#we met in shakespeare & co at a poetry reading

[kvothes]

.

[tteokdoroki]

hi!! saw your requests were open, can i ask hcs for todoroki, hawks, bakugou and tamaki with a touchy drama queen fem!reader who they have a crush on? (separate)

— touchy-feely | bnha crush headcanons.

⇝ pairing(s): katsuki bakugou, shoto todorki, tamaki amajiki, keigo takami x fem!reader

⇝ rating: suitable for all.

⇝ genre: fluff.

⇝ warning(s): please read ! loads of fluff ?? and some cursing.

⇝ author’s note(s): thank you so much for this request lovely!  it was actually my first so i hope i was able to do it justice for you ( sorry they’re kinda long)  !! also thank you for 300+ followers :( i adore you so much  <3

⇝ masterlist | requests

ok so, we all know that baku despite his bark bark grrrr aggressive nature is really just a sucker for cuddles and shit.

he loves that he lives for it!!

probably cos he never really got many hugs in his childhood ?? idk

so naturally with him having a crush on you all he really wants is for your attention to be on him

All The Time.

again going back to baby bakugou he probably has some kinda thing for praise an attention because everyone praised his quirk when he was younger.

but since he’s stubborn he’ll try to reject your touch most of the time and act like he doesn’t enjoy it when in reality he does.

he tries to hide the angry pink on his cheeks when you ruffle his hair in front of class or when you squeeze his booty on the walk back to dorms.

it’s your daily routine to wake him up with a pick up line during breakfast, some of your classmates think it’s over the top but you like how boom boom boy blushes.

katsuki’s favourite is when you lean your head on his shoulder during class movie night 🥺

he pretends that your hands aren’t intertwined under the blankets too

bakugou enjoys these moments the most it’s like you’re both calm around one another ??

kirishima and kaminari always tease him about it which makes bakugou wanna push you away.

A MISTAKE !!!

being the drama queen that you are you’d probably turn on the fake tears, get those water works RUNNING to the point where poor katsuki is all flustered and doesn’t know what to do.

“QUIT YOUR CRYING YOU FUCKIN DUMBASS”

“DO YOU NOT LIKE CUDDLING WITH ME KATSUKI?? IS THAT IT??”

poor bby just wants reach out and Hold you.

also wants you to shut the fuck up.

will probably grab your hand and yank you into his room for a cuddle session. “stop your crying, shitty girl. it’s giving me a damn headache.”

overall bakugou would probably be very flustered by your random dramatic personality but would get used to your displays of affection over time.

he doesn’t really think much of how dramatic you are.

at least you don’t yell at him like bakugou does.

todo is probably more worried about you than anything ?? because you go from 0-100 in a matter of minutes and that confuses him.

he’s also confused by the butterflies in his liddol tummy when you squish his cheeks and call him a pretty boy before anyone’s settled in for class.

like ??? why do you insist on pointing that out EVERY DAY

:( please tell him he’s pretty bc he doesn’t think it’s true

it doesn’t show but every time you wrap your arms around him to give an overly dramatic detailed account of how beautiful and talented shoto todoroki is he literally short circuits inside his brain

WHY DO YOU KEEP PRAISING HIM!!!

pls don’t stop bc poor baby missed out on all these good feelings.

maybe one of the main reasons you do it :(

todoroki starts attempting to ?? get touchy with you back ??

he knows that he’s fond of you but probably has never experienced a crush before so he doesn’t know if he should return these gestures.

you make it a daily habit to kiss shoto on the cheek and tell him how dashingly handsome he looks while reciting some kinda shakespeare poetry

he decides to ask natsuou what’s going on

Bad Bad Idea

big bro todoroki is like “this girl?? she’s in love With You?? you gotta confess to her right back!!!”

shoto: what is love?

so the next day in class you’re heading straight for the dual haired boy and he is Ready He Has a Plan

before you even reach him he’s grabbing your cheeks and pressing a KISS right on your lips.

“i think you’re very pretty too, miss ln.”

?:&/@-@/9&:

the whole class Freezes ??

and you being the drama queen that you are COLLAPSE in front of everyone because THE shoto todoroki just kissed you.

bby doesn’t even know what he did 🥺

probably ends with you two confessing to one another in recovery girls office.

you make a mental note to thank natsu later.

FJDJDJD here comes the big DUMB bird brain.

we all know that keigo is literally the biggest drama queen out there. he’s a pretty bird and he basks in attention no matter who it’s coming from.

you’d be similarly matched in personality so maybe that’s why he started to fall for you so hard and so fast.

i think you’d both be very touchy with one another, as part of your friendship.

whether that helping the bird with his eyeliner, touching at his stubbled chin to keep his face still or him pretending to peck at you by nibbling on your cheeks and shoulders.

you even squawk back at him!!!

keigo is very touch starved so i think he’d just like always having your hands on him and vice versa

sometimes he’ll do stuff to make you overreact like steal food from your plate when you guys have take out together

or bump into you on patrol

you’ll do either one of two things;

A) scream at him through laughter obnoxiously loud

B) ruffle his feathers a bit and play with his big boy wings.

usually it’s both

“stop laughing at me >:(“

you literally burst into fits of giggles when keigos wings puff up because of how flustered he IS

and of course for that dramatic flare you add some tears of joy.

kei loves how tight you hold him when he takes you for a fly even if you’re spouting a bunch of nonsense about how he’s gonna drop you and how you’re going to die.

probably drops you on purpose to see how you’d react.

when you land he laughs at how you kiss the ground and hug it mumbling something about how “i thought i’d never see you again,”

kei has to hold your hand while you get used to being on solid ground again.

adores the weight of your palm in his.

out of all the boys i think keigo would be the least shocked by your personality and your affections

it all kinda feels normal to him and that’s why he has a major crush on you.

BOY!!!

okay so this little bean has probably had a crush on you for like his whole life idk maybe you were childhood friends.

but then y’all met mirio and he thought that he’d never stand a chance.

pls your hints would go SO SO over his head.

you are Loud so very loud which contrasts with tama’s quiet and shy personality. so in his mind itd make sense for you to fall for mirio instead of him.

so he pushes his feelings for you deeep deep down.

you’re a naturally affectionate person, maybe a little overly affectionate but that just comes with your extremely over the top personality.

but around tamaki, it’s like your affinity for touching people increases by a tenfold.

you’re always clinging into him :(( despite the red tips to his elvin ears and you always smother his face with little kisses whenever you greet him.

of course tamaki loves your attention, no matter how shy it makes him— you’ve always got your hands on him and that makes him feel better.

it makes him feel like he has a chance with you.

the way you bounce up to him every day with a huge smile on your face just makes him Fall For You.

but tama struggles to see the good in himself and always compares the way you act around him to mirio.

baby over thinks :(

one day he’s hanging out with mirio and the blonde kinda goes “when are you gonna ask out yn?”

???? CONFUSED LITTLE ELF BOY

“she likes you, didn’t you know that?”

starts to return your affections a bit more n loves how excited you are when he holds your hand back !!

“EVERYONE TAMAKI AMAJIKI IS HOLDING MY HAND I REPEAT HES HOLDING MY HAND!!”

your feelings for one another go unspoken but he feels better now that he knows you like him and him only.

[shirophantomvox]

Leorio, Hisoka, Illumi, and Chrollo Head Canons #2

What’s up y’all! Thank you so much to the people who have given me feedback about what posts you all would like to see! This post will be about the “Adult Trio” and Leorio about how they would help their significant other with a subject in college. This one is a good suggestion! I’m going to incorporate fluff in this, as I am a sucker for fluff. I hope you all enjoy this! I most certainly do. This post is about 2687 words but don't worry, it's worth the read! These head canons came from my mind its a coincidence that some of these pictures match the thoughts. Portentous (old English) means wonderful or marvelous (in modern English) FYI: I am thinking about creating a discord server for both Voltron and Hunter x Hunter fans. I don’t know how to use the fancy perks of discord yet, so if you know how to and can help me out, send me a message! Alright, let’s get to it! Obviously these images are from Pinterest.

Discord Server for Voltron and HxH fans!

Leorio

“Mr. Leorio”, as we all know, is a sharp guy. He dresses in a suit, carries a suitcase, and wants to be a doctor. This man knows everything about academics, especially math and science. He will need to know these subjects to be a successful medical doctor.

Leorio received an A- in Calculus II and a B+ in Organic Chemistry. He was the only one that passed with flying colors while everyone else barely made it. He didn’t gloat in their faces but as soon as he got into the hallway he jumped for joy.

He was extremely happy about his progress and counted the days until graduation even though that was in 5 years. Wow! Don’t we love graduate school?!

He deserved the high grades because he spent countless nights studying missing parties, football games, and being with you just to make sure he was on the right track to graduating on time.

As we all know, Leorio wanted to pursue this career because he witnessed his best friend dying in front of him powerless to save him. The care for his friend would have been too expensive. Obtaining his degree was in honor of his friend; he’d save countless children, women, and men who’d all thank him for his hard work.

Leorio didn’t socialize much, but he did find himself hanging around a group of classmates that were a part of a co-ed fraternity that provided information on scholarship money for graduate school and job opportunities. This is where he met you. You didn’t want to be a doctor but instead wanted to be a computer scientist and decided to volunteer for this fraternity job fair.

As he rejoiced, his smile faded when he saw you walking down the hallway; tears falling from your face not caring who stared at you. He quickly walked up to you, put his arm around your back, and gave you a soft hug.

“What’s the matter,” he asks.

You were failing Calculus, a class you’ve been taking since the 12th grade but for some reason, you couldn’t pass it. Everyone else had A’s and B’s, while you had a D. D’s aren't accaetable in college; most make you retake the class.

“Don’t worry. I’ve just passed my midterm. I can help you study. You’ll pass; trust me.”

Later on that evening, he kept his promise but gave it a unique twist. He kept the lights off and lit 4 Yankee-sized candles in the room that smelled like Lavender. In the background, he had piano jazz playing on his speaker. You felt confused for a moment. You and Leorio weren’t necessarily dating but you both flirted with each other here and there. He wasn’t a social butterfly, but he felt comfortable talking to you.

“Um...what’s the music for?”

“It helps me concentrate. Believe it or not, it helps my brain flow. You like it don’t you?”

“No, actually I don’t.” Truth be told you loved it but you wanted to pull his strings a little. He looked up with a confused look.

“Ok. I’ll turn it off.”

“I'm kidding! It’s great!”

Whenever he cannot solve a Calculus question, he reviews similar problems from Algebra II. He applies this knowledge to your problem.

“Perform the indicated function evaluations for f(x)=3−5x−2x^2 . I’ll solve the first part for an example: f(6+t) simply means you will exchange “x” for 6+t. It will look like f(6+t)=3-5(6+t)-2(6+t)^2=-49 . You’d distribute -5 and -2 to the numbers inside of the brackets in which they are next to.”

Wow, that was easy! Wait, not he must think you’re stupid.

“You must think I’m stupid, don’t you?”

“Of course not! It took me a while to understand it too. You’ll apply the same knowledge for the rest.”

After what seemed like 4 hours (which was 2), you finally finished your homework! It was probably wrong but at least you made it past the 1st question! As you blew out the candles and turned on your LED lights instead, you see Leorio sleeping on your couch. Something about his soft face made you smile and place your hand over your heart.

“My little doctor,” you whispered to yourself.

“Well, come give this doctor some company then. I’m freezing over here!”

The throw blanket was large enough for you both. Snuggling on the couch was a great end to a stressful day.

Chrollo

To everyone else Chrollo was “Boss” or “Boss Man” but to you, he was Chrollo. Big C was known for his love for poetry and language.

He read poetry any chance he had at lunch and even dinner. It had gotten so bad that you had to tell him for the millionth time “No books at the table!”

Given his past, he always read at least 2 hours a day or one book a week. Reading is what got him through the day.

He was staying in your dorm for the day to relax because he had taken and passed his midterms to. The young thief thought about hiding in the closet but he didn’t because he sensed that you’d be tense because of midterms.

As you walked through the door, you looked angry, so angry that you could punch a wall. He immediately rose to his feet, threw his arms straight out in front of him, and motioned for you to stop. You just stared at him blankly.

“Come here,” he said like you, on cue, melted in his arms. He was warm and the deepness of his cooing voice vibrated against your neck. “What’s the problem?”

“I’m failing this stupid Shakespeare class!”

“Really?”

“Yes and if I don’t pass this midterm I’m going to fail the class for the 3rd time. I want to drop out! Who needs this scam anyway?!”

Chrollo held you a bit longer until you were ready to sit down and get to business. You pulled out your college’s book about Shakespeare plays and how he used Old English. Chrollo was the perfect man for the job! He’s read Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet several times!

Chrollo read a few stanzas and explained them. He then had you read some on your own and explain them...still you can’t.

He notices the problem immediately. He catches you snuggling comfortably against his toned arm, nearly falling asleep.

Chrollo laid at the very corner of the couch as you lay horizontally placing your head against his chest. You were comfortable but you weren’t able to focus. He notices this and slightly demands that you go sit at the table. When it came to academics, he was serious.

For as long as he had been reading, he has an arsenal of vocabulary words ready to be of use. He created flashcards for you and had you flip them over for nearly an hour. You start to memorize the words!

But you’re not done yet.

“Say the word ‘portentous’.”

“Por-ten-trious…?”

“No. Por-ten-tas.”

“Tias…?”

He moved his chair next to you, just an inch away from your face. He cups your mouth and moves it as he speaks again. This wasn’t a hard clutch, it was soft and he wasn’t irritated but he could sense that you were becoming irritated.

“Por-ten-tas,” he said again.

Instead of letting your cheeks go, his eyes diverted to your lips. They were moist and plump, ready to be met by his.

“Your lips are gorgeous. Kisseth me quite quaint.”

Oh no. Look at the monster you’ve created.

Chrollo created a reward system. Whenever he did things right as a child, he was rewarded with money and jewels. For every word you pronounced and defined correctly, he kissed you once. For each word you got correct in a row, he’d kiss you twice.

Soon enough he had kissed you so much that you couldn’t see straight!

The kisses worked because you passed your midterm! Each kiss placed a stain in your brain that made you remember the definition and how to pronounce it.

You and Chrollo celebrated by drinking champagne and listened to him read Sonnet 23 and 57.

Hisoka

As unusual as it seems, Hisoka is gifted when it comes to Chemistry specifically. That is why you two work well together...there is some chemistry going on between you two.

His hair down and his glasses were his alter ego, it was something that made him act completely different than what you were used to.

When you all were freshmen, he would skip class, attend parties, and would be hungover almost every week but once he was called into the Dean’s office, he changed.

You slightly missed that edgy side of him, but you enjoyed having a serious beau.

Hisoka is a social butterfly and is the life of the conversation and you loved him for it but sometimes it was awkward.

While he was chatting away about Calcium (Ca) and Iron (Fe), you stood there nodding like an idiot. You had NO IDEA about what he was talking about and that is why you were going to drop your chemistry class.

“I saw an imbecile put aluminum foil in the microwave and it burst into flames. How did they not know that Microwaves are the radio waves falling under frequency around 2500 megahertz? Any metallic object detected by radio waves inside the microwave acts as a reflector of radio waves.”

You shove his arm hard. He was acting arrogant in front of his friends. You were used to this but it got on your nerves. You made mistakes, everyone does!...even those that almost burn down the entire dorm room.

You two leave the party and head to his dorm room. Once you were settled, you released a can of anger and threw it all over your boyfriend.

“Hisoka? You just humiliated me.”

“Oh? No one knows that I was talking about you, my dear.”

“Don’t ‘my dear’ me! I asked for your help and you’re ignoring me. I don’t appreciate that. I didn’t ignore you when you sprained your ankle, did I?”

“No, you didn’t, dear. I supposed I have a few hours to kill. What do you need help with?”

Hisoka’s way of studying was much different from other students. He exercises like crazy before he opens his textbook.

He listens to EDM instrumentals while on the treadmill and when he lifts weights. You weren’t standing there like a trophy, he made you lift too.

“Being healthy will help your brain flow more easily. Lift this dumbbell as heavy as you can.”

He ran a mile on the track upstairs. Sweat dripped from his face like he had been standing outside in the rain.

By the time you returned to his dorm, you were beyond tired. You laid your head on his pillow but just as you closed your eyes, he pulled you up on your feet.”

“Not on my watch,” he tutted. “It’s chemistry time.”

You were having trouble memorizing Chemical Formulas and this by far was the most difficult concept you had come across.

To make you stay awake, he turned on a bright LED light and faced it towards the table. The bright light nearly made your head fall off from the pain it reflected in your eyes.

Hisoka grabbed his book and began to write down the major chemicals on the periodic table and their charges.

“Pay attention to the following abbreviations and charges: Calcium is Ca, Chloride is Cl+2, Carbide is C+2, and Carbon Dioxide is CO+2. Read these over and I’ll test you again.”

He did just that but you still weren’t understanding. You were ready to give up.

