Opinion of Phoebe Bridgers' 'Chinese Satellite'
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Author Topic: Opinion of Phoebe Bridgers' 'Chinese Satellite'  (Read 1582 times)
Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela
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« on: June 19, 2022, 11:36:59 AM »




For those unaware, Chinese Satellite tells the story of someone who, seemingly unlike their loved ones, is not meaningfully religious or spiritual, but wishes they were able to have faith, both because they yearn for there to be an afterlife so they don't have to face up to their loved ones being gone forever when they die, and more ambiguously, maybe also because on some level they feel an aimlessness as a result of their lack of faith.

I've found this song interesting ever since I heard it, partly because it's just a good song but mostly because it's always notable when a song gets this unambiguously close to home. I'm not as bothered by whether there's an afterlife or not, but as time passes and I gain a better understanding of myself I have definitely moved on from reactive nu atheism and exhausting narrow-minded rationalism and come to recognise that as one of many symptoms of a broader disconnect from the world that's plagued me all my life and kept me from actually experiencing a lot of things.

What do you think? Does this song represent your values too? Do you welcome it as a sign that some younger people are slowly recognising the void in their lives and turning towards faith? Is it yet another small sign of the slow turn away from patriarchy rationalism that's eating away at Western society? Was this whole thread just a wistful post-ironic waste of your time?
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« Reply #1 on: June 19, 2022, 01:59:02 PM »

This is a struggle that I held through most of my adolescence after growing out of the all too Bush-era Dawkinsite milieu enforced by my parents. Growing into spirituality was a lengthy, experimental process, and is forever ongoing.

Quote from: Genius annotations
The satellite represents science serving as a quasi-faith and something to believe in, with Phoebe stating “I love science — I think science is like the closest thing to that that you’ll get [to the supernatural]”.

This false dichotomy being upheld by Ken Ham-Neil Tyson debate bro culture, though, plays an important role in enforcing the struggle to arrive at spirituality from no spiritual priors (as is its intention!), and disassembling the conception thereof in my philosophical priors was an essential part of my spiritual growth. Of course, the woo-woo ecofeminist path I have found myself on is perhaps uniquely oriented towards this, but in my experience it is not remotely unique to mine; my dear Argentine friend, for instance, is quite proud of incorporating Spinoza's interpretation of the nature of divinity within a Catholic framework. Finding the divine in one's immediate mundanity is just as vital as finding it in heightened experience and broad Jungian arcs of meaning.

Is it yet another small sign of the slow turn away from patriarchy rationalism that's eating away at Western society?

Without getting too post-ironically WE'MOON as I must restrain myself from doing at times, spirituality has indeed been for me a deeper way of communing with my femininity that cuts away at both my physicality and learned masculinity distorting it and the broader societal order of patriarchy-in-deferred-crisis and ecological post-post-apocalypse. There are times when I have more millenarian impulses about the violent death of one order giving birth in the ecstatic throes of travail to one more fit to divine order, or when I simply feel deep mourning transfigured into love; either impulse is more cathartic and productive than the detachment that you bemoan, that I had felt before. Through genuine connection to the earth and to those like you who dare to contemplate the vastness without prejudice and don't become shallower with proximity is how faith is expressed as love, and indeed to me faith is the ultimate form of love (agape, as it were).

Next do Bowie's "Quicksand" Wink
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Battista Minola 1616
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« Reply #2 on: June 21, 2022, 10:22:23 AM »

My experience with faith is different enough from that described in the song that I hesitate to say it "represents me", but it is still applicable in some ways. I don't remember ever feeling like I wished I had faith but effectively lacked any spirituality, but during my teenage years I must have wished I could be religious in a structured sense but only had vague spiritual beliefs mostly centred around the cosmos and similar things multiple times (I suppose this could be called 'the same doubt one life stage higher' in Kierkegaardian terms). I have talked about that more in detail on this forum in the past:

No, it was pretty much all by myself, although I probably was influenced by reading that Orion featured prominently in many ancient mythologies. Sometimes I went on my balcony and just contemplated Orion, and secondarily whatever other stars I can see from my urban setting. Or in other moments of the year or in other places, mostly Ursa Major. I can't easily recognize any other constellation sadly. I felt a connection to spirituality in that.
As for ritualistic forms, I never went beyond taking a bow as a closure act, because everything else that came to mind felt too influenced by Christianity, and I didn't like that.
I have always been fascinated by the night sky, and am really sad that so much light pollution exists. I once even wrote a sonnet about this (it was almost certainly during the period of the aforementioned spiritual phase, but I'm not sure how influenced it was by that).

