The Middle of Nowhere #6

Welcome back to The Middle of Nowhere. I’ve been thinking about a lot of music but none more than Mavi’s Laughing so Hard, it Hurts. But I first wanted to write about Twin Peaks.

An Ode to Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks helped save my life. I try not to say that in some flaccid way people use when something is vaguely comforting in its moodiness. I’ve grown awfully intimate with death, what it means, how it ravages everything and everyone in its wake. I also have spent the last year and a half slowly losing my mind and my sense of self. Mornings would be spent in the mirror with a deadened stare, hardly recognizing the void of a man there. I was still there but in the most literal way possible. Depression and anxiety mummified me, no clue of what to do and how to do it in a world seemingly destined to fail. I’d walk around my neighborhood with vicious visions of myself hanging from palm trees, jumping off buildings to my demise. Then I started to lose the people around me. I lost one of my best friends, my granddad, and my mother in a year’s span. In between all of this, I lost my love for writing. I lost my purpose. I couldn’t win.

I searched for answers for a long time. What was the point if I was bound to lose again? I cursed the sky, questioning whatever deity that chose to listen, “why would you take them away from me?” The grief was maddening. But Twin Peaks gave me the grounds to grieve the same way the townspeople mourned Laura Palmer. With the loss I endured, I realized that the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer didn’t really matter. I never agreed with David Lynch’s hardened position not to tell who did it; his followup film to the series Fire Walk With Me isn’t nearly as harrowing without watching Laura learn who the evil deity BOB inhabited. The mystery might’ve been the hook of the show but discovering the culprit doesn’t negate the aftermath of losing Laura Palmer. What’s essential is comprehending why it happened, how women like Laura are exploited and abused by the world around them. How does Twin Peaks ever truly grow without interrogating the environment around them?

I’ve read and heard people separate Twin Peaks and its sequel 25 years later that Twin Peaks is inherently darker, that the original setting was more magical, maybe a little more naive. The Return does lack that sort of 80s soap opera sheen the original had visually and those goofy grins characters like Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) shined brightly. The Return is far more direct in its cutting analysis of America as a general concept. This all feels dismissive of what the OG Twin Peaks was to me. Twin Peaks was always a dark, twisted place, it explicitly shows you this. No matter how much Coop and Sheriff Truman (Michael Ontkean) sip on coffee, there was never a utopian Twin Peaks before or after Laura died. Don’t get me wrong, I think Twin Peaks is an outstanding comfort watch but it’s beautiful in the same way every place is distinctly beautiful. The hard part is finding love and beauty in a world that continues to fail us and the people we love.

If I hadn’t watched Twin Peaks, I would probably still hold resentment in my heart for the losses I’ve endured. I’d still battle my mind in a war to stay sane and productive in a world that will always fail. I would never have achieved peace with the way life has brutalized me. It blooms with empathy, for Laura and for anyone that has been failed by this cold world. It’s an escapist dream not ignorant or unaware of the world around it. It had the courage and love to try to fix something that could never truly be fixed. All we are is in pursuit of something better, some semblance of peace. Twin Peaks helped me come to grips with how the world failed my mom the same way it failed someone like Laura Palmer. It helped me find my love for writing, for art, and for life. It helps me everyday to find peace of mind.

Mavi- Laughing so Hard, it Hurts Review

There’s a distinct difference between living and surviving. Survival is merely a measure of perseverance. Survival is bracing and wincing for the inevitable pain that we are destined to experience. It’s day by day, minute by minute, moment by moment, ready for persecution because it’d be foolish to expect less. Existing today requires mere survival. God forbid you ever take a break to process the traumas and griefs in the world. Truly living is never settling for the excruciating grind of surviving. It involves healing and interrogating the pain. Living is never letting the vicious tides of life dictate how you exist everyday. It takes a long time to get past mere survival. Mavi’s album Laughing so Hard, it Hurts feels like living.

The difference between Mavi’s music from his sensational 2019 debut Let The Sun Talk and his latest is a lighter color palette. To thoughtlessly pull him into the bounds of doom and gloom would hardly give him the credit and nuance his music offers. On “Self Love,” he’ll shrug, “I ain’t give a fuck ’til my lungs had to fight for air,” only to be saved from the dark depths of depression when his therapist told him to “fight whether I like or not.” There are flickers of light but so much of it revolves around the fluctuating willpower to survive everyday. The various hues of gray overtake the strongest of spirits. Rather than slouch in the overcast, Laughing so Hard, it Hurts grapples with a hard truth: the sun is gonna shine regardless.

That’s an important truth Mavi seems to have accepted on his quest for healing and clarity. It’s not some permanent solution; no amount of money, success, or just regular ol’ good days could never make the scars disappear. “Last Laugh”, Mavi raps, “Found out welts make wit,” a powerful sentiment that the tough is what makes the good more satisfying. Mavi’s unrelenting honesty makes the pain easier to navigate. “Hemlock” lies some of his rawest, most brutal writing, “Spent weeks just lashing out, discovered when I write these small addictions be draining the color out my life. I keep a blick, but can’t escape the thought of what get left behind.” A song later, he embraces that he’ll still be on his way, despite knowing that God can take him any time he decides. Perhaps it could be viewed as hopelessness for himself and the world around him, but there is profound power in realizing you can’t win every battle, no matter how hard you try. You can only truly live if you give yourself the liberty to fail.

The Cut

• I’ve been absolutely enthralled by the Glorilla experience. I’ve seen the countless memes, her grunts in comparison to Rick Ross, the neat categorization of her music and presence in relation to the other women in rap. All of it is noise; she just fuckin’ rules man. She reminds me so much of Young Dolph, effortlessly funny and magnetic, consuming every inch of real estate on beats. Pairing her with Cardi B on “Tomorrow” was a layup, someone who’s similarly alluring when she isn’t on the most manufactured music imaginable.
• Lucki’s nasal on Flawless Like Me has never sounded geekier. Someone rapping about addiction should not sound this nerdy.
• Chicken P’s “Money” is one of my favorite discoveries of the year. Usually, producers will labor the hell out of samples until it’s just easily recognizable gunk. “Money” jolts 50 Cent’s “Ski Mask Way” with adrenaline and the result is invigorating. I’m really invested to see where P goes from here.
• Sickboyrari’s “Night Walker” sounds like being in the crosshairs of a drone strike. The contrast of Rari’s dead-eyed affect with the nerve-wracking screech in the beat makes for a truly electrifying single.
• I revisited Kendrick’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers recently. I hesitate to call it good. I do appreciate that more than anything, it (mostly) feels honest. For one of the biggest artists in the world to be as raw and barren as he is on the album, it’s something I respect more than anything. But I still don’t love it. It can often read super self impressed which makes for one of the funniest listens you’ll come across this year. People often opt to anoint these rappers instead of merely letting them be so they tend to rap with this distorted sense of profound confidence in their dumbest statements. But to be flawed in public, I can’t help but empathize there.

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