There are two things that make an interminable Zoom meeting slightly better.
One is a standing desk. Being forced to stand through hours of talkingheadedness gives me time to engage different muscle groups. If I’m not standing, I’m usually lounging. I rarely sit. So standing is good.
The other, which I discovered quite by accident today, is keeping a vase of flowers nearby—preferably in the sightline of your webcam so that you can gaze at your blooms without your eyeballs straying and betraying the fact that you’re no longer paying 100% attention to whomever is speaking.
Today I spent quite a long amount of time admiring the intricate small ruffles inside a peone. It’s quite beautiful how small and frizzly they get inside the softer, larger petals around the rim.
I found myself wondering how I might paint them—realistically or no. Studying the shadows, how the color changes with the light.
I’ve been carrying this bouquet of peones around with me, from my after-work station in the living room, to my standing desk in the kitchen. I feel quite indulgent doing so.
One of those habits that makes life feel a little more luxurious.
Mignola’s art style perfectly compliments the tone of the comic—any Hellboy that’s not drawn by him feels less like Hellboy—and I’m looking forward to this.
It’s a beautiful movie. I must confess to loving the “upstairs/downstairs” aesthetic, but this movie is just beyond. The clothes are gorgeous without being costumey. The camera meanders through scenes and lingers over little details. Light and shadow actually matter.
The cast is brilliant. Charles Dance is an absolute treasure.
It showcases the reality of upstairs/downstairs. While it seems like writer Julian Fellowes has dedicated his life to smearing the British aristocracy, it’s striking to me how many parallels exist between the “upstairs” folks in 1932 and the “director” folks in 2019. There’s a huge gulf between the people at the top who put their names on things and the people downstairs who do the work. In the words of Detective Stephen Fry: “I’m not interested in the servants; only people with a connection with the dead man.”
It’s subtle. Nothing is explained—it is shown. (Until the murder is solved at the end, of course. Then we get a few explanations.) This is one of those movies that I can watch multiple times and find something new each time. Some people hate this type of movie. I am not those people.
The accents are lovely. /Hi, I’m American
It’s a good reminder of just how little justice is done on this earth. Much of the time, the authorities don’t really care. People can be counted on to act in their own best interests, and true selflessness is rare.
Slow-burn melancholy romance is the best kind of romance.
It’s delightfully planned out, but executed quite naturally. Like how there are not one, but two sets of mis-matched couples—where if they paired up and swapped spouses everyone would have been a whole lot happier. So much duality, but since it’s never explained, you have to work it all out for yourself.
It’s not often that I find fictional characters that I identify with. Mary Maceachran is one of those characters.
Helen Mirren’s speech on the gift of anticipation speaks to my soul.
What gift do you think a good servant has that separates them from the others? Its the gift of anticipation. And I’m a good servant; I’m better than good, I’m the best; I’m the perfect servant. I know when they’ll be hungry, and the food is ready. I know when they’ll be tired, and the bed is turned down. I know it before they know it themselves.
And that’s it, really. It’s a movie that requires attention from the viewer—a puzzle that extends beyond the murder mystery.
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe,—
Sailed on a river of crystal light
Into a sea of dew.
“Where are you going, and what do you wish?”
The old moon asked the three.
“We have come to fish for the herring-fish
That live in this beautiful sea;
Nets of silver and gold have we,”
Said Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
The old moon laughed and sang a song,
As they rocked in the wooden shoe;
And the wind that sped them all night long
Ruffled the waves of dew;
The little stars were the herring-fish
That lived in the beautiful sea.
“Now cast your nets wherever you wish,—
Never afraid are we!”
So cried the stars to the fishermen three,
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
All night long their nets they threw
To the stars in the twinkling foam,—
Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
Bringing the fishermen home:
‘Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed
As if it could not be;
And some folk thought ‘twas a dream they’d dreamed
Of sailing that beautiful sea;
But I shall name you the fishermen three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
And Nod is a little head,
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
Is a wee one’s trundle-bed;
So shut your eyes while Mother sings
Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things
As you rock in the misty sea
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three:—
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
It’s not often I’ll admit in public that I like this band, but I’ll make an exception for a 9/11 post.
