#(kind of feel similarly to Some of johns comments on his own music where he said he didn't like Certain Songs)

[phoneybeatlemania]

I think one mistake people make is equating John’s output with his taste in music. John was critical of or uninterested in music of his peers that might have been considered cool or in line with what his fans would like. He also loved music that would have been considered lame at the time by those same types i.e. Disco/Donna Summer etc. I recently read an antectdote from someone who had met Bob Gruen who said that John spent a lot of time listening to the radio and loved Silly Love Songs (and thought the “I love you” was meant for him lol). Not sure the validity of this, but I fully believe that he would like SLS based on the music he was listening to around this time. Obviously, he also loved a lot of older music despite his “granny music” comment. My point being, I think he enjoyed/loved music that was not in his wheelhouse to perform or make himself, so although his solo output may not have been similar to Paul’s it does not necessarily mean he did not enjoy it (same for their work in the Beatles).

I agree that realistically he probably didn’t like all of Paul’s music and am more inclined to buy his comments from the mid 70s, but comments from the early or late 70s (especially early) have so much interpersonal baggage behind them that I wouldn’t take it at face value. And unfortunately people did and some still do and use it as a criticism of Paul (without using their own independent thought or judgement) Also want to note, Paul did not like all of John’s solo work either, he just did not publicly criticize it.

Hiya anon—only just getting to your ask now because (real) life has been super busy, but I hope you come across my response anyway, and sorry about the wait!

So, I do agree with what you're saying in that John Lennon isn't necessarily someone whose comments you want to take at face-value, especially when they're relating to Paul (and especially when they're post-breakup). And I do think that there were songs John either pretended to dislike, or liked but never made any documented comments on.

My hesitation with this analysis though is that I think it can be kind of easy to fall into a habit of always reading between the lines, and figuring that John must have at all times had an underlying motivation and/or been lying any time he made a comment that was less favourable to Pauls solo work. Sometimes he might have genuinely just not liked the song/thought it could have been improved; sometimes Pauls solo stuff might have just not resonated with him.

When it comes to earlier 70s criticisms, I do agree that these types of comments would have had a much higher chance of being shaded by a bias against Paul, and I do think that's worth taking into account. And as John himself said, "its very hard to listen to your friend", because knowing and having a relationship with the actual artist makes it difficult to be objective about these things—so I do think that his opinions on Pauls work would have always been informed, at least to some degree, by his relationship with him.

I just think on the other hand though, it can be a difficult call between is he just being Mean for the sake of being Mean, or did he have a genuine critique/dislike.

So essentially, I do agree with what you're saying anon, and there are plenty of instances where I think it is worth reading between the lines of what Johns saying and/or taking their relationship contexts into account. I just think as well (to reiterate) that its easy to fall into a pattern of always assuming there is an underlying motive, when sometimes his opinions might have just been as simple as: he didn't particularly like the song/album.

[woolishlygrim]

Winter Weebwatch #10

We’re very much hitting the final stretch of the winter anime season now, and to be honest, I still don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing for Spring Weebwatch (Spring Spreebspratch?). Kami no Tou, Digimon Adventure 2020, and Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens are shoo-ins, but a lot of the shows that start in Spring are the second seasons of shows from Autumn 2019, and I’d rather not do those.

Anyway, on with this week’s shows.

Pet.

★★★☆☆

Okay, so apparently Pet did air last week, I just didn’t see that it had, which is weird, I was looking out for it.

Also weird is that the character I originally thought was called Tsukasa and then thought was called Tsubasa is actually called Tsukasa. Did … did the subbers make a mistake at some point, or did I make the mistake? I genuinely do not know.

Anyway, last week and this week, Pet saw Hiroki discover Hayashi, still not entirely crushed but rather in a mostly-crushed state similar to the one he found Tsukasa in. Realising from exploring his memories that Tsukasa was the one who crushed Hayashi, Hiroki, feeling betrayed, confronts Tsukasa and eventually runs away. Meanwhile, Tsukasa, faced with the prospect of the Company separating him from Hiroki and then with Hiroki running away, grows more and more unhinged, eventually deciding to manipulate Satoru into going after him.

Things are definitely winding their way towards a conclusion, and I honestly can’t see what that conclusion will even be, or how the writers plan to tie this up in two episodes, but it’s fun to watch, at least.

That said, my god, Tsukasa going off the deep end is … something. The animators are having a whale of a time, drawing him wide-eyed, pale, and practically twitching. One scene has him drooling as he talks and occasionally having to wipe it away with his sleeve. If this was an actor, I’d say they were chewing the scenery, but it’s not, someone intentionally made him like this.

ID: Invaded.

★★★☆☆

This is another episode that just doesn’t quite deliver on the promise it set up. While I felt I was being a little harsh with last week’s score, this time I feel like I’m being a little lenient. It’s really a two and a half star episode.

With the set-up of the last episode going forward, Anaido just turns out to not … really have any kind of diabolical plan at all, whereas Hondomachi in the Well-Within-A-Well just kind of puts a couple of clues together and discovers who John Walker is.

John Walker is, incidentally, the character everyone expected him to be, since we’d seen that Walker has a white beard and moustache and only one other character had that.

As far as twists go, it’s … weak. It’s very weak, and the downplayed way the episode presents it suggests that the creative team were well aware of how weak the twist was. Similarly, the reveal that Kiki is inside the Mizuhanome is pretty much expected.

However, we still have two episodes to go, so there is plenty of time for the show to pull a rabbit out of its hat, so to speak.

Darwin’s Game.

★☆☆☆☆

I’m beginning to lose patience with this show, and if we weren’t in spitting distance of the end (this is episode nine, there are eleven episodes total apparently), I would drop it.

So continuing on from last week, the protagonist (nine episodes in and I still have no idea what his name is) engages in a fight to prove that his clan is worthy of allying themselves with the boxing gym-y clan, after which the top-ranked player in the game kidnaps him to … ugh.

Kidnaps him because she is the head of an ancient clan of psychic assassins and she wants him to be the father of her child, and fuck knows writing that sentence made me seriously reconsider watching the last two episodes.

The whole thing ends with said top-ranked player (who can psychically incapacitate people somehow) joining the protagonist’s clan, because I guess we don’t need stakes? Nah, nah, who needs narrative tension, right?

Congrats on another episode I actually remembered, Darwin’s Game. You might’ve done better if I hadn’t.

In/Spectre.

★★★★☆

Okay, I admit it, In/Spectre has wormed its way into my good graces. I enjoy this show now, I guess.

This is just a really good episode, and it manages to be a really good episode while working with material that I’m not sure most writers would be able to make interesting. As the plan to take down Steel Girder Nanase kicks off, Kotoko begins what is essentially a reddit forum argument in which she attempts to cast doubt on the existence of Steel Girder Nanase by proposing an alternate theory and arguing in its favour. As she does this, however, Rikka is attempting to argue back under several different accounts, trying to sway people into believing in Nanase’s existence.

Do you see what I mean? This is … this is banal. This is people arguing in the comments section while one person uses transparently disguised sockpuppets. This is something I can find by just going to a forum and scrolling down a few inches, and yet this episode is absolutely fascinating to watch.

When the episode ended with Kotoko saying that it’s time for her to present her second theory, I wasn’t even annoyed. I’m genuinely interested to see what the second theory is. I hate that I really like this show now.

Infinite Dendrogram.

★★★★☆

This is another one where I was honestly not sure what score to give it. It was a three-and-a-half star episode, really, and I wavered back and forth for a while over whether to bump it up to four stars or down to three stars, before eventually deciding to be nice. 

Honestly, it could have gone either way.

With Franklin/Penguin-san having kidnapped the princess and enshrouded the arena in a barrier, he begins his invasion of the city, remarking to the princess that he will break the spirit of the Masters of Altar before the war between Altar and Dryfe can resume. While Franklin’s own Superior class ability, which allows him to invent and spawn monsters, is a potent threat in his own right, he is also joined by numerous other Masters, from both Dryfe and Altar, along with Hugo and what appear to be the other three Dryfe Superiors.

So this is an actually really fun episode, even if it’s also kind of a nothing episode. With Shu and Figaro both trapped in the barrier, Ray and Rook learn that any player below level fifty can pass straight through the barrier, and use that to mount a counterattack. A small chunk of the episode is devoted to what amounts to a ‘Ray And Rook (And Later Hugo) Show Off Their Awesome Abilities’ scene, and honestly it was enough fun that I’m willing to forgive it for being mindless fluff. I do like the touch that while Rook can use his abilities to convert female monsters to his side, his Embryo Babyl can use her abilities to convert male players to her side, making them a nice team.

Meanwhile, Marie, who had bonded with the princess earlier, tracks down Franklin and shoots him a bunch, and exactly nobody is surprised because we all basically knew already that she was the monster-bug-shooting gunslinger who killed Ray before. Franklin is still alive, though, and as the show, as all shounen shows must, descends into shounen anime battle match-ups, Marie finds herself facing off against another Dryfe Superior with power over music.

Also, can I just express my irritation that Franklin combines both chess metaphors and poker metaphors. Those games are the antithesis of each other: Chess is a game all about planning multiple moves ahead, figuring out multiple paths and multiple outcomes to those paths and then choosing the best one; whereas Poker is a game all about taking a hand dealt to you by luck and tricking, scheming, and gambling your way to getting the best possible use out of it. Either one will work for a scheming villain, but they work for very different kinds of scheming villain.

[aion-rsa]

The 100 Season 7 Episode 16: The Last War

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This THE 100 review contains spoilers

The 100 Season 7 Episode 16

Ultimately, The 100 turned in a series finale that’s better than the back half of its final season, but not by a whole lot. The use of two fan-favorite characters (Lexa and Abby), and a last-minute twist, are responsible for much of the emotionally satisfying material. So much of the rest, including the saber-rattling and Sheidheda skulking around, feel like a waste of precious time, plot missteps from earlier in the season that long overstayed their welcome.

The most successful moments were based in the characters we’ve invested in for so long. Octavia’s jaded takes on war, culminating in her speech. Raven holding it down for absolutely everyone. Murphy and Emori grieving what they thought were one another’s deaths. Miller and Jackson’s reunion and dancing juxtaposed with Emori and Murphy’s dire goodbye was a beautiful way to let us say goodbye to those characters, because even if everybody lives, we’re still saying goodbye.

This episode spends quite a bit of time on the concept of judging Clarke’s actions as a proxy for all of humanity. While that has always come with the territory of the show, it feels like an extremely reductive way of viewing seven seasons with a strong ensemble cast and far more robust storytelling, yet it’s the one the finale imposes upon us. Clarke was right about one thing: getting Raven back in the mix should have been Plan A, not cleanup.

It’s far too easy to judge an entire show based on whether you like the main character, even moreso when that character is a woman or girl. It feels odd for The 100, the same show that quietly gave us so many accomplished women and girls as leaders, to spend so many of its final minutes on this. Even with Raven and Octavia course-correcting, the series finale of the show still comes down to a question of Clarke’s choices, and whether we think they’re justified or not. Surely after all this time, The 100 could have aimed higher than that?

Up until the reveal that Clarke’s friends returned to Earth for her, the episode has almost no emotional heft outside of Emori’s fate. Seeing Indra vanquish Sheidheda for her mother was nice, but long overdue considering we’d watched her fail to pull the trigger so many times before. Raven’s pleading on behalf of humanity had more punch because it was with Abby, but it came so late in the episode and was so brief.. 

One of the more promising opportunities was Clarke’s conversation with her judge. While it’s not actually a long-awaited reunion with Lexa, it’s recognition that Lexa was Clarke’s greatest love, and perhaps her greatest teacher. I appreciate that the higher being pushed Clarke to justify some of her choices, though she mostly let Clarke slide on her intent to murder her own child.

Continuing this season’s theme, there were a few beats we never got to unpack because The 100 preferred to go for surprise (also a problem during season 5, which has more similarities than I’d like to this final season.) Octavia stopping the war was something only she could do, but rather than seeing the faith and growth it took for Blodreina to lay down her arms, the moment was clipped. Clarke killing Cadogan was a badass moment, but shooting him at that point in his test meant we never got to see what it looked like when he had to respond to the higher consciousness, who was in the process of grilling him about giving up love when Clarke takes him down. Similarly, we learned the mystery of what Becca saw, that she was asked to take the test and declined. But there wasn’t time to consider what that actually means.

Did Emori transcend? Her body was dead but her consciousness was alive, and we saw her orb swirl around John’s and transcend. Is she in his mind? Apparently she was in the final scene, but she was hard to spot, even on re-watch. This feels like an odd loose end to leave hanging and not make more explicit, especially after spending so much time this season building up these two possible deaths. Whether she lived or said goodbye in the mindspace, both could have been satisfying, but the in-between space feels accidental or even thoughtless.

In the end, it got me to see all these characters back together on Earth and building again. While they didn’t transcend, it’s their own kind of heaven to be together and to create a life that’s (presumably) free from violence and war. It doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny of course, but when I think of the show from seasons one and two that I fell in love with, it’s the final scenes on the shore that I’ll recall, if I think of the finale at all. 

More likely, I’ll think of Octavia’s time on Sky Ring, Indra’s relationship with her daughters and how she let them teach her as much as she taught them, Gabriel’s humanity and eternal sense of curiosity, and the way Murphy and Emori changed so much, but always back to one another. How much I enjoyed meeting Hope, how Diyoza evolved beyond my wildest imagination, Raven’s strength and how she owned her mistakes, and so much more from so many seasons gone by and characters long gone. And how much this little show that people ignored or made fun of had to say about grief, trauma, colonialism, found family, and what we do to survive. 

May we meet again. 

Other notes…

The high power mind palace place looks like the galaxy version of Rainbow Road but a lot less fun. Carved into the wood are Cadogan and his daughter’s initials, plus “Ben was here,” and JR + JR in a heart, which I assume was Jason Rothenberg’s tribute to his wife Joy. Any idea what these mean, or spot any others? Let us know in the comments.

They still have not explained how Earth even exists right now. Are they back in time? Is this one magic? Are we in a multiverse? Alright, I know, I give up…It just feels relevant since a spinoff is happening on Earth at another time to know if that’s how Earth has suddenly cropped up all fine and dandy again.

Can we just take a moment to appreciate how incredibly long Raven’s to do list was during this episode? Did she time travel? She must be exhausted.

War is bad and stuff, but hell yeah O in her OG Trikru war paint! Linctavia forever.

I just want it on the record that I’m bummed out that Jordan’s plan did not involve spraying algae on all the invisible Disciples.

One thing I do appreciate is that The 100 continued to reckon with the doctrine of jus drein, jus draun and various aspects of Grounder culture until the very end.

The contemporary music for The 100 has always been used sparingly and generally to great effect. Here we got a heavier hand than usual, but I think it still worked. The cover of REM’s “The One I Love” had the sort of intensity needed for the battlefield, though it seems they were using a very literal interpretation of the title. The Vance Joy song Miller/Jackson and Memori dance to felt like a lighter touch, especially when was filtered through some brain waves. Using U2 for the final scenes is the perfect Dad Rock move from Jroth, though “Bad” is somehow both surprising and on the nose. (Were they not allowed to use “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” or “Where the Streets Have No Name”?)

It is low-key hilarious that Murphy is the first person Clarke assumes might not have transcended

Clarke not getting to go to the Promised Land is very Moses of her, which sort of works because Clarke is very Old Testament.

Birth control suddenly being handled feels like a real gift but also a weird thing for the Lexified higher being to mention, since this show has very much ignored birth control for seven whole seasons.

The post The 100 Season 7 Episode 16: The Last War appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[aswithasunbeam]

Finding Forgiveness, Chapter 6

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9

Rating: Teen and Up

Summary: Eliza Hamilton can't keep punishing her husband forever. If she didn't intend to leave him, she would need to find a way to forgive him. But how? The Reynolds Pamphlet aftermath

Eliza and Hamilton finally have that big fight they’ve been avoiding...

June 1798

“Honey?” Eliza tapped on the office door lightly and peered through the open sliver into the room. Hamilton appeared to be absent, so she pushed the door open all the way and stepped inside. She needed more paper to finish her correspondence on behalf of the Widow’s society, and he always kept some in his desk drawer.

The worn drawer slid open with a familiar squeak as she pulled out a small stack of blank sheets. She shook her head as she looked at her husband’s messy desk, littered with papers, old quills and an empty ink pot. One letter buried in the mayhem looked like it had been folded and addressed, so she reached out to pluck it from the stack, intending to give it to the maid for the post. She didn’t dare touch the other papers, but she did place the worn quills into their holder and made a mental note to have water sent in so Hamilton could mix more ink.

The topmost letter on his desk caught her eye just as she was turning to leave, the word ‘Military,’ capitalized in the first sentence of the second paragraph, arresting her attention. She scanned the letter, eyes dropping to an italicized portion further down, dread growing in her stomach. “You intimate a desire to be informed what would be my part in such an event as to entering into military service. I have no scruple about opening myself to you on this point. If I am invited to a station in which the service I may render may be proportioned to the sacrifice I am to make—I shall be willing to go into the army.”1

She felt ill as the realization came over her: he’d lied to her. Again. Those pretty words he’d said in the foyer barely a month ago about how important she and the children were to him had meant nothing. He was going back to public service.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.” She jumped at the sound of her husband’s voice, looking over at him with wide, startled eyes. He laughed gently. “I’m sorry, did I startle you?”

She nodded, heart racing and mind churning.

He leaned easily against the doorjamb. “I know you need to help look after your father, but it’s going to be hard with you gone. Alex and Jamie were just about to reenact the tragedy of Cain and Abel over a dish of strawberries. Where ever did they get such a sweet tooth?” He asked the question with a knowing smirk.

The comment was an open invitation to tease him about his own sweet tooth. Not five minutes ago, she would have done so in good humor; now she can barely look at him. He seemed to sense the change.

“Betsey? Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she nodded vaguely. She couldn’t confront him right now. Her throat felt tight and her eyes were watering. If she tried to speak, she’d burst into tears.

“You’re sure?” Hamilton looked unconvinced, and not a little concerned.

She hesitated, cleared her throat to avoid any quavering, and amended, “Actually, I’m suddenly feeling a little under the weather. Perhaps I’ll go lie down a bit before the party.”

His expression softened with sympathy. “Of course, sweetheart. Go take a rest.”

She nodded again, pushing by him to get out of the room. Mounting the stairs with haste, she shut herself into her bedroom and leaned back against the door. Perhaps she was overreacting, she considered. He had told her that he would reconsider his position on public office if war between France and America should come. Wasn’t that all the letter had said?

The sting of betrayal remained deep in her breast. He hadn’t talked to her about joining the army again. He hadn’t even mentioned he was considering it. His actions felt deceitful and underhanded.

The peace she had found over the past weeks, ever since he’d spoken those blessed words about choosing their family over his public life, washed away under a new wave of hurt and pain. It was silly, perhaps, to place so much meaning on that one conversation, but she had. For the first time in so many months, she’d felt as if she recognized her husband again.

She placed her blank pages on her dressing table and sighed. Rooting around in one of the drawers for a quill and some ink, she decided to continue her correspondence. Those poor women and their babe’s shouldn’t suffer because of her emotional turmoil, she told herself firmly. She found the items shoved towards the back; she needed them in here only on the rare occasion she wanted to jot down a list before bed.

Writing calmed her.

