#I couldn’t imagine hearing this live DURING the aids crisis | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

letsgofoletsgo · 5 years

Text

A Wander Through the Weald

(Heyo! I’ve wanted to write a Postwickshipping fic for awhile now, so I hope you like it! <3)

It had been one month since Gloria defeated the “Unbeatable Champion” Leon. The greatest champion Galar ever seen had been dethroned Sometimes Gloria couldn't believe it herself. It seemed like just yesterday that he had given her and his younger brother, Hop, a Pokemon in Postwick. Gloria remembered the journey alongside her next-door rival fondly, challenging each other and exploring the region.

While she relished in her victory in the semifinals, part of her heart ached when she remembered Hop’s face. He appeared to take the loss in stride, yet she couldn't help but notice the sorrow in his eyes. He did end up somewhat confiding in her about his new sense of misdirection in a battle of all things. However, he did find a new path after aiding in the Dynamax crisis; Sonia offered for him to study and help her in the Pokemon Lab, which he accepted. Gloria was happy for her friend, and was eager to see what discoveries he might make.

The new Champion hadn’t seen her friend in weeks, and was missing him quite a bit. So she decided to drop in for a visit one warm, spring day.

“Hop! You have a visitor!”

The boy looked up from his desk. He had a textbook open and was in the middle of jotting something down. He placed down his pencil and turned around to see Gloria enter his room with a bright smile.

“Gloria!” Hop’s own face lit up as he rose and hugged her. “It’s so great to see you!”

“Likewise!” The two let go. “I haven’t seen you in forever, so I thought I’d pay you a little visit.”

“Heh, you’re right, guess you’re busy with all your fancy champion business,” he teased.

“Well, it’s more like I’ve been training to take on the battle tower for the last few weeks, if that’s what you mean.”

“Oh yeah! I remember you telling me about that. You recon you’re almost ready?”

“I think so. Gotta smooth the edges a bit with my team, but I’m pretty sure we’re nearly set.”

“Sweet! Well, I wish you luck!” He smiled.

“Thanks, mate. So, since I’m not doing anything today, do you think I could pull you away from your studies for a couple hours and go for a walk maybe?”

“Oh, uh, I’d really like to, but I kinda still have some work left-”

“Don’t worry about it Hop, you’ve been working pretty hard and I think you deserve a break,” Sonia chimed in, grabbing a notebook from a shelf.

“Er- Really? Awesome, thanks!”

“Hehe, well then, it’s a date!” Gloria said cheerfully.

Hop’s heart briefly skipped a beat when she said that, and a brief blush spread across his face. He caught Sonia giving him a brief smirk before heading upstairs.

“So, you ready?”

“Y-Yeah! Totally, let’s go!” He stuttered a bit, resisting the urge to facepalm.

The two headed South from the lab, walking down Route 1. The sun shone gently along the grass and leaves, which rustled from an occasional skittering Skwovet or fluttering Rookidee. There were scattered clouds in the sky, casting long, misshapen shadows across the distant rolling hills. Wooloo were peacefully grazing or sleeping in the surrounding pens, and the two made a game of trying to count them all. As they approached Postwick, Hop began to explain what sort of things he and Sonia were studying; the key differences between Dynamax and Gigantimax, what causes a Pokemon to change form during the latter, etc. They had formed a theory that it may be related to Mega Evolution in the Kalos region. He was about to go into the genetic specifics that he knew of, when they realized they reached the gate in front of Gloria’s house.

“Ah, seems we have reached the entrance to thy Slumbering Weald,” Gloria commented poshly, to which Hop giggled. “If you think about it, our journey kinda started here, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, you’re right; remember when we saw Zacian for the first time? And you tried to fight it?”

“I do! And we were knocked out for like, ten minutes. Imagine if your brother found us like that!” She laughed.

He laughed too, yet remembered how close his face was to hers when he awoke, and could feel a pink tint return to his face again.

“So… What do you say we take a stroll through the woods again? For old times sake?” Gloria suggested.

“Sure, fine with me.”

With that, she swung open the gate and proceeded through. She then skipped on ahead of Hop, then turned back to him near the entrance, looking at him with that familiar, glowing smile.

He wished he could tell her how wonderful that smile made him feel.

“Gloria, wait up!” He stopped a moment. “Woah, where did all the fog go?”

“I guess it lifted? It does feel weird being able to see farther than five feet in here.”

To their surprise, the thick fog that normally enveloped the Slumbering Weald had disappeared a fair amount. There was still a thin layer on the ground and rolling along the tiny hills, but it allowed the sun to shine through the leaves and reflected across the dew hanging on the foliage.

“Cmon, lets see what sort of things we can spot here now that it’s clear,” Gloria piped in.

“Hey, I bet I can find more cool things that you,” He challenged with a smirk.

“Oh, you think so? How ‘bout we see then?”

The two rivals proceeded to wander about the Weald, pointing out weirdly crooked trees, large rocks that jutted out of the ground, oddly-colored plants and berries, the like. While having fun with their little expedition, Hop found his eyes on Gloria several times. He saw how face eyes lit up as she found a pretty leaf, or how she laughed as she poked a cluster of funny-looking mushrooms. He noticed how her eyes marveled in wonder as she looked inside a split tree or turned over a rock. Seeing her having fun and exploring the world around her brought a genuine smile to his face. The sun beaming onto her pale complexion also happened to complement her face wonderfully, and he couldn’t help but stare...

“Yo! Earth to Hop!”

The boy snapped out of his trance with a dumbfounded look. She rolled her eyes slightly before walking up to him.

“I wanted you to see this rock I found,” she presented a stone about the size of her palm; it has a typically craggy surface, but upon her turning it around, showed an almost rainbow-colored crystallization inside.

“Wow, that’s one heck of a geode there!” He exclaimed, admiring the hues.

“You got anything else cool yet?”

“Uhh, yeah,” Hop quickly scanned over his shoulder and dove for the nearest thing to him.

“Check out this leaf!” He brought a decaying, frail leaf to her face, and in the process half of it flaked off. The ensuing silence felt like a jab in the gut.

Gloria’s face scrunched a bit and she giggled. “You’re such a dork, you know that?” She said as she lightly hit him on the arm. “C’mon, if I’m right, I think we’re pretty close to the center of the Weald.” She turned and proceeded down the shady path.

Hop processed that moment for a second before following- caught between the fluttery feeling of hearing her laugh and mentally kicking himself for his stupidity.

After turning the bend on the faded path, he was pleasantly reminded of the splendid beauty of the hero’s shrine. The ancient structure stood in front of a still lake, only occasionally rippling gently when a wild Pokemon would take a drink. The sunbeams swayed through the leaves, rustling ever so slightly.

“You know, no matter how many times I come here, I don’t think I’ll ever get over how beautiful this place is,” Gloria stepped onto the shrine, looking over the lake.

As much as he agreed with her, Hop found himself more entranced with the girl in front of him. Her body looked illuminated against the lake, almost as if she was a legendary herself. The boy was speechless at her hauntingly ethereal appearance, yet wanted nothing more than to tell her how absolutely, stunningly gorgeous she was.

“Hey, how about we sit for awhile?” She sat down on the side of the shrine facing the lake, hunching over a bit to look into the depths of the lake.

He snapped out of his daze once again, following her and sitting next to her. He saw how the water reflected on her hazel eyes, creating a blueish projection onto her pupils.

“Hop, is there something on your mind?” She asked bluntly. “You’ve been rather tense all afternoon.”

“Have I?” He would usually deflect with an “I’m fine”, but something felt different. He felt like this was the moment to tell her. He felt like he could tell her.

“Well, there is something I’ve been thinking about,” he began. “I know you’ve heard this from me a million times, but all my life I’ve wanted to prove I could live up to my brother, that I could be something more than him. Even after I became a trainer for real, everyone always saw me as Leon’s younger brother, the kid who aimed to beat the unbeatable champion.”

He sighed, and turned his face to hers. “But you always saw me as me. Not the champion’s little brother, not just another rival, but as me. As Hop.”

She gave him an endearing smile. “Hop, you’re one of the most fun-loving, caring, zestful people I’ve ever met. You never let anything stop you, and you greet challenge and adversary with a smile. Even when things are looking down, you don’t give up and you keep going. I’ve admired that about you for as long as I’ve known you, how could I not?”

“Heh. For the longest time, I was wondering how anyone ever could.” He admitted with a slightly sorrowful tone. “What I’m trying to get at Gloria, is… Well, I won’t lie; You’re one of the best things that has ever happened to me.”

Gloria stared at him in shock. Hop just fixed his sight into the water, afraid to meet her gaze.

“Hop, I… I don’t know what to say, I’m…” A bit impulsively, she leaned against him, causing the boy to tense a bit.

“You know, our journey across Galar, I have a lot of fond memories of it. From meeting so many amazing people, learning things about Pokemon I never would have guessed, to building and training my team, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. That journey helped me see who I am and what I want. But, thing is, you were one of my favorite parts of it too. We always helped each other, and you wouldn’t turn your back on me no matter what. You were always so excited to hurry to the next town or challenge me to a battle. You made it all so much fun. And because of that, I’d say you’re one of the best things to happen to me too.”

Hop couldn’t quite describe the feeling in his chest. It was a mix of disbelief, anxiety, wonder- but mostly pure joy. He didn’t say anything, rather just wrapped his arms around her and held her close. She returned the embrace, and sighed contentedly against his shoulder. He placed his head atop hers, nudging her green hat a bit and nestling into the scent of her soft, brunette hair.

The two remained at the shrine until the moonlight glistened across the lake, neither wanting the moment to end.

#postwickshipping #postwick #trainer hop #trainer gloria #pokemon #pokemon sword and shield #pokemon SWSH #sonia #hopxgloria #gloriaxhop #hop x gloria #gloria x hop

522 notes · View notes

torestoreamends · 5 years

Text

Olivier Awards 2019: The Inheritance, Company, and Come From Away

This year’s Olivier Awards have just been handed out in an evening that seemed (over the radio) to be warm, equitable, fair, and celebratory. For me, having seen the vast majority of the nominated shows, there didn’t seem to be an award that went to the wrong place, and I was delighted to see such a range of different shows acknowledged.

I was particularly pleased that A Monster Calls won the Entertainment and Family category – it was a powerful and beautiful show, and I hadn’t really expected it to be honoured, even though it thoroughly deserved to be. My other shout out goes to Six which, although it didn’t win, is one of the most joyous and uplifting experiences I’ve had in the theatre this year. Tonight’s performance of the opening number slayed so hard it reduced me to tears even just listening to it on the radio.

The three shows I really want to talk about though are the three which each received four awards, and tied as the most rewarded shows on the night: The Inheritance (Best Lighting Design, Best Actor, Best Director, Best New Play), Come From Away (Outstanding Achievement in Music, Best Choreography, Best Sound Design, Best New Musical), and Company (Best Supporting Actor in a Musical, Best Supporting Actress in a Musical, Best Musical Revival, Best Set Design).

I saw all three of these shows – The Inheritance twice (once at the Young Vic back in May and once at the Noel Coward in January), Come From Away twice in just over a week (just after it opened in March), and Company once (on Thursday night during its closing week) – and even though I didn’t love them all, I can see why they won. Let’s start with Company.

Company

Actually, to say that I didn’t love this show is a bit of understatement – I didn’t get it at all. I found it intensely frustrating and lacking in plot, even though I was aware that it’s so widely beloved, and I wish I could have seen in it what so many others did. But it truly wasn’t for me.

Having said that, I understood that it was a landmark production of an iconic musical. Watching it, it was impossible to imagine it ever being performed with the original gender configuration: I can imagine that it must have been interminable.

I also appreciated the artistry of it. The lighting design was beautiful, the book immaculately crafted, and Sondheim’s music has been stuck in my head ever since. The set design and staging were also fascinating and reminded me why it’s so much fun to see be a regular theatre goer, because it allows you to see threads in people’s work – this one had subtle hints of Bunny Christie’s design for Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and Marianne Elliott’s staging reminded me so much of Angels in America, with the way pieces of set seemed to disappear into a void at the back of the stage.

