The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
10 — Wednesday, March 17, 2021

There is a kind of clarity about oneself 

that comes with empathy. Something about 
examining yourself in the way you respond 
to others, in the emotional exchange that 
is shared when you feel keenly what those 
around you are feeling, that provides clarity. 
Alice Phoebe Lou, as she discussed in an 
interview with The Daily, is an empath, 
something apparent in her music. The 
South African-born, Berlin-based free spirit 
smiled while ruminating on this, giving a 
nervous laugh that worked hard not to give 
away the seriousness of her words. Her 
catalogue of music reflects this balance; 
it is tempting to categorize her music as 
folk, save for its luminescent touches of 
interstellar space. Her music creates space 
in a way that is reminiscent of Jamie Drake, 
and her voice shines similarly to another 
blonde otherworldly being, Joni Mitchell. 
And yet, her music escapes the genres that 
would pin it down.

Glow, her new album, was a change 

in sound, in part due to it being recorded 
entirely on tape and because it’s full of love 
songs. “Especially with this album, what I’m 
trying to do or communicate with the songs 
is being able … to try and help somebody get 
more in touch with their own emotions and 
their own feelings, which I feel is a gift,” 
Lou told The Daily. She described music 
as a catalyst for seeing within yourself, as 
everyone is at different stages of connecting 
with themselves. The new album is languid, 
not rushing the listener into or out of love, 
but allowing them to explore the feelings it 
inspires at that moment in time.

Intriguingly, she had a specific goal 

for her listeners with this new work — to 
make them feel. However, there is a careful 
balance between her musical needs and the 
listeners’ expectations. 

“I used to focus too much on the listener,” 

she admitted. “As I was writing the songs, 
I was adjusting things, or censoring things 
or making things more palatable, based on 
like, wanting the listener to be happier with 
the final product, or … anticipating what 
somebody wants from you, rather than just 
giving what you want.”

That has changed. There is certainly a 

sense of newfound self-confidence on this 
record. In fact, this LP is a total change in 
sound from her previous two. Although the 
songs are mostly about another person — 
as love songs often are — they are entirely 
Alice. To be able to connect to your own 
truest self through your love for another is 
a special thing. And finding the right way to 

express it? Well, that’s the challenge. 

In the past, Lou explained, “I was always 

looking to, like, one of the men in the room 
to kind of … take over and, and steer (the 
music).” Now, however, she has found an 
important reason to trust her own musical 
intuition. “It’s my story. It’s my thing,” she 
asserts. How can she truly write about what 
she feels, if she is not more vocal in how it is 
executed?

This aforementioned dip in confidence 

arose mainly from her lack of professional 
training musically. Lou began as a street 
performer, 
busking 
with 
her 
guitar 

(although she casually mentioned that 
she was first a fire dancer). Everything 
in her musical journey happened quickly 
without giving her the space to master 
her instrument. Even though there are 
times when she feels self-conscious about 
this, it also works to her advantage. This is 
especially so when hanging with her band, 
who are all trained musicians. 

“We learn from each other and bring 

different things to the table, because the fact 
that I don’t have a musical education also 
helps me see a bit outside of the box of like, 
this is how a song is supposed to sound,” she 
told The Daily. 

Her atypical way of looking at music is 

part of what creates her singular sound. “It 
becomes this kind of unique sound, and this 
unique thing, my band is able to kind of, you 
know, create the worlds in which we live, 
because of … the things that they’ve learned 
more technically from music,” she said. “So I 
feel like we learn so much from each other.” 

This reciprocal education was vital to an 

element of her music that has always pulled 
me in: its playfulness. Even when her music 
covers serious topics, it always has a corner 
of a smile beneath. At its most joyful, it feels 

like a laugh that simply can’t be repressed — 
something too good to be true, so much so 
that it evokes a physical response. 

