#flaming june impressionist

[avesseloflanguage]

something tells me that i don't really want this / 'cause every waking moment here is haunted

(@grieving4theliving)

[ask-the-four-lords]

Hello Lady Dimitrescu, I hope you are having a nice evening. I find myself wondering if you have a favorite piece of art. Be it a painting or sculpture. Anything really. I’m no art connoisseur but I do enjoy it. Have you ever seen Frederick Leighton’s “Flaming June”? It’s one of my favorites and I had the opportunity to see it in person many times. Also “Judith Slaying Holofernes” by Artemisia Gentileschi is just *sighing because there’s no way I can describe the feeling*. Guess you can tell from those how broad my spectrum goes. Anyway, do you have any favorites or any you like? I have to say, your own work is marvelous as well. Kudos to you, my lady.

Alcina Dimitrescu: I must say, you have truly excellent taste, also thank you for the compliment on my own work, I take great pride in it. Actually, Flaming June is maybe my second or third favorite painting, of course, favoritism is an almost unmakeable choice. To answer your question, my favorite painting is Sargent's The Portrait of Madame X. About particular artists; I have always loved the Impressionist movement, Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Degas, although the greats of the Renaissance are inescapable to those with true taste. The most modern I've ever been able to go is Edward Hopper's work, I prefer the mid to late 19th century if you couldn't tell by now. On the subject of "Judith Slaying Holofernes" I do like the story behind it, but at the end of the day, such a beautiful rendition of the killing of a manthing is always lovely. And you are right, the feeling is truly unexplainable, abjectly and unfailingly transcendental.

(I really loved this question and thanks for using these examples, I didn't even have to do research. Hopefully memory doesn't fail me tho. Also something tells me Lady D really enjoys Degas' paintings of the ballerinas.)

[nyxs-sins]

Ikevamp Character Facts

So I recently started playing IkemenVampire, and if you’re anything like me then you are not a history buff and this is the most history you’ll ever remember. And you’re probably really confused on who some of these people are. So I complied a list of the characters, the timeframe they lived in, their birthday (according to the game), and some interesting facts about these historical figures.

And let’s all thank @simpingandsinning for helping me out! I really appreciate you. <3

Napoleon Bonaparte

1769-1821

Birthday: August 15

The first emperor of France, Napoleon was a famous military general who conquered most of Europe. His biggest mistake was attempting to conquer Russia during the winter season.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

1756-1791

Birthday: January 27

He’s been in the mansion for one year.

He was baptized as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, and was an influential composer of classical music. His first piece was composed at the age of five, and he was seven when his first composition was published. He wrote his first opera when he was twelve. By the time Mozart was six, he has already mastered both the piano and violin. He performed often for royalty all over Europe.

Leonardo da Vinci

1452-1519

Birthday: April 15

Other than his art, he is known for his sketches in which he would depict anything he found interesting. He also created sketches for inventions with blueprints. Many of his blueprints were turned into functional versions, such as helicopters and armored vehicles. Leonardo was very private about his personal life, even though there are hundreds of journals on him.

Arthur Conan Doyle

1859-1930

Birthday: May 22

He was a British writer and physician. He wrote Sherlock Holmes during med school after being inspired by his mentor’s keen observation powers. However, he would grow to have a love-hate relationship with his character, as Sherlock Holmes came to be more popular and widely known than the author himself.

Vincent van Gogh

1853-1890

Birthday: March 30

A Dutch post-impressionist painter, he’s best known for his painting “Starry Night”. He created roughly 2,100 paintings, 860 of which were oil paintings.

Theodorus van Gogh

1857-1891

Birthday: May 1

A Dutch art dealer and Vincent’s younger brother, it was thanks to his unfailing financial and emotional support that Vincent was able to devote himself to his art. He died just six months after his brother.

Osamu Dazai

1909-1948

Birthday: June 19

A Japanese author who wrote “No Longer Human”, “The Setting Sun”, “Schoolgirl”, and many more. He was very transparent with his personal life and had a semi-autobiographical writing style.

Isaac Newton

1642-1727

Birthday: December 25

Sir Isaac Newton, an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian, and author, is best remembered for discovering the laws of gravity and motion as well as inventing calculus.

Jean d’Arc

1412-1431

Birthday: January 6

Jean d’Arc is based on Jeanne d’Arc, a woman considered to be the heroine of France thanks to her role in the 100 Year War. She is also known as “The Maiden of Orléans”. She was originally a peasant girl who, believed to be under the power of divine guidance, gave the French army a moment of victory against the English.

William Shakespeare

1564-1616

Birthday: November 11

He was a famous English playwright, poet, and actor, and is considered to be one of the world’s greatest dramatists.

Comte de Saint-Germain

1691-1784

Birthday: October 25

A man who was deeply concerned about humanity, he was known as the Ascended Master and was the keeper of the Sacred Violet Flame of Healing.

Sebastian (Akihiko Satou)

21st Century

Birthday: September 22

After consulting with @simpingandsinning, we concluded that Sebastian is not a character based on a historical figure. He is likely an original character designed for the game.

Vlad

1431-1477

Birthday: June 6

This is possibly a reference to Vlad the Impaler, who was a famous ruler of Wallachia. He was known for his extreme cruelty and impaling his enemies.