My Chemical Romance is a band that was born on 9/11. Not the lineup or even the concept, but the emotion that was driving Gerard Way through the whole thing:
“I didn’t see the planes hit. I did see the buildings go down, from I’d say fairly close. It was like being in a science fiction film or some kind of disaster film—it was exactly that kind of feeling. You didn’t believe it. You felt like you were in Independence Day. It made no sense. Your brain couldn’t process it. And for me it was a little different. I’m very empathetic and I’m kind of a conduit emotionally, so I pick up a lot of stuff in that way. There was about three- or four-hundred people around me—and I was right at the edge. All these people behind me, they all had friends and family in those buildings. I didn’t. So when that first building went, it was like an A-bomb went off. It was like just this emotion and it made you nauseous.”
The thing about MCR is that their sound so perfectly encapsulates a certain feeling, and articulates it in a way that makes sense. I’m sure there were a few kids who were drawn into a dark path from their music, but for the most part people started listening to them because MCR accurately represented how they felt.
This was the first song that Gerard Way wrote for MCR, btw:
Steel corpses stretch out
Towards an ending sun, scorched and black
It reaches in and tears your flesh apart
As ice cold hands rip into your heart
That’s if you’ve still got one life left
Inside that cave you call a chest
And after seeing what we saw
Can we still reclaim our innocence?
And if the world needs something better
Let’s give them one more reason, now
The weird mix of innocence and gore that twists through all MCR songs was there at the beginning.
9/11 wasn’t the only thing that influenced Gerard Way. It was just the catalyst. He was into horror movies and comic books, one of those weird hulky goth kids in high school. Horror pop music (or “kiddie emo” according to the music snobs) was a natural fit for someone with his emotional sensibilities and dramatic flair. And he took that flair to the extreme.
There are a lot of things surrounding MCR that you can take issue with, but sincerity is not one of them.
The reason that I posit that MCR is a 9/11 band is because of this song:
It was one of the lead songs from their last full album. I listened to it for a weekend solid (no lie). At this point. Gerard Way is married, has a kid, kicked alcoholism and has written and recorded an album that failed to capture the “emotion” that MCR’s first three albums did.
This album was more like a message to the future, like what he would tell his daughter as she grew up.
Anyway, the lyrics go:
Where, where will we stand?
When all the lights go out
Across these city streets
Where were you when
All of the embers fell
I still remember there
Covered in ash
Covered in glass
Covered in all my friends
I still
Think of the bombs they built
His hope is in his daughter, in the children of the future…but it’s still hope.*
Between these two bookends lies the bulk of MCR’s career. Much like fiction, there’s the inciting incident, and the epilogue. The turn at the end that shows that the emotional journey is over–the true end of the story.
MCR’s last album, Danger Days, isn’t quite like the other albums. It’s still story-driven, like an auditory comic book, but this time the story is cartoonish, full of color and energy. When you listen to “The Only Hope for Me is You,” you know why.
At some point, Gerard ran out of on-brand stories to tell. The darkness that had been driving with him fell away.
We all have points in our lives that change everything, especially regarding death and destruction. Mine came a few years later, when I was in college, but I can only imagine what it would be like to be even mildly empathetic or intuitive and be around NYC that day. I can understand why someone would react like this.
Overactive imaginations R us.
*That’s not to say there wasn’t hope in any of MCR’s other albums. Bruh have you listened to “Famous Last Words“?
It’s dark, but only just–the sky over the treeline still has that afterglow of the sunset fading up to a deep inky midnight blue. The crescent moon rises, poking out from behind a treetop.
I love summer evenings, when the air finally cools down but you know it’s been hot.
From this vantagepoint, I see the neon sign of an old theater glowing green and red and black and white. The theater is a church now, but it still looks like a theater. It’s a converged church, so maybe the overlap is appropriate.
There are Christmas lights in the trees of the town square, and streetlights. The motel up the hill shines a neon light as well. It says “motel.” Cars drive by, their taillights winking in the night.
So I guess it isn’t really dark after all. But the silhouette of the trees is so beautiful. Nothing is as black as trees silhouetted against the fading light.
I want to hang fairy lights out here, too. Even less dark.
