brat summer pt.1
the summer part, plus june vibe inventory + an invitation!
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Solstice is kind of a scam, right? It’s a cruel joke that the first day of summer is also the longest. If anything was fair in this world, the longest day would fall in the middle of the season, right?
On June 21, Los Angeles had 14 hours and 26 minutes of sunlight. As I’m writing this on July 2, we’re down to 14:22. It seems fucked up that the season most associated with living your best life is in a constant state of dying.
But that tracks with the cruel trick that summer tends to play. Expectations peak in June, when the season hasn’t even begun. A ridiculous sense of possibility shows up when the winds change and the imaginary school bell rings.
Even when I’m not corny enough to make an actual bucket list, a ready-made one shows up in my head. Oh baby, I’m going to change this summer. I’m going to shop at the farmer’s market. I’m going to either (a) finally follow the Dodgers or (b) fall in love (these take the same amount of intellectual and emotional effort imo). Bug bites: nonexistent. Climate change: solved. AC: always working. I’ll see friends every night and go to the movies and, I don’t know, learn to roller skate? My outfits won’t be ruined by watermelon juice, and my thighs will never stick to the lawn chair. I will spend all my time outside and never look at a laptop screen. I will read 20 books and backpack the Sierras and watch the last 2 seasons of The Sopranos. Somehow, I will retain both my job and my health through all of this. It’s insane. I’m insane. Blame summer – or maybe blame its marketing team.
No season has been narrativized the way summer has been, and maybe for good reason. It’s the most hero’s-journey-slash-bildungsroman-slash-coming-of-age-movie-coded one of them all. It’s constantly connected with the teen years in popular imagination because it turns full-grown adults into adolescents, causing bodies to act in strange ways and allowing fantasies to take on a life of their own. It makes us daydreamy and wide-eyed in one moment, petulant and selfish in another. Everyone’s supposed to become something over the summer, and return to real life in September as a completely new person.
A couple weeks ago, I was talking with a friend about high school. Both of our experiences were good, one could even say ideal. We had solid friend groups, supportive teachers and parents, and extracurriculars that, in hindsight, took up way too much of our time. We made good grades, had sweet little teenage romances, and got into good colleges. All the boxes of an American high school experience were checked. Still, we remembered being disappointed by it. We’d been fed a steady diet of John Green novels and teen soap operas in the years leading up, and real life just couldn’t compete. High school was weird and intense, but it hardly ever felt cinematic the way we thought it should.
We agreed that the best version of high school actually happens on the bus ride home from 8th grade. In a similar vein, I think the best version of summer – that idealized version of it – is lived in early June, in the first afternoon that seems to last forever. That rush of aspirations should be savored; it’s kind of adorable that our lizard brains get so excited by neon-blue skies and ripe strawberries they convince us complete self-transformation is possible. Our capacity to dream and reimagine should not be disavowed or shamed. But aspirations can all too easily slip into expectations, and that’s when shit gets bad. There’s nothing lamer or more counterproductive than beating yourself up for feeling like you didn’t have enough fun.
So I’m trying to rein in my hyperactive fantasizing, or at least put it in its place. I’m reminding myself that summer is lived in the space between “should” and “is,” and that responsibilities, moods and bodily needs do not magically disappear in tank top season, that bugs bite, shorts chafe, and AC units break for no reason. None of these things ruin my summer experience – they just bring it down to earth, and make those rare, sparkling moments (and there are always a few) even more special.
🚨 editor’s note 🚨
I’m working on a bigger essay on Charli XCX that I’d promised myself would be out by July 1; clearly things didn’t go to plan there, but it’ll be done soon.
I hesitate to give a tl;dr on the piece because it’s…not done. Essentially, I’m fascinated by the conversations that Brat has spurred around adulthood, celebrity and the pop landscape. The fact that a record mostly focused on hedonism can be such an effective cipher for larger discussions is evidence of Charli’s genius, imo. Separately, I think there’s an awkwardness and unbridled sense of need at the heart of Charli’s star persona that I’m obsessed with and I think is under-discussed, and I think Brat represented an integration of those elements rather than an avoidance of them. I’ve loved reading other criticism on it, and I want to brush up on my interviewing/yapping skills, so I’m making a lo-fi little interview-based podcast series to follow up the essay and take us through Brat summer.
Here’s the thing: I need guests.
The pitch: Charli programmed a series of 6 movies at Roxy Cinema that screened after the release of Brat, saying that they all “in some way link to the world” of the album. I want to talk about them with truly anyone – Brat lovers, Brat haters, other writers, friends, anyone. So, if you want to share thoughts on Daisies (1966), Velvet Goldmine (1998), Project X (2012), Party Girl (1995), To Die For (1995) or Justice: A Cross the Universe (2008) in regard to the themes explored on Brat, drop me a line in this Google Form.
Hell, if you have another cultural object that feels very Brat and want to kiki about it on-mic for a nonexistent audience, hmu. The format will be pretty loose, and I can easily accommodate remote recording. Charli also apparently wanted to include Wild Child (2008), Human Traffic (1999), Modulations (1998), Basic Instinct (1992), Yannick (2023) and Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (1972). Maybe we’ll get to those if the vibe’s right. We’ll see.