Johann Georg Faust

1466/80-1541

Birthday: February 29

Also known as John Faustus, he sold his soul to the demon Mephistopheles for worldly knowledge and pleasure. He was a German alchemist, astrologer, and magician during the German Renaissance.

Charles-Henri Sanson

1739-1806

Birthday: February 15

He was the royal French executioner during the French Revolution, dealing death and torture to those as told by the upper class.

[kentwang]

Art history in your pocket! The Starry Night is an oil painting by the Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh. Painted in June 1889, it depicts the view from his asylum room in southern France, to which he was admitted after slicing off his own left ear in a psychotic episode. The painting is dominated by swirling patterns of stars, above an idealized village. A flame-like cypress tree unites the sky with the quiet hamlet below. Van Gogh was heavily influenced by Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, in particular the flat perspective, sharp outlines, even lighting, and uniform regions of color. Japan opened to trade in 1854, and the exported woodblocks quickly became fashionable in European artistic circles. Van Gogh and many of his impressionist peers collected ukiyo-e, and for a time Vincent and his brother Theo even dealt in them.

[robbialy]

Interior (nicknamed The Rape), 1868 by Edgar Degas. Interior, also known as The Rape (French: Le Viol), is an oil painting on canvas by Edgar Degas (1834–1917), painted in 1868–1869. Described as "the most puzzling of Degas's major works", it depicts a tense confrontation by lamplight between a man and a partially undressed woman. The theatrical character of the scene has led art historians to seek a literary source for the composition, but none of the sources proposed has met with universal acceptance. Even the painting's title is uncertain; acquaintances of the artist referred to it either as Le Viol or Intérieur, and it was under the latter title that Degas exhibited it for the first time in 1905. The painting is housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Degas painted Interior at a time when his growing commitment to Realism had led him away from his earlier preoccupation with historical subjects such as Sémiramis Building Babylon (1860–62), Young Spartans Exercising (ca.1860), and the painting which marked his Salon debut, Scene of War in the Middle Ages (1865). His new direction was apparent by the time he exhibited Steeplechase—The Fallen Jockey in the Salon of 1866. Degas probably intended to submit Interior for exhibition in the Salon of 1869, but it was not shown publicly until June 1905, when it was displayed at Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris. Degas referred to the work in 1897 as "mon tableau de genre" ("my genre painting"), which suggests that he considered the painting anomalous among his works. Interior has been described as "the most theatrical of all Degas's compositions of modern life". Art historians have written of the work's "distinctly stage-managed character: items are arranged as if they are props, while the dramatic lighting increases the impression that a play is being enacted ... In addition to the mysterious subject-matter, this stage-like effect is presumably one of the chief reasons why scholars have repeatedly tried to identify a literary source for the painting." Various Naturalist novels have been put forward for consideration. Georges Rivière, a friend of the Impressionists, first suggested Louis Edmond Duranty's novel, the Struggle of Francoise Duquesnoy, as a source; the idea was accepted by R.H. Wilenski and others but found unsatisfactory by Duranty experts. Later, a scene within Émile Zola's Madeleine Férat was identified as matching the elements of Degas's painting in several particulars—but while the narrow bed and the round table corresponded, the position of the figures relative to each other did not. In 1976, art historian Theodore Reff published his conjecture that Interior depicts a scene from Zola's novel Thérèse Raquin. This idea has been widely, but not universally, accepted by other scholars. Thérèse Raquin, published in 1867, tells the story of a young orphan whose aunt has forced her to marry her sickly son, Camille Raquin. Thérèse enters into an affair with one of Camille's friends, Laurent, and the two carry out a plot to murder Camille, staging the death to look like an accident. Later, on their wedding night, Thérèse and Laurent find their relationship poisoned by guilt. The passage that has been deemed to correspond closely to the scene depicted by Degas occurs at the beginning of Chapter 21 of Zola's novel: Laurent carefully closed the door behind him and remained there a moment, leaning against it, staring into the room with an anxious, confused expression. A bright fire was burning in the grate, casting golden patches that danced over the ceiling and the walls. The room was thus illuminated by a brilliant, vacillating glow which dimmed the lamp set on a table. Madame Raquin had tried to arrange the room attractively, all white and scented, as though to serve as a nest for young lovers; the old shopkeeper had chosen to add to the bed a few bits of lace and to fill the vases on the mantel with big bouquets of roses. A gentle warmth lingered in the air, with soft odors. ... Thérèse was sitting in a low chair, to the right of the fireplace. Chin in hand, she was staring fixedly at the dancing flames, and did not turn her head when Laurent entered the room. Wearing a lace-edged petticoat and bed-jacket, she looked particularly pale in the bright firelight. Her jacket had slipped from one shoulder which showed pink through the locks of her black hair. Laurent took a few steps, not speaking. He removed his jacket and vest. In shirtsleeves, he glanced again at Thérèse, who had not stirred. He seemed to hesitate. Then he noticed the pink shoulder, and bent down to press his trembling lips against that bit of bare skin. The young woman pulled her shoulder away, turning around abruptly. She stared at Laurent with a gaze so strangely mingling repugnance and dread that he stepped back, troubled and uneasy, as if overcome with terror and disgust himself. Reff attributed certain elements in the painting that are not mentioned in the text (e.g., the sewing box, and the corset on the floor) to artistic license, and perhaps the influence of a second literary text. In 2007, Felix Krämer published an article in which he took issue with Reff's conclusions. In particular, Krämer wrote of the "critical" discrepancy between the marital bedroom described by Zola and the narrow, single bed in the painting; in addition, the placement of the man's top hat on the bureau in the background suggests that the man has not just entered the room, as Laurent has in the passage quoted above. Krämer instead proposed as the "most obvious source" of Degas's composition a lithograph by Paul Gavarni: sheet number five from the Lorettes series, published in 1841 in Le Charivari. Gavarni was an artist greatly admired by Degas, who amassed a collection of some 2,000 of Gavarni's lithographs. Points of similarity between the print and Interior are described by Krämer: As in Degas's Le Viol, [the woman] has her back turned towards the man who stands in front of the door, his legs spread wide and his hands in his pockets. From above, as if contemplating his prize, his gaze is fixed on the woman who, significantly, is seated on an animal-skin rug. Not only is the man's posture reminiscent of Degas's painting, but the woman is also in a comparable pose, her right hand raised to her head, her garment sliding off her shoulder. Even the pictures on the wall and the discarded clothes on the sofa could have inspired Degas. Gavarni's print depicts a prostitute; the title Lorettes is a reference to the Paris neighborhood of Notre-Dame de la Lorette, home to many prostitutes. As described in 1841 by Maurice Alhoy in Physiologie de la Lorette, these women lived in hotels and carried their few belongings in small suitcases, always including a sewing kit which was indispensable as the means by which the "Lorettes" maintained their appearance. According to Krämer, the prominence given the sewing box in Interior, together with indications of blood on the bed, bolster the case that Interior is a scene depicting prostitution and the aftermath of sexual violence, rather than marital discord. The influence of Interior has been noted in the compositions of Degas's protégé Walter Sickert, specifically in the latter's The Camden Town Murder series of 1908, and his painting Ennui of 1914. In a conversation with Sickert, Degas described Interior as a genre painting, and as in the older artist's example, Sickert's depictions of men and women together are marked by dramatic tension and narrative ambiguity.

