#tried to deliberately polish this one less to get it to look more dynamic

[randevu-01]

God & Gun 💥

📻 Pig — Arbor Vitate

alt version

[wyslyyzr]

HOW DID I MISS THE FIRST LISS MEME ROFLMAO do it. I dare you. I double dog dare you.

◈ for a first kiss between our muses.  |  @sebastianshaw

through the motions of life, erik has always tried to be decisive. it is a change from the quivering and persecuted child he was, but even then, max had ground nails into knives, and on more than one occasion, decided he would die to kill his oppressors, thwarted only by misstep. he prides himself on his strengths, but there is one distinct category he's had a tumultuous time with: interpersonal relationships. they were often elusive at worst, and complicated at best; his methods were disavowed but he was loved, or he was not loved and was feared, or he was precisely asocial to the point of withdrawal. it was always a struggle, and erik's loneliness was silent, tucked away beneath his breast bone with the rest of his pain he had no desire to aerate.

he doesn't particularly like sebastian shaw, but he tolerates him as demanded or requested by those around him that he respects more, which allows for a subsistence of social dynamic he wished he could simply scorch to nothingness. shaw is oppressively annoying, but erik suspects even if he could train himself to offer minimal reactions, shaw might not retract--his interest ran a bit deeper than mere needling, though erik could not quite deduce what it was that interested shaw. his strength or convictions? maybe, but it was difficult to imagine sebastian approved of how he used them--he'd almost made that clear already. erik simply pretends that isn't there, that he can exist in relative peace, though he feels sebastian's eyes on him rather consistently.

this is a quiet moment, one erik relishes, even if it's beside someone like sebastian shaw. he offers ambivalent reactions, responses, a neutrality meant not to reveal his hand or thoughts, but it would be a lie to claim he didn't enjoy this, at least; the sprawling scenic view of high risen paths and low valleys of clear water, the refracting light from the falling sun, the subtle breeze that tickled his throat and forearms and hands, that lazily tangled in his hair.

when shaw gestures, albeit vaguely, to the ink stretched across his bare forearm, erik's brow sets in clear annoyance, a sharpness narrowing his eyes. sebastian lifts a finger to tut, oh, please, erik, i am not mocking you. he watches shaw fold a leg over the knee, expecting a verbal display of stupidity, or at least, something that would evoke a tremor of rage, but to his surprise, it doesn't come.

shaw mumbles in a way that seems deliberate, like he was sharing exactly what he meant to, a storybook that eliminated any opportunity for vulnerability--like if he said what he meant in an exact tone, it couldn't possibly sound like something that was about him, something that made him less than impervious and grandiose. when he speaks, its of his father, of an impoverished childhood, though the details are deliberately obscured. perhaps a brusque and narrow comparison to what erik endured, but perhaps not done maliciously.

this once, at least.

the bars of tendon in erik's wrist flex as his fingers spider about the rim of his offered glass of champagne, and the taste is fragrantly sweet. he'd observed the bottle had been appropriately stamped with a kosher seal, and wondered if that had been intentional, too, or if shaw had deferred to his misconstrued idea of what exactly kosher meant. that was fine by erik, either way; he hadn't had a good glass of wine or champagne since passover. see, i am not quite the privileged lout you seem to think i am, erik.

erik rolls his eyes, though a bud of amusement burrows into the side of his cheek, pressing a soft line beside his lip. ' oh, believe you me, shaw, i still think that of you. ' he stands from his seat, the sunlight touching his white clothes in such a way that it made erik look otherworldly, illuminating his pale hair, his draped shawl, the tight fit of his long legs. ' i'm unsure what your motivation is for sharing such knowledge with me, ' erik begins, opening his hand in offering to take shaw's emptied cup, ' as it would be out of character to think of you doing anything without an ulterior motive, ' he raises his brows at shaw, though the gesture is almost playful, ' but.. regardless, i appreciate that it was shared. ' shaw rolls his hand on the ball joint of his wrist, flicking his fingers in a dismissive manner. i have servants for that. so erik drops his hand, and shaw rises from his seat in tandem, electing to take erik's emptied glass himself. erik watches him set the pair aside on a small, cherry-oak polished end table that bore nothing else but what looked to be a cigar box. take it as a display of good faith.

' you do nothing in good faith. '

quite untrue, and such an unyielding accusation. you think so low of me. ' is that so? give me an example of your good faith. ' when shaw staggers to an idle, searching for something that would appease magneto, erik almost laughs in his face. ' i did not think so. ' shaw reaches for his arm before he can retreat from the balcony, his hold unkind enough to make erik jerk in response, but he relaxes when it becomes evident to him sebastian merely wants to gain precedence over this debate, and keep him here to speak. well, i make regular donations to a homeless children's education fund in pittsburgh.

' okay. ' thats an example, as you demanded. ' i suppose so. '

when shaw contemplates him, erik thinks he looks rather dull. he watches his brow press into a line. when you learned the scarlet witch and quicksilver were your children, what did you do, magnus?

erik raises a pale brow, something hot and brittle waning in his chest. the sudden switch in topic is jarring, and suspicious to erik. he blinks, averting his eyes from sebastian in thought. ' i held my granddaughter in my arms. i thought about all the time i had missed, and i felt sorry for myself, and sad for them. and i got over it, and began trying to fill in the gaps. why? what does-- '

shaw, perhaps realizing he had yet a hold on erik's arm, lets him go. nothing. it was--a ghost from my past has come to haunt me. you, so filled with them, might have known what to do. i was.. perhaps, asking for .. help.

' help? you? ' ridiculous, isn't it? it feels disgustingly wrong.

' well, thats your problem. ' erik presses his finger into sebastian's chest, albeit the pressure is slight; it's meant to get his attention, nothing else. ' you only accept help when it means theres less work for you to do. what do you do when it makes you vulnerable? i struggled with that for years, and it is still wanting. '

there is a long suffering moment of silence between them, the sun continuing its descent on the horizon, bloated colors of orange and pink crawling over glass. finally, one of shaw's near-comically large hands raises to crest the side of erik's face, his thumb curling to the hinge of erik's jaw, beneath his ear. he tilts erik's head like he's appraising his face, and erik scrunches his nose. ' what are you doing? '

kissing him is certainly the last thing erik could have expected. in fact, it's so left-field to him, so abrupt and strange, that for a moment, erik doesn't know exactly what to do. shaw pulls erik's head down just slightly to compensate for the inch of difference in height, an act erik would suspect meant to be domineering. when his senses come back into focus, he can taste alcohol, a hint of smoke, something beneath that likely to be meat. his heart rushes into his ears, and the swirl of panic pushes erik to respond, his suspended belief finally giving like an overcrowded dam. he balls a fist against shaw's clavicle and shoves with force, successfully prying him free, and nearly knocking him into the railing.

' gott! du khazer, what in--why did you do that? ' erik roars, wiping his face in his sleeve.

i thought we were having a "moment".

' no! '

[thewhumpstuff]

You and I, Me and You [38]

[ CW: Self-harm, suicidal ideation, unhealthy relationship dynamics.]

[Teaser and Master List] [Archives of our Own] (Lost and Found: Chapter 13)

There is no point.

[<– Previous] ~ [Next –>]

Akira was slipping.

An evening when all Tariq could tell her to do was watch Zizi’s movements to learn and become better… “Almost, Kira… but you’re twisting your body too much, that’s a tell, you want the strike to be a surprise… you gotta-” He just needed to look at Zizi for her to demonstrate again. They had developed such a keen and natural choreography as the two of them trained Akira together… It was not like that; they were all learning together, just a few days ago. When did it become them teaching her?

Makes sense I guess; they have more experience.

Zizi’s fist flew at the pad Tariq held, missing it deliberately and then landing a quick backhanded strike as she recoiled. The pad took quite the battering, Akira was glad that the suite was soundproof. “-Like that, making the best of the miss…” It was Zizi who completed Tariq’s advice. Akira had learned that Zizi had lost so much, and yet she fought... and fought better than she did. In less literal ways too... -

And a night when she spent hours stammering answers at Nova as she revised for a test, haphazardly. “Alcyone really hates it when trainees are not procedural, so try to structure your answer, it’ll fly better.” Nova’s smile was genuine, she was encouraging as usual. So, Akira tried again, she started by listing the symptoms this time, gnawing at her lower lips as she stared past Nova, trying to recall the epidemiological data for the disease. Nova tried to offer a mooring for the answer. “Maybe start with the physical exam? Alcyone will probably walk you through a case…” “Ok… ok…” Akira took a deep breath and tried again. “Oh, and you can’t stutter… They’ll assume you don’t know…” Nova winced as she spoke this time, almost apologetically. She was just wishing that Alcyone was a more forgiving examiner. All Akira saw was pity. She laughed nervously. Dismissively, she decided to do what she always did… Postpone.  “I guess, I mean, I’m probably just not ready, I’ll just give the test… next round.” “No… Aki. Come on, you always do this, you know your stuff…” Nova’s pleas went unheard. Akira had made her decision. -

A morning that she could not find the will to get out of bed.

