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john-is-on-the-rails · 7 years ago

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Being more pirate in Bruxelles

My time in Brussels is over. I crammed a lot into two and a half days, so I’m enjoying the first class ICE inter-city experience (currently at 157km/h). Especially after sitting in the rain at Brussels-Noord station for an hour. I’ve bagged a window seat, loads of leg room, free Wi-Fi (auto-correct tried to change that to wife) and a charging point. It’s interesting how reliant we are on our phones now, making us wonder how people got about without them. I’ve heard the argument that part of the traveling experience is getting lost, asking a local who doesn’t speak English, finding your way by reading an annoying folded map upside down. I’m not entirely convinced. The amount of stress and time saved by having maps to anywhere at my fingertips, entertainment (music, podcasts, audiobooks), a camera and video recorder, GPS tracker of my journey and handy torch when my hotel room card suddenly stopped working and the lights went out, makes me feel more relaxed and reassured. Maybe at the cost of the isolation and expansiveness you feel when you’re navigating by your wit alone. Perhaps the reassurance provided by a digital connection is more appreciated if you are traveling alone. When getting lost on your way back to your hotel is less fun and more intimidating in a busy city. At least with someone else there, when you panic they might not!

Brussels was an interesting city. I stayed just off Grand Place in the city centre. Grand place is, as the name suggests, a grand square. Surrounded on all sides by beautiful gothic-style edifices. The town hall, guildhalls and the King’s House (which now houses the museum of Brussels). I couldn’t really grasp the scale or the level of craftmanship no matter how many times I walked through it. It was quite a lot to take in, especially with elderly Chinese ladies trying their best to skewer me with their selfie sticks. The French got so annoyed with it they blew Grand Place, and much of Brussels, up with cannons and mortars during the siege of 1695, no selfie sticks survived. In modern times, power has shifted away from this impressive monument to trade and across town to the Euro Quarter.

I have a theory. I often get mistaken for a local. I used to think it was my Mediterranean looks, round specs, beard and because I tan quite easily. I’m now starting to think it’s because my default facial expression is mildly pissed off. This isn’t intentional, but my thinking and concentrating faces resemble my annoyed face pretty much exactly. I think a lot when I’m walking around, and when I’m sat down to be honest, probably about whether my hat looks silly or what to have for dinner. I am also aware that tourists are annoying if you live locally. I experienced this first hand in the centre of Chester when I just wanted to get some milk and I had to push my way through crowds of Japanese and American tourists at Tesco. I forget I am a tourist when I go somewhere, so I get annoyed at all the other tourists who dared to want to go to the same place as me. (Ooo phone has just switched to Telekom.de, wish I’d kept track off all the mobile networks my phone has roamed too, just for posterity – just left Aachen soon to arrive at Cologne for my train change to Berlin HBF). My working theory is that my slight frown, plus my physical appearance equally contribute to my local-lookingness. I got asked directions a lot the last few days. There is probably a very nice German couple still wandering around the park I sent them through to get to the city centre (I checked google maps so I hope I advised them correctly). I do hope they aren’t living off berries in Parc Brussels.

Just got on my connection from Cologne station.

One final thought. I’ve just been listening to the latest ‘Reasons to be cheerful’ podcast with Ed Milliband and Geoff Lloyd. I recommend it if you have any interest in a) politics b)sticking it to the man c)pirates. They had the author of “Be more pirate: how to take on the world and win” on to talk about his book. It sounds fascinating and is at the top of my reading list when its released on 3rd May. The general concept is that anyone interested in changing the status quo should ‘be more pirate’. This doesn’t mean stealing a boat and sailing off to Barbados to relieve the Spanish of their gold, although that’s a pretty good metaphor for what it does mean.

The author has re-imagined the story of the pirates through a contemporary lens. He compares their act of rebellion against the state to the crisis of purpose felt by many young people today, and argues that breaking rules is the most effective way to progress as a society. Simply by knowing that history is written by the victors should give you pause to re-evaluate the traditional image of the cutthroat pirate pillaging and destroying without thought. There was an amount of pillaging and destroying, but taken in the context of the time this isn’t particularly shocking, re: the British Empire. The pirates were a marginalized group, pushed out of England and Wales (Bristol channel mainly), by a combination of redundancy due to technological advancement and a confusing international situation pushing them into conflicts the causes of which they did not understand or feel invested in. I won’t go into too much detail because you should listen to it yourself: https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/h2br8-5b88c/Reasons-to-be-Cheerful-with-Ed-Miliband-and-Geoff-Lloyd-Podcast

But here is a short list of initiatives brought about by the pirate community which would take hundreds of years to be replicated in the UK:

· Dual governance (not seen in the UK until the two-chamber system in parliament) – The pirates realized that power could corrupt a single person. They gave an equal level of power to the captain (in charge of strategy) & the quartermaster (in charge of culture and cohesion on a ship).

· Pay transparency – before each voyage the crew knew what share of any bounty they would receive by shares of the total.

· Gay marriage – Think how recently that has become legal in the UK. Some pirate voyages could take months, even years e.g. Drake. It was realized that close bonds would form between, the predominately male, crews. These relationships were recognized and made formal in Matelotage, a form of civil partnership.

