little women (2019), under the tuscan sun (2003)

the newest little women is a movie about how women maybe don't have to marry (though we are given the meta treatment on this) or could marry happy but will be poor, or will die alone & innocent or i guess the fourth option is to marry stupid & have things all turn out in your favor by sheer luck.  there's maybe an ambient fifth option floating around, becoming marmee, a woman seething w/ imperceptible anger played by laura dern in the rare role that doesn't give her a chance to break down in hysterics. at one pt dern turns to laurie, urging him to call her marmee, invites the audience, too, to treat her as mom. teat 4 the world.  marmee's absent & dull husband who is given more scorn in the novel is played by bob odenkirk (?) & might as well be a bag of potatoes w/ some sideburns.

someone says their friend is thankful that little women is finally given the ending it deserves, perhaps alluding to the VERY 19th ct feminist take on domestic affairs, love, etc., but the ending it most deserves is probably one that comes w/ the grit of real life.  we get a lush fantasyscape in which the middling talents of every march sister flourish in providing for the next generation.  all of the narrative tragedy of little women is always too muted, coated in the bliss of happy family, a zone devoid of trauma and full of security in spite of professions of the opposite.  for straight women the ultimate ending is maybe to be shown that they don't have to settle for a wooden toothed thousandaire, that they themselves could one day be the thousandaire.  jo gives a dramatic speech about the perils of a life without a husband, how she is filled w/ dire loneliness.  i want 2 to know why she doesn't just make some fuckin friends.

its maybe a Homosexual trait to be born knowing that you'll die alone & have every romantic interlude be some sort of wild diversion in an illegal paradise.  dying alone is among the best scenarios that could befall one truly in a world where coupledom and marriage are the sites of the greatest violence against women.  in under the tuscan sun, which i watched a few hours after little women, a lesbian played w/ clunky tact & aggressive style (berets, leather, suspenders) by sandra oh spends a total of two onscreen minutes mourning the loss of her partner who has abandoned her then falls happily in2 motherhood.  here is where we remember laura dern, an utterly zen look on her face masking the complete exhaustion & rage, "i'm angry every day of my life"  marriage is a curse, is motherhood any better?

some say being an artist is like being a mother.  would louisa may alcott agree?  releasing your work into the world after caring for it so deeply.  this is kind of like calling your dog your son but whatever it's complicated.    there are so many wink & a nod moments when gerwig zooms out & looks at the way narratives were crafted in 19th century America.  some cranky publisher says no one would ever want 2 read this story about an UNMARRIED WOMAN LIKE JO  meanwhile every woman who has ever read little women has identified w/ jo so strongly that they would sooner die than have to be an Amy or Beth or Rhonda or whoever the hell the other women are.  we can't even remember their names.  gerwig holds up a mirror but also isn't willing to do a fast forward to jo living our her days like emily dickinson straggly grey hair 2 her ass refusing 2 leave the house except 2 go 2 the bread baking competition, nightgowns stained w period blood, bed filled w crumbs.  heaven.

under the tuscan sun, which we watch because one of my favorite people loves it, is also a movie about women's desperation to find love & the narratives we are told 2 cling 2 in the face of love being revealed as impossible, busted, or just kinda gross.  at one point the cartoonishly horny (the only way middle aged women r allowed 2 experience sexuality in films like these) protagonist frances has finally gotten some passionate d after years of her own wooden toothed thousandaire exhusbo and wildly slides down the side of a muddy hill in chase of the car of her italian lover.  she will do anything 2 find the love that is guaranteed 2 cure her suffering.  at the end of the movie, i think a man reminds her she has everything she needs.  get bent loser!!!

does jo have a lot in common with frances?  yeah, they're writers, don't need anybody but themselves, risk takers, etc.  we've heard this one before.. society keeps telling em "you need a man" even tho theyve got that gut feelin' every woman is born with... ("all women are lesbians" -jill johnston)   "write what you know" is eternally in vogue so you'll be hard pressed to find a story like one of these that doesn't feature a writer.  it's a great occupation if you don't want your protagonist to have any earthly responsibilities or need to deliver some cosmic burns or give them something to live for outside of marriage that is then complicated by marriage.  but they're women working against the conventions of their time, which r of course the same.  nothing much changes in the apocalyptic pastpresentfuture time collapse of heterosexuality (lol sorry).  anyyywayyy I'm looking fwd 2 the next little women adaptation where marmee is just played by a roomba in some sexy lingerie, jo's a real dyke, the dad's a bag of potatoes, meg gets in2 improv so no1 will marry her. beth goes to CVS for the antibiotics, amy cheats on laurie w/ a guy who won't return her calls.  period pieces are beautiful traps, invitations 2 forget abt the world for an hour or two.  romantic comedies r like snorting buzzfeed articles.  can't complain either way.  cotton candy 4 the soul. 

