#Thomas Chatterton

[burningvelvet]

being a romantic era poet: a quick how-to guide

walk around in nature contemplating Things. start hiking, swimming, sailing, rowing, shooting, riding, etc. for inspiration

be obsessed with the french revolution and related enlightenment-era figures like rousseau, voltaire, mary wollstonecraft, and madame de staël. be more disappointed by napoleon bonaparte than you are by your own father. 

speaking of fathers, your parents and most of your other relatives are all either dying or dead or emotionally abusive. if you have any siblings (full, half, step, or adopted) who DIDN'T die tragically already, then you may choose to be close to them. you also may end up being much TOO close to them. various circumstances may also ban you from seeing them. 

be at least slightly touched by madness and/or some other severe illness(es) including but not limited to: consumption, horrors, syphilis, deformities, lameness, terrors, piles, boils, pox, allergies, coughing, sleep abnormalities, gonorrhea, etc. — for which you must take frequent bed rest and copious amounts of Laudanum (opium derivation)

consider foregoing meat and adopting a vegetable diet instead to purify the spirits. you may also abstain from alcohol for the same reasons. alternatively, you may attempt the veggie diet, end up rejecting it, and becoming a rampant alcoholic instead. in romanticism there is no healthy medium between abstinence and excess.

reject, or at least heavily criticize, christianity. refuse to get married in a church and consider becoming a fervent champion of atheism. alternatively, you may embrace catholicism, but only on an aesthetic basis. eastern religions and minority religions are also acceptable, only because they piss off the christians. 

if you���re not a self-hating member of the aristocracy and instead have to work for a living, do something that allows you to benefit society, be creative, and/or contemplate life. viable options include, but are not limited to: apothecarist, doctor, teacher, preacher, lawyer, farmer, printmaker, publisher, editor. there is also the possibility of earning a few coins from your art. if you were cursed to be born a She, no worries. we believe in equality. you may choose from these occupations: wife, nanny, housekeeper, spinster, amanuensis (copy writer for a man), lady’s companion, divorced wife, singer/actress/escort, widow, regular escort, tutor, or housewife. 

speaking of sexist institutions, try rejecting marriage entirely. Declare your eternal devotion to your lover by having sex with them on your mother’s grave instead.

if you do get married — elope, and only let it be for necessary financial reasons, or to try and save a teenage girl from her controlling family, or out of true love with someone you view as your intellectual equal, or because your life is so racked with scandals and debt that you can only clear your name by matrimony to a wealthy religious woman as your last resort before fleeing the country.

After marriage, quickly assert your belief in the powers of free love and bisexuality by taking extramarital lovers and suggesting your spouse follow suit. If they cannot keep up with your intellectual escapades then consider leaving them. Later on, propose a platonic friendship with them following the separation, or beg them for reconciliation.

If your marriage is happy, try moving in with another bohemian couple to shake things up. Alternatively, you may die before the wedding for dramatic effect.

If you beget children (whether in or out of marriage, makes no matter), do society a favor by choosing to raise them with your beliefs. Consider adopting orphan children, or even non-orphan children. If their parents are poor enough they probably won’t mind. Try kidnapp— I mean adopting — children off the side of the road if you can. 

DIE but do it creatively. ideally young. ideas: prophecy your own death, lead an army into war and then die right before your first battle and on your deathbed curse everyone and demand to see a witch, write a will leaving money to your mistresses or some random young man you have an unrequited romantic obsession with, carry a copy of your dead friend's poetry and read it right before you drown so that your washed up corpse can only be identified by his book in your pocket, die while staring at your lover's shriveled up heart that you keep wrapped up in a copy of his own poetry and then be buried with it, die of the poet's illness (consumption) while your artist friend draws you and then be buried with your lover's writing, get mysteriously poisoned (by yourself) after a series of scandals and accidents and then have your family announce that you were killed by god, die from romanticizing poverty or receiving bad reviews from literary critics, die from walking or horseback riding in the cold and the rain while poeticizing, etc.

[kaleb-is-definitely-sane]

"You're 17, what are you going to do with your life?" I'm gonna write poetry in my room, try to get published, kill myself with arsenic, and be worshipped like some kind of Romantic Messiah a hundred years later when a bunch of high and alcoholic teenagers start a cult around me.