· Although the crews were predominately male, this was certainly not exclusively the case. Just google Ann Bonny and read some of her exploits. Race, age, gender were not seen as a boundary for the pirates. It was a true meritocracy!

· The first truly global branded image – The iconic skull and crossbones is widely acknowledged as the first globally recognised brand, and still endures to this day.

· Workplace compensation. Pirate crews were insured. Lose a leg – 600 pieces of 8. This worker’s right did not get enshrined in UK for hundreds of years.

A brief summary of a truly fascinating story. After the pirate age, the co-op movement sprung up from the very same towns and villages that many of the pirates had originated from, and returned to. And guess what the founding tenets of the co-operative movement mirror, that’s right, the pirate code.

#reasonstobecheerful #bemorepirate #piratesrule #pirates #travel #travelblogger #travelwriting #brussels #cologne #berlin #europe #interrail

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judedoyle · 7 years ago

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It’s sort of a corny project, assembling songs by women and non-binary people at the end of every year. It’s a very dopey, dated, 1990s, Women Who Rock! version of feminism. I mean, I think there was a reason for that iteration of feminism — year-end lists are still dominated by men, and my favorite albums fall through the cracks just about every year for that very reason — but it begs the question of why you’d do it now, when it has been established fact for many decades that you do not have to be a man to make music.

The reason I do it is that it keeps me honest. This year’s list, for example, is all women; I don’t know of any albums by non-binary people that came out this year, though I’m sure there were some. But even within that narrower subset, I am blown away by how many kinds of songs by women there are — how wildly different women are in their voices and priorities and visions, how the word “woman” sums up so much but, somehow, doesn’t tell you anything at all. Making the list, I can start to feel like I’m assembling my own little pantheon, selecting a hall full of different archetypes or visions of what womanhood can be, so that listeners can wander through and pick the vision that best suits their needs or their own self-identification.

That task seemed particularly important this year. Trumpism insists so much on homogeneity — on the second-class status of all women, sure, but also, on the supremacy of whiteness, on heteronormativity, the importance of only admitting one specific Ivanka-esque type of woman to even exist as a person worthy of consideration. I wanted to select as many different versions of womanhood as I could, to show something about what “being a woman” could potentially mean.

Nor is this really a “best songs” list this year, if it ever was. I never agree with other writers’ year-end lists, and I can never put everything I love onto one cohesive mixtape; this started as twenty-four songs, and it could be thirty, or fifty, and still feel incomplete. There are songs I loved that are missing. What this is, I think, is a list of the songs that felt most like 2017; that reflected the mood and the predominant anxieties of the moment. They tend to fall into themes: Songs about fascism, about men, about grief, about God and magic. Putting them together is not just about lifting different women’s voices up, but about writing a kind of collective diary of one very strange year.

“2016,” Nadine Shah, Honeymoon Destination

Nadine Shah gets neglected, on the list of musicians I like, because she’s not showy. She just plugs away, making quietly excellent, sort-of-PJ-Harvey-ish songs for voice and guitar. This song starts out in that quiet, excellent mode, in an assortment of mundane details: She’s thirty, she’s depressed, she’s getting addicted to true crime TV, all her friends are on weird diets. Then history comes staggering into the frame — what is there left to inspire us with a fascist in the White House? — and suddenly, you’re aware that you’re hearing the voice of a biracial British Muslim woman living through Brexit and Trump, and that it is incredibly crucial. She pulls this trick a lot on Holiday Destination, angrily raking the state of the world through her songs, and though it’s sometimes incredibly on the nose, well, it deserves to be. This is that kind of year.

“Aryan Nation,” EMA, Exile In The Outer Ring

If Nadine Shah’s anger is elegant and British, EMA’s is scuzzy and loutish and American. I got to hear this album before its release, which makes me particularly fond of it, but I like to think I can still be objective. What stuns me about it is that it manages to pull off “populism,” as a stance, without ever overriding or ignoring identity. The narrator here is pulling away from the whiteness and ugliness of the United States under Trump — she’s “a refugee from the Aryan nation,” as she puts it — but she’s still located firmly among the 99%. “Tell me stories of famous men / I can’t see myself in them” is a demand that rings throughout the whole album, which mixes intimate songs about emotional abuse and misogynistic dude friends with big songs about downward mobility and class struggle, “identity” politics with politics-politics. In this song, the men standing outside the casino, the face of the elite, register as nearly demonic figures; they might be demons, I think, since “in their eyes are things that you and I will never know.” But their evil expands and takes on new facets, depending on who you are. There’s a double indictment: EMA’s Everyman can’t see herself in the nation’s “famous men” because they’re famous, but also because they’re male. Either way, she’s ready to burn it down.

“No Man Is Big Enough For My Arms,” Ibeyi, Ash

Oh, man. I love this song. I would probably love it for the title alone, to be honest. But I cannot escape the feeling that, were Leftist Asshole Twitter to get ahold of its existence, they would hate it more than seventeen Hamiltons combined. It’s an incredibly simple piece of music: Just the Diaz sisters singing the title phrase over clips of Michelle Obama’s speeches, and specifically her 2016 campaign speech about Trump’s history of assault and what our nation owes its girls. If the election had gone another way, or if the tone were valedictory, it absolutely wouldn’t work; it would probably represent the same corny, self-satisfied #centrism that I’m sure some podcast is accusing it of as we speak. But this isn’t a victory lap. As the mournfulness of the singing should make clear, it’s a funeral dirge: For a historic moment that passed into a historically racist backlash, for the vision of a better world that never came to pass, for a promise to our daughters that wasn’t kept. As much as Democrats loved the idea of “when they go low, we go high,” or Michelle Obama herself, that wasn’t the vision of women and girls that carried the day. We’ve all been brought low now.

