collections: a semi-seasonal reset

We’re in the double digits now and that’s a modern miracle. I was going to spend this collection writing about something else, but then I read “i can’t stop thinking about this” and, well, these are some things i can’t stop thinking about:

  • in the pantomime: the winter olympics are nothing without canadian ice dancing royalty
  • cosmic operas: florence + the machine lyrics are something else
  • tossed and turned: i promised some people i would write about hacky sack


💌


in the pantomime

the winter olympics are nothing without canadian ice dancing royalty

For a brief blip in 2018, I was obsessed with ice dancing. As in, swept up in the media hype and frenzy around this sport where I barely knew the rules but knew it looked graceful from every angle.

“ice dancing is the pinnacle of human achievement”

—wrote this on a computer sticky note; feb 19, 2018

Ice dancing is a marvel of human achievement (though perhaps not quite the pinnacle, I was being overdramatic). There is an unfathomable degree of athleticism, synchronicity, and elegance involved as you hurl your body in the air with sharp blades attached to your feet—and then trust that the other person will catch you every step of the way atop stone-cold ice. No room for missteps, just the sensuality of knowing your own body so well that it gets mirrored in your partner’s, and vice versa.

The Winter Olympics this year are among the most forgettable: too much has happened and devolved for any of us to consider Beijing 2022 at the forefront of our information diet. But still, the Winter Olympics makes me think of the February from fours year ago when I made a Spotify playlist based on all the songs I’d heard in the free dance, and the description read “um ice dancing has taken over my life and i don’t know how to fix it.” That happened. Twizzles are a real thing.

For some two weeks in February , I was completely invested in Canadian ice dancing royalty, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. Had seen every medal-winning performance and behind-the-scenes training montage. Could probably tell you everything about why they were going for Gold during their final performance as a pair in Olympic competition. Knew the refrain of Moulin Rouge not because Baz Luhrmann created a masterpiece, but because Virtuemoir won their coveted medal skating to it.

As with all things that are sparkly and electrically-charged, the Virtuemoir fascination was heighted by the celebrity gossip hype machine. Twitter was a very good place that month; Twitter was on its best behavior for the parasocial fisheye lens in Pyeongchang. We were all over-invested in the personal lives of these two Canadian ice dancers who seemed to destined to be together on- and off- ice. Some select favorites from the February 2018 critics cycle: An Unnecessarily Close Read of the Virtue-Moir Relationship (the Ringer); Why Do I Care So Much That These Two Canadian Ice Dancers Aren’t Dating? (the Cut); and Why people can’t stop shipping Canadian ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir (Vox).

There is no point to this other than the fact that I find this incredibly funny years later. I was reminded of this recently because the news of Beijing 2022 had dawned upon me, and I was curious what the line of succession looked like after the reigning champions had retired. It has been so long and this has not crossed my mind in ages, and yet my memory can tell you as much as I once knew in the whirlwind of information consumption. At the end of this very long day, they are two people who became elite athletes in domination of a difficult sport, who both also happen to be attractive, and know full-well how to sell a story. They sold that story for years, and some corner of the internet will still insist they’re in love.

The Olympics are a pinnacle of parasociality. We lift individuals onto pedestals and claim their story is the story of our nation, our people. We learn their childhoods and traumas, peel back their deepest fears and burning fires, poke and prod them beneath hot camera lights until their face lights up every local newsstand. Their stories, their relationships, their victories—they belong to us. Everything but their failures.

I’ll end here with this ice dancing video I’ve forced too many people to watch: Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir skate to Stay by Rihanna.

cosmic operas

florence + the machine lyrics are something else entirely

I owe a lot of what I know about writing to Florence + the Machine lyrics. I mean this in the way I could crack open the lyric booklet to the first two Florence albums, and start to trace the lineage of how I write and think today, in the pseudo-poetic way. In voicing the otherwise unperturbed recesses of your witching hour psyche, tailored to the radio-friendly adult-alternative airwaves.

Bear with me for a moment. In the early 2010s, I consumed stories about others coming of age (to make sense of my own); and around the same time, I was also learning how to write. I learned how to write about emotions and other people and all those other hard-to-describe mundane observations about life that were exploded in magnitude. Exploding those feelings in small spaces is what really good music does. You spend so much of your life thinking and feeling things, and it’s not until you see someone else’s articulation of the same thing—almost, but not quite the same—that empowers you to create your own version of it. I don’t know much about anything, but I’ve at least accrued the vocabulary to start talking about it.

I didn’t really think about this until F+tM started dropping thematic compilations of their discography on Spotify, and I was as blown away hearing “Seven Devils” in 2022 as I was when I first heard it in 2012 (this is also known as an iconic music moment for the season one finale of Revenge). Her lyricism is visceral—splices you open and promises flowers will soon grow over the gaping wound—and revels in the sturm und drang of it all. “you are flesh and blood! / and you deserve to be loved and you deserve what you are given / and oh, how much!” is something Whitman wishes he wrote. The snapping violence of “Howl” if Ginsberg wrote under a full moon.

The music of Florence + the Machine can only be described as cosmic angst; or a violent opera if the genre suits it. There’s a celestial, yet demonic quality to their songs: of possession and near-ascension.

tossed and turned

i promised some people i would write about hacky sack

I watched a game of hacky sack transpire on a winter beach, kindly withdrew my participation, and promised some people I would write about it.

There’s something about the physicality of hacky sack—a group game where you a tiny football throw up in the air and a circle of people ritualistic reach out with various limbs and body parts to keep it in flight for as long as possible; the round is over when it finally, devastatingly, falls to the ground—and the socialized practice in an open field that suggests a certain restrained ferality. People lose themselves in it, singularly focused on keeping this tiny capsule of sand in the air. A clumsy life purpose.

Nobody plays hacky sack alone. All for the good of the group. This is not a game for the individual: it emphasizes the collective, and if one falters, so does everyone else. The only person that can be let down in hacky sack is everyone else, suspended in the animation of everyone else’s hushed hopes, that maybe it won’t fall this time. The stakes are high, and their eyes are watching. Reaching out for it, stretching and scrambling; only for it to flash out of sight. The helpless fanaticism as it falls and the desperate motions to rescue it. Limbs flailing. Controlled spasms.

Each reset promises a new beginning. If they try a little harder or extend themselves a little further, they’ll make it. Maybe they’ll save it this time. It looks like falling forward or tripping backward; flinging arms and appendages askew for their skin to make contact once again. There’s nothing mechanical in the movements, nothing but an urgent fluidity. They’re not the hero of the story (there are no heroes in hacky sack), but they’re doing enough to keep it alive for a little while longer. Every move is an act of continued salvation.

this past week