The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
4 — Wednesday, February 17, 2021
Kota the Friend moves toward
closure on ‘Lyrics to GO, Vol. 2’
The title is accurate — Lyrics to
GO, Vol. 2 is all about the message
indie rapper Kota the Friend wants
to leave you with. The flow of words
— words of gratefulness, sadness and
love — seems to tumble out of Kota
on this mixtape. Lyrics to GO, Vol.
2 is not as carefully thought out as
his previous album Everything, but
it was released anyway because Kota
has words he needs the world to hear
right now, without delay. His lyrics
stand on their own; there are so many
things to say that there’s almost no
time to form a perfect, catchy beat to
match.
True to Kota’s earlier work, the
rapper’s mental health challenges are
carefully ruminated on as gratefulness
fights to exist alongside them. This
mixtape is a cathartic processing
of these conflicting emotions. Over
pared-back, sunny beats that let the
ease of his flow shine through, Kota’s
direct lyrics provide self-reflection.
His words hold up a mirror to each
listener — we can connect to this
mixtape only if we choose to actively
listen to it. The beats are designed to
give the words the space they need but
don’t do enough to draw the listener
in without a bit of effort. Through his
openness about his struggles, Kota
seems to find closure as the mixtape
progresses.
The starting tracks set the tone for
the mixtape, with their beats made
up of guitar or wistful piano, and
full of grainy fry. In “Luke Cage,”
Kota speaks in the second person,
asking the listener to remember
with him as he welcomes them
into the album. The memories are
a mixed bag. In “Clinton Hill,” he
acknowledges hunger pains of the
past in the same breath he speaks of
his thankfulness. On “200 Dollars,”
his nostalgia takes on a bite as he
considers the gentrification of his
hometown, New York City. He longs
for the metaphorical green grass and
pound cake he describes that are just
beyond his grasp at the same time he
reviles them.
His sadness begins to infiltrate
the mixtape about halfway through.
“Created
everything
from
the
darkness, I still wrote it / I still wear
my heart on my shoulder / I’m still
hopin’ for the best, I’m still awake
when I rest,” he admits in “Broken.”
Kota’s laid-back vocalization of these
difficult words keeps the lyrics honest,
instead of portraying a fabricated
tortured artist. He acknowledges
that life has suffering, but it isn’t
all suffering. Pain fosters growth;
Kota uses it to develop himself and
his music. “Thunderstorm coming,
I sit on the porch and sing through
it,” he tells us on this same track,
acknowledging all the little bits of life
that make it whole. In “Emotionally
Dumb,” he drives home this point by
emphasizing that you can be grateful
even when everything isn’t perfect.
In this same song, Kota drops
lyrics that just about sum up the
mixtape: “But I’m workin’ on it, no
more escapin’ when I’m hurtin’ /
No more self-sabotage, livin’ against
my purpose / More appreciation for
myself when I ain’t perfect / Every
day I get up and grow, that’s what I
chose.”
It is a statement of self-affirmation
that we are all learning to make for
ourselves, and hearing it from others
allows us to share that experience.
He accepts that growth does not
mean everything is instantly better
— it means you want to make things
improve.
The profundity of these statements
makes it seem a shame for them to be
rushed out with not much thought
given to their production. Although
the minimalistic beats give the
listener space to think about what
Kota is saying, they don’t add much.
The lyrics would have a similar effect
being rhythmically read aloud at a
poetry slam — there’s musicality in
Kota’s flow, but not in much else.
And yet, for now, the words are
enough. This probably isn’t a mixtape
that will stand the test of time, but
it emerges right after the close of a
year that knocked us all off our feet
again and again. On “Flowers,” the
closing track, Kota acknowledges
that everybody always wants more
out of life — but right now, this is
what he can give us. He released this
mixtape, even though it is not his best
work, even though it is bare bones
and sounds like a lot of mediocre
SoundCloud rap, because it was one of
those moments when he couldn’t hold
back what he was thinking. There
are times where you finally find the
answer you’ve been searching for for a
while — Kota can’t keep himself from
sharing his.
ROSA SOFIA KAMINSKI
Daily Arts Writer
‘Waiting For The Night Song’ is a flimsy nature fiction debut
Albeit flawed, 2020 was a wonderful year
for debut novels. Some of my favorites — “A
Burning” by Megha Majumdar, “The Best
Part of Us” by Sally Cole-Misch and “Burnt
Sugar” by Avni Doshi, to name a few — kept
me company during endless hours indoors.
