#[*inadequate german rambling*]

[milkywayan]

i hope this is an okay ask to send, idk if you’ve gotten a thousand of these already lol, but i’m like. uber passionate to learn about medieval studies but the main thing stopping me is knowing where to start. where did you, if you have any recommendations? i love this slice of history more than i can describe and though it feels weird to say because people knowing things ahead of time is so… depended upon today in a way that makes others feel inadequate, i want knowledge to show for it and to really engage in a meaningful way with that portion of the past. where do you think i should start? thank you for your time by the way you’re wonderful

awww, it is ok, and no you are literally the first person to ask this! And your ask made me really happy and excited! It is amazing that you want to engage and understand history! One of the biggest realisations you will have is probably, that people in the past were just.. people, like us. Nothing is funnier than finding some documents from the 13th century where two neighbours argue over who is allowed to use the drain between their houses, like nothing has changed.

I am no expert myself, I am just a scientist who is way too much into history, but I will do what I can. Expect a long ramble, you have been warned! I also focus mostly on german/austrian history, because I am austrian, scandinavian/norwegian history, because that is where I live and of course british because that is where you just get a lot of good sources for. Also, the medieval age was long, so every time period is very different from each other!

There are many different aspects that are full fields of study on their own, like just general history with "who was king when and what war happened when", or domestic history as in "how did people wash their clothes" or "how did people make their clothes" which is my love, of course. There is also of course literature, which is also one of my passions (i have mentioned i love history, right?).

I think you can just understand people if you know the stories that they told each other, the stories they were passionate about. So for me that means reading middle high german poetry (like my beloved Walther von der Vogelweide), reading myths, sagas and fairy tales from different regions (my faves are german, slavic and scandinavian)

For me, it is easy to get into a new topic by watching things about it, because I am dyslexic and reading is hard. Idk if you know them, but the BBC made AMAZING living history documentaries about domestic life and castle building (they also have ones for e.g. the edwardian and victorian life they are also good):

Tales from the Green Valley: the first farm docu made, where they spend an entire year living on a reconstructed farm in Tudor England

Tudor Monastery Farm: similar to the previous one, they show life in an early Tudor, so early 16th century farm that is owned by a monastery, and also therefore talks a lot about catholic rites and how that shaped the culture

Secrets of the Castle: here they visit an AMAZING project in France, where they build a 13th century castle with authentic methods to understand how castles were constructed. Fun fact, they are now working with the people from the project to reconstruct notre dam!

Then there is this guy: Modern History TV

I am so envious of this guy, he owns I think a gaming company and got super rich, and now he is just living his dream of being a IRL knight and making fun and nice videos about medieval life and his horses, 10/10 super wholesome. I especially recommend his videos about what people ate in the medieval time

There are also a lot of other youtubers focusing on these kinds of stuff, most of the people I watch are doing their videos in german though, so idk how helpful that is. But there are a lot out there.

Great, so these are like nice entry level things, that may also help you see what periods/regions/aspects of history you are interested in! and from there you can go on. There are also other cool sources like the Gutenberg Project where you have a huge array of e-books for free, a lot of history books and medieval literature!

Another cool thing is museum and library websites (e.g. The Met, Germanistic Museum, University of Heidelberg Digital Collection, and so many more!)! Often they have medieval texts scanned, or a lot of their collection online, where you can look at them and read more about it! That may be for the later stages when you know what to look for. There are also some scientific research papers that you can read online, but again, that is something you will probably find when you start looking for things that really fascinate you. It is a rabbit hole! I often have friends send me links to austrian archives, where they found scans of swabian church books, it is really endless how much resources we have in this day and age!

And then, of course, there are tons and tons and tons of books about everything you can imagine.

And of course... other historians, hobbyists, reenactors, they all are often great sources, and have blogs and pages and stuff. On instagram and facebook I know a lot of people who make educational content or recreate medieval things!

I bet there are also a lot of podcasts out there for every topic!

So yea, browse through it all, see what you find cool and interesting. One of the fun parts of learning about history is just to dig into it, find new things, uncover little details that are just fascinating and getting excited about it.

And if any of my followers who are into medieval stuff have anything to add, do it!

Sorry for this long as ramble! I wish you good luck :D

**EDIT: haha almost forgot, you can also go to Wikipedia if you just quickly want to get an overview over certain things, and then check the sources they have to read more in depth!

[love-minor-poltergeist]

Dude you're like the only person I know who made at least one thing on werner werman and honestly I can't stop reading it. I would absolutely love it if you could do more relationship hcs for him( or maybe jealous hcs if you're up to it!) if you don't that's totally fine just know I absolutely love what you've written so far and can't wait to see more!

A/N: Anon, how about I do you one better and give you a two- for- one special. This rat man deserves all the love he can get and hopefully this is up to your liking!

(Note: Read more placed due to lengthiness; Jealous HCS are also found under the cut)

General Relationship Hcs with Werner Werman:

A relationship with Inkwell Isle III’s resident inventor/mechanic is one filled with a surprising amount of conversation than you’d initially expect. As it turns out, Werner is actually quite the chatter box when he’s truly comfortable, and since the two of you are dating, he’s nothing BUT comfortable.

On a normal day, expect to come into your boyfriend’s apartment and be met with a loud, boisterous greeting from Werner while he’s perched at his workbench. And as you’re settling down and making yourself comfortable, Werner, still not seated at his workspace, fills the apartment air with the sound of his voice alone; easily overshadowing the clatters of metal hitting wood.

“You valked in just the right time, liebling. Today vas a bit of a pain. It turns out giving that little katzchen of mine a vorking AI vasn’t the best idea I’ve had.”

Most of his ramblings tend to revolve around his work; as it’s a subject he’s quite passionate about. It may come off as a bit tiring from time to time, but Werner doesn’t mean to be so work-orientated around you. The intricacies of his projects is something he loves going into, and since you (and Dr. Kahl, but Werner fights with that man worse than cats and dogs do) can keep up and at least somewhat understand what he’s going on about, Werner tends to get carried away from the excitement.

Of course, Werner is just as a good of a listener as he is a talker. He’s perfectly content with stepping down to listen to you about anything; how your day went, anything troubling, etc. He even adds in his own input here and there if you’re looking for it.

Once the two of you have dated long enough to be comfortable with the other, don’t be surprised if Werner ends up using you as his own makeshift teddy bear.

As someone who’s passionate (and stubborn) when it comes to his inventions, Werner spends nearly all of his nights working. Going to sleep with him at his station and waking up to him still tinkering away is unfortunately a common sight. Which means Werner doesn’t get enough sleep like he should be.

So on the rare occasions where he does eventually give into his need for rest, he’ll gladly get under the sheets with you, curl himself around your sleeping form, and fall fast asleep. After a day’s hard work, your warmth alone is enough to make him go out like a light.

It’s enough to make him consider actually going to bed earlier, truthfully. But he’d too embarrassed to admit it.

Get ready for a bunch of terrible jokes from this man, because this is a part of your life now. Both in English and German.

 All of which are awful puns that leaves him wheezing at his own joke every time.

“No matter kind you are to children, German children are kinder”

Please stop him.

Can’t Cook? Great! Neither can he!

It’s not that he doesn’t want to learn how; it’s just that Werner never had the time to do so. Serving in a war and spending most of his days afterwards building machines for clients doesn’t exactly leave much wiggle room for him.

Fortunately, this leads to plenty of date nights for the two of you. In other words, the two of you get to fumble around with a haphazard spread of ingredients out on the table while making sure neither of you accidentally burn the place down.

With that said, Werner is definitely the type of person to try to change out ingredients of a recipe purely because he thinks something else would work better (and/or because neither of you felt like going out to get a particular thing if you’re missing it)

 “Nein, we don’t need baking soda anyvay. Vat’s the worst thing that could happen?”

Please kiss this man as much as you can. He’s more than a little touch-starved than he cared to admit, and not to mention it makes him feel safe.

Jealous! Werner:

Werner is usually a level-headed man, and so jealousy is a rare occurrence for him. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s impervious to it.

 And how can he be? While he’s well aware of his own successes, he’d be lying if he didn’t say that he has a hard time accepting/dealing with times where he feels inadequate.

 Werner feels that he should be able to be good at things right away; essentially setting high expectations for himself.

With you, those already high expectations skyrocket to even more wildly ridiculous levels. In his eyes, you deserve to have an exceptional partner, and fears that you’d lose interest in him if he lags behind more “well-suited” suitors.

So when he had invited you to accompany him on a trip to an inventor’s meet (which was just a small gathering, really), he hadn’t expected his rare jealousy streak to make an appearance.

The cause of said jealousy? Well, that would be the very man Werner absolutely loathes: Dr. Kahl.

 It wasn’t out of any fear that the mad scientist would steal you away from him- far from it, really. It’s just that the sight of your wide, wonder-filled gaze directed towards someone else was enough to leave his confidence a bit shaken.

