Austin singer-songwriter Molly Burch has released two new Christmas songs, ‘Cozy Christmas’ and ‘December Baby’. Take a listen below.
Burch released her latest studio album, Romantic Images, last year via Captured Tracks. In 2019, she put out a holiday record called The Molly Burch Christmas Album.
In an interview with The Guardian promoting BROCKHAMPTON’s 2021 record ROADRUNNER: New Light, New Machine, Kevin Abstract made what seemed like a shocking declaration: “I think this is the first album where I’m really tired of this boyband thing.” It’d been years since the SATURATION trilogy cemented their status as the self-proclaimed “best boyband since One Direction,” and despite their frantically prolific output – ROADRUNNER was their sixth LP in four years – the all-inclusive, tight-knit nature of the group still felt like a core aspect of their identity. In expressing a desire to distance themselves from the “boyband” tag, Abstract’s statement only reinforced that idea. They thought of themselves more as, “A community. Friends. Homies,” he explained. The group’s purported final album reaches for an even more powerful and unifying descriptor: The Family. On it, however, Abstract relays a deep feeling of weariness that has to do with more than just terminology: “Dead tired/ Feeling stupid,” he admits over strummed guitar on ‘This American Life’, “And I got nothing to say.”
As if to really the point home, Abstract repeats that line again and again. It fits with the overall vibe of The Family, whose existence is consistently framed as both a label obligation and a chance to tell the BROCKHAMPTON story in earnest. For fans, the end has felt imminent for a while now, with an undercurrent of melancholy and nostalgia flecking each one of their albums since at least iridescence. It wasn’t until earlier this year that the group officially announced they were going on an “indefinite hiatus,” before teasing what’s billed as their “final album” at Coachella. “It’s not a solo thing, it’s a group album,” Abstract promised, and though some listeners might be disappointed that it sounds a lot like the former, it actually plays a bit like both. Abstract handles all of the lead vocals, with contributions from Bearface and Romil Hemnani, and he directly acknowledges it’s somewhat of an oddly jarring send-off: “The group is over without being on the album,” he raps on the exhilarating ‘Big Pussy’. It’s hard to call it a Kevin Abstract solo project when BROCKHAMPTON is, both conceptually and spiritually, the absolute sole focus.
When Abstract isn’t charting the highs and lows of the BROCKHAMPTON, he reflects on how their unlikely trajectory personally impacted his behaviour in ways that further illustrate the group’s dynamics. ‘All That’, spinning the theme song from the 1990s Nickelodeon TV show of the same name, finds him describing how experiencing fame coincided with his addiction struggles, but stresses that healing was what they all collectively needed. Later, on the title track, he goes as far as to embody, rather than simply reflect on, the domineering, self-destructive leadership style that pushed the band to the edge: “I feel free when I drink, you don’t know shit about me.” The toxicity and turmoil that underpins much of The Family feels hauntingly familiar – there have been twinges of it along the way – but never have BROCKHAMPTON owned it with such raw conviction. This brutal honesty remains at the heart of The Family, even as Abstract identifies it as one of the problems that arise when you strive to turn everything into art.
As unsurprising as it is, it’s almost remarkable how bittersweet the album feels all the way through. There’s no celebratory moment without a pang of regret, no hopeful nod to the future that’s not couched in uncertainty. The juxtaposition between Abstract’s somber mood and Bearface and Hemnani’s lush, vibrant soundscapes is also to be expected, but for a record about the volatility and magic of a self-made group that found success after meeting on a Kanye West fan forum, it’s strange just how seamlessly, almost cozily its 35 minutes flow by. If you want a proper taste of BROCKHAMPTON’s shapeshifting, unpredictable energy, you’ll be better served listening to TM – the album they dropped as a “parting gift” to fans a day after The Family, though it was in fact recorded before it. On the whole, The Family comes off as pensive without quite being morose, thought-out but not quite calculated, a family affair but not really. TM sounds like a BROCKHAMPTON album; The Family is a farewell to everything it came to mean.
