#nigel nicholson

[freakingoutthesquares]

Russell: A very strange thing happened to me at Scarborough this year. Have you seen our album? There's a photograph of me dancing with some donkeys. Well, I was walking along the Scarborough beach thinking I was getting away from it all when, by pure coincidence, I happened to come across this scene. Me and the donkeys. I came across them shooting it. Because they did it with cutouts - I don't know if you've noticed that.

Pulp-on-Sea Words: Mark Edwards, Photographer: Nigel Shafran Taken from Arena, February 1996

In the first of Arena's snapshots of modern Britain, we go on tour with the common people.

There's a police horse pissing in the street outside The Ocean Wave restaurant. The un-mounted police who are standing around it have to step back hurriedly to avoid being splashed. The crowd of fans queuing to get into the Spa Theatre, Bridlington, cheer.

Last week they would have been queuing for The Good Old Days, starring Bobby Crush. Next week it will be Ice Fantasies. But tonight it's Pulp.

Bridlington council have already tried to ban the concert; now the fear that the band who sing Sorted For E's and Wizz will corrupt their youth has brought the Bridlington constabulary out in force. A mobile police command centre is parked out back. Mounted police roam the streets.

At the door, everyone is searched. About 20 Pulp fans are arrested. Meanwhile, backstage, two-thirds of pulp - singer Jarvis Cocker, guitarist/violinist Russell Senior, bassist Steve Mackey and drummer Nick Banks - are discussing their love of British seaside resorts.

"The irony of it", says Mackey. "Here we are saying how nice it is around here, and the council wants to stop us and the police are round here trying to bust us."

"They're in plain clothes," notes Senior, deadpan. "There's lots of rastas with little 'taches."

Steve: This side of the coast is where you went if your parents were a bit short on money - Skegness, Cleethorpes, Scarborough, Bridlington. Then if you had a bit more money, you went to Blackpool.

Jarvis: I only ever went to Blackpool once when I was a kid, and that was just because a scrap-metal dealer was going out with my mother and wanted to impress her that he had loads of money, so he took us to stay in a holiday flat for a week.

Jarvis: It was quite weird when I realised that I'd been to a roller disco here seven, eight years ago. In this place here. It was my girlfriend's birthday. I like staying off-season.

Steve: There's a bit of a pathos to the town, isn't there?

Jarvis: I remember walking along the front, and there were all like, these big plastic ducks from some fairground ride, only they were all kind of huddled underneath the pier to stop them getting too much crap on. It just looked weird. The hotel we stayed in, we had the whole floor to ourselves so we could run around the corridors and mess about.

Steve: All the things like clowns' faces look grotesque off-season when it's all grey and raining.

Russell: It's like a Scooby Doo episode - the haunted fun fair that's all shut down. Your out-of-season resort has got that to it.

Jarvis: Or there's bingo and there's only two or three people playing. It's a bit reminiscent of some of our early gigs, actually. They had that kind of out-of-season air to them.

Russell: ...end of the pier, falling into the sea...

Nick: My best holiday was Butlin's at Skegness. My grandma was taken ill. My granddad said: "Well, we can't waste a week's holiday." So my grandma was shovelled off into hospital and I took her place. I was about 11. I was running round Butlin's on my own.

Russell: A bit like Jack Nicholson, were you?

Nick: No, there were other people there. It was just my granddad, though. Not my parents.

Steve: You didn't see these two little twin girls down the corridor, did you?

Russell: The other thing about Butlin's was the swimming pool. It had this glass side, and in the restaurant downstairs you could see the people in the pool. It was like a big aquarium. You could see birds and that.

Russell: A very strange thing happened to me at Scarborough this year. Have you seen our album? There's a photograph of me dancing with some donkeys. Well, I was walking along the Scarborough beach thinking I was getting away from it all when, by pure coincidence, I happened to come across this scene. Me and the donkeys. I came across them shooting it. Because they did it with cutouts - I don't know if you've noticed that.

Jarvis: I remember my sister going on this roundabout in Skegness. She spent all her pocket money on going on it three times in a row straight after having dinner, then she got off and threw her sausage and chips up... and then I knocked out this scrap man, who was courting me mother. I didn't mean to. We were playing Crazy Golf and I don't think I'd played it before. Because I'd seen it on telly that you swing when you play golf... and he was stood behind me. I cracked him right on the top of the nose and knocked him out. I was trying to drive it down the fairway.

Jarvis: They are good places. The good thing about them is that, unlike other bits of the coast, the Yorkshire coast is quite undervalued. Quite a lot of it is unspoilt.

Russell: Actually, it's totally crap.

Source & transcription: Acrylic Afternoons

[dontdenymeshakespeare]

Christmas & Birthday Book Haul

My 2022 Christmas and Birthday Book Haul

As always, I combine these two lists because my birthday is two days after Christmas. They are in no particular order The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Volume Four, 1929-1931, edited by Nigel Nicholson & Joanne Trautmann Volume four of Virginia Wolff focuses on Wolff’s correspondence with Ethel Smyth and the book The Waves. The Circus Train by Amita Parikh Lena Papadopoulos has never found her…

[scotianostra]

January 16th 1936 saw the birth of Michael “Chalky” White.

Born in Glasgow, Michael was the son of Victor White, a glovemaker and merchant, and his wife Doris, a property developer and businesswoman, both from eastern European Jewish immigrant families.

White was educated in Switzerland and at the Sorbonne in Paris and after working as a Wall Street runner in New York in the fifties, he took an interest in theatre, spending five years as assistant to Sir Peter Daubeny at the World Theatre in London.

In 1973, White produced the original Theatre Upstairs production of The Rocky Horror Show, and went on to produce the film version The Rocky Horror Picture Show in 1975.

He was executive producer on The Hound Of The Baskervilles in 1978 and also wrote an autobiography called Empty Seats.

His former girlfriend Lyndall Hobbs said in an interview aout him "Michael had an appetite for life that was unmatched in my opinion. A unique man who put on hundreds of shows and truly was a theatrical pioneer."

