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greylunar · 5 years ago

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PLEASE do in depth analyses of all of the houses for your quiz I was enraptured reading the gryffindor one and I didn’t even get gryffindor

JUST FOR YOU ANON, I am going to compile the sort of Final Breakdown of every house, in my opinion, that you get at the end of the quiz now. Theres more in-depth analysis of specific questions under each house’s tag on my blog, and you can feel free to ask more specifics of course bUT here is the masterpost of that c:

A Hufflepuff is, unlike a Ravenclaw or a Gryffindor, an internal house. I know what you must be thinking, “how can you be the house of loyalty if you’re an internal house?” Puffs have a small network, Their People, maybe friends, maybe family, maybe friends who are family, maybe an assortment of small pets or animated characters. While Slytherins also have Their People, they have resources and associates to draw from when their bored, whereas the term associates exhausts a Hufflepuff. Spending time with people they don’t love doesn’t ever sit quite right, although they will often do it in an attempt to make folks happy. Hufflepuffs yes, are a house of kindness and of love, but unlike Gryffindors when it comes down to it they don’t have to go out of their way for kindness and love. Gryffindors will seek out situations in which they can do good. Hufflepuffs good is smaller (not lesser) in which they will do as much good as they can for the people directly in their line of sight, but when granted with the great expanse of the world it is easy for them to shrink in on themselves and not be able to cope. That said, they have so much love to give out, and will often want all their love in one place, slightly selfish but mostly excited collectors of people. If your version of the ideal future is a vague image of all the people you love in your house for [insert holiday] that is a very Hufflepuff sentiment. Hufflepuffs, like Gryffindors, are inherent/intrinsic worth folks. Hufflepuffs know who they are, or at least how they define themselves. Their moral code may not be their local government’s law (and actually very often isn’t), but it does exist and is rigid, and puffs won’t go against it unless incredibly pressed. This is a point of contention with Slytherins and Ravenclaws, and even Gryffindors who feel like they have to perform/validate their identity and choices through others. Hufflepuffs are themselves, and no one else, completely and quietly. They love their People. They want to build a home for them. That isn’t to say that puffs are necessarily gentle pushovers. A huge component of Punk and Anti-fascists align themselves with Puffs because they are So themselves and So invested in the safety and well-being of their people and community. Like slytherins, hufflepuffs often know/feel they’re weird, and tend to relish in finding people as absurd and lovely as they are. They will forgive people, possibly too much. But quietly, they will shift the little orbit of the world around themselves to be a little kinder, a little gentler, for them and the people they love. Be kind to yourself. You do not have to be any bigger than you are.

Slytherins are linked to identity, changing themselves to meet their needs and the wants of the world around them. They have specific people that are Theirs, and their circle of Actual Trust may be rather small, even if their friend/associates/resources group is a wide network. Slytherins are tied to wanting, craving, and not necessarily in a bad way or in a way that’s “ambition”. Slytherins are a house made up of people who want something or someone or some goal desperately or are made up of a myriad of little wants, but also struggle with the idea of worth and whether or not they have done enough to deserve the things they want. Sometimes, these wants are secret. Slytherins are often caught up in this wanting and this worth, and cannot see that they are already loved, completely and wholly, for who they are. When you care for someone you care for them with all of you, you are inherently a protective house like hufflepuffs for those that you care about most, and for all your wanting so so so many of you are beautiful creators (the worlds and story ideas slytherins have just roaming around in their brains?? amazing!). My advice to slytherins, if I can give some without being asked hahaha oops, is to recognize that for all the shapeshifting of the self you do, you can be exactly who you want to be, if you just give yourself permission. Who would you be in a dark room without any mirrors? How would you dance? How would you dress, for just yourself? Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to change your life tomorrow. It just means, sometimes, starting in little ways, take back a little bit of ground from the world. “This part is me. This part is mine. You aren’t allowed to have it.” It can be quiet. But you are worth so much, and you are yours. You are just as much of a person as anyone else, and have already earned love, because you never had to earn it in the first place.

Gryffindors believe in innate worth, innate characteristics, sort of your personality is that way because That Is Who You Are. Similar to hufflepuffs in this way, anti-slytherin experience haha. Gryffindors, unlike Hufflepuffs, are an external versus internal change maker. Because of this, they are often more broadly idealistic than hufflepuffs (think range, although they both hold their core values very deeply, hufflepuffs are on a smaller more condensed scale whereas gryffs will spread themselves thinner. Puffs do not have to change the world, rather they create a Home in which to put their world into, whereas a lot of Gryffindors struggle with feeling that they aren’t doing Enough, not Enough good, not Enough love. That the failures of the world are in part because they haven’t done enough to help personally). Gryffindors are very solid with their identity. While slytherins/ravenclaws will see their body/their reflection in a mirror, a scientific fact of life or something they wish they could/can change and shape, Gryffindors (with some exceptions for gender, trauma, and mental illness) tend to be confused that there are answers other than “I see myself in the mirror.” However, Gryffs can be performative, because while they see themselves, they need to be told that they are going in the right direction, they need to be loved, they need to help. Gryffindors will lose themselves a bit in an empty room, in isolation, moreso than hufflepuffs or ravenclaws. They create and change the world around them FOR the world around them, and so the world can look at them and say “okay, you did it, its okay now.” In this way, they are closest to slytherins, seeking validation, seeking a legacy, even though they may not even do it/realize its for themselves. They do good, or they try to, based on how they have defined it for themselves. They will care for you with all of them, if you earn it. They will hold you. But the voice in their head says “am I sure that this is what good looks like. Am I sure that this is enough.” From your friendly neighborhood Hufflepuff, sometimes doing what you need to take care and save yourself is the best thing for the world. Maybe cook something, have a lil dance party. You are an important part of the world. Start small, and love that part the most. You can add on from there c:

Ravenclaws shape the world around them, and create, in order to create a world that better suits themselves and their goals, rather than Slytherins who shape and create/recreate themselves to suit the world, meaning they are an external house, creating and impacting in the world around them rather than in themselves. Unlike Gryffindors, the other external house, Ravenclaws do not feel as much pressure to be seen in a sort of grand legacy or entirely shape the world around them. They give and seek knowledge and creation because, in a very basic sense, they feel like they need to. In a way I’ve said it “I could not write poetry for 30 years and that wouldn’t mean I’m not a poet. I am a poet. That does not change.” But Ravenclaws will get restless if they don’t create if they don’t learn. Their legacy doesn’t mean that the whole world will remember them forever. Its that they will create/make/do something that will matter to even one person enough that they will be remembered. A lot of Ravenclaws feel tied to their Ravenclaw identity because they don’t quite know who they’d be if they weren’t the ‘intelligent one’ if you will. But Ravenclaws sometimes forget that they create beauty every day, learn things new and small every day, without even meaning to. Ravenclaws believe identity is created/forged/remade constantly as information is gathered, and often try to seem neutral, scared of sharing an opinion unless they’ve thought it through completely and are certain they should stand by it. Ravenclaws are often searching, looking for something bigger than them, as almost to prove they are small in comparison. Sometimes the best thing a Ravenclaw can do is realize that all those wonderful books and poems and pieces of art that make you dream of a fantasy world were made in this world. This place, so full of love, that gave them to you in order for you to love it back. A lot of ‘gifted kids’ put themselves in Ravenclaw, without realizing that it was the rest of the world that put them in Ravenclaw, and not something that they chose. If that’s the case, maybe now is the time to ask yourself who is it you want to be? The self is a construct loves, and a uquiz doesn’t define you. You define you. You’re so good at creating Ravenclaw friends. Create you. You’re already magnificent. You’re already worth it. Now its time to look at yourself and give some love to that self, to ask it what it wants to be. You are, more than anything else, your greatest masterpiece.

#tal asks #anons #quiz related content #hp lore #hp lore masterpost #ravenclaw #gryffindor #hufflepuff #slytherin

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phoenotopia · 5 years ago

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2020 July Update

Things have gone slowly... again.

The good news is that the game is now submitted to the console "authority" and it's entirely off my hands. Once it gets through the console "checking" process, it can get a release date and we can sprint towards release. Until then, it'd be at least a month's wait or more until I hear anything. Understandably, their checking process is impacted by Corona, so wait times are increased.

On my end, I was also slow to submit the game. I submitted it late late June, since I ended up spending 7 weeks fixing bugs (and not 2-3 weeks like I estimated in the last blog post). There were just SO many bugs - now squished, thankfully. Since this is a blog post, I'll talk about what kind of bugs I've been fixing.

The other thing that slowed down the submission process was simply due to unfamiliarity with how these submissions proceed. There were pages and pages of stuff to read, guidelines to follow, and legalese to wade through. It really made me wish I had a publisher to guide me through the process. But I was able to clear it with a couple days work. I had an impression that the submission process went like A->B->C->D, with no room for concurrency. Turns out I could have done steps B & C at the same time and sped things up by 2 weeks... So that's that. I'm taking that as a lesson for next time.

The Console Revealed

What is this console that I talk about so stealthily? So that this blog update isn't completely unexciting, I'll reveal which console I've been working on until now. Drumroll please!

It's Switch!

We actually got the Switch dev kit in late 2017. From my understanding, around this time in the USA, the Switch kit was quite hard to get for indies as it was just starting out and high in demand. So I was surprised that my application got approved. I didn't know it then, but the game would still need a few more years of development...

Tweaking performance and fixing bugs

Here you can see my "expert" playtest setup. Since the Switch is more powerful while docked, I needed to playtest it in handheld mode, so I could catch and profile any problem areas where the framerate was unsteady. The most common thing that caused framerate drops were areas that went overboard with lighting. For these areas, I'd tweak or swap out the lights with alternatives that looked similar while also being less computationally intensive. Maintaining 60 FPS is a must!

An old camera (Nikon D3100) trained at the screen recorded my playthrough and would let me rewind to any moment a bug occurred. It could only record in 10 minute chunks, so I'd have to repeatedly repress the record button. On the plus side, because it's so old the movie file sizes were small and convenient.

The number one bug that I tracked and fixed in the past two months was what I dub the "Gear Ring De-equip" bug. The Gear Ring functions as customizable shortcut keys for the player to map items and tools (see an old video demonstration HERE). Through regular use of the inventory, somehow the equipped items on the Gear Ring would be de-equipped. It was an elusive bug since the de-equip event would happen very quietly and you would only suspect something had gone wrong much later. By then, the trail had gone cold and you weren't sure if a de-equip had actually occurred or if the player had simply de-equipped the item themselves. Two other playtesters noted that something left the Gear Ring in their playthrough, but I dismissed them. "Are you sure you didn't just de-equip it yourself?" It was a bug that bred mistrust and discord. I didn't truly believe it until it happened to me...

Luckily, with the camera setup, I was finally able to track it. In the literal 67th video, I caught a live instance of the bug occurring. After which, it was all too easy to recreate the exact same inventory and gear ring setup and replicate it.

(With this exact item layout, combine the 2nd item with the 14th item... and viola! Gear Ring de-equip!)

After fixing this bug, I then proceeded to fix it 5 more times. Every time I fixed it, it would later reappear through a different mechanism.

Why do bugs like this happen? Underneath, there are two lists of items. Tools on the right and items on the left. Items can occur multiple times because they're consumable. Both lists start counting their indexes with the value 0. However, both items and tools co-exist on the gear ring. So to uniquely identify an entry you need both the item ID and the data index. Failure to check both data types resulted in bugs like the Gear Ring de-equip. Now throw in a bunch of item operations that can confuse the system. You can split items, combine items, swap items, or discard items. The more freedom you allow, the more ways there are for the system to trip up.

If you didn't get all that, that's alright. It was needlessly complicated. Imagine doing more and better and with less code and less bugs! Such a thing is possible if you start with the right design. I'm definitely taking notes here on how to design inventory systems for next time. In the meanwhile, I'm very confident I've squished all inventory related bugs.

Other bugs squashed and features implemented in the past 2 months include the end game arts not unlocking properly, collection percentages climbing beyond 100, stray doors floating in the sky, low HP sfx blaring when loading different files, balance tweaks on bosses, a max HP display when the menu is open - too many to count really! It was only after I fixed them all that I was confident enough to move forward with submitting the game. I apologize for the delay this will cause!

PC version back in progress

You may recall in the March 2020 update I talk about how in pursuing the Switch version, I unwittingly ruined the PC version. Well, since the game is "done" now and I'm waiting for it to go through the checking process, I've started working to reclaim the PC version.

And there is some good news to report. The PC version can compile again! Of course, it will need to have some work done, since it was late 2017 when I last had a functioning PC build.

The opening menu is broken, the underlying save file system needs to be updated, and the controls... oh Lord, the controls. Controls were probably the #1 factor in pushing me to pursue a console version first. There are just so many controller options. Even just the usual suspects are numerous: Xbox, Nintendo, Sony, Logitech, Hori, 8Bitdo, Steam...

One of the number one complaints received regarding the flash game (which was keyboard primarily) was that I didn't allow controller rebinding to start. It was then that I learned of the vast array of different keyboard types.

(Ever heard of an Azerty keyboard?)

I shan't make the same mistake twice! One of the things I'll definitely tackle is the Right/Left face button feud when it comes to which should one should be 'confirm' and which one is 'cancel'. I want to allow the player to choose which is their "YES" and "NO" preference and allow that to overlap other actions like Attack or Jump.

Even after control bindings are taken care of, some things just won't translate well. The right control stick is currently used to access the gear ring and for fishing. Keyboards have no right stick. Aiming the crossbow with a full 360 degrees of range is done with the left control stick - if keyboard only, would the crossbow simply be locked to the 8 cardinal directions? What about those tutorial prompts with button graphics (e.g. "Press 'B' to Jump"). If using the playstation controller, it'd need to be the CROSS symbol. How many button graphics are we gonna load into the text module? What if the player, mid-playthrough, decides to swap out controllers? Indeed, there are many issues to tackle where controls are concerned...

Perhaps I'm overthinking it because even some AAA games get this wrong (Dark Souls has 'B' as 'Yes' on Switch, and it's not remappable, which I find quite annoying). I've seen games on consoles where the controls wouldn't mention the console's controller at all but instead mention a mouse and keyboard. Or, if you remapped the controls, the tutorial prompts still showed the old control bindings, making for a confusing experience. I definitely want to do the controls justice, so this will take some time.

Phoenotopia DISCORD Channels

Ryan and Firana have been running a Phoenotopia discord since late 2017, which I promoted on this blog once. It's been a couple years and it turns out that the old discord link I promoted expired. It's long overdue, but their channel could use another shoutout. Here's their channel : https://discord.gg/cnjrYST

Also, Khalid recently reached out to me about creating a Phoenotopia discord as well. I see no reason why we can't have 2 or more discords, so he has created that one with my blessing as well. You can find his discord here : https://discord.gg/cfnsCwy

I personally don't use Discords, since I'm very busy and there's too much new tech to keep up with. I hear there's a Tik Tok now? Should I create a Tik Tok for Phoenotopia? Hmmm...

Anyway, if you'd like to chat with other people who are similarly enthused for Phoenotopia, do check them out!

Fan Arts

We have five new fanart submissions this time around from regulars and new alike.

Cody G. returns with this pair of sketches of Gail. One seeks to answer the question, "how is Gail so strong?" Cody's answer is that under her sleeves she's actually really buff! This might be the most ripped rendition of Gail yet. Also, in the right drawing, the letter 'E' kinda melds with her bat, making it look like a keyblade!

What if Gale was a Shrek character? A new artist, Samu Kajin, from tumblr answers that question with a rendition of Gail sporting ogre style antennae. Samu Kajin says she can be called "Gaek" or "Shrale". I like the poncho!

Shafiyahh returns with a pretty portrait of Gail. Unlike their previous digital pieces, this one was made with color pencils! I like how her hair blends pink and purple colors together, and this pattern is also present in the eyes. Reminds me of a certain character. And the eyes are so sparkly despite using color pencils! Major props!

Negativus Core also returns with this relevant image of Gail, masked and running, presumably from Corona. It gave me quite a chuckle! I like the angle and tilt of this run pose because you can see the sole of her foot - that's how you know she's at full sprint! A skillful blur localized to her left foot show's just the right amount of motion. Gotta love the robot's expression too!

A rare 3D art has emerged. Dany Q crafted this adorable figure of Gail that is as cute as a button! I like how well it translates the pixel character over to 3D, capturing the 3 stitches on her shirt and even catching her stray strand of hair. It kinda reminds me of a Wallace and Gromit character, so I can picture it moving and animating in that unique claymation style.

Next Time

I'm ~80% confident we can clear the Switch console checking process and drop the trailer with a release date before the next blog post. But once again, if things go slowly, you'll hear from us in 2 months...

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dustedmagazine · 4 years ago

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Dust Volume 6, Number 13

Trees

It’s four in the afternoon and already getting dark, a foot of snow on the way. One year is nearly over — and yes, we’ve got some essays on that coming up after the holiday break — and another one is taking shape in our inboxes, mail chutes and hard drives. But for right now, let’s take another look at 2020, doubling back on the records that caught our ears without exactly fitting our schedules, the ones that almost got away. Here are the usual free improvisations and long drones, hip hop upstarts and cowpunk also-rans, a harpist, a cellist, a tabletop guitarist and at least one stellar punk record that has us hoping for sweaty live music again in 2021. Contributors this time included Bill Meyer, Bryon Hayes, Andrew Forrell, Patrick Masterson, Jennifer Kelly, Jonathan Shaw, Arthur Krumins, Ian Mathers and Ray Garraty, heck let’s call it a quorum, and see you again in the New Year.

Mac Blackout — Love Profess (Trouble In Mind)

Love Profess by Mac Blackout

Mac Blackout owes his surname to his membership in the Functional Blackouts. That’s a garage combo that was once the subject of an article about how they’d been banned from various venues on account of the destructive chaos of their live performances. But you can’t do that forever, and nowadays Mac’s a painter and solo recording artist. His latest sounds are unlikely to make anyone want to put a chair into the mirror behind the bar, but they might send you flipping through your record collection, looking for the sounds that you and he have in common. Love Profess opens with a burst of piano-pounding, sax-overblowing free jazz, but that lasts for about nine seconds before it gets swallowed by some John Bender-worthy synth throb. Give “Wandering Spheres” a couple more minutes, and Mr. Blackout goes full La Dusseldorf on us. By turns spacy, spooky and seriously compelled to vent nocturnal loneliness, this half-hour long LP is both as familiar and as unknown as a well-shuffled deck of cards.

Bill Meyer

Ross Birdwise — Perfect Failures (Never Anything)

Perfect Failures by Ross Birdwise

Vancouver-based electronic improviser Ross Birdwise rails against spatio-temporal norms. The concepts of tempo and rhythm are malleable in his universe. Architecturally, Birdwise is Antoni Gaudí, working in fluid lines to build incomprehensible structures. With Perfect Failures, he leaps even further away from the orthogonal grid of musical construction, dissolving beats into grains of sound. The warped rhythms found on Frame Drag are divested in favor of an approach that more resembles electroacoustic composition. As a matter of fact, the title track comes on like a digital recreation of a piece of classic musique concrète. Birdwise avoids venturing into purely ambient territory yet borrows some signifiers from the genre: keyboard melodies, elongated tones, washes of sound. He overlays these seemingly innocuous elements with crashes of noise, oblique jump cuts and hyperkinetic sequences, constantly forcing us to shift focus to make sense of his soundscapes. The febrile nature of the music is what intoxicates, but the discordant melodies are what enthrall.

Bryon Hayes

C_G — C_G (edelfaul recordings)

C_G by C_G

Belgium-based French electronic artist Eduardo Ribuyo (C_C) and Israeli drummer Ilia Gorovitz (Stumpf) join forces on C_G, a one-take collaboration of molecular machine noise and improvised percussion. It opens as a slow creep, Gorovitz playing minimal rhythms that sound like someone walking through the pre-dawn streets of an awakening city. Ribuyo accretes whirrs, cracks and electrical pops to evoke the dread of a night not over. On “Normalising Cruelty,” for instance, the discomfort builds, the drums tumble in flight, the noise intensifies. The relative conventionality of the percussion tracks seems intentional and serves to focus attention on the granular details Ribuyo conjures from his machines. Think the experiments of similarly minded Mille Plateaux and Raster Norton artists. When played through headphones at volume, its full queasy Room 101 buzz and grind squirms most effectively into the brain. Easy listening this is not, but if and when home gatherings resume this would be an ideal way to clear the house.

