#Colin Bell poetry

[wolfie-wolfgang]

Baudelaire Day at Wolfie's Poetry Surf

Last Thursday (16th May 2024), I finished a three-year marathon, reading the whole of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (155 poems in English and in French) at my weekly on-line poetry event called Wolfie’s Poetry Surf which will have been running for exactly twelve years this coming Thursday. I’ve hosted poetry events in my home town of Lewes over the years and read my own work any many…

[skyguywrites]

Character Blog Tags !!!

(writing these down for myself bc i keep forgetting // will update sporadically)

AMELIA. (she’s a runner she’s a trackstar;)

Charlie: clarke the shark;

June: she used to be mine;

Louis: the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious;

Luke: just keep swimming;

🤍Maggie: h o t t o g o;

Ripley: letting our hearts light the way;

Rowan: tbd

Sam: workout wife;

Teddy: coach cutie;

AMIRA. (mugshot;)

🤍Killian: a mythical thing;

Goose: tbd

Hunter: you’re a real tough cookie;

Joey: tbd

Noah: i wanna guard your dreams and visions;

Ripley: tbd

Simon: kindness in a cup;

ANNIE. (i woke up like this;)

Bradley: because woke;

Dante: prince charming;

🤍Eli: daddy’s little protégé;

Jax: brother from another mother;

BILLY. (a face only a mother could love;)

Ariadne: my saving grace;

Harlow: prettier than poetry;

Levi: tbd

Rae: a little bit of sunshine;

Ripley: tbd

🤍Simon: sun on a cloudy day;

BONNIE. (the girl who waited;)

Ariadne: oh what a noble mind;

Jenson: flower power;

Maggie: dream girl;

Mary-Kate: you’re so gorgeous it actually hurts;

Missy: best girl in the world;

CASSIE. (the last human;)

Blair: the most important woman in the entire world;

Charlie: love is always wise;

Glenn: the big bad wolf;

🤍Jonah: safe hands;

Kasper; he’s a bit of a fixer upper;

Killian: the oncoming storm;

Laura: save the cheerleader save the world;

Louis: smooth talkin so rockin’;

Max: in amongst seven billion there’s someone like you;

Ty: stud muffin;

COLIN. (born to serve;)

Archer: mini me;

Ariadne; filthy little bookworm;

Carmen: tbd

Charlie: aquaman;

Missy: i’d let her fuck me with a racket;

Rachel: tbd

Ripley: let it rip;

Tanner: legs eleven;

Teddy: the bear;

🤍Ty: we understood each other completely;

DIEGO. (serving face;)

Band: kings and queens;

Chess: tbd

🤍Henry: the man the myth the legend;

Marley: she’s a real bad bitch;

Poppy: the best of me;

ELODIE. (hot girl summer;)

Charlie: sex bomb;

🤍Heath: we keep this love in a photograph;

Keeley: tbd

Lando: he was a skater boy;

Louis: l’âme d’un poète;

Luke: tall drink of water;

Maggie: she’s electric;

Ripley: i despise my jealous eyes;

Teddy: super boy;

Théo: built in bestie;

FLYNN. (superhuman good looks;)

Keeley: little red;

Noah: we all just wanna be big rockstars;

🤍Rae: you were my new dream;

Wardo: scholarly menace;

IVY. (a half empty girl;)

Chess: tbd

Henry: piano man;

Holly: tbd

Louis: public enemy number 1; // there will come a poet whose weapon is his word;

🤍Max: stud;

Raff: grumpy cat;

Wardo: partner in crime;

JASPER. (hungry like the woolf;)

🤍Ariadne: her heart did whisper;

Ben: and the truth is in the end i’m pretty useless without friends;

Henry: the soul is a piano with many strings;

Jax: you kiss by the book;

JESSIE. (nothin’ but sweatpants lookin’ like a princess;)

Louis: pretty boy;

🤍Marley: sugar and spice and all things nice;

Max: superstar;

KIAN. (wild rover;)

Charlie: same old charlie hitting the ground;

Cora: tiny dancer;

🤍Ezra: as long as you’re mine;

Davey: pain in my arse;

Luca: little bird;

Luke: tbd

Missy: she’s handsome she’s pretty;

Raff: misery loves company;

Rory: a sky full of stars;

MARCUS. (my gift is my song;)

Charlie: how wonderful life is while you’re in the world;

Dante: i saw the dimples first and then i heard the accent;

Henry: you’re sad and you’re sweet and i knew you complete;

🤍Jenson: rain will make the flowers grow;

Kennedy: she’s so lovely;

Maggie: tbd

Ripley: made for the movies;

MATTY. (vogue;)

🤍Chess: beauty queen;

Delaney: trophy wife;

Eli: sweet like summer;

Jax: got a ride that’s smoother than a limousine;

Maggie: queen of munchkinland;

MAVERICK. (southern belle;)

🤍Harlow: i am filled with calculust;

🤍Rafferty: in the midst of darkness light persists;

Simon: tbd

Wardo: sour patch kid;

MICAH. (aesthetic;)

Bradley: mister fantastic;

Chess: checkers;

🤍Joey: the ryan to my shane;

OLLY. (puppy dog eyes;)

Charlie: tbd

Dante: he’s so tall and handsome as hell;

Ezra: he ain’t heavy he’s my brother;

Harlow: cowboy casanova;

🤍Jude: what must it be like to grow up that beautiful;

Marianne: for forever;

Simon: your smile could light up new york city after dark;

Rae: raes in the sunne;

Teddy: tbd

PERSEPHONE. (look for the girl with the broken smile;)

🤍Bradley: daddy long legs;

Jax: lips like candy;

Levi: tbd

Maggie: nightmare dressed like a daydream;

Marley: a supernatural delight;

Ripley: riptide;

POPPY. (headshots;)

Band: you’re in the band;

Charlie: hey mr dj;

Chess: super mom;

Diego: god of rock and roll;

Henry: hope and happiness;

Joey: dodododo dodo; (the ghostbuster theme song)

Louis: you’re so golden;

Marley: i named both her eyes forever;

🤍Noah: heartbreak kid;

Rae: pocketful of sunshine;

SCOTTY. (insane with the hotness;)

Joey: if you need to darling lean your weight to me;

Laura: tbd

Louis: wretched and divine;

Max: tbd

🤍Sam: girl almighty;

THÉO. (l’artiste;)

Charlie: cheeky charlie;

Elodie: the other half of me;

🤍Hunter: sharpshooter;

Jax: father figure;

Keeley: my girl;

Lando: tear in my heart;

Louis: found family;

Teddy: tbd

VALENTINA. (my funny valentina;)

Ariadne: she keeps me warm;

Henry: music man;

Sylvie: baby bly;

🤍Teddy: lumiere darling;

ZAC. (the best of humanity;)

🤍Archer: love in all its forms is the most powerful weapon we have;

Eva: clever girl;

Delaney: i believe in her;

Matthias: you don’t expect a sunset to admire you back;

Melody: i’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important;

Missy: you were fantastic;

Rory: the last centurion;

Sylvie: marty mcbly;

————————————

ANGELICA. (prince of angels;)

Charlie: surfer babe;

Izzy: you shine like glitter and gold;

🤍Jamie: it’s like you’re drawing hearts around my name;

Jenson: mon trésor;

Jude: patch perfect;

Kasper: słoneczko; (sunshine)

Max: ice ice baby;

Ty: mi amor;

ART. (speed demon;)

Ace: ace of hearts;

🤍Goose: deep blue but you painted me golden;

Laura: rocket to my heart;

Pip: fuck me sideways;

Teddy: swim daddy;

Win: sexy mama;

CHRIS. (chris-py kreme;)

🤍Carmen: reese’s pieces peanut buttercup;

Charlie: charleston chew;

Dante: jollee rancher;

Izzy: bubblegum bestie;

Kasper: kitkasper;

Laura: timlin timbits;

Leo: tbd

DAVEY. (i’m a trust fund baby you can trust me;)

🤍Cora: princess;

Eli: lightning mcqueen;

Eva: all i wanted was you;

Kian: big brother is always watching;

Lando: pretty young thing;

Luca: the baby;

Ripley: good girl faith and a tight little skirt;

CANDICE. (blonde bimbo girl;)

🤍Forrest: i’ll be your lighthouse;

Jude: you are kenough;

Levi: playboy;

Thaniel: bless me father for i have sinned;

DAFF. (flower child;)

Heath: you got a friend in me;

Mac: ramblin’ man;

🤍Shep: thorn in my side;

Thaniel: take me to church;

DOLLY. (you’re lookin’ at country;)

Archer: loaded gun;

Harlow: i had the best day with you;

Hattie: your beauty is beyond compare;

Hunter: tall dark and superman;

Sloane: her hips don’t lie;

Travis: a good old slow talkin’ country boy;

ELLIE. (smile like you mean it;)

Charlie: you’re too sweet for me;

Cody: sweeter than heaven;

Glenn: funcle;

🤍Reid: to infinity and beyond;

FITZ. (me old mug;)

🤍June: she drives me wild;

Keeley: pocket sized;

Pip: twinkle toes;

Win: tbd

GABE. (game face;)

🤍Blair: it’s a rollercoaster kinda rush;

Max: golden boy;

Missy: fatal fantasies;

GEM. (little songbird;)

Archer: tbd

Carmen: tbd

Cora: let’s go down to the ozdust ballroom;

Eva: lookin’ super cute and freaky;

Izzy: shimmering beautiful;

Leo: with his kiss the riot starts;

Maia: life is a cabaret old chum;

Toby: do anything for my brothaaaa;

JASMINE. (flowers bloom until they rot and fall apart;)

Levi: knight in shining armour;

🤍Pip: i’m right here beside you;

Simon: sweet as pie;

Win: everybody wants to know her name;

KIM. (glamour shot;)

Ash: little shit;

Ben: he loves me not;

Delaney: dancing in her best dress fearless;

Ezra: twin flame;

🤍Luke: we rule the kingdom inside my room;

LILY-ROSE. (promo shoot;)

Chess: passion for fashion;

Delaney: i love my sister more than anything in this life;

🤍Levi: he’s so bad but he does it so well;

LUCA. (dancing through life;)

Cora: because i knew you i have been changed for good;

Davey: nothing can break us;

Kian: heroic and true;

Lando: hot patootie;

Maggie: your favourite artist’s favourite artist;

🤍Taylor: you matter to me;

MEI. (eyes wide shut;)

Bradley: danny devito’s body double;

Max: on thin ice;

Ripley: point and shoot;

Wardo: brave and bold;

OPHELIA. (profile picture;)

Archer: tell me your favourite song;

🤍Glenn: ernest only had lovely things to say about you;

Kennedy: ride or die;

Lando: best boy;

Luke: i wish you would;

Mary-Kate: stunner;

RACHEL. (me myself and i;)

Archer: brother of mine;

Carmen: the innkeeper;

Colin: the protector;

Cora: dancing queen

Eva: baby girl;

Lando: cuddle buddy;

Maia: hey mister she’s my sister;

Teddy: my hero;

Ty: the inlaw;

[sparrowsfallingfromthesky]

Just for fun I made a page on my blog with book suggestions for Black Sails fans, but I think it’s impossible to get there on mobile and I’d like some people to actually see it so I’m making a post for it too :) Here it is under the cut. Enjoy, and let me know if there’s anything you would add to the list!

