#her language is very evocative and there's a lot of subtext

[social-mockingbird]

It is late enough that I am willing to argue that when Oberon put the love potion on Titania’s eyes he turned her into a succubus no I will not explain myself

[fanficwritersinterviewed]

Hello! A question for you and all your writers. Who would you say is the author (fanfiction or published) who most influences your writing, and how do you mindfully borrow and learn from them? (i.e. What part of their writing, specifically, do you try to emulate in your own, and is this a conscious or sub-conscious process?)

Hi anon! Great question!

I asked a few writers ( @willowcrowned, @shey-elizabeth, @tessiete) and also took a crack at answering myself. The post got a little long, but I hope you’ll find it as interesting as I did to see how different writers engage with what they are reading.... DarkIsRising:​

I read a LOT of fanfic in a ton of different fandoms that I’d never write in, constantly looking for the very best writing that fandom has to offer. I’m always asking for recs from people, trying to find the writing that makes my brain purr. From there it’s a process of getting lost in a new writer’s way of developing story and character, falling in love with how they did what they did, and then rereading to see if I can find out why those words in that order made my mind melt or my heart speed up or my skin get that sickly dread feeling that comes when the angst is high and hitting just right. What happens next depends on my mood.

Sometimes I’ll tuck away what I think I learned into my back pocket as something that’s interesting but not really what I’m particularly interested in writing. Sometimes I take the deconstructed idea of what I learned and write something where I try out the trick for myself. I wouldn’t say it’s copying so much as “hm, I think this is how it worked, is this how it’s done?” and then apply it to my own writing.

“Werdla” came after several re-readings of an Old Guard kink series by TheIneffableLily, who used this mood of safe and consensually sex where the kink served to make a charged emotional atmosphere, where the really truly dangerous thing wasn’t the pain play or what have you, it was the vulnerability that might be revealed through the sex. So I tried it out for myself in relation to Din and Luke, playing with the idea of Din’s helmet and Luke’s blindfold—which comes up a lot in dinluke fanfic, so much it’s probably its own trope at this point— Din’s vulnerability in removing his helmet to have sex with Luke and the trust that Luke is a good enough man that he won’t look. Later I found out that furiosophie was inspired by the mood I created in “Werdla” and used what she’d felt in it to create elements for her fic “Go and Get Your Hands Dirty.” So that’s kind of a beautiful thing in fanfic, when it’s done right and everyone is being respectful (and not stealing literal words, etc) how much of this work can be a call and response. Someone writes something that stirs a feeling in me, that feeling influences what I write next, only for someone to read my thing and get inspired to create their own thing from it. Sometimes it creates those “works inspired by” links in ao3, but sometimes it’s more subtle than that, and that subtly is where I absolutely live, die, and live again.

Tessiete: 100% ruth baulding. Ruth's stories got me back into SW, and prompted me to enter the fandom (first, intending to seek her out, but then I started writing). She just has this great balance, imo, of slightly overwrought prose that to me felt very original Star Wars-y. Kind of an elevated Lucas! And I love how she used language to convey character subtext (I've talked about this before, but she rarely uses the word "love" bc Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan don't know how to use it for each other, either. They always talk around it, and so the writing skirts it with metaphor.

Then, I'd say treescapes, and outpastthemoat. Moat has this ability to walk a fine line between tragedy and hope, and I find that particularly wrenching for Obi-Wan stories in particular. Often the most gutting parts of her fic are the smallest miscommunications. I strive for that subtlety. And with trees, her imagery just is SO evocative and poetic. She packs so much feeling into a visual moment. I literally change how I think about storytelling every time I read her work. I think about the details. The wrist bones, the lashes over the slate blue eyes, the little turns of phrase that reveal SO much. Just....incredible!!! I do consciously think of them - though it's not as clear cut as trying to copy them. Sometimes, it's just osmosis, or skill acquisition. But I think of them A LOT. Shey: I don't have one particular fic author I take writing inspiration from. Early on, I took a lot of characterization inspiration from the most popular writers in the Steter/Stetopher fandom because their take on the characters is what made me fall in love with the pairing. For example, Bunnywest writes Peter in a way I adore, and that has influenced the way I write him. Twothumbsandnostakeincanon's snarky, sarcastic Stiles is my favorite Stiles. So they, along with many others, have definitely influenced the way I think about the characters. I've spent way more time reading fic than I ever did watching the show, so the way I picture the characters is an amalgamation of the way I've seen them written over time. As far as "mindfully borrowing," that phrasing makes me uncomfortable. I do my best to keep out of other authors fics when I'm writing. (In fact, I don't read in a fandom that I'm actively writing in for this exact reason!) When you're all writing about the same characters it feels way too easy for "borrowing" to turn into copying.I also wouldn’t say I try to emulate any particular writer, either. I read a lot (32 published books so far this year, 150+ last year. Thank god for Kindle Unlimited!) and I really believe that I've learned a ton about writing because of it. I'd say the most useful thing I do to learn from other authors is read and think about the things I'm reading. What did I like? What did I dislike? What worked in the story and what didn't? WHY? On the other hand, there are plenty of authors who's work I absolutely adore and I aspire to write with the kind of skill they do. Definitely the two mentioned above, as well as Twisted_Mind, cywscross, kouriarashi, and ThisDiscontentedWinter (if you want more names, check out my AO3 bookmarks!). On the published author side, I'm obsessed with the writing of Onley James, Cara Dee, Alessandra Hazard, Hailey Turner, Neve Wilder, and Nora Phoenix to name a few. Willowcrowned: Ohhhh that’s such a good question. It’s hard to say what author most influences my writing because I’ve been writing for long enough that my go-to style has become a melange of bits stolen from some formative works. Since I do like to experiment consciously with prose style, if I’m ever trying to nail something specific, I’ll find an author that writes that way and use it as a reference. For “Smoke Raised with the Fume of Sigh,” which I wanted to have rich, luxe prose, I turned to Dark’s (hi Dark!) “The Things That Are Deadly.” For anything where I want economy of language without sacrificing setting, I’ll go back to Tolkien (my first and forever love). *

Ask week

[thesinglesjukebox]

MUNA - NUMBER ONE FAN

[6.20]

We have no choice but to (checks score) ...give a [6]?

