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𝔞𝔫𝔦𝔪𝔢 𝔤𝔦𝔣
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Watercolor sequences by Joanna Blémont
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we've found it folks: mcmansion heaven
Hello everyone. It is my pleasure to bring you the greatest house I have ever seen. The house of a true visionary. A real ad-hocist. A genuine pioneer of fenestration. This house is in Alabama. It was built in 1980 and costs around $5 million. It is worth every penny. Perhaps more.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "Come on, Kate, that's a little kooky, but certainly it's not McMansion Heaven. This is very much a house in the earthly realm. Purgatory. McMansion Purgatory." Well, let me now play Beatrice to your Dante, young Pilgrim. Welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
It is rare to find a house that has everything. A house that wills itself into Postmodernism yet remains unable to let go of the kookiest moments of the prior zeitgeist, the Bruce Goffs and Earthships, the commune houses built from car windshields, the seventies moments of psychedelic hippie fracture. It is everything. It has everything. It is theme park, it is High Tech. It is Renaissance (in the San Antonio Riverwalk sense of the word.) It is medieval. It is maybe the greatest pastiche to sucker itself to the side of a mountain, perilously overlooking a large body of water. Look at it. Just look.
The inside is white. This makes it dreamlike, almost benevolent. It is bright because this is McMansion Heaven and Gray is for McMansion Hell. There is an overbearing sheen of 80s optimism. In this house, the credit default swap has not yet been invented, but could be.
It takes a lot for me to drop the cocaine word because I think it's a cheap joke. But there's something about this example that makes it plausible, not in a derogatory way, but in a liberatory one, a sensuous one. Someone created this house to have a particular experience, a particular feeling. It possesses an element of true fantasy, the thematic. Its rooms are not meant to be one cohesive composition, but rather a series of scenes, of vastly different spatial moments, compressed, expanded, bright, close.
And then there's this kitchen for some reason. Or so you think. Everything the interior design tries to hide, namely how unceasingly peculiar the house is, it is not entirely able to because the choices made here remain decadent, indulgent, albeit in a more familiar way.
Rare is it to discover an interior wherein one truly must wear sunglasses. The environment created in service to transparency has to somewhat prevent the elements from penetrating too deep while retaining their desirable qualities. I don't think an architect designed this house. An architect would have had access to specifically engineered products for this purpose. Whoever built this house had certain access to architectural catalogues but not those used in the highest end or most structurally complex projects. The customization here lies in the assemblage of materials and in doing so stretches them to the height of their imaginative capacity. To borrow from Charles Jencks, ad-hoc is a perfect description. It is an architecture of availability and of adventure.
A small interlude. We are outside. There is no rear exterior view of this house because it would be impossible to get one from the scrawny lawn that lies at its depths. This space is intended to serve the same purpose, which is to look upon the house itself as much as gaze from the house to the world beyond.
Living in a city, I often think about exhibitionism. Living in a city is inherently exhibitionist. A house is a permeable visible surface; it is entirely possible that someone will catch a glimpse of me they're not supposed to when I rush to the living room in only a t-shirt to turn out the light before bed. But this is a space that is only exhibitionist in the sense that it is an architecture of exposure, and yet this exposure would not be possible without the protection of the site, of the distance from every other pair of eyes. In this respect, a double freedom is secured. The window intimates the potential of seeing. But no one sees.
At the heart of this house lies a strange mix of concepts. Postmodern classicist columns of the Disney World set. The unpolished edge of the vernacular. There is also an organicist bent to the whole thing, something more Goff than Gaudí, and here we see some of the house's most organic forms, the monolith- or shell-like vanity mixed with the luminous artifice of mirrors and white. A backlit cave, primitive and performative at the same time, which is, in essence, the dialectic of the luxury bathroom.
And yet our McMansion Heaven is still a McMansion. It is still an accumulation of deliberate signifiers of wealth, very much a construction with the secondary purpose of invoking envy, a palatial residence designed without much cohesion. The presence of golf, of wood, of masculine and patriarchal symbolism with an undercurrent of luxury drives that point home. The McMansion can aspire to an art form, but there are still many levels to ascend before one gets to where God's sitting.
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its been a while since i drew my Chief Sillyguy so. here he is
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the wild thing about henry iv and hal is they clash constantly but so much of their rhetoric on kingship is
genuinely
exactly
the same
henry iv thinks his son doesn't understand the lessons he's trying to teach him. meanwhile hal has already internalized them so perfectly that he's pulling off the same strategy so well that even his father has no idea.
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Literally any show can be improved by adding more older women. Not many know this, but it’s true.