Books directly referenced within the show:

-          Meditations by Marcus Aurelius – self-explanatory.

-          The Odyssey by Homer – I think the translation Flint is most likely to have read is Chapman and it’s worth skimming that for a sense of the language, but if you want something more readable for a modern audience, I recommend Emily Wilson (and even if you don’t read the whole thing, her introduction where she talks about the nature of translation is really interesting).

-          Don Quixote and La Galatea by Miguel de Cervantes – I haven’t read La Galatea, but it’s the one Flint leaves for Miranda as an apology. Don Quixote of course is referenced by both the Hamiltons and Madi.

-          The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan – I haven’t read this either, but it’s a very influential text (referenced in both Little Women and Vanity Fair, for example, to give an idea of its wide range) so it’s good to know at least a little about it, and this post by starbuck is really good meta as to why Flint might be reading it when he’s in the fort.

-          Something (possibly The Changeling) by Thomas Middleton – Again, I haven’t read this, but interesting post here by flintsmintsplint about the significance of this book choice.

-          A Cruising Voyage Round the World by Woodes Rogers – Heads up this is a fairly awful read, except when he tries to describe animals, at which points he’s unintentionally pretty funny.

-          The Bible I guess, particularly Genesis (quoted by both Thomas and Flint), Song of Solomon (quoted by Miranda), and Revelation (just a vibe, plus it’s briefly referenced in Treasure Island)

Other books, in no particular order, which are relevant, or which I think could give you valuable perspective or additional things to think about, or which might appeal to people who like the show:

-          Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson – Duh.

-          Dreams of Exile by Ian Bell – A biography of RLS. Not the best bio in the world (a little boring at times, and Bell’s fixation on RLS’s mommy kink is grating) but there are interesting points especially on the ideas of duality, identity, and the power of a place, which are so central to his fiction.

-          The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down by Colin Woodard – A good basic source about the real people and events in Black Sails. I’m pretty certain the writers of the show consulted this book.

-          Shakespeare – The Tempest seems like an obvious start (I doubt Miranda’s name was an accident) and when you’re done with that you can check out Aimé Césaire’s postcolonial reimagining A Tempest.

-          Jekyll and Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson – It is unbelievable to me that no one has written a J&H fic about Flint yet. Also this story contains one of the three funniest lines RLS ever wrote in my opinion.

-          The Iliad by Homer, The Aeneid by Virgil, and The Metamorphoses by Ovid

-          Paradise Lost by John Milton – Check out this post.

-          Frankenstein by Mary Shelley – If Flint lived a hundred years later he would have been a Romantic, I feel this in my soul, and I want to read this book in particular to him SO BADLY. Same kind of logic as Paradise Lost, except I actually like this one.

-          Moby Dick by Herman Melville – There’s homoeroticism and it’s set on a ship, what more do you want?

-          Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicolson – I am constantly screaming about Flint and Silver as Odysseus.

-          The poetry of Elizabeth Bishop – Her poem “The Weed” is eerily reminiscent of the final silverflint confrontation(s) but honestly the rest of the collection has nothing to do with BS, I’m just in love with her and wanted to give her a rec while I have your attention.

-          She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore – Not technically magical realism, because that’s a culturally specific term, but it’s like magical realism. It’s a retelling of the creation of the country of Liberia, and it is so good. I’m putting it on this list because it’s an exploration of how marginalized and enslaved people can have their own power in the face of colonization.

-          The Deep by Rivers Solomon – “One can only go for so long without asking who am I? Where do I come from? What does all this mean? What is being? What came before me, and what might come after? Without answers, there is only a hole, a hole where a history should be that takes the shape of an endless longing.” Interesting exploration of community and history and generational trauma and pain and identity and the scars of white supremacy.

-          A Field Guide to Getting Lost and The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit – Just vibes I guess. The second one especially has a lot of focus on stories, and if I ever write the silverflint Eros/Psyche AU that lives in my heart I’ll definitely be thinking about her words.

-          Meadowlands by Louise Glück – An Odyssey-inspired collection of poems. I don’t love the book as a whole, but there are a few gems, including that one poem I’m crazy about.

-          On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong – You have seen passages from this book posted on tumblr. I know for a fact that at least two (the one about drowning before meeting the other person and the one about the word monster and lighthouses) have been used in (really beautiful) Black Sails edits. I think it’s important to read the whole context. It’s intense and deeply personal. His poetry book Night Sky with Exit Wounds is also powerful – “I write things / down. I build a life & tear it apart / & the sun keeps shining. Crescent / wave. Salt-spray. Tsunami. I have / enough ink to give you the sea / but not the ships, but it’s my book / & I’ll say anything just to stay inside / this skin.”

-          The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason – A story is true a story is untrue etc.

-          From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers by Marina Warner – Such an interesting book. Definitely check out what she has to say about gossip.

-          Maurice by E.M. Forster – this parallel

-          Les Miserables by Victor Hugo – Some of the themes might resonate, plus maybe you’ll be inspired to read my Silver=Grantaire fic lol

-          Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson – Another one you’ve probably seen used in Black Sails edits, and for good reason. The main character’s name is Silver, there are direct references to RLS and Treasure Island, and it’s a story all about stories and inner darkness and that sort of thing. Kind of a weird book structurally, but some lovely language. Also worth reading some of Winterson’s other work, especially her memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

-          When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man by Nick Dybek – A fucked up little novel which, despite the title, has almost nothing at all to do with Treasure Island. Last few sentences pack a punch.

-          Folklore and the Sea by Horace Beck – Feels even longer than it is, rambling and hard to get through, and also kind of outdated (sometimes verging on offensive) – but it does have some pretty interesting sections.

-          The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall – queer love, a genderfluid protagonist, piracy and other evils as a response to imperialism and colonialism, mermaids…

-          Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas by Laura Sook Duncombe – Has some issues, especially a kind of annoying girlbossy tone, but is interesting.

-          Flint and Silver: A Prequel to Treasure Island by John Drake – Unlike everything else on this list, this one is actively an anti-recommendation, in case you happen to come across the title somewhere and say “oh, a book called Flint and Silver, I have to read that!” Do not do it. It is so bad.

Edited later to add:

-          A Clash of Steel by C.B. Lee – a total reimagining of Treasure Island as a queer romance about Chinese and Vietnamese girls and women. I loved this book! Two particular characters from the original were merged into one character which would never have occurred to me and it was SUCH a good reveal.

-          The Last Smile in Sunder City by Luke Arnold – It’s by Luke Arnold.

-          When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill – About women (especially queer and otherwise nonconforming women) in the 1950s refusing to be silenced and controlled. Because they’re dragons.

-          The Arabian Nights – I recommend the new(ish) version translated by Yasmine Seale and annotated by Paolo Lemos Horta, which is enormous but really interesting. This is a really foundational text that has consciously or unconsciously influenced a lot of other stories, and I don’t think it’s a leap to guess that Treasure Island, Black Sails, and some of the other books on my list are among them. Plus, here’s a quote from the introduction that might give off some familiar vibes: “Every story in the global canon of fantastical literature is in some way a vessel shipwrecked on the rocks of its misinterpretation… Assessed in these terms, One Thousand and One Nights is perhaps the greatest and most sprawling ruin of them all.”

-          Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown – Some poor bastard finds himself stuck as the cook on a pirate ship, gets his leg amputated, and falls in love with the ruthless captain. Hmm.

-          A Conspiracy of Truths and A Choir of Lies by Alexandra Rowland – Explores the roles of storytellers in society through the misadventures of really fascinating unreliable narrators.

-          The Drowning Empire trilogy (beginning with The Bone Shard Daughter) by Andrea Steward – a very compelling fantasy series which I initially picked up primarily because the covers look kind of like the Black Sails intro sequence

-          Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco, which yes! I did look at entirely because it had Silver in the title. It’s a vampire book and it has some weaknesses BUT it’s a polyamorous romance which counts for a lot.

[mermaidsirennikita]

(I know you've read a lot of romance books and I hope this is an appropriate question) Can you please rec me books with male leads who are kind of mischievous, charming and get along with others well? I'm thinking of book!Colin Bridgerton, or maybe Nikolai from S&B and (I dunno if you've read this, hopefully yes) Thorne from The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. I feel like that's really difficult to come by and really need some help!

Not inappropriate at all, and I think I have some recs for you!

A Week to Be Wicked by Tessa Dare--My favorite romance novel Colin, personally. A rake, very charming, and everyone likes him except for the heroine, who thinks he's trash. Is he trash? He does dry hump her until they both come and justifies it with "there's a sheet between us so it's not sex", so like... perhaps. Makes a joke about her being a sword swallower while they're disguised as circus performers.

Duke Most Wicked by Lenora Bell--Out 9/27 and has a hero a lot like this. He kicks off the book trying to reform himself because he's like.. run out of money, lol.

The Lady Gets Lucky by Joanna Shupe--It's actually a part of the hero's development in this one. He knows everyone likes him, but they don't take him seriously. And he wants them to!!! But also, he's gonna teach the hero some seduction lessons becauuuuse she has something he wants and a deal's a deal.

The Good Girl's Guide to Rakes by Eva Leigh--This is a "you wanna see a real party?" book, where the hero is taking the heroine around town to show her a good time while she tries to help him find a wife. He does wear eyeliner and write poetry. It's great.

Devil in Spring by Lisa Kleypas--The hero of this book has all his father's charm and none of his father's tendency to kidnap women. Accidentally compromises the heroine, and is like "well obviously I'll marry her" but plot twist! She doesn't wanna marry himmmm.

Married by Morning by Lisa Kleypas--Leo Hathaway is a reformed rake type, very snarky, has gotten over serious angst by the time his book has come around. The heroine is the only person who has damage with him because they're in an enemies to lovers dance. Especially good because while he's fun and witty in the streets, he's quite dominant in the sheets.

