have you guys seen that video of taz and iñaki. anyway 

The Castlevania Lost Media: Harmony of Dissonance's mobile ringtone & Lament of Innocence's mobile manga

There are two pieces of lost media in the Castlevania fandom that for years have been impossible to find even for die hard fans that collect everything, and we only know of them due to some proof of their existance. Both of them were Japanese exclusive releases. The first one is a ringtone for mobile phones that was released 20 years ago.

When Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance was promoted in 2002 there was a rumour claiming that Mana of Malice Mizer was composing its OST thanks to an interview with Iga in the Famitsu magazine (that they didn't bother to translate to see what was really going on, while also discrediting Soshiro Hokkai, the true composer of the game). In this interview they talked about a japanese exclusive ringtone for cell phones he composed called "La Nuit Blanche". The name of the ringtone is a reference to the subtitle of the game in Japan, "White Night Concerto" but in french. Mana has been an enthusiastic Castlevania fan since many years and according to his words, he had a special view on Castlevania in a musical way: "Well, while maintaining an aesthetic world view, I thought I'd put out something that was unique to me. In my mind, I have a strong image of a pipe organ. That's why I want to use that pipe organ to create a beautiful and sad world." Sadly we don't know if he really used a MIDI organ sampler (given how the music for mobile phones was in those years) for that compostion because nobody knows how it sounds and nobody has been able to find it yet.

The second piece of lost media is a Castlevania: Lament of Innocence manga that was also available exclusively for Japan and for mobile phones in 2007. Yes, these damned devices again! The comic series, which ran for two years, chronicled events related to Lament of Innocence's main storyline. Illustrated scenes include Sara Trantoul's kidnapping, the secret of Walter's birth, how Joachim became a vampire, and much more. Introduced, also, were two original characters: Liza, whose fiancee was killed by Walter, and Justine, Rinaldo's former daughter and now the Succubus' vampire servant. After agreeing to pay a monthly fee, users could connect to one of three services (i-Mode, EZweb or Yahoo!) to access a database and download its separate volumes. The story was written by Yumi Akitsuki, illustrated by Benio Sakakida, but we don't know if it's canon for Koji Igarashi. For what is known, given some descriptions of the chapters that are listed on the Wiki, the manga expands and changes or omits many things of the characters' backstories and events from the game itself, such as the placements of the guardians and the order of castle areas. Despite efforts of fans searching ways to get it, this manga has never been found anywhere, as the service expired in 2012 and Oedipus-Complex, the publisher and owner of the comic, has stated they don't have it anymore. Hope someday somebody happens to have a back up of it and uploads it on the net just for the sake of preserving it.

Fantasy sights: Ingres

In my "fantasy read-list" I mostly focus on fantasy texts, but I also include things such as operas or movies. But there is a type of fantasy-inspiring or fantasy-made content I can't talk about in my list: paintings, illustrations, drawings, the original visual mediums. So this is where the "fantasy sights" series comes in, a complement-series presenting some paintings, illustrations and artists either born out of fantasy, or that inspired fantasy.

Let's start with some classics - classical paintings taking back subjects from the "primordial" fantasy of Greek myths, Shakespearian plays, Ossianic epics and more...

To start it all: Ingres. Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, one of the great French painters of the 19th century.

We begin with one of his most famous works, taken from Greek mythology, "Oedipus explaining the enigma to the Sphinx".

Following this, we have the painting "Roger saving Angélique". From the Orlando Furioso. I do not recall talking about this poem in my reading-list, and yet I should have - but this will be a "little surprise" for those that take the time to both look at the reading-list and watch-list.

The Orlando Furioso is an epic poem of the 16th century composed by the famous Italian poet, the Ariosto. This epic is very noticeable for being a mix of actual historical epic (the background is the war between Charlemagne and the Saracens), of medieval knight-and-warrior adventures (Merlin and Roland appear, among others), and of Greco-Roman motifs (the episode of the "Orco" is a retelling of the Cyclop's tale in the Odyssey, the enchantress Alcina is a perverse and evil Circe, and in the episode depicted here, the Saracen knight Roger saves the princess Angélique from a sea-monster the same way Perseus saved Andromeda from a sea-beast).

We move on to the Ossian-mania that swept Europe when his poems were "found" (wink wink) and translated (wink wink wink), and Ingres' very famous painting meant to illustrate this Celtic epic poetry: Le songe d'Ossian, The dream of Ossian.

We return to Greek mythology with this time another very famous piece of Ingres: Jupiter and Thetis. This is actually an illustration of Homer's The Iliad, depicting the very first chant, and how Thetis the sea-goddess left her watery dwelling to go to Olympos high up in the sky, in order to beg Zeus to spare the life of her son, the hero Achilles.

To match "The dream of Ossian" celebrating this Celtic poetry, I had to place Ingres' piece, "Homer deified, or the apotheosis of Homer", showing the ancient aedes Homer being crowned in front of all the great artists and storytellers of history (including actual modern writers and famous French figures - you can see Boileau, Molière, La Fontaine, Racine, Dante, Phidias, Pindar and many more...)

any books you wish more people have read

thank you anon!

i don't have any particular ones in mind, just... i wish people read more classic books. i know that in school there's this built-up hatred towards classics they forced us to read (i was one of those kids lol, i used to hate la celestina and el lazarillo de tormes) but trust me, those books are classics for a reason! maybe it's the history and writing nerd in me but most of the classic books i've read have made me scream with joy at one point or another, and i think it's pretty cool to learn about how these characters decades or centuries ago viewed life and thrived (or not) in their contexts! and especially i would recommend reading literature from your own culture (i am guilty of not doing this myself), there's nothing like recognizing patterns and places and cultural elements in past settings while being able to fully immerse in the writing craft of the author, as translations will never be as good as reading the original text.

oh and on the topic of classics, i would also recommend going way back and reading texts from the ancient and classical periods! i know they might be scary, but imo they show how humanity has never changed and i think that's neat. i'll recommend some of them below - note that i'll only recommend books written by cultures i've studied, but i would love to read / know about other texts written by asian or mesoamerican cultures as well (if anyone has any recommendations please let me know!):

-i haven't read much of egyptian literature but it has always surprised me with how human it is, i would especially recommend reading the lamentations and the instruction texts! they are not really literature but they're incredible.

-the epic of gilgamesh is a must!!!! it's the oldest literary text ever written, and it makes me feel so much, i recommend it 10/10

-in the greek world there's a bunch of stuff i would recommend: sappho and hesiod are a must imo for the oldest stuff, and like if you want you can read a couple books in the illiad or the odyssey but i have to warn you - they're a bit boring honestly. if you are a geography nerd then plutarch is a must, and a hidden gem i got to read for uni is lucian's a true story (a huge inspiration for gulliver's travels!). plato - contrary to what one would think - has some really light and beautifully written books, i would say definitely check symposium and the book that narrates socrates' death, i don't remember the name but i think it's the critias? could be wrong tho. finally, oedipus rex, lysistrata, medea, and antigone are essential plays, absolute bangers all of them.

-roman literature is my favourite of the four so i don't even know where to start lol. i would say the quintessential roman book is the aeneid, which serves as a mini illiad + odyssey but way more interesting and with lots of hidden themes and references and everyone who has translated it knows that it's a pleasure to read in latin. my professor once said the aeneid was the greatest piece of literature in the ancient world, and i once was against this but... she had a point. i also recommend catullus and martial's poetry, as well as my personal favourite classical book, ovid's heroids. if you are fond of gossip while learning about 'history' suetonius' the twelve caesars is a banger. finally, seneca's medea is my absolute favorite roman tragedy, and it contains my favorite latin phrase so of course i had to recommend it.

i'm sorry that this ended up being so long 😅

Into the psyche of Toshio Matsumoto

One of the most seminal Japanese visual artists of the 20th century, Toshio Matsumoto(1932-2017), pioneered the 60s avant-garde experimental filmmaking and multimedia. Matsumoto’s wild and visionary work went on to heavily influence Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”. Subversive and radical in his approach- he presented a body of work that, infused with surrealist strategies, made a discordance not only artistically groundbreaking but politically charged. 

Shortly after graduating, Matsumoto worked on his first short called Ginrin (1955), an experimental PR film. Ginrin was made at Shin-Riken Film Company, in collaboration with the members of Jikken Kōbō, an artist group of the post-war collective, consisting of composers and artists like Shozo Kitadai and Katsushiru Yamaguchi, who would later work on the Godzilla series. 

A contemporary to the post-war creative elements of Japan like Shuji Terayama and Yukio Mishima, Matsumoto's work remains strikingly relevant to this day. Ahead of his time, Matsumoto’s avant-garde collides tradition with pop culture. In an interview with Tate, he alludes to pop culture’s stimulatory effect on him, “At the time, we understood pop art as a new movement which was represented by artists such as Warhol, Lichtenstein, or Wesselmann. There were discussions about the boundaries between pop art and concept art or kitsch; however, I have never heard of any other term being used.” 

His 1973 short film, Mona Lisa, fuses those boundaries by deriving direct references from Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol. Using the mass famous mysterious image of the inner subjective life of Mona Lisa, Matsumoto experiments with a litany of colors, evocative and bright, constantly changing, applied to Mona Lisa- the sole still element of the film. 

Matsumoto developed in the 1960s, what he called ‘neo-documentarism’, a documentary type that was rejecting its traditional objective nature for one and confronting the subjectivities of an echoed, internal life. Made around the same time as Chris Marker’s La Jetee- a monumental feat in changing the course of cinema from being a medium of moving images to stillness- a sci-fi tale in a series of images; Matsumoto’s The Song of Stone (1963) too, weaves an abstract collection of still images into an experimental epiphany. 

The idea of stonecutters carving into stone,  breathing life into the inanimate- juxtaposed against the stillness of the images, almost as still as its stony subject, pushes the boundaries of the film as a medium. Strikingly sublime, The Song of Stone attempts at changing the discourse of how cinema can be perceived. 

This exploration of mediums to convey a euphoric and provocative stream of ideology is important to Matsumoto’s art. Featured on Tate, MoMA, New York, and London, his art paves the way to the frenetic psychedelia that he endorsed, amidst the still objectivity that life offers. Responsive to the unconventional and unspoken, his films always narrate a structurally adventurous tale. In his most famous film Bara no Soretsu (Funeral Parade of Roses), Matsumoto retells the myth of Oedipus featuring a transvestite trying to move up their way through the euphoric nightlife of Tokyo hostess clubs. 