Other debuts, however, were less thrilling.
“Waiting For The Night Song,” a nature
fiction debut by Julie Carrick Dalton, falls
into this category.
Dalton’s novel reads like a subdued version
of Delia Owens’s “Where the Crawdads
Sing.” Dalton, a journalist, tells the story of
Cadie, an entomologist who grows up in a
small town in rural New Hampshire. Young
Cadie holds the local woods close to her
heart until a deadly shooting turns her world
upside down. The novel alternates between
the present and the past, following Cadie
and her best friend Daniela as they navigate
the trauma they’ve inherited. The plot deftly
intertwines themes of climate change,
immigration and political polarization to
create a layered and current story.
Fans of nature fiction will love Dalton’s
lingering and thoughtful descriptions of our
planet. “Wind stretched the clouds below her
like raw cotton on a comb, allowing rusty tips
of dead pine trees to peek through,” Dalton
writes when Cadie stands at the peak of a
mountain. And Cadie is just the type of lovable
science geek that fellow environmental
enthusiasts will love. Yet even with these
luxurious descriptions, Dalton’s writing lacks
depth and fails to pack a punch.
Ironic for a thriller, this novel’s greatest
downfall is its inability to effectively build up
suspense. However, Dalton does a sufficient
job of depicting trauma in a realistic and
understandable way. “All of her experiences
and memories were either before or after the
gunshot,” Dalton writes of Cadie. Readers
see how trauma lingers, appearing during
otherwise ordinary moments with an intensity
that transports you back to the incident itself.
Yet, the events of the plot happen suddenly and
without warning. Without suspense, readers
don’t understand the gravity of situations that
are meant to be transformative or traumatic for
the characters.
Similar to the plot, the romance in
“Waiting For The Night Song” happens
quickly and without any significant buildup.
The relationship between Cadie and Garrett,
a child across the lake that Cadie met during
the fateful summer of the shooting, feels
forced. Cadie and Garrett have had a handful
of conversations together, yet when Cadie
returns to her childhood woods nearly thirty
years later, Garrett is suddenly all she can
think about. “I think I’ve been waiting for you
my whole life,” Cadie says, a phrase that was
quite literally hard to read. How absurd this
relationship feels isn’t a consequence of the
character building, but because the plot lacks
a sense of urgency and depth. It’s difficult
to understand the strength of Cadie and
Garrett’s bond when they only met for one
summer at the ripe age of eleven years old.
Despite its flaws, “Waiting For The Night
Song” does have a bright side. Climate
change-themed fiction is a hard genre
to master while retaining an interested
audience, and Dalton does a wonderful
job weaving the acute threat of climatic
warming into the plot. Cadie’s forest is
both depicted as a comforting refuge and
a landscape threatened with fire. “Silence
lived at the top of mountains and deep in
the woods, where the nuances of worms
under soil, insects in the air, trees exhaling,
and animals wooing gave dimension to the
quiet,” Dalton eloquently writes, reminding
us all of the serenity found outdoors. But
when those same woods are on fire, the
landscape is unrecognizable, the flames
depicted as “harmony and melody thrashing
with unrestrained grace” as they hungrily
devour the forest trees.
The dual depiction of the environment
— as both a safe haven and something
under constant threat of destruction — is
a poignant reminder that we don’t have
much time left before many of our local
landscapes begin to resemble California,
Australia or the Amazon. Dalton allows us
to take comfort in our surroundings while
also reminding us how much it would hurt
to lose them. I think of this in nearly every
encounter I have with the natural world — a
peaceful moment walking through a grove
of pine trees suddenly seems more sinister
when I realize this same stand likely won’t
be here in 50 years, when the climate of
Michigan is projected to resemble present-
day Arkansas.
Even with these highlights on climate
change, this novel still unforgivably lacks
in plot and substance. It’s easy to turn the
pages, but the story’s lack of urgency makes
it ultimately unfulfilling. “Waiting For The
Night Song” is a light, easy read, but don’t
expect it to rock your world.