She was glad she hadn’t tried to bring up the letter downstairs; she needed time gather her thoughts and place them in perspective. They would need to talk, calmly and rationally, about what a return to public life would mean for them. Tonight, after the party, she would sit him down and they would discuss it.

~*~

Eliza laughed politely as Nicholas Fish, one her husband’s oldest and dearest friends, regaled her with an amusing tale. In the interest of fostering conversation, she’d been seat across and several seats down from her husband. She took a bite of the chicken from her plate and glanced down the table at Hamilton.

His shoulders looked tense and his eyes seemed deliberately trained on his meal. She didn’t recognize the man seated beside him. The man, whoever he was, gestured wildly as he spoke, his fork swirling through the air, dangerously close to the people seated on either side of him. His dazed expression and slightly manic smile signaled to Eliza that he’d partaken of too much drink.

John Church was seated on the other side of her husband, and he caught her eye as she was taking in the situation. He, too, looked tense and uncomfortable. She gave him a quizzical look. He darted his eye towards the unknown man and shook his head once.

“Poor Ham looks like he’s having a tough time of it,” Fish noted beside her.

“Who is that man sitting next to him?” she asked.

Fish frowned. “I’m not sure. Some distant relation of Jay’s, I believe, though I’ve never met him before. He certainly doesn’t seem to be making much of an impression.”

The man beside her husband raised his voice suddenly, his words noticeably slurred. “The bastards! We ought to take ‘em all out one by one!”

Hamilton replied softly, so she couldn’t hear what he was saying.

“I don’t care who hears me,” the man shouted back at him. “Why? You one of ‘em?”

The person seated on the other side of the man said something else to him. His eyes widened and his volume lowered once more. Her husband’s face was flushed as he renewed his study of his dinner plate.

The meal past without further incident, and the party retired to the front room for music and dancing. Eliza paced over to the open window for a breath of air in the already warm room. The violins tuned up in the corner as couples took their places.

“Well, that was interesting.”

She looked around at Hamilton, who was now standing behind her. “What happened?”

“The only thing worse than having a political discussion over a meal is having a political discussion with someone who has clearly had more than their fair share of wine.”

She gave him a half smile.

“Would you like to dance?”

“Perhaps later, to a slower song,” she declined, hardly in the mood for the spritly dance that was to open the night.

“Are you still feeling unwell?” His brow wrinkled in concern and he reached a hand towards her cheek.

She leaned back away from him. “I’m fine.”

“My dear brother,” Angelica called, approaching with Church fast on her heels. “Will you dance with me? My husband refuses to indulge me.”

Hamilton smiled as he turned to face her sister. His eyes lingered for a moment on Angelica’s fashionable, low-cut dress. “With pleasure, my dear sister.”

A flash of unreasonable jealousy shot through her as she glanced down at the navy blue dress he’d so complimented when she’d worn it to the theater back in March. Hamilton and Angelica had similarly gregarious and flirtatious personalities. They’d been playful with each other ever since they first met, and it had never once bothered her. She trusted them both too much to be concerned. But watching her husband escort her sister to the dance floor, his hand at her waist, she felt a poisonous worm of jealousy wriggling in the back of her mind.

She smiled tightly at Church, still standing silently beside her. Turning her face back to the window, she opened her fan and waved at her face perfunctorily. She’d never much cared for these bright, loud parties.

“Would you care to dance, Mrs. Hamilton?” Nicholas Fish asked several minutes later before the next song began. He held out a hand to her hopefully. She glanced out at the dance floor, where her husband was still speaking quietly to Angelica, smiling widely at whatever clever retort her sister had made.

“You wouldn’t prefer an eligible young woman, Mr. Fish?” Still a bachelor at forty, she wondered if the sweet man would ever settle down. There was little hope of it if he kept dancing with married women at parties.

“I’d be quite content to dance with the loveliest lady in the room, ma’am,” he replied.

“If you’re going to flatter me, sir, at least make it believable,” she scolded, though she softened the comment with a smile.

“Hardly mere flattery, I assure you. Your kind heart and generous spirit radiate from you like a beacon. I’m quite sure your husband would agree.” The last sentence was spoken with a kind of finality, as if her husband’s agreement were all the proof any assertion required to make it true. Knowing Fish, he probably believed that.

She shook her head at the overt attempt to charm her, but she took his hand. When she took her place in line, Hamilton met her eye and smiled, his whole face lighting up at the sight of her. She smiled back at him, some of her bitterness towards him easing at his expression of pure delight. She turned her attention to Fish as the music began.

She found herself enjoying the evening after that. She danced merrily with Fish, then once with Church, and finally once with her husband. Hamilton twirled her around too many times at a key moment in the dance, throwing off the steps, and when she’d bumped into him as a result he had pressed a playful kiss to her nose before twirling her back to the proper place. She swatted at him even as she grinned adoringly.

“You did that on purpose,” she charged.

He grinned. “Of course I did. I can’t resist you, especially not in that dress.”

Everything was going wonderfully, until the end of the night.

The unknown relation of Jay’s lurched drunkenly towards their group when they’d sat to rest and have a companionable drink. The companion who’d sat beside him at dinner was tugging at his sleeve and whispering quietly, but the man shrugged him off. “We’ve got to actually do something,” he stated, apropos of nothing, as he came to a stop in front of her husband.

“Sir, I think it’s time you retired,” Hamilton replied calmly.

“No, no, we’ve got to do something. Those tri-colored bastards just…just get away with everything! Robbery, murder. Look at…look at poor Jemmy Jones!”

Fish looked incredibly uncomfortable at the reference. James Jones had been insulted by Brockholst Livingston in the republican Argus along with Fish, but where Fish had chosen to pointedly ignore the insult, Jones had flown into a passion, attacked Livingston with a cane, tweaked his nose, and ended up dying in a duel as a result.2 The duel had been a mere two weeks previous, making the reference in even poorer taste.

“Sir,” Hamilton tried to interrupt once more. His jaw muscle was bunched in a way that told her he was trying to reign in his temper. The man refused to be silenced.

“We can’t just let them get away with it! And you,” he pointed at Hamilton, “You should be leading us! If I were you, I’d be at the capital. Not off…off philandering about with pretty whores—”

“That’s quite enough,” Church roared, jumping from his seat and taking the man by the arm. Hamilton was on his feet as well.

Humiliation burned through her; she pressed a hand to her forehead as if to cover her face. Fear mixed in strongly as well. Was Hamilton about to get into a duel? Would he, too, be a victim of the dangerous political polarization gripping the nation?

Angelica wrapped an arm around her as the men stalked off. “My poor, dear love,” her sister whispered. “It’ll be all right.”

She half wanted to snap at her sister to take her hand off her shoulders. A deeper, younger part of her wanted to crawl into her big sister’s arms and weep. Drawing in a steadying breath, she looked over at Angelica and announced, “I’m leaving.”

“I’ll get Hamilton,” Angelica offered, already moving to stand.

“No,” she stopped her. “No. I’m leaving.”

She stood, walked purposefully towards the door, and ordered their coach be brought around. When it arrived, she told the driver to take her home, and curled up in the corner as the carriage clattered away on the rough road. Let him play politics to his heart’s content, she thought darkly, to his death if that’s what he wished.

She didn’t need him.

~*~

The front door of their townhouse slammed shut nearly an hour later. Eliza started in her seat, looking away from the dying fire to the doorway where her husband now stood, face red and livid with anger. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him look so furious, at least not with her.  

“What were you thinking?” he demanded, voice icy. “You just left me there. And you took the carriage. I had to ask Church to bring me home. Do you know how embarrassing that was?”

A slightly hysterical laugh burst out of her. She turned her gaze back to the fire.

He took a step into the room. “Why are you laughing?”

She ignored him.

His fist pounded into the wall and she jumped again. “For God’s sake, Eliza, we’re going in circles! We can’t keep doing this!” She could count on one hand the number of times he’d raised his voice at her like that. Watching him warily, she saw him rest his head on his fist, leaning heavily against the wall and breathing hard. He added, in almost a whisper, “I can’t keep doing this.”

“You’re joining the army.” She stated the fact flatly. To anyone else, it would have seemed a non-sequitur, but she knew he understood by how fast his head whipped around to face her again.

“You read my letter.”

“You said you weren’t going back.”

“I said wasn’t going back as long as it could be avoided. This is bad, Eliza. People are dying. I can’t avoid it any longer. After everything I’ve sacrificed—”

“You’ve sacrificed?” she repeated with disbelief. “You?”

“Yes,” he snapped.

A red haze seemed to descend over her vision.

“You’ve ruined my life!” she shouted at him. “You took everything I’ve ever known to be true, set it aflame, and published the ashes for the world to see.”

He stared at her, nonplussed by the outburst.

“And now you want to start all over again! Saddle yourself with overwhelming responsibility until you crawl back into the first open pair of arms you come across.”

“That’s not true. That’s not going to happen!”

“How do I know that? How will I know if it does? Would you have ever told me about the first girl if your public reputation weren’t on the line?”

“Would you have wanted me to?”

She ground her teeth together so hard she feared they would break. “I hate that you slept with her. The very thought of it makes me crazy. But the worst part was the deceit. You lied to me. You lied to me for years. And now you’ve lied to me again.”

“I didn’t lie to you about this,” he insisted. “And that’s not going to happen again. That wasn’t me, Eliza.”

“You keep saying that. Of course it was you! Stop lying!”

And they were off.

The fight that followed was unlike anything Eliza had ever experienced. She hardly remembered all the horrible things they started screaming. Pent up resentment, anger, humiliation, and confusion was suddenly spewing forth from both of them, raging through parlor like a great storm, destroying everything in its path. No one knew them better than the other; no one knew how to hurt them more. They tore into each other like wounded animals, shouting over each other, the vitriol worsening with every word. Every soft spot was prodded, every insecurity laid bare.

They lost the thread of the argument at some point, striking out with anything that could wound. She remembered echoing some the attacks she’d read in the press about his political corruption. Somehow, she linked that with an accusation that he was lusting after Angelica.

“I’m not sleeping with your sister,” he nearly spat back. “Though it is nice on occasion to speak to a woman who actually understands something of my work.”

It ought not to have hurt so much: she’d never claimed any sort of interest in politics, and she’d met several well-educated, even brilliant, men who’d found themselves awed by her husband’s genius. That she didn’t grasp every nuance of his work was hardly a reflection of her intelligence. Still, the thrust sank deep, feeding a deep insecurity that she wasn’t good enough, wasn’t smart enough, to be married to a man like him. The pain must have shown on her face, because the anger in his expression rapidly transformed into regret.

That was when she struck the killing blow, treading onto forbidden ground. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you were unfaithful, given who raised you.”

The color drained from his face. “Don’t.”

“Like mother, like son.”

He crumpled in on himself, turning away from her.

It was a hollow victory.

She fled from the room, up the stairs, and slammed her bedroom door. It was then she suddenly remembered the house full of children she could only pray had slept through the horrifying display. Her dress tore at the back as she ripped it off, desperate to change out of the formal gown. She didn’t care; she couldn’t imagine she’d ever wear it again when it was linked indelibly in her mind to such a nightmarish evening. Tugging a nightgown on, she crawled into bed and curled up, sobs wracking her chest. She pressed her face into her pillow, trying to quiet them.

Some time passed, her sobs fading to hitching breaths and damp eyes, when she heard a soft tap at the door. She froze in place, waiting. Another soft tap followed. “Eliza?”

She stayed quiet.

“Eliza, please answer me.”

Tears started leaking from her eyes again at the pain in his voice.

“Those can’t be the last things we say to each other before you leave. Please,” he begged.

When heavy silence met him again, she heard a soft thud, as if he’d knocked his head against the door, and a light scratching, as though he had dragged his fingers down along the wood. At last, she heard footsteps retreating down the stairs. She heaved out a long breath.

The imagined image haunted her: his head resting on the door, his fingers splayed across the wood as he begged to be let in. Then the image of him hours earlier popped into her mind: smiling with delight as he spun her on the dance floor, pressing little kisses to her nose. It would be so much easier to hate him if she didn’t love him so much.

Eventually, perhaps hours later, the heartache and guilt overwhelmed the anger and pain, and she pulled herself from the bed. She went to the dressing room, where she collected a nightshirt and the spare quilt. Then she padded downstairs with the items, looking into the empty parlor first and then approaching the office. The door was slightly ajar, so she pushed it open gently.

Hamilton was asleep in his armchair, fully clothed, his arms crossed over his chest and his feet propped up on the foot rest. She knelt beside him. “Alexander?”

He snuffled lightly, his head rolling toward her, but he didn’t wake.

Sighing, she spread the blanket out over him and left the nightshirt by his side, in case he woke in the night and wished to change. The door closed behind her with a gentle tap.

~*~

She blinked slowly in the bright sunlight filtering through the curtains of her bedroom. The normal Sunday bustle sounded outside the door: the children readying for church, the maids hard at their chores. One of the servants had checked on her earlier, and she’d feigned sleep. She’d been alone and undisturbed ever since.

Some of the activity finally quieted outside. She’d nearly drifted off when her door opened once more. She kept her eyes closed, even as she felt a familiar weight settle onto the bed beside her.

“Eliza?” Hamilton asked.

Slowly, she opened her eyes to look up at him. His eyes were slightly bloodshot, and he looked tired, almost achingly soul weary. She wondered if the same sight would greet her in the mirror.

“Angelica took the boys with her to church,” he informed her. He reached out slowly, wary, but she stayed still until he finally placed the back of his hand against her forehead. “Are you ill? Should I send for the doctor?”

“No,” she said simply.

“Can I bring you anything?”

She rolled over to face away from him. “Just leave me alone.”

He complied, rising from the bed and closing the door behind him.

She did eventually get up. She finished packing and made sure Angelica and William both had everything they would need for their trip to Albany. William was still a bit too small to be away from her, and Angelica…well, the girl had nearly begged her to come along. She wondered how much of that was a desire to be with her mother and see her grandparents, or simply a desire not to be left alone with her father, with whom she was barely speaking.

Hamilton rode out with them to the sloop that afternoon. He gave their giggling baby a series of wet, sloppy kisses all over his face. Angelica surprisingly agreed to hug him goodbye, accepting a kiss to the crown of her head as she squeezed her father around the waist. “I love you, sweetheart. I’ll miss you,” he whispered to their little girl.

“I’ll miss you, too, Papa,” Angelica replied. It was, perhaps, the most words she’d strung together in a sentence directed towards him in months. He’d smiled slightly in response.

Finally, he looked at her. Their eyes met for a long, pregnant moment. He didn’t try to speak to her, or kiss her goodbye. She made no movement towards him, either. His shoulders fell, a deep despair plain on his face, as he walked back towards the coach alone.

~*~

A week later, she settled into a seat outside her parents’ estate, looking out at the water as she slowly sipped at her tea. Angelica had taken little William down to the riverbank, and she could see her daughter playfully splashing in the water, flicking little drops at the baby as he laughed gleefully. She smiled at the simple scene.

Her father seemed to be doing much better, but she didn’t regret her trip. She needed time away: time to think without her husband’s sad eyes to make her feel guilty. Not that she had escaped him entirely. When she’d arrived in Albany, she had two letters from her husband and one from her sister waiting for her. One of Hamilton’s letters and Angelica’s had both been sent on the day she’d left New York.

“I have been extremely uneasy, My beloved Eliza, at the state of health and state of mind in which you left me. I earnestly hope there has been a change of both for the better,”3 Hamilton had written. She’d nearly laughed. Did he really think a few days on a boat were going to do anything to improve the mess their lives had become?

He’d continued, “I always feel how necessary you are to me. But when you are absent I become still more sensible of it, and look around in vain for that satisfaction which you alone can bestow.”4 The longing in those sentences had made her ache a little. Did he mean that? If he did, if she alone could bring him satisfaction, why did he insist on going back to the army?

Angelica’s letter had helpfully informed her that Hamilton had gone to her house for dinner and that he was “very much out of spirits” over the course of the evening. She’d added that the unpleasant man from dinner the night before, or the “dirty fellow,” in her words, had been “effectually silenced.”5 She wondered queasily if he had been silenced in the same manner as James Jones.

“You look deep in thought, my dear heart.”

Eliza turned in her seat to see her mother carefully making her way to the table to join her. “Hello, Mama,” she greeted, conjuring a warm smile. “How was Papa this morning?”

“He’s getting a little stronger every day,” Kitty Schuyler replied. She lowered herself into a chair with a great sigh, and Eliza quickly set about preparing her a cup of tea. “What had you looking so serious on a such a lovely morning?”

She shook her head, trying to shrug off her troubles and concerns.

“Is it that husband of yours?” Kitty pressed. Eliza’s face must have given it away, because Kitty nodded to herself. “I thought something was wrong, when three letters preceded your arrival. What happened?”

Eliza swallowed around a sudden lump in her throat. “We had a fight,” she managed. “We had a…a terrible fight. We said such horrible things to each other. And then I left.”

Kitty laid one of her wrinkled hands atop hers, inviting her to continue, to unload the great weight she’d been carrying inside her for so long.

And so she did. She told her mother about her grief, her anger, her deep and abiding love, and how it all seemed to whirl within her in such a confusing and overwhelming way. “I’m trying so hard. I want to forgive him. Things between us used to be so wonderful, so easy. Now half the time he feels like a stranger. I just don’t know how to make things like they were before. How can I go back?”

“You can’t,” her mother said simply.

Her eyes widened, devastation surging through her. Her mother patted her hand affectionately. “It’s not so bad as all that, dearest. You know, your Papa and I have been married for a very long time now. I’ve learned over the years that sometimes things happen that change your relationship forever: sometimes good things, sometimes bad things. In either case, you can never go back to the marriage you had before. You can only walk forward.”

Eliza nodded, mulling the thought over in her mind.

“You know, many marriages, most I would venture to say, are little more than convenient economic arrangements between men and women. They live in separate spheres, perhaps exchanging polite words over dinner. Even if they don’t start out that way, they usually end up as such.”

She frowned at her mother. Was she saying she should accept the painful distance that had grown up between them? Give up on her loving relationship and accept a life of smiling politely at her husband over shared meals?

“But you and Hamilton, you’ve always shared an uncommon intimacy. You love each other so deeply and passionately. You’re friends, lovers, partners. I’ve seen the way he looks at you, like you’re his only light in a dark world. And he isn’t a stranger; you know him better now than you ever have before. Things between you are going to change, to transform. You’ll continue to love each other, of that I have no doubt. But you need to stop trying to go back to a golden past, sweetheart. You’ll never be able to, and trying will only drive you both mad.”

“How do I move on?” she asked, voice quiet. “How do I get past this?”

“Speak with him,” Kitty answered. “Truly speak with him. Try to understand how this happened, and how to stop it from happening again, so you can begin to rebuild trust. You can’t just hold this inside you and hope if you bury it deep enough, you’ll forget about it.”6

That was exactly the trap she had fallen into, she realized. Burying the hurt, pretending to be fine, and then retreating from him when it reared its ugly head once more.

Her mother leaned over and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Whatever happens, you’re going to be just fine, my sweet girl,” she added, taking another sip of her tea.

Eliza stared at her mother for a long moment, wondering how she’d become so wise. A thought occurred to her, a terrible thought: had her father…? Her world seemed to tilt on its axis for a moment as she considered the possibility that her heroic, loving father could ever do such a thing to her mother. Of course, such things happened with a disheartening frequency. The only difference in her case was her husband’s spectacular failure of discretion.

