extremely noisy, but still has elements we can comprehend within the noise. I don’t want to read the album reductively and I don't think it's all about this idea, but it's something that, early on in my listening, I find to be a compelling aspect of it.

[thesinglesjukebox]

BILLIE EILISH - "BIRDS OF A FEATHER"

We too are sticking together on this...

[7.11]

Jonathan Bradley: The catchiest and prettiest thing on Hit Me Hard and Soft is this micro-scale nighttime fantasia, a burble of dazed affection and death imagery; it’s Billie’s most mellow evocation of the macabre to date. Her vocal is light but dexterous, pushing some syllables away, swooning on others, opening out when restraint threatens to take over entirely. A lesser performer would melt into the production -- the sort that we used to call lap-pop, back when not all pop could be produced on a home computer and that could mark a sound. It's interior in outlook, a composition of detail rather than impact. And the details are what sell this: the pattering thump of drums, the sleepy sprawl of the synth textures, the faint sparkling of guitar arpeggios that decorate rather than dominate. It’s a toybox tune, but one where the toys come to life as you dream. [8]

Kat Stevens: This is how I remember it: Sharon and Tracey are trying to win a cash prize at a karaoke competition, presumably to get themselves out of some sort of financial scrape. Tracey is reluctant at first but eventually commits to their hamfisted "I Will Survive" dance routine. However, Sharon gets stage fright at the last minute, leaving their man-eating, snobby next-door neighbour Dorian to save the day. Dorian pinch-hits "Like A Virgin" to the delighted crowd, and I decide that the next time I do karaoke, I will copy this schtick down to the very last gyration. Everything else about Birds Of A Feather was shit, so Billie has a low bar to clear here. [5]

Katherine St. Asaph: The sort of genial soft-rock arrangement Haim have made a whole career of, enlivened by the kind of vocal acrobatics Billie normally holds back. [7]

Jackie Powell: When “Birds of a Feather” was first released, critics immediately projected that it could be a top 40 radio mainstay or song of the summer, as this track is the "purest pop" Billie Eilish probably has in her catalog. It’s a foot tapper, and the combination of kazoos, acoustic guitars and melodic synthesizers emulate how a bird typically flitters around. But I don’t view “Birds of a Feather” as Eilish selling out or chart-hunting. Creating a song that sounds like the younger sister of Wham!’s “Last Christmas" -- which Eilish’s main collaborator and brother Finneas believes is a major compliment -- isn’t complying with some sort of industry trend. It’s not like Eilish went country like so many other pop acts have in the past three months. She also challenges herself vocally. Eilish has always been gifted at blending her upper register with her chest voice, and she shows off her excellent mixing in each pre-chorus, especially on the phrases “I don’t” and “might not.” So where does she challenge herself? Right in that final chorus, where Eilish crescendos on each overlapped response that begins with “til.” There are three of them. She begins in her head voice, mixes on the second, and then takes a risk and belts in a way we’ve never really heard before, her voice going on the proverbial rollercoaster that vocal teachers always have their students visualize and try to execute in warmups. "I couldn’t belt until I was literally 18," Eilish told Zane Lowe. “I couldn’t physically do it.” Now she clearly can, and she's all the more versatile -- the exact opposite of an artist’s intent when “selling out." [8]

Mark Sinker: Not doctorate-level semiotics here, but this comes into focus as a song – from sweetly yearning fuzzgoth to something more bodily and bitter and present — when the verse rhyme-endings switch from open vowels (-ay, -oo, -ee) to that hard array of -its. Which, I mean, yes, it’s actually Californian alveolar tapping shading into glottal stops, and that final rhyme of “stupi… ” actually trails off into the Billie-est of ether, so the bitter bodily array is way more implied than it’s physically there. [8]

Alfred Soto: Part of the charm of "BIRDS" is how it sounds like a demo for a dance-floor banger. That's also one of its hindrances. "I'll love you till the day that I die" is fine once, a place-filler every other time.  [7]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: This John Legend, Lewis Capaldi corny-ass song sounds slightly pleasant when sung by Billie, but do yourself a favor and go listen to the "Guess" remix instead.  [6]