Thanks to Kahl’s access to higher-grade materials (the man lives in a scrap-yard, after all), Werner was already often overlooked by investors and potential clients in favor of his rival’s sleeker and appealing designs.

Werner is already used to second place when it came to clients, but with you? Well, he isn’t just going to take this insult lying down.

Werner, whenever jealousy gets the better of him, is the type not to try and harm his competitors, nor is he the type to put any of the blame on you. Oh, no. Instead, Werner becomes rather showy; essentially, this man is going to do everything in his power to peacock for your attention.

Kahl built an impressive robot out of spare car parts? Big deal, Werner can build one that works just as well- maybe even better- with tin and aluminum. (Which you don’t doubt, truthfully. This is the same man who managed to make a makeshift tank out of a giant soup can, after all).

Oh, you’re impressed by one of the inventions the others brought? Well, how about the one Werner brought? Isn’t it better?

It eventually reaches a point where you’d have to drag him off to a quiet corner before he has a chance to offend anyone else. You’d shoot him a withering look, hands firmly planted on your hips as you confront him. And in that moment, Werner is forced to realize just how much of an ass he’s been making of himself.

He’d hesitantly mumble the motivations behind his behavior, hints of a pink blush faintly showing through thick fur. While Werner doesn’t have much shame when it came to his pride in general, the whole situation is enough to knock him down a peg or two.

Just as he would begin to wonder if you’d cut things off and go home, a snort would snap him out of his thoughts. He looks up to meet flushed cheeks and your lips desperately trying to hold back a laugh before you finally broke down into a giggly mess.

At first, he’s slightly offended, but that’s soon drowned out by utter relief.

Shortly after you manage to pull yourself back together, you shoot your boyfriend a mirth-filled look.

“That’s what you were so worked about? Werner, you know none of that matters to me.”

The rat would sputter as you take his face in a gentle grasp, and you shake your head a bit, another laugh threatening to form again, before you plant a tiny peck on his nose

“Some of these men and women may impress me, but you’re the one who amazes me the most.”

The rest of the evening goes by smoothly, and Werner’s sour attitude fades as he mingles with the others in the room; all the while he had an arm wrapped around your shoulder and his chest puffed up in pride.

 As he laughed and chatted with the others, a part of him couldn’t help but think he should get jealous more often.

[iuvelatiius-blog]

❝ your expectations for me have been set way too high. ❞

     ▹ short stories.

⌈✧⌋ Eyebrows raise upon such statement, both of surprise & confidence. A sign of weakness from Kiryuin herself? What an unexpected response, indeed.

❝ No, they are not, young Miss, of that you can be sure. ❞ 

Words truly sounding harsh for someone not knowing what scientist was speaking of, and yet, they hid a certain warmth underneath the strictness only young warrior could understand now.

          ― But why such certainty of own beliefs? 

Oh, there was a plenty of proof memory has recorded until today. It has already been some time since they, as boss & subordinate, begun cooperating in revived REVOCs or, as it was known amongst those few remembering of now fallen monster’s atrocious plans within the textile company,the shadow of the very HELL. The efforts & capabilities heiress ( at her still so tender age, one should remember ) has shown so far as a leader were... amazing, if one wished to understate. Reason enough for visible progress. And not to forget, three years of wordless observation at Honnoji Academy sung only of STRENGTH within young Kiryuin, both body & mind... She has become a wonderful lady.

❝ You did already prove them, back then at Honnoji. I’m sure you’ll prove them again now. If not alone, then with help of your friends. ❞

Cue a gentle smile softening features, while fingers roughened by hard work were placed upon girl’s shoulder. ( With carefulness due for a human not fond of touches that she was, of course. ) Is that an image of friendly sibling talk, no? Perhaps.

❝ ....I believe in you, Satsuki. As do Shiro, Soroi and your sister. ❞

          ― Oh, her father would be so proud of her today.

[academicatheism]

Adequately Dealing With the Ex-Atheist Claim

To make atheism appear false, believers like to claim that they were once atheists. The easiest route is to dismiss their claim as disingenuous. They’re only saying they were atheists to make either their opponent or the audience believe that atheism really doesn’t hold water. It’s a claim made to give people the false impression that atheism is a false conclusion based on incomplete information and evidence, emotional considerations, and/or sheer rebellion. Eventually one’s emotions settle with the idea that there’s a god and that he abhors thought-crime and sexual desire. We eventually realize that we can’t rebel against this god and that the evidence is absolutely stacked in favor of his existence. This is the route most atheist’s take; it’s a route that I’ve taken. It isn’t, however, the best route.

There are two very good routes to take and they definitely drive a stronger point. The first is that, as a follower of this blog and friend argued, we aren’t the same. You may have been an atheist, but your level of skepticism was inadequate to fulfill the task, which is to say that your skepticism didn’t reach far enough to address the matter in question. You didn’t weigh enough evidence and certainly not enough of the right kinds of evidence. Consider, for instance, the intellectual rigor that goes into simply understanding science. I can’t expect every atheist to adequately understand cosmology and various ways in which the evidence shows conclusively that an immaterial being did not create and could not have created the universe. I can’t expect every atheist to make the connection between cosmology and philosophy as it concerns matter and causation.

Saying that you’re a former atheist doesn’t simply imply that you were like me, but rather that you were just like me. Since late 2011, I’ve made multifarious sources available to atheists. One opponent, in a furious libel, labeled me a jack of all trades and an expert in nothing because I demonstrated a grasp of different lines of evidence in favor of atheism--scientific, philosophical, anthropological, historical, and so on. Apologists tacitly expose the need for atheists to be equipped in all these fields by making arguments that delve into a number of academic disciplines. In one opening argument, someone like William Lane Craig will demand for the atheist to be a philosopher (an ethicist more specifically), a cosmologist, and an ancient historian! The Moral Argument, the Kalam Cosmological Argument, and the Argument From the Resurrection will demand that an atheist have an adequate grasp of all these disciplines or risk losing the debate and make atheism appear false.

I’ve held strongly to my belief that an atheist must try their best to meet this expectation , so that the truth can be made clear. Believers are known to make a number of specious claims and ramble a bunch of arguments and they fully expect you to lack sufficient retort. I experienced that in my first year on Tumblr and realized that I had to become much more informed in a number of disciplines. Now the tables are permanently turned! Christians still make claims like “eyewitnesses wrote about Jesus,” but flee once they realize that I didn’t simply deal with the claim. I’ve dealt with arguments for the claim stemming from sources that I can name like Habermas and Bauckham. Unlike them, I also considered the counter-arguments.

Perhaps they were former atheists, but they clearly didn’t match the lengths I’ve gone to in order to find truth. They didn’t match the extent to which other atheists have gone to in order to find truth. They did much less and were convinced of something false if only because they didn’t come across the right information or don’t possess the ability to understand good evidence. Perhaps an atheist like me has a larger hippocampus and can therefore remember more facts and relate them in a way that’s germane to the matter in question. Some people simply have raw intellectual capacity and sure, that definitely doesn’t make them a superior person or a superior human being, but it puts them in a much better position to draw the right conclusion on a matter. When you add that most people can’t even spot or don’t even care when they’re committing a logical fallacy or when they’ve been hampered by a cognitive bias(es), matters are much more bleak. You might have certainly been an atheist, but you certainly weren’t like some of the atheists who remain such. It takes a lot to pursue a strict naturalism the likes of Sean Carroll’s or to build a system as philosophically consistent as Kai Nielsen’s. Identifying as an atheist doesn’t do all the work for you.

The other route an atheist can take is that of pointing out the fact that former atheists try to make atheism appear infantile. C.S. Lewis always mentioned lacking belief in his youth. That goes to show that they want to make people think that it’s a knee-jerk, emotional conclusion based on naiveté. Edward Feser does this as well. He even mentions how old he was, always placing his testimonies in his early teen years. Even in mentioning his “mature atheism,” he says he didn’t really get arguments for god because he was young and didn’t have the capacity to fully comprehend what was being argued (see here). Yet they’ll neglect to mention that people like Bertrand Russell and Quentin Smith remained atheists well passed middle-age. They were atheists right into and beyond retirement age and it can be safely assumed that they died lacking belief in god. 

I agree that sometimes atheists are guilty of the above, but when argued correctly, the argument works better for us than it does for the believer. If we take the Freudian route and argue that belief in god is nothing more than the residual need for a parental figure, then calling belief infantile in this sense is completely in bounds. There’s nothing at all wrong with arguing that some people believe for precisely such a reason. Look at the average American Christian and you will see that they believe in a god that rewards them for good behavior and punishes them for bad behavior. This is analogous to the philosophy of a lot of American parents. Provide incentive for good behavior and reward it; disincentivize bad behavior and punish it. God is nothing more than a father figure for a lot of American Christians, so yes, according to Freud this is a most infantile way of leading your adult life. 