Her heart hurt even more for her daughter: if the idea bothered her this much at forty, what must it be doing to her impressionable thirteen year old?

She didn’t ask her mother, didn’t press her suspicion; she simply sat back and looked out over the water. She tried to soak in the advice. They had spoken very briefly about what had led to the affair: how the stress of his job as Treasury Secretary and his feelings of inadequacy in sufficiently providing for his family had driven him to indulge in a destructive kind of fantasy world. It was part of the reason she felt so worried about him returning to a public position. They’d both attempted to talk further after that conversation, several times, in fact. Hadn’t she been considering such a conversation the very same day they’d had their explosive argument? But now, with clearer expectations, she felt like she might finally be ready.

Her old marriage was gone: mortally wounded by her husband’s betrayal and finally killed by their last fight. But together they could forge a new marriage, a more honest love.

She’d write to him today, when she went inside, she decided.

She gazed out a the tranquil river, feeling lighter and more hopeful that she had in a very long time.

1. Alexander Hamilton to George Washington, 2 June 1798

2. See Affairs of Honor, by Joanne Freeman, p. 172 and A History of the People of the United States: From the Revolution to the Civil War, by John Bach McMaster, p. 381.

3, 4. Hamilton to Eliza, 3 June 1798

5. Angelica Church to Elizabeth Hamilton, undated. All credit to runawayforthesummer and theelizapapers for making a remarkably convincing argument that the “Icarus” letter was not, in fact, written in the summer of 1797, but rather in 1798. Read the post here. Both Hamilton and Angelica mention Hamilton coming by for dinner after Eliza left that night. Also, Hamilton’s letter to Eliza on the day she left for Albany was written on June 3rd, which was a Sunday, and in Angelica’s letter where she talks about Eliza leaving on the sloop, she mentions taking the boy’s with her to church that morning, which also likely places her letter on a Sunday. Everything about it just matches up perfectly. That also means that the “dirty fellow” Angelica mentions wasn’t necessarily James Callender (although it could have been, as circumstances were heating up for him around this time, with the Alien and Sedition Acts coming out soon after). The drunk man (I didn’t want to saddle him with a real identity) at the party was all just my imagination trying to create a circumstance where Hamilton and Eliza would really fight it out.

6. Kitty Schuyler’s advice is sort of an amalgamation of a whole bunch of articles and advice columns I’ve been reading lately. One of the most interesting and insightful source I found was the Dear Sugar podcast four part series on Infidelity, which featured Ester Perel in one episode (another huge thanks to Iris970 for suggesting I seek her work out). Perel also just published an article in the Atlantic (Oct. 2017 Issue) entitled “Why Happy People Cheat: A Good Marriage Is No Guarantee Against Infidelity,” which was also very influential and helpful for this chapter.

[westphotolukedas]

Production Journal - Being John Malkovich

210220

Being John Malkovich (1999) is a haunting film that asks viewers to surrender to a fantastically absurd premise. It was Spike Jonze’s directorial debut and he received an Academy Award nomination for such a bold undertaking. The plot follows Craig Schwarz, a struggling street puppeteer, his affectionate wife Lotte and his office infatuation Maxine. Relations between them cycle between attraction and repulsion when they discover a portal into the brain of John Malkovich. Its intrepid moments of comedy were met with praise and fascination from critics. ‘Put simply, Being John Malkovich just has to be one of funniest, cleverest films of the year, a Fabergé egg of comic delight,’ were Peter Bradshaw’s closing remarks in his review. (Bradshaw, 2000)

Director of Photography Lance Acord (Born 1964) is Jonze’s long term collaborator. Between them they have the hipster credentials to deliver trendy music videos, independent films and Hollywood blockbusters. With Being John Malkovich (1999) they developed a visual language which was darker derived from traditional set ups and framing. ‘We shot most of the scenes very simply. We didn’t have that much time to do them, and instead of breaking down each scene into ten setups, I wanted to spend my time getting performances from the actors,’ Jonze explained in interview. He continued, ‘That was a conscious decision, but I thought it worked for the movie - not to make it big, flashy and overly into technique. Lance can confidently and quickly work with little equipment. And, also, he doesn’t care so much what his peers are going to think.’ Given that the film explores such abstract concepts, it is largely due to Accord’s efforts that the viewer is able to suspend disbelief and lose themselves in the cinematography. (Macaulay, 2019)

Being John Malkovich (1999) has philosophical appeal for its portrayal of same-soul theory - a model of Cartesian dualism that suggests individuals identify with a consciousness unique to them. In essence, a person may be themselves within the vessel of someone else. The functionality of the portal may be likened to a cerebroscope - a fictitious device capable of relaying the contents of someone’s brain to another individual. The film addresses this phenomenon by switching to an occluded camera view analogous to peering through a periscope. The feeling of voyeurism is elevated by drawing attention to Malkovich’s bodily processes akin to the auditory effect of an isolation chamber. In a comically pedestrian scene, he orders a bath mat and scours his kitchen for Chinese food; however, the cinematography makes the act seem supernatural. Several levels of this interaction are explored when Maxine has a date with Lotte as Malkovich and Malkovich enters the portal to witness his own conscious mind in a perverse paradox loop. The filmmakers breech the fourth wall and meander either side of it to the point that it is accepted these characters are familiar with the real actor John Malkovich and his friend Charlie Sheen. (Koch, 2011) (Shaw, 2006) (Weinstein, 2008)

Summary

Jonze’s classic film takes time to develop layers of reality that act as a platform for facets of philosophy and science. In comparison, my film will be minutes long and undertaking anything of the same magnitude would be ambitious. I would like there to be a change in the rhythm of the footage that I will create with my own production technique. During an email conversation with lecturer Teemu Hupli, we discussed this issue and the potential avenues that I may partake.

‘Something has been ringing in my head since we spoke last Friday, and I want to voice it. You said a sentence in our chat to the effect that ‘the toil’ behind finished pieces of dramatic art (by which I understand films, plays, TV performances of various kinds) is ‘often not seen’ and your proposed project would expose that side of things. I am not saying it is often seen, but I would suggest you research the basis of this assertion. We do have films / representations of the work that goes into making pieces of dramatic art - cinema by now has a lot of them e.g. Synecdoche, New York, Being John Malkovich, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, and theatre has messed around with the fourth wall at least since the modernist times. In general, the idea of exposing the structures ‘behind’ finished products of art falls under the broader rubric of self-reflexivity, which has become a relatively widely used strategy for slightly more experimental dramatic art. I did mention structuralist film in our chat, which was based exactly on that idea, although it was not always about exposing the toil of actors alone, but often focused on the materials and editing structures of film e.g. Michael Snow’s Wavelength, which is essentially one very long inward zoom with marginal - literally in the margins of the frame - events occurring in the room.

I believe it would be important for you to acknowledge that your project might be operating in the context of such experiments in film / theatre. This is not to say that you should not follow your idea, but that you need to ensure that you are as fully cognisant as possible about the art / film historical context in which you work, in order to develop a clear sense of where you might be doing things similarly and / or differently from the context.’

Production Notes

An original musical score by György Englert provides some clue that Natalie might be an actor playing an actor. Lady Gaga’s Shallow (2018) and Joseph Arthur’s In the Sun (2003) were the inspiratory prompts that I gave him. I like the way both songs become more upbeat as they progress; however, melancholic accents are apparent throughout. Englert’s gypsy jazz roots contribute a playful quality that is also implicit of these shifting intentions.

After the title fades the film begins with a conventional shot seen in television interviews - framing tight to the subject and emphasising facial gestures. There is a second shot positioned further away to add some variation and then photographs from Natalie’s career roll across the screen. Momentum is broken for the first time when she slips and I encourage her to recuperate her thoughts. In the last scene of the interview there is an inaudible background comment from me, although this might be too elusive for the viewer to notice. These remarks were left in the final edit to break the fourth wall - the actor and the director are aware that they are part of a fictional narrative. In the scenes that follow, I added extracts from the scratch audio that are revealing of the filmmaking process. A focusing error while Natalie drinks tea was also left in. An early commercial cut of the film had these parts removed. It had a more mainstream tone and the intentions of the piece were lost. My peers encouraged me to be bolder with my post-production choices and this was the right direction for the project.

Being John Malkovich’s (1999) cerebroscope is recreated in the line reading sequence. The audience has a first-person view of Natalie’s performance as if they are me. There is a familiar fluidity to the play that she exudes. She waits in anticipation of her opening gambit and then launches into the role. Glances down to the paper script and then back to camera were the exact nuances that I wanted to capture. Scratch audio of me monotonously rattling off lines is heard at the start and then there is a fade away to a voice over. I selected the passages about her acknowledging nerves prior to a performance and method acting to superimpose over the visuals. Both give insight into the feelings that she may be experiencing in real time. Various edits exist where the scratch audio was omitted or faded out at a later frame. Feedback from these versions led me to believe that my speech was needed to frame the situation. Finally, I am pleased with the way that Natalie’s staring eye dominates the closing shot before the next scene.

Bibliography

Bradshaw, P. (2000). Bonkers but Brilliant. The Guardian. Available from www.theguardian.com/film/2000/mar/17/1 [Accessed 10/04/2020]

Koch, C. (2020). Consciousness Redux - Being John Malkovich. Scientific American, 22 (1), 18-19

Macaulay, S. (2019). I’m In You - Director Spike Jonze and Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman Talk Being John Malkovich. Filmmaker. Available from www.filmmakermagazine.com/107755-im-in-you-director-spike-jonze-and-screenwriter-charlie-kaufman-talk-being-john-malkovich [Accessed 10/04/2020]

Shaw, D. (2006). On Being Philosophical and Being John Malkovich. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 64 (1), 111-118

Weinstein, L. (2008). The Perverse Cosmos of Being John Malkovich - Forms and Transformations of Narcissism in a Celebrity Culture. Projections, 2 (1), 27-44

Final Cut, Manual Mode, 25 fps, WB Natural Light

[thehooliganhangoutspot]

You wouldn't believe how many label presidents I've heard say, 'Bruno doesn't have what it takes, we don't know how to market him, we don't know what kind of music he does.' You know, 'Who's this beige-looking kid with curly hair? We can't figure him out.' It was devastating. Bruno Mars, 2011 FROM THE ARCHIVES: Caught in Mars' orbit Caught in Mars' orbit The sky's the limit for this Grammy nominee and his cohorts. February 06, 2011|Matt Diehl In early September 2010, Bruno Mars found himself sitting in the posh lounge of North Hollywood's Larrabee Studios, a high-tech temple designed for creating pop-music smashes. Platinum discs from artists who've recorded there line Larrabee's walls, and in an adjoining room, renowned mix engineer Manny Marroquin rushed to complete the 25-year-old singer-songwriter-producer's debut album, "Doo-Wops & Hooligans," due out less than a month later. Marroquin's Midas touch is legendary, blessing hits for Alicia Keys, Rihanna and Usher, among others; in his short career, Mars' ability to create pop blockbusters is proving similarly gilded. At this point, Mars had already helped write and produce chart-toppers for artists such as B.o.B, Flo Rida, Cee Lo Green and Travie McCoy; as a solo artist, Mars' first single, the stirring ballad "Just the Way You Are," was midway through its chart ascent. By early October, that song would reach the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100, attaining triple-platinum status; "Doo-Wops" would also eventually crest at No. 3 in the U.S. and top charts internationally. But Mars didn't know this back in September: Despite the hit-making firepower backing him, he was nervous. His label, Elektra, was preparing to follow up "Just the Way You Are" with a soulful power-pop ditty called "Grenade," and Mars exuded anxiety about its reception: "What's 'Grenade' compared with 'Just the Way You Are'? I'm crossing my fingers, hoping people dig it." They did, demonstrated by Mars' seven Grammy nominations in 2011, second only to Eminem's 10. "Grenade" would also top the charts, making him the only male solo artist to do so with his first two singles. "Hearing Bruno on the radio for the first time is almost like discovering the pre-pubescent Michael Jackson," says McCoy, whose 2010 hit single "Billionaire" was a Mars collaboration. "Bruno is poised to be one of the next generation's greats," notes Green, whose Grammy-nominated hit "[Forget] You" was co-written and produced by Mars and his production team the Smeezingtons. "I'm feeling like a winner right now, sir -- I'm not going to lie!" Mars exclaimed in a recent phone interview between European tour stops. "But I'm still crossing my fingers about the Grammys. They stay crossed: I tend to overthink things. I'm not the guy who screams 'This is a world smash!' when I finish a song." The Grammy Awards take place next Sunday at Staples Center. Indeed, although "Just the Way You Are" was nominated for best pop vocal performance alongside John Mayer and Michael Jackson, Mars seems more excited by his collaborations. "I'm fortunate to work with guys like Cee Lo and B.o.B," he says. "'Nothin' on You' by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I'd been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing." And Green's 2006 hit as part of Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy," captured Mars' imagination: "It epitomized what I wanted to achieve: a song that would be played on pop stations, on hip-hop stations, on rock stations -- just because it was good." (At the 2011 Grammy Awards ceremony, Mars will perform with B.o.B and another crossover success of last year, Janelle Monae.) Mars' voice and production style -- blending classic soul, reggae-tinged grooves suggesting the Police and Sublime, OutKast's iconoclastic hip-hop and Sade's smooth internationalism -- have become pop radio's dominant sound. "Bruno's songs have no boundaries," says John Ivey, program director for the influential top-40 radio station, KIIS-FM. "No one in the past year has had hits as varied. When we first heard 'Just the Way You Are,' it was a little shocking. We'd assumed he was a hip-hop artist, and all of a sudden he's Billy Joel!" Born to a Puerto Rican father and Filipino mother (his birth name is Peter Hernandez), Mars grew up in Hawaii, playing in his family's cover band, the Love Notes. By age 4, he was performing onstage as "the world's youngest Elvis impersonator," and appeared in the film "Honeymoon in Vegas," where he sang "Can't Help Falling in Love." Mars attributes his unique sound to this multicultural upbringing. "Honolulu is a melting pot," he explains. "Melody is everywhere you go. Kids would come to school with guitars and ukuleles on their back, and we'd all jam at lunch." At age 18, he'd moved to L.A., quickly scoring a solo deal with Motown; within a couple years, however, that deal soured. "You wouldn't believe how many label presidents I've heard say, 'Bruno doesn't have what it takes, we don't know how to market him, we don't know what kind of music he does,' " Mars says. "You know, 'Who's this beige-looking kid with curly hair? We can't figure him out.' It was devastating." In L.A., Mars associated with future stars Ne-Yo, Kesha and Kanye West collaborator Jeff Bhasker (with whom Mars performed in a cover band called Sex Panther) as each waited for their big break. "Ne-Yo was one of the first people I saw write a song," Mars recalls. "He'd make something that sounded like a hit record within an hour -- I couldn't believe it. Kesha and I were signed to the same management; we'd call each other up and see what the other was working on, which was usually nothing." To keep his dreams afloat, by 2007 Mars had hooked up with two other young music-industry hopefuls: Philip Lawrence, a singer and songwriter, and sound engineer Ari Levine. "Bruno was a cool, normal dude, but even years ago, when he played his music, it was incredible -- a no-brainer,' " Levine recalls. Working out of Levine's LevCon Studios, set in a ramshackle cottage between a Laundromat and a medical mari- juana doctor on a seedy Hollywood side street, the trio honed their songwriting and production skills as a means of survival. "We worked long and hard in this little shack, hoping just to pay rent and have someone listen to our songs," Lawrence says. Calling themselves the Smeezingtons -- "We'd say a song was going to be a smash, which turned into a 'smeeze,' which turned into a 'smeezington,'" Mars clarifies -- the group developed its distinctive mode. "We're that weird middle ground, where there's live instruments but it's still rhythmic and pop," Levine says. "I'll listen to the Strokes or Black Keys, while Phil can sing any Motown song." "I'm the Nickelodeon version of DangerMouse," Mars adds. He says he's a fan of simple songs "that stand the test of time: 'Just the Way You Are' was inspired by songs like 'Wonderful Tonight' and 'Nothing Compares 2 U.' Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song." "Bruno is extremely talented, and not formulaic -- and that goes equally for all the Smeezingtons," notes Green (who says he was offered "Just the Way You Are" and holds other unreleased, single-quality gems from their sessions together). Undeniably, Mars' Grammy success represents an equal triumph for the Smeezingtons, nominated in the producer of the year category. The Smeezingtons began writing for the likes of Kn'aan, Matisyahu and Brandy, but their first big hit proved the hook for Flo Rida's "Right Round," catching the attention of Atlantic/Elektra's Senior Director of A&R Aaron Bay-Schuck. "Bruno came in with his guitar and it was love at first sight," Bay-Schuck says. "Among the songs he had were 'Billionaire' and 'Nothin' on You,' which sealed the deal." "Every song Bruno and his team had was a smash," adds John Janick, co-president of Elektra Records. "Immediately, we had to sign him. They were doing something different, creating their own sound." -- Making headlines The Smeezingtons' run continues beyond Mars' solo success: the group produced R&B singer Mike Posner's upcoming single, Flo Rida's current hit "Who's Dat Girl," and much of Koreatown pop group Far East Movement's recent debut album. The anonymity of Mars' studio work has been upended by his pop-star status and some headline-grabbing events, however: He recently took a plea deal on cocaine possession charges after an arrest in Las Vegas last September; coincidentally, he entered his guilty plea right as "Grenade" topped the charts. Although he declined to comment on the Vegas incident, he has quickly become aware of the trappings of celebrity. "I have to be a little more cautious about my surroundings," he says. "I'll be eating breakfast at a hotel, having just rolled out of bed -- without realizing people are filming me with flip cams and cellphones. In that way, life has changed, but that's not that bad. Everything I've ever wanted, I have right now." This past December, Mars, who still lives in L.A., headlined the Blaisdell Center, a 7,000-seat venue in his Honolulu hometown, and all that's happened came into perspective for him. "I'd done arena shows," he says, "but this was my first ticket that said 'Bruno Mars' at the top. The show sold out, but all I could think about was how close I came to giving up before 'Nothin on You' hit. I live for this. The best part is, it's just the beginning. I still have so much room to grow; I'm learning something new every day." According to KIIS-FM's Ivey, he does have it all: Mars' triple-threat status as a performer, songwriter and producer puts him into an elite echelon that appeals to Grammy voters. "Kanye West, Diddy, Prince, Jack White -- these are just music guys who can do it all, and really well," Ivey says. "I'm anxious to see where he goes: We need to hear more to determine what he is. But the sky's the limit in terms of potential. If this is the way he starts off -- man, there's no telling what this guy could be." "Bruno's still a work in progress," Green says. "Life isn't shaped as a pop song. He needs to go deeper, try harder, but that's his ambition: Soon he's going to win in that area, too, and be whole." -- calendar@latimes.com ............................................................................................................. In honor of Bruno's birthday, the LA times posted an old throwback article about Bruno from when he was just starting out. It's inspiring to see how far he's come despite the obstacles he's faced. I'm so proud of him. ❤️❤️❤️

[one-of-us-blog]

Old Friends (TGG, Season 3, Episode 1)

Today Eli is forced to watch and recap Old Friends, Episode 1 of the third season of The Golden Girls.  Can the dismal finale to Season 2 be redeemed by the debut episode of Season 3?  Keep reading to find out…

First of all, Jon, you did a great job as always recapping Forest of the Dead!  I’m glad you loved River Song (spoiler alert: you haven’t seen the last of her), and that the Donna Noble era of Who still seems to be going strong for you.  I’m really fond of the next episode you’ll be watching, and I can’t wait to hear your thoughts!  But for now…

Let’s head to Miami!

