A Walk With Cipriano.

Many years ago I wrote a piece of flash fiction which, reading it again now, hasn't aged horribly. I was inspired by the lavish prose and medieval Spanish setting of Gregory Maguire's Mirror, Mirror.

***

We walked together along the winding path, flanked by grass heavy with spring dew, geese waddling along the mossy banks of the lago, trees offering up on ancient boughs the crisp scent of almond blossoms.

“I think Papá is mad at me,” I ventured.

Cipriano’s eyes crinkled at the corners, the way they always did when he looked at me. “And why do you think so?”

“I did not speak much at last night’s meal. He wanted my opinion on everything, it seemed! And I had little to give.”

“You are anxious about the coming days.”

“I don’t want to leave.” I slipped my hand into his, which was rough with age; a hand that with its companion had spent much time lifted in offering or clenched in prayer. “I love my home.”

“Yes, our village, our Colina Verde, is worthy of much love.”

Nestled atop a paradise of Spanish hills, Colina Verde was my world. How could the town to which my father and I were returning—his native town, the premio de la reina—possibly know such perfection of light in the crest of dawn, or speak to the exquisite, half-imagined dangers of the dense forest below? Would ivy drape like plaits against cool stone walls; would the women allow me to scatter yellow narcissus petals across the chapel pathway?

“I don’t want to leave,” I whispered, and my ebony hair caught the wind, and spilled over my shoulder.

Cipriano’s grip tightened with affection. “Perhaps it is time to look at the world with new eyes, little dove. You are a child yet, but occasions such as these will strengthen you. You must learn to see the order of things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Consider the alder tree. In autumn it sheds its leaves and in winter stands shivering, a dead thing. Yet come spring, what do we find? The newness of life, of beginning again. Just last summer you remarked to me how tired the leaves become, a dull green wilted by the heat. They cannot stay forever on their limb, you see. They must die, to be born again.”

 I blinked at the wetness in my eyes. What did the alder tree have to do with the awful move looming in so near a future? 

His gaze became distant, as though the series of hills were a vision of his very words. “If you pause to consider all you are losing, you miss what can be the beautiful birth of something more. Even death, the ultimate end, is but a transformation, for nothing truly dies, my Ramira.” 

I would not understand his words until much later, but I listened anyway and nodded, in hopes of easing the glassiness in the Fraile's faded eyes. He came around soon enough, and patted my head. “Do not fear this change,” he urged. “Before long you will not be able to recall your winter of sadness, and happiness will spring from more than memories of this place.” 

“I will pray about it,” I offered.

 “Yes, good. And do not worry about your father. He remembers an afternoon when you sat with him in the cool shade and spoke of everything and nothing. The bad humors of Edmundo do not last.”

We walked quite a distance, then, in silence, and I struggled to interpret his words. To imagine all that I cherished of my lovely home receding behind me in deference to new wonders as fresh as the lemon trees; as warm as Papá’s voice during prayers on quiet nights. To accept an end, and a beginning, in which I could believe.

As we climbed the final hill, a figure, strong and gentle, came into view; sitting on a low stone wall, slices of apple in his hand. It was Papá, and he waved to me.

Snapshot.

 What I'm Reading: The Origins of Biblical Monotheism by Mark S. Smith
What I'm Watching: Wellington Paranormal on HBO Max
What I'm Listening To: In These Silent Days, Brandi Carlile
Mood: mostly pleasant, thanks to my meds
Smells: baked ribs
Sounds: my floor fan since I have hot flashes now apparently
Temperature: 70s
Thoughts: inner peace is the goal

Almost human.

The following essay is a compilation of personal journal entries from 2015, when I was at my lowest point. The words are striking to me now, a very intense and urgent reminder of just how deeply I believed my world was coming to an end. I am in recovery, no worries. But I feel it's time to put this out there. Living memory. And yes...I literally journal like this.

***

Guillermo del Toro once tweeted, “We come into this world just to shout/scream/laugh – declare who we are before fading…and hope it echoes in someone’s soul.”

