#soliloquy on stage rather than watching a person communicate

[ssaalexblake]

my favourite dw episode being written by moffat is just me trying to keep people who want to box me into a specific type of dw fan on their toes 

[delimeful]

taking the fall (2)

warnings: fear, injury, mild blood

-

It was Roman’s love of the arts that did him in.

He was loath to admit it, but Virgil had been right. He’d always been enchanted by the musical productions he’d seen on human teevees, always finding a spare moment to perch on a dusty shelf and take in as much as he could.

So, when he overheard a musical chorus while scavenging for extra paper from the apartment with the newly-moved-in tenant, there was simply nothing else he could do except to investigate further!

One trek and several hiding spots later, he’d found the perfect angle to eavesdrop on the human’s computer. Even better, once he was unpacked, the human was consistent. There were schedules and calendars and sticky notes all over his desk, and he adhered to them strictly, making his apartment the perfect place for Roman to borrow for their little community.

And if he happened to make a return trip and perch himself on the shelf above the human’s rolling chair at the perfect time to see whatever stage production the man was watching this time? That was nobody’s business but his own.

He certainly wasn’t about to tell Virgil, who seemed to get secondhand stress from Roman’s accounts of past riskier borrowing trips. The outie was more than accustomed to the dangers of living outside, but ‘human beans’ were a whole different story.

No, Hot Topic would never get the odd almost-longing that Roman sometimes felt when he saw the amazing things that humans could do. On the tiny laptop display, he could almost pretend those wonderful theatrical productions were actually done by people his size, that they could perform without worry of discovery or capture.

It was a combination of indulging such thoughts and knowing the human’s schedule back-to-front that made him so bold.

When Logan came home with an armful of art supplies, Roman was immediately intrigued, though he justified it as checking for useful materials to borrow. He spent that afternoon watching as Logan methodically glued, hammered, and painted wood into the shape of a miniature house-- no, a set!

It looked just like the stage for the most recent musical Logan had (unknowingly) played for him. Roman was enchanted, coming back every day between borrowing trips to see how more tiny furniture and stairwells had been carefully crafted with the help of a magnifying glass and precise tools. The set came together piece by piece, until it was as complete as any Broadway production.

And then, the downfall. It was during one of these little visits that he overheard Logan on the phone, reassuring whoever was on the other end that the ‘scale model’ was finished and ready to be brought in tomorrow afternoon. Roman had felt a tightening in his chest, and after probably too little time spent deliberating, he was settled.

He was going to stand on that stage, at least once.

It took some doing to cover his tracks-- Mari had been oddly antsy lately, and it had been making everyone else jittery as a result. He’d been playing up his own glittery-ness in order to  reduce the tension, and had volunteered to take another shift borrowing at 2B, the apartment with the snakes and the human that had been eerily perceptive lately.

It wasn’t lying, really. He would go borrow from there, just… after he’d made a quick stop to fulfill his newfound dream!

Logan always slept heavily until his alarm went off, so Roman felt no fear sliding down to the floor at the early hours of the morning. He remained alert, of course, throughout his entire trek over to the table that the human had spent so many hours hunched over, but as he predicted, there were no unusual sounds from the human’s bedroom.

From there, it was only a swift climb up with the help of his hook, and he left it nestled there in the wood, just in case he needed a swift getaway.

Finally, he was before it.

The strangest part about it all was the way that everything seemed to fit just about right for someone his size. He was used to cobbling together chairs and beds out of whatever material was at hand, repurposing anything and everything that came customized for humans.

These chairs were like real ones, human ones that fit together and had all their pieces, and Logan had been so meticulous about making sure everything was to scale that there wasn’t any awkwardness to sitting down on it. Overcome, he nearly sprinted up the model’s stairs to the bedroom terrace above it, flinging himself onto the bed-- perfectly matched up linen, pillows and pillowcases, just like a real bed-- and muffling his delighted squeak into his hands.

The instruments on the dresser were light and easy to grab, though Roman was disappointed to find that the ornate hand mirror didn’t have very high quality glass and was a bit hazy. The hairbrush seemed to be handcrafted, however, and Roman ran it through his own hair once, twice, immersing himself in an imaginary scene.

He had the dialogue mostly right after Logan’s obsessive rewatching of scenes-- pausing often to jot down set reference-- and he wasted no time in pacing around the room and ranting in a whisper, detailing an imaginary conflict in an aside to the audience. He mocked slamming the hairbrush down on the dresser, and turning, the anger drained from him, to walk to the terrace and look out longingly.

He hesitated.

In the scene, the character would be staring up at a night sky. In a play, the actor would be looking out over an audience hanging off their every word.

In reality, he was staring out at a world that was and always would be too big for him.

His soliloquy trailed off to bitter silence, and Roman backed up, shaking his head. He hadn’t a clue why he’d thought this would help him, rather than just rub his nose in what he couldn’t ever have.

Carefully, steps silent, he readjusted the bedding, removed a stray hair from the hairbrush, placed everything neat and right where he’d left it. He would leave no evidence of his presence, just like always.

When he turned around, he met the gaze of a human, standing only a few feet away bedecked in a bathrobe and fluffy unicorn slippers.

It was like Roman had been suddenly drenched by an icy downpour, his whole body going cold with shock. His muscles locked up, and even when the human took a step closer, he couldn’t seem to wrench himself free of the mental paralysis.

Talk about stage fright.

Normally a boon, his imagination was working against him now, spinning elaborate visions of what was to come. He’d been seen, and now not only would he be doomed to die by a human’s whims, but he’d also put every borrower in and around the building in danger. All borrowerkind, even, if this human was bad at keeping secrets.

“So, how are the proportions?” the human in question asked, leaning forward slightly with an excited glint in his eyes.

Roman blinked, befuddled.

“Are they to scale? You seem to be able to manipulate them easily, which bodes well, but I’m not sure the dining room chairs have short enough legs to make sitting at the table feasible…,” Logan trailed off, looking between Roman and the lower level of the model as though measuring him mentally. “Would you mind sitting in one?”

He reached out for something on the set, and Roman’s instincts seemed to kick back into high gear, sending him skittering back across the scaled-down room, grabbing his bag as he went. He remembered seeing a window cut into the backing of the room adjacent, there—!

Heart racing in his ears, he barely registered the human’s voice raised in alarm as he swung himself over the miniature window ledge. The landing jarred his bones, but he was still all in one piece, and that was good enough for him!

There were only moments before the human leaned around to see where he’d gone, so he wasted no time in sprinting to where the desk met the wall. Logan’s laptop charger trailed down in the small gap behind the desk, the closest thing he’d get to a rope down with his real hook on the other side of the table next to the human.

Logan seemed to be a bit slower than usual, since Roman managed to slide down out of sight before the human could move to even catch a glimpse of where he’d gone.

His hands stung slightly as he descended much faster than advisable, already trying to come up with his next step. All his entrances were higher up, but if he could get under nearby furniture, he could cut into the fabric and hide in the hollow underbelly until the coast was clear--!

The only warning he got was a barely audible click from above, and then his ‘rope’ gave out and he was in gut-churning freefall.

Roman fell for three fluttering heartbeats, just enough time to realize what was happening, and he hit the ground feet-first.

His right leg gave out with a dull crack, and the pain-- impossibly overwhelming-- reached him only an instant later. He bit down on his arm to muffle his cry, tears forming as the slightest shift of his leg sent ripples of agony through him.

Well. No longer in one piece, then.

He struggled to come up with a course of action as his head swam. His entire body had gone cold and sweaty, his vision darkening despite his best efforts to stay alert.

An enormous shadow fell over him, and his one last attempt to move was enough to finally make him succumb.

---

Logan allowed himself one very heartfelt swear, watching as the tiny person under his desk slumped over, limp and boneless.

This was not what he had expected when he’d shuffled into his living room to go make some celebratory coffee for managing to finish both the last touches on his latest set model and his ridiculously elaborate statistics midterm all in one night.

Perhaps he could have handled the situation better, but to be fair to him, upon spotting the miniature person, Logan had honestly assumed that he’d either started hallucinating, or had fallen asleep after all. He figured that if he was going to imagine such things, he might as well try to soothe his own concerns about any imperfections in the scaling.

The spike of fear and guilt that he felt hearing that tiny, muffled cry of pain meant that there was no way he was heading to bed anytime soon. He sent a few texts to Patton, informing him that he wouldn’t be able to bring the model to the theatre today and asking him to smooth over any ruffled feathers.

He was well aware that this was completely unprofessional-- he would surely be getting an interrogation from his friend later-- but for the moment, he needed to focus on more important matters.

From the injury he was sporting, the tiny person hadn’t landed on his back, so it would be alright to move him as long as he acted with care. Logan carefully slid a plastic folder under the stranger, muttering apologies when that tiny face crinkled up slightly even in unconsciousness. He lifted the folder up slowly and moved to the kitchen, where the first aid kit was stored under his sink.

From there, he quickly assessed the injuries he could see.

The leg was expected, and it seemed to be swelling rather severely. Unexpectedly, there seemed to be bleeding along the arm, and Logan had to retrieve his magnifying glass to see the injury in detail.

Upon closer inspection, the wound was in the shape of a tiny bite mark, indicating that the stranger had bitten down on himself to avoid screaming. Logan felt his heart sink a little further at the continued confirmation of the terror he’d seen in the stranger’s face before he fled. He’d really frightened the poor creature by moving so thoughtlessly.

He took a deep breath and pushed the feelings aside, flipping the lid of the first aid kit open. He could worry about potential reactions to his presence after he made sure the tiny stranger would at least wake up with less pain than before.

It was his fault this had happened, after all, and so he would do his utmost to fix all that he could.

[villainousshakespeare]

In The Timing

Tom Hiddleston/Reader

Rated E 

Warnings: Smut, Angst, *But in this chapter only FLUFFFFFF with a teasing mention smut 

Chapters: 4 of 4 + Epilogue

After a horrible first date, you end up at a pub filled with University students. You are feeling rather old and sorry for yourself, until a blond haired Adonis strikes up a conversation with you. Obviously he is too young for you, but what could a little flirting hurt?

@yespolkadotkitty @hopelessromanticspoonie @nonsensicalobsessions @caffiend-queen @thecutestlittlebunbunfairy @vodka-and-some-sass @arch-venus25 @devikafernando @devilish–doll @hiddlesholic @just-the-hiddles @kellatron55 @myoxisbroken @wrathkitty @shae-annelore @kellatron55​ @from-hel-i-with-love​  ciaodarknessmyheart

Chapter 1 - First Meeting

Chapter 2 - The Morning After

Chapter 3 - Years Later

Chapter 4 - Time’s Up

Epilogue

"Ladies and gentlemen, you know my first guest as Loki the God of Mischief and The Night Manager. His new movie,  In The Timing, is currently nominated for a slew of awards, including the Oscar for Best Picture. Please welcome back to the show Mr. Tom Hiddleston."

