And now everything has raisins 'cause you fell for a raisin-crazy fool

[sovay]

I had a very nice time this evening reading Charon and listening to everyone else in Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love (1997) on the Scintillation Discord, notably featuring nineweaving and rushthatspeaks as the older and younger Housman, and then as I was driving home from dropping off Rush-That-Speaks I turned on WGBH and found myself in the middle of a jauntily jaundiced jazz un-standard that sounded like a lost Rodgers and Hart and turned out to be Rachael and Vilray's "Hate Is the Basis of Love" and now it's stuck in my head and so is some Anakreon, so after all this has been a pretty good night.

P.S. I completely forgot to mention the turkey that approached me at a stop sign earlier in the afternoon. I hope it was able to catch the next cab.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Not a sight to expect to see every day! :o)

[sovay]

Not a sight to expect to see every day!

In the streets, yes; trying to get into my car, no!

[thisbluespirit]

Turkey!! XD

And I'm so glad the reading went well. <3

[sovay]

Turkey!!

It approached with such an air of peremptory patience, exactly as if I were its long-awaited ride. Alas.

(My father's youngest brother famously had a turkey in his car once; it blew in through a rolled-down back window. The experience sounded stressful.)

And I'm so glad the reading went well.

Thank you. I did not do much in it, but I love the play.

[davidgillon]

Perhaps it was thinking 'Any poet in a storm'?

[asakiyume]

--excellent comment, 100%

[sovay]

Perhaps it was thinking 'Any poet in a storm'?

I'm very impressed.

[asakiyume]

Turkeys were on the move yesterday! A whole bunch of them were foraging in my backyard. One slipped on the crusted snow.

I'm glad the reading turned out fun. I'm guessing Stoppard doesn't presuppose hate as prompting the invention of love? (... or does he? I don't know the play)

[sovay]

Turkeys were on the move yesterday! A whole bunch of them were foraging in my backyard. One slipped on the crusted snow.

Oh, no! Was it all right?

I'm glad the reading turned out fun. I'm guessing Stoppard doesn't presuppose hate as prompting the invention of love? (... or does he? I don't know the play)

No, not at all. It's a ghost play for A.E. Housman, set between memories and the Styx. I love it very much.

[asakiyume]

It was fine: picked itself up and walked on as if unconcerned at all what a watching human might think.

It's a ghost play for A.E. Housman, set between memories and the Styx. I love it very much. <3 <3 <3 And I love this.

[choco_frosh]

...I think I've met that turkey.

[sovay]

...I think I've met that turkey.

Does it ever succeed in getting a ride? Is it the phantom hitch-hiker of Boston turkeys?

[ethelmay]

He never returked, no, he never returked...

[asakiyume]

LOL!

[landofnowhere]

It was great to have you at the reading last night!

Also that turkey gives me flashbacks to living in Cambridge (though I never saw a turkey in the snow!)

[sovay]

It was great to have you at the reading last night!

Thank you! Nice to have heard you!

Also that turkey gives me flashbacks to living in Cambridge (though I never saw a turkey in the snow!)

I have seen turkeys in snow, but not usually trying to come out of it into my car!

[landofnowhere]

I completely missed that that picture was taken out your car window -- wow!

[yhlee]

Turkey!! :D

[sovay]

Turkey!!

I saw movement at the corner of my eye and thought it was a pedestrian attempting the crosswalk. It was not!

[regshoe]

Well, that is a fun bird sighting :D Er, I hope it wasn't lost (do they often turn up in towns/cities???)

[choco_frosh]

These days, yes: I once saw a whole flock walking down an alley in the North End in Boston.

[regshoe]

Oh wow, that is very cool!

[sovay]

Er, I hope it wasn't lost (do they often turn up in towns/cities???)

Around here, surprisingly often! There was a local turkey about a decade ago famous enough to generate his own fan song.

[regshoe]

A turkey fan song! Aww, amazing :D

[gwynnega]

That is a turkey with attitude.

I'm glad the reading was fun!

[sovay]

That is a turkey with attitude.

I think I really disappointed it.

[jesse_the_k]

Urban turkeys deserve their own great memes. We see at least four a day.

[sovay]

Urban turkeys deserve their own great memes. We see at least four a day.

Nice!

[reconditarmonia]

The reading sounds like it was lovely. I was only just telling someone the other day about that play! We were talking about Housman, they had not known he was gay.

[sovay]

was only just telling someone the other day about that play! We were talking about Housman, they had not known he was gay.

I hope it improved their day to find out! It is one of, like, the three essential facts about him.

(I would love to see an Invention of Love directed by you.)

[reconditarmonia]

(That's very kind of you <3)

[thawrecka]

Turkey! :D I hope the turkey got where it was going.

[sovay]

I hope the turkey got where it was going.

There's a major bus route on that street. I have hopes.

