#5 mornings
on unlikable narrators, grief-stricken indie, and capitalist commodification
Dearest friend,
My balcony is now overflowing with flowers and vegetable plants! It feels like a small, foresty oasis, where only good things happen and nothing can hurt you. Only bees and birds and sweetness allowed. I’ve been spending all of my time there: in the early mornings and late afternoons — any chance I get. I’m of the belief that there is no greater joy than to read in the sun with a cold beverage in hand.
It’s been a good month for me, personally. But as always, there is so much darkness in the world. Despite that, I am learning to cherish and cradle my personal joy, stoke its warm fires, let it grow and spread and fight against the gloom. I hope you are able to too.
the library
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas was a fast favorite. I knew I’d like it based off of the premise alone, but I had also read enough mixed reviews to have tempered expectations. For me though, the book just worked. Reading it felt like living in another person’s mind, with all of its contradictions, uncertainties, and unpalatableness.
I’ve always loved a good controversial and unlikeable character, and even better if it’s a woman. I especially love how common the narrator’s unlikability is. She’s not particularly depraved or murderous, but she’s unseemly in a mundane, everyday way. She has the unlikability of someone who is too thinky. Someone too gregarious and self-important, while also being insecure. Above all, her unlikability stems from the fact that she can be so utterly banal: she is yet another intellectual woman with her self-righteous opinions that are both right and wrong and vague. She is unlikeable in all the ways that we as the readers might be unlikeable as well, or can recognize in others.
You can read more of my thoughts on Vladimir on Instagram.
the record player
//currently spinning//
I used to think I didn’t like Chinese music. Typically reserved only for drunken karaoke nights or during moments of nostalgic reverie, “mandopop” songs (e.g. Jay Chou’s) have always felt too repetitive and unimaginative for my taste. Within the past year or so, however, I’ve stumbled upon the world of Mandarin indie music. This genre finds its roots throughout the Mandarin-speaking world: Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China primarily, but elsewhere as well.
One of my latest favorite finds is 福禄寿 (FloruitShow), a three-sister band based in Beijing, China. Their latest album, 【我用什么把你留住】(What Do I Do To Keep You), came out in 2021. It’s a sweeping, mournful album, filled with lyrical energy that is drawn from a deep well of knowing grief. It features the kind of music that can only come from a familiarity with loss and pain. Yet, there’s a dreamy sweetness that ebbs and flows throughout. The intro sets an undercurrent tone for the rest of the album, as they sing: “我知道我就快要回到梦里去了” (I know I’m about to return to the dream). This simple, airy prelude launches listeners into the surreal world of the album. Each song has an ethereal quality, created by a foundation of disparate sounds — chimes, echoes, electronic beeps, traditional Chinese instruments, and distorted vocals. But the experimental noises are always grounded by more stripped back moments. Each song tackles the ever-present themes of life, death, and primarily, grief.
The first two songs after the intro deal with loss head-on. They’re gentle and candid, bald in their vulnerability. They feel like the soft cry of someone nursing a wounded heart. Here, FloruitShow implore the listener to heed their pain, to note the brittle variations of life with all of its bitterness and beauty, its emptiness and fullness.
《超度我》(Chāodù Wǒ / Transcend Me), track 4, taps into the spiritual and mystical realm, incanting the Diamond Sutra as bells sound off in the background like calls to prayer. Here, FloruitShow are apologetic yet bold as they fluctuate between the stages of grief. In turns, they cry out in denial, sorrow, and bargaining, all just within this one song. It begins:
来不及 (Too late)
最后一句想你来不及让你知道 (I was too late in letting you know I miss you)
再也回不去 (Can never return)
那个有彩虹出现的下午 (To that afternoon with the rainbow)再也感受不到你温度 (Can never again feel your warmth)
如果你留我在梦里 (If you leave me in a dream)
我会放弃呼吸 (I will give up on breathing)
请。超度我 (Please. Transcend me)
Lyric and sonic intensity come to a head in the fifth song, 《没咯》(Méi Gē / No Slight). It’s a dense and rhythmic piece with heavy trap/EDM influences. The music builds and builds, and the bass reverberates in your chest like someone pummeling you. There is a hypnotic, animalic quality, as if the singer, heavy with grief, is wailing and thrashing and anguishing. The chanting, mechanical overture spills over into layers of intensifying electronic beats. You can hear sharp gasps in between the 808 bass and kick drums, like someone gasping for breath in the midst of a breakdown. It’s a torrential, mad thrasher of a song.