Stupid scam. Why do I need a piece of paper to determine what I can do? You thought to yourself. Well, it’s obvious. If you can’t do the work now, what makes you think you can do it at a job? Harsh, I know.

“Let me try this,” He said. He carried you to his bedroom and gently placed you on it. He took off his shirt and removed his glasses. “Aluminum has a charge of +3 and Oxygen has -2. If there were three of me and two of my clones disappeared, how many of me are left?”

“Just you, right? One”

“Correct! Excellent.”

Wow, everything started making sense once he took his shirt off.

From then, he just inserted himself into the equation and then it started to make sense! He apologized for running his mouth earlier and promised to keep any more secrets between you two. The night ended with you sleeping in his bed wrapped in a cotton blanket just cuddling and that was it. And bam! You slept as sound.

Illumi

Dating the “hot” quiet history buff was a flex of its own. Sure Illumi didn’t talk to anyone besides you, but it didn’t matter. People swooned if he looked in their direction.

History was a popular major during your era. People were not like their grandparents; they wanted to learn about other cultures besides their own. Illumi’s specialty was in world history and civilizations. The class was very interesting to you but there was so much information, you could barely process it.

Illumi often wrote his essays in one day proofread and all! He often charged people to look their essays over.

One time he made $500 in one year!

Glancing at your transcripts, he notices that you have a C- and offers to help.

“Why are you looking through my stuff?”

Hey, he’s your boyfriend! But still, he should ask.

“Sorry. It was up on the screen,” he said, throwing his hands in the air.

You began to blush in embarrassment. The hottest smartest man in the building now knew that you were failing one of the easiest classes on campus.

Placing his thumb under your chin, he lifted your head to meet his gaze. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I can help you.”

“How? I am so behind! I zoned out after chapter 2!”

“We’ll watch a movie.”

“Oh, God! Not one from PBS is it?!”

“Yes. How else are you supposed to learn?”

He turns on the movie and allows you to lay your head on his shoulder but not too much. He is aware of your tricks and he wants you to pay attention.

Every 15 minutes, he pauses the movie and asks you checkpoint questions. If you got them wrong, you had to stand up with your underclothes on (t-shirt and shorts) in the cool room for 10 minutes. If you got the questions right, he allows you to lay more comfortably. You were already in your underclothes but you were under the blanket.

He made you write down key definitions and the embarrassment of each section.

After the movie, he blindfolds you and reads out a term. Surprisingly, you got them all correct!

As a reward for your past midterm, he takes you to dinner at a restaurant where he slips a promise ring on your finger containing your birthstone.

[theoutcastrogue]

Besides the Mafia, what exactly is a "thieves' guild"? Is it something D&D invented?

Fritz Leiber invented it, D&D pilfered it.

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #1: “Ill met in Lankhmar”, art by Mike Mignola

Thieves' House

There's a Thieves' Guild in the city of Lankhmar, where Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (the OG fantasy rogue) operate, and it's first mentioned in the short story Thieves' House (1943). Ankh-Morpork and its own Thieves' Guild (which hilariously operates like a proper historical guild, recognised and regulated by the state) is inspired by Lankhmar, too.

"The house had a bad reputation. People said it was the den in which the thieves of Lankhmar gathered to plot and palaver and settle their private bickerings, the headquarters from which Krovas, the reputed Master Thief, issued his orders—in short, the home of the formidable Thieves' Guild of Lankhmar."

The Guild is powerful, merchants pay tribute to it, and Krovas the guildmaster just hates it when independent thieves attempt to make a buck, too. In the story, said independent thieves are our (anti-)heroes, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. And that notion of a trade monopoly obviously comes from historical guilds, whose entire point was that no one was allowed to practice a trade unless they were members of the relevant guild.

Rogue Literature

So where did Fritz Leiber get the idea of a Thieves' Guild? I can't know for sure, but his parents were Shakespearean actors and he was into Elizabethan theatre, and do you know the book The Rogues and Vagabonds of Shakespeare's Youth? If Leiber did, he knew rogue literature, and that explains both Thieves' Guilds (not the term, just the content, the term is all his) and Thieves' Cant.

English rogue literature is an early modern (rather than anything medieval) and largely urban genre, which appears around 1600 with pamphlets describing the wicked ways and language of beggars, thieves, and conmen, all out to get the upstanding, respectable, and all too gullible good people of (usually) London. Around 1700, the first cant dictionaries appear, and Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders (1722) is probably the first novel of the genre. Meanwhile, there are a lot of plays that are at least inspired or informed by it, from Shakespeare himself to John Gay's The Beggars' Opera.

1600s

Now, if we take the early Elizabethan pamphlets at face value (and we should NOT, since all our sources were outsiders who aimed to shock – and titillate! – their law-abiding audience), thieves and beggars were organised in associations or fraternities with strict hierarchies. There were ranks and offices, and elaborate initiation rites and oaths to the devil, and codes of conduct and chains of command, and even kings of thieves with prima nocta privileges. And lots and lots of greed.

Most of that is bullshit, it's made up or wildly exaggerated. Some of it makes a lot of sense, though, if you take out the fanciful stuff. A certain level of organisation is necessary for urban crime to work. After all, thieves need fences and beggars need real estate (I mean, they need to call dibs on their spots and somehow ensure that other beggars will respect that). And we should keep in mind that rogues (people without masters) and vagabonds (people without homes) were a world apart from respectable society: not only did they not enjoy whatever protections the state extended to its subjects, but they were considered criminal elements merely for existing without masters and without homes. So their only recourse was each other. A fraternity where all the thieves of London somehow worked together is mere fancy, but there was certainly a lot of mutual aid (if you were lucky) and internal exploitation (if you weren't).

1700s

As we move on to the 1700s, London's criminal underworld booms as much as the city itself, and the pamphlets (and now the newspapers!) have plenty of material to talk about. And for a hot second, there arguably is a thieves' guild, run by a sinister guildmaster, a criminal mastermind who controls the thieves of London with one hand – and with the other, serves law-abiding people and retrieves their stolen property for but a small fee. His name is Jonathan Wild, and like Lankhmar's Krovas, he hates it when independent thieves try to make a living in his city. And also he's an utter bastard.

The infamous Thief-Taker General and his elaborate organisation may have been an inspiration for Fritz Leiber's Thieves' Guild, or perhaps it was second-hand from Professor Moriarty, who was also partly inspired by Jonathan Wild.

Elsewhere

Meanwhile, in 17th century Istanbul, the Thieves' Guild ("the corporation of thieves and footpads who... pay tribute to the two chief officers of the police") and the Beggars' Guild (which had a "sheikh", i.e. a leader, a guildmaster) once joined a very official procession of the guilds on the city streets. Or at least, that's what The Book of Travels says. But all the research I've read about Ottoman guilds considers this passage fanciful. There may have been thieves and beggars in the procession, but they didn't have a legally recognised guild – an esnaf.

Spanish picaresque novels had been around since the mid-16th century, and Cervantes describes something like a thieves' guild in Seville. A French jargon of thieves, along with assorted poetry and literature, is attested from the 15th century. Rogue characters/anti-heroes appear in Arabic literature from the 9th century, and the early emergence of big cities in the Islamic world leads to various associations of thieves and beggars in places like Cairo and Baghdad. A loose co-fraternity of rogues, the Banu Sasan, pops up in every corner of the Arabic world, from al-Andalus to India.

But I don't think Leiber (or Gygax) were too familiar with any of these, except perhaps with a very distorted echo of French thieves & beggars via The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Victor Hugo took a heavily mythologised version of the Court of Miracles, a 17th century thing, and projected it back to 14th century Paris, so it's kinda based on history but also wildly inaccurate.

Conclusion

So as far as the D&D origins of Thieves' Guilds and Cant are concerned, I believe we should stick to Fritz Leiber, English rogue literature, and whatever kernel of historical truth is behind it. And completely ignore the Mafia and any sort of contemporary organised crime, which is another animal altogether.

[grandhotelabyss]

My Year in Books, 2020

Introduction

I don’t want to waste your time, dear reader, with a list of all the books I read in 2020—you can track that on my Goodreads, if you care—nor even a list of all the books I wrote about on my site. But I would like to take the occasion of New Year’s Eve to revisit some of my favorites. Please click below for the list. Happy New Year!

1. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

Reading old books can help us understand the present better than reading new books, which are often too caught up in today’s doxa to offer a true perspective on today’s world. Austen’s first major novel is a good example; what can help us understand class and gender better than this 19th-century narrative? As I wrote:

Marianne Dashwood (or Lily Briscoe or Sula Peace) has triumphed: today, she issues defenses of desire on podcasts and Patreon and posts pictures of her swollen ankle and putrid tonsils for the fetishists among her OnlyFans subscribers. If Elinor still functions as her conscience, she does so in the administrative bureaus of the corporation and university—human resources, diversity and equity—where her job is to intercept and interdict threats to the untrammeled unfolding of Marianne’s consciousness. This metamorphosis has undoubtedly liberated the individual from the stifling convention of bourgeois domesticity, but is the place where it has installed her now, where she must sell soul and body by algorithm just to stay alive, any less a prison?

I thought I’d get cancelled for that one, but nobody seemed to notice. Here’s another chance, cancel crew!

2. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron

Like everyone else and for obvious reasons, I read The Decameron in 2020, but it didn’t make much of an impression, besides its historical interest. This might be the problem:

The late medieval personae and settings are different from the postmodern ones: clergy in place of technocrats, princes in place of corporations, and a network of land and sea routes where fiberoptic cables now run. But Boccaccio himself, in writing a comic prose work that has, according to the scholar Robert Harrison, been called “a mercantile epic,” did much to prepare the way for our world.

I’m sure this is a mix of presentism and philistinism talking, but a literary culture divided between Dante and Boccaccio would seem to have something wrong with it. The best writers earlier and later—Homer and Sophocles, Shakespeare and Joyce—seem capable of synthesizing what in Dante’s divine comedy and Boccaccio’s human comedy are held forcibly, artificially apart. 

3. James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault

I review a scandalous biography of the theorist who may or may not have made our contemporary world:

His identification of a new oppressed class, and his observation of oppressive power structures working in precisely those institutions meant in the modern period to correct the “barbarities” of ages past with their torture chambers and ships of fools, would change the western left forever. The “abnormal” subject (rather than the worker) was now the protagonist of history, power (rather than exploitation) the mechanism of oppression, and modern scientific and liberal institutions (rather than capitalist economics) the enemy. Foucault’s anti-psychiatry stance is now in abeyance—a recent viral Tweet promised that “under socialism all men will be sent to therapy,” an old chestnut of Stalinist terror that redefines political dissent as mental illness in an instance of exactly the thinking Foucault meant to challenge. But the drift of his thought, toward the emancipation of western reason’s underside, still defines for many what it means to be on the left today. If the left once promised, per the Internationale, “reason in revolt,” Foucault offered unreason in revolt.

4. Plato, The Republic

A much misunderstood book, in my view:

Socrates clearly describes the defects of the soul’s non-rational divisions; by contrast, reason, ordained as it is to apprehend the perfection of the idea, is presumably faultless. Yet I would suggest that Socrates’s forgetting that divine inspiration is the source of poiesis, even as he utters poetry in praise of reason, is a flaw. If the fault of the soul’s appetitive part is an insatiable quest for more and more physical satisfaction, and if the fault of the soul’s spirited part is a desire for victory or conquest without limit, then might we not theorize a parallel danger in the soul’s rational part? And doesn’t Socrates exemplify this danger when he follows the autonomous logic of his argument past all experience, including the poet’s experience of divine inspiration?

What if we took up the hint and patterned contemporary novels on Platonic dialogues?

5. Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

I have mixed to negative feelings about this cult classic, but I had fun introducing its conspiracy-laden plot with some paranoia of my own:

Finally, canvassing the Wikipedia entry on the novel before I read it, I found that among the endless occult paraphernalia Eco packed into the text was “[a]n obscure one-time reference to the fictional Cthulhu cult through a quote from The Satanic Rituals—‘I’a Cthulhu! I’a S’ha-t’n!’. The words closed a ritual composed by Michael Aquino.” Aquino was a high-ranking Satanist and a psychological warfare expert for the U.S. military; he co-wrote the notorious Pentagon position paper “From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory”. Understandably, he recurs again and again in the annals of American conspiracy theory: the politically paranoid on the right abominate him for his Satanism, while those on the left loathe his anticommunist and militarist commitments. Through a vector I’m not at liberty to disclose, I am only two of the proverbial degrees of separation away from Aquino, though I have obviously never met him or had anything to do with him or even discussed him with anyone who has. I imagine conspiracy theorists will promulgate this curious fact widely on the Internet to discredit me whenever I finally become as famous as I deserve to be, considering that I am one of America’s great writers. (Megalomania and paranoia: like horse and carriage.) 

And no, I still won’t tell you how I’m connected to Michael Aquino.

6. Thomas Mann, Mario and the Magician

Writing on this classic semi-anti-fascist novella, I wondered whether “anti-” is always the solution:

It is an old problem: how not to become what we behold, how not to transform into one’s enemy—how to be sure anti-fascism doesn’t become fully indistinct from fascism itself. Given our psychology, with its tendencies toward projective and dichotomous thinking, and given political realities, which often make violent confrontation seem fated, this may be an insoluble problem. Perhaps every anti-[X] is doomed by the occult law of similarities to become [X]; perhaps our time is better spent in simply not being [X] rather than defining ourselves against and therefore by [X]. 

7. Cormac McCarthy, The Orchard Keeper

I took the opportunity of McCarthy’s preternaturally eloquent first novel to clarify a point of political economy:

As I insist on reminding everyone from time to time, even at the risk of repeating myself, Lenin argues in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (a book I don’t claim to understand in every particular) that the monopolization of capital is the necessary and final stage of history before communism. Monopoly represents “a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialisation”—i.e., let the corporations do the work of centralizing production so that the biggest corporate body of all, the state, can easily assume the economy’s commanding heights. Marxism, therefore, is not really a challenger to neoliberalism but only the loyal opposition. Hence the chief theme of McCarthy’s corpus: how the inherent flaws of humanity and nature, those organic defaults that make the marketplace a necessary evil in both serving and curbing self-interest, immeasurably worsen when magnified to the scale of organized planetary warfare in the very name of their correction by rationality—or, as a pair of unorthodox Marxists called it, the dialectic of enlightenment.

Conclusion

Speaking of the economy, though, my most important literary event of 2020 was the publication of my novella, The Quarantine of St. Sebastian House, my attempt to turn contingent crisis into permanent art. With that, I leave you. Let’s hope the poet had it wrong when he said, “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day.”

[angelofrainfrogs]

Serendipity (Part 1/3)

Fandom: Good Omens

Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley (but not the main focus)

Other Characters: Warlock Dowling

Description: Seven years after Armageddidn't, a boy wanders into A.Z. Fell and Co. and finds something more priceless than a first-edition novel- a reunion he (and his childhood caretakers) never thought possible.

Rating: G

Genre: General/Family/Mild Hurt/Comfort

Read on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20432192/chapters/48473378

Part 1

Aziraphale raised his head from his book as the bell over the shop door jingled merrily. The angel carefully set the book and his glasses on a nearby table, standing up with a small sigh. Today had been blessedly quiet and he’d hoped that it would remain as such- this was only his third customer and it was already mid-afternoon. Still, he knew that if he let whoever had just walked in wander aimlessly, they might feel the urge to buy something; it was best to check on the visitor and see what their mission was before they tried anything rash.

“Hello!” Aziraphale said warmly, rounding the corner of an overstuffed bookshelf to find a boy examining a section of Italian poetry. The boy was in his late teens, with a lanky build just a smidge taller than Aziraphale. He wore dark jeans and a V-neck t-shirt bearing the logo of some pop band the angel would never understand. His hair, a cross between dirty blonde and light, light brown, was cut short, save for the unruly swathe of bangs that fell in front of his bright blue eyes.

“Hey,” the boy replied, pushing his bangs out of the way to get a better look at Aziraphale.

The angel blinked as he was hit with a wave of strange familiarity. A slight crease between his eyes was the only thing that alluded to this; otherwise, he kept himself composed. Aziraphale had seen so many humans over the years, he got the occasional twinge of feeling that he knew someone passing by in the street, but it always turned out to be a double of someone he’d met long ago. This boy, surely, was no different.

“Is there anything in particular you’re looking for, young man?” Aziraphale asked, clasping his hands behind his back.

“No, I just… kinda wandered in to look around, honestly.” The boy laughed and Aziraphale couldn’t stop his smile from widening. The laugh, coupled with the boy’s American accent, triggered something deep within his memory, though he couldn’t quite reach it. “The Yelp reviews of this place are wild; I wanted to see what it’s like for myself.”

“Yelp reviews?” Aziraphale questioned, tilting his head. He’d heard of this before from some of the other customers. From what he gathered, Yelp was a platform where people could post reviews of places they’ve visited. Based on what Aziraphale had been told, his bookshop would be classified as having a “mixed rating.”

