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brooklynmuseum · 4 years ago

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Closing out National Poetry Month, our Spring Interns paired some of their favorite poems with works from our collection. We hope you enjoy!

— Jeffrey Alexander Lopez, Curatorial Intern, American Art & Arts of the Americas

Image: Suzuki Harunobu (Japanese, 1724-1770). Page From Haru no Nishiki, 1771. Color woodblock print on paper. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Peter P. Pessutti, 83.190.1

from Citizen: “Some years there exists a wanting to escape...” [Excerpt] By Claudia Rankine

I they he she we you turn only to discover the encounter

to be alien to this place.

Wait.

The patience is in the living. Time opens out to you.

The opening, between you and you, occupied, zoned for an encounter,

given the histories of you and you—

And always, who is this you?

The start of you, each day, a presence already—

Hey you—

— Halle Smith, Digital Collections Intern Catherine Green (American, born 1952). [Untitled] (West Indian Day Parade), 1991. Chromogenic photograph, sheet. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist, 1991.58.2. © artist or artist's estate

Ode to Enchanted Light by Pablo Neruda

Under the trees light has dropped from the top of the sky, light like a green latticework of branches, shining on every leaf, drifting down like clean white sand.

A cicada sends its sawing song high into the empty air.

The world is a glass overflowing with water.

Consuelo Kanaga’s black and white photograph captures a dazzling, yet fleeting moment from everyday life. Three textured glasses cast shadows whose patterns are almost kaleidoscopic in effect. We can imagine Kanaga passing by her kitchen table, as she is brought to a halt to take a closer look at, and ultimately to photograph, the simple beauty generated by the play of light and everyday objects. The close-up scale of this image emulates the singularizing framing techniques deployed by Surrealist photographers, who also took parts of everyday life and blew them up in the photographic frame, thereby encouraging their viewers to look at life around us from a different angle. It is a way of saying: Here, take a closer look. Viewing the world with wonder, along with the joy that this act brings, are encapsulated in Pablo Neruda’s poem Ode to Enchanted Light. The speaker observes the way light passes through trees and creates enchanting patterns. He not only observes, but feels the beauty in the simple details of life, from the way light falls from the sky, to the sheen of leaves, to the buzzing of cicadas. Approaching life through such a hopeful lens evokes a glass-half-full perspective. In fact, the speaker is so hopeful that he believes “The world is/a glass overflowing/with water.” I think Kanaga would have felt the same way.

— Kirk Testa, Curatorial Intern, Photography Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978). [Untitled] (Glasses and Reflections). Gelatin silver photograph. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga, 82.65.25

Easter Wings By George Herbert

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,

Though foolishly he lost the same,

Decaying more and more,

Till he became

Most poore:

With thee

O let me rise

As larks, harmoniously,

And sing this day thy victories:

Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

My tender age in sorrow did beginne

And still with sicknesses and shame.

Thou didst so punish sinne,

That I became

Most thinne.

With thee

Let me combine,

And feel thy victorie:

For, if I imp my wing on thine,

Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

Easter Wings by George Herbet and Martin Bach’s flower vase from the Brooklyn Museum’s Decorative Arts collection reveal the interrelationship between form and function. In Easter Wings, Herbert strategically varies the line length to create an image that enhances the meaning of the poem; when you turn the poem on its side, it resembles the wings of a bird, of which are symbolic of the atonement of Jesus Christ. In doing so, the author is not only telling us his message, but he is showing it visually as well. Similarly, the vase takes the visual form of its function. Its floral design amplifies the meaning of the object, as the vase is meant to hold flowers. In both instances, we see how aesthetic properties of a work echo the meaning and function of the work itself.

— Amy Zavecz Martin Bach (American, 1862-1921). Vase, ca. 1905. Opalescent glass. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mrs. Alfred Zoebisch, 59.143.16. Creative Commons-BY

I am the Earth (Watashi wa chikyu) [Excerpt] by Kiyoko Nagase, Translated by Takako Lento

I am warm, moist soil I am a single supple stalk I draw my life all the way up into corollas of wild berries on the roadside

I am amazed at a breast of water welling to flow into the inlet of a muddy rice paddy I am amazed at myself being hot steam blowing fire and sulfur up from the bottom of the great ocean, deep indigo. I am amazed at the crimson blood flow covering the earth’s surface in human shape; I am amazed that it swells as the tides ebb and flow, and gushes out monthly under distant invisible gravity … I am the earth. I live there, and I am the very same earth.

In the four billionth year I have come to know the eternal cold moon, my other self, my hetero being, then, for the first time, I am amazed that I am warm mud.

The vivid imagery conjured up by Kiyoko Nagase’s poem is beautifully visualized by Emmi Whitehorse’s painting. The emphasis on deep Earth tones and abstract corporeality in both the poem and the painting really creates an intense metaphysical link between the environment and the self.

— Amanda Raquel Dorval, Archives Intern Emmi Whitehorse (Navajo, born 1957). Fire Weed, 1998. Chalk, graphite, pastel and oil on paper mounted on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Hinrich Peiper and Dorothee Peiper-Riegraf in honor of Emmi Whitehorse, 2006.49. © artist or artist's estate

Seventh Circle of Earth by Ocean Vuong

On April 27, 2011, a gay couple, Michael Humphrey and Clayton Capshaw, was murdered by immolation in their home in Dallas, Texas.

Dallas Voice

________________________________________________________

As if my finger, / tracing your collarbone / behind closed doors, / was enough / to erase myself. To forget / we built this house knowing / it won’t last. How / does anyone stop / regret / without cutting / off his hands? / Another torch

streams through / the kitchen window, / another errant dove. / It’s funny. I always knew / I’d be warmest beside / my man. / But don’t laugh. Understand me / when I say I burn best / when crowned / with your scent: that earth-sweat / & Old Spice I seek out each night / the days

refuse me. / Our faces blackening / in the photographs along the wall. / Don’t laugh. Just tell me the story / again, / of the sparrows who flew from falling Rome, / their blazed wings. / How ruin nested inside each thimbled throat / & made it sing

until the notes threaded to this / smoke rising / from your nostrils. Speak— / until your voice is nothing / but the crackle / of charred

bones. But don’t laugh / when these walls collapse / & only sparks / not sparrows / fly out. / When they come / to sift through these cinders—& pluck my tongue, / this fisted rose, / charcoaled & choked / from your gone

mouth. / Each black petal / blasted / with what’s left / of our laughter. / Laughter ashed / to air / to honey to baby / darling, / look. Look how happy we are / to be no one / & still

American.

Ocean Vuong’s “Seventh Circle of Earth” has persisted as one of the great, affective moments of poetry in my life since I first heard Pádraig Ó Toama’s gorgeous reading and discussion of it on his podcast, Poetry Unbound. I decided to pair Vuong’s poem with Mary Coble’s Untitled 2 (from Note To Self) because both works are urgently immersive into the violence and experience of LGBTQ people in the U.S., and for how each work uses text and physicality to address presence, pain, and erasure. Vuong’s poem is actually footnoted to a quote from a news article about a gay couple murdered in Texas. The page is thus blank, absent of text. The reader has to sink below the main stage, the accepted space of word and story, to find the voices of this couple and the depth of their story’s tenderness, eroticism, and utter devastation. Coble’s piece foils the structure and effect of Seventh Circle of Earth by taking what was subverted by Vuong—text and the narrative of violence—wholly to the surface. Her photograph captures her own legs tattooed without ink with the names of LGBTQ individuals victimized by hate crimes. I cannot help but think of Franz Kafka’s short story “In the Penal Colony,” in which prisoners’ “sentences'' are inscribed by the needle of a “punishment apparatus” directly onto their bodies. I was struck by how the curator’s note for this photograph describes Coble’s artistic endeavor here as “harrowing.” The needle in Kafka’s short story is indeed called “The Harrow”. The noun harrow is an agricultural tool that combs plowed soil to break up clumps of earth and uproot weeds and clear imperfections. The verb to harrow means to plague, and in the story’s original German the verb for “harrow”, eggen, is also translated as “to torment”. Kafka and Coble conflate these definitions of “the harrow” in their respective works: they use a needled device, like the true noun definition, as an instrument of torment because of someone else’s idea of punishment and justice. Here, violence is brought to the surface, intimate in as much as we are brought right up to the artist’s skin and into the presence of her and her community’s pain. Together, one can see how each creator physicalizes their respective artistic space to tell the stories of LGBTQ people, of what is tender and harrowing, below the surface and written into the skin.

— Talia Abrahams, Provenance Intern, IHCPP Mary Coble (American, born 1978). Untitled 2 (from Note to Self), 2005. Inkjet print. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist, 2008.10. © artist or artist's estate

To my daughter Kakuya by Assata Shakur

I have shabby dreams for you of some vague freedom I have never known. Baby I don't want you hungry or thirsty or out in the cold. and I don't want the frost to kill your fruit before it ripens. I can see a sunny place Life exploding green. I can see your bright, bronze skin at ease with all the flowers and the centipedes. I can hear laughter, not grown from ridicule And words not prompted by ego or greed or jealousy. I see a world where hatred has been replaced by love. and ME replaced by WE And I can see a world replaced where you, building and exploring, strong and fulfilled, will understand. And go beyond my little shabby dreams.

This poem is featured in Assata Shakur’s memoir, Assata: An Autobiography. It details her hope for a better world that her daughter can grow up in. This poem is positioned in the book when Shakur is facing increasing prosecution as a result of her activism and affiliations with the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation army. Being written more than 30 years after this picture was taken, the poem summons me to think about the trauma that many Black women face and how much of that trauma gets passed down to their children. The black and white photo of a mother and daughter provides a nice visual to the poem. “The image of a Black mother and child sitting on their luggage reflects the little-discussed history of segregated transportation in the northern United States. Through the 1940s, Penn Station officials assigned Black travelers seats in Jim Crow cars on southbound trains” (Brooklyn Museum). The photograph of train passengers waiting outside of Manhattan’s Pennsylvania Station especially echoes the verse “I don’t want you hungry or thirsty or out in the cold.” The overall optimistic tone of Shakur’s poem alters our relationship to the image as we imagine the mother pictured above hoping for the exact same things

— Zaria W, Teen Programs intern Ruth Orkin (American, 1921-1985). Mother and Daughter at Penn Station, NYC, 1948. Gelatin silver photograph, sheet: 13 15/16 × 11 in. (35.4 × 27.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mary Engel, 2011.22.3. © artist or artist's estate

Crunch. By Kailyn Gibson

I retch as a mass of sinew lies between my lips. The sensation is unbearable. Fortunately, the jar of flies has gone missing again.