[lesbian-sora]

Hogwarts Christmas Fic Part 4

Summary: Dan finally gets to spend his first Christmas with the Lesters. Previous part here!

Genre: Fluff

Words: 3.2K (It’s so much longer than the others wow.)

Warnings: Just some swearing for you to worry about!

Author’s note: So yeah, this was supposed to be published 173 days ago. Whoops. Well, people asked for the conclusion so I wrote a Christmas fic in June. It’s fine. Anyway, I’m still doing prompts every Friday so send them on over here!

Dan honestly wasn’t expecting too much on Christmas morning. He figured he would slowly wake up around nine or ten like he did on all the days he didn’t have a schedule to keep. Afterwards he would open the presents the House Elves had delivered (he was kind of hoping they would at least nibble the cookies he left for them as he was a little bummed out over missing the family tradition of Santa cookies this year) and then wander down stairs for breakfast, either meeting Phil in the Great Hall or hunting him down afterwards. Then there would be a bit of wandering about a Christmassy Hogwarts until it was time to go to Phil’s family home. They’d be there for a bit for Christmas tea and present swapping for the Lesters while Dan sweet talked Katherine Lester into liking him even more than she already did. After that they’d make it back to the castle for the famous Hogwarts Christmas Feast where he and Phil would sit with their students and pop some crackers and enjoy themselves. The evening would finish off with yet another wandering of the corridors, but this time they’d be a bit more tipsy and eager to find little nooks donned with mistletoe. All in all an absolutely wonderful Christmas, and a perfect one for his first Christmas as Phil’s boyfriend.

Phil, apparently, had other ideas.

“Dan! Dan, wake up! It’s Christmas!” Phil shouted, bouncing on Dan’s bed and shaking him. “Come on, then! You can’t just sleep the day away!”

Dan groaned and stuffed his head under his pillow. “Nooo,” he whined. “Why are you even awake? It’s so early you’re always a grump before noon.”

“Not on Christmas!”

Dan did eventually emerge from his pillowy fortress to glare at his boyfriend. Unfortunately, Phil was still in his PJs and a santa hat and was just in general too unfairly adorable for Dan to stay irritated at him. “Alright, alright, I’m up. Now give me my presents, please.”

Phil beamed and handed Dan six presents, keeping five for himself. Dan quickly sorted through his gifts going through the givers’ names in his head. Mum and Dad, Adrien, Louise, PJ, Bryony, and Felix and Marzia. Wait a second. “There’s not a present from you in here,” he said, then flushed slightly over how childish he sounded.

Phil just laughed, obviously not offended. “That’s because I didn’t give the House Elves my present to you. Your present is safely at my parents’ house along with all the other ones.”

“Oh,” Dan pouted. “Well, I did have yours delivered, so you’re not allowed to open it until I do.”

“Fair enough,” Phil said with a shrug, then without another word he dove straight into ripping open his packages, and Dan did the same.