“Yeah, people have said all kinds of shi- er, stuff about this shop,” the boy replied, correcting his near-curse as he guiltily met Aziraphale’s gaze. Something told the boy that the shop owner wouldn’t appreciate that sort of language. Remembering a particularly interesting review, the boy’s face lit up. “Is it true there’s a giant snake in here?!”

“Ah, well… sometimes,” Aziraphale admitted, a bemused light in his eyes. “He tends to wander, though; he’s out at the moment.”

The boy’s face shifted into an expression of mingled confusion and curiosity. Aziraphale’s unneeded breath caught in his throat. The strange sensation pulsed in the back of the angel’s mind, the feeling that he definitely knew this boy. He wanted more information on his origins, but it wouldn’t do to push too hard, lest he scare the boy off- Aziraphale had been told on more than one occasion that he could be rather “ruthless” (according to a certain demon, though the phrase made the angel scrunch his nose up in disgust) when it came to gathering information he desperately wanted to know.

“We don’t usually get many visitors from out of the area; are you on holiday?” Aziraphale asked, busying himself with reorganizing a shelf of books that had been shifted out of alphabetical order. There had to be some connection- he’d probably met the boy’s family or long-distant relative on a trip to America many years ago.

“No, I’m going to college here- university, whatever you want to call it,” the boy replied with a shrug. “Well, I mean, I don’t have class today- I’m not skipping or anything.” Again, there was that guilty look, as if the boy was afraid of disappointing the man in front of him- which was odd, since the boy had certainly never met the elusive Mr. Fell before. “I’ve got a day off, so I figured I’d check out Soho. I never really got to just, like… explore England when I was a kid.”

The angel froze mid-task. His slowly turned, focusing on the boy’s face and really looking. Time seemed to fade before his eyes, the boy’s defined features softening into the lanky face of a pre-teen, then melting further into the chubby visage of a child with a smudge of dirt on his cheek from where he’d rubbed his face while planting flowers-

“You okay, Mr. Fell?” the boy asked, noting the slight tremor in Aziraphale’s hands. The angel blinked, quickly composing himself.

“Yes, I-I’m fine, young W-… dear boy.” Aziraphale caught himself as his voice slipped into an accent he hadn’t used for over seven years. He shook his head; there was absolutely no way this could be the same child whose bruises he’d healed with a loving kiss and a touch of divine miracle.

“…Okay.” The boy didn’t sound convinced but decided to let the matter drop. He’d heard that the owner of the bookshop was eccentric and figured that the hyper-focused attention he was receiving was part of the package. Although, the boy had to admit that, just for a second, the man had sounded terribly familiar.

An awkward silence followed, neither of the two knowing how to continue the conversation. Aziraphale’s mind was racing, trying to figure out if this really was the boy from his memory and, if this was true, why in the world he had chosen to visit the bookshop. Aziraphale and Crowley had a discussion many years ago about whether they should try to reconnect with Warlock Dowling and had concluded that they’d already interfered in the boy’s life enough. His personality had seemed fairly balanced when they’d left, save for a tendency to be extremely blunt when speaking his mind. They had no idea what they'd really done to the poor mortal boy’s psyche and decided it best to leave him be and hope that he grew up as normal as he could from his eleventh birthday onward.

So, Crowley and Aziraphale stayed far away from the Dowlings for nearly a decade. They were so strong in their conviction of never going to see Warlock again that they hadn’t even entertained the possibility that the boy might find them.

No, it’s too much of a coincidence, Aziraphale thought, watching the teenager as he started looking through the poetry books in front of him. The angel glanced towards the ceiling, his lips pursed. Unless this is another part of Your ineffable plan…

“Hey, Mr. Fell?” The boy’s questioning tone brought Aziraphale back to Earth instantly. “I know you don’t, like… actually like to sell stuff, so the internet says, but maybe you could help me find a book for my mom’s birthday? I honestly don’t think she’d notice if I bought her a first edition Shakespeare collection or whatever, but… I dunno.” The boy shrugged. “I thought I could try something different and see what she thinks.”

The look in the boy’s eyes is what ultimately convinced the angel that his instinct was true. Aziraphale had seen that look much too often for his liking- it was a look of sad resignation that Warlock's parents, ever-distant and too wrapped up in the political world to raise their own child, didn’t care about him nearly as much as they should. A twinge of ice shot through the angel’s heart. He’d hated seeing that expression on a child’s face, but he utterly despised it now, knowing that things didn’t seem to have changed nearly a decade later.

“Hey, are you sure you’re okay?” the boy asked, seeing Aziraphale’s face slip into a strange expression. “You look-” He was about to say “weird,” but it was at that exact moment that the nagging familiarity that had also been gnawing away at his own mind came to the surface. He saw the face in front of him sporting a shining collection of bad teeth framed within a cloud of fluffy hair, though the mental image was skewed as if he had to look up from a much shorter height than he was now.

But, as with Aziraphale’s own recognition, it was the eyes that ultimately broke through the fog of childhood memories- the eyes currently gazing at Warlock full of more love than anyone should be able to comprehend. Without warning, Warlock felt tears prick at the edges of his vision.

“…Brother Francis?” he choked out in a small voice. Aziraphale smiled, and if Warlock had any remaining doubts about the man's identity, they were blown away like the shadows of night banished by the rising sun.

“Oh, my dear, dear boy,” Aziraphale said warmly, opening his arms, and Warlock fell into the hug without hesitation. They gripped each other tightly, and the angel realized what a fool he’d been for leaving the boy without a word. He and Crowley should have gone back after the apocalypse was thwarted, or at the very least written a letter explaining why they’d left; judging by the way Warlock held onto Aziraphale as if he were a lifeboat in the midst of a stormy sea, the angel realized that the boy must have missed them just as much as they’d missed him.

Aziraphale and Warlock stayed in the embrace for a while longer, and then the boy gently, almost reluctantly, unwrapped his arms and took a step back to give Aziraphale a proper once-over.

“What happened to you?!” Warlock asked, astonishment dripping from every word. Then, suddenly, a fierce frown twisted his face. “And why the hell did you and Nanny leave without saying anything?! Er, sorry, I mean why the heaven- ugh, you get my point!”

Aziraphale smiled again; this was the boy he used to know, attitude and all. Warlock always had a penchant for speaking his mind, a fact that was encouraged wholeheartedly by his Nanny. While Aziraphale didn’t want Warlock to stop expressing his feelings and asking questions either, he had been bothered by the boy’s increasing vocabulary of unsavory expressions, which the angel had tried to remedy by correcting him with more docile phrasing. Apparently, the instinct to do so still was still present.

“Hellooo?” Warlock said, waving a hand in front of Aziraphale’s face. “Brother Francis- Mr. Fell… whoever you are! This is really weird, and I need you to explain a lot of things!”  

“Oh, I do apologize, my dear; I get a bit lost in my thoughts, sometimes,” Aziraphale admitted with a guilty chuckle. He hesitated for a second and then gestured towards the back of the shop, where a comfortable couch and coffee table resided. “Yes, we… we really should have a little chat. Please, have a seat and I’ll put on a pot of tea and join you.”

Warlock didn’t move, instead narrowing his eyes. Aziraphale blinked at him.

“…Would you prefer coffee instead?” the angel ventured. Warlock rolled his eyes and crossed his arms in front of him, slouching to the side in a pose uncannily similar to someone else Aziraphale knew.

“You literally just up and left me when I was eleven years old,” the boy explained, a scathing bite to his words that made Aziraphale wince. “According to the internet, you’re some weird cryptid- which I can now confirm, knowing who you really are, because you and Nanny were definitely not normal. How do I know you won’t just-”

And here the boy cut himself off, realizing how vulnerable finishing that sentence would make him seem. He knew that Brother Francis had seen all sides of him, weak ones and all, but that was many years ago. He’d still been a kid then; now he was older and much more practiced at hiding his true emotions, since the only people who’d had time for them disappeared after his eleventh birthday. Just because he’d found his beloved gardener and confidant again through some divine- or hellish, he never knew which to believe- turn of events, it didn’t mean that things would instantly go back to the way they were before.

Warlock didn’t think it was possible for Brother Francis’ expression to soften even more, but apparently it could. Slowly, as if afraid of spooking him, the angel reached out and gently brushed Warlock’s bangs out of his face, tucking them behind his ear before cupping the boy’s cheek in his hand.

“I’m not going to leave you again, dear boy, please believe that,” Aziraphale said, injecting as much truth into his words as he possibly could. “It was a rash decision and your Nanny and I should never have disappeared without a word. I’m just going to flip the Closed sign on the door and put the kettle on, and then we can talk, alright?”

Warlock nodded almost imperceptibly, but Aziraphale saw the gesture. He gave the boy’s cheek a light pinch and winked, earning a cry of embarrassment. With a laugh, the angel disappeared around a bookshelf, moving towards the front door. Rubbing his cheek and pouting, Warlock shuffled to the couch in the back of the shop. He’d forgotten how endearingly annoying his old gardener could be.

Aziraphale flipped the “Open” sign to “Closed” and leaned back against the old wooden door, shutting his eyes. He was overjoyed to see Warlock again, certainly, but he was completely unprepared for this situation. What was he supposed to tell the boy? What excuse could he possibly give for Warlock’s closest companions abandoning him without so much as a “goodbye?”

Aziraphale and Crowley always regretted the way they’d handled that situation, but they had bigger concerns at the time- namely, the impending apocalypse and the fact that Warlock was not the antichrist they thought he was. Aziraphale grimaced, running a stressed hand through his hair; what should they tell Warlock about that? Should they expose him to the supernatural world he’d unintentionally been apart of for the first half of his life?

“…Probably best not to bring that part up,” the angel murmured to himself. He adjusted his waistcoat and steeled himself for the afternoon ahead. He would make Warlock a nice cup of tea, call Crowley to give him a warning on who awaited him back at the bookshop, and then bide his time until the demon showed up and they could have a proper conversation about what to do now that the boy was back in their lives. Yes, that seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan.

So, of course, it was guaranteed that things would not turn out the way Aziraphale hoped. As the angel busied himself in the tiny kitchenette area in the back of the shop, the bell over the front door rang again.

“Angel!” a voice called, and Aziraphale let out a strangled yelp. He rushed out of the back room and was greeted with the sight of Warlock, standing by the couch slack-jawed and staring straight ahead. Trapped at the end of Warlock’s gaze stood Crowley, wearing an eerily similar expression of shock. The two of them gazed at each other questioningly for an agonizing few seconds, before Warlock asked, in a trembling voice:

“N… Nanny Ash?”

“…Ah,” Aziraphale said when Crowley turned his helpless expression upon him. Though the demon’s eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses, Aziraphale knew they were giving him a look of utter confusion. “Crowley, we… we have a very special visitor.”

“Ngk,” the demon replied.

And then, suddenly, Warlock was in Crowley’s arms, holding him tight, and Crowley returned the gesture without a second thought, overwhelmed with a great sense of relief. The boy was shaking, obviously trying very hard not to cry, and the demon instinctively gripped him closer and grinned into his hair.

“Hey, little hellspawn. Good to see you again.”

                                                             ***

Read Part 1. (You are here.)

Read Part 2. 

Read Part 3.

[archiefm]

         ... claws my way up from hell once more and vomits onto the dash.... hello. its nora. i used to write rory bergstrom, but if u were here before that u might remember me as greta or alma putnam or..... som1 else.... an endless carousel of trash children..... this is finn, who i actually wrote for an early version of this rp abt 5yrs back now...... grits teeth..... so forgive me if im rusty i havent written him in a long time but seein honey boy gave me a lotta finn muse n im keen to get Back On The Horse yeehaww...

DYLAN O’BRIEN / CIS-MALE — don’t look now, but is that finn o’callaghan i see? the 25 year old criminology and forensic studies student is in their graduate year of study year and he is a rochester alum. i hear they can be judicious, adroit, morose and cynical, so maybe keep that in mind. i bet he will make a name for themselves living off-campus. ( nora. 24. gmt. she/her )

shakes my tin can a humble pinterest, ma’am....

finn has a bio pasted at the bottom (n written in like.... 2015.... gross) but it’s long  so if u don’t wanna read it here’s the sparknotes summary..... anyway this was written years ago n a lot of it seems really cliche and lame now but..... we accept the trash we think we deserve

grumpy, ugly sweater wearing, tech-savvy grandpa

very dry sense of humour and embraces nihilism. 

if ron swanson and april ludgate had a baby it would be finn

he was raised in derry, just south of dublin.

from a big family. elder sister called sinead. he also has a younger sister (aoife), a younger brother (colm), and a collie named lassie because his father lovs cliches (finn hates cliches but loves his dog). 

his father was a pub landlord and his mother worked at the market sellin fruit n veg when they met but got a job as a medical receptionist when she had kids cos it meant she cld be there with them in the day and work nights.

his parents met when they were p young and fiesty and rushed into marriage cos they were catholic n just wanted to have sex. his family were literally dirt-poor, but they had a lot of love i guess

hmmmmm his relationship w his father wasn’t the best cos i can’t write character who have healthy relationships w their parents throws up a peace sign. yh, had a pretty emotionally distant, alcoholic violent father n so gets a lot of his bad habits i.e. drinking as a coping mechanism and poor anger management from him BUT anyway

as a kid he was never very motivated in class, he always had a nervous itch to be off somewhere doing something else. struggled under government austerity bcso there just wasn’t the resources to support low income families where the kids had learning difficulties n needed support. fuck the tories am i right 

his mum suggested he try sports to help w his restless energy but he was never any good at football so he took up boxing and tap dance instead. he took to tap dancing like a fish to fuckin water. as adhd n found this as a really good way to use his excess energy in a creative way

had a few run ins with the police in his early teens for spray painting and graffiti, but he straightened himself out n now actually considering becoming a detective inspector??? cops are pigs.

he had a youtube channel where he posted videos of him tapdancing and breakdancing as a kid, basically would be a tiktok boy nowadays, n had like... a small fanbase in his early teens. attended several open auditions unsuccessfully, until he was finally cast in billy eliot when he was fifteen.

during billy eliot he began dating an italian dancer called nina. they became dance partners soon after and toured across the republic with various different shows (inc riverdance lol the classic irish stereotype). their relationship was p toxic tbh, they were both very hot tempered people and just used to argue and fight all the time.

he went semi-pro at tap dancing, and nina couldn’t stand being second best so she moved back to italy with her family. ignored his texts, phone calls, etc, eventually he was driven to the point where he used his savings to buy a plane ticket, showed up at her house and she was like wtf?? freaked out and filed a restraining order accusing him of stalking.

he was fined for harassment and then returned home to derry, but after the incident with nina he quit dancing for good and finished his leaving cert before heading to university in the US to get as far away from nina and his past life as poss. and basically since he quit dancing to study forensics (death kink. finn cant get enough of that morgue. just walks around sayin beat u) he’s become a massive grump and jsut doesn’t see the good in people any more.

u’ll find finn in an old man bar drinking whiskey bc he is in fact an old man at heart or sat on his roof smoking a joint, drawing wolves and lions and skeletons and shit, playing call of duty or getting blazed or at the corner of the room in a house party ignoring everyone and scrolling through twitter. is a massive e-boy. always up-to-date on memes and internet slang. has reddit as an app on his phone

not very good at communication. rather than solve his issues by talking, he’d prefer to just solve them through fighting or running away from his problems hence why he has come halfway across the world to get away from an issue which probs cld have been solved w a few apology emails.

takes a lot to phase him, but when his beserk button gets pressed he can become a bit pugnacious like an angry lil rottweiler. in his undergrad he was in a few fist fights but doesn’t really do tht any more as he doesn’t condone violence.

 in the previous version of this rp he was hospitalised like 5 times. pls, give my son a break. stop tryin to kill him. he literaly got a bottle smashed over his head and bled out all over his favourite angora rug that was the only light of his life

works at the campus coffee shop n always whines about how he’s a slave to capitalism. always smells of coffee

lives off campus with an elderly woman named Marianne, and basically gets reduced rent bcos he makes her dinner / keeps her company. they have a great bond

fan of karl marx. v big on socialism

insomniac with chronic nosebleeds

cynical about everything. too much of a fight club character 4 his own good n has his head up tyler durden’s sphincter

always confused or annoyed

statistics

basic information

full name: finnegan seamus o'callaghan nickname(s): finn age: 25 astrological sign: aries hometown: derry, ireland occupation: phd student / former street entertainer fatal flaw: cynicism positives: self-reliant, street smart, relaxed, intelligent, spontaneous, brave, independent, reliable, trustworthy, loyal. negatives: hostile, impulsive, stubborn, brooding, pugnacious, untrusting, cynical, enigmatic, reserved.

physical

colouring: medium hair colour: dark brown, almost black eye colour: brown height: 5’9” weight: 69kg build: tall, athletic voice: subtle irish accent, low, smooth. dominant hand: left scar(s): one on the left side of his ribs from a knife wound that he doesn’t remember getting cos he was drunk distinguishing marks: freckles, tattoo of a wolf howling at a moon allergies: pollen and the full spectrum of human emotion alcohol tolerance: high drunken behaviour: he becomes friendlier, far more conversational than when sober, flirtier, and generally more self-confident.

