Pieces of Thread #11
sounding annoying about BBC's Merlin, Rachel Chinouriri, Sabrina Carpenter, and more
On Saturday, I was ready to give up hope on a pieces of thread for this week and then I went to the library. And I’m glad I did because I really like some of the things I wrote, researched, and consumed this week.
Rachel Chinouriri
Last year, as I wrapped up my purposeful listening of 36 albums I had never listened to before, I found Rachel Chinouriri. My first listen of her album “What a Devastating Turn of Events” was uneventful. I liked it, but I didn’t feel any particular pull towards her or her music.
I re-listened to it this week as part of this year’s goal to re-listen to 25 albums. I was much more drawn into it. Especially the titular song, “What a Devastating Turn of Events” which follows a storyline which is really a draw for me towards any song. Her voice in these songs feels like a friend singing into my ears, even in the more heavily produced songs her vocals still feel intimate. This is especially prominent in the second half of the album after and including the titular track.
In the process of realizing I really like this album, I have done some research into her and the album. There is a short article with her from 2022 about genre and her music. In this interview she does say exactly what is happening, “Anyone who is Black and doesn’t do R&B, hip-hop or soul music always gets thrown into the ‘urban’ bracket, which just really pigeonholes you [as an artist].” A more recent interview with BritishGQ continues to delve into these issues of genre. It also points out that Rachel Chinouriri went to musical theatre school which gives me another layer of listening.
Overall, “What a Devastating Turn of Events”, has joined the rotation of albums I reach for in the silence.
What am I?
I’m not sure if I’m a writer or just a person with a lot of ideas. I’m not prone to gorgeous prose and I get to the point a little too quickly. Most things I write are about people who I have let slip through my fingers, as I am too much of a pussy to ever make a move. And I don’t think I’ve ever mastered the short story. Sometimes I look back at things I have written and decide I must have accidentally downloaded them onto my google drive because they don’t seem like mine, I’ve even run one through a plagiarism checker.
In My Saved Inbox
Earlier this week, I posted a standalone of all the articles I saved on Substack. I am so so so happy to see some of these writers whose work I thought good enough to never want to disappear, pop up in my notifications. I highly recommend reading some of those articles and creative pieces, even though some of the authors have each other blocked on Substack.
Shirley Temple Autofiction Draft
She doesn’t like soda, but sometimes she watches other people with a sprite in hand and wishes she could have just two sips of the sickly sweet bubbles. At the end of the summer, as the campers departed she found forgotten cans of ginger ale next to an unopened bottle of grenadine, she squirreled them away for future use. The cans slowly disappeared, one went to her roommate who took it without asking, one to a visiting friend, and one came along on a three-hour road trip.
Somewhere on the internet a child is getting made fun of for their shirley temple reviews, a note about it on some app or another is what spurred her towards the fridge. She found the last can of ginger ale tucked behind the beers she didn’t buy, or like, or drink. It was a smaller can than the usual. Holding it in her hand, she wondered if maybe she should just drink it, no grenadine added. She poured it into a glass, then washed out the can for recycling before taking a sip.
The taste hit her tongue with the sweetness she expected and she braced for the harsh carbonation on the swallow. The bubbles were the problem, even though she knew the taste wasn’t the same without them, flat sodas were somehow worse. One sip, then another. She put the glass down.
She returned to the fridge, picking up the bottle of red liquid and slowly adding it and tasting until it was just the right taste. She takes a sip enjoying it, the memories of childhood, memories of college nights where they added vodka, memories of standing at a bar unsure of what to order and ordering a dirty shirley. But she doesn’t add the vodka, instead she takes another sip walking now to her next to do. She sets the glass down in her bedroom before rushing off to do the laundry.
BBC’s Merlin
Merlin is a show I know forwards and backwards… literally, I once watched the show backwards for some reason that frustrated my mother who I forced to watch with me. Recently creative medieval ideas have re-entered my brain, ones that were once inspired by Merlin, and now I am watching the show again. I know the storylines by heart, the characters pull at my heart despite knowing exactly how long they survive. In two days, I had finished the first season.
On this re-watch, the unfortunate academic side of my brain has been clicked on. My last re-watch of Merlin was with friends during my freshman year of college, before that academic side had been fully brought to the surface. Now I watch the show ready to analyze and discuss for class.
