#hard times for me and also famously quite a few people around the world its a ruff one tonight tumblr

[deliciousmicroplastics]

alright alright alright alright now time to think abt things that aren't heartbreaking (<- typed this on mobile then forgot abt it and used desktop for like an hour)

[world-cinema-research]

Week 2 Blog Essay: A Hard Day's Night. By Chloe Ziegler

A Hard Day’s Night is a film about a day in the life of the Beatles. Filmed in 1964 and directed by Richard Lester, this film features musical pieces as well as acting parts. It isn’t an ordinary film though, as the Beatles run around London preparing for their television performance, they bring their humor and immaturity along with them. Each of the Beatles, John Lennon, Ringo Star, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney feature as themselves going about hordes of fans, performing on tv, and partying.

It is a significant film in the eyes of song lovers and movie critics alike because it reveals much about the lives of a famous band and what they go through. While it seems fun and exciting it also shows how hectic and crazy they are. The film is similar to that of Bohemian Rhapsody in the way that it focuses on telling a story of famous musicians who shaped the music from their time. However, A Hard Day’s Night is more lighthearted and serves a purpose of entertain.

Many critics praised the production of this film by the Beatles because of many aspects, including the humor, acting, and twists and turns. However, one critic, Roger Ebert, comments “when a film is strikingly original, its influence shapes so many others that you sometimes can't see the newness in the first one.” The film was quite original at the time it came out because people weren’t used to famous people featuring music of their own, especially from a band like the Beatles. Their popularity also helped the influence of the film itself. Many people were intrigued by what goes on in their life and the humor intertwined made it that much better in the eyes of fans.

Back in 1964 the world was making much progress both economically and socially. We began avidly exploring space and the Olympics were held in Tokyo. The Beatles were HUGE at this time as well. They appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show which was a huge deal, accommodating more than 73 million households over the television. They performed a few of their songs including a famous hit of theirs called “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” So when the film came out, many were eager to watch it. In an interview with John Lennon he mentions that their fame was 10 times more emphasized than what we see in the film. The fans, the craziness, all of it.

In light of what was happening in the world at the time, the Beatles provided an outlet for a new style of music for musicians all around. People found freedom to express themselves in Rock and Roll, which was very different from music that had been put out before the Beatles came about.

The film appears in black and white, but also features a lot of music. From them performing to their music playing in the background. They not only promoted their music through this film but also their reputation. One of the characters we learn about is Paul McCartney’s grandfather who first appears quiet and reserved, but as the movie progresses he gets himself and even Ringo at one point into trouble.

Several of their songs featured in the film many of which however came from their album “A Hard Day’s Night.” The band famously performed one of their songs called “I Should’ve Known Better” which appeared on the television show also the year this film came out.

One of the scenes that stood out to me was in the beginning on the train to London. The Beatles meet a man who disapproves of them playing music and bantering, so they leave the train car and continue to run back and forth by the window making faces and scenes to be funny. Their style in this movie is unique which is part of why it draws the attention of many.

The film caught a lot of attention in its first few weeks of premiering. When the film came out it made more than 1.6 million dollars, while it only cost them about $560,000 in their production budget. The film did very well as the Beatles were quite the popular band at the time attracting viewers and fans from all around the world. The film was mainly filmed to present what the Beatles were becoming as they continued to grow and gain fame.

A Hard Day’s Night appears more as an unconventional film especially during the time in which it came out. They featured a musical aspect to it which wasn’t seen very often. Their ability to include their own music greatly influenced others to do the same down the road but it wasn’t very common. The comedy part was more on the conventional side, however, the comedy was sarcastic and witty on the Beatles part. It also went about a single day in their life, whereas other films would go about several days if not more. Many films about artists nowadays like to start from the beginning of their career and continue into present day but not the Beatles which is what makes it a hit.

[shinymooncolor]

hey! you don’t have to answer this, but i know close to nothing about hockey and my family and i have never really watched it and i’m starting to get very interested, but i have no idea where to start 😅 what do you think i should focus on first, as a newbie? what should i absolutely know as a fan? what teams are pretty good in your opinion? again, thanks for your help if ever you see this p.s: i really love your posts and they bring a smile to me face, so thank you for your hard work! <3

Hi!

Ohhh well. First of all. Welcome to the nerve wracking, nail biting, jaw clenching, gut wrenching, heartbreaking and utterly incredible world of (ice) hockey. Angry muscle machines on skates chasing a tiny rubber puck in the nhl and their goddess equivalents in wnhl - what’s not to love?

You’ve decided on a hell of a year to join. Due to Covid, the normal system was paused and a recent bubble playoffs series played and later won by Tampa Bay Lightning a few weeks ago. The new season would’ve begun last week but is currently expected to start around December.

I’d say the best starting point would be to watch some games - YouTube has a lot of highlights, game compilations etc. and browse hockey tumblr. Hockey tumblr is a great combination of hockey gossip, game reviews, fans sharing their love, passion and (hateful) opinions about players, clubs and the sport in general.

My personal team faves are a handful - you see, the league is “split” into two conferences - east and west and within here a few other divisions dictating who the teams will play on a more recent basis. The clubs in the nhl being split over North America and Canada means a lot of ground to cover and therefore it’s split like this - time zones, distance and whatever. So maybe decide on a conference first? East or west.

I’m an eastern conference gal meself, but the west sure has its merits too.

So. Teams. You’re about to start a rumble here 😂

I am a personal fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins 🐧 they play good hockey, in spite of their idiot general manager (I’ve got posts detailing why he’s an ass hat extraordinarie). They’re captained by Canada’s hockey savior, Sidney Crosby: hockey robot, yellow crocs enthusiast , triple gold member (youngest captain to get all three?) and the goodest boy in the league. He’s been heralded as the next great one yada yada since he was about 5? And shot pucks into a dryer back in Canada - with that came a lot of shit for the poor guy who, in his own words, just wants to play hockey. And he’s good. He’s got his team of French Canadian d-men (letang, dumo), a whole lot of goalie drama which seems to be a pattern and his Russian (husband) assistant captain Evgeni Malkin who’s got the cutest kid, a really cool wifey (seriously her insta is 10000 better than geno’s own) and a wicked sense of humor which he conviently hides behind his “English big bad today” excuse to avoid media on a daily basis (he’s played this card since his wild escape and temporary defection from Russia back in 2006) seriously google it. It’s wild. They’ve won three cups since 2009, they’re contenders in the playoffs most years and their pr department provides some hilarious videos of captain Canada and his Russian (husband) A. It’s a true love story. Sue me. We’ve got an intense rivalry with philly and the caps. Seriously. That orange flyers jersey is intense - even if philly’s mascot is the next president.

Funnily enough, my strange obsession with Russian hockey players have led to the most disturbing but developing club crush on the Washington capitals who are the penguins’ nemesis.

I mean, this club led by the one and only gr8 8 mr Alexander Ovechkin is a rollercoaster of emotion and hot daddies in skates armed with sticks and a murder Swede.

So. Washington caps used to be a joke in the league until they went and drafted mr ovechkin first overall, brought him to the capital and let him do his thing. He’s got a rep for being a hell of a lot of fun on the ice (if you’re on his team) and one of those players that people love to hate (even if they can’t take away how freakishly good he is at hockey) - look up his impossible goal(s)! He’s an exuberant, fun loving Russian with a heart of gold and a missing tooth. In 2007, the caps went shopping for a center just for ovi who needed a playmaker and a slap shot feeeder - they went and drafted the Swedish angel (maybe assassin) (Lars) Nicklas Backstrom - and the purest hockey marriage was forged. The actual words (we needed a center for ovi and ovi wanted backstrom) have been said. Yes, these two Are now famously the mama and papa of the caps and they have a roster of unruly (and handsome) hockey babies with the fighting menace Tom Wilson, bird impersonator and Russian cat Evgeni Kuznetzov and a whole army of other adorable (albeit hockey playing menaces) babies. Most recently they had the leagues daddiest daddy goalie Mr Holtbeast as the fun and handsome canadien cowboy uncle but he’s ventured to Vancouver to adopt a new group of hockey babies. To compensate, the caps went shopping in New York and brought the one and only king Henrik from the crease in msg to be the goalie mentor for baby Russian caps goalie and to keep the daddy energy flowing.

(Seriously why are Swedish players part time models? Their national team strategy is to be so handsome the other teams are distracted. It’s a thing. Look it up)

I also love a handful of other players on other teams (I really don’t dislike any team in particular - but you’ll meet some dedicated and strong minded fans here)

Erik Horse Johnson, Cale Makar and Nikita Zadorov (Colorado Avs - zad have recently been traded to the blackhawks (not sure how I feel about that). Phwucking fun team. Who needs teeth anyways.

Marc Andre Fleury (Vegas now but hell always be a penguin to me)

The Russian gang in Tampa - and giant Swede victor Hedman (seriously he’s massive)

The canes (Carolina) and their collective of Finnish and Russian babies (aho, svech) with chaotic Marty and former penguin Baby Staal as captain

And a whole lot of others too. It’s hard to choose.

The Dallas stars and the most precious bean of them all (Russian) dobby - Anton khudobin their backup goalie turned playoffs hero and fashion icon. The man said we’re not going home and threw the entire team on his back and dragged them to the final. And their homoerotically charged captain and his alt captain and their Hollywood epic soap worthy relationship. Stallions, people, Stallions...

Btw we like to project our brash queerness onto this league. You’ll learn why quickly. There’s only so much talks about hot hands, slick moves, eternal love for teammates and quite frankly obscene (sexy) amounts of kneeling, roughing (let’s face its it’s just aggressive cuddling) and teammates honorably defending teammates.

Anyways. I love hockey. He. Sorry.

Fun fact I’ve dragged @canesinthecrease kicking and screaming into the hellhole that is the caps and I’m working on convincing @dontpuckwithme about the incredibly sexy thing that is Russians and Canadians being secretly married in Pittsburgh.

Great, sexy, amazing, cool, smart and wonderful hockey ladies to follow for even more amazing content on more clubs (the hurricanes - also a team I’m starting to love). They’re my queer sherpas and emotional support network.

Hope you can use this dear (new) hockey friend and mutual 💖🐧

[passionate-reply]

Great Albums is back for a third time! This week, we discuss Dazzle Ships, the avant-garde masterpiece that was so infamously weird, it almost “sank” the pop career of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Or did it? As usual, you can find a full transcript of the video under the break, if you’d like to read it instead.

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums. Today, I’ll be talking about an album that many would consider OMD’s best, and many would consider the last great album they ever made: 1983’s Dazzle Ships, their fourth studio LP. It has a reputation that precedes it, as a strange, experimental, and avant-garde album. And I can’t argue with that too much, when it has tracks that sound like "ABC Auto-Industry."

The most obvious thing one can say about Dazzle Ships is that it’s dense and rich with samples. You’ll hear found sounds ranging from a “Speak and Spell” toy to a radio broadcast from Czechoslovakia. It’s a magpie’s nest constructed of garbage and baubles, collage-like and conscientiously artificial. And OMD’s Paul Humphreys and Andy McCluskey managed to make it before sampling became easier and hence more widespread later in the 1980s, thanks to advancements in digital technology. In its own day, it was, famously, a huge flop, baffling even the critics, which makes it tempting to argue that the world simply wasn’t ready for it. Popular legend says that Humphreys and McCluskey were essentially forced to make increasingly soft, pop-oriented music for years afterward, usually at the hands of their label’s higher-ups.

Is that story really true? Well, I don’t know, and I’m not sure if anybody really does. But I think it’s important that we entertain some doubt. Regardless of its actual veracity, this legend is offering us a simplistic narrative of art and capital butting heads, and one that we see repeated all too often in music journalism. It’s a story that expects us to believe that experimental music is good by default, and the natural goal of music and all the people who make it--and, conversely, that accessible music is bad, and anyone who writes a song you can dance to is always after profit, never craft.

Ultimately, though, the most important reason why I’m asking you to leave this question at the gate is that it’s simply a less interesting way to think about art. What I think is truly ingenious about OMD is their ability to combine a pop sensibility with that bleeding-edge experimentation, and vice versa. I don’t think of Dazzle Ships as just an inscrutable, esoteric musical ready-made, but rather something capable of animating and enriching a bunch of otherwise mundane sounds. A word I might use for it is "challenging," because it isn't simply off-putting--it has a certain charm that invites you to stick around and work through it, and you don't feel like it's a waste of your time. I think the underlying pop DNA offered by Dazzle Ships is a big part of that.

In “Genetic Engineering,” the samples from that Speak & Spell are contrasted with a more traditional chorus, which rises above the chaos, stirring and anthemic. It’s a song full of friction, not only between these musical ideas, but in ideas about technology and our future. Like many great works of electronic music, especially earlier in its history, Dazzle Ships is deeply concerned with science and technology, and the ways they’ve structured our world. These guys wrote “Enola Gay” a few years earlier, sure, but there’s much more than Luddite, dystopian thinking here! Dazzle Ships walks a tightrope between romantic adoration of the promise of a better tomorrow, and the tempered uncertainty we’re forced to develop, when we witness the devastation our most horrifying inventions have wrought already. Something that helps sell the former is the motif of childhood: in addition to the Speak & Spell, “Genetic Engineering” also features a children’s toy piano, and prominently references “children” in its lyrics. And “Telegraph,” the album’s other single, sees fit to reference “Daddy.”

Touches like these, and the centering of not-so-new technologies like telegraphy and radio, carry us backward in time. Dazzle Ships has a sense of nostalgia for the technological explosion of the Midcentury, when household technologies were improving in ways that saved time and labour, and faith in “better living through science” was high. It’s not a wistful or introspective nostalgia, but rather one that taps into the bustling excitement of living through that era. That retro styling helps us situate ourselves in a childlike mindset: optimistic, but somewhat naive. Children are highly imaginative, and become enthralled with possibility, but don’t always understand every implication their actions have.

But, as I said, “Telegraph” and “Genetic Engineering” were the album’s singles; the typical track on *Dazzle Ships* sounds more like “ABC Auto-Industry.” The track listing is structured such that these more conventional songs are surrounded by briefer, and more abrasive, intrusions. They become signals in the noise, as though we’re listening to them on the radio--or ships, rising above some stormy seas. Several tracks, such as “International,” also feature a more dissonant intro, on top of that, crowding their main melodies inward.

Over the years, many critics have been quick to contrast Dazzle Ships with OMD’s other albums, but I actually think it has a lot in common with their preceding LP, 1981’s Architecture & Morality, and seems to me to flow naturally from the direction the band had already been going in. Architecture & Morality is a lively mix, with moody instrumentals like “Sealand,” guitar-driven numbers like “The New Stone Age,” and catchy, intuitive pop songs like “Souvenir.” Architecture and Morality proved to be their most successful album, when its title track sounds like this. I fail to see how it’s tremendously different than the title track of Dazzle Ships, which leads us on a harrowing sea chase, with radar pings quickly closing in.

That nautical theme is a great segue to discuss the album’s visual motif. Like all of OMD's first five albums, its sleeve was designed by Peter Saville, most famous for his stunning work for New Order. The cover and title were inspired by a painting Saville had seen, Edward Wadsworth’s *Dazzle Ships in Drydock at Liverpool,* which portrays WWI warships painted in striking, zebra-like geometric patterns. These sharply contrasting “razzle dazzle” designs weren’t “camouflage,” but rather served to confuse enemy forces’ attempts to track them, and predict their motions. Dazzle ships were killing machines that fought dirty...and they were also beautiful. It’s a potent, complex symbol, and it’s a natural fit for an album that’s also capricious, perplexing, and captivating in its uniquely modern terror. Saville’s sleeve design features both a die-cut design as well as a gatefold; peeking through the cover’s “portholes” reveals the interior, where we find a map of the world, divided by time zones. It’s yet another reminder of how technology has reshaped the planet, connecting the human race while also creating divisions.

Earlier, I argued that Dazzle Ships isn’t that different from OMD’s preceding LP, and I’d also suggest that their follow-ups to it aren’t all that different, either. It’s easy to see the influence of Dazzle Ships on their most recent work, made after reforming the group in the late 00s, and informed by the critical re-evaluation and cult acclaim of their alleged masterpiece. But even in the 80s, they basically continued the pattern of layering easy to love, “obvious single choice” tracks alongside more experimental, sample-heavy ones. Compare the title track of their sixth LP, 1985's *Crush.*

Even the greatest of pop hitmakers can't maintain a streak in the charts forever--it's not the nature of mainstream pop charts. Not even in the 1980s, when you could get away with quite a lot of electronic weirdness...at least for a while. Looking back and listening to "Maid of Orleans," it's almost hard to believe it was one of OMD's biggest hits. Is it really less weird than something like "Telegraph"? Perhaps they had simply reached the end of their imperial phase...whether they really had that stern talking-to or not.

It's not so much that Dazzle Ships isn't weird, so much as it is foreseeable that a nerdy, left-of-center band like OMD would have come up with it. Dazzle Ships IS excellent--it’s a Great Album! But it's good enough that I think it deserves to be heard and valued on its own terms. The album is too goddamn good--too compelling, too spell-binding--to be reduced to "that one album the plebs were too dumb to really get." I'm not clearing the air because I think this album is overrated, but because I think it deserves better, deeper discourse than it gets. A truly great album is great whether it sells or it doesn't, right? My advice is to never let art intimidate you, no matter how obtuse people say it is. Send your ship on that plunge into the dark waters of the unknown--you might find something beautiful.

That said...my favourite track overall is “Radio Waves,” an irresistibly fun cut that could easily have become a third single. Since “Genetic Engineering” and “Telegraph” live on side one of the record, “Radio Waves” is really the only “reprieve” we get on side two, smack in its middle. It really stands out, in context--almost like the opposite of how a more conventional album might have one out-there track that catches you off guard. Aside from all of that, though, the song also stands perfectly well alone. I have a real soft spot for music about music, how it’s made and transmitted, and “Radio Waves” is simply one hell of a ride.

Thanks for reading!

[gstqaobc]

CBC THE ROYAL FASCINATOR

Friday, November 20, 2020

Hello, royal watchers and all those intrigued by what’s going on inside the House of Windsor. This is your biweekly dose of royal news and analysis. Reading this online? Sign up here to get this delivered to your inbox.