Written by Kathy Speer and Terry Grossman, directed by Terry Hughes

The girls are busy preparing for a rummage sale, but Blanche isn’t too busy to get in a knock on Dorothy’s fashion sense.  Sophia won’t be around to lend a hand, as she’s heading to the boardwalk to watch men on the beach adjust themselves.  To help the gals get ready, a kindly Sunshine Cadet named Daisy is on hand to volunteer…portrayed by none other than Jenny Lewis!  That’s right, THE Jenny Lewis, who would go on to star in 1989’s The Wizard and front the indie rock band Rilo Kiley, in addition to singing one of my favorite songs (Acid Tongue) as a solo artist; in other words, she’s kind of the best, you guys.  Young Daisy pops into Rose’s bedroom to fetch some items for the big sale, and emerges with an old teddy bear.  She dearly loves it, and Blanche decides to let Daisy keep it.  Rose won’t mind, right?  Daisy departs as Rose returns, and it takes her no time flat to realize that her bear is missing.  The bear’s name is Fernando, and he’s a beloved family heirloom she has had since she was six years old.  Blanche tries to cover her tracks, and heads out to locate Daisy.

At the boardwalk, Sophia pops a squat on a bench by an old man for a friendly cataract discussion.  The man is Alvin Newcastle, security guard.  Despite some teasing from Sophia, Alvin insists that he’s legit and works at a retirement community, where he even knows one of Sophia’s friends.  They have a nice conversation that eventually gets a little flirty, and Sophia offers to give him a taste of her sandwich.

Back at home, a week has now passed and Rose is still sitting in the kitchen looking sad.  Dorothy says she needs to get a grip, but Rose insists that “I got a right to sing the blues.”  Sophia is heading back to the boardwalk, and reveals that Alvin will be buying her breakfast.  Meanwhile, Blanche pops in with a fake Fernando to try to appease her friend, but Rose sees right through the act and leaves.  Blanche confesses to Dorothy that she accidentally gave away Rose’s beloved bear.  Worse, she tried to get the bear back from Daisy, but the young Sunshine Cadet was far less innocent than first believed and is now holding the bear for ransom.  She even went so far as to cut off Fernando’s ear and to send it along as a message.

We cut to the boardwalk, where Sophia and Alvin are people watching; more specifically, they are watching people pee in the ocean and having a great time.  Sophia reflects on life with her late husband Sal, and asks Alvin about his own late wife, Edna.  Alvin doesn’t respond, and has a strange look in his eyes, almost as if he’s having difficulty remembering something.  He tries to change the subject, but Sophia pushes a bit, prompting him to break into tears.  Sophia immediately tells him that she understands and comforts him in a very sweet moment.  He puts his head on her shoulder and she tells him he can cry all he wants.

At home again, Blanche and Dorothy are in the living room with Daisy, in the midst of an intense negotiation for the bear’s return.  Blanche tells her that she made a mistake, but Daisy thinks it’s important that we learn by paying for our mistakes.  And for payment, she wants Blanche to give her a 10-speed Schwinn.  It’s quickly becoming clear that Daisy isn’t your typical Sunshine Cadet; she’s the kind of girl who prefers smoking in the boys’ john rather than community outreach.  Dorothy attempts to get tough and call Daisy’s parents, but her rival is ready.  Daisy tells her to “get real, Grandma,” and draws her weapon…a water pistol filled with red ink, and pointed directly at Fernando!  Rose comes home, and Daisy realizes that Blanche never told her the truth of the matter.  She takes off with the bear, and Blanche is forced to tell Rose what’s really going on.  Rose has only one thing to say: “Cut the crap and get back the damn bear.”

Back to the boardwalk we go, where Sophia is sitting alone.  Alvin shows up, but something is off.  He’s confused again, and yells at Sophia for sitting in his seat.  Sophia tries to figure out what’s up, but he continues to yell angrily until he eventually leaves, with Sophia calling after him.

We’re in the kitchen once more, and Sophia is knitting a scarf for Alan; similarly, Rose made a pair of pants for her bear.  Sophia talks about her recent depression, and Rose talks about her own, and how she used to snuggle with Fernando.  Sophia says she never went to bed with Alvin, but she always wondered about those myths regarding black men.  In the living room, Daisy shows back up with the bear and says that she will accept cash for its semi-safe return.  Blanche goes to retrieve her purse, but Rose stops her; she says that her feelings have changed and she puts on a good show of giving up Fernando, even putting her arms around Jenny; that is, until she springs into action, snatches back her bear, and throws that little criminal out on her ass.  Action Rose is on the scene, and she has reclaimed what was once hers!

We go back to the boardwalk yet again, and thankfully Sophia is having some pleasant banter with Alvin once more.  Dorothy is there as well, hanging in the background to keep an eye on things.  Alvin’s daughter also shows up and talks to Dorothy.  She is glad that her father and Sophia are friends, but she has to let Dorothy know that Alvin in forgetting things quite a bit these days, and his condition is getting worse.

At home again, Blanche and Rose are making up with some kitchen conversation, even if Rose is accidentally throwing some major shade.  In Sophia’s room, Dorothy pops in to talk to her mother about Alvin.  Sophia says she isn’t stupid, and she knows that Alvin isn’t well.  Dorothy lets her know that Alvin has Alzheimer’s, and is about to be sent to New York for care.  In another emotional moment, Sophia comments on the fact that people often say that at their age, you’re lucky “just to be alive.”  But in reality, just being alive isn’t enough.

For the final scene, we return to the boardwalk once again.  Sophia and Dorothy are both present, and Sophia realizes that Alvin is not coming back.  She wonders if he’ll remember her.  Mother and daughter start to walk away, but another old man innocently sits in Alvin’s seat; Sophia immediately scares him away, while dramatic music plays to end the episode.

The End.

Well gang, I have a new favorite episode!  I thought this one was great all around.  I know I’ve written in the past about Sophia as a heartless criminal, but I have to say that the main plot featuring her and Alvin was one of the most touching we have yet seen in the show.  But not only that, this was also perhaps my favorite B plot of any episode thus far as well!  I have a definite bias in favor of Jenny Lewis, but I thought she did a great job as Daisy.  I was genuinely surprised and delighted when she turned out to be such a cutthroat badass, but I was equally happy to see Rose spring into action and take back what was hers.  This episode had a great balance of drama and humor, and I give it a score of 5 poofy hairdos out of 5!

Check back in on Friday, when I will be reviewing One for the Money, the next episode of The Golden Girls.  And be sure to check in tomorrow when Jon will be recapping Midnight, another brilliant episode of Doctor Who.  Until then, as always, thank you for being a friend, and for being One of Us!

[thisdaynews]

America, the Gerontocracy

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/america-the-gerontocracy/

America, the Gerontocracy

Hate crime is rising, the Arctic is burning, and the Dow is bobbing like a cork on an angry sea. If the nation seems intolerant, reckless and more than a little cranky, perhaps that’s because the American republic is showing its age. Somewhere along the way, a once-new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal (not men and women; that came later) became a wheezy gerontocracy. Our leaders, our electorate and our hallowed system of government itself are extremely old.

Let me stipulate at the outset that I harbor no prejudice toward the elderly. As a sexagenarian myself, not to mention as POLITICO’s labor policy editor, I’m fully mindful of the scourge of ageism. (I’ve had the misfortune on occasion to experience it firsthand.) But to affirm that America must work harder to include the elderly within its vibrant multicultural quilt is not to say it must be governed almost entirely by duffers. The cause of greater diversity would be advanced, not thwarted, if a few more younger people penetrated the ranks of American voters and American political leaders.

Story Continued Below

Let’s start with the leaders.

Remember the Soviet Politburo? In the waning years of the Cold War, a frequent criticism of the USSR was that its ruling body was preposterously old and out of touch. Every May Day these geezers would show up on a Moscow reviewing stand, looking stuffed and fix their rheumy gaze on a procession of jackbooted Red Army troops, missiles and tanks. For Americans, the sight was always good for a horselaugh. In 1982, when Leonid Brezhnev, the last of that generation to hold power for any significant length of time, went to his reward, the median age of a Politburo member was 71. No wonder the Evil Empire was crumbling!

You see where this is going. The U.S. doesn’t have a Politburo, but if you calculate the median age of the president, the speaker of the House, the majority leader of the Senate, and the three Democrats leading in the presidential polls for 2020, the median age is … uh … 77.

It doesn’t stop there. We heard a lot last November about the fresh new blood entering Congress, but when the current session began in January, the average ages of House and Senate members were 58 and 63, respectively. That’s slightlyolderthan the previous Congress (58 and 62), which was already among the oldest in history. The average age in Congress declined through the 1970s but it’s mostly increased since the 1980s.

The Deep State is no spring chicken, either. POLITICO’s Danny Vinik reported two years ago that nearly 30 percent of the civilian federal workforce was over 55; two decades earlier, it was closer to 15 percent. Of course, the entire U.S. workforce is getting older, thanks to the aging of the Baby Boom—that giant Hula-Hoop-shaking cohort born during the prosperous post-World War II years from 1946 to 1964. But the federal bureaucracy is even older, apparently because civil-servant Boomers, despite their defined-benefit pensions, are less inclined than their private-sector counterparts to retire.

America’s ruling class is of course more nimble than the Politburo ever was. And indeed, the two Democratic presidential candidates proposing the most dramatic departure from the status quo are Bernie Sanders, who’ll turn 78 on September 8, and Elizabeth Warren, who’s 70. Still, there’s something to be said for youth and vigor. John F. Kennedy (then 43) tapped into that feeling in his 1960 bid to succeed Dwight D. Eisenhower (then 70) when he campaigned on the slogan, “Let’s get America moving again.”

Why should we care how old our leaders are? As the journalist Michael Tortorello reported three years ago in POLITICO Magazine, cognitive functioning declines dramatically on average after age 70, and the types of intelligence that decline most sharply on average are “the capacity to absorb large amounts of new information and data in a short time span and apply it to solve problems in unaccustomed fashion.” It would seem advisable to have at least afewmore people in the higher reaches of government on whom we can rely still to possess this skill in youthful abundance.

The cognitive-function issue is not a theoretical one, if political commentators are to be believed. The past month has brought near-daily speculation about our 73 year-old president’s state of mind. “He’s getting worse,” CNN’s Brian Stelter said earlier this month. “We can all see it. It’s happening in public.” In recent weeks, Trump has canceled a meeting with the Danish prime minister because she wouldn’t discuss selling Greenland; suggested that his own Florida resort be the site of the next G-7 conference; and been quoted suggesting that hurricanes be deterred from reaching landfall in the U.S. through the detonation of nuclear weapons. “If Donald Trump were your father, you would run, not walk, to a neurologist for an evaluation of his cognitive health,” John Gartner, a psychologist, wrote in an AprilUSA Todayop-ed.

Whether Trump’s cognition is declining is a question muddied by a wealth of evidence that his speech and behavior were always at least somewhat erratic. (This is a man, recall, who more than 30 years ago confessed to giving his second-grade music teacher a black eye, which may not even be true.) A similar ambiguity surrounds Joe Biden, 76, whose well-documented history of verbal gaffes helped sink two previous presidential candidacies, one of them (similarly) more than 30 years ago. “Biden has always made gaffes by the bushel,” Fox News commentator Brit Hume (who’s also 76) tweeted earlier this month after Biden appeared to think he was in Vermont when he was really in New Hampshire (a state of no small significance in the primary race). “But some of his recent ones suggest the kind of memory loss associated with senility.” (Trump and Biden’s physicians, I should note, have vouched emphatically for their mental fitness.)

Even if the speculation that Trump and/or Biden might be a little bit gaga is unfounded and terribly unfair, isn’t it strange that we’re talking about the 2020 front-runners in the same worried tone we might adopt discussing with our siblings whether Mom and Pop should still be driving? It isn’t the first time. The 2016 election occasioned more muted speculation along the same lines about Trump, and even a little bit about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, who’s only slightly younger.

None of this means a septuagenarian can’t function effectively as a political leader. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell are 79 and 77, respectively, and by all reports they’re operating at peak mental capacity. But to affirm that not all elderly people are impaired cognitively is very different from affirming that none is.

Even the healthy older brain is, well, different from the healthy younger brain, and if you care about politics that’s worth making some effort to understand. Certain tasks are just harder as you get older, even if you’re very smart. Your mental reflexes are slower. (How do I know? None of your damn business.) It takes you longer to remember someone’s name. Multitasking is more challenging. Learning foreign languages is more difficult, and adjusting to unfamiliar cultures is perhaps a bit harder. You can overcome these obstacles if you make some effort, but not everybody—not even all American leaders—makes the effort.

The most important compensating benefit to old age is greater wisdom, which comes from experience. When you’re making decisions that affect others, it’s much better to have a deep well of experience to draw on than to maintain the mental reflexes of an auctioneer. Wisdom may be more valuable in the digital age than ever before, because the velocity of information and normative judgments on social media, cable news and elsewhere constantly threatens to make glib idiots of us all.

But here’s the rub: The aging of America’s ruling class does not automatically increase its experience level. In presidential politics, notes Brookings Institution senior fellow Jonathan Rauch, political experience, which “used to be a selling point,” has “become a liability. Voters and the public have come to see experience as inauthenticity.”

In a November 2015Atlanticarticle, Rauch plotted experience level for presidential candidates from 1960 to 2012. His graph showed a clear increase in experience level among the losers and a corresponding decrease among the winners. Gerald Ford lost to Jimmy Carter. George H.W. Bush won with more political experience than Michael Dukakis, but four years later lost to Bill Clinton, who had less. John McCain lost to Barack Obama, who’d been in national politics a mere four years.

Donald Trump, who is 73, entered the Oval Office with no political experience at all. The single greatest mental compensation that age provides was therefore unavailable to the oldest president in American history.

***

Why is America governed by old people?Maybe because it has so many elderly voters.

The American electorate is older than it’s been for at least half a century. One reason is aging Boomers. The other is the greater tendency (despite a rising mortality rate) of people who make it into old age to go on living. By 2030, every living Boomer will be elderly (that is, age 65 or older), and by 2035, the Census Bureau projects, the elderly will outnumber minors for the first time in U.S. history.

This demographic trend has an exaggerated effect on politics. According to the Pew Research Center, in the 2020 election nearly one-quarter of the electorate (23 percent) will be elderly, “the highest such share since at least 1970.” But that understates the size of the elderly vote because the elderly are much likelier than any other age group to show up on Election Day. Old peoplereallylike to vote. In 2016, for instance, 71 percent of eligible elderly voters reported to the Census that they voted. For other age cohorts, the turnout percentages were 67 percent (aged 45-64), 59 percent (aged 30-44) and 46 percent (aged 18-29).

The electorate is even older in primaries, and older still in local elections. In 2016 Phil Keisling, chairman of the National Vote at Home Institute, led a Portland State University survey of 50 cities that found the median voter age in municipal elections was 57, “nearly a generation older than the median age of eligible voters.”

The broad outlines of this trend are widely understood, which explains why, for instance, Donald Trump said in 2015 that “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican.” (He nonetheless proposed in this year’s budget to cut more than $500 billion from Social Security and Medicare, which he’d also pledged to protect, but that’s another story.)It helps explain why the federal government spends more on Medicare, which provides medical coverage to elderly people, than it does on Medicaid, which provides medical coverage to poor people. (Another reason for the difference is that the elderly require more health care.)

It also may help explain why racial tolerance seems in some respects to be in decline, as measured, for instance, by the unnerving quasi-respectability afforded white nationalism by some mainstream players in national politics (including Trump). The elderly, polls show, are in the aggregate less concerned about racial prejudice than the young. A 2017 Pew Research Center survey found a 21-point spread between the elderly and young adults (18-29) when they were asked whether racial discrimination was the “main reason many blacks can’t get ahead,” with 54 percent of young adults answering in the affirmative but only 33 percent of the elderly. The age divide on this question was almost as wide as the 24-point divide between black respondents and white.

Similarly, political support for immigration restrictions may reflect an aging electorate. Pew found a majority in all age categories agreed that “immigrants strengthen the country because of their hard work and talents,” but the spread between the elderly and young adults was 31 points, with 51 percent of the elderly answering in the affirmative but 82 percent of young adults.

It’s often claimed that the elderly care less about the future than the young, but that’s a canard. The elderly care quite a bit about what will happen to a world they spent a lifetime building and populating with their children and grandchildren. (Their lives wouldn’t have much meaning if they didn’t.) Recent polls show the elderly care, if anything, slightlymore about the budget deficit than other age groups (despite not wanting to give up Medicare and Social Security benefits), and are slightlylessinclined to complain they pay too much in taxes.

That said, the young care a lot more than the old about climate change. Polls aggregated by Gallup from 2015 to 2018 show that concern about it drops with age. Fully 70 percent of respondents age 18-34 worried “a great deal” or “a fair amount” about global warming, compared with 63 percent age 35-54 and 56 percent age 55 and up. That’s a 14-point generation gap between the young and the elderly and near-elderly.

You often hear older Americans complain that the younger generation, with its fixation on social media, can’t distinguish between fact and opinion, making it difficult for them to apply the critical thinking necessary to consume news and be responsible citizens. A 2018 Pew survey found that Americans do indeed experience great difficulty telling these two things apart: Given five factual statements and five statements of opinion, a majority of Americans couldn’t identify them properly.

But younger Americans actually scoredbetteron this test than older ones. Thirty-two percent of 18-49 year-olds were able to identify all five factual statements, and 44 percent were able to identify all five statements of opinion. Among the over-50 cohort, only 20 percent identified all five factual statements correctly, and only 26 percent did the same with the statements of opinion.

***

The final leg of America’s gerontocratic triadis its system of government. That, too, is old and a bit creaky.

We think of ourselves as a young country, and in many respects we are. But we are also, as Paul Ryan famously noted in 2016, “the oldest democracy,” provided you exclude older ones that didn’t last (Athens, Rome) and ignore various undemocratic restrictions to the franchise that persisted into the 20th century. No nation in the world has a written Constitution older than ours. And it shows.

The list of the Constitution’s anachronisms and ambiguities is long.

Article One says Congress may “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States,” phrasing that strictly limited the regulation of private business at the federal level until the New Deal, when the Supreme Court reversed itself and concluded the federal government’s power to regulate private business was pretty vast. Had the Founders grasped that the modern economy would all but eliminate purely local commerce—and that it could, unchecked, alter the very climate of planet earth—they might have had more to say on the subject. As things stand, the powers of the regulatory state are the subject of endless legal combat.

Article Two says you must be a “natural born Citizen” to be president, which excludes for no apparent reason Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jennifer Granholm, who previously governed two of the nation’s most populous states. The racist “birther” movement that challenged the legality of Barack Obama’s presidency (and that ushered Donald Trump onto the national political stage) wouldn’t have been possible without Article Two.

Article Two also established that presidents be elected through the Electoral College, an antique mechanism borrowed from the Holy Roman Empire that twice during the past two decades delivered the presidency to the popular-vote loser.Some people have a problem with that.