Slowly, surely, and yet never sure at all, the quiet of buzzing rings through the in-between.

It is a symphony wrought from blood and bone.

Saliva drips from bleeding, hungry gums, And the crunch of glass echoes the grinding of molars.

If I proffered a sanguine smile, would masticated shards look like teeth? Would they gleam just as prettily?

The flies ring, and the rot calls.

— Kailyn Gibson Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917). Portrait of a Man (Portrait d'homme), ca. 1866. Oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Museum Collection Fund, 21.112

Excerpt from Autobiography of Red A novel in verse by Anne Carson

7. If Helen’s reasons arose out of some remark Stesichoros made either it was a strong remark about Helen’s sexual misconduct (not to say its unsavory aftermath the Fall of Troy) or it was not.

8. If it was a strong remark about Helen’s sexual misconduct (not to say its unsavory aftermath the Fall of Troy) either this remark was a lie or it was not.

9. If it was not a lie either we are now in reverse and by continuing to reason in this way we are likely to arrive back at the beginning of the question of the blinding of Stesichoros or we are not.

10. If we are now in reverse and by continuing to reason in this way are likely to arrive back at the beginning of the question of the blinding of Stesichoros either we will go along without incident or we will meet Stesichoros on our way back.

11. If we meet Stesichoros on our way back either we will keep quiet or we will look him in the eye and ask him what he thinks of Helen.

12. If we look Stesichoros in the eye and ask him what he thinks of Helen either he will tell the truth or he will lie.

13. If Stesichoros lies either we will know at once that he is lying or we will be fooled because now that we are in reverse the whole landscape looks inside out.

This excerpt comes from Appendix C of Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, a novel in verse. A translator and classicist herself, Carson mixes fact with fiction in her unconventional retelling of the myth of Geryon and Hercules, beginning with a roundabout introduction to the poet Stesichoros. Autobiography presents a captivating example of recent Queer projects that take up Classical material as their basis. A fascination with the Classical past has pervaded our modern conception of sexual identity politics, down to the very etymology of the word “lesbian.” In this fascination, I see the same desire to capture Classical imagery as cultural heritage which has also pervaded American museums, albeit with significantly different aims. The fresco pictured above comes to mind, which passed through many collectors and was even purchased by the museum before anyone pegged it as a modern piece—not an original Roman fresco. John D. Cooney, a 20th century curator of our Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Near Eastern Art collection, wrote that “the unclad and somewhat winsome charms of the lady [probably] diverted objective glances.” Both in the case of the fresco and Carson’s novel, the “unclad and somewhat winsome charms” of the Classical past shape and reshape our understanding of history.

— Kira Houston, Curatorial Intern, Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Near Eastern Art Modern, in the style of the Roman Period. Part of a Fresco, early 19th century C.E. Clay, paint. Brooklyn Museum, Ella C. Woodward Memorial Fund, 11.30.

Late Fragment by Raymond Carver From A New Path to the Waterfall, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989.

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

— Shori Diedrick Brackens (American, born 1989). when no softness came, 2019. Cotton and acrylic yarn. Brooklyn Museum, Purchased with funds given by The LIFEWTR Fund at Frieze New York 2019, 2019.12. © artist or artist's estate

Jaguar By Francisco X. Alarcón

some say dicen que ahora I'm now almost estoy casi extinto extinct in this park por este parque but the people pero la gente who say this que dice esto don't know no sabe that by smelling que al oler the orchids las orquídeas in the trees en los árboles they're sensing están percibiendo the fragrance la fragancia of my chops de mis fauces that by hearing que al oír the rumblingc el retumbo of the waterfalls de los saltos

they're listening están escuchando to my ancestors' el gran rugido great roar de mis ancestros

that by observing que al observar the constellations las constelanciones of the night sky del firmamento

they're gazing están mirando at the star spots las motas de estrellas on my fur marcadas en mi piel that I am and que yo soy always will be y siempre seré the wild el indomable

untamed espíritu silvestre living spirit vivo de esta of this jungle jungla

While the author of the poem speaks about animals, their words can also speak on behalf of the erasure of indigenous peoples in South America. Much like the jaguar, indigenous traditions and culture are very important to life in South America. Despite their marginalization, Indigenous peoples throughout the Andes used coca leaves to help with the altitude. The use and cultivation of coca are criminalized throughout most of South America despite it being essential to indigenous cultures. This vessel was used to contain lime which would activate the coca leaves. Much like the jaguar, indigenous traditions are also faced with endangerment despite being woven into the fabric that is Latin America. Through the opposite man and woman figures, the vessel shows the duality that is important to the Quimbaya people which is still relevant to Colombians today.

Aunque el autor del poema habla sobre los animales, sus palabras también comunican el sentimiento común de la supresión de los indígenas en Suramérica. Con la mención del jaguar, se puede entender en el poema que la cultura y las tradiciones de las personas que son indígenas son sumamente importantes para la vida en Sudamérica. A pesar de su marginación, los indígenas en Los Andes utilizan la hoja de coca para ayudar en la altura de las montañas. El uso y el cultivo de la hoja de coca fue criminalizado (penalizado) a través de Sudamérica, aunque su uso para los indígenas era vital y esencial para su cultura. Este recipiente que se utiliza contiene limón lo que activa la hoja de la coca. Similarmente al jaguar, las tradiciones de los indígenas siempre estaban en peligro aunque estuvieran entrelazadas en las telas de lo que sería Latinoamérica. A través del hombre opuesto y las figuras de mujeres, el recipiente muestra la dualidad de lo que es importante para las personas que son Quimbaya, algo que todavía hoy es relevante para los Colombianos.

— Jeffrey Alexander Lopez, Curatorial Intern, American Art & Arts of the Americas Quimbaya. Poporo (Lime Container), 1-600 C.E. Tumbaga. Brooklyn Museum, Alfred W. Jenkins Fund, 35.507. Creative Commons-BY

#national poetry month #poetry #art #poems #art history #brooklyn museum #bkminterns

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gayasinstupidpodcast · 6 years ago

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What’s up gamers!!! Our fourth episode plowed through the chaos of thanksgiving holidays and is Here w/ some Facts and Opinions about creating shit and being LGBT and how being LGBT influences creating shit. HEADS UP we recorded this while I had a cold so my voice is probably a little off, but ik Isaac put SO much work into the editing so it would be ready on time and we have recorded statements from some amazing artists (transcriptions under the cut below!) & this is honestly one of my favorite episodes we’ve done so far, so give her a listen if you’re gay or enjoy fun things!

BIG thank you once again to everyone who participated in this month’s episode!! Your contributions are so valued and so beautiful!!

You can find us on the Itunes Podcast App/Webpage at Gay As In Stupid Podcast! You can also find our episodes uploaded to Youtube and Soundcloud!

You can also follow us on twitter at gayasinstupid!

Further Reading on LGBT Artists

Montage of a Queering Deferred: Memory, Ownership, and Archival Silencing in the Rhetorical Biography of Langston Hughes

The Political Provocations of Keith Haring

Pop art politics: Activism of Keith Haring

E M Forster’s Gay Fiction

Alok Vaid-Menon Tells Us What It’s Like To Be Femme In Public

Shea Diamond Speaks Her Truth

Aaron’s 2018 November Recs!

Alok Alok Vaid-Menon is one of my favorite poet/activist/performance artists out there! Their writing and stage presence is gorgeous and witty in a way that’s SO clever and still feels like you’re in a room trading jokes you don’t need to explain with your closest trans friends. The way they balance their art creates a real, deeply touching experience that feels very essential to our world.

Miles (2016) Miles is set in 1999 and is a coming of age story about a gay teenager trying to get a volleyball scholarship for college in Chicago. It’s not revolutionary and it’s not over the top dramatic, but it’s funny and honest and it makes me feel nice. Definitely the movie to watch when you’ve just been through something emotionally taxing and need a light crying session and some mediocre pastries.

Isaac’s 2018 November Recs!

The Adventure Zone I know half of you already kin the Mcelroys while the other half either don’t know or don’t care, but the Adventure Zone is one of my most favorite things in the world. It’s a DND podcast (yes, all episodes are transcribed, and they have a graphic novel for the first arc of Balance with a second one on the way!) by three brothers plus their dad, and not only does it have the most amazing story and is ungodly funny, but TONS of gays (Griffin went ape with those Lesbian NPCS)! And just because they can! Same with trans characters. It’s a story where they just exist, and that’s really important to me because in a lot of media LGBT have to almost prove why they deserve to take up space. And it’s not just something that goes on in their first campaign, Amnesty also has those sweet sweet gay! I could talk about this podcast for hours, so if you needed that final push to give it a listen, THIS IS IT!

Stardew Valley You get to farm and be gay. And if THAT hasn’t sold you on this charming video game, then maybe the super cute graphics, beautiful soundtrack and a handful of interesting characters will! TBH I spend so much time playing this game it’s concerning. It’s just such a fun way to relax, and I just really REALLY like video games were I can chose to be gay. Like. God Tier. YOU CAN HAVE CROPS AND CHICKENS AND BE GAY C’MON YALL!!

The Amazing Quotes And Artists Featured!

