on THE WANTING
some thoughts on caroline polachek's album "Desire, I Want To Turn Into You"
In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting a series of five newsletters on some of my favorite musical albums. This one is about Desire, I Want To Turn Into You.
There is something I feel rising up within me sometimes: for the past few years it has appeared in the earliest hours of the morning, my heart pounding and waking me up for no reason discernible to me, adrenaline rush as the rest of me tries desperately to get back to sleep. It’s also appeared in the rush of cool, kind wind that arrives with springtime, with the yawning, lazy, returning heat of the sun I’ve missed forever, for years, for decades, for my entire life and the lifetimes before it. It appears in the window when I’m in the last subway car and I look out behind us at the dark tunnel, seemingly endless. It appears when I watch movies about places I haven’t seen myself, it appears when I hear the right song at the right time, it appears when my old terrier of a dog suddenly rises up, full of energy, and claws at our sliding glass door to go bark at some animal he hadn’t cared about before, excited and undaunted. It appears whenever it wants. It appears when I cry, when I fall in love.
I’d gone, yesterday, to a figure drawing session downtown with a friend, and the whole drive there I was kind of scared I’d fall asleep from exhaustion and die in a horrible car crash. I was that tired. I’d worked all day. I’d worked all my life. My dad asked me if I’d be okay to drive. Traffic was bad; it took over an hour to get there, and I’d spent a lot of that hour listening to Caroline Polachek’s new album in a fugue state, hopeful because I hadn’t gone to in-person figure drawing for almost a year, probably, or maybe more, and I’d gotten into the habit this past month of doing absolutely nothing other than what was absolutely necessary on my schedule. This album had become a sort of lifeboat for me, at that point, and I’d spent the past few weeks poring over it and feeling that thing within me stretch out long, its maw opening slowly, gradually, a time-lapse I couldn’t perceive in real-time but when I played the footage back, well, I saw, I noticed THE WANTING.
I believe in fate: I know that Caroline Polachek named her 2019 album “Pang” after those adrenaline rushes I also get in the middle of the night. I couldn’t tell if my excitement about all these musical breakthroughs was triggering my body, she says, like I was manufacturing drugs internally. As for me, I’ve viewed them as fits of anxiety that usually happen when I have a lot on my mind (often). I open my eyes and my heart is pounding like I’m running. I don’t know what to do about it. I believe in fate: I know that Caroline studied in Boulder, Colorado, near where I live, and then went to NYU, studying art, then lived in New York for a long time. I feel that, girl. I grab for that string. I like coincidences. They comfort me. They remind me I’m real. Not singular. They get me excited. I believe in fate: I listened to her album from front to back for weeks, or years, I’m not sure, and I WANTED, I wanted. And then I go to this figure drawing thing, and I have this moment where I think I’m hallucinating because in the midst of that funny brand of indie music that they always play at those things there was “Welcome To My Island”, playing in a silent room with around thirty people in it, Caroline screaming in that way she does in the beginning and I sat there and thought, There aren’t really words for this sort of thing. A small moment, insignificant when expressed to others, but one where I felt that maw open its jaws completely, wind rushing in as the world got blown open wide and I felt I would die with what I felt in my palms, behind my eyes. There aren’t really words for this sort of thing! But I’ll try. Caroline crawls towards the sand: I get down there with her. THE WANTING!
I wish I was in Sicily. I wish I was even sitting in the subways of New York, again, because I WANT and I want. I have WANTED since I was young- I can’t really remember a time I didn’t. Do other people not desire? I’ve always thought. Of course they do. Do other people not desire like I do, I then amend. I am often see-sawing between two conclusions- from wondering if this desire is toxic, a detrimental all-encompassing relationship and if I should just give it up, accept the moment, live in peace, stop getting on my hands in knees on the subway floors with my headphones on, screaming about it; or, you know, say fuck it and- DESIRE, I WANT TO TURN INTO YOU!