In art exhibitions of Hong Kong's Everything Visible is Empty, and the Japanese Expanded Cinema Revisited at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, he presented a dynamic hyper-sensory stream of projections culminating his electric video synthesizer pieces like Metastasis (1971) and Mona Lisa (1973) with a post-war culture that stands in direct contrast with them. Matsumoto’s key works such as Atman (1975), Engram (1987), Phantom (1975) is an examination of his psyche, that reaches far beyond the realm of normality and offers captivating chaos. 

Toshio Matsumoto experimented in an array of genres ranging from iconography and architecture to political undertones in pop culture. Aiming at creating more than flicker films, his robust immersive work with a distinct sound influenced forever the normal sense of psychosomatic rigidity.

▶ The Doors - When the Music's Over ( I RE-POSTED THIS TERRIFIC ANALYSIS FROM " BenS/b-rod, 7moths ago"}}: "Ew, he wants to what?" Well first of all, you've got to understand where Morrison was coming from. A little background information is certainly required for the uninitiated. Jim wanted first and foremost to be a filmmaker and a dramatist (and poet) before he ever wanted to be in rock n roll. He went on to graduate from UCLA (unlike the deplorable Oliver Stone movie where a full ONE THIRD of the thing is FICTION - ie, never happened, like certain scenes, and the very crass way Kilmer portrayed him was ludicrous - but that's another topic). In the film department there, he learned  many things about cinema and drama in general that he transposed into his music. He even had acting lessons according to Paul Ferrara. Anyway, I think the main work that influenced Jim on "The End" was Artaud's "Theatre & Its Double," which I reread recently and it made a lot more sense to me why Jim went in that theatrical direction. When I reread it, pieces fell into place that I'd never realized before. Artaud goes through his theories and in one instance, he even mentions "Oedipus Rex" itself by name (which, for those who don't know is an ancient Greek play that Freud psychologically postulated as universal, Oedipus for boys and Elektra for girls - deep in the unconscious). On a side note, Artaud also had a major influence on the Living Theatre, which Jim saw every show he could of, with their confrontational approach to theatre, which was right before Miami, and is what got Jim in trouble down there for allegedly exposing himself, with it fresh in his mind. Anyway, I believe its drama. Jim didn't get into personal confessional lyrics until LA Woman with things like "Hyacinth House" or "Cars Hiss By My Window." "The End" does start out about a break up with his girl prior to Pamela but then obviously goes in another direction when they would improvise to fill their slot at London Fog. But Artaud's work, I think, is key to understanding where Jim was coming from and the theatricality of some of his lyrics. And as Ray said about the Lizard King to Ben Fong-Torres - "That Lizard King thing - that's out of "Celebration Of The Lizard" and he's acting a part; its a theatre piece. Its a drama of which a guy is leading a small band of people...out into the desert and at the end of the whole piece he says "I am the Lizard King, I can do anything" and people are going "Oh, he's the Lizard King, he's the self-proclaimed Lizard King." You bastards, man! He's ACTING! ITS A ROLE, you know? Marlon Brando is not Stanley Kowalski, Jim Morrison is not the Lizard King, but they ground him down [for it]."Could the same be said for "The End?" You fuckin bet.Here's Jim speaking in late 1970 (also to Ben Fong-Torres) - "Are you still considering yourself the Lizard King?" "What I was trying to say with that, and that was years ago, and even then it was kind of ironic. I meant it ironically, and it wasn't meant to be - " and Pam cuts him off saying "That whole thing was done tongue-in-cheek" and Jim says, "Well, half tongue-in-cheek" and Pam continues, "and everybody thought it was like so serious." Jim: "Well, its an easy thing to pick up on." Its interesting to note that his production company with, I think, Paul Ferrara and Babe Hill, joking called themselves the Media Manipulators."Well, its an easy thing to pick up on" is the operative phrase - memorability, standing out, and this, I think, is key to understanding "The End" and other things. In the same interview with Fong-Torres, he also talks about how at newspapers there's someone who is there to write only the headlines of an article, that it has to be a catch phrase. Maybe its hard for literal-minded people to understand, but Jim says "THE killer" and then proceeds to take a face, an ancient drama mask that actors would wear on stage. He doesn't say "I" until he's set up the scene and in that role.  "The key to throwing the audience into a magical trance is to know where in advance the pressure points must be affected...But theatre poetry has long become unaccustomed to this invaluable skill...To make language convey what it does not normally convey. That is to use it in a new exceptional and unusual way, to give it its full, physical shock potential...and restore their shattering power...The thought it aims at, the states of mind it attempts to create, the mystical discoveries it offers...It all seems like an exorcism to make our devils FLOW...strange signs, matching some dark prodigious reality we have repressed...ready to hurl itself into chaos in a kind of magical state where feelings have become so sensitive they are suitable for visitation by the mind...We must not ask ourselves whether it can define thought but whether it makes us think [and feel], and leads the mind to assume deeply effective attitudes...Just as in former times, the masses today are thirsting for mystery" (Artaud) (And there are more quotes equally as good in his work).I'm not saying he was consciously thinking of Artaud's theories when he went up onstage that night at the Whiskey, but it certainly came out of him then - the culmination of many things going on in the background of his consciousness and trying to push the envelope as an artist. As a fellow INFP explorer (mine and Jim's personality type), I think I can understand Jim more than most in that respect. Its "drama of the highest order" said Jack Holzman

Confluence of Updates

7.26.2020

Writing on Writing

In addition to weekly therapy since November, I have been watching School of Life videos on YouTube. The latest video I watched helped confirm for me that I’m on the right path. I’m never going to eliminate my Inner Critic or ever feel completely comfortable with myself. I think if I did, that would be something extra-human. Neither are realistic goals. This particular video’s intent was to get people to write a journal. In a nutshell, you can’t keep it all in. Give yourself a daily mental outlet where you can release your thoughts and you’ll have less mental anguish. Well, here we are! Glad I’m on the right path. 

This may be the reason Sunday nights have recently become the most difficult for me. Brain won’t turn off, but it’s because I haven’t had what I’m trying to turn into my daily routine of walking in the morning and writing at night. The out I’m giving myself is this is all new and it takes some growing pains to get it right. 

Writing on Walking

I try not to spend money these days but any new venture is going to have some startup costs. My sneakers should be good for another month or so if I stick with it. I’ve been keeping my mask in my pocket, but that makes it difficult to pull it out when I actually see people, so I bought some neck gaiters I can pull up to be a mask. But the two big things were new headphones and shirts. 

The headphones are a big deal because of “the thud of footsteps”. As you may have figured out by now, I actually listen to music. It’s not just a beat or a background to keep me going. I’m actually interested in hearing it, reacting to it emotionally, having my own internal dialog about it, and just plain enjoying it. I can’t do that while walking because I hear the thud of my own footsteps with my headphones on. Happens with my Amazon Basics on-ear headphones, which are actually super awesome Monoprice headphones, and it also happens with my Sony earbuds I bought for phone calls. Turns out the Amazon ones are on-ear, closed back. And with the way earbuds have been redesigned, they create a closed back type effect. 

So I made an educated guess and took a chance on some KOSS open air, on ear headphones. Remember the shitty headphones that came with your Walkman? Those were open air, on ear headphones. Those are the ones I used to listen to Megadeth at top volume on in the back seat of my parents’ car so I didn’t have to listen to their shitty lite-fm radio. I found some good ones from KOSS that won’t make my ears hurt after listening to them for 30 minutes and they arrived today. Put them on, took three steps, no thud. Yeah, you can hear the music if you really get close to me. But it’s not like I’m crammed onto a subway around here. Monday will be the real test but so far it seems like $30 in Amazon points well spent. 

Now you may ask yourself, “why are new shirts a big deal?” I think it’s about self worth and there’s a bunch going on here. 

To this point, I’ve been wearing whatever t-shirt I want to walk. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with them. But they’re yer basic men’s printed band shirt or otherwise printed shirt. So they trend kinda heavy and not too comfortable. But you’ll be able to wear them through armageddon. Some of them are 10 to 20 years old. So there’s a lot of personal history and/or bullshit associated with them. Not only because of whatever is printed on them that I obviously liked. But also because of where/when I’ve worn them and how they’ve been associated with certain places. I don’t want to get rid of them or necessarily stop wearing them. But I do kinda just want to put them in a box at the bottom of my closet and start over. 

Then there’s the deserving part. I have more than enough varying degrees of uncomfortable shirts, I should just wear them and be done with it. I’m not good enough for new shirts. Especially some new shirts that are obviously designed for workouts and sports. I’m about 40 pounds overweight. I need to lose half that weight first and really get into a routine before I’m approaching good enough for new shirts. Otherwise, I’m just some pudgy poser. 

And I’ve been listening to this bullshit from my internal dialog for the past month, as I have been walking around my neighborhood. Well, we’re almost at the end of the month and I’m still going. And as I’m putting them in the cart and buying them, a 14 year old memory trying to get me to stop pops up. 

From ‘05 to ‘08 I played guitar in an off-off-off Broadway production of Oedipus. We actually did all three plays during that time. And the best way I can describe the production is “What would happen if George Orwell wrote Oedipus, and it played out on American Idol?” In 2006, we played for a week at the Fringe Festival in Brisbane, Australia. My anxiety nearly fucked me on getting a passport, but I was able to get over that. What really fucked me was the NYC blackout of that year, which hit my area for an extended period of time. 

One of the wonderful things about NYC is the laundromats have drop off service and will do your laundry for you. So I dropped off my laundry a few days before I was going to leave for Australia. Well, the fucking blackout took out the laundromat, with my clothes still inside. So I left for Australia with my guitar equipment and an empty suitcase. For some reason, I had insisted I wanted to fly JetBlue from NYC to LA, which meant I needed to take a cab to LAX. This turned into a blessing in disguise because the driver agreed to stop at Target while I ran around the store and bought whatever I thought might look ok. 

The black shirt I bought to wear onstage was an activewear shirt. It was kinda stretchy, but I figured it would hang loose. And of course it didn’t and we’re about to get onstage and I look like a fucking Ring Ding shoved into a muscle shirt. Everyone in the entire cast laughed at me. Finally, the drummer was nice enough to change shirts with me and he wore it. Later on that trip, he gave me the worst purple nurple ever. So this is what’s going through my mind in fucking Costco, and why I didn’t deserve new shirts. But I bought them anyway as a fuck you to that memory. 