Meg | instagram | esty

“My identity as a bisexual woman influences my art in many ways. As a woman, i create art about the issues that effect me, such as abortion and gender equality, in order to resonate with the people that matter most to me. As a bisexual individual, my subjects often appear from a gaze that falls outside of the stereotypical eye. My figure drawings and portraits all come from a place of admiration, and don’t fall into the stereotype of the male gaze or womanly care- they are the space inbetween, equally sexualized and normalized. I feel lucky to be a bi gal in the art world because it is a place that is my own to create in. There are so many queer artists that i look up to such as Mapplethorpe and Warhol, and many female artists i can cite as influence (Jenny Holzer, Kiki Smith, and Louise Bourgeois to name a few). My identity gives me a whole new world of content to draw from and allows my work to resonate with a wider audience, and I really think that any artists goal is to reach and touch as many people as possible.“

Cameron | twitter | instagram

“I don’t think that it influences the form really, but it definitely influences the subject matter! (Much as I hate to admit it, my identity influences the majority of choices I make in life.) I write a lot of poems about lgbtq related things and religion, as well as other stuff too. I was raised catholic, so realizing that I was “different” at more than one point in my teen years was scary AF. Being a member of the lgbtq+ community and also trying to still feel like I belong, or wanting to, in a religious community is hard, the two things are usually at a crossroads in my life so writing about them makes it easier for me to get through. My hope is that someday someone reads what I wrote and finds some peace in their own life/experience.”

Vince | art instagram

“Well, being transgender I feel like I’m constantly aware of the lack of representation of my community, and I feel like it might be because of that I tend to experiment with showing all sorts of different type of people in my work. Because there’s so much diversity in the world, why not showcase that?”

Fox | art instagram

“Oof…I’m gay so my characters always be gay. Gotta Fill the void in media w my own bullshit so I don’t have to rely on straight showrunners who will inevitably discard the character since they themselves seem to have no personal attachment and treat lgbt characters as disposable extras. Bc if I don’t at least attempt to create representation in the field I’m going into then I can’t rlly complain about the lack of it right? If I don’t try and change it I can’t complain about the lack of change so being an lgbt artist is lowkey Big Pressure to be revolutionary in your work but sometime…..I just wanna draw funkey animeal and that’s aight too”

Jen | twitter | instagram

“As a female bisexual poet, I worry often that my poetry and art will be too niche to be appreciated. I’ve spent years editing my poetry down to its barest bones in hopes that someone will relate to it. Changing pronouns back and forth because I worry that if I do talk about a woman, the poem will be stripped of its context and suddenly be about my queerness when in reality it never was. When I write about love and people I have dated and have crushed on, I want the poem to exist outside of the gender of who I love. I fear my authorial death will result in a complete misinterpretation of what I mean. When I write, it truly does not matter to me if I am writing about a woman or a man. If I feel what I write and I can make someone else feel it too does it matter that I also love women? I write what matters to me overall, regardless of gender, I try to make my poetry as true as possible. Sometimes, when I catch myself over editing I try to take myself back to the moment, to the person, what I loved about him or her. “

Lain | art instagram

“My LGBT Identity has significantly impacted almost all of my art, especially my work over the last two years. Ever since I have allowed myself to accept that I am trans and began my transition (6 months on T!), the impact that my Roman Catholic upbringing has had on my bisexual trans identity has bled into my artwork. Because of the way I was raised, accepting and allowing myself to be authentic has been an upward struggle. And what better way to process and document struggle than art?

Much of my recent work has had a focus on the trans body, particularly the “sanctity” of self-actualization and the god-like power that comes with accepting and creating yourself in the unique and exceptional way that LGBT people must in order to live authentically. Two of my pieces on this topic were actually recently exhibited at UWM in the Trans-lucent exhibition, and will remain there until December 15th (I think). I got sick and tired of never seeing trans representation, so now I am creating that space that I crave in my own work.”

Kobe | instagram | soundcloud

“My art from is very influenced by my LGBT identity. It is very influenced by my LGBT black Identity. I think that whenever an artist makes their art (in my case writing music, singing, dancing) they should incorporate as much of themselves as possible. I think my LGBT identity definitely adds a sense of representation as well. I want people like me to listen to my music to know they aren’t alone. So it influences my work a lot. “

Nat | art instagram

“I think the fact that I am part of the LGBT+ community influences my art directly. Even though I don’t draw as often as I wish, I believe both my drawings and college projects (I am a 3d art/animation student), and my creativity in general is inspired by my personal experiences as a gay woman and common things experienced by the community. I try as often as I can to bring representation of some kind in the things I do, mainly personal projects. I also feel that it influences me on my motivation to keep creating; whenever I listen to, see drawings, watch movies or see whatever form of artistic expression from LGBT+ artists it gives me the energy to keep going, to keep creating.”

#gay as in stupid podcast #lgbt podcast #lgbt artists #gay art #trans art

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wtnv-panels · 6 years ago

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Good Morning Night Vale, episode 5: “Good Morning the Shape in Grove Park”

Symphony: Close your eyes. Let my words wash over you.

Meg: You are safe now.

Hal: Good morning, Night Vale.

Meg: Hello and welcome to Good Morning Night Vale, episode 5, “The Shape in Grove Park”. So my name is Meg Bashwiner, I am your tri-host, co-host, what do you call it when there’s three of us?

Hal: Throst?

Symphony: Three…

Meg: Throst?

Symphony: Aa-aa, I was thinking that too.

Meg: And I am joined today by the beautiful Symphony Sanders…

Symphony: It’s me!

Meg: And the beautiful Hal Lublin.

Hal: That’s me.

Meg: And we’re here to talk to you. We’re here to talk to you.

Hal: We’re just here to talk, but you know what? We also wanna listen.

Symphony: [chuckles]

Hal: That’s not gonna work for this show.

Meg: Let’s all listen right now.

Hal: Alright, let’s just listen for half an hour. [long beat] Has it been 30 minutes?

Symphony: That would be terrible.

Meg: Yeah, felt like it.

Hal: Yeah, that felt like 30 minutes of listening.

Symphony: So hey guys! What are we, what do we do in this show, huh?

Meg: We recap and chat about episodes of the hit popular podcast, This American Life, no.

Symphony: Is that popular?

Meg: It was, it was like one of the first podcasts, but I don’t think anyone listens, I don’t think they make that anymore.

Hal: I’m just glad a show exists where somebody recaps and analyzes Joe Rogan’s podcast, and we are those three people!

Meg: No we’re here to analyze and recap the hit popular podcast Welcome to Night Vale.

Hal: That too.

Meg: And this week we’re talking about “The Shape in Grove Park”, which is described as “A protest against the removal of the shape in Grove Park that no one acknowledges or speaks about, plus changes to the school curriculum, a growing tarantula problem in town, and musical auditions”. So that’s a pretty hefty description for lots of things that happen this episode.

Symphony: There are lots of things that happen in this one. Well, first of all, the fact that it’s called the shape and is a shape in, that Cecil repeatedly asked to get a statement from it, and sometimes it quivers or something, but that freaks me out a little. I don’t know about you guys.

Hal: That scared you? Did you get a little scared listening to it? It’s creepy.

Symphony: Well-

Hal: There is a creepy experience to like when you listen to it, especially with headphones, because like the sound picture being painted is so specific that it can, it can creep you out.

Meg: Yeah absolutely. So we’re talking about “The Shape in Grove Park”, so there’s this monument, this landmark, which reminded right away of the removal of confederate statues.

Symphony: [chuckles] Right!

Meg: I was like, this is another one of those like creepy foreshadowing to the public removal of statues where in this case it’s like, no one talks about it or acknowledges it but it’s still really important. That’s kind of the vibe there whereas with confederate statues, we all talk about it and it’s important and we should tear them down, but… [laughter] It’s this kind of similar discussion about public space and monuments and interacting with them.

Symphony: Yes and the City Council isn’t very helpful with all of that at all. Aren’t they trying to make sure, they’re trying to save it right, so they end up putting it in front of the studio in and trouble ensues, obviously.

Meg: Yes. So this is kind of a monumental, monument, monumental episode in the sense that this is where Cecil gets a name.

Symphony: Oh right!

Meg: This is where Cecil gets the name Cecil.

Symphony: I always forget about that, that he’s just like nameless narrator until a certain point. But he still doesn’t have a last name.

Meg: No. And he doesn’t get a last name for a bit. And then he gets a middle name.

Symphony: Yes.

Hal: There is something interesting to this that this is the first time he really gets an identity for the listener in terms of a first name, but the thing that struck me about that it even though there are a lot of things that happen is that it’s just his existential struggle. Like that’s the thing, that was my biggest takeaway from it and the thing that struck me is how well constructed that was, and then it didn’t need to, I mean it has a place in the larger continuum, but it also can exist on its own, just that particular plot line of him struggling like, am I the only one here, for all I know nobody’s listening or. I just, that was something that I was really drawn to and and, just very well written and well executed.

Symphony: Yeah I loved that idea of him possibly being alone in this universe, to something that’s not even connected to anything or anyone else. I mean, haven’t we all felt like that at one moment or another?

Meg: Yes.

Hal: Oh sure.

Meg: (God).

Symphony: [chuckles] Just…

Meg: So yeah, that’s the plot point that launched a thousand theories, conspiracy theories about this show.

Symphony: Yes. [laughter]

Meg: Cecil is alone. There’s been heat death of the world and Cecil is all that is left, alone in his empty universe.

Symphony: Yeah or it’s just, even that he’s like in this all by himself or it’s in his head kind of thing, I’ve seen a lot of those theories on Tumblr and whatnot over the years, so that’s always been really fun.

Meg: I thought this was one of the funnier episodes, I think this is they’re really starting to find their rhythm with their writing structure, their joke structure for how this show works, and this episode is very funny. There’s lots of really interesting things that are done with writing, like when they talk about the tarantula problem. Which is, [chuckling] there’s just so many different things that happen in that paragraph…

Symphony: Teen pregnancy.

Meg: ..teach a spider to read, teen pregnancy teach a spider to read, stop the madness.

Symphony: [chuckles] Yeah.

Meg: It’s just like it just keeps, things just keep happening in that paragraph that keep turning it on its head.

