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fmpseenandnotheard · 4 years ago

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Artist Research...

(1) Boogie-Street & Documentary Photography...

Boogie will blow your mind.

The native of Belgrade, Serbia got his start began documenting rebellion and unrest during the civil war that ravaged his country in the 1990s, and the experience seemed to have a profound effect not only on him, but on his work as well. Though Boogie now resides in New York – he arrived in 1998 – all of his work still carries the urgency and thought-provoking depth of a war-torn country.

Perhaps it’s because Boogie’s latest photographs focus on lives torn apart – from the runaway smoking crack in a drug den that used to be a hospital to the gang member caught in a moment of tenderness while cuddling his newborn child. Boogie appears to have shot everything, everywhere. Beggars on the streets of Caracas, Skinheads in Serbia, birds caged by power lines in Tokyo – the world looks more moody, evocative and meaningful through Boogie’s lens. Every detail takes on a life of its own.

Unsurprisingly, the photography world has taken notice – Boogie has published five monographs and exhibited around the world. He shoots for high end clients, renowned publications and countless awe-struck eyes worldwide.

Daniel: Tell us about yourself, where did the name Boogie get picked up and what’s the story behind it?

Boogie: I’m 40 years old, born and raised in Belgrade, Serbia, moved to NYC in 1998 after winning a green card lottery; I’ve shot a lot, published 5 monographs so far, had some interesting solo exhibitions. My nickname was given to me by my friends some 20 or so years ago after a character from some scary movie.

Daniel: You do a lot of “candid” or better yet documentary photography. Are you always geared with a camera where ever you go?

Boogie: Of course, I’m a photographer, that’s what I do

Daniel: Lots of Gangs, Drugs, Skinhead photography. That screams trouble, are you not afraid meeting with these people, taking their photographs? Have you ever encountered trouble? – How do you approach these people at first?

Boogie: While I was photographing gangsters, skinheads, junkies, it never crossed my mind to be afraid. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to get those photos. People can sense fear easily – plus, I don’t think any photo is worth risking your life for. I encountered some minor problems, but nothing serious, after all I’m still here. I always listened to my instincts, they kept me safe.

There is no recipe for approaching people. You either have it in you or you don’t. Usually if you treat people with respect they’ll be OK with you.

Daniel: You’ve recently signed a deal with HBO’s new show “How To Make It In America” what were your feelings when you first heard HBO was interested in featuring your photography, and what do you think about the show?

Boogie: It was a great gig, I met some very interesting people and got to know how the movie industry works. I haven’t seen the show, just the pilot, which I liked.

Daniel: Here’s a funny question wrapped around the HBO show – so When did you know you finally made it, as a photographer in America

Boogie: ‘Making it’ is very relative. I made it as a human being cause I have a great family and get to do what I love.

Daniel: Have you ever thought of shooting film?

Boogie: You mean moving picture? If so, while working on this HBO show, I realized that being a director of photography is an amazing job. Maybe the only job in the world I would trade for mine.

Daniel: What is your connection with photography, your personal life, and your photographs of poverty?

Boogie: Maybe the way I grew up led me to see things the way I do? I guess so, everything you go through in life has a purpose and influences what you become in the end.

Daniel: Tell us about the shoot in Brazil Sao Paolo, how was it?

Boogie: It wasn’t ‘a shoot’, I just packed my bags and went there for a week. very intense, I shot in some scary neighborhoods, I published a book after, all good.

Daniel: What was Mexico like, where did you visit?

Boogie: I was in Mexico City with a friend of mine Adrian Wilson … it’s an amazing city, great energy, great people. Al these horror stories they tell you before you go there are bullshit. Although I’ve been in some neighborhoods where I was afraid to shoot even from the car. But you have areas like that wherever you go.

Daniel: I know you’ve visited Cuba, Istanbul, Tokyo in addition, what is it that you learn from these trips?

Boogie: Travels are always great experiences, seeing how other people, other cultures live is priceless. It humbles you in a way, makes you appreciate what you have more.

Daniel: Lots of black and white, lots of flying birds. What is it that you like the most about Black & White?

Boogie: No idea, lately I also shoot a lot of color.

Daniel: Which gallery is your personal favorite?

Boogie: You mean on my website? everything there needs an update …

Ref: bloginity.com

Robert Frank

Influential photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank has died at the age of 94. He died of natural causes on Monday night in Nova Scotia, Canada. His death was confirmed by his longtime friend and gallerist Peter MacGill.

He was best known for his 1959 book The Americans, a collection of black-and-white photographs he took while road-tripping across the country starting in 1955. Frank's images were dark, grainy and free from nostalgia; they showed a country at odds with the optimistic views of prosperity that characterized so much American photography at the time.

His Leica camera captured gay men in New York, factory workers in Detroit and a segregated trolley in New Orleans — sour and defiant white faces in front and the anguished face of a black man in back.

Photographer Robert Frank holds a camera in 1954. His photo book, The Americans, changed the way people saw photography and the way they saw the U.S. Frank died on Monday at the age of 94.

Fred Stein Archive/Getty Images

Trolley – New Orleans, 1955.

Robert Frank/National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Maria and Lee Friedlander

The book was savaged — mainstream critics called Frank sloppy and joyless. And Frank remembered the slights.

"The Museum of Modern Art wouldn't even sell the book," he told NPR for a story in 1994. "I mean, certain things, one doesn't forget so easy. But the younger people caught on."

Eventually, the photographs in The Americans became canon, inspiring legions. Photographer Joel Meyerowitz remembered watching Frank at work early on.

"And it was such an unbelievable and powerful experience watching him twisting, turning, bobbing, weaving," Meyerowitz said in 1994. "And every time I heard his Leica go 'click,' I would see the moment freeze in front of Robert."

Restaurant – U.S. 1 leaving Columbia, South Carolina, 1955.

Robert Frank/National Gallery of Art, Washington, Robert Frank Collection, The Robert and Anne Bass Fund

Ginsburg was a friend and photography student of Frank. He also starred in Frank's first film, 1959's Pull My Daisy. It was based on part of an unproduced play by Jack Kerouac and featured the author as narrator.

Pull My Daisy, and the other experimental, autobiographical films Robert Frank made, were his reaction to a restlessness he felt around still photography.

"In still photography, you have to come up with one good picture, maybe two or three," he told NPR in 1988. "But that's only three frames. There's no rhythm. Still photography isn't music. Film is really, in a way, based on a rhythm, like music."

Yet Frank's films shared a lot with his photographs. They were personal; they evoked emotions as much as they told stories. They're like home movies, and he made more than 20 of them before returning to photography. By then, he was a legend, acknowledged as an inspiration by such noted artists as Ed Ruscha, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand.

What comes through in all of Frank's work is his ability to catch a moment. And that came from truly looking.

"Like a boxer trains for a fight, a photographer, by walking the streets, and watching, and taking pictures, and coming home, and going out the next day — same thing again, taking pictures," Frank said in 2009. "It doesn't matter how many he takes, or if he takes any at all. It gets you prepared to know what you should take pictures of.

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(2) Weegee (1899 - 1968)

Biography

Weegee, born Usher Fellig on June 12, 1899 in the town of Lemburg (now in Ukraine), first worked as a photographer at age fourteen, three years after his family immigrated to the United States, where his first name was changed to the more American-sounding Arthur. Self-taught, he held many other photography-related jobs before gaining regular employment at a photography studio in lower Manhattan in 1918. This job led him to others at a variety of newspapers until, in 1935, he became a freelance news photographer. He centered his practice around police headquarters and in 1938 obtained permission to install a police radio in his car. This allowed him to take the first and most sensational photographs of news events and offer them for sale to publications such as the Herald-Tribune, Daily News, Post, the Sun, and PM Weekly, among others. During the 1940s, Weegee's photographs appeared outside the mainstream press and met success there as well. New York's Photo League held an exhibition of his work in 1941, and the Museum of Modern Art began collecting his work and exhibited it in 1943. Weegee published his photographs in several books, including Naked City (1945), Weegee's People (1946), and Naked Hollywood (1953). After moving to Hollywood in 1947, he devoted most of his energy to making 16-millimeter films and photographs for his "Distortions" series, a project that resulted in experimental portraits of celebrities and political figures. He returned to New York in 1952 and lectured and wrote about photography until his death on December 26, 1968.

Weegee's photographic oeuvre is unusual in that it was successful in the popular media and respected by the fine-art community during his lifetime. His photographs' ability to navigate between these two realms comes from the strong emotional connection forged between the viewer and the characters in his photographs, as well as from Weegee's skill at choosing the most telling and significant moments of the events he photographed. ICP's retrospective exhibition of his work in 1998 attested to Weegee's continued popularity; his work is frequently recollected or represented in contemporary television, film, and other forms of popular entertainment

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trinuviel · 7 years ago

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The Ice and the Fire of the Song (part 3)

What does the Ice and the Fire refer to in GRRM’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire? That is the subject of this series of posts. (Part 1, Part 2). In this series, Ice and Fire refer to many different things. That doesn’t mean that one meaning excludes the others but rather that the two concepts have multiple meanings and that these depend on context. In my previous post, I examined Ice and Fire in relation to the cult of R’hllor and its rigid theology of an eternal binary opposition between forces that are ascribed meanings as either Good or Evil.

In this post I’ll use Robert Frost’s poem Fire and Ice as the basis for an exploration of the elements of Ice and Fire in relation human emotions as well as to the history of the world in which the story takes place. Finally, I’ll ponder whether the text offers a possibility to escape the trap that dogmatic binary thinking constitutes. Things aren’t black and white, and sometimes opposing elements can meld together.

DESIRE AND HATE

There are many sources of inspiration for GRRM’s A Song of Ice and Fire but one of them is Robert Frost’s poem Fire and Ice from 1920.

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if I had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

This an apocalyptic poem where the elemental forces of Ice and Fire are interpreted through the lens of human emotions. Ice is hate and Fire is desire.

“People say that I was influenced by Robert Frost’s poem, and of course I was, I mean… Fire is love, fire is passion, fire is sexual ardor and all these things. Ice is betrayal, ice is revenge, ice is… you know, that cold inhumanity and all that stuff is being played out in the books.” (GRRM)

Here Ice and Fire come to symbolize common human feelings – things that unite and divide us: love and hate, etc. In this context, the Ice and the Fire can be applied to any number of the characters since these feelings are universally human. In order to decipher which feelings GRRM assigns to Ice and Fire, it is important to play close attention to the language of the text.