Ian Mathers: On the surface this is just pleasant (hits me soft, you could say), but I keep coming back to the "say you wanna quit, don't be stupid" part. Whether you hear this as about siblings or romance, there's just enough of that element to undercut (or maybe ground) the florid declarations of the rest of it. [8]

Nortey Dowuona: At one point in 1886, it was estimated that 50 American bird species were hunted for their feathers. Passenger pigeons and Carolina parakeets went extinct, one after the other. If not for the crusading of Harriet Hemenway and cousin Minna Hall and the passage of the Weeks-McLean Law (aka the Migratory Bird Act) by Congress in 1913, backed by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, snowy egrets would've been plucked to extinction. Think of all the years it took to get that passed into law and backed by the Supreme Court. Think of how much longer it will be until trans rights and the rights of the entire LGBT community are enshrined into law. And how much longer this song will last until that happens, long after me and Billie and you are dead. [7]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[sspacegodd]

sspacegodd

Every now and then a book thrusts itself into my literary spokes, and I take a dive into one of those rare finds: a book I’ve always been waiting for.

The Temple of Iconoclasts by Juan Rodolfo Wilcock is such a book.

He is a mongrel literary mutt of the highest order, sniffing and rooting through physics, the occult, pyramidology, archaeology, and lexicography, and emerging triumphantly with the tastiest crumbs.

These are woven together in fantastic, grotesque hilarotragedies like ‘A Couple of Gay Indians,’ his meta-fictional western novel about two Native Americans serialized in a horse-racing sheet, filled with anthropology, genteel wit, and homosexual pornography.

The Temple of Iconoclasts is a quirky, erudite collection of short sort-of-true-but-completely-fake biographies of sort-of-fake-but-true eccentrics and fringe scholars. This slim semiotic seductress lures the reader through a labyrinth of fascinating alternate histories and pseudo-science, including:

> the inventor of an all-encompassing dictionary of every word in existence but constructed like an adventure novel so it's more interesting to read;

> a doctor who formed dissolved salt crystals into the shape of animals and healed hemorrhages just by reciting Old Testament verses; and

> a man who has lived several lives--not in the past but right now, simultaneously, in several bodies.

This collection is hilarious, odd, and profound.

It’s the kind of book lying on a table at the coffee house that will make you look smart but that you might actually enjoy reading.

BUY, BORROW, or BURN?

[apocrypals]

Weird question maybe but how do you both like Christmas so much?

I am ex-evangelical in the way that probably lots of your listeners are and now that I don’t have the like church-y part of Christmas I just kind of feel bad about it :/ and you guys have such a genuine love for Christmas it seems like !! So if you have any advice about liking Christmas and not getting bogged down in bad theology feelings i would appreciate !! Or if that’s too big of an ask thanks for the show anyways and I hope you’re listening to Darlene love !!

A number of years ago, Chris did a podcast episode with our mutual friend Elle Collins about the joys of secular Christmas, but it doesn't seem to exist on internet anymore, alas.

But without even diving deeply into the semiotics of the thing, I feel there's much to like about Christmas at an absolutely surface level with minimal religious trappings: lights, decorations, music, food, candy, hot drinks, getting together with friends and family, parties, that kind of stuff. For a lot of people, that kind of thing is enough to enjoy Christmas even if they don't have a religious attachment.

However, if you need something more, the things I like to think about when it comes to Christmas are that it's a celebration at the darkest time of the year, when much of nature sleeps or dies, and in a way, we're forced to confront our own mortality. BUT, Christmas (and other winter holidays; this isn't a Christmas exclusive) reminds us that life and death is a cycle: today is dark, but tomorrow is a little brighter. If you're no longer into the idea of an incarnate deity born that man no more may die, consider the holly, the evergreen. If they can tough out the winter, so can we. "Hope," saith the holly.