Symphony: Yeah and I love that they are, yes they do find their humor in this, and Cecil starts becoming more of a fleshed out character, you can hear in Cecil’s voice acting even. Like, he starts getting a little bit more into his higher ranges, which is always very fun for me to hear, ‘cause it just is more light-hearted than just like..

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: ..the announcer, I mean Cecil has a gorgeous timbre to his voice already. But when, you know you’re adding these other levels to this person, you are really fleshing out a character.

Meg: Absolutely, we are starting to kind of land in Cecil now that are, this is yeah we’re at this point we’re five episodes in, and so we’ve learned a lot about the world of Night Vale, we’re learning a little bit about the character of Cecil, and then just the continual world building that we’re getting. Michael Sandero gets his second head.

Symphony: That’s more attractive.

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: That his mother prefers, so.

Hal: And puts, I love that she has a list out on, a public list, ranking of her children that goes out in front of her house for everybody to see.

Symphony: In the front yard! [laughs] If only, I mean Hal, you’re an only child, right?

Hal: True.

Symphony: So you’ve never really had to deal with this, but Meg you have a sister as I have a brother. And there is always that sneaking suspicion of who’s like, the more beloved. [laughs]

Hal: Do you think it’s you?

Symphony: No, I think my brother is the more beloved, in a different way.

Meg: Yeah. I think my sister and I kind of trade that position, like over the years in our life we’ve kind of traded that role several times back and forth about who’s the favorite. So we’re just hoping for many more years of trading off who’s the good one, so… [laughs]

Symphony: Can you imagine tho if your parents put that in the front yard for everybody to see it’s like, this is my favorite kid and this is my least favorite kid?

Meg: At least you’d know where you stand, you know.

Symphony: I guess so. It’s all (that truthfulness).

Meg: Which is kind of interesting, ‘cause in my family you know where you stand. There’s like…

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: We’re not really a passive aggressive bunch, we're pretty much an aggressive aggressive bunch [laughter]. So you know when you’re on top and you know when you’re not.

Symphony: [laughs] Oh. Well, what if you grew another head and it was more attractive or people liked that head better, how would you feel about that? It’s not even just like your sibling, it’s like on your own body, like that’s adding insult to injury, now?

Meg: Do you have to do its makeup or does it do it on its own?

Symphony: Well I guess if you share a body, the body has to do all the work. Like the, right? Like maybe you only get one arm like, the left head gets the left arm and the right head, that would be really tough for your eyeliner, I can’t wing with the same hand.

Meg: Yeah. I do most of the stuff with my right hand. The thing that would probably bother me the most is that I would have to share the, the real estate of my body with someone else, like I feel like I’m barely getting by being a clumsy person with the stuff that I’m working with and to have to share that with another entity that would just be, I’d fall down every flight of stairs, I would not be able to chop an onion. [laughter] Symphony: Well and this gets into the territory of Siamese twins, guys.

Meg: Here we are. Episode 5, we finally got there.

Hal: Finally. I can’t wait, this is welcome to the finale of Good Morning, we got there in five episodes, we did it, that’s the record for getting to Siamese twins. I feel like I’m so insecure, the idea of a better looking smarter head on my body is like…

Symphony: Right.

Hal: That is my worst nightmare that I didn’t know I had until you asked that question like two minutes ago.

Symphony: Also is it now incorrect to say Siamese twins? [laughs]

Meg: I think we say “conjoined twins” now.

Hal: We say “conjoined twins”.

Symphony: We say “conjoined twins”. (Grant, cut it!) [laughs] OK. So “conjoined twins”. Yeah after I heard it I was like, that probably sounds a liiittle racist, (--).

Hal: I know that people can’t see what we’re doing right now, but Symphony has a clipboard in her left hand, and when you ask questions like that, you look like a camp counselor who’s going through the sensitivity training like, [laughter] can we say “Siamese twins”? Is that OK, let me mark it down ‘cause I had a note about that, I have finally the answer. Free swim at 9 AM, that’s gonna be fun.

Symphony: And crafts are in the barn.

Hal: Even for you “conjoined twins”, see I do learn. [laughter]

Symphony: After last summer’s debacle, (I mean it is)…

Hal: Surprised you came back, but I’m glad you’re here. [laughter]

Symphony: It’s how we learn, it’s how we learn.

Meg: Right, we just gotta keep the conversation, keep the conversation (going).

Symphony: We’re gonna move forward.

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: So OK, I feel like this is the first time that the people huddle outside the back of the Ralphs. I’ve always loved that imagery, like in the hole of the parking lot.

Hal: Yes.

Symphony: It’s like, what are these people just like hanging out in a hole? Ralphs is a grocery store.

Meg: Yeah, Ralphs is a grocery chain.

Hal: Yes.

Symphony: Right. It’s like real tho?

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Yes.

Symphony: Right, I’m like I feel like I’ve heard of the Ralphs before.

Meg: They’re just in California and maybe there’s one in Arizona.

Symphony: OK, well…

Hal: You know them as Kroger, same company.

Symphony: Ah, I do know a Kroger, seen a Kroger before. But I always think, I saw that recently about like chain grocery stores, and that’s always interesting to me ‘cause what you grow up with you’re like, oh all grocery stores aren’t a Jewel?

Meg: Or a Shoprite?

Symphony: But when people are just hanging out in a huddled mass outside of the Ralph, and they put out an ad for it.

Meg: Yeah, that Cecil delivers earnestly.

Symphony: Like come hang out with us.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: Just an earnest ad for a hole in the parking lot.

Symphony: For you to huddle with other people in.

Meg: Pretty good. So we add to our intern count, intern Leland.

Symphony: Leland.

Meg: RIP.

Symphony: But you know, doesn’t there seem like there’s more pomp and circumstance with this one like…

Hal: Yeah!

Symphony: He dies but they talk about having a funeral and how they bury them in the break room, which…

Hal: [laughs]

Symphony: ..was never discussed before, but I like it.

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: It seems a propos.

Meg: It’s important to have ceremony surrounding grief, you know.

Hal: Oh absolutely. [chuckles] It just feels, I like, I love watching the little detail like coloring the corners, getting the little nooks and crannies in this world building, and that’s what this feels like ‘cause it’s not, yes a series of, at this point you probably would figure out that most of the interns are going to die. But those little like, you get filled out what actually happens when somebody dies outside of, Cecil makes an announcement that there is a full sort of funeral held in their break room, which is just really for all intents and purposes, a graveyard where they eat sometimes.

Symphony: [laughs] I don’t think they allow that in actual cemeteries, so they get mad if you go in there and try and picnic.

Hal: Have you tried?

Meg: You can. Yeah.

Symphony: Can you?

Meg: Yeah I have a friend growing up whose Mom would take her to the cemetery to eat on her grandparents’ grave, they would like go do that. They would take a hot lunch.

Symphony: But if you didn’t know anybody, you’d just like sit that’s what I’m saying…

Meg: Yeah, then it’s…

Symphony: Not like it’s some of your family.

Meg: Yeah it’s like have some respect, you’re just sitting there like eating a six-inch Subway meatball sandwich just like, I was hungry! [laughter]

Symphony: It’s like, oh I just stopped at the Kroger or whatever like I just needed a place to sit down, and this is closer than the park.

Meg: Quieter, it’s cleaner.

Symphony: Totally, and it’s nice, there’s flowers, trees and stuff.

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: Some cemeteries are very nice.

Meg: They are.

Symphony: Although I think a waste of land.

Meg I- I have to agree that they’re a waste of land, although some of the existing ones are pretty special, like-like the famous existing ones they’re special. There’s a bunch of ones that are just like, you know, miles and miles of dead people, where it’s like they probably could have figured out something better to do here with this, but you know.

Symphony: I like the fancy ones in LA.

Meg: Oh.

Symphony: I’ve been to a couple of those.

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Hollywood Forever, where…

Symphony: With like celebrities.

Hal: Yeah, they show movies at Hollywood Forever…

Symphony: Yeah yeah yeah!

Hal: ..you can go see, when Jennifer and I were first dating, we went with Annie Savage who was appeared on the show, and her future husband at the time Fred and Ben Acker, we all went and watched, I think “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure”. Like they just project it onto a mausoleum and a bunch of people show up, and and it’s acceptable.

Symphony: Wow.

Hal: That’s what happens in a Hollywood cemetery. It’s all glamour out here, folks.

Meg: Anything goes in Hollywood. Anything goes.

Hal: All the rumors are true.

Symphony: But I guess that’s what you sign up for when you’re like, oh I wanna be buried in this Hollywood cemetery and then you’re gonna get a movie shown on your grave, you know?

Hal: Yeah. I wanna, if I do that I want it written into my will which movies I will allow.

Meg: What would you pick if you had to like have a list of a few that you would find acceptable to project onto your grave?

Hal: Only “Xanadu”. That’s all I want shown all the time.

Symphony: Yes! [sings] Xanaduu…

Hal: And only the big number at the end where they combine all of their ideas into one horrific – dance number?

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: I’d have to go with “Grease 2”, if it was me.

Hal: [laughs] Bowling alley sequence only?

Symphony: That’s the one with Michelle Pfeiffer?

Meg: Yeah. Yes.

Symphony: OK so, ‘cause I was about to say, I was like wow are we going to let Olivia Newton-John here? And then no it’s ‘cause it’s “Grease 2”. I think on my – “Labyrinth”.

Meg: Oo!

Hal: Nice. Nice.

Symphony: I like that movie a lot.

Meg: That sounds cozy and you know a bunch of college kids would roll up a joint and rock up to your grave and..

Symphony: Right!

Meg: ..(-) [silly voice] “Are we watching ‘The Labyrinth’ at Symphony Sanders’ grave tonight?” And it would be a good time.

Symphony: Yeah, and then my ghost would come out.

Meg: Yeah, and your ghost would love it!

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: Your ghost is like, I’m trying to imagine what your ghost is wearing, it’s a one piece.

Symphony: Yes.