Michael White was the hidden celebrity of his age, and one of its greatest party-givers, counting Mick Jagger, Kate Moss – who presented him with that Olivier award – Anna Wintour, Yoko Ono and Jack Nicholson among his closest friends

One of his biggest earliest West End successes was with Barry Humphries in Housewife, Superstar! at the Apollo in 1970. And in film he produced the hilarious Monty Python and the Holy Grail and groundbreaking and excellent, The Comic Strip Presents, starting from Channel 4 television’s opening night in 1982. No other producer had as sure a nose for the comedy zeitgeist and no other tuned in like he did. It has been said that  he never produced anything he did not want to see himself.

Hec was a much loved man but prone to the excesses of life, White said he loved everyone and had no enemies, even though he felt he had been treated badly over the Rocky Horror film rights; he signed away his share, he cheerfully admitted, in a druggy haze.

White was declared bankrupt in 2005 – being a compulsive gambler did not help – shortly after suffering the first of several strokes in Los Angeles. He downsized from his Notting Hill mansion to a one-bedroom apartment. The work stopped, but his zest for life in the fast lane continued on crutches and at times a wheelchair.

It's said that there was nothing dull about anything he did. Even his flops were spectacular.

White got married twice: first to the model and designer Sarah Hillsdon in 1965, and then to Louise Moores in 1985. Both marriages ended in divorce, and between them his partner was the film director and producer Lyn all Hobbs.

White was the subject of a documentary 'The Last Impresario', which followed his exuberant life mingling with the A-list in London and featured interviews with famous friends and colleagues. In 2014, he received the Special Award at Britain’s Olivier Awards, honoring his lifetime achievements. By this time he already survived two strokes and was confined to a wheelchair, this didn't stop him enjoying his night,m as seen in the final pic with Nigel Planer and Kate Moss.

Michael Simon White died of heart failure on 7th of March 2016 and was buried at Westwood Memorial Park Westwood, Los Angeles County, California, USA.

[nervousfestlove]

Cornelia Nicholson, a Tennessee reporter, was recording a segment when her boyfriend, Riley Nigel, popped the question.

http://dlvr.it/SvJJRz

[diegodeanna]

Beverly Hills 3D Mapping Show 2023 from NewMedia Creative Tech Studio on Vimeo.

The pioneering company in introducing video mapping and dome projections in Europe has done it again. For the first time NewMedia introduces the naked eye 3D technique in video projections. Until today it was only used on LED screens such as Times Square, but NewMedia took video mapping to another level. And in the best canvas: the iconic tower of the Beverly Hills City Hall. The show can be seen every night from 6pm to 10pm until January 1st. 3D content, +73 million pixels, 240,000 lumens and surround audio. The perfect formula for one of the most beautiful Christmas shows you can see this year in the world. #HolidaysBH 

Credits Client: Beverly Hills City Hall General Production: NewMedia Creative Technology Studio Idea & Concept: Carolina Comas Garcia & Diego De Anna Creative Direction: Bruce Ferguson, Shaun Madgwick & Carolina Comas García Production Director: Diego De Anna Creative Producer: Horacio Bolz Production Assistant: Sergio Alvarez Engineering: Yuri Kostengo & Eugene Gruzdev Programing: Michael Telenchenko Mediaserver: Screenberry Equipment rental: Paintscaping Scaffolding and cover: Scaffold Solutions Unlimited & Stunning Signs 3D Animation Team: Shaun Madgwick, Emil Woodruffe, Nigel Upchurch, Bruce Ferguson, Mathew Crisp, Grant Nicholson, Bran Freeman, Timo Lenton Turtle Animation: Jer Bot, Johnson Martin, Robert Gutierrez Sound Effects, Mixing & Mastering: Chris Chetland & Huia Hamon Animation Production: Emma Wolf & Bruce Ferguson

Thanks to the University of Massachusetts Amherst Special thanks: Lili Bosse (Mayor of Beverly Hills), Teresa Revis, Sharona Nazarian, Laura Biery, Norman Khan (Utopia Worldwide), Hailey Buck and the Beverly Hills City

[la-semillera]

Georgia O'keeffe & Virginia Woolf

De niña Virginia Woolf era una gran aficionada a cazar mariposas y polillas. Con ayuda de su hermana y hermanos, solía embadurnar los troncos de los árboles con melaza para atraer y capturar a los insectos y clavar después sus cuerpos sin vida en planchas de corcho, con las alas extendidas y sujetos por alfileres. Su interés no decayó con la madurez y cuando descubrió que también a mí me gustaba cazar insectos, insistió en que saliéramos juntos de expedición por los campos de Long Barn, la casa que mi familia tenía en Kent, a tres kilómetros de Knole, donde había nacido mi madre. Yo tenía nueve años. Una tarde de verano mientras peinábamos las altas hierbas con nuestras redes sin atrapar nada, Virginia se detuvo de pronto, y apoyándose en su bastón de bambú como un salvaje descansaría sobre su azagaya, me preguntó: «¿Cómo es ser niño?». Yo, sorprendido, repuse: «Bueno, Virginia, ya lo sabes. Tú también has sido niña. Yo no sé cómo es ser tú, porque nunca he sido mayor». Fue la única ocasión en que conseguí sacar lo mejor de ella, dialécticamente. Creo que intentaba reunir información para el retrato de James en Al faro, que estaba escribiendo en aquel momento, puesto que James era más o menos de mi edad. Me explicó que no le resultaba de gran utilidad rememorar su propia infancia porque las niñas no son como los niños. «Pero ¿de niña eras feliz?», pregunté. He olvidado lo que me contestó, pero creo que ahora sé la respuesta, ya que su infancia y juventud son casi las más documentadas que conocemos. Más que infeliz, tuvo una infancia problemática. Su madre murió cuando Virginia tenía trece años y su hermanastra cuando tenía quince. A los veintidós perdió a su padre y dos años después a su hermano Thoby. Otra hermanastra suya estaba trastornada. La propia Virginia, ya desde bastante joven, sufrió períodos de depresión aguda e incluso enajenación mental. Sus hermanastros abusaron sexualmente de ella cuando todavía era demasiado joven para entender lo que ocurría. Sufrió, pues, una serie de calamidades que podrían haber conducido a una juventud profundamente traumática. Pero Virginia era valiente, con una fuerte capacidad de recuperación y una gran iniciativa. Tal como muestran sus primeras cartas y diarios, mejor que otras recopilaciones posteriores, Virginia se desarrolló de forma bastante normal y aunque no le importaba el éxito social, tenía facilidad para hacer amigos y desde edad muy temprana demostró el impulso de recoger por escrito todas sus experiencias. El mismo día que salimos a cazar mariposas me dijo: «En realidad nada ocurre hasta que se describe. Así que tienes que escribirles muchas cartas a tu familia y amigos y llevar un diario». El dolor se aliviaba yel placer se intensificaba al dejar constancia escrita de ellos. 

