#another thought

[tormentsaint]

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[kellys-sweet-thing]

I fucking love making decisions and then justifying them by being like, "Yeah, Kelly Nickels would be proud of that." Or "Yeah, Nikki Sixx would've done that."

[stoicmike]

Every thought you can have leads to another thought, and so it goes…like a train that has an infinite number of stations, but no destination... -- Michael Lipsey

[grrl-operator]

Byrne, Glass, Ginsberg on Arthur Russell 'Another Thought' EPK

[foolhearts]

“Which birthday was your favorite, and why?”

“30th, cause I had lots of friends there, and yeah we had a good party. I don’t celebrate my birthday normally but 30 I thought, special occasion. I got really, in a good mood, if you see what I mean. And the next day I had the hearing at the FIA, in Paris, beacuse of the Baku incident. You know when I drove into Lewis because I was angry that he stopped, blah blah blah.”

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Something I've thought a lot about in connection with Louis' promo, and that maybe underlies (consciously or unconsciously) some portion of people's frustration with it is that the story Louis has chosen to tell about himself for a while now has a lot of the elements and flavor of a character arc, essentially. From the high of the band, to the lows of the hiatus and what followed for him personally, to him finding himself and his self-confidence as a solo artist. I don't think there's any problem with telling that story, but the structure of a story like that suggests movement, and suggests an end. He's found his self-confidence as a solo artist, now what's the new thing he's going to do with that self-confidence. Obviously, real people's lives don't work like that, it's not like you just get over your struggles and then it's done and you move on totally, but in the telling of it as a public narrative, I can sympathize a bit with people who feel like we've been at the end of this story for a few years (I think the version of the narrative we're hearing now is more developed for sure, but not at base very different from what it was with Walls). And that makes me curious about why Louis continues to choose to tell the story that way. Is it just that that's how he still sees himself, still at the end phase of that story and not ready to move on to something new? Or, is there some part of it attributable to the pandemic? Like, this was kind of the narrative he wanted for the documentary all along, and in a non-pandemic world it would've come out in late 2020, early 2021 and served as like, a cap to the end of that personal journey so he could move on from it, except then the pandemic happened and now that's been stretched over two more years? I'm clearly just speculating, I don't know the answer, I doubt we can or will ever know the answer, but I do find it interesting to think about.

I think this is incredibly insightful anon - and a really important point.

I agree that Louis has been telling the same arc for a while now and there is something unsatisfying about it as an observer. You describe the arc very accurately - and why it's unsatisfying.

And here's what's particularly interesting to me - it's unsatisfying even though from this distance it's clear that it's reasonably true. Figuring out that he wants to do music and releasing his first singles was a step on the way. Walls was a step on the way. The livestreams were a step on the way. The tour was a step on the way. Faith in the Future was a step on the way. Everytime he's told that story he has been noticeably more confident and more sure of himself as an artist than he was before. But that doesn't make it interesting.

I don't really think this is attributable to the pandemic. If he has really planned a documentary that long, the best time to release it would always have been after touring with or after the album. There would have been one fewer round without the AWFH festival livestream - but the livestream story was much more specific anyway.

I think it's much more about the demands of promo and the difference between people's lives and stories. One of the key aspects of promo is that it requires to present your life in a tidy digestable way - a story that people can understand. A narrative of growth is a great thing to present, and because growth is very slow - it makes sense people tell it for the first time before they're anywhere near done.

Harry and Liam do similar things in their promo - they tell the same story over and over again. (I'm interested in what Niall's doing with this promo round, although I haven't caught up yet). I do think that they do so for slightly different reasons. I think Liam is actually in a loop between different sorts of behaviour - and frames one part of the loop as recovery, but is actually going through a loop over and over again. I don't know about Harry - I find it hard to believe any of it's true and think it's largely what he thinks a rockstar would be doing and feeling (but I've no idea if that's accurate). Where as I think Louis is getting more comfortable with himself. But the reasons that they're all telling this story over and over again is the demands of hte promo cycle.

I think there are two related questions that you've maybe jumped ahead of - the first is does Louis see this as a problem? And also is it a problem? I don't know the answer to either of these. I don't know how it lands outside of a very narrow selection of people who are a bit frustrated (but most understand their frustration through a different lens). A lot of artists aren't very good at telling stories about themselves, certainly not in the rapacious way that the internet demands. Louis may not have many other stories he wants to tell about himself at the moment.

I don't know the answer the two questions that began the previous paragraph - and I am interested in what other people think.

[princeklassen]

Arthur Russell - Another Thought Promo Cassette