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sailormoonandme · 3 years

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Why does Usagi think Mamoru might leave/cheat on her?

Occasionally during Sailor Moon R, S and SuperS Usagi seemed to have these moments of insecurity where she was concerned that Mamoru was either interested in other people or else other people might make a play for him.

The real life reason for this I suspect is simply because Sailor Moon has a lot of sitcom sensibilities alongside it’s romantic elements, so milking comedy from a romantic topic by having our lead act over the top or goofy is a logical writing tool to reach for. Especially when you have such a large quantity of episodes to produce.

However, I have a more in-universe explanation to propose.

In real life Usagi’s behaviour would most likely be connected to trust issues with her partner, with other people or else concerns about her own inadequacies. However, I don’t think that’s the case here.

Rather, I think it’s actually far more connected to the numerous times Usagi has loved and ‘lost’ Mamoru.

Back in the Silver Millennium days there was this low key implication that romantic mingling between the Moon Princess and Earth Prince was somehow forbidden. After all when Endymion came to the Moon and tried to warn Serenity about Metalia and Beryl the royal guards chased him away and he needed to disguise himself. So from Serenity’s POV the social system she was living in was limiting her ability to be with the man she loved and made their future together at best uncertain.

Now, I admit that’s perhaps a bit too big of an extrapolation to draw from, especially for the anime version of the characters where we got far less info about their past lives. However, the more significant part here is the fact that Endymion was taken from her when he was killed by the Dark Kingdom. Seeing her lover murdered in front of her whilst her home were also being destroyed (and her friends killed) would obviously be very traumatic, particularly if Serenity was mentally and physically the equivalent of a fourteen year old like Usagi.

In her next life she was crushing very hard on Tuxedo Mask who routinely showed up to aid her and then rarely lingered. That’s not exactly traumatic, but the early days of their relationship would’ve still been founded by Usagi seeing the person she wants to stick around and spend time with her leave her when she wouldn’t want him to.

She also feared Tuxedo Mask had died in episode 13 when Jadeite announced that he’d killed him. True, he was revealed as alive and well shortly afterwards, but the horror of that moment (however brief it may’ve been) could’ve stuck with Usagi.

Then, in the iconic 34th episode of the show, Mamoru was violently impaled right in front of her. We can debate if he died and was consequently revived by the Dark Kingdom or if he was merely close to death before his abduction. But either way that’d inevitably be an instance where Usagi once again traumatically lost the man she loved, or at least came extremely close to doing so if not for the emotion of the moment re-awaking her old memories.

Speaking of which, as episode 35-36 make clear, the mere act of abruptly regaining all her memories would be emotionally wrenching all on it’s own. When combined with the tragic and traumatic nature of those memories, it’s far from unbelievable that subconsciously this would further mark Usagi’s psyche.

The reveal that her lover is alive but no longer remembers her and is actively a threat to her now would obviously compound this. As would the fact that in episode 36 he uses a rose to hurt her. It’s not a serious wound at all, but he still hurt her and used an object that up until then he’d used explicitly to help and protect her. Within Usagi’s mind his roses would’ve likely been ‘coded’ with positive emotions, so seeing them used in that way would’ve been further upsetting for her, in essence a perversion of what they should mean to her mind. The roses now being black are an apt metaphor for this point.

Of course during the final stretch of episodes in season 1 Usagi almost restores Mamoru. But that’s the key here, she almost succeeds. First it the ski episode where he briefly seems to break out of his brainwashing and then again in the episode where Ryo (and the other Rainbow Crystal hosts) returns. In the latter she actually succeeds in restoring him to normal but he’s abducted immediately once again. Not only did Usagi lose Mamoru a few more times but her active efforts to bring him back to her failed.

We then come to the most traumatic events in Usagi’s second life (up to that point), episodes 44-46.

In episode 44, not only did she once again re-experience the tragic destruction of the Silver Millennium, but she got a ‘bird’s eye view’ of everything that happened, including the specific moments she, Endymion, her friends and even her mother died. True, her sadness or trauma over everyone else isn’t specific to her losing Endymion/Mamoru, however because these events happen so close together and are connected it’s not unbelievable that Usagi’s mind might’ve created an association. So her pain over seeing her mother die is associated also with her ‘losing’ Endymion as well. By that same token, the death of her beloved friends in episode 45 might’ve consequently become associated with what happened next.

In episode 46 Usagi is outright attacked by a brainwashed Endymion. First she sees him loyally serving her enemy who (by proxy) murdered her friends like an hour ago. Worse she might’ve picked up on the obvious romantic undertones between Beryl and Endymion, including him kissing her hand, and let’s not forget in the flashback from episode 44 Beryl clearly desired Endymion. Whilst intellectually Usagi might know he’s not in his right mind, emotionally seeing him like that with Beryl in that context could emotionally upset her, almost as though he was betraying their love in the worst possible way.

Endymion’s efforts against her are also significantly more violent and active than anything he did before since episode 36. Dashing a rose across the back of her hand pales in comparison to ensnaring her and shocking her with his roses. Not to mention trying to slice her up with the very same sword he would’ve used to defend her in the Silver Millennium. Even if you don’t buy into my point about perverting these symbols of their relationship, the mere act of him hurting her and trying to murder her like that is going to obviously be emotionally arresting.

In a sense in those horrible moments for Usagi Endymion/Mamoru really was ‘lost’ to her, he merely looked like her lover. This I think is why it was significant that she actually fought back against him with her tiara. But since he still looked like her lover and intellectually she knew he wasn’t to blame (and emotionally hoped he was still salvageable) her own act of self-defence horrified her.

Of course she does save him, but then he dies again. Depending on how you look at it, from Usagi’s POV this is at least the second time he’s really died and that number climbs higher if you include his presumed death in episode 13 and the number of times she had to re-experience his death in the Silver Millennium. And that isn’t even counting traumatic dreams about him dying in the aftermath of episodes 34-35. It doesn’t help that his mortal injuries in episode 46 are eerily similar to the ones he sustained in episode 34, namely a violent impalement.

We might even argue this is categorically the worst instance up until this point of Usagi watching her lover die or seemingly die. In the Silver Millennium she herself died seconds later. In episode 13 they weren’t nearly as close as they’d become by episode 46 and she at least had friends and family in her life she knew she could lean on. This equally applies to Mamoru seemingly dying in episode 34 and even his abduction in episode 35. In fact with Minako, Makoto and Artemis Usagi had an even larger support network than before. In episode 46 though her lover has died in her arms, she’s left to go on and the Inner Senshi are dead, Luna and Artemis aren’t around and the end of the world is imminent. She’s truly all alone in her grief and intellectually she knows that even if somehow she resolves the crisis her support network has been mostly gutted. THEN she herself dies to defeat Beryl/Metalia and save the world.

She gets her fondest wish, to go back to a normal life, but that’s also taken from her due to the arrival of Ail and An. Yay for Usagi, she gets to have ALL of those traumatic memories from the Silver Millennium rerun through her head AGAIN. And this time they’re complimented by the Hell she went through in losing her friends, her lover and dying herself in the Arctic.

But hey, at least now she and her lover can finally be together right? Nope. He literally doesn’t know her. He isn’t Endymion. He isn’t Tuxedo Mask. He isn’t the Mamoru she knew and doesn’t even want to know her. Meanwhile a prospective romantic rival is sniffing around him and for all she knows he may well be interested in her. She gets a tiny ray of hope when Moonlight Knight shows up but that’s abruptly squashed when she receives (seemingly) hard proof this guy who seems oh so similar to the man she loves definitely isn’t that man. So her tiny hope of maybe getting him back is taken from her almost as quickly as it came.

After Ail and An depart Earth Usagi finally has what she wants…until two episodes later. This time in the cruelest twist of fate for her, it isn’t external forces that tears Mamoru away from her. This time he takes himself from her. From a certain point of view this is sort of worse than him dying. Usagi knows death and reincarnation are a thing and that magic exists. She already knows that, as traumatic as it might’ve been, the pair have been given more chances than most people to get together. But how is that to happen when Mamoru, in his right mind and fully possessing all his memories, clearly conveys he doesn’t want her. In the same way Tuxedo Mask pulled a disappearing act early on, now Mamoru in normal life begins actively avoiding Usagi and even saying hurtful things to her.

It is in episode 61 (the break up episode itself) that we arguably first see this insecure side to Usagi where she questions if Mamoru prefers a child under 10 years old to her. From there we also see Mamoru try to hint to her that he’s seeing Unazuki.

Of course Usagi eventually learns that it WAS another external force pushing them apart again (well sort of but that’s for another day). However, to lose Mamoru again after all she’d already gone through to be with him was emotionally going to be a serious twisting of the knife for her, in addition to his efforts after episode 61 to push her away. The fact that his own desire to be with her caused him to still help and even hang out with her on occasion would’ve further confused her.

But even after this mess is cleared up, in Sailor Moon R The Movie: Promise of the Rose Usagi has to witness Mamoru nearly die for her again. And like on other occasions it comes via an impalement right in front of her and a consequent abduction to boot. And the abductee happens to be someone she and her friends suspect might harbor romantic feelings for Mamoru as well, someone who actively insulted her, actively tried to dissuade Mamoru from dating her and who literally pushed her away from him.

When taken collectively, I think all these traumas associated with Usagi ‘losing’ Mamoru or otherwise being prevented from being with him would make Usagi subconsciously on the alert for the next thing that might take him from her.

I propose that this is the actual reason for Usagi’s concerns that Mamoru might like Chibiusa more than her, for why she gets concerned when Ami and Mamoru chat together in S, for why she goes all ninja in SuperS, etc. Deep down she does trust him and deep down she trusts her friends and doesn’t actually feel threatened by anyone who might try to hit on Mamoru.

It’s in reality a case of her gripping too tight precisely because the object of her desire has slipped through her fingers far too many times in the past.* Or if you like, from Usagi’s POV destiny might’ve pre-ordained that she fall in love with Mamoru but she may well be concerned that it’s also pre-ordained that they be allowed to enjoy being in love, not for too long anyway.

However, I think this in turn set up a great example of character development for our heroine.

First of all, in episode 132 we have Chibiusa outright warning Usagi she has a romantic rival and that if she doesn’t shape up she will lose Mamoru to her, and yet Usagi shrugs this off.

Of course, we could argue that this is Usagi trying to simply one up Chibiusa in this moment, or else she is dismissive of the warning precisely because it comes from Chibiusa whom is both a child and someone who makes a point of trolling her. On the other hand we might view this as an example of how Usagi has in fact grown and is more at peace with the idea that she isn’t about to have Mamoru taken from her for the umpteenth time.

Granted her over reaction in episode 136, wherein she dresses as a ninja to ensure Rei and Mamoru don’t get up to anything, goes against that idea. However, we could just as easily argue that Usagi’s reactions in that episode were an example of her backsliding precisely because of Rei and Mamoru’s history. She might not worry about Rei and Mamoru deep down, but the idea of them living in the same place when they used to date and when she knows how active Rei was in pursuing him back in the day? It’s not beyond belief that in these specific circumstances Usagi’s resolve faltered whereas she’d have been less concerned if it’d been a stranger or someone with no romantic history with Mamoru.ffff

More significantly though is Sailor Stars. Once more Usagi ‘lost’/nearly lost Mamoru. This time this was due to Queen Nehelenia, whose efforts poisoned the Earth and by extension endangered the life of her lover. Then she did that AGAIN, this time outright brainwashing and abducting him.

Even if this didn’t remind Usagi of her horrible experiences with Evil Endymion and Beryl, it would’ve still been disturbing and upsetting, especially when Mamoru developed a mirror fetish. Usagi went through Hell and physical torture to try and save her lover and this time the stakes were even higher. Because this time losing him would also mean losing the other person she loved the most, (Chibiusa) a horrible event that she eventually witnessed happen.

Sure, she saved the day and got both her future husband and future daughter back, but she still had to live through those horrible experiences to get to that point.

And yet, despite these fresh traumas regarding losing her lover, in episode 173 Usagi handles Mamoru leaving for America surprisingly well.

It’s made clear she’s upset by his departure and doesn’t want him to go. But she comes mere inches from seeing him off with a smile as she intended, demonstrating her increased strength and maturity.

And despite her tears, despite her not wanting him to go, she still sees him off, she doesn’t try to dissuade him, she isn’t worried that he’ll meet other people or that their relationship will get torn asunder once more. She is sad because they are going to be physically separated by a long distance for a long time, but that’s the only thing that’s of concern to her. And her reaction even then is relatively reigned in (by her standards) even in the privacy of her own home.

And from a narrative/emotional POV it is almost like the universe rewards her for that growth via Mamoru giving her a promise/engagement ring, saying he loves her and kissing her in the airport.

Whilst the significance of the ring is obvious (albeit not to Usagi) we shouldn’t undersell Mamoru’s words or the kiss.

I’m willing to be corrected on this but I’m fairly certain that episode was the first time Mamoru (not Endymion, not Moonlight Knight talking about Mamoru, etc) had ever told Usagi he loved her. Of course, his actions spoke louder than words on this front. Even before Usagi knew Mamoru was Tuxedo Mask she suspected the latter rescued her because he was in love with her. Nevertheless, having your partner actually look you in the eye and say the words can be incredibly emotionally significant for a lot of people. In a sense it is the ultimate unambiguous proof of the other person’s feelings (in theory anyway). Even if Usagi hadn’t been waiting to hear him say the words (personally I think her expression implies she had been) it would’ve nevertheless been a significant development in their relationship all the same.

And as for the kiss, I admit I only vaguely know about Japanese cultural norms regarding PDA, but it is to my understanding that kissing in public is frowned upon. Even if I’m wrong about that, Mamoru (as evidenced by the R movie) certainly doesn’t like to kiss Usagi when anyone else is around. If you go back to check most of their kisses, either they are alone or else it’s obvious Mamoru doesn’t think anyone is observing them. The fact that he kisses Usagi not only in a public space, but an airport of all places (when there are crowds there for three big celebrities no less) is a huge deal for him. And in turn it’s a huge deal for Usagi because, whilst Mamoru might have more reservations, Usagi clearly cared a lot less about PDA, typically being the one to initiate their kisses.

Consequent episodes further demonstrate Usagi’s growth regarding her old insecurities with Mamoru. Putting aside how we never once see her worried about him seeing other girls, in episode 181 Seiya outright raises the idea of him seeing other people. Usagi casually, without a hint of aggression, dismisses the idea.

The irony is that it is Usagi who’s in the situation she so often worried about regarding Mamoru. She is the person being pursued by romantic rival to her lover, namely Seiya.

The cruel irony is that Usagi having matured enough to accept Mamoru leaving (despite being deeply upset and lonely about it) actually had lost him yet again.

She just didn’t know it.

*Not to mention…she is a teenager. Those people tend to be ever so slightly prone to emotional over reactions at the best of times.

