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writtenontheflyleaves's review
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
Pop Song: Adventures in Art and Intimacy by Larissa Pham 🌹 ad/#gifted by @serpentstail
🌟🌟🌟🌟
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🎨 The concept: In this lyrical and insightful book of essays, Pham explores the complex relationships between the self, love, intimacy, and loss, traversing the landscapes of different art forms to make meaning out of her own tangled emotions.
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Larissa Pham has been someone I’ve admired for years. I’ve mentioned on here before that her essay on summer crushing rewired my brain when I read it a few years ago, and there is more of what I loved in that essay here. Her writing is vulnerable and interesting and sharp; she has a willingness to not only articulate messy or intense feelings but to take them seriously, to find them beautiful. She has this sweeping gaze that I just love, one that takes in Louise Bourgeois and seemingly-inaccessible modern art, but also Tumblr, Frank Ocean, Instagram, life on a screen - I’ll be referring to the essay “Camera Roll” frequently/forever.
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One of the central questions of this book is about intimacy and surrender. Can we be truly intimate with another person without surrendering control? Is that surrender an annihilation of the self or something else? When does surrender not lead to intimacy at all? Pham navigates these questions smoothly and beautifully, and I related hard to the obstacles she came up against in answering them - when she wrote about trying to let go of the narrative she was constantly writing of herself in her head, I felt seen as though an actor I was watching on a stage had looked out of the scene directly at me.
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🌞 Read it if you loved The Lonely City by Olivia Laing, or if you are in the contemplative late stage of a breakup, where it hurts like a bruise you still compulsively want to press.
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🚫 Avoid it or seek detailed trigger warnings if you’re sensitive to discussions of eating disorders or sexual assault.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
-
🎨 The concept: In this lyrical and insightful book of essays, Pham explores the complex relationships between the self, love, intimacy, and loss, traversing the landscapes of different art forms to make meaning out of her own tangled emotions.
-
Larissa Pham has been someone I’ve admired for years. I’ve mentioned on here before that her essay on summer crushing rewired my brain when I read it a few years ago, and there is more of what I loved in that essay here. Her writing is vulnerable and interesting and sharp; she has a willingness to not only articulate messy or intense feelings but to take them seriously, to find them beautiful. She has this sweeping gaze that I just love, one that takes in Louise Bourgeois and seemingly-inaccessible modern art, but also Tumblr, Frank Ocean, Instagram, life on a screen - I’ll be referring to the essay “Camera Roll” frequently/forever.
-
One of the central questions of this book is about intimacy and surrender. Can we be truly intimate with another person without surrendering control? Is that surrender an annihilation of the self or something else? When does surrender not lead to intimacy at all? Pham navigates these questions smoothly and beautifully, and I related hard to the obstacles she came up against in answering them - when she wrote about trying to let go of the narrative she was constantly writing of herself in her head, I felt seen as though an actor I was watching on a stage had looked out of the scene directly at me.
-
🌞 Read it if you loved The Lonely City by Olivia Laing, or if you are in the contemplative late stage of a breakup, where it hurts like a bruise you still compulsively want to press.
-
🚫 Avoid it or seek detailed trigger warnings if you’re sensitive to discussions of eating disorders or sexual assault.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Eating disorder and Death
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