[thatwritererinoriordan]

"He dies at 17" is a mild way of saying he unalived himself by drinking arsenic after Horace Walpole uncovered his forgery.

Literary history that happened on 20 November

[famousdeaths]

Thomas Chatterton was an English poet whose precocious talents ended in suicide at age 17. He was an influence on Romantic artists of the period such as Shelley...

Link: Thomas Chatterton

[hamletthedane]

A/N by john_keats: This fic was originally planned to be just as long as my other one, but the haters in the comments discouraged me from finishing it, so don’t expect any updates.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Thomas Chatterton Williams

Published: May 19, 2024

We’d gathered that day at the cafeteria’s “Black” table, cracking jokes and philosophizing during the free period that was our perk as upperclassmen. We came in different shades: bone white, tan and brownish, dark as a silhouette. One of my classmates, who fancied himself a lyricist, was insisting that Redman, a witty emcee from nearby Newark, New Jersey, was the greatest rapper ever. This was the late ’90s, and for my money, no one could compete with Jay-Z. I said so, and the debate, good-natured at first, soon escalated in intensity, touching on feelings and resentments that ran far deeper than diverging claims about artistic merit.

“How can you even weigh in?” I still remember the kid fuming. “You ain’t even the pure breed!”

With that, there was nothing left to say. Friends separated us, the bell rang, and I headed home. A short time later, I went off to college, where I would meet a wider assortment of Americans than I had realized existed. But over the years, I have been reminded of that boy’s slicing racism, the lazy habit of mind that required no white people to be present but would nonetheless please the most virulent white supremacist.

Recently, two public controversies spirited me back to the suspicion and confusion of my high-school cafeteria. All spring long, an unusually nasty feud between the rappers Drake and Kendrick Lamar has been captivating audiences, both for the quality of the music it has engendered and for the personal and malicious dimensions of the attacks it has countenanced. Much has been written about the fight, in particular about the two men’s treatment of women, which I won’t rehash here except to point out that it’s a little funny that they both portray themselves as enlightened allies while also acting as if the ultimate disparagement is to call another man feminine. Less has been said about the potency of the racial dimension, which feels like a throwback to a time before Drake’s pop-culture dominance—indeed, to a time before the historic hybridity of the Obama era—and like a distillation of the skin-deep racialism of the current social-justice movement.

Drake, who grew up in Toronto, is the son of a white Jewish mother from Canada and a Black father from Memphis. Since the release of his 2009 mixtape, So Far Gone, he has been not only the most successful visibly mixed-race rapper—and arguably pop star—but also the most visible Black male musician for some time now. Anyone at the top will attract criticism. But not even a white rapper like Eminem has been subject to the kind of racial derogation that has been hurled at Drake.

Back in 2018, the rapper Pusha T released a diss track about him for which the cover art was an old photograph of Drake performing in a cartoonish blackface. The image makes you cringe, but—as Drake explained—that was the point. Drake began his career as an actor, and he wrote that the photograph was part of a “project that was about young black actors struggling to get roles, being stereotyped and typecast … The photos represented how African Americans were once wrongfully portrayed in entertainment.” But presented without context, it appeared to be a self-evident statement of inauthenticity.

Another rapper, Rick Ross, calls Drake “white boy” again and again in his song “Champagne Moments,” released in April. In an op-ed for The Grio, the music journalist Touré explains why the insult is so effective: “We know Drake is biracial. He’s never hidden that, but many of us think of him as Black or at least as a part of the culture … On this record, Ross is out to change that.” Touré calls this “hyperproblematic,” but his tone is approving—he admires the track. “We shouldn’t be excluding biracial people from the Black community, but in a rap beef where all is fair as a way of attacking someone and undermining their credibility and their identity, it’s a powerful message.”

In a series of more high-profile records, Lamar has built on Ross’s theme, both implying and stating directly that racial categories are real, that behaviors and circumstances (like Drake’s suburban upbringing) correlate with race, and that the very mixedness of Drake’s background renders him suspect. It is an anachronistic line of ad hominem attack that is depressing to encounter a quarter of the way into the 21st century.

