i've stumbled again into a rabbit hole of mourning the early-00s blog culture I never participated in. I was facetiming my roommates joni and jonathan the other day to talk about renewing our lease and we ended up talking about short stories because jonathan and i are both trying to write them right now, and also because in high school our friend ebi wrote a short story that features a character based on some hybrid of joni and myself. we were talking about viral fiction, so, cat person, and jonathan referenced marie calloway's adrien brody. i'd never heard of it, which embarrasses me, but i guess i'm young and no matter how hard i try the closest i came to participating in the golden age of blog culture was stumbling upon hipster runoff animal collective content when i was in 8th grade.
i wonder how my life would be different if i had been born earlier, or ambitious enough to end up in new york media circles, or rich enough to go to the kind of school for undergrad that lands you in new york literary circles, or online enough to end up in new york literary circles by proxy, or whatever enough to be a new york art girl. i wonder what these circles think of each other, if i am just not smart enough to participate, and if their temporary allure when i follow these threads would be enough to keep me from wanting to ride to the desert on a motorcycle, as i usually do.
i like this moment in adrien brody when she says : Like I was involved with socialist politics for a while, but, like when I
went to protests or whatever I felt really embarrassed. and then admits for the first time that she doesn't think there will be a socialist revolution (i guess this was in 2013).
my boyfriend is reading the golden notebook right now [prominently featured in the hulu show normal people!!] and i feel like all of these confessional internet sex pieces are just vague graspings at what doris accomplished.
I started to wonder, and felt relieved that there might be truth to the
idea of intellectuals all being frauds. I knew that I certainly was. who does this bitch think she is jia tolentino??
i think the dialogue is good and so is the character development of the narrator but her internal monologue is pretty boring and trite. i guess that's a kmart realism thing. maybe it just seems boring because it's been imitated so many times?
I felt very connected to him, like before, and enjoyed having sex with him very much.
He penetrated me and I was happy. I felt a strong sexual connection with him.
who does this bitch think she is earnest hemingway??
also this part: From reading his articles, besides his intelligence, what I had really
admired about his writing was essentially this feeling of how he seemed
to uphold human dignity and the sacredness of human feeling and
connection. And so it seemed unbelievable that he would cheat. That made
me both disillusioned in him, and yet also sexually excited, because he
was betraying those values.
honestly adrien brody (rob horning from the new inquiry)
very much reminds me of the comp lit phd student i was infatuated with
throughout college who was obviously lecherous and into the idea of
being so but could only pull it off with someone like me, so clearly
beneath him intellectually, but you could see the facade start to
crumble as he tried to disguise his awkwardness and self-loathing with
apathy.
"Are you an idealist or a materialist?" I asked.
"A materialist I guess...I assume you're a materialist, that goes along with Marxism."
"Yeah," I said, smiling, happy that he was a materialist, too.
who does this bitch think she is me in 2016??
here here here are some interesting commentaries from blog world i encountered in my spiral after reading the original piece here is a piece referenced in the piece and here is a recent rob horn(y) piece i came across that involves both ariana reines and adam driver, the two celebrities i am most horn(y) for at the moment. oh and here is another short story jonathan brought to my attention that is of the same genre but much better and i have much less to say about.
Saturday, May 23, 2020
get ready to drag my edgelord ass
ok i'm sorry but everybody already knew lana del rey had terrible politics. she was dating a cop...? idk why people are acting surprised
i do think the discourse around her comments is important because it's always important to monitor how white women manipulate perceptions of white femininity to manipulate their image into one of innocence and vulnerability, and how the language of this practice morph to fit the current social atmosphere. and how ldr does this is going to be really different from how, for example, elizabeth warren does this, and studying both is important.
i'm still going to listen to lana del rey's music, just as i've continued to listen to her music as she's done dumb and offensive shit that i disagree with for years. i listen to plenty of musical artists who have done terrible things, and if you say you don't you're full of shit.
requiring art to contain some moral lesson or value (esp. based on the moral purity of its creator) for it to be worthy of engaging with is diseased thinking.
like... i really like some woody allen movies and in college i felt guilty and horrible about this and tried to talk myself out of it but then i realized liberal arts school had given me postmodern brainworms and got over that shit.
