#by literally recreating the most traumatic experience in his life and putting him in a situation where he can’t run away

[sasuke-says-acab]

Anyone else feel weird about the “choking Sasuke”meme” that was going around a while back, due to the context of the scene or was that just me?

[larrythefloridaman]

handing you more characters bc your analysis is so delicious .

crimson. the scrunkly. most likely to be cpuk's tumblr sillyman.

Studying this little freak like a bug <3

(cpuk and ncct spoilers)

The thing about Crimson is that narratively, he is, as a villain, a bad coping mechanism or a self-destructive behavior. Barely even a metaphor- thats literally what he is to peppermint in pretty much no uncertain terms, she's parasocially in love with him because he, and the concept of a multiverse, allows her to indulge in the fantasy of a world where she's happy, and indulging unhealthily in fantasy is what actively drives people away from her, making her even lonelier. And she's not the only example of characters whom crimson's relationship to them is defined by them giving in to a character flaw. Chessmaster is the other clear cut example- succumbing to his inferiority complex and giving in to evil for the sake of proving himself are directly interrelated events, and he broke free when he was given kindness and support, a clearer picture of why he's like this (because he was designed to be,) and a vision of something different, something healthier, to be. He tempts people, consciously or not, to act their worst.

Hamburger Helper was a family man. Season one's storytelling is patchier than later seasons, but one can read between the lines, both then and later, to see something of a Mr. Incredible style gloryhound mid-life crisis to inspire his behavior, and his husband putting his foot down and breaking things off wasn't enough to drag him back to sense- especially since his son was on his side, resenting dadondorf for both his more firm parenting and splitting their family, launching into his ongoing emo phase and "trying to summon satan to kill his dad." (Real line from cpuk1. smthn smthn nccts crimson's first host was a dad and hes good with kids and says despite being kind of a monster he wouldn't hurt one. food for thought) But when The Grunk died, the show went on hiatus, and he was left in the broken fizzled aftermath of all that and forced to slowly realize how immature he'd been behaving and what ultimately really mattered to him and defected from Crimson of his own will.

Valentine was a risk taker, all for the drama of the show. Valentine walked directly into explosions just to see if he could survive them. He's a performer and a gentleman and a hero to the people. However, a risk taken in performance is a risk nonetheless and his overconfidence was his downfall. Valentine made a bet. Didn't tell a soul before he did it, other than a crimson possessed hamburger helper, speaking in their minds- hold your breath for the drama! And then he lost. And the deal was real. And so were the consequences. And the show he so loved came crashing to a halt as he was used to kill a man. (I'd also like to note, captain crimson in the nccts is kind of another example of a recreation of val as an image without his input, if im understanding the dream-fakes correctly- bc theyre composed of the current dreamers recollection of them, and Val isnt in the fourth dream. So once again val is being copied over as a biased outsiders image formed from people's perceptions of him, this one more literal and impermanent and largely defined by a very publically known traumatic experience that he really doesnt like to talk about and the person who controlled him in that time, while Quad was originally made to be a sort of exaggerated parody of what he loves and values. fun.)

Larry's... well, I've talked about Larry's problem. He overextends himself, unwilling to burden others intentionally even if they're willing to bear it, and needs to show himself a little self-compassion. And the circumstances of his possession? He functionally agreed to saving Crimson's life, and Crimson repays this by running off with his body right away and refusing to let Larry see his loved ones (for reasons of self-protection, crimson desiring to lie low right now, but still) and Larry's still trying to fix him from the inside. Bro thats nice and very noble and all bc god knows crimson genuinely needs help but you functionally got kidnapped my dude!!!!!! You missed yet another Valentines day after SEVEN missed Valentines days! you're on course to miss a NINTH since the show's gone off air in your absence!!! Your man just wants you to be safe for once!!!!!! He misses you!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sidenote ive noticed in terms of teaching the lesson of not overextending your compassion sometimes folks trying to teach it fumble the point by making it so the way its taught is by making the target not 'worthy' of the compassion somehow (tricking the giver of care or help into thinking they need it when they really dont or smthn) as if overextending yourself is a matter of choosing who's morally deserving of help and weeding out the untrustworthy lazy manipulators or some shit rather than You Cannot Help Everyone, its a Logistical Impossibility and By Trying You Will Only Hurt Yourself and Eventually Others as Either Your Loved Ones Worry Themselves Sick To Death Over You as Your Wellbeing Inevitably Declines Or You End Up Lashing Out At Others Because Your Needs Have Gone Uncared For As A Result, Therefore You Literally NEED to be Helped Because You Literally Cannot Bear It All Alone and im glad thats more the kind of vibe set up here. Like. Crimson definitely definitely definitely needs help that much is clear. But Larry aint the fucker to do it. because He's Super Not Okay Either and also, he'd been trying to get Crimson to open up for however long it was between cpuk orange and ncct2 hed been trying and didn't know Funbox's name when Crimson was willing to say that on live tv but Dani spends an hour in a vent with him and he's Explaining His Personal Living Nightmare to her. Larry is not a person hes willing to open up to, probably Specifically Because he is trying and wants to help him! Larry's fuckin. Red Cross Syndrome actively makes Crimson want to clam up! They can be good buds, they certainly seem to enjoy eachothers company well enough, but not in the 'i can unload about my trauma to you' way right now because neither of them are people who think they need or deserve that yet!

Maladaptive coping mechanisms and emotional regulation strats being the domain of a god of treachery makes sense- especially in a show about compassion and healing the way CPUK often is. they don't fix the real problem. Often they make it worse. They make you feel better, stronger, until they don't, they take control of your life, and sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you realize you have a shovel in your hands. But, the thing about them is, they're NOT 'evil,' they're volatile, theyre unhealthy, and they don't come from nowhere. Its the culmination of unaddressed pain. And as with Chartreuse's tragedy, this applies to Crimson as much as it does to those his powers effect- this badboy's chock full of dumb destructive shit he does to feel power and control over and satisfaction with his own life, and that makes itself most apparent in his relationship with Crimsonaut. Now, Crimsonaut lacks much of a firm moral compass- but he's kind, in a snarky long-suffering sort of way. he was created by Dr. Order to venture into the crimson for study. We don't know how that went, but we know the result. Allowing Crimson to hide and recover in his body, lying about being uncontaminated upon his return from meeting him, intentionally hiding and protecting Crimson from discovery until he was strong enough to start taking control of the body from time to time and getting up to his shit again. Crimsonaut is more than capable of verbally standing up to Crimson, he puts his foot down- but he puts his foot down only when Crimson condescends to him, treats him like he's not an equal. Crimson calls him his little buddy- like hes affectionately describing a cat or a small animal or perhaps one of those fucked up lil splatoon fish, and Crimsonaut tells the evil primordial god in his body that he owes him at least the title of friend. Takes some backbone, which he chooses not to use later. He wasn't happy with crimson attempting to destroy the universe, where he lives, but after the fact, their relationship as we see it doesnt seem to have changed at all. Crimsonaut was still willingly playing his snarky human shield. Crimsonaut's friendly with Dani, and no exorcism ever happened. even though he very nearly successfully destroyed a universe, (and got them both put on a fucking Leash by his siblings for weeks after the fact,) he'd rather let him stay. But being separated from Crimson as a result of Crimson's own meddling, getting a nice breather away from him, and Crimson using this break as an opportunity to make a direct attempt to kill him to avoid being put back was the last straw. he was horrible despite when they got along and what he was made for and he couldnt just put up with it anymore, although Prism's next move might have... complicated his feelings about it. Crimson might honestly care about him, but that didn't make him any less of a toxic friend, and for that, Crimsonaut doesnt owe him a continued place in his life, and Crimson lost himself the most earnest, faithful, selflessly motivated friend he seems to have had since he arrived in this universe entirely through his own short-sighted self-destructive inability to deal with the minor restrictions living with Crimsonaut imposes on his life. He cant make himself willingly hand over control to another person enough to adapt to a minor dietary restriction. Absolute control freak. And... well. We know why.

Prism and the Ciblings relationship wasnt... explicitly cast as being abusive in those words before the nccts, though one could easily read between the lines. And what the implications spoke loud and clear already was bad enough. But things are called what they are in the nccts, (not by the cods, who. likely think its... not normal. but maybe normal for gods. Theres not really other examples of godly parenting for them to draw from, after all. But Folk correctly labels Prism as abusive.) and Crimson's status as a favorite target of torment is exposed, and recontextualizes... a lot of things, really. He implies quite straightforwardly that everything he says should be taken with a grain of 'im aware of when Prism's watching and what im willing to say when she is is effected somewhat by that.' His words are inherently a bit deceptive, but not necessarily maliciously- but self-protectively. Every respectable parenting resource: "strict helicopter parenting doesnt teach your child obedience, it teaches your child how to lie to you" prism raising a god of treachery: "haha yeah thats the point :)"

Crimson and Prism's relationship is a pretty realistic example of the effect of the beginning of a cycle of abuse, in the broad sense. A parent, effected by existential stresses they cannot escape, be they monetary, interpersonal, psychological, whatever, lashes out against their children in the process of raising them, simultaneously traumatizing them and modeling toxic behavior to them, which they ultimately mimic because thats how dealing with problems and stress was modeled to them in their formative years, lacking access to or knowledge of more positive outlets for their feelings.

Crimson wants to be nothing like her- but he is, unthinkingly, like her. He hurts people to his own ends, he manipulates the truth, he's controlling, a number of other small things- a sickly smile to reflect prism's vacant yet intense one. He is his mother's son. Godhood of treachery and godhood of stories are... rather similar in concept, really- i don't recall who, but ive heard a certain philosophy of storytelling said as, paraphrasing, 'fiction is lies, falsehood, in service to truth.' he adopts an aesthetic of opposition, blood guts and chocolate cake, without really deconstructing his behavior in context, because changing who he is means making himself more vulnerable to being changed while he's figuring himself out, and Prism's entire modus operandi is changing you without you ever noticing, and he wants to believe through his rebellion he can atleast be fully authentically himself, uninfluenced. But change cannot be staved off forever, and despite what he wanted to believe, he's still stuck. Choosing evil is not an escape, it is another cage. The hopelessness and stagnation of lacking meaningful choice setting in seems to be changing him anyway.

I marked the 'horrible person' square the way i did because normally when one claims a tragic villain 'had no choice' but to commit their actions, its not really an accurate reflection- having reasons and motives to do what you do doesnt change that you chose to do them, if only under duress. But Crimson was... very particularly, literally and specifically being disallowed from having a choice in who he turned out to be under the gaze of a panopticonic and brutal authority that could begin watching him at any time, and what they wanted him to be was evil. He was born to be a villain and groomed into it, lead to evil blindly by a strict parent who's strictness was applied specifically to spawn the rebellion it caused and create a self-demonizing villain. He could've chosen to be better in theory- options were technically there- but he wanted to be a villain because he was raised in such a way that it felt like a meaningful rebellion against Prism's goody two shoes persona, but it wasnt, and he wouldnt have been allowed to pick the better options anyway- judging from things like Prism hitting the undo button on TOJ giving her a shiner, anything deviating too far from the plan can just be undone anyway, with none but her (and the audience,) maintaining memory of it, although it's marks are left regardless. little retcons. (Prism saying she felt guilt for what she 'had to do' to Crimson is... a bit supported by this- if she never wanted him to ever have nice things she could very easily take All of it away. She could have made that hug never happen. But she did let him have that. Doesnt make the constant cruelty better but yknow. Abusers are weird and complicated people sometimes and often they believe what they're doing is for the best for the child even if it really really isnt)

While we all came to agreement that Doctor Order's statement, about how if someone is changed by prism by unnoticed inches it will become miles over time, did not apply to her... I think it applies to Crimson, although not fully in the magical sense she meant, but the metaphorical. I think once upon a time there mightve been a better nature and hope in crimson which was slowly, steadily, and thoroughly corroded for a long, long time. Started CPUK Reboot in my rewatch recently, and before it became Team Calibur, Team Crimson's uniting factor wasnt even evil- it was passion. Bizarre, considering how inhuman Crimson was played in the first season. Kindness is what comes naturally to people. All that doesnt have to matter, not in the least, to the people he's hurt- but free will has always been more theoretical for him than the average person with Prism's eyes trained on him, and morality greys and greys as one gets into the weeds of why people are the way they are and when you remove or bar off meaningful and conscious choice from the equation. It is, sometimes, a luxury to have the option to be a good person, even if you aren't aware those options have been closed off to you. People get trapped, often without even knowing, in doing things that contradict what they believe or understand to be right to survive and enjoy any kind of happiness or fulfillment every day. smthn smthn no ethical consumption under capitalism for a familiar example. Crimson just raises So Many Fun Moral Philosophy Questions. God i love 'born to be evil, are so much more than that' type characters theyre always so human and fun to get pretentious about. can you tell my family's ex-catholic /j