Lamar’s most recent Drake diss is called “Not Like Us,” and reached No. 1 on Billboard Hot 100. It goes after Drake’s cultural affiliations with the American South. “No, you not a colleague,” Lamar taunts. “You a fucking colonizer!”

It’s hard to hear that and not remember that Drake’s mother is Jewish, and that this is the same invective used to undermine Jews’ sense of belonging in Israel. Such racist habits of thought have become potent rhetorical weapons in the progressive arsenal.

The second (if smaller) controversy followed an essay on language and protest published in The New Yorker earlier this month. The novelist Zadie Smith, who is of European and African descent, argued—carefully—that it is too simplistic to regard the world as sortable into categories of oppressor and oppressed. “Practicing our ethics in the real world involves a constant testing of them,” she writes, “a recognition that our zones of ethical interest have no fixed boundaries and may need to widen and shrink moment by moment as the situation demands.” This was an attempt to take seriously the tangible fate of Hamas’s victims on October 7, the broader implications of anti-Semitism that can at times be found in criticism of Israel’s response, and the ongoing tragic loss of Palestinian life.

Despite praising the protests that have engulfed college campuses and describing a cease-fire in Gaza as “an ethical necessity,” Smith was derided on more than intellectual grounds. One widely shared tweet, accompanied by a photo of Smith, stated the criticism plainly: “I feel like Zadie Smith uses black aesthetics to conceal her deeply pedestrian white middle-class politics. People see the head wrap and the earrings made of kente cloth and confuse that for something more substantive.”

This was not the first time Smith had been regarded as a racial interloper. The author Morgan Jerkins once wrote of the emotional “hurt” she felt reading another thoughtful essay Smith published in Harper’s asking “Who owns black pain?” Smith’s transgression here, according to Jerkins, was “intellectualizing blackness” from a distance instead of feeling it. “Do not be surprised,” Jerkins warned, “if a chunk of that essay is used in discussions as to why biracial people need to take a backseat in the movement.”

The retrograde notion that thought and action necessarily flow from racial identities whose borders are definable and whose authority is heritable is both fictitious and counterproductive. “Something is afoot that is the business of every citizen who thought that the racist concepts of a century ago were gone­—and good riddance!” Barbara and Karen Fields write in their 2012 masterpiece, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life. “The continued vitality of those concepts stands as a reminder that, however important a historical watershed the election of an African-American president may be, America’s post-racial era has not been born.”

Of course, the first African American president was, like our nation and culture, himself both Black and white. One of the most disappointing—and, I have come to realize—enduring reasons the “post-racial era” continues to elude us is that it is not only the avowed racists who would hold that biographical fact against him.

==

This is why we call it neoracism, not "antiracism."

[litinart]

the death of chatterton by henry wallis (1856)

[snifekinner]

exhausted from work, lying on the sofa sipping beer as if it were tonic wine and i a sickening victorian poet dying in a garrett

[grandhotelabyss]

One must wonder indeed- verbosity aside (which we are in agreement on) would pronoun maximalism (in other words, taking all of em) qualify as bien-pensant as you’ve stated you find they/them? In any case I was relistening to the Beloved episode of the pod the other day, some of your finest work, one the best podcast episodes I’ve ever had the privilege of listening to- I mourn that we didn’t get that episode on Mason & Dixon. I do see what you mean when you’ve judged the pod not entirely successful at what it set out to be- for the most part I found the aesthetics sensible (or acceptably beyond the pale) and the politics within the threshold of acceptable (old) liberalism regarding/excitement over disreputable ideas (the only thing I remember thinking could be read as objectionable outside of humanitiesworld was the very brief intimation in one of the shock jocks episodes that you thought the left needed to return to center on gender issues) and if you’re going to go for the Red Scare crowd you probably do need to take off the gloves and say some stuff that’s genuinely offensive to regular people. That said I do miss it-there are so very few literary podcasts worth a damn out there.

