Sloppy Jane (feat. Phoebe Bridgers) - "Claw Machine"

Listen here.

From the mouth of Henry Giardina:

i am not a phoebe bridgers fan, exactly. it's more that we’re in the same taste whirlpool. i like who she likes—elliott smith, her series of egg-seeming boyfriends. sometimes i'm resentful of her, the way I'm resentful of all pretty people who can express themselves through music.

if i could choose, i would be a musician. it's always seemed cruel that i can only write and not make any other kind of art--music just understands better, carries the message better. a few words make such a difference set to music.

'claw machine' is a story song, a few vignettes strung together. it was written specifically for I Saw the TV Glow and includes the title in its first line, followed by a description of a teen who "paints the ceiling black" so they won't know when their eyes close.

if you ask people of my generation to speak about our adolescence, all these emo images show up. black ceilings, myspace photos, dodgy talks with older men in AOL chat rooms, summer jobs. Jane Schoenbrun's movie steers clear of most of that—her first film played more with that territory.

TV Glow instead surrenders to a feeling, that specifically trans state of growing up and feeling underwater, without a heart, without senses. being an egg was so literal for us: surrounded by the four walls of our shitty bedrooms, feeling strained and yet contained and held by it. we loved a box we couldn't fit inside.

the song’s central metaphor, the claw machine, is the narrator's heart: like it, they "can't hold onto anything." they're going through the motions. they don't know anything that doesn't directly contradict who they are. all they know is that they don't like who they are, and neither does anyone else. "you know it's a mistake," Bridgers sings, in Figure 8-style waltz time, "when it's me who was making it."

TV Glow is a movie about eggs, yes, but also about how eggs are perceived. those dead-eyed, shut-in nerds, never getting any sunlight, addicted to the TV, living in their heads, afraid of their bodies. yes, we were all of that. we had a murky sense of another life, something outside of everything we knew, but to reach for it was too painful. what would people say? to be trans is to be called crazy. so we pre-empt the critique by calling ourselves crazy first.

"I think i was born bored," the chorus goes.

"i think i was born blue

i think i was born wanting more

i think i was born already missing you."

When I saw TV Glow my heart felt mutilated after. It was the kind of movie I could have used as a kid, as an egg, even if my egg self might have felt too exposed by it.

I was so happy that people have this movie from now on, and so sad that some of the trans people I've already lost never got a chance to see it. sometimes we meet the people we're born already missing, but the missing doesn't stop.

sometimes people fall off the face of the earth. sometimes you don't get the closure you want. but it has to be enough that we survive alongside each other, even if we never end up touching.

Henry Giardina is a writer living and dying in L.A.