Judging by his resentful tone with things like lovey dovey romance and Prism's 'barney the dinosaur' demeanor, i think its pretty fair to assume Prism's faux-sugary demeanor has made him thoroughly distrustful or disdainful of anything too 'sweet' at the outset. Only pain and grit is 'real', anything too sweet is a facade waiting to stab you in the back. Despite his two-faced smarmy deceitfulness being a defining trait, being Authentically Himself seems to concern Crimson a great deal, and for obvious reason. That being said i think theres also a part of crimson that wishes he could win over her approval, judging from his conversation with captain crimson- where i think he's the only one of the cods to actually briefly label prism as their mom directly, if only in a snarky derisive way, (usually they fall in line with her description of herself as their babysitter, but i mean. When your parent is a primordial cloud of feelings and ideas and not a person that can raise you but their emissary raises you in their place idc thats functionally a Mom) and implies Crimson sticks around here because of Prism in a way that makes it sound like it was a deliberate choice- it'd certainly explain why he actually tried to be good at the job he Knew he had (until attempting to self-sabotage to prove a point,) and making a point out of cobalt fucking up at his, despite his typically impulsive and self-indulgent personality. not really realizing he never could have her approval until his godhood of treachery was revealed to him, a title which means he is inescapably evil to her. I think Crimson wants very badly to be liked and approved of by Somebody, and in failing to get that from Prism has... latched on to the audience a bit, as another extension of his progenitor Spectrum. Crimson sees chat! He can see everything we say about him! He probably has thoughts and feelings on a good lot of it! He started using the nickname Crimbo because of us, and throughout orange's intros iirc he seemed more than a little disappointed by the reception to him as host not just from the competitors but from us in chat booing him (in a heelish kind of way, largely. God knows we do love crimson even if he sucks <3) and for god's sake the nelson warping is activated by us complimenting him. hes So Desperate for us to like him! Not unlike prism was!

i think the treachery reveal ultimately came as the second hit of a three hit combo of crimson's held beliefs being challenged. I think Crimson percieved Cobalt as kinda... Prism's lapdog to some extent? always trying to be the 'responsible' one, managing his and Chartreuse's behavior on Prism's advice while botching his own job. Cobalt showed his care for Crimson as his little brother through making deals to keep him alive, but considering he spends every other moment they're together (understandably, crimson is not a good person and cobalt has a very firm and deliberately constructed punitive moral compass to keep from losing sight of his responsibilities,) being critical of him on moral grounds it makes their relationship feel much more... transactional, even if Cobalt doesnt mean things that way. Like he's only making these deals to protect him because Someone needs to do his job. And then a disguised Crimson, after his apparent death, walks in on Cobalt discussing with Chartreuse that they need to do something about Prism, that this has all gone on too long. He cares, regardless of their stupid jobs, he just wants Crimson to be Less of an Asshole. And then, after the treachery reveal, there's chartreuse giving up her godhood.

Crimson's been confused by and rudely dismissive of his sister's relationship ever since he found out- particularly so after learning what she's been doing to maintain it. She's weakening herself, hurting herself, making herself vulnerable, to maintain a relationship with some mortal who, even if she could keep up what she was doing, not telling him anything and enduring the pain of keeping his fracture in the timeline sustained, would have sixty maybe seventy years at best to be with her and then she'd be back to the usual. They are incomprehensibly old, Folk is a blip in the grand scheme. She'll get over him, she should stop whining about it, its spilt milk. And then she gave up her godhood entirely. This mortal was worth facing not just pain, but the inevitability of death to her, worth facing the absolute vulnerability of mortal life. Crimson still can't understand it... he still doesnt agree with her decision and he doesnt particularly like Folk that much. but he can understand this is Really Fucking Important to her. and he cares about her enough to respect it and want to be a part of it as much as he can.

Ultimately, what i think Crimson really needs is to learn is how to trust someone enough to willingly hand over power and control to someone else without it being the end of the world and that change can be for the better, and him respecting the agency of other people even if he intensely disagrees with their decisions is an important step in the right direction on that front.

[wisteriabookss]

My ACOSF Review (2/5 Stars)

Please respect my opinions. Not everything I say will be praiseful or nice. While I liked a lot of this book, a lot of it frustrated and bothered me. 

This review contains spoilers. Read at your own risk. 

This review will be more of an overall impression, and I will get more in depth about certain characters in future posts. 

I eventually got into the plot of the book, but I don’t think it was as great or creative as it could’ve been. I feel like SJM recycled ideas she’s already used to create the storyline. A quest to find a magic object that can stop a war and save the world? That sentence applies to both ACOWAR and ACOSF. It’s even more disappointing when you know there were other routes the plot could’ve taken but were eventually scratched. It was the perfect set up for an Illyrian mountain setting, it was written in canon, and, unsurprisingly, SJM retconned and changed it. 

The Valkyrie plot was cool, if a bit forced and out of place. Nesta barely starts training, and all of a sudden she wants to recreate a powerful band of female warriors that we’ve never heard of in the context of this world? Honestly, it feels like SJM watched Thor: Ragnarok, and was like, “Yes, that’s what I’m gonna do.” I thought Helions winged horses would come into play with that, but I guess we’ll have to see.

I thought the Blood Rite plot was gone, but we got it in the end, even though it was rushed. The most beautiful parts of the book happened during the Rite, so I’m glad we got to see those.

The ending of Briallyn was so swift I literally had to go back a page to make sure I read it right. Literally one page, and she’s killed. I expected more. I can’t say I'm surprised by how rushed her death was when I knew the Feysand trouble was approaching, and the number of pages left was getting smaller. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that SJM would save Rhys, Feyre, and their baby. Out of the entire ensemble in Kingdom of Ash, she only had the heart to kill Gavriel, who wasn’t too much of a main character. There was no way in hell she would do that to Feysand. 

I’m sorry, but I do not like the name Nyx. Imagine calling someone Nyx? Did she originally have it as Nick, but just needed to put an X? My eyes were rolling so hard when I read it. Just put an ‘O’ in front of it and end our misery, though I still would’ve rolled my eyes at that name too. The name just reminds me of all the blogger moms who put X’s in their child’s names for dramatic effect that ends up looking like they can’t spell.

I also didn’t appreciate the out of touch colloquialisms in this book either. Prythian doesn’t have a name for anxiety, depression, or PTSD, but they know what lactic acid means?

The amount of sex in this book was something we had been warned to expect, and I think due to the fastness of me reading this book (finished in two sittings), it made it feel like the sex was happening every other page, which it basically was. I’m not going to be mad though because a) it was well written, b) I didn’t feel like it harmed the plot too much, and c) this is the only Nessian smut we’re going to see in canon. But that threesome line with Az. . . y'all know which one I’m talking about. . . the one with the details about certain positions. . .  chile um anyways let’s move on. 

I called it months ago that Emerie would either be Mor or Azriel’s love interest, and looks like it’s going to be Mor. SJM’s writing is fairly predictable, especially when it comes to romantic ships, and she couldn’t have been more obvious about the two of them. I will write about Gwyn and Azriel in Azriel’s chapter review (cause that monstrosity needs a post of its own).

Now about Nesta’s healing arc. Some of it was satisfying and others were saddening. I’m happy that Nesta was able to find purpose in her life, and not believe herself to be worthless or pathetic, but strong and powerful. I’m happy she found Gwynn and Emerie; I love their friendship. I love how they stuck by each other no matter what, and saw the good and potential in one another.

However, even by the end of the book, Nesta still thinks herself as undeserving. Of Cassian, of love. She knows she has it, and she's so grateful for it, but she still believes she is undeserving of it, that Cassian is just so much better than her. A part of learning to love and live with yourself is knowing what you deserve, so why SJM took that from her character, I don’t know. I was continuously disappointed when said she was undeserving of anything, even after she had learned and grown from her mistakes. 

Maybe SJM thinks the belief of being undeserving of one's partner is romantic. I’m telling you now, it’s not. All that does is give unnecessary power to a person you believe you are undeserving of, and this leads to unequal power dynamics in a relationship. Rhys was the exact same with Feyre, so I’m guessing it's a theme.

Speaking of romantic themes, the repetition of the “your mine-im yours” line in this book was nauseating. Your going to make Nesta say the exact same thing her sister said when they had sex? Is there nothing else SJM could’ve come up with? It’s just so weird. And I swear to god if I see Elain do the same thing I’m gonna vomit. 

Nesta apologized to Cassian about what she said to him on Solstice in ACOFAS as if he never called her unlovable. As if he never said he didn’t understand why her sisters love her. He never apologized for that. There was so much apologizing from Nesta to Cassian about her calling him a brute, as if Cassian didn’t say he was “shackled” to her after she clearly explained how she feared she would lose her humanity if she accepted the word mate. Not if she accepted him, but the word. 

For Cassian to routinely tell Nesta to, “shut her fucking mouth,” when she used some attitude against Rhys was comical. Rhys has been bad mouthing and disrespecting Nesta this whole time, and when she shows some warranted attitude in return (not even an insult), Cassian rips into her. It doesn’t matter what he did for you, babe. Not everyone has the same experience with Rhys, so Cassian getting angry when Nesta showing anger at the way she was being treated was wrong. Her experience with him does not become invalidated just because Cassian has a good relationship with him.

There wasn’t a character arc for Cassian, which was one of the most disappointing parts of the book. He thinks of himself as inferior and undeserving as well, and by the end of the book it’s not even clear if that stance has changed. We saw him grow into the courtier persona in the meeting with Eris when Tamlin shows up, but we never see it again. I know there were instances in which he stood up for Nesta, but he also very quicky after that became silent in other moments when they were insulting her. The next book isn’t in his pov, but I’m hoping we see him become more confident in himself and make a firmer stance to protect Nesta (although I doubt he’ll need to seeing as how Rhys kisses the ground she walks on now).

Now onto Nesta’s apologies to the IC. I think Nesta apologizing to Feyre was expected, and I’m glad the sisters had that moment. I am, however, upset that there was never a moment where all the sisters sat down, and hashed it out. Talked about what they’d been through, how it affected them, and how it affected their feelings toward each other. After everything that happened between Nesta and Elain, all that hurt, you’re telling me all it took was Nesta to make Elain laugh by saying “fuck you,” and we’re good? It’s lazy writing. 

Elain telling Nesta that she only cared about how her trauma affected her did not sit right with me. Nesta sat by Elain’s side for weeks when she was in the thick of her struggles, and refused to leave her alone for fear that her struggles would eat her up alive. She constantly looked for anything that could help her sister, and never left her unprotected. Nesta and Elain didn’t communicate after the war, for reasons that we now know was because of Nesta’s guilt for Elain being kidnapped. It is not abnormal when a family member has been traumatized by things that have happened to another family member. That’s expected. Ask any family who has lost a child or had a relative go through something horrible.

Elain is acting as if Nesta has only ever been concerned with herself when she’s spent her entire life concerned with Elain. I made a post long ago about how the IC only wanted Nesta to heal for their sake rather than her sake, and there’s so much more evidence for that than for Elain. Elain’s healing process was able to be understood and encouraged by the IC, whereas they had no idea what to do with Nesta. So for Elain to come at Nesta for not caring about her trauma, a second after Nesta was trying to protect her from further trauma by telling her she didn't want her seering for the Trove, was unwarranted.

Speaking about Elain looking for the Trove, what happened there? Elain had this whole speech where she said she wanted to do something and no one could stop her and then we just. . . don’t hear anything about it again? SJM had a perfect opportunity to do something powerful with Elain there, and completely threw it away. 

Nesta’s apology to Amren was extreme, dramatic, and honestly, unnecessary. Amren called Nesta a “pathetic waste of life,” constantly demeaned and degraded her anytime her name was mentioned, and said she did all this because Nesta used her as a shield against her problems and the IC. Seriously? Nesta using Amren as a shield does not warrant that kind of verbal abuse. It doesn't make her a pathetic waste of life. Amren’s been alive for how long? And reacts like that to an obvious side effect of extreme trauma? No ma'am. Nesta getting on her damn knees was too much, and obviously just another moment, like a lot of moments, that SJM felt the need to make dramatic. And then having the audacity to let Amren say to Nesta that, “the struggle with the darkness is worth it,” when she was one of those people who contributed to that darkness is disgusting.

