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sarahsavagephotography · 7 years ago

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Riding the Dirt

My dirt biking journey started in March 2016 with a level 1 and 2 off-roading biking course with https://www.motoscotland.com.

I'm a forty-something female who sat on a motorbike again at the beginning of 2015. The last time I rode a motorbike was in 1996/7 after completing my bike test followed by brief periods of scooter riding between 2005 -2008 living overseas for a while. My biking experience therefore was limited; it was just a way of getting from A to B.

In 2015 a new job closer to home gave me the idea of commuting by motorbike. I booked a couple of ‘Rusty Rider’ lessons with a local motorbike training school, http://www.valemototraining.co.uk and then built up my confidence riding a 125cc Suzuki Van Van to and from work, mixed with a few days out riding with hubby just for fun. On one of those days riding home from work during that summer, there had been a downpour during the afternoon, which made the country lane route home very slimy and slippy. I had a scare that resulted in me being very close to rear-ending a car that had braked suddenly! The road was so slippy, my brakes didn’t do much to slow me down and my life seemed to move in slow motion from that point as I skidded on what felt like ice over several metres. How I managed to stay upright and not hit the back of the car in front was nothing short of a miracle. It certainly wasn't anything to do with my bike skills. I arrived home a nervous wreck. After explaining to hubby what had happened he immediately said I’d benefit from some off-road riding. He has many years experience of off-road motorbiking and competing in enduros. He has always believed that his off road motorbiking has made him a better road biker and felt that some off-road biking skills would benefit my road riding. After researching different training schools, hubby came across an article about MotoScotland. It described the training tailored to build skills that could potentially be a lifesaver on the road. I was instantly sold. Now I should add, that there are many off road training venues closer to home, but Motoscotland’s unique selling point of making you a better road biker through learning off-road biking skills was the attraction for me. The more we read about the services that MotoScotland offered, we knew it was just what I needed and hubby was happy to come along for the ride. A few months later we were at Inveraray ready for our two days out on two wheels in the Scottish wilderness. Clive Rumbold, owner and instructor at Motoscotland packed so much in over those two days. I started day one a nervous wreck; I ended day two elated and feeling like a mountain goat on two wheels! Clive's cheery disposition and constant encouragement combined with his wealth of knowledge and skills inspired confidence in everyone. With him evaluating and talking through everything, you learned where you went wrong, tried again, improved and moved on. There seemed to be no type of terrain that we could not cover. I had a go at everything and pleasantly surprised myself each time.

The biggest surprise of that weekend in Inveraray was how much I’d enjoyed off-road biking. That certainly wasn’t something I’d bargained for, but I left knowing that I wanted a dirt bike in my life. Needless to say, hubby was pretty happy when I announced that to him.

Since then, to keep up my skills we’ve had a couple of short holidays to Spain and Cyprus to do some off-road riding in the sunshine. It was a good way to build up my confidence on a dirt bike, though it was at times pretty tough riding over rocky terrain and I had many tumbles and spills, but learned from them and moved on, returning home each time with a view to one day having a dirt bike in the garage!

In June this year we returned to Motoscotland to do their Level 3 course. I wasn’t sure that my skill levels would be adequate having only 5 days riding in Spain and Cyprus under my belt, but hubby reassured me and once there I realised that my doubts were unfounded. During day 1 we consolidated skills that were learned during our level 1 and 2 course and then Clive upped the ante! We were pushed, it was hard work, but it was lots of fun. Clive never stopped evaluating and progressing each rider. He also managed to fit in 1 to 1 training with everyone throughout the sessions and seemed to have an uncanny knack of knowing when you’ve messed up even when he wasn’t looking! It’s no exaggeration to say that I left Inveraray after that weekend feeling a huge sense of achievement and still determined to have a dirt bike in my life.

As ever, you get back home and life and work take over. Before you know it the months have moved on, the off-road biking weekend is a distant memory and the thought of owning one a pipedream. That is until the morning of your Birthday and you’re handed a small gift, which turns out to be a highlighter pen box stuffed with lots of paper roll! After unwrapping what seemed like reams and reams of paper I ended up with a key in my hand! To say I was speechless is an understatement. I couldn’t quite comprehend what I was looking at until hubby told me it was in the garage – a beautiful 2010 Beta Alp 200 in near pristine condition. Needless to say, there were endless questions, not least of all, how did he manage to sneak a motorbike home without me knowing about it…? I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed at his sneakiness or concerned that he’d done it so well…!

So, from that day my full time dirt biking journey began - after a shopping trip for helmet, body armour, kneepads, etc.

Here starts a new chapter of my biking life… in the dirt, mud, clay, rocks, grass… Watch this space!

Being a photographer, I had to have a mini photoshoot with my new machine while it still looked near new with no dings, scratches and scuffs.

Experiencing the local terrain.

Even hubby couldn’t resist having a go on my new wheels!

A post shared by Sarah Savage (@sarahsavagephotographyuk) on Oct 15, 2017 at 2:23pm PDT

Bouncing, slipping and sliding! As you can see, it wasn’t pretty and I’ve plenty of room for improvement!

For superb off-road biking lessons go to https://www.motoscotland.com

For fun trail riding holidays in Spain and Cyprus, visit http://www.trailworld.co.uk and https://www.exclaimtours.com/the-tours

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6four1-blog · 8 years ago

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June 10th, 2017 (Kavousi, Crete, Greece)

I haven’t really been using my computer lately due to both inconvenience and pure exhaustion from the hard manual labor. I would like to write a few of these long entries that are separate from my journal as passages that are meant to be read by other people. If you were here in Kavousi with me, then you will (most likely) be reading this at the end of our excavation. If I am sharing this with you, it means I felt like we got decently close and I hope this serves as a reminder for the magical summer we shared, no matter how brief our interactions may have been. However, if you are family, a friend from home, a friend from Duke, or just someone who came across this blog, I hope you enjoy reading about my culture shock and taking a sneak peak into my train of thought. Now, it has been about two weeks, and the writer within me itches like a rough patch of eczema and being away from a keyboard is really tearing me inside out. I shall try my best to recall everything that has happened so far to the best of my ability.

I remember the very first day as clear as these oceans’ waters. I had arrived at the Heraklion airport full of anxiety and incredibly unsure if I made the right decision in coming to dig at Azoria. The airport itself was rather shabby and run-down; the lone building was tainted with a smudged layer of brown that can be found at all hot and humid countries. The same smother is visible on almost any old building in my home town Xiamen on the Southern Chinese coast. I remember stepping out of the airport to a beating sun that cooked me in my black Zumiez joggers as if I was a goat prepped for a Minoan feast. There were a few other students who were also part of the Azoria excavations and there were quite a few who I identified well before boarding the plane in Athens. I would soon discover that the majority of them are from Trent University and had already known each other. They seemed so well knit already that a part of me was deeply worried that this experience would be extremely lonely. Luckily for me, one of them had the courage to introduce himself to an Asian boy who clearly seemed out of place. His name was Alex and he would turn out to be my trench master for these upcoming seven weeks. The man had the build of an Ohio State linesman but the voice of a gentle scholar. His words were of something incredibly reassuring, that the people who worked on this project and even those who returned year after year were quirky and friendly in their own unique way.