Andrew Forell

Che Noir — After 12 EP (TCF Music Group)

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If you’ve been paying attention to hip-hop in the last few years, Buffalo’s Griselda camp has dominated the “old heads” conversation away from whatever the kids are vibing to on TikTok. But there’s life away from an Eminem partnership, and not just in the form of Benny the Butcher: Witness Che Noir, who has been on fire throughout 2020. After starting off the year with the 38 Spesh-produced Juno and following it up with the Apollo Brown-produced As God Intended, Che’s closing things out with this self-produced seven-song EP that covers a wide range of territory without dipping into tales of street hustling, just the age old struggle to get some respect. “Hunger Games” is an early highlight that shows her chemistry with Ransom and 38 Spesh, while she completely takes over in speaking to the times on “Moment in the Sun,” which is the clear emotional highlight of the EP. Amber Simone’s pleading chorus on closer “Grace” is another stylistic turn and closes things on a high note. The last words you hear are Simone’s as she sings, “Imma go get it”; the lingering effect is that you know Che Noir is already showing you as much. Miss this one at your own risk.

Patrick Masterson

Cong Josie — “Leather Whip” b/w “Maxine” (It Records)

Leather Whip / Maxine (AA single) by Cong Josie

Frankie Teardrop rides again in this smoking synth punk single from Australia’s Cong Josie. “Leather Whip” is about as menacing and minimal as synthesizer music gets, braced by the hard slap of gate-reverbed drums and a claw-picked bass sound (maybe electronic?) and Cong Josie’s whispery insinuations. “Maxine” is just as stripped, with blotchy bass sound and swishing drum machine rhythms framing a haunted rockabilly love song. It’s very Suicide, but isn’t that a good thing?

Jennifer Kelly

Divine Horsemen — Live 1985-1987 (Feeding Tube)

Divine Horsemen “Live”1985-1987 by Divine Horsemen

With Divine Horsemen, Chris D of the Flesh Eaters had a brief but memorable run in vivid, gothic, country-tinged punk. This disc commemorates two red-hot live outings from 1985 and 1987, the first at Safari Sam’s in Huntington Beach, California, the second at Boston’s The Rat. A sharply realized recording shows how this band’s sound fit into the cowpunk parameters set by X, with strident guitar clangor and hard knocking rock rhythms (the ax-heavy line-up featured in this recording included Wayne James, Marshall Rohner and Peter Andrus on guitars, the Flesh Eater’s Robyn Jameson on bass). The secret weapon, though, was the ongoing and volatile vocal duel between the front man and his then-wife Julie Christensen, a classically trained soprano with an unholy vibrato-laced belt. You can hear how she transformed his art by comparing the Flesh Eater’s version of “Poison Arrow” with the one here. It’s as aggressive as ever, musically, and Chris D. is in full florid, echoey, goth-punk mode. Christensen, however, is molten fire, letting loose cascades and flurries of wild vibrating song. There’s a scorching, stomping romp through the vamping “Hell’s Belle,” and a lurid rendering of mad, howling “Frankie Silver,” and, towards the end, a muscular take on the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.” Christensen later made a mark as one of Leonard Cohen’s favorite backup singers, and Chris D is still knocking around with a reunited, all-star Flesh Eaters, though there’s some talk of getting this band back together as well. I’d go.

Jennifer Kelly

Dezron Douglas & Brandee Younger — Force Majeure (International Anthem)

Force Majeure by Dezron Douglas & Brandee Younger

Harlem harpist Brandee Younger and bassist Dezron Douglas faced down New York’s early months of quarantine with a series of live broadcasts recorded in their apartment on a single microphone. This document of intimate resilience collects highlights of the Friday ritual. Younger and Douglas perform covers of spiritual Jazz, soul and pop songs as well as the delightfully titled original “Toilet Paper Romance.” The music is so close you feel the fingers on the strings and frets. Younger’s harp playing is a revelation, pianistic on John Coltrane’s “Equinox”, pointillist yet robust on his “Wise One” which they dedicate to Ahmaud Arbery. Douglas provides vigorous and sympathetic accompaniment and his solo rendition of Sting’s “Inshallah” is a tender tough exploration of his instrument. Along the way there are lovely versions of pieces by, amongst others, Alice Coltrane, Kate Bush and Clifton Davis. Douglas closes with the words “Black music cannot be recreated it can only be expressed” and Force Majeure demonstrates that the same goes for humanity and creativity.

Andrew Forell

Avalon Emerson — 040 12” (AD 93)

040 by Avalon Emerson

It’s been a big year for Avalon Emerson, who started 2020 prepping a move from Berlin to East Los Angeles and ends it back home stateside with an almost universally acclaimed DJ-Kicks entry to her credit. This three-song 12” for the label fka Whities is a nice way to close out a triumphant year, illustrating her penchant for bright melodies and percussive detail. “One Long Day Till I See You Again” is a welcoming slice of beatless percolation to close; “Winter and Water” leans heavily on rhythmic tricks in the middle. That makes A1 “Rotting Hills” the ideal lead as a balance between them. There may not be so obvious a gimmick as a Magnetic Fields cover, but that makes it no less valuable for showing what Emerson can do. Call it one more fluorescent rush.

Patrick Masterson

End Forest — Proroctwo (Self-released)

Proroctwo (The Prophecy) by End Forest

For some of us, the fusion of folk music forms with crust and metal mostly issues in obscenities like Finntroll (yep, a Finnish band that makes folk metal songs about…trolls) or in politically toxic, Völkisch nationalist fantasias. But some bands get it right; see Botanist’s remarkable work, and see also End Forest, an act just emerging from Poland’s punk underground. Singer Paula Pieczonka employs a traditional Slavic vocal technique that roughly translates to “white singing” — but before you get creeped out by any potential fascist vibes, please know that the “whiteness” at stake in the phrase is purely an aesthetic value. And her voice is really great, open and soaring. “Proroctwo (The Prophecy)” has the sweep and drama of a lot of contemporary crust, and all of the genre’s interest in symbolic violence. The lyrics envision a future wrought and wracked by social conflict, a coming conflagration of torn bodies and of piles of dislodged teeth housed in some horrific archive of viciousness (that’s quite an image). It’s harrowing stuff, big guitar chords accented by sitar and flute. The track is available on Bandcamp, along with several inventive remixes by Polish musicians and DJs, like Tomek Jedynak and Dawid Chrapla. End Forest indicates that a full record is forthcoming sometime in spring. Looking forward to it, y’all.

Jonathan Shaw

Lori Goldson — On a Moonlit Hill in Slovenia (Eiderdown Records)

On A Moonlit Hill In Slovenia by Lori Goldston

Goldson creates movement and tension in an arresting way with a rough-hewn approach to the cello. This could be a good entry point to her solo work, which is varied and bridges the gap between DIY attitude and elevated levels of musicianship and considered approach. The flow of her playing here evokes the almost brutal scrape of the strings, which gives a welcome texture to the melodic squiggles.

Arthur Krumins

Hot Chip — LateNightTales (LateNightTales)

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The LateNightTales series of artist-curated mixes has seen a fair bit of variation over the years since Fila Brazilia first took up the torch in 2001, which makes a certain amount of sense; how we spend our late nights can differ wildly, of course. Hot Chip’s instalment in the series hits some of the expected notes (at least one cover, in this case a deeply moving one of the Velvet Underground’s “Candy Says” they’ve been playing since Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard were in high school together; a closing story track, in this case Taylor’s father reading a bit from Finnegan’s Wake) and otherwise depicts the kind of late night Dusted readers might be more familiar with than most; one where a clearly voracious and eclectic listener is keeping their own private party going just for another hour or so, but always keeping things just quiet and subtle enough to not wake up anyone upstairs. The three other, non-cover new Hot Chip tracks all make for standouts here but there’s plenty of room for accolades, whether it’s for the smoothly groovy (Pale Blue, Mike Saita, Beatrice Dillon), the more avant garde (Christina Vantzou, About Group, Nils Frahm) to just plain off-kilter pop (Fever Ray, PlanningToRock, Hot Chip themselves). The result works as both a wonderful playlist and a survey of the band’s sonic world; and it does work best when everyone else is in bed.

Ian Mathers

Annette Krebs Jean-Luc Guionnet — Pointe Sèche (Inexhaustible Editions)

pointe sèche by Jean-Luc Guionnet, Annette Krebs

Annette Krebs and Jean-Luc Guionnet recorded the three long, numbered tracks on Pointe Sèche (translation: Dry Point) over the course of three days at St. Peter’s Parish church in Bistrica ob Sotli, Slovenia. Location matters because this music couldn’t happen just anywhere; Guionnet plays church organ. Krebs was once part of the post-Keith Rowe generation of tabletop guitarists, but since 2014 she has abandoned strings and fretboards in favor of a series of hybrid instruments called konstruktions. Konstruktion #4, which appears on this record, includes suspended pieces of metal, a handful of toy animals, a wooden sounding board, vocal and contact microphones and a couple touch screens that manage computer programs. While both musicians have extensive backgrounds in improvisation, this recording sounds more like an audio transcription of a multi-media collage. Guionnet plays his large instrument quite softly, extracting machine-like hums, brief burps and dopplering tones that flicker around the periphery of Krebs’ fragments of speech, distant clangs and unidentifiable events. The resulting sounds resolutely defy decoding, which is its own reward in a time when so much music can be reduced to easily identifiable antecedents.

Bill Meyer

KMRU — ftpim (The Substation)

ftpim by KMRU

If you happened to catch Peel, Joseph Kamaru’s wonderful release on Editions Mego in late July, but haven’t paid attention before or since, early December’s half-hour two-tracker ftpim done for (and mastered by) Room40 leader Lawrence English is a Janus-faced example of the Nairobi-based ambient artist’s power. As Ian Forsythe put it in his BOGO review of both Peel and Opaquer, “Something that can define an effective ambient record is an ability to disintegrate the perimeter of the record itself and the outside world,” a line I think about every time I listen to KMRU now. “Figures Emerge” feels more immediately accessible to me as a relatable environment where the gentle, pulsing drone is occasionally greeted by sounds outside the studio, while “From the People I Met” is more difficult terrain, a distorted fog of post-shoegaze harmonic decay — no less interesting, but perhaps more metaphorical in its take on the outside world. (Or not, given how 2020 has gone.)

Patrick Masterson

Paul Lovens / Florian Stoffner—Tetratne (Ezz-thetics)

Enough years separate drummer Paul Lovens and guitarist Florian Stoffner that they could be father and son, and Lovens membership in the Schlippenbach Trio, and Lovens role as drummer in the legendarily long-running Schlippenbach Trio establishes him as an august elder of free improvisation. But the partnership they exhibit on this CD is one of equals committed to making music that is of one mind. Whether matching sparse string-tugging to purposefully collapsing batterie or burrowing sprung-spring wobbles to an immense cymbal wash, the duo plays without regard for showing us one guy or the other’s stuff. The point, it seems, is to how they imagine as one, and their combined craniums generate plenty of imagination. They operate in a realm close to that occupied by Derek Bailey and John Stevens, or Roger Smith and Louis Moholo-Moholo, but their patch of turf is entirely their own.

Bill Meyer

Mr. Teenage — Automatic Love (Self-Release)

Automatic Love by Mr. Teenage

Melbourne, Australia’s fertile garage punk scene has squeeze out another good one in Mr. Teenage, a Buzzcockian foursome prone to short, sharp riffs and sing-along choruses. A four-song EP starts with the title track, whose arch talk-sung verse erupts into rabid, rip-sawing guitar, like Devo meeting the Wipers. “Waste of Time” piles palm muted urgency with explosive release, with a good bit of the Clash in the crashing, clangor. “KIDS” struts and swaggers in a rough-edged way that’s close to the violence of early Reigning Sound or Texas’ Bad Sports. “Oh, the kids these days,” to borrow a phrase, they’re pretty good.

Jennifer Kelly

Nekra — Royal Disruptor (La Vida Es Un Mus)

Royal Disruptor by Nekra

Remember punk shows? Remember half-lit, dusty basements and fully lit, dirty kids? Remember your sneaker soles sticking to scuffed, gummy linoleum? Remember greasy denim battle jackets and hand-drawn Sharpie slogans? Remember warm beer (watery domestic suds in cans and cups) and cold stares (angsty bravado and bad attitude for its own sake)? Remember anarchists arguing with nihilists, and riot grrrls arguing with rocker boys? Remember people laughing and people smoking and people shouting and people spitting, all without masks? Remember the anticipation that crisps the air when the amps switch on? Feedback from the cheap-ass mic stabbing your ears? Beefy dudes elbowing through the press of flesh? That volatile, stomachy mix of happiness and truculence? Those warm-up thumps of the bass drum and the initial strums of crackling guitar? Remember all that? For the time being, in the United States of Dysfunction, here’s the closest thing you’ll get: an EP of feral, fast punk songs that sound like they’re happening live, right in front of your face. Thanks, Nekra — I really needed that.

Jonathan Shaw

Neuringer / Dulberger / Masri — Dromedaries II (Relative Pitch)

Dromedaries II by Keir Neuringer, Shayna Dulberger, Julius Masri

Yes, Dromedaries II is a sequel. It follows by three years a debut cassette which was sold in the sort of microquantities that 21st century cassettes are sold. So, it’s more likely that you have heard another of the bands that the trio’s alto saxophonist, Keir Neuringer, plays in — Irreversible Entanglements. While the two combos don’t sound that similar, they share a commitment to improvising propulsive, cohesive music that will put a boot up your butt if you get in the way. While IE focuses on supplying music that frames and exemplifies the stern proclamations of vocalist Camae Ayewa, the trio plays instrumental free jazz that balances individual expression with collective support. Neuringer, double bassist Shayna Dulberger and drummer Julius Masri play like their eyes are on the horizon, but each musician’s ears are tuned into what the other two are doing. The result is music that seems to move in concerted fashion, but usually has someone doing something that pulls against the prevailing thrust in ways that heighten tension, but never force the music off track.

Bill Meyer

Kelly Lee Owens — Inner Song (Smalltown Supersound)

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One of the distinctive things about Kelly Lee Owens’ marvellous debut LP a few years ago, as noted here, is that it felt so confident and distinct that it could have easily been the work of a much more seasoned producer. That impression, of a deftly skilled hand at the controls and a keen artistic sensibility and taste shaping it all, certainly doesn’t recede on Inner Song, whether it finds Owens homaging the grandmother who provided support and inspiration (“Jeanette”), gently but firmly rejecting unhealthy relationships (the utterly gorgeous “L.I.N.E.”) or teaming up with John Cale to make some bilingual, deep Welsh ambient dub (“Corner of My Sky”). And that’s one pretty randomly chosen three-song run! Owens continues to excel at both crafting gorgeous, lived-in productions and maybe especially with her handling of voices (her own and others), and she’s comfortable enough in her own skin that if she wants to open up the album with an instrumental Radiohead version (“Arpeggi”) she will, and she’ll make it feel natural, too.

Ian Mathers

San Kazakgascar — Emotional Crevasse (Lather Records)

Emotional Crevasse by San Kazakgascar

You won’t find San Kazakgascar on any map, but give a listen and you’ll know where this combo is coming from. Geographically, they hail from Sacramento CA, where they share personnel with Swimming In Bengal. But sonically, they are the product of a journey through music libraries that likely started out in a Savage Republic and sweated in the shadow of Sun City Girls. They likely spent time in the teetering stacks of music collections compiled in a time when the problematic aspects of the term world music were outweighed by the lure of sounds you hadn’t heard before. More important than where they’ve been, though, is the impulse to go someplace other than where they’re currently standing. To accomplish this, twangy guitars, rhythms that straighten your spine whilst swiveling your hips, bottom-dredging saxophone and a cameo appearance by a throat singer who understands that part of a shaman’s job is to scare you each take their turn stepping up and pointing your mind elsewhere. Where it goes after that is up to you.

Bill Meyer

John Sharkey III — “I Found Everyone This Way” (12XU)

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Has Sharkey mellowed? This early peek at the upcoming solo album from the Clockcleaner legend and Dark Blue proprietor suggests a pensive mood, with liquid jangle and surprisingly subdued and lyrical delivery (albeit in the man’s inimitable hollowed out and wounded snarl). But give the artist a power ballad if that’s what he wants. The song has a graceful arc to it, a doomed romanticism and not an ounce of cloying sentiment.

Jennifer Kelly

Sky Furrows — Sky Furrows (Tape Drift Records/Skell Records/Philthy Rex Records)

Sky Furrows by Sky Furrows

Sky Furrows don’t take long to match sound and message. As Karen Schoemer drops references to SST Records and Raymond Pettibone, bassist Eric Hardiman and drummer Philip Donnelly whip up a tense groove that could easily have been played by Mike Watt and George Hurley. Mike Griffin’s spidery, treble-rich guitar picking is a little less specifically referential, but does sound like it was fed through a signal chain of gear that would have been affordable back in the first Bush administration. The next track looks back a bit further; Schoemer’s voice aside, it sounds like Joy Division might have done if Tom Herman had turned up, pushed Martin Hannet out of the control room before he could ladle on the effects and instead laid down some space blues licks. Schoemer recites rather than sings in a cadence that recalls Lee Ranaldo’s; pre-internet underground rock is in this band’s DNA. The sounds themselves are persistently cool, but one drawback of having a poet instead of a singer up front is an apparent reluctance to vary the structure; it would not have hurt to break things up with some contrasting passages here or there.

Bill Meyer

Soft on Crime — “You’ve Already Made Up Your Mind” b/w “Rubyanne” (EatsIt)

7'' by Soft on Crime

These Dublin fuzz-punks kick up a guitar-chiming clangor in A-Side, “You’ve Already Made Up Your Mind,” which might have you reaching for your old Sugar records. Sharp but sweet, the cut is an unruly gem buoyed by melody but bristling with attitude. “Rubyanne” is slower, softer and more ingratiating, embellished with baroque pop elements like flute, saxophone and choral counterpoints. “Little 8 Track” fills out this brief disc, with crunching, buzz-hopped bass and a bit of guitar jangle under whisper-y romantic vocals. It’s a bit hard to get a handle on the band, based on such disparate samples, but intriguing enough to make you want to settle the matter whenever more material becomes available.

Jennifer Kelly

Theoxinia — See the Lapith King Burn (Bandcamp)

See the Lapith King Burn by Theoxenia

Students of Greek mythology will grasp it right away, but in the internet age, it doesn’t take anyone long to figure out that when you name your record See the Lapith King Burn, you’re casting your lot for better or worse with the party animals. The Lapiths were one side of a lineage that also involved the considerably less sober-sided Centaurs, and the two sides of the family had a bloody showdown at a wedding that has been taken to symbolize the war between civilization and wildness. Theoxinia is Dave Shuford (No-Neck Blues Band, Rhyton, D. Charles Speer & the Helix) and his small circle of stringed instruments and low-cost repeating devices. If you were to dig through his past discography, it most closely resembles the LP Arghiledes (Thrill Jockey) in its explicitly Hellenic-psychedelic vibe. But, like so many folks in recent times, Shuford has decided to bypass the expanse and aggravation of physical publication in favor of marketing this LP-sized recording on Bandcamp. If that fact really bugs you, I guess you could start a label and make the man an offer. But if fuzz-tone bouzouki, sped-up loops and unerringly traced dance steps that will look most convincing when executed with a knife between your teeth and the sheriff’s wallet poking mockingly out of the top of your breast pocket sounds like your jam, See the Lapith King Burn awaits you in the realm of digital insubstantiality.

Bill Meyer

Trees — 50th Anniversary Edition (Earth Recordings)

Trees (50th Anniversary Edition) by Trees

This boxed set presents the two original Trees albums from the early 1970s, The Garden of Jane Delawney and On the Shore, with the addition of demos and sundry recordings from the era. Here the band took the UK folk rock sound emergent at the time and drew it out into its jammy and somewhat arena rock guitar soloing conclusion. It’s good to have all of this in one place to document the myriad ways that Trees wrapped traditional material into new forms and with a bracing, druggy feel.

Arthur Krumins

Uncivilized — Garden (UNCIV MUSIC)

Garden by Uncivilized

Guitarist Tom Csatari presides over NYC-based large jazz ensemble known as Uncivilized, whose fusion-y discography stretches back a couple of years and prominently incorporates a cover of the Angelo Badalamenti theme from Twin Peaks. This 27-track album was recorded live at Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works space in 2018 with a nine-piece band, who navigate drones and dances and the multi-part Meltedy Candy STOMP, a sinuous exploration of space age keyboards and surging big band instruments. Jaimie Branch, who lives next door to Csatari and was invited on a whim at the last minute, joins in for the second half including a smoldering rendition of the Lynch theme. It’s damn fine (though not coffee). Later on, Stevie Wonder gets the Uncivilized treatment in a pensive cover of “Evil,” led by warm guitar, blowsy sax and a little bit of jazz flute.