Virginia nació en Londres el 25 de enero de 1882; era la tercera hija de Leslie y Julia Stephen. Tanto su padre como su madre habían estado casados antes y ambos aportaron a la unión hijos del matrimonio anterior. Las personas más importantes para ella durante la infancia fueron sus padres, su hermana Vanessa y su hermano mayor Thoby. Julia era hija de John Jackson, que ejerció gran parte de su carrera como médico en Calcuta, y Maria Pattle. Como su madre, Julia fue una de las mujeres más bellas de su tiempo .De joven posó para Watts, Burne-Jones y su tía la fotógrafa Julia Margaret Cameron, a quien debemos una imagen de Julia claramente prerrafaelita, a menudo de una contención trágica y, como Virginia, siempre bella pero nunca bonita. Lo que más llama la atención de estos retratos es la serenidad de la mirada, como si la vida fuera una constante prueba de carácter que ella superara triunfalmente, pero tal vez esta impresión responda a la inmovilidad que exigía la fotografía en sus comienzos: no se puede mantener una sonrisa más de un instante sin que parezca falsa.        

- Nigel Nicolson,  Virginia Woolf. MONDADORI, 2002. Traducción: Cruz Rodriguez Juiz 

-  Eagle Claw and Bean Necklace

[reedienews]

Nigel Nicholson, Walter Mintz Professor of Classics & dean of the faculty, will be keynote speaker at the Foster-Scholz Club annual luncheon on the Saturday of Reunions!

For alumni who graduated 40 or more years ago, please join us for an elegant lunch and presentation of the Distinguished Service Award ceremony. Prof. Nicholson will discuss recent curricular changes, including the new HUM 110 syllabus, new distribution requirements, new majors, and the introduction of minors.

Learn more and sign up for Reunions ’19.

[immunitass]

It is said that women gossip more than men do. Perhaps they only do it better. Men just call it “networking.” What does tend to differ by gender is the content of gossip. Men are much more interested in who is up and who is down (hence sports-page obsession), as befits their predilection for competitive game-playing. Women tend to gossip more about social inclusion and moral alignment-who’s in and who has merit. What Darwin called sexual selection–the search by females for good male genes, and by males to advertise their quality–drives men toward competition and a single-minded focus on instrumental action. It drives women toward the dynamics of intimacy, emotions and social relations.

Nigel Nicholson

[msclaritea]

"...Benedict Cumberbatch is no stranger to rock stars. He’s friends with Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, who scored The Power Of The Dog, and recounts their awkward first meeting.

“[Radiohead producer] Nigel Godrich and [Last Night In Soho director] Edgar Wright came to see me in Hamlet,” remembers Cumberbatch of his celebrated stage run at the Barbican in 2015. “They came backstage afterwards and we had a nice, long chat.

“I said to Nigel: ‘I’m a massive Radiohead fan, I don’t suppose any of the boys would want to come and see some Shakespeare?’ So Jonny and Thom [Yorke] came one night and afterwards we talked backstage. I was really nervous because it hadn’t been a great performance, so I was looking at the ground all embarrassed. But so were they – and Thom was muttering: ‘Yeah, we’re really big Sherlock fans…’ There was all this shifting around, all looking at our shoelaces. It was so weird!”

Cumberbatch, it turns out, is quite good at name-dropping. Apart from his brush with “the Radiohead boys”, he tells us about being accosted by Ted Danson at the Oscars (“he just went bananas”), bumping into Buzz Aldrin (“a sweet man”), surfing with Flea (“another famous musician”) and getting the seal of approval from Jack Nicholson (“he just looked at me, raised his eyebrows and cheers’d me from across the room”)..."

Read the rest online

[thecoleopterawithana]

When he wanted to, John could be an avid reader, and he decided to read every book in the house. In the afternoons we sat by the pool and read quietly. John became obsessed by two books Tony King had given him as gifts, Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Nigel Nicholson’s Portrait of a Marriage, which Tony said would remind John of his marriage to Yoko. John loved the Thompson book, a seamy study of a drug-involved journalist investigating the underbelly of America, and became obsessed with the notion of starring in a film version of the book. On the other hand Portrait of a Marriage really disturbed him. The book was an account of the fifty-year marriage of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson, both of whom were bisexual and continually unfaithful to each other, yet were able to evolve a relationship of great depth and longevity despite the incompleteness of their marriage. John was very distressed by the theme of sexual incompatibility in the midst of great emotional attraction and the fact that no matter how hard one tries, a marriage may always remain incomplete.

In May Pang’s Loving John (1983).

-

[My profound gratitude goes to @eppysboys, who’s going through this insightful book and took the time to bring this gem to my attention.]

-

Regarding Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

It was later adapted into a film of the same title in 1998 by Terry Gilliam, starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro who portrayed Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo, respectively.