The Second Amendment frames the right to bear arms within the context of “well-regulated” state militias that no longer exist, an ambiguity that the Supreme Court interpreted in 2008 to mean the Constitution protected the right to bear arms, after holding for the preceding seven decades that it did not. Had the Founders known the extent to which the nation would tear itself apart over the regulation of firearms more deadly than they ever imagined, they might have laid down a few broad parameters.

And so on.None of this would matter much if our government were more amenable to reconsidering first principles, but that’s getting harder, too. The Constitution can be amended, and it has been, 27 times. But growing political polarization in recent years has made that difficult. Only two constitutional amendments were ratified during the past half-century (one giving 18-year-olds the right to vote and another, more anodyne amendment that makes it a little harder for Congress to give itself a raise).

Congress could perhaps pick up some of the slack, but it’s slowed down, too. According to the Pew Research Center, Congress passes fewer substantive laws today than it did 30 years ago.Increased use of the filibuster (which isnotmentioned in the Constitution, but has been around almost as long) almost certainly played a role, and a fed-up Senate has during the past decade started phasing out its use. In a provocative June 2018 essay inCommentary, the political scientist Yuval Levin posited that 231 years on, Congress had acquired a problem James Madison never anticipated: a reluctance to compete with the other two branches of government in the exercise of power. Partisanship, he concluded, had displaced ambition to legislate. Senators and representatives, he wrote, now “see themselves as players in a larger political ecosystem the point of which is not legislating or governing but rather engaging in a kind of performative outrage for a partisan audience.” Levin didn’t put it this way, but he seemed to be suggesting that Congress had grown decadent, likefin de siècleVienna, but without the solace of Sacher tortes.

A more modest theory of governmental decadence was set forward by Rauch in his 1994 bookDemosclerosis. The idea was that democracy had developed arteriosclerosis, not because its system of government was creaky, but rather because the accumulating power of interest groups over time was choking it like a weed. Demosclerosis differs from gridlock, Rauch argued, because gridlock implies that nothing gets done. In a demosclerotic government, plenty gets done. Rather, Rauch wrote, the government’s ability to solve problems is compromised because it can’t easily reassign a finite set of resources. Old allocations must continue, and therefore new allocations can’t be experimented with.

Think of it, Rauch says, like leaving a bicycle in the rain. The bicycle may be perfectly fine, but if you leave it outside long enough rust will corrode it. All things considered, Rauch says, the Constitution is in excellent working condition. But its machinery has been left out too long in the rain.

Bringing a bicycle in from the rain should be within the ability of America’s somewhat doddering polity. Our gerontocracy is a bit rheumatic, but it isn’t hopeless. Still, the task will likely be easier and go much faster if a few more young hands pitch in.

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[americanahighways]

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photos by Jimmy Faber

There’s something relaxed and comfortable about Hayes Carll, so that listening to his tunes sometimes feels like slipping into an old, favorite pair of jeans. He’s easy to get into, doesn’t chafe, and feels snug and familiar. After a while you start feeling like you could happily sit around with him all evening, just telling stories and shootin’ the breeze.

That’s partly because his chord changes and melodies really ARE familiar, since he borrows copiously — though nimbly and tastefully — from his Austin-area influences: Ray Wylie Hubbard, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Guy Clark. He has also clearly studied the song-craft of folks like Bob Dylan, John Prine and Steve Earle — whose former -ex, Allison Moorer, Carll legendarily “stole,” to Earle’s dismay — along with other, younger Americana penmen like Todd Snider and Ryan Adams. Nevertheless, Carll’s is an original and invigorating voice rather than a merely derivative one.

Carll also has the kind of laid-back, drawling persona that can lull you into thinking he’s not going anywhere quick, when all of a sudden — WHAM! — it hits you that he just snuck another genius line or unshakeable melody deep into your subconscious, where it’s likely to sit and ferment until it hits you hard between the eyes.

He’s a sneaky puncher, that guy.

And then every once in a while his serious, more edgy, political side shows up to remind you that he has a less laid-back, more observant side, too. Though he’s only 43 years old, with just six albums to his credit, it seems like he’s been around (and been through) a whole lot more. In short, he seems like an old, wise soul at times, who has maybe gleaned more than a few nuggets of wisdom from his friend and mentor Ray Wylie.

Carll’s performance with his band The Gulf Coast Orchestra (featuring Travis Linville on steel, guitar, and dobro, Mike Meadows on drums, Geena Spigarelli on bass, and Cory Younts on piano, mandolin, and harmonica) at the Ardmore Music Hall on April 4 exhibited all of the above-mentioned qualities. His 22 song set (including three encore numbers) spanned his entire career, with a natural emphasis on his new album, What It Is.

Dressed in his customary blue, Western-cut workshirt, jeans and boots, and playing a trusty, scratched-up Gibson J-45, Carll choose to open the show with the train-beat propelled country honker “If I May Be So Bold.” Interestingly, No Depression had recently published an essay/statement of Hayes’ by the same title, in which he took a public stance with regard the country’s wide political divide. Though he felt uncomfortable about “being seen” in that way, he felt he finally had to do so after suffering an ugly on-line incident. (In brief: after Carll announced via social media that he would be playing a concert in support of Beto O’Rourke, “someone left a comment stating that he hoped I got shot on stage.” You can read his full response to the incident via the link provided below.)

In a way, starting the show with that particular song was like making a statement about a statement, saying in effect: This is who I am, take it or leave it. Or as he says in the essay, “I’ve decided I would rather be criticized for the things I believe in than be embraced for the things I don’t.”

Statement made, Carll proceeded to show his kinder, gentler side via ballads like “Nonya Business,” “In Times Like These” (which he introduced via a story about the time he and Allison Moorer made up a persona — a librarian — during a Southwestern Airlines flight), and “Jesus and Elvis” (about Lala’s Little Nugget, in North Austin). He interspersed those tunes with others highlighting his pointedly political side, such as the irony-laced “Fragile Men,” as well as his rowdier side with rockers like the joyous “Beautiful Thing” (from the new album) and the scorcher “KMAG YOYO” (an abbreviation for the military phrase “Kiss my ass goodbye, you’re on your own).

The band exited the stage after that last number, leaving Carll to accompany himself on the lovely “Beaumont” from 2008’s breakthrough Trouble in Mind, which he followed with his lilting, cheerful tale about the quirky courtship of Billy and Katey, “Girl Downtown.” Linville returned to the stage to accompany Hayes on dobro for the latter tune.

The rest of the band rejoined Carll and Linville and quickly picked up where they had left off with a rousing version of the Hubbard classic “Drunken Poet’s Dream.” They followed that with “What It Is” off the new album, which featured a tasteful dobro solo by Linville; the humorous “I Got a Gig” from Trouble in Mind, Carll’s rocking version of Scott Nolan’s “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart,” which drew thunderous applause from the crowd; “It’s a Shame,” solidly anchored by Spigarelli’s loping bass; and finally a kickass version of “Stomp and Holler,” which got the audience doing exactly what the title says.

Carll and company’s encore consisted of three tunes: the ballad “I Will Stay,” during which Carll held the audience completely in thrall (you could hear the proverbial pin drop as it ended); “Wild as a Turkey,” whose steady thumping beat was ably provided by Meadows, while Linville added another nice dobro/slide solo; and finally, Carll’s lyrical tour de force, “Sake of the Song.”

By show’s end the comfort level between Carll and the audience was beyond that of a cowboy and his favorite pair of jeans; it was well nigh down to the skivvies. Carll seemed particularly happy with the venue, noting that he usually plays “The type of place that has a mechanical sheep.” I’m not exactly sure what that means, but like the rest of the audience I enjoyed the casual, drawling way he said it.

—————

Ben Dickey, who opened for Carll and his band, was a bit more of an enigma to me. Like many other audience members, no doubt, I was intrigued to see how Dickey’s on-stage persona might align (or not) with his amazing on-screen portrayal of Blaze Foley in Ethan Hawke’s film “Blaze.” Despite his lack of experience as an actor Dickey absolutely owned that role and seemed completely comfortable and convincing in conveying the title character’s legendarily cantankerous, outsized personality.

He didn’t seem quite as outsized as a solo, live performer on stage, however, though his guitar chops were pretty darned impressive. Playing a black semi- hollow 1935 Gibson archtop through a chorus pedal, and at times running that combo through a looper pedal to stack multiple layers of guitar tones, Dickey provided a nifty nine-song set that culminated with a trio of tunes by John Prine (“Long Monday”), Blaze Foley (the unmistakable “Clay Pigeons”) and Townes van Zandt (“No Place to Fall”). Dickey sang that last tune with conviction, delivering its dark delicacy beautifully. Its legendary author no doubt would have approved.

Dickey seemed slightly more circumspect in delivering his originals, however. Perhaps it was nervousness in returning to the city (Philadelphia) where he’d struggled through some hard times, working feverishly as a chef at the fabled music club Johnny Brenda’s and experiencing “some kind of breakdown” after his band Blood Feathers broke up and a good friend died in a bicycle accident — this was before Hawke drafted him for the lead role in Blaze — but Dickey’s interactions with the audience seemed a bit halting at times. The only reference he made to his Philly past came when he mentioned the local phrase “down the shore” — “I never heard that phrase before I came here,” he said. No further comment was extended.

He was similarly reticent on the topic of portraying a songwriting legend like Foley. That experience was “really strange,” he said — “mystical and magical” — but he did not proffer any specifics about why, or what had made it so.

Which was just fine, as long as he was dazzling us with his nimble guitar playing and somewhat unexpected tunes. The chorus of the balled “Man with a Hammer” goes “Tallyhoo, time to go / Lay down your bones to be free, old soul,” which sounds rather old-timey; but when mated with chorus and tremolo effects pushed through a slowly distorting looper pedal, it became something else entirely. During an upbeat blues number with a strong affinity to Dylan’s “Highway 61,” Dickey shredded on a rockabilly style solo; another song had the flavor of surf music-meets-psychedelic rock, while a fourth featured a nifty bridge with R & B flavored stops.

The man definitely has some chops, and his voice has a husky, pleasantly Dylanesque quality to it. I’m hopeful that Dickey will begin to open up and establish even more of a rapport with his audiences, so he can convey the kind of breathtaking intimacy his portrayal of Foley delivers. He’s definitely a talent to keep your eyes on, whether for his acting or musical endeavors.

—————

Upcoming tour dates for Hayes Carll, along with videos, recordings and merchandise, can be found at: http://www.hayescarll.com

Carll’s essay “If I May Be So Bold” can be found at: https://www.nodepression.com/if-i-may-be-so-bold-an-essay-by-hayes-carll/

Americana Highways’ review of Hayes Carll’s What It Is can be found at: https:// americanahighways.org/2019/02/14/review-hayes-carlls-what-it-is/ and interview with Hayes Carll is here: Interview: Hayes Carll on “What It Is,” Reading More and a Sense of Humor

More info on Ben Dickey, along with tour dates, videos and music can be found at: https://www.bendickeymusic.com

An account of Dickey’s time in Philadelphia (entitled “When musician Ben Dickey left Philadelphia, he was depressed. Now, he’s a movie star”) can be read at: https://www.philly.com/entertainment/music/ben-dickey-ethan-hawke-blaze-foley-20190329.html

Americana Highways’ recent interview with Ben Dickey’s can be found at: Ben Dickey Releases “A Glimmer on the Outskirts”

Review: Hayes Carll and Ben Dickey: An Old, Comfy Pair of Jeans and a Bit of An Enigma @hayescarll @bendickeymusic @alleyesmedia @ardmoremusicPA photos by Jimmy Faber There's something relaxed and comfortable about Hayes Carll, so that listening to his tunes sometimes feels like slipping into an old, favorite pair of jeans.

[limejuicer1862]

On Fiction Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger. The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these fiction writers you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

  Shane Jesse Christmass

is the author of the novels, Police Force As A Corrupt Breeze (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2016) and Acid Shottas (The Ledatape Organisation, 2014).

He was a member of the band Mattress Grave, and is currently a member in Snake Milker.

An archive of his writing/artwork/music can be found at www.sjx.digital��+ www.shanejessechristmass.tumblr.com

The Interview

1. What inspired you to write fiction?

Not sure if there is one thing, or actually anything, that inspired me. I am always dubious on whether or not inspiration is an actual substance that is required to stimulate someone in order to create. I wanted to write novels, so I wrote novels. The urge pushed the outcome. I know I didn’t talk much as a child, and one of the things I liked doing was reading a lot. I feel that I perhaps hallucinated, maybe fantasised intensely is the better choice of word, but was terribly miserable, and was probably left alone a lot, and therefore just simmered in my imagination by myself. I wasn’t particularly gifted in anything, except reading a lot, and that is especially not a great skill, I just made time for it, because I was terrible at other academic quests, or sports endeavours. Therefore I think there are benefits to speaking in an incoherent manner. Writing is just a small human sacrifice in a suburban supermarket. Inspiration is just the cataleptic attack.

P.B Shelley is a volatile substance that did cast a slow expiration over me for a while though. Around when I was 14 years of age, and then for a long time afterward, but still, currently, very much presently, and probably forever actually. His words were some type of nauseous gateway to perfection. A natural faultlessness for me to read. There was a proportionate unity, and a particular shape to his work. Everything I had read prior to then reading Shelley just seemed like teabag stains in comparison, limp flints. A sudden jet of ceaseless elation.

2. Who introduced you to fiction?

Well you kind of have to don’t you. You have to learn how to read and write, so therefore you have to read all these little dinky stories and books. I don’t have fond memories of these sort of things. I don’t really like thinking about these things. I just spent a lot of time at the library. I nagged people in my family to take me to the library a lot, until I was old enough to go by myself. And when I was there I asked the librarians lots of questions. They pointed to the books for the answers. My father was this sort of person who was very detached, but did amazing things like purchase the complete works of Shakespeare, or the Romantic poets, in these Encyclopaedia Britannica type of leather bound books, something you probably bought from a salesman, or from a catalogue. They were on the shelf. I remember asking him once who all these books were for. He advised me they were for ‘us’ – meaning me and my siblings. I commenced pawing through them. By no means am I saying people should go read Shakespeare to be a writer. He’s definitely not my taste. I got it done early in life. I couldn’t imagine reading him now. That would be so boring. I just read him because it was in my house. I also read pretty much anything. I read my mother’s ‘Cosmopolitan’ magazine for example. I probably enjoyed that more than Shakespeare.

3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older writers?

Massively. You don’t want to do something that someone did originally and more uniquely – that would just be very disappointing. But – you do also wish to do something in the experimental tradition, perhaps extend something further, or add upon something that came previous. I’ve had odd moments where people have commented that my writing is like a certain author that I have never heard of, or I have checked out an author that is new to me, say Saint-John Perse, and I can see massive similarities, but ones that are just magical coincidences. Someone once told me that my writing reminded them of Thomas Pynchon, a writer I wasn’t terribly familiar with, and who to this day I have never read. I mean why would I go read a writer that people say is similar to myself, or that I am similar to. One of the reasons I write the way I do is because I couldn’t find the fiction that I wanted to read.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

You know that shot in ‘The Omen’ where Lee Remick is pushed over the balcony balustrade and falls – and the fall causes her to miscarry? I once saw a documentary where the director, Richard Donner, explained how they set up and executed that particular scene and then how they shot it. Go watched it, it’s an amazing piece of filmmaking, but watching the documentary, I can only now watch that scene and think know about how they did it. The wonder that I had of initially not knowing how they did it has evaporated. Telling people my daily writing routine might be equivalent to watching that documentary.

5. What motivates you to write?

Because no one believed I could do it. And as mentioned in the opening question, it was always just something I wanted to do, I didn’t have much faith in my ability to do anything else, but this seemed somewhat natural, and I certainly felt less anxious doing it than other tasks. Fretted-about signs always show up in the skull housing, you can keep them inside, or you can plaster them onto a page and publish. I chose to plaster and publish.

6. What is your work ethic?

Cold hands, in a cool climate, need to tap some words out each day. And that’s the key, every day, something has to contribute to the writing of something. What that something is will be particular for each writer. Just don’t die wondering that you never put your crystalline vision into effect. Don’t get to the end, and as a luminous patient … suddenly think: I could’ve done more, I should’ve written more. One of the things that use to upset me, especially when I was young, was this equivalency, and this is particular in my family where my parents came from working class stock when they were children, and then moved themselves into a lowly middle class position, was that reading books or writing was equivalent to being lazy. My work ethic is inspired to prove that that equivalency is false, and that perhaps the benefits of doing something like that are not entirely immediate. Does sitting in an armchair and looking out a window thinking, or ruminating on a thought, lack substance or profit? No … it’s ghostly work. As Evelyn Underhill wrote, some natures have a special sense, an attempt to reach a transcendental consciousness, the contemplation allows us to reach it. My point is that a writer’s work ethic shouldn’t just be to write all the time. Contemplating, how you’re going to write something, why you’re going to write something, should have a worth ethic to it, in that it should be just as rigorous and productive as the actual writing, but it is no less valuable.

7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

Yeah good question. Guess if I was going to make a list of my top ten favourite writers, or some list that is defined similarly like that, favourite writers or some such, most of the writers on that list would probably be favourites from when I was younger. The only book that might go onto that list, that I only just came around to, would be Gary Indiana’s Horse Crazy. I guess how they influence me today is a bit tricky to answer. I don’t put those books into any list, or hold them close, because of any exact influence on my writing, or an influence on the topics I write about. To a greater degree, most of the books, or these favourite authors, are the ones that I felt gave me permission to make early attempts at this writing business. Certain books made me realise I could do this. It gets back to your question regarding the dominating influence of older writers. I read less fiction these days, and what fiction I do read these days is more for entertainment purposes, meaning when I was younger I would read novels, but would take notes, mental or otherwise, regarding how the novel was written, all the mechanical and technical elements on what makes up a novel. So the reading of novels then was more from an educational aspect, whereas the type of books that influence my current writing, whether indirectly or directly, would be non-fiction work, and that’s not from a position of incorporating direct facts from non-fiction texts, but more to provide a feeling, or tone to inflect into my own work. I just read that famous work by Robert A. Monroe about out-of-body experiences. This in no way means that there will be a plot, or a character directly, in my next manuscript that has these experiences, it’s more just to provide some nebulous science fiction, or scientific, tone.

8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

Oh where can I start! Lots of people. Isabel Waidner. Rachel de Moravia. Candice Wuehle. Nadia de Vries. Darcie Wilder. Why? It seems very unlikely that writing could make a physical change to a person’s anatomy, but perhaps these writer’s may assist in a human’s evolution. Are we just vegetable matter? The future will have visual differences from what we currently see. Why can’t we have writer’s, like these, that act as handbooks, guides, to assist us when we encounter those visual differences. You can either be a body, or a bystander amongst the rubble, or you could read those writers. The interior of their books is like a telepathic reading, lurking emulsions of forward-looking designs and approaches. It’s good shit.

9. Why do you write?

The most common question to ask an author, but the most difficult for authors to respond to. Maybe there is no reason, except I just happen to write, it’s what I always wanted to do, and it’s what I always did. Do you know about the clinamen? The clinamen has numerous definitions, but I’m interested in how it was defined within pataphysics. Originally the Roman poet, and philosopher Lucretius, defined the clinamen as being an unpredictable swerve of atoms. Alfred Jarry, the writer who penned the main tenets of pataphysics, came to understand the clinamen as a slight change that can cause a greater, or the greatest meaning. For example: changing one letter in a word to make a new word, and that new word obviously caries a completely new meaning. I’m interest in the clinamen, but not a slight change, a delirious upheaval. A repetition of images, tweaks of images causing dislocation and jump-cut in narrative, the death of certain images only for images to reappear later, interchangeable images causing interchangeable narratives. I write, to perhaps take pleasure, or to promote the instability of meaning, and through that instability, reach new meanings through new forms, instructions or procedures. I want to create stories that start at any point in the manuscript, as this aligns with the spasmodic and aleatory experience of modern time, a somnambulist drift between tenses, a relentless overload of information. Shifts of attention to something irrelevant or disconnected – the clinamen. That’s how I feel today, my reasons will probably change completely tomorrow.