As for the performances, Jonathan Bailey absolutely stole the show as Jamie, and his Olivier win was one of the most effortlessly justifiable of the night. It was a physical, wordy, complicated number that he delivered with impeccable panache. Easily one of the best individual performances of the year, and I wish the show had featured him and his character more.

Although I didn’t get the appeal of this show, it was a valuable lesson for me in theatre as a craft, and in classic musicals. I’m glad I saw it and I’m glad it won the awards it did.

The Inheritance

This show – particularly its Part One – was one of those shows that speaks to the heart. Brutal in its imagery and interval placement, I found myself sobbing into my hands as the house lights came up at the end of three out of its six acts.

The image that will always live with me is the one at the end of the second act. As the name suggests, this is a play about inheritance and legacy – the inheritance of collective memory and knowledge, as well as a physical inheritance – and at the end of act two we see both literally go up in flames. The AIDs crisis laid waste to an entire generation of the queer community – it saw the loss of thousands of people who would have been our role models, writers, activists, friends, lovers, and mentors – and in the play, the main character is left a house that is a touch point with that generation, but before he finds out that he’s been given the immense gift of this inheritance, the deeds to the house are burned. Seeing the flames catch on those papers and reduce them to ash, robbing this young, gay man of yet another opportunity to meet with the lost generation, is one of the most heart wrenching expressions of loss that I’ve ever witnessed in the theatre.

I am grateful to this show and all who worked on it for bringing this dialogue between the queer community’s past and present to the stage. Although I yearn for a wider range of queer stories to be told on stage, nothing can be taken away from the power and beauty of this show. I am glad it was told to the world, and I hope it has further life in the future.

Come From Away

I first saw this show at the end of miserable week, on a Friday night, which also happened to be International Women’s Day. When I first heard of it I wasn’t very interested to see it, but when it came to the West End and I read more about it I grew curious. The ticket I bought that day on a whim came at the perfect time.

It’s 100 minutes in length and I can honestly say that I cried for the entire duration of the show that night. The sheer beauty of the music, the warmth of the story, the way it faces grief and loss with honesty and hope, all make it a truly special show.

One of the things I love about it (and the reason why I’m particularly pleased that it won the specific awards it did), is the way the music is used throughout the show. The music has a real narrative function. Every song is essential to the plot and drives it forward. Music and dialogue are seamlessly interwoven, to the extent that I couldn’t imagine how it would possibly work as a soundtrack.

It also feels important to mention the real life stories that have inspired the show. Nick and Diane’s story is one of my favourites, and I’m also truly grateful to have been introduced to Beverley Bass by the show. I mentioned that I first saw the show on International Women’s Day, and there could not have been a more perfect moment to hear the story of the woman who led the first all-female crew in the history of commercial jet aviation. There’s a moment during the song which focuses on Beverley’s story in which the women of the company stand and seem to be applauding her, and applauding themselves, and it’s one of those moments that gives you real hope as a woman – hope that the world will be better, that we can lift ourselves and each other up, and that we can achieve our dreams and fearlessly raise our voices.

People have said that this show gets one of the fastest standing ovations in the West End at the moment, and having seen it twice I can attest to this. Right now we need a reminder that there is kindness and goodness in the world, and that communities can come together to welcome strangers, no matter where they’ve come from, how they look, or what language they speak. This show is that, and it could not be more timely.

I truly think that tonight’s awards did justice to the breadth, diversity, and brilliance of this year’s London theatre scene. The fact that the big winners were a gender-switched show putting a woman at the heart of her own narrative, an epic story about queer existence today, and a musical about a community opening their doors and hearts in the face of tragedy, suggests that there is some justice in the world.

It’s been a great year, and here’s to the next. My money’s already on a Dear Evan Hansen sweep, but time will tell!

#My writing #Olivier awards #Come From Away #Company #The Inheritance #Theatre reviews #Not Cursed Child!#Surprisingly I do see other shows #lots of them...#it's a problem #but it made watching this year's Oliviers kind of fun!

3 notes · View notes

reece-c-parker-blog · 5 years

Text

Gay Culture; A Blight Upon Itself

How this ethical quagmire has metastasised across the lives of our lost boys struggling to find their place as men.

Originally posted on Medium

I hate being gay. Statistically speaking there would have to be a few of us. The numbers, I’m sure you’ve noticed, are kept conspicuously quiet. No, there isn’t a vast conspiracy. It simply doesn’t fit narrative.

My pubescent years fell as the millennium turned, amidst the rise of the gay normalisation movement. This time saw the rise of Will & Grace, Queer As Folk, and Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. It was a great time to feel included. Just not for me. These programs were an entry-level concept of what it means to be gay for the metropolitan audiences of the east and west coasts of the United States. The AIDS crisis had drawn the eyes of mainstream western audiences to the existence of the gay community. There was no better time to finally address what could no longer be ignored.

I had tried to engage, during these years, with the material that was expected of me. They were telling my stories, after all. Painting the canvas of life with the experiences I should experience, and feelings I should feel. Expect they didn’t. They proselytized with tired stereotypes and the bigotry of low expectation. I soon found homosexuality a talking point in my social circles — as nothing more than a kitsch cliché pulled in for reference, then reshelved until needed. Gay men weren’t making the punchlines. They were the punchline.

This was a moment of the first of many disconnects. Where I, through failures of character and assimilation, couldn’t bond with my peers. As the industry grew, and the prevalence of gay characters onscreen continued to impress focus groups, so grew my dejection. But as the list gorged itself with new examples of progressivism, and the insertions became further tokenistic, the rise of groupthink assured this lens had become a prerequisite entry point to what it meant to be gay. Suddenly, so vanished the hardships of the few — gay culture was at the mercy of almighty corporate.

Now here we are; Expected to worship towards the cultural meccas of preselected gay figures championed not for their contributions to the realms of medicine, literature, or technology, but instead to their servile attitudes in representing the hedonism that bore their fame. Gay conversation has fast adopted an adaptation of Godwin’s Law, where as a conversation increases in duration, the probability one of the conversationalists mentioning RuPaul’s Drag Race approaches 1. Though, it’s more than this. It’s the exclusivity of language attached to those cultural expectations. While language has long been in flux, flitting to the verbal needs of its speakers, allowing our language to be shaped by corporate interests masquerading as representatives borders on Orwellian. Shade, Read, Sickening, Tea, Fish, Clock, and a series of disjointed ramblings have become the core exchanges of the gay communiqué. The expectation of this adherence, a cruel hand to play for young men seeking freedom from the limitations clasped to them during their formative years. To escape the shackles of their prison, to fall into the loving embrace of a new turnkey. Oh, but this time it’s different. This isn’t some hallway bully. This one wants you. But only if you be what it wants you to be. Only if you buy its products. Only if you wear its styles. Only if you speak with its voice. And only if you, in the innocence of your youth, surrender in your entirety.

Even an article like this risks defilement through the accusation of homophobia; for calling out the failures of a community through its inactivity of service and protection of all its members. For the suggestion we have a culture of ceaseless pandering to those most visible and easily pigeonholed would net me a gay excommunication. It simply cannot be said. It’s an inconvenience too burdensome to address, and so instead we commit to the monotonous busywork of feigning outrage by the perceived slights issued by positions of power. As if, by the consternation of the gay masses, the notion things aren’t too bad is too hefty a price to concede. Understandably so. Without a rallying struggle against the alabaster crowned, black suited boogeymen, all that would be left for the LGBT community would be to accept responsibility for the establishment of reasonable behavioural boundaries and the regulation of its members. A price too high, indeed.

In many ways it reminds me of the Arcadian Pan, whose submission to lust-filled tawdriness is emulated to a design by metropolitan hook-up culture. A youth swept away by the propagandistic idiom of ‘It Gets Better’, without the nuanced discussion of whether or not this is even true. After all, Grindr recently ranked top on the unhappiness scale, with a 77% respondents rate of user depression post usage. No surprises why. In the constricting nativity of my youth, I had dabbled, seeking conversation, which at the time was perceived to be a remedy to my loneliness, from the most populated aggregate. Within one working day I had been labelled as a faggot, by a member of my own community — for simply failing to supply him with what he wanted. The entitlement. As if I were nothing but a monkey tasked to perform by an organ grinder. Words carefully chosen, as his organ was the recipient of my expected performance. It is in this shadowy field where the ego is unleashed, freed from the shackles of civility. Where an otherwise unremarkable citizen may scale a hierarchy sheathed from the view of their heterosexual peers. Where the 1% isn’t measured by economic prosperity, but instead by the congregation of required physical traits and social capital to be granted worth. Note, ‘granted worth’. As worth within this community is not an immutable characteristic inherent to the individual, rather a bestowed upon status via the idolatry of its membership. But remember. It gets better. As if the exchange of the verbal assaults of your schooling for this is somehow, by definition, superior. Of course, it is. This time it’s a choice. An opt in.

But is it? Every year when the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras sweeps Sydney’s city streets, I can’t help feel it serves as a charming veneer — an underbelly surviving on the laundering scheme of ‘good intentions’. How respectful we are, in recognising the hard work and good character of our Australian Servicemen and women. And so we should be, their contributions are worthy of recognition. Though for some, and in numbers enough to escape the descriptor of a powerless minority, the parade and those in it are merely puppets. A necessary encumbrance to be endured before the night blooms, and the incubi feast. And feast they shall — while failing to recognise such a diet consisting of thin amoral gruel could provide anything other than little sustenance. This is not to say the Mardi Gras fails in its purpose. A brotherhood, and sisterhood, or similarly disenfranchised individuals finding solace amongst the mutual understandings of their peers is an integral cornerstone of any counter-cultural community. My query remains, why does the LGBT community repeatedly allow this message to be bastardised and accessorised by the overtly sexual?

And it is the same, hollow-toned degeneracy which snakes its way through all visual and auditory signposts, toxifying the channels of expression. The invention of preventative HIV measures has garnered responses from activist campaigns such as ‘You can fuck raw, PrEP works, no more HIV’. A delicately phrased example for a youth burgeoning into manhood. A wretched expectation of what is to come for both themselves, and their future. The normalisation of pharmaceutical dependence to enable sexual deviancy — have gay men fallen so low, they would prefer the assistance of big pharma to maintain their deviancy, rather than changing their behaviours? But of course, that is an opinion unheld. Unstated. Should that question be uttered, the tested formulaic response had already been embossed across social media. We get enough hatred from outside the community, we don’t need any hatred from within it. An interesting deflection. One that disarms all criticism. Even if it is legitimate.

One-night hook-up culture is leaving an alarming amount of young men feeling trapped. Yet, little in the way of option is offered for an alternative. Prudism is projected onto those non-participatory figures more inclined to other forms of connection. To the point, albeit most likely a problem on my behalf, I have felt rejected purely for my unwillingness to participate. The larger point is; no one should have to. The trading of bodies in a conceptualised marketplace as currency may serve the purposes of immediate pleasure, but the model itself has only been in operation for just over a decade. A time barely long enough to map the cognitive changes amongst habitual users. I often hear the espousal ‘It’s just a bit of fun’, when I vocalise even my least controversial concerns. A dismissal that I have oft found confusing. As if detachment and promiscuity held no hidden consequences. Though the citation of psychology holds little sway in this field, as it lacks the grounded and well secured architecture of reasonable discourse — instead, it’s an emotional beast. These members, with the impetus of their own desire, have decided it is fun. Thus, fun it is. Though I would argue, it takes a certain type of man to revel in such a state of emotional displacement, and not one I would imagine, many would go out of their way to willingly associate with.