And you know what? I took them out of the package and they smelled like chemicals. So I washed them and the neck gaiters and left them out to dry. Then I changed into one of the shirts to play pickleball with my kid yesterday afternoon. AND IT WAS PERFECTLY FINE. Yeah, I’m probably dumb for buying black shirts and I should have bought the white ones. But that’s toxic “oh black looks harder than white” for you/all band shirts are black/get ripped in a year and wear them onstage too. 

To top it off, we went to the pool this afternoon and after I showered, I put on one of my regular t-shirts. And it kinda felt constricting. I can’t wear the black shirts everywhere because they’ll smell like BO in 30 seconds. But I’m going to wear them a lot, and not be embarrassed about them. It’s ok to be comfortable. 

Whither, Music. 

Unsurprisingly, Bernstein’s lectures have led me to bite off more than I can chew. I haven’t been walking on weekends, so I haven’t been listening to him. But I did find a bunch of books I’ve either read too many times or not read enough, and pulled them out. They are:

Aaron Copland - What to Listen for in Music

Howard Goodall - The Story of Music

Glenn Kurtz - Practicing

Philip Toshio Sudo - Zen Guitar

Pat Pattison - Writing Better Lyrics

I haven’t really read anything other than news for a long time. Or I buy books, read some, and never finish them. This is obviously detrimental to my mental health. So like with walking and with writing, I’m going with what interests me. I’m not trying to be busy all the time, but I definitely want to keep from punishing myself like I have done historically. 

I started on Copland’s book last night. I read 25 pages, and that was only the Forward and Preface. So tonight I’m looking to get into at least the first chapter. 

I’ve also been watching some other YouTube videos, particularly “Now Hear This” which is a PBS show about classical music, and another series I found about “how to listen to classical music” from a channel called Inside the Score. Last night I got my Ford Prefect on, and listened to Beethoven’s 5th. Today, I’m listening to Holst’s “The Planets”, which of course is the Leonard Bernstein version. I gotta say, these new headphones sound pretty good. 

Lastly, I’m waiting on the book to Bernstein’s Harvard Lectures, which I will pick out every last piece he talks about, find it on Apple Music, and create a giant playlist. I hope the runners on the American River trail like classical music. They’re gonna hear a lot of it in passing.

For Everybody Still Worried About the Leaks

Clues from the Cast Interviews, GRRM Hints, and My Own Gut Feelings

Disclaimer: Hey, nobody knows nothing, but life’s too short to stress about things we can’t control, and stories are supposed to be maps to help us learn more about ourselves and about life in general–not hair-pulling inducements.  So I’m going to enjoy all the speculating that I can regarding the GOT season finale, and want to share some thoughts on why I think certain “leaks” are most likely bunk.

I’m mostly focusing on the pervasive “Does Tyrion die by trial?” leak, and everything that links to that, including any betrayals or major deaths.

Tyrion’s Ending and The Ending, In General

First, let’s quote Peter Dinklage himself:

I had all these ideas in my head and a version of one of them is how it ends up [for Tyrion]. David and Dan have a brilliant version of what I had. If I use any adjectives it will give it away. But I love how it ended up. And how it ends up for everybody. They had a beautiful gentle touch with some, and a hard touch with others.

But that’s just on Tyrion’s ending. Before I get into what that quote tells us, let me quote what other people have said about the Overall Ending of Game of Thrones:

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau:

I’ve never read anyone who got the whole thing. And when I read it the first time, I was blown away.

George R.R. Martin:

So many readers were reading the books with so much attention that they were throwing up some theories, and while some of those theories were amusing bulls*** and creative, some of the theories are right…At least one or two readers had put together the extremely subtle and obscure clues that I’d planted in the books and came to the right solution.

What the above quotes tell me is:

No one has guessed the ending completely–but parts of the ending? Yeah, they’ve been guessed. Which just goes to show how much this show and its themes have resonated not only with GRRM, but with his audience. Because,as a writer, I can tell you that no storyteller tells a story alone. There’s something guiding us and we can’t put a finger on it but it’s often the source of our best ideas. And it’s the same ineffable something that stirs all of us when we’re creating, sharing, and participating in stories. It’s the reason you see the same patterns in stories over and over. In short, the fact that part of the ending CAN be guessed is NOT a bad thing. It’s natural. Some postmodern storytelling theories have taught us that tricks and surprises are where it’s at–but a story isn’t true unless it can surprise us and, in retrospect, give us the only answer that makes any sense. You can see a pithier version of this kind of storytelling in Ye Olde Riddle–for example, the Sphinx in Oedipus Rex could tell us the answer to her riddle is orange, and that would throw us for a loop, but it would tell us nothing and mean nothing and add nothing to the story and thus would be forgotten. Surprise doesn’t count unless it has a ripple effect. So, about-face turns and OOC arcs may shock and subvert, but they’ll ultimately end up as dross and not as gold. (But hey, more on my thoughts on what can and can be accepted as canon in the last blurb below!).

Now, has anybody assumed that Tyrion would betray Daenerys and end up dead simply for 1) loyalty to the Lannisters, 2) suddenly losing faith in humanity?, or 3) suddenly wanting to usurp power himself? No. This is not a popular theory by a longshot. Tyrion dying? Sure. Somebody betraying Daenerys? Sure. Tyrion as a ruler? Sure. But this very specific, shoehorned version of the story is simply too contrived to have been picked up by fans organically.

The leaks so far have painted nothing but harsh endings for ALL the characters. Don’t tell me those leaks are pro-Stark. Those leaks point out backstabbing, loneliness, and emotional stagnation–forget what characters live, think about what these leaks have said about these characters. Not only does this not jive with the “bittersweet” aspect of the ending, it doesn’t jive with Dinklage’s assertion that, while some characters will go down harshly (R.I.P. Missandei especially–at least Edd and Jorah and Beric got heroic deaths and funerals), others will be treated gently. A heartbroken Brienne? A cold, lonely, manipulative Sansa? A suddenly hopeless, headless Tyrion? I don’t think so. (I also don’t think that means that Brienne and Jaime will necessarily ride into the sunset–but I do think we’ll have Jaime’s feelings for her confirmed, along with the completion of his redemption arc. I also don’t think that means Tyrion definitely won’t die–but I don’t think he’ll be character assassination, either. And I also don’t think that Sansa WILL end up in a canon relationship–but, logically, they can’t leave all the Stark’s COMPLETELY UNABLE TO LOVE, and um, somebody has to be willing to have legitimate heirs to the Stark House. Ok, just to continue this aside, but it seems theoretically impossible to me that the Stark House, which is all about the continuation of the Starks and the independence of the North, would not be given any canon marriages/alliances at the end of their arc. Arya’s already rejected marriage, Bran drove Meera away, and Sansa’s always wanted a happy marriage, even if she’s got very understandable trust issues right now. Anyhow–).

Peter Dinklage was able to guess how his character arc ended. What are the odds that Betraying Somebody He Cares About Without Good Reason (Daenerys–I could see him betraying her reluctantly, but not easily)/Being Betrayed By Somebody He Cares About (Sansa)/Dying Guilty After All The False Trials His Character Has Been THrough were in the mix? I don’t think so. Dinklage has gone on record multiple times to say how much he admires Tyrion and thinks he’s a good person. He’s also gone on record stating that Sansa and Tyrion’s relationship is full of true affection. Even if Tyrion dies and/or he and Sansa don’t end up as a couple, betrayal just seems so far out of the scope of what these characters’ storylines have been building to. And again, I can’t see that being even one version of one of Dinklage’s headcanons. What I think is most likely? A) Hand to the Ruler, B) Part of a new council that replaces or supplements the King/Queen, C) the King himself, or D) a heroic death.

How Long They’ve Planned the Ending:

They had talks with GRRM in 2014

They’ve been planning the ending for five years

They’ve known it was Arya who would take out the NK for three years

So some decisions weren’t set in stone, even by GRRM (such as who would take out the NK…an interesting thing not to know, actually, but that just points out how inflated the importance of the Others/White Walkers was–do I still think it will be handled better by GRRM, yes, but that’s another story), and even if D&D’s execution feels more like “here’s an outline of what’s happening” rather than “here’s the organic progression of that storyline,” I can only imagine that if core pieces were given by GRRM AND they’re not completely winging it, then there will be a certain amount of narrative cohesion once this comes full-circle.

Let’s not forget, we still have a third WTFudge moment that was came straight from GRRM himself, with the other two shockers being Hodor’s origin and Shireen Baratheon’s death. Could this third twist be Dany going completely mad? Maybe, though it doesn’t fall into the same category of completely-unexpected-but-honestly-possible, like Shireen and Hodor. Only because the foreshadowing for Dany’s madness was heavy-handed in the last few seasons (taking away the ‘unexpected’ bit), and is now quite uneven here in Season 8.

I think the third twist will likely be a specific action (a la Shireen’s death) or another origin story-type twist (a la Hodor). Some people have speculated that “Tyrion’s Trial” would make for that final twist, but here’s why I don’t think so:

The Nature of the Leaks

It’s very interesting to me that this leak, supposedly this Huge Most Important Leak, was one of the very first ones released. Like, months ago. While the rest of the leaks, the ones that have actually been accurate, are usually only released at the max a few days before each episode airs.

It’s also interesting to me that HBO has not done more to shut down this particular leak.

And, I would not put it past HBO to have actually filmed one entire fake-out scene. Most of the Dragon Pit/South scenes were filmed after the first three episodes, so they probably knew that they had the time and money to just throw fans for another loop. Sound tinfoily? Perhaps, but the idea that this big twist–and a twist that so far doesn’t make much sense given what we’ve seen in what is now ⅔’s of the season–was such an easy leak just makes me suspect.

Another possibility? Tyrion IS on trial, but is pardoned. Or Tyrion thinks he’s on trial, but it turns out to be somebody else’s funeral (a la that Littlefinger Fake Out 2.0.). I’m not saying any of this makes for the best handling of his character or for a particularly compelling scenario, but considering we haven’t seen it, I can’t say for certain.

GOT’s Recent “Plot Twist” Pattern

D&D have switched to information-withholding tactics in the last few seasons. Just look at Sansa and Arya’s arc and the Littlefinger Fake Out. Were these well-written? Not entirely–but they don’t make for the worst entertainment either. Yeah, we had better quality storytelling in the first four seasons, but soap opera can still be fun.

And how long have they been teasing Dark!Sansa without actually delivering? And let’s not forget–show-Sansa’s arc is still, broadly, based on book-Sansa’s arc. Book-Sansa remains far more in tune to the archetype of the Lady/Maiden, while show-Sansa is slightly blended with Jeyne Poole’s arc (and, unfortunately, a dash of Pop Feminism). But the fact remains that whatever meeting D&D had with GRRM back in 2014 contained information based on the broad trajectory of Sansa’s arc as GRRM has been writing it. (I’m writing a character arc meta on Sansa that’ll be out…soonish).