the idea that we shouldn't consume the media produced by problematic people is entirely a product of art and cultural production being rendered commodities, and i don't really fuck with that. you could say "well olive, that's just the way it is"and patiently explain that streaming a track on spotify is tacit endorsement of the shitty people that produced it. but that's not how it works. it makes me sad to see these self-righteous fools being like I FOR ONE WILL NEVER LISTEN TO LANA DEL REY AGAIN like she gives a shit.
i do think the discourse around her comments is important because it's always important to monitor how white women manipulate perceptions of white femininity to manipulate their image into one of innocence and vulnerability, and how the language of this practice morph to fit the current social atmosphere. and how ldr does this is going to be really different from how, for example, elizabeth warren does this, and studying both is important.
i'm still going to listen to lana del rey's music, just as i've continued to listen to her music as she's done dumb and offensive shit that i disagree with for years. i listen to plenty of musical artists who have done terrible things, and if you say you don't you're full of shit.
requiring art to contain some moral lesson or value (esp. based on the moral purity of its creator) for it to be worthy of engaging with is diseased thinking.
like... i really like some woody allen movies and in college i felt guilty and horrible about this and tried to talk myself out of it but then i realized liberal arts school had given me postmodern brainworms and got over that shit.
the idea that we shouldn't consume the media produced by problematic people is entirely a product of art and cultural production being rendered commodities, and i don't really fuck with that. you could say "well olive, that's just the way it is"and patiently explain that streaming a track on spotify is tacit endorsement of the shitty people that produced it. but that's not how it works. it makes me sad to see these self-righteous fools being like I FOR ONE WILL NEVER LISTEN TO LANA DEL REY AGAIN like she gives a shit.
Wednesday, May 6, 2020
wwjdd
I’m thinking about Joan Didion tonight, like most nights. I wonder what Joan is thinking and if she would write about this moment in the way she wrote about the Manson murders - something reality-shattering and bizarre and celebrity and world historical - but everything is too obvious. A viral infection sweeps the globe and all the cracks in society are laid bare. Duh. Today I cried for about two hours straight. Duh. The president told people to spray Lysol in their lungs. Duh.
When Trump was first elected, many of us spoke of the “end of satire.” We were lamenting the ways in which reality was mocking itself, and no comedic interpretation could be funnier or more abject than the real thing. A couple of months ago, just before social isolation started, I got dinner with a friend of my parents who was in town, and he started talking about John Mulaney and made me watch a video comparing Trump’s presidency to a “horse in a hospital.” This pathetic grasping at comedic analogy is one of far too many failed attempts to satirize Trump - attempts made by SNL of course, but also by my father, a formerly sharp political cartoonist who, like most middle-class white boomers, is absolutely paralyzed by shock at Trump’s election and seems to be in a four-year-long glitching cycle. It makes sense that his friend showed me this video and called me a killjoy when I didn’t laugh. In reality, I’m one of the funniest people I know, and it’s because I never talk about Donald Trump. ANyway, I just got off on a little Googling spiral about Sean Mulaney and discovered that his wife makes lampshades and he referred to in a Valentine’s Day post on Instagram as “a cross between Joan Didion and Erika Jayne,” which brings us back to the topic at hand.
I read The White Album for the first time in 12th grade. It was the first time I read Joan and I got pretty obsessed. I was captivated by her romantic depiction of her particular brand of journalism, by which I mean she’d developed enough of a reputation for herself that she was able to write about whatever she wanted - the packing lists she made so she could leave quickly, the proximity to fame and luxury but always a silent observer, and - suddenly - the proximity to carnage. She so transparently saw herself both as Sharon Tate and Linda Kasabian, living within Hollywood and without. I wish I had the grace to pull that off.
Coronavirus and Charlie Manson and Columbine shared the responsibility of forcing ugliness on those who usually pay to avoid it. The systemic equivalent of holding someone's eyelids open while forcing them to watch, like, Salò. You witness something horrific like this unfold and feel sad for whoever has to deal with it, and maybe feel more, but quickly figure out how to harden yourself to the feeling, because that’s what it takes to function, right? You hold the understanding in the back of your mind that this could possibly “happen” to you, but console yourself with your security, your access, your luck.
