揽瓜阁俱乐部第三期 Day11 2020.07.30
【人文科学-艺术】 Lady Gaga Is Back and Smaller Than Ever （840字 精读 必做篇）
Fame is pain. That's always been one of Lady Gaga's messages. Whether via spiked shoulder pads, skyscraper heels, or raw-meat pleats, her early persona read as mad-scientist fashion model: someone shellacking and reshaping herself for the public's amusement. As she sang assaultively catchy songs about excess and applause while spurting blood or in gilded wheelchairs, she reminded viewers that the destruction of the body has too often been the rite through which human beings have become popular icons.
Sadly and sure enough, Gaga's performance art did not prevent serious torment. She broke a hip on tour in 2013. She began speaking of a pain disorder, and of mental anguish, and of having survived sexual assault. She gave up on jackhammering dance music and instead took to the gentler swaddling of jazz and folk. She made a movie, A Star Is Born, that depicted the early thrills of fame leading to addiction and doom. She recorded lyrics about healing and cures. All along, many fans wished for her to return to the superhuman persona and aggressive sound of before. But Gaga's growing interest in displaying human fragility hinted that it could be unsafe to go glam again.
Yet here comes Gaga's new album, Chromatica, a front-to-back rave that she has billed as a return to form. Like in her early days, there are disco drums and spoken-word passages in vaguely European accents. There are colorful costumes, otherworldly music videos, and even a half-baked thematic gimmick. (Chromatica, you see, is a planet of translucent mountains and warring tribes. There is no mention of this in the songs themselves). But the album's not a reversion—it's a deescalation. It is pop music that tries to wash itself of the trappings of popularity, so as to be more nourishing or therapeutic.
One change is tonal. From 2008's The Fame to 2013's Artpop, Gaga and her producers fused together an ever-shifting, hyper-modern rumble over which the singer performed a campy horror show. For Chromatica, though, the musical approach is light, crystalline, and quite pretty. It's also astonishingly retro. Many tracks beam straight into an early-'90s warehouse with spritzing hi-hats, rhythmic piano, and spiraling diva wails.
As always in Gaga's career, the standout moments here are wacky ones. The gasping chorus of “Alice,” the whipping dynamic turns of “Rain on Me,” and the trampolining sound effects of “Replay” all are addictively dramatic. Other highlights show Gaga's knack for tunes in which incongruous-seeming passages fit together deliciously. If certain listeners get snippy at her channeling the Queen of Pop yet again, Gaga's absolutely unbothered. “Rip that song,” she drawls. “Gossip, babble on!”
Indeed, hand-wringing about Madonna's influence on Gaga—hand-wringing rooted in sexism and naïveté about the referential nature of pop—are exactly the sort of celebrity-narrative nonsense Gaga wants to transcend with Chromatica. Mostly, now, she lets her themes arise simply from the stories she tells about her own struggles with depression, anxiety, and the record industry. “You love the paparazzi, love the fame, even though you know it causes me pain.” she sings, possibly into the mirror, in the sparkling but doleful “Fun Tonight.”
Paparazzi and fame are, of course, keywords from her early career. When Gaga uses those terms, she's noting the way that whatever psychic and physical troubles she's had are linked, on some level, to carefree songs. But Chromatica wants to make something clear: It's not the songs themselves that hurt her. In fact, as she has said repeatedly in the promotional process, music has served as her medicine. It's the joy of pop as a sensory experience, separate from the machine around it, that she wants to access with Chromatica's straightforward, relatively statement-free sound.
It was likely inevitable that she'd make an album with that intention at some point. In recent years, the melodically forceful, production-polished, perkily danceable sound Gaga helped perfect has lost cultural centrality as hip-hop and R&B have become America's most-listened-to genres. Dance pop now sometimes seems like an object of cult admiration led by lower-key singers such as Carly Rae Jepsen and Charli XCX. Gaga still has the name and talent to land hits; “Rain on Me,” her collaboration with Ariana Grande, should chart well. But after Artpop and 2016's Joanne failed to produce smashes, she surely knows that hits aren't guaranteed anymore. Chromatica comes across as the work of someone ready to decouple from expectations of cultural domination.
Maybe the context of 2020 turmoil makes Chromatica's ambitions feel small, too. The coronavirus pandemic robbed her listeners of the dance floors on which these new songs would make the most sense, and accordingly Gaga pushed back the album's release by nearly two months. Now, as Chromatica arrives amid tense clashes over racism nationwide, Gaga has mostly suspended promotion of the album while expressing support for protesters. She probably gets that there is no credible way to say her new music speaks to our times, save for one: by providing escapist joy to individuals in pain. That's an important feat, but one whose limits Gaga knows well.
Source: The Atlantic
【人文科学-生活方式】 Baking Therapy Helps Ease Pandemic Anxiety （463字 3分11秒 精听 必做篇）
先做精听再核对原文哦~
When I lost that main structure of going to school of being in a physical environment, I kind of ended up falling back on baking as this thing that brings me comfort.
For the better part of her life Chloe Tom Sue has staved off clinical depression and anxiety with social activities. Like other college students in the country Chloe who also happens to be my daughter had to switch the remote studying and practice social distancing leaving her feeling helpless and isolated. She's not alone according to developmental psychologist Colin Valenti.
So a lot of people who suffer from anxiety can easily pop into the what-ifs the catastrophizing, you know what I call awfulizing, the worst case scenarios, and so in my practice what were doing a lot of is working on kind of recognizing what can I control. I can make myself a cup of hot tea, I can go out for a walk, I can do some deep breathing exercises.
Chloe has focused on baking. I thrive on routine, the one of the reasons I like baking so much is it's this thing with steps, and you have to kind of be conscious of what you're doing and it allows me to do a lot of things, it allows me to be creative you know, to try out new things even if they fail to taste something nice and it allows me to feed people which is something I really like.
Baking highly depends on using the right ingredients and these days finding them on depleted grocery store shelves is a challenge. So this is the flour section as you see we have a huge selection to choose from. There is nothing and corn mill.
After venturing to three different stores she finally finds flour at a small neighborhood market.
I would say 2 pounds. Is that right? yeah brilliant like two to three pounds something like that thank you.
Back in the kitchen Chloe gets the pies ready for the oven. I'm like how it looks because it looks like most snow fall on the berries. It's been pretty. Food has this ability of really bringing people together.
The results are superb, a crusty fragrant berry pie, a creamy pumpkin pie and a spicy chocolate cake. Those are real flower? The family gathers around the table for a pie feast. This is so much better than math class.
This is a tangible proof that I've done something today and that I'm continuing to to push forward despite feeling kind of you know cruddy. I don't know what to choose, shelter at home, eat pies. Thank You Chloe.What does that say life is all about how you, I can't read.
A life is all about how you handle Plan B.
Source: VOA
【笔记格式要求】
精读笔记格式要求： 1.总结文章中心大意 2.总结分论点或每段段落大意 3.摘抄印象深刻或者觉得优美的句子 4.总结文章中的生词 5.记录阅读时间、总结时间、总时间
精听笔记格式要求： 1.逐句听写整篇文章 2.对照原文修改听写稿，标记出错原因 3.总结文章中心大意 4.总结精听过程中的生词 5.记录听写时间、总结时间、总时间
这里也给大家两点学习小建议哦~ 精读：如遇到读不懂的复杂句，建议找出句子主干，分析句子成分，也可以尝试翻译句子来帮助理解~ 精听：建议每句不要反复纠结听，如果听 5 遍都没听出来，那就跳过，等完成后再回听总结原因，时间宝贵，不要过于执着哦~
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发表于 2020-7-29 22:22:06
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