excruciated consciousness

excruciated consciousness # 1 (via a New Yorker profile of the 1975 frontfellow)

"In January, the thirty-four-year-old British rock star Matty Healy woke up on a couch in his house, except it was not his house, it was a stage set at the O2 Arena, in London, and twenty thousand people were there with him, screaming. His band, the 1975, stood in position among wood-panelled walls and framed family photos, and Healy—skinny, in a close-cut suit and a tie, black curls slicked back behind his ears—rose and dramatically blinked at the lights, took a swig from a flask, and sat down at a piano. Then he lit a cigarette and began to play the jittery riff that opens the band’s latest album, “Being Funny in a Foreign Language.” “You’re making an aesthetic out of not doing well / And mining all the bits of you you think you can sell,” he sang, taking long pulls from a bottle of red wine as the audience roared.....  If you do a show that’s about the duality of your life, is it still Method acting?” he asked between songs at the O2. The house lights came on, and white-coated technicians touched up the band members’ clothes and faces. A tech slammed a clapboard, and they resumed their positions, concluding the meta intrusion."

excruciated consciousness #2 (via a different New Yorker piece, about Taylor Swift and her current Eras tour)

"In 2011, Swift told The New Yorker that she has long been “fascinated by career trajectories”—the idea, as she put it, that “ ‘this artist peaked on their second album. This artist peaked on their third album. This artist peaked with every album.’ ” She went on, “I sometimes stress myself out wondering what my trajectory is.” Swift has traded in this self-consciousness for a self-awareness, one that has likely been facilitated by the therapeutic process of rerecording, and reclaiming, her older works. She has built a tour solely devoted to the idea of a trajectory—that of a career, of a musical identity, of a life—that can be traced cleanly from one “era” to the next. It’s a funny way to reach an understanding of oneself... 

"One of the most surprising elements of the concert was how some of the Swift songs that I’ve always found irredeemably cringe—for example, “You Need to Calm Down” and “Look What You Made Me Do”—were the most exciting to watch live. During the latter, Swift performed with several digital versions of herself and with background dancers dressed in the garb of her various eras; at every show, she picks a different era to hold up a “loser” hand sign to—either a completely random choice, or a genuine reflection of whichever part of herself she hates that day."

The Taylor piece is interesting (as is the Healy profile). It analyses - from a fanatically committed and obsessively consuming Swift-fan's perspective -  the ways in which the Eras Tour is utterly integrated with onlineness and telemediation. Every aspect Instagrammed and TikToked in real time, but also before it happens (you preconsume the tour before you even attend) and immediately after it  happens (reconsumption). A densely spiraling virality of clips and comments and reactions and fan behaviours caught unawares by fans-turned-snoops-turned-amateur-documentarians, then recirculated. 

It ends ambivalently"

"In the days after the concert, I noticed some Swifties posting on Reddit about a new phenomenon: some are struggling with a post-Eras Tour depression, in large part because they went to the show but are unable to remember it. It’s not that they were drunk, or that they weren’t paying attention; they just don’t remember. “It’s strange,” one person wrote, saying that, despite having attended two Eras Tour performances, she could recall only a few details, like Swift’s outfits, “but nothing about me being in that moment experiencing it.” Others mentioned having similar out-of-body experiences and blurred memories. A user named bellahadidpizza, who had also blacked out during the concert, consoled the group by noting that “high sensory experiences” have been known to cause amnesia. (One commenter said the same thing had happened to her during her wedding.) No one had a good solution. But many had returned to consuming footage of the show, hoping it might spark something. As one person wrote, “I’ve done nothing but cling to the videos I took to take me back.”

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

postscript: flashback to 2017's "Look What You Made Me Do' video with its gallery of Taylor Swift "personae" - Zombie Taylor, Dead Taylor, Crazy Rich Taylor, Viper Taylor, Celebrity Taylor, Thug Taylor, Squad Leader Taylor, Vixen Taylor, The New Taylor, Nerdy Taylor.

Bowieism goes K-Mart

"Swift has said that part of the premise of the video is rooted in the idea that, "If everything you write about me was true, this is how ridiculous it would look. It is a satirical send-up of media theories about her true intentions that have little validity. The video begins with an overhead shot of a cemetery before the camera zooms in on a grave with a headstone that reads "Here Lies Taylor Swift's reputation." After that, a zombie Swift, wearing the dress from her "Out of the Woods" music video, crawls out of the grave before proceeding to dig another grave for her Met Gala 2014 self. The next scene shows Swift in a bathtub filled with diamonds, with a necklace spelling out No next to a ring, supposedly sending up tabloid press rumors of past romantic relationships. She is then seen seated on a throne while snakes surround her and serve tea. Swift later crashes her golden Bugatti Veyron on a post and sings the song's chorus holding a Grammy as the paparazzi take photos. She is also seen swinging inside a golden cage, robbing a streaming company in a cat mask, and leading a motorcycle gang. Afterwards, she gathers a group of women at "Squad U" and dances with a group of men in another room. Then, she is seen standing on top of the wing of a plane in an airport hangar, sawing off the wing in half and spray-painting "reputation" in pink on the side of the plane. At the video's climax, Swift is seen standing on a T-shaped throne while clones of herself (from her past music videos, stage performances and red carpet appearances) struggle and fight against each other trying to reach her. The video concludes with a scene of a line up of surviving Swift clones bowing in the hangar while Swift stands and watches on the wing of the plane. The clones bicker with one another, describing each other as "so fake" and "playing the victim". The 2009 VMA Swift clone then says "I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative", resulting in the other Swifts yelling at her to "shut up!" in unison."

Postscript #2 - even more New Yorker coverage of the Eras tour - Amanda Petrusich on "the intense parasocial bond that Swift’s fans feel with her", and specifically the on the "startling intimacy" as well   "mind-boggling inescapability of  Taylor Swift’s latest endeavor—a sixty-date stadium romp" that could end making Swift "a billionaire".

"The scope of the show reinforces the hysterical demands on twenty-first-century pop stars: be something new every time you show up, or don’t show up at all"

^^

"The pavement outside the stadium was dappled with thousands of fallen sequins. Strangers were mouthing the word “slay” to each other. Forearms were wrapped in bracelets featuring Swift-isms spelled out in lettered beads. I was seated in front of two people dressed as fully decorated Christmas trees."

^^

"Swift has for years been a savant of what I might call “you guys” energy, a chatty, ersatz intimacy that feels consonant with the way we exist on social media—offering a glimpse of our private lives, but in a deliberate and mediated way. When Swift addressed the seventy-four thousand people who had gathered to see her, I felt as though she was not only speaking directly to me but confessing something urgent." 

^^

"She has perhaps been unfairly dismissed as too capable and too practiced, an overachieving, class-president type. I’ll admit that I’ve struggled, at times, with the precision of her work. If you’re someone who seeks danger in music, Swift’s albums can feel safe; it’s hard to find a moment of genuine musical discord or spontaneity. Over time, though, I’ve come to understand this criticism of Swift as tangled up with some very old and poisonous ideas about genius, most of which come from men slyly rebranding the terrible behavior of other men." 

^^^

"Swift was recently rumored to be dating Matty Healy, of the British rock band the 1975. Healy is, depending on whom you ask, either an irascible provocateur or a disgusting bigot. Some of Swift’s fans deemed him a racist torture-porn enthusiast, owing to comments he made on a podcast, and groused about him after he and Swift were photographed together....  This is the obvious flip side of Swift’s purposeful cultivation of intimacy. From afar, her fans’ possessiveness appears both mighty and frightening."