Thank you! Yes, the Beloved episode is almost certainly the best, along, I think, with the aurally pyrotechnic one on Eliot. I was at times dancing around some perhaps unacceptable views, but, given the time of recording, these were more of the old-fashioned anti-war left variety. I don't regularly listen to Chapo, but I checked out their Norman Finkelstein interview out of curiosity and had to laugh at their nervous silence after he gave the full-throated Marxist anti-imperialist perspective on Putin and Ukraine. I don't go nearly as far as that, or maybe my views aren't that systematic, but still, my mission in life is not to lend my talents to the defense of NATO, especially since the CIA doesn't even pay writers for those services anymore. (Admittedly, on foreign policy the left and the right may have switched sides since my youth, as they have before.) I wouldn't have said any of the Steve Sailer stuff Anna and Dasha eventually fell for, not because I was hiding it, but because I don't believe it or don't care about it. Even Anna and Dasha seem to have ended their Sailer arc with the recent Thomas Chatterton Williams episode where he genially upbraided them for it. Surely it's "problematic" enough in this atmosphere to agree with Thomas Chatterton Williams's racial politics!—which, for the most part, I do.

Re: the pronoun question, partially Major Arcana is an attempt to find out. I have they/them characters later on and am finding it basically impossible to avoid referential confusion, so I'm just leaning into it for a delirious effect. (When Joyce Carol Oates objected to they/them on strictly linguistic rather than gender grounds—as we've seen lately, on gender per se, she's with the left—it doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone that she did so from the perspective of someone who wants to write 800-page novels as quickly as possible.) On the other hand, the constant repetition of "Simon Magnus," not to mention that I've elected to call every character by first and last name, has an almost Steinian avant-garde abrasiveness I both love and hate, or in any case wouldn't have thought myself capable of. I'm not usually warm to mere verbal hijinks in a novel, but it seems to me that this experimental fiction is running a large-scale social experiment on these linguistic interventions and their underlying logic and effect rather than just for the sake of toying with the signifier or whatever.

[lesamis]

1810s dashboard but it's niche drama

💛 heartofanna Following

imagine cancelling someone for saying war is bad

🧵 sharethewoe Follow

#didn't expect better from w*rdsworth but some people i rly thought i could count on…… #anyway we will live to see this empire fall. can't stop history lol (via @heartofanna)

speaking as someone who was press ganged at the age of 17 to serve in his majesty's royal navy i couldn't be more grateful for your poem. young men like me are cannon fodder and you spoke for so many of us. fuck napoleon but fuck parliament even more.

86 notes

chatterpwned-deactivated78345629743

stable forgiving virtuous flourishing in my lane definitely not buying poison moisturized unbothered never been better

chatterpwned-deactivated78345629743

me when i lie

179302 notes

🏛 mynoseisfine Follow

Settling this once and for all. What does the public actually think about the Parthenon marbles debate:

🦉 realminerva Follow

lol i know it’s you lord elgin

🦉 realminerva Follow

like we joke and all but fully aside from the fact that removing the sculptures from greek soil was vulturine and opportunistic etc, it’s really just the tip of a frankly gigantic mountain of imperialist bullshit. let’s not pretend we haven’t been brutally killing hundreds who resisted oppression in india, LITERALLY BOMBED A NEUTRAL EUROPEAN CAPITAL, and embarrassed ourselves in the charge against napoleon for years now. pathetic ass empire & evil as hell to boot. @mynoseisfine the greeks who carved your marbles millennia ago would kick your tory ass so hard

3661 notes

🎀 emmawoodhousestan Follow

how do i still keep seeing thomas chatterton's final post being reblogged, wtf is wrong with you freaks??? he was seventeen it was tragic and horrible and happened ages ago. he was a kid just let him rest

294 notes

🍎 masque-off Following

callout post for @castleyeah @lordsidmouth @officialcoe @parliamentofficial: they oppress, murder and famish the british working people & also suck majorly

⛪ castleyeah Follow

sour cuz you’re unfit to have custody of your own kids huh

🍎 masque-off Following

proud to be the dad of a newborn who could already rend your pudding spine asunder with a mere glance

187 notes

🦆 mallardturner Following

finished this today 😊

44 notes

😎 chadeharold Follow

why is it always “you’re risking your life and legacy & will get yourself killed before the age of five and twenty” and never how was swimming the hellespont the hellespont looked fun was it fun

🎭 loved-joanna Mutuals

ohhh my god you swam the hellespont five years ago?? wooow should we tell everyone?? should we throw a party?? should we invite famous hero of greek myth leander who swam the hellespont

😎 chadeharold Follow

@loved-joanna look we never had any beef & don’t have to start this now. it’s cool that you’re sticking up for my ex, you guys were friends first, but just know that i’ve always trusted your opinion on my work & genuinely respect and admire you & would still be up for a collab whenever.