Cold inhumanity

When it comes to cold inhumanity, the Others immediately spring to mind. They are quite literally cold and inhuman. It is, however, more chilling when men and women act with a cold inhumanity. Tywin Lannister is perhaps the prime example of this. He coldly arranges for horrible events to happen without a twinge of remorse or regret. Tywin Lannister shows no empathy towards the people whose lives he ruins. He coldly weds Sansa Stark to his son Tyrion whilst he plots the murder of her family – and he does not display an ounce of empathy with the poor girl that has already been horribly abused by his grandson. In Tywin’s eyes, Sansa is not a person but a means to an end: She’s the Key to the North.

Tyrion rubbed at the raw stub of his nose. The scar tissue itched abominably sometimes. "His Grace the royal pustule has made Sansa's life a misery since the day her father died, and now that she is finally rid of Joffrey you propose to marry her to me. That seems singularly cruel. Even for you, Father." "Why, do you plan to mistreat her?" His father sounded more curious than concerned. "The girl's happiness is not my purpose, nor should it be yours. Our alliances in the south may be as solid as Casterly Rock, but there remains the north to win, and the key to the north is Sansa Stark."

"She is no more than a child." (ASoS, Tyrion III)

He doesn’t care about her feelings or her well-being. Tywin doesn’t care that a pregnancy could be very dangerous for a 12 year-old girl, he just cares that the Lannisters secure a claim to Winterfell and the North. He treats everyone as tools for his ambitions, even his own children. He doesn’t see them as persons in their own right but simple as vehicles for the legacy he wishes to build for House Lannister.

Hate

When it comes to hate, I find it interesting that the inhuman Others are describes as driven by hate towards humankind.

Old Nan nodded. "In that darkness, the Others came for the first time," she said as her needles went click click click. "They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins…” (AGoT, Bran IV)

In the prologue of the very first book, the author drops a very significant detail: the Others have a language! One of them speaks when the ranging party from the Night’s Watch encounters them, and the Other says something mocking.

The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking. (AGoT, Prologue)

Thus, the text hints that they despise humans. We have yet to find out why but it is a delicious mystery.

Distance/rejection

GRRM also uses imagery of ice with scenes of distancing and rejection. Those can be negative things but it depends on the context and the POV of the scene.

He had always had a yen to see the Titan of Braavos. Perhaps that would please Sansa. Gently, he spoke of Braavos, and met a wall of sullen courtesy as icy and unyielding as the Wall he had walked once in the north. It made him weary. Then and now. They passed the rest of the journey in silence. After a while, Tyrion found himself hoping that Sansa would say something, anything, the merest word, but she never spoke. (ASoS, Tyrion VIII)

Notice how the distant courtesy that Sansa hides behind is described as sullen and icy by Tyrion. He is frustrated by Sansa’s refusal to open up to him. He wants her love and she doesn’t want to givet it to him – with good reason. In Sansa’s chapters her courtesy is described as an armour. For Sansa, it is a defense mechanism – she uses it as a means to avoid angering people and to hide her true thoughts and feelings. For Sansa, her courtesy armour is a positive thing whereas it is a negative thing for Tyrion. Some things are all about perspective.

Love

Whilst GRRM relates fire to love in the interview quoted above, there’s a surprising dearth of direct linkage between fire and love in the text (I am excluding passion here because GRRM generally uses passion specifically in relation to lust and hate). Instead, he uses “warmth” in relation to love in its positive aspects.

He was not a man you'd expect to speak of maids and wedding nights. So far as Jon knew, Qhorin had spent his whole life in the Watch. Did he ever love a maid or have a wedding? He could not ask. Instead he fanned the fire. When the blaze was all acrackle, he peeled off his stiff gloves to warm his hands, and sighed, wondering if ever a kiss had felt as good. The warmth spread through his fingers like melting butter. (ACoK, Jon VIII)

The love that is healthy and positive, is the warmth of the bonfire or of the warmth of the body and soul of the beloved. It is a fire that shelters and gently warms.

Bones, Catelyn thought. This is not Ned, this is not the man I loved, the father of my children. His hands were clasped together over his chest, skeletal fingers curled about the hilt of some longsword, but they were not Ned's hands, so strong and full of life. They had dressed the bones in Ned's surcoat, the fine white velvet with the direwolf badge over the heart, but nothing remained of the warm flesh that had pillowed her head so many nights, the arms that had held her. (ACoK, Catelyn V)

Desire/Passion/Lust

When it comes to desire, passion and lust, the imagery of fire runs rampant in the text. One of the ways in which the text associates desire/passion/lust with fire is through the imagery of “kissing”:

She bit his neck and he nuzzled hers, burying his nose in her thick red hair. Lucky, he thought, she is lucky, fire-kissed. "Isn't that good?" she whispered as she guided him inside her. (ASoS, Jon III)

The wildlings seemed to think Ygritte a great beauty because of her hair; red hair was rare among the free folk, and those who had it were said to be kissed by fire, which was supposed to be lucky. […]Sometimes she sang in a low husky voice that stirred him. And sometimes by the cookfire when she sat hugging her knees with the flames waking echoes in her red hair, and looked at him, just smiling . . . well, that stirred some things as well. (ASoS, Jon II)

She would sooner sit bathed in the ruddy glow of her red lord's blessed flames, her cheeks flushed by the wash of heat as if by a lover's kisses. (ADwD, Melisandre I)

Fire is a perfect metaphor for strong emotions, yet the fires of passion are often framed negatively by the text:

Prince Quentyn was listening intently, at least. That one is his father's son. Short and stocky, plain-faced, he seemed a decent lad, sober, sensible, dutiful … but not the sort to make a young girl's heart beat faster. And Daenerys Targaryen, whatever else she might be, was still a young girl, as she herself would claim when it pleased her to play the innocent. Like all good queens she put her people first—else she would never have wed Hizdahr zo Loraq—but the girl in her still yearned for poetry, passion, and laughter. She wants fire, and Dorne sent her mud. You could make a poultice out of mud to cool a fever. You could plant seeds in mud and grow a crop to feed your children. Mud would nourish you, where fire would only consume you, but fools and children and young girls would choose fire every time. (ADwD, The Discarded Knight)

GRRM assigns hatred to ice but hatred can be passionate, it can burn red-hot - like fire:

He did not love, nor was he loved himself. It was hate that drove him. […] this man Sandor Clegane dreamed of slaying his own brother, a sin so terrible it makes me shudder just to speak of it. Yet that was the bread that nourished him, the fuel that kept his fires burning.” – The Elder Brother to Brienne of Tarth, (AFfC, Brienne VI)

Sex

When it comes to the Targaryens, the connection between sex and fire becomes quite literal. I can’t remember who first pointed it out, but when Daenerys rides Drogon for the first time, the language turns almost orgasmic:

The lash was still in her hand. She flicked it against Drogon's neck and cried, "Higher!" Her other hand clutched at his scales, her fingers scrabbling for purchase. Drogon's wide black wings beat the air. Dany could feel the heat of him between her thighs. Her heart felt as if it were about to burst. Yes, she thought, yes, now, now, do it, do it, take me, take me, FLY! (ADwD, Daenerys IX)

There’s a sexual subtext to the language. Dany mounts her dragon and feel his heat between her thighs – an expression that is often used as a description of sexual desire and Dany herself used the expression of taking someone as an euphemism for sex. She mounts her dragons, feels his heat, asks him to take her (“take me, fly”) and her heart feels as if it is about to burst. This is very much the kind of language used to evoke an orgasm.

When it comes to Dany’s father, the connection between fire and sex is direct and so twisted that I lack the words to properly describe it:

The sight had filled him with disquiet, reminding him of Aerys Targaryen and the way a burning would arouse him. A king has no secrets from his Kingsguard. Relations between Aerys and his queen had been strained during the last years of his reign. They slept apart and did their best to avoid each other during the waking hours. But whenever Aerys gave a man to the flames, Queen Rhaella would have a visitor in the night. (AFfC, Jaime II)

The fact that Aerys II became sexually aroused by burning people alive connects fire to madness in the text.

Madness

The Targaryen dynasty is often described as tainted by madness, which is related to the systematic incest they practiced over many generations. However, their madness is particularly tied to fire:

"Did you know that my brother set the Blackwater Rush afire? Wildfire will burn on water. Aerys would have bathed in it if he'd dared. The Targaryens were all mad for fire." – Jaime Lannister to Brienne of Tarth, (ASoS, Jaime V)

The traitors want my city, I heard him tell Rossart, but I'll give them naught but ashes. Let Robert be king over charred bones and cooked meat. The Targaryens never bury their dead, they burn them. Aerys meant to have the greatest funeral pyre of them all. Though if truth be told, I do not believe he truly expected to die. Like Aerion Brightfire before him, Aerys thought the fire would transform him . . . that he would rise again, reborn as a dragon, and turn all his enemies to ash. – Jaime Lannister to Brienne of Tarth, (ASoS, Jaime V)

Passion, desire and lust aren’t negative things in and of themselves, it is interesting that the text more often than not describes these feelings in a negative manner. An excess of passion is just as dangerous as an excess of fire.

“SOME SAY THE WORLD WILL END IN FIRE, SOME SAY IN ICE”

Revisting Robert Frost’s poem, you can’t help but notice that it is a poem about the end of the world. It is apocalyptic. As the story stands, Westeros faces an icy apocalypse brought along by beings that hails from the far North:

Yet there are other tales—harder to credit and yet more central to the old histories—about creatures known as the Others. According to these tales, they came from the frozen Land of Always Winter, bringing the cold and darkness with them as they sought to extinguish all light and warmth. (tWoIaF)

(The Land of Always Winter. Art by Rene Aigner)

Frost’s poem speaks of an apocalypse of either Ice or Fire, where fire is put before ice. This made me think about whether there has been an apocalypse of fire in the history of Westeros. It just happens that there has: the Doom of Valyria (link), where a catastrophic eruption of a ring of volcanoes, the 14 Flames, brought down an entire civilization in a fiery inferno so hot that even dragons caught fire in the sky.

An apocalypse is a world-ending event but it doesn’t necessarily have to destroy the entire world. The Doom did, however, destroy both the Valyrian peninsula and the Freehold as both a political entity and a sophisticated civilization.