I didn’t like Rhys at all in this book. Even after he saw inside Nesta’s mind about her experience in the cauldron, he was still wary and rude with her. Literally anytime Nesta showed that she was changing, Rhys didn’t change anything about his attitude or behavior towards her. A moment of regret, and then he’s back to being arrogant ass Rhys. Him not telling Feyre about the baby was also extremely stupid. It’s her body, her life, her baby’s life, his life, and she had a right to know what was happening. Not telling her because you didn’t want her to be “upset,” is a dumb excuse. I thought you always promised to let her make her own decisions, Rhys? What happened to that promise? The one that was a hell of a lot better than the stupid bargain ya’ll made? Though Nesta told her out of anger, good on her for telling her sister. Should’ve happened way sooner. His apology to Nesta was the only one that warranted the dramatics. That is what you get on your knees for.

That whole scene about him becoming High King had me throwing the book. Amren telling Rhys that the swords were some sort of mother-mary-cauldron-blessed-hallelujah sign that he was supposed to be High King had me fuming. It’s Nesta’s power. It’s Nesta’s sword. That should have never been a discussion. Not everything is for Rhys. These people are so blinded by their love for him they can’t even see how arrogant he is. To write Nesta giving back Ataraxia made me so angry after we just had a whole moment where we find out it means inner peace. I just hope that all of this is not foreshadowing Rhys becoming High King. I know you love him Sarah, but please don’t.

All in all, this book wasn’t too bad. There were some great moments and some bad moments. I think SJM’s biggest issue in her writing is that she doesn’t outline, or at least doesn't seem to outline, not thoroughly. I feel like she uses plot devices willy nilly whenever it’s the easiest solution. There was never a moment where I said, “that was clever!” A lot of it was cool, but not clever. Not creative. She also has a tendency to write very dramatically, in staccato type sentences where everything is made into a big moment, which bugs me a lot. 

I love Nesta. She’s still my fav, and will probably always be my fav. This book doesn’t change that, and as you can tell in my review, most of the issues I had weren’t with her behavior, but with the behavior of other characters. I still love Cassian, even though he made me want to rip my hair out sometimes.

Will I read the next books? Probably. I can’t seem to stay away from these characters or these books, so kudos to SJM for writing them. I know a majority of people have given this book 4 or 5 stars, but I can’t bring myself to give it more than 2/5.

[thisweekingundamwing]

TWIGW Feb 18 - 24, 2018

Happy Roundup Day!! Once again, a special thanks to everyone who submitted works; it makes our job so much easier, and helps us catch things we may miss in the shuffle. You only need to dive into the Gundam Wing tag to see just how much love still exists in our fandom.

Also, as this is my first week as a mod, please be gentle if you don’t see your work here. It’s difficult to fill in the blanks beyond the submissions we receive.

Thanks so much and have a lovely week!

--Mod Rem

Fanfiction:

A Little Piece of Gundam Wing

The archive is being ported to AO3! Check it out!

Amberly, yourbloodlikewine

In This Light

Duo spent the last semester working in his older brother's coffee shop. He's resigned himself to a boring spring when a stranger appears, shaking up his entire life.

Eli left home last fall, choosing to spend the last six months living out of his van on his travels from the Midwest to the East Coast. By the time he arrives at Ink's, the novelty of traveling alone has started to wear off. Still, the last thing he's expecting is to meet someone who's going to change all that for him

Pairings: 2xOC, 3xOC, SoloxOC

Warnings: Original Characters - Freeform, Alternate Universe, child abuse mention, Sexual Assault Mention, homophobic parents, Re-Written Characters, Drug Use, Violence, off screen murder, gratuitous author indulgence

Ammiehawk

If He’s Anything Like Me

What if not one, or even two, of the Gundam pilots had a son together, but all five? Some genetic experiment gone awry, or is something else at work here? Yaoi

Pairings: 2xSeverus Snape, 4x1, 3x5

Warnings: Crossover - Harry Potter

@claraxbarton

The Green Door

Duo visits an adult novelty store for the first time.

Pairings: 5x2, 3x5, HxM, 1xR, 2x3x5

@duointherain

To Be Human is to Love

Duo and Heero are working a damaged part of their new colony, things go wrong.

Pairings: 1x2

Warnings: Spaced

@kangofu-cb

If You Let Me

If Trowa could give the new residents one rule for surviving the ICU, it would be ‘Don’t Touch Anything. (Especially The Patients.)’.  In reality, he’d actually give them a lot of rules, possibly with diagrams for clarity.  But his main rule essentially covered the bases. When you worked in one of the largest ICUs, in the biggest medical center in the country, at a hospital known for taking on unstable patients for the most complex and risky surgeries that were performed no-where else, new residents were a menace. Until he meets Dr. Maxwell, the newest anesthesia resident.

Pairings: 2x3, background HxD

Warnings: Alternate Universe - Medical, Doctor/Patient, Nurses & Nursing, Fluff and Smut, this is literally my feel good thing guys ok, I mean I’m not saying there won’t be any angst, but basically this is all WAFF

Of Infinity

The morning after "On The Edge."

Pairings: 2x3x4

Warnings: Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, just a big orgy honestly, tithes for 2x3x4, also a sequel, sort of cocktail friday

Lsama_no_miko

Posted multiple fics, too many to list here

Check out their page here 

Maldoror

The Source of All Things

Center, a planet where magic and technology blend. Or more accurately, fight tooth and nail. A planet of Sources, holes in our boring dimension letting through arcane power, chaos and pseudo-deities. In this hot-house of myths and very real dangers, Trowa and Quatre find a mysterious man at the end of a shamanic voyage. Portents suggest this Heero Yuy is crucial to Center’s survival. He’s important enough to have some interesting enemies after him, at any rate: a devious killer and thief called ‘Shinigami’, and a very irate Dragon. Beyond them looms an even greater threat. Indeed, the greatest of them all.

Pairings: 3x4, 2x5, eventual 1x2x5

Warnings:  alternative universe, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Plot Twists, fairly graphic depiction of sex, Mild description of self-harm, Mathematical Magic, weird science, crones - Freeform, Magic and Technology brawling and eventually screwing, Eventual Threesome, Kinda, Insanity of arcane origin, The universe is a pile of marbles and other dubious allegories

Two Halves

The two kingdoms of Sanq and Lin were at war for years; a conflagration involving magic, armies and political murder. The conflict left both nations devastated and strewn with refugees. The king of Sanq finds his infant son, lost at birth, among the death and the ruin, a miracle he barely dared to hope for. But there isn’t just one boy, there are two, clinging together like two halves of a whole that cannot be separated. Decades later, the truth behind that second child’s existence will put a hole in the world, or possibly save it.

Pairings: 1x2

Warnings: Fantasy AU, medieval setting with magic, starts with our heroes as children, Cousin Incest, sort of, eventually, being royalty this is in fact the norm and rather expected of them, Canon-Typical Violence

@remsyk-blog

Distracting Dissertations 

All Wufei wants to do is finish his dissertation and enjoy the rest of the weekend. He just needs to take care of a few distractions.

Pairings: 2x5

Warnings: Smut, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Just an excuse to do it, How else can I put this?

SmallSound

Two Truths and a Lie

A few years after they join Preventer, Duo and Heero are sent on a space mine clean-up mission. Alone in space together for several weeks, the two ex-Gundam pilots find they have time to find out who they are and who they want to be.

Warnings: Some fluff, Some angst, Sex, New love, Polyamory Negotiations, this is gonna be a long one

Thai_Tea_Addict

Wolves and Lambs

On the cusp of war, Remus Lupin discovers he has a son. Facing a prejudiced wizarding world unwilling to believe Voldemort has returned, Remus must now navigate his duties as both a member of the Order and as a father to one Duo Maxwell. Duo doesn’t know a lot about families, but he knows war. HP Fifth Year, Post-GW main series

Pairings: 1x2, 2xHP, 3x4, Romione

Warnings: Harry Potter crossover, Family Reconstruction Act, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Politics, Wizarding Politics, War, Disturbing Themes

@yesacia

Mission: Christmas

Duo gets tired of spending Christmas alone, and realizing he's the only one who celebrates inspires him to bring the others in on the festivities.

Warnings: Duo and Quatre are bffs, Quatre is guilty, Duo just wants y'all to have a merry christmas ok

 Late Night Reading 

Duo reflects a little bit about his love for reading and makes an interesting discovery about a parallel between one of his favorite fictional characters and his long time friend he never noticed before.

T for language. This is just sort of an idea, pretty short, it's based when the guys are in their 20s and still adjusting. Comes out of the On Again, Off Again universe.// an older fic from my FF.net account

Pairings: 1x2

 Random Duo Thoughts 

Random drabbles about Duo's Life Post-War

Pairings: 1x2, 2x3

Warnings: On-Again/Off-Again Relationship, Blurbs from a bigger project

 Random Quatre Thoughts 

Thoughts of Quatre Post-War

Warnings: Recreational Drug Use, Drug Use, Lonely Quatre

Snippets:

@cosmostar​

One of the Road - WIP Featuring Heero Yuy and Cathy Bloom

@gw-ficrecfriday

Just Because - Snippet of Quatre Winner, Dorothy Catalonia 

@lemontrash

Thursday (300) - WIP 2x5 

@lbro009

Insider Snippet: Midii Une - WIP Wednesday

@lifeaftermeteor

LAM!verse snippet - Heero en Route 

@noirangetrois

Dancing with the Duke - WIP for Rewrite the Romance 

@relenaforpresident

The Agreement - 1xR 

@terrablaze514

Touched by an Angel - WIP Wednesday 1x2 

Thirsty for a Change - Snippet Sunday 1+4. Quatre POV

 Photo Edits/Manipulations

@goldenfirefox

Keep Your Word You Fool! 

Headcanons / Meta / Discussions:

Multiple Contributors

Possible HCs Discussion 

@lifeaftermeteor

Dr J and Professor G 

@gundamwing-ellesmith

Heero’s Birthday 

@robo-rad

Office Workers HCs 

Fanart:

@arubees

Zechs and Duo 

@drkstars-art

Bizarre Circus - Trowa Barton and Quatre Winner 

@enukoblr

Duo Maxwell 

@noelleian

Duo Maxwell 

Lady Une 

@vegalume

Color of old sketch - 1x2

@zibelinbelt

Meet-up in Town 

Cosplays:

@kirkettecosplay

Heero Yuy and Duo Maxwell 

@simulacraryn

Treize and Une - Featuring @renmaxwell and @shinigami-of-excellence 

@shinigami-of-excellence

Treize Khushrenada 

Calendar Events:

Cocktail Friday

https://gwcocktailfriday.tumblr.com/

A new prompt every Monday!

Submissions should be posted Fridays between 3 and 5pm EST, and tagged with @gwcocktailfriday

Interview with a Creator by @remsyk-blog @interview-with-a-creator

Remsyk has created an online interview for fandom creators to fill out and then she features one each week so that everyone in the fandom can learn a bit about each other.

If you haven’t filled out her interview, go! do! now!

This week’s interviewee is @vegalume​ found here

[thecoroutfitters]

Great lessons of survival come along with extreme and life changing experiences.

What would a 14 months drift on the ocean mean in terms of survival? Salvador Alvarenga knows it, for sure!

Alvarenga survived 438 days adrift in the Pacific Ocean, drifting 7000 miles from just off Mexico, to the Marshall Islands. His open 24′ fiberglass boat was disabled in a storm and nearly all his gear was swept overboard, disabled or had to be cut loose to keep the boat from sinking.

His story is way beyond ordinary, and now he’s sharing it in this exclusive interview for Survivopedia readers.

When I heard that he was going to be in Salt Lake City for PrepperCon 2017, where I hosted two Q&A sessions on EMP survival, I wanted to meet him and hear his story firsthand.

The Survivor and His Unbelievable Story

At first glance, I must admit that I was somewhat skeptical. In my mind, this feat pushed the boundaries of what I thought was possible. Either way, I wanted to know. As I researched, read, interviewed and analyzed his ordeal at sea, I grew increasingly convinced that his story true. As you can plainly see in the video interview below, it is difficult for him to talk about the experience to this day.

After the interview, I handed him a copy of the English Language version of the book Jonathan Franklin wrote about his experience. He looked at the book and flipped through the photographs, pointing and commenting as if he was seeing an old family album he had not looked at in a long time.

It was clear how deeply traumatizing the ordeal was for him and that he still compartmentalizes many aspects of the experience. This is very understandable given what he went through. That’s why I admire Salvador for being willing to revisit those obviously painful memories in order to help others.

