✨ recomMONDAYtions #6
recs regarding the vibes economy and friendship; images and the taking of them.
Dear friend—
Our second snowstorm of the season has finally melted. The other day, the temperature rose so fast and the snow was still piled so high, a dense, grey fog blanketed my neighborhood as it all vanished. “All that is solid melts into air,” or something like that.
My life is quiet, still. A nasty cold kept me even more at home than usual. I take Hazel out. I write my stories. I read, a lot. Here are a few things that have been on my mind.
This biting article on the Antonoff of it all.
I love a lot of Jack Antonoff’s work, especially Bleachers (as I’ve written about before). This piece is a pretty scathing assessment of the music producer and his effect on contemporary pop—and while it didn’t change my love of Bleachers, it did make me Think.
One of the arguments: Antonoff’s sound, especially Bleachers’, is ultimately about packaging an emotion. Other elements of the work—lyricism, vocals, melody—fall either by the wayside or into a mishmash of predictability. And this packaging of emotion is perhaps indicative of a bunch of cultural forces—the Soundtrackification of our lives, the Vibes economy, the rise of (at least the discourse of) Main Character Energy, the increasing commodification of all corners of our lives, even our art and emotions, and our on-demand cultural environment.
Wanna feel nostalgic/powerful/yearning on your grocery run? Pop in your earbuds, play some Bleachers—juice your heart rate and come close to tears as you pick out your apples and bananas!
The author seems derisive toward this development; of the way Antonoff’s manufactured, copy-paste catharsis has seeped into so many corners of Music Today. Have we traded artistry for vibes?
LOL, maybe?
Like I said, I still like Bleachers and I think what Antonoff does is cool and wonderful, if not groundbreaking. But I do think there’s something there—something to unpack about these connections between changing consumption modes and what we want from art (or maybe swayed to want?), and how that’s all connected to capitalism and technology.
When things change—when we find ourselves listening to new kinds of music, or we engage with music in different ways—what do we gain and what do we lose? Always questions worth asking, I think.
This video essay that runs the gamut from Stanley Cups to urban planning.
Mina Le pulls together so many threads that have been tangling in my brain the past few months, especially since I moved away from Pittsburgh and my dearest friends. I feel on the edges of the kind of friendship-vs.-isolation, community-vs.-capitalism dynamics she outlines. She also ties together ideas about consumerism, privatization, social media, third places, and all the cultural forces spinning them together. There are so many freaking gems in this video, but I am most thinking about her notes on the decline of “generalized reciprocity.”
Generalized reciprocity is when you do nice things for your friends, neighbors, and community not in return for something specific (and not just because you’re an altruistic person) but rather because you know your community will be there for you when you need it, whenever that may be.
Mina suggests this is due to a decline in serendipity and material engagement with community. The design of everyday life in so many ways incentivizes us to stay stuck in our own worlds; to stay cozy at home instead of going out, to watch a video instead of take in our surroundings. As a result, we don’t notice when people need help, or we have less opportunities to help. There are less opportunities to offer our seat to the elder on the bus, or help our neighbor carry groceries from their car.
Additionally, Mina argues, people are more likely to see things through a transactional lens. If we can pay for an Uber from the airport, why would we ask a friend to pick us up—or ask them to do it without immediately offering something of equal or lesser value in return?
This mindset can be a good and bad thing. It can translate to people being more thoughtful about their friends’ time and energy. But it can get a little soul-killing if a friendship gets too transactional; if it becomes a constant calculation of tit-for-tat. Personally, I worry that I worry too much about the former that I lean too far toward the latter. I have a whole essay about this sitting in my drafts, and maybe it’s time to finally publish it.
All this to say, listening to Mina’s video made me grateful for my friends because our relationship is so much the opposite of what she talks about. And that’s largely because—on top of being lovely people who love each other—so many of us lived and live within walking distance. This is something else Mina notes; the benefits of proximity, and how it fosters familiarity, ease, and serendipity in friendships.
It is an enchanted experience, to be so close to your friends and have that community without big barriers of time and space. I miss it dearly, and hope to be back there sooner rather than later.
This essay by Kevyan S. on grief, solidarity, and Gaza
Among other things, this essay considers the consequences of a solidarity that is fueled and summoned only through grief and spectacular suffering. It’s a rich and urgent piece—my few thoughts on it here won’t do it justice, so I very much recommend reading it.
After decades of contempt, fear, or apathy from much of the West, we are in the midst of an unprecedented groundswelling of global activism in solidarity with Palestinians. But it has largely been galvanized by images of unimaginable suffering in Gaza.
As Kevyan lays out, this dynamic (of grief, spectacle, solidarity, and action) is a throughline for many causes and movements. It is powerful, but it begs practical and moral questions. For one, Kevyan notes how it allows smaller injustices to fall by the wayside—even though the smaller injustices share a root cause with and build up into the spectacular violence. A movement driven by such spectacle will struggle to address the quieter ways that injustice is embedded in systems and lives. And it depends on great suffering to happen before we make changes.
As new horrors spill onto my newsfeed each day, I am now constantly reminded of Kevyan’s words: “The development of our moral imagination should not rely on the affective power of Palestinian death.“ Instead, they call for “a solidarity based not purely on loss and grief, but on everyday compassion and acts of defiant living.”
While reading this essay, I almost immediately thought of a series of photos I saw weeks ago that stopped me in my tracks: A few journalists and their friends on the beach, softened by the pink light of sunset. Playing chess on the sand while the sun dips beneath crystal blue water. Motaz, laughing as he leans against a car door with a friend.
The last slide in the post is a video of Hind, facing the sea, her hair lifted in tendrils by the wind. She slowly turns leftward, burying her cheek against her shoulder, wearing what may be a smile. As she dips her head down, her collar covers her mouth. Her gaze flicks upward for a moment.
I’ve watched this video at least twenty times by now. After seeing these journalists report on the ground, hold bleeding bodies, gesture stolidly at the devastation around them, it felt like a miracle to see them smile; to see their faces do the same things mine surely has.
This video of Hind, this marvel of softness and intimacy and life—I keep returning to it in my head, to remind me of what else persists in Gaza.
Thanks for reading, take care,
—mia xx