This, incidentally, was one of my first ever interactions with Ayla... ah, simpler times. Anyway, even if ever since rejoining the Catholic faith almost two years ago my relationship with religious belief is much more different, I would be lying if I said I don't still struggle with it in forms that are nothing new. The last few months in particular I've usually felt too alienated or tired or time-crunched to give space to spirituality or religion, to my despair.

Perhaps this whole thread was indeed just yet another wistful post-ironic waste of my time, and I could have read a book, made a walk or even prayed instead of writing this response... but I am glad you posted it nonetheless.
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John Dule
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« Reply #3 on: June 21, 2022, 10:30:09 AM »

I have never "struggled" with my lack of belief and I never will. It is just an obvious fact of life that is only disturbing or alarming to atheists who were raised in religious households.
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Mopsus
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« Reply #4 on: June 21, 2022, 02:33:55 PM »

When I was younger I struggled with the fact that religious people around me displayed a certainty about their beliefs that I was never able to muster. I've slowly come to terms with the fact that uncertainty is one of the conditions of our existence, yet we are called to make commitments nonetheless. And I'm a lot healthier for it.
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Nathan
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« Reply #5 on: June 22, 2022, 12:43:32 AM »

It's an excellent song on an excellent album. In addition to what it says about the narrator's (who is, of course, not always the same person as the singer-songwriter) own values and beliefs, it's also a lot more compassionate to the fervently religious-conservative worldview of the narrator's loved ones than most people with Bridgers's political commitments are willing to get these days. I hope she hasn't lost that capacity in the two years that the culture war has spent getting some-f**king-how even worse since Punisher was released.

The song on the album that really represents my values is "Kyoto", though, so much so that I wrote a 600-character essay on it in Japanese for a project called Magellan no shisen that didn't pan out.

It is just an obvious fact of life that is only disturbing or alarming to atheists who were raised in religious households.

This is a glib hypergeneralization that has already been disproven multiple times in this very thread.
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Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela
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« Reply #6 on: June 22, 2022, 02:55:10 AM »

The song on the album that really represents my values is "Kyoto", though, so much so that I wrote a 600-character essay on it in Japanese for a project called Magellan no shisen that didn't pan out.
If you don't mind, I'd like to hear more about this!
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Samof94
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« Reply #7 on: June 24, 2022, 06:09:17 AM »

One of my favorite albums ever made. It gets almost everything right.
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« Reply #8 on: June 27, 2022, 12:20:26 AM »

Despite being irreligious I’ve long accepted my false idols. Occam’s Razor dictates 90% of being a Philly sports fan is some malevolent cosmic entity tormenting me for my sins in a past life.
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« Reply #9 on: June 27, 2022, 12:31:22 AM »

Despite being irreligious I’ve long accepted my false idols. Occam’s Razor dictates 90% of being a Philly sports fan is some malevolent cosmic entity tormenting me for my sins in a past life.

I (and discovalante) raise you:

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« Reply #10 on: June 27, 2022, 12:49:56 AM »

Despite being irreligious I’ve long accepted my false idols. Occam’s Razor dictates 90% of being a Philly sports fan is some malevolent cosmic entity tormenting me for my sins in a past life.

I (and discovalante) raise you:

*snip*

 Quick! To the DeLorean!


If not, then the Os just need some Bird Flu! (WARNING: do not try this dance sober.)
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« Reply #11 on: June 27, 2022, 01:04:53 AM »

Despite being irreligious I’ve long accepted my false idols. Occam’s Razor dictates 90% of being a Philly sports fan is some malevolent cosmic entity tormenting me for my sins in a past life.

I (and discovolante) raise you:



I have never felt such a breadth of fervor becoming malaise as a member of any broader community as was in the air here when we lost the 2012 AL East to the Yankees. We as a people were in tatters, and it can be said that we never really recovered on levels not limited to the O's marching right back into the sea since then.
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Nathan
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« Reply #12 on: June 27, 2022, 01:09:54 AM »

Despite being irreligious I’ve long accepted my false idols. Occam’s Razor dictates 90% of being a Philly sports fan is some malevolent cosmic entity tormenting me for my sins in a past life.

I (and discovolante) raise you:



I have never felt such a breadth of fervor becoming malaise as a member of any broader community as was in the air here when we lost the 2012 AL East to the Yankees. We as a people were in tatters, and it can be said that we never really recovered on levels not limited to the O's marching right back into the sea since then.