#Sailor Moon #Tuxedo Mask #usagi tsukino #Usamamo #Mamoru Chiba #Chiba Mamoru #tsukino usagi #pretty soldier sailor moon #pretty guardian sailor moon #bishojo senshi sailor moon #Prince Endymion #Princess Serenity #My Essays

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redisriding · 4 years

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The Right Swipe - Prologue

A Court of Thorns and Roses Modern AU Fanfic

All character’s belong to the wonderful Sarah J Maas.

“Come on Nesta!”

“Just for fun!”

“Humour us.”

“You never know who you might meet.”

Nesta rolled her eyes at her sisters’ cajoling, taking a bite of pizza, “I’m not looking to meet anyone right now.”

“It doesn’t have to be a serious thing. Don’t you think it would be nice to go on some dates? Get back on the horse, so to speak.”

“Get back on the dick, you mean,” Feyre rebutted.

Elain giggled, “Well if the guy is very well endowed it might be like a hor—“

“ELAIN!” Feyre shrieked, grabbing a cushion off the sofa and throwing it at Elain.

Nesta took another bite of her pizza to hide her laughter. Her two sisters were drunk. Nesta had been late getting out of work, and when she had arrived at Feyre’s apartment the two of them had already sunk a bottle of wine while they waited on her to arrive.

It had been like that a lot recently, Elain and Feyre waiting on her to leave work. If she was able to leave at all. More often than Nesta wanted to admit, she was forced to call her sisters and cancel their plans only to realise that it was more than an hour after they had agreed to meet. There was so much going on in their lives that she was missing out on, which was why, this evening, she had been determined to leave her office on time. She still left 40 minutes later than she had planned, but at least she had made it, and before the pizza arrived too.

It had been too long since the three of them had had a good catch up about their lives, and Nesta wasted no time in filling them in on what had been going on in her life. Namely, her breakup with her longterm fiancé Thomas.

Things with Thomas hadn’t ended badly. They’d just ended.

They had been together for eight years, and engaged for five of those years. With no wedding on the horizon, and both of them more focused on their individual careers than building a life together, they had gone to brunch one morning and decided to break up over mimosas. Thomas had moved out a week later.

Her two sisters, who had seemed less than surprised when she broke the news, were now trying to convince Nesta to download Swipe, a dating app they were both enjoying.

“Please Nesta, just let us set you up a profile so we can have some fun tonight. You can delete it in the morning.”

“Yes Nesta, please. You don’t have to meet anyone, we can just spend our evening objectifying men.” Feyre said, with a sincere face, that did not match her words.

“You two are ridiculous, you know that?” Nesta said with a smile.

“Oh we know, but you love us,’ Elain chirped.

“That I do…okay fine, one night of objectifying men, but I’m deleting it the moment I leave this apartment.”

“Deal!”

“Hand over you phone, Archeron,” Feyre said with a wiggle of her eyebrow.

Nesta sighed, pulling her phone from her pocket she reluctantly handed it over to her sisters, who sat on the sofa opposite her grinning from ear to ear.

As soon as the app had downloaded, Feyre and Elain put their heads together and began building Nesta’s profile.

“I want final veto on any of the photos that you choose,” she said getting nervous, as they whispered.

“Why don’t you come over here and help us?” Elain asked.

“I don’t really know what I’m doing, you guys are the experts.”

“Hardly.” Feyre said with a snort.

“Wait, you guys should let me see your profiles, its only fair.”

“Sure,” Feyre picked up her phone off the coffee table between them and tossed it to Nesta, “just don’t swipe on anyone, you’ll mess up the algorithm.”

Nesta picked Feyre’s phone up from where it landed on the couch beside her, keying in the passcode, she scrolled through the mess of apps that was Feyre’s home screen before she located the little red hearted icon of Swipe.

It took her a moment to find Feyre’s profile, she didn’t want to click on the wrong thing and accidentally betroth her sister to anyone.

Feyre’s profile had six pictures to swipe through. The first, Nesta thought, captured her essence perfectly. Paintbrush in hand, she stood beside an easel laughing at something out of the view of the camera. She had blue paint smeared across her nose, but she looked radiant. The other photos included a picture at her final year art show, one with her friends, her graduation, a selfie, and the last one was her in a bikini on the beach.

Neither too cutesy or overtly sexual, she looked like the perfect 'girl next door.’ It was the accompanying bio however that had Nesta choking on her wine.

Feyre. 24. Fine art graduate working in a coffee shop, my parents would be so proud…if they weren’t dead.

“Feyre!” Nesta explained, looking up at her sister, bewildered, “our parents are not dead!”

“Mom is.”

“Yeah, but Dad isn’t.”

“He might as well be. When is the last time you’ve seen him?”

Nesta sighed, of all of them, Feyre had the worst relationship with their father, but it wasn’t something she wanted to get into right now. Not when they were having such a lovely evening chatting and laughing together as sisters should. It wasn’t always this easy.

“Let’s see your profile, Elain,” she asked instead, moving the conversation away from their contentious father.

Elain handed her phone over with a shy smile.

Nesta brought up Elain’s profile.

The pictures were all of Elain in sundresses, in one she held a bouquet of flowers, another she sat under a tree, in the final one she held a glass a wine as she smiled across the table at whoever had taken the photo. It was as close to racy as Elain got.

Her bio read:

Elain. 26. School teacher. I enjoy gardening in summer and curling up in front of the fire in winter.

“So what kind of vibe will my profile be?” Nesta asked cautiously.

“Beautiful, bad bitch,” Feyre said with a smirk.

“I’m not sure how to take that?”

“Its meant as a compliment.”

“Come see,” Elain said patting the space on the sofa beside her.

Nesta drained what was left of her wine, and scrambled off the coach she was stretched out on, to join her sisters.

She plonked herself down in between them, forcing their heads apart so she could see what pictures they were selecting.

“Oh gosh no, you can’t use that one?” She exclaimed. The picture was one that Thomas had taken of her while they were on holiday the previous year. She had been wearing a teeny tiny bikini that she had hoped might ignite the passion in their relationship again.

“Why not?” Elain asked.

“Its a great picture,” Feyre added.

“My boobs are fully out,”

“If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” Feyre said, giving her a nudge.

“That’s still too much. What about this one?” She asked, pointing to a professional picture she had taken when she was first called to the Bar.

“Nesta no, this is not your CorporateLink profile, you need something a bit more…”

“Sexy,” Elain finished.

“Your profile, isn’t sexy though?” Nesta said, before she thought to stop herself.

The hurt that flashed across Elain’s face had Nesta’s stomach twisting, “My profile is sexy.”

Nesta quickly scrambled fix what she said. “Your profile is sweet and feminine, and you look beautiful, but its’ not tits out sex appeal.”

“Well…that’s true,” Elain said with a small sigh, her shoulders slumped but she gave Nesta a reassuring smile.

“Guuuurrrlllll, look at this selfie you took,” Feyre said on a purr, interrupting the moment. She turned the phone towards Nesta and Elain.

Nesta felt herself blush at the photo, “I was just finished in the gym…I felt good.”

“You look good,” replied Elain.

“We’re using this one. Guys, love a girl who goes to the gym, it reminds them of other ways they like to get hot and sweaty.”

“Okay,” Nesta conceded, “you can use that one.”

“Wonderful, then we’re all set.”

Nesta took the phone off Feyre and flicked through the photos she had chosen. Three of the pictures were ones Nesta had posted on her Photogram, she knew she looked good, dressed in tight body con dresses and heels, her makeup perfect. It wasn’t who she was everyday but these guys didn’t need to know that. There were two bikini pictures from holidays in the past few years, neither were the tiny bikini, and Nesta had to admit they were tasteful yet suggestive. The final one was the mirror selfie from the gym…

Feyre had set the bio as,

Nesta. 28. Lawyer. If you want a queen, earn one. If you want a whore, buy me three shots of tequila.

Nesta burst out laughing.

Elain leaned in to read what had been written, “Feyre!”

“It will get the guys’ attention.”

“It sure will.”

“You know I’m deleting this in the morning,” Nesta said.

“Doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun tonight.”

“True..so how does it work?”

Feyre took the phone from her, closing the profile page, and a picture of a guy appeared. He was standing on a deck, beer in hand, barbecuing. He was shirtless and his brown skin was covered in swirling tattoos that ran across his broad shoulders and down his arms. His body was hard but his face was kind, as he smiled brightly at the camera.

“You swipe left for no, and right for yes. If you both swipe yes then you’re able to message each other.”

“Okay, that seems simple enough.”

“It is.”

Feyre handed the phone back to Nesta who fumbled it before catching it upside down. The shirtless barbecuer disappeared, “Ah, what did I do?”

“You swiped up.”

“What does that do?”

“It’s a mega-match.”

“And that means…?”

“That they can see that you liked them and want to start a conversation.”

#acotar fanfiction #The right swipe

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trendycapsformenandwomen · 3 years

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katrinawritesthings · 3 years

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my favorite jonghyuns: this bright firecracker

i love this junghee!!! she just has so much bright bubble gum pink she is energy!!!

like from the moment she enters she is a blur of pink diving headfirst onto her stomach on the couch and smiling at key with her chin in her hand. from the moment she enters i am in love

i love that she instantly starts monologuing about her pokemon and i love that she makes big loud noises for her big loud emotions and i love that she wails through the house for key to save her from tiny little spider and i love that she has song samples just saved as numbers on her computer

i love that their eyes eyes sparkle!! i love that her smile is boxy and bright and contagious!!! i love that she swamps herself in giant turtlenecks!!! i love that her speaking voice is dark and sparkly and her humming voice is peachy pink!!! they just have so much like. energetic physicality to them. just in the way that they are and the way that she acts and the things that she does like!!! it radiates off of her and makes me feel !!! also

and i love her curiosity and the way she is so carefree and easy going in her acceptance!! it feels very warm in my heart how easy it is to be comfortable with her and the reverse is also true with how carefree and easy going she is in her own queerness like. "i think it smells like lesbianism” icon??? their entire little conversation about the end????? the essence of being gay

this junghee really just feels like a shot of she is era straight into the bloodstream and that is so so so wonderful uwu

#jonghyun #mfjs #fic rec #bonus points for key knowing and what she's talking about but listening to her anyways : )#jongkey

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impressivepress · 3 years

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MATISSE AND RUSSIAN ICONS: The Metaphysics of Pictorial Space

"He paints 'images'" and in these "images endeavors to reproduce the divine. To attain this end he requires as a staffing point nothing but the object to be painted (human being or whatever it may be) and then the methods that belong to painting alone, color and form." ---- Wassily Kandinsky, writing about Henri Matisse [1]

Matisse’s Introduction to Russian Icons

There is a remarkable convergence between the work of Henri Matisse and that of the Russian icon painters. Our topic in this essay is precisely this convergence, and not the influence which icons may have had on Matisse. In the case of an artist of Matisse's caliber, influences -- although present and not without interest -- are superficial compared to that which gives quality to the art; because at a deeper level, every great artist is original, in the sense that the art draws its strength from direct contact with nature - and in Matisse's case, with nature at her deepest level, where one drinks from the very wellspring of being, of existence. That is why Matisse said that to be an artist one must rid oneself of prejudicial habits of vision and learn to look at life with the eyes of a child, and draw one's strength from the existence of objects. [2]

Matisse was already moving in a certain direction before he went to Russia, and the icons he saw there made a strong impression on him because he was ready to see them, because he was travelling on a path that converged with them. As Matisse himself put it, "You surrender yourself that much better when you see your efforts confirmed by such an ancient tradition. It helps you jump over the ditch."[3] It is not wrong to say that the icons influenced Matisse; but it is truer, and more to the point, to say that they confirmed his originality.

A certain kinship can be noted between ancient icons and Matisse's paintings even before the artist visited Russia. The Painter's Family was finished just before Matisse left for Moscow in October, 1911; yet the brilliant reds and black-and white checkerboard patterning are already reminiscent of icons. Matisse had very likely seen icons in 1906 in the exhibition organized by Sergei Diaghilev as part of the Salon d'Automne, and was probably familiar with more examples of iconography through reproductions. Interest in icons was "in the air" at that time. The 1911 Salon des Independants included works by several contemporary Russian artists working in a neo-Byzantine or archaic style; Guillame Apollinaire said they seemed to have "fooled the centuries."[4] Painters and patrons of contemporary art in Russia at this time, like Riabushinskii and Oustrukhov, collected icons.

The Conversation was another picture painted before the trip to Moscow. Shchukin, writing to Matisse on August 22, 1912, said of this picture: "I often think of your blue painting (with two figures)... It reminds me of a Byzantine enamel, its colors are so rich and deep."[5] Matisse's first exposure to Byzantine art may have come through Signac. When the divisionist travelled to Venice and saw the Byzantine mosaics in San Marco, he decided to change his dots to squares. He brought back a number of postcards which he doubtless showed his disciple in St. Tropez. The impression of Byzantine mosaics seems to have stayed with Matisse. After his death, several photographs of the interior of Hagia Sophia were found pinned to the wall of his apartment in Nice.

Matisse arrived in Moscow on October 23, 1911. The next day, he visited Ilya Ostroukhov, painter and collector and "patron" of the Tretiakov Gallery, whom he had met in Paris, and asked to be shown his collection of Russian Icons. A day later Oustroukhov recounted the incident:

"Yesterday evening he visited us. And you should have seen his delight at the icons. Literally the whole evening he wouldn't leave them alone, relishing and delighting in each one. And with what finesse! ... At length he declared that for the icons alone it would have been worth his while coming from a city even further away than Paris, that the icons were now nobler for him than Fra Beato... Today Shchukin phoned me to say that Matisse literally could not sleep the whole night because of the acuity of his impression."[6]

"From that moment on, "writes Pierre Schneider, "Matisse spent all his time going around to visit churches, convents, and collections of sacred images, his excitement at the first encounter not having diminished one iota. He shared it with all who came to interview him during his stay in Moscow." [7]

On Oct. 31, Ilya Ostroukhov wrote to D.J. Tolstoy, the curator of the Hermitage Museum: "Matisse is here. He is deeply affected by the art of the icons. He seems overwhelmed and is spending his days with me frantically visiting monasteries, churches and private collections." [8]

"They are really great art," Matisse excitedly told an interviewer. "I am in love with their moving simplicity which, to me, is closer and dearer than Fra Angelico. In these icons the soul of the artist who painted them opens out like a mystical flower. And from them we ought to learn how to understand art." [9] What is one to make of this expression of heartfelt admiration for the old Russian icons? From these icons "we ought to learn how to understand art." This is a very strong statement. It sounds exaggerated. Yet, Matisse was habitually reserved and cautious in his statements, not prone to exaggeration. Our endeavor in these pages may be defined as an investigation of the meaning and validity of this assertion.

