It's easy to change your name, but hard to change your life
Tonight I spent fifty minutes on a disabled train. At one point it started moving, then stopped again because of signal problems. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch was waiting to meet me at the Diesel. I sent him home to start the potatoes baking and the garlic roasting or dinner would have been hours late; once off the train, it took me nearly another hour to get actually home. Charlie Baker continues in his plan to starve the T until he can privatize it. The next Somerville caucus is in March and I am going back to see if I can run as a ward delegate again, because I want a governor who will actually put money into public transit instead of disingenuous apologies. Forward the ethical artichoke. This is some week.
1. I wish Marcin Wrona hadn't killed himself in 2015. It struck me late last night that between Poland's legally sanctioned denial of history and Jewish cemeteries excavated for car parks, his Demon (2015) is more pertinent now than ever: "We must forget what we didn't see here." On that note, I got some good literary recommendations as well as history out of David G. Roskies' "Poland's Judas Holocaust."
2. I don't live in Massachusetts' third congressional district, but anyone who does should be paying attention to Alexandra Chandler. She's running as a Democrat, she's a former senior naval intelligence analyst, and she's openly trans. She comes recommended by friends of mine. She has good positions. At the moment I'm especially in favor of the ones on infrastructure, gun control, healthcare, and, well, most of them.
3. I am having some trouble believing that Georgiana Houghton and her nineteenth-century paintings of ghosts, which look appropriately like nothing on earth or any other artistic tradition of the time, did not retroactively come into being because of something Gemma Files wrote.
4. I did not comment on the death of John Mahoney when it went by in the news, but I am sorry: I never saw him in Frasier (1993–2004), but I remembered him from Moonstruck (1987)—a middle-aged professor with a habit of ending his dates with a drink thrown in his face, dazzled and rebuked by Olympia Dukakis—for years.
5. I am made curiously happy by this picture of one of Heathcote Williams' mixtapes.
P.S. I should stress that I came home to a house that smelled like baking potatoes and garlic, which was a huge improvement on the usual neighbors' ditch-weed funk; we turned them into overstuffed potatoes with grated cheddar and roasted garlic (for Rob) and potato skins with grated cheddar and roasted garlic (for me) and we made short-order burgers to accompany them and cinnamon rice krispie treats for dessert. Autolycus did his best to get into every single bowl and plate and pan and tired himself out enough in the unsuccessful process that as soon as dinner was over, he crawled into my lap and fell asleep, where he remains to this minute. I am enjoying not being on a very crowded, going-nowhere train.
spatch was waiting to meet me at the Diesel. I sent him home to start the potatoes baking and the garlic roasting or dinner would have been hours late; once off the train, it took me nearly another hour to get actually home. Charlie Baker continues in his plan to starve the T until he can privatize it. The next Somerville caucus is in March and I am going back to see if I can run as a ward delegate again, because I want a governor who will actually put money into public transit instead of disingenuous apologies. Forward the ethical artichoke. This is some week.1. I wish Marcin Wrona hadn't killed himself in 2015. It struck me late last night that between Poland's legally sanctioned denial of history and Jewish cemeteries excavated for car parks, his Demon (2015) is more pertinent now than ever: "We must forget what we didn't see here." On that note, I got some good literary recommendations as well as history out of David G. Roskies' "Poland's Judas Holocaust."
2. I don't live in Massachusetts' third congressional district, but anyone who does should be paying attention to Alexandra Chandler. She's running as a Democrat, she's a former senior naval intelligence analyst, and she's openly trans. She comes recommended by friends of mine. She has good positions. At the moment I'm especially in favor of the ones on infrastructure, gun control, healthcare, and, well, most of them.
3. I am having some trouble believing that Georgiana Houghton and her nineteenth-century paintings of ghosts, which look appropriately like nothing on earth or any other artistic tradition of the time, did not retroactively come into being because of something Gemma Files wrote.
4. I did not comment on the death of John Mahoney when it went by in the news, but I am sorry: I never saw him in Frasier (1993–2004), but I remembered him from Moonstruck (1987)—a middle-aged professor with a habit of ending his dates with a drink thrown in his face, dazzled and rebuked by Olympia Dukakis—for years.
5. I am made curiously happy by this picture of one of Heathcote Williams' mixtapes.
P.S. I should stress that I came home to a house that smelled like baking potatoes and garlic, which was a huge improvement on the usual neighbors' ditch-weed funk; we turned them into overstuffed potatoes with grated cheddar and roasted garlic (for Rob) and potato skins with grated cheddar and roasted garlic (for me) and we made short-order burgers to accompany them and cinnamon rice krispie treats for dessert. Autolycus did his best to get into every single bowl and plate and pan and tired himself out enough in the unsuccessful process that as soon as dinner was over, he crawled into my lap and fell asleep, where he remains to this minute. I am enjoying not being on a very crowded, going-nowhere train.
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I read “Seaton’s Aunt” for the first time last night, and now I feel like there are ties between Haughton and the creepy eye-of-God pictures that the title character kept scattered around her house.
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I haven't read "Seaton's Aunt," but I clearly need to. I was reminded of the title character of A.S. Byatt's "The Conjugial Angel" (Angels & Insects, 1992).
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It makes me happy that Heathcote Williams had a Slapp Happy song on his mixtape.
Now, predictably, I want a potato with cheese.
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I'd never heard of her! I'm glad she got an exhibition. They look like the kind of art that will really hit you up close. They're not exactly indifferent on a screen.
It makes me happy that Heathcote Williams had a Slapp Happy song on his mixtape.
I wished they'd digitized it. Maybe somebody still will.
Now, predictably, I want a potato with cheese.
I hope you have at least one of these things in the house already!
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Those Georgiana Houghton paintings are amazing and eerie and beautiful.
Somehow, that's exactly what a Heathcote Williams-made mixtape ought to be like.
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Thank you. It was a very long time to be standing surrounded by a lot of other people. You could tell it had gotten bad by the end because they were talking to one another.
Those Georgiana Houghton paintings are amazing and eerie and beautiful.
They don't even look psychedelic to me; they look alien. I would love to see them in person someday.
Somehow, that's exactly what a Heathcote Williams-made mixtape ought to be like.
I would definitely listen to it!
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And I'm glad you're off the train. There are few things more frustrating than being stuck on a train that isn't going anywhere, or only by fits and starts.
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This is the good part of the internet: things you never heard of and are very glad to know about.
And I'm glad you're off the train. There are few things more frustrating than being stuck on a train that isn't going anywhere, or only by fits and starts.
It just starts to feel so personal after a while. "We will be resuming service momentarily–" "HAH NICE TRY MBTA FAKE ME OUT ONCE BESIDES THAT ISN'T WHAT 'MOMENTARILY' MEANS!"
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LOL!
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They were exactly what we both wanted for dinner and especially what I wanted after all the transit slogging. It was great.
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Seeing Eno's "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" on the mixtape made me smile; I'll go find that on YouTube now.
I'm glad you had good potatoes to come back to.
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I can see why she's considered an abstract artist, though if she felt she was representing accurately the "fruits and flowers" of the spirits she saw, I'm not sure it really counts. Do you have any of her paintings near you?
I'm glad you had good potatoes to come back to.
Thank you!
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I'd love there to be a local connection... I did an internet search, but nothing comes up. Unless one of her watercolours is hanging in a house within a few miles from here.
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I had to go listen myself. That was amazing.
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WHAT.
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It was a very good dinner and they are very good cats.