17 June 2021
‘…I don’t know what comes after, once I decide to let desire have its way with me. How to un-melt the melted? How to turn the ground powder back into a person? This idea points to a knowledge that I don’t have: how to love without losing the self.’
Plumbing the well of culture for clues about love and loss – from Agnes Martin’s abstract paintings to Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet to Frank Ocean’s Blonde – this brilliant work of debut nonfiction explores the state of falling in love, whether with a painting or a person.
Pham creates a perfectly fractured portrait of modern intimacy, triumphant in its vulnerability and restlessness. Pop Song is a book about distances: the miles we travel to get away from ourselves, or those who hurt us, and the impossible gaps that can exist between two people sharing a bed.
Here is a map to all the routes by which we might escape our own needs before finally finding a way home.
Read an extract below.
Ways of knowing
when it’s time to go
A starting gun
A text message
A plane ticket
A phone call
Last call
An upside-down shot glass in front of you at the bar
An orgasm in an unfamiliar room
A failure to come
A silence
The moon is visible
The moon isn’t visible, and you want to find it
You’re the happiest you think you’ll ever be at this party
Everyone else around you is hailing a cab
The sun is setting
The pool is closing
They’ve turned off the fog machines
The sun is rising
The sun is rising and a song you love has started to play
