Mtiski and Me

 Tentatively going to be published on Embodied Magazine:

During my senior year of high school, I found solace in Mitski’s third album Puberty 2 and her music video to a single from that record “Your Best American Girl.” I was enamoured by her style, complexity, and ability to rock out. The video featured her getting dolled up on a video set and trying to get the attention of a white man across from her by waving at him. The white boy doesn’t recognize her and a random white girl pops up and passionately makes out with the white man, much to Mitski’s dismay. There was so much pain in her face; confusion, anger, melancholy. I was seeing my own face in the reflection of my computer screen. The familiar disappointing face I had made a few times when I realized that I am not the ideal person. Then she grasps her energy and mimics the white couple making out by kissing her own hand. This was groundbreaking because I learned to bottle up my feelings and still hold on, but I never learned how to channel the energy into something else. The song itself plays around with the idea of unrequited love with heart-wrenching lyrics like “Your mother wouldn’t approve of how my mother raised me, but I do. I think I do.” We yearned to be accepted by our surrounding community by conforming to their likings and rejecting what the ideals we were raised upon, or to be simple, “the other.” During the climax of the song, Mitski abandons tonguing her own hand and shreds on her guitar by herself. She doesn’t mind what’s going on with the other boy and is fully immersed in self-love. It’s a distraction, but one that dissolves pain by drowning her surroundings and focusing on the thing she should love the most: herself. By the end of the song, she shrugs off her problems and exits the set in full confidence. 

The first time I saw her perform was the end of my senior year of high school. It was back in a small and packed venue in Pomona, California where all the indie nerds who were the complete opposite of my high school demographic showed up, However, a large portion of queer Asian girls from the surrounding vicinities also came to bask in the pure emotion that they also seldom see in their own people. Her mouth was glued to the mic and fingers intricately stuck to her pick. Her bass was her sword and armor and she was charged for a battle to showcase her instrumental skills (which then inspired me to enhance my own performing abilities She connected to the audience by thanking them for showing up and giving individual backgrounds to her own songsFans roared for her classic songs; there wasn’t a song that the audience didn’t sing along to. My friend Caroline, who introduced me to Mitski’s music, went with me to the concert and we both cried to “Your Best American Girl.” In fact, everyone around us did and it was a collectively beautiful moment. 

I saw Mitski again at the Governor’s Ball 2019 at Randall’s Island, but this time she didn’t carry around her bass guitar. Instead, she was equipped with just a table and chair, and a four piece back-up band backing her up. She donned a white shirt with a high-waisted black skirt and knee pads before a considerably small crowd compared to the rest of the festival. “Hi I’m Mitski, my name is spelled out on the back if you don’t know,” she said as she was pointing to the huge flashing board that displayed her name in white. “This is maybe the only time I’m going to talk directly to you the audience.” This was the first time I saw her perform songs from Be the Cowboy and since her training with performance artist Monica Mirabile. She opened with a throwback from her second album “Goodbye, My Danish Sweetheart.” Her opening stature was stiff stared at the audience as the hot summer sun hit her pale face. As her set list grew, she became more comfortable with the stage, table, and chair and became more complex with her movements. During songs with long instrumentals, she pondered while crossing the stage, going around the table, and finally sitting on the chair like an obedient woman. At one point, she turned the giant table to its side, shaking its legs back and forth aggravatingly or lifting her own legs atop the table in a bicycle like movement. When Mitski performs, she is poised, assured, and swiftly posed. Her songs tell the opposite as longing is a common theme. The movements juxtapose her innocence and her hard-hitting lyrics. At the same time, they expose a different kind of vulnerability that expresses anxiety, but with the facade of an energetic child. By the time “Your Best American Girl” played, she sat quietly at the table and looked across the stage. During the powerful chorus, she shook her hand, flat-palmed, at the audience, a gesture that could represent a “why.” It wasn’t the same gesture as when she was longing for the white man in the music video but, rather,  a collective “why.” Why was she doing this and why does the audience not care? Is it because she wasn’t basking in the spotlight like the other acts who shared the festival billing with her? Was I the only person who cared for her, and will she care that I, another Asian woman, care for her? After the song, she whispered, “I’m done with all the hits. If you want to watch another act, I won’t be offended.” I sympathized with her. She was very niche, and there were different acts that were much more popular for the target audience of GovBall. At that point, my friends carried me off to catch another act across the festival grounds. 

Mitski announced her last concerts, before her hiatus, about a month after GovBall. The same friends who drifted away from her act at the festival wanted tickets, as well as my friends who never saw her. Even though I just recently saw her, I had no choice but to see her again. When I arrived at the large outside venue of SummerStage, at Central Park, the audience was packed with white people, specifically white men. My friend Mona and I were confused, since Mitski doesn’t have a specific audience. It was pretty unorthodox for white men to show up to an Asian-American woman’s show. For this reason, and because I am a short Asian-American woman, I could barely see what was going on, much to my annoyance. 

Mitski entered the stage with much grace, but she didn’t say anything at all. She didn’t acknowledge anything or anyone at all during the concert. She performed in the same style as the GovBall set, with the table, chair, and all. However, in this performance, Mitski asserted more dominance because it was her show and she had the spotlight. I resonated more with her childlike wonder; she wandered less stiffly, and her voice was less strained, but more quiet. Her stage was her bedroom and every teenage girl’s bedroom. She was comfortable with being alone in the moment, but not forever. But when she finally performed “Your Best American Girl,” it was the most uncomfortable experience I ever had with the song. Two couples directly in front and behind me screamed the lyrics. I found it to be extremely ironic because that specific song isn’t your typical love song, but an ode to unintended isolated circumstances. She exuded the same hand gestures that she did at GovBall, but with much more pain on her face. She didn’t look at the audience but violently shook her hand during my favorite lyric. I wanted to express longing with her, but I couldn’t in the environment I was in with people constantly screaming. No one could express that kind of yearning because they all had more privilege; the privilege of being wanted. It was clear that Mitski wanted to distance herself from the audience because she didn’t have the same intimacy as she did as the first concert I went to back in 2016. As she became more popular, how could she connect and perform to an audience that can’t personally resonate with her? 

We were both lost in our familiar place and I realized her hiatus was timed appropriately. We both needed to find ourselves, and I endured the same crisis I had during my senior year of high school. As she sang her last song “Carry Me Out,” I finally cried because I realized that we can’t know for sure when I will relate to someone like that in the near future. When was I going to have the same aching feeling again?

Profile on Taylor Jeffries

Pursuing journalism as a career path takes lots of time and devotion, especially in one of the most daunting political climates in America. Lea Veloso caught up with one dedicated journalism student at NYU.