Nova had the day off, Zizi had fallen into the day to day humdrum well enough to make breakfast. Akira was not really needed; she did not have to get out of bed. So, she did not. “I’m not hungry, but thanks…” She responded to the knock at her door and heard the rhythmic clink of Zizi’s metal leg as she walked away. Later that day, Akira finally slipped out of her room, quietly. Unfortunately, she ran into Nova and Zizi in the living room. “I’m just… going to go for a walk. Get some snacks… Might go to my room to pick up some things too.” “Ok… but please don’t give up on the test, you still have-” Nova’s insistence was interrupted by the thud of the door. -

It was surprising how little of himself Jared left in her room. And everything was so neat.

She purposely shuffled the neatly tucked covers of her- the bed. The room did not feel like hers anymore, but nor was it his.

He had been living in it for about a fortnight now. She opened her cabinets, largely stocked with BuzzBo and cereal. The refrigerator had some frozen meals. She was not even sure if this was an invasion of privacy or not. The closet doors flew open next. Her hands ruffled through the clothes hung up on the hanger, everything was new. Uniforms, tracksuits… Most things were in threes. Solid colours… Suddenly, she was looking for something and she wasn’t sure what till she found it.

A white t-shirt.

She was not sure what compelled her to do it, but within moments, she stripped to just her underclothes. Akira snatched the cotton tee. It was too soft to be new. She held it up to her face, burying her nose in the fabric, she inhaled deeply. Detergent mostly, but him too. She slipped into it. The hem of the t-shirt kissed the top of her thighs.

Akira was not very sure of why she was doing whatever it was she was doing. Things seemed to be happening around her, her limbs acting out of their own accord.

She sauntered to the bathroom, that still felt like hers… and a little like his.

Her old toothbrush and his snuggled in a cup by the basin. Some of her things peeked from the shelves that sat on either side of the frameless mirror. He had tried neatening them up. Stacking the old dry bottles of nail-polish in one corner and the expired make up in another. It looked like he tried navigating the shelves before giving up and just letting them be, adding his own things somewhere in between.

Just like he finds his little spaces between the mess I am…

Could she really expect him to give her more, give her everything she said she wanted? Could she really handle what she was asking for? Probably not. Maybe it was stupid of her to think that she could be there for him. Maybe he was right in keeping things from her. Maybe not. Maybe he ought to trust her a little bit. Make some more space for himself. Things should feel more... equal. Yet, they didn't. He had a darker past and probably a brighter future, just like Tariq, like Nova too... And Zizi. They had suffered and they were better for it. She did not flick the light on, the only source of illumination was a glazed window for ventilation. She looked at herself in the mirror. It was like a black and white photo. She drew herself closer, leaning over the basin. Peering at the dark-circles and the slight gaunt of her cheeks. The slightly vacant and hollow look in her eyes. Things felt easier once. She felt less burdened, less like a burden too…   She was invincible once. Flawless. Fierce. Bold… Infallible. Heck, she was incorrigible. A fighter. She had her light in the past and maybe that was the problem. Maybe that's why she didn't know how to fight the darkness. ‘you are a…?’ That voice. That stupid voice. “Failure.” The reflection’s lips moved; the word echoed in the bathroom. Akira leaned closer; her left palm joined hands with the girl on the other side of the glass. Lips moved again, forming foreign words that asked for something final. “I’m a failure. I deserve to die. You should kill me.”

Then she saw it.

⅃ƎIꓘƎZƎ

The letters were so angular and sharp. Precise and assured in the way they were etched onto the woman’s forearm. He was still flaunting his existence on her, in her mind.

Akira looked down at her own arm. She lingered on each letter individually. The E started about four-fingers from the crease of her elbow. L ended over the light-green tree of her veins, just under her wrist.

The mirror shattered. She broke it. “You don’t get to tell me who I am!”

A dagger-shaped shard clinked against the basin. Tiny perfect drops of red followed, staining the white ceramic. The ball of her left palm was now bleeding. She did not care. She barely felt it. Slowly, she reached for the piece. Blood fell onto it, and Akira wiped it away. The eyes of the woman who looked back at her, from the red-tinted reflective surface, were dark and stormy. Doubt and pain flickered as the eyelids closed momentarily. Then there was that molten anger again.

She marched into the shower cabinet and sat down on the floor. Like she sat that day, draped in that lab-coat. With a uniform first, and then a suit. Tariq and Jared had been there then… One after another.

But today she was alone. Alone in Jared’s white-tee, which was already sporting a few stains of crimson. She looked down at the god-forsaken name. At that perpendicularly angled letter at her wrist. Then back at the shard… and then just at the wrist, past the scar of the letter. -

Jared’s hair stood on end. He was not expecting someone to already be in the room. He noticed every little change, the covers, the cabinets that were left slightly ajar. The way the seam of his uniform peaked out of the crack between the closet doors, like they had been closed in a hurry. There were no signs of forced entry… But BioHacker trainees did not have too many layers of protections for their rooms, no one typically wanted anything from them. Getting in would not take too much effort.

Did someone come looking for something? If that had truly been the purpose of this intruder’s visit, he was not too worried. There was nothing in the room that was worth taking. This person was not really trying to mask their presence. Yet, there seemed to be no one in the room. Maybe they left? But something set Jared on edge. Something felt off. Then he heard the soft purr of streaming water. Jared was not in uniform, but he did have his army knife. He plucked it out of the drawer and cupped it in his hand, just in case this was an ambush of some sort.

Then it hit him. This was not his room after all. 

“Shira?”

There was no response. He strode into the bathroom earnestly. The broken mirror, the drops of blood. And the silence, except for the water running. The door of the shower cabinet was not entirely closed, he could see some skin. Her ankles and a part of her calves, leaning against the wall on the other side.

And the trails of crimson dissolving into the drain.

“Shira!”

There was no reply again. Why didn’t she answer? Why won’t she…

He could not breathe, and he keeled to the floor. His hands reached for the cabinet door. There was a slew of protest and denial in his thoughts. He didn’t want to open this door… as much as he knew he had to. He slid it open. She sat flattened against the corner. Blood ran down her palm, in a creek, joining the thicker rivulets down her arm. It collected at her elbow, from where it dripped steadily onto the white roughened tile. Repeatedly, the drop fell and dissolved, wispy dregs in the water that swirled.

Her eyes were open and she was alive.

Relief and rage took hold of him in equal measure, he leashed the latter, calling out her name again.

“Shira…”

The drop of soft light glinted off the shard; it danced across the walls and lent a shimmer to the swirling water below. It peeked into his eyes, they looked silvery in its influence. A very shaky hand clutched the piece of the broken mirror. The tip was pressed against her skin. It sat just below the scar of another cigarette burn that he had given her, forced by circumstance.

Perhaps, now that she finally recognized that he was here, she allowed herself to respond with the softest of whimpers. It sounded like an unfocused afterthought. He watched her, but she seemed to be merely looking at him... From a distance that did not really exist between them.

He held out his hand. Her eyes narrowed and the grip she had on the shard suddenly steadied. She pressed the piece deeper into her skin. Her glare had such intensity, he could almost feel the stab of the glass and the warmth of the fresh crimson tears the wound cried. It was like she wanted him to, like this was a threat. He raised his hands.

Why would she do this?

“Shira… Put it down…”

There was a certain revulsion he tasted in the back of his throat. It came hand in hand with that searing pain of concern and helplessness.

“… Please.” “No…”

The voice was so quiet and yet, so resolute. It was her voice, but this was not his Shira… It could not be. Her averted eyes fell back to her lacerated arm. He did not want to spook her into doing something stupid. So, he sat there and followed her gaze, with his heart in his throat. It did not stop him from choking out the question.

“Why are you doing this?” -

No one ever means to make something about themselves. It just happens. It is all one knows.