What Christians do isn’t the same. They’re not drawing a clearcut analogy or citing psychologists. They’re appealing to what they think is common knowledge about teenagers. Teens are apathetic, belligerent, impulsive, and naive. They then want to equate atheism with these attitudes when, in fact, atheism isn’t a conclusion based on any of that. It might even be true that they were atheists for exactly those reasons, but if they believed themselves to be rebelling against god, then they weren’t atheists at all. If instead they rebelled against and defied their parents, then their nominal atheism was done out of spite rather than inquiry for truth and intellectual honesty.

Christians who claim to be former atheists might be telling the truth. We should always proceed with discretion because some, like Lee Strobel, might be lying through their teeth. It’s curious that he has no publications from his atheist days, but plenty from his Christian days; perhaps it’s because he could easily exploit the latter market but not the former. Others, like Feser, might be telling the truth, but their intention is dubious and malignant. Feser makes it absolutely clear that he wants to make all atheists look like puerile, belligerent, apathetic, angry people rather than like intellectually honest individuals investigating the question of god. Then there’s the simple fact that atheists don’t develop equally. Some atheists have raw intellectual capacities allowing them more tools to better investigate this question. Others simply never acquire an interest in the relevant subject matter and are therefore convinced by intellectual-sounding arguments that when scrutinized turn out to be false. Atheism is by no means a childish conclusion. Atheists and skeptics simply aren’t the same. And of course, believers could just be lying. Rather than take the latter route, exploring the former two routes might prove more fruitful.

[cutie1365]

Hello Detective Chapter 47

Pairing: Sherlock x Reader

Word Count: 1947

masterlist�� Part 48

“Joining me?” Sherlock asked as you were handcuffed together.

“Yeah, apparently there’s some kind of law about assaulting officers.” You said, and Sherlock’s head turned back to see blood running from Donovan’s nose. He let out a small smile.

“Bit awkward, this.” Sherlock said.

“There’s no one to bail us.” You said, though you could always call Mycroft, but you also knew Sherlock would refuse his help.

“I was thinking more about our imminent and daring escape. You don’t have an earpiece in right?” Sherlock asked.

“No... why?” You asked, and he grabbed the dispatcher from the car you two were against, and gave it a squeeze. An excruciatingly high pitched sound emitted through all the earpieces of every officer around. Everyone clutched their ears and quickly ripped it out. Sherlock quickly turned around, dragging you with him, and pulled a  gun out of an officer's belt.

“Ladies and gentlemen, will you all please get on your knees?” Sherlock yelled, pointing the gun around at them, but no one moved, he fired into the air twice, “Now would be good!”

“Do as he says!” Lestrade yelled, ushering everyone down to their knees.

“Just so you’re all aware the gun is his idea. I’m just, uh, you know...” You rambled nervously.

“My hostage!” Sherlock said, pointing the gun at you. As you two slowly backed up away from Baker Street.

“Hostage? Ok, what now?” You whispered.

“Doing what Moriarty wants. Becoming a fugitive. Run.” Sherlock said, dropping the gun from your head and running.

“Get after him Lestrade!” You heard the Chief yell from around the corner.

You two ran awkwardly, since your hands were cuffed together.

“Take my hand!” Sherlock instructed, and you obeyed.

You continued to run until you cut through an alleyway. You were about to turn a corner when you saw a police car passing and pulled Sherlock back. You two waited, leaning against the cold brick.

“Everybody wants to believe it. That’s what makes it so clever. A lie that's preferable to the truth. All my brilliant deductions were just a sham. No one feels inadequate. Sherlock Holmes is just an ordinary man.” Sherlock said, before pulling you to the opposite wall.

“What about Mycroft? He can help us.” You said.

“Big family reconciliation. Now’s not really the moment.” Sherlock said, peeking around the corner.

“Sherlock.” You whispered, pointing down the alley to a man peeking out from behind the wall. “One of your new neighbors.” You recognized him from the files Mycroft had shown you.

“Let’s see if he can give us some answers.” Sherlock said, before running.

“Where are we going?” You asked. He looked out to the street and the red double decker coming down the path.

“We’re going to jump in front of that bus.” He said before taking off again. You followed him into the street, your heart beating fast. Before the bus could hit you, you were pushed out of the way by Sherlock's new neighbor. You hit the ground and Sherlock grabbed the gun from the assassins waistband since the one he had was dropped blocks ago.

“Tell me what you want from me.” Sherlock demanded, pointing the gun at him. “Tell me!”

“He left it at your flat.” He said.

“Who?” Sherlock asked.

“Moriarty.” The assassin answered.

“What?” Sherlock asked.

“The computer key code.” You all stood.

“Of course, he’s selling it. The program he used to break into the Tower. He planted it when he came around.” Sherlock smiled, finally understanding, he lowered the gun.

Gunshots were fired from the air and the assassin in front of you dropped to the ground dead. You took a step back in shock, and looked to the rooftop where the shots had to have come from.

You and Sherlock ran, panting before ducking into an alcove.

“It’s a game changer. It’s a key. It could break into any system and it’s sitting in our flat right now. That’s why he left that message telling everyone where to come ‘Get Sherlock’. We need to get back into the flat and search.” Sherlock said.

“CID will be camped out. Why plant it on you? Another subtle way of smearing your name?” You asked, looking behind the corner and hearing sirens again.

“I assume so, now I’m best pals with all those criminals.” Sherlock said. Your eyes darted to a newspaper stand that had the SUN just next to where you were hiding.

“Yeah, well, have you seen this?” You asked, grabbing a copy to show Sherlock. “A kiss and tell. Someone named Rich Brook. Who is he? Mycroft showed it to me.”

Sherlock’s eyes grew wide when he saw the name of the writer.

“I know where we need to go, come on.” He took off running.

You had now broken into a flat and were sitting on the couch. You assumed you knew where you were even though Sherlock didn’t tell you: Kitty Riley’s flat. Your suspicions were confirmed when the door creaked open and the lights flipped on.

“Too late to go on the record?” Sherlock asked, as Kitty’s eyes grew wide when they landed on the two of you in her couch.

You had handed Sherlock the bobby pin that you used to break into her flat, so he could undo his handcuff before you did yours.

“Congratulations. The truth about Sherlock Holmes. The scoop that everybody wanted and you’ve got it. Bravo.” Sherlock growled at her. She now sat across from where you were.

“I gave you your opportunity. I wanted to be on your side, remember?” She said. “You turned me down, you both did.”

“And then, lo and behold, someone turns up and spills the beans. How utterly convenient. Who is Brook?” Sherlock asked. She shook her head like she wasn’t going to answer.

“Oh, come on, Kitty. No one trusts the voice at the end of a telephone. There were all those furtive little meetings in cafes, those sessions in the hotel room where he gabbled into your Dictaphone.” You seethed with anger.

“How do you know that you can trust him. A man turns up with the Holy Grail in his pocket. What were his credentials?” Sherlock asked, and you could hear the sound of the door opening directly behind you.

“Darling, they didn’t have any ground coffee, so I just got normal.” A voice spoke from behind you, your eyes went wide and looked to Sherlock as you recognized it. You quickly turned around and was met face to face with James Moriarty.

He dropped the bag of groceries and backed up against the wall, his hand raised.

“You said that they wouldn’t find me here. You said that I’d be safe here.” He spoke, his voice trembling, no where near the same as the Moriarty you knew.

“You are safe, Richard. I’m a witness. They wouldn’t harm you in front of witnesses.” Kitty said.

“Richard? So, that’s your source? Moriarty is Richard Brook.” You argued.

“Of course he’s Richard Brook, there is no Moriarty, there never has been.” Kitty believed.

“What are you talking about?” You said, mystified.

“Look him up. Rich Brook, an actor Sherlock Holmes hired to be Moriarty.” Kitty said, and your mouth dropped open.

“Ms. Gregson, I know you’re a good woman. Don’t... Don’t hurt me.” He raised both of his hands in defense.

“No, you’re Moriarty! He’s Moriarty! We’ve met, remember? You were going to blow me up! You have been following me since I met Sherlock!” You yelled.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. He paid me. I needed the work.” He almost laughed.

“That’s impossible! Moriarty knew things about me that even Sherlock didn’t! You knew about my uncle, you knew what he did to me, what he called me! And you knew that I–” You were furious. You stopped yourself before you said he knew you were pregnant. You promised Mycroft you wouldn’t tell Sherlock. It might have been a stupid decision, but right now Sherlock needed to focus more than ever. “Sherlock, you better explain ‘cause I am not getting this.”

“I’ll be doing the explaining. In print. It’s all here. Conclusive proof. You invented James Moriarty, your nemesis.” Kitty said, handing you the write up.

“Invented him?” You asked, in disbelief.

“Mmm hmm. Invented all the crimes, actually. And to cap it all, you made up a master villain.” Kitty spoke.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” You scoffed.