As often as the album revolves around the same ideas, Abstract seems wary of lingering on any one of them for too long. Most songs hover around the 2-minute mark, and even when they stay a bit longer, they don’t necessarily reveal much that fans wouldn’t already be aware of. Which is why the album’s closing run is so striking: from ‘The Family’ onwards, it sounds like one man trying to cap off the show by hitting just the right note, and even if they don’t all land with the same impact, together they convey the mix of frustration and gratitude that comes with drawing out the end of a chapter. He doesn’t really sound exhausted, just overwhelmed and ready to move on. Of all the biting truths Abstract spills on the album, this one from ‘Take It Back’ would in any other context probably be met with some doubt: “United we stand, divided we fall/ I’m sorry homie, but that don’t apply to us at all/ The next chapter is everything/ That’s my promise to y’all.” The Family makes it sound like more than a possibility.
serpentwithfeet has released a new song’, ‘My Hands’, which serves as a bonus track on Animal Collective’s soundtrack to the new A24 film The Inspection. The song features production by Sensei Bueno, with contributions from Animal Collective and vocals from StemsMusic Choir. Listen to it below.
Based on the life of writer and director Elegance Bratton, The Inspection follows “a young, Black, gay man, Ellis French, ostracized from his family and opportunity,” according to a press release. “Ellis joins the Marines to provide for himself, and in boot camp, he encounters more than just physical obstacles obstructing his path.”
“‘The Hands’ is a devotional song,” serpentwithfeet explained in a statement. “By the film’s end, Ellis French has a strong sense of self but doesn’t lose his sensitivity or optimism. I wanted to reflect that lyrically and musically.”
The Inspection goes into wide release on December 2. Animal Collective’s score for the film is out now.
Tom Hegen, the German photographer known for outstanding aerial photography, has announced he will publish a book on his series Salt Works. The book contains 167 images across seven chapters and will be released on the 1st of December.
Talking about the book and its core focus Hegen stated: “Salt has become one of the most ordinary products on our kitchen shelves, but we rarely ask where it comes from and how it is produced. SALT WORKS takes on an aerial view of the sublime landscapes shaped by salt mining.”
Pablo Milanés, the Latin Grammy-winning singer-songwriter who helped found Cuba’s “nueva trova” movement and toured the world as a cultural ambassador for Fidel Castro’s revolution, died early Tuesday in Madrid. Representatives for Milanés confirmed his death on his official Facebook page. “With great pain and sadness, we regret to report that Maestro Pablo Milanés has passed away,” they wrote in Spanish. “We deeply appreciate all the shows of love and support, to all his family and friends, in this very difficult time. May he rest in the love and peace he always transcended. He will remain forever in our memory.” Milanés was 79.
In early November, the singer announced he was being hospitalized and canceled several concerts. He had been under treatment for blood cancer in Spain, AP reports.
Milanés, widely known as Pablito, was born in the eastern city of Bayamo on February 24, 1943. In 1950, he moved with his family to Havana, where he studied in the Conservatorio Municipal de La Habana, one of the most prestigious musical schools in the country, though he credited his neighborhood musicians for inspiring him early in his career.
Along with Silvio Rodríguez and Noel Nicola, Milanés is known as one of the founding members of the nueva trova, a movement that emerged in 1968 after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 with the aim of modernizing traditional Cuban folk musics for a post-revolutionary society. In 1973, he released his first album, Versos Sencillos, in which he set poems by José Martí to music. He went on to release over 40 solo records and collaborated with many artists from Cuba, elsewhere in Latin America, and Spain.
Milanés won numerous Cuban honors during his five-decade career, including the Alejo Carpentier medal in 1982 and the 2007 Haydee Santamaria medal from the Casa de las Americas for his contributions to Latin American culture. In 2006, he won two Latin Grammys: best singer-songwriter album for Como un Campo de Maiz and best traditional tropical album for AM/PM, Lineas Paralelas, a collaboration with Puerto Rican salsa singer Andy Montanez.
“The culture in Cuba is in mourning for the death of Pablo Milanes,” Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz wrote on Twitter.