“Because…” She did not really have an answer. But she had wanted something. This started somewhere, with something, with a goal. But somewhere along the way, she forgot what it was. Somewhere in those moments of making precise cuts in her mind and imprecise jagged lines on her arm… She forgot the why.

And now the blood ran too thickly, for her to see the mangled letters and remember. Now all she knew was that she didn’t want to mar the scar of that cigarette burn.  And that the piece now loitered dangerously close to making a line she knows she should not. To crossing a line she knows she should not.

She looked at him, the soft glow of his face. The black and white of their existence and the silver and red that was held in between.  

“What’s the point?”

She did not want to die. But, she also did not see the point. -

Jared was not really a romantic. But he did love, the best he could. Perhaps, what he did next was very wrong. In that desperate moment, he acted with the coldest, logical instinct - one that was more doused in passion than he would ever want to admit. He reached for the pocket-knife he had stowed away and flicked it open silently. The click drew her attention. She was watching now. There was a lethality to the way she regarded him, from behind the curtain of her drenched tresses. 

Jared didn’t seek to make a mockery of this by copying her gash for gash. He had his own point to make… about the pointlessness. And he got straight to it. He held the knife somewhere above the carved scrawl of her name. He did not wince as he made a small slice of his own. If he made his line, it would strike through her handiwork. Slice through the name he had actually grown accustomed to wearing.

A part of him wanted to. The part that hated this. Hated that she could hold her life, over his. Hated that he was now holding his over hers.

“There isn’t one.” He said. 

Now they sat, staring at the invisible lines that they could make… that they could cross… but did not. Till she recanted, after she noticed her name on his arm. Noticed what she would lose. What they would lose. “I’m sorry… It’s- It’s not what it looks like… Not exactly.” She sounded a little more like his Shira now.

Were there parts of her, he was refusing to see? Were their parts he had refused to make his own? He had refused to give up parts of him to her… Maybe it worked the other way around too… "We should... Talk" "Can we... talk?" She suggested and he asked. They spoke over one another, ending in sync. She dropped the shard. He snapped the knife close. Tags: @lettuceknighted, @quirkykayleetam

[demytasse]

[Shizaya] Coping Mechanism — Ch 2

[Previous Chapter]

     The apartment was at full capacity with a bartender manning the kitchen and an elephant in the living room. Izaya had no excuse to dodge either one as he’d summoned both, yet moments upon minutes he paced in deliberation of if he should flee or fulfill the goal of his spontaneous visit.

His scenery brought a wrinkle to his brow, furthermore pursed his lips as he examined an overwhelming flood of memories in faded colour. Suddenly thrust into the thick of things presented him the opportunity to reevaluate what he’d already judged too many times. Such like scuffs on the walls that he knew the explicit stories behind, the unique routes they each took in order to reach various rooms; especially like a picture frame filled with a photo of Shizuo’s brother rather than himself, like Izaya had implied with the gift. It was an abomination to which Izaya stubbornly tried to ignore, but never could escape how Kasuka disapproved of him within his peripheral whenever he walked by it.

Locked in a showdown of mutual dislike, he was caught off guard by a rattle of cabinetry in the distance. He replaced the frame within its dust guidelines before his attention shifted to the absent-minded fool that bumped around the narrow confines of the kitchen. Oddly, Shizuo didn’t care that he barely fit and he never really did.

             "You know my place has more than just an impressive view. It’s got enough space for five or more bumbling Shizu-chans — scratch that, let’s just keep it to one, right?”

No matter how Izaya tried to sell him on his own apartment, Shizuo had a frustratingly high appraisal of his shabby box.

It was like he awoke each morning with a wiped memory and forgot how many months he’d been an inmate of the three-star prison. Prideful, he’d boast to Izaya of how nice it was for such an affordable price, pleased that he was spared wailing ambulances and out-of-the-blue gang brawls. It was a breath of fresh air, a good omen of changing tides — high hopes for his future.

Inevitably that optimism was killed by none other than Izaya and his prerogative; his duty as an informant to save people from their own ignorance. So naturally he rationalised each perk on Shizuo’s checklist as if it were necessary, and unnecessarily nothing remained without due explanation.

             “For instance, Shizu-chan, did you know that…”

Drywall was cheaper than double-pane windows, which was why he was forced to rely on floor lamps, squared-off corners cost less, hence the reason for his boring floor plan; low grade carpet was easy to replace, which clearly explained why the flat appeared polished upon move-in.             ”Simply put, it was especially built for your typical bachelor, unlike what you are…”

When Shizuo handled his disappointment with an 'oh’, the self-proclaimed saviour knew he’d gone too far — Izaya’s eyeopener ruined Shizuo’s simpleton perspective.

That memory and those that could attest came back to haunt him. They unearthed the possibility that Izaya’s harsh realism versus Shizuo’s naivete was the underlying problem of their dynamic, which they’d forced beyond rivalry to become a couple in hot water. Could their relationship honestly last in the long run, or were he and Shizuo just a novelty soon to expire?

    “You know, I applaud you for how tidy you’ve kept this hole in the wall.” Izaya struggled through a compliment.

Shizuo jumped at the sudden comment; judged Izaya with a half-formed frown before he dug through the fridge.

    “Not like I had a choice.”

    “Is that so…”

    “You woulda sassed me if I didn't.”

    “And you can confirm with certainty that I would come back?” displeased with being predictable, he disguised his bothered browline with sardonics.

    “Yes.” Shizuo’s brute unwavered stoicism bore into Izaya’s confidence.

    “I suppose a congratulations is due.”

    “You just couldn't spare the sarcasm, huh?”

    “Why, my dear Shizu-chan, if you know me so well you should have predicted that. Bless your ignorant soul.”

Shizuo’s grip sunk into his obtained milk carton; Izaya swore the only reason he wasn’t covered in the contents was all thanks to a far off grocery day. He waved off the comment.

With a forced sigh, Shizuo tugged his fingers through scraggly blond bangs that combed back to expose inches of dark undergrowth. The atrocity stabbed Izaya with guilt.

    “It seems that we’ve both mourned over the loss of certain shared activities.” Izaya twiddled an overgrown lock an inch out of style beyond his chin. Caught exposed, Shizuo dropped the nervous act in shame — grumbled to himself.

    “Fuck you,” he re-situated his hair. “You don’t get to mourn!”

    Pried of his rare moment of empathy, Izaya sneered. “I can mourn even if I made a mistake—”

    “Not this mistake!”

    “As if you haven't made questionable decisions in your lifetime,” he gestured the span of his body to deprecate himself.

    “You’re a disgrace to yourself, louse. I'm goin’ back to bed.”

    “So you’re just going to run away?”

    Shizuo’s eyes flashed. “First, don’t act like you didn’t do that before me! Second, I’m not gonna sit here and watch you put yourself on the damn chopping block!”     “I can berate myself as I like, it’s not for you to decide!”

    “I’m done.” He threw up his hands.     “That’s it?”

    “Yes.”

    “That’s really it?”

    “Yes, goddammit!”     “My, how the mighty fall, or so it goes.”

    Shizuo rolled his eyes, “You know where the door is, Izaya.”

The floorboards creaked under his heavy steps, though his pace was too methodical to be natural.

    “Shizuo, wait…” Izaya spoke with a shred of desperation.

As commanded, Shizuo stopped at the bedroom and looked over his shoulder; the doorframe within his grip. Ultimately, he looked confused by his own anger; like it was borrowed from a time when he wasn’t exhausted.

Familiar with the malaise, Izaya turned their conversation to a softened staredown; he intended to talk, but nothing came out.

Both shared an unspoken message, but negotiated in silence for the other to speak it in lieu of their ability to. An apology, forgiveness, a truce, neither had the strength to relent. Pity, though, they had that in spades.

Hurt dissolved Shizuo’s resolve and transformed him into a mess of emotions and nebulous expressions. Izaya forced himself to watch. It played like the reel of torture he already subjected himself to at night, that unbearable disappointment of others in him that he couldn’t drag himself to witness in person — shamefully, for too long. He was lucky, that he was cut short of the perpetual spin, at least in that moment.

    “...you know where the spare sheets are too...if you want.”

    “I remember. Yes.” Izaya nodded.

Shizuo mirrored and doubled the ‘yes’ in a whisper, and then allowed the door to separate them.