“I started becoming very serious about 

everything, and everything had to be like, 
a serious thing,” she admitted, in the midst 
of praising her band for saving her from 
this mindset. They reminded her that the 
goal is to enjoy, and that mistakes can be 
laughed over. This sort of easy happiness 
has underlined her music before, most 
notably the play on orgasm noises in her 
breakout song, “Something Holy.” Now on 
her new album, love takes on a more quiet 
seriousness, and a notable queerness. “Dusk,” 
the lead single from Glow, croons to a loved 
one, using female pronouns to refer to the 
individual. Lou wishes to leave this song up to 
interpretation, keeping the kind of love being 
sung about ambiguous. She likes to keep her 
songs and herself undefined. 

“I don’t like to make the meanings too 

obvious or didactic,” she ventured. “Because 
then it kind of breaks the magic of like, your 
own agency of interpretation.” 

Lou makes her music for herself, to 

express her experiences. But once it is out 
in the world, there is a beauty in it that it 
gives everyone something different. It is not 
her song, she emphasized, but hers and all 
listeners. This is the importance of art in our 
everyday lives — the meaning we get from it. 

“I feel like sometimes I just have this 

desire for my music and my songs to be 
like a friend that can relate to those parts of 
yourself,” Lou mulled over in our discussion 
of self confidence. 

“If maybe you live in a family or a 

community or an environment that doesn’t 
serve you in that way and doesn’t actually 
allow you to … take away the shame.”

Alice Phoebe Lou’s Glow is out March 19.

Basement Arts’s production of 

“Jesus Corner,” written and directed 
by Music, Theatre & Dance freshman 
Samuel Aupperlee, is as splendid as it is 
strange. The one-man show, starring 
Music, Theatre & Dance senior Kieran 
Westphal as narrator, draws from 
real-life accounts of people reckoning 
their sexual identities with their 
Christian faith. The subject matter 
is inherently tricky to grapple with, 
yet the joint efforts of Westphal and 
Aupperlee prove to be an artistic tour-
de-force.

The production uses documentary-

style theatre — much of the content is 
drawn from real-life interviews with 
people who identify as both Christian 
and LGBTQ+. These perspectives 

are shared through a “Mister Rogers’ 
Neighborhood” style children’s show, 
in which the unnamed narrator 
interviews 
puppets 
about 
their 

experiences.

The use of handmade puppets to 

explain Christianity, homosexuality 
and where they intersect, is one 
fraught with potential for either 
extraordinary failure or extraordinary 
success. After all, we rarely associate 
religiously-motivated 
homophobia 

with sock puppets. Nevertheless, 
“Jesus Corner” pulls it off.

Westphal’s peppy delivery and 

colorful puppets contrast sharply 
with the heavy subject matter. The 
protagonist named Narrator presents 
us with three puppets periodically 
throughout the show. One of them, 
Pastor Meaning, is a snake puppet 
in a pastor’s uniform (the biblical 
irony isn’t lost on me). He appears 

periodically to explain doctrinal 
truths, especially those outlining 
what it means to be “good.” The 
show starts out with a relatively 
friendly tone, the presentation seems 
good-naturedly 
cheesy. 
Narrator 

explains to the “boys and girls” that 
God’s love is unconditional, but that 
homosexuality is a sin. 

The first half of “Jesus Corner” 

is intentionally evasive in the way 
it discusses the struggles of being a 
gay Christian. The puppets do what 
puppets do best: They sugarcoat. 
The sermon repeats the mantras 
that many a pastor has reiterated 
in the past decade, those detailing 
the inherent conditionality in God’s 
love — “Hate the sin, love the sinner” 
rhetoric. There is a palpable tonal shift 
when Narrator’s puppets One and 
Two detail their experiences coming 
out to their parents. The dialogue 

starts out lightly, but quickly takes 
a grim turn when Two’s parents 
decide to ignore their homosexuality 
completely. “They say come as you 
are, but they don’t really want that,” 
Two says.