Meg: It’s like a spooky little one-piece jumpsuit. [laughter]

Symphony: You know me and my one-piece living, or dying.

Meg: Your one-piece dying! [laughter]

Symphony: Boo, Sanders! So speaking of celebrities and dead celebrities, Rita Hayworth apparently. But I mean you guys, first of all it’s hearsay of hearsay. This is like the most like not, probably it’s not true at all.

Hal: It did come from an angel, they’re very trusted sources of, they’re known celebrity spotters.

Symphony: They said to Old Woman Josie, who told Cecil, right?

Hal: Yes.

Symphony: The angel didn’t tell Cecil, Old Woman Josie did. She could be a liar.

Hal: Are you saying…

Meg: Wow, accusation.

Hal: ..there are unreliable voices in Night Vale?

Symphony: [laughs] Noo… Yes. No. Maybe. Uuuh, well, do you even know what Rita Hayworth looks like?

Hal: Yes!

Meg: I don’t.

Hal: Have you not seen “The Shawshank Redemption”? She’s the one who whips her hair back when they watch the movie and goes “Who me, boys?” She’s the first poster that he puts on his cell wall.

Symphony: No I was just asking like for posterity, do you know what [chuckling] Rita Hayworth looks like?

Hal: I do.

Symphony: So the answer is yes.

Hal: Yes. She’s shorter and more Hispanic than I remember but…

Symphony: [laughter] (-) that was fun.

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: Well, maybe that woman’s name was Rita Hayworth, it just wasn’t the Rita Hayworth that we’re thinking of.

Hal: That’s true, that’s on us.

Symphony: Right? Her name could be Margarita Hayworth. She just goes by Rita. Actually that’s my, a girl I went to high school with. Her name was Margarita so it’s not like…

Meg: No, when I was taking Spanish class in fifth grade, my Spanish name was Margarita, so…

Symphony: Did you know what a Margarita was, the drink?

Meg: Yes.

Symphony: OK.

Meg: I wasn’t drinking them at the time, but I had been to a Chili’s before, so I… [laughter]

Hal: You do a lot of growing up the first time you go to a Chili’s, don’t you?

Meg: Sure, that’s for sure.

Hal: Mm hm.

Symphony: God I love Chili’s. I also have digestive distress, but it’s so good.

Meg: I feel like we have already done this on this show, we have ranked the Applebee’s and the Chili’s and [laughter] and the uh, TGI Fridays, I feel like we’ve already been down this road.

Symphony: Well Applebee’s is on the lowest, it’s on the lowest.

Meg: We all agree that Applebee’s is the worst, it’s Scrabblebee’s.

Hal: Applebee’s is terrible, but I got food poisoning at a Fridays, so that will always be the bottom for me.

Symphony: Well that’s full of people that definitely don’t wash their hands.

Hal: That’s true. They dump their wings in the toilet before they bring them out.

Symphony: [laughs]

Hal: And they told me, it’s really on me. I rank myself below Fridays for that reason. (--) OK, you know what, I’ll roll the dice, I’m a gambler. [laughter]

Meg: I also really love the satire that we have of auditions, and (--) as a whole we get for the “Once on this Island” auditions announcement. [laughs]

Symphony: Yes. I love how they do this throughout the series, throughout the show in general, but they’ll do lists of things and it’ll start out normal or it’ll be like a couple normal things, and then it’ll totally go off the rails. Which I love, and I think you know, when you’re an actor, you just gotta have all those skills, you know what I mean?

Hal: Yes.

Meg: Yes.

Symphony: Sniper skills, all sorts of things. What is a dirigible?

Hal: It’s a, it’s a blimp.

Symphony: You’re, [laughing] you’re a blimp?

Hal: (--) I’m a blimp? ‘cause I answered, how rude!

Meg: That’s rude.

Hal: That was just Applebee’s style behavior right there.

Meg: When you’re here, your family. [laughter]

Hal: What is the biggest lie you ever put on your resumé, or like the dumbest skill that you have on your acting resumé?

Symphony: My own? I dunno.

Hal: Did you write stuff on other people’s resumés? When you’re on auditions you wrote like, “doesn’t work well with people”.

Symphony: Well I just remember I was, I was looking at someone’s once, and I just thought it was funny that they put like “burp on command”, they could burp on command.

Hal: [laughs]

Symphony: And I’m like, do people like test you on that, or what?

Hal: They might.

Symphony: I mean I’ve always wondered if people get called out, you know.

Meg: If someone were to actually call me out on the horseback riding skills that I list, it probably would be dangerous, I probably would get hurt. Like so you can actually really ride a horse, right? Yeah sure, totally. And like, I would get trampled. It’d be like here, gallop down this beach, and I’d be like oh no, we’re all gonna die.

Hal: [laughs]

Meg: I always wonder why they have the, like where we have to put our that we have a driver’s license and that it’s valid. [laughs]

Symphony: Yeah.

Hal: Yeah!

Meg: Valid driver’s license.

Hal: Like they’re gonna go, oh driver’s license huh? I’ve got a truck downstairs in the garage and they just throw you the keys. Go round the block and don’t hit any stuff!

Meg: Yeah. I’ve never had to act in a car. It’s never been a place for like…

Symphony: Me either, never been in that commercial. That’s usually like commercials, right? Like…

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Yeah.

Symphony: You’ll have to be, but do they even like, make you drive in the actual car, or is it like you’re in one of those fake cars on a like green screen?

Hal: It depends. Sometimes you probably have to drive it. But even then if you haven’t ever driven before, and they put you in the car and you do that thing that kids do where you’re like just, you’re constantly moving the wheel..

Symphony: Yeah.

Hal: ..because you know that there’s a steering wheel in a car, that’s how they know this person probably doesn’t have a valid, this person can’t act like they’re driving, they seem really bad at it.

Meg: We would all get not cast in “Once on This Island”. Which is an interesting choice.

Symphony: Well maybe I could because I’m a person of color…

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: So I was encouraged, that’s good.

Meg: That show really should be people of color..

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: ..only. [laughs]

Symphony: Pretty much, well except for, there’s like four white people in the show.

Meg: Yes.

Symphony: They’re like staying at the hotel or wherever.

Meg: Actually I saw Welcome to Night Vale actor Kevin R. Free in a wonderful production of “Once on This Island” at the Papermill Playhouse, and he did a fantastic job. Fun fact about Kevin R. Free is that he has a beautiful singing voice.

Symphony: He’s a good actor.

Meg: He’s a good actor, beautiful singing voice.

Hal: Not a surprise.

Symphony: All around good guy, yeah. Just sending Kevin R. Free some love, that’s all.

Hal: Yeah. I do like the idea of auditions ‘cause that in the later, in the touring show that just concluded, there was another bit about auditions as well, like it’s just a fun thing to come back to, that something’s always being cast and it’s very dangerous. Like the requirements are different every time, but also you know we were talking about the lists earlier, so people who are a fan of comedy and breaking down comedy, listening to and sort of studying how these lists are put together by Jeffrey and Joseph, it’s a little good way to understand heightening and misdirection, and the way they build their laughs out of surprises and then, they build on the surprise, it’s like constant hard turns, and then build build build hard turn that gives them like a reset to build off of, which is really really smart and fun as an audience member to experience, and really fun as an actor to perform.

Meg: Yeah, absolutely like especially in this episode with the list where they talk about the curriculum. “Finally, in addition to the current foreign language offerings of Spanish, French, and modified Sumerian, schools will now be offering double Spanish, weird Spanish, Coptic Spanish, Russian, and unmodified Sumerian.” So yeah, construction of these lists that do, they just take us on a journey, a journey of humor.

Symphony: I love the text books, that was always, that was really funny for me. I just like when they turn the things that would normally happen in everyday life right on its ear, you know like the math and English, those two just switching names but they still are the same like principles right? I just find that really funny and imaginative. And that teachers are astral projecting.

Meg: Yeah. And we get our, I think it’s our first Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner.

Symphony: Yeah, about the moon.

Meg: Where Cecil’s talking about the moon, yeah. [laughter] And Telly the Barber and Carlos, so I think it’s our first Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner, which is a fun segment on this show. So speaking of segments on this show, we have some fan theories and fan questions that we got from our voicemail and from our email, and we’re going to talk about those.

But first, let’s talk about the weather.

[ad break]

Meg: So this episode’s weather was “Jerusalem” by Dan Bern.

Hal: I love Dan Bern.

Symphony: I thought that song was so funny. It had, the tune itself made me think of almost like a 60’s revolutionary folk rock song, but what he’s talking about, the whole thing about the olives was killing me, I was like yes.

Meg: [sings] Olives!

Symphony: I wrote “loves olives”. [laughs]

Hal: Yeah, Dan is super smart and super funny and he sounds, he’s not a Bob Dylan soundalike but he’s super evocative. He’s got a similar vocal style, the way he plays the guitar has that folk rock feeling to it. That is like, he’s the kind of musician where you want to listen to, the lyrics are super important and sometimes just the way the music is built is the most important thing. But with him, you wanna catch all the details of what he’s saying as he sings, ‘cause it’s always super smart and really funny satire.

Meg: Yeah, agree on all of those things, I think it’s a really nice addition to this episode. It feels like it almost matches the rhythm of this episode, where it is one that does kind of, has a more humorous tone to it, has a “hey pay attention to the words” kind of tone to it, observational humor tone to it, it does feel like it is a nice match with that, whether that’s intentional or not, it feels like at home in this episode.

Hal: Yeah, 100 per cent. Probably the most, the best fit in terms of matching what’s going on. It doesn’t feel like it’s hard to turn away from where we’ve been. It feels kind of, it’s logical in a way that…

Symphony: Right.

Hal: The weather doesn’t really have to be, but when it is it’s nice, it’s a nice little sort of surprise.

