'Cause you don't know my way

[sovay]

I know it is feeding the trolls, I know it is engaging with the rhetoric, but when the man in the White House claims that American Jews who vote Democratic are showing disloyalty—not to him, as one might suppose would bruise his nanometrically thin skin, but to the State of Israel, which in his mindset of eternal outsiders he imagines must command more of our allegiance than the country we actually, you know, live in—all I can think is and what would you know about being loyal to even one country? Nothing he has ever done has been in the interests of America as it is, only America in his image, the old, blood-hungry, land-hungry Moloch-ghost of prosperity gospel and racist fantasy. And I don't think he's loyal even to that; I just think he can exploit it and leave the rest of us with the ashes. Today is Lovecraft's birthday, speaking of American hauntings: I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you cannot put downe. Well, the man in the White House certainly isn't going to do it; we have to lay this ghost and we're running out of time.

I am having an exhausting and rather difficult day, so here are some very different links.

1. Justin Philip Reed, "In My Defense, Monsters: Notes on Black Poetic Grotesqueries, Composite Humanity, and Freedoms of the Horrific, Part 3": "Horror—which I'd qualify as that mode that best abrades superstructural façades, degrades the social fabric and the sanctity of the flesh, and standardizes the repulsive—is a terrain of Black consciousness."

2. The bloodless icefish: "Their name describes exactly what is unique about them: they technically do not have blood."

3. David Schraub on Israel's exclusion of Representatives Omar and Tlaib. I keep thinking that forcing Tlaib to relinquish her likely last chance to see her grandmother is just another form of family separation.

thisbluespirit linked me this gif of Dwight Frye's Renfield and I am finding it extremely relatable.

Comments

[rosefox]

Something about item 3 makes me think of sharing this video with you. If you aren't familiar with The Band's Visit, all you need to know about this scene is that she's Israeli, he's Egyptian, and he's astonished to learn that she's a fan of Egyptian film stars from watching them on TV during her childhood.

(The show is no longer on Broadway, but it's touring to Boston in the spring and you should really, really go see it. When I need hope about Israel, its songs play in my head.)

[sovay]

If you aren't familiar with The Band's Visit, all you need to know about this scene is that she's Israeli, he's Egyptian, and he's astonished to learn that she's a fan of Egyptian film stars from watching them on TV during her childhood.

I have seen the film, but not the musical! I will look for it when it comes. Thank you.

[rosefox]

The musical is phenomenal. I was so lucky to get to see it before it closed up here.

I just realized that video doesn't have the whole song, so here you go.

[sovay]

The musical is phenomenal. I was so lucky to get to see it before it closed up here.

I have passed on the suggestion to my mother who loved what she heard at the Tonys.

I just realized that video doesn't have the whole song, so here you go.

Thank you!

[rosefox]

Also, good God, that Justin Philip Reed piece took my breath away.

[sovay]

Also, good God, that Justin Philip Reed piece took my breath away.

I didn't want in some sense to blow it by quoting the entire thing, but the passage that begins "I'm sitting inside a coffin in Portland's Lovecraft Bar" is an incantation, and yes.