"From them we ought to learn how to understand art." Not one particular kind of art, but art in itself. The icons offered Matisse a revelation of what art is. This goes deeper than stylistic "influence." To speak of Matisse imitating or being influenced by icons is to miss the point. His relationship with them is on a deeper level. In them he has recognized, in an especially pure form, the essence of art. Art is, for Matisse, essentially a manifestation of the life in which both nature and the artist participate. Throughout his career Matisse was a truly original artist. This does not mean that one cannot find in his work what are commonly called "influences" of other artists, in this case the Russian iconographers. It means that Matisse's art is directly rooted in the place where art originates, in the wellspring of being which we mentioned at the beginning. Precisely because he strives to be true to nature, Matisse converges with the icon painters.

We know that before and after his trip to Moscow, Matisse responded enthusiastically to other forms of what were known as "primitive arts" – Persian miniatures, Japanese prints and African sculptures. But the icons held a special importance for two reasons.

The first was articulated by Matisse in several interviews in Moscow. On Oct. 27, he praised the monumentality and majesty of the Kremlin churches, and the reporter added: "The pure, rich colors of the old icons, their sincerity and immediacy, seemed a genuine discovery to him." Then he quotes Matisse: "This is primitive art. This is authentic popular art. Here is the primary source of all artistic endeavor. The modern artist should derive his inspiration from these primitives." [10] Matisse confided to another interviewer: "The icons are a supremely interesting example of primitive painting. Such a wealth of pure color, such spontaneity of expression I have never seen anywhere else. This is Moscow's finest heritage. People should come here to study, for one should seek inspiration from the primitives. An understanding of color, simplicity -- it's all in the primitives. It is the best thing Moscow has to offer. One should come here to learn because one should seek inspiration from the primitives."[11]

Matisse links the "primitive" quality of the icons with their authentic popularity. That is to say, this art was still in use and understood popularly. It worked. In Matisse's view, art is not to isolate itself in museums, but to "participate in our life."[12] Decades later, in a letter to Sister Jacques-Marie regarding the Chapelle du Rosaire at Vence, Matisse wrote: "I would like it to be useful. Do you think it could be useful?"[13] What does Matisse mean when he speaks of art "working" or being "useful"? This question brings us to one of the key connections between Matisse and the iconographers. In his conception and theirs, the role of art is therapeutic. It seeks to "relieve," to "alleviate," to "heal." How it does this we will see a little further on, but for now let us just say that the instrument of this "healing" is light."[14] "Light," says Schopenhauer, "is the most delightful of all things; it is the symbol of everything that is good, everything that heals. In all the religions of the world it symbolizes eternal salvation."[15] (Let us remember that, etymologically and theologically, salvation means healing.) The icons held a special importance for Matisse because they are an art whose specific function is to heal whoever contemplates them, by means of light; and this use is truly popular, understood by all the faithful who approach them. Presently we shall look into the nature of pictorial light, color and space, and then we shall see what this light has to do with healing.

Before we get to that, however, we can surmise a second reason for the special importance which the icons held for Matisse. Whereas Persian miniatures and Japanese prints were foreign to the West, icons were part of the heritage of western Europe until the late middle ages, in Romanesque and early Gothic painting and sculpture. The whole of western medieval art developed in direct or indirect dependency on Byzantium, and there was a rich exchange of formal ideas between East and West throughout the Middle Ages. Furthermore, the art of the great Venetians -- Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto -- has roots in Byzantine iconographic art, the influence coming by way of Crete. The Venetian legacy, with its Byzantine formal roots, was in turn widespread in western Europe, coming to Matisse via Chardin, Courbet and Cezanne. Thus while the icons were, like other eastern painting, impressively and revealingly different from "the art of the museums," they were nevertheless a significant part of the family tree of western art. This peculiar balance must have been especially stirring to the sensibilities of the young painter who had spent so much time studying western masterworks in the Louvre.

Space in Russian Icons and in Matisse: preliminary considerations

It is often said that icons and Matisse's late paintings and cutouts, and for that matter Japanese prints and Persian miniatures as well, are "flat." Such a statement can be either ambiguous or mistaken, depending on the understanding and intention of the speaker. The intended meaning of the word "flat" may simply be "unmodelled." Indeed, the modelling or shading of volumes in these works is usually slight, and is sometimes suppressed altogether. They are executed largely in line and flat tone. But that does not at all diminish the plenitude of the volumes! Volume is expressed in better ways. As Matisse explained to a visitor in his studio, who remarked on the volumetric quality of the Barnes Mural, "Yes, but in reality the painting is made in flat tones, without any gradation ... It is the drawing, and the harmony and contrast of the colors, that form the volume, just as in music a number of notes form a harmony more or less rich and profound according to the talent of the musician who has assembled them."[16] So let us not say that these pictures are flat, even if we only mean to refer to the flatness of the tones; the paintings are emphatically not flat.

Sometimes Matisse's pictures and the icons are said to be "flat" because they lack Albertian perspective -- as if space were dependent upon such perspective. This, too, is an error, as will be made clear by our investigation of the nature of pictorial space. This investigation will begin in the following paragraphs, and will be taken up again and deepened later in this essay.

Our experience of space in the world is largely kinesthetic, dependent upon the sensation of our bodies' movement, our feeling of the forces of gravity and equilibrium, and the ever-varying correlation between optical stimuli and eye movements -- including binocular convergence, accommodation to focal distance and parallax.[17] This elementary fact is forgotten by those who think that space is achieved in painting by optical verisimilitude, with its shading of volumes and its atmospheric and linear perspective approaching the effect of photography. An arbitrary "snapshot," the epitome of a purely optical impression, gives us a jumble of variously shaped tones removed from their spatial context. From being accustomed to viewing such flat images, whether in photographs or in academic "realist" paintings, we develop a "space blindness." The eye seizes upon recognizable details and, by a conventional sort of "leap of credulity" accepts the flat image as referring to things one has experienced in the world. The difference between flatness and space collapses.

The opposite happens in great paintings. There our experience of space is heightened. In a masterpiece of Matisse -- or of Rembrandt or Raphael, Giotto or Picasso or Mondrian, for example -- a feeling of depth is created by the pushing and pulling of shapes and colors. All the lines and tones are organized, at once musically and architectonically, in such a way as to give the viewer movement into and out of depth; and this depth is made palpable by the tension between it and the flatness of the pictorial surface. The real experience of space in a painting is not quantitative, dependent upon the suggestion of deep vistas; rather, it is qualitative, dependent upon the resonance of the tension between the flat plane and all the pushing and pulling planes of color. The difference between flatness and space is not collapsed in painting; it is amplified.

Two Views of Matter

The belief, so rampant in the academic art of the nineteenth century and still widespread today, that a painter can "copy" appearances -- as also the trust we put in the camera, a machine, to reproduce the way things look - betrays a tendency to reduce the material world to mere materiality, something which can be considered apart from spirit. When the churches of the West split from the Christians of the East at the end of the first millennium, they set off on a road of increasing rationalism, gradually losing the mystical vision of the world which the Orthodox in the East retained. Descartes' dualistic philosophy is a significant milestone in the western trend, although the direction was evident centuries earlier, notably in the medieval scholastics. Descartes held that matter is mere extension and that spirit is only found in our own minds or in heaven. To the extent that painting was influenced by this notion, it had to deal with the world, its light and its space, externally, mechanistically. To be sure, there was never any lack of allegory, or poetic or religious subject matter; but things were ontologically impoverished, rendered inert.

The Orthodox tradition knows no separation between nature and grace such as prevails in western thought in the wake of scholasticism. In the eastern view, as expressed from ancient times by Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor and a host of others, matter is thoroughly and dynamically irradiated by the divine energies, apart from which matter would not exist. These energies are uncreated; they are God Himself. By the "luminous force"[18] of His logoi or "thought-wills" God creates and orders, sustains and governs all things in an intimate, dynamic relationship with each creature, operating within the creature. This inner life of nature blazes forth as what Saint Isaac of Syria calls "the flame of things." St. Maximus says: "The unspeakable and prodigious fire hidden in the essence of things, as in the bush, is the fire of divine love and the dazzling brilliance of His beauty inside every thing."[19] Icons are above all concerned with this inner life, this luminous force, this fire within creation.

Matisse similarly insists on the necessity for artists to be in touch with the inner lift of things. "The time spent at school should be replaced by a free stay in the Zoological Gardens. The pupils would gain knowledge there in constant observation of embryonic life and its vibrations. They would gradually acquire that ‘fluid’ which great artists come to possess." Matisse, like the icon painters, recognizes the need for a certain asceticism, a purification of the power of vision, in order that one may see the light and life within nature. Raymond Escholier describes how, relaxing in his garden in Nice, Matisse smiled at the crystal-clear light: "Everything is new," he said, "everything is fresh, as if the world had just been born. A flower, a leaf, a pebble, they all shine, they all glisten, lustrous, varnished, you can't imagine how beautiful it is! I sometimes think we desecrate life; from seeing things so much, we don't look at them any more. Our senses are wooly. We feel nothing. We are spoiled. I think that to really enjoy things, it would be wise to deprive ourselves of them. It is good to begin by renouncing, force oneself from time to time to take a cure of abstention."

The artistic process

Matisse describes the work of a painter as an inner process, culminating in the rhythmic and life-filled expression of an internal vision:

The first step toward creation is to see everything as it really is [dans sa verite], and that demands a constant effort... A work of art is the climax of long work of preparation. The artist takes from his surroundings everything that can nourish his internal vision... He enriches himself internally with all the forms he has mastered and which he will one day set to a new rhythm. It is in the expression of this rhythm that the artist's work becomes really creative. To achieve it, he will have to sift rather than accumulate details, selecting for example, from all possible combinations, the line that expresses most and gives life to the drawing; he will have to seek the equivalent terms by which the facts of nature are transposed into art.... That is the sense, so it seems to me, in which art may be said to imitate nature, namely, by the life that the creative worker infuses into the work of art. The work will then appear as fertile and as possessed of the same power to thrill, the same resplendent beauty as we find in works of nature. Great love is needed to achieve this effect, a love capable of inspiring and sustaining that patient striving towards truth, that glowing warmth and that analytic profundity [depouillement profond] that accompany the birth of any work of art. But is not love the origin of all creation? [20]

This love, which is necessary for artistic creation, has a divine aspect:

Nothing is more gentle than love, nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing larger, nothing more pleasant, nothing more complete, nothing better in heaven or on earth -- because love is born of God and cannot rest other than in God, above all living beings.[21]

The rhythmic quality of lines, tones and shapes, which Matisse insists on, is necessary for experiencing the vital energy at the heart of existence. The rhythms are perceived in nature by the artist who has purified his vision so as to be able to "look at life as he did when he was a child."[22] The artist must interiorize these rhythms, "until the object of his drawing has become like a part of his being, until he has it within him and can project it onto the canvas as his own creation."[23] In this sense the object is set forth in the work of art according to a new rhythm. There is a life that fills all creation, a life which is the manifestation of a great love. An artist can make a beautiful work of art, a work which manifests the splendor, the love-impelled vitality of nature, only to the extent that he reverently attends to reality "with the eyes of a child."

Matisse's approach is similar to that of the icon painters. They likewise expose themselves at length to that which they want to portray, until they can draw its traits not from the outside world but from deep within themselves. The Orthodox tradition holds that one can only see the uncreated light of divinity by being oneself transformed into light. Hence the iconographers must be ascetics, must purify their vision and become themselves filled with light. Then they will see all things as filled with light; they will walk in a divine space, the space of the kingdom of heaven which is within them. The space and the light are one; and all things are light, as an iron held in fire becomes fire. The icon painter expresses all this from within, expresses a space which is identical with light-energy and which does not recede from us, but rather opens out toward us. The saints who inhabit this space are, in the words of St. Macarius of Egypt, "all face and all light."

Let us look at an icon of Saint Nicholas. One of the most pronounced elements in the design is the relation among the crosses on the saint's omophorion [part of the outer liturgical vestment of a bishop]. They move counterclockwise around his shoulders. The symmetrical placement of light and dark shapes immediately to the right and left sides, respectively, of the saint's neck, ensures the movement of space around his head and the return of this movement on the left side, where the cross moves downward and toward the right to complete the spatial circle. The opposition between the downward and rightward movement of the left cross and the upward and rightward movement of the right cross is mediated by the strict parallelism of their constitutive parts, while the abrupt change in direction from the former to the latter is explained (and caused) by the abrupt collision of the omophorion with the forcefully rectangular shape of dark robe at the center of the icon. The vector of the left cross ricochets off the upper edge of this dark rectangle to become the vector of the right cross. The exceedingly great power of this dark rectangular shape, which is able to stand firm beneath these crosses (themselves strong and violent in their contrasts) is felt to issue forth from the blessing hand which extends into this shape, and thus to be an amplification, a visual proclamation, of the power emanating from the peaceful gesture. Thus the icon shows us simultaneously both the gentleness and the power of the blessing. At the same time, the Gospel book bounds forward from the dark rectangle, repeating its shape while being pushed forward by the visual action of the white omophorion. The color of the book relates it directly to the blessing hand, as well as to the head. The book pulls gently to the right, assisting the overall counterclockwise rotation of the space in the icon. This movement of space (and concomitantly of volume, since neither exists apart from the other in painting) is seen also in the subtle asymmetry of the head (characteristic of icons) -- in the placement of its features and the modeling of its volumes. It is hardly necessary to point out that all the lines and shapes in this icon, all the highlights in the dark robe and even the subtlest nuances of the modeling in the hand and face, as well as all the chromatic and tonal intervals, are rhythmically and harmonically interrelated.