And let’s just say I don’t see Dark!Sansa hinted very well in the books at all. Sansa learning to pull strings like Littlefinger and Cersei and Margaery? Heck yes. But Sansa will do it Sansa’s way.

So, given that D&D usually try to shock us by hinting at a character’s worst possible tendency AND by withholding information AND by trying to get us to see one scenario while giving us another (another example being Jon Snow vs. Night King actually being Arya vs Night King), I can very well see them turning Sansa into a reluctant last-minute ally of Daenerys, Tyrion being pulled out of hot water at the last minute, Jaime’s running to Cersei being about taking out Cersei not making out with Cersei (yeah sorry/not sorry about that one), and heck, maybe Dany won’t go mad–she’ll just realize she doesn’t want the Iron Throne anymore, or the Iron Throne shouldn’t exist, or she dies tragically but not as a monster. Time will tell.

Who We Haven’t Seen So Far That Can Introduce New Complications

1. Edmure Tully

Tobis Mennzies (Edmure Tully) has been confirmed to return this season. Could it just be a cameo? Maybe. But I wouldn’t put it past Sansa, Arya, and Bran to be planning a back-up plan to help out Jon (and thus Dany). Arya is probably planning on killing Cersei, Sansa can rally what’s left of the Tully’s, and Bran will hopefully do something Three-Eyed Ravenish (or regain some of Bran’s humanity–which would be a twist worth waiting for).

2. Khal Drogo

Motherhood is an important theme in Dany’s life. I think ultimately, book and show wise, it’s what’s truly important to her. She just doesn’t realize it. In this way, Dany is a very interesting parallel with Cersei. Both of these women are tempted to replace their intimate losses with power. They believe power will protect them and their own. And that mentality can slowly shift into the classic Mother Bear conundrum: Us vs. Them.

Now, Khal Drogo not only represents a happy time in Dany’s life where she was both powerful and protected, but where she was a mother. After her losses, she gained her dragons. She truly loves her dragons as children, but they are also a liability to everyone but Dany. Interestingly, Dany’s human child with Khal Drogo was a liability to everyone but the Khalasar. The priestess from season 1 knew this, and so she prevented it. It doesn’t make the loss any less of a tragedy, however.

Will we see the same thing play out here in the final act of Game of Thrones? I’m not sure, but Khal Drogo’s presence will be heavily symbolic. Either Dany will meet him in the afterlife or reject death another time–but perhaps she’ll realize that her true desires were always for belonging and motherhood (just not at the expense of her own free will).

And, as an aside–I’ve really come to see Dany in a different light this season. I’ve always been anti-Daenerys as Ruler, but Daenerys as a character is truly fascinating. So what I see implied in her final arc is truly heartbreaking (and I hope it’s handled better overall than it was, in snapshot, here in 8x04). [Dany’s also my dad’s favorite character, haha, and I respect my dad’s opinion almost more than anyone else’s, so she gets props for that too lol].

3. Robin Arryn

I have a feeling this will be a cameo, but honestly the worst-case scenario for me would be Sansa being engaged to him lol. It would certainly be a Margaery Tyrell move on her part (knowing she won’t have to marry him for some time and he’ll be easy to influence), but the Knights of the Vale are already dedicated to her and I’m a Sanrion shipper so you know where I stand on any other Sansa ship. ;-)

Regardless, the Vale could become an important wrinkle in the plot, and I’m all for us not having a complete Doomsday scenario.

And In The Worst Case Scenario

The worst case scenario is that the leaks are legit. Bran as an emotionless king? The Starks are forever alone? Tyrion’s character assassination? Bleh.

But I’ve already hinted at my philosophy on canon storytelling.

Look, most fanon is crap–but so is most fiction. There are millions of stories out there, but it’s hard to find (and tell) one that resonates across all borders of sex, ethnicity, age, and epoch. You know what CAN exist in both fanon and canon–and what actually matters as canon in the end? The stories that are true.

If characters don’t act true to themselves, if deep-in-the-bones themes suddenly drop off, if crucial scenes that are present in every single successful outline are missing (don’t go postmodern on me–just read The Story Grid), then that story is incomplete. And it’s a lie.

Madeleine L’Engle once said “All truth is God’s truth.” She was trying to make the point that fantasy, and fiction in general, is important because it tells the truth. It’s not about the facts (dragons aren’t real! This is just a TV show! Etc.). It’s about the truth (dragons can be beaten! There is wonder in the world! We are united by our mythologies!).

So no, fanon can be a lot more than making heterosexual characters gay or inserting fluff without dealing with the consequences of character actions or erasing parts of canon. Fanon can be more true than canon when the author is on the tail of the actual Story.

Steven Pressfield does a much better job of explaining this in The War of Art. Madeleine L’Engle does a much better of explaining this in Walking on Water. Shawn Coyne does a much better job of explaining this in The Story Grid.

So don’t just take my word for it.

For me, then, I’m excited to see how the show plays out. And I’m fine if certain things that I only WANT don’t happen–but if the story doesn’t have what NEEDS to happen, then I’ll sadly and reluctantly reject it, and wait for GRRM’s books to come out, or simply contribute to the ASOIAF lore as best as I can. Hopefully not as wish fulfillment, but simply to respect the core of the story itself.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

10 Books to Peel the Scales from Your Eyes

IN THIS MONTH’S SPDCLICKHOLE by Trisha Low

From visionary writers to collaborations that shift our perspective, from work that sheds a light on injustice and dares us to face it, we’re happy to honor this month’s #SPDHANDPICKED theme - VISION - with a list of books that peel the scales from our eyes.

1. Vision of the Children of Evil by Miguel Angel Bustos, trans. Lucina Schell (co-im-press)

"Like the tormented Peruvian César Vallejo or the Spanish madman-savant Leopoldo Panero, Argentina's Miguel Ángel Bustos ransacks the unconscious for its darkest revelations of the inexpressible. Like García Lorca forty years before in Spain, Bustos was murdered for his politics in 1976 by his country's military dictatorship. To render his hallucinated language and his dream-nightmare visions in credible English, Lucina Schell reaches for the edges of expression and introduces us to a strangely gifted, wildly imaginative, prematurely silenced twentieth-century voice."—Stephen Kessler 2. Tela de sevoya / Onioncloth by Myriam Moscona, trans. Antena: Jen Hofer with John Pluecker (Les Figues Press)

The narrator of TELA DE SEVOYA / ONIONCLOTH travels to Bulgaria, searching for traces of her Sephardic heritage. Her journey becomes an autobiographical and imagined exploration of childhood, diaspora, and the possibilities of her family language: Ladino or Judeo-Spanish, the living tongue spoken by descendants of the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. Memoir, poetry, storytelling, songs, and dreams are interwoven in this visionary text—this tela or cloth that brings the past to life, if only for a moment, and that looks at the present though the lens of history.

3. Television by Claire Millikin (Unicorn Press)

"In this remarkable collection, Claire Millikin has made her own persistent music of a fully felt, fully experienced life in which 'what's broken never heals completely.' Often edging into what seems unspeakable, she finds a language that remains plain, steady, scrupulous, unsentimental and unshowy. Poem after poem registers the poet's 'battle for the moral world'—illuminating not only a single life but its human and environmental surroundings. As a motif draws us to the heart of a piece of music, Millikin's recurrent emblem is the centering fact and force of television: its role—fractured, phantasmagoric and familiar—in home and family, and in the wider world, where it may exercise its 'balm of blue light.'” —Eamon Grennan

4. Actualities by Norma Cole and Marina Adams (Litmus Press)

In this lambent collaboration, visual artist Marina Adams echoes the spareness of Norma Cole's language with delicate lines that contour muscular negative spaces, sometimes stark and densely foreboding, sometimes luxuriant with color. Norma Cole dialogues with Marina Adams with syncopated poems concerned with fragmentation, transformation, love, precarity, and the tenuousness of kinship between places, things, and being. In ACTUALITIES, poet and artist meditate in tandem, moving between anxiety and reconciliation, in a call and response with one another, and with a cosmos that continuously thwarts knowing, refusing to sit still.

5. Tucson Salvage: Tales and Recollections from La Frontera by Brian Jabes Smith (Eyewear Publishing)

This book is a chronicle of the overlooked and unsung, a collection of award-winning essays based on Brian Jabas Smith's popular column, "Tucson Salvage." "A true champion of the dispossessed and forgotten. ... I can't recommend this book highly enough."—Willy Vlautin

6. Bred from the Eyes of a Wolf by Kim Kyung Ju, trans. Jake Levine (Plays Inverse Press)

Equal parts poetry, drama, and sci-fi, award-winning poet Kim Kyung Ju's verse play BRED FROM THE EYES OF A WOLF follows a post-apocalyptic family of wolves (indistinguishable from humans) forced to taxidermy their own cubs in order to survive. An allegory for the degraded social relations of the present, Kim Kyung Ju's all-too-familiar dystopia partitions the male body into monetized parts while the female body is valued only for its reproductive ability. Various mythologies and science fictions layer one over the other—from Oedipus to zombies to a cybernetic police state—in this stunning depiction of family, alienation, and contemporary capitalism, translated from Korean into English for the first time by frequent collaborator Jake Levine.

7. Thirteen Ways of Looking at The Bus by Gizelle Gajelonia (Tinfish Press)

In THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE BUS, Gizelle Gajelonia discovers her muse in Honolulu's TheBus mass transit system. She takes seriously (in this seriously funny chapbook) the notion of routes—routes through Hawai'i's history and geography, routes through American poetry, routes through languages spoken in Hawai'i. Many of the pieces parody canonical poems by T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop, John Ashbery, and Eric Chock. Out of her parodies come marvelous revisions. Among the figures included in Gajelonia's revised canon are Hawai'i's last queen, Lili'uokalani, Filipina nurses, and an honors thesis writer very like the author who dreams of Columbia University.

8. USO: I'll Be Seeing You by Kim Rosenfield (Ugly Duckling Presse)

USO: I'LL BE SEEING YOU is at its core a parable of performance and service. How does one perform/serve issues of identity, race, politics, and the essential vulnerability of what it means to be human? What is language in service of and when does it go too far? What degrades? What supports? What is heroic? What does it mean to put oneself at risk or in harm's way? This book speaks via the poetry of stand-up comedy to the U.S. involvement in the Middle East and the difficulties of naming the unnameable. 

