Jazzmin

Butterflies part 1. How do I even... It's not about my personal situation, thing is, I was listening to another song by a completely different artist (actually in a different language) and its lyrics just reminded so much of Butterflies so I felt like refreshing it in my memory and, needless to say, I did it more than once. Much more than once. In fact, I am still being obsessed, can't get enough!

TBH, pretty much the entire UV album the first few times I listened to it, West Coast being sort of the only exception. Actually, I used to find most, if not all, of the not catchy (in my ear) Lana songs awfully dull back then but it became particularly obvious with UV when I played the CD as a whole in the car or something like that. I guess I did hate it at the time. Now, though, it's probably my favorite studio album of Lana. Probably, cause I haven't made up my mind about Lust for Life yet, it's just that I haven't listened to her newest stuff for a while (and I do realize that newest stuff isn't new anymore for anyone but me) and I need more time to figure it out.

@@Lirazel Try out the Innamoramento album. Not that I want to discourage you from listening to Monkey Me the album but I find it quite weak compared to Mylène's older stuff, except for such gems as Je te dis tout. And the music video is just beautiful - it teems with references to the beginning of her career which you might not get but I guess it's still worthwhile. (Although I do like the titular song, Quand & Nuit d'hiver. Oh, and also kind of Love Dance because of its absurd lyrics.)

Excuse my nitpicking but 'innamoramento' actually means 'falling/being in love' - as for 'in love', I would rather translate it into 'innamorato/innamorata' (m/f). Like, it is the first translation that springs to mind in my case, me being an Italian (though non-native) speaker. The focus is on the process/feeling itself, not on the person that feels it. According to Wikipedia: (Not that I recommend Wikipedia (the one in English) as the sole source but I do find it a very good place to start when to comes to MF interpretations, just to get some idea what they can look like. They are mostly all very subjective, no hard facts and it's up to you whether you accept or reject some hypothesis. In my opinion, claiming that 'the X lyrics are nothing about Y, they are about Z' is... well, weird if both interpretations make sense. ) I think the whole point of using that particular word is to differentiate between 'falling in love' and 'love' - the original title of the book is Innamoramento e amore. By no means am I an expert but according to the descriptions of the book I skimmed, the differentiation is pretty significant and, IMHO, so is it to MF. I don't even begin to explain Alberoni's whole work right now but suffice it to say that is the innamoramento is something along the lines of the initial stage that leads to the amore or the process in which the amore is born. Well, hopefully I am not talking rubbish right now, you know, at least I tried... And the title sounds InnamorAMENto (no some common French word) probably also because it contains that amen. Mylène is a sucker for word plays. As for MF's interpretation of the innamoramento, I don't even begin to since the album deals with a plethora of themes and describes multiple kinds of love. Personally, I've just begun to listen to Mylène's music again (not having done it for quite a long time). Haven't listened to her newest stuff yet. As for her older lyrics, I've grown more critical of her lyrics, apparently. Not all of them but to my surprise, a few of her songs seem stupider to me now than they did a few years ago. Gee, time flies. On the whole, I find a lot of them chaotic and vague indeed. The way I see them (and please bear in mind that I don't speak French, I simply learned to understand it a bit, thanks to the MF & Alizée songs... and dictionaries): a) some are more or less well written, there is actual content to them (and if vague, they are intentionally vague), b) some make sense or don't, depending on the attitude of the listener (if you are looking for thoroughly written, thought out lyrics you'll be disappointed; however, if you want to make sense out of them, you will, the way you read tea leaves; a lot of the lyrics of this kind base on double entendres when there is in fact hardly any purpose they serve, being there just for the sake of it); c) some are total mess. Needless to say, that's very personal, everyone is entitled to their own view on her stuff. EDIT: Merde, I've just gotten into Mylène & Alizée again. Must be something about my melancholy. Someone may ask how come Alizée fits my current mood since her stuff is far more optimistic than Mylène's... (Although there's an exception to every rule, vide "Lui ou toi" or "Cœur déjà pris". And having delved into her lyrics, I find many of them much darker than they seem on the surface, I've got a feeling I've already written that somewhere.) Well, dunno, I guess it just reminds me of a period in my life that keeps bringing tears to my eyes now... and simultaneously helps me deal with my pain. @@Lirazel , I'll be making a doc containing some MF lyrics (and one day, hopefully, all of them) and my makeshift PL 'translations', do you want one, too? In this mess called my life, I'm not starting my French classes anytime soon, so I want to try out another way of learning it. Kind of. Just some sketches, helping me to memorize vocabulary and to find out as much about the lyrics as I can on my own. I, too, really hate not understanding the songs I listen to. As I said, I do realize I can't even begin to fully comprehend French texts and I am certainly not the right person to translate them. After all, I often have a hard time translating Russian or Italian songs/poems, that is, written in languages which I DO understand pretty well. However, better a small fish...

