#motherfucker wanted to depict working class struggle

[jacquelinemerritt]

Gravity and Eisenstein’s Montage

Originally posted October 6th, 2014

So this week I had to write a paper for my Film Editing class about the film Gravity. That meant that I couldn’t write the collaborative post I promised you, but since I didn’t want to leave you without anything to read this week, I figured I’d post that paper here.

In 2013, Alfonso Cuarón released Gravity to much acclaim. Critics praised it for its use of sound design, special effects, editing, and cinematography. While some critics complained about the story of the film being undeveloped (Dowd), and scientists like Neil DeGrasse Tyson criticized the film for its scientific inaccuracies (Tyson), the response was mostly positive. Yet in all this praise, many critics have neglected to write about the fact that this film ultimately owes all of its success to the theory of montage put forth by Sergei Eisenstein in the early days of film. Gravity, in fact, is as successful a film as it is because of the way it implements Eisenstein’s theory of montage.

Eisenstein’s theory of montage is not in fact related to the film Rocky. Montage instead refers to a theory of film editing that is about “juxtaposing representational shots … that are neutral in terms of their meaning, in meaningful contexts and series” (Braudy 15). Eisenstein also proposed five different forms of montage that editors can use: metric, or cutting based on the number of frames in each shot; rhythmic, or cutting based on visual continuity; tonal, or cutting in order to elicit a response from the audience; overtonal, or using metric, rhythmic, and tonal montage in order to elicit a more complex response from the audience; and intellectual, or cutting in order to add intellectual meaning (Braudy 28). Eisenstein also wrote about the use of sound in film; he argued that adding sound to film would remove the editor’s ability to use montage, and sound must clash with the film in the same way two images clash with each other if sound films are to remain a valuable artistic medium (Eisenstein 8).

Gravity uses metric montage in a very holistic way. The film opens with the first scene being almost entirely unedited; it is all told through the use of a single tracking shot. As the film progresses, however, the editing shifts and becomes faster paced, culminating in the quick cuts present in the crash landing sequence (Gravity). Eisenstein’s use of metric montage was often to achieve a similar effect; in his film October, he used this technique on a single scene of a machine gun being fired on a crowd (Braudy 35). While Eisenstein used this on a smaller scale, Gravity still uses this technique over the course of the whole film in order to increase the intensity from the beginning until the end.

Gravity uses rhythmic, tonal, and intellectual montage in interesting ways as well. Rhythmically, it cuts between Sandra Bullock and George Clooney’s characters’ conversation quite naturally, following a somewhat standard pattern of shot and reverse shot. Tonally, the cuts made during Sandra Bullock’s approach to the International Space Station are timed well to elicit a response from the audience. There is also a good example of intellectual montage in the scene where Sandra Bullock is beginning to fly the Chinese pod down to earth; almost immediately after she begins her descent, the camera pans up to a small Buddha statue sitting on the cockpit, signifying her character having reached enlightenment before returning to earth.

The use of overtonal montage in Gravity is very clearly inspired by Eisenstein. Overtonal montage was the most important form of montage to Eisenstein; he viewed overtonal montage as the culmination of metric, rhythmic, and tonal montage techniques in order to elicit a very specific response from the audience (Eisenstein 11). The opening scene, again, is the perfect example of this. While Eisenstein would see the scene’s lack of cutting as a lack of editing, that is not the case. The scene, while only consisting of a single take, was very meticulously edited. Because it was created primarily through special effects and computer generation, there is never a point where the camera is not focused on the most important event. Because of this, the audience is not given a chance to separate themselves from the events happening on screen, thus eliciting an incredibly powerful response. The timing of the camera movements, the focus on creating a single continuity of events, and the tone of the events happening all come together to form a perfect use of overtonal montage, without ever making a single cut.

Finally, Gravity very clearly relates to Eisenstein’s thoughts on the use of sound in film. Alfonso Cuarón made a very noticeable choice in the sound design of Gravity; the audience is only able to hear the sounds that the characters in the film are able to hear. This works beautifully within the framework Eisenstein believed sound in film should follow; it both clashes with the visual presented by allowing the audience to not hear the sounds they normally would hear in other films in space, while placing simultaneously placing the audience in the situation with the characters, allowing for an incredible level of immersion.

­Bibliography

Braudy, Leo, and Marshall Cohen. Sergei Eisenstein: From Film Form. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. 7th ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. 13-40. Print.

Dowd, A. A. “Gravity.” Review: · Movie Review · The A.V. Club. The A.V. Club, 3 Oct. 2013. Web. 05 Oct. 2014.

Eisenstein, Sergei. Film form: Essays in film theory. Ed. Jay Leyda. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949.

Gravity. Dir. Alfonso Cuarón. Perf. George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. Warner Bros., 2013. Film.

Pechter, William S. “The Closed Mind of Sergei Eisenstein.” JSTOR. Kenyon College, n.d. Web. 05 Oct. 2014.

Tyson, Neil Degrasse (neiltyson). “Mysteries of #Gravity: Satellite communications were disrupted at 230 mi up, but communications satellites orbit 100x higher.”. 06 Oct 2013, 23:30 UTC. Tweet

Next week, I will actually be writing that collaborative article with my fellow film critic. And after that, it’s back to the Disney Renaissance with Mulan.

If you liked this, consider supporting me on Patreon, or donating to my Ko-Fi.

[zapsoda]

Wanna share your 13 reasons why opinions?

YES thank you for asking. i would have done so unprompted but i had a class.

so the controversy was that people were saying its portrayal of suicide "glamorized" the act and would thus make "children" want to kill themselves, and that that meant it shouldnt have aired. i have a lot of thoughts on this so ill go bit by bit.

in response to the criticism, the creators added a little pre-show bit with the actors clarifying that suicide is bad and that 13 reasons why is a fictional show and not like. a how to guide. personally i would have found that irritating and condescending if i was a tweenager tuning into the tv show but whatever. thats whatever in and of itself i dont care.

but specifically theres one part where one of the actors says that if you are struggling with self harm or suicidal thoughts "this show might not be for you." and thats fucking insane right? thats insane? a tv show talking about issues YOU struggle with. YOUR ISSUES. and youre being told not to watch it? that its not actually For You???? thats fucking ridiculous. i understand they intended it as a trigger warning but WOW was that probably the worst possible way to do it. and whats funny is in an interview, executive producer selena gomez says that she Intended the show to help people! who struggle with self harm and suicidal thoughts!!! but dont watch it i guess.

anyways i havent watched the show itself so thats actually the extent of my opinions about it. the rest are about the discussion and controversy.

something i noticed was that. every single motherfucker i saw talking about the show. good or bad. was an adult who made no claims of having experienced mental health issues. and yet they had such strong opinions about the effect the show would have on those groups. as an adult who has tried to kill himself. who was a child pretty recently. i find much of what they are saying to be a load of fucking useless horseshit. i cant speak for every teenager or mentally ill person i can only speak for myself. but i think i have more of an authority than random mother of a teenager #4.

and these people dont even make an ATTEMPT to empathize with the groups they are trying to "protect." every single one of them talks about teenagers as if they are a faceless mass of impressionable statistics rather than people.

and they keep using the word "children" and referring to "children." this show is not for 6 year olds. this show is for teenagers explicitly. it is about teenagers it is making an attempt at representing what teenagers struggle with. and uhhh i think it goes without saying teenagers are a LOT smarter and more developed than people give them credit for. yes they are crazy and stupid and insufferable but they are rapidly becoming adults every day and i think they should be treated with the appropriate amount of respect! what do they think about this, as the target audience? when 13 reasons why first came out, i met a girl who, like me, struggled with depression and self harm. and she watched it and enjoyed it, which surprised me given my familiarity with the drama surrounding it. and i think about that a lot, yknow? what about her?

there is this prevailing idea that, regardless of intent, any depiction of suicide will immediately result in someone killing themselves in imitation. thus, they say, suicide should never be depicted in media and nobody will kill themselves ever again. zero nuance. that doesnt seem right to me. am i crazy? that sounds like bullshit. thats not how anything works.

obviously , i can only speak for myself as a previously suicidal person (albeit thats more than 99% of these bozos can speak for any suicidal person), but in my experience, if i want to kill myself, then i want to kill myself. regardless of whats on tv. regardless of whether its depicted or "glamorized." i didnt want to kill myself because i saw that it was something i could do on tv, something "cool." i wanted to kill myself because i was fucking miserable constantly and i didnt want to be miserable anymore. i find it wring and demeaning to reduce that pain to "oh he watched the wrong tv shows."

there was also the claim that otherwise mentally well people would see it and suddenly become suicidal. i dont even care about getting into this because its basically an unprovable claim. how do you know they were otherwise mentally well, how do you know the show directly caused their suicidality? claims which lack nuance have no place in a discussion like this one and should be Destroyed.

anyways i hate how taboo suicide is. i hate it i hate that you cant say it that you cant talk about it. i find that so fucking unhelpful for destigmatizing and generally improving public mental health .

its even more infuriating seeing mental health professionals PERPETUATING the taboo, saying that suicide should never be portrayed at all. i think thats evil and i hate it. like my personal disdain for censorship notwithstanding i think that is harmful actually. how are you supposed to deal with feeling suicidal if you cant even TALK about it!?

i think the crux of the issue is just that these people are uncomfortable with the topic of suicide and they think that that must mean it is a bad topic which should be sanitized until it is tolerable to them and acknowledged as little as possible. i hate that. sometimes people die. you can talk about that just fine. sometimes people do it to themselves. sometimes they want to. its a fact of life and it would be a fact regardless of whats on tv, regardless of what people think about it, and regardless of what you think about it. people should be able to talk about facts of life. i think its disturbing to cut off bits of reality that you or random mother #4 find uncomfortable and make them off limits or pretend they dont exist.

i dont think the quality of the depiction, or whether or not its "glamorized" matters when determining whether or not a depiction of suicide should be allowed to exist, because that is inherently subjective and every individual will come away with a different interpretation. its not like people are being held at gunpoint forced to watch it!! i think people can generally make an informed personal decision about the media they engage with.

