#it's like making parallels between she and marilyn too of which there are quite a few even though it's acting vs. musicianship

[septembersghost]

thinking about the quote from the end of Elvis, "

I’ll tell you what killed him. It was love. His love for all of you.

That voice rang out, and he sang with all his life."

and the reblogged ask about Taylor, and I know people don't want to hear this because we loved interacting with her and miss her, but I'm glad she has distance, im glad she's not killing herself for that love anymore.

i've touched on this a bit in comments with my friend @joons, who wrote really lovely meta about this here, and i'm going to quote her: "elvis, as a man, had such a generous spirit that no one—not his wife or manager or friends or fans—could stop him from digging deep and giving, even when it cost him everything. when his body was failing, his friends would ask him to postpone tours, to rest, to heal. and all he would do is gently smile and say, “it’ll be all right. don’t worry about it.” we may think the colonel is treating love lightly by bringing it up as a factor in elvis’ death, but this pivot in focus actually brings us the closest we ever get to knowing who elvis really was (something elvis himself promised he would reveal to his audience early in the film). his generosity is why he was so loved, and the colonel suggests it was his fatal flaw, that he cared so much about sharing his wealth, his talents, and himself with others that he did not care how much it hurt him. or rather, he did care, but he did not know how to stop sharing whatever he could to make other people happy, instead of attending to his own happiness. he gave people his trust and continued giving it long after they had stopped deserving it. and maybe wishing it had been different would be to wish elvis weren’t elvis."

the movie by default made me think about taylor quite a bit, despite the many clear differences, there are unavoidable similarities when it comes to the types of artists they are, who bare so much of themselves and are constantly giving and shimmering and trying and working to connect to their audiences. it's something taylor has addressed several times now, the rippling whisper of that anxiety and the clear slashed wound of it has been appearing in her work for years, and has crystallized further in her most recent music. i mentioned to chelsea how elvis made me think of dear reader (if it feels like a trap, you're already in one is so "suspicious minds" in the way it was utilized in the film, and never take advice from someone who's falling apart/so i wander through these nights, i prefer hiding in plain sight/my fourth drink in my hand/these desperate prayers of a cursed man/spilling out to you for free/but darling, darling, please/you wouldn't take my word for it if you knew who was talking viscerally made me think of him the first time i heard it after seeing the film). her fears about others seeing right through her, drunk as we watch her shattered edges glisten, that she doesn't do enough, that it's exhausting to root for her, that she desperately has tried her best and wanted to be loved (and make it seem effortless), that she shines so bright but that in itself is a kind of curse, that her desire to succeed is also an irredeemable quality, "your kindness is fake. your pain is manipulative,"...will you still want me when i'm nothing new?...it's splashed like a bloodstain all over her music and is such a sad, distressing facet of what she's gone through, but i also think there's an inherent quality in this that certain artists have - this wellspring of humanity, this boundless love that has nowhere else to go and springs forth from the music, the act of creating art, the euphoric feeling of performing, the intensity of love they feel from fans that, we have to acknowledge, can never be fully balanced or reciprocal because of the necessary and natural boundaries between us. i think taylor gave so much of herself when she was younger that it was corrosive to her person. she was struggling in such a way personally and still striving without end to be respected and embraced, and she gave a lot of that unfailingly to fans, maybe because she felt she had to as an extension of gratitude, maybe because she didn't feel loved and safe elsewhere, and also because she does feel a real sense of love in that way. but i think it was very hard on her too, and untenable. you can never reach everyone. you can never make everyone happy. you can never help everyone who needs help. you can never give all the love you wish you could give. it's a beautiful and admirable and even spiritual thing to share, but when does the line need to be drawn when you have to attend to your own needs and humanity first before collapsing under the weight of it?

all this said, i too am glad she's got a much healthier balance now, is very steadily loved in her daily life by a partner who gives her a sense of stability and quiet, and that she doesn't feel the need to give so much of herself away, outside of all the vulnerability within her art. it doesn't mean she doesn't care for us, i believe she means it whenever she thanks us, whenever she says she owes her career to us or she creates things for fun with us in mind (the easter eggs in the bejeweled video, as a recent example. she took a song about her feeling hurt and unappreciated, sadness became my whole sky, and wanting to sparkle again, and reinterpreted it visually to include her fans as a positive aspect), but i also think she's learned what she doesn't have to sacrifice.

there's an unerring empathy in the tragedy of elvis not knowing when to stop, how sincere that love he had was, how that itself was a type of defiance. "he loved and he gave, and he couldn’t do otherwise no matter how much people tried to stop him. and that simple truth is one last great gift." i do believe this endures and is a connective gift.

still, there's a strength in learning how to stopper that outpouring of oneself, one's heart and soul and love, too, and i do find that i'm thankful she's learned that, even when we miss her engaging as much, knowing she has a better sense of peace takes precedence. that love doesn't have to be fatal anymore. she's learned how to let it have its respite instead.

#anonymous #letterbox #it's like making parallels between she and marilyn too of which there are quite a few even though it's acting vs. musicianship #marilyn also suffered from never being able to turn her intense sensitivity and her love off and the burdens that brought with it #it's really fascinating to me bc it speaks to a certain kind of humanity and a certain need to connect that i think is really raw #anyway i could talk about the elvis comparisons here at length aksdflgk but yeah #i worried about her for so long and she very clearly saw tragedy unfolding ahead of her #she made a conscious decision not to drive off the cliff and that is its own act of bravery #thrown out speeches #taylor swift #elvis presley #i was a dreamer

[chiseler]

The Kitten in the Storm Drain

Yes, in retrospect it had all the makings of a bestselling children’s book, but in the midst of everything, before any end was in sight, it was more like one of those frustrating and hopeless nightmares where you need to do something important, but can’t.