You smiled as Tom jogged out onto stage to thunderous applause. Or maybe "thunderous" wasn't quite right. Thunderous implied deep, and the cheers for your man were much higher in pitch, clearly spearheaded by all of the overeager women in the audience. You couldn't really blame them. In his monochromatic blue suit and leonine mane of hair, Tom was definitely scream worthy. Still, that didn't mean you wouldn't take great delight in teasing him about his status as heartthrob later.

The response to  In The Timing had been incredible, with glowing reviews and box office receipts that were much higher than expected for an independent romantic comedy. Now, with the studio making a push for it on the awards circuit even more people were coming out to see the movie that was your labor of love in more ways than one.

All of this was wonderful for you and Tom, as you were both receiving accolades and prizes for your disciplines, but it also meant an endless round of press junkets, talk show appearances, and gala screenings all around the world. Most of the weight of this, of course, centered on Tom's deliciously broad shoulders, but you had your own share of speaking engagements as well. To your amusement, he had insisted that the studio coordinate your schedules, so that you were promoting in the same city at all times. He had just gotten you back, he insisted. After seventeen years apart he was not going to spend one night separated from you if there was anything he could do about it.

You were only too happy to go along with this plan. The state of pure euphoria you had been coasting through your days in had come to a screeching halt the first time you were asked to get up onto a stage in front of a thousand people and answer questions about your process and the characters you had imagined. Only Tom, standing to one side of the stage like a proud and nervous papa watching his child win her first spelling bee had kept you grounded. Every time you started to falter, you would look over and see him practically speaking for you with his body language. It would make you giggle inside how earnestly he watched you, reacting to the questions with amusement or indignancy on your behalf. What did it matter, you realized, what anyone else thought of you, when the over grown ginger in the wings believed in you so completely.

That didn't mean, of course, that you would let him off the hook for the swooning fangirls. Someone had to keep his head from becoming too big to fit through the door.

"So, Tom," Colbert was saying as you focused on the interview, "I hear you've got a new picture out."

"I have," he answered with a smile, playing along with one of his favorite hosts. Between the Hank Williams duet and the Hamlet soliloquy, Colbert was right up Tom's alley.

"Yeah, I hear it's pretty dreamy. Or rather you are pretty dreamy in it."

"I don't know about that," Tom chuckled with humility, face going a bit red. "I don't know who would have told you such a thing."

"Oh, my female staff, my daughter, my wife..." Stephen deadpanned as the audience laughed. "What is it about this film that is so... I believe the word was "swoony"."

"Swooy? An excellent word. From the old English geswogen, meaning "in a faint"" you rolled your eyes as Tom pontificated.

"If you say so," Stephen laughed.

"I would say that it's the waistcoats, Stephen," Tom said with an impish grin. "They are rather constraining, depriving the wearer of appropriate oxygen. Hence the swooning."

"I see. Interesting. Now, this is a romantic comedy. Normally those are not big Oscar bait movies. Oscars tends to go more for tradgedy or history... the feel good tropes.

"Exactly," Tom laughed along.

"So what is it about this movie that makes it so appealing to awards voters? Is it the waistcoats?"

"Maybe," Tom smiled. "Maybe it's the waistcoats."

He was so charming, you thought you could feel the adoration from crowd washing towards the stage. He would be on cloud nine tonight, you knew. Tom feeded off of the energy of a crowd in a visceral way. It wasn't ego, exactly, or at least not just. It was the validation of his hard work, and the knowledge that he had shared something with an audience that had touched them on a personal level, made them experience something as a communal group.

With a smug smile you wondered if he would be able to wait until you were back to your hotel tonight before sharing that excitement with you, or if you would have to find a closet or some other private room to slip into for half an hour or so. Over the last few months there had been a number of times when, sometimes for no other reason than a look you had thrown at him, Tom had siezed you by your wrist and dragged you to some semi-secluded spot to have his way with you. Hell, once or twice you had even been the one to push him into an alcove and reach for his zipper. Your relationship all those years ago had been marked by insatiability for eachother, and if anything the years apart had only added to the ferver to touch, taste, and fuck eachother senseless.

"Along with the costuming, which is brilliant - bless our wonderful costuming department - I think the thing that sets this movie apart is its writing," Tom was saying, throwing an adoring glance in your direction. "It really gets to the heart of what it means to be in love. How we, as human beings, with all our foibles and idiosycrosies can be our own worst enemies in the persuit of our heart's desire."

And seriously, how could you not love this man to distraction? 

"The course of true love never did run smooth," Colbert threw in.

"Exactly. Shakespeare said it best as usual. But do you know which character that was?"

"Helena, Midsummer Night's Dream," Stephen said uncertainly.

"Close, very close," your walking Shakespeare anthology smiled sugly. "Hermia. Act I, Scene 1 I believe."

"I'll take your word for it," Colbert surrendered to the master. "So, you're nominated for a slew of awards - a BAFTA, a SAG, an Oscar... is there anyone that you are really gunning for? It's the Oscar right?"

"Well, sort of," Tom hedged.

"What do you mean sort of?"

"I am enormously flattered to be nominated for all of them, of course, and so excited for the film to be recieving so much love. But the award I'm most excited for isn't an acting award for me, or even Best Picture. It's the Adapted Screenplay Award."

"And why would that be, Tom Hiddleston?"

"Well, as I mentioned before, the writing, particularly the dialogue, is truly the star of this picture."

"Uh-hu. No other reason?" the host prodded. "I know you're a private man when it comes to your relationships..."

"With reason, you have to keep a bit of life for yourself."

"Of course. So, what do you want to share with us Tom?"

"Well, it just so happens that the writer of this particular movie is someone very close to my heart," he smiled a dopey smile that made your stomach do filp-flops.

"How close exactly are we talking?" Stephen asked, also shooting you a look.

"Well, Stephen," Tom grinned, "it just so happens that this particular author, this beautiful, brilliant, compassionate woman, has recently become closer to me than people may realize."

"Really?" Stephen grinned back at him. "You know, it just so happens that I see her standing there in the wings. Shall we invite her out here?"

"Well..." Tom threw you a smile, eyes saying that he knew he would be in trouble later, "I really do think that she deserves to be the one sitting out here discussing the movie. She is the reason it is a success after all."

"What do you think ladies and gentlemen?" Stephen asked the audience as you glared at both of them. "Shall we bring her out?"

As a chorus of enthusiastic yeses assailed your ears, you vowed that you would make Tom pay for this later, possibly ususing the pair of fur lined cuffs he didn't think you knew he had purchased when you were strolling through the village the day before. Resigning yourself to your fate you sighed and nodded you head once to their entreating glances.

"Ladies and gentleman, she is the writer behind In The Timing Victoria Thomas," you still were not used to hearing your pen name spoken out loud as often as it was, or responding to it. You were going to have to do something about that soon, you thought.

"That is her pen name, indeed," Tom said as you walked slowly out on stage, glad that you were dressed in a chic Calvin Klien dress that flattered your figure, "I hope you will all join me in welcoming the newly minted Mrs. Hiddleston!"

  It had been a complete suprise. You and Tom had been walking through Central Park, Bobby frisking around you as he chased invisable prey. Your fingers were linked together, and Tom had at least somewhat learned to shorten his long stride to make up for your significantly shorter legs. After a bit of wandering, you had made it to the Shakespear Garden near both Delacourt Theater and Belvedeare Castle, and Tom had pulled you down beside him on a stone bench.

  "This garden," he told you conversationally, "has every flower the is mentioned in Shakespeare's plays planted in it."

  "That's so interesting," you teased, even though you did find it interesting, you loved to give him a hard time over his love of all things Shakespeare.

  "All of those flowers," he went on as though you hadn't spoken, "and not one of them is close to being as beautiful as you are."

  "Tom," you sighed dreamily, snuggling against his chest. Honestly, how had you gotten so lucky?

  "Darling," he said, a nervous tone creeping into his usually confident voice. "I wanted to ask you something."

  "What's that?" you said lazily, enjoying the smell of his skin as he kissed the top of your head.

  "Would you look at me love?" he asked.

  You lifted yourself off of his chest to see an anxious expression to match his voice.

  "I know that we have not been back together for long," he began, hands figiting, "but I think you know how much I love you."

  "I do," you smiled at him. "I love you too."

  "And we have, if you think about it, known eachother for almost two decades."

  "I suppose."

  "Given that, and that I don't think I will survive parting from you again," detaching himself from you, Tom dropped down onto one knee and your mind went blank. "My darling love, will you marry me?"

  You gaped at him in stunned disbeleif, unable to move or speak as the sun glinted off of his copper curls. As your eyes met his you saw a look of hope begin to shade into panic, and realized that you had not given him an answer. Just as you were wondering how mouths and tongues worked, Bobby barked loudly and jumped up onto the bench beside you, breaking the spell that you had been under. You burst out laughing, and after a moment so did Tom as Bobby licked at your face.

"Upstaged by my own dog," he grumbled good naturedly, some of his confidence coming back as you were beaming at him. "  B ut come, darling, ' what sayest thou then to my love? speak, my fair, and fairly, I pray thee  .'"

  "I say yes," you smiled at him as he rose to spin you off your feet in a circle. "Of course yes, Tom!"

  Two days later, in a quiet ceremony attended by just imediate family flown in secretly and his ever vigilant puplicist Luke, the two of you were married in the same spot by your fiesty dirctor Susie, who had obtained her liscense online for the occasion. It was peacful, and even if one or two persistant pedestrians had been able to snap a quick picture of you in your ice blue dress and Tom in a perfectly tailored Ralph Lauren suit, Luke had been able to keep any whisper of it out of the press. As gossip control went, it was a minor miracle.

"So, you two crazy kids tied the knot, huh?" Stephen asked as the crowd finally died down.

"Yes," Tom said quickly, looking a bit nervous. "Though as you may be able to tell by the expression on my beautiful bride's face, we hadn't made the announcement public yet."

"Oh that's okay," Colbert waved it off, "they won't tell, will you guys?"

The crowed laughed at the notion of it staying a secret after such a public announcement.

"Well, congratulations Tom, and to your lovely wife, my condolences."

"Oh, I think Tom's the one who's going to be needing condolences soon," you joked, and Tom gamely winced, though his eyes said he wasn't sure how much you were joking.

"So, why did you agree to marry such an obvious fixer upper?" Stephen asked you. "Couldn't you find anyone good looking?"

"It's a struggle, Stephen," you sighed and the audience laughed, as you had married, by your own reconning, the most handsome man on the planet. "But, well, I'm in love you see."

"Ah," he nodded sagely.

"Yup, I'm in love with Bobby, and the only way to get the dog was to say yes to the man."

"My evil plan worked, you see," Tom chimed in, laughing his endearing ehehe

"You used the dog to get the woman? That's next level planning!"

"Well you see, Stephen," Tom said, staring into your eyes with an intensity that made you forget you were on national TV, "I have been in love with this particular woman for seventeen years. And if it had taken adopting an entire three ring circus to finally get her to marry me, that was what I was going to do. Fortunately for our home, one adorable Spaniel was all it took."