The drive to Kavousi was quiet and lonely, as all the Trent University Canadians fell asleep in perfect sync. I, already exhausted from nearly 20 hours of non-stop travel, somehow couldn’t fall asleep as I observed the small Cretan villages that came and went as if I was scrolling through a stack of old photographs. The houses bore an uncanny resemblance to those that I found in my travels around rural China. Everything seemed to be built to just merely fulfill its purpose and most of the architecture was furnished just enough to get the job done, but not enough to be considered as beautiful pieces of art or as revelations in engineering. The highway itself was a project stuck in time, as if the construction workers finished just enough so that the rocky slopes wouldn’t collapse before leaving and returning to live their normal lives. The mountains here were sheer, steep, and dry like the ancient pottery of this land. The flora and fauna spawned across the land in a sporadic fashion much like Floridan shrubs back home in North America. The trees and bushes were never too tall to block one’s view of the island’s silhouette. Their pigments bore a much lighter shade of green compared to the Western white pine and red cedar from my home near the foot of the Northwest Rocky Mountains. Since the Northwest trees liberated a distinct aromatic smoke when burnt, later on, when these Greek trees were used as firewood in the local pizza ovens, the smell of the smoke was unfamiliar to me and my olfactory quaked with a nonnative affect that I simply cannot explain with words.

After what it seemed to be a life time of driving, Catherine finally pulled up at the Tholos hotel where I would be staying for the next seven weeks. I found myself in a triple with two much older guys, one from Chicago who goes to the University of Kentucky named Weston, and another who goes to the University of Iowa named Rick. Weston was 23 and Rick was 25, both of whom are substantially older than my meager 19. Our room was incredibly simple and plainly furnished with a few pieces of furniture and simple ornaments. The owners tried their best to decorate the room but, coming from Vancouver and Duke, the decorations simply did not exceed my expectations in any way.

It was then when Weston strolled into the room and introduced himself. He had an incredibly gregarious demeanor that struck me as someone who was exceptionally comfortable with talking to people and someone who was god damn confident in his ability to strike up a good conversation. In my heart, there was a flash of envy and awe, best summarized as an unique respect for someone who seemed to be very open to talking about different topics and very good at conversing with people of diverse cultures and backgrounds. He certainly had faith in his speech and strong personality that I always lack when I first meet people. Weston and I slowly trotted up to Maria’s taverna for a quick drink and bite of food. What we talked about on that walk up to Kavousi, and the countless walks many nights and days to follow, will be a subject for another discussion. On our walk back that night, we briefly met David. He was walking up to Maria’s from Tholos in a near pitch-black street lit with out-of-commission street lamps, making him look rather menacing and scary. In that moment, I had no idea that he would become one of my best friends here at Azoria.

It was either on the same day or the day after when I met the rest of the girls that would eventually become a good component of my friends here. A few gave such distinct first impressions that I will never forget. Alana, a girl from John Hopkins, seemed like the biggest goofball and happy-go-lucky daughter that a mother could ever ask for. Her constant commentary on her own actions and the world around her just brightened the crowd and could make you laugh any time, any day. She had a humor that could penetrate the barriers in society created by controversial issues surrounding socioeconomic status, race, and culture. Having her around in a discussion and in a group activity was an absolute pleasure and just made the times much merrier. Courtney was just so tall and impossible to miss, but what truly imprinted on me was her willingness to give you her undivided attention while you were talking. Her gaze into your eyes as you spoke was one of constant thought, careful never to miss a word and unwilling to let your voice go unheard in the large mob. Then there was Callie, who immediately rubbed in my face that UNC won the national NCAA title this year and attempted to marginalize Duke. However, after getting over the fact I am a Duke student and people from Duke are not all as bad as Grayson Allen, her expressions and mannerisms became that of close sister that I have never had. It was her who attempted to include me in group activities and she was more than often the first to ask how I was doing on the brutal 7 am work mornings. Somewhere in the dark I saw a spark for a friendship that can be maintained for many months and perhaps even years to come. There was also Nikki, the girl with probably the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. They were a bright light-blue that twinkled even better than even the dazzling constellations during a night in the middle of the Sahara. She had the smily eyes that only those who were deeply loved by their mother and the father would ever have.

The first few days, including the orientation, flew by as if I was driving down the Interstate 95 from Raleigh to Savannah. It took a few days for my body to adjust to the amount of heat and sunlight we had to constantly work in. I was imbibing more than a gallon of water in a span of just 12 hours and my body was still constantly screeching at me for more. Working with the skaliskiri was the forearm and wrist workout that I never bothered doing at Duke. After the first week, I swear there was a tendon in my right arm that was ready to just rupture and give in. The ibuprofen numbed it as it always does and my forearms eventually developed the endurance and strength they needed for a seven-hour work day. After this trip, I don’t think I will skip forearm day ever again. As of two weeks in, sieving seems to be my favorite activity up on site. At the sieve, I got the chance to bond with Kate, Marissa, Gabriela, and Lexi. We all loved to sieve and had many conversations about home, deep thoughts, and things greater than our own microcosms. The labor was physically tiring and mentally draining but every once in a while you find big shards of pottery or bone, and these little finds are what keeps you going and digging. That yes, maybe it sucks to be coated in dirt and constantly harassed by horseflies, but the possibility of finding a cool piece of goat bone with my next scarp kept me, and I assume the rest of my trench, going onwards and forwards. Our trench on the western slope is always blessed with a refreshing breeze that came from the Aegean up north. It was as if the old gods were constantly sending down their regards and encouragement in the most comforting and non-verbal way possible.

The few hours after work were probably the most defining moments so far. For the first week at least, the norm for us was to head down to the beach and go for a light swim. We found a little shop that recently opened and the owner is a Cypriot native and was once a professor in Athens for more years than I have been alive. He approached me on our very first encounter and asked me whether I was Japanese or Chinese. Perhaps it was then when I realized that I, being an Asian person in a small town that does not get its fair share of Asian tourism, not mention young Asian travelers, am literally an animal out of the zoo for most of the people here in Kavousi. It was during these afternoon strolls and beach talks when I started to appreciate Weston and David more and more. We had radically different upbringings; just to give an example, I didn’t recognize a single song that David showed me. My innate attitudes about socializing with different people started to morph as I came to the realization that our cultural and background differences were so easily overcome by similar senses of humor and topics of interest. It was remarkably satisfying to grow closer and begin to understand David. He had the shell of a tough guy who seemed to have seen and endured too much for someone his age. A part of those eyes burned like an aching scar that could easily tear open. I later found out that he had been terribly bullied in his adolescent years and, as a result, he carries himself with an aura of confidence and belligerence that utterly refuses to be hurt in the same way ever again. But underneath that stout façade, there was a young man who simply wanted to be listened to, understood, and trusted. I would be a very rich man if I could just get five euros whenever his and my humor clicked like the gears of a nice Swiss timepiece. Not only does the guy have a talent for talking and deep-thinking, but he would also become a very successful professional fly-swatter if he wanted to.

Later on in the second week, the Greek workmen started inviting the three of us to drink with them after work. In Chinese and Canadian society, and to some extent American society, workmen are not considered a great demographic to be associated with. Many were known to blow their small earnings on hedonistic pleasures such as prostitutes and drugs. However, these Greek workmen were some of the most down-to-earth people I have ever met. These were the video gamers, the big brothers, the fathers, and the engineering students who are native to Kavousi and enjoying meeting people from around the world. Maybe the most distinct workman I met was Giwrgos, whom refers to himself as Katis. Katis’ English was so impressive and his voice was one that reminded you of your best roommate. When he lent a helping hand, you could feel the care in his touch, the sincerity in his voice, and the simple desire to get to know you better and become your best friend. He once went out of his way to go to his house and fetch his car just to drive me, Weston, and David back to our hotel rooms. His kindness and comforting demeanour will take him so far if he ever chooses to leave Greece and work elsewhere, because I simply don’t see him not being able to fit in anywhere he goes.

