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The seas will never run dry, my dear
It is astonishing to me how much energy I don't have these days. I had to visit a clinic for bloodwork yesterday and I was just useless for the rest of the day. I finished watching Turn: Washington's Spies (2014–17), which I have enjoyed and generally recommend even though the first season doesn't find its footing until the finale and the fourth season should really have been a fourth and fifth (it was surprisingly valuable for my formative experience of narrative TV to have been Babylon 5, is what I'm saying). I graduated from envying most of the cast their waistcoats to envying some people their actual coats. Quite unfairly, I then slept badly, had one of the worst nightmares I can remember in months, and woke with a jaw-wrenching headache. Today has mostly been work. Have some links.
1. I would love to see the rest of the series of orixás this combination of photography and drawing belongs to: Tauan Carmo and Tiago Sant'ana, "Oxum—A Rainha das águas doces."
2. I wouldn't mind knowing where this bog trail is located, either, but I love how the water lies over the boardwalk.
3. This is such a mythic poem with such matter-of-fact roots, which I enjoy: L. K., "Old Flame."
4. Because it is suddenly September and I have to make honeycakes soon, I feel everyone should appreciate this flowchart of the Jewish holidays. "Is there a horn?" "Tekiah!"
5. I love these photographs of ocean so much. They make me hungry. I went to the photographer's website and found the sailing expedition to Antarctica they came from. I would like that much of snow and sea and seals in my life. I would like to be able to travel again.
1. I would love to see the rest of the series of orixás this combination of photography and drawing belongs to: Tauan Carmo and Tiago Sant'ana, "Oxum—A Rainha das águas doces."
2. I wouldn't mind knowing where this bog trail is located, either, but I love how the water lies over the boardwalk.
3. This is such a mythic poem with such matter-of-fact roots, which I enjoy: L. K., "Old Flame."
4. Because it is suddenly September and I have to make honeycakes soon, I feel everyone should appreciate this flowchart of the Jewish holidays. "Is there a horn?" "Tekiah!"
5. I love these photographs of ocean so much. They make me hungry. I went to the photographer's website and found the sailing expedition to Antarctica they came from. I would like that much of snow and sea and seals in my life. I would like to be able to travel again.
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/shanegarlock/40068258640/in/photostream/, https://www.flickr.com/photos/shanegarlock/40068261870/in/photostream/
Annoyingly, he's not very specific on where, but from surrounding evidence, it's the Adirondaks. Somewhere in New York. *gestures widely*
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Thank you! I'll . . . wander around there sometime. (Famous last words of a future bog body.)
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Excellent!
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I also read a mystery that you might like -- altho I don't know how you feel about child murder/sacrifice in stories, but there's some lovely writing about liminal spaces, marsh and sky and sea (specifically the Norfolk coastline), in the first novel in Elly Griffiths' series about an archaeologist who gets drawn into murder cases, The Crossing Places.
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Oh, that's wonderful, and I hadn't seen. Thank you!
I also read a mystery that you might like -- altho I don't know how you feel about child murder/sacrifice in stories, but there's some lovely writing about liminal spaces, marsh and sky and sea (specifically the Norfolk coastline), in the first novel in Elly Griffiths' series about an archaeologist who gets drawn into murder cases, The Crossing Places.
I have very few blanket dealbreakers when it comes to narrative and I even read about the Carthaginians on my own time, speaking of child sacrifice! I'll check it out.
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Did you find any? I kept finding references to the series, but not further artwork from it!
And I love the bog photos, too.
I love the colors, and the water, and the sky.
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This article features several.
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Oh, beautiful! Thank you.
follow-up
Re: follow-up
I never think to look on Instagram! These are spectacular.
Re: follow-up
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I'm not at all familiar with Dark. I'm glad it did the best job it could with the room it had, but I really wish the network-imposed insta-wrap-up weren't such a recurring bug of non-miniseries TV.
They actually did a surprisingly good job, but that last season gets *dense* at times, and does even less hand-holding than the first two, which already expected you to do a lot of mental work.
Hand-holding isn't a problem with the last season of Turn, but density—and pacing, and prioritizing—is. If I write up this series in any serious fashion, I will undoubtedly complain in more detail. It ends well, but it kind of gets there on speed.
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I quite liked Dark; not sure if you would. It's a complex and grim small-town drama a la Twin Peaks, only with less humor, and replacing demons with time travel. The time travel aspects get increasingly baroque and complicated, but do seem to ultimately avoid becoming nonsense. I say "seem to", because the accelerated final season leaves a lot just implied.