“Ask him, he’s right here! Just ask him! Tell him, Richard.” Kitty pointed to Jim in his faded jeans and cardigan with disheveled hair. “

“Oh for God's sake! This man was on trial!” You pointed.

“Yes, and you paid him. Paid him to take the rap. Promised you’d rig the jury. Not exactly a West End role, but I’ll bet the money was good. But not so good he didn’t want to sell his story.” Kitty said.

“I am sorry. I am, I am sorry.” He mumbled.

“Rich Brook.” You scoffed, rolled your eyes. You began to turn to Sherlock when you stopped in your tracks. Eyes wide, you could hear the voice of Ms. Hudson in your head from earlier tonight ‘German, like the fairy tales’, and Donovan ‘The Reichenbach Hero’.

“Oh my God. Rich Brook. Reichen Bach.” You turned back to Moriarty and you swore you saw a smirk flash across his face.

“Yes, that case too, all rigged.” Kitty said, not understanding.

“No Kitty, you naive idiot.” You shook your head at her. “Sie verstehen, richtig?” You spoke to Sherlock in German. You understand, correct? He nodded, still looking at Jim.

“I’m on kids TV, I’m the storyteller. It’s on DVD, Kitty show her.” He kept playing the role. Kitty handed you a folder with Richard Brooks ‘credentials’.

“Tell them. It’s all coming out now. Just tell them. Tell her!” Jim rambled, making Sherlock more angry. “It’s all over... No! No! Don’t you touch me! Don’t you lay a finger on me.”

Jim began to yell after Sherlock took a step towards him. Moriarty was now backed up against the stairs leading to the kitchen.

“Stop it, stop it now!” Sherlock yelled. Moriarty quickly turned and ran into the next room closing the door.

“Leave him alone!” Kitty yelled as you all chased him. When Sherlock got the door back open the window was open and Jim Moriarty was gone.

“No, no, no, he’ll have backup.” Sherlock pulled you away when you looked out the window.

“Do you know what, Sherlock Holmes. I look at you now and I can read you. You repel me.” Kitty said, Sherlock turned and exited her flat. You ripped the copy of her expose out of her hands, still holding the ‘Richard Brook’ file and followed Sherlock outside.

“Can he do that? Completely change his identity? Make you the criminal?” You asked.

“He’s got my whole life story. That’s what you do. You sell a big lie. You wrap it up in a truth to make it palatable.” Sherlock paced outside.

“It’s your word against his.” You argued.

“He’s been sowing doubt into people’s minds for the last 24 hours. There’s only one thing he needs to do to complete his game and that’s to–” Sherlock stopped himself before finishing.

“Sherlock?” You asked, concerned.

“There’s something I need to do.” He spoke, and his whole demeanor had changed.

“Can I help?” You asked, craving to be kept in the loop.

“No, on my own.” Sherlock said, jumping into a cab and leaving you in the dead of night outside of Kitty’s house.

“Sherlock!!” You yelled as he left you.

You angrily got into a cab, knowing there was one place you had to go.

Part 48

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[agermanbetweenscots]

The Interview

So mum and me arrived in Kassel Wilhelmshöhe on 5th of July sometime in the late morning. I just got reminded that the interview was around noon, but being the proper Germans that we are, we of course were trying to be there as early as possible.

As we stood there, waiting to the tram to arrive that would take us to the hospital, out of the corner of my eye I saw this blond girl, with dark framed glasses, long-ish hair and a backpack stand there with us, entering the same tram. She seemed a little nervous, confused and somehow as if she was going to the exact place as me. She stayed in the tram with us, every stop we let pass by, she let pass by until my mum (god bless her) just straight up asked her whether she was also going to the selection days. She did. The name was Pauline and even though you always feel very protective and closed-off before an interview (maybe that is just me), I loved seeing how normal she looked, how similar. It was nice having someone with me, trying to find the building and to sit with.

Also: Get prepared to meet Pauline over and over again. As I am not sick of her yet - you won't be either.

Finding the building in which the selection days were to happen was a little confusing, I think that we took a very roundabout way but because of our early arrival we were still very early.

We entered the building, were greeted by lots of other applicants sitting on chairs in a circle and older years. We grabbed a name badge and sat down, making small talk with the people sitting left and right from us.

I remember feeling so out of my comfort zone. And it wasn't even nerves for the interview but the entire situation.

I remember the people I was speaking to all seeming so wordly - I was asking a couple of people (I think one of them was Nora) about where they are from. And whenever you ask that and get an answer that is longer than 1 or 2 words, they immediately feel to international. This people all started with "... well I was born in ...." and this just made me very aware of how different these people were.

The selection process was threefold:

1) An interview

2) A group task

3) A writing task

The interview was awkward - I remember feeling very inadequate and not listened to. Every time I wanted to bring something up that I did previously (my degree, my time as a paramedic) I only got to hear a "we know". My interview was held by David (our genetics teacher) and a female doctor from the Klinikum. Also in room was a girl from the older years - who hs asked whether she could be present in my interview. I would not say that I had much choice in saying no, nervousness and wanting to just get it over with ruined the 'informed consent' I think - but I would have said yes anyways. I always appreciate having people in my room as I feel somehow safer. It was very interesting to go through this interview, however as I immediately forgot everyone's name. I only retrospectively remembered David through lectures now and because I would see him again in the tram leaving Kassel later that day.

The group task was to discuss a potential smoking ban on the hospital grounds and we should discuss this. This was such an interesting experience. We all were so kind to each other, trying to a) show the interviewers that we were really nice b) demonstrate that we have thought of a variety of arguments (for and against) and c) still go out of this experience as the best (we all wanna get accepted after all). Here, I remember Suveni, Nora and Pauline being part of my group. And its was a lot of 'that's what I wanted to say' and 'no, no, no you go!'. I was quite happy though because, when we all packed up to leave and went out the room, I felt comfortable enough to joke with the selectors/interviewers 'let's go for a cigarette break'.

The writing task was the last thing I had to do on the selection day - it was the last thing any one of us had to do. At it was just me and Pauline in the room, across from each other, scribbling away on the pieces of paper - having to think about a time where we encountered medicine I think. I just rambled on about my paramedic experience and the MANV on my first day and how overwhelmed I felt and how it inspired me to do medicine in the first place. Knowing me, the essay probably turned out like a sob-story, very introspectively and very wordy. (After all, you've read this blog...).

After that, they day was done. I had passed and done all the tasks and could go and pick up mum from the foyer, where she had sat down with a coffee and the Süddeutsche Zeitung. I said goodbye to Pauline, the one that stuck with me throughout the day (because she had to, not by choice haha). I remember telling her good luck and hoping we would meet again in September. Little would I and her know where our journey would take us. She offered me a drink and talk, but back then I was thinking very differently about my experience. All these international girls had made me very nervous, made me feel like there was a sense of unattainability, as if this course was very far out of my league. So I am unsure what I told mum about my experience but I don't think I said many good things.

After I had told my mum and eyed Suveni out of the corner of my eye, who was also being picked up by her parents in the foyer, me and mum where ready to meet my cousin/mum's godchild in a really nice bagel place. I remember my mum asking whether I wanted to tell Analee about my day - and how much we should discuss my 'ordeal'. I did not want to though. So we had a very nice late lunch/coffee with Analee, discussing everything and the world.

On the way home, mum lost her jacket in the train (she keeps bringing up this fact randomly... must have been some real trauma for her), dad picked us up in Goslar and the stress fell off of me.

Thank god that day was over.

[ratherhavetheblues]

INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘CRIES AND WHISPERS’ “She’s already beginning to rot…”

© 2018 by James Clark

     We’re off and running with another breathtaking film by Ingmar Bergman, namely, Cries and Whispers (1972). The nature of this production entails, as usual, thrilling motivations most of us had never thought about. And here we must put into the mix, as never so emphatically before, that the uniqueness of that delivery entails being without any effective allies. We have encountered, in the films by Bergman so far, a species of more or less thriving upon that neglect, a warrior sensibility. But enfolded within that tang, we are also alerted to partaking of the powers implicit in cooperation, cooperation with those who don’t and never will, give a damn for what a figure like Bergman would live for, however chaotically.