The novel lacks a clear narrative and frequently delves into the surreal, never quite distinguishing between what is real and what is only imagined by the characters. The basic synopsis revolves around journalist Raoul Duke (Hunter S. Thompson) and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo (Oscar Zeta Acosta), as they arrive in Las Vegas in 1971 to report on the Mint 400 motorcycle race for an unnamed magazine. However, this job is repeatedly obstructed by their constant use of a variety of recreational drugs, including LSD, ether, cocaine, alcohol, mescaline, and cannabis. This leads to a series of bizarre hallucinogenic experiences, during which they destroy hotel rooms, wreck cars, and have visions of anthropomorphic desert animals, all the while ruminating on the decline of both the "American Dream" and the '60s counterculture in a city of greed. 

The preface quotes Samuel Johnson: "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." The quotation alludes to the protagonists' profuse drug use in escaping the coarse realities of American life; passages detail the failed counterculture, people who thought drug use was the answer to society's problems. The contradiction of "solace in excess" is thematically similar to The Great Gatsby. Thompson posits that his own drug use (unlike Timothy Leary's mind-expansion experimentation drug use) is intended to render him a mess; that he is the poster boy of a generation of "cripples and seekers..."; their erratic behaviour depicts the restless failure his generation feels. Throughout Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the protagonists go out of their way to degrade, abuse, and destroy symbols of American consumerism and excess, while Las Vegas symbolizes the coarse ugliness of mainstream American culture. [Source]

I've seen through junkies, I been through it all / I've seen religion from Jesus to Paul / Don't let them fool you with dope and cocaine / No one can harm you, feel yer own pain

LADD: What happened to the in-quotes “revolution”?

JOHN: Not the physical revolution, but the whole game that was going on? [pause] I think, in one way, all of us were under a slight illusion that we might… Maybe it wasn’t an illusion, and maybe had we pushed harder, we would’ve gotten what we wanted, but I’m not sure we – anybody really knew what we wanted. We knew we didn’t like what was happening, but nobody knew quite what – what it was that we wanted. ‘Cause we’d never had it.

— Interview w/ Jim Ladd. (October 10th, 1974) 

[John talking about waking up from the dream that was the idealism of the 60s as a metaphor for waking up from the dream of his own life]

-

About Portrait of a Marriage:

Vita Sackville-West, novelist, poet, and biographer, is best known as the friend of Virginia Woolf, who transformed her into an androgynous time-traveler in Orlando. The story of Sackville-West's marriage to Harold Nicolson is one of intrigue and bewilderment. In Portrait of a Marriage, their son Nigel combines his mother's memoir with his own explanations and what he learned from their many letters. Even during her various love affairs with women, Vita maintained a loving marriage with Harold. Portrait of a Marriage presents an often misunderstood but always fascinating couple. [Source]

The classic story of the relationship between Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, and a unique portrait of the Bloomsbury Group. The marriage was that between the two writers, Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson and the portrait is drawn partly by Vita herself in an autobiography which she left behind at her death in 1962 and partly by her son, Nigel. It was one of the happiest and strangest marriages there has ever been. Both Vita and Harold were always in love with other people and each gave the other full liberty 'without enquiry or reproach', knowing that their love for each other would be unaffected and even strengthened by the crises which it survived. This account of their love story is now a modern classic. [Source]

Even though I have not read this book, I can’t help but wonder if the assessment that the marriage was “incomplete” in the absence of sex and/or monogamy was perhaps not a feeling expressed by the participants, but rather a projection of John’s own anxieties. 

John was very distressed by the theme of sexual incompatibility in the midst of great emotional attraction and the fact that no matter how hard one tries, a marriage may always remain incomplete.

The phrasing of the issue is so on point, that despite May’s developed emotional intelligence, these ideas appear to me as having been expressed by John himself (whose indulging in deep introspecting often made him quite apt at identifying his feelings).

It’s just handy to fuck your best friend. That’s what it is. And once I resolved the fact that it was a woman as well, it’s all right. We go through the trauma of life and death every day so it’s not so much of a worry about what sex we are anymore.

— John Lennon, interview w/ Jonathan Cott for Rolling Stone: Yoko Ono and her sixteen-track voice. (March 18th, 1971)

It’s a plus, it’s not a minus. The plus is that your best friend, also, can hold you without… I mean, I’m not a homosexual, or we could have had a homosexual relationship and maybe that would have satisfied it, with working with other male artists. [...] It’s the same except that we sleep together, you know? I mean, not counting love and all the things on the side, just as a working relationship with her, it has all the benefits of working with another male artist and all the joint inspiration, and then we can hold hands too, right?

— John Lennon, interview w/ Sandra Shevey. (Mid-June?, 1972)

[hms-chill]

ok i really want to start reading but i have absolutely no idea where to start do you have any recs?

Oh man, it completely depends on what you want to read!

Poetry:

I just responded to an ask and listed like 10 of my favorite poems, but more generally:

- Badger Clark: queer cowboy poet; his work is really rhythmic/lyrical and tends to be about General cowboy/Western things

- Wilfred Owen: gay WWI soldier who trained as a pastor; his love poetry is gorgeous and his war poetry is haunting

- Langston Hughes: queer Black writer; lots of poems about race and Harlem (the Black neighborhood of NYC)

- Phillis Wheatley: Black enslaved person; Wheatley was the first woman published in America and her stuff tends to basically say ‘hey look I’m just as smart as a white person maybe we should have equality’

Contemporary fiction:

- I’m loving Sarah Gailey’s work right now, they’ve got two fun gay vaguely Wild West ensemble pieces (Upright Women Wanted and River of Teeth) and a fun magical California noir one (Magic for Liars)

- Tamora Pierce is an author I grew up on and am getting back into; she’s got tons of series about lady knights and lady spies and girls in fantasy in general

- the Six of Crows duology by Leigh Bardugo is a super fun, gay, incredibly diverse heist series (good old fashioned doing crime for money)

- Nottingham by Anna Burke is a lesbian retelling of the Robin Hood myth

- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon is about an autistic boy who wants to be an astronaut and needs to find out who killed his neighbor’s dog (it’s also about family, and how much love we can give each other, and how to find new ways to love each other when old or ‘normal’ ones don’t work for us)

Classics

- I’m a slut for The Hobbit not gonna lie; it’s rambly and sometimes slow but it feels cozy somehow

- Les Mis is a dense motherfucker but it was also a pretty fundamental book in getting me into social justice

- Jane Austen in general is fantastic; I’m a huge fan of Northanger Abbey in particular because it just makes fun of trashy Gothic lit

- on the topic of Gothic lit, Dracula is really worth the read. You can’t get the full story or the right vibes from any other medium.