I think this album lives in a specific mania. It doesn’t name anyone in particular in its narrative as the object of desire- it feels as if we’re truly living in that feeling of want, of grasping. To me, it’s a pulling, clawing feeling. It’s a bit desperate. It’s intensely emotional. It’s about death, and starvation in the face of deep, carnal hunger, and then its vice versa, and it’s about pleasure and Dionysian notions and hedonism, I think. Not in a bad way. I think Caroline weaves hedonism into a tapestry of sunshine and isolation and mourning and motivation. A lot of it is perfect for someone like me, who struggles between choosing an old, sleeping god of fate and soul-related peace or the idea that this world is fucked, so I might as well not give a fuck and let pleasure swallow me whole. By this I mean that I sometimes wonder if I should spend my time pushing for something better and good and new, which is tough work, or if I should spend my time riding the wave the world gives me, giving up on it altogether, which is also tough work. I suppose Caroline figures out an intersection of these two things. I suppose it does not have to be one or the other.
I love “Bunny Is A Rider”. She describes it as “a very direct manifesto of my being decidedly unavailable … being offline and off grid, I think that’s the sexiest thing ever.” I’m not really someone thinks about being offline or off the grid - I’m a specific sort of artist, I live online, I’d lose a lot without it, unfortunately, tragically - but I’ve always wanted it. I gave up on that WANT, years ago, but sometimes it creeps back into my psyche for a moment and I see glimpses of it, that longing for something cleaner. That’s the best I can describe it. Something cleaner. I want fresh air. “Bunny Is A Rider” is a clean sort of song; Desire, I Want To Turn Into You is a slick, smooth album that somehow manages to still feel raw and vulnerable and spur-of-the-moment.
When I imagine going off the grid, my brain usually conjures up images of dense natural environments, like overgrown forests or some remote place in Iceland. It’s not that I want to live in a cabin in the woods, or whatever, it’s that I want to sit on a rock in the middle of a storm in some fishing town and feel the waves almost reach out and take me with them. You know? The sublime. I don’t think Desire, I Want To Turn Into You is about the act of going to a new place or even the ideation of wanting to go to a new place in particular, not exactly. It’s less about the specific thing you want, though that’s there, too. No, it’s about THE WANTING. It’s a cerebral album and to me it’s not quite about the tragedy of being in a subway car and escaping through the music in your headphones- it’s about that flash, that pang of a moment that happens when you literally feel as if you’re crawling on the sand. It’s fleeting. It’s VIOLENT! It’s EVERYTHING! I know I keep talking about the album cover. It’s just so good, okay.
There’s this New Yorker feature where Caroline says she “became obsessed with a fake Marianne Williamson tweet, Photoshopped to say ‘Everything we want will require unfathomable violence.’”
She told me, “I started thinking about how to re-harmonize myself, and my music, with the reality that there is a destructive side to everything, with the recognition that you are mortal, that you cannot save the world, that there are greater forces that you submit to.”
The album tackles this violence, I think. It’s not a pure WANTING. Is there a pure wanting? A wholesome sort of desire? I suppose I’m not as interested in it. The greater forces. The realization, when you go through enough, that the world is kind of fucked up and really hard to live in, but that it also has things that are worth living for, yes, yeah. In the face of unfathomable violence, we find unfathomable desire (tenderness, longing, hope). I am obsessed with this desire, tucked somewhere dark and warm and humid but that is the key to a large part of the human condition. Every day something horrible and irreversible happens. I don’t know, but I believe!
It’s a cliche thing, wanting beaches when you don’t have them. A universal symbol of longing. I grew up in landlocked states. I was fixated on the ocean as a kid as a source of fascination and future career options. Ha! The beach, and the boulder I roll up the hill so I can “live by the beach”. I don’t like that feeling I get when I think too hard about the boulder, whatever, so I fall into that manic, flying state of WANTING. It’s cool. I’m wearing black to mourn the loss of innocence, and that’s all right because it hides the dirt and hides the wine. Well! Central to the album is fun. Bacchanalian fun, but fun nonetheless. “Sunset” makes me feel at home. “Sunset” is warm and has this faint undertone of mourning, but it gallops on with hope and love and lust and it’s great. “Smoke” is probably about Caroline’s experience living near Mount Etna as it erupted, and again nature shows itself in the music, a wailing, expansive figure. The volcano is a recurring entity throughout the album. Perhaps there is an object of desire in the record after all: natural, inevitable destruction, and being its witness, or friend.