In a testimonial of 1951, Matisse tells of how, in the Chapel at Vence, he wanted to do the same thing he had always done in his canvases: "In a very restricted space- the width is five meters --I wanted to inscribe a spiritual space as I had done so far in paintings of fifty centimeters or one meter; that is, a space whose dimensions are not limited even by the existence of the objects represented."[24]

This spiritual space is a kind of plenitude that is plastic, i.e. truly felt. It does not imitate some externally perceived space. And it is achieved through color -- color which, laid on in flat planes, provokes light "as one uses harmonies in music."[25] "Color helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist's brain."[26] "Most painters require direct contact with objects in order to feel that they exist, and they can only reproduce them under strictly physical conditions. They look for an exterior light to illuminate them internally. Whereas the artist or the poet possesses an interior light which transforms objects to make a new world of them -- sensitive, organized, a living world which is in itself an infallible sign of divinity, a reflection of divinity."[27] Because the light-filled space that the artist finds within himself reflects the divine, it brings with it a communion with nature, and gives birth to art which is true to nature. "Awakened and supported by the divine, all elements will find themselves in nature."[28]

Our investigation thus far enables us to see the profound truth of Kandinsky's words about Matisse, quoted at the head of this essay: "He paints ‘images’" and in these "images endeavors to reproduce the divine. To attain this end he requires as a starting point nothing but the object to be painted (human being or whatever it may be) and then the methods that belong to painting alone, color and form."[29]

For Kandinsky, the freeing of art from the imitating of appearances allowed it to revert to its essence of line and pure tone. Matisse, committed to this most universal mode of painting, whose revival in France had been pioneered by Gaugin and Van Gogh, said to Teriade in 1936: "When the means of expression have become so refined, so attenuated that their power of expression wears thin, it is necessary to return to the essential principles that made human language. These are, after all, the principles that ‘go back,’ that restore life, that give us life. Pictures that have become refinements, subtle degradations, dissolutions without energy, call for beautiful blues, beautiful reds, beautiful yellows -- materials to stir the sensual depths in men. This is the starting point of fauvism: the courage to return to the purity of the means."[30] In a postcard to Manguin, sent from Moscow in 1911, Matisse had compared the icons to fauvist painting.[31] Later in life, reminiscing about his reaction to divisionist theories and rules, Matisse said he had to find a way to compose with the drawing in such a way as to enter directly into the arabesque with the color.[32] He stated that in the fauvist reaction against the diffusion of local tone in light, "Light is not suppressed, but is expressed by a harmony of intensely colored surfaces."[33]

In a letter to Charles Camoin in 1914, Matisse writes of his enthusiasm for a Seurat, intensely colored, with a band of blue dotted with violet at the top and the bottom, functioning like the repoussoir of the old masters. He has the Seurat on his wall alongside a photograph of Delacroix's "Jacob Wrestling with the Angel," which his daughter prefers because of its overall life. Comparing the two, Matisse notes that the Seurat remains grand, but "Delacroix's composition is more entirely created, while that of Seurat employs matter organized scientifically, reproducing, presenting to our eyes objects constructed by scientific means rather than by signs coming from feeling. As a result there is in his works a positivism, a slightly inert stability coming from his composition, which is not the result of a creation of the mind but of a juxtaposition of objects. It is necessary to cross this barrier to re-feel light, colored and soft, and pure, the noblest pleasure." The Delacroix, with its vital arabesque, is ultimately more significant to Matisse.[34]

In Matisse's Red Interior (Note: illustration 2 will be added), every line, every shape, every tone -- each of the pictorial elements -- is rhythmically related to all the other elements. The blue oval of the table top, pushing in front of the field of warm reds and yellows, jostles the lower left corner of the rectangle and pops the red shapes of the tomatoes to the fore. The contours of the table swing counterclockwise, descending on the left and ascending on the right to push the vase over to the left, flattening the right contour of the vase while the left contour bulges in response. The oval table is echoed above by the medallion enclosing a woman's profile, while the yellow medallion in turn is answered by the vertical yellow rectangle of the door standing ajar. This yellow door pulls strongly to the right, all the way to the edge of the canvas, yet resists conformity to the straight edge; the upper part of the door leans to the left, back toward the yellow medallion, and thus initiates a large counterclockwise rotation of the whole space of the painting, from the door to the mirror and then back down to the table, an amplification of the rotation of this very table. Balancing this rotation, however, is the movement of the great plane of red with its black zig-zags, from lower left to upper right, followed by the action of the yellow flowers outside, whose shape, a more active variation of that of the flowers in the vase, provides a counterpoint to the inclination of the yellow door.

Note that the light in the painting is a radiant encounter of fields of color, ceaselessly enriched by the ebb and flow of all the powerful and subtle exchanges that go on among the pictorial elements. There is not even any suggestion of incident illumination. Nor does the ample space of the painting make any allusion to perspective. The painting indeed manifests that "interior light which transforms objects to make a new world of them - sensitive, organized, a living world which is in itself an infallible sign of divinity, a reflection of divinity."[35]

The painting unfolds rhythmically as an organic whole in space and in time. Or rather, the space and time are born from the same unfolding. The painting is alive and active, manifesting the energy, the love, which creates and sustains nature, and with it space and time. The organic unfolding of all the elements within the painting is continuous with an unfolding of the painting toward the viewer -- the painting's splendor, clarity or radiance. The plenitude of being which the work manifests expands and radiates to illumine a beholder standing at even a distance of fifty or a hundred feet.[36] The painting is not limited by the dimensions of its frame. This expansiveness is a function of the mysterious reality- which painters call the picture plane: when all the lines, shapes and colors are interrelated in a dynamic and harmonic space/time equilibrium, the painting exercises a luminous presence which faces the viewer. The painting is "all light and face." We see here the true coincidence, the coinherence, of space, light and the picture plane. They are one reality, and that reality is an event, an event of transformation which, for Matisse as for the icon painters, manifests the divine.

Let us examine further this mysterious event which we call the picture plane. In painting, the picture plane cannot be taken for granted. It is not something one starts with, and which can be "preserved" or not, but something which must be achieved. Its achievement is simultaneous with the creation of pictorial space and light, because together they are constituent aspects of a single spiritual event. Matisse's colleague, Andre Derain, stated that color in painting does not come from the prism, but is a spiritual matter of inner life manifested by rhythm. Derain further observed that light in painting is not a principle of imitation, like illumination. Its purpose is not to illuminate objects, but to set the painting within its frame -- that is, to generate the picture plane. In a living painting, the rhythmic relation of lines, angles, shapes and colors results in what Derain described as a "paroxysm." The paroxysm is simultaneously the opening up of space and the breaking forth of radiance, of spiritual light, of real pictorial color. This paroxysm is thus tantamount to the event which is the picture plane. We see now that the picture plane is transcendent in its very essence. That is why it is so mysterious and hard to grasp. It only exists in an act by which it transcends itself. An infinity of pictorial space and light exists when, and only when, the picture plane exists. That is why in great painting the difference between flatness and space is not collapsed, but rather amplified -- and reconciled. It is also why when the picture plane is achieved, the surface on which the picture is painted feels right, and breathes the air of infinity, rather than feeling like a constriction or a limitation.

The joy of Matisse's knowledge of nature is the joy of a unitive knowledge which in its depth may be compared to conjugal knowledge. This joy lives on in the event of the picture plane, the paroxysm, ceaselessly renewed by the painting's rhythms. In this connection let us observe that the joyful light and space of the Orthodox icon are likewise that of a nuptial feast the feast of the eighth day of creation which is the fulfillment of God's espousal of his creation, now healed and transformed.

We can now see why icons are considered to be agents of inner, spiritual healing, why their light, their space, are therapeutic -- and why Matisse desired to create paintings that would have a therapeutic effect. The communion with nature, the participation in the divine, which is implicit in pictorial light and space, cannot but have a healing action. The event of the painting, the act of transcendence which constitutes the picture plane, the opening out of inner life and light, is itself the beginning of a process of spiritual transformation.

~ Endnotes:

1. W. Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Intr. and tr. M.T.H. Sadler (New York: Dover Pub., 1977) p 17.

2. Jack Ham, ed., Matisse on Art. (Berkeley end Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995) pp. 213, 218.

3. Ibid., p. 178.

4. Guillaume Apollinaire, "Les Russes," Gil Blas, April 22, 1911.

5. Cited in French in Alfred Barr, Matisse, his Art and his Public. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1951), p.555.

6. "Matiss v Rossii osenju 1911 Goda," Trudy Gosudarstvennogo ermitaza, vol. 14 (1973), pp. 167-84. Quoted in Pierre Schneider, Henri Matisse. (New York: Rizzoli) 1984, p. 303.

7. Schneider, pp. 303-304.

8. Ibid., p. 14

9. Jack Flam, Matisse: the Man and His Art. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 323.

10. "Matisse in Moscow," Utro Rossi, Oct. 27, 1911, in Y.A. Rusakov, op. cit., p. 288.

11. Quoted in Matisse on Art, p. 296.

12. quoted by Pierre Schneider in the catalogue: H. Matisse. Exposition du Centenaire. (Paris, 1970), p. 13.

13. quoted in French in R. Escholier, Matisse from the Life. (London: Faber, 1960), p. 203.

14. Pierre Schneider, Henri Matisse. (New York: Rizzoli,1984), p. 10.

15. statement recorded in C. Zervos, Cahiers d'art, 5-6, 1931.

16. Matisse on Art, p. 110.

17. A clear and extensive treatment of this can be found in the book by the nineteenth century sculptor, Adolf Hildebrand, The Problem of Form.

18. St. Gregory of Nyssa, "In Hexaemeron," P.G., XLIV, pp. 72-3.

19. Amb., P.G. 91, 1148c.

20. Jack D. Flam, Matisse on Art. (New York, 1978), pp. 148-149. The quotation is from an interview conducted by Regine Pernoud and published in Le Courier de l'U.N.E.S.C.O., vol. VI, no. October, 1953. The translation given here is Flam’s, but I have inserted some of the words of the original French in brackets where I feel this is required by the subtlety of Matisse's expression.

21. Henri Matisse, Jazz. (Paris, 1947), quoted in Flam, Matisse on Art, p. 113.

22. loc. cit.

23. Ibid.

24. Matisse on Art, p. 207.

25. Ibid., p. 178.

26. Ibid., p. 156.

27. Ibid., p. 89.

28. Ibid., p. 156.

29. W. Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Intr. and tr. M.T.H. Sadler. (New York: Dover Pub., 1977), p. 17.

30. Matisse on Art, pp. 122-123

31. Schneider, 1984, p. 309.

32. Dominique Fourcade, ed., Henri Matisse: Ecrits et propos sur l’art. (Paris: Hermann, 1972), footnote, p. 93.

33. Matisse on Art, p. 58.

34. Fourcade, ed. op cit., footnote, pp. 93-94. Translation of part of the letter given in Matisse on Art, p. 275.

35. Matisse on Art, p. 89.

36. Pierre Bonnard advised painters to take their canvases outside from time to time and view them from at least thirty feet away in order to judge them properly. The ability of a good painting to carry over distance is to a surprising degree independent of the size of the canvas--- surprising, that is, until one understands the reason.

~ Lazarus James Reid

#matisse #art article #painting #Sergei Shchukin #Russia #jacob’s well #tretiakov gallery #Sergei Diaghilev #icons #the chapel of the rosary #matisse jazz

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globalworship · 3 years

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Transfiguration & the Defeat of Death - Kenneth Tanner

Fr. Kenneth Tanner, pastor at Holy Redeemer Church in Rochester Hills, Michigan, is one of my favorite writers. Here is his recent sermon as published online, followed by a contemporary icon.

Transfiguration & the Defeat of Death https://www.clarion-journal.com/clarion_journal_of_spirit/2021/02/transfiguration-the-defeat-of-death-kenneth-tanner-1.html

The transfiguration is a revelation of the defeat of death. Elementary observations about the event are often overlooked or unspoken. On the mountain Moses and Elijah, dead to history, are very much alive and once again embodied. They are speaking with Jesus. This is not telepathy. Human speech requires tongues and tongues require bodies. The disciples are witnessing not cleverly devised mythology (2 Peter 1:16), bits and pieces of the Israel story artfully arranged to reinforce pious sentiment, but a palpable experience of the resurrection amidst our death-drunk reality. Resurrection is just outside our ken, just beyond our ability to perceive it, and yet we see here on the mountain that it is nevertheless everywhere, and near us, and greater than death. Transfiguration shows us that resurrection is the end of all things, not death. On the holy mountain the law and the prophets are in a conversation with their embodied human perfection, Jesus Christ, and their talk is about sacrificial love, about the “Passover” this One would “accomplish” at Jerusalem.

For a fleeting moment of “eternal now” the disciples witness the glory of what Eastern Christians call the “uncreated light” that is waiting to be unveiled everywhere and in every ordinary thing in creation, the light of resurrection. This uncreated light reveals not the color, shape, size, and texture of a thing or a person as natural light does—this is not the direct or reflected light that causes photosynthesis or moon shadow. No, this light discloses the goodness, beauty, and verity instilled in the tree or the tiger or the orchid or the human by God. This unique illumination, unavailable apart from self-sacrificial love, is made possible by the profound humility of our incarnate God. The suffering of God in the human flesh of Jesus is what fills the universe with a divine light that’s more radiant than all stars. The universe is called out of nothing and sustained in movement and life by the triune God who gives all of himself for this cosmos they as One make, and this selflessness is what in the end illuminates everything that exists with supernatural radiance...from the inside out. When by grace we participate in the triune selflessness by the Spirit, we inherit the permanence that God is by nature; we become one with the Father who by the Son said “Let light shine out of the darkness.” This is the light that shines from the face of Moses; that envelopes the chariots of fire that carry Elijah beyond the sight of Elisha; that radiates in the cloud that descends on Tabor. Our Father has “made this light shine in our hearts so that we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ, his Son” (2 Corinthians 4:6). And from this human and divine face, shining like the sun in full strength, everything in creation will in the end be transfigured by light, a consuming fire which reveals the true essence of all things, and redeems further still beyond all original goodness, heals from every participation in evil, elevates to participation in the divine nature. The Transfiguration shows us that love is a conversation, a conversation that brings Elijah down from heaven and raises up Moses from the ground, a conversation that brings heaven and earth together in the resurrection. This conversation invites us (like Peter, with all our misunderstandings, sins, and frailties) into the eternal discussion that is the divine life shared between the Father, Son, and Spirit. And what is the conversation that Love speaks? What are Moses and Elijah talking about with Jesus? Love talks always and everywhere about the cross, about the suffering of God in the flesh of Jesus that makes us heirs with the One who has the words of life, words about “a sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel” (John 6:68; Hebrews 12:24). Moses, Elijah, and Jesus are talking about the cross because “where there are no graves there are no resurrections” (Nietzsche). Graveyards and tombstones are all that we now know but here is a sacred conversation that tells us that death dies; that death is trampled down by death. “To preach the word of the cross seems like sheer nonsense to those who are on their way to destruction, but to us who are on our way to salvation, it is the mighty power of God *released within us*” (1 Corinthians 1:18). This word of the cross is a far superior, more life-granting conversation than the one that takes place on social media, on broadcast news programs, and on talk radio—a far more fruitful conversation than our present one, driven by political partisans, corporate commissars, and conspiracy daydreamers. The glory on this mountain is in speaking well of the cross, telling of a suffering pain that heals and does not destroy God or humanity, because Love is stronger than death. Once again, in case we cannot yet hear the song of creation: the Transfiguration reveals a divine conversation, the conversation about self-sacrificial love that the triune God forever is. A light-radiant cloud descends on Tabor, the same cloud that descends on Sinai when God signs his law on stone tablets, the pillar of cloud that follows and defends the children of Israel in the wilderness. The self-same cloud that fills the temple when the musicians play and sing praise to the God who is good, whose mercy endures forever and ever. When later Isaiah envisions the Lord ascended on a throne (and this God’s only throne is a cross), as the six-wingéd seraph fill the air with their thrice-sung “holies,” like the train of his billowing robe, the interior of the temple is filled with this cloud. This cloud is the Spirit. And here on Tabor, from deep in the light-radiant cloud, comes the voice of the Father, “This is my Son, marked by my love; listen to him.” Moses and Elijah fade from view, and heeding the Father’s voice, we now only read their Scriptures in light of this human who is God, we only see Jesus on the pages of Scripture. ‪The Scriptures are veiled for those who don’t begin their experience and witness of God with Mary’s son, with the one who the people of God rejected for a criminal, the one who dines with sinners, who touches the unclean, the one who never kills or destroys, this transfigured one who instead raises the dead and rebuilds the world. Jesus is the human God intends from the beginning and therefore he is the truest self of every human, not our ancestor Adam. Pride is not your truest self, humility is what you were made to embody; hate is not the essence of your person, love is what you forever are. You were made to incarnate the divine disposition that Jesus reveals, one of service to every creature in this grand and beautiful cosmos he loves more than his own life. This moment on the mountain reveals the truth about every person and that truth is that the sacred life of Jesus is now the measure and the meaning of human nature. Transfiguration folds time, brings disparate events together, for this is not just a real moment between Moses, Elijah and Jesus, and between the disciples and the triune Love; it’s not just this actual historic moment on Tabor where a resurrected humanity communes with the divine life. This moment also reveals the encounter with Moses and the triune Love on Sinai, and later on Sinai, Elijah’s encounter with the one God, who is not present in the earthquake or the fire or the mighty wind but in a still small voice. This moment on Tabor participates also in the moment where John encounters this still small voice as the figure walking amid the seven-branched Menorah in the opening of the Apocalypse. Here at the outset of Revelation the description of Jesus is nothing but a composite of all the descriptions of the Transfiguration in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

This One, transfigured by the uncreated light of heaven, this revelation in human flesh of the conversation that the triune God is, lays his right hand on John—and in Matthew’s account on Peter, James, and John—and on everyone in this room, and on every human who has ever lived or ever will live, and this is what Jesus Christ says: “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one; I died, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation‬ ‭1:17-18‬).