AN: I scrapped my original fic for its limbs and innards then repurposed them for this monstrosity. Am I happy with it? I’m happy that this amateur reconstructive surgery is finished. If I squint my eyes, the blurry lines of dialogue are okay. Aha! Ahahaha... Just wait! The next chapter is when I finally break loose of my old fic shackles! And won’t that be a testament of my current writing prowess! (Psst, this is where you stop writing your authour note and post, me.)

[ladylizaelliott]

LADY IN THE DARK at MasterVoices, April 26-27th

So the evolution of this production of “Lady” I was finally able to see was made aware of a few years back when a follower on my tumblr page wrote to me about the production she was working on in which the script received revisions. This is something I have been waiting for ever since falling in love with this musical almost 16 years ago. The production at NYCC Mastervoices was the NYC premiere of this new adaptation. Along with what Ted Sperling has tweaked in the delivery of the score, has me firmly believing that Lady is in the right hands and has a future outside of “Limited” runs and preservationist performances.

Firstly, the character of Dr Brooks has been toned down from his original “I know best” attitude which at worst times previously could be seen as condescending and in a fresh and recently applied approach, is played by a woman. This brings a less antagonistic air to her observations about Liza and in fact some of her more revelation-esque moments with Liza are now prompted for Liza to say herself rather than one long “Here’s your diagnosis” speech at the final session which also does a MUCH better job of showing the passage of time by showing that by the end of the show, Liza is actively stating the observations as her own and in a way that looked as though they had a shorthand with each other. Secondly, the office banters are MUCH shorter and keep to relevant “planting” points. I will use the term “planting” as it relates to the importance that everything we see Liza dream about should be “planted” somewhere in her conscious life and it looks like this is something they had in mind for revising-trim the fat of those banter and keep the meat. Helping this is the modification by Christopher Hart to combine the roles of Miss Foster, Miss Stevens AND Allison DuBois to one woman: Miss Foster. This streamlines the office scenes SO effectively. Additionally, this adaptation utilizes Maggie and Miss Foster in her dreams much more to the point where they get solo lines in ensemble numbers AND in a brilliant move by Sperling, sing a three part jazz harmony on one of the verses of Saga of Jenny. It was the most dynamic version I’ve ever heard, including a solo line from Kendall as well. It broke up the song and took some of the vocal pressures off Liza. That being said my only criticism of a missed “plant” point is that I dislike the song “Tchaikovsky” as it has NO plant in Liza’s conscious life and as we know with the structure of this show, it should. It was made as a vehicle patter number and while still impressive, feels out of place, and I think that Russell should have SOMETHING spoken as relates to classical music that ties this song back into something from Liza’s conscious life. Charley Johnson. The balance with this character is unarguably the most difficult part of this modernization. His original form would never have been accepted nowadays for his blatant sexism and multiple cases of workplace sexual harassment. THAT BEING SAID I have NO qualms about retaining that quality (it is still essential to her own questioning and discovery of her attitudes on her sexuality and emotional terrain) and men like that STILL EXIST. I was very surprised to see an audience react to his lines: laughing at ones I heard were boo’d in previous ones and gasping at ones I thought not NEARLY as evocative (If we ever need a good man over there I’ll make you an offer!”) Things they DID NOT do: **Unambiguously indicate that Liza and Charley end up together **Use any Freudian dogma that tied her relationship with Kendall as being “daddy issues” like that fucking awful Hollywood version **Have her say aloud in any capacity that she wanted to “live as other women” or “give it up” it was much more Liza talking about the possibilities outside her current reality and asking herself to find an identity OUTSIDE of her job and outside of her relationships. But they never outright picked one. Perfect!

Things they Did I LOVED: **This Is New was sexy as hell and did, in the classiest way, imply Liza had a fantastic sex dream about Randy Curtis. YES **Use the dancers to do an entire sequence WITH Kendall Nesbit for “The Best Years of His Life” **Reprise the last verse of “The Princess of Pure Delight” during the flashback sung by Young Liza and made the entire SONG ITSELF another song from her childhood, and reprise Mapleton High Chorale right after her revelation of being stood up by Ben. So EACH Wedding Dream song got directly tied back to the childhood scenes. **They played an underscoring of “Its Never Too Late to Mendelssohn” during the first scene with the parents at their dinner party. **They added a nod to The Coq D’Or and made it into a joke on the phone with Miss Foster

Victoria Clark is the Liza Elliott we’ve waited 70 years for. Her acting is phenomenal and her peaks and valleys show a compelling restrain and than when she goes to sing, handles the score with all the operatic polish required of the Weill lovers while not losing any of the theatricality and humor in the numbers. Her physicality is also a journey itself to watch-the first time you see her sit on Dr Brooks couch (which got used as multiple set pieces and divans across the play) tells you everything about her journey. When she first sits, she tries multiple positions of her arms, fidgets, shows all the anxiety that brought her there in the first place. The final moment, she is laid back open and relaxed, hair down, and wearing a powder blue suit- a breathtaking journey JUST in the visual presentation. Also her “My Ship” is so stunning in its simplicity and control, and when the lights came up behind them to show blue and green stars I cried. Overall the only criticism I had was like the previous concert version at NYCC the tempo was just a taaaad too slow and this score can get heavy and leadened without a jazz tempo especially in the Glamour Dream. The more straight and upbeat the more it reads for the ham of a sequence it is and so it is really hilarious when it takes off into those fantastical moments. You just realize your ears are in heaven while chuckling. I think maybe another week of rehearsals WITH the orchestra to tighten the cues as there were points they either couldn’t see the conductor clear enough and missed cues so they sounded like they were hesitating hitting marks. This score should be quick and sharp and spit flying from diction. The Wedding Dream was STUNNING. I also consider myself blessed to witness a Circus Dream that outlandish and that had a full choreographed Dance of the Tumblers. I am of the opinion (and purists of Weill would hate me for it) that given the limitations on current productions to cut it OR add something more deliberate to make it as much of an intent of placement as “Princess” and “My Ship”. 

In conclusion, a musical which for a long time I felt like was dead to the point that even a defibrillator wouldn’t be worth trying, has been revived, is conscious, and in the hands of Ted Sperling and Victoria Clark, may very well survive and make a full recovery. 

**All Photographs are by Richard Termine**

[shoewave]

Canjam Jams

Canjam is a one of a kind experience. Organised by Head-fi, these annual events are a unique space where audiophiles and their favourite manufacturers gather from all over the world to see, touch and hear the latest and coolest gear.  For just those two days, you’ll be able to find yourself talking to the Japanese amp engineers one minute, and trying out Polish custom earphones the next. It’s a feast for the ears. But that raises the question - as we look for gear to listen with, what do we listen to? 

Even in the very lively public space of Canjam, the act of listening to a track remains quite individual. I couldn’t help but wonder, what are the songs flowing through cables and drivers all over the room? For us audiophiles, what is the song we choose to press play on? So I went around Canjam Singapore 2019 and asked: 

“When you have your favourite setup, what’s the first, go-to, favourite song you play?” 

Below you’ll find responses from attendees, engineers, brand reps and distributors. Some interpreted this to mean test tracks, while others shared with me their favourite jams. The question phrasing is admittedly clunky, but I was hoping to get at that feeling where you listen to a song, and something clicks inside your heart. About that feeling when you unbox that latest buy and pick your first song to play for maximum pleasure. It’s not an easy thing to put into words, and after all, everyone has their own version of it. Nonetheless, I hope you’ll find this insightful in some way, and my heartfelt thanks goes to all those below who were kind enough to talk with me. In no particular order:

(Spotify playlist here)

Marco, Focal/Absolute Sound: Soulwax - Is it Always Binary. “And Queens of the Stone Age is good too.” With a background in producing electronic music, the pacing and beats on this Soulwax cut are something he really digs and listens for.

Megane, Focal: Diana Krall - Temptation, for the vocals, and Jennifer Warnes - Rock You Gently for that deep bass.

Kenneth, Focal/Absolute Sound: The Reddings - The Awakening Part 1. “Especially that bass slap.” He’s not one to pigeonhole himself into a single genre, but if he had to pick one this would be it. They usually leave the album on a loop for demo, so it’s one the whole crew’s gotten pretty familiar with, and for good reason - it’s an absolute banger. He also recommends the subsequent songs on the record: Doin’ It which has vocals, and I Want It for a slower mood. “But ultimately,” he adds, “if you don’t enjoy the song, what’s the point right?”