Janet DavisonRoyal Expert Fact, fiction and The Crown

The last time Arthur Edwards took a photo of Prince Charles with Lord Louis Mountbatten, the heir to the throne had his arm around his great uncle. Similarly, Mountbatten had his arm around his great-nephew. They both seemed to be in fine form that day, not too long before Mountbatten lost his life to an IRA bomb in the summer of 1979 off the coast of Ireland. "They were laughing together," Edwards, the longtime royal photographer for the Sun newspaper, recalled over the phone from the U.K. this week. The recollection came to mind as controversy swirls over the newly released Season 4 of the Netflix drama The Crown. The show takes viewers into the reign of Queen Elizabeth, with the latest season moving the action into the 1980s. In the first episode, Mountbatten is seen just before his assassination writing a letter to Charles saying he could bring "ruin and disappointment" on the Royal Family with his pursuit of Camilla Parker Bowles, who in real life is now Charles's wife but at that time was married to someone else. There's no evidence ��� again, in real life — that such a letter was ever written or that Charles and Mountbatten quarrelled before he was killed. It's just one of many moments in the latest season that have set off debate over how fact meets fiction in the award-winning drama created by Peter Morgan. "Many people will think it's the truth ... but it's not," said Edwards, who snapped his first photo of Charles feeding sugar to his polo ponies in the mid-1970s, just after he'd left the Royal Navy. "Much of it … comes out of a scriptwriter's brain, which I can understand because … it's drama.” What bothers Edwards, he said, is the portrayal of Charles. "I've worked with him now for over 40 years, and I don't recognize that man in it." And therein lies a challenge of turning history into drama. "Certainly, in every season [of The Crown], there's a blend of fact and fiction, but it stands out in Season 4 because we are getting closer to the present day," said Toronto-based royal historian and author Carolyn Harris. Because so many in the audience will have their own memories of how what is portrayed in Season 4 turned out in real life — how Charles's marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales, collapsed in spectacular fashion, for example — there is perhaps further potential for the controversy now swirling. "It's always a challenge with historical fiction that the people who are being portrayed do not know what's going to happen next, but the audience ... does," said Harris. In some instances, the episodes present events that played out in the public eye and reflect the historical record. "An example is that engagement interview where Prince Charles famously said, 'whatever in love means,'" said Harris. But there are many other examples of events being fictionalized or put together to create a narrative. Take Michael Fagan's break-in at Buckingham Palace, a focus of Episode 5. That actually happened, in 1982. He breached security and made it to the Queen's bedroom, where he spoke to her. "But Michael Fagan describes it as a very brief conversation before he was arrested, whereas for the purposes of the series, he has a more extended dialogue about [Prime Minister] Margaret Thatcher's politics in order to tie this event to the series's critique of political developments while [she] was prime minister," said Harris.

CBC Archives: The leadership fracas that forced Margaret Thatcher from power

Edwards worries, however, that people will believe The Crown's version of what happened when Fagan broke into the palace that night, which isn’t true, with its portrayal of a longer chat with the Queen. "That's what really irritates me," he said. And he remains troubled by the thought that the portrayal of Charles, pilloried for a bad marriage, doesn't reflect the driven and hard-working man he has seen up close, whether he is visiting and offering support to schoolgirls in northern Nigeria or the Jewish community in Krakow, Poland. "You won't see that on Netflix." Edwards went with Charles when he returned in 2015 to the site of Mountbatten's assassination. "I watched him … and he was remembering it." As aware as Edwards is of The Crown, he has stopped watching it.   "You've got to remember it's drama; it's not necessarily the whole truth."

Just let loose and dance Peter Morgan may be the creative mind behind The Crown, but in the current season, at least one moment playing out on the small screen came straight from the actor. At one point, Diana — played by Emma Corrin — dances by herself with wild abandon inside a very well-appointed room at Buckingham Palace — or in this case, a stately home filling the role of the palace where Diana went to live after her engagement to Prince Charles was announced in 1981. "It was one of my favourite scenes to film," Corrin said in a recent interview with the Royal Fascinator. "I loved it because they wanted to choreograph it, and I said, 'Do you mind if we don't ... I don't think we can choreograph a moment like that. I'd love to just let loose and dance.'" So she did, and she chose the song that was blasting over the speakers during filming, a bit of musical time travel to 1998, and Cher's Believe. Corrin's love for the song dates back a few years. "There's a theatre company in Britain called DV8, and they do this show called The Cost of Living, and there's an amazing dance scene," she said. "A guy does this dance to Cher's  … Believe…. It's like the truest form of expression I've seen." In Corrin's research for the role, she was surprised to learn how important dance was for Diana. "It was quite a private thing," said Corrin. "You see her dancing and what that does, how that is such a mode of expression and release, and I thought that was really interesting."

Looking ahead — and looking back

Every so often over the past few years, there have been rumblings about whether Queen Elizabeth, now 94, might step aside from her role as she gets older. And as soon as those rumblings emerge, other royal observers are quick to note how that is unlikely for a variety of reasons, including the dark shadow cast by her uncle's abdication as King Edward VIII in 1936, her deep devotion to duty and how she has always considered her role as one for life. So it wasn't too surprising to see that scenario play out again in recent days when one royal biographer suggested Elizabeth might "step down" when she turns 95 next April. But soon after, there was also a very strong signal from Buckingham Palace about looking ahead in her reign. The first plans were announced for celebrations in 2022 to mark her Platinum Jubilee, or 70 years on the throne. It would be an unprecedented milestone — no British monarch has reigned as long as she has. In the United Kingdom, it will culminate in a four-day bank holiday weekend in early June. Oliver Dowden, the British culture secretary, said it would be a "truly historic moment" worthy of a "celebration to remember," the BBC reported.

Royally quotable

"Let us reflect on all that we have been through together and all that we have learned. Let us remember all victims of war, tyranny and persecution; those who laid down their lives for the freedoms we cherish; and those who struggle for these freedoms to this day."

— Prince Charles,

during a visit to Germany

to attend events commemorating its national day of mourning, which focused on British-German relations this year.

Royals in Canada

While members of the Royal Family have made numerous trips to Canada over the years, The Crown hasn't turned its dramatic attention to them yet, even though the show has featured several foreign visits.

"It's a shame," said royal historian Harris, because during Queen Elizabeth's reign, "there have been some very interesting Canadian tours."

Sure, there's been a brief glimpse of a Canadian flag at a table during a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting portrayed in The Crown.

"But we don't see Canada assuming a prominent role, whereas the series has had at least three tours of Australia," Harris said.

One episode in the current Season 4 focuses on Charles and Diana's 1983 trip Down Under. Shortly after that visit, Charles and Diana came to Canada. Had that been portrayed in The Crown, it would have backed up a developing theme, Harris said.

During the visit, Diana celebrated her 22nd birthday on Canada Day.

"There's press footage of Canadians giving Charles birthday cards to give to Diana, and a scene like that would have supported the theme of that episode of Charles feeling overshadowed by Diana," said Harris.

Edwards, the Sun photographer, was along for that trip, and has been to Canada about 15 times with members of the Royal Family.

The 1983 trip lasted 17 days and was "fantastic," he said. "It was just brilliant. I can recall it like it was yesterday. We criss-crossed the country."

During the opening of the World University Games in Edmonton on July 1, the crowd sang Happy Birthday to Diana.

"The whole crowd. It was phenomenal," said Edwards.

Harris sees potential plotting for future seasons of The Crown possibly playing into how the series has portrayed foreign visits so far.

"We see a stronger Australia focus, and it's certainly possible that the 1999 Australian referendum [on the monarchy] may come up in a subsequent season so some of this may be building towards that.

"But definitely in terms of the Commonwealth, certain nations are emphasized more than others in the series."

Royal reads

1. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip

celebrated their 73rd wedding anniversary today

, and a photo was released of them reading a card from their great-grandchildren. [CBC]

2. In a rare statement, Prince William has said he

welcomes an investigation by the BBC

into circumstances around the controversial Panorama interview his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, gave to Martin Bashir in 1995. [CBC]

3. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex,

did authorize a friend to talk to the authors of Finding Freedom

, a biography of her and Prince Harry that was published his summer, court papers say. [ITV]

Cheers!

I’m always happy to hear from you. Send your ideas, comments, feedback and notes to

royalfascinator@cbc.ca

. Problems with the newsletter? Please let me know about any typos, errors or glitches.

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦🇬🇧🇦🇺🇳🇿

[uncloseted]

i related to effy an unhealthy amount when i was only 13 when i first watched it, but at the time i wasnt doing drugs, homewrecking, doing anything that young lol. however i was extremely mentally ill but undiagnosed, and so confused but i found solace in effys character because of how similar i felt to her. flashforward to being 20 now and im a nic addict/borderline drug and alcohol addict that forgets to take my prescribed antidepressants and antipsychotics. i cant tell you how many events of effys life have mirrored mine now 7 years later, both the pretty but mostly the ugly. it all feels like a joke to me, and the thing is of course it wasnt effy the fictional character that did this to me, it was the fact that i was genetically and epically set up to do this to me for as long as i existed and i saw myself in her too young. everyone ive ever met and started to befriend has fallen in love with me, has found me beautiful, and then seen my flaws and hated me even if they didnt tell me to my face. ive been a horrible friend and partner and im flighty and unreliable and destructive. i never saw effy, or a person like effy, find a happy ending and im afraid even when im at my manic highs i will never find a lasting happiness and will always accidentally self sabotage until i die. what im trying to ask is, how can i save me? i know its dumb to ask a random tumblr user but ive been following this blog since i was 13-14 and since you know effy through and through, you might know a little about me. its a long shot. (i’d also like to say this isnt a cry for help and im safe/not actively suicidal so i dont want you to feel like theres any pressure like that, but i did use this ask box as a free therapy session.)

I'm a bit biased, but I don't think there's anything wrong with asking a random Tumblr user at all. I'm happy to be a free therapy session when you need one, and I'm really touched that you've trusted me with your thoughts and feelings for so long. Hopefully I've been some help over the years 😆

Coping with mental illness can be really, really hard, but the good news is that with the right tools and support system, you can absolutely recover. It sounds like you already have a psychiatrist in your life, which is a great start. If you've having trouble remembering to take your medication, it might help to set calendar reminders on your phone, set up text prompts to remind you to take your pills, to link taking your pills with something else you do every day (like brushing your teeth or eating breakfast), or to reward yourself for taking your medication (for example, putting a piece of candy in your pill box that you can eat after taking your pill).

If you don't have one already, a therapist might also be a good idea. It can take a while to find the right therapist for you, so schedule a few appointments and see which therapist you "click" with. A therapist can help you work through any reluctance you might have towards taking you medications, as well as helping you come up with day to day strategies that help you achieve your goals and helping you work through the beliefs that you hold about yourself and the world that may be holding you back.

Moving on to talking about addiction for a bit. I strongly believe that addiction doesn't come from some type of inherent lack of willpower or moral failing, or even really the drug itself. It's the need to escape reality. And that's actually supported by scientific literature; most famously, the Rat Park experiment by Bruce K Alexander. Practically, we've seen that same thing in the aftermath of Portugal's decision to decriminalize all drugs. They took the money they were using to keep drug users in prison, and instead invested that money into reconnecting people who struggle with addiction to society. Their goal was to make sure that every person who struggles with addiction has a reason to get up in the morning and has a support system within the wider society. And it actually worked- injection drug use is down 50%, overdoses and HIV infections have massively decreased, and rates of addiction decreased as well. It's much easier to quit when you have something motivating you to keep going.

Why am I telling you all of this? I guess what I'm trying to get at is in order to recover from addiction, I think first people need to understand what the reality is that they're trying to escape. What can be done about those issues? Who's in your corner trying to support you, even if they're not doing the best job at it? Where else can you get the social support you might need? What are you passionate about? What would make it feel worth it to get up in the morning? I think instead of focusing on the drugs, or the alcohol, or the cigarettes, maybe we should focus on solving the root problems that make those attractive options. That's one of the reasons a therapist is a really good idea; they can help you figure out what those root problems are, and provide resources and tools to help you fix those problems.

In terms of practical, do it yourself advice for dealing with addiction, there are a couple things you might try. I did a whole post on evidence-based ways to set goals and follow through on them here, so I won't rehash it in this post, but basically:

Try to set goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. For you, this might be something like "My goal is to have only one drink a day (measurable and achievable) for week (time bound) so that I can be more reliable for my friends (relevant)".

Instead of trying to quit something, replace it with something else. For example, "when I feel like smoking, I'm going to do ten minutes of learning Korean instead". Learning something new is easier and more exciting, and so new habits are easier to maintain that breaking old ones. Find a new hobby that you've always wanted to do or that's exciting to you, and try to focus your energies on that to distract yourself.

Identify any obstacles (such as environmental triggers) that you might run into, and develop contingency plans for working around them. This might be something like, "when I drink coffee in the morning, I want to smoke, so I'm going to switch to tea instead." If you can, get rid of all environmental triggers that might remind you of your addiction or trigger a craving.

Get someone else involved. Tell a friend about your goal and have them check up on you. Your fear of disappointing them will help you stay on track.

Put money on the line. Give money to a friend with the understanding that you'll get it back at a set date if you've achieved the goal you set. Tell your friend that if you fail, they should donate the money to a group or cause you really hate.

Write down the reasons you want to quit, and put them somewhere you know you'll see them. Whenever you want to engage in an addiction behavior, read through that list first.

For bonus points, add to that list your contingency plan for when you want to engage in an addiction behavior. These may include ways to redirect your attention or distract yourself until the craving passes.

76% of people who wrote down their goals, actions and provided weekly progress to a friend successfully achieved their goals.

You might also try an addiction recovery app, such as these, or doing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy worksheets on your own if you can't access a therapist right now.

There are also some things you can try in order to improve your mood. As much as I hate that this is true, consistent exercise has a huge impact on mood. If you can, try taking a 20 minute walk outside, 3 times a week. Other (boring) things, like making sure you're getting 7-9 hours of sleep a night and eating regularly, can also make a big difference in mood. Some of you might know that I'm a little bit obsessed with the free Coursera class "The Science of Well-Being". It has a lot of great evidence-based tips and tricks for how to build happiness, and I highly recommend it if you're trying to live a happier life. These include things like journaling, meditating, noting things that you're grateful for, helping other people, and having regular social interactions.

Finally, a few philosophical thoughts. One of the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism is dukkha. Basically, this is the idea that suffering is an innate characteristic of existence in our world. When I was younger, I never liked this concept, but I think now I kind of get it. It's impossible to be happy 100% of the time, and that shouldn't be our goal. Suffering is the comparison by which our lives gain meaning. But we can do our best to minimize our suffering and the suffering of others, and ride the wave of suffering when it does come. And each time we ride that wave, we can learn techniques to manage it a little bit better, and to make it easier the next time. We will sometimes sabotage ourselves out of fear, but we can learn how to do it less frequently and for the consequences to be less dire. We can learn how to forgive ourselves for our flaws and what we've done in the past, and learn from those mistakes so we don't do them again in the future. It's also okay to backslide, to struggle even after you've made progress. You're never back where you started, because you've always learned more and experienced more.

I know I've thrown kind of a lot at you in this post, and I don't expect you to try all of it or for all of it to work, but hopefully something in there is helpful to you. You can get through this. You can save yourself, but please, also remember to let others help save you. You don't need to do this on your own. And just like I have been since you were 13, I'm always here to give a free therapy session and to lend my support ❤️❤️❤️

[cavehags]

what got you started on lost in the year 2021? I know it was such a huge show during it’s time but would you recommend it to other people? (NOT clowning on you; you are one of my most trusted critics here on tumblr dot edu)

lol i know it’s a pretty out-of-left-field choice. i mean first of all i think watching the wilds (and being in quarantine) sparked my desire to look at pretty tropical island scenery. it also reminded me of lost in general based on the obvious similarities in the premise, which reminded me that i had always wanted to watch it. i wasn’t yet watching tv made for adults when lost aired, but i did watch quite a few of the shows that were part of the first generation of imitators that tried to replicate its success. as you said, it was hugely influential on genre tv and entertainment as a whole and it teed up the media that i wound up coming of age to. i had an academic interest in how it inspired such devotion, and how many storytelling conventions have stuck around even today that are still remnants from lost. there are a lot! i want to be able to appreciate the positive qualities in something that made it popular, even if that thing is famously lacking in other areas. i think it’s just savvy from an artistic and a business perspective to be able to identify what qualities gave a cultural giant its staying power. and i am finding a lot about this show to appreciate. when the only way to watch tv was week-to-week, and fan culture was still a few years away from coming into the mainstream with the late harry potter books and the MCU, lost was this highly suspenseful and engaging and mysterious narrative that inspired people to use the fairly new resources available to them on the internet to gather more info and spot clues and connect with each other. that is very genuinely cool to me! i always think of mystery box as being simplistic and silly, but there is something genuinely fulfilling about watching a story where suspense is the driving force to keep you going! and this was even more true fifteen years ago. successfully creating suspense is hard and it really impresses me how well lost pulled it off. i'm enjoying just appreciating things like that and it makes me feel like a scholar to acknowledge just how hard this must have hit back in a pre-netflix pre-MCU world.

also, i think i’ve watched basically everything else.

[fwoopersongs]

何必诗债换酒钱 - Notes

Clean version here and thoughts under the cut.

I saw the song translation notes made by @shelterfromrain​ a while back and thought, wow! what a fantastic idea it is to share the results of the rabbit holing (that you inevitably end up engaging in when doing this) and leave a record for your future self while at it too! Currently some of the song and poetry translations on fwoopersongs do have little notes, but those were casually written on the fly and after so long, the thought process behind certain choices often get forgotten, which is such a waste... Long story short - I’m doing it this way from now on!

This song was requested by @peerlesssqq on twitter - which may or may not have bumped it up by like a year on my list (yes, I’ve been sitting on it since 2018 and you’ll see why) - and I had WAY more fun than expected, so 谢啦 ~ It was a delight to receive your DM request. I was happy for days!

Some background: 《何必诗债换酒钱》 is the theme song of 【文定乾坤】- a collection of musical works that feature notable contributors to Chinese literature in ancient times, poets and the like. Oh, and I did notice that the MV on bilibili looks like it could be a promo for a webtoon or game. Who knows? I’ll be checking out the rest of the songs, that’s for sure!

The following part of this post will be my thoughts for first the title, then each section - the intro, verse 1 & 2 and the chorus, ending off with some final comments.

Disclaimer first though (otherwise later you read already then feel like beating me up): Everything in this post is only my interpretation of the song. I have quite limited familiarity with mainland literature and culture, so of course don’t expect much xD Here you’ll only find a story-loving banana who jiak-ed kantang too much in her youth and now regrets it a whole lot. 说好了哈 I’m pants at analysis, worse at Chinese, and am not at all good with words ok?

Title

So《何必诗债换酒钱》, let’s start off with the word here that’s unfamiliar to most of us:

诗债 | shī zhài or a debt of poems/poetry debt is a legit thing! - All you authors and artists out there might be familiar with it - It’s what you call the resulting debt when a poet promises to write something for another person but hasn’t done it yet. Procrastination has apparently always been the curse of content creators.