So of course that’s what it is. He echoes in my soul.

Obviously that wasn’t his intention, he came without intentions, but we can’t predict or control the effect we will have on other people. We don’t know most times who’s hurting or vulnerable or codependent, and we can’t stop them from one day seeing us as if for the first time and believing in their broken heart that we can save them.

I’m not sure if we have true souls, but I think there is definitely a part of us that transcends the ordinariness and banality of the strictly material. Maybe if, fantastically speaking, someone went in and excavated my soul, and if they placed their ear to the wall, they would hear the echoes of this experience – the highest and lowest feelings, the dreams, the tattered hope, and all of it would be called by his name.

Am I doomed to his echo? I think I am doomed to putting a face to desires that are never satisfied, to hanging on to the smallest fragments of what it must be like to be human, and cared for. Sometimes I feel very, very deeply that attachment is blindingly simple, that love waits just beyond another day or two of staying here; sometimes I could swear I feel it right next to me but separated by a plane of existence, able to look but never touch. Is this a manifestation of a yearning so long and so unresolved that it is self-aware, that it needs to understand why it would exist only to scatter in the darkness like ancient starlight? That’s one way to put it, I guess.

It’s enough to make me feel like a mistake. I mean, we’re all mistakes, we shouldn’t even be here, but working with what we’ve got we attuned ourselves to the possibilities of love, and within that framework I’m the mistake of mistakes. And I feel like a fool. Far enough removed from it now, unmoored and drifting further every day from my little island prison, I see more objectively what an idiot I was to believe in such things. I went through all the machinations of infatuation – happy, confident, expectant, the world all bright and new, etc. etc. Maybe that makes sense for other people but not for me. Real, solid, foundational happiness – not contentment, not joy, not peace, but happiness – will not have been a part of my experience in this place. I’m a shadow passing through the world; no one can see me.

It’s actually a bit frightening the way that, even apart from how others can determine our own identity, our mind dictates our experience of reality. When our eyes are on the prize we are blind to anything that doesn’t support the grand idea, and we are hostile to truths that would dismantle it. Is it so important that we hold to it? No, the chemicals in our brain merely dictate the necessity. We are slave to the interchange, the increase and the lack, and only if equilibrium is restored do we see as clearly as one can see, laboring as we do inside the equivalent of an illusion.

Last week I realized how linked my creativity is to my desires, and my obsessions; how he shows up in so many of my internal wanderings and creations, almost spontaneously, as though the stuff of which my inner life is made is intricately infused with those things of him that I loved most. I wondered if all artists experience this. Maybe all artists, once they reach a certain point, find their body of work is just a retelling of their single most important pain, and as such, I’m afraid everything I create until the day I die will wear his face.

 ***

I am become Mars.

In the summer of 2016 I watched The Martian obsessively for a week, and then I read the book. I personally believe it is one of the greatest stories ever told. Not ever written, or ever filmed, mind you - but the story of a solitude more complete than ever in human history, on another planet, in a hostile but strangely indifferent environment, a man keeping alive through sheer force of intelligence, mental resilience, and the knowledge of all the ages before him... I think that's pretty great.

I then got a wild hair to rewrite the book in my own image. Not for publishing, obviously, I'm not an idiot. Just for myself. As a writer, I wanted more from the book. I saw where perhaps some deeper reflection or more finely-tuned emotional resonance was lacking, and I wanted to add it. Just for myself. To make something perfect. Something both scientifically marvelous and humanly devastating and edifying.

Anyway, I gave up about a hundred pages in. It was a rough year otherwise so the project was bound to fall away. But I enjoyed it. And I wrote a few excerpts that I'm really proud of. I will share one here.

