It's personal

I put a list of songs into ChatGPT and asked it to order them for a smooth flow. I was wary of any of them standing out — is this one or that one too much of a “song,” instead of just part of the vibe? Will people feel interrupted when it comes on, like they need to readjust to its sound?

I’ve been DJing at Loveless twice a month, and it’s forcing me to interact with my music, specifically my vinyl, in a different way. To think about it through other people’s ears instead of just my own, and to think about how my collection works together, or doesn’t.

I sometimes feel like I need to defend myself when a music-lover friend I admire says I’m all about “vibe.” It sounds like an insult coming from him. The other day my date commented on how people dress in Bentonville vs. Austin, where she’d moved from. I said something about how it’s funny that I can dress differently depending on where I am; I want to be noticeable, but not stand out/be stared at. She said, kind of incredulously, “you don’t like to stand out?” Was that an insult, too?

Probably not. But it’s been making me think. What’s wrong with a “song” being a “song,” and taking someone out of the moment? Making them look up, listen to it? And what do I mean? Like, Fleetwood Mac wrote songs. Prince wrote songs. Beach House is creating a vibe. Sade is creating a vibe. Radiohead threads the line. It’s not always either/or; sometimes it is. You know what I mean...

I lean vibe, I’ll admit, though I love a great song. Some genres lend themselves more to vibes - jazz, reggae, shoegaze. Others to songs — classic rock, hip hop, pop. Vibe albums, vibe genres, long 45-minute threads that seldom make you have to recalibrate halfway through, or maybe for just one track (usually 7 or 9 or 11 is where artists start to get weird). My favorite track is usually number 9. The sad one. The dissonant one. The emotional ballad. I leave those out of my set.

ChatGPT said my set list was a “sonic journey,” intimate and personal moving into expansive and joyous. I’m trying to not hate ChatGPT, to find where it fits into my life in an authentic way; can’t fight technology, right? I didn’t end up going with the order it suggested — it sandwiched a Mulatu Astatke track between two Sade songs. It doesn’t not work, but it’s not quite right, either. The way I feel most times I ask AI for help. The flow was even worse when I used a DJ-specific site that sorts songs by beats-per-minute to ensure smooth transitions. Best to go with my gut than sort based on an algorithm; better to let my subjective interpretation of the correct order come through. I decided on it by walking around, listening to the playlist over and over, moving songs around based on feeling.

When I put a Spoon track on my set list, I was nervous. Was it too out of place? “Don’t You Evah” is squarely a song, part of an album of songs. It might be the only one. It’s also one of my favorite transitions. Here’s my set list, you decide. (“Johnny Get Angry” is also very much a song. I ended up not playing that one until the room cleared out.)

I’ve been feeling out of place at places I’ve created lately. The only one who read a certain character a certain way at my book club. The one oversharing at my supper club. The one who overshared at the party. The one who overshared at the staff meeting. Basically, the one who overshares.

I relate to this hard.

I’m standing out, exposed, and as much as I don’t want it to, sometimes it gets to me. We read Jen Beagin’s “Big Swiss” for our shop book club recently. I really loved that book; I thought it was funny and didn’t take itself too seriously but still explored deep, interesting questions around romance and intimacy and self-love. I related strongly to the characters in it, stumbling around and making their own mistakes (mistakes? maybe just making decisions and living with the consequences). While I wasn’t the only one who liked it, the overwhelming, vocal majority of the room hated it. The main character, Greta, is a 45-year old woman who starts an affair with a married woman. They lie. They are hypocritical. She violates her partner’s privacy. She makes some impulsive decisions that hurt people. They are not punished for it; it’s just a season in their lives. I though it was great, and really got at the complexity of connection, double standards, and all the things we repress, while just being fun and kind of delightfully weird. Two book club members called the protagonist “morally reprehensible,” lots of heads nodding in agreement. There was disgust in the voice of one participant when she spoke about Greta. She didn’t even learn anything! What a waste of time, waste of a story. As I listened, I could feel myself spiraling a little. With a shaky voice (was I going to cry?), I defended her. I felt embarrassed afterward.

Other times, at the bookstore, friends or customers I respect will have strong opinions about characters that feel in complete violation of my connection with them. “She played the victim,” is a common one. “Cringe,” another. “Selfish”, another. “Self-absorbed, navel-gazey,” is another. I’m still not sure what’s wrong with navel-gazing; isn’t that just looking within?

I take all of this personally. I pretend that I don’t; I own a bookstore. I’m here for the discussion. When my voice shakes and I almost cry in the middle of book club, that veneer cracks. Here I am, showing too much of myself again.