Suddenly You by Lisa Kleypas--Another "fun-loving man who's great at parties meets local woman who can't stand him" book, but with the twist that she's an author and he's a publisher. Also, she thinks he's the sex worker she ordered to divest her of her virginity at the beginning of the book, and he's like "well I'm not gonna say anything".

Sweetest Scoundrel by Elizabeth Hoyt--Asa Makepeace is the family scoundrel/fuckup (his family is made up of Quakers and he's running a pleasure garden lmao). The heroine is very uptight whereas he's super mischievous and fun.

Scandalous Desires by Elizabeth Hoyt--As a note, this comes before Sweetest Scoundrel. The heroine is actually Asa's sister. The hero is a pirate king so he's dangerous, but he's also super snarky and charming. He's literally called "Charming Mickey". It is great, one of my favorite romances ever.

Notorious Pleasures by Elizabeth Hoyt--Heroine is engaged to a boring guy and begins an affair with his fun good-time brother who has a bad reputation but is, again, great at parties.

I think a lot of these are like... Colin Bridgerton (book!Colin that is) if Colin fucked hard. Some more than others, lol. But the "good time guy" is totally a romance hero type.

[ninja-muse]

Year-End Wrap-Up 2021

So this was *cough* my best year ever…. I scared even myself with how much I read.

Stats


Yearly total: 160
 Queer books: 58 (36%)
 #ownvoices POC books: 35 (21.8%)
 Canadian authors: 24 (15%)
 Books by women: 106 (66%)
 Books by nonbinary/genderqueer folks: 8 (5%) 
Classics and Poetry: 6 (3.7%)

Top 5 Fiction (Not Ranked)

Flyaway - Kathleen Jennings

Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

Nettle & Bone - T. Kingfisher

The Witness for the Dead - Katherine Addison

A Marvellous Light - Freya Marske

Top 5 Non-Fiction (Not Ranked)

The Cold Vanish - Jon Billman

Empire of Pain - Patrick Radden Keefe

Ace - Angela Chen

The Warmth of Other Suns - Isabel Wilkerson

The Unidentified - Colin Dickey

DNFS

The Extraordinaries - TJ Klune

Rotherweird - Andrew Caldecott


The Blacktongue Thief - Christopher Buehlman

The Last Watch - J.S. Dewes

The Library of the Dead - T.L. Huchu 


Velvet Was the Night - Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Ship of Stolen Words - Fran Wilde

The Bookseller’s Secret - Michelle Gable

Small Favors - Erin A. Craig

Appleseed - Matt Bell

The All-Consuming World - Cassandra Khaw

Other Ratings and Goals


Longest book

: The Liar’s Knot - M.A. Carrick

Best queer book: A Marvellous Light - Freya Marske

Most Impressed By:

Yume - Sifton Tracey Anipare

Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings

A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske

Biggest Disappointments:


When You Get the Chance - Tom Ryan and Robin Stevenson

The Glass Magician - Caroline Stevermer

The Lost Apothecary - Sarah Penner

Persephone Station - Stina Leicht

Jay’s Gay Agenda - Jason June

Did I beat 2020? You betcha.

Did I beat my Best Year Ever? Heck yeah.

Did I read more classics? No. Last year I read 7.

Did I read more Canadians? Yep!

Did I whittle my TBR shelves down any? I think I’ve broken even (if you don’t count ARCs). Most of the whittling was unhauls, not reading, however.

Was it a good reading year? You bet it was. I practically did nothing else.

Breakdowns by Month

January February March April May June July August September October November December

Click through to see how I did on my 21 in 2021 goals and my Storygraph charts!

2021′s Reading Goals

Read 80% of this list I think I did it?


but especially all the Seanan McGuire books; almost, one is on my physical TBR, another’s on order.


Return of the Trickster by Eden Robinson;


The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley;


The Library of the Dead by T.J. Huchu; DNFed

A Radical Act of Free Magic by H.G. Parry;


The Hidden Palace by Helene Wecker; and


The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison


Read all the ARCs I’ve acquired (or will) Yeah, no.  I just kept getting them. But I think I put in a good effort.


Don’t read so many books about libraries/bookstores/writers that I get sick of them


Read with more ethnic/cultural diversity


which includes Canadian authors, damnit


Read at least 12 non-fiction books


at least five of which aren’t true crime


Return to my “giant history book a year” goal, because I missed that in  2020


Semiosis by Susan Burke

Ace by Angela Chen

The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison

Daughter of Black Lake by Cathy Marie Buchanan


Post more self-made rec lists, not just adding onto requests Also no


Make extreme use of my library without getting late fees


Storygraph Charts

[spamzineglasgow]

(REVIEW) Miscellaneous by Julia Rose Lewis

In this review, Maria Sledmere visits the verdant isle of Julia Rose Lewis’ pamphlet Miscellaneous (Sampson Low, 2019), and engages chaotically with its shape-shifting poetics of ecstasy, digression and slippery things.

> Miscellaneous: of various kinds; elements of different kinds. A little green book full of miscellany. The work of Julia Rose Lewis has been dealing in miscellany (let me say it as much I can, it’s a lovely word) for a while now. Lewis’ collection Phenomenology of the Feral (Knives Forks and Spoons Press 2017) was a veritable assemblage of household objects, clothing items, all things edible (from oranges to gummy bears), tools, chemicals and other substances. Words had a Steinian tendency to slip, where a ‘pear’ becomes ‘peer’ and sugar becomes sand. The whole book teems with a delicious excess of things and their zoomed-in, jostling, merging and almost psychedelic relation (I mean just consider the multicoloured octopus-bunny hybrids on the cover). Her recent pamphlet, Miscellaneous (2019), a slender offering from chapbook series Sampson Low, edited by fellow dealer in poetic animalia, SJ Fowler, continues this playful approach to disordering objects, experience and relation.

> Explicitly ‘inspired’ by Green Eggs and Ham, a classic children’s book by Dr. Seuss, Miscellaneous works with its foodstuffs in a fractal and kind of ecstatic way. Ecstasy meaning rapture or transport; Miscellaneous as a little island of strong emotion. I want to say island, but I could just as easily say green tomato. It’s difficult to resist the seduction of island metaphors during quarantine, and besides, Lewis herself spent time as a child in Nantucket Island. According to the publisher, Miscellaneous ‘asks if it is possible to have a mutually healthy relationship between a human and an island’. In an interview from 2016 with Katy Lewis Hood, Lewis says, ‘I use writing about the place I’m longing for as an antidote; I see islands as stories and stories as islands’. Staying with that chiasmus, might we see Miscellaneous itself as a kind of place? The scales upended sufficient to slip into our pocket, a zoomy island remainder? A dinky little 12-page island you could circle on foot and do it again and again — for this is a book that loves repetition, a veritable jaunt on the anaphora express, a 5-7 syllabic ride on the waves. But it’s difficult to know what constitutes the very land you walk or ride on:

A mane! A terrain! A mane is a terrain through and through and should you be guarding the herd inside the river valley? You hold this territory? Not harnessed! Not in a horse-less carriage!

Lewis plays deliciously with the fact of metaphor as a transport, a vehicle, while thrashing around in the joy of assonance and sound as forces of meaning and meaning’s disruption. What’s more, the repeated invocation of the ‘you’ means I’m forever hailed back to the scene; I can’t leave the island utterly behind, can’t glide drone-like over its landscapes. Besides, maybe it’s more like an archipelago? Terrain is a region of land, a system of rocks or geological formations, a standing-ground or position. Lewis teases us with the ever resolving, dissolving, negating terrains of lyric. Those exclamation marks are surely provocations to the reader, as much as the swept up proclamation of revelling in words themselves (thinking of the upward-looking heart emoji, reacting to a message). Her ‘I’ (perhaps riffing off the O’Haran tradition of I do this I do that poems, via Colin Herd’s I like this I like that variation) is quite demanding, precise, has an eye for arrangement (‘The musk ox is not in the / ocean’), identification, variation, placement (‘They disappear’). As with the effect of haiku (a kind of ‘cut’ of images), she challenges ‘nature’/object relations by similarity and contrast:

I would not like that morose woman faraway, that maiden hair tree. I am that old ginkgo tree.

What is the connection between the morose woman and the maiden hair? Does the fact of the speaker being the ‘old ginkgo’ explain her conditional dislike of the woman? And is the maiden hair tree the same as the woman? With its short, invitational lyrics, Miscellaneous gives you time to wander around the ideas of things, ideas in things. Maybe it’s telling the story of an island which is really a metaphor for Earth: its ‘holding pattern[s]’, its ‘there or anywhere’, its snowy territories, its ‘dry grasses / and mosses’ (v. Eliotic, ‘The Dry Salvages’ of Four Quartets?), its ‘skyhook’, its ‘living fossil leaf’ with ‘many millions of years’ inside it. Crudely speaking, ecopoetry often tries so hard to seem either objective (ecomimesis) or explicitly subjective (Romantic); the speaker of these poems insists on a kind of declarative, shape-shifting reality, whose run-on code requires the user command of something more than human. ‘You hold all the weeks / would you tote the boulders here?’ The labour of bringing the world to life in poetry is more than just reading; you have to really consider toting the boulders of words around. There’s a weird hospitality to this, a gesture of extending the voice: ‘So I / say try the bloom of mold!’. Maybe as a reader I’d speak better the world with the mold in my throat. It’s these kinds of special conditions Miscellaneous gets at so well. What the chapbook gives is a portable miscellany, a set of questions, a dicey and moreish feast of seeing the world anew — at all scales and dwellings, from a ‘ptarmigan nest’ to the air itself. Better eat up.

> Lewis’ smart and choppy lines remind me of the best chefs at the restaurant where I used to work, who would dice veg or make meat cuts with a certain deftness, all the while engaging in dishevelled conversation. I would ask, from which precise bay are the oysters sourced, and the chef would lecture me on the valiance of a 2Pac album. We would swerve from one topic to another by the time of the bell: language defined by the beat and demand of cooking. It was good to feel enslaved to the temporality of the microwave, the rising of bread, the petulant delay on the part of a chicken. And you might say, O maria what does this have to do with Julia Rose Lewis’ new book? And I would say, well, it’s all about iteration, digression, perversion of recipe. The poetic line as the flick of sweaty chef hair, the child’s demanding inquisition, the special way of dodging the question. But don’t let me fill you up with nonsense.