Leah Isobel: About U's ability to make gay adolescence seem poetic instead of, like, thoroughly humiliating made it one of my favorite records of 2017, but any more elegiac lyrical evocations of the past would feel like too much navel-gazing. So for their new single, MUNA turn their eyes toward the present; the protagonist from their debut is a little older, much better at dancing, and officially Online. The vocoder turns Katie Gavin's already-brittle intonation into sheet metal, and the hollowness around the synth and guitar tones suggests one of those extremely '90s Internet PSAs. The lyrics, meanwhile, do something so completely obvious I can't believe it hasn't happened yet: They filter self-love through the purposefully exaggerated language of stan Twitter. Depending on my mood, this either reads as a brilliant evocation of the struggle to love oneself by just trying harder (borne out by the prechorus, which is the best part of the song), or as cheap pandering. The meta-implications of getting their audience to sing "I'm your number one fan!" back at them are too good for me to resist, but this particular strain of slang doesn't feel entirely suited to their brand of suburban emo. [7]

Will Adams: MUNA's mastery of imbuing sincerity into otherwise cheesy mantras (see also: "don't you be afraid of love and affection") is what lets them get away with a song that's about loving yourself, free of any of the subtext that usually comes with it, that even includes words like "stan" and "iconic" in its chorus. As with "I Know a Place," the mood is celebratory -- a grooving, Technotronic bassline, guitar licks peppered in judiciously, synth chords that burst like confetti -- only stopping to reveal its doubt in the bridge ("in the thick of it, will you stick up for me?"). For a Pride month particularly marked with dead-eyed corporate lip service and certain other pop stars fumbling with allyship, having something as earnest as "Number One Fan" is a damn triumph. [8]

Stephen Eisermann: This song makes no effort to hide its pandering, but with such a peppy production, it's almost forgivable. Almost. The disinterested vocal prevents this from being great, but man, was it close. [5]

Vikram Joseph: A song about self-belief that doesn't seem to believe in itself; the tightly-wound verses accumulate a potential energy that needs to find release, but instead spills away in the pre-chorus and evaporates entirely in the flaccid, anticlimactic chorus. The vocal melody bears much of the blame, flatlining around a few mid-range notes and exposing Katie Gavin's weaknesses as a vocalist. The brash synth that serves as a post-chorus drop is fun, but I'm not sure MUNA are very good at middle eights -- a slow, soupy 30 seconds also derailed "Winterbreak," a far better song than this. [4]

Katherine St Asaph: Yet another song that starts seething and knife-poised but immediately abandons all tension for major-key blahs. The only difference is "Number One Fan" doesn't even wait the whole verse to drop it. What it has instead is a chorus of stan shit. And given that for the past decade of my life, and probably for the rest of it, stans have shown me how many thousands of people think I'm an awful person, up to and including sending me death threats, echoes of that are not remotely assuring in any context. Nor is the overarching premise much better. I await the day pop culture and pop psychology stop haranguing people about how they should ignore the tides of people calling them shit, and instead direct those efforts at stopping the tides. [3]

Iris Xie: It has a hilarious intro that's a sure attention-grabber, but it settles back and becomes really muddled after the initial verse is over. Still, the screwy zipper of a synth throughout, combined with that delivery, makes me score it a [6] instead of a [5]. [6]

Katie Gill: It's interesting how this song simultaneously has a darker sound than the classic overlook-your-flaws, self-love songs of Alessia Cara, Pink, and Christina Aguilera, and yet is more upbeat and peppy than all three of those. The chorus is overproduced in such a way that I doubt "Number One Fan" will ever reach the sing-along status of some of MUNA's other work. But as weird and uneven and oddly constructed as "Number One Fan" is, I still love it a lot. [7]

Alex Clifton: "Number One Fan" has made me think about the all the time I spent loving various idols and hating myself. I've latched onto obsessions just to remind myself that there's something good in this world worth loving--my Jason Mraz years, that time I listened to only Arcade Fire for three months straight, the summer I could only focus on One Direction content, the whole year I spent focusing on BTS so I could ignore the trashfire of 2017. During those years I'd look at myself in the mirror and feel so unworthy of love for myself that I felt I had to pour it into something else. I never considered the concept of "being your own stan," but it's like all the stuff I've worked through in therapy--reworking your brain so it's not beating itself up, telling all those voices saying you're unlovable and evil and alone that they're wrong, taking all the bad thoughts and forcing them into something better and more productive. Rather than holing up and listening to Bon Iver in the dark for six hours, it's okay to love yourself and be your own biggest fan. "Number One Fan" is a much-needed reminder for me, and also probably one of my favourite songs this year. [8]

Jonathan Bradley: The diagnosis is better and more terrible than the cure. "I heard the bad news/nobody likes me and I'm gonna die alone" is delivered over forceful chunks of synth bass with declarative finality. It's bitter, perhaps because it's cruel or perhaps because it could be true. But when, for the chorus of "Number One Fan," Katie Gavin turns stan culture inward, it doesn't make it more uplifting; it subsumes her own esteem into that hungry emptiness. Nonetheless, the repetition of slang and filler words -- "like, oh my god, like," "so iconic, like big, like stan" -- in that hook builds up its own rhythmic sense, one that is more affirmative than the resolution itself. But it's the cold dread of the opening that is this song's best moment. Add that to "I knew, when you told me you don't want to go home tonight..." and "I saw a beautiful girl on the street/she looked nothing like me..." as evidence of this band's arresting ability to conjure scene-setting openers. [6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Of all the recent tracks to turn the dialect of stan twitter back onto itself, this is the only one to really work. That's partially because MUNA is a very good at the basic functionalities of being a band-- just listen to the little contours of the guitar track, or how self-assured the drum groove is. But "Number One Fan" really works because it understands that fandom is deeply self-centered yet never narcissistic. Obsessing in fandom is the abandonment of the self and the taking on of something greater than you as replacement. MUNA short circuits that equation: for better or for worse, the only thing to stan is yourself. [8]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[dippedanddripped]

Sonya Sombreuil’s COME TEES is equal parts art project and subversive streetwear imprint, underpinned by the effortless cool that can only be afforded by limited-run garments. The clothing isn’t exclusive because of corporate hype machinations, however; COME TEES goods are limited merely by the amount of time she’s able to allot to creating each one. Each meticulously crafted shirt, hat, or pair of vintage jeans is one-of-one—screen-printed, deconstructed, and hand-painted in Sombreuil’s Los Angeles studio.