[elsanna-shenanigans]

February Contest Submission #14: Valentine Vesuvius

words: ca. 4700 setting: mAU with accidental time travel lemon: no cw: homelessness

“Hey, you wanna get out of here?”

I turned to look at Elsa in confusion. Wasn’t this museum date her idea? She looked mischievous, her left eyebrow arched.

I opened my mouth. Shut it. Opened it. I glanced at the other families gathered in a loose arc around the museum tour guide who was currently droning on about some old emperor or another.

“Hell yeah,” I whispered.

Moments later we were giggling as we ran through a deserted hallway like school girls skipping class. Never mind that we were two adults in our upper-twenties who chose as well as paid to be at the museum.

We rounded a corner and found ourselves suddenly immersed in a dim room void of people, filled instead with spotlights on old pottery from Ancient Rome or something. Elsa spun to face me and took my hands in hers. I dragged my gaze from a vase depicting a mountain with people at its base, and met Elsa’s eyes.

“I’m so lucky to have you as my wife,” she said, gently squeezing my hands.

“I’m the lucky one,” any more words would have been cut off as Elsa cupped my face and kissed me.

She pulled away slightly and rubbed her thumb in a soft circle on my cheek. “Anna…”

My eyes were still closed from the intimate sensation, but I blinked them open. Why did she sound so sad? “Hey, what’s wrong?” I asked.

She took a deep, slow breath and let it out in a shaky sigh.

“I just… I want kids so bad, Anna.”

My heart broke. I nodded. “I know, Els. I do too.”

“I thought this tour would be a fun valentines date. I just didn’t expect there to be so many families. So many kids. I couldn’t… I couldn’t stand to be around them another second.” She shook her head. “It hurts too much.”

We had been trying everything we could the past couple of years, but the IVF wasn’t working and every adoption had fallen through. It was all getting so expensive, and even more frustrating.

I rubbed her arm. “Why is it so easy for straight people to accidentally create life, but when a couple of lesbians want kids it costs twenty thousand dollars and two left kidneys?”

“It’s not fair,” Elsa sighed.

“It’s not,” I said. “But hey,” I touched her chin, lifting her head up from its sad slouch. “We’re strong as fuck. We’re not going to give up.”

Elsa nodded.

“And until we do become parents,” I continued, “we are still perfect, and whole, and completely the best family I could ever imagine. Just the two of us.”

She smiled. “You’re right, Anna. With you by my side, there’s nothing else I could ever need. I hope I’ve never made you feel like you aren’t enough. You’re my everything; so much more than I deserve.” Pulling me close, she started sounding more like herself again.

“Don’t be silly,” I kissed Elsa quickly. “You deserve everything good in the world.” Another kiss. “And I love you.” Another. “So much.”

The last kiss was deepened by way of Elsa’s grip on the back of my neck. She took my lower lip between her teeth and flicked the tip of her tongue across it playfully, sending a shiver up my spine and heat shooting down my stomach.

I gasped as Elsa grabbed my waist and kissed my neck while she walked us toward a wall. Throwing my head back, I was relying on her to guide us. I couldn’t function when she was sucking on my neck, my pulse point like — that, ah! Jesus!

“Oops.”

I barely registered that my back hit something wobbly, but the last thing I heard was the unmistakeable sound of pottery crashing on the floor. I felt a flash of cold air run over my skin and then - nothing.

————————————-

When I came to, the first thing I felt was a piercing headache. I hadn’t even opened my eyes yet and I wished I could close them. Gripping my skull, I rolled around in the darkness behind my eyelids, wishing the high pitched shriek in my ears would fade. Then I noticed the bumpy texture digging into my back. Uhh… Why did the museum floor feel like it was made of rocky ground?

Perhaps more pressing: why was the rocky ground …trembling?

I stopped moving altogether and sure enough, the ground I was laying on was shaking. I cracked my eyes open only to be blinded by bright sky. This was definitely not the museum exhibit. Blinking rapidly, my eyes started to adjust to the light even as my headache pounded and begged me to close them, or better yet, knock myself back out.

While I waited for my vision to make sense, I scrambled to get my feet under me. This was easier said than done, the way the ground wouldn’t stop moving beneath my legs. Finally I was at least on all fours and stable enough to look around.

“Jesus Christ.” Was that a motherfucking volcano? I arched my neck to see the top of the mountain I was extremely close to. Pluming dark clouds surrounded its peak. What the hell happened to me?

I whipped my head around, swaying from the dizzy fit the motion sent me into. I was in sort of a vast, empty field of rocky, grassy terrain. There looked to be a bustling town just down the hill. No one else was around, except —

“Elsa!” I shrieked. I scrambled to my right, getting to my feet as I gained momentum. Rocks kept shifting under my bare feet and I tripped a couple of times before I reached where she was laying. I fell to my knees by her side, and rolled her onto her back.

“Elsa?” I tapped her cheek with my palm, patting it several times. “Els! Wake up!”

She groaned.

Relief washed over me. I kept nudging her until she came to. She groaned again. “Ugh… my head.”

“Shh, I know, it sucks.” I said, more to myself than to her, as I pulled her head into my lap. “Wait. Are you wearing a fucking toga?” I looked down at myself. “Am I wearing a fucking toga?!”

We were both wearing cream colored fabric gathered at the shoulders and the waist. As if being at the base of a volcano wasn’t enough of a wake up call, for some reason the wardrobe change was what pushed me over the edge. It felt like my throat was closing up as I started struggling to breathe. My lungs couldn’t fill; I took breaths faster and faster, but too shallow to help. Perfect time for a panic attack, Anna.

Slow down. I closed my eyes, gripping Elsa tightly to me. Breathe in.

I felt the fabric under my fingers, it was thick but soft. Breathe out.

I heard birds chirping their alarms in the distance, wind sweeping past, and small rocks settling into new places all around me. Breathe in.

I smelled… fresh, salty air, tainted by something like smoke or dust. Breathe out.

“Hey lady! Is she dead?”

My eyes snapped open. There was a young girl, about eight years old approaching us from down the hill. She held a basket and wore a similar tunic, but hers had been through a lot. It was tattered and dirty. The words she spoke were so strange - I understood them in my head but at the same time, they sounded… foreign to my ears.

I cleared my throat. “No, she’s just waking up,” I responded. My own words had the same strange quality to them when I spoke to the girl.

“Oh. Who are you? My name is Cassia.” She had dark hair chopped unevenly at her shoulders.

“What a pretty name!” I said, a million thoughts racing through my head. “I’m Anna, and this is my… this is Elsa.” I didn’t know where, or when, we were so I didn’t want to get us into any unnecessary trouble. “Where are your parents?”

“I don’t have any. I was just gathering some berries when the ground shook again. Did you do it?” She squinted at me suspiciously.

So there are earthquakes here often. “No, of course not,” I laughed, hopefully convincingly, even though I had never felt less like laughing. “Elsa and I are traveling from afar, but …we got lost and hit our heads when the earth shook. Can you tell us where we are, exactly?”

Cassia gave me a strange look. “This is Pompeii, silly. What other city is at the bottom of the volcano?”

Pompeii?

….Holy fucking Vesuvius…

———————————————————

Once Elsa was fully conscious and aware of our situation, we decided to take Cassia up on her offer to show us to her home, which turned out to be more of a fort in the outskirts of town. It was about midday and the kid was generous enough to let us hang out in her home while she went back out to keep foraging, now that the tremors had slowed down enough.

We sat on the dirt floor after Cassia left, both staring off into the distance, in shock. How the fuck did this happen?

“So…” Elsa began.

“We’re in fucking Pompeii!” I exclaimed.

“What the fuck!” Elsa said.

And then we laughed, because, honestly, what else could we do at that point? We laughed uncontrollably. We laughed at our clothes. We laughed at the earthquake, at the damn volcano, at the funny way all of the words sounded.

When we couldn’t laugh anymore, I fell into Elsa’s torso and we sat, half snuggled up on the dirt floor of this impoverished orphan’s dwelling place.

“What year do you think it is?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Elsa said. “Does it matter?”

“I mean,” I glanced at her sideways, “I sure hope it’s not 79 AD.”

“Is that when it happened? How do you even know that?”

“I told you I always liked that section of art history.”

“Hmm,” Elsa sighed. “Well how do we even figure it out? We can’t just ask someone. Do they even use that system right now? Like the AD and BC stuff?”

I shrugged. “I almost don’t even need to be told though, you know? Just by the way that smoke looked above the volcano… I have a bad feeling.” Elsa looked concerned too. “Maybe we could ask around to find out if it usually does that when there’s an earthquake here. We could get a sense for how much we need to panic.”

“That’s a good idea. And if it’s the worst case scenario, then there’s the question of, do we worry about evacuating or do we figure out how to get us the fuck back home before this place is history?”

Elsa rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I wish we had a clue how it happened. I don’t know how we’re getting back if we don’t know what sent us here in the first place.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “We should try to think back on everything that happened in those last few minutes we can remember.”

“Well, we were in that room with the… what was it? Pottery?”

“Mhmm,” I continued, “And you were kissing the life out of me until we bumped into something and it fell. Oh! I wonder if it was that vase I was looking at.”

