The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
14 — Monday, August 31, 2020 

Not 
a 
month 
before 

quarantine started, my Taylor 
Swift™ snake ring snapped in 
half. After anxiously twisting it 
on and off my finger for nearly 
two years, the silvery metal 
fittingly relented in therapy. 
Bulky, obnoxious and glittery 
green — I had come to think 
of it as a secret signal (“I knew 
you were a Swiftie!”) and a 
conversation starter. “Oh,” I 
began when anyone asked me 
about it, “I’m a really big Taylor 
Swift fan.”

So it’s hard to overstate the 

unconscionable joy and sheer 
terror I felt Thursday morning 
when I saw that Taylor’s eighth 
album, 
folklore, 
was 
going 

to be released in less than 24 
hours. Pre-album release rituals 
out the window (listen to all 
previous albums in consecutive 
order, wear all possible Taylor 
merch during release week, etc., 
etc.), all I could do was take a 
few selfies with the sepia-toned 
folklore™ filter on Instagram — 
and wait. 

To 
anyone 
well-versed 

in 
Taylor’s 
meticulous 

release routine, folklore is an 
interruption. Her lead singles 
are expected to roll out three to 
four months in advance of each 
new album, which are released 
every two years in autumn, and 

followed by a year-and-a-half 
long tour. Right on schedule, 
if it wasn’t for COVID-19, I 
would have been preparing to 
attend LoverFest this week, 
the accompanying festival to 
Taylor’s 2019 effort. 

But more explicitly, folklore 

is an interruption full stop. 
The pastel palette of Lover 
has been washed over with 
a 
melancholy 
gray. 
Sugary 

anthemic pop replaced with 
atmospheric 
strings, 
piano 

and acoustic guitar. Taylor has 
always been a poet, but with a 
subdued backdrop her lyrics 
have room to shine. While I’m 
not sure that one of the biggest 
pop stars in the world can, by 
definition, create something 

“alternative” or “indie,” folklore 
is certainly the closest Taylor’s 
ever come. With the help of The 
National member, songwriter 
and producer Aaron Dessner, 
and longtime collaborator Jack 
Antonoff, every song on folklore 
sounds like it could be made 
into a movie. The drama of love 
and loss is Taylor’s wheelhouse, 
but she’s never addressed these 
same themes with this kind of 
weight or maturity. 

Take “my tears ricochet” for 

example. Any Swiftie worth 
their salt knows the significance 
that its placement as “track five” 
holds — the fifth track of any 
Taylor album is its emotional 
compass. From her self-titled 
debut to 1989, they were the Big 

Heartbreak Songs. reputation 
broke the mold with the hopeful 
“Delicate,” clueing fans in on 
the fact that she and her current 
boyfriend were in it for the 
long-haul. And on Lover, “The 
Archer” gives insight to Taylor’s 
struggle with loving herself. 
This time around, track five 
invites the listener to a funeral. 
Potentially Taylor’s. 

“I didn’t have it in myself 

to go with grace” she admits, 
backed by ghoulish “oohs” and a 
gloomy keyboard, “ ‘cause when 
I’d fight you used to tell me I 
was brave.” 

‘Folklore’ and intimate isolation

KATIE BEEKMAN

Daily Arts Writer

Review: ‘How 
I’m Feeling Now’

DYLAN YONO
Daily Arts Writer

This piece is a part of a 

series on “Art during COVID,” 
an exploration of art forms to 
keep our idle minds creative 
during this pandemic. With 
many of us at home, our minds 
have ample time to wander, 
wonder and create. This series 
highlights 
accessible 
and 

immersive art forms to both 
produce and consume during 
the pandemic months and 
beyond.

Summer graciously lends 

us picturesque lazy evenings, 
and I use them to create art. 
Sitting on my deck with a 
packet of oil pastels, or on 
my driveway with a palette 
of watercolors, is my way 
of winding down against 
the background of a warm 
summer twilight.

I usually let my mind 

wander as I create, and 
recently I’ve been thinking 
about what exactly art is. 
Even dictionary definitions 
are ambiguous, and rightfully 
so: How can you define 
something that encompasses 
such 
a 
diverse 
range 
of 

personal expression? If I had 
to define it, I would settle for 

“a form of expression that 
holds meaning to the creator 
and the viewer.” Under that 
label, the Black Lives Matter 
protests I’ve been attending 
fit squarely under the art 
umbrella.

I attended two protests last 

week, one in my hometown 
of Canton and the other in 
neighboring 
Northville, 

towns that are 69.6 percent 
and 
95.2 
percent 
white 

respectively, 
according 
to 

the 
U.S. 
Census 
Bureau. 

Despite their proximity to 
each other, both protests 
were different — I marched 
with a diverse crowd in 
Canton, but stared out into 
a sea of white in Northville. 
Regardless of demographics, 
in each protest I felt a pull to 
those I walked with — a sense 
of solidarity, as if the world 
was crumbling but we were 
creating something beautiful 
out of the ashes. 

Protests can be a form 

of communal art, often the 
most powerful of art forms. 
Community-oriented 
types 

of art, such as collaborative 
murals 
or 
community 

dialogues, can be a poignant 
way to create bonds within 
a 
neighborhood, 
and 
its 

message is heard with more 
vigor than art created by one 
person. Everyone has a piece 
to add, a role to play, a story to 
tell. I love the conversations 
that arise when I create art 
with a friend or loved one 
sitting by my side. It seems 
natural 
to 
share 
such 
a 

gratifying experience with 
another person.