Lovin, Wired for Sound: Nobuo Uematsu - The Man with the Machine Gun (Distant Worlds Orchestral Version) “If the headphone can play this song without any problems, I’ll buy it.” He likes how the song takes you through the whole spectrum. Fast, slow, quiet, loud - all in 3 and a half minutes. He was kind enough to let me listen to it on his player, and it really gave my IEMs a workout. A very dynamic, energetic piece.

Takatoshi Seto, Acoustune: He responded instantly - ONE OK ROCK. Asked which song exactly, he had to think for a bit, then decided on one of their latest releases, Stand Out Fit In. 

Andreas Schmitt, InEar: He paused, deep in thought. “Ok, you know what are...classics?” Then looked me deliberately in the eyes as he listed each of the following: Adele - Hello, Yello - Limbo, Klaus Bedelt - He’s A Pirate, Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake (Berliner Philharmoniker), Herbie Hancock - Cantaloupe Island. 

Antony, Music Sanctuary: At first he took it to mean test tracks, but when I rephrased and asked him what puts a smile on his face, what he jams out to, he just lit up and responded with Twenty One Pilots - Fairly Local. Such bass power. 

Ito-san, Kumitate Lab’s engineer: He truly had a tough time deciding, as he will have a set of as many as 20 to 30 songs for tuning each IEM model he makes, and that each set is unique and diverse with songs stretching across decades and genres. I then asked if there’s a song that shows up more than most, or that he keeps coming back to, and after much thought and some banter with his colleagues in Japanese, he replied that there is one song he likes to use to test dynamic driver bass specifically - Yonezu Kenshi’s 打上花火 (Uchiage Hanabi). “If the bass is not tuned correctly, you can hear it in the rumbling.” For bass-treble balance, he listens to BUMP OF CHICKEN - ファイター (Fighter). Just a note, this song isn’t available on Spotify for me, so it isn’t in the playlist, but it is uploaded on youtube here . 

Kyo, Final Audio: “Ah...hmm...I think you may not know this singer...she is not really famous outside Japan.” He really enjoys female vocals - no surprise that he’s with Final then - and his first pick is MACO - Love for enjoyment, but also for testing because it’s usually on the top of his recently played list anyway.

Chingan, Final Audio: Lady Gaga - Always Remember Us This Way. This song is what’s on rotation for now, he likes to listen to the wide soundstage and fine details within. 

Albert, fellow attendee: Hailing from Indonesia, Albert shared that Hoff Ensemble - Hva Skal Hende Nå is one of his Top 3 songs to listen to. They’re a Norwegian band, and this album is aptly titled Quiet Winter Night. 

Piotr Granicki, Custom Art: FIBAE Black, the single-BA-that-does-not sound-like-one, went through over 20 iterations, and I decided to ask if there was a go-to song Piotr would use through that long tuning process. Like Ito-san, he had a tough time settling on one, saying that he tries to keep a big variation so that you know the IEM will handle a wide variety of things well. But, he kept coming back to Cane Hill - Singing in the Swamp. He would listen out for “this point about 30s in, where with just a drum beat, everything changes, and it becomes really loud.” Interestingly, unlike Ito-san, Piotr keeps more or less the same set of tracks in rotation across his models, so he can compare across his lineup more easily. I do wish I’d asked him though, whether listening to Singing in the Swamp gives him flashbacks of late nights at his workshop tuning up the FIBAE Black. Oh well, maybe next Canjam.

Herbert Zheng, Moondrop: Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27, Mitsuko Uchida on piano. “Hey, she was actually very pretty when she was young,” says Herbert as I point to the album cover on Spotify. Classical music is the genre he mainly enjoys, but he chuckles and shares how working in the audio industry has messed with his listening habits. “We try to tune for the general audience, so we will look at everything in a customer’s playlist and just listen through the whole thing.” Which for him meant a lot of mandopop, since in China most western music and streaming platforms aren’t available. After all the pop though classical is still a mainstay in his playlist, alongside some J-pop nowadays (looking through the playlist, he actually recognised Uchiage Hanabi, though he knows it by the chinese pronounciation of the characters - da shang hua huo.) For this concerto he stressed that one has to listen to all three movements - though the first and third are his personal favourite. 

Sam Roney, Dekoni Audio: Sam’s was the quickest response on the list, immediately shooting back with Moloko - Sing It Back. “Snare-heavy” in his words, it’s an energetic track that would do well on the dancefloor - the Boris Dlugosch mix is an instant banger.  

Tal Kocen, Dekoni Audio: Tal took a bit longer to decide, but eventually said that he would come back to Fleetwood Mac. “Rumours, that whole record, you know?” If he had to pick one song off it, it’d be Fleetwood Mac - The Chain. A classic. 

Masuda Masanori, MASS-kobo: It took a couple rounds of translation, but after he understood the question, he immediately replied with Jen Chapin’s Jesus Children of America, pulled out his player, connected it to his model 404, gesturing for me to listen. I do, and it’s gorgeously full and vivid. He uses this song as a tester when he builds each of his amps, but it’s also one he enjoys. It turns out he got the CD with this song from Jen Chapin herself, decades ago when an engineer in LA introduced him to her. “Very rare, that time only released in USA, not in Japan. I also visited the recording studio where they recorded this album, showed them my amps, and the engineers there were very impressed,” he says, grinning. 

And that rounds it up...with no Hotel California at all, make of that what you will. Thanks again to the above folks for taking the time to entertain my questions. Even with all the high-end gear on show, one of the most valuable things at Canjam is always the community, the people, the conversations you have. It was wonderful getting all these different perspectives on audio and hearing how people enjoy their music. In the course of all these conversations, unavoidably the age-old question arose from time to time: are you using your gear to listen to your music, or using music to listen to your gear? Maybe even both? In the end we all agreed it’s a personal thing. You listen to what you like, you find tracks that work for you, whether you’re tuning an IEM, testing cans at the store, or just laid back at home. In that sense I admit that asking people to pick just one track is unfair. As many of the people listed above mentioned, one song isn’t going to cover all your moods, all the frequency ranges. 

But in this case, it’s not about the perfect track, but rather the perfect moment. It’s that that song or album or band that sticks out in your memory. Maybe it’s only with a specific setup, or it could be any old headphone, whichever. The music that when you first heard, or hear it now, just makes something click inside, you know? Just gives you that feeling of rightness. 

I remember fondly what that feels like for me, and I wanted to know how it was for others, hence this playlist. 16 different ‘peak listening experiences’, so to speak. What’s yours? 

[oumakokichi]

I was wondering what you thought of the character Oowada Mondo? I was reading your meta of Celestia and i was wondering what you thought of him as a culprit?

Mondo isn’t exactly one of my favorite characters from dr1,but I do think he worked well as a culprit.

Sdr2 and ndrv3 both had stronger Chapter 2s in my opinion,but dr1 Chapter 2 still is pretty decent in its own way. Mostly, it suffersfrom the rather rushed relationship between Mondo and Ishimaru, as well as fromthe messy implications of Chihiro “hiding as a girl” to avoid being calledweak. But the former is something that several characters in the series havesuffered from, not just Mondo and Ishimaru, and the latter is unrelated to thequestion of Mondo’s character, so I won’t dwell on it too much.

In hindsight, I would say Mondo reads as a sort of prototypefor Juzo and Momota both. Like Juzo, he’s quick to anger, wants to solveproblems with his fists, and rarely thinks things through before rushing toaction—which can be useful, sometimes, but often leads him to more trouble thanit’s worth, and eventually does wind up being the reason that he commitsmurder.

There’s also the matter of Juzo being canonically confirmedgay, which adds another lens through which to view the sauna scene with Mondoand Ishimaru. While I do think the sauna scene was originally meant as a mix ofbaiting and comic relief, it’s true that Juzo and Mondo both deal heavily inrepressed emotions, and both feel like they would absolutely be better off deadif anyone knew their darkest secrets. Considering the heavy stigma associatedwith being openly gay in an environment very filled with toxic masculinity(like, for instance, a biker gang), there’s a lot of room to read into Mondo asa very closeted individual.

Meanwhile, Momota shares far more similarities in terms ofappearance and attitude with Leon at a first glance, but I think it’s true thathe and Mondo are both the characters that deal the most with “what it means tobe a man,” “real men keeping their promises, etc. He too shares many of thesame issues of toxic masculinity that Juzo and Mondo both do, though in Momota’scase, a lot of this is because his character is meant to imitate the “perfectshounen protag.” So the violence and harmful aspects of this character trait golargely unexplored with him.