Meg: Let’s go into the FanZone where we hear from some of our fans who have written into the email address and have dialed into our weird voicemail. So I (-) through the email account today and found some things. We asked, just for these first couple of episodes, we asked fans to react to the first ten episodes of Night Vale and what they had in terms of theories and questions. And Erin B. writes to us and says: “Theories. Carlos was sent to Night Vale by the place he works for, and as soon as time distorted, he wasn’t able to ever send any research back. Theory 2: Cecil was extremely lonely prior to Carlos arriving and pushed people away. Theory 3: The Voice of Night Vale infects Cecil and he doesn’t even really need a radio station to podcast. And theory 4: the secret government agency sent Carlos to Night Vale.” So we’ve got some theories here. I think are interesting when we are listening to it and hear the kind of new things about how Cecil wonders if his microphone is even attached, and if he is all alone. So it’s kind of the first episode that starts to pull back the, the (lens) of possibility and so, hearing from Erin on their theories about what’s going on here. We can’t of course confirm or deny any of these theories. I think that Cecil probably was extremely lonely prior to Carlos arriving. I dunno if he pushed people away, maybe he pushed people away, it’s possible.

Symphony: I think it is interesting that um, just like with a lot of theatre itself like, why is it important now, why are you talking about this thing now? So obviously Carlos coming into his life has been a catalyst for something or it’s been a big deal, because he wasn’t really, like we didn’t hear about Cecil before all that stuff, and now since Carlos has come into his life, things have changed. I dunno if he pushed people away, but now things in his life are changing, and Night Vale especially.

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Yeah. I think they’re good theories. I like the, I like back filling sort of character. You sorta can find the notes that you need to back fill where a character might have been when they arrive through listening and just sort of what the current relationship is and how important it is to the people, so I’m all for stuff like that. And then it’s fun when the writing either confirms or denies that, and if it doesn’t, then that’s something you can hold on to, and you’re always right.

Meg: Yeah and on that, the similar topic there, (Julianne) writes to us and says, “In episode 5, Cecil explicitly addresses this idea, questioning whether his mike is even plugged in and if the world is held aloft merely by my – his delusions and by his smooth, sonorous voice. But it leaves, it has a hypothetical scenario by not pursuing it past his musing. But his mind being stuck in limbo makes sense, Cecil and the city having (-) sense of time is the biggest clue, followed by a general lack of knowledge about how things – science, correct building materials for drawbridges and - heck, just how weird everything in Night Vale is”, so that’s (Julianne) saying that it makes sense that this might be a real thing that Cecil’s not actually there, that because it might prove that Cecil is stuck in limbo and that creates a weird sense of time, which makes sense why everything is weird in Night Vale.

Hal: I would ask, and (Julianne) you can’t respond. You can do it on social media I guess but right now, [chuckles] right now we can’t have a conversation about it, but I always wonder in those cases, is it more interesting for it to actually exist and be real, or is it more interesting if none of it is real and he is delusional, or has created a reality around him, in which case where is he and what is the real world around him? And I don’t think I, I don’t have an answer one way or the other, but I think that’s sort of the interesting question and conversation that you can jump off, either thinking about it by yourself or discussing with other friends/fans.

Meg: Nice. And Nina asks us, trying to put this the right way, Nina says: “Did I hear that a typo in an early episode resulted in a somewhat prominent change in plot? Can you tell us what that was all about?” So it’s not so, getting the story from Jeffrey, we talked to Jeffrey about this. Not so much that a typo resulted in a prominent change in the plot, it was that a typo resulted in a prominent change in the plot so we had to have Cecil re-record. So the way that the episodes are recorded is Joseph and Jeffrey work on a script, that script goes to Cecil, Cecil sits down, reads the script and kinda figures out his emotional beats, and then he performs it into a microphone and then he sends that recording off to Joseph, who cuts it into an episode. So there’s not a director in the room that is gonna go through word for word and make sure that the writers’ intents come through, so in this situation there was a typo that twisted the meaning, or a word got dropped and that changed the whole meaning of an episode, so he had to go back and have Cecil re-record and get that word in there, and have the episode have the meaning that Joseph and Jeffrey intended.

Symphony: But otherwise, all is well.

Meg: All is well. Sarah writes (-) us about Michael Sandero and Michael Sandero’s mother. So Sarah says: “Michael Sandero’s mother kept a ‘which of my children I like best’ ranking outside her house, which means Michael presumably had at least one other sibling. Why have we never heard about them? Will we ever hear about them? Are they simply so utterly normal compared to Michael and his recordbreakingly awful luck that they don’t stick out at all? Do these siblings actually ask?” And then this is in parenthesis: “Regardless of siblings or lack thereof, Flora is not a good mother, at least to Michael. So if the siblings are real, it would be nice if they showed him the support she does not.” Sarah also says [chuckles]: “How are the troubled tarantulas doing? I hope they’ve managed to turn their dire situation around and get on their many very hairy feet by now.”

Symphony: I don’t know that, like any theory, we can only make assumptions on the information that we have. And knowing how Night Vale is, I mean maybe he does have other siblings, but they don’t get any sort of (interest or play), right? They can’t possibly, ‘cause he’s a big football star. When you got a big football star, if you don’t live up to that, you know? It’s like “Friday Night Lights”.

Hal: He was already at top of the list and then the head beat him out. So he can’t, even when you’re at the top of the list, you’re not at the top of the list. Sorry, Michael.

Symphony: Yeah. You’re never safe.

Hal: Never.

Symphony: Oh and the tarantulas, do we wanna answer that? Is that a question?

Meg: How are they? I hope they’re doing OK. I mean, it seemed like there was a good program in place for them.

Symphony: Yeah, I mean they’re trying to get them to read, which is the first step I think in any sort of, uh, programming.

Meg: Yeah. And I think there’s passionate people involved in trying to rehabilitate and provide opportunities for these tarantulas, just all we can only ever hope for is that people are, there’s good people trying to do their best for them.

Hal: I’m deathly frightened of tarantulas, so they could all walk into a fire as far as [chuckling] I’m concerned!

Symphony: [chuckles]

Meg: That’s so cold, Hal. So cold.

Hal: Yeah. Not the fire, the fire’s plenty warm, if you’re cold get in that fire.

Meg: [laughs]

Hal: It’ll warm you up.

Meg: So let’s burn the tarantulas or not. And thus we end the FanZone. [laughter] Alright, we got through our episode. Thanks so much for discussing “The Shape in Grove Park”, all ‘yall! Next week, we are going to be speaking with Jon Bernstein, you may know him as Disparition. He is the creator of the music for Welcome to Night Vale and Alice Isn’t Dead, and he is an all around rad dude. We will be discussing episode 6, “The Drawbridge”, so we have that to look forward to, which is exciting. I’m very excited.

Hal: Me too!

Meg: Symphony?

Symphony: I’m not that excited.

Hal: Wow, hateful. The shade!

Symphony: Just kidding!

Hal: [whew].

Symphony: It’s because I’m afraid of bridges.

Hal: [laughs]

Meg: Awww. Well we’ll unpack that and all of our fears in next week’s episode, where we unpack our fears and talk it over with musician Jon Bernstein. You know him as Disparition, I refer to him as Yon. Symphony, do you have any other nicknames for Jon?

Symphony: Berenstain. I call him like Berenstain Bears, he doesn’t like that.

Meg: No. Alright great, (-) one in the (-), thank you all so very much for listening, and we will check in with you next week. And until then, good morning Night Vale, good morning.

Meg: Good Morning is a Night Vale Presents production. It is hosted by Symphony Sanders, Hal Lublin and Meg Bashwiner. It is edited by Grant Stewart. It is mixed by Vincent Cacchione, it is produced by Meg Bashwiner. Theme music by Disparition. Special thanks to our fans who submitted their thoughts. Leave us a voicemail at 929-277-2050, or email us at [email protected], to share your theories and ask questions, or to tell us which host would lie in court for you.

For more information on this show, go to goodmorningnightvale.com and follow us on Facebook and Twitter @NightValeChat. Special thanks to (Christy Gressman), Jeffrey Cranor, Joseph Fink, and Adam Cecil.

Today’s adverb is “savagely”. The lion savagely attacked his tempe and quinoa salad, because he was a hungry wild beast, but also had just started doing meatless Mondays, because sustainability matters and we are all on this planet together.

#night vale presents #good morning night vale #meg bashwiner #hal lublin #symphony sanders #episode 5 #the shape in grove park

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backwardspalindrome · 7 years ago

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so here’s what’s been going on with me lately (this is a long post with a lot of rambling, sorry):

1. i haven’t been using this blog like at all. the last posts were from pretty early in my first semester at college. once i got through that initial hard part of getting used to the university environment, my life has been incredible. here’s a couple sub-points:

1a) i started hormone therapy (spiro tablets and an estradiol patch) in january. actually started on friday, january 13th which is beautiful and i love it. that also means that my 5 month anniversary is the day before my birthday this month. but that’s stuff you probably know from my tumblr and twitter.

1b) i really started to connect with a few people at college and now i have a better grasp of who i can trust and who i can turn to. that’s a weird and bad way of putting it, but it’s important that i know those things.

1c) i also started doing more with my online friends like cole and jack. in fact, i am now officially the Founder of something - i run a podcast network along with cole that’s shaping up to be pretty good. again, keep an eye on my twitter and tumblr.

1d) in the few weeks leading up to finals and summer break, i met a transfem person on okcupid in springfield. (she had “trans woman” on her bio when we found each other on the app, but i guess that’s no longer fully accurate. i haven’t asked her about labels or even pronouns yet because i’m a bad person.) her name is leslie and she is just stunningly gorgeous. we like a lot of the same things and we were kinda talking really vaguely about maybe having some kind of not-just-platonic relationship. i met up with her face-to-face for the first time just a couple days before i left for summer break. i like her a lot, but distance is hard and i get paranoid easily.

2. this brings me to the problem, and the reason i’m back on this blog after so long. i had to move back to tipton for summer break. i couldn’t find any internship or job or summer class to keep me in springfield so now i’m back in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do and no one to see. and it’s tearing me back down again. here come the sub-points.