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ftwrthtx · 7 years ago

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UFC 3 is set to release this week but we have already stepped into the octagon. Was it ready for the bell, or should it return to training camp?

Read our review to find out.

The UFC video game franchise has grown quite a bit since it’s first installment and really feels like it’s been around longer than it has. Last year’s release was a decent edition and garnered some pretty good review scores, but was lacking in the career mode area. This years release wanted to change that and the G.O.A.T. career mode in UFC 3 is light years ahead of what was offered in UFC 2.

Before we dive into more on GOAT mode, the base game itself has also seem some major improvements. First thing EA Sports did was to get back in the motion capture ring using their new Real Player Motion tech that captured smoother action from each fighter. Not only that, but when it came to capturing combos EA didn’t just capture a bunch of different strikes to copy and paste together later, but instead captured full combos by a fighter so that those animations would look and feel more natural, and they do. As folks that love a good striker, seeing a smooth three punch combo like a Right hook – Left uppercut – Right hook put someone on the canvas in sweet succession is not only eye pleasing, but satisfying as well.

The controls were revamped a bit as well, but not to the point of making the game feel totally different. Blocking is much easier and transitioning from defense to offense felt much quicker. This gives the stand-up modes a more boxing like feel which comes in handy on a couple of other non-standard UFC modes. More on that later. The ground game hasn’t changed much at all but you can turn on simple a defense that uses button presses instead of analog stick controls. All in all, the controls felt better and easier to use when standing and boxing.

As I said earlier, career mode is light years ahead of last years release. The goal isn’t just to fight and win a championship, the goal is to become the Greatest of all Time (G.O.A.T.). Depending on the difficulty level you choose, this can either be fairly easy to achieve or it could be downright impossible. Once you have achieved it, a new difficulty is unlocked called Legendary that is very unforgiving and keeps you from being able to restart a fight if you got the crap beat out of you.

You’ll start your career out in the WFA, which is like a minor league system that is used to train and evaluate up and coming fighters. EA Sports does use their Gameface technology for UFC 3 if you want a more personalized experience, and it works pretty well. We did run into a problem with the Gameface page loading due to having used it with UFC 2 but finally figured out if we went to the gender selection page of their system it allowed us to start over. The likeness to a real person is pretty uncanny and you can use any person’s image as long as you have front and profile shots.

To start your career you’ll have a couple of fights in the WFA in which to impress Dana White, and depending on how you do, you’ll have a couple of different paths possible for you. Win both fights by KO and you’ll be in the UFC. Win one and lose one and you may find yourself on the UFC reality show vying for a shot in the UFC. Get your butt kicked twice and you’ll probably be asked to keep working at your craft in the WFA. It is also possible to make it to the UFC, only to get your butt kicked back down to the WFA. The career mode isn’t set in stone, and each person’s path may be different depending on your skill level and your results, so don’t expect it to always be a linear path.

Once you make it out of the WFA you’ll have your first rival mouthing off at you on social media. You can respond in several different ways, either being aggressive, passive, of dismissive, but eventually you’ll have to fight them and that is the key to progression. Each fight is broken down into fight selection, training camp, and then the fight itself. Fight selection isn’t too important until you’ve started to make a name for yourself, and then you’ll need to keep an eye on the stats of your opponents. Even on the easier settings, some of these guys will be able to easily defeat you if their stats are way above yours. Each fight will also list how many weeks will be available for your training camp, so pay attention to that as well.

Once you have a fight selected, you’ll then get to choose a training gym and these are as varied as the available fighting styles you chose from early on. We found that just because you are a striker, that doesn’t mean you should always train in a boxing gym, as you’ll need to be a more balanced fighter if you want to achieve that GOAT status. Make sure you can stand and bang, but at the same time make sure you can defend against those submissions too. The ground game might not be your forte but you better at least be able to defend yourself against someone whose forte is.

Each training camp is broken down into a certain number weeks where each week you’ll have 100 training points to spend on either making your fighter better or more popular. Both areas are important in becoming the GOAT so spread those points wisely. Learning new moves is important but in the grand scheme of things, having more buys for your PPV is a necessity as well. You can also spar with a fighter that will mimic your upcoming opponent and will give you a key to victory. Do this early in your training regimen and you just might be able to learn something that will help you knock the guys head off early, limiting any damage you may incur. Your longevity in the fight game might thank you.

If you need to take a break from your road to GOATness, you can jump right into the octagon in several other modes. Snoop Dogg joins the announcers for a best of 3 Knockout Mode where each fighter has a limited number of hits and no ground game required. It’s a fun mode but some of Snoop’s comments in the past may have soured some UFC fans toward Snoop. In a more traditional, almost Fight Night mode but with both feet and fists, Stand and Bang uses the game’s health system instead of a point system.

EA Sports also includes an Ultimate Team mode where you can build a fight team based off of playing cards which can be purchased or earned by completing challenges and ranking up. The online portion of the game gives you plenty to see and do, and if you played through the career mode, your skills learned just may come in handy there.

EA Sports UFC 3 is a pretty complete game this year and live roster updates should keep the game fresh and fun for some time to to come. The road to G.O.A.T. is definitely worth your time if you are a UFC fight fan.

EA Sports UFC 3 review code provided by publisher. For more information on scoring, please read: What our review scores really mean.

EA Sports UFC 3 Review – On The Road to Being the G.O.A.T. UFC 3 is set to release this week but we have already stepped into the octagon. Was it ready for the bell, or should it return to training camp?

#EA Sports UFC 3 #ps4 #Review #Xbox One

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ratherhavetheblues · 7 years ago

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INGMAR BERGMAN’S THE VIRGIN SPRING“Big, wonderful dreams!”

Now, as we open a third can of worms installed by the inimitable, Ingmar Bergman, we need to open our eyes to the seriously bizarre communication these films consist of. Unlike the catch-as-catch-can opportunities to turn a buck by fulsome cinematic and mainstream cultural techniques, Bergman puts to himself and his clients two simultaneous and contradictory presentations. Why did he work like that? He didn’t want to starve. And, moreover, he was obliged to maintain—with reservations—that the mainstream has much to recommend.

The works, in question now, introduce with silent-film-optics-brilliance, figures variously galvanized by the resources of the history of Christian assurance. Though the most overt aspects of the narratives very convincingly appear to sustain the integrity of loyalty to a Christian power, there coincides an ambush exploding the entire enterprise and mooting the uncanny ways of fearlessness.

The era when Bergman displayed such an impressive changeup pitch was perhaps less experimental and volatile than our own. But his assumption that he was on to a crucial singularity resonates—to those with advanced reflective skills—in our own millennium. The films, Through a Glass Darkly and The Seventh Seal, subtly found much amiss in insisting that strong but fabricated personalities could put one on easy street. In our film today, The Virgin Spring (1960), only a last minute convulsion cements that whimsy. But, all the better from our point of view, the drama concerns a very flesh-and-blood problematic, namely, distemper.