> There’s this weird piece in The Guardian that totally disses Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham, which I’ll admit I haven’t read this side of puberty. The author, Emma Brockes, is pretty damning: ‘two-thirds of the words feel like filler’, ‘the rhyme scheme [...] is like something a kid would throw at a homework assignment so he could finish and run out to play’, ‘[Seuss’] books are creepy, empty, over-long, cheap, twee writing posing as whimsy’. Maybe I don’t have a striped ankle to stand on here, but I can’t help but think Brocke is missing a point somewhere. What’s wrong with poetry that wants to fly through itself quickly, all the better for the writer to go out and play? I’m thinking of something Jack Spicer writes in one of his letters to Lorca, describing how there are times in a poet’s life where ‘the objects change’ when ‘someone intrudes into the poet’s life’ so a certain balance is lost. ‘The seagulls, the greenness of the ocean, the fish—they become things to be traded for a smile or the sound of conversation—counters rather than objects’. You sort of get the feeling Brocke got tired of this (too many counters, too much supposed impeachable brilliance) and upended the board, sending everything scattering to miscellany. Maybe that was the appropriate reaction. I’d like my poetry to have that effect sometimes. And then I’d quite like to run out and play, or fall in love (if we were not in lockdown), or otherwise just write you a blowsy prosy letter.

> There’s this idea of Green Eggs and Ham as a childhood exercise in epistemological questioning. Asking you to think about how experience establishes beliefs about the world. Miscellaneous quite obviously trades in the empirical possibilities of knowing, experimenting in what happens when certain patterns or conditions are put into play (it’s worth noting that Julia Rose Lewis is also a scientist by training). I think of a child stuffing sand in its mouth, learning about size, scale, texture, taste. A child that learns a tomato is good when ripe and sweet. I also think of judging when I might cross the road, or a chemist inching just a *wee* bit more of X in the formula (is that how it works? is it like choosing to add another comma to a poem - what exactly is the risk of explosion?). Every day of our lives we are hedging, testing. ‘If you will then I will try / rain on rain on rain’; how I learn from you, a fashionable imitation in the wearable weather/whether. Things pile up, acquire elemental charge; the poems are teasingly object-oriented; the ‘I’ is an iterative effect of desires, repulsions and relations. Substances effect themselves into life and I think of Francis Ponge and the orange. Expression is something to be ‘endured’. How does an object hold itself in a poem, without being overly squeezed into miscellany, matter? Lewis uses the singsong effects of poetry (repetition, rhyme), to play with causality and intention. In the final poem, for example, is the ‘gold’ ‘old’ and what temporality is ‘golden’; is it the ‘spring /green’ or the speaker who is ‘cold’?

> Miscellaneous in general describes a kind of extra or supplementary category, that which escapes the normative set. Perhaps there is then a case for this being a kind of queer object-oriented poetics. Things are slippery and hungry and irresistibly insistent. They become the book itself, the little object in your hand, tomato green as ‘the spring / green tomatoes in sea salt’, sprinkled with salty little words. This is a case for frivolity and filler and whimsy in poetry, for appetite and affect, salty wit, the necessity of dancing around sentiment, excess, sweetness and swerve. ‘I will eat the spring / fruit upside down’; the fruit of the book you peel again.

Miscellaneous is out now and available from Sampson Low.

~

Text and image: Maria Sledmere

Published: 12/6/20

[uneminuteparseconde]