wong kar-wai & feelings time

i am watching movies made by wong kar-wai which have made me think a lot about the duration of a feeling and its quantifiable potential--this could be called something like "feelings time."  does a period of happiness carry as much significance as, say, the period that is an hour?  equally abstract though the former tugs you in & out of a span understood viscerally.  inside the depths of a feeling, one is unable to pay attention to most time anyway, lost in love or sorrow.  no1 wears a watch at the pinnacle of a feeling, the place where it is most vivid & inescapable.  there r certainly no alarms, calendars, nothing more pressing than whatever rushes of good or bad capture us.

in the mood for love gives a sense of the way we piece together past time via a feeling.  the way snippets of love r sometimes all that survive from a period of greater stress & activity.  we craft a porous yet durable quilt from our most vivid emotions.  we find any time they were extinguished or nurtured or revived.  a year potentially known only for its brushes with love becomes a unit of time composed entirely by feeling.  we might forget things (whether consciously or unconsciously) that take away from this emotion's vividness or dissuade us of its power or stranglehold.  the emotion is in charge of our memory, thought, doing whatever it wants w/ it.  i love the first half of this movie, how the viewer chugs through the endless start and stop of love's first moments.  how they r all that survive from this period &, possibly, all that is worth saving.  love's past brushes--no matter how painful, fruitless, or flung out of space--making future longing impossible & possible all in one.  history repeats itself--that's about feelings, too.

i have a watch i wear to work most days which is part of a costume i wear--that of a servant 2 regular time, the boring kind, the one that has no feelings at all.  when i am at work, part of my job is to respect the boundaries of things like seconds and minutes and even the surreal 5-day work week.  i know deeply what it means to have a monday or a thursday--identical periods of time that will yield wildly different experiences.  that a month could contain some certain element, sectioned off of the rest of the world, is impossible but i, too, have calendars.

feelings time has the same unpredictability of regular time--that identical "units" could be felt in completely different ways.  this is perhaps why it is the best alternate measure to regular clock-oriented time telling or the one we most readily adopt when our memory traces our pasts.  love will never be identical, though might burn w/ the same bodily parameters.  some periods of depression are completely arresting, others produce great art.  the feeling of sadness, sometimes stops one in its tracks or other times that same kind of minor ticking.  these can go on for months of years, vivid sensations sometimes burning out much quicker than the things which we dully carry with us from day to day.  feelings that r bland in their familiarity being the ones that we r most afraid to have leave us--common happiness, faded love, quiet anger w/ the world.

chungking express lives, too, in feelings time.  & the feeling that rules is, again, love--the iron fist whose fingers grow like weeds.  a birthday not complete without the rush of acknowledgement, understanding, infatuation.  a year that passes composed entirely of longing; we don't need its particulars--we know exactly what this looks like (how this feels).  wong kar-wei's sunglasses-filtered worlds could not tell u what time it is.  they have beautiful clocks & calendars which may as well read the same time over & over again.  we r foolish in love--the groundhog's day scenario that we allow 2 derail us w/ the same blissful wonder every time.  dissolved in its warmth, we r careful students of tests we can never pass but probably would never want to.

in the mood for love, kar-wei says in an interview i watch, features foods which tip off the viewer to the time of year.  we are given glimpses of an exterior world--coats, rain from beyond hallways, seasonal vegetables on the table.  yes a sense of time's passing but ultimately time has no real authority against feeling.  snow can stop the mail but getting rid of love is literally excising some physical sensation from oneself--an impossibility.  chungking express's soft, boozy atmosphere makes the viewer feel uncertain of the world altogether--trapped in chaotic bursts of people then alone again, at work, in one's apartment, at bars.  "alone" is a feeling that people don't necessarily fix.  a world this hazy and uncertain is one in which we inevitably retreat inside ourselves looking for the feelings that will remedy the burden of having a body & moving about.  time's monotony--its rules & regulations--are part of this withdrawal.  we can trust only the felt, as these other measures r so ready to betray us.  to trap us in traincars and commitments.