Our film today attends remarkably to that estrangement, and, as a result, lingers with the personnel in such a way as to garner from (some of) them a direction to love. The film’s saga involves two protagonists; and we choose here to spotlight one, a woman, namely, Agnes, who has already died from cancer in the earlier part but conveys her golden moment at the film’s final seconds, by way of a diary, read by Anna, her long-time housemaid (though presented by the diarist’s voice-over). The event recorded involves desultory Agnes being paid a visit to the family manor (under her keeping) by her two sisters whom she has allowed to more or less overtly treat her as a non-entity, as she was treated by her mother. Braced, as the latter were, by her long-term illness, there is a moment of vision emanating from their ramble upon the palatial grounds, strewn with golden leaves. “It’s wonderful to be together again… Suddenly we began to laugh and run toward the old swing that we hadn’t seen since we were children [when kinetics were at least as favorable as frozenness]. We sat in it like three good little sisters, and Anna pushed us slowly and gently. All my aches and pains were gone. I could hear them chatting around me… I could  feel the presence of their bodies, the warmth of their hands. I wanted to hold the moment fast, and thought, ‘Come what may, this is happiness. I cannot wish for anything better. Now, for a few moments, I can experience perfection. And I feel profoundly grateful to my life which gives me so much…” (Those visiting angels having—along with Agnes’ skittishness—tossed divided but meritorious Anna to the sharks.)

The full-color composition (unique up until this time for Bergman) needs to be broached, along with the previous films, as a positioning of the urgency of fearlessness. With this particular vehicle, however, we’re on the hook to attending most closely to the apparatus required to fully show what’s ticking here. Therefore, as usual (but not quite the same), we posit, “How new is new?” You’d never have gotten from him anything explicit about the possibility that gigantic and unprecedented change has begun to make inroads and that that uprising (but tempered) is where art attains its stature. Apart from playing the movie game that the single work on tap must stand entirely on the basis of the screen being watched, there would be, however, the understandable discomfort that—unlike the folk reservoir of normal filmic presentation—matters of reflective complexity, generally assumed to be the purview of science and other academic disciplines, have become necessities. Just because the entrenched classical rational experts would utterly dismiss any validity not certified by their practices, does not disable a figure like Bergman to take matters into his own accomplished hands, in his own medium of communication. As such, his work being an extended research of sensibility, the various steps of his disclosures comprise, unlike the normal, disparate  entertainments, a constant, expanding investigation, very germane to earlier discoveries. Unlike conceptual building blocks of a technical nature, Bergman has at his disposal, not only a manifold of dramatic sensibility by way of his screenwriting and Sven Nykvist’s cinematography, but a cadre of performers the varying roles of which, from-film-to-film, increase a current of intent or temper a performer’s previous apparition, for the sake of comprehending the volatility of discernment and its creative capacities as a co-host of the cosmos.

Cries and Whispers carries along another cinematic power, namely, the efforts of other filmmakers the work of which being variously able to leverage the efforts of Bergman. Our film here devotes vast areas of a range of red walls and accessories for the interior of the palatial estate. In 1965, Michelangelo Antonioni launched a venture, namely, Red Desert, the redness of which speaking to widespread malignancy and malaise. In the Jacques Demy musical films, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) and Donkey Skin (1970), the settings have been enhanced by pronounced color saturation, for the surrealistic sake of overcoming a profoundly inadequate mainstream. On such templates we’re treated to our guide’s “cyclotron,” the ingredients of which consisting of acrobatics and an impossible trick of juggling—as wild and wonderful in 1972 as it was when launched in the film, The Seventh Seal, in 1957. The first protagonist, Agnes, a spinster and amateur painter, nearing the end of a long struggle with cancer, at the end of the nineteenth century, has drawn to her family heights her two sisters and their spouses, but without their children. The gulf between her horror and their easy anticipations is not the main gulf in the picture. The actress playing Agnes, namely, Harriet Anderson, starred, in 1960, in a film called, Through a Glass Darkly, as Karin, whose husband, a medical doctor, so detests her unconventional physicality that he nudges her toward believing she is schizophrenic and belongs in a mental hospital. She loses her equilibrium during the stresses of a family reunion, comes to a default position in claiming to have seen God to be a giant spider; and infers, as a promising rally, that she should leave her family and do some independent thinking in that rather incongruous sickbay. One of the sisters, Maria, a decorative seductress, is played by Liv Ullmann, who, in 1966, six years before our current puzzle, played the part of a decorative, notable actress coming to a crisis and opting to enter a mental hospital in the guise of having lost her interest in speaking. This silent Elisabet, in face of annoyance from a presumptuous medic and also some street smarts and affection, climbs to a portal where the trick of juggling (making the best of a clumsy talent pool) rears its head. The oldest sister, Karin, is performed by actress, Ingrid Thulin, who, in the film, The Silence(1963), portrayed an overbearing nit-picking prig and prude who teeters close to emotional collapse but draws upon a reservoir of majoritarian dominance. In our current picture she has to be probed carefully, being in fact the other, and more important, protagonist. Though in a flash-back we see her slashing her vagina with a shard of smashed wine glass and rubbing the blood over her lips in annoyance with her insectile husband, billed as a “diplomat,” she does have what might not be an A-game but acrobatic skills to ponder.

We get to know a lot about Agnes during what seems a rare uptick in her palliative days. Maria, eliciting a measure of placid juggling in lieu of a preamble of gut-wrenching acrobatics (thereby being a pale shadow of Elisabet), proposes taking up her ongoing readings of Charles Dickens’ novel, The Pickwick Papers, to which the invalid replies, “Oh, I’d love it!” Though roughing up a doleful soul for her choice of pleasure would be pretty cheesy in most cases, here there is nothing short of dynamite in this disappointment, as the installment catches fire. “Chapter 34, in which Mr. Pickwick thinks he’d better go to Bath and goes accordingly” [that a sponge bath administered by the sisters has closely preceded this remark hopes to alert the viewer that they should read into the text something pertaining to Agnes’ stature]. “ ‘But surely, my dear, sir,’ said little Parkin, as he stood in Mr. Pickwick’s apartment… ‘Surely you don’t really mean, really and seriously now… and irritation apart… that you won’t pay these costs and damages?’ ” Pay the cost, or forever lost. Or: cover an ongoing acrobatic demand or commit a horror on the order of self-mutilation.

By way of reveries of her childhood, from out of confinement in that blood-red homestead, Agnes shows us that the singular life of paying the costs is not for her and that some of that redness is her contribution to that plague-ridden realm. (Along with the introduction of acrobatics, in The Seventh Seal, there is a plague in the land.) There is an omnibus flash-back, centering upon her mother, which constitutes a ground zero as to her remaining a wimp. Liv Ullmann, acting in double-duty here, becomes the Venus of the preceding generation, one of a series, no doubt, of spoiled, precious airheads. There she is, in elaborate apparel, with a tiny Agnes in thrall and kept at a distance, as if the less than pretty girl would reduce her heights. “I loved her at such a jealous extreme! I loved her because she was so gentle and beautiful and alive and so pervadingly present. But she could also be cold, playfully cruel… and rebuff me … [shades of Ullmann’s gorgeous Elisabet, in Persona, rebuffing her ugly little boy]. I wish I could see her again…” [That’s easier than she thinks.] That dotage being the linchpin of the action’s catastrophe. Thereby she misses the pertinence of a cut to a magic lantern party, at Twelfth Night, involving a “Wicked Witch,” and also the trickery (of the “Hansel and Gretel” saga on tap—an “impossible” trick being the bedrock of her best (and ignored) prospect. She does not, however, miss the constant attentions to Maria, played by Liv Ullmann’s young daughter, during the party, leaving our minor protagonist fretting from a distance. “I was the only one who couldn’t join in the merriment.” After a cut, Agnes, hoping to effect a more rounded picture of her home life, proceeds with, “Another time, I remember … I hid behind the curtain and in secret watched her arrange roses on her writing table. Suddenly, she saw me and, in a gentle voice called me. Uncertain, I went up to her, thinking that, as usual, she was going to scold me. But instead she gave me a look so full of sorrow that I nearly burst into tears. I raised my hand, put it against her cheek. And for that moment we were very close.” That was frail Agnes’ sense of the moment. The camera, on the other hand, does not lie in showing that, while the little girl felt to be loved at last, her vastly cheap mother was beholding her like a thorn in her side, a hopeless cause.

This latter vignette ends with a cut to the patient in her final stage. The intensity of the death throes tends to eclipse the real problematic that that was a pariah who was at the early stages of being under a gun that would never go away, necessitating extreme measures. Before leaving her to myopia and cries and whispers, we must appreciate those factors which might have been decisive. Anxious as Agnes remained, about her position in the scheme of her family, there was wanton neglect of the scheme of her more telling life. Raising a rather feeble gesture in the order of painterly beauty, our protagonist/ victim consistently fussed about her family, and lost the world. Her wild animal braying from a pain now killing, though hard to behold, opens a portal of sensuous energy buried way too long. The film begins with the grace and bounty of the grounds of that funerial confinement. First, as a calm dawn begins, we see hundred-years-stout tree trunks in silhouette, tracing to upper branches carrying our glance amidst those configurations, and presaging those compositions of innovative art which have nothing to do with deletant domesticity. The dashes of sharp sunlight playing over that initial scene carry their vivacity into the following stage, whereby the morning mists shower another prospect, this time steady rays of light alighting upon the greenery. Another cut shows a statue of Orpheus with his lyre being part of a sunny park where the positions of the trees and the dispositions of the leaves induce a deep breath. From there, another unseen region, namely, the interior of the mansion with all asleep, shows what it can do. To the beat of ticking sounds, we are given a tour of Age of Enlightenment clock faces, the textures of their grounds,  the variety and motions of their hands, along with bronze embellishments like a child angel looking through a telescope, and also a Medusa  as a pendulum; and mathematical mechanism. As if this offering, unseen by the players, were not enough to contemplate, we should hold on to something even more evanescent. Along with a red ground to begin, there is the almost inaudible chime of a triangle. As it strikes, sporadically, it brings along that motif of  synthesis on the grounds of acrobatics and juggling, that exigency Bergman is so right not to let go. That gunning forward toward advantage (an Age of Enlightenment key word) is a Mr. Pickwick outrage which Agnes subscribes to, and comes to a silent crescendo in that reverie of the three sisters on the swing. Maria and Karin flanking the protagonist going nowhere. Here was the geometry, but where was the music?