From his parents he got a very heavy book about stars that combined Muggle and Wizard knowledge showing everything from the different constellations between the worlds and explaining how the science of Muggles could explain just how they impacted magic and how magic explained things science couldn’t. Adrien’s gift was a little silly but also wonderfully sentimental as it was a small photo book full of nothing but pictures of their dog whom Dan freely admitted to missing the most while away. Louise had gotten him a wonderful quill that refilled itself with ink, PJ had painted a beautiful picture of Dan flying through space, Bryony had gotten him a giant box of sweets with a note saying “Phil’s box is different so share, boys ;)” and Felix and Marzia had gotten him a nice set of attachments to go on his telescope.

“Good haul?” Phil asked, grinning and surrounded by the presents he had opened along with Dan’s which remained unopened.

“Yeah, you?”

Phil nodded, clearly quite happy. “Did PJ give you a painting, too? He left me a note that said the paintings would interact.”

“I didn’t get a note,” Dan pouted.

“Did you check the back?”

“No? Oh, there it is.” Doing as the note instructed, Dan and Phil sat their paintings up right next to each other and waited. Sure enough, as soon as painting Dan realized there was another painting he flew across and landed in painting Phil’s jungle. Upon meeting, the painting Dan and Phil threw their arms in the air and embraced, making strange almost squeaking sounds. “I wonder why they can’t talk right,” Dan pondered.

“I think it’s PJ’s art style,” Phil said. “It’s less realism and more impressionist so when the paintings talk we can just get an impression of what they’re trying to say.”

“Oh, well, they sound happy.”

“Yeah, I can imagine they are.” Phil sounded a little odd, so Dan glanced at him, but quickly looked away with a red face when he saw that Phil was just staring at him a dopey, lovestruck smile.

“Come on, let’s go get breakfast, I’m starving,” Dan said quickly, standing up to hide his blush.

Phil nodded and stood as well, taking time to grab Dan’s hand and tug him along. “Yeah, we’d best be going, we’ve got a bit of a tight schedule.”

“What are you talking about?”

Phil glanced at him, looking almost as confused as he was. “My parents’ house, remember? We’re supposed to be there around ten and it’s already a quarter of nine.”

“What?”

Phil looked even more confused and now a little hurt. “We said yesterday that we’d go to my parents’ before the feast. Do… Do you not want to go anymore?”

“Of course I still want to go,” Dan said quickly. “I’m just really surprised we’re going that early. I thought we were getting back just in time for the feast.”

“Oh, we are.”

Dan’s eyes kind of bulged. “We’re going to be at your house for six hours?”

“Uh, yeah?” Phil said nervously. “That’s what I usually do on Christmas?”

“Oh, my god, I thought it was only going to be for like two or three hours,” Dan fretted. “Phil, how am I supposed to make a good impression for six hours?”

“You don’t need to make a good impression,” Phil laughed. “You’ve met my family before and they all love you.”

“But I’m your boyfriend now,” Dan pointed out. “They’re going to judge me different.”

“Nah, they all know I’ve basically been in love with you since we first met, so they’ll all be thrilled,” Phil shrugged. Then he suddenly realized what he just said and his face flushed to match the same maroon Dan’s was. “I mean, um. Don’t worry, they like you.”

Dan smiled almost shyly, looking at Phil through his lashes. “I’m glad,” he said softly.

Phil smiled that same love struck smile he had given Dan earlier before suddenly clearing his throat and shaking his head. “Er, right. Breakfast then?”

Breakfast passed with little to no excitement. They sat up at the teachers’ table in their normal spots right next to one another as it appeared that all of the students were either still in their dorms or scarfing down their breakfast to get back to their dorms. There was one instance where John Browning from Slytherin was eating too quickly and started choking but the Charms professor, Lucy Grove, lazily waved her wand which caused the toast John was choking on to fly out of his mouth and bop him on the head before scolding him to slow down. There were the normal breakfast foods like sausages and porridge, but apparently the House Elves were warming up for the main show that evening because there were also gooey cinnamon rolls and smoked salmon and big fluffy pancakes. Dan was more than tempted to gorge himself on everything available, but Phil warned him that his mum would be making a Christmas lunch that deserved plenty of room. After breakfast they parted ways to get properly dressed with an agreement to meet back in Phil’s office as soon as they were done to take the fireplace to the Lester residence.

“You ready?” Phil asked when Dan finally made it to the office.

“Do I look ready?” Dan asked, then elaborated. “That was a serious question, by the way. Do I look alright?”

“You look great,” Phil chuckled, wrapping his arms around Dan’s waist. Dan made a small noise of disbelief so he pressed on. “No, really, you do. Just know that mum is going to put you in a sweater as soon as we get there.”

“I’d look great in anything she makes,” Dan scoffed.

“Honestly you would,” Phil agreed easily. He then tossed a pinch of Floo Powder into the flames, turning them a bright green, and offered Dan a hand which he gladly took. They stepped into the fireplace hand in hand and Phil said in a loud, clear voice, “Highwood Manor!”

As always when traveling by Floo, Dan screwed his eyes shut and allowed Phil to lead the way. When they did suddenly come to a stop, he reached out a hand to catch Phil who, again as always, was about to fall out of the fireplace. “We’ve really got to work on your landings,” Dan admonished gently as he righted Phil’s balance.

“Phil, you’re here! And you brought Dan!”