In fact, in the Bai Juyi’s poem that came up on the 诗债 baidu page《晚春欲携酒寻沉四著作先以六韵寄之》- possibly addressed to a friend he owes - he was complaining of illness, old age and writer’s block. But then oh, he goes on and then I passed by a party where they had drinks, and was quite up to my gills & totally out of it for some time, and THAT’S why I’ve done you dirty and owe you ever so many poems. I don’t really understand the last two lines but apparently he then offers to bring a drink for this person he’s talking to, mentions a wish to meet a winter goddess (????? pretty girl? or the snow? idk which), and starts reminiscing the times that were like a precious string of pearls they had singing at Yang Pass. Most likely farewells, but without context I just don’t get it. Anyway bribery and misdirection huh? I see what you did there bro, and I’m sure the person you attempted to distract saw it coming too...

何必 | hé bì, is a rhetorical question of Must you really? In the case of this word, 何 functions as roughly ‘is it that’ and 必 as ‘it must be so’.

换酒钱 | huàn jiǔ qián is of course, exchange for money to purchase wine.

‘Must you really promise poems in exchange for money to buy wine?’ then is the literal translation of 何必诗债换酒钱.

So here is the question: Is alcohol worth a poetry debt? Onwards to the answer!

Intro

生就诗骨 算来三百篇  Born and already a poet to the bones, (with) three hundred works counting up to now. 

浪掷秦淮长安 风流李杜王白  Spending lavishly in Qinhuai and Chang’an, free/unrestrained as Li and Du, Wang and Bai;

余下十分 便随意肩上担  whatever left is divided in ten parts, casually thrown over a shoulder

权作金玉铜板 相谢好人间  and taken for jade, gold and coin, a big thank you to this good world!

I interpreted the 生 in the first line as 天生 i.e. innate, natural born talent, so this first line describes someone born with a gift for poetry with ‘three hundred’ works to their name. Although... that three hundred should not be taken too literally, it’s more likely to be an allusion to collected works like the 16th century anthology of poems, Three Hundred Tang Poems. After all, Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei and Bai Juyi are the most famous Tang Dynasty poets… and they were all name-dropped in the next line!

浪掷 | làng zhì was a new phrase for me, and means something like spending freely and lavishly or willfully wasted. Of course Chang’an was the capital during the Tang Dynasty and it was the world's most populous city at the time. One can only imagine how prosperous it must have been… and what fun things were there to spend your money on! The banks of Qinhuai river and that general area was once a gathering place for noble/wealthy families, scholars looking for a good time (and some say, the red light district xD). Though by Sui/Tang, that area was no longer doing as well due to political shifts. So the mental image I got from 浪掷秦淮长安 is of someone gallivanting through places of interest, from the bustling and prosperous to the dilapidated.

风流 | fēng liú is as always, hard to translate with no full equivalent in english. The feel it gives me ranges from, ‘cool, dashing bloke on a galloping horse with their cloak/robes/hair flowing elegantly in the wind’ to ‘pleasure seeking dandy who totally knows how to enjoy life, all the courtesans know him by courtesy name!’.

The third line started with 余下十分, which will not make any sense - why leftover? Divide what by ten? - until its put in context with the following:

Three hundred poems 算来三百篇 + 权作金玉铜板 pretend they are gold/jade/money (权作 | quán zuò just means to take one thing for another temporarily.)

The load thrown over the shoulder 肩上担

Spendthrift behaviour on tour 浪掷秦淮长安

The TITLE: bro so u wanna promise poetry in exchange for money to drink? why.

Let’s take those precious poems that can be exchanged for gold - a whole bagful of scrolls, and now I’m so rich I can scatter my money down the streets of entertainment districts and the capital! The very image of a 风流 poet, reckless and free spirited.

// Folks, please learn from this silly girl and do not read songs (or poems) line by line. They need to be appreciated at a distance, not one inch from your eyeballs.

Verse 1

两分与月 劳烦身前打点 Two parts to the moon, (may I) trouble you to take care of me while I’m alive.

哪处巍峨峰峦 当借我悬来观 Wherever there are majestic peaks and ranges, do lend me (your light) to hang and see by.

三分典高楼 好与长风赴宴 Three parts pawned for the tall building, good for attending the banquet alongside the wind,

遍寻可爱星子 唾手一把玩 searching for charming little stars, easily caught to play with.

Now we get to see how the poet is spending his ‘wealth’. This verse is a lot more literal as compared to the introduction, so there’s not much to say.

打点 used here is so interesting! Because it’s what you call bribing someone in a superior position to smoothen your path ahead (so to speak). Thanks to a childhood of tvb drama, I vaguely associate the type of people who would 打点 with rich merchant or minor noble fathers who want to give their sons an easier time at court. Either that or lower ranked officials with less moral scruples. Anyway, what’s being said in the song is something like: here is 20% dear moon, I’ll have to trouble you to bless me for the rest of this lifetime, and also please lend me your light to see by when I have need of it at scenic spots *for art*. The moon is a muse for many poets in all its forms after all… 明月, 圆月, 孤月, 残月, 冷月, 江月, 秋月 and so on.

Actually that whole sentence 劳烦身前打点 is so playful and fun that I put it in quotation marks to emphasize it. We’ve only just begun. Is the speaker already drunk?

And with the third line, 30% has been spent. Just noting here that 典 | diǎn can be read as pawn or mortgage. Another interesting thing to note would be that this imagery of ascending a tall building 高楼 and reaching out for stars 星子 in the last two lines of Verse 1 brings to mind one particular poem, famously attributed to Li Bai. Following translation by yours truly.

《夜宿山寺》- Overnight at the Mountain Temple 危楼高百尺 | dangerously towering a hundred feet high 手可摘星辰 | the stars are within reach 不敢高声语 | one dares not raise their voice 恐惊天上人 | for fear of disturbing the deities

Though the two probably have nothing to do with each other, doesn’t the reverence in the tone of this one bring out the playful irreverence of the other? So. Much. Fun. I adore the whole feel of 遍寻可爱星子 唾手一把玩 SO MUCH.

Verse 2

两分与桥 歇脚南北行船 Two parts to the bridge where travellers on foot and by boat from the north and south can rest,

欣然八方风物 闲话半日茶碗 delighted by the scenery all around, idly chatting half the day away over bowls of tea.

三分典流水 润色枯瘦石山 Three parts for the running water, moistening the gaunt stone mountains

又将天地一展 伸手 试浓淡 and again spreading heaven and earth wide, reaching out to test the viscosity (of the water).

It took a few listens, but in the end I really enjoyed the aesthetics here. And again, this verse is quite straight to the point albeit with two things I cannot understand.

The first point of confusion for me is why the lyricist chose to use 桥 | qiáo, a bridge as the place for people to rest on their journeys. I assumed here that this in reference to a pier or dock, assumed also that he is donating funds for this structure to be built or repaired. However, if that were the case 坞 | wù would have been enough - 船坞 was supposedly invented only in the Song Dynasty though, so maybe that’s why another word was chosen. But it’s not like there is any incidence of 桥 being used to mean ‘dock’ either!

The second thing that confuses me is the use of 典 for 流水. In verse one, that 典 was referring to the poetry works sold to reserve the venue for a banquet. That usage was apt. Here I suspect it might be for parallel structure, because there is no alternative reading for 典 that might allow one to use their 30% 三分 to do anything to flowing water 流水. That’s the literal reading, of course.

If we’re taking this a little less literally, it can be interpreted as borrowing the scenery (figuratively, since the place would not belong to anyone in the way you might own a property) to admire. It also expands on the second line’s mention of the surrounding view 欣然八方风物; there is running water which completes 润色 and brings the appearance of the gaunt and rocky mountains 枯瘦石山 closer to perfection.

润色 | rùn sè means to polish, to bring to greater heights. When you say something has been 润色 it is made more brilliant and closer to perfection by that addition. It can also mean moisten.

We always hear ‘rivers and mountains like a painting’ 江山如画 - originating from Su Dongpo’s《念奴娇·赤壁怀古》- used when the scenery is wonderful, because how often is real life as ideal as what we can imagine and depict? And that is exactly what is described here. The feeling out if the ‘water’ is concentrated or diluted 试浓淡 is used in answer to 一展 unfurling. 浓淡 of ink to 一展 of painting scroll. The land and sky seem like an ink wash painting, so beautiful that the viewer cannot help but reach out to run their hand through the water.

Chorus

Chorus Part 1

若趁游兴直到酣 If we take advantage of our wanderlust and go roaming till it is sated,

千字文章不值钱 classics and essays shan’t be worth a coin.

诗换花 词换雪 A poem for a flower! A song for snow!

再作檄文斗天官 Another denunciation for those heavenly officials!

Starting off with three new terms for me: 游兴 | yóu xìng means enthusiasm for travel. 酣 | hān can mean having a great time drinking, or being very satisfied and satiated. 檄文 | xí wén is a type of official document written for important announcements, declaration of war, or denunciation and condemnation of certain people or actions.

While I still feel this need to go out to see the world, I shall keep on the road until I am satisfied. Who cares about writing, who cares for study, it’s all worthless to me. I do what I want. And what I want is to write a little poem in exchange for a flower, some lyrics for a flake of snow. I’ll even write a denunciation against those officials in heaven (immortals). Fight me!!!!

I point again at Verse 1 with climbing the tower to play with stars. It’s no longer just playing nearby, now he wants a go at the gods.

Among the four parts of the chorus, this one is the simplest for sure. The lines mean exactly what is said. It also feels the most chaotic and mischievous. Is the speaker drunk? Is he high on something? One thing’s for sure. He’s out of money.

Chorus Part 2

何愁不得一样我 Why feel troubled that (I) cannot have another just like me?

知交尽向话中添 for one who understands you and is understood, look entirely towards stories to fill that place

唐解元 嵇中散 people like Tang Bohu (first in provincial examinations) and proud, upright and stubborn Ji Kang

且驰大梦任疯癫 Just chase that great dream, allow yourself to go mad.

I feel like the first two lines are quite straightforward, though they might not appear so on first reading: How could there be a need to feel sad or troubled that I have no like-minded equal. To find a true friend who understands you without need for words, and whom you understand in return, all you need to do is turn to those tales and stories 话中 for people to fill 添 that place.

唐解元 - People like Tang Yin, courtesy name: Bohu 唐寅, 字伯虎 (1470–1524 AD), noted painter, calligrapher and poet of the Ming Dynasty. Tang Yin led a life full of ups and downs that really cannot be covered in a paragraph’s worth of song translation notes. You can check out his wiki page if you’re curious though! There’s a little more on him where I cover the last line of this section. He is addressed as 解元 | jiè yuán here which is the term for the top scorer of the provincial examinations (second stage in the Imperial examination ladder). It is also an honorific for scholars. Tang Bohu is both.

嵇中散 - People like Ji Kang, courtesy name: Shuye 嵇康, 字叔夜, (223–262 AD), one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove - a group of friends who wisely kept themselves aloof from the dangerous politics of the Court, and devoted themselves to art, refinement and debate, of the Three Kingdoms period. He was a Daoist philosopher, musician, writer and poet.  

An accomplished musician, the qin composition 廣凌散 | guǎnglíng sàn is attributed to Ji Kang, though some versions of the story claim he learned it from a ghost while stopping at a pavillion on his way home. 嵇中散 was one of the names he was known by because of his appointment to the position of Attendant Counsellor, 中散大夫 | zhōng sàn dàfū, a civil official unspecified duties in the court of Cao Wei.

When Ji Kang was sentenced to death for his attempt to testify for a wrongly accused friend, three thousand scholars petitioned for his pardon to no avail. It’s said that at the execution ground, while they waited for the appointed hour, he had his favourite qin brought out and played a brilliant interpretation of Guanglin San that is now forever lost.

Do go read about them both if you have the time!

I would like to point out for the last line that 任 is to allow, to indulge, and it’s just such a heady sensation to say 任疯癫 - indulge in the madness! throw yourself in and don’t look back!

There is an easter egg here too. A nod to a poem by Tang Yin which can be read as his stance on his lifestyle choice after the alleged accusations of bribery in the final step of the Imperial examinations left him disgraced, and unable to pursue a civil career. Thematically the line does not call back to the poem at all, similarities end with the choice of words: chasing the dream 驰大梦 and indulging madness 任疯癫.  I leave an excerpt below. Translation again by me.

《桃花庵歌》- Song of a Plum Blossom Cottage // 若将花酒比车马 | if tawdriness and wine were compared against fine carriage and steed 他得驱驰我得闲 | he would have to drive and work hard for speed whilst I have my idle rest 别人笑我太疯癫 | others mock me for my madness 我笑他人看不穿 | i am amused for they do not perceive 不见五陵豪杰墓 | can’t you see that at the Emperors’ mausoleums and heroes’ graves 无花无酒锄做田 | there are no flowers, no wine, only land ploughed for farming

The second part of the chorus isn’t related to the first, but it has the same theme of showcasing the untamable (unhinged xD) spirit of the speaker. This time, the people he admires ‘intellectual equals’ and kindred spirits are featured, the 任性 feeling here has been pushed to greater heights.

Chorus Part 3

敢夸洒落何须酒 If one dares to boast of carefreeness, why, they hardly need wine.

不煮黄粱也称仙 Even without brewing millet they would still be called Immortal.

镜湖桌 白梅盏 The tables in the mirror-like lake, white plum blossoms in the cups,

等来春风恰开宴 await the spring breeze which arrives just in time for the feast to start!

Li Bai is regarded as both the god of poetry 诗仙 and god of drunkards wine 酒仙 because he wrote some of his greatest poems while drinking. The first two lines seem to be gently poking fun at that. Like hey, if you dare to claim to be all groovy, surely you have no need for alcohol? Just like how an immortal would still be an immortal without wine, your writing talent should not need any stimulants. This would be the time to mention that 黄粱 | huáng liáng is also known as millet, a type of grain that can be used to brew wine.

洒落 | sǎ luò has a few meanings, like shower down or blame, but the relevant one here would be 洒脱 generous, uninhibited and open. For me it feels similar to 风流 in that there is that ‘free, and exhilaratingly unrestrained’ element. 洒落 is in the most positive sense, being always open to having a good time, but without that dissolute or vaguely whirlwind-romance like connotation of 风流.

It feels like the intensity is letting up a little here - this is a light-hearted and frivolous song all the way through, but the words 洒落, 称仙 and imagery of a clear lake, white plum blossoms and the crisp spring breeze are grounding and sweet. Spirited in a different way from before.

Chorus Part 4

四角天地也醺然 The four corners and heaven and earth are also tipsy,

醉极自有桃李搀 when I’ve overindulged, my students will be there to help.

快意只 笔下讨 Gratification can only be claimed from beneath the brush;

何必诗债换酒钱 is falling into poetry debt worth that money for drink?

New words: 醺然 | xūn rán just means drunk. A new word for me though! 桃李 | táo lǐ is literally peach 桃 and plum 李 (李花, also known as 玉梅) flowers, and is a metaphor for students. The term originates from a story in 《韩诗外��》which was set in the Wei Kingdom of the Spring and Autumn period (771 to 476 BCE). There was once a highly ranked official who was sacked from his post and left for the north. He met another gentleman and remarked that the people he helped before did not lift a finger when he was in need. This person replied that, if someone were to plant peach and plum trees in spring, he could relax under their shade in the Summer and taste their fruit in the Autumn. But if that person were to plant weeds, nothing can be done with their leaves in Spring and there would only be burrs to hurt himself on in Autumn. Clearly the people the unfortunate gentlemen had helped before were not worth his effort. Students ought to be carefully selected and carefully cultivated as one would a tree.

Reading the four corners and heaven and earth 四角天地 are also tipsy 也醺然, I imagine the world sort of spinning around the speaker because he is drunk. But that’s okay, because his students (or the trees xD) will be there to support him.

快意 | kuài yì is the feeling of sudden relaxation, and then lightheartedness and joy. In this line, I felt like the intention would be closer to 畅快，爽快 and so chose gratification, because really writing is like scratching an itch isn’t it? Pleasure from satisfaction of a desire. Phrasing it as 笔下讨 is so very fitting though, because 讨 can be interpreted - somewhat contradicting - as either to demand or to beg. What could be more gratifying than having squeezed out the perfect sentence or word under your figurative pen?

So so so after all that, 何必诗债换酒钱? What do you think, is alcohol worth the poetry debt? Is Mr. Poet actually drunk and about to dig himself a deeper hole of owed poems to get even MORE drunk, or has he just been thinking about it all along? :)

Thoughts

This has been such a fun adventure following our madcap big spender from the shining Chang’an to the inviting Qinhuai, shadow of great poets in tow and all. We’ve done everything from talking to the moon and seeing the sights by her light, to boating down a river, dragging fingers through the water. It was sort of like being on a backpacking tour, except with with someone contemplating opening (or perhaps regretting opening this can of worms?) poetry commissions instead of singing in the streets?

Dear reader, if you’ve reached this point of my post, thank you. I hope you enjoy the song as much as I do now!

[oneyanderegirl]

Desire

Genre: One-shot, Hurt/Comfort, Angst Rating: T Sasuhina Month 2020 Theme Day 7 (Desire) 

A/N: I decided to skipped over Day 6. I swear I feel like every time I write, it gets longer and longer lol. Part of my one-shot series for Sasuhina Month 2020. You can read the other parts by going on my profile and clicking the fanfiction tab. They’re not written in a particular order since they are one-shots that are supposed to work as stand-alones, but there are hints here and there about when and where things take place. Anyways, hope you enjoy! Warnings: Mentions of death.  

@sasuhinamonth (in case this doesn’t show up in the tags)

It began on a whim.

Sasuke did not anticipate becoming this involved in her life.  

The woman named Hinata Hyuga was an odd mystery in his eyes.

They had known each other since childhood due to being born from the two biggest clans in Konoha. The Uchihas and Hyugas were famous for their rivalry as well as their prowess. He remembered attending several meetings with his family to socialize and discuss clan issues with the other prominent ones, including their rivals of course.

The adults had called it parties.

He called it boring.

But those days had long been over. The Uchihas had eventually died in cold blood because of the man known as Itachi Uchiha. He was one of the strongest shinobi to have ever lived in this world.

He was also Sasuke’s older brother.

Even that seemed like a far away memory now. Itachi was already dead. Sasuke had finally avenged his clan. Or that was what he had thought before he had found out the real reasoning behind his brother’s actions. The demise of the Uchiha clan was due to Konoha itself; they had been afraid of the Uchiha’s growing influence within the village and afraid of an uprising to overthrow the system in place. They had ordered Itachi to nip it before anything could take place. They had forced Itachi to kill his friends, lover, and even his own flesh and blood.  

Yet despite the horror that his brother was forced to go through, Itachi’s last wish was for Sasuke to continue to protect the very village that had essentially killed the Uchiha.

He never understood why his brother would still want to protect the village after what they had done to their clan. It had left Sasuke with more questions than answers. He could never tell what his brother was thinking. It was something that Sasuke was still trying to figure out. It was why he had decided to leave Konoha to travel in the first place.

