#like saying “they talked about trees” rather than literally writing out a transcript of the entire conversation they had about trees
Text
Poll adventure (paventure? lol) Day 11: read the small story tidbit below the poll for more details, OR just vote based on initial impression
(✦ see past poll results + further information HERE (link) ✦)
Yesterday's poll decided that The Adventurer should curiously socialize with a few of the boat travelers ...
~
"The Adventurer grabs one of the ornate glass bowls near the buffet table, meekly gathering some cheese and vegetables as he scans the crowd. For the first 15 minutes of the lunch, he mostly crouches in a corner seat, nibbling on his food and nervously fielding the occasional drunken question from a passing party guest..
Knowing he should.. probably... actually socialize at some point, he begrudgingly chooses conversational partners, squeezing his eyes shut and pointing around randomly until he lands on someone.....
The first is a scrawny man in a flashy suit, wobbly from wine but still keeping a vaguely charming demeanor about him. He proudly introduces himself as a "legal expert", then goes on to ramble for a while about the laws in the area, how drastically they vary from city to city (plus a few veiled hints on how to safely break them), and that if you travel a lot it can be hard to keep up with it all.
He mentions, quite conveniently, that he's recently published a book on the topic, a legal guide for local explorers, and offers to give The Adventurer a copy for a special discounted price... but... then soon recalls that the crate of books he'd planned to sell on the boat sadly ended up falling into the river earlier during a "silly little mishap"..
In place of a book, he simply slides The Adventurer a glossy mint colored paper swirled with golden floral motifs, supposedly serving as some sort of business card, though the actual contact information seems obscured beneath the cluttered design. The Lawyer also pulls off his scarf as he rises to leave, wrapping it around The Adventurer's shoulders with a little waving flourish (not the first time someone has confused his anxious shaking for cold shivers). The Adventurer stutters out a confused thank you, then watches as the Lawyer stumbles off, mumbling to himself that he's been drinking too much and "truly must find somewhere to piss"......
The second person he approaches is an older woman, hunched over a table fidgeting with a handful of colorful glass dice, spinning and stacking and arranging them into patterns whilst her thoughts drift elsewhere. Initially, she gives evasive answers when asked personal questions, but soon grows more talkative once the topic of local flora and fauna arises. She apparently used to adventure as well, roaming the lands to document various elements of nature relevant to her mysterious "private research" - though, at her age, she's now resigned to casual boat rides rather than riskily hiking alone through uncharted wilderness. Gently laying a worn leather journal of watercolor paintings out onto the tabletop, she points at various berries, leaves, and animals, eagerly describing their significance...
After chatting for a while, she abruptly changes topics, mentioning that sometimes she can "sense things which she should not" (whatever the hell that means), then asks him to pick one of her dice. He hesitates, but she just stares, refusing to elaborate further.. Finding even 30 seconds of awkward silent eye contact physically impossible to bear, he hurriedly plops a finger down in front of an iridescent yellow die. She chuckles..
Scooping up all of the dice from the table, she rattles them in her clasped hands, then brings them up to her ear as if to listen... to something?? A few moments later, she turns back to him, speaking in a raspy whisper: "There are others, melding your footprints with their own, seeking a gift you do not yet know - this is what I see."
Before he can ask her for any elaboration, the Captain returns, grumbling that The Adventurer has already stayed 5 minutes past the time limit and swatting at him with a broom to shoo him off of the boat. Apparently an hour can go by fast....
After climbing back into his dinky raft, he sails mostly successfully down the river, finally making it to a point that, at least based on his map, SHOULD be where the main road picks back up past the detour. He crashes into a small grouping of rocks whilst trying to navigate back to the shore, but he was planning on disassembling the raft to get his rope and supplies back anyway, so.. aside from a scraped knee and possibly broken pinky toe, he decides it's actually fine. The cat is okay, which is all that really matters, anyhow.
By the time he's taken apart his boat, eaten a quick meal, and bandaged his leg, the sun seems to have nearly set. It's later in the night than he'd usually like to travel, but, where he's going is a pretty commonly used road, so maybe it's safe? He's exhausted from socializing, but could probably muster enough energy to walk for at least a while. Or perhaps he should just call it a night and find a place to sleep.. But.. where??? What should he do?
-
Additional information
acquired a long, warm, expensive scarf
acquired slightly increased knowledge of local plants
acquired vague information from the 'dice based fortune teller', or whatever that was meant to be
acquired a business card (+ ability to get away with one minor crime free of legal consequence)
acquired mild nausea for the next 5hrs from weird buffet cheese
acquired badly scraped knee and sprained toe (will walk slightly slower for the next 2 days)
the adventurer's current main goal: follow his map to reach the abandoned castle ruins and see the rare animal specialist about the mysterious egg he has
#paventure posting#polls#choose your own adventure#okay yeahgh this one took like a week instead of a few days lol#I've went back to physical therapy for my chronic chest muscle issue and I think one of the new excercises they gave me in the#appointment ended up really irritating something instead of helping it because I was having way worse and sharper#chest pain for a few days. I went to the doctor and got an ekg just to rule out anything bad like that because I seriously#thought something was wrong but.. apparently it's just the same thing as always. It feels a bit better now#and hopefully wont get bad again if I ease into the excercises more. but for a few days I really didn't want to use my arms at all#so that means like.. not drawing or typing. also when I feel bad I kind of stray away from social media? I know for some peopls#social media is a good distraction when they're sick or whatever but I just find it stressful. I usually just lay on the floor#for a few days with silly cooking shows or Carefully Curated Youtube Videos That Specifically Contain Absolutley Zero Possibility#Of Stressful content Whatsoever on in the background lol.. ANYWAY.#I am at the moment able to use the computer again so I could draw things. hopefully will get on better schedules again one day#anyway!!... HE!!! adventure man... Again I hate trying to shorten things by just describing the conversations without dialogue#like saying “they talked about trees” rather than literally writing out a transcript of the entire conversation they had about trees#etc. I think because most of the time when I write it's in a very dialogue heavy context (like script type things. or visual novels/games#where lots of characters are talking and it's mostly that. etc.) So it feels awkward and bad to just skip over things#But also these would take days and days and days to do if I wrote out pages of conversation so I'm just doing vaguely rushed shortcut writi#writing trying to include only details that are necessary or etc. but ggbhjbhj... it's just so opposite to what I usually like#I always walk away like 'FINE.. i GUESS.. that will have to do >:T' lol#Kind of like how I hate literally every bit of digital art I have ever done because I'm so used to traditional art - specifically pencil#and pen stuff that's very sketchy and messy - and then digital art is all about clean even neat lines with a line tool and very polished#clean coloring - so it's super super opposite to my usual sketchy things and just Feels Wrong. I kind of like ms paint because it feels#like a middle ground like. it's somehow also sketchy even though it's digital. multiple pixelly lines over each other give it a 'sketch'#type feel. BUt anyway. It's supposed to be casual and quick and fun! I will choose to ignore all art and writing errors because#it is all about having a little advenchure! :3 As long as the main idea is clear enough for the voting to make sense . who cares#Remember to keep him safe! the dice lady is trying to help him. Regardless of where he sleeps though he can probably use the scarf#as a new warm blanket addition to his existing meager bedding situation lol. soft. fluffy. the cat will love it probably#Also again. whenever he talks to people the text will be longer. Sorry. Still trying for most of them to be short blurbs lol
25 notes
·
View notes
Audio
Richard Armitage interview on BBC Radio London for Uncle Vanya (25/10/20)
Full transcript under cut
Just a couple of days ago I was lucky enough to chat to Richard Armitage. He’s best known of course for roles in The Hobbit, Ocean’s 8, Hannibal, and of course, I was obsessed, absolutely obsessed on Netflix with The Stranger. Well, he’s about to star in the multi- Olivier-nominated play - in fact that’s tonight! We’ll find out if they win. Uncle Vanya – it’s filmed at the Harold Pinter Theatre during the pandemic, and uh, it’s incredible, it’s an incredible piece of theatre, and we’re all going to be able to watch it, which is a joy. And this is what we chatted about.