For the first three years of my adulthood, bambi-like and with the same naive idealism consistent with those of that age, I was blessed with a boyfriend. Three years, you may have noted, came with an expiry date. When we, still growing, reshaped ourselves into markedly dissimilar people from who we were at the commencement of our relationship. Still, I have found these years to be the fondest of my life, and resultantly the greatest limitations to my understanding of the gay community. To be succinct for the first time in this passage — I loved him. And though this love found a place to rest, the memory of its impact remains too profound to sully with the pursuit of anything less.

But this anecdote has painted me with the status of a malcontent. One, whose bitterness and internalised homophobia, governs my actions and sews hatred and salt into the faultless fields of the LGBT. A community which celebrates the union of an autistic child and a boastful killer while they bond in front of a portrait two letters shorts of spelling rohypnol. A community who cannot stand accountable without proclaiming their victimhood — ensuring the aberrant social victimisation perpetrated within their community is kept out of public sight. Should you ever have believed racism were a plague long extricated from your neighbourhood, feel free to log into your gay phone app to source the mantra, ‘No spice or rice’. I’m sorry Mr. Rogers, It isn’t a beautiful day in those neighbourhoods, nor is it a beautiful day for those neighbours.

What is to be done? A start, perhaps, is a discussion free of the tedious pejoratives usually held in reserve for ‘The Other’. For too long the gay community has projected bad intent onto its naysayers. Understandable. But know this, a concession isn’t a loss. It’s a sign of maturity. So in the invocation of this request, I wonder — will the change prove too arduous, or my brethren too stubborn?

#gay #gay culture #essay #opinion #medium

1 note · View note

gordonwilliamsweb · 3 years

Text

Aiding Her Dying Husband, a Geriatrician Learns the Emotional and Physical Toll of Caregiving

The loss of a husband. The death of a sister. Taking in an elderly mother with dementia.

This has been a year like none other for Dr. Rebecca Elon, who has dedicated her professional life to helping older adults.

This story also ran on The Washington Post. It can be republished for free.

It’s taught her what families go through when caring for someone with serious illness as nothing has before. “Reading about caregiving of this kind was one thing. Experiencing it was entirely different,” she told me.

Were it not for the challenges she’s faced during the coronavirus pandemic, Elon might not have learned firsthand how exhausting end-of-life care can be, physically and emotionally — something she understood only abstractly previously as a geriatrician.

And she might not have been struck by what she called the deepest lesson of this pandemic: that caregiving is a manifestation of love and that love means being present with someone even when suffering seems overwhelming.

All these experiences have been “a gift, in a way: They’ve truly changed me,” said Elon, 66, a part-time associate professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an adjunct associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Elon’s uniquely rich perspective on the pandemic is informed by her multiple roles: family caregiver, geriatrician and policy expert specializing in long-term care. “I don’t think we, as a nation, are going to make needed improvements [in long-term care] until we take responsibility for our aging mothers and fathers — and do so with love and respect,” she told me.

Elon has been acutely aware of prejudice against older adults — and determined to overcome it — since she first expressed interest in geriatrics in the late 1970s. “Why in the world would you want to do that?” she recalled being asked by a department chair at Baylor College of Medicine, where she was a medical student. “What can you possibly do for those [old] people?”

Elon ignored the scorn and became the first geriatrics fellow at Baylor, in Houston, in 1984. She cherished the elderly aunts and uncles she had visited every year during her childhood and was eager to focus on this new specialty, which was just being established in the U.S. “She’s an extraordinary advocate for elders and families,” said Dr. Kris Kuhn, a retired geriatrician and longtime friend.

In 2007, Elon was named geriatrician of the year by the American Geriatrics Society.

Her life took an unexpected turn in 2013 when she started noticing personality changes and judgment lapses in her husband, Dr. William Henry Adler III, former chief of clinical immunology research at the National Institute on Aging, part of the federal National Institutes of Health. Proud and stubborn, he refused to seek medical attention for several years.

Eventually, however, Adler’s decline accelerated and in 2017 a neurologist diagnosed frontotemporal dementia with motor neuron disease, an immobilizing condition. Two years later, Adler could barely swallow or speak and had lost the ability to climb down the stairs in their Severna Park, Maryland, house. “He became a prisoner in our upstairs bedroom,” Elon said.

By then, Elon had cut back on work significantly and hired a home health aide to come in several days a week.

In January 2020, Elon enrolled Adler in hospice and began arranging to move him to a nearby assisted living center. Then, the pandemic hit. Hospice staffers stopped coming. The home health aide quit. The assisted living center went on lockdown. Not visiting Adler wasn’t imaginable, so Elon kept him at home, remaining responsible for his care.

“I lost 20 pounds in four months,” she told me. “It was incredibly demanding work, caring for him.”

Meanwhile, another crisis was brewing. In Kankakee, Illinois, Elon’s sister, Melissa Davis, was dying of esophageal cancer and no longer able to care for their mother, Betty Davis, 96. The two had lived together for more than a decade and Davis, who has dementia, required significant assistance.

Elon sprang into action. She and two other sisters moved their mother to an assisted living facility in Kankakee while Elon decided to relocate a few hours away, at a continuing care retirement community in Milwaukee, where she’d spent her childhood. “It was time to leave the East Coast behind and be closer to family,” she said.

By the end of May, Elon and her husband were settled in a two-bedroom apartment in Milwaukee with a balcony looking out over Lake Michigan. The facility has a restaurant downstairs that delivered meals, a concierge service, a helpful hospice agency in the area and other amenities that relieved Elon’s isolation.

“I finally had help,” she told me. “It was like night and day.”

Previously bedbound, Adler would transfer to a chair with the help of a lift (one couldn’t be installed in their Maryland home) and look contentedly out the window at paragliders and boats sailing by.

“In medicine, we often look at people who are profoundly impaired and ask, ‘What kind of quality of life is that?’” Elon said. “But even though Bill was so profoundly impaired, he still had a strong will to live and retained the capacity for joy and interaction.” If she hadn’t been by his side day and night, Elon said, she might not have appreciated this.

Meanwhile, her mother moved to an assisted living center outside Milwaukee to be nearer to Elon and other family members. But things didn’t go well. The facility was on lockdown most of the time and staff members weren’t especially attentive. Concerned about her mother’s well-being, Elon took her out of the facility and brought her to her apartment in late December.

For two months, she tended to her husband’s and mother’s needs. In mid-February, Adler, then 81, took a sharp turn for the worse. Unable to speak, his face set in a grimace, he pounded the bed with his hands, breathing heavily. With hospice workers’ help, Elon began administering morphine to ease his pain and agitation.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my God, is this what we ask families to deal with?’” she said. Though she had been a hospice medical director, “that didn’t prepare me for the emotional exhaustion and the ambivalence of giving morphine to my husband.”

Elon’s mother was distraught when Adler died 10 days later, asking repeatedly what had happened to him and weeping when she was told. At some point, Elon realized her mother was also grieving all the losses she had endured over the past year: the loss of her home and friends in Kankakee; the loss of Melissa, who’d died in May; and the loss of her independence.

That, too, was a revelation made possible by being with her every day. “The dogma with people with dementia is you just stop talking about death because they can’t process it,” Elon said. “But I think that if you repeat what’s happened over and over and you put it in context and you give them time, they can grieve and start to recover.”

“Mom is doing so much better with Rebecca,” said Deborah Bliss, 69, Elon’s older sister, who lives in Plano, Texas, and who believes there are benefits for her sister as well. “I think having [Mom] there after Bill died, having someone else to care for, has been a good distraction.”

And so, for Elon, as for so many families across the country, a new chapter has begun, born out of harsh necessities. The days pass relatively calmly, as Elon works and she and her mother spend time together.

“Mom will look out at the lake and say, ‘Oh, my goodness, these colors are so beautiful,’” Elon said. “When I cook, she’ll tell me, ‘It’s so nice to have a meal with you.’ When she goes to bed at night, she’ll say, ‘Oh, this bed feels so wonderful.’ She’s happy on a moment-to-moment basis. And I’m very thankful she’s with me.”

We’re eager to hear from readers about questions you’d like answered, problems you’ve been having with your care and advice you need in dealing with the health care system. Visit khn.org/columnists to submit your requests or tips.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Aiding Her Dying Husband, a Geriatrician Learns the Emotional and Physical Toll of Caregiving published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

0 notes

gordonwilliamsweb · 3 years

Text

Aiding Her Dying Husband, a Geriatrician Learns the Emotional and Physical Toll of Caregiving

The loss of a husband. The death of a sister. Taking in an elderly mother with dementia.

This has been a year like none other for Dr. Rebecca Elon, who has dedicated her professional life to helping older adults.

This story also ran on The Washington Post. It can be republished for free.

In 2007, Elon was named geriatrician of the year by the American Geriatrics Society.

By then, Elon had cut back on work significantly and hired a home health aide to come in several days a week.

“I lost 20 pounds in four months,” she told me. “It was incredibly demanding work, caring for him.”

“I finally had help,” she told me. “It was like night and day.”

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Aiding Her Dying Husband, a Geriatrician Learns the Emotional and Physical Toll of Caregiving published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

0 notes

seven-oomen · 4 years

Text

I JUST SAW THE NEW PREVIEW AND I AM SCREAMING!!!!!!! I’m so ridiculously excited to read the full scene! It’s entirely possible some of the noises I made were not entirely in the normal human register. There was probably some blushing and flailing (read: there was definitely some blushing and flailing.) Peter being all shy and trying to cover it with sass. Chris being so confused about just what the implication of the offer was. Noah being amused at both of them but also not even fully letting Peter ask before bursting out with an emphatic yes. My precious awkward turtles, I love all of them so!

And if you would like my perspective as an American who would have been just a few years behind the boys in school, I will say that it’s highly likely they would have known about some methods of contraception and such, even if their parents weren’t the type to bring it up. In that sort of post-emergence of the AIDS crisis time period, safe sex became a thing that was hammered into you in health classes, after-school specials, etc, unless you lived in the much more rural, conservative areas (so I guess with Chris it would depend partially on where all he lived growing up?) Now their ability to (legally) access anything like condoms, etc, would have been much more iffy (though the idea of John, Talia, or Deuc offering to get some for Peter is hysterical to imagine.) How much they would have cared about/been stopped by this lack of access is really a matter of character interpretation, though :D

I’m so down for attempted family prank shenanigans. (Also, side note, the best way to find Linden’s Insta is actually through links from his Twitter. He had to do one of the variation things, like Hoechlin, because someone was already using his name for one. His vibe is pretty much a combo of aging surfer dude and MASSIVE dad energy.) Actually speaking of family shenanigans, may I put forth the idea of game nights? Can you imagine them sitting around playing Apples to Apples or Monopoly (and how many fights between Stiles and Jackson this might cause)? Or even better, when the younger kids are off at a sleepover, or at least busy in another room, the older kids and the parents sitting around playing Cards Against Humanity? Seeing who can manage to make the group break through card chosen or the reading of said card (and boy are there some doozies to choose from)? I feel like the best at maintaining a complete deadpan presentation or reaction would be Noah, Jordan, Erica, and Lydia.

