Monthly Archives: February 2022

Courtesy: Olivia Parks

From the six-year-old in a fabric Speedo cap with goggles too big for her face and the woman she became we bid you goodnight, swimming. You watched my first belly-flop dive transform into the final stroke of my career. Now, after fifteen years, cheers to alarms set before dawn for hesitant leaps into frigid pools. Obsessing over the clock, down to the very hundredth of a second. Moments of helplessly laying on deck, staring up at the sky with legs dangling over the pools edge in a desperate attempt to gasp for air. The crawl to class from exhaustion and seemingly permanent soreness. The stench of chlorine seeping through pores to the chagrin of fellow classmates. Perpetually raccooned eyes from goggle burn. And, the ever-so classic rejection of plans: Sorry I cant, I have practice.

Helplessly in love with you from the age of six, you are the life I chose. Dedicating not only my body to you, but my heart and soul. Hours, days, and years devoted to staring at that incessant black line. Asserting my entire existence into training with a hypoxic gaze. Nevertheless, nothing about you is simple. Among the many wins, I have had my fair share of losses. The highly anticipated last lap, hitting the wall, then checking the scoreboard . . . only to be flooded by utter devastation. All I can say to this is: there has never been and will never be a boy who can break my heart like you. There have been months in which you were my greatest enemy. Still, in a chlorine trance, I came back.

In spending my youth perpetually chasing down endless lane-lines, I proudly look back with no regrets. For fifteen years, I have relied on you for structure, confidence, and friendships. Before and after school, with absolute consistency, there you were: waiting for me. Of everything youve done for me, you introduced me to my teammates and coaches: the people I love. Because of you, I have been fortunate enough to work with Coach Marko Djordjevic, Coach David Marsh, Coach Joey Gracia, and Coach Kirk Kumbier who have made monumental impacts on my life on and off the deck. Most of all, you led me to Coach Abi Liu and her partner KR Liu. No words can describe the influence these two women have had on me. All I can do is strive to live by their example every day. These are the people who made every grueling set, post-race heartache, and the all-encompassing hardships of life worthwhile. For that, I am forever grateful.

However, in the last three years, the dream of completing my career of you became more like a memory. Dealing with the following matters since high school, you were still by my side. Despite a panic attack disorder, severe depression and anxiety, the trials and tribulations of psychiatric medications, and an eating disorder that landed me in an outpatient program, I clung to you for dear life.

In the wee morning hours before UCSD left for the 2019 Division II NCAA Championship, I laid helpless in an Urgent Care bed at 3 a.m. Amidst one of the best seasons of my career, there I was: hyperventilating and trembling from a vicious panic attack. Unfortunately, this wouldnt the only time I end up here. Come 5 a.m., a few hours prior to our flight to Indiana, I was discharged. Some may think the pressure of you induced this episode; but its impossible to blame the genetic inevitable. Completely exhausted and drained, I got on that plane by 8 a.m., motivated by the desire to compete for the team I love. Two days later, I stood alongside three other teammates on the second place podium for the 200 Medley relay; I became an All-American athlete that day. As I received my trophy, the same question Ive asked for years looped through my mind: What is wrong with me?

The priority of you got me up in the morning, forcing me to seek treatment and hold myself accountable. Regardless, uncontrolled galactic highs and profound lows persistently cycled without definitive reason. What is wrong with me? continued to play on repeat. Just five months shy of the final victory lap of my career, we sat side-by-side in silence, listening and processing my clinical diagnosis of bipolar disorder. The dream of you began to slip away faster than ever. Feeling isolated and ashamed, the unconditional love of family, coaches, and teammates overpowered those initial thoughts. To everyone reading this, its okay to not be to okay. Being an athlete, in any sport, is so difficult even without lifes afflictions or curveballs. That being said, embrace asking for help and please, hold yourself as the priority. Jordan Phillips team captain, my roomie of four years, and ultimate best friend gifted me my dearest memory of you after my last practice. Still in the pool, Jordan told my weepy self to follow her. Confused as ever, I obliged and stared at her as she settled underwater in a corner of Triton Pool. Then, she pointed out beyond my gaze. When I turned around, there it was, simple, symmetrical, and stunning: an empty 25 yard by 50-meter pool. We sat there on the bottom, silently admiring how this concrete hole has given us a world of possibilities. By the hand of circumstances we would have never fathomed nor predicated, this unexpected version of my finish line was met at UCSDs Senior Day. After everything, I decided not to compete. Instead, I celebrated our decade and a half of memories together. If anything, this is my final race; the embodiment of all of the chlorine burn, sweat, and tears leading up to this moment. Even after my tan-lines fade, the athlete mindset youve ingrained in me has changed my narrative: this disorder isnt a hindrance, just another challenge to overcome.