Jennifer Kelly

Unwed Sailor — Look Alive (Old Bear Records)

Look Alive by Unwed Sailor

Johnathon Ford, who plays bass for Pedro the Lion, has been at the center of Unwed Sailor for two decades, gathering a changing cohort of players to realize his lucid instrumental compositions. Here, as on last year’s Heavy Age, Eric Swatzell adds guitars and Matthew Putnam drums to Ford’s essential bass and keyboard sounds. Yet while Heavy Age brooded, Look Alive grooves with bright clarity, riding insistent basslines through highly colored landscapes of synths and drums. The title track bounds with optimism, with big swirls of synth sound enveloping a rigorous cadence of bass and drums. “Camino Reel” is more guitar-centric but just as uplifting, opening out into squalling shoe-gaze-y walls of amplified sound. Ford, who usually leans on post-punk influences like New Order and the Cure, indulges an affinity for dance, here, especially audible on the trance-y “Gone Jungle” remix by GJ.

Jennifer Kelly

Your Old Droog — Dump YOD Krutoy Edition (Self-released)

Dump YOD: Krutoy Edition by YOD

American rapper Your Old Droog has been releasing solid music for years. He never had ups for the same reason he never had downs: he never left his comfort zone. Dump YOD Krutoy Edition (where “krutoy” stands for “rude boy” or “badass”) may be his breakthrough album. He always kept his Soviet origins in check, and here for the first time he draws his imagery from three different sources: New York urban present, Ukrainian folk and Soviet and post-Soviet past (even Boris Yeltsin makes an appearance). In this boiling pot, a new Your Old Droog is rising, among balalaikas and mean streets of NYC, matryoshkas and producers with boring beats, babushkas and graffiti writers.

Ray Garraty

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Bo Burnham: Inside Songs Ranked from Worst to Best

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The musical of the summer was supposed to be a life-affirming celebration of one of New York’s most vibrant neighborhoods, full of color, romance, and big group dance numbers. Instead for many viewers, the musical of the moment was filmed and performed by one man, alone in isolation from the comfort (or discomfort, really) of his own home, with songs centered on techno paranoia, mental health, and the fear of aging. Maybe after a year stuck in their homes, audiences could relate to the existential dread and general anxiety on display in Bo Burnham: Inside more than a conventional movie musical.

Billed as a stand-up special, Burnham’s latest musical comedy endeavor finds the former wunderkind holed up and feeling more uncomfortable than ever. Writing, editing, directing, and performing from a claustrophobic studio, Burnham’s stand-up special skews more toward being a straight-up musical, and not because the special is light on jokes and missing an audience. Rather this has all the hallmarks of a musical narrative and plays closer to experimental cinema than sketch comedy.

Burnham expresses his characters’ inner-thoughts, fears, and desires via song throughout a contained narrative, in this case the narrative being one man trying to occupy himself during a pandemic. It has ballads, charm songs, comedy numbers, “I Am” and “I Want” songs, and a big reprise. By capturing his personal pandemic experience and putting the whole affair to song, Burnham has created one of the most compelling (and catchy!) accounts of life during 2020.

To celebrate the musical that we all needed after a year in our homes, we’ve decided to rank every song from Bo Burnham: Inside. You can stream along via the Inside (The Songs) album on the streaming platform of your choice.

20. I Don’t Wanna Know

Merely an interlude, “I Don’t Wanna Know” doesn’t quite work outside of watching the special itself. However, it is a clever way to address the fact that modern audiences do not have the attention span to sit through a film at home without checking their phone or complaining about a runtime.

19. Bezos II

While certainly meant to poke fun at the real-life Lex Luthor, it’s not that fun to listen to Bezos’ name repeated. Stil, Burnham does elicit a few laughs with his over-the-top mock congratulations. “You did it!”

18. Any Day Now

A Sesame Street-like mantra that plays over the credits, “Any Day Now” suggests this could all end either hopefully soon or on a depressingly vague far-off date that will never come. We’d like to think it’s the former, but it’s safe to assume what Bo thinks.

17. All Time Low

While this number gets docked points for its short runtime, it absolutely packs a punch with its four-line, single verse. After Bo admits that his mental health is rapidly deteriorating, he describes what it’s like to have a panic attack set to a chipper ‘80s dance backbeat. Unfortunately, we don’t get to ride the wave long enough, and judging lyrics, that’s probably a good thing for Bo.

16. Content

This strong opening number musically sets the vibe for Inside, letting us know that we’re in for some synth-heavy throwback beats that would be best listened to underneath a disco ball. Also incorporating silly backing vocals, a hallmark of many of Inside’s best tracks, Burnham declares he’s back with some sweet, sweet content. “Daddy made you your favorite,” he sings, and he ain’t wrong.

15. Bezos I

Unlike the reprise in “Bezos II,” “Bezos I” gets by off its increasingly deranged energy, with Burnham roasting fellow tech billionaires and working himself up into a manic frenzy by song’s end. Musically, it sounds like the soundtrack to an intense boss battle on a Sega Genesis game before ending with a sick little synth solo and Burnham hilarious squawking. It’s arguably the only acceptable thing that Bezos has ever been associated with.

14. Unpaid Intern

While “Unpaid Intern” is one of Inside’s shortest tracks, it absolutely makes the most of its time. The jazzy tune scorches the exploitative nature of unpaid internships before Burnham breaks out into a laugh-out-loud worthy scat routine. It unfortunately ends too soon.

13. Shit

Inside’s funkiest jam sounds like Burnham wrote the lyrics for a new Janelle Moane album cut. Bo show’s off his vocal dexterity and plumbs the depths of his depression in a surprisingly danceable fashion. Throwing in a little faux crowd interaction helps bring home the fact that we have all felt like this at one point or another during the pandemic.

12. Sexting

This slow-jam details the complications of sexting, throwing out hilariously too-true punchlines like “the flash makes my dick look frightened.” “Sexting” feels like one of a few songs that could most easily appear on previous Burnham specials. Proving that Inside’s musical textures do not come exclusively from ’80s synth pop, the outro of the song expertly mirrors modern pop trends by throwing in some trap-influenced “yahs” at the end of Bo’s lines.

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11. How the World Works

Influenced by comedian Hans Teeuwen and children’s entertainment in general, “How the World Works” finds Burnham going back to the well by playing the ignorant, smarmy white guy who is oblivious of the real issues plaguing nonwhite Americans. What’s even better though is Socko calling Burnham out on forcing others to educate him for his own self-actualization instead of doing the work on his own for the betterment of others.

Socko pointedly asks “Why do you rich f—— white people insist on seeing every socio-political conflict through the myopic lens of your own self-actualization?” Not to keep things too heavy, the song ends with an absurdist bit where Burnham returns Socko to the nether place that he goes when he’s not attached to Burnham’s hand. Scathing and bizarre, it’s a great piece of social commentary.

10. FaceTime With My Mom

While most of the music of Inside feels directly transported from the 1980s, “FaceTime With My Mom” seems only inspired by the past decade’s musical trends, updating the sounds in much of the same way that the Weeknd and Dua Lipa have. This is Bo Burnham as a hitmaker, and his attempt is convincing. “FaceTime With My Mom” earns easy laughs by getting to the seemingly specific, yet universal things that all our moms do over video chat.

9. Goodbye

Every good musical needs a good closing track, and Burnham nails it with “Goodbye,” pulling off a reprise that weaves in many of the special’s signature musical moments and touches on the special’s core themes. A forlorn piano ballad before it soars through Inside’s best motifs, “Goodbye” caps a triumphant musical achievement, coming back to “Look Who’s Inside Again” just to punch you in the gut one last time.

8. Problematic

Addressing his past work and some aspects that have not aged well, while also skewering celebrity apologies, “Problematic” is self-aware critique by way of an ‘80s workout bop. From the specific Aladdin confession to the overall apology for being “vaguely shitty,” Bo has never made accountability sound so good.

7. That Funny Feeling

This is Bo Burnham’s version of Father John Misty’s “Holy Shit,” a laundry list of all the stupid things that are signaling the fall of culture and civilization as we know it. If Misty hadn’t gotten there first, we may have had this one ranked higher. Still, Burnham manages to come up with a sticky chorus that you’ll be humming the next time something makes you feel like you’re living in the uncanny valley.

6. White Woman’s Instagram

Perhaps the special’s most playful moment, “White Woman’s Instagram” uses the musical cues of an inspiring empowerment anthem to poke fun at the predictably, perfectly curated feed of a “girl boss” Instagram. The song is greatly enhanced by the accompanying visuals, which find Bo recreating the meticulously staged and glamorous portraits that women pass off as their everyday lives.

However, Bo always likes to sneak in some sentimentality, and imagines a genuinely heartfelt post to his white woman character’s deceased mother. Don’t worry, the emotional moment doesn’t overstay its welcome, and we’re soon back to laughing at horribly derivative political street art.

5. All Eyes on Me

The droning synth and pitch-down vocals make “All Eyes On Me” oddly hypnotic and beautiful. The song seems to be addressing Bo’s depression along with his need for validation and attention, a juxtaposition that many performers deal with. It becomes clear that Burnham isn’t addressing an invisible audience, but himself, trying to will himself up and out of his dreary mental state.

4. Look Who’s Inside Again

A classic “I Am” musical song, “Look Who’s Inside Again” just may be Inside’s most emotionally resonant track that seems to hit closest to who Bo Burnham was and who he is today. This is the song that I will most likely regret the most for ranking so low.

“Well, well, look who’s inside again. Went out to look for a reason to hide again,” perfectly describes the cycle of depression and will, for me, be the special’s most lasting moment. The downbeat ending “come out with your hands up, we’ve got you surrounded” is heartbreaking enough to send a shudder down your spine.

3. Comedy

The special’s real first number is absolutely packed with hooks, from the “Call me and I’ll tell you a joke” bridge to the “Should I be joking at a time like this?” change-up. This is Bo really flexing how far he’s come as a musician, expertly utilizing autotune and a key change (us “stupid motherf***ers” can’t resist them).

“Comedy” also finds Bo comfortably in the lane that we’re most used to seeing him in, playing the egomaniacal white messiah with a wink. “Comedy” is the tone-setter and it’s so good that it lets you know that you’re in good hands for the next hour plus.

2. 30

Either I’m ranking this song too highly due to its personally relatable nature or the fact that I haven’t been able to get “All my stupid friends are having stupid children” out of my head, but I really don’t care. “30” is Inside’s biggest earworm and addresses the existential terror that comes with no longer getting pats on the back for being a young wunderkind.

“30” also examines generational differences, showing how 30 year-old people are more infantile than ever. However, at the end of the day it all comes back to those shimmering keys and that irresistible refrain. Apologies to my friends with children.

1. Welcome to the Internet

No matter how deep and emotionally rich some of Inside’s other tracks may be, “Welcome to the Internet” is the one that will live on the longest. If this were a traditional musical, this would the antagonists’ showstopper; a vaudevillian romp through the alluring chaos that is the internet. Speeding up and slowing down the pace to mirror the manic, addictive nature of surfing the net, Burnham pitches the negative aspects of online culture as they are: a feature, not a bug. Promising “a little bit of everything all of the time,” “Welcome to the Internet” is almost as enticing as the dark tool itself.

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zatanni · 6 years ago

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Lukanette September Day 6/7: First Kiss, Second Chance

Their first kiss happens several years after they met.

They’d both loved and lost and grown and moved on, but by some twist of fate (or luck) Marinette found herself attending the same arts Université as her charming what-if. Broken hearts mended, conversations turned into playful banter, and soon Luka and Mari were exploring what could have–no, what should have been.

Z: Art and Songfic for Day 6 and 7. The song I used was May I by Trading Yesterday, which you can find here: https://open.spotify.com/track/72DAOl4TGmp48MvXsLbMR4

I hope you like it!

Fic below the cut!

“Hey, ‘Nette. Did you hear about the music festival next month?” asked Juleka, who together with the rest of Kitty Section, were attending Renommé University for the Arts.

Marinette warmly greeted her long time friend and favorite model. Juleka, after that photoshoot so long ago, had since gained a bit more confidence, and now wore her bangs to frame her face instead of hide it. The simple change did wonders for her modelling, especially on the runway.

“I haven’t, actually. Is Kitty Section joining?”

“'Course we are!” chirped Rose as she sidled up to her girlfriend. Marinette wondered why she even asked. Kitty Section was really gaining traction these days. They were set to release their sixth album this summer. Some days, the members couldn’t even walk across campus without being stopped for at least one picture.

Ivan joined the girls’ excitement, showing off the new platinum white drumsticks he was planning to use onstage.

“Actually��”

A smooth low voice accompanied the familiar arm that draped around her shoulders. Marinette felt the usual tug at her heartstrings and fought to keep her face from filling with red.

“We were hoping you could help us out with that, Ma-ma-marinette. You know, just like always,” Luka chuckled.

With her reply, the whole band cheered and ushered her to their own corner of the common grounds, a small picnic table where they could have lunch and discuss their ideas.

The junior kept his arm securely on her shoulder even as Marinette already agreed to the job. That she’d agree was a given. After all, they were such close friends. Besides, Kitty Section was a delight to work with, they’d always allow the designer creative freedom, much like their idol and producer Jagged Stone always did.

And…

And Luka would be there.

Marinette wasn’t sure how to define what she and Luka were. They were friends, of course, but…

Friends didn’t stay up til the wee hours of the morning having conversations about nothing and everything.

Friends didn’t sneak into your dorm to give you chicken soup, nor stay up all night to care for you when you were sick.

Friends didn’t fix a loose bra strap nor let their fingers linger for one second…two…three wishful seconds long.

No, Marinette thought, as she felt Luka’s piercing eyes look up from his guitar and fall on her as she sketched out new designs.

Friends didn’t do that at all.

…

“Stare any longer and you’ll burn a hole in her head,” Juleka teased, looking up with two gloves stained with hair dye.

Luka raised both his hands in defeat, scattering the band’s sheet music he was working on all over the floor.

“Hey, this is Rose’s place, ya can’t make a mess!” Juleka chided, helpless, as both her hands were filled with purple goo.

Luka grumbled and picked up the pages, making one messy stack on the corner of the coffee table.

“You sure you don’t want to dye your hair again?” She asked, turning back to the mirror.

“How do I ask her, Jule?” Luka sighed, the million-dollar question finally hanging in the air. Juleka would have laughed at her brother had he not been playing such a depressive tune on his guitar.

She followed his gaze back to Marinette, who was sketching happily in the next room while Rose, Ivan, and Mylene occasionally looked over her shoulder.

“You know I suck at words. I’ve been at this for years.”

Luka promptly gave himself a self-deprecating guitar diss and Juleka couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Her brother must have really loved Marinette if he was having such a hard time finding the perfect way to ask her out.

It suddenly occurred to Juleka that the latter part of his sentence wasn’t and exaggeration. Luka really had been at it for years, back since before the whole disaster when Mari got with Adri-that guy. But now that they were attending university and there were no more barriers between them, Luka had gotten even more explicit with his affection.

A smile here, a touch there, a subtle moment where it seemed like Mari and Luka had their own little world stitched between daydreams. Juleka didn’t pretend she didn’t know where Luka would be when he snuck out at night, or when he’d leave practice early to catch her after class. She didn’t pretend to miss the way his eyes seem to drift to Marinette every time the girl smiled or laughed.

Her brother was in love. And he had been for such a long time.

Juleka shoved down the slight guilt from the fact that she’d chosen to support “Adrienette” all those years before when really she should have been supporting her brother, who made Marinette happy in the best of ways.

“You’re overthinking it,” the girl advised, as she slid off the gloves shed used to dye her hair. “You should just do what you always do…you know, what you’re good at,” she encouraged.

“What, be emo?”

Juleka smacked him on the head. “No, silly!”

The girl picked up a discarded piece of crumpled paper, filled with the familiar scratchy handwriting belonging only to her brother. She smoothed it out and held it out to him.

“Ask her with a song.”

…

The night of Renomme’s Music Festival had finally come. Several bands had lined up to play one after the other but everyone knew that they were all really waiting for the final performance by Renomme’s very own celebrity band.

Even the members of all the other bands stayed after their performances to see what the cat-themed personalities would be playing for them today. Over the years, Kitty Section’s style had evolved, with them decking out hit after hit especially since the members all hit university.

The crowd roared to life as the band stepped onstage in black combat boots, sporting the edgiest outfits they had ever seen them wear. Dressed uniformly in leather jackets with their respective masks embroidered on the back in luminescent gold thread, the members took the time to show off their new clothes. For the first time, the members donned masks with black bases and uniform gold accents with their respective designs.

Marinette took a risk with the darker color palette, but the monochrome style change plus the gray-scale and silver recreation of their debut backdrop showcased exactly what Kitty Section was these days: different and evolved, but staying true to their roots. It seemed to have an even better reception than Marinette hoped.

Luka looked over to the side of the stage where Mari was watching. Ocean eyes met bluebell ones, and by the gods, did sparks fly.

He winked, and she smiled, sheepish, as he jumped right into an earth-shattering riff to kick off their performance. They started off with their first and still popular song, the one that that they played on Bob Roth’s segment. But with the skills and experience they’d built up over the years, what used to be the work of a cool garage band turned into a sick track on the same level of Jagged Stone.

The music hall screamed with the sounds of their fans, both students and outsiders alike cheering the all the words in unison, Rose’s once-chirpy-turned-husky voice leading them along. Juleka matched her girlfriends energy, melting the hearts of girls and boys alike with her guitar and back up voice. And who could forget Ivan, with his precise beats and crazy drum fills?

But Luka? Luka was living. The way he banged his head to the music had Marinette worried the mask would fly off, but his energy and passion had everyone screaming even harder as he led the band into their next song, and the next one after that. Watching him rock on with Kitty Section during practice was amazing enough, but it was nothing compared to what Luka was like on stage. He was a marvel. Everyone felt like they were seeing the makings of the next Jagged.

Kitty Section hit their last notes and let Rose's hard vocals ring throughout the gymnasium. There was a pause and then, a loud, thundering applause. Fans were losing their minds, demanding more, more more.

ENCORE! ENCORE! ENCORE!

Sweat was dripping down their faces as they reveled in the crowd's deafening cheers. Through it all, Juleka met her brother's eyes and nodded.

It's now or never.

Marinette's eyes widened as Rose stepped away from her microphone. In her place, was Luka, for the very first time in Kitty Section history.

The crowd was silent, confused, as they recognized the signature lightning bolt on the mask of the lead guitarist as Luka took center stage. He put a hand over his black mask and pulled it to the side, inciting collective gasps from those fans who didn't know him and one small gasp from Marinette.

Wait! This wasn't part of the plan! Marinette thought, almost panicking. She looked at the eyes of the members one by one, but the only one who met her eyes was Juleka. And she was smiling.

Luka’s voice pulled her attention back to him, and he was staring at her with deep ocean orbs so raw with emotion that she could melt.

"This song is for the most amazing person I have ever met. I’ve always wanted to tell you...all this time.”

The crowd exploded with hoots and cheers all curious to see just who the lead guitarist was looking at on stage left, but all Marinette could see was Luka. Luka, looking so vulnerable, so honest and true. Luka, who made her heart sing and dance every moment he was near. Luka, Luka, Luka.

The crowd went silent in anticipation as he closed his eyes and took his first breath to sing.

And there you stand opened heart, opened doors Full of life with the world that's wanting more But I can see when the lights start to fade The day is done and your smile has gone away

He turned to the side, fully facing his heartsong.

Let me raise you up Let me be your love

Marinette’s heart soared, and she stood frozen, entranced by his smooth baritone.

May I hold you As you fall to sleep When the world is closing in And you can't breathe May I love you May I be your shield When no one can be found May I lay you down

Tears welled up in her eyes at his confession. God it was so beautiful, so him.

All I want is to keep you safe from the cold To give you all that your heart needs the most

Luka raised his arm toward Marinette as Rose took his guitar. He was shaking so much he couldn’t play as well, but Juleka smoothly filled in.

Let me raise you up Let me be your love

But his voice delivered his conviction, and Marinette found herself walking onstage, closer to him, as he sang the chorus again.

May I hold you As you fall to sleep When the world is closing in And you can't breathe May I love you May I be your shield When no one can be found May I lay you down

The crowd went wild as he took both her hands in his. This was it. This was the moment.

All that's made me Is all worth trading Just to have one moment with you So I will let go With all that I know Knowing that you're here with me For your love is changing me

The instrumental died down, and Luka touched his forehead to hers, singing the lyrics in a gentle whisper. He was confessing. He was asking for a second chance.