Des concerts à Paris et alentour en gras : les derniers ajouts :-: in bold: the last news Octobre 03. JB Dunckel + Mariachi + Freeka Tet + Alexis Langevin-Tétrault & Pierre-Luc Lecours (Biennale Némo) – Le Trianon (gratuit sur résa) 03. Piotr Kurek + Papivores + Matthias Puech – Espace B 03. A.N.I. – Le Bal 04. Kontravoid + Hide + Soft Riot – Espace B 04. Cosmic Neman + Blackthread + Renaud Bajeux – Instants chavirés (Montreuil) 04. Anthony Rother + Galaxian + Sync 24 + Foreign Sequence – Rex Club 04. Ascion b2b D. Carbone + Hypnoskull + Years of Denial + Common Poetry + Salem Unsigned – Protocol (Pantin)  04. Tommy Four Seven b2b Ancient Methods + Regis + The Driver + Dave Clark + SHDW & Obscure Shape + AZF + ABSL + Amato & Adriani + DJ Bone b2b Ben Sims + Charles Green +  Dax J + Dersee + DVS 1 + Félicie + Boston 189 + Louisahhh b2b Maelstrom (Pulse fest.) – Le Grand Dôme (Villebon/Yvette) 05. Stefane Perraud : “Sylvia” (Nuit blanche) – Collège des Bernardins (gratuit) 05. Meryll Ampe + Dinah Bird + Mr Moonlight + Irene Murphy + Mick O’Shea + Shruti Box Minimal Ensemble + Ian Wooldridge (Nuit blanche) – Paris Art Lab 05. Bernard Szajner + Marco Quaresimin + Monÿang + Vincent Heter & Lou-Maria Le Brusq + Mururoa + Richard Comte + Jules Wysocki & Natnada Marchal (Les Sonifères fest.) – DOC 05. Anetha b2b Randomer + Blush Response b2b Thomas P. Heckmann + Rebekah + Juan Atkins + Marcel Dettmann + Poison Point + Ben Klock + Andrejko + Bassam + Fabrizio Rat + Newa + Tripeo b2b Hemka + Analog Kitchen + Cleric b2b Stranger + Marko Nastic (Pulse fest.) – Le Grand Dôme (Villebon/Yvette) 05. Nuit de l'orgue avec des œuvres d'Éliane Radigue, Arvo Pärt, Olivier Messiaen, Philip Glass, Nico Muhly, Jonathan Fitoussi... (Nuit blanche) – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie (gratuit) 06. Aline Penitot + Nuits + Jean-Baptiste Zelal + Pali Meursault + Rodolphe Alexis + Aymeric de Tapol + Dasein (Les Sonifères fest.) – DOC 06. Forced into Feminity + Big Debbie + Sophie Torrell + L.T. Létext + Vestas + Divisas – Les Nautes 06. Fusiller – Instants chavirés (Montreuil) (gratuit) 06. Quator Bozzini joue : "Occam Delta XV" d'Éliane Radigue, "Five String Quartets" de Phill Niblock et "Koan" de James Tenney – La Marbrerie (Montreuil) 06. Daughters – La Maroquinerie ||COMPLET|| 08. Sleep + Pharaoh Overlord – Bataclan 09. Jozef Van Wissem : cinéconcert sur "Nosferatu le vampire" de Murnau – Cinémathèque 09. New Model Army – La Maroquinerie 09. Trumans Water – Espace B 09. Kollaps + Âme de boue + Alice Botté – L'International 09. Ty Segall & Freedom Band + Guadal Tejaz – La Cigale 10. Ty Segall & Freedom Band + Axis: Sova – La Cigale 10. Toecutter + Le Crabe + Tommpa Lanzakinen (Serendip Lab fest.) – Le Zorba 10. Dumb + Belmont Witch + À trois sur la plage – La Boule noire 10. Bruce McClure + Paul Smith joue "A Jim O’Rourke European premiere of a new 2019 Moog Synthesizer playback installation work" – Instants chavirés (Montreuil) 11. Dominique Gillot + La Pisse + Flesh World + We Will Woo – Folie N4|Parc de la Villette (gratuit) 11. Bitpart + Mary Bell + Rive droite + Going away Party + Ours blond + Shit Rockets + Alison Backdoor – Espace B 11. Nova Materia + Scalping – La Station 11. Sonic Area + Shaârgot – Petit Bain 11. Kazumoto Endo + Spore Spawn + Vomir + Autocastration – Instants chavirés (Montreuil) 11. Birds in Row + Lane (Jimi fest.) – Théâtre Antoine-Vitez (Ivry/Seine) 11. Frank Bretschneider + Robert Lippok – Protocol (Pantin) 11. Marc Acardipane aka Pop + Manu le Malin + [KRTM] + DJ Chuimix + Raw + Makornik + Fuerr – La Machine 11. AZF + Colin Benders + BLNDR – Dehors brut 11. Ansome & Ayarcana + H880 + Fred Terror b2b Panzer + Antenes – Protocol (Pantin) 11. New Order – Grand Rex ||COMPLET|| 12. Lucas Paris : "Emotional Synthesis" + Orson Hentschel + Sentimental Rave (Biennale Némo) – Le 104 12. Ben Shemie, John McEntire & Sam Prekop – Petit Bain 12. Osilasi + Tumulus + Kawaii & The Boulaouane Brothers + G de GNG & Julien Bobard + Nicolas Montgermont & Pali Meursault (Serendip Lab fest.) – Cirque électrique 12. Marion Guillet + Bear Bones, Lay Low + Full Quantic Pass + Pi Doom (Serendip Lab fest.) – Jazz y Jazz 12. Foudre! + Tiger Tigre + Front de cadeaux + Sierra Manhattan + Die Klar + Kwamē – La Station 12. I Hate Models + ABSL + Céline + Chafik Chenouf + Rommek – tba 12. Iggy Pop + Helena Deland (Arte concert fest.) – La Gaîté lyrique ||COMPLET|| 13. Andy Ortmann + Viki + Deeat Palace + Evil Moisture – Les Nautes 13. Foals + Ala.ni + Toh Imago (Arte concert fest.) – La Gaîté lyrique ||COMPLET|| 14. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Olympia 14. Shannon Wright – Trianon 15. Arno Bruil + Les pédales s'amusent + MMY – Espace B 15. Kate Carr + Valérie Vivancos – Instants chavirés (Montreuil) 15/16. Metronomy – Olympia 16. Cycle péruvien + Laurene Ipsum + Robin Kobrynski (Serendip Lab fest.) – Cirque électrique 17. Vindicatrix + Descendeur + Lacustre + Gakona (Serendip Lab fest.) – Cirque électrique 17. City Dragon + Sunk Heaven – Le Zorba 17. Puppetmastaz – Trabendo 17. Automat : musique pour "Archeologia" d'Emmanuelle Huynh – Centre Pompidou 18. Dream Syndicate – Petit Bain 18. Total Victory + Leroy se meurt + Entracte Twist – Espace B 18. A_r_c_c + À travers + Simple Appareil + Blenno Die Wurstbrücke – église Saint-Merri 18. Arktau Eos + Zoät-Aon + Aeoga – Les Voûtes 18. Marie Guilleray + Justin Bennett + Jaap Vink + Gabriel Paiuk + Raviv Ganchrow + Kees Tazelaar + Gottfried Michael Koenig + Johan Van Kreij + Richard Barrett + Ji Youn Kang + Bjarni Gunnarsson (Akousma) – MPAA 18. Maud Geffray + Molecule + DNGLS (MaMA fest.) – La Cigale 18. Cloning + Leandro Barzabal + Léo Dupleix – tba 18. Sydney Valette + Le Prince Harry + Maenad Veyl – Protocol (Pantin) 18. Rendez-Vous + Marble Arch – Le Plan (Ris-Orangis) 18. Stanislav Tolkachev + Unhuman & AN-I + Oake + Nastia Reigel – Protocol (Pantin) 19. Shrouded and the Dinner + King Baxter + Vitaphone + À PLUSIEURS sous Raphaël Julliard + Enzo et Jacques – Folie N4|Parc de la Villette (gratuit) 19. Sisters of Mercy – Bataclan 19. Josin – Lafayette Anticipations 19. Françoise Barrière + Renaud Bajeux + Pali Meursault + Julia Hanadi Al Abed + Yan Maresz (Akousma) – MPAA 19. G4Z + Peru + Jean Turner + Monster X + Steven Marcato + Aly-x (Serendip Lab fest.) – Le Sultan 19. Jeanne Added + Regina Demina + Vale Poher + Theodora + Flore + Gonthier + Vikken (dj) + Rag (dj)... – La Station 19. Adam X + David Caretta b2b The Hacker + 14Anger + Phase Fatale + Terence Fixmer + Raffaele Atanasio + Darzack + De-Dust2 + Dersee – tba 19. Juan Atkins + Vril + Ceephax Acid crew + Antigone + Onur özer + Fasme (Le Champ des machines) – Le Ferme du Buisson (Noisiel) 19. Lingua Ignota – Espace B ||COMPLET|| 19. Pixies + Blood Red Shoes – Olympia ||COMPLET|| 20. Kim Gordon & Dimitri Chamblas – American Center Paris (gratuit sur résa) 21. Pawns + Youth Avoiders + Barren? – Espace B 21. Les morts vont bien + Rivière de corps + René Couteau + Razzle Dazzle (dj) (Obernoir fest.) – L'International 22. Carambolage + Deedee & Tha Abracadabras + Roger de Lille & The Gin Tonics + The Hare (dj) (Obernoir fest.) – L'International 22. Thurston Moore – Trabendo 22. David J – Petit Bain 23. Ecstatic Vision + Les Tigres du futur + Os Noctambulos – ESS'pace 23. Sly & The Family Drone + Stef Ketteringham + Decimus + Dust Breeders – Espace B 23. Plomb + Je t'aime + Electric Press Kit + dj Oxblood (Obernoir fest.) – L'International 23. Four Tet – Le 104 ||COMPLET|| 24. Last Night + Negative Space + Pedigree + Buzz Kull + dj Dave Rockin (Obernoir fest.) – L'International 24. The Necks – La Marbrerie (Montreuil) 25. A Certain Ratio – Petit Bain 25. Poutre + OK fdp + Bruant zizi – ESS'pace 25. Jozef Van Wissem – Crypte Notre-Dame de la Croix (sur résa : jvwparis[@]gmail.com) 25. Fiesta en el Vacio + Axell Larsen + Franz France + Sinead O'Connick jr + Paroi (Serendip Lab fest.) – Jazz y Jazz 25. Catastrophe + Sean O'Hagan + Form – La Maroquinerie 25. Curses + Sophie Morello + Tonn3rr3 + E for Ears & Grāv Jōnz + Trusspe – La Station 25. Bestial Mouth + Veil of Light – Protocol (Pantin) 25. DaGeist + Blind Delon + Outer Limit Lotus + Nick klein + UVB 76 + Dress Rehearsal (Obernoir fest.) – L'International 25. dj Varsovie + Paulie Jan + Blndr b2b Panzer + Mind Matter + End of Mortal Life – Glazart 25. Orphx + O/H + December + Unhuman + Limbus Puerorum – Protocol (Pantin) 26. The Monochrome Set + The Last Detail – Petit Bain 26. Nina Harker + Bianca Warlord – Le Zorba 26. Truckks + Terrier + Achab + Olive Pogo + Car Crash Control (dj) (Obernoir fest.) – L'International 26. The Wheal + Princesse Napälm + L'Orchidée Cosmique + Klymt (Obernoir fest.) – L'International 26. Mørbeck + Philipp Strobel + IV Horsemen – La Machine 26. Alignment + Hadone + UVB + Parfait + Repro – tba 26. Loto Retina + Jakub Lemiszewski + Somaticae + Le Compas dans l'oeil + Ahta Bat + Letal Ataraxia (Serendip Lab fest.) – Le Sultan 27. Stephen Mallinder + Laisse Moi + Hexenschuss (Obernoir fest.) – L'International 28. Kate Tempest – Le Trianon 29. Agent Side Grinder + DaGeist – La Boule noire 29. Pauwels + Mr Marcaille + BOB Cooper – L'ESS'pace 30. The White Screen + Techno Thriller + Novichok – Supersonic (gratuit) 30. Oiseaux-Tempête + Jessica Moss – La Maroquinerie 30. Jenny Hval – Centre Pompidou 30. Battles – Trabendo 31. Skepta + Mura Masa + Hamza + Zola + Ateyaba + Celeste + Duendita + Ezra Collective + Flohio + Kojey Radical + Master Peace + Slowthai + The Comet is Coming + Yussef Dayes + Charlotte Dos Santos + Kojaque (Pitchfork fest.) – La Grand Halle de La Villette 31. Arrington de Dionyso – Instants chavirés (Montreuil) 31. Broken English Club + Cabaret nocturne + IV Horsemen + Gil. Barte – Petit Bain Novembre 01. Chromatics + Belle & Sebastian + Primal Scream + John Talabot + Weyes Blood + Barrie + Briston Maroney + Chai + Desire + Helado Negro + Jackie Mendoza + Nilüfer Yanya + Orville Peck + Sheer Mag + Squir + Loving + Nelson Beer + Sons of Raphael (Pitchfork fest.) – La Grand Halle de La Villette 01. Park Hie Jin + HAAI + Afrodeutsche + Nite Fleit (Pitchfork fest. after party) – Trabendo  01. Under Black Helmet b2b Hadone + Inhalt der Nacht b2b Echoes of October + Danilo Incorvala + Makornik + Félicie – Les Docks de Paris (La Plaine-Saint-Denis) 02. The 1975 + Charli XCX + 2manysdj (dj) + Aurora + Agar Agar + SebastiAn + Aeris Roves vs Jamila Woods + Jessica Pratt + Kedr Livanskiy + Korantemaa + BEA1991 + Caroline Polachek + Ela Minus + KhadyaK + Mk.gee + Oklou + Tobi Lou (Pitchfork fest.) – La Grand Halle de La Villette 03. Ensemble économique + CIA débutante – Le Chinois (Montreuil) 05. Body of Light – Supersonic (gratuit) 06. The Murder Capital – Nouveau Casino 06. Scattered Purgatory + Qian Geng + UVB76 + ruò tán – Le Cirque électrique 06. Glacial – Instants chavirés (Montreuil) 07. Camilla Sparksss + Hyperculte [+ Xiu Xiu : ANNULÉ] – Petit Bain 07. Kælan Mikla – La Boule noire 08. Bedroom Community – Cité de la musique|Philharmonie 08. Part Chimp + Gnod + Hey Colossus – Petit Bain 08. Sourdurent + Raymonde – Pan Piper 08. Jad Wio + Love in Prague – Gibus  08. Boy Harscher – Trabendo ||COMPLET|| 09. Molchat Doma + War Scenes – La Station 10. Amiina : cinéconcert sur "Fantomas" de Louis Feuillade – Le Studio|Philharmonie 10. Ôlafur Arnald + Hugar – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 10. Fontaine D.C. – Bataclan 12. Deerhunter + Moon Diagrams – Trabendo 13. Mick Harvey & JP Silo, Steve Shelley, Glenn Lewis – Les Trois Baudets 14. Dinah Bird & Jean-Philippe Renoult (Inaudible Matters) – La Gaîté lyrique 14. Girl Band + Silverbacks – La Maroquinerie 15. Kap Bambino – La Gaîté lyrique 15. Von Pariahs + Nursery – Point FMR 15. Chemical Brothers – Seine musicale (Boulogne-Billancourt) 17. Nitzer Ebb + Liebknecht – La Machine 17. Tropical Fuck Storm – Badaboum 18. Omni + The Gotobeds + Pleasure Principle – La Boule noire 19. Earth + Helen Money – Petit Bain 20. Lucy Railton + Sean Baxter + Jessica Ekomane – Instants chavirés (Montreuil) 21. Cate Le Bon + Grimm Grimm – Petit Bain 22. Rubin Steiner + Dombrance + Ambeyance + Meteo Mirage – La Maroquinerie 22. Nursery + Casse Gueule + Tout de suite – Cirque électrique 22. Kazu Makino (Blonde Redhead) – Les Étoiles 23. Billy Chyldish + Le Villejuif Undergroud + Petausaure (fest. BBmix) – Carré Bellefuille (Boulogne-Billancourt) 23. 999999999 + Jawbreakrs + Nico Moreno + Perc + Sentimental Rave + Softcoresoft + Trym + Parfait + UR trax – tba 24. TR/ST – Le Trianon 24. Mdou Moctar – La Boule noire 24. Midori Takada + Carla dal Forno + Felicia Atkinson (fest. BBmix) – Carré Bellefuille (Boulogne-Billancourt) 24. The Young Gods + Les Tétines noires – La Machine 26. Wardruna – Olympia 27. Poly-Math + Bruit ≤ + Maven – Supersonic (gratuit) 27. The Stranglers – Olympia 28. Derek Holzer + Cate Hope & Lisa McKinney + Antoine Schmitt & Hortense Gauthier (fest. Bruits blancs) – Le Cube (gratuit sur résa) 28. The Psychotic Monks – Trabendo 28. Artl + Powerdove – Petit Bain 29. Scanner – Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil 30. Mondkopf – Médiathèque musicale de Paris (gratuit) 30. Donato Dozzy + Max Cooper + Terry & Cyan Riley + Ensemble intercontemporain joue "Drumming" de Steve Reich + Ensemble Social Silence joue "Music for Airport" de Brian Eno + Apollo noir + Récital pour marimbas (Marathon fest) – La Gaîté lyrique Décembre 01. Motorama – La Maroquinerie 03. White Hills – Supersonic (gratuit) 03. Belgrado – Espace B 06. Phillip Glass Ensemble : cinéconcert sur "Koyaanisqatsi" de Godfrey Reggio – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 07. Phillip Glass Ensemble : cinéconcert sur "Powaqqatsi" de Godfrey Reggio – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 07. Kokoko! – La Gaîté lyrique 08. Phillip Glass Ensemble : cinéconcert sur "Naqoyqatsi" de Godfrey Reggio – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 11. Boris – Le Gibus  12. Mono + Jo Quail – Petit Bain 12. Kompromat (Vitalic & Rebeka Warrior) – La Cigale 13. Contrefaçon – La Gaîté lyrique 13. Regards extrêmes + Lisieux + Ascending divers – Les Voûtes 18. Amenra – Bataclan 2020 Janvier 04. Rokia Traoré + Ballaké Cissoko & Vincent Segal – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 16. Black Midi – Le Carreau du Temple 17. Edith Nylon – Petit Bain 18. Lee Ranaldo & Raül Refree – Le 104 18. Franck Vigroux : "Flesh" (Biennale Nemo) – Maison des arts et de la culture (Créteil) 29. Rendez-Vous – La Cigale 30. Editors – Salle Pleyel 31. Tindersticks – Salle Pleyel Février 02. Sunn o))) – La Gaîté lyrique 09. Explosions in the Sky – La Cigale 13. Ride – Le Trianon 16. Orchestral Manoeuvre in the Dark – La Cigale 21. Ensemble Links joue "Drumming" de Steve Reich + Cabaret contemporain : "Détroit" + Molécule – Le 104 24. Sleater Kinney – Le Trianon Mars 06. Frustration – Le Trianon 07. Ensemble intercontemporain joue Steve Reich : cinéconcert sur un film de Gerhard Richter – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 20. Ensemble Dedalus joue "Occam Ocean" d'Éliane Radigue – Le Studio|Philharmonie 21. Front 242 + She Past Away – Élysée Montmartre 21/22. Laurie Anderson : "The Art of Falling" – Cité de la musique|Philharmonie 27. Lebanon Hanover – La Gaîté lyrique 28. Ensemble Links joue "Drumming" de Steve Reich + Cabaret contemporain joue Kraftwerk – théâtre de la Cité internationale  Mai 08. Max Richter : "Infra" + Jlin + Ian William Craig – Cité de la musique|Philharmonie 09. Max Richter : "Voices" – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 10. Max Richter : "Recomposed" & "Three Worlds" – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 24. Damon Albarn – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie

[phanfictioncatalogue]

Oblivious!Phan Masterlist

Links Last Checked: May 11th, 2022

A Maze of Thoughts (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: Dan’s oblivious to Phil’s feelings towards him. His own feelings -and maybe even his world- are thrown out of control once Phil brings home a boyfriend.

Dan and Phil play the CHAPSTICK CHALLENGE (ao3) - WhenJoshIsJoseph

Summary: In which Dan and Phil somehow end up doing the Chapstick Challenge together on Phil's channel.

Don't wait that long (ao3) - Dry_The_Rain

Summary: Phil wants a dog, he doesn't care about the landlord or the work, he wants one and he'll be damned if Dan stops him.

Even In My Worst Lies (You Saw The Truth In Me) (ao3) - twoheadlights (fizzfic)

Summary: au where dan and phil are actors pretending to be boyfriends for pr.

For You I'd Wait (Til Kingdom Come) (ao3) - blueshirt

Summary: 5 times throughout the years that Dan and Phil did the FWB thing, 1 time they didn’t, and 1 time it all worked out.

It's No Good (Unless It's Real) (ao3) - blueshirt

Summary: The first time it happens is an accident.

(Or, the one where Dan accidentally starts reverse-dating Phil in the midst of executing a foreign tour, sharing the world's tiniest mattress, and generally failing at Amish table-making.)

Let The Bells Ring On A Fool's Holiday (ao3) - softsocks (orphan_account)

Summary: It's Christmas Eve, and Phil hasn't seen Dan since he stormed out a week ago.

Will things be all happy and cheery when Dan comes back? Or have things changed between them forever?

Oblivious - phan-panda

Summary: Dan shows up drunk at PJ’s house. He confesses his feelings for Phil, unaware that he is in the other room.

One Where Dan Is Snow White - daniactuallysnuffledthatpopcorn

Summary: Phil gets a girlfriend and Dan is oblivious.

OTP (ao3) - brookwrites

Summary: Dan and Phil are simply friends, but when Phil gets a secret admirer, things get more complicated. After an oblivious Phil finally realizes that the admirer was really Dan, the entire school somehow manages to as well. Can their relationship (or either of them) hold up under the weight of the fact that they’re suddenly the school’s OTP?

Phil - oversizedpenis

Summary: Dan suffering through an existential crisis throughout the years and Phil being entirely oblivious.

Soccer Dads (ao3) - phantropolis

Summary: Dan accompanies Phil to their son’s soccer practice for the first time, only to discover that the soccer mums flirt with a very oblivious Phil in very obvious ways. Featuring jealous!Dan and their son, Jack, who is a surprisingly talented player.

The Essence of an Absence - ravehowell

Summary: Dan has a dumb crush on an oblivious best friend, a poetry blog and a boyfriend that doesn’t exist. (Dan also learns how to lie to Phil and can’t tell when to stop.)

The Great Colin Conundrum - gorgeousdan

Summary: Dan’s boyfriend breaks up with him, and Phil does his very best to get Dan to realize they’re perfect for each other. Unfortunately, Dan’s oblivious and his dog, Colin, is out to ruin Phil’s plans.

There's A Storm Brewing (In My Teacup) (ao3) - orangesofsymmetry

Summary: Today's specials: caramel macchiato with a side dish of this drink gets you laid.

Third Time Lucky - camisadan

Summary: Dan keeps trying to ask Phil the ‘big question’, and Phil is a little oblivious to it.

Unburdened And Becoming (ao3) - wiintersoldiier

Summary: Dan is being a stubborn little shit and not moving from his sofa crease. Phil thinks of a way to get his attention.

[tumtumtrema]

I was tagged by: @but-sometimes-im-not thank you, Erika!🌸

Name: that’s classified information but call me tumtum or whatever

Birthday: tHaT’S cLasSiFieD iNfOrmAtiOn

Zodiac Sign: Aquarius (sun), Sagittarius (moon)

Height: 183cm (which is around 6′ or something right?) which is... quite tall. 

Hobbies: reading, music, cinema, crying over other people’s art, gardening, making random stuff out of wood, swimming, long walks, daydreaming, petting pets, overthinking Gentleman Jack ¯\_(ツ)_/¯   

Favorite color: the colour of the sky on a clear winter morning

Favorite books: I hate this question. Fiction: Anything by Virginia Woolf, but if I had to pick one, probably Orlando because that was the first Woolf I ever read. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. L’Étranger by Albert Camus. Les Belles Images by Simone de Beauvoir. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. And Hermione Granger is my Root™️. Non-fiction: Loads loads loads of philosophy and basically my faves change every week because I keep discovering new things. Anyway. Anything by Hannah Arendt, but The Origins of Totalitarianism is a good place to start. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein (I’m not joking). Le Deuxième Sexe by Simone de Beauvoir. Quiet by Susan Cain, How to be everything by Emilie Wapnick. Poetry: Elizabeth Bishop. Emily Dickinson. Sappho and other classical Greek poetry. And Shakespeare sonnets 4evah.

Last song I listened to: Borderline by Tame Impala

Last movie I watched: Kingsman: The Secret Service because it was on the telly last night and I needed a laugh and I find Colin Firth in a suit slaying folks aesthetically very pleasing don’t judge me. 

Inspiration: Suranne Jones whispering every time I come here.

Dream Job: Philosopher (basically my dream is to get paid for overthinking - currently studying philosophy at university so who knows. A girl can dream.) 

Inspiration for my url: my url is a literal brain fart I’m sorry. 

Tagging: @yellowlitchi @soulofacircus @lustenina09  @thehappyscavenger​ @native-gallifreyan and every other darling who wants to do this, feel free!💜

(Edit: I’m serious, picking 5 people to tag gave me a slight anxiety attack so if I haven’t tagged you and you’d like to do this, consider yourself tagged babe okay?)

[thesunlounge]

Reviews 263: Benjamin Lew

Every retrospective release on STROOM tells a story and one of my favorite yet comes via Benjamin Lew’s Le personnage principal est un peuple isolé. In this case, STROOM transports us to 80s Brussels and a loose community of musical expats that were perhaps enticed to Belgium by labels such as Les Disques du Crépuscule, Factory Benelux, and Marc Hollander’s Crammed Discs. A meeting place within this creative scene was a tropically themed bar called Le Papaya, which employed author, poet, and generous creative vessel Benjamin Lew…a “enlightened amateur” in the words of Hollander who came to music rather nefariously, having no interest in the form until stealing some records from a local shop in his youth. Of course, renaissance man as he is, Lew at some point developed a passion for analog synthesis, using the daylight hours, his electronics, and an 8-track recorder borrowed from Hollander to explore ancient African cosmologies and Arabian desert fantasies. He began bringing his tapes into Le Papaya and passing them on to the resident musicians, which led to a rich partnership with Tuxedomoon, especially Steven Brown. After shifts at the bar, Lew would return to his apartment with Brown, giving him free reign to color the taped synthesizer compositions with saxophone and keys…a process that eventually involved Gilles Martin and Hollander as well, resulting in Lew’s debut album: Douzième journée: le verbe, la parure, l’Amour, released in 1982 on Crammed Discs.

But it is the period following this album that STROOM is concerned with on Le personnage principal est un peuple isolé, which collects together tracks from 1986’s A propos d’un paysage (also written with Brown and including Vini Reilly), Nebka from 1988, Le parfum du raki from 1993, and a curious collaboration with Samy Birnbach of Minimal Compact called When God Was Famous that married Lew’s enigmatic compositions to Birnbach’s evocative readings of poetry from Yeats, Hesse, Apollinaire, Patchen, and many other famous poets from across America and Europe. As always, label head Ziggy Devriendt has assembled from these albums a weird and wonderful collection of songs and arranged them into a wholly unique journey, one that ignores temporal borders and instead attempts to strike at the very heart of Lew’s magical and collaborative sonic world. Across the twelve tracks, we hear chamber ensembles playing from the sea floor, exotic lounge jazz emanating from shadowy clubs at the edge of time, sea shanty horn minimalism and Afro-idiophonics, spiritual ragas beamed in from alien dimensions, ambient liquids dripping within crystal caverns, dramatic spoken word flowing above dark industrial lullabies, scraped string riffs wandering beneath fourth world flutes, and choirs of distortion singing above wandering pianos and glimmering chimes…all led by Lew’s otherworldly synthesizer, the imaginative production of Martin, and the clarinets, keys, and drums of Hollander.