TRINA PAL
Daily Arts Writer
Design by Elizabeth Yoon
Samantha Power in conversation with Laura Dern
Last
week,
publishing
company HarperCollins hosted
an event to help raise money
for local bookstores. In their
timely exploration of the human
experience
extrapolated
to
the universality of the human
condition, actress Laura Dern
and writer Samantha Power
mingled in a conversation that
was not simply an overview of
Power’s life story, but instead a
discussion of the driving forces
at play in her new memoir, “The
Education of an Idealist.”
As
the
former
U.S.
Presidential Ambassador to the
United Nations under Barack
Obama and as someone who is
in many ways legally bound by
public opinion, Power’s memoir
demonstrates
her
effort
to
expose the roots of her fierce
commitment to empathy. She
wants to make you, the audience
and the reader, more aware of
the parts of her life that manage
to defy the myth-making of
American success. She wants
you to know all this because
she’s aware that there’s a chance
it might resonate with her
readers’ lives.
During the conversation, which
was hosted by Literati Bookstore
in conjunction with a network of
local bookstores nationwide as a
fundraising effort, Power worked
ardently to demystify the shadow
life haunting the background
of her success by discussing the
transmission of her idealism
from a patrilineal line down to
her: a transmission mirroring
the
spiritual
guidance
she
offers in the form of a dazzling,
knocked-down
romanticism
for the endurance of the human
condition that refuses to stay
down. Through her resistance
to power structures known to
oppress and marginalize, Power
refuses to rant or lay blame on
individuals.
Rather,
both
during
the
conversation with Dern and in
her memoir, Power turns the
magnifying glass of reporting
on herself. In doing so, she
resists the polarizing idea that
politicians are only interested
in the power encircling their
roles in government. She also
repeatedly
emphasizes
the
importance
of
mapping
the
universal onto the particular,
atomistic
functions
of
the
human in isolation, whether it
be quarantine-induced or the
belief that you are uniquely
alone with your burdens.
In the process of doing so,
she delved deeper into her
personal background than most
politicians and their staffers
tend to disclose outright, even
in the aftermath of publishing
a memoir. Dern, a clear admirer
of Power, magnified Power’s
commitment to empathy and
how it’s manifested in the form
of
a
powerful,
trail-blazing
curiosity.
“That’s not normal (or) innate
curiosity,” Dern observed.
Power
expanded
upon
Dern’s observation — as she
excelled at doing throughout
— by explaining how, when
she was growing up in Ireland,
the constant exposure to her
father’s catalog of narratives
from customers at his pub played
an oversized role in shaping her
empathically-leaning interests.
She further explained that, due
to the vividness of her father’s
storytelling, it felt as if a cast of
characters sat beside the rest of
her family at the dinner table as
she came of age.
Power expressed an avid
appreciation
for
the
moral
integrity
displayed
by
her
father while she was growing
up. “When you’re at the pub,
everyone’s equal,” she said,
referencing her father’s views
on the human condition. “What
people (in the pub) care about is
… Can you tell the story’s arc and
hold an audience?”
Power continued on to say
that, “what (she’s) inherited
from (her father) is the ability
to tell a story and bridge a
distance.”
While
this
type
of
storytelling might be expected
given the framing of a memoir,
what I didn’t expect was the
interpersonal validation shared
between Power and Dern, across
two
disparate
professions,
politics and acting — that of
finding themselves to be the
only woman in a room. Where
the
promotional
literature
of both the memoir and the
event may have streamlined
their experiences as that of
prototypical American success,
Dern
and
Power
seemed
intimately entangled in a more
significant way: Each woman
spoke of the impacts of resisting
repression and silence.
This
segment
of
the
conversation
began
with
Dern asking Power about a
scene in the book where she
is summoned to a meeting
with other women working in
government.
Power
recalled
being initially annoyed by the
perceived disruption of this
summoning but then described
how she reconfigured it as
“one of the most cathartic
experiences of (her) life” while
she was drafting it into the
book.
Another,
personal
throughline Power emphasized
during
the
conversation
dealt
with
the
damaging
emotional ramifications of her
father’s death from alcoholism.
Specifically, Power disclosed
that, despite becoming aware
that it wasn’t her fault through
therapy, she questioned her
own possible role in it. Dern
didn’t shy away from pointedly
asking Power how she managed
to endure the self-interrogation
required for the narration of
her life — the articulation of its
nuances in the writing of her
memoir — in the wake of her grief:
“What I want to understand
is, how did you survive the
guilt of responsibility … How
did you feel such a deep sense
of self and let go of old stories?”
