A flower on his grave

[sovay]

Okay, I fail at content. Have some music instead. My soundtrack for the last several days has been a combination of PJ Harvey and the Pixies; I realized earlier that they are music I listen to both when I'm in a bad mood and a good one; sometimes the same songs. This one I just discovered tonight. It's ghostly.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to connect it with Saiyūki will be shot.

Who Will Love Me Now? (PJ Harvey)

In the forest is a monster
It has done terrible things
So in the wood it's hiding
And this is the song it sings

Who will love me now?
Who will ever love me?
Who will say to me
You are my desire—I set you free?

Who will forgive and make me live again?
Who will bring me back to the world again?

In the forest is a monster
And it looks so very much like me
Will someone hear me singing?
Please save me, please rescue me

Who will love me now?
Who will ever love me?
Who will say to me
You are my desire—I set you free?

Who will love me now?
Who will ever love me?

Comments

[setsuled.livejournal.com]

Only the murder ballad "Henry Lee," and then Marianne Faithfull's Before the Poison (2004), for which they both wrote songs.

Then you've heard more than me, actually--I haven't heard that Marianne Faithfull album. Do you have Nick Cave's whole Murder Ballads album?

Do you think women's characterizations of women, or men's characterizations of men, are more accurate? Or only, I don't know, inaccurate in different ways?

I believe each sex is capable of writing very accurately about itself, I don't think one any better than the other, but it's hard to say. Part of me is inclined to think people draw on experience as their individual sex more than they necessarily realise. Like there are qualities to Merricat in We Have Always Lived in the Castle that are sort of defaultly feminine, even though there are many outward qualities of her character that many might consider boyish.

But I also think there's no fundamental difference between male and female minds, only differences that are crafted by environment--which are often very subtle. What do you think about an author's relationship with the sex of hisherit's character?

I ought to note there've been plenty of men written by women that seemed perfectly male-like to me--such as the writings of Ursula K. LeGuin and yourself. I think I actually notice more of a general, though not universal, difference in tone for an entire story, when it comes to the matter of the author's sex. I think male writers usually seem more like the narrative is jumping from log to log while female writers are dealing with a forest.

Why is that?

I'm not entirely sure why I prefer to write about women. It could simply be that I'm physically attracted to them, it could be because I had no real strong father figure growing up and the different households I lived in were comprised of women. For some reason, I find men actively boring, though. Most men I've met distinguish themselves from most women I've met through latent or overt homophobia and/or a general need to feel like other people see them as knowledgeable or capable. I suppose you could write about men without those qualities but, I usually figure, if you're going to do that, you might just as well be writing about a fairer sex.