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awesomezorbabooksus-blog · 1 year ago

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Top Book Reviewers in India: A Comprehensive Guide

When an author writes a book, the thoughts going through his mind are ‘people should read and enjoy or benefit from my book.’ That can happen if people know about the existence of your book and some other relevant facts about your book. How can you, the author, communicate these facts to readers? One important way would be to tap book reviewers. There are numerous book reviewers in India. Which book reviewer suits your book and will help your book make a mark with readers? We have researched and collated the below list to help you in this endevour. Rakhi Jayashankar ‘Outset books’ blog Blogger, writer and critic Started in 2015 Has several campaigns like little readers, book marathon, top book reviewer award 37.6K followers on Instagram 4K followers on Facebook What made you want to start a blog? I have been a writer since I could remember. It is to promote my book that I started a blog. Soon my publisher asked me if I could review a book in my blog. Which genre do you love the most and why? I love mythological fiction and thrillers. What do you do when you’re not reading? I am a Holistic Wellness Coach and an entrepreneur. As a mother of three and the founder of a community ‘ Moms of Kochi’, I am a handful

Vidhya Thakkar Young entrepreneur Founder of Mumbai Bookstagram– A community of all Mumbai Book Bloggers Started a challenge called Balance the Books challenge Likes to review Romance, Thriller, Mystery, Mythology and Biographies. I started the blog in 2014 and an Instagram account in 2017 2.4K followers on Facebook 24K followers on Instagram 2,427 followers on Twitter Which genre do you love the most and why? I like reading romance and poetry as it helps me escape reality and heals me. What are the difficulties you face as a book blogger and how do you overcome them? The difficulty would be managing the deadlines and being subtle yet clear with my review.

Aakanksha Jain Blog called Books Charming I’ve been engaged in this since 2017 Quit her job to become a full-time blogger Also, an author of a non-fiction book 1.30 million readers on website 11K followers on Instagram 1.8K followers on Facebook 3,410 followers on Twitter

What made you want to start a blog? The desire to forge my path and assume a leadership role rather than working under someone else ignited my journey into launching Books Charming.

Which genre do you love the most and why? I have a deep appreciation for Non-Fiction literature, particularly in the realm of self-help and autobiographies.

Asha Seth A seasoned writer, book critic, and an editor Has reviewed more than 600 books Started blogging in 2012 ‘Missbookthief’ blog page 11K subscribers (blog) 12.1K followers on Instagram 1.97K subscribers on YouTube What made you want to start a blog? I grew up a bookworm. I made it my mission to encourage more and more people to read books. When it culminated into a blog, I can hardly tell. Which genre do you love the most and why? It’s difficult to choose one. Thrillers, History, Horror, and Poetry are the top ones. What difficulties do you face as a book blogger and how do you overcome them? Engagement is always a challenge; given that the category is uber-niche. Even with 50k monthly blog views, I struggle for a decent engagement on odd days. Trying different strategies is the solution.

Khyati Gautam: ‘Bookish Fame’ blog Promotes on different platforms. 4,256 subscribers (blog) 26.7K followers on Instagram 1,477 followers on Twitter What made you want to start a blog? I loved the idea of writing about books I read. I saw book blogging as an intersection of two of my most favorite activities – reading and writing. Which genre do you love the most and why? I adore literary fiction and psychological thrillers.

Aishwariya Laxmi ‘Aishwariya’s LittLog’ blog Started blogging about books in 2017 Favorite authors- Enid Blyton, John Grisham, Lauren Weisenberger Also has poems, essays and interviews on her blog page 1,139 followers on Instagram 2,706 followers on Twitter What made you want to start a blog? I freelanced as a journalist while still doing my M.A. in Mass Communication. When I learned about blogging in 2004, I started my own blog.

Which genre do you love the most and why? As a reader, I like fiction, especially Young Adult ( YA) fiction these days.

Rakhi Verma Mumbai based book blogger Blog- Beyond the Covers: Exploring Passions My blog, newbooksreviewer I launched my blog in 2019 Published her own book 4.5K followers on Facebook 64,120 total page views (blog) Which genre do you love the most and why? While I appreciate a wide range of genres, if I had to choose a favorite, it would be romance reviews and sharing my literary experiences has been fulfilling and rewarding

Namrata Ganti ‘Red Pillows’ blog An engineer at day job, spends rest of the time reading Favorite genres- fantasy fiction and middle-grade fiction 796 subscribers (blog) 1,369 followers on Instagram 638 followers on Twitter What made you want to start a blog? I have been blogging for 10 years now and this started off in 2013. I realized that I not only enjoy reading books but also talking about them. What motivates you to continue doing what you do? I enjoy helping authors get noticed and sharing information about their books. It is this continued support from the authors, publishers and the general book blogger community that keeps me motivated to continue writing book reviews and promoting books.

Ritu Bindra Design professional by day and book reviewer on the side. Blog- Bohemian Bibliophile 1,028 followers on Instagram 1,717 subscribers (blog) 1,076 followers on Twitter What made you want to start a blog? I launched my blog, Bohemian Bibliophile, in April 2019. I was active on Book Twitter and Goodreads long before that and often found lesser-known but immensely readable books did not get the promotion they deserved. There was also a limited range of books being talked about, particularly Indian books. Quality books got lost in all the hype. The purpose of my blog has always been to talk about lesser-known books that deserve more love.

Isha Singh: ‘ibooksta’ blog I started this blog in the first lockdown of 2020. he and her team are seasoned book promoters Reviews English and Hindi book of all genres 1,167 followers on Instagram Which genre do you love the most and why? I love romance genre, as I am fan of love stories and their fate in the end excites me. Choosing the target audience for your book and selecting the right book reviewer will be one step towards book promotion and there should be a mix of numerous different book marketing efforts.

Kevein Malik Kevein Books and Reviews- where they focus on book reviews, promotion and marketing Started in 2014 and has covered 1100 books Said to have 5,000 visitors a day What made you want to start a blog? In 2013, I was searching for book reviewers to get some reviews for one of my friends’ books, unfortunately I could not find anyone. Which genre do you love the most and why? On a personal level, I like war and historical fiction.

What are the difficulties you face as a book blogger and how do you overcome them? The biggest challenge is that many think that book review blogging is free. Book bloggers are free; however, it takes a lot of time and patience to read and review a book. Choosing the target audience for your book and selecting the right book reviewer will be one step towards book promotion. There should be a mix of numerous different book marketing efforts to get your book noticed. Some of the marketing efforts you can implement find here.

#book publishing #book reviewers #book review

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oddlyunadventurous · 4 years ago

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BOOK REPORT 2020

I’ve always been a sparse reader but 2018 and 19 had me accelerate my reading habits to the point that I think I’ve read the most books this year that I ever had. I suppose I’ll count them all here, just to make sure!! I said something or other about the Moomin books at the end of last year’s Inkt*b*r so, this being the month of traditions, let’s make a new one by tallying up my literary “yays” and “nays” at the end of the season.

Video game text boxes don’t count, online publication articles don’t count, psych/aesthetic papers and 1000 page biosemiotic textbooks don’t count, but they have sure pursued me in my sleep during the year as well. This list is really mostly for my benefit (and no I won’t get a Goodreads account tyvm), so under the cut you’ll find a list of titles in roughly the order I read them, along with short notes. I’ve done longer reviews of these books elsewhere and I need not bore you with them here.

K. Stanislavski - An Actor Prepares (1936) I started reading this book in 2012, then dropped it because I couldn’t understand it at the time. Kostya attends acting school and gets lessons from The Director. He learns to sleep like his cat.

K. Stanislavski - Building a Character (1949) Supposed to have been published along the first one in a single volume. Kostya continues his lessons. A lot of thoughts on walking, gaits, eloquent speech, phrasing, etc. Both these books are wonderful looks into the author’s artistic life. It’s very heartfelt and down to earth, considering it’s quasi-fiction made to edutain. Very inspiring.

M. Polanyi - The Tacit Dimension (1966) A book on the origin of knowledge, the integrated performance of skills, the emergence of life and other phenomena in the universe, marginal control between levels of reality, the moral death of the communist regime caused by the unbridled lucidity of the Enlightenment, the responsibilities of science, and thoughts about open societies of the future. This is one of the two shortest books I’ve read in the list, it covers all of this under 130 pages and manages to do it well.

B. Rainov - Eros and Thanatos (1971) A communist propaganda book attacking western mass media and escapist culture. It gets no points for being correct, as the author mostly swiped the truths from french philosophers. Very variable in its intellectual prowess, almost as if it picks its arguments in order to push an agenda. Informative but also infuriating. Also expectedly homophobic.

J. Hoffmeyer - Signs of Meaning in the Universe (1997) A somewhat pop-sciency book about biosemiotics. Forgettable but also humbly written and explicative.

A. Noë - Varieties of Presence (2012) An unimpressive book about sensory perception. Noë’s theory on sensorimotor action is worth considering but the book is poorly edited and mostly spent arguing with peers.

E. Fudge - Quick Cattle & Dying Wishes (2018) A look into a registry of last wills and testaments from the period 1630 - 1650 in Essex. The book is about early modern people’s relationship to their animals and what they meant to them in life, as well as in death. Fudge’s argumentation is sharp and her style is modern. Being a scholarly book it is really overwhelming with the footnotes sometimes, but otherwise satisfying. One gets beautiful glimpses of family relationships, thoughts and feelings that people now dead for 400 years once held.

G. Márquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) The Buendia family get all their sons killed. The Banana Company sucks. People love each other. A lot happens, generally. It is a hundred years, after all. The upper class sucks.

K. Polanyi - The Great Transformation (1944) The Industrial Revolution sucked. England sucks. It reduced all its workers to subhuman wretches. Every single decision made after the empiricists made labour and land fictional commodities has been a band-aid to the essential contradiction that the market economy wants to annihilate its human host. Laissez-faire sucks. It caused WW1. Fuck everything. Fun book.

R. Coyne - Peirce of Architects (2019) Talks about architecture and the ideas of logician/father of pragmatism Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). Informative about both. Brisk and not very in-depth, but to its benefit rather than its detriment.

R. Williams - Culture and Society (1958) A survey of the 18th and 19th century England, and the emergence of the concept of “culture” as defence against the horrors that the Industrial Revolution inflicted upon society. Consists of some two dozen outlines of contributors to the romanticist tradition, from Adam Smith, through Ruskin, to Orwell, their beliefs, contributions and literary works. Very eloquent and interesting.

E. Fudge - Brutal Reasoning (2006) A fantastic book about much: early modern views of the difference between a human and an animal, the Christian discourse of reason, the logical fallacies that lead to its implosion, the advantageous use of dehumanisation by imperialists in other to genocide natives, Montague and Shakespeare, and the ethical hell of animal murder that led Descartes to deem animals as machines so as to allow his buddies to perform live vivisections on dogs without feeling guilty about it (this is the real reason, don’t let anybody tell you otherwise). There is even space for an entire chapter about an intelligent horse who could tell a virgin from a whore and learned Latin at Oxford. This is my favorite book I read this year, so it gets an extra long review.

R. Williams - The Long Revolution (1961) A sequel to Culture and Society that’s worse. The start and end are brilliant but the middle sags. It contains some historical reviews of English cultural elements, like the newspaper industry, the Standard English vernacular and the realist novel of the 19th century, but honestly if the book was just about about the creative state (intro) and Marxism (outro) it would’ve been fine, if not better.

P. Klee - The Thinking Eye (1956 & 1964) Bauhaus boy in 1920s Germany! Love you Klee, xoxo. You really have to read his thoughts to understand his work imho. You can appreciate it just fine on the surface level, but his completely eccentric (though very self-consistently logical and sharp) views on art creation open a new outlook into his primitive approach.

F D.K. Ching - Architecture: Form, Space & Order (1979) A staple book for architecture students. Or so I hear. Steeped in gestalt psychology. Very good, though not necessarily stuff I don’t know already. Very nice looking pencil illustrations, Ching looks to be an accomplished technical draughtsman.

H. Wölfflin - Principles of Art History (1915) A strong contender for second place in the tier list. The book examines the transition between Classical to Baroque in Italy and Germany (and all the Germany clones, like the Netherlands). It is a systematic, precise aesthetic treatise that reveals much by conceptualizing and grouping characteristic art features in which the two styles differ, then explaining their bearing on their decorative content as well as the outlook on life that they embody. Lovely.

M. Porter - Windows of the Soul: The Art of Physiognomy in European Culture 1470-1780 (2005) A historiographical treatise about early modern views on physiognomy. The book deals mainly with the extant literature on the subject and tries to gleam what it could mean for the customs at the time - palmistry reading, occultism, persecution of the “gypsies” and the Christian scientific project of attaining meaning. Macro- and microcosms, as above so below, hermeticism, that sort of stuff. It’s an interesting read but it’s too long, the quality of writing varies greatly from chapter to chapter, and it is far too expensive. Wouldn’t recommend it.

S. C.Figueiredo - Inventing Comics: A New Translation of Rodolphe Töpffer's Reflections on Graphic Storytelling, Media Rhetorics, & Aesthetic Practice (2017) This is the shortest book I read, mainly translating Töpffer’s 1845 "Essay on Physiognomy" along with giving his biography and some other paraphernalia. It’s not worth the price for the content contained within, but Töpffer is the father of the modern comic book, so I thought I’d learn what his philosophy was. On that front, at least, very interesting! If only I knew French I’d save myself the trouble and read the original, which is now public domain.

D. Bayles - Art & Fear (1985) A useless self-help book. Not entirely bullshit but completely banal from all angles. Shouldn’t even be on this list but I did read it, so...

I. Allende - The House of the Spirits (1982) A child rapist gets a redemption arc. Well, kind of. All women are queens. Men are awful. The poor are wretches and it’s their fault. Oh no, the communists are going to take our land! Pinochet’s concentration camps sucked. Overall a better magical realism book than 100 Years of Solitude, to be honest. Very well written characters.

R. Arnheim -To the Rescue of Art: Twenty-Six Essays (1992) What it says on the tin. Wide range of subjects, from art appreciation, to schizophrenic and autistic child art, to gestalt psychology, to philosophy of science, to Picasso’s Guernica and the fate of abstract art, to reflections on the 20th century and the writer’s life in pre-nazi Germany and America. I love Arnheim, I’ve read many of his books and I’m glad I picked this one up.

R. Arnheim - Film as Art (1957) A book about cinematography, one of his earliest, actually, mostly a personal translation from an original German book he published in 1933. Somewhat outdated, but foundational. Not as informative to me but I don’t regret reading it.

G. E. Lessing - Laocoon; or, On the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766) A book by a greekaboo about a fucking dumb poem and a statue of a naked dad and his two sons getting fucked by snakes. It’s misogynistic and authoritarian in several places, and altogether awfully full of itself. 100 pages of interesting observations stretched over 400 pages of boring Greco-Roman literary discourse.

