Expansion Pack #1: "COWBOY"

Welcome to the wild, wild web.

Hi! Today I’m testing out a brand new series here at

Left On Red

called “EXPANSION PACKS”, an assortment of self-serve recs, in a newsletter meets mood board format. There’s a little something for whatever you’re in the mood for as long as you’re in the mood for “cowboy”.

It all started with Beyoncé and her country album that dropped at the tail end of March.

I found myself thinking back to a book I’d read recently, an early contender for favourite book of 2024. Then of course Vogue declared cowboy fashion was in, which felt almost as obvious as declaring flowers are in for spring. (I’ll still take both, please and thank you.) Barbie still hasn’t left the chat, nor has her Western Barbie getup. And lest you forget, Ken will never die.

My background is in fashion design. I think of things in terms of collections and patterns and concepts and moods. Literature, film, fashion, music, poetry—it all makes more sense together.

Here we go.

“COWBOY CARTER” ALBUM COVER

So. COWBOY CARTER. Some people love it. Some people don’t, like the creator on TikTok who launched a thousand stitches for declaring that she thought it was boring. I might not’ve listened to the album were it not for the passionate discourse, wanting to find out for myself. And it’s my favourite Beyoncé album to date. I have II HANDS II HEAVEN, TYRANT, 16 CARRIAGES, and SWEET HONEY BUCKIIN‘ on rotation.

The entire album tickled both my brain and ear. I highly recommend listening and then reading about its layered references, or read first then listen. I learned so much, like what “Cowboy Carter” really means¹. It makes me want to do my version of something that’s, as Rolling Stone called it, “richly researched and meticulously constructed”, something multilayered that develops and simmers over time (five years for this one).

From 16 CARRIAGES: Ain't got time to waste, I got art to make / I got love to create on this holy night. Lana Del Rey has said something very similar a few times: “The way I live my life is my poetry, my lovemaking is my legacy, and I get to make music in between.” Lana is also, as we know, putting out her first country album this year, called LASSO, after years of playing into Americana as a thematic reference in her music.

Listen to it if you haven’t. Pop, country, R&B, hip-hop, rap, blues, opera (yes), if none of those is “your genre”, listen to it as a creative exercise.

Moving on. Ish. Something I appreciate about Beyoncé as an artist is that she chooses to collaborate with a mix of well-known names (on this album, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Miley Cyrus) and artists far from mainstream consciousness—like poet Warsan Shire on Lemonade. In BLACKBIIRD, a cover of Paul McCartney’s song inspired by Little Rock Nine, Beyoncé sang with four emerging Black country artists: Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts.

But Shaboozey (featured on SPAGHETTII and SWEET HONEY BUCKIIN‘) was the one that really got me.

WHY CAN’T COWBOYS CRY? from the his album, COWBOYS LIVE FOREVER, OUTLAWS NEVER DIE is a hip-hop/country mashup with a side of cinematic soundtrack.

Good question though, why can’t cowboys cry? Cowboys are a profession, just people who wrangle cattle on ranches, who’ve become assigned to the American masculine ideal.

COWGIRL (emphasis mine) is a newsletter about the American West—“its history, mythologies, cruelty, and beauty”, highlighting its romance:

Cowboy-Knight

And its violence:

Empire of Nothing

I haven’t read Tom Robbins’ EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES but I’d come across this quote from the 1976 novel: “...disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business...”

EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES BY TOM ROBBINS

In the vein of his other books, Tom masterfully blends poetry and humour and mixes in the absurd. What a treat to read this nonsense:

This sentence is made of sunlight and plums. This sentence is made of ice. This sentence is made from the blood of the poet. This sentence was made in Japan. This sentence glows in the dark. This sentence was born with a caul. This sentence has a crush on Norman Mailer. This sentence is a wino and doesn't care who knows it. Like many italic sentences, this one has Mafia connections. This sentence is percent organic: it will not retain a facsimile of freshness like those sentences of Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe et al., which are loaded with preservatives. This sentence leaks. This sentence doesn't look Jewish . . . This sentence has accepted Jesus Christ as its personal savior. This sentence once spit in a book reviewer's eye. This sentence can do the funky chicken. This sentence has seen too much and forgotten too little. This sentence is called “Speedoo” but its real name is Mr. Earl. This sentence may be pregnant, it missed its period. This sentence suffered a split infinitive—and survived. If this sentence had been a snake you'd have bitten it. This sentence went to jail with Clifford Irving. This sentence went to Woodstock. And this little sentence went wee wee wee all the way home. This sentence is proud to be a part of the team here at Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. This sentence is rather confounded by the whole damn thing.