as 4 me, i have no respect 4 time & will watch as many movies in a day as i please.  off 2 watch another wong kar-wai film...

im goin downnnnnnnn

i have not blogged in a while cos dang it has been a crazy month for me, with a vacation, a mary j blige concert, 2 of my best friends comin 2 visit, a fellowship application (gag me w/ lottery tickets folks), lots of practicing with my new band jelly, & EVEN MORE hangin' out!!!  i have been blessed this summer with the gift of many new friendships & have been tryna ride this wave.  lucky 2 have figured out how to live in a city i never fully got 2 kno until this past year & 2 have been engulfed in a mess of weirdo geniuses who respect me even tho im a plainclothes freak.

i would be remiss if a review of the mary j blige concert i attended early this month did not appear on my blog.  this was my THIRD mjb concert & i can't even begin 2 describe how much these r SPIRITUAL experiences.  mjb is there 2 soothe & process alongside her attendees.  if u have a broken spirit, broken man, broken sense of self--u will leave knowing the next step forward.  mary always takes a moment 2 pause & rap w/ the audience.  some perfect moment just as you feel yr heart might give out from shuffling in the aisle 2 cyclical tales of love heartbreak disappointment redemption.  sometimes people tell me i am good at giving advice but i feel that maybe everything i've learned about giving advice has come from mary j blige? "enough cryin" is one of my favorites in this regard--"I've gotta be out my mind to think I / need someone to carry me" there's venom but it's the kind of venom where you don't even wanna bother w/ the past.  what's there to look back on?  i've done enough cryin cryin cryin sings mary waving her hand at the gnats of her past that are tryna get some time w/ her certainty in the future.  ugh she nearly opened w/ this & i was not ready.  this was one i had not seen live yet.

arriving at the concert, my sister & i were greeted by westboro baptist protestors who frequent a lot of random stuff here.  they're a little bored & they're from nearby--it's kinda like when neighbors stop by your grill n chill & can't hang w/ the preexisting vibe.  they'd apparently listed the mjb show on their website as a very sinful event in need of protesting.  some held signs that said "eat your children."  my sister rolled down the window & yelled "we're gay, we're sisters, & we're married" our favorite joke being that we are both sisters & wives which is especially not funny if you're my mother & you have to listen to the beautiful song we sing to one another "my sister my wife." anyway at one point mary was excising the suffering from my soul with her razor-sharp wailing in "im goin down"  in front of a sick flame graphic.  these must have been the hellfires the wbc was warning about.  that said, the thigh-high glittery black boots mary wore throughout the show (throughout her 4 outfit changes) were truly an act of sacrament & mjb's entrance into heaven is imminent & mandatory. 

mjb's music is powerful because it creeps in2 yr body, possesses u w/ emotion.  her vocals dare U 2 quake & quiver like her heart.  she is always crying, always thankful.  she can't believe we've come to her concert, we can't believe she has decided to impart this wisdom.  if you're a mary j blige fan, you have been through some shit.  you are at the mjb show because you are ready to heal.  you are also at the mjb show because you want to fuckin dance.  we are all getting it in the outdoor airconditioned zoo ampitheater because doing anything else would be grand disrespect.  it doesn't matter if you're good at dancing or if you just like to tap your foot, sitting down is a disgrace.  even the boyfriends & husbands get up at certain points.  if you don't know the words you probably feel a little left out.  but how can u not know the words?  u have been here before.  if u havent had a not gon cry im not gon cry im not gon shed my tears moment you should not be at the mary j blige concert u sld b at the weird al show tomorrow night that a few of my friends r going to hit me up if u need somebody to go w/

anyway i could write a million more words abt mjb but i really have to go use the bathroom that's all folks

the kinds of dreams you have when you're sleeping in somebody else's bed

i am housesitting for two friends i see almost every week so it feels both strange & not strange at all to be using their shower, cooking with their pans, playing their piano, sleeping in their bed.  while i sometimes forget where i am as i go about daily activities, at night i am all too aware.  i had one dream where i was attempting to rearrange furniture, another where we had permanently traded beds, and a third where i struggled to cook an egg, cracking it directly onto the burner of the stove rather than into the pan which sat a few inches away.  in this last dream, my friend charlie flawlessly cooked an omelette right next to me as i made the unconscionable gaffe.  