It was about five or six Sunday morning. Shortly after we got up, my wife Morgan heard what could only be described as the piteous mewling of a cat in some kind of terrible trouble. After confirming none of our own cats were in any major distress, she threw on her coat and went outside. It may have been yet another standoff between a couple of the local outdoor cats, or maybe a cat in heat, but she just wanted to make sure that’s all it was.

It took a few minutes, but after zeroing in on the wailing across the street, she caught the glint of whiskers a foot or two below the grating of the storm drain. She came back upstairs and grabbed some cans of food, thinking that might lure the cat out, just so she could see it was safe. The food, however, was promptly eaten by the aforementioned street cats, and the wailing continued.

Once the sun came up and Morgan could see more clearly into the storm drain, she found a calico kitten, likely only a few weeks old, perched precariously on a short  concrete pipe two feet above the water running below. The kitten was on the street side opposite the wider opening on the curb, and there was no way Morgan could reach her. She couldn’t fit her arm through the grate. Even if she could, there was no way she’d be able to pull the kitten’s head through anything other than the wider curbside opening. It was unclear how the kitten may have found itself in that predicament, and we weren’t sure we wanted to know. Balanced on that short pipe it was clearly too terrified to make the jump to safety, and equally terrified of people.

Morgan called the city’s Animal Care and Control center, but they were closed. She left a message with all the pertinent details and a contact number, then came back upstairs to let me know what was going on.

I sent a quick note to a vet tech who’d helped us in the past, asking if he had any suggestions. Morgan, meanwhile, headed back outside to try and lure the kitten to safety. The cold rain had started to fall.

Not sure how long it might be before I heard back from the vet tech—it was early Sunday morning, after all—I called 311, New York’s all purpose hotline for non-emergency city agencies.

At this point, two parallel dramas began playing out—one outside in the rain, the other upstairs on the phone.

After sifting through half a dozen phone menus, someone from the sewers department informed me the problem at hand was beyond their jurisdiction. The grating over the storm drain was not theirs, and they were not allowed to touch it. After calling back and sifting through the same menu, the fire department—and this was shocking—told me they no longer rescued trapped kittens (so there goes that myth). I finally reached someone at ACC, who informed me they were not a city agency, and the sewer grating was city property belonging to the water department (DEP). What I needed to do, she said, was contact DEP and have them send someone out to remove the grating. The DEP workers would then contact ACC, and only at that point would ACC send someone out to pluck the kitten to safety. If it was still alive at that point, of course. So I called 311 again, where I was told there was no direct phone line to DEP, that pretty much my only option was to send them a letter requesting they, whenever they had the chance, send a licensed crew out to remove the grating.

In other words, I might expect the city to take some action on the “kitten trapped in the storm drain” front come around April, maybe June.

Meanwhile the rain was coming down harder and the water in the storm pipe was rising fast. The kitten was soaked and freezing and frantic, and there was nothing Morgan could do. A couple strangers stopped to see what was happening, and while they were sympathetic, there was nothing they could do, either.

When two passing  cops arrived on the scene, for just an instant it seemed something might possibly happen. If nothing else, they’d certainly know who to contact. It was a step or two toward rescuing the kitten. That instant passed quickly, however, as the cops merely stood around on the sewer grating for ten or fifteen minutes doing nothing, then told Morgan the cat was fine. It was an adult, they insisted, it lived down there, it knew what it was doing, so she shouldn’t worry about it. Then they went away. After they left, the cops apparently also called ACC and fed them the same line of bullshit, because when Morgan called again, she was told ACC wasn’t going to do anything about rescuing the kitten, based on what the cops reported.

So the city, in essence, refused to do anything to save a damned kitten, using byzantine bureaucracy and fuzzy jurisdictions as a cheap and easy excuse.

By this point things had been going on for three or four hours, and we were starting to run out of hope. Morgan used what she could find to try and construct a makeshift bridge to allow the kitten to cross over the rushing and rising water to the curbside opening. I still hadn’t heard from the vet tech, so, with few other options, I called my friends Daniel and Marilyn. I knew they’d had a number of dealings with animal shelters and the like, so figured it was a long shot, but a shot nonetheless.

After I explained the situation to them, they had a few suggestions, people and places I might contact, but at the top of the list was a man named Sean Casey, who ran an animal rescue and was known to handle cases like this on occasion.

I called Mr. Casey, told him what was going on, and asked for his help. It was apparently his day off, but he said he might come out. The best thing to do, he suggested, was try and flag down a couple passing cops (“They’ll never come if you call them”) and have them put in a call to ESU, which I took, perhaps erroneously, to mean the Emergency Services Unit.

I told him what happened with the earlier cops, and he suggested we try and flag down different cops. I thanked him and hung up the phone, still hopeless and still unsure whether he was coming by or not.

Between the two of us, Morgan and I had pretty much exhausted our options. We’d just have to wait and watch and listen to the screaming until the water rose high enough to wash the kitten away.