L. Tolstoy - Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (1852, 1854, 1856) One story serialized in a magazine then later collated in three separate books. Aristocrat boy grows up in pre-revolution Russia. A very, very relatable coming-of-age story. Tolstoy is a lovely writer.

F. Dostoevsky - Poor Folk (1846) An epistolary novel consisting of letters between literally Dobby from Harry Potter and his maybe-niece, whom he wants to fuck. Starts bad, gets better by the end. A bit rough and tumble for Dostoevsky’s first, so I forgive him for wasting my time a little bit. A decent character study of the middle/lower classes, at least.

L. Tolstoy - Family Happiness (1859) An amazing romance novel for the skill employed in writing it. It is very short yet delivers so much emotion. Rather simple narrative at its core, but executed with such bravado one cannot help but be impressed.

F. Dostoevsky - The Double (1846) In which the Author starts swinging. A pathetic, neurodivergent old man gets used and abused by the people around him and nobody cares. Satirical and biting, better than his first.

A. Lindgren - Pippi Longstocking (1945) I last read this when I was 6 years old so I thought I’d refresh my memory. I remember disliking the book then and I can see why. Pippi’s kind of an asshole. Still very enjoyable to read. I know it’s meant for a younger audience’s reading level yet I cannot help comparing it with Tove Jansson’s books and how much better the prose in there is. Sorry.

***

I think that about rounds them up! That’s about 30 books, give or take. For next year I’m hoping to:

Finish Tolstoy’s and Dostoevsky’s bibliographies

Read more econ and marxist writing (low personal priority but i have to, in THIS economy *rolls eyes*)

Finish the Tintin and Moomin comics, as well as Jhonen Vasquez’s collection of edgy humor

Read more about botany and biology in general

Get started on Faulkner’s and William Golding’s bibliographies

Read more children’s books

Search for more Latin American fiction from the Boom

Read more psych/aesthetics/pedagogy literature, which seems to have become my main area of interest

Thanks for sticking till the end of the list, hope you’ve learned something and maybe you’ll pick one of these up if it took your interest. I don’t have to be a philistine just because I’m drawing video game fanart! Bye now!

#books #book report #reading #2020 #blogging #i'm busy reading i'll go back to drawing in a bit #not art

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spamzineglasgow · 4 years ago

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(REVIEW) Tongues by Taylor Le Melle, Rehana Zaman and Those Institutions Should Belong to Us, by Christopher Kirubi

In this review, Rhian Williams takes a look at Tongues, a dazzling zine edited by Taylor Le Melle and Rehana Zaman (PSS, 2018), with* Christopher Kirubi’s pamphlet ‘Those Institutions Should Belong to Us’ (PSS).

*I [Rhian] use ‘with’ here in homage to Fred Moten’s use of that preposition in all that beauty (2019) to ‘denote accompaniment[]’. This pamphlet was interleaved in the review copy of Tongues that I received from PSS.

> Onions, lemons, chilli peppers, fractals, hands, patterns, palms pressing, tears, avocados, pomegranate, mouths, finger clicking, deserts. Screenshots, flyers, placards, transcripts, textures, temporalities. Tongues is an urgent gathering in, a zine-type publication that works as a space where Black and Brown women (bringing both their intersections and the tension of distinction) enact memorial, exchange, jouissance, resistance, collaboration, support, listening. Edited by Taylor Le Melle and filmmaker Rehana Zaman, whose work generates many of the dialogic responses interleaved in this collection, this ‘assembly of voices’ was brought together in this particular format in the wake of Zaman’s exhibition, Speaking Nearby, shown at the CCA in Glasgow in 2018. But, as Ainslie Roddick explains, in ‘an attempt to reckon with the trans-collaborative nature of “practice” itself’, Tongues resists academic mechanisms that fall into reiterating the violence of individualism, moving around the figure of the single author/editor to seek to capture ‘a process of thinking with and through the people we work and resist with, acknowledging and sharing the work of different people as practice’ (p. 3). As such, ‘[Tongues’] structure, design and rhythm reflect the work of all the contributors to this anthology who think with one another through various practical, poetic and pedagogical means’ (ibid.). Designed and published by PSS, this is a tactile, sensory production: its aesthetics are post-internet, collage, digi-analogue, liquid-yet-textural, with shiny paper pages that you have to gently peel apart, gleaming around a central pamphlet of matte, heavier paper in mucous-membrane pink and mauve, which itself protects the centrefold glossy mouth-open lick of ‘I kiss your ass’ between the leaves of Ziba Karbassi’s poem, ‘Writing Cells’, here in both Farsi and English (translated with Stephen Watts). Throughout, Tongues reiterates the sensuous, labouring body as political, as partisan.

> Tongues’ multivalency is capacious, nurturing, dedicated to archiving that which is fugitive yet ineluctable; so, inevitably, its overarching principle is labour, is work. The entire collection of essays, response pieces, email exchanges, WhatsApp messages, poetry, transcripts, journaling, and imaginings are testimony to effort and skill, to the determination to keep spaces open for remembrance and for noticing within the ever-creeping demands of production. It is not surprising that this valuable collection is stalked by perilous attenuation, the damage of exhaustion. It is appallingly prescient of the first week of June 2020. Moving my laptop so that I can write whilst also keeping an eye on what I’m cooking for later, setting up my child to listen to an audiobook so that I can try to open up some headspace for listening and responding, nervous about how to spread my ‘being with’ across multiple platforms (my child, my writing, the news, other voices), I am taken by Chandra Frank’s meditative response piece to Zaman’s Tell me the story Of all these things (2017) and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee (1982), which vibrates with ‘the potency and liberatory potential of the kitchen’ (p. 9) and movingly seeks to track and honour ‘what it means to both feel and read through a non-linear understanding of subjectivities’ (p. 10). But I only have to turn the page to realise my white safety. I am at home in my kitchen; my space may feel like it has turned into a laboratory for the reproduction of everyday life under lockdown, but it is manifest, it is seen in signed contracts, my subjectivity is grounded on recognition and citizenship. For Sarah Reed, searingly remembered by Gail Lewis in ‘More Than… Questions of Presence’, subjectivity was experienced as brutalisation, manifested posthumously in hashtags, #sayhername. (Reed was found dead in her cell at Holloway Prison in London in February 2016. In 2012 she had been violently assaulted by Metropolitan Police officer James Kiddie; the assault was captured by CCTV footage.) For the women immigrants engaged in domestic work in British homes, as documented here in Marissa Begonia’s vital journaling piece and Zaman’s discussion with Laura Guy, subjectivity is precarity and threat, their dogged labour forced into shadows. Lewis’s piece pivots around a ‘capacity of concern’ generated by ‘the political, ethical, relationship challenge posed by the presence of “the black woman”’ (p. 18), urging that such concern be of the order of care by walking a line with psychoanalysts D. A. Winnicott and Wilfred Bion in recognising that ‘in naming something we begin a journey in the unknown’ (p. 19). If that ‘unknown’ includes understanding how the British state is inimical to the self-determination and safety of Black and Brown women born within its ‘Commonwealth’ borders (#CherryGroce; #JoyGardner; #CynthiaJarrett; #BellyMujinga), and further, how its ‘hostile environment’ policies – named and pursued as such by the British Home Office under Theresa May – are designed specifically to threaten those born elsewhere, by reiterating Britain’s historical enthusiasm for enslavement of non-white labour (see the 2012 visa legislation, discussed here, that, for domestic workers, effectively put a lock on the 2016 ‘Modern Slavery Act’ review before it had even begun), then consider Tongues a demand to get informed. This is a zine about workers and working. It is imperative that we come to terms with what working life in Britain looks like (see the Public Health England report into disparities in the risk and outcomes of COVID-19 – released June 2 2020, censored to remove sections that highlighted the effect of structural racism, but nevertheless evidencing the staggering inequality in death and suffering that is linked to occupation and to citizen status, and therefore tracks race and poverty lines). It is imperative that we scrutinise how ‘popular [and, I would add, Westminster] culture perpetuates a notion of working class identity as a fantasy’ (p. 52) that literally spirits away the bodies undertaking keywork in the UK. The title of Frank’s piece here, ‘Fragmented Realities’, is exquisitely apt.

> Bookended by Roddick’s and Zaman’s radical re-orientating of the apparatus of academia – the introduction that resists assimilating each of the forthcoming pieces under one stable rubric, instead simply listing anonymously a sentence from each contributor in a process of meditative opening up, and ‘A note, before the notes. The end notes’ that counter-academically reveals weaknesses and vulnerabilities, is open to qualification and reframing, is responsive – Tongues constitutes a politics and aesthetics of ‘shift’. Collated after a staged exhibition, anticipating new bodies of work to come, and ultimately punctuated by a pamphlet that segues from reporting on an inspiring event that took place at the Women’s Art Library, Goldsmith’s University of London to imagining a second one in paper (the ‘original’ having been thwarted by bad weather), the entire collection has a productively stuttering relationship with temporality and with presence. As Shama Khanna writes about working groups and reading groups, workshops and pleasure-seeking in gallery spaces, this is the moving ground of the undercommons. It is testament to its intellectual lodestars – Sara Ahmed, Fred Moten, Stefano Harney, and, especially, the eroto-power of Audre Lorde. Along with Christopher Kirubi’s pamphlet, ‘Those Institutions Should Belong to Us’, which comprises a series of seven short ‘prose poems’ documenting the anguish of writing a dissertation from a marginalised perspective, the entire project of Tongues with Those Institutions is to upend academic practice, to recognise the ideological thrust of academic method, to stage fugitive enquiry. Kirubi’s plain sans-serif black font on white pages rehearses the anxious dialectics of interpellation and liberation (‘there is a need to see ourselves reflected in position of agency power and self determination in a world which does not really wish to see us thrive at all’ (part 3)) afforded by their academic obligations, but inarticulacy is a higher form of eloquence:

Even though I know at some point I am going to have to yield to these demands I feel I have to say now that I want to take in this dissertation a position of defending the inarticulate, defending the subjective and defending the incoherent, without having to arrive at a point of defence through theoretically determined foundations, but to feel them.

> Since its structuring principles are those of women’s work, and of Black and Brown experience, nurturing and shielding within the exhaustingly cyclical nature of toiling for recognition, respect, and protection, Tongues dances in the poetics of circles, of loops and feedback, of reciprocity and exchange. Recognising, however, that circularity is also the shape of repetitive strain, Zaman leaves us with a spiralling gesture, in homage to the Haitian spiral, ‘born out of the work of the Spiralist poets’ (p. 61). This ‘dynamic and non-linear’ form insists on the mutuality of the past and contemporary circumstances, is ‘a movement of multiplied or fractured beings, back and forth in time and space demanding accumulation, tumult, and repetition, adamant irresolution and open endedness…’. We are in that spiral now. Such demands must be heard, power must be relinquished, established forms of control – enacted in the streets and on our pages – must be terminated. Writing in early June 2020, this feels precarious; no one is exempt from giving of their strength.

Please pursue further information here. If you are able, these organisations thrive (given the paucity of state support) on donation:

Voice of Domestic Workers: https://www.thevoiceofdomesticworkers.com/

Cherry Groce foundation: https://www.cherrygroce.org/

BBZBLACKBOOK (a digital archive of emerging & established black queer artists): https://bbzblkbk.com/

Reclaim Holloway: http://reclaimholloway.mystrikingly.com/

Text: Rhian Williams

Published: 16/6/20

#review #writing #poetry #reviews #Tongues #Taylor Le Melle #Rehana Zaman #Rhian Williams

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youngneemleaves · 5 years ago

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Journal: 2019

A list of my creative activity and all the media I have experienced throughout the year. I did a version of this eight months ago, but I wasn’t entirely satisfied with it. So I tooled about a little; and in the meantime, the activity has remained as inconsistent as my energy levels, but eventful, nonetheless. Here’s a more thorough list drawn up at the end of the year - after all, the end of 2019 is also the end of the 2010s.

The list has become rather long, so I’ve excluded online essays, stories, fanfiction, or poems that I’ve read this year. I ended up resorting to the usual 5-star rating system; because if I had to add a footnote explaining my personal 7-star rating system, the list would’ve been even longer and weirder!

+ Creative Writing

(Obviously, no ratings for this section; that’s up to you all ;)

Beloved - a short story for Holi

Lady Aesculapius: a new short story serial -> episode 6, Sixty Thousand Bedtime Stories

Clara Oswald: The Untold Adventures (coming on April 25, 2020) -> episode 4, As You Like It

+ Books and Audio Drama

Dave Rudden, Twelve Angels Weeping: twelve stories of the villains of Doctor Who (2018) | SFF, short stories [read the review on Downtime] - ⭐⭐⭐

Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (2014) | literary fiction, SFF [review] - ⭐⭐⭐

Amitav Ghosh, Dancing in Cambodia and Other Essays (2008, first published 1998) | memoir, nonfiction, travel [review] - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Ellen Oh and Elsie Chapman (ed.), A Thousand Beginnings and Endings (2018) | SFF, short stories [did not review] - ⭐⭐⭐

Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water (2011) | LGBTQIA, nonfiction, memoir [did not finish] - ⭐⭐⭐

Hsiu-Chuang Deppman, Adapted for the Screen: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Fiction and Film (University of Hawai’i Press, 2010) | nonfiction (academics) [did not finish] - ⭐⭐⭐

Cecilia Sjöholm, The Antigone Complex: Ethics and the Invention of Feminine Desire (Stanford University Press, 2004) | nonfiction, philosophy, psychoanalysis [reread] [did not review] - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

D.N. Bryn, Our Bloody Pearl (2018) | LGBTQIA, romance, SFF [did not finish] - ⭐⭐⭐

Catherynne M. Valente, Palimpsest (2009) | LGBTQIA, SFF [did not finish] - ⭐⭐⭐

Rey Chow, Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the Age of Global Visibility (Columbia University Press, 2007) | nonfiction (academics) [did not finish] - ⭐⭐⭐

Shirley Jackson, The Lottery and Other Stories (1982, first published in 1949) | horror, literary fiction, short stories [currently reading] - ⭐⭐⭐

Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (2005) | literary fiction, SFF [did not review] - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Lauren Berlant, Desire/Love (2012) | nonfiction, philosophy, psychoanalysis [brief review] - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Melissa Broder, The Pisces (2018) | contemporary fiction, romance, SFF [currently reading] - ⭐⭐

Amitav Ghosh, The Shadow Lines (2007) | literary fiction, historical fiction, travel [currently reading] - ⭐⭐⭐

+ Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor Adventures - a fan-made audio drama on the further adventures of the Twelfth Doctor: series 1 [re-listen], plus this year’s specials:

Unlikely Thieves [review] - ⭐⭐⭐ 1/2

Blue Hour [review] - ⭐⭐⭐ 1/2

** UNDER THE CUT: list of TV and films watched **

+ TV Round-up

Killing Eve (BBC America, 2016 - ) ⭐⭐⭐

Dark (Netflix, 2017 - ) ⭐⭐ 1/2

Good Omens (Amazon Studios and BBC, 2019) ⭐⭐⭐

The OA (Netflix, 2016 - 2019) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Star Wars: The Mandalorian (Disney+, 2019 - ) ⭐⭐⭐