Valyria. It was written that on the day of Doom every hill for five hundred miles had split asunder to fill the air with ash and smoke and fire, blazes so hot and hungry that even the dragons in the sky were engulfed and consumed. Great rents had opened in the earth, swallowing palaces, temples, entire towns. Lakes boiled or turned to acid, mountains burst, fiery fountains spewed molten rock a thousand feet into the air, red clouds rained down dragonglass and the black blood of demons, and to the north the ground splintered and collapsed and fell in on itself and an angry sea came rushing in. The proudest city in all the world was gone in an instant, its fabled empire vanished in a day, the Lands of the Long Summer scorched and drowned and blighted. An empire built on blood and fire. The Valyrians reaped the seed they had sown. (ADwD, Tyrion VIII)

That does sound like a world-ending event but there’s also an element of hubris associated with the Doom of Valyria. It was an empire built on fire and blood and it ended in a cataclysmic fire with a magical fallout that still poisons the Lands of of the Long Summer and the Smoking Sea that was created when the peninsula shattered.

Every man there knew that the Doom still ruled Valyria. The very sea there boiled and smoked, and the land was overrun with demons. (ADwD, The Reaver)

The Doom of Valrya spelled the end of the Dragonlords who subjugated the continent of Essos. The only Dragonlords who survived were House Targaryen and they did so die to the prophetic dreams of Daenys “the Dreamer” Targaryen. It was because of her warning that House Targaryen removed to Dragonstone with all their dragons, servants and slaves. A century later, Aegon Targaryen and his sister-wives Rhaenys and Visenya set out to make a new homeland through the Conquest of Westeros.

As a descendant of the only Dragonlords to survive the fiery apocalypse of Valyria, it seems fitting that the Last Targaryen appears destined to become embroiled in the icy apocalypse of Westeros. Daenerys Targaryen has yet to travel to Westeros in the books but she has a prophetic dream that could foreshadow her fighting the Others with her dragons:

That night she dreamt that she was Rhaegar, riding to the Trident. But she was mounted on a dragon, not a horse. When she saw the Usurper's rebel host across the river they were armored all in ice, but she bathed them in dragonfire and they melted away like dew and turned the Trident into a torrent. Some small part of her knew that she was dreaming, but another part exulted. This is how it was meant to be. (ASoS, Daenerys III)

BURNING ICE AND FROZEN FIRE

My previous posts in this series explored what the Ice and the Fire could refer to in GRRM’s epic fantasy series. They also examined the title of the series, A Song of Ice and Fire - a title that encourages the reader to think in absolute opposing forces, which is the most common way that epic fantasies are structured. However, within the narrative, the cult of R’hllor could very well function as a metatextual discourse on this kind of binary thinking and how it is a trap for the mind.

In this context, it is worth noting that Martin combines the opposites of Ice and Fire several times in the text:

Nothing burns like the cold. (AGoT, Prologue)

The Other halted. Will saw its eyes; blue, deep and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like ice. (AGoT, Prologue)

Ice can be so cold that it feels as though it burns, yet there is no equivalent when it comes to fire. There’s no fire burning cold within the text. Then there’s obsidian, also called dragonglass. The material that can kill the Others is called “frozen fire” in Valyrian and when Sam Tarly kills a White Walker with an obsidian dagger, the language evokes an image of the weapon being simultaneously hot and cold:

Finally only the dragonglass dagger remained, wreathed in steam as if it were alive and sweating. Grenn bent to scoop it up and flung it down again at once. "Mother, that's cold." (ASoS - Samwell I)

What are we to make of this? What does this melding of opposites signify? Jojen Reed knows the answer:

“Why can’t it be both?” Meera reached up to pinch his nose. “Because they are different,” he [Bran] insisted. “Like night and day, or ice and fire.” “If ice can burn”, said Jojen in his solemn voice, “then love and hate can mate. Mountain or marsh, it makes no matter. The land is one.” (ASoS, Bran II)

The land is one!!!

In my previous post, I agreed with @thewesterwoman that purity is dangerous in GRRM’s world. As pure ice and pure fire, the Others and the dragons are equally dangerous. Purity represents an imbalance in the natural state of things. Perhaps this means that it is “impure” things that will play a pivotal part in the endgame. The obsidian is interesting in this context because it can be seen as a product of the marriage between fire and stone, the crystallized product of molten stone (lava).

So the weapon that is extremely effective when it comes to killing White Walkers (they die instantaneously) is made from a melding of different elements into something new. Obsidian is neither pure stone, nor pure fire.

(The Wall. Art by Feliche)

It is also worth remembering that the Wall that keeps out the Others and the undead wights is made of ice. However, the Wall is not made from ice that is “pure”. It is infused with the magic of the Children of the Forest – and their magic was of the living land, and the Land is One!

#asoaif #a song of ice and fire #meta #game of thrones #ice #fire

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varun-krishnan · 7 years ago

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High School: Good Luck Keeping Your Cool

Are you reading this because you have to or because you want to? Do you have the self-control to finish reading this paper if you wished? Or do you have the ability to rebel against reading this paper if you’re only looking at this sentence through obligation? These questions about control, rebellion, and independence are what thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche to W.E.B Du Bois implore us to answer. I don’t claim to have answered those questions; instead, I have explored them through the context of my life and the paradigm of cool. After all, in our society, the word cool is like a cellphone, people use it every day but have no idea of its inner workings. But by reflecting on the thoughts of those who have studied the word, and relating it to my own life, I can hope to unscrew the casing and at least glimpse what lies underneath.

I grew up in a high school that viewed class participation as a God, and everyone from the teachers to the students worshipped it as such. Your grade hinged on how you acted in class, and if you couldn’t speak up, you were going to be lacking a certain vowel on your transcript. Most of my peers and I were happily oblivious to our grades throughout middle school, and so class involvement was just an abstract idea floating beyond the horizon of reality. But as we walked into the jaws of high school, the pervasive stench of college applications began to affect everyone. Soon, I noticed that the classroom was a jungle of outstretched hands swaying back and forth for the teacher’s attention. People were making noise just for the sake of making noise so that subconsciously the instructor would think they were participating more. And don’t even get me started on how much “funnier” the teacher’s jokes suddenly got. I felt like I wasn’t surrounded by my friends anymore, but these alien life forms whose mission was to capture as much of the teacher’s attention as possible. The worst part is...I started turning into those unrecognizable creatures as well. I begin to tune out the material taught and instead, solely focused on what I was going to say next. I stopped refining and re-refining my thoughts in my head and instead, blurted half-baked thoughts as they spawned into my consciousness. I used to prize ideas that I contributed, but now I simply jumped from concept to concept without being committed to any of them. Perhaps worst of all, I hated all of it. I was despised and ashamed of how shallow and artificial I was, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to jump off the train because I had no idea where I’d land. Now I know, however, that I would have landed in the cool.

The rejecting of my individuality and acceptance of superficiality is profoundly uncool. Just look at Oscar Wilde who said “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation(De Profundis).” And he’s right. My classmates and I didn't love trigonometry or enjoy discussing some long-forgotten battle, but we sure acted like we did. Our thoughts sought to mirror that of our teachers and hence, we were no longer ourselves. And this hollow imitation we lived, through the lens of Oscar Wilde, was uncool. Oscar Wilde was far from the only person who recognized the importance of one’s identity. W.E.B Du Bois wrote about how his racially discriminated peers “shrunk into tasteless sycophancy(The Souls of Black Folk)” and how they failed to realize that for one “to attain his place in the world, he must be himself, and not another(The Souls of Black Folk).” Were my friends and I too not tasteless sycophants seeking to flatter our way to a better grade? I, like many of Du Bois’ audience, thought I had to slip into the skin of someone else if I was to fit into the world. But Du Bois, just like Oscar Wilde, drew from the wells of cool to preach the importance of remaining true to yourself.

I gave up another aspect of myself during my high school experience: self-control. And in the bible of cool, there’s no greater sin than relinquishing control. For example, Robert Farris Thompson in his studying of the aesthetic of the cool argues “Control, stability, and composure...seem to constitute elements of an all-embracing aesthetic attitude(An Aesthetic of the Cool).” You would see none of those traits if you walked into my high school classrooms. I learned that being composed meant being unable to contribute your thoughts amid my unconstrained peers continually trying to make sound. Our class discussions were as shifting as the tides, and new waves steadily erupted as people tried to change the topic to what fell into their minds. And hence, I lost all self-control. I could no longer prevent myself from foregoing my tendency for careful thought and instead, succumbing to the mindless chatter around me. As Thompson would say, I no longer exhibited “the intelligent withholding of speech for the purposes of higher deliberation(An Aesthetic of the Cool),” and hence, I no longer fit into the definition of cool. Nietzsche too held the same notions about control when he said: “Virtues are as dangerous as vices in so far as one lets them rule over one as authorities and laws(The Will to Power).” Nietzsche argues that, just like how authorities and laws can control you, so do virtues. Being able to involve myself in school was always taught to me by my friends, my parents, my teachers, almost everyone really, as a beneficial value I must adopt. But as the German philosopher acutely points out, virtues can exert great control over you, and if you’re not careful, it can leave you like a marionette with loose strings for anyone to seize.

I’ve spent most of my life never rebelling, and I can never hope to find even signs pointing to the highway of cool if I haven’t shown defiance. I grew up in a household that revolved around risk, specifically how best to eradicate it. My father taught us that predictability would lead to success, which, in his eyes, meant doing well in school, becoming a doctor, and safely investing your money till retirement. He wanted to ensure our financial stability as we grew older and beseeched us to follow the well-beaten route to the top without getting distracted by the side trails continuously dotting the path. And hence, when faced with the choice to either jump in the boat with my classmates to float safely to an A, or to bid farewell and strike out on my own to explore the turbid tributaries, I, of course, chose the former. But that is wholly uncool.

The authors of Cool Rules put it succinctly when they wrote “Cool is an oppositional attitude adopted by individuals or small groups to express defiance state to authority(Cool Rules).” My injected sense of caution couldn’t have led me farther from the attitude Pountain and Robins are describing. The problem with defying authority is that it is inherently risky, and you never know the consequences of such an action. The thought of disobeying my teachers scared, and still does scare, me because you’re no longer on the surest path to success. But being in a “private rebellion(Cool Rules)” is critical to the art of cool, and without it you are, as Nietzsche would say, “a herd animal, something eager to please, sickly, and mediocre(Beyond Good and Evil).” And that’s a pretty accurate way to describe my classmates and me. Herd animals that are corralled by the teacher and graze on her approval. This sentiment is furthered by Oscar Wilde’s assertion that “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made(The Soul of Man Under Socialism).” For Wilde, disobedience is an integral part of humanity that has helped us continuously propel the wheel of progress forward. In his eyes, there was no progress in our classroom, no one was pushing the teacher to be her best self by questioning her, and in turn, no one was pushing us to become better by questioning us. Everyone simply said what everyone else wanted to hear, and as Wilde predicted, neither the teacher nor the student grew as a result. And if you can’t even find a way to grow in life, how do you expect to be cool?