As part of the mental toll that daily survival and isolation began to take on the main character, I wanted to show what wild fantasies might spring up in so singular a situation. It wasn't Earthly survival; it was "if I mess up I will no longer be able to breathe." It wasn't Earthly solitude, it was "no one else in the universe sees these constellations." He begins to dream of monstrous Martian inhabitants who keep a constant watch, and who draw ever closer with each dream, the astral embodiment of his relationship with death as it becomes likelier with each passing day. How might Mark Watney cope? What might keep him from going insane? Perhaps, nothing less than transcendence.

***

The dream again. This time they breached the Hab.

They tore through the canvas with a hunger no longer contained, pulling themselves toward my bunk with long grasping fingers, thin bodies vibrating with the looming satiation of the need to consume. I watched them lurch onto the covers, sheets squeezed in translucent fists, and I heard their painful airless gasps of realization that the human flesh they so long desired was not there. I watched from outside.

Because I was freed, finally, from the pathetic constraints of air and hunger and time; I was formless above the Hab while the creatures whirled about in confusion, unable to see or sense my new phase, unable to understand that I was now part of the very planet that had spit them forth in the relentless cold of those long-ago millennia. Every molecule formed my thoughts and my thoughts formed every molecule; I understood at last that the universe was alive and listening and remembering and speaking back, and I was deliriously joined to its infinitude.

Even now as I type this the night is still black and I still feel the irreversible change. I feel the sand in my skin; the rocks are my bones; my blood is a river of stars. Too long in the void, too long under the foreign sky, and the red planet has absorbed me at last. And I am cosmic. I am beautiful. I can never go home. I am become Mars.

Notes on a disorder.

Since I rarely have written about psychology here, I'm going to skip a big intro and dig right in. I've just been having some thoughts I want to try out.

There are three main personality disorders: borderline, narcissistic, and schizoid. Narcissism in the clinical setting requires the consistent presentation of five or more behaviors from a list set out in the DSM in order to reach a diagnosis; it is not what pop culture references when it really means egotism.

The word of course comes from the Greek myth of Narcissus, the beautiful young man who fell in love with his own reflection. An accepted definition of narcissism today is "a fixation with oneself and one's physical appearance or public perception."

Narcissistic personality disorder is, in my opinion, best described using object relations theory. In this theory the early (infantile) interactions between subject (self) and object (other) create the basis for enduring psychological traits that can be positive or negative. When the traits are pervasive and negative, they can be (but are not always) grouped as a disorder of personality.

For the NPD sufferer, from what I have studied, the main conflict between subject and object arises from a failure of the object to properly "mirror" the subject, and that means exactly what it sounds like. This especially shows up later in childhood when the disordered person can have more social interactions and, of course, speak. The easiest way to describe it is in the most common areas where objects fail to properly mirror: when it comes to opinions and desires.

Of course, much of an individual's identity can be described by their opinions and desires, and also values, etc. But when the object's subjective thoughts/feelings fail to fall in line with those of the disordered person, harsh and degrading reactions are often the result. The NPD sufferer will lash out regarding the differing worldview instead of learning to accept it as belonging rightfully to the object. 

In effect, it could be assumed that the NP (narcissist personality) does not realize there are other worldviews beyond her or his own. This could explain why they may appear cavalier about socially unacceptable behaviors like infidelity or fraud (and how the "narcissist" label gets affixed to popular figures who otherwise do not present for the disorder)

There's way, way more to this common reaction among NPs, including how inner part-objects function and the role of projection, but I'll need to skip that. For more reading, I've including a list at the end of this post.

My thought is that using the word narcissist to describe this set of disordered behaviors is inaccurate, and a different word should be used.

Schizoid personality disorder, also best described using object relations theory, stands apart from NPD and BPD in that the sufferer usually does not cause outward havoc or toxic relationships under normal circumstances. SP's, whether or not socially withdrawn, are intensely disattuned to personal and intimate attachment. "The libidinal attachment appears to be with oneself." Libido is a word that has been coopted by various sex psychologies and therefore we generally think of it as sex drive; but psychoanalytically it has more to do with psychic fascination - fascination with other people, with objects, with places, etc. ("Psychic" here relating to the psyche, or self).