"Seventeen years? Really?" Stephen looked back in forth between you, a wealth of unanswered questions in his eyes.

"Indeed. She led me quite a chase, but I wore her down in the end."

"I have a feeling there's a story here," the host said, in huge understatement, "but I'll wait until your next visit for that."

"I'm afraid that story is not suitible for television," Tom demured.

"Well, can you at least give any advice to the fans out there? Some help for the lovelorn?"

"Well, in the end," he said, giving it his usual deep thought, "all I can say is it's all in the timing."

"And that, my friends, is what we call a segue. You can catch the movie in theaters now."

Tom glanced over to you and winked with a cocky grin, and you thought of all the things that had gone between you, the years and passion and the love. You loved this man with everything you had. He might be insufferable, he might occasionally push you beyond your comfort level, but you knew in that moment and every moment that you were loved with a fierce, constant heart. It was the happy ending you had always dreamed of. And it was yours.

                       Notes:        

Thank you all so much for reading. It has been a wonderful story to write.

[princelestatdelioncourt]

Character Name

Lelio (DiCraprio)

Status

Lover, usually the son of either Pantalone or Dottre.

High in stature, but usually brought low by the hopelessness of      their infatuation.  - Rudlin      

Member of Innamorati – Rudlin

Costume

The latest fashion.  Males sometimes dressed as young soldiers      or cadets. -Rudlin

Flowing and somewhat over fashionable in a color scheme that is very      feminine with a great deal of panache.  – Tim Shane      

Gentry-class dress, nice looking, modest, cute.  Usually with a      heart motif  -Little

Origin (History)

The aristocracy of the Italian Renaissance courts amused themselves      with a form they called commedia erudita based on the plays of      Terence and Plautus, for example Calandria by Cardinal Bibbiena      which, like Shakespeare's later Comedy of Errors, is based on      Plautus' Menaechmi.  As the professional improvised comedy      looked to extend its range it seemed to have borrowed the Lovers from the      amateur form.  - Rudlin

Physical Appearance

Had to be young, well set up, courteous, gallant even to the point      of affectation - in short, a blade and a dandy.  - Duchartre

Young and attractive – Rudlin      

The lovers and wooers of the Commedia dell'arte were always dapper      and engaging and just a trifle ridiculous. - Duchartre

Mask

No actual mask, but heavy make-up.  Mascara and beauty spots      for both sexes.  The make-up in fact becomes a mask enabling      performers to play the role well into middle age, or even beyond - Giovan      Battista Andreini, son of Francesco, played Lelio until he was 73.        Vizard or loup could be worn for disguise, usually made of black      velvet.  This was a normal accoutrement for society ladies when      walking to a rendezvous and could be half- or full-face.  But since      it has not expression it does not count as a mask in the Commedia sense,      although it does provide plenty of plot potential, enabling, for example,      Columbina to attend rendezvous in her mistress's place.  - Rudlin      

Occasionally wore a mask that just covered eyes or a loop mask. -      Laver

Signature Props

Handkerchief. -Rudlin

Stance

They lack firm contact with the earth.  Feet invariably in      ballet positions, creating an inverted cone.  Chest and heart      heavy.  They are full of breath, but then take little pants on      top.  Sometimes when situations become too much for them, they      deflate totally.  – Rudlin

Legs tightly together, usually with only one foot firmly planted on      the ground, and the other crawling upward like he has to urinate      badly.  The groin is usually inward and protected with the upper      torso bent over it. – Tim Shane

Walk

They do not walk as much as tweeter, due to the instability of      their base.  First the head leans the other way to the body      sway.  Then the arms have to be used, one above the other, as a      counterweight.  -Rudlin

Light, fluttering on tip toes, arms extended with wrists loose      allowing the hands to flap like wings.- Tim Shane

Poses

1.) On toes in various ballet positions with wrists bent down.

2.) Anything that might look Vogue.

3.) Whenever      sitting, legs crossed in a feminine  manner.  Head always sits      very delicately on the frame of the body.

4.) Never stand up      right, always with a hip cocked out to expresses “attitude”.

5.) Mimic poses of female lovers

6.) Back of hand      against forehead, other arm outstretched.

Movements

Actors would use the same dancing masters as the well-to-do whom      they were parodying in order to point up the ridiculousness of exaggerated      deportment.  Movement comes at the point of overbalance leading to a      sideways rush towards a new focus, with the arms left trailing      behind.  Stop at the new point (usually the beloved or some token      thereof) before (almost) touching it.  The Lovers have little or no      physical contact.  When there is any, the minimum has maximum      effect.  - Rudlin

Light and fluttery. – Tim Shane

Gestures

Foppish- Tim Shane

Often while holding a handkerchief or flower, etc. in the leading      hand.  The arms never make identical shapes.  Because of their      vanity, they frequently look in a hand mirror, only to become upset by any      minor imperfection which is discovered.  Even in extremis they are      always looking to see if a ribbon or a sequin is out of place.  A      button found on the floor or a blemish in the coiffure equals        disaster. - Rudlin

Speech

Language:  Tuscan, making great display of courtly words and      baroque metaphors.  Well read, knowing large extracts of poems by      heart (especially Petrarch).  They speak softly in musical sentences      - in contrast with the zanni.  Their sentences are often      flamboyant, hyperbolical, full of amorous rhetoric.  By the end of  the 17th Century in Paris, the Lovers spoke French.  - Rudlin

Light and every sentence is like a sigh, adding occassional sighs in      between words and speaking in crescendos and decrescendos.  –      Shane

Animal

Butterfly.

Relationships

When it comes to women, his words are the only thing that shows      that he might have any interest.  His body language, actions, tone,      all contradict any infatuation he may have with a female.  The only      reason why he would express an interest in a female is because he loves      the idea of love.  However he seems genuinely more in love with      himself and other male characters before he is in love with a woman.        – Shane

They [the lovers] relate exclusively to themselves - they are in      love with themselves being in love.  The last person they actually      relate to in the course of the action is often the beloved.  When      they do meet they have great difficulty in communicating with each other      (usually because of the nerves).  And they relate to their servants      only in terms of pleading for help.  The Lovers love each other, yet      are more preoccupied with being seen as lovers, undergoing all the      hardships of being in such a plight, than with actual fulfilment.        Consequently they frequently scorn each other and feign mild hatred; they      rebut, despair, reconcile, but eventually end up marrying in the way of      true love when the game is up and they know they cannot play any      more.  After a quarrel the male may try a serenade to win back      favour.  This will be (dis)organized by Zanni:  he employs      musicians who are drunk or spends the money on something else and has tu      use tramps off the street.  The result is total chaos, but in the end      the serenade is beautifully played and sung because everyone miraculously      turns out to be good at their job after all.  - Rudlin

Relationship to Audience

Extremely aware of being watched. Play with the audience for      sympathy in their plight. Occasionally flirts with spectators.    -Rudlin

Frequent Plot Function

Indispensable.  Without them and their inability to resolve      their own problems, there would be no function for the zanni, no      struggle between the ineffectuality of youth and the implacability of      age.  The lovers are never alone on stage - they always have someone      with them or spying on them. - Ruldin

Their function was to depict a state of mind rather than to paint a      personality.  - Duchartre

Characteristics

Whatever the names of the lovers in the commedia dell'arte, they      had no other trait as 'characters' than that of being in love. -      Duchartre

Three, like primary  colors:  fidelity, jealously and      fickleness.  They are vain, petuluant, spoilt, full of doubt and have      very little patience.  They have a masochistic enjoyment of enforced      seperation because it enables them to dramatize their situation, lament,      moan, send messages, etc.  When the Lovers do meet they are almost      always tongue-tied and need interpreters (i.e. a zanni and/or a servetta)      who proceed to misinterpret their statements, either through stupidity      (Zanni), malicious desire for revenge (Brighella) or calculated      self-interest (Columbina).  Their attention span is short like young      children’s.  The fear that they might be nobodies keeps them      hyper-animated.  Their element is water:  they are very wet      creatures indeed.  The females are more passion-wrought and energetic      than their male counterparts.      

The lovers exist very much in their own world- and in their own      world within that world.  Self-obsessed and very selfish, they are      more interested in what they are saying themselves and how it sounds than      in what the beloved is saying.  They are primarily in love with      themselves, secondarily in love with love, and only consequentially in      love with the beloved.  What they learn, if anything, from the      tribulations of the scenario is the need to reverse these priorities.      

They do, however, come off better than most other Commedia      characters:  there is no viciousness in them, and less to be      reproached for – except vanity and vapidness, which, given their parents,      they can hardly be blamed for.  They represent the human portential      for happiness.  – Rudlin      

The lover had to play with dash and be able to simulate the most      exaggerated passion.  - Duchartre      

“If then true lovers have ever been crossed It stands as      an edict in destiny. Then let us teach our trial patience,       Because it is a customary cross, As due to love as      thoughts, and dreams, and sighs, Wishes, and tears – poor  fancy’s followers.” 

Shakespeare

Lazzi

1.) Very afraid of women, and fears them as if they are monsters      that want to rip him apart.

2.) Hypochondriac, feigning illness whenever possible.

3.) Very sensitive and is reduced to tears with the slightest stimulus or agitation.

4.) Likes to get lost in his thoughts and drop off into long soliloquies of rhyming poetry until silenced or knocked unconscious.

5.) Anything gay (as in happy).

6.) Talks with his handkerchief, occasionally making a      scene out of picking it back up again.

7.)  Being deafly afraid of women’s cleavage.

8.)  Accepting a compliment      and then adding to it and polishing it himself.

[phantoguy-blog]

Lakeland

alright guys, it’s time for my first post ever. basically i wrote this story because i live in a town with needlessly strict parking laws and i wondered, “why?” 

4772 words and some are good. enjoy. 

***

“Hey, Smitt. Come look at this.”

Mr. Walter Smitt did not want to see whatever his campaign manager, Councilman Daniel Armstrong, was talking about. It was a hot day, and there was a rally that afternoon, and Smitt wanted nothing more than to return to his thirsty viewing of the local news. But nothing seemed to be newsworthy that day except for a local accounting firm burning down, which would have no effect on the mayoral race apart from warranting the obligatory sympathetic tweet. Smitt, therefore, decided to go see Armstrong in the break room, but he elected to shamble through the door so as to convey to Armstrong that he was burdened by this demand.

“Oh, Smitt. Look at this.”

Armstrong, a man of about 5 feet 11 inches, was looking at the dining table, on which sat a piece of bread and a tub of butter. He wore an expression of brooding that rearranged his facial features into a configuration Smitt rarely saw.

“You want me to look at the table?” “No, the butter.” With this, Armstrong emphatically picked up the tub of butter and thrust it at Smitt. “See?”

“What?” But Smitt did not receive an answer: Armstrong simply smiled like a dog who suspected his owner had treats. Smitt laboriously raised his right eyebrow.

“Look at the brand,” said Armstrong as though watching Smitt unwrap a Christmas present “The brand name.”