This was the only warning Dan got before he was being swept up in a tight hug along with Phil. “Hello, Mrs. Lester,” he wheezed, once again marveling at her incredibly strong grip.

“Oh, you always get so dusty when you use Phil’s fireplace,” she frowned. “Why don’t you two use yours, Dan? Yours is always so neat and tidy.”

“You just think that because whenever you come to visit at his house he always goes into a frenzy to super clean everything,” Phil smirked.

“Phil!” Dan squawked while Mrs. Lester just laughed. “You can’t just go around telling secrets like that!”

“Oh, nevermind him, dear,” Mrs. Lester smiled. “Come on, we’re going to open presents now that you two are here.” Phil absolutely beamed and dragged Dan along to the parlor.

As always when he visited the Lester family home, Dan was amazed at the sheer size of it. As with a lot of Pureblood families, the Lesters had managed to accumulate a good deal of wealth along with a big ass manor to match. Seeing as Dan had grown up in a tiny three bedroom townhouse outside of Wokingham with a lounge smaller than one of the guest bedrooms, he never could wrap his head around being a kid in a place this large or how the Lesters somehow made the high ceilings and marble floors somehow seem cozy. He silently thanked whatever gods that were out there for making Phil the younger son and not the one who’d inherit the estate so he’d never have to move in and try to fill the place himself. Then he scolded himself for thinking way too far down the line of his and Phil’s relationship.

“Dan, you’re here!” Martyn said cheerfully, clapping a hand down on his shoulder. “All Phil’s wanted to talk about for the last month was how you were going to be at Hogwarts for Christmas, but I didn’t think he’d ever get the guts to actually invite you.”

“Oh, shove it,” Phil scowled, shoving his brother in attempts to distract from the pink coloring his cheeks.

“Come sit with me, Dan!” Cornelia called, waving him over. Once he was sat down in the squishy love seat with her she smiled, showing all her teeth. “I swear Lesters are the absolute worst people in the world, it’s good to have someone on my side.” She cast a glance around and stage whispered, “It’s also good to have someone who actually knows how Muggles act to talk to for once.”

Dan snickered at the mildly offended looks Martyn and Phil gave them. Dan honestly didn’t know how she managed to spend any time at all with the Lesters; he was only Muggle Born, he couldn’t imagine what it was like trying to chase down a wizard like Martyn while being a Muggle. “Would you believe me if I told you Phil didn’t know about Santa before I told him?”

“Absolutely, yes!” she snorted. “You should have seen the look on Martyn’s face when I told him.” She pulled a comically horrified face and mockingly said, “‘I can’t believe you tell Muggle kids there’s a magic man watching through the year-’”

“‘That’s an absolutely terrifying thought and you blackmail them into behaving!’” Dan finished. “Phil said the exact same thing!”

She snickered a bit and grinned at him. “It’s going to be nice being able to spend Christmas with at least one half sane person.”

“Mrs. Lester isn’t that bad.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re her favorite.”

“Shut up! Am not!” Dan mumbled, hiding his flushing face in his hands.

He was dragged out of his misery by Mrs. Lester nudging him on the arm and offering him a cookie with a sly wink. “Alright, you two. Presents time.”

“I’d like to sit next to my girlfriend again, if you don’t mind,” Martyn said, raising his eyebrows.

“Too bad I’ve decided I want to sit next to Dan,” Cornelia declared, looping her arm through Dan’s. Martyn responded with a faux offended scoff before trying to squirm his way between them while Cornelia laughed.

Quickly deciding he didn’t want to get caught up in that mess, Dan escaped to sit on a comfy tartan chair a few feet away. Phil soon joined him, sitting on the floor and leaning on Dan’s legs, and Dan smiled down at him and started absently running his fingers through his black finge. “Are my presents for your family here?” he double checked in a whisper.

Phil fondly rolled his eyes. “Yes, they’re here. I brought them over two weeks ago when you gave them to me.”

Dan was about to respond when he was interrupted by a present nudging him in the forehead. He looked up to see Mr. and Mrs. Lester with their wands out directing the presents to float over to their owner and hover in the air around them. “First round!” Mr. Lester said. “Everyone grab your present from Martyn!”

Dan quickly shuffled through his gifts until he found one labeled “To: Dan From: The Real Best Lester And You Know It.” He gently tore off the paper to find an incredibly detailed star map that moved when he tapped it with his wand and said a date. He peered over Phil’s shoulder and smiled when he saw him investigating a self-functioning watering can so he wouldn’t forget.

“Okay, my turn to pick who goes,” Martyn said. “I think we all know mum needs to go next.”

Mrs. Lester laughed merrily as everyone tore into identical squishy, lumpy squares. Dan beamed down at the handsome black sweater covered in sparkling silver stars, and without instruction pulled it on over his head. “Told you you’d look great,” Phil said, looking up at him with a dopey smile, wearing his own purple sweater.

“Actually, I believe I told you I’d look great,” Dan smirked.

“Yeah, but I agreed with you.”

“Okay, is everyone ready?” Mrs. Lester beamed. “Because it’s Tom’s turn!”