As the puppets tell their stories, 

the manner in which the Narrator 
portrays 
the 
puppets 
becomes 

increasingly erratic. It is heavily 
implied that he too is struggling with 
his sexual identity, which becomes 
evident as the characters of the 
puppets fade away. 

The stage directions detail that the 

puppets become “clearly inanimate,” 
and it becomes evident that the 
Narrator is completely alone. The 
performative aspect of the puppets is 
an interesting technique, as it helps 
the audience differentiate between 
the 
performative 
heterosexuality 

the Narrator finds himself forced to 

practice and the reality of his sexual 
identity. The distinction between 
meaningless 
statements 
about 

tolerance and the harsh reality of 
ostracization makes itself visible in a 
way that’s hard to watch. 

“God loves you, just not as you are” 

is a mantra that is intensely hurtful, 
but terribly familiar to many who 
grew up Christian. It’s the mantra 
that drove me away from religion 
altogether. It’s the reason I wake up 
in a cold sweat, terrified of a God I’ve 
tried my best to renounce. “Jesus 
Corner” hits particularly close to 
home because it speaks to not just 
my fears, but the fears of anyone 
who has dared to exist outside of 
the straightlaced (no pun intended) 
Christian ideal.

Perhaps the most powerful motif 

in this show is that of crucifixion. 
Each time the Narrator deviates 

from his performance of “good 
Christian heterosexuality,” we hear 
the scintillating clang of a hammer 
on nails. This cacophony serves as 
the soundtrack for the Narrator’s 
final breakdown, in which he states, 
“Sometimes all you can do is make 
some noise and let God know how 
you feel.” We are left with the final 
image of the Narrator with his 
wrists outstretched, stained with red 
marker, offering himself up as a final 
atonement.

Even in its COVID-19-altered 

form, 
“Jesus 
Corner” 
astounds. 

The oscillation between anguish 
and erraticism on Westphal’s part 
is excellently portrayed, and the 
design concept is simple yet effective. 
Aupperlee’s script mixes the bizarre 
with the biting. It hammers at the 
gruesome reality of homophobia, and 
the nails run deep.

I am a deeply impatient person. I 

try to keep the worst of it subdued, to 
at least play at maturity, but it comes 
out in the way I love spoilers (more 
often than not I seek them out myself) 
and the way I watch the clock tick 
up by seconds during the last minute 
before my shift is over at work and the 
way I average 87 miles per hour on 
the expressway so that I can get to my 
destinations sooner.

Because I’m impatient, I always 

want to skip ahead. If a plot point in 
a movie is taking too long to develop, 
I’ll open the Wikipedia page and read 
what happens before the movie can 
tell me itself. I did it just last week, 
watching the Bride struggle to get out 
of a coffin in “Kill Bill Vol. 2.” I’m not 
sure when it started, but I think it goes 
back a ways. I tell people I just don’t 
like surprises, but what I mean is that 
I don’t like to wait.

I was a sophomore in high school 

the first time I saw the film “Her.” 
At the time, no one had written a 
comprehensive Wikipedia synopsis 
for it yet, so I was forced to let myself 
be surprised. Over the course of the 

film, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix, 
“Joker”), a lonely writer going through 
a divorce, and Samantha (Scarlett 
Johansson, “Marriage Story”), his 
ultra-intuitive, all-knowing operating 
system who speaks to him through 
an earpiece, form an emotional and 
sexual relationship. He’s a human, 
and she’s a computer program. The 
premise works better in its execution 
than it does on paper (I swear), and 
upon first viewing, I found myself 
wanting to reach for my phone and 
look for a review, a blog post, anything 
that might answer all of the questions 
I had about this movie.

By now, I know all of the answers. 