He needed time to think.

He needed time to ponder. There were too many things to do, too many things to figure out. He couldn’t stay in the village. He had to leave. He had to in order to find the answers he needed.

So Sasuke travelled.

He travelled wherever the wind blew. Whether it was far or near, he would go. He would explore and learn about the different cultures that existed. He had developed a habit of recording what he saw and what he learned. It had almost become a ritual at this point. Sasuke didn’t mind though, rather he found it calming and fulfilling to do so. It gave him a purpose.

A hawk landed on a rock where Sasuke was currently sitting. The bird ruffled its brown feathers before dropping an envelope in front of him. He reached into his brown bag to grab a piece of dried fish and tossed it to the bird as a reward for a successful delivery. Sasuke watched the hawk squawk in joy as he eagerly devoured the food before looking at the letter he had just delivered to him.

The letter was wrapped neatly in a lavender colored envelope with his name written nicely in the front. There was also a blue paper charm that contained pressed petals from a sunflower taped next on top of the envelope. Sasuke was quite perplexed by the gift as he was not expecting anything from her.  

“ Sora, she’s quite persistent isn’t she?” He asked the hawk.

Of course, the hawk was much too busy enjoying his snack to respond.  

Hinata Hyuga.

She was the heiress to the Hyuga clan, famous for her highly developed Byakugan. Although they had attended the same academy and became shinobi around the same time, the two of them were mostly strangers towards one another. His most prominent memory of her was her famously large crush on his best friend during their genin days. Other than that, Sasuke could not really recall much about the woman other than her heritage.  

Yet for some reason, ever since the War had ended, she had constantly and desperately tried to seek him out.

He remembered that night when he had decided to visit Naruto to catch up about life and his travels, he had spotted her quietly watching them. At first, Sasuke had thought that it was his best friend who she had wanted to see, but then he noticed that she had kept staring at him instead. When he had finally finished talking with Naruto and started to leave, she had tried to follow him.

“ I...know this is a selfish request of mine, but...i-if it’s okay with you...I would like to see you again,” She asked between each breath.

Hinata slowly looked at the man towering before her. His cool expression gave away no emotion. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She wondered if it was a mistake to ask him.

“ What good will that do? We aren’t friends, Hyuga. I have no interest in doing so either. I have my own things that I have to do. If you want to grieve then do so at your own expense. Don’t come to me to do it,”

“ Please...Please, Sasuke-kun,” She whispered.

She begged him.

She begged as tears started falling from her tired eyes.

But Sasuke was already gone.

He quickly buried away the letter and the paper charm into his bag before starting to eat.

Sasuke was not stupid. He knew why she had seeked him out. It was like that when he had been hospitalized as well. She had seeked him over there too.  

“ If you’re going to come in, then just do it already, it’s already late.”  

Sasuke had felt a presence in front of his door. Surprised at who the person was behind the door, he made it known that he could tell she was there. He watched as Hinata slowly came into the room. He could make out the scrapes and bruises that had formed on her body from the War. What stood out the most though were her silvery eyes.  

They held no light within them.

“ I never expected you, of all people, would come and visit.” He said.

His words held no malice nor its usual coldness. Sasuke felt tired after all. The War had just ended only a few days prior, yet his mind was still not at peace. He watched the woman sit on the floor and bury herself into her hands and knees. Perhaps she too was tired.

Tired of war.

Tired of death.

Tired of the corrupt world that existed.  

Tired of living.

It didn’t matter though because in his eyes, Sasuke felt exhausted. He questioned the wish that his brother had left behind. Itachi had suffered due to Konoha, yet it was his dying wish for Sasuke to continue to protect it. Why? He couldn’t understand.

“D-do you think I’m being s-silly right now?” She suddenly asked.

Sasuke didn’t know what to say, so he decided to stare out the window to look at the moon. The moon was shining brightly in the sky, brighter than any of the stars. Yet despite the beauty it held, he could only think of how dull and lifeless the moon looked as it stood alone by itself in the vast darkness.

“ A-ah...Sorry. I know I sound a little strange right now. I apologize for disturbing you. I just had a lot on my mind lately. I’m sure you’ve heard that my...cousin had died.” Hinata tried to explain.

“ I know. I heard.”  

Neji Hyuga.

A Branch member of the Hyuga clan. He was regarded as a prodigy, much like himself, during their academy days. Although he never did get to properly fight him, Sasuke respected the man. Even though he was of a lower class, Neji had worked hard to make himself strong. He was probably the strongest Hyuga of their generation. When Sasuke learned of his death, he felt that it was a shame the Hyuga never received the proper chance to prove himself. “ How do you deal with the pain of losing a loved one?” She finally asked.

Sasuke kept staring out the window for what felt like an eternity before turning to face her. Neji had died protecting the woman he considered a sister in a way similar to how Itachi had tried to protect Sasuke. Though the methods they had taken in doing so were different, ultimately, they both had ended up dying in order to protect their most precious person. Though he could not understand why either of them had decided to make such a sacrifice, Sasuke knew one thing.

“ We move forward. We have to live. We have to strive to protect them. If we can’t protect their physical bodies, then the least we can do is protect their ideals. It doesn’t matter how much you cry or suffer, you have to live anyways. If you don’t, then it just means their deaths were in vain. Don’t waste the life they gave you.”

The words that he had spoken were more for himself than it was for her, but Hinata still looked surprised at his words.  They weren’t words of sympathy or pity. There were no apologies nor were there empty condolences within the words he had spoken. They were truly his own thoughts.

Words that he held in his heart because Sasuke knew that no one else would ever understand him. They would never understand the pain that he had to go through, the pain that he was still going through. The pain of not just losing a loved one, but of losing someone that had loved you more than anyone else in the world. More than their friends, more than their lovers, they had sacrificed their own lives due to the love that the two had held for them. That was how important Sasuke and Hinata were to their older brothers.

Perhaps that was why she had started crying when he had said those words to her.

She had cried and cried until there were no tears left. When the last of her tears were wiped, she had started to leave. She bowed to him before turning towards the door.

Sasuke didn’t know why she had decided to come to him for advice, but he knew that she was going through the same emotions that he had gone through. The grief that Hinata was experiencing was something that he was all too familiar with. For the first time, he felt something other than grief and rage bubble up inside of him. Perhaps the War had worn his heart out, but watching her cry had, in some ways, reminded Sasuke of himself.  

It had reminded him of the loneliness he had felt as he watched his clan members die.

It had reminded him of the helplessness he had felt as he watched his parents be murdered in cold blood. It had reminded him of the pain he had felt as he watched his brother, the last remaining family member, perish into the heavens.

An experience that no one should have to endure alone.  

“ Hyuga,” He finally called out, surprising both Hinata and himself.

The moment her pale grey eyes met his dark ones, Sasuke felt a sense of mutual understanding between them. An unspoken connection that had formed from their shared pain. Sasuke didn’t know why, but he felt the desire to comfort her in that moment. It was irrational of him to do so, it just wasn’t in his nature, yet that was the only conclusion he could come to as he tried to make sense of this unfamiliar feeling forming in his heart.

“ You’re not silly for feeling what you feel. Remember that.”

The only response she gave was a small smile before leaving his room.

Yet it was a smile he would never forget.

It had all begun at that point.  

The night after he had rejected Hinata’s desire to see him again, Sasuke kept thinking back to the hospital. He kept thinking back to the moment they had shared together. Her smile, her tears, her expressions, they kept preoccupying his mind. The emotions he had felt watching her as she reminded Sasuke of himself in his own grief was a strange experience. The desire to comfort her was odd. So out of this desire that he couldn’t get rid of, Sasuke had decided to allow her to write letters to him.

To his surprise, Hinata had graciously accepted.

She would write about once a week to him. Sometimes the envelopes felt very bulky. Other times, it would feel like there was no paper at all. Although Sasuke never wrote back, she still continued to write to him.

He never bothered to read them. When his hawk would fly by to drop the letters, Sasuke would just bury it in his backpack and forget about them. He was much too occupied with his own things to worry about hers. Still, she never stopped writing to him. It soon became a routine for them, she would write to him, he would shove it in his bag and continue on the day. He didn’t mind, she didn’t seem to mind either. So Sasuke left it at that.

But you could only travel alone for so long before the sensation of loneliness sinks in.

-----

One day, after almost a year of travelling alone, almost six months since Hinata had started writing to him, Sasuke suddenly felt a wave of loneliness hit him. It was a starless night with the moon hidden away, Sora had already flown into the forest to rest for the night while Sasuke laid in his sleeping bag trying to sleep. He was only halfway through slumber when he had woken up from a nightmare.

Nightmares were common for the Uchiha. He first started having them after watching his parents die. It was something that Sasuke had learned to get used to over the years.

But it was especially bad tonight.

Knowing he couldn’t sleep any more, Sasuke stared at the vast sky. The forest was eerily silent tonight. Not a sound could be heard. Even the wind itself was still. The darkness felt like a black void waiting to ensnare him. All he could see was a vast abyss of nothingness.

There were no stars.

The moon had disappeared.

There was no light.

It was then that the thought finally hit him.

Sasuke was truly alone.

When was the last time he had talked to Naruto? When was the last time he had a decent conversation with his friend? When was the last time he had seen him in person?

When was the last time Sasuke interacted with someone?

He felt the palms of his hands become sticky with sweat. His heart rate had jumped up significantly from his own panicked thoughts. His throat felt dry. His breathing became shallow as if there was no air left to breathe. He felt his body tremble with fear as if there was a monster hidden somewhere in the forest.

But there was no monster.

There was no one.

He was alone.

Sasuke couldn’t stand it anymore. He felt the need to leave. He had to leave. He had to do something, anything, to get this chilling feeling out of his mind. Grabbing his bag, he quickly opened it to get a drink of water to quench his thirst.

However, when he looked inside, he stopped.

Letters.

He had forgotten about the letters.

All his previous thoughts had vanished when he saw the piles of letters inside his bag. All of his attention had shifted to the letters Hinata had written to him. He had never bothered to read a single one. He was not interested.

But now, perhaps due to the discomfort and panic that he was feeling, Sasuke slowly reached into his bag for one. He chose one of the lavender envelopes with his name neatly on it. His fingers gently brushed against the surface, feeling each delicate stroke she had written so elegantly to ensure that he knew it was addressed for him.

Then he slowly opened it, careful not to rip off a part of the letter.

And he began reading.

He never realized how much she had written to him.

Some of the letters were as long as five pages, others were as short as one paragraph, but within each letter, Sasuke could tell that everything Hinata had written came genuinely from her heart. She wrote to him about various things. From trivial things, such as what she had for lunch that day, to much deeper topics such as the regrets she had felt after her cousin had died, she wrote about them all.

Sasuke faithfully read through each one, making sure not a word was missed. He wasn’t sure why Hinata had written so much, but he found her words comforting in a way. It felt as if he was getting to know her little by little through each letter. Before he knew it, the panic he had experienced earlier had already dissipated along with the isolation that he had felt. The only thing left over was a sense of tranquility. A new profound peace that he hadn’t experienced in a long time.  

Perhaps the reason why he had helped her that night in the hospital and why he had decided to let her write to him wasn’t because he had wanted to comfort her. Rather, it may have been because deep within his heart, he knew that the one who had wanted to be comforted was himself.

After reading about half the letters, Sasuke finally felt exhaustion hit him. He decided he would finish reading them in the morning, so he neatly placed each one back into his bag before laying back down in his sleeping bag. The moment he laid down, he felt sleepy. A tiredness that felt relaxing rather than full of distress. And as Sasuke finally fell asleep, a new unfamiliar emotion started to grow in his heart.  

It was desire.

A desire to see Hinata again.

[centrally-unplanned]

Serial Experiments Lain: A Guide to Proper Mindfucking Procedures

(I finished Lain! I originally wrote here “will jot down some thoughts, maybe I can write a full essay sometime later”, reviewing it now this is absolutely a full essay, so scratch that lets commit)

Serial Experiments Lain is a starring member of the pantheon of 90′s “mindfuck” anime, those shows that supposedly blow the mind with esoteric philosophy and trippy visuals. Current-me has frequently sallied against this notion, particularly the idea that any of these shows (or most any show) are that philosophically dense - the nature of television & film is such that they almost never are, which is normally a good thing. But young-me watched Lain around the same time I watched the original Ghost in the Shell film, and I had that halcyon experience for both: intriguing, but also on the border of incomprehensibility. As such I held little opinion of either of them, not trusting my hazy memories, until I saw them again much later. Ghost in the Shell, by the way, is a terrible, painfully boring film, precisely because it tries to be that philosophy-mindfuck concept. Which can work when you are young and stupid, but once you have read literally anything, anything at all, a single op-ed will do, about “AI and Identity” or the like its ideas are trite and shallow while it has sacrificed characterization, plot, and pacing in pursuit of that failed dream. 

Lain on the other hand is a brilliant show that succeeds at that concept far better than media like GitS ever could precisely by not even trying to be that. The thematic foundation of Lain is actually quite simple; the openness & inter-connectivity of the internet is not just utilitarian but can offer a way of living that is seemingly brimming with unlimited freedom and emancipatory potential, but that promise is found fundamentally to be a hollow (ahem) shell, with reality being not only inescapable but desirably so. Or something like that? I mean maybe. Lain never spends that much time on answers, because those are boring; instead focusing on the actual experience of the titular Lain herself as she navigates these concepts. All of the content it throws out are lateral moves around this core, details to mull over as opposed to attempts to “go deeper”, which makes it not-that-hard to follow once you understand that is what is happening. There is even a scene where the, let’s say “villain”, tries to go full-philosophy on Lain: who is the real her? What is identity anyway? Plays that whole entire hand, and she replies:

Which, given that those themes are absolutely the themes of GitS, made me laugh out loud and yes is 50% of why I am comparing them. I am certainly not saying that Lain doesn’t have philosophical concepts, it clearly does in spades. Stitching those concepts together into a grand thesis, however, is just not the focus. 

What is Lain’s focus is mood, and I have never seen a show use so many varied animation concepts and narrative approaches all towards capturing a singular mood; that of the free-wheeling hacker-for-truth aesthetic of the early internet. It is of course famously filled with glitchy shots of Lain flickering on CRT monitors and horror-shadowy power lines, damn does it have so many shots of power lines. But that is covered ground - instead I want to note how often the narrative approach itself just goes off the walls in service of its goals. Episode 9 is the peak of that approach, where scattered throughout the episode is a fully-fledged documentary that starts with the Roswell incident, which it then admits is fake, nevermind! before pivoting to discourse about Schumann Resonances and the Earth as a decentralized Neural Net and...

Just a screenshot from an anime here folks! Vannevar Bush better have a Danbooru tag 

All of this information is “true” by the way, as in real concepts and thinkers and crackpot ideas...until the end, when suddenly its someone from Tachibana Labs adding Schumann Resonance Integration to the 6th Protocol and wait-a-second that’s the show-canon, Tachibana Labs isn't real. As a ~youth~ you might be foolish enough to try to figure out how say ELF bands might be critical to understanding the plot of Lain, which is a classic “philosophy mindfuck” mistake; its all bullshit, the ideas only matter in the most loose way that does not require understanding them. Yet, this is *exactly* what that early hacker internet felt like; crazy ideas being stitched together from low-pixel edited docu-footage repurposed to utopian futures or secret conspiracies, and by sliding this stream-of-consciousness braindump right into the canon of the show it makes Lain feel like a perfect simulacra of that age. To spend any amount of the runtime of an episode on this and to actually pull it off is queering the madness/genius binary in the hottest way. 

The reason Lain can pull this off is its other source of strength I alluded too - all of these visual elements are in service of a very human story, that of Lain trying to figure out her place in the world. And this arc hits one of my sweet spots for media, what I have called the “multifaceted arc” in the past, where instead of a show having multiple independent arcs for characters it instead has one seemingly-completed arc that proceeds to be refracted, challenged,and altered over the run of a show. I mentioned in my previous Lain essay how the show was using the visual language of exposed skin to communicate Lain’s digital emancipation, becoming Lain of the Wired. In those early episodes that is what is happening, and this process peaks around the halfway point with a confident, powerful Lain. She spends much of episode 6 looking like some variation of this:

Total badass. That confidence and power then proceeds to be abused, manipulated, revealed as a false identity, and then stripped away over the latter half of the show - being Lain of the Wired turns out to be a curse as much as a blessing, and for the very human reasons of the connections to real people she loses through that process. This emotional core does an amazing job of keeping you grounded - in the same episode as that conspiracy documentary, Lain has her first kiss! (Its a bit of a dud, but still). And by the end of the show she is at the apogee of her digital empowerment, and also riddled with despair, loneliness, and in desperate need of help, looking like this:

Note the withdrawn pose and the positioning of Lain backgrounded and way below her friend in the frame, to imply a state of weakness despite her capabilities. That is some classic visual language by the way: no crazy shot effects, no weird narrative devices, just straightforward emotional communication. Lain spends 50% of its runtime going full avant garde, but never (okay, rarely) lets that overwhelm its arc, and threads the needle to make that arc one of the deeper and more moving arcs I've seen in a show.

Serial Experiments Lain is far from perfect, despite all the praise I just put on it; Episode 6 for example has some dumb midichlorian-style “you are trying to explain something no one needs an explanation for” plot, and half of the crazy visual effects are compensating for the fact that its budget was like 10 dollars. But it peaks far exceed its valleys, and I am exceedingly happy to have watched it; I have always struggled to name my “Number 5″ on my top 5 Anime list with a lot of contenders for the slot, but Lain might have just snagged the title.

(Which would make my top 5 list *entirely* composed of anime from the second half of the 90′s, and not due to nostalgia as I only saw the majority of them in the past few years. Certainly a question worth answering, but for another time...)

[a-spoonful-of-home]

My Top 17 Foods To Eat In Chengdu

Szechuan cold spicy noodles 四川涼面

These are hands down my favourite food to get in Chengdu. Sitting down in the heat outside with some cold spicy noodles (and a beer - of course) is the best way to spend a hot summers day here. It’s a great mixture of garlic, spring onions, ginger, and lots of chilli oil. I think I prefer cold noodles over hot noodles because it takes the heat down a level. Just writing about these noodles is making me want to go for a walk down to the noodle joint near our complex! An absolute staple of Szechuan cuisine - 10/10!

Steamed buns 包子

Steamed buns, or baozi, kept me alive when we first arrived in Chengdu and were running round trying to get all our documents sorted. They’re so convenient and you can really get them everywhere. I love the snacking culture here in China because it means you’re never very far away from some tasty street food. Steamed buns, sweet or savoury, never break the bank and you can pick one up normally for around 20p/30p. Steamed pork buns are my favourite bun but it’s always fun to try new ones - like the custard buns that you can poke with a chopstick and squeeze all the custard out… granted it can look a little disturbing but it’s still fun!