Then about fiftteen minutes later Morgan glanced out the window again and saw a white  truck out front.

“Animal Care and Control’s out there,” She said, before throwing on her coat and running downstairs.

Well imagine that, right? After all we’d been through with them, ACC came through after all.

But when Morgan got downstairs she saw it wasn’t ACC after all, but Sean Casey’s Animal Rescue van, and Casey himself.

Morgan explained the story again, and he assessed the situation. Then he asked her to stand back a ways, as he needed room to work. He also warned her, quite seriously that there was a chance there wouldn’t be a happy ending, that the kitten might slip away from him into the rising water. With that disclaimer, he set about his business.

Apparently unafraid of what this or that city agency might say about who it does or doesn’t belong to, Casey lifted the grating off the storm drain, lay down on his belly on the wet and filthy pavement, and, using two animal control loops, scooped the sopping, freezing and yelping kitten out of the sewer and dropped it safely into a waiting carrier, together with a towel Morgan handed him.

He replaced the grating, set the carrier in his van, and returned his new charge to the shelter where she (we learned it was a “she”) would be cleaned up and checked out. Later that night, pictures of Casey posing with their latest acquisition—now dry, clean and fed—were posted on the Rescue’s website. It was as happy an ending to the day’s story as we could’ve hoped.

So maybe it’s a story that’s a bit more softhearted, a bit less cynical and nasty than I’m used to, but we couldn’t just stand around and listen to that kitten die. Consider it a simple lesson in the uselessness of city agencies, and the value of individuals with the gumption to overlook ridiculous bureaucratic folderol in order to do what needs doing.

For the rest of that afternoon, Morgan and I found ourselves saying, apropos of nothing, “Fuckin’ Sean Casey, man. Fuckin’ Sean Casey.”

(For the record, less than 24 hours later, the list of people lining up to adopt the storm drain kitten continued to grow astronomically.)

by Jim Knipfel

Please donate to Sean Casey’s Animal Rescue 

https://www.nyanimalrescue.org/

[the-desolated-quill]

BBC’s The War Of The Worlds blog - Episode 2

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Never before have I witnessed something this god awful. I’m actually gobsmacked. I knew Peter Harness was a terrible writer, but I didn’t think even he could fuck up this badly. I was utterly dumbfounded by the end of the second episode. I couldn’t believe what I just watched. Not only does this fail as an adaptation of War Of The Worlds, it fails as a story in and of itself.

The problems with Episode 2 surface almost immediately within the first few minutes. A flash forward to a post apocalyptic Earth where we see Amy taking care of her son as humanity struggles to survive because of the red weed (which doesn’t look terribly convincing sadly, but that’s the least of this series’ problems). From there the episode continuously switches back and forth to the invasion and the aftermath throughout, which completely ruins the pacing, but it’s actually even worse than that. These flash forwards also giveaway the ending of the story. That the Martians end up losing. Harness tries to act all clever-clever with it by having British propaganda claim that the army defeated them, but the damage has already done. Thanks to this reveal, Harness has successfully managed to completely suck all tension from the story completely. The Martians no longer pose a threat because we, the audience, know they eventually lose, and we know that Amy at least survives, so at no point do we ever worry about her safety. I was absolutely flabbergasted when I saw this. I couldn’t believe any writer could be this stupid as to sabotage their own story by completely defanging their villains. As for the red weed slowly killing the planet, not only do I feel this unnecessarily complicates a perfectly simple narrative, it also opens the door for humanity to overcome their Martian oppressors when the whole point of the original story was that we only survived by the skin of our teeth. Our human ingenuity had nothing to do with it. We’ll have to wait and see what Episode 3 brings, but I’m not optimistic.

Meanwhile the invasion itself is still just as stilted and lacking in focus as it was before. Certain scenes stand out, like the black smoke enveloping London and the Tripods attacking the ferries, but because we know the Martians ultimately lose and that Amy survives, there’s absolutely zero suspense. (And yes, I know War Of The Worlds is a hundred year old story and everyone knows how it ends, but that doesn’t mean you can’t build tension). Also because of Harness wilfully reducing the Martians to incompetent fools, he has to resort to cheap shock tactics in the desperate hopes of scaring the audience, like when we see one of the Tripods kill a baby. Or how about the bit where Amy almost gets raped in the post invasion scenes? After all that performative feminist posturing last week, it’s quite galling to see such a sexist trope be used here for a cheap bit of drama. It’s fucking pathetic.

And once again the focus is in all the wrong areas. Instead of depicting the horrifying events of the Martian invasion, Harness is more preoccupied with Amy and Rupert Graves’ character (I’m sure he has a name, but I can’t be bothered to remember it at this point) squabbling every five minutes. Guys! Humanity is being destroyed by fucking aliens! Can this not wait?!

I’m assuming the whole baby killing thing was an attempt to show us the selfish nature of man or something, but George and the Artilleryman barely make the effort to actually look for the baby and the scene doesn’t go on nearly long enough to get us invested in the search and their eventual failure. The baby is practically thrown away just so Harness can have a moment where social media will go ‘OMG, they killed a baby in War Of The Worlds! How edgy!’ And the annoying thing is the book does actually have morally grey and shocking moments that Harness could have adapted if he wasn’t too busy trying to second-guess the audience and show what a dark and edgy writer he is. There are two important characters in the source material that the narrator encounters who offer different points of view on the events of the novel. There’s the priest who we see slowly lose faith in God and become more and more panicked and erratic, and there’s the Artilleryman, who represents British colonial attitudes, believing that humanity will ultimately triumph when the evidence clearly doesn’t support this. Here the Artilleryman is played by Dudley Dursley himself Harry Melling, who does a decent job with the material he has been given, but unfortunately the character he’s being forced to play is just utterly inadequate.

