Saturday, October 17, 2009

important development for historicizing this blog and also about turnin me on


like always ive been away for way too long and i apologize but i want to take this opportunity to perform two actions one of which ive been sitting on for quite some time and another that has just come to my attention the latter of which will go first and so as some of you know i took it upon myself to repost all of the previous blog entries a bit ago which effaced certain built in modes of historicization by which i mean say for instance one wanted to know how long i spent between my fourth and fifth posts at this current juncture there is no way to do it however with the surfacing of this picture anyone can now retroactively discover certain facts about the state that this blog existed in before the revamp now the second thing which i want to discuss is the song turnin me on specifically the opening lyrics and their repetition fly as hell swagga right brown skin poppin now the question of repetition itself is very important insofar as it accounts for a beautiful series of subtle turns and dips and almost balletic movements in the song lollipop off the album the carter iii but in this particular case the beauty is one of appropriation which is another meta interesting phenomenon as you all probably know by now but in it the repetition of that first line serves to indicate that the role is being assumed and it does so in a move apparently dissimilar but deeply related to the one in the song with t pain so that has to be taken into account but more importantly for my purposes in this moment the twisting out from under the falsely positive or empowering nature of the song preceding it one of many sung by female pop artists who are trying to align themselves more with alanis morissette than fergie but in adhering to the formula that it sets for itself limits the possibility of it saying anything interesting by circumscribing itself within a format which only allows her to express satisfaction in the non material or chivalrous and dissatisfaction in the grossly material which is repeated very often in cultural moments so being caught in both this formula and in the broader cultural circular logic seem to be the fate of this song along with so many others but that repetition that crystal clear moment of appropriation and insight slash dredging up from the interpretive to the immanent it is in that beautiful moment that the song escapes from that necessarily being its totality and instead becomes something rife with potential where meaning is made to splinter and reconfigure kaleidoscopically

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