Charli XCX, Claws
What happens when the manic pixie dream girl grows up? Not a singular girl, not the character Kate Winslet or Winona Ryder or Kirsten Dunst played in this or that, but the archetype itself—what happens when it matures in culture? What would the new stock representation of unhinged female whimsy be?
What happens when Chloë Sevigny grows up? Chloë herself remains eternally cool and relevant, but what about the indie “it” girl in culture, in a media culture which is now almost exclusively internet culture?
666 with a princess streak?
I’m neither young nor chronically online, so how did I get sucked into Charli XCX’s brat era? As a new superfan, I’ll simply direct you to Claws and 1999 as all the proof of concept required. It’s hyperpop for hyperlove, total embodiment and joy in life, defiantly using obstacles as signposts designating the field of play. It’s pure conviction in one’s own power and the synergistic power of friendship, music, and parties.
A week before I found this manic pixie cyborg socialite, I quit my job. It was kind of an accident, you could say I didn’t quit anything, I just started living the life I wanted to live. I’ve already gained ten pounds. My hands and wrists are healed. The rashes on my face and arms have cleared.
Quit your job, full stop. Wake the neighborhood with the crash of your loathsome kitchen shoes hitting the back of the dumpster. No family, no savings? Perfect, now you can fly. Never quit your job without another job? Always quit your job without another job.
Here’s the thing—everyone loves you and wants you to be safe, larder groaning with choice cuts, accounts replete with banknotes, grids of healing gemstones glittering in fractal rainbows, freeze frame of radiant upturned faces laughing, armfuls of thick, lush peonies dripping...this is turning into an ad for wedding accoutrements or pharmaceuticals, but, in any case, a lot of your friends go to jobs they hate in order to be safe, or endure barren relationships in order to be safe, and that’s completely understandable because society is savage. And it’s completely understandable that they’ll urge you to do the same, sell your time and the sanctity of your body for whatever pittance the lords and masters toss in the grey dust of your groveling shadow. Hey, I did it for years!
In any event, we’re bored of that. It’s time to seek inner guidance, turn up Source Radio.
If you’ve ever fallen on hard times while also being a dreamer, you’ve probably tumbled right on in to the clutches of the Manifestation Industry. Law of Attraction, Law of Assumption, Neville Goddard, quantum jumping, robotic affirming, angel numbers, the vortex, inner being…you know the drill. This overused pseudo-scientific language is alienating to those of us who feel that a fresh experience requires fresh language to describe it.
But here’s what’s up—before, during, and after quitting my job this uncanny thing happened whereby I experienced everything they say as true. You can in fact step into a different timeline as easily as this: stop moving, pick up your right (or left) foot, and step sideways about sixteen inches. Do it with your body and do it with your mind. Now you’re in a parallel reality. Let every decision you make be skewed sixteen inches.
I discovered that there’s a contracted, defeated voice inside me that rejects every offer, every idea, every solution presented by the enthusiastic, lit-up, alive part of me. And what happened is that by some means I can only describe as grace, the alive and living part converted the dead and dying part, and now I have two alive parts (they’re still distinct—one is radiant light and heat and the other is a sort of bower of twigs and shells) that basically sit on a grassy knoll and knock back kombuchas together.
It’s not perfectly sustained, there’s moments of relapse and discord—and sheer terror—but much of the time I’m in a state of gratitude that doesn’t have to be practiced because it wells up unchecked as a consequence of being in the world with sense organs.
I just need to figure out how to stay fed and housed while never violating my integrity again. It starts with turning off “I can’t” and “I don’t know how,” and turning on “I will” and “I’ll figure it out.”
We’re allowed to think whatever we want. We’re allowed to imagine whatever outcome we want. Not only in our personal lives, but in the wider world. We’re allowed to believe in world peace, degrowth, no one hungry, no one homeless!!!
YOU ALREADY HAVE IT. YOU ALREADY ARE IT. NOW LET YOURSELF SEE IT.
There will indeed be work, the work of clearing away the debris blocking our vision, not the work of slogging through jobs we hate.
I’m really close to a breakthrough, and I hope you are too!!!
Next issue will be about schemes, because I’ve got to come up with $2,500 in a week. As my esteemed comrade said, figuratively of course: cake farts on Only Fans. In other words, it doesn’t have to be hard. ALSO, I finally devised a proper gift for paid subscribers—a hypnosis club! Find it at the top of the homepage; I’m working on the first script now.
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