Latest news with #Caity
Atlantic
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
Paris Can Be Intimidating—But It Has Great Butter
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain's account of his international adventures, made him famous—and cemented the stereotype of the Ugly American. One hundred and fifty-eight years later, Caity Weaver followed him to Paris. Caity and I chatted about her hilarious recounting of her trip in The Atlantic, why Paris can feel so intimidating, and the only food she ate there that she actually liked. Isabel Fattal: If you could go back in time and travel to Paris with Mark Twain, would you? Caity Weaver: Could I be assured of a safe return? Isabel: Yes, for imagination's sake. Caity: Absolutely. I would go anywhere with him. One of the things I was struck by when I reread this book before my trip was how unbelievably funny it is. Of course I knew that Mark Twain was 'a humorist,' but there were sections where I was laughing out loud. I think a lot of times when people think of old books, they get an idea in their head of a book that's really stuffy or boring. But this was cracklingly interesting. As a reader, it's rewarding to come across prose like that. As a writer, it's extremely irritating and intimidating. This man was funnier than I'll ever be, and he did it in 1869. Isabel: Do you have a favorite line or passage from the book? Caity: There was a section where he wrote about what he calls 'the Old Travelers'—well-traveled know-it-alls you sometimes encounter abroad: 'They will not let you know anything. They sneer at your most inoffensive suggestions; they laugh unfeelingly at your treasured dreams of foreign lands; they brand the statements of your traveled aunts and uncles as the stupidest absurdities.' Isabel: If you could ask Twain one question about his trip, what would it be? Caity: I would say: 'Sam, Mr. Clemens, did you go to the Louvre? Did you set foot inside the Louvre, really?' I can't prove that he didn't, but I strongly suspect that he didn't. And I feel like he would tell me. Can't kid a kidder. Isabel: You write in your story about the possibility that Twain was ashamed about not understanding the art at the Louvre. Does visiting Paris make a person feel like they need to have a certain level of cultural knowledge? Did you feel intimidated at any point? Caity: I feel like a completely idiotic, disorganized, disheveled crumb bum anywhere, but especially in Paris. It's like walking into a very fancy hotel lobby. Some people are going to be really comfortable there, and some people are going to think, Am I gonna be arrested for walking into this hotel lobby? Paris is so just-so. I find it to be an intimidating place. The combination of not really speaking the language and the city being so beautiful … I felt a little bit on edge there. Isabel: I have one bone to pick with you. I think you were eating wrong in Paris. You didn't eat anything yummy! Caity: I sure didn't. (Well, I had great ramen.) Isabel: What went wrong? Caity: I didn't eat anything I absolutely loved except the butter. I had a crêpe suzette—delicious, and thrilling to have a small fire caused in a restaurant at your behest. I had some croissants. I really was hoping to be able to write, 'Oh my God, I found the best croissant in the world,' and I just don't think I did. But the butter: unbelievably good. I took so many notes for myself trying to describe the color and the taste of the butter. [ Reads through her notes.] I suppose I am an Ugly American, because this is my description of butter: 'creamy; has a scent; smells almost like movie theater butter.' The color was such a rich, deep yellow, almost like how an egg yolk can sometimes tip over into orange. My notes say, 'So fatty and rich.' Next bullet point: 'like if the whole room were made out of pillows.' And then: 'Yes, I realize I am describing a padded cell.' But it was an ultimate richness, softness, like, Just let me roll around in a padded cell. That was how I felt eating this butter. I took dozens of photos in my hotel room trying to capture its exact hue, and failed to. I encountered another group of Americans in my hotel lobby who were trying to figure out a way to transport butter home in their luggage. I involved myself in their conversation, as Americans do: What if the hotel was willing to store it in a freezer, in an insulated lunch bag? We devoted quite a bit of time to solving this problem. Caity: Oh, no, I think they're probably enjoying that butter right now. I wanted to bring a bunch of dried sausage back to the U.S. And then, after I purchased it, I realized that I could get in trouble for flying with it. I ate so much saucisson in my hotel room so fast. I worried such a dense concentration of salt might cause my heart to shut down. I Googled something like: How much dried sausage too much. Here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic: The Week Ahead Essay A High IQ Makes You an Outsider, Not a Genius By Helen Lewis Who has the highest IQ in history? One answer would be: a 10-year-old girl from Missouri. In 1956, according to lore, she took a version of the Stanford-Binet IQ test and recorded a mental age of 22 years and 10 months, equivalent to an IQ north of 220. (The minimum score needed to get into Mensa is 132 or 148, depending on the test, and