Despite the titles, school records, and awards that accumulated in my athletic portfolio over the years, none of them compare to the opportunity Coach David Marsh and Coach Joey Gracia granted me: the ability to give back to you. Coaching the kids of Coronado Swim Team Elite has completely reshaped not only how I see you, but myself. Being around younger athletes as one who has just finished her career spins a fresh outlook on what it means to be a young person in a sport like you. Resonating with their excitement, joys, and silliness is reminiscent of how I was at that age: the possibilities unlimited and the need for speed boundless. Without you, I would have never met them: my little heroes. Therefore, I am most thankful, rather unmeasurably grateful, for this aspect of you.

I say good night, because Ill see you in the morning. I wont be putting on a cap and goggles tomorrow but the qualities you have forged will follow me for life. Such as a permanent internal clock doomed to consider 7:00 a.m. as sleeping-in on a Sunday morning. The certainty to give 110% to expectations or tasks in any future career. Understanding how to allocate time wisely. How else would balancing coaching, being a full-time scholar-athlete at UCSD, and somewhat of a social life be possible? Although at times met with absolute disdain, appreciating a body that has allowed me to achieve goals I once considered impossible. Looking back at everything I have done and been through; then confidently looking forward to everything I will do.

With that, goodnight from my six-year-old self in the fabric Speedo cap and goggles too big for my face and the woman I am now. After everything weve been through, I owe it all to you.

Thank you; I love you.

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"Goodnight, Swimming": A Retirement Letter To The Sport - SwimSwam

As the drummer beats his rhythmthe heels of his palms resounding against stretched animal hideI move. I am moved. Arms reach and retract, spine twists and tilts, legs stretch and sweep across the vast, golden wood floor.

This being an improv dance class, my body is mine to do with whatever I wish. I quiet my over-anxious brain and allow the music to guide my body in carving out a path through space. Coming from the restrictive, highly choreographed world of ballet, improv feels as freeing as skipping naked, newly feral, through a lush, flower-soaked field. I move. I am moved. Overtaken. Once the music ends, I emerge from a trance to find I have no idea how I got to where I am in the room or what movements got me here.

History and culture offer a treasure trove of attempts to interpret dances unique power over our bodies and minds.

The films The Red Shoes and Black Swan feature leads who are driven to demise by seeking perfection in the art of ballet. Their obsession with dance consumes them, and in forsaking all other aspects of life, they destroy themselves. At the end of The Red Shoes, our female protagonist jumps in front of a train, showing us that to dance is to forget the world, to be swallowed whole.

In some films the desire to dance itself is toxic, Adrienne L. McLean writes in Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, the Body, and Narrative Cinema. [M]erely associating with the world of ballet can prove fatal. As for the protagonist of The Red Shoes, McLean notes, Vicky is doomed merely because she is a ballerina.

Black Swan grows the roots of this artistic annihilation theme even deeper. Near the beginning of the film, the prima ballerina whos being forced into an early retirement walks into traffic, a not-so-subtle message that without your art, there is nothing. Throughout the film, our main character is haunted by increasingly intense hallucinations involving her rival/understudy, a talented up-and-coming dancer who happens to bear a passing resemblance to her. This dual perceived competition, with another and within herself, leads her to seek a level of artistic perfection that ultimately can only end in self-destruction. Dance as self-absorption that bloats beyond the bounds of sense and reason.

Since a dancers body is at once brush, paint, canvas, and artist, self-involvement is practically a prerequisite. To be obsessed with dance is to be obsessed with yourself. While the prospect of artistic perfection is intoxicating, its pursuit can paradoxically spell loss of creative freedom. When dance is more than a hobby, the ecstatic freedom begins to be eaten up by the intense restriction of aesthetics: technique, musicality. Whats more, professional dances all-consuming nature demands physical, social, and psychological sacrifices. So is it the seeking of perfection, the self-absorption, or the dance itself that invokes madness?

