Keats and Yeats are on your side, but you lose

[sovay]

I wish to register a complaint with the universe that I had no idea that Eddie Shields—the beautiful Gaveston of the ASP's Edward II—was playing Christopher Marlowe in a local stage adaptation of Shakespeare in Love until tonight, otherwise known as too late. I know it's my own fault for not reading the arts section and I appreciate that other Boston-area directors have recognized his obvious affinity for Marlowe; it bodes well for his appearances in future. But I would have liked to be able to take advantage of this one!

I spent the afternoon with my cousins and Fox for the first time since before Arisia. It was good. Assorted links.

1. Dr. Kate Lister debunks the Victorian vibrator myth, with entertaining commentary and horrifying illustrations: "Once you have moved past the fact that the doctor and patient strongly resemble escapees from Area 51 . . ."

2. My brother and his family are planning to drive across Canada next summer. I have commended them to the stone dragon of Alberta.

3. This entire issue of poetry from Aotearoa/New Zealand is very good, but at the moment Kate Camp's "Gulls," Nina Powles' "Some titles for my childhood memoir," Tim Upperton's "The Truth about Palmerston North," and Gregory O'Brien and John Puhiatau Pule's "Song of the coral brain" and "Canticle of the hydrosphere" are especially sticking with me.

4. I feel that I should not discover people by their obituaries, but I think I need to hear the music of Coco Schumann.

5. I know people with this aesthetic: Ruth Maddison, "Women's dance, St Kilda Town Hall, Melbourne, 1985."

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, it's annoying when you narrowly miss something good, though! Worse than missing it by miles.

4. Well, it's maybe not ideal, but better late than never!

[sovay]

Aw, it's annoying when you narrowly miss something good, though! Worse than missing it by miles.

It must say something about the human brain that it feels so much worse, even though rationally missing a performance by an evening is just as bad as fifty years: it's still over and done. But if only I had known! Or time-traveled by three or four hours!

Well, it's maybe not ideal, but better late than never!

This is a fair point. I'm just always sorry to find out afterward, if it could be helped. [edit] This is really the same problem as the first one, isn't it?

[thisbluespirit]

I suppose it depends how much longer after you read the obit! (I tend to come in very late these days... I mean, my downfall with James Maxwell was the obit, definitely, and it was twenty years old.) I joke that I judge a person I like by the quality of their obituary these days, but, um, I do like some living people!!

(My and my sister once very seriously considered going to see Cymbeline at the Barbican and then didn't. I discovered in the height of my David Collings phase that it was the one with David Collings and Tom Hiddleston. So, if you find a time-travel machine or something, let me know, although actually, in that case, I've got some TV archives to raid while we're at it...)

[sovay]

My and my sister once very seriously considered going to see Cymbeline at the Barbican and then didn't. I discovered in the height of my David Collings phase that it was the one with David Collings and Tom Hiddleston.

Ouch!

(I had the opposite experience with a stage production, but I was once invited by my god-aunt to attend a convention when I was twelve which I refused because it sounded like a lot of crowded strangers and later it turned out that was the year Ursula K. Le Guin was Guest of Honor at Readercon, so I never met her.)

If a time machine crosses my path, you'll hear about it.

[thisbluespirit]

If a time machine crosses my path, you'll hear about it.

Yesterday, indeed, I expect. ;-)