🎭 loved-joanna Mutuals

yea sure why don’t your lips collab with my ass

😎 chadeharold Follow

on it boss

1009 notes

#literally call me. down if you are

🍂 endymion Follow

sorry is it me or is the assassin who stabbed german bootleg wordsworth kinda…… 🥵

💄 biprincesscharlotte Mutuals

JOHN KEATS????????

2427 notes

#i'm p sure this is the author of lamia thirstposting on main??? help

🌾 huntsmanx Follow

romanticism this romanticism that why don’t you romanticise universal suffrage and rights for labouring people

🌾 huntsmanx Follow

anyone else in jail for seditious libel

🏹 axelaidtotheroot Mutuals

lmao i'm one of the “anyone else”s and i know you’re enjoying family visits and apparently some kind of cushy armchair situation, plus tons of books. try being in here as a spencean dude they won’t even let me learn how to write. worst of all some evangelical came by yesterday just to proselytize & put me “on the right path” fml

8341 notes

🗻 mounttambora Follow

y'all i don't feel so good :/

59 notes

[mariacallous]

This Tuesday’s election saw the culmination of Republicans’ long-standing effort to attract people of color, with the party tapping into shared feelings of political disenfranchisement and abandonment between working-class Black, white, and Latino or Hispanic voters without college degrees. While diversifying their base was clearly an objective, Republicans also turned “equity” into a dirty word—criticizing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and “woke-ism” to undermine tools Democrats have used to address racial disparities and the inequitable distribution of government resources. 

Meanwhile, racially coded language was utilized along the campaign trial, shocking some voters but rallying others who either appreciated racial tropes or were willing to ignore them in the face of economic plight. Public debates platformed racist tropes such as whether Haitian immigrants ate pets, if immigrants were taking Black jobs, and the dangers rather than the assets of majority-Black cities.

In defeat, Democrats struggled to convince working-class voters of all races that the party’s platform addresses their concerns, likely due to their very targeted focus on the issues of Black and Latino or Hispanic voters. For instance, in the weeks leading up to the election, Vice President Kamala Harris introduced an “Opportunity Agenda” specifically for Black men, including a proposal to provide “1 million loans that are fully forgivable to Black entrepreneurs and others to start a business.” This was in the face of a litany of lawsuits against racially explicit remedies for discrimination. 

Sticking to this brand of identity politics—in which individuals from specific religions, ethnicities, or social backgrounds form exclusive political alliances—may be a reason Democrats lost the race so thoroughly. 

In a social media post, writer Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote, “The fact that so many Americans of all ethnicities, geographies and colors wanted to see Democrats pay a resounding price not just for policy decisions but for a larger circa-2020 indulgence paid to so many deeply unpopular activist perspectives simply has to be taken seriously.” And a pre-election New York Times piece stated that identity politics has lost its influence since the aftermath of George Floyd.  

However, it’s evident that both political parties leveraged identity politics and racism in the 2024 election, particularly with nonracial identities such as educational level. Identity politics is central to our understanding of constituency, so its practice in many forms is not going to go away. So, rather than avoid the topic, reckoning with the racial politics of the 2024 election will help the country move forward.  

What should both parties consider moving forward? 

Through their votes, working-class voters expressed that they’re feeling pain, contradicting economists’ assertions of a supposedly strong economy. Trump already had a commanding hold of white voters at 55% in 2024, and gained significant ground with Latino or Hispanic voters (increasing from 35% in 2020 to 42% in 2024) and Black voters (from 8% in 2020 to 16% in 2024). Much of that gain came from people without a college degree. For voters who never attended college, support for Trump increased from the past election from 54% in 2020 to 62% in 2024.  