in general, my dreams are far more likely to err on the side of domestic, laborious, believable, etc. than fantastic.  i often dream i am at work writing emails and answering questions or at home struggling with large loads of laundry.  these dreams are far more nightmarish & exhausting than ones where i'm falling off a cliff or committing a great crime, since they extend the monotony of my day into my precious hours of sleep.  that said, they have nothing on the ones where i'm fighting with an ex or being emotionally destroyed by my mother.  

my favorite type of dream is one where i've created an artwork i can replicate in real life, though it also falls--complicatedly--into the category of dreams that i cannot stand (which is also, unfortunately, most of the dreams i've already mentioned): dreams which play out real-life scenarios and leave me with a sense of confusion about their reality upon waking.  sleeping in someone else's bed seems to make me hyper-aware of the fact that i'm a person in a house--i fall asleep knowing i am in a room, in a bed, going to sleep, physically immersed in the spatial & sensory differences.  my dreams are then almost inevitably set inside the house, it all makes sense.  but i'm a person who cannot always determine what is real & what is not, easy to lure into a different reality & ready to live there interminably.  i wake concerned i'll be spending all day cleaning the stovetop or moving my own bed back into my house.

it's maybe a little different when you're sleeping in someone's bed with them.  you feel protected from the strangeness of the room, or understand it better.  though sometimes it's amplified.  the last person i dated was a restless sleeper and her whole bedroom seemed to absorb this energy, radiating it back into whomever inhabited the bed.  certain things, too--the bay of windows that sometimes meant we awoke naked and in perfect view of a woman in the garden, or the fact that there was a large loom in the dining room which i would bang into every time i went to the bathroom--kept me very alert of my surroundings, in spite of spending so many nights there.

islands in the stream

this song is the karaoke version of itself but still does some thing to me that i can't ex plain. dolly's vocals are surprisingly light yet precise & kenny responds accordingly, holding back just enough to let dolly soar--a gentleman holding the door open.  the love feels true.

is this hold music? it's very margaritaville here where we've decided codependency isn't hot. we're not one island, we're islands--we each get half of the basement for our knick-knacks. the song is set in c major which is really the basic bitch of scales. no sharps, no flats. as uneventful and boring as a relationship with proper boundaries and good communication. it's the same chord progression as son of a preacher man or r-e-s-p-e-c-t which really shows you where this song could have gone. instead it's a polished diamond waiting to be strangled to death by the tongs of a wedding ring.

the only thing i've ever set out to get with a fine tooth comb was lice, but it's true, tender love is blind. more than professing love, this song seems hellbent on making the lonely feel utterly useless. "everything is nothing if you've got no one," sing the duo, sniping single beachgoers from their lifeguard chairs. if your love doesn't smolder like a skidoo in the sunset, dolly & kenny don't have time for you.

(this is the part in this blog post where i acknowledge how many times people have walked in on me with the lyrics to islands in the stream open. folks it is alarming. i must conclude this blog post soon...)

what is it about beach country? one youtube user comments "Okay, I changed my mind. Country music does not suck." another comments that she is 9 years old and will be singing it to her brother tomorrow for his birthday. it's a universal feel good song--"we ride it together" which might be figurative or might be filthy. we don't even mind that these islands are merely in A STREAM. still, it's undoubtedly a beach country classic--toes in the water, ass in the sand. kenny chesney fans unite under the banner of "no shoes nation" & in doing so, give themselves up to this same cult of eternal, unending shore. on the beach, we are free. all of the dreary country music cliches could be alive and well (lord knows I've cried on vacation) but somehow they really seem to dissipate. all you're left with are even-keeled professions of happiness & a beverage held inside a coconut.

the bottom line is this song is both perfect & disgusting, just like couples holding hands in public or men carrying pictures of their wives in their wallets. this song was made for first dances at weddings and dentist office waiting rooms yet for some reason i still want to huff it like it's the only thing that's gonna get me through science class.

it's too late (tapestry #3)

am i bloggin my way through tapestry?  HELL YES I AM.  things will get grim, though.  we are talking about a future that includes, "Smackwater Jack"...