Of course the mad artist trope isnt confined to dancers. Musicians, visual artists, writers, actors: no artist is safe from the titillating perceived connection between madness and creative genius. Think films like The Soloist, about a schizophrenic cello prodigy, Birdman, the tale of an aging actor on the precipice of insanity, and of course Wes Andersons new work The French Dispatch, which includes an abstract painter who loses his mind in pursuit of artistic perfection.

The idea of the mad artist is so compelling, psychologist Dr. Sybil Barten said at a symposium on the subject. Both madness and creativity are rooted in the unconscious.

Some scholars argue that creatives were historically seen as mad because regular people needed a way to explain their genius and their odd behavior. In the Victorian era, being mad simply meant deviating from the norm. Creativity requires risk-taking, spontaneity, non-conformance. These behaviors surely signified madness.

I have been lost in the throes of artistic creation as both a writer and a dancer; the former feels absorbing, while the latter is transformative, nearly spiritual. As a full-body endeavor, I cant help but feel dance is the most intensely overwhelming and consuming of all the arts. A 2005 study found that dancers reported much higher levels of absorption than other athletes. The researchers explained that absorption is correlated with spirituality and altered states of consciousness.

Of course, most of the time dancing is coded as a feminine pursuit, especially when it comes to cultural depictions of ballet and modern dance. That means hiding underneath the more obvious morals of these stories, I see the insidious reinforcement of our cultural belief that for women, to indulge in art is to forget their proper place in the world. To devote yourself to perfecting your artform is to reject your role as societys caregiver: a cardinal sin that cant be left unpunished.

As we learn from the original fairy tale of The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen, dance is also a power that can be used against you. The story is actually about a young girl whose shoes get cursed because of her vanity, and she is forced to dance for the rest of her life. When the girl should have been tending to her dying adoptive mother, she went out to a fancy ball instead, so she is doomed to eternal dance: Dance you shall, the man who curses her screams. Dance in your red shoes till you are pale and cold, till your skin shrivels up and you are a skeleton! Dance you shall, from door to door, and where proud and wicked children live you shall knock, so that they may hear you and fear you! Dance you shall, dance!This is dance as torture, brought on by the sin of selfishness.

In the horror film Suspiria, the dancer is not the victimshe is the one in control. Dance is a way to channel supernatural forces for malevolent purposesto torture or maim others. The story revolves around a mysterious modern dance company thats also secretly a coven.

In one of the most terrifying scenes in the 2018 remake of the 1977 film, we watch as the new company member dances her predecessor to deaths door without ever touching her. Their bodies are connected by the dance, so as one woman twirls and whips and contracts, in a different room, we see the other being flung around like a rag doll, her body grotesquely contorting, bones snapping, until she is left a simpering pile of sinew. The satanic series of movements has been employed to transfer the lifeforce of the older dancer into the new one. One persons ecstatic creative freedom is anothers pain and suffering. The separation of the two women reminds us that sometimes this harm is invisible to us.

But the power of dance can also be wielded for good. The bizarre, disturbing cult favorite Netflix show The OA, also uses a specific series of movements to channel supernatural forces. This time, the choreographys goal is the opposite of that in Suspiria: it seeks to reverse death. In this case, five movements done by five people in unison, repeatedly, can slowly return life to the recently departed. These movements can also open portals to other dimensions, revealing dance as more powerful than death, and capable of opening up infinite new worlds and possibilities. As a society that exalts words above all else, its easy to overlook the fact that movement can convey meaning far beyond the bounds of any vocabulary.

These scenes recall ancient rain dances, fertility dances; dance as prayer. An order of Sufi Muslims spin themselves into a frenzydervishes whirling until they lose all sense of their bodies in space and timeas a form of meditation, a search for the divine. Dance as a way to tap into a higher power.

Perhaps dance is a supernatural dabbling that shouldnt be taken lightly. Perhaps it is its own peculiar sort of madness. Or maybe its just brain chemistry. Dances transformative power might simply be the state of artistic flow, a state not everyone finds comfortable to inhabit. In a flow state, your brain dampens its executive function network and allows the default mode network to take over. (Brains of creative geniuses actually show increased activity in both networks simultaneously.) Letting your default mode network drive for a change can feel discombobulating at first. But thats precisely the point.

Writers rave about the creatively generative power of walking, about how the movement of the body jolts the brains machinations. Just imagine the rush, then, of the movement itself being both generator and outcome.