I love the movie so much that 
Samantha’s lines about how “the 
heart’s not like a box that gets filled up; 
it expands in size the more you love” 
have practically written themselves 
in my DNA. Even before quarantine, 
the film was a comfort I returned to 
often. During quarantine, it resonates 
because it’s about connection and 
disconnection with technology as a 
medium — the ways we can relate 
to each other through it but also the 
ways it limits our interactions. It’s 
easy to identify with Theodore and 
his desire for love and closeness in any 
world, with or without a pandemic, 

but his relationship with someone 
he can’t touch — someone he can’t 
even communicate with without the 
technology — hits harder now than it 
did before.

But the more I watch the movie, 

the more I think that I identify most 
with Isabella (Soko, “The Dancer”), 
a woman who Samantha enlists to 
act as a middleman, to be the body 
Samantha can never have and give 
Theodore what she thinks will be 
more genuine experience during sex. 

Samantha is quick to clarify 

that Isabella is not a sex worker 
because there’s no money involved; 
she just wants to be a part of their 
relationship. Isabella is a conduit, but 
she also comes into their relationship 
with the assumption that she’ll be 
an equal partner. When she enters 
Theodore’s apartment, her arms wrap 
around him immediately, borrowing 
Samantha’s 
emotional 
familiarity 

with him and translating it into the 
physical, even as Samantha guides 
them. It’s Samantha’s voice in their 
ears, but it’s Isabella who has the 
bodily agency. She doesn’t really know 
either of them, but she’s able to act as 
she does, and she might even believe 
she does. When things inevitably go 
awry and Isabella leaves sadly, she 

tells Theodore and Samantha that she 
will always love them. Even though 
he’s the one to call the whole thing 
off and send Isabella home, insisting 
that it just didn’t feel right, I think 
Theodore is more like Isabella than he 
realizes. 

Theodore works for the fictional 

beautifulhandwrittenletters.com, 
a 

company that writes personal letters 
for other people. In one scene, he tells 
Samantha about writing love letters 
for a couple named Roger and Rachel 
for eight years and how he included 
a detail about Rachel’s crooked tooth 
in a letter because he saw it in a photo 
of them. Theodore, like Isabella, is an 
intermediary in other people’s love 
lives, a guest meant to manufacture 
or facilitate intimacy when his hosts 
can’t find or make it themselves. His 
familiarity with them is artificial, but 
he pretends to know them deeply in 
order to replicate their love back to 
them.

There’s something there that I 

can understand. It’s not so much the 
in-betweenness or the way other 
people use Theodore and Isabella to 
communicate love when they can’t 
do it themselves; it’s the immediacy of 
knowing another person. 

When I meet people, sometimes 

I want us to act as we’ve always 
known each other. I’m impatient. I 
want to skip over the pleasantries, the 
hesitation, the shyness, so I can get 
straight to the familiarity, the warmth, 
the kinship. Forget the exposition, 
give me everything that comes after. 
Let me know everything about a 
person and let them know everything 
about me in the second I see them, so 
I can love and be loved in an instant. 
I’m impatient. Drop me somewhere 
near the center of a relationship, past 
the earliest stages but far from the 
end. Let me walk into an apartment 
and wrap my arms around someone I 
didn’t know at all yesterday but know 
deeply today. Make me like Isabella 
and Theodore, but remove the artifice.

I know it’s a lot to ask, and I know 

people just don’t work that way. The 
practical parts of me rail against 
my inability to let go of this kind of 
idealism, the same idealism that 
makes the idea of love at first sight 
so appealing to kids and hopeless 
romantics. It’s the practical parts that 
keep me from leaning completely 
into my fantasies of seeing and then 
immediately knowing other people, of 
cutting through the politeness to get 
to the closeness. I play at maturity by 
holding myself in one spot and trying 
to root myself there.

I’m trying to get myself to enjoy 

the exposition. I’m trying to rein in 
my eagerness and remind myself that, 
sometimes, good things take time. 
I’ll probably keep spoiling movies for 
myself, though. I’m still impatient.