And we foster that hope with lights and songs and games and music and good food and good will and forgiveness toward the other people around us. Consider these verses from a favorite song of mine:

All hail to the days that merit more praise Than all the rest of the year And welcome the nights that double delights As well for the poor as the peer Good fortune attend each merry man's friend That doth but the best that he may Forgetting old wrongs with carols and songs To drive the cold winter away 'Tis ill for a mind to anger inclined To think of small injuries now If wrath be to seek, do not lend her your cheek Nor let her inhabit thy brow Cross out of thy books malevolent looks Both beauty and youth's decay And wholly consort with mirth and sport To drive the cold winter away

In that podcast I was talking about at the top, Chris talked about how he loves the very idea of Santa Claus, because he represents humankind at their most selfless. Not just in the idea that there's a powerful figure whose whole deal is giving other people things, but that Christmas morning is likely to be the happiest a kid will feel all year, and parents are willing to give someone else credit for it. It almost staggers the mind, tbh.

On top of that, for me personally, one of the major draws of the Christmas season is the wealth of folklore that comes along with it, but your mileage may vary on that.

Anyway, of course, all this winter stuff only applies if you're in the Northern Hemisphere; sorry if you're in Australia or something, I don't have any metaphors for you.

[theory-of-art]

3.2 Cremaster Cycle

To be quite honest, I’m not entirely sure what to make of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle. While I understand the allusions to the cremaster muscle and thus the exploration of the masculine identity, I’m not sure if it is taking a hard stance on gender binarism or androgyne. Barney’s work is a series of five feature-length films, related sculptures, photographs, drawings, and artist’s books creating a more immersive artistic impression than just a singular still image, sculpture, or film. While the title references the muscle used to raise and lower the testicles in temperature fluctuations, the project’s visual symbolism and iconography focuses on the parts of embryonic sexual development before the gonads differentiate between testes and ovaries. In this, Barney represents the condition of ultimate potential. 

Formalism and semiotics seems like it would be the best lens through which to view the cycle, but again the message seems to be muddled to me. While I currently identify within the queer umbrella and understand the signs and signifiers of modern queerness, I am not well versed in the signs and signifiers of queerness in the nineties and early two thousands. I can clearly see the visual similarities between the Cremaster Cycle and popular music videos of the time, so I recognize the pop culture significance, but the ultimate message Barney is trying to convey is unclear. Of course, it could be that he is trying to emphasize the muddled idea of gender and its signifiers playing with the idea that there is no clear understanding of masculinity, just the potential for gender expression.

[lifeafterthelayoff]

Part II, Day 44.

There’s gonna be sad days, and lonely nights.

Today was a real range of rejections, a selection of sorry-but-no salutations, a trying trio of toodle-oos.

1️⃣ The first rejection note arrived an hour and 22 minutes after I submitted my application and bespoke cover letter. And my cover letters are delightful. 

If anything, perhaps I should marvel at their ability to quickly determine that I’m a poor match despite a sparkling resume that matches the job description quite closely.

Seriously, though, it sorta feels like something is not quite dialed-in with the machinery that our applications pass through on their way to the round file.

2️⃣ The second rejection was probably the most painful of the three, after three interviews. The further into the process, the more difficult the rejection.

This company was prompt and respectful, and didn’t automate the notification. I’m going to ask for some feedback, and I feel like there’s a good chance that I will hear back. Though I didn’t land the role, I found the whole process quite agreeable.

I was really excited about working there. One designer I spoke with painted a picture of a work culture that revered language and the power of communications. I could see myself there, engaged in deep side conversations about etymologies and semiotics. That evaporated when I opened the email tonight, sadly.

3️⃣ The third rejection was hot garbage. I only checked in on the company’s job portal to see my status while typing this update. While there, I discovered that the company marked my application status as “Process complete” without sending me any notification.

We’ll have to agree to disagree about the definition of the word “complete” in this scenario, because it seems like it would include letting me know about it.

🔵 Where do you go from there? To the puzzle table in the record room with a cup of green tea to put on a blues record. Tonight, it’s Junior Kimbrough’s album with the most devastating title: “Sad Days, Lonely Nights.” The title tune’s opening verses are something I come back to on days like today:

My momma told me I was a child She said, "Son You're gonna have hard days" My daddy told me too He said, "Son You're gonna have sad days Lonely nights…”

My own parents didn’t offer such stark advice, but I have since received it from the late Mississippi bluesman. What resonates the most is the inevitability of the hard days and the sad days. They’ve been here in the past, and they’ll be here again. In the midst of a job hunt, they might arrive a little more frequently.

