I timed it perfectly—had just set the rosemary to bloom in hot oil when the halftime show began. It’s a bit of a ritual, my Sunday evening culinary experiment, but I made an exception for the Super Bowl because one must engage with the broader culture, lest one become the sort of person who uses the phrase “the broader culture” in everyday conversation. Enter Kendrick Lamar, who took the stage with a theatrical flair that suggested he had either an urgent message for humanity or was about to stage a coup against the referees. The performance was visually striking—something about the interplay of lights, dancers, and live instrumentation made it feel less like a mere show and more like an urgent transmission from the future. But as for what exactly he was saying, well, I must confess that while I caught the general vibe of righteous indignation and historical reckoning, the specifics eluded me. One moment he was delivering bars with the intensity of a man who had cracked the code to the universe, and the next, the camera cut to a backup dancer in what appeared to be a metallic trench coat, marching with the gravitas of an ancient oracle.
Still, one need not grasp every lyrical nuance to appreciate the moment. There was power in the message, even if it was slightly lost on a man tending to a pan sauce. And frankly, I admire the commitment—it’s no small thing to take the most corporate, middle-America spectacle and inject it with a sense of purpose. There’s a dignity in that, like leaving a handwritten note in a library book for some future reader to discover. I imagine many people watching had their own interpretation, and maybe that’s the point—great performances don’t hand you a neatly packaged answer but rather invite you to wrestle with the meaning. In any case, my dish (a citrus and fennel braised chicken, if you’re curious) turned out well, and the halftime show left me entertained and mildly bewildered, which feels about right.
No comments:
Post a Comment