A painter by trade, Sonya’s staunch DIY attitude anchors every aspect of COME TEES, going beyond the handmade imagery to the community-driven mentality that inspires special releases. The bread and butter of COME TEES are silk-screened garments crafted via a laborious method that settles the ink deep into cotton T-shirts and hoodies, creating long-lasting, vibrant colors. Special editions are frequently launched, simply in the name of charity. Sombreuil has partnered with designer peers such as Election Reform! and Eckhaus Latta, accenting the well-intentioned releases with playful accessories such as the ceramic shoelace plates launched in February.

Though COME TEES remains in tune with its local roots, the brand is on the verge of skyrocketing into mainstream consciousness thanks to celebrity fans like Rihanna and Kanye West. These high-profile admirers don’t shake the designer’s hearty appetite for experimentation, however, with plenty of adventurous items cropping up on the brand’s website with little notice. Sombreuil’s impromptu collections are perhaps the most diverse of all the West Coast do-it-yourselfers, with lush colors spilling out across vintage Dickies work shirts, chore jackets, and even the occasional maxi dress.

The breadth in COME TEES’ creative output is indicative of the label’s fervent creative energy; Sonya’s signature style of artwork manifests this restless attitude to fabrication. Jagged lines, scribbled text, abstract swirls of color and surreal imagery rich with context are frequent motifs in COME TEES goods. These aggressive strokes of color hint at the messages embedded in each garment as she references feminism and body politics; religion and jazz; utter despair and effervescent positivity. Balancing the earnest, querying designs are light-hearted one-offs, like the Japanese Jane’s Addiction shirt seen on Kanye West.

While the graphics clearly speak for themselves, the craft behind COME TEES’ actual garments is a crucial element of the brand’s ethos. Sombreuil sources deadstock French terry, lightweight cotton, and pre-loved vintage garments as the base for her work, transforming each blank canvas into special COME TEES pieces. Furthermore, most items are realized with slouchy, easygoing cuts to embody the effortless California cool that informs the entire label. Beyond the boxy fit, however, Sonya often chops up her shirts, piecing them back together with raglan sleeves, vertical seams, shortened hems, and unexpected panels—all accomplished in her studio.

COME TEES’ distinct fits and equally individualistic imagery are at the heart of the brand, but it’s Sonya who gives COME TEES life; she’s intertwined with her one-woman operation, each item an extension of her own consciousness. More than mere streetwear, it’s hardly unfair to call each COME TEES garment a work of art, each upcycled wearable meant to be loved until it becomes vintage once again.

How did COME TEES begin?

COME TEES started because I was always involved in the music scene and a huge music lover but not a musician. In 2009, I worked two days for a screen printer and thought, “I can do this.” I bought a small press and some ink and started making band shirts and eventually shirts for bands that didn’t even exist…Like music, T-shirts are easy to circulate and very much about linking with other people.

How did you first begin creating art and designing?

Art is how I process the world. I was always an artist and my very earliest memories are of making art. Designing and art didn’t limit themselves to the page. I wanted to chop and screw my clothes, my environment, and my life. It’s an impulse that is native to my spirit.

Do you try to maintain a consistent theme?

The way I see it, I’m always trying to tell a “human story,” which is why my work is often figurative. Faces, hands…these are things that relate instantly. I love language, in particular song titles, bits of music and lyrics. I know there is a message or subtext that goes throughout my work, but I’m not sure it can be said directly.

What inspires your imagery?

My inspiration is always changing, but I love graffiti, primitive art, religious art, traffic signs, anime. I go through little phases where I am interested in simple things, like a pair of colors or an old skate graphic.

Who’s wearing COME TEES right now, and who would you like to see wearing it?

It’s difficult to say. I see a lot of diversity in who wears my stuff. I’m a small brand and I think it’s a small audience who are in the know and down to wear something bold and outside of the realm of brand logos and known quantities. It’s a little bit of a freak flag and that really satisfies me.

What’s on your plate right now?

Right now I am working on expanding my denim line and creating new silhouettes with COME TEES textiles. I love making T-shirts but I want to break out of that. I’ve always loved denim fits, workwear, uniforms, and nowadays I really like menswear, so I am interested in making things that are more formal and structured then a T-shirt.

What’s the story behind the name COME TEES?

I came up with a list of names and my brother told me COME TEES was stupid.

Can you walk us through your daily design process?

I listen to a lot of music and my designs are often composites of a bunch of things I am into at the moment. Bits and pieces of weird album art, or shrouded personal references. In a weird way, I feel like I am narrating my personal life and sometimes the designs are kind of an evocation. Like recently I have been feeling really romantic and sexual so I made the COOKIE AURA shirt, which is meant to invoke a juicy ‘90s R&B energy.

What does COME TEES mean to you?

COME TEES is a pet project from my heart. It’s fantasy that comes from one person, from the spontaneous and unique nature of my existence. I feel that the energy of my little dream can be heard by other people and somehow vibe with their little dreams. I want to make things that feel personal and human and paradoxically make people feel more individual and more themselves.

What do you see when you envision the label’s future?