Dumplings in chilli sauce  红油抄手

Another classic here. I wasn’t a huge fan of these the first time I tried them but now I can’t get enough of them. I think I’ve really worked up my heat tolerance since moving here and now there’s nothing better to me than a big bowl of pork dumplings covered in spicy chilli sauce! It’s the intensely aromatic sauce they’re coated with, made with vinegar, garlic, and roasted chilli oil, that makes these dumplings so irresistible. You can also get dumplings in soup but I prefer the dry dumplings with chilli sauce.

There are lots of different types of dumplings in Sichuan and China as a whole, but Zhong dumplings are named for the family who first made these in Chengdu around 100 years ago - and now they’re recognised officially as one of Szechuan’s most famous street foods! They’re a simple dumpling with sweet soy sauce and chilli oil and they’re great for beginners. James and myself were actually lucky enough to get to go on a dumpling making course when we first arrived - it was really fun!

Roast pork 烤猪肉

This isn’t a Szechuan specialty but it’s still very much available here in Chengdu. My favourite way of eating pork here so far has been where the pork is served on a sizzling plate with a sweet sauce and peanuts. Normally the server will pour the hot sauce over the pork in front of you and it’s great to watch it sizzle. I love it when meals feel more interactive like that. It’s super sticky and sweet and is everything that roast pork should really be!

Hotpot 火锅

I think it would be a sin to come to Szechuan and not try hotpot at least once. Unfortunately, I’m not the biggest fan of hotpot with red oil but I do quite like the version of hotpot at a restaurant near us that uses what I think is some kind of chicken stock/soup to boil the ingredients. This restaurant is Hong Kong themed so it’s not typical Szechuan food. When the food is cooked you dip it in a sauce that you can put together yourself - this is chillis, garlic, soy sauce, and spring onions. There are a few different types of hotpot but some of the most popular here are chuan chuan 串串 (where you get your food on long sticks and place it in the pot) and huo guo 火锅 (where you place the food directly into the pot and scoop it out when it’s ready).

It’s a really fun way to eat though because at most restaurants you start by going around a fridge section of the restaurant with a basket and get to choose what you’d like to boil, then take it back to your table and cook it in the pot with your friends. Chinese style eating is quite different to the UK because typically you share food more instead of ordering just for yourself and I really prefer it like that - it just means you get to try more things and don’t have to worry about ordering something you won’t like! It’s a much more sociable way of dining and it’s just so much more fun.

Eating with friends

It’s always so much more fun to share your cooking with your friends - especially when you all come from different parts of the world. I really love the other teachers in my class and so I decided to cook them some ‘traditional British food’ because Tina, one of the teachers, really loves trying new food. It was also a bit of a thank you for how welcoming they’d been and how much easier the job is working in our team. Of course, being the welcoming people they always are, they came to the dinner with Szechuan food for us to try too! They made us kung pow chicken, fried chicken wings, and mapo dofu (silken tofu in a spicy sauce) and we shared with them a cottage pie, potato and broccoli soup, Hellmann’s egg mayonnaise sandwiches, biscuits with brie, and a steamed syrup pudding - the best of both worlds!

Dan dan mian 担担面

Dan dan mian (noodles) are so called because historically the walking street vendors who sold the dish would have a type of carrying pole (dan dan) that they carried over their shoulder with two baskets containing the noodles and sauce at either end. The name of these noodles is literally translated to noodles carried on a pole. They’re another Szechuan staple food and one of my favourite things to pick up when I’m walking around Chengdu. They're served hot with minced pork in a spicy sauce. They’re also served with preserved vegetables like zha cai 榨菜 (lower enlarged mustard stems) and ya cai 芽菜 (upper mustard stems). Living in Chengdu has meant that I’m a lot more into preserved vegetables than I was in the UK!

Xiaolongbao 小笼包

Now this is definitely not a Szechuan food but you can still get it in some places in Chengdu. It’s associated with Wuxi and Shanghai so I’m really excited to try some more when we move cities! It is a steamed dumpling with broth inside that's typically made from chicken or pork. You eat them using a soup spoon and a pair of chopsticks and bite into the dumpling on the spoon then suck out the soup. There’s a restaurant called ‘Modern China’ that we’ve been to a fair few times. It’s got a huge menu but recently I’ve been ordering just xiaolongbao and calling that my dinner. It’s been wonderful!

Roast Duck 北京烤鸭

Some of the best roast duck that we’ve had in China (so far!) was when we went to Hongyadong 洪崖洞 in Chongqing - which was once the site of the earliest and most developed pier in ancient China. It has since become a popular destination for visitors to experience Bayu culture and houses a large-scale stilt house complex built along the bank of the Jialing River. It was full of food vendors and we ended up going for a dinner roast duck which was skilfully carved in front of us. Again - I just love food where you get to see the chef or servers work with it! The restaurant we visited is called Quanjude and it’s a restaurant famous in China for its roast duck and longstanding culinary heritage since it was established in Beijing in 1864. There’s no way that we’re going to be able to live in Shanghai without at least one trip on the bullet train to Beijing now!

There’s also a restaurant called Bao Bao Ding just near our apartment and they sell really great roast pork and duck with rice. It’s not hard to find and I’ve never found it to be anything other than delicious! James also swears by the spicy duck neck snacks that you can get here but I think they’re still too spicy for me!

BBQ 烧烤

One of the first restaurants that James and I went to near our new apartment was a BBQ joint just across the street and I fell in love with this area! I’m a big kid and I just love getting involved in cooking the food myself so I really enjoy going for BBQ here. You’re supposed to dip the cooked meat in chopped peanuts and spices when you’ve cooked it on the grill and it’s so good. Unfortunately, I went to a different BBQ joint in the city and ended up getting food poisoning (I don’t think that I cooked the chicken enough) and so I’ve got off BBQ for the moment but I’m sure I’ll be able to get back on it!

Sweet water noodles 甜水面

I love these noodles so much - they’re always the star of the show. Most famously, you can get them from the Wenshu temple area where there are plenty of vendors selling this street-side snack. They’re quite different to the other noodles in this list because they’re made using a much thicker, square-cut noodle and are served in a sweet-and-spicy sauce. They're served cold and are very chewy with a rough surface to help them grab every bit of the sugary sauce that they're served in. I really love both the chunky look of these noodles and their mouthfeel and I think they’re always going to be something that distinctively reminds me of our wonderful times in Chengdu.

Pastries 蛋糕

Although I do miss a good Greggs sausage roll - Chinese pastries really are off the hook. We live by a bakery called Holiland which opened in the mid 90’s and became the biggest chain bakery in China. I think that’s fantastic news because we won’t have to go without our Holiland fix in Shanghai! Chinese pastries and breads are typically a lot sweeter and lighter than those in the UK and always seem to be much more creative in their presentation - maybe it’s just because they’re new to me but I really find them to be so beautiful. Some of my favourite pastries here are the hotdog pastries (literally just a hotdog in sweet bread) and the half baked cheese (which is sort of like a cheesecake with no base). It’s a very dangerous shop!

Bubble tea 珍珠奶茶

I really love just how readily available bubble tea is everywhere you go here. Every famous western fast food company that’s come over to China has their own bubble tea (McDonalds is the best one) and there are so many other chains (like HeyTeaGo and Fresh One More Time) which sell some really amazing teas. It’s really going to be one of the things I miss the most when we do eventually move back to the UK. One of the best teas you can get is a watermelon tea with a cheese foam topping. There’s a lot of cheese flavoured things here (like cheese flavoured yoghurt) which I’m really into. It’s not so much a hard cheddar cheese and is more like a cream cheese/mascarpone flavouring (if that). I’m really obsessed.

Vegetarian food at temples

I really like visiting temples. I think they’re such beautiful places that offer a calm that you don’t seem to find in many other places in the city. They also often have vegetarian restaurants nearby and the food is super tasty and affordable. When we went to visit the Leshan Buddha with my parents, we went to a restaurant near the temple there and had a lovely meal overlooking the square. I’m just really into these vegetarian restaurants and love what they’re about.

Cake at the kindergarten

We always bake a cake with the little ones whenever its one of their birthdays at the kindergarten. There’s a great mini kitchen downstairs and they’re so precious in the tiny chefs hats and aprons. The cake itself isn’t the most delicious cake I’ve ever had because we don’t put any sugar in it, so it’s more like a bread with fruit on top, but it’s so much fun to share it with so many excited four year olds. It’s great for them to get to bake the cake and then eat it together. I love birthdays at the kindergarten.

Street food 路边小吃

The best part of living in China is the abundance of street food. There have been so many new things I’ve had the opportunity to try from vendors in the road. It also keeps our cost of living down because they’re never that expensive and can be quite filling! I love just picking up some noodles when I’m out and about, or grabbing some Guo Kui 锅魁 (deep fried meat pie) which tastes a little bit like a sausage roll with lots of Szechuan spices.

Liang Gao (Glutinous Rice Curd) 凉糕

Liang gao is a sweet summer dessert which roughly means 'cold cake' (although it's more like cold tofu thing). It's served with sweet molasses and has a texture like jelly pudding but is just mildly sweet without the sauce. I first had it at the noodle shop near our first apartment and it was a great accompaniment to our noodle feast that we had!

Variety of crisps

China has some really out there crisp flavours. I’m not sure if they’re just novelty or if people really like them but I guess they wouldn’t sell if people weren’t buying them! The most interesting flavours I’ve seen have been lychee sparkling drink flavour and yoghurt drink flavour. Some of the flavours like spicy crab and hotpot flavour are really good but I think I’ll be avoiding the yoghurt for a while longer!

Sugar people 糖人

Sugar people is a form of traditional Chinese folk art using hot liquid sugar to create beautiful shapes and animals. This isn’t really something that is particularly delicious to eat - just because it’s made purely of hardened sugar but it really is beautiful. The reason I love it so much is because I think it’s such an amazing art form and it’s handmade and blown in front of you. I really enjoyed this pig candy because I got to blow it up myself (which a lot of help from the vendor). It’s kind of like glass blowing but you get to eat the finished product (highly recommend not doing this with actual glass).

[wirewitchviolet]

“What can I do to help?”

As I’m writing this, I’m dealing with a rather astounding amount of vicious harassment which is taking a very serious toll on me. Usually when this is happening, I try not to talk about it publicly, because the sort of people who do this love nothing more than seeing evidence that it’s working, but sometimes, exceptions need to be made. And more to the point, as someone who deals with these sort of attacks as a constant presence in my own life, as well as helping others deal with the same in what is arguably a professional capacity, it seems to me the state of things today is at a point where we need a fresh round of public education on how these sorts of attack play out, and what any given person can do to actually help people deal with them in a meaningful way.

Predators and Herds

As a basic fundamental primer here, I’m going to need everyone to start looking at things from the perspective of a herd animal, because not only is it a pretty clear metaphor for a lot of this, I honestly think this is literally the sort of ancestral memory/instinct that drives this sort of thing. Plus there’s an amusing irony in telling people dealing with these sorts of predatory scumbags that they aren’t acting ENOUGH like sheep.

Some animals are predators. In order to survive, they have to stalk/chase/pin down other animals and kill them in order to eat. Invariably, the animals they target are those that are the most vulnerable. It’s the easiest way to go, and the one with the least risk of anything going wrong. If you’re a hungry wolf, you’re not going to mess with the big beefy ram who can headbutt you and break some ribs, or the really fit sheep you’d have to chase for an hour and still might never catch up with. You’re just going to go for the one with the broken leg, or the little defenseless baby lamb. Those ones you can definitely pick off without much effort at all, and they can’t really fight back in any meaningful way.

Some animals deal with predators by just focusing single-mindedly on defending themselves. If you can outrun the predators, and never let them get the drop on you, or you hide well enough they can’t ever find you, or you know how to really fight back and hurt them badly enough they know not to mess with you, then cool, you aren’t going to get eaten. At least until you let your guard down at the wrong time, or you get injured, or age starts taking its toll. Plus with all of these you’re just living your whole life in this constant state of fear, actively aware that death lurks just around the corner, and you can’t really form any real attachments with anyone else or protect them. It’s no way to live your life, and all of these require you to be able to outperform any predator who comes at you.

The other way to survive with predators wanting you dead is to be part of a herd. If everyone the predators want to prey on are in a big group, there’s inherent safety in numbers there. Not, to be clear, simply because having so many potential meals to choose from means the odds of you being chosen drop. Predators have to weigh the risks now of coordinated defenses. That big tough ram they’d rather not tackle for fear of getting hurt is right there next to that shaky-legged little lamb that would otherwise be the easiest meal to snag there is.

Herds cause a whole lot of headaches for predators, so when they’re a factor, the first step is pretty much always going to be to scatter the herd in some fashion, so all the prey that would be a pain to deal with leave, and the easily picked off targets are left behind to move in on. There’s a lot of ways to do this, and I don’t want to get into too much detail because the metaphor would get too strained, but the real key counter-strategy is to keep the herd from scattering.

Wolves are going to show up, they’re going to show up in packs, they’re going to start snarling and howling and all that, and some sheep are always going to run when that happens, and some sheep aren’t going to be able to. The trick is to have as many sheep as possible stand their ground. If there’s only a couple who do, they’re just going to get picked off along with the ones who can’t run or fight back. But if enough sheep stand their ground to keep those intimidating numbers, nobody’s getting eaten.

There’s our big framework for looking at this, don’t ever let it drop.

How Predators Attack

Now, the next thing to keep in mind here is that people who haven’t been really hit hard by the sort of attacks I’m talking about here tend to be totally clueless about what they actually involve, and even those who have been targeted tend to be really bad at recognizing when other people are being put through the same.

What people imagine to be a “really devastating attack” is when, say, 2000 different twitter accounts all coordinate to hurl violent threats and horrible slurs at a single person over a single one-hour period or something. Don’t get me wrong here. That does happen, regularly, and that’s never a fun thing to deal with, if only because it essentially serves as a DDoS attack, rendering you unable to see any messages from people you want to see things from, but at the end of the day, it does no more harm than having your router go down for a few hours, maybe a day or two in the most extreme cases. It’s also not something that ever really gets sustained in the long term. It’s more like the predators are just holding a pep rally and testing how many accounts they can direct at once.

The really devastating attacks are the effort to drive herds away. They’re a hell of a lot less flashy, generally. They’re hard to point out to others. When really well executed, the target doesn’t even necessarily see anything happening. And what’s happening is elaborately orchestrated character assassination.

I can’t really convey the seriousness of this without some very specific examples. I may follow this up with a roundup of every attack I’ve personally had launched against me, but for now, let me present a very old and famous example, along with the one I’m most recently dealing with.

The classic, of course, from way back in 2014- “Zoe Quinn slept with five guys from various publications in exchange for good reviews of a game.” If this were the first time you encountered this statement, odds are good your personal reaction would be along the lines of “who?” or “who cares?” The goal here isn’t to make everyone hate Zoe Quinn though, just people immediately around Zoe Quinn. The premise of trading favors for good press is something anyone involved in the press is going to take quite seriously, with even baseless claims having an extreme chilling effect. For another crowd, promiscuity is considered a crime worthy of stoning someone to death (and it’s rather telling that the most commonly repeated version of this attack shortens it to simply “Zoe Quinn slept with five guys”). Much more to the point though, the premise that anyone reading this hasn’t previously encountered this line. That message was shouted from the rooftops all over the world for five straight years, over every possible channel.

More recently, I’ve been dealing with... this incoherent mess. This is much less coordinated, with just a handful of people in the think tank, testing every attack live on the fly. You can watch, more or less in real time, as this predator tosses out a variety of defamatory attacks, switching to a new one every time one falls flat. I’m friends with Graham, then I’m business partners, then I’m either paying him or maybe sleeping with him in exchange for promoting some website. I’m a professional journalist (which is a rather weird angle to press as an attack). Then suddenly I’m a “pedophile defender.” A new attack every day.

Now, in both these cases, there’s no truth at all behind any of these attacks. None of these are even stories with two sides to consider. Zoe Quinn’s game was a little choose your own adventure story comprised of a few simple HTML pages linking to each other. No one ever reviewed it to begin with, so the whole thing falls apart. Graham Linehan is a disgusting crusader who attacks children’s charities for daring to provide support to trans children, and quite famously has some weird fixation on publicly attacking me, and I’m a trans woman who hasn’t had any real luck finding work of any kind since coming out half a decade ago. I’ve never run any website that wasn’t a simple blog like this one, or this one which I think puts that last claim to bed well enough.

But again, the idea with attacks like this isn’t to be credible, or even plausible. People don’t make these sorts of attacks based on anything the target has done, it’s all about what will do the most harm if even one person actually buys into it. You want to hurt an indie game dev? Get people to believe they have to bribe people with sex to get any positive mention of their output. You want to hurt a trans woman? Get people to believe she’s friends with and/or sold everyone else out to the king of the transphobes. Someone who does real work to shut down child porn sites? Secretly a pedophile. Etc. Etc. And the success rate of attacks like this is never zero. No matter how transparently false the claim is, shout it at enough people and SOMEONE is going to treat it as ironclad fact, spreading it around in turn and coming off more credible because they’re quoting someone.These rumors spread like wildfire since, let’s be honest, social media sites are all just glorified gossip mills at the end of the day, and all those laughable details from the original lie drop away, replaced with lists of all the very credible people who always know what they’re talking about these scathing claims have been filtered through.

In my experience, honestly it’s the all the most pathetic claims that do the most damage. “Slept with five guys” sticks more than “in exchange for reviews” because it’s such a non-crime that people default to “let’s say that’s true - who even cares?” rather than question the veracity. And I swear all the most damaging attacks I’ve ever suffered really just boil down to baseless claims that I really just don’t like some arbitrary collection of mostly women (a mix of strangers and people I generally view in a positive light).

Having established all of that, we can finally get around to the big question found in the title of this post:

What can I do to help?

Really, the most meaningful and impactful thing you can ever do when someone is being attacked like this is just to do whatever you can to get in front of it. If you know someone has some predator out there trying to convince people she eats puppies, broadcast a big announcement about how that’s happening, along with how and why you’re as confident as you are that she doesn’t, and it’s a baseless hit job. If you have media connections, try to get a story printed about the whole mess, or set up an interview where the victim can talk about how surreal the experience is. If you don’t, just shout about it where you can, so people know not to trust it when word eventually reaches them of all the depraved puppy feasts.

Past that, just be an active support. Tell the alleged puppy eater how you have her back. Ask how she’s holding up. Offer to talk for a bit, or watch a movie. More often than not, attacks like this cost people career contacts and close friends, and cause a lot of trauma. Whatever you can do to help beat the encroaching darkness back helps.