Jess Shoman began Tenci as a bedroom folk project in 2018, naming the band after their grandmother, Hortencia. Featuring contributions from a handful musicians Shoman met through Chicago’s DIY community, their debut album, 2020’s My Heart Is an Open Field, conjured an entrancing atmosphere through sparse instrumentation and unconventional songwriting. After touring in support of the album, Shoman was joined by Curtis Oren on saxophone and guitar, Izzy Reidy on bass, and Joseph Farago on drums to record its follow-up, A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing. Released earlier this month, the album is as much a showcase for the band’s playful and revitalized chemistry as it is for Shoman’s strengths as a vocalist whose presence can be both strangely intimate and wholly electric. They manage to take their sound in explosive new directions while staying close to home, and every fiery solo or subtle flourish has a way of affirming and animating Shoman’s poetic imagery. Tenci’s music has felt full even in its barest form, but it seems to have grown fuller with hope than trauma. On the album’s opening track, Shoman sings about “shape-shifting into someone new” – and with the band having just completed a run of shows, they’re reminded these songs’ evolution is just as constant.
We caught up with Tenci’s Jess Shoman for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about their latest tour, songwriting as a cathartic and archival process, what they love about their bandmates, and more.
What has it been like bringing the new songs to a live audience?
It’s been really fun to finally get to play them. You spend so much time writing them and thinking about them in this isolated way, it’s just freeing to be able to finally get to share them with people and see how they interpret and respond to them in real time. What I feel is so great about live music is being able to share that moment with someone in real time.
I wanted to ask you about that relationship between your music and solitude – how it transforms from the moment you start writing a song, to fleshing it out with the band, to then releasing and performing it.
I feel like all of the songs that I write, they live only in my head to begin with, before I even write them out or write down an idea. They’re always kind of simmering in there, in my brain. I think that in itself is the purest form of isolation as far as the containment of the song goes – before I even know what it’s going to be, it’s there in a certain way. From there, being able to put it into some sort of space, whether that be a piece of paper or a voice recording or my phone Notes app, I think that kind of makes it more real, giving it life very slowly. After that, I take it to the band and I’m like, “Here’s this thing that I wrote.” It’s that barest form, and then they start breathing life into it. And from there, we record it and it’s in this different sort of space, so it’s constantly morphing into different things, which I think is really cool to watch.
Then from there, performing it is also completely different because we don’t always play the same, and there’s always things that change. We’re humans, so I think that makes it so that it’s not perfect every time. And I also think that’s really beautiful, to just be able to play around with the songs and see how our moods for the day affects how we play the songs or how the people that we’re playing it to affect how we play them. You can listen to the recording and that’s always going to be the same, but beyond that, it’s always going to be different, which I think is crazy.
Part of this evolution is that you’re taking it from a private space to a communal space. I’m curious if that was one of the big differences between My Heart Is An Open Field and this record, in the way that it opens up your songwriting.
Yeah, I think with My Heart Is An Open Field, even though I invited people to play and see what would come out of it, I still had an idea of what I wanted it to be. And I felt like I needed more control on that album, especially because that album was covering a lot of topics in my life that were very traumatic for me. But with this album, it has been a lot different because it’s more about self-rejuvenation and trying to create a new narrative for myself. I think having a band and friends that I trust and feeling comfortable just being like, “Here you go, put your spin on it and I’m sure it’ll be great,” is so much different than me telling people what to play. That has been really nice, and kind of parallel paths with the celebration of rejuvenation within a more communal space, a more collaborative space. They still have similar qualities in terms of how the songs come to be, but it’s cool to compare and contrast the two.
There are certain desires that you circle around throughout the album, like wanting to be seen and heard by others, and on a more internal level, staying connected in your own self. To what extent does making music fulfill those needs for you?
Making music for me is the most selfish thing that I do. [laughs] Because I don’t really write music in the lens of, like, “Are other people going to like this? Are people going to understand what this means?” That’s never been a concern of mine, and I know it’s different for a lot of people. But I have always made music with the lens of being like, “What can I pull out of myself and fossilize so that I can look back on this and understand who I was and where I was at that point in my life?” And also, on a more cathartic level, it helps me work through things and process things, which is a very common thing with songwriters. But it feels like one of the only things that can really help me understand myself. And I think it’s because I can think through it in a different, more creative way and put a spin on it, whereas if I were to just write down all my thoughts on paper, that’s just what it is. But with music, I can make a story and I can change the outcome, which I think is really powerful.
Would you be able to tell something that you feel like you understood about yourself through making this record?