I want to be able to grow and mature artistically through time. I love having a following and keeping my audience tight and close and I want them to grow with me and be down for any sudden turns I make because they trust me. I want to make more stuff out of plastic and wood, I want to design kicks, I want to make jewelry, I want to collaborate with other brands.

[dietraumerei]

2018 Books - Part 3

Or: My Little House on the Prairie Phase

So it all started with reading Wendy McLure’s The Wilder Life, which is her musing about the Little House books and following, a little, in Laura’s footsteps -- or rather, exploring what Little House things she could do, and recapture how the books made her feel. I’ve loved Wendy’s writing for a long time and I loved the Little House books and I read basically all of this on a flight to Seattle to look for apartments, so the American myth of striking out West was...a thing that I suddenly got.

Okay, this book is good, and I loved it, and I loved hearing about her quest for the Laura life in a funny, good-natured, not-prepper way. It really resounded with me, and also really got me on a roll!

I’d read the first two Little House books in 2017, so kind of leapt in with On the Banks of Plum Creek, By the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Farmer Boy, Little Town on the Prairie and These Happy Golden Years. Just a few of my observations (ugh this is why I’m doing stuff as I read this year, I had so many thoughts! I know I did!):

Laura’s writing is really, really, really beautiful and evocative. I want to spend the night alone on the prairie, to see what she saw. The books, language-wise and describing the landscape that’s changing and vanishing as Laura watches, are exquisitely written.

Laura’s pretty racist.

Ma is SUPER RACIST. Like, really deeply hates Natives and is also creepily libertarian (no I don’t think it was Rose, I think it was just that Ma was the racist, weird, super-boring Ayn Rand of the prairies.)

I skipped the scene with Pa in blackface because to say it’s uncomfortable is putting things lightly.

Mary’s kind of a drip.

My goodness they’re manifest destiny-licious.

The books definitely get worse as the series goes on. These Happy Golden Years is more a series of vignettes that answer questions like ‘what do you do at a house party in a small town in the middle of South Dakota?’  The Long Winter is still a grinding read and also CAP GARLAND.

Okay, so I don’t believe that Rose wrote the books, but honestly both she and her mother were just assholes about Independence and Taking Care of Ourselves and Not Helping Anyone even though they both got a shit ton of governmental assistance IN ADDITION TO STEALING LAND I MIGHT ADD and anyway these books are creepily libertarian. There’s a lot of weird subtext about being Free and how Farmers are the Best, and it’s just very, very weird and offputting.

Which leads me neatly into one of the best books I read last year, Prairie Fires. Caroline Fraser wrote the book I would have given my eyeteeth for as an obsessed Laura fan. This is a meticulous tracing of the routes Laura’s family actually took, and how they moved around and the greater world around them at the time. And then, of course, it’s the rest of Laura’s life, and it kind of turns into an accidental biography of Rose Wilder Lane, too? And Laura was pretty awful (Almanzo is basically the only person to come off well by the end, actually), and probably lived in a sundown town and was a massive asshole about kind of everything, but Rose. ROSE WAS THE WORST YOU GUYS. Rose was probably, at best, mentally ill and deeply untreated but also ROSE’S PERSONALITY IS ASSHOLE. Ohhhhh my goddddddd this book was so good.

Anyway, you should read it, and you should also read Ana Mardoll’s livetweet of her read of the book (the non-tweet collection starts here) which is GENIUS.

Oh apparently I also read Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life which I have no memory of probably because it was not openly juicy and full of tea.

(Also you can find videos on YouTube of Wendy McClure’s talks while she was promoting her book and they are delightful. I also found a really good one from someone who had done research into Mary’s life at the Iowa School for the Blind and that was really cool too.)

Anyway, in conclusion, the Little House books mean a lot to me but they define Problematic and honestly I’m not sure I’d give them to a child to read.

ETA: whoops, apparently Ana Mardoll is doing a Prairie Fires re-read! The link goes to her first read, but honestly I am very very excited about the re-read too!

[topmixtrends]

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to talk about the first two poetry collections by poet, translator, and essayist Charles Simic, who turned 80 this May, without also briefly mentioning George Hitchcock, California publisher and editor of the intrepid literary magazine Kayak (1964–1984) and the Kayak Press, which brought out What the Grass Says (1967) and Somewhere Among Us a Stone Is Taking Notes (1969), as well as second books by Philip Levine, Raymond Carver, and a host of other poets who were still under the radar. A maverick activist, artist, and editor, Hitchcock helped launch the careers of many mid- to late 20th-century poets in a letterpress venue known for its boldness, eclectic format, and gallows humor (rejection slips often took the form of cards printed with Victorian scenes — beheadings, tragic accidents — and accompanied by blunt statements about the unsuitability of a given submission). To say that in its 20-year run the Kayak Press helped to shape the landscape of American poetry — especially those poetries with leanings toward Surrealism and the Deep Image — would be an understatement.

Poems from Simic’s first two Kayak collections appear later in what might be considered his breakout third book, Dismantling the Silence, published by George Braziller in 1971. In a note to that collection, series editor Richard Howard, nodding to Simic’s Eastern European upbringing, speaks of the poet’s

ancient fooling, which, by its presence, we suddenly realize has been absent from recent American verse — a gnomic utterance, convinced in accent, collective in reference, original in impulse […] “I am whatever beast inhabits me,” he asserts, he exults, and in another place: “it is not only its own life that man’s body has to endure.” Exile as homecoming, then, and the natural world accepted as a celebration, a rite.

Although his early work seems to draw more upon European landscapes and gestures than on terrain and topics specific to America, Simic’s against-the-zeitgeist freshness — “gnomic,” “collective,” “unique in accent,” “original” — puts him squarely in the lineage of the United States’s native innovators, Whitman and Dickinson. The titles of Simic’s first two books alone, with their evocation of grasses and stones, evoke Whitman, and their riddle-like “fooling” allies him strongly with Dickinson. Yet the poems are, of course, very much his own, greater in sum than their obvious influences — French Surrealism, Eastern European oneirism, the physical dimension of the Imagists.