This is tough work, my fellow job seekers. Pulling yourself together to get dismantled later (kindly or otherwise) is inevitable, too. 

But soon the pendulum will swing the other way and you’ll be singing another Junior Kimbrough song, “I Feel Alright.”

[georgiafitzsimons]

Major Project FMP - Letterpress LO3 Workshop - LO2 - LO4 - 1/4

I felt that immersing myself in a creatively stimulating environment before resorting to digital methods was crucial for effective experimentation in this project. This approach allowed me to explore novel ideas in a physical form and structured my day successfully.

Engaging in these experiments elicited a sense of freedom and excitement as I delved into techniques I hadn't previously practiced. It was empowering to break away from digital constraints and explore new creative avenues.

When diving into imagery and type experiments, I focused on the first verse, using it as a launchpad to explore metaphorical uses of type. The initial printing on textured papers and tracing paper, especially in portraying 'underneath,' produced intriguing results. With the help of Joseph, experimenting with angles, lighting, and paper manipulation added a layer of unpredictability to the process. The introduction of yellow acetate to represent 'the gold sun' was visually appealing, although considerations for a motion video context arose due to potential distractions from bright lights.

Considering a physical approach akin to the JULY TALKS music video, I realised its potential for success. The use of pathetic fallacy, symbolising different song features with elements like the sun and water, opened up rich narrative possibilities. Exploring water experiments on various printed materials effectively conveyed the literal interpretation of 'underneath.'

This experimentation process has been enlightening, providing valuable insights into the potential avenues for my project. Recognising the need for adaptation in a motion video context and understanding the impact of physical elements on narrative representation will guide my future explorations.

Moving forward, I will continue to explore and refine these concepts, considering the balance between static visual appeal and dynamic motion video requirements. Additionally, I'll explore other elements that could enhance the narrative representation of the song.

The investigations into how semiotic approaches can impact design and creativity have proven to be genuinely intriguing.

[princess-of-purple-prose]

[ID: Tweets by jay Dragon makes stuff @/jdragsky that read:

gods are similar to goldfish — they grow to fit the size of their enclosure. some gods are cozy in snuffboxes and reliquaries, while others stroll among the clouds or writhe like mycelium roots in the deepest tectonic caves

arrogant humans believe gods live or die by their belief. the truth is the opposite — worship is the indentation gods leave upon our dimension as they pass through, our prayers the somatic equivalent of the lines formed by intersecting spheres in a 2d plane

when a god dies, they undergo a semiotic whalefall, cascading waves of divine symbology crashing into the lower planes and attracting hordes of scavengers that form their own ecosystem; demons, heretics, false prophets; until all thats left is bones and worms.

despite studying the anatomy of gods for thousands of years, we have still not yet found where gods travel to reproduce (they are much like eels in this way). some researchers claim there are caves in turkey, others trace to a mountain range near nigeria

gods occasionally imprint onto humans, becoming domesticated and leaving unwanted gifts the way a cat might: a dead bird, a ball of yarn, a vision of France in flames, rolled into your living room and presented oh-so-proudly

gods have evolved for all sorts of atmospheres — some are practically domesticated and depend on narrow bands of climate and culture, while others are extremophiles and can take root in even the most hostile environs (cities, factories, cargo ships, etc)

leave it to humans to industrialize our godfonts — have you heard about the godfarms in montana, where young gods are pumped full of stimulants and harvested for their iconology? we just mine them for content, a spiritual fast fashion industry

small gods can create nests inside your pillow, where they replace all the stuffing with scraps of holy books and whisper such terrible prophecies into your ear at night. there are specialist exterminators, atheists well-versed in disillusionment

in the catacombs beneath paris, theyve found psalmbergs, massive hunks of lard, ink, and prayers that are the size of icebergs and take decades to unpack. its why public health advises not to get your hopes up near your toilet — you dont want to clog the pipes with salvation. End ID]

[mywifeleftme]