“When the World Was At War We Kept Dancing,” Lana Del Rey, Lust for Life

If you told me, back in 2014, that I would be relying on Lana Del Rey for insights into the national psyche, I would have either laughed you out of the room or thrown myself out of a window to defeat your grim prophecy. Yet here we are, with a song by Lana Del Rey about American politics and the rise of fascism, and I kind of like it. Granted, her proposed solutions — they are, in order, “youth,” “truth,” and “dancing” — are all (intentionally?) vapid and Lana Del Rey-like. But the core question — is it the end of an era? Is it the end of America? — is one that’s haunted me all year. Welcome to 2017: Things are so bizarre and depressing that Lana Del Rey sounds normal.

“Let’s Generalize About Men,” Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Here’s the thing, guys: I fucking loved Al Franken.

I loved him early on. I had every crappy Al Franken book of “political humor” in high school. I listened to his radio show on Air America, even as Air America collapsed into a smoldering pile of debt and garbage. I was so thrilled to share a room with him at Netroots Nation that I texted my parents, and they texted back that they were proud of me, like it had taken some feat of exceptional skill and intelligence to be in the same room as the keynote speaker at an event. I teared up watching him talk about sexual assault in the military, how we were failing those women. And I know women who worked on his first Senate campaign. They loved Al Franken. I loved Al Franken. Al Franken could have been President, on the back of all the women who loved him.

Al Franken can roast in the pits of Hell.

The creators of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” almost certainly did not intend for this song to air the same week as the Weinstein allegations and the Shitty Media Men list. They had no control over how its lyrics — right now we’re angry and sad! It’s our right to get righteously mad at every member of the opposite sex! — would land in an environment where seemingly every famous man was publicly accused of sexual atrocity. Nevertheless, in a few short weeks, this song has become my chief emotional release valve for dealing with an endless wave of sexual trauma, and the one thing that can reliably make me laugh. This is probably the one song I’ve listened to most in 2017, and it’s not even from a “real” pop album.

I don’t know why this makes me laugh as hard as it does. I think it’s the deranged cheerfulness of the music, and how triumphant they all sound. They’re just listing lazy ’90s sitcom tropes about gender, but Gabrielle Ruiz puts so much mustard on the phrase “all men only want to have sex,” my God. And, in an age, when #notallmen routinely swing by to remind you of all the stuff they’re not doing, you have to admire the magnificent troll job of lyrics like “there are no exceptions / all three billion men are like this!”

Of course, you’re not meant to agree with them; there’s a whole trip through straight ladies’ condescending homophobia, just in case you missed the point. But when they finally get to the verse about all the other stuff that all men do — all three point six billion men, and also, Al Franken — well. It is a song that is of its moment. That kicker would no doubt be less brutal, in a pre-Weinstein universe. But it’s funnier when you believe it could be true.

“Boyfriend,” Marika Hackman, I’m Not Your Man

The concept of this song — Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl,” from the girl’s point of view — is so simple, I can’t believe it hasn’t been done before. And maybe it has! But it’s hard to believe it’s been done better, because this is, moment-for-moment, my favorite song of the year. It’s really just four jaunty minutes of Marika Hackman telling some poor schmuck about how excellently she fucked his girlfriend last night: “It’s fine ‘cause I am just a girl / it doesn’t count,” she sings, and it’s one of the most coolly vicious moments in any song this year. In another year, it might not even strike you as all that political. But in a year especially full of male sexual aggression and cluelessness, of Robert in “Cat Person” and the vanguard of the Left scoffing about “pats on the backside,” frogs using cuckolding metaphors and seemingly every single Hillary-hating talking head getting exposed for rubbing his penis on coworkers, “Boyfriend” feels like the snarl of rage that’s been bubbling under every conversation. I mean: Among other things, she is literally cucking this dude. It could be pretty gross. But I’ll allow it.

“Green Light,” Lorde, Melodrama

Sometimes you do need a fun, blockbuster pop song. Despite Lorde’s much-vaunted writing skills, several lyrics in this are just plain goofy: “We order different drinks at the same bars,” for example, is what everybody does at bars, including people who are on a date with each other. Later, she snarls that her ex is a “damn liar” for claiming to love the beach, a line which summons up a long history of passionate and incredibly specific anti-beach sentiments, and raises the serious possibility that she’s singing about Anakin Skywalker. But if you can get past the mental image of Lorde swinging through the club with Darth Vader, each of them taking sips from a single shared gin and tonic, there is a sense of propulsive longing to this song, a sense of being so excited you’re almost sad, like the twinge you feel on Christmas morning when you realize there’s nothing left to wait for. That sense of pre-emptive nostalgia defines many of the great moments on Melodrama; Lorde is both vibrating with joy over how new and full of potential her world seems to be, and sad that it won’t always feel like this. That feeling defines a lot of youth, too. Many songs aim for that epic sweep; Jack Antonoff has a retirement fund because of it, “Tonight, Tonight” and “1979” were the ones people played when I was young enough to actually feel it, but this year, that big, hopefully hopeless, Gatsby-invoking chorus was the closest to the real thing.