Smitt squinted as dramatically as humanly possible and read the dish. “Land ‘O Lakes?”

“Yeah! Like the town! Lakeland!”

“Oh!” The town was, in fact, called Lakeland. Smitt, the mayoral front-runner, felt slightly ashamed for not noticing this buttery coincidence until now. “Oh. Very funny, Armstrong. I was in the middle of analyzing important data when you interrupted me.” “Analyzing important data” meant watching the news.

“Sorry,” Armstrong said. He clutched the butter tub in his hand for a moment, then got up from his seat and held it poignantly as though he was Hamlet and Smitt was Horatio. “You know, Lakeland is a lot like butter.”

Smitt’s face fell, because he realized he would now have to ask why Lakeland was like butter. He clenched his fist and asked, “Why is Lakeland like butter?”

Elated, Armstrong began to wax what to him was poetry. “Because it’s all, like, flat and the same, and it tastes kinda salty.” He paused, for dramatic effect. “But it looks tasty.” Sated, he punctuated his soliloquy by setting the butter dish down. It made a loud clack.

This is why I’m the candidate and you’re the manager, Smitt thought. As he walked back to his office, he continued to ponder his friend’s intellectual capacity. But he knew, despite his scorn for Armstrong’s less-than-ideal conversational ability, that Armstrong was not wrong. Lakeland was absolutely, like, flat and the same. Its biggest and only hill was in its cultural epicenter, Turmeric Park, which had a great stage atop a large mound of grassy land. The houses of Lakeland looked almost as though someone had copy-and-pasted them in great lines with some magical computer. There was a lot of grass, and where there was not grass, there was sidewalk, and where there was neither, there was road or dirt. It was not a town that any up-and-coming young professional would choose to migrate to (Smitt placed remarks like this in his “Things to say in the company of only private donors” vernacular).  

But the winds of change were coming to Lakeland and its population of 10,000. Signs were sprouting up in yards just like the flowers of Spring, and the signs sent many different messages at first, but now they were down to just two. Occupying the South and West sides of town were blue signs adorned with graphics of buildings and the message “VOTE November 6th Walter E. Smitt For A Better Lakeland!” On the North side of town, you would be more likely to see plain maroon signs with one white star at the top, with text saying “RE-ELECT Mayor Elliott Madison!” There was one such sign in a large flower-pot outside the accounting firm that Smitt was currently watching burn down on TV. He tried to catch a glimpse of the sign past the reporter who was currently blocking it, and saw one red corner, which suggested, much to his chagrin, that the blaze had not taken the sign.

The door opened. Smitt instinctively turned off the TV, hoping that the visitor would not discover his newfound schadenfreude for Richter and Sons’ Accounting firm. He was relieved to see that Armstrong, a man well-trained in the political art of not morally analyzing one’s boss, was standing in the doorway.

“Smitt, your rally’s in, like, an hour. Do you want to get going?” asked Armstrong.

“Yes. Yeah. Whose turn is it to drive?”

“I think it’s yours. I drove to the breakfast.” Smitt stared blankly. “With the union leaders.”

“Oh. Right. Ugh. It’s too hot. The van’s probably an oven right now and it’s too hot to drive.” Smitt’s official campaign vehicle did not have an air conditioning unit.

“Well, I guess I can drive to the rally and you can drive back,” Armstrong offered.

“Ok. But make sure you pick me up at Cedar & Chapel instead of the park. The voters don’t need to see the van.”

Armstrong looked solemnly in the direction of the parking lot. “Right.”

---

“We’re expecting a crowd of about 150 people today,” said Armstrong, nonchalantly reading emails from his phone as he drove.

Smitt smiled. “That’s one of the highest turnouts all year! I’d like to see old Madison compete with that. ...By the way, what’s Madison up to today?” “Dunno. I don’t think he’s, like, holding any rallies. Guy’s been mayor for so long, he probably thinks he’s got this in the bag already.” “If it weren’t for his army of churchgoing, wine-guzzling, high-horsing ‘community activists,’ he’d have been defeated a long time ago.” This remark, Smitt knew, squarely occupied his “campaign-ending gaffe” vernacular and should never be repeated in public under any circumstances. He scanned the van for recording devices just in case, but found none.

The two men took side streets to avoid being spotted, and pulled up behind the stage area in Turmeric Park. Armstrong looked at Smitt and nodded. “Go out there and give ‘em hell, Smitt. Remember to mention the parking situation. And give Madison a few knocks for me.”

“Right,” said Smitt. Armstrong gave him a firm pat on the arm, and with that, Smitt exited the van and made his way to the stage.

---

There was already a sizable crowd gathered. Some of them were holding signs that said things like “SMITT FOR LAKELAND” and “MADISON IS MAD, SON!” The latter slogan was one of Armstrong’s design.

Smitt could hear the crowd murmuring what he imagined were very complimentary things. The murmurs grew louder as he approached the steps to the stage, and then suddenly fell silent as he scaled them. Finally, when Smitt took the stage, the crowd’s voices grew to a mighty roar of pure zeal. Smitt beamed from ear to ear, raised his right hand, and gave an unassuming wave-- and with that one little movement, he immediately asserted his dominance over the crowd and guaranteed their consent, all while appearing as relatable as a 49-year-old businessman-turned-politician possibly could. “Thank you!” he said. It was like flamboyantly tuning an instrument before a concert. “Thank you!” This was the best part of Smitt’s job.

Smitt was not a natural-born politician. Though he would scarcely admit it to anyone whose last name was not Armstrong, he could not understand the people of Lakeland in the way that they understood each other. Lakelanders, as they were known, were a simple and quite homogenous people. They said a lot of words, but most of their communication was nonverbal and carried itself through ritual rather than rhetoric. They attended church every Sunday at one of Lakeland’s many churches, after which they would stop at one of Lakeland’s many restaurants for one of Lakeland’s many sandwiches. They travelled in packs of 3-8, depending on how many kids and/or friends they had, and fancied themselves quite intellectual and cultured but not to the extent that they ever mentioned this.

Smitt was not a religious person. He did believe that there was an omnipotent force that was currently guiding him, and only him, to become mayor of Lakeland, but this belief, if he ever expressed it out loud, was nothing short of a “campaign-ending gaffe.” He fancied himself an entrepreneur, who had recently moved back to his hometown of Lakeland after completing his MBA in order to found an advertising firm. When he travelled, it was in packs of 1-2, as he did not have a family and preferred to keep his friends far away. He never truly considered himself a Lakelander, though he had grown up there. And when he looked out at the adoring crowd before them, it was with a sharp twinge of sympathy, a sharper twinge of disdain, and a twinge of appreciation that was not particularly sharp.

But Smitt had a trick up his sleeve. He knew how to play his audience like the church organs they heard weekly. He understood, as much as any Lakelander, one of the fundamental problems with the town, and was ready to convince 150 average joes that he alone could fix it.

“Hey, Lakeland!” he said, which was as much a greeting as it was a statement. “Who’s ready for a change?!”

The crowd applauded sufficiently to indicate that it was, in fact, ready for a change.

“Yeah. Yeah! That’s what I like to hear!” Smitt liked to use crowd-pleasers he remembered from Monday Night Wrestling. “A year ago, when I first launched this campaign in Turmeric Park, I never thought we’d get this far. Now look at us!” More applause. “We’re still in Turmeric Park, but there’s more people!”

One more emotional appeal, Smitt thought. Then the big segue.

“This town is the greatest town in Upper West Perry County, Indiana, and we’re going to reclaim its former greatness together!”

A few seconds more of applause. The bait was now on the rod. Now to cast.

“You know…” The applause died down. “You know, I was just being driven here by my, uh, chauffeur, in our campaignmobile, when I ran into a bit of an issue.”

Smitt was dangling the rod now, almost taunting his crowd. He could feel the pressure build up, and it was exhilarating. He could barely move his hand, but ran it through his hair just to prove to himself that he could.

“Yeah? You all know what I’m talking about?” A quiet, low roar began to build up. “That’s right. That’s right. We couldn��t find a damn place to park!”

It was like someone had just set off a bomb. The crowd was sent into hysterics. I bet the guys at Richter and Sons’ Accounting Firm can hear us now, Smitt thought. And rightfully so. Smitt had just touched upon the single greatest grievance one could have with Lakeland: The parking.

“The streets were wide open, sure. Tons of places to park. Tons of places! But guess what the sign says? Guess. Guess.” Smitt knew, of course, that his constituents were physically too far away from him to hear their guesses, but he enjoyed riling them up all the same.

“‘No parking between 12AM-8PM. That’s right, 12AM-8PM! I guess you have to pay a fine or get your car towed or something if you dare to commit the grave offense of parking there.”

Smitt paused for a round of applause from the crowd of revolutionaries, then continued.

“And it’s not just limited to the street behind the park. We can’t park in front of our houses. We can’t park in front of our houses! I have to move my car two streets down-- and even then, you can’t keep it there for more than 8 hours or guess what, it gets towed and you’re paying for it!

“Now, my good friend Elliott Madison seems to think he can take advantage of our money, our cars, even our schedules. He’s been in the mayor’s office longer than some of us have been alive. But today, we’re telling him that he’s wrong. He does not own us. He does not own our houses, our cars, our families, or our lives, and on the 15th, we’re going to show him what we’re all about.  

“We are not about taxes. We are not about inconvenience. We are about freedom-- especially when it comes to parking.”

Smitt beamed from ear to ear and took a few steps back, watching the movement he had created. Not all Lakelanders were the same bible-thumping populace. Some were too young to know what church was, some were too old to know what church was, and some did not go. But all Lakelanders were united in their hatred for the town’s parking policies, which were simply nonsensical. For instance, on some streets you could only park from 8-10 AM, while on others, there was no parking from 2-6:30 PM and  7-11 PM but anytime else was fair game, and these were just scratching the surface. Not only were the laws ridiculous, but the punishments were even worse. At best, you’d get a ticket; at worst, your car would be towed and you would get a ticket on top of that. If there was one good thing you could say about Mayor Madison, Armstrong always mused, it was that he enforced the law like no one else. One could get away with a little shoplifting here and there, and the police would almost certainly let you off for going a couple miles over the speed limit. But failure to comply with parking rules for more than a few minutes at the time would result in certain punishment. Madison had created a special task force charged with patrolling the streets for illegal parking, and punishing the offenders to the fullest extent of the law. Almost any Lakelander has had the experience of watching a siren-equipped tow truck go barreling down the street in search of the next unfortunate victim’s car, and merely shaking their head with a solemn sort of empathy. The townspeople wanted the quintessential essence of life in small-town Middle America: To do whatever the hell you want without the government in your way. Yet they re-elected Madison so many times that some say he was actually born in office, and lived out his entire life as mayor. And well before Smitt came on the scene, it was customary in Lakeland to, whenever running over a pothole, seeing litter in the parks, or receiving one of the aforementioned parking tickets, turn to the person most immediately close to you, sigh, and say “Madison.” They re-elected him not because they liked him as a person (most had never seen him), or because they agreed with his policy stances (which were mostly unknown).

