Hedonism In The Cultural Desert and Charli XCX’s ‘Apple’
I do not believe that pleasure, to anyone, is a place.
I grew up in a romanticised landscape, desired for brief encounters but commended for its history - what I had described as a ‘cultural desert’. I have damned this landscape, viewing it as an impediment to any pleasure.
My closest city was home to tourists, 6 million a year. I would regularly observe how the residents expelled a kind of privacy as if they were still living the childish life, a town made up of the ‘popular’ group; ignorant to their own tradition, with a mindset of sterility. But perhaps this was their form of pleasure.
In 2024, singer Charli XCX released ‘Apple’ - coining the iconic and contemporary brat summer. However, when I first heard this song, I felt nothing but nostalgia. I consider the ‘cultural desert’ a place of idolised rebellion - where generations diverge from their hedonistic differences. Yet, her lyrics, “I guess the apple don't fall far from the tree”, arguably symbolise the effect of tradition on an individual.
Coming from a place of tourist-valued history, I ironically recognised tradition to be meaningless but, more importantly, hedonistically insignificant. Life, like an apple, appears to be a particularly Anglican perspective, whereas if I think of life like the orange Californian poppy, it is one assured for its individual brilliance. The apple is far from this but does signify to me the influence of our residence.
Naturally, living in my world of cultural ignorance, friendships have truly constituted my pleasure. But are friendships infantile? I have never known my father to value friendships. Maybe it was this independence of his that I used to admire; it was hopeful. I didn’t have to rely on people, even those who may have disliked me anyway.
Until the age of sixteen, I thought friendships were simply fraudulent, necessary socially, yet of no real worth to me. It seemed that the ‘cultural desert’ couldn’t offer me the pleasure that I sought, in fact, it enforced the opposite. Once I reached this age, something changed. I found myself seeking time with others, feeling a sense of pleasure I had not felt before.
Whilst I used to believe the ‘cultural desert’ was simply barren of Epicurean bliss - I now recognise the insignificance of this landscape – my focus was wrong. As Charli XCX points out, we cannot escape who we are. Though sought out in different ways, maybe our ability to find pleasure is foundational to our tradition.
Seeking pleasure in our surrounding landscape is difficult because it is more about who surrounds us. I imagine this is why I viewed friendships as infantile, having previously endured friendships by those who exhibited childish masochism.
We are undeniably influenced by that which has come before us; this may be manifested through a physical place, but it ultimately comes from its residents. As apples, we are “rotten right to the core […] from all the apples coming before”, our hedonism, or lack of, was embodied to me through the landscape of the ‘cultural desert’.
The ‘cultural desert’ remains to me a place of masochistic agony, pleasure may be subjective, but pain arguably permeated through these streets. However, in recognising the significance of those who surround us, we break the boundaries of pain that the ‘cultural desert’ so historically enforced.
As a resident of the ‘cultural desert’, I can no longer deny tradition in my pursuit of pleasure - for this place will remain one of pain to those who do not embrace fellow residents. Hedonism in the ‘cultural desert’ is difficult to achieve when obsessing over the landscape.
Embracing tradition is necessary for hedonistic bliss, but this begins with your acceptance as an apple.
Edited by Roxy-Moon Dahal Hodson
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