Yeah. Let me think about that. I think the biggest thing is, change is a very reoccurring thing that happens on this record; it is a fact of life. And before this record, I feel like I did not react well to change. And this record is constant reminders – I think every song has something to do with that concept – constant reminders that it’s okay to change. I feel like I’ve just embraced that a lot more and used it to fuel myself, instead of letting it hold me back. So I think that has helped me a lot, and helped me discover that it’s not as scary as – I mean, it’s still scary, but it’s also really cool to watch everything change around you and relinquish control in that way. I think that’s the biggest piece that I have taken away from it so far.
One of my favourite lines on the album in relation to change, and the way it registers in the body, is, “We can’t get used to the feeling of skin that’s writhing and weaning.” Can you talk about what that means for you?
I think it just means that it’s never going to be feel comfortable, things changing, and often in a drastic or painful way. You don’t have control over that, so the best way, at least for me, is to use it to help myself understand life and myself and those around me. And I think acceptance is a key word. You know, life is ugly sometimes, and I think it’s good to remember that. It’s sad to think of it like that, but for me, it’s more so like, “Hm that’s interesting,” instead of like, “Oh, it’s really sad that that thing has happened to me.” It’s kind of looking at it in a different way, and seeing how I can change the perspective for myself.
On the last track, ‘Memories’, you include voice recordings from parents and grandparents, and the album references family memories throughout. Obviously, the name of the project is significant in that regard as well. Do you feel like this idea of family and legacy is still at the heart of Tenci as the band has grown?
Yeah, definitely. The archival process of having these bits and pieces of myself and my family and friends left behind is very sacred to me. I want to be writing music until I’m in my old age, that’s my dream. And hopefully, I am capable and can do it forever. But I think the reason why is because I’m really obsessed with encapsulating these parts of myself. I don’t know if it’s more so for me or for other people to be able to find these things later on, like, well after I’m dead. I don’t know which one it is, but I think it’s important for me to have myself live in these various forms. And my family is a huge part of that, because they are a big part of why I’m here. I want to do that for them, too.
I think that’s why include a lot of voice recordings, because otherwise, these things wouldn’t see the light of day, and I enjoy interpreting them and taking them from their original meaning, which is usually pretty straightforward. It’s like opening up a history book for me, and looking back and seeing what has happened is really beautiful. I also struggle with remembering certain things. I feel like my memory is kind of blurry for some reason, and I’m not sure why. But I think helping myself by writing those things down, especially in such a powerful way as through a song, is the best way for me to look back and be like, “Oh, yeah, that happened a really long time ago.”
With ‘Memories’ specifically, I had begged my mom to digitize these home videos for me. I had never seen a home video before that. So, a couple of years ago, for my birthday, she digitized them for me. That’s why I got so obsessed with looking through them and piecing things together. I was like, “Wow, I did not remember that that had happened.” It’s very emotional for me to look through all that stuff and see myself as a child in video form. I had never seen that before. There were videos of me singing and standing on the couch and performing for my family, which, you know, I’d heard stories of, but I’d never seen. It really helps me connect the dots a little more.
The way I relate to my childhood self is often through photos rather than home videos, so I think I would have a similar reaction to seeing myself as a child, you know, as a moving body.
Yeah, it’s really intense. There’s a different type of cadence with the conversation that’s happening around that, too. A lot of these are set at family parties and stuff, so it’s funny because I can hear – not in the specific recordings that I chose, but in the videos themselves, I can hear people’s side conversations, which is crazy. And it sparks new memories for me that I had never even realized were in my brain.
I think a testament to how emotional it makes me and how important it is to me, is on our first show, in Milwaukee, my mom and my sister, they were at the show because they live not too far from there. I played that song last, and it was the first night of the tour. And I was just sobbing. I got through the song, but I was just sobbing through it the whole time. And I think it’s because my mom was right there, and I was getting to play this song for her. And it was a very emotional moment because I had never played it for her before. It was just very powerful to be able to share that moment with her and show her why it’s so important to me.
How did she react? Did you have a conversation about it?
She just hugged me at the end. We didn’t get to talk much because we were hustling to get everything out and sell merch and stuff, but she is very good at remaining lighthearted in situations like that too. She just started singing the song back to me and hugging me. I had sent it to her a while ago, but that was my first time playing it live for her and she was really touched by it. She never really has a crazy philosophical sort of input, aside from, she feels moved by it too. She understands why I do what I do.