10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

I know I shouldn’t answer a question with a question, but I might ask – ‘What sort of writer do you want to be?” I have a certain sphere as a writer, a speciality, but certain specialities might just be another name for limitation. Unfortunately there’s no glib answer to that question that suffices, except what they probably already know. I’ve seen so many interviews with writers, and I’m talking really famous and rich writers, who when they get asked this question always answer – read more. Yeah, no shit, thanks for nothing. Isn’t that the most asinine and dainty response you ever heard? I’d probably advise not to get distracted by the idea of being a writer, don’t get distracted by all these accoutrements of a writing life. Don’t get distract by finding some perfect, decorated writing space, or finding some enlightened pencil. But one thing I would say is, everything is a story, everything that happens can be a story. And everything you can possibly conjure up in your imagination, is a story.

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

I’m nearing the end of a large piece of work that is, at the moment, unwieldy and a bit broad in its scope. I originally started out with the idea that I was going to write a memoir, not based on my life, definitely not based on my life, but a memoir based on the movements of two childhood male friends. These two friends, over the years, become on-again, off-again sexual partners with each other, but with an absence of love or any affection. One of the male friends, is very loosely based on Herb Mullin. And definitely not based on the life of Herb Mullin at all, but an idea that Herb Mullin had. He thought that a small killing would prevent a major catastrophe to occur. He believed, at the start of his killing spree, that his killings could stop a massive earthquake from occurring in the San Francisco area. Actually he believed that all the deaths caused by the Vietnam War, up to that point, were enough to forestall this earthquake, but as the war in Vietnam was winding down, he’d need to advance the killings himself. Anyway – I was intending to write a massive cadaverous tragedy that plays out with these two male friends, based on this livid idea that an individual waging a war on society, that unfortunately involves bloodshed, could stop a massive war from commencing, or that could finish a massive war between two nations. Oh and it’s a love story. I’m really enjoying writing it and it is fucking nuts. If anyway wants to read it, by all means hit me up. https://archive.org/details/anabasispoembyst0000sain/page/18 http://www.sacred-texts.com/myst/myst/myst06.htm https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/09/17/to-die-in-effect-for-love-on-gary-indianas-horse-crazy/ https://www.monroeinstitute.org/robert-monroe

  On Fiction Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Shane Jesse Christmass On Fiction Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

[thesnhuup]

Pop Picks – January 3, 2019

January 3, 2019

What I’m listening to:

My listening choices usually refer to music, but this time I’m going with Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast on genius and the song Hallelujah. It tells the story of Leonard Cohen’s much-covered song Hallelujah and uses it as a lens on kinds of genius and creativity. Along the way, he brings in Picasso and Cézanne, Elvis Costello, and more. Gladwell is a good storyteller and if you love pop music, as I do, and Hallelujah, as I do (and you should), you’ll enjoy this podcast. We tend to celebrate the genius who seems inspired in the moment, creating new work like lightning strikes, but this podcast has me appreciating incremental creativity in a new way. It’s compelling and fun at the same time.

What I’m reading:

Just read Clay Christensen’s new book, The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty. This was an advance copy, so soon available. Clay is an old friend and a huge influence on how we have grown SNHU and our approach to innovation. This book is so compelling, because we know attempts at development have so often been a failure and it is often puzzling to understand why some countries with desperate poverty and huge challenges somehow come to thrive (think S. Korea, Singapore, 19th C. America), while others languish. Clay offers a fresh way of thinking about development through the lens of his research on innovation and it is compelling. I bet this book gets a lot of attention, as most of his work does. I also suspect that many in the development community will hate it, as it calls into question the approach and enormous investments we have made in an attempt to lift countries out of poverty. A provocative read and, as always, Clay is a good storyteller.

What I’m watching:

Just watched Leave No Trace and should have guessed that it was directed by Debra Granik. She did Winter’s Bone, the extraordinary movie that launched Jennifer Lawrence’s career. Similarly, this movie features an amazing young actor, Thomasin McKenzie, and visits lives lived on the margins. In this case, a veteran suffering PTSD, and his 13-year-old daughter. The movie is patient, is visually lush, and justly earned 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (I have a rule to never watch anything under 82%). Everything in this film is under control and beautifully understated (aside from the visuals) – confident acting, confident directing, and so humane. I love the lack of flashbacks, the lack of sensationalism – the movie trusts the viewer, rare in this age of bombast. A lovely film.

Archive

December 4, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spending a week in New Zealand, we had endless laughs listening to the Kiwi band, Flight of the Conchords. Lots of comedic bands are funny, but the music is only okay or worse. These guys are funny – hysterical really – and the music is great. They have an uncanny ability to parody almost any style. In both New Zealand and Australia, we found a wry sense of humor that was just delightful and no better captured than with this duo. You don’t have to be in New Zealand to enjoy them.

What I’m reading:

I don’t often reread. For two reasons: A) I have so many books on my “still to be read” pile that it seems daunting to also reread books I loved before, and B) it’s because I loved them once that I’m a little afraid to read them again. That said, I was recently asked to list my favorite book of all time and I answered Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. But I don’t really know if that’s still true (and it’s an impossible question anyway – favorite book? On what day? In what mood?), so I’m rereading it and it feels like being with an old friend. It has one of my very favorite scenes ever: the card game between Levin and Kitty that leads to the proposal and his joyous walking the streets all night.

What I’m watching:

Blindspotting is billed as a buddy-comedy. Wow does that undersell it and the drama is often gripping. I loved Daveed Diggs in Hamilton, didn’t like his character in Black-ish, and think he is transcendent in this film he co-wrote with Rafael Casal, his co-star.  The film is a love song to Oakland in many ways, but also a gut-wrenching indictment of police brutality, systemic racism and bias, and gentrification. The film has the freshness and raw visceral impact of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. A great soundtrack, genre mixing, and energy make it one of my favorite movies of 2018.

October 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We had the opportunity to see our favorite band, The National, live in Dallas two weeks ago. Just after watching Mistaken for Strangers, the documentary sort of about the band. So we’ve spent a lot of time going back into their earlier work, listening to songs we don’t know well, and reaffirming that their musicality, smarts, and sound are both original and astoundingly good. They did not disappoint in concert and it is a good thing their tour ended, as we might just spend all of our time and money following them around. Matt Berninger is a genius and his lead vocals kill me (and because they are in my range, I can actually sing along!). Their arrangements are profoundly good and go right to whatever brain/heart wiring that pulls one in and doesn’t let them go.

What I’m reading:

Who is Richard Powers and why have I only discovered him now, with his 12th book? Overstory is profoundly good, a book that is essential and powerful and makes me look at my everyday world in new ways. In short, a dizzying example of how powerful can be narrative in the hands of a master storyteller. I hesitate to say it’s the best environmental novel I’ve ever read (it is), because that would put this book in a category. It is surely about the natural world, but it is as much about we humans. It’s monumental and elegiac and wondrous at all once. Cancel your day’s schedule and read it now. Then plant a tree. A lot of them.

What I’m watching:

Bo Burnham wrote and directed Eighth Grade and Elsie Fisher is nothing less than amazing as its star (what’s with these new child actors; see Florida Project). It’s funny and painful and touching. It’s also the single best film treatment that I have seen of what it means to grow up in a social media shaped world. It’s a reminder that growing up is hard. Maybe harder now in a world of relentless, layered digital pressure to curate perfect lives that are far removed from the natural messy worlds and selves we actually inhabit. It’s a well-deserved 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and I wonder who dinged it for the missing 2%.

September 7, 2018

What I’m listening to:

With a cover pointing back to the Beastie Boys’ 1986 Licensed to Ill, Eminem’s quietly released Kamikaze is not my usual taste, but I’ve always admired him for his “all out there” willingness to be personal, to call people out, and his sheer genius with language. I thought Daveed Diggs could rap fast, but Eminem is supersonic at moments, and still finds room for melody. Love that he includes Joyner Lucas, whose “I’m Not Racist” gets added to the growing list of simply amazing music videos commenting on race in America. There are endless reasons why I am the least likely Eminem fan, but when no one is around to make fun of me, I’ll put it on again.

What I’m reading:

Lesley Blume’s Everyone Behaves Badly, which is the story behind Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and his time in 1920s Paris (oh, what a time – see Midnight in Paris if you haven’t already). Of course, Blume disabuses my romantic ideas of that time and place and everyone is sort of (or profoundly so) a jerk, especially…no spoiler here…Hemingway. That said, it is a compelling read and coming off the Henry James inspired prose of Mrs. Osmond, it made me appreciate more how groundbreaking was Hemingway’s modern prose style. Like his contemporary Picasso, he reinvented the art and it can be easy to forget, these decades later, how profound was the change and its impact. And it has bullfights.

What I’m watching:

Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is just exceptional. It’s filmed on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which provides a stunning landscape, and it feels like a classic western reinvented for our times. The main characters are played by the real-life people who inspired this narrative (but feels like a documentary) film. Brady Jandreau, playing himself really, owns the screen. It’s about manhood, honor codes, loss, and resilience – rendered in sensitive, nuanced, and heartfelt ways. It feels like it could be about large swaths of America today. Really powerful.

August 16, 2018

What I’m listening to:

In my Spotify Daily Mix was Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman, one of the world’s greatest love songs. Go online and read the story of how the song was discovered and recorded. There are competing accounts, but Sledge said he improvised it after a bad breakup. It has that kind of aching spontaneity. It is another hit from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, one of the GREAT music hotbeds, along with Detroit, Nashville, and Memphis. Our February Board meeting is in Alabama and I may finally have to do the pilgrimage road trip to Muscle Shoals and then Memphis, dropping in for Sunday services at the church where Rev. Al Green still preaches and sings. If the music is all like this, I will be saved.

What I’m reading:

John Banville’s Mrs. Osmond, his homage to literary idol Henry James and an imagined sequel to James’ 1881 masterpiece Portrait of a Lady. Go online and read the first paragraph of Chapter 25. He is…profoundly good. Makes me want to never write again, since anything I attempt will feel like some other, lowly activity in comparison to his mastery of language, image, syntax. This is slow reading, every sentence to be savored.

What I’m watching:

I’ve always respected Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but we just watched the documentary RGB. It is over-the-top great and she is now one of my heroes. A superwoman in many ways and the documentary is really well done. There are lots of scenes of her speaking to crowds and the way young women, especially law students, look at her is touching.  And you can’t help but fall in love with her now late husband Marty. See this movie and be reminded of how important is the Law.

July 23, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spotify’s Summer Acoustic playlist has been on repeat quite a lot. What a fun way to listen to artists new to me, including The Paper Kites, Hollow Coves, and Fleet Foxes, as well as old favorites like Leon Bridges and Jose Gonzalez. Pretty chill when dialing back to a summer pace, dining on the screen porch or reading a book.

What I’m reading:

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson tells of the racial injustice (and the war on the poor our judicial system perpetuates as well) that he discovered as a young graduate from Harvard Law School and his fight to address it. It is in turn heartbreaking, enraging, and inspiring. It is also about mercy and empathy and justice that reads like a novel. Brilliant.

What I’m watching:

Fauda. We watched season one of this Israeli thriller. It was much discussed in Israel because while it focuses on an ex-special agent who comes out of retirement to track down a Palestinian terrorist, it was willing to reveal the complexity, richness, and emotions of Palestinian lives. And the occasional brutality of the Israelis. Pretty controversial stuff in Israel. Lior Raz plays Doron, the main character, and is compelling and tough and often hard to like. He’s a mess. As is the world in which he has to operate. We really liked it, and also felt guilty because while it may have been brave in its treatment of Palestinians within the Israeli context, it falls back into some tired tropes and ultimately falls short on this front.

    June 11, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Like everyone else, I’m listening to Pusha T drop the mic on Drake. Okay, not really, but do I get some points for even knowing that? We all walk around with songs that immediately bring us back to a time or a place. Songs are time machines. We are coming up on Father’s Day. My own dad passed away on Father’s Day back in 1994 and I remembering dutifully getting through the wake and funeral and being strong throughout. Then, sitting alone in our kitchen, Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence came on and I lost it. When you lose a parent for the first time (most of us have two after all) we lose our innocence and in that passage, we suddenly feel adult in a new way (no matter how old we are), a longing for our own childhood, and a need to forgive and be forgiven. Listen to the lyrics and you’ll understand. As Wordsworth reminds us in In Memoriam, there are seasons to our grief and, all these years later, this song no longer hits me in the gut, but does transport me back with loving memories of my father. I’ll play it Father’s Day.

What I’m reading:

The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin. I am not a reader of fantasy or sci-fi, though I understand they can be powerful vehicles for addressing the very real challenges of the world in which we actually live. I’m not sure I know of a more vivid and gripping illustration of that fact than N. K. Jemisin’s Hugo Award winning novel The Fifth Season, first in her Broken Earth trilogy. It is astounding. It is the fantasy parallel to The Underground Railroad, my favorite recent read, a depiction of subjugation, power, casual violence, and a broken world in which our hero(s) struggle, suffer mightily, and still, somehow, give us hope. It is a tour de force book. How can someone be this good a writer? The first 30 pages pained me (always with this genre, one must learn a new, constructed world, and all of its operating physics and systems of order), and then I could not put it down. I panicked as I neared the end, not wanting to finish the book, and quickly ordered the Obelisk Gate, the second novel in the trilogy, and I can tell you now that I’ll be spending some goodly portion of my weekend in Jemisin’s other world.

What I’m watching:

The NBA Finals and perhaps the best basketball player of this generation. I’ve come to deeply respect LeBron James as a person, a force for social good, and now as an extraordinary player at the peak of his powers. His superhuman play during the NBA playoffs now ranks with the all-time greats, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, MJ, Kobe, and the demi-god that was Bill Russell. That his Cavs lost in a 4-game sweep is no surprise. It was a mediocre team being carried on the wide shoulders of James (and matched against one of the greatest teams ever, the Warriors, and the Harry Potter of basketball, Steph Curry) and, in some strange way, his greatness is amplified by the contrast with the rest of his team. It was a great run.

May 24, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I’ve always liked Alicia Keys and admired her social activism, but I am hooked on her last album Here. This feels like an album finally commensurate with her anger, activism, hope, and grit. More R&B and Hip Hop than is typical for her, I think this album moves into an echelon inhabited by a Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On or Beyonce’s Formation. Social activism and outrage rarely make great novels, but they often fuel great popular music. Here is a terrific example.

What I’m reading:

Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad may be close to a flawless novel. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer, it chronicles the lives of two runaway slaves, Cora and Caeser, as they try to escape the hell of plantation life in Georgia.  It is an often searing novel and Cora is one of the great heroes of American literature. I would make this mandatory reading in every high school in America, especially in light of the absurd revisionist narratives of “happy and well cared for” slaves. This is a genuinely great novel, one of the best I’ve read, the magical realism and conflating of time periods lifts it to another realm of social commentary, relevance, and a blazing indictment of America’s Original Sin, for which we remain unabsolved.

What I’m watching:

I thought I knew about The Pentagon Papers, but The Post, a real-life political thriller from Steven Spielberg taught me a lot, features some of our greatest actors, and is so timely given the assault on our democratic institutions and with a presidency out of control. It is a reminder that a free and fearless press is a powerful part of our democracy, always among the first targets of despots everywhere. The story revolves around the legendary Post owner and D.C. doyenne, Katharine Graham. I had the opportunity to see her son, Don Graham, right after he saw the film, and he raved about Meryl Streep’s portrayal of his mother. Liked it a lot more than I expected.

April 27, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I mentioned John Prine in a recent post and then on the heels of that mention, he has released a new album, The Tree of Forgiveness, his first new album in ten years. Prine is beloved by other singer songwriters and often praised by the inscrutable God that is Bob Dylan.  Indeed, Prine was frequently said to be the “next Bob Dylan” in the early part of his career, though he instead carved out his own respectable career and voice, if never with the dizzying success of Dylan. The new album reflects a man in his 70s, a cancer survivor, who reflects on life and its end, but with the good humor and empathy that are hallmarks of Prine’s music. “When I Get To Heaven” is a rollicking, fun vision of what comes next and a pure delight. A charming, warm, and often terrific album.

What I’m reading:

I recently read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, on many people’s Top Ten lists for last year and for good reason. It is sprawling, multi-generational, and based in the world of Japanese occupied Korea and then in the Korean immigrant’s world of Oaska, so our key characters become “tweeners,” accepted in neither world. It’s often unspeakably sad, and yet there is resiliency and love. There is also intimacy, despite the time and geographic span of the novel. It’s breathtakingly good and like all good novels, transporting.

What I’m watching:

I adore Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, and while I’m not sure his Shape of Water is better, it is a worthy follow up to the earlier masterpiece (and more of a commercial success). Lots of critics dislike the film, but I’m okay with a simple retelling of a Beauty and the Beast love story, as predictable as it might be. The acting is terrific, it is visually stunning, and there are layers of pain as well as social and political commentary (the setting is the US during the Cold War) and, no real spoiler here, the real monsters are humans, the military officer who sees over the captured aquatic creature. It is hauntingly beautiful and its depiction of hatred to those who are different or “other” is painfully resonant with the time in which we live. Put this on your “must see” list.

March 18, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Sitting on a plane for hours (and many more to go; geez, Australia is far away) is a great opportunity to listen to new music and to revisit old favorites. This time, it is Lucy Dacus and her album Historians, the new sophomore release from a 22-year old indie artist that writes with relatable, real-life lyrics. Just on a second listen and while she insists this isn’t a break up record (as we know, 50% of all great songs are break up songs), it is full of loss and pain. Worth the listen so far. For the way back machine, it’s John Prine and In Spite of Ourselves (that title track is one of the great love songs of all time), a collection of duets with some of his “favorite girl singers” as he once described them. I have a crush on Iris Dement (for a really righteously angry song try her Wasteland of the Free), but there is also EmmyLou Harris, the incomparable Dolores Keane, and Lucinda Williams. Very different albums, both wonderful.

What I’m reading:

Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on Christopher Steele presents little that is new, but she pulls it together in a terrific and coherent whole that is illuminating and troubling at the same time. Not only for what is happening, but for the complicity of the far right in trying to discredit that which should be setting off alarm bells everywhere. Bob Mueller may be the most important defender of the democracy at this time. A must read.

What I’m watching:

Homeland is killing it this season and is prescient, hauntingly so. Russian election interference, a Bannon-style hate radio demagogue, alienated and gun toting militia types, and a president out of control. It’s fabulous, even if it feels awfully close to the evening news. 