“Say You Do,” Tei Shi, Crawl Space

This is another record that got under-rated as the result of being simple, pretty and specific in its ambitions when the context demanded Big Statements. There’s nothing wrong with big statements, and this list is full of them. But this is four perfect minutes, no wasted space, no false steps, and it makes me happy every time I listen to it. Granted, it’s aiming for that same cheesy ‘90s mom-jams vibe that a lot of people aim for these days; viewed through a certain lens, this is basically a HAIM song. But HAIM actually released an album this year, and none of the songs were as good as this one. The whole album is like this; intentionally lovely, boundary-pushing without being self-indulgent, excellently crafted. It’s skated just under the radar, maybe precisely because of those qualities. But crises pass, and craft keeps standing.

“Frontline,” Kelela, Take Me Apart

Even simple, blockbuster pop songs are not always as simple as they seem. It was only when putting this list together that I realized all the songs I’d classified as “just fun” were about the same thing. They’re all about women contesting men’s narratives. You don’t know me like you say you do, Tei Shi insists; you’ll always deny that we’re going in circles, Kelela says here; even Lorde, God bless her, is incredibly clear on the fact that her ex does not like the beach, despite recent statements to the contrary. (Is systemic corruption at play? Is Lorde’s ex in the pocket of the powerful beach lobby? Only time will tell!) I don’t think I got the appeal of ‘90s R&B nostalgia before now; here, especially in the pre-chorus, it’s simultaneously sexy and meticulous, propulsive but airbrushed at the same time. But within that is Kelela herself, who has been gradually moving to the forefront of her own songs for years now, becoming a persona rather than just another instrument: Coming up with the Sun around me… now I’m up and I won’t be taken down, she sings. The fact that the defiance is intimate makes it no less political. I believe her.

“Deadly Valentine,” Charlotte Gainsbourg, Rest

It’s hard to come up with an elevator pitch for this one. It’s the Stranger Things soundtrack, but also a French disco, but also Charlotte Gainsbourg singing about her sister’s suicide. Any one of those elements could undermine the other, but somehow, they don’t. This year has been full of albums about grief — reasonable, given that it feels like most of us are grieving something — but the opulence of Gainsbourg’s, the way it calls on the musical history of the family to dramatize the loss of one of its members, stands out. I get so caught up in the catchiness of this one, so blinded by all the disco lights, that I can almost miss Gainsbourg mourning in the background (“I’m my own shadow / you are my little hurricane”). Which, I think, is the point.

“Los Ageless,” Saint Vincent, MASSEDUCTION

Annie Clark is a very cool musician. One of the last great cool musicians, maybe. Cool has been on the way out, though, in this century; what you find sexy and mysterious, I might just see as repressed and withholding. Clark does not like it when her audience gets too close. She doesn’t do “raw.” The emotion in her songs gets refracted through intellect, through reference, through character, through irony; often, and especially on her last album, she seems to be playing a parody of herself, as if she can only be a pop star by putting scare quotes around her own personality. This is often very appealing; it’s why people point to her as an heir to David Bowie or David Byrne (or, presumably, other celebrity Davids). It can also be frustrating, when you want to make a direct connection and she doesn’t let you. I don’t know why MASSEDUCTION is different; maybe the breakups Clark has been through have worn down her defenses, maybe working with living schmaltz factory Jack Antonoff has thawed the ice a bit. But this chorus is huge: Big, melodramatic, honest, painful. It’s not something I knew she could do.

“Jukai,” Jhene Aiko, Trip

I TOLD YOU PEOPLE ABOUT JHENE AIKO AND YOU WOULDN’T LISTEN.

Sorry! I was super into Jhene Aiko in 2014, the first year I made this list. I talked about her all the time and people looked at me like I was an idiot. Back then, she just sort of floated around, appearing on dudes’ songs. It took a while for her own aesthetic to take shape. She had vague, New-Agey ideas about spirituality; she talked a lot about weed; she made regrettable puns. (How regrettable? Her first album is called Souled Out, featuring a song called “Lyin’ King,” so, you tell me.) Even when her aesthetic finally did take hold, her label kept making incredibly cash-grabby statements about how there’d never been a Frank Ocean for the female demographic. So that was how people saw her, I think — just a stoner riding a trendy vibe. Someone you could write off.

If I told you, in 2014, that Jhene Aiko would be turning in a 22-song conceptual exploration of her brother’s death and her own substance abuse, and that it would begin with a song about Aiko entering the “Sea of Trees,” which is a common place for Japanese people to commit suicide, and that you would be hearing Jhene Aiko seriously sing lines like “I envy the dead,” and that critics would love it, I do not think you would have believed me. But here we are, with the harrowing, serious Jhene Aiko statement about death and grief that the world didn’t know it needed. Women shouldn’t have to bring themselves to their knees to be taken seriously. So the best thing to know, about Jhene Aiko, is that this was always there.