Madison was simply the status quo, and his status as a punching bag had become something of a cornerstone for the community. It had been generations since they had truly felt outrage or anything more than mere annoyance at Madison’s governing, and since no one had ever come along to oppose him, he never faced the serious possibility of not winning re-election. Smitt, however, was not afraid to stir the pot, to remind the Lakelanders, for motives selfish or not, that just because it is the status quo does not mean it is good, or that it cannot change. And he continued to remind them of this, through several more rallies and a televised debate, until it was finally election night in Lakeland.

Smitt had moved the TV from his office to the break room, where he was now pacing back and forth in front of Armstrong, who was calmly watching the results come in.

“Smitt.”

“Mm,”  said Smitt, who was squeezing the leg of his pants.

“You nervous?”

“No.” Smitt opened and closed the refrigerator door a few times. He was not hungry.

“Good. ‘Cause we’re gonna win. You know that.”

“Yeah. Yeah we are.”

Suddenly, the office buzzer rang loudly. Startled, Smitt jumped, banged his head on the ceiling, and shouted in pain. Armstrong looked at him quizzically as he stumbled around the room and rubbed his head.

“Smitt, I think someone’s here.”

“You think?” Smitt growled. “Go open the door. Tell whoever’s there that they can go screw themselves. I don’t want visitors right now.”

“What’s the magic word?” “Now.”

Armstrong left the room, feeling slightly emasculated. Smitt sighed, closed his eyes, and listened as Armstrong’s footsteps made their way across the office space and towards the door. He heard the door creak open, and a quiet yet urgent voice on the other end.

“Hello, sir. I need to speak to Walter Smitt.”

“Sorry. He gave me specific orders to tell anyone who comes here to go--”

“Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.” Smitt sprung into action and ran to the door. “There’s no need to finish that sentence.” He found Armstrong towering over a short, portly man with tan skin and a tuft of white hair on his head.

“Sorry, Smitt. This guy just seemed a little troublesome, so--”

“Armstrong, that guy is the mayor.”

“Oh.” Armstrong sized the man up and took a step back. “Crap. Sorry.”

There was a moment of tension between the three men. Armstrong refused to meet Madison’s eyes, Madison was looking straight into Armstrong’s eyes, and Smitt was trying to listen to the TV in the break room. Finally, Smitt decided to break the ice. “Hello, Mr. Mayor,” he offered, and extended his hand.

“Good evening, Mr. Smitt,” replied Madison. The two shook hands, each man crushing the other’s hand so much that they could not feel their own hands. This practice was customary between Smitt and Madison; Smitt had won 7 out of the approximately 13 of these exchanges they had gotten into over the course of the race.

Madison brushed his jacket impatiently and adjusted his tie. “I’ll keep this brief, Mr. Smitt, as I imagine you’re something of a busy man yourself. You are aware that the election is tonight, yes?”

“Oh, yeah. That. I forgot that was tonight.”

“Even though your TV is quite loudly playing live coverage of the election right now?”

“With all due respect, Mr. Mayor, you must have had a better reason to come here than to listen to my TV.”

“Yes.” Flustered by Smitt’s remark, Madison winced slightly. “In short, I understand that you seek the mayor’s office.”

I mean, I have been campaigning against you for a year, genius, Smitt wanted to say. Instead, he nodded.

“Yes. There is a clear conflict of interest here, I think we can agree.”

“A conflict of interest?”

“I am the mayor of Lakeland. I have been the mayor. You seem quite intent upon unseating me.”

“I suppose you would call that a conflict of interest,” Smitt agreed apprehensively.

Madison paused, then took a step closer to Smitt, completely shutting Armstrong out of the conversation. “I have a proposal that may benefit us both.”

“Look, I’ve been out here for a year and I’ve spent thousands of my own voters’ money. If you think I’m gonna--”

Madison held up his hand. Smitt was immediately silenced.

“You drop out of the race tonight and endorse me. Life in town returns to normal, and perhaps some of the village budget finds its way into your pocket.”

“Are you trying to bribe me, Mr. Mayor? I hope you realize that’s in violation of campaign finance laws.”

“Cut the bullshit,” Madison snarled. “This town needs me. If you stand in my way, the stress of the job will be the least of your problems.”

“Bribery and now threats? This could be grounds for impeachment.”

“Impeachment? You want to impeach me?” Madison gave a high-pitched laugh. “Oh, I’m not threatening you, Mr. Smitt. I won’t hurt you. Unlike you, I still have a shred of decency left. I took this job to protect the common good and keep Lakeland safe.”

“You call towing someone’s car because they dared to park past 3 PM ‘keeping Lakeland safe?’”

Madison smiled a tight, painful smile and grinded his teeth together. “There is so much about this job that you do not understand, Mr. Smitt. Withdraw and put an end to the mockery you’ve made of this beautiful town. Withdraw and let life return to normal. Your life will be made much easier, of that I can assure you. I’ve been re-elected once for every fifty dollars you’ve made in your entire career, and believe me, I will see to it that you don’t regret your decision. So suspend your campaign tonight, for the greater good.”

Smitt pretended to think for a second. He could almost feel Madison’s sharp blue eyes burning into him, and his heart began to race much like it did when he was first interviewing for a job at Goldman-Sachs so many years ago. But this time, he had the upper hand and he knew it. He smiled and turned to Armstrong, who was now sitting on the couch staring at the floor.

“Armstrong? Get this guy outta here.”

“Right away.” Armstrong obediently leapt to his feet and cracked his neck back and forth.

“No! Please, Mr. Smitt, you don’t understand what you’re doing,” pled a shocked Madison.

“Too late, buddy,” said Armstrong. He rolled up his sleeves-- a feat which demonstrated strength by itself, for he was wearing a suit and jacket--  to reveal two very strong arms.

“You can’t do this to me, councilman! I am the mayor. I am your boss!”

“But it’s not you that elected me. It was the people. And now, you’re going to see what the people are capable of.”

Armstrong gritted his teeth and flexed his biceps. He clenched his right hand into a fist, and with one sweeping motion, slammed it down on a button affixed to the wall.

“Security? It’s time to remove the mayor from office.”

Madison glared at Smitt and Armstrong for a moment, then turned with a flourish and left, evidently trying to avoid a scandal on election night.

Armstrong turned to Smitt and grinned from ear to ear. “Did you like that line? I’ve had it prepared for years in case this happened.”

“It was… It was good.” “When I said ‘remove him from office,’ it was, like, a double meaning. I was talking about this office.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So you liked it?!” “It was good, Armstrong. Now, let’s go watch the election results.” The outcome of the election was quite predictable if you had been paying attention to the political climate in the past year. Smitt beat Madison 52%-48%, the mayor’s first loss in a political career so long it could be considered a one-man dynasty. Tens upon tens of people, which was a lot for a political event in Lakeland, came to watch Smitt’s victory speech, which they received with much applause. The city council liked Smitt even more, with the majority standing and applauding when he entered the council chamber for the first time (Armstrong was nearly censured for his loud whooping). Smitt’s first act as mayor was to eliminate all parking restrictions in Lakeland, which passed the council 9-1. The one dissenter was a longtime Madison loyalist, a tall, gaunt man who watched contemptuously from the shadows as Smitt signed the bill into law.

The first day after the bill became law, cars now lined the streets of Lakeland such that no one could tell whether there was a major traffic jam going on or if it was simply 8:00 PM on a Wednesday night and everyone had just returned home. It was a beautiful sight. Subarus, Toyotas, Hyundais, Fords, and more adorned the streets, framing them like a picture of American freedom.

And as Smitt got into bed that night, blowing a kiss to his Tesla that was parked right outside for once, he felt truly accomplished. His eyes drifted shut.

---

Crash. Bang. Vvvvvrrrrrr.

Smitt’s eyes drifted open again. Without seeing the time, he knew they had not been closed long enough. But there was crashing and banging going on outside, and Smitt’s phone was vibrating fiercely. He groggily reached for it. The display said 3:48 AM. I’m not going to answer, he thought. It’s too early. The president could be calling and I wouldn’t answer.

He answered the phone.

“Smitt-- I mean, Mr. Mayor Smitt! Are you there?!” It was Armstrong, who had not sounded this distraught since the two got kicked out of the Applebee’s bar the night after the election.

“Whoozair? Armsrong? IssthreeAM.”

“Mr. Mayor, look outside! The town! Oh, it’s too horrible!” Smitt sighed and hung up. He pulled his pillow over his ears, shut his eyes tightly, and tried to go back to sleep, when a tremendous earthquake shook the floor and nearly knocked him out of bed. That was when Smitt realized that something was seriously wrong in Lakeland. He leapt to the floor, slowly pulled himself by the windowsill, and peered out the window. He could not believe what he was seeing.

The clouds in the sky had parted; lighting was flicking through them like an angry god thrusting his trident. All the houses and the cars parked in front of them were in shambles. Massive tentacles the thickness of tree trunks burst from the ground, their great suction cups illuminated only by the lightning. They thrashed around furiously, throwing houses off of their foundations, uprooting trees, and sweeping unlucky people off the ground towards a fate that Smitt shuddered to imagine. Underscoring this horrendous scene was a cacophony of splintering wood, shattering glass, screaming people, and of course, car alarms. Smitt could only watch in horror as the town he had grown up in, campaigned for, and now governed, crumbled before his very eyes.

Suddenly, Smitt remembered Madison’s words about the town needing him. Realizing the true nature of those words, Smitt rushed to his dresser and pulled out his phone book. He quickly flipped through it until he found an Elliott Madison. Hands shaking, he dialed the number. The phone rang once, then twice, then three times, until finally someone picked up.

“Smitt, I presume?”

“You’ve-- You’ve gotta help me, Madison. What the hell’s going on?” demanded Smitt breathlessly.

“What you are seeing now is the great beast that until now slept below Lakeland. He has been sealed underneath the streets since the beginning of time-- and I was to be his warden, essentially. If enough cars remained in one spot for long enough, the pressure would wake him. I had to prevent that. Thus, the parking laws.” Madison spoke with a hint of amusement, and a hint of utter despair.

“What… Why didn’t you tell me?!” shouted Smitt, nearly crying for the first time in his life.

“Let’s be realistic, Smitt. You wouldn’t have believed me. Even if you did, you would have repealed the parking laws all the same. Because you just have to serve your constituents, don’t you. You must bend to their self-serving whims. You must tweak every rule, take an eraser to every bill, until the people smile back at you.”

At this, Smitt rushed to defend himself, tripped on his words, gasped, and choked on his gasp.

“Goodbye, Smitt. It has truly been a pleasure. May our last few moments on this earth be as pleasant as all the ones before.”

“Madison, don’t go. It can’t end like this. You know something and you’re not telling me, right?! Madison!” But there was no answer. Smitt might as well have been screaming into a brick, and he knew it, as much as he did not want to.