I had to look up some of those music ideas (and boy are my YouTube algorithms probably confused right now), but yes, I love all of those. Especially Peter’s, because it reminds me of a headcanon/scene I thought of for a fic I will never actually write because I am a coward where Noah wanders into the kitchen one morning to find Peter making breakfast and full-on rocking out to Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” in nothing but an ancient BH Sheriff’s Dept t-shirt and a pair of boxer briefs. With Chris I just keep going back to the ball thing because one of the few Nickelback songs I know is “Something in Your Mouth”. XD So, I have a fun story for “Never Gonna Give You Up”! When two of my friends got married, they had a friend of the groom’s be the officiant. Rgiht before he got to the part with the vows and having them repeat after him, it only took me like one or two lines into his lead in speech to go “…wait a minute this sounds familiar…”, at which point he began having them recite the lyrics to that song as their wedding vows. Pretty sure everyone was cracking up (I mean, the ceremony took place in the middle of a zombie walk with all of us in full costume. no one was expecting anything normal, but still. that was hilarious.) But oh god, can you imagine if any of the kids ever figured out Chris liked that song? The sheer amount of rick-rolling that would occur boggles the mind. The things Jackson could try to talk Danny into using his tech skills to do. It might be one of the things Stiles and Jackson could bond over. For Noah, maybe he heard them while he had some kid pulled over one day and was like “well that’s stupidly catchy” (because it is), or maybe Stiles had some of their albums at one point, and he kept hearing them and realized he rather liked it, so snuck in and burned himself a copy at some point? I also considered suggesting ABBA, because that also seems like one of those out of left field choices. And omg, yes, on the Caramelldansen. I feel like they’d play it up even more once they notice how horrified their older kids were, because they’re assholes like that. (Related if you want it to be note: Did you know YouTube has a 10 hour loop of the Swedish version?)

The funniest thing to me with the kids eating the dog cookies is how often it happens and how rarely it gets noticed. And they always pick the nastiest ones, too. If they’re gonna do it, they should wait until Christmas, that’s when we get the ones that are basically like the blandest sugar-style cookies ever (I will neither conform nor deny having taken a plate of those to a party once, because I, too, am sometimes an asshole) And yeah, I don’t get the cat water thing either, particularly since the tap water in our area is actually really good quality. Some other entertaining stories I forgot last time:

1) Our corporate office told us we had to start carrying snakes, so now we have a ball python named Julius Squeezer.

2) Speaking of eating weird things, we once had a group of college kids come in on a scavenger hunt and one of them bought and ate a feeder fish to check an item off their list.

3) A guy who worked in one of the other businesses apparently lost a bet of some kind and had to come up to our front doors after hours, dressed as a cat, and rub all over them and generally act like a cat wanting back in the house. We know this because the whole thing was caught on one of the security cameras, and it ended up getting shown at the company holiday party, and one of our cashiers was like “Hey I recognize him.”

4) We have a cardboard stand-up of Rachel Ray (a celebrity chef) that we have to have out because we just started carrying her pet food, and this thing is the stuff of nightmares. It is technically life-size in that it is about as tall as I am, but the proportions aren’t quite right. All the employees are weirded out by it. Every time you walk past it, you can feel it’s soulless gaze following you, mocking you with it’s dead eyes and rictus grin. Recently it got damaged, and my boss had to temporarily move it until it could be repaired. Unfortunately (and perhaps coincidentally) the spot he chose was directly across from the employee entrance, so that was the first thing they’d see entering the building. I witnessed some great reactions that day. I wish I’d gotten to see the ones from when he took my suggestion back when we first received it to slide it behind one of our propped open warehouse doors so that the face was right where the little window in the door is. Apparently one of my coworkers jumped a solid two feet when someone pointed it out to him. I was probably more proud of myself for suggesting it than I should have been, but oh well.

Glad you were spared having to attempt public transport. I can’t imagine how nerve-wracking that would be right now. Hope your day has somewhat improved (I know other people who work tech support, I understand there’s only so far up that part of it can go), at least!

That makes me so happy!

No seriously, my workday was absolute shite and I come out of work and I see this wonderful message and my god my friend. You made me smile today. I smiled for the first time today when I read this.

I’m so excited to read your response to this chapter, I’m just so excited and that’s what’s keeping me going. Because I really feel like crying and giving up for a bit. But this, this means so much to me. Thank you <3

I’m definitely going to need people to have a little bit of suspension of disbelief I guess. I mean, yeah, teenagers can do very stupid things and technically only Chris & Peter did the stupid thing, but I might need a little bit of suspension of disbelief. Now that I read how well-known birth control was in the US during that time. I know it was a big thing in The Netherlands (where I’m from) but I wasn’t sure about the US.

I like to think werewolves would be pretty open about these things and Talia and John were definitely like; wrap it up. Deuc definitely bought Peter a whole box of condoms after they found out Chris and Noah were knocked up. ‘Just to be helpful’.

Talia definitely talked to Chris and Noah about birth control more and educated Chris on sex and what’s going to happen now that he’s pregnant. I might actually include that in the story somewhere or in the prequel. I like to imagine that due to moving so much he never really got much education on everything and when he did he was probably tired from hunting and couldn’t focus much on school.

DUDE

I wanted to put Cards against Humanity in the story but the game doesn’t come out until May 2011, the story takes place in January XD

But yeah, game nights are definitely a thing, especially CAH, Monopoly, Life, Clue (Cluedo in Europe), Trivia Pursuit (Stiles, Lydia, and Noah rock that one), I actually don’t know Apples to Apples but it looks like fun and definitely something they might play!

During Monopoly, they have the general rule that no-one can flip the board and Allison is the bank. (she’s the fairest and most level headed during Monopoly.) Although that role is passed to Kira when she starts playing.

Noah wanders into the kitchen one morning to find Peter making breakfast and full-on rocking out to Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” in nothing but an ancient BH Sheriff’s Dept t-shirt and a pair of boxer briefs.

This is one image where I’m like, yeah, this is going into the story because it is awesome! I need it more than life itself.

Also, I can see the three of them swapping clothes quite often too. Like Chris wears Noah’s BH Sheriff’s dept jacket or cap and Peter’s Stanford Hoodie, Peter wears Noah’s worn BH Sheriff’s dept t-shirt and Chris’s worn Metalica/Green Day sleeping shirts, Noah tends to wear Peter’s leather jackets and Chris’s sunglasses. (Because Chris’s shirts are a little too tight for him and his pants too short. He does occasionally steal those loose sleeping shorts from Chris)

Occasionally he’ll take Chris’s weird pens (from Argent Arms or places like BK that Chris collects) with him on patrol. His favorite Pen to steal is a pink feathery one while on late DUI patrols where he can write tickets with them.

And dude the rickroll at the wedding is brilliant! I should have done that at my friend’s wedding.. damn.

But yeah Jackson would enlist Danny into helping them. Stiles still pitches Derek shirtless to use as leverage against Danny. (Which to me is extra funny because Derek is actually their cousin.) Derek is okay with it because he gets to extract revenge on Uncle Peter for that time where Uncle Peter gave him the talk by just throwing condoms at him.

At some point there’s just a rickroll VS Carameldanssen battle, it needs to happen XD

All of these stories are wonderful, honestly, they really made me smile and if I wasn’t this tired I would’ve shared some from my vet tech days too. Those days were wild man. But I do want you to know, I’ve read all of them and tell Rachel Ray she’s awesome and Julius Squeezer he’s a ball and I love him <3

#ben says stuff #once upon a time comments #submission

0 notes

nancygduarteus · 6 years

Text

How a Stroke Turned a 63-Year-Old Into a Rap Legend

Dr. Sherman Hershfield woke up one morning and was surprised to find himself behind the wheel of his car. Somewhere between his Beverly Hills apartment and his practice in the San Fernando Valley, the silver-haired physician had blacked out. Somehow, he’d avoided a crash, but this wasn’t the first time. “I didn’t know what was going on,” he admitted.

Apart from his frequent blackouts, Hershfield was in fine health for a man in his 50s. He was tall and lean, ran six miles a day, and was a strict vegetarian. “I believe a physician should provide exemplary motivation to patients,” he once wrote. “I don’t smoke and have cut out all alcohol.” Hershfield specialized in physical medicine and rehabilitation, and for decades had helped patients with brain injuries learn to walk again and rebuild their lives. Even with his experience, Hershfield didn’t know what was wrong inside his own head.

Perhaps the mystery blackouts were caused by stress, he wondered. Hershfield was the medical director of the rehab center at the San Bernardino Community Hospital, but he also ran a private practice 76 miles away in Winnetka, offering non-surgical spinal treatments. “Sometimes I worked from 6 a.m. to 3 a.m.,” he recalled, adding that the pressures had cost him his first marriage. At the hospital, Hershfield often slept in the doctor’s lounge, where colleagues nicknamed him “Dr. Columbo” after the disheveled television detective.

Not long after the blackouts started, Hershfield suffered a grand mal seizure—the type most people imagine when they think about seizures. He was driven to the emergency room, thrashing and writhing like a 6-feet-4-inch fish pulled out of the water. Concerned doctors at the UCLA Medical Center rushed him into an MRI machine, and, this being the late 1980s, wondered whether he might have pricked himself with a needle, and contracted AIDS. Instead, the scan revealed that his blackouts where actually a swarm of small strokes, and his illness was diagnosed as antiphospholipid syndrome. Hershfield’s immune system was mistakenly creating antibodies that made his blood more likely to clot. Those clots, if they entered his bloodstream and brain, could kill him at any moment.

Doctors prescribed blood-thinning medication and forced Hershfield to quit driving, but he was still fit to practice medicine. Like many survivors of stroke, his speech became slurred and he sometimes stuttered. His personality also seemed to change. He suddenly became obsessed with reading and writing poetry. Soon, Hershfield’s friends noticed another unusual side effect: He couldn’t stop speaking in rhyme. He finished everyday sentences with rhyming couplets, like “Now I have to ride the bus, it’s enough to make me cuss.” And curiously, whenever he rhymed, his speech impediments disappeared.

A STROKE or “brain attack” can happen to any of us at any time. One occurs every 40 seconds in the United States, and they can lead to permanent disability and extraordinary side effects. Some patients become hypersexual or compulsive gamblers. Others have even woken up speaking in a fake Chinese accent. “There was a famous guy in Italy who had what they called ‘Pinocchio syndrome,’” said Dr. Alice Flaherty, a joint associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “When he told a lie he would have a seizure. He was crippled as a businessman.”

One of Dr. Flaherty’s most famous cases was Tommy McHugh, a 51-year-old British man who suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage—a stroke caused by bleeding around the brain. Once a grizzled ex-con, McHugh’s stroke changed his entire personality. He became deeply philosophical, and spent 19 hours a day reading poetry, speaking in rhyme, painting, and drawing. He’d never been inside an art gallery before, he joked, “except to maybe steal something.”

For Hershfield, a love of poetry was also completely out of keeping with anything in his past. He was born in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1936, and while his mother was a concert pianist, he followed his father into medical school, graduating in 1960. In Flin Flon, a Canadian mining city, he mended the heads of injured hockey players, then became a resident at the University of Minnesota, before serving in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. In 1973, he arrived in Southern California and set up his practice, where he had little time for reading anything but medical journals.

His problems started during the medical malpractice crisis in the 1970s. Lawsuits against doctors became popular, and the cost of Hershfield’s liability insurance rose from $864 to $3,420. In protest, he quit working all but emergency cases, and took a job frying fish at Thousand Oaks Fish and Chips for $2 an hour. Newspapers across America wrote about the doctor who fried fish while wearing hospital scrubs, adding that Hershfield “looked like he was about to have four cod fillets wheeled into surgery.” He explained: “I’ve always been a person of high moral values. I’ve thought, what the hell do I want out of life? And it comes out, I want to be happy.”

Hershfield did return to medicine, but things went from bad to worse when his business partner and best friend started to abuse drugs. “He was an excellent surgeon, a handsome man who had everything going for him ... but he was unable to control his fears and constant bouts of withdrawal and depression, and he tried five times to take his life,” he recalled. Hershfield was there when his friend’s heart finally stopped, after six days on a respirator.

By 1987 he’d filed for bankruptcy. A year later he became the medical director at the rehab center, where he butted heads with management over his “odd” ideas, like opening a hospice where pets could stay with their dying owners. That was around the time the blackouts started.

In the 10 years following his stroke, Hershfield dedicated his free time to a Buddhist organization called Soka Gakkai International, where he loved to chant for hours. He had met his second wife there, Michiko, a beautiful Japanese divorcée who he impressed with his intellect, and his three medical certificates. Michiko told me that her husband “changed a lot,” following his stroke. “He used to like Japanese haiku poems, you know, five, seven, five.”