—
What a pleasure to speak to you for a number of reasons, because we can actually talk about how to bring theatre back to people’s lives, ‘cause I’m missing it desperately, but also talk about The Stranger. Let’s talk about Uncle Vanya first-
Yes.
-if we may.
Yes, of course.
Wow. What an incredible thing to do. Thank you for doing this, actually.
Yeah, I mean it was uh, kind of heart-breaking when we had to y’know, end our run six weeks early, and uh, the play was taking on so many kind of resonances of what we were living through, unexpectedly really. I, we thought the play was about, y’know, a man losing his livelihood, and then y’know, as, as the virus started to come into our lives and uh, the play started to change course really. So, and then, to sort of live through lockdown as well did and then come back to the play realising that’s exactly what these people have been doing, they’ve been stuck in a house together from summer through to the winter and going out of their heads. It again, it took on a whole other sort of energy, so a real privilege to be able to do that.
I mean, it is extraordinary when these old stories feel so relevant, and something a lot of people know, for people who don’t know something about it, we should explain a little bit about the story, but it feels like you’re talking about a story from today.
Well, it does. I mean, the fact is that Uncle Vanya, he’s the caretaker of this old estate and uh, he’s worked his entire life, um, supporting a property that’s not his, and then y’know, the owner who’s raised his daughter, Vanya’s raised his daughter for him, comes and says “right, I’m selling the estate for my retirement, um, and you’re all, you’re all out”. And it’s this devastating realisation that everything that he’s worked for is being snatched away from him. At the same time, y’know, my character is a doctor who is living through, trying to save patients during an epidemic, and uh, not handling it very well and turning to drink. And he’s also trying to save his little corner of the world that, y’know, is being deforested, so he’s planting trees and realising that the environment has such an impact on our health, um, *laugh* so it literally could’ve been written yesterday, um, and this was over a hundred and twenty years ago, so y’know, they knew. There was a huge movement in Russia at that time about, um y’know, how to, how to survive, and how to deal with the environment, and we seem not to have heeded any, any advice, really.
We, we never do though, do we? We seem never to.
Not really.
Well, many people don’t seem to. As you said, it just feels so relevant today. So when you, it must have been heart-breaking being in the show, the buzz was extraordinary, it was impossible to get tickets for. This way, I have to say, all the people who couldn’t get tickets, now we can all see it. I’m one of those people who couldn’t get tickets, as you can gather from what I’ve just said. Um, friends of mine went and said, “You’ve GOT to go!” but this is an incredible way to bring theatre to people who, like me are missing it desperately, and many other people who might not have gone to the theatre, who don’t live in London, who couldn’t have seen a show like this, so there is a plus side. I’m always looking for the plus side, I think. *Laugh*
Me too. I mean, I’ve always said that when a play is coming to the end of its run, putting together a film of it, and even a, a sort of audio recording of the play, I think is like an exit package. It’s worth doing for-
Yes.
-like you say, people that can’t go to the theatre, or maybe wouldn’t go the theatre because it’s like, y’know, it might be too expensive for them, and a cinema ticket’s a bit cheaper, they might be able to watch it on telly at some point. But y’know, hopefully they might watch it and think, ‘Oh God, that, that looked really good in the room, maybe I’ll go the theatre when it’s back’. But uh, either way, it’s still just great story-telling, and y’know right now I think everybody sort of wants to disappear into a, into a tale, and uh, hopefully, hopefully they’ll feel brave enough to go and see it in the cinema.
What does it feel like? I mean you’ve, obviously you’ve been in so many award-winning shows, what does it feel like when you’re, you’re waiting to hear? I mean they’ve all, there’s a number of Olivier awards that it’s up for, everyone was talking about this. Once again you were in something that everyone was talking about. Do you, do you feel slightly one step removed? I mean, The Hobbit, and obviously The Stranger, as you can tell I’ve got to go there because I LOVED it, I devoured it.
*Laugh*
Um, what does it feel like being on the outside of everybody talking about something that’s so - that’s such a part of you?
Um, to be honest, with – at the time that it’s happening, I, I sort of close my ears to all of that-
Oh, I love that. *Laugh*
-and try to live in it, rather than outside of it. That, that’s none of my business. But I do, I do pay attention after it’s over, and I love – y’know, I prefer hearing other people’s opinion of it, rather than reading about it myself, so, so I do enjoy the feedback. But when you’re in it, you’re in it. And to be honest with, with Uncle Vanya, we could tell that we were doing okay because the audience would let us know, and y’know that, the very, very first preview was such a kind of electric performance, and the audience were, were kind of laughing all the way through, which we hadn’t had in a rehearsal room. So that feeling is, is very, very precious, and uh, it continued like that through the run. But uh yeah, I tend not to sort of uh, pay too much attention while it’s happening, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, don’t read – everybody was saying-
No, I don’t read the reviews. *Laugh*
Do you REALLY not?! I bet you do sneakily sometimes.
I really don’t. I, I did it once, and it was – I y’know, I read one tiny miniscule negative thing about myself, and it was the only thing I remembered. And so I thought, ‘that’s a good lesson’. Don’t read the good stuff, don’t read the bad stuff. Read it at a later date, but at the time it does not help me.
Okay, alright. Well, I’ll tell you, they were all fabulous. Congratulations. All the reviews, absolutely incredible.
*Laugh* Thanks.
*Laugh* I cannot wait to see this. Now let’s talk about, if we may, The Stranger. I might have mentioned it a few times already in the past few minutes-
*Laugh*
-but it was one of those things I actually, I couldn’t stop. I loved it, I devoured it. And I sort of became slightly obsessed with it, it was BRILLIANT. Did you feel that when you were making it?
Yeah, and you know, again I, I was sort of in the middle of it, so I’m sort of focusing on the character’s journey, but Harlan Coben’s writing is very much in that vein – if you’ve ever read one of his books-
Yes, I have.
-you, you literally can’t put it down, and you can’t wait for, for bedtime so that you can pick it up again, and sometimes you, you get to the last chapter and you sort of, you think, ‘I’ve gotta space this out, ‘cause I’m just gonna devour the whole thing’-
Yes!