psychological

dreams/goals: self-fulfilment, travel the globe, experience life in its most alive and technicoloured version, make documentary films, help the vulnerable in society, grow as a human being.

skills: jack-of-all-trades, very fast runner, good at thieving things, talented tap dancer, good in crisis situations, dab-hand at mechanics, musically-intelligent, can throw a mean right hook and very capable of defending himself, can roll a cigarette, memorises quotes and passages of literature with ease, can light a match with his teeth.

likes: the smell of the earth after rain, poetry, cigarettes, shakespeare, whiskey, tattoos, travelling, ac/dc, deep conversations, leather jackets, open spaces, the smell of petrol, early noughties ‘emo phase’ anthems.

dislikes:  the government, parties, rules, donald trump, children, apple products, weddings, people in general, small talk, dependency, loneliness, pop music, public transport, justin timberlake, uncertainty.fears: fear itself, drowning alignment: true neutral mbti: istp – “while their mechanical tendencies can make them appear simple at a glance, istps are actually quite enigmatic. friendly but very private, calm but suddenly spontaneous, extremely curious but unable to stay focused on formal studies, istp personalities can be a challenge to predict, even by their friends and loved ones. istps can seem very loyal and steady for a while, but they tend to build up a store of impulsive energy that explodes without warning, taking their interests in bold new directions.” (via 16personalities.com)

full bio (lame as fuck written years ago..... pleathe...)

tw homophobia

born in quigley’s pub on the backstreets of sunny dublin, young finnegan o'callaghan was thrown kicking and screaming into the rowdy suburbs of irish drinking culture. the son of a landlord and a fishwife, he never had much in the way of earnings, but there was never a dull moment in his lively estate, where asbo’s thrived, but community spirit conquered. at school, finn was pegged as lazy and unmotivated, though truly his dyslexia made it hard for the boy to learn in the same environment of his peers and only made him more closed-off in class. struggling with anger management, finn moved from school to school, unable to fit the cookie-cutter mould that school enforced on him, though whilst academic studies were of little interest to the boy, he soon found his true passions lay in recreational activities. immersed into the joys of sport from as young as four, finn was an ardent munster fan and anticipated nothing more than the day he could finally fit into his brother’s old pair of rugby boots.

his calling finally came unexpectedly, not in the form of rugger, but through dance. to learn to express himself in a non-academic way, he began tap dancing, finding therapy in the beat of his soles against the cracked kitchen tiles (much to his mother’s disgrace). it wasn’t a conscious choice, finn just realised one day that dance was something that made him feel. a king of the streets, finn made his fortune on those cobbled pavements – dancing and drawing to earn his keep. by default, finn became a street artist, each penny he earned from his chalk drawings saved in a jam jar towards buying his first pair of tap shoes. though many of his less-than-amiable neighbours called him a nancy and a gaybo, finn refused to quit at his somewhat ‘unconventional’ hobby, for the young scrapper found energy, life, and released anger through the rhythm of tap. soon he branched out into street dance, hip hop, break dancing, lyrical, his days spent smacking his scuffed feet against the broken patio into the night.

when he was thirteen he took up boxing, and as expected, his newfound ‘macho’ pastime conflicted with his dancing. the boxers called him ‘soft’; the dancers called him ‘inelegant’. he felt like two different people; having to choose between interests was like being handed a knife and asked to which half of himself he wished to cut away. he couldn’t afford professional training in dance, with most schools based in england and limited scholarships available. instead, he made the street his studio, racking up a small fanbase on youtube. when he was fifteen he made his debut in billy eliot at the olympia theatre in dublin. enter nina de souza, talented, beautiful and italian; ballet dancer, operatic singer, genius whiz kid, and spoiled brat. she was selfish, conceited, hell bent on getting her own way, and every director’s nightmare. finn fell for her like a house of cards. he’d always had a soft spot for girls who meant trouble. and so their hellish courtship began.

by the time they were seventeen, the two young swans had danced in every playhouse across the republic. they were known in theatres across the country for their tempestuous personalities, their raging arguments with one another, their tendency to drop out of shows altogether without any notice, yet the money kept rolling in and the audiences continued to grow. for three years, their families continued to put up with their hysterical fights followed by passionate reconciliations. he was too possessive, and she was too wild. their carcrash of a relationship finally came to a catastrophic halt when nina broke off the whole affair and returned to italy with her family. for months finn tried to contact her, yet his phone calls, texts, facebook messages were always ignored, until finally he was driven to drastic measures and used his savings to get a plane to her home town. when finn turned up uninvited at nina’s house she freaked out – and rightly so – she contacted her agent, accused him of stalking her, and had a restraining order placed against him. finn was arrested, held in a station overnight, and charged with harassment before he was allowed to return to dublin.

after the incident with nina, finn lost the fight in his eyes. he became far more hostile, far less likely to retaliate with his own fists, and picked fights not for the thrill of feeling his own fists pummel another into a wall, but for the sensation of his own brittle bones cracking. he dropped his tap shoes in a dumpster, stopped talking to his friends, followed his father’s advice and went back to school to complete his leaving certificate. a few short months later, and finn was packing his bags, saying his bittersweet goodbyes, and travelling half-way across the globe to be as far away as possible from his past self, his mess of a life, and most of all nina. it seemed somehow ironic that the boy who had been cautioned by the garda so much during his youth for spray painting, busking without a liscence, and raucous parties would become the grumpy, aloof overseas student studying a degree in criminology; that his once reckless spirit could be crushed so easily. 

of all things that finn could be called, straightforward would never be one of them. ever since his first days in atticus, the boy was pegged as hostile, hot-headed, cynical, rude. he seemed to spend more time in his thoughts than engaging in conversation. like a ticking time-bomb, finn’s anger was of the calm kind, liable to explode without a moment’s noticed. his unpredictable personality make him something of an enigma to those who aren’t amiable with the lad, though hostile as he may appear, he harvests a good heart. loyalty lies at the centre of his affections, and whilst his friends are few in number, he makes a lifelong partner. somewhere within finn, there’s still some fight left, but mostly he has recognised that his hedonistic lifestyle did little to leave him fulfilled – mostly, it just emptied him out – and over his three years at university has resigned himself to a nihilistic predicament.

        if u wanna plot with me pls pls pls im me or like this post!! i am always game for plots i love em so excited to write with you all here r some ideas

study buddies. finn is now a phd student so has to start takin shit seriously. he gon be in the library every day doing that independent study. if he had ppl who were also regular library goers n they get each other coffees to save time.... tht wld be sweet

ppl who love techno dj sets and going super hard on the weekends!!! fuck yea

friends with benefits. exes on bad terms. ppl he tried to date but couldnt because he’s always emotionally hung up on someone else. spicy hook up plots

ppl he met touring?? maybe ppl who were also in the entertainment industry..... anyone got a character who is ex circus hit me up

does anyone else study criminology / forensics / criminal psych / law? phd students sometimes lecture so he cld be an assistant lecturer / tutor if ur character is in a younger year

gamers !!! social recluses !!! hermits !!

finn goes to the skatepark and all the young boys there think he’s a gradnpa which he is! 

[ralph-n-fiennes]

RALPH FIENNES LOOSENS UP - GQ MAGAZINE

Well, loose for Ralph Fiennes, anyway. The actor and director lives a life of high culture like practically no one else alive. Lately, he's been making us laugh, too.

Ralph Fiennes seems both parodically English and consummately European, the way classical music isn't bound by borders, either. In addition to all measure of British, he has played, to my count: Austrian, Irish, French, German, Hungarian, Russian, and unspecified Balkan—as well as American (both WASP and serial-killer varieties), and Snake. He appears to carry with him, among many other charms, a cache of words, phrases, and proper pronunciations of non-English languages, like a deep pocketful of pre-Eurozone coins. It is very fun to listen to him talk in movies—and in person in London, as I did, for a few hours in late January.

I say all this to help explain why Fiennes registers to many interested in his life and career as one of our ultimate cosmopolitans. He is, just to list some of his culture bona fides, one of the living actors most associated with Shakespeare. He has said that he and his six siblings grew up listening to vinyl recordings of poetry recitations. He has often acted in films based on the acclaimed novels of major-prize-winning authors. He has said the talent he would most like to have is playing the violin. He has said that when he travels for a film, he always does so with the complete Beethoven piano sonatas, a “talisman” and “safety net for when one is feeling a bit bruised or battered.” He has described the greatest love of his life as “having a transforming encounter with a Work of Art, either as a listener, viewer, reader, spectator, or participant.” He is fluent in painting styles and the names of museum directors and the great theaters of both the East and the West. He is fluent in ballet now, too, since he's just directed a movie about the Soviet dancer Rudolf Nureyev. He enjoys hopping on the Eurostar to Paris from his home in London. He enjoys short flights to European capitals. He enjoys picking up his rental car in Umbria so that he may drive—the only time he drives—to his “tiny farmhouse” in the Italian countryside, where he goes “to read.” He has said his idea of perfect happiness is “swimming naked in the sea.” He has said that when and where he was happiest in his life was “swimming in Voidokilia Bay in the southern Peloponnese.” While we were together, he sounded most like Ralph Fiennes when he said European-sounding nouns, like “Peugeot” and “Tchaikovsky” and “salade niçoise.” He pronounced the little tail thing on the c, and, as a Fiennes character might direct him to, he pronounced it trippingly.

This cosmopolitanism seems to have sort of become the point about Ralph Fiennes in recent years. Wes Anderson may have been the first to recognize a new use for this caricature: that in the post-heartthrob Fiennes, a filmmaker could mine middle-life pathos, as well as levity and humor; that if a character were to possess an arch knowingness about the fact that he was being played by Ralph Fiennes, it might be really, really fun to watch.

Actually, maybe credit belongs to Martin McDonagh and In Bruges. The joke there was that Fiennes—the very high culture of his cells—could play the antithesis of so many counts and kings: an irritable East End gangster with a Shakespearean facility with fucking fuck fucks. Maybe that was the pivot?

Or, scratch that, too—perhaps it started earlier, with his first nose-less “Avada Kedavra!” in a Harry Potter movie. Maybe that was when we felt the options expand.

Regardless, there's been a slow shift, iterative at first, and then all at once wholly present, in a new series of roles for Fiennes over the past decade or so. There would always be the bedrock of English/European-set drama (Schindler's List, The English Patient, The Constant Gardener, The End of the Affair, Sunshine, just to name some acclaimed heavies), but there was space now for a fresh kind of on-screen presence. You get the Oscar-nominated talent and the self-awareness, too.

Take Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash, for example, where Fiennes plays a motor-mouthing cocktail of taste and devil-may-care that could be reduced to something like: Ralph Fiennes type—but with all of the shirt buttons unbuttoned. Ralph Fiennes type—but with a Jagger falsetto and breezy linen. There's a scene in which Fiennes's Harry Hawkes leads his compatriots to a no-tourists dinner spot on a secluded hillside on an Italian island, doling out por favores and grazies as he gracefully inserts himself into the hospitable hands of the locals. I remember thinking in the theater, or on the plane, or wherever: This. This is what you get when you strip off the uniform of haughty propriety, but still have all the knowingness—all the language and command and wisdom amassed from a lifetime of moving fluidly across European borders. The result is very funny and very cool.

When we met in January, Fiennes had just finished a 76-show run of Antony and Cleopatra at the National Theatre in London. He'd spent the previous day—his one and only day off between the play and a new film shoot—reading books and responding to e-mails. (He'd been journaling when I first approached our table.) Fiennes still had his beard from the play, but it would be gone by that evening. He made reference to “what little hair I have left” on top, a style that changes often. The fixtures of his face were plenty there, though. The prominent nose and brow. The sticky-outy canines. The sensitive pale eyes, ticklish to the light—ever-present in the heroes and the villains alike, the same pair on Count Almásy as on Voldemort. The eyes were so familiar. As was the voice. His voice sounded exactly like Ralph Fiennes.

Sometimes actors make choices to pivot their careers. Other times those choices—those theories about their work, the sort of I've just laid out above—are more arbitrary, connecting unrelated opportunities in an effort to make sense of them, the way we trace weird animals out of the stars. Fiennes has said that, at times in his career, he felt people presuming that he only did a certain kind of dramatic role. I asked him if the run of films including In Bruges and The Grand Budapest Hotel and A Bigger Splash felt like a pivot.

“It did feel like that,” he said. “I cannot tell you how thrilled I was when Wes asked me to be in the film. And when Martin McDonagh approached me to be a kind of London gang boss. Which is not my obvious casting bracket.… And then Luca came to me with that great part, and it felt exciting to me, that ‘Oh, great, I'm not being seen as, I don't know, English intellectual or sort of cool, crisp bad guy.…’ The thing that people were responding to was the comedic, or the humorous, that was clearly in Wes's script, and Martin's, and in A Bigger Splash, and also the wonderful scene I was asked to do in the Coen brothers' film [Hail, Caesar!].” (Would that i' t'were so simple...)

I told him I'd been wondering how active he was in the pursuit of that pivot, since it's difficult to know how much an actor's hands are on the wheel.

“I think it's a very valid question. And I think sometimes actors are absolutely going: I want to do this and this.And other times it comes to you. All the stuff I've loved doing most has come to me. Sent to me.”

In the case of A Bigger Splash, Luca Guadagnino, who'd made it “an aim” of his to work with Fiennes ever since seeing Schindler's List and Quiz Show, told me he knew the actor for Harry “had to be somebody who could carry a complete buffoonish, clownish character combined with melancholy—and there was no doubt Ralph was the right person for that.” At the time, Fiennes had done The Grand Budapest Hotel, Guadagnino continued, and a trailer had just come out: “And I saw him briefly in a pink tie, being suave and swarthy in that little clip, and it was, ‘See, he's perfect.’ He's not only a master of shades of brooding-ness and melancholy, but he can also bring a levity and a capacity of likability that is really unique.” That well-worn heavy, and the new light. Perfect.

Fiennes is a voracious reader, and many of the films he's best known for have been adapted from the works of renowned authors. Michael Ondaatje. Graham Greene. Peter Carey. Shakespeare and Dickens. Even with the more genre-y, it's the best of the genre: Ian Fleming, John le Carré. I asked him if there was any intentionality to those clusters, to working with material from notable novelists.

“I know, I've been asked that before,” he said, seeming to consider it fresh. “But I think I'm responding to the film. And I've been happy to do things that are not based on a book, like In Bruges or The Grand Budapest Hotel.”

I asked if “his people” know what he's going to go for at this stage.

“I believe they know what I respond to,” he said. “But I'm actually not a good reader of film scripts. I'd rather read… I mean, I think I try the patience of the people who represent me.” He laughed knowingly. “If there's a book to read, and they're both sitting there…I'll go to the book, I'll read the script later.… If a certain amount of pressure is put on me, I'll go, Sorry, sorry, I'm doing it.”

I asked Tony Revolori, who played Fiennes's teenage co-lead in The Grand Budapest Hotel, if he remembered what Fiennes was reading on set. “A book of Shakespeare's sonnets,” naturally. Revolori said that Fiennes taught him “the proper way” to read those sonnets and then presented him with a “beautifully designed book” of those poems at the end of the shoot. On set, there were discussions of diction with director Wes Anderson. Tongue twisters were introduced. She stood upon the balustraded balcony inimicably mimicking him hiccuping while amicably welcoming him in. “Tongue-twister battles” ensued. (I would be disingenuous if I described any of this as being shocking.)

From a distance, it is hard to see Fiennes's life as anything but full and packed wall-to-wall with high culture. I asked if he, as a Known Culture Person with a love of things like theater and opera and classical music and art, worried there was something “slipping” in culture?

“I think, 'cause the National is fresh, I can talk about that with a bit more—I can know my thoughts more about the National more than…”

“Than all of culture, like I'm asking you?” I said.

He laughed. “It may be nostalgia, it may be how I'm choosing to remember, but you felt that within the National Theatre—and certainly at Stratford it is the case—they have to function as the company. I think it's probably impossible to do that now because of the way the entertainment business works, and the way actors need to be a part of—the pay is not high—so you have to make money on television or doing voice-overs. But maybe I have a romantic sense of the company.”

Fiennes's first big break came in 1988, in Stratford, with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the company of companies. “I wanted to be an actor because I was excited by Shakespeare. It was thrilling and moving. I don't know, I had a quite naive infatuation with Shakespeare. I thought, What a wonderful thing to be in the Royal Shakespeare Company, or the National—and I didn't really think about films, because that seemed like another world.”

Shakespeare led to his first films, which led to a meeting with Spielberg and a role as an Austrian Nazi. In 1993, he was nominated for his first Oscar and embarked on the 25-year movie career that's followed. “If he picks the right roles and doesn't forget the theater,” Spielberg said of Fiennes at the time, unwittingly providing a useful blueprint, “I think he can eventually be Alec Guinness or Laurence Olivier.”