Things went on like that for Mr. Lester and Cornelia, and Dan received a big bottle of firewhiskey from Mr. Lester and a Blu-Ray set of several classic Christmas movies from Cornelia with a note that said “For when you want to feel a bit more Muggle this Christmas ;)”.

“I think it’s Dan’s turn!” Cornelia said with a grin when everyone had finished their presents from her.

Dan did his best not to flush and hide his face when everyone started opening his gifts. There were several oohs and thanks going around the circle, but Dan’s attention was solely focused on Phil who was tearing off the paper with abandon. In his lap was a tiny plant that snapped at his finger whenever it got too close Phil blinked down at it in awe for a moment then cooed at it before looking up at Dan like he hung the moon. “Thanks, Dan.”

Dan really did blush then and looked away, trying to casually cover his pink nose with his hand. “Shut up. It was nothing. Let’s quickly move on and open Phil’s gifts now.”

“You’re last this year, Phil,” Mrs. Lester smiled. “That means he gets to pick who starts us off next year,” she explained for Dan’s benefit.

Dan nodded, and tore into the present Phil had gotten him. Inside was a scarf, but not just any scarf. Dan looked at it in wonder as he ran his fingers over the silky smooth surface and watched as it seemed to flow around his fingers like water, while the stars that decorated it seemed to twinkle at him as they passed by. Almost hesitantly, he wrapped it around his neck and his eyes widened. As his neck was very sensitive he was very picky about his scarves, but this one was perfectly warm and hung around him like it was made to be worn by him.

“Do you like it?” Dan looked down at Phil who was biting his lip and staring up at him like he had anything in the world to be nervous about.

Dan just stared at him for a moment before his cheeks split into a smile wider than Dan had previously thought possible. “It’s brilliant,” he breathed, bending over to give Phil an upside down kiss.

“Holy shit!”

Dan snapped his head up to see Martyn gawking at them like a child seeing a dragon for the first time. “When the fuck did this happen, then?” he demanded, gesturing and Dan and Phil.

“Martyn, don’t use that kind of language at family Christmas,” Mr. Lester scolded.

“Sorry, dad. Okay, when the frick did this happen?”

“Umm, about two days ago?” Phil chuckled nervously, scratching the back of his neck.

“Well, it certainly is a Christmas miracle.”

“Mum!”

Dan just stayed silent with his hands over his face and tried to melt into the chair while the Lesters all shouted at one another about the very sudden change in Dan and Phil’s relationship. “Okay, look, it doesn’t matter!” Phil decided. “Dan and I are dating now, but we’re still working on things.”

“Oh, we’re just so happy for you is all, dear,” Mrs. Lester gushed.

“Yeah, I know, mum,” Phil smiled. “I think Dan and I are gonna go take a walk now, though. We’ll see you guys in a bit.”

He gently untangled Dan from the ball he had curled up in and gently escorted him outside after they bundled up in the coats he’d had the foresight to bring. They were silent for a while as they walked the snowy grounds side by side until Phil looked up at Dan from beneath his lashes. “So, that was your first Christmas with the Lesters.”

“Yeah,” Dan agreed blankly, staring straight ahead.

Phil bit his lower lip. “Did you- erm. Uh, how’d you like it.”

Dan stopped in his tracks and turned to Phil with a wide grin. “It was perfect.” Then he grabbed Phil by the ears and pulled him in for a kiss they were both too busy smiling to enjoy.

So there it is. The long awaited conclusion to the Hogwarts Christmas fic. Was it worth six months of waiting? Ehhhh, that’s for you to decide. 

First Part!

Previous Part!

Prompt me!

[un-nmd]

Recent listening—

The Mothers of Invention, Weasles Ripped My Flesh (1970) Strikes a somewhat psychotic balance between the whimsy of a Ween and the all-out avant of a Beefheart. The musicianship’s all there lest you fear that Zappa’s noisy conundrums were meant to hide a lack thereof—his magic band equivalents are able to don ‘general public’ masks and jam away just like any contemporary fellow, as they do on “Directly From My Heart To You” and “My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama” (note the electric violin on the former). But to those with ears of gentle predisposition: beware, and don’t be fooled, for the joke’s on you. The visceral beasts behind those vaguely satirical eye-holes are let loose more often than they’re contained. Take the two characteristic collages, “Didja Get Any Onya?” and “Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Sexually Aroused Gas Mask”: chaos, yes, but ritualistic chaos; Zappa, wielder of the wild. The sheer number of ideas, themes, and allusions introduced and just as quickly passed over in the space of, for each, less than four minutes, is nauseatingly impressive. E.g. about halfway through the latter, whose title suggests Debussy’s own ...d’un faune, some Satanic call and response gives way to the distant strains of the second subject of the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique, over which some madman projects an uncanny valley imitation of a big cat growling—then final tremors from kit and a deep down electric rumbling to close. And if you thought music was one-dimensional (audio, you could argue, perhaps is) wait till you hear Zappa break the fourth wall on “Toads Of The Short Forest” which itself ends on a parodic consonance that’s rich with the same commercial irony of the album’s parting words— “Goodnight, boys and girls”—which follow one and a half minutes of some of the harshest noise you’ll ever hear. If you thought Penderecki was aggressive listen to this and reconsider.