-so his writing matches that kind of uh, television format brilliantly. But I love it, and I, I loved what uh, Danny Brocklehurst did with that script. Y’know, he, he sort of elevated the book, and made it a kind of, much more kind of woven drama. So yeah, I love working on that kind of thing. And that is the type of TV that I will, I will watch on a personal taste level.
You’re happy to watch yourself?
No, I- *laugh*, I never watch myself, but I-
I like that, no please say that-
No, I- *laugh*, I never watch myself-
-I know that’s not what you meant, but that, it just sounded lovely that you’re happy to watch yourself in that one.
It, ugh, I haven’t yet, but I-
*laugh*
-I will eventually, *laugh*, um but it’s the kind of TV that I do, I do love watching. But no, again I’m, I’m not a good judge of myself, and ageing on screen is a REALLY hard thing to do.
You can watch that one, I promise you. Um-
Can I?
-may we go back to a part of your past that is, I’m fascinated by, that you – it was about music and musical theatre.
Mmm, yes.
And then you suddenly thought that that wasn’t enough for you, was that right?
Yeah, I mean I – it was at a time when there were, y’know, all of the big musicals were happening in the West End, and I, I saw kind of peers that would kind of move between Les Misérables, and then they’d go into Miss Saigon, and then they’d go into Phantom of the Opera, and I felt like I didn’t really want to, to follow that path. And I just felt that I wasn’t good enough, a good enough practitioner of either dance or song to, to feel that it was gonna be a sort of, that it was gonna have longevity for me, so I was already studying at the actor’s centre, and then I thought, y’know, I’ve gotta just y’know, go back to drama school and start again and do a classical training. ‘Cause that was the thing that was really exciting me. Um, and I’m glad I did it, but y’know, I still feel like in the future I might y’know, pick up that old hat again.
YES!
Yup.
That’s what I was going to ask! ‘Cause I’m a – I love theatre, hugely, as the way you can probably gather from the way I was talking at the beginning, um, but musical theatre is, I think, a very magical thing. And I think it’s possibly something that we all need as well, right now.
I agree.
So if you could – imagine – I’ve got a magic wand, okay?
Yeah? *Laugh*
And I am a magical music theatre fairy.
Yeah.
I could actually sing this bit, ‘cause I love musicals – *singing* “now you can do a theatre show”-
*Laugh*
No, I won’t sing it. Um, so you can do any theatre show on the planet-
Yup.
-any musical theatre. Which one is it, Richard?
Okay, so when we were doing our little warm-up before Uncle Vanya, Aimee Lou Wood and I used to sort of joke and fantasize about maybe doing Cabaret.
*gasp* Oh, yes!
Shall we, shall we send that out to the gods of the universe of theatre, to Aimee Lou Wood as Sally Bowles-
Oh, you can practice, practice, do a little bit-
-she’s got a GREAT voice.
Go on, just do us a little bit.
*Laugh* I can’t.
Oh, he’s not gonna do it, are you?
*Laugh*
I’ve made you – I can tell you’re blushing, which is great because I’m at one end of the computer and you’re at the other end of a computer-
You could do it, you sound great!
No, no, no, no.
Do you sing?
No, I’ve done it. Yeah, no, no. But musical theatre is a magical, magical thing, and I just – I, I love the fact that you’re open to all of that.
Definitely.
Now, let’s go to New Zealand on our next bit of travels. Um, what an incredible place to be for such an extraordinary film. I mean, The Hobbit, and everything that entailed, changing – I mean, for other people I’ve spoken to who were in any of The Hobbits, they all say that they felt it was such a MASSIVE part of their life, and they learnt so much doing it.
Yeah, I mean I never dreamed in a million years that I, I would get an opportunity to work on a project like that. And to work, y’know – I was a huge Tolkien fan for a start, and then when I saw Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, I was just, I was obsessed with it. And it’s not one of the reasons I pursued it, it kind of came to me, and I felt like ‘Gosh, why does he want me to play a dwarf?’ but um, getting the chance to go that country for so long, and work with that cast and him, and be completely kind of, sort of disappear into a, into a sort of a world and a character. And to be taken in a helicopter to the top of a mountain and, and y’know, shoot in places where human feet haven’t trodden – you know, it was, it was life-changing, it really was. And apart from the success of the films, which was a whole other thing, the actual experience of doing it was, it was unbelievable.
Aw, well, listen Richard, thank you. It’s such a pleasure to talk to you, I could talk to you for ages. And I can’t wait to come and see you in Cabaret. And congratulations-
*Laugh*
-on Uncle Vanya. Pleasure to speak to you.
Thank you very much.
#RICHARD IN CABARET#fuck can you imagine#i can't wait for a future musical theatre production ft. RA#richard armitage
73 notes
·
View notes
Text
Lexember 2020 - Kmitmuk ksu
I did Lexember 2020 but I only posted it on twitter, and I thought I’d be a good idea to archive all my posts on tumblr as well ヽ(*・ω・)ﾉ
so I’ll put all the pictures in this post and write the transcriptions underneath each pic for ppl who prefer seeing it in that format or are blind.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(the first 4 entries were posted the 4th of December)
I decided to do #Lexember kind of late 😅 but here are the first 4 entries, it's my first lexember and I'm a beginner conlanger so pls don't be too harsh if I mess up 🥺🥺
entry 1! 😊
tucir [tʊ.ʔɪɾ] Noun. emotions, feelings, energy.
from *tʼoɛːluː meaning blood, because it was believed that one's emotions where in their blood, they thought of it as a soul, so that's why corpses didn't emote or move, their emotions dried up.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
entry 2! 👍
ksu [ksʊ] Adjective. good, correct, important.
from *kusʼu meaning big, the autonym of this language is "kmitmuk ksu" which basically means "the correct way of speaking" and also implies that it's an important language.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
entry 3! 🐍
pi [pɪ] Noun. evil person, "monster."
from *pɛː meaning snake, it's a pretty severe insult, you wouldn't hear it in a civil conversation. it implies "murderer" but isn't always used this way.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
entry 4! ⚔️
pira [pɪ.ɾə] Noun. royal guard.
from *peθæː meaning star, they thought of stars as deities whose purpose was to protect humanity, so the word started to be used for guardians or sentinels and eventually became more specifically used for royal guards.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 5! 💬
kmitmuk [kmɪt.mʊk] Noun. language, dialect, speech.
from *kɔmytʼemokʼɔ the diminutive of fog, they live in a cold area, so this references the condensation that comes out of their mouth when they speak.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 6! ☝️
qer [qeɾ] Noun. four, index finger (archaic).
from *kʼyːθyː meaning index finger, their words for counting inanimate objects come from the names of their fingers and names of parts of their arm, these words are almost exclusively used for numbers nowadays.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 7! 😪
tugh [tʊɢ] Adjective. dull (blade), exhausted.