[Read: Can music be used as medicine?]

Hershfield also embraced his Jewish heritage, and volunteered at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish global human rights organization. “I did the Holocaust in rhyme,” he recalled of the educational poem he’d perform on the bus. The city now sounded like a swinging rhythm section: Brakes hissed. Horns honked. Passengers rang the bell. As Hershfield recited his rhymes alone, he had become just another crazy person talking to himself on public transport. Then, one afternoon, as he waited at a bus stop in Hollywood, a man selling jewelry overheard him and suggested that he take his lyrics to Leimert Park.

“Where is Leimert Park?’” Hershfield asked. He had never been there.

Intrigued, he rode a bus headed into South Central, past Crenshaw’s Magic Johnson theater, the neighborhood’s megachurches, and liquor stores. At the foot of Baldwin Hills he found it—an area with one of the largest African-American populations in the western United States. If Leimert Park was 100 people, just one was white.

Since the 1960s, Leimert Park had been the center of African-American culture in Los Angeles—Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, and Richard Pryor had all lived within five miles of the place. To outsiders, it was known only as a hotspot during the Los Angeles riots in 1992. The jazz poet Kamau Daoud told me that locals still refer to the riot as “the rebellion.” The village would not quickly forget the four white police officers who beat the black motorist Rodney King half to death.

It was the very late 1990s when Hershfield stepped off the bus, dressed like a doctor who lived in Beverly Hills. He walked in polished shoes to the beat of the drum circle that gathered in the park, past the row of Afrocentric bookstores and shops selling colorful fabrics, where saxophone music leaked from every door and window. At 43rd and Leimert, he found a crowd of teenagers surrounding a community arts center called the “KAOS Network.” This had to be it: Spontaneous rap battles were breaking out, and dancers writhed on the sidewalk, seizurelike. At the entrance, a young man sized him up.

“Would you like to hear something?” Hershfield asked politely.

“Sure, what’s your name?” the man asked.

Hershfield looked at him.

“My name is Dr. Rapp.”

ESTABLISHED IN 1984 as a media-production center, KAOS Network was famous for “Project Blowed,” an open-mic workshop for up-and-coming rappers. Since 1995, the project had turned the dance floor into a living Venn diagram of performers from various gang-controlled neighborhoods, mostly African-American teenagers wearing baggy pants, Timberland boots, and caps pulled down just above the eyes.

“It was underground, powerful, strong, and scary for people if they weren’t ready, because it was really volatile,” explained the proprietor, Ben Caldwell, a 73-year-old African-American filmmaker with a tidy, graying beard. “I would have to take a deep breath every time, because it was a bunch of alpha males.” The project was a tough breeding ground for rappers, who hoped to “blow up,” like the underground performer Aceyalone, or more mainstream stars like Jurassic 5. But Hershfield knew nothing about any of this.

“He said he wanted to do a rhyme on the Holocaust,” Caldwell remembered. “I thought that was really insightful. I thought that it would be something good for the kids to hear.” This was unusual, but not against “da mutha f**ckin rulz” pinned to the door, that began: “PROJECT BLOWED IS PRESENTED FOR THE LOVE OF HIP-HOP ENTIRELY FOR BLACK PEOPLE.” The sign continued: “DO NOT GET VIOLENT BECAUSE THIS IS A BLACK-OWNED, BLACK-OPERATED BUSINESS.”

The entrance fee was $2 to perform, $4 to watch, and rappers were expected to “perform a polished piece of music,” wrote Jooyoung Lee in Blowin’ Up, a history of the club, adding: “The open mic is a lot like peer review.” Emcees with the skill to rap spontaneously—“freestyling”—enjoy the greatest respect. But when a rapper forgets his lines, stutters, or shows up unprepared, the crowd forces them offstage with a devastating chant:

“Please pass the mic!”

The DJ demanded Hershfield’s backing music. He handed over a cassette tape of Chopin. Piano music filled the room. Regulars in the audience, known as “Blowdians,” looked at each other.

“They all were going, ‘Uh hunh, uh hunh,’” Hershfield recalled, but they quickly tired of the classical music.

“Okay,” someone said. “Get rid of that music and let’s hear you rap.”

Alone on the stage, Hershfield gripped the mic, and began:

“God, this is a tough thing to write

The feeling I got in my heart tonight

Just to think of the Holocaust

So deep and sadly blue

And still so many people

Don’t think it’s true.”

The crowd was silent. Here was an old man, reading a poem.

“The first time he was up there, he wasn’t that successful,” Caldwell said. But out of respect, the audience didn’t chant him off. Project Blowed calls itself the longest-running open-mic session in the world, and they’d never seen anyone like Hershfield on stage. “First of all, he’s Caucasian around all these people of color,” said one regular, called Babu. “I thought he was some kind of spy.” Hershfield was also the oldest person in the room: “If you up in your mid-thirties and still ain’t got it,” a Blowdian called Trenseta would say, “Leave hip-hop alone, and go get you a little job at International House of Pancakes or some shit!” Hershfield was now 63, a dinosaur in rap years.

Clarence Williams / LA Times

As he emerged into the hot South Central night, Hershfield heard a voice from Fifth Street Dicks, the neighboring coffee shop: “If you can’t keep up with those kids, then you’d better do something else,” shouted Richard Fulton, a large man with graying dreadlocks. Fulton’s jazz cafe was a hotbed of African-American writers and artists, and he’d seen many beat poets try their luck in Leimert Park—none of them from 90210, America’s ritziest zip code. “At that time I thought I was rapping,” Hershfield later recalled. “I wasn’t rapping, I was just reading poetry. It didn’t have any beat. When you’re on rap street, you gotta have that beat.”

Undeterred, Hershfield put aside his Tchaikovsky records and listened to NWA and Run-DMC. He played rap music in the bath, Michiko told me. When she found out he was preparing for rap battles in South Central, she told him: “You’re crazy!” But she couldn’t stop him returning to Project Blowed every week, sometimes making the six-and-a-half mile journey from Beverly Hills on foot.

“Sherman’s leaving at 10 o’clock at night and going to Crenshaw,” she told her son, Scott. “He’s hanging out with kids and rapping.” Scott, who had transitioned from a teenaged professional skateboarder into a hip-hop DJ, was now in his 20s and was scoring regular gigs at Hollywood’s celebrity-filled clubs. When he saw his stepfather rapping at home, he felt embarrassed.

“Sherman, you’re kinda just rhyming, putting words together, but you know so many Latin words, you should rap about neurology, really get into the science of it ... that would be amazing,” he said. Scott encouraged his stepfather to be more like the hip-hop rappers he admired. “Even though I’m from the West Coast, most of the stuff I really liked was East Coast 90s hip-hop ... I was into KRS-One.”

In the mid-1980s, KRS-One had emerged from the Bronx as the emcee of Boogie Down Productions, with the seminal album Criminal Minded. As a solo artist he’d created one of hip-hop’s most enduring records, Sound of Da Police, and was now a leading rap scholar and lecturer. One evening in October 1999, Hershfield heard that KRS-One was speaking about rap history at an event for hip-hoppers in Hollywood, and decided to swing by. “Try to imagine a hip-hop gathering,” KRS-One told me, late last year. “You know, emcees from the hood, breakers, DJs, music is blasting. I’m giving you permission to stereotype. Then in walks this dude.” It was like Larry David had wandered into a Snoop Dogg music video.

During the Q&A, Hershfield grabbed the mic and started to tell his story.

He explained that he was getting his language back together after a stroke by listening to rap records. “One of which was one of my songs,” KRS-One recalled.

Hershfield couldn’t stop himself.

“I started to have a stroke,” he rapped. “Went broke.”

The room fell silent.

“I started to think and speak in rhyme. I can do it all the time. And I want to get to do the rap, and I won’t take any more of this crap.”

The crowd erupted.

When Hershfield rapped about his struggles, not history lessons, he inspired the audience.

“He got a standing ovation,” recalled KRS-One. He gave the doctor his telephone number and suggested they hang out.

[Read: The revenge of autobiographical rap]

“I didn’t know anything about him,” Hershfield recalled. “I just knew that he was in the same category as Tupac Shakur.” When Hershfield told his stepson about his new friend, Scott was stunned. “You know, you should really listen to his music and listen to his lyrics,” he told his stepfather. But inside, Scott was thinking: Let’s see how long this lasts. KRS-One?

A few days later, the rap icon arrived at Hershfield’s office. KRS-One gave the doctor a signed copy of his book, The Science of Rap. He too was fascinated with neurology, he said: “I was already talking about the concept of how rapping synthesizes those two hemispheres of the brain,” KRS-One told me. He asked Hershfield if he’d like to be part of an experiment, and offered him rap lessons.

“When you’re trying to teach someone to rap, you ask them to sing along with a song they might have heard,” KRS-One told me. He hit play on Rapper’s Delight by the Sugar Hill Gang. The song began:

“I said a hip-hop / Hippie to the hippie / The hip, hip a hop, and you don’t stop ...”

Then he pressed rewind and encouraged Hershfield to give it a try.

“He nailed it,” said KRS-One.

“He had the cadences and the rhythms,” he added. But the doctor needed to work on his delivery, breath control, and enunciation. And so an unlikely friendship blossomed between the Blastmaster and the Buddhist. They were both interested in spirituality: The rapper’s name, ‘KRS,’ came from the Hare Krishna volunteers he befriended in a youth spent on the streets of the Bronx. And just as Hershfield had lost his business partner to suicide, KRS-One had lost his right-hand man, DJ Scott La Rock, who was shot in 1987. The loss was life-changing for the rapper: his lyrics became more political and philosophical; he launched a movement called Stop the Violence.

To KRS-One, Hershfield was a pioneer of rap theory. “He was talking about neuroplasticity before I heard about it on PBS,” KRS-One recalled.

KRS-One suggested they write a book together, or record an album in New York.

He told the doctor: “I visualize you as revolutionizing hip-hop.”

HERSHFIELD RETURNED to Project Blowed, where he vowed to win over the crowd. The elder statesmen of Leimert Park took Hershfield under their wing, making sure he got time on the mic, and that he got home safe. “People respected him and he could work on his chops, work on his brain,” Caldwell told me. “It was interesting to see how well we all accepted him.” Caldwell encouraged Hershfield to experiment. “He wanted to do Jewish chants,” he recalled. “And I was like ‘That is so fucking tight.’”

The younger members of Project Blowed were also drawn to Hershfield. Up-and-coming rappers in South Central suffered from an “existential urgency,” Lee wrote in Blowin’ Up. Theirs was a race to “make it” in hip-hop, before their life was derailed by gang violence. Like them, Hershfield was rapping against the clock, unsure when the next seizure might strike.

Richard Fulton, the coffee shop owner, became especially close with Hershfield. Fulton was a cancer survivor and former drug addict, who had once pushed a shopping cart along Skid Row’s 5th Street. That was before he found God—and jazz. Against all odds, a reborn Fulton launched his coffee-and-music operation. His caffeine was strong and the jazz loud. Like Hershfield, Fulton’s second life was dominated by a love for music. His catchphrase was “Turn the music up.”

Hershfield and Fulton were kindred spirits, said Erin Kaplan, a journalist who frequented Leimert Park. Both men were enjoying “second chances,” she explained, and living “on borrowed time.” Hanging out at Dick’s, Hershfield brushed shoulders with beat poets, rappers, chess players, and jazz musicians. It was there he fell into the rhythm of Leimert Park.

Every week for two or three years, Hershfield climbed onstage at Project Blowed and gave his everything, sweat on his brow, steam on his glasses, fists pumping. Sometimes he electrified the crowd, other times: “Please pass the mic!” He learned to self-promote and name-check “Dr. Rapp” in his lyrics just like the pros; he wore customized T-shirts and learned to freestyle. He performed on the stage and in impromptu “ciphers” under street lamps, until the sun came up.