Various artists, Planetarium (2017) You would think that with the extra personnel Sufjan would be somewhat protected from the subsuming ambition that fed Illinois and Adz to over an hour each—or that he’d personally outgrown it, as these mature words here would suggest:

A lot of those flourishes and gestures and aesthetic wanderings on earlier records were smoke and mirrors, a lot of obfuscation that were probably the result of me feeling either inadequate or feeling coy. There’s a lot of role playing and constructing facades.

But the 76-minute run-time indicates otherwise. Perhaps it’s the subject matter. These four gentlemen’s ode to the cosmos is as much about space as it is about substance—by which I mean: aside from the planet portraits they also craft sonic voids to match that of the great vacuum, and call it ‘ambient music’ so its justifiable. Is Muhly to blame? If so, its at least theoretically intriguing for its marriage of post-minimalism and popular music. It makes for dull listening though. You accept it the first couple of times but there’s no way I’m sitting through “Sun” or “Tides” or the “Moon” coda for a third or further. However with “Black Energy” the suspended dissonances are at least something for the ear to work on, and “Halley’s Comet” and “Black Hole” are short enough to accept as outros/intros to tracks preceding/following, with the latter also being interesting for its similarity to certain parts of Badalamenti’s score to Fire Walk With Me. But of the actual songs?—“Jupiter” and “Mars” quickly go from overwhelming to simply overcrafted. Likewise “Earth” is overcome by temporal grandeur, but it is defensible in the same way that the Mahler symphonies are, i.e. gushing Romanticism kills itself yet in doing so also transcends itself. “Pluto” and its interstellar string line provide the appropriate sappiness required of a work named Planetarium. The real gems, however, are “Neptune”, “Uranus”, “Saturn”, and “Mercury”—is it any coincidence that these are also the most Sufjan-esque?

John Coltrane, The Olatunji Concert (1967) This was all the Gods could muster: a cheap, dingy mic, a 30-sec intro, time for two jams with the latter cut off before the final hit—there the master laid down his pen. Like J.S. centuries ago it was, fittingly, on his signature move. Did he know it would be his last live recording? The notion would at least have been entertained as by then he was probably well into the throes of the cirrhosis that would eventually take him. Trane’s apocalyptic final will and testament, the culmination—if only chronologically—of a lifetime’s innovation, comes at you through an otherworldly haze, through cigarette smoke and spirit vapours, through half a century (exactly) of sonic decomposition of tapes that were at a poor enough quality to begin with. All that’s pretty is shed away, left behind for the blind and the shallow to fuck with. This is the primal essence. Trane, on the precipice, delivers a performance of catastrophic immensity. This was no Mahler 9, no sweet surrender—with one foot in the grave he raged.

Deep Puddle Dynamics, The Taste of Rain... Why Kneel? (1999) And re-calibrate again for the emcees in this realm require of the listener a completely different approach. Here the gamut of receptors is tuned less to harmony, instrumental skill, or ‘compositional rigour’ (in the Western art sense), and more to verse, cadence, dialect, timbre, rhythm, and so forth—it’s only empty if you ain’t looking hard enough. And four voices means there’s plenty of variety to go round. The interplay between the distinct bodies to their voices makes them stronger as a unit, à la Tribe preceding. E.g. I don’t think I could handle an entire full-length full of Doseone’s nasal delivery but on this the other three contextualise the texture space he resides in so that his grating-ness means something. (See his entry on “The Scarecrow Speaks”.) Another point of difference between this and the records surrounding: I’ve had genius.com open for probably half my listens. The pace, density, and abstraction of the ideas expounded deserve more comprehension than a fleeting ear’s able to discern; the work is the word, mostly, so read the libretto. We open with Slug: “Descending on the centre / from the outskirts of obscurity”. An apt heads up for such is how you approach the meaning to these tracks, most of which exceed five minutes. Within them the majority of time is spent dealing in Impressionistic strokes of free-verse, free-associative syllables strung streaming out to the potent symbology of, say, a candle flame (as on “The Candle”) or the psychological landscape of a peeling ceiling (as on “Heavy Ceiling”—distant progenitor to Courtney Barnett’s “An Illustration of Loneliness”). However at times a rhyme catalyses the crystallisation of these supersaturated abstractions—here’s Sole towards the end of “Thought vs. Action”:

Man, I once had an idea but it didn’t get me anywhere Read The Art of War when I should have been out fighting Why is it the mass is unexposed to so-called great thinkers until they die? And why do they live in fear Of the fighters afraid to leave their insides?

But wait! Don’t forget ‘compositional rigour’ just yet as a certain hook on the track just discussed, the chant chucking nouns at each crotchet (“catalyst, cataclysm, fallacy, fortitude, medulla...”), appears also on “Deep Puddle Theme Song” and “June 26th, 1998”, albeit with different words, and as different answers to different questions. And formwise you’ve got the partition between the ‘98 tracks and those from June 26th, 1999. There’s a palpable maturation from the former to the latter. In the year of ‘98 they had more answers than questions—see the noun chant above, see the youthful arrogance on “The Scarecrow Speaks” and “I Am Hip Hop (Move the Crowd)”. And even the cynicism that closes #1 has with it a little bit of nihilistic tongue-in-cheek. One year on and they’re a lot more tired of the world. That sly grin’s nowhere to be found on lines like these...