“What vase?” Elsa asked.

I rubbed my head, “Think think think. Um, it was clay. It had people on it. Oh! And a mountain! A volcano! It had to be that vase. It must have been found in Pompeii, and when we broke it while we were making out, it sucked us into its original time. Or something like that.”

“Sure, that sounds about right for how today’s going,” Elsa said. “But then, why didn’t it come through with us? I didn’t see any clay fragments where we landed on that hill.”

“Me neither,” I frowned. “Or maybe it couldn’t come along because here in Pompeii it already exists! Maybe we just have to find where it is now and recreate what happened before.”

“There’s a thought…” Elsa said. “So we just have to search the entire city for a vase with a volcano and people on it.”

“That sounds fun! Can I help?”

Elsa and I both turned to the doorway, startled. How long had Cassia been standing there?

——————————————————————-

Too long. Cassia had been standing there too long, and she had as many questions for us as we had for her.

Before long she knew we were accidentally-time-traveling wives from almost two thousand years in the future and Pompeii was doomed; and we in turn knew it was indeed the 79th year, no the dark volcano clouds were not normal for an earthquake, and the entire city was already scrambling to evacuate. I had a terrible feeling that Elsa and I caused the earthquake through our rough landing, effectively dooming Pompeii. Also, Cassia was eight years old like I had guessed, had been living on her own since she was five and a half, and she wanted nothing more than to help us find the vase we needed.

“That’s really sweet of you,” I said, placing a hand on her arm, “But you have to promise that as soon as we find the right vase you’ll get yourself to safety.”

Cassia glanced to the side as she said, “Promise.”

I was a little concerned about the validity of that promise but decided I’d try again later. First we were off to a shop that sold souvenirs for all the rich vacationers that visited Pompeii.

It was a short walk until we made it into the more touristy, upscale part of the city. Here, everyone was running around like chickens with their heads cut off. In and out of homes, carrying personal possessions, yelling for neighbors, yelling at the sky.

We almost lost sight of Cassia several times but we managed to follow her to the shop she talked about. We ducked under the arched doorway into the small space. It was dark, and seemed to be usually lit by candles like the lonely one over to the side that hadn’t been extinguished. Elsa went to retrieve it for us.

Using the single flame to see, we wandered around the space as a little pack, checking out all kinds of little trinkets made from stone and clay. Many were volcano-related, but it all seemed so small compared to the vase I remembered.

“Cassia,” I said, “Do you think this place has any vases that are… this big?” I motioned my hands around to describe the size.

“Oh. Why didn’t you say so? This place has nothing that big, but it could be…” she tilted her head in thought. “Oh, it’s probably Oaken’s! Duh.”

More winding through the chaotic streets behind Cassia. This walk actually went very fast, and before we knew it we had arrived at another shop. This one was bigger and well-lit inside. We all walked in. I immediately noticed that there were many vases of a familiar style and size, making my heart leap in hope.

“Not open for business or looting!” A voice called from deep in the shop.

“We just have a question!” I yelled back. “It’s urgent!”

“And we mean no harm!” Elsa added.

The man grumbled as he made his way to us, accompanied by the sound of sandals crunching on clay shards. Poor guy must have lost some of his pottery to the earthquake earlier.

“What’s the question?” A very large man appeared from behind a display wall. “Oh Cassia, dear. Why didn’t you say you were here?”

Cassia was standing half behind me. Was she suddenly shy or something?

I spoke up, “Cassia led us here. We think you can help us. We’re looking for a certain vase. We… saw it on a recent vacation but didn’t buy it, and then…”

“Then later we realized we lost a ring,’ Elsa chimed in. “We think it might’ve fallen in this vase.”

The pottery man sighed, “Well that’s a long shot, but what did the vase look like?”

“It was about yay-big, and it depicted the volcano with people underneath,” I explained excitedly.

He raised an eyebrow, “That’s about half the vases I make. You know this is a tourist town at the base of a volcano.”

I thought harder. There was a chip of color I could almost see in my memory. “Um, well, it might’ve had a sort of turquoise color by the rim?”

“Oh!” The man stood up straight. “In that case, I know the exact vase. Unfortunately I sold it about six months ago. Real rich family. Their vacation home is at this address,” he scribbled onto a small stone. “I don’t think they’ve been in town the last few months. With all the chaos out there, nobody would notice if you slipped in to look for the ring. Just make it quick.”

Soon we were walking again. When we entered an empty alley I spoke up, “Hey Cassia, why were you so quiet back there?”

She turned to face us while she kept walking, backwards, “Oaken is nice, but I have to act shy and sad around the people with money, so they’ll feel bad and give me food. I learned pretty fast that they don’t care about a mouthy troublemaker as much as a helpless little girl.”

Wow. I couldn’t imagine having to learn something that depressing as a homeless five year old. Cassia was a strong kid, and she somehow managed to seem happy and nonchalant about her struggles.

Elsa looked around at the quiet homes we were walking between. “Why are some parts of the city so calm while other ones are in chaos?”

Cassia shrugged. “Only the richest people will get to evacuate in time. The rest of us have learned to stay in our homes and hope we make it through whatever comes. There’s no point in panicking around the city because we would never make it onto a ferry anyway.”

The rest of our walk was completed in silence. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for this girl. I wished there was some way we could help her before we (hopefully) escaped the city ourselves. Judging by the look on Elsa’s face, her heart was breaking for Cassia, too. I met Elsa’s eyes and we shared a look. We definitely had to do something for the girl.

Suddenly we were standing in front of a grand structure made of stone. It was no little hut; more like an ancient mansion. This was somebody’s vacation home? Jeez! These people in 79 AD sure knew how to live lavishly.

“Looks like he was right,” Elsa said. “There’s no one around.”

“Wow!” Cassia was already walking through the front door. “Check this out! They have a river in their house!”

Elsa and I stepped inside and saw what the kid meant. There was a decorative skinny pool of calm water that stretched in a line from the front room of the house to somewhere beyond the next doorway. Pompeii style skylights illuminated the open space with the ashy, dreariness of the sky above.

We passed the minimalist entry room into the next space. Here, there was a staircase to the left, a gathering area, and more doorways.

“Hey Cassia, why don’t you head upstairs and see if there’s any vases up there while we finish looking down here?”

“Okay!” the girl was excited by her solo mission and took off up the stone steps.

Once she was gone, I rushed to Elsa. “Come ‘ere, baby,” I said as we hugged each other close.

She let out a sigh of relief. “I was gonna lose it if we didn’t get to talk soon. Alone.”

“I know,” I said. “This is a lot to go through without being able to actually talk.”

She nodded. “About Cassia…” I knew exactly where she was going.

“We have to take her with us,” I finished.

“She has nowhere to run. If she’s left here she’ll be dead by tomorrow night.”

“I know, Els.” I grabbed her hands. “You don’t have to convince me. It’s what we have to do.”

Elsa continued, “And I’m not saying that we have to adopt her or anything, but I just want her to be safe. Once we’re back we can find somewhere for her to—”

“We are fucking raising that child, Elsa.” I interrupted.

“Oh thank god,” she said, as I pulled her in close once more. “Do you think we should tell her?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“What if she doesn’t want to come? We’re running out of time, so maybe we shouldn’t give her the option if she might fight it,” she explained. “This is the only way she’ll be safe but if she doesn’t want to leave Pompeii, there’s no way we could make her.”

“Given that she’ll have to hold onto us while we kiss and break the vase…” I added.

“Or we grab her at the last second.”

“Right,” I said. “Either way, you have a point. We shouldn’t give her the option in case she would choose to stay.”

Elsa’s face suddenly went pale as she pointed behind me. I turned to see Cassia standing with her arms crossed.

“If you two wanna have a kid you’re going to have to learn how to talk quieter. It’s so easy to eavesdrop on you!”

My mouth was stuck open while I tried to form words.

“What did you hear?” Elsa asked in a low voice.

Cassia’s demeanor changed from snarky to… almost shy. “Um… Well, if it helps you to know, I’d really like to go with you. Away from here. Please.”

“Of course,” I stepped forward and wrapped her up in a big hug.

“We’re going to get you out of here,” Elsa joined in. “And if you want, you never have to be lonely again.”

A soft voice came from the middle of the hug, “I’d like that.”

“Now let’s find that damn vase,” I said, pulling away from them.

“Language.” Elsa looked at me pointedly, with a glimmer in her eye.

Cassia laughed at Elsa. “I already know how to swear, weirdos.”

This kid was going to be an adventure.

——————————————-

A few minutes later, we found the vase in a bedroom. It was sitting on a side table near a window, which was actually just a square cut out of the wall. We were going to have to hurry with the way the sky was looking out there. I was not about to let us get buried in burning ash right after vowing to expand our family to include our new little Pompeii friend.

“Alrighty!” I said, clapping my hands together and rubbing my palms. “So… now what?”

“What did you do to get here?” Cassia said. “Kiss a bunch? Ew.”

Elsa cleared her throat. Yeah this was a little more awkward than I hoped.

“Um, yeah, so,” I began, “maybe you can stand right next to the vase here, Cass. And then Elsa and I will…” I glanced at my reddening wife, “do our thing, and when we bump into the vase, at the last second, you grab onto us.”

Cassia stared at me.

“Does that makes sense?” I asked. “We only have one shot at this.”

She blinked. “Oh. Yeah, that sounds easy. You just… you called me Cass.”

Shit. “Sorry, was that ok?” I grimaced.

“I like it,” she grinned. “I like it a lot.”