March 8, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We have a family challenge to compile our Top 100 songs. It is painful. Only 100? No more than three songs by one artist? Wait, why is M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” on my list? Should it just be The Clash from whom she samples? Can I admit to guilty pleasure songs? Hey, it’s my list and I can put anything I want on it. So I’m listening to the list while I work and the song playing right now is Tom Petty’s “The Wild One, Forever,” a B-side single that was never a hit and that remains my favorite Petty song. Also, “Evangeline” by Los Lobos. It evokes a night many years ago, with friends at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA, when everyone danced well past 1AM in a hot, sweaty, packed club and the band was a revelation. Maybe the best music night of our lives and a reminder that one’s 100 Favorite Songs list is as much about what you were doing and where you were in your life when those songs were playing as it is about the music. It’s not a list. It’s a soundtrack for this journey.

What I’m reading:

Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy was in the NY Times top ten books of 2017 list and it is easy to see why. Lockwood brings remarkable and often surprising imagery, metaphor, and language to her prose memoir and it actually threw me off at first. It then all became clear when someone told me she is a poet. The book is laugh aloud funny, which masks (or makes safer anyway) some pretty dark territory. Anyone who grew up Catholic, whether lapsed or not, will resonate with her story. She can’t resist a bawdy anecdote and her family provides some of the most memorable characters possible, especially her father, her sister, and her mother, who I came to adore. Best thing I’ve read in ages.

What I’m watching:

The Florida Project, a profoundly good movie on so many levels. Start with the central character, six-year old (at the time of the filming) Brooklynn Prince, who owns – I mean really owns – the screen. This is pure acting genius and at that age? Astounding. Almost as astounding is Bria Vinaite, who plays her mother. She was discovered on Instagram and had never acted before this role, which she did with just three weeks of acting lessons. She is utterly convincing and the tension between the child’s absolute wonder and joy in the world with her mother’s struggle to provide, to be a mother, is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. Willem Dafoe rightly received an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. This is a terrific movie.

February 12, 2018

What I’m listening to:

So, I have a lot of friends of age (I know you’re thinking 40s, but I just turned 60) who are frozen in whatever era of music they enjoyed in college or maybe even in their thirties. There are lots of times when I reach back into the catalog, since music is one of those really powerful and transporting senses that can take you through time (smell is the other one, though often underappreciated for that power). Hell, I just bought a turntable and now spending time in vintage vinyl shops. But I’m trying to take a lesson from Pat, who revels in new music and can as easily talk about North African rap music and the latest National album as Meet the Beatles, her first ever album. So, I’ve been listening to Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy winning Damn. While it may not be the first thing I’ll reach for on a winter night in Maine, by the fire, I was taken with it. It’s layered, political, and weirdly sensitive and misogynist at the same time, and it feels fresh and authentic and smart at the same time, with music that often pulled me from what I was doing. In short, everything music should do. I’m not a bit cooler for listening to Damn, but when I followed it with Steely Dan, I felt like I was listening to Lawrence Welk. A good sign, I think.

What I’m reading:

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I’m not usually a reader of biographies, but I’ve always been taken with Leonardo. Isaacson does not disappoint (does he ever?), and his subject is at once more human and accessible and more awe-inspiring in Isaacson’s capable hands. Gay, left-handed, vegetarian, incapable of finishing things, a wonderful conversationalist, kind, and perhaps the most relentlessly curious human being who has ever lived. Like his biographies of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, Isaacson’s project here is to show that genius lives at the intersection of science and art, of rationality and creativity. Highly recommend it.

What I’m watching:

We watched the This Is Us post-Super Bowl episode, the one where Jack finally buys the farm. I really want to hate this show. It is melodramatic and manipulative, with characters that mostly never change or grow, and it hooks me every damn time we watch it. The episode last Sunday was a tear jerker, a double whammy intended to render into a blubbering, tissue-crumbling pathetic mess anyone who has lost a parent or who is a parent. Sterling K. Brown, Ron Cephas Jones, the surprising Mandy Moore, and Milo Ventimiglia are hard not to love and last season’s episode that had only Brown and Cephas going to Memphis was the show at its best (they are by far the two best actors). Last week was the show at its best worst. In other words, I want to hate it, but I love it. If you haven’t seen it, don’t binge watch it. You’ll need therapy and insulin.

January 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Drive-By Truckers. Chris Stapleton has me on an unusual (for me) country theme and I discovered these guys to my great delight. They’ve been around, with some 11 albums, but the newest one is fascinating. It’s a deep dive into Southern alienation and the white working-class world often associated with our current president. I admire the willingness to lay bare, in kick ass rock songs, the complexities and pain at work among people we too quickly place into overly simple categories. These guys are brave, bold, and thoughtful as hell, while producing songs I didn’t expect to like, but that I keep playing. And they are coming to NH.

What I’m reading:

A textual analog to Drive-By Truckers by Chris Stapleton in many ways is Tony Horowitz’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning Confederates in the Attic. Ostensibly about the Civil War and the South’s ongoing attachment to it, it is prescient and speaks eloquently to the times in which we live (where every southern state but Virginia voted for President Trump). Often hilarious, it too surfaces complexities and nuance that escape a more recent, and widely acclaimed, book like Hillbilly Elegy. As a Civil War fan, it was also astonishing in many instances, especially when it blows apart long-held “truths” about the war, such as the degree to which Sherman burned down the south (he did not). Like D-B Truckers, Horowitz loves the South and the people he encounters, even as he grapples with its myths of victimhood and exceptionalism (and racism, which may be no more than the racism in the north, but of a different kind). Everyone should read this book and I’m embarrassed I’m so late to it.

What I’m watching:

David Letterman has a new Netflix show called “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” and we watched the first episode, in which Letterman interviewed Barack Obama. It was extraordinary (if you don’t have Netflix, get it just to watch this show); not only because we were reminded of Obama’s smarts, grace, and humanity (and humor), but because we saw a side of Letterman we didn’t know existed. His personal reflections on Selma were raw and powerful, almost painful. He will do five more episodes with “extraordinary individuals” and if they are anything like the first, this might be the very best work of his career and one of the best things on television.

December 22, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished Sunjeev Sahota’s Year of the Runaways, a painful inside look at the plight of illegal Indian immigrant workers in Britain. It was shortlisted for 2015 Man Booker Prize and its transporting, often to a dark and painful universe, and it is impossible not to think about the American version of this story and the terrible way we treat the undocumented in our own country, especially now.

What I’m watching:

Season II of The Crown is even better than Season I. Elizabeth’s character is becoming more three-dimensional, the modern world is catching up with tradition-bound Britain, and Cold War politics offer more context and tension than we saw in Season I. Claire Foy, in her last season, is just terrific – one arched eye brow can send a message.

What I’m listening to:

A lot of Christmas music, but needing a break from the schmaltz, I’ve discovered Over the Rhine and their Christmas album, Snow Angels. God, these guys are good.

  November 14, 2017

What I’m watching:

Guiltily, I watch the Patriots play every weekend, often building my schedule and plans around seeing the game. Why the guilt? I don’t know how morally defensible is football anymore, as we now know the severe damage it does to the players. We can’t pretend it’s all okay anymore. Is this our version of late decadent Rome, watching mostly young Black men take a terrible toll on each other for our mere entertainment?

What I’m reading:

Recently finished J.G. Ballard’s 2000 novel Super-Cannes, a powerful depiction of a corporate-tech ex-pat community taken over by a kind of psychopathology, in which all social norms and responsibilities are surrendered to residents of the new world community. Kept thinking about Silicon Valley when reading it. Pretty dark, dystopian view of the modern world and centered around a mass killing, troublingly prescient.

What I’m listening to:

Was never really a Lorde fan, only knowing her catchy (and smarter than you might first guess) pop hit “Royals” from her debut album. But her new album, Melodrama, is terrific and it doesn’t feel quite right to call this “pop.” There is something way more substantial going on with Lorde and I can see why many critics put this album at the top of their Best in 2017 list. Count me in as a huge fan.

  November 3, 2017

What I’m reading: Just finished Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, her breathtakingly good second novel. How is someone so young so wise? Her writing is near perfection and I read the book in two days, setting my alarm for 4:30AM so I could finish it before work.

What I’m watching: We just binge watched season two of Stranger Things and it was worth it just to watch Millie Bobbie Brown, the transcendent young actor who plays Eleven. The series is a delightful mash up of every great eighties horror genre you can imagine and while pretty dark, an absolute joy to watch.

What I’m listening to: I’m not a lover of country music (to say the least), but I love Chris Stapleton. His “The Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is heartbreakingly good and reminds me of the old school country that played in my house as a kid. He has a new album and I can’t wait, but his From A Room: Volume 1 is on repeat for now.

  September 26, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo. It took me a while to accept its cadence and sheer weirdness, but loved it in the end. A painful meditation on loss and grief, and a genuinely beautiful exploration of the intersection of life and death, the difficulty of letting go of what was, good and bad, and what never came to be.

What I’m watching:

HBO’s The Deuce. Times Square and the beginning of the porn industry in the 1970s, the setting made me wonder if this was really something I’d want to see. But David Simon is the writer and I’d read a menu if he wrote it. It does not disappoint so far and there is nothing prurient about it.

What I’m listening to:

The National’s new album Sleep Well Beast. I love this band. The opening piano notes of the first song, “Nobody Else Will Be There,” seize me & I’m reminded that no one else in music today matches their arrangement & musicianship. I’m adding “Born to Beg,” “Slow Show,” “I Need My Girl,” and “Runaway” to my list of favorite love songs.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J from President's Corner http://bit.ly/2CNqJdM via IFTTT

[mamusiq]

The forgotten bard who shaped pop

John Dowland’s songs were massively popular in the Elizabethan era. They played into an idea of English melancholy that continues today, writes Andrea Valentino.

By Andrea Valentino -  3 August 2017

Stumble into any grimy club, or any taxi, or any supermarket in Britain and chances are that you’ll hear the same music: the same songs, the same chords, the same lyrics. Ed Sheeran has been top of the pile lately. His latest album has sold over a million copies in the UK alone, and the quaking sentimentality of Castle On The Hill is almost a new national anthem.

We know surprisingly little of Dowland’s own life

But if Sheeran’s floppy red hair and catchy love songs are obsessing modern Britain, he was hardly the first to grab the national mood. Back in the 16th Century, the composer and lutenist John Dowland was similarly popular – pressing into a vein of moping soppiness that made him famous, and has served English musicians ever since.

This memorial to Dowland stands in the Dalkey suburb of Dublin (Credit: Alamy)

For such an influential musician, we know surprisingly little of Dowland’s own life. He was born about 1563, probably in London. He travelled widely, first working for Queen Elizabeth I, then for the Danish King Christian IV. Scandal chased after Dowland: he left Denmark after ‘unsatisfactory conduct’.

He was also rejected from the English court, probably for being a Catholic. And despite considerable fame, Dowland died in poverty, lamenting the “young professors of the lute” who “vaunt themselves to the disparagement” of old timers like him. This poignant end is dappled with mystery: even now, there are rumours that Dowland was a spy, and a traitor.  

The beauty of sadness

If Dowland’s life remains enigmatic, personality explodes out of his songs. Just their titles – Burst Forth My Tears, Rest A While You Cruel Cares – are stickily evocative. His lyrics, meanwhile, still scrape against the heart of anyone who listens. “Burst forth my tears, assist my forward grief,” starts one, “and show what pain imperious love provokes.”

Dowland’s First Booke of Songs and Ayres from 1597, with sheet music to allow lute players to accompany singers, was one of his many successful songbooks (Credit: Alamy)

Elsewhere, Dowland sang that “down, down, down I fall, and arise I never shall.” The composer himself seemed to paddle happily about in all this. “His motto was semper Dowland, semper dolens. This means ‘always Dowland, always doleful’”, Pierre Huard, an early music performer and researcher, tells BBC Culture. Like Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits, in other words, John Dowland the angsty musician was sometimes indistinguishable from his music.

Elizabethans saw melancholy as fashionable – Olga Hernandez Roldan

Dowland’s distinctive music was not just a personal affectation, though. Sixteenth-Century England was obsessed with “melancholy”, seeing it as. “fashionable”, says Olga Hernandez Roldan, a lecturer in music history at the Madrid Superior School of Singing. Ted Libbey, a music critic, agrees. “Melancholy was the sign of a superior individual,” he wrote, in an article for NPR. It was typical of someone “who was mature and capable of deep feeling.” These ideas seeped into 16th Century life. One scholar wrote a Treatise on Melancholy while Shakespeare cast Hamlet as bubbling with existential worries. Like all the best modern musicians, meanwhile, Dowland tapped into these feelings. If Ed Sheeran’s Galway Girl sates modern teenagers desperate for tipsy nostalgia, Dowland filled his songs with the passions of his time.

English illustrator John Minnion drew this caricature of Dowland – a sign of the songwriter’s enduring impact in the UK (Credit: Alamy)

Dowland’s music was strikingly modern in other ways, too. He was one of the first composers to popularise the lute in England, spreading his music to a mass audience. Like the piano a few centuries later, it could be produced cheaply and made music accessible “to the bourgeoisie,” explains Hernandez Roldan. “The lute allowed people to play printed music at home on their own,” she adds. Dowland’s music soon became wildly popular, and one of his song books was reprinted four times during the late 1500s and early 1600s. Together with his instrument, moreover, Dowland pushed for a new kind of music. Unlike the dense Italian madrigals of the previous century, many of Dowland’s songs were “organised simply” with just an intimate solo lute as accompaniment, says Huard. “They had a big effect on the public” and helped turn English into a “European language.”

‘Shakespeare of songs’

Given all this, it’s little wonder that Dowland is now known by some as the “first modern singer-songwriter,” although not everyone agrees. “We must root Dowland in his musical context to appreciate the whole,” says Hernandez Roldan. “I feel that to speak about him just ripped out of his world makes no sense.” She has a point: scratching a line right from Dowland to modern musicians risks slipping into anachronism.

The lute was a popular instrument in the 16th and 17th Centuries and featured in many paintings such as this one by Valentin de Boulogne (Credit: Alamy)

Still, if Dowland did not wear a black leather jacket, his gushy self-expression – combined with his simple, intense style – are both hallmarks of modern pop. For Huard, Dowland is nothing short of a timeless “Shakespeare of songs” whose vivid delivery jumps down to us as strong as ever.

He is a fool who is not melancholy once a day – English proverb

And if some historians might hesitate to make the comparison between Dowland and contemporary music, artists have happily adapted his passionate songs. Twentieth-Century composers like Benjamin Britten and Parry Grainger have reimagined pieces by Dowland. The Dowland Project elegantly mixes Dowland’s lute pieces with modern jazz. Dowland’s music has even stumbled back to the pop world. Elvis Costello has sung a version of Can She Excuse My Wrongs? and in 2006 Sting covered an album of Dowland’s songs, even sitting in a smoky Tudor cellar to record In Darkness Let Me Dwell.

Sting released an album of Dowland covers through classical label Deutsche Grammophon in 2006 and remains an avid lutenist (Credit: Alamy)

The melancholic twang from John Dowland’s lute has shivered down to generations of English artists indirectly, too. In the early 20th Century, Edward Elgar’s haunting music was called ‘wonderful in its heroic melancholy’. Later, Pink Floyd released trippy songs like Time where they sang that “hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.” Things went into overdrive as the utopianism of the hippie years quivered and died. By 1976, Joy Division were gripping worn-out kids around the country. A decade on, The Smiths went even further. Songs like Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want and How Soon Is Now? are still benchmarks of teenage worry. John Dowland may not have sung that he was “happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows I’m miserable now” – that was Morrissey. But he could have.

Naturally, not all these musicians were influenced by Dowland directly. But starting with John Dowland and his shameless self-expression, his melancholy has proved wonderfully durable. But why do the English seem so drawn to misery? Maybe it reminds us of life’s unfairness. An old English proverb remarks that “he is a fool who is not melancholy once a day.” Or perhaps it’s the weather. As Voltaire put it, “these are the dark November days when the English hang themselves.” Whatever the reason, melancholy has surely scrabbled far enough into our national identity to stay firmly put. Hopefully, anyway. It would be a shame to lose musicians like John Dowland, whose “dainties grief shall be, and tears my poisoned wine.”

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http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170801-the-ed-sheeran-of-16th-century-england

[nothingman]

Non-consensual pornography—frequently called “revenge porn”—describes nude or sexually suggestive photos shared in a manner or context that the subject did not consent to, often with the intent to humiliate, intimidate, or extort the victim. In many cases, these pics are distributed by someone who received (or was allowed to take) them on the assumption that they would remain private.

While non-consensual pornography is not unique to social media, these platforms have made it easier to distribute images anonymously/pseudonymously to a wide audience. Nude or sexual pics are non-consensually distributed through dedicated websites; subforms on Reddit, 4chan, and their many offshoots; “dump accounts” on Twitter or Tumblr; torrent sites (particularly for celeb photos); and the Dark Web (for underage or otherwise illegal content).

In the past couple of years, non-consensual pornography has increasingly been discussed in the news media. One recent scandal that made headlines centered on “Marines United” Facebook page, where current and former marines were caught sharing and commenting on images of their female colleagues. Many of these images were “creepshots” taken without the knowledge of the women.

Another high profile incident occurred in 2014, when nearly 500 nude images of dozens of celebrities (mostly women) were leaked on message boards such as Reddit and 4chan; this event has been dubbed “Celebgate” (or “The Fappening”). Hackers managed to steal these images by compromising the security of celebrities’ own iCloud accounts. Though the original Celebgate hackers were caught and convicted, other hackers continue to target celebrities and leak their photos.

Perhaps the most infamous hub for non-consensual pornography was isanyoneup.com, which allowed users to post amateur pics they took of ex girlfriends, people having sex at parties, women in public, etc (and in some cases paid contributors). The website existed for a couple years before its creator, Hunter Moore, shut it down in 2012, complaining that he had to spend an average of three hours a day reporting underage submissions. Moore said of his victims:

They’re just stupid people. All I really do is take advantage of them.

Moore was eventually arrested and prosecuted in 2014. He accepted a plea deal of 2.5 years in prison for “unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information for purposes of private financial gain and one count of aggravated identity theft.” But he was only charged in connection with the files he purchased from hackers, not for the much larger number of lawfully obtained non-consensual pornographic images (and, yes, that sentence makes sense under current federal law).

In light of these events and countless other incidences of sexual images shared without permission by former partners and friends—or even strangers—non-consensual pornography has become the focus of lobbying organizations such as Without My Consent, campaigns by celebrities, and some journalists who have taken up this beat. One result of such attention is that several states have passed (or debated) criminal statutes specific to prosecuting non-consensual pornography, but not the federal government.

While the non-consensual sharing of pornographic images appears to be disturbingly widespread, it is difficult to track and tally these instances. Beyond the practical issue that it would be difficult to collect such information is the moral issue that such efforts could potentially bring further exposure and harm to victims. One thing we do know is that consensual sharing of pornographic images via digital media is increasingly common: A 2013 Pew survey* found that 18% of people ages 18-29 report sending sexually suggestive pictures or video of themselves with a cell phone. 42% of people in this age group reported receiving such images. Responses were similar for both single people and those in relationships.

Historically, copyright has been the main legal tool for prosecuting non-consensual pornography (at least in case of selfies). I’m certainly not going to criticize victims for using the only tools available, but this leads to absurd consequences—not the least of which is that copyright tends to vindicate those who share images without consent if they happened to be the one taking the photo.

VIDEO

John Oliver on non-consensual pornography, copyright, and victim blaming.

More importantly, treating non-consensual pornography as copyright infringement misses the point: The thing that actually upsets us in these case is not misuse of content but the denial of a person’s right to self-determination, particularly with regards what happens to one’s own body. I would suggest that that non-consensual pornography is more akin to sexual assault than pirating music via Bittorrent.