A devout farming couple (in medieval Sweden) sends off their adolescent daughter to a distant church in order to fulfil a clerical edict that a virgin deliver candles for the observances. She is intercepted by three goatherds who rape and kill her. The murderers, having heard from the naïve and smug girl how opulent her family farm is, pay a visit and—something the goats might have red-flagged—attempt to sell the victim’s expensive and now bloodied clothes. Her father beats and stabs to death the naïve trouble-makers. This triggers for the God-fearing parents a spate of fence-mending. The whole retinue of the rough-hewn estate is led to the girl’s corpse by an eye-witness. At that site, the contrite and grief-stricken killer looks upward and repeatedly addresses his Lord. “I don’t understand you!” Then he adds, “Yet I still ask for forgiveness… I don’t know any other way to live… I will, with these hands, build a church here.” The distraught parents embrace their child for the last time; and then they and their underlings submit to the mass hallucination (a couple of no-names from the staff bemused in accurately seeing nothing—as per the skeptics in the other two films cited) of a spring coming into force where the girl’s head had lain. (Hallucination being prominent in those two aforementioned films.) A young semi-adherent to paganism, who had been charged to see that the trip be a safe and happy one, imagines being refreshed by the “waters” and now becomes as devout as the others on hand.

I hope you can appreciate that this angle on the eventuation leaves a lot of questions. A close look at the film’s first moments can introduce a level of sensibility from which to comprehend what really happens here. We’re confronted with a ragged, swarthy and beautiful young woman, crouching over a fire pit, with arms extended. Very definitely, it is the coursing of the fire per se, and not the kindling of the cooking apparatus, which absorbs her. She exhales with vigor and with a sense of urgency, her cheeks puffed-out grotesquely. “Odin, come!” is her non-breakfasty wake-up call. She pushes a long wooden pole upward to allow the smoke to escape from a trap-door beyond the ceiling. As she looks upward to the billows she is filmed close-up from the floor, and the large features of her face bring to mind an early cave-dweller, more primitive animal than rational ruler. Moreover, her peculiar dance is unmistakably an expression of solitary anger. “Come to my aid!” she cries out. At this window of opportunity, she is fearless, a condition we know to be at the heart of Bergman’s constructs.

The screenplay is credited to one, Ulla Isaksson, whom the auteur commissioned to deal with a Norse ballad involving child murder, which caught Bergman’s eye at the time of his production, The Seventh Seal (1957), with its desperate traffic of medieval piety. Isaksson’s inhabiting the idiom of faith and her concern to set in relief the 14th century triumph of Christianity over the forces of the pagan God, Odin, would, in fact, be merely useful dilettante spadework for Bergman’s finalization of a drama concerning fearlessness and its slide to distemper (hardly a matter confined to the distant past).

The sensuality of that firebrand, named, Ingeri, gives way to the principals of the farm, namely, Tore, and his wife, Mareta, who start their morning being stalk-still, in prayer. Tore recites, “Heavenly Father, Son and Holy Ghost, with all your hosts of angels, guard us this day and always from the devil’s snares…” Mareta adds, “Lord, let not temptation, shame, nor danger befall thy servants this day.” In strong and ironic contrast to Ingeri’s commitment to conflagration, Mareta drips warm, runny candle wax on her hand. “It’s Friday,” she explains, “the day of our Lord’s agony…” Then she crosses herself, “So help me God.”

Instead of just distributing that stark contrast, there is a cut to an elderly lady, Frida, who presents us with a blanket filled with new-born chicks, delicate, beautiful and full of life. Holding one in her hand, she says, “You poor thing. Live out your wretched little life, the way God allows all of us to live.” Here, then, a synthesis tumbles our way—the “wretched little life” hovering toward the possibility of disinterestedness, with aspects of wild Ingeri and the calculators, in the mix. But life is not a sure-fire recipe, as Frida soon shows us why. Ingeri’s dance in the kitchen is interrupted by the seeming old dear, her colleague in cuisine, asking her in a harsh voice, “Where were you all night? If you don’t care where you sleep, you could at least come back for the milking… Instead, I had to run around on these poor legs…” Where did the “wretched little life” go?

We’re on track, at this introduction, to deal with, not religious wars, nor with bromides about improving the Dark Ages with prayer books; but instead with an addiction for eclipsing others and leaving them seen to be inferior. After her celestial entrance, Ingeri, about six months pregnant, flashes her enhanced profile in a bid to drive Frida to feel that all her chaste priorities have become obsolete, have come to naught. Just before that, her surliness elicits from the old semi-dear, “What’s wrong?” A far cry from her silent gambit, Ingeri very commonly, even old and obsolete, explains, “Nothing more than the usual—bastards beget bastards…” Not that Frida improves the tone with her spiteful, “Serves you right, the way you behave—spitting and snarling like a wild cat. You should thank God on your bare knees for his mercy. To come to a farm like this and stay in this house like a child of the family. But you are, and always will be, a savage child.”

The objective of personal power, bringing down upon many a blast of horror, derives from that patrimony of advantage, of seizing the upper hand. The proprietors, over and above their systematic prayers, have seen fit to be the only ones to provide the regional church with candles for the observances of the Virgin Mary. In accordance with a tradition that a virgin must carry the candles to church, the onus falls upon their adolescent daughter, Karin, to double-down the piety in that way. Whereas the parents are fastidious in consummating their secular and religious challenges, Karin has chosen to exploit the vantage point she was born to and thereby occupy a medium where she always appears paramount. True to form, she had been the focal point of the party the night before, the party also dear to Ingeri; and whereas the servant had showed up, the princess had slept in, leading Mareta to think of the only other virgin, namely, Frida, to carry the goods that day. Tore’s edict, “Go put some life in that loafer,” takes Frida off the hook, and Karin ending her winning streak.

The Virgin Spring may be bountiful in evoking the mysterious and perilous tumble of sensual energy. But it also shines in its dramatic dialogue (Bergman being a connoisseur of theatrical rhetoric, to the point where speech and its imagery joins that tumble). Therefore, we’ll track with some detail the distemper within the first family, whereby Karin seeks wedding garb for running an errand of piety. She is roused by her mother only by way of racking up lavish indulgences in apparel and cuisine. “I’ll wear my yellow dress,” she proclaims. And when Mareta reasons, “My child, it’s a week day,” the child threatens, “Then I won’t go.” Mareta fortuitously perseveres to an upshot of how superior the girl and her parents not only believe themselves to be but tolerate in themselves such cheapness. “You’re behaving like a little child… [but] I can’t be hard to you.”/ “Mother, I’ll ride to church with such dignity, and Blackie will raise his hooves gently, like a pilgrims’ procession. I’ll look neither right nor left, but straight ahead.” Mareta changes the subject, but not the nonsense. “This is not an ordinary dress. Fifteen maidens sewed this! “ She attempts to return to some ascetic territory, not enjoying the cross-purposes. “You’ll give the devil such joy. Angels will punish you with boils and toothaches…” She goes on to refer to her disturbing dreams and Karin counters with, “I wish I had dreams, too… Big, wonderful dreams! But I never do…” Tore comes by, and pleased by the glamor and glory, he exclaims, “I’ll ride into the mountains with this naughty girl and I’ll say, ‘I won’t have such a daughter… I’ll imprison her in the mountains for seven years until she’s been tamed!’”