Also? Don’t fall into that trap of granting these sort of BS claims are true to argue the point that they’re stupid reasons to attack someone. They’re always going to be a big deal to someone, and your hypothetical just makes it seem more factual.

Do keep in mind though that these sorts of solidarity moves are going to make the predators real mad. They want to drive you away, and failing that, they’re going to want to take you down too for not running off with the rest of the herd. If we can establish these sorts of defenses as a cultural norm, or you’re personally the sort of person it’s too risky to go after, this is a total non-issue, but if you’re also particularly vulnerable, and nobody else is following suit, be aware of the risks you’re taking.

Finally, make sure you don’t fall into the trap of becoming a predator yourself. So many people get this idea in their heads that the best defense is a good offense, and set out to “turn the tables,” but frankly it just doesn’t work. When you go on the offense, you can’t help but take on those predatory instincts. You end up targeting the most vulnerable people you can find and convince yourself are “the enemy.” I mean that’s almost certainly how the batch of predators you’re trying to fight got started in the first place.

So just... try to be kind. Be supportive. Get out in front of life-ruining rumors. And don’t just do it for people you know and trust. Do it for strangers who are plainly being preyed on. Look for people who just live to tear into people, especially when they keep tearing into the super marginalized. Object to that on principle. And remember anyone can fall into doing it, no matter how long you’ve known and trusted them, or what their politics are.

And some more thoughts on this topic.

[prolapsarian]

Notes to Sean Bonney (1969-2019)

The great ruse of our political epoch: Cameron, Osborne and Clegg, and their crows in press, scorched a set of oppositions in the minds of the people. The whole of society encapsulated in an image of “workers versus shirkers”, “strivers versus skivers.” The great tragedy of our political epoch: the Labour movement, the left, and the social democrats took the bait of these laminated ghouls. They responded simply by saying that there were no skivers: instead there was a worthy working class, labouring away ever harder, and getting ever poorer. They said the whole thing was a myth, that the shirkers were a phantom, a chimera, a scapegoat, an image invented by evil overlords to turn the working class against itself, leaving it prone to the ideologies of reaction. The labour movement talked instead only about the working poor, or the unemployed who wanted always to get back to a good job, on a good wage, forever and ever.

Few resisted the ruse, but Sean Bonney was one of them. Perhaps it was because Sean himself was a skiver, a drunk, a scoundrel, a villain, an addict, a down-and-out, a fuck up. More likely it was because of his deep political intuition and understanding. For him, the politics of class warfare was never about worthiness; it was never about what the working class deserve at the end of a hard day’s work, but instead its crucible was the hatred of the social conditions that pummelled people, silenced them, boxed them in, boxed them up, oppressed them, made them suffer. This politics was uncompromising because it understood that any compromise was a failure: there is no weekend that redeems the week, no pension that makes good on the life wrecked by the conformity and unfreedom of work.

I like to think of Sean as the thing that terrified those Tories most, as one of those beautiful creatures who so absolutely threatened them that they had to transfigure him into a phantom. His poetry too was one with this politics in this. Every line is written in solidarity with the shirking class, a class whose underground history crawls and stretches backwards, a perpetual dance, an unending squall, as anonymous as it is enormous. If Sean was a skiver he was also always hard at work, undertaking an immense labour of compression, in order to make that history heard. And this furious labour was quick and angular, because it always came with some sense that history was, already, ending. As a singular voice that resisted the ruse, his writing is one of the most important political efforts of our time.

o scroungers, o gasoline there’s a home for you here there’s a room for your things me, I like pills / o hell.

*** Since hearing of Sean’s death I have been thinking a lot about what I learnt from him. Learning is maybe a strange way to look at it. Because Sean’s poetry was not really so complicated. He stated unambiguous truths that we all knew and understood. Just like Brecht’s dictum in praise of communism: “It’s reasonable, and everyone understands it, it’s easy […] it is the simplicity, that’s hard to achieve.” This was the plane on which we met. All of us, Sean’s friends, comrades, loves, beloveds, others we did not know who all were invited, all in this common place where we know how simple these truths are, even if none of us were able to express them with such concision as Sean – even if we were all somehow less rehearsed, less prepared, less audacious. And suddenly I know it was a common place he made, wretched and hilarious.

*** So communism is simple. But running beneath all of Sean’s work was an unassuming argument, from which I have learned so much. Although argument was not his mode – his poems were always doing something, accusing but never prosecuting – an argument is there, even if it was exposed as a thesis in its own right. It is something so simple, easy, and so obvious that it barely seems worth saying. Sean’s poems made an argument for the enduring power of French symbolism – for a power that surged through history in the spirit of that movement. No surprise for a poet who rewrote Baudelaire and Rimbaud. But constantly a surprise to a world that thought that mode already dead, a world no longer animated by the literary symbol, nor transfixed by the resurrection any such symbols could herald. His writing followed the traces of this hyperhistory that wrapped around the world and back, from the high culture of decolonial revolutionism back in to cosmopolitan centre where bourgeois savages feast greedily on expropriated wares; into the dark sociality of the prison, and out again into every antisocial moment that we call “society”; sometimes making the earth small within a frozen cosmos ringing out noise as signal to nobody and everyone; sometimes bringing the whole cosmos in crystalline shape (sometimes perfect, sometimes fractured) as the sharpest interruption within the world - every poem charting a history stretched taut between uprisings and revolts. He knew the rites of symbols, the continuing practices with which their political power could be leveraged.

Sean was one of the few untimely symbolists of our time. His poems are full of these things: bombs, mouths, wires, bones, birds, walls, suns, etc - never quite concepts, never quite images, never quite objects, but pieces of the world to be taken up and arranged, half exploded, into accusations; treasured as partial and made for us to take as our own, a heritage of our own destruction, at once ready at hand, and scattered to the peripheries on a map of the universe, persistently spiralling, in points, back to the centre, some no place.

But if Sean was a symbolist, if he was attentive to its fugitive history, a slick and secret tradition of the oppressed, then this was also a symbolism without any luxuriant illusion. It is a symbolism in which all knowingness has been supplanted with fury and its movements. Sean’s poems are spleen without ideal. They have nothing of the pointed, almost screaming, eternal sarcasm of Baudelaire when he ever again finds the body of his beautiful muse as white and lifeless cold marble, utterly indifferent to the desirous gaze. There is no such muse, no callous petrified grimace, half terrified half laughing, ancient enough to unseat Hellenism itself - although there is beauty still but it exists otherwise, amid a crowd, darkened and lively. When I think of Sean’s monumental work I imagine an enormous bas-relief of black polished marble jutting out from some monstrously disproportioned body, angled between buildings. This great slab flashing black in the white noise of the city. This great slab as populous as the world. Flashing black and seen with the upturned gaze. There is no oppression without this terrified vision that sees in ever new sharpness the oppressor.

When you go to sleep, my gloomy beauty, below a black marble monument, when from alcove and manor you are reduced to damp vault and hollow grave; when the stone—pressing on your timorous chest and sides already lulled by a charmed indifference—halts your heart from beating, from willing, your feet from their bold adventuring, when the tomb, confidant to my infinite dream (since the tomb understands the poet always), through those long nights in which slumber is banished, will say to you: "What does it profit you, imperfect courtisan, not to have known what the dead weep for?" —And the worm will gnaw at your hide like remorse.

*** I haven’t explained what I learnt. I ask the question, What does it mean to find the late nineteenth century stillborn into the twenty-first? Why should these febrile years, from 1848 to the Commune have been so important? What was Sean leveraging when he recast our world with this moment of literary and political history? And what was he leveraging it against? I have a sense that what was important to Sean was a sense of mixedness. There were those who would read these years, after the defeat of revolution, as a dreadful winter of the world. There were those who saw only society in decline. “Jeremiads are the fashion”, Blanqui would say while counselling civil war. And then there were those for whom arcades first provided an extravagant ecstacy of distraction and glitz. These were the years of monstrocity, from Maldoror to Das Kapital. These years of the great machines that chewed up humans and spat out their remains across the city, of great humans who chewed up machines and made language anew. These years in which the fury of defeat burnt hot. These years of illumination. These years where gruesome metallic grinding and factory fire met the dandy. Few eras have been so mixed, so utterly undecided. No era so perfect to carve out the truly Dickensian physiognomy of Iain Duncan Smith. This was neither the stage of tragedy nor comedy, but of frivolous wickedness and hilarious turpitude. The world made into a barb, and no-one quite knowing who is caught on it. The great progress. The great stupidity. Street life. The symbol belonging to this undecided realm.

Marx was famously dismissive of that “social scum” the Lumpenproletariat, who he described at the beginning of this period as “vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème.” Marx saw in these figures, in their Bonapartist, reactionary form, a bourgeois consciousness ripped from its class interest and thus nourished by purest political ideology. But if he could excoriate the drunkenness of beggars, Marx failed to appreciate its complement: the intoxication of sobriety of the working classes, the stupefaction in methodism, their imagined glory in progress. Wine, as the beggars already knew, was the only salve to the social anaesthetic of worthiness and the idiotic faith in work.

If Sean were here I’d want to talk to him about this learning in relation to a fragment by Benjamin, which he wrote as he thought about the world of Baudelaire; this world of mixedness of the city constructed and exploded, and the people within it subject to the same motion:

During the Baroque, a formerly incidental component of allegory, the emblem, undergoes extravagant development. If, for the materialist historian, the medieval origin of allegory still needs elucidation, Marx himself furnishes a clue for understanding its Baroque form. He writes in Das Kapital (Hamburg, 1922), vol. 1, p. 344: "The collective machine ... becomes more and more perfect, the more the process as a whole becomes a continuous one — that is, the less the raw material is interrupted in its passage from its first phase to its last; in other words, the more its passage from one phase to another is effected not only by the hand of man but by the machinery itself. In manufacture, the isolation of each detail process is a condition imposed by the nature of division of labor, but in the fully developed factory the continuity of those processes is, on the contrary, imperative." Here may be found the key to the Baroque procedure whereby meanings are conferred on the set of fragments, on the pieces into which not so much the whole as the process of its production has disintegrated. Baroque emblems may be conceived as half finished products which, from the phases of a production process, have been converted into monuments to the process of destruction. During the Thirty Years' War, which, now at one point and now at another, immobilized production, the "interruption" that, according to Marx, characterizes each particular stage of this labor process could be protracted almost indefinitely. But the real triumph of the Baroque emblematic, the chief exhibit of which becomes the death's head, is the integration of man himself into the operation. The death's head of Baroque allegory is a half-finished product of the history of salvation, that process interrupted — so far as this is given him to realize — by Satan.

I won’t pretend to know all of what Benjamin means here but I have some idea. And those last sentences terrify me. Modernity begins with a war that is a strike, one that repeats through history. And the shape of this strike, this war, this repetition, is the shape of detritus of production interrupted. We shift perspective and the machine is revealed as other than it was once imagined: it is not some factory churning out commodities, but a world theatre of soteriology. An exchange takes place: the half-finished product for the half-destroyed body. Although what is created (albeit as a “monument to the process of destruction”) is some monstrous combination of the two. One and the same seen with two different perspectives, and the two perspectives separated by the distance between the promise that production will be interrupted, in rhythmic repetition, and the force of the machine that completes the product, kills the body into it, sealing death perfectly within the commodity, as its catastrophe. This distance, a tropic on the edge of the end of the world, is Hell.

This is a lot. But maybe it gets close to what I learnt. That all those bombs, mouths, wires, bones, birds, walls, suns, etc were for Sean the emblemata of our political times. These are the monsters, half-finished, half-human, half-machine, the bird interrupting itself with a scream a silent as the cosmos once seemed. I don’t know if they are to be taken up as weapons in the battle for salvation, or as mere co-ordinates on the map of hell. But they are certainly potent, and set here in commitment to redemption, for the work of raising the dead. Sean’s writing was always ready for this task, in constant preparation, and in constant interruption. Its angles quickly pacing between the two.

This has become theologically ornate. But perhaps something of the point is clear: that in the symbolic realm of Sean’s language are staked the great theological and materialist battles of our age. He had to deep dig into our time for that, furrow and dig so deep that he found the nineteenth century still there, crawling everywhere, right up to us. And all of this was set, furiously, against a more everyday view that production has all but disappeared from sight: society fully administered slips across screens with nothing but a sense of speed and gloss. His poetry decries, digs into, a laminated world with which we are supposed to play but in which we are never supposed to participate, never mind to get drunk, see the truth, raise the dead, even now as they slip away ever further through the mediatized glare.

*** Are we not surrounded by those who cast spells? Sorcery is the fashion, if only for the blighted, the meek, the poor, the oppressed. And it would be easy to mistake what Sean was writing for just another piece of subaltern superstition; promising mighty power for as long as it remains utterly powerless and otherworldly. But this is not right. Seans symbols are not just any old sign, or signal, or sigil. They are not arcana, but materials taken to hand out of the dereliction of the present. They are certainly magic, just as Sean was certainly a seer. But this is a materialist magic, a fury, a joy. They are not drawn from some other mystical world, but from this one. And his magic was to suspend them between this world and the next, between law made in the mouths of a class who hated him, and justice. He saw more deeply than most of us dare, and invited us along. Invited everyone along, including the dead who will rise, even if we have to dig and dig and drag them out of the ground and through the streets, to show the world what streets are really for. Here in this common place, between buildings, together. This is the place of magic, for riots, for burning cars; here a wall, there a blazing comet. Let his poetry dance on, and we will dance on too.

[passionate-reply]

This week on Great Albums: My first video about Depeche Mode--and it’s about their first album! I think it’s pretty good, but a lot of people HATE it. Are you intrigued? Take a listen, or read the transcript, and see where you fall!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be looking at the somewhat rough start of one of the most iconic bands in the history of electronic music: Depeche Mode, and their 1981 debut, Speak & Spell. While Depeche Mode are certainly a beloved band, many of their fans actively revile Speak & Spell. What’s wrong with it? Well, it has songs that sound like this.

Music: “Just Can’t Get Enough”

“Just Can’t Get Enough” isn’t exactly the kind of song Depeche Mode are associated with--though it did make an entry in the charts, and remains fairly well known today, largely thanks to its use in advertising. The band’s “classic run,” spanning roughly from the mid-80s to the mid-90s, saw them achieve substantial mainstream adulation, as a pop act peddling dark and gothic themes, and maintaining a substantial electronic element to their music, without ever becoming inaccessible to rock listeners. They were even “rock and roll” enough to consistently break America, which is no small feat for, essentially, a synth-pop band from England. That synth-pop heritage dominates the sonic palate of Speak & Spell, and it’s hard to imagine a die-hard rock fan vibing with upbeat, almost saccharine pop ditties like “What’s Your Name?”

Music: “What’s Your Name?”

Of course, “What’s Your Name?” has another big problem besides favouring bright, chirping synth riffs over the guitar-based chug of tracks like “Personal Jesus.” Its seemingly homoerotic lyrics might be said to constitute the first instance of Depeche Mode engaging in what we might call musical “queer-baiting.” Thumbing their noses at norms of sexuality and gender presentation have earned the band a substantial queer following throughout their career, but it’s not such a smart move if you’re trying to attract macho rock listeners, and get yourself into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Part of the reason why Depeche Mode were ultimately able to do those things, later in their career, is that they had a pretty handy scapegoat: Vince Clarke. Clarke was a founding member of the band, and as the chief songwriter for all but two tracks on Speak & Spell, he was unequivocally the creative force driving the album. Conveniently enough, Clarke not only departed from Depeche Mode immediately after this first album, but went on to serve as an integral member of two unequivocally poppy duos, Yazoo and Erasure. But as easy as it is to simply blame Vince Clarke’s interest in cheerful pop for the apparent failures of Speak & Spell, this hypothesis doesn’t hold up. Some Clarke-penned numbers, like “Puppets,” are at least as gloomy as anything from the mind of Martin L. Gore, who took over songwriting duties on every subsequent Depeche Mode LP.

Music: “Puppets”

“Puppets” is pretty far from a feel-good song. Those fairly bright synths remain, but here, they feel more like a tense crescendo of violins, as something goes poorly in a horror film, and a serrated synth stab answers them from below. Dave Gahan’s semi-whispered delivery of the vocals, which narrate the perspective of a manipulative and controlling partner, add even more to its sinister ambiance. Given only a minor aesthetic facelift, “Puppets” could fit just fine onto most other Depeche Mode albums, even if Clarke did write it. I actually think the softer, poppier touches this track DOES have serve it well, and make it feel a bit insidious--like a lover who seems loveable and charming at first, before revealing their abusive tendencies over time. Another track that really benefits from creating tension between pop fluff and things macabre is the striking “I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead.”

Music: “I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead”

“I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead” features an almost gratingly toylike synth riff, that reminds me a bit of those custom cell phone ringtones from the 00s. Its lyrics are also almost painfully chipper, at least at first, as is Gahan’s infantile delivery of them...but there seems to be some irony there. While that provocative title doesn’t actually appear, the song seems to be obliquely telling a story of someone dealing with a breakup, albeit cloaked in this eerily sunny music. International editions of *Speak & Spell* would remove this track in favour of the non-album A-side “Dreaming of Me,” presumably targeting it for its inflammatory title and short runtime of just over two minutes. “I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead” is a powerful reminder that just because something has a shiny pop veneer doesn’t mean it’s disposable, or that it lacks in artistic complexity.

Still, if you’re in the market for something that feels more like “classic” Depeche Mode, Speak & Spell can deliver on that front as well. Look no further than Gore’s contributions to the album, such as “Tora! Tora! Tora!” With its frantic refrain, and troubling themes of nuclear holocaust, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” feels more like Depeche Mode’s classic run than just about anything else on Speak & Spell, prefiguring iconic tracks like “Leave In Silence” and “People Are People” quite well.

Music: “Tora! Tora! Tora!”

Speak & Spell’s cover is certainly strange and a bit opaque, showing some sort of bird in its nest from a very low angle. The background is almost entirely a lurid, artificial-looking pinkish red, with no other recognizable figures to ground this landscape in reality. Between the chaotic textures of the nest, and the surreal emptiness of the scene, it comes across as a sort of nightmare world, albeit one populated by only this fairly non-threatening creature...that we know of. If we look closely at that bird, we can start to see what looks like a transparent veil covering its neck and head. I like to interpret this image as a representation of the natural world, destroyed by human callousness: an animal suffocates under a sheet of plastic, while the sky behind it glows red with bombs “raining from the sky,” as in “Tora! Tora! Tora!”

Despite the title, you won’t hear any samples of the titular toy on Speak & Spell--though Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark would famously incorporate some on their album Dazzle Ships, a few years later. The title “Speak & Spell” would seem to suggest the album’s light, playful tone, and sense of pop novelty. A Speak & Spell is, of course, a fun and entertaining toy, which repeats the same handful of things over and over, as a pop song might be played *ad infinitum* on the radio. Perhaps the way the songs sneak a darker emotional undercurrent past their listeners is parallel to how the toy covertly educates children in basic spelling, while also being amusing to fool around with.