The schizoid person's libidinal attachments are to her or his self, lived as a powerfully emotional and endlessly detailed inner world the sufferer carries with them from early childhood. This fascination with the "objects" that have been projected back into the subject replaces the fascination that would normally become the libido used to develop deep friendships, and intimate relationships. Of course, SPD is not about sex - it's about a fundamental and unconscious disdain for the idea of the physical subject, fears of absorption, and infantile coping strategies in the face of abandonment and/or neglect.

In this way, I feel that schizoid personality disorder would actually be served better by being called narcissistic personality disorder. The crux of the Narcissus myth is that he, literally or figuratively, fell in love with himself - the libidinal attachment was to himself. He did not come to his demise by begging for attention and accolades, by being materialistic and over-confident, which is how modern culture thinks of narcissism. His demise was his libidinal attachment to himself. Further, his myth relays how he traditionally scorned all intimacy, with the reason being that no one was good enough for him. Perhaps? Or perhaps that explanation comes from the bruised perspective of the rejected object?

So what then would we call the current narcissist PD?

Since in my opinion the crux of the disorder is failed mirroring, I would go with symbiotic personality disorder. (In the same way that neither borderline, narcissistic, or schizoid perfectly encapsulates the complexity of their respective disorders, I feel that symbiotic as a general term works well)

In a symbiotic relationship at least one species benefits, while the other species is affected positively, negatively, or not at all. In the clinical context, symbiotic personality disorder would always refers to a negative relationship with the object.

I came upon this word while trying to find one that captured the essence of what it most difficult about interacting with a NP; and that is their dogged resistance to outside perspectives and desires. This is what makes up a least some of the confusion with egotism, in that in a NP's search for mirroring, they can hold no subject (other) higher than their own self. Their worldview is always the correct one, is always the starting point. Again, this demand for mirroring and the negative reactions to failure are mired in very complex inner psychological conditions, and perhaps one day I'll do a post just focusing on that.

In the meantime, I feel that, if you were to put it in fresh terms, what we have called a narcissist is actually someone seeking a mutually positive symbiotic relationship with all subjects - with disordered behavior arising at its failure, leading to consistently negative outcomes.

***

All of James Masterson's works regarding personality disorders are essential; here are the three I've made it through so far:

Search for the Real Self (1988)

Disorders of the Self (1996)

Psychotherapy of the Disorders of the Self (2002)

New music part 4/Music roundup.

By virtue of not having properly blogged in over a year, I've got a LOT of music to get through. Some of the 'new music' I discovered back in 2018, so if you're wondering if I'm the type to procrastinate, wonder no more.

First I want to ruminate a bit on the state of music in the 2010s (since I'm still procrastinating on my epic blog post about the 2010s). It was the decade of women, for sure. The biggest stars (Adele), the most influential songmakers (Florence + the Machine, Sia), the most talked-about (Cardi B), the most iconic (Lady Gaga, Beyonce), the most divisive (Lana del Rey), were all women, and I believe this happened organically. It's simply how the decade played out.

It was also the Decade of Pop. I read an interesting article about how pop slowly became legitimized after the 90s/00s reign of alternative and rock; that hipster music mags and critics could no longer make money turning their noses up at the genre that was taking over everything. And everything went pop: rock, r&b, country, folk - you wouldn't believe how many artists betrayed their early, earnest acoustic or subversive catalogues for bass, synth and reverb. It's so across the board that it seems most just gave up and realized they'd have to follow the pop storm in order to stay relevant. It is very, very interesting to me.

I also love (good) pop, always have. I never thought it was illegitimate. I'm inclined to say that in the 2010s artists discovered how much there was to work with in the genre (which simply means 'popular' but has for decades meant 'pap') and that it could be fun. Sure, there were plenty of other cultural forces at work, but that's definitely a different blog post. It no longer had to mean the ubiquity of made-to-order songs like "Livin' La Vida Loca" or the out-and-out paint-by-numbers pablum of the early Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys days. Now pop is layered, creative, collaborative, and can be made in your bedroom if you've got the setup.