People without a college degree are a constituency; they have an identity. People of different races without a college degree—whom we loosely refer to as the “working class”—are ostensibly feeling pain. Factories that left for other countries didn’t just employ middle America white workers—they employed Black, Latino or Hispanic, Native American, and Asian American workers as well. These multiracial workers have been impacted by policies such as North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and they share another identity: underemployed, unemployed, and broke. Not treating them as a unified voting bloc is to miss the mark. Trump’s rhetoric tapped into this multiracial community.  

Discrimination is another source of pain, particularly for Black and Latino or Hispanic voters. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that Black and Latino or Hispanic people face higher unemployment rates compared to white people. This is especially true for women: As of fall 2024, white women’s unemployment rate was 4%, compared to 6.2% for Black women and 5.9% for Latino or Hispanic women. Studies also show discrimination in the justice system, with Black, Latino or Hispanic, and Native American men facing higher arrest and incarceration rates for similar offenses compared to white men. And when they are arrested, they are incarcerated for longer periods: Black men are given sentences 13.4% longer than white men, and Latino or Hispanic men are given sentences 11.2% longer than white men.

Democrats’ rhetoric often treats these policy issues only as a moral ones. But one of the most difficult challenges that we face as a country is understanding how discrimination not only robs specific groups of attaining well-being, but also throttles economic and societal growth for us all. Equity is not a zero-sum game, yet Democratic and Republican rhetoric treats it as such. The proverbial pie can grow by addressing inequity across race and place. 

The quality of our social, economic, and political futures is inextricably linked to how inclusive our neighborhoods, local economies, and schools are and will become. The country can easily slip back into a recession if we’re not careful to maximize the talents of all Americans. Reckoning with discrimination isn’t divisive—it gives us an opportunity to grow as a society. 

The voting public and both parties must demand concrete policy solutions that will make all Americans economically secure. Discrimination isn’t just about hatred. It also commonly comes in the form of abandonment and neglect. Americans need and want a policy agenda that uplifts people of all races who have been denied opportunities to gain economic security to advance their well-being. The voting behavior of working-class Latino or Hispanic and Black men shows they understand this. 

Equity isn’t a dirty word to be avoided. Quite the contrary, it’s a quintessential American concept. Equity is behind the assumed level playing field that is central to the American dream. Our tax system’s ability-to-pay principle—which holds that the tax burden an individual carries should be proportionate to their wealth—is based on equity grounds. Pragmatically, that means researchers and government officials must continue to collect data that examines the distributive impacts of policy to make necessary adjustments. Researchers are often guilty of rolling their eyes at equity matters, opting for macro measures of performance and growth. This is partly why many economists downplay the role prices play in a country’s economic performance, as they often overlook how prices impact various groups differently.  

The branding of equity as divisive or even anti-democratic is clearly a political tactic to distract us from the policies the public wants and needs. Not addressing it is a form of neglect. 

Democrats and Republicans must learn how to use equity as a unifying force. This year’s presidential election is a referendum to ensure that white people in rural Pennsylvania as well as Black and Latino or Hispanic people in inner city Philadelphia have an economy that improves the quality of all their lives.   

The Republican Party may have swept the election, but if they fail to deliver on the referendum for economic security laid down by working-class voters of all stripes, they too will find themselves on the outs. Republicans will learn that avoiding the word “equity” won’t make the pain of not delivering it go away. Just ask the Democrats. 

[kaleb-is-definitely-sane]

Being a teenage writer is like: I can either invent a literary genre or kill myself with arsenic.

[sewerdraws]

what do you mean french music ? 👀(and experimental 👀)

Are you perhaps interested in discovering french music ?

Okay i'm a HUGE music nerd, not so much in terms of music theory or playing instruments, but more history of music, thematics, leitmotifs, relationships between musicians etc...

i also HAPPEN to be super into translating so i already have like... 4 or 5 french songs translated into english that i could be putting somewhere on a google doc for people to read as they listen to a song ? Artists i've translated so far include Orelsan, Feu!Chatterton and Klo Pelgag, but i'd like to translate a lot of Stromae and all the ones i'm about to list below as well...