The book I teased at the top, one of my early contenders for favourite book read in 2024 is THE SOLACE OF OPEN SPACES by poet and filmmaker Gretel Ehrlich, published in 1985. It’s a series of essays accounting for the time Gretel spent on ranches in Wyoming.

THE SOLACE OF OPEN SPACES BY GRETEL EHRLICH

I kept thinking about this line from the book: “ripeness is a form of decay”.

And this excerpt: “A person’s life is not a series of dramatic events for which he or she is applauded and exiled but a slow accumulation of days, seasons, years.”

And these lines describing the scene after midwifing a baby calf: “Walking up to the ranch house from the shed, we saw the Northern Lights. They looked like talcum powder fallen from a woman’s face. Rouge and blue eyeshadow streaked the spires of white light which exploded, then pulsated, shaking the colours down—like lives—until they faded from sight.”

Celebrities love opening restaurants, starting book clubs, and writing poetry. And A24 makes cool movies and gifts. The two collide in COWBOY POET OUTLAW MADMAN by Val Kilmer, a very pretty book containing poems written between the long stretch of time between 1987-2000. Courtney on Goodreads said: “Still unsure if I like poetry or not. But I know I like Val Kilmer.” Here’s part of a poem:

FROM COWBOY POET OUTLAW MADMAN BY VAL KILMER

The book’s foreword by playwright and screenwriter David Mamet, starts with this line:

All the great poets were Cowboys.

And you know what? I think I get it.

So this cowboy is a poet. This cowboy is a woman. This cowboy is a black man.

And this cowboy is a robot. I still think about WESTWORLD, the television show, all the time. Cowboys and damsels representing lawlessness, freedom, and adventure—in a simulated reality hosting humans paying to experience those things for themselves.

From the 2023 Helmut Lang exhibition, “YOBWOC”, spearheaded by writer, curator, and former kindergarten teacher Antwuan Sargent, on asserting a contemporary vision of the cowboy:

FROM “YOBWOC”, 2023

On the collection/exhibition:

There is utility in cowboy codes but also a showiness. A flamboyance.

The cowboy is a hero, an American icon. But also a complex and at time problematic figure in this country's history.

When thinking of the word 'cowboy' I think about the body. I think about the strain on the body, I think about the sweat, the grime.

We have been interested in not only cowboys but different cowboy-like spirits. The astronaut who is often referred to as a space cowboy, or the artist. There are aesthetics, of course. And then there is attitude.

Cowboys x space: iconic Toy Story duo WOODY AND BUZZ LIGHTYEAR, the mediocrely-reviewed but conceptually-exciting COWBOYS AND ALIENS (2011) based off the graphic novel, this poem from LIFE ON MARS by Tracy Smith:

THE UNIVERSE: ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK BY TRACY SMITH, FROM LIFE ON MARS

Kandace Siobhan Walker is a London-based poet and I’m waiting for her collection, COWBOY (available at Cheerio Publishing), to come in the mail. It’s supposed to be very Millennial and about “the wildness underneath the smooth glass-and-chrome surfaces of contemporary life”. From the collection:

MUSTANG BY KANDACE SIOBHAN WALKER, FROM “COWBOY”

For eau de cowboy:

• COWBOY GRASS BY D.S. & DURGA (“Perfect for robbing banks on horseback.”)

• COW BY ZOOLOGIST (“Lush green pastures tumble toward the horizon.”)

• THE TWILIGHT OF THE OLD WEST COLLECTION BY CHERRY-KA’S TRUNK on Etsy (Black Hat: “The smell of leather chaps, gunpowder on the wind, of datura petals opening up for the starlight.”)

L to R: COW BY ZOOLOGIST, COWBOY GRASS BY D.S. & DURGA, CHERRY-KA'S TRUNK

When I put something like this together, I always leave it to sit for at 80% done for few days while my brain and tabs try to figure out how I want to tie it all together, what this hodgepodge of references wants to leave behind as its impression.

A while ago I was reading about the decline of the western as a film genre: “In recent years, the cowboy has been replaced by the superhero as the most common expression of American values in blockbuster filmmaking.”² Today, movies that tap into the landscapes of the American frontier get folded into other more dominant genres. See: MINARI (drama), PEARL (horror), BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (romance), KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (crime), and LOGAN (superhero).

And here I found my end, with a video essay about a mutant with claws and the limits of genre as a set of laws that govern our expectations. It starts with this quote from film critic Leo Braudy: “Change in genre occurs when the audience says ‘That’s too infantile a form of what we believe. Show us something more complicated.’”

The end / the beginning.

1. What's the Significance Behind 'Cowboy Carter' Title?

2. “What the Western Means Now” by Noah Gittell, the Atlantic