The taming of Ingeri—chosen by Karin to accompany and thereby accentuate her own fabulousness on the road and to have the audacious one’s brain picked on the subject of intercourse—proceeds by her own volition, first of all (in being tasked to provide a meal for the princess) as to placing a toad within one of o the buns. Such childish distemper not becoming her fluency with the realm of fire. Abandoning, for the moment, the most revealing interplay of the girls in the first phase of the trip, there is the shining and appallingly brief (semi-) fearlessness of Tore. After killing the goatherds (who had displayed a [semi-] retardation of predatory appetite) and rushing to Karin’s semi-nude corpse, he dispenses with meek piousness and samples some fearlessness at the borders of power as he has come to understand it. He stands close to the stream which Karin had seen before being devoured by fish-like feeders (one of which playing a Jew’s harp—a factor recalling the Nazi touch by Martin, in Through a Glass Darkly; but here the bite is far more controversial, possibly at the basis of the often-remarked down-play by Bergman toward this film); and he leverages Ingeri’s account—he very likely being the father of the child—of that viciousness and guile to a point of serious rebellion. After looking to skies that have become efficacious, no longer supernatural, he smashes his face with his fist, kneels down and then falls over, face down. Presently, he looks up in extreme divided confusion and calls out—already, in this move, sliding away from a medium of efficacy—“You saw it, God, you saw it! The death of an innocent child and my vengeance. You allowed it to happen [here a fascinating disclosure of boldness clinging to a safety net, replete with his shaking his fist]. I don’t understand you [a close-up seen from behind]. I don’t understand you [the rippling waters actually going nowhere]. Yet I still ask for forgiveness. I know no other way to make peace with myself. I don’t know any other way to live…I promise you, God, here by the dead body of my only child… I promise that as a penance for my sin I shall build you a church. On this spot I shall build it… out of mortar and stone… with these hands…” The melodramatic stance, with legs far apart, and arms up to the sky, reminds us of Ingeri at her best, bestriding the cauldron and dispensing with verbiage.

Searchlit singularity comes to a bemusing crescendo in one of Tore’s marginal retainers, namely, “the Professor,” with a vaguely clerical baldpate head. He comes into his own in scrutinizing the little brother of those killers intent on doing even more damage, but being too dull to make the most of the occasion. That the kid-minding kid (initially ordered by his adult brothers to keep an eye on the body, but soon tagging along) has been shocked to the point of not being able to keep any food down presents no mystery to the master of inferences—he having already figured out that the dark night bringing no princess means she has been murdered by those operating along the route of the church and now partaking of Tore’s hospitality. (On the other hand, Tore tells Mareta, “If Karin doesn’t come tonight, she’ll surely return tomorrow… I know you’re worried about Karin. But she’s stayed in the village overnight without permission before.”)

A preamble to that seer (a country cousin to the Joseph of The Seventh Seal) involves Frida—she of the presence of affection and the language of affliction—denouncing our sharp but not sharp enough navigator. He carelessly teases her, “A woman like you no doubt needs a confessional close at hand.” And she pushes back, “Says the man who had to flee the country to save his hide… I know all about you, Professor…” He shoots back, “A bird on the wing finds something, while those who sit still only find death. I’ve seen both women and churches…” (Frida brightens up at the prospect of learning more about religious edifices. “What were the churches like?” And he brags, “Tall as the sky. And big… Not of wood, but of mortar and stone.”)

But when the chips are down, the Professor shows that his reputation as a spoiler to sedate invalids derives from his having taken a deep measure of “a bird on the wing.” The sick and terrified boy is put to bed by Frida, and when she departs he takes over with his bass baritone baseline, to implicitly officiate the boy’s funeral. “You see how the smoke trembles up the roof hole? As if whispering and afraid [both fear and freedom conjoined]. Yet it’s only going out into the open air, where it has the whole sky to tumble about in. But it doesn’t know that. So it cowers and trembles under the sooty ridge of the roof. People are the same way. They worry and tremble like leaves in a storm because of what they know and what they don’t know. You shall cross a narrow plank, so narrow you can’t find your footing. Below you roars a great river. It’s black and wants to swallow you up. But you pass over it unharmed. Before you lies a chasm, so deep you can’t see the bottom [‘Hell is other people,’ has also been used]. Hands grope for you. At last you stand before a mountain of terror.” (Here the bird on the wing conflates to an interfering manipulation.) “It spews fire like a furnace and a vast abyss opens at its feet. A thousand colors blaze there. Copper and iron, blue vitriol and yellow sulphur. Flames dazzle and flash and lash at the rocks. And all about, men leap and writhe, small as ants, for this is the furnace that swallows up [the boy looks away in fear.] But at the very moment you think you’re doomed, a hand shall grab you and an arm circle around you and you shall be taken far away where evil no longer has power over you…”

What appears to be gross self-contradiction in that funeral sermon pertains to a duality with which the film is passionately absorbed. The short-lived fire of Ingeri and the rather long-winded but engaging metaphors of the Professor constitute an uncanny poetic life-blood, haunting, to those who have striven to reach heights. In addition to that, however, a curtain of inertia—demonstrated by Ingeri’s loss of grip and the Professor’s withering to clichés—intrinsically busies itself to foster preoccupation with others in survival action. We should take care, at this point, to more closely discover how Bergman evokes, with a horrific shambles, the bracing dilemma and delight of a groundswell often overt but rarely sustained.

One of the most felicitous cinematic portrayals of the endless struggle to harmonize between the two moments of creativity occurs in the course of Tore’s steeling himself to kill his daughter’s devourers. Seemingly needing to fire up his flesh by whipping himself with branches from a supple young tree (recalling the flagellants in The Seventh Seal, seen by notables to be deranged), he proceeds to break the trunk near the base. But in carrying out his effort to break the trunk, Tore becomes caught up in pushing to and fro the plant’s elasticity, a vivid metaphoric rendition of the work of balancing, countering overarching advantage, like the kills he is intent on. (That Ingeri, slinking back to the farm, goes on to accompany and assist his questionable motivation—preparing scalding vessels for him to shower nude—becomes an indicator of the “savage child” having capitulated entirely to the rapacity of advantage, getting things done without due attention to the possibility of that other, poetic accomplishment.)

The early moments of the ride to the church never reached by Karin present many rich features of those essential polarities being not and never effectively reached. Karin, the self-styled star, rides on a snow-white mare and sits in archaic, chivalric side-saddle, cosseted by the ancient airs and dances of a routed, effete and dull constituency. She sits barely touching her mount, as if messaging to the countryside that a hierarchy has come to pass. Ingeri, upon a dark, splotchy runt, rides using her legs but only faintly derives the gifts of the earthiness which the opportunity affords. Karin in the lead, they skirt a sparkling lake in the sun. The camera of Sven Nykvist draws back to reveal the vast hilly forests and skies and cosmos beckoning the girls toward a memorable treasure of travel. Karin gets as far as a pleasant song with that recorder and timbrel motif which accompanied the credits. “The little bird, he soars so high/ It is such work , such work to fly/ And over high mountains to spring./ The streams flow so merrily/ All under the verdant trees/ In springtime’s breeze…” (Here the billowy white clouds with wild flowers below accentuate the endowments of nature, seldom heeded.) Prior to this stage, there was the Professor accompanying the girls as they passed beyond the farm’s gate. He, too, was induced to song, the kinetic subject of which inclined to flattery and a premonition (of death amidst verdant trees twisting in an ambiguous breeze) ravaging lovely fruit. “So lovely an apple orchard I know/ A maid with virtues so dear./ Her hair like spun-gold does flow/ Her eyes like the heavens so dear./ The streams flow so merrily/ And under verdant trees/ In springtime’s breeze.”