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If the science fiction doesn't become silly and the grimness isn't to the point of grimdark, I might recommend it to my father. He just finished watching Better Than Us (2018) on Netflix and, beyond feeling that the finale went suddenly bigger than the story required or could convincingly pull off, really enjoyed it.
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THANKS FOR SHARING, PATIENT ZERO.
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You're welcome!
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There was a meme called “Chronic Cat” with assorted sayings, but the one I always recall was,
“I hope you get well soon”
- What part of “chronic” do you
not understand?!
Clearly you need your own ‘Stormbringer,’ to infuse you with the vitality of the souls eaten by this unholy black sword… Uhm.
… Okay, this notion may present certain difficulties.
But you’d look awesome wielding it, especially with that marvelous hair - a living Hildebrandt painting!
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Hah. Thank you! It is a tempting proposition.
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It is a good sort of era for waistcoats and coats. So much pretty! I doubt I'll ever quite feel moved to watch Turn for them, but it is an enticing thought. XD (There are some beautiful ones in 1970s POldark as well, despite the crappiness of old-time video. My #1 grudge against Nu Poldark is Lack of Nice Jackets and waistcoats. Some people have no proper sense of priorities and are also scared of hats, the cowards.)
♥
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It contains some stellar performances as well as waistcoats. I watched it for Burn Gorman and was rewarded, but the show also did well by some actors I came in liking and gave me a couple of new names to keep track of.
My #1 grudge against Nu Poldark is Lack of Nice Jackets and waistcoats. Some people have no proper sense of priorities and are also scared of hats, the cowards.
That does prejudice me against it. Hats are great.
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That is generally the danger of watching good things!
That does prejudice me against it. Hats are great.
Modern period dramas are so strangely terrified of hats and even proper hair-dos. (Oh, noes, our test audience had not the compassion to feel for a character wearing a bonnet, let alone a tall confection with a feather in it!!)
XD
(You note, of course, that I am using the icon of someone who is def. into shiny waistcoats.)
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I thought half the point of period dramas was the clothing and the hairstyles! When else in their life is a person going to have the chance to cultivate the kind of stiff-brushed side-parting that went out for a reason?
(You note, of course, that I am using the icon of someone who is def. into shiny waistcoats.)
(And looks splendid in them, too.)
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Yes, but they have to be the right ones. Or sometimes just whatever was in the dress-up box that day, if it's done by Starz.
And looks splendid in them, too.
XD
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I really need to watch Turn. I read the book it was based on (which is entirely nonfiction, oddly enough), and I've got a project going about NYC during the American Revolution, and yet I still haven't gotten around to it!
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I've read about it, but I'd never heard the theory of the construction itself as a sacrifice, and I love that concept.
I read the book it was based on (which is entirely nonfiction, oddly enough), and I've got a project going about NYC during the American Revolution, and yet I still haven't gotten around to it!
I really liked it! I will now proceed to provide a pile of caveats! The first season is narratively clunkier, morally more black-and-white, and rather more AMERICA!!! than I consider either necessary or ideal, but there are complicating elements present from the start and it comes into its own just in time for the season finale; the second and third seasons are almost exponentially better on all planes of characterization and emotional-historical complexity, eventually assuming the deep, hard edges of late eighteenth-century le Carré; the fourth season visibly suffers from having to pack the plot in with a crowbar before cancellation and therefore while it ends well, it ends fast, and although it contains some of my favorite character material all show, it also loses track of some things it really should have known better about. Assume a close AU relationship with history. Some of the characters are historical and portrayed faithfully; some characters are historical and imaginatively elaborated; some characters are pure inventions; some kind of shift between categories. Some of the most random plot coupons turn out to be historically attested, the dialogue was written by people making a visible effort to balance between period flavor and contemporary understanding, and although colonial America is not my field of specialty, I got the impression that a whole bunch of social mores just went by the wayside because otherwise the writers wouldn't have been able to tell the kinds of stories they wanted and I always have mixed feelings about that approach, even though from a purely storytelling perspective, it yields some barn-burners of character development. The show gets some of its best results, however, when people remember to think like their time, especially when it's jarring. The time-jumps are utterly unpredictable. Never mind the compression of the fourth season, we lose the entirety of 1779 behind the couch somewhere in season three and no one even seems to notice. The acting on all fronts is splendid and especially early on is the thing that carries the show. I actually started watching it for Burn Gorman, otherwise known as the disaster astronomer mentioned a couple weeks back; he got the most satisfying arc in the series for me and was a pleasure to watch no matter what he was doing in the meantime; but it's a solid ensemble show and everyone gets some chance to shine. I have not read the book and probably should, just so I know what everyone was really doing between 1776 and 1781.