“He was tight,” the rapper Myka 9 told me, while he smoked in an alleyway before a performance in Culver City. “He had a little bit of an angular approach. He had flows, he had good lines that were thought out, I remember a couple punchlines that came off pretty cool.” Myka 9 recalled socializing with Hershfield at house parties in South Central, and described him as “a cult personality in his own right.”

At home, the doctor’s wife was worried. “I don’t understand why he goes to that area,” Michiko told me. Her husband was too generous and trusting, she added. “I bought him nice clothes, Italian-made suits, a couple times he came back with dirty clothes, he’d given the nice suit to somebody else.” With his designer threads and prescription pad, Hershfield was a mugger’s dream.

“I keep telling him it’s dangerous,” Michiko told me.

Hershfield insisted he was safe. These people were his friends, he said.

NOT EVERYONE IN the world of hip-hop was enthused by Hershfield. A letter arrived from a lawyer representing a different Dr. Rap, who advised him to find a new name or face legal action. Hershfield, who actually had a doctoral degree, rebranded to Dr. Flow, but it was too late. His reputation was spreading.

In early 2000, Hershfield attended a talk about violence and rap music at the California State University at Los Angeles. Sitting on the panel was one of Gangsta Rap’s pioneers, Ice-T, who argued that violence was an unavoidable part of rap culture. “I’m a person who deals with violence always in my music,” he told the audience. “Masculinity runs this world. The person who’s violent gets control. Peace gets nothing.”

Hershfield was infuriated.

“You can’t live by hate!” he yelled out, before trading comments with Ice-T in an ugly scene that required the moderator’s intervention.

Hershfield was appalled by gang violence and its needless killings. Internally, he was struggling with the fragility of his existence: He had survived a deadly stroke, and life was a precious gift.

No one was more devastated than Hershfield when Fifth Street Dick’s cancer returned. Hershfield was one of the many Leimert Park regulars who surrounded Fulton’s bedside. He found his friend unable to speak, the tumor in his throat so large that his tongue protruded from his mouth. Fulton could only communicate by writing notes, and knew his life was ebbing away. But Hershfield couldn’t accept it.

“If I can just get him to chant, he’ll recover,” Hershfield said, as decades of medical experience were drowned out by denial.

He started his Buddhist chant:

“Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.”

Friends urged Hershfield to stop, but he wouldn’t listen. Fulton, 56, could barely breathe, let alone speak.

“We’re going to tap into his life force,” Hershfield insisted.

But on March 18, 2000, jazz filled Fulton’s room as he declined a final morphine shot, and instead told nurses in a note: “Turn the music up.”

Back at Project Blowed, Hershfield intensified his efforts to dominate the mic. But his double life soon became strained, as his two worlds splintered. “His friends in Beverly Hills did not approve of this at all,” said Kaplan, Hershfield’s journalist friend. “They were so shocked. Let’s just say none of his friends showed up at open-mic night.” By choosing rap nights instead of night shifts, Hershfield soon fell into another financial crisis. “I think he was more obsessed with rapping than he was going to work,” his stepson Scott told me. Sometimes, Michiko told me, the guys from Leimert Park would lend Hershfield money for the bus.

Soon, Hershfield’s voice became hoarse from shouting rhymes over African drums, and staying out all night. Then, during one particularly hot evening, everything went black. “Dr. Rapp had a seizure,” recalled Tasha Wiggins, who worked for KAOS Network. “Other rappers caught him. Everybody stopped what they were doing, trying to nurture Dr. Rapp.” As Hershfield lay unconscious on the floor, the crowd started chanting his name.

THOSE WHO HAVE been struck by the strange side effects of brain injuries often speak of their gratitude. Just before he died of cancer, Tommy McHugh, the British convict who became an artist, said his strokes were “the most wonderful thing that happened.” He added that they gave him “11 years of a magnificent adventure that nobody could have expected.” Dr. Flaherty described McHugh’s hemorrhage as “a crack that let the light in.” McHugh and Hershfield both experienced symptoms of what the physician and author Oliver Sacks called “sudden musicophilia,” an eruption of creativity following a brain injury or stroke. But for Hershfield, rhyming was no longer a symptom, but a cure.

It was as if one side of Hershfield’s brain that held the rhymes healed the broken side that had short-circuited. Brain scans on rappers carried out by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) discovered that during freestyle rapping, brain activity increased in the brain areas that engage motivation, language, mood, and action. Hershfield said rapping kept his seizures under control, and even after he collapsed that night in Leimert Park, he used hip-hop to regain his speech and return to the stage.

[Read: Mapping creativity in the brain]

Soon, Dr. Rapp’s notices at Project Blowed started improving.

“His name was on the lips of the multitudes,” recalled Ed Boyer, a Los Angeles Times journalist who first heard rumors about South Central’s rapping doctor in April of 2000. Boyer tracked down Hershfield to his office, and visited Project Blowed to hear him perform. “I’ve seen Dr. Rapp rock the whole house,” Tasha Wiggins told Boyer, as Hershfield climbed onto the stage. Another Project Blowed member, Gabriela Orozco, said, “Oh, I think I’m going to cry. I mean ... he’s doing it.”

As Dr. Rapp stepped into the spotlight and the DJ’s needle found the groove, he became lost in his rhymes:

“Me, I’m just a beginning medical intern of rap

Trying to express and open my trap ... ”

Hershfield’s stepson, Scott, remembers the morning he opened the Times and saw a photograph of Dr. Rapp, wearing an Adidas tracksuit, mid-flow, on the paper’s Metro pages. “The whole thing was so bizarre,” he said.

Dr. Rapp had finally “blown up.”

RADIO AND TELEVISION crews from Canada and England soon descended on Leimert Park looking for Hershfield. Ben Caldwell showed me footage from a Japanese television station, who filmed Hershfield waiting to take the mic. He looked like a retiree standing in line for an early bird dinner special. Then he laid down his rhymes, as the crowd bobbed their heads in appreciation. Afterwards Hershfield took a nap on a couch. “He did that quite regularly,” Caldwell sighed. “Everybody liked the doctor, right, even the hardcore gangster types,” he added. “They liked him for his chutzpah.”

Hershfield told reporters that Leimert Park had opened his eyes to a whole new world. “There are lots of misconceptions by white people about the area,” he said. “It’s very cultural with a lot of interesting places.” Project Blowed was “the Harvard of rap,” he said. “This is my foundation. I find it very beneficial.”

Though he never recorded an album with KRS-One, Hershfield owed his underground rap career to the Blastmaster. KRS-One, who now lives in Topanga Canyon, California, told me: “He mentioned one of my songs brought him back. He was in a coma, they were playing music for him to try and wake him up.” He added: “I’ve met a lot of people, but a few people I will never forget. [Hershfield] saying rap healed him ... that just stayed with me ... It’s part of my confidence in hip-hop.”

Instead of embarking on a world tour, Dr. Rapp continued to pay his dues at Project Blowed every week. Like a true underground star, he shunned mainstream success. He did appear in a documentary about Leimert Park, not as a novelty act, but as a regular member of the crew. “I can’t clearly tell you whether [rap] helped him,” said Michiko, “but I can tell you he was happy when he was doing rap music.” Hershfield represented Project Blowed until ill health forced him to quit both music and medicine. He died from cancer in Los Angeles, on March 29, 2013, aged 76.

Today, Project Blowed lives on, every third Tuesday at KAOS Network in Leimert Park. The area remains the “hippest corner in Los Angeles”—according to the recording on the club’s answering machine. But Leimert Park is now fighting a new battle, against soaring property prices and gentrification. The reason Hershfield was accepted at Project Blowed, said Caldwell, was that he arrived with an open mind, and he listened and learned. “That’s one wonderful thing I like most about black American communities,” he said. “As long as you don’t try to tell them how to do their own culture, you’re good.” Ever since Dr. Rapp’s days, performers from all races and backgrounds have jumped onstage, added Caldwell. But the moment they stutter or slur, it’s always the same:

“Please pass the mic.”

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/01/doctor-rapp/579634/?utm_source=feed

0 notes

ionecoffman · 6 years

Text

How a Stroke Turned a 63-Year-Old Into a Rap Legend

[Read: Can music be used as medicine?]

“Where is Leimert Park?’” Hershfield asked. He had never been there.

“Would you like to hear something?” Hershfield asked politely.

“Sure, what’s your name?” the man asked.

Hershfield looked at him.

“My name is Dr. Rapp.”

“Please pass the mic!”

The DJ demanded Hershfield’s backing music. He handed over a cassette tape of Chopin. Piano music filled the room. Regulars in the audience, known as “Blowdians,” looked at each other.

“They all were going, ‘Uh hunh, uh hunh,’” Hershfield recalled, but they quickly tired of the classical music.

“Okay,” someone said. “Get rid of that music and let’s hear you rap.”

Alone on the stage, Hershfield gripped the mic, and began:

“God, this is a tough thing to write

The feeling I got in my heart tonight

Just to think of the Holocaust

So deep and sadly blue

And still so many people

Don’t think it’s true.”

The crowd was silent. Here was an old man, reading a poem.

Clarence Williams / LA Times

During the Q&A, Hershfield grabbed the mic and started to tell his story.

He explained that he was getting his language back together after a stroke by listening to rap records. “One of which was one of my songs,” KRS-One recalled.

Hershfield couldn’t stop himself.

“I started to have a stroke,” he rapped. “Went broke.”

The room fell silent.

“I started to think and speak in rhyme. I can do it all the time. And I want to get to do the rap, and I won’t take any more of this crap.”

The crowd erupted.

When Hershfield rapped about his struggles, not history lessons, he inspired the audience.

“He got a standing ovation,” recalled KRS-One. He gave the doctor his telephone number and suggested they hang out.

[Read: The revenge of autobiographical rap]

“I said a hip-hop / Hippie to the hippie / The hip, hip a hop, and you don’t stop ...”

Then he pressed rewind and encouraged Hershfield to give it a try.

“He nailed it,” said KRS-One.

To KRS-One, Hershfield was a pioneer of rap theory. “He was talking about neuroplasticity before I heard about it on PBS,” KRS-One recalled.

KRS-One suggested they write a book together, or record an album in New York.

He told the doctor: “I visualize you as revolutionizing hip-hop.”

“I keep telling him it’s dangerous,” Michiko told me.

Hershfield insisted he was safe. These people were his friends, he said.

Hershfield was infuriated.

“You can’t live by hate!” he yelled out, before trading comments with Ice-T in an ugly scene that required the moderator’s intervention.

Hershfield was appalled by gang violence and its needless killings. Internally, he was struggling with the fragility of his existence: He had survived a deadly stroke, and life was a precious gift.

“If I can just get him to chant, he’ll recover,” Hershfield said, as decades of medical experience were drowned out by denial.

He started his Buddhist chant:

“Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.”

Friends urged Hershfield to stop, but he wouldn’t listen. Fulton, 56, could barely breathe, let alone speak.

“We’re going to tap into his life force,” Hershfield insisted.

But on March 18, 2000, jazz filled Fulton’s room as he declined a final morphine shot, and instead told nurses in a note: “Turn the music up.”

[Read: Mapping creativity in the brain]

Soon, Dr. Rapp’s notices at Project Blowed started improving.

As Dr. Rapp stepped into the spotlight and the DJ’s needle found the groove, he became lost in his rhymes:

“Me, I’m just a beginning medical intern of rap

Trying to express and open my trap ... ”

Dr. Rapp had finally “blown up.”

“Please pass the mic.”

Article source here:The Atlantic

0 notes

bestmovies0 · 7 years

Text

Donald Trump mounts extraordinary defence of his ‘mental stability’

President boastings of being a highly stable genius and calls Michael Wolff a fraud but author says his explosive book will finally terminate this presidency

In an extraordinary public defence of his own mental stability, Donald Trump issued a volley of tweets that seemed guaranteed to add fuel to a raging political fire.