(originally I romanized [ɢ] as <gg> but eventually changed it to <gh>)
from *tʼuːxiː meaning dull, it's used metaphorically to say you gave it your all and now you need to sharpen (rest) before you can keep going or you won't be quite as productive.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 8! 🌨️
nsaqf [nsəqf] Verb. to focus, to pay attention.
from *nusʼoxɔ fe meaning to freeze, referencing the fact that if you're concentrating you're probably not moving a lot, so it's like you're frozen.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 9! 👑
muciqxn [mʊ.ʔɪqχn] Noun. king.
from *moy xixæːnɔ meaning great father, the ancient word for great *xixæːnɔ lead to many modern words ending in qxn, which got reanalyzed as a suffix that can be added to words to make them related to royalty.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 10! 🐟
nicaqf [ni.ʔaqf] Verb. to be dead, to float (archaic).
from *nyːaxɔ fe meaning to float, referencing fish, that tend to float when they die, it can still be used to say float but it's very uncommon.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 11! 🗂️
magheqf [ma.ɢeqf] Verb. to group, to classify.
from *mæːxexɔ fe meaning to cut or separate, the meaning of separating was more and more commonly used and eventually acquired the characteristic of separating based on specific traits that things have in common.
also I misspelled acquired in the image, oops 😅
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 12! 🌬️
qorazdoqf [qo.ɾaz.doqf] Verb. to howl (wind).
from *kʼolæːsuːtɔxɔ fe meaning to blow (wind), in their culture, the wind howling is seen as a bad omen, it's a warning from the wind God (who is actually a wolf) and everyone must stop what they're doing to pray.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 13! 🗺️
nzu [nzʊ] Noun. north.
from *nɛːso meaning north, this language doesn't have words for left, right, up, down, etc. instead you have to use cardinal directions and reference things like landmarks and the sky.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 14! ✨🌙
tfpik [tfpik] Noun. star.
from *tøfæːpʼykʼɔ the diminutive of sun, this word is also used for planets that are visible to the naked eye, but not for the moon, which is "ksor" [ksoɾ] from *køsʼɔɾuː also meaning moon.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 15! 🔪
put [pʊt] Adjective. new (for tools).
from *pœːtʼo meaning sharp (like a knife), this word is pretty much exclusively used for tools, the generic word for new is "not" [not] from *nɔtʼɔ also meaning new.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 16! 🐛🤬
pik [pɪk] Noun. worm, bug, phallus (vulgar).
from *pɛːkʼɔ the diminutive of snake, it can be used as a swear word depending on the context, but it usually means worm and sometimes bug in general.
I realized I had never really made any swear words in any of my conlangs so I thought I'd give it a try 😆
also sorry if this one is a bit too edgy lol I'll return to normal vocab tomorrow 😅
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 17! 🌲🌲🏔️
terrag [te.rag] Noun. forest.
from *tʼœːræː ki meaning many trees, there's also a word for forest that is more fancy and tends to be used specifically for montane forests "tir" [tɪɾ] from *tiːlyːo meaning forest.
also, this word is always interpreted as being plural because of its etymology, so if you wanted to say "small forest" you would say:
"terrag tacakig" [te.rag ta.ʔa.kɪg] (forest small-PL)
as opposed to:
"terrag tacak" [te.rag ta.ʔak] (forest small.SG)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 18! 🐌
kudipaduw [kʊ.dɪ.pa.dʊw] Noun. snail.
from *kutiːpʼæː topɛː wet/sticky animal, meat is "mxa" [mxə] from *mɔxo w/ same meaning & container is "kitek" [kɪ.tek] from *kitʼøkʼɔ diminutive of lake, so bucket of snail meat is "kitek kit mxa tugudipaduw."
based on this meme:
https://twitter.com/Fordsmender/status/1335178530284564480
btw, the gloss is (container with meat snail-LOC) where the locative case is being used to mark inalienable possession (maybe I should've used alienable 🤔)
also kitek is mainly used for things that typically have water in them but it can mean bucket or tub in general.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 19! 👹🐕
mzgha [mzɢə] Noun. beast, monster.
from *muːsuːxœː the augmentative of dog, the word originally meant wolf, but the meaning expanded to all dangerous animals and big mythological creatures, and the word for dog is mzu [mzʊ] from *muːsuː
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 20! 🌋🔥🌲🌲🔥
teqsnubz [teqs.nʊbz] Noun. volcano, burning place.
from *tʼøxœː sʼœːnu pɔθy meaning mountain with fire, that word for "with" was specifically for animate nouns, it came to mean "accompanying" and mountain was the augmentative for hill.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
also, a bonus because it's 20:20 20th-(12 😔 smh)-2020
ke [ke] twenty (animate, base 4) from *kœː meaning twenty.
pipaa qer [pɪ.paː qeɾ] twenty (inanimate, base 8) from *pe pæːyː kʼyːθyː (2 eights (and) four) or more literally (ring finger, forearm, index finger).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 21! 🌲🗡️
putfmeterra [pʊtf. me.te.rə] Noun. felling axe.
from *pœːtʼofe mø tʼœːræː meaning blade for trees, blade is the nominalized form of sharp *pœːtʼo and in fact, the modern word for blade or knife is putf [pʊtf]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 22! 😇
kidiweqf [kɪ.dɪ.weqf] Verb. to be believed or trustworthy.
from *kytɛːpøxɔ fe the passive form of to see, there is no adjective for trustworthy, it is seen as an action rather than a trait that a person can have.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 23! 🌒☀️
napirqf [na.pɪɾqf] Noun. solar eclipse.
from *næːpʼœːθiːxɔ fe meaning to be un-burned (or extinguishing), basically they believe their sun god can extinguish himself at will, eclipses are referred to as "extinguishings" and are seen as a sign of their god's dissatisfaction.
lol I actually ran out of space in the first tweet, that hadn't happened before. this one was inspired by the recent Great Conjunction! 🔭 I'll probably make the next few Christmas related.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 24! 🎅🎁
nicirrogi [nɪ.ʔɪ.ro.gɪ] Noun. expensive gift or present.
from *nɛːirɔ ki poruːpʼuː meaning poem, or more literally: beautiful/colorful words (or even more literally: flower-like words) high class people could afford to commission poems, generic gift is msu [msʊ] from fruit *miːsʼo
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 25! ❄️
kucugitugh [kʊ.ʔʊ.gɪ.tʊɢ] N. snowflake, hexagon, complex shape.
from *kœːo ketʼo xo tœːpʼumæː meaning snow with(ɪɴᴀɴ) six(ɪɴᴀɴ) tips/points, since the word was too long it got shortened to the first four syllables and it's now also used to refer to complex shapes and patterns.
idk if there's a term for words getting shortened, I just figured I could do it since english does it in words like "net" for "internet" and stuff lol I don't know what I'm doing 😂
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 26! 🗻
teghop [te.ɢop] Adjective. solid, hard.
from *tʼøxœːpʼuː meaning mountain-like, originally it was used to mean huge (anything that was around the size of a building or more) but it started to imply sturdy, and the meaning slowly shifted to being anything solid.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 27! ⛰️
mudurus [mʊ.dʊ.ɾʊs] Noun. coal, fuel, inspiration.
from *muːto θøsʼo meaning black/brown rock/stone, it's used metaphorically to talk about how inspired someone is to do any form of art or craft.