‘Her,’ connection and impatience

Alice Phoebe Lou finds clarity in her latest, ‘Glow’

‘Jesus Corner’ hits the nail on the cross

KATRINA STEBBINS

For The Daily

DARBY WILLIAMS

Daily Arts Writer

SOFIA ROSA KAMINSKI

Daily Arts Writer

Andrea Rojas

Warner Bros. Pictures

Oh, what a joy — to sit down in a cafe 

and embrace the ambience. Filled with an 
assortment of chairs, knickknacks and eccentric 
personas, sitting down in a cafe for a poetry 
reading is probably in my top 50 things to do if 
you like to read and have a coffee addiction. So 
that’s why I was so excited to drop in on Café 
Shapiro’s first night of student readings, tuning 
in a little differently than how I imagined, with 
my computer on my lap and a bag of Takis by my 
side. Nevertheless, the night had some amazing 
talent that made my hair stand on end and my 
eyes tear up just a little bit, even if it was only 
Takis dust in my eye.

Café Shapiro is a 20-plus year tradition 

created and hosted by the University of 
Michigan’s Library that originally was a student 
coffee break as a part of the University’s “Year 
of the Humanities and Arts.” For two weeks, 
University undergraduate writers read aloud 
selected works, ranging from poems to op-eds. 
Although the first installments have come and 
gone, there are still several more chances to see 
student writers read their work.

One of the first highlights of the first night was 

LSA sophomore Nicole Tooley. Tooley’s poetry 
was the perfect balance of natural and processed 
sugar. Her poem “Those Divine Cows” captured 
childhood in all of its pinky swearing, Kool-Aid 
drinking and cow dung-smoking glory. Maybe 
cow dung isn’t the first thing that comes to mind 
when you think about childhood nostalgia, but 
this story resurfaced a really niche memory for 
me of those field trips you take to that one lonely 
farm or petting zoo off the highway (we all know 
the one). Tooley’s use of childhood imagery and 
sweet, soft cadence created an airy story of 

youth. She captured the sappy love and distilled 
it into a syrupy poem that stopped my heart in its 
viscous nostalgia.

Next on my list of favorite pieces from 

the 
night: 
LSA 
senior 
Dylan 
Gilbert’s 

“Appointment.” It was a chilling poem, focused 
and clear. Gilbert’s poem consisted of a dialogue 
between a patient with saltwater in their 
lungs and a doctor who thinks anything but. 
The juxtaposition of such an obvious ailment 
makes the doctor’s unwillingness to hear the 
patient that much more upsetting. Gilbert was 
able to use this dialogue to address the blatant 
disrespect that Black women face when seeking 
help from America’s healthcare system. Gilbert’s 
voice is clear, and while other readers often felt 
disengaged in their readings, Gilbert brought 
the scene to life with her stunning performance.

Another standout writer from the night was 

LSA junior Malin Andersson with “The Night 
Farmer.” Speaking as someone who definitely 
had a curiosity for astronomy as a kid and still 
does today, a poem about a farmer keeping a 
field of stars sounds like the perfect Pisces, 
sun-inspired Studio Ghibli film. However, 
Andersson’s juxtaposition of the farmer’s 
sparkling cosmic light and the artificial sterility 
of hospital lights provided a somber note to the 
poem’s otherwise whimsical style. Ultimately, 
Andersson’s work felt like the kind of poetry you 
read on a happy rainy day — joyous, with notes 
of melancholy.

All the writers brought an amazing 

assortment of original work to the cafe, and it 
was an absolute pleasure to listen in on some 
of the University’s best writers. Though the 
reading was without the more cringy staples 
of a coffee shop’s poetry night, I was better off 
getting to see students in their homes and in 
their element, with me sitting cozily in mine.

Divine cows, salt water and a little night 

farmer: Café Shapiro’s opening night

DARBY WILLIAMS

Daily Arts Writer

Design courtesy of Caitlin Martens