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hi! this is my reviews section. here, i write about media i like and things i've explored recently. this can include art, plays, short stories, collections, albums, general music ....... anything i really really really liked enough to write about!

this is also to keep me accountable for actually getting into things. a lot of this is interpretation or just the way i personally feel about it, so please dont get mad at me if you dont agree. in fact, id be more than happy to hear exactly why you dont agree (civilly. we are probably both civilized people)

feels like you, whirr

this is the first whirr album i listened to in full (i think), and i have to say, i'm super impressed. 'feels like you' manages to swaddle me in love and warmth, smotheringly sweet. it's like being in an initially toxic relationship, kind of. it's sweet at its most wonderful moments- so sweet, you almost can't imagine anything else. so sweet it's addicting. you never want to leave. you never want to be anywhere else. the good moments sweep the bad moments under a rug, and by the time you're stuck in the iron, unyielding arms of the album, you've already forgotten anything bad even happened. the bad moments are scary by themselves. they're enough to make anyone crumble, even the strongest emotionally and physically. you are entirely at war with yourself and your lover; every good thing you've ever had is cheap and faulty now. everything you ever known is nothing but the cut of a scalpel. facing them and making it through to the other side yields a glorious triumph over your own faults and your partner's. it's sunny, but not without its work.

this album brings up a lot of dense, packed feelings within me. it encases me in its sound, isolating me from the outside world and trapping me in a cocoon of suffocating, soothing noise. it is trapping. it's like watching a car crash. it's beautiful. it has caught me entirely in the wreckage. i LOVE IT!!!

i've been listening to a lot more of whirr's work recently. this specific album pokes out to me because of the pulling, pushing, swaying motions it takes on. while some say whirr's previous work is repetitive, i can't help but disagree. i think they play with atmosphere, something i've always admired and looked for in music.

their sound here is absolutely marvelous. they capture this weird sense of yearning very well. i'm trapped in a web of something i can't put a name to, but have always experienced.

very well done!

raw blue, whirr

'raw blue' is a narrative follow-up to 'feels like you.' 'raw blue' exists in dreams, where you wander between the waking world and unreality. it is not transparent, but more of a dim fog that covers you like that carpet between good and bad things; it is noticeable, ever-present, ever-visible, but not a real obstacle. it obscures your vision, preventing you from seeing anything else. still, you have to walk.

where 'feels like you' is soft and romantic while still tugging at melancholic yearning, 'raw blue' is akin to its album cover: spinning solitary, hopelessly independent. 'raw blue' is lonely. it's knowing something isn't good for you because you know better, but it aches to separate. 'raw blue' is a cold hole in your heart. its dreams paint hopelessly empty, snowy, concrete cities, but also beautiful meadows and lights at the end of tunnels that only seem to be getting further out of reach.

soundwise, the band's sound only gets better. songs like 'enjoy everything' have wonderful musical ornamentation (a muted trumpet in this case), making the spinning feeling improve even more. the atmosphere crushes you, smothering you in sweet sound. 'raw blue' is reminiscing on a goodbye kiss. it's feeling the warmth of your lover in your bed, smelling their scent and hearing their laughter, long after they've left. it is a staticky kiss, pins and needles of hypothermia freezing skin that rejects close. songs like 'swing me' pulse in and out, pain throbbing and aching like a heart pulsating outside of the body.

in heat lies the chill of sweat, like in 'crush tones.' in the cold lies the warmth of hypothermia (enjoy everything). the comparison between 'raw blue' and 'feels like you' has been likened to yin and yang. indeed, there is presence of love and warmth in 'raw blue;' bliss soothing the listener into a lull of euphoria, heady and sweet on the tongue. and 'feels like you' is not scarce of its scary agony, claws tearing deep into flesh and ripping where it hurts. i scratch what i said about 'feels like you:' the inclusion of trumpet on the ending track was utter genius.

dreamtigers, by jorge luis borges.

"A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his face."
Dreamtigers, Epilogue, p.93, Borges.

dreamtigers, to me, is the apex of postmodernism. first, i'm in love with the structure: part one is comprised of prose poetry/short stories/flash fiction/whatever you wanna call it, and part two is comprised of verse. borges' style here feels paradoxical, contradictory, absurd and perplexing: he is frustrated but peaceful, restless but tranquil, knowledgeable but emptyheaded. all of his work stares directly at reality and crushes it beneath his fist; deems it the oppressor by likening it to spain. borges aims to escape to the world of metafiction; fiction about fiction, living inside of a dream about a dream. still, this restlessness and dissatisfaction resonates where borges admits the written word is incapable of describing reality. all of fiction and word is perfect: everything has already been written about before. every phenomenon has already been documented. every aspect of human nature has already been written down. and yet, it cannot perfectly capture the real world, because written word emerges specifically from people and people are simple creatures who cannot grasp the complexity of the world. borges lives inside the world of contradiction and paradoxes and absurdity, and it is exactly why this collection works so well: it governs itself in the logic of dreams and their natural state of symbology, of complexity, of references, of intertextuality. it weaves tapestries out of tapestries and flouts its incoherence and imperfections and fear. i love dreamtigers.

one specific device i like seeing borges employ is writing people writing about others; he has a specific collection, museum, where he organizes fictional writings of the past exploring the human condition across time. regret, pride, existential dread, dissatisfaction, rage, and love. nothing more to be said about it, im just generally a huge fan of it.

i also admit, me reading the collection is very, very, embarrassingly self-indulgent. (it does, in fact, draw on the works of dante, which i am so embarrassingly partial to and adore. i sat there fanboying). borges has a very captivating way of describing the human condition as performance and culture as eating itself alive. it deals with creation and destruction as mutation and distortion; things blend into each other, lending to a dreamy feel as the stories and poems mutate symbols (specifically in the moonand distort the truth of reality into fantasy that tastes sweeter and goes down easier. this fantasy is necessary because language cannot describe reality. dreamtigers grapples with original language and the ability of language to describe real events; fearing distortion of the beauty of events he witnesses through the simplicity of language (he likens it to a mirror) he draws in on himself, becomes terrified of reality because he craves to understand it and cannot. the image that exists in his mind will never be part of the real world because the world is more complex than we can comprehend. our language directly impacts our ability to understand and communicate about reality: is there, then, a 'perfect' language that perfectly describes the world? borges argues 'no.' this work might have convinced me.