(Remember that brief era of insanity in the mid-2000s when, if an unknown band made it big, their fans wept and gnashed their teeth? They didn't want their favorite band to be popular. They wanted the alt cred that came along with only enjoying things other people had never heard of or couldn't understand or enjoy. Since the music put out by these bands was, to a classically trained ear, utter shit, I've always wondered if maybe those rabid fans were just using shit music to feel untouchably cool. Tragically hip, if you will)

Additionally, those hipsters realized that pop could be made by 'real' musicians, too. Back in the day the definition of a 'real' musician or band was people who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments and made their own way, and while you can't argue with that, it's a bit obtuse. A huge part of the rancor against American Idol was the supposedly foolproof criticism that the contestants and winners weren't real musicians - they just churned out pre-approved albums crafted by the latest Swedish hitmaker. Regardless of your opinion of the show, I wouldn't say that, for example, opera singers weren't real musicians just because they didn't write music or libretto. Someone who sings is a musician, period. But that sort of logic wasn't allowed back in the day. Rules were rules.

Then came along Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. At very first rejected not only for their pop sensibilities but their showiness, the masses complained that they couldn't sing and weren't real musicians. Then the women began performing live everywhere and proved that they could sing. Then it came out that they'd written their songs. Then it came out that they even wrote songs for other big acts. Then we saw them playing piano and guitar, respectively. Wait, whaaa? How is this possible??... People who can sing and write and play, they don't make pop music!! Funnily and obviously enough, those early naysayers were never heard from again.

And so things went from there and it became the Decade of Pop. I personally think it was the best era of music since the 80s which, probably not coincidentally, was also heavy on melodic pop. It will be interesting to see where the 2020s take us; I'm prepared to be let down.

Ok - time for new (to me) music!

Lana del fucking Rey.

On a wintry night at the end of 2011 I drove across state lines to hang out with a couple of friends. I don't remember anything from the evening besides the fact that we watched Saturday Night Live. Danielle Radcliffe was the host, and the musical guest was a complete unknown named Lana del Rey.

The verdict at the end of the show was clear: my two friends had hated her shaky performances, while I noted that I loved her look (floor-length cream-colored dress and long red hair) and the throwback but intriguing style of her music. I would keep her in mind as one to watch for, though that turned out to be unnecessary.

The next day media buzzed with the news that venerable NBC news host Brian Williams (since defrocked for violating his industry's code of ethics) had publicly called del Rey out in a tweet as being the worst performer in SNL history. The bandwagon was swiftly weighted down with concurring opinions: she was emotionless, out of tune, and didn't even have a proper album out; her lips were probably fake, her sentiments Victorian, and Lana del Rey wasn't even her name but a stage name. Who was this woman and how dare she? How dare she?

Her official debut album, Born to Die, was released in January of 2012. The music critics were ready for it. Pitchfork called it "limp and pointless." Rolling Stone felt it "dull, dreary and pop-starved" and gave it two stars. AV Club said "shallow and overwrought." Consequence of Sound gave it a D. Spin pointed out its objective ridiculousness a dozen times and quoted actual lyrics that were objectively ridiculous - for example, "let's take Jesus off the dashboard/got enough on his mind." Additionally, the Spin review starts out by addressing the common knowledge that multiple musical acts throughout history have taken stage names, getting it out of the way in a "yeah yeah" style in order to say so what? Your girl's still shit.

Apprehensively I listened to the previews of the album on iTunes, then pretty much just bought it. And listened to it again and again and again and again. Now, I'm definitely what one might called a "late adopter" or "early deserter," and I enjoy not thinking along the same lines as everyone else. But I wasn't listening to LDR to prove a point. I was listening because it was damn good.

