It's a belligerent style of play and you're resisting the change
We have new internet! It's not entirely clear that we actually needed new internet, but RCN certainly wasn't going to let us continue to use our previous internet, so the tech came and now we have a new router and all the same names on our networks because seriously. Autolycus bravely stayed on the couch through two rounds of doorbell while Hestia defended the bedroom door against all comers. I may finally have gotten over this nosebleed in time to leave the house.
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spatch has written about Tuesday's Burns Supper birthday; I will add that the version I sang of "John Barleycorn" was George Mackay Brown's and that Rob left out the part where he was illustrated by buttresses in the persons of Lynn Feingold and Lynn Noel. We came home and watched Ken Russell's The Boy Friend (1971), a gloriously meta-theatrical love letter to shabby British theater and glamorous Hollywood musicals, with Twiggy, Max Adrian, Murray Melvin, and Vladek Sheybal.
Yesterday I did very little except work, which was boring but undoubtedly better for me than running around. Today I run around. Have some links.
1. The entire story of what Alan Turing's OBE and other memorabilia were doing in Colorado is nuts, but I'm glad they have been recovered; I hope Sherborne gets them back.
2. I am also in favor of not losing Prospect Cottage. To help crowdfund the preservation of Derek Jarman's garden, because apparently this is the world we live in, go here.
3. Viathanate: Kali Wallace, "your heart is a moving target." "I think a lot about what is being lost in those gulfs. I wonder what people would be writing if they weren't being reminded every single day that books live or die by what elements will have people squealing with joy on social media. I wonder what happens to a body of literature if the only people who can take time to create daring and unusual things are those people who already have the support and privilege to make such a choice possible. I wonder what it does to individuals and communities when writers internalize the idea that what they write might matter for a month or two, or maybe a year or two if it's extraordinarily lucky, but after that they have to find a way to matter all over again. What they aren't saying, because they don’t think anybody will hear it."
4. Viahandful_ofdust: things Sherlock Holmes has canonically done. I only wish it came with the stories identified, since the one about the jellyfish is right there in the title, but I can't at all remember where the diagram of breadcrumbs goes.
5. I am actually very impressed by the science of the Vesuvius-vitrified brain.
spatch has written about Tuesday's Burns Supper birthday; I will add that the version I sang of "John Barleycorn" was George Mackay Brown's and that Rob left out the part where he was illustrated by buttresses in the persons of Lynn Feingold and Lynn Noel. We came home and watched Ken Russell's The Boy Friend (1971), a gloriously meta-theatrical love letter to shabby British theater and glamorous Hollywood musicals, with Twiggy, Max Adrian, Murray Melvin, and Vladek Sheybal.Yesterday I did very little except work, which was boring but undoubtedly better for me than running around. Today I run around. Have some links.
1. The entire story of what Alan Turing's OBE and other memorabilia were doing in Colorado is nuts, but I'm glad they have been recovered; I hope Sherborne gets them back.
2. I am also in favor of not losing Prospect Cottage. To help crowdfund the preservation of Derek Jarman's garden, because apparently this is the world we live in, go here.
3. Via
thanate: Kali Wallace, "your heart is a moving target." "I think a lot about what is being lost in those gulfs. I wonder what people would be writing if they weren't being reminded every single day that books live or die by what elements will have people squealing with joy on social media. I wonder what happens to a body of literature if the only people who can take time to create daring and unusual things are those people who already have the support and privilege to make such a choice possible. I wonder what it does to individuals and communities when writers internalize the idea that what they write might matter for a month or two, or maybe a year or two if it's extraordinarily lucky, but after that they have to find a way to matter all over again. What they aren't saying, because they don’t think anybody will hear it."4. Via
handful_ofdust: things Sherlock Holmes has canonically done. I only wish it came with the stories identified, since the one about the jellyfish is right there in the title, but I can't at all remember where the diagram of breadcrumbs goes.5. I am actually very impressed by the science of the Vesuvius-vitrified brain.
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2. I heard about this last night and thought of you. Fingers crossed...