“Awesome!” Phew. I didn’t want to fuck things up with our kid before we even got home. “So, you stand right here and just ignore everything about what we’re doing except for where we are. Then grab us as soon as—”

“As soon as you hit the vase, yeah. Got it.” Cassia pushed us toward the doorway. “Go be gross.” Elsa and I stumbled over to the open entryway of the room. We ducked out of Cassia’s view for a moment.

We both leaned on the wall and took a second to breathe. I gazed over at Elsa. She had a lot of emotions running across her face; embarrassment, relief, worry. I took her hand, causing her to look at me. “Hey.” I said. “Whatever happens this time… we did everything in our power to fix things.”

“I know,” Elsa sighed. “There’s just so much to process. We probably caused the deaths of everybody here, but at least we could save one person - and that’s if this even works to send us all home, which if it doesn’t, means we’re all going to die the same fate, which maybe we deserve—!”

I cut her off with a kiss: short, but long enough to send my message. “Shhh babe. It won’t do any good to obsess over that right now. If we survive, we will absolutely be marching ourselves to therapy, but for right now, we gotta get in there and get our butts back home.”

She nodded, her shoulders relaxing a little as if some of the tension eased away.

“Now, you gonna kiss me or what?” I asked with a smirk.

——————————-

I flung my arm wildly about, searching for the bottle of Tylenol on my bedside table. Would that even be strong enough for the fierce pounding in my skull? Instead of my familiar nightstand, I felt cold linoleum floor. I blinked my eyes open. Dim yellow spotlights gave a soft glow in the dark space around me.

Oh.

It all came back, just like that. I rolled over and saw Elsa sprawled out next to me —why am I always the first to wake up?— and the small form of a girl just beyond her. Cassia! She was clothed in a very sensible t-shirt and leggings combo. Thank goodness she didn’t pop into the museum in her old tattered cloth.

It didn’t seem like anyone had noticed our little …blip, so I quickly slid my two girls across the floor to keep us out of view from the hallway. As I pulled Cassia by her wrists, I noticed the vase sitting on a podium, looking exactly as it had back in Pompeii. It had bright colors and no evidence that almost 2,000 years had passed, or that it had technically shattered twice. Huh. Isn’t that the weirdest thing?

I sat on the floor next to Elsa and Cass while they continued to sleep off their travels, and I wondered how the vase actually did what it did. Was it a magic vase? Did that guy Oaken know he made something so powerful? Did he make other enchanted pottery? Something told me I would never have the answers to those questions. I certainly wasn’t in any rush to go back and ask him. Nope, ancient time traveling wasn’t really my thing after all.

It wasn’t long before Elsa woke up, and Cassia wasn’t far behind. We probably should’ve prepared her a little for life in the 21st century, as the simple museum lightbulbs were freaking her out. Just you wait, little lady. You have no idea how much your world has changed!

Once we calmed her down a bit, Elsa and I held hands with Cass, and began walking out of the room that changed our lives. Well, we took a few steps anyway, before I halted.

“What’s that noise?” I asked. “That jangly noise?” It was coming from the kid. I raised my eyebrow at her.

Realization dawned on Cassia’s face as her hands found her pants pockets… and pulled out fistfuls of glittering jewelry. “Oops?” she said, nervously.

Elsa’s jaw dropped. “Did you take those from the mansion?”

“I found them upstairs,” Cassia said, looking down at her clean black tennis shoes. “It was all just laying there, and the world was ending.”

“It’s okay,” I said quickly, not wanting her to think we were upset. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

I wondered if those pieces of jewelry had ever been recovered from the archeological site. I could see the headlines now: Priceless Ancient Pompeii Artifacts Vanish from Museum! I chuckled to myself, shaking my head.

“Hmm?” Elsa prompted.

“Ah, nothing,” I said with a smile. Then I pointed to the red, glowing Exit sign above a nearby doorway. “Hey, you wanna get out of here?”

[icequeen-shiva]

what i need to say to you, as a fat girl.

i’m going to put it under a cut, not because i’m embarrassed but because i know i’m going to get longwinded and i know some people won’t appreciate a gigantic, lengthy post clogging up their dash. and i get that! that’s me sometimes too. it’s cool, fam. it’s... it’s a damn novel. i’m not going to lie. i’m sorry it got so long. there’s a lot of history. but i don’t know how else to make it so clear and understandable without going deep. everything in here is exactly what i want known. so... yeah, it’s long.

i just had my yearly gynecological appoint a week ago. she stressed to me that she couldn't be happier with me, even with my weight. my blood work was, she called it, wonderful. my levels are good! i’m not even close enough to pre-diabetic that she felt a need to caution me. i’m healthy, according to my blood, she said. keep doing what i’m doing, she said, based on science and my blood, not my stomach, where all my weight seems to go. i am blessed that my doctor is kind. she knows that i, and others like me, am doing the best i can to find more healthy and nutritional things that work for me (and while i won’t go into it here, i will say that i have a fucked up home life that doesn’t make it easy). she knows pcos is fighting me every step of the way on losing weight. but she is proud of me and supports me and when she wants to talk about my weight, that is how she addresses it: with positive suggestions, not shaming me, not guilting me into feeling like i’ve done this wrong and disappointed everyone.

yes, i could exercise more. i’m not in shape, but the tests come back that, overall, i’m healthy, but that doesn’t seem to matter, because i’m still fat.

it shouldn’t be this hard to write. i shouldn’t be crying while i write this, but it’s been beaten into me (not literally) since i was a child that i’m not worth it if i’m fat. i went from kindergarten through eighth grade to a very small school (at its largest while i went there, my class had 36 people total) and i lived on the very edge of the district. if a friend wanted to do anything, we had to coordinate with our parents who was going where, whose parents were driving and what time would we get together, what time would someone need picked up, etc. and i was fat. i’ve been overweight since the day i was born, coming out at 10 pounds. i wasn’t into sports, which was absolutely what this school put almost all of its focus on. i was into art, which was the last thing this school put its focus on. i was quiet, i didn’t live in town, i didn’t want to play kickball or basketball at recess, i wanted to sit on the swings and draw. i was the weird kid, and i also happened to be the fat kid in my grade. the only fat kid. so i was an undesirable, and i just... got used to it. i will never forget how sick i felt in seventh grade, in the girls’ locker room after gym one day, when one of the thinnest girls was almost crying about her reflection and how fat she looked. i felt terrible for her, because if she really believed that then that girl needed help, but i also felt absolutely sick and knew i wanted to be annnywhere else but that school with these girls. i was lucky enough that my mom finally agreed to let me go to the school just a hop over the district line for high school. i met the best friend i’ve ever had in my whole life. i met other fat kids. i won the art club scholarship when i was a senior. my entire social existence was not predicated on “she doesn’t live here, she’s an oddball, and she’s fat” for the first fucking time.

but i was still fat in high school, and still pretty weird, i won’t lie, so i was still not the girl asked to any dances. i was never invited to any parties. i’m lucky that i wasn’t bullied for my fatness. a couple underclassmen punks behind me in the hallway tried one time, but at this point, i had perfected my glare and intimidation voice, so when i stopped, turned around, glared, and dared them to say that one more time, they didn’t. i was picked on for my goth aesthetic more than i was my weight, and that was fine. it wasn’t my weight, so i could live with it. i had my friends, i had my art classes, i had english and history where the teachers loved me and how good i was at these subjects. but i never had a date. i never had a first kiss. i never had any of this. i was fat, and i was weird. i’m not blaming it all on my physical appearance. everyone is embarrassingly weird as a teenager, i think, and if you weren’t then you’re lying.

for varying reasons, i didn’t get to go away for college. i went where my parents demanded i go, to a community branch of ohio state, with looming promises of “oh, you can transfer to columbus in a year or two, it’ll be fine” that ended up never happening. it was just like high school all over again. it was so small, and so limited, and so full of the same kind of people i’d been with the last four years already. i was still the fat weird girl. i grew into both of these. i learned to carry them each much better, i started taking theatre classes and auditioning for the plays, i even got the fucking lead in a one season. i was antigone, and i was, for the first time, excited about myself.

it didn’t last, though. the theater kids were, contrary to how they’re depicted so often and what other people’s stories have been, mean. so i left it. i never acted on that campus again. and it hurt like a motherfucker when i reminded myself that i gave up like that. but it was easier to do that. it was easier to take myself out of the spotlight than it was to constantly fight and defend my right to have it just like anyone else. now... there’s a lot of other issues in my life, that i’m not willing to address right now. all of my friends moved a few hours away from me. i’m not exaggerating, though i wish i was. i never ended up leaving. i dropped out of college when my depression was spiraling out of control and i wasn’t reeeeally functioning at all. i still live at home, in this close-minded, rural, midwestern place, because i’m terrified of leaving my mother with her depression that’s much worse than mine has ever been and i have no one in this area at all that i trust enough to be roommates with, and i can’t afford living on my own without that crutch. that’s as far as i’m willing to go. but this-- leaving acting, that i had loved so much-- was really a tipping point into the depression i have struggled with for almost my entire adult life.

and that depression and continued social rejection has really drummed in further i am fat. i have no hope of anyone ever thinking i’m beautiful. no one will ever really be attracted to me. i can fix my face with makeup but i cannot hide my gut, and that will repulse them.

