The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, September 19, 2018 — 5A
I always wanted to be Mac
Miller.
He was effortlessly cool, his
cockiness somehow charming
through
his
willingness
to
be
publicly
imperfect.
His
music
was
easy-going
and
kind, an impression confirmed
repeatedly by those who knew
him personally. He possessed
sensitive
indie
proclivities
(e.g. the “Nikes On My Feet”
video opens with a snippet
of
“Wordless
Chorus,”
his
sampling of Sufjan Stevens, his
covers of “Lua” and “First Day
of My Life,” etc). He started as
a fun kid and developed into a
thoughtful and clever lyricist
with a penchant for irreverent
humor
interspersed
with
Hemingway-esque moments of
incisive candor. He was always
rhythmically innovative and
musically-minded. His music
soundtracked my high school
experience and, to a certain
degree, my college experience
so far. He felt like an old friend.
Remembering Mac Miller
JONAH MENDELSON
Daily Arts Writer
SONY PICTURES
Mac Miller died alone at his
home on Sept. 7, 2018, of an
apparent drug overdose.
I’ve spent the last two weeks
listening
almost
exclusively
to Mac’s music, and the main
message I’ve taken away from it
is that hindsight is 20 / 20. His
most recent works in particular
are foreboding: What could
be brushed off before as an
exercise in depression as a
lyrical theme now feel like
obvious foreshadowing. Take
“Rain”: “Sober I can’t deal, I’m
in the corner with my head low
/ Runnin’ from my shadow,
never ending chase / Ease
the pain and the battle that’s
within me / Sniff the same shit
that got Whitney, the high heel
depression / My temple feel
the metal comin’ out the Smith
& Wesson, bang / Say a prayer,
leave my brains on the tile floor,”
or “Perfect Circle/Godspeed”:
“They don’t want me to OD and
have to talk to my mother / Tell
her they could have done more
to help me / And she’d be crying
saying that she’d do anything
to have me back.” The tracks
that hit the hardest, however,
are from the K.I.D.S era, a time
when Mac seemed so carefree
and lighthearted. “Nikes On
My
Feet,”
“Knock
Knock,”
“Kool Aid and Frozen Pizza”
and many others now serve as
morbid reminders that the good
times don’t always last.
Since his death I’ve been
asking
myself
the
same
question: What is it about Mac
Miller’s music that makes his
loss such a devastating blow? I
think it’s that he always seemed
triumphant
in
some
way;
even when he was candidly
discussing his demons, it always
felt somehow inevitable that
he would overcome them. For
him to succumb so tragically
is a grim message. If Mac, a
guy with so much going for
him, can’t beat his own human
failings, who among us can? He
always stressed that he was a
normal guy, especially in his
early tracks like “Kool Aid and
Frozen Pizza”: “I live a life
pretty similar to yours / Used to
go to school, hang with friends
and play sports.” What was once
an inspiring message now turns
bleak.
The title of “So It Goes,” the
final track off Mac’s final album,
Swimming, is a reference to Kurt
Vonnegut’s
“Slaughterhouse-
Five,” in which the phrase
“so it goes” is repeatedly used
when someone dies. For this to
be the title of Mac’s final track
is unfortunately fitting. Mac’s
final Instagram story, posted
hours before he was found dead,
was the outro to “So It Goes.”
His final tweet, later deleted,
was “The end of So It Goes is
so beautiful man. I told Jon
Brion to play the ascension into
heaven and he nailed it.”
The phrase “so it goes” is often
misinterpreted as an expression
of passive acceptance, a shrug of
the shoulders. To the contrary,
Vonnegut used that phrase
to convey the way in which
words are often not capable of
expressing the raw tragedy of
death. Instead, the reality of the
situation is numbed through
cliché fatalism. The repetition
of the phrase draws attention
to how much pain is buried
beneath stoicism. It is not a
positive message.
Mac’s death is not poetic,
it is sad and meaningless and
real. He once said “I’d rather
be the corny white rapper than
the
drugged-out
mess
who
can’t even get out of his house.
Overdosing is just not cool.
You don’t go down in history
because you overdose. You just
die.”
So it goes.
Rest in peace, Easy Mac with
the cheesy raps.
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
A man with a mask shaped
like a crow’s head met us when
we arrived at the scream park,
lugging our sleeping
bags,
fresh off the golf cart that had
brought us from our car. I’d
already quietly predicted that
the golf cart might unironically
be the most fun part of the
night
for
me,
and
when
the
crow-man
approached,
wielding a staff and peering
inscrutably at us down a sharp
red beak, I froze. He was the
first “monster” we’d met.
“You guys signed the waiver,
right?” he asked us.
Oh
God!
I
thought.
Somebody nodded yes.
“Good! That means I get to
hug you!”