His Dark Materials (BBC and HBO, 2019 - ) ⭐⭐⭐

The Witcher (Netflix, 2019 - ) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

+ Films Watched

Disobedience (2017), dir. Sebastián Lelio ⭐⭐⭐ 1/2

The Favourite (2018), dir. Yorgos Lanthimos ⭐⭐⭐

First They Killed My Father (2017), dir. Angelina Jolie ⭐⭐⭐

Badla (2019), dir. Sujoy Ghosh ⭐⭐ 1/2

Roma (2018), dir. Alfonso Cuarón ⭐⭐⭐

Us (2019), dir. Jordan Peele ⭐⭐⭐⭐

In the Mood for Love (2000), dir. Wong Kar Wai ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Lady Macbeth (2016), dir. William Oldroyd ⭐⭐⭐

Chungking Express (1994), dir. Wong Kar Wai ⭐⭐⭐ 1/2

Stoker (2013), dir. Park Chan Wook ⭐⭐⭐

Widows (2018), dir. Steve McQueen ⭐⭐⭐ 1/2

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), dir. Gareth Edwards ⭐⭐⭐ 1/2

High Life (2018), dir. Claire Denis ⭐⭐

The Cloverfield Paradox (2018), dir. Julius Onah ⭐ 1/2

Little Forest (2018), dir. Yim Soon-rye ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Jennifer’s Body (2009), dir. Karyn Kusama ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Fallen Angels (1995), dir. Wong Kar Wai ⭐⭐⭐

The Phantom of the Opera (2004), dir. Joel Schumacher ⭐⭐

Midsommar (2019), dir. Ari Aster ⭐⭐⭐ 1/2

Star Wars: episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), dir. George Lucas ⭐⭐ 1/2

Byzantium (2012), dir. Neil Jordan ⭐⭐⭐ 1/2

Star Wars: episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002), dir. George Lucas ⭐⭐ 1/2

Star Wars: episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005), dir. George Lucas ⭐⭐⭐ *

Madeline’s Madeline (2018), dir. Josephine Decker ⭐⭐⭐

+ Studio Ghibli films:

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) ⭐⭐⭐ 1/2

Nausicaa in the Valley of the Wind (1984) ⭐⭐⭐

Spirited Away (2000) ⭐⭐⭐

Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) ⭐⭐⭐

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013) ⭐⭐⭐

* I would’ve rated it a solid 4 if not for the fridging at the end of the film.

** HEADER IMAGES CREDIT: (from top) 1. Joanna Kosinska; 2. Brazil Topno; 3. Kelly Sikkema; 4. chuttersnap [edits: mine] **

#booklr #adult booklr #writeblr #2019 #end of the year lists #personal #my reads #my reads: 2019 #mine: books #2010s

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transformativeworksandcultures · 6 years ago

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Call for Symposium Essays

TWC has three upcoming special issues that are still taking Symposium submissions. And while we are always desperate for good Symps, we are especially eager to have more fan voices. It's 1500-2500 words editorially reviewed, so there is a review process, but it's nothing like for the full double blind peer review.

So here is my impassioned plea to y'all: consider writing for us. Academics I try to sell this by saying "It's a CV line for a blog entry." That's not quite true in both cases, because it isn't quite on par with a full essay (but certainly with a book review!) and it will be edited and professionally published. But it may be the best professional buck for your fannish work :)

Everyone else, who's a passionate fan and into meta: it may not get seen by as many people as a Tumblr post in the wild and there's no direct conversation, but it lasts. It has a permanence that's sorely lacking these days. And it's citable!!! (And will be cited and will be taught. Symp pieces are eminently teachable.)

OK, so while we always wants Symps (heck, if you submitted one tomorrow, we'd try to get it into the September 15 issue!), here are the three special issues for 2019:

Romance/Fans: Sexual Fantasy, Love, and Genre in Fandom

Fans of Color, Fandoms of Color

Fan Fiction and Ancient Tribal Scripture

All three are in need of more essays, and TWC is in need of more fannish voices. So if you always wanted to talk about m/m slash and romance or the fan community in romance fiction, if you want to talk about being a FOC in fandom and how things have changed over the years, if you want to revisit RaceFail or celebrate that not every COC is automatically "dead bro walking," if you've always wanted to do a close reading of this amazing Jonathan/David fic...here's your chance.

Below is a (not quite random) selection of Symposium essays over the years. And if you look at them, some are clearly academic and cited frequently (Scott, Lothian, Farley, Turk, Stanfill) whereas others are deeply personal (Phi, Sasha_feather, Wilson, Jones, Lavin, Rosenblatt). And some are just interesting and quirky: Biena's essay, for example, is told from the perspective of a LARP sword! Seriously. Wilson's essay could be meditative poem on life, the universe, and Pete Wentz :)

Cupitt, Cathy. 2008. "Nothing but Net: When cultures collide." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2008.0055.

Phi, Thien-bao Thuc. 2009. Game over: Asian Americans and video game representation. Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 2. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2009.0084.

TWC Editor. 2009. Pattern recognition: A dialogue on racism in fan communities. Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2009.0172.

Scott, Suzanne. 2009. Repackaging fan culture: The regifting economy of ancillary content models. Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2009.0150.

Freund, Katharina. 2010. "'I'm glad we got burned, think of all the things we learned': Fandom conflict and context in Counteragent's 'Still Alive.'" Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 4. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2010.0187.

Sasha_feather. 2010. From the edges to the center: Disability, Battlestar Galactica, and fan fiction. Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 5. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2010.0227.

Keller, Vera. 2011. "The 'Lover' and Early Modern Fandom." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 7. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0351.

Lothian, Alexis. 2011. "An Archive of One's Own: Subcultural Creativity and the Politics of Conservation." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 6. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0267.

Gray, Jonathan. 2012. "Of Snowspeeders and Imperial Walkers: Fannish Play at the Wisconsin Protests." In "Transformative Works and Fan Activism," edited by Henry Jenkins and Sangita Shresthova, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 10. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2012.0353.

Wilson, D. 2012. "Queer Bandom: A Research Journey in Eight Parts." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 11. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2012.0426.

McWilliams, Ora C. 2013. "Who Is Afraid of a Black Spider(-Man)?" In "Appropriating, Interpreting, and Transforming Comic Books," edited by Matthew J. Costello, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 13. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2013.0455.

Farley, Shannon K. 2013. "Translation, Interpretation, Fan Fiction: A Continuum of Meaning Production." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 14. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2013.0517.

Turk, Tisha. 2014. "Fan Work: Labor, Worth, and Participation in Fandom's Gift Economy." In "Fandom and/as Labor," edited by Mel Stanfill and Megan Condis, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 15. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0518.

Jones, Bethan. 2014. "Written on the Body: Experiencing Affect and Identity in My Fannish Tattoos." In "Material Fan Culture," edited by Bob Rehak, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 16. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0527.

Barenblat, Rachel. 2014. "Fan Fiction and Midrash: Making Meaning." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 17. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0596.

Bienia, Rafael. 2015. "Exploring Nonhuman Perspectives in Live-Action Role-Play." In "Performance and Performativity in Fandom," edited by Lucy Bennett and Paul J. Booth, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 18. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2015.0631.

Lavin, Maud. 2015. "Patti Smith: Aging, Fandom, and Libido." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 20. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2015.0658.

Keen, Tony. 2016. "Are Fan Fiction and Mythology Really the Same?" In "The Classical Canon and/as Transformative Work," edited by Ika Willis, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 21. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2015.0689.

Rosenblatt, Julia Carlson. 2017. "From Outside to Inside." In "Sherlock Holmes Fandom, Sherlockiana, and the Great Game," edited by Betsy Rosenblatt and Roberta Pearson, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 23. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2017.0920.

Stanfill, Mel. 2017. "Where the Femslashers Are: Media on the Lesbian Continuum." In "Queer Female Fandom," edited by Julie Levin Russo and Eve Ng, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 24. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2017.959.

Ball, Kevin D. 2017. "Fan Labor, Speculative Fiction, and Video Game Lore in the Bloodborne Community." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 25. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2017.1156.

Any questions, suggestions, people you might think I should contact, are more than welcome! Thanks!!! (kbusse2 [at] gmail.com)

#twc #cfp #meta #fandom #fanfiction

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phroyd · 6 years ago

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PART FOUR

Prey among prey

Former sergeant Cheryl Johnson of the Fort Worth Police Department started counting around 2007, the year that Wyatt’s father said her case went before a Tarrant County grand jury. As head of Fort Worth’s adult sex crimes unit, she was sending dozens of rape cases to the Tarrant County district attorney’s office to be presented to the county’s grand jury. But again and again, the grand jury had “no-billed” her cases, deciding not to indict — even when they seemed open and shut to Johnson.

“We had cases where there were photographs and confessions from the suspects that were no-billed,” Johnson told me in 2015 in the tidy living room of her Fort Worth home. One case in particular stuck with her: A man admitted to giving a woman drugs that would render her unconscious — and then raping her after she had passed out and photographing the act. The victim was sent the photographs of her own rape, which she turned over to police. Still, the grand jury decided not to indict.

So Johnson began to keep track of what became of her cases once she sent them to the district attorney’s office. Journalist Tim Madigan at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram caught up with Johnson during his own investigation into Tarrant’s no-bill rates and incorporated her findings. Published in 2012, Madigan’s report found that Tarrant County’s no-bill rate for alleged acquaintance rapes was 51 percent. By contrast, the city of Austin’s no-bill rate for the same crime was 13 percent. For whatever reason, Tarrant County simply wasn’t deciding to indict in such cases at the same rates as other locales.

To this day, different stakeholders have different theories about the cause of the discrepancy — and some dispute whether it even existed.

Johnson cited prosecutors’ failure to call detectives to testify before grand juries as a matter of routine procedure, pointing out that, sometimes, assistant district attorneys’ presentations of these complicated cases to grand jurors took only a few minutes.

Former Tarrant prosecutors pointed to the grand jurors themselves, who, before 2015, were appointed on a non-random basis labeled the “pick-a-pal” system by critics. Tarrant’s large volume of cases demanded that grand jurors sometimes meet several times a week, meaning that those selected to serve often fit a particular profile: older, retired, male and perhaps, as Fort Worth defense attorney and former prosecutor Leticia Martinez told me, more willing to believe that “oh, these young people today . . . they’ll do anything.”

Then there was the matter of the district attorneys, and whether they took allegations of acquaintance rape seriously.

Tim Curry, the district attorney at the time of Wyatt’s case, died in 2009. But when Madigan’s investigation was published, during then-District Attorney Joe Shannon Jr.’s tenure, Shannon penned an op-ed in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram disputing Madigan’s report on the problem. When I spoke with him this year, Shannon still insisted that, with “this consensual rape stuff,” victims frequently elected not to participate in prosecutions after their initial reports, accounting for Tarrant’s high number of no-bills. “I’m not going to try to prosecute somebody knowing full well that I can’t prove it,” he said.

After Madigan’s exposé, a new district attorney, Sharen Wilson, won the office in Tarrant County. Despite repeated requests for an interview, Wilson never agreed to speak with me for this article. But she offered a statement through a spokeswoman which seemed to suggest that, under her administration, whatever had gone awry in past eras has been set right now: “Since DA Wilson implemented changes upon taking office,” the statement read, “the indictment rate for sexual assaults in Tarrant County has dramatically increased, from 60.92% in 2015 to 81.25% in 2017.”

In Wyatt’s case, it isn’t exactly clear what happened. But signs of the troubled system Johnson detected and Madigan exposed emerge. Detective Lucero confirmed to me that he was not called to testify to a grand jury in Wyatt’s case. Wyatt herself was willing to testify before a grand jury but was never called.

And, despite the soccer player’s semen found in Wyatt’s body and the injuries she sustained, neither of the boys were questioned by police. When I asked Lucero how he felt reading over Wyatt’s case file in 2015 and reflecting on the non-indictment, his mind immediately went to the fact that he was never able to speak with either boy. “Speaking to the perpetrator, the suspect, it’s huge,” he said, “and it can make or break a case.” But aside from presenting the boys for DNA swabs when subpoenaed, Lucero said, the boys’ attorneys did not make their clients available for questioning. When Lucero communicated with the boys’ attorneys, they refused even to answer whether their clients argued that any sexual encounter had been consensual. I attempted to contact both boys by telephone, email and mail and through family for this article; though a friend of the soccer player reported he knew I was trying to get in touch, neither of them returned my messages seeking contact.

Why did the district attorney’s office not pursue the case? Alicia Cooper, the assistant district attorney who handled Wyatt’s case, declined repeated requests by telephone, email and letter to comment for this article.

No doubt, it would have posed a challenge for prosecutors. “I know the DA’s office would’ve been faced with an uphill battle at trial,” Malcolm Bales, a retired former U.S. attorney for Texas’s Eastern District, which borders Tarrant, told me. Defense lawyers, he said, “would seize on her intoxication, her inability to clearly recall things.” But Bales was still surprised that Tarrant’s prosecutors hadn’t managed to so much as indict anyone involved. “If it had been me, I definitely would have prosecuted [the soccer player] with the physical evidence,” Bales said, “and I would have gone to trial. With some cases, it’s hard — they’re hard to prosecute. But you prosecute them for the victims, for accountability and for the State of Texas.”

“Even if it had gone to trial and they would have found them not guilty, at least they would have been on trial for it. I would hope that she would have been able to put this behind her much sooner.”

But that wasn’t how it played out. Wyatt’s father, Mark Wyatt, remembered receiving a call that he believes came from Cooper in February 2007, advising him that there would be no legal consequences for the two boys Wyatt had accused of the rape. “I got a call . . . that they’ve chosen not to indict because it was a ‘he said, she said’ thing,” he said. Mark Wyatt was furious, disconsolate.

Because the case never went to trial, rumors that Amber Wyatt had either recanted or dropped charges blossomed, bolstering the notion that she had invented the entire thing. Mark Wyatt still believes that if his daughter’s case had gone to trial, the years of suffering that followed for her— the spiral of drug abuse and addiction — would not have been so severe. “Even if it had gone to trial and they would have found them not guilty, at least they would have been on trial for it,” he said. “I would hope that she would have been able to put this behind her much sooner.”

Amber Wyatt had used drugs before 2006, and, once the rumors spread, those with knowledge of Wyatt’s drug use seemed to view her reputation as a reason to doubt her version of events. But Deborah Caddy, director of rape crisis and victim services at the Women’s Center of Tarrant County, suggested a different kind of relationship between victimization and drug abuse.

Stranger rapists — the kind of attackers who victimize people they don’t know — hunt for victims who exude vulnerability, Caddy said. Acquaintance rapists exhibit similar behaviors, Caddy pointed out, scanning their social milieus for people who are in some way incapacitated, available for the taking: people whom nobody will believe, people who can’t fight back.