My main discussion point is about Arthur and Merlin. In Merlin and Arthur’s first meeting, Arthur is broey and arrogant, he sends Merlin to the dungeon for stepping out of turn. By the end of their second meeting, and second fight, Arthur chooses not to arrest him again because he points out Merlin's bravery. From this act of kindness we start to see Arthur as the future ‘fair’ king that everyone claims he will be. But Arthur is not consistently kind to Merlin, he piles as much work as possible onto his serving boy in ways that can be unfair and cruel. He risks his life for Merlin, but also makes him bait on hunting trips.
This relationship is seen on college campuses all the time. The frat boys or student athletes allow in one boy who is outside what is typically expected of their group. Maybe it’s the kid they ask to help with their homework, I don’t know. I have no clue why this happens, but in a lot of ways that is how Arthur and the knights treat Merlin. He is the only servant on hunting trips or knight trips, they accept that he is there, but he is never in the same social class as them. This happens throughout the show, eventually the Knights of the Round Table are the same, even though they know in some way how necessary he is to their survival.
A less academic thing I have been thinking about is how little I knew about the myth of King Arthur, Merlin, Camelot, and The Knights of the Round Table before I watched this show. I was in middle school and up until then the only Knights of the Round Table touchpoint I had were the Sir Cumference books. Sure there were things that came up that I knew vaguely, Lancelot and Excalibur were ideas I understood. But I didn’t know about Guinevere and Arthur or the love triangle with Lancelot. And now since BCC’s Merlin tv show is the only Arthurian tale that I want to watch, I have no other media reference to it. So don’t talk about Arthurian legend with me, I will be confused.
2 Articles on Sabrina Carpenter
Way back at the beginning of me committing myself to Substack, back when my cute work outfits didn’t involve three layers, I read an article titled “your fave is selling a pedophilic fantasy.” An article about Sabrina Carpenter’s aesthetic and the cultural consequences of it.
At the time, the photoshoots that posed her like Lolita or in a teenage bedroom, made me upset at the push towards the sexualization of a younger look, but what interested me more in the article was the political connotations. Jade Hurley delves into the concept of “soft girls” and how it relates to “tradwifery” as well as the racist history of Western “femininity.” She ends her article with statistics about child pornography, and sexual assault. The bigger picture of the article uses Sabrina as an example of bigger issues in the mainstream American market.
The reason I have returned to that article is because this week I read another Sabrina Carpenter related article, “Who’s Afraid of Sabrina Carpenter?” This article looks at the same photoshoots that had been called out in the first article and flips the script showing how much things have changed since the teenage stardom of Britney Spears and Alicia Silverstone. This article goes further into the gaze and societal reasons why so much girlhood expression seems to be for men is because the “male gaze” used to be the only gaze that art was made for.
Both articles are true in what they are trying to get across. They both in a way use Sabrina Carpenter to discuss bigger issues that the authors are focused on. Both authors are articulate and educated in their claims. They use more references than most Substack articles and it is all packaged in girlhood. These articles are packaged for a specific type of Substack reader, one who isn’t tired of essays about girlhood, and they use their marketing to teach those readers something bigger than Sabrina Carpenter. If you want a full understanding of Sabrina Carpenter’s image, then I recommend reading both with an open mind, without believing one has to be true.
Creative Block
I have been in a bit of a creative block, which really isn’t true. I have far higher expectations of myself than what is reasonable. I keep chasing the high of my “Study of Green Doors: Bunks in Summer” mixed fabric arts project. Which is hard because the piece I made directly after was a CD case and CD based on my favorite song, Primrose Chopper by Jack Van Cleaf. The project assembly of the project frustrated me so much and I ended up liking the fabric CD that I made on the fly better than the well thought out and drafted embroidery that I made as the CD case art. I’ve made good things since, but they haven’t been my own design, until my mini cross stitch which I still haven’t made the decisions to finish.
Oh shit, I sound pretentious in this one. I did a lot of the writing for this in a public library and that made me an academic douchebag. If you think I made any good points please consider subscribing.
Pieces of thread is inspired by all the small scraps of thread, yarn, and fabric that accumulate when working with fiber arts. I have a tendency to collect these pieces, scared of the small waste I am creating. This newsletter is the same, a way to keep these pieces of ideas, threads of writing, safe from the landfill of forgetting.