Too many people say that they were the coolest when they were in high school. And yet, from studying the true meaning behind the word cool, I would say they couldn’t be farther from the truth. My high school ran off with my individuality and left me with only a threadbare blanket of superficiality with which to shamefully wrap myself. And, as both W.E.B Du Bois and Oscar Wilde described, individuality is central to a person's being. Furthermore, I lost my ability to control myself and was instead forced to sing a song I despised. This loss of self-control, in the eyes of Nietzsche, bound me down just like any law or authority figure would. Thompson too valued self-control, stating that if you can’t even teach yourself how to stay quiet, you can never hope to become cool. Finally, my dad’s instruction to always color in between the lines left me passive and obedient, adjectives that, in the eyes of Cool Rule’s authors, would be noticeably absent in any cool man’s dictionary. Hence, no matter how cool I, or any of my classmates, thought we were in high school the thinkers who actually analyzed the essence of the word would only smile(well maybe not Nietzsche) and shake their heads in dissent.

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newyorktheater · 5 years ago

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The Fre at The Flea, by Taylor Mac

Two Broadway veterans — Taylor Mac, Tony-nominated playwright of “Gary” and Greg Kotis, the Tony-winning co-author of “Urinetown” – are back Off-Off Broadway this season, and why would that surprise anybody? That’s where they began, it’s where they honed their craft, and it continues to reflect their sensibility,

Theirs are among the 11 shows I highlight in my first-ever Off-Off Broadway season preview guide.

Now, I’ve been doing separate semi-annual preview guides for Broadway and Off-Broadway for a decade – and I also put together a monthly calendar of openings that includes Off-Off Broadway.

But Off-Off Broadway always struck me as too vast*, too ill-defined* and too complicated** to fit neatly into a preview guide. Typically Off-Off Broadway theaters give little advance notice of what’s coming up, the runs are very short and the official descriptions are often too vague, coy or hallucinogenic to be of much help . Yet an Off-Off Broadway show can be groundbreaking, and sublime. This is relatively rare, yes, but the surprise of seeing something sublime Off-Off Broadway – and for as little as $10 – is so much more satisfying than paying through the nose for the pre-certified sublimity of a Broadway hit. Also it’s year-round, not limited to the similar fare in the theater festivals that get so much concentrated attention in January and during the summer. So in the spirit of experimenting that characterizes Off-Off Broadway itself, below are 11 shows that I’m looking forward to checking out this season, organized by the theaters in which they are appearing, many of which are my favorites. And below that, a list of other Off-Off Broadway venues of repute, linked to their websites. See for yourself what else is playing this season.

La MaMa ETC

La MaMa Experimental Theater Club is one of the quartet of theaters that gave birth to the Off-Off Broadway movement in the 1960s, and the only one that still survives. Since Ellen Stewart launched the theater in an East Village basement in 1961, it has presented more than 150,000 artists from over 70 nations. It launched the careers of an astonishing array of notable American performers and playwrights. It found a worthy successor in Mia Yoo, and won the 2018 Regional Tony Award. It is, in other words, the place to start. There are 20 shows at LaMaMa from now until the end of April. I could make LaMaMa my entire preview guide, but I’ve selected three.

The Transfiguration Of Benjamin Banneker January 23 – February 2 This show by Theodora Skipitares, renowned puppet artist, celebrates the life of Benjamin Banneker, a free black man living in Maryland from 1731 to 1806, who taught himself mathematics and astronomy, and made groundbreaking scientific discoveries. It features dance, live music, the Soul Tigers Marching Band, and a multi-generational cast of Brooklynites, including students from Benjamin Banneker High School , a pioneering puppet artist whose Radiant City ,about Robert Moses using giant puppets of his head, was eye-opening and memorable.

One Green Bottle February 29 – March 8 Bo, Boo and Pickle all have plans, but someone must stay home to care for their pregnant dog, Princess. Trivial disputes and slapstick mischief quickly morph into family feuds and also, possibly, to the end of the world. Playwright Hideki Noda is one of the most celebrated theater artists of japan.

The Beautiful Lady April 30 – May 17 With music by the late Elizabeth Swados, and direction by Anne Bogart,

The Flea

Begun in 1996 by a group including down avant-garde legend Mac Wellman, Jim Simpson and Sigourney Weaver, this theater won me over way back after 9/11, with Ann Nelson’s “The Guys,” and I’ve written about its ambitious plans , its new building and new artistic director,, Niegel Smith who took over in 2015.

Leaving the Blues January 16 – February 8

African-American blues and jazz singer and songwriter Alberta Hunter follows her long-dead friend, black comedian Bert Williams. Written by Jewelle Gomez and produced by TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence), which bills itself as New York City’s oldest professional LGBTQ+ theater I had the pleasure of interviewing Hunter when, after working as a nurse for twenty years, she resumed her singing career at the age of 82.

.The Fre February 28 – April 12 The Fre is written by Taylor Mac, and directed by The Flea’s artistic director Niegel Smith, his collaborator on “Hir” and “24 Decade History of Popular Music” and that makes this show a must-see no matter how weird or uncomfortable it winds up being. “In this queer love story, audiences will literally and figuratively jump into the mud with the Fre to hash out the current cultural divide.”

HERE Arts

Doctors Jane and Alexander January 24 – February 15 A new play by Edward Einhorn about his grandfather, Alexander S. Wiener, who discovered the Rh Factor in Blood. Told through the lens of interviews with his mother, Jane Einhorn, a PhD psychologist and visual artist who had recently experienced a stroke at the time of the interviews Nearly everything I’ve seen by Einhorn and his Untitled Theater Company #61 – from Money Lab to The Iron Heel to The Neurology of the Soul has been, as promised, “a theater of ideas” — inventive and intelligent

The Tank

I Am Nobody March 5 – 29 An unhinged computer chip engineer threatens to destroy the world. What’s most noteworthy about this production is that it’s written by Greg Kotis, the author of arguably the most successful Off-Off Broadway show ever, “Urinetown.”

Dixon Place

One of the venues that simply doesn’t offer much advance notice of its shows, almost all of which have short runs. But I’ve lucked out often enough here to feel it more than a coincidence, and I share their interest in puppetry.

Packrat

January 31 – February 14 nspired by the adventure novel “Watership Down,” this multimedia puppet play follows one peculiar rodent on his journey to discover the interconnectedness of life

NYTW Next Door

New York Theater Workshop offers support and the use of the 60-seat Fourth Street Theatre to a wide range of companies.

La Paloma Prisoner

Based on the true story of a group of incarcerated women selected as beauty queen contestants at the Buen Pastor prison in Bogotá, Colombia, the play centers on a woman who avenged the raped women of Bogotá.

The Bushwick Starr

Bushwick has become something of its own cultural center now, but those not in the know should at least know that it’s just a block and a half from the subway.

The Conversationalists January 8 – 25

I was impressed enough with a previous show by James & Jerome to be drawn to theirnew one despite the confusion engendered by its description: “James & Jerome create an original movie that plays only inside the audience’s minds. This live “movie” is an international melodrama about the triangular friendship (and sometimes enemyship) between a Colombian-born Mexican-raised pop-ranchera star, her teenage son, and a Palestinian-born Jordanian-raised owner of a chess shop in Greenwich Village. The Conversationalists is experienced at once as a theater piece, a concert, a radio play, a night of storytelling, and a movie dreamed together.”

Jack

Best Life In Melissa Tien’s play, a woman of color can rewind time, but only within the last five minutes. The result: her exchange with a white woman in a cafe becomes increasingly alarming

Among the other Off-Off Broadway theaters worth exploring:

Ars Nova Although still offering programs at its Off-Off Broadway building in midtown, it has has taken over Greenwich House Theater, which with 199 seats is an Off-Broadway house.

The Brick has a new artistic director with a stated aim of “multi-week theatrical runs and a dynamic line-up of singular one-off events”

The Clemente , a former school building on the Lower East Side that includes three Off-Off Broadway theaters.

The Invisible Dog

Labyrinth Theater

New Ohio Check out their Producers Club series “we invite familiar and new-to-our-orbit companies into the New Ohio for a couple of days to…test their next great idea.” And DirectorFest

New York Live Arts

Target Margin Theater

Triskelion Arts

Theater for the New City

*Technically, Off-Off Broadway simply means theaters with fewer than 100 seats, but it’s used as a description of companies as well, not just physical buildings. Many of these companies have no permanent home. A recent report issued by the Mayor’s Office Of Media and Entertainment found “748 small venue theater organizations” spread out across the city. **Few Off-Off Broadway companies give much advance notice: For example, one of my favorite Off-Off Broadway theaters, Labyrinth, lists “World Premiere Play TBA Spring/Summer 2020” on its website. In addition, some venues offer a mix of Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway-sized theaters. Most of the venues aren’t producing their own shows, but presenting the work of other companies. So does it even make sense to organize a look at Off-Off Broadway via venues?

Off-Off Broadway Season Preview Guide Two Broadway veterans -- Taylor Mac, Tony-nominated playwright of "Gary" and Greg Kotis, the Tony-winning co-author of "Urinetown" - are back Off-Off Broadway this season, and why would that surprise anybody?

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dieselpunk-progressive-blog · 7 years ago

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Let’s You and Him Fight

The last week has been a real eye-opener for me, regarding the rift currently splitting the people who consider themselves the legitimate opposition to the reactionary government currently running the United States at almost every level, in almost every local. Although the best known, most publicized conflict is between those people generally labeled as being the “Bernie wing” and the “Clinton wing” of the current Democratic Party, there are fractures along lines of race, sex and class which seem to run very, very deep. In an age of ever more selectively available media, it’s easy (perhaps even unavoidable, now) for these various camps to see their differences and quarrels through a lens which distorts them to Wagnerian heights of drama. Meanwhile, the people generally regarded as the ‘bad guys’ (the Steve Bannons and Robert Spencers of the nationalist Right) continue to advance their agenda and gain a stronger grip over the institutions of the United States, through the actions of men like Steve Mnuchin, Jeff Sessions and Scott Pruitt, courtesy of Donald J. Trump.

So why is it so hard for people, who all see themselves as the champions of the opposition, to unify and present an effective, organized front? Largely, it is because they can’t agree on what, exactly, they are actually fighting for. They can’t even agree on what they are fighting against, beyond the most generic platitudes about white nationalist fascism.