it's too late!!!  this song is all subtext. a victory jog, foot tapping on the grave of what used to be--triumph slowed by confusion but triumph nevertheless. the lyrics provide the definitive statement that the music cannot--it's over & there's no goin back. you can tell me this song is sad a million times but i will never believe you! it's confused, sure, but even the minor key dabbles in the major. it's got a muted joy that feels both totally irrational yet inevitably perfect. when your feelings have departed, realizing that things are over is more of an accomplishment than a defeat. you're finally able to admit what you've been spending your every waking moment denying.

anyway here's the deal--the piano line is over it, luring us into the mess of the song with a drunken confidence. it saunters about the room before jumping on some kind of wobbly throne. those chimes that kick in with the chorus are like a breathmint for the soul. tabula rasa, bitch!!! carole's spent the morning in bed because she's been trying to keep that piano from cheekily announcing that her life will go on--it's almost like those hands have a mind of their own. but it's true what carole king's possessed ass hands announce, it's never too late to throw your boring man to the CURB.

i've been trying to avoid saying this but this album legitimately sounds like it was mixed in hell. the guitar line hits like audio blaring from a pop-up ad; it's a real oil & water scenario. i can never quite figure out why so much guitar was added when we've got carole playing the piano like she's in the finals for the worlds sauciest talent competition. you heard that intro--we have what we need!!! it's a gripe with the whole album--all of the stuff piled on top by some perennially & transparently high producer. a casserole king. we don't even get to appreciate the saxophone! anyway, there's a small orchestra in carole king's bedroom, helping her through this realization.

she feels like a fool not for having loved & lost but for having denied herself this kind of freedom for so long. these instrumental interludes feel like those inevitable pauses in difficult conversations. you ever had a sax line capture your romantic malaise??? the dream. next time i get in a fight with my girlfriend, i'm phoning the nearest saxophonist to play my truth. anyway, this song has it all--saxophone, guitar, a fuckin conga. god bless whoever brought that conga to the studio. for us, it is never too late, conga player. please call me!!! 

so far away (tapestry #2)

so much of what's good about tapestry is that it's an album populated only by people.  people as feelings, jobs, homes, ideas. all powerful & sometimes all-consuming. the piano line that runs through "so far away" seems to tell a story--it comes close then is pulled back to the beginning. a loop of almost getting what you want.  it's a little ache-y but we get used to it.  that's life.

this is a breakup song but it's not awful like "yesterday"--it doesn't think time is an answer or feel bad for itself.  the way we move in & out of each other's lives, we're all a little responsible for what doesn't work.  there's this line "doesn't help to know you're just time away"--something about how distance is really just the time we won't or can't give.

it's another song that starts with the chorus.  sometimes it seems like a chorus is the lie we tell ourselves--the narrative we create; the verses & bridge hold what's true, discreetly hidden somewhere less intoxicating.  the drums kick in & we finally get a little more insight with the softly aggressive--"one more song about moving along the highway / can't say much of anything that's new." coming off of "i feel the earth move" we are a bit skeptical of the mature detachment present in the rest of the song--the ho-hum melody & beautiful resignation to the vocals.  we don't trust this woman to be somebody who just lets things go.  the frustration of being away from a lover is funneled through the dissatisfaction with not being able to create an original song--of the reason for distance (to be a perennially road-weary musician?) not having any kind of reward.  or at least that's my two-cents.  i'm still a little shaken up from the earthquake 2 min ago.

what does it mean that the roads might come to own you?  you're addicted to the chase?  you can't stop for what's good?  letting yourself follow the ebb & flow of life too long will run you down?  aren't the roads already in control--the only paths we have to one another whether they're the few feet between us or long enough to get tangled in.  i like that this song doesn't have to be about romance, in its open-ended & deftly melancholic form.  so many of our relationships seem to have this same capacity to slow us in their absence.

it used to be the case that absence made the heart grow fonder but now absence seems kind of impossible.  & anyway, none of us have enough experience with it to know how to use it for good.  i wonder if we burn through relationships a lot quicker in the present, letting resentments fester in our infinite connectedness.  or maybe this fixes as many problems as it would have caused.  if only i could stick carole king in the hot seat.  she seems to have so many answers.