Follow Fr. Kenneth for many such spiritual edifications at https://www.facebook.com/kenneth.tanner

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Transfiguration Icon by Khrystyna Kvyk, Ukraine

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fromthefriars · 4 years

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“Learning To Look At Jesus”

Dear Brian,

Thank you again for your letter. Your question, “How do I pray?” is one that has been echoing in my own heart for the last twenty years. Needless to say, I was deeply moved by it and I wish to take it very seriously. In my opinion, this is the most important question one can ask in life. The reason for this is simple: prayer, unlike anything else, reveals to us the truth about God and ourselves.

One could become quickly overwhelmed, however, at the vast array of literature that exists on the topic of prayer. There are countless books, seminars and podcasts on prayer. One hears about Carmelite prayer, Franciscan prayer, Benedictine prayer, etc. Also, prayer is often characterized as being either contemplative, meditative and vocal. Then there are numerous suggestions and ideas about things like posture, breathing, and material to pray with. Should I sit, should I stand, should I kneel, where should I pray and when?

Somebody who is considering diving into this ocean we call prayer, can quickly become overwhelmed and feel like they are drowning before they even get their feet wet. I would suggest, for the meantime, that you ignore everything mentioned above and simply understand prayer as this: learning to look at Jesus and allowing him to look back at you. That, I am convinced, is the essence of all prayer, regardless of what form or shape it takes.

I can remember a few years ago coming to the startling realization that during my official “prayer times” I was spending little time actually praying. What was I doing? I was daydreaming, worrying, planning, self-analyzing, etc. Rather than looking at Jesus I was looking at myself. I can remember thinking, “I must be in a dark night because God appears absent to me!” I would soon discover however, that the darkness I was experiencing was the result of my own self-obsession, which was preventing me from looking at Him. Hence, God was not absent as I believed, I was.

Therefore, it is important Brian to remember that whether you are praying with Scripture, in Eucharistic adoration, journaling, etc. that your focus needs to be on Jesus. This might seem like an obvious point, yet how difficult it is to do! Anyone attempting to pray for five minutes will become acutely aware of the seemingly endless current of distractions, temptations and random thoughts that so easily steal our attention away from Jesus. In fact, many people say that they feel worse when they begin to pray, because prayer is revealing to them how distracted they really are. The good news is, they are not getting worse, but simply experiencing at a deeper level their own need for a Savior.

I mentioned above that prayer is learning to look at Jesus and allowing Him to look back at you. What does this look like practically in one’s life? First, our gaze in prayer is primarily extended outward, away from ourselves, towards God. Christian prayer is not a self-help exercise, a stress reduction program or a therapeutic tool to help us cope with our problems. Of course, prayer can provide insight about ourselves and help to calm our emotional and psychological states, however, these are not end’s to be sought in prayer. In prayer, God is the end, and to do that I must extend my gaze beyond myself.

Second, since we all struggle with a tendency towards self-obsession we need something, particularly if we are new to prayer, to help us look at Jesus. A scripture passage, a few decades of the Rosary, or simply sitting before an icon or crucifix, etc. can be a tremendous aid in helping us to look more intentionally at the Lord during official times of prayer. As your prayer life and relationship with God matures, many people discover less of a need for something external to help them gaze upon Jesus. That, however, is a topic for another letter!

Finally, Christian prayer is relational. Though it is true that God is always greater than our ideas, concepts and images of him, it is also true that God is not merely some energy or force “out there” in the universe. Despite what we can or cannot know about God, this much is true: God is a personal presence. Hence, our relationship with him, particularly in prayer, is relational. In prayer we are communicating with an Person, who listens to us, speaks to us, and most importantly, loves us.

In this first part of prayer, learning to look at Jesus, you are discovering who God is. In the second part, allowing Jesus to look at you, you are discovering who you are. Quite honestly, the first part of prayer is relatively easy. Once the presence of Jesus captures our attention our distractions and thoughts tend to dissipate for a time, allowing us to gaze upon him with wonder and intrigue. Interestingly, it is the second part of prayer that many people find the most difficult, and cause some to abandon prayer all together.

What you will discover Brian in prayer as you allow Jesus to gaze back at you is a presence that is gentle, attentive and loving. As wonderful and attractive as this may sound, the purity of his gaze upon us is unlike anything we experience in this life. It is both confronting, yet disarming, intense yet peaceful, demanding yet patient, all of which leaves us feeling both consoled and afraid. When we allow Jesus to gaze upon us it can often feel like staring directly into the sun on a hot summer day; even though we enjoy the warmth and brightness of the sun, our eyes need time to adjust to its presence. My prayer for you Brian is that you allow yourself time, not only for your eyes, but your heart, to adjust to the dazzling light of His presence.

Unfortunately, throughout most of our life we are merely seen “exteriorly.” Things like social status, fame and our physical appearance captures a significant amount of attention from the world. What is ironic is that by remaining merely on the exterior, the person who has become the object of fasciation is never revealed. Thankfully, Jesus works in the exact opposite way. What he desires is you, not the you that is presented on social media or the you that your career and social status might indicate, but the you beyond all these temporary aspects of your life. Hence, without prayer one can only live on the surface of life.

Does all of this appear too good to be true? Whereas it is good and necessary to talk about prayer, the most important thing is that one actually begins to pray. I hope that if anything, this letter inspires you Brian to pray by simply looking at Jesus and allowing Him to look at you, because it is here, more than any other place, where you will discover both who God is and who you are. After all, isn’t this what we are all looking for? Prayer is the key that unlocks the door to these great mysteries.

Sincerely in Christ,

Fr. Jeremiah

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parisakamali · 4 years

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hello bie !!! big congrats to your blog growing so quickly again !!! you're so sweet and a warm person so i think u deserve so so many more (also your edits omg they're STUNNING) !!! may I please get a ♡ & ❀ + *mine. my bday is on march the third !! thank u queen 😌💕

hello badrieh!!! thank you so so much, im pretty sure i wouldnt have managed to get here without all the lovely mutuals who kept following me after i moved blogs and im very thankful y’all did that 🥺 im so so happy you joined the celebration 🤍 obviously this got suuuper long so it’s under the cut, sorry

join my celebration uwu

♡ : WELL, i always think i dont have much to say about people after complimenting them for a while, but i somehow always manage to find more things to say about you! your themes?? brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same! im not even joking here, you have the most beautiful mobile themes ive seen and it’s so inspiring. i love how you match the icon with the header and the colour scheme and just create this gorgeous overall aesthetic! UR URL? we love to see it! missing blafard sometimes, but cant miss it that much given that it was replaced by the name of the only good man!!! i keep telling you how talented and creative you are and i mean it from the bottom of my heart, but i think we should also focus on what an amazing person you are! you’re sweet and supportive, you made me feel welcomed from our first interaction, despite how much i looked (and still do) up to you as an editor. you! take! no! shit! you always speak ur mind, you call out all the bullshit you see and that makes me respect you even more. add to that how intelligent you are and you get the recipe of a future very successful person. i really hope all your dreams come true and i know they will because you’re gonna go out there and take everything you deserve!!! i have a lot of trust in you; if you ever doubt yourself just know that i don’t. you’re gonna get far and it’s exactly what you deserve, my dear!! you’re one of my favourite people on tumblr and im glad i get to use this platform at the same time as you <3

❀ : miss badrieh, if you dont already know you’re my favourite editor it means i did a horrible job as president of the badrieh fanclub! idk if i told u this already but your edits are the reason i ended up on litblr (is this a thanks to or because of situation,,, we shall never know)! i kept seeing them and asking myself how can one be so talented (i still do) and eventually decided to edit too. so thank you for being my inspiration! now onto choosing... this is hard, ok!!! (i literally have 13 tabs open, how can i only choose 5??)

this eli edit and this victor edit! im simply in love with this style!!! im a hoe for b&w edits, but the pop of colour you added makes it even cooler. you really encapsulated the essence of these two characters in these edits; i love when i can take a single look at an edit and already feel like i know the characters even if i wouldn’t have read the books!

shoutout to this villains edit as well! the style is a bit different but it has kinda the same vibes (it’s the same series, ofc it does...) i love how you played around with the pictures and the text, it looks very unique!

you are the absolute queen of coloring, point proven by this harry edit!, this gone girl edit!, and this renison edit! your coloring is always so stunning, i dont know how you make all the pictures look like they truly belong together while also matching the vibe of each character/book. also!!! fukn text placement!!!!!!! good god, you have such a way with it! it’s always just the right amount of text and it looks so cool! you’re also really good at choosing quotes, i admire that. you’re not just going for the overused, popular quotes, you’re taking stuff that speaks to you and turn it into the popular quotes.

this kaz edit and this jesper edit! i mean... is this shocking? the pictures fit both of them so so well and the colour schemes are stunning! again with the text placement, which looks so damn good!!! also, i love the oilpainting effect in the jesper one; that became sort of ur signature and every time you use it, i have to stare a little longer to make sure it’s an effect, not actual art! but then again, your edits are art!

this iwwv edit! absolutely stunning. i sometimes go back and look at it and im hit by how gorgeous it is!! the coloring is pretty, but that’s nothing new lmao it’s more than just an edit imo, it’s a vibe. idk how to describe this but it feels like the book yk. i love the gif overlay you added, it ties everything together. and the “text inside the text” is *chief’s kiss*

this grover edit! queen, you inspired me to try out moving doodles in edits, but no matter how much i try, i could never come close to what you did here. this is my favourite edit of yours, but also one of my favourite edits on tumblr. it's so simple, the coloring is immaculate, there are not so many elements on it, but that’s what makes me like it so much. there’s beauty in simple things or some poetic bs like that.

shoutout to this other grover edit! again, coloring: beautiful, fonts: really nice, pictures: perfect. i also really like the quote you used on the 4th picture, i think it fits grover very well and it also fits with the whole vibe of the edit too.

in conclusion, spare some talent, ma’am!!! or hand in marriage idk whatever it is, i’m good with it. keep being you, please never stop editing and i hope you’re gonna have not only a beautiful day, but a beautiful life 💛✨

#also i havent been able to see harry as some other than adrien since you made that edit. ur power #badrieh tag #mutuals #biecelebrates #harry-cameron #human interaction

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chicagoindiecritics · 4 years

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New Written Review from Mike Crowley on You’ll Probably Agree: 10 Reasons Why ‘Blade Runner 2049’ is better than ‘Blade Runner’

If you haven’t’ seen the movie, see it then read this. No intro, let’s jump right in.

1. K is a replicant

The reveal of K’s genetic code, or lack thereof, flips everything we assume the movie will be on its head. We are learning along with K what it means to exist. Do we as humans, live like replicants? Do we obey a society that treats us like trash but breath anyways out of the fear of death? Where we viewed “Blade Runner” mostly through Deckard’s eyes who didn’t have much of a personality, K’s lack of a character is his entire purpose for existing. For K to emote is to face death.

Where Harrison Ford’s Deckard entire arc was us questioning if he’s human or not (despite what Ridley Scott unequivocally says), there’s nothing much of substance to Officer Deckard. He gets drunk, retires replicants, that’s it. Name one thing that makes Deckard standout? I’ll wait. Ryan Gosling’s Officer K goes from a machine that is dying spiritually on the inside to someone wanting to have a purpose in life. All while maintaining his composure, if perhaps too much poise for the film. Anything with a conscious can feel. Whether or not how it was made is as relevant as where you were born or what skin color you are. The importance is that you’re here.

K doesn’t seek gratitude nor affirmation. He doesn’t suffer from a narcissistic personality. All he wants is not just to be another useless piece of metal.

2. Deckard has depth this time

Being a daddy changes you a lot. Rick isn’t just a slouchy drunk who likes to shoot robots out of legal obligation. He’s a man who’s principles and love for forbidden things cost him his life. What kind of soul did Deckard have in the first film? Who did he care for? Please don’t say, Rachel, we all know why he was attracted to Rachel. Like Winston in 1984, Deckard rejects Big Brother for a life of pain to gain a glimmer of happiness.

3. It’s horrifyingly relevant

Denis Villeneuve based the imagery in 2049 on a planet that has become degraded with pollution. The buildings are extrapolating enormous amounts of water into the atmosphere, the sea wall at the end of the picture will be our new Mount Rushmore, the orange Vegas is happening now. Denis Villeneuve didn’t predict the earth looking like this, but his production team was still spot on. A picture that transcends its very style, developing a look that will be discussed on its merits separate from the ubiquitous original, is a stunning achievement.

Everything isn’t dystopian because that’s the way it was in the book. It’s what will happen to us in real life, why we’d look for colonies to live on if we had the technology or funding towards NASA to do so. God help us all.

4. The love story questions the essence of relationships

The story between K and Joi further examines the meaning of love, sex, and mortality, with the two being different versions of artificiality. When the default sexed-up version of a naked Joy pops up on the screen, we are emotionally mortified. Some of us may be repulsed to observe a character we care for utilized like a thirsty Godzilla.

The towering ad tries to seduce K tempting him to buy it, rendering everything Joi said to K throughout the picture questionable. Its manipulation solidifies his final decision in life to help another man. We’re not sure if she loved him or said what it thought it wanted him to hear throughout the narrative. Possibly Joi herself didn’t know her intentions. An unusual amount of nuance and uncertainty rests in the love story. Who do we love? Why do we love? Do we love by the heart or the heart of our designers whom we don’t know?

Meanwhile, Deckard was just drunk and horny when he bashed Rachel up against the wall. Sorry, that really was all there was to their passion despite what Wallace says.