He enveloped two of us
in a hug. I wasn’t sure how
to react. Was it meant to be
friendly? Uncomfortable? He
kept hugging us for a minute
although we didn’t really hug
him back. Uncomfortable must
have been the goal.
When my friend pitched
us the idea — one night of
“horror
camping”
at
the
Scarefest Scream Park in New
Haven, Mich., where we were
guaranteed to be terrorized
for 13 hours straight at a
campground in the woods — I
thought she was joking. Every
step of the process was twofold
for me: Not quite wanting to
go while still agreeing, pulling
up thrilled to see the festive
searchlights and torch-rimmed
park
while
simultaneously
yearning to backtrack and
find an Airbnb somewhere.
We really are those idiots, I
kept thinking. Signing up and
paying money to get terrorized
for a night, waltzing into a
forest where we know we’ll get
attacked, joking about it.
All of it was like that:
excitement
virtually
indistinguishable from dread.
I’ve been thinking about this
line a lot lately. In the spirit of
fall (and of my whole horror-
obsessed
self),
I’m
taking
an English class focused on
popular horror, and last week
we talked about why anyone
would ever enjoy something
that’s
specifically
designed
to disturb or frighten them.
I tried recalling some of the
theories to my friend while we
waited in line for the haunted
hayride (the least terrifying
attraction by far, and the one
we both felt most equipped
for), but could only remember
a few. There was the idea that
horror engages our curiosity
and fascination, the notions
of being thrilled or vindicated
by empathizing with either
the attacked or the attacker,
and
the
gender-normative
“snuggle theory,” which my
class seemed to unanimously
decide was the strangest.
As the night wore on, we
noticed a lot of recurring
characters.
There
was
the
young man with a face caked
in skeletal grey makeup, who
seemed to dislike all four of us
in a fair, controlled sort of way.
There was the nun in the terror
maze whom we later saw in
the late-night scavenger hunt
who was dressed scarily but
who actually gave us helpful
advice whenever we talked to
her. In the scavenger hunt we
met a boy covered in makeup
who had us do the “Thriller”
dance in exchange for a clue.
The crow-man’s presence was
woven in and out of our night;
every couple of hours we’d
cross paths with him again,
ask each other how the night
was going. He was a benign
presence. Oh, good, I started to
think, after the second or third
encounter. It’s our friend the
crow-man again.
By 3:00 a.m. or so, toward the
end of the scavenger hunt, I’d
begun noticing a thread: The
horror of the night was tied
inextricably in with comedy.
Even now I can’t completely
figure out why — there’s no
simple reason, and it’s not like
the event was marketed as
comedy, or as anything other
than strictly horror. But we
were very open to laughing,
the same way we were open to
being scared. Maybe it was the
same door inside of us that was
open to both of them. It was
weirdly freeing. The monsters
made fun of us when we made
missteps or took wrong turns,
and we made fun of ourselves,
too. That giddy feeling you get
when you’re nervous stuck
with us all night, making us
giggle probably more often
than we jumped and screamed.
For all the giddiness I
mentioned before, it was still
unquestionably
scary;
the
two were linked. I clutched
my friends and held hands
with them. We were a team,
the Dream Scream Team as
one of them had labeled our
group chat beforehand. We
jumped at fake gunfire, tensed
at chainsaws and flinched
when monsters crept up on
us. A couple of times I started
shaking
and
couldn’t
will
my body to stop, which was
frustrating, but really more
mystifying than anything.
I’ve
always
loved
scary
stories. I think horror is a
rich and fascinating subset
of literature, and of culture
in general. One of my friend’s
persuasions for why we should
go camping was, “It’ll be like
being in a scary movie for a
night!” Which sounds horrible,
sure, but also kind of awesome,
right?
Who hasn’t sat in a group
of their friends, debating the
order in which they’d be picked
off in a horror movie? Who
hasn’t watched “Halloween”
or
read
“The
Shining”and
thought, What would I do if
that were me? They’re hero
stories, and everyone wants
to think they’d be brave, but
there’s no way to know unless
you’re there. Maybe you want
to be Sidney Prescott or maybe
you want to be Carrie, or maybe
you want to be both, either,
just as long as the night ends
with you covered in blood, as
long as you’ve changed, you’ve
emerged the real you, you’ve
gone through something.
I was afraid that “living
through” a scary story wouldn’t
be as much fun for me as
reading or watching one from
outside. It would be too much
for me, I wouldn’t be able to
take it. To be sure, there were
parts of the night I opted out
of; our experience could have
been much more extreme. But
overall, I had a terrific time.
It felt liberating, exhilarating.