today's post was kind of late because I didn't have any inspiration 😅 running a bit low on ideas atm.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 28! ♒
tacup [ta.ʔʊp] Adjective. energetic, always moving.
from *taop‘uː meaning river-like, it can be used negatively to mean someone is annoying, but generally it's used in a more positive way.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 29! 😡
qo [qo] Adjective. angry / upset (informal)
from *k’uː meaning red-orange, it originated as a metaphor but eventually the word stopped being used for the color altogether.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
day 30! 👋
mukigii [mʊ.kɪ.giː] Interjection. see you, bye.
from *muːk’ø kɛːyː meaning be-ɴᴘsᴛ.ɪᴘғᴠ well, the word for "to be" is now archaic and the word for good/well now means holy, so the meaning of the phrase is a bit obscure for most people.
wow I can't believe #Lexember is almost over, time flies! :o tomorrow is the last day already! but I think I'll keep posting about my #conlang-s, maybe just not as often :) and I might use my tumblr for longer posts in case anyone is interested in checking that out.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
🎇🎆this is the final #Lexember2020 entry! I had the idea to make a "book ending" and end it where it started, with four proper nouns related to the first four entries I posted on the first day, thanks for all the ❤️s and RT's everyone :D transcriptions below:
day 31! 🙂
Txurr [txʊr] Proper noun. (joy, happiness).
from *tix’oruː meaning joy/happiness, this word is used exclusively as a name (typically female) and most people no longer know what it means.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
also day 31! 🗨️
Kmitmuk ksu [kmɪt.mʊ.ksʊ] Proper noun (correct speech).
literally “speech/language correct/important” from *kɔmyt’emok’ɔ and *kus’u meaning fog(diminutive) and big, both previous entries, this is how this language’s autonym is written.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
also day 31! 🐉
Pigh [pɪɢ] Proper noun. (dragon).
from *pɛːxœː the augmentative of snake, used exclusively as a name (gender neutral) most people think it means resilient/wise because of a homophone that comes from *p’yːxi meaning old, only scholars know better.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
also day 31! 🌟
Pira [pɪ.ɾə] Proper noun. (royal guard)
from *peθæː meaning star, this word was featured in a previous entry but this is how it’s written if it’s used as a name, proper nouns have their own writing system, based on an ancient syllabary similar to cuneiform.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That was a lot, that’s a lot for reading everyone!! ヽ(o＾▽＾o)ノ I’ll start posting more stuff on Tumblr starting in 2021!
0 notes
Text
Andy’s Instagram
I said in my "I'm back" post that Andy is still engaged in some of his old behavior patterns on his Instagram. He said last fall on Facebook that he has "no real interest in maintaining the big public persona fandom thing," but that was and is obviously not the case. Here is a run-down, with screenshots in case he deletes things. Other people's faces and usernames will be censored and comments will only be included if they're relevant in some way.
Overidentification with a fictional character
This is the most obvious element of Andy's Instagram behavior: the majority of his photos concern or are linked to Bucky and the MCU in some way. Until very recently, if he wasn't actually in costume for the photo, his comment would talk about how much his hair looks like Bucky's, he'd refer to himself as Bucky, or Bucky would appear in the tags. To some extent, this is normal for cosplayers on Instagram and other social media platforms; however, given Andy's history, it seems like a terrible idea for him to engage in this sort of behavior.
Remember, this is the guy who verbally, emotionally, psychologically, sexually, and otherwise abused a number of people for years and tried to excuse his actions by claiming that his mental illness/es had caused him to believe, among other things, that he was the embodiment of various fictional characters and some real people, and/or was in contact with them as they existed in parallel universes, and that everything he did was necessary to save the world. Only four years ago, he said that he'd been writing something from Neville Longbottom's point of view and suddenly started to see and hear this fictional character in the room with him. Within the last three years, he was explicitly tying in Destiel with his relationship with Brittany in SPN meta posts. Just last year, he was claiming to have very specific sense-memories of New York in the 1920s and '30s, but lampshaded it by saying that he probably picked up some information during "the gap-filled years", which he felt made him even more like Bucky. This was around the same time that he started talking about how his hair had mysteriously changed color all on its own to look exactly like Bucky's, much as it changed when he "became" Elijah Wood and Orlando Bloom.
As I and others have said time and again, if Andy honestly believes that he did horrible things to people due to mental illness making him unable to differentiate fantasy from reality, why would he ever engage in behavior that risks triggering an event like that again?
Here are just a few examples:
#buckyhair and #buckywiththegoodhair come up a lot.
Andy’s hair just naturally looks like Bucky’s. Yup.
Of course a fictional character's training has any bearing at all on Andy's real-life abilities.
This post has nothing whatsoever to do with Bucky, but note the hashtag.
I find it very hard to believe that Andy's really been planning this tattoo for years and that it has nothing to do with Bucky. I guess we’re supposed to believe that it’s a huge coincidence that the current design and his future plans for it coincide so well with the placement of Bucky’s metal arm. Without explicitly saying so, he offers this as evidence of how he’s “so connected to Bucky”.
Yes, Andy himself is a superhero.
Again, there is no actual Bucky in this post.
Here, Andy over-dramatizes his actions while being hit by a car to make it seem as if he responded in much the same way that a highly trained supersoldier would. Someone replies, "You are literally Bucky oh my god are you okay??"
Andy also says on his Instagram that his Bucky cosplay has motivated him, more than anything has before, to work out and to get in better shape. While this is a good goal to have, it's worth noting that talk of/promises to change lives for and by means of fandom (and characters that Andy channeled or embodied) was a major component of the BagEnders and DAYD cults. In the latter case, getting into better physical shape was part of it, with “Dumbledore’s Boot Camp” and the cross-country hikes.
Tying fandom in to real-life politics and world affairs
This was also posted on tumblr. The text is a paraphrased quotation from The Avengers, from the scene in which Captain America saves the life of an elderly German man (by implication a survivor of the Nazi regime) who is the only one brave enough to stand up to Loki.
Andy is hardly the first person to conflate being a slash fan with political or social activism, but considering his history, this gets an extra hard eyeroll from me. People's lives are at stake due to LGBTQIA persecution in Russia, so naturally it's an extremely emotionally charged issue, and Andy is right there to take advantage of that. He also talks about learning Russian, supposedly for career reasons, although people on tf-talk have pointed out that the Russian film system is closed to outsiders, the field is rather crowded in Eastern Europe, and oddly enough, people in countries that are not Russia tend to speak primarily non-Russian languages. (A Russian class did not appear on Andy's Spring 2017 transcript, so he only took it for one semester, if at all.)
I also notice that he says he's "about to learn a lot about Russian time zones", as if he's never had a Russian friend before. One of the women that he emotionally manipulated via tumblr and Skype is Russian and lives in Russia.
This is not the only post of Andy as Bucky wearing a POW/MIA shirt as part of his cosplay and using hashtags like #honorourvets and #powmia. If he really wanted to honor military personnel, a minority group, etc., he wouldn't use them as props to draw more attention to himself.