You’re not likely to believe this (before I explain), but a lady with a measure of mojo was on the swing, namely, Karin, the one being unreasonable with the broken glass. (You’ll see that she, like promiscuous and cruel, Anna, in the film, The Silence, would not be someone you’d want to meet; but someone worth studying. And sharing the name of the protagonist, in, Through a Glass Darkly, would also be bemusing, at least.) Whereas that “Twelfth Night” flow of jealousy was shown from Agnes’ perspective, there was a very brief moment showing a young Karin, also not in the holiday spirit. Whereas Agnes has rather frantically here become a student of her opulent family, there are ways of indicating that Karin opts for a very different response. In real time, she’s introduced as the unsmiling, taciturn foil to Maria’s “diplomatic” charms, “humanly” honed by a history of affection, and comfortable in her role as generous care-giver, along with Agnes’ needy appreciation. (Her diverting resumption of throwing herself at the doctor during a visit to Agnes may not have gone well; but the quantification of her maneuvers ensures lusty profits notwithstanding.  Here we must recognize that the Anna in, The Silence, looks pretty good, by comparison.)

She catches brief but quite remarkable fire from the deadly intensity of the closeness of death, and proposes giving Agnes a sponge bath, during a lull in the agony. Rather startlingly, Karin, too, is lifted by the occasion, producing smiles and a surprising level of serenity in her motions. Where did that come from, all of a sudden? Perhaps the quiet one has a sustaining history of her own. Earlier in the night, in a dark room where she was reading by a gaslight, possibly something more weighty than Dickens, she calls, Anna, “Do you hear?” The busy and faithful servant, whom we have come to regard as close to a saint, admits, “I only hear the wind and the clocks ticking.” “No! It’s something else!” Karin insists. “I don’t hear anything, why?” the usually acute stalwart maintains. So nonplussed is the odd-one out, she rather misses the mark in describing her confusion: “I’m freezing!” (In the aforementioned film, Thulin/ Ester is seized by chills,  fleeting, as compared with her sister’s sweltering in face of a totally inadequate dispensation.) Then there is Agnes complaining to Anna, “I’m freezing…”  Soon she is dead; and while Maria backs off and falls apart, Karin, along with Anna, composes the corpse on her deathbed, the three sets of hands upstaging all the sculptures in the building. Thereupon, a modest embrace of the freezing sisters. The triangle mingles with that workload, a feat of passion brooking no relentment but seeing much to celebrate. The flashback of cut-throat diplomacy surfaces there, with some cut-the-crap clarity going forward. As she ponders upon that instrument of pain, Karin tells herself, “It’s but a tissue of lies. It’s a monumental tissue of lies…” (recalling the unhelpful declaration of Tomas, which pushes a suicidal parishioner over the cliff, in the film Winter Light [1962]). Also noteworthy, there is stressed Karin slapping Anna (helping her with her bedclothes before the coup de grace), losing her nerve for a moment. Karin quickly apologizes; and the elite servant and companion does not accept the apology.

Back to the aftermath of the death, we see Karin going over the prosaic (but not necessarily prosaic) task of checking the costs. Her hands and the sensuous grey paper mean business, not as usual. She takes in hand her pince nez reading glasses and slightly flips it upward and downward to the bed of paper constituting but one type of nitty gritty. (The protagonist in First Man [2018] has been seen to be closer to pay dirt flipping a pince nez than hopping around the moon.)  Then she gives a spin to that shard of glass, beholding its ripple in the gentle light. At this juncture of rich destiny, Maria comes into the office, and her perception of the moment of vision ignites more mysteries. “Karin, I want us to be friends. I want us to talk to each other. You read much more than I do, you think much more than I do. Your experience is far greater… Couldn’t we devote these days to getting to know each other, finally?” Not wanting another brutal smash like the failing with Anna, she listens to that creature she knows only too well. “We could put our arms around each other… We could talk together for days and nights on end…” (Here we’ve been put to the test to compare how doubting Tomas, in Winter Light, came to put up with “togetherness” maven Marta.) Karin, feeling caught up in a dilemma that can’t work for her, gets up from her desk and heads for the door—an acrobat paying costs of depth which only begins her “thinking.” Holding her back in her exit, Maria—a diplomat of some efficacy—calls out, “It’s easy to do, but I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” After a cut—accomplished, as always, by a blood-red cloud, that emblem of possible efficacy—there is Karin, confused and pensive. Maria comes in, again, finding her sister reading Agnes’ diary. Now a bit more forthcoming, she reads, “ ‘I received the gift anyone can receive in this life… a gift that is called many things…togetherness…companionship, relatedness, affection…’” [the visual is Anna, by Agnes’ bed]. “ ‘I think this is what is called grace…’” Maria, who was wandering about when the reading was given, moves to touch Karen’s shoulder, and finds the latter spinning away from her. “No, don’t touch me. Don’t come near me!” Togetherness becoming an outrage due to the effort of  paying the costs cheek-by-jowl with refusing to pay the costs. Maria, aka Elisabet, comes behind Karin, in a facsimile of the  Persona sisters. Maria touches Karin’s cheek and the latter, though backing off, does not repel the approach as before. Soon she is allowing herself to be caressed by that functionary of skin. However, she soon insists, “I don’t want you to do that… I don’t want you to be kind to me” [because I have no resources to be appreciative toward a coward like Maria]. “I can’t! I can’t stand it!” (The optics, particularly the lighting, preserves the uncanny tonal spike, in face of Karin’s melodramatic tailspin, for instance, “It’s like being in the greatest hell. I can’t breathe anymore. All of that guilt!”) After a battlefield fade, Karin apologizes for her “lost control,” and the prosaic “formalities” of selling the property occupy their conversation. No generous consideration for Maria occurs to the other one-note sibling in the room, a sibling unique in the film’s universe for possibly becoming a true aristocrat. Groping for that elusive stature, she tells disappointed sentimentalist Maria, “I’ve often thought about suicide.” (Here we have her less than compelling default stand, by comparison with the man frightened to suicide by the prospect of China gaining nuclear weapons, in, Winter Light.) Then she brings up her husband’s slight that she’s “clumsy”—“I fumble!” Now a glutton for the sensational that goes nowhere, she turns on her slack sister having, for once, had an inspiration. “You thought our talk would be different, didn’t you? Do you realize I hate you? And how foolish I find your insipid smiles and your idiotic flirtatiousness… You understand? Nothing can escape me… for I see it all… Now you learn how it sounds when Karin talks!” (This latter weakling flourish is exactly the one Alma the nurse directs upon Elisabet the silent goddess [Liv Ullmann], in Persona. Having reached an almost complete self-embarrassment, our protagonist cries out, and Maria, who had been reduced to tears, rushes to her; and hears from the “all-seeing,” “Forgive me!” Unlike Anna, Maria does forgive, and the togetherness/ grace catches fire; but not for very long. With a Bach cello composition evoking primordial relatedness, we behold the pair lovingly illuminating their kinetic best, the associated shut-down of sound endowing the tete-a-tete as similar to a Botticelli painting. They whisper in each other’s ears as if revelations of hidden forces had been released. In close-up, Maria seems pensive; in close-up Karin seems tentative and adventurous. This elevated effort comes to an end as colliding with Anna’s last-ditch enlistment of the sisters to steady her fears of poverty. She inhabits the cusp of Agnes’ being no more, and calls upon, first circumspect Karin and then sentimental Maria, to soothe the lost sister. Her prefatory fanfare—“Don’t you hear it?”—stands   in stark contrast to that, “Do you hear?” of Karin, which Anna can’t take seriously. Karin is the first one summoned, and her harsh reception to old-style mysticism quickly brings the interview to a halt. “I won’t accept involvement with your death. Perhaps if I loved you… but I do not love you… It’s pure morbidity, disgusting, meaningless. She’s already begun to rot…” The meeting with Maria becomes the latter’s running away in terror. The departure of the funeral party is notable for Karin hoping to sustain the confluence her acrobatics finds essential; and for acrobaticless Maria treating that fling as if it were only a fling. “Could we hold to all our resolutions?” Maria, perhaps a bit miffed by her sisters’ acceding to her deadened husband’s making Anna walk the plank; but transparently back to her mode of gyrating mush, makes a cardboard smile and lisps, “Dearest Karin, why on earth shouldn’t we do that?” Resuming the venomous treatment by Elisabet toward ardent Alma, in Persona, she carries on with, “It’s that everything seems different since that evening.” Karin quietly remonstrates, “I think we’ve become very much closer… What are you thinking about?” The lifetime baby doll, tries, “I’m thinking about the conversation…” “No, you’re not,” the friend in need asserts. Thereby the woman always on the go rephrases her thought, “I was thinking about how [her cuckold husband] Joakin hates it if I keep him waiting… I have no idea why you call me to account as if I were on trial for my thoughts, Karin. What do you want?” In close-up, Karin looks down in disarray. “Nothing,” is what she realizes she must expect—from Maria; but what about the world at large?