2a) i came out to my parents about a year ago. the day before i moved to springfield, actually. my sister told me that it would help if i gave them some kind of expectation or directive - something they could do to show support. i asked them to use my name and my pronouns when we were alone. just in private, not a big task, and i made sure that they knew i wasn’t expecting perfection. my mother has used my name one time in the year since. my dad has not. neither have used my pronouns. i tried to confront them about this the other day. their reasoning boiled down to: well, we have some problems with how you act at home and so we’re not going to give you the basic respect of name and pronouns. fuck, i’m being reductive but they literally brought up how i don’t refill water jugs or how i don’t like eating with other people. during the conversation i was trying to have about my pronouns. they brought up other things that i feel are part of me being somewhat autistic (that’s a separate conversation). my mother said to me that when she thinks of trying to say my name out loud, it makes her want to throw up. she said that to my face. and i’m the one who has to change my behavior.

2b) there’s no one here. in college, i had easy access to my college friends (who are actually pretty good at handling heavy topics), my online friends, support groups, and my counselor. if i felt something and i needed to talk about it, 80% of the time i had someone willing to talk with me. now i have my online friends and that’s it. i can’t talk about anything with my parents, i have no friends in tipton, and there’s not a single community within 30 miles of here where i could actually belong. there’s no lgbt center in tipton, there’s no pride celebrations in tipton, there’s no group counseling in tipton, there’s no therapists in tipton. the only thing i can do with my emotions is let them fester in my head.

2c) i’ve always felt negatively about tipton. my entire life i’ve hated this piece of shit town and everything around it, about it, and in it. i’m starting to think that my attitude of hating the physical place of tipton also started to apply to how i feel about my experiences being in the closet. all of the worst things in my life - being closeted, my bad relationship with my parents, my inability to find friends, the lack of resources - they all are tied to this town. that’s why it was so easy for me to adjust to springfield. i was ecstatic to leave the town where i had to endure 17 years of psychological harm. that’s maybe part of the reason i felt so good for so long in springfield too. i left everything bad behind. and now, i’m back. and all those 17 years and all those bad experiences just sat here in tipton and waited for me. add to that the fact that apparently my parents were fostering more resentment than i thought about the fact that i never wanted to come home. for me, tipton is everything wrong about the world in one place. if you were to make a community built on willful ignorance, it would be named tipton, missouri. my primary goal in life is to never have to be in tipton ever again. but here i am.

i think i’m done with the points and sub-points now, but now we’ve made it to my big fear right now and the reason i started writing this post in the first place. i think i might be slipping back into the tipton headspace. i went back to dressing more like i used to (old t-shirts, sweatpants). my dysphoria - while thankfully not as bad as it used to be - is coming back. the ever-present fear that i forgot was part of the atmosphere of tipton is back. ever since i got here, i haven’t been able to stop comparing my life during college to my life now. the main thing is that in college, i was actually happy. i was happy most of the time. i was happy in a general way that touched every part of my life. i realized this sometime in second semester.

see, i used to do this obnoxious depressive-nihilist-millenial thing where every time i crossed the street i’d make a half-joke in my head about getting hit by a car. it takes different forms, but i think you know what i’m talking about. sometime in second semester i crossed a street, saw a car, and had that thought about getting hit. and then immediately, i realized that no - no, i don’t want to die. that was the first time i ever remember having the explicit thought “i don’t want to die”. i felt like i had a future for the first time in my life. when i began to fully understand what that moment was for me, it was one of the most terrifying and the most liberating realizations of my entire life. liberating, because i recognized that there was a possible future where i could live as myself and be happy. terrifying, because i realized all at once that i should have had that feeling before, and tipton stole it away from me.

i described it to my counselor like this: tipton is a bubble, and it has an insidious way of making the people inside it think there’s nothing else in the world but tipton. tipton contains everything, and it’s not possible for someone to need something that tipton doesn’t have. remember how i said earlier that tipton has no lgbt centers, no theatres, no therapy? when you’re in tipton, you can’t need those things. nobody needs those things. what even is it that you think you need? those things don’t exist. you don’t need therapy, you just need to suck it up. why aren’t you like everyone else?

that’s what tipton did to me. and that’s what it’s trying to do to me again. i noticed today that my brain seems to have gone back to being depressed more often than not. but now i know there are other things than this god-forsaken hellhole. tipton is what drove me two steps from attempting suicide. i will burn the entire god damned place to the ground before i let it do that to me again. i don’t know how i’m going to avoid all this shit. i just know that i can’t let tipton destroy me for a second time.

i don’t have a game plan. all i have is this. i’m writing this on thursday. tomorrow i work. saturday i’m coming out to my grandparents. sunday, i’m coming out to my uncle. these are the people that my parents told me i need to talk to in person before i can come out on facebook. my public coming out will be at midnight on my birthday - wednesday. i want every obscure relative and forgotten acquaintance to see this post when they try to wish me a half-hearted happy birthday. i’m gonna spend the following two days dealing with the aftermath. i have no plans after that, but i think once i come out publicly i’ll be able to fight back more effectively. i’m going to rip control of my life out of the hands of this town and then i’m going to be the most important force in my life again.

i started this post because i felt sad and helpless about what tipton was doing to me. but for the first time, writing shit on this blog has actually helped me. all of this post boils down to what could be described as my supervillain origin story: this town ruined me once. now, i’m going to make it kneel before me.

#long post #long-ass post

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endlessarchite · 6 years ago

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My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds

I take pride in some very strange things. Being able to cartwheel into a pool for example. Or knowing every single word to old commercial jingles and 90’s rap songs. Or the fact that John and I, two righties, somehow made two lefties, which clearly means they’re brilliant (not sure how I can even take credit for this phenomenon, but I do, as well as the fact that our kids are super tall, which is amazing to me as a 5’2″ lady).

But one thing I don’t really think about much is my secondhand furniture hunting mojo. I don’t think I have any magic luck or special searching skills. I would generally describe the key to my process as frequency. In other words: looking often. I regularly look at thrift stores and on Craigslist and on Facebook Marketplace. Most of the time I don’t find anything good at all, but every once in a while I find something awesome. Like this insanely beautiful inlay dresser that’s made by Restoration Hardware and sells for $1800 that I found on Craigslist for $400 (you can read the full story of that here).

So instead of demonstrating that I know every last word to the Left Eye rap in TLC’s Waterfalls, I figured I’d round up my best tips for secondhand shopping success, all of which have nothing to do with dumb luck, and everything to do with actionable things that you can implement to hopefully score some great finds of your own.

Lesson #1: Show Your Interest & Be Persistent

If I stop an analyze how that inlay dresser coup came to be, there’s just one simple thing that made it all happen: I was determined with a capital D. I saw this listing go up months before I bought it. And I loved it. But it was $600 and that was still over my beach house dresser budget – no matter how gorgeous and expensive the dresser originally was. So I waited. And the listing sat there. And it sat there.

Knowing she might be having trouble selling it, I decided to let the seller know that an interested party existed. Even though I wasn’t ready to shell out the $600, I wanted to make myself an option and discourage her from just deleting the listing out of frustration (I know as a seller I’ve definitely done that before). I emailed her saying “I am SO INTERESTED in your dresser but the top of my budget is $400. If that works for you, I’ll gladly come right over with $400 cash and grab it.” And she very kindly emailed me back and said “Thanks, I’m not planning to lower the price just yet but I’ll let you know if I do later.”

Now here’s where the whole determined thing really came into play. The listing sat there for a few more weeks (and I continued to watch it), but then one day it disappeared. And I noticed. And I gasped. It could’ve sold or just expired, but since I already had an email chain started, I decided to reach out to her one last time, just to say “hi, it’s me again! I noticed the listing is gone so I’m sure my dream dresser sold, but if it hasn’t and you’re interested in that $400 cash I can come right over! Just say the word!” And you know what? She said “You’ve got a deal.”

And that’s how this amazing dresser ended up at the beach house. It didn’t fall into my lap. It didn’t happen in a day or even a week – but over the course of months as I kept an eye on it. And if I hadn’t pinged her that first time I never could have followed up that second time because I wouldn’t have had her contact info – and I’m pretty sure this dresser wouldn’t be ours today. So let that be Lesson #1. Have patience and go out on a limb (maybe even multiple times) for something you love.

Lesson #2: Be Vigilant & Ready To Pounce

Ok, now let’s move on to the next one. I really really love this marble topped dresser that I bought on Facebook Marketplace from the sweetest local lady whose entire house was so amazing I wanted to buy everything in there. The entire top is a gorgeous slab of marble and the drawers have little key latches and it’s perfect for storing board games in the foyer of the beach house. I forget how much this was but I think it was around $100 which is an awesome deal since it would be hard to find a slab of marble as big as the one on top of this dresser for $100 alone.

Let’s talk about my hunting routine. I like to sit on the couch at the end of a long day and just scroll through Facebook Marketplace. It takes less than five minutes, and I’d say I do it maybe five times a week if I remember. And thanks to my habit of checking pretty frequently, I happened to see the listing for this dresser within an hour of it being posted. So I was first in line when I pinged her, I got cash FAST, and I got to her house within about an hour, meaning nobody could snatch it out from under me. So upon reflecting how I scored this dresser, it really comes down to being SO READY to make this thing mine (and not wavering, waffling, or taking too much time to get the cash and get to her house).

The thing is, you never know when something is going to be listed, and you certainly can’t be on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace every hour. But I realized that back before I checked Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist with any regularity that I was greatly lowering my chances of finding good stuff. Of course I couldn’t expect to pop on every few months and immediately find something I wanted! I had to up my frequency – even if it just means devoting five minutes a night to it a few times a week. This obviously gives me better chances of seeing more items, and catching them earlier.

Also, get cash and get thee to the person’s house fast! Sellers often observe a “first come, first served” rule and I can’t tell you how many times as a seller that the second or third person who contacted me actually got the item because the first person took too long to come pick it up & pay. So there you go. Lesson #2 is spend a little more time looking for something cool if you actually want to find something cool, and then descend like Cheetah with the cash. Fast, fast, fast.

