analyzing liquid smooth by mitski (i have no understanding of lyricism whatsoever)

I'm beautiful, I know cause it's the season

I think this is funny, because that’s exactly how you feel in this situation. You don’t know beauty as an internal construct. You don’t yet understand that beauty is something you can give yourself; you think it’s supposed to be earned, by an unnamed Society that judges you based on your worth. You know you’re beautiful because it’s the Societally predetermined time to be beautiful.

But what am I to do with all this beauty? Biology, I am an organism, I'm chemical

Mitski presents her beauty as many things, none of which are alive the way humans are. She says that she is biology, an organism: technically alive, for sure, but the same way you know that slug on your AP Biology textbook is alive. You are the subject of inspection, in such scrutiny that you feel you are broken into your chemical structure.

That's all, that is all

“That is all / That is all” is the first sign that she internalizes this message. It’s a common experience, or at least that’s that I’d like to think: the female lived experience nearly always includes some episodes of self-scrunity. The same way my grandmother told me to lose weight, then I told me to lose weight.

I'm liquid smooth, come touch me, too And feel my skin is plump and full of life I'm in my prime I'm liquid smooth, come touch me, too I'm at my highest peak, I'm ripe About to fall, capture me

Another common experience: after living long enough with your beauty (and its ephemeral nature) being drilled into you, you start to think that, maybe, you should enjoy this. This is the high point in your life, you’re “at your highest peak.” You advertise this to everyone: look at me, “come touch me, too.”

Yet, you are also intrinsically aware that there’s an object-adjacent quality to what you’re doing. Ultimately, you wonder, isn’t this kind of like marketing? Lipstick and Photoshop to make yourself into a product others consume.

Then, you realize that you are making yourself the object; whether you care is a different question. You’re “ripe” the way that fruit is just before it is consumed. You plead to “be touched” in the same way that you’re an animal at the zoo, looking through the glass panes at your observers. You are the product, they paid to look at you. Yet… this is it. That’s all you get, for ever and ever. You feel that you deserve to enjoy this, to enjoy something…

But you’re not allowed to like even this; not wholly, anyway. It’s the same unsettling feeling as that time you went to the theme park as a kid, watching yourself ascend the heights of the roller coaster knowing that you’re about to fall. This is the best in you, and that also means you will deteriorate, and you will fall, and fall, and fall…

So you begin a plea, “capture me.” You think you ought to have this one thing forever, if that’s the only thing you get.

Or at least take my picture

But you know that’s not how it works. You know the rules. Maybe the best thing to do is to get immersed in it, make sure that at least this moment thrives. “[A]t least take a picture,” because a) you seek a sort of permanence to this, to this moment that is supposed to be so beautiful… and b) that permanence isn’t granted to you.

Kuzurete yuku maeni I'm pulsing, my blood is red and unafraid of living

There is a high in it, you acknowledge, enjoying this nonpermanent beauty. Taking the pictures is kind of fun, even if it induces some sense of existential dread in you. There’s a thrill when your marketability is at your highest. “I’m pulsing,” you yell out into the world; “my blood is red and unafraid of living.”

Beginning to end

This is, in my opinion, the best lyric in this song. By a long shot. It’s magical, the layers of complexity it can harbor: firstly, the thing we always say, i.e. “This book is boring, beginning to end.” You’re inclined to understand it like this, from years of hearing this phrase in this context. Yet, you hear the alternative: “My beauty, my cardinal value as a woman, is beginning to end.” You are once again on the ledge, forever on the pendulum between.

When you are at the highest point, you are also on the verge of a downfall; both the lyrics and the songwriting demonstrate that.

I'm liquid smooth, come touch me, too And feel my skin is plump and full of life I'm in my prime I'm liquid smooth, come touch me, too I'm at my highest peak, I'm ripe About to fall

How I feel this river rushing through my veins With nowhere else to go, it circles ‘round

Oh, but how you feel alive! You feel alive, and you think other people ought to see it, too. Regardless of your appearance, it’s true that your body is at its prime. There is a vitality in you, you hear other people call it “youth.” You’re alive, and you want to celebrate it. There is the beauty and the aliveness, and you don’t know which to celebrate; the line between them has long fallen.

Unlike the vitality, though, the beauty is a façade. It’s the cage, the outer walls of what makes you whole, and it traps the person you are inside. Whatever you feel, the “river rushing through [your] veins,” is ultimately your own. Other people do not understand you like this, remember? They see your marketability, the product, instead of you.

I'm liquid smooth, come touch me, too And feel my skin is plump and full of life I'm in my prime I'm liquid smooth, come touch me, too I'm at my highest peak, I'm ripe About to fall, capture me