9. War and Peace 4: Vision and Text, by Judith Goldman and Leslie Scalapino, Editors (O Books)

WAR AND PEACE 4: VISION AND TEXT is devoted to collaborations between visual works and poetry, includes collaborative works of Charles Bernstein with Susan Bee, Amy Evans McClure with Michael McClure, Kiki Smith with Leslie Scalapino, Denise Newman with Gigi Janchang, a film on paper by Lyn Hejinian, Alan Halsey's visual texts, Simone Fattal, and Petah Coyne. Judith Goldman interviews Marjorie Welish, Lauren Shufran interviews Jean Boully, Leslie Scalapino interviews Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. Also included are E. Tracy Grinnell's homophonic translations of Claude Cahun's "Helene la rebelle" and poems by Fanny Howe, Thom Donovan, and others.

10. How Do I Look? by Sennah Yee (Metatron) Through a series of flash poetry/non-fiction pieces, Sennah Yee's debut full-length book HOW DO I LOOK? paints a colourful portrait of a woman both raised and repelled by the media. With pithy, razor-sharp prose, Sennah dissects and reassembles pop culture through personal anecdotes, crafting a love-hate letter to the media and the microaggressions that have shaped how she sees herself and the world. HOW DO I LOOK? is a raw and vulnerable reflection on identities real and imagined. 

All #SPDhandpicked books on VISION are 20% off all month w/ code HANDPICKED

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#Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5 Episode 10 "Past Life" Recap and Review

The episode starts with the Zephyr docking at the Lighthouse. Kasius and his men instantly enter and find Sinara’s body.

The team enters through a container.

A Kree in a lab detects no life forms. Enoch apparently doesn’t count. He tells the team that the Kree are still searching the ship. He will have the machine done by the time Flint builds the monolith.

Deke still doesn’t understand how this works. Fitzsimmons give him a science explanation and Daisy tries to clarify. He wants to know when they’ll kill Kasius.

Tess tells Mack, Yo-Yo, Flint that there was someone else with her when she was revived. She wants to go back for them. Yo-Yo says that she’ll go instead. Tess is needed at the Trawler. She talks to Flint before she leaves. Yo-Yo tells him to take care of Mack.

Kasius wants his doctor to fix Sinara. He can’t. Kree biology is far more complicated than Terran biology. Kasius shoots him. Then he starts talking to Sinara. When he’s done, he tells one of his men to get the inhuman trainer. He has Robin’s drawings and he now understands that they want to go back. He wants to kill them before they get back so that his father can have the full Earth like he always wanted. When the trainer gets there, he tells him that he wants the remaining inhumans to form his army. When the trainer protests that most of them haven’t been trained much, Kasius tells a story about his family. They have this death vial they use to die well. He shoves the contents of it into the trainer’s mouth. His mouth and eyes bleed black and the effects described are a lot like the ones in the second Thor movie.

Mack talks to Flint about motorcycles and offers to let Flint go with them. Then they find Fitzsimmons, who show Flint the monolith.

Coulson and May rescue Kasius’s inhuman army. The trainer attacks Daisy and Coulson. After a while, Daisy kills him

Tess finds Deke at the Trawler and they awkwardly talk about her being dead. Coulson then talks to her about shared life experiences, which must be nice for him. She then leaves to get the inhumans to the human levels.

Kasius is told about the inhumans, but he’s gone completely nutty. He only talks to Sinara. He takes a vial but doesn’t open it. He tells the other Kree that they are going to use the seer as an example. The seer is a she, by the way.

Yo-Yo finds the other inhuman, who is also the seer, who is also herself. I KNEW IT! Kasius’s reaction when he met Yo-Yo was just too weird! Old Yo-Yo confirms Fitz’s worst fear: they are in a time loop and she doesn’t believe they can change it. Kasius kills her and then revives her when needed. She tells now Yo-Yo that they make it back and cause this future, like Oedipus but without the incest. She also confirms that Mack died, apparently in a fire. That’s all she remembers about it.

Enoch has been found. He calculates that he has 12 minutes before they break in. Deke says that he’ll go and save Enoch. Daisy wants to go with him. He won’t let her and even gives her a pep talk. Their relationship has grown so much. I’m going to miss it.

Simmons has become the default inhuman therapist/trainer as she’s helping Flint with the monolith piece. He confirms that it’s mostly limestone. Three Kree catch them, but Fitz kills them with a trip wire he’s been setting up.

Old Yo-Yo tells now Yo-Yo that she remembers feeling helpless that she couldn’t change people’s choices, “his” choices.

Daisy hacks into the lighthouse but tells Coulson that she isn’t coming with them.

Old Yo-Yo says that the more they fought, the closer the future came. One choice sets them down this path, the choice to save a male someone.

Coulson ices Daisy.

It was Coulson. Coulson is dying. Old Yo-Yo says that they have to let him. Now Yo-Yo tries to get Old Yo-Yo to come with her.

Old Yo-Yo says no and shows now Yo-Yo that her hands are gone, a la comics Yo-Yo. Now Yo-Yo leaves.

Flint is in one of Deke’s masks in space.

The Kree have gotten to Enoch.

Kasius goes to see Old Yo-Yo.

Flint is bringing rocks together. Mack moves a servant back from a window. Flint throws the rocks he’s been collecting through the window and all the Kree collected there die.

Deke kills the Kree before he kills Enoch. Enoch wants him to repair the machine, which was damaged in the fight, instead of him.

Mack and Fitz talk. Fitz tells Mack he’s engaged, kind of. Simmons takes out the servant’s device. May and Coulson, holding Daisy, get there and ask about Yo-Yo. May meets Flint and her awesomeness is what he needed to rebuild the monolith.

Mack finds Old Yo-Yo and Kasius. He has a knife to her throat. She begs Mack to go. He doesn’t. Kasius takes the death vial and slits her throat. Then he attacks Mack.

The machine is too damaged to power the monolith. Enoch can do it, but it will kill him, and the succeeding explosion will kill Deke. He and Coulson talk. Deke doesn’t tell him.

Flint isn’t coming with them. He leaves with the servant. Mack and Yo-Yo aren’t back yet.

Kasius is beating the crap out of Mack until Simmons get there. She puts the silencer into his ear. This disorients him enough for Mack to axe him. Yo-Yo runs in and kind of explains.

Enoch has less time than he thought and not everyone is there yet. Fitz asks him to hold on. We see the rest of the team running there.

Tess talks to Flint about second chances on the Trawler.

This got hecka dark. We know from promoland that everyone got back, but oh boy. I needed some tea to calm down from this one. Wow. 9/10.

FJM is a fucking legend.

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74:17 of pure enlightenment... although “I love you, honeybear” is still my favorite vinyl... :)

1- PURE COMEDY (6:23)

The comedy of man starts like this ... Our brains are way too big for our mothers' hips ... And so Nature, she divines this alternative ... We emerged half-formed and hope that whoever greets us on the other end Is kind enough to fill us in ... And, babies, that's pretty much how it's been ever since ... Now the miracle of birth leaves a few issues to address ... Like, say, that half of us are periodically iron deficient ... So somebody's got to go kill something while I look after the kids ... I'd do it myself, but what, are you going to get this thing its milk? He says as soon as he gets back from the hunt, we can switch ... It's hard not to fall in love with something so helpless ... Ladies, I hope we don't end up regretting this ... Comedy, now that's what I call pure comedy ... Just waiting until the part where they start to believe ... They're at the center of everything ... And some all powerful being endowed this horror show with meaning ... Oh, their religions are the best ... They worship themselves yet they're totally obsessed ... With risen zombies, celestial virgins, magic tricks, these unbelievable outfits ... And they get terribly upset ... When you question their sacred texts ... Written by woman-hating epileptics ... Their languages just serve to confuse them ... Their confusion somehow makes them more sure ... They build fortunes poisoning their offspring ... And hand out prizes when someone patents the cure ... Where did they find these goons they elected to rule them? What makes these clowns they idolize so remarkable? These mammals are hell-bent on fashioning new gods ... So they can go on being godless animals ... Oh comedy, their illusions they have no choice but to believe ... Their horizons that just forever recede ... And how's this for irony, their idea of being free is a prison of beliefs ... That they never ever have to leave ... Oh comedy, oh it's like something that a madman would conceive! ... The only thing that seems to make them feel alive is the struggle to survive ... But the only thing that they request is something to numb the pain with ... Until there's nothing human left ... Just random matter suspended in the dark ... I hate to say it, but each other's all we got ...

2 -  Total Entertainment Forever (2:53) Bedding Taylor Swift ... Every night inside the Oculus Rift ... After mister and the missus finish dinner and the dishes ... And now the future's definition is so much higher than it was last year ... It's like the images have all become real ... And someone's living my life for me out in the mirror ... No, can you believe how far we've come ... In the New Age? Freedom to have what you want ... In the New Age we'll all be entertained ... Rich or poor, the channels are all the same ... You're a star now, baby, so dry your tears ... You're just like them ... Wake on up from the nightmare ... Come on ... Oh ho oh Oh Oh ho oh No gods to rule us ... No drugs to soothe us ... No myths to prove stuff ... No love to confuse us ... Not bad for a race of demented monkeys ... From a cave to a city to a permanent party ... Come on ... Oh ho oh Oh Oh ho oh When the historians find us we'll be in our homes ... Plugged into our hubs ... Skin and bones ... A frozen smile on every face ... As the stories replay ... This must have been a wonderful place ...

3 -  Things It Would Have Been Helpful To Know Before The Revolution (4:18)

It got too hot and so we overthrew the system ... 'Cause there's no place for human existence like right here ... On this bright blue marble orbited by trash ... Man, there's no beating that ... It was no big thing to give up the way of life we had ... Oh ho oh ... My social life is now quite a bit less hectic ... The nightlife and the protests are pretty scarce ... Now I mostly spend the long days walking through the city ... Empty as a tomb ... Sometimes I miss the top of the food chain ... But what a perfect afternoon ... Industry and commerce toppled to their knees ... The gears of progress halted ... The underclass set free ... The super-ego shatters with our ideologies ... The obscene injunction to enjoy life ... Disappears as in a dream ... And as we return to out native state ... To our primal scene ... The temperature, it started dropping ... The ice floes began to freeze ... From time to time we all get a bit restless ... With no one advertising to us constantly ... But the tribe at the former airport ... Some nights has meat and dancing ... If you don't mind gathering and hunting ... We're all still pretty good at eating on the run ... Things it would have been helpful to know before the revolution ... Though I'll admit some degree of resentment ... For the sudden lack of convenience around here ... But there are some visionaries among us developing some products ... To aid us in our struggle to survive ... On this godless rock that refuses to die ...