Continuing with his trend of writing allegories to things that have nothing to do with War Of The Worlds, Peter Harness takes the opportunity to comment on military conscription, even though conscription wasn’t introduced to the UK until 1916. So now the Artilleryman isn’t some impressionable nationalist that has willingly bought into imperial dogma, but rather he’s a scared little bunny rabbit forced to fight a war against an enemy beyond his comprehension. Worse still, George gets conscripted into the military for literally no fucking reason. He doesn’t get given a gun or anything and despite the fact that he knows more about the Martians than the soldiers do, none of them fucking listen to him when he tries to explain the heat pulse thing or why it might not be a good idea to shout at a Tripod. Then, when they think they won the battle, the captain points his gun at George and forces him to wade into the marshes and investigate. Again I must stress that George doesn’t have a gun! It’s just utterly contrived!

Oh but don’t worry. Harness finally addresses what the source material is actually about. British imperialism and colonialism. Unfortunately he does it with the subtlety and nuance of a giant steamroller driven by Marilyn Manson. Now admittedly the book isn’t very subtle about it either as the narrator comes right out with the comparisons between the British and the Martians, but the thing is the book gets away with it because it’s told from the perspective of a journalist writing about his own experiences after the fact. H.G. Wells has the licence to draw direct parallels because the narrative form he has chosen allows him to. A TV series however - a visual medium - cannot get away with this. Harness, not having the faintest idea how to address the themes of the source material organically in the visuals or the plot, resorts to sledgehammer tactics to get the point across. In the flash forwards to post apocalyptic Britain, we see Amy’s son reading a book that details how the British defeated the Martians as part of some propaganda initiative. A speech is made about how powerful and unstoppable the British Empire is, whilst intercut with soldiers having their arses handed to them by the Tripods. We see several characters maintain a stereotypical ‘stiff upper lip’ attitude as though the Martian invasion was a minor inconvenience instead of a shocking tragedy. There’s even a moment where the Minister of War is babbling on about how much more powerful the Empire can become if they can use Martian technology before succumbing to the Martian’s black smoke and we see literal bile foam from his mouth. It’s all so painfully on the nose and doesn’t offer any intelligent points or topics for discussion other than ‘empires are bad.’

And that’s not to mention all the other contrivances and annoyances in this episode. Despite Eleanor Tomlinson giving it her all, I still couldn’t give two shits about her character. Rafe Spall’s performance as George is still utterly atrocious, running around with a gormless expression on his face as though he’s just lost his wallet. Rupert Graves is utterly wasted as George’s brother and has no good material to work with. We also have a little girl join the group in a desperate bid to draw some sort of emotional reaction from the audience (it doesn’t work) and we have a sick older woman who serves no purpose whatsoever as far as I can see. In fact she really pissed me off due to the way in which she gets poisoned. It’s clearly meant to be there to establish the Martians terraforming Earth, but good God it’s stupid. How does she get poisoned? By drinking a random cup of water someone had just happened to leave lying around in the middle of a field.

I... I... Harness.... Harness, does your brain work?! How the flying fuck did you ever manage to get a career as a writer?!?!

BBC, I beg of you, please stop using our TV licence fees to fund hack screenwriters’ poorly thought out and unentertaining fanfiction!

PLEASE!

#the war of the worlds #hg wells #peter harness #bbc #review #spoilers

[alfcrtscue]

❛ she wears strength and darkness equally well, the girl has always been half goddess half hell. ❜

( marilyn lima, twenty-one, ciswoman ) my goodness, is alice fortescue back? it’s been a few years since the pureblood has been around the castle, but i’d recognize her anywhere. rumor has it the seventh year spent the past few years aligned with the order. they’re still ambitious & resourceful and domineering & cynical, though. and the slytherin still reminds me of the smell of rain after a storm, toasting marshmallows on a raging bonfire and the sharp thorns on a beautiful rose. well, then, i guess some things never change.

links: stats, pinterest character parallels: laurel castillo ( how to get away with murder ), sarah manning ( orphan black ), cristina yang ( grey’s anatomy ), rosa diaz ( brooklyn nine-nine ), jessica jones ( jessica jones ), donna pinciotti ( that 70′s show ) triggers: parental death

BACKGROUND

alice fortescue is known to some as a mystery. born to two loving purebloods, alice was always supposed to be the spitting image of her parents — soft, kind, and weak. and while she might’ve had the stunning looks of her mother and the wavy hair of her father, that was where the similarities stopped.

some people like to joke that maybe alice is adopted, since she is so obviously different to bother her mother and father. and coming from some, this can be funny. other times, alice won’t hesitate to push you into a corner and defend her parents honour.

while alice loved her parents dearly, as any daughter should, she likes to think that she raised herself in a way. her parents were often distracted trying to stay on top of the family ice-cream business, and as much as they were incredibly attentive, it was always their philosophy that their little girl should find her own way in the world, to form her own opinions and find what makes her happy all on her own. 