5. Grief. Have you heard about the 3-D printed vocal tract of the 3,000-year-old Egyptian priest?
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Thank you!
(I have no Jeremy Brett icons. This is terrible.)
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Thank you! It is very like our old internet, but it is internet and we cannot afford to be without it! (I had not seen until this evening the proposal by Sanders to treat internet access as a public utility, like heat or water; I'd be good with it.)
2. I heard about this last night and thought of you. Fingers crossed...
I mean, I can believe that the nation hasn't stepped in to save it because the nation appears to be suffering from the internationally popular pandemic of ass clowns, but I'm still frustrated it's necessary!
5. Grief. Have you heard about the 3-D printed vocal tract of the 3,000-year-old Egyptian priest?
No! What?
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Nine
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"But then, as Howard pointed out, the sound is more specifically that of Nesyamun lying in his coffin after mummification."
THIS WILL END WELL.
"Schofield added the approach could also be applied to other preserved human remains – such as the iron age bog bodies found in Denmark and beyond."
THIS WILL DEFINITELY END WELL.
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Here you go:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/23/talk-like-an-egyptian-mummys-voice-heard-3000-years-after-death
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*THIS WILL DEFINITELY END WELL*
Story prompt, perhaps?
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-society-fishskin/chinas-mermaid-descendants-weave-final-garments-from-skin-of-fish-idUSKBN1ZK0AM?fbclid=IwAR2iUq-jr0siwXxLpkzn8tTO5TyujCr3PO7mc7fagx-FUyIekM_VRdtAobY
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I just saw that! I didn't know about the Hezhen, and I didn't know about the fish-skin clothing. That culture should not be lost. It's so easy to break links.
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And here is a detail of one portion:
I have closeups of the rooster and the snake too--but I think this detail is good because it combines art and commentary:
"Eso no se hace" --"That's not done"/ "That's not happening"
... But I do think about how long things linger. I've been comparing trying to have an impact to trying to raise a giant, heavy, smothering blanket up. Sometimes you can lift it up from underneath a little with a stick or something, but eventually the weight of it breaks the stick, and then the tiny hump you've raised is gone. So yeah... Don't know about longer impacts. Though I must say, the ballads are one way... songs have a way of sticking around.
ETA: Only realized after the fact that what you had up there was a quote--d'oh! (And you would have thought I would have noticed when I was reading, but it took seeing that
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It's all right. I didn't think it sounded much like me, so I figured the quotation marks would come into focus. I agree that people create art under any circumstances they can and I appreciate the photos of incredibly beautiful graffiti. But I have also watched—am in some cases in real time watching—people I know convince themselves not to tell the stories they would otherwise tell because it is inconceivable to them that anyone would want them. I don't think it's a strawman argument.
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My parents have one of those complete collected chihuahua-squashing hardcovers of Holmes that I grew up reading; I should just borrow it from them again. I remember lugging it around in my backpack in high school when I was already carrying too many textbooks, that's how much I was enjoying it. (It is a miracle that academia didn't give me a bad back on top of the PTSD.)
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According to the lawsuit, she also said that she had an Order of the British Empire Medal that she bought off Craigslist adding, “I don’t have Alan Turing’s O.B.E.”
I also hope Sherborne gets everything back in the end!
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ALANUM MATHISON TURING, etc")
(And it looks like she was probably lying about getting the OBE off Craiglist?)
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I know the conventions of these case names, but I am still extremely entertained by "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. PHOTOSTAT COPY OF PRÉCIS OF THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY BY ALBERT EINSTEIN PREPARED BY ALAN TURING FOR HIS MOTHER AT AGE FIFTEEN AND A HALF." It makes it sound as though the U.S. government is going to throw down over a fifteen-year-old's understanding of physics.
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Yes!
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"26. According to Ms. Turing, Alan Turing became her father and she could always look to him for direction."
Thank you for the additional documentation; it just kept going.
I also hope Sherborne gets everything back in the end!
It would be appropriate!
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...what, on the astral plane?
*is not reading, doesn't dare*
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It's an amazing combination of "doot-doot-doot, legalese" and "wait, what?!"