i’m 28 years old and still-- fucking still-- the only time i’ve ever been shown romantic interest, was a joke. the only time someone has ever given me their phone number was a goddamn joke. it was at a restaurant, where i wasn’t afraid to order what i wanted and enjoy eating it, and i probably looked like a pig. i like food. we kind of need it to survive, and if i’m going to a restaurant with my friends, i’m going to get what i want, what sounds good, and enjoy myself with my friends, not get only a small salad because i have to watch my weight and i have to look like the meek, ashamed fat girl who’s trying to do better. i don’t have to look like anything, for anyone. but for a long time after i realized that number was a joke, i stopped doing all of that. i’d barely eat when we went out. i’d cry about it in the bathroom. i’d cry about it in bed. i cried a lot. and i hated myself. i’ve somehow managed to mostly overcome that. but it’s been hard, and let me repeat: i can only say mostly.

so what i really, really need you to know, and this is directed to the tickle community more than it is anyone else right now... this is why, if/when i get suddenly upset about belly tickles; if/when i get very quiet and withdrawn, when my dash is flooded with “ideal” bodies with their cute bellies getting tickled; if/when i get very feet-centric again because, after over a decade of navigating through my kink preferences and finding a place in this community, i’ve convinced myself over and over again that “if you keep it focused on your feet, they won’t notice that you’re fat.” which is ridiculous because in online play, nobody has to know that if i don’t say anything. but i will know. i will always know, when i present myself in rp as some small, cute, only a little bit chubby girl, that i’m lying.

it’s so hard being fat in such a physical kink. so fucking hard. even the plus size girls in the videos don’t look like me. it’s incredibly appreciated, don’t get me wrong, and it’s... it’s not even that i’m ~so big. i don’t look as heavy as i am. i’ve been accused of looking for attention and saying i’m heavier than i really am, when i try to be honest about how much the scale says (which honestly just makes me incredibly paranoid that maybe i have some giant cyst(s) on my ovaries that’s distending everything and heavy af with a bunch of fluid and crap, as is the hallmark symptom of polycystic ovarian syndrome, but that’s another essay). but it’s heavy enough to bother me. and that just gets problematic, because it’s not right of me to think “well, at least i’m not that size,” because the girl that size is having the same struggles as i am, probably. 

there’s literally one person i’ve ever spoken to that has told me, and i believe truthfully, they think i’m cute and that i’m worth it. and they live in england, thousands of miles away. and he wasn’t a “chubby chaser,” and i truly believe he wasn’t saying it out of pity. he meant it. but he’s the definition of unattainable.

i need you to understand that you need to be patient with me, if we’re really going to play, because the hardest thing i can do is accept that you don’t think i’m disgusting. because at the end of the day, i can be as confident in my personality and my intelligence and my skills as possible, but i will still look down at my stomach, hanging over the waistband of my pj shorts, and i will still think this is disgusting and it’s no wonder i’m alone.

[frontporchlit]

The MFA for the Emotionally Stunted by Robert

We came to an MFA creative writing program. We eat food, and read books, and attend classes to learn things, and secretly hope to publish something and win accolades and fame and fortune, before our Panoptical doubt sounds the alarm and rushes in riot-gear clad. We attend the cool readings of visiting writers. We smoke cigarettes, which according to science, activates the writer gene in our DNA. We struggle and struggle to write human characters.

By “we,” I mean me and the baby in my stomach. But not in a pregnancy way. I’m a guy. I have balls. The baby is also a guy, but really, he’s just a small dick motherfucker. I mean, look at that little baby dick. I’m laughing.

I only include him in the we because he goes everywhere with me. He just bounces around in my gut, as we ride the bus, buy milk, go to coffee shops. I feel I should explain the bouncing verb—I’m not an idiot with no conception of human anatomy; I understand human midsections are full of organs and blood and digesting shit and the whole 37 yards, or whatever our 8th grade science teacher told us, of coiled up small intestine—so I get that the kid wouldn’t literally be bouncing around in there; he’d be drowning, and clawing at my liver, and trying to poke a hole in my lung to put his little mouth against to breathe. I’m laughing. But anyway, I say bouncing because in my visual representation of my guts, I imagine a dark pit: it’s part prison (my ribs as a cage), and part cave (I fancy the imaginary floor of my pit gut as nature-ish, with dead leaves, dust, maybe the skeleton of a dead squirrel, etc.). The kid has room to move is what I’m saying.

But I’m also saying he doesn’t move, at least of his own volition, for two reasons. Firstly, I’ve been beating the shit out of him for as long as I can remember. Not because he’s a bad dude or anything—rather, when I was a kid, I thought he was pretty awesome; we were pretty tight. I couldn’t even tell the difference between him and me. If we’re talking pronouns, him and me was probably just I. But as I got older, I learned there was supposed to be a we—I saw other guys beating their babies down into their guts, and I was like oh, guess that’s how it’s done, and I started beating mine. Since I spent so much time depicting the gut pit, I’m probably obligated to depict how the violence works (and you’re a real sick fuck for expecting that from me)—essentially, the brain secretes an ooze from the stem that drips down the nasal cavity, coagulates in the squeezing tight throat, gains size and speed at the chest, and runs four taut knuckles straight at the small, scared, upturned face…no, no, I won’t be describing that after all (if you’re disappointed, you need Jesus).

[SCENE OF VIOLENCE]

I learned, I would say in adolescence, that you are supposed to cripple the little bitch, but you shouldn’t kill him. When you kill him, he decomposes worse than roadkill and mucks up all the plumbing (back to the more anatomically correct conceptualization). Most guys usually try to drown the putrid carcass with alcohol (I mean it makes a kind of sense, right?). Or they just take to beating someone else. Usually once you kill the kid, you’re on a timer until you kill yourself. I don’t recommend it.

Secondly, I keep him asleep. You can beat him into submission, but he will still catch a mood occasionally and start screaming and screaming, and that’s never fun. I went to cut out his tongue one day, and shit, he’s a little goddamn savage. A lullaby of grinding my teeth and clenching my fists accompanied with steady rolling melodies of seething anger usually keeps him quiet. Because as we all know, the world, or is it society? or is it family? or is it friendship? or is it romance? is essentially an airplane, and no one wants to hear your baby cry on an airplane.

Except in an MFA program. (And we’re back, I hope you can forgive the digression.) The MFA is all about the baby. Or maybe that’s wrong. The MFA is all about people who seem to have actually raised the baby, became the baby, but, you know, like the adult-version of the baby. We walk into class and see other baby-saturated adults doing cool things like talking about their feelings and encouraging each other. Suffice it to say: some weird ass shit. Which is all well and good as a tourist, but the thing about MFA programs is they’re full of sharers: you have a turn.

And so, I’m up for workshop and I’m sitting with my laptop trying to think of a story. I look to the baby for help: Hey! I need you right now—but as usual when I’m writing, he runs feral, smearing himself in intestinal oils, slippery as a greased pig. I grab at him, chase him, catch his ankle before he squirms away, lose him entirely and hear only his mocking laughter, until I finally pin him down. I cut off one of his fingers and leave him to howl and kick. I fingerpaint the story.

When workshop begins, they start with a round of compliments. The round lasts 1 minute and 47 seconds. Long enough for the baby to flush pink and crawl inside my head, nestling warm, and to look out my eyes, little mouth pressed so close it fogs the pupils, trying to see other children like him in their faces. The round ends.  

The workshop is unimpressed.

“It needs more paint.” — I throw him from my brain.

“Deeper color here.” — I shove him back down into the pit of my gut.

“Another stroke here.” — I grab his shoulders and shake him and blame him.

“This character just doesn’t feel human to me yet.”

Next time I’ll cut his arm off.

[everysuperherofighting]

Best Albums of 2016

I think we all know how we feel about 2016, though I will say that on a personal level it was actually pretty good, and involved a lot of positive personal development, though also a fair amount of death, and I’m not talking about all the celebrities right now. My aunt, grandfather, and former band instructor all passed away this year.

As far as music, my tastes feel like they fall on the same continuum they always do, though there seem to be a few more old guy rockers than usual, which I guess means I am no longer aiming for “Noisey” but rather “Rolling Stone.” This is probably also personal: I am not an old guy yet, but I am getting closer and I am also becoming aware that I will probably not accomplish all of my artistic goals within the next 5 to 10 years, and so am becoming increasingly open to artists staying relevant into their middle age and beyond.

RIP all the folks, RIP all the artists and celebrities, RIP all the people in Syria and Yemen and the Philippines, and all the people killed in terrorist attacks in Europe and Africa and the Middle East, and killed in shootings (police, mass, and otherwise) in the United States,  and RIP the short term possibility of having a federal government that is at least potentially responsive to the needs of marginalized people. Here are the best albums of 2016, according to me:

Image via the Hold Up music video

1. Beyonce - Lemonade.

This album was cathartic when it was released at the beginning of the year, but now that we’re at the end we probably need it even more.

Though largely about infidelities within an interpersonal relationship (dammit Jay), with a heavy smattering of race commentary (particularly in the videos) and empowerment feminism, the frustrations and self-empowerment in the face of all adversaries expressed in these songs transcend the specifics. Especially in a year determined to put us in our place, to make us feel worthless or powerless.. Whether a cheating lover, an orange race-baiting huckster masquerading as politician (and ascending to the highest office in the land), the goddamn fucking forces of white supremacy/the patriarchy/global capitalism or our own private struggles with self-doubts and mental illness, this album had something to offer, if nothing else than a reminder to hold our heads up and say “fuck ya’ll.”

I didn’t like every song on this album but look: When I saw a room full of women, middle fingers raised, jamming out to “I’m Not Sorry” like a giant “fuck you” to whatever it was that was fucking their day up, telling them they weren’t valuable or whatever, I realized that it didn’t necessarily need to be for me.