the average IQ in the general population is 100.) Her result lay unnoticed for decades, until it turned up in The Guinness Book of World Records, which lauded her as having the highest childhood score ever. Her name, appropriately enough, was Marilyn vos Savant. And she was, by the most common yardstick, a genius. I've been thinking about which people attract the genius label for the past few years, because it's so clearly a political judgment. You can tell what a culture values by who it labels a genius—and also what it is prepared to tolerate. The Renaissance had its great artists. The Romantics lionized androgynous, tubercular poets. Today we are in thrall to tech innovators and brilliant jerks in Silicon Valley. Vos Savant hasn't made any scientific breakthroughs or created a masterpiece. She graduated 178th in her high-school class of 613, according to a 1989 profile in New York magazine. She married at 16, had two children by 19, became a stay-at-home mother, and was divorced in her 20s. She tried to study philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, but did not graduate. More in Culture Catch Up on The Atlantic When Pete Hegseth's Pentagon tenure started going sideways The travel ban shows that Americans have grown numb. The Trump administration is spending $2 million to figure out whether DEI causes plane crashes. Photo Album Spend time with our photos of the week, which include images of monsoon flooding in India, Dragon Boat Festival races in China, a huge tomato fight in Colombia, and more.
BBC News
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Caity Baser on the importance of vulnerability in new music
Singer Caity Baser says she's excited for her music to "dive into my more emotional side".With earlier hits like Friendly Sex, Why Can't I Have Two and I'm A Problem, she says she was projecting a fun-loving, carefree version of herself that was hiding something much it took an interviewer calling her a "man-eating, confident assassin" to realise "if that's what people think of me then I need to be more open and let people in".In reality, "I'm sad, I'm confused," Caity tells BBC Newsbeat, with her new track Watch That Girl (She's Gonna Say It) reflecting that. "Everyone sees me as confident, like I don't care, but I think that was just to distract from how I was actually feeling."The Brit-nominee says trying to hide from her deeper feelings eventually started to wear off."So for two or three years I was singing, 'it's fine, everything's fine', but then it gets to a point where you're like, maybe I should deal with why I'm so angry." Watch That Girl touches on a difficult childhood, fractious parental relationships and heartbreak, with the 22-year-old singing about trauma that "comes in so many shapes and sizes" which all "fit me perfectly".Caity's calling it a "new chapter" as she turns her attention to writing about more personal topics, having built her brand on being young and carefree. "How I presented myself - crazy, loud, being a nutter, that is who I am but I'm also sensitive," she when she was having a down day, presenting that version of herself could be difficult. "I felt genuinely weird if I was on stage and not like that, it just doesn't make sense."I didn't want to feel like I had to switch it on. I want to express all sorts of emotions rather than just one."While the Southampton singer says her old music "made sense to me at the time... it's important for my fans to see that there's other parts of me and that's OK. There's other parts to them too." Last summer, Caity released her EP Still Learning. Since then, she tells Newsbeat she's learnt quite a lot, mostly just how much she can handle. As she's "matured", she says she found it harder performing some of her older songs. "I can't make a song I don't relate to," she says. "That's why I've done this shift, because I was writing about things that didn't matter to me anymore."Opening up after building a brand on being young and carefree is "scary", Caity says. "I've always been so ashamed of being vulnerable."But at the same time writing her newest project was "the easiest thing I've ever done"."I imagined I was talking to my younger self," she says. "It was really healing for me." 'A Brat time all the time' While fans love seeing a more authentic side to their favourite artists, Brat summer taught us they also love escapism and balancing those things can be challenging, Caity says. "With Brat summer and my old era, it was so much fun going out and wearing these outfits, but there comes a point where you have to go home, leave the party and deal with stuff," she says. "I'm having a Brat time all the time, I'm a crazy girl, but it's just about finding a happy medium."I'm really big at keeping my peace right now and staying at home." Her new chapter isn't just for her music, but also social media where she has hundreds of thousands of followers. "If you look at my page, it looks like I'm having a whale of a time," Caity says. "I am - I love my life and I'm so lucky that I live this life but also it's not always like that."Normally, I'd be like, let's put on a smile and let's just be crazy. "Whereas now if I'm feeling a bit sad, a bit tired or whatever, I'll lean into that emotion and make something with that," she says. Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.