be prepared for the flute solo at the end of this track--a woodwind hug to make up for the loss of your lover and offer comfort as you float back off onto the lonely roads ahead.

p.s. i'm not done talking about this song.  i simply must mention the weird choir of caroles that happens around "traveling around sure gets me down & lonely."  a representation of the delirium of being whisked from one place to another?  & to be lonely, too, stuck in the company of yourself.  i'm not sure fully what i think of this addition but it does momentarily remove you from the flow of the song.  a weird mixing choice but there's no going back.

tell me lies tell me big little lies

in spite of my greatest attempts at tearing down myself and the people around me, my life has never been like a soap opera. this is, possibly, the grand allure of HBO smash hit limited tv series BIG LITTLE LIES. the moms of monterey, ca (though with kids always conveniently off-screen and jobs that are on hiatus or part-time as in at an aquarium for 45 minutes a week) always seem to have each foot expertly planted in a different bad situation and all of these big...little...LIES about whether they're ok or how they can afford living in a beach bungalow on an underemployed accountant's salary JUST KEEP ADDING UP.

it's hard to share your truth in a town where almost everyone is a hot actress i had a confusing crush on in middle school, but things aren't as peachy as the power suits and pastel peacoats would lead us to believe. everyone carries their own secret trauma and all this experience concealing their pasts & presents has convinced our protagonists that one more lie won't do much. that's, of course, the kind of wishful thinking that helps someone with deep trauma limp along. one day this big little lie is going to catch up with us, warns Madeleine, mostly talking about an actual murder, though her recent tryst with the theater director has taught her about beefy tiny fibs, too.

BLL is an instagram-filtered romp through lives that we'll never have and mostly don't want. where you wear a $10k suit to your custody hearing or drive a $200k car off the road in an ambien fueled fugue state. we've seen at least a handful of these situations play out with less glamour in our ordinary lives, devoid of the HBO-sheen that seems desperate even to make the show's most horrific moments a bit sexy. while season one carries the premise of "escape," season two works through the hazards of "concealment." one can't escape in place & the resulting drama leaves our ladies lying in a mess exponentially fed by even the most benign efforts towards cleaning-up and repairing the past.

each episode of BLL starts with crashing waves and a song which asks of a viewer who has likely just settled onto her couch with a glass of wine the size of her migraine, "did you ever want it? / want it bad?" the answer is--as with every HBO show--no, not really. this is followed--if one chooses not to frantically hunt for the remote--by a very sensual overview of what's to come--well dressed ladies, saltine cracker husbands, unaware frolicking children, Chekhov's gun (never to be fired literally but metaphorically going off like a semi-automatic). the most reoccurring scene in the show is a tracking shot of someone driving over the same bridge between what seemed to be their own BIG LITTLE LIES and the rest of the world.

i hate that i am the target audience for this show but it's true & here i am front and center. i might even call myself a devoted fan. i love when women do just about anything. my dream tv would be a talk show where a bunch of mild mannered ladies talk about what they got in the mail that day. the truth is, even though i will complain to anyone that this season was chaotically boring--one bad last episode spread out over seven hours--i was still riveted. i loved the school drama, petty fighting between husbands, watching renata klein arrive in her husband's train lair like a vulture in the desert.  even though watchers had already seen some of the Monterey Five at their lowest, the allure of this season--seeing the characters truly unravel--was perhaps some kind of perverse vindication. the rest of the world looks on from its rummage sale living room and target comfort wear but tv's about voyeurism, baby. windows not mirrors. we don't want to see the violence & drama but we do want to know that it can happen to anyone--regardless of beachfront mansions or how many close friends they have.

i don't know if i have anything tremendously unique to say about BLL. i still think about that scene with Mary-Louise a lot, where she puts the cross to her lips. it's hot sacrilege. her primal scream, too. the death of a tyrant unleashes the wrath of the demon who spawned him. but here's what we learn--trauma begets trauma. we are creatures of our own upbringings--even Mary-Louise's vampyric psychobully ass. Bonnie's pointless storyline allows us to mash together a parallel. two abused children, one of whom learns to break the cycle but never fully reconciles the parts of her that have come from her mother. another who allows that part of him to take control of his life. Bonnie's still convinced violence lurks within, but we can't trust Bonnie's interior monologue, the show says, giving us heavy-handed avant-garde imagery & fractured "what if's" anytime she appears. the gift the other women give to Bonnie is the clarity she denied herself--if she didn't push Perry, someone else would have. the women were all guilty all along, not just for lying, but for wanting the death. how's that for a BLL? the women all walk together into the police station. as we've just learned from all the courtroom drama, guilt & innocence aren't always clear-cut.