Popping up during the funeral formalities, we do get a little fizz from the world at large, surprisingly in the form of the local bishop. (Karin’s diplomat. in a post-mortem moment, counts them as lucky that the clergyman has the flu and therefore their being spared his presence at the dinner following the burial. Looking closely, we see he’s hale and hearty and floats a little white lie to avoid a party of ghouls.) You’ll recognize a fascinatingly tempered version of the rally of Tomas, in, Winter Light. As with Algot the sidekick, there are sextons and candles, here at the entryway to Agnes’s resting place. What you will notice, first and foremost, is that this first swing of the death ritual is light on the big powers and remarkably a weighty eulogy to rather underwhelming Agnes, as if she were on the hunt of something which very few  have hazard. “Could it be that you gathered up our suffering and agony into your body. Should it be that you leave with you this hardship through death. Should it be that you meet with God… [Algot slipping when he goes beyond the wonderment that venerable safety nets won’t do. Hence the overestimation of old-timey good news, somewhat upstaging a hard and nourishing magic.] … as you come to that other land… Should it be that you find his countenance turned toward you there [the nature of sensibility being not something to take for granted while sitting on a ruinous scenario]. Should it be that you know the language to speak… So this God may hear and understand… Should it be that you then talk with this God… [the conditional tense here, like that of Algot’s heresy, a weird and wonderful push-back upon millennia being stupefyingly inadequate, while spilling over to wooden humanitarianism and science!]… and he hear you out. Should it be so… pray for us… Agnes, dear child, please listen to what I have to tell you now. Pray for us who have been left in darkness… left behind on this miserable Earth, with the sky above us grim and empty…” [Agnes’ diary being on a very distant page from this dip to formalities]. The last word of this singularity dressed up to seem more of the same is an instance of great theatrical irony. “Her faith was stronger than mine.”

[vitalmindandbody]

Eddie Izzard:’ Everything I do in life is trying to get my mother back’

Transgender hero Eddie Izzard has done standup in French and German, run dozens of marathons, and is now in a period drama with Judi Dench. But, he uncovers, his can-do outlook has a doleful source

There was a literal turning point in Eddie Izzard’s lifelong pursuit of personal freedom. It came one afternoon in 1985 when he had gone out for the first time in a dress and heels and full makeup down Islington high street. He was 23 and “hes been” scheming- and shunning- that minute for just about as long as he had been able to remember. The turning point came as he was chased down the road by some teenage girls who had caught him changing back into his jeans in the public toilets and wanted to let him know he was weird. That pursuit intent when eventually, faced with the screamed doubt” Hey, why were you garmented as the status of women ?”, he chose simply to stop running and alter and justify himself.

He spun around to give an answer, but before he got many words out the girls had run in the opposite tack. The event educated him some things: that there was influence in encountering panic rather than scaping it; and that from then on he would never tell other parties define him. After that afternoon, he says, he is not simply felt he could face down the things that frightened him, he went chasing after them: street performing, standup slapstick, marathon ranging, political activism, improvising his stage show in different languages- all these things detected relatively easy after that original came to see you as what he calls” transvestite or transgender “.” You make, if I can do something that hard, but positive- maybe I can do anything .”

The ” anything” he has been doing very recently is to take on the challenges facing behaving opposite Judi Dench and Michael Gambon. In Stephen Frears’s interpretation of the real narrative of Queen Victoria’s late-life relationship with an Indian servant, Victoria& Abdul , Izzard plays a full-bearded, tweed-suited Bertie( afterward Edward VII ), reining in his comic instincts to occupy the cruelty and scheming of a son investigating his mother apparently making a clown of herself. Izzard has done spate of films before- “hes in” Ocean’s Twelve and Thirteen alongside George Clooney and Brad Pitt and the rest- but good-for-nothing that has required fairly this degree of costume drama suppression. He loved it.

Watch a trailer for Victoria& Abdul .

He and Dench are old friends. She has been a regular at his stage shows and has been in the habit, for reasons forgotten, of sending a banana to his dressing room each opening night, with” Good fluke !” written on it. Checking her channel Victoria at close quarters was a daily masterclass. The movie was shoot partly at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight( the first time any cinema crew had been allowed inside by English Heritage) and the casting would make their whisker down in the nights. One day, Izzard echoes:” I was dancing with Judi to Ray Charles’s’ What’d I Say ‘. She felt like a young woman, a young teenage girl nearly. Judi has this amazing activated of vitality that marks all the way back to her youth .”

Watching the movie, you’re so ready to see Izzard slip into one of his wayward rambles of consciousness that for a while it seems odd that he stays on dialogue. Does it feel that road to him extremely?

” Not now ,” he says.” My early act as relevant actors wasn’t very good because I simply swopped all my comedy muscles off, and I didn’t know what to replace them with. I believe I have learned more how to merely’ be’ on cinema now. It is similar to knowing how to both journey a bicycle and drive a car. If you are in a vehicle you don’t want to lean sideways to turn a reces. You know the difference .”

Ever since he drivelled off institution and conned his direction into Pinewood Studios as a 15 -year-old and walked the film sets for a daytime, he has imagined himself relevant actors. The first thing he did when his slapstick eventually took off after years of trying and often is inadequate to construct parties laugh was to get himself a drama agent and see if he could prosecute a twinned busines. He has never been satisfied with exactly doing one thing, and it is suggested that determination to change has only just flourished. He’s 55, and because of his running- which peaked at 43 marathons in 57 periodsin the UK and 27 in 27 epoches in South africans for Sport Relief– he seems lean and almost alarmingly bright-eyed. We are talking in a hotel room in London, and he is garmented aggressively in” boy with eyeliner” mode. He works on the belief, he says, that human beings were never made to sit still or reconcile, but to target themselves in objection situations, and then work out how to cope.

” World conflict two is a good example ,” he proposes.” People went sagged behind enemy lines with no meaning of what they were going into. They had to learn to do a great deal under extreme pressure and on the move. And they testified we are able to. In a most varied behavior, I envision came to see you as transgender let me to place myself in other panicking the status and toil them out formerly I was in them. I knew I would get through the bad, terrifying bit- and there was a lot of that when I was a street performer- and eventually get to a more interesting place .”

Ranging one of many marathons for Sport Relief in July 2009. Photograph: Alfie Hitchcock/ Rex

He has, of late, paused to reflect on the same reasons behind that motivation, first in a documentary film, Believe: the Eddie Izzard Story , made by his ex-lover and long-term collaborator Sarah Townsend, and then in an autobiography, Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens . The first two elements of that latter subtitle mostly led Izzard back to his mother, who died of cancer when he was six years old. Preparing the cinema, Townsend came to suggest that all Izzard’s invigorated digressive practices clique around this actuality, and in his journal, in opening assemblies too poignant to read easily, he expands on that thought.

” Toward the end of the movie, I started talking about my mother …” he recalls.” And I said something revelatory:’ I know why I’m doing all this ,’ I said.’ Everything I do in life is trying to get her back. I think if I do enough acts … that maybe she’ll come back .'” When he said those texts, he says, it felt like his subconscious speaking. The thought stood with him that” I do speculate I started performing and doing all sorts of big, crazy, ambitious circumstances because on some tier, on some childlike magical-thinking stage, I belief doing those stuffs might make her back .”

I wonder, having went those stuffs out into the public, nearly half a century on, if it has changed how he thinks about himself?

” I certainly seem I am in a better place ,” he says- but also it has given him a sense of his own strangeness.” There is that concept where people say wow about the marathons or whatever. And I kind of say wow very, because there are some things I did that, looking back, I don’t know how I did them. Running a double marathon on the last day in South Africa. It was 11 hours of not recreation. And about five minutes of euphoria. I’m not sure how I did that .”