Lesson #3: Recruit Spies

Ok, let’s move on to the rug in our bedroom. Whenever I see it my brain sings: “I’ve. Had. The rug of my li-i-ife. And I never felt this way before.” Yes it’s the song from Dirty Dancing with a rug worked into it, and yes, weirdly altering song lyrics is also something I take great pride in. The story of this guy is that I bought it locally from a consignment shop. YES! I know! It feels like an extremely lucky find. And it was… but it also clearly has a lesson attached when I look in the ol’ rearview mirror of life.

See, my friend actually texted me a picture of this rug along with some others that she had seen at a local consignment shop. So the first lesson is: befriend an army of people who will text you all the pretty things they find. Ha. Kidding. But really, if you have an interest or a need for something, it never hurts to let your design-loving friends know! They might see whatever it is you’re looking for (secondhand or beyond!) and be able to tell you where it is. Heck they might even text you a picture or send you a link.

The fact that my friend, who is a decorator, knew that I love these big colorful wool rugs definitely worked in my favor in this case (had I not been “linked” to this thing in her mind, she never would have texted it to me). And you can offer to keep an eye out for things for them in return – it really is a nice mutually beneficial thing to do with someone else who loves home stuff.

My accompanying tip for this rug victory harkens back to the second half of my last lesson, which is DO NOT HESITATE. The second she sent it I called the shop, asked the price, got the cash, and John and I rushed over there to smell it (always smell secondhand things guys – it’s a non-negotiable!) and it was in our car about 20 minutes later. There’s way more about this whole rug discovery and our bedroom’s evolution in this post, which also has a ton of sources for things.

Lesson #4: Be Nosy & Remember It Never Hurts To Ask

These chairs are a more recent score that I chatted about a little bit on the podcast (in this episode) and they hail from Facebook Marketplace. One thing I like about Facebook Marketplace over Craigslist (don’t get me wrong, I still like Sir Craig & His List) is that Facebook Marketplace learns what you click. So, much like Pinterest, it can curate a more customized experience every time you browse. Which is also why it’s super fast to check every time I drop in (less than 5 minutes).

Mine has learned that I click on furniture and home stuff, so it shows me all of that stuff first in my feed, even if a weird ceramic babydoll that stares into your soul was uploaded more recently. AND I SO APPRECIATE THAT.

But back to these chairs. I mentioned on that podcast that this listing was funny because it was actually for a large piece of driftwood, but I saw these chairs in the background – yes, BEHIND THE DRIFTWOOD. And I basically messaged her and said “about those chairs – are they for sale?!” And she said yes! The seller even had a large car and offered to drive them to my house since they’re HUGE and it would have been impossible to get both of them into our SUV at the same time.

So the lesson here is: anything in the picture is something you can ask about! The worst they can say is “no, my cute dog in the background is not for sale you psycho” and the best thing they can say is essentially what happened with these chairs, which was: “Sure! I’ll sell them AND DRIVE THEM TO YOUR HOUSE FOR YOU!”

Also, sub tip: whenever something is large we ask if they would accept an extra fee (like $20) to drive it over. It often saves us time/gas/money spent renting a larger vehicle, so it can be very worthwhile in many cases.

This chair story also has sort of an epilogue of sorts. When we posted photos of them in the show notes of that podcast where we mentioned them, a very kind and knowledgeable design enthusiast essentially said “OMG I THINK THOSE ARE RUSSELL WOODARD CHAIRS!” and thanks to the rabbit hole of google I learned he’s an amazing 50’s designer, sort of like Eames (we all know about his chairs! can’t Russell catch a break?!) and THEY SELL FOR THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS on places like 1st Dibs and Chairish. In fact, here’s a set of four currently listed for $3,750 (and here’s another one). HOW INSANE IS THAT?!?!

By comparison, we spent $140 for both chairs (which also included delivery!). So they might be the biggest secondhand score we’ve had yet. Honestly for me it’s way less about what something’s worth or who made it and a lot more about filling your house up with stuff you love. So my advice would just be to sniff around in secondhand spots (in person and online) often if you actually hope to find something amazing – and if you do it regularly enough I’m confident it’ll happen for you! Happy hunting!

P.S. Six years ago we wrote this post about 25 tips for buying on Craigslist, and a ton of them still apply – so check it out for even more ideas for scoring some pretty great stuff. Happy thrifting to one and all!

P.P.S. And if you saw something in the photos above from our beach house or our house here in Richmond that has you saying “where’s that from?” we have source lists for both of those: here’s the one full of beach house info, and here’s one for our Richmond house.

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statusreview · 6 years ago

Text

My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds

Lesson #1: Show Your Interest & Be Persistent

Lesson #2: Be Vigilant & Ready To Pounce

Lesson #3: Recruit Spies

Lesson #4: Be Nosy & Remember It Never Hurts To Ask

The post My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds appeared first on Young House Love.

My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds published first on https://ssmattress.tumblr.com/

0 notes

lukerhill · 6 years ago

Text

My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds

Lesson #1: Show Your Interest & Be Persistent

Lesson #2: Be Vigilant & Ready To Pounce

Lesson #3: Recruit Spies

Lesson #4: Be Nosy & Remember It Never Hurts To Ask

The post My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds appeared first on Young House Love.

0 notes

billydmacklin · 6 years ago

Text

My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds

Lesson #1: Show Your Interest & Be Persistent

Lesson #2: Be Vigilant & Ready To Pounce

Lesson #3: Recruit Spies

Lesson #4: Be Nosy & Remember It Never Hurts To Ask

The post My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds appeared first on Young House Love.

My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds published first on https://carpetgurus.tumblr.com/

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additionallysad · 6 years ago

Photo

My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds https://ift.tt/2vtMElj

Lesson #1: Show Your Interest & Be Persistent

Lesson #2: Be Vigilant & Ready To Pounce

Lesson #3: Recruit Spies

Lesson #4: Be Nosy & Remember It Never Hurts To Ask

The post My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds appeared first on Young House Love.

#additionally sad home renovations

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truereviewpage · 6 years ago

Text

My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds

Lesson #1: Show Your Interest & Be Persistent

Lesson #2: Be Vigilant & Ready To Pounce

Lesson #3: Recruit Spies

Lesson #4: Be Nosy & Remember It Never Hurts To Ask

The post My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds appeared first on Young House Love.

My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds published first on https://aireloomreview.tumblr.com/

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vincentbnaughton · 6 years ago

Text

My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds

Lesson #1: Show Your Interest & Be Persistent

Lesson #2: Be Vigilant & Ready To Pounce

The thing is, you never know when something is going to be listed, and you certainly can’t be on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace every hour. But I realized that back before I checked Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist with any regularity that I was greatly lowering my chances of finding good stuff. Of course I couldn’t expect to pop on every few months and immediately find something I wanted! I had to up my frequency – even if it just means devoting five minutes a night to it a few times a week. Upping my frequency obviously gives me better chances of seeing more items, and catching them earlier.

Lesson #3: Recruit Spies

My accompanying tip for this rug victory harkens back to the second half of my last lesson, which is DO NOT HESITATE. The second she sent it I called the shop, asked the price, got the cash, and John and I rushed over there to smell it (always smell secondhand things guys – it’s a non-negotiable!) and it was in our car about 20 minutes later. There’s way more about this whole rug discovery and our bedroom’s evolution here in this post, which also has a ton of sources for things.

Lesson #4: Be Nosy & Remember It Never Hurts To Ask

The post My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds appeared first on Young House Love.

0 notes

statusreview · 6 years ago

Text

My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds

Lesson #1: Show Your Interest & Be Persistent

Lesson #2: Be Vigilant & Ready To Pounce

Lesson #3: Recruit Spies

Lesson #4: Be Nosy & Remember It Never Hurts To Ask

The post My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds appeared first on Young House Love.

My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds published first on https://ssmattress.tumblr.com/

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vincentbnaughton · 6 years ago

Text

My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds

Lesson #1: Show Your Interest & Be Persistent

And that’s how the amazing dresser coup happened. It didn’t fall into my lap. It didn’t happen in a day or even a week – but over the course of months I kept an eye on it. And if I hadn’t pinged her that first time I never could have followed up that second time because I wouldn’t have had her contact info – and I’m pretty sure this dresser wouldn’t be living it up at the beach house today. So let that be Lesson #1. Have patience and go out on a limb (maybe even multiple times) for something you love.

Lesson #2: Be Vigilant & Ready To Pounce

I like to sit on the couch at the end of a long day and just scroll through Facebook Marketplace. It takes less than five minutes, and I’d say I do it maybe five times a week if I remember. And thanks to my habit of checking Facebook Marketplace pretty frequently, I happened to see the listing for this dresser within an hour of it being posted. So I was first in line when I pinged her, I got cash FAST, and I got to her house within about an hour, meaning nobody could snatch it out from under me. So upon reflecting how I scored this dresser, it really comes down to being SO READY to make this thing mine (and not wavering, waffling, or taking too much time to get the cash and get to her house).

The thing is, you never know when something is going to be listed, and you certainly can’t be on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace every hour. But I realized that back before I checked Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist with any regularity that I was greatly lowering my chances of finding good stuff. Of course I couldn’t expect to pop on every few months and immediately find something I wanted! I had to up my frequency – even if it just means devoting five minutes a night to it a few times a week. Upping my frequency obviously gives me better chances of seeing more items, and catching them earlier.

Lesson #3: Recruit Spies

My accompanying tip for this rug victory harkens back to the second half of my last lesson, which is DO NOT HESITATE. The second she sent it I called the shop, asked the price, got the cash, and John and I rushed over there to smell it (always smell secondhand things guys – it’s a non-negotiable!) and it was in our car about 20 minutes later. There’s way more about this whole rug discovery and our bedroom’s evolution here in this post, which also has a ton of sources for things.

Lesson #4: Be Nosy & Remember It Never Hurts To Ask

The post My Top Four Tips For Scoring The Best Secondhand Finds appeared first on Young House Love.

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