After Speak & Spell, it took several more years for Depeche Mode to really find their footing, and launch into that classic period of theirs where they released most of their best-loved material. Despite the absence of Vince Clarke, their sophomore LP, A Broken Frame, is stylistically rather similar to Speak & Spell, and pairs somber tracks like “The Sun and the Rainfall” and “My Secret Garden” with some very upbeat ones like “The Meaning of Love.” If the fact that Clarke could write “Puppets” didn’t sell you on my assertion that he isn’t the singular problem with Speak & Spell, the fact that Martin Gore wrote “The Meaning of Love” should serve as proof that the desire to make catchy pop tunes didn’t rest solely on any one person’s shoulders.

Music: “The Meaning of Love”

My favourite track from Speak & Spell is the opener, “New Life.” “New Life” was also released as a single and made substantial headway in the charts, though it doesn’t seem quite as well remembered as “Just Can’t Get Enough.” Like “I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead,” “New Life” is almost disgustingly catchy and hooky, but hides some surprisingly dark lyrics. But I’ll freely admit that I don’t particularly have some sophisticated, intellectually justified reason for liking this song the most, besides just thinking it’s a real toe-tapper. While I’ve gone to great lengths to dispel the idea that Speak & Spell is nothing but cheerful pop, I’d also like to point out that simply being cheerful pop isn’t exactly a musical sin. Whether you like it or not, it’s certainly far from easy to write a great pop song that stands the test of time, the way tracks like “New Life” and “Just Can’t Get Enough” have, and simply pointing out that they’re not as morose as later Depeche Mode songs isn’t a worthwhile criticism of them. While I enjoy a lot of more gothic music myself, I think a work of art that elicits the emotion of joy has as much of a shot at being a Great Album as one that wants to make us angry, sad, or afraid. On that note, I’ve reached the end of my video--as always, thanks for listening.

Music: “New Life”

[palegengarsiloved]

Buddhism, Existentialism, Dark Souls

Fromsoft's games revolve around a core idea, one that other Japanese auteurs like Hideo Kojima, Fumito Ueda, Yoko Taro also touch on: the cycle of life and death, the suffering inherent in that natural system, and the connections we can still form and the meaning we can still find within them. It's obviously rooted in Buddhist and Shintoist beliefs, as well as other East Asian philosophies that acknowledge the supremacy of nature (and natural processes), accept the impermanence and imperfection of the world, and yet (therefore?) also the beauty found therein. First, how do other forms of media try to communicate these ideas? In traditional East Asian visual arts, humans are oftentimes either ignored or viewed as very small, distant figures, entirely dwarfed by nature. Early Buddhist art avoided human depiction at all, using instead icons like wheels and lotuses/cherries to communicate ideas of the cyclic nature of the world and the impermanence of the moment (it's argued that human depictions of religious figures only came into prominence after the whole Greco-Bactrian thing where Greeks set up shop in what is now Afghanistan/Pakistan and started carving gods-as-people, and I mean, you gotta compete with that seductive reification of divinity). Shintoist poetry is brief, fragile, incomplete, often summoning a brief moment of nature ("this dewdrop world / is a dewdrop world / and yet, and yet--"). Kurosawa's deep love of rain and bamboo, Ozu's pillow shots of landscapes and rooms devoid of people. All of these use tools unique to their respective mediums to manifest a sensation or emotion into the audience: Ozu focusing on an empty street for 10+ seconds wouldn't be possible in painting or sculpture; architecture's capacity towards grandness and sense of proportion to a person inside it can't be communicated through photographs. Think about the tools unique to video games, now. Think of all the ways you interact with a game: user interface, input controls, gameplay loops, level design, etc, and how those connect to create a totality of experience. All of these drastically affect the interplay between audience and art; think of if a Jeff Koons balloon animal sculpture were installed in some small garage versus a giant New International-style skyscraper lobby. (Imagine if Dark Souls was presented as a visual novel or whatever genre Undertale is.) Now think about how Dark Souls approaches each of those tools. User interface and item management is one that is quite clever: you are given an item, and you have zero idea of what it is, so you find a brief safe moment and take a look at its item description. It's vague and honestly impenetrable, with a little bit of equally-impenetrable lore on it. You only have one so far, so you're afraid to use it, but you have the feeling that not only could it be useful, but perhaps even necessary for some encounter. You see that you can carry up to 99 (and store 600) of them, so maybe there'll be more later? You know that you've picked up stuff that you thought might be one-off and found more later, or a merchant who sells it. Fuck it, might as well try it out - after all, this user interface is almost begging you to think about the lore meanings, the possible item use, and exploring for more of them, or how/where you could best use it. It's designed so that you acknowledge the rarity of it, but also are assured to not to worry too much about it and just try it out for whatever benefit you can get in this dangerous world. What's the worst thing that happens - you die and waste it? You've lost thousands of souls (the precious in-game currency) before, what's one lightning paper or green blossom whatever? You know this game is famously difficult; "It's like Dark Souls" is industry shorthand for "It's a fucking hard game" at this point. Might as well try something new in this brief cycle you have before the next inevitable death. That leads me to the next tool: the corpse-running / death mechanic. You'll die a lot, sure, but then you'll learn more, have the opportunity to think about what you might be doing wrong or not seeing, maybe even find a shortcut or trick or use a different item this time to make it easier. It's another ostensible punishment that's actually an opportunity for you to get better at the game, and to think about maybe using that one item for a boost or trying out a different weapon, but also it starts teaching you something very important to the series plot and themes: it's okay to die - natural, even. A part of life. It's not a waste any more than anything else in life is a waste - the only waste is if you don't learn from it, appreciate it, bask in the purifying fire of failure to find yourself in something close to Zen gameflow. Even then, it's not the game disrespecting your time; I would say that it's the player disrespecting their own experiences, discarding any outcome other than an easy victory as a waste, as pointless, as if progress is the only marker of a life well lived. Resisting death, panicking, generally facing it in an undignified manner... all of these are counter-productive. To do so is to miss the philosophy of why there isn't an instant boss restart button! The brief little life as you scurry to your undistinguished death is, perhaps, the point. I mean this in a game sense, too. If you are deeply reluctant and fearful of death, you won't have as much success exploring dangerous and unfamiliar areas. Once you accept that you might lose some paltry number of souls in exchange for new items, new shortcuts, new areas... the game becomes less of a hostile slog and more of this world that you want to explore and understand. Yes, there'll be some suffering; that's to be expected. But there's still rewards you can find, NPCs you can ogle, vistas you can enjoy. Kind of a blunt metaphor, huh? That leads to the level design. By that I mean not only shortcuts and verticality/horizonality, which are ingenious from a design perspective, but in how the levels evoke two major things: one is the lived-in nature of the world; the other is how small you are in comparison to it. Cathedrals are prominently featured throughout the games. Historically they were specifically designed to make laypersons feel small in the presence of divinity, to make their eyes look upward, and to contemplate the sheer power (physical and social) necessary to create these things. Think of how small you are, then, that there are even greater powers in nature that can make these monuments to humanity fall. As for the lived-in aspect, think of how strange the items you find are, how fragmentary their lore, and yet how they start to fit together, even from their placement in the world. (Why is a Choir investigator-assassin hiding out in the School of Mensis? Why does he drop sedatives?) There's this giant world taking place around you and you're so unimportant that no one really bothers to tell you anything more than vague prophecies and allusions. Anyone who points you somewhere concrete sees you as the pawn you are; you're also literally smaller than many other NPCs (Non-Player Characters) to illustrate this point. The NPCs are yet another way that the game acutely communicates its existential ideas to you. Everyone in the Dark Souls world is cursed to not die, but rather turn Hollow – that is, to lose their minds in lieu of death. The only way to fight against this curse is to commit to a purpose and use that willpower to stave off insanity. This is strongly absurdist in nature, as a cursed undead either completes their goal and then, newly purposeless, goes insane, or the goal is unfulfillable, and the goal-seeker is doomed to an eternity of Sisyphean torment. Some NPCs appear broken under this will, crestfallen or twisted or gleeful upon recognizing the sheer injustice of their burden; some soldier bravely on; some offer unconditional kindness; some perform a mixture of all three. There are startlingly few characters in this game, each almost hidden by the landscapes, and each clearly dwarfed – both literally by the environments they are lost in, and by the staggering difficulty of the tasks they took up. It’s almost easy to attack all the NPCs you come across, as you’re conditioned to be fearful of any other entity you encounter; many players kill a certain peaceful demonic entity because they’ve slain so many similar-looking monsters defending her. It’s easy to miss these connections, and the game makes no effort to protect them. It’s the hedgehog’s dilemma: can you let down your guard towards someone who very well may hurt you, in a world that has done nothing but hurt you? Will others do the same? The multiplayer component of this game adds a corollary to this social experiment: there will, inevitably, be those who seek to invade and destroy you, those who will defend and avenge you, those who will help you, and those who will dabble in all three. You see every day in real life: the wounded lashing out in pain, the happy few just trying to help others along the way, the people who want to create some sense of justice in an indifferent universe. Oftentimes, one human will try out all three roles in their life. Why do we do this? Perhaps it’s how we work through the cosmic injustice of our existence, in a form of primitive dialogue that we need to act out. The human condition, after all, is reconciling oneself with the fact that we, and everyone we know, are fated to someday die. That's where the plot intersects with the gameplay and themes to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. The directive you’re given at the beginning of the game is to extend the Age of Fire, the era you are currently living in; you are told that this is because with Fire there’s light, and time, and the creative spark of divinity on high. However, it turns out that unnaturally prolonging the Age of Fire is actually pretty bad, and results in all sorts of upheaval and foul consequences (including, possibly, the undead curse itself, unless you believe a certain scholar in DS2…). We learn as we venture through this game and interface with its mechanics that death must be a part of life and dark must accompany light. We also know that something can arise out of nothing (as we know there was a “time” before the Age of Fire; think pre-Big Bang), so it turns out that even if you don’t extend the Age of Fire, the larger cycle of death and rebirth perhaps never ends. In any case: fighting against this inevitability, fighting against the possibility of pain and loss caused the Gwyn, the Lord of Fire and Light, to ultimately sacrifice and thus lose everything he defended in tragic irony; similarly, trying too hard to lean into the turn caused Oolacile/New Londo/Farron Keep to be lost in the Dark forever. By dying over and over in-game, by investigating the subtle hints of lore found in the items and the sparse dialogue, and by witnessing the sad existence of these once-great powers of Fire that have long-since shriveled up under the infinite and inescapable wheel of nature, you begin to internalize the themes these games try, through all the tools at their disposal, to make you feel. You can live, however briefly, and value it, but also learn to let it go. You can love nature and respect its impersonal processes, understand that ultimately it will reclaim us, and find some comfort that the end isn't necessarily the end. There will be suffering, but there will be moments of total (if brief) triumph. There will be moments of tenderness with NPCs that can only be generated by a video game world where life is immensely fragile and nothing but the curse of insanity permanent. Will you allow yourself to try and help them, knowing how difficult and obtuse it will be, and how little it might seem to matter? Will you extend the Age of Fire to uphold the lie, because this Age is the only thing you and the rest of the world has ever known? Will you be brave – or perhaps, human – enough to reach out to others in this brief moment before the end of the world, and when the time comes, to let the Age of Fire fade? Can you live, and perhaps just as importantly, die with dignity? The totality of the experience gets the player to directly feel these themes in a way that can't be done in other media. By showing - through the death mechanic, NPC quests that can permanently be failed or missed, unforgiving and vast levels with tons of secrets and shortcuts, obscure item descriptions and the resultant need for exploration and player-driven introspection and experimentation, and not by telling through cutscenes, everything works together to evoke a mood that the player directly feels like they're helping create. The sheer unity - the, ahem, ludonarrative assonance - of the design is beautiful to consider on an intellectual level but also satisfying on an interactive, practical level. You have fun not despite these things, any of which alone may be disheartening, but because together they're so thematically consistent. Taken by itself the corpse run mechanic might be considered unnecessary or anti-fun, but when placed among the larger picture it not only makes sense but makes the player consider that there might be something they're missing, that there may be more to explore elsewhere or some item that will help, because the game is so mysterious and rewards exploration and experimentation so much. This is in addition to how much it reinforces the themes of the game! I could expand on about how such well-executed unity of purpose and audience-medium interplay makes it high art, like, true fucking Michaelangelo's David type shit, but I don't want to get swept up in the hype, so I'll leave you with a classic Dark Souls quote: "therefore try tongue but hole"

[essenceoffilm]

Foreigner Himself

Nicholas Ray is a filmmaker who is celebrated as the poet of lonely souls. His films portray people who feel displaced and estranged even on fairly familiar ground. “I’m a stranger here myself,” says a character from what must be the most unique western ever made. All of Ray’s characters are kindred spirits to that one in Johnny Guitar (1954). They are homeless -- in the less urgent meaning of the word. These existentialist themes of solitude and alienation were not uncommon for Ray’s generation of American directors, who had their breakthroughs right before the invasion of television during the late 1940′s and the early 1950′s, but no one tackled them with the cinematically energetic sense of existential malaise as Ray did. To the new generation of young French film critics, primarily in the 1951 founded film magazine Cahiers du cinéma, these fresh American directors with their quickly produced B films exemplified novel individuality, stylistic personality, and poignant critiques of the American society. All the young American directors were rising poets to them. But Ray was their darling. Above all, it was Ray who represented the individual who could find a place for his own original expression in the Hollywood studio system. His films of the 50′s, such as In a Lonely Place (1950), On Dangerous Ground (1951), and Rebel without a Cause (1955), were fierce, distinctive, poetic, and full of cinematic energy. Classical virtues of coherence were secondary to the young Turks of Cahiers; to them, a film with even a few shots of personality could win over a classically good film of quality that had no personality to it -- that lacked what some of them called poetic intuition. Ray was the embodiment of such cinematic poetry. To Jean-Luc Godard, as he famously wrote in a review of Ray’s Bitter Victory (1957), Ray’s name was simply synonymous with the seventh art. 

Like his peers -- as well as other Hollywood directors -- Ray eventually succumbed to the big studio system, as that seemingly eternal giant was taking its last breaths, by making big-budget spectacles at the end of his career. After his fairly successful Biblical epic King of Kings (1961), Ray made another historical spectacle for producer Samuel Bronston. Unlike its predecessor, however, 55 Days at Peking (1963) bombed at the box office and had a negative critical reception. While many of the generic films of this transitional era -- such as Ben Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960), and Cleopatra (1963) -- were not very good in any artistic sense, they usually made a lot of money. The financial and artistic disappointment of 55 Days at Peking must thus have been even more tragic for Ray as the film that practically ended his career [1]. In a strange way, nevertheless, it feels like a very appropriate end for Ray’s time in Hollywood’s limelight of outsiders. 

A Ray Story

55 Days at Peking takes its title from Noel Gerson’s novel of the same name which concerns the actual 55-day-long Siege of the International Legations, a climactic event during the Boxer Rebellion in China, which The Sun called “the most exciting episode ever known to civilization” [2]. The Boxers were Chinese nationalists who opposed foreign forces in China. Christianity represented such foreign presence at its most salient. The Boxers performed martial arts in the streets and started to gain big support after famine and anti-imperialist sentiments had begun to spread in the country in the late 19th century, partly due to a humiliating loss in a war to Japan in 1895. The Boxers’ violent attacks on foreigners and Chinese Christians reached a peak in the summer of 1900 when they forced some of them into a siege for 55 days. On August 14th, the siege ended in the foreign victory of the Eight-Nation Alliance (consisting of countries that were to tear each other apart in the following two world wars!). A year or so later, the Boxer Rebellion came to an end. It was the loss of the Boxers in the Siege of the International Legations, however, that had sown the seeds for the downfall of the Qing Dynasty, which fatally took the side of the Boxers in the conflict and was finished itself a decade later as China became a republic in 1912. 

The fact that the historic event has been pompously called “the most exciting episode ever known to civilization” should have already sparked the interest of more than a couple Hollywood producers (there’s a tagline ready to be printed), but it has surprisingly been filmed very rarely on screen. And for some reason this catchphrase did not catch the attention of the film’s advertisers -- which strikes me as odd for the simple reason that back then they used anything as a selling tagline. Reasons are probably plentiful, but what is more interesting in this context is that the story of the Boxer Rebellion from an Anglo-American perspective sounds perfect for a director like Ray. Although 55 Days at Peking represents Ray’s artistic downfall, which was less than just metaphoric as he collapsed during production due to his declining health, it does exemplify the main themes of Ray’s cinema -- or Ray as cinema -- and Ray finding his own place somewhere else. Rather than picking up the many problems in the film, which I will bring up later, I would like to linger on appreciating this suitability of the story for Ray that is not all unambiguous and, as far as I know, has rarely been recognized by people writing on the film. What I wish to point out is that even though the genre (historical spectacle) and the subject matter (the Boxer Rebellion or, more generally, Chinese history) are foreign to Ray’s cinema, the core of the story (an American individual feeling not-at-home) and some of the film’s stylistic aspects ring true to what we could call, in the spirit of the young French critics, Ray’s poetic intuition. 

55 Days at Peking centers around an American major, Matt Lewis (played by the biggest star of the Hollywood historical spectacle, Charlton Heston), who knows the local ways of Beijing. He is introduced to us as the leader of the US military garrison filled with young blood to whom he tells that they should not think any less of the Chinese just because the Chinese do not speak English -- and proceeds to arrogantly teach them the only Chinese words they’ll need, “yes” and “no,” because everything is for bargain and nothing is free. Arriving at his hotel, Lewis meets what will turn into his love interest, a Russian Baronness Natasha Ivanoff (played by Ava Gardner), who seems like an abandoned character from a Tolstoy novel. She wants to leave China but cannot because her visa has been revoked by the brother of her late husband who, as it is later revealed, committed suicide due to Natasha’s extra-marital affair with a Chinese officer. The dire situation in Beijing turns worse when the Chinese Empress of the Qinq dynasty decides to take the side of the Boxers in the heated political climate. As the siege begins, Natasha and Lewis find themselves trapped in a foreign country. Lewis gets help from a British officer, Sir Arthur Robinson (played by David Niven) with whom he blows up a Chinese ammunition warehouse. In the final act of the film, Lewis needs to leave Beijing to deliver a message to nearby Allied forces in order to put an end to the siege. While he is gone, Natasha sells a valuable necklace of hers, which would provide an ace against her brother-in-law, to acquire food and medical supplies for the wounded westerners and Chinese Christians. Her material sacrifice is elevated by a spiritual one since she dies in the process of providing help to those who need it. Lewis’ message reaches the Allied troops, but he will not be reunited with his love. Shortly after his return, the Allied troops arrive and put an end to the siege. 