My eyes were first opened to the scope of these divisions in the last week. When the Women’s March organization, which is recognized as being largely the product of women of color, announced that they’d secured Bernie Sanders to be one of the key speakers at their coming conference, a great many people, myself among them, were thrilled. Aside from being an indication that Senator Sanders’ agenda of economic justice was continuing to gain further support, it seemed to show that the divisions caused by the 2016 Democratic primary contest were, finally, beginning to heal and fade. Then came the cold water, in the form of a statement from the leadership of the pro-Clinton EMILY’s List. It seemed the group was ‘disappointed’ with the Women’s March for inviting Sanders. They were also ‘reaching out’ to ‘help improve the program’. Across social media a debate broke out, which seemed to split women into two factions: those who wanted Sanders there and those who didn’t.

The camp which wanted Sanders to address the Women’s March felt that the organization was perfectly capable of deciding for itself who to invite. They pointed out that Sanders’ economic agenda includes strong support for issues which women should be universally in favor of: wage reform, expanded child care, universal health care and body autonomy, free of the ‘religious objections’ which are only thinly veiled misogyny. They also argued that an organization primarily oriented around women of color did not need, or want, white women telling them how to go about being feminist. My personal experience in this first twenty-four hours or so, was that the majority of women of color I was exposed to in social media wanted Sanders there. They saw his agenda as reinforcing the agenda of women generally, and found his economic priorities complimentary to their social priorities.

On the other side of this particular skirmish, were those women who said very clearly that no man has a right to address a women’s group. They held that inviting Sanders was either a tragic mistake made by wayward sisters, or outright treachery against the cause of all women. In any event, the message was clear that popular feminism, noticeably lead by pro-Clinton groups, was appalled. They insisted that the Women’s March had failed, by not inviting a prominent woman leader (such as Hillary Clinton!) to speak in the slot occupied by Sanders. It was, they insisted, demeaning to all women to have to sit quietly and be spoken to by a man at their own event. In all, the impression was given that Senator Sanders had somehow manipulated his way into delivering a patronizing lecture about women’s issues to women, as if they needed to be told what their priorities were.

Setting the larger conflict between Sanders people and Clinton people aside, the point here is that these two groups of women are not talking about the same things. Those who supported Sanders speaking were focused on concrete economic policy, and those who opposed it were focused on unity among feminists. Obviously these two strains of thinking do not have any kind of mutual exclusivity, and should be able to coexist. Nonetheless, this became part of the continuing conflict over the soul of the opposition to the current regime.

Now it would be easy to focus on this fight, and no doubt someone should go into the details, but the point here is that this conflict, and a hundred others, aren’t being resolved. Instead they continue to fester and drive wedges, furthering the isolation of people who should be allies against a greater, and very real threat. But instead, people bunker down, raising up walls of selectively chosen media around themselves. And the real problem with echo chambers isn’t that they enable our solipsism, it is that they deny us allies.

By isolating and insulating ourselves from the ideas, convictions and voices of those who do not automatically reinforce our existing opinions, we are cutting ourselves off from even the possibility of collective effort. We like to quote the platitude that there is strength in numbers, and this is a true statement but, in order to access that strength, we must gather the numbers. And that means that a lot of people in this country are going to have to develope something which targeted media and social media have largely robbed us of in the last twenty-some-odd years. The ability to tolerate things that make us uncomfortable.

This doesn’t mean agreeing to support policies that we disagree with; not, in any case, at the street-level of organization, which is where the rifts need to be mended first. No, in this case, tolerance means simply not alienating ourselves from someone who mostly agrees with us. It mean that when someone at the PTA meeting says they’re more concerned about feeding their family than maximizing relative economic advantages, you don’t assume they’re uneducated technophobic Luddites and avoid them. It means that when a woman who’s family is struggling to keep their home says that wages are more important to her than the gender of a candidate, you don’t call her Suzy Homemaker and put her on mute. It means you don’t vilify the person of color who thinks that universal public college is more beneficial than increasing enrollment quotas and making it easier to take on large amounts of debt.

No doubt some people are offended at the phrasing in the last paragraph, and that is the point. Note the phrasing, the deliberate use of the word ‘you’. Some readers, who already agree with these perspectives, are cackling and feeling empowered and mentally wagging their fingers at the caricature of those who found it accusatory, presumptuous or just insulting.

Now let me put the shoe on the other foot.

Unifying in opposition is going to demand a certain amount of tolerance for people and ideas that are less-than-perfect. It means that you don’t walk away because a candidate has to work with business leaders. It means that when a woman tells you she feels ignored when discussion of the minimum wage doesn’t explicitly mention the pay gap, you don’t call her an economically privileged sell-out. It means that when a woman of color says she doesn’t feel represented by a white male, you don’t lecture her about prioritizing identity over policy.

The point here isn’t that ‘everyone is guilty’, but rather that ‘everyone is needed’. These days, we cannot afford to alienate or ignore potential allies. And that means that everyone, absolutely everyone is going to have deciding whether or not they can work with people aren’t going to either reinforce or leave unchallenged their biases, privileges, or assumptions. The fascists have the advantage here, because they pre-selected for uniformity. Despite the atrocious methods and goals, we can’t deny the fact that they do organization and solidarity very well. Those of us who value personal liberty and expression, by necessity, have to work a lot harder at getting along with one another.

That raises another point. What exactly is it that the opposition is actually opposing? There seems to be more than a little confusion about this. Some people are pushing back against the oligarchy run from Wall Street. Others are focused on fighting for reproductive freedom. Most seem more-or-less on board with supporting transgender Americans, but TERFs nonetheless demonize us and many women are afraid to criticize other women for these hateful behaviors. We have the Black Lives Matter people, but a lot of them don’t see a connection between economic empowerment and the ability to control and regulate the justice system. The list goes on.

It has often been said that nothing unifies people like a common enemy, but how do we identify the common enemy when there is so much factionalism, reinforced by so much selective media consumption? Is it possible to identify a common enemy when we no longer share a common language, a common discourse. Probably not.

On the other hand, perhaps defining ourselves negatively isn’t a very good strategy after all. After all, that’s what American politics has been doing for the last seventy years (at least) and where has it gotten us? Right where are. Still, an opposition has to be against something, but that doesn’t mean it should be defined by that statement in the negative. Instead, let opposition give us a general direction of movement (in this case away from chauvinistic white male nationalist fascism ) and let us be defined by what policy goals we are actually seeking to enact.

What that agenda will look like is going to be determined by speaking with, and listening to, one another. Even and especially people who make us uncomfortable. Nobody can reasonably expect to get everything their own way, and everyone needs to examine themselves to see if they aren’t, at least subconsciously, trying to do exactly that. Everyone needs to listen and observe, and be honest about the unintended consequences of their agenda might be. Globalization, as one example, may have been intended to improve economic conditions for all, but it nonetheless created an entire underclass of alienated, derided and dismissed economic ‘losers’. Each and every individual member of either ‘the revolution’ or ‘the resistance’, needs to start by getting over the idea that they either have all the answers, or that they have a monopoly on all the facts, let alone any universal truth or enlightenment.

The future will be a cooperative endeavor. That is an absolute fact, inasmuch as it will result from the simultaneous interactions of all the operations of all the participants, and all the interactions of second and third order consequences. The only actual question is whether or not we will also be working in opposition to ourselves.

#feminism #politics #bernie sanders #hillary clinton #womens march #emily's list #resistance #Our Revolution #intersectional feminism

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xavieralexander1980 · 7 years ago

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A Guideline to Reading My Work and Generally Blowhard Post About Poets, Activism, and Performance Art

(Written for Facebook were I post usually)

(Warning, I was drinking coffee and just started writing to clarify some things. It has turned out to be an EXTREMELY LONG post. You might want to visit later if you care and have the time):

--I stared into the sun one time for three or four hours. For a long while afterwards there was a floating blue and red dot or floater in my field of vision, but my eyes adjusted. It's kind of a miracle that I can see at all. I completely destroyed my macula. That is why you often see mistakes in punctuation. I think it is a comma when it is a period. I was delusional when I stared at the sun.

--I started writing poetry at 15 in 1995. In 2008, I branched out to poetry films in grad school, which you can see those films on my page, Caruso Films. That is a long time of writing only poetry.

--After reading David Foster Wallace in 2011, I branched out into nonfiction, memoir, and experimental essays. Some of those essays have been published in journals, such as "Sugar Mule" and "And/Or". However, it has only been 5 years of truly writing prose, so if you think my prose is weird or rough or shaky, it is because I am an amateur experimental essayist.

--In poetry and experimental writing, there has to be an entry point into the author's style. Every day if you are following any of this, I am experimenting. One thing I notice is that I try to be as clear as a fucking idiot who is grasping for words in my prose. I don't want you to think I am being condescending at all. Or that everything I write is somehow profound. Because it isn't usually: Being profound or not, after a while, I have learned, in writing is all the same. In learning the craft of writing, writers say that you have to "earn" interesting and profound points and ideas. There is no shortcut in earning something, as you know. It is all doing and work hours.

--Writers usually don't show the world their work hours. What you see is the finished, polished product. In a sense, I don't see my writing as "nonfiction" in any conventional sense. Since this is Facebook, and it is like town hall square in olden days, I have always intended it to be performance art. I am a great admirer of performance art, such as spoken word, magic, jesters, busking, impromptu comedy, jazz, or even ballet. I see poetry as my strength, prose my weakness. At least, that is my opinion. I don't want to impose that, though. I notice people actually prefer my little blogs and essays. I also notice people prefer brevity, but here's the thing about that: this is all published, and can be perused by anyone on earth later. I don't hide my profile or any status updates.

--As an activist, which much of my writing is political, and I would argue Facebook, as a public forum, is all political and social dynamic, I have always enjoyed independent and maverick art and statements, such as Neil Young or Lou Reed or Emerson or Thoreau or just about any poet in World Literature. While poets have come in groups like the Beats or Romantics or Dadaists (the first punk rock artists), within those groups, there have always been individual and political differences between poets, such as Ginsberg and Kerouac, or Byron and Wordsworth, or Marcel DuChamp and Tristan Tzara. I try to allude to poets and literature I admire, btw. Here is a compendium: (I sort of went hogwild. Skip for time sake.) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Welsh maverick and alcoholic prodigy, Dylan Thomas, my first love. To know more about his style and who he is, see Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Donne, both Protestant ministers.