Madeline gets more Madeline, while Celeste is both fucking one thousand dudes off-screen (s/o to Mary-Louise's selfless tho sometimes terrifying childcare) and able to deliver a cross-ex that can't even be countered by the state of California's best child services attorney. she contains multitudes. there's something about Nicole Kidman's frail onscreen presence that always makes her feel like a background character even when she's giving an EMMY AWARD WINNING performance. ethereal but on the brink of being blown away by a fan. a few tender moments between Madeline and Celeste remind us that even annoying people like Madeline can use their obnoxious & meddling behaviors for good. she wishes she would have known--could have stopped this all from happening. we don't we LOVE THIS TV SHOW!!!

the showstopper of season 2 has of course been Laura Dern's PERFECT Renata Klein who went from season one terror mom to season two alpha bitch husband destroyer. Renata's stable home life that allowed her to be such a go-getter in the first season is ripped away though it only seems to give her MORE STRENGTH. compared to our other protagonists, she only loosely leans on the other Monterey moms, she seems to thrive off pure rage. perhaps the greatest failure of season two was not enough onscreen sparring between Renata and Mary-Louise, two women who truly operate from the most heinous depths of the soul.  somewhere there's a season 3 of BLL where we see Renata take up a new career as a hired assassin to get back her money. or maybe a season 3 where she eviscerates her husband like it's Midsommar. i'd really watch a reality show where laura dern is hired by angry wives to destroy their husbands' toy collections.

i don't know if one can truly make much out of this world full of eyes bleary with sunsets and bodies sculpted by weekday surfing hobbies. i apparently don't even have anything to say about Jane, whose fourteen year old narc boyfriend and aquarium job had my blood pressure rising every time they came onscreen. everyone learns their lesson & things mostly work out as they need to. we get the sweet ending, cut off before the realities of the judicial system can steamroll any happy life that we fantasize these characters might get to lead. maybe now is the time for all of us to let our big little lies free.

i feel the earth move (tapestry #1)

i want carole king to play me like a piano. i was somewhere last night where they were raffling off a massage not from a company or anything just from some guy named michael. anyway that's what i want--a massage from some sweatpants-clad carole no-last-name. i love this song because it's like yeah you feel the earth move you're about to break your fucking hands playing the piano. downstairs neighbors banging on the ceiling with a broomstick, shit falling off the walls. of course the earth's moving.

it's a song about getting the earth-shattering hots for someone which is kinda sexy and kinda scary, one of life's greatest combos. a rigorous mating stomp that lapses into gooier and more stomachable fare before returning to the iconic fuck me chug that reeled you in in the first place. i love a song that starts with the chorus--why not? if it's the best part of the song, it's the best part of the song. towards the end there's that guitar line that almost doesn't matter. it makes the piano even better. it has something to talk over.

that fuck me chug, though. it's a cartoon character's tongue splayed across the room when somebody hot walks by. i can't believe we're all just stomping around in this erotic parade then rolling around in a bed of flowers then back out in the streets I FEEL THE EARTH MOVE. a terrifying "oh darling / I CANT STAND IT / when you look at me that way." you almost don't even hear that last bit. She Can't Stand It. we're outside with a boombox and if that doesn't work, we're going to scale the building until we can suck on the glass of your bedroom window. i don't even know the guy and now im air humping around the living room.

my mom loved carole king--a live CD called the living room tour came out when I was in sixth grade and joined her regular boombox rotation. carole came on when she was sweeping, dusting, doing laundry. these songs felt then like the fear that i might be asked to wash dishes or vacuum. i can remember hiding in my room fearing the opening applause of the intro track in spite of this being so much better than hearing kd lang's ingenue for the 400,000th time. when carole plays "i feel the earth move" live, she riffs a little on the opening melody, making us want it even more. she demands everybody clap and sing. what is the deal with this song? i didn't need to be told to clap and sing. i'm already in the streets, tipping over cars, ripping my clothes off, busting out my vacuum. making the earth move.