Simic’s second book, written on the cusp of his 30s, is worth knowing (if you can find a copy), not only for its beautiful embodiment by Kayak (hand-set in an edition of 1,000 with quirky anatomical prints by Hitchcock that reflect the dream-like ambages of Simic’s poems), but also for the ways in which, by volition or intuition, the book situates itself in the stream of American innovative poetries. What Philip Levine wrote of the poems featured in Kayak — “wild enough to be truly American” but also “underground” because America’s “official organs […] were too sterile to allow them life anywhere else” — surely applies to Simic’s early work.

Some of the poems for which Simic remains best known and often anthologized are part of this second book — “Bestiary for the Fingers of My Right Hand,” “Dismantling the Silence,” and a series of marvelous poems about cutlery and other tools, including “Spoon,” “Ax,” “Knife,” and “Fork”:

This strange thing must have crept Right out of hell. It resembles a bird’s foot Worn around the cannibal’s neck.

As you hold it in your hand, As you stab with it into a piece of meat, It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird: Its head which like your fist Is large, bald, beakless and blind.

Refusing to privilege the human over the figuratively reimagined inanimate, Simic conjures a world that doesn’t quite make logical sense, creating an experience of wonder and bewilderment in what often feel like imperfect yet utterly arresting “translations” from and into languages that resist parsing. Indeed, the focus on objects allows the poems to transcend any one language. In an essay on his first years in the United States, “Fearful Paradise,” Simic writes:

One of the great temptations for an immigrant is to go native the whole way, start eating canned soup, white bread, and Jell-O and hide one’s passion for sausages smothered in onions and peppers and crackling in fat. I read Emerson and Thoreau and other New England writers and loved them, but I knew my identity was different. I was already a concoction of Yugoslav, American, Jewish, Irish, and Italian ingredients — and the stew wasn’t ready yet. There were more things to add to the pot. More identities. More images to cook.

“Can one experience nostalgia for a time and place one did not know?” Simic asks in a brief essay on Berenice Abbott’s photographs called “The Life of Images,” and responds: “I believe one can.” It is as though by entering into the silence of objects, armed with a sourceless nostalgia, Simic finds his unique identity as a poet, a process he evokes in “Explorers”:

They arrive inside The object at evening. There’s no one to meet them.

The lamps they carry Cast their shadows Back into themselves.

They make notations: The sky and the earth Are of the same impenetrable color. There’s no wind. If there are rivers, They must be under the ground. Of the marvels we sought, no trace. Of the strange new stars, nothing. There’s not even dust, so we must conclude That someone passed recently With a broom …

As they write, the tiny universe Stitches its black thread into them.

Eventually nothing is left Except a faint voice Which might belong Either to one of them Or to someone who came before.

It says: I’m grateful That you’ve finally come. It was starting to get lonely. I recognize you. You are all That has eluded me.

May this be my country.

This terra lingua is a natural home for a poet whose early years were marked by multiple languages, violence, uncertainty, and exile. In a United States that to many seems unrecognizable, Simic’s imagination now makes fresh sense. Why not attend to the speech of eternal stones as Rome burns?

In his most recent collection, Scribbled in the Dark (2017), we see Simic continuing to confront what confounds sense in poems like “Illegible Scribble,” “Signs of the Times,” and “Star Atlas”: “The madness of it, Miss Dickinson! / Then the dawning suspicion — / We are here alone ventriloquizing / For the one we call God.” Though it has been some 50 years since Americans first encountered the work of Charles Simic, the ludic absurdity of his vision continues to remind us that his poetry — that poetry itself — is necessary, precisely for its subversive ability to shape-shift and then deliver the goods. Simic himself suggests as much in “How to Psalmodise,” a small but potent “joke” of a poem about poetry from his second volume:

1. The Poet

Someone awake while others are sleeping Asleep while others are awake An illiterate who signs everything with an X. A man about to be hanged cracking a joke.

2. The Poem

Meat. Carried by a burglar To distract a watchdog.

¤

The Costa Rican–American poet Jacob Shores-Argüello is another fabular shape-shifter, whose forays into cross-cultural spaces, fluid identities, and what he calls “magic rationalism” mark him as Simic’s kindred spirit. Paraíso, his second collection — selected by Aracelis Girmay for the inaugural CantoMundo Poetry Prize celebrating Latinx writing and published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2017 — follows In the Absence of Clocks, winner of the Open Competition Award of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry and published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2012. Written in part as a response to a Fulbright year in Ukraine, the first book has as a narrative subtext the Orange Revolution of 2004–2005, during which political corruption surrounding a Ukrainian presidential election inspired a series of ultimately successful protests from the people. But as the book’s title suggests, its story is not bound by a single set of circumstances or chronology. Any one unsettling tale of injustice, violence, and usurpation touches all others; time, place, and people change and blend as Shores-Argüello’s pilgrim narrator journeys from Eden to Chernobyl, from the Missouri River to “the Dnieper’s delicate music,” exploring the toxicity of cruelty and the vicissitudes of love, family, and history.

In Paraíso (which is both the Spanish word for “paradise” and a town in Costa Rica), Shores-Argüello brings his pilgrim’s gift closer to home, specifically to his mother’s country, Costa Rica. Memories of spending time there as a child float under and over the details of a journey the adult narrator makes by bus and on foot to the “unholy altitudes” of mountainous cloud country, to a farm he has inherited from his mother after her death. The mythic sensibilities that darken and enchant the Ukrainian turf of the first book also ripple through Paraíso, intensified by the urgency of a profound, seemingly untouchable personal grief.