2. I prefer World Literature. a. Russian poets: Brodsky, Mayakovsky, Mendlestam, Voznesensky, and Pushkin (Shakespeare of Russia). b. Germanic, Polish, Eastern European and Jewish: Goethe (Shakespeare of Germanic Literature), Paul Celan, Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska, Edmond Jabes are good starting points. c. Western European poets come in schools: French Symbolists (who invented free verse and influenced TS Eliot), Surrealists, Dadaists and Futurists (who opened poetry to all the arts), and British poets you know. d. Although not technically World Lit, American Southern Poets are not discussed near enough: John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren are like the Willie Nelsons and Johnny Cashes of the South.

3. American Schools and Poets I would recommend: John Cage (John Lennon and Yoko Ono), David Antin (who didn't write but spoke all of his poetry and recorded it), Language School, and Black Mountain School.

4. For Queer poets: Allen Ginsberg, Walt Whitman, Jack Spicer, are the big guys. Lesbian poets: you should know are Sappho and Adrienne Rich. Just talk to your gay and lesbian friends about poets they like.

5. For Black and African lit, "Negritude" school, see amiri baraka and Aime Cesaire, who are, to me, very important for their poetic styles. Check out your local Spoken Word show. There are a million things going on.

6. I don't even know where to begin with Asian Literature. Haiku poet Basho and Korean poet Yi Sang are two big poets. In China, poetry was the literature of the scholar class. Prose wasn't invented until 1900 and it was considered pulp. I would refer you to my Professor Walter K. Lew for all Asian and Buddhist Literature. Lao Tzu is phenomenal, in so many ways. From religion to spirituality to poetry, it is all one and the same.

7. Spanish poets I like are Chilean Poet Pablo Neruda (His sonnets are the best love poems), Brazilian Poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and to know these poets, check out Federico Garcia Lorca from Spain. It doesn't hurt to know the first novelist Cervantes, who birthed the modern novel, Don Quixote. I like the 1940s translation by Samuel Putnam. Critic (Big Blowhard of English Lit) Harold Bloom considered Cervantes the only equal to Shakespeare, who both were writing at the same time (and didn't know about each other).

8. Middle Eastern and Persian poets: Rumi, Ghalib (who wrote ghazals, one of my favorite forms). I can't say I am too familiar with Contemporary Middle Eastern poets, but you come across them in literary journals. See the Koran, as well.

9. For Feminist poets, see Anne Sexton, HD, Gertrude Stein, Diane Wakowski, and Adrienne Rich, again, to name a few. Although not a poet, see Renaissance Italian writer, Christine de Pizan, and her fictional story, "The Book of the City of Ladies", which birthed Feminist Literature.

10. The Bible, Torah, Tao Te Ching, Koran, Gnostic Judaic and Christian Books, Bhagavad Gita , Vedas and Upanishads, and Homer, (Most Buddhist Literature was orally passed down but all we have is prose versions. Except certain Chinese Buddhist Schools: See Haiku and Renga forms): all of which is technically poetry. And that is a different entry point or lens into those important works. I think in this day of organized religion it is very important to remember that spiritual texts and myths were written as poetry, and translated into all languages. People have noted some of my religious views, but I do so from poetry.

(I don't know why I just gave you a compendium of poets and authors. I got excited and took a trip down memory lane. I prefer World Literature translations. I just have always gravitated toward them and learning about the world through their poets.)

In case you don't want to go through all of World Literature, here are anthologies I would recommend: 1. Norton Anthologies, of course. 2. Poems For the Millennium by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris (Most of the poets I mentioned can be found in the first two volumes and it is a great starting off point). -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--Personally, I have always enjoyed anthologies and literary journals over individual poets. I enjoy poems over poets, generally speaking. The best guide to literary journals is New Pages.com. Everything from experimental writing to traditional writing can be found there. The big thing now or in the last few years is "hybrid' writing, which is basically not identifying the style of writing and blending all the styles. So just to be obvious, my Facebook page could be quote hybrid. The other big thing is a more "personal style". To paraphrase Frank O Hara, why write a poem when you can just call your friend on the telephone?

--My father has told me a million times that he doesn't get my poetry. And my father is more intelligent than I am. He is a doctor. I really don't have an answer or explanation. I read poetry like I read an article in the Washington Post. I read poetry on the toilet. I try not to "comprehend" it. Sure there are different ways to analyze it, and there are scholars who do that all day long. I have done that and can do that. But the difference is kinda like hearing "Kind of Blue" and studying it. I just appreciate the album, I don't know Jazz Theory. Most of the time, I just feel or listen to poetry. School and scholarship is the time and place to scan, do close readings, and theorize poetry, in my opinion. I am not a scholar. I am not a critic. I am an artist. I create. Most of theory and criticism stifles me. And I would recommend both scholarship and theory for any artist, but I wouldn't bog myself too much, not until you are interested in it. There are people who have been doing that all their life. And so much more power to them.

--Last point: I have Bipolar Disorder. I have coped with this illness all my life. Mental illness is a debilitating illness in the sense of functioning in conventional society. You know someone who has a mental illness, beside me. And not much is truly understood about mental illness. David Foster Wallace hung himself due to chronic depression, and he is arguably the greatest nonfiction writer in the last twenty years. Dostoevsky suffered from fits of seizures in which he had profound revelations. Hemingway shot himself due to alcoholism and some underlying mental illness. Sylvia Plath committed suicide due to a mental illness and I believe it was un-diagnosed bipolar disorder (I could be wrong). Emily Dickinson suffered from agoraphobia and stayed home for most of her life. While I am not saying I am like those geniuses, and it is a misnomer to think that everyone with a mental illness is an artist or genius, I bring it up because artists I admire had mental illnesses. The point is to show that sometimes society is wrong about things, as you know. Blacks, immigrants, queer folk, women, veterans, homeless people, poor people, and virtually every marginalized group I can think of society has been wrong about. And many of these marginalized people are starting to come out of the closets and say, guess what, society doesn't quite get me. And they are doing so in art and argument.

"In conclusion," LOL, these are guidelines and entry points for readers. For the most part, I believe people don't care actually. But neither do I most of the time. I also have been drinking coffee this morning and I get rolling with thoughts, which explains the length of this post. LOL.

#blog #essay #experimental essay #prose #poets #activism #performance art

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readbookywooks · 8 years ago