unfortunately, instead of searching for the good in the world, little alice went straight for the bad, finding toxic and unwelcoming environments everywhere she turned. she found the world to be a cruel and unforgiving place, and from a young age she taught herself how to be hard, impenetrable — how to be everything her parents were not.

with scraped knees and a near permanent scowl, little alice shut herself off from the rest of the world, her soft interior only visible to those she knew she could trust ( which for quite a while was limited only to her parents ). she set out on trying to be better than those who had taught her what a terrible world she lived in, but being better did not always equal being kind.

it is perhaps this upbringing that gave alice many of the traits which landed her in the house of the snakes when she started at hogwarts. ambitious, cunning, determined and fraternal, alice should’ve fit in right with her housemates.

but of course, in typical alice fortescue fashion, she made enemies far quicker than she made friends. having heard only bad things from her parents about slytherin, alice set out to make it abundantly clear from the moment she entered the dungeons that she would take absolutely none of the ‘purist bullshit’ she’d heard stories of.

it actually took quite a while for alice to find friends that she could trust in her first year. she would often get into fights with people who knew it was easy to rile her up, and it quickly became her brand, in a way. she wasn’t used to making friends, but finally after a few months she found people who could get past the cold exterior she’d put up and appreciate her for what she was — an incredibly passionate, caring and driven individual.

for the first few years, alice absolutely flew through school. she was intelligent, witty and abundantly creative, and even if her teachers didn’t particularly like her ( punching a few purists is sure to give you a bad rep ) they respected her and her work ethic. everything was running smoothly, in fact, until the war started to rear its ugly head.

even before the battle that broke out at hogwarts, alice’s mind had started to slip further and further away from school and ever so closer to what role she might play in this impending war. her grades slipped and her number of friends dwindled, but she didn’t care - she’d always known it was her duty to fight for that which was right, and this war was, to her, her calling.

as soon as hogwarts shut down, alice dove headfirst into the war effort. she slotted herself immediately into the order of the phoenix and begged for them to give her something to do, anything to help, even if she was just sixteen. having moved back home, she acted for the first two years as an intel gatherer, listening to the whispers on the streets of hogsmeade and working at her fathers ice cream shop to appear seemingly innocuous. as soon as she turned 18 however, she would take nothing less than to be out on the field.

it didn’t take long for alice to become one of the best warriors the order had to offer, even if she was so young. she fought tooth and nail to keep the death eater’s off the streets and was assured she’d have a place in the auror program once she had completed her schooling. for a while, she felt invincible -- but only for a while.

PARENTAL DEATH TW: three months before hogwarts opened up its doors back to the students, florean fortescue was caught in the crossfire of a battle between two death eaters and an order member and died on the spot, right outside his own ice cream shop. official reports say it was an accident, but it didn’t take long for some to wonder whether the death eater’s had purposefully targeted the father of one of the order’s strongest members.

alice was completely and utterly distraught. she loved her father more than anyone else on this earth -- all he had ever sought to do was bring happiness to the lives of wixen. he was kind, soft and full of love and had never let the war touch him. he was the last person that should’ve been killed in this fight. he was the last person to deserve it, in alice’s eyes.

isolating herself from everyone in her life, including her mother, alice has felt empty ever since. she blames herself for not being there for him, for not dying in his place, and hasn’t even been back to the ice cream shop since ( the shop which is ‘ temporarily ’ closed ). audrey, alice’s mother, has tried everything to get her little girl back, but not even those two have seen each other since that fateful day. alice simply cannot bear it. she moved into the order safehouses but still kept herself away from everyone else, unsure with what she even wanted to do anymore. END TW

when hogwarts opened back up, alice wasn’t so sure she was going to return. her old friends ( some of whom she hadn’t spoken to in the last three months ) tried everything to convince her, but it was eventually albus dumbledore that managed to give her the final push. she has returned, but only with one goal in mind -- to earn her place in the auror program. she wants to get back out there, to find the asshole that killed her father and those who continue to kill innocent people every day. she’s sick of moping around and feeling sorry for herself -- it’s time to act, and no one is going to get in her way.

PERSONALITY

there are two things that make alice alice — her determination and her love.

if alice ever sets her mind to something, you can bet your ass she is going to get it done. nothing can ever come between alice and something she wants, and while for the most part this is a good thing, it can definitely sometimes get in the way of other, more important things. multiple friends have accused her of being too focused on her studies, or the order and she’s even lost a few who believed she just didn’t care enough about them. but that couldn’t be farther from the truth —

the one thing that really drives alice is her deep love and loyalty to her friends and family. while she might seem cold and cruel on the outside, she has a heart the size of jupiter. all she wants is to see the ones she loves safe from harm, from prejudice, from war. while it might take her a while to love, once she does, she loves so deeply and with such strength that she might just drown you.

she has a very quick tongue, and often doesn’t think before she speaks. it got her into trouble a lot at hogwarts and continues to get in her way within the auror department, and while sometimes it frustrates her, she usually doesn’t care — if someone can’t handle what she has to say, then that’s their problem, not hers.

#totalusintro #⌜ character study ⌟ ✦ * · ˚ ʜᴇʀ ᴍᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ᴛᴏʟᴅ ʜᴇʀ ꜱʜᴇ ᴄᴏᴜʟᴅ ʙᴇ ᴀɴʏᴛʜɪɴɢ . #parental death tw

[thereallygoodblogshow]

MA Fashion and Textile Practices Major Project Path - 9th April

After looking at the colour white, I wanted to look at the colour black, as this seems to be the colour of choice for me at the moment within the work I am creating.