If you read the reviews by average people of BTD on Amazon, the sentiment is completely reversed from what industry critics shared. Instead of getting the feeling you're watching someone actively being thrown under a full-speed city bus, you read of the beauty of the songs and her gorgeous lower register, the subversiveness of her lyrics, the smart marriage of mid-century pop stylings with of-the-moment beats and production.

I'm not writing this to try and convince you that professional music critics are hacks, that you shouldn't enjoy music journalism, that music appreciation isn't ultimately subjective.

No, I'm writing this to put on the record that Elizabeth Grant suffered a coordinated assassination attempt by every publication with a web address, that the reviews were a goddamn Greek chorus of the same illogical complaints and character attacks, that whatever objective quality her music displayed was absolutely ignored and then completely lied about over and over and over again. I'm writing to remind you, in case in the ensuing years you've forgotten, that a young woman with little name recognition and no famous supporters somehow made it through the sustained, concerted effort to reduce her to ash, to leave any trace of her credibility in absolute tatters, done so smugly and glibly that there shouldn't have been any energy or courage left in any of us plebeians to withstand the industry's resounding NO.

I also write this on the eve of the 2020 Grammys, for which del Rey is nominated for Album of the Year for her sixth album, Norman Fucking Rockwell.

Lana del Rey is, in my opinion, the artist of the decade. She has been totally unique throughout the 2010s, to the point where no one has ever dared mimic her. She has stayed consistent, both in her musical style and personal style, through the very same years we saw total transformations from the likes of Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. She is exceedingly prolific - again, NFR is her sixth album release in eight years. (I include the EP Paradise as a proper album; it's got nine freaking songs). And, like all great heroes of myth and legend, she endured tragic beginnings, stayed the course, and has won the war against her - not because the industry quickly heeled, because they did not. But because she was true to herself, she allowed her massive creativity to continue to flow, and she earned fans who have defended her from the beginning and likely will until the end.

I don't want to write a super-long post and take you through the triumphs of each of her albums; you can listen for yourself. What I want to note in particular, though, is this: because she is so consistent, there are plenty of moments on Born to Die, and Paradise, and Ultraviolence, and Honeymoon, and Lust for Life, that would fit seamlessly in NFR. I want to stress that the same things she did to earn an Album of the Year nomination in 2019 were present from the beginning. Lana del Rey has not changed. The world was simply forced to finally shut the fuck up and listen.

If you enjoy NFR, it would be impossible for you to find any fault with songs like "Radio," "Body Electric," "Black Beauty," "Terrence Loves You," or "White Mustang." Or songs like "Blue Jeans," "American," "Money Power Glory," "Art Deco," "or Change." You see, I'm just running through her discography and picking a song off of each album. I could do this all night.

So what is it that the critics find suddenly so worthy this time around? Here is another sampling of reviews, this time for NFR: Pitchfork called it "elegant and complex." Rolling Stone felt it "massive and majestic." AV Club said the album-ending song was "stunningly personal." Consequence of Sound gave it an A-. Spin actually says in the title of its gushing, philosophical review that NFR - and thus, LDR - "Isn't Afraid to Go Where Other Pop Stars Won't." But that's funny 'cause like, when she did that in 2012, it was bad and wrong.

And remember how taking Jesus off the dashboard was completely uninspired drivel? The Pitchfork critic  in the review linked to above, swan-dived deep into the fandom by declaring del Rey the next best American songwriter, "period."

Wait, does this mean that del Rey learned from her early mistakes, her naivete, her gumption? Does it mean that she spent the decade taking a humble step back, being mentored by the greats, taking nighttime poetry courses, etc. etc. and now Norman Fucking Rockwell is the butterfly finally emerged? Fuck no. Like I've been saying the entire time, del Rey is nothing if not consistent. Neither she, nor her vision, nor her style, have changed. And if I played a game where you had to decide which lyrics were from BTD and which were from NFR, you would lose spectacularly.