Another post about cosplay and slash fandom as a form of activism. What a shame that his cosplay partner puts his real-life relationship ahead of "being a tree by the river of truth", and that his fiancée puts her discomfort with "anybody else gettin' their hands on her man" (as Andy says in the video) ahead of their great chemistry. [/sarcasm]
Andy has repeatedly made passive-aggressive comments about this man's being unwilling to do Stucky photos because of his and his fiancée's boundaries. I didn't think much of it until I noticed that a comment giving Andy kudos for showing respect had been met with pontification about how he would really love to be able to do Stucky photos, but "real life romances come first" and he wouldn't want to do a Stucky shoot with a "stunty, stilted, or no-homo vibe".
I also think the way he refers to his "wonderfully devoted fan following" in Russia speaks volumes about how he thinks of them. Everyone is just a means to an end, and usually that end is narcissistic supply.
Here's some post-election political Bucky art. Run through Google Translate, the caption reads (bolding mine):
I'm sorry that my Russian is bad, small and new. I'm grieving for America tonight. I do not believe in religion. I believe in God. I do not think I found this place by accident. Here I learned that a place can have bad leaders, bad laws and good, strong, kind people. It's Russia. Now it will be America too. I hope we can change and have good leaders and good laws.
He continues to portray himself as wise, compassionate, and haunted by the fact that the rest of the world is not equally so. This also continues his old pattern of imparting mystical significance to his participation in a fandom.
Using superhero imagery "to highlight the problems faced by real world vets" on Veterans Day seemed disrespectful to Andy…so instead, he posted a picture of Cap and an apology to veterans for Trump's having been elected. Because that's completely different.
International Women’s Day. See previous point about his use of people and issues as attention-getting devices.
Courting younger, politically-minded people with condescension and a hefty dose of misinformation
Here are just a couple of Andy's posts about the 2016 presidential election:
I can't even tell you how many times Andy made tumblr posts inviting random strangers to his (his parents') house to hang out and have fun; this is the same old story from another angle. Anything to lure new people into his influence. (This video is incredibly condescending, by the way.)
This (part 2) (part 3) is the Instagram version of this misleading tumblr post. I'm going to go ahead and admit that this and several other tf-talk comments about his BS surrounding the election were from me because I was incredibly angry about Andy's once again taking advantage of people's completely justified fears about a volatile situation.
See also this brief but masterful takedown of his "shh everything will be fine" tumblr post after the election.
Here's a completely unironic post (part 2) (part 3) about how back in the day, only intelligent, right-thinking people had the ability to share their opinions with large numbers and wide ranges of people—but now any jackass pleb can get on the internet and spin anything in any way that they want, to reach any nefarious end. "Credentialed experts, not Instagram gurus. Data, not anecdotes." There he is again, hiding in plain sight.
Talking about how poor he is
It mainly takes the form of the usual posts about doing or making XYZ impressive thing on a shoestring budget because Andy Is Wise and Resourceful, but there's also this (part 2).
Stupid art school! Not only do they expect Andy to take art classes instead of just accepting that he is The Most Talented; they also expect him to purchase supplies! Thus he can no longer attend VA ComicCon…unless his friend knows "a magic money tree or a way to get free tickets." One or the other must have materialized, because he made it to the con anyway. Obviously Andy's friends are free to pay for things for him if they want to, but remember that he has a history of lying or "bending the truth" to get money out of people.
Making and endorsing extremely poor decisions
Yes, he says that he only had one Oxy with his giant tumblr (sic) of wine. That doesn't matter. It's unwise to mix any amount of opiates with alcohol, and equally unwise to discuss it publicly, especially given his tendency to encourage much younger people to regard him as some sort of font of wisdom and life advice.
This is how Andy achieves the one-armed Bucky look. Yes, a lot of people can pop their shoulders in and out of joint at will, but it's a bad idea, especially given the amount of time that he spends with it in this condition.
I spoke with the same doctor whom I consulted about the horrific binding injury that Andy claimed to have sustained. They said that repeatedly dislocating one's shoulder is very likely to cause instability of the joint, which can be debilitating (and quite dangerous, I would think, if his shoulder went out while lifting weights or something). Additionally, every time his shoulder is popped out and reset, Andy risks incurring torn muscles and stretched or torn ligaments/tendons, a trapped nerve, and vessel damage. Some of these effects become increasingly likely the longer it's out of joint. Andy, if you happen to read this, please stop doing this stupid thing. I may not like you, but I don't want you to injure yourself, for fuck's sake. And please stop instructing other cosplayers in how to accomplish dangerous things for the sake of a costume.
I have no idea whether Andy was checked out by medical personnel after he was hit by the car. I hope so. It's the #noexcuses tag that really gets to me. Attention, everyone: never, ever assume that you are 100% okay to engage in strenuous physical activity after an incident like being hit by a fucking car. It doesn't matter how slowly it was moving at the time. Without a thorough physical examination, you cannot be sure that you haven't sustained a non-apparent injury that will cause trouble later. Something like this is absolutely a valid reason not to go to the gym the next day, as intense cardio or weight training may exacerbate damage of which you are not yet aware. This post of his is incredibly irresponsible.
Promoting DAYD
Last October, in a post that featured photos of the GoT feast, Andy referred to DAYD as "a fairly popular HP companion novel", as if it were the HP equivalent to the Star Trek novels rather than a fanwork.
Andy continues to urge new people to check out the fan novel that he used as the basis for the second cult of personality in which he manipulated and took advantage of a great many people. (Also, DAYD got a neutral, one-line mention in an Atlantic Monthly article alongside Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, but okay.)
He is so hoping that someone will ask about that tattoo.
Grooming female companions
I'm not sure what other word to use for Andy’s relationship with this person, as public information about it is limited to what appeared on Instagram. Please understand that I am not judging her at all and do not wish to identify her in any way. Considering Andy's behavior with Abbey, Brittany, L, Silven, and others among his female friends/followers, I think it's important to talk about it.
This is the first overtly romantic cosplay picture that Andy has posted in MCU fandom. His cosplay partner’s comments are very telling:
It really was the best day for me. … I love you my handsome cosboyfriend you seriously are my best friend my love and I truly believe my partner I know when you call me "your" Natalia that I am loved and care for more than I could ever imagine. I love you
If this person is roleplaying as Natasha, it makes no sense to refer to Bucky as her "cosboyfriend". She is talking about Andy. Whatever is going on here is pretty fucking intense. And given his proclivity for redheads, it is not lost on me that he has selected a character who’s had a canonical relationship with a red-haired woman in the past, giving him an excuse to act out scenes like this.
Here is a romantic photoset of Andy with the same woman, to whom he now refers as "the cosgirlfriend". She replies,
I love you my beautiful cosboyfriend … By the way you owe me roses now … [you're] the beauty im the beast
A commenter asks whether this is "canon, or just two beautiful people being beautiful together," wondering whether Andy and this fellow cosplayer are an IRL couple. Andy neatly dodges the question by referring to the comics.