One of the things about marathons- even if you are running, as he was some of the time in the UK, followed by an ice-cream van blaring the Chariots of Fire topic- is that there is an frightful lot of period for imagining. Does his brain ever pause for breath?

” I have a lucky situation ,” he says,” which is that I am interested in any question- how did we get here? all the beliefs. I can think about anything. For instance when I did the 43[ marathons] I operated past a clue saying’ the Battle of Naseby: 1 mile’ and I’m immediately off thinking about Cromwell and Fairfax, Prince Rupert maybe, and how this path I was guiding on would have been a racetrack back then and maybe the cavalry came down it, how did they get cannon round that deflect, all that, at every moment …”

Campaigning for Labour during the general election in 2015. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/ PA

Talking to Izzard, and watching him play-act, you feel he has a kind of the requirements of not ever wanting to miss any scrap of know-how. It’s partly, he proposes, why he has broadened his repertoire of doing standup in different languages in recent years.

” German has been the more difficult thus far ,” he says. He is doing Arabic next, planning a show in the Yemen( he was born in Aden, where “his fathers” worked for a day for BP) to draw attention to the brutal civil conflict there, and after that, Mandarin Chinese. As he excuses this, blithely, I’m prompted both sets of channels in his journal where he writes about the strategies he developed to overcome severe dyslexia as a child, and his uneasy rapport with his late stepmother, Kate. The antithesis of performing as a younger soldier for the remembering of his mother was a refusal to be limited by Kate’s efforts to control him. She missed him to be an controller because he was good with quantities, if not with learning. He recalls her once telling him:” You’ve got to understand that you are a cog in the machine. As soon as you understand that, they are able to fit in and get on with life .” You can only imagine how that was downed. Does he ever think he will become more accept of limits?

” I have a very strong sense that we are only on this planet for a short segment of epoch ,” he says.” And that is only changing. Religious parties might think it goes on after extinction. My concern is that if that is the case it would be nice if exactly one person came back and make us know it was all fine, all corroborated. Of all the billions of people who have died, if just one of them could come through the cloud and say, you know,’ It’s me Jeanine, it’s brilliant, there’s a really good spa ‘, that would be great .” He interrupts.” Although what if heaven was merely like three-star, OK-ish. You know,’ Some of the taps don’t work …'”

He places his success down not to any particular expertise, but to his being” brilliantly digesting. Some parties are perhaps brilliantly fascinating. But I have the opposite gift .” That, and staman, and that inexhaustible curiosity about the world.

For a BBC series about genealogy he went to Africa to draw the percentage of his genetic make-up that was Neanderthal. It fortified his sense that there was nothing new under the sun, that people has all along been the same.” We never think of cavemen being resentful of the neighbours with the very best cave, but no doubt they were ,” he says.

In hamlets in Namibia, wives were mesmerized by his nail varnish; some of “the mens”, extremely.” You know if you have a football and some tack refinement and a smile you can walk into any hamlet in the world and find acquaintances ,” he says.” “Theres” 7 billion of us on countries around the world now and we should be relation up more. Ninety-nine per cent of us would be live-and-let-live and’ Hi and how are you ?’. But the 1% aren’t glad with that, they want to actively budged it up and tell us that is not the way to go on .”

Assembling the Bakola Pygmy in Cameroon for a BBC series to retrace his genetic make-up. Image: BBC

Talk of politics is a reminder of Izzard’s involvements in last year’s referendum expedition, in which he tried to use its own experience of doing comedy in French and German and Spanish as an example of how Europe might be a place where you could share culture, rather than be defensive about it. In those fevered weeks, his arguments were sometimes made to look naive; the Mail and the rest ribbed him after an awkward encounter with Nigel Farage on Question Time .

He admits that he is sometimes still learning in politics, but is unrepentant about his efforts to try to advance a justification that he has been engaged in as a musician for a long while.

” Running and disguising from Europe cannot be the way forward for us ,” he says.” The intuition that Britain can go back to 1970 and it will still be all the same merely can’t be an option .”

Does he think there is still hope for Remainers?

” It seems to me beings are always capable of being either brave and curious or frightening and suspicious. If you track humanity the whole way through, the periods of success for civilisation are those periods where we have been brave and strange .”

There is plenty of fear and distrust in the world though. How does he think it “il be going”?

” I don’t know. If you look at the 1930 s there are obviously clear examples of how individuals can twisting this type of suspicions and twist them, and then you get what historians usually call mass-murdering fuckheads in influence .”

He has long has spoken of looking to run as a Labour MP in the next election. Is that still the suit?

” Yes, the strategy was always to run in 2020, though Theresa May has changed that with her failed supremacy grab. So now it’s the first general election after 2020.”

He will too employ himself forwards for Labour’s national executive committee at the party powwow this year. He didn’t make it last period, though he got 70,000 referendums. And if and when he has become a MP, he will give up playing and performing?

” I would. It’s like Glenda Jackson; she gave up acting for 25 times to concentrate on it, then she changes up back as King Lear .”

With Ali Fazal, Judi Dench and director Stephen Frears for a screening of Victoria& Abdul at the Venice film festival. Photograph: Pascal Le Segretain/ Getty Images

I wonder if another ambition, to eventually have children, still exerts?

” I always said teenagers in my 50 s. But I too ever felt that I had to do concepts firstly. Get this material done. But yes, I haven’t given up on that .”

For someone who was coped an early assignment about the fragility of life, his long-term strategy dins strange. Does he feel that negation?

” I think we should all choose a year we would like to live to, and do everything we can to make that the project works. I mean it could all go wrong at any point, patently. But we also know that if we don’t get malady or get hit by a bus we are able ourselves by drinking enough sea and maintaining as fit as you were when you were a kid. As we get older and we get a bit creaky we take that as a signed to stop doing trash. My sense is we should promoted through creaky. I was seeming a little bit sluggish recently, about a month ago, I considered right, I’ll do seven marathons in seven days. And off I disappear. The first four were a little bit rubbish, but you push on through that .”

He must have good joints?

” I mutilated my knee up a while ago, trying to jumping over a barrier ,” he says.” But it healed up, and now it complains only when I don’t use it enough .”

Is there some genetic cause for his power?

” Dad adored football, played until his late 30 s. I don’t know about Mum. She liked singing and humor and Flanders and Swann but I’m not sure about play .”

I discover his voice interrupt just slightly. Izzard still can’t really talking here his mother easily, at least not in an interview. In his volume he describes how in the immediate consequence of her fatality he and his dad and two brothers exclaimed together for half an hour and then stopped in case they went on for ever. In situate of care pa bought his sons a prototype railway determined and they improve it in the spare chamber and immersed themselves in it. The established lately resurfaced when Izzard had it regenerated and donated it to a museum in their home town of Bexhill-on-Sea, another part of his excavation of that time.

” Dad helped us with it after Mum died ,” he says, by way of cause.” He made a table for us and we spent hours and hours constructing it. Then in 1975 my stepmother, Kate, came along and it was put away into boxes and never came out again. It get from Dad’s attic to my brother’s attic, and he didn’t know what to do with it. I felt, why not give it to the museum in Bexhill? I guessed there might be spate of prototype railway enthusiasts in Bexhill, and they rebuilt this thing, it’s kind of a collector’s item. They are now going to build another one, a Christmas version. We had a grand opening and Dad came down to see it .”

He likes the facts of the case that he is in a position to prepare these kinds of things happen. Is he happier now than ever?

” I always missed the various kinds of profile that you can leverage to do the things you require ,” he says.” There is no path into it. You have to work out how you get there- over the wall, or tunnel your route in. I always envisaged doing the same occasion was actually going backwards. And if “youre starting” saying’ Hi, I like chicken’ on some advert, you know you have probably reached that degree .”

You hesitate a little to ask him what he is working on next, but I do anyway.

” I’ve written my first cinema ,” he says.” It is called Six Minutes to Midnight , set in the summer of 1939. I’m developing a show in French in Paris. This December I am going to be on a ship, exactly below Notre Dame, doing two substantiates nightly. What else? I’m not a good reader but I always wanted to read all of Dickens, so I have found someone who will let me speak them as audiobooks- I have done a third of Great Expectations and it took four epoches. So: 12 eras. And then there is the premiere of Victoria& Abdul for which Dad is coming up from Bexhill to spend his 89 th birthday with Judi Dench …”

Out of all the things he has done, I expect, of what is he proudest?

” Mostly I hope I have done things that help other people to do them ,” he says.” That was the thing with coming out as transgender, and it was the same thought doing the marathons, or memorizing the languages. I hope beings might recollect, well if that jackas can do it, why can’t I? I mean, I’m just some guy, right. Nothing special ?”

I’m not quite convinced.

Victoria& Abdul is exhausted on Friday 15 September. Conceive Me issued by Michael Joseph( PS20 ). To prescribe a print for PS17 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p& p over PS10, online orderings simply. Telephone orders min p& p of PS1. 99

Read more: www.theguardian.com

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