- Frankenstein is also worth the read. Shelley knew what was up.

- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Hurston is in dialect, which can take a bit to get used to, but it’s SUCH A GOOD BOOK

- A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is so painfully gay it was used as evidence in his sodomy trial. If you can, get your hands on the uncensored version for maximum gay.

Nonfic

- Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicholson is about his parents’ polyamorous relationship(s), including his mom’s relationship with Virginia Woolf

- 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time To Write by Sarah Ruhl is a fun collection of 100 short essays about theater, patenting, and life

- This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpan Faust is a bit slow, but it’s a look at the way the American Civil War changed our ideas about death and it made me want to study history

Plays (these got away from me a bit, sorry)

- No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre is about three awful people trapped in a room together. Maybe not the play to read in quarantine but a damn good play.

- Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, adapted by Sarah Ruhl. A play version of the book Woolf wrote about how much she loved her girlfriend, it uses lots of Woolf’s original language and is so fucking gay and beautiful

- Hamlet by Shakespeare. What can I say; I love this funky lil depressed gay and his cute nerd boyfriend. Macbeth and The Tempest are also great.

- A Sunday Morning in the South by Georgia Douglas Johnson needs a trigger warning for racial violence, but it’s one of the most chilling things I’ve ever read in my life. It’s about a a Black family in the Deep South in the early 1900s, it’s pretty short and it’s so horrifyingly good.

- Trifles by Susan Glaspell is about a murder investigation, and more deeply about women protecting each other.

- Tea by Velina Hasu Houston is about four Japanese women in a small town in Kansas in the 1960s and how they find common ground and community.

- Language of Angels by Naomi Izuka is a vaguely supernatural one about a girl who dies in rural Appalachia and the way she haunts the classmates involved.

- Slaughter City by Naomi Wallace is about worker’s rights both historically and in the modern meat packing industry; it’s also got some really cool supernatural elements

- In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play by Sarah Ruhl is about the invention of the vibrator, and more generally about intimacy and sexuality/sexual pleasure.

- M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang is a subversion of the white savior trope and a commentary on the effeminization of Asian men, based on a true spy story.

[et-iterum]

[Virginia’s] friendship was the most important fact in Vita’s life, except Harold, just as Vita’s was the most important in Virginia’s, except Leonard, and perhaps her sister Vanessa. If one seeks a parallel to Vita-Harold, one can find it only in Virginia-Leonard, although one must admit differences, for Virginia was sexually frigid and Leonard was not homosexual. Their marriages were alike in the freedom they allowed each other, in the invincibility of their love, in its intellectual, spiritual and non-physical base, in the eagerness of all four of them to savour life, challenge convention, work hard, play dangerously with the emotions — and in their solicitude for each other. How well do I recall Leonard’s look as he watched Virginia across a sitting-room to see that she did not grow tired or overexcited, caring for her much as Joseph must have cared for Mary, for their relationship was Biblical. There was no jealousy between the Woolfs and the Nicolsons, because they had arrived independently at the same definition of “trust.”

— Nigel Nicholson on Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, Portrait of a Marriage

[elizascharlesdanceblog]

Charles Dance: how common

Charles Dance: 'the audience feels cheated if you don't be honest about yourself'

Nigel Farndale12:15AM BST 28 Oct 2007

Army officers, worthy medicos, louche aristos, and now a donnish C.S. Lewis in 'Shadowlands' – when casting directors need 'a toff actor', Charles Dance is top of their list. It's all pretending, the secret plebeian tells Nigel Farndale, and he loves it. Portrait by Joss McKinley

Given that Charles Dance is an actor, it shouldn't come as a surprise that his manner off stage is quite actorly. Yet somehow it does. I suppose it is because he is often cast as the reserved, taciturn, patrician type, while, in person, he is tactile and garrulous. Sitting on a sofa in his dressing-room at the Wyndham's Theatre, London, he makes big theatrical, off-the-shoulder gestures, taps the wood of his dressing table – the superstitious actor – and leans forward to touch my knee occasionally, to emphasise a point. Moreover, he punctuates his anecdotes with 'darlings', 'sweethearts' and 'dears'.

Physically, he looks taller and more athletic than seems decent for a 61-year-old. He doesn't dress his age, either: his 6ft 3in frame looking rangy in faded jeans, T-shirt and heavy black boots. His hair may be thinning and becoming as pale as his skin, but his face is still strong boned, his hooded eyes still flinty. Intellectually, you suspect, there is not as much depth there as he likes to think there is, but he is friendly and engaging. Like many in his profession, he enjoys having a whinge about the actor's lot.

Don't get him on the subject of dressing-rooms, for example. He has just been touring the provinces before opening in the West End this week – 'the foreplay before the penetration,' he calls it, rather alarmingly – and the dressing-room he had in Cambridge was dark and subterranean. This one is windowless and has a fan whirring, but at least it is freshly decorated and all the light bulbs around the mirror are working. 'That's thanks to Madge,' he says. 'I was doing The Play What I Wrote here in 2002, just before Madonna did a show here and she paid for the dressing-rooms to be done up. But the funny thing was?…' he bounds up from the sofa and marches across the room to the shower area; here he describes two diagonal slashes with his arms, '…?they put crime scene tapes over the shower so no one else could use it before Madge.'