May I hold you As you fall to sleep When the world is closing in And you can't breathe

Ivan hammered the bass pedal as Juleka ramped up her guitar for the key change.

May I love you May I be your shield When no one can be found May I lay you down

Goosebumps appeared on her skin as he concluded the song with powerful vocables, and Marinette...Marinette had never been so sure.

The instrumental faded out, the crowd was stunned silent, hearts so moved by emotion they couldn’t speak.

And Marinette, her heart filled with to the brim with love for him and him only, took the second chance he so freely gave her, and pulled his lips to hers.

_______________________________________________________________________

Z: So...did you guys like it? I decided to combine two days because I couldn’t ignore how well they fit together. So here’s an Art for First Kiss and a Songfic for Second Chance.

They’re all in university here, and yes, its implied that a certain blonde had her heart first. I hope you like it :)

For not the first time, I used the song May I by Trading yesterday/The Age of Information because it’s my ultimate Lukanette song.

Again, find the song here: https://open.spotify.com/track/72DAOl4TGmp48MvXsLbMR4

@lukanette-month

#lukanetteseptember2019 #lukanetteseptember2k19 #lukanettemonth2019 #lukanette #luka couffaine #luka #marinette #marinette dupain cheng #miraculous ladybug #miraculous #mlb #ml #mlb2019

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gibelwho · 4 years ago

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Top 5: Nostalgia Movies

This Top 5 is taking a trip down childhood memory lane to choose the best Nostalgia Movies - films that I loved as a kid and continue to love to this day. The film must have been watched multiple times during my youth and continue to be associated with a memory or tradition that was an important marker of growing up. Therefore, any film produced past 2004, when I graduated high school, has not been considered - and, to even make the cut, the film must be associated with more than just constant re-watches in our downstairs rec room (arranged with a HUGE - well, big for the ‘90s - screen with actual surround sound that my dad installed); rather, these films must be an essential part of my childhood progression into adult-hood and laid the groundwork for a future of loving cinema.

Gibelwho Productions Presents Nostalgia Movies:

5. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

4. X-Men

3. The Little Mermaid

2. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

1. Newsies

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986): As my high school career began to wrap up and I was looking ahead to college (where I had already committed to attending film school), my mother informed me of a proclamation - I was not allowed to leave her household without watching Ferris Bueller. Perhaps she knew that she needed to instill a little bit of rule-breaking encouragement into her straight A / type A child before I was to head out into the unruly world of college, but nonetheless, this film left a mark with it’s delightful adventures of Ferris, Cameron, and Sloane. Years later, I attended an LA rooftop screening where the audience all danced during the Twist and Shout parade, bringing me straight back to the joy of discovering this film with my mom. In the same tradition, I will be sure to make my kids watch this film before they leave our household for the wide world so they can learn to cause a little innocent rule-breaking. Save Ferris!

X-Men (2000): I had a secret obsession when I was a kid - I LOVED Marvel Comics. I had read all of my dad’s comic book collection from when he was a kid, I started my own collection, and had even started tracking the value of each issue. But I was a girl, and did not share this particular passion with my fellow elementary school friends (ahhh, the fear of being judged by your peers). So when I entered a movie theater as a freshman in high school (with my secret still intact) to see an X-Men film and the place was PACKED, I couldn’t contain my excitement that maybe, just maybe, more people would be into these characters and storylines. Then, when I went into my summer theatre program and my friends used X-Men characters as improv inspiration, I thought...this is going mainstream! I still didn’t confide my true colors until the MCU began and my college friends discovered that I knew a...lot more about Iron Man’s backstory than should be possible and I was officially outed. So, fully embracing my nerdom, I traveled to San Diego to the sacred ground that was Comic Con, truly cementing my love of Marvel. And now the rest of the world has caught up to why these characters are so special. That first inkling of a wider world loving what I loved started when I watched X-Men in theaters - seeing my heroes on the big screen, fighting their super villains, and the packed crowd around me was digging it!

The Little Mermaid (1989): One of my earliest memories of opening presents was from my 6th birthday, sitting in the living room and ripping open the wrapping paper to discover the VHS for The Little Mermaid - a film I had seen at school and LOVED - and now it was mine to watch at any time! Truly a special Disney moment, which is also matched with many other memories of Disney animated films (the momentous opening to Lion King and the cut to black that took my breath away in the theater, playing the Mulan soundtrack on cassette over and over singing Reflection, and identifying with Belle’s obsession with reading). I was very much the target audience for the Disney Renaissance, and I ate up all the music, the (slightly) stronger portrayal of women, and our VHS collection only grew to include all of these modern classics. The Little Mermaid kicked off a golden age for Disney Animation and little Katie grew up on the Alan Menken soundtrack.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989): Our family had three fancy VHS boxed sets for three different franchises and we watched these flicks on repeat - Star Trek movies (TOS with Kirk and Spock), the Star Wars trilogy, and the Indiana Jones films. Literally any one of the movies from these collections could make this slot, but since both of the Star franchises have already gotten love in these Top 5 lists, I’m going to pick representation from our resident archaeological professor / international adventurer. My favorite of the bunch is the third - from the thrilling opening of young Indy, to the dynamic between father and son, and the epic ending of selecting the correct Grail (“you have chosen...wisely”). Watching any one of these films is just comfort food for my soul, taking me back to the family settling in to watch in our downstairs rec room, setting the foundation for the nerdom that my parents instilled into me at a young age and that has continued to guide my interests and movie-watching to this day.

Newsies (1992): Growing up, my family had Friday movie nights, where we ordered from the Pizza Hut that was right next to a Blockbuster; my brother and I were allowed to each choose a movie to rent for the weekend. I went through a phase where I just rented Newsies on repeat. It was as though this film was made just for me - a musical, set in a historical time period, with cute boys singing and dancing, music by the magical Alan Menken - what is not to love?!? I was so obsessed with this movie that in the pre-Internet age, I wrote down the lyrics by meticulously listening, pausing, writing down, rewinding, and repeating - which was an onerous process when one was working with manual VHS tapes. I eventually got a copy of my own, the DVD when it came out, the CD of the soundtrack, and also the piano sheet music. I knew all the lines to the songs, and could probably to this day quote the majority of the movie. Years later, imagine my delight when Disney produced a Broadway musical of the movie - we took a special trip to New York on my birthday to see the show (which of course, doesn’t match up to my love for the film, the true effect of a nostalgic love for a piece of your childhood). Living in LA affords us the opportunity for magical movie-going experiences, and my husband and I scored tickets to a special showing of Newsies at the Disney El Capitan theater - and then the traveling Broadway company of Newsies the musical that was in town and performing just up the street at the Pantages theater made an appearance and performed for the audience after the movie wrapped. This film has held a special place in my heart and is the epitome of nostalgia love for a movie from childhood.

Honorable Mentions:

The Music Man (1962): The two music genres we listened to growing up were 90s country (Garth, Reba, Trisha, Wynonna!) and also musicals. Our family was very much into theater and starting at the age of twelve, I started acting in musicals at our local performing arts program for youths. Our family also watched many of the classic musicals that were filmed in the 1950s and 60s, such as Hello, Dolly, Oklahoma, and Music Man. This last film stands in as a proxy for all those classics, but was also selected in particular because I performed in a production during a summer in junior high, where I was in the background chorus (and featured in the Wells Fargo song!). The music and lyrics of this story, written by Meredith Wilson, are of such cleverness and variety - from the 4-part harmony barbershop quartet to the love song ballads, the pre-hip hop rhythmic talking song to the genius opening number of the salesmen on the train. The translation to film is serviceable and very much in the style of the musicals brought from stage to screen in the 1960s - nothing too clever and some blocking that sought to recreate a theater stage on the film set, but these series of musical films cemented my love for the genre in an accessible way just as I was starting myself to perform on stage.

Jurassic Park (1993): Oh, the raptor in the kitchen stalking the two kids stills brings me chills thinking about it. Watching that scene as a kid, I (more than once) fled the room because it was so scary! This film had it all - creepy dinosaurs, a smart teenage girl and an even smarter heroine that was a scientist, great music (whose theme I diligently learned how to play on the piano), and plenty of action! My family definitely had this on repeat in the VHS player, but I loved the movie so much that I ended up reading Michael Crichton’s novel to experience the source material - and became more aware of how a film is an adaption of a novel’s storytelling, translating from the page to the screen. I do fall in favor of reading the novel before seeing the movie, but if a film helps you discover an incredible book, it can be like diving into an extension of the world beyond what the screen can fit.

#ferris bueller #x-men #the little mermaid #indiana jones #indiana jones and the last crusade #newsies

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fmdtaeyongarchive · 4 years ago

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headcanon #043: interest in performance art

word count: 1,688 words.

triggers: mentions of violence (including gun violence), assault.

ash is notoriously talented in the musical arts and terribly untalented in traditional visual art like drawing or painting, but performance art is something ash has developed a unique interest in over the years. he’s a dancer, a performer by nature, but it’s situation art pieces, so-called “happenings” that step outside the bounds of a simple enjoyable story performance that intrigue him the most.

ash hasn’t gotten the opportunity to experience much situation art in person, as it’s generally meant to be experienced, but he loves reading about it and watching videos of it or on it. since the beginning of the year, he’s made a point to read more, and in addition to topics like philosophy, he’s delved deeper into research on performance art as well.

he’s most interested in art the explores topics of human relationships, the dynamic between audience and artist, the nature of art, and the human experience as a whole. that’s part of why he’s so drawn to situational performance art. though he’s one of many, he’s in particular a fan of marina abramović‘s works.

two of marina abramović‘s works he’s most interested in are breathing in, breathing out (which marina abramović did with ulay) and rhythm 0.

in breathing in, breathing out, the two blocked their nostrils and pressed their mouths to one another so that they could only breathe the air the other breathed out until eventually, they were each only breathing in carbon dioxide and deprived of oxygen up to the point of passing out. ash views it as a commentary on human connection and relationships and the danger of dependence in relationships — to rely too much on another is to deprive and ultimately poison oneself. while ash considers this to be a commentary on all relationships, be they romantic, friendly, or familial, it resonates with him in particular because of his own tendency to depend too much on romantic partners in the past.

violence tw, assault tw, gun tw // his other favorite abramović piece, and possibly his favorite performance art piece, is the famous rhythm 0 where abramović stood in a room with seventy-two objects, varying from feathers and food to a scalpel and a loaded gun, laid out on a table. she left instructions on the table stating that the others in the room could do whatever they wanted to her for six hours and she would take responsibility for whatever they did, absolving them of any responsibility of their own for their actions. by the end of the six hours, she’d had her clothes cut off of her body, had been cut with various sharp objects, someone had attempted to suck blood from one of her cuts, and someone had pressed the gun to her head and put her own finger on the trigger before someone had torn it away. when she moved after the six hour mark had passed, the audience had all scattered and the observers-turned-participants left at the closure of the piece, not wanting to talk to her. abramović stated she realized in the midst of the piece that the participants might very well kill her if given the right time and circumstances. there are obvious feminist implications to this piece that ash acknowledges, but wouldn’t feel qualified to talk on himself as a man, but the part that resonates with him the most is how it speaks to the relationship between artist and audience. art builds a fourth wall, even despite all attempts to tear it down, that makes an audience feel ownership and emotional detachment from the artist. the pedestal a performer is put on grants the audience the ability to do or say anything they’d like, even if it’s demeaning, violent, or sexual, without the fear of consequences — things they’d never do or say if faced with the face-to-face humanity of the artist. the piece really struck ash the first time he read about it and saw pictures of it, and he’d like to do a song based on the piece one day, or even an entire album inspired by marina abramović‘s works and his own interpretations of them in the context of human relationships and the relationship between artist and audience.

gun tw // the death of the artist by abel azcona is another piece that stuck with ash for similar reasons as rhythm 0. the artist had previously done performance art pieces on topics like religious institutions, politics, and sexuality that angered several organizations and groups that had caused controversy and caused him to receive death threats, and for this piece, he wrote letters to all of the organizations and people who had threatened him inviting them to a gallery where he stood on a raised platform facing a loaded gun on open display nearby on a platform. this is more of a commentary on persecution and attempted censorships of artists by powerful entities, something ash can’t really relate to since he doesn’t do anything provocative enough to earn him death threats from anyone other than edgy teenagers on twitter. nevertheless, it’s a piece he thinks about a lot in relation to the nature of art and an artist’s place in society.

other pieces ash likes to ponder are:

tehching hsieh thirteen year plan, where he declared that he would make art in private without showing it publicly for a span of thirteen years. at the end of the thirteen years, he concluded the project with the statement “i kept myself alive. i passed the december 31st, 1999.” it makes ash consider his relationship to his own art and whether he’s doing it for others or doing it to keep himself alive.

marina abramović and ulay’s lovers (another piece he’d like to use as inspiration for a song), where the pair embarked on a dramatic spiritual journey to end their romance. they started walking from opposite ends of the great wall of china and met in the middle to officially end their relationship with an embrace, a final farewell, and the promise to never meet again afterward. it’s the sort of poignant closure ash thinks every relationship could have in an ideal world, and it speaks to the depth of bond romance can root in two people.

marina abramović and ulay’s rest energy, where the pair balanced a drawn bow and arrow between them for four minutes, with the arrow aimed directly at marina abramović’s heart. this is again a piece with feminist implications of the societal power men hold over women, but it also speaks to the vulnerability of love to ash and the kind of unwavering trust he’s not sure he’s ever had with anyone.

yoko ono’s cut piece, where she invited audience members to cut pieces of clothing and remove it. ash likes this one for similar reasons to why he likes rhythm 0.

roi vaara’s artist’s dilemma, a video piece where a sign saying “art” points in one direction, while another stating “life” points the other in a frozen, barren landscape. vaara deliberates between the two for the duration of the video before it ends with him standing in the middle, still not having chose one direction or the other. to ash, it’s unclear whether it’s saying one must choose between one or the other, that an artist exists between two different worlds, or that performance art lays in between the balance of life and art, and he likes that he can interpret it in so many ways without any explanations feeling hollow.

tino sehgal’s kiss, a choreographed piece involving two dancers slowly acting out a passionate embrace on the floor of a museum or gallery. among original choreography and poses, they reenact famous kissing scenes from other artworks such as rodin’s kiss and brancusi’s kiss. the piece to society’s simultaneous discomfort with publicized intimacy and fascination with other’s love lives, both historically through art and socially through gossip and rumors. it also speaks to the difficulty of recreating intimacy through art. as someone who spends a lot of his time trying to recreate love and intimacy through music, and has had plenty of people both obsessed with and shaming him for their own perception of his love life, this piece stands out to him on a personal level as well.

ash’s interest in performance art comes mostly from how directly it can invite the audience of the art into the work. it’s part of why he’s come to love performing (solo) concerts over spending every day of his life in front of a camera. (jay z himself has argued concerts can be akin to performance art in an alternative venue, and ash would like it if one day he could hold a concert that plays with that idea more.) performance art allows for statements to be made that can’t be made as resoundingly through musical art or the fine arts. in performance art, the artists themselves are the art, and oftentimes the audience becomes a part of the art, too, and it can be outside of the commodification and greediness of other forms of art because of that if the artist so chooses. videos, pictures, and books on performance art can be sold, but often the piece itself cannot be and lives within the minds and memories of the artist and the audience. situational art can’t as easily be censored, controlled, or shaped by rich collectors or executives at labels, and that’s a part of the appeal to ash, who has often felt his music has been compromised by the business processes of the music industry. it reminds him of why he used to love dance so much, how a live performance lives in the moment.

ash himself doesn’t think he could ever be a performance artist, though he’d one day like to have the chance to sit down and talk to performance artists about art through their eyes. he believes performance artists are greatly underrated and too often written off as fake deep try hards when the legends of the form have just as much to say about the human experience as the greatest artists of any other art form.

#&& holding on to something | headcanons #&& bring color to my skies | character development #ash vc: if we're not walking from opposite ends of the great wall of china until we meet in the middle to end our relationship #as a performance art piece what is even the point in dating #this is so long and for no reason :pensive:#violence tw #gun tw #assault tw #disclaimer that neither ash nor i are art majors ash just likes looking into performance art as a hobby and i know even less than him so

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putanauhere · 5 years ago

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so me and @foxesmouth are writing an art forgery au eh, tentatively titled by me only (didn’t run it by amy - you’re probs good with it, right?): a portrait of the artist as a con man. here’s our first scene.

Theo slips out of Hobart and Blackwell, walking two doors down to his own studio, just minutes before his 3 pm appointment. He takes more private sector work these days than working with museums, partly because there aren’t too many new masterpieces popping up out of obscurity these days, but mostly because he always gets the feeling he’s flying too close to the sun.

This is the last of his appointments before he ships off to Boston for a restoration residency on a few John Singer Sargents as a favor to Peggy at the Gardner, and he’s anxious to see it resolved quickly. That must be why the thought of the appointment buzzes uncomfortably in the back of Theo’s mind, the same frequency as the persistent worry that he forgot to turn off the oven before leaving the house.

His fingers pick through the code to disarm the alarm as he shrugs his coat off one shoulder, not at all elegant as he turns to the coat rack and shrugs the other arm off to hook it up quickly. As he sets the coffee pot in the corner brewing, Theo tries his name out a few times, trying to find the cadence of it so he doesn’t embarrass himself, and settles on something that sounds familiar, if not correct, just as the buzzer goes.

His 3 o’ clock is younger than Theo expects, shorter than Theo is, and dressed far warmer than Theo thinks is necessary. Theo is given a swift onceover, then a slower one, both immediately disarming, before Theo remembers himself and steps aside to let him in. “Mr. Pavliovsky, it’s good to meet you.”

He looks amused by this. “Sure.” He has the painting tucked under his arm, wrapped in what looks like a linen sheet, to Theo’s horror. He’s already seen what Mr. Pavlikovsky has in the way of provenance, and his hopes aren’t high, but in the off chance that’s a real Renoir he’s got in there - Theo is already sweating with the thought.

Theo hangs his thick winter coat and rests the Renoir - wrapped in a pillow case, he realizes - on the intake table, itching to yank it free from its cotton prison like a grand reveal, ta daaa, but he’s a professional and lets his showroom do its showing.

Mr. Pavlikovsky’s dark, critical eyes carefully scan the studio, eyes lighting on Theo’s work bench with its array of lights and magnifiers clamped to every available edge of the desk, surrounding like a frame to the Pissarro reproduction he has lying in wait on an easel. He moves toward the work bench with interest, leaning over to survey the painting closely but keeping his hands tangled together behind his back. Another win for the showroom. “Is this restoration?”

“God, no, I have a separate temperature controlled studio upstairs. This is… practice.”

His eyes flick up from the painting to the shelves of paints and small buckets of brushes stored above the bench where Hobie would keep chisels, hammers, and pliers. “You practice your craft in foyer of business instead of fancy art studio upstairs?”

“I - ” Theo stutters, never having been challenged on that.

“Is okay, I understand. You don’t sell art, you sell skill. Can’t frame a restored or debunked Pissarro on the wall, but you can leave gentle suggestion of experience on display.”

Theo stops up, irritated at having his intentions read so quickly, so easily by a stranger, but he doesn’t like the way it sounds almost nefarious on Mr. Pavlikovsky’s lips. Theo’s clientele often work on blind faith and reputation, and no one is allowed in his studio. Gentle suggestion is the only ammunition Theo has access to.

He turns to Theo, misreading Theo’s surprise about the easel’s placement for the easel’s content. “Did I pass the test?”

Yes, technically, yes, because everyone else tends to guess Monet, which is frankly insulting. But instead of answering, Theo smiles his customer-facing smile and gestures to Mr. Pavlikovsky’s painting. “Let’s have a look?”

He liberates the frameless Renoir from its slumber once he dons a pristine pair of white gloves and all six of its sides a quick scan before placing it down on the intake table. He knows immediately it’s a fake - one made with a lot of heart but a less than acceptable amount of skill. Nonetheless, he pulls his stool forward, switches his glasses for a specialized pair, and switches on an overhead light.

He’s joined at the table by Mr. Pavlikovsky, which is rare these days - even if his typical intakes are ten minutes or less, his clients are still glued to their phones or important business papers or a copy of the New Yorker. Theo’s not wild about having someone sit over his shoulder, he finished with that once he graduated from a formal university and from Hobie’s crash course in furniture restoration, but Theo allows him to stay in the name of customer service.

“Do you enjoy Pissarro?”