In the same way that apparently everyone in the music industry gathered around a pitch black table in the dungeon of some secret mansion and solemnly swore to tear her to pieces for deigning to release BTD, I'm assuming they all gathered again last year and decided that it was up to them to redeem her, to give her the accolades she deserves, but knowing that an Album of the Year nomination wouldn't be possible without ridiculously glowing reviews by the exact same publications who tried to murder her with their preschool-level pettiness.

But to her millions of fans, they just look fucking ridiculous. Lana del Rey, who honestly seems at first glance fragile enough to fall over in the wind, was stronger than all of their hate. I don't know how she did it - huge personal support network I'm guessing? - but I know I would have crumpled to dust. The world out there, doesn't deserve her. The real fans, however, do, and that is who she keeps making music for (I tell myself, indulgently). We stan because there's every fucking reason to stan.

For the record, I don't think she'll actually win. I think this is just ceremonial. Someone hopefully also deserving like Bon Iver will. And honestly, we never needed her to be nominated. Maybe just respected. Truly, in the Me Too era, the treatment of del Rey nine years ago looks very, very bad. Let that be a lesson that there's no such thing as being "on the right side of history."

And to all you losers who tried to end my girl: I will never forget what you did.

Free Mumford and Sons.

In 2015 Mumford and Sons went electric.

After massively successful debut and sophomore albums, the British neo-folk rock band that stomped and banjo-plucked their way to the music industry's heights decided on a new direction, and asked their fans to trust them on this journey. But amid the weeping and gnashing of teeth, distant wails of "where's the banjo?" and clockwork dismissals by industry critics, it wasn't a happy journey. As I wrote in an earlier blog post, Wilder Mind was a perfectly charming rock album, but in the shadow of the folk revival M+S helped engineer it paled in comparison for many, and perhaps a majority of, fans.

Three and a half years later their newest album, Delta, strays even further from the original formula, almost as if fealty to music's possibilities and group evolution is more important to them than glowing reviews. And again, the reception is middling at best. So have M+S officially lost their way, tone-deaf to the quality of the magic they used to make? Or is there possibly another explanation?

***

Sigh No More and Babel are the M+S acoustic albums, and share plenty in common: four-part harmonies, furiously syncopated guitar strumming, dramatic crescendos, excellent hooks, grandiose lyrics, and a very abused kick drum. M+S, in their old-timey vests and hats, were peddling a populist new folk that dispensed with the regional intricacies that often make historical folk difficult to penetrate.

It helps to place these albums in the context of the larger musical landscape of the late-aughts and early teens. It may be hard to remember a time when music was quiet, but singer-songwriters dominated the 2000s, and Colbie Caillat, Jason Mraz, Regina Spektor, Glen Hansard, Corinne Bailey Rae, and dozens of their contemporaries specialized in quirky, even Gallic sounds and ruminations. When Mumford and Sons and fellow British act Florence + the Machine came screaming onto the world stage in 2009, they woke everyone up. Music became big, epic, vast - everyone from Lady Gaga to Fun. to Kings of Leon to Beyonce to OK Go to Katy Perry to Sia got in on the game.

When M+S debuted, what they were doing was fresh and exciting by 21st century standards. Their stage name sounded appropriately hipster-vintage, their album cover was inscrutably indifferent, and their carefully curated look ran directly parallel to the elder Millennial men with their silly mustaches and just-burgeoning beards. Fans amassed in veritable hordes. Small-venue concerts sold out. Music festivals were abuzz. Babel was released in 2012 and was exactly more of the same; the boys won Album of the Year at the Grammys (partly to make up for them not winning Best New Artist previously). The love affair was solidified.

And then came that moment when every musical act has to decide where to go from there - risk criticism for sticking with the formula, or risk criticism for trying something new? Take your pick! I say very confidently that M+S fans would have been blissfully content with a third album of exactly more of the same, and critics would have chided them for playing it safe while still paying homage to their legacy which is the most anyone can ask for.

So they mindfully chose moving in a new direction.

Castle Rock.