Smitt shambled to his door, slowly opened it, and walked outside. His Tesla had been reduced to a pile of smoking garbage, much like how he currently viewed himself. There was no chance now of evacuating.

“All I wanted,” he said to himself, “was to be mayor.”

“All I wanted,” he said in between tears, “was to fix the damn parking situation.”

“Now, the town’s fucking gone.” He crumpled to the ground and punched the sidewalk.

“God fucking damn it.”

But in his last moments, Smitt did not cry. On the contrary, he smiled. He smiled with joy, because he remembered something.

This was one blaze that Richter and Sons’ Accounting Firm would never be able to come back from.

[11toe11-blog]

Covid Sitayana

Ramayana was an epic scale epic. Since we did not have the bandwidth for more than one Ramayana or Mahabharata - we decided to ensure another Ramayana never happens. 

So every other potential Sita was trained - a clear Line drawn - stand inside, well within the line. 

“How many times should i tell you! Stay inside”

Sita - “but the cow…”

“What cow? No cow! Stay inside. Always remember the line. Everything outside is Ravana.”

____

Notes on Kalari -- Dr. Priyadarshan Lal

Warm body- warm up

Being able to stand on two feet requires great balance. Not any other mammals other than humans - who start erect. Core- balance ( like cycle/swimming)

Drawing associations of etymology. Letter of Tamil are distinguished as.

Mei-ezhuthu-  Consonants. Mei --> Body

Uyir-ezhuthu - Vowels. Uyir-->Breath

---> Mei- payattu

8 types of postures:

Lion - cross legged and paw connect. Cross core

Elephant - simultaneous movements of the side. All of left shifts. Then all of right shifts.Strength.

Fish - turn. Flash turn.

Kukkuda/ rooster - flutter up and land

Horse straight

Boar -stright. lift.

Snake

Cat

All the postures appear in the meippayattu, obviously or subtly.

(*noticing how barteniff similarly constructed fundamentals based on evolutionary stages of embryo. In my experince so far, the manipulation of the jelly like that is strong and flexible and can contort and expand and realign etc, in connection with the breath, creates a posture if extended to the extremeties)

(pic courtesy: https://www.leisurepro.com/blog/explore-the-blue/5-harmless-species-jellyfish/) 

___

Empty handed combat. Win over the enemy without fighting. (*love and empathy)

___

Adhara chakra

(*he didnt elaborate, but from the adishakti workshop of many years ago i remember that each posture has an associated chakra basis. Maybe the movement originates or is held or passed through that particular chakra. Im yet to experience it. For fish and horse and elephant maybe i sense it, but i cant be sure)

___

I feel close to being done writing about myself. And my vantage at this point. I feel it would be nice to explore a subject in writing.

Like kalari. And where kalari meets ramana. Not scholarly sense, but for me. So that i can discover for myself the connections i have made. And the questions and blind spots are clearer to me. 

Looking at a dance journal called FUSE, i caught a glimpse of the dancer’s notes...the notes, the scores, seemed closer to my way of enquiring. Scores. Questions. Frames of observation.

What of the archetypes and narratives and characters? 

“We’ll isn't it interesting, that as well as you know your characters and the relationships between them, you aret compelled by dialogues - what they say to each other seems to be of no import to you.” 

 Yes. I cant seem to care much for dialogues insipte of all that auditory hallucinations. 

I feel - The dialogues are not spoken. They are actions. And in the body, their very being itself there is something alive and exchanging and transforming. SOmething that doesn't lean on words to do preliminary negotiations. Something that is, and goes in, and is being from the very start all they way.  Like mom keeps saying, actions speak louder than words.

Yes. And in their moving around and relating back and forth to the space and movements and changing landscape of their emotions/memories/ etc… changes takes place… in ascertain  kind of quietness. Cant call it silence.  Or in a certain kind of silence. Cant call it quietness. Or is it a certain kind of silence. 

But dialogues have no place there. Expect as inner soliloquies. May be as monologues. When it comes to rapid energy exchange, it physical. Not words.  Because words are diversions at best.

Most of the time. They appear when there is no choice, but to speak. And then  the words appear, and they appear crystal clear, to illuminate, to clarify. Not to veil and hide. 

___

Form is created by tension. Last night i was watching the mind. Or rather something was watching the mind. And i was in the mind trapped in its incessant chatter and looking from outside. The incessant chatter seemed to originate from a tension at the base of the skull. From something taut, like a string of a musical instrument. Though not wholly a pleasant feeling. 

In this tension, between this points of tension space is created and form appears. A is the tension between the two slanting lines whose base is pulled apart and wedged by a shot line. Form. Uyirzhuthu. K is the inclined upward and inclined downward push, directed to a particular single point on the vertical line.

Not sure if i would have been able to finally get a sense of the symbols used to denote english alphabets, if wasnt for my conversation with DK, aka Quirky.

Me: wait... i have more technical question ...how do you remember what you did on the floor?

and when does meaning emerge?

He: It's all in the flow

And it's the experience and the environment that the movement create that in turn gives the watching person to make meaning

Technically it's all about the flow and muscles memory

Me: but what of the mover? where is he/she finding meaning?

or is the meaning purely an experience of spatial truth?

He: Meaning is subjective isn't it

Me: yuss

He: It's like the color red and the redness of the read. Red

I guess redness of the red is what I am interested

Not what meanings people associated red with

Of course one can use association of the red to creat an emotion or mood but as a core the ness ness of something is the research

Me: do you at any point at all, as a mover dancer, remember being interested in what meanings people associated with red? or was it always about redness of red?

He: When is create it all about the Ness nesss but ofcourse once the composition and presentation of the idea start I do play with association of the given ideas or objects to create tention. 

But I also know if I considered the association I am closing a lot of other posibal reading

It's a balancing act

Me: mmmm

He: If I address the association more often them not I will be taking stands and sides

Which may be use full for certain works

But as a for being true to the work I find it enriching to look for the nessness of the idea

Me: Ness-ness is nice. very nice. i supoose it the most neutral position available to you while fully innit - if i must intellectualise. but ya... when i was asking you, how do you rember, i was coming from a simplistic space of notaton and mnenomics. but this redness of red gives me a btter answer tothe unasked question.

He: I don't remember I am not wired like that

Dicklessli. Lol

Its all in the flow and muscle memory

And ofcourse repetition

Me: relieff

just came acrosss this https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/63113284/fuse1

He: The useal lol . Gay and tamil mami

Lol. I know of the person who runs this project

Me: trust you to massacre! Nut!

___

I dint quite understand what he meant by this “ He: When is create it all about the Ness nesss but ofcourse once the composition and presentation of the idea start I do play with association of the given ideas or objects to create tention. “ yesterday.  This idea of creating tension using associations etc for the compositions and presentations and sharing… the point of outer reflection and feedback from the larger whole , as mirror.  Like R says, “only when the play meets the audience does it become a play”, audience provides that vital energy - that space- witness. ANd thats when the possibilities of the play star unfolding. 

What of traditional performers such as koodiyattam then? For whom the lamp is the only witness?

Also https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/07/06/the-aesthetic-of-silence-susan-sontag/

“Art is a technique for focusing attention, for teaching skills of attention… Once the artist’s task seemed to be simply that of opening up new areas and objects of attention. That task is still acknowledged, but it has become problematic. The very faculty of attention has come into question, and been subjected to more rigorous standards…

Perhaps the quality of the attention one brings to bear on something will be better (less contaminated, less distracted), the less one is offered. Furnished with impoverished art, purged by silence, one might then be able to begin to transcend the frustrating selectivity of attention, with its inevitable distortions of experience. Ideally, one should be able to pay attention to everything.”

“So far as he is serious, the artist is continually tempted to sever the dialogue he has with an audience. Silence is the furthest extension of that reluctance to communicate, that ambivalence about making contact with the audience… Silence is the artist’s ultimate other-worldly gesture: by silence, he frees himself from servile bondage to the world, which appears as patron, client, consumer, antagonist, arbiter, and distorter of his work.”

Both of which i resonate with to whatever degree of my experience  has been. This struggle of audience. And a certain withdrawal and dismissal and a sense of pursuit of something much larger than popularity or appreciation of peers. Which is questioned very starkly here by Sontag like a slap on the hand

“

Sontag recognizes that the gesture of silence in abdication from society is still “a highly social gesture.” She writes:

An exemplary decision of this sort can be made only after the artist has demonstrated that he possesses genius and exercised that genius authoritatively. Once he has surpassed his peers by the standards which he acknowledges, his pride has only one place left to go. For, to be a victim of the craving for silence is to be, in still a further sense, superior to everyone else. It suggests that the artist has had the wit to ask more questions than other people, and that he possesses stronger nerves and higher standards of excellence.”

Is that why i am still around. Hanging on nail and tooth. Because i havent proved myself in this world. That the way to Griffindor is through the corridors of Slytherine?

Ramana says, not necessary. 

Kalari says, if necessary, come to the pit.

Eitherways, the presence and absence of a living fluid core makes a difference to the experience and perception of reality and the energy to keep observing past its frames. So i show up the pit everyday. One way or the other.

[dyemelikeasunset]

Ty, could you rec me some movies and/or tv shows you like? :)

YEAH i’m totally down!! I don’t really watch TV though, so this will be a movie rec list! (Also I haven’t watched a lot of movies recently, so a majority of these are from my teenage years)

Movies:

The Fountain (2006): a layered story that interlocks three different timelines/worlds. One takes place during the 16th century where a conquistador is trying to find the Tree of Life in central America, hoping to save Queen Isabella, the second takes place in the 2000s, about a doctor coming to terms with the impending death of his wife, and the third is in the far future, where a lone man is traveling through space with a magic tree. All three timelines star the same two actors, Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, and the significance of that can be interpreted in multiple ways. The movie doesn’t have a solid Hollywood story, so the ending may feel rather unhappy, but the visual themes, music, and acting are amazing. It may seem like a typical “middle age white man pain” story on the outside, but it’s executed well and I personally really enjoy it.

The Hours (2002): based on a novel of the same name, this movie is another triple-layered story. This story revolves around Virginia Wolfe and her novel Mrs. Dalloway: one timeline follows Wolfe trying to write the novel, the second timeline follows a 50s housewife reading the novel, and the third is a 2000s re-telling of the novel. This movie could very likely be considered slow and is practically made up of all soliloquies, but again, superb acting and an overall very emotional journey. There are quite a lot of gay subthemes, with the modern Mrs. Dalloway character (played by Meryl Streep) in a long-standing and committed relationship with another woman, and there are one-sided feelings in the 50s housewife story (the housewife is played by Juliane Moore). There is a weird, potentially incestuous, kiss between Virginia Wolfe (played by Nicole Kidman) and her sister(?), so warnings for that and also lots of talk of suicide (as per accurate of Wolfe). It’s also unfortunately another all-white cast.