Suggestions in a new tell-all volume that he was mentally unfit to be president were out of” the old Ronald Reagan playbook”, Trump wrote on Saturday.

“Actually,” the president added,” throughout “peoples lives”, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart .”

He likewise said he” would qualify as not smart, but genius … and a highly stable genius at that !”

The book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, by Michael Wolff, burst into the public consciousness on Wednesday, when the Guardian reported excerpts nearly a week ahead of publishing. Trump would be in danger of sue but succeeded simply in prompting the publisher Henry Holt to bring the book forward.

Wolff presents a picture of a doomed administration careening from crisis to crisis, steered by a childlike figure who responds to overstimulation with intense, reflexive outbursts.

” The chairperson may not be able to restrain himself from commenting but I can confine myself from commenting on his comments ,” Wolff told the Guardian on Saturday.

At a lunchtime press conference at Camp David, the president was asked why he tweeted. In a characteristically freewheeling answer, he said:” Merely because I went to the best colleges or college. I went to- I had a situation where I was a very excellent student, came out and constructed billions and billions of dollars, became one of the top business people.

” Went to television and for 10 years was a tremendous success as you probably have just heard. Ran for president one time and won .”

In fact, in 1999 Trump mounted a first run for the White House when he tried the nomination of the Reform party.

The president continued, referring to Wolff:” And then I hear this guy that does not know me- doesn’t know me at all- by the way did not interview me for three- he said he interviewed me for three hours in the White House- it didn’t exist, OK? It’s in his imagination .”

Trump called Wolff a “fraud” and his book a” operate of fiction” and complained about US libel laws, which he has threatened to change.

The White House chief of staff, John Kelly, told a White House pool reporter the president tweeted to get around the filter of the media. Trump had” not at all” seemed angry on Friday night or Saturday, Kelly said, adding that the president had watched the Hugh Jackman movie The Greatest Showman- about the hoaxer and legislator PT Barnum- with lawmakers and others.

Before Trump’s tweets, Wolff spoke to the BBC. He said:” I suppose one of the interesting effects of the book in so far is a very clear’ sovereign has no clothes’ effect.

” Abruptly everywhere people are going:’ Oh my God, it’s true, he has no clothes .’ That’s the background to the perception and the understanding that will finally purpose … this presidency .”

The 25th amendment of the US constitution provides for the removal of a president if a majority of the cabinet and the vice-president concur. In Wolff’s book, the then White House strategist Steve Bannon refers to vice-president Mike Pence as” our fallback guy “. Pence stood to Trump’s right at Camp David, his gaze rarely leaving the president.

Bandy Lee, an aide clinical professor at the Yale School of Medicine, briefed a dozen members of Congress last month on Trump’s behaviour. At the end of a few weeks that began with Trump taunting North Korea over the size of his” nuclear button“, Lee told the Guardian” the threat has become imminent “.

Fifty-seven House Democrats have signed on to a bill to establish an oversight commission to determine if a chairman is mentally and physically fit.

” We need this legislation apart from the Trump administration ,” Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland and the author of the bill, told the Guardian.

” The 25 th amendment was framed during the nuclear age- the nuclear arsenal being a vast destructive power that is vested, as the president reminded us this week, in one person who panoramas himself as having the power to press a button. We certainly don’t want someone in that post who absence the power of empathy.

” The rising tide of questions around the president’s mental health indicates a lot of nervousnes unleashed by the president’s nuclear tauntings lodged at North Korea .”

A queue for Fire and Fury at Kramerbooks, in Washington. Photograph: Guardian

source >

The White House has forcefully criticised Wolff, who has said he stands by his project, which included more than 200 interviews and extensive access to the West Wing and key administration figures.

At Camp David, Trump referred to Bannon derisively as “Sloppy Steve” .. The former Trump campaign chief has avoided extensive commentary, though in the consequences of the the Guardian story he called Trump” a great human “.

Trump’s reference to” the Ronald Reagan playbook” was a curious one. Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, a degenerative brain illnes, in 1994, five years after leaving agency.

The extent to which he suffered during his time in the White House remains a matter of contention. Reagan, like Trump in his 70 s when in agency, long faced questions over his psychological state. Antagonists pointed to his habit of forgetting epithets and inducing contradictory statements.

In the Hollywood Reporter this week, Wolff wrote of Trump:” Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repeatings. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he’d repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories- now it was within 10 minutes. Indeed, many of his tweets were the product of his repeatings- he merely couldn’t stop saying something .”

The White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, has said Trump will undergo his annual physical examination on Friday 12 January. The results are due to be made public.

Read more: https :// www.theguardian.com/ us-news/ 2018/ jan/ 06/ donald-trump-tweets-mental-stability-fire-and-fury-michael-wolff

from https://bestmovies.fun/2018/01/07/donald-trump-mounts-extraordinary-defence-of-his-mental-stability/

