Certain sentences can grind my brain to a halt, demanding attention and completely derailing the reading process, whether by tone, word choice, lyricism, or utter rhetorical madness. Witness:
This amalgamated aesthetic is catnip to a significant portion of American listeners but functions like an invisibility cloak against music writers.This sentence, appearing in Jia Tolentino's "The Slippery Appeal of the Biggest New Band in America" in The New Yorker, compels further contemplation.
Partly I perform a readerly revel at the idea of an aesthetic which can simultaneously be catnip and and invisibility cloak. (Or at least, catnip which "functions like" an invisibility cloak. Is it worn? Eaten? Brandished?) Partly I cringe at this strangely not-quite-metaphor. Partly I am ready to accept any sentence beginning with the awesome and alliterative "amalgamated aesthetic".
But the biggest part, and the final one for me, is the sheer audacity of writing a sentence about "music writers" in an article about music; this is an incredible feat of non-self-recognition on the part of the author, who surely must be labelled as a music writer. And to whom this band is --- as the feature and focus of this article-let --- definitely visible.
This post's theme word is eclose, "(of an insect) to emerge as an adult from the pupa or as a larva from the egg." Twenty One Pilots' hit song "Stressed Out" focuses on the difficulties and angst of eclosure.
