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We never said you'd come back home
I started my day with a dentist's appointment and got home in the evening to discover three contradictory letters from our health insurance that I will have to call them about on Monday. The first congratulates us on being eligible for coverage. The second regrets to inform us that we're not. The third is a bill that ends by thinking it owes me four dollars. I am beginning to think we have blown through Kafka and into Beckett.
Fortunately, the mail had also brought the CD I had ordered last week of Zeal & Ardor's Stranger Fruit (2018), the full-length follow-up to last year's breathtaking Devil Is Fine (2017). Musically it's more wide-ranging than its predecessor, moving forward in time with its inspirations—gospel choirs, funk and soul—without losing the project's original anchor of blast beats and field hollers, not just black but Black metal; it's not an exercise in history or even in pastiche but the past's hands gripping the present by the throat, telling it to listen up. I did. It's worth it. Not all of the sixteen tracks on Stranger Fruit land with the same force, but even the less successful experiments have something to recommend them, if only that furious breakage of time. Songs like "Gravedigger's Chant," "Don't You Dare," "Row Row," "You Ain't Coming Back," "Stranger Fruit," and "Built on Ashes" are indispensable.
Reflex (1981) has a decent claim on being my favorite Dick Francis novel I've read so far and I am deeply disappointed there appears to be no fic for it on AO3.
Fortunately, the mail had also brought the CD I had ordered last week of Zeal & Ardor's Stranger Fruit (2018), the full-length follow-up to last year's breathtaking Devil Is Fine (2017). Musically it's more wide-ranging than its predecessor, moving forward in time with its inspirations—gospel choirs, funk and soul—without losing the project's original anchor of blast beats and field hollers, not just black but Black metal; it's not an exercise in history or even in pastiche but the past's hands gripping the present by the throat, telling it to listen up. I did. It's worth it. Not all of the sixteen tracks on Stranger Fruit land with the same force, but even the less successful experiments have something to recommend them, if only that furious breakage of time. Songs like "Gravedigger's Chant," "Don't You Dare," "Row Row," "You Ain't Coming Back," "Stranger Fruit," and "Built on Ashes" are indispensable.
Reflex (1981) has a decent claim on being my favorite Dick Francis novel I've read so far and I am deeply disappointed there appears to be no fic for it on AO3.
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Ooh, is that the one with all the photography stuff? I feel there should be more Francis fic generally - I think there is some for To the Hilt, which is more slashy than most.
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It is! And it's good photography stuff, written in such a way as to give you an idea of the protagonist's talent—the kind of eye he has, the kind of subjects he's interested in—as opposed to having to take it on faith. I also enjoy reading about photography as a technology, which is less true of books like the one that's about wine.
I feel there should be more Francis fic generally - I think there is some for To the Hilt, which is more slashy than most.
I saw some of those on AO3. Otherwise there's a very small fandom for the Sid Halley books and then a couple of one-offs. I had just sort of assumed there would be more.