The Tale of Two Sisters (2003): a Korean horror movie about two sisters who return home after an extended stay in a mental institution. Their home suffers under a subtly oppressive and supernatural energy, and there are a lot of mysteries creeping about. Complicated relationships are slowly revealed between the sisters, their father, dead mother, and step mother. This story has a lot of twists, and in its center, I actually think it’s more of a tragedy rather than a true horror. I know the surface level of “psychologically troubled sisters in a horror movie” seems very cringe-worthy, but surprisingly the psychoses are treated as a separate entity from the supernatural elements (even if the lines are a bit ambiguous and blurry, there is still a line). The acting in this is amazing and makes much, much more sense when watched through a second time.

Doubt (2008): the screen adaptation of a stage play, Doubt is a very thematic story revolving around a Catholic boarding school and a molestation allegation. The lead nun (played by Meryl Streep) is suspicious of the main pastor (played by Philip Seymour) because of the close relationship he shares with the first Black child to be integrated to their school. The story is fairly simple, but the amount of psychological tension really drives the story, and the viewer’s prejudices are really put to the test. The actors deliver incredible performances, with an amazing, surprise role from Viola Davis as the child’s mother. The movie really leaves you questioning yourself by the end.

Unleashed (2005): my favorite American Jet Li film, and one of the few US movies that actually takes advantage of his incredible acting skills. This story is about a mentally disabled cage fighter, who is kept like a dog by his gang boss. Through circumstances, he gains his freedom and is saved by a blind pianist (played by Morgan Freeman), who teaches him how to live an ordinary life. Of course, his past comes to haunt him and there’s a lot of action scenes, but the core of the movie is very sweet. I also personally have a soft spot for Asian/Black co-leading actors, and movies that focus on positive relationships between the two groups (which Jet Li has also done in Romeo Must Die but the story in that one is kinda lacking). I think what’s incredible about this movie– as a childhood Jet Li fan– is seeing how his acting and personification of the character translates into the martial arts choreography. For someone who rose to stardom as “the elegant fighter,” Jet Li delivers amazing emotional impact as an unhinged and almost beast-like fighter.

Saving Face (2004): I realize most of my movies are heavy I’m so sorry, so here’s a light-hearted movie to balance things out lmao. Saving Face is a Chinese-American lgbt film, starring Michelle J. Krusiec as a lesbian surgeon. Out to her friends, but closeted to her mother and their general Chinese community, the main character falls into the responsibility of caring for her aging mother– who has mysteriously become pregnant. The mother-daughter duo must learn to live together, reconcile their relationship, and deal with losing face together in the light of their unconventional relationships. While the story is mainly focused on the parental relationship, the main character does have a relationship with another woman that receives significant screentime and development. A feel-good film that does have a lot of bilingual scenes, so watching with subtitles will be needed for non-Mandarin speakers.

Animated Movies:(obviously I’ve seen more animated movies than the ones on this list but I don’t see people talk about these films often so I’m gonna rec them)

Wolf Children (2012): the story of a mother who’s left with raising her two, half-wolf children. The movie follows her meeting a werewolf, falling in love with him, losing him, and raising the kids from infancy to middle-school age. The animation house is the same group that produced The Girl Who Lept Through Time and Summer Wars, so the quality is top-notch. The story, while generally slice-of-life, obviously has some supernatural elements to it due to the kids being werewolves, but is still able to retain the evocative nature of a parental coming-of-age story. There are a lot of themes of love and loss, so it’s not a very feel-good film, but the ending leaves quite the impact on the viewer.

Tokyo Godfathers (2003): a dramedy movie from Satoshi Kon, this film follows the story of three homeless people: a teenage girl and two middle-aged adults, an alcoholic father and a former drag-queen (who now identifies as a trans woman). During the Christmas holiday, the three stumble on an abandoned baby, and more or less decide to find the parents. Their journey takes them across Tokyo, through unbelievable and hilarious circumstances, and also through each of their unresolved pasts and motivations. The animation in this movie is amazing, and the story is light but human enough to strike at your emotions. Hana-san, the trans woman, may come across initially as a caricature, but she is treated with respect and humanity just like the other two characters.

[pardontheglueman]

Frank Sinatra and the Great American Songbook

Between 1900 and, let’s say for argument’s sake, 1960, hundreds upon hundreds of American songsmiths worked away like bees in a dive (a speakeasy on Union Square’s Tin Pan Alley, or a dimly lit gin joint off Broadway, perhaps?) to craft and co-author a magnificent honeypot of sweetly-scented,  pungently sad popular tunes, creating, in the whole haphazard process, a brand new and wonderfully vibrant American art form: The Great American Songbook. Sung by everyone from Fred Astaire and Judy Garland to Ella Fitzgerald and the peerless Frank Sinatra, the songbook would come to dominate America’s airwaves, breathe new life into old Broadway shows and, with the advent of talking pictures, satisfy a seemingly unstoppable craze for star-studded Hollywood musicals. These poets of Tin Pan Alley; Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Yip Harburg, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer and Dorothy Fields to shortlist just a few of the legendary composers and lyricists who graced the industry, first chronicled and celebrated the Jazz Age, then consoled and cheered a nation coping with the tragedy of the Great Depression and the unimaginable trauma of the Second World War, before a dynamic double whammy of television and rock ‘n’ roll gave the trailblazing tunesmiths a permanent kiss-off that they never even suspected was coming.

Many of the songs they wrote, though, have happily survived the rock, glam, disco, punk, rap, grunge and grime eras with their effervescent reputations largely intact. Songs like (and I could have chosen two or three hundred others that you would immediately recognise), “Summertime”, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, “One for My Baby”, “Blue Moon” and “That Old Black Magic” still float around in the ether as ever-present as they ever were.

The knock against these tunes, the reason that they are sometimes thought to be ‘old hat’, has always been due to the supposedly impersonal nature of the songs themselves. Admittedly, there were thousands of songs churned out by hired tunesmiths and wordsmiths during the fifty or so years in which they reigned supreme. And, of course, there was a mass production line cranking out songs for sale, and there were plenty of marriages of convenience, too, between composers and lyricists with nothing more in common other than an eye for the main chance and a working knowledge of the laws of supply and demand such as they operated in Tinseltown. There were novelty songs and sentimental ballads aplenty too, tossed off by the moon/June rhyming merchants, but was that really any different to the production lines at Motown, where Whitfield and Strong, Holland-Dozier-Holland and a certain Smokey Robinson penned chartbusters around the clock, or life in the Brill Building where Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Carole King and Neil Sedaka squatted in their tiny cubicles hatching out classic tune after classic tune?

Sarah Vaughan singing the Harry Warren / Al Dubin classic “September in the Rain”.

It would be sacrilege to discuss the Great American Songbook without doffing our collective caps to the finest interpreter in the annals of American popular song, one Francis Albert Sinatra; A.K.A “The Voice”, “ Swoonatra”, “The Sultan of Swoon”, “Ol Blue Eyes” and “The Chairman of the Board”.

Before we can speak of the artist, however, we have to clear the decks by examining the man and the myth. We all have an image of Sinatra stored somewhere in the back of our minds, or stuffed down the cul-de-sacs of our broken hearts, whether it’s the Rat Pack Romeo, the Vegas showman, the Presidents’ pal, the Mafioso-made film star, the painfully thin young pup idolised by screeching ‘bobbysoxers’, or even, the old-timer so in love with the art of singing that he kept on reversing his endless retirements to the point of craziness; having first announced his retirement in 1971, “The Chairman of the Board” eventually drew business to a close on the 25th of February 1995, with a six-song set at the climax of his own golf tournament in California.

There is, however, another Sinatra who is rather less well known these days - the radical supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programme and the life-long campaigner for racial equality; the Musician’s Union in Hollywood had been segregated until Sinatra hired the black flautist Buddy Colette to play in his band (read Martin Smith’s When Ol’ Blue Eyes Was a Red for the full picture of Sinatra the agitator!). Even more important, at least when it comes to a consideration of Sinatra’s work at Capitol (1953-1962), was the precise state of mind of the singer as he walked into the studio to record his ‘comeback’ album for the label, the mellow song cycle Song’s for Young Lovers. So let’s take the A-Train all the way down memory lane until we reach 1954.

Sinatra, it is worth recalling now, was all washed up when he signed his beggars can’t be choosers contract with EMI subsidiary Capitol. In 1950 MGM had unceremoniously scrapped his movie contract and then, even more humiliatingly, Columbia records pulled the plug on him too. His divorce from childhood sweetheart Nancy Barbato, an ill-tempered and headline-grabbing marriage to actress Ava Gardner, his scandalous links to the Mafia, and his history of left-wing activism all combined in a perfect storm to sink an apparently indestructible career. Here is a taste of the treatment routinely meted out to the singer, from a 1948 pamphlet entitled Red Betrayal of Youth –

“Of late this young red punk has been touring the country swooning bobbysoxers with his baritone voice while he tells their parents how to vote… any intelligent person ought to be able to see how “Red Frankie”, with his gentle purring voice is swooning the youth of America into the arms of atheistic Communism”.

It wasn’t, thankfully, to be the end of the lonesome road for Sinatra quite yet. There is one very good reason for that – he was the best goddamn singer in the business! Songwriter Gene Lees summed it up succinctly enough in his book Singers and the Song; “the body of excellent songs that had come into existence in the United States at last found a singer worthy of them. He was the best singer we had ever heard. He was one of the best singers in history. And we knew it. He was our poet laureate”.

What had originally set Sinatra apart from rival crooners was his technical mastery of the microphone. Electrical recording had transformed the art of popular singing (Bing Crosby latched on to its potential first and the technique he employed can be boiled down to a simple rule of not over singing and always remembering that less is more!) Furthermore, Sinatra’s voice control, his impeccable phrasing and his unchallengeable reputation for interpretation of a lyric made him the go-to guy for any self-respecting songwriter in America. Nobody, but nobody, sang the Great American Songbook like Sinatra. Here’s Sinatra on how his dedication to his craft found practical expression -

“I was fascinated by {violinist} Jascha Heifetz, who could make a change of his bow in phrase and get to the end of the bow and continue without a perceptible missing beat in the motion. I thought if that could be done on an instrument… why not do it with the human voice? It was very tough to do it. It took a lot of calisthenics and physical work to get the bellows - the breathing apparatus built up”.

Sinatra later fleshed out his theory in an interview given to Life magazine in 1965, recalling how closely he had studied big-band leader Tommy Dorsey’s trombone playing,  

“He would take a musical phrase and play it all the way through seemingly without breathing for eight, ten, maybe sixteen bars. How in the hell did he do it? I used to sit behind him on the bandstand and watch, trying to see him sneak a breath, but I never saw the bellows move in his back. His jacket didn’t even move. I used to edge my chair to the side a little and peek around to watch him… I discovered he had a ‘sneak’ pinhole in the corner of his mouth – not an actual pinhole, but a tiny place where he was breathing [this was something Pop Dorsey had taught him]. In the middle of the phrase, while the tone was still being carried through the trombone…[he’d] take a quick breath and play another four bars with that breath. Why couldn’t a singer do that, too?… It was my idea to make my voice work in the same way as a trombone or violin - not sounding like them, but ‘playing’ the voice like those instruments.”  