Text

Bran

The Karstarks came in on a cold windy morning, bringing three hundred horsemen and near two thousand foot from their castle at Karhold. The steel points of their pikes winked in the pale sunlight as the column approached. A man went before them, pounding out a slow, deep-throated marching rhythm on a drum that was bigger than he was, boom, boom, boom. Bran watched them come from a guard turret atop the outer wall, peering through Maester Luwin's bronze far-eye while perched on Hodor's shoulders. Lord Rickard himself led them, his sons Harrion and Eddard and Torrhen riding beside him beneath night-black banners emblazoned with the white sunburst of their House. Old Nan said they had Stark blood in them, going back hundreds of years, but they did not look like Starks to Bran. They were big men, and fierce, faces covered with thick beards, hair worn loose past the shoulders. Their cloaks were made of skins, the pelts of bear and seal and wolf. They were the last, he knew. The other lords were already here, with their hosts. Bran yearned to ride out among them, to see the winter houses full to bursting, the jostling crowds in the market square every morning, the streets rutted and torn by wheel and hoof. But Robb had forbidden him to leave the castle. "We have no men to spare to guard you," his brother had explained. "I'll take Summer," Bran argued. "Don't act the boy with me, Bran," Robb said. "You know better than that. Only two days ago one of Lord Bolton's men knifed one of Lord Cerwyn's at the Smoking Log. Our lady mother would skin me for a pelt if I let you put yourself at risk." He was using the voice of Robb the Lord when he said it; Bran knew that meant there was no appeal. It was because of what had happened in the wolfswood, he knew. The memory still gave him bad dreams. He had been as helpless as a baby, no more able to defend himself than Rickon would have been. Less, even . . . Rickon would have kicked them, at the least. It shamed him. He was only a few years younger than Robb; if his brother was almost a man grown, so was he. He should have been able to protect himself. A year ago, before, he would have visited the town even if it meant climbing over the walls by himself. In those days he could run down stairs, get on and off his pony by himself, and wield a wooden sword good enough to knock Prince Tommen in the dirt. Now he could only watch, peering out through Maester Luwin's lens tube. The maester had taught him all the banners: the mailed fist of the Glovers, silver on scarlet; Lady Mormont's black bear; the hideous flayed man that went before Roose Bolton of the Dreadfort; a bull moose for the Hornwoods; a battle-axe for the Cerwyns; three sentinel trees for the Tallharts; and the fearsome sigil of House Umber, a roaring giant in shattered chains. And soon enough he learned the faces too, when the lords and their sons and knights retainer came to Winterfell to feast. Even the Great Hall was not large enough to seat all of them at once, so Robb hosted each of the principal bannermen in turn. Bran was always given the place of honor at his brother's right hand. Some of the lords bannermen gave him queer hard stares as he sat there, as if they wondered by what right a green boy should be placed above them, and him a cripple too. "How many is it now?" Bran asked Maester Luwin as Lord Karstark and his sons rode through the gates in the outer wall. "Twelve thousand men, or near enough as makes no matter." "How many knights?" "Few enough," the maester said with a touch of impatience. "To be a knight, you must stand your vigil in a sept, and be anointed with the seven oils to consecrate your vows. In the north, only a few of the great houses worship the Seven. The rest honor the old gods, and name no knights . . . but those lords and their sons and sworn swords are no less fierce or loyal or honorable. A man's worth is not marked by a ser before his name. As I have told you a hundred times before." "Still," said Bran, "how many knights?" Maester Luwin sighed. "Three hundred, perhaps four . . . among three thousand armored lances who are not knights." "Lord Karstark is the last," Bran said thoughtfully. "Robb will feast him tonight." "No doubt he will." "How long before . . . before they go?" "He must march soon, or not at all," Maester Luwin said. "The winter town is full to bursting, and this army of his will eat the countryside clean if it camps here much longer. Others are waiting to join him all along the kingsroad, barrow knights and crannogmen and the Lords Manderly and Flint. The fighting has begun in the riverlands, and your brother has many leagues to go." "I know." Bran felt as miserable as he sounded. He handed the bronze tube back to the maester, and noticed how thin Luwin's hair had grown on top. He could see the pink of scalp showing through. It felt queer to look down on him this way, when he'd spent his whole life looking up at him, but when you sat on Hodor's back you looked down on everyone. "I don't want to watch anymore. Hodor, take me back to the keep." "Hodor," said Hodor. Maester Luwin tucked the tube up his sleeve. "Bran, your lord brother will not have time to see you now. He must greet Lord Karstark and his sons and make them welcome." "I won't trouble Robb. I want to visit the godswood." He put his hand on Hodor's shoulder. "Hodor." A series of chisel-cut handholds made a ladder in the granite of the tower's inner wall. Hodor hummed tunelessly as he went down hand under hand, Bran bouncing against his back in the wicker seat that Maester Luwin had fashioned for him. Luwin had gotten the idea from the baskets the women used to carry firewood on their backs; after that it had been a simple matter of cutting legholes and attaching some new straps to spread Bran's weight more evenly. It was not as good as riding Dancer, but there were places Dancer could not go, and this did not shame Bran the way it did when Hodor carried him in his arms like a baby. Hodor seemed to like it too, though with Hodor it was hard to tell. The only tricky part was doors. Sometimes Hodor forgot that he had Bran on his back, and that could be painful when he went through a door. For near a fortnight there had been so many comings and goings that Robb ordered both portcullises kept up and the drawbridge down between them, even in the dead of night. A long column of armored lancers was crossing the moat between the walls when Bran emerged from the tower; Karstark men, following their lords into the castle. They wore black iron halfhelms and black woolen cloaks patterned with the white sunburst. Hodor trotted along beside them, smiling to himself, his boots thudding against the wood of the drawbridge. The riders gave them queer looks as they went by, and once Bran heard someone guffaw. He refused to let it trouble him. "Men will look at you," Maester Luwin had warned him the first time they had strapped the wicker basket around Hodor's chest. "They will look, and they will talk, and some will mock you." Let them mock, Bran thought. No one mocked him in his bedchamber, but he would not live his life in bed. As they passed beneath the gatehouse portcullis, Bran put two fingers into his mouth and whistled. Summer came loping across the yard. Suddenly the Karstark lancers were fighting for control, as their horses rolled their eyes and whickered in dismay. One stallion reared, screaming, his rider cursing and hanging on desperately. The scent of the direwolves sent horses into a frenzy of fear if they were not accustomed to it, but they'd quiet soon enough once Summer was gone. "The godswood," Bran reminded Hodor. Even Winterfell itself was crowded. The yard rang to the sound of sword and axe, the rumble of wagons, and the barking of dogs. The armory doors were open, and Bran glimpsed Mikken at his forge, his hammer ringing as sweat dripped off his bare chest. Bran had never seen as many strangers in all his years, not even when King Robert had come to visit Father. He tried not to flinch as Hodor ducked through a low door. They walked down a long dim hallway, Summer padding easily beside them. The wolf glanced up from time to time, eyes smoldering like liquid gold. Bran would have liked to touch him, but he was riding too high for his hand to reach. The godswood was an island of peace in the sea of chaos that Winterfell had become. Hodor made his way through the dense stands of oak and ironwood and sentinels, to the still pool beside the heart tree. He stopped under the gnarled limbs of the weirwood, humming. Bran reached up over his head and pulled himself out of his seat, drawing the dead weight of his legs up through the holes in the wicker basket. He hung for a moment, dangling, the dark red leaves brushing against his face, until Hodor lifted him and lowered him to the smooth stone beside the water. "I want to be by myself for a while," he said. "You go soak. Go to the pools." "Hodor." Hodor stomped through the trees and vanished. Across the godswood, beneath the windows of the Guest House, an underground hot spring fed three small ponds. Steam rose from the water day and night, and the wall that loomed above was thick with moss. Hodor hated cold water, and would fight like a treed wildcat when threatened with soap, but he would happily immerse himself in the hottest pool and sit for hours, giving a loud burp to echo the spring whenever a bubble rose from the murky green depths to break upon the surface. Summer lapped at the water and settled down at Bran's side. He rubbed the wolf under the jaw, and for a moment boy and beast both felt at peace. Bran had always liked the godswood, even before, but of late he found himself drawn to it more and more. Even the heart tree no longer scared him the way it used to. The deep red eyes carved into the pale trunk still watched him, yet somehow he took comfort from that now. The gods were looking over him, he told himself; the old gods, gods of the Starks and the First Men and the children of the forest, his father's gods. He felt safe in their sight, and the deep silence of the trees helped him think. Bran had been thinking a lot since his fall; thinking, and dreaming, and talking with the gods. "Please make it so Robb won't go away," he prayed softly. He moved his hand through the cold water, sending ripples across the pool. "Please make him stay. Or if he has to go, bring him home safe, with Mother and Father and the girls. And make it . . . make it so Rickon understands." His baby brother had been wild as a winter storm since he learned Robb was riding off to war, weeping and angry by turns. He'd refused to eat, cried and screamed for most of a night, even punched Old Nan when she tried to sing him to sleep, and the next day he'd vanished. Robb had set half the castle searching for him, and when at last they'd found him down in the crypts, Rickon had slashed at them with a rusted iron sword he'd snatched from a dead king's hand, and Shaggydog had come slavering out of the darkness like a green-eyed demon. The wolf was near as wild as Rickon; he'd bitten Gage on the arm and torn a chunk of flesh from Mikken's thigh. It had taken Robb himself and Grey Wind to bring him to bay. Farlen had the black wolf chained up in the kennels now, and Rickon cried all the more for being without him. Maester Luwin counseled Robb to remain at Winterfell, and Bran pleaded with him too, for his own sake as much as Rickon's, but his brother only shook his head stubbornly and said, "I don't want to go. I have to." It was only half a lie. Someone had to go, to hold the Neck and help the Tullys against the Lannisters, Bran could understand that, but it did not have to be Robb. His brother might have given the command to Hal Mollen or Theon Greyjoy, or to one of his lords bannermen. Maester Luwin urged him to do just that, but Robb would not hear of it. "My lord father would never have sent men off to die while he huddled like a craven behind the walls of Winterfell," he said, all Robb the Lord. Robb seemed half a stranger to Bran now, transformed, a lord in truth, though he had not yet seen his sixteenth name day. Even their father's bannermen seemed to sense it. Many tried to test him, each in his own way. Roose Bolton and Robett Glover both demanded the honor of battle command, the first brusquely, the second with a smile and a jest. Stout, grey-haired Maege Mormont, dressed in mail like a man, told Robb bluntly that he was young enough to be her grandson, and had no business giving her commands . . . but as it happened, she had a granddaughter she would be willing to have him marry. Soft-spoken Lord Cerwyn had actually brought his daughter with him, a plump, homely maid of thirty years who sat at her father's left hand and never lifted her eyes from her plate. Jovial Lord Hornwood had no daughters, but he did bring gifts, a horse one day, a haunch of venison the next, a silver-chased hunting horn the day after, and he asked nothing in return . . . nothing but a certain holdfast taken from his grandfather, and hunting rights north of a certain ridge, and leave to dam the White Knife, if it please the lord. Robb answered each of them with cool courtesy, much as Father might have, and somehow he bent them to his will. And when Lord Umber, who was called the Greatjon by his men and stood as tall as Hodor and twice as wide, threatened to take his forces home if he was placed behind the Hornwoods or the Cerwyns in the order of march, Robb told him he was welcome to do so. "And when we are done with the Lannisters," he promised, scratching Grey Wind behind the ear, "we will march back north, root you out of your keep, and hang you for an oathbreaker." Cursing, the Greatjon flung a flagon of ale into the fire and bellowed that Robb was so green he must piss grass. When Hallis Mollen moved to restrain him, he knocked him to the floor, kicked over a table, and unsheathed the biggest, ugliest greatsword that Bran had ever seen. All along the benches, his sons and brothers and sworn swords leapt to their feet, grabbing for their steel. Yet Robb only said a quiet word, and in a snarl and the blink of an eye Lord Umber was on his back, his sword spinning on the floor three feet away and his hand dripping blood where Grey Wind had bitten off two fingers. "My lord father taught me that it was death to bare steel against your liege lord," Robb said, "but doubtless you only meant to cut my meat." Bran's bowels went to water as the Greatjon struggled to rise, sucking at the red stumps of fingers . . . but then, astonishingly, the huge man laughed. "Your meat," he roared, "is bloody tough." And somehow after that the Greatjon became Robb's right hand, his staunchest champion, loudly telling all and sundry that the boy lord was a Stark after all, and they'd damn well better bend their knees if they didn't fancy having them chewed off. Yet that very night, his brother came to Bran's bedchamber pale and shaken, after the fires had burned low in the Great Hall. "I thought he was going to