Sylvie is better than Martha Stewart

Sylvie is not knowledgeable about houses. Her inexperience is understandable, as she lives a transient lifestyle, never staying in one place for too long. As a newcomer to domestic life, she experiences a steep learning curve for housekeeping. She often goes through the motions of homemaking without understanding why or how to do it well.

            The best analogy I can imagine for Sylvie’s housekeeping is the music of a band called The Shaggs; Sylvie is to housekeeping what The Shaggs are to music. Sylvie is a transient, forced into domestic life by circumstance, and The Shaggs were three sisters forced into music by their father. Sylvie has a surface understanding of the things people do to maintain their houses, does not understand what purposes they serve. As a result, she attempts to keep the house, but often does things that seem bizarre. For example, she understands that houses are supposed to be swept, but not where or why sweeping occurs, so she sweeps half of the ceiling and a door. She also understands that people collect and organize things in their houses, but not what they collect or where, so she stacks tin cans in the kitchen. Similarly, The Shaggs had a surface understanding of how pop bands made music, but not the precise things that made pop music sound good. For example, they were aware that most bands had a rhythm guitar, but they did not fully grasp the concept of rhythm. Many of their songs sound like they have no time signature, and the guitar simply strummed whenever a word was sung. They also understood that bands had multiple takes of their songs in recordings, and started over when they made mistakes. When they stopped and began again during recording sessions, the production staff was often baffled as to what they thought the mistake was.

            However, The Shaggs are now beloved by many for their unconventional, outsider approach to music. Some might compare their music to a movie like “The Room:” so hilariously bad that it’s good. Personally, I would compare their music to a child’s drawing: while it isn’t “good” in the conventional sense, it can be an unusual and intriguing insight into their mind. For example, the song “Who are the Parents?” with its strange call-and-response lyrics, could tell the listener about the personal lives of The Shaggs. Perhaps Sylvie’s housekeeping might also be praised for its outsider approach. Though her work doesn’t effectively clean anything and would give my mom a stroke, it is a fascinating and unique use of a house. Sylvie eats in the dark, preferring to watch the sun rise and only let natural light in. She opens the windows and lets in the elements, keeping neat piles of leaves in the corners. She doesn’t understand that houses are meant to keep the elements out, and she strives to make the house closer to nature. Ruth compares Sylvie in a house to a mermaid in a ship, letting in the element the vessel was designed to exclude.

            The Shaggs predate artists like Captain Beefheart, who intentionally made music which broke all the rules of how to sound “good,” and whose seminal work “Trout Mask Replica,” was one of the most critically acclaimed albums ever made. Frank Zappa infamously declared that they were “better than The Beatles.” Similarly, could Sylvie’s housekeeping be considered great in its creativity? It defies every rule of good housekeeping. At a glance it appears to be a disaster, but perhaps it’s secretly a masterpiece.