![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The yearning desert in the country of your skin
Thanks a lot, May. No sooner do I praise the weather than it relapses into March, the grey end of winter and raining. I've been running errands all day with a sweater and gloves on. I don't think spring in New England knows what to do with itself anymore.
The good news is, it could have been snowing and I would still have had a lovely time in Providence with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
greygirlbeast and Spooky. The main event, as it were, was a matinée of Shapeshifter at the Trinity Repertory Company; now that I have seen the play, I can say confidently that I would have kicked myself for years if I had missed it. It got a mixed review in the Boston Globe, but I think the reviewer may not have understood what she was looking at. It's a play of refractions, three shapes of the same folktale playing out on a small Orkney island: the man who loves the woman who must lose a part of herself in order to live in his world; how the fire still runs beneath the skin or the sea still calls. There is a dragon, a selkie, a swan. There is a fierce young girl and her grieving father, a hunter become obsessed with his prey, a dreamer who one day brings a black-eyed woman home from the storm, and his aging parents, a broken storyteller and his sharp-spoken wife. There was a song I wanted credited in the program, because I couldn't tell its language and I'm hoping it was Norn. I would have had one of the strands end differently, but that's me; there's a reason I write "The Salt House." All together, I liked it very, very much. (My ears would have liked it better without the cataclysmic bang in the last act, but I don't see how it could have been done without.) It was deeply folkloric, not simplistic, building itself out of words and names and tellings. I want a copy of the script.
The night before, we watched a double bill of Buffy the Vampire Slayer ("Once More, With Feeling") and Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008), which I had missed last year. I wish I'd seen it in theaters—I am tempted to describe it as Rigoletto crossbred with The Revenger's Tragedy under the auspices of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but the shorthand would not actually do it justice. We are talking Grand Opera, with a premise worthy of Philip K. Dick and a dénouement worthy of Webster and all kinds of decadent chaos in between; Anthony Stewart Head is magnificent, I hadn't known Alexa Vega could sing and Terrance Zdunich is now on my list to watch for, and it's hard to hate any movie where Paris Hilton's face falls off. (Much more disturbingly, Repo! succeeds in putting Paris Hilton into a musical context I would classify as sexy. If I think about this too hard, my brain is going to melt.) There's crazily black satire and complicated protagonists; the not too distant future of the production design invokes the nineteenth century without turning into steampunk; there are maybe five spoken lines in the entire show. In many ways, it's the film I was hoping Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd would be. If it doesn't become a cult movie with midnight showings and audiences dressed to the gothic nines, there is no justice in this world.
And otherwise we had Indian food and birthday cake and stayed up late talking and Caitlín had an interview withreadingthedark at the Providence Athenaeum, so I curled up downstairs and read an Imagist journal from 1915 and an anthology of war poetry from 1945; literally, its shelves look like the libraries I dream about. I came home to contributor's copies of Sybil's Garage #6 and "Postscripts from the Red Sea." We didn't get to the sea, but one of the cats slept briefly beside me and the other tried to eat my ice cream. My cellphone now displays a blue screen of death, which I hadn't known they did. It was all very good.
The good news is, it could have been snowing and I would still have had a lovely time in Providence with
greygirlbeast and Spooky. The main event, as it were, was a matinée of Shapeshifter at the Trinity Repertory Company; now that I have seen the play, I can say confidently that I would have kicked myself for years if I had missed it. It got a mixed review in the Boston Globe, but I think the reviewer may not have understood what she was looking at. It's a play of refractions, three shapes of the same folktale playing out on a small Orkney island: the man who loves the woman who must lose a part of herself in order to live in his world; how the fire still runs beneath the skin or the sea still calls. There is a dragon, a selkie, a swan. There is a fierce young girl and her grieving father, a hunter become obsessed with his prey, a dreamer who one day brings a black-eyed woman home from the storm, and his aging parents, a broken storyteller and his sharp-spoken wife. There was a song I wanted credited in the program, because I couldn't tell its language and I'm hoping it was Norn. I would have had one of the strands end differently, but that's me; there's a reason I write "The Salt House." All together, I liked it very, very much. (My ears would have liked it better without the cataclysmic bang in the last act, but I don't see how it could have been done without.) It was deeply folkloric, not simplistic, building itself out of words and names and tellings. I want a copy of the script.The night before, we watched a double bill of Buffy the Vampire Slayer ("Once More, With Feeling") and Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008), which I had missed last year. I wish I'd seen it in theaters—I am tempted to describe it as Rigoletto crossbred with The Revenger's Tragedy under the auspices of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but the shorthand would not actually do it justice. We are talking Grand Opera, with a premise worthy of Philip K. Dick and a dénouement worthy of Webster and all kinds of decadent chaos in between; Anthony Stewart Head is magnificent, I hadn't known Alexa Vega could sing and Terrance Zdunich is now on my list to watch for, and it's hard to hate any movie where Paris Hilton's face falls off. (Much more disturbingly, Repo! succeeds in putting Paris Hilton into a musical context I would classify as sexy. If I think about this too hard, my brain is going to melt.) There's crazily black satire and complicated protagonists; the not too distant future of the production design invokes the nineteenth century without turning into steampunk; there are maybe five spoken lines in the entire show. In many ways, it's the film I was hoping Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd would be. If it doesn't become a cult movie with midnight showings and audiences dressed to the gothic nines, there is no justice in this world.