kill me," Robb confessed. "Did you see the way he threw down Hal, like he was no bigger than Rickon? Gods, I was so scared. And the Greatjon's not the worst of them, only the loudest. Lord Roose never says a word, he only looks at me, and all I can think of is that room they have in the Dreadfort, where the Boltons hang the skins of their enemies." "That's just one of Old Nan's stories," Bran said. A note of doubt crept into his voice. "Isn't it?" "I don't know." He gave a weary shake of his head. "Lord Cerwyn means to take his daughter south with us. To cook for him, he says. Theon is certain I'll find the girl in my bedroll one night. I wish . . . I wish Father was here . . . " That was the one thing they could agree on, Bran and Rickon and Robb the Lord; they all wished Father was here. But Lord Eddard was a thousand leagues away, a captive in some dungeon, a hunted fugitive running for his life, or even dead. No one seemed to know for certain; every traveler told a different tale, each more terrifying than the last. The heads of Father's guardsmen were rotting on the walls of the Red Keep, impaled on spikes. King Robert was dead at Father's hands. The Baratheons had laid siege to King's Landing. Lord Eddard had fled south with the king's wicked brother Renly. Arya and Sansa had been murdered by the Hound. Mother had killed Tyrion the Imp and hung his body from the walls of Riverrun. Lord Tywin Lannister was marching on the Eyrie, burning and slaughtering as he went. One wine-sodden taleteller even claimed that Rhaegar Targaryen had returned from the dead and was marshaling a vast host of ancient heroes on Dragonstone to reclaim his father's throne. When the raven came, bearing a letter marked with Father's own seal and written in Sansa's hand, the cruel truth seemed no less incredible. Bran would never forget the look on Robb's face as he stared at their sister's words. "She says Father conspired at treason with the king's brothers," he read. "King Robert is dead, and Mother and I are summoned to the Red Keep to swear fealty to Joffrey. She says we must be loyal, and when she marries Joffrey she will plead with him to spare our lord father's life." His fingers closed into a fist, crushing Sansa's letter between them. "And she says nothing of Arya, nothing, not so much as a word. Damn her! What's wrong with the girl?" Bran felt all cold inside. "She lost her wolf," he said, weakly, remembering the day when four of his father's guardsmen had returned from the south with Lady's bones. Summer and Grey Wind and Shaggydog had begun to howl before they crossed the drawbridge, in voices drawn and desolate. Beneath the shadow of the First Keep was an ancient lichyard, its headstones spotted with pale lichen, where the old Kings of Winter had laid their faithful servants. It was there they buried Lady, while her brothers stalked between the graves like restless shadows. She had gone south, and only her bones had returned. Their grandfather, old Lord Rickard, had gone as well, with his son Brandon who was Father's brother, and two hundred of his best men. None had ever returned. And Father had gone south, with Arya and Sansa, and Jory and Hullen and Fat Tom and the rest, and later Mother and Ser Rodrik had gone, and they hadn't come back either. And now Robb meant to go. Not to King's Landing and not to swear fealty, but to Riverrun, with a sword in his hand. And if their lord father were truly a prisoner, that could mean his death for a certainty. It frightened Bran more than he could say. "If Robb has to go, watch over him," Bran entreated the old gods, as they watched him with the heart tree's red eyes, "and watch over his men, Hal and Quent and the rest, and Lord Umber and Lady Mormont and the other lords. And Theon too, I suppose. Watch them and keep them safe, if it please you, gods. Help them defeat the Lannisters and save Father and bring them home." A faint wind sighed through the godswood and the red leaves stirred and whispered. Summer bared his teeth. "You hear them, boy?" a voice asked. Bran lifted his head. Osha stood across the pool, beneath an ancient oak, her face shadowed by leaves. Even in irons, the wildling moved quiet as a cat. Summer circled the pool, sniffed at her. The tall woman flinched. "Summer, to me," Bran called. The direwolf took one final sniff, spun, and bounded back. Bran wrapped his arms around him. "What are you doing here?" He had not seen Osha since they'd taken her captive in the wolfswood, though he knew she'd been set to working in the kitchens. "They are my gods too," Osha said. "Beyond the Wall, they are the only gods." Her hair was growing out, brown and shaggy. It made her look more womanly, that and the simple dress of brown roughspun they'd given her when they took her mail and leather. "Gage lets me have my prayers from time to time, when I feel the need, and I let him do as he likes under my skirt, when he feels the need. It's nothing to me. I like the smell of flour on his hands, and he's gentler than Stiv." She gave an awkward bow. "I'll leave you. There's pots that want scouring." "No, stay," Bran commanded her. "Tell me what you meant, about hearing the gods." Osha studied him. "You asked them and they're answering. Open your ears, listen, you'll hear." Bran listened. "It's only the wind," he said after a moment, uncertain. "The leaves are rustling." "Who do you think sends the wind, if not the gods?" She seated herself across the pool from him, clinking faintly as she moved. Mikken had fixed iron manacles to her ankles, with a heavy chain between them; she could walk, so long as she kept her strides small, but there was no way for her to run, or climb, or mount a horse. "They see you, boy. They hear you talking. That rustling, that's them talking back." "What are they saying?" "They're sad. Your lord brother will get no help from them, not where he's going. The old gods have no power in the south. The weirwoods there were all cut down, thousands of years ago. How can they watch your brother when they have no eyes?" Bran had not thought of that. It frightened him. If even the gods could not help his brother, what hope was there? Maybe Osha wasn't hearing them right. He cocked his head and tried to listen again. He thought he could hear the sadness now, but nothing more than that. The rustling grew louder. Bran heard muffled footfalls and a low humming, and Hodor came blundering out of the trees, naked and smiling. "Hodor!" "He must have heard our voices," Bran said. "Hodor, you forgot your clothes." "Hodor," Hodor agreed. He was dripping wet from the neck down, steaming in the chill air. His body was covered with brown hair, thick as a pelt. Between his legs, his manhood swung long and heavy. Osha eyed him with a sour smile. "Now there's a big man," she said. "He has giant's blood in him, or I'm the queen." "Maester Luwin says there are no more giants. He says they're all dead, like the children of the forest. All that's left of them are old bones in the earth that men turn up with plows from time to time." "Let Maester Luwin ride beyond the Wall," Osha said. "He'll find giants then, or they'll find him. My brother killed one. Ten foot tall she was, and stunted at that. They've been known to grow big as twelve and thirteen feet. Fierce things they are too, all hair and teeth, and the wives have beards like their husbands, so there's no telling them apart. The women take human men for lovers, and it's from them the half bloods come. It goes harder on the women they catch. The men are so big they'll rip a maid apart before they get her with child." She grinned at him. "But you don't know what I mean, do you, boy?" "Yes I do," Bran insisted. He understood about mating; he had seen dogs in the yard, and watched a stallion mount a mare. But talking about it made him uncomfortable. He looked at Hodor. "Go back and bring your clothes, Hodor," he said. "Go dress." "Hodor." He walked back the way he had come, ducking under a low-hanging tree limb. He was awfully big, Bran thought as he watched him go. "Are there truly giants beyond the Wall?" he asked Osha, uncertainly. "Giants and worse than giants, Lordling. I tried to tell your brother when he asked his questions, him and your maester and that smiley boy Greyjoy. The cold winds are rising, and men go out from their fires and never come back . . . or if they do, they're not men no more, but only wights, with blue eyes and cold black hands. Why do you think I run south with Stiv and Hali and the rest of them fools? Mance thinks he'll fight, the brave sweet stubborn man, like the white walkers were no more than rangers, but what does he know? He can call himself King-beyond-the-Wall all he likes, but he's still just another old black crow who flew down from the Shadow Tower. He's never tasted winter. I was born up there, child, like my mother and her mother before her and her mother before her, born of the Free Folk. We remember." Osha stood, her chains rattling together. "I tried to tell your lordling brother. Only yesterday, when I saw him in the yard. ‘M'lord Stark,' I called to him, respectful as you please, but he looked through me, and that sweaty oaf Greatjon Umber shoves me out of the path. So be it. I'll wear my irons and hold my tongue. A man who won't listen can't hear." "Tell me. Robb will listen to me, I know he will." "Will he now? We'll see. You tell him this, m'lord. You tell him he's bound on marching the wrong way. It's north he should be taking his swords. North, not south. You hear me?" Bran nodded. "I'll tell him." But that night, when they feasted in the Great Hall, Robb was not with them. He took his meal in the solar instead, with Lord Rickard and the Greatjon and the other lords bannermen, to make the final plans for the long march to come. It was left to Bran to fill his place at the head of the table, and act the host to Lord Karstark's sons and honored friends. They were already at their places when Hodor carried Bran into the hall on his back, and knelt beside the high seat. Two of the serving men helped lift him from his basket. Bran could feel the eyes of every stranger in the hall. It had grown quiet. "My lords," Hallis Mollen announced, "Brandon Stark, of Winterfell." "I welcome you to our fires," Bran said stiffly, "and offer you meat and mead in honor of our friendship." Harrion Karstark, the oldest of Lord Rickard's sons, bowed, and his brothers after him, yet as they settled back in their places he heard the younger two talking in low voices, over the clatter of wine cups. " . . . sooner die than live like that," muttered one, his father's namesake Eddard, and his brother Torrhen said likely the boy was broken inside as well as out, too craven to take his own life. Broken, Bran thought bitterly as he clutched his knife. Is that what he was now? Bran the Broken? "I don't want to be broken," he whispered fiercely to Maester Luwin, who'd been seated to his right. "I want to be a knight." "There are some who call my order the knights of the mind," Luwin replied. "You are a surpassing clever boy when you work at it, Bran. Have you ever thought that you might wear a maester's chain? There is no limit to what you might learn." "I want to learn magic," Bran told him. "The crow promised that I would fly." Maester Luwin sighed. "I can teach you history, healing, herblore. I can teach you the speech of ravens, and how to build a castle, and the way a sailor steers his ship by the stars. I can teach you to measure the days and mark the seasons, and at the Citadel in Oldtown they can teach you a thousand things more. But, Bran, no man can teach you magic." "The children could," Bran said. "The children of the forest." That reminded him of the promise he had made to Osha in the godswood, so he told Luwin what she had said. The maester listened politely. "The wildling woman could give Old Nan lessons in telling tales, I think," he said when Bran was done. "I will talk with her again if you like, but it would be best if you did not trouble your brother with this folly. He has more than enough to concern him without fretting over giants and dead men in the woods. It's the Lannisters who hold your lord father, Bran, not the children of the forest." He put a gentle hand on Bran's arm. "Think on what I said, child." And two days later, as a red dawn broke across a windswept sky, Bran found himself in the yard beneath the gatehouse, strapped atop Dancer as he said his farewells to his brother. "You are the lord in Winterfell now," Robb told him. He was mounted on a shaggy grey stallion, his shield hung from the horse's side; wood banded with iron, white and grey, and on it the snarling face of a direwolf. His brother wore grey chainmail over bleached leathers, sword and dagger at his waist, a fur-trimmed cloak across his shoulders. "You must take my place, as I took Father's, until we come home." "I know," Bran replied miserably. He had never felt so little or alone or scared. He did not know how to be a lord. "Listen to Maester Luwin's counsel, and take care of Rickon. Tell him that I'll be back as soon as the fighting is done." Rickon had refused to come down. He was up in his chamber, redeyed and defiant. "No!" he'd screamed when Bran had asked if he didn't want to say farewell to Robb. "NO farewell!" "I told him," Bran said. "He says no one ever comes back." "He can't be a baby forever. He's a Stark, and near four." Robb sighed. "Well, Mother will be home soon. And I'll bring back Father, I promise." He wheeled his courser around and trotted away. Grey Wind followed, loping beside the warhorse, lean and swift. Hallis Mollen went before them through the gate, carrying the rippling white banner of House Stark atop a high standard of grey ash. Theon Greyjoy and the Greatjon fell in on either side of Robb, and their knights formed up in a double column behind them, steel-tipped lances glinting in the sun. Uncomfortably, he remembered Osha's words. He's marching the wrong way, he thought. For an instant he wanted to gallop after him and shout a warning, but when Robb vanished beneath the portcullis, the moment was gone. Beyond the castle walls, a roar of sound went up. The foot soldiers and townsfolk were cheering Robb as he rode past, Bran knew; cheering for Lord Stark, for the Lord of Winterfell on his great stallion, with his cloak streaming and Grey Wind racing beside him. They would never cheer for him that way, he realized with a dull ache. He might be the lord in Winterfell while his brother and father were gone, but he was still Bran the Broken. He could not even get off his own horse, except to fall. When the distant cheers had faded to silence and the yard was empty at last, Winterfell seemed deserted and dead. Bran looked around at the faces of those who remained, women and children and old men . . . and Hodor. The huge stableboy had a lost and frightened look to his face. "Hodor?" he said sadly. "Hodor," Bran agreed, wondering what it meant.

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