Dern asked, referring to Power’s
mounting sense of guilt after
her father’s death, as well as the
coping mechanisms she utilized
as a witness to atrocity.
In response, Power explained
her initial resistance to the idea
of therapy, as both a woman
working in American politics
as well as a first-generation
immigrant. While she credits
it with her healing, the long
answer, for her, is that the
trauma dealt with in therapy
never really leaves you or drains
away through the cathartic
conversations
had
between
therapist and client. Even still,
she added that if you are lucky
enough to do so, you can conduct
the
energy
constructively.
Power informed Dern that the
guilt of her father’s death was at
the core of her decision to go to
therapy.
The exchange was initially
propelled by the pair’s personal
experiences characterized by a
mutual understanding of what
it means to build careers in
male-dominated
workplaces.
But it was the accumulation of
those same experiences, by way
of what Dern called a “massive
journey” through the political
realm, that ultimately secured
Power’s firm place as a feminist
icon. That is, as a voice that
grapples openly on the page
with the toxicity built into the
work environment.
In the midst of the desperation
to
be
right
that
so
often
defines the modern American
body politic, the refreshing
commiseration between Dern
and Power seemed to channel
their desires, as an actor and
politician
respectively,
to
embrace the microphone and
to speak for the betterment of
the collective through its sonic
force.
SIERRA ÉLISE HANSEN
Daily Arts Writer
There’s
nothing
more
satisfying than turning a key
in the ignition of a well-oiled
car. Well, maybe getting crisp
bills from the ATM, breaking
the
smooth
surface
of
a
freshly-opened jar of peanut
butter or stepping into a
boiling shower after being out
in the cold. There might not
be a true leader of satisfaction
to rule them all, but as I
started my first car early last
month in the parking lot of a
Chelsea DMV, I had never felt
anything like it.
Driving home at 65 mph on
the freeway, I bested myself
yet again: the seat warmer
toasting
my
butt,
hands
firmly on the wheel, I reached
for my phone and turned on
Pat Benatar. This was the
life, man. It’s the small things
after all, right?
Listening to Pat Benatar
sing-yell “We’re running with
the shadows of the night” as
I sped down the highway, I
thought about that unique
feeling of satisfaction that
seemingly
random
actions
create in our daily lives.
Beyond the one-second hit
of dopamine that turning
the radio up might have
spurred, it was Benatar and
her 80s contemporaries that
truly brought me comfort on
that first drive back to Ann
Arbor. I could imagine my
mother doing the same drive
to visit her sisters here at
the University of Michigan,
listening to the same songs
on
the
radio
screaming
down a potholed interstate.
I smiled, losing myself in the
fake drumbeats and earworm
rhythms of the music.
The songs that followed by
Heart, the Pretenders, the
Go-Gos, Wilson Phillips and
the like were cheesy, sure,
but there is truly nothing like
them. In a period dominated
by men with teased hair and
gyrating hips on pyrotechnic
stages, women like Benatar
and
Chrissie
Hynde
were
unabashed in their embrace
of
life
and
love
without
apologies.
You can pretend to hate
“Barracuda,” but there’s no
way you don’t at least know
the chorus to that song. I
didn’t know the song Scarlett
Johansson
sings
in
“Lost
in Translation” was called
“Brass in Pocket,” but I’ve
known the chorus since I was
seven years old.
This music might not be
considered “good taste,” but
it’s really good. It’s music
made for real people, for true
comfort, made to be a catalyst
for joy.
I’m not typically a huge
pop fan either; when I was
13 I would have let Julian
Casablancas of The Strokes
kill me and then said thank
you as a ghost. I still love a
good angsty indie track, and
most of my time as a music
journalist has been focused
on people who have less
than five pieces of colored
clothing in their closets. But
there’s just something so
universal about these 80s
ladies, whether it is their
strength, the catchiness of
every single chorus or their
very tall hair.
Their voices are impossibly
loud, their belts smooth and
the guitar in the background
peppy. Listening to them is
like putting lotion on freshly
shaved legs, like flipping the
perfect pancake. I’m running
out of similes, but you get the
picture.
No matter how emo the rest
of my playlist might get, there
is always a little space for my
anthemic friends. Perhaps I’ll
wear a leotard tomorrow in
their honor.
CLARA SCOTT
Daily Arts Writer
In praise of cheesy comfort anthems