It’s like hunting, in other words. The whole thing was something like a hunt, and Wyatt was easy prey.

In the crime-scene photographs taken inside the shed where Wyatt said she was assaulted, you can count the buck heads — 12 mounted neatly on the first floor, another half dozen strewn on the ground of the loft, antlers tangled like bramble, eyes wide and staring. Wyatt’s panties are there, too, on the concrete under the empty watch of the beheaded deer. How blunt it seems, overstated almost— prey among prey.

Many a treatise on brutality has taken deer as its subject, because the pleasure derived from killing them is so disturbing in light of their docile grace. Montaigne laments the dying cries of a wounded hart in his essay on cruelty; so does William Wordsworth in his poem “Hart-Leap Well.” Both Montaigne and Wordsworth meditate on the deer’s last stagger, the long prelude to death, the moment when the light leaves its eyes.

Wyatt had eyes like that: thick-lashed, wide and dark, dimmed to vacancy at times by drugs and alcohol. She was beautiful, and she was vulnerable. And everyone knew it.

Indeed, Wyatt’s case remains a dark reminder that vulnerability to predation occurs on more than one axis. Wyatt was young. But she was also someone who struggled with drug and alcohol use, and someone her peers understood to be working-class. For the assault itself, and for everything that followed, she was easy to discount.

Montaigne and Wordsworth lived near enough to the bloody indifference of nature to spare a thought for its victims. But the veneer of civility painted over modern life has paradoxically revealed a certain contempt for victims and the condition of victimhood. And perhaps, lurking in all the complaints about our putative culture of victimhood, there is something uglier than generalized contempt: a disdain for the weak.

It’s obvious that vulnerability will elicit viciousness from predators. But then there are the rest of us — the cast of Arlingtonians beginning with midnight partygoers and ending with high school rumor-listeners who, with honorable exception, ridiculed Wyatt at worst and ignored her at best. Wyatt’s story calls on us to inquire: What motivates otherwise ordinary people to abandon all pretense of mercy when faced with the abject need for it?

To look into the eyes of a vulnerable person is to see yourself as you might be. It’s a more harrowing experience than one might readily admit. There is a version of yourself made powerless, status diminished, reliant upon the goodwill of others. One response is empathy: to shore up your reserves of charity and trust, in hopes that others will do the same. Another is denial: If you refuse to believe you could ever be in such a position — perhaps by blaming the frail for their frailty or ascribing their vulnerability to moral failure — then you never have to face such an uncomfortable episode of imagination. You come away disgusted with the weak, but content in the certainty you aren’t among them.

Or they make you feel helpless, just by dint of how little you can do to stop what’s being done to them. The temptation in that case is to look away, let it all be someone else’s problem, or deny that there’s a problem in need of resolution in the first place.

As I reported on her story over the course of three years, Wyatt was alternately patient and frustrated. She wondered, in a series of private Facebook messages to me, whether this article would ever be published, and whether revisiting that period in her life was worth the emotional cost. It was, she told me last year, “a wound that has been reopened.”

Sometimes I replied; sometimes I didn’t. I didn’t know whether the article would ever be published, either. But I didn’t want to be the last person to look away.

PART FIVE

What you know now

Wyatt’s drug habit worsened after she was moved from Martin to an alternative high school in Arlington. She was arrested in December 2006 for driving while intoxicated, which she pleaded guilty to in a county court, and again in 2009, on charges of possession of a controlled substance and possession of marijuana, to which she pleaded no contest. Her record states that she was arrested for a final time in 2010 on a charge of driving while intoxicated, this time in Denton, Tex. Again, she pleaded no contest. For a time, she lost her driver’s license. Her 2010 mugshot, posted online by the Texas Department of Public Safety, shows her disheveled and on the verge of tears, bearing only a passing resemblance to the bright and outgoing cheerleader she had been only four years before.

Late in November of 2010, Wyatt overdosed on a cocktail of Klonopin, vodka, cocaine and methadone, bringing her to the brink of organ failure. On Dec. 1, Wyatt posted a despondent Facebook status: “In ICU for the past 2 days. I’m having kidney failure. Please pray for me.” Once she made it out of the hospital and into addiction treatment, Wyatt’s counselors told her she needed to invest her trust in a higher power — to have faith.

With all that had come before, that word in particular stung more than it soothed. And her past followed her. “Even four years after I graduated,” Wyatt told me in 2015, “I would meet people and they would be like, ‘Oh, you’re Amber Wyatt.’ ” By which they meant, as Wyatt interpreted their response, the girl who “lied about being raped.”

Still, the incidents of normal life returned in hard-won bits and pieces: a car, a home, a steady job. Last March, she married Stephen Wilson, a man she encountered in recovery. The two met on an outing to Six Flags Over Texas, an amusement park in Arlington, where they sat side by side on a Batman-themed roller coaster. They live quietly now in the Texas city of San Marcos with a dog named Stitch, abandoned by Wilson’s former roommate when he went back to using. Wyatt has taken Wilson’s surname.

The last time I see her, we meet on a warm Dallas evening in April. The city is wide and magisterial, with a crest of glittering lights marking its heights in the darkness. On a clear night with bright stars, the city and sky can lose their seam. It’s a night like that, and she rounds a corner in a quiet restaurant to see me waiting for her in a booth.

Wyatt is completing an undergraduate psychology program at Texas State University. This year, she’s serving as a teaching assistant for a forensic psychology course; from there, she’s considering pursuing a master’s degree. I notice, as we sit in the restaurant, a peace sign tattooed on the underside of Wyatt’s wrist. Has she found it, I wonder? Faith is still a tender word. But she trusts “in a spiritual power,” she tells me. “I let myself believe.”

In the years since that ill-fated pool party, society has made important cultural and legal strides in treating victims of sexual harassment and assault with dignity and respect — much thanks to feminist-led movements such as #MeToo. Indeed, Wyatt’s decision to cooperate with my reporting when it began in 2015 was an anticipatory #MeToo moment — she hoped, by speaking out publicly, by giving her name to a grimly familiar story, that she would help some other girl in some other city.

It is tempting to imagine that, if all of this really had happened now, in the wake of #MeToo, things would have been different and justice better served. And some things have certainly changed. Over the past several years, attention paid to sexual assault cases outside the stranger-rape mold has increased thanks to a changing consciousness about the realities of coercion and consent. With stories like the 2012 Steubenville, Ohio, rape case and the 2012 prosecution of former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky, we have begun to understand how systems of power can warp the consciences of otherwise ordinary people when it comes to prosecuting or even reporting sexual assault.

Likewise, the #MeToo phenomenon has resulted in accountability for high-profile perpetrators of sexual abuse who were, sometimes for decades, protected by edifices composed of their own power, prestige and wealth. That figures such as Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and Steve Wynn have faced serious repercussions after accusations of sexual misconduct testifies to a real and growing revolt against sexual abuse at society’s highest echelons. Still, progress is slower and abuse more frequent lower down the socioeconomic ladder, where poor and working-class people have relatively little recourse when it comes to suffering sexual misconduct, both because the costs of speaking out are often unbearable and because their abusers rarely grab headlines the way Hollywood rainmakers and politicians do.

So I look back uneasily, unconvinced that we have come such a long way after all. Because there will always be opportunities to do evil and evil opportunists. There will always be acts of cruelty prepackaged with plausible deniability, or the easy cover of crowds to disperse responsibility. There will always be people nobody believes: people with lesser reputations, people who struggle with addiction, people without much capital, social or otherwise, to credit them. And there will always be cases of offenses that are real and true but hard to prosecute, which means that justice in the world — if it’s to exist at all — will have to take some other form than the formalized and official, and peace will have to arise from some other reckoning than a proper settling of accounts.

This is my imperfect offering toward that end: a record of what happened, and the willingness to have been troubled by it all these years. It still troubles me now — it will always be unresolved — and I hope that it troubles you, because the moral conscience at ease accomplishes nothing.

Wyatt doesn’t have much interest in pressing for a trial or other remedy after all this time. Even if she did, it would be impossible; Lucero’s files indicate that all the physical evidence relating to Wyatt’s case was destroyed — common with no-billed cases — in 2009. All that remains are the urban legends and the memories, the wounds and their scars, a stack of documents in a Texas public safety office, what you know now, and the hope that you will carry it with you into the world.

End Part VI, V End of Article

Phroyd

#rape #injustice

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janeaddamspeace · 7 years ago

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Addams Author Eloise Greenfied is 2018 Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award #JACBA Newsletter 23Feb2018

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards

Eloise Greenfield is the recipient of the 2018 Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement.

"Eloise Greenfield is a trailblazer whose extraordinary books of poetry and prose have influenced many and continue to resonate with children today. Her rich body of work inspires and enriches readers," said Award Committee Chair Deborah D. Taylor.

Paul Robeson by Eloise Greenfield 1976 Awardee

UC San Diego exhibition features work by 7 leading international women

The seven artists - Eleanor Antin, Barbara Kruger, Faith Ringgold, Martha Rosler, Miriam ... Substantiate Our Horror" (1985), Faith Ringgold's hand-stenciled quilt "Seven Passages to a Flight"...

Presented together for the first time, seven internationally recognized artists are featured in the UC San Diego exhibition "Stories That We Tell: Art and Identity," celebrating those who paved the way for greater inclusion by inventing new means to address issues of race and gender.

The seven artists - Eleanor Antin, Barbara Kruger, Faith Ringgold, Martha Rosler, Miriam Schapiro, Lorna Simpson and Carrie Mae Weems - have all been honored with major exhibitions at leading museums, recognized with prestigious awards and are all representative of the university's Department of Visual Arts.

"Faith Ringgold: An American Artist" to open at the Crocker Art Museum

"In the exhibition Faith Ringgold: An American Artist, there is warmth, charm, and straightforward honesty in Ringgold's art," said Crocker Art Museum Associate Curator Kristina Gilmore. "It draws us in and disarms us, then often reveals powerful messages. Through her work, she speaks truths that are sometimes haunting and painful, but often joyful and heartwarming. It's quite inspirational."

Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky by Faith Ringgold 1993 Awardee

Exploring the Black Experience through the Art

"Create Dangerously - In this deeply personal book, the celebrated Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat reflects on art and exile, examining what it means to be an immigrant artist from a…

In this deeply personal book, the celebrated Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat reflects on art and exile, examining what it means to be an immigrant artist from a country in crisis. Inspired by Albert Camus' lecture, "Create Dangerously," and combining memoir and essay, Danticat tells the stories of artists, including herself, who create despite, or because of, the horrors that drove them from their homelands and that continue to haunt them. Danticat also suggests that the aftermaths of natural disasters in Haiti and the United States reveal that the countries are not as different as many Americans might like to believe.

Create Dangerously is an eloquent and moving expression of Danticat's belief that immigrant artists are obliged to bear witness when their countries of origin are suffering from violence, oppression, poverty, and tragedy.

Mama's Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation written by Edwidge Danticat, illustrated by Leslie Staub 2016 Awardee

African-American history for young readers

Children's books on African-American history, they both said, are increasingly becoming part of mainstream curriculums.

"Just look at the American classrooms today," Andrea explained. "The majority have children of all kinds of races, nationalities and backgrounds. I think teachers and educators are realizing they have to serve these kids. These are the thought leaders, the teachers, the librarians, the illustrators, the writers and the decision makers of tomorrow."

Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney, illustrated by Brian Pinkney 2011 Awardee

Sojourner Truth's Step-Stomp Stride, by Andrea Davis Pinkney & Brian Pinkney 2010 Awardee

Top 10 Diverse Nonfiction for Older and Middle Readers

"Danza! Amalia Hernandez and Ballet Folklorico de Mexico. By Duncan Tonatiuh. Illus. by the author. 2017. Abrams, (9781419725326). Gr. 2–4. The life and work of dancer and choreographer Amalia Hernandez...

Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and her family's fight for desegregation, written and illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh 2015 Awardee

Black Power: 17 Children's Books on Black Activists, Innovators, and...

Schomburg, The Man Who Built a Library by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Eric Velasquez. Where is our historian to give us our side? Arturo asked.

The Legendary Miss Lena Horne by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon: Celebrate the life of Lena Horne, the pioneering African American actress and civil rights activist.

Radiant Child, The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat by Javaka Steptoe: Jean-Michel Basquiat and his unique, collage-style paintings rocketed to fame in the 1980s as a cultural phenomenon unlike anything the art world had ever seen.

The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth & Harlem's Greatest Bookstore by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie: In the 1930s, Lewis's dad, Lewis Michaux Sr., started a bookstore in Harlem and named it the National Memorial African Bookstore.

Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Jamey Christoph: His white teacher tells her all-Black class, You'll all wind up porters and waiters. What did she know? Gordon Parks is most famous for being the first Black director in Hollywood.

Frederick Douglass, The Lion Who Wrote History by Walter Dean Myers, illustrated by Floyd Cooper: Frederick Douglass was a self-educated slave in the South who grew up to become an icon.

Sugar Hill, Harlem's Historic Neighborhood by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie: Take a walk through Harlem's Sugar Hill and meet all the amazing people who made this neighborhood legendary. Includes brief biographies of jazz greats Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sonny Rollins, and Miles Davis; artists Aaron Douglas and Faith Ringgold; entertainers Lena Horne and the Nicholas Brothers; writer Zora Neale Hurston; civil rights leader W. E. B. DuBois and lawyer Thurgood Marshall.

Coretta Scott by Ntozake Shange, illustrated by Kadir Nelson: Walking many miles to school in the dusty road, young Coretta Scott knew the unfairness of life in the segregated south.

Birmingham, 1963 by Carole Boston Weatherford 2008 Awardee

New Shoes by Susan Lynn Meyer, illustrated by Eric Velasquez 2016 Awardee

Hot Day on Abbott Avenue by Karen English, with collage art of Javaka Steptoe 2005 Awardee

Now Is Your Time! The African-American Struggle for Freedom by Walter Dean Myers 1992 Awardee

Patrol: An American Soldier in Vietnam by Walter Dean Myers 2003 Awardee

Ruth and the Green Book by Calvin Alexander Ramsey with Gwen Strauss and illustrated by Floyd Cooper 2011 Awardee

Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans written and illustrated by Kadir Nelson 2012 Awardee

The Village That Vanished written by Ann Grifalconi and illustrated by Kadir Nelson 2003 Awardee

The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth & Harlem's Greatest Bookstore by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie 2016 Awardee

Books help build strong girls

"I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsberg Makes Her Mark" by Debbie Levy. (Ages 4-8) This biographical picture book about the notorious Supreme Court justice, tells her story through her famous dissents, or disagreements.

"The Firefly Letters: A Suffragette's Journey to Cuba" by Margarita Engle. The award-winning poet paints a portrait of early women's rights pioneer Fredrika Bremer and the journey that transformed her life.