3 Second SEAL Test Will Tell You If You’ll Survive A SHTF Situation

7 Lessons Learned in 483 Days on the Sea

Salvador had some advantages going into his experience. He was a sharking boat captain with 12 years of experience in the open ocean. He was an outdoorsman who fished, hunted, camped and survived his way cross country to Mexico from El Salvador as an illegal immigrant.

His build was ideal, being compact and powerful, winning weight lifting competitions against the other hard working, hard fighting and hard partying fisherman of Costa Azul, which helped retard hypothermia.

So he was no stranger to adversity and problem solving. The man had an iron stomach and a lifetime of conditioning his immune system. He ate raw meats of all kinds, drank raw turtle blood and considered their meat and eggs to be delicacies. He hailed form a culture that considers turtle eggs to be something along the lines of naturopathic Viagra.

Here are the lessons to be learned from his story.

1. “90% of Survival Happens From the Neck Up”

I first heard it put in precisely this way by Adam Kay, the winner of Season 1 of Alone, but the primary lesson taught by Salvador Alvarenga’s experience is the importance of the mental aspects of survival.

Psychology, mental toughness, bravery, adaptability, knowledge and problem solving ability made all the difference in this case. Alvarenga started out the ordeal with a crewman named Cordoba who lacked Salvador’s fundamental optimism.

Religious faith works both ways. In this case, Salvador’s companion was convinced by the vision that a sister from his religious congregation had while fasting. She told him that she foresaw that he would die at sea. His belief that he would die eventually consumed him and became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

After finding a partially digested venomous sea snake in the stomach of a sea bird he had eaten, he became physically ill and stopped eating birds which, since they lacked the gear to fish, where their primary food source. Cordoba eventually starved to death because he refused to eat, which has happened in other cases of survival at sea where survivors were unable to properly cook foods.

2. Catching and Eating Sea Birds Helps

Salvador eventually constructed a roost for sea birds to land on, under which he would lay motionless until birds got comfortable and started preening or dosed off. He would then grab them by the neck and break on of their wings to prevent their escape, eventually keeping a flock of up to thirty of them in the hull like a brood of anorexic broilers and “meat on the hoof.”

He sun-dried meat from the birds on the outboard motor cover, using it as an improvised solar oven of sorts.

3. Turtles, Sea Birds & Raw Fish Eyes Contain Vitamin C

Vitamin C is present in small amounts in raw fish flesh, but occurs in greater amounts in fish eyes. Unlike us mammals, both birds and turtles produce their own Vitamin C, in which their livers are particularly rich.

Salvador ate enough sea turtle liver, bird liver and fish eyes to intake enough Vitamin C to stave off scurvy.

4. Use Floating Trash to Your Advantage

Salvador put floating trash found in or near shipping lanes to good use, occasionally even finding odd scraps of food or a few drops of soda. His haul included 73 half liter bottles which he used to store rainwater and a large piece of Styrofoam which he said helped attract birds.

5. Adaptability Means Disobeying Conventional Training

Had many famous survival instructors swapped places with Salvador, they very likely would not have survived. Part of the problem is theory or book knowledge vs real world knowledge, and part is that is that it is becoming impossible to practice or teach survival in the preservationist, “leave no trace,” overly litigious, fragilista-engineered world we live in.

While certain correct principles of survival apply to all environments and ecosystems, there are far too many ecosystems in this world to write one book that will teach you everything you need to know to survive in all of them, so it is imperative to learn from the locals.

Survival is an inherently dangerous activity and instructors are often compelled to err on the side of safety, which, taken to the extreme, prevents students from learning that which they need to know most of all.

Eating Trigger Fish

How many of you have an SAS Survival Guide in your pack? I have at least a couple of Lofty’s books.

They are a great resource from a world-renowned instructor, but regarding triggerfish, the book advises readers, “Many kinds are poisonous to eat. Avoid them all.” yet virtually every story of long term survival adrift in a boat or life-raft I have researched, whether it took place in the Atlantic or the Pacific, nearly all the survivors ate triggerfish because it is one of the first species begin nibbling at boats adrift, it is noisy when they do, and you may go long periods without access to other species.

While it is true that the flesh of any species of triggerfish could be contaminated with toxins which cause ciguatera, the risk with certain species of triggerfish is lower than others.

Do not get me wrong, ciguatera can be very serious and potentially fatal, especially in a survival situation, but ciguatera occurs in over 400 species of reef fish and the only way to completely avoid is to not eat any reef fish, restricting your diet to deep water species.

Had Salvador had some fishing gear, it would have been advisable to use the triggerfish as bait and chum and fish for deep water species, but he had no such option.

If you are eating fish in restaurants or fishing for recreation it makes sense to exercise a great deal of caution as you choose your meals. Lost at sea, your dining options are likely going to be considerably more restricted.

Avoid species prone to ciguatera like the titan triggerfish, barracuda and red snapper, but gray triggerfish is common table fare in restaurants in many tropical regions. Try to take them away from reef in deep water if possible.

If my choice was between starving to death and running a small risk of ciguatera, I would definitely eat gray triggerfish. Salvador ate more colorful varieties as well and in his situation, I would have done the same. If you ever find yourself there, that is a decision you will have to make.

When you are down to eating powdered fish bones mixed with water, your own hair and fingernails and even wood from the boat, they might start looking pretty tasty.

Eating Shark and Fish Liver

The US Military Multi-service Survival, Evasion & Recovery Field Manual, and therefore survival manuals and courses virtually without end that regurgitate the reference, say not to eat fish liver, period. Some species of fish liver is edible, however, but some is not. Some survivors begin craving liver, eyes and other parts of fish that contain nutrients or vitamins they are lacking.

Fish liver can carry parasites, but all fish body parts can transmit some species of parasites if eaten raw. Avoid eating the stomach of fish large enough to gut, especially raw, as it contains more parasites than any other part of the fish, but it makes great bait to catch other fish.

With reef species, ciguatera can build up in greater concentrations in the liver, so perhaps that is why the field manual blackballs it. Salvador used and even preserved shark liver by drying it for use as a laxative, which was very important due to his high-protein diet full of bird and fish bones. Ouch!

Eating “Raw” Birds and Sea Turtles

Lofty agrees that sea turtles are good eating, which is true, except for the critically endangered hawk’s bill sea turtle which also tends to be contaminated with ciguatera. The hawk’s bill sea turtle can be identified by yellow polka dots on the head and front flippers and can grow to very large size.

Eating raw bird meat can lead to bacterial infections or parasites. I got salmonella once from eating bird meat and it most certainly would have been fatal in a survival situation, but eating the flesh fresh, cutting it into very thin strips and sun drying it as Salvador did, greatly reduces numbers of pathogens.

If you can construct a makeshift solar oven, that would improve your chances. Salvador dried it on the outboard motor housing, but that was the closest thing he had. Keep in mind, though, that Salvador had eaten raw meat all his life, so that would have developed his immune system far beyond that of a typical North American or European.

Drinking Urine

Amongst survival instructors, this is almost as divisive a topic as 1911 vs Glock amongst the tactical pistol crowd. Instructors I respect have weighed in on both sides of the issue.

David Holladay, Cody Lundin, Matt Graham and the guys from Boulder Outdoor Survival School, say not to drink it, while Mykel Hawke, Joe Teti (never thought I would write that those two agree about something) and some of the military crowd saying it’s a go … no pun intended. In Salvador’s case, Cordoba said it would help and they drank it. The question is whether it helped keep him alive or if he survived in spite of drinking it.

While healthy urine is not toxic, it is does contain compounds your body is trying to eliminate and by the time you are in a situation where you are considering drinking your urine, it contains less water and higher concentrations of urea, salts and other waste products. If you store it, bacteria will grow in it and it will start to stink, so I would not save it for later. If you had the gear to distill it, you could distill seawater.

While it used to be taught that urine is microbiologically sterile until it reached the urethra, it is now known that that is not true. It is interesting that military guys would argue for it, because the US Army Survival Field Manual advises against it on the basis that it contains high concentrations of salts which will contribute to further dehydration, but I believe Mykel has a B.S. in biology, so perhaps he based his decision on that.

If you were urinating clear and copious, it would probably do a lot less harm to you, but that would mean you are not even thirsty yet. Did it help him? I doubt it, but the man did survive, so perhaps Mykel has a point. Even David Holladay seemed to reconsider his position for a moment when heard Salvador tell his story. I’m not convinced it changed his mind though. Maybe we should ask him. I am perfectly comfortable sitting inside the question and considering it without rushing to answer it.

6. Ecosystems Form Around Drifting Rafts and Boats

Studying cases of long-term survival adrift at sea shows a certain patterns. The ocean is our planet’s greatest wilderness, with distinct ecosystems created by prevailing weather interacting with the ocean, underwater topography and land masses to produce currents, zones teeming life and rain and oceanic desert regions with little sea life or rainfall.

Fortunately, large sea creatures, drifting boats and rafts and even large floating debris create small, slow-moving ecosystems. The boat or raft creates shade and hiding places for small marine life. Algae and barnacles grow on the hull.

Sea birds find a place to land and leave droppings, which are eaten by small fish, attracting progressively larger fish, which survivors consume, returning offal and waste to the water and so on until the raft or vessel adrift, organisms that it shelters, survivor, predators and prey become a nomadic and slowly snowballing ecosystem. Every one of these organisms is a resource.

Some survivors used barnacles as bait and Salvador ate them for food.

7. Chances of Survival at Sea Are Linked to Location

There is a reason where tales of surviving long periods adrift occur in places like Mexico, the Marshall Islands, North Africa, the Caribbean, Brazil and California. They are all in latitudes relatively near the equator, where it is possible to survive exposure for longer periods of time.

Survival time for fishermen in the Bering Sea is measured in hours, even if they are wearing specialized survival suits.  In, relatively speaking, warmer waters, there are portions of the ocean that receive too little rain to survive without a hand-pumped desalinator or some other way to get fresh water.

Did It Ever Happen Before?

Salvador is not the first one drifting away. Here are a few of many previous precedents for survival adrift at sea.

In 1941, Olympian Louis Zamperini and Russell Allen Phillips survived 47 days adrift on two small life rafts after their B-24 crashed into the Pacific due to mechanical problems, eventually drifting into the Marshall Islands.

In 1982, American Steven Callahan of Rhode spent 76 days on a life raft after his sailboat sank, probably after a collision with a while.

In 1973 Maurice and Maralyn Bailey of Britain where sailing to New Zealand when their yacht was struck by a whale and sunk. They survived 117 days adrift in a rubber raft before being rescued.

In 1989, John Glennie, James Nalepka, Rick Hellriegel, and Phil Hoffman survived adrift in the South Pacific off the coast of New Zealand on the wreckage of their overturned Trimaran for 119 days.

In 1942, Poon Lim was the sole survivor when the SS Benlomond was torpedoed by a German U-boat and survived 133 days adrift on an 8′ square wooden raft until he was rescued off the coast of Brazil.

In 2005, Jesus Vidana, Lucio Rendon and Salvador Ordonez, much like what happened to Salvador Alvarenga, were shark fishing of the West coast of Mexico when their 27′ fiberglass boat was disabled and drifted to within 200 miles of the Marshall Islands before being rescued. They lost two companions on the journey including the captain and consumed 103 sea turtles and many species of fish. Unlike Salvador and Cordoba, they had line and more tools which enabled them to fashion hooks from nails and screws.

The longest anyone has ever survived adrift at sea was in the case of a Japanese cargo vessel captained by Oguri Jukichi a crew member named Otokichi in 1813. They drifted almost to California for 484 days before rescue and lost 12 crew members to scurvy. This case is hard to compare as it was a much larger vessel carrying hundreds of bags of beans.

One way or another, Salvador Alvarenga found his way to survival. He was not trained for it. He was a regular guy, like many of us are. His story is the proof that survival means much more than skills and training that one can have in advance. I’d say that what you have inside makes you a survivor.

Are you a survivor? Will you be able to protect your own in a life or death scenario? Click the banner below to find out!

This article have been written by Cache Valley Prepper, based on his interview with Salvador Avarenga for Survivopedia. 

from Survivopedia Don't forget to visit the store and pick up some gear at The COR Outfitters. How prepared are you for emergencies? #SurvivalFirestarter #SurvivalBugOutBackpack #PrepperSurvivalPack #SHTFGear #SHTFBag

[vitalmindandbody]

Zadie Smith: dance lessons for scribes

From Fred Astaires elegance to Beyoncs power, Zadie Smith is inspired by dancers just as much she is by other writers

The connection between writing and dancing has been much on my mind recently: its a canal I want to keep open. It detects a bit neglected to report to, say, the ties between music and prose perhaps because there is something counter-intuitive about it. But for me the two forms are close to each other: I experience dance has something to tell me about what I do.