Everything was elaborately,
enthrallingly ridiculous. So a
clown is running after us with
a chainsaw? Whatever, we
paid for this, didn’t we? The
scary crow-man? Yeah, he’s
Living inside a horror
story, for the night
DAILY LITERATURE COLUMN
LAURA
DZUBAY
Summer Reading: Sedaris
and a new way of thinking
I have a theory: For every
person there is one book that
changes everything, a novel or
memoir or poetry collection
that blows their world wide
open. One book to which
we can point and be able to
say, “After that everything
was different.” For me that
book is David Sedaris’s 2017
collection, “Theft by Finding:
Diaries (1977-2002).”
Good books give us fresh
perspectives, new ways of
understanding
the
world’s
contradictions
and
entire
languages through which to
filter them. The best books,
though, are the ones that
change not just how we speak
and think about the world
but what of our lives we deem
worthy of critical attention.
I began “Theft by Finding”
on a muggy July afternoon this
summer. It was a two-week
loan from the Boston Public
Library, with a faded green
clover sticker on the spine
indicating it was from the new
books section. I’d never read
any of Sedaris’s other works. I
picked it up on a whim because
I liked the cover art — big red
block letters in a pleasing font.
My
lack
of
purpose
or
expectation made it especially
thrilling to have found this
book, a manifestation of the
kind
of
life-altering
luck
that one imagines but rarely
experiences
in
such
vivid
clarity. “Theft by Finding”
is something very special,
perhaps
because
Sedaris
himself is so extraordinary.
It’s not his fame that makes
the
book
so
remarkable,
but instead his dedication
to seeing the world as it is;
ridiculous, pain-filled, joyful,
incomprehensibly
bizarre.
“Half the people I know have
dead animals in their freezers:
reptiles, birds, mammals. Is
that normal?” Sedaris ponders.
Or: “Today the teacher told us
that a ripe Camembert should
have the same consistency as
a human eyebrow.” His dutiful
recordings of strangers are just
as engaging: “Man ordering at
Butera’s
deli/prepared-foods
counter: “Hey, give me one
of them chickens that spins
around.”
Sedaris’s sharp sense of
irony
anchors
the
entries,
whose subjects range from
his career as a professional
mover
to
the
emotional
aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
He is constantly ready for a
tender takedown of nearly
everything. “While listening
to a country music station, we
heard a talk / song narrated
by our flag,” Sedaris writes.
“I flew proudly at Iwo Jima
and the blustering deserts of
Kuwait, anywhere freedom is
threatened, you will find me.”
Even his literary success
is
addressed
with
this
keen, sincere logic of life’s
incongruity. “Roger Donald
called from Little Brown to say
that he would like to negotiate
a
two-book
deal,”
Sedaris
says. “To celebrate, I bought
a denim shirt, and thought it
amazing how quickly one’s life
can change. I never thought I’d
want a denim shirt.”
I
am
enthralled
with
Sedaris’s eye for the strange,
and for how he manages to
juxtapose his own trials with
the oddities he comes across.
“Today I saw a one-armed
dwarf carrying a skateboard.
It’s been ninety days since
I’ve had a drink,” he writes.
Nothing gets a pass; the whole
lot of life is presented raw,
spread-eagle for his dutiful
examination.
After
reading
“Theft
by
Finding,”
the
world seems that way to me,
too:
unimaginably
strange,
teeming with things to notice
and write about.
It is all here. It always was. I
just had to look.
MIRIAM FRANSISCO
Daily Arts Writer
BOOKS NOTEBOOK
our friend. At one point in the
terror maze I urged my friend
forward,
saying
something
along the lines of, “What are
you afraid of? Getting scared?
That’s going to happen no
matter which way we go,” and I
felt an immediate small rush of
pride. Even this one moment of
impatient rationality made me
feel very smart and competent,
in control, like maybe I didn’t
need to be so terrified all the
time — maybe it was up to me.
The
next
morning,
we
wandered dull-eyed out of our
tent, working on an hour or two
of sleep. The concessions tent
was doling out a sugar-heavy
complimentary breakfast, and
while we sipped our orange
juice and ate our doughnut
holes, we surveyed the scene
that had so terrified us only
hours before. The turnaround
of the hayride was dusty and
flat; the haunted castle was
clear-edged in the pale dawn,
no longer a threatening cave
of shadows. Already I felt a
little nostalgic as we finished
our breakfast, said goodbye to
the crow-man while we packed
up our rental tent. It was a
clear morning and everyone
was happy (we survived!) yet I
already missed the thrill of the
night before. I missed the story:
the constant expectation, the
emotion, the question of which
characters we could trust.
Yet I still felt giddy. We left
the campsite still marveling
about how different it looked,
about how bizarre it was to
see all of this left over in the
daytime. It’s a wonder what a
little darkness can do.
I have a theory:
For every
person there
is one book
that changes
everything, a
novel or memoir
or poetry
collection that
blows their
world wide
open.