I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark, written by Debbie Levy, illustrated by Elizabeth Baddeley, 2017 Awardee

Silver People: Voices from the Panama Canal by Margarita Engle 2015 Awardee

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle 2009 Awardee

9 Children's Books to Raise Awareness of Civil Rights

The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, A Young Civil Rights Activist by Cynthia Levinson

We Shall Overcome: The Story of a Song by Debbie Levy

Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Doreen Rappaport

Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

...

We've Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March by Cynthia Levinson 2013 Awardee

Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. written by Doreen Rappaport with artwork by Bryan Collier 2002 Awardee

Trouble at the Mines by Doreen Rappaport 1988 Awardee

Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges 2000 Awardee

Each Kindness written by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by E.B. Lewis 2013 Awardee

From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun by Jacqueline Woodson 1996 Awardee

I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This by Jacqueline Woodson 1995 Awardee

---

The Jane Addams Children's Book Award annually recognizes children's books of literary and aesthetic excellence that effectively engage children in thinking about peace, social justice, global community, and equity for all people.

Read more about the 2017 Awards.

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bobbystompy · 5 years ago

Text

My Top 75 Songs Of 2019

Previously: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011

First time going below 100 songs since 2015, and I cannot wait. Giving this extra juice already.

As always, criteria and info:

This is a list of what I personally like, not ones I’m saying are the “best” from the year; more subjective than objective

No artist is featured more than once

If it comes down to choosing between two songs, I try to give more weight to a single or featured track

Each song on the list is linked in the title if you wanna check them out for yourself; there is also a Spotify playlist at the bottom that includes the majority of the songs

This is usually the part where I put up a pump up video, but we are going with something a little different this year.

youtube

(It was stuck my head. Blame Blink-155.)

75) YG - “In The Dark”

The video begins with YG chugging a full tequila bottle -- sure. This song is very bad. It’s like he’s in a competition to make the verse lyrics worse than the chorus lyrics (spoiler alert: the verses “win”); not even satanic imagery can save this.

74) Solange - “Stay Flo”

Here’s a weird take: wouldn’t Solange’s career be way more fun if everyone slept on her? Instead, it’s hype on hype -- plus being Beyoncé’s sister -- which makes it nearly impossible to deliver. This has a fun beat/vibe but is kinda boring... and was still easily my favorite off her album.

73) Art Alexakis - “The Hot Water Test”

My doctors told me that I had a disease / I will slowly fall apart until there’s nothing left that looks like me

This song makes the stakes clear immediately. It was released a few months after I saw Art play in June 2019 on my birthday. At the intimate show, he revealed his multiple sclerosis diagnosis as if we were all his closest friends. Something like this is never easy to deal with -- a similar announcement by the Lucky Boys Confusion singer did not help matters -- but music can help such a painful situation, and it’s clearly Alexakis’ exile here.

72) The Cranberries - “In The End”

A very suitable sendoff for the band following the passing of singer Dolores O’Riordan. The recording story (via NPR):

O'Riordan died suddenly in January 2018 at 46 years old and left behind the vocal tracks to what was intended to be the band's latest album. Now, O'Riordan's bandmates have decided to complete that album, In The End — the last album the band will release — in her memory.

[...]

In June 2017, O'Riordan and Hogan started emailing album ideas and demos back and forth to each other. O'Riordan had been very open about her struggles with mental health and addiction, which would affect the band at times, but they wanted to make a new album. Hogan says that when they were emailing those demos, she was in a good place. They started laying down her demos.

"All of that was kind of behind her," Hogan says. "She's kind of found a way to cope with the mental health thing. That's why she wanted to write so much. That's what she kept saying, 'I have so much to say, I just need the music to put it to.' "

Hogan says O'Riordan's apparent stability is what made her death even more tragic and devastating. (Officials ruled O'Riordan's cause of death to be accidental drowning due to alcohol intoxication.) But after a period of mourning, the remaining band members remembered they still had O'Riordan's demos. As Hogan remembers, they finally had the courage to start listening to them again in late February and, with her family's permission, started recording in April. "We spoke to her family and said, 'Look, how do you feel about us finishing the album?' And they were really supportive," Lawler says. "They were delighted, actually. They gave us their blessing."

Hogan says, in a sense, they were used to O'Riordan not being in the studio when they recorded — "Dolores hated hanging around the studio once we worked on our parts" — but, of course, this time was different.

71) Raleigh Ritchie - “Time In A Tree”

Exercise time. Play the first minute or so of this song without looking at any YouTube visuals.

/waits for you

OK, who are you picturing singing this? Got your image?

Well, whatever it was, you’re wrong -- it’s GREY WORM HIMSELF.

This was the best thing about “Game of Thrones” in 2019, sadly.

70) Culture Abuse - “Goo”

Simple, effective, gets out before you can dislike much.

69) Lil Pump f/ Lil Wayne - “Be Like Me”

Sometimes, a song starts, and you can just tell it’s going to be ignorant. Even before the vocals kick in. This was probably our moment here:

Between that and the beat, it’s like the only thing you can think is “Ohhhh, he’s about to say some horrible things about women.”

Other choice lines:

- “Yes, I’m hella ignorant, I don’t give a fuck” (he even says it in the song)

- “I take drugs like it’s Vitamin C / I’m a millionaire, but I don’t know how to read”

This song almost feels like it existed already.

68) The Get Up Kids - “Satellite”

Finally, our first rock song with some punch. This probably takes the crown from both DMB and P.O.D.

67) Bad Religion - “My Sanity”

BR is historically my favorite band, so it is rather deflating to see them so far back on this list. That said, it is Year 40 (!!!) of their existence, so some can be forgiven. Yet... we’ve never needed them more, you know? It’s this weird mixture of resentment but understanding.

66) Billy Liar - “The Righteous & The Rats”

Gonna see him (them?) open for The Bombpops in March; looks quite promising. Has an old school Brit punk feel.

65) Beach Slang - “AAA”

Beach Slang never lets you forget they love -- no, like, LOVE -- The Replacements. When this cover dropped, I googled “replacements AAA”, and, surprisingly, nothing came up.

Ohhh, what I fool I was. After more digging, I discovered a band called Grandpaboy who performed “AAA”.

“Oh, damn -- he finally went outside the box with this pick.”

No. Grandpaboy is fronted by Paul Westerberg. Singer of, you guessed it, The Replacements.

James Alex wears his heart on his sleeve so hard, he might as well give the heart a little jacket so his heart can wear its own heart on its sleeve.

HE DID THAT TOO?!

You can’t even make jokes about this band; they live in the jokes with their damn earnestness.

64) Gesaffelstein & The Weeknd - “Lost In The Fire”

Even lesser known Weeknd-involved tracks sound like they could lead a soundtrack or close out a festival. Are you familiar with this one at all? It has 87 million views on YouTube. Abel is never not not playing.

63) FIDLAR - “By Myself”

Started from the bottom and I’m still at the bottom

Falling apart never felt so carefree and burdenless.

62) Constant Elevation - “Fuck Runnin”

As hardcore punk as this list is gonna get. All glory to Vinnie Caruana. Though none of his solo tracks from 2019 made it, this has an undeniable energy and confidence. Plus probably the best song title of the year.

61) Maren Morris f/ Brandi Carlile - “Common”

A focused duet that drills into relationship dynamics before throwing a personal theology wrench in the middle of the chorus.

60) Anti-Flag - “Christian Nationalist”

AF going in on the white, religious right. This is like throwing a 50 mph pitch to -- /looks up good baseball players -- Pete Alonso.

59) Cokie The Clown - “Punk Rock Saved My Life”

This is less of a song and more of a confessional essay, and it gets harder and harder to look away with every revealing detail. If NOFX’s Fat Mike needed this character as a vehicle to get all of these autobiographical details off his chest, hopefully it’s a helpful therapy.

58) White Reaper - “Might Be Right”

“Judy French” is such an untoppable song, but “Might Be Right” has a similar dynamic.

57) Denzel Curry - “RICKY”

Denzel Curry as a rap moniker is such a slam dunk.

/looks up actual name

!!!

56) Ariana Grande - “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored”

It takes a special kind of hot girl twisted to issue this unflinching request while totally pulling it off.

55) Goody Grace f/ blink-182 - “Scumbag”

Not sure if Goody is a Soundcloud rapper, punk rocker, or some kinda emo hybrid of both.

A few asides:

- Have we ever -- ever -- heard Travis Barker this subdued on drums?

- On the Blink-155 podcast, Goody said he gave Tom from the Plain White T’s a songwriting credit because he unintentionally lifted some melodies from “Hey There Delilah”, but... I really don’t hear it at all; like, it sounds maybe in the same key but not much else?

54) Jonas Brothers - “Sucker”

Despite their popularity in the past, I do not think I could name a single JoBros song. That changed in 2019 with this poppy, light, clappy, Maroon 5-style single.

53) Goo Goo Dolls - “Money, Fame & Fortune”

Someone -- coulda sworn it was Brendan Kelly -- said this was Goo Goo Dolls sounding like Fake Problems, and that is spot on.

52) AJJ - “A Poem”

A poem is song that no one cares about

This short, folky tune led to one of my favorite Twitter exchanges of the year, when I reached out to a music journalist with a question and AJJ came flying off the top rope.

51) DaBaby - “Suge”

This song is fun, but I really don’t get it. Beat is cool, flow is fine... this is the new face of hip-hop? His name is DaBaby! What are we doing here?!

50) Laura Stevenson - “Jesus, Etc.”

Taking a classic and doing it full justice/adding some harmonies.

49) blink-182 - “Not Another Christmas Song”

Blink’s 2019 album “Nine” was very, very bad because it tried too hard and was not good. This song, released later in the year, takes an opposite approach and actually works. We get lyrics that are discontent, even clumsy at times -- the “I miss fucking in the rain” line is so out of place/cringe-y but actually feels real and not workshopped by 10 producers. The trio can hopefully use this better b-side to figure out the best songwriting should flow out of you without having to go through multiple stations on a conveyor belt first.

48) Dave Hause - “Eye Aye I”

This song has a lot I love (catchy chorus, wistful thoughts, hairline analyses) and a lot I don’t (genuine use of the word “old bores”, Van Halen getting respect), but one thing is clear: Dave Hause is in complete control.

47) Beck - “Up All Night”

I’ve casually followed Beck’s entire career and would not have guessed this was him if given 100 chances. As an exercise, I’m going to pull up the 2020 Coachella lineup and randomly point to an artist.

/pulls up lineup and points

I got Daniel Caesar. If you told me this was Daniel Caesar, that would probably make more sense here.

46) Shawn Mendes - “If I Can’t Have You”

Randomly came into Shawn Mendes tickets in 2019, and good gracious, that was something. Other than parents, we were the oldest people there by a lot. Getting to watch thousands of teens and preteens legitimately having the best moment of their lives was downright inspiring. When you’re that young, it’s not even hyperbole. Phones were flagrantly out; I’m talking 20+ minutes of straight video being filmed. I wanted to judge so badly, but if you gave me an iPhone at my first concert when I was 14, who the hell knows how egregious my behavior would’ve been. As fun as the whole experience was, I never wanted to be in a grimy punk club more. Sometimes, leaving your comfort zone makes you appreciate your home base more.

This is a rock solid pop song, but there are way too many you/you rhymes to not penalize it some.

45) Big Thief - “Cattails”

The whitest song you will ever hear that isn’t written by Vampire Weekend.

44) Bayside - “Prayers”

Bayside went super metal with their 2019 release “Interrobang” (such a sick name). So yes, the guitars are a touch harder than you might be used to, but the chorus soars; a great hook transcends genre.

43) Naughty Boy & Mike Posner - “Live Before I Die”

Few had as interesting of a year as Mike Posner. Following a breakup, the death of his father, and the death of Avicii, he decided to walk across the United States of America. He legit became Forrest Gump, right down to the beard and grown out hair.

In the video, you can see how a snakebite hospitalized him and almost derailed the whole trek. After a rehabilitation period where he almost lost his leg, our man finally makes it to the Pacific Ocean. If nothing else, watch for the ending -- it’s exhilarating.

42) Post Malone - “Wow.”

Post is flexing in this one; we’ve got slow motion jamming with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, international flights, a dancing beard guy, and a Fall Out Boy name check which really makes them sound cooler than they are now.

41) Bryce Vine f/ YG - “La La Land”

Sometimes, these summertime Cali songs write themselves. That is until YG comes in and flips over the board before you can finish the game. By the time the Coachella reference is dropped when Bryce comes back in, you realize 1:47 may have actually been a better endpoint for the song than its 2:47 length.

40) David Rokos - “Backseat Drives”

It’s winter in Chicago, again and until forever. If you haven’t been to the Jewel in the South Loop or Marshall Field’s before they changed it, just listen to this so you don’t actually have to.

39) Simple Creatures - “Drug”

Mark Hoppus and the dude from All Time Low give us this synth-pop bop that feels like the duo shooting their shot at a real mainstream pop hits. It didn’t quite get there, but they should feel OK about where it landed.

38) Chris Cresswell - “To The Wind”

My interest in The Flatliners ramped up considerably in 2019, as their near decade old record “Cavalcade” got plenty of spins (peep “Filthy Habits”; just stunningly incredible punk). Though they did not release anything this year, their singer put out “To The Wind”, a longing song about missing someone.

37) Kesha f/ Big Freedia - “Raising Hell”

Kesha, with the help of New Orleans’ Big Freedia, gives us another one. I’ve personally dug Kesha for a while now, but when is it time for us as a society to put her into the all-time conversation for pop artists? She has at least, like, seven HOF certifiable bangers. Plus she kills a guy in this music video.

In conclusion, I think this could translate to a country song very easily.

36) No Lenox - “Marquee”

Illinois/Japan’s No Lenox are back with Reuben Baird on the mixer and legendary masterer Collin Jordan (of The Boiler Room) on the, well, master, and the fullness in sound leads to the assault that is the “I saw your name on the marquee / Your friends were milling around outside” part. They only play it once, but I really could’ve gone for closer to five.

35) Red City Radio - “Love A Liar”

Rapid fire Red City Radio gets this one done in exactly 120 seconds.

34) Barely March - “Lead Single”

This sounds like Joyce Manor turned up to a 17 out of 10 before unexpectedly turning into a hellogoodbye song.

33) New Lenox - “Old Words”

Not a typo from two songs ago -- legitimately a different band. This one was written by your boy. The first 15 seconds were from a demo recorded 1/2/16 before developing the rest in 2019 (after some encouragement). We have Dave Rokos on guitar/bass, Dave Hernandez on hums, and Brian Bedford on some very temporary sleigh bells. Themes: online dating, resolutions, exes, currents, Black Wednesday, hope, and Carly Rae Jepsen stage banter.

32) MakeWar - “Sails”

Honey, I can’t make it on my own

You might get some Gaslight Anthem vibes as the vocals come in, but by the time the song ends, MakeWar leaves their own imprint on this impassioned ballad.

31) Sheryl Crow & Johnny Cash - “Redemption Day”

Was gonna say Johnny’s voice could move mountains before realizing no, Johnny’s voice is the mountains.