The play he did before that was Long Day's Journey into Night at the Lyric on Shaftesbury Avenue. 'In the dressing-room were little sachets of vermin poison. Pretty bloody awful. There was a mattress in there with a piece of fabric that looked like Monica Lewinsky's old dress on it. Half the lightbulbs had gone. I was there for 12½ weeks doing a play that was not a bundle of laughs, so I bought some ready-made curtains and a throw and some lightbulbs and insisted they had the room painted. They brought colour swatches of white, white or white – so I chose white.'

In his latest play, the first major revival of William Nicholson's award-winning Shadowlands, Dance plays C.S. Lewis. Although Nigel Hawthorne, on stage, and Anthony Hopkins, in the Oscar-nominated film version, are hard acts to follow in that role, Dance proves himself worthy. His struggle as the middle-aged Lewis to accept that he has fallen in love for the first time, only to lose his new wife to cancer, is mesmerising. 'It is about love in the presence of pain and suffering,' Dance says. 'C.S. Lewis believes pain is a tool. Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world.'

Presumably getting in the right reflective mood beforehand, while sitting in a pleasant dressing-room, is crucial to this performance? 'Your mood can be affected by the state of your dressing-room, and by the day you have had, but hopefully that doesn't affect the performance.'

I ask whether he can relate to the religious aspects of the play: C.S. Lewis, the devout Christian, agonises over the faith that has let him down. 'Not at all. I am an agnostic. I'm not bothered about not knowing. Religion is at the core of the play, but we pretend. It's my job. If I'm playing a murderer I don't murder people.'

And the academic aspects, the donnish world of Oxford? 'I am not an intellectual. I am reasonably intelligent, but not intellectual.' I only ask because he often plays men who are in professions that others find inspiring: Army officers, doctors and so on. When he prepares for such roles, does he ever wonder whether, by comparison, being an actor in greasepaint is somehow not quite a proper job for a grown man? He seems affronted by this question and answers in a loud and indignant voice. 'Some might think it's a job for children, but it's not! We do work very hard!'

Slightly taken aback, I say that I didn't mean to sound rude. I reframe the question in terms of the Samuel Johnson quote about every man thinking meanly of himself for not being a soldier. 'I see; well, I like pretending to be all those things. I like pretending to be someone in the military, but whether I could do it I don't know. That's why I am an actor.'

I tell him I went to see his Coriolanus years ago, the ultimate role for an actor with martial aspirations. 'London or Stratford?' The Barbican. 'Good. I was reasonably happy with it by the time we reached the Barbican.' It was a powerful and memorable performance, I say. Perfect casting.

The irony, though, was that Coriolanus is the patrician who is condescending towards the plebeians, and Dance's background is plebeian. He is the son of Nell, a former parlour-maid.

Dance returns to his actors-are-just-pretending theme: 'I just pretend. I was able to observe the aristocracy at close quarters because my mother worked for them. She certainly worked for much posher people than we were. Housekeeping. One observed it and absorbed it. My mother married above her station. She came from the East End. I'm not sure what my father did, because he died from a perforated ulcer when I was four, but I think his family had been confectioners. And I think he had been an engineer. A little further up the social scale than my mother. He used to do the occasional music hall recitation.'

Despite this background, when Dance started out in acting a fellow actor noted that he was 'a toff actor' as opposed to 'a peasant actor'. 'It's because I have a patrician face,' Dance says. He does indeed. But it is also to do with his bearing. As an actor he has a commanding presence and a certain grace. He can convey emotions with the flicker of a muscle, with the slightest movement of the eye. Two of his more polished aristocratic roles are the Earl of Erroll in White Mischief and Lord Raymond Stockbridge in Gosford Park. When he was filming the latter he told the director, Robert Altman, that he was in the wrong place, upstairs with the toffs; he should be downstairs with the servants. Altman said: 'Not with that face, Charles.'

It might be that he learnt his patrician bearing from observing his step-father, Edward, a civil servant. He had been the lodger. He drank lots of tea and did the pools. 'A fairly solitary men who seemed to have no friends or family, but quite decent. He looked after my mother. She would say, "When your father died I had 10 bob left in the world, dear".'

His mother's wasn't a happy life. Nell nursed Edward through cancer and then died from a heart attack six months after he did, in 1984, the year The Jewel in the Crown was making her son's name. They used to row a lot, mother and son. 'Terrible emotional scenes. She was a very emotional woman.'

I ask if she was socially insecure. 'She came from the servant class, which was not the same thing as the working class. The servant class is right in the middle. I'm not sure I believe there is such a thing as a middle class: it is either working class on the way up or aristocracy on the way down. She also, of course, was a lifelong Tory voter, as most people from the servant class were; you can't possibly be governed by your equals. You have to be governed by your betters.'

His brother is 10 years older, a retired naval officer who lives in France. 'He had been a difficult adolescent and my mother thought joining the Navy would make a man of him. So she marched him off to the recruiting office when he was 15, a decision my mother regretted until the day she died. I remember sharing a bedroom with him before he left for the Navy and there were books of poetry around the place and he wasn't a bad draughtsman either. All that had to go. My mother learnt from her mistake and allowed me to indulge in poetry and the arts.'

Charles Dance had been studying graphic design and photography at Leicester Art School when he got the acting bug. Steve McQueen and Peter Finch had inspired him to become a screen actor, while 'Brian Rix dropping his trousers in a farce made me want to prance about on stage'. He abandoned his course in favour of acting lessons from two retired thespians, Leonard and Martin. They were gay, but quiet about it, as society demanded at the time.

What was he like at that age? 'When I was 19, I was long-haired, going on the Aldermaston march, shagging everything in sight. The march was more fun than anything. I'm not especially political.'

Was he narcissistic as a young man? 'Not really, not until way after my teens. Mid to late twenties, possibly. I look around now and see guys who are fantastic looking and then I look in the mirror and think this is a very odd face. It doesn't bear close scrutiny. Bags under the eyes, thinning hair, I don't see a handsome man when I look in the mirror. Never have done. It is not an easy face to photograph, which is tricky in a film career unless you are in the hands of an astute and clever director of photography. I wear clothes quite well and am reasonably fit and have a good body, but I don't think I am particularly handsome. When people first started describing me as being that, at the time of Jewel in the Crown, I was surprised, but then I learnt to embrace it, a little too fondly.'