Contrasting with the early field of fruition, Ingeri, in the sequel, gets her face slapped by Karin for teasing her about seducing at that party a young farmer in the hinterland (perhaps another of her paramours), brought into view as they encountered him in his pasture. (This descent into cheapness parallels the Karin in Through a Glass Darkly, being unable to regain poise after participating in an ill-conceived birthday skit.) Karin quickly apologizes; but the once fearless (implying disinterestedness) loner clings to petty advantage. “Don’t ask me for forgiveness!” From there, the dark horse, taking up a rather distant rear, doesn’t have a ghost of a chance. A raucous raven in close-up keys the next closure of Ingeri’s heart. Having come upon the pathway’s attendant to a bad crossing of the stream, Ingeri walks her mount and the beauty of that modest beast speaks volumes. Here, with her integrity in shreds, she cries out to Karin, “Let’s turn back!” When Karin refuses, the unstable outsider blurts out, “I’ll take the candles!” (melodramatic rolling the dice being a symptom of shallow desperation). Karin, being the stable one for the time being, finding some backbone in light of another’s cowardice, offers a glimpse of how volatile, how kinetically challenging, one’s emotional resources can prove to be. Ingeri does not, her gypsy looks notwithstanding, possess any capacity to foresee the future. Instead, her skittishness stems from a factor of her own failure to bring equilibrium to the firestorm of her sensibility. “The forest is so dark! I can’t go on!” Too much prose, advantage. Not enough poetry, disinterestedness. Karin, occupying a rare picture of daring and, thereby, caring, tells her, “Don’t cry so hard. You could hurt the child.” Then she shows some more of the aristocratic stream we all inherit, but have to live up to. “I’m not frightened. I’m going to church. May she [addressing the rough-hewn official] rest in your cottage a while until I come back?” Karin offers a portion of her large lunch hamper. “Look, here! This is enough for both of you.” Overwhelmed by an abyss no longer sparkling, Ingeri clings to Karin’s horse, terrified. “Did you think I was going to slap you again?” the one with the upper hand asks. When Karin is on that way she’ll need all the confidence and maturity she’s ever had, the bridge man asks, “Are you in labor?” Shaking her head, she replies, “Worse than that!” (And could Bergman, apparently fond of American genre films, have seen and been struck by the noir, Kiss Me Deadly [1955] and listened closely to its theme song, “Rather Have the Blues” [than what I’ve got]?) After the spooky old guy does some mumbo jumbo with bones and tries to embrace her as a pagan kin—a status she now regards as sterile and just another failure in her battle to engage “Something Big”—Ingeri, trembling, cries, “You have taken human blood!” She races away, the terror in her eyes and on her mouth showing that she’ll never be the player she seemed qualified to be, in those first seconds of the saga (the leaven of sensual lucidity gone forever). Before she ran away, the self-styled seer, presuming to be able to bring her around, declared, “But you’re afraid. You mustn’t be. I will give you strength!” During her flight to distance the seer, the conifers along the way have become a tomb rather than a take-off. The blur of her race through the thick woods affords no dynamic step forward, and in this she becomes a kin of that Wendy of Wendy and Lucy, in the box-car, with the trees flashing by and deadness prevailing.

Ingeri settles for commonness at the site of Karin’s corpse—a Karin murdered by way of her letting slip away that once-in-a-lifetime balance (seeing) she commanded at the bridge (a bridge to endless enmity, advantage). Ingeri had run fast enough to witness, from a hiding place, the rape and kill and desecration. The inert rock she held, and failed to use, would be her kin for life and for leveraging an after-life as an angel. That she had run afoul of shallow fantasy calculation coincides with the shallow carnal calculation of her own modus operandi which might have lasted longer in the secular fold, but with no real traction. During the squabble at the outset of the deadly ride, Karin tells Ingeri (who had lorded over Karin in experiencing the pain of carrying a child), “Then I’ll be married and mistress of my house with honor.”

#ingmar bergman

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ekniemisba2a · 7 years ago

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BA2a Narrative Strategies - Reflective Essay (2nd Draft)

In this essay, I will be reflecting on my short story inspired by the themes of dreams and the uncanny in our set text Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson. I will explore Magic Realism and the depiction of the ‘little people’ in both Stevenson and Japanese author Haruki Murakami’s work. Finally, I will be discussing how I would animate the short story with references to my inspirations in animation, as well as my research into the Victorian Era.

One of the key themes in and surrounding Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is dreams. In the book, this mystery of Mr Hyde is unveiled through the character of Gabriel Utterson, whose ‘imagination was engaged or rather enslaved’ by this man, ‘even in his dreams it had no face, or one that baffled him and melted before his eyes’ (Stevenson, 2002, p.13). Similarly, writer Robert Louis Stevenson was plagued by images of Mr Hyde and changing powders in his dreams, supplying him with his desired plot for this story (Stevenson, 1892). Freud described dreams as ‘the royal road to the unconscious’ often revealing repressed desires (White, 2018), which has a clear connection to Henry Jekyll’s inability to suppress his dark cravings, resulting in the creation of Edward Hyde. I was first introduced to Sigmund Freud in A Level Psychology, and although he has quite questionable ideas and theories, I always found them to be fascinating in their madness. Which leads me to the next theme I took an interest in within this tale, the Uncanny. This is also evoked by the presence of Hyde, who gives ‘an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation’ (Stevenson, 2002, p.16). This Ernst Jentsch would describe as uncanny from his essay On the Psychology of the Uncanny (1906) for its prolonged state of uncertainty (White, 2018).

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a Magic Realist narrative which is the ‘inclusion of fantastic or mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction’ (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, 2014). This concept has always enticed me, I love to think that there are unknown elements in our lives that may one day reveal itself to you. So I thought this would be a good place to start when it came to brainstorming an idea for my short story. Initially, I struggled to think of a narrative based on or inspired by our set text because I found the language difficult to read, taking me out of the story and lacking to stir any ideas. However, in one of our lectures, the mention of Stevenson’s Little People, the ‘substantive inventors and performers’ (Stevenson, 1892,) of his imagination, instantly caught my attention. The author that I had instead been turning to for inspiration was Haruki Murakami, one of my favourite writers, who funnily enough also wrote about creatures by the name of Little People. In Murakami’s books 1Q84 (2009-2010), ‘no one knows for sure who these Little People are’ (Murakami, 2009, p.604), they are neither good nor evil, they are something ‘that surpasses our understanding and our definitions’ (Murakami, 2009, pg. 631). There are a lot of similarities between Stevenson and Murakami in both their writing and their personalities, both famous for their magical realism and with avid imaginations that Murakami described as ‘a kind of animal’ keeping it alive through writing (Bausells, 2014). Dreams are also a focal point in Murakami’s writing, acting as a gateway to an unknown world and allowing the Little People from that world into ours.

I combined Stevenson’s dream fabricators and Murakami’s dimension walkers with my own imagination and came up with this short story about these Little People. My depiction of the Little People are particularly uncanny according to Freud, they are both familiar and unfamiliar in their appearance and made visible to Stevenson when they ought to be a secret (White, 2018). Like Murakami, I didn’t plan my story extensively, I just ran with my exciting idea and started. I enjoyed writing about these strange creatures, I am always drawn to the macabre in my work but trying to show and not tell with words was a welcomed challenge. It did take several re-drafts to finalise my text, with most of my struggles deriving from my introductory paragraph, I just couldn’t find the right words for without describing too much. I was also conscious of being historically accurate with my portrayal of Stevenson and his life, a lot of this came from the project’s lectures and my tutor’s knowledge of the writer. However, Back In My Time: A Writer's Guide to the 19th Century’s article on the Victorian Bedroom (Huls, 2016) was extremely helpful in creating a clear picture in my head of what Stevenson’s chief place of living might be like.