It’s been beaten into me that I should not take things personally. It’s not about me, right right right. I cannot assume that other people experience things the way I do. Therapist after therapist, relationship after relationship; it’s not about me. The key to life, to successful relationships. Got it.

Except, can someone explain to me why it’s not personal? It’s not that I need to interpret my experiences as absolute truth, but I would like to take them seriously. I would like the people I love to try to understand those experiences, and vice versa. I do understand that others’ opinions are about them and they are speaking from that place, which they are also allowed to take personally and seriously. When we speak to each other about abstract ideas and they touch on a personal experience, it is personal. It is okay that it’s personal. If we are not mapping our personal lives onto the bigger pictures/issues/ideas at hand, how are we adjusting in the direction of growth/change/goodness/truth? (Ugh. That sounded capitalistic, like we should always be learning/optimizing/improving. But also I think it’s how change happens, at a personal level. Not that we are personally responsible for all the mistakes of the patriarchy! But we get more powerless as the sphere moves further away from our experience. I could go on; I won’t.) It doesn’t mean we can’t have the conversation. (I’m desperate for the conversation.) It doesn’t mean we can’t differ in points of view. It doesn’t mean I need to change your mind, or that you need to change mine. But I’d like to be allowed to take things personally. It is my life, after all.

I read a great post by Elif Batuman, whose work I love. Whose characters I really resonate with. (Selin is a dear friend of my mind.) She recalls a disagreement with a fellow writer:

I find myself remembering an encounter I had with a novelist some years ago on a books panel. I had just published Either/Or, and she had published a sweeping multi-perspective novel with a constructed plot. The panel got a question about using autobiographical material. The non-autobiographical novelist—a brilliant and delightful person; I probably share 95% of her views on literature—said something like: I could never violate the women in my family by doing that.

Well, there I was, stuck defending the women-violators. I launched into some version of my standard response, viz.: I stand against the honor/ shame culture; one way that culture is sustained is through the idea that “we don’t air our dirty laundry”—i.e., it’s shameful, a betrayal of honor, to narrate one’s own subjective reality (which invariably implicates others). Novelists, feeling the shame they’re supposed to, distort their experiences. As a result, we all grew up reading accounts that don’t reflect reality, making us feel more alone with our own shame. Therefore, even though I put a value on not exploiting my personal relationships, and not causing pain to people I care about, I ALSO put a value on not censoring my subjective reality, and not perpetuating the sanitized version of personal life that benefits various power structures; for me, writing often involves a painful struggle between those considerations.

This is an emotional issue for me, so I wasn’t cool and collected in my answer, and I definitely managed to say something that annoyed the more fictional novelist. Probably I sounded like I was implying that she was perpetuating shame culture and existing power structures—which admittedly would have been pretty rude, and wasn’t my intention—but I remember backstage she said something about how at least she wasn’t betraying everyone in her life. Even at that time I remember thinking: this isn’t actually about her or me; this is about some powerful force that’s talking through us.

I like that she connected subjective experience to shame. I like that she acknowledged it as an emotional issue. I like how she calls out the “painful struggle” inherent in giving credit to her subjective reality when that reality might implicate another, maybe her panel-mate, in real time, a writer she admires. It feels related to shame for me, too. I know I felt emotional that day at book club, discussing “Big Swiss,” because I felt so ashamed to see myself in this “morally reprehensible” person. And, was I casting shame on those who had a completely different experience of the book than me, by pushing back? Does my experience invalidate theirs? Was I a selfish person? Because I feel seen when people fuck up, make a mess, act “cringe,” does that mean I’m a mess? Does everyone here see me as a mess? Because I’ve stayed in problematic relationships, been desperate for love, been scared of being alone, was I annoying when I complained about it, was I “playing the victim”? And so what if I was? Am I the only one here desperate for love? What does that tell you about me? What do you even know about me? Fuck off!

Misunderstanding > shame > anger > pain. That ol’ pattern. Reaching for intimacy, pushing it away. Gotta tamp the need for validation down, remember. Don’t show your insecurity. Gotta find all the fulfillment within yourself, don’t project, who cares what other people think. Yea! Who cares!

Elif also acknowledges, at the end of the quote, “this isn’t actually about her or me; this is about some powerful force that’s talking through us.” Yes, and no. In the book club discussion, a bigger, older anger was triggered, as I could feel the room “perpetuating the sanitized version of personal life that benefits various power structures.” We don’t air our dirty laundry. We just don’t say certain things out loud. We don’t suggest that this isn’t working for us, that maybe we’re not so grateful, that we have needs that aren’t being met, because then what? It might make people uncomfortable. It might implicate people that we depend on, that we love. Yes, ok, I’m projecting again! Also, I get it; sometimes it’s not safe to let it all out. It’d be, like, cool, though, if we tried to make it safe for each other. If we all just admitted how personal it all really was. What is an objective experience, anyway? I would be interested to know why people felt so repulsed by Greta’s behavior. What did it mean for you? What did it bring up? I probably should have just asked those questions. It can be cool to care.