Rubbery dancehall, Nahleans jazz,  futuristic (though I guess present now) R+B, diva voice: Beyonce does that thing where she overdubs like 20 different vocal tracks over one another, but her voice is already so powerful it sounds like a chorus of Amazonians or gods. And of course there’s the image of Beyonce walking around smashing car windows with a baseball bat in the “Hold Up” video, which now seems to be remarkably prescient.

The biggest pop star in the world right now has our back. We could do worse.

Watch “Hold Up”

2. Anderson .Paak - Malibu

Deceptively breezy soul and funk that inherently understands the political power of a block party. Like so many artists before, Anderson .Paak understands that sometimes just getting by is a revolutionary act, and thus this album often seems like a celebration of the awe one feels at their own continued existence. Some pretty good jams for fucking also.

Watch “Come Down”

3. Schoolboy Q - Blank Face

A gangsta rap album that absolutely nails the paranoia and sense of menace that must accompany the lifestyle. The vibe alternates between blazed out soul samples and claustrophobic, almost manic moments of paranoia. Sometimes you’re smoking the Kush and then sometimes there’s a black SUV in your rearview. Schoolboy Q rides over all this with straight-faced hood talk and almost gleeful depictions of acts of depravity, like so many others grasping power in whatever avenue is available to him. Kanye West has a show stealing feature and Vince Staples continues to shine, but I’m all about those Jadakiss and E40 bars.

Watch “John Muir”

4. Danny Brown - Atrocity Exhibition

Beats that sound like they were compiled from the intro to old VHS tapes and people banging on trashcans.  Little oft-kilter touches mirror the descriptions of substance abuse, the pitch-heightened background voice in “White Lines,” B-Real’s blitzed nursery rhyme delivery of the hook on “Get Hi.” Not that much music can probably still scare your cool boomer parents, but I’d nominate this one.

Watch “When It Rain”

Image via the Nobody’s Baby video

5. Sheer Mag - III

Sheer Mag sounds like the best basement band in the world, grimy rock n roll made by people who got punk but also grew up on Thin Lizzy and Jackson Five. Guitar solos that sound liberating instead of masturbatory and powerhouse vocals from Tina Halladay about love and heartbreak, like someone’s memory of what 70s rock n roll was like, inevitably better than it actually was.

Watch “Nobody’s Baby”

6. The Falcon - Gather Up The Chaps

Technically this is a punk rock supergroup, with members of the Loved Ones and Alkaline Trio, but it feels very much like Brendan Kelly’s vision, a chance to get a little grittier than the Lawrence Arms and indulge in his ever present artistic interest in the guy puking in the alley, then asking you if you know where to score some coke. There’s a song named after the video of David Hasselhoff drunkenly eating a cheeseburger, and though in a different band this may be a gimmicky (and like, really really out of date) reference to internet culture, here it comes across as a recognition - a dark moment is a dark moment no matter how meme worthy it becomes.

Watch “Sergio’s Here”

7. Jeff Rosenstock - Worry

Massive sing alongs, noisy genre hopping (or combining), and huge power-pop hooks that always seem to be just on the verge of descending into chaos. Jeff Rosenstock has often managed to make whatever he’s going through personally seem to speak to larger scale generational woes (I’m pretty sure there were at least two albums about not wanting to get a job, which came out at the same time that I and most of the people I know also didn’t want to get jobs). A reoccurring theme here seems to be the gentrification of places that you love, which is connected to the experience of getting older and feeling like you’re missing out. Jeff has definitely crafted his own “sound” at this point, so when he switches styles to the straight genre homage in the three-song punch of “Bang On the Door,” “Rainbow” and “Planet Luxury” (garage punk, third-wave ska and hardcore) in 3 blistering minutes, it’s a perfect reminder of all the music we (well, me) grew up loving.

Watch “Wave Goodnight To Me”

8. Kamaiyah - A Good Night In the Ghetto

Remember when people used to call beats “slappers?” Probably only if you were into Bay Area hip-hop circa 2007. Anyway, this shit slaps.

Watch “Out the Bottle”

9. YG - Still Brazy

Similar to how A Good Night in The Ghetto feels like an amalgamation of several decades of Bay Area hip hop, this is puuuuuure fucking LA fat bass, eerie keyboard sampling G-funk. Gangsta rap has always been political. Have I written that before? It’s worth saying more than once. Those last three songs though. FDT will obviously have a lot of shelf life, but “Blacks and Browns” and “Police Get Away Wit Murder” are sharp contributions to the tradition of “fuck this shit” also.

Watch “FDT”

10. Run the Jewels - RTJ3

A rush of weird beats, shit talk, and surreal imagery, hip-hop dispatches from a dystopian future, but one that feels weeks rather than years away. El-P and Killer Mike are honestly not that similar stylistically, (El-P is more from the highly conceptual east coast underground school, Killer Mike is more the southern testifying and telling straight truths school) but their mutual love of the game has always made this work and they are both world class shit talkers.

Watch “Talk To Me”

Image via the Chili Town video

11. Hinds - Leave Me Alone

Garage… pop I guess? that feels close to the vein, emotionally. I don’t mean heartbreak, though that’s here too, but also friendship, drinking wine in the sun, with surfy guitar melodies. There’s something that sometimes happens with some lady bands, where people kind of get into some sort of perceived naiveté or innocence or something, so I’m going to assume these women can fuck you up.

Watch “Warts”

12. Pup - The Dream Is Over

The frustration of reaching your mid-20s, realizing that you have not accomplished any of your goals and that you don’t have any prospects. In song form. It would sound like a kiss-off if the singer wasn’t desperately grasping for change.

Watch “DVP”

13. A Tribe Called Quest - We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service

Classic Tribe components still here - the swing in the rhythm, the walking bass lines, motherfucking Busta Rhymes(!), but with a foot firmly planted in the present. Did they used to swear this much? I don’t remember. Extended music breaks. Guitar flourishes. Q-Tip is clearly the ringleader, wearing the role more comfortably than ever, but with a kind of quiet humility that comes from age. Yeah, we still here, shit still sucks, but sometimes you find those little moments, you know?

Watch “We The People”

14. Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker

Is there hope for salvation before death? Or just further disappointment and failure? An album to drink wine to in a dark room, alone but for ghosts.

Watch “You Want It Darker”

15. Drive-By Truckers - American Band

Pretty sure the Truckers have always been angry and political, it’s just never lined up with current events quite this overtly - but there’s always been a real siding with the have-nots, the people screwed over by bad economics, and the (not just white) working classes, though sometimes this manifests as concept albums about Lynard Skynard. Still, with a band that clearly flirts with a Red State target audience, at least sonically, and judging from the youtube comments on some of their videos, hanging their hat so clearly on the “blue side” is a risky move and one that should be commended. Here we get stories about the founder of the NRA murdering a Mexican teenager in the 20s, the shooting at Umpqua community college, hypocritical religious folks, and Black Lives fucking Mattering.

Watch “Surrender Under Protest”

16. David Bowie - Blackstar

To be honest, I thought this sounded a little bit too much like Pink Floyd the first time I heard it (plus a sax player) but the sultriness of cuts like “Lazerus,” the keyboard line in “’Tis a Pity She Was a Whore” that sounds like it came out of an 80s fantasy movie, and the weird vocal flourishes and marching rhythm of “Girl Loves Me” won me over. Bowie has left this mortal coil, and either ascended to a tinsel covered 70s movie set or an 80s computer game about going to the moon, but it’s definitely some kind of heaven.

Watch “Lazerus”

17. Death Grips - Bottomless Pit

A soundtrack for glitchy meme art, ordering 2CI off the Silk Road, and those computer generated DeepDream images, while MC Ride bellows avant-garde street poetry. I’ve never been sure if Death Grips are railing against or with the shitposting internet culture that’s embraced them. Some of these tracks are just fucking metal though.

Watch “Eh”

18. clipping - Splendor and Misery

Breakneck raps over the sound of an airshaft opening on a spaceship. This is supposedly a concept album about a slave revolt in outer space. Musically this equates to old spirituals and malfunctioning computers.

Watch “Air Em Out”

19. The Coathangers - Nosebleed Weekend

In the music video for “Nosebleed Weekend” the women in the band crash a party of hipsters to punch everyone in the face, but then the video ends with them probably trying to keep a straight face while they get covered with buckets of fake blood. Tough sounding surf punk, much about heartbreak.

Watch “Nosebleed Weekend”

Image via the Victim of Me video

20. Descendents - Hypercaffium Spazzinate

There’s a lot of older musicians on this list for whatever reason (all the dead guys I guess,) but a few lyrics about dietary changes aside, this band could have stepped wholesale out of their 1994 variation. Fast, hooky, with the most underrated bass lines in punk.

Watch “Victim of Me”

21. Paul Simon - Stranger to Stranger

Alright, this one’s a little NPR but I will say that I think Paul Simon sounds a little more of-kilter, a little moodier than he sometimes does. There are dark things around the edges in this one, whether it’s the ghostly guitars on the title track, or the way his funny song about getting stuck outside a club you’re supposed to play suddenly starts alluding to class uprising, a buildup that feels both surprising and also strangely inevitable.

Watch “Wristband”

22. Mikey Erg - Tentative Decisions

A lot of emotionally earnest music (dare we bring up emo?) gets slammed, essentially for being melodramatic. It’s a difficult balancing act, but I’ve always felt like the Ergs managed to avoid this, and here Mikey Erg continues that streak on his first solo album, with tastefully poppy tunes full of yearning melodies and (more) broken hearts, ala Big Star or an early Beatles album. When I saw this guy live a few years ago, it made my friend get back together with his ex-girlfriend.