While writing, I still experience the flow state, but it is not nearly as immersive as my dancing flow. One difference is that the production and consumption of writing is separated by time, the creator separated from the consumer. Dancers encounter their audience live and in person, creating an unreplicatable kinetic electricity. You can practice all you want beforehand, but once the music starts, there are no more chances for editing.

Words are too literal, too specific. Dances meanings are mushy, subjective. Subjectivity can also be scary, disquieting even, but it can also be freeing. Movement succeeds where words fail.

Writing is creating something to send out into the world; dancing is creating yourself.

I struggled for a long time with how selfish dancing felt. You spend hours a day staring at your reflection in the mirror. I lost myself in dance. In wanting so badly to succeed, I prized perfection over my health: ignoring inflamed tendons, pounding laxatives, breaking bones, losing toenails. Now, freed from the pressures of professional success, dancing feels like freedom again. Therein lies the important distinction. To lose myself in pursuit of balletic perfection was indeed, for me, a self-destruction. A madness. Losing myself in the creative flow of dance is self-liberating.

For me, dance is meditation, escape, therapy. It requires nothing less than living exclusively in the moment. To dance is to be swallowed by the now, to live in the perpetual present. To dance is to lose yourself in a fugue outside of time, just beyond words, cushioned from concern.

See the rest here:

The Creation of Yourself: On the Flow and Fugue of Dance - Literary Hub

In a bid to make up for their cancelled Timeland festival in December, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have announced a one-off show for punters in Melbourne dubbed Return Of The Curse Of Timeland.

The outdoor gig will take place March 5 at Burnleys Reunion Park, with the band themselves set to perform a three-hour marathon set. Though its less than King Gizzard had planned to deliver at Timeland the band were booked in to play for six hours over four sets its twice as long as they typically play.

Joining the band are a trio of acts that due to appear at Timeland Stonefield, Ajak Kwai and Nice Biscuit as well as Babe Rainbow, Bones & Jones & Folk Bitch Trio and DJ Sophie McAlister.

Itll be King Gizzards only Australian show until at least November, with a sprawling run of tour dates in North and South America, Europe and the UK (including their appearance at this years Coachella) taking up the bulk of their 2022. Tickets for the show will go on sale at 10am tomorrow (February 18).

The show comes off the back of King Gizzards first remix album, Butterfly 3001, which was released independently last month. As its title implies, the new record is comprised of new takes on tracks from King Gizzards 18th album, Butterfly 3000, which they released last June.

In a three-star review of the original release, NMEs Becky Rogers said: It may be set apart from the rest of the Gizzverse repertoire, but Butterfly 3000 sounds familiar nonetheless.

Given that theyre self-confessed music-geeks, its no surprise that King Gizzard have considered every element right down to the mid-phrase time changes (Blue Morpho) and dub-trance experimentation (2.02 Killer Year).

But this formulaic approach lacks surprise once youre a few tracks in, youve heard it all. It might not be a total hot Gizz summer, but at least weve got a few extra bangers to bask in.

King Gizzard are due to release their 19th album, Made In Timeland, sometime in 2022. It was initially supposed to be given out for free at its namesake festival, though the cancellation led to those plans being scrapped.

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King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard will perform a three-hour marathon set in Melbourne next month - NME.com

By Delaney Clifford

February 16, 2022

Anas Mitchells name echoes through a variety of mediums. An accomplished songwriter, folk musician, and playwright, her catalog of work has been the subject of glowing critical acclaim and a host of prestigious awards. Her most renowned achievement has been the success of Hadestown, a stage musical Mitchell adapted from a folk opera to an album, then into a Broadway production in the span of thirteen years. She did this all while developing and releasing new albums on her own and with the folk supergroup, Bonny Light Horseman.

Since Hadestown premiered at New Yorks Walter Kerr Theater in 2019, Mitchell has had time to return to songwriting. Shes used her time away from the stage to compose her own kind of epic, Anas Mitchell, an eponymous collection of songs exploring memories of her upbringing, personal inspirations, and manifestations of her goals.

This latest solo work from Mitchell stands in stark contrast with the stage music that has ruled her creative space for the better part of a decade. While the style of songwriting the new album utilizes is far from unfamiliar to the acclaimed folk musician, it wasnt without its challenges.

There was a big learning curve in terms of the kind of songs that are required for a piece of drama versus a piece of music. Essentially, [theater] songs need to work hard on the part of the story and the character development, you need to arrive someplace at the end of a song that is different from where you began, she said. A song for music can be more circular, if that makes sense. I think the kind of mesmerizing Lets trance out for three and half minutes of music and poetry is incredible and its what I love about songwriting and the music world, but its not enough for dramatic songwriting.

