uneasy-eyes

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Nosferatu (2024) and the Revenge of Lucy Westenra | A writing experiment

I. How We Keep Getting Dracula Wrong Let’s start with this: Dracula is not a love story. Not in Bram Stoker’s novel. Not in its core themes. Not in the reality of what Dracula does to his victims. And yet, time and time again, adaptations have tried to make it one. They have taken a story about predation and turned it into a story about longing. Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula gave us the…

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"AI Doesn’t Need to Be Human—It Just Needs Us to Be" and other things I learned from my digital Simulacrum.

Did you happen to see this screenshot floating around of the poem that DeepSeek R1 made? If you haven’t, here you go: For context, a content creator (bio reads: “AI Influencer”) called KatanHya on X seems to be trying to get AI to dialogue on a philosophical/creative level—an interesting exploration of how artificial intelligence either assists or reflects back to us the way we think. They…

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I have a mental illness. Here's why it's important I say that.

DISCLAIMER: This blog post was difficult to write without help, so I’ve been assisted by AI in the writing of it. In the interests of transparency, then, this blog post will be a transcript of the “conversation” I had with ChatGPT. ME: Hey ChatGPT, could you help me explain why, as someone diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, I might…

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In which ChatGPT reads my Baldur's Gate 3 Brainrot for filth...

DISCLAIMER: This is a word-for-word transcription of an exchange between this blogger and ChatGPT. Reflecting the current state of AI ethics, is not meant to represent an “original written work;” it is simply being shared because it is interesting. Also, SPOILERS FOR BALDUR’S GATE 3. ME: Hey ChatGPT, I have a bit of a thought experiment for you. I’m going to give you a person’s primary,…

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If I ever get married, I am going to bully my partner into using this part of Hadestown for our vows:

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Hadestown West End Epic III change alert! (If you read Working on a Song you knew this was coming. XD)

For the first day of previews--note that this can always change later--the verse that used to go:

The more he has, the more he holds The greater the weight of the world on his shoulders See how he labors beneath that load Afraid to look up, and afraid to let go So he keeps his head low, he keeps his back bending He's grown so afraid that he'll lose what he owns But what he doesn't know is that what he's defending Is already gone

was replaced with the following:

I know how it is because he is like me I know how it is to be left all alone There’s a hole in his arms where the world used to be When Persephone’s gone His work never done, his war never won Will go on forever, whatever the cost Cause the thing that he’s building his wall around Is already lost

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You know what’s sad? In Hadestown, Orpheus and Eurydice don’t remember the cycle. Each time in new, and fresh. For Hermes, who has watched it all, it’s like opening an old wound every time. Every time he sees the boy he cares about fall in love and loose it all. There is nothing he can do but watch and wait. Hades and Persephone are in a cycle, but one they are aware of. They never died and started over, it’s all the same. But for Hermes? He sees it all.

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Don’t mind me, just getting v emotional at both Hermes actors telling Reeve’s Orpheus to “take her home” and Eva leading him out of Hadestown

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even in death. — colby & jack.

1. hadestown, way down hadestown // 2. margaret atwood, eurydice // 3. unknown // 4. poem heaven, untitled // 5. natalie diaz, the hand has twenty-seven bones: these hands if not gods // 6. brett reel, maybe in another life, huh? // 7. geloy concepcion,  things you wanted to say but never did  // 8. hadestown, wait for me 

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And Eurydice was a young girl

But she’d seen how the world was

When she fell, she fell in spite of herself

In love with Orpheus

Get the print here!