The book’s first section, a series of prose poems titled “Games,” provides a kind of manual on how to read the book. It offers a breviary of childlike magical thinking: tricks for coping with loneliness, exile, and loss. As the speaker gives instructions for various word games, it’s impossible not to see the connection between games and poems. “You don’t need anything special for these games,” the narrator says in “Joke, Fact, Anecdote”: “no cards, dice, or paper. All you need is someone to play with. Play them separately. Play them all at once.” We also learn a lot about our pilgrim — his sense of humor, his desire to relate with others:

I’ve been told that I like games because I am an only child. People say that only children try to convince the world to play with them so they’re no longer alone. But it’s more than that. My Oklahoma uncle says he feels sorry for me. His idea is that I am half Costa Rican and half not, that I wouldn’t know where to run when shit goes down. I think that’s the reason I like to play games. It’s important to make little connections with anyone you can.

He shares his belief in ancestral and magical powers (“On the Costa Rican version of the Monopoly board there is a silhouette of a witch on the square where my house would be”), as well as his exilic sense of anomie, accented by his mother’s death: “Now that I am thinking about it, I guess my mother was where I’d go when ‘shit went down.’ The kids in the streets of Oklahoma did not want me. The kids in the streets of Costa Rica did not want me. The country I had was her.”

Armed with these “rules” for surviving the deep blue of grief, the reader accompanies the narrator as he ascends into the remote country of his family’s past. A progression of sonnet-like lyrics recounts a dizzying, careening bus ride up “the toothy mountain,” a journey through village paschal parades, orchards burgeoning with “giant milk-hearted” fruits, bird-heavy jungles, the icy condensation and breathlessness of the cloud forest. Inside the bus, a congregation of brother and sister travelers claps and sings. A hummingbird that has slipped in through a window, evoking Bede’s sparrow, “swoops and flutters, hovers / like the Holy Spirit above [their] heads” (“Dove”). The passengers devour “butter-slathered hunks of chicken, / coconut cajeta, bright red jelly / that we suckle from the corners of bags,” washing it all down with “slugs of sinless rum” (“Cerro de la Muerte”).

Yet as the speaker makes his way up into the mountains, he acknowledges that “there’s only so much a passenger can know” (“Holy Mysteries”). It’s not until he arrives that he can truly confront his loss, and the difficult work of re-entry and return begins: reacquaintance with family and place (past and present), a funeral, and, in the book’s last section, an encounter with a witch. She calls herself a “sobadora, // a healer who moves pain with her hands”:

“Looking for Signal”

I finally find the witch. She is branch- boned, old, with knowing fingers. She says nothing. Walks me to a tall tree, a gourd hanging from a long line of jute. She pulls out a phone, asks me to type a note to my family. I do it, but can’t see how a message can be sent from somewhere so deep. She scolds me, says that only tourists think the world can be escaped. The jungle’s green is the wild mind of God. The witch puts the phone into the gourd. Hand-over-hand, she hoists this cradle to the top of our holy canopy.

Despite dosing with tinctures (“Medicine is balance, she says”) and performing other rituals, the speaker learns from the sobadora that “[s]he cannot be my mother / and has no idea if I can be healed.” Finally, in a spell he concocts for himself in “Cure #3: Deciding to Leave,” the speaker conducts an elaborate ritual involving candles, which allows him to take what he can from his journey and return from whence he came:

If the candles point to opposite places, this means nothing. It is recommended, in this case, to go anyway. If you have followed all these steps, it’s because you want to go. Take your candles.

In “Charms and Riddles,” originally a paper read to the New England Stylistics Club at Northeastern University in 1975 and subsequently published in Spiritus Mundi: Essays on Literature, Myth, and Society (1976), Northrop Frye writes that the riddle

is essentially a charm in reverse: it represents the revolt of the intelligence against the hypnotic power of commanding words. In the riddle a verbal trap is set, but if one can “guess,” that is, point to an outside object to which the verbal construct can be related, the something outside destroys it as a charm, and we have sprung the trap without being caught in it […] [The poet of charms is] a magician who renounces his magic, and thereby recreates the universe of power instead of trying to exploit it. Riddle goes in the opposite direction, and has to make the corresponding renunciation of the answer or guess […] [R]enouncing it means, again, being set free to create. As Paul says, we see now in a riddle in a mirror, but we solve the riddle by coming out of the mirror, into the world that words and things reflect.

Charles Simic and Jacob Shores-Argüello both work with charms and riddles, not to control or to answer (one ostensible aim of charms and riddles), but rather, as Frye says, to “set [the poet] free to create.” Frye argues that “the real answer to the question implied in a riddle is not a ‘thing’ outside it, but that which is both word and thing, and is both inside and outside the poem.” Shores-Argüello puts it this way at the close of “Cure #4: For Grief”:

Go home. Fix your tea. It is not important that you have picked your plants correctly. It is important that you have walked. It is important that you sit and drink. That you believed.

Humility, vulnerability, and a daring joy suffuse the work of these two poets. Their poems flirt with mortality and chaos by wielding the human imagination’s unique ability to break open the deadlock between word and world.

¤

Lisa Russ Spaar is a poet, essayist, and professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. She has published numerous books of poetry, and her latest collection, Orexia, was published in 2017.

The post Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry by Charles Simic and Jacob Shores-Argüello appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2KO0Vjh

[theseventhhex]

Benjamin Wallfisch Interview

Benjamin Wallfisch

‘A Cure for Wellness’ is the new psychological thriller from visionary director Gore Verbinski. The music to the film was written by acclaimed composer Benjamin Wallfisch. Wallfisch, fresh off a Golden Globe nomination along with Hans Zimmer and Pharell Williams for ‘Hidden Figures’, is an Emmy nominated composer who has worked on more than 60 feature films over the last decade, composing music for such legendary filmmakers as Steven Spielberg, Rupert Wyatt, Gore Verbinksi and Lars von Trier. His projects have been recognized with multiple awards and nominations at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, BAFTAS, Ivor Novello and World Soundtrack Awards. Throughout the soundtrack for ‘A Cure For Wellness’, Wallfisch’s compositions evolve immaculately as the story takes shape. Benjamin conceives a narrative opera that informs the film with an exceptional and inspiring outcome… We talk to Benjamin Wallfisch about being an observer, having Hans Zimmer as a mentor and the Golden Globes…

TSH: Talk us through the primary framework for your approach whilst working on the excellent soundtrack for ‘A Cure for Wellness’…

Benjamin: This movie forces the audience to confront difficult existential questions about the nature of our reality in the modern world. It pushes so many boundaries, both in terms of the brilliance and boldness of the filmmaking, the inner-workings of the story, and also the psychological thriller genre itself. It’s almost as if the film diagnoses the audience, and then offers a cure. But a cure with a terrible secret. I hadn’t come across any other film like it when I started the scoring process and as such it was a liberating, dangerous and exciting experience. In the end the primary framework was finding two character themes, strong enough to sustain the entire score and malleable enough so they could effortlessly evolve and metamorphose with the unpredictability and mind-bending nature of the narrative.

