Pop psychology
Instead of a New Year's resolution, I will fix myself through songs
Positive self-talk: Who’s doing it? Is it working? Would you be available to do it for me? Do you take Visa? I want airline miles.
For 2025, I’m trying to drill a few personal mantras into my bones. Resolutions, I decided a while back, aren’t my bag. They’re antithetical to the way I feel most comfortable operating the levers of life, which is “idk, I’ll figure it out when I get there.”
A few days ago, my friend Beth and I went to an end-of-the-year sound bath situation. I had no idea you could do all that with a gong. The experience included a worksheet. I dutifully filled it out and actively restrained myself from writing “100” in red pen on top and circling it.
The sheet asked for the usual reflections: our biggest joys of the past year, our intentions for the next, what have you. One section instructed us to write down short statements that relate to our intentions for 2025. My inner voice traditionally oscillates between RuPaul (I believe in my inherent worth; I generally love myself; I’m open to leasing the mineral rights at my ranch to the highest bidder) and Don Rickles (I roast myself like a suckling pig).
A more reflexively nurturing inner monologue sounds nice. So here I am, talking to myself like a be-aproned Viola Davis1: I am resilient. I am kindhearted. I am warm. I am desirable. I am hot. The last mantra is the only one I don’t actually believe in some capacity. I’m not fishing, but if you have an appetite for bait, don’t let me stop you. Chomp chomp, sweetie.
The repetition strikes me as a long-tail version of something I’ve always done with my favorite songs. 1) Grab a few words of honesty from an irresistible chorus and, 2) hold on tight.
Labi Siffre’s “My Song” makes me think of resilience. The past few years have been doozies. There’s a chance of heavy dooz in the years to come. The lyrics of Siffre’s song carry the durability and flexibility I’d like to have. They leave room for heartbreak2 with an elegant promise — “to laugh as tears go by.” I read the titular “song” as one’s identity, their core, maybe their joy. “No one can take it away.” “No one can make it a lie.”
Siffre sings:
“This is my song/ And nothing/ Can make it die/ It's been so long/ And it's stronger/ I know why”
The first song that came to mind for this newsletter was “It’s Okay to Cry” by Sophie, from 2018 album “Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides.” Musically, it sparkles; the lyrics are a consolation or maybe even a pep talk. Sophie kindly walks a friend, a partner, or maybe herself through sorrow.
There’s warmth in this track, which is my favorite quality in a person. To extend easy, peaceful, affectionate safety toward another — well, it feels like the point of waking up, no? It’s everything I want to be, especially when talking to myself.
I remember walking alone through Chicago one night and listening to this song’s final swirl of sound on repeat. Sophie repeats the title words over and over: “It's okay to cry.” Very handy words to have, um, on hand.
As for songs to convince me that I’m desirable and hot, well, the recording industry hasn’t solved body dysmorphia. Though, I’m sure they have their top scientists ON IT.3
I watched a TikTok the other day about how 2025 is the year for the chickens of your desire to come home to roost. (The idea was from a video; the chicken phrasing is mine.) In 2007, Australian Prime Minister emerita Kylie Minogue ran pure desire through a food dehydrator, crushed it into a fine powder, and reconstituted it as the song “Wow.” I’m gonna try to picture myself in its words, instead of an imaginary beefcake:
“From the way you walk/ From the rhythm when you're dancing/ Every inch of you spells out desire/ You're such a rush, the rush is never ending”
There might be something there for those of us with low self-esteem — to believe yourself a crucial ingredient of your own wants.
There are also a million possible mantras about this in the MUNA catalogue. For example, 2022 banger “What I Want” celebrates the confident, reckless abandon of making up for lost time:
“I've spent way too, too, too many years not knowing what/ What I wanted, how to get it, how to live it and now/ I'm gonna make up for it all at once/ 'Cause that's, that's just what I want”
There’s more hedonism in singer Katie Gavin’s night out than I have in mind, yeah. I’m a careful boy. But inside an electropop pulse, there’s a community fridge full of affirmation. Take something out and see if it looks good: “I want the fireworks.” “I want the chemistry.” And a particularly useful one: “There's nothing wrong with what I want.”
Now: I need a gong from Craigslist.
One rad thing
From the offbeat holiday movie scavenger hunt: 1993’s “The Long Day Closes,” directed by Terrence Davies. This dreamy, gorgeous drama has a couple Christmas scenes, but its view of time is much more expansive.
“The Long Day Closes” is a semi-autobiographical film from Davies, charting a year in a young boy’s life in 1950s Liverpool. The narrative flows like mercury, silvery with nostalgia but discomfitingly untouchable. Scenes blur into each other, often with the help of post-war pop songs or a flickering movie projector light.
Michael Koresky’s Criterion Collection essay, “‘The Long Day Closes’: In His Own Good Time,” picks up the corner of every proverbial rug in the movie, showing what’s not quite visible to us casuals. I’m unfamiliar with Davies’ life story, which Koresky uses to great contextual effect:
“In ‘The Long Day Closes,’ we’re essentially seeing the world through the eyes of a child alive to its sensations, yet whose astonishment is bridled by the wisdom of a middle-aged man aware of its disappointments. The effect is an almost unbearable poignancy.”
The film’s protagonist, sweet-natured Bud (Leigh McCormack), watches and quietly processes his surroundings. “Images of joy and despondence are equally ephemeral,” Koresky writes. It’s an obituary for childhood. What a death it is to grow up!
You can stream “The Long Day Closes” on The Criterion Channel app.
Outbox
Writer Alex Vadukul recently profiled Teddy Blanks, aka “The Typography Maestro Getting Calls From Greta Gerwig and Robert Eggers,” for The New York Times. The whole thing smacks of professional incest between cool rich kids. You know that this profile is actually interesting, because still, I share. Is Blanks married to a Times books critic? Does the story, in explaining his friendship with a political scion, contain the sentence, “She eventually inducted him into her fold of city kids that included [Lena] Dunham”? Yes to both!
But I enjoyed putting a face to a niche creative pursuit that I quite admire: movie title design. There are glowing quotes from Eggers and Gerwig. The “Lady Bird” lady says:
“[Blanks] understands that we are trying to create an experience for people from beginning to end, that the film needs to be a good dancing partner and reward the audience for putting themselves in a place of vulnerability. If any part of it is careless, the audience will subconsciously stop trusting you. There is nothing that isn’t important in a frame.”
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I never tire of hearing comedian Michelle Buteau speak; I would like to suggest an unlikely but fruitful partnership with a sleep meditation app. Her new interview on NPR’s Wild Card podcast, in which Buteau calls herself the “big titty Ryan Seacrest,” gave me a fizzy, wonderful listen on Saturday morning. Listen to the episode or read a transcript here.
Viola Davis did talk to me once during a red carpet interview for the premiere of “Air.” Honestly, she seemed like she was having a stressful day, but she doesn’t owe me anything.
Look at me, holding space for lyrics.
Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” was a failed experiment, like when Red Lobster bankrupted itself on curved, veiny back of unlimited shrimp.
need a Turning Out Spotify playlist for all the bangers 🫡