Black

In Western culture black is a colour often associated with death, we usually wear black to a funeral and to mourn. We us the word black at the beginning of the words such as ‘blackmail’ and ‘blacklist’ as unfavourable responses. Black can be seen as a colour of depression or evil, so not surprisingly the colour black is seen as a negative colour, but in other respects black is perceived as sophisticated, classy, sexy, mysterious, authoritative, powerful and adorns the wealthy. Combine black with other colours, such as white or red it can be very impactful, black can assist in adding contrast and definition to design. Again on his website Color Meanings Jacob Olesen (2019) describes black as such;

“In color psychology, the color black relates to protection against emotional stress. It creates a barrier between itself and the outside world. It provides comfort while it protects its feelings and hides its vulnerability, insecurity and lack of confidence.”

I suppose this is partly what I am doing within my work, my lack of confidence in my design path is hidden within the use of a strong and impactful aesthetic and the mixing of black and white makes a statement whilst at the same time masking my insecurities - a colour oxymoron!

The colour black is of course synonymous with fashion, who doesn’t remember Audrey Hepburn dressed in one of the most famous ‘Little Black Dresses’ of all time  - designed by Givenchy - in her role as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s? In a role originally sited for Marilyn Monroe, Hepburn is cast as a girl striving for the better things in life and doing some risqué things to get them. She plays Holly Golightly a Cafe Society girl - or ‘lady of the evening’ as described by film director Lee Strasberg, who advised Marilyn Monroe against taking the character as it could bad for her image. Almost as an opposing role characteristically to that of her role in My Fair Lady, she is seen in Breakfast at Tiffany’s wearing simple black dresses or clothing of strong block colours, maybe to emphasise the darker side of her character as well as hiding her vulnerability and insecurity. It was filmed at the beginning of the 1960′s and depicted a life that would have been considered quite controversial and mysterious, but the 1960′s were also a time of exploration and empowerment for women, so this possibly highlighted this and helped in the films success.

Kettler, S. (2019). The Parallels Between Audrey Hepburn and Holly Golightly. [Photograph]. Retrieved from https://www.biography.com/news/audrey-hepburn-holly-golightly-breakfast-at-tiffanys-similarities.  

In the early 19th century black was adopted by romantic poets such as Shelley, Keats and Byron because black was associated with their melancholic writings, melancholy being the overriding tone of romantic poetry. One of my favourite artists the 19th century English illustrator and author Aubrey Beardsley used black ink almost exclusively in his illustrations, these were heavily influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts but focused towards the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. Beardsley was one of the main members of the Aesthetic movement - a movement which championed the phrase ‘art for art’s sake’ which looked more to the sensual and visual qualities within design over the narrative and practical aspects. Beardsley was also a major contributor to the Art Nouveau movement where his poster designs were highly influential.  

Beardsley, A. (1893). The Climax. [Illustration]. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Climax_(illustration).

Beardsley work has always appealed to me. I love the style of his illustrations and the impact of the black ink on white, and I like the sensuality within his strokes, the subject matter usually with some erotic, murderous or melancholic back story. The use of black in art has been contested through the centuries, some artists avoided the heavy use of black, such as Kandinsky who used it more towards the end of his life, almost like a death signifier. Others embraced the use of black, such as in Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece Guernica.   

Picasso, P. (1937). Guernica. [Oil on canvas]. Retrieved from https://emptyeasel.com/guernica-famous-cubist-painting-by-pablo-picasso/.

Using a monochromatic palette Picasso produced Guernica as an anti-war protest and a display of anti-Fascism in response to the bombing attack on the small northern Spanish town. The painting is shocking and disturbing to this day. I remember my mum recalling seeing it in real life and crying. The painting does not display any specifics details of the attack but more so depicts his general disgust of war itself. Guernica combines his pioneering style of Cubism along with elements of Surrealism. Here again black is used for impact and contrast combining in a haunting and powerful display of the horrors of war.   

On his website Color Meanings Jacob Olesen (2019) also discusses the contrast of black and white;

“Black hides things, while white brings them into the light. What black hides, white brings back again. We all use the black color at different times in our lives, in one way or another, to hide from the world around us.”

So I can assess from this that using black and white as a colour combination is literally and psychologically a contrast, the white bringing positivity and new beginnings, the black adding contrast whilst aiding the white to come forth. It reminded me of Yin and Yang - the concept of dualism within Chinese philosophy. The concept of Yin and Yang dates from the 3rd century or possibly earlier which suggests that all things have an opposite such as; light and dark, male and female, young and old which are contradictory yet inseparable from each other, as the symbol for Yin and Yang illustrates;

Heritage, A. (2017). What is Yin and Yang?. [Illustration]. Retrieved from https://www.heritage.com.sg/blogs/tcm-basics/what-is-yin-and-yang.

In the symbol for Yin and Yang each side has the core element of the other, represented by the eye, or dot. Neither of the sides are superior to the other, and if one were to increase it would decrease the other, so a perfect balance of both must be had in order to achieve harmony. The name Yin and Yang originated from the Chinese school of Yinyang which studied this philosophy and cosmology in the 3rd century. The Yin and Yang philosophy was mainly devised by cosmologist  Zou Yan (or Tsou Yen) who believed that as we travel through life we pass through 5 different phases -  fire, water, metal, wood and earth -  which a continuously altered and changed to maintain harmony throughout our life. 

