OPE! Mixtape #14: This can't go on. This probably will go on.
OPE! is also now on Facebook Pages and Bluesky, and moving away from Twitter
Well hello there. How are you?
We survived the LA hurricane-earthquake. A lot of rain. I was drawing this week’s cartoon when the earthquake hit. It wasn’t too strong, but I still felt my apartment shake. Strange feeling, to feel the world shake around you while you sit still.
In the spirit of my last newsletter and getting back on Instagram for OPE!, I’m also now back on Facebook as a Facebook Page and was invited to Bluesky. (Thank you, Jeremy, for the invite.)
A fair warning that I’ve done just the bare minimum to get these two accounts up and running. As of this writing, I don’t even have proper images on Facebook. I just got Facebook because I wanted to verify Instagram to use Buffer. I’ll start posting on these platforms more often soon, so if you’re inclined to follow OPE! outside the newsletter, that would be lovely. (All of OPE!’s social media links are at the bottom. As of now, Instagram is where I enjoy posting the most and tend to share the most OPE!—related content. I’m also pretty active on LinkedIn, though that’s just my personal profile.)
For the Facebook Page, I imagine that I’ll be posting some upcoming virtual events that I want to hold soon for paying subscribers, including writing and Q&A sessions. I’m still on my personal Twitter but will transition my time from Twitter to Bluesky throughout the rest of this year.
I’ve never liked Twitter. Every other social media I’ve used had a mix of reasons to join, most notably to stay in touch with family and friends and to build up my professional writing network. From the beginning, I’ve viewed social media as that necessary evil to join the writing world that I wanted to be a part of. As much as I like to remind myself that James Joyce didn’t have a Twitter, I also have to remember that Joyce … would have had a Twitter if it existed in his day. (He would have been insufferable, too, but that’s for a different newsletter.) As writers, we need to use the tools of our time to speak to the audience of our day even as we (hopefully) aim for evergreen knowledge and wisdom, or at least try to manifest the famous quote on writing, and specifically journalism, that it’s penning the first draft of history. I said this in a past newsletter and will gladly repeat it: If you want to join the circus, you gotta join the circus, but you’re allowed to play as much or as little as you wish. I’m glad I took the past few years off (most) social media. I’m glad to be back, now with a healthier relationship with social media, and to expand OPE!’s visibility and get some more people hooked on some great music. (Even though the best way to promote this newsletter is still … you! See the bottom of this newsletter for more on that.)
Even when I took my social media break, I still had Twitter. Twitter (along with, for a few days, TikTok) is the only social media I’ve done only for the sake of my “brand.” Outside of trying to be better about marketing myself, I get no joy from the platform. I get the irony that the most writer-friendly platform is my least intuitive platform. Twitter has always thrived as a place to talk shit about other people. That’s not my speed, at least not on the Internet. Of all the platforms I’ve been on, Twitter seems to consistently bring out the worst in people, including people I enjoy very much in real life. For a while, I believed that if I just stayed true to tweeting the kinds of things I cared about while being consistent and engaging, I could avoid all the noise and connect with the right audience. Twitter is the only social media platform that has proven that wrong for me. I’m not joking when I say that if you want to be successful in media, you have to talk shit on Twitter.
If Twitter goes away tomorrow, I won’t miss it. I’m also mindful of my history of using Twitter as a tool that has helped me research and connect with editors and other writers. I’ve gained actual, practical career value from using the site. For that, I’m thankful. Now that most of my colleagues have moved over to Bluesky, I can now get that value elsewhere. So long.
As much as I’d like to say “out with the old, in with the new,” so far I’m also not too impressed with Bluesky. The platform itself is fine. It feels exactly like Twitter, in both structure and the kinds of posts you see from Very Oline Folks regardless of political identity who feel the right to say whatever they want with all the irony they want and no context while pontificating what others can or should say. This is inescapable on most social media, but at least other places have silly memes and my actual friends to balance out the noise. I have mixed feelings about The 9.9% as an economic or political theory, but if it does exist, it exists mostly on Twitter. It will likely, eventually take over Bluesky. Too many people have built careers and made money from this circus. You can change the platform. You can’t change people.
But dril is now on Bluesky. Bluesky wins for now.
**
But that’s enough about all that Twittering and Blueskying. Let’s get to the dang music. Here are some links and tunes for the week.