5. The movie was an honest commentary about how the world views woman

Here’s a controversial one. A lot of women were disgusted by the way they were depicted in the film. Outwardly watching the movie, I can’t blame them. I’ll let Mr. Villeneuve speak for himself. “I am very sensitive to how I portray women in movies. This is my ninth feature film and six of them have women in the lead role. The first Blade Runner was quite rough on the women, something about the film noir aesthetic. But I tried to bring depth to all the characters. For Joi, the holographic character, you see how she evolves. It’s interesting, I think. What is cinema? Cinema is a mirror on society. Blade Runner is not about tomorrow; it’s about today. And I’m sorry, but the world is not kind on women.”

Villeneuve is right. Women today are still sexualized. Even with the Me Too movement, women are continually seen as sex objects or subservient slaves in a male-dominated society. Villeneuve isn’t interested in painting a rosy picture that Hollywood does for female roles to make the audiences feel comfortable. It’s an honest reflection on who we are. What we see is what we don’t want to see, but that’s part of the honesty of cinema.

6. The score is mesmerizing

Another point in which I may face some contention. Yes, Vangelis’ score is iconic, but it only works for the era it was composed in. Much of its mixture of bleeps, blops, and wind chimes are a product of its time. A lot of emotion is missing from the score other than the opening theme and “Tears In Rain.” Hearing much of the soundtrack while on the road, I sometimes thought I was listening to something from a porno. Take a listen to “Wait For Me” in the soundtrack and tell me otherwise. Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Walfisch’s score is timeless while also paying respect to Vangelis’ synthetic use in the original. It dives into the character’s mind providing a replication of something more human than what Vangelis composed.

7. It thematically ties more directly to “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” than “Blade Runner” does.

“Blade Runner” got the overall gist of Phillip K Dick’s novel. Replicants are scared, trying to find a way to survive as Deckard hunts them down. However, the Andies in the movie almost deserve to die. In their quest for more life, they torture and kill multiple civilians. What did the guy making the eyes do to deserve being frozen to death? What about J.R. Sebastian? He was nothing but pleasant to Roy and Pris. Did Roy eye gauge him when he was done with Tyrell?

Aside from Luv (Sylvia Hoeks), our replicants are fully rounded people. Sapper Morton is a watchful protector who was meant to be a NEXUS 8 combat medic; Joi’s true intentions come into question for herself and us. K’s inner conflict is the central core of the story. All of this revolves around the meaning of existence within a world that has forgotten about you. The introduction of Robo procreation is an evolution of Dick’s ideas, widening his notion of why life exists in the first place.

8. It doesn’t get lost in the scale

Many sequels love scope over characters. Remember “The Matrix”? Remember how they talked about Zion and all these other things we didn’t see? When the sequels brought in Zion, the focus got lost in the spectacle. “The Matrix Reloaded” was a bumbling CGI mess of Agent Smith Clones and cave orgies. “The Matrix Revolutions” was a glorified “Space Invaders” game. Shoot as many sentinels as you can before becoming overwhelmed. Amidst the sequels bumbling chaos, I missed the smaller scale of the Nebuchadnezzar crew.

The story of “2049” could have focused on the replicant uprising with thousands of robots slamming into humans. We could have gone off-world to finally see what all these other colonies we’ve heard about are like. Some have argued that the movie could have borrowed some of its source material from the later novels about replicants creating humans, so on and so forth. All of that sounds incredible in theory. In execution, you would likely get “The Matrix” sequels.

A movie that overreaches in scope, attempting to please fans by showing everything. What we got was an incredibly meaningful story that further explores the themes of the original while building upon its world without going too far. We see what’s beyond L.A. on the dilapidated west coast. The answer is not much. The film aims at minimalism over extravaganza.

9. We’re still talking about it

After being MIA for decades, “Blade Runner 2049” isn’t forgotten. I can’t say the same for “Superman Returns,” “Monsters University,” “The Incredibles 2,” “Live Free or Die Hard,” and “Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull.” In fairness, people do talk about Indy 4, but not in a positive fashion. “Blade Runner 2049” returned to the limelight with disastrous box office results yet high accolades, even gaining the Academy’s attention. Ironically it seemed destined to live the life of its predecessor.

“2049” may have tanked because it was a multimillion-dollar art film that respected its audience’s intelligence. Maybe “Blade Runner” was too far gone amongst the public to gain an interest geared almost entirely towards comic books and Disney. I think the trailers after the reveal teaser looked too generic for my own two cents, turning me off from the film for a short while.

Here we are with Honest Trailers in 2020, making a video about a film that came out in 2017. Bloodsoaked orange skies from the headlines mention the atmosphere of this film. Somewhere, about 100 other people are writing their analysis of “Blade Runner 2049” as I type right now. Seven years from now, we’ll be talking about why the world is still like “Blade Runner 2049.” Villeneuve made a timeless sequel to be remembered.

10. It’s better than the first film and one of the best films in the last ten years

Here’s why you’ll probably agree with this one when you put your pitchfork down. Remove your nostalgia goggles. I know it’s hard to do, please, trust me. Look at the points I made above. Think about how ironic the love story is to our lives. The layers of meaning behind K’s existence is lightyears beyond the featureless Rick Deckard. The picture isn’t flawless. Niander Wallace is spectacularly corny in his scenery-chewing grim monologues. Dr. Eldon Tyrell had some ambiguity regarding the morale of his intentions. For that, I’ll give the original the benefit of my doubt. I understand Ryan Gosling was cast to be intentionally deadpan, but it’s okay to emote once. His distant stare in all of his other performances made it difficult for me to discern myself from the actor’s rather dull persona.

With this said, “Blade Runner 2049” understands cinema. Its atmosphere is why we venture into a dark room that takes us to a different place. Denis Villeneuve’s masterful follow up is one of the most orgasmic cinematic experiences I have witnessed in the last ten years that demands a re-screening in 2022 when theatres reopen at an entirely safe capacity. The style doesn’t overshadow its substance, which is far richer in detail than the original without grasping at blatant metaphors. “Blade Runner 2049” is slow cinema at its finest, letting us into the character’s heads, knowing when to be quiet and when to be loud.

Like “The Empire Strikes Back,” not everyone appreciated the movie at first. Time has been incredibly kind to it, though. I wish the Academy recognized “Blade Runner 2049” beyond its technical marvels in 2018. I suppose it wasn’t the type of picture that catches Oscar voter’s eyes. But it has acquired the audience’s to this day. Now, if you could just look up and to the left for me?

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dailyaudiobible · 4 years

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05/05/2020 DAB Transcript

Judges 21:1- Ruth 1:22, John 4:4-42, Psalms 105:1-15, Proverbs 14:24-25

Today is the 5th day of May welcome to the daily by both Cinco de Mayo it's good to be here with you today as we come together and dive in and take the next step forward in the Scriptures. This is a good day. Today we’re going to conclude the book of Judges and then move our way into the book of Ruth and…ahhh…comes at a really really good time. So, we'll talk about that when we get there. But first, let's conclude the book of Judges. We…we began a pretty treacherous story yesterday that left us like with one tribe missing because of Civil War and some terrible injustice. And, so, we’ll conclude that story today. Judges chapter 21.

Introduction to the book of Ruth:

Okay. So, that concludes the book of Judges, which now brings us to the first page of the book of Ruth. And like I was saying earlier, especially when we get to this time of year, all that we’ve gone through in the year, and it's been a super unique year to say the least, but also we get to this point in the year and we’re kind of moving through Judges and we just need, it’s like we need a breath of fresh air at this point and it comes and it couldn't come at a better time. We've seen anarchy. We've seen just the chaotic extremes of what it looks like when everybody does what is right in their own eyes and this kind of systematic rebellion, this wave of back-and-forth over centuries with God and just the challenges that the people were facing even just to be led. So, Ruth comes in and like a breeze and just begins to transition us into the next season. And we’re moving into new eras in the Bible, but Ruth is this story, basically it's a story…there's more than three people in it but it’s a story of three major players, Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz. These are people who, in spite of opportunity for exploitation or whatever, like choose to do the right thing, even though they're going through some really tough, difficult, trying times. And we should be able to relate. And what we see in the book of Ruth is that when people have character and they use that character and cultivate wisdom and think things through and make correct choices and follow those choices then God's faithful, He is ever present. But Ruth also gives us this breath of fresh air where we’ll get to see this beautiful portrait of women, strong and full of character in the Scriptures. And it's because of Ruth and Naomi's faithfulness that eventually King David would be born and through the vine of King David Jesus would come. And, so, we begin. The book of Ruth chapter 1.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of John, Jesus is having a conversation with the woman at the well, today. So, this is a very, very famous story. The woman is a Samaritan. We've explored Samaritans before, especially in the story of the good Samaritan. So, Jesus has done a somewhat rare thing. Most of Jesus ministry is centered in the Jewish culture among the Hebrew people. So, He's kind of left and He's among the Samaritan people when He has this conversation. And it's interesting that in Jesus time among the Samaritan people they believed. They heard Him with their own ears, and they believed. He was unpacking things for them that they believed, and they believed in Him, whereas the Jewish story is a different one. The people could see something different about Jesus, but the religious leaders denounced Him continually. And Jesus said something really interesting in the conversation that He was having with this woman, “but the time is coming, indeed, it's here now, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those will worship him that way for God is Spirit. So, those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and in truth.” So, how do we do that? How do we worship in Spirit? And even bringing that question up obviously puts a massive amount of theological forks in the road. And we can go down all these forks in the road to explain this but why don't we just get simple? Are we a spirit? Do we have a Spirit? As believers, we certainly believe that we do. We would even declare that our Spirit is the truest essence of us, like it is the real deal. It’s the real us or that everything that's real about us flows from there. And if we generally believe that we are kind of made up as a tri-human being, a being that has a body and a soul or a mind or a brain that can certainly direct our body, but a lot more is going on in our head than our bodies ever do. Like, we’re thinking all of the time and then we have a Spirit, the true essence of life within us, that which has been granted by God. So, then being able being able to say, “I am not my body. My body is certainly something I must care for. It's the temple of God, the Holy Spirit within me, I must care for, it is a part of my experience and a part of my existence. But I am not only my body. I am not only my mind”, right? Like, “I am not only the things that I think about.” And I’ve been thinking about thoughts a lot lately. It’s like you could be sitting still and just kinda listen to some music or just be really quiet and just try to concentrate and be still before God or whatever and it's amazing when you get still how many thoughts are happening that you can observe. Like, how…how is it that you choose the one that you're gonna, that you’re gonna go down, the path that you’re gonna go down. There's so many opportunities to think about so many things and we choose one and then we go down a rabbit hole and it can completely change our day, it can completely change our emotional life, it can change everything. How is it that we choose the things that we do? How do we take those things captive? I’ve been thinking a lot about that and realizing I think a lot like most…I’m a thinker and I'm an introvert and most my life is in my head, but to try to get to a place to say I am not my thoughts any more than I am my body any more than I am my emotions that come and go, something true about me is here, like there's something deeper than all of these things that is the truth of who I am. And I think we all know and sense this, we just mostly stay in the realm of thoughts or feelings. And yet, at the depth of our being is a…an eternal Spirit, maybe we could say the truest part of us. So, Jesus seems to be saying here, especially in the context of the conversation He’s happening is, “it doesn't matter where you go to do your worship, it matters that you do it truthfully from the truest place in you, a place that can have union with God in Spirit.” This is the point that you can kind of branch off into any number of theological or dog…dogmatic teachings. Like go down that path. How then do I do this? Like how do I activate, how do I engage in Spirit? And in the Christian faith that can range in a number of directions from, “you can't do this because you are completely corrupt. But one day you will be able to when you are whole” all the way to, you know, “you’ve gotta speak in tongues” and that's the evidence that you’re…that you’re engaging with the spiritual realm and everything in between. For me, having walked many of these paths, for me I am…where I'm at now is just trying to find some point in my day to be still and know that He is God instead of running around frantically thinking about how He is God and getting all whipped up into every care of this life trying to invoke Him to do things for me. I'm trying to at least find someplace that resembles what Jesus is talking about, someplace where I can get past thinking thoughts about God and being still enough to know, which is deeper than thinking or feeling, to know that He is God.

Prayer:

So, Jesus we take to heart the things that You have said. We believe them. We engage with them. We allow them to enter us and our thoughts and our emotions and everything that is beyond that. We want to worship in Spirit and in truth and we can go in all kinds of directions, but Spirit and truth have to be involved. And, so, we invite Your Holy Spirit into our Spirit, into the truest places of who we are, the places that are made in Your image and we just open ourselves up to You. We’re always, always using words. In fact, we’re talking to You right now and I'm using words but there is a language in love that is beyond words, and those of us who are in love with somebody on this earth with a spouse or somebody that we love that we've been with for a long time and we've gotten to know, like, even though the getting to know never ends, even though we can never know everything about the one that we love, we have those moments where we’re still and we know and it's beyond words, and this is how we want to sit with You. The way this is described in the Scriptures is like a weaned child that his mother's breast – calm, safe, beyond words, true. So, come Holy Spirit and help us to find some space in this day for that and every day for that, that we might go deeper in this relationship that You have invited us into. Come Holy Spirit into this we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, that’s the website, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here as I say just about every single day to remind us. It’s where you find out what’s going on around here, it’s how you stay connected. So…so, be familiar.

Be familiar with the Community section.

Be familiar with the Shop. There are resources there for the journey that we are on together. So, check it out.

You can certainly, if you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, also access these things, including the Prayer Wall from within the app by pushing the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There’s a link on the homepage. Thank you, thank you for your partnership. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the little red button at the top or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hey, DABbers this is Mike In Awe in Kansas City Missouri I wanted to call in and pray against anxiety and confusion in relation to this virus. I think a lot of us have been going through it. I had a lot of anxiety at the beginning of this and I’ve really had to press into the Scriptures and pray and started ignoring all news related to it but I’m still doing my part like hand sanitizing and wearing a mask when I go to the store. Anyway, Lord, please bless the mental health of Your people Lord. Help us to increase, enjoy, in n wisdom, imagination, kindness, love, peace, purity, and patience Lord. Bless us with these things. Help us to see the truth that You are in control Lord, that You are all-powerful during this time, nothing has caught You off guard. Nothing is stronger than You Lord. Nothing can happen to us. You know us individually Lord. The Scripture say that You’ve counted the hairs on our head, and nothing will befall us, nothing will happen to us outside of Your approval. And help us to lean in on that Lord. Help Your Psalms 91 promises Lord that You will keep the us under the pinions of Your wings, metaphorically. Help us keep that in our heart Lord. Help that to resonate with us and become who we are Lord that we know that You’re our shield like David said, You’re our glory, the lifter of our head Lord. Bless us with joy abundantly during this time that we can see the trickery of the enemy and that we can rise above it in joy, that we can share Your life with others. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Hey there DAB family this is Catherine the South African from Houston calling. I’m a little behind on my DAB listening and I had listened to April 18th today and I heard Val from Vegas. And Val am so glad to hear you, are doing so well and that everything turned out so well for you. I am thrilled to hear the joy in your voice, and you gave me so much joy. So, God bless you and I hope that’s…you just continue to get stronger and stronger. And then there was a lady called Good News Cindy I think and she called and really made me smile just thinking of all the things that she’s enjoying about COVID if there’s…if one can even look at it in that light. But it made me think about what I’m grateful for and there is so much, there is so much to be grateful for. You touched about having time to be outdoors and take…to be…take notice of things that you’d otherwise miss when you’re at work. And we’ve been spending so much time outdoors just appreciating how beautiful the area we live in is, seeing spring slowly come and…well…quite quickly in Houston, take over. But the thing that I most value is that the fact that my husband’s home. He’s been furloughed. I’m working from home part time and we just have this amazing time together and it occurred to me, the next time we’re probably gonna be sitting around, “what do you feel like doing today love” is probably going to be when we’re both retired. And, so, I encourage married copies to just love each other and just enjoy this time together because goodness knows it’ll probably be a long time before we get something like this again. I love you all so much family and I just love this podcast. Thank you, Brian, thank you everyone involved and all you listeners. I love you and pray for you.