4 -  Ballad Of The Dying Man (4:50)

Naturally the dying man wonders to himself: Has commentary been more elusive than anybody else? And had he successfully beaten back the rising tide ... Of idiots, dilettantes, and fools ... On his watch while he was alive ... Lord, just a little more time ... Oh, in no time at all ... This'll be the distant past ... Ooh ... So says the dying man once I'm in the box Just think of all the overrated hacks running amok And all of the pretentious, ignorant voices that will go unchecked The homophobes, hipsters, and 1% The false feminists he'd managed to detect Oh, who will critique them once he's left? Oh, in no time at all This'll be the distant past What he'd give for one more day to rate and analyze ... The world made in his image as of yet ... To realize what a mess to leave behind ... Eventually the dying man takes his final breath ... But first checks his news feed to see what he's 'bout to miss ... And it occurs to him a little late in the game ... We leave as clueless as we came ... For the rented heavens to the shadows in the cave We'll all be wrong someday ... Oh ... Oh ... Oh ...

5 -  Birdie (5:19)

Take off, little winged creature ... It's nothing but teens in ravines ... And antics on concrete down here ... And are you really as free as all the great songs would have me believe? Let me tell you why some day, Birdie, you're gonna envy me ... Some dream of a world written in lines of code ... Well, I hope they engineer out politics, romance, and edifice ... Two outta three ain't bad ... Some envision a state governed by laws of business ... Merger and acquisition instead of violence or nations ... Where do I sign up? Take off, little winged creature ... It's nothing but falling debris, strollers, and babies down here ... And you may be up in the sky but our paradigms are just as deep and just as wide ... What with all our best attempts at transcendence ... Something's bound to take ... Soon, we'll live in a global culture devoid of gender or race ... There's just one tiny line: You're either born behind ... Or you're free to peek inside ... Life as just narrative, metadata in aggregate ... Where the enigma of humanity's wrapped up finally ... That as they say is that ... Oh, that day can't come soon enough ... It'll be so glorious ... When they finally find out what's bugging us. ...

6 - Leaving LA (13:11) I was living on the hill ... By the water tower and hiking trails ... And when the big one hit I’d have a seat ... To watch masters abandon their dogs and dogs run free ... Oh baby, it’s time to leave ... Take the van and the hearse down to New Orleans ... Leave under the gaze of the billboard queens ... Five-foot chicks with parted lips selling sweatshop jeans ... These L.A. phonies and their bullshit bands ... That sound like dollar signs and Amy Grant ... So reads the pulled quote from my last cover piece ... Entitled "The Oldest Man in Folk Rock Speaks” ... You can hear it all over the airwaves ... The manufactured gasp of the final days ... Someone should tell them ‘bout the time that they don’t have ... To praise the glorious future and the hopeless past ... A few things the songwriter needs ... Arrows of Love, a mask of Tragedy ... But if you want ecstasy or birth control ... Just run the tap until the water’s cold ... Anything else you can get online ... A creation myth or a .45 ... You're going to need one or the other to survive ... Where only the armed or the funny make it out alive ... Mara taunts me 'neath the tree ... She's like, "Oh great, that's just what we all need ... Another white guy in 2017 ... Who takes himself so goddamn seriously." She's not far off, the strange thing is ... That's pretty much what I thought when I started this ... It took me my whole life to learn to the play the G ... But the role of Oedipus was a total breeze ... Still I dreamt of garnering all rave reviews ... Just believably a little north of God's own truth ... He's a national treasure now, and here's the proof ... In the form of his major label debut ... A little less human with each release ... Closing the gap between the mask and me ... I swear I'll never do this, but is it okay? Don't want to be that guy but it's my birthday ... If everything ends with the photo then I'm on my way ... Ohhh-ho-o-oh oh-ho-ho-ho-oh I watched my old gods all collapse ... Were way more violent than my cartoon past ... It's like my father said before he croaked ... "Son, you're killing me, and that's all folks." So why is it I'm so distraught ... That what I'm selling is getting bought ... At some point you just can't control ... What people use your fake name for ... So I never learned to play the lead guitar ... I always more preferred the speaking parts ... Besides there's always someone willing to ... Fill up the spaces that I couldn't use ... Nonetheless, I've been practicing my whole life ... Washing dishes, playing drums, and getting by ... Until I figured, if I'm here then I just might ... Conceal my lack of skill here in the spotlights ... Maya, the mother of illusions, a beard, and I ... 2000 years or so since Ovid taught ... Night-blooming, teenage rosebuds, dirty talk ... And I'm merely a minor fascination to ... Manic virginal lust and college dudes ... I'm beginning to begin to see the end ... Of how it all goes down between me and them ... Some 10-verse chorus-less diatribe ... Plays as they all jump ship, "I used to like this guy ... This new shit really kinda makes me wanna die" ... Ohhh-ho-oh-oh oh-ho-ho-ho-oh Ohhh-ho-oh-oh oh-ho-ho-ho-oh My first memory of music's from ... The time at JCPenney's with my mom ... The watermelon candy I was choking on ... Barbara screaming, "Someone help my son!" ... I relive it most times the radio's on ... That "tell me lies, sweet little white lies" song ... That's when I first saw the comedy won't stop for ... Even little boys dying in the department store ... So we leave town in total silence ... New Year's Day, it's 6 o'clock AM ... I've never seen Sunset this abandoned ... Reminds me predictably of the world's end ... It'll be good to get more space ... God knows what all these suckers paid ... I can stop drinking and you can write your script ... But what we both think now is.

7 - A Bigger Paper Bag (4:41) Dance like a butterfly and drink like a fish ... If you're bent on taking demons down with only your fist ... And I've never known anyone who could lose himself in a bigger paper bag ... The weaker the signal, the sweeter the noise ... Hunching over an instrument that you now employ ... Like the Starvation Army needs a marching piano in the band ... Are you feeling used? ... I do ... Oh, I was pissing on the flame ... Like a child with cash or a king on cocaine ... I've got the world by the balls ... Am I supposed to behave? ... What a fraud ... What a con ... You're the only ... One I love ... It's easy to assume that you've built some rapport ... With a someone who only likes you for what you like yourself for ... Okay, you be my mirror but remember the only a few angles I tend to prefer ... I'm only here to serve ... Oh, I was pissing on the flame ... Like a child with cash or a king on cocaine ... I've got the world by the balls ... Am I supposed to behave? ... Oh, I was dancing 'round the flame ... Like a high-wire act with a "who, me?" face ... I was living on nothing but water and cake ... What a fraud ... What a con ... You're the only ... One I love ... One I love ... One I love ...

8 - When The God Of Love Returns There'll Be Hell To Pay (4:04) When the god of love returns ... There'll be hell to pay ... Though the world may be out of excuse ... I know just what I would say ... That the seven trumpets sound ... As a locust sky grows dark ... But first let's take you on a quick tour of your creation's handiwork ... Billy got through the prisons and stores ... And the pale horse looks a little sick ... Says, "Jesus, you didn't leave a whole lot for me ... If this isn't hell already then tell me what the hell is?" ... And we say it's just human, human nature ... This is place is savage and unjust ... We crawled out of the darkness ... And endured your impatience ... We're more than willing to adjust ... And now you've got the gall to judge us ... The spider spins his web ... The tiger stalks his prey ... And we steal fire from the heavens to try to keep the night at bay ... Every monster has a code ... One that steadies the shaking hand ... And he's determined to accrue more capital by whatever means he can ... Oh, it's just human, human nature ... We've got these appetites to serve ... You must not know the first thing about human beings ... We're the earth's most soulful predator ... Try something less ambitious the next time you get bored ... Oh, my Lord ... We just want light in the dark ... Some warmth in the cold ... And to make something out of nothing sounds like someone else I know ...

9 -  Smoochie (3:45) When my personal demons are screaming ... And when my door of madness is half-open ... You stand alongside ... And say something to the effect that everything'll be ... Alright ... Soon ... Smoochie ... Chaos attends to creation ... And when the shadows inside me vie for attention ... You stand alongside ... And say something perfect like "concealment feeds the fear." And hand me a sea peach ... And say, "Come, come over here ... Smoochie."

10 -  Two Wildly Different Perspectives (3:12) One side says ... “Y'all go to hell.” The other says ... “If I believed in God, I'd send you there.” But either way we make some space ... In the hell that we create ... On both sides ... One side says ... “Kill 'em all.” The other says ... “Line those killers up against the wall.” But either way some blood is shed ... Thanks to our cooperation ... On both sides ... On both sides ... One side says ... “Man, take what's yours!” The other says ... “Live on no more than you can afford.” But either way we just possess ... And everyone ends up with less ... On both sides ... On both sides ...

11 - The Memo (5:16) I'm gonna steal some bedsheets ... From an amputee ... I'm gonna mount em on a canvas ... In the middle of the gallery ... I'm gonna tell everybody ... It was painted by a chimpanzee ... Just between you and me ... Here at the cultural low watermark ... If it's fraud or art ... They'll pay you to believe ... I'm gonna take five young dudes ... From white families ... I'm gonna mount 'em on a billboard ... In the middle of the country ... I'm gonna tell everybody ... They sing like angels with whiter teeth ... But just between you and me ... They're just like the ones before ... With their standards lower ... Another concert-goer will pay you to believe ... Oh, caffeine in the morning, alcohol at night ... Cameras to record you and mirrors to recognize ... And as the world is getting smaller, small things take up all your time ... Narcissus would have had a field day if he could have got online ... And friends it's not self-love that kills you ... It's when those who hate you are allowed ... To sell you that you're a glorious shit ... The entire world revolves around ... And that you're the eater, no not the eaten ... But that your hunger will only cease ... If you come binge on radiant blandness ... At the disposable feast ... (You're enjoying the chill winter playlist) Just quickly how would you rate yourself ... [?] In terms of sex appeal and cultural significance? (Irony, irony Blo blo blo blo blo blo blo) Do you usually listen to music like this? (Just one more mile, you can do it again) Can we recommend some similar artists? (This is totally the song of my summer) Are you feeling depressed? (This guy just gets me) But your feedback's important ... To us ... (Music is my life) Gonna buy myself a sports team ... And put 'em in a pit ... I'm gonna wage the old crusade ... Against consciousness ... All I need's a couple winners ... To get every loser to fight in it ... Keep the golden calf ... Just need the bullshit ... And they won't just sell themselves into slavery ... They'll get on their knees and pay you to believe ...