One of the most solid portions of writing advice I know is in fact intended for dancers you can find it in the choreographer Martha Grahams biography. But it loosens me in front of my laptop the same path I thoughts it might encourage a young dancer to breathe deeply and wiggle their paws and toes. Graham writes: There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a accelerate that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of epoch, this face is unique. And if you stymie it, it will never prevail through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how important nor how it compares with other idioms. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and instantly, to keep the canal open.

What can an artistry of words take from the artwork that needs none? Yet I often envision Ive learned just as much from watching dancers as I have from speaking. Dance lessons for columnists: assignments of prestige, posture, tempo and form, some of them obvious, some indirect. What follows are a few documents towards that idea.

Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire

Alamy; The Life Picture Collection/ Getty Images. Crown: Getty Images

Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly

Fred Astaire represent the elite when he dances, claimed Gene Kelly, in old age, and I represent the proletariat. The mark is immediately satisfactory, although it was a little harder to say why. Towering, thin and tasteful, versus muscular and sporting is the fact that it? Theres the obvious content of top hat and tails versus T-shirt and slacks. But Fred sometimes wore T-shirts and slacks, and was not actually that towering, this is the only way digested as if “hes been”, and when moving always shown heightened, to be gliding across whichever surface: the floor, the ceiling, an ice rink, a bandstand. Genes centre of gravity was far less: he stoops his knees, he hunkers down. Kelly is sanded, securely planted, where Astaire is untethered, free-floating.

Likewise, the aristocrat and the proletariat have differing relations to the soil beneath their paws, the first moving fluidly across the surface of the world, the second largest specific tethered to a certain blot: a city block, village representatives, a factory, a stretch of fields. Cyd Charisse claimed her husband “ve always known” which of these dancers molted been working with by looking at her body at the end of the day: bruised everywhere if it was Kelly , not a blemish if “its been” Astaire. Not simply aloof when it came to the field, Astaire was aloof around other peoples forms. Through 15 times and 10 movies, its hard to detect one moment of real sex friction between Fred and his Ginger. They have great peace but little hot. Now think of Kelly with Cyd Charisse in the fantasy string of Singin in the Rain! And perhaps “its one of” certain advantages of earthiness: sex.

When I write I detect theres typically a choice to be made between the grounded and the float. The floor I am thinking of in such a case is speech as we fulfill it in its commonsense mode. The communication of the television, of the supermarket, of the advert, the newspaper, the government, the daily public dialogue. Some novelists like to walk this field, recreate it, separate bits of it off and use it to their advantage, where others scarcely recognise its existence. Nabokov a literal aristocrat as well as an aesthetic one just ever put a toe upon it. His speech is literary, far from what we think up as our shared linguistic home.

One argument in defence of such literary communication might be the behavior it admits its own artificiality. Commonsense language meanwhile claims to be plateau and natural, conversational, but is often as fabricated as asphalt, dreamed up in ad organizations or in the heart of government sometimes both at the same meter. Simultaneously romantic and coercive.( The Peoples Princess. The Big Society. Make America Great Again .) Commonsense language claims to take its precede from the road parties naturally speak, but any scribe who truly attends to the room people communicate will shortly find himself categorised as a distinctive stylist or satirist or experimentalist. Beckett was like this, and the American columnist George Saunders is a good contemporary sample.( In dance, the pattern that comes to my thinker is Bill Bojangles Robinson, whose circumstance was tapping up and down the stairs. What could be more ordinary, more folksy, more grounded and everyday than tapping up and down some stairs? But his signature theatre number implied a staircase pressed right up against another staircase a stairway to itself and so up and down he would tap, up and down, down and up, exclusively surreal, like an Escher publication be submitted to life .)

Astaire is clearly not an experimental dancer like Twyla Tharp or Pina Bausch, but “he il be” surreal within the meaning of outperforming the real. He is transcendent. When he dances a few questions proposes itself: what if a figure moved like this through the world? But it is only a rhetorical, fantastical interrogation, for no mass move like Astaire , no, we are just move like him in our dreams.

By contrast, I have received French boys run up the phases of the High Line in New York to take a photo of the opinion, their backsides working just like Gene Kellys in On The Town, and I have met black girls on the A train swing round the pole on their way out of the slide doorways Kelly again, hanging from that eternal lamppost. Kelly mentioned the commonplace where reference is danced, and he reminds us in turn of the mercy we do sometimes own ourselves. He is the incarnation of our mass in their youth, at their most liquor and potent, or whenever our natural endowments blend ideally with our hard-earned abilities. He is a demonstration of how the prosaic can return poetic, if we work hard enough. But Astaire, where reference is dances, has nothing to do with hard work( although we know, from biographies, that he worked very hard, behind the scenes ). He is poetry in motion. His movements are so removed from ours that he adjusts a limit on our own ambitions. None hopes or expects to dance like Astaire, just as nothing truly expects to write like Nabokov.

Harold and Fayard Nichols

Getty

Harold and Fayard Nicholas

Writing, like dancing, is only one of the arts available to people who have nothing. For 10 and sixpence, advises Virginia Woolf, one can buy paper enough to write all the plays of Shakespeare. The only absolutely necessary material in dance is your own body. Some of the greatest dancers have come from the lowliest backgrounds. With many pitch-black dancers this has come with the complication of representing your race. You are on a theatre, in front of your parties and other people. What appearance will you show them? Will you be your soul? Your best self? A image? A typify?

The Nicholas friends were not street minors they were the children of college-educated musicians but they were never formally trained in dance. They learned watching their parents and their parents colleagues performing on the chitlin circuit, as pitch-black vaudeville was then called. Later, when they entered the movies, their executions were generally filmed in such a way as to be non-essential to the narrative, so that when these movies played in the south their splendid sequences “couldve been” snipped out without doing any harm to the integrity of the plan. Genius contained, genius ring-fenced. But likewise genius undeniable.

My talent was the weapon, insisted Sammy Davis Jr, the influence, the course for me to fight. It was the one behavior I might hope to affect a followers pondering. Davis was another chitlin hoofer, originally, and from straitened environments. His logic here is very familiar: it is something of an article of faith within the kinds of class who have few other resources. A baby tells her children to be twice as good, she tells them to be indisputable. My father used to say something like it to me. And when I watch the Nicholas brethren I think of that traumatic teach: be twice as good.

The Nicholas brothers were numerous, numerous importances better than anybody else. They were better than anyone has a right or need to be. Fred Astaire called their routine in Stormy Weather the greatest example of cinematic dance he ever attend. They are developing down a giant staircase doing the separates as if the splits is the commonsense behavior to get somewhere. They are impeccably garmented. They are more than representing they are excelling.

But I always visualize I discern a little difference between Harold and Fayard, and it interests me; I take it as a kind of lesson. Fayard seems to me more concerned with this responsibility of the representatives when he dances: he looks the part, he is the part, his propriety unassailable. He is formal, contained, technically indisputable: a recognition to the hasten. But Harold grants himself over to joy. His mane is his tell: as he dances it loosens itself from the slather of Brylcreem he ever put on it, the irrepressible afro scroll springtimes out, he doesnt even try to brush it back. Between propriety and joyfulnes, select joy.

Prince& Micheal Jackson

Redferns; Sygma via Getty Images

Michael Jackson and Prince

On YouTube you will find them, locked in numerous dance-offs, and so you are presented with a stark alternative. But its not a question of stages of ability, of who was “the worlds largest” dancer. The pick is between two altogether opposite appraises: legibility on the one handwriting, temporality on the other. Between a gravestone( Jackson) and a kind of mirage( Prince ).

But both men were good dancers. Putting aside the difference in height, physically they had many similarities. Abysmally slight, long necked, thin-legged, powered from the torso rather than the backside, which in both cases was improbably small. And in terms of influence they were of course evenly indebted to James Brown. The separates, the increases from the separates, the invent, the glide, the knee bend, the schmuck of the head all been stealing from the same source.

Yet Prince and Jackson are nothing alike when they dance, and its very hard to bring to sentiment Prince dancing, whereas it is practically impossible to forget Jackson. It clangs irrational, but try it for yourself. Monarch moves , no matter how many times you may have discovered them, had not yet been conglomerate inscription in remembrance; they never seem quite fixed or saved. If person asks you to dance like Prince, what will you do? Spin, possibly, and do the divides, if youre able. But there wont appear to be anything especially Prince-like about that. Its strange. How are you able dance and dance, in front of thousands of beings, for years, and still seem like trade secrets simply I know?( And isnt it the instance that to be a Prince fan is to feel that Prince was your secret alone ?)

I never went to see Michael Jackson, but I insured Prince half a dozen days. I visualized him in stadia with thousands of parties, so have a rational understanding that he was in no sense my secret, that he was in fact a celebrity. But I still say his demonstrates were illegible, private, like the performance of a follower in the middle of a room at a house party. It was the greatest concept you ever perceive and hitherto its greatness was confined to the moment in which it was happening.

Jackson was exactly the opposite. Every move he made was absolutely readable, public, endlessly facsimile and copyable, like a meme before the word existed. He conceived in likeness, and across occasion. He purposely outlined and then commemorated once more the edges around each move, like a polouse outlining a chalk front round a body. Stuck his cervix forward if he was moving backwards. Cut his trousers short so you could spoke his ankles. Grabbed his groin so you could better understand its gyrations. Gloved one hand so you might attend to its rhythmic genius, the path it punctuated everything, like an utterance mark.

Towards the end, his strange stagewear became increasingly tasked with this job of drawing and separation. It looked like a model of armor, the purpose of which was to define each element of his form so no push of it would legislate unnoted. His arms and legs multiply fastened a literal visualisation of his flexible joints and a metal sash leading left to right across his breastplate, accentuating the alteration of his shoulders along this diagonal. A heavyweights loop accented slim hips and subdivided the torso from the legs, so you discovered when the top and foot half of the body pulled in opposite tendencies. Finally a silver-tongued thong, making his persuasive groin as clear as if it were in ALL CAPS. It wasnt subtle, “there werent” subtext, but it was clearly legible. Beings will be dancing like Michael Jackson until the end of time.

But Prince, treasured, elusive Sovereign, well, there lays one whose figure was writ in liquid. And from Prince a columnist might take the lesson that elusiveness can possess a deeper beauty than the legible. In “the worlds” of words, we have Keats to remind us of this, and to express what a long afterlife an elusive master can have, even when residence beside as clearly described a illustration as Lord Byron. Prince represents the inspiration of the moment, like an ode composed to captivate a guide superstar. And when the humor changes, he changes with it: another good lesson.

Theres no democracy in has become a tombstone. Better to be the guy still jamming in the wee hours of the house party, and though everybody movies it on their phones no one demonstrates quite able to captivate the essence of it. And now hes get, having escaped us one more time. I dont contend Rulers epitome wont last-place as long as Jacksons. I merely say that in our minds it will never be as distinct.

Janet Jackson Madonna Beyonce

Michel Linssen/ Redferns/ Getty; Dave Hogan/ Getty; Matt Slocum/ AP

Janet Jackson/ Madonna/ Beyonc

These three dont exactly invite transcripts they demand them. They go further than legibility into proscription. They extend hordes, and we join them. We are like those uniformed dancers moving in military pattern behind them, an anonymous corps whose errand it is to replica accurately the gesticulates of their general.

This was induced literal on Beyoncs Formation tour recently, when members of the general invoked her right arm like a shotgun, gathered the initiation with her left and the reverberate of gunshot resound out. There is nothing insinuate about these sorts of dancing: like the military forces, it operates as a word of dealership, whereby a decree meaning America, Beyonc presides over numerous cadres that span “the worlds”. Maybe it is for this reason that much of the crowd I heard at Wembley could be found, for long periods , not facing in the direction of the stage at all, instead turning to their friends and partners. They didnt need to watch Beyonc any more than soldiers need to look fixedly at the flag to perform their duties. Our monarch was up there somewhere dancing but the relevant recommendations of her had already been internalised. Friends from the gym put in cliques and ran their fists, girlfriends from hen nights passed inwards and did Beyonc to each other, and boys from the Beyhive screamed every parole into each others faces. They could have done the same at home, but this was a public display of allegiance.

Janet Jackson knocked off this curious phenomenon, Madonna sustained it, Beyonc is its apex. Here dancing is intended as a show of the female will, a concrete articulation of its reach and possibilities. The lesson is quite evident. My torso obeys me. My dancers obey me. Now you will obey me. And then everybody in the crowd reckons being obeyed like Bey a delightful imagining.