Benjamin Lew - Le personnage principal est un peuple isolé (STROOM, 2019) “Profondeurs des eaux des laques” features lazily flowing guitar arpeggios from Vini Reilly that remind me of The Durutti Columns “All That Love and Maths Can Do” while Steven Brown uses clarinet and soprano sax to weave deep earth mysticisms and layers of opium den ambiance, with occasional emotive bends into the feverish night. Lew enters with aquatic pings and deep sea refractions…his soft electro-pulsations coalescing with the reed instruments and guitars to create a mysterious underwater landscape. “Moments” follows with space bubbles sequenced into an exotica waltz and layered horns moaning in desperation. Brown traces melancholia spirals high in the sky on clarinet and a jazz rhythm emerges from the ether, with Alain Lefebvre’s tapped rides and brushed snares locking into a daydream glide. Lew’s electronic evoke plucked string instruments from alien planets and Hollander adds a touch of synthesis, with ascendent Afro-jazz melodies sourced from synthetic brass. The title track is built around world percussion hypnotics from Gilles Martin while Renaud Pion and Michel Berckmans evoke a small scale orchestra of woodwinds and reeds moving through mystic motions. Denis Moulin’s sky-seeking violin performance recalls the ecstatic folk ragas of Henry Flynt and the air is colored through by chanting voices, fluttering horn solos, and wavering tremolo breaths as ethnological drums merge completely with Lew’s percolating synthesis…the whole thing like a soundtrack for a robed caravan of desert sages marching in unison beneath a blood red moon.

“Face a ce qui se derobe” is dominated by the clarinets and saxophones of Brown and Hollander, which periodically wash over a disturbing panorama of cosmic chimes, rapid motion synth trails, and polyrhythmic pad layers creating strange swirling vortices. The woodwinds lock into slow motion and slightly drunken trance patterns that align with the contemporaneous work of Yasuaki Shimizu while also presaging the guttural sax spells of Colin Stetson. And Reilly is supposedly somewhere in the mix on guitar, though he’s impossible to discern…so alien are Lew’s electronics and so overwhelming are the cycling reed hallucinations. The exotica of “Qu’il fosse suit” sees electronics mimicking birds of paradise as kalimbas and balafons play minimalist spirituals for an African sunrise. Rainforest hand drums weave shambolic polyrhythms while Tuxedomoon’s Blaine L. Reininger soars to transcendental heights on violin and as in the previous track, dazzling woodwind patterns drift through the mix, though here moving in round, with layers sourced from Hollander’s clarinet flowing ear-to-ear and dreamily overlapping…his bubbling runs giving way to gaseous drones and then repeating. “The Wheel” is one of two pieces featuring Samy Birnbach’s poetry readings, and here Lew’s synths and Peter Principle’s guitars background a double-tracked and pained reading of W.B. Yeats’ “The Tower.” Bass throbs, feedback wisps, scraped starshine textures, and bell-tone modulations sit above glowing reverb metals and there’s a kinship with Current 93, though more so Tibet’s later explorations of pagan neo-folk and dream psychedelia.

The second Lew and Birnbach collaboration is “Little Birds Sit on Your Shoulder,” which floats upon the springtide cellos of Aurelia Boven. Her themes for fairy flower forests are accompanied by Lew’s silvery electronics and liquid space glitters…all setting the stage for Birnbach’s reading of a poem from Kenneth Patchen, though no longer delivered in a desperate swoon, but instead clearly spoken and apathetic. “Etendue” hearkens back to Lew’s early experiments accompanying his one-off Fossile fanzine, as warbling and wavering tape loops featuring choral arias are smothered in burning smoke. Majestic voices sing together…their waves of heavenly power washing side to side while Brown wanders through it all on piano, with beauteous chordscapes and fantasy dream strands. Lew adds further tape layers featuring wild laughter and whispered conversations that slowly wash out the choirs and all the while, the pianos grow in intensity. Black hole vapors flow in from the void in “Ces Personnages” while machines communicate with spirits of the cosmos. New age sequences swim through oceanic dream worlds, wisps of galactic light wrap around quivering feedback textures, and searing fuzz leads scream through ethereal hazes of blue, with everything supported by bass synths floating on unseen currents. There’s a connection with the underwater galaxy explorations of ÆOLUS and Iury Lech, though it’s all interspersed by the moaning reed and brass spiritualisms of Pion and Luc Van Lieshout…these skronking and slow motion atmospheres of New Orleans jazz transmuted into a funereal drift.

Aside from treatments by Martin, “Joyeux regrets imprécis” is a Lew solo adventure, with electronics evoking chimes and gemstones gently colliding and decaying through gaseous fx. Synthesized pianos lock into mesmeric sequences, mermaids weave joyous siren songs, and ominous bass pulses and soothing percussive clacks float through the mix, with the music once again touching on the darker and more exploratory shades of new age. Though Lew contorts his synths into many unbelievable forms across this collection, his work in “Hommes assis devant un mur chaulé” is truly mystifying, as electronics evoke Afro-psych guitars and electrified Middle Eastern string instruments, only as if reduced to a shamanic trance. Wiggling scrapes and glissando runs are interspersed between an esoteric riff out and flutey leads work over top, all fragile, spacey, and vaporous. Choirs are smeared into a shadow panorama, Arabian symphonies play desert incantations, and as things progress, there’s the overwhelming sense of galloping camelback across some infinite expanse of sand and desolation. Closing track “La magnifique alcoolique” is named after a patron of Le Papaya…a mysterious woman into alcohol and maybe “other things” who Lew avoided for fear of being pulled into her dark world. Musically, sampled pianos shamble through a hallucinogenic procession, almost harp-like and playful, though washed over by tones of sadness. Peter Principle’s e-bow guitars sing out alongside Martins ethno-drums, with layers of sustaining and reversing psychedelia swimming within smoldering clouds of bass distortion.

(images from my personal copy)

[wolfie-wolfgang]

I’m thrilled by this! Here’s a video of that poetry and art event that I was a part of last week in New York. Great to be a part of an otherwise all American event over Independence Day weekend! I was honoured!

[bermudianabroad]

2018 in books

Reread Don’t bother Yes, bother *Nobel Winner*

Every time you see Margaret Atwood, do a shot.

Fiction

We Need to Talk About Kevin- Lionel Shriver

Questions of Travel- Michelle de Kretser

Fingersmith- Sarah Waters

The Dog Stars- Peter Heller

Hag-Seed - Margaret Atwood

MaddAdam- Margaret Atwood

Moral Disorder- Margaret Atwood

Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer

Authority- Jeff VanderMeer

The Strange Bird- Jeff VanderMeer

The River- Rumer Godden

Always Coming Home- Ursula K. Le Guin

Left Hand of Darkness- Ursula K. Le Guin

The Figure in the Carpet- Henry James

The Glass-Blowers- Daphne du Maurier

Ancillary Justice- Ann Leckie

Ancillary Sword- Ann Leckie

Ancillary Mercy- Ann Leckie

Moon Tiger- Penelope Lively

C.- Tom McCarthy

Black Girl, White Girl- Joyce Carol Oates

Wide Sargasso Sea- Jean Rhys

Snap- Belinda Bauer

Stay With Me- Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

The Essex Serpent- Sarah Perry

Short Stories

The Beijing of Possibilities: Stories - Jonathan Tel

Till September Petronella - Jean Rhys

Wilderness Tips: Short Stories- Margaret Atwood

Delicate, Edible Birds- Lauren Groff

Attrib and other stories- Eley Williams

Murder in the Dark- Margaret Atwood

What it Means When a Man Falls from the Sky- Lesley Nneka Arimah

Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales- ed. Angela Carter

Non-Fiction

To A Mountain in Tibet- Colin Thubron

Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea and the Deep Origins of Consciousness- Peter Godfrey-Smith

In Translation

Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Memorias de mis putas tristes)-Gabriel García Márquez [Colombian Spanish]

The Elephant Vanishes ( Zō no shōmetsu )- Haruki Murakami [Japanese]

Without Blood (Senza sangue) - Alessandro Baricco [Italian]

Lust, Caution (Sik Gaai) - Eileen Chang [Cantonese]

The Vegetarian (Chaesikjuuija) - Han Kang [Korean]

The Flea Palace (Bit Palas) - Elif Shafak [Turkish]

The Castle of Crossed Destinies ( Il castello dei destini incrociati) - Italo Calvino [Italian]

Three Japanese Short Stories - Akutagawa and Others [Japanese]

Eva Luna- Isabel Allende [Chilean Spanish]

From the Mouth of the Whale (Rökkurbýsnir)- Sjón [Icelandic]

Bonjour Tristesse- Françoise Sagan [French]

Fo’ Da Youth (technically; young is a state of mind)

The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage- Phillip Pullman 

The Book with No Pictures- BJ Novak

Stuck- Oliver Jeffers

Poetry

Poems, New and Collected- Wisława Szymborska* [trans from Polish]

Comics and Graphic Novels

Saga, Vol 1. - Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples

Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir- Malik Sajad

[crepeandpenn]

Issue No. 4, October 2019

Issue No. 4, October 2019

About this issue: Poetry contributors are Gale Acuff, Alondra Adame, Elodie Barnes, Kendall A. Bell, Gail Bello, Wanda Deglane, Nathan Dennis, Sarah A. Etlinger, Kristin Garth, Kyla Houbolt, Colin James, Cassidy Jones, Griffon Kaye, Adrian Kresnak, Callan Latham, Courtney LeBlanc, Richard LeDue, D.S. Maolalai, Neha Maqsood, Siddhartha Prabhat Nigam, P.S. Nolf, Hava Özbas, Ada Pelonia, Amanda…

[bts-starlight]

Get To Know You Tag

Rules: Tag 10 blogs you want to get to know better.

I was tagged by @taev-gucci I love you, thank you :)

Name: Meabh

Gender: Female

Star Sign: Aries

Height: 5'7

Middle Name: Antonia

Put your iTunes on shuffle, what are the first 6 songs that popped up?

BTS - Propose

BTS (RM & V) - 4 O'Clock

SHINee - Married To The Music

One Direction - History

BTS - Blood Sweat & Tears (can you tell I love BTS????)

Justin Timberlake - Can’t Stop The Feeling

Grab the book nearest to you and turn to page 23. What’s line 17?

The book is, “If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller” by Italo Calvino

“Chief Gorin is arriving later than all the predictions tonight,” someone says, because at that moment the chief enters the bar.

Ever had a poem or a song written about you? By someone else? No. But I do write poetry from time to time, sometimes in the first person or using “she” which usually refers to me, as I write about myself and my experiences with others and things around me.