At the time, he was described as the English Robert Redford. I suggest it must have given him confidence to be told he had matinee-idol looks, even if he couldn't see it himself. 'Confidence is something I have had to acquire. This profession is littered with people, who, by their nature, are more introvert that extrovert. I can have my flamboyant moments, but I am, by nature, an introvert. I acquired confidence by giving myself severe talkings-to from time to time. I found that aspect of Coriolanus – the opening scenes where he is confident, strutting, all "I'm f---ing wonderful, and powerful", harder to act than the more vulnerable moments later in the play when it emerges that he is a mummy's boy.'

He thinks that early on in his career he may sometimes have been cast because of his looks – but not any more. 'Now I am getting more interesting roles. Mr Tulkinghorn in the BBC adaptation of Bleak House, for example. Or Ralph Nickleby [in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby]. He is a complete s---. Evil, but interesting. Whereas there are only so many ways you can play a romantic leading man. You know you are there for a reason.'

He described himself earlier as 'shagging everything in sight'; just how successful was he with women? 'Not that successful. You know how it is when you are a young man: lots of groping most of the time, nothing serious.'

For 23 years he was married to Joanna, a sculptor. They have grown-up children: Oliver, who works in film, and Rebecca, who is in publishing. Then, in 2004, they divorced. Dance's name has been linked to one or two actresses and models since, but he nevertheless worries that he might end up alone. He prefers not to think about it. Indeed, he feels uncomfortable with this conversation, not least because his ex-wife was door-stepped by the press at the time of their divorce. 'I'd rather you avoided the subject,' he says, 'but I can't blame "the business" for the breakdown of my marriage. I don't want to talk about it. If I had a choice in the matter I would say "please don't go into all that", but if you want to insert something about it I can't stop you.'

I note that actors tend to be liberal by inclination, that this is partly to do with the bohemian life they lead: the touring, the intimacy with fellow cast members, the abandonment of self-consciousness. In Dance's case, that includes appearing nude. He has no qualms about it, as he demonstrated recently in the film Starter for Ten. He turned up on set for that scene already naked. When the wardrobe assistant offered to cover him up, he said: 'No need, darling'.

'Well, if you've done it once, after that it doesn't bother you,' he says now. 'To continue the painting analogy, painters have brushes and paints, we have this.' He sweeps his hands the length of his body. 'The audience feels cheated if you don't open up and be honest about yourself. I feel I have cheated myself if I don't go that far. Having stuff in reserve is to cheat.'

Similarly, he is not fussy about what he appears in, so long as the money is good. He has done a number of forgettable Miss Marple-type dramas on television and memorably wore fishnets and a red rubber micro-skirt for the Ali G movie. 'I'll do anything for money,' he says. 'People talk about choices. What choices? The choice is to work or not to work.'

I suppose he has an additional choice in that he can also write, produce and direct. Notably, he wrote, produced and directed Ladies in Lavender, a film about two sisters, played by Dames Maggie Smith and Judi Dench, living on the Cornish coast, who take in a Polish stray just before the Second World War. 'There was a day when I was stupid enough to try to direct Judi. She came up with a line that was a bit sentimental for her and I knelt down and touched her knee and said: "Judi, it is a bit Celia Johnson-ish." And she said: "How dare you? And get your hand off my knee.".'

The film grossed more than $30million. 'But none of it found its way into my pocket. It all went to the f---ing distributors and sales agents. I see the returns. I get "0000" next to my name while they are coining it in. It was a bugger to get the financing together for that film. I had to ask Judi and Maggie to defer fees and they sweetly said "of course, darling", even though they knew deferment usually means deferred indefinitely.'

He slips on a black polo-neck and scoops up a packet of cigarettes from among the greasepaint pots. He is going to pop outside for a quick fag. As we walk through the theatre we talk about Shadowlands and its funereal themes. He says he would have loved to have gone to George Melly's funeral. 'He had a cardboard coffin which people wrote funny things on, like, 'You owe me 20 quid, George".'

As we stand outside the stage door, in the drizzle, I ask if he has thought about what form he would like his own funeral to take. 'God no,' he says, lighting a cigarette. 'Too busy trying to live, for f---'s sake.'

'Shadowlands' is at the Wyndham's Theatre, London W1, until 15 December; www.shadowlandstheplay.com, 0870 950 0925

source: telegraph

[sgreffenius]

Speech enforcers at Reed College and Middlebury College

Speech enforcers at Reed College and Middlebury College

Events at Reed College in November 2016, then at Middlebury College in March 2017 made me think more about illiberal sentiments at liberal arts colleges than I usually do. I graduated from Reed College several decades ago, taught politics at Carthage College, a small school in Wisconsin a few decades ago, and now live in New England, not far from Middlebury. Compared to other regions of the…

[redandfranticfeelings]

its that time of year again when i start posting and repeatedly reblogging my massive birthday art wishlist!!

now that i'm 18 going on 19 i'll also take tasteful nsfw stuff of certain characters and ships (specifically the fictional channel awesome characters i have listed), but only if you're my close mutual and in the age range of 18-24, and obviously not of like, minors or real people of shit like that. if you consider this just DM me and i can explain further

the things i want most are italicized! note that the reason i have so much listed is just in case some people only know one or two of these things, but still wanna send me something. this isnt obligatory i just rlly like listing my interests anyway lmao

general:

pretty much any of my ships

any of my kintypes or comfort characters

anything based on my fanfictions

the amanda show, specifically pertaining to penelope taynt

anything related to my autistic headcanons, if you are autistic as well

gorgonzola from chowder

the mighty b!