Watch “Faulty Metaphor”

23. NOFX - First Ditch Effort

There is no way I’m not putting an album that has a song where Fat Mike sings about being a fetishistic crossdresser in my top 25.

Watch “Six Years On Dope”

24. Ramshackle Glory - One Last Big Job

It’s amazing how many people’s favorite band this is with virtually no mainstream recognition. Like, even Bomb the Music Industry put out stuff with Asian Man, who’ve put out Alkaline Trio records and stuff. And yet this (and Patrick Schneeweis’s other projects) is like Bob Dylan to thousands of kids across the country. I knew something was up when all the kids at the Rainbow Gathering I went to (2011) were playing Johnny Hobo covers. Anyway, this is their last album, and as such is a somewhat slow, contemplative affair. Pat’s always been excellent at espousing anarchist ideals while also representing that problems and hypocrisies that accompany radical lifestyles. Swan song for a true alternative.

Listen to “Face the Void”

25. AJJ - The Bible 2

Very much continuing ideas first developed on Christmas Island, a collection of noisy rock/pop tunes with upbeat melodies and lyrics about losing your shit, dirty middle schoolers who hang out by themselves in construction sites, and the Herculean task of feeling kind of ok with yourself.

Watch “Goodbye, Oh Goodbye”

[allofbeercom]

‘Progress is painfully uneven’: Baltimore, 15 years after The Wire

From its first episode in 2002, the HBO TV drama documented the poverty, politics and policing of a city. We visit its memorable locations and talk to the people trying to rebuild scarred communities See more of JM Giordanos photographs of Baltimore locations used in the wire here

In black jacket, checked shirt and white trainers, eight-year-old DAngelo Preston is riding his bike while his sister, Alicia, 11, gives chase. They are playing outside the Baltimore Montessori public charter school, where they would be pupils if they had the chance. Their teachers dont yell at them, says Alicia matter-of-factly. Their teachers let them do whatever they want.

Alicia aims to be a maths teacher when she grows up; DAngelo wants to be a professional football player. They live barely a minutes walk from the Montessori school but, having lost an enrolment lottery, instead take a daily bus to Dallas F Nicholas elementary school, which has fewer resources. The siblings father, Shawn Preston, 38, a mechanic, says: It has a good reputation and I wish more local kids could go. I tried to send Alicia but they told me it was all filled up. I was disappointed. I thought they could have got her in there somehow: were in the neighbourhood.

This is Greenmount West, a community striving to put distance between itself and its portrayal in one of televisions most indelible dramas: The Wire. The Montessori school building was previously home to a beleaguered government school and starred in the fourth and arguably finest season of the show. A nearby design college is still recognisable as where the corner kids hung out. A couple of houses near Prestons were used during filming. Even the name DAngelo strikes a chord as the name of a principal character in the first season.

But as the disappointment over school places illustrates, progress is painfully uneven. While some parts of Baltimore are thriving, others have gone into reverse. In 2015, the death of an African American man in police custody triggered widespread unrest, while the total murder rate of 344 was the highest per capita in the citys history. Last year the figure was 318. In 2017 so far (up to 10 May), there have been 124 murders, outstripping Chicago and putting Baltimore on course for its bloodiest year ever.

Michael Olesker, an author and former Baltimore Sun columnist, says: Its turf wars. Its a battle for street corners. Youve got 18-year-old kids killing each other. Many are from broken families. Wed like to think art can move the world but this problem is so intractable on so many levels its going to be with us for a long time.

This was the world of The Wire and it is still very much intact. From June 2002 to March 2008, the epic HBO series mapped the citys geography, society and soul, charting the never-ending street battle between cops and drug lords. It was a study of the havoc wrought by the drug war on trust between black communities and police. Its hard-boiled realism included a scene of four minutes and 40 seconds in which the dialogue between two detectives consists entirely of 31 fucks, four motherfuckers and one fucking-A.

Bodie and DAngelo Barksdale (right and second right) in season one of The Wire. Photograph: BBC/HBO

The Wire never won an Emmy award or gained a mainstream audience; its acclaim rests largely with critics and fans, including Barack Obama, who named it his favourite show. It stands undiminished in the cultural pantheon. In 2015 Jonathan Bernstein wrote in the Guardian: The temple of the US one-hour TV drama has four pillars: The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men and Breaking Bad, novelistic shows that indicted America for its failures but refused to condemn their complex, emotionally crippled leading men.

When British actor, director and writer Kwame Kwei-Armah moved to Baltimore in 2011 to head the Center Stage theatre, he had not seen The Wire so he caught up via iTunes. Recently he met its creator, David Simon. I think its magnificent television, Kwei-Armah says. I think it was voted one of the best pieces of television of the 00s and, as a document, it will be remembered. Baltimore was just a metaphor; it depicted post-industrial America.

The Wire was intricately, unforgivingly plotted, capturing the prosaic nature of police procedural work, the brutal dynastic politics of drug kingpins and the corruption and grubby compromises of civic life. Simon has memorably said: Our model when we started wasnt other television shows. The standard we were looking at was Balzacs Paris or Dickenss London, or Tolstoys Moscow.

Befitting a novel, the characters were richly realised archetypes that leapt off the screen. There was the hard-drinking maverick cop Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), the world-weary detective Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters), the aspirational, smooth gangster Stringer Bell (Idris Elba), the quietly heroic recovering addict Bubbles (Andre Royo) and the enigmatic, gay Robin Hood figure Omar Little (Michael K Williams), whose distinctions include a facial scar, quaint turn of phrase and being Obamas favourite character.

And in police detective Kima Greggs (Sonja Sohn), we had American TV dramas first major portrayal of a black lesbian. In a phone interview, Sohn recalls: I cant say that I thought she was going to be iconic in any way, but I do think she has become so. I think she is a character I started seeing a lot more in cop shows. Whos the tough female cop, person of colour?

I think its unquestionable the impact that the show has had not only on my career but many of the principal cast. The climate was very different at that time than it is now in terms of the availability of roles for people of colour in the business. So it was quite an anomaly to see a show that would require a predominantly black cast. That in itself was unusual and something that caught the attention of us all.

But there were detractors, she adds. One thing that was disappointing was the city officials. They really were not pleased with the depiction of Baltimore and some of them took the storylines personally. David has always said the issues and stories of The Wire exist nationally.

Bodies hangout: DAngelo Preston, eight, outside the Honey Carry-Out store the spot where Bodie was killed in season four. Photograph: JM Giordano

Baltimore is the Maryland city where Francis Scott Key wrote The Star Spangled Banner, Edgar Allan Poe is buried and, in 1910, the first residential racial segregation law in any US city was enacted. Once a thriving port, hundreds of thousands of small, two-storey terraced houses were built in the Victorian era as the population climbed to a million. But since the mid-20th century that number plunged and now stands at 614,664, according to the US Census Bureau the lowest for nearly 100 years.

The series, though mostly set in the west of the city, was largely filmed in the east because the number of trees in the west made it awkward to shoot through changing seasons. Numerous houses still lie abandoned and boarded up, a few with roofs collapsed under their own weight. Pavements are cracked and smeared with graffiti. Broken bottles and other rubbish pile in gutters. On a typical Sunday afternoon, a patrol car crawls by, an officers tattooed arm trailing out of a window. At night, strobing police lights are alarmingly routine.

In Greenmount West, at what was Bodies corner in the series, customers have to be buzzed in to the Honey Carry Out convenience store. Inside, most of the products M&Ms, Starburst, Skittles, earphones, Butterfinger, Almond Joy, Mounds, KitKats, Snickers, Hersheys, Dove soap, Colgate toothpaste are piled behind bulletproof glass like an art installation. All transactions are final. No refund, says a scrawled sign. Making a purchase requires placing money on a turntable, which revolves to exchange it for the product, a process reminiscent of jail.

Nearby, when we approach one resident, he explains that he returned here last year after a stretch of 24 years in prison and does not want to talk.

Yet this neighbourhood, designated an arts and entertainment district, is slowly but surely gentrifying. The school had shut down in 2001, before The Wire film crew moved in. The building was vandalised, had asbestos and copper pipes removed and was used as a homeless shelter in the winter of 2007. The following year, the Montessori school took over.

Today the colourful jungle gyms and live chickens in its backyard are a world away from the grim vision of ill discipline and desperate teachers seen in The Wire. Allison Shecter, its founder and director, says: We have younger kids here whose parents come from every zipcode in the city. We do bring kids in at every age. They come in when it [their schooling] isnt working : they have a hard shell so it takes a while to win their trust. Even when they come in at eighth grade, its transformational.

The Montessori has 425 pupils and a waiting list of 1,200. It draws pupils by lottery from across the city, many from middle-class homes, while kids in the surrounding, struggling neighbourhood often do not make it and go to Dallas F Nicholas instead. The dynamic has provoked debate about parental choice, the lack of resources for government schools and the dangers of rivalries.

Shecter, 47, says: Families are looking for choice. If there are schools struggling, I think looking at why schools are struggling and helping them needs to be the answer rather than pitting them against each other.

She acknowledges that Greenmount West continues to have problems. Its still very much a neighbourhood in transition: there are still drugs and gangs. There was a hold-up with a gun at eight oclock yesterday morning. Crime in Baltimore is out of control.

But Tina Knox, 57, whose nearby backyard also featured in The Wire, is upbeat. At one point in time this community was down to nothing, she says. You dont know if a fights going to break out or theyre going to start shooting. But once they started tearing down the vacant properties, investors started coming in, buying the houses and fixing them up. The community is coming back up. Now you couldnt pay me to live in any other neighbourhood.

