Love and insomnia

[koganbot]

Pasted in from freakytigger's livejournal. In a previous episode advice had been offered in regard to what the panicking, woefully underprepared freakytigger and koganbot should write about in their respective columns (deadlines looming, ideas not in place):

skyecaptain:
2007-09-17 06:48 pm
Both of you should write about Cassie. She's great (I'm late in my Cassie obsession phase).

If I could, I'd talk about "esoteric reading" of modern teenpop, which basically means you pay attention long enough to listen to a whole album/oeuvre to figure out what's going on. I tried to play Ashlee Simpson for a reluctant friend, and realized that I was making my argument backwards: "HOLD ON! Pretty soon this will signify 'complicated' even to you, the instinctive bristler, because you don't need to try to figure out how her contradictions work in advance." I.e., when Frank talks about "Autobiography" being a personals ad, it's important to stick with Ashlee long enough to realize that her superficiality MAKES HER DEEPER. And that this isn't "reading into her too much" -- when she says "I've got stains on my t-shirt and I'm the biggest flirt," it's kind of as silly as it wants to be, and it only scans as deep in relation to the other stuff happening in her other songs (not just the oft-quoted coffee incident in "Better Off"). Like listening to "Pieces of Me," I now have a better understanding of what's happening here -- she's finding love for what basically amounts to the first (and ONLY) time on the whole album, but you don't figure out how this usually works (I'm a mess and I guess we love each other but then why are we both so fucked up??) until you've already gotten to know her. Which makes "Pieces of Me" a bad place to start. Almost as bad as starting with "Autobiography." (Unless, that is, you want to get to know her, in which case it's all good because you're probably in for the long haul, maybe because you've talked to a supporter via poptimists about it already).

Um. Anyway. This is sort of a riff on your [Tom's] Big Idea idea (keep riffing on this; I feel like there's something important but still underdeveloped here) -- the Big Idea of Ashlee Simpson (to someone who isn't totally closed off to the possibility of enjoying her music, who will like think the Big Idea is "SHE SUCKS SO WHY SHOULD I LISTEN TO HER!1!11") is probably "Pieces of Me," but this is overshadowed time and again elsewhere, which retroactively enriches the song for its very incongruity. I.e., the Big Idea turns out to be a pretty Small Idea after all! Whereas ABBA's catchiness and adult themes always work in tandem, pretty much at all times. Catchiness isn't an inflated Big Idea, it's just the one that gets privileged (often at the expense of the other ideas, but not in a way that precludes them from working at all, whereas with Ashlee, if you think the understandable surface read -- I even had this read until I started noticing how friggin' BLEAK some of it is, but with the possibility of redemption from bleakness -- of "Pieces of Me" is the norm, you're missing Her, period.

(Is this making any sense?)

skyecaptain:
2007-09-17 06:49 pm
Should note that my "HOLD ON!" response was futile, and I was pretty much wasting my time. Some friendships can't encompass all of my interests, but so what? Anyway, it was worth a shot.

koganbot:
2007-09-17 08:59 pm
Auteurist! I mean, when you come down to it, that's a big part of auteurism, taking the time to get to know a lot of what, say, Raoul Walsh does, not merely a single one of his movies. But then this is how you get to know anything, from your best friend's sister to quantum mechanics. You see a bit of it in action here, more of it in action there, you notice similarities, surprises, the surprises getting you to rethink what you'd "known" earlier. And you can carve out different areas of knowledge that contain the same phenomenon. E.g., "Pieces Of Me" as part of teenpop 2004, "Pieces Of Me" as an example of John Shanks' riffage and strumming and chorus release, "Pieces Of Me" on your best friend's sister's iPod, "Pieces Of Me" in relation to female adolescent development in the United States in the early 21st century.

I don't have much tolerance for people who won't even listen. No, that's not true. I don't have much tolerance for people whose reason for not listening, beyond the usual "I don't have much time," "I tend to find jazz more relaxing," "I've got 65 books to read and 29 albums to listen to by yesterday," etc., is that they think they already know what's there. But then my reason for not reading books on astrology and books on the seven habits of successful businessmen etc. is that, while I may well find something surprising that teaches me something new about the world, I'm not expecting them to feed my soul. Of course, how can my soul know this, if I don't read them? Or that I should give really low priority to reading mystery novels in which a cat is a main character? I've never read one, and I most likely never will, but how do I know? But making such choices is a necessity. Without habits and prejudices and received ideas, we don't get through the day, and a lot of our snap judgments work well enough. It's only on the basis of being conventional and nonexploratory in a whole bunch of areas that I have the time and the stamina to go looking for surprise in music. (But then, my contempt for Simon Reynolds' and Idolator's treatment of Paris is a whole different issue; and what's going on with the people you meet who won't give Ashlee the time of day isn't time management, it's social differentiation, and a cultivated ignorance. That's my guess, anyway.)

