“is this the millennial bottom?: a meditation”

ARC Seed 2025 presents Kim Ip

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Cordelia’s TikTok famous song

“i think i like this little life”

hit where my achilles tendon gets strained…maybe stringy.

 

 

In all the strain of my torn ankle ligament is a soft spot for an acoustic lilt that lulls me into the recesses of being a baby once again. Hmm how can I describe this very moment in time–is it “a little bit-more, less, harder, fine”?! FINE! Fine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is this Gen Z’s version of Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten”? 

 

 

 

 

Is Cordelia trying to be ironic? Is she, a cuspy gen z-er? Am I really trying to speak into the void that is…millennial bottom? And what is the millennial bottom actually? And why does pop-ular music/TikTok/hitclips call into question a larger U.S. cultural consciousness that is attempting to lighten the blow of a project 2025 government? The pop music isn’t a wax on wax off mentality around impending doom, but it is, I suppose, a reprieve from actual reality.

Hence the verbiage of “hey that song was catchy it had a memorable hook”. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wanna know, can you manufacture joy through a sonic earworm? These songs we hear for 10-30 seconds that get swooped up in the TikTok algorithm only to be stripped of context and meme-ified. I want to believe that the subtext of these songs and the impulse that created these songs actually have weight to them. I want to believe in the chemistry of Mulder and Scully of X-Files fame and the universality of auspiciousness tucked into the potentiality of an emergent landscape–this I hope exists as surprise and delight. And..I listened to the song in totality and I did read the comments and they’re beautiful. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“This is both sad and comforting at the same time.”

-sais my millennial bottom