“I have seen - they have many of his paintings at the Met, is local, have you seen?” Mr. Pavlikovsky asks, and Theo’s heart shudders like someone has just walked over his grave. Shaken, he blinks his eyes firmly a few times and refocuses on the task at hand. Nobody has cared enough yet to draw the connection, and Theo himself has had no interest to check if the New York Times has immortalized the article with his name on it on the internet finally now that all copies of the paper should have been disposed of over fifteen years ago.

Thankfully Pavlikovsky doesn’t wait for an answer - he doesn’t seem to need one. “Beautiful painting of Montmartre, looks exactly like the boulevard! Have you been to Montmartre? Incredible, some things, they never change, you could paint same paintings today, same views, but with cars and tourists on cell phones instead of horses and carriages.”

“I’m sure I have seen it at some point. I am a fan of his landscapes, as you can tell.”

“Yes, you have a way with them.”

Theo’s cheeks heat up and he can’t quite figure out why, so he disguises it by lifting the canvas and taking a careful inhale down the right side of the canvas. If Mr. Pavlikovsky is concerned by this behavior, he doesn’t say so.

Theo frowns as he sets the painting back down. It’s a shame he won’t even have to get his x-ray out to get a look at the layers, but maybe he should - he could charge more for this session, and the longer an investigation, the more legitimate he seems. But from the way this conversation has gone so far, Mr. Pavlikovsky doesn’t seem like he needs the whole song and dance.

As if on cue, Mr. Pavlikovsky says, “I should leave you to work - I will come back later, no?”

“No need, I have made my analysis.” He strips his gloves and switches his glasses back out before turning his focus back to Mr. Pavlikovsky.

“Already.” It’s not phrased like a question, but the way he sounds impressed sends a wild thrill through Theo’s chest for a reason he can’t name.

“I’m sorry to say, Mr. Pavlikovsky, but this is a fake,” Theo says and braces himself for an impact that doesn’t come. Ordinarily there’s screaming and spitting, the unchecked pride of rich men bubbling over at being duped, and because they likely won’t be able to find the dealer again, Theo is the unfortunate sole recipient of their ire.

Instead Mr. Pavlikovsky grins and says, “How could you tell?”

There’s a lecture’s worth of material in this canvas, but most don’t want to settle in to listen to Theo drone on and on like the worst of his professors. Theo taps to six different problem areas, each of them having lit up like a glowing red sore as soon as Theo had laid eyes on them - poor blending, wrong paints for the time period - is that acrylic? really? - thick careless strokes that indicated speed and not care, and more. “Here, staples here, this is wrong, no fraying on the canvas edges is immediately suspicious, this issue with the verso here. And Renoir typically signed his paintings with a signature tail at the end of his r - this, at its most charitable, is a smudge - and he almost never connected his o to his i.” He snags a piece of paper and fountain pen from his desk and works out a quick recreation, the bold r, the diamond-shaped o, then taps at it. “Reno-ir.”

Mr. Pavlikovsky leans in close to Theo’s shoulder, peering seriously at Theo’s scrawled signature. His proximity is enough to make Theo stifle a shudder. “Perhaps he was drunk this day.”

“No,” Theo says bluntly.

Mr. Pavlikovsky laughs, tracing his bottom lip with his thumb thoughtfully as he leans back. “It is fake,” he says, but in a way that almost sounds like he’s confirming what Theo has said to be true, instead of mulling over this new discovery.

“I don’t wish to presume, I’m sure the price is not an issue - if you would like me to perform the standard x-ray and microscopy to confirm, I am absolutely able to. But in the interest of preserving your time.”

He nods, like fair is far, and picks up the painting to stuff it back into the pillow case.

“Sorry - I - my apologies, Mr. Pavlikovsky, would you mind? I know it’s not a real Renoir, but it is still. You know. I’d hate to see anything happen to it.”

He gestures an invitation. “Please.”

Theo quickly trims foam for the verso and wraps the whole thing in paper like a present. He presents the secure package back to Mr. Pavlikovsky, but neither of them move to complete the transaction. Something about the thing feels unfinished - yes, the money, Theo’s brain helpfully supplies - but Theo doesn’t think that’s it.

Mr. Pavlikovsky digs out a tight bundle of cash anyway, too many hundreds stuffed into a straining silver money clip that he peels their agreed upon fee from and slaps onto the table. It feels almost dirty transacting this way, Theo used to wires, money orders, checks, and the like - cash feels uncouth. One of Pavlikovsky’s hands repockets the money and the other doesn’t go for the painting like Theo expects, but rather squeezes at Theo’s shoulder. “Well, if I can’t reward your speedy expertise with more money. Do you want to join me for drinks?”

“I’m not - um.” Theo swallows his initial objection, the way his mind leapt to that conclusion feels too telling. “Sorry? Drinks?”

“It’s not fun to pretend anymore, let you talk talk talk, Mr. Pavlikovsky this, Mr. Pavlikovsky that.” He raises his eyebrows at Theo. “I will say it hurts my feelings you don’t remember me, Potter, though I know it was very long time ago.”

It’s the Potter that does it, the fuzzy sort of familiarity with the nickname born from a cultural phenomenon he’d missed almost entirely with the timing of it. The only way it had nudged itself into Theo’s brain was through some drunk coed at a party he was desperately trying to fuck at a houseparty holding him by the waist and telling him firmly that she thinks he’s a Ravenclaw, whatever the fuck that is. And, of course, also through Boris.

“Shit, Boris, sorry, man, sorry,” Theo says, his face widening with a grin. “God, it’s been forever since Vegas?”

“You look good.” Boris pulls him into a hug Theo isn’t expecting, but allows himself to be collected into. “It’s good to see you.”

He hadn’t exactly kept tabs on Boris at the time beyond the few classes they’d shared together, the rare times they’d found each other in the same places, nodding affably from where they’d each stood at opposite sides of the room.

His last memory of Boris had been at this party at some girl’s house - Hadley, maybe - and the two of them had straddled their legs over either side of a diving board over the winter-emptied pool, and tried to lean forward and take lines off the laminate, giggling and knocking heads and clutching at the sides, at each other, every time the board would shiver and shake with their movements. Theo had already been fucked up on something he’d stolen out of Xandra’s purse just to give him enough motivation to leave the house, letting the world grow opaque in front of his eyes like it’d be easier to live in if he just couldn’t see it, but he remembers Boris at the time, clear as day, like his nearsightedness had transfigured into Borissightedness.

He remembers Boris being taller than he was at the time in a way that burned jealousy into his skin - a non-contest he is too secretly pleased to have won out in the end now - and the way Boris would wear his hair in the style that his mom used to call Needs a Haircut and his dry, calloused hands that held onto Theo’s wrists when he risked toppling over into the pool and the urgent way he’d whisper I got you like it wasn’t anyone else’s business to know.

Looking at Boris now, things shift slightly until they click into place, it’s like the sensation of sliding on glasses for the first time and realizing the world was not an impression, not muted, but all sharpness and defined edges and tangibility. Of course it’s Boris.

“Come get a drink with me,” he presses.

Yes, technically, yes, that’s what Theo wants, but. “I can’t - I fly to Boston tomorrow morning.”

Boris checks his watch in an outrageous flash of silver. “Is sixteen hour wait at the airport, or what? You can’t take night off your busy schedule and have a drink with an old friend?”

Theo would hesitate to call them old friends. He’d hesitate to call them anything, but there’s potential humming under the surface now that had always been there back in Vegas. He hadn’t known what it was, what it meant back then - it was just shared snorting at the dumb puns Mrs. Mullin would say to get everyone excited about earth science, sitting silently beside each other on the bus when there were no more empty seats left, and holding each other by the waist only when they were wasted at a pool party on the weekend and acting like it never happened on Monday morning.

But Theo knows what the humming is now - the desperate desire to have a friend and the fierce inability to let himself have one. Boris leaves the painting on the desk and scoops up his coat. He holds the door open for Theo, his way of telling not asking again. So Theo grabs his coat as well and thinks maybe he can let himself have something now, maybe just this one thing.

“It’s good to see you too,” Theo says, but it doesn’t feel like enough.

#like a proper au!!!#i wrote #the goldfinch #boreo #portrait of the artist

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leiaevans · 5 years ago

Audio

leia’s decision to audition for the summer musical had been a completely last minute choice that left her scrambling to put together her game plan. she practically had two days to pick a song, memorize a monologue, and practice for pieces in both her and joey’s. normally she felt like she worked well under pressure, more motivated even, but it would be a lie if she said she didn’t feel the pressure surrounding her. could she actually do this?

when leia had first heard the announcement that this year’s summer musical was going to be mamma mia, auditioning hardly crossed her mind. sure, she had been a part of the new directions and the cheerios for all four years of her high school career, but the one of mckinley’s musicals were one of the things she had never been crossed off her list. it wasn’t that she hadn’t been interested in the musicals, in fact it was rare to find someone in an arts school who didn’t want to be involved in some way or another, but leia had always found an excuse or a way to talk herself out of it. from her inexperience to her busy extra-curricular schedule, she had practically burnt out every excuse in the book for herself which made it that much harder to say no when both joey and drew continually encouraged her.

at first, leia had told herself she would help with joey’s dance and nothing more. that way she was helping out her friend while still getting a little taste of the auditions. a dance she could do, she had learned plenty of dances and routines for the cheerios, how was this any different? but after not being able to get the musical off her mind and talking things through with both joey and drew, their encouragement for her to try it out giving her the small boost she needed, she finally decided two days before the last audition day that she would follow their advice. she already was going to be there to help joey out, why not give it a shot? it wasn’t like it was one of the bigger productions the school put on, it was simply their summer fundraiser. or at least that’s what she told herself to get her past the school’s glass double doors.

walking into the school building, the gust of cold air circulating the building hit leia unexpectedly, a small smile on her face. she hadn’t thought she’d be walking these halls again so soon, but as she walked down the fluorescent lit halls to the finn hudson auditorium, she couldn’t say it wasn’t nice to be reminded of the good memories she had in this place. and in a way, she was still adding to that list, even if she didn’t make it into a huge role. feeling herself starting to become more and more distracted as she went, leia had to force herself to reel in her focus on one thing at a time, her first obstacle to pass being joey’s audition dance number. she wanted to do well in this dance number because she knew this was part of joey’s audition, but in a way this was part of her own audition too. she was trying her best not to let her thoughts roam past this first task of the day, knowing if she thought too much about it she would start to psych herself out, so instead she gave herself little to no room to think about anything except running the dance steps in through her mind once more while rushing her way to side stage where she was meant to wait for joey’s cue.

when joey stepped over and grabbed her hand, she felt like she was right back on the side of the field during a football game as her smile went on and she was swept away into the music. by the time the pair had finished and leia was walking off the stage once more, not only did she feel good about how it went, but she had fun. after all the practice they had done in preparation, the steps were easy to keep up with and she was able to just enjoy the music and the dance without any stress clouding her every thought. in fact, recreating the waterloo scene almost made her begin to feel excited to be doing not just mamma mia, but the musical in general. as she made her way back to outside of the auditorium to sit in wait for her own audition, not wanting to listen to the other auditions and psych herself out, she truly let herself get lost in her thoughts. after all that had been happening around her, from school ending to the ongoing distance between her and theo, she was ready for a distraction. for something to get her out of the house for more than just a day. maybe it wasn’t trip to the coast to some beach or a summer road trip, but this could be the event that really does make her summer the special ‘last’ summer before college is in full swing. she had a good feeling about this summer. that is, until she heard her name being called, the weight of her nerves finally hitting her as she shakily stood.

truthfully, it all boiled down to leia’s lack of confidence in herself. she had never been one to be insanely conceited or self-assured in her skills. she knew she wasn’t the worst performer in any sense, but if anyone asked she would be the one to humbly say she was ‘decent’ or ‘alright’ and truly believe that. it was a fault she had always had, despite her parent’s unwavering support and reassurance that she was just overthinking. she had just always had the fear that she would get up to the stage and completely bomb her audition, or even worse, get a decent part and let everyone down because she couldn’t memorize her lines or keep up with the numerous dance numbers required. but if there was one thing she had learned from her previous talk with julien, it was that she couldn’t let these worries and insecurities prevent her from performing her absolute best. she needed to be present in the moment instead of dwelling on the ifs, ands, or buts. as long as she believed she had put her all into it and she did all that she could, she couldn’t be disappointed in herself.

with one last deep breath and reassurance muttered to herself, leia pushed open the door and stepped into the auditorium. despite her quickened heartbeat and nerves feeling like pinpricks covering her skin, she kept her head high and her thoughts positive as she made her way to center stage, a smile spread across her lips. “hello everyone, i’m leia evans and i’ll be singing requiem from dear evan hansen.” she spoke out, her usual bubbliness was still there but between wanting to remain professional and her nerves, it was dialed back in comparison. “oh, and uh, i would be happy with any role you see fit for me,” she finished with another smile sent to the directors and a nod towards the pianist. leia waited with closed eyes, feeling herself shift her weight from foot to foot as she was unable to stay still. she knew this song was one she practically knew by heart, being one of her favorite musical soundtracks throughout the years, and she had practiced it nonstop over the past couple of days, she just had to simply begin. all she could do now was her best, so that’s what she did.

as the music began to play, leia finally opened her eyes as she began the first line of “why should i play this game of pretend?” she hadn’t necessarily picked this song for the relation to mamma mia like she maybe should have, but leia had always thought the music in dear evan hansen was beautiful, even if the message wasn’t. she also thought this would be one of her best bets to show off her vocals and emotional range to a certain degree, seeing as she had no real experience in acting but had learned how to show the emotion behind a song. while she personally had no situation she could compare to that the musical portrayed, with such an emotional ballad she felt like she could dip into situations of her own to portray that sense of emotion. leia had always been one to bottle up emotions, especially when her parents went through their divorce. while it wasn’t a death or a true loss, she had felt like it was the loss of her family. all of the pieces of the loving family were still there, but they didn’t fit together anymore. she had always tried to play off her feelings, wanting to be strong so that her parents weren’t having to worry over her at the same time, but truthfully it affected her, more than she’d liked to have admitted.

before she knew it, she was finishing out the song with the final “i will sing no requiem tonight”, practically on the verge of tears herself, just thankful that her voice hadn’t cracked during the last verse. giving herself just a moment of pause to catch her breath and return to the present, leia then quickly moved on to the monologue portion of the audition. while both the song and dance seemed to take no time at all, the performance of the scene she had chosen went by even quicker if at all possible. when she had fully completed the audition, she moved to thank the directors for their time before quickly moving off stage and out of the building. it wasn’t a broadway level performance in any sense, having stumbled over a word or two during her monologue, but overall leia could easily say she felt relieved. despite the over thinking and the nervous haze that had seemed to follow her there, she actually felt good, confident in what she had done, and that’s all she have asked for.

#wmhs:mamma mia #( *&. audition )#*pls ignore the other voices in this audio lmao

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mikrokosmos · 6 years ago

Video

youtube

Satie - Ogives (1889)

Monday afternoons I work the lunch shift. I take mini-breaks when I can between taking orders and putting plates together. So I’m chatting with friends on discord, and one of them drops the news: Notre-Dame is burning. That afternoon I was filling with dread, sneaking another peak at the development, wishing and praying that the church would be saved. Every few minutes, it seemed to be getting worse and worse. The roof was being lost. The spire caught flame. And there was talk of the possible collapse of the bells that could bring the towers down as well. Now that the fire is out, I’m relieved to see that, as extensive as the damage was, it was nowhere near as bas as I was afraid it would have been. But in the fear of those hours and reading news stories about heartbroken people around the world, especially French people, and the people of Paris, I couldn’t help but think of the opening to Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre-Dame. The preface of the book tells us that the author had been rummaging around the bell towers and found the Greek word for Ananke, a personification of fate, inevitability. It seemed to have been carved in there by someone in the Middle Ages. But at some point afterward, the cathedral was renovated and that word was erased from the wall. Hugo uses this section to meditate on the possible motivation for the nameless person of generations ago putting that word as their only mark on history, and then on the sadness of that word being erased along with him. He ends the passage suggesting that maybe some day the church itself will vanish. I still cannot stop thinking about this brief passage, and how heavy the sentiment is. Had the worst happened, and Notre-Dame were to completely have burned down, one of the great monuments from the middle ages, the most iconic church, full of art, a masterpiece of architecture, would have been gone off of the face of the earth forever. Even something that we think of as timeless, like that specific cathedral, can be taken away at any moment. It is only inevitable. Ananke. While these piano pieces by Satie have nothing to do with Hugo’s novel, they were inspired by the architecture of Notre-Dame cathedral, specifically the pointed arch windows. These are short works, stoic, and they combine plain-chant like phrases with louder chorale passages. They’re brief meditations on what it feels like to experience being inside one of the great old cathedrals, to feel the heaviness of the stillness and tradition, and feel a connection with God. And if not God, at least an acknowledgment that you are in a space that is part of something greater and older than you. The music here also tries to recreate the echo that the church organ causes. And the score lacks bar lines, which can help the performer get into a trance-like flow, letting the music happen without strict attention to rhythm and counting.

Pianist: Jean-Yves Thibaudet

#Satie #ogive #ogives #music #classical #piano #piano music #modernism #modernist music #notre dame #notre dame cathedral #victor hugo #the hunchback of notre dame #victor hugo the hunchback #notre dame fire #Erik Satie #Satie ogives

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years ago

Text

Pluralistic, your daily link-dose: 28 Feb 2020

Today's links

Clearview AI's customer database leaks: Sic semper grifter.

The Internet of Anal Things: Recreating Stelarc's "Amplified Body" with an IoT butt-plug.

Oakland's vintage Space Burger/Giant Burger building needs a home! Adopt a googie today.

Fan-made reproduction of the Tower of Terror: Even has a deepfaked Serling.

Drawing the Simpsons with pure CSS: Impractical, but so impressive.

Let's Encrypt issues its billionth cert: 89% of the web is now encrypted.

AI Dungeon Master: A work in progress, for sure.

How to lie with (coronavirus) maps: Lies, damned lies, and epidemiological data-visualizations.

This day in history: 2019, 2015

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Clearview AI's customer database leaks (permalink)

Clearview is the grifty facial recognition startup that created a database by scraping social media and now offers cops secretive deals on its semi-magic, never-peer-reviewed technology. The company became notorious in January after the NYT did a deep dive into its secretive deals and its weird, Trump-adjascent ex-male-model founder.

(the Times piece was superbly researched but terribly credulous about Clearview's marketing claims)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html

Yesterday, Clearview warned its customers that it had been hacked and lost its customer database. Today, that customer database was published.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/clearview-ai-fbi-ice-global-law-enforcement

It seems that the NYT weren't the only ones to take Clearview's marketing claims at face value. Its client list includes the DoJ, ICE, Macy's, Walmart, and the NBA. All in all the dump includes more than 2,200 users, including "law enforcement agencies, companies, and individuals around the world."

Included: state AGs, university rent-a-cops, and clients in Saudi Arabia.

"BuzzFeed News authenticated the logs, which list about 2,900 institutions and include details such as the number of log-ins, the number of searches, and the date of the last search."

What does Clearview, a sercurity company, say about this ghastly security breach? "Unfortunately, data breaches are part of life in the 21st century."

Big shrug energy.

"Government agents should not be running our faces against a shadily assembled database of billions of our photos in secret and with no safeguards against abuse," ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler, said to BuzzFeed News.

It is amazing that this needs to be said.

"More than 50 educational institutions across 24 states named in the log. Among them are two high schools."

They are:

Central Montco Technical High School in Pennsylvania

Somerset Berkley Regional High School in Massachusetts

The log also has an entry for Interpol.

The Internet of Anal Things (permalink)

In 1994, the notorious/celebrated electronic artist Stelarc did a performance called "Amplified Body" in which he "controlled robots, cameras and other instruments by tensing and releasing his muscles"

https://web.archive.org/web/20120712181429/https://v2.nl/events/amplified-body

Now, artist/critic Dani Ploeger has revisited Amplified Body with his own performance, which is very similar to Stelarc's, except all the peripherals are controlled by Ploeger tensing and releasing his anal sphincters around a smart butt-plug.

https://www.daniploeger.org/amplified-body

He calls it "B-hind" and it's a ha-ha-only-serious. The buttplug is "an anal electrode with EMG sensor for domestic treatment of faecal incontinence," and the accompanying text is a kind of art-speak parody of IoT biz-speak.

https://we-make-money-not-art.com/b-hind-celebrating-the-internet-of-anal-things

"B-hind offers a unique IoT solution to fully integrate your sphincter muscle in everyday living. The revolutionary anal electrode-powered interface system replaces conventional hand/voice-based interaction, enabling advanced digital control rooted in your body's interior. Celebrating the abject and the grotesque, ‍B‒hind facilitates simple, plug-and-play access to a holistic body experience in the age of networked society."