Andy's "cosgirlfriend" has also called him gorgeous, left a suggestive comment on one of his bathbomb photos, talked about missing him/his face, and referred to him as "baby" and "dear". All of her comments were left within ten days, and of course Andy didn’t respond publicly to any of them. In my opinion based on what Andy has done many times over, the little information that I have (not all of which I am comfortable sharing) suggests that this may have been another situation in which he love-bombed a woman and quickly established what she felt was a very close, deep relationship with romantic possibilities, and then backed off just as quickly. As of 5/30, Andy had taken down the first picture of the two of them and she'd asked for the second to be removed as well. He did so earlier this month. I have not attempted to contact this person, as I feel that would be crossing a line, but I'm guessing that she requested their removal because she’d received negative attention and/or warnings about Andy.
Miscellaneous
I will not share screenshots of these, but Andy has posted several pictures of himself with young children. He loves kids, perhaps in part because they tend to be so much more credulous than adults and they make great attention-getting props. In one notable instance, he posted a picture and video of a little boy from Romania, who he said was a huge Captain America fan who'd love to hear from Sebastian Stan. Andy and some of his friends tagged the actor several times in the posts and comments. All the boy talked about in the video was his Pokemon fan creations, while Andy tried hard to drag the conversation around to Cap and Bucky. The picture that he posted was also Pokemon-related, as was a later image of a drawing the child had made. It seems likely, given his past behavior, that Andy is using this child (who may or may not be interested in Marvel characters at all) to gain the attention of the actor who plays the character around whom his life currently revolves.
Andy has consistently referred to the kittens as "our babies" for a couple months now, which is understandable because he lives with them, but also makes me nervous because of his history with the rabbit, the mouse, and Boo.
He recently shared a picture of himself with a very good Seven of Nine cosplayer and called back to his days in the Star Trek: Voyager fandom. Reminding people of the first time that you lied your ass off to a fandom for attention is probably not a great idea, Andy.
Here he is using another flimsy excuse to humblebrag about his alleged genius IQ, which he's been doing from the very beginning. Andy never changes.
Andy also now has a Patreon on which he is offering a tutorial for Bucky’s metal arm. Someone at tf-talk has noted that his bio includes a different origin story for his costuming interest than he gave in Viva La Cosplay. Then, he wanted to appear charmingly naïve and to make his work look more impressive by claiming a lack of experience. Now, he wants to look super legit to attract more patrons.
The higher reward tier includes a 20-minute [Facebook] messenger session for Q&A and for Andy to talk the patron through customizing the arm for themselves. A) Facebook’s policies mean that a lot of people will have to give Andy their RL names for this...which is one reason that he likes using Facebook. B) That doesn’t seem like very much time to go over customization. Would any cosplayers like to weigh in on this?
37 notes
·
View notes
Text
Adventures in Digital #1
The Theory and Practice of Podcast Opera : part 1 (of 3)
A transcript of a Composer Commentary podcast, by Martin Ward, exploring the creation of the opera serial Road Memoir.
Road Memoir is a digital opera podcast serial, written by Martin Ward and produced by Renegade Hymnal. It was created, recorded and podcast in summer 2017. It features the voice of the soprano Billie Robson.
This Commentary assumes that the reader has listened to Road Memoir and it therefore contains some minor spoilers. To listen to the work go to http://www.martinwardmusic.com/road-memoir
Hello, my name is Martin Ward. I'm the creator, writer, composer and producer of Road Memoir. As a composer, my background is in writing for the stage – particularly opera, theatre and ballet - and especially in creating dramatic work. I come from a music college education and I worked for the Royal Opera House music department after leaving college, so the traditions of western classical music are well instilled in me but recently I've been increasingly wanting to explore how opera in particular might develop in the current and future digital age.
By digital I'm not just talking about the use of digital technology in staged productions - through video projection, lighting and sound - I'm more getting at exploring the ways that opera can exist and embed itself within digital media. Particularly the digital media we carry around with us, literally or virtually, in our phones and iPads and laptops.
There is obviously a role to be played by technology in promoting stage productions (via youtube, websites and social media) and more recently the screening and streaming of live or filmed productions is clearly bringing the artform to a wider audience and that's all fantastic but still what these methods are presenting is the traditional staged work. In contrast, what I'm looking to explore is the creation of work that uses this media and these devices as the platform - the digital stage - for which it is specifically created and on which it is "performed".
Increasingly we experience the world through our phones - news, art, culture all come to find us. You receive a notification, you tap on that and away you go. The immediacy of that is exciting and stealthily addictive. So I wondered what it would be like to attempt to bring that same immediacy to a dramatic musical story, to have the work come to the audience rather than making the audience go and find it. The prospect of being able to embed a work within or alongside the normal everyday interactions of the audience's digital life, to have some control over when that "performance" moment happens, and to have that as a storytelling tool, is all quite enticing too.
For this piece, which is really a first stage on that journey, I chose what is intentionally quite an easy step to begin with, by using podcasting as the medium for the "performance" of the work. I say "easy step" just because the podcasting platform is well established and the process of uploading episodes; and for those episodes to then automatically migrate into iTunes and other podcast providers; and to gain a global reach therefore, is all quick, painless and pretty simple. Given the creative challenges I was imagining, ease of delivery was an important factor.
I decided early on that I wanted to make an episodic piece – what I started with was an idea for a work that was really more like a song cycle than an opera. The inspiration I was taking was from works like Schubert's Winterreise, where a narrative is told by a single character in the first person and the songs are about moments in a journey, extremely intimate glimpses of personal experience or emotion or memory that end up saying something profound about the world they are set in.
I had also been wanting to write a piece about refugees for some time. By way of research, I'd read a lot of refugee stories and testimonies online and thought that I'd try to concentrate on what was common to the refugee experience, avoiding the bigger pictures of the political causes and the wider humanitarian ramifications of refugee crises, stripping away geographical or historical setting and any backstory that wasn't completely personal to the single character that I would focus on. So, by taking this route in, the piece is largely about how a person is not in control of their own fate, things happen that are outside of their control and they react, often without the luxury of understanding the context or the bigger picture and often in the only way they can, they literally have no choice other than "run and live, or stay and die" and those survival choices lead them in certain directions and they have to then live with where they end up. So in this piece I wanted to create a character and then put those kinds of life or death moments in her path and let her snap decisions in those moments lead her journey, whilst I concentrated on showing how it must feel to constantly be that helpless and afraid and threatened.
An intriguing factor in writing a piece that will likely be experienced through a phone, probably on headphones, is the intimate one-to-one nature of that communication, that connection, and I decided pretty early on that that needed to be embraced by the work. That this needed to be a story and an approach which tied in with that intimacy and used it to it's advantage. Hence the idea that every voice you hear in the opera, be it sung or spoken, is being sung or spoken into a phone. I hoped that that might draw in the listener, make them feel more involved in the drama.