“Wildwood,” Tori Amos, Native Invader

The Tori Amos “return to form,” if you ask me, occurred way back in 2011, with Night of Hunters. But, at least since the 2014 critical re-evaluation that accompanied Unrepentant Geraldines, it’s widely agreed that she’s all the way back on her game. So if I tell you that Native Invader is great, that several songs are as good as anything she’s ever done, that’s not surprising. If I tell you that she’s still doing concept albums, but that it’s started working— this album is, in no particular order, about climate change, the Dakota access pipeline, her mother falling severely ill, and the Native American ancestors on her mother’s side of the family; in typical Tori Amos fashion, the endangered bodies of the planet and her mother and her ancestors get all tangled up together, until, by the final song, they seem like the same being — maybe that doesn’t surprise you, either. But this might: I finally get what she’s doing with the ‘70s soft-rock thing.

In plenty of Amos’ late-00s work, maybe all the way back to “Crazy” on Scarlet’s Walk, she’s tried to signify “sexiness” with what sounds like smooth tunes for dudes with heavy mustaches and ladies with feathered hair. Given that Amos gained her initial fan base by running on wild, primal intensity (this is either a song or a scene from The Exorcist; I’m honestly still not sure) her fixation on suddenly sounding mellow was bizarre and frustrating. “Crazy” worked fine, but “Sleeps With Butterflies” almost derailed her whole fucking career.

Yet here we are, with another sexy-’70s Tori Amos song. It’s mellow; it’s smooth. There are bongos on it. And yet, I know what it’s doing now. This is an album about aging and death; the death of wild nature, the all-too-possible death of her mother, the impending adulthood of her now-17-year-old daughter, and the fact that Amos, within the foreseeable future, will become part of her family’s oldest living generation. The point of the ’70s sounds, I think, isn’t that Amos believes they’re current; it’s that they are part of Amos’ youth, echoes of the songs she fell in love with as a teenager. These songs are to Tori Amos as Tori Amos records are to me — something precious from a world that has ended, a little bit of being young that she gets to carry around. “Wildwood” summons up a wild, healing, erotic relationship with Nature (don’t @ me) but also sounds as if it’s mourning that communion, and the woods, which may not be there for her own grandchildren; it sounds, like the Lorde song, as if it is about both happiness and the inevitable end of happiness, nostalgic for something that is happening right now.

“Om Rama,” Alice Coltrane, World Spirituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane

When you talk about Tori Amos, you’re always talking about God. Her worldview is deeply pagan, not in the New-Age sense, but in an earned way; when she sings to the woods as a living creature, asking it to heal her, you know she’s serious.

That was my second-favorite album of 2017. This is my favorite. I don’t know how I found it; I think it just got introduced into my Spotify feed through some algorithm. And I’m not even sure if it qualifies; sure, it was released this year, but all the actual music was recorded decades ago. It wasn’t even intended for mass release. This is Alice Coltrane’s attempt at writing devotional music for her ashram; it was meant to be heard by the ashram, and no-one else.

Yet I am hard-pressed to think of anything else like it: A female composer, from the 20th century, wrestling to communicate her own experience of God. There’s so much going on in here; traditional chanting, gospel music, ’90s synths that sound like the Twin Peaks soundtrack, what we used to call “soundscapes.” You float from one texture to another, one worldview to another, linked only by Coltrane’s own sense of the divine. It’s incredibly intimate; maybe too intimate, since you’re very aware that the state of Alice Coltrane’s soul was not intended for people outside her own religious community to pass comment on. But it’s also incredibly beautiful, a synthesis that somehow goes beyond what “God” sounds like in Western music (choirs, mostly) or Eastern appropriation, and becomes its own, new sublime.

“Tabula Rasa,” Bjork, Utopia

Here is an unexpected thing about having a baby: Bjork makes me cry now. I’d always listened to her, given that she belonged to that sacred constellation of ‘90s “alternative” ladies that makes up about 80% of my personal value system. But I tended to view her with respect, rather than love; she struck me as a cerebral artist, technically brilliant but not too intimate. Then I found myself breastfeeding at 3 AM, listening to “All is Full of Love” and crying, or singing “Hyperballad” to the baby in the bath, and I realized the emotion had always been in there. I just hadn’t felt it yet.

Utopia adds a few entries to the list of “improbable words Bjork has trilled on a record,” including “Kafkaesque” and “patriarchy.” But she’s serious about the patriarchy thing. This record is, like the title says, her utopia — her matriarchal island, where nature can still hold sway, where mothers are never defeated in their ability to protect their daughters, where, after all the dirt and awfulness of the year, we might be able to get clean. She’s less singing than she is invoking it into being.

Some of the details on this song are small, petty, specific: A bad divorce, a father who led two lives. But the whole thing centers, as stories of matriarchy always do, around a mother and her daughter. When Bjork finally starts witching out, singing her preferred solution into being — “Tabula rasa for my children / not repeating the fuck-ups of the fathers” — it’s hard to imagine a better hope to take into the new year.