So if they are opposite forces what does Yin represent?

Feminine, black, dark, North, water, passive, Moon, Earth, cold, old, even numbers, valleys, poor, soft, and provides spirit to all things.

And what about Yang?

Masculine, white, light, South, fire, active, Sun, Heaven, warm, young, odd numbers, mountains, rich, hard, and provides form to all things.

I can actually relate well to this philosophy. I am female so do relate more to the Yin side, I like the colour black, the Earth (being the Earth sign Taurus in astrology) the Moon, the soft and spiritual in things. I am quite a grounded person but do like to try and understand the spiritual aspects of life, so I do lean more towards the dark side, not that I will be joining Darth Vader anytime soon! I also see elements of Yang in me too, I am quite young at heart, enjoy warm relationships, feeling safe and having enough money to not stress over things in life - money being something which has been lacking for quite a few years! Achieving this MA will hopefully resolve that aspect of my life, as well as gaining some balance and harmony too.     

Website: Olesen, J. (2019). Black Color Meaning – The Color Black. Retrieved from https://www.color-meanings.com/black-color-meaning-the-color-black/.

Website: Cartwright, M. (2018). Yin and Yang. Retrieved from https://www.ancient.eu/Yin_and_Yang/.

Website: Wikipedia. (2019). Black. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black

Website: Tate. (n.d). Aubrey Beardsley. Retrieved from https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/aubrey-beardsley-716.

Website: Empty Easel. (n.d). Guernica by Pablo Picasso. Retrieved from https://emptyeasel.com/guernica-famous-cubist-painting-by-pablo-picasso/.

[nofomoartworld]

Art F City: Museum Punk Show in Need of A Sound Guy

Gardar Eide Einarsson, “Always Carry A Bible / All Cops Are Bastards,” 2007

Punk. Sus rastros en el arte contemporáneo Museo Universitario del Chopo Curated by David G. Torres Until March 26th, 2017

Featuring: Tere Recarens, Martin Arnold, Johan Grimonprez, Federico Solmi, Dan Graham, T.R Uthco, Ant Farm, María Pratts, Iztiar Okariz, Chiara Fumai, Raisa Maudit, Fabienne Audéoud, Eduardo Balanza, TRES, Raymond Pettibon, Die Tödliche Doris, Mabel Palacín, Christian Marclay, Guerrilla Girls, Brice Dellsperger, Jordi Colomer, Pepo Salazar, Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa, Jota Izquierdo, Israel Martínez, Aida Ruilova, Antonio Ortega, Luis Felipe Ortega, Daniel Guzmán, Jimmie Durham, Mike Kelley, Tony Oursler, João Louro, Paul McCarthy, João Onofre, Santiago Sierra, Yoshua Okon, Miguel Calderón, Nan Goldin, Enrique Jezik, Guillermo Santamarina, VALIE EXPORT, Kendell Geers, Laureana Toledo, Sarah Minter, Semefo, DR. LAKRA, Gardar Eide Einarsson.

MEXICO CITY– I’m struggling to watch Aïda Ruilova’s 2009 video “Meet the Eye,” in which the actress Karen Black alternately attempts to seduce and crazily berate Raymond Pettibon between rapid edits. She’s wearing babydoll-style makeup, which gives her a subtly Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? vibe, and I’m hooked to the melodrama. But I have no idea what the argument is about, because I can barely hear the audio track over the sound of gunshots, a faint electroclash song playing somewhere, countless indistinguishable noises, and the invitation “Let’s go for it!” being repeated in a grating child’s voice.

The gallery is an ADHD nightmare. It contains not one, but two talking Mike Kelley works and several videos by other artists. In one, the Spanish performance artist Itziar Okariz is pissing on a parked car in the middle of New York City. On the other (source of the electroclash track) I catch a glimpse of what appears to be a dead-eyed princess dripping with cum.

By the time I turn back to Ruilova’s piece the loop has ended. My questions are unanswered. The curatorial strategy here leaves me with so many more.  

From Raisa Maudit’s 2012 “FART: Global Art Fair”

Punk. Sus rastros en el arte contemporáneo, now on view at Museo Universitario Del Chopo, is sort of a mess. That’s not to say the work here isn’t good—it’s great—but the show is an overwhelming, over-stimulating experience that’s often draining when it should be wholly inspiring. I can’t think of another exhibition I’ve been to in which I’ve loved nearly every artwork yet couldn’t wait to get the hell out of each gallery. Maybe that abrasiveness is deliberate? The experience did, after all, remind me of trying to have one-on-one conversations with dear friends while a noise musician performs on the other side of a party in a squat. If the past 35 years have rendered audiences numb to “shocking” artworks, perhaps subverting museum-caliber curatorial conventions is the last punk gesture.