Fiennes didn't forget the theater, and he returns to Shakespeare frequently. The plays were his first love. And despite all forces pushing younger actors toward other kinds of work, he finds that that same infatuation endures with a new generation. “Even just walking back from our last-night Saturday, across the bridge to a party we were having [to celebrate the end of the production], one of the younger female members of the cast, a tiny part, but a lovely presence…she was saying, ‘I just wanted to do Shakespeare. I just love it. I just…’ And she expressed what I had felt. I was so touched, actually, because she said it with such ‘I just love Shakespeare.’ ”

“I know the film asks questions; I don't know that it answers them. I don't know that a film should answer. I like films that provoke me to think.”

Walking back across the bridge. I love that. Every actor, unknown and galactically famous, leveled out, in it together, the intimacy with one another, and with the city where they performed each night. It was fun to get a glimpse of Fiennes in London. It'd almost be a shame to encounter him anywhere else. We walked around Covent Garden for a bit, and he pointed out the grand theaters of the West End. That's where Eliza Doolittle sells flowers in the beginning of Pygmalion. That was Dickens's office. Fantastic. He delineated the precise border of the City of London, pointing at “that church-y thing over there,” a critical marker. We ended up facing the National Theatre—across the very bridge he'd mentioned—and it was sort of like being Ouija-ed by a drunk back to his favorite bar. The theater felt like home position, like all wanderings might wind up back there. Fiennes has lived and worked mostly in London all his career. I asked him if he ever thinks about elsewhere.

“I love London. I think London is a great city. I think it's got fantastic things. I don't know, I guess I've thought about elsewhere but haven't done it, because if it's working, why fix it?” he said. “I'm at a funny time, and I keep wanting to make a shift in the way I, where I live or how I live. I live in London, I've lived in London all my adult life, I live in the East End Shoreditch area, before it became über-hip, I bought a place in 2000. I've got a very lovely place in New York, which I love going to. But most of the work I get tends to be based out of here. And the theater work… I keep going back, because I miss it, I miss that thing.”

Fiennes has the rest of the year “chalked up” already. Five new films: a Kingsman prequel, a new Bond (“I'm waiting to get a Bond script; I'm hoping for a sexy location”), and three-ish other interesting-sounding dramas. Plus the release of The White Crow—Fiennes's third film as director—about a young Rudolf Nureyev, the famed Soviet dancer, and his defection from the USSR to France in 1961.

The White Crow features several scenes that capture those “transforming encounters with a Work of Art” Fiennes has described as the loves of his life. In one flashback, a young Nureyev—born on a trans-Siberian train to poor parents—is taken by his mother to the theater. We don't see what's transpiring onstage, only what's transpiring across his face. We see it happen again when Nureyev, older now and in training in Leningrad, stands before the Rembrandts at the Hermitage Museum. And then, once again, when he wakes up early one morning, to make sure he's the first person at the Louvre, so he can have Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa all to himself.

Again and again and again—“transforming encounters with a Work of Art.”

I read Fiennes's words back to him.

He laughed in recognition. “Yeah, okay. I'd forgotten that.”

I asked him about those scenes in the film.

“Those scenes,” he said, “the one in the Louvre and the one in the Hermitage, with the Rembrandt, those were the scenes that really moved me. Because the engagement with the Rembrandt… I thought The Prodigal Son, looking at it, when we shot that, I was so emotional, I wasn't crying, but on the inside… Those were holy days for me.”

I told Fiennes I knew he'd answered this question after directing his first two films, but I wondered if the answer had evolved during his third: Among the directors he'd worked with, had he cobbled together bits from one or another to help inform him, or was he standing on his own now?

“I don't know that I'm consciously taking from the films I've been in, in terms of visuals, in terms of cinematography,” he said. “But I certainly, in terms of ways of working…I'm often interested in Spielberg, whose energy, vocal… He's not a quiet sort of monosyllabic, quiet-voiced director. He's just direct. ‘Just go here.’ ‘Just put this lens on.’ ‘Come sit down.’ ‘Do it quickly.’ Very clever. Totally positive. And you can feel it. I remember the set, people loved it, because there was a sense of momentum. I think generally actors and crew love it when they feel this forward momentum and, along with it, good work.”

“Deliberate intention,” I said.

“Deliberate intention,” he said. “Wavering, wavering on the set is…” He chuckled darkly. “Too much wavering is worrying. And, like, Anthony Minghella [during The English Patient] was brilliant with actors. A gentle provocation towards looking for something other… It was in my lack of experience that I thought he was wanting me to ‘hit it,’ to ‘nail it.’ But I think actually, quite rightly, he's looking for ‘What else is there that I can get that this actor can own so that they're not contriving something to satisfy me?’ ”

“The pleasure is that I see a French film and meditate on what it, being an Englishman, what it says to me...it offers up new provocations, and also confirms common identity of being a human being.”

After lunch, we walked a short distance to the Royal Opera House, where Nureyev had danced and where a large black-and-white portrait of him hangs in the wings, hovering above the dancers as they step onto the stage. The Royal Opera House is also where Fiennes took ballet lessons of his own—eight or nine, he says—with a dancer in the Royal Ballet named Bennet Gartside, in preparation to play the legendary Soviet ballet teacher Alexander Pushkin. Once, and only once, in my presence, Fiennes did that incredibly weird thing where an actor transforms his head and face and body into another human being in a flash, a total magic trick, while showing me the way Pushkin did something or other.

The White Crow centers on the 1961 trip to Paris by the Kirov—the famed Leningrad ballet company. Nureyev is played by the Russian dancer Oleg Ivenko, who leaps and spins throughout as tightly as the threads of a screw. The film builds to a masterfully suspenseful climax at Le Bourget Airport in Paris, where Nureyev has to choose between defecting to the West or being sent back to the Soviet Union to face some unknown—but likely terrible—fate.

“It's not an easy decision as he sits there in the room. We've seen the love of the mother, we've seen the support of Pushkin, and we've seen those friends—it's not just the oppressive evil empire, it wasn't stifling,” Fiennes said. “When we shot Leningrad, the Soviet scenes, I wanted it quite classically framed, and ever so slightly, we bring the color up. We don't want to confirm the cliché of the gray Soviet world. And when I tried to look at color stills of the Soviet era, they're quite hard to find, but when you find them—bang!—I mean everyone, the women, the red, red being the political color, but red is everywhere. But it pops! And we see so many black-and-whites, it's so weird what this very basic visual thing does. Yeah, I just…it's complicated.… I know the film asks questions; I don't know that it answers them. I don't know that a film should answer. I like films that provoke me to think.”

When I met Fiennes in London in late January, politics was on the surface. Theresa May's Brexit plan had just been rejected by Parliament. And Fiennes had recently given a little-seen speech at the European Film Awards, in which he had spoken about film's role in Europe, and Europe's present relationship to Britain. The speech was economically rendered, but urgent and unequivocal in its diagnosis of political crisis in Europe and the U.K., and of film's role as a remedy:

In anticipation of this occasion…I couldn't help but reflect on what it is to consider oneself European. Is it an instinct? A feeling of belonging? Can I be English and European? Emphatically: Yes. That is my feeling in my gut.

There is arguably a crisis in Europe, and our feeling of family, of connection, of shared history, shared wounds, this feeling is being threatened by a discourse of division. A tribal and reactionary vocabulary is among us. It is depressing and distressing to witness the debate in my own country about who we are in relation to Europe. In England now, there is only the noise of division.

But film, filmmaking, the expression within a film, can be a window for us to see another human being, another human experience, and we can celebrate our differences of language, culture, custom, and our common humanity at the same time. But the act of seeing, seeing another, seeing through the lens, carries in it, I believe, the vital act of bearing witness. Perhaps if we truly bear witness, there can be a true connection, and a better understanding.… Our films can be songs, crossing borders and languages with melodies and harmonies in the form of light and sound and narrative patterns.

We discussed the speech, and his intentions with it. I asked him how much some of the ideas in The White Crow—the way ballet could move across borders, like the films he describes—were on his mind when he delivered the speech.

“I just had an instinct, that I wanted to say how much, how important I felt the community of filmmakers are, and given what this was, I would really be meaning European filmmakers, at the time when my own country is divided about what it means to be linked to Europe,” he said. “Not that countries have to make films that express [exclusively] their culture.… The pleasure is that I see a French film and meditate on what it, being an Englishman, what it says to me…it offers up new provocations, and also confirms common identity of being a human being. And I do feel, I suppose it links what I hope is identifiable in the film: [that he is] being moved and therefore changed by exposure to a work of art. It's a dialogue.”

There are the works of art in The White Crow, I said, and also the cities themselves. Before Nureyev sees the performances or the paintings, he's walking about first Leningrad and then Paris, experiencing that new feeling of somewhere else, letting it in. Fiennes doesn't shy away from his comparable feelings for Russia. The feelings you discover when a place becomes for you the people who live there and not just the political systems that dominate headlines.

“I've formed over the years a handful of friendships in Russia, a handful who are very important to me, and I love going there. And I'm aware of the… I mean the authoritarian nature of their regime that's in control of mostly all the press, and the creep of censorship and control, is very disturbing. But when I'm there, I sort of: There's life going on. I see amazing theater plays, and I have friendships with people.… What interested me was the common humanity underneath the ideological, political fisticuffs.”

I said that hearing about his friends in Russia reminded me of the same dynamic in the United States, the dissonance between the noise of American politics and the lives of most Americans, how most people have nothing to do with the political headlines, how most people are trying to do their best, to generally be kind to their neighbors.

“That's it. Exactly. Exactly. I'm sure that, you know… I mean, nothing that I read about Republican politics makes me think I would ever be sympathetic…but I'm sure that I could go to a Republican community in America and be welcomed, and looked after, and treated with extraordinary generosity and decency and kindness, and those people might go support a Republican candidate the next day.”

That continued exchange between human beings, whether ultimately fruitless or not, seems critical to Fiennes. And art continues to be one of the pre-eminent currencies of at least the exchange of culture.

“Ballet, not being connected to any spoken language, is an extraordinary communicator.… And as an audience member, whether it's a film, or a ballet, or a play, it feels so important to me that we have the privilege of being exposed to these things.... This is the one area, cultural interaction…where we can talk to each other. So when that's impacted, it seems serious.”

We discussed performers and companies struggling to get visas.

“I'm not saying that they're not coming anymore, but it is a challenge that you have to get a visa to go to Russia. And it's funny, isn't it, that I think the cultural interchange, interaction, exhibitions, theater, ballet, coming, that is where we can be like—”

Fiennes threaded his fingers together, hopefully, like hands in prayer.

Daniel Riley is GQ's features editor.

A version of this story originally appeared in the April 2019 issue with the title "Ralph Fiennes Loosens Up."

PRODUCTION CREDITS: Photographs by Scandebergs Styled by Jon Tietz Grooming by Ciona Johnson-King Set design by Zach Apo-Tsang at Magnet Agency Produced by Samira Anderson/Mai Productions

Huge thanks to the amazing @tessa-quayle for helping me out with this impossible-to-open article

[scarlettsabetlondongirl]

Read the New Interview by Poet Scarlett Sabet and Led Zeppelin Founder Jimmy Page in Interview Magazine below or click on headline link.

JIMMY PAGE AND SCARLETT SABET ARE THE MUSIC-POETRY POWER COUPLE THE WORLD DIDN’T KNOW IT NEEDED

By Stephanie LaCava

Published October 10, 2019

Scarlett Sabet’s poetry is felt three-fold when she performs it. The written words aren’t the same when she says them; they are trance-like, told as if from memory. To call the London-based talent a poet and performer seems inadequate. She’s more so a musician, or, perhaps, a mystic. Her haunting readings have taken place at storied book shops such as San Francisco’s City Lights and Shakespeare & Co. in Paris, and she’s been invited to read at the likes of Wellesley College. She has published four collections of poetry on her own imprint: Rocking Undergound, The Lock and The Key, Zoreh, and Camille earlier this year. 

Today, she debuts her spoken word album Catalyst, produced by her partner, the legendary musician Jimmy Page. 

Interview sat down with the couple to talk about coming together for this project, the brilliance of the Velvet Underground, and paying to produce your own work.

STEPHANIE LACAVA: You two met in 2012, but it was two years later that your relationship started and you first talked about collaborating together. It would be five more years before today’s release of your project on all streaming platforms. Why this album now?

JIMMY PAGE: One project that I knew it shouldn’t be was poetry with music. So with the production of Scarlett’s work, I wanted to create an individual character for each poem, a sonic landscape to compliment it.

LACAVA: And with all due respect, that was also a cool move. It would have been kind of eye-rolling to do music accompaniment.

SCARLETT SABET: Yes. It feels exciting, but also like a natural progression, I think, because we live and work together every day. Literally every one of these poems, Jimmy was there when I wrote it, and he was the first person that heard it and he’s seen me perform so many times.

PAGE: It was six years ago that I first heard Scarlett read.

SABET: At World’s End Bookshop on the King’s Road in Chelsea.

PAGE: I thought, “This is really interesting. She’s really interesting. She’s definitely got something there.” And the people in attendance soaked up Scarlett’s reading.

LACAVA: Surely, you’ve read a lot of crowds.

PAGE: That’s a good point. The whole place hushed. Rocking Underground was the first poem I heard of Scarlett’s and when we started production, we began with it.

LACAVA: I think people assume the title of the poem is a music reference, but it’s actually quite literal…

SABET: I was on a train. My computer had broken. It was just one of those, ugh, kind of despairing Sunday nights. I just remember there was a guy with a backpack in my face, and I got out my notebook, and there was the rhythm of train.

LACAVA: Do you usually listen to music while you write?

SABET: It’s got to be something that’s trance-like. I can understand why you’d listen to jazz, for example.

LACAVA: That’s a place where both of your practices kind of overlap.

PAGE: Well, yeah. I did this interview with William Burroughs for Crawdaddy Magazine in 1975. We started to talk about trance music. I thought maybe he’d been to see Led Zeppelin on just one occasion. Actually, it was many times at Madison Square Garden. Anyway, we then started talking about this whole trance ethos, about the Master Musicians of Jajouka, this whole genre of tribal trance music from Morocco.

LACAVA: You learned about Jajouka from Brian Jones?

PAGE: Yes. To be fair, I know that Brion Gysin had introduced Brian Jones.

SABET: He was a painter and musician, Burroughs’s lover, and he came up with the cut-up technique with Burroughs.

LACAVA: Ah. What was your connection to Jones?

PAGE: I’d heard Elmore James songs (which Jones played a lot,) but I couldn’t quite work out how to play the music. People would say it was literally, from the neck of a bottle. I thought, ‘So, let’s see how this guy Jones does it.’ Sure enough, he gets up on stage and starts doing some Elmore James songs, and he has the equivalent of what everyone would know as a slide on his finger. I started talking to him when he came offstage, and I said, “Well you know, you’ve really got that down. What are you actually using?” You must understand that nobody that I knew played slide guitar at all. This is the first time I’d seen somebody do it—before Jeff [Beck] was doing it, before the Rolling Stones. So, he said, “Oh, have you got a car mechanic near you?” And I said, “I literally do have one not too far away.”‘ He said, “Go there and ask for a bush. It’s called a bush.” A thing used used in car maintenance. And he said, “You’ll find that it’ll just fit on your finger absolutely perfectly, and that’s what I use.” This guy was so generous.

LACAVA: Is there any young musician today who has really impressed you?

PAGE: Well, I was so impressed with the two guys that I saw with you.

LACAVA: Stefan Tcherepnin and Taketo Shimada, the New York-based Afuma.

SABET: They were so good. You said that was reminiscent of New York in the ’60s?

PAGE: Well, well, yeah. It was. It definitely had that sort of trance vibe.

LACAVA: Back to Scarlett’s start. You did your first reading at Shakespeare & Co. in Paris in January of 2015. Jimmy help set it up?

PAGE: So, when Sylvia (Whitman, owner and daughter of George Whitman) was giving me a tour after my own book signing, I saw the poetry section there, and I said, “Do you having readings here?” And she said, “Yes.” And I said, “Well, French as well as English?” “Oh, no. Only English.” And I thought, “I know a poet.”

LACAVA: It was Sylvia who introduced me to Scarlett years ago.

PAGE: After hosting Scarlett, Sylvia said to me, “It’s really powerful in print, but her renditions, they’re in another realm.”

LACAVA: So, Sylvia’s now the fourth person in this interview.

PAGE: That’s right. And something else funny happened when I was back at Shakespeare and Company. The man in charge of the rare book department said, “Oh, Sir, that Françoise Hardy track that you were on was absolutely amazing. That’s one of my favorite pieces of your guitar work.” I thought, “Well, wait a minute. I’m going to check, I’m going to track this down.” When I heard it, lo and behold, there’s this distortion box. It’s called a fuzz box. And I was the one who helped create this thing, and there it was on Francoise Hardy’s Je n’attends plus personne. I did it when I was a session musician. It was a session in Pye Studios at Marble Arch, downtown where all these Petula Clark hits were done. It wasn’t until you were in the studio that you’d see the artist come in. And you’d go, “Oh, I know who this is.” Or, “I don’t know who this is.” But when Francoise Hardy came in, I knew who she was. She had on one of those turtlenecks and that sort of tweedy skirt.