Mastering that vocal technique, recognising the difference in tone and projection that he was now required to adopt in the studio, much like an actor re-tuning his performance to allow for the difference between stage and screen acting, enabled Sinatra to phrase more for the meaning of a lyric which, in turn, allowed him to give expression to the underlying subtext of each song. More important, then, than the physical and technical improvements that Sinatra made to his singing, was his unique ability to wring the very last drop of meaning from a lyric which, on the surface, had no direct connection to the singer. Here again, though, Sinatra was light years ahead of the competition, using his own troubled personal life to go deeper into the sorrow of a song than any other popular entertainer of his time. While Sinatra was no method actor on the silver screen, (he was impatient in the film studio in a way he never was in the recording studio), the intensity of his work here suggests that he may have applied the Stanislavski system to reveal the fundamental truth of a lyric. Riding my luck and sticking with the movie industry metaphor (sort of), I can safely say that hearing Sinatra deliver a lyric by Jimmy Mercer or Cole Porter is like listening to Olivier reciting a soliloquy from Richard III or Hamlet.

The emotional intensity that permeated virtually each and every track on a Sinatra ballad collection during his Capitol years, speaks to the fact that the man cannot be separated from his music. That Sinatra was a life-long manic-depressive who had made multiple suicide attempts isn’t particularly well known today, but even a cursory audit of the themes that run through heartsick albums like In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning (1955), Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (1958) and No One Cares (1959), would have been enough to suggest to the listener that art might be imitating life here. The album titles, say it all for goodness sake!

Nelson Riddle pays his own tribute to Tommy Dorsey!

Of the albums listed above, classics one and all, Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (a record that spent 120 weeks on the Billboard chart, where it peaked at number 1), is so beautiful and unremittingly melancholy that it gets into territory that very few albums have ever explored. At the time of its recording, Sinatra and Gardner’s divorce had just been finalised while arranger/conductor Nelson Riddle was also coming to terms with a double bereavement. Sinatra, as usual, was set on only choosing material that conveyed a unity of mood – in this particular case one of nihilist despair.

Opening with “Only the Lonely” (music by Jimmy Van Heusen, words by Sammy Cahn) the devastating track that lent its name to, and set the tone for, Sinatra’s first post-Gardner project has a lyric worth quoting in full –

Each place I go only the lonely go Some little small cafe The songs I know only the lonely know Each melody recalls a love that used to be The dreams I dream only the lonely dream Of lips as warm as May That hopeless scheme only the lonely scheme That soon somewhere you’ll find the one that used to care And you’ll recall each fun time Those picnics at the beach when love was new It well could be the one time A hopeless little dream like that comes true If you find love hang on to each caress And never let love go For when it’s gone you’ll know the loneliness The heartbreak only the lonely know

Listen, below, for the Pinteresque pause before Sinatra sings the last word of the second line and for the saddest piano of motifs as it ripples through the song. Sinatra had tried to kill himself on more than occasion after a bust-up with Gardner, once in the apartment of a songwriting pal, indeed the composer of this very song. There is no doubt at all where Sinatra’s head and heart were as he delivered a truly great reading of this oh so blue and broken-hearted ballad.

After the sublime “Angel Eyes”, a song Sinatra kept going back to again and again in live performance, comes a personal favourite of mine, “What’s New”. We’ve all been in the singer’s shoes as he runs across an old flame and has to bravely disguise the fact that he is still carrying a torch for the woman who will be the (lost) love of his life (even Phil Oakey had a stab at this tragic scenario on The Human League’s sweetest song, “Louise”). Here, Johnny Burke’s lyric has a great pay off with Sinatra crooning “Of course you couldn’t know / I haven’t changed, I still love you so”. Blue, blue bliss!

“Willow Weep for Me”, a jazz standard by Ann Ronnell that had already been recorded by Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Sarah Vaughan in the preceding two years has a tender line where a lovelorn Sinatra beseeches the wind to “Murmur to the night to hide its starry light”, so the singer can cry his heart out in  darkness. The dream team of Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer donate “Blues in the Night” to the cause. Sinatra and Riddle decide to give it the Grand Guignol treatment, with the singer crazily imitating a train’s lonesome whistle sounding out across the darkness. Altogether, now, “A whoooee, a whoooee!!!”

The title alone will tell you all you need to know about “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears out to Dry”, except the Sammy Cahn lyric is so cleverly contrived it deserves laying out in black and white -

The torch I carry is handsome It’s worth its heartache in ransom And when that twilight steals I know how the lady in the harbor feels When I want rain, I get sunny weather I’m just as blue, blue as the sky Since love has gone, can’t get myself together Guess I’ll hang my tears out to dry

Friends ask me out, but I tell them I’m busy I must get a new alibi I stay at home, and ask myself: “Where is she?” Guess I’ll hang my tears out to dry Dry little teardrops, my little teardrops Hanging on a string of dreams Fly little memories, my little memories Remind her of our crazy schemes Yes somebody said, just forget about her So, I gave that treatment a try And strangely enough, I got along without her Then one day she passed me right by - oh well I guess I’ll hang my tears out to dry

There is a real satisfaction to be had in wallowing in that kind of self-pity!

The all-time great pairing of Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart

The Richard Rogers / Lorenz Hart song “Spring is Here” is a simply exquisite number. An overworked adjective, admittedly, but no other single word will do the heavy lifting when it comes to one-word descriptions that can sum up this, the most gently gloomy ballad imaginable. This is the kind of tune, stuffed full of romantic yearning, that the Great American Songbook stands or falls by. For starters, it has a lyric by Lorenz Hart (who, quite possibly, was the greatest lyricist to work in the genre), and it can boast a chorus of almost unbearable, unknowable heartbreak. If this song isn’t for you, then neither is the Great American Songbook!

Once there was a thing called spring, When the world was writing verses like yours and mine. All the lads and girls would sing, When we sat at little tables and drank May wine. Now April, May, and June are sadly out of tune, life has stuck a pin in the balloon.

Spring is here! Why doesn’t my heart go dancing? Spring is here! Why isn’t the waltz entrancing? No desire, no ambition leads me, maybe it’s because nobody needs me? Spring is here! Why doesn’t the breeze delight me? Stars appear! Why doesn’t the night invite me? Maybe it’s because nobody loves me, spring is here, I hear!

It reads well enough, but Sinatra actually dispenses with the prologue (something he rarely did) and cuts straight to the chase of the chorus. The killer line is ‘Maybe it’s because nobody needs me?’ You can hear it coming, alright, but when Sinatra actually sings it, you feel your crestfallen heart is about ready to cave in.

The insuperable “One for My Baby”

The closing number “One for My Baby” is, quite possibly, the genuine Sinatra signature song (granted there are two dozen or more to choose from!). It’s the song that defines him as a saloon singer, anyhow - a morose drunk, down on his luck and suckered by love, spilling his heavy heart out to the listening millions. Or, as Lees dramatically puts it, “’One for My Baby’ is the finest piece of musical acting Sinatra has ever turned in. He has never sounded closer to the end of his rope”. The only disappointment here, and what a crushing disappointment it is, is that Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life” was axed from the album, Sinatra apparently feeling he hadn’t quite got a hold of the song. In an essay from his book This Will End in Tears, Adam Brent Houghtaling describes the song as “Easily among the most emotionally complex standards in the Great American Songbook”. Here’s the work in progress that Sinatra nixed (he never attempted the song again!)

You can file this noir album alongside Joy Division’s Closer, Richard Buckley’s Bloomed and just about anything Hank Williams put his name too! Interestingly, the fact that Sinatra alternated the release of these tortured masterpieces with a succession of bold, brassy extravaganzas like Songs for Swinging Lovers (1956) and Come Fly with Me (1958), that served to showcase the larger-than-life, happy-go-lucky side of New Jersey’s finest, only adds credence to claims that the singer was suffering from an undiagnosed case of bipolar disorder that might partly explain the star’s penchant for violent outbursts, such as the time he smashed his car radio to bits after he accidentally tuned into a station playing The Doors “Light my Fire” (Sinatra loses a chunk of Brownie points with his hatred of rock ‘n’ roll), or the occasion he took a knife to a Norman Rockwell painting hanging on the wall of Jimmy Van Heusen’s apartment. Talk about mood swings!!!!!

So how is the Great American Songbook doing right now? Well, it’s doing prettttty good as Larry David might say. Barely a theatre season goes by without a Broadway revival of one classic show or another (including Pal Joey in 2008, Guys and Dolls in 2009, Brigadoon in 2010, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in 2011, Porgy and Bess in 2012, On the Town in 2014 and The King and I in 2015). With Carousel set to open in 2018, the trend looks set to continue. Furthermore, a company touring the Gershwin / Porter / Berlin songbooks will probably be appearing in a provincial theatre near you sometime very soon. As for that great nemesis of the show tune, rock ’n’ roll, its poster child Bob Dylan is in his seventies now and has just completed his third straight album of (and we can be generous, here, and call them interpretations rather than covers) tunes lifted straight from the pages of the Great American Songbook. Well, did you evah!

Further reading:

Sinatra! The Song is You, a magnificent study of Sinatra the singer by Will Friedwald.

Reading Lyrics - Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball - Collecting together more than a thousand lyrics from 1900 to 1975.

American Popular Song: The Great Innovators,1900-1950 by Alec Wilder. The definitive study on the subject, written by the composer of scores of popular songs and countless classical pieces. His songs have been sung by.the likes of Sinatra and Peggy Lee.

Singers and the Song, Gene Lees. A fascinating collection of essays, particularly the ones on Sinatra and Johnny Mercer.

Recommended listening

You can go online right now and pick up Frank Sinatra: The Capitol Years 1953 -1962 for just over a tenner! An unbeatable collection containing 16 essential albums.

At half the price of the above, you can also purchase

Blues in the Night: The Johnny Mercer Songbook. The Greatest of them all? Listen to Billie Holliday sing “I Thought About You” and “One for My Baby”, Sarah Vaughan glide through “Day In-Day Out”, and Louis Armstrong growl understatedly (he really does!) on the misogynistic title track and you might just be jumping on the Mercer bandwagon.

We’ll Take Manhattan: Ella Fitzgerald sings from the Rodgers and Hart Songbook and includes standards such as “The Lady is a Tramp”, “My Funny Valentine”, “Mountain Greenery” and “Blue Moon”.

The Very Best of the Cole Porter Songbook. Fifty songs including  “Anything Goes”, “Night and Day”, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, “I Get a Kick out of You” and “Every Time We Say Goodbye”.

American Songbook series: Harry Warren. Never heard of Harry? Then you’ll be surprised to see that this best of includes “Lullaby of Broadway”, “Chattanooga Choo Choo”, “I Only Have Eyes for You” and “You’re Getting to be a Habit With Me” as well as many other wonderful compositions.

http://www.walesartsreview.org/author/kevin-mcgrath/