Alicia from Pennsylvania calling. I just heard some woman talking about her daughter and I just wanted pray for them. Lord, just give that mother the words to be able to talk with her daughter. Her daughter had said that she hadn’t slept in four days and I feel like I can relate to that and just the amount of mental strain that that brings. Crying on the floor in the fetal position for an hour, like just reminds me of my teenage years. And my mother was so…I know…I know that those times weighed so heavy on my mother’s heart and that she would have done anything to help me. And I just couldn’t hear her at the time. And I want to just tell you that there’s hope. I’m medicated now for bipolar and I have never felt better emotionally and I would say the only main difference between her and me is that I have seen God work in my life and I just pray that she does experience something in her life that shows You that You are real and that You’re here in that You are with her Lord. Lord I just pray that You lift them up, just let them be able to put in Your arms all the things that they can’t explain that have happened to them. Lord just help them to put it aside and to find the silver lining and to find the love that does exist. In Your name I pray. Amen.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family this is Cindy the flute player. I’m just going to be straight up and not stay on here very long. I lost my job. I have not been able to secure employment and today I found out that I have to leave my…my home. So, I don’t have any words, but I want you to know that I appreciate this group, this family and I’m praying for you out there. Been fasting and praying and so, what’s Your reason? There must be a really strong reason why He’s put me in such a trial like this. I don’t know what needs to be cultivated or eliminated or…I don’t know…I don’t know a lot but I know that He really is our only hope. So, anyway, talk to you later. Bye.

Good morning DAB fam this is Stephen from Alabama May the 1st and I just want to make everyone…and praise God for this ministry. And I hope everyone realizes the value of this ministry, the incredible immense value from the insight that we get from Brian to just this week Miss Brown singing Mr. Rogers. I wept as well when I heard that. And Miss Brown I’ve adopted you as my third grandmother. My…my grandmothers have both passed on to heaven. And, so, I’m adopting you and I don’t know that we will ever leave this side of heaven, but I can’t wait to hug your neck in heaven. I also want to reiterate what Nicole who called in who’s gone through the incredible tragedy in her life and difficulty. I too, in the nine years I have been listening to the Daily Audio Bible, I’ve gone through…I went through about four or five years of…of failures in business. Our personal income dropped about 80% from where it once was. A couple years ago I had a virus, very similar…very, very similar to this virus that’s going around now. Caused me to have pneumonia. Never been in a hospital a day of my life. Had pneumonia. Attacked my heart. Gave me heart failure. About a year ago this month I had a pacemaker defibrillator implanted. So, through that all I was…God gave me an incredible amount of peace simply because I showed up every day and pressed play. And that’s my encouragement to you. Jesus said this life is still gonna be difficult, but if you will just show up and push play, Jesus…and Brian has done all the hard work. Just push play and let God speak. God bless. Love you.

This is an encouragement for my sister who is dealing with husband that is abusive and selfish and trying to take away the child that he said he never wanted. And I understand. I went through that myself. All I can say is that God is able to do so much more than you can ever ask, think, or imagine. After my situation was over God had provided a way for me to be the sole provider of my child and also gave me an amazing husband that I love so much. And we would never have been able to have children. So, it’s an amazing thing. God works through our trials and our battles are His battles. So, put on your armor every day. Gird your loins, expect to fight, but then just submit fully to the hand of the Lord and trust Him because He will deliver you. He is your deliverer. He loves you and your daughter beyond measure. May God bless you and keep you. May God make His face to shine upon you and give you peace. May He cover you with His pinions. May He protect you. May He give you outrageous strength and eyes to see and ears to hear above all the noise that the enemy is throwing at you. And it’s in Jesus’ precious and holy name I pray for you and ask these things. I love you. Treasured Possession.

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vapormaison · 4 years

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2019 Best Press 3/4: カタカナ・タイトル + Kanji Title by TANUKI

While for many vaporwave vinyl is doubtless equal parts collector’s item and audio source, I don’t want to lose sight of the goal of this blog here: developing a canon of the genre for high fidelity enjoyment. That said, when I come across something remarkable or noteworthy about a particular piece of wax, even if it is not a “purely audiophile” object, I want to make mention of it.

And TANUKI’s カタカナ・タイトル + Kanji Title wax release is not only noteworthy, but contends for hi-fi consideration despite it’s status as a picture disc.

But let’s back up slightly.

Going back to the previous thesis on why we buy records, sometimes you just want to own a vinyl just because. Just because you’re a collector trying to compile a discography on wax — or, better yet, just because you truly love the album art. For me, カタカナ・タイトル + Kanji Title (Double EP) was undoubtedly all of the three “just be-causes”.

A while back, I noticed that the LP was going into its 3rd press, and decided to snap up a copy because I like Tanuki, I like Lum, and because of those other just becauses. Unfortunately the only format available was not the pink vinyl, but the picture disc. As I’m sure is well-known (because audiophiles are very loud about things they dislike), picture-discs are a big no-no in the audiophile community. This is because while a beautiful objet d’art, a serious listening session of a picture disc release will usually produce greater amounts of surface noise than any other type of vinyl. You can, of course, with the right system, neutralize and mitigate this process slightly, but true-blue hi-fi heads pursuing that elusive muse of “pure sound” would never give a picture disc a second look.

I’m not one of those people.

Tangentially, I’ve heard whispers of ghosts of rumors from when I was living in Shenzen, China — that various record suppliers (small batch Makers) are working out manufacturing and material processes that minimize these issues on pic discs to create appealing records that cover all the bases: hi-fi suitability, collector oriented visual esoterica, and price. I should also admit I have no idea where those companies are in terms of R&D and/or producing these. I end up catching a lot of very fast talk from extremely motivated enthusiasts, but Chinese is still as elusive a language to me at times as “pure sound” can be. With that in mind, however, it’s logical to surmise that advances in technology will eventually render the differences between picture discs and traditional black wax undistinguishable. So long as the world isn’t destroyed in some cataclysmic climate disaster (very real possibility), or -- as we are watching evolve now: World War 3. My view is that it’d be pointless to dismiss the format out of hand when there are active attempts to innovate it as we speak.

That all said, I know what to expect when a contemporary, big-label picture disc plays. During my college days, I used to spin wax at the university radio station. One of the previous catalog managers had a fetish for this “collectible” format, and was convinced he was doing the station a favor by purchasing all these vinyls, noting a pre-supposed resale value later. I remember throwing these on the well-worn Technics SP-10 we had as our main turntable, and listening to the occasional scratch, frequent popping, and constant surface noise, that for the uninitiated (bless you), sounds like a sustained “cracking” in your Rice Krispies — or for those born in the analog age, CRTV static.

So when I sat down with the Tanuki picture disc, I had this laundry list of preconceptions and prejudices about the format. I thought that I could listen to a moderately scratchy record once or twice, keep it as more a visual boutique item and then eventually include in an article where I bemoan the poor quality of the genre’s releases.

But then, I actually listened.

And it sounded… well, I won’t get ahead of myself. Here’s the full review:

THE MUSIC

BABYBABYの夢 — is doubtless the reason why many of us have bought the EP from a sonic perspective —especially if the band-camp reviews are indicative of trends. I still maintain that this is the Mariya Takeuchi sample/remix work par excellence. Tanuki hits all the essential notes here, a genuine respect and love for the sound-staging of its original source, Yume No Tsuzuki. I still get echoes of the original arrangement in my system, (ever so slightly) with a bright and dance-infused collection of unique sounds — particularly in that delicious, wide mid-range — that flesh out the track into its own sort of masterpiece.

何がGoin' On — the curatorial and conspiratorial side of my brain tells me that Goin’ On will probably go down as one the under-appreciated vintage bangers of this era of future funk. I can envision hipsters two or three decades from now sussing out a neophyte with pretentious questions about this track’s pitch-shifted sample draws from. It has that sort of vibe that you know hits with a certain subset of electronica fans — rich & vibrant, making the tweeters on your system work out in all the best ways — it’s just great.

がんばれ — Tanuki is at his best when he gets playful with brass samples. I firmly believe that the titans in this genre each have their go-to piece in their best arrangement — like Dan Mason’s creative vocal array, or greyL’s manipulation of micro-samples. For Tanuki, it’s whenever her gets a horn — synthesized or otherwise, into his production workflow.

ファンクOFF — continues Tanuki’s magic act, taking another city pop track more iconic for its soulful electric guitar riff and turning it into the most slap-worthy single on this EP. I prefer it when Japanese pop samples are fundamentally re-imagined, although I can see how the perfectionist tweaking of someone like Yung Bae is more appealing for some. Tanuki is undoubtedly one of the innovators of this genre, and there’s no more solid evidence of that talent than this track.

腕の中でDancin’ — if I ended up hosting a sort of mythical vaporwave grammies or something like that, (I’m available, folks!) I would probably go off on a Ricky Gervais style rant on how artists aren’t in touch with “the people” (read: me) because all we really want are more remixes of Meiko Nakahara songs — who given her impact on City Pop should have way more play in this genre than she does. This one, like most of the Meiko mixes I’ve heard, is a banger with an absolute fire bass riff punctuated throughout.

Radiant Memories — this might be my first certified “hot take” in the publication (they’ll be many more, I imagine) — but as far as I’m concerned this is the superior Plastic Love edit. I’ll just leave my thoughts there, so they can soak in with a portion of the fanbase who split my reddit account on an open fire of downvotes for suggesting that other artists than Macross 82-99 (Praise be upon him!) are allowed to touch this song as well. While Macross’s mix is definitely the more up-temo of the two, and that for some is the very essence of the genre, this slightly down-mixed version is both the perfect conclusion for the EP and ideal antithesis.

THE LISTENING EXPERIENCE

Signal to Raise ratio on the following albums:

カタカナ・タイトル + Kanji Title: ~61.9db (1 db MoE)

Tron Legacy, Daft Punk: 58.4db

Love Trip, Takako Mamiya, Kitty Records Press: 65.8db

(ratings based on averages 5 minutes of sustained play on the testing unit, the machine actually complied this data on its preset, which is another fascinating part about this sort of vintage press-testing tech). The margin of error is because the machine, according to my mentor Dr. Juuso Ottala formerly of Harman International, informs me it was never meant to give accurate readings of picture discs, and to add about a dB of error margin.

One of the benefits of growing up in New England and, subsequently, New York, is that there are no shortage of heritage professional audio brand HQs in operation around a 200 mile radius from Manhattan to Boston. Off the top of my head, there’s Harman/Kardon, Boston Acoustics, Bose, NuMark, Marantz, and Rane headquarters within an hour’s drive from my two hometowns. Early on in my audiophile quest, I got my hands on some cool vintage gear — vinyl lathe testing equipment that has collected dust in both an old Harman technician’s storage unit, and now my parent’s basement. Over the holiday, I recently brought it out to do some surface noise testing on it to get a rough confirmation of what I was explaining in yesterday’s hi-fi guide. The innards of the machine looks eerily like a plinth-less linear tonearm and plate pair attached to a monitor. After making sure I’m not violating some kind of Harman International trade secret, I’ll post it on instagram.

Wanting to also get a firm idea on just how good my ear-test sounded, I grabbed another picture disc vinyl I had received as a gift a few years ago from my brother — the Tron Legacy OST. While I found the film passably enjoyable, my own preconceptions about pic discs, and a general exhaustion with french house — left me with no discernible desire to spin the thing. I hadn’t even broken the seal on the plastic wrap, so it seemed like as good as a blind test as any. I also grabbed what my ears tell me is a “good”, “heavy” press, a 1982 original dead-stock copy of Takako Mamiya’s Love Trip LP pressed by Kitty Records Japan. I’ve played it maybe a half dozen times since I bought it, so it’s as close to “new” 80s audiophile pop record as you can get. The Japanese are infamously anal about low SNR on their vinyl.

And, well, the results speak for themselves. The sweet spot for most black vinyl records is between 60-70db depending on age, weight, and a host of other frankly uncontrollable factors that aren’t worth getting into detail here, as I’d go on forever. The main takeaway here is that Neoncity’s and Tanuki’s record sat at the low end of the audiophile vinyl reference spectrum. Which in itself is a remarkable achievement for a pic disc. It’s worth taking a look at Tron Legacy, which just barely scratches 8db above a cassette tape, and 7db a Japanese vinyl from 1982.

This is all in an effort to say: damn, this is pretty good.

This also somewhat counters the usual “picture discs sound like shit” narrative that’s prevailed pretty consistently in the audiophile community. Tron Legacy? Yeah, that probably sounds like shit if I could bother to suffer through a listen. But whoever Hong-Kong based Neoncity is using actually makes “good” — if such a qualifier needs to be attached — image-pressed records. And that devotion to audio fidelity should be rewarded.

It might be time for me to re-asses picture discs on the whole, and that mind-expanding moment is something I owe to the fine folks at Neoncity.

#bestof2019 #bestpress

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a34trgv2 · 5 years

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Why It Worked: The Prince of Egypt

Introduction: The Prince of Egypt is a 1998 animated Biblical historic epic directed by Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner and Simon Wells. Produced by Penny Finkelman Cox and Sandra Rabins, with the screenplay written by Phillip LaZebnik and Nicholas Meyer, the film retells the Biblical story of Moses and how he freed the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. The film stars Val Kilmer, Ralph Fiennes, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sir Patrick Stewart, Helen Mirren, Steve Martin and Martin Short and features music and songs by Hans Zimmer and Stephen Schwartz respectively. Released on December 18, 1998, the film received very positive reviews (scoring an 80% out of 87 critics aggregated on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 7.08/10 average rating), was financially successful (making $218.6 million on a budget of $70 million), won an Academy Award for Best Original Song (When You Believe), spawned a direct-to-video prequel focusing on Joseph (the dream interpreter) and a stage musical at TheaterWorks in California in 2017. Out of the 37 animated films DreamWorks has made, I always viewed The Prince of Egypt as not just my favorite, but also their best film in terms of quality. In this post, I'm going to explain why that is and why we need more films like this.

