I Can't Stop Listening to this Song and I Am Embarrassed

Not about the song at all. The song itself is a banger. Not even simply a bop, nope. This song is a full on banger. 

The band? Nirvana.

Good band, right? I mean, if we're being honest, I didn't even ENJOY Kurt Cobain's band one stitch until I randomly fell in love with "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" during a Spotify adventure. 

The song? "Rape Me".

Good song, right? It's definitely a vibe. Not a song to be embarrassed about listening to, right? 

What about if you ask OKGoogle every day multiple times, "Okay Google. Play "RAPE ME" on all speakers at FULL VOLUME!"?

And then you yourself scream sing it at top volume all over the house until it is done and then you enjoy the rest of "Rape Me" radio until your soul needs to hear "Rape Me" proper again. 

Should I be embarrassed about that part? 

Because I am not. 

I am, however, embarrassed about the reason I'm doing this multiple times each day. 

It's because I am harnessing that Kendall Roy energy. 

Yes, I am listening to the same song over and over again because I am thinking about a television show. I want to feel the very layered feels that I feel when watching this scene.

And when I talk about feeling things because of this song and this scene, it's not just about what is happening on the screen. A lot of it is the excitement over the brilliance of the writing of the scene. Or the way it looks, or the way it's acted or, again, the full on brilliance or all the meaning and subtlety all the artists involved packed into this single scene. 

That is very small and very embarrassing to me. Why? I'm not sure exactly and I've been trying to figure it out in my brain. 

Let me set the scene a bit just in case you're not as obsessed with "Succession" as I am. Spoilers are coming, obviously. 

The scene is from season 3, episode 3 of Succession. 

The Roys are a mess. As usual. They are enmeshed in the middle of so much billion dollar drama, I can't even encapsulate it into a single blog post, let around a sentence. 

One of the biggest messes is sexual assault allegations against their cruise division. You know that whole mess that Greg the Egg and Tom Wamsgams (that is how I say it, so that's how I'm gonna spell it. I know it it not right, but he's fictional, so I don't feel too terribly bad.)

Shiv, the pretending-to-have-it-all sister of the Roy family, is giving a speech at an employee town hall. Logan, the blustery patriarch, is sitting on his hands in a sense, acting like he's not still 1000% in charge. Roman's playing the "I love my daddy" character pretty hard this episode. 

And Kendall? He's on the outs, both corporately and family-y.

And then he shows up and does this. 

What I love about this scene is just it's sheer perfection - the song choice is impeccable for the situation. The silencing of a woman with this particular song gave me chills the first time I watched this scene. And the low tech way Kendall rolled out his attack...

It's all just brilliant. And I guess one of my brain's special skills is that by listening to the song, I can feel all those feelings again. And weirdly, for me, they're good ones. 

A note on the low tech comment- instead of blasting through the existing sound system in place, Kendal played it on the same kinda PA I used to work for my work parties. 

I love when the writing on a TV show is so good that you can examine the inner workings of the character's brains. "Succession" is so good at that. 

I know deep inside when I think about it enough that the reason this embarasses me is the decades and decades of one person or another that was supposed to love me saying over and over "Stop talking about television! I do not care!"

So I feel shame-y for enjoying something. Hooray for my broken brain. 

At least I'm learning to work with it, rather than against it! 

So hooray for progress!