Cuttys boxing gym: the building that housed this location is now derelict. Photograph: JM Giordano

Her friend Stewart Watson has lived here for 15 years and runs an art gallery. Today she is out walking her two great danes. I didnt watch The Wire because I felt I was living it, Watson recalls. It wasnt relaxing to me because of what was happening in my community at the time. The one about schools would probably break my heart.

The closure of the school was a heavy blow, she recalls. All the kids got sent to other schools. Not having a school in the neighbourhood was really tough. It changes the dynamics of the families and breaks up the camaraderie of a neighbourhood. It was the school where Tina went: that kind of loss you cant recover from.

Watson, 48, is optimistic but also worried about the future of Greenmount West. There are difficulties with the gentrification process that any community has. Gentrification is a half-dirty word. Ive said if it means I dont have spinning bulletproof glass up the street, thats great. Its about whats fair and accessible: the racial divide that plagues this city were still trying to figure out.

A short drive away, reminders of that divide are everywhere at some of The Wires most fondly remembered locations. The boxing gym where Dennis Cutty Wise (Chad Coleman) gets back on the straight and narrow is abandoned, its windows broken, cesspools and debris on the concrete floor, the silhouette of a boxer painted on the wall a reminder of its ghosts. (There is talk of a food co-op moving in.)

The TV repair shop that was run by drug kingpin Proposition Joe and the bar that belonged to Omars confidante Butchie have both closed down. Michelle Sponaugle, 53, whose father owned the latter, says: It makes me sad. I used to work behind the bar. We had a good clientele but the crime got rough down here. My father had a gun put to his head a couple of times so we put up a bulletproof wall.

And the convenience store where Omar, the seemingly invincible stick-up man (You come at the king, you best not miss), was gunned down by a boy has vanished altogether after a blaze set off by the unrest of 2015 and the construction of an apartment complex for the elderly. Over the road is a park bench that proclaims without a hint of irony: Baltimore: the greatest city in America.

One of its occupants, Alfred McDaniel, 59, says he never saw the series because he does not watch TV. Time is too valuable to waste so why would I do something like TV? Im in a house that should be condemned, so why would I watch TV? Im in court trying to get them to fix it. I need surgery but Im trying to deal with the rats and the mice. Where I live, the stupid landlord wont even fix the goddam door.

McDaniel, a home repair man on medical leave, is in his fifth home in five years in the city. I aint seen no improvement in Baltimore. You call the police to report a crime and they tell you theyre not going to file a report, so what police can you depend on in this city? So the next person who breaks in your room, you should kill them.

Beside him is John Williams, 56, who used to work on the docks, which featured in the shows second season. He says: Baltimore is struggling the same. Its good for some people but if you live on this side of town its not that good. Houses have been vacant a long time so theres no reason for homelessness in Baltimore. The city could try to renovate these houses and make them affordable to people.

Sonja Sohn (detective Kima Greggs) now helps children break the cycle of crime. Photograph: Icon Sports Wire/Corbis via Getty Images

Williams says that, in his first week as a resident of Baltimore in 2013, some 35 people were killed. The cops are overwhelmed to a certain degree. Relations are strained. The community doesnt believe in the cops. There are people who know who committed murders but they dont want to come forward. Youve got murderers walking among you and its dangerous, basically. If youre working as a taxi, youve got to be careful where to pick up.

Similar sentiments are expressed in another neighbourhood by Janet Worsley, 57. They still have gangs and mobs. You take your life in your hands if you walk these streets at a certain time of night. If I get off work, I walk home, but to come out otherwise? No. She describes an incident when her car was stopped by police. All I could do was humble myself: Sorry, officer. Im still afraid for my son being mishandled by police because he has a mental illness.

For Sonja Sohn, such issues resonate with her own childhood and remain intensely personal. After production wrapped on the fifth and final season she co-founded ReWired for Change, a Baltimore-based nonprofit organisation that works to help young people break the cycle of crime. It often uses cast members and material from the show to get its message across.

For a while, it seemed this portrait of a city in crisis might sting officials into action, but the power of art has its limits. Sohn says: I think that the city leadership did begin to make an effort to look at the issues that The Wire brought to life, particularly because of the fourth season, which focused on the children and the schools.

As much as the city leadership couldnt stand The Wire, they were forced to address the issues because, I believe, they wanted to prove that their city was better than what was depicted. So ultimately The Wire impacted this city in a positive way in my opinion.

But then came a hammer blow that appeared to destroy any putative gains made in crime reduction and community-police relations in Baltimore. Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American, died of neck injuries suffered in police custody in April 2015. The city erupted in weeks of mass demonstrations and a day of rioting. Six police officers were charged in connection with Grays death but none was convicted. A justice department report found a huge racial disparity in enforcement, especially in stops, searches and discretionary misdemeanour arrests, including those of people congregating on street corners. It also observed that residents believe there are two Baltimores one wealthy and largely white, the second impoverished and predominantly black.

Sohn says: I was not surprised but the most visceral reaction I had was one of support of the people. I was so tired of pounding the pavement, of spending my extra time and extra dimes to help lift up under-served communities in Baltimore. After I started the nonprofit, I started to see how challenging that work is, and I also started to see how it quite possibly is this never-ending clusterfuck. I had stepped away to reassess how I could be useful, in fact, when the whole Freddie Gray situation happened.

When I saw the people rise up and express their anger in the way that they did even though I did not want the city to burn down, I did not want lives to be lost the very core of me said, what else could they do to get your attention? To let you know you serve them? That you have not served them for decades, and theyre not tolerating it any more? They put you in office, the city taxpayers pay their salaries, and theyre not being served. And when talking no longer works, what else do the people have?

That part of me said, burn it down, burn the whole motherfucker down. If theyre not going to fucking listen, burn it. Theres that revolutionary radical in me. But at the same time thats more of a sense than it is an intellectual choice Im telling people to make. Im saying yes, act from that sense. We dont want them to take it literally but I see you acting from that sense and, symbolically, this is what we need to do. We just need to find a way to do it differently.

Relations with the police remain strained despite efforts and initiatives on both sides. Sohn is eager to dispel the myth that young men hanging out on streets corners or residents sitting on stoops outside their homes are all selling drugs. I think what people dont understand is when you live in these communities, this is your tribe, this is your home, the streets are a part of your property, its a part of your culture.

Omars death: Alfred McDaniel, 59, stands across the street from the location of the shop where Omar was shot dead in season five. The building burned down during the riots following the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015. Photograph: JM Giordano

We sit on the stoops, we say Hey! to Miss Mary down the street and see the little kids coming home. If theres a fight, somebody jumps off the stoop and runs and breaks up the fight. We might not use drugs or deal drugs but we know the drug dealer, we babysat him when he was eight. Or maybe we know hes 20 and hes dealing drugs but we went to school with him He was in my eighth grade class. These are just people we know. We know your mama, I date your sister, she cool.

Whats going on on the street isnt always drug dealing. Its a community thats gathering and taking care of itself. If you dont understand it and youre only looking at TV, what youre thinking is people are dealing drugs and everybodys just depressed and sitting on the stoop drinking beer. And though that may be there, it is certainly not all of whats there. Theres a community gathering and communing with one another.

Nevertheless, the toxic mix of drugs, firearms and joblessness chronicled by The Wire in 2002 still persists. Last month, the mayor of Baltimore, Catherine Pugh, appealed to the FBI for extra help to combat the soaring homicide rate, explaining: Murder is out of control. There are too many guns on the streets.

Rafael Alvarez, an author and screenwriter who worked on the show, writes in an email: The rich and cruel supply of American fucked-up-ness will never run dry in Baltimore, so yes, The Wire could be made 15 years after it originally aired. I suspect give or take 50 homicides and a new wave of corruption and ignorance it could be made again 15 years from today.

Olesker is similarly short on optimism about the citys future. I think you could do the same show today. Its still out there on the street corners: you can go to countless neighbourhoods and see street after street of abandoned houses that have sat there for years.

Youve got all these kids who are rootless, who dont have families, who are joining gangs. Theyre figuring out very early the game is stacked against them. Theyre not going to get to college like middle-class kids do, so they have a choice: they can work in McDonalds for $10 an hour or they can make multiples of that from the drug trade, and theres no mother or father around to tell them otherwise.

Indeed, Donald Trumps pledge to be a law and order president stressing blue lives matter rather than black lives matter, and his attorney general Jeff Sessionss retro approach to tough sentencing only seem likely to fan the flames in Baltimore, a majority black, staunchly Democratic city. The Wire was sometimes accused of implying that its characters were locked in a hopeless cycle; events seem to bear out this sense of fatalism.

But Kwame Kwei-Armah offers hope. One of the things Ive learned since Ive been here is that people of Baltimore care about Baltimore in a rather profound way. Im talking about the philanthropic community in particular: they actually put their money back into the community. Community means something, and Im not just saying that to blow smoke. We had to raise $36m in order to renovate our theatre and we were able to do that in what is a relatively small city. Were not the only people out with a capital campaign. Actually, after the uprisings of 2015, there was a lot of money that came from within Baltimore to start looking at creating solutions for the problems that are endemic here.

Sonja Sohn, too, feels some optimism. Ive been around, Ive been on the planet a little while, she says. I never trusted the establishment anyway so the face we are seeing now is not a surprise, and Ive also been around long enough to see people and movements come and go. By no means do I believe that evolution goes backwards. Evolution goes forwards. No human being can defy the laws of nature, so Im not worried about Donald Trump and Im not worried about Jeff Sessions. Im on my mission, Im on my grind, Im on my purpose and we are all collectively moving forward, I guarantee you that.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/progress-is-painfully-uneven-baltimore-15-years-after-the-wire/