B-hind was produced in collaboration with V2_, the Lab for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam, and In4Art.

Oakland's vintage Space Burger/Giant Burger building needs a home! (permalink)

Giant Burger was once an East Bay institution, known for its burgers and its gorgeous googie architecture.

https://localwiki.org/oakland/Giant_Burger

One of the very last Giant Burger buildings is now under threat. Though the Telegraph Ave location was rescued in 2015 and converted to a "Space Burger," it's now seeking a new home because it is in the path of the Eastline project.

https://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2015/02/24/space-burger-launches-in-uptown-oakland/

The Oakland Heritage Alliance is hoping someone will rescue and move the building: " Do you have an idea for a new location for this mid-century icon? Please contact [email protected] if you know of an appropriate lot, project, or site, preferably downtown."

(Image CC BY-SA, Our Oakland)

Fan-made reproduction of the Tower of Terror (permalink)

Orangele set out to re-create the Walt Disney World Twilight Zone Tower of Terror elevator loading zone in the entry area to their home theater. He's not only done an impressive re-make of the set, but he's also augmented it with FANTASTIC gimmicks.

https://www.hometheaterforum.com/community/threads/the-tower-of-terror-theater.365747/

It's not merely that's he's created a rain, thunder and lightning effect outside the patio doors…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QMzN0v4mJQ

Nor has he merely created props like this gimmicked side table that flips over at the press of a button.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY7gQLMnbeA

He's also created HIS OWN ROD SERLING DEEPFAKE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=MIsjYJwOXSU

I kinda seriously love that he left Rod's cigarette in. The Disney version looks…uncanny.

Not shown: "exploding fuse box with simulated smoke and fire, motorized lighted elevator dial, motorized/lighted pressure gauge, video monitor playing Tower of Terror ride sequence seen through the elevator door wrap, motorized "elevator door'"

He notes, "I was once married, but now as a single person, I can do whatever I want, haha. NEVER getting married again."

Drawing the Simpsons with pure CSS (permalink)

Implementing animated Simpsons illustrations in CSS isn't the most practical web-coding demo I've seen, but it's among the most impressive. Bravo, Chris Pattle!

(not shown: the eyes animate and blink!)

https://pattle.github.io/simpsons-in-css/

#bart .head .hair1 { top: 22px; left: 0px; width: 6px; height: 7px; -webkit-transform: rotate(-22deg) skew(-7deg, 51deg); -ms-transform: rotate(-22deg) skew(-7deg, 51deg); transform: rotate(-22deg) skew(-7deg, 51deg); }

I especially love the quick-reference buttons to see the raw CSS. It reminds me of nothing so much as the incredibly complex Logo programs I used to write on my Apple ][+ in the 1980s, drawing very complicated, vector-based sprites and glyphs.

https://github.com/pattle/simpsons-in-css/blob/master/css/bart.css

Most interesting is the way that this modular approach to graphics allows for this kind of simple, in-browser transformation.

Let's Encrypt issues its billionth cert (permalink)

When the AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein walked into EFF's offices in 2005 to reveal that his employers had ordered him to help the NSA spy on the entire internet, it was a bombshell.

https://www.eff.org/tags/mark-klein

The Snowden papers revealed the scope of the surveillance in fine and alarming detail. According to his memoir, Snowden was motivated to blow the whistle when he witnessed then-NSA Director James Clapper lie to Senator Ron Wyden about the Klein matter.

Since that day in 2005, privacy advocates have been fretting about just how EASY it was to spy on the whole internet. So much of that was down to the fact that the net wasn't encrypted by default.

This was especially keen for @EFF. After all, we made our bones by suing the NSA in the 90s and winning the right for civilians to access working cryptography (we did it by establishing that "Code is speech" for the purposes of the First Amendment).

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech

Crypto had been legal since 1992, but by Klein's 2005 disclosures, it was still a rarity. 8 years later — at the Snowden moment — the web was STILL mostly plaintext. How could we encrypt the web to save it from mass surveillance?

So in 2014, we joined forces with Mozilla, the University of Michigan and Akamai to create Let's Encrypt, a project to give anyone and everyone free TLS certificates, the key component needed to encrypt the requests your web-server exchanges with your readers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Encrypt

Encrypting the web was an uphill climb: by 2017, Let's Encrypt had issued 100m certificates, tipping the web over so that the majority of traffic (58%) was encrypted. Today, Let's Encrypt has issued ONE BILLION certs, and 81% of pageloads use HTTPS (in the USA, it's 91%)! This is astonishing, bordering on miraculous. If this had been the situation back in 2005, there would have been no NSA mass surveillance.

Even more astonishing: there are only 11 full-timers on the Let's Encrypt team, plus a few outside contractors and part-timers. A group of people who could fit in a minibus managed to encrypt virtually the entire internet.

https://letsencrypt.org/2020/02/27/one-billion-certs.html

There are lots of reasons to factor technology (and technologists) in any plan for social change, but this illustrates one of the primary tactical considerations. "Architecture is Politics" (as Mitch Kapor said when he co-founded EFF), and the architectural choices that small groups of skilled people make can reach all the way around the world.

This kind of breathtaking power is what inspires so many people to become technologists: the force-multiplier effect of networked code can imbue your work with global salience (for good or ill). It's why we should be so glad of the burgeoning tech and ethics movement, from Tech Won't Build It to the Googler Uprising. And it's especially why we should be excited about the proliferation of open syllabi for teaching tech and ethics.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jWIrA8jHz5fYAW4h9CkUD8gKS5V98PDJDymRf8d9vKI/edit#gid=0

It's also the reason I'm so humbled and thrilled when I hear from technologists that their path into the field started with my novel Little Brother, whose message isn't "Tech is terrible," but, "This will all be so great, if we don't screw it up."

https://craphound.com/littlebrother

(and I should probably mention here that the third Little Brother book, Attack Surface, comes out in October and explicitly wrestles with the question of ethics, agency, and allyship in tech).

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

AI Dungeon Master (permalink)

Since 2018, Lara martin has been using machine learning to augment the job of the Dungeon Master, with the goal of someday building a fully autonomous, robotic DM.

https://laramartin.net/

AI Dungeon Master is a blend of ML techniques and "old-fashioned rule-based features" to create a centaur DM that augments a human DM's imagination with the power of ML, natural language processing, and related techniques.

She's co-author of a new paper about the effort, "Story Realization: Expanding Plot Events into Sentences" which "describes a way algorithms to use "events," consisting of a subject, verb, object, and other elements, to make a coherent narrative."

https://aaai.org/Papers/AAAI/2020GB/AAAI-AmmanabroluP.6647.pdf

The system uses training data (plots from Doctor Who, Futurama, and X-Files) to expand text-snippets into plotlines that continue the action. It's a bit of a dancing bear, though, an impressive achievement that's not quite ready for primetime ("We're nowhere close to this being a reality yet").

https://www.wired.com/story/forget-chess-real-challenge-teaching-ai-play-dandd/

This may bring to mind AI Dungeon, the viral GPT-2-generated dungeon crawler from December.

https://aidungeon.io/

As Will Knight writes, "Playing AI Dungeon often feels more like a maddening improv session than a text adventure."

Knight proposes that "AI DM" might be the next big symbolic challenge for machine learning, the 2020s equivalent to "AI Go player" or "AI chess master."

How to lie with (coronavirus) maps (permalink)

The media around the coronavirus outbreak is like a masterclass in the classic "How to Lie With Maps."

https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo27400568.html

Self-described "cartonerd" Kenneth Field's prescriptions for mapmakers wanting to illustrate the spread of coronavirus is a superb read about data visualization, responsibility, and clarity.

https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/product/mapping/mapping-coronavirus-responsibly/

Both of these images are representing the same data. Look at the map and you might get the impression that coronavirus infections are at high levels across all of China's provinces. Look at the bar-chart and you'll see that it's almost entire Hubei.

Here's a proposed way to represent the same data on a map without misleading people.

Another point that jumped out: stop coloring maps in red!

"We're mapping a human health tragedy that may get way worse before it subsides. Do we really want the map to be screaming bright red? Red can connotate death, still statistically extremely rare for coronavirus."

This day in history (permalink)

#5yrsago Ad-hoc museums of a failing utopia: photos of Soviet shop-windows https://boingboing.net/2015/02/28/ad-hoc-museums-of-a-failing-ut.html

#5yrsago First-hand reports of torture from Homan Square, Chicago PD's "black site" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/27/chicago-abusive-confinment-homan-square

#1yrago EFF's roadmap for a 21st Century antitrust doctrine https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/antitrust-enforcement-needs-evolve-21st-century

#1yrago Yet another study shows that the most effective "anti-piracy" strategy is good products at a fair price https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3kg7pv/studies-keep-showing-that-the-best-way-to-stop-piracy-is-to-offer-cheaper-better-alternatives

#1yrago London's awful estate agents are cratering, warning of a "prolonged downturn" in the housing market https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47389160

#1yrago Bad security design made it easy to spy on video from Ring doorbells and insert fake video into their feeds https://web.archive.org/web/20190411195308/https://dojo.bullguard.com/dojo-by-bullguard/blog/ring/

#1yrago Amazon killed Seattle's homelessness-relief tax by threatening not to move into a massive new building, then they canceled the move anyway https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/huge-downtown-seattle-office-space-that-amazon-had-leased-is-reportedly-put-on-market/

#1yrago The "Reputation Management" industry continues to depend on forged legal documents https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190216/15544941616/pissed-consumer-exposes-new-york-luxury-car-dealers-use-bogus-notarized-letters-to-remove-critical-reviews.shtml

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Allegra of Oakland Heritage Alliance, Waxy (https://waxy.org/), We Make Money Not Art (https://we-make-money-not-art.com/), Sam Posten (https://twitter.com/Navesink), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Kottke (https://kottke.org) and Four Short Links (https://www.oreilly.com/feed/four-short-links).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Canada Reads Kelowna: March 5, 6PM, Kelowna Library, 1380 Ellis Street, with CBC's Sarah Penton https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Currently writing: I just finished a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel now, though the timing is going to depend on another pending commission (I've been solicited by an NGO) to write a short story set in the world's prehistory.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last week, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs" this week; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Gopher: When Adversarial Interoperability Burrowed Under the Gatekeepers' Fortresses: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/02/24/gopher-when-adversarial-interoperability-burrowed-under-the-gatekeepers-fortresses/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

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thepermanentrainpress · 5 years ago

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THE IMPOSSIBLE STAIRCASE – A CONVERSATION WITH ANDREW JUDAH

Andrew Judah is based in Kelowna—but don’t call them a Kelowna band.

“It’s impossible not to be influenced by your environment in some way, but I’m not writing about the Okanagan and the sound is not based on anything to do with the Okanagan,” their frontman (and namesake) told us over coffee earlier this month.

“Yeah, it might be shaped by the people you spend time with… less by the lake,” bassist Caleb McAlpine chimed in beside him.

Fair enough, some of the band members themselves having grown up or spent extended periods of time in other cities. Andrew Judah was a solo project first; his debut album, The Preacher’s Basement, came out in 2011.

Judah still writes the material and handles most of the instrumentation on studio recordings, but the group of like-minded musicians has been a boost to his live shows and creative process. McAlpine even co-produced the new record with Judah – or, in the latter’s words, “pulled me back from the ledge when I was having doubts about something, or about to delete everything.”

Impossible Staircase, set for release on April 20th, pulls back from the synth-y melodies of Judah’s last album. It was written about a close friend’s battle with addiction, and ties into an overarching concept of being trapped in a feedback loop.

There is piano, guitars, and drums, but also hints of the less conventional—violin, autoharp, trombone. The recently released single “Burn it Down” is eerily cinematic; Judah’s lyrics are a mix of metaphor and literal, his vocals poised amidst the pulsing rhythm.

Impossible Staircase by Andrew Judah

One of the few instruments Judah didn’t play on every track himself was the drums. Most of the percussion was recorded by Zac Gauthier – who was featured on Judah’s last album, Metanoia, as well – in a cabin near Salmon Arm.

“There are some pretty explosive moments [on the record] that only he could pull off,” said McAlpine. “He is amazing,” Judah agreed.

Chloe Davidson, who is a member of Kelowna bluegrass quartet Under the Rocks, handled violin duties.

Every song on Impossible Staircase flows into the next as if in – you guessed it – a never-ending cycle. Judah also incorporates Shepard tones—audio illusions which give the impression of a pitch rising, or falling, forever.

“It’s a loop, but it tricks your ears into thinking you’re hearing this very stressful, continuously descending sound,” Judah said of the technique. (Film score composer Hans Zimmer is a fan, if you needed another reason to appreciate its emotive power.)

Judah’s favourite song on the album changes day to day, but at the time of this interview he settled on “Lose My Mind,” which will be released as a single on Friday.

“It’s just a very sincere song about a very serious topic, and I managed to do it in a way that… I don’t hate?” He laughed. “It’s hard to write from an honest place about something that’s happening in your life, and not have it be cheesy. I’m pretty critical of things that feel cheesy.”

McAlpine went with “Penrose” – a seven-minute tune that has proven to be quite the challenge in rehearsals.

“There’s a repeating line that feels like it goes on for two minutes… there's no room to breathe. I'm going hard on a shaker, playing keys, singing, and I'm just not thinking. Almost every time without fail, I feel like I'm about to pass out.”

It’s something we don’t often consider—complex arrangements, pieced together between the walls of a studio, written with the headphone listener in mind and not the immediacy in having to recreate them. Rehearsals are the first opportunity the band members have to flesh out the songs for their live show.

Andrew Judah was set to embark on a BC tour this month, but postponed the dates due to COVID-19 concerns. Victoria was one city they were most looking forward to revisiting; they played a sold-out show at Vinyl Envy in October, and have also been on the bill for Psych & Soul – an annual music showcase put on by the record store.

“Really good community there,” said McAlpine. “We will never not go to Victoria to play shows.”

In light of the circumstances, they recorded a live set at Judah’s studio, Sounds Suspicious. It can be enjoyed with a glass of wine, and a friend, providing that friend is streaming the video from the confines of their own home.

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The band is no stranger to larger crowds, having been a part of Skookum, Vancouver Fringe Festival, and Rifflandia in recent years. They were scheduled to play the (also postponed) AltiTunes Festival at Big White alongside Canadian rock darlings Arkells and Dear Rouge.

But there’s nothing quite like the charm of a room, and they lean towards intimate, self-made events at coffee shops and other less traditional venues when performing locally. It is time consuming, Judah acknowledged, but makes the end experience that much more worthwhile. “Everything is intentional, as opposed to playing in a bar where half the people might not even be listening.”

The most anticipated part of their set is also the most unpredictable: the group marches from the stage to the middle of the crowd, and play a song without the use of mics or amplification.

They’ve done it surrounded by hundreds under the cozy lights of Canoe Coffee Roasters, to a lone table of three in Port Alberni. It is a moment that lends itself to connection and vulnerability – and audiences have been receptive to that.

“It turns things from look at what we’re doing, to look at what we’re engaging in,” McAlpine said. “We go back on stage and it changes from that point on.”

The cover art for Impossible Staircase was drawn by Max Weiner, who also did the art for two of Judah’s previous records. Keeping with the cyclical theme, it shows an ouroboros – a snake eating its own tail – in the shape of a DNA strand—“which speaks to our behaviour being more ingrained than not,” said Judah.

The last music video Andrew Judah put out was for “Best in Show” – a song that will appear on the new record, albeit a more resonant version than what is currently released.

They don’t have any others in the works, McAlpine noting it’s something they’ll revisit once the album is out, and they see an opportunity to carry the art forward.

“I'm not a giant fan of music videos in general,” said Judah. “I don't think they’re worth doing unless they're something that can stand on their own; truly another way to look at a piece of music, as opposed to just… (The PRP: A band performing it?) Yes, exactly. That feels reductionist to do it just because.”

When he’s not working on material under the Andrew Judah banner, the frontman is a freelance composer for film and television.

It started back in 2012, when he remixed the song “Let Go” by New York experimental artist Son Lux, a.k.a. Ryan Lott. Lott’s day job was as a composer at Butter Music; one thing led to another, and Judah was offered a residency there himself.

Asked how the commercial avenue has influenced his approach to solo material, Judah admits he wasn’t very intentional with his writing when he started out. “Music was just this thing that happened… the inspiration would lead wherever it led. Since it became my job, [I think more about] what sounds are going to make people feel a certain way. It’s been an education in what to do with my own music.”

McAlpine has his own solo project, Common Fires, and a new single coming out April 13th. But he had always wanted to play in a band, and joked that he was “very sad, very bored. Never getting any better, just getting more sad and bored; slightly worse,” in the solitary endeavour.

He returned to Kelowna in 2014, having not lived in the city for about 10 years, and was planning to move again when the opportunity to collaborate with Judah – whose work he was already a fan of – arose.

“It’s been a very fruitful relationship,” McAlpine surmised.

The other members of the live band are Nathanael Sherman (guitar) and Kevin Dreger (drums). Sherman also releases music under the moniker N. Sherman, and put out a single titled “Sweet Boy” last week.

So, it seems Impossible Staircase is a fitting analogy for the musicians themselves. Multi-faceted and never satisfied. Continuously pushing their craft.

“You as a musician are probably always practicing,” McAlpine said. “You’re never not riding that bike.”

And we can be appreciative of that.

Written by: Natalie Hoy Header image by: Nathan Peacock

#Andrew Judah #Caleb McAlpine #Nathanael Sherman #music #interview #Kelowna #Natalie #Canadian music #Impossible Staircase #new music #Burn it Down #Vancouver #indie rock #band #Common Fires #ylw #yvr #Kevin Dreger

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masqueradelydia · 6 years ago

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Adjustment to Personhood

I wrote a small introduction piece for my Sides AU, and I’m still figuring out a name for it. This is an art blog, but since I started posting some of my creative stuff for this AU here, I figured I might follow suit with this. Here are the drawings I started with for this concept if you want to see them:

https://masqueradelydia.tumblr.com/post/186613049831/i-had-a-concept-in-mind-for-a-sanders-sides-au

https://masqueradelydia.tumblr.com/post/186637156928/here-are-the-other-two-sides-to-go-along-with-the

Summary: An overview of the Sides in this Alternate Universe. After taking on their own bodies and entering the world with Thomas’s blessing, they take on a slice of life with their own devices.

Characters: Roman Sanders, Logan Sanders, Virgil Sanders, Deceit Sanders, Remus Sanders (All of their last names are different), Character Thomas (Mentioned)

Warnings: None

Ships: N/A

Words: 1513

A/N: I’m considering making another part to this that would further elaborate from the point I left off.

The adjustment to a rather groundbreaking change can be a different sort of process for everyone involved. You could ask any of these six gentlemen about it and they’d be more than happy to elaborate on their new presence, outside of the Mindscape and into their own senses of what it’s like to be irrevocably responsible for their own bodies, and their own seizing of what their crafted existences would bring them. Taking the chance to alter their faces to become less than identical with their host in the Mindscape was practically instantaneous, and of course provided a solid foundation for their own preparation in what was to come next.

Logan, with his sacred view of appreciating the sheer magnitude of it all, was quick to take his taller frame and longer, sharper face to his newfound scientific community that accepted his mistakes as just mistakes and treated him with dignity. They did not over-criticize him and thought things through logically, while providing him a clear ground to explore his own interests and bond with him over their shared ones. They didn’t pry at him and force him to pretend to be more affectionate than he wanted to be and allowed him the necessity of taking the pressure off of himself to be the only logical person in the room. His enthusiasm to accept their welcome resulted in needing only a few days to plan his moving away from the other Sides and bid them all a cheerful goodbye.

Roman’s bursting out from Patton’s restraints on his greater ambitions manifested in a near shriek of joy as he puffed out his chest and wished the others good fortune in their own quests of life before sending himself like a bullet to New York City to become the Broadway performer he had wanted to rebel for so long to be. His chiseled face and bolstered frame complete with broad shoulders had hardly greeted them at all after he had acquired his own body, and just like that, he had bid them farewell.

Virgil and Patton had taken a little bit of time to register everything, not wanting to solidify a path just yet. This resulted in Virgil spending a good few nights in his room reflecting on his thoughts upon being acknowledged by strangers on a near daily basis. It wasn’t as difficult as he had anticipated to get used to it, and after spending a few weeks doing the bookkeeping for the local music shop by his and Patton’s apartment, he’d fallen into quite the enthused discussions regarding today’s changing scene for his favorite music genres. Three weeks after his first day there, he’d gone to his first real concert without Thomas, and was accompanied by his new friends he’d grown quite a liking to.