In all of these cases, it’s clear that the victims are exceptions to the general law of the land. Some suffer, while others don't, and regardless of the upward or downward posturing we do regularly to mitigate the image cast by having too much or too little, we all know, more or less, where we stand on this spectrum. Many of us understand ourselves to be the rule, not the exception, until we don’t. Shelter-in-place drills and hand-sewn masks are things we do for peace of mind, but viruses don’t operate based on good intentions. I don’t know about school shooters.
Anyway, I’ve developed some lowkey agoraphobia during this time but earlier today I drove around my neighborhood and it really is very beautiful. I spend a lot of time on the front porch and every afternoon there’s a guy who walks down the street with a bluetooth speaker blasting early 2000s bangers like Sexy Love by Ne-Yo. There’s another guy a few doors down who sits on his porch at the same times I do and has long, animated conversations over Zoom. They’re mostly about Star Wars and he talks about the characters like they’re real people and I don’t know if I’d call it endearing but I’m happy for him.I hope Joan Didion is having an okay time wherever she is, and I hope she's able to notice the idiosyncratic behaviors of those around her from a safe distance.
When Trump was first elected, many of us spoke of the “end of satire.” We were lamenting the ways in which reality was mocking itself, and no comedic interpretation could be funnier or more abject than the real thing. A couple of months ago, just before social isolation started, I got dinner with a friend of my parents who was in town, and he started talking about John Mulaney and made me watch a video comparing Trump’s presidency to a “horse in a hospital.” This pathetic grasping at comedic analogy is one of far too many failed attempts to satirize Trump - attempts made by SNL of course, but also by my father, a formerly sharp political cartoonist who, like most middle-class white boomers, is absolutely paralyzed by shock at Trump’s election and seems to be in a four-year-long glitching cycle. It makes sense that his friend showed me this video and called me a killjoy when I didn’t laugh. In reality, I’m one of the funniest people I know, and it’s because I never talk about Donald Trump. ANyway, I just got off on a little Googling spiral about Sean Mulaney and discovered that his wife makes lampshades and he referred to in a Valentine’s Day post on Instagram as “a cross between Joan Didion and Erika Jayne,” which brings us back to the topic at hand.
I read The White Album for the first time in 12th grade. It was the first time I read Joan and I got pretty obsessed. I was captivated by her romantic depiction of her particular brand of journalism, by which I mean she’d developed enough of a reputation for herself that she was able to write about whatever she wanted - the packing lists she made so she could leave quickly, the proximity to fame and luxury but always a silent observer, and - suddenly - the proximity to carnage. She so transparently saw herself both as Sharon Tate and Linda Kasabian, living within Hollywood and without. I wish I had the grace to pull that off.
Coronavirus and Charlie Manson and Columbine shared the responsibility of forcing ugliness on those who usually pay to avoid it. The systemic equivalent of holding someone's eyelids open while forcing them to watch, like, Salò. You witness something horrific like this unfold and feel sad for whoever has to deal with it, and maybe feel more, but quickly figure out how to harden yourself to the feeling, because that’s what it takes to function, right? You hold the understanding in the back of your mind that this could possibly “happen” to you, but console yourself with your security, your access, your luck.
In all of these cases, it’s clear that the victims are exceptions to the general law of the land. Some suffer, while others don't, and regardless of the upward or downward posturing we do regularly to mitigate the image cast by having too much or too little, we all know, more or less, where we stand on this spectrum. Many of us understand ourselves to be the rule, not the exception, until we don’t. Shelter-in-place drills and hand-sewn masks are things we do for peace of mind, but viruses don’t operate based on good intentions. I don’t know about school shooters.
Anyway, I’ve developed some lowkey agoraphobia during this time but earlier today I drove around my neighborhood and it really is very beautiful. I spend a lot of time on the front porch and every afternoon there’s a guy who walks down the street with a bluetooth speaker blasting early 2000s bangers like Sexy Love by Ne-Yo. There’s another guy a few doors down who sits on his porch at the same times I do and has long, animated conversations over Zoom. They’re mostly about Star Wars and he talks about the characters like they’re real people and I don’t know if I’d call it endearing but I’m happy for him.I hope Joan Didion is having an okay time wherever she is, and I hope she's able to notice the idiosyncratic behaviors of those around her from a safe distance.
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