Happy Black Friday Caroline Polachek

sus

sus

Moderator


Clearly some Kate Bush stuff happening in this music vid.

One of 2020's better music essays—on crushing, Catholicism, the role of fantasy.
artificialdevotional.substack.com

on caroline polachek, carly rae jepsen, & the ecstatic agony of crushing

how two of 2019's most polished pop albums provide a roadmap to the delirious highs and abject lows of capital-Y Yearning — feat. britney, barthes, and more!
artificialdevotional.substack.com artificialdevotional.substack.com
While listening to Pang, I spent a lot of time considering desire in the sacred as well as erotic sense. One of the aftershocks of an even vaguely Catholic upbringing — you can take the girl out of after-school catechism classes, but you can never really take the catechism classes out of the girl — is that the only feeling that ever rivals the intensity of a full-blooded crush is the simultaneous certainty that you ought to suffer for it. “I’m beginning to see why I would have been drawn to monastic life if I lived in the Middle Ages,” I’d written in one of my more humiliating diary entries, attempting to dissect the agony of having a crush so incomprehensible he might as well have been God to my pitifully adolescent, rat-brained self. “As a girl, that pure unadulterated capacity for want inside me feels so intense that faith in a higher power would be the only vessel large enough to even begin comprehending it.”
Click to expand...
Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments casts lovers and neurotic literary theorists as possessors of the same gaze: “I look for signs, but of what? What is the object of my reading? Is it: am I loved (am I loved no longer, am I still loved)? Is it my future that I am trying to read, deciphering in what is inscribed the announcement of what will happen to me, according to a method which combines paleography and manticism? Isn't it rather, all things considered, that I remain suspended on this question whose answer I tirelessly seek in the other's face: What am I worth?” In his immaculate 2008 debut single “Crush” — a song whose chorus begs to be sung along with ardent, soaring falsetto and histrionic gesticulations whenever you’re lucky enough to hear it — American Idol season seven runner-up David Archuleta echoes the same anxieties: “Do you catch a breath when I look at you? Are you holding back like the way I do?” Asymmetric desire is its own private, agonizing kind of pleasure; at its most thorough, it’s a combination of piety and hermeneutics. You know you’re ensnared when you feel like the world’s most insufferable semiotician.
Click to expand...

Pairs well with Alexandra Molotkow's "An Erotics of Hypochondria":
A crush begets superstition and ritual. You might spend hours poring over the most forgettable words and gestures, counting text messages and their characters, asking friends what they think it all means. In the throes of hypochondria, you can spend hours scrolling through medical sites, studying symptom lists, checking your glands or palpating your abdomen, and asking friends what they think it all means. Proof is scarce in either case, but “evidence” is everywhere: a song you both love plays at the drugstore; a movie whose lead reminds you of them (everyone and everything does) gets together with a character who looks a little like you. These are “signs,” enough to sustain hope.
Click to expand...

This is a thread on contemporary pop music, limerence, hypochondria, narcissism, unrequited love, and crush theory.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
Caroline Rose deserves a mention here as well.





I got this feeling
Baby it's just madness
I'm so in love with myself, it's so romantic
Click to expand...
In the classroom, trying to believe in
The words on a page of a book that I'm reading
Spread out by a woman who became a teacher
'Cause she couldn't make ends meet from her writing career
Click to expand...
 
sus

sus

Moderator
I'm gonna be honest the first few times I heard "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings," I went, "Did Katy Perry get good at writing songs again?"
 
sus

sus

Moderator
The best Katy Perry songs ranked:
1/ Waking Up in Vegas
2/ Teenage Dream
3/ I Kissed A Girl
4/ The One Who Got Away
5/ Hot N Cold
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
girls that by conventional standards look sickly and gawky. i think youve written some analysis of this?
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
you were saying that the idea is that you can see the beauty in them, and being able to see the beauty in them distinguishes you from the crowd, but also means you aren't competing for the cheerleader or something? it was a sophisticated analysis, i can't remember the exact details.... something about big glasses maybe?
 
sus

sus

Moderator
"While I cannot take the time to name all the men in Dissensus who have been named as listeners of indie, I have here in my hand a list of those that were known to be, and who are still posting and shaping the culture of Dissensus.”
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top