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Later on it mentions that she addresses diary entries to him. Which is not actually that strange a thing to do, except that the entries are "I'm worried the police are going to take your things away from me."
(Also I found her Quora account, which is a rabbit hole I should probably not go down.)
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I LOOKED IN THE TRAP, RAY.
now, having read the Kali Wallace article
Write about what really matters. No, not what matters to you. Write about what matters to that guy who wrote an important book and is talking in an important interview. No, not that guy. The other guy.
It reminded me of this Mitchell & Webb skit, which maybe/probably you already know about.
More generally, though, I feel as if her particular pressures are specialized? Specialized to people who are already represented by an agent and (more or less) successfully having books published in the mainstream market. It's just a world so far away from the world of writing that I know. I believe in the stressfulness of it, but I guess I don't accept that the only way one can make a contribution to the writing world is to go into that New York-oriented publishing maw, any more than the only way you can make a meaningful contribution to film is to go into the Hollywood film maw. There are just too many examples of people changing other people's lives and enriching the world--examples that include people I know, like you--that don't fit that pattern. (I'm not suggesting that those other lives don't have stresses aplenty, just that they're not the ones of having to sum up your novel as a combination of tropes or be presenting yourself as a brand)
I do agree with what she says about that world though. If you plunge in, you need to protect your sense of self and your sense of vision, because there are a lot of pressures put on those things.
Re: now, having read the Kali Wallace article
I had not! "So, what if it's not that, but Jaws?"
There are just too many examples of people changing other people's lives and enriching the world--examples that include people I know, like you--that don't fit that pattern.
It's true that I've never had an agent and I've never published with a major press. But I have had to push back on the idea of more social media; I am encouraged to engage in much more self-promotion than I do (and I am given to understand that it has hurt my sales that I don't); it happens less now, but after my first collections came out in 2005, I was regularly asked about my novel, as though I were obviously working on one. I have a very low-profile career. If I wanted anything else, I would have to put much more energy into making myself visible, available, interactive, attractive. It's a moot point because I don't have the energy for that kind of daily hard sell and if I tried it, I don't even know what my mental health would look like except worse. But it's still understood that I'm opting out of the behavior.
Re: now, having read the Kali Wallace article
... I mean, I don't think I'm saying anything Kali Wallace would disagree with, and I'm not trying to contradict anything she's saying. To me the piece reads as a cry from the heart, and I feel for her. I just think the pain can be less if you keep your eyes clear. But she might say, Yeah, but that's really hard and the pressure is great, to which all I could really say is, I hear that.
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That's how it looks. The edges that I brush up against are difficult enough for me to deal with. If my job is writing, I don't want to have to be my own publicist into the bargain, and yet it now seems to be assumed as a package deal.
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I found it an ultimately encouraging essay with a complex rather than inspirobot recognition of the importance and difficulty of making one's own art rather than the art one is contradictorily, conflictingly, constantly pressured to make, but the part where it's ventriloquizing the critical mass of publishing advice that is indistinguishable from brainweasels is acutely bang on.
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2. I should hope it's saved!
5. The vitrified brains are awesome. I feel like that sometimes.
Nine
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Honestly, I feel her last name is the least weird thing about this person. On the bright side, I am never again even going to mock-worry about whether Wittgenstein would have been weirded out by my affection for him, because at least I didn't change my name and style myself in direct descent from him.
2. I should hope it's saved!
It's irreplaceable! I also object on principle to the fact that Keith Collins is dead.
5. The vitrified brains are awesome.
I mentioned it to my therapist and he in turn mentioned the Heslington Brain, which I had no idea existed.
I feel like that sometimes.
Your brain is made of ice and autumn leaves, not glass. There's a huge difference.
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You're welcome! I'm glad it was useful to you.
Saponify!
“During a process called saponification, triglycerides in the fatty brain tissue react with charged particles in the surrounding environment, transforming into soap over time.“
This explains some people.
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I heard this in the same voice as Tom-Leher-as-Lobachevsky's "Plagiarize!"
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It gives a new meaning to the term “brainwashing.”