I'm glad my great-grandfather, who was in charge of the Baltimore parks department when the team moved from St. Louis and was honored with a plaque on the Os' tenth anniversary that still hangs in my parents' home, was dead long before the 2018 and 2019 seasons. At least the Red Sox have had a great couple of decades--but then, having a great couple of decades has caused the team to lose something of its old soulfulness.
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« Reply #13 on: June 27, 2022, 01:58:20 AM »

Despite being irreligious I’ve long accepted my false idols. Occam’s Razor dictates 90% of being a Philly sports fan is some malevolent cosmic entity tormenting me for my sins in a past life.

I (and discovolante) raise you:



I have never felt such a breadth of fervor becoming malaise as a member of any broader community as was in the air here when we lost the 2012 AL East to the Yankees. We as a people were in tatters, and it can be said that we never really recovered on levels not limited to the O's marching right back into the sea since then.

I'm glad my great-grandfather, who was in charge of the Baltimore parks department when the team moved from St. Louis and was honored with a plaque on the Os' tenth anniversary that still hangs in my parents' home, was dead long before the 2018 and 2019 seasons. At least the Red Sox have had a great couple of decades--but then, having a great couple of decades has caused the team to lose something of its old soulfulness.

Let me clarify the facetiousness in my first post is half-kidding. I promise this is not in my usual oneupmanship of proving Philly is superior to Diet Philly. I unironically champion the Eagles, Phillies, Flyers, and Sixers as not only my pantheons, but that of an entire city.

I wake up every morning to a different childhood friend sending a "Good Morning. AJ Brown is a Philadelphia Eagle." text in our group message. If I chose to listen to the radio instead of the aux cord, the most common frequency is 97.5 the Phanatic. There was a 20-minute segment a few weeks ago on the afternoon drive over superstitious concerns regarding Nick Castellanos moving into the same Margate mansion Ben Simmons lived in. And then we made Simmons too afraid to come to his return! (Sixers lost by 30 points but who cares lmao). Landscaping at FDR in the hellish summer heat is considered a treat if you make it over to NovaCare. We built a statue of Nick Foles going over to Doug Pederson to ask for the Philly Special less than a year after it happened. Jason Kelce could run for mayor. There is empirical evidence watching Jose Alvarado pitch in relief contributes to alcoholism. And yes, I still stay up until 3 in the morning cursing it all because the Flyers were one lottery ball from McDavid.

The all-encapsulating anecdote is the timeless "Unlike Agholor" man. This man is SAVING BABIES FROM A BURNING BUILDING AT 430 in the morning and the ONLY thought in his mind is "Godf----ingdammit why couldn't Nelly hold onto that ball!?"

And ya know what? I wouldn't have it any other way.
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Nathan
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« Reply #14 on: June 27, 2022, 10:51:33 AM »

The song on the album that really represents my values is "Kyoto", though, so much so that I wrote a 600-character essay on it in Japanese for a project called Magellan no shisen that didn't pan out.
If you don't mind, I'd like to hear more about this!

This was in connection with a photo album that I bought from a rare book dealer in Scotland that has several hundred pictures from a young Air Force secretary's time in Occupied Japan. I wanted to explore the role of tourism in supporting "traditional" Japanese culture in a time where the domestic Japanese interest in it is 1. declining because, well, the population itself is declining and 2. more and more entangled in various political and historiographical shibboleths. I was proud of what I eventually wrote, although I didn't cite Discourses of the Vanishing enough. The overall project was me and a few other people trying to expand from this phrase "Magellan's gaze" that Pope Francis used at one point to describe "viewing the center from the periphery"; personally, Magellan would NOT be my first choice of historical figure to use to describe this concept, but, well, that's the phrase that was used.
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John Forbes Kerrygold 🧈
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« Reply #15 on: June 27, 2022, 11:10:31 AM »

My favorite song on the album. Perfectly captures the feeling of isolation and helplessness that comes in those moments of not knowing where to turn. Looking for absolutely anything to hang onto. Also, weirdly, her most romantic song ever? “I’d stand on a corner, embarrassed with a picket sign, if it meant I could see you when I die.” Incredible stuff.
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Хahar 🤔
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« Reply #16 on: June 27, 2022, 11:55:22 PM »
« Edited: June 28, 2022, 02:04:45 AM by Хahar 🤔 »

Originally this was a thread about a song I like very much, but then it turned into a thread about the Baltimore Orioles, a team for whom I can name more or less every regular player from about 1960 to 1985. With apologies to past management, I think that under Nathan's leadership this board is going to be my favorite on the forum.

I've discussed this song with Heat before. When I first listened to this album it stood out not because of the lyrics but because it doesn't sound like any of the other songs. I wasn't really sure if I liked it or not. After many more listens I noticed what the words were saying and now it's one of my favorite songs from the record, which is saying a lot.

