sovay: (PJ Harvey: crow)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2019-06-18 02:35 pm

You'd best believe this thing is real

Whatever else you may happen to be doing this afternoon, evening, or morning, please take four minutes and listen to the Staple Singers' "Slippery People." I heard the song first and adore it in Stop Making Sense (1984), but this is the definitive version. It could have been written for them.

Other links while I work until I leave the house for a workshop this evening—

1. Not a quick read, but not a shallow one, either: "When an ex-Fatah Palestinian 'neighbor' took up a Zionist author's challenge." They are a small part of the overall discussion, but I was struck by these lines:

[M]ost Diaspora Jews are still speaking about Israel in a 20th century way, which is: Zionism began with the pogroms in czarist Russia, and it culminates in the Holocaust—an entirely Euro-centric narrative. That is problematic for several reasons. One is because the majority of Israeli Jews come from families that have nothing to do with the Shoah, who came from one part of the Middle East and moved to another part. So we are writing out a majority of Israeli Jews from the Zionist story.

Mizrahi Jewishness does have importance in the diasporic circles I read and talk in, but I suspect my diasporic circles self-select for inclusivity and that means I have no idea what anyone else is doing until, cf. recently the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, they do it wrong. It's the sort of widening ring of awareness that makes me feel uselessly naive. In any case, the piece as a whole is worth your time.

2. I am sorry to read of the death of Sylvia Miles. She was not an unreasonable age for it, but I just discovered her within the last six months and in the way of character actors I could have believed that she was raucously immortal.

3. I found William Meredith's "Navy Field" in Poetry's "The Poetry of World War II" and I just like his language. It reads a little like a translation—it makes me think of Gerard Manley Hopkins—but neither of these is a complaint.

4. I read this article about virtual influencers and I really don't enjoy that we have reached the stage of dystopia where we are just straight-up ripping off William Gibson's Idoru (1996).

5. At least the D.C. Dyke March does not yet appear to have set a trend.

P.S. It took forever and involved nightmares, but last night I slept.
thisbluespirit: (alfred burke)

[personal profile] thisbluespirit 2019-06-18 07:43 pm (UTC)(link)
P.S. It took forever and involved nightmares, but last night I slept.

Good!

Also some character actors should defnitely go on forever; it should be a thing. <3
thisbluespirit: (Dracula)

[personal profile] thisbluespirit 2019-06-19 07:53 am (UTC)(link)
Ha. Their power to stalk a person from beyond the grave is quite something at times, it's true!

(This icon technically does have Denholm Elliott in it, honest.)
cmcmck: (Default)

[personal profile] cmcmck 2019-06-18 08:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes, I can see the Hopkins influence there and I agree with you that the language is very fine.
oracne: turtle (Default)

[personal profile] oracne 2019-06-18 08:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Have you heard the Angelique Kidjo version of Remain in Light? Also she is touring - Philly will be February.
drwex: (Default)

[personal profile] drwex 2019-06-18 08:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Sorry about the nightmares. That link to the "Slippery People" tripped something deep in my brain because I remembered there was something special about it that I'd heard when it came out in 1984. That led me to this - https://dangerousminds.net/comments/when_the_staple_singers_covered_talking_heads_on_soul_train - which reminded me that even though he's not with them on this Soul Train performance, David Byrne did play guitar on the version they recorded and that the Staple Singers had a long history of working with Byrne/Heads. I was also reminded that Byrne adapted his Stop Making Sense dance moves from things he saw in historically black churches.
muccamukk: Susan in a white shirt with her uniform jacket slung over her shoulder, looking tired. (B5: Done with the day)

[personal profile] muccamukk 2019-06-18 09:06 pm (UTC)(link)
That Times of Israel interview was fantastic. Thanks for linking to it.
muccamukk: Susan with her hair down, looking sombre (B5: Sad Susan)

[personal profile] muccamukk 2019-06-19 01:55 am (UTC)(link)
I think you have admired this one in this past, at least.
gwynnega: (Leslie Howard mswyrr)

[personal profile] gwynnega 2019-06-19 01:51 am (UTC)(link)
That Staple Singers version of "Slippery People" is glorious.
Edited 2019-06-19 01:52 (UTC)
pameladean: (Default)

[personal profile] pameladean 2019-06-19 03:14 am (UTC)(link)
That Staple Singers version is wonderful. And now autoplay is serving up a lot of different versions of Stop Making Sense generally.

P.
nineweaving: (Default)

[personal profile] nineweaving 2019-06-19 05:24 am (UTC)(link)
People disappoint you. Lovers disappoint you. But theatrical memorabilia stays with you, as long as you keep it under clear plastic.

"Raucously immortal" indeed. She had a good run, but I wish it were longer.

Nine
landingtree: Small person examining bottlecap (Default)

[personal profile] landingtree 2019-06-19 11:03 am (UTC)(link)
Whatever else you may happen to be doing this afternoon, evening, or morning, please take four minutes and listen to the Staple Singers' "Slippery People."

Done! That is very good.


I've only had time to read the start of the interview so far, but it looks extremely useful and I will definitely come back to it. Thank you!