Still, Mondo’s character was interesting to look at from theaspect of being a sort of prototype figure for future characters. I couldeasily see the similarities there on my recent dr1 reread, and it’s hard not tosympathize with him to some degree for falling so pitifully into the trap Junkoset with the “embarrassing secrets” motive in Chapter 2.

One of the things I like best about both the motive andMondo’s character though is perhaps the fact that his desperate need to be “strong”in the eyes of others ties in perfectly with DR’s more general commentary onsocietal pressure. The need to succeed in Japanese culture, both academicallyand socially, is incredibly strong, and not a laughing matter at all. Suiciderates among high schoolers and college students are extremely high in Japan. One of the things DR has always done verywell with as a franchise is commenting on this extreme societal pressure byputting it through the lens of “SHSL Talents” and kids who feel they have to bethe absolute best at what they do,otherwise they’ll be discarded by society as a whole.

Mondo’s obsession with strength reflected that societalpressure quite well, especially with its added layer of toxic masculinity.There’s nothing admirable or enviable about Mondo, by the time the trial ends:neither his strength nor his talent account for anything. He’s just… rather pathetic,really, a scared kid who snapped under pressure and killed someone weaker andsmaller than him, in order to try and prove himself strong. All his talk about “men’spromises” and “protecting the weak” ultimately amount to nothing, because itwas those things which drove him to want to take his secret of “killing hisbrother” with him to his grave in the first place.

And that hollow realization also embodies Junko’s idea of “despair”so well, especially in the first game. In sdr2, the motives were far morepointed and deliberate, usually guaranteed to target at least a few people, oreven one specific person. As Kodaka himself has said, Junko cared very littleabout the sdr2 kids overall. To her, they were small fry; her objective wassimply to get them back to the way they were, and especially to get Kamukuraback. The killing game was simply a means to pass the time until that happened.

But in dr1, the killing game itself is the end goal. Junko’stwisted “love” for her classmates is shown by the fact that she wanted them todespair on their own, through much more general, less targeted motives. Thefirst three chapters illustrate this particularly well: Leon, Mondo, and Celesall kill for very mundane, completely-avoidable reasons, like wanting toescape, the terror of a secret being exposed, or plain and simple greed.

If dr1 had been a tad more polished, I feel like Mondo could’vereally been shaped into a more interesting character. Sadly though, I don’tthink Chapter 2 ever really reached his full potential. The main redeemingpoint of his character was supposed to be his newfound bond with Ishimaru, andhis loyalty to both him and his gang members. But this aspect of his characterwasn’t explored almost at all; if anything, him killing Chihiro went directlyagainst what was expected of him as both a biker gang leader and a “real man.”

We’re not even really given an explanation as to why he and Ishimaru became so close inthe span of about a day or so. Sure, there’s room to read between the lines asto what might have happened in the sauna scene—but it’s ultimately all justspeculation. Had their interaction been more gradual, leading up to a moreunderstandable friendship (or more than that), that would’ve been understandable.

But it ultimately felt very flat in the end, as did Ishimaru’sbreakdown over his death. Rather than exploring Ishimaru’s character on hisown, he was mostly just there to mourn over Mondo’s instead, all without anyreal reason provided for it by the plot other than “they had one really sweatynight in the sauna that we mostly played for comic relief.”

We’re meant to feel sympathetic for Mondo in the end—arguablymore sympathetic than Leon, who tries to claim self-defense in Chapter 1 but isrightfully called out on having gone willingly back to his room to get thetools to hunt down Maizono in the bathroom and kill her, even though he had aperfect opportunity to run away without doing anything to her at all.

Mondo’s crime was unplanned, and took place in the heat ofthe moment, that much is certain. But his admission to it later on is somewhatmarred by the fact that he does, in fact, deny it fervently early on, eventrying to rush the trial by saying that Togami did it when the group discoversthat Togami posed the body. Despite his apparent guilt over what happened,there’s still undeniably an aspect of self-interest to his crime which is neveractually addressed within the trial much, and that makes it somewhat hard toconsider him as sympathetic of a character as the narrative tries to act.

Also, this is perhaps somewhat nitpicky, but his executionis… honestly really bad. It’s quite hard to take it seriously or read into itmuch when it’s based on a pretty racist folktale, and when it’s mostly meantfor funny meme material. This sort of bouncing between everything being a hugejoke and everything being actually, seriously traumatic is pretty ongoingwithin the whole Mondo-Ishimaru dynamic, though (Ishida is another example of “characterdevelopment” being done only as a joke).

In any case, these are pretty much my thoughts on Mondo! He’snot my least favorite character in DR by any means, or even in dr1, but I dofeel there was a lot that could’ve been improved about him, and about dr1Chapter 2 in general.  Still, there areaspects and motifs about his character that I feel were reflected in characterswhich came after him, and I can respect that his character arc tied in quitewell with DR’s larger themes about the pressure to succeed, and how it oftencauses kids to snap and do things which they’re unable to take back.

I hope I was able to answer your question, anon! Thank youfor asking; it’s always really fun to be able to write meta about some of theother games sometimes!

[nebris]

The Man from Red Vienna

December 21, 2017 Issue

Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left

by Gareth Dale Columbia University Press, 381 pp., $40.00; $27.00 (paper)

What a splendid era this was going to be, with one remaining superpower spreading capitalism and liberal democracy around the world. Instead, democracy and capitalism seem increasingly incompatible. Global capitalism has escaped the bounds of the postwar mixed economy that had reconciled dynamism with security through the regulation of finance, the empowerment of labor, a welfare state, and elements of public ownership. Wealth has crowded out citizenship, producing greater concentration of both income and influence, as well as loss of faith in democracy. The result is an economy of extreme inequality and instability, organized less for the many than for the few.

Not surprisingly, the many have reacted. To the chagrin of those who look to the democratic left to restrain markets, the reaction is mostly right-wing populist. And “populist” understates the nature of this reaction, whose nationalist rhetoric, principles, and practices border on neofascism. An increased flow of migrants, another feature of globalism, has compounded the anger of economically stressed locals who want to Make America (France, Norway, Hungary, Finland…) Great Again. This is occurring not just in weakly democratic nations such as Poland and Turkey, but in the established democracies—Britain, America, France, even social-democratic Scandinavia.

We have been here before. During the period between the two world wars, free-market liberals governing Britain, France, and the US tried to restore the pre–World War I laissez-faire system. They resurrected the gold standard and put war debts and reparations ahead of economic recovery. It was an era of free trade and rampant speculation, with no controls on private capital. The result was a decade of economic insecurity ending in depression, a weakening of parliamentary democracy, and fascist backlash. Right up until the German election of July 1932, when the Nazis became the largest party in the Reichstag, the pre-Hitler governing coalition was practicing the economic austerity commended by Germany’s creditors.

The great prophet of how market forces taken to an extreme destroy both democracy and a functioning economy was not Karl Marx but Karl Polanyi. Marx expected the crisis of capitalism to end in universal worker revolt and communism. Polanyi, with nearly a century more history to draw on, appreciated that the greater likelihood was fascism.

As Polanyi demonstrated in his masterwork The Great Transformation (1944), when markets become “dis-embedded” from their societies and create severe social dislocations, people eventually revolt. Polanyi saw the catastrophe of World War I, the interwar period, the Great Depression, fascism, and World War II as the logical culmination of market forces overwhelming society—“the utopian endeavor of economic liberalism to set up a self-regulating market system” that began in nineteenth-century England. This was a deliberate choice, he insisted, not a reversion to a natural economic state. Market society, Polanyi persuasively demonstrated, could only exist because of deliberate government action defining property rights, terms of labor, trade, and finance. “Laissez faire,” he impishly wrote, “was planned.”

Polanyi believed that the only way politically to temper the destructive influence of organized capital and its ultra-market ideology was with highly mobilized, shrewd, and sophisticated worker movements. He concluded this not from Marxist economic theory but from close observation of interwar Europe’s most successful experiment in municipal socialism: Red Vienna, where he worked as an economic journalist in the 1920s. And for a time in the post–World War II era, the entire West had an egalitarian form of capitalism built on the strength of the democratic state and underpinned by strong labor movements. But since the era of Thatcher and Reagan that countervailing power has been crushed, with predictable results.

In The Great Transformation, Polanyi emphasized that the core imperatives of nineteenth-century classical liberalism were free trade, the idea that labor had to “find its price on the market,” and enforcement of the gold standard. Today’s equivalents are uncannily similar. We have an ever more intense push for deregulated trade, the better to destroy the remnants of managed capitalism; and the dismantling of what remains of labor market safeguards to increase profits for multinational corporations. In place of the gold standard—whose nineteenth-century function was to force nations to put “sound money” and the interests of bondholders ahead of real economic well-being—we have austerity policies enforced by the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with the American Federal Reserve tightening credit at the first signs of inflation.