LINKS
The Associated Press announces newsroom guidance on how to use, and report on, generative AI.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication, but written with the Donkey Kong Country 2 soundfont.
Kurosawa and how to compose and film movement. (A bonus video from the same channel: Buster Keaton and the art of the gag.)
Hip-hop’s future will be less American and more global. (This has been true for rock and electronic music for many years.)
Spotify’s attempt to ban “white noise" podcasts. (One of the funnier ways in which people have been hacking the current streaming economy.)
THIS WEEK’S MIXTAPE
Listen to this week’s mix on Spotify.
(Note: Not every song here is available on streaming services.)
The National - “Space Invader”
I’m not sure if “Space Invader” is a fantastic National song, or if “Space Invader” is fantastic because it’s better than anything off the album they released earlier this year, an album that I had to look up to remember its full title. Either way, I lost my mind on first listen, especially around the 3.5-minute mark when the band gets into their outro jam that reflects their great live show more than anything recently they’ve done in the studio. I’m sorry for ever doubting these guys.
Addison Rae - “2 die 4” (Charli XCX)
There seems to be an insistence that we must keep Addison Rae famous. To me, she’s a social media presence who’s well-known for being well-known. I have no idea what she does or what makes her special. So of course she eventually gives pop stardom a shot. “2 die 4” feels like a great Charli XCX b-side that Charli (who I really like) handed off to Rae as a favor. “2 die 4” feels great because Charli is on it. Remove her, this would just feel like a rip-off.
Green Day - “Pulling Teeth (4-track demo)”
Dookie was not the first album I loved, but it was most definitely the first album I loved that then kicked open the door for some crazy music fandom. I can pretend that I don’t know all these lyrics by heart, but I’d be a liar. As long as there are suburbs and bored suburban kids, Dookie will always sound good. I could write 30,000 words about Dookie, and writing anything less would feel like I’m insulting the memory of my childhood self falling in love with music for the first time. For now, I’ll say that I’m glad the upcoming 30th-anniversary deluxe edition of Dookie (out at the end of next month) includes many fun 4-track demos of album tracks. “Pulling Teeth” feels the most fleshed out in its original demo form (Billie Joe’s self-harmonies!), but the whole mini-release is fascinating, especially a version of “When I Come Around” in which you can actually hear Billie Joe’s lyrics.
ghost orchard - “cut - MONEYPHONE Remix”
I really like ghost orchard, but even I was caught off guard by how much I love the new re: rainbow music album. The artwork is more interesting and intricate than most indie music I’ve heard this year. As someone who loves the poppier and more frantic flavors of Aphex Twin, this remix of “cut” hits hard.
Cat Rose Smith - “Tough Luck”
Give Faye Webster a Golden Hour rainbow backing band and you have this lovely song.
Mark Steiner & Ingunn Holmen with Pavel Cingl - “Twin Flames”
I didn’t realize that I would love the sound of Low covering U2 in a snowstorm.
Lenze & De Buam - “Nimma weg”
I have to rely on the sound of these words and the emotion they convey rather than their literal meanings, which feel sullen and in want for something, or someone, to arrive. I love how the vocals build off the repetition of the main piano melody.
Gaadge - “No Go”
I love when a guitar can sound like a DJ’s turntable.
The Cars - “Drive”
I only have a basic knowledge of The Cars. Beyond the debut album, their deep cuts are a mystery to me. “Drive” is not a deep cut, but I had never heard this song while driving a car or even on the radio as a passenger. That is until this past week when I was driving back from meeting a friend for drinks and “Drive” came on the radio. Driving around LA at night with the windows down and “Drive” coming out of nowhere felt like a gut punch to the part of the brain that talks to the hearts and says, “Nostalgia?” Not knowing where the lyrics would take me, the plot twist of the titular “drive” coming in the chorus (“Who’s gonna drive you home / tonight?”) really hit hard. It’s amazing how one second you can feel great and then listen to a lyric that can instantly make you feel alone but in the most cinematic, most lovely way. It’s almost like a reminder that our natural state as humans is to be, in a way, alone, but that doesn’t mean we have to always be alone.
Billie Eilish - “What Was I Made For?”