It's a decision like that that marks a kind of break through in the development of a work because immediately other things fall into place. So, straight away I knew that the woman's voice had to be recorded up close in a dry space and then had to be mixed without reverb (to sound as it would on a phone recording made outside) and I also had to create the sounds that phones pick up other than your voice. So there's the natural ambiance of the surroundings – be it a city, or a wood, or on a beach – as well as more specific sounds of other people or vehicles or of movements like footsteps, the sound of the wind on the microphone even, all of that went into making it sound authentically like a phone and also into creating a sense of the character's surroundings. A lot of this is quite subliminal because the listeners ear instinctively homes in on the words and obviously there's the music in the mix as well but I really came to believe in the power of that subliminal sound - the ear takes it all in and interprets it, even if it doesn't flag it up to the conscious mind. For instance, a dry-recorded voice accompanied by just a natural ambient recording of wind blowing through trees can have a significant emotional impact. The changes in ambiance also really helped to chart the journey from one episode to the next and I constantly used them to give a sense of place before using any words to fill in detail.
On a practical level, I tried to record as much of the sound myself over the course of the creation of the opera. My Olympus LS-5 Recorder has been a constant companion on dog walks for the last few months. A lot of the woodland ambiance and sounds – footsteps for instance – are recorded in a wood near my home in Bedfordshire. I needed to EQ out the drone of the M1 motorway which is about 5 miles away and record between passing planes but that's pretty much unavoidable wherever you go in the UK. For the beach sounds I spent an afternoon at Dunwich in Suffolk. I thought it would be quiet on a weekday but it ended up being a really sunny September afternoon with lots of retired people walking their dogs – so not quite the desolate coastline I was after but, if you're patient in the recording and prepared to work in editing the sound files in the studio, you can make it work.
So all of the initial development and thought and planning was happening early this year and the creative work didn't really begin until after I spoke to Bill Bankes-Jones at the start of May and he offered to present the piece as part of the Tete a Tete Opera Festival in July and August. This was important not least because, as a podcast opera, there wasn't an audience in existence. Unlike staged work where an established opera audience simply follows the companies and theatres which produce the work they like, monitoring the websites and the brochures, etc. I was aware that no-one would be looking for this, that podcast opera didn't exist as a thing and so, partnering with a new opera festival would hopefully flag up the piece to the kind of audience who are open not just to opera (and that's already a small enough proportion of the population) but also to contemporary opera that's exploring new ground and new methods and unconventional stories.
Figuring out my approach and the details of the story, creating the characters, writing the libretto, all that took some time, not least because I was kind of inventing the form of it as I went along. And from an initial idea of having short episodes (two minutes maximum) daily for two weeks it was suggested that it would work better as weekly episodes. This made sense with the established podcasting routines and I hoped to attract seasoned podcast listeners – something that I don't think really happened actually – and it also felt like it would buy me a bit more time as the series would then be spread over 12 weeks and so I agreed on that change and took a step back to see how that might alter the possibilities for the piece. I decided (and this was a decision that I almost came to regret) that with weekly instead of daily episodes I'd have to increase the length of each (to five to six minutes), to keep the audience engaged, and that I should include a second voice...
This second voice was the spoken text role of The Investigator, which had come initially from an idea that if the opera mixed sound and music maybe it should also mix sung and spoken, to create a fuller sonic picture. I'm also a fan of parallel stories in films and books and it occurred to me that having someone investigate the woman's experiences at the same time as we hear her living them, might be interesting, and might make it possible to bring more insight and context to her story whilst also underlining how little she is really aware of what's going on around her during her journey. This seemed to be an addition which would add real depth to the piece.
In the next blog I'll talk about the writing and composition of Road Memoir and some of the conclusions that I've taken from the process.
0 notes
Photo
My Review of One Hundred Years of Solitude
Thank God, I have something to write about this book. I thought I was going to hate it and I would just have to suck it up until very end. Turns out, I did enjoy this book and maybe it took reading reviews and interpretations of it to get myself motivated but at least, I understood what it was trying to say. I think if it were written in the same era as of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, I would not have questioned why it was so difficult to read. It has the same air and gravity as of a classical book and yet it’s pretty modern. It tackles timeless themes and what I loved about it is that it used themes so relevant to what is going on currently to my country and to the history of my own people.
It cannot be denied that the book screams “repetition” or the circular form of events. It is explicitly shown in the use of names and how it confuses me every single time (and I depend on the family tree provided). Ursula states it more obviously. She says how even the names seem to possess the same characteristics. Ursula states it time and time again, how events seems to repeat themselves, “time was not passing...it was turning in a circle...” Then, there is the vicious cycle of each member creating and destroying. Fernanda states this in one passage that I found really beautiful.
As much as we would like to promote that we should not repeat the same mistakes, we still do. We do it until we have forever burned like the hands of Amaranta. This is what I see and saw in the history of the Philippines. It was a cycle of being under one race to another. Different generation, same mistakes. Until to this very day, we are still tied down by invisible colonizers. We are still oppressed by a group of people. We are born and reborn in every struggle and coming out without learning anything.
What scared me the most was the massacre of the banana workers. Thousands of lives wiped out and so were the memories of them. The lines that follow states a Martial Law. It felt like I was peering into reality. Jose Arcardio Buendia talked about a house of mirrors and I feel that this book does just that. It mirrored a brutal reality. People would rather believe something false than the truth. We override schoolbooks and government transcripts with the lies of the victors.
Our President denies the lives lost during the Martial Law when there are families who mourn to this day for the bodies that were never found and never given justice My heart still pours for them. For the women, who survived but experienced all kinds of harassment never a human should EVER go through, and yet they are called liars. Students who brutally taken out of their daily lives and punished for speaking out are forgotten. The youth today are blinded by the stories told by their schoolbooks. The old generation, shut up. Finally, believing in the lies. Who would have thought that I would find an image of my own people in this book? Now, we believe the lies a woman tells on her Facebook page and pulverizes every journalists who worked hard to find the truth only for her to twist it to fit her opinions. She who gets mad when insulted but does not have the class to know where arguments are valid and arguments are just plain stupid. We finally believe in lies and we will never be born out of this vicious cycle. Our memories fade like of Ursula’s haunted by the past. They fade like the the plague of insomnia.
This book became a treasure hunt of putting pieces together and finding themes. Besides the themes that resound and reflect my own country, I found very feministic themes. I like how it was not always that women were treated fairly. I like the juxtaposition of prostitutes and women as head of the house. It showed the versatility of women. Putting a character that did not even have a name, was forced to sex and then putting another character who was the voice of reason even between men, emphasized that strength to be independent and lead. We see the men of Buendias, they were weak towards vices. They tucked themselves in their solitude while the women had to work with reality. While the men did what they fancies and used up money that sometimes was not even theirs, the women held their ground. They taught the children, the found their own way of proving for themselves. We see how powerful women are in the fact that those who lived to the hundreds were women. Ursula who was blind was still independent and moved around with authority. Remedios the Beauty was such a strong female character and it was outwardly shown in the way that was literally lifted up to the heavens. She was beyond convention and her beauty became the death of simpletons. Amaranta also showed strength in one line where she said that she need not look for men. Fernanda also held her ground and persevered although, annoying. Another strong women figure. All the women for me, were more or less very strong and persistent. They were always reasonable in a way and practical. They weren’t as impulsive as the men were.
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
honeytext
Little Rui the guy ever
jubans
改善
lu-undy
Lundy
notyetneedcoffee
Not Yet, Need Coffee
zampanobra
Zampanò