And otherwise we had Indian food and birthday cake and stayed up late talking and Caitlín had an interview with
readingthedark at the Providence Athenaeum, so I curled up downstairs and read an Imagist journal from 1915 and an anthology of war poetry from 1945; literally, its shelves look like the libraries I dream about. I came home to contributor's copies of Sybil's Garage #6 and "Postscripts from the Red Sea." We didn't get to the sea, but one of the cats slept briefly beside me and the other tried to eat my ice cream. My cellphone now displays a blue screen of death, which I hadn't known they did. It was all very good.
no subject
Nine
no subject
Nine
no subject
Nah, Shapeshifter just reminded me.
no subject
Also, that movie did make me hate Paris Hilton a little less, and that's something.
no subject
Lucky. There was a showing somewhere in Cambridge, because I heard about and couldn't make it—I think at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square? And then it vanished from common ken.
Also, that movie did make me hate Paris Hilton a little less, and that's something.
I know! I didn't think it could be done.
no subject
Yeah, it's not perfect--there are some truly insane clunkers, particularly in terms of the lyrics, and Alexa Vega ping-pongs back and forth between "awesome" and "why the hell is she onscreen, again"? But I enjoyed it a lot; I'd certainly watch it again. There's something about the sheer spectacle of weird ambition which sucks me in like a vaccum.
no subject
Especially as directed by Alex Cox, so now I'm envisioning GeneCo in New York City and the Duke and his get in Liverpool and after that it just gets wacky.I think there's a paper to be written on the revival of the revenge tragedy. It's been all over the place recently.
there are some truly insane clunkers, particularly in terms of the lyrics
I have to tell you, I am made weirdly happy by lines like "Why, oh, why are my genetics such a bitch?"
But I enjoyed it a lot; I'd certainly watch it again.
I really liked it. I was surprised.
no subject
Shapeshifter sounds lovely. I do hope that was Norn, also.
Congratulations on the contributor's copies. I'm sorry to hear about the cellphone bsod; I hope you can get it fixed soon and at minimal cost.
PS
no subject
I don't, actually: just the song to Brigid. How do you feel about sendspace?
no subject
PS
no subject
Just put them in a reply—if you worry about copyrights, I can always delete it.
The first third of it
Here's the first track
second track
third track
fourth track
fifth track
sixth track
I'm not sure about the copyright issues, really--it's an own-label CD from fifteen years ago, and I don't even know if it's still in print. Usually I'd just say to leave them up, but it is the whole CD, so I'm not sure. What do you think? (I certainly don't mind anybody else grabbing these whilst they're up.)
Manx orthography makes my head hurt. It's sort of like the illegitimate child of eighteenth or nineteenth century Welsh and English orthography, being used to write a language that's so close to the one I love best as to really grate on me. Supposedly it's the last remnant of an early attempt to create something like IPA.
The second third of it
08 O Kirree T'ou Goll Dy Faagail Mee.mp3
09 Oikan Ayns Bethlehem.mp3
10 Shooyl Inneenyn.mp3
11 Lament of the Duchess of Gloucester.mp3
12 Vreeshey, Vreeshey.mp3
Three more tracks of it
14 O My Graih.mp3
15 Padjer Colum Keeilley.mp3
I'll send 'ee the rest--three more tracks of it--in the morn. I amn't sure I'm able to sleep, but I'd best essay it.
The last of it
17 Arrane Ghelbee.mp3
18 Arrane Oie Vie.mp3
That should be the lot of it. Please to let me know if any of it doesn't work for you?
no subject
Will do. Thank you so much!
no subject
I'm not sure if our scanner still works, else I'd scan the liner notes and send them you. Perhaps once I've a bit of breathing space I'll try that. We'll see.
no subject
Though it reads a bit like a book report, the review in the South County Independent seems to actually be written by someone who understood what the play was about.
no subject
"The gods are in the weather . . ."
That is much better than the Globe. Thanks.
no subject
My copy of Sybil's Garage came, too. Your poem was the first thing I showed my younger daughter :-)
no subject
We were lucky to get tickets when we did—it sold out the rest of its run. Maybe someday there will be local productions.