Speaking of nighttime driving songs, “What Was I Made For” also sounds great at night. This song matches that contradicting, suspended feeling of moving very fast in one direction while sitting still. I’ve been critical of Eilish in past newsletters, but this song is too good and sounds too good to deny. Her singing is excellent. A few weeks after Barbenheimer, I still think Barbie and Oppenheimer are great movies for different reasons. My favorite part of Barbie is the big finale in which this song plays.
Carole King - “I Feel the Earth Move”
An earthquake was not on my weather bingo for this weekend’s hurricane.
Squarepusher - “Tommib”
After knocking out my errands throughout Saturday, I spent Saturday night and pretty much all of Sunday doing some catch-up busy work while rewatching a bunch of movies on Netflix. One of those movies was Lost in Translation, which I didn’t realize was back on streaming.
I think I first saw Lost in Translation when I was a freshman in high school. It immediately became my favorite movie. Its soundtrack is A+, thus the Squarepusher track below. I had never seen a movie that so perfectly captured a kind of melancholy that I experienced in my own life. It sounds silly to write now, but at the time, I really thought, wait, other people feel this way? Other people get sad when they look at beautiful city buildings and know that one day they, and us, will go away? Other people live more interesting and secure lives than I do and still feel lonely? Other people feel grateful and sad at the same time? And so on. I still think Lost in Translation captures this specific melancholy better than most movies I’ve seen since, though Edward Yang’s Yi Yi comes close and might be the more nuanced film. When I was lucky enough to visit Tokyo in college, I convinced my friends to visit the Park Hyatt Tokyo and go up to its piano bar where many of Lost in Translation’s key scenes play out. We also did karaoke, but that took little convincing.
After college, I drifted away from Lost in Translation. It was probably an outcome of my encounters with a decent amount of people in real life who did not appreciate the film for its mostly benign, sometimes cringy depiction of Japan. I appreciate the criticism, especially when it comes from my Japanese friends. I also don’t believe it’s a reason to completely avoid the film. I don’t think we as viewers are supposed to take the perspectives of two lost and bratty Americans as absolute truths about a different country and its own complex history and heritage. There are plenty of incredible films made by Japanese directors who capture the essence of their own country better than any American ever could. This is a movie about two Americans, directed by an American, metaphorically and literally out of place. This foreign setting matches the intended atmosphere of feeling foreign to oneself. Its notable flaw is in service of its strength.
I can articulate all this today, but back then, I couldn’t quite express these reasons. No, looking back, I think the main reason I moved on from this movie is because I was too busy dealing with my own real-life hardships throughout my 20s. When I had my first serious case of depression as an independent adult in my mid-20s, all of a sudden, the preciousness of Lost in Translation felt a little too neat for the messy and unattractive sadness I was wrestling with. My low period did not look as nice as Billy Murray feeling sad in a 5-star hotel. In my mid-20s, I took that personally. So, I wrote off the movie as a happy capsule of a former teenage feeling. Now I knew better. And I was still sad.
Rewatching it after all these years, I’ve come full circle. I’ve fallen in love with Lost in Translation again. It made me feel that initial feeling of not being alone, which was much needed on an especially melancholy and gloomy day while still adjusting to a brand-new city. But it was a different viewing experience. Because now I’m a much different person.
It’s rare when a movie can convey the same emotion as your first watch while also offering more insight when you’re in a different place in your life. I’m now older and have gone through intense cycles of joy and sorrow in my own life. I’m in a much better spot emotionally than I was even just a few months ago. I’ve become a lot more forgiving and less hard on myself. I felt more forgiving watching these characters try and fail but then sort of succeed in connecting with one another. I now know that loneliness is not the end of the world. It comes. It also goes. Life indeed gets harder—the big fear of Scarlett Johansson’s younger character, thus becoming my own big fear—but we also get smarter and wiser. That’s not the same as saying that we become smart and wise. But we do become smarter and wiser if we listen to the world around us. It’s still a victory. I now watched this movie appreciating more the humanity in these characters. It made me sad, yes, but in a way that made me happy. Yes, they’re still bratty, but now I know that in the end, they’ll be OK. So will we.
I’m excited to see how I feel about this movie in another decade.
And that’s it!
Until next Wednesday, as always.
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With love and all the other good things,
-b
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OPE! logo by Claire Kuang. words and cartoons by yours truly. stock photos by Substack unless credited. animations made using FlipaClip and EZGIF. all typos are intentional.