Patton’s disappointment from losing his unit of the other three and familial authority, even if only in the nominal sense, had been temporarily pushed aside as he made small talk and such with the neighbors living above himself and Virgil, although he could feel it building up in the back of his throat and the palms of his hands, until he at last expressed this distress to Virgil.

Despite Virgil’s insistence on the four reuniting to soothe Patton’s spirit, no attempts at politely asking nor his attempts to recreate his Tempest Tongue for Roman’s amusement had convinced Logan and Roman to return. Logan did, however, assure him that he would visit them when he had the time considering that he had kept up with Virgil on a frequent basis and enjoyed his company.

Now, while Virgil was encouraging Patton to volunteer at the animal shelter and make a new sort of “family” here, it may seem curious to leave out the other things affecting Patton and the quick leave that Deceit and Remus had taken after acquiring their own physical forms, so I shall delay these things no longer.

Patton, unlike Virgil, had not chosen to sharpen his chin and elongate his face, or give himself hooded eyes and get gauges in his ears. Patton, choosing to continue his perhaps misguided role of exemplifying empathy, had taken on a face of an unrecognizable collage of features, with a poignant speech about loving these features when “No one else will,” and had miscalculated the offhand comments he’d get about fixing his crooked nose, getting his teeth straightened, about his hair being too frizzy and frayed out, his freckles, and the vaguely heart-shaped birthmark on his chin that sat underneath a rather bushy beard. Someone like you or I may ask, “Wouldn’t he have seen this coming?” but Patton did not suddenly break out of his rather simplistic mindset that all good people in the world would also be kind to him at all times, just because he’d received the gift of his own body.

Do not worry about him, though. After a rough few months, his little world seemed to ease up on him and he found his place in it well enough with open-hearted company that would probably make both of us a little bit sick, along with keeping Virgil in his circle.

Deceit and Remus did not have the same luxury of being close to Patton, or any of the other Sides upon entering their personhood. Patton had assured them that they would be better on their own, not wanting to see the manifestation of something he disliked in Thomas so much anymore. Deceit wasn’t feeling any sudden sentiment bubbling up in him that would’ve encouraged any argument to this point. Deceit, finding his world less insistent on black-and-white thinking, took his newfound personhood by the helm of its neck, having found a keen interest in law. He went back to school to pursue this and imagined that someone with such a gaudy facial tattoo along his almost skeletal face and sunken cheeks, and a lip piercing, such as himself would defy a few common stereotypes of what an attorney looks like. All the more shocking when he won his cases, far off from that self-righteous presence telling him this and that, leaving him with a sour taste of candy sprinkled with unwanted puns in his mouth. As for his name, he’d found Gabriel to be a suitably ironic name for his own reasons, and adopted it accordingly.

Logan Jones, Virgil Addams, Roman Lancer, and Gabriel Wright may all sound like silly surnames attached to first names that you’re already familiar with, because they are, but perhaps a lack of experience left all of their owners with the same small piece of un-self-conscious enthusiasm towards life, usually only seen in small children in great amounts, and their surnames had taken the brunt of its presence in these characters.

The last person to enter new personhood had been kept at a greater length than he’d expected from Gabriel, whose career left no room for time for him. He would have loved to tell you about undergone new adventures and how deliciously sweet his new life in stand-up comedy had tasted if that were the truth. Even he, as much as he barreled face-first into everything, could not escape the unsavory effects of his fitting in just barely enough to exist during his life in the Mindscape.

Remus Morgan did not have the sheer joy of sharing Roman’s time, projecting his skills and developing them along with Thomas on the stage, receiving engaged and even receptive feedback regarding his drawings, being spoken to like an improving, or even developing Side of Thomas, being given enough attention to inadvertently learn enough about people to operate alongside them as would be expected from someone past mid-childhood.

Remus Morgan, now with scruff on his chin, hair grown out with more grey in it, sunken eyes and a stained and torn green bomber jacket, perhaps resembling that of the bar janitor down the street who had done a few creative works of his own, did not account for the navigation of personhood as he’d honed his awareness of the silly and gory corners of the world, and the unused potential in Thomas’s mind, which he didn’t need to be chastised and hissed at and looked upon as if he were leakage from the sewage grate for. He’d figured he wasn’t doomed to this forever anymore when he’d realized the brink of personhood upon him as the he and the others had gone through this transformation.

This is all quite vague, but perhaps I should just leave you with the point that Remus’s… outgoing nature, putting it nicely, was not suited to the tastes of directors who might have considered working with him had he been a bit better adjusted to his new life and if his acting had been polished to a much higher degree, and if his humor didn’t sound like an eight-year-old who just learned that Santa isn’t real and that he can curse when his parents aren’t looking. Perhaps it would be easier to explain his current situation if I take you through one particular day he’d experienced.

#sanders sides #ts sides #my writing #Concept AU

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upontheshelfreviews · 6 years ago

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And now we come to the final piece of Walt Disney’s original animation trifecta, Fantasia, and it’s one I’m both anticipating and dreading. Fantasia isn’t just one of the crowning jewels in Disney’s canon, a landmark in motion picture animation, and second only to Snow White in terms of influential music and storytelling in the whole medium, it’s one of my top three favorite movies of all time. Discussing it without sounding like an old history professor, a pretentious internet snob, or a hyper Disney fangirl is one hell of a daunting task.

“Did someone say hyper Disney fangirl?! I LOVE Disney!!”

“I thought you only liked Frozen.”

“Well, DUH, Frozen is my favorite, which makes it, like, the best Disney movie ever! But Disney’s awesome! There’s a bunch of other movies I like that are almost as good!”

“And Fantasia’s one of them?”

“Yeah!!…Which one is that again?”

“The one with Sorcerer Mickey?”

“Ohhhh, you’re talking about the fireworks show where he fights the dragon!”

“No, that’s Fantasmic. I’m referring to Fantasia. Came out the same year as Pinocchio? All done in hand-drawn animation…has the big devil guy at the end?”

“THAT’S where he’s from?! Geez, that’s some old movie. Why haven’t I heard about ’til now?”

“Probably because you spend twelve hours a day searching for more Frozen GIFs to reblog on your Tumblr.”

“Ooh, that reminds me! I need to go post my next batch of theories about the upcoming sequel! Toodles!!”

“Thanks. Another second with her and I would’ve bust a gasket.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Anyway, it’s no surprise Sorcerer Mickey is what people remember the most from Fantasia, and not just because he’s the company mascot. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” was the reason we have the movie in the first place. It began as a pet project between Walt Disney and renowned conductor Leopold Stokowski.

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“Yep. THAT Leopold.”

However, between the upscale in animation and the use of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the cost grew too high to justify the creation of only one short. Over time more sequences featuring animation set to various pieces of classical music were added in what was initially dubbed “The Concert Feature”. Later it was wisely changed to the more memorable “Fantasia”. It works not only because it’s derived from the word “fantasy”, but because “fantasia” is a term for a musical composition that doesn’t follow any strict form and leans towards improvisation. Combine the two meanings and you get the whole movie in a nutshell.

And this leads us to –

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #1: “It’s SOOOOOO boring! Nobody’s talking and nothing ever happens!”

You know, few recall that decades before Warner Brothers was known as that studio that made rushed prequels to beloved fantasy franchises and a hastily cobbled together superhero universe, it had humble origins in the music business; their Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts began as music videos made to sell their records. Disney’s Silly Symphonies followed in the same vein, though they focused more on pushing the envelope in animation technique and character resonance than selling music, as did the lesser known Harman-Ising Happy Harmonies.

And if that’s the case, then Fantasia is the Thriller of animated music videos. It’s the result of years of technological advancement and trial and error, all culminating in the flawless weaving together of visuals and some of the greatest music mankind has created to tell seven stories and elicit an emotional response for each one.

Let me repeat that: FANTASIA. PREDATES. THRILLER.

“And unlike Thriller, Fantasia has the advantage of NOT being directed by a man who literally got away with murder or involving an artist whose pedophilia accusations are still discussed a decade after his passing…at least as far as we know.”

By the way, if you’re watching the current version of Fantasia that’s available, do me a favor and pause the movie to watch the original Deems Taylor intros; while they’re shorter than the ones on the blu-ray, they have Deem’s original voice. All later releases have him dubbed over by Corey Burton because the audio for these parts hasn’t held up as well over time. Now Corey Burton is a phenomenal voice actor who’s done countless work for Disney before, but there’s a problem I have with him taking over these segments: One, he and Deems sound nothing alike, and Two, he makes him sound so dry and dull. Not to mention the longer intros practically spoil everything you’re about to see whereas the cut versions give you just enough to build some intrigue for what’s to follow.

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Regardless of whichever one you’re watching, Deems gives us the rundown on what Fantasia is all about and lists the three categories that the sequences fall under.

A concrete story

Clearly defined images with something of a narrative

Music and visuals that exist for its own sake

And the very first of these parts falls directly into the last one.

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor – Johann Sebastian Bach

Some hear this tune and attribute it as stock horror music, but for me it’s the start of a grand, dark, fantastical journey through realms of the imagination. While it is intended as an organ piece, this full orchestration blows me away. Capturing the orchestra in bold hues and shadows with colors specific to certain highlighted instruments was a brilliant move, setting the stage for what’s to come.

And if the previously referenced Bugs Bunny cartoon was any indication, the real Leopold Stokowski is one of the main draws to this segment. Stokowski’s claim to fame was that he ditched the traditional conductor’s baton and used his hands to guide the orchestra. His passion and restraint is plain for all to see, even in silhouette.

Ultimately Stokowski and the orchestra fade away into the animated ether. The idea behind Toccota and Fugue was to show a gradual transformation from the conscious world to the subconscious, providing a literal and figurative representation of what you see and hear with the music. That’s why the first animated images resemble violin bows sweeping over strings. Over time those distinct objects evolve into abstract geometric shapes.

Honestly, no amount of stills can capture what it’s like to watch this sequence play out. It’s a radically unique experience, almost like a dream.

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #2: “It’s the world’s first screensaver/musicalizer!”

This is something I hear often from people (ie. the people making the complaints I’ve chosen to highlight). First, read the previous Thing. Second, Toccata is not so much about recreating a story as it is capturing a feeling. And yet a story isn’t out of the question. I always saw at as glimpses of a battle of light versus dark, heaven versus hell, albeit not as overt as the opening of Fantasia 2000. That’s the beauty of this segment. It’s all up for interpretation. You can let the images and sounds wash over you as if you were dreaming it, or attach whatever meaning you find.

And on that note (ha) –

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #3: “God, all these animators must have been so fucking high to come up with this shit.”

I tell ya what, if you’re one of those people who think that, take whatever drug is handy, grab some crayons or whatever you feel comfortable doodling with, and when you’re comfortably high, draw one full second of animation. That’s 24 consecutive drawings that need to flow, squash and stretch into each other realistically. It doesn’t have complicated; it can be a ball bouncing, a flower blowing in the wind, an eye blinking, but it has to work.

Not so easy, huh?

Classic Disney animators who lectured at art schools received comments like this all the time. While there were some like Fred Moore who would go for the occasional beer run on breaks, there’s no record of narcotic or alcoholic influence on the animators’ turnout. I’m pretty sure Walt would’ve fired anyone who turned in work produced while high because it’d be awful. Animation was still a fairly new medium at the time, and Disney was constantly experimenting with what it could do, which is why we got things like this, the Pink Elephants, and other delightfully trippy moments throughout the 40’s, not because of drugs. Isn’t that right, classic Disney animator Bill Tytla?

“Of course! I’ve never done drugs, and I never drink…wine.”

The Nutcracker Suite – Pyotr Illich Tchaichovsky

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #4: “Yawn. Nutcracker is SO overplayed. Of course Disney had to jump on the bandwagon with their version!”

Ironically, the extended Deems Taylor intro has him mention how nobody performs Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker; in light of its modern seasonal popularity, the sentiment is rendered archaic. True, the ballet wasn’t an initial critical hit and Tchaikovsky himself virtually disowned it, but much of its ubiquity is largely due in part to Disney adapting it for Fantasia. It eschews the title character in favor of a nature ballet portraying the cycle of seasons. Initial planning included the overture and the famous march featuring woodland critters, though they were eventually cut. Walt considered pumping scents into the theater during this part, but was unable to figure out how to do it naturally. If they had Smell-O-Vision that might work, but what scents would you have to scratch off for the other Fantasia segments? Wood resin? Wine? Wet hippo? Brimstone?

The sequence begins with The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. In the night a group of fairies dance like fireflies, gracing spring flowers and spiderwebs with delicately timed dewdrops.

“Any of you girls seen Tinkerbell?” “She ditched us to hang out with that obnoxious flyboy.” “Again?! That’s the third time this month!”

The scene is atmospheric with beautifully rendered pastel backgrounds. After the fairies comes The Chinese Dance performed by a group of little mushrooms. It’s a cute number, and just another that was parodied more than a few times in other cartoons – wait do those mushrooms have slant eyes? And they’re prancing around nodding like extras in The Mikado…

You fungi are lucky you’re so darn adorable otherwise I’d sic the self-righteous side of Twitter on you.

Dance of the Reed Flutes follows. Lilies gently float on to the surface of a pond before inverting themselves to resemble twirling dancers with long, flowing skirts. And since I’m not always one to take the easy route, enjoy this niche reference instead of “You Spin Me Right Round”.

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A gust of wind blows the spinning lilies over a waterfall into some moody underwater caverns, where a school of unusually sultry goldfish perform the Arabian Dance.

Cleo, does Gepetto know about this?

A novel idea, using the basic swimming motions of a goldfish and their naturally diaphanous tails and fins as veils to resemble exotic dancers, though like other animated characters in a similar vein, this has led to some…”interesting” reactions from certain people.

Right, well, bubbles transition us into the penultimate movement, the Russian Dance. Thistles and orchids resembling dancers clad in traditional Russian peasant clothing spring to life in this brightly colored energetic minute. You’ll be chanting “hey!” along with it.

And finally, the Waltz of the Flowers. As a little girl I would often hold my own “ballets” to this scene, which mainly comprised of me in a ballet costume or fancy nightgown spinning around in circles for family members with this playing in the background. Top that, Baryshnikov.

Fairies similar to the ones from the beginning transform the leaves from fresh summer green to autumn orange, brown and gold. Milkweed seeds blossom forth and float through the air like waltzing ladies. This piece above all else is what really shows the beauty of nature. I feel more emotion watching the leaves pirouette in the wind than any plain live-action drama.

Fall turns into winter, and the fairies, now snow sprites, skate across a pond creating ice swirls while even more spiral down from the sky as snowflakes. The secret of animating these snowflakes was nearly lost to time. Several years ago a notebook by technician Herman Schultheis was rediscovered, revealing how many of the special effects in Disney’s early films – Fantasia in particular – were brought to life. The snowflakes were cels on spools attached to small rails from a train set that were filmed falling in stop motion and black and white, then superimposed on the final picture.

In conclusion, The Nutcracker Suite is a lovely piece of animation and music, and I’ll pop in Fantasia at Christmastime just to watch it. This was my introduction to The Nutcracker, and it’s an excellent and unique one.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – Paul Dukas

The symphonic poem of the same name now gets a proper name with Mickey Mouse stepping in the title role. It’s impossible to imagine any other character in his shoes, but for a time there were other considerations.

“Nope. Too wooden.”

“Too angry.”

“I’m sorry, but you’re just too darn loud.”

As we all know, Mickey was given the part since his popularity needed a boost. He doesn’t talk here, and I know those who find his voice grating wholeheartedly embrace that fact, but what we’re given is proof that Mickey works just as well silently as he does speaking. Very few cartoon characters can pull off that kind of versatility.

And while we’re on the topic of sound, Walt was so determined for the sound quality to match what was happening on screen that he devised a system he dubbed “FantaSound”, where it would seem as though the music would move around the the theater instead of just blare out from one speaker.

You read that right. Fantasia is the movie that invented SURROUND SOUND.

But that’s not the only technological leap Fantasia is responsible for – this is the first time we see Mickey with sclera.

That’s the white of the eyes for those who don’t speak science.

Before Fantasia, Mickey had what we refer to today as “pie eyes”, a relic of the era he was created in. As the art of animation progressed, animators found it increasingly difficult to create believable expressions with two little dots. Fred Moore is responsible for the mouse’s welcome redesign. Mickey as the apprentice serves the sorcerer Yen Sid, named after his real world counterpart.

“Hey! I didn’t teach him that!”

Mickey’s craving a taste of his master’s power, so he borrows his magical cap after he goes to bed and enchants a broom to finish his work of gathering water. It’s fun and bouncy, though the part where Mickey dreams he can control the cosmos, seas and sky is something to behold.

“The power! The absolute POWER!! The universe is mine to command! To CONTROOOOOOL!!!”

But Mickey is jolted from his dream of ultimate conquest when the broom begins flooding the place. Unfortunately the sorcerer’s hat doesn’t come with a manual so Mickey doesn’t know how to turn it off. He resorts to violently chopping the broom to pieces with an axe. The animation originally called for the massacre to happen on screen, but was altered to showing it through shadows instead. I think it’s much more effective this way. The implied violence is more dramatic than what we could have gotten.

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One of my favorite stylistic choices in Fantasia is what follows. The color is sucked out, drained if you will, mirroring Mickey’s exhausted emotional and physical state after committing broomslaughter. But it slowly returns as the broom’s splinters rise up and form an army of bucket-wielding drones. They overpower Mickey and catch him in a whirlpool until Yen Sid returns and parts the waters like a pissed off Moses.

“You! Shall not! SWIM!!!”

Mickey sheepishly returns the hat, and I have to give credit to the animators for the subtle touches on Yen Sid. He appears stern at first glance, but the raised eyebrow borrowed from Walt? The slight smirk at the corner of his mouth? Deep down, he’s amused by his apprentice’s shenanigans. Even the backside slap with the broom, while rendered harshly due to the sudden swell of music, is done less out of malice and more out of playfulness.

The piece ends with Mickey breaking the barriers of reality to congratulate Stokowski on a job well done.

“Hey! I didn’t teach him that!”

If you haven’t already guessed, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is easily one of my preferred sequences. It’s energetic, perfectly matches the music, and features my favorite mouse in one of his most iconic roles. I joke about the scene where Mickey controls the waves and the sky due to Disney’s far-reaching acquisitions in the past decade, but within the context of the film it’s one of the most magical moments. Some theorize that The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is an allegory of Walt’s journey to create Fantasia itself, and there’s some merit to it – Mickey’s always been Walt’s avatar after all, and here he dreams big only to wind up way in over his head. But you don’t need to look for coincidental parallels to enjoy this part.

Rite of Spring – Igor Stravinsky

Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is admittedly my least favorite part of Fantasia, though I don’t hate it by all means. Thematically it’s the furthest from the original work’s intent: instead of a pagan ritual involving a virgin sacrifice, we witness the earth’s infancy. I was never really into dinosaurs as a kid (I didn’t even see Jurassic Park until I was in fourth or fifth grade), and the thundering, threatening music put me off. I found it too long (twenty-two minutes is an eternity in child time), uninteresting, and dour compared to the other sequences, with the exception of one moment. I can appreciate it now that I’m older, though.

A solitary oboe echoes through the vast darkness of space. We soar past comets, galaxies, suns, and down into our lonely little planet still in the early stages of formation. Volcanoes cover the earth. They spew toxic gas, but their magma bubbles burst in precision with the music. Once again this is due to Herman Schultheis. He filmed a mixture of oatmeal, coffee grounds, and mud with air pushed up through a vent, and let the animators go to town on it.

The volcanoes erupt simultaneously. Lava flows and the ensuing millennia of cooling form the continents. But deep in the sea, the first protozoan life wriggles, divides, and evolves into multi-cellular organisms. One of them crawls up on to land, and finally we’re back in the time where dinosaurs weren’t just confined to zoos.

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #4: “Dinosaur inaccuracies…brain melting…”

True, most of the dinosaur and plant species here never shared the same period of existence, but try telling that to the animation studio or John Hammond. They mostly went for whatever looked cool and prehistoric regardless of scientific accuracy. Some of the designs themselves are a bit off, but the animators did their best considering how much we knew about the creatures in the 30’s and 40’s. Heck, we’ve only recently discovered that most dinosaurs were covered with feathers or fur, and I don’t see anyone harping on Jurassic Park for omitting that detail. Thank God Steven Spielberg doesn’t harbor George Lucas’ affinity for reworking his past movies with extra CGI.