12 - So I'm Growing Old On Magic Mountain (9:58) That was the last New Year I'll ever see ... And I wanna stay on that magic mountain ... With lost souls and beautiful women ... I drank some of Farmer's potion ... And we were moving in slow motion ... The slower, the better ... The slower, the better ... 'Cause there's no one old on magic mountain ... There's no one old, old on magic mountain ... And that was the very last barn I'm burning ... So for now everyone is dancing ... As if it's any time but the present ... So for now every young thing in my path ... I'll hold their face so long inside my hands ... The longer, the better ... The longer, the better ... 'Cause there's no one old on magic mountain ... There's no one old, old on magic mountain ... The wine has all been emptied... And smoke has cleared... As people file back to the valley... On the last night of life's party... These days the years thin till I can't remember... Just what it feels like to be young forever... So the longer I stay here... The longer there's no future... So I'm growing old on magic mountain... I'm growing old, old on magic mountain...

13 - In Twenty Years Or So (6:27 What's there to lose? For a ghost in a cheap rental suit? Clinging to a rock that is hurtling through space? And what's to regret? For a speck on a speck on a speck...? Made more ridiculous the more serious he gets? Oh, it's easy to forget. Oh, I read somewhere, That in twenty years, More or less... This human experiment will reach its violent end... But I look at you... As our second drinks arrive... The piano player's playing "This Must Be the Place"... And it's a miracle to be alive... One more time... There's nothing to fear... There's nothing to fear.... There's nothing to fear...

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Father John Misty - "Leaving LA" [Official Music Video] - Father John Misty - "Leaving LA" [Official Music Video] Father John Misty's official music video for his song "Leaving LA" from the album Pure Comedy,  out now on Sub Pop Records and Bella Union. Directors: Grant James & Josh Tillman Producer: Lindha Narvaez Director of Photography: Marc Shap Camera Op: Chris Klosterman Assistant Camera: Ryan Guzdzial Editor: Ben Montez Colorist: Marshall Plante with NTROPIC Father John Misty On The Web: http://bit.ly/2kCSElu http://bit.ly/2B8OUDV http://bit.ly/2jGO07B Get Pure Comedy: Pure Comedy CD/LP (US): http://bit.ly/2jGLC0Q CD / LP (UK / EU): http://bit.ly/2AeYNjo Stream / Download Pure Comedy: http://bit.ly/2B8OXzB LYRICS: I was living on the hill By the water tower and hiking trails When the big one hit I’d have a seat To watch masters abandon their dogs and dogs run free Come on baby it’s time to leave Take the van and the hearse down to New Orleans Leave under the gaze of the billboard queens Five foot chicks with parted lips selling sweatshop jeans These LA phonies and their bullshit bands Just sounds like dollar signs and So reads the pull quote of my last cover piece Entitled “The Oldest Man In Folk Rock Speaks” You can hear it all over the airwaves The manufactured gasp of the final days Someone should tell them bout the time that they don't have To praise the glorious future and the hopeless past A few things the songwriter needs Arrows of love, a mask of tragedy But if you want ecstasy, or birth control Just run the tap until the water’s cold Anything else you can get online Comic gold or a .45 You’re going to need one or the other to survive Where only the armed or the funny make it out alive Still I dreamt of garnering all rave reviews Just believably a little north of God’s own truth He’s a national treasure now and here’s the proof In the form of his major label-debut A little less human with each release Closing the gap between the mask and me I swear I never do this, but is it okay Don’t want to be that guy but it’s my birthday If everything ends in a photo then I’m on my way Mara taunts me ‘neath the tree She’s like “Oh, great, that’s just what they all need Another white guy in 2017 Who takes himself so goddamn seriously” She’s not far off, the strange this is That’s just what I thought when I started this It took me my whole life to learn to play the G But the role of Oedipus was just a total breeze I watch my old gods all collapse Whoam way more violent than my cartoon past It’s like my father said before he croaked “Son, you’re killing me” and “That's all folks!” So why is it I’m so distraught That what I’m selling’s getting bought At some point you can’t control What people use your fake name for So I never learned to play the lead guitar I always more preferred the speaking parts Besides there’s always someone willing to Fill up the spaces that I couldn’t use Nonetheless, I’ve been practicing my whole life Washing dishes, playing drums, and just getting by Until I figured if I’m here than I just might Conceal my lack of skill here in the spotlight Maya the mother of illusions, a beard, and I 2000 years or so since Ovid taught Night-blooming teenage rosebuds dirty talk And I’m merely a minor fascination to Manic virginal lust and college dudes I’m beginning to begin to see the end Of how it all goes down between me and them Some 10 verse chorus-less diatribe Plays as they all jump ship, I used to like this guy But this new shit makes me want to die My earliest memory of music’s from The time at JC Penny’s with my mom The watermelon candy I was choking on Barbara screaming “Someone, help my son” I relive it most times the radio’s on That Tell Me Lies, Sweet Little White lies song That’s when I first heard the comedy won’t stop for All the little boys dying in department stores So we leave town in total silence New Years Day at 6 o’clock am Never seen Sunset this abandoned Reminds me predictably of the world’s end It’ll be good to get more space God knows what all these suckers pay   I can stop drinking and you can write your script What we both think now is indie - https://youtu.be/WfnXM_DmEzo

Log 2 - Intake

     The following is a transcript from a recording, beginning at approximately 20 minutes into my weekly session with the Muriel Jenkins.

Having been unable to sleep every night this week, anticipating a moment again similar to what I experienced during dinner Sunday night, I spent a great deal of time pondering what steps I could take. Finding an inconspicuous recording app for my phone was a suitable use of my time waiting for Emma Frost to force herself into someone else’s mind, so that she may get a quote from me.

I spotted it as soon as it began during my afternoon appointment with Muriel. Mrs. Jenkins was in the middle of a story, an altercation with her daughter-in-law, when she suddenly went blank behind the eyes. By the time she was done readjusting her posture, I was already waiting for the RP dialect.

I did try to hide my outrage, my anxiety, my exhaustion in wanting to know what this game was that I was being forced to play. Most importantly, I stayed calm while reaching for my phone, to check the time as a reference for my next discussion point - when in actuality, I was turning said recorder app on.

____________________________________________________________________

DR: -irty[thirty] five minutes left in her session. You don’t think that’s unfair?

FROST: Oh please; I’m creating a false memory of her blathering on to you for another hour, before coming to the astute observation that she desperately wishes she could be the one married to her son. Homework for next week is to stop putting that reverse oedipus baggage on other-

DR: Ms. Frost.

FROST: Please, darling, you can call me Emma. No need for pretensions here.

DR: Funny you should say that, don’t you think?

FROST: Excuse me?

[silence]

DR: You know, many health professionals would agree that I would need to need to see you, in person, for a proper intake.

FROST: I’ll mail you a bloody picture, then. I think we can both agree that my situation calls for a level of…discretion. I would much rather project an image of myself wearing only the finest Oscar de la Renta for you to see instead of this wrinkled landscape, but…You’re immune to telepathy. Or so they say.

DR: My reputation has held up, I imagine.

FROST: Why? Because I’ve only tried reading your mind 4 times since this conversation began? Yes, you’re just as advertised. I can’t hear anything but ocean sounds in there.

DR: Oh, c'mon-

FROST: It’s true! Like listening to a sea shell. It’s rather calming, actually.

DR: …I like to think telepaths enjoy being around someone whose mind is closed off to them.

FROST: But then however do you blackmail them? [silence] FROST: See? I don’t need telepathy to know you’re waiting for me to tell you I’m joking.

DR: May I ask what your goal here is? Are you seeking treatment, or is this…part of some…

FROST: Grand scheme? As if I were some entendre-named Bond villain. Really doctor, I thought your bedside manner would be much better than this.

DR: Well in both our defenses, I’ll admit to considering you a far more serious threat than a Bond villain. I don’t think you can blame me for anticipating that the White Queen might have moving pieces at work

FROST: Flattery will get you nowhere. And for your information… [silence] FROST: Yes. I am looking for an intake. To begin seeing a therapist. To begin seeing you as my therapist, I’ve decided.

DR: Alright, and what are the circumstances surrounding your-

FROST: You can’t be serious.

DR: -I know the headlines. I also know you can’t always trust the news.

FROST: Would you look at that, Muriel has a lovely stash of airline liqueurs in her purse…

DR: Although when the news is–

[Frost opens Muriel Jenkins’s purse]

DR: Please, don’t make a patient of mine drink in session.

FROST: But it’s my favorite kind of drink. All the chemistry, none of the calories. I’ll just add a little, clearly already present, alcoholic’s guilt in her morning routine’s memory.

DR: Emma, I won’t talk to you if-

[Emma has Muriel Jenkins drink from one of her travel sized bottles]

FROST: You were saying; something about the news?

[silence]

DR: Reports…of you shooting down an aircraft full of human beings-

FROST: -INhuman beings, darling. And my god, how does anyone expect to get drunk off these? [Emma has Muriel take another drink.] FROST: Now, allow me to clarify something. Firstly, you *are a mutant, yes?

DR: Yes.

FROST: And I know from poking around your husband’s brain that he’s a mutant as well, among other things-

DR: Excuse me?

FROST: -So you’ll allow me to be candid with you, I’m sure, in asking you…Do you know what an Inhuman is?

DR: Ah…yes. Those with Kree ancestry born human, but affected by the Terrigen Mists by way of-

FROST: Very scholastic, but you know that’s not what I mean. Mutant-to-mutant, love. What is an Inhuman? 

[Emma has Muriel take another drink.]

FROST: I’ll tell you what a mutant is. The next step. The future of our world. And hated, set aside as “other” because of it. Because of fear. An Inhuman, on the other hand, is a party that the pleural YOU can join! No messy ‘mutation’ to pile onto an already abysmal puberty, rather Terragenesis is the wonderful prize given for being otherwise completely mundane. A change you CHOOSE to become part of so there’s something to fill that deep deep void. Hate your job and wife and sodding kids? Well cross your fingers and pray your ancestors were experimented on by aliens, because you too can become a completely different person overnight! Sounds rather akin to Scientology, don’t you think?

[Emma has Muriel take another drink.]

DR: I’m hearing a lot of anger.

FROST: Oh ding-bloody-ding–These monsters have taken EVERYTHING from me! With everybody watching on slack-jawed and hypnotized by a royal sovereign’s PR machine! Those savages have a piece of my fucking body kept as a TROPHY!