Most fictional stories and day to day texts today, such as News and Media, are written in the past tense, so it is no surprise that we feel a sense of unfamiliarity when consuming writing in a present tense. Despite the fact that I found it difficult to keep to writing in the present tense, I exploited this foreignness to create a sense of disquiet within my story. The winding sentences phrased in this way also work to make the reader slightly uneasy, which I felt appropriately reflected my magical realist narrative. It was also important for me to have the little people coming into our world through Stevenson’s mouth as this is a clear opening for them to escape his mind, but also it is how the Little People do it in Murakami’s 1Q84 too, specifically through the mouth of a dead goat in one instance. I also wanted them to be in a group because of their namesake and Murakami’s own words which states ‘there is never just one’ (Murakami, 2009, p.624).

If I were to adapt my short story into an adult animated film, I would use a combination of stop motion animation and live action. The first sequence in Stevenson’s bedroom during the night would be in stop motion animation to make use of its innate uncanny qualities and create a dream-like atmosphere. This would be contrasted with the, undoubtedly real, live action sequence that follows the next morning. This technique is used in James and the Giant Peach (1996) directed by Henry Selick and The Cat with Hands (2001) directed by Robert Morgan, both to symbolise passage into a new world. However, I would have my sections reversed in comparison to these films, as I would choose to begin with animation and end with live action. To further exploit the uncanny sense provided by stop motion animation, I would animate the movement of the little people puppets with missing in-between frames to make their movement more jittery and unnatural. However, Stevenson’s puppet will be animated with smooth and consequently realistic movements. Because I can’t physically have the little people puppets climb out from Stevenson’s mouth, I would need to maliciously plan my shots in the storyboard phase and explore my puppet’s limitations, so that I am fully prepared to retain believability in the shoot.

All puppets would be made from scratch with wire armatures and animatable with pins. However, the little people at roughly 6” puppets, would be considerably smaller than the Stevenson puppet at 12”. The little people’s ill-fitting skin would be made using silicone or latex to achieve the fleshy quality, taking inspiration from the puppets used in the animated short film La Ballena Escarlata (Figure 2). Whereas the Stevenson puppet would be put together with old second-hand doll parts, and his bedroom set would be dressed with equally used and old-fashioned objects. All these materials would be collected from vintage and antique fairs to be in line with the Victorian aesthetic. This is the process of filmmakers the Brothers Quay (Figure 3), who start both their stop motion projects in this way, working around the details of the chosen objects. However, some props will be difficult to find in the right size to compliment my large puppet, for instance, Stevenson’s nightshirt and four-poster bed, which I would have to instead make myself.

The night scene will have a cold grade to bring out the blues and beiges in the set, contrasted by the morning scene that would have a warm grade to emphasise the now new world full of oranges and yellows. The main light source in both scenes would be from the moon or sun through the window, using minimal dim lights only where it is necessary but otherwise I would want to create as much shadow as I can. Yet, the little people I created will lack shadows, so to get around this issue without it implementing the lighting of the set, I would mask out the shadows in post-production using Adobe After Effects. Finally, the soundtrack would consist of mostly ambience Foley sounds, for example, the ticking of the clock, which is very prominent in my story, to add to the sensation of unease.

Through this process, I have learnt that creative writing isn’t as scary as I thought and can be a really satisfying way of bringing my ideas to life. Although the set text wasn’t a hit with me, I have found it to have very interesting narrative themes that I enjoyed exploring in my writing and research. What I would do differently is start my research and essay earlier, I am someone who comes to writing last in a workload as I really struggle to formulate my thoughts into words, it never gets easier but I am determined to improve my attitude in order to complete these tasks to the best to my ability. On a whole, this project has been insightful, giving me the confidence to start writing more short fiction and encouraging me to pick up reading on a regular basis again, allowing me to grow not just as an animator but a storyteller too.

#BA2a Strategies & Story Adaptation #2nd Draft #Reflective Essay #Week 18

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hrc3 · 8 years ago

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A Look at John Darnielle’s Universal Harvester

I finished reading John Darnielle’s Universal Harvester and I still don’t know what to think. Don’t get me wrong, all the accolades are well-deserved and this is an excellent book. Figuring out how to communicate that to someone, however, is difficult. The book builds tension without a huge payoff (which would arguably cheapen the tension it builds). It leaves loose ends that feel like they were left untied on purpose and it’s our jobs as readers to make those connections after we’re done. It manages to be creepy without being grotesque. It’s uncanny.

I would like to point to some of the ways Darnielle accomplishes this as a way of working through the narrative, hopefully without giving too much away. First, there is the initial main character (Jeremy Heldt) and his narrative of being somewhat stagnant in his hometown. It’s impressive how right this narrative feels. Jeremy is 22, living at home with his dad, and working at the local Video Hut with little direction in his life. As someone who lived at home in Buncombe, GA and worked at the Piggly Wiggly until 22 myself, Darnielle nails this dynamic and much of what this situation feels like for the person caught up in it. Not that there is anything wrong with living and working in your hometown, but this instance lends to the tension of the novel when it feels like directionless stagnancy rather than a choice.

Second, there are the dark currents that run under this small-town narrative. Maybe it’s because I’ve been rewatching Twin Peaks lately, but something definitely feels off in all the small Iowa towns throughout the novel. There are picturesque farm houses and fields of corn, but you get the feeling that there is something very troubling happening just below this wholesome facade. We get glimpses of what this could be through the splices of tapes that characters encounter throughout the narrative, but we never get a full payoff of one singular event or example that we can point to as being the source or instance of this tension. Which leads me to my last point.

Much of the tension Darnielle builds is through the reactions that characters have to one another and the tapes they watch, and this feels like the most masterful part to me. After watching these home video recordings, characters appear disturbed and unable to figure out where to go from there. Should they call the police? Should they track down the people? Should they try to forget what they saw? The reactions always seem slightly out of sync with what is described on the tapes, which makes me feel like I’m missing something here and it is my job as the reader to track exactly what. I’ve tried to describe this to friends, and the best I can do is to tell them to read the book because you can’t lift out any single instance or element as indicative of the mood it builds in the moment. It’s uncanny.

A few months ago I missed the opportunity to see Darnielle when he came through Portland. I never miss a Mountain Goats show if it comes in my region, but I’ve yet to attend a John Darnielle reading. I remember saying something to my friend along the lines of “John Darnielle > A lot of other writers and The Mountain Goats > Every other band.” While I still believe this statement to be mostly true (and I would also note that the experience of seeing a band live—especially The Mountain Goats—far surpasses that of seeing someone read, at least for me) the number of writers Darnielle is better than is increasing with each of his publications. This feels like his best work yet.

Powell’s has a good price on the book if you want to pick it up.

#john darnielle #universal harvester #the mountain goats #iowa #david lynch

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doomedandstoned · 8 years ago

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'Abbey Rose' An Excursion Into The Malevolent World of The Munsens

~Review by Billy Goate~

Live Photos by Javier Armendariz and Travis Heacock (B&W)

I've always had a soft spot for the MUNSENS, going back to the 'Weight of Night' (2014) days. My first opportunity to meet and interview the Denver band came during their 2015 tour stop in Eugene, and the performance did not disappoint. They're an affable bunch; down to earth dudes who enjoy skating, photography, and leveling concert halls with ripe riffage.

In the intervening years, Mike Goodwin (bass, vocals) and Shaun Goodwin (guitar) have teamed up with a new member to the Munsens clan for a second record, 'Abbey Rose' (2016) -- a dark, dramatic huddle of tracks averaging +/- 10 minutes each.