Can you share one thing that you love about each of your bandmates?
It’s funny that you asked this because in the car, this past tour, I don’t know if you’ve heard of those, it’s like a “40 questions to fall in love with someone” or something. We thought it would be funny to do it as a band, so we went around and asked each other all these questions. And this was one of them. But I think Curt is really adventurous, and I feel like we’re both down to have an adventure, do something out of the ordinary even if it means sacrificing energy or time. They have a million stories that would surprise anyone, and still, they’ll tell me something that has happened to them or that they’ve done or experienced and I’m completely surprised every time, and I have known them for a while now. They just are full of life and experience, and I’m in awe of that.
With Joseph, the drummer, we’re super close in and out of the band, and we just have a really loving and supportive relationship with each other. He’s a very good friend, and I admire that about him. He’s really loyal and good at maintaining his relationships and reaching out to people even when they’re not always reaching back. I think that is a really nice quality to have, because I know that can be taken personally sometimes. But he’s really good at maintaining all his relationships, and I kind of watch it from the sidelines and take note. [laughs]
And then Izzy, they are just a very strange and unique person and have a really nice sense of humour. They do a lot of the talking on stage, and that’s really helpful for me because I hate doing it most of the time. [laughs] But they’re always talking about something so strange and funny. They just have a very creative brain. This whole tour, their whole thing that they’ve been asking people is, “Does anyone have any bulk grains in their pantry?” [laughs] And they’ll do a poll of who has what start going off about how to best preserve your bulk grains so that you don’t get weevils. They’re a very funny person, but also really caring and kind. They really care to make sure that everyone is feeling good and happy and are always willing to lend a helping hand.
So yeah, they’re all amazing. I think the more tours we do together, the more we love and understand each other. It’s not always easy, because tour is really stressful, but we’ve definitely been able to persevere and help each other. It’s been really good.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Tenci’s A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing is out now via Keeled Scales.
Quasi, the duo of Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss, have shared a new single from their upcoming album Breaking the Balls of History. Following lead cut ‘Queens of Ears’, ‘Doomscrollers’ comes with an accompanying visual directed by B.A. Miale. Check it out below.
Breaking the Balls of History, Quasi’s debut for Sub Pop, is set for release on February 10. It was produced alongside John Goodmanson, who also engineered and mixed the record, at Rob Lang Studios in Seattle.
Rabit, the moniker of Texas-based producer and composer Eric Burton, has released a new track, ‘Bad Dreams’. It’s lifted from his upcoming album What Dreams May Come, which arrives this Friday (November 25) via Halcyon Veil. Check it out below.
What Dreams May Come also features contributions from Eartheater, Colin Self, Baby Blue, Lauren Auder, John Beltran, and JG Thirlwell. Rabit previously previewed it with the singles ‘Angelica’ and ‘No Ceiling’.
Throughout the week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with the new releases that caught our attention the most, be it a single leading up to the release of an album or a newly unveiled deep cut. And each Monday, we round up the best new songs released over the past week (the eligibility period begins on Monday and ends Sunday night) in this best new music segment.
On this week’s list, we have ‘God Turn Me Into a Flower’, a majestically enveloping highlight from Weyes Blood’s new album that finds Natalie Mering relaying the myth of Narcissus; Romy’s latest Fred Again.. collaboration, the clubby and hauntingly cathartic ‘Strong’; ‘Wasted on You’, the pleasantly delicate yet existential lead single from Andy Shauf’s new album; Fucked Up’s invigorating new song ’Found’; Shame’s anxiously soaring ‘Fingers of Steel’, the lead offering from their third record Food for Worms; and ’My Blood Runs Through This Land’, a sprawling, emotionally captivating preview of Black Belt Eagle Scout’s upcoming LP.
Best New Songs: November 21, 2022
Song of the Week: Weyes Blood, ‘God Turn Me Into a Flower’
Romy feat. Fred Again.., ‘Strong’
Andy Shauf, ‘Wasted on You’
Fucked Up, ‘Found’
Shame, ‘Fingers of Steel’
Black Belt Eagle Scout, ’My Blood Runs Through This Land’
The ‘Instagram Novel’ is tricky — too didactic, and you seem like a Luddite, too familiar, and you’re rehashing previous territory. Too few seem like they have any other message behind ‘Instagram is bad!’ but when a rare gem offers something new, it can be explosive.