I feel this way a lot when talking to people about their relationships or their jobs or their families; the way cultural norms just creep in and they stop themselves, hold back, correct themselves, and make me want to scream, BUT HOW DO YOU ACTUALLY FEEL ABOUT IT??

But that anger, while historic, is a part of me, and how I’m coloring the world and shaping my perspective. The root of it, the “powerful force,” or a piece of it at least, is shame, and how it’s embedded deep in our values, and ideas about class and decorum. And it’s personal. What’s us and what are the things we’ve internalized? It’s not an either/or — society vs. the personal. Maybe it’s easier to talk about the force, though, in the abstract, and less about ourselves.

I love the resentment that came through in “Liars,” by Sarah Manguso (another controversial book among customers at the shop), because so often the advice seems to be to edit that out. Tone it down. How embarrassing for her, seemed to be a common hushed attitude around the book. I, once again, felt defensive. Let her have her resentment! Love is fucking personal. And irrational. And painful. Is it so bad if that comes through?

I want to write for days about this. About Chris Kraus and “I Love Dick,” and about claiming mortification, leaning into it, celebrating it. Totally diving into subjective experience, at the expense of relationships and work and reputation. Letting projection become reality, in an act of rebellion. Throwing yourself at the feet of embarrassment, shame. Turning it on its head. Using it as a muse. How we’ve made mortification such a female experience, such an isolating experience. How that’s even a word, mortification; how it means both “humiliation and shame,” and, “subduing one’s bodily desires.” Mortis. Death. How we look away from it. How cringe.

All of this reminds me of a conversation I had with Geffrey Davis back when he did a reading at the bookstore, where, when he asked if I wrote, I told him I couldn’t because I was too bitter. I didn’t know how to edit out the bitter. I think that idea got seeded in me after an essay I wrote in college on Antigone, where I drew a parallel between her defiance of her uncle and my defiance of my parents. Emo, I know. I thought it was a good essay at the time; I was proud of it. I learned a lot about myself while writing it. My professor pulled me aside a few days after I turned it in, concerned, and said he was shocked at how cynical I was; he didn’t really know what to do with it, how to grade it. Was everything okay at home? Oh. Whoops. Was my experience not normal? How embarrassed I felt. Chastened. Best to leave the personal out, was the lesson I learned, or at least to have some distance from it before sharing.

I was invigorated by the feeling (resentment?) creeping through in this excerpt I read from “Song So Wild and Blue,” in this wonderful interview between Garth Greenwell and the book’s author, Paul Lisicky:

As to what we were expected to value across the arts? Understatement. Control at all costs, even down to the level of the syllable. Nothing ornate or cadenced, too bright or too dark. High emotion, no. Was racism, misogyny, homophobia, classism twisted in its cloth? Likely. All of this was unsaid, of course. And if you crossed over an arbitrary line of expression, someone was always there to call you on it, which didn’t mean he didn’t want to cross over with you, because he knew that’s where the life was. That’s where growth and change were. But power didn’t live on that side. Big agents didn’t either. Contracts for first novels? No. So given the choice between life and death, some always chose death, with a knowing shake of a head and a rueful squint. They got to be in The New Yorker one day while you kept your beautiful life.

Yes, that’s where the life is. If we let it, power can live on that side, too, I hope; on the side of emotion. Maybe, like claiming our joy and enthusiasm is resistance, anger is resistance, too.

I do like these “messy women” books (ugh. maybe just like…human women), where they’re bitter and angry and grasping at a sense of self, because they make me feel less alone. When I’m in a room where my experience is ridiculed, I feel more alone. But what would it mean to let this all bounce off of me, unbothered? If I can’t bring my experience to art, then what is my relationship to it? I’d like to be in conversation with it, the way when you love something you want to be part of it. What’s me and what’s the stuff I love? For it to not be personal feels tragic, sanitized, soulless. When I love you, it’s about you. The things I do can be about you. Feel free to take it personally. You can tell me about it. I’d like to have relationships that value our subjective realities, even if they don’t align. That don’t censor them. That can handle the mess. These are nice things to say out loud, but how do they play out in reality? Can I handle the mess?

Anyway, songs. Maybe time to play the weird, specific tracks, instead of curating toward the abstract. Last time I DJ'd, the bartender, who also DJ’s, contrasted her music taste to mine and said her set is “angry,” because she’s angry. I said that sounds like a room I want to be in.