"Cam Girl" by Elliot Wake. I liked "Unteachable" quite a lot (found it well-composed on the whole, despite the weaker, abrupt ending; I saw potential there) but Wake's newer works... IDK, most of the time, the plot seems lackluster and chaotic, while the characters come off one-dimensional. Such a pity, since I can see it's written by a very talented author and the writing style, oh, it's sometimes even prettier than in his debut novel, but the story itself... I definitely can see some cool ideas break through that all and I've been enjoying the second half of the book so much more than the first one - but the author could have done a hell of a lot better, IMHO. Don't get the hype. There is actually some plot (as opposed to "Black Iris"), especially later on in the novel, however, I wish the writer had devoted some more attention to the way he wrote it out in practice. Don't get me wrong, despite all my criticism, I was pleasantly surprised, having read "Black Iris" - if only because of my low expectations. It is readable, at least when the protagonist is not bitching about everything and everyone (which initially happens nearly all the time). And well, I am not the target audience for YA novels anyway; I used to read them once in a blue moon and the only reason my reading habits changed a bit in that regard is that I've been having trouble staying focused. Confronted with a more complex text, I usually end up not understanding it at all, mindlessly staring at the letters like a fucking zombie.

Holy Holes - Monika Brodka

Het geheim van het vermoorde geneuzel (literally: The Mystery of the Murderded Drivel) by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer A bunch of essays on poetry in general from a point of view of a rather idiosyncratic poet. I'm sure liking it: not always fully agreeing with this guy but I do feel this book is gonna deepen my understanding of poetry and that is freaking awesome.

Maybe this will help you?

Idaho - Hannah Fury

Do you recommend it? I was thinking about reading this book.

Oh my, I totally forgot about this thread . Currently, I'm reading "My Name Is Lucy Barton" by Elizabeth Strout. I have come across really good opinions about it and decided to give it a read. Not exactly my cup of tea but I am enjoying this heartwarming story in a way.

I've updated the original post. High time, TBH. I wanna add a longer description (which hopefully won't come off as very cheesy) but what's up there now will have to suffice for the time being. Spasibo ogromnoye! As for "Cute Aggression": I love it how she has more possibilities in terms of production and how she can experiment with various sounds now. I listen to her bedroom-made stuff with as much pleasure as to her newest works and find them quite as good but I'm terribly glad that, so to speak, a whole world of new options opened for her. Would've never expected it back in 2014. Damn, I think my freaking destiny is such that I have to adore every song Nicole creates and it's freaking fantastic. There's one little thing, however... IMHO, the lyrics of "Cute Aggression" are very good (and they fit that super catchy rhythm of the song which I really appreciate) but all Nicole's songwriting prior to this track made me nearly fall off my chair at the first listen, so amazing was it. The music is not nice, it's marvelous! I love it so. And on top of that, I'm diseased by the egregious need to listen to it.

This music video is stellar, truly stellar. I will try to interpret it later. Right now I'm just in awe, taking in its flawlessness.

Oh, the (in)famous Sylvia Plath! I know that for the general public, she's a poster child of unceasingly sad poets, a poete maudit, a depressive artist. It is, after all, the image that emerges from her oeuvre. For some time, I strongly believed that Sylvia's moments of happiness were as powerful as those of depression: it seemed only logical to me that a girl who knew how it felt like to stifle under a bell jar, was able to experience joy unknown to non-depressive people once her mood had swung to the other end of the pendulum. The book "Bitter Fame" by Anne Stevenson made me falter a bit in this firm conviction, though; not abandon it completely, of course, but certainly did make me think. In a nutshell, the Sylvia that we find in this book seems to be doomed from the beginning ("a girl who wanted to be God" could never have been really satisfied with what real life offered to her, could she?). The girl-next-door, fun to be with, an A-student, is said to have been but a more or less intentionally created persona, a veneer, behind which a very somber world waited, teeming with her anguish, bile and obsessions. All doom and gloom, goddammit. Be it as it may, I think this what-sylvia-plath-taught-me image shows Sylvia's brighter, less depressing side than most of her poems. As for Ted's infidelity, and please please please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to absolve him of his guilt... let's not forget that Sylvia wasn't an angel, either. OK, I'm not sure to which extend all those stories about Ted and Sylvia's marriage are true (her unhealthy jealousy, mood swings, unpredictable behavior)... but living under one roof with a cut-throat perfectionist can't have been easy. Besides, blaming him for Sylvia's death is a total oversimplification in my eyes. I think she might have been saved if she had been admitted to a hospital or, at worst, if her friends and her doctor had been more vigilant. You don't leave a suicidal woman alone, you just don't. But should you lay the blame on them, then? We don't live in a perfect world and neither did she. I'm sure everybody did their best, it just wasn't feasible to keep an eye on her every bloody hour, minute, second. And I wrote "might have", because I can play here "what if"'s all I want but sometimes even somebody that loves them can't keep a suicidal person alive. As Virginia Woolf's suicide note, addressed to her husband, reads: But nobody could. Well, it's taken me quite a while to get my head together and post in this thread. To tell you the truth, I'm still not sure if I've got an accurate image of her as a person. All I know for sure is that she had a way with words. And if one day I can write as well as she did (≠ the way she did), then I should know I've done a f...ing good job. Oh, and hopefully, I'm making sense? I've tried to keep this post from being chaotic but you know, what I write on Sylvia's work and life always ends up ramifying into a million more or less personal thoughts, in spite of myself.