The narrator behind Allie Rowbottom’s new novel, Aesthetica, Anna, starts her journey as a vulnerable 17-year-old yearning for something more: stardom, purpose, or just a hobby. After a direct message from Instagram influencer Jake Alton, he takes her under his wing and she immediately receives an influx of comments, hearts, and followers. This, Anna realizes, can be a viable career option.
Aesthetica tracks Anna’s story starting in 2017 and the multiple surgeries, personality shifts, and thought processes she endures while courting sudden fame. Her mother, a stout second-wave feminist, looks down upon Anna’s injectibles and occurrence at influencer parties, saying this isn’t the path to self-realization. Anna, though, is stuck between two schools of thought: to want to modify one’s body, and to go through with it, well, that’s just what feminism is. She views an online story where an Asian woman undergoes surgery to correct her “natural squinty eyes,” and thinks to herself, “What sort of woman would I be if I weren’t thrilled for her?”
Our Culture sat down with Allie Robottom to discuss the Instagram age, influencer culture, and the terrifying real-life circumstances that inspired the novel.
Everything changed — when I first started studying writing in college, I was learning and writing fiction, and had veered away from it because I had material in my life that felt like it needed to be non-fiction. So it was kind of like a muscle I had lost when I came back to it, and it took me some time to realize it. I really wanted to get Aesthetica written fast. I was like, ‘I’m just gonna pound this out.’ But then I was writing it like it was a memoir, even though I was making all this stuff up. I had to go back to the drawing board, and learn to craft books, and re-educated myself on scenes and plot. Stuff that’s really basic but which I had lost the thread of, a little. I will say, it has been so emotionally freeing and fun to write fiction, as opposed to memoir, which is my first love and I still write non-fiction quite a bit, but it can be so emotionally taxing. It’s nice to have a book that I can enjoy publishing and publishing.
That, totally — it’s nice to just not have to stick so closely to the truth of what happened. But also, just in terms of not having to answer a lot of questions about myself or my family or my mom. It’s nice to just be like, ‘I made this thing, I put the work in, and it’s about me but kind of just about the book.’ Whereas with Jell-O Girls, it’s about the book but it’s actually more about me and my personal life. That can just feel really draining after a while. With this, it’s just like, ‘I made it up!’ [laughs]
The relationship between Anna and Jake was one of the first things to fall into place with the book. I just knew that there’d have to be some shady guy to usher her into this dark world. He was almost fully-formed in my head, because I was basing him off of a lot of nightlife promoters in New York I met while I was young. It took some time to deepen him and make him complex — he was fully one-dimensional for a while. I wanted him to be a round character but also stand in for the patriarchy, in some way. He’s this shadow that falls over Anna kind of quickly in the book, and it felt important to have the plot moving forward with him coercing her, but also caring for her and creating this complicated relationship. Ultimately, he’s the catalyst for a lot of terrible things in her life, but he also takes care of her and asks about her mom.
I didn’t do a lot of checking in with influencers while I was writing — I’m not sure why, exactly. I guess I was just more focused on nailing the emotional highs and lows for the character herself. One thing I was doing was listening to a lot of true crime podcasts about [Harvey] Weinstein and [Jeffrey] Epstein. I remember there was one girl in particular about one of the things about Epstein, and she had just lost her mother and she was particularly vulnerable to his coercion. Listening to that was like… ‘Well, that’s my character’s story too.’ That was the primary research I was doing — that in coercive control and terrible guys enacting violence.
What I found with the Instagram stuff that I would sort of make up, is that later, when I would talk to influencers or hear one on a podcast, it all felt very aligned with the content of the book. I wasn’t trying to speak for all influencers or all Instagram models, of course, but looking at the sort of make-up of the world she was existing in, and the premise of Instagram itself — which is like, image is currency and sex sells — it was very easy for me to take it to its natural, dramatic conclusion. It turns out that all of the things I chronicle in the book do happen. Of course, it doesn’t happen to everyone, but that kind of out-of-control power, when you start out thinking you have it, I feel like that’s common in a lot of people’s lives. Instagram is just one way that it plays out.