TSH: Was it particularly challenging to deliver the human truth of what these characters are experiencing in the movie?

Benjamin: Yes, but as ever it was about deciding from which character’s point of view the music was being told. For example, when Lockhart finds himself in an almost unimaginable predicament towards the end of the film; does the score support his own emotional experience at that moment, or that of the doctor responsible for his situation, or neither? Those kinds of decisions were sometimes made to completely disorientate the audience.

TSH: You’ve previously mentioned ‘being improvisatory and raw’ is really important. To make the music match the thriller, did you look to incorporate much of an improvisational outlook?

Benjamin: Whenever I write a film score, story is king. And to be true to that, it’s important in the first stages of the music’s development to almost be an observer of my own emotional response to the story and characters, and what that might sound like in music. So, my initial approach is often to put myself in the shoes of one or more of the characters, or focus on a particular story or mythology point, feed in the director’s overall vision for the tone and feel for the movie, and then just play; see where my musical instincts are through improvisation at the piano. Sometimes the central idea comes straight away, other times you have to ‘creep up on it’ as my mentor Hans Zimmer often says. For ‘A Cure for Wellness’, the process was the same, the only difference was I was working out of Gore Verbinski’s cutting rooms during the entire composition process from start to end, so I was in the fortunate position of being able to get immediate feedback on my ideas from Gore, and be guided by him at every turn. It was an incredibly inspiring experience.

TSH: Let’s talk about some of the top music on this body of work. Firstly, ‘Bicycle’ – the track resonates so infectiously. What were your intentions as you fleshed this piece out?

Benjamin: This is literally the singular moment in the entire movie where there is a sense of hope and freedom for our two main characters. Putting that into context: Lockhart is plagued with a childhood trauma he feels responsible for, and has channelled those energies into driving himself ruthlessly up the corporate ladder. Now he is unexpectedly in a strange environment with a broken leg, trying to fulfil what should be a simple task, were it not for the mysterious unfolding of the reality of his new environment. Hannah, is a girl in a woman’s body - a mysterious, fragile muse, with a kind of deceptive innocence. She has also gone through childhood trauma she can’t recall, and has been in the confines of the castle for as long as she can remember. So here there is a beautiful moment in the film where, just for the sheer adventure of it, they take a bike ride together away from the castle - Hannah pedalling, Lockhart precariously balancing himself on the back. The way it is shot and the energy of the cut gives the audience a moment of uplifting reflection and the score needed to support that emotion. I used rising melodies played by a full string orchestra to project a sense of hope, and driving harp and cascading piano figures to drive the physical energy of the scene. Gore often spoke to me about the concept of a ‘bicycle with the chain off’, not just literally as in this scene, but also in the sense of unrelenting inevitability the characters feel as they hurtle through the unimaginable truths of this place - the lack of control. So, this bicycle cue also had to reflect the hidden subtext of this bicycle ride, and that happens in the second half of the track, where the harmonies get darker and the orchestration moves into the lower strings.

TSH: ‘Clearly He's Lost His Mind’ is harrowing and daunting. What sort of ideas did you have in mind to capture such energy?

Benjamin: This cue is heard over a sequence of scenes where Lockhart is first briefed on his mission at the beginning of the movie. The setting is an elevator and then a stark boardroom, the photography and performances always gives the feeling of silent confrontation, perhaps the atmosphere every day in a high powered financial corporation. You hear the voiceover of a letter being read by Pembroke, the company’s CEO Lockhart has been tasked to bring back to New York, diagnosing his new view of the human condition. At the end of the letter Lockhart is asked what he makes of the letter: “clearly he’s lost his mind” is his response. Gore and I spent a lot of time together honing this particular cue, getting the exact degree of erosion of reality that is communicated in Pembroke’s letter, together with the stark tone of the scene’s setting. We chose strange mono synths that slide between notes, dark strings and cold harmonics as the sound world, and there are very subtle hints of Volmer’s theme in the string harmonics, which echoes the setting in which the letter was written.

TSH: What was the experience like in collaborating with Mirel Wagner on the album closer ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’?

Benjamin: Mirel is a wonderful artist, with such an evocative sound - she has a kind of strength and vulnerability intertwined in her vocals. Gore approached her to sing an acappella rendition of the classic Ramones song for the movie’s first trailer, but with a totally different energy from the original. Almost like an anthem for the patients at Volmer’s wellness centre, maybe even an anthem for modern society, the way 24 hour news, the advent of disorientating ‘fake news’, social media ‘curated reality’, relentless corporate advertising etc - can create a feeling of disconnect from the world - a form of sedation almost. Her first take was the one we used in the trailer - it was perfect, so we were done pretty fast with the recordings. So almost for fun she also did a version of the full song with guitar, and it was beautiful. We decided to turn it into a full track for the album.

TSH: Do you still feel that your job is to try to find ideas that surprise the director, in the right direction?