This unholy trinity of economic policies that Polanyi identified is not working any more now than it did in the 1920s. They are practical failures, as economics, as social policy, and as politics. Polanyi’s historical analysis, in both earlier writings and The Great Transformation, has been vindicated three times, first by the events that culminated in World War II, then by the temporary containment of laissez-faire with resurgent democratic prosperity during the postwar boom, and now again by the restoration of primal economic liberalism and neofascist reaction to it. This should be the right sort of Polanyi moment; instead it is the wrong sort.

Gareth Dale’s intellectual biography, Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left, does a fine job of exploring the man, his work, and the political and intellectual setting in which he developed. This is not the first Polanyi biography, but it is the most comprehensive. Dale, a political scientist who teaches at Brunel University in London, also wrote an earlier book, Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market (2010), on his economics.

Polanyi was born in 1886 in Vienna to an illustrious Jewish family. His father, Mihály Pollacsek, came from the Carpathian region of the Hapsburg Empire and acquired a Swiss engineering degree. He was a contractor for the empire’s growing rail system. In the late 1880s, Mihály moved the family to Budapest, according to the Polanyi Archive. He magyarized the children’s family name to Polanyi in 1904, the same year Karl began studies at the University of Budapest, though he kept his own surname. Karl’s mother, Cecile, the well-educated daughter of a Vilna rabbi, was a pioneering feminist. She founded a women’s college in 1912, wrote for German-language periodicals in Budapest and Berlin, and presided over one of Budapest’s literary salons.

At home, German and Hungarian were spoken (along with French “at table”), and English was learned, Dale reports. The five Polanyi children also studied Greek and Latin. In the quarter-century before World War I, Budapest was an oasis of liberal tolerance. As in Vienna, Berlin, and Prague, a large proportion of the professional and cultural elite consisted of assimilated Jews. In the mid-1890s, Dale notes, “the Jewish faith was accorded the same privileges as the Christian denominations, and Jewish representatives were accorded seats in the upper house of parliament.”

Drawing on interviews and correspondence as well as published writings, Dale vividly evokes the era. Polanyi’s milieu in Budapest, known as the Great Generation, included activists and social theorists such as his mentor, Oscar Jaszi; Karl Mannheim; the Marxist Georg Lukács; Karl’s younger brother and ideological sparring partner, the libertarian Michael Polanyi; the physicists Leo Szilard and Edward Teller; the mathematician John von Neumann; and the composers Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, among many others. In this hothouse Polanyi thrived, attending the Minta Gymnasium, one of the city’s best, and then the University of Budapest. He was expelled in 1907 following a shoving match in which anti-Semitic right-wingers disrupted a lecture by a popular leftist professor, Gyula Pikler. He had to finish his doctor of law degree in 1908 at the provincial University of Kolozsvár (today Cluj in Romania). There, he was a founder of the left-humanist Galilei Circle and later served on the editorial board of its journal.

Polanyi became a leading member of Jaszi’s political party, the Radicals, and was named its general secretary in 1918. He was drawn to the Christian socialism of Robert Owen and Richard Tawney and the guild socialism of G.D.H. Cole. He mused about a fusion of Marxism and Christianity. Polanyi is best classified as a left-wing social democrat—but a lifelong skeptic of the possibility that a capitalist society would ever tolerate a hybrid economic system.

After World War I broke out, Polanyi enlisted as a cavalry officer. When he came home in late 1917, suffering from malnutrition, depression, and typhus, Budapest was in the throes of a chaotic conflict between the left and the right. In 1918 the Hungarian government made a separate peace with the Allies, breaking with Vienna and hoping to create a liberal republic. Events in the streets overtook parliamentary jockeying, and the Communist leader Béla Kun proclaimed what turned out to be a short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic.

Polanyi decamped for Vienna, both to recover his health and to get off the political front lines. There he found his calling as a high-level economics journalist and the love of his life, Ilona Duczynska, a Polish-born radical well to his left. Their daughter, Kari, born in 1923, recalls, as a preteen, clipping marked-up newspaper articles in three languages for her father. At age ninety-four, she continues to help direct the Polanyi Archive in Montreal.

Central Europe’s equivalent of The Economist, the weekly Österreichische Volkswirt, hired Polanyi in 1924 as a writer on international affairs. He continued his quest for a feasible socialism, engaging with others on the left and challenging the right in ongoing arguments with the free-market theorist Ludwig von Mises. The debates, published in agonizing detail, turned on whether a socialist economy was capable of efficient pricing. Mises insisted it was not. Polanyi argued that a decentralized form of worker-led socialism could price necessities with good-enough accuracy. He ultimately concluded, Dale recounts, that these abstruse technical arguments had been a waste of his time.1

A practical answer to the debate with Mises was playing out in Red Vienna. Well-mobilized workers kept socialist municipal governments in power for nearly sixteen years after World War I. Gas, water, and electricity were provided by the government, which also built working-class housing financed by taxes on the rich—including a tax on servants. There were family allowances for parents and municipal unemployment insurance for the trade unions. None of this undermined the efficiency of Austria’s private economy, which was far more endangered by the hapless policies of economic austerity that were criticized by Polanyi. After 1927, unemployment relentlessly increased and wages fell, which helped bring to power in 1932–1933 an Austrofascist government.

To Polanyi, Red Vienna was as important for its politics as for its economics. The perverse policies of Dickensian England reflected the political weakness of its working class, but Red Vienna was an emblem of the strength of its working class. “While [English poor-law reform] caused a veritable disaster of the common people,” he wrote, “Vienna achieved one of the most spectacular triumphs of Western history.” But as Polanyi appreciated, an island of municipal socialism could not survive larger market turbulence and rising fascism.

In 1933, with homegrown fascists running the government, Polanyi left Vienna for London. There, with the help of Cole and Tawney, he eventually found work in an extension program sponsored by Oxford University, known as the Workers’ Educational Association. He taught, among other subjects, English industrial history. His original research for these lectures formed the first drafts of The Great Transformation.

His mentor Oscar Jaszi was also now in exile and teaching at Oberlin. To supplement his meager adjunct pay, Polanyi was able to put together lecture tours to colleges in the United States. He found Roosevelt’s America a hopeful counterpoint to Europe. After war broke out, one of those lecture trips evolved into a three-year appointment at Bennington College, where he completed his book.

The timing of publication was auspicious. The year 1944 included the Bretton Woods Agreement, Roosevelt’s call for an Economic Bill of Rights, and Lord Beverage’s epic blueprint Full Employment in a Free Society. What these had in common with Polanyi’s work was a conviction that an excessively free market should never again lead to human misery ending in fascism.

Yet Polanyi’s book was initially met with resounding silence. This, I think, was the result of two factors. First, Polanyi belonged to no academic discipline and was essentially self-taught. Dale writes that when he was finally offered a job teaching economic history at Columbia in 1947, “the sociologists saw him as an economist, while the economists thought the reverse.” Midcentury America was also a period when political economy, institutionalism, the history of economic thought, and economic history were going into a period of eclipse, in favor of formalistic modeling. Polanyi’s was not a hypothesis that could be tested.

Second and more important, Polanyi’s ideological adversaries enjoyed subsidy and promotion while he had only the power of his ideas. Mises, like Polanyi, had no academic credentials. But he conducted an influential private seminar from his post as secretary of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce. The seminar developed the ultra-laissez-faire Austrian school of economics. Mises’s prime student was Friedrich Hayek. As a laissez-faire theorist financed by organized business, Mises anticipated the Heritage Foundation by half a century.

Hayek later contended in The Road to Serfdom that well-intentioned state efforts to temper markets would end in despotism. But there is no case of social democracy drifting into dictatorship. History sided with Polanyi, demonstrating that an unrestrained free market leads to democratic breakdown. Yet Hayek ended up with a chair at the London School of Economics, which was founded by Fabians; the “Austrian School” got dignified as a formal school of libertarian economics; and Hayek later won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The Road to Serfdom, also published in 1944, was a best seller, serialized in Reader’s Digest. Polanyi’s Great Transformation sold just 1,701 copies in 1944 and 1945.