261: Various Artists // Poesia Sonora

Poesia Sonora Various Artists 1975, CBS

Assembled in 1975 by Italian conceptual artist and sound poet Maurizio Nannuci, Poesia Sonora (Sound Poetry) was one of the first attempts to anthologize the then-predominantly European literary genre. Subtitled an “International anthology of phonetic research,” it emphasizes the experimental nature of these compositions. Sound poetry was on one hand the logical next step in the development of free verse (i.e. if a composition can be a poem without rhyme or meter, it can also be a poem without words), and on the other an outgrowth of currents in linguistics and semiotics that distinguished between language as a system of meaning and its arbitrary phonological characteristics. In other words, it freed writers to use language and the building blocks of language non-representationally, akin to music or abstract painting. Many early sound poets presented their works as conceptual experiments—to give but two examples, in his manifestos Kurt Schwitters, a key figure in early sound poetry thanks to his 1923 Ursonate (trans. Primeval Sonata), urged other artists to explore words and verbal sounds as entities independent of meaning, while Nannuci’s liner notes mention the Italian futurist Fortunato Depero, whose “‘onomalingua or abstract verbalization’ verbally reconstructed the noise of machines, trams, trains, cars, and natural forces including wind, thunder, and rain.”

Obviously, while these “experiments” wear pseudo-academic garb, this was a thoroughly poet-brained endeavor, and the reality of the genre was one of (predominantly) men flecked with spittle and profuse sweat honking and braying at vexed audiences. It was conceptual, but also an excuse to make strange noises. The terms of their experiments were not (and could not be) empirical, but the results could be as transfixing as the best avant-garde music of the 20th century, with the unchaining of the human voice giving performances a uniquely primal immediacy.

Sound poetry’s earliest texts date from the 1910s and ‘20s, but its real boom came with the wider availability of magnetic tape in the middle of the century. With the exception of the Swiss Arthur Pétronio, whose concept of “verbophonie” (a combination of abstract vocalizations and acoustic sounds) dates back to at least 1919, Poesia Sonora focuses on the generation of sound poets who came to prominence in the 1950s and ‘60s. The poems are presented almost without pause, giving each LP side a collage-like quality. The brilliant Englishman Bob Cobbing’s polyvocal mosaic “Hymn to the Sacred Mushroom” practically segues into Frenchman Henri Chopin’s “Dinamisme integral,” a percussive wave of minutely-chopped unidentifiable vocal sounds that conjures a sense of many dusty wings fluttering in an enclosed space, or Aphex Twin at his most minimal; Chopin’s piece gives way to the German Franz Mon’s  “Articulation,” which utters individual consonant and vowel sounds in such a way that it gives the impression of an aphasic trying to recover their language.

Despite sound poetry’s mission to abstract and defamiliarize language, the international nature of the compilation does present challenges to the monoglot. Many of these poets still play with the meanings attached to language (for example by breaking down an emotionally- or politically-charged word into atomized nonsense), and that sort of resonance is lost when you’re just listening to a guy slowly spelling out words in Italian (?) (Nannuci’s “Spelling”). I’m therefore most intrigued by the pieces that are more purely sonic, like Chopin’s piece or François Dufrêne’s “Crirythme,” an athletic spectacle that finds the artist tormenting his throat into sounds resembling a coffee percolator, a whistling kettle, and the soup-slurping of a demented dinner guest. I’ve also long had a special fondness for British-Canadian Brion Gysin’s “I Am,” a piece I’ve heard performed as a lengthy koan-like meditation (by contemporary sound poet Jaap Blonk) and here as an echoing hell of tape manipulations.

I am far from a true connoisseur of sound poetry (and in fact, can almost hear Ottawa poet, publisher, micropress archivist, and good-natured curmudgeon jwcurry hollering at me for mistakes in this right up), but for those with a taste for the field and an interest in its history, Poesia Sonora (and the useful circa-1975 discography offered in its liner notes) is a good grab.

261/365

[stobinesque]

Listening to "Ring of Keys" and thinking about Her (butch Robin Buckley)

[dustedmagazine]

Life Expectancy — Decline (Iron Lung Records)

Decline (LUNGS-256) by LIFE EXPECTANCY

Many, many bands and projects in heavy music now make it a practice to advertise their wares by ticking as many genre boxes as possible: one recent metal act (and we won’t name names, you know who you are) adorns its Bandcamp page with the claim that its newest record is simultaneously “death metal,” “technical metal,” “dissonant black metal,” “dissonant death metal,” “industrial metal” and — because why not — “extreme metal.” When the algorithms and hashtags dominate our experience of cultural connectedness, that sort of genre carpet-bombing seems to be what we get, and since some bands actually want to eat, one can understand the tactics. Life Expectancy, a one-man project from somewhere in England’s post-industrial ruins, works a different method: minimal semiotic yakkety-yak, maximal fusion of long-established genre conventions in heavy music. And the results? They’re good.