[hyarrowen]

Urban turkey looks very spruce and very much at home. Great picture!

[sovay]

Urban turkey looks very spruce and very much at home. Great picture!

Thank you!

[alexxkay]

The wife and I were on a rare outing yesterday. On returning home, we found the front yard occupied by four territorial turkeys. We made it inside, but things looked a bit iffy there!

[sovay]

On returning home, we found the front yard occupied by four territorial turkeys. We made it inside, but things looked a bit iffy there!

I am glad you were unscathed! Where did you out to?

[alexxkay]

Some friends bought us tickets to Manual Cinema's production of Frankenstein. It was... ok. They had a very interesting way of telling the story, and some interesting changes on the basic story, but I felt that those two aspects of the production fought against each other.

[sovay]

They had a very interesting way of telling the story, and some interesting changes on the basic story, but I felt that those two aspects of the production fought against each other.

Say more? Sorry it didn't work, regardless.

[alexxkay]

In terms of story, they had clearly done their research, but made many changes. They went with the outermost frame of telling Mary Shelly's own story (in very brief), drawing a connection between her dead child and the Creature. This was mildly interesting, but as an old hand with the Frankenstein mythos, I didn't find it terribly original. The one really effective image (for me) was the final one, of Mary cooing over a child-scale Creature in her arms. Despite including a line from Victor along the lines of "I designed my creature to be beautiful!", the Creature was massively deformed, and had one ominous eye that seemed lifted directly from "The Tell-Tale Heart". They included the family that the Creature hides out around, an oft-overlooked element, which was nice. But they lost that goodwill with me when, not only does the Creature never learn speech, but when the family turns on him, the Creature massacres them. Weirdly, Elizabeth is not killed by the Creature. A paranoid Victor, expecting an attack by the Creature at any moment, accidentally shoots her! On the plus side, Victor gave some extremely good MAD Scientist, German Expressionist style.

About 10 feet over the stage was a large projection screen. The stage itself contained musicians, actors, video cameras, shadow puppets, marionettes, miniature backdrops, and props. A complex bustle of activity onstage went towards creating a mostly silent-era-aesthetic film of Frankenstein, in real time, with no pre-recorded elements. Characters moved from being actors to puppets and back again seamlessly. Scenes were composited from multiple layers of reality in a single shot. It was a virtuoso piece of work, technically speaking. But if you were paying attention to the artistry, it distracted from the story, and if paying attention to the story, missed the artistry.

Ultimately, the whole exercise seemed rather pointless. It was possible to use this style to tell this story, but I couldn't see any reason for it. "The marvel is not that the bear dances well, but that the bear dances at all." I would really like to see this storytelling style applied to something where the technology worked with the story. I think an adaptation of Metropolis, with its motif of the huge (literally) under-class of workers that make everything above function, could be fruitful.

[sovay]

A complex bustle of activity onstage went towards creating a mostly silent-era-aesthetic film of Frankenstein, in real time, with no pre-recorded elements.

That sounds absolutely fascinating (and makes me think of Liz Hand's Pandora's Bride (2007), which resets the characters of James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) in Weimar Berlin). Do you think it would have been less distracting if the changes to the story had not been so out of character? I agree with you that Metropolis sounds like an ideal application.

[alexxkay]

Do you think it would have been less distracting if the changes to the story had not been so out of character?

No, on two counts. One, the only way (I could see) to make it less distracting would be to really integrate form and function. And while there is certainly precedent for trying to make Frankenstein be a story about complex technology, I've never found those attempts very successful.

Secondly, I wouldn't necessarily categorize the changes as "out of character". This was only an adaptation of the novel in the simplest of senses. It was far more a conscious installment of the ongoing cultural conversation of many different Frankenstein variants over the decades. Sort of similar to how no modern production of Hamlet can be solely based on the text of the play. Having accepted that, I wasn't going to be upset by the fact of there being significant changes. Some of the changes failed to land with me for aesthetic or political reasons, but I felt that they were justified in making their own decisions of what "in character" meant.

After all, my own personal headcanon of the story is pretty wildly different from any other I've seen :-) [In brief, there's very little textual evidence that the Creature actually exists, and tons of evidence that Victor has some serious mental health issues, probably tied up with repressed homosexuality. Victor is strongly suspected to be the culprit in several of the Creature's murders -- maybe he is both the murderer and Creature. This does require a bit of textual contortion, but not enough to make me abandon the headcanon.]

[nnozomi]

in the middle of a jauntily jaundiced jazz un-standard that sounded like a lost Rodgers and Hart and turned out to be Rachael and Vilray's "Hate Is the Basis of Love"
A late comment, but thank you for turning me on to this! They're fun--my dad would have adored them.

[sovay]

A late comment, but thank you for turning me on to this! They're fun--my dad would have adored them.

You're welcome! I had to come home and find out what I'd been listening to.