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paulbenedictblog · 5 years ago

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Usa today Boy Scouts files for bankruptcy, Harvey Weinstein trial goes to jury, Nevada debate deadline: 5 things to know Tuesday

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Harvey Weinstein's sex crimes trial: Your questions answered

Usa today Mike Bloomberg qualifies for Nevada debate

Mike Bloomberg has licensed for the the upcoming Nevada debate it used to be published early Tuesday, marking the predominant time he’ll stand alongside the rivals he has up to now kept some distance from by bypassing the early balloting states and the use of his private fortune to provide an explanation for himself via tv classified ads. A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll reveals Sen. Bernie Sanders with a double-digit lead within the Democratic major contest, at 31% enhance nationally, with Bloomberg in 2d space at 19%. The aged Recent York City mayor will appear in Wednesday’s debate in Las Vegas alongside Sanders, aged Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar and aged South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Fellow billionaire and philanthropist Tom Steyer remains to be hoping to qualify. The sigh's caucus will be held on Feb. 22. To qualify for the Nevada debate, candidates must receive 10% or extra in a minimal of 4 polls between Jan. 15 and Tuesday. This comprises nationwide polls or Nevada and South Carolina sigh polls. Candidates can furthermore qualify for the debate if they earn one delegate in both Iowa or Recent Hampshire. There'll be no donor requirements.

What you should knowabout the Nevada Democratic caucuses

Idea: Nevada's altering demographics are a toll road method showing Democrats the style to earn elections

Usa today Uncommon celestial alignment to motive Mars to recede unhurried the moon

The moon will toddle at present between Earth and Mars, inflicting Mars to briefly be out of stumble on early Tuesday. This uncommon celestial alignment is is named an occultation. Early risers in North The United States can respect Mars recede unhurried the moon upright earlier than morning time. Mars will reappear from the diversified side lower than two hours later.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Learn or Portion this legend: https://www.usatoday.com/legend/knowledge/2020/02/18/boy-scouts-recordsdata-monetary grief-harvey-weinstein-trial-nevada-debate-closing date/4785597002/

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theotherpages · 4 years ago

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National Poetry Month Number 09- Eavan Borland - Becoming Anne Bradstreet

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. You can listen to the podcast version of today’s article on Spotify, ITunes, Anchor, Breaker, or Google Podcasts. Click Here to access links. (https://anchor.fm/steve-spanoudis) Look for the podcast titled National Poetry Month at the Other Pages.

My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair in Texas, Kashiana Singh in Chicago, and (Nelson) Howard Miller in Georgia. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades.

It is not uncommon for poets to write poems about the art of writing poems, or about other poets, especially those they admire. In the category of light verse, where humor and sarcasm predominate, poems about people they despise are often common.

But today’s piece by Irish poet Eavan Borland is definitely a case of strong admiration, for a poet I have also always admired. First we’ll talk about Anne Bradstreet, the woman who is the subject of the poem.

Bradstreet, who lived from 1612 until 1672 CE, was the first person residing in the Americas to become recognized and published as a poet. This was at a time when just getting to the Colonies was perilous, and life there was harsh, at best. Being sent to the Colonies as a punishment was considered by some to be the equivalent of a death sentence.

We have several of her works online at theotherpages.org (https://theotherpages.org/poems/poem-ab.html#bradstreet) (we should definitely have more; I’ll work on that over the summer).

That she lived to age sixty was quite uncommon for her time and place. That she became a poet, and managed to get her works published in England, makes her unique for the times. Particularly unique, when you realize that, in the Puritanical culture of Colonial Massachusetts, writing was considered a highly improper activity for a woman. The headwinds against her were considerable.

Eavan Borland (who was born in 1944 in Dublin, and died there in 2020), was a professor-in-residence at Stanford University from 1996 onward, and split her time between California and Ireland. She wrote many poems, essays, and pieces of literary criticism. Much of her writing focused on the everyday lives of women, and the hurdles they faced in a male-dominated society, something that Anne Bradstreet herself would have no-doubt appreciated, although she also took on painful topics including domestic violence, in common with Wednesday’s piece by Maria Nazos.

Today’s short poem, Becoming Anne Bradstreet, is a meditation by Borland on what it must have been like to be Anne Bradstreet, and the kinship she feels towards her, and understanding of what she must have gone through in life. Each time she reads Bradstreet’s poems, according to her own poem, she feels hope and optimism, and a connectedness:

Mare Hibernicum leads to Anne Bradstreet's coast.

A blackbird leaves her pine trees

And lands in my spruce trees.

I open my door on a Dublin street.

Her child/her words are staring up at me

Boats sailing the Irish Sea (that’s Mare Hibernicum in Latin) visible from Dublin, can be sailed all the way to American shores. The preceding line may seem misplaced,

The ship's rail freezes.

But I think the visceral detail suggests she’s visualizing that passage, perhaps in winter, for Bradstreet, or maybe, imaginatively, for herself.

The ordinary things and everyday life that Bradstreet wrote are the same as those outside her own front door. As she reads Bradstreet’s verses, and tries to understand her life, she comments that she herself is:

An Irish poet watching an English woman

Become an American poet.

And that, all by itself, is probably as succinct as any statement on the universality of poetry as a medium.

The full text of the poem is available online at the Poetry Foundation (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55336/becoming-anne-bradstreet), along with the opportunity to listen to Borland herself reading it.

Thanks for Listening

You can find more at theotherpages.org, or at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr.