LACAVA: You also did some early sessions with Nico before she was part of the Velvet Underground.

PAGE: Nico came to London to record the Gordon Lightfoot song “I’m Not Sayin” with Andrew Oldham as a solo artist. So, there’s this huge orchestral session with Nico singing, and Andrew asked me to write a B-side with him for Nico, routine, play, and produce it on a separate session, which I did. It’s called The Last Mile. I was a staff producer on Immediate Records.

LACAVA: How old were you?

PAGE: 19 or 20. I was going to routine her at her apartment just near Baker Street in London with my acoustic 12-string guitar. Nico’s son with Alain Delon was there and he was holding up my guitar in the air, and I decided it was time to rescue it.

LACAVA: When did you see her again after that?

PAGE: Steve Paul’s Scene Club (Paul’s nightclub The Scene at 46th and Eighth Avenue) had been decorated by Andy Warhol. I don’t know what you’d call it here, but it’s this silver wrap—

LACAVA: Mylar.

PAGE: All the walls were covered with Mylar because Andy Warhol said that color was the color of speed. And playing down there was Nico and The Velvet Underground. I had an incredible connection with Lou Reed, and we spent lots of time talking.

SABET: Was that the first time you met him?

PAGE: Yeah, and I’d seen The Velvet Underground on more than one occasion. They were almost like a resident band. Andy Warhol was keen for them to be there. I can tell you exactly what it was like. When I heard the first album, it was just exactly what they were like. They were just like that. It was absolutely phenomenal.

LACAVA: See, that’s interesting in the context of his new project, as well. The difference between seeing someone in person versus the recording…

PAGE: The other thing about Steve Paul’s and The Velvet Underground was that it didn’t really have too many people coming to hear it, which I found extraordinary.

LACAVA: How many people were there?

PAGE: Well, hardly any people. Like, nine, a dozen people. It was so radical, such a radical band. You know, Maureen Tucker just playing the sort of snare drum. And the fact that there was the electric viola with John Cale. You just didn’t get this sort of line-up. It was really arts lab, as opposed to pop music, this wonderful glue, this synergy between them that was dark. It was very dark.

LACAVA: You mentioned Warhol. Do you remember seeing him there?

PAGE: No, he wasn’t actually there, but I met him with the Yardbirds. I don’t actually remember the hotel, but there was a reception for the Yardbirds. He came in, and he was with one other person. I was talking to him, and he said, ‘I just want to feel the band, feel the Yardbirds.’ “I want to feel their presence,” was the exact quote. We had a conversation and at the end of it he said, “You should come to the Factory, and do an audition.” But we were working, and I didn’t manage to do that. And then I saw him again in Detroit in ’67, when we were playing there. Andy Warhol was proceeding over this wedding, and The Velvet Underground were there. So, I got a chance to say hello again.

LACAVA: Something interesting that Scarlett told me once was that you steered her toward self-publishing. That legitimacy doesn’t come from a label—it comes from creating the thing you want to create.

PAGE: Yes.

LACAVA: You could have told her the opposite, based on your experience.

SABET: Jimmy was like, “Well, look. The first Led Zeppelin album, I paid for that.”

LACAVA: You produced and paid for it?

PAGE: Yes.

SABET: They had a record. He then took it to record companies. He took it to Atlantic and said, “This is what we’ve got. I’m not releasing singles. Take it or leave it.” He literally said the words, “I didn’t want to go around cap in hand saying, ‘Oh please. We’d like to write some songs.’ It’s better to do it.”

PAGE: What I’ve been producing over the last few years are Led Zeppelin rereleases and catalog items. It means a lot of listening to quarter-inch tapes, and it’s all in real time. I had to approach this project in such a way that the first album speaks for itself. The last and ninth album of the studio albums were Coda, so on every album in between, I had to make sure all of these companion discs were done and present the idea to the record company along with new artwork—that way to ensure the complete vision of the recordings were released.  

SABET: With the sound engineer, Drew, Jimmy would explain how he wanted to kind of layer some of my voices. And I practiced some on cassette, so it was like a guiding track, and then I’d listen back, and I understood the timing and what we were going to do for each one. If there was a sound or there was a better take, we’d talk about that.

PAGE: The first one that I wanted to try was Rocking Underground, which opens up the whole of this work. It was recorded on a cassette tape. It was so noisy, but urgent. I said, this is what we’re going to use, but then it needed some extra work to be done to augment the base layer—

LACAVA: Oh, that’s cool!

PAGE: So, it opens, and it’s really disturbing, all this ambient noise. And I know we pulled it off. Because there’s such a variety on it, and it will be such a surprise. It’s the sort of thing that you listen to for, say, Side One, from beginning to end. The whole sequencing is there for a reason.

LACAVA: We’re living in an age of the ubiquitous podcast. Everyone has those things in her ears.

“Catalyst, a spoken word album written and performed by Scarlett Sabet and produced by Jimmy Page, is released on a special 12-inch etched vinyl via JimmyPage.com.”-Jimmy Page

Photos: Interview Magazine

[artsistory]

Hot cheese air (7.11.19)

We had a fairly late start to the day but once we got going we hustled to see the  l’Orangerie. This museum is fairly small but it has such a wonderful design. The walls are curved to match the paintings and there is perfect soft natural life. This was the first place I learned to appreciate Monet. 

Brandi went to the bathroom and discovered that they have a shoe cleaner machine! It made me so happy to get to dust off my shoes!! Of course once we left the museum we were back in the white sand but... it was nice while it lasted.

Our next stop was to get some falafel. Two different people recommended this place to me independently of each other so I knew it would be a slam dunk. And legit, it’s the best falafel I’ve ever had! I didn’t really have an appetite but ended up eating half of Brandi’s because it tasted so dang good.

We chased it down with some ice cream! Brandi pointed out that they serve pretty small serving sizes of ice cream in Paris. These ones were particularly smol. We got it from Berthillion which is a really popular old ice cream joint. They had vegan options which was great for me! My flavor was whiskey chocolate, but don’t worry, I didn’t get ice cream drunk.

As we enjoyed our tiny scoops we wandered across the bridge to Notre Dame. We tried to reenact our last visit here and honestly Brandi nailed it whereas I...well.... look fine. Boy I really miss that jacket and those boots I used to have.

Our next stop was the Shakespeare and Co bookstore and this time we had a little space to actually read! I read a book of poetry and a little Virginia Wolf...it felt appropriate. The store cat Aggie was napping on the roof. Brandi spotted her by following some clever clues! The window leading to the rook had a poster of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof! We looked out and there she was!

After reading I got myself a crepe. This time I saw there was a kinder/nutella option so of COURSE I just had to. It was...so much. They threw in a couple kinder bars which instantly melted into the hot nutella and the result was the chocolatiest monstrosity I’ve ever eaten. The guy who made it laughed at me. 

Finally we rounded out our Latin Quarter visit with a stop at St Chapelle. This is a very small church compared to a lot we’ve seen but it feels very special because of the windows.

It’s impossible to capture these windows in a selfie. The stained glass is so uniquely beautiful so I’ll also post a non-selfie! Somehow we lost Luke and had to use all our boyscout training to find him. He forgets his sim card for ONE DAY and manages to lose us! We eventually find each other and meander our way homeward.   

On our walk home we saw several weird but notable sights. The first was a toy store filled with really realistic animal stuffies. Once inside we saw a staircase with a sign that said “zoo”. Intrigued, we headed down the stairs to find what can only be described as a dungeon of dolls...It was actually kind of creepy and strangely cold and also it smelled weird. 

Next we ran into a pet store with real animals inside! There were so many puppies Brandi and I were sobbing heaps on the floor. Destroyed by the cuteness.

It took a lot of effort to rip ourselves from the pet shop but we had to hurry home in order to record another collab for our pod! This time my friend Eve came on to talk to us about David Cerney! It should be a pretty good episode.

Our final plan for the evening was to get some raclette! The basic idea is that they serve you cheese and a little melty oven to melt the cheese in and then you pour it over potatoes or bread or meats. As we approached the restaurant we were met by the powerful smell of cooked cheese. It was flowing in waves all the way down the street. They sat us underground in another dungeon. But this time it was a cheese dungeon!

This restaurant also had fondue and we were pretty overwhelmed with the choices. We ended up getting a beef fondue and a mixed raclette dish. The server informed us that we’d have to order for 4 people so we agreed. The result was that we ate SO MUCH meat and cheese. The server told us that we had unlimited potatoes and cheese included in our meal and we just laughed at her.

By the time we left we all smelled very strongly of oil and cheese. Our original plan was to join Vincent to go dancing but we were too full to even consider. We rolled home and immediately threw our clothes in the washer. 

[prcserpina]

Tell us about the kiss!!!

MY INBOX IS FLOODED and like genuinely i wasn’t gonna talk about the ~whole thing~ but what the heck i figure it’s an opportunity to be real honest abt the fact that sometimes things? aren’t perfect and that’s actually so totally okay?

i first went out with him thursday night - we got hot chocolate and he very quietly but sweetly insisted on paying, we wandered around the city a bit, we found an open street where the sun was setting and squished up on this ledge together talking for a couple of hours. he seemed nervous at first but i could see that as time went on he got infinitely more comfortable with me which was lovely, so he’d opened up so much by the end, and what was super nice was that he’s of mexican descent but lives in california so we could talk in/about spanish & we talked a lot about the parallels between being an indian immigrant in the uk / mexican immigrant in the us but also stuff like spanish / french slang and it was just so much fun & i feel like we learned so much from each other. he was very sweet. he kept saying he’d never had a conversation like ours before (massively stroked my ego, always love that) .

so we had a good night & i wanted to stay friends bc he was leaving the city in a couple of days (so i wasn’t really thinking about anything particularly more than just hanging out). i invited him to join my friends and i the day after next (yesterday) because he doesn’t know anyone in the city and i thought he’d have fun with us & he was super happy to.

we met at shakespeare & co, wandered around, him and i went upstairs and i found a book of neruda’s work with translations & was asking him about the spanish vs english - ie i could understand both translations but bc i’m not a native speaker i couldn’t get a /feel/ for the spanish & i was asking him if the /feeling/ of this poem was lost in translation (answer btw: yes, very much so). he ended up reading poetry to me in spanish in the upstairs corner of the bookshop, which was crammed with people, but we somehow created our own quiet little bubble for a bit.

we all went to the notre dame and bc he grew up catholic we ended up talking about our feelings about religion & that led into talking about our childhoods & families. my friends didn’t want to go to sainte-chapelle & i desperately did so they went to a park & he came with me and obviously that was gorgeous and quiet intimate, also, i’m clumsy so i trip a lot / kept bumping into him and he’d like grab my hands or waist to steady me & also insisted on holding open every door we went through for me and when we were walking around i kept looking over my shoulder to check that he was ok so that sort of became a little in joke. we talked more about religion, he told me about día de muertos (i thought it was el día de los muertos but google is telling me otherwise) & i told him about diwali. we met up with my friends, wandered around, found somewhere to get some lunch, then all of us walked to the seine and sat by the river talking for a while (and i completely forgot, we went to the pantheon too!). it was evening by this point and we were pretty knackered so we headed back to the apartment, i did the dishes while my friend ran out to get some groceries and then liz came home and we all crashed for a bit listening to old french music and drinking tea (but also discussing disney channel films, the cinematic masterpieces that they are). at one point he was just quietly smiling to himself and i asked why and he said he couldn’t believe he’d ended up drinking tea with a bunch of english girls in paris (valid).

we headed out again to the champs-élysées, when we were walking around the city during the day the two of us were generally hanging back a little and walking together so our hands were brushing etc, we did that again & got to the arc de triomphe while the sun was setting. then we all went and got some dinner & headed back to the apartment again. i walked with him down the street to say goodbye also OH i forgot to mention i’d nicked his leather jacket in the evening so his jacket was over my shoulders. it was almost midnight, we were sort of prolonging the goodbyes. (he actually very sweetly asked about me being bi bc it had come up in passing and he said he’d never heard anyone say it so casually before so he was quite taken aback but it was out of curiosity & not hostility or anything) and then he was. just generally being real sweet and saying that he’d never met anyone like me before. i asked if he was planning on kissing me. he was like - honestly, i’ve never met a bi girl before and i didn’t know if you’d be okay with it. i was like i’d very much be okay with it. he was like okay good. he pulled me closer using his jacket which i was still wearing and then had to bend down and i had to stand on my tiptoes because he’s Tall and i’m Small and he held me by my waist to steady me and i put my arms around his neck and he kissed me and OH MY GOD i almost DIED laughing because he went STRAIGHT IN with tongue and i was so taken aback i actually opened my eyes while he was kissing me and then closed them again because i was like WAIT NO I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT

BUT APPARENTLY HE LIKED IT because we were like talking between kisses and he went in again and i was like ok first time was a test drive but NOPE MORE TONGUE and then he was hugging me and i swear to god he kissed me with tongue for a third time and at this point i was like fuck it he’s obviously enjoying himself imma just let him do his thing.

and like honestly? the kiss was a bloody nightmare. but i’m not even vaguely upset, i’m really happy? i wasn’t crazy in love with him and i don’t think i’ll ever see him again, my first kiss wasn’t this incredible moment with the love of my life - but he’s a sweet guy and it was a good way to say goodbye and everything before and leading up to it was lovely and that’s all that really matters to me? and i’m SO surprised by that bc i’m such a hopeless romantic, i always thought it’d be perfect, and now i’m so weirdly happy that it wasn’t.

he said his friends were never gonna believe that he kissed a london girl in paris at midnight. i took his jacket off and put it back on his shoulders. we parted ways, i looked over my shoulder and yelled ‘FRIENDS?’ and he laughed and yelled back ‘FRIENDS.’ and that was that.

[seacrowisland]

Langblr Secret Santa

Hiya my dear @genderqueerfujioka , I’m your Secret Santa and here to spread some Langbrl joy! Since the Langblr coordinator told me you were interested in Italian and Literature I thought, I might share a short introduction to Italian Literature with you as it is the thing I’m currently studying in university. However, when stalking your profile, I couldn’t help but notice that you are very interested in learning Swedish at the moment, which is why I have created a second gift for you. This way, you can decide which language you want to focus on today and keep the other one for Boxing Day or New Years. (Or open it right away as well.)

If you want to be a pro at Italian Literature (or seem like it) you have to know these three drama queens:

From the left to the right they are Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarca (also known as Petrarch). They are also called the “tre corone” which means “three crowns” and even though they published all of their works in the 14th century they are still considered the finest literature one could possibly read. (They are like Italian Shakespeares basically and everyone’s obsessed with them.)

Let’s start with the first one, shall we? Dante was a pretty cool guy. Born in 1265 in Florence he first became a politician, but since he choose the wrong party (there were two oppositional parties in Florence at that time and they were at each other's throats) he had to flee from Florence in 1301, which the other party used to deny him entrance into the city for the rest of his life. (If he had paid enough money maybe they would’ve let him back in but he wasn’t really interested in that.) Dante then basically founded Italian Literature as he used the “volgare” (the language of the common folk in Florence at that time) as the language of his stories. (Before him it was all Latin, from then on all the authors wrote in the Florentine accent because through Dante it became cool.) His most famous work is “La Divina Commedia” (“The Divine Comedy”) in which Vergil, a Latin poet, as well as one of his lovers, Beatrice, lead him through the three realms of the dead. (Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.) Sort of ancient fantasy literature which also teaches about theology, philosophy and also about science at that time. He died in 1362.

Boccaccio was a little bit more chill, he was also a politician (born in 1313 in Florence as well) but instead of getting send into exile he kept calm, travelled a lot and wrote a set of 100 novels called “Il Decameron” (from deka=ten and hemera=day because it takes place within ten days). The novels are all centred around a group of ten young people that flee from the plague in 1348 and lift in the countryside for ten days. (Obviously, the plague wasn’t over within 10 days but it’s a story after all.) During those days they each told a story every day and then the one who had told the best story was selected king or queen of that day. The novels all take place among normal, upper-class people (merchants most of all) and are focused on the intelligence of the characters, which was something quite new at that time. Boccaccio was also obsessed with Dante and literally wrote a biography about him, there was that much enthusiasm. (Even though Dante didn’t return it.) He died in 1375.