Yeah, and I think it often does happen that way. You know, this guy DM’s her, and she’s like, ‘Yeah, I wanna meet up. Sounds legit, look at his checkmark and all these powerful men on his feed.’ There’s this part in the book where she’s looking at Jake’s grid before she’s met him, and he has pictures of himself with all these powerful men, and that was something I took directly from accounts of Epstein — you would walk into his townhome and there were pictures of him legitimized with all these famous people. That was on purpose — it was to make young girls feel at home and safe, in some ways.
I definitely think there are ways to not come to that conclusion — I mean, the younger the user is, the harder it is, which is why I think people with big platforms have a real responsibility to help their younger audience to come to the conclusion that they don’t have to present themselves a certain way. In the book, I’m looking at a large portion of users that use the app a certain way, but I know there are people who use it differently. There is, like, Bookstagram, or a wing of Instagram that’s focused on body positivity and diversifying people’s feeds. I don’t think the lesson of one’s value being situated in one’s physicality or hotness is the only lesson Instagram provides, but I do think it’s the biggest one.
On the plus side — and I hope that in some small way, the book contributes to this — there is a growing awareness of the surreality of Instagram and the smoke and mirrors that go on behind the scenes. Instagram might not be around much longer; engagement is down and people are using it less, so there’s gonna be something else that takes its place, and hopefully that app will be a little bit better at giving multiple ways of using and engaging with it.
To me, there’s three answers to that — one is her age. She’s very young and, at least for me, at that age, when a guy I liked suggested something to me, I’d be like, ‘Sure, love me.’ I didn’t want to make her completely passive, but there was that element of my experience I wanted to get onto the page because I definitely don’t think it’s unique to me.
I also think that, for Anna, she grew up without a father, and having a challenging relationship with the father archetype, is also something I took from the Epstein stories. The absence of a father being a really common thread within his victims. I think it does make someone more susceptible to saying yes and going through with something like breast implants or whatever a guy that fills that father role suggests.
And then also, fourth-wave or post-wave feminism: this sort of idea that everything that a woman chooses is feminist and is empowering. It’s a messaging that she’s internalized, so maybe her first response to implants is maybe, ‘No. Why would I do that? It’s not for me.’ But the more she wraps her head around the idea, the more she’s like, ‘This is empowering, and if it’s a business opportunity, why would I not take it? It’s what I’m here to do. The women who have come before me have paved the way for me to be able to self-actualize in this way.’ I wanted her to embody that next wave of feminism as a counterpoint to her mother, who is way more second-wave and old-school.
Poor Naurene. It’s a really impossible situation, and you know, thinking about it now, it came from my own experience with my mom at that age, but I was obviously not courting Instagram stardom. But at 17 or 18 I had a really gnarly eating disorder, and my mother behaved very much like Naurene. She was trying to help me and save me and I was constantly blowing her off. I don’t know what she could have done better, because I was just not gonna listen to her. I know she was terrified. Looking back, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, how terrifying.’ I just wanted to put some of that impossibility into that dynamic between the two of them. Once your kid is like, legally an adult, there’s not much you can do to stop them or get through to them. There’s no real way for Naurene to get through to Anna, except from physically excising her from Jake’s house, which is a fear Anna has.
In the space of the book where we aren’t with her, which is where the book leaves off in 2017 and picks up in 2032, I think that in my imagination, she was turning towards procedures to stop time and freeze herself in youth and girlhood. That is what the procedures are done for — they’re to make us look young and to preserve beauty. Eventually, what she comes to is that it’s more valuable to look in the mirror and see her true self reflected back to her. And her mother is a part of her true self. The grief is erasing the traces of where you come from. For her, returning to her natural face as if she aged naturally is a reclamation and a return to her mother’s daughter.
I love that. That’s a great way to cap her story off. Finally, what’s next? Do you think you’ll continue writing about the internet and stardom, or do you have other topics you’d like to explore?
I think I’ll write another novel. I have an idea, but I can’t talk about it too much because it’s still young and precious to me. It doesn’t have to do with the internet, but it does have to do with stardom!
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