#theotherpages.org #the other pages #national poetry month #napowrimo #poem #poems #poet #poets #poetry #Eavan #Borland #Eavan Borland #Irish #Anne Bradstreet #Bradstreet #Becoming Anne Bradstreet #homage

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usatrendingsports · 7 years ago

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WWE Uncooked outcomes, recap: Ronda Rousey and Roman Reigns impress in scorching present

If the general execution of Sunday’s Elimination Chamber left emotions of hit or miss, Monday’s episode of Uncooked felt much more like midseason kind on the Highway to WrestleMania. In a three-hour episode that was virtually all killer (with little to no filler), WWE packed in a ton of swerves and storyline developments as the ultimate feuds start to take form 41 days out from WrestleMania 34 in New Orleans.

Essentially the most aggressive facet of the present turned out to be which angle would exit as essentially the most compelling. Ronda Rousey continued to maneuver the chains as her storyline reverse Triple H and Stephanie McMahon continued to take form. John Cena additionally toyed with the hearts of followers by difficult The Undertaker to “The Present of Exhibits,” solely to modify course with one other reveal. However the spotlight of the evening was a “shoot to thrill” promo from Roman Reigns that was geared toward Brock Lesnar’s part-time schedule and real-life tease of future plans in UFC. The neatly written takedown firmly shifted the polarizing Reigns into the function of babyface because the probably predominant occasion to WrestleMania produced a memorable opening chapter.

Huge fan of WWE? You should definitely subscribe to my podcast In This Nook with Brian Campbell the place I break down the whole lot you must know every week.

Ronda Rousey faces the music vs. The Authority

One evening after Rousey put Triple H by a desk and obtained a smack to the face from McMahon, the events concerned returned to the ring in Uncooked’s last section. The Authority defined that Uncooked common supervisor Kurt Angle’s divulge to Rousey that this was all a setup by saying he was “hallucinating” from double pneumonia. Referencing Rousey’s signed contract, McMahon additionally mentioned that Rousey now “reviews to me, which suggests WWE owns Ronda Rousey.”

Rousey got here sprinting out to the ring in search of a battle, however Angle adopted proper behind pleading together with her to listen to him out. Angle informed Rousey that coming to WWE was the very best determination she ever made. She countered by saying, “I would like this greater than something, however I’ve by no means been slapped earlier than in my life. I refuse to be disrespected and I’m nobody’s property.” Angle responded by altering course and admitting he misheard The Authority and lied on Sunday evening, telling Rousey he is sorry however he wants his job. Nonetheless not keen to place the slap behind her, Rousey ordered McMahon to apologize or “I can’t hesitate to tear your arm out of its socket.” McMahon obliged in dramatic trend. However as The Authority turned to exit, Triple H cold-cocked Angle and McMahon walked over his fallen physique.

Whereas Rousey nonetheless has an extended approach to go in her development on the microphone, she stays plausible in presenting herself as an intense, bodily risk. Inserting her right into a well-written feud reverse three confirmed performers can be no coincidence. Identical to on Sunday evening, there is likely to be parts to choose aside by way of the execution of the section, however the total story seems headed in place. That’s what’s most vital, and it is being informed at a average tempo. Anticipating Rousey to step in and be nearly as good or higher than the corporate’s high feminine superstars is simply not lifelike. However regardless of the presence of her full-time contract, if you evaluate her as an alternative to what she truly is — a star introduced in to assist promote WrestleMania — you shortly understand she’s already forward of the curve.

John Cena makes a activate his Highway to WrestleMania

One evening after a loss at Elimination Chamber he deemed “demoralizing,” Cena gave an extended speech about how failure made him who he’s immediately. “You both keep down otherwise you determine it out,” he mentioned. “I figured it out.” As a way to repair his downside of not having a Highway to WrestleMania, Cena briefly popped the gang by issuing a problem to The Undertaker earlier than shortly providing a swerve. “I am informed that match is just not taking place as a result of it is inconceivable,” Cena mentioned. With the gang confused, the free-agent Cena revealed that his “actual street” to April eight in New Orleans is by going to SmackDown Reside. “I am going to do no matter it takes to hopefully earn a spot at WrestleMania,” Cena mentioned. “See you tomorrow evening.”

The tease of falsely asserting an Undertaker match was not solely a robust swerve, it might have been WWE’s approach of testing the heartbeat of followers earlier than pulling the set off. Sending Cena to SmackDown can be a robust use of his “free agent” storyline standing, which was created to spice up rankings on each reveals and can probably just do that on Tuesday. Contemplating the rumors that Taker is in a significantly better place bodily than he was one 12 months in the past due to surgical procedure, do not be stunned if we hear from The Deadman earlier than this story concludes.

Roman Reigns work-shoots on absent Brock Lesnar

Contemporary off a victory at Elimination Chamber, Reigns spoke about fact and the way he is a person of his phrase for saying he would face Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania for the common title and backing it up. He then started his personal model of a “pipe bomb” promo in what gave the impression to be a labored shoot geared toward The Beast. After referencing how a lot warmth he’ll probably face for saying it, Reigns known as out Lesnar for not exhibiting as much as Uncooked regardless of being scheduled. He additionally referenced the real-life photograph that UFC president Dana White tweeted out late Sunday of Lesnar in a UFC T-shirt.