Interestingly, I am going to talk about some of this in my column, how new ideas fare, how conventionality can sometimes go dysfunctional and leave dark areas of bigotry and ignorance, thoughts about how we can break out of our own ignorance.

mooxyjoo:
2007-09-17 09:48 pm
hermeneutic circle yo

koganbot:
2007-09-17 09:13 pm
I don't find Autobiography bleak in the least; I think the words you're looking for are "anguished" and "uneasy," in the way that "Frankenstein" and "Lookin' For A Kiss" and "Private World" and "Jet Boy" are anguished and uneasy. But they're exuberant, too, and so is Autobiography. Not just embracing the struggle, but making it a spirited dance.

I love "Pieces Of Me," and even if it's one of the few songs on the album where happiness scores a solid victory, it's got its bottom crashes and its sleeplessness. The sound and the thick emotional stream of the chorus seem plenty representative of the album and of Ashlee. Of course, I'm now hearing it through ears that have heard the rest, that have felt the bottom crash elsewhere and know what's at stake.

skyecaptain:
2007-09-17 10:35 pm
I dunno, I think "bleak" does describe "when I hit that bottom, crash, you're all I have," but the bleakness is buoyed (maybe made less bleak?) by the fact that this makes her feel genuinely great. But I think it's just as important that she doesn't really feel genuinely great again until Album Two. ("Better Off" might be the closest she gets to feeling great, and that isn't really saying much, but it's certainly saying something -- and that's precisely what the song is about!) Anguish might be a better word, but I think there's a fundamental pessimism at play, a sort of bewilderment maybe (I relate to this), even if it's relegated to a period of time that Ashlee's pretty confident she'll get through, possibly with the help of this Dude.

Interesting to contrast the sleeplessness in "PoM" with it in "Autobiography" (walked a thousand miles while everyone was asleep -- presumably, she's not doing any sleeping, though maybe she does it while everyone else is walking a thousand miles), also because you get a really contained and sorta tightly coiled example of what I'm trying to talk about above:

(1) "Walked a thousand miles while everyone was asleep": great line with no real world connection -- the real world connections in the first song are kind of silly, it's actually NOT a great introduction to her (if you're not planning on getting comfortable and reading her autobiography, now that she's dared you to).

(2) "Monday, I am waiting, Tuesday, I am fading, Wednesday, I can't sleep": could be read as Girl Falling Head Over Heels for Random Dude. But that's not all that's going on.

(3) "Monday, waiting, Tuesday fading, into your arms so I can dream": OK now she's fallen head over heels. Before it was sort of equal doses of love and insomnia (love means never having to say I'm going to bed now). When she finally becomes the Big Idea Girl (not actually a very Big Idea in the scheme o' things), it's only (extra-)poignant if you realize that it's not who she was even at the beginning of a song. She might be more in love at the end than she was at the beginning.

Well yeah, it's auteurist by your definition (and it's probably Realist by Bazin's definition, since Realism = "the stuff Bazin digs [into]"). Or we could just call it paying attention to what the piece does. (There's a difference between paying attention and imbuing everything with either great significance or authorial intent, of course, but that kind of goes without saying...it matters when it matters, and with Ashlee it matters a LOT, because you really have to pay attention to understand how she works. I'd argue the same of ABBA, actually.)

skyecaptain:
2007-09-17 10:41 pm
"So I can BREATHE," not dream (need to be careful when I quote lyrics off the top o' me head). So she hangs on to some of the unrest, I guess. And you could read that as more messy than it probably is.

koganbot:
2007-09-17 10:58 pm
You're right, it is "breathe," but the lyric sheet says "dream," so I've made that mistake a number of times, too. Maybe you picked it up from me.

"Finally rest my head on something real." Like, at last! (Reminds me of the Dixie Cups' "Chapel Of Love" (written by Jeff Barry or Ellie Greenwich), which is a totally happy celebration but has this one line that goes "And we'll never be lonely anymore," implying that the basic pre-wedded state is loneliness.)

Um, have to stop writing about Ashlee and write my column (or fall asleep and then dash it out tomorrow).

EDIT: Comment thread contains excellent OTIS FERGUSON quotations.

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

The new Cassie single is SO GOOD. I must remember to check youtube daily for the video's emergence.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Did the Cassie album ever actually get a release in the UK? If not I'm off to the internets, since my previous pirate copy seems to have been swallowed by my hard drive's machinations.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yes! Though it had the WORST PR ever - I remember being so frustrated that I just bought it in the end.