I’ve been thinking about Celine Nguyen’s post on research as a leisure activity and realized I have a similar approach to criticism: there’s an inherent value to picking apart cultural products in order to better understand our world and ourselves, especially with others who are down to clown. I realized that many of my favorite shows – Nymphet Alumni, Stargirl, Jokermen, It Girl Theory, Popcast Deluxe, even Time Crisis – engage in this kind of joyfully unruly analysis, and life is too short *not* to make a dumb little podcast, imo. Anyway, lmk. Anyone’s welcome.
vibe inventory: june 2024
reading material
only finished one book this month, and that’s (grits teeth and squeezes lavender-scented stress ball) FINE. Midway through Mating by Norman Rush; The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire by Wayne Koestenbaum and Preliminary Materials for the Theory of the Young-Girl by Tiqqun. Schjeldahl and Butler have been put on ice for the time being but I trust they’ll come back when I need them.
I’m also supposed to start reading Anna Karenina (not linking to that bc I assume all my brilliant readers have read it already and are judging me for being so late to the party) with my dad this month. I made a Google Doc to track our thoughts. We’ll see how it goes.
My audiobook appetite has been nonexistent, so if you’ve listened to a real banger (I only tend to do nonfiction in audio), lmk.
The Biography of X, by Catherine Lacey
A ruthlessly stylized novel about a fictional performance artist named X, whose work revolved around taking on new identities and shape-shifting through personalities and mediums. It’s written in the voice of her widow, who is trying to figure out the actual identity under all the personas she fell in love with while managing her grief — all this amid the backdrop of an alternate-history version of the U.S. that split into a fascist theocracy after World War II. I think X should be placed in the lineage of Gatsby and Don Draper as a classically American figure of reinvention, and the ending genuinely made my jaw drop.
How A Homegrown Teen Gang Punctured the Image of an Upscale Community, by Rachel Monroe, The New Yorker
I’ll be so honest and tell you that I’m actually only halfway through reading this article but I ride for Rachel so hard that I’m recommending it anyway. No one depicts the fucked-up realities of the American West like her!!! The NYT Mag piece about the lady who can smell Parkinson’s thoroughly fucked me up this month, as did the Rolling Stone one about Snapchat drug dealers. Longform reporting isn’t dead and we need to support it!!
linking some favorite substack posts from this month too because I can:
Woke up in a cold sweat one morning with the phrase “you just need to tap into your Lynchian rizz” echoing through my head. gorgeous examination of the power of hardheaded belief in your own work and filtering criticism.
this one messed me up in a good way. I’m both an avowed VW fan and consistently carry icky feelings about That essay and the allegations within. Frankly, I still don’t know how to reconcile those feelings, and usually just avoid them. While my conclusions aren’t the same as Mackenzie’s, I really appreciate her bringing the discussion back to the fore. I don’t know if I’ll ever come to a clean conclusion on what to do with the art of monstrous men etc., especially when the monstrosity alleged is (wrongly) culturally normalized. I don’t know. I need to think about it more. Come to think of it, the original Cut essay is an interesting predecessor to Tavi’s Taylor Swift zine, but I don’t have time to unpack that. I’m literally just spouting words rn.
listening material: tunes
I finally succumbed to my fate as a woman in her late 20s by buying a record player. I take back every rude thing I’ve ever said about physical media nerds — I get it now, sort of. Though if I ever get into Blu-Ray collecting you all have full permission to come to my house and punch me.
I’m trying to put on a record at the end of every workday to kind of transition out of remote work video game mode and back into the tactile world, and I’m building out my collection slowly, placing equal emphasis on exploration and preserving old favorites. Behold my tiny, incoherent record collection:
Also had an insane run of live shows w Vampire Weekend at the Bowl, fred again.. at the Coliseum, and Charli at the Shrine all in one week; then drove to Vegas to see Dead & Co. at the Sphere the weekend after. The Sphere thing will take some unpacking — had a very ABBA Voyage vibe to it even though the band was present. I’m not complaining. I love SUMMER, I love SPECTACLE, I love LIVE MUSIC.
Really fun music month for me generally. My faves were kind of all over the place:
Brat, Charli XCX (obvs)
Something is Happening…, GUPPY
Sex EP, The Dare
Purple Mountains, Purple Mountains
Album, Girls
Reflection, Hannah Diamond
Roots, Everly Brothers
Separate Oceans, Ned Doheny
listening material: non-tunes
screen time
8 1/2 (1963, dir. Federico Fellini)
Hard To Be A God (2014, dir. Aleksei German)
Ren Faire (2024, dir. Lance Oppenheim)
Baby Reindeer (2024, dirs. Weronika Tofilska, Josephine Bornebusch)
weird dudes who should not be posting on Instagram Reels
truly my favorite form of entertainment right now. the uncles of America are POSTING!!
And that’s June bitch!!! My water-drinking goal did not go great but I’m (say this in a Matt Belloni voice) bullish on July; I want my Nalgene to fear me. I actually got enough sleep a few nights ago and truly felt like I could kill god so I’m trying to focus on that, which is hard amid the summer hyperactivity of it all. I’m excited about the Charli essay but trying not to overcomplicate it, which I’m not awesome at if you can’t tell already. But I’m getting better!
Tell me what you loved or hated this month if you’d like! And fill out my dumb Google Form! 💖
That New Yorker article was really wild, thanks for sharing.
Also, as a Dodgers fan, now is a pretty good time to start following. The team is a bit in influx but still good and Shohei Ohtani is a treat to watch.