This disconnect between our experiences and public policy indicates a need to make sense of the deeper relationship going here—not the one bound up in copyright, property, and ownership, but, instead, what it is like to experience being the subject of non-consensual pornography and the sense of violation we feel when the control we have over our selves is taken from us.

The issue of non-consensual pornography highlights the increasingly intimate connection between our bodies and digital technologies. However, the technological mediation of our bodies is not something uniquely digital. Phenomenologists and other theorists long observed the blurring of boundaries between flesh and machine; these cyborganic relations just have never fully achieved popular and legal recognition.

Incorporation and Feeling Digital Media

I think it is particularly useful to consider the experience phenomenologists described as incorporation (i.e., the idea that we can come to experience foreign objects as being part of the body, part of our selves). Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945), Phenomenology of Perception explains:

those actions in which I habitually engage incorporate their instruments into themselves and make them play a part in the original structure of my own body. (p. 104)

To get used to a hat, a car or a stick is to be transplanted into them, or conversely, to incorporate them into the bulk of our own body. Habit expresses our power of dilating our being-in-the-world, or changing our existence by appropriating fresh instruments. (p. 166)

Going further back to Heidegger we have an idea that tools (such as a hammer) can become almost invisible to us so long as they function properly. We feel as though our agency extends through such objects. Martin Heidegger (1927), Being and Time, explained:

The less we just stare at the hammer-thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is—as equipment. The hammering itself uncovers the specific “manipulability” of the hammer. The kind of Being which equipment possesses—in which it manifests itself in its own right—we call “readiness-to-hand”.

Similarly, Merleau-Ponty (p. 176) gives the example of a blind man learning to use a walking cane:

Once the stick has become a familiar instrument, the world of feelable things recedes and now begins, not at the outer skin of the hand, but at the end of the stick… The pressures on the hand and stick are no longer given; the stick is no longer an object perceived by the blind man, but an instrument with which he perceives.

There are other accounts of similar processes in social theory. Marshall McLuhan (Playboy, 1969) expanded this notion even further, suggesting that electronic media are an extension of our entire central nervous system. He also talks about the experience of driving—how the car can dissolve into our consciousness and we can forget that we are even driving:

The electric media are the telegraph, radio, films, telephone, computer and television, all of which have not only extended a single sense or function as the old mechanical media did — i.e., the wheel as an extension of the foot, clothing as an extension of the skin, the phonetic alphabet as an extension of the eye — but have enhanced and externalized our entire central nervous systems, thus transforming all aspects of our social and psychic existence.

Perhaps most relevant is a 2012 dissertation by Amy Taylor about a man left impotent after treatment for prostate cancer and, to his surprise, he discovers that he can experience orgasm using a strap-on dildo with his wife.

[The patient went] from regarding the dildo as a “piece of purple plastic” to an “organ” of his own body, and experiences the dildo as such—evidenced not only by his explicit statements, but by his ability to achieve sexual satisfaction through the dildo, a striking example of an object working in concert with the body, or extending the body beyond the skin.

The most radical aspect of our ability to incorporate objects into the body is the recognition that human subjectivity extends beyond the flesh—that objects become part of us—part of our perception of the world and part of our perception of ourselves. We generally describe such incorporated objects as “prostheses,” and we have argued that this is how we have come to relate to our social media profiles and our smartphones. It’s why when someone makes a negative comment, we feel hurt; and if they hack our accounts, we feel violated; and if we lend our phone to someone, we feel uneasy. These objects have become “digital prostheses.”

And, like Heidegger’s hammer, when these technologies work well, they seem to nearly vanish from our perception, creating the possibility for intimacy—for meaningful connection (perhaps one that is even felt physically) between two (or more) people. This perspective suggests that if we are going to makes sense of revenge porn as assaulting a person (and not just as an inappropriate use of property), then we to stop reifying conventionally held boundaries between subject and object; producer and product; person and thing—and I’d say even online and offline. The concept of digital prostheses suggests an extension of moral regard beyond flesh and blood to all things a person experiences as integral to his or her subjectivity.

This concept follows in the footsteps of Sandy Stone (“Split Subjects, Not Atoms; or, How I Fell in Love with My Prosthesis,” 1994), who also examined the intimacy of our relationships with machines. In her observation of a phone sex collective, she suggests “what was being sent back and forth over the wires wasn’t just information, it was bodies.”

Stone coined the term “split” subjectivity to describe subjectivity embodied by two or more media. In other words, phone sex operators were not only embodied by flesh and blood but also by the medium through which they worked. She concludes that new media are forcing us to reimagine where the bounds of self stops and starts:

virtual systems are [perceived as] dangerous because the agency/body coupling so diligently fostered by every facet of our society is in danger of becoming irrelevant

However, rather than emphasizing the distinctiveness of the materials that mediate our experience (as Stone does), I think it is more useful to emphasize the coherence and continuity of that experience, so (drawing on past work with Whitney Erin Boesel), I prefer to describe this state as “augmented subjectivity.”

One chief assumption of this perspective is that all interactions and experiences are mediated. Flesh itself is a medium. No interactions are any more or less “real” than others, just differently mediated.

Bodily Integrity as an Alternate Framework Privacy or Context Integrity

We need to expand our sense moral regard to accomodate the new, digital-mediated reality confronting us. In particular, I believe that the conversation about non-consensual pornography needs to be recentered from property rights, or even privacy, to the concept of “bodily integrity.” Helen Nissenbaum’s (2004) work on “context integrity” is an important bridge concept here. She observes new surveillance and information technologies strain conventional notions of privacy. When it was assumed that surveillance technologies were bulky and limited in scope,

public surveillance is determined not to be a privacy problem. Because this conclusion is at odds with the intuition and judgment of many people, it warrants more than simple dismissal.

Nissenbaum suggests that, rather than ignoring these concerns, we need a new model—a paradigm shift—that can account for them. (This, of course, is exactly what we are suggesting is needed to address the sense of violation experienced by victims of non-consensual pornography). Her concept of “context integrity” suggests that, when considering whether it is proper to collect or share information, we need to consider norms about what sort of information is appropriate in various spaces as well as how freely the information was expected to flow when it was initially disclosed. Important to our discussion of non-consensual pornography, Nissenbaum observes “appropriating information from one situation and inserting it in another can constitute a violation.”

While the disruption of context integrity is one aspect of why the experience of non-consensually sharing of nude or sexually suggestive images is so violating, it does not fully account for the intensity of this experience of violation. To understand this, we need to also consider bodily integrity.

The concept of bodily integrity assume that we have a privileged relationship to our own bodies—a right to determine what happens to them and, above all, how other people relate to them.

After the Celebgate release of private nude images stolen from her computer, Jennifer Lawrence spoke out about her experience in a way that gets to the heart why digital images are an issue of bodily integrity

Those pictures were incredibly personal to me — and my naked body I haven’t shown on camera by choice — it’s my body. I felt angry at websites reposting them. … I can’t really describe to you the feeling that took a very long time to go away, wondering at any point who is just passing my body around. Who’s got a picture of my body on their phone and is at a barbecue and looking at them. It was an unshakable, really awful feeling that after it healed a little bit made me incredibly angry.

Lawrence identifies with the photos not just as something she’s created and put out into the world but as “my body”—something that is still part of her. This loss of control over self left her shaken.

Though women celebrities like Lawrence are accustomed to being publicly objectified, she makes it clear that having images of her body shared without consent felt profoundly violating. This experience of violation is likely even more profound for people who are less accustomed to public exposure. Nevertheless, people of all types—and, particularly, women—are increasingly likely to be victims of non-consensual pornography.

What this discussion, and the concept of digital prostheses, suggests is that our pictures and profiles are not merely representations of us; rather, they are us, in some important sense. As such, they merit greater respect and protection than can be provided by laws and norms against privacy—or even context—violations. We must treat non-consensual pornography as a matter of bodily integrity.

* Download crosstabs to find these statistics.

  PJ Patella-Rey (@pjrey) is a Founding Editor at Cyborgology and a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland. 

via Cyborgology

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: When Great Art Makes You LOL

Laughing Budda (image via Flickr)

If you heard peals of laughter ringing out through the quiet, reverent halls of an art museum, what would your reaction be? Would you “tut-tut” in their general direction, maybe shoot them a glare or offer them a pointed “shhh”? If so, can we be totally sure that you, and not they, are in the right?

For contemporary artists who love to insert a little bit of humor in their work, the situation above begs the question: Can art be funny? 

Yes, of course — but it doesn’t have to be, whereas comedy has to be funny or else it fails. The basic structure of a joke is simple: set-up, punchline, laugh, repeat. No laughs is proof that the joke doesn’t work. But art? It can be whatever it wants to be, as long as it’s full of thoughts, emotions, humanity, concepts, etc.

Melissa Rocha is a stand-up comedian who also hosts The TV Show Show, a themed comedy variety show. (Full disclosure: Alicia Eler participated in the Seinfeld edition.) Rocha left her performance art career behind when she realized she was funny, and wanted to work on crafting jokes. We caught up by phone about her transition, and why it happened. “The part of comedy that most artists and people have a hard time with is the failure of it,” she said. “It is so brutal…the trial and error is a lot harder to get a grip on. In the art world, you can just explain it.”

Image by Melissa Rocha (image via aliciaeler.com)

Another defining difference between art and comedy is that the latter has a clear purpose: the goal is to land the joke. It’s a comforting, binary relationship: either you’re funny, or you’re not. In art, there is no clear goal — there is no end, and there may not be a beginning, either. The complete lack of rules — of form and structure — can be overwhelming. But artists, unlike comedians, also have a convenient out if their funny art isn’t really funny. When art is, it’s a bonus — but it doesn’t have to be to succeed. “It’s about safety, ” said Rocha. “It’s like, ‘I’m an artist, and if you don’t think it’s funny that’s okay because it’s art.’ But if you do stand-up, improv, and sketch comedy that is specifically, deftly 100% supposed to be funny, and if it’s not, then you have no safety.”

But is funny art actually funny? The answer, as we see it, is a rousing chorus of “it depends.” Of course, to just use the term “art” when talking about this is to be imprecise. There are many different kinds of art — painting, sculpture, performance, whatever bullshit Richard Prince is currently up to — and they each come with their strengths and limitations.

For the purposes of this essay, we are going to break these forms down into two separate categories: static and temporal. The former, like painting and sculpture, produces pieces that are fixed and immutable. The latter, like performance and video pieces, exists in multiple, successive moments in time. For the most part, temporal art can incorporate and commingle with comedy fairly well, whereas static art (again, for the most part) does not.

Now, don’t get us wrong here: an image can of course be funny. For proof, check the internet. In 2016, we used funny memes as a kind of relational currency: I will gladly be friends with you tomorrow for a crying Jordan meme today. However, static art that attempts to be funny rarely succeeds at being both funny and art at the same time. This is inherent to its nature. In order to be funny, the artwork has to both set up the joke and deliver the punchline in one go. In order to do this, the art often has to sacrifice depth.

Crying Jordan (meme via Internet!)

Because here’s the thing about comedy: it relies on the subverting of expectations, which means that it cannot exist without them. Jokes need to be clear and comprehensible, but ones that are too easily understood — where the punchline can be seen coming from a mile away — are often the least funny jokes of all. These are the types of amateur jokes that you’re likely to hear during an attempt to write a funny wedding speech. But if you take any basic piece of comedy — “Why did the chicken cross the road?”, “Knock knock? Who’s there?”, “Take my wife! Please!” — you will see that it follows that structure of expectation and subversion. The more surprising the subversion, the funnier the joke.

Static art often lacks this element of surprise, because in order for its joke to be understood, it has to sacrifice most everything else. Yes, Marcel Duchamp was able to blow everyone’s mind when he took a toilet, called it a fountain, and declared it to be art — but he also had the benefit of novelty. When you’re the first person to do something, you get a lot of credit, as you should. Once we move past Duchamp to the works that he influenced, the flood of ingenuity becomes a trickle in no time. Because, while a funny piece of static art can maybe make you laugh, is it going to make you ponder it? Or feel much? Or even think about it again, once your momentary guffaw has passed? Likely, it will not. (Again, Duchamp is granted a special waiver here for innovation.) What is great about art — and is especially true about great art — is how it moves beyond the “get it/don’t get it” binary and gets at something far deeper, more complex and unsettled. Nobody stares at a Monet to “understand” the waterlilies.

An example of jokey static art is Eric Yahnker’s, who creates visual puns oftentimes in the form of title-as-punchline, or by just meme-ifying an image. In many ways, Yahnker is a political cartoonist; it’s not surprising that his training is actually in journalism, and he worked on the cartoon South Park. But with the death of the political cartoonist job and the rise of the internet, he decided to create his own small business as an artist, which ultimately gives him the freedom to do whatever he wants. Take, for example, his “American Piece,” a collection of VHS tapes lined up one by one on a shelf that all have “American” in the title. The humor is dry, almost kicking up dust. And, naturally, the name of his recent solo show in LA was Noah’s Yacht, a play on the biblical story of Noah’s Ark. Similar, humor-wise, is Cory Arcangel, whose dry wit comes across in his work “Super Mario Clouds” (2002), which is literally just the clouds of this game. It is a versatile piece, working as a tongue-in-cheek trick — haha, it’s just the clouds screengrabbed as a single image! — or the six-minute video of the clouds, decontextualized from their video game environment, existing as, well, pixelated clouds. 

Temporal art forms still have an easier time escaping the basic “get it/don’t get it” binary, and more gracefully collaborate with comedic forms. Because the art unfolds through time, it can create multiple sets of expectations and multiple forms of subversion. It can be funny in one moment and then deadly serious the next. It can play with multiple ideas — or at the very least many unique shades and tones within the same thematic palate.

For instance, Jason Musson, aka Hennessy Youngman, is hilarious. His ArtThoughtz videos are basically vlogs, and work in part because they’re performed by his alter ego — not by him, the Artist. He takes on the persona of a vlogger dude who breaks down theory concepts, like post-structuralism, into something easily consumed on the internet. The mission of Musson’s Youngman character is to take art less seriously by bringing in some humor. Writes Don Elder for Hyperallergic:

Part of Musson’s success with Art Thoughtz has been the creation of an unlikely character that challenges the core of the intellectual orthodoxy of today’s art world. Hennessy Youngman introduces a comedic, urban perspective into a largely serious and boring Ivy League discourse (a slightly ironic gesture, since Musson has an MFA degree from UPenn).

Yeah, that’s real.

  Andrea Fraser similarly uses comedy to a critical effect in her performance “Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk” (1989), where she played the fictional character Jane Castleton, a docent/volunteer/artist who took people around the Philadelphia Museum of Art, commenting on toilets, the shop, the coat room, and other things that were not pieces of art, while also inserting her own social and political commentary. Using docent-speak, she blurred a fictional and “real” experience of the art museum.

A number of artists who are exploring with comedy create personas. Erin Markey’s queer, feminist comedy and live performances make us laugh hard because, as she once put it, they’re “absurdist and sometimes dark.” Some call her an actress, while others refer to her as a comedian or performance artist. Her intense cabaret–style rendition of Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” transforms a song that’s marketed as sugar-sweet pop. Between Markey’s lecherous gaze as she performs and the ways that she over-enunciates every word, audiences are left wondering how they could’ve just hummed along to this actually dark song. Is it performance art, comedy, or both? 

(screenshot via Erin Markey’s “You Belong with Me” video)

Similarly, Dynasty Handbag, aka Jibz Cameron, plays with the absurd alter-ego, creating a buffer between real-life and fictional comedic performance. Dynasty is so over-the-top — we are fascinated like we are with a John Waters film — so we’ll go with her anywhere. Her performance work is actually funny — not just poking fun at the art world — and at times she ends up on bills and slates that include comedians. In her recent music video “Vague,” a spoof on Madonna’s “Vogue,” Dynasty dances and wanders amidst a variety of odd backdrops while also pulling off signature vogueing moves. Except for her, everything is vague — she’s not sure where she is or what’s going on, and most of what she says is almost incomprehensible. At one point, she sings about a vague situation she may have been in, where she couldn’t tell if it was a business lunch or a date. Produced by the comedy network JASH, Dynasty’s work fits into both the art and comedy worlds, creating something else entirely. Her work embraces a kind of middle space, a queering of traditional boundaries — expressing a kind of nihilism where maybe everything matters, maybe nothing matters, but either way, LOL.

(screenshot via Dynasty Handbag’s video “VAGUE”)

This lack of an agenda — of “say a joke, get some laughs, repeat” — is crucial to Dynasty’s work coexisting as both “art” and “comedy.” It’s clearly funny, but that isn’t all it is. It’s also significant that her videos are being presented by a comedy network. And it’s not just the artists who are breaking into the comedy scene — many comedians are taking their cues from the more contemplative, multi-shaded aspects of art. Though this is not new, either. It just seems like it is, because the accessibility to artists that is afforded to us by the internet can make us feel inundated with content. Ernie Kovacs, for example, was bringing his own brand of cigar-chomping weirdness to network TV in the 1950s. Then there was, of course, the sublimely British Monty Python, and the formalist silliness of early Steve Martin. (In fact, Martin himself has admitted that parts of his standup act were specifically designed to eschew punchlines entirely.) In the ’80s and ’90s Bill Hicks tested the stand-up comedy form to see just how much deeply felt philosophizing it could include. And then of course there was Andy Kaufman, who pushed stand-up so far that many declared that he just flat-out wasn’t funny.

Comedians have been testing the limits of the form — and of their audiences — for decades. Some of the best modern examples of comedy-acting-like-art come from Cartoon Network’s late night Adult Swim block. That’s right, just in time for you to have forgotten it, we’re dragging Too Many Cooks back into your nightmares. Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job may have been the first Adult Swim show that blended comedy and art, usually using copious amounts of horror and weirdness as bonding agents, but it certainly wasn’t the last. And while Too Many Cooks was the video that really went viral, the far weirder, far scarier Unedited Footage of a Bear provides an even better example of comedy becoming art. The film begins with a simple premise: it’s a commercial for an allergy medicine with a suspiciously long list of possible side effects. It’s a joke that’s been done before, but never like this: as a horror movie portrait of a psychotic breakdown. So is Unedited Footage of A Bear comedy, art, or both? Well, the film was directed by Alan Resnick and Ben O’Brien, who both belong to the Baltimore-based art and performance Collective Wham City. Maybe the real question is, does the distinction between comedy and art even matter?

In reality, many comedians would bristle at being told that they are not artists. And maybe they should. After all, they are expressing their own thoughts and views through the creation of original work — just like other artists do. And while some comedians can be easily lumped into the category of crass, mass-market entertainers (see: Kevin James), the exact same could be said of some artists.

Ultimately, if there is one thing that artists and comedians share is their impulse to express something that is true about the world or themselves. As the old standard goes, “it’s funny because it’s true.” Replace the word funny with the word “touching” or “important” or “revelatory” and the same sentence could be applied to any great work of art.

Art can definitely be funny and still be art. More importantly, it can still be great art. The only difference is in the labelling and in the expectations that those labels can create. Label something as “art” and people might not expect to laugh, but label something as “comedy” and they will. And if producing funny art means subverting expectations, then maybe more art that makes us laugh is a good thing. After all, when was the last time you heard an artist say their goal was to give their audience exactly what they were expecting?

The post When Great Art Makes You LOL appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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