{"id":167,"date":"2021-07-05T12:14:45","date_gmt":"2021-07-05T11:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/?p=167"},"modified":"2021-07-05T12:14:45","modified_gmt":"2021-07-05T11:14:45","slug":"play-lists-by-jessica-mookherjee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/05\/play-lists-by-jessica-mookherjee\/","title":{"rendered":"Play Lists by Jessica Mookherjee"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At first brush, it\u2019s tempting to classify Play Lists <\/em>as a document of an era, a window onto another time \u2013 the poems are fizzy with teenage love and fashion craze, tentative trespass and intoxication, all set to a pop\/glam\/alt rock soundtrack that you can access via Spotify. It has bags of atmosphere and a litany of callbacks: Lacan and Camus, Lydia Lunch and Logan\u2019s Run<\/em>, Melody Maker, Tin Tin Duffy, pixie boots, James Dean and Elton John \u2013 and Bowie, of course, ever ready to pounce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But to my mind, the key to this book is a neat bit of wordplay in \u2018Record Collection\u2019, a tautly written ghazal that covers the arc of a relationship. Its first two lines read:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hid my music from you, I didn\u2019t want you to look, at my record collection,
I knew you could read me like a book, but you\u2019d no recollection.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That slide from \u2018record collection\u2019 to \u2018recollection\u2019 betrays the fact that memory \u2013 and nostalgia in particular \u2013 has its own agenda, blending layers of reality and mythology, and Play Lists <\/em>does a wonderful job of embodying the way we mould narrative out of a dizzy blur of emotional highs and indelible impressions. \u2018Hero Worship\u2019, for instance, is pointedly a mash-up of The Iliad<\/em>, Grease <\/em>and first-hand experience of stirring sexuality:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Achilles picked me up from school in his red sports car.
My spring term, buds out, shirt buttons
undone, skirt hitched up. Get in<\/em>, he said, sounding American \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A character in \u2018Smashing\u2019, in even fuller flower, \u201cmouths spells to Aphrodite, Dionysus, Tiaco and Pamela Anderson\u201d, while other personae are possessed by the spirits of pop stars and pin-ups: \u201cAnimal boy, I never let on that night I was secretly Iggy Pop\u201d (\u2018Broke\u2019); \u201cWe acted like movie stars. Nothing was safe.\u201d (\u2018Cracked Actors\u2019); \u2018Spoiled everything, as you strutted Jagger-lipped\u2019 (\u2018Hell for Leather\u2019). When they fly too close to the sun, their hairstyles catch fire (\u2018Some of Them Are Old\u2019). And woven through these glitzy, eerie, familiar glamours are frightening glimpses of loneliness, betrayal, loss of self and certainty amid the rhapsody of impersonations.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a lot packed in once you slip beneath the bubblegum sheen and start to unpick individual lines and scenes, and at times I found myself pulling away from a closer examination of what is being implied in some of the poems, not certain I wanted to be touched by what is most raw in them. It\u2019s possible to keep to the shallows, enjoy the achy paeans to smooth trickster-boys and blissed-out nights, but Play Lists <\/em>has an undertow as well, a real body beyond the make-up, from which it draws its heat. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At first brush, it\u2019s tempting to classify Play Lists as a document of an era, a window onto another time \u2013 the poems are fizzy with teenage love and fashion craze, tentative trespass and intoxication, all set to a pop\/glam\/alt rock soundtrack that you can access via Spotify. It has bags of atmosphere and a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[328],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}