30) American Football f/ Hayley Williams - “Uncomfortably Numb”

Sensitivity deprived I can't feel a thing inside I blamed my father in my youth Now as a father, I blame the booze

An unlikely collaboration that makes you forget about its unlikeliness by the two minute mark. The two voices trade spots, mesh, harmonize, and weave throughout this beautiful song.

Asides:

- Blake from “Workaholics” in the video?!

- Choose to interpret this song’s title as a Pink Floyd diss

- “I’ll make new friends in the ambulance” should be a 2005-level emo lyric that we all mock, yet it’s somehow one of the most stunningly appropriate closers of the entire year

- I wish my friend Luke was with us to hear it

29) Stuck Out Here - “Embarrass You”

Stuck Out Here got onto my radar with 2014′s amazingly named “Getting Used To Feeling Like Shit”. Five years later, they’re back -- and not feeling much better. The Toronto quartet’s Bandcamp describes the song like this:

They’re fucking up, but unlike previous releases, they’re finally holding themselves accountable.

You can even kinda hear their Canadian accents in the “I’m sorry I embarrass you...” part.

28) The Weeknd - “Heartless”

The Weeknd will be on these lists as long as he continues to make music even 1/8th as good as this.

27) The Chainsmokers f/ blink-182 - “P.S. I Hope You’re Happy”

A simple song that’s a touch more clever than you first realize. The Chainsmokers guy is giving me some real Owl City vibes. Also, how airtight of an apology is the line “I blame myself for when I was someone else”. It’s like the modern way of saying “When I was a child, I spoke like a child”.

Also also, the “I will find a way somehow...” harmony in the pre-chorus is as pretty as music got in 2019. The Chainsmokers are so sonically pleasing, whether you end up liking the music or not.

26) Vampire Weekend - “Harmony Hall”

ooooooooh, that crisp guitar in the intro

25) Alex Lahey - “Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself”

If Carly Rae Jepsen can get a sword, why can’t Alex Lahey get a god damn saxophone? HIT ME.

That solo, combined with the “Mighty Ducks” reference in the chorus, make this song untouchable.

24) Lizzo - “Truth Hurts”

Let’s be clear: this did drop in 2017 but was technically re-released in 2019, so it does qualify for our list despite the criteria threatening timeline. Anyway.

The walking piano part, the iconic intro line (with a lawsuit!), the Minnesota Vikings reference (causing a Green Bay radio edit), and all of the damn positivity. Lizzo was among music’s big winners this year, and her success made you wonder how the hell someone this talented was slept on for those two years.

Let’s end with the purse.

23) An Horse - “Ship Of Fools”

Awkward band name, but a song that makes you pay attention. Kinda like Tegan and Sara, had they stayed more rock. So much urgency in the vocals and lyrics.

22) Charli XCX f/ Lizzo - “Blame It On Your Love”

Trippy vid; Charli continues to give us anthems. Wasn’t super high on the Lizzo cameo, but it somehow made more sense in the context of said video.

21) Sincere Engineer - “Dragged Across The Finish Line”

Sincere Engineer is back -- you can tell from the second those guitar leads get goin’. Drums from 1:19 to 1:36 = /heart eyes emoji. My buddy Cox said his next tattoo very well could be the outro lyric “Too dumb to succeed, too honest to cheat”.

(Bonus fact: they did a beer collaboration/show with Pollyanna Brewing Company in 2019.)

20) Lil Nas X - “Old Town Road”

Was unwilling to listen when this first dropped solely because of how horrible Lil Nas X’s name is (”What if a rapper came out named ‘Lil Jay-Z X’?!”)... what a foolish notion. One billion streams and a Billy Cyrus cameo later, I wouldn’t have been able to miss out on the Song of the Summer (and year) if I tried. More notes:

- Picked this because I had to, but “Panini” is legit good (200+ million streams)

- Went with the original (sorry, Billy), which is a beautiful 1:53 long (brevity, brevity, brevity)

- Did you know: Lil Nas X uses a Nine Inch Nails sample on the beat? This Rolling Stone interview with Trent Reznor is super interesting

Reznor calls “Old Town Road” “undeniably hooky,” but once it exploded, he took a back seat to the phenomenon. “The reason I haven’t stepped in to comment anything about it is, I don’t feel it’s my place to play any kind of social critic to that,” he says. “It was a material that was used in a significant way and it turned into something that became something else, and those guys should be the ones the spotlight is on…. They asked if I wanted to do a cameo in the video, and it was flattering, and I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I don’t feel like it’s my place to shine a light on me for that. I say that with complete respect.”

Still, Reznor is amazed at how the song became a juggernaut. “Having been listed on the credits of the all-time, Number One whatever-the-fuck-it-is wasn’t something…I didn’t see that one coming,” he says. “But the world is full of weird things that happen like that. It’s flattering. But I don’t feel it’s for me to step in there and pat myself on the back for that.”

19) Gryffin & Carly Rae Jepsen - “OMG”

What doesn’t this little bop have? It’s kinda Chainsmoker-y and tingles like cool breath hitting the back of your neck.

18) Craig Finn - “Blankets”

You travel your whole life just to get out to the place you’re gonna die

I love everything about this song: the artwork, the intro, the climax, the command Craig Finn has from start to finish -- with such a payoff. Now several albums in, the greatest compliment we can give is that his solo stuff now feels more essential than Hold Steady releases*. You can even hear it in this line: “When we got to the Twin Cities / I said ‘Man, I know some songs about this place’”. Another life.

17) Carly Rae Jepsen - “Now That I Found You”

Carly always keeps us in the sky; picking one song was difficult because the album is even more fulfilling as you get to put the pieces together.

16) Billie Eilish - “Bad Guy”

Different genres*, but Billie Eilish lived up to her hype in the exact same way Lana Del Rey did in the earlier part of the decade. Lana said she was the gangster Nancy Sinatra and totally fucking was. Billie feels like something potentially even bigger. Nearly everything about her aura lets you project (or even second guess, if you’re a skeptic). Is she dead-eyed because she’s high or disaffected? Or just Aubrey Plaza? Is it her or her brother that’s pulling the strings? How can someone so young be so good already? In the skinny fashion era of All Achilles Everything, how is she rocking such loose fits?

“I never want the world to know everything about me. I mean that’s why I wear big baggy clothes,” she said. “Nobody can have an opinion because they haven’t seen what’s underneath.”

“Nobody can be like ‘Oh, she’s slim-thick, she’s not slim-thick, she’s got a flat ass, she’s got a fat ass,’” she continued. “No one can say any of that because they don’t know.”

It almost seems too easy, but how much sense does that make to you?

Great jokes aside, I have so much anticipation for what’s next, with assured belief in its potential. Pitchfork:

In 10 years, she will still be well under 30. Let’s hope the planet survives that long.

Yes.

(* - though not totally)

15) Ben Gibbard - “Filler”

Before you check Gibbard’s, please listen to the original by Minor Threat. That’s what he had to work with. From there, a total transformation while doing the near impossible -- keeping its beating heart.

14) Martha - “Wrestlemania VIII”

youtube

Third favorite song title of the year/favorite music video of the year. This is energetic, bratty punk at its finest; also surprised to find out it was British, but, based on the upcoming tour dates and YouTube description...

This is a silly & frankly quite rubbish video but when you are a band trapped within surveillance capitalism's endless hunger for content trying to promote a tour sometimes things will be a silly & frankly quite rubbish.

I love them. Seriously didn’t even notice the accents in the singing until I knew to look for them; now, it’s all I can hear. Also, the part in the video where they finally show someone with an instrument, only he stops playing guitar halfway into the solo (/crying emoji).

THEY SAY ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDA

13) Chance The Rapper f/ Ben Gibbard - “Do You Remember”

Chance The Rapper dropped a one hour and 17 minute album in 2019 because he is a monster. I could not name three songs on it, but this one stood out big. It’s Chano doing what he does best: reminiscing and evoking summer in his city. Gibbard on the hook gives it that 2005 nostalgia while also making you say “Damn, it’s been nearly 15 years since 2005?!”

Fav two lines:

1) “Used to have obsession with the ‘27 Club’ / Now I'm turning 27, wanna make it to the 2070 club / Put the 27's down, Lord, give me a clean lung / Took the ring up out the box, I know this ain't no brief love”

2) “That summer left a couple tan lines / I love my city, they let me cut the line on the Dan Ryan”

(If you know, you know.)

Two more asides:

- If you Google “death cab for cutie”, the next autofill from there is “do you remember”. Rough for the legacy.

- “My daughter on the swing like the 2017 Cubs” is a line that confused me, but here’s how Genius explained it:

Chance is talking about a memorable summer and the things that made him happy. This line continues that theme when he raps about his daughter happily on a swing and how that’s similar to the 2017 Cubs. The Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016; therefore, the 2017 season was one of celebration and relaxation as the pressure of the 108 year drought was over.

12) Lana Del Rey - “The Greatest”

I miss Long Beach, and I miss you...

Listening to this song feels like watching the cement dry on a classic in real time. Lana Del Rey’s galactic “Norman Fucking Rockwell!” dominated lists at the end of 2019, and she -- to borrow her word -- fucking deserved it.

- The Beach Boys line is so god damn perfect

- The guitar solo (soooo sick)

- The breathy singing; the crooning; the notes that go up and then down until you’re surrounded by melody

- The perfection of this album name (minus the very iffy exclamation point) will have me comparing nearly any other all-time album title for probably the rest of our lives

- Tried playing this album during my Monday night pickup basketball run, and it very much failed... but that’s about the only thing it couldn’t do

- I’m told the dude with her on the album cover is Jack Nicholson’s grandson (named Duke Nicholson, because of course)

11) Off With Their Heads - “No Love”

If you do not like punk rock, this will be unlistenable. If you do, what a treat! I love how dissatisfied and put off he sounds, and, while there are a few more lively songs remaining on the list, none in 2019 got fast-tracked to my workout/pump up playlist at this speed.

Factoring in the band’s van accident (occurred after the release of this song), the “There’s nothing I could say that’s ever gonna make it right” outro becomes hauntingly clairvoyant.

10) Drake f/ Rick Ross - “Money In The Grave”

We need to face facts: it was a down year for stadium hip-hop. Nowhere on this list do you see Jay, Em, Kendrick, or Kanye (rest in peace). This was my favorite rap song of the year, and it couldn’t even crack the Top 5. Similar to his beloved Raptors -- who are being celebrated here -- it’s almost as if Drake needed some injuries outside his own locker room to get the crown. But I’m done being bummed, let’s focus on the good:

- Ohhhh, the intro (”I mean where. the fuck. should I. really even start?”)

- The way he says “grave” in the hook like he can barely contain

- The hook itself -- read it out loud: “When I die, put my money in the grave”

- How cool Ross sounds when he breaks in

- The Zion reference

The bad:

- Rarely take this angle, but really wouldn’t mind if it were longer

- Misogyny

9) PUP - “Bloody Mary, Kate And Ashley”

Second favorite song title of the year, 6/8 time signature, satanic references, drugs, hallucinations (maybe), and, yes, the Olsen twins.

8) Better Oblivion Community Center - “Sleepwalkin’”

“It’s impossible to count...”

The intro, as the tempo gets jarringly slower and slower, ironically helps you acclimate quicker. This Phoebe Bridgers/Conor Oberst collab was my No. 1 played track of 2019 (the album coming out in January definitely helped). The song builds to Phoebe’s solo part:

You like beer and chocolate I like setting off those bottle rockets We can never compromise But fighting 'til the death keeps us alive

It’s sung so well, you can almost feel the heat of the spotlight on her through the stereo. The lyrics could be anything.

The chill guitar solo takes us out.

7) AM Taxi - “Saint Jane”

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Adam Krier is such a rockstar, he had me shouting “I’m no hero, at best a zero!” within my fifth listen -- and I was skeptical as hell when I first heard the line. But that’s about where it stopped. You can tell this song is going to rip even before the vocals come in. When they do (”These fears don’t die, you get older and they multiply”), it’s just fucking time to go.

6) Taylor Swift - “Paper Rings”

My favorite pop song of 2019. Tay is firing on all cylinders; every lyric is exactly where it’s supposed to be; boppy and fun and sincere (while still being light-hearted). Still holding out minor hope it will be a single in 2020.

5) Pkew Pkew Pkew - “The Polynesian”

I’ve always said the best songs make you want to live the lyrics, whether they are positive or negative. This one had me researching “polynesian wisconsin” faster than I’m comfortable disclosing. And yes “bed bugs” and “needles” were both in the Top 7 recommended searches after those first two words.

Pkew Pkew Pkew collaborated with Craig Finn on some of their lyrics on 2019′s “Optimal Lifestyles”, and I’d be blown away if he doesn’t have fingerprints on this one -- the storytelling is pristine. Go into this open-minded, and I’d be shocked if you weren’t shouting the “Goatees, tall cans, camo pants, and Packers fans” mantra by the end.

Bonus story: this St. Patrick’s day in Chicago, I asked my friend Sara (Wisconsin native) if she’d ever stayed there, and she held up her elbow and showed me a scar from the hotel’s water slide. Your boy was over the moon.

4) Spanish Love Songs - “Losers”

It gets harder, doesn’t it?

Dylan Slocum has a way of not just writing depressing songs -- many lyricists are good at that -- but specifically depressing songs. This song contemplates death, homelessness, squandering your limited time on the planet, credit card debt, leeching off your parents because you have no other choice, crippling illness, and completely giving up because there genuinely is no other choice. The last lines are, without any hint of winking, “We’re mediocre. We’re losers. Forever.”

It’s wonderful.

Two straight Top 4 finishes for SLS; their 2020 album should be something special.

3) oso oso - “the view”

If Jade Lilitri is making personal progress in “microscopic strides”, you wouldn’t be able to tell by his songwriting. Every tune has a way of warming up your entire body and being. This grabs you, whether it’s the laid back guitar or the mismatched quick drums or the big ass chorus. While it came down to this one or “basking in the glow” (an actual single), the bridge here puts us over the top:

But not as much as the phone ringing Not as much playing my house Not as much as the way her goddamn voice sounds It's like taking in sun And then taking it back I fall into old habits I'm stepping over your cracks again

Her voice? This song.

2) The Menzingers - “Strangers Forever”

This song makes me want to rip up walls, sprint through streets with no destination, shred my lungs screaming off rooftops, bash hands drumming the steering wheel until my sprained fingers beg me to stop. It is such a perfect encapsulation of my favorite band of the decade and possibly of all-time.

Scranton’s sons gave me everything and more from 2010 through 2019, so it’s fitting they end so high here. This is probably the most clownable sentence of them all, but I am so constantly thankful I am alive to experience Greg Barnett’s songwriting. What he creates, I can only compare to the best books or movies or athletes or even personal relationships.

The way the guitar alternates in the headphones to start, the drums that go big and push the song along, the reverb vox that certainly could have less reverb, the “it is what it is”-style lyric of “My miserable memory’s making me more miserable”, the oceanic imagery, the quiet bridge that explodes into a final chorus. Barnett said the overall theme was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”.