I can't directly relate to this song because I've never held a materialist view of human existence and I've always held the same religious beliefs, but I'm always appreciative of genuine depictions of the inner reality of religious experience. My favorite story of F. Scott Fitzgerald, which I'm sure I've talked about before because I talk about it constantly, is like this but written from the perspective of someone raised with religion.

Something that stands out, as Nathan put, is its compassion toward what one would expect to be the enemy. The aforementioned line about being willing to stand on a corner with a picket sign grants genuine humanity to the nameless evangelicals. Back in the mid-2000s, every remotely alternative band had at least one song about how evil George Bush and the people who voted for him were; none of them would say something like that.

The other bit that's always stood out to me is at the very end, where there's a reference (albeit not by name) to UFOs, part of our American folk religion. I can't say with confidence that this is what's happening here, but it makes sense that when thinking about religious experience, someone who was raised without any organized religion would fall back on UFO vocabulary to describe it.
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afleitch
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« Reply #17 on: June 28, 2022, 02:28:13 AM »

Based



Genuine honesty and vulnerability in music is rare and actually leads to real success, even if untied from commercial success. I knew her from a collaboration with Lord Huron, a band I quite like. Not listened to her full catalogue yet. So this thread is a good prompt.
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Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela
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« Reply #18 on: June 28, 2022, 05:57:00 AM »

I knew her from a collaboration with Lord Huron, a band I quite like.
The Night We Met is one of those songs I revisit every so often because it's just so cosy, even if I don't actually relate to it and hopefully never will.
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« Reply #19 on: June 28, 2022, 09:42:17 AM »
« Edited: June 28, 2022, 04:49:21 PM by Supporter and promoter of anti-white racism »

Based



Genuine honesty and vulnerability in music is rare and actually leads to real success, even if untied from commercial success. I knew her from a collaboration with Lord Huron, a band I quite like. Not listened to her full catalogue yet. So this thread is a good prompt.

I think you'll really love Punisher, Andrew. Let us know what you think of it once you've listened to it!
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Samof94
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« Reply #20 on: September 19, 2022, 05:30:02 PM »



For those unaware, Chinese Satellite tells the story of someone who, seemingly unlike their loved ones, is not meaningfully religious or spiritual, but wishes they were able to have faith, both because they yearn for there to be an afterlife so they don't have to face up to their loved ones being gone forever when they die, and more ambiguously, maybe also because on some level they feel an aimlessness as a result of their lack of faith.

I've found this song interesting ever since I heard it, partly because it's just a good song but mostly because it's always notable when a song gets this unambiguously close to home. I'm not as bothered by whether there's an afterlife or not, but as time passes and I gain a better understanding of myself I have definitely moved on from reactive nu atheism and exhausting narrow-minded rationalism and come to recognise that as one of many symptoms of a broader disconnect from the world that's plagued me all my life and kept me from actually experiencing a lot of things.

What do you think? Does this song represent your values too? Do you welcome it as a sign that some younger people are slowly recognising the void in their lives and turning towards faith? Is it yet another small sign of the slow turn away from patriarchy rationalism that's eating away at Western society? Was this whole thread just a wistful post-ironic waste of your time?
I love it
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Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela
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« Reply #21 on: September 19, 2022, 06:34:02 PM »



For those unaware, Chinese Satellite tells the story of someone who, seemingly unlike their loved ones, is not meaningfully religious or spiritual, but wishes they were able to have faith, both because they yearn for there to be an afterlife so they don't have to face up to their loved ones being gone forever when they die, and more ambiguously, maybe also because on some level they feel an aimlessness as a result of their lack of faith.

I've found this song interesting ever since I heard it, partly because it's just a good song but mostly because it's always notable when a song gets this unambiguously close to home. I'm not as bothered by whether there's an afterlife or not, but as time passes and I gain a better understanding of myself I have definitely moved on from reactive nu atheism and exhausting narrow-minded rationalism and come to recognise that as one of many symptoms of a broader disconnect from the world that's plagued me all my life and kept me from actually experiencing a lot of things.

What do you think? Does this song represent your values too? Do you welcome it as a sign that some younger people are slowly recognising the void in their lives and turning towards faith? Is it yet another small sign of the slow turn away from patriarchy rationalism that's eating away at Western society? Was this whole thread just a wistful post-ironic waste of your time?
I love it

I'm glad.
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Sol
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« Reply #22 on: June 13, 2023, 12:29:59 AM »

I've been feeling this way -- longing for faith in the absence of it -- more lately. Good song.

If anyone has advice for this circumstance, I'm all ears. 😄
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