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“m/f romances are ALWAYS boring” - tell me you haven’t seen the part in Hadestown where Orpheus and Eurydice are reunited in the underworld and she launches herself into his arms and he lifts her up and spins her around and for one brief moment, no matter how many times you’ve heard the story before, you’re convinced that it will all work out this time

without telling me you haven’t seen it

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On love

Eurydice (Sarah Ruhl); Liana Rādulescu ; “Spending More Time” (Ron Hicks); Song of Achilles (Madeline Miller) ; It’s Been a Long, Long Time (Harry James, Kitty Kallen); Unknown ; Romeo and Juliet, Act 1 Scene 1 (Shakespeare); Six of Crows (Leigh Bardugo); Unknown, Quora ; Eurydice (Sarah Ruhl)

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1. three moments in paris, mina loy/ 2. eurydice, sarah ruhl/ 3. orphée ramenant eurydice des enfers, jean-baptiste camille corot/ eurydice, sarah ruhl/ 4. talk, hozier/ 5. hadestown, anais mitchell/ 6. the wounded eurydice, jean baptiste camille corot

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orpheus but he's sisyphus

Ovid’s The Story of Orpheus and Eurydice (tr. Rolfe Humphries) / Spirited Away dir. Hayao Miyazaki / @mag200 / Jenny Diski, “Housewife” / Franz Wright, God's Silence / Adrianne Kalfopoulou, “Poem in Pieces, a Log” / Jon Ware, I am in Eskew / Kazimierz Wierzyński, “A Word of Orphists” (tr. Czeslaw Milosz) / @prisonhannibal / Aeschylus, The Oresteia / Ocean Vuong, Eurydice

image ids under cut:

image 1: a quote from Ovid that reads: "And Orpheus received her, but one term was set: he must not, till he passed Avernus, turn back his gaze, or the gift would be in vain."

image 2: excerpt from the script of the film Spirited Away that reads: "Haku: But I can't go any farther. Just go back the way you came, you'll be fine. [highlighted] But you have to promise not to look back, not until you've passed through the tunnel."

image 3: a drawing, labeled in all-caps handwriting "a venn diagram of love vs. grief:". the drawing is a single circle.

image 4: an excerpt, highlighted and italicized, from Jenny Diski that reads: "People don't understand about repetition, do they? How it is at the heart (thump, thump, thump) of obsession; at the erotic centre (drip, drip, drip) of desire. You do, of course. Repetition is insatiability spelt sideways."

image 5: a quote from Franz Wright reading, "And let me ask you this: the dead, where aren't they?"

image 6: a quote from Adrianne Kalfopoulou in red text, reading, "Grief will keep you reaching back / for what is not there"

image 7: an excerpt from Jon Ware that reads, "Here's my question. If the ghost wants nothing more than to be witnessed, why would it appear behind you, not in front of you? The only answer I can think of is this: [underlined] it appears behind you because it already knows, to an absolute certainty, that you will have no choice but to look back."

image 8: a quote from Kazimierz Wierzyński that reads: "I understood the true fate of Orpheus, that [highlighted] love is a constant terror of loss."

image 9: a screenshot of a tumblr ask from an anonymous user who says, "What's the point?" user prisonhannibal responds, "of what? it's love though".

image 10: two lines from aeschylus reading, "Orestes: This was always going to happen. She's been dead since the beginning."

image 11: an excerpt from Ocean Vuong that reads, "Your absence has gone through me // Like thread through a needle. / Everything I do is stitched with its color."

end ids.

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“Cause here’s the thing. To know how it ends, and still to begin to sing it again. As if it might turn out this time. I learned that from a friend of mine.”

Hadestown and Orpheus and Eurydice over the years. Broadway, NYTW, album, and myth.

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― Ovid, Metamorphoses

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"if i was orpheus i would simply not turn around" yes you would. if you were orpheus and you loved eurydice, you would. to love someone is to turn around. to love someone is to look at them. whichever version of the myth — he hears her stumble, he can't hear her at all, he thinks he's been tricked — he turns around because he loves her. that's why it's a tragedy. because he loves her enough to save her. because he loves her so much he can't save her. because he will always, always turn around. "if i was orpheus i would simply —" you wouldn't be orpheus. you wouldn't be brave enough to walk into the underworld and save the person you love. be serious