Given how different the style and subject of songs from Anas Mitchell are from Hadestown, its clear that separating herself from her beloved stage wasnt the only factor that led Mitchell to her new record. After Covid brought Broadway and the entertainment industry at large to a standstill, Mitchell took a state-wide step away from stage and the city. With a baby on the way, she and her family relocated to her home state of Vermont, taking up residence in the memory-steeped former home of her grandparents. This extraordinary shift allowed Mitchell to explore a powerful connection to her past, a theme that presides over most of the songs on her latest work.

However, Anas Mitchell isnt the only album that draws on Mitchells past. According to her, her youth in Vermont has served as consistent inspiration for all of her songwriting.

I grew up in a very wild and wooly kind of hippies in the middle of nowhere setting, she said. We didnt have a television, but we did have fields and woods to explore. There was a lot of making our own fun (for my brother and me). I think that fostered a certain kind of creativity in both of us. Also I think living in Vermont puts you really in touch with the natural world and especially the cycle of seasons. The winter is long, cold, and dark. The summer is brief and incredible. I know that imagery has come up again and again in my songs.

With the new record now completed, Mitchell has returned to touring for the first time since 2020. Mitchell will be pulling double-duty every night on this tour, performing her own songs in addition to a set with Bonny Light Horseman, the trio consisting of Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats and The Shins), and Josh Kaufman (The National and Hiss Golden Messenger).

Having accomplished so much already and with even more to look forward to in the short-term, its hard to tell where Mitchell will go from here. The future is vast and full of opportunity, but rather than stress over the possibilities, Mitchell is letting it come to her naturally.

Im having so much fun right now just writing songs and making records, she said. Im sort of waiting for the right story to cross my path. Im keeping an eye out.

Anas Mitchell and Bonny Light Horseman will be in Charlotte on February 24 at Knight Theater. Listen to Mitchells latest self-titled album released on January 28, 2022.

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Anas Mitchell is a multi-talented singer-songwriter and playwright - CLTure

Mitski. (Photo by Ebru Yildiz)

Three years ago, during the summer of 2o19, Mitski announced a hiatus. For the past five years, shed been touring nonstop. The 2016 breakout success of her fourth studio album, Puberty 2, had vaulted her from a well-loved indie artist to a crossover success story, then onward and upward into the firmament of pop stardom. Lorde tapped her as an opening act in her 2018 Melodrama tour; Iggy Pop name-checked her on his radio show; her subsequent album, 2018s Be the Cowboy, was a perennial favorite on year-end lists. She still didnt have a permanent mailing address and stored her things at her parents house, but no mattershe was, as NPR crowned her, the 21st centurys poet laureate of young adulthood, and her future, as Pitchfork declared, was limitless.

In a recent interview, Mitski recounted the time leading up to her hiatus as a period of detachment: Looking back, she said, she couldnt remember long stretches of the overlapping tours. Her hair was graying; her body was breaking down. I felt it was shaving away my soul, little by little, she told Rolling Stone. But even in moments of exhaustion, she was productive. Stuck in Kuala Lumpur during the holidays, depressed and lonely, she had written Nobody, the best-known track on Be the Cowboy, which in 2021 became TikTok famousand as a result, according to Billboard, multiplied her daily streaming numbers sevenfold during both the height of the pandemic and her retraction from the public eye.

Mitskis most ardent fans can be intense, too: They cry at shows, they call her mom, and they tattoo her lyrics onto their bodies. They say her music saved them. John Doe from the punk band X once turned to Phoebe Bridgers at a Mitski show in Los Angeles and commented, All these kids look like theyre at fucking church.

The unfortunate reality of being an artist beloved for granting unflinching access to your emotional underbelly is that, unless you want to do it in obscurity, you dont exist in a vacuumyour art is always steps away from misguided co-option and misinterpretation. As your star rises, access to your pain becomes a service, or a resource to be tapped. With fame, Mitski realized art was a bad jobone she wanted to quit. She was sick of selling her emotions and memories, little by little.

So by the summer of 2019, she made the announcement: She was leaving social media, and her September appearance at SummerStage in New York Citys Central Park would be her last live show indefinitely.

Its time to be a human again, she tweeted.