I had to write to say that I won't be home anymore

'Cause something happened to me while I was driving home

And I'm not the same anymore

As part of this newest wave of filming Steven King adaptations, Hulu has released the ten-episode series "Castle Rock" (all episodes streaming now). It is written by Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason and based in the King multiverse, set in his oft-used fictional, foreboding town of Castle Rock, Maine and making frequent nods to past literary horrors. The story is new, and as mentioned not penned by King, but tries mightily to carry the spirit and underlying philosophy of his work.

The series is made to appeal to both the rabid and the casual King fan; you do not need an intimate knowledge of his canon to understand and enjoy it. I personally have only read two of his short story collections and seen a handful of his films, but his writing is so iconic, so permanently etched into the fabric of modern American society, that the odd reference to Cujo or The Shining is immediately recognized. (The series also features at least three actors who have been in previous King films: Sissy Spacek of Carrie, and Bill Skarsgard and Chosen Jacobs from the recent It)

The premise is this: on a bright late summer morning, Shawshank Penitentiary's very recently retired warden Dale Lacey (Terry O'Quinn) commits suicide. Upon hearing that he had kept an entire cell block empty for decades, his successor Theresa Porter (Ann Cusack) sends two prison guards to investigate the area; there they find, in an underground cell, a young man in a cage. When asked to identify himself, he says the name Henry Matthew Deaver. The problem is, he is most decidedly not Henry Deaver, and the guards who grew up in Castle Rock know this instantly.

One of those guards, Dennis Zalewski (Noel Fisher), calls the real Henry (Andre Holland) anonymously and tells him he is being asked for in his hometown. Henry is currently a lawyer for death row inmates in Texas; we see him eloquently (but ultimately fruitlessly) arguing to a jury for the commutation of the death sentence of a woman who killed her husband. He reluctantly makes the trip up to Maine to discover the purpose of the anonymous call, and on a more personal note, to visit his mother Ruth (Sissy Spacek), currently suffering from dementia.

(thar be spoilers ahead)

"Cat Person," Aziz Ansari, and the end of love.

In December 2017 a short story published in The New Yorker titled "Cat Person" caused a stir as it depicted the awkward, ugly realities of modern dating; it caught more notice, perhaps, because of the attention lavished on it by people (largely young women) who claimed it was a page ripped directly from their own lives.

My interaction with the hubbub was mainly through Instagram, as my cousin tagged me in The New Yorker's post and I read the thousands of too-similar comments exclaiming some version of "this is soooo true!!!" My cousin tagged me because it resonated strongly for her, and she knew that it would for me as well. I proceeded to read it, and it did.

"Cat Person" details one college student's misadventures in trying to get to know a patron of her movie theater where she sold him snacks. Because he was mildly more talkative than most boys her age, they managed to swap numbers and then for a few weeks engaged in dopamine-triggering text exchanges full of witty banter. But when it came time to be fully human - to go on a date, to fool around - everything changed. The guy who was so confident and funny via smartphone screen turned out to be just another socially-challenged disappointment who'd learned all he knew about sex from porn, and who claimed to have a bunch of cats she never actually saw.

In a weird trick of timing, several weeks after the fervor over "Cat Person," an article was published in Babe magazine detailing a young woman's abysmal date with comedian Aziz Ansari. There was even less to their connection than the ill-fated duo of the short story, as she and Ansari hardly knew each other, and the "date" quickly devolved into an almost shockingly comical imitation of shockingly bad porn. The hubbub surrounding this article, which was printed less than a week after Ansari won a Golden Globe for acting, involved a wide range of social factors: the #metoo movement, feminism in general, the racial implications that it was a hit piece (considering his incredibly recent accomplishment), the state of sexuality among Millennials, the increasingly embedded effects of a porn-saturated society.

Both of these events, and many, many more before them, have forced us to begin trying to figure out how sex, love, and companionship have become so very difficult and distant in a time when we should be reaping the multiple rewards of a sexual revolution now fifty years in our past. This is simply my perspective.

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