Benjamin: There’s always that first moment with any director where you play them your ideas for the very first time, and the ideal outcome is they feel you have engaged with their vision, the tone and emotional intent of the movie, and set up real potential for story development through the score, whilst also leaving some unanswered questions. If you can pleasantly surprise them whilst doing all those things, with an approach they might not have expected, it brings another layer to the storytelling, which is normally a good thing to shoot for. The bottom line is, whenever you start a new movie score - it’s always a blank sheet of paper. Each movie demands something completely musically bespoke and unique to exactly what the director intends, so that process of discovery of musical colour, theme, approach, energy is always something I try to approach as collaboratively as possible.

TSH: Your OST for ‘Summer in February’ received many kind words and was highly rated. What resonates with you most about this collection of work?

Benjamin: Alongside Beethoven, Stravinsky, Mahler, Bartok and many others, one of my absolute favourite composers is Vaughan Williams. This movie, set in Edwardian England, in one of the most beautiful parts of the country, was just crying out for a score that celebrates that lush and deeply emotive language which Vaughan Williams pioneered. Alongside Britten and Elgar, he really is the great hero of British music and in many ways I wanted to pay homage to him with this score. The narrative, which ultimately ends in real tragedy despite a pervading feeling of hope through much of the film, needed strong character melodies, and also a theme for the place - Lamorna, Cornwall. It’s a drama with a heightened sense of emotion throughout, a feeling of desperately wanting a resolution but never quite getting one. All of this motivated the score.

TSH: How inspiring is it to have someone like Hans Zimmer as a mentor?

Benjamin: Hans is without doubt the most generous artist I know, both personally and in terms of his ideas and concepts. Working with Hans is like walking into an high octane tornado of ideas and sheer force of creativity. I am constantly learning from him. With Hans, the project almost always starts with discovering the ‘big idea’ - what is it this movie has that no other film does, and how can that be manifested in music? How can that be done whilst living dangerously? How much risk can we take to maximize the creative reward? He has an uncanny ability to come up with an over-arching concept and musical ideas that will somehow be in such perfect sync with the movie's story, characters, subtext, rhythm, that it’s almost like that music has always existed for that particular movie. With Hans there is always the sense of a great musical adventure, driven by story, that elevates the film to a whole new level. Collaborating with Hans and being guided by him is a masterclass and I’m very grateful to count him as my mentor and good friend.

TSH: Furthermore, what were some of the highlights in working with Hans and Pharrell on the excellent ‘Hidden Figures’ film?

Benjamin: It was such a huge honour to be a part of this incredible movie: the opportunity to collaborate with incredible artists, creating a score that supports such an important story is truly something I will always treasure. To collaborate with Pharrell means truly examining a creative idea, no matter how challenging it may be. He looks beneath the surface of a creative dilemma, whether it’s a chord progression that doesn’t quite add up, or a story point that hasn't yet found the perfect musical analogue, and he goes inside, takes a walk. As a result, he makes the most difficult creative decisions feel easy, because they are truly considered. The end result is the music feels effortless, weightless, free, positive and joyful. He is a true artist - his love for his art shines through his incredible generosity of spirit. He has a way of making every interaction, whether it’s personal or creative, inclusive, benevolent and inspiring.

TSH: What do you miss most about London?

Benjamin: Mainly my family and friends there. Certain venues, museums, art galleries and orchestras, but honestly I really do love living in LA. Apart from all the obvious benefits professionally (and the incredible sunshine), there is a certain feeling of optimism and openness which I feel has been lost from London in recent years, especially since the financial crisis (which the UK is still very much recovering from) and of course more recently Brexit. With the new art galleries and museums being opened around LA, I think it’s an incredibly exciting time to be a resident here. I love visiting London which I do so regularly for recordings, but I’m not sure I can truly call it ‘home’ anymore.

TSH: How much did you frustrate your piano teachers as you’d never practice the music they set you to learn?

Benjamin: A lot! But they were very patient, and I’m grateful for that. For me, I’ve always been more at home improvising and inventing on the piano than learning someone else’s music. As a kid I’d sit down for 5-10 minutes learning what I should be learning, but then discovering a chord sequence in the piece which was really intriguing, and then spending about 3-4 hours improvising around it, figuring out what was going on, trying to understand it and internalize it. I come from a family of classical musicians and my Grandfather Peter Wallfisch was a great concert pianist. I think as a kid it’s most natural to follow in the footsteps of those you are closest to and for a while I found myself deeply immersed in the world of classical music - not just as a pianist, but as a conductor. I’ve been completely obsessed with film music from the age of 6 (it helps growing up in the 80s during the incredible heyday of the Williams/Spielberg collaboration), and began writing my own little piece of music at a young age. I was a teenager when my piano teacher at the time Ronan O’Hora pulled me aside and basically said - ‘what are you doing trying to be a pianist? You’re a composer!’ From that moment onwards everything changed.

TSH: How is time spent for you when you’re not immersed within music?

Benjamin: I’m lucky enough to have a wonderful and incredibly patient wife and any moment I can spend away from the studio, it’s with her. We love cooking together, going for long walks on the beach, and we also both share a passion for photography.

TSH: What were some of the highlights as you attended the Golden Globes ceremony earlier this year?

Benjamin: It was such an honor to be nominated alongside Hans and Pharrell for our ‘Hidden Figures’ score, and I just felt very fortunate to be in the room with such an incredible group of actors, film makers and artists. I think a particular highlight was meeting one of my director heroes, JJ Abrams on the red carpet, and having the opportunity to speak with him briefly. Also seeing Meryl Streep’s powerful and moving acceptance speech. I’ve never experienced such potent energy in a room as she was speaking. Again, a real honor to be there.

TSH: Finally, heading forward, what sort of opportunities do you want to explore?

Benjamin: I try to keep my main ambitions simple, which are to write better and better music, become the best storyteller I can be, and to collaborate with film makers where there is a real creative synergy. I love being challenged by new genres and approaches and one of the most exciting things about being a film composer is you never know what’s next. So it’s all about making sure your craft is evolving, developing and improving, so you are ready for whatever might come your way.

Benjamin Wallfisch Ft. Mirel Wagner - “I Wanna Be Sedated”

A Cure For Wellness (Original Soundtrack Album)