Lady scribes who invigorate similar piety( in far smaller audiences ): Muriel Spark, Joan Didion, Jane Austen. Such columnists give the same essential qualities( or illusions ): total limit( over their pattern) and no freedom( for the reader ). Compare and contrast, say, Jean Rhys or Octavia Butler, girl columnists much adoration but rarely simulated. Theres too much impunity in them. Meanwhile every convict of Didions says: obey me! Who operates “the worlds”? Girls!

David Byrne

Rex/ Shutterstock

David Byrne and David Bowie

The art of not dancing a crucial lesson. Sometimes it is essential to be awkward, clumsy, jerking, to be neither poetic nor banal, to be positively bad. To utter other the chances of figures, alternative evaluates, to stop making sense. Its interested in me that both these creators did their worst dancing to their blackest gashes. Take me to the river, sings Byrne, in square trousers 20 times too big, searching down at his jerking hips as if they belong to someone else. This music is not quarry, his trousers say, and his pushes go further: perhaps this body isnt mine, either. At the end of this seam of logic lies a liberating gues: perhaps nobody absolutely owns anything.

People can be too precious about their heritage, about their habit writers especially. Preservation and protection have their situate but they shouldnt block either impunity or theft. All possible aesthetic idioms are available to all families under the mansion of affection. Bowie and Byrnes evident adore for what was not theirs brought about by new inclinations in familiar dins. It hadnt arose to me before accompanying these men dance that a person might elect, for example, to converge the arch of a container hit with anything but the parallel bending action of their body, that is, with accord and heat. But it is about to change you can also repel: throw up a strange angle and suddenly spasm, like Bowie, or wonder if thats rightfully your own arm, like Byrne.

I think of young Luther Vandross, singing backup a few hoofs behind Bowie, during Young Americans, watching Bowie flail and thresh. I wonder what his take over all that was. Did he ever conceive: Now, what in the world is he doing? But a few concerts in, it was clear to everybody. Here was something different. Something old, and yet new.

Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov

Sipa Press/ Rex/ Shutterstock; Getty Images

Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov

When you face an gathering, which style will you return? Inwards or outwards? Or some combining of the two? Nureyev, so relentless and neurotic, so susceptible, so beautiful like a deer abruptly caught in our headlamps is faced resolutely inwards. You cant take your eyes off him, as beings like to say, but at the same occasion he is almost excruciating to watch. We experience we might snap him, that he might disintegrate or explosion. He never does, but still, whenever he leaps you sense the possibility of total catastrophe, as you do with certain high-strung players no matter how many times they lead or jump or nose-dive. With Nureyev you are an onlooker, you are a person who has been granted the great honor of being present while Nureyev dances. I dont necessitate this sarcastically: it is an honour to watch Nureyev, even in these grainy age-old videos on YouTube. Hes a kind of miracle, and is fully cognisant of this when he dances, and what did you do today to authorize an gathering with a miracle?( See too: Dostoevsky .)

With Baryshnikov, I have no horrors of disaster. He is an outward-facing creator, he is trying to satisfy me and he supersedes altogether. His face dances as much as his arms and legs.( Nureyevs face, meanwhile, is permanently lost in transcendent seeming .) Sometimes Baryshnikov wants to please me so much blaze even try tap dancing with Liza Minnelli, risking the sneer of the purists.( I am not a purist. I am delighted !) He is a charmer, an entertainer, “he il be” comic, dramatic, cerebral, a clown whatever you need him to be. Baryshnikov is both desiring and adoration. He has high and low modes, tough and soft constitutes, but hes ever facing outwards, to us, his audience.( See too: Tolstoy .)

Once I fulfilled Baryshnikov over a New York dinner table: I was so star-struck I is more difficult to pronounce. Lastly I asked him: Did you ever satisfy Fred Astaire? He smiled. He said: Yes, formerly, at a dinner. I was very star-struck, I hardly expressed. But I watched his hands all the time, they were like a assignment in themselves so sumptuous!

Swing Time by Zadie Smith is published on 15 November( Hamish Hamilton, 18.99 ). To prescribe a photocopy for 15.57, going to see bookshop.theguardian.com or announce 0330 333 6846.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

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Zadie Smith: dance exercises for columnists

From Fred Astaires elegance to Beyoncs power, Zadie Smith is inspired by dancers just as much she is by other writers

The the linkages between writing and dancing has been much on my psyche recently: its a canal I want to keep open. It detects a little ignored compared to, say, the relationship between music and prose maybe because there is something counter-intuitive about it. But for me the two forms are close to each other: I experience dance has something to tell me about what I do.

One of the most solid portions of writing advice I know is in fact intended for dancers you can find it in the choreographer Martha Grahams biography. But it tightens me in front of my laptop the same space I thoughts it might encourage a young dancer to breathe deeply and jiggle their thumbs and toes. Graham writes: There is a vitality, a life force, an intensity, a speed that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of day, this show is unique. And if you stymie it, it will never dwell through any other medium and it will be lost. The macrocosm will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how prized nor how it compares with other phrases. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and immediately, to keep the canal open.

What can an prowes of words take from the prowes that needs nothing? Yet I often remember Ive learned as much from watching dancers as I have from speaking. Dance lessons for novelists: exercises of stance, attitude, tempo and form, some of them obvious, some indirect. What follows got a few observes towards that idea.

Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire

Alamy; The Life Picture Collection/ Getty Images. Top: Getty Images

Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly

Fred Astaire represent the elite where reference is dances, claimed Gene Kelly, in old age, and I represent the proletariat. The preeminence is immediately satisfactory, although it was a little harder to say why. Tall, thin and stylish, versus muscular and athletic is that it? Theres the obvious matter of top hat and tails versus T-shirt and slacks. But Fred sometimes wore T-shirts and slacks, and was not actually that towering, he only put as if “hes been”, and when moving always shown hoisted, to be gliding across whichever surface: the flooring, the ceiling, an ice rink, a bandstand. Genes centre of gravity was far less: he crouches his knees, he hunkers down. Kelly is floored, firmly planted, where Astaire is untethered, free-floating.

Likewise, the aristocrat and the proletariat have different relations to the soil beneath their paws, the first moving fluidly across the surface of the world, the second largest specific tethered to a certain spot: a city block, a village, a factory, a strain of battlegrounds. Cyd Charisse claimed her husband always knew which of these dancers molted been working with by looking at their own bodies at the end of the day: bruised everywhere if it was Kelly , not a blemish if it was Astaire. Not only aloof when it came to the sand, Astaire was aloof around other folks torsoes. Through 15 years and 10 movies, its hard to detect one moment of real sexual strain between Fred and his Ginger. They have enormous unison but little hot. Now think of Kelly with Cyd Charisse in the fantasy string of Singin in the Rain! And perhaps this is one of certain advantages of earthiness: sex.

When I write I seem theres often a select to be made between the sanded and the floating. The dirt I am thinking of in this case is usage as we converge it in its commonsense mode. The expression of the television, of the supermarket, of the advert, the newspaper, the government, the daily public conference. Some writers like to walk this sand, recreate it, separate bits of it off and use it to their advantage, where others barely recognise its existence. Nabokov a literal aristocrat as well as an aesthetic one barely ever employed a toe upon it. His expression is literary, far away from which is something we think up as our shared linguistic home.

One argument in defence of such literary usage might be the route it acknowledges its own artificiality. Commonsense language meanwhile claims to be plateau and natural, conversational, but is often as created as asphalt, dreamed up in ad agencies or in the heart of government sometimes both at the same experience. Simultaneously nostalgic and coercive.( The Peoples Princess. The Big Society. Make America Great Again .) Commonsense language claims to take its contribute from the room beings naturally pronounce, but any writer who truly attends to the route parties speak will shortly find himself categorised as a distinctive stylist or satirist or experimentalist. Beckett was like this, and the American columnist George Saunders is a good contemporary example.( In dance, the illustration that comes to my sentiment is Bill Bojangles Robinson, whose act was tapping up and down the stairs. What could be more normal, more folksy, more grounded and everyday than tapping up and down some stairs? But his signature theatre routine implied a staircase pressed right up against another staircase a stairway to itself and so up and down he would tap, up and down, down and up, alone surreal, like an Escher magazine be submitted to life .)

Astaire is clearly not an experimental dancer like Twyla Tharp or Pina Bausch, but “he il be” surreal within the meaning of outperforming the real. He is transcendent. When he dances a few questions proposes itself: what if a organization moved like this through “the worlds”? But it is only a rhetorical, fantastical question, for no figures move like Astaire , no, we are just move like him in our dreams.

By contrast, I have construed French boys run up the phases of the High-pitched Line in New York to take a photo of the opinion, their backsides working just like Gene Kellys in On The Town, and I have looked pitch-black girls on the A train swing round the spar on their way out of the slide doorways Kelly again, hanging from that eternal lamppost. Kelly quoted the banality when he danced, and he reminds us in turn of the prayer we do sometimes own ourselves. He is the incarnation of our bodies in their youth, at their most liquor and potent, or whenever our natural expertises blend ideally with our hard-earned knowledge. He is a demonstration of how the banal can grow poetic, if we work hard enough. But Astaire, when he dances, has nothing to do with hard work( although we know, from biographies, that he worked very hard, behind the scenes ). He is poetry in motion. His motions are so collected from ours that he determines a limit on our own aspirations. Nobody hopes or expects to dance like Astaire, just as nothing genuinely expects to write like Nabokov.

Harold and Fayard Nichols

Getty

Harold and Fayard Nicholas

Writing, like dancing, is only one of the arts available to people who have nothing. For 10 and sixpence, advises Virginia Woolf, one can buy article enough to write all the plays of Shakespeare. The only absolutely essential equipment in dance is your own person. Some of the greatest dancers have come from the lowliest backgrounds. With numerous pitch-black dancers this has come with the complication of representing your hasten. You are on a stage, in front of your people and other people. What appearance will you show them? Will you be your soul? The very best ego? A illustration? A badge?

The Nicholas friends were not street minors the latter are the children of college-educated musicians but they were never formally training at dance. They learned watching their parents and their parents peers acting on the chitlin route, as black vaudeville was then called. Later, when they entered the movies, their acts were generally filmed in this way as to be non-essential to the storey, so that when these films played in the south their impressive strings “couldve been” snipped out without doing any harm to the soundnes of the scheme. Genius contained, genius ring-fenced. But also genius undeniable.

My talent was the weapon, indicated Sammy Davis Jr, the power, the behavior for me to fight. It was the one way I might hope to affect a people recalling. Davis was another chitlin hoofer, initially, and from straitened environments. His logic here is very familiar: it is something of an article of faith within the kinds of households who have few other assets. A baby tells her children to be twice as good, she tells them to be indisputable. My baby used to say something like it to me. And when I watch the Nicholas brothers I think of that traumatic education: be twice as good.

The Nicholas friends were numerous, many importances better than anybody else. They were better than anyone has a right or need to be. Fred Astaire called their routine in Stormy Weather the greatest example of cinematic dance he ever picture. They are progressing down a monstrous staircase doing the divides as if the separates is the commonsense room to get somewhere. They are impeccably garmented. They are more than representing they are excelling.

But I always envisage I spot a bit discrepancies between Harold and Fayard, and it interests me; I take it as a kind of assignment. Fayard seems to me more concerned with this responsibility of representation when he dances: he gazes the division, he is the part, his propriety unassailable. He is formal, contained, technically irrefutable: a credit to the race. But Harold hands himself over to joy. His whisker is his tell: as he dances it loosens itself from the slather of Brylcreem he always put on it, the ebullient afro scroll springs out, he doesnt even try to brush it back. Between propriety and exultation, prefer joy.

Prince& Micheal Jackson

Redferns; Sygma via Getty Images

Michael Jackson and Prince

On YouTube you will find them, locked in numerous dance-offs, and so you are presented with a striking selection. But its not a question of degrees of ability, of “whos” the greater dancer. The select is between two altogether opposite appraises: clarity on the one side, temporality on the other. Between a headstone( Jackson) and a kind of mirage( Prince ).

But both men were superb dancers. Putting aside the differences among stature, physically they had many similarities. Terribly slight, long necked, thin-legged, powered from the torso rather than the backside, which in both cases was improbably small-time. And to its implementation of influence they were of course evenly indebted to James Brown. The splits, the rise from the splits, the gyration, the slip, the knee bend, the schmuck of the brain all stolen from the same source.

