Ponytail Picks #56 - Strangers
We like to think of you all as more than strangers, but let's get to know each other better though this week's picks.
LISTEN
Billy Joel’s “The Stranger”
Sometimes, you have to go with the obvious choice. Regarding this week’s theme, this is that.
What I find most interesting about this song, though, is how fitting its lyrics are to so many conversations I’ve had recently about people and politics and our tendency to notice the worst in others before we’re ready to recognize the same in ourselves. You know, “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye,” or whatever.
This verse digs particularly deep:
You may never understand
How the stranger is inspired
But he isn't always evil
And he is not always wrong
Though you drown in good intentions
You will never quench the fire
You'll give in to your desire
When the stranger comes along
Billy Joel doesn’t have a reputation for articulating deep, philosophical concepts in his music, but after listening to this song again, I feel inclined to take a closer look.
-AK
Don’t be a stranger.
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WATCH
Stranger things on screen
No, not the show (though I am eagerly awaiting Season 5!), but the lowercase things as seen on the silver screen.
There plenty of very strange films out there—trippy psychological horrors, wacky absurdist comedies, pretty much anything by David Lynch, etc.—but today I’m going to list a few of those films that either wait a while to get weird, or maybe only have one or two notes of weirdness that are thrown into an otherwise mundane, unspectacular environment, making them perhaps even more unsettling and strange than films packed to the brim with the bizarre:
The One I Love (2014)
Watched this one ages ago but it’s stuck with me ever since. Shapes itself up to be a pretty straight forward indie dramedy about a couple on the rocks before strangers (kind of) appear and things get weird.
Enemy (2013)
More doppelganger strangeness.
The Shining (1980)
This one’s obviously more famous for some horrifying images and scenes that get packed into the third act, but my favourite parts of it are the many vapid scenes before it (kid riding a tricycle, man throwing a ball, woman preparing dinner) that get infused with an intangible sense of impending doom.
Barton Fink (1991)
A movie about a writer. Surely nothing weird goes on in their brains, right?
Groundhog Day (1993)
Much more lighthearted than the above films, but its note of strangeness is no less pronounced (and smartly goes unexplained).
-JB
READ
The adjacent lives of Infinite Jest
Plenty has been said about Infinite Jest—its extensive footnotes, its length, its author’s misogyny and abusive behavior—but the thing that struck me the most was how it portrayed the complexity of life by running seemingly unrelated, parallel plots through its +1,000 pages.
The purpose behind this move is never spelled out, leaving you to draw your own lines between the tennis-school-superintending Incandenzas, the undercover terrorism-obstructing Hugh Steeply, and the rehab-running Don Gately. Linked only by mutual love interests and connections to Quebec, the collected narratives highlight how little we know about each other, and at the same time, how similar we are to the other struggling strangers in this world.
Plenty of people will poo-poo this book for being a lit-bro doorstopper. I would venture to say the vast majority of those people haven’t read it. At the end of the day, it’s the same thing all great works of literature are: an empathy machine.
-AK
Joel and I are taking a little break from the bi-weekly Ponytail schedule. Besides a few potential posts in the upcoming months, we’ll
Andrew- Thanks for sharing this. It sort of sums up a lot of things I need to catch up on. So you're saving me some time here. Have a fantastic summer!