Laurel Hell, Mitskis newest album, is a putative reclamation of her agencyand it does come across as Be the Cowboys corrosive rebuttal. (Cheekily, one of the songs is titled Everyone, in which she sings, Everyone said, Dont go that way / So of course to that I said, I think Ill go that way.) While Be the Cowboy thrashes with manic electricity, each song either building to an explosion or crackling in breathless anticipation of one, Laurel Hell maintains a rueful distance, looking back with something like pity. You stay soft, get beaten, Mitski sings. Only natural to harden up.

Be the Cowboy pantomimed this kind of fatigue, playacting a hard-won world-weariness with the jaded characters of Me and My Husband, Blue Diner, and Two Slow Dancers. Laurel Hell gives us a Mitski who has caught a glimpse of this herself: Working for the Knife, the albums lodestar, is a haunting ballad of a working artist forced to shoulder the crushing churn of work and self-promotion. I always knew the world moves on / I just didnt know it wouldnt go without me, she sings. I start the day high and I end so low / Cause Im working for the knife. In the songs music video, Mitski doffs a cowboy hat and, dead-eyed, turns to an empty theater. She collapses to the floor, rises and dances with a manic smile to canned applause, throws herself down again, and beats her fists against the ground, the meaty pounding of her hands against the wood as she pummels it, drowning out the song. The video ends with a closeup of Mitskis forced grin. The stage lured her back and crushed her again.

I used to think Id be done by 20, she sings in Working for the Knife. Now at 29, the road ahead appears the same / Though maybe at 30 Ill see a way to change. The new songs may flash a weary attitude, the video may depict her flaying herself onstage, but there she is, as beforedemonstrating her pain to you, trapped under the spotlight.

Mitski, like some of her contemporariesLorde or Billie Eilish, for exampleis using her new songs to explore the particular fatigue that online fame has produced: Our narrator, ambivalent about dealing with the absurdities of being a popular artist in a crumbling world, cleanses herself of social media and, hopefully, the crushing, deluded expectations of success. Unlike other riffs on this arc, Mitskis version doesnt present us with the redemptive beatitude of the other side. Instead, she tells us tales from the crypt, the horror of being raised from the dead.

Laurel Hell, then, is about the singers acceptance that her pain and vulnerability are currency; their performance can be cashed in, but the expectation that she will expose them to others with searing, consuming honesty, on demand and without end, exacts a punishing toll. And I opened my arms wide to the dark / I said, Take it all, whatever you want, she sings in Everyone. I didnt know I was numb / I didnt know what it would take.

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Lyrically vivid as ever, Mitski tosses us images of lingering specters in the dark, wet teeth shining, eyes glimmering by a fire, as she sings on Valentine, Texas in a low, trance-like murmur over the groans of an organ. At its best, Laurel Hell seethes with these kinds of monstersones you see at the corner of your eye, all the more frightening for never fully showing themselves. I left the door open to the dark / I said, Come in, come in, whatever you are, she sings in Everyone. But it didnt want me yet.

Mitski is comfortable in horror; as a genre, its suited to the comic, sometimes caustic, always self-conscious spirit at the foundation of her best songs. Laurel Hells best moments embrace this dynamic. Open up your heart / Like the gates of hell, she sings on Stay Soft. In the music video, figures in Edo-period masksblond-haired, blue-eyedchase her out of a garden shes tending, then corner her and drag her into their lair. Stay soft, get eaten, she sings with a wink as the masked figures begin their torments. She slays them and feeds their blood to an Audrey IIlike flower, which wiggles with fiendish glee in her hand.

But if Laurel Hell is a ghost story, its only as good as the teller is at sustaining a mood. This is the case when the enemy is ambiguous, and therefore disconcerting, as in the brilliant music video for Stay Soft or the demonic thrashing that closes out the video for Working for the Knife. The image of a hand plucking Mitski from her life and dropping her into a labyrinth in Shouldve Been Me crests on a shimmer of synths and carries us with it, into the perplexing daydream that stole her day and deeper into an uncertain, troubling world.

But this isnt most of Laurel Hell. Only Heartbreaker, the catchiest and tightest song on the album, is also its dissonant chord: a moment of high-octane fun that dissolves as soon as it ends. I need you to love me more, Mitski tells us in the similarly hyperactive Love Me More. Love enough to clean me up. Tied up so neatly, the opportunity to feel an uneasy chill deflates into a resigned shrug; what could unsettle merely makes us pine. A limitation that Mitski could thrive on, if she leaned into it, is also a truism of the genre: The real horror is what you dont reveal.