bojack horseman, especially beatrice, diane, or princess carolyn

tak from invader zim (possibly shipped with dib platonically or romantically)

calvin and hobbes

amethyst x peridot

youtube:

anything nostalgia critic related honestly, particularly him w the other characters i love

hyper fangirl!! especially anything playing with my own headcanons with her

devil boner (especially with hyper)

benny the assassin (especially with hyper, platonic or in polyam with hyperboner)

anything with the aunt despair/uncle lies and their screwed up family (or the bum family) is good too

dr coquette tease and/or dr cochram block from the nostalgia chick, preferably as a ship cuz im gay

todd in the shadows

the cinema snob

jacksfilms

jenny nicholson

total drama:

my total drama ocs, mel and randy

any mel ship, especially mel x izzy, mel x my friend's oc charlotte, and randy x izzy!

anything related to total drama do over, my friend���s old fic (my dA demographic will remember it, others may not)

gwen x zoey

brick x courtney

alejandro x heather

noah x owen

phineas and ferb:

candace flynn (preferably shipped with with jeremy, vanessa, or stacy)

anything from my future AU including my fankids

rodney’s son orville, as in my headcanons for him

monty x vanessa

vanessa doofenshmirtz

dexters lab:

anything pertaining to the astronominov family

lalavava

mandark x dee dee

lalavava and dee dee (platonically or romantically)

my deedark fankids

musical theater:

avenue q

if/then

something rotten! (especially nigel bottom)

anything related to the 25th annual putnam county spelling bee

barfee x olive, or even them as friends

marcy x logainne, or even them as friends

leaf and logainne friendship!

the book of mormon, especially arnold cunningham, either shipping him with nabulungi, kevin, or both

arnold/nabalungi babies

mlp fim:

moondancer (especially shipped with twilight)

twilight being cute in general

pinkie pie x rainbow dash x fluttershy

homestuck:

davejade

jade/dave/karkat (but no jadekat please! just them both dating dave)

my davejade fankids (i dont think much of them anymore but i would still appreciate seeing art of them)

johnroxy

meenah x aranea

my les8ifins fankids (see above wrt davejade kids)

meulin x rufioh red or pale

damara x meulin any quadrant

porrim x latula red or pale

porrim x aranea any quadrant

my fantrolls

lynera skalbi

[cakane463]

📖 When #VirginiaWoolf left her house on the last day of her life on March 28 in 1941, she left behind a note to Vanessa Bell, her sister, and a note to Leonard Woolf, her husband.

The notes hinted that Virginia was going to kill herself but didn’t say how or where. Little did she realize that the river she planned to drown herself in would sweep away her body and prevent her friends and family from discovering what happened to her for three whole weeks.

After the discovery of her hat and cane on the bank of the nearby river Ouse, her family assumed she had drowned herself but had no evidence to confirm it.

A couple of news articles published during that time frame document the weeks her loved ones, and the world, spent waiting to find out what happened. In one article, published in the New York Times on April 3, Leonard Woolf is quoted as saying:

“Mrs. Woolf is presumed to be dead. She went for a walk last Friday, leaving a letter behind, and it is thought she has been drowned. Her body, however, has not been recovered.” The article confirmed Virginia was missing but states the police were not investigating her disappearance:

“The circumstances surrounding the novelist’s disappearance were not revealed. The authorities at Lewes said they had no report of Mrs. Woolf’s supposed death. It was reported her hat and cane had been found on the bank of the Ouse River. Mrs. Woolf had been ill for some time.” Although there was little doubt that Virginia had killed herself, there was no body, no evidence, no funeral and no closure for her friends, family or her fans. In a letter written by Virginia’s brother-in-law Clive Bell, dated April 3, Bell reveals to his friend, Frances Partridge, that the family had hoped to find her alive but that hope had waned as the days went on:

“For some days, of course, we hoped against hope that she had wandered crazily away and might be discovered in a barn or a village shop. But by now all hope is abandoned; only, as the body has not been found, she cannot be considered dead legally.” Yet, according to a biography on Virginia Woolf by Nigel Nicholson, some of her friends, such as Nicholson’s mother Vita Sackville-West, thought it best if her body was never found and hoped it was instead carried out to sea so that her loved ones would not have to face it.

Three weeks later, some children made the gruesome discovery when Virginia’s body washed up near the bridge at Southease. On April 19, the Associated Press announced to the public “Mrs. Woolf’s Body Found,” and confirmed she had drowned herself. The article hinted that the ongoing war with Germany may have played a part in her suicide:

“Dr. E. F. Hoare, Coroner at New Haven, Sussex, gave a verdict of suicide today in the drowning of Virginia Woolf, novelist who had been bombed from her home twice. Her body was recovered last night from the River Ouse near her week-end house at Lewes…. Her husband testified that Mrs. Woolf had been depressed for a considerable length of time. When their Bloomsbury home was wrecked by a bomb some time ago, Mr. and Mrs. Woolf moved to another near by. It, too, was made uninhabitable by a bomb, and the Woolfs then moved to their weekend home in Sussex.” The coroner read a portion of her suicide note to the reporters, but misquoted it. The reporters printed the misquote in the article. The note did not mention the war but Virginia did state she was not well and felt she couldn’t go through another breakdown.

Virginia was later cremated and her remains were buried under one of the two intertwined Elm trees in her backyard, which she had nicknamed “Virginia and Leonard.” Leonard marked the spot with a stone tablet engraved with the last lines from her novel The Waves:

“Against you I fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death! The waves broke on the shore.”

Virginia’s suicide note to Leonard read:

“Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier ’til this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.” Sources: Nicolson, Nigel. Virginia Woolf. Penguin Group, 2000. Flood, Alison. “New Bloomsbury Archive Casts Revealing Light on Virginia Woolf’s Death.” The Guardian, 19 Mar. 2010, www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/19/bloomsbury-archive-virginia-woolf-death “Virginia Woolf Believed Dead.” New York Times, 3 April. 1941, www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0125.html

http://virginiawoolfblog.com/when-virginia-went-missing/