When The Great Transformation appeared in 1944, the review in The New York Times was withering. The reviewer, John Chamberlain, wrote, “This beautifully written essay in the revaluation of a hundred and fifty years of history adds up to a subtle appeal for a new feudalism, a new slavery, a new status of economy that will tie men to their places of abode and their jobs.” If that sounds curiously like Hayek, the same Chamberlain had just written the effusive foreword to The Road to Serfdom. Such is the political economy of influence.

Yet Polanyi’s book refused to fade away. In 1982, his concepts were the centerpiece of an influential article by the international relations scholar John Gerard Ruggie, who termed the postwar economic order of 1944 “embedded liberalism.” The Bretton Woods system, Ruggie wrote, reconciled state with market by “re-embedding” the liberal economy in society via democratic politics.2 The Danish sociologist Gøsta Esping-Andersen, a major historian of social democracy, used the Polanyian concept “decommodification” in an important book, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990), to describe how social democrats contained and complemented the market.3

Other scholars who have valued Polanyi’s insights include the political historians Ira Katznelson, Jacob Hacker, and Richard Valelly, the late sociologist Daniel Bell, and the economists Joseph Stiglitz, Dani Rodrik, and Herman Daly. On the other hand, thinkers who seem quintessentially Polanyian in their concern about markets invading nonmarket realms, such as Michael Walzer, John Kenneth Galbraith, Albert Hirschman, and the Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom, don’t invoke him at all. This is the price one pays for being, in Hirschman’s self-description, a trespasser.

Having been exiled three times—from Budapest to Vienna, from Vienna to London, and later to New York—Polanyi had to move yet again when the US authorities would not grant Ilona a visa, citing her onetime membership in the Communist Party in the 1920s. They ended up in a suburb of Toronto, from which Polanyi commuted to Columbia until his retirement in the mid-1950s.

Though his enthusiasts tend to focus only on The Great Transformation, Dale’s book is valuable for his discussion of Polanyi after 1944. He lived for another twenty years, working on what was then known as primitive economic systems, which gave him yet another basis to demonstrate that the free market is no natural condition, and that markets in fact do not have to overwhelm the rest of society. On the contrary, many early cultures effectively blended market and nonmarket forms of exchange. His subjects included the slave trade of Dahomey and the economy of ancient Athens, which “demonstrated that elements of redistribution, reciprocity, and market exchange could be effectively fused into ‘an organic whole.’” Dale writes, “For Polanyi, democratic Athens was truly antiquity’s forerunner to Red Vienna.” Athens, of course, was far from socialist, but its precapitalist economy did blend market and nonmarket forms of income.

Dale also addresses Polanyi’s views on the escalating cold war and on the mixed economy of the postwar era that many now view as a golden age. The trente glorieuses, combining egalitarian capitalism and restored democracy, should have felt to him like an affirmation. But Polanyi, having lived through two wars, the destruction of socialist Vienna, the loss of close family members to the Nazis, four separate exiles, and long separations from Ilona, was not so easily convinced. While he admired Roosevelt, he considered the British Labour government of 1945 a sellout—a welfare state atop a still capitalist system.

Half a century later, that concern proved all too accurate. Others saw the Bretton Woods system as an elegant way of restarting trade while creating shelter for each member nation to run full-employment economies, but Polanyi viewed it as an extension of the sway of capital. That may also have been prescient. By the 1980s, the IMF and the World Bank had been turned into enforcers of austerity, the opposite of what was intended by their architect, John Maynard Keynes. He blamed the cold war mostly on the Allies, praising Henry Wallace’s view that the West could have reached an accommodation with Stalin.

Dale makes no excuses for Polanyi’s blind spot about the Soviet Union. At various points in the 1920s and 1930s, he notes, Polanyi gave Stalin something of a pass, even blaming the 1940 Molotov–Ribbentrop pact on Whitehall’s anti-Sovietism. And he was sanguine about the intentions of the Russians in the immediate postwar period. As a member of the émigré Hungarian Council in London, he broke with its other leaders over whether the Red Army should be welcomed as a harbinger of democratic socialism. The Soviet liberation of Eastern Europe, Polanyi insisted, would bring “a form of representative government based on political parties.”

Having been proven badly wrong, Polanyi cheered the abortive Hungarian revolution of 1956, yet after it was crushed by Soviet tanks he also found reasons for hope in the mildly reformist “goulash communism” that followed. This was naive, yet not totally misplaced. Though Polanyi was no Marxist, there was enough openness in Hungary that in 1963, a year before his death and well before the Berlin Wall came down, he was invited to lecture at the University of Budapest, his first visit home in four decades.

On the centennial of his birth in 1986, Kari Polanyi-Levitt organized a symposium in his honor in Budapest. The conference volume makes a superb companion to the Dale biography.4 The twenty-five short articles are written by a mix of writers based in the West and several from what was still Communist Hungary—where Polanyi was widely read. The writing is surprisingly exploratory and nondogmatic. Even so, when her turn came to speak, Polanyi-Levitt took a moment to plead: “If I may be permitted one more request to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences…it is that The Great Transformation be made available to Hungarian readers in the Hungarian language.” This was finally done in 1990. Like many in the West, the Communist regime in Budapest was not quite sure what to do with Polanyi.

Today, after a democratic interlude, Hungary is a center of ultra-nationalist autocracy. Misguided policies of financial license played their usual part. After the 2008 financial collapse, Hungarian unemployment steadily rose, from under 8 percent before the crash to almost 12 percent by early 2010. And in the 2010 election, the far-right Fidesz Party swept a left-wing government out of power, winning more than two thirds of the parliamentary seats, which made possible the “illiberal democracy” of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. It was one more echo, and one more vindication, that Polanyi didn’t need.

What, finally, are we to make of Karl Polanyi? And what lessons might he offer for the present moment? As even his champions admit, some of his details were off. Earlier friendly critics, Fred Block and Margaret Somers, point out that his account of late-eighteenth-century Britain exaggerates the ubiquity of poor relief. His famous case of the poor law of Speenhamland of 1795, whose public assistance protected the poor from the early perturbations of capitalism, overstated its application in England as a whole. Yet his account of the liberal reform of the poor laws in the 1830s was spot on. The intent and effect were to push people off of relief and force workers to take jobs at the lowest going wage.

One might also argue that the failure of liberal democracy to take hold in Central Europe in the nineteenth century, which paved the way for right-wing nationalism, had more complex causes than the spread of economic liberalism. Yet Polanyi was correct to observe that it was the failed attempt to universalize market liberalism after World War I that left the democracies weak, divided, and incapable of resisting fascism until the outbreak of war. Neville Chamberlain is best remembered for his capitulation to Hitler at Munich in 1938. But at the nadir of the Great Depression in April 1933, when Hitler was consolidating power in Berlin and Chamberlain was serving as Tory chancellor of the exchequer in London, he said this: “We are free from that fear which besets so many less fortunately placed, the fear that things are going to get worse. We owe our freedom from that fear to the fact that we have balanced our budget.” Such was the perverse conventional wisdom, then and now. That line should be chiseled on some monument to Polanyi.

A recent article by three Danish political scientists in the Journal of Democracy questions whether it was reasonable to attribute the surge of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s to the long arc of laissez-faire and economic collapse.5 They reported that the well-established democracies of northwest Europe and the former British colonies Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand “were virtually immune to the repeated crises of the interwar period,” while the newer and more fragile democracies of southern, central, and eastern Europe succumbed. Indeed, fascists briefly assumed power in northwest Europe only through invasion and occupation. Yet that observation makes Polanyi a more prophetic and ominous voice for our own time. Today in much of Europe, far-right parties are now the second or third largest.

In sum, Polanyi got some details wrong, but he got the big picture right. Democracy cannot survive an excessively free market; and containing the market is the task of politics. To ignore that is to court fascism. Polanyi wrote that fascism solved the problem of the rampant market by destroying democracy. But unlike the fascists of the interwar period, today’s far-right leaders are not even bothering to contain market turbulence or to provide decent jobs through public works. Brexit, a spasm of anger by the dispossessed, will do nothing positive for the British working class; and Donald Trump’s program is a mash-up of nationalist rhetoric and even deeper government alliance with predatory capitalism. Discontent may yet go elsewhere. Assuming democracy holds, there could be a countermobilization more in the spirit of Polanyi’s feasible socialism. The pessimistic Polanyi would say that capitalism has won and democracy has lost. The optimist in him would look to resurgent popular politics.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/12/21/karl-polanyi-man-from-red-vienna/ @catcomaprada