Yet Prince and Jackson are nothing alike when they dance, and its very hard to bring to thought Prince dancing, whereas it is practically impossible to forget Jackson. It voices absurd, but try it for yourself. Monarch moves , no matter how many times you may have seen them, had not yet been firm inscription in reminiscence; they never seem fairly sterilized or perpetuated. If person asks you to dance like Prince, what the fuck is you do? Spin, maybe, and do the separates, if youre able. But there wont appear to be anything specially Prince-like about that. Its strange. How can you dance and dance, in front of thousands of beings, for years, and still seem like trade secrets simply I know?( And isnt it the occasion that to be a Prince fan is to feel that Prince was your secret alone ?)

I never went to see Michael Jackson, but I verified Prince half a dozen seasons. I interpreted him in stadiums with millions of people, so have a rational understanding that he was in no feel my secret, that he was in fact a wizard. But I still say his proves were illegible, private, like the performance of a man in the middle of a area at a house party. It was the greatest event “youve been” visualize and yet its greatness was confined to the moment in which it was happening.

Jackson was exactly the opposite. Every move he made was utterly legible, public, endlessly imitated and copyable, like a meme before the word existed. He recollected in portraits, and across season. He intentionally summarized and then differentiated once more the leading edge around each move, like a cop outlining a chalk string round a form. Stuck his cervix forwards if he was moving backwards. Cut his trousers short so you could read his ankles. Grabbed his groin so you could better understand its gyrations. Gloved one hand so you are able to attend to its rhythmic genius, the room it interrupted everything, like an ejaculation mark.

Towards the end, his strange stagewear is more and more tasked with this task of drawing and distinction. It looked like a figure of armour, the purpose of which was to define all aspects of his body so no gesture of it would overtake unnoted. His arms and legs multiply strapped a literal visualisation of his flexible joints and a metallic sash moving turn left right across his breastplate, accenting the shifting of his shoulders along this diagonal. A heavyweights belt accented slender hips and segmented the torso from the legs, so you noticed when the top and bottom half of their own bodies drawn in opposite counselings. Finally a silver-tongued thong, rendering his forceful groin as clear as if it were in ALL CAPS. It wasnt subtle, there was no subtext, but it was clearly legible. Party will be dancing like Michael Jackson until the end of time.

But Prince, treasured, elusive Lord, well, there lays one whose reputation was writ in liquid. And from Prince a novelist might take the lesson that elusiveness can own a deeper elegance than the readable. In “the worlds” of words, we have Keats to remind us of this, and to illustrate what a long afterlife an elusive master can have, even when placed beside as clearly sucked a person as Lord Byron. Prince represent the brainchild of the moment, like an ode composed to captivate a proceed whiz. And when the feeling changes, he changes with it: another good lesson.

Theres no liberty in being a mausoleum. Better to be the guy still jamming in the wee hours of the house party, and though everybody movies it on their phones no one substantiates quite able to captivate the essence of it. And now hes croaked, having escaped us one more time. I dont claim Lords portrait wont last as long as Jacksons. I simply say that in our recollections it will never be as distinct.

Janet Jackson Madonna Beyonce

Michel Linssen/ Redferns/ Getty; Dave Hogan/ Getty; Matt Slocum/ AP

Janet Jackson/ Madonna/ Beyonc

These three dont just invite facsimiles they require them. They go further than clarity into proscription. They guide legions, and we join them. We are like those uniformed dancers moving in military shaping behind them, an anonymous squad whose activity it to be able to imitate precisely the gestures of their general.

This was manufactured literal on Beyoncs Formation tour recently, when the general invoked her fucking arm like a shotgun, plucked the initiation with her left and the resonate of gunshot reverberate out. There is nothing intimate about this kind of dancing: like the military forces, it operates as a way of dealership, whereby a rule mind America, Beyonc is presided over by many cells that span “the worlds”. Maybe it is for this reason that much of the crowd I realized at Wembley could be found, for long periods , not facing in the direction of the stage at all, instead turning to their friends and marriages. They didnt need to watch Beyonc any more than soldiers need to look fixedly at the flag to perform their duties. Our queen was up there somewhere dancing but the relevant recommendations of her had already been internalised. Acquaintances from the gym digested in haloes and gushed their fists, girlfriends from hen nights changed inwards and did Beyonc to each other, and boys from the Beyhive called every statement into each others faces. They could have done the same at home, but this was a public display of allegiance.

Janet Jackson kicked off this curious phenomenon, Madonna sustained it, Beyonc is its apex. Here dancing is intended as a show of the female will, a concrete diction of its reach and possibilities. The reading is quite evident. My mas obeys me. My dancers obey me. Now you will obey me. And then everybody in the crowd suspects being heeded like Bey a delicious imagining.

Lady columnists who inspire similar devotion( in far smaller gatherings ): Muriel Spark, Joan Didion, Jane Austen. Such novelists render the same essential qualities( or misconceptions ): total self-control( over their model) and no impunity( for the reader ). Compare and contrast, say, Jean Rhys or Octavia Butler, maid columnists much affection but rarely copied. Theres too much discretion in their own homes. Meanwhile every convict of Didions says: heed me! Who leads “the worlds”? Girls!

David Byrne

Rex/ Shutterstock

David Byrne and David Bowie

The art of not dancing a crucial reading. Sometimes it is very important to be awkward, inelegant, jerking, to be neither lyrical nor banal, to be positively bad. To express other the chances of bodies, alternative costs, to stop making sense. Its interested in me that both sets of creators did their worst dancing to their blackest gashes. Take me to the river, sings Byrne, in square trousers 20 hours too large, searching down at his yanking hips as if they belong to someone else. This music is not mine, his trousers say, and his motions go further: perhaps this organization isnt mine, either. At the end of this seam of logic lies a liberating conclude: perhaps nobody rightfully owns anything.

People can be too precious about their heritage, about their habit scribes specially. Preservation and protection have their lieu but they shouldnt blocking either liberty or stealing. All possible aesthetic speeches are available to all peoples under the signed of cherish. Bowie and Byrnes evident affection for what was not theirs brings out brand-new slants in familiar announces. It hadnt passed to me before picturing these men dance that all individuals might opt, for example, to encounter the veer of a drum lash with anything but the parallel curving crusade of their body, that is, with peace and hot. But it turns out you can also fight: throw up a strange angle and suddenly spasm, like Bowie, or wonder if thats genuinely your own arm, like Byrne.

I think of young Luther Vandross, singing backup a few paws behind Bowie, during Young Americans, watching Bowie flail and convulse. I wonder what his take on all that was. Did he ever conclude: Now, what in the world is he doing? But a few accomplishments in, it was clear to everybody. Here was something different. Something old, and hitherto new.

Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov

Sipa Press/ Rex/ Shutterstock; Getty Images

Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov

When you face an audience, which direction will you turn? Inwards or outwards? Or some compounding of the two? Nureyev, so ferocious and neurotic, so susceptible, so beautiful like a deer suddenly caught in our headlamps is faced resolutely inwards. You cant take your eyes off him, as people like to say, but at the same hour he is almost excruciating to watch. We appear we might breaking him, that he might disintegrate or explode. He never does, but still, whenever he leaps you feel the possibility of total tragedy, as you do with particular high-strung players no matter how many times they lope or climb or descent. With Nureyev you are an onlooker, you are a person who has been granted the great honour of being present while Nureyev dances. I dont make this sarcastically: it is an honour to watch Nureyev, even in these grainy old-time videos on YouTube. Hes a kind of miracle, and is fully cognisant of this when he dances, and what did you do today to warrant an audience with a miracle?( See too: Dostoevsky .)

With Baryshnikov, I have no suspicions of natural disasters. He is an outward-facing artist, he seeks to delight me and he succeeds entirely. His appearance dances as much as his arms and legs.( Nureyevs face, meanwhile, is permanently “ve lost” transcendent find .) Sometimes Baryshnikov wants to delight me so much hell even try tap dancing with Liza Minnelli, risking the rebuff of the purists.( I am not a purist. I am delighted !) He is a charmer, an entertainer, he is comic, spectacular, cerebral, a clown whatever you need him to be. Baryshnikov is both loving and adoration. He has high and low modes, tough and soft constitutes, but hes ever facing outwards, to us, his audience.( See likewise: Tolstoy .)

Once I assembled Baryshnikov over a New York dinner table: I was so star-struck I could hardly pronounce. Eventually I asked him: Did you ever assemble Fred Astaire? He smiled. He said: Yes, formerly, at a dinner. I was very star-struck, I hardly addrest. But I watched his hands all the time, they were like a exercise in themselves so stylish!

Swing Time by Zadie Smith is published on 15 November( Hamish Hamilton, 18.99 ). To guild a simulate for 15.57, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or announce 0330 333 6846.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post Zadie Smith: dance exercises for columnists appeared first on vitalmindandbody.com.

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Zadie Smith: dance exercises for scribes

From Fred Astaires elegance to Beyoncs power, Zadie Smith is inspired by dancers just as much she is by other writers

The the linkages between writing and dancing has been often on my recollection lately: its a canal I want to keep open. It experiences a bit neglected is comparable to, allege, the ties between music and prose perhaps because there is something counter-intuitive about it. But for me the two ways are close to each other: I find dance has something to tell me about what I do.

One of “the worlds largest” solid bits of writing advice I know is in fact intended for dancers you can find it in the choreographer Martha Grahams biography. But it loosens me in front of my laptop the same way I suspect it might persuasion a young dancer to breathe deeply and wiggle their fingers and toes. Graham writes: There is a vitality, a life force, an vitality, a acceleration that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of duration, this idiom is unique. And if you obstruct it, it will never prevail through any other medium and it will cease to exist. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how precious nor how it compares with other showings. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and instantly, to keep the channel open.

What can an artistry of words take from the art that needs nothing? Yet I often consider Ive learned as much from watching dancers as I have from reading. Dance lessons for columnists: lessons of post, outlook, pattern and style, some of them obvious, some indirect. What follows are a few tones towards that idea.

Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire

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Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly

Fred Astaire represent the elite where reference is dances, claimed Gene Kelly, in old age, and I represent the proletariat. The mark is immediately satisfactory, although it was a little harder to say why. Tall, thin and elegant, versus muscular and athletic is that it? Theres the obvious substance of dress hat and tails versus T-shirt and slacks. But Fred sometimes wore T-shirts and slacks, and was not actually that tall, this is the only way stood as if he were, and when moving always shown hoisted, to be skimming across whichever skin-deep: the floor, the ceiling, an ice rink, a bandstand. Genes centre of gravity was far lower: he crouches his knees, he hunkers down. Kelly is grounded, firmly planted, where Astaire is untethered, free-floating.

Likewise, the aristocrat and the proletariat have different relations to the dirt beneath their paws, the first moving fluidly across the surface of the world, the second specifically tethered to a certain smudge: a city block, a village, a factory, a extend of provinces. Cyd Charisse claimed her husband always knew which of these dancers molted been working with by looking at her body at the end of the day: bruised everywhere if it was Kelly , not a blemish if “its been” Astaire. Not only aloof when it came to the ground, Astaire was aloof around other people mass. Through 15 years and 10 movies, its difficult to detect one moment of real sex friction between Fred and his Ginger. They have great harmony but little heat. Now think of Kelly with Cyd Charisse in the fantasy sequence of Singin in the Rain! And maybe “thats one” of certain advantages of earthiness: sex.

When I write I detect theres usually a pick to be made between the grounded and the swim. The ground I am thinking of in this case is usage as we fill it in its commonsense mode. The communication of the television, of the supermarket, of the advert, the newspaper, the governmental forces, the daily public conference. Some writers like to walk this field, recreate it, crack fragments of it off and use it to their advantage, where others barely recognise its existence. Nabokov a literal aristocrat as well as an aesthetic one scarcely ever put a toe upon it. His conversation is literary, far away from which is something we think of as our shared linguistic home.

One argument in defence of such literary conversation might be the course it acknowledges its own artificiality. Commonsense language meanwhile claims to be plain and natural, conversational, but is often as erected as asphalt, dreamed up in ad bureaux or in the heart of authority sometimes both at the same occasion. Simultaneously nostalgic and coercive.( The Peoples Princess. The Big Society. Make America Great Again .) Commonsense language claims to take its conduct from the lane people naturally communicate, but any writer who truly attends to the path beings communicate will shortly find himself categorised as a distinctive stylist or satirist or experimentalist. Beckett was like this, and the American writer George Saunders is a good contemporary precedent.( In dance, the precedent that comes to my subconsciou is Bill Bojangles Robinson, whose stuff was tapping up and down the stairs. What could be more normal, more folksy, more grounded and everyday than tapping up and down some stairs? But his signature stagecoach number implied a staircase pressed right up against another staircase a stairway to itself and so up and down he would tap, up and down, down and up, exclusively surreal, like an Escher print be coming home with life .)