Last but not least Petrarch. (I’m gonna call him that even though his actual name was Petrarca but Petrarch is more common among English speakers.) He was born in 1304 and—not, not Florence, but Arezzo, Italy. As his dad was a politician, who worked close to Avignon, Petrarch grew up in France, in a rural area close to the Mont Ventoux. Why does this matter, you might ask? Well, because Petrarch one day (in 1336) decided to climb up that mountain (most people at that time had better things to do than to climb up random mountains, so it was quite unusual for him to do so) but what made this hike so special is, that he wrote about it in a letter to Francesco Dionigi. In this letter, he has the spectator was in the centre which was a massive cut in the experience of nature and landscapes in the 14th century. Suddenly the entire aesthetic changed because suddenly there wasn’t just nature but a reflection of your innermost self within the things you see in front of you. Petrarch was a poet and also the founder of the (Italian) sonnet (which was later copied by many Englishman and once it was already out fashion picked up by Shakespeare to be cool again, so Petrarch is the reason why people are able to obsess over Shakespeare’s sonnets) but most of all he changed the worldview from being centred on God and his creation to being focused on the self and your feelings. In his poems, the “Canzoniere” (consisting of 366 poems) he wrote about one thing: His love for a girl called Laura. When Petrarch first met her, she was already bound to another man, but that didn’t keep him from loving her. He wrote to her 266 poems “in vita” (so whilst she was still alive) and 100 “in morte” (once she had died), talking about his feelings about her and so on. (By the way, they weren’t just sonnets but also songs and ballads.) I’d also have to mention, that the Italian sonnet differs from the (standard) English sonnet: Both have 14 lines but whilst Shakespeare had three quatrains (abab cdcd efef) followed by a heroic couplet (gg), the original Petrarchan sonnet consisted of a rhyming octave (abbaabba) followed by a rhyming sestet (cdcdcd).

To include some actual Italian, here’s Petrarch's XXXV (35th) poem. (I included an English version below so that you can understand it properly, but I’d definitely encourage you to try and read it the way it is.)

Solo et pensoso i piú deserti campi vo mesurando a passi tardi et lenti, et gli occhi porto per fuggire intenti ove vestigio human l'arena stampi.

Altro schermo non trovo che mi scampi dal manifesto accorger de le genti, perché negli atti d'alegrezza spenti di fuor si legge com'io dentro avampi:

sí ch'io mi credo omai che monti et piagge et fiumi et selve sappian di che tempre sia la mia vita, ch'è celata altrui.

Ma pur sí aspre vie né sí selvagge cercar non so ch'Amor non venga sempre ragionando con meco, et io co llui.

(And now the English version)

Alone and thoughtful, through the most desolate fields, I go measuring out slow, hesitant paces, And keep my eyes intent on fleeing Any place where human footsteps mark the sand.

I find no other defence to protect me From other people’s open notice, Since in my aspect, whose joy is quenched, They see from outside how I flame within.

So now I believe that mountains and river-banks And rivers and forests know the quality Of my life, hidden from others.

Yet I find there is no path so wild or harsh That love will not always come there Speaking with me, and I with him.

So, first of all, you can probably totally tell, that this poem is about how in love he is and even though he’s trying to hide it from people, it’s not really working out the way he planned it. I’m not going to go on about the verse rhythms and stuff like that, but I would like to point out (a) the beautiful form of the Italian sonnet and (b) the connection between the nature (fields, sand, mountains, river-banks) and his feelings, wanting to find a path that hides him from people and most importantly lets him escape love. (But, as he precisely states, there is no such path.)

There are lots of other Italian writers (like Giacomo Leopardi, who totally looks like Eddie Redmayne and was one of the first romanticists or Carlo Goldoni, who was super important for the Italian Drama, which in itself it a whole other story) but if you know the tre corone, people are going to be super impressed and their works are also great reads. Personally, I most enjoy Boccaccio because his stories are quite simple, but Petrarch's poetry is nice too and if you’ve got the time, maybe one day you’ll read into “La Divina Comedia”. (I honestly tried but couldn’t do it.)

I hope you enjoyed your gift! If you want to talk about Italian Literature (or Drama or poetry) you can text me anytime. I know, that this isn’t exactly a vocabulary list or anything like that, but I always enjoyed not only learning my target language but also a few of the cultural backgrounds so hopefully, we’re on the same track here. Happy holidays and have a good new year!

[les4l]

on the beauty of poetry- Lorenza de la Torre

I am sitting here, wondering about poetry. Why is it here? What does it mean? Is it really needed? All these different questions that no one knows the answer to. How can I, a 16 year old, know how to define what poetry is and what is its impact on our society? However archetypal this may sound, one can’t define poetry. I mean, poetry isn’t just a couple lines on a piece of paper that illustrate symbols, metaphors, personifications and whatnot. If we really look hard, humanity can find poetry anywhere they look. May it be a decaying tree, human resistance, or a mother carrying their child, poetry is part of our everyday life. Poetry comes in many shapes and sizes, it could be something repulsive, ephemeral, or simply beautiful.

Beauty. This is the very word that I will be trying to define throughout this text. Why would I choose such a conventional and vague topic such as beauty? Beauty, like poetry, is easy to find, depending who you are. Now I, someone who I believe to be quite buoyant, finds beauty everywhere. However, I do believe that the word in itself is overused and in this day and age, the age of technology and selfies and social media, this specific word has lost all its meaning. Yes, I know, that was a very radical statement, but everytime I walk out on the street, I cannot escape the words “Oh my god! This is beautiful!” “You’re beautiful!” “I am Beautiful”. People saying it constantly that the word means nothing to them, but they wouldn’t know.

As I have done with multiple other concepts, concrete and abstract concepts, I looked into the past. I would consider myself a golden age thinker. Someone who despises the time that they are currently in, wishing that they can go back in time to when all their amount of personalised and relative fun was happening. I would rather be hanging out with the beat poets, or debating with Albert Camus, listening to the amazing, innovative music from the new wave eighties, or even contemplating what art is with Oscar Wilde, than sitting here, watching people only care about their appearances as they take another meaningless selfie on their brand new iphone.

The main question I asked myself is how did the concept of beauty evolve through time? One view on beauty from the Antiquity being that Socrates believed in the rejection of the human body and that the concept of physical beauty meant nothing. However, Nietzsche stating that this was because he was an ugly, repulsive man. Kant, on the other hand, stating that in some way real beauty doesn’t exist, that beauty only exists in order to please man. Oscar Wilde, with his aestheticism, putting beauty above anything that has a physical impact on humanity like politics or social position; because, ignorance is bliss. People’s concept of beauty is relative, one thinking that it is only accessible through human proportions, and other’s, like Wilde, thinking that it is the world around us. The environment in which we find ourselves. It sounds like an “easy way out” answer to a complicated and complex question, but each person's view of beauty is relative to who they are. Who they are being formed by multiple factors such as social position (Wilde, a dandy, found it everywhere), personal physical appearance (To Nietzsche, Socrates denying beauty because he was simply unappealing), personal history, and general context.

People’s relative stance towards beauty has led to many different essays, novels, and poems about said subject. An outsider’s view towards poetry is that every single poet writes about beauty, or a “fair lady” that they have met in the past. However, many different poets portray their different stances on beauty with their poems, views that were even frowned upon in the society that they lived in. Shakespeare, putting his love before the physical beauty of the woman in his sonnet “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” to Baudelaire and Wilde comparing a decaying, dead, body to an angelic and pure object. Beauty, in poetry is used as a door into the poet’s perception of what they value the most, physical or spiritual. Moreover, their perception, enlightens, informs us, and helps us form our own personal view towards such an abstract concept. Beauty and poetry also go hand in hand. Poetry in itself being something beautiful, throwing a positive light on human emotions. Without beauty, whatever it may be, there would be no poetry, and without poetry, there would be no beauty. They are co-dependant notions that make life opulent, worthy.

Now, is poetry needed in our society. People who say that it isn’t, I believe to be quite naive and ignorant on what poetry truly is. As I illustrated previously, poetry is not a text on a piece of paper, poetry can be found everywhere, if we look hard enough. So to say that poetry is inexistent, and has no necessity in life, would be just plain incorrect. However, I do believe that the youth of today might seem to be unappreciative of the conventional definition of what poetry is. My generation, the “youngsters” of today simply don’t read as much as before, because we have technology, social media, Netflix, Youtube, whatever that keeps our minds and bodies occupied that promote the least amount of activity. Yes, I am calling my generation lazy. However, this rejection of written poetry has opened us to concentrate on a more unappreciated form of poetry: music. Music today plays the role that novels, and poetry played back in the day when music was only for the elite. Ever since the beginning and most importantly, the second half of the Twentieth century, music has assembled both lyrical and instrumental talents to make us feel rare emotions, that we wouldn’t encounter without it. For example, we have the 80’ band The Smiths, whose innovative guitar and intellectual lyrics sprouted a group of young adults to think for themselves, and continues to do so. Patti Smith, whose literary idols include Arthur Rimbaud, and Baudelaire, copies their style and writes through their perspective of the world. Music for the Masses. Music makes poetry available to people who wouldn’t have access to the sometimes superficial, written poetry. Could someone survive without poetry? I don’t think so. I stated that I believed that poetry could be found anywhere, so it would not be plausible to never encounter poetry, even if we are not aware of it. But music, makes poetry so much more valuable, especially to the young generations of today. Many people escape the world through their headphones, and get lost in the music. Today, most people listen to rap, in itself a very poetic form that is very attractive and enlightens the youth without them knowing it.

How could I illustrate to you, dear reader of the importance of poetry in our society. We need it. We can’t just go along living our lives without it. Art is needed, litterature is needed, and poetry is needed. In whatever form they might be in. Ever since the beginning of intellectual curiosity, so the Antiquity, poetry has been illustrated as a way to express emotions, everybody’s personal humanity. In my opinion, the meaning of life is to find happiness, whatever that may be. It’s all relative. In order to find happiness, one must “find themselves”. We need a cheat sheet, an opening to other people’s minds to show us the right path. And poetry is the perfect way. Poetry, through music, visual arts, human actions, gives life a meaning and a goal. To find the beauty in this world that might seem to be the opposite.  

[whatamidoingineurope]

tues 17 dec

Today I wandered around Le Marais. Was starry-eyed at the lovely independent shops and stylish people. On my walk I made sure to cross through lots of tiny alleyways and hidden garden courtyards!

I sat in Square Louis XIII amongst the formal gardens with fountains. the gardeners did an A+ tree trimming job because the trees lining the park formed a perfect square and had right-angled edges. I walked around imagining I was an 18th century noble despite my appearance which very much says “peasant” atm.

Admired the ceiling in the St Paul-st Louis church:

Then I went to see Impressionist art in the Musee D’Orsay, and their collection was massive but I was grateful it largely adhered to one theme! Easy to get overwhelmed by big museums (for this reason didn’t really enjoy the Met in NYC - raced around trying to see everything but appreciating nothing - and decided to skip the Louvre this time in Paris. If you have more time, and can pop in and out regularly with an annual pass, these places would be ideal though)

These lovely paintings transported me to summer in Aireys:

My favourite things were their smaller collections of historical war paintings and statuary though! This is the Sack of Corinth:

At night I got some inspo from the interior design shops on the Left Bank...

Walking home at night I stopped to look in Shakespeare and Co, an English language bookstore established in 1919 by a woman named Sylvia Beach. She believed in encouraging reading over profits and lent her books out prolifically to the poor, and she also published Ulysses and fought for it to be printed in its transgressive entirety. The bookshop was a gathering place for writers of the Lost Generation such as Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 20s but they closed in the 40s because they didn’t want to sell books to Nazis. I went upstairs to the museum where they had preserved Sylvia’s personal quarters, which were so beautiful and serene with old books covering every wall, someone playing the piano, lots of cosy reading nooks, and a cat that sat on people’s laps. No pictures inside but I hope you can imagine it for yourself. Couldn’t believe my luck that I arrived in time for Jeannette Winterson to do a reading of her new book Frankissstein, which explores the relevance of Mary Shelley’s reimagining of what “human” means in the age of AI. Basically, she says we are about to become an inferior species to our AI overlords, but do they have souls? and does it really matter? ooh. She was incredible, I got a copy signed and she wished me luck for my travels! But she couldn’t understand why I left Sydney for Europe. I have been wearing wet socks everyday (in between trips to the dryer) so honestly same... So it was perfect timing that they did Christmas poetry readings and there were free mince pies and mulled wine. It was literally amazing to be warm, fed, and in such a cosy atmosphere with people who spoke the same language as me for a few hours.

Walked home past the Seine, looking at the city in a romantic trance, which resulted in my stepping in lots of muddy puddles:

Admired the Christmas forest at Hotel de Ville:

Unfortunately then my phone broke and I had a bit of a panic thinking I’d lose all my travel documents and photos. Hurried home without a map but was heartened by the kindness of strangers who helped me alomg the way. Fortunately I fixed my phone later that night! But I also found out that my tote bag, the one thing I had bought in Paris, was stolen from my hostel room during the day, along with all of my food. Bit of a downer and I couldn’t really sleep knowing someone in my room had done that.

To sum up, priceless learning experiences were had today!!

[limejuicer1862]

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger. The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Suzy Conway,

fell for poetry when she was introduced to Shakespeare by a nun exhibiting uncharacteristic passion for it. Her poems were published in medical journals and newspapers during her career, and once retired, she devoted more time to writing. A former medical librarian, originally from Minnesota, she finished her career at Countway Library in Boston, only to restart it in Nepal in 2002, creating a medical library for Kathmandu University. She resided in Nepal for four years.

In Donegal, Ireland, where she lived in 2006, horses manifested before her in uncanny ways as she rode her bike hither and yon. Back in the states, Secret Halo trotted into her life, and how things shifted into the most demanding and mystical schoolroom is a poem yet to be penned. Rilke wrote: The future enters into you long before you know it. In retrospect, it s right before your eyes.

Her brother once told her that she looked like her horse, which thrilled her. Now she endeavors to be like her horse: awake, aware, in the present moment. Her book of haiku, Lights Along the Road, debuted in Kathmandu in 2005, co-authored with Janak Sapkota. She lives, rides, and writes in Corvallis, Oregon.

The Interview

1. What inspired me to write poetry?

As a sensitive child my questions were these: Who am I? What am I doing here? Surely there’s got to be more. I got a hint to the answers when I learned to print my letters. If I was holding a pencil stringing words across a page wellbeing flooded my soul. It was the beginning of purpose, I got an inkling of how I would be able to stay, how I would cope.

I discovered the library as a young girl and found gold. I eventually became a medical librarian to quench a desire to serve, read, learn and publish. I worked in buildings that held the archives of famous writers, and minds. Libraries were my true north, my cave. I didn’t need a map to navigate them.

I was a seeker. In high school poetry was where I found beauty and truth. Poetry gave me some of the first bricks to a philosophical foundation of life. I loved school, but it lacked what I was specifically after which was a viable explanation to what I was truly doing on earth. Raised Catholic gave me the holy, sacred rituals to soothe myself but organized religion per se never got me to the crux. India got me closer to it. India ripped layers off and left me close to naked in the sense of shedding the false self. Surviving India was a breakthrough of massive proportions, I could almost hear the crash the masks made when they hit the ground. India will do that to you. Life shifted after that. In good ways.

When I read The Merchant of Venice, “The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blest…” I was on to something. I can remember the moment I read those lines, they gave me ballast to keep my head above water. I grasped poetry as one would grasp a life raft. A truth from the universe. A young woman’s philosophy began to form.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

I was introduced to poetry by a nun in high school, who unlike most nuns from that era, showed a passion for what she was teaching. She was the Shakespeare teacher. Her enthusiasm was contagious. The poetry teachers in college bored the life out of me, except for one, the Chaucer teacher who I’ll never forget. In my mid-20s I began to read poetry with a vengeance. None of my family or circle of friends were into poetry, so it was a lone journey, but I bought a lot of poetry books, and I haunted a lot of bookstores.

3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

Such a good question. I was aware of who was being taught in school, but other than that, I wasn’t aware at all, and in the scheme of things what was being taught in school was limited. I was quite sheltered, quite naive. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s, 40s that I sought out those poets. I was working in libraries with poetry at my fingertips, so it was easy to gain momentum. I craved poetry that touched on the liminal, the ineffable, the mystical.

My therapist, who was a Renaissance man, turned me on to Rilke. I carried his books around the world with me for decades. His poetry was an elixir for my soul, and once I discovered Rumi, Hafiz, Kabir, the Japanese haiku masters, (especially Ryokan) and other Zen poets, I was air born. In the old days, Howard Moss, poetry editor of The New Yorker, served up heaps of good poetry.

I wanted to be moved at the heart and soul level, wanted to be seismically knocked off my feet.

I had the great fortune to meet and become friends with Tess Gallagher. She influenced me greatly and still does. Ray Carver’s poetry and short stories brought me home and led me to her. I owe so much to Tess; her straight talk and generosity is engraved in my heart.

4. My daily writing routine.

To be open and prepared to meet the mysterious, I begin every day with meditation followed by a big pot of French press coffee. I get ideas, inspiration, whispers, points of view and guidance when I’m silent, and quiet, and still. Mostly out in the woods and forests.

I write and correct and edit and write and correct. I do this until I’ve aged the poem. Sometimes riding my horse or my bike, ideas fall into my head. Sometimes fixes come in. Sometimes entire poems spurt out of my pen with no effort.

I’m a morning person, I write when my mind is free of pesky thoughts, but if I’m on a roll, I’ll be up all hours. It depends on where my soul takes me.

5. What motivates me to write?

The need to be in touch with who I really am. That vast spirit tucked into my small physical form. I want to express that aspect of my identity, you know, the one that isn’t criticizing or judging or planning the future and raking over the past. The one who is the over soul, the one who is the observer, the one who is trying to be heard. I want truth. From another realm. And writing puts me in touch with that.

