Sing holly, go whistle and ivy
I had been going to start this post by acknowledging that I'm not writing much about politics lately because I worry it would be nothing but an unending pour of vitriol and there is enough of that in the world without my adding to it, although I don't know what kind of person doesn't feel like pouring vitriol on the thoughts and prayers of yet another, another school shooting or half of Congress confirming that it views disabled bodies, like the ones that belong to so many of the people I love, as defective and disposable, not worth the protection of law; then ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch told me that Mueller had indicted thirteen Russian nationals on charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S., including the very same paid protesting of campaign rallies of which 45 accused Clinton's supporters, and I don't think it's true that history recurs first as tragedy and then as farce, I think it can recur in any order it feels like and sometimes that includes Dada.
I feel like time is doing nothing but getting away from me. I'm in the kinds of pain that make me feel dogged and foggy. I'm sleeping badly. I dreamed of watching a sequel-remake-reboot of a very famous and totally nonexistent Merchant Ivory-ish television production of the '80's or '90's, in which the actor who played my favorite character in the original was reappearing as his older self, still shy and sad and not really vague, fortunately no longer caught in an idiotic love triangle. I don't think my brain was very clear on the setting, which seemed to be incorporating aspects of the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries at the same time, but the production values were great.
1. Last night I was talking to Fiona Maeve Geist about Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) and its old, folkloric, fruitfully uncanny association between Fairy and the dead, which mostly fell out of fashion in the twentieth century until Susanna Clarke revived it, and she linked me to Francis Stevens' "The Elf-Trap" (1919), which lands its ending on the strength of the same blurring of worlds: "And a man who has been with them once is caught—caught in the real elf-trap, which the smiths' work only symbolized. He may escape, but he can't forget nor be joined again with his own race, while to return among them, he must walk the dark road that Tademus had taken when she called." The bonny road that winds about the ferny brae, not the thorny road to heaven or the lily road to hell. The broad road. The Milky Way.
2. I am delighted to hear that Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts (2015) is being adapted for film by Oz Perkins. I still haven't seen I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016), but I loved The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015) and have been wondering off and on what he was doing next.
3. I saw the title of Alessandra Stanley's "In Praise of Alistair MacLean and the Male Romance" and agreed instantly with this way of categorizing his books, until it turned out she meant something very different by it than I did. I have that same edition of H.M.S. Ulysses (1955), though.
4. I meant to link this track days ago: PJ Harvey and Harry Escott's "An Acre of Land." I don't know what the film it belongs to will be like, but I find the song haunting.
5. I disagree with this film series on the most basic grounds of definition—if you come away from Gilda (1946) believing Rita Hayworth was playing a femme fatale, you have never read Richard Dyer or paid any attention to the movie at all—but on the other hand I've never seen Dishonored (1931), Under the Skin (2013), or A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), so I'm conflicted.
I had noticed from the number of ash-crosses on the street that Valentine's Day this year was also Ash Wednesday, but I hadn't realized untillesser_celery mentioned it that Easter is also going to be April Fool's Day. This feels like a setup: "Χριστός ἀνέστη!" "Get out of here!" The Apostle Thomas is going to hate it.
spatch told me that Mueller had indicted thirteen Russian nationals on charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S., including the very same paid protesting of campaign rallies of which 45 accused Clinton's supporters, and I don't think it's true that history recurs first as tragedy and then as farce, I think it can recur in any order it feels like and sometimes that includes Dada.I feel like time is doing nothing but getting away from me. I'm in the kinds of pain that make me feel dogged and foggy. I'm sleeping badly. I dreamed of watching a sequel-remake-reboot of a very famous and totally nonexistent Merchant Ivory-ish television production of the '80's or '90's, in which the actor who played my favorite character in the original was reappearing as his older self, still shy and sad and not really vague, fortunately no longer caught in an idiotic love triangle. I don't think my brain was very clear on the setting, which seemed to be incorporating aspects of the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries at the same time, but the production values were great.
1. Last night I was talking to Fiona Maeve Geist about Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) and its old, folkloric, fruitfully uncanny association between Fairy and the dead, which mostly fell out of fashion in the twentieth century until Susanna Clarke revived it, and she linked me to Francis Stevens' "The Elf-Trap" (1919), which lands its ending on the strength of the same blurring of worlds: "And a man who has been with them once is caught—caught in the real elf-trap, which the smiths' work only symbolized. He may escape, but he can't forget nor be joined again with his own race, while to return among them, he must walk the dark road that Tademus had taken when she called." The bonny road that winds about the ferny brae, not the thorny road to heaven or the lily road to hell. The broad road. The Milky Way.
2. I am delighted to hear that Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts (2015) is being adapted for film by Oz Perkins. I still haven't seen I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016), but I loved The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015) and have been wondering off and on what he was doing next.
3. I saw the title of Alessandra Stanley's "In Praise of Alistair MacLean and the Male Romance" and agreed instantly with this way of categorizing his books, until it turned out she meant something very different by it than I did. I have that same edition of H.M.S. Ulysses (1955), though.
4. I meant to link this track days ago: PJ Harvey and Harry Escott's "An Acre of Land." I don't know what the film it belongs to will be like, but I find the song haunting.
5. I disagree with this film series on the most basic grounds of definition—if you come away from Gilda (1946) believing Rita Hayworth was playing a femme fatale, you have never read Richard Dyer or paid any attention to the movie at all—but on the other hand I've never seen Dishonored (1931), Under the Skin (2013), or A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), so I'm conflicted.
I had noticed from the number of ash-crosses on the street that Valentine's Day this year was also Ash Wednesday, but I hadn't realized until
lesser_celery mentioned it that Easter is also going to be April Fool's Day. This feels like a setup: "Χριστός ἀνέστη!" "Get out of here!" The Apostle Thomas is going to hate it.
no subject
I'll try to make it!