DR: I…feel your…frustrations; obviously. My husband and I were terrified of M-Pox, we didn’t know whether to pull the children out of school, if we should–did you say, “a piece of your body”?

FROST: They’re super-powered cult, and somehow in the name of unbiased news we’ve once again we’ve allowed lunatics normalcy. While perpetuating THEIR lies!? What about the people THEY’VE killed!? If they want to gas us, I say what I’ve done is proper justice!

[silence]

DR: Alright.

[silence]

FROST: Alright!

[silence]

DR: So…do you want to take that again, or can I speak?

FROST: Excuse me? Don’t you think for a second that the rumors might not true, doctor. You have no idea what I can d-

DR: Why are you giving me super villain?

[Muriel (Emma) stands up from my couch, throwing an empty miniature bottle to the floor]

FROST: YOU will learn your PLACE. If you’re going sit there ‘throwing shade’, I will remind you that I am not only the ONLY Queen in this room, but I was the closest thing to the bloody matriarch of the whole damned mutant species!

DR: And I don’t disagree.

FROST: Then maybe you can tell me why I turned into some INSANE BLOODY BACKGROUND FUGITIVE OVERNIGHT!! 

DR: Emma-

FROST: And I know I’ve done a hell of a lot of wrong in the past, so maybe I simply deserve it by rite; you don’t have to tell me that! But first you better ring Wanda Maximoff: We can have a 3-way session comparing the pros and cons of genocide vs solving world hunger for a few months - If she’s not too busy doing yoga all across Europe-

DR: 'The Scarlet Witch’ is not a patient of mine-

FROST: I even specifically put the old college try into NOT killing Charles Xavier, for YEARS longer than reasonable, some would very well say!

DR: -but if it’s any consolation-

FROST: If Scott and I got amnesia and snoged Dr. Doom would Captain America have given us a shiny new team as well??

DR: -I agree with you.

FROST: I-……………….

[silence. Muriel (Emma) collects herself.]

FROST: ….I mean, What Is this trend? This sudden surge of affection for some Camelot sideshow-

DR: You don’t need to tell me. You were in my husband’s mind: I’m sure you selected us based on extracting from him memories of us, well, discussing you, often. I dare say he’s a fan.

FROST: Of course, though I didn’t stay long enough to see your feelings through his memory. There was so much affection for you and your children gushing in there that I thought I was going to be sick.

DR: Thank you.

FROST: Clever boy; I’m still holding you hostage though.

DR: To treat you? Treat your anger? Your guilt?

FROST: I never said I felt guilty.

DR: You mentioned feeling deserving or your…status change.

FROST: Watch it.

DR: And you did shoot down a shipload of Inhumans.

FROST: Yes and I would do it again.

[silence]

DR: So then…just your anger?

FROST: Just my…everything.

[silence]

DR: And I’m going to assume that I don’t have a choice.

FROST: Obviously. Especially since I can’t erase your memory of this conversation.

DR: But you’ve made it very clear that you have easy access to anyone in my life.

FROST: So we shouldn’t have any problems with privacy, wouldn’t you say?

[A knock from outside my door can be heard]

FROST: Now shall we set a day and time where you’re meeting with someone more pleasant looking? Though I do enjoy how delightfully vacant Muriel’s head is. Complimentary drinks certainly have their appeal…

[End of recording]

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     The next few minutes were somewhat staggering. My next patient cut my recording off by impatiently calling my cell, and suddenly Emma was gone. Then there was a very confused, and very suddenly drunk, Muriel Jenkins to deal with.

Emma left no indication of when I would next hear from her, but I believe her self-conducted intake was a success. My professional opinion was that Ms. Frost was looking for validation, some sign that she’s not completely out of touch with reality for seeing her past few years as an undeserved role reversal. From what I can gather, it seems as though this encounter was a test of how sympathetic I would be to her in her current state. Behind the razor sharp wit and the scowl, she was looking for someone potentially unbiased, someone who would not be intimidated into saying what she deeply wants to hear: Emma was right. Whether I meant to convey that message to her, and whether I’ll regret it, remain to be seen.

I’ve also emailed my current patients to remind them all to never have foreign substances in their system, or on their person, while in session.

The Doors - The End - Live At Hollywood Bowl 1968 ( I RE-POSTED THIS TERRIFIC ANALYSIS FROM " BenS/b-rod, 7moths ago"}}: "Ew, he wants to what?" Well first of all, you've got to understand where Morrison was coming from. A little background information is certainly required for the uninitiated. Jim wanted first and foremost to be a filmmaker and a dramatist (and poet) before he ever wanted to be in rock n roll. He went on to graduate from UCLA (unlike the deplorable Oliver Stone movie where a full ONE THIRD of the thing is FICTION - ie, never happened, like certain scenes, and the very crass way Kilmer portrayed him was ludicrous - but that's another topic). In the film department there, he learned  many things about cinema and drama in general that he transposed into his music. He even had acting lessons according to Paul Ferrara. Anyway, I think the main work that influenced Jim on "The End" was Artaud's "Theatre & Its Double," which I reread recently and it made a lot more sense to me why Jim went in that theatrical direction. When I reread it, pieces fell into place that I'd never realized before. Artaud goes through his theories and in one instance, he even mentions "Oedipus Rex" itself by name (which, for those who don't know is an ancient Greek play that Freud psychologically postulated as universal, Oedipus for boys and Elektra for girls - deep in the unconscious). On a side note, Artaud also had a major influence on the Living Theatre, which Jim saw every show he could of, with their confrontational approach to theatre, which was right before Miami, and is what got Jim in trouble down there for allegedly exposing himself, with it fresh in his mind. Anyway, I believe its drama. Jim didn't get into personal confessional lyrics until LA Woman with things like "Hyacinth House" or "Cars Hiss By My Window." "The End" does start out about a break up with his girl prior to Pamela but then obviously goes in another direction when they would improvise to fill their slot at London Fog. But Artaud's work, I think, is key to understanding where Jim was coming from and the theatricality of some of his lyrics. And as Ray said about the Lizard King to Ben Fong-Torres - "That Lizard King thing - that's out of "Celebration Of The Lizard" and he's acting a part; its a theatre piece. Its a drama of which a guy is leading a small band of people...out into the desert and at the end of the whole piece he says "I am the Lizard King, I can do anything" and people are going "Oh, he's the Lizard King, he's the self-proclaimed Lizard King." You bastards, man! He's ACTING! ITS A ROLE, you know? Marlon Brando is not Stanley Kowalski, Jim Morrison is not the Lizard King, but they ground him down [for it]."Could the same be said for "The End?" You fuckin bet.Here's Jim speaking in late 1970 (also to Ben Fong-Torres) - "Are you still considering yourself the Lizard King?" "What I was trying to say with that, and that was years ago, and even then it was kind of ironic. I meant it ironically, and it wasn't meant to be - " and Pam cuts him off saying "That whole thing was done tongue-in-cheek" and Jim says, "Well, half tongue-in-cheek" and Pam continues, "and everybody thought it was like so serious." Jim: "Well, its an easy thing to pick up on." Its interesting to note that his production company with, I think, Paul Ferrara and Babe Hill, joking called themselves the Media Manipulators."Well, its an easy thing to pick up on" is the operative phrase - memorability, standing out, and this, I think, is key to understanding "The End" and other things. In the same interview with Fong-Torres, he also talks about how at newspapers there's someone who is there to write only the headlines of an article, that it has to be a catch phrase. Maybe its hard for literal-minded people to understand, but Jim says "THE killer" and then proceeds to take a face, an ancient drama mask that actors would wear on stage. He doesn't say "I" until he's set up the scene and in that role.  "The key to throwing the audience into a magical trance is to know where in advance the pressure points must be affected...But theatre poetry has long become unaccustomed to this invaluable skill...To make language convey what it does not normally convey. That is to use it in a new exceptional and unusual way, to give it its full, physical shock potential...and restore their shattering power...The thought it aims at, the states of mind it attempts to create, the mystical discoveries it offers...It all seems like an exorcism to make our devils FLOW...strange signs, matching some dark prodigious reality we have repressed...ready to hurl itself into chaos in a kind of magical state where feelings have become so sensitive they are suitable for visitation by the mind...We must not ask ourselves whether it can define thought but whether it makes us think [and feel], and leads the mind to assume deeply effective attitudes...Just as in former times, the masses today are thirsting for mystery" (Artaud) (And there are more quotes equally as good in his work).I'm not saying he was consciously thinking of Artaud's theories when he went up onstage that night at the Whiskey, but it certainly came out of him then - the culmination of many things going on in the background of his consciousness and trying to push the envelope as an artist. As a fellow INFP explorer (mine and Jim's personality type), I think I can understand Jim more than most in that respect. Its "drama of the highest order" said Jack Holzman

Blog Post #10 - 4/12/17

“La Cienaga” was a very uneasy movie to watch.  It was peppered with alcohol abuse, preventable accidents, numerous injuries, and uncomfortable sexual tension.  Laura Mulvey’s article, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” discussed the recurrent themes of many films in regards to the portrayal of males and females.  Each of these pieces has the undertone of a domain of psychology that Mulvey touches on: Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis. 

The most obvious parallel between the article and the film is the portrayal of women as sexual objects.  From the opening scene, the audience often sees women in bathing suits and even young girls in incredibly revealing clothing--both of which continue throughout the film.  Even when the men, too, have bathing suits or minimal clothing, which is the case in the very first scene by the pool, it is the women that are moving about and catering to the needs of others while the men just sit and observe (just as the audience observes) the women. (In this particular scene, Mecha is preparing drinks for everyone....see gif above.)

As the film carries on, though, the one thing that stood out to me was the countless scenes in which there was some sort of awkward interaction between two family members that might be understood as having a sexual implication.  In addition to the overall lack of clothing being worn even around Mecha’s house, there are many instances when two members of the family find themselves in the shower together or in bed together.  (And, of course, in all of these situations, you won’t find a fully-clothed individual.)  Some examples include Jose and Momi’s encounter while Momi is showering; Momi taking Jose’s clothes off while he is lying in bed; Jose removing the bandages from just above his mother’s breasts; and Jose climbing into bed with Mecha with only his underwear on and taking a nap while holding onto her.  This last example even further relates to Mulvey’s article regarding psychoanalysis in film.  Jose’s desire to be close to his mother in a somewhat non-platonic manner falls in accordance with Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of the Oedipus complex.