Originally posted here:

Mitskis Ghost Stories - The Nation

Jos Alvalade, the man who established Sporting Clube de Portugal in the early 1900s, originally intended to study medicine, only to drop out of his Harvard degree because he couldnt stand the sight of blood. After spending two years as president of the club, he stormed out in a dispute with his fellow directors, tragically dying of Spanish flu at the age of 33. And perhaps the nicest thing one could say about Sportings performance against Manchester City on Tuesday night was that it was a more than fitting tribute to his legacy.

Squeamish, rancorous and over far too soon: Sportings big night out, their first Champions League knockout game since 2009, imploded in a bouquet of boos and a haze of basic incoherence. City did not just put the tie to bed: they embalmed it, sealed it in a lead coffin, wreathed it in chains and dropped it somewhere off the north Atlantic coast.

Long before half-time the home crowd was already being treated to chants of youve had your day out, now fuck off home from the little pocket of enraptured City fans in the bottom corner.

They did not, of course. They stayed and watched until the grisly end, even rising to salute their demolished team as the minutes ticked away. Who knows, after all, when this stadium will be able to witness a game of this magnitude again?

The manager, Rben Amorim, has done a fine job of resurrecting this fallen giant of Portuguese football and his reward will probably be an elite club job this summer or next. Their dashing midfielder Pedro Gonalves will get his move sooner or later. This, in a way, is the fate that awaits any club from a smaller league who dares to overachieve: growth, success, acclaim, dismemberment.

Just ask Ederson, Bernardo Silva, Rben Dias or Joo Cancelo: all once teenage products of the Benfica talent factory, now turning out for the highest bidder. Perhaps that added a little grizzle to the game, given Benficas history with their Lisbon rivals. And certainly Silva seemed to take a certain relish in scorching his former foes to the ground: two goals in the first half, another one disallowed, and the rest of the evening spent in a sort of sadistic trance in which the aim was to humiliate as many opponents as possible.

But Citys iron fist was wrapped in a velvet glove. The spectacular strikes by Silva and Raheem Sterling will dominate the highlight packages but perhaps the most impressive element on Citys part was their guile and tactility, the way they played with time as if it were dough in their hands. Witness the little pause and feint of the eyes from Phil Foden to commit the goalkeeper before dinking the ball home for Citys third: all this around four yards from goal. Or the delicate swivel of the ankle from Kevin De Bruyne in the buildup to Citys first goal, diverting the ball to Riyad Mahrez at the very last second.

Perhaps, for all the soft-focus coverage of Amorim and his championship-winning Sporting side before the game, we should have seen this trouncing coming. One had only to glance at the two teams lining up before kick-off. While City simply stood stock still, as if this could be any match in any stadium in any city against any opponent, Sporting could scarcely contain their awe. Gonalves breathed deeply to settle his nerves. Antonio Adns eyes darted all around the arena. This was new territory and these were new feelings. Amorims greatest quality is the intensity and fervour he manages to draw from this team. But amid a swirling and evangelical noise, it was cool heads that were most sorely lacking here.

Mahrez scored Citys first goal after eight minutes, while Sportings players were still appealing for offside. The second goal from Silva, a murderous half-volley off the crossbar, was a freak of nature from a freak of nature. The third goal somehow summed up Sportings night. Mahrezs cross was allowed to pass through three sets of legs Ricardo Esgaio, Matheus Reis, Sebastin Coates on its way through to Foden, a sort of bizarre penaltybox croquet. Citys fourth goal and Silvas second was deflected off the backside of Gonalo Igncio, which again felt entirely appropriate.

Four-nil up by half-time and yet still contractually required to play out the last 135 minutes of this tie, City naturally dialled themselves down a little in the second half. Sterling smashed in a fifth goal and Oleksandr Zinchenko briefly threatened a sixth and Joo Cancelo played much better after a mixed first half, but all the dramatic tension had long since leaked out of the room. It was the eighth time this season City had scored five goals or more.

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And curiously, this game told us very little we did not already know about them. This is the gift and the curse of the modern City: often we have no idea how they will fare in adversity because they so rarely encounter it. All we can really say with any certainty is that the road to St Petersburg in May will be paved with far sterner challenges than this.

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Ruthless Manchester City toy with Sporting to ruin home sides big night - The Guardian