I asked Mike for some background on the new EP.

"Following the release of Weight of Night we didn’t play for quite a while," he recounts, "as our original guitarist Jon decided he was going to live in Asbury Park, New Jersey full-time and wasn’t going to be able to come out to Denver to join us permanently, or even periodically, as we’d done throughout the history of the band."

The hunt was on for a replacement.

"Shaun and I continued to write and were set on finding the right person to join us, rather than rush a new lineup together. Ultimately, we decided Shaun would move from drums to guitar and we would bring in a new drummer." The two met Graham Wesselhoff "through our friends in Cloud Catcher and we’ve been running with it from there. We are thrilled to have him in the band."

These mods to the lineup "played a significant part in the construction and sound of Abbey Rose."

I confess, it did take me a while to get into this record, though I've generally found this to be the case with compositions that operate on a grand scale (Dopesmoker being a prime example). The Munsens are clearly going for the long game with Abbey Rose, preferring a carefully crafted climate of fear and loathing over quick thrills. These insistent riffs burrow deep into the subconscious, baptizing us into a world of the uncanny.

Stylistically, let me just say how great it is to hear honest-to-goodness, bass-driven doom. So much of the genre has become dominated by the guitar that it's easy to forget that the bass is so much more than a compliment to the rhythm section. The capacity of the bass to step up to a leading role is something that, by now, has been amply demonstrated by duos Swamp Ritual, TVSK, Year of the Cobra, and the great Norwegian quintet Reptile Master.

Now, it's time we tackle this beastly anthology track-by-track...

1. You're Next

Abbey Rose by the Munsens

The album opener is a dank, brooding number, with seething vocals that drip with spite and hint of revenge. "You're Next" and the pieces that follow are send backs to the classic ballad. No, not the power ballads of '80s hair metal fame. I have in mind dramatic stories set to song, like the unthinkable tale of Goethe’s Erlkönig, scored so powerfully by Franz Schubert. The tradition reached a pinnacle in the 19th century, but saw revival in early blues and the folktales Bob Dylan.

There's definitely something sinister afoot in the epic before us. We feel its stench in the raspy strain of the singing, the prominence of its black hearted baseline, and that dense wall of sound surrounding us. There's a real sense of presence here, owing in no small part to the live recording (something the Munsens have insisted on for both EPs). We have Jamie Hillyer of Module Overload to thank for capturing the ambience, as it were, of an empty church hall draped in shadows. Dennis Pleckham of Bongripper put on the finishing touches, mastering at his Comatose Studios.

"You're Next" has developed quite a bit since I filmed the Munsens performing it year before last at Old Nick's Pub. "Though it was written prior to Graham’s addition, his drumming has given the song a new feel," Mike observes. "Shaun and Jon also have much different guitar playing styles. Shaun had the structure and theme of that song in his head for quite some time, but it didn’t really take shape until we began jamming it out with the new lineup."

Wade in the water Cast your eyes on the sea Looming in torture Beyond the still of the leaves

As I listen, my chest tightens; my throat is seized with dread. Clearly, I've become entangled in the tentacles of my own imagination, as I did at 12 years old when I swore that a lanky, medieval Satan was hiding in my closet. The song "can be probably taken a few different levels," Mike tells me, "but that’s up to the listener."

Notwithstanding the ambiguity of interpretation, I found it helpful that the Munsens included lyrics for this release (obscure as they may be). Personally, it's beyond annoying when a band withholds the words to their songs. I understand the reasoning, but it really distracts from the listening experience when I'm left to guess what the hell's being said. But I digress...

"We are psyched on how it turned out," Mike reflects, "though I think we all wish we had a bit more time to work on it, particularly with the drums. We thought they could have been 'larger.' The lack of time to experiment the way we wished was part of the reason we released Abbey Rose as an EP, despite the running length."

2. Abbey Rose

Abbey Rose by the Munsens

Following "You're Next" comes the record's namesake, which is "framed around The Abbey Rose, a place that yields the image and world an individual desires, or thinks they desire, at the price of having to live with that persona infinitely." The mood is reinforced by Mike Goodwin's ominous cover photo of an institution frozen in the clutches of night.

The cobblestone is rigid Yet it yields not a glimpse nor a sound The street offers no entrance No, the guests here, go around

The subtext of "Abbey Rose," we're told, is "the insufferable narcissism of our modern age, pushed to extremes by digital personas. The additional irony lies in that the individual is able to attain and admire all they ever wanted, but are unable to present it to the world around them, the reason they desired such an appearance in the first place."

Curious about this worldview, I pressed Mike for details. "I imagine a dismal view of the chaos and absurdity around us," he says. "Lyrically, I wanted this EP to have something of a common thread, and 'You’re Next,' 'To Castile,' and 'Abbey Rose' are a bit similar in that they address a life spent pursuing something that doesn’t exist. Or should the outcome indeed exist, is it worth the sacrifices endured to achieve it?"

Ultimately, "Abbey Rose" is an admonition against "flawed personal motivation, the groupthink of society, and religious zeal."

3. To Castile

Abbey Rose by the Munsens

"To Castile" takes "the slightly enlightened perspective of someone who has finally realized that it is all just an empty pursuit. But even when staring the end in the face, they are still wrapped up enough in the bullshit that they continue to play the role. It has a religious bend, through a fictional letter from Joan of England to her father Edward III from the Port of Bordeaux, while her envoy her swiftly killed by the plague."

I look from high out in the night This fright, it will be mine

The smart pacing of this song and its placement on the EP helps to establish an interconnected narrative. It's something that really differentiates Abbey Rose from other records. Admittedly, it is difficult to put something this cohesive together, let alone write a competent concept album that doesn't come across as a loose collection of songs.

4. The Hunt, Part II

Abbey Rose by the Munsens

The clear standout of the record for me is its final track, which guitarist Shaun Goodwin says is "about an evil being that haunts a village." Part I of "The Hunt" actually began on the prior EP, where "the story is told from the perspective of those haunted by this witch. They rally to hunt her until finally capturing her ('We’ve got the witch, the high is ours')." Part II is told "from the evil being’s point of view, as she returns to haunt those that thought they had defeated her."

I will never die I will always rise I will haunt again There will be nothing left This is revenge

As with previous stories, there's an underlying meaning: "It's a metaphor for the evils in life that we each encounter -- addictions, bad relationships, etc. -- and the highs and lows that come along with them."

Mike elaborates: "Part I tells of the elated feeling after seemingly overcoming these wicked vices. Part II brings the return of such evils, as they so often do in our lives. Both tracks, and the riffs/lyrics in these tracks, are structured in such a way that you can feel these high and lows as the witch is hunted, defeated, and then encountered once again in stronger force."

We definitely get this impression from the guitar play, which now steps up to a more prominent role. Shaun's riffmaking is teeming with emotion, building and building to a perfectly choreographed climax.

"Perhaps this metaphor does not hold true for everyone, but it represents a battle that many of us face on a daily basis. I guess it can be interpreted as 'the hunt' for mental peace."

Thus ends our tour through the imposing Abbey Rose. If you dig it as much as I do, there's more to come. "I’d say this album is a lot more thought out than anything else we’ve released, but our upcoming full album -- out late summer-- will feel more complete." The band concludes, "We’ve also been looking to further define our individual sound in a realm that can feel increasingly contrived and this EP, in our opinion, is a greater step in that direction."

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