Janak Sapkota is a poet I met when I lived in Nepal who motivates me every day. His belief in me, his support is a kindness in my life. He and I published a book of haiku called Lights Along the Road when I was living in Kathmandu from 2002 – 2006. He is a gifted young poet, a beautiful soul and a unique voice. To find someone who believes in you when you don’t believe in yourself is vital to one’s ability to keep on writing.

6. Work Ethic

I was brought up Irish Catholic in a family where hard work, responsibility, good grades, and sticking with it were prized. On top of that I’m a classic Virgo which ratchets the intensity up considerably. Now that I’m older and retired and have had lots of therapy, (smile) I’ve morphed into a new sun sign. This one lets me relax more, trust more, and stay in balance, in harmony. I’ve freed myself to run amok in the best sense; to be wide open to whatever happens. To jump out of planes, to ride my horse in a pitch-dark forest, to know what the next step is and take it afraid or not.

My work ethic is more in balance because my worth doesn’t stem from it anymore.

7. Writers when I was young who influence me today.

What influences me from that time in school more than actual poets was experiencing the beauty of words. Rhyme captivated me. Iambic pentameter soothed me. A turn of a phrase calmed me. Poe captured my imagination with his dark longing, and desperation. Even though the feel of his poems was so disturbing, the beauty of them consoled me. More than anything, that’s what I took from the poets of yore. How language could soothe the broken heart, lift it even when it remained broken, transform something like loneliness into a beautiful work of art.

8. Writers I admire today and why

Wendell Berry Robert Bly Ray Carver Tess Gallagher Jane Hirschfield Jon Loomis Tom Lux Sharon Olds Antonio Porchia Rainer Maria Rilke Rumi, Hafiz, Kabir, Lao Tzu, Li Po, Ryokan Antoine de St. Exupery Edna St. Vincent Millay William Stafford Wislawa Szymborska Sara Teasdale

Because they replace what I know with something I don’t.

9. Why Do I write

I am visual, and I was born with a fountain pen in my hand. Ink to paper is an orgasmic profound thing, and I’m sure in past lives I was a scribe or an illustrator or a writer or maybe just a fountain pen! I write to be in touch with my soul’s yearning to create and evolve.

10. How do you become a writer?

You become a writer by writing. Daily, often and frequently. Read. Take notes. Be aware. Observe. Understand as best you can what moves you. We are not our bodies, thoughts and emotions. We are spiritual beings here to wake up to that. Wake up to the areas within yourself that need healing, the parts that need the light. Write about what makes you weep.

11. Writing projects at the moment

Since publishing my book of poetry Bringing In Horses, and two other books I wrote with my publisher Cheryl McClean, my interests shifted to short stories that have a synchronous point, the kind of stories I hanker to read, ones that illustrate a larger force at work. I trust that shift of focus after I put my life’s blood into Bringing In Horses. Writing the book took some courage and it put a lot to rest.

I help a friend, a German journalist, mountain climber and translator on occasion, and when invited speak at creative writing classes held in and around where I live. There is always enough to keep my soul engaged with its purpose, with what enlivens it. I have writing projects just for myself. I finish them and then investigate what to do with them. Answers always come.

I also collaborate with my older brother who acts as my muse. That close relationship inspires many creative writing projects and some of them have manifested as books. He is one of my strongest supporters.

Thank you so much for this beautiful opportunity to delve into these questions. I’ve never pondered them to this degree before, and by doing so have learned a lot about myself. My gratitude to you Paul, and to everyone who contributes to your site, everyone who is doused to the gills with poetry.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Suzy Conway Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. 1,925 more words

[topmixtrends]

FOR THE KARL MARX Bicentennial Forum, Jason Barker spoke to Clive Coleman, co-writer with Richard Bean of Young Marx, a play about Marx and his family’s early years in London. The play opened at the Bridge Theatre in London on October 27 and ran until December 31, 2017. It was directed by the Royal National Theatre’s former artistic director Sir Nicholas Hytner, and starred Rory Kinnear in the lead role, Oliver Chris as Engels, and Nancy Carroll as Marx’s wife Jenny von Westphalen.

¤

JASON BARKER: Many people will be familiar with your TV credits on The Bill and Spitting Image. How did you come to co-write a play about Karl Marx, which seems like a different proposition entirely?

CLIVE COLEMAN: As a writing partnership Richard [Bean, co-writer] and I go back a long way. We used to write comedy together in the mid-1990s. We wrote a sketch show called Control Group Six for BBC Radio 4, so we’d always been in touch. Richard became a well-known playwright and I went on to work for the BBC as its legal correspondent. We worked together on a play about phone hacking called Great Britain within five days of the verdict in the big criminal phone hacking trial in which Rebekah Brooks was acquitted and Andy Coulson convicted. [1] We worked on that in 2014 and wanted to do something else. Then Richard was approached initially to write the libretto for an opera about Karl Marx. That didn’t happen for various reasons but through talking to him about it we started reading around Marx — we read a number of biographies — and were just amazed by the fact that in 1850, as a young man, all the things you would never have imagined of this imposing figure — this bust in Highgate Cemetery — actually happened to him. He lived the most extraordinary life. All the incidents in the play actually happened. He did apply for a job on the railway as a clerk, he did have terrible boils on his backside, he fathered a child illegitimately with his housekeeper, and he lived in absolutely penurious circumstances. At one point the Prussian spy who was spying on him reported back to Berlin that Marx hadn’t left his Soho apartment for five days. Why? Because he’d pawned all of his own clothes; he was too poor to leave the house. So there was a ready-made door-slamming farce right there, with bailiffs banging on the door and his beautiful German wife fobbing them off while he hid in the cupboard. There was an amazing collection of ingredients that we thought would make a fantastic play. Initially we thought of it as a pure farce. Then we backtracked slightly because when you’re putting a genius on the stage farce is actually too slight a vehicle … That was basically it. I think we slightly fell in love with the young Marx because he was such an amazing character. Flawed but charismatic, energetic, crackling with intelligence, and the kind of person to whom things happened and who made things happen. So the character we found magnetic and fascinating.

I agree that farce is too slight a vehicle for Marx. But I could have imagined the play as an opera. You focus on a lot of material that lends itself to melodrama.

The producers were keen to have an opera with Freddy Demuth, who was Marx’s illegitimate son, grown up, but we fastened on 1850 as the play’s setting because it was a time when an awful lot was happening. We really wanted to focus on Marx as a young man, the one people don’t really know about. Some of the information has been hidden from the public …

Almost certainly a lot was censored by Marx’s daughters, maybe self-censored.

Yes. People are more comfortable thinking about him as an austere and iconic figure who gave birth to communism then Stalinism, et cetera. No one’s thought about lifting the curtain and looking at the life he was living, all the normal problems, so for us this presented an irresistible opportunity. No one’s written a play about Marx and put it on the English stage, even though he lived in England for the majority of his adult life.

In focusing on the young Marx you’re perhaps contradicting the audience’s expectations, both of the image of the man as well as Marxology. It’s easier to think of Marx as a great thinker when we’re presented with him as this sedentary old sage with a big beard in the way that all the Victorian sages are presented: Darwin, Dickens, et cetera. Did you deliberately set out to smash this image?

The thing that comes across if you read Marx’s letters, particularly those to Engels, is how funny he was; witty, funny, very well read. He would quote Shakespeare at length, he knew poetry, literature. He and Engels would ridicule their opponents, quite cruelly, actually. I’m not sure that this ritualistic side to Marx and this caustic wit ever really left him; I’m not sure he became so different to the way he was previously in terms of his sense of mischief and ribaldry. That bust of him at Highgate Cemetery — somewhat strangely — casts a long shadow. I happen to believe that lurking in the background there’s a real person. One of the things that draws you to him is this incredible intellectual energy he had. Maybe that magnetism is in some respect what makes him into a leader. If there was a room with five hundred people in it and he walked in you’d know he was there. He was someone who drew your attention. That energy was something that everyone found attractive. So in that sense I don’t think there was a deliberate effort to smash the image of him as an older man.

I’d like to come back to the question of farce. Young Marx is a very dynamic play and there’s a lot of outrageous physical comedy, like the fight scene in the British Museum, where Marx meets Charles Darwin (apparently without realizing who he is). But the mood of the play shifts with the death of Marx’s son, at which point it becomes a tragedy; Marx realizes the error of his ways and makes peace with the chaos. In reality, of course, when his son Guido dies in 1850, it turns out to be only the beginning of a long sequence of tragic events. In 1851 his wife Jenny gives birth to a daughter, Franziska, who only survives a year; then Edgar, his eldest son, dies in 1855. And for the next 15 years Marx is still persecuted much as he was before by bailiffs and landlords, and he doesn’t make serious headway on his “economics shit” for years. Even after Das Kapital is published in 1867 he complains to Engels that he’s never been in more dire financial straits and feels like he’s at death’s door. In 1860 he writes a work entitled Herr Vogt, which is this huge exposé of an obscure German activist who, years later in 1870, turns out to be a spy of Napoleon III. By this point Engels is almost tearing his hair out, imploring Marx to finish his book on capital. But he can’t. In this sense one could say that the farce is never-ending. Why did you decide to curtail the farce at the point you did, in 1850 or thereabouts, when in reality it had only just got going? 

In any piece of drama or comedy, when you’re dealing with such a full and eventful life, you have to bite off a digestible chunk. But you’re absolutely right, we compressed a lot. The Marxes lost several children, whereas we focused on Fawksey. In fact it was Edgar who lived up until just before he was eight years old, who Marx absolutely adored, and who was a brilliant Artful Dodger–type character. He would stand outside their Soho apartment and fob the debt-collectors off as well. All of that is equally great material but we wanted to get as much of his young life into as short a period as we could. So much happened in 1850; that year draws in all of the incidents that took place around it. You’ve only got two hours on stage. Had it been a box-set TV series we could have expanded it. You mention how he felt as if he was at death’s door. He was frequently ill due to a terrible lifestyle of smoking cigars and drinking far too much but also just getting through the run-of-the-mill everyday things of life. As writers, we had to make a decision about what a reasonable chunk of his life is, and if there were great things that happened outside of that then which ones we should try and work into that space.

I suppose the staging of the play might also have encouraged that compression. Young Marx is performed at the Bridge Theatre in London, a purpose-built brand-new state-of-the-art theater on the Thames at Tower Bridge. You have this fantastic revolving stage that allows the action to change locations in an instant, from Soho to Brussels, and which serves the piece very well. Did knowing you had that machinery at your fingertips influence the way you wrote the play?

It started quite raw. The Marxes lived in two rooms in London’s Soho in what’s now the Quo Vadis restaurant. We knew we wanted to have scenes in the Red Lion, where the Communist League met. We also knew that we wanted the duel scene, which actually took place in Antwerp, and where Konrad Schramm went to fight August Willich on Marx’s behalf. Schramm was grazed by a bullet, everyone thought he was dead, and then he turned up in Soho a few days later. But, actually, the truth is we wrote the play and Mark Thompson, the brilliant set designer, came up with this amazing revolving set. There were still a few scenes that the director cut. But we wanted the London of the time, which was a dirty, grubby Soho, awash with émigrés and revolutionaries from the 1848 revolutions in Europe. So we wanted this Dickensian pea-souper type of London together with this fetid atmosphere of revolutionaries plotting and planning. And also factions splitting. At least one of the communist factions wanted to spark revolution through pure violence. Marx never wanted that and believed things would happen through a historical process. It was all those things together that led to the way in which it was staged.

Whenever I fall into conversations with people about Marx, people always tend to express the same opinion. Armchair enthusiasts, people who haven’t read him much, or at all, usually start by insisting that while they admire Marx and agree wholeheartedly with his ideas in theory, they don’t see how they could possibly work in practice. I’m curious to know whether you’ve had similar conversations with people and whether you share the sentiment. The reason I ask is because that skepticism doesn’t come across in the play at all. Overall it ends up feeling optimistic and dispenses with the lunacy, along with the cliched idea that Marx is a utopian fantasist, irresponsible, nothing but a drunken raver, et cetera.

I’m someone who’s sympathetic to the man and his dilemmas. Marx was a young man married to a beautiful German aristocrat who was four years his senior. He was living in difficult, penurious circumstances, managing a young family and trying to hold a political movement together through the Communist League at a time when it was splitting up. So he had a lot on his plate! But can I answer the question in a slightly different way?

Sure.

Put it this way. A play about Karl Marx cannot avoid his writings. It would be absurd to try to do that. No one goes to the theater to have two hours of Marx’s theories rammed down their throat. That would not be a particularly entertaining evening. But we wanted to tackle his writings and we thought long and hard about finding ways and the right speeches in order for him to do that. So there’s a scene in the play where they’re making breakfast and Marx has an epiphany, and it’s through making breakfast that he manages to expound upon alienation. Something like alienation is a difficult concept to get across and we wanted to find ways to ground things like that in situations that might have sparked his imagination and enabled him to come up with them. And especially in those domestic situations. But I don’t think we ever took on or made a value judgment about whether these concepts were workable in practice. It was a moment in time. It was 1850. So no one had really put any of this stuff into practice. We were many years away from him actually completing Das Kapital. He’d been working on it for about five years and hadn’t done much, I think. So that wasn’t the focus of the play. I’ve slightly dodged your question there.

I think it’s fair to say that Marx in 1850 is an unusual character. At the time he was experimenting with communism and socialism, which were still fairly minority underground sects. He doesn’t know how things are going to work out, he’s grappling with it all; even though Marx’s “theory” is itself a practical undertaking. He’s not an abstract theorist.

There was one speech we put in the play and which I was very keen to have in. Marx had a great optimism that history would play out in a particular way and in the speech at the Red Lion he says there will be a time when the money’s eaten itself, banks will be bust, there will be no money to pay the police or the army and so we won’t need a revolution; we shall simply walk in and take over. There was also another speech we put in. Although he had this optimism, capitalism has clearly turned out to be hugely elastic and shape-shifting. It hits one crisis then it finds a way, whether through the invention of credit cards or state intervention to prop up banks. So in actual fact it’s proved to be a very powerful foe and perhaps more so than Marx imagined. So in the play he gives another speech when he’s at his nadir and in which he describes capitalism as a seven-headed hydra that can never be beaten. And I wonder whether he ever thought like that. Did he ever consider: What if I’m wrong about this? What if the enemy is more powerful than I thought? I take the view that anyone who believes so much in something must at some point reflect and think: what if the thing is more difficult to beat than I ever imagined?

It’s the Marx bicentennial this year and Marx’s ideas about class struggle and economic exploitation are still live issues. I wonder whether this explains why there have been so few TV or theater dramatizations of Marx’s life. Do you think producers are frightened, not so much of Marx, but of what he represents? Or do you think there’s a more innocent explanation? In passing I’ve heard it said that the Raoul Peck movie The Young Karl Marx has been struggling to secure an English distributor, which may go some way toward explaining why more Marx films don’t get made. Clearly it can’t be for lack of a good story, or one that’s worth telling. 

I don’t think there’s a big capitalist conspiracy to blunt any drama about Karl Marx. There have been lots of documentaries and books. I think it’s because people associate him so much with the writings and the history that followed it. And for a lot of people that’s a bit of a turn off.

But it’s still very visual. Your play has a great visual language in terms of the spies and all these archetypes you have in it. It’s interesting that the Marx story should remain so overwhelmingly on the page.

Well, having said that the Young Marx play has been on about a thousand cinema screens on National Theatre Live, so it has been seen in cinemas. There may end up being a film of the play. Who knows? You have these sleeping giants. For years and years, when I was writing sitcom, everyone said you cannot write a sitcom about people being in an office. People are in an office all day and they do not want to come home and sit for another half an hour and watch people in an office. And then Ricky Gervais wrote The Office. Sometimes you have a long period where people think things aren’t doable. Then suddenly times change, attitudes change, and those things become popular. So you never know. This may be a time when people are going to look again at Karl Marx. He certainly deserves a look.

And as a dialectical thinker of contraries he’s perhaps the greatest sleeping giant of them all. One should never say never with Marx.

Well, exactly. Maybe we’ve helped to start something new.

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Jason Barker is professor of English at Kyung Hee University, South Korea. He is the writer-director of the German documentary Marx Reloaded and author of the novel Marx Returns.

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[1] In 2011, it emerged that The News of the World, a mass circulation UK tabloid Sunday newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, had hired a private investigator to hack into the phone records of Milly Dowler, a young British teenager who went missing in March 2002, and whose body was eventually discovered six months later. In July 2011, it was reported that during the period of Dowler’s disappearance, during which the newspaper supported a public campaign to find her, the private investigator and journalists from the paper listened to voice messages left on her phone, and deleted others in order to free space for new incoming messages. This created the false impression that Dowler was still alive. Following pubic outrage the paper ceased publication in July 2011. In 2013, former editors of The News of the World, including Brooks and Coulson, were prosecuted for their involvement in the related phone-hacking scandal.

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