The Plot: For those who aren't familiar with the story of Moses, it's a tale about hardship, sacrifice and deliverance. A young Hebrew baby is saved from the slaughter of Hebrew babies ordered by Pharaoh out of fear. That baby is picked up by Pharaoh's wife and is named Moses, for he was pulled out from the Nile river. Moses grows up being Pharaoh's son until he finds out his true heritage and essentially exiles himself in the wilderness. There he meets God in the form of a burning bush who tells him that He has heard the Hebrews suffering and has chosen Moses to free them. 12 plagues and 1 crossing of the Red Sea later, the Hebrews are free and Moses is hailed a hero. While this film stays true to the original text for the most part, it does make a few additions and subtractions so that the film flows naturally at an hour and 40 minutes. I could talk all day about the changes made from the text to the film (such as Moses having a stutter and Mirriam giving Moses to the Queen) but in an instance I wish was more common place when it comes to adaptations, the filmmakers provided an opening statement at the start of the film. "The motion picture you are about to see is an adaptation of the Exodus story. While artistic and historical license has been taken, we believe that this film is true to the essence, value and integrity of a story that is a cornerstone of faith for millions of people worldwide. The Biblical story of Moses can be found in the Book of Exodus." It's clear that the filmmakers had nothing but respect for the material and told a strong story about two brothers going on different paths in life. They also don't shy away from the brutality of the story, while still making it accessible for children. People are whipped, drowned, attacked by locus, and even straight up killed. What makes this film stand out from other Biblical films is that it's animated, but not like that of Disney. Where Disney tends to go for the fantastical and colorful, The Prince of Egypt is more reserved and grounded. The characters move more like humans and are designed more like Egyptian hieroglyphics and paintings than fairy tale illustrations. This grounded approach makes the fantastical stuff all the more powerful. The parting of the Red Sea (with blends 2D and 3D animation perfectly) is still one of the most iconic scenes in animation history. The animation in this film is so unlike anything I've seen before or since and it also helps that the story is well written and is brutally honest with it's depiction of slavery and a tyrant ruler.

Cast and Characters: The cast they got for this film is excellent. Sure they're celebrities who (at the time) didn't have prior experience in voice acting (with the exceptions of Michelle Pfeiffer, Jeff Goldblum, Danny Glover, Sir Patrick Stewart, Helen Mirren, Steve Martin and Martin Short). That said, in this film they nailed their respective characters. Starting off with our hero, Val Kilmer gives such a nuanced performance as Moses, making him cockey and arrogant at the start and then making him so well spoken and wise by the end. Moses is such a relatable protagonist and has a genuine arc through the film. His brash and fun loving demeanor is in direct contrast to his uptight older stepbrother, Rameses. Speaking of which, before he was Voldemort, Ralph Fiennes gave such an amazing performance as Rameses, who's at the top of my list for the best villain is DreamWorks' animated catalog. The thing about Rameses is before he became a ruthless tyrant, he strived to be just like his father, who he saw as wise, percise and a real king. At the same time he had such a good relationship with his stepbrother, Moses, that he hoped that they'd make Egypt a better place together. That all changed when Moses came back from his self imposed exile and asked him to release the Hebrews in the name of God. Ralph Fiennes showcases the right amount of worry, stubbornness and sadness of this character, and the chemistry he shares with Moses is perfect. Everyone else does a great job voicing their respective characters as well. Michelle Pfeiffer gives Tzipporah such a snarky personality and makes for a good wife to Moses, Sandra Bullock makes Mirriam such a motherly sister, Jeff Goldblum made Aaron as essentially the voice of the cynical people which this film couldn't function without (also Jeff Goldblum is always a win), and Steve Martin and Martin Short work off each other perfectly as Hotep and Huy. Then there's our Lord and Savior Himself, God. In this film, God is portrayed as the all powerful being He is as described in the Bible. He protects His people, He tells Moses exactly what to do and how to do it, He shows mercy and good favor towards the Hebrews, and He does keep His promise in bringing His people out of Egypt. Val Kilmer provides the voice of God and it sounds so majestic and calm, it's like listening to your best friend.

Songs and Music: There is not a single song in this film that I don't catch myself humming to on a daily basis. That is how powerful these songs are. The opening number, Deliver Us, perfectly captures the oppression of the Hebrews as they are whipped, pushed, and yelled at by the Egyptians. Oh and also babies are slaughtered during this scene, making the song even more powerful. Moses' song, All I Ever Wanted, plays after his encounter with Miriam and Aaron and brilliantly showcases his doubts to his upbringing; right before he's hit with that amazing dream sequence done in the style of Egypt wall paintings. Look at Your Life Through Heaven's Eyes was such an upbeat and fun song that shows you your life has meaning and you should look at it with a more optimistic perspective (through Heaven's eyes, if you will). Playing With The Big Boys is an amazing number, showing the dark mockery of God from Hotep and Huy as well as some impressive visuals (also there's this dope rock cover of the song by Jonathan Young and Caleb Hyles you should really check out: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gqlNY5iX-nA). The 12 plagues are shown via a reprise as All I Ever Wanted and it is genius. The visuals get noticeably darker with each passing plague until all of Egypt is covered in darkness. And Moses and Rameses' duet perfectly captures their opposing viewpoints during this time. Then there's the Oscar winning song, When You Believe. It's the ultimate song of hope, of faith, of belief; it's the song that should be song and heard around the world, especially today when hope and optimism are seen as being ignorant. Also, Hans Zimmer's score for this film is nothing short of magical. The way he uses brass instruments to emphasize God's power is just glorious and the choir is used in the exact place you expect there to be a choir. It's so soothing and majestic, I wish I had the soundtrack.

Where it Falters: My only gripe with the film is the ending. Not that it's bad, but that, well, it ends. Despite the film promising to bring the Hebrews to the promise land, we never actually go there. I thought they'd get to that in a sequel, but that's not likely to happen anytime soon because DreamWorks Animation swore off 2D animated films after Sinbad tanked and they're not nearly as ambitious now as they were back in the 90s and 2000s. Cosmodore made this really insightful video about how DreamWorks Animation almost went bankrupt twice and why their recent output has been geared more towards families (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dLa7xe5GTWw) but the tl;dr is DreamWorks Animation was 1 more financially disappointing year away from closing up shop completely. Still though, I would love to have seen a sequel to The Prince of Egypt focusing on how Moses lead the people through the wilderness.

Conclusion: The Prince of Egypt stands as one of the best animated films ever made. With an amazing soundtrack, memorable characters, beautiful animation, and a stellar voice cast, it's one of a select few films I consider a masterpiece. You could argue that it's not accurate to the story told in the Bible (a fact the filmmakers themselves acknowledge), but it does stay true to the spirit of the story and it doesn't go out of it's way to convince nonbelievers that this is truth. As a film on it's own, it's great and I hope it's watched and remembered for generations to come. Thanks so much for reading and I'll see you soon ;)

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eyebright-iris · 5 years

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Review: Met Gala 2019

Good morning to girls and gays only. Straight men can perish.

Well, the Met Gala has rolled around once again and all I can say is: I’m so glad I’m a lesbian. The theme for this year was ‘Camp: Notes on Fashion’ and my GOD did some men decide that this was the perfect opportunity to come in a bland black tux or worse.

Some of the biggest disappointments of the night for me have to be Rami Malek and Taron Egerton, who, having both just played some of the most iconic men in recent history who lived, breathed and ate the essence of camp, saw fit to turn up in black tuxes. Taron’s was kinda sparkly though and I still respect the dude for his general lack of typical masculinity elsewhere (more men commenting “phwoar” on their mates’ Instagram, please). Shout out to Frank Ocean who showed up looking like any bouncer you might find outside one of my local clubs on a Saturday night. He collaborated with James Charles to prove that while some gays showed their best, others certainly did not. The theme was CAMP, James Charles, and you still couldn’t deliver.

I appreciated the change in pace from Darren Criss and Harry Styles, but to be honest, Harry’s had camper looks in concert and Darren Criss…well, I loved his look, but it also took me a solid ten minutes to work out that it was him and not just Brendon Urie in his regular concert gear. Glittery jackets and statement eyeliner do not a camp icon make, I’m afraid, though you certainly did better than so many others.

Kim Kardashian was certainly…there. I’m impressed with the way she managed to make herself look like she’s just stepped out of the ocean butt-naked and dripping wet, but girl. You’re rich as fuck. There’s more than bodycon dresses out there. Also please smack your husband, he’s a dick and he’s wearing a black tracksuit. Kendall and Kylie were a little more flamboyant but honestly, they were single-colour knockoffs of things I would say you could find at a Rio street festival, except that would be an insult to Brazil and all the ways Rio festivals embody everything the Jenner looks were not. And to be real with you? For all the colour that was there, they were boring. What is it with these women and being afraid to be #Iconique? It’s sad that all they seem to know how to do is emphasise their boobs and hips in dresses with very little fabric to try and be daring. If they weren’t so rich and influential no one would pay them any mind because you can see the same look on anyone else.

While I don’t like Cardi B, I can appreciate her attempt to get into the spirit of the Met Gala, which she pulled off so well last year. I only wish her skirt hadn’t ended up looking like rows of theatre seating. Katy Perry was there as both a chandelier and a hamburger, which, while a step up from the Jenner-Kardashian contributions, leads me to wonder if she knows what ‘camp’ means, or if her foray into queer culture stopped once she was done appropriating sapphic sexuality for male consumption in 2008. Special mention must go to Benedict Cumberbatch who saw fit to show up dressed like some bizarre visiting cousin of Colonel Sanders who maybe definitely owned a plantation. It wasn’t a black tux but somehow I just wish it had been.

To get to the real stars of the night, I think it’s only fair to start off by saying this Met Gala was once again, Black Excellence. I cannot BREATHE for the number of incredible, powerful black icons taking to the pink carpet in works of art. Let’s begin, shall we?

Billy Porter showed up (and showed everyone else up) with six hot half naked slave dudes decked out in gold carrying him in on a black-and-gold chaise-lounge like a modern-day Cleopatra and, once he had both feet firmly on the floor, threw up the massive golden wings of Isis and owned the entire space around him. The crown. The wings. The copious gold sparkly shit. The gold bedazzled stuff on his face. Every other man should be ashamed of his failure to measure up to the king. Also every man in a tux found DEAD by the side of the road thanks to our Lord and Saviour Billy Porter.

If Billy Porter is the king, then surely, there are too many queens to choose from. From Laverne Cox’s strikingly shaped black dress with her brilliant blue-white hair and statement makeup, to Lupita Nyong’o showing up in the full neon spectrum of the rainbow, black women showed up to take the crown every single time last night. Janelle Monáe’s stunning artsy dress blew me away, from the Picasso-like features to the multitude of hats that I have no idea how she balanced, she’s a masterpiece. Lizzo stepped out looking like the Empress of Flamingos and I am absolutely here for every second of it. The colours are loud, bold, and the outfit is as large-as-life as Lizzo herself. Her hair was so stunning, I swear I thought it was a crown at first.

Black hair certainly had a starring role on the red carpet as well, from Tessa Thompson’s insanely long braid (she was carrying a WHIP to complete her outfit RIP all wlw) to Lupita’s impressive afro with its many golden combs. I adored Danai Gurira’s hair and especially loved her Oscar Wilde-inspired outfit: here is a woman who understands her brief and works from it to great effect, and I loved Keiynan Lonsdale’s gorgeous hair and butterfly gown – seeing him embracing his queerness with both arms since Love, Simon led him to come out has made my heart big.

I can’t move on from the black dominance and excellence of the night without mention of two of my favourite looks: Zendaya and Lena Waithe. If Billy Porter is the king and there are too many queens to count, then Zendaya stands out yet again as the living, breathing princess of the lot of them. I can hear the white tears over black girl magic Cinderella from here. She arrived in a whole Cinderella dress that expanded and glows from within, a pumpkin-carriage purse and her own fairy godmother to transform her with a little bibbity-bobbity-boo? She even lost her damn glass slipper on the stairs. A true artist. As they say in the LGBT+ community: um, wig.

Speaking of which: Lena Waithe. The lesbian icon herself, who showed up to last year’s Catholic-themed Met Gala in a pride flag cape, and who went hell for leather this year as well, putting every man in a tux to shame by not only out-classing them in how fantastic she looked in her lilac suit, but also paying homage to the origins of camp, with the back of her jacket boldly stating “Black Drag Queens Invented Camp” and the pinstripes on the suit actually being cleverly displayed lyrics to iconic drag queen songs. She really Did That yet again and I’m knocked dead.

This review is already long as hell and it’s about to get longer because there are more looks that I want to mention.

First of all: Lady. Fucking. Gaga. My girl did four outfits on the pink carpet in the space of 15 minutes and holy shit did she kill it. Starting out in a voluminous hot pink ballgown, followed by a more sedate but still impressive black one with a matching umbrella, then down to a slim hot-pink number, huge sunglasses, and statement telephone, and finally ending up in an iconic mesh and underwear set, all while sporting the most gorgeous gold false eyelashes that made the whole thing pop. The creativity and flair of everything Gaga does has made her iconic throughout the years and this event was no exception.

Ezra Miller FUCKED IT UP. Pinstripe suit with the sweeping train, glittering cage corset on top and a myriad of imitation eyes all over his face, carrying an eerie mask of himself on a stick? Phenomenal. The confidence in his walk as he moved and the way he displayed his look was so striking and seeing him own it so much made my night.

I loved Jordan Roth’s take on Billy Porter’s wings, allowing him to show up as a literal whole theatre. I loved Ryan Murphy’s sparkling pink champagne tux and high-collared cape. Florence Welch absolutely slayed in her glittering wing-collared cloak.

However, one of the standout looks for the night was Hamish Bowles. The embodiment of camp, with that magnificent fur-trimmed patterned cape. The look is absolutely dominating even when he’s standing still, and when he moves, the whole thing comes alive. Watching some of the dynamic shots taken of him having fun with his outfit, I felt like I was watching a bullfighter in a lion’s mane – and all of that is good. I can’t quite put my finger on why I felt he looked like a fabulous Mrs Doubtfire (maybe it’s the shoes) but the outfit was one of the best and definitely set a bar that so many men fell short of.

Final Words:

Can someone please tell cishet men to step their game up? Or men in general (I see you Frank Ocean and James Charles letting the damn side down)? They can stay boring if they want, however. The rest of us will be having far more fun without them, and the plain black tuxes certainly are no talking point of the evening.

#review #met gala #met gala 2019 #fashion review #fashion #red carpet #zendaya #billy porter #ezra miller #lady gaga #i wanted to get this out in a timely fashion so it was relevant #also idk if you can tell but i'm eagerly anticipating macdoesit's review because his red carpet reviews are EVERYTHING and i think it shows #*it shows here #i am INFLUENCED because i love him

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