Believe it or not, this scene was once considered the height of accurate dinosaur depictions on film, because nobody else had done it before with this level of research and care in animation. Without Rite Of Spring, we wouldn’t have The Land Before Time or Jurassic Park in the first place. Look at Land Before Time’s bleak, orangey atmosphere and the Sharptooth fights and tell me this didn’t influence it in any way.

The dinosaurs themselves have little character and, while fascinating to see how they might have lived, are not particularly engaging. Until…

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Yes, when the king of all dinosaurs makes his entrance, bringing a thunderstorm along with him no less, all the others are wise to run and hide from him. I would hide under a quilt but still peek through the holes in awe. He snaps about throwing his weight around, but when it goes toe to toe with a stegosaurus? That’s when things get real.

This battle, by the way, is animated by Woolie Reitherman, who had a knack for bringing gargantuan characters to life. He was responsible for animating Monstro in Pinocchio, and was behind Maleficent’s dragon form in Sleeping Beauty.

Though what follows is far from triumphant. The earth has become a hot, barren wasteland. The dinosaurs trudge through deserts and tar pits, their fruitless search for water turning into a slow death march. Not even the mighty T-Rex can survive this.

California: present day.

Some time later, the dinosaurs are all gone. Only their bones bleaching in the sun remain. Without warning, a massive earthquake hits and the seas flood through, washing away the remains of the old prehistoric world. The sequence comes full circle as the lonely oboe plays over a solar eclipse, which sets on an earth ready to step into the next stage of life.

If Walt had his way, the segment would have continued with the evolution of man and ended on a triumphant note with the discovery of fire, but he was worried about the possible backlash from zealous creationists. And I don’t blame him for wanting to avoid a confrontation with that crowd.

“It’s bad enough he makes a mouse act like a people with his dadgum pencil sorcery, but propagandizin’ evil-loution in mah Saturday mornin’ toon box? That’s just plum un-okkily-dokkily!”

“…You wouldn’t happen to have a dictionary on hand, would you?”

“DICTIONARIES ARE THE DEVIL’S BOOSTER SEAT!!”

Subsequently, those edits made to Stravinsky’s score pissed off the composer so much that he considered suing Disney for tampering with his work. He opted not to, yet the experience turned him off animation for good. A crying shame; Stravinsky, apart from being the only classical composer alive to see his work made part of a Fantasia feature, was excited to work with Walt. The two deeply respected and recognized each other as artists ahead of their time. Who knows what else could have come from their collaboration if things ended better?

With that knowledge, it makes sense that one of Stravinsky’s most famous pieces, the Firebird Suite, was included in Fantasia 2000: perhaps on some level Disney wanted to apologize for how the finale of Rite of Spring was mishandled by making Firebird the grand finale (though knowing Stravinsky he would have hated the little changes made to his music there as well).

Following the intermission, the orchestra reconvenes and has a fun little jam session. Deems Taylor takes a moment to introduce us to the most important – but rarely seen – figure that makes Fantasia and most music in movies possible, The Soundtrack.

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Once again, Disney does what it does best and anthropomorphizes what no one thought was possible. Think about it: giving personalities to animals is one thing, but they’ve successfully done the same for plants, planes, houses, hats, and here, sound itself. It may seem silly and out of place, but I think it’s brilliant and charming. The visuals it creates to represent different instruments are perfectly matched; some of them harken back to Toccata and Fugue. This, combined with the improv from the orchestra, is a good way to ease us back into comfort after the harshness of Rite of Spring.

Pastoral Symphony – Ludwig Van Beethoven

There’s a famous story about Walt Disney while he was pitching this segment. When met with complaints that it wasn’t working, he cried out This’ll MAKE Beethoven!” In a way, he was right. This was the very first piece of Beethoven I ever heard, even before the famous “da da da DUUUUUN” of Symphony #5. And as far as I know, it was for a good many Disney fans too. We still get a romantic depiction of the countryside as was the composer’s intent, but instead of an rural utopia, we see the Fields of Elysium at the foot of Mount Olympus. It’s home to a variety of mythical creatures from the golden age of Greece: fauns, unicorns, cherubs, centaurs and Pegasi.

If there was ever a Disney world I wanted to spend a day in, this would be it. It’s so innocent, laidback and colorful; it takes me right back to my childhood. A great portion of this sequence was used in my favorite music video in the Simply Mad About the Mouse anthology album, “Zip A Dee Doo Dah” sung by Ric Ocasek from The Cars. Whether that was my favorite because it featured Pastoral Symphony or Pastoral Symphony was my favorite because it was featured in the video I don’t know. There’s nothing that could ever destroy it for –

Oh son of a…

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #5: “RACIST. FUCKING. CENTAUR. EQUALS. RACIST. DISNEY… RACIST!!!”

Yes ladies and gents, that image is real. Meet Sunflower (or Otika, I’m not sure which one she is) one of the the censored centaurettes (for very obvious reasons). I’m of two minds when it comes to their inclusion. First off, yes, they’re crude and demeaning blackface caricatures that have no place in a Disney movie, let alone one of the best ones and in one of my favorite sequences. But my inner art/film historian that despises censorship feels that erasing these depictions is the same as pretending they and other prejudices of the time never existed.

Thank you, Warner Bros.

As time and the civil rights movement marched on, all traces of the Sunflower squad were removed from later releases of Fantasia. The downside to that was editing techniques at the time weren’t as high-tech as they are today; I was lucky to see a film print of Fantasia at the Museum of Modern Art in 2015 that must have dated as far back as the ’60s because she wasn’t there, but the cuts were very noticeable. Sad to say the amazing remastered tracks done by Irwin Kostal in the 80’s used a similar print because the shift in the music is very jarring at points in this segment. It wasn’t until Fantasia’s 50th anniversary that they were able to zoom in and crop the scenes that had Sunflower in them while recycling other pieces of animation over parts where they couldn’t get rid of her, eventually managing to digitally erase her from some of the film entirely (look carefully at the part where the red carpet is being rolled out for Bacchus on the blu-ray. Unless he got it from the Cave of Wonders, carpets normally don’t roll themselves…)

I completely understand the reasoning behind Sunflower’s removal, but can also see why animation aficionados would try to pressure Disney into bringing her back with each new re-release for Fantasia, possibly with one of those great Leonard Maltin intros putting everything into context like in the tragically out-of-print Disney Treasures dvds – though the chances of that happening are as likely as Song of the South being made public again (the Disney+ promo should have made that clearer when they claimed Disney’s entire back catalogue would be available for streaming, but I doubt the tag line “We have everything except Song of the South” would hook people). It’s an issue I’m very torn on. So if there was ever a chance that a version of Fantasia with a restored Sunflower was possible, either through Disney themselves or fan edits, my thoughts on it would be a very resounding…

The first movement of the symphony is “Awakening of Pleasant Feelings upon Arriving in the Country”, and this part does just that. As the sun rises and we get our first glimpse of the technicolor fantasyland. Pan flute-playing fauns and unicorns frolic with each other while a herd of Pegasi take to the sky. Again, going back to other notable movies taking cues from Fantasia, Ray Harryhausen carefully studied the movement of the Pegasi here when creating his stop-motion Pegasus for Clash of the Titans. They canter through the air as they would on land, but in the water they move with the grace of a swan.

And look at the little baby ones, they’re just too cute!

The second movement, “Scene by the Brook”, takes place exactly where you think it does. A group of female centaurs, named “centaurettes” by the animators, doll themselves up with the help of some cupids (and the aforementioned Sunflower) in preparation for mating season.

“”I used to like the centaurettes not just because they were pretty but because each of them having different colors could be interpreted as women of all colors hanging out together and finding love. But no, having Sunflower there confirms that they’re all supposed to be lighter-skinned ladies. Racism given context makes it no less of a pain in the ass.”

The male centaurs arrive and hook up with their conveniently color-matching counterparts. The cherubs help set the mood for their flirting interludes until they discover two shy, lonely centaurs (Brudus and Melinda, because I’m that big of a Disney nerd that I know their actual names) who haven’t found each other yet. They lure them to a grove with some flute music a la The Pied Piper and it’s love at first sight.

One of my favorite details throughout the Pastoral Symphony is that we keep coming back to Brudus and Melinda. They’re a cute couple, one of the closest things we have to main characters in this sequence, and it’s nice to follow them.

Our third movement is “Peasants’ Merrymaking”. The centaur brigade prepare an overflowing vat of wine for Bacchus, god of booze and merrymaking. Bacchus, forever tipsy, arrives backed up by some black zebra centaurettes serving him. Maybe they were considered attractive enough to avoid being censored.

The bacchanalia is in full swing with everyone dancing and getting loaded. But Zeus, who appears more sinister than Laurence Olivier or his future Disney counterpart, crashes the party with a big thunderstorm. I used to think he was a jerk for endangering his subjects just for kicks, but in light of recent revelations maybe he had ulterior motives.

“Feel the wrath of the thunder god, you fucking racists!”

“Come on, dad, you used to be fun! Where’s the Zeus turns into a cow to pick up chicks?!”

“He grew up. Maybe you should too, son. Now EAT LIGHNING!”

“The Storm”, our fourth movement, provides some stunning imagery against the torrential backdrop, from the centaurs being called to shelter to the pegasus mother braving the gale to rescue her baby.

Ultimately Zeus grows tired and turns in for the night, ending the storm. Iris, goddess of the rainbow, emerges and leaves her technicolor trail across the sky. The creatures revel in the effects it has on their surroundings, then gather on a hill to watch the sunset, driven by Apollo and his chariot. Everyone settles in to sleep, and Artemis, hunting goddess of the moon, shoots an comet across the sky like an arrow that fills the sky with twinkling stars.

Pastoral Symphony was the one part of Fantasia that always received the most derision from critics, but racist characters aside I simply don’t get the hate for it. It may be longer than Rite of Spring but feels nowhere near as drawn out. I love the colors, characters, and the calm, bucolic fantasy world it creates. This was my first exposure to Beethoven and the world of Greek mythology and I still hold plenty of nostalgia for it. I admit it’s not perfect, and not just for the reason you think. Out of all the Fantasia pieces, this is the one whose quality is closest to an original Disney short than a theatrical feature. It’s a bit more cartoony and there’s some notable errors, particularly when the baby Pegasi dive into the water and emerge different colors. Also, Deems and the animators flip between using the gods’ Greek and Roman names, and the stickler in me wants them to pick a mythos and stick with it. But for all it’s flaws it’s still among my very favorite Fantasia pieces and nothing can change that.

The Dance of the Hours from the Opera “La Giaconda” – Amilcare Ponichelli

Like I said before, Disney was a master of the art of anthropomorphism. And nowhere is this more true than Dance of the Hours. Animals portray dancers symbolizing morning, noon, dusk and evening – only they’re the most unlikely ones for the job. The characters of our penultimate act are as cartoony as any you’d see in a Disney short from the era, but what puts the animation above it is the right balance of elasticity and realism. The exaggeration is on point, but there’s enough heft and weight to the animals that I can buy them being grounded in (some semblance of) reality. The animators studied professional dancers and incorporated their moves and elegance flawlessly. Half of the comedy derives from this.

The other half comes from how seriously the mock ballet is treated. We’re never informed who the dancers will be, leading anyone who hasn’t seen this before to assume they’re people. The ballet itself is a parody of the traditional pageant, but the performers carry on with the utmost sincerity. It doubles the laughs when it comes to moments such as Ben Ali Gator trying to catch Hyacinth Hippo in a dramatic pas de deux or an elephant getting a foot stuck in one of her own bubbles as she prances around. The familiar lighthearted refrain of the dance provides wonderful contrast to the caricatures on screen, particularly if you recall its other most famous iteration beyond Fantasia.

No one ever told me Camp Grenada was this Arcadian or zoological.

Morning begins with a troupe of uppity ostriches in ballet gear waking up, exercising and helping themselves to a cornucopia of fruit for breakfast. They fight over some grapes only to lose them in a pool. Something bubbles up from beneath and the ostriches run away in terror, but it’s only the prima ballerina of the piece, Hyacinth Hippo. She prepares for the day with help from her handmaidens and dances around a bit. Then she lies down for a nap, but no sooner do her ladies in waiting leave than some playful elephants come out of hiding and dance around Hyacinth unawares.

Elephants blowing bubbles in a Disney feature…nah, it’ll never catch on.

The elephants are blown away by a gust of wind (must be a really strong breeze), and with the coming of night a sinister band of crocodiles sneak up on Hyacinth. They scatter at the sudden arrival of their leader, Prince Ben Ali Gator, who immediately falls in love with Hyacinth. Surprisingly, the feeling is mutual.

I’m calling it – first body positivity romance in a Disney flick.

The climax of the piece has the crocodiles returning to wreak havoc on the palace and pulling the ostriches, elephants, and hippos back into a frenzied dance which brings down the house.

No bones about it, Dance of the Hours is a comic masterpiece and one of Fantasia’s crowning jewels. And the moment it ended was always the signal for younger me to stop the tape and rewind it to the beginning, due to what follows making a complete and terrifying 180…

Night on Bald Mountain – Modest Mussorgsky / Ave Maria – Franz Schubert

At last we come to our final part, two radically different classical works that blend perfectly into each other. And brother, what a note to end on.

Composer Modest Mussorgsky passed away before completing his masterwork “Night on the Bare Mountain”, a tonal poem depicting a witches’ sabbath from Slavic mythology. His friend, the great Rimsky-Korsakov, finished it for him while adding his own personal touch. The result is some of the most iconic and terrifying music ever created, and the accompanying animation, with the exception of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, is the most faithful to its source material.

The scene takes place on Walpurgis Night, which is the closest thing Europe has to a real-life Summerween (those lucky so-and-so’s), on the titular mountain. The mountain’s peak opens up revealing Chernabog, the Slavic deity of darkness.

Chernabog is a masterclass in design and form. It’s easy to mistake him for Satan himself – Walt Disney and Deems Taylor both refer to him as such – though considering he’s technically Slavic Satan, there’s not too big a distinction. Chernabog radiates power, terror and pure darkness from his intro alone. You can imagine him influencing all other Disney villains to do his will, essentially filling in the horned one’s hooves. Chernabog was skillfully handled by Bill Tylta, an early Disney animator with enough talent to create characters as diverse as Stromboli and Dumbo. Bela Lugosi, the original Dracula, posed for reference pictures in the early design stages, though Tylta ultimately discarded them in favor of some different inspiration – sequence director Wilfred Jackson as model, and Tytla’s own Czech heritage. He grew up with folktales of Chernabog, which served him well during the production.

“Soon, master. The one known as Jackson shall take up your mantle and we shall feast upon humanity yet again.”

Chernabog unleashes his might on to the sleeping village below and raises the dead from the cemetery. A cabal of witches, wraiths and demons gallop on the wind and take part in his infernal revelry. Yet they are but playthings to the evil being. He transforms the creatures into alluring sirens and wretched beasts, sics harpies on them, condemns them to the flames, and lustfully embraces the hellish blaze. It’s an in your face pageantry of pure malevolence that you can’t look away from

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #6: “This is too scary for kids!! What the hell were they thinking?!”

I think it’s time we made one thing clear: Fantasia was NOT made for children – or to be more accurate, not EXCLUSIVELY for children. While Disney movies are made to be enjoyed by both kids and adults, Fantasia is the only one who dared to appeal to a more mature audience, and Night on Bald Mountain is proof of that. It had the audacity to explore some of the most darkest, ancient depictions of evil in a way that no Disney feature has before or since. Most importantly, it’s not done for shock value like any random horror movie you could name. It’s meant to show the juxtaposition between the darkest depravity and purest good; combined with Ave Maria it makes for the perfect symbolic climax to Fantasia. Light versus darkness, chaos versus order, life versus death, profane versus sacred, and the quest to master them all are the themes that unify the seemingly disparate sequences, and this finale is the apotheosis of that.

I stated in my Mickey’s Christmas Carol review that Bald Mountain was one of my first introductions to the concept of eternal damnation at the tender age of…I wanna say four, five? It was easily one of the most petrifying things from my childhood, but at least I could avoid some exposure to it thanks to its position at the very end. Though now I adore Night on Bald Mountain for how bold and striking it is. Tytla’s animation, Kay Nielsen’s stunning demon designs, and Schultheis’ effects culminate in harmonious diabolical artwork that’s impossible to extricate from the music. It’s a shame Schultheis left the studio after Fantasia. He met a mysterious, tragic end in Guatemala, right around the time Bill Tytla left too as a matter of fact…

“He knew too much…about the secrets of animation, I mean. Nothing at all about das vampyr walking the earth. No sir.”

Yet at the height of his power, one thing stops Chernabog cold – the sound of church bells. Disney historian John Culhane saw Fantasia during its original theatrical run (lucky so and so…) and he recalled how much having FantaSound affected his screening: when the bells rang, he could hear them coming from the back of the theater and slowly course their way up front as their power grew. It was an awe-inspiring moment that took the Bald Mountain experience one step further into reality.

The bells and the rising sun drive Chernabog and his minions back into the mountain and the restless spirits return to their graves. In the misty morning a procession of pilgrims glides through the woods like a parade of tiny lights, and thus the Ave Maria begins. It’s one of the rare times Disney has gone overtly Christian. Maybe Walt wanted to get back into the God-fearing American public’s good graces after the sorcery, paganism, devil worship and evolution theory we’ve witnessed in the past hour and fifty minutes. It does relieve the tension from the previous turn of events.

The first pitch had the march enter a cathedral, but Walt didn’t believe recreating something people can already see in Europe. So instead they move through a forest with trees and natural rock formations resembling the Gothic architecture of a cathedral. It’s the stronger choice in my opinion. The implication speaks greater volumes than a specific location, subtly connecting nature to the divine. It’s difficult to make out most of the hymn’s words, but regardless it sounds beautiful, especially those final triumphant notes as the sky lights up over a view of the verdant hilltops.

“When the sun hits that ridge just right, these hills sing.”

And with that, Fantasia comes to a close.

Really, what else can I say about it at this point. I keep forgetting this movie came out in 1940. It’s virtually timeless, and a must-see for anyone who loves animation and classic film and wants to jump into either one.

Fantasia was a critical and box office success…sort of. Despite the praise and high box office returns for the time, it sadly wasn’t enough to make up for the cost of putting it all together. Like Pinocchio before it, the war cut off any foreign revenue. And not every theater was willing or able to shell out for that nifty surround sound so the effects were lost on most people. Then there’s the audience response, which is the most depressing of all. The casual moviegoers still viewed Walt as the guy behind those wacky mouse cartoons and called him out for being a pretentious snob, while the highbrow intellectuals accused Walt of debasing classical music by shackling it to animation. The poor guy just couldn’t win.

Fantasia marked the end of an era. Never again would Walt attempt a feature so ambitious. His plans of making Fantasia a recurring series, with old segments regularly swapped out for new ones, would not be seen in his lifetime. There’s been the occasional copycat (Allegra non troppo), a handful of spiritual successors (Make Mine Music, Yellow Submarine), and of course the sequel which I’m sure I’ll get to eventually, but through it all, there is only one Fantasia. And no amount of my ramblings can hope to measure up to it. Fantasia is one of those movies you simply have to experience for yourself, preferably on the biggest screen available with a top of the line sound system. I know it’s a cliche for Internet critics to name this as their favorite animated Disney movie, but…yes, it’s mine too. It opened a door to a world of culture and art at a young age. The power of animation is on full display, and it’s affected the way I look at the medium forever. Fantasia was, and still is, a film ahead of its time.

Thank you for reading. I hope you can understand why this review took me nearly three months! If you enjoyed this, please consider supporting me on Patreon. Patreon supporters get perks such as extra votes and adding movies of their choice to the Shelf. If I can get to $100, I can go back to making weekly tv show reviews. Right now I’m halfway there! Special thanks to Amelia Jones and Gordhan Ranaj for their contributions.

You can vote for whatever movie you want me to look at next by leaving it in the comments or emailing me at [email protected]. Remember, unless you’re a Patreon supporter, you can only vote once a month. The list of movies available to vote for are under “What’s On the Shelf”.

Artwork by Charles Moss. Certain screencaps courtesy of animationscreencaps.com.

To learn more about Fantasia, I highly recommend both John Culhane’s perennial book on the film and The Lost Notebook by John Canemaker, which reveals the long-lost special effects secrets which made Fantasia look so magical.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to be spending the rest of the month with my handy dandy garlic, stake and crucifix and pray Bill Tytla doesn’t visit me this Walpurgis Night. I suggest you do the same.

March Review: Fantasia (1940) And now we come to the final piece of Walt Disney's original animation trifecta, Fantasia, and it's one I'm both anticipating and dreading.

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