The crickets chirp quickly, a record of the faded, hot day, while the gradual acceleration and deceleration of the cars paints a longer phrase over top. The sound of a small town in the summer.
One of the neon lights reflects onto the underside of the roof, a gradient of blue and red bending when the cars drive past. The glare from passing headlights reflect the shadows of trees over top, a lovely juxtaposition.
This porch reminds me that life is good. There is good in life. The creation that God made is good, it is the rest of it that is not.
Breathe the air, bathe in the sun, splash in the water, twirl in the wind.
I want to weave his lush and vibrant colors into a cloak that is warm and velvety as the night, and hide under it forever.
I want to crawl into the dappled depths of texture that he renders onto the canvas so like a living, breathing tree.
Most people know Klimt for his ladies. His ladies are pretty great. They exude power and femininity and sensuality. I kinda want to be this lady, TBH.
But Klimt’s landscapes are out-of-this-world.
I want to count every blade of grass, every flower, every leaf. I want to burrow myself into the texture until every fiber of my being screams at me to come up for air.
I want to run into the depths of his forests and never look back. To hide myself in the shadows.
And even his gardens…
(Ah, but I want to inhale this into myself, make it part of my Being.)
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
Between Day 2 of the printmaking workshop and applying for a new job (hence, hope) my creative abilities are pretty near tapped out. I have some good posts in mind for this week, though, so stay tuned.
I’ve long wondered how personality influences clothing and decor choices.
Wait.
When you put it like that, OF COURSE one’s personality influences one’s choices of clothing and home decor.
Someone who wears a fedora is absolutely not the same type of person as a person wearing a backwards baseball cap. There is a vast difference between the type of person who pastes a collage on her bathroom wall and the type of person who can’t sleep knowing that there is a crumb on her kitchen floor.
One of my defunct blogs was formed entirely on that premise–that if you wear clothes, you have a style. It may not be a considered style, or a polished style, but it’s a style nonetheless.
They say that intelligent people (or creative people, depends on the story) always have a messy office, although this sounds to me like flattery to make people with messy offices feel smart or creative.
But I do wonder if playful, maximalist designers like Kelly Wearstler or Christian Lacroix are more Intuitive.
Or if a more simple look that’s cozy, like an Emily Henderson design, is indicative of a Sensing type.
Or if someone like Dior–very structured and considered–was a Thinking type.
It’s hard to imagine any of these designers producing work in each other’s style. The lines are different, the priorities are different. The overall effect is different.
Now, I’m sure a competent designer could emulate another style (and many interior designers do, because they often design for the client rather than just their own whims) but a unique, ahem, point of view is one of the necessary criteria for a good designer.
I’m just guessing here, but I doubt that someone like Alexander McQueen (romantic and all about that grand narrative) is anything someone like Karl Lagerfeld (quite precise), even though both share a tendency toward subversion.
I might explore more of this. Design is something I enjoy (both structurally and aesthetically) and I haven’t talked about it on this blog as much as I would have thought.
Design + personality sounds like it would be fun to write about, even if not 100% useful.
But that’s okay. We all need a little more fun in our lives.
More perhapses
Perhaps a Perceiver is less organized than a Judger, unless of course the Perceiver overcorrects.
Perhaps an Introvert is more likely to include a reading nook than the large dining table for the Extravert.
Perhaps an Intuitive is more likely to find things that “go” but don’t “match” while a Sensing person would take the time to find the exact right match.
Unlike the woman I met at a cold bus stop after a Wovenhand show sometime in 2014, I’m a quiet fan of this band. That lady was absolutely obsessive over David Eugene Edwards, down to telling me his life story and vowing to marry him. (I think he’s already married.)
But because the music is so good, I understand the enthusiasm of the fans.
Refractory Obdurate had always stuck me as a winter album, spare and muted but layered, so perhaps posting about it in March is inappropriate, but it has been dancing in and out of my head all weekend.
If you can see Wovenhand live, do. This is the kind of music that is only half alive until it is performed.
I want to escape into a misty forest at dawn and run toward the light that spills through the trees. I want to cloak myself in velvet and swim into a glittering nebula. I want to discover the truth of God and the universe.
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