In it, the character Darya Alexandrovna learns of her husbands infidelity and declares: “Even if we remain in the same house, we are strangers — strangers forever!” The idea of becoming a stranger to someone you so intimately know stuck with me, and became the overarching narrative to this song. Dolly’s statement is definitive, but she also realizes the trappings of 19th century patriarchal Russian society. It’s a complex conundrum, and while lyrically I speak in the first person, this song exists in a world outside of my own personal experiences. I wanted to write about the finality of relationships that need to end this way. Strangers Forever.

My only gripe is I wish there were more. But I’m the same person who never wants them to stop.

1) Signals Midwest f/ Sincere Engineer - “Your New Old Apartment”

Only one song could make me fear missing the chance to be with the love of my life the same year I married her. As discussed in “The Polynesian”, the best songs have the consistent ability to put you in someone else’s shoes. You are either reliving something you personally experienced or maybe taking it all in for the first time. And that can be powerful -- especially dealing with anything big picture.

“Your New Old Apartment” launches me into 2009 without ever asking. Age: 23. My life was transient, I had no career, I didn’t even believe in marriage. I left my retail job in the Chicago suburbs for an unpaid newspaper internship in New Jersey. When I saw the people I loved, I always tried to make it count. Still do.

The descriptors and feeling are suffocating, right from the jump:

I only saw you a couple times last year Once at a wedding, once at a funeral I wore the same clothes to both, and I was worried you would notice ‘cause yours were impeccable

That’s me, then. Not knowing how to dress but hoping to get by anyway. I remember talking to my buddy P before buying my “work clothes” and learning you needed to match your shoes with your belt. Boyish adulthood.

The song continues, and the narrator is filled in on 5-year plans. It may be cliche to speak, but every current moment is simultaneously your youngest and oldest. Being in my early 30s now, it is so easy to scoff at anyone’s best laid plans, but I’m also the same cat who thought The Wonder Years’ “Jesus Christ, I’m 26 / All the people I graduated with / All have kids, all have wives, all have people who care if they come home at night” was life-defining, because I was the same age when that dropped, and it always hits the hardest when it’s all around you.

What I love about these lyrics are the careful observation mixed with mature-behind-his-years restraint. For a very long time in my life, I did not think I would get to be with my wife as anything more than a friend. When you are forced to come to terms with those potential realities, you must make concessions and convince yourself they’re OK. So when it’s revealed the narrator’s muse is married, he resigns himself to hopefully seeing the person more and at least being adjacent to the life they are living. It is tragic but still something. It is alternate hope in the hopeless.

I can picture myself listening to this song that wasn’t yet written while leaving a 2009 or 2010 or 2013 wedding and wishing I told her everything. But I wouldn’t have -- not then. I would have poured my heart out into a diary and quoted a line or three from this at the bottom. But that was then, this is now.

In 2019, her new old apartment will be my new old apartment, and that will never be lost on me.

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* * *

Bonus coverage. Since we are at the end of the decade, I rounded up our No. 1 song from each year and have that below:

2010: The Menzingers - “Time Tables” 2011: Jay-Z & Kanye West - “Gotta Have It” 2012: Carly Rae Jepsen - “Call Me Maybe” 2013: Kanye West - “On Sight” 2014: The Menzingers - “Where Your Heartache Exists” 2015: Big Sean f/ Kanye West - “All Your Fault” 2016: The Menzingers - “Lookers” 2017: The Menzingers - “After The Party” 2018: Horror Squad - “I Smoke The Blood” 2019: Signals Midwest f/ Sincere Engineer - “Your New Old Apartment”

* * *

It’s time to stop writing. Thank you so much for reading.

Spotify playlist is here, featuring 70 of the 75.

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heartofoshun · 8 years ago

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This is a micro-essay and a banner created as an extended introduction to a fic-rec list pulled together to celebrate Maglor’s Day on the Fëanorian Week celebration on Tumblr and initially inspired by the SWG Strength and Beauty March 2017 challenge.

In her summary introduction to the first story on the list below, Dawn Felagund writes: “The Noldolantë seems to be one of those Must-Write Silmarillion Stories.” Here is my quick and dirty effort to collect a random selection of fanfiction featuring the Noldolantë. The Noldolantë is, of course, Maglor’s famous epic work of the Fall of the Noldor, beginning with the first Kinslaying at Alqualondë. One usually presumes it continues through the building of the kingdoms of the great Noldorin princes in Middle-earth and their heroic feats against Morgoth in the North, their tragic defeats, and perhaps unconscionable missteps on the part of the Fëanorians in their attempts win back the Noldor’s greatest artifact the Silmarilli, created by Fëanor and stolen by Morgoth.

There is no reason to presume, however, that the tale could not have started much earlier, even in the Golden years of Valinor with the seeds of that tale, or that the story we know lacks certain key aspects that call into question our most common assumptions about that history.

A Tale Written from Strength Rather Than Weakness?

"Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic." ~Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Tolkien names it a lament. A lament can be a song or poem of grief, anguish, anger, or pain. It does not necessarily mean an acknowledgement of wrongdoing and expression of guilt. It might be a railing against the gods in outrage at being falsely accused. You decide. A lament might be sung more in anger than in sorrow.

Maglor is the guy who sought out on the field of battle and personally killed Uldor, the one who had betrayed them at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. These characters are complex. One ought not assume too quickly that Maglor is the sweet, gentle Fëanorian. Most importantly, Tolkien wrote the story of the Noldor at length in The Silmarillion but from other points of view. Yet, he gave us not a line, not a word of the Noldolantë, despite the fact that it was composed by the greatest singer of the Noldor and the one loremaster in a position to have had the most intimate familiarity with the facts of their history.

We know there is another perspective on this history. History is usually written by the victors and yet the Noldolantë tantalizingly enough contains the version of that grand history as experienced by the vanquished, through the words of its greatest bard. It is the ultimate challenge for a Tolkien fanfiction writer to take a stab at writing any small part of this chronicle.

A few stories concerning the Noldolantë (The Fall of the Noldor).

Noldolantë by Dawn Felagund–For Oshun, how Maglor devised the Noldolantë. (2008) Noldolantë by Nelyafinwe Feanorian–In poetic form. (2004) Noldolantë by Epilachna–From a longer story, this chapter recounts a performance in Valinor by Maglor of the Noldolantë. (2008) The Artistic Temperament by tehta–They don’t all have to be somber; the Noldolantë with humor. (2013) The End of All Things by Marta–They don’t all have to accept the Silmarillion view, but this one more or less does, with a special twist. (2013) Faraway Voices by ncfan–Nerdanel becomes aware of the Noldolantë. (2013) The Tale Of The Telerin Flute Player by Himring–Maglor’s wife becomes aware of the Noldolantë. (2012) Bard Rising by Rhapsody–Maglor picks up the Noldolantë and decides to write a more personal prequel. (2007) Unfinished but reads well as is.

How do you imagine the Noldolantë? What are some of your favorite fan fic versions of this epic? Do you intend to write a Noldolantë story? I suppose I do. Actually, I imagine that is more or less what the body of my Silm fic is as a whole (with a few exceptions)—the story told from the perspective of the Noldor. Aside from that, I mention it from time to time in the context of my other stories. In my ongoing interpretation, Maglor’s brothers and cousins have been hearing bits of it from him since his adolescence.

#feanorianweek #day 2 Maglor #maglor #noldolante #silmarillion fic recs

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queenmobs · 8 years ago

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Interview: Timothy Dyke

Timothy Dyke is the author of Atoms of Muses (Tinfsh Press, 2017). He lives in Honolulu, Hawai‘i with parrots. He teaches high school students and writes poems, stories, and essays. In 2012 he earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. He is also the author of the chapbook Awkward Hugger, which was published by Tinfish Press in 2015.

Jaimie Gusman: Thanks for agreeing to continue our conversation. I’m really excited about your upcoming book Atoms of Muses. The poems are raw and beautiful and seem very personal. We talked about vulnerability in our earlier conversations, so I was hoping we could pick up there. In the book, you write, “I struggle with the ethics of telling stories about people I love.” Tell me something about this.

Tim: I wrote a story once about an extraordinary and dangerous experience I went through when I was devoted to this drug addict friend of mine. Once I came out of the spell of that relationship, and once my friend cleaned himself up and put his life in a forward direction, I wrote a story that got published. I told my friend I was writing a story about the crazy stuff we went through. He said he understood and didn’t want to read it. About a year later he read the story, and he was so pissed. He didn’t deny that I’d captured a truth about our experience, but he wanted me to know that I’d embarrassed him.

Jaimie: How did he handle it?

Tim: We didn’t talk for about two years afterwards. We got over it. We’re friends now. He’s the friend I called last summer when I needed a ride to Moanalua for emergency surgery. At the time of his first expression of rage, I was in graduate school in Tucson. I told my professor what was happening. This poetry teacher said he made sure he didn’t tell his loved ones where he was publishing. He seemed to imply that he wrote whatever he wanted and dealt with the consequences.

#Timothy Dyke #interview #Jaimie Gusman

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otherpplnation · 4 years ago

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Episode 671 — Kathleen Rooney

Kathleen Rooney is the guest. Her new novel, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, is available from Penguin Books.

This is her second time on the program. She first appeared in Episode 274 on May 4, 2014.

Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, as well as a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand. She teaches in the English Department at DePaul University, and her most recent books include the national best-seller, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (St. Martin’s Press 2017 / Picador 2018) and The Listening Room: A Novel of Georgette and Loulou Magritte (Spork Press, 2018).

A winner of the Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine, she is the author of nine books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including the novel O, Democracy! (Fifth Star Press, 2014); the novel in poems Robinson Alone (Gold Wake Press, 2012), based on the life and work of Weldon Kees; the essay collection For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs (Counterpoint, 2010); and the art modeling memoir Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object (University of Arkansas Press, 2009). Her first book is Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America (University of Arkansas Press, 2005), and her first poetry collection, Oneiromance (an epithalamion) won the 2007 Gatewood Prize from the feminist publisher Switchback Books.

With Elisa Gabbert, she is the co-author of the poetry collection That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (Otoliths, 2008) and the chapbook The Kind of Beauty That Has Nowhere to Go (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013).. And with fellow DePaul professor Eric Plattner, she is the co-editor of Rene Magritte: Selected Writings (University of Minnesota Press, 2016).

Her reviews and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Poetry Foundation website, The New York Times Book Review, BITCH, Allure, The Chicago Review of Books, The Chicago Tribune, The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation and elsewhere.

She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay.

Today's monologue: listener mail.

www.otherppl.com

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limejuicer1862 · 5 years ago

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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 poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

rob mclennan

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent poetry titles include A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019) and Life sentence, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds), Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He is “Interviews Editor” at Queen Mob’s Teahouse, editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com. He has a million links to books, chapbooks, interviews and other activity at his author page: robmclennanauthor.blogspot.com

The Interview

What inspired you to write poetry?

That’s a good question. I’m not entirely sure, and it’s a question I was asked by another not that long ago. I think poetry found me, and the finding, during my early high school years, solidified some of the thinking I’d already been attempting. Writing simply made sense.

It helped that I had a good social group around me during that period, many of whom were also experimenting with the beginnings of writing. We even started a small publication that our English teacher put together for us, and I contributed poems, postcard fictions and a couple of drawings.

Once my twenties began, it was the birth of my first child that really made me realize I should either pay attention to “this writing thing” properly, or simply not bother. She was born two months before I turned twenty-one, and I was soon running a home daycare full-time so I could stay home with her (taking in two other children five days a week, ten hours a day). I was writing in a coffee shop three nights a week during that period, from 7pm to midnight.

Who introduced you to poetry?

During my mid-teen years, my girlfriend (the eventual mother of my first child) was a big reader, and she introduced me to many things, including poetry and fiction, predominantly Canadian literature of the period—Leonard Cohen, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Lawrence, George Bowering, John Newlove, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Elizabeth Smart, etcetera. Through another high school peer, I became introduced to the work of Richard Brautigan, who remains my preferred American writer. I have a soft spot for him and his work I refuse to relinquish.

How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

“Dominating” seems an odd word. Anyone who publishes, especially for an extended period, is going to overshadow anyone younger who hasn’t yet published. Also: I’ve known a great many ‘older poets’ who have been remarkably generous with emerging writers, many of whom might not have managed to get to where they needed to gain traction with their own work without that kind of mentoring. I, myself, spent my teens and twenties encouraged by a great number of well-established writers, including Henry Beissel, Gary Geddes, Ken Norris, Judith Fitzgerald, John Newlove, George Bowering, Bruce Whiteman, Robert Hogg, Diana Brebner, John Barton, Mark Frutkin, Barry McKinnon, Elizabeth Hay and others.

I was aware of other writers only abstractly during my teen years, with few examples. Gary Geddes and Henry Beissel lived close, and I became aware of them through high school workshops. Ralph Connor was very much on my radar, as he’d written extensively on and around my geographic area, but he existed as a historical figure, not as a contemporary one (he sold a million copies of his books in 1900, being Canada’s earliest, if not first, best-selling fiction writer). It was only once I moved from the farm to the city at nineteen that I began moving through bookstores and libraries and multiple reading series, and getting a slow sense of what was happening with writing.

By the time I was twenty-three (1993), I’d started reviewing poetry titles, which quickly emerged into what has become a lengthy engagement with reviewing poetry, fiction and non-fiction books, journals and chapbooks. I started with a column in our local weekly paper in 1994, but by the end of the decade that had fizzed out, which eventually shifted my attention online, and my blog, which began sometime in 2003. For many years, as reader, writer, editor, reading series organizer and publisher, I’ve made it my business to be aware of as much as I possibly, humanly, can.

What is your daily writing routine?

Before the birth of our wee girls (who are now three and five and a half), I was writing daily from the time I woke until late afternoon, and even kept “office hours” at a donut shop from 1994 to 2000, before shifting over to a coffee shop (once my donut shop closed) where I sat daily for fourteen further years. Once the (more recent) wee children plus our house, I moved from writing almost exclusively in public spaces to sitting at my desk in a home office. These days, I’m either with the children, or I’m at my desk. There aren’t many opportunities for much else.

I’m currently writing around their summer program schedule—three mornings a week from 9am to 12:30pm—before I collect them from the church down the street for further adventures. There are times they are willing to play quietly, whether downstairs or in the living room, which allows me some further time at my desk, but I try to be careful with that. Once September hits, our big one begins grade one, and the wee one most likely returns to her three mornings plus two full (school) days a week, which will allow me some further attention. Perhaps that might even open the possibility that I return to that “big novel” I keep promising myself I’m still working on.

What motivates you to write?

This would seem an odd question to pose to a dairy farmer: what motivates you to milk the cows? Or to a welder: what motivates you to weld? So I offer: this is what I do. I start projects to make sense of things, and to explore particular subjects, thoughts and shapes. I finish projects because I am project-oriented (and am often eager to get to whatever might come next). Perhaps it comes from being the son of a self-directed dairy farmer, but I see what I do very much as existing in a working-class ethic. I get up, I work. I keep working. Very “Alice Munro” in my Scottish-Protestant ethic.