When was the last time you played air guitar? Actually I remember this - about 8 hours ago when I was walking to get the bus and I was listening to some Day6 songs so I played air guitar and someone walked past me giving me this really sympathetic look lol

Who is your celebrity crush? All of BTS (specifically Kim Taehyung), Choi Minho, Shawn Mendes, Colin O’Donoghue, Dylan O’Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Tom Holland and Lee Jong-suk (thank you ‘W’ for introducing me to this beautiful person)

What’s a sound you hate? Love? I would say none in particular, I like silence, I like noise. However, I hate the sound of the fire drill bell at college when it goes off at 7am and I have to go outside in my pyjamas in the cold. Just no. I love the sound of laughter.

Do you believe in ghosts? Aliens? OKay kids siT DOwn and get ready for a story. One day I was playing a boardgame with my friends at my house when we were about 7/8 years old. We couldn’t figure out how to build it (it was so complicated, honestly) so we left the boardgame in pieces and went into the kitchen to ask my mum for help. She said okay but to go back into the room and wait for her which was all good. But when we got back into the room, THE BOARDGAME WAS BUILT????? There was no one else in the house and the window in the room was open and I swear on my soul I saw some white wispy thing go out the window. Let’s say I have never been the same since. So yes, I do believe in ghosts. Aliens too. 

Do you drive? If so have you ever crashed? I am learning to drive, I have failed my test once (lol) and I’m doing it again next week??? I have never crashed, thankfully, though there have been about 3 close calls where someone has nearly drove into me (thankfully all is okay)

What was the last book you read? I think a book called “The Grimm Legacy” but Polly Shulman. My friend let me borrow it, I think it’s more of a young teenage book but she was shocked when I hadn’t read it so she let me borrow it. 

Do you like the smell of gasoline? Do I? Do I? Of course I do!? I could literally smell it all day. (I know it’s bad, don’t judge) Honestly, I think I worked with it in a past life.

What was the last movie you saw? Now You See Me - it’s amazing 10/10 recommend, one of my favourite movies (when I watched this, I actually was forcing my friend to watch it for the first time.) Naturally, she loved it. 

What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had? Medically, I should say when I almost fractured my left wrist because I had to go to hospital and get one of those hand glove things with the metal bars to straighten my wrist out. However, crashing into the wall on my bike for me is the worst because all I remember is the pain and blood everywhere

Do you have any obsessions right now? Photography, I’d say. I always loved photography but I have a polaroid and I love getting pictures with that!

Do you tend to hold grudges on people who have done you wrong? Yes. I’ll hold a grudge forever if it’s particularly bad, but to others outside of the conflict, it may look as if I’ve forgiven someone. However, I never really do. It’s more a forgive but never forget type of thing? 

In a relationship? Nope!

I’m tagging: @hqfreak @jiminnie-jams @saltyassuga @calcio-jimin @cloudycypher @solafideflower @catladyjaebum @dustandrubies @taengerinee @tae-la-tiger

[letswatchmoviesnstuff]

Short: Stuck in Love (2012)

Nat Wolff is always cast as characters I know would destroy me emotionally. This whole movie he quite literally just mopes around with his hood up, reading Stephen King and writing poetry about the girl he loves. I mean come on am I really that transparent (yes!!)

And then there’s his older sister (Lily Collins), who plays a cynical, emotionally detached writer with a fear of commitment.... it’s basically like this movie is staring me in the face!!! 

I don’t really know how to write about this movie. It’s pretty good and there are moments that are pretty cheesy, but if you’re looking for a movie to watch that’ll dip just beneath the surface of something great - then this is it.

It lies heavily on the backbone of its great cast. It would actually be pretty difficult to make this movie terrible due to that. Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Connelly, Nat Wolff, Logan Lerman, Kristen Bell, Lily Collins... 

My largest flaw is I don’t really know what it’s trying to tell me. It’s a story about a family, harbored by the romanticism that comes along with being artists, and dealing with their lives and heartbreak. But at some points I found it not really saying much at all. Then at certain points I found it telling me everything at once. I also had a handful of times I rolled my eyes. 

The problem I have lies less with the actual dialogue and more with the script. It feels hollow with actors who deserved to be trusted with more talented. Why would you put my boy Rusty through a scene that felt like I was watching an episode of Ned’s Declassified? And also why is his name Rusty????

Thankfully there are characters in this seem real. Kate (Liana Liberato) and Sam (Lily Colins) seem so close in comparison to what I was feeling at that age. Some scenes were a bit much from Lily Collins, but I’d say her character also went through the biggest change of pace - it’s hard to come to terms with yourself as a mean girl. It’s hard to turn it all off and turn into a nice one. But why does she have to all of a sudden dress awful once she turns nice??

We also didn’t need three “dad cooking with his kids” montages -- I get it, they have a good relationship.

Anyways I’m finding more things to hate as I get through this review. Just watch it for fun. Especially if you love any of the actors listed. It’s worth it.

Quotes:

“You can’t make me write dad,”

“I don’t have to, you’re a writer, you’ll do it yourself.”

Rating: 6.8/10

[mariefsaintfleur-blog]

Ten Interesting Haitian Novels

1. Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat

“ Just as her father makes the wrenching decision to send her away for a chance at a better life, Claire Limyè Lanmè—Claire of the Sea Light—suddenly disappears. As the people of the Haitian seaside community of Ville Rose search for her, painful secrets, haunting memories, and startling truths are unearthed. In this stunning novel about intertwined lives, Edwidge Danticat crafts a tightly woven, breathtaking tapestry that explores the mysterious bonds we share—with the natural world and with one another.’‘ (Amazon.com)

2. Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

“At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York, to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti--to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence, in a novel that bears witness to the traditions, suffering, and wisdom of an entire people.” (Amazon.com)

3. The Book of Emma by Marie- Célie Agnant

“ Confined to a psychiatric hospital following the murder of her young daughter, Emma Bratte refuses to speak any language but her mother tongue. Dr. MacLeod has brought in an interpreter, Flore, to help him evaluate Emma's fitness to stand trial. "Both crazy and too lucid," an articulate and knowledgeable Emma relates her long battle against despair, through striking images of her lonely but determined and creative struggle to win the love of a mother misled by a racist society and then through tales of the suffering and resistance of some of her female forebears. These narratives, which are both epic and dramatic, and their contrasting reception by the officious psychiatrist and the sensitive Flore, produce rich layers of experience and meaning in this concisely narrated work.  Flore recognizes Emma's faithfulness to her ancestors' struggle and their wisdom, both in her desperate gesture to save her child from the cruel humiliations of prejudice and in her definitive act of rejoining her ancestors when she has effectively fulfilled her duty to pass on the memory, theirs and hers, to guide her successors, like Flore.” (Amazon.com)

4. Children of Heroes by Lyonel Trouillot

“ Their father’s favorite saying, between drinks and blows, was, “Life holds only bad surprises, and the last one will be death.” And now, Colin observes of the man sprawled under all the broken furniture, their father was definitely and forever out of surprises. Children of Heroes is the story Colin tells of what happened—and what happened before that. Testimony, confession, a child’s outpouring: this is his painfully matter-of-fact account of how he and his older sister, Mariéla, killed the man who tyrannized them and their piously pathetic mother, who is now a “blank.” As he describes their flight from the slum in Haiti to an uncertain somewhere called “far away,” Colin conjures a bleak picture of the life he and his sister are trying to leave behind. And whether these two—children only in age—are guilty or merely victims of the violence festering in their city is a question only the reader can answer. In its picture of a world in which the heroes and the destroyers—whether fathers or leaders—are often indistinguishable, and where life’s poetry and poverty are inextricably linked, this book tells a story of Haiti that is at once intimate, universal, and otherworldly.’‘ (Amazon.com)

5. Clerise of Haiti by Marie-Therese Labossiere Thomas

“ A young domestic worker devoted to her prominent urban employers in Les Cayes, Haiti, Clerise progressively renounces the traditional values of her rural background. When she later marries and opens a small business, class conflicts and divided loyalties develop amid the terror of the Duvalier regime, and she is ultimately caught in the escalation of violence. Clerise of Haiti is a story of three generations of Haitian women, and covers a thirty year span ending in the late 1970s. Full of humor and resilience, Clerise's unique perspective into the upper classes and the world of the poor explores the complexities of life in a provincial town and highlights the socioeconomic and political forces at play in Haiti.’’ (Amazon.com)

6. The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat

“ It is 1937 and Amabelle Désir, a young Haitian woman living in the Dominican Republic, has built herself a life as the servant and companion of the wife of a wealthy colonel. She and Sebastien, a cane worker, are deeply in love and plan to marry. But Amabelle's  world collapses when a wave of genocidal violence, driven by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, leads to the slaughter of Haitian workers. Amabelle and Sebastien are separated, and she desperately flees the tide of violence for a Haiti she barely remembers.Already acknowledged as a classic, this harrowing story of love and survival—from one of the most important voices of her generation—is an unforgettable memorial to the victims of the Parsley Massacre and a testimony to the power of human memory.’‘ (Amazon.com)

7. Haiti Noir by Various Authors

“ Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.” (goodreads.com)

8. Untwine by Edwidge Danticat

“ Giselle Boyer and her identical twin, Isabelle, are as close as sisters can be, even as their family seems to be unraveling. Then the Boyers have a tragic encounter that will shatter everyone's world forever.Giselle wakes up in the hospital, injured and unable to speak or move. Trapped in the prison of her own body, Giselle must revisit her past in order to understand how the people closest to her -- her friends, her parents, and above all, Isabelle, her twin -- have shaped and defined her. Will she allow her love for her family and friends to lead her to recovery? Or will she remain lost in a spiral of longing and regret?” (Amazon.com)

9. The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat

“ In this award-winning, bestselling work of fiction that moves between Haiti in the 1960s and New York in the present day, we meet an unusual man who is harboring a vital, dangerous secret. He is a quiet man, a good father and husband, a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a landlord and barber with a terrifying scar across his face. As the book unfolds, we enter the lives of those around him, and his secret is slowly revealed. Edwidge Danticat’s brilliant exploration of the “dew breaker”-- or torturer-- is an unforgettable story of love, remorse, and hope; of personal and political rebellions; and of the compromises we make to move beyond the most intimate brushes with history. It firmly establishes her as one of America’s most essential writers.’‘ (Amazon.com)

10. American Street by Ibi Zoboi

“ On the corner of American Street and Joy Road, Fabiola Toussaint thought she would finally find une belle vie—a good life.But after they leave Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Fabiola’s mother is detained by U.S. immigration, leaving Fabiola to navigate her loud American cousins, Chantal, Donna, and Princess; the grittiness of Detroit’s west side; a new school; and a surprising romance, all on her own.Just as she finds her footing in this strange new world, a dangerous proposition presents itself, and Fabiola soon realizes that freedom comes at a cost. Trapped at the crossroads of an impossible choice, will she pay the price for the American dream?’‘ (goodreads.com)