0 notes

2gameprince · 7 years

Text

In Lieu

It is in an armchair, settled in front of a roaring fire, where I now write these words, to be typed later. I sit shivering, not at the chill which creeps from behind and up my shoulders, but at that which I’ve read and come to accept as gospel in this, my bleakest hour. In my dreams I have seen the worlds of the endless beginning, and of the infinite end. These lands, which we can only now picture as mere manifestations of an overactive imagination, were real. They were real because we’ve seen them. Every moment your eyes are shut, every second your mind wonders, you are in that place between the known and the unknowable. Trapped are you in the universe’s grand clock, and you are but a particle of observatory dust, meant not to witness everything, and know nothing. Despite this scheme, our minds wonder and we witness these beautiful, vast things. This is because we refuse the reduction life grants us. It is in our nature to dream, to explore, to know. And as the gift of knowing grants peace of mind, some truths may drive you mad. As they have countless priors. The sand across the deserts of the world make haste, to cover the timeless treasures and the bloodied pasts beneath them. The seas rise to the heights of the mountains, and Everest melts with the rising of the sun, tearing down the civilizations of long ago, and banished cursed history to the watery depths, forgotten. I lie in a dreamy wake, torn by the troubles of today and the struggles of days to come. The trees around me fade with the seasons, as every year they take some of me with them. It is a soul-stirring proclamation that neither shakes the foundation of realization, or otherwise. It is a feeling beyond the sensation of warmth or cold. It is a moment, spanned for as long as you keep the thought in your head. This is mortality, only limitless limits, followed by an infinite blackness. There is nothing more beyond this, but hope, still holding on, like the twisted strings of a guitar, just barely severed after each pluck. Imagine for a moment, if you will, that nothingness is a substance, unseen by the human eye. A box exists, filled with nothingness, and yet this thing which we can name and establish, indeed, is something. Passing from the metaphorical to the physical, now imagine that this nothingness holds the capability to create, to give life. This nothingness, and all the many emptinesses that you see are now an endless force, fueled by our incomprehension to comprehend them. That is poetic mortality. The world seemed such a dark-dim place, and all those joys which once filled the limited hours of my day now were nowhere to be found. My days poured over into my nights as my eyes refused to shut. Sleep was impossible in this state, and those outer-forces I could feel looming in on my soul refused to let up. Perhaps this was my mid-life crisis, or perhaps the devils of hell really did require the solace of my spirit. These were my days. Endless exhaustion and the quantum zenith of all my fears come to bare fruit. Fears of death and the prolonged reality of non-existence. I pondered all the things that could possibly make up this life of mine. Was I insignificant? Did my life matter? Sorry, to my self to say, I never held myself in high regard for most of my life. I was a black sheep, but not the first of my immediate family. I had brothers casted out before me. Their riches and the promise of our family’s decay and wealth was swiped from them at an early age. I could only imagine the reasons why. Still, it seemed to be no surprise that such acts of thievery would come from my bastard of a father. That’s right! I said it! Do you hear me down there!? In Hell!? I hate you! I hate you! I never knew what became of my brothers. I never knew them well, and never knew them much after their disownment. I suspected he had them killed. I don’t doubt it. A small fee to pay from keeping your mistaken offspring from continuing to wander the earth, spreading the truths about your infidelity and malice. Oh, father couldn’t have that. And so… I believe he had them killed, my brothers. Oh, and so young they were too! Bastard! Bastard! Bastard! I swore to never have children. Cause you see, father, the only reason you have them is to usher in your own death! Your children outlive you! They remind you of what you had and what you wasted! They flaunt youth and innocents and throw it back in your face! That’s what I did father! That’s what I did! And you died a broken fool, crying out on a bed and gasping, begging for god to give you more air; But I took that air, didn’t I daddy? I took your air and your years a long time ago. I was all you had. Your last continuation. Well I’ll be damned if I do as you wanted! I hope you turn in that grave! I hope you feel the maggots on your flesh and the pain in your bones! I’m happy you’re there! Better than being off, poisoning the world like the vile monster we all knew you to be!!… Oh, my. I lost myself for a moment, there. God, this heavy feeling in my head grows. I make my way outside. The night air is stale as I make my way through the foggy brush. That tint of white that fills the moonlit night fades ever so swiftly at my staggering nature. For I walk upon the cemetery atop the old dark hill, at that place past the mansion where I withered all those tormented dawns. That peak of luminescent blackness which echoes outward in a cold streaming wind. Wind which shivers the gates of this cemetery, vibrating the ground and all those deep-holes where the dead lie, resting eternal. For within the ground and surrounded by the promised keep of the dead is where I belong, in this moment. Each step I take, contemplating that chain of thoughts which has summoned me up from my study-chair and out my door, into the bitter night. Summer is upon this hill as the grasp of snow finally fades with the season’s passing breath. A breath I’ve heard and have made a point to call on during these last few weeks. Calling upon the aid of the doctor, I churned in my deathbed, calling out to the assistance of that healer. The man which fed my father serums, prayed my mother to rest and aided my siblings, uncles, aunts and cousins into their comfortable eternal sleeps. I called him to my side each and every day, because I knew the shadows were upon me. Those shadows, like big gloomy sheets of darkest void that stole my family’s riches and struck them down like ill-cattle. My home which suffered, ringing with the hauntings of memories dead and gone, still slept, in a quiet fest of gore. Those halls held silence and sound that could only be heard in limbo. But, the doctor could not help. Death was upon my house, upon my title. Upon my life. The doctor spoke of sicknesses within my head. He claimed it was all in my mind. These shivers that clutched me by candles, so warm, and these bruises which manifested in plight. The doctor, a charlatan, claimed these ill-happenings to be illusions in my head. All this pain, and the knowledge that the reaper glared through my window at night, he spoke of as if it were mere childish blather. So I ordered him away, to retreat from my side! An exile from my home, as I could not tolerate his foulest insinuations. I, a liar and over-worried dolt of the highest class of hypochondriac?! How dare he! This seed of the devil which weakened my heart shortened my breath with a reality that was all too true to not see. And so, when the wine from my cellar had run out and the maidens that once fainted at my doorstep ceased their arrival, I strummed up my inner most strength to pull my dying self from the old-home. I began my walk to the cemetery on that hill, where I now stand, leaning upon the stone-graves of my kin; Awaiting that ever-sweet silence which I know will break at dawn. It is unbearable! Have I not waited long enough!? I curse any god who would allow such suffering, as even the devil knows some eventual end to malice. In all the awaited absolutes that have tarnished my mortal flesh, the arrival of death is one so tedious as to bring about one’s final insanity! And now the sky appears blue as those crows upon the black trees which surround me begin to flock away. The night is lifting and the mist has taken it’s final bow. The air is cold again, but that lantern in the distances brings promise of another day. Be death a nightmare I have mistaken for truth? Be the bindings upon my flesh be the tricks of my mind laid to be boldly seen? This day brings light, a new, and envelopes me once again as I lean back on the grave of my father and witness the sun in it’s glorious ascension, forgetting the night and it’s dark promise. This sorrow moves from me, welcoming a worsened existence. So it is decided that I will live, by the contract of god and the devil, a torturous life, indeed. I step those same harrowing spaces which evil men and come before me. And so I join their ranks to share in their wickedness. To blasphemy and curse the lower birth, drinking the blood of infants and ravishing the untainted. A defiler, all the same, as any other, am I. Tonight is the meeting and my first glance into that world which my heritage has granted me access. The rich walk in hooded cloaks, like druids, stepping to the drumbeat of a low-key humming. Once a year, on a night like this and under the glorious eyes of a great wooden statue of our idol, we pray and celebrate. It is tradition that those whom possess the blood of the blessed are to remain forever wealthy, forever fit, forever sane. This world understands us not, and rather would they take torches to our holy positions and cast us out like self-entitled madmen. Jealously takes those less fortunate and the wooden idol to which we glorify tells us this in slumber. The idol speaks of the poor man’s inferiority and warns us of their treachery. To live in this world one must abide by those rules and traditions predetermined by the idol and one’s own ancestry. Or else one could just as easily fall to the will of the ‘lesser-man’. The beggar who weeps at our doorstep, pleading for bread or for shelter, to share in that which we have earned. Just so, when our guard has weakened, they may cut us down and reap our fruits. No, I nor not a single of my brothers whom stand beside me shall ever show mercy to that lesser-man. It is the rich who run this world and who decide it’s outcome. We alone hold the ability to pass righteous judgment and can distribute the correct laws of life to abide by. The lesser-man has no mind and no heart. We are the sacred, chosen from birth to shape this world as the sheep bend to the twirl of the shepherd’s stick. The stick we use to guide their empty minds. And we know they will not rise us, because they can only speak, in the dark holes and crevices they tuck away into at night. The poor will not challenge the rich. They will attack us with words, representatives, petitions and laws. We manipulate those words, we bribe those representatives, we cancel those petitions and we craft those laws. Our system is in place to aid only the truly gifted man. Something those below will never see. They stumble on whiskey and drunkenly beat down our names in the quiet of the street’s corner pub, while we sit amongst civil equals and sip our serums to the sound of a constant melody. That melody which keeps true to the betterment of the wealthy and the obliteration of the not. All praise be to the idol. The idol, do we praise. Drenched in the shame of my family name I can see no other way, than to go about my wretched ways and fulfill the bastardoues needs that are mine and my father’s before me. I am no different from them, the long line of vile sinners, resting deep in their graves in a dark unrest and malice. That place where, as I continue to rot, an end prances upon me. So it is god I turn my heart upon, and to the church I scatter. Mortality has deserted me, as the devil has only taken. And now I seek the pure-light given to all by one holy creator. For as far as I know, the devil hasn’t touched the church. The holy men slumber while I beg in their chambers. Begging for aid. So the father takes me in. I forget my estate with walls of sin and study under they eyes of the divine. Well-enough, I do. I turn away from this faith, as I had before and once again find my self at the mercy of wine, staggering amidst the rocky dirty before my family’s legacy home. That damnedest place! As I lie one night in a state of rape and tarnish by the hands of the paths I have walked, a priest comes to me. One of a large rank, convinces me to vacate my chambers and join him for a soul’s good cleansing. I’d need not much encouragement to join the priest, as it was better than slowly dying along the floor outside my cursed home. He led me past graves and the black gate of the cemetery. A feeling that emanated coldly, like the reaper leading me unto my death. Deep within the musty tombs of the cemetery’s mausoleum, the High Priest led me down, carrying a torch, unafraid of the beaconing blackness beneath us. I followed close behind, high and curious, as the webs surrounding the corridors of death took up my line of blurry vision. We trotted down and endless flight of stone steps, gazing into the nothings below us. As if descending amidst the depths of the Tower of Babel, this mausoleum could’ve stretched all the way to Hell and back. The endless empty sockets of the dead were fixed upon me, so did I also feel their presence. The absence of sight was a blessed gift in this home of the un-alive, warning me of the High Priest’s intentions. Invading my chamber, and luring me with a smokey substance which placed me in this trance. I knew not of what wicked scheme he had been planning, but I was soon to realize. When the steps came to a halt, we did as well. He fixed his index finger above my forehead and had me follow him through a row of thorny arches. This lead us to a blueish room of cobblestone walls, and an obelisk fixed above a grey slab. Before I could blink, I found myself upon the slab, facing upward at the dirt-ceiling and crying out in an aggravated silence. I moved my lips, yet no works could escape. The High Priest sat above me, as my arms and legs were held down by a force, invisible to the human eye. The High Priest’s white robes faded to a red hooded cloak, drenched in a scarlet ora. What followed was nonsense words, spouted in a deep voice, the High Priest grabbed hold of a dagger. With a curvy blade and a golden hilt, he raised the knife as he spoke again, making no more sense than he had before. My chest began to glow a greenish glow as the wall behind him lit up. He raised his arms as I began to ponder my situation. I was to be a sacrifice in the summoning of something otherworldly. This invisible force held me down and held me firm, as the ritual progressed, I cried out harder than ever before. The High Priest was a druid, indeed. As the thoughts of the dead had told me upon our descent. I could not break the chain, I could not dispel this evil. No amount of servitude to the church could free me from this fate now. As great jaws stretched out of the portal upon the wall, I found myself able to scream. The High Priest raised his hand, clutching the dagger and swung to spill blood. As I became covered in crimson liquid, I peered up to see that it was not my blood that the dagger had spilt. The High Priest had pierced his own heart! As he stood, shaking in pain, the mighty jaws swallowed him up. The creature within the wall came forth, in full malevolence, chewing him up. I stayed, spiritually and physically bonded to the slab, all while the hungry beast took up the room. His great jaws peered down upon me, the High Priest’s blood dripping from them. The High Priest was the sacrifice, meant to manifest the beast, fully in our world. I was merely an instrument of demonic fruition. And so my purpose had come to pass, as that famous contract between god and the devil comes too. Casted down into damnation, down where my soul has ceased all forms of being. Light reaches no further than that place beyond heaven’s wreath. Beyond that wreath I lie, lied to in lying and laid in distain, caught between this world and the world’s behind. The creature melted into mist with, what appeared to be it’s soul, attempting to form itself again. It came from my chest and flew about the tomb in a frantic speed. I faded into obscurity for a moment, coming back from the depths of a large scream which shook the foundation of the tomb. I notice not the flames of hell or the lights of heaven, but a star. A star far out among a cosmos I have never known. Out in a place I have never thought to look. Out there, past the night sky and the nebulas that spiral with carnage and chaos in tow; There was my purpose. A purpose beyond the satisfaction of mortal likings. A reason far greater than one’s own preservation. It was the open ceiling of the tomb which caught my eyes upon this star and revealed to me my grand purpose in the scheme of things. This world was not one of gods and devils. This world was a machine of arcane monstrosities and things beyond knowing or believing. I was to be a part of something bigger. The grand coming of another age, used in by things long locked away. I could feel this sentience pass through me, tearing me apart. So I laughed. Laughed at the insignificance of all those around me. The summoners, the druids, the warlocks and all those worshipers of these ‘things’ that were attempting to claim our world. They were all nothing. I was the portal for this sentience, to reap our realm. I was in a state above the worshipers. Directly responsible for these creatures’ manifestation. I heard the name of the summoned one as he passed through my chest. I was one with this being named ‘Thuhl’. This monstrosity of formless matter from beyond the valleys of unending time. From a place beyond concept and the very essence of what we call existence. And to this summoning I went unto, willingly; To serve in the kingdom of eldritch unrest. Even in this, I was not to be the instrument of creature we’d call gods! Because the moment in which I was to serve as birther to this being named Thuhl, a group of men, with guns and crosses and a large brown book, broke down the doors of the tomb, marched down the steps and began to destroy the ritual chamber. They knocked over candles and chanted words which made Thuhl hiss and churn. These men sent the creature into a frenzy as it drew itself backward; Back into the portal carved upon my chest! I was nothing now! Not even parent to the celestial beings who lurked above! These men… these bastards… took my purpose! I had nothing! They bleached the tomb with some kind of holy-waters and casted incantations upon strips of paper which they nailed to every wall. I leaped from my slab as the restraints of Thuhl no longer held me in place. I ran for the dagger that rested within the High Priest’s shredded corpse and ripped it out of his heart! As I turned to lunge at the men they pointed their guns at me. I saw the state I was in and took a moment to collect myself. I looked up at the twisted dagger and back down at my chest, carved up to high heaven. Then, it all hit me at once. This tired feeling. Brought on by the strain of having played mother to a child, or maybe it was the loss of blood which had me faint. Either way, I dropped the knife and fell to my knees. With one final cry of agony, I fainted. When I awoke I was in a hospital. I was beside about three other people in one of those wide open rooms. There were so many nurses. They got excited when I woke up. I tried not to talk, imagining that everything that had come before was a dream. I remained quiet and played dumb, up until I felt that I’d had a decent night’s rest. There was a clock to my right that helped me keep track of the days. I had no visitors and, in the state I was in, no one around me seemed to know who I was. I eventually had decided to ask one of the nurses where I was, as this hospital didn’t resemble the one I had always gone to as a child. She told me that I was in the Boston Medical Center and that a group of men had brought me in, claiming they had found me beaten and mugged in an alley. They told they hospital I was from out of town and had arranged something of an extended-stay for me at the facility until I had gotten my bearings. She was called away and I settled back into my bed. I faded into sleep. A scream broke blackness as I jumped out of bed to find the room in dismay. The patient on the tables beside me were torn open! Their insides were scooped out! I begged to just be in some damned nightmare. I ran to the window where an orange light was coming from and bashed it open with a fire extinguisher. I peered out past the light that shined in and past the orange sun I could see endless desserts. For miles there was nothing. Just the hospital, cut off from everything else. I could feel a presence moving about the building as it quaked and shook in demonic throes. I ran for the door as the bodies of the patients began to reanimate! Their torn-open bodies lifted their arms and began to stand on their broken legs. They wiggled and stumbled towards me like heaps of bloody bones, hung with black-ridden flesh! The door was broken off of it’s hinges and laying in the middle of the hall, so I jolted. It was as if the hospital was under attack! I heard voices singing in deep unisons and demonic screaming filled the walls of the building. The halls grew rotted and brown as jagged metal began to stick out from cracks and corners. The halls and rooms were empty with a patient or a nurse running here or there. I stumbled down a hall as a few people ran by me. I shielded my eyes in horror as overtime that monstrous roar was heard, their heads exploded!! Brains and chunks of skull flew everywhere, as if taken off by gunfire! I leered at the long corridor to see a thing made up of sharp teeth and eyeballs reaching out long alien-arms for me. The building felt as if it was collapsing. I heard “Tttthhhhuuuuhhhhllll…..” and knew exactly what was coming! The beast had found me. Was Thuhl free!?! I wanted nothing to do with the creature. I ran in the opposite direction to avoid the beast and came face to face with a row of four people. No, not people. Things. Half human, half undead. They wore suits of strange materials and stood against the coming beast with no fear. I crawled to the wall, too scared to stand. On one side there loomed Thuhl and on the other side stood these… beings. My hair ran white as their raised their right arms to the beast. Their palms glowed with a flurry of blue lightning as they shot beams of energy at Thuhl! They fired until the monstrosity fell, breathing it’s foul breath no more. It’s hundred-eyes went still and it’s arms stopped pulling it forward. The four beings then looked to me. I could tell they were not of this world. They opened their mouths and spoke. I heard infinite voices, all screaming at once. The beings spoke in unison and in words I could not understand. When they finished speaking I found I could not hear. I was deafened! I screamed and wailed while these beings looked down at me. They raised their arms as I cursed and damned them. As their hands rose. they snapped in unison and I could no longer taste or feel my tongue. They were stealing my senses! I ran for them, lunging with my arms ready to reach out and strangle them! They threw me backward and finally raised their left arms up to me, in unison. And in a flash of light they shot a beam of blue energy through my head. I saw nothing. I was blind.

0 notes