Check out the one-two punch of “Born Rotten” and “Scalped,” from the tape’s opening half: both songs are bathed in hiss and ear-decimating treble, nods to Life Expectancy’s significant investment in the unpleasant sonic conditions of industrial noise. But under that harsh scrim, there are recognizable songs moving along, from verse to chorus to shredding guitar solo. Thrashy hardcore, metallic d-beat, muscular anarcho-punk: it’s all in there, seamlessly compressed into nasty blasts that exhaust themselves in 80-to-100 seconds. Then there’s another assault of mechanical clamor or roar, and the next song makes its headlong transit through your consciousness, burning and crunching and pulverizing everything in its path. 

Alongside all that racket, Life Expectancy doesn’t entirely dispense with the chatter: the project’s Bandcamp presence, hosted by label Iron Lung, includes the tags “energy,” “malcontent” and “bedsitter.” That last tag might be less precisely understood by folks outside the UK, where a “bedsit” is a tiny room, a flophouse-style accommodation with a shared bathroom. The tag operates thematically, suggesting a class position (more lumpen than prole) and a mode (one man, home recorded). It’s less overt marketing and more evocative of a milieu, and Life Expectancy’s music exudes complementary gritty, grimy textures. “Liquidated Flesh” fairly blisters with them, issuing in a thoroughly alienated, violently disgusted display of audio hostility. It even has a breakdown — but where that inevitability is often a form of macho preening in hardcore, Life Expectancy’s use of the convention feels like a statement of sociopathic intent. Decline? No doubt. 

Jonathan Shaw

[thedarksideofyay]

across the spider verse is so visually impressive, and i know everyone knows that, but the visuals alone could tell the story with no dialogue. the emotions, the story beats, the themes, everything is there. semiotics nerds must eat that shit up

[ritsykitty]

Your Darshan is: Haravatat

Oh, a fellow linguist! The study of languages and semiotics, this Darshan encompasses all forms of communication, from ancient runes to modern speech. Its graduates mainly focus on the scientific study of language rather than literary appreciation, therefore they are very well-versed in the mechanisms of complex syntaxes and linguistic analysis. Fun fact: Alhaitham and Faruzan belong to this Darshan.

---

[Quiz here!]

[sspacegodd]

Every now and then a book thrusts itself into my literary spokes, and I take a dive into one of those rare finds: a book I’ve always been waiting for.

The Temple of the Iconoclasts by Juan Rodolfo Wilcock is such a book. He is a mongrel literary mutt of the highest order, sniffing and rooting through physics, the occult, pyramidology, archaeology, and lexicography, and emerging triumphantly with the tastiest crumbs. These are woven together in fantastic, grotesque hilarotragedies like ‘A Couple of Gay Indians,’ his meta-fictional western novel about two Native Americans serialized in a horse-racing sheet, filled with anthropology, genteel wit, and homosexual pornography.

The Temple of the Iconoclasts is a quirky, erudite collection of short sort-of-true-but-completely-fake biographies of sort-of-fake-but-true eccentrics and fringe scholars. This slim semiotic seductress lures the reader through a labyrinth of fascinating alternate histories and pseudo-science including:

> the inventor of an all-encompassing dictionary of every word in existence but constructed like an adventure novel so it's more interesting to read;

> a doctor who formed dissolved salt crystals into the shape of animals and healed hemorrhages just by reciting Old Testament verses; and

> a man who has lived several lives--not in the past but right now, simultaneously in several bodies.

This collection is hilarious, odd, and profound.

It’s the kind of book lying on a table at the coffee house that will make you look smart but that you might actually enjoy reading.

BUY, BORROW, or BURN?

Buy.

[juuridesu]

going to write something for alhaitham and i am finally going to use my degree to simp HAHAHA