That’s a thought I might not have had, were it not for the fact that (I think) I entered the exhibition backwards. The galleries are stacked in a concrete box addition inside the museum—an airy 1902 glass pavilion that, appropriately, was home to Mexico’s famous punk market “El Chopo” until the late 80s. I started from the top floor, the library, where punk memorabilia is arranged in vitrines, more or less chronologically alongside didactic text. This part of the exhibition, at least for me, was surprisingly enjoyable. The text places punk in an art historical context, citing Dada, the Situationists, John Waters’ films, and Warhol’s factory as conceptual forefathers. Alongside the familiar narratives of the CBGBs scene and parallels in London, the curators discuss Spain’s Movida Madrileña—one of my favorite, under-historicized moments in subculture—the Spanish-speaking world’s more recent equivalent of the experimental Weimar Republic years. I got an undeniable thrill from seeing a video of all-female Basque punk band Las Vulpess’ cover of “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog” enshrined in a museum (in Spanish, the song translates to “I like being a slut”, and its broadcast on television sparked a debate about censorship, gender, and “decency” in Spain’s relatively new socialist democracy). From photos of drag icon Divine to punk band Eskorbuto, never had I felt more cool nerding out in a museum. Importantly, the show ties the influence of both European and anglophone punk to Mexican subculture in the 80s and 90s. That’s a topic I’m glad the show gave me an introduction to. (Indeed, I’d like to revisit Sarah Minter’s hour-long video “Alma Punk” from 1992 in a less overwhelming context. It’s a candid DIY document of Mexico’s punk scene from that era.)

Enrique Ježik, “La fiesta de las balas,” (The Bullet Party) 2011.

If the academic and “precious” vitrines of punk history and artifacts were unexpected, the gallery beneath it seemed like a contemporary assault on the culture of display—quite literally. The aforementioned gunshot sounds are from an Enrique Ježik sculpture, “La fiesta de las balas,” 2011. The piece comprises three bulletproof glass display cases, evocative of Damien Hirst works, riddled with craters from bullets. They’re installed in their own room, like a shooting range, but the sound from the shooting recording reverberates through half the museum. The piece stuck with me beyond my initial reaction (a teen boy destruction fantasy) as a commentary on both the cult of art object worship, and the futility of resisting it. Like Warhol’s “Shot Marilyns”, the piece’s value lies in it doubling as a record of the violence committed against it.

But “La Fiesta de las balas” also points to two of the exhibition’s most glaring problems: it’s one of the few works here that actually should be experienced as a physical object, and it’s loud as hell. There are only a few other sculptural works in the show, and at least half of them involve an audio or video component that’s competing with other sounds in an echoey gallery.

Still from Brice Dellsperger’s “Body Double 16“

And sound is a big, big problem for a show that’s overwhelmingly based on video. Don’t get me wrong: nearly every video here is fantastic. I spent untold hours diligently viewing relatively short works such as Raisa Maudit’s 2012 “FART: Global Art Fair” (in which the artist parodies the gallery/artist relationship in a tiara and semen during a fake interview with herself) or Ant Farm’s 1975 “The Eternal Frame,” in which the artists reenact the assassination of JFK, complete with drag Jackie O. But in such a busy exhibition, to expect visitors to sit through Dan Graham’s hour-long “Rock my Religion” is asking a bit much. If you’re curating a program with more time-based-media than a museum has hours, perhaps a gallery exhibition isn’t the way to go. I couldn’t shake the impression that Punk would’ve made a fantastic screening series and publication, with perhaps a much leaner gallery install where noise-emitting sculptures had more space to breathe. It felt like a missed opportunity for content with so much potential for event-based programming and critical writing—especially considering the museum has its own movie theater.

It’s frustrating to view video works when they’re all looping at different rates in a gallery context. There’s a rich history of subversive cinema as a collective viewing experience, and so many of these works would be better on the big screen. I am thinking especially of Brice Dellsperger’s “Body Double 16.” It’s short, but screams for cinematic treatment. In the piece, Dellsperger assumes a variety of characters in drag, committing various acts of violence against the other characters he’s also playing. The artist recreates scenes from A Clockwork Orange and Ken Russell’s Women In Love with surprisingly beautiful cinematography that makes the punk/masochistic content so much stranger. 

Pepo Salazar, “Yoga Alliance,” 2015.

It’s one of many highlights lining the ramp gallery (which is either the entrance or exit, depending on the route one takes). There’s really too much excellent work here to talk about it all—but I’d be remiss for neglecting Pepo Salazar’s assemblage “Yoga Alliance,” which is arguably one of my favorite artworks of the past few years. It comprises a digital print of bald Britney Spears, from her very public meltdown a decade ago, and a black wig hanging from the piece. It has a very “Punk’s not dead” (rather lurking in unexpected places) vibe, and the physical wig almost reads like an invitation to the viewer to join in the rebellion.

Install view with Die Tödliche Doris, “Das Leben des Sid Vicious,” 1981 (L); Christian Marclay, “Record Players,” 1983-84; and Guillermo Santamarina, “Frei vom jedem Schaden!” installation of albums thrown like a discus at the wall in the background.

Descending the ramp, through more video projections, the last piece I encountered (or the first for viewers who start from the bottom up) was Catalan artist Jordi Colomer’s “No Future.” The video follows an old car mounted with an electric sign bearing the titular text as it drives across European cities. The piece is from 2006, and as the “NO? FUTURE!” message crossed a likely expensive, Calatrava-looking bridge, it felt eerily prescient. Filmed just before the global recession and the political turmoil that ensued, Colomer seemed to know that punk would suddenly become relevant anew. If The Decline of Western Civilization is accelerating, at least somebody is still having a little fun while we’re along for the ride.

Jordi-Colomer-No-Future-2006

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