She says, So many stories we were told about a safety net / But when I look for it, it’s just a hand that’s holding mine. Yeah. That’s something I’ve found, too, that at the end of the day the only thing that matters is human connection. It’s something uncontrollable and unpredictable and if it’s not those things then you might be doing it wrong, in my opinion. You try your best. You stay optimistic. Emotion! Loving, airy emotion. Right there- do you see it? THE WANTING. “Billions” and its reiteration of I never felt so close to you. The children’s choir. Pitchfork’s Cat Zhang’s review ending with “But being close to is still not the same as being subsumed by, having turned into. So we nudge and nudge and nudge, never quite reaching fulfillment, longing until the end.”
Another thing I love about the album is Caroline’s incredible vocals, every note intentional and pushed to something more. You can tell she has a passion for the beauty of the delivery of a vocal note. It’s impressive. Her voice carries the album, no doubt. There are a few songs I feel are not bad but not particularly life-changing, either (“Fly To You”, “Butterfly Net”, even “Pretty In Possible”) but overall, I think it’s great. I wasn’t super into Caroline’s first album, I’m going to be real with you - I love “Hit Me Where It Hurts” but was otherwise unmoved - but the first time I listened to this one, I was like, I love this shit! Fine, this is really good! I’m wary of artists like her that get overhyped in certain Internet circles (sorry, I know I’m not edgy for not liking her before, but again, I’m being real) and so I was kind of avoiding her work and her fanbase for a while. The hyperpop / pop girlie / intellectual pop? community is both very exciting and deterring to me. I want people to analyze things on their own and tap into their feelings about art plainly and honestly. I tried to do that with this album, and here we are. I’m a fan.
She understands the power of a phrase (BUNNY IS A RIDER), of a strange, unique word or sentence, of bending language and vocals (BILL-EE-YUNS!), of imagery and impulse. There’s an almost Jenny Holzer vibe to her lyrics. Punches of something you get and don’t get at the same time. Right at the heart of humanity but also: funny. Rewatching the video for “Welcome To My Island”, I feel the urge to make it clear- the album involves escapism from capitalism, from inevitable heartbreak, from anything bad, really, but is also about the awareness that you’re doing that and the romanticization of it as a human emotion that we cannot stop. We have to do it. We have to WANT. I have to WANT. I will not stop WANTING. DESIRE, I WANT TO TURN INTO YOU!
Her father never came to see her perform. There’s that part in the music video where she stares at the camera and says: I AM MY FATHER’S DAUGHTER IN THE END! HE SAYS WATCH YOUR EGO, WATCH YOUR HEAD, GIRL! YOU’RE SO SMART, SO TALENTED, BUT NOW THE WATER’S TURNING RED AND IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT AND IT’S ALL YOUR MESS AND YOU’RE ALL ALONE, CAN’T GO TO BED, TOO HIGH ON YOUR ADRENALINE YOU GOTTA GO SOMEWHERE YOU CAN’T PRETEND FORGET THE RULES FORGET YOUR FRIENDS JUST YOU AND YOUR REFLECTION CAUSE NOTHING’S GONNA BE THE SAME AGAIN NO NOTHING’S GONNA BE THE SAME AGAIN!
You know what I mean?
I have to tell you something: I actually loved taking the subway. I loved the long rides the performances the way people would take your seat the standing the looking the watching the glass the screeching I felt like I was in my own movie I know it was just a commute and people don’t really get to choose their commutes and there’s bad shit about it too it’s not really that great objectively and most people hate driving and riding and the in-betweens of places but I have always been in love with staring out windows imagining things it’s the lifeblood of who I am of what I make it’s the thing I have above all else it’s THE WANTING. It’s the WANTING. I have to tell you something I sometimes want so much I get scared I get terrified that I’m delusional that I don’t have what it takes and I’m really just insane and I don’t know it and I should just settle and make myself fall in love with someone and I should have studied business I shouldn’t have said all those things to all those people and all my journal entries from years ago want the same things and I still haven’t gotten them but I’ve gotten so much if you look at it a certain way so what’s the truth why do some people get it and others don’t why do some people die and others don’t it’s not for lack of WANTING. It’s not for lack of WANTING. I do it anyway I keep doing it anyway I drive into the city eyes drooping music too loud my leg muscle aches a little because I was squatting mopping floors at my job. I have to tell you something it snowed during that exact hour I was supposed to drive there and no other time that day or this whole week and I kept thinking of course of course of course and then when I got there I had this flash of everything I’d ever done and it made me want to sob but out of joy and I have to tell you something I think she’s on to something here I think she gets me I think she gets being in love with being in love with desiring desire.