As the halfway point, the sixth song marks a departure. 《玉珍》(Yù Zhēn / Precious Jade) was a song written for the three sisters’ late grandmother. Quiet and lullaby-like, the song is enveloped in a veil of tranquil, loving acceptance.
With Track 7, 《春暖花开去见你》(Chūnnuǎn Huā Kāi Qù Jiàn Nǐ / Spring Blossoms Open to See You), FloruitShow shift away from death and turn toward lost love instead. It’s a sweet track imbued with earnest promises and hopes. The song feels like a soft spring morning.
Track 8 is fucking beautiful. Titled《如何》(Rúhé / How), it represents that moment when it’s been months, maybe even years after the loss of a loved one, and you’re doing okay. But then, it hits you. Your heart constricts. You feel it all over again, waves crashing down over and over. You ask yourself: now that they’re gone, what am I supposed to do? How can I forget them? How do I stop missing them? The use of layered machine-warped vocals, in addition to the sounds of glass breaking and an un-answered dial tone, add to the sublime sense of helplessness and hopefulness.
Track 9 leans into religion and prayer, as FloruitShow sing a Buddhist Tara mantra for the world suffering from COVID-19.
Track 10 rounds out the album. It’s a heavy-hitting acoustic song that draws from oral storytelling traditions, where people would gather around a blazing fire to share folktales. Various percussion instruments can be heard as FloruitShow’s varied voice heaves, painting a literary tapestry. It is a final story infused with raw power.
Favorite tracks:
《超度我》(Chāodù Wǒ / Transcend Me)
《没咯》(Méi Gē / No Slight)
《如何》(Rúhé / How)
If you liked this album, check out these songs and artists as well:
变形金刚（Biànxíng jīngāng / Transformer) - Waa Wei
如常 （Rúcháng / Usual) - No Party for Cao Dong
//the mixtape//
Stay up-to-date with my new summer playlist:
the salon
To begin this month’s salon offering is an article I wrote for Heroica about hair salons (partly)! More specifically, I talk about my history of hair changes and the significance of said changes (spoiler: I’ve done a lot to my hair over the years).
“Hair has also always been a way to externalise my inner emotions and individuality. In some cases, it has been an outer manifestation of my attempt to escape an internal struggle or a way to rebel. It has in turns been my pride and joy, my shame and struggle. It may just be hair, but it’s also so much more.”
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about influencer culture, celebrity-hood, and consumerism. Naturally, Guy Debord’s , La société du spectacle (The Society of the Spectacle) has been on my mind. One day, I’d love to make a few theory posts dedicated to it, but until then, here’s an illustrated guide that explains Debord’s main theses in an easy-to-understand way.
“The diffuse spectacle, which relies on a rich abundance of commodities, is typified by wealthy democracies. The latter is far more effective at placating the masses, since it appears to empower individuals through consumer choice. The diffuse spectacle of modern capitalism propagates itself by exploiting the spectator’s lingering dissatisfaction. Since the pleasure of acquiring a new commodity is fleeting, it is only a matter of time before we pursue a new desire — a new “fragment” of happiness. The consumer is thus mentally enslaved by the spectacle’s inexorable logic: work harder, buy more.”
Speaking of commodification and capitalist instruments of control….each of DeFino’s articles unveiling the beauty industry feel like stabs right in the vulnerable center of my heart. Necessary, but painful stabs. Read her latest article critiquing the “no-makeup makeup look” a.k.a. the “clean look”
“Minimal makeup, then, is maximal everything else. It’s more masquerading as less. Framing the trend as a “five-minute makeover” or “two-minute makeup” or simply “clean” allows customers of a certain class — the beauty bourgeoisie — to reap the rewards of cosmetic labor without the gauche appearance of having performed said labor.”
“After all, what is the “five-minute morning” if not an admission that there is pressure to perform a baseline of beauty; that that baseline of beauty is not innate to the human face but rather, imposed; that this performance is not one of enjoyment but obligation — one that must be squeezed in, even when time is scarce? “
A poem for the road:
From Darkness
Tim SieblesSunrise runs
a fresh wind through the leaves,
a night turns
back into shadows.Waking up, the birds tell
first light
everything they know.Why do we keep
killing each other?The Earth is a woman
who walks
in the sky, walks
in the sky! Her legs
so longyou can’t even see them.
For no reason, the morning comesback again, saying Come back—
open your eyes.
For no reason, the morning comes back again!!! After grief, there is mourning, and then there is morning light.
With the utmost of love,
Charlotte