Cut Loose

Despite the many shortcomings of the film, which I will dissect in a moment, the heart of this story is Lewis’ experience -- which also ties it to Ray’s cinema. Granted, it is hard to see this if one looks at 55 Days at Peking as an individual film or in the context of other Hollywood spectacles from the late 50′s and the early 60′s. Viewed in the context of Ray’s oeuvre, however, 55 Days at Peking looks less like a failed portrayal of the Boxer Rebellion and more like a big (if not entirely successful) tale of alienation. Thus, from an auteurist perspective, the film opens up as a story about Lewis’ sense of homelessness in a foreign environment that is growing more hostile toward him.

All of Ray’s films depict individuals who are tormented by a sense of homelessness. They of course experience it even in their domestic environments. The famous line cited above from Johnny Guitar is the most well-known example. The title of In a Lonely Place says it all as it is a portrayal of people in Hollywood. The theme is also articulated quite concretely in Ray’s films that involve characters moving to another place, though still within America. In On Dangerous Ground, a tough cop must move elsewhere to find home. In Rebel without a Cause, a teenager’s loss of direction is aggravated by his family moving to a new town. As far as I know, 55 Days at Peking is Ray’s only film in which the central character resides in a country other than the States. Lewis’ sense of homelessness, innate to him as a character in the Ray universe, is only heightened by such displacement. Making matters worse for his implicit malaise, which remains unaddressed at the level of the film’s dialogue, one might say, the social atmosphere starts boiling up. It is during the hottest months of the Boxer Rebellion that the sweats of his homelessness come to the surface. And this is essentially what happens to Ray’s characters in his other films as well, though in a less grandiose scheme. 

55 Days at Peking begins with a sequence in the Forbidden City where an execution of a Chinese general is about to happen because the general, part of the Chinese army, has been shooting the Boxers. One of the leading figures in the army, Jung-Lu arrives to call off the execution. He asks the Empress to take his life instead of the general’s because it was he who gave the command to shoot the Boxers. “They were burning Christian missions, killing foreigners,” Jung-Lu pleads in an effort to justify his command. The Empress declines his offer, listening rather to an ancient prediction in a fatal mistake of taking the side of the Boxers. As a smug smile raises on the Empress’ face, the sequence concludes with a brief and surprising low-angle shot of the executioner swinging his sword from the top frame to the low frame, implying the off-screen cut of the Chinese general’s neck. As the sword falls to the low frame of the shot, however, there is -- in a stroke of visual genius -- a cut to a medium close-up of Heston as Lewis. A clever way to end the first sequence and tie it in with the next, this transition is the best cut in the whole film. More than an energetic beginning for what turns out to be a mediocre story, the cut also has a thematic dimension. 

In order to appreciate all of this, let us take a moment to remind ourselves that Ray is often celebrated as one of the great visionaries of the CinemaScope format. Already his Rebel without a Cause brought new sensitivity and intimacy to the newly invented (in 1953) wide aspect ratio that enhances horizontal compositions in a way that is usually just for “snakes and funerals,” as Fritz Lang cunningly puts it in Godard’s Contempt (1963, Le mépris). The width of ratio tends to encourage directors to cut less and use larger shot scales, but Ray combines the wide aspect ratio with close-ups and a faster editing rhythm in Rebel without a Cause -- which is, in my view, alongside Max Ophüls’ Lola Montès (1955), the best CinemaScope film. The introduction of Heston as Lewis in 55 Days at Peking bears resemblances to this. The shot of the executioner swinging his sword is extremely brief (barely a second), but it lies in between of two shots that are longer in duration: the medium close-up of the Empress indulging in her fatal decision is four seconds, the medium close-up of Lewis is seven seconds. The brief shot in between creates an abrupt, surprising sense of acceleration in the film’s editing rhythm, which is calmer in the rest of the film. It makes the visual transition from the Empress to Lewis feel quick, abrupt, out of the blue. Such editing is not considered the done thing when it comes to the use of the CinemaScope aspect ratio. Nor is the use of close-ups. But Ray creates a language of his own out of all of this. It’s a minor detail, you might say, but it’s really one of those small wonderful things that remind you that you are indeed watching a Hollywood spectacle by a real auteur rather than an anonymous factory. I think the cut is definitely worthy of more attention.

The cut from the Empress to the executioner or the cut from the executioner to Lewis is not a match cut; yet it is a match cut of sorts. A match cut in the traditional sense is a cut between two shots that share a visual correspondence: a similar object lies within the same area in their distinct screen spaces (the most famous example being the match cut from the extinguishing match to a setting sun in Lawrence of Arabia, 1962, another CinemaScope spectacle from the same time). While the shot of the executioner lacks direct visual correspondence with either the shot that precedes it (the medium close-up of the Empress) or the shot that follows it (the medium close-up of Lewis), there is not just a match between the two medium close-ups separated by the shot of the executioner but there is also a less visual and a more mental equivalence between the shots due to the cutting. 

The equivalence comes from the idea of cutting. The executioner is a character who cuts necks and hence his position in the brief shot that mediates two longer shots is a clever idea in itself. The movement of his sword serves as a ticking clock for the shot’s duration. Thus it wires a tension and creates a visual conflict, which will turn into a dramatic one in the film, between the Empress (or the Qing dynasty in general) and Lewis (or the foreigners in general). The cut is also associated with the political act that already happens now in the Empress’ decision to continue with the execution even though she will make this decision more explicitly later in the film: to take the side of the Boxers. It is the act of cutting ties to the foreigners. After all, the execution takes place because Chinese generals have been shooting the Boxers who have been killing foreigners. This is the main thematic function of this cut. When put in words, it might start to sound too much on-the-nose. But when seen in the film, it is implicit and subtle. 

There is yet another function, however, though it is a far subtler one. The shot of Lewis is in the scale of medium close-up (from the clavicle upward), but since Lewis’ head is moving vertically within the confines of the frame (horizontally his head stays put due to the synchronized movement of the tracking camera), the shot also has this strange framing where Lewis’ head lies in the very lowest area of the screen space, the rest of his body cropped off (including his neck and clavicle), with some superfluous empty space above and around his head. The cut to the next shot, a long shot of Lewis with his military garrison, introducing him like a character from a Fordian cavalry western, affirms that this movement is due to horse-riding, but taken in isolation, there is this strange visual movement of the head in space. Granted, the spectator does not experience the movement of the dislocated head as strange because they are used to associate such movement as well as the character’s attire with riding a horse (a call-back to cavalry westerns). However, since the brief shot in between has created this sense of not only acceleration but also haste, the shot of a head in space does catch one a bit off guard. It is the first shot of one of the film’s main characters after the 14-minute opening sequence. It is crucial that this shot in particular introduces the protagonist of the film. It’s a very Ray-esque shot: a lone man being nowhere. The sense of visual strangeness, visual unheimlich, if you will, in the shot is later heightened by the fact that the spectator learns that Lewis is indeed a resident in a foreign country where he does not belong. This obviously plays a part already in creating this initial visual strangeness because we are transformed, via the cut, from the Forbidden City of Beijing to a lone man straight from a cavalry western in anonymous space. There are Chinese buildings in the background, but their cultural architecture is hardly recognizable. They are just buildings that are in contrast to Lewis’ clothing and being, his whole habitus. He is homeless, cut away, floating in air. He is, to paraphrase Johnny Guitar, a stranger here himself -- even though he teaches crude lessons to his soldiers about China. 

The theme of home is thus articulated visually before it grows out from the narrative. On the narrative level, the theme is treated by Lewis’ relationships to the other characters, primarily to two female characters. 

One of the chief dramatic motifs for the theme of Lewis’ alienation (or his sense of unheimlich, not-being-at-home) is a young Chinese-American girl. She is the daughter of one of Lewis’ soldiers who has had a love affair with a Chinese woman, but the woman has been killed. In the beginning, the soldier asks Lewis for advice with regard to the girl: should he take her back home to the United States or leave her in China as an orphan? Lewis replies cynically that the girl should definitely be left in China because back home she would be “treated like a freak,” while here “she’ll be among her own kind.” Putting aside the character’s racism for a moment (after all, the girl is also half-American), Lewis’ cynicism, I believe, exemplifies his attitude toward himself more than toward anyone else. He himself feels like a freak, a creature hanging in mid-air, cut loose from the homestead. When the girl’s father dies in action during the siege, Lewis must confront his cynicism or self-loathe as he has to inform the girl of her father’s passing. After a series of attempted evasions of duty, Lewis goes to the Christian mission to talk with the girl. He manages to imply the truth, but is unable to say it up front. He asks help from the Christian minister there who tells him that all men are fathers to all children, but one can believe this only if one feels that way about the world. On a wider scale, the minister is speaking for a non-cynical attitude toward the world. After the siege has ended, Arthur (the Niven character) tells Lewis that now he will leave China and go live “every Englishman’s dream” with a family, a few books, and a dog in the countryside. Nothing less cynical than that. He then inquires about Lewis’ future plans.

Arthur: “What about you? What’s home to you?”

Lewis (laughing): “I don’t know... I have to make one yet.”

In the final scene, as he is once again riding on a horse, going away from his non-home, he picks up the young Chinese-American girl from the crowd. Although his change of heart is motivated by the character’s arc throughout the narrative, there is a similar feeling of haste to this decision as there is to the abrupt cut in the beginning. There is optimism in the end, but also, within the context of Ray’s whole oeuvre, the film’s ending seems too good to be true.

Another important element for Lewis’ character development and the theme of home is his relationship with Baronness Natasha Ivanoff (the Gardner character). It is quite appropriate that Lewis lays eyes on Natasha for the first time while his soldier is telling him about the young Chinese-American girl. He meets her at the hotel where they play a game of sexual innuendo. Soon, a more emotional connection starts to build between them. In the scene where Natasha reveals her past to Lewis (that her husband committed suicide because she was unfaithful to him with a Chinese general), she asks him, connecting their relationship to the young Chinese-American girl, whether the same could not have happened to him: “Couldn’t you have fallen in love with a Chinese girl?” Lewis has no answer, but he kisses Natasha fiercely. It’s an affirmative answer that is obstructed by his cynicism or self-loathe. Although the fact that nobody in this film speaks anything but English might be disorienting, it is true that Natasha is a foreigner not just in China but to Lewis (the American-as-can-be Heston) as well. She’s Russian -- which meant two different things in 1900 and 1963 (and yet again in 2020). Natasha has her own character arc of growing away from selfishness to altruistic self-sacrifice. Thus she further motivates Lewis’ development. In her death, Lewis experiences a loss of love and becomes more aware of his tormenting homelessness, which, in the end, makes her pick up the young Chinese-American girl. Whether it is his new-found altruism or his egoistic fear of loneliness that makes him do this is arguable. Similar ambiguity lies in the emerging sense of responsibility at the end of Rebel without a Cause as a fellow young man’s death shakes something up in the torn-apart protagonist. 

A Triumph (of sorts) in Weakness

Unfortunately, it’s precisely these two major sub-plots (Lewis’ relationships to the young Chinese-American girl and the Russian woman, Natasha) that are the biggest weaknesses of the film. This is unfortunate because, when it comes to narration, these are the main aspects in which Ray deals with the leading theme of homelessness in the film. It is true, of course, that the character of Arthur (played by Niven) is also important: he represents the happy home life that Lewis lacks, while Natasha and the young Chinese-American girl represent possibilities of acquiring it. But the slightly better quality of his character does not excuse the lowbrow characterizations of the two female characters. 

First, the young Chinese-American girl is a mere stock character -- less from a Dickensian story and more from mediocre melodrama. Her character is reduced to a sentimental tear-jerker. What makes this worse is not just the film’s duration, which would definitely allow deeper characterization for her, but also its implicit racism that is evident in its reliance on white Hollywood actors playing the Chinese in “yellow face.” While far from the outrageous in-your-face racism of Mickey Rooney’s performance in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), this convention of playing Asian characters in “yellow face” just heightens the superficiality of the Chinese characters. It’s also worth pointing out the confusion that stems from this convention. At times, it takes time to realize that a character is indeed supposed to be a Chinese character. When everybody speaks English and looks like someone from London or Los Angeles, it’s hard to tell. All I know is that Jung-Lu (played by Leo Genn) definitely does not look like a Beijing local. Although the young Chinese-American girl does not generate such immediate difficulties in recognition, this background makes the character’s superficiality feel more poignant. She’s nothing but a visual figure -- with a few terribly written lines. On the other hand, there is an argument to be made that she has no other purpose for the film’s narrative -- which is, of course, precisely the problem for some. In this sense, she’s like Natalie Wood’s character in Ford’s The Searchers (1956) who the film’s protagonist, played by John Wayne, first despises but then suddenly embraces. Wood’s character is certainly not a very complex one, but she never feels like a mere tear-jerker either, whereas the young Chinese-American girl definitely does. And that’s essentially the problem here. Since 55 Days at Peking, seen from an auteurist perspective, should not be received as a story of the Boxer Rebellion but as part of Ray’s cinematic oeuvre of tortured and alienated American men, it is less problematic (at least in my opinion) when characters serve only narrative functions for those lonely souls. What remains problematic, when it comes to the aesthetic quality of the film, however, is the childish sentimentality with which the character is constructed. 

Something similar goes for Natasha. Gardner is a good actor, but here she is at her weakest. It’s almost like Heston brought out the worst in her. For they were destined to fumble around a decade later in the ludicrously bad disaster film Earthquake (1974). While there is sexual tension between the two from the first scene that introduces them, as Natasha first makes fun of Lewis’ attempts of picking her up but then agrees to share the room with him, it’s a little difficult to buy the love that grows between them quite rapidly. There is a dance sequence -- that must forever exist in the shadows of Visconti’s The Leopard (1963, Il gattopardo) from the same year -- but the love still feels unearned, nevertheless. The scene where the two finally kiss, after Natasha has shared her history of infidelity with Lewis, comes particularly out of nowhere. Making matters worse, the scene ends really abruptly. The kiss has this long set-up with Natasha’s brother-in-law and the lingering disclosure of truth, but then the scene suddenly ends with a quick kiss that transports us to a completely different scene. There is no mediator, just a straight cut. It feels like someone just had to shorten the film and took out the remaining 10-20 seconds of the scene in the last minutes before the film’s release. “Okay, they kissed, let’s move on!” Strangely enough, Natasha is involved in the film’s other terrible cut: a quick pan that turns into a cut when the camera shifts from Arthur mourning his son’s serious injury to Natasha taking care of a wounded man. Let alone the fact that quick pans are not considered the done thing with CinemaScope (and for good reason), it’s quite astonishing how badly this stylistic device fits with the rest of the film with regard to camera movement and rhythm in general. There is no other shot like it in the film. And its distinctive singularity is not of the good kind. There is no raison d’être for it.

Despite these awkward characterizations and stylistic details, there is a sense of Ray’s artistic presence in this film. Ray is known as a director who sometimes did not oversee his projects to the finish line, and, given the fact that he had to stop working due to a collapse on set during production, it is hard to tell which aspects of 55 Days at Peking really come from him. At the very least, however, one can say that the theme of homelessness that is first articulated by cinematic means in the form of a match cut of sorts and then by narrative techniques (albeit poorly executed ones) fits with the rest of Ray’s oeuvre. Even if the narrative techniques with the young Chinese-American girl and Natasha lacked quality, there is something earnest in the portrayal of Lewis’ relationships to them. After all, the point of the film is not to tell this great love story between an American and a Russian nor a story where a lone man grows into a father figure for an orphan. The Russian woman and the Chinese-American girl are there just to bring about something in the protagonist who is the film’s focus. Through them, the film articulates Lewis’ sense of homelessness. In this sense, the unearned love between Lewis and Natasha feels less like a poor version of a great love story and more like an apt portrayal of feelings that are motivated by the characters’ self-loathe and disappointments. Perhaps it’s the kind of infatuation that one wishes to be love even when it is not. It’s the wish-fulfillment fantasy where reality is romanticized -- ideas of love pasted on sore wounds. This can be seen in the scene where Lewis and Natasha meet for the last time. Natasha must cut their meeting short because the doctor needs her medical assistance. Lewis waits in the corner as she does her duty. She comes back and they share this brief impassioned moment. In this scene, Ray’s sense of mise-en-scène is as good as it gets in this film. The quicker cutting separates the two, and the strong contrasts of shadows in the space exhale a sense of death above them. We know that this will not last -- and we seem to share the characters’ implicit epiphany that maybe it even should not. When Arthur expresses his condolences to Lewis’ loss, Lewis’ indifferent shrug is simultaneously repressive and honest. 

It’s this aspect of idealized love in a reality that lacks it and alienation in a hostile environment that make 55 Days at Peking an interesting film. At its heart, it is a story about abandoned alienated people trying in vain to find each other, which casts a shadow of doubt above the happy ending. These aspects also make it a Ray film. Its cinematic energy, evident in the match cut of sorts, comes from the poetic place of Hollywood that made the young French critics of the 50′s fall in love with the dream factory. While one senses the presence of such fire, one also senses powers constantly putting it down. There’s this strange co-existence of different ideas and forces pulling to the opposite directions in the film. Although 55 Days at Peking is, I believe, best appreciated from an auteurist perspective as a tale of alienation (as a story about Lewis’ experience of homelessness in a foreign environment) and not as a historical story about the Boxer Rebellion, it has two scenes, one in the beginning and one in the end, which try to make it precisely into something like that. During the opening sequence, before the one in the Forbidden City, the camera on a crane descends before two elderly Chinese men. One complains about the noise surrounding them: “What is this terrible noise?” The other responds: “Different nations saying the same thing at the same time, ‘We want China!’” The scene is cheesy, but, more importantly, unnecessary and unfitting for the whole of the film. In the final sequence, there is a similarly awkward brief scene of the Empress repeating the words “the dynasty is finished” in the Forbidden City. The Boxer Rebellion provides a great historical background for Ray’s story about alienation, but the film has really nothing to say about that historical event -- nor should it. In these two scenes, however, the film seems to think not only that it should have something to say about it but also, and more embarrassingly, that it actually does have something to say about it. These two scenes perfectly exemplify the film’s confusion over its own identity which might, in fact, be the most appropriate (albeit tragic) way to end Ray’s career in Hollywood where he was constantly trying to find his own voice, his own sense of home, surrounded by forces that felt foreign to him. 

Notes:

[1] Although Ray still made two films afterwards, We Can’t Go Home Again (1973) and Lightning Over Water (1980), his poor health did not allow him to be responsible for them as the primary director. He made We Can’t Go Home Again with his students and Lightning Over Water is more a film by Wim Wenders than it is by Ray. At the very least, 55 Days at Peking is Ray’s last film made in Hollywood -- in the world that made him who he is as an artist. 

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_the_International_Legations