Okay i'm gonna put a read more here because i'm gonna dump a shitton of thoughts and suggestions

Basically what fascinates me about french music and that i'd like to share is the ability and reocurring will to play with the language, puns, tricks, it's incredibly complex and awesome, but would be very hard to get for a non-native even with good french comprehension. Hence the translations, i try to carry over the wordplays and themes !

One of my fav french musicians called simply "Jacques" has english captions on a lot of his songs already and is an incredibly touching and heartfelt writer, it's a great introduction to what i mean. I'd recommend his single "Rien" but be warned the captions somehow have super fucked up timing :(((

More incredible songwriters that fit into this category are Thomas Fersen (whimsical short stories), Brassens (basically old french rural Tom Lehrer), Odezenne (old school french rap)

I'm very obsessed with Orelsan because he's a now nearly 40 yo that has been rapping since he was 16 and while he's always criticized societal topics, you can see how much nuance and wisdom he's gained over time, and his latest hits are PUNCHES IN THE GUTS in terms of storytelling and phrasing.

The band "La Femme" made a couple songs to make fun of how french they are, one is "Ciao Paris" and the other is "Foreigner" and if you're a native english speaker you'll get a kick out of the accent.

ALSO i'm nowhere near patriotic but if there's one thing i'm proud of France for is how much we fuck with electronic and experimental and how many french artists paved the way for current music. Check out "the little ships" by Jean-Jacques Perrey. You probably heard it in a meme or other before ! Well that's one of the historical first uses of sampling, using the Moog Synthetizer !!

Nowadays you still have french (or francophone by the way, Stromae and Klo Pelgag are belgian) artists breaking grounds in electronic music. Daft Punk of course, but there's also Justice, C2C, Woodkid, Apashe, General Elektriks, Caravan Palace and many more !!! You might have even known some of these artists without knowing they're francophone ! Ummm also the woman that literally created tektonik is french, she's called Yelle and she's still making awesome stuff !

AND the final note is that i love how "goofy" is so ingrained in our musical culture. Some of the most recognized artists are parody artists, pretty similar to how Al Yankovic was perceived. Phillippe Katerine makes absurdist songs with sometimes thinly veiled political messages (good ones, usually) and literally every french person knows his name !

[mosertone]

Looking through history we discover that there have always been depressed artists. Nevertheless, the idea of the suffering artist, writer, poet, or composer came into existence with Romanticism, which later expanded to include the macabre. There was just something about the tormented soul that seemed to lend itself to greater expressiveness. It's still with us today. Pain didn't have the same charm previous to the Romantic era. Nevertheless, whether it's Beethoven or Van Gogh, many consider the expressions of a tortured soul to have more weight.

Ironically, Claude Monet and Picasso are two of today's most popular artists and neither's life was burdened with unusual hardships. I've attached this Romantic painting which I think embodies the tortured artist. It's entitled The Death of Chatterton by the English artist Henry Wallis. The subject is the suicide death of the depressed poet Thomas Chatterton. - Tom Mallon

[drowndophelia]

hiiii <3 i’m charlie, short for charlotte; 19, she/they. not new to tumblr but new account and am looking for moots!!

i think this is mainly gonna be a history/shakespeare blog but i’m not sure. my twt is @/drowndophelia too so you can find me there being strange and silly.

fav historical figures: lady jane grey, richard iii, arthur tudor prince of wales, thomas chatterton, jane seymour

anyways i’m shite at intro posts so just shoot me a message or an ask!!! i’m mainly here to make friends :3

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"The most shocking aspect of today’s mainstream antiracist discourse is the extent to which it mirrors ideas of race—specifically the specialness of whiteness—that white supremacist thinkers cherish.

“Woke” antiracism proceeds from the premise that race is real—if not biological, then socially constructed and therefore equally if not more significant still—putting it in sync with toxic presumptions of white supremacism that would also like to insist on the fundamentality of racial difference.

Working toward opposing conclusions, racists and many antiracists alike eagerly reduce people to abstract color categories, all the while feeding off of and legitimizing each other, while any of us searching for gray areas and common ground get devoured twice."

-- Thomas Chatterton Williams