Astaire is clearly not an experimental dancer like Twyla Tharp or Pina Bausch, but he is surreal in the feeling of outshining the real. He is transcendent. When he dances a few questions proposes itself: what if a person moved like this through the world? But it is only a rhetorical, fantastical query, for no torsoes move like Astaire , no, we only move like him in our dreams.

By contrast, I have appreciated French sons run up the steps of the High Line in New York to take a photo of the view, their backsides working just like Gene Kellys in On The Town, and I have seen black minors on the A train swing round the spar on their way out of the slither openings Kelly again, hanging from that eternal lamppost. Kelly quoted the banality when he danced, and he reminds us in turn of the goodnes we do sometimes own ourselves. He is the incarnation of our torsoes in their youth, at their most flowing and powerful, or whenever our natural knacks blend ideally with our hard-earned knowledge. He is a demonstration of how the prosaic can change poetic, if we work hard enough. But Astaire, when he dances, has nothing to do with hard work( although we know, from profiles, that he worked very difficult, behind the scenes ). He is poetry in motion. His crusades are so collected from ours that he determines a limit on our own ambitions. Nothing hopes or expects to dance like Astaire, just as none certainly expects to write like Nabokov.

Harold and Fayard Nichols

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Harold and Fayard Nicholas

Writing, like dancing, is one of the arts available to people who have nothing. For 10 and sixpence, advises Virginia Woolf, one can buy paper enough to write all the plays of Shakespeare. The only absolutely essential material in dance is your own torso. Some of the greatest dancers have come from the lowliest backgrounds. With numerous pitch-black dancers this has come with the complication of representing your hasten. You are on a stage, in front of your people and other beings. What look will you show them? Will you be your self? Your best ego? A image? A represent?

The Nicholas friends were not street teenagers the latter are the children of college-educated musicians but they were never formally training at dance. They learned watching their parents and their parents peers play-act on the chitlin circuit, as pitch-black vaudeville was then announced. Later, when they entered the movies, their concerts were usually filmed in such a way as to be non-essential to the narration, so that when these films played in the south their splendid strings “couldve been” snipped out without doing any harm to the unity of the story. Genius contained, genius ring-fenced. But also genius undeniable.

My talent was the weapon, bickered Sammy Davis Jr, the dominance, the lane for me to fight. It was the one course I might hope to affect a servicemen reckoning. Davis was another chitlin hoofer, initially, and from straitened situations. His logic here is very familiar: it is something of an article of faith within the kinds of kinfolks who have few other assets. A mom tells their own children to be twice as good, she tells them to be indisputable. My mother used to say something like it to me. And when I watch the Nicholas brothers I think of that traumatic instruction: be twice as good.

The Nicholas brothers were numerous, many amounts better than anybody else. They were better than anyone has a right or need to be. Fred Astaire called their routine in Stormy Weather the greatest pattern of cinematic dance he was never ensure. They are progressing down a monstrous staircase doing the divides as if the separates is the commonsense space to get somewhere. They are impeccably dressed. They are more than representing they are excelling.

But I always believe I recognize a bit discrepancies between Harold and Fayard, and it interests me; I take it as a kind of reading. Fayard seems to me more concerned with this responsibility of the representatives where reference is dances: he looks the character, he is the part, his propriety unassailable. He is formal, contained, technically indisputable: a credit to the race. But Harold establishes himself over to joy. His mane is his tell: as he dances it slackens itself from the slather of Brylcreem he ever put on it, the ebullient afro bend springtimes out, he doesnt even try to clean it back. Between propriety and elation, select joy.

Prince& Micheal Jackson

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Michael Jackson and Prince

On YouTube you will find them, locked in numerous dance-offs, and so you are presented with a stark select. But its not a matter of grades of ability, of “whos” “the worlds largest” dancer. The select is between two entirely opposite qualities: legibility on the one side, temporality on the other. Between a monument( Jackson) and a kind of mirage( Prince ).

But both men were excellent dancers. Putting aside certain differences in elevation, physically they had numerous similarities. Exceedingly slight, long necked, thin-legged, powered from the torso rather than the backside, which in both cases was improbably small. And to its implementation of influence they were of course evenly indebted to James Brown. The divides, the increases from the divides, the invent, the fly, the knee bend, the jolt of the manager all stolen from the same source.

Yet Prince and Jackson are nothing alike when they dance, and its very difficult to bring to mind Prince dancing, whereas it is practically impossible to forget Jackson. It sounds irrational, but try it for yourself. Monarch moves , no matter how many times you may have mentioned them, have no firm inscription in remembrance; they never seem fairly defined or perpetuated. If person asks you to dance like Prince, what the fuck is you do? Spin, perhaps, and do the divides, if youre capable. But there wont appear to be anything specially Prince-like about that. Its strange. How can you dance and dance, in front of thousands of beings, for years, and still seem like a secret only I know?( And isnt it the speciman that to be a Prince fan is to feel that Prince was your secret alone ?)

I never went to see Michael Jackson, but I insured Prince half a dozen days. I received him in stadiums with thousands of parties, so have a rational understanding that he was in no feel my secret, that he was in fact a wizard. But I still say his proves were illegible, private, like the performance of a mortal in the middle of a area at a house party. It was the greatest act “youve been” eye and yet its greatness was confined to the moment in which it was happening.

Jackson was exactly the opposite. Every move he made was utterly legible, public, endlessly imitated and copyable, like a meme before the word prevailed. He thoughts in likeness, and across occasion. He purposely sketched and then differentiated once more the leading edge around each move, like a policeman attracting a chalk strand round a figure. Protrude his cervix forwards if he was moving backwards. Cut his trousers short so you could spoke his ankles. Grabbed his groin so you could better understand its gyrations. Gloved one hand so you are able to attend to its rhythmic genius, the channel it punctuated everything, like an exclaiming mark.

Towards the end, his strange stagewear became increasingly tasked with this job of summarize and separation. It looked like a word of shield, the purpose of which was to define each element of his torso so no flow of it would pass unnoted. His arms and legs multiply buckled a literal visualisation of his flexible joints and a metallic waistband running left to in communities across his breastplate, accentuating the transformation of his shoulders along this diagonal. A heavyweights belt accentuated slender hips and fractioned the torso from the legs, so you observed when the pinnacle and bottom half of their own bodies drawn in opposite counselings. Finally a silver-tongued thong, rendering his persuasive groin as clear as if it were in ALL CAPS. It wasnt subtle, there was no subtext, but it was clearly legible. Party will be dancing like Michael Jackson until the end of time.

But Prince, precious, elusive Prince, well, there lays one whose mention was writ in water. And from Prince a writer might take the lesson that elusiveness can possess a deeper beautiful than the readable. In the world of words, we have Keats to remind us of this, and to illustrate what a long afterlife an elusive master can have, even when targeted beside as clearly outlined a flesh as Lord Byron. Prince represents the brainchild of the moment, like an ode composed to captivate a come sensation. And when the feeling changes, he changes with it: another good lesson.

Theres no impunity in has become a tombstone. Better to be the guy still jamming in the wee hours of the house party, and though everybody films it on their phones no one substantiates quite able to capture the essence of it. And now hes become, having escaped us one more time. I dont say Monarches persona wont last-place as long as Jacksons. I simply say that in our sentiments it will never be as distinct.

Janet Jackson Madonna Beyonce

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Janet Jackson/ Madonna/ Beyonc

These three dont only invite replicas they expect them. They go further than legibility into proscription. They conduct armies, and we join them. We are like those uniformed dancers moving in armed formation behind them, an anonymous force whose undertaking it to be able to simulate precise the gestures of their general.

This was obligated literal on Beyoncs Formation tour recently, when members of the general promoted her right arm like a shotgun, gathered the prompt with her left and the phone of gunshot echo out. There is nothing intimate about this kind of dancing: like the military forces, it operates as a model of franchise, whereby a ruling opinion America, Beyonc is presided over by numerous cells that span the world. Maybe it is for this reason that much of the crowd I checked at Wembley could be found, for long periods , not facing in future directions of the stage at all, instead turning to their friends and marriages. They didnt need to watch Beyonc any more than soldiers need to look fixedly at the flag to perform their duties. Our princes was up there somewhere dancing but the idea of her had already been internalised. Friends from the gym stood in curves and pumped their fists, lovers from hen nights diverted inwards and did Beyonc to each other, and boys from the Beyhive called every message into each others faces. They could have done the same at home, but this was a public display of allegiance.

Janet Jackson kicked off this curious phenomenon, Madonna resumed it, Beyonc is its apex. Here dancing is intended as a show of the girl will, a concrete articulation of its reach and possibilities. The assignment is quite evident. My organization obeys me. My dancers obey me. Now you will obey me. And then everybody in the crowd suspects being obeyed like Bey a delicious imagining.

Lady columnists who inspire similar earnestnes( in far smaller audiences ): Muriel Spark, Joan Didion, Jane Austen. Such writers furnish the same essential qualities( or illusions ): total authority( over their way) and no freedom( for the reader ). Compare and contrast, answer, Jean Rhys or Octavia Butler, girl novelists often adored but rarely reproduced. Theres too much exemption in them. Meanwhile every convict of Didions announces: obey me! Who ranges “the worlds”? Girls!

David Byrne

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David Byrne and David Bowie

The art of not dancing a crucial exercise. Sometimes it is very important to be awkward, indelicate, jerking, to be neither poetic nor banal, to be positively bad. To show other the chances of people, alternative significances, to stop making sense. Its interesting to me that both these masters did their worst dancing to their blackest slice. Take me to the river, sings Byrne, in square trousers 20 hours too large, gazing down at his jerking hips as if they belong to someone else. This music is not quarry, his trousers mention, and his crusades go further: perhaps this mas isnt quarry, either. At the end of this stratum of logic lies a liberating conclude: perhaps none genuinely owns anything.

People can be too precious about their patrimony, about their institution columnists specially. Preservation and protection have their situate but they shouldnt stymie either liberty or theft. All possible aesthetic speeches are available to all peoples under the signal of passion. Bowie and Byrnes obvious adoration for what was not theirs brought about by new angles in familiar bangs. It hadnt existed to me before seeing these men dance that a person might prefer, for example, to gratify the curve of a container trounce with anything but the matching bending crusade of their body, that is, with harmonization and hot. But it is about to change you can also fight: throw up a strange slant and suddenly spasm, like Bowie, or wonder if thats truly your own limb, like Byrne.

I think of young Luther Vandross, singing backup a few paws behind Bowie, during Young Americans, watching Bowie flail and thresh. I wonder what his take over all that was. Did he ever feel: Now, what in the world is he doing? But a few executions in, it was clear to everybody. Here was something different. Something old, and hitherto new.

Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov

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Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov

When you face an gathering, which way will you transform? Inwards or outwards? Or some combining of the two? Nureyev, so relentless and neurotic, so susceptible, so beautiful like a deer suddenly caught in our headlamps is faced resolutely inwards. You cant take your eyes off him, as people like to say, but at the same occasion he is almost excruciating to watch. We appear we might violate him, that he might deteriorate or explosion. He never does, but still, whenever he leaps you feel the opportunities offered by total adversity, as you do with particular high-strung jocks no matter how many times they move or jump or nose-dive. With Nureyev you are an onlooker, you are a person who has been granted the great honour of being present while Nureyev dances. I dont mean this sarcastically: it is an honour to watch Nureyev, even in these grainy old-fashioned videos on YouTube. Hes a kind of miracle, and is amply cognisant of this when he dances, and what did you do today to authorize an audience with a miracle?( See likewise: Dostoevsky .)

With Baryshnikov, I have no frights of disaster. He is an outward-facing artist, he is trying to satisfy me and he supplants altogether. His appearance dances as much as his arms and legs.( Nureyevs face, meanwhile, is permanently lost in transcendent feeling .) Sometimes Baryshnikov wants to delight me so much blaze even try tap dancing with Liza Minnelli, risking the mockery of the purists.( I am not a purist. I am delighted !) He is a charmer, an entertainer, “hes been” comic, drastic, cerebral, a clown whatever you need him to be. Baryshnikov is both affection and enjoyed. He has high and low modes, tough and soft poses, but hes always facing outwards, to us, his audience.( See also: Tolstoy .)

Once I convened Baryshnikov over a New York dinner table: I was so star-struck I could hardly pronounce. Eventually I asked him: Did you ever assemble Fred Astaire? He smiled. He did: Yes, once, at a dinner. I was very star-struck, I scarcely expressed. But I watched his hands all the time, they were like a lesson in themselves so luxurious!

Swing Time by Zadie Smith is being issued in 15 November( Hamish Hamilton, 18.99 ). To order a transcript for 15.57, going to see bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

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