Protests 
are 
making 

national headlines in part 
because of the sheer number 
of people turning out and 
the 
enormous 
geographic 

range they cover. I’ve lived 
in the suburbs of metro-
Detroit all of my pre-college 
life, and I’ve never seen 
protests like these before in 
my own hometown. I feel an 
undeniable connection with 
the strangers I march side 
by side with, even though I 
know next to nothing about 
them. Linked by invisible 
threads, 
protesters 
create 

a 
visible 
movement, 
a 

passionate piece of art that is 
now receiving international 
recognition. This intangible 
art 
can 
be 
turned 
into 

something concrete as well, 
such as the wall of protest art 
now surrounding the White 
House, but the intangible is 

just as valuable.

Activism 
isn’t 
unknown 

territory for me. I was raised 
by 
a 
family 
of 
political 

activists, 
and 
I’ve 
been 

campaigning 
for 
political 

causes around my hometown 
before I was old enough to 
vote. But today’s Black Lives 
Matter 
movement 
feels 

different to me. Half of my 
battle is getting someone to 
listen and be agitated enough 
to care about topics close 
to my heart, like voting or 
the environment. I struggle 
every November to get my 
friends to the polls, and many 
of my attempts to engage 
my friends politically end in 
frustration. Now, I finally feel 
the tide turning. We’re angry, 
but eager to channel this 
exasperation 
into 
change. 

The art of protesting allows 
us to express this frustration, 
and each local march adds 
to the larger, international, 
illustration. 
There’s 
still 

mountains of work ahead of 
us, but, as I see open ears and 
accepting hearts around me, 
in my mind a small part of the 
battle is already won. 

The arts as a form of protest

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

How and why 
we save the arts

TRINA PAL

Daily Arts Writer

ZOE PHILLIPS
Senior Arts Editor

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

COVID-19 
has 
given 
the 

phrase “bedroom pop” a whole 
new 
meaning. 
High 
profile 

musicians across the world have 
flocked to video conferencing 
and streaming platforms like 
Zoom and Instagram Live to 
perform and chat with fans more 
than ever before, often from 
the comfort of their bedrooms. 
British singer and experimental-
pop superstar Charli XCX took 
this ascending intimacy between 
artist and listener and cranked 
it up to the max. Her new record 
how i’m feeling now was recorded 
and produced at lightspeed — all 
from scratch over the course of a 
month — and Charli documented 
the process live all along the way. 
Fans were able to tune in as she 
wrote lyrics, filmed music videos 
and collaborated with pop music’s 
most 
cutting-edge 
producers, 

providing an intimate look into 
the synthesis of an electropop 
gem.

The project began on April 6 

when Charli announced it on a 
Zoom call. She simply said she 
was starting a new album from 
scratch, promised to open up the 
creative process to her fans and 

set a release date just over a month 
away. And thus Charli and her fans 
embarked on a grand pop music 
experiment, every day between 
announcement and release being 
a part of the journey to how i’m 
feeling now. Charli modeled 
in “photoshoots” (pictures her 
boyfriend took on his phone in 
their bedroom) that were shared 
with and edited by countless 
artists to make alternate covers 
for each new single, ranging from 
professionally designed album 
covers to humble fanart. She 
live streamed with an eclectic 
bunch of musicians, celebrities 
and public figures including 
Paris Hilton and 100 gecs. And 
maybe most impressively, Charli 
stuck to the arbitrarily imminent 
finish line she set for herself: The 
polished, full-length LP released 
without delay on May 15.

Making 
how 
i’m 
feeling 

now was not just a cute idea 
or an experiment — it was an 
unbelievable success. The final 
album is a weirdly 21st-century 
product 
of 
a 
pandemic, 
an 

unbelievably relevant concoction 
and nothing short of brilliant.

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

It’s said every theatre is 

inhabited 
by 
at 
least 
one 

ghost, and contrary to legends 
propagated 
by 
Halloween, 

these ghosts do not like the 
dark. Thus, when the curtain 
falls and a theatre’s house 
empties, an employee will leave 
a light — a ghost light — to burn 
onstage until the performers 
return. Across the world, ghost 
lights have remained on and 
untouched for months. But the 
lives of performers continue 
offstage, 
each 
day 
adding 

pressure to find performance 
spaces on digital platforms. 
What 
happens 
when 
the 

ghost lights keep burning and 
we’re left with a stage wholly 
mediated 
by 
posts, 
shares, 

comments and likes? 

In 
late 
May, 
superstar 

ballerina Maria Kochetkova 
posted a ghostly photo of the 
Berliner 
Ensemble 
theatre 

on her Instagram: An aerial 
shot of what was supposed 
to be the audience’s thicket 
of red velvet seats was now 
an 
otherworldly 
scene 
of 

deforestation. 
Every 
third 

or 
fourth 
seat 
had 
been 

unbolted and ripped from 
the ground, leaving socially 
distant pods of one and two-
seat arrangements scattered 
across the floor. The photo 
was originally posted on the 
Berliner’s Instagram account 
with a caption that translated 
to “the new normal,” but 
Kochetkova’s thoughts proved 
more striking: “Why are the 
theaters forced to do this,” she 
wrote, “and not the airlines?” 

The 
controversy 
began 

immediately: Some praised 
Kochetkova 
for 
making 
a 

political 
statement, 
others 

accused her of advocating for 
the violation of health codes. 
In reality, her question fell 
into neither category and the 
curiosity was well-founded. 
Like in theatres, airplane 
passengers sit in seats next 
to each other, wrestling over 
elbow room and breathing 
each other’s exhales.

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

Photo from Wikimedia Commons