What is your work ethic?

My work ethic is the muscle I utilize to create and complete work. It is something I struggled to establish during my twenties, and has sustained much of my writing since.

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

George Bowering was a great jumping-off point for my reading and research. He remained my favourite Canadian poet for two decades or more. He is often underacknowledged in CanLit for his wide range, and enormous amount, of editorial work and critical writing. He did, it was said, more critical work on those around him than any other writer of his generation. Through him, I discovered the work of a great deal of writers, from established to emerging, from mainstream to experimental, from Canadian to international. If one thought inevitably leads to another, so, too, my reading and thinking, and Bowering, singularly, increased my awareness exponentially.

And there are multiple books and authors I continue to return to, for rejuvenation, or solace. I’m rereading Jack Spicer these days, for example. Before that, I was digging through, yet again, Rosmarie Waldrop and Norma Cole.

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

There are many! And too many to list here. But I am always excited to see new works by Lydia Davis, Lorrie Moore, Rosmarie Waldrop, George Bowering, Stuart Ross, Gil McElroy, Jason Christie, Brecken Hancock, Julie Carr, Pattie McCarthy, Erín Moure, Jack Davis, Monty Reid, Stephen Brockwell, Pearl Pirie, Amanda Earl, Stephen Collis, Sarah Manguso, Cole Swensen, Megan Kaminski, Anna Gurton-Wachter, Hailey Higdon, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Jordan Abel, derek beaulieu, Sarah Mangold, Sandra Ridley, Hoa Nguyen, Jessica Smith, etcetera. There are so many writers doing amazing things! And there are new things to learn and relearn from every one of them. I want to experience it all. I like seeing what I haven’t before, which can often be difficult. I want to see work that challenges the way I think of writing, and thinking.

Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

This is something I know I can do, and do very well. I also really enjoy it.

It makes sense to me when I tell myself that I write. I am a writer.

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

Write as much as possible. Read as much as possible. Be fearless. Employ the long game.

Be open. Engage with others attempting the same. Edit later. Don’t be afraid to fail.

Keep going. Repeat as necessary.

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

Since January I’ve been working on a poetry manuscript titled “book of magazine verse,” which plays off Jack Spicer’s title, writing poems that aim themselves toward specific journals and presses. In hindsight, I’m realizing just how little such pointed compositions are acknowledged, and I’m enjoying seeing where the poems end up taking me. If one attempts a couple of poems for Fence magazine, for example, they are going to sound very different than, say, poems that one might send to Grain magazine, so why not play with that structure? So much contemporary literary production would be lost without the little magazine and the small and smaller presses.

I’ve also been poking at a handful of short stories, attempting to get a sense of where a new manuscript might take me, especially since completing a further manuscript of short stories last year. I don’t just want new stories to sound like an extension of what that prior book was doing. I want to see if I can do something different with the tone, and the structure. I’m still feeling it out. I’m also working on a follow-up manuscript of postcard stories, furthering a line begun with the publication of my debut collection of short short stories, The Uncertainty Principle: stories, (Ottawa ON: Chaudiere Books, 2014). I step into that manuscript every so often, but am not in any particular hurry, there.

There are numerous other projects in various states of incompleteness, which I would like to focus on, but I might have to wait until the fall before I can consider any of that. I mean, I’ve a post-mother creative non-fiction manuscript, “The Last Good Year,” that could use reworking. I’m half-through a poetry manuscript, “snow day,” currently made up of two longer prose poems (I haven’t yet decided on what the potential third section might look like). I’ve multiple unpublished manuscripts of literary essays that could use some attention, and re-shaping, for potential publication.

There is so much more that needs to be done.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: rob mclennan Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

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ionecoffman · 6 years ago

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What People Really Say Before They Die

Mort Felix liked to say that his name, when read as two Latin words, meant “happy death.” When he was sick with the flu, he used to jokingly remind his wife, Susan, that he wanted Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” played at his deathbed. But when his life’s end arrived at the age of 77, he lay in his study in his Berkeley, California, home, his body besieged by cancer and his consciousness cradled in morphine, uninterested in music and refusing food as he dwindled away over three weeks in 2012. “Enough,” he told Susan. “Thank you, and I love you, and enough.” When she came downstairs the next morning, she found Felix dead.

During those three weeks, Felix had talked. He was a clinical psychologist who had also spent a lifetime writing poetry, and though his end-of-life speech often didn’t make sense, it seemed to draw from his attention to language. “There’s so much so in sorrow,” he said at one point. “Let me down from here,” he said at another. “I’ve lost my modality.” To the surprise of his family members, the lifelong atheist also began hallucinating angels and complaining about the crowded room—even though no one was there.

Felix’s 53-year-old daughter, Lisa Smartt, kept track of his utterances, writing them down as she sat at his bedside in those final days. Smartt majored in linguistics at UC Berkeley in the 1980s and built a career teaching adults to read and write. Transcribing Felix’s ramblings was a sort of coping mechanism for her, she says. Something of a poet herself (as a child, she sold poems, three for a penny, like other children sold lemonade), she appreciated his unmoored syntax and surreal imagery. Smartt also wondered whether her notes had any scientific value, and eventually she wrote a book, Words on the Threshold, published in early 2017, about the linguistic patterns in 2,000 utterances from 181 dying people, including her father.

[Read more: What it’s like to learn you’re going to die]

Despite the limitations of this book, it’s unique—it’s the only published work I could find when I tried to satisfy my curiosity about how people really talk when they die. I knew about collections of “last words,” eloquent and enunciated, but these can’t literally show the linguistic abilities of the dying. It turns out that vanishingly few have ever examined these actual linguistic patterns, and to find any sort of rigor, one has to go back to 1921, to the work of the American anthropologist Arthur MacDonald.

To assess people’s “mental condition just before death,” MacDonald mined last-word anthologies, the only linguistic corpus then available, dividing people into 10 occupational categories (statesmen, philosophers, poets, etc.) and coding their last words as sarcastic, jocose, contented, and so forth. MacDonald found that military men had the “relatively highest number of requests, directions, or admonitions,” while philosophers (who included mathematicians and educators) had the most “questions, answers, and exclamations.” The religious and royalty used the most words to express contentment or discontentment, while the artists and scientists used the fewest.

MacDonald’s work “seems to be the only attempt to evaluate last words by quantifying them, and the results are curious,” wrote the German scholar Karl Guthke in his book Last Words, on Western culture’s long fascination with them. Mainly, MacDonald’s work shows that we need better data about verbal and nonverbal abilities at the end of life. One point that Guthke makes repeatedly is that last words, as anthologized in multiple languages since the 17th century, are artifacts of an era’s concerns and fascinations about death, not “historical facts of documentary status.” They can tell us little about a dying person’s actual ability to communicate.

Some contemporary approaches move beyond the oratorical monologues of yore and focus on emotions and relationships. Books such as Final Gifts, published in 1992 by the hospice nurses Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley, and Final Conversations, published in 2007 by Maureen Keeley, a Texas State University communications-studies scholar, and Julie Yingling, professor emerita at Humboldt State University, aim to sharpen the skills of the living for having important, meaningful conversations with the dying. Previous centuries’ focus on last words has ceded space to the contemporary focus on last conversations and even nonverbal interactions. “As the person gets weaker and sleepier, communication with others often becomes more subtle,” Callanan and Kelley write. “Even when people are too weak to speak, or have lost consciousness, they can hear; hearing is the last sense to fade.”

I spoke to Maureen Keeley shortly after the death of George H. W. Bush, whose last words (“I love you, too,” he reportedly told his son, George W. Bush) were widely reported in the media, but she said they should properly be seen in the context of a conversation (“I love you,” the son had said first) as well as all the prior conversations with family members leading up to that point.

At the end of life, Keeley says, the majority of interactions will be nonverbal as the body shuts down and the person lacks the physical strength, and often even the lung capacity, for long utterances. “People will whisper, and they’ll be brief, single words—that’s all they have energy for,” Keeley said. Medications limit communication. So does dry mouth and lack of dentures. She also noted that family members often take advantage of a patient’s comatose state to speak their piece, when the dying person cannot interrupt or object.

[Read more: What good is thinking about death?]

Many people die in such silence, particularly if they have advanced dementia or Alzheimer’s that robbed them of language years earlier. For those who do speak, it seems their vernacular is often banal. From a doctor I heard that people often say, “Oh fuck, oh fuck.” Often it’s the names of wives, husbands, children. “A nurse from the hospice told me that the last words of dying men often resembled each other,” wrote Hajo Schumacher in a September essay in Der Spiegel. “Almost everyone is calling for ‘Mommy’ or ‘Mama’ with the last breath.”

It’s still the interactions that fascinate me, partly because their subtle interpersonal textures are lost when they’re written down. A linguist friend of mine, sitting with his dying grandmother, spoke her name. Her eyes opened, she looked at him, and died. What that plain description omits is how he paused when he described the sequence to me, and how his eyes quivered.

But there are no descriptions of the basics of last words or last interactions in the scientific literature. The most linguistic detail exists about delirium, which involves a loss of consciousness, the inability to find words, restlessness, and a withdrawal from social interaction. Delirium strikes people of all ages after surgery and is also common at the end of life, a frequent sign of dehydration and over-sedation. Delirium is so frequent then, wrote the New Zealand psychiatrist Sandy McLeod, that “it may even be regarded as exceptional for patients to remain mentally clear throughout the final stages of malignant illness.” About half of people who recover from postoperative delirium recall the disorienting, fearful experience. In a Swedish study, one patient recalled that “I certainly was somewhat tired after the operation and everything … and I did not know where I was. I thought it became like misty, in some way … the outlines were sort of fuzzy.” How many people are in a similar state as they approach death? We can only guess.

We have a rich picture of the beginnings of language, thanks to decades of scientific research with children, infants, and even babies in the womb. But if you wanted to know how language ends in the dying, there’s next to nothing to look up, only firsthand knowledge gained painfully.

Lisa Smartt at her father, Mort Felix’s bedside (Eliana Derr)

After her father died, Lisa Smartt was left with endless questions about what she had heard him say, and she approached graduate schools, proposing to study last words academically. After being rebuffed, she began interviewing family members and medical staff on her own. That led her to collaborate with Raymond Moody Jr., the Virginia-born psychiatrist best known for his work on “near-death experiences” in a 1975 best-selling book, Life After Life. He has long been interested in what he calls “peri-mortal nonsense” and helped Smartt with the work that became Words on the Threshold, based on her father’s utterances as well as ones she’d collected via a website she called the Final Words Project.

One common pattern she noted was that when her father, Felix, used pronouns such as it and this, they didn’t clearly refer to anything. One time he said, “I want to pull these down to earth somehow … I really don’t know … no more earth binding.” What did these refer to? His sense of his body in space seemed to be shifting. “I got to go down there. I have to go down,” he said, even though there was nothing below him.

He also repeated words and phrases, often ones that made no sense. “The green dimension! The green dimension!” (Repetition is common in the speech of people with dementia and also those who are delirious.) Smartt found that repetitions often expressed themes such as gratitude and resistance to death. But there were also unexpected motifs, such as circles, numbers, and motion. “I’ve got to get off, get off! Off of this life,” Felix had said.

Smartt says she’s been most surprised by narratives in people’s speech that seem to unfold, piecemeal, over days. Early on, one man talked about a train stuck at a station, then days later referred to the repaired train, and then weeks later to how the train was moving northward.

“If you just walk through the room and you heard your loved one talk about ‘Oh, there’s a boxing champion standing by my bed,’ that just sounds like some kind of hallucination,” Smartt says. “But if you see over time that that person has been talking about the boxing champion and having him wearing that, or doing this, you think, Wow, there’s this narrative going on.” She imagines that tracking these story lines could be clinically useful, particularly as the stories moved toward resolution, which might reflect a person’s sense of the impending end.

In Final Gifts, the hospice nurses Callanan and Kelley note that “the dying often use the metaphor of travel to alert those around them that it is time for them to die.” They quote a 17-year-old, dying of cancer, distraught because she can’t find the map. “If I could find the map, I could go home! Where’s the map? I want to go home!” Smartt noted such journey metaphors as well, though she writes that dying people seem to get more metaphorical in general. (However, people with dementia and Alzheimer’s have difficulty understanding figurative language, and anthropologists who study dying in other cultures told me that journey metaphors aren’t prevalent everywhere.)

Even basic descriptions of language at the end of life would not only advance linguistic understanding but also provide a host of benefits to those who work with the dying, and to the dying themselves. Experts told me that a more detailed road map of changes could help counter people’s fear of death and provide them with some sense of control. It could also offer insight into how to communicate better with the dying. Differences in cultural metaphors could be included in training for hospice nurses who may not share the same cultural frame as their patients.

End-of-life communication will only become more relevant as life lengthens and deaths happen more frequently in institutions. Most people in developed countries won’t die as quickly and abruptly as their ancestors did. Thanks to medical advances and preventive care, a majority of people will likely die from either some sort of cancer, some sort of organ disease (foremost being cardiovascular disease), or simply advanced age. Those deaths will often be long and slow, and will likely take place in hospitals, hospices, or nursing homes overseen by teams of medical experts. And people can participate in decisions about their care only while they are able to communicate. More knowledge about how language ends and how the dying communicate would give patients more agency for a longer period of time.

But studying language and interaction at the end of life remains a challenge, because of cultural taboos about death and ethical concerns about having scientists at a dying person’s bedside. Experts also pointed out to me that each death is unique, which presents a variability that science has difficulty grappling with.

And in the health-care realm, the priorities are defined by doctors. “I think that work that is more squarely focused on describing communication patterns and behaviors is much harder to get funded because agencies like NCI prioritize research that directly reduces suffering from cancer, such as interventions to improve palliative-care communication,” says Wen-ying Sylvia Chou, a program director in the Behavioral Research Program at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, who oversees funding on patient-doctor communication at the end of life.

Despite the faults of Smartt’s book (it doesn’t control for things such as medication, for one thing, and it’s colored by an interest in the afterlife), it takes a big step toward building a corpus of data and looking for patterns. This is the same first step that child-language studies took in its early days. That field didn’t take off until natural historians of the 19th century, most notably Charles Darwin, began writing down things their children said and did. (In 1877, Darwin published a biographical sketch about his son, William, noting his first word: mum.) Such “diary studies,” as they were called, eventually led to a more systematic approach, and early child-language research has itself moved away from solely studying first words.

“Famous last words” are the cornerstone of a romantic vision of death—one that falsely promises a final burst of lucidity and meaning before a person passes. “The process of dying is still very profound, but it’s a very different kind of profoundness,” says Bob Parker, the chief compliance officer of the home health agency Intrepid USA. “Last words—it doesn’t happen like the movies. That’s not how patients die.” We are beginning to understand that final interactions, if they happen at all, will look and sound very different.

Article source here:The Atlantic

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