“Brock Lesnar is a bit of crap who hides behind his contract,” Reigns mentioned. “I am sick of it; we’re all sick of it.” After saying there is a tremendous line between enterprise and respect, Reigns mentioned, “I am going to say this proper now: I do not respect Brock Lesnar, and I rattling positive do not worry that bitch.” Mic drop.

Oh heck yeah. Regardless of whether or not you most well-liked his work reverse Cena final fall, it would not be a stretch to name this the very best promo Reigns has ever delivered. From good writing to his shoot-like supply, Reigns was at his highest in delivering the increase. Credit score WWE for enjoying up the trustworthy realities of Lesnar’s unsure future due to his contract being up after WrestleMania amid rumors of a flip again to combined martial arts. For a predictable feud that was telegraphed 12 months within the making, this can be a juicy approach to kick it off and construct buzz.

What else occurred on Uncooked?

Is Asuka going to face Alexa Bliss at WrestleMania? Though this match was by no means formally introduced, it was referenced a number of occasions off-hand. A lot for Asuka, the Royal Rumble winner, getting to decide on her opponent like Shinsuke Nakamura did. Bliss, with Mickie James in tow, opened the present by heckling everybody she defeated in Sunday’s inaugural Elimination Chamber match. She additionally reduce into Asuka, who got here to object. After Bliss made enjoyable of Asuka’s poor English expertise to her face, Nia Jax ran in and a brawl shortly ensued. Sasha Banks and Bayley joined the social gathering with Bliss and Jax standing tall ultimately.

Asuka, Sasha Banks & Bayley def. Alexa Bliss, Mickie James (by way of submission) & Nia Jax: Predictably, a by-product six-woman tag match ensued. Banks and Bayley continued to stroll out their leftover uneasiness from Sunday as Banks hit her former greatest pal with a tough tag and Bayley later reciprocated by refusing to let a weary Banks tag her in. Banks lastly hit Asuka with the new tag which led to a knee bar/armbar submission on James to pressure the faucet.

Bray Wyatt destroys Heath Slater: Wyatt was so zealous in attacking Slater and his sidekick Rhyno, their singles match by no means received began. After taking each out, Wyatt grabbed Slater and maniacllly danced with him earlier than hitting Sister Abigail. He closed by slicing a promo on Matt Hardy, blaming him for inflicting him to harm these harmless males. “You led them to slaughter,” Wyatt mentioned. “The nice struggle is way from over. You’ll face me once more.”

Kurt Angle places a hurdle in The Miz’s ‘Mania plans: An in-ring promo from The Miz, who claimed he is 62 days away from changing into the longest-reigning intercontinental champion in WWE historical past, featured complaining concerning the disrespect he has been proven about being not noted of the WrestleMania predominant occasion. The Miz referenced an argument he had with the Uncooked GM that ended with Angle cryptically mentioning that Miz’s opponent tonight “would possibly decide who you face at WrestleMania.”

Seth Rollins def. The Miz by way of pinfall: Rollins lived as much as his new “Monday Evening Rollins” nickname in a giant approach, hitting a sequence of spectacular aerial strikes from a blockbuster and superplex/Falcon Arrow to consecutive suicide dives. The end was probably the night’s high in-ring second as Rollins adopted a Revolution Knee with an absurd frog splash from the highest rope, leaping three-quarters of the way in which throughout the ring to complete The Miz. Rollins’ celebration was arrogantly interrupted by Finn Balor, who soaked up the gang’s cheers on the ring apron.

Finn Balor def. The Miz by way of pinfall: Regardless of the dearth of an evidence as to why The Miz was compelled to wrestle once more, his match with Balor was immediately halted by an assault from The Miztourage. The Good Brothers ran out to set off a brawl and defend Balor. Angle immediately appeared on the large display to eject the corners of each side and restart the Miz-Balor match with the caveat that Miz settle for or “you will not be going to WrestleMania.” The match featured loads of close to falls from each till Balor hit his Coup de Grace for the 1-2-Three. Afterwards, Rollins informed Renee Younger backstage that Balor was making an attempt to indicate him up earlier than revealing his hope of going through The Miz in a title match at WrestleMania.

Uncooked Tag Crew Championship — The Bar (c) def. Titus Worldwide 2-Zero (Greatest 2-of-Three falls match): A distraction from Cesaro off the opening bell helped Sheamus hit a Brogue Kick on Titus O’Neil for the short pin. The second fall was a lot tougher to come back by as Apollo showcased his acrobatics a number of occasions to assist Titus Worldwide rally. The end, nonetheless, got here off the heels of one other Cesaro interference. The Bar then hit Apollo with their double-team finisher off the second rope to brush the match. After studying off latest tag groups they’ve crushed, a cocky Sheamus introduced in the course of the postfight interview, “Who’s there to face if there isn’t a one left to beat?”

Braun Strowman def. Elias by way of disqualification: The lengthy, methodical beatdown from Strowman was ended when Elias crawled below the ring. He emerged with a hearth extinguisher to spray Strowman and pressure the DQ. Regardless of being partially blinded, Strowman chased Elias up the ramp. However his try at slamming Elias by the announce desk was stopped by a raking of Strowman’s eyes. Following an extended backstage chase, Elias escaped by the open storage doorways. Simply as Strowman gave up his pursuit, a limo pulled up in entrance of him. The digicam panned on the door however nobody in the end emerged, dropping a tease for the long run.

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