How is it I’m motivated to endure Eight hours of pure unadulterated boredom? Then sit in front of another computer for Four more hours using the same old drum set Trying different loops, can’t find one to fit Maybe this is why I sit in front of a pad of paper, pen in hand with a blank mind And I ask myself Is the writer’s slump the best form of meditation? Rhetorical, don’t have an answer And I also don’t expect one.

...and all that’s left is a deathly wit...

It ain't all love, it's confusion and a waste of time It ain't all time, it's confusion and a waste of love It ain't all waste, it's confusion and some time to love It ain't all confusion, it's love and some time to waste It ain't all that It's all of the above So scared into this And you are And you wonder from the shores how deep the puddle is. 

...borne of the same fin-de-siècle dread that fed Radiohead’s OK Computer.

Alvvays, s/t (2014) Music that’s dense and complex and meticulous will never be difficult to write about, or, for some, even to listen to, because there’s always the task of ascribing theory to composition to hide in. Such an approach, however, can neglect what you might say to be the primary purpose of music: evoking a meaningful emotional response in the listener. This, to trained ears, can be tempered by knowledge and understanding of the underlying theory, but for the most part it is governed by right-brain perception; that is, the Dionysian response as opposed to the Apollonian. For example: I could write about how on “Dives” you can developmentally derive the verse theme from the prelude’s sinister synth line, or about the 3/2 bars on the refrain to the same and how Molly’s melody overlays a 6/4 structure in a sort of inverse hemiola to the colossal opening of Brahms’s 3rd—or, instead, I could write about the sweet, sweet ache I am immediately plunged into upon the first words to the first song (”How / Do I get close to you? / Even if you don’t notice / As I admire you / On the subway”), or the simultaneous melancholy of lyric and uplift of melody on the chorus to “Archie, Marry Me”, or the crack in my heart that accompanies, every time, Molly’s crack up to that high note on “Ones Who Love You”, that velvet vowel vocalise that’s recalled, in spirit, on the final seconds of their latest single when she, unexpectedly, epiphanically, goes up the register to a transcendent 5th scale degree falling to the major 3rd on what itself is a 6-3 on the I, i.e. a first inversion founded on yet another radiant, overtone-heavy 3rd. Point being, who really cares about the details when all you can think about is that it’s making you soar, or in some cases, sore (in the chest).

[alisonfloresus]

An Appreciation Of Van Gogh’s Starry Night Painting

Many art fans consider Van Gogh Starry Night to be the ‘magnus opus’ of the tragic Dutch post-impressionist. He painted it when he was confined to a Saint-Remy asylum in June of 1889, shortly before he short himself in the chest, an injury from which he perished two days later. The painting shows the view from his room. The original painting itself hangs in the American Museum of Modern Art and has done so for more than sixty years.

The picture’s foreground is dominated on the left-hand side by a cypress tree. This element features in a number of other works by the artist. It is included in ‘Road with Cypress & Star’ (1890), ‘Cypresses & Two Women’ (1890), ‘Cypresses with Two Female Figures (1889), ‘Cypresses’ (1889), ‘Wheatfield with Cypresses (1889) and ‘The Poets Garden IV’ (1888).

There must be something about this painting that appeals to people on a very primitive level. Perhaps it is because it was painted during a period of extreme emotional angst and it speaks directly to our inner core of emotions. Maybe it’s because it is so personal, so intimate, that it communicates soul to soul. It screams out his individuality and completely identifies Van Gogh as the artist.

Vincent Van Gogh makes skilful use of something called ‘chiaroscuro’, a means of using shade and light to product depth in a painting. Literally translated from the Italian, it means, ‘light-dark’. One way in which he uses chiaroscuro is to breathe life into his still life paintings of flowers in a vase. Examples of this, all painted in Paris in 1886, are ‘Vase with Zinnias’, ‘Vase with Mysotis and Peonies’, ‘Vase with Zinnias and Other Flowers’, and ‘Vase with Carnations’.

In ‘Vase with Gladioli and Carnations’, ‘Vase with Red Gladioli’ (Paris 1886), the canvass appears to be alive with flames. An expression, perhaps, of the raging hell within. He certainly had a way of making a bunch of flowers come to life.

He had a way of bringing the most mundane of subjects to life and telling a story with them. What the observer sees in ‘A Pair of Shoes’ (Paris, 1886) is a dingy pair of hard worn boots on the floor in a darkened room in front of a pool of light. What the observer senses in another room is a hard working man taking a well-deserved rest, smoking a pipe in front of a roaring fire.

One of his most vibrant paintings is ‘Fourteenth of July Celebration in Paris’. Here, he uses reds, yellows and purples to dizzying effect to illustrate an explosion of fireworks. The people underneath watching are all clothed in black and the center of the blast is muted with dark tones.

One of his most surreal works is ‘Skull with Burning Cigarette’. The subject could easily be a poster boy for campaign to encourage people to quite smoking. It was painted in Antwerp, Belgium, during the winter of 1885-1886. It is currently displayed in the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands.

from JournalsLINE http://journalsline.com/2017/05/16/an-appreciation-of-van-goghs-starry-night-painting/ from Journals LINE https://journalsline.tumblr.com/post/160725988860