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Dialogues des Carmélites (Vienna, 2023): Reactions, Part III
*prepares for emotional devastation, knowing it is useless*
i know that this is called dialogues of the carmelites, but why is there extra dialogue added here
oh no no no
“this is the perfect time to put my foolproof martyr plan in action!”
the bestest of besties
marie: alright which one of you MOTHERFUCKERS voted no and ruined my foolproof martyr plan
constance: pls don’t call me that anyway i changed my mind
BLANCHE HUGS CONSTANCE GOODBYE BEFORE RUNNING AWAY I CANNOT
and constance is DEVASTATED
bye bye habits
“sir i don’t even know how to walk in heels”
how to build back a shell of a life
“i want to be fearSOME not fearFUL”
“blanche i cannot help you with your problems right now i have enough of my own”
i genuinely cannot tell you how much this scene has read and shattered me on a personal level
THE WAY SHE SOUNDS SO MUCH LIKE SHE’S SOBBING I CANNOT—
“must…not…be…tender…must…be…motherly…and…strict…”
oh hey they’re actually including this scene that no one ever does
blanche: oh fuck fuck fuck
(also omg they added a rooster crow after she says she’s never been to compiègne…like the rooster crowing with saint peter 😳)
naughty counterrevolutionaries go into the box (WHY IS THIS WHAT I THOUGHT OF)
she’s trying her best to stay upbeat for her daughters 🥺
“in the garden of olives, christ was no longer master of anything…he too was afraid of death…”
girlie just KNOWS her bestie is coming back
and they are condemned to death.
don’t fucking LAUGH about it
a mother doing her best to hold the family together
“this is not about what you want”
sometimes the sacrifice is not to die but to live and bear the burdens of grief and survivor’s guilt
“oh god, if it is at all possible, take this cup away from me…”
Area Mezzo Has A Mental Breakdown
but it seems she’s made a decision…
“very well then. let your will be done.”
okay whoever the FUCK uploaded this performance but DID NOT INCLUDE THE SALVE REGINA i am envisioning acts of such violence
edit a day later: ALRIGHTY WE GOT IT
here we go… (also hey! they actually get nun outfits like the historical reality!)
ah perfect. borrow the john dexter idea of “have them go out the back” but almost completely block the back exit from audience view :/
and the numbers go down one by one by one
trying to be brave…
“YOU DID COME BACK!!!!!!!” my HEART
a hug you can feel even when it isn’t there
okay now i’m just confused. like did she just. die??? why did she get wounded in the side??? why didn’t she climb up there with the others? man idk but that was weird
#dialogues des carmelites#opera#nicole car ruining my life once again#i by the by dont love the staging of this ending but i rationalize it to myself as blanche being stabbed/killed on the way/#to her death—it is miraculous that she is executed alongside the other nuns so maybe this production tries to clear up that ‘plot hole’/#by making it as though she was not killed by the guillotine but by a soldier?#i’m not sure#what i am sure is that the staging kind of sucks#but this production has surprising depth that i’m only getting on rewatch outside of this ending#and i’m ALWAYS here for nicole car
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having feelings about this at 12:30 am and realizing that there may not be another stretch of seventy-one seconds in opera that make me feel as devastatingly seen as this
(met 1987 with maria ewing as blanche de la force)
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Dialogues des Carmélites (Met, 1987): Reactions, Part III
*cue waterworks*
here we go…
and there we have it
I love that it’s somewhat ambiguous as to who actually voted against it
like you would think it would be Blanche, and she does run off, but Constance does swear before God that she’s telling the truth and also I feel like she could have said no in order to give Blanche the courage to say yes
so we’re doing it after all
oh no oh Blanche
and poor Constance too
just gotta say it: in addition to being a fabulous powerhouse, Jessye Norman was just so beautiful
so she got to keep the habit???
dammit we’re not even halfway through the act yet and I’m crying
this is so relatable sometimes
Blanche needs all the hugs in the world
reminder to self
they all need hugs, actually
I wish Jessye Norman could’ve been a mom figure for me :(
how many ways can I say “this score is incredible”???
it may come true yet…
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
you’re doing amazing, sweetie
you’re blessing us with your awesomeness forevermore
I love this scene
she deserves better
here we go…
oh Constance :(
the sheer camaraderie and strength…
TIME TO DIE
NO
MY HEART IS SHATTERING
!!!!!!!!!!
THAT SOUND YOU HEAR IS THE SOUND OF ME BEING DESTROYED
I’m dead I have died
my heart
there are no words
#dialogues des carmélites#opera#blanche de la force#i am living for your reactions#maybe the best production of this stunning stunning opera
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Miscellaneous gifs
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⚔️⚔️⚔️
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Black History Month: Some of the greatest African-American opera divas of the 20th century: Marian Anderson, Leontyne Price, Shirley Verrett, Reri Grist, Grace Bumbry, Martina Arroyo, Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Leona Mitchell and Maria Ewing.
#opera#shirley verrett? maybe greatest american opera singer.#fight me#no one is or was doing it like maria ewing#salome?#hers.#blanche?#no one’s better
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when I was in high school my dad was speeding like crazy because I was running late to my job at the cemetery. and the cop who pulled him over gave him three whole tickets because who the hell goes 95 in a 25??? but then, when my dad went to court the cop didn’t show, and so the judge looked over at the charges and just couldn’t believe it. he thought the cop must’ve been so racist that he made it up because who the hell goes 95 in a 25? so my dad got all 3 tickets dismissed bc of racism. that he didn’t even experience because he was in fact going 95 in a 25.
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in 2002 when Spirit came out, Burger King had Spirit toys in their kids meal. I wanted Spirit and/or Rain so badly. I fantasized about having them. When I finally got my parents to take me to Burger King, I was ecstatic. I couldn't wait to play with my new horse toy.
So imagine my surprise when I cracked open the kids meal and discovered I had received the racist colonel instead
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youtube
today is july 17, 2023, aka the 229th anniversary of the execution of the martyrs of compiègne and the date of the ending of poulenc’s dialogues des carmélites.
one of the most devastating scenes in all opera.
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Fuck do you guys remember BASEBALL RIGOLETTO
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