The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/author/skylarxu/)
Lasting just over an hour, Goodbye to Language consists of what I can only describe as an excruciating series of tawdry audio, visual and textual snippets stitched together in the most random way possible.
I have been hunting for a specific kind of lyrical, melodic, soft electronica. I went through Sufjan Steven’s The Ascension (think “Video Game”), Jamie xx, a bit of Tame Impala and lots of Joji before remembering alt-J. The British band combines elements of electronica, rock and pop to create the distinct texture of their music. I knew their most popular song, “Breezeblocks,” but I had never really listened to their albums seriously up until now. It was down this lane of rediscovery that I stumbled upon alt-J’s version of Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day.”
Alt-J peaked around 2015.
There is only one thing that makes me wish I wasn’t studying abroad this semester — Fat Ham, a comedy written by James Ijames, is on Broadway and I really want to go see it. The play ran from May to July last year at the Public Theater in New York, after premiering as a streaming production (thanks, pandemic) at Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater and winning the Pulitzer Prize in drama. Fat Ham, a comedic reinterpretation loosely based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, caught my eye for two reasons: I had just finished writing a paper on a modern-day Shakespeare adaptation, and Colman Domingo (who plays Ali in Euphoria) is co-producing the play. He posted about it on Instagram — and yes, I follow Domingo on Instagram. Memorable adaptations of Shakespeare are few and far between.