Good Analysis Of LJ. I Don't Remember Overt Paul Disike But I Do Remember A Lot Of Linda Dislike. Tho

crossing a picket line, abusing striking workers AND littering, all before 9am smh. No one deserved a slap more that day.

Also not convinced by that teacher's assertion that Lennon would be on the picket with them, unfortch. Rich guys are still rich guys.

Anyway, important to remember that wealth is the greatest corrupter, even of our faves.

What did goddess mean by this?

Victorian sexplorer and cross-cultural relationships

Richard Burton

Last night I watched a documentary on Richard Burton presented by Rupert Everett (The Richard Burton in question was the 19th century explorer, writer and translator of the Kama Sutra, not, as Everett put it, ‘Elizabeth Taylor’s fifth and sixth husbands’). Unsurprisingly, considering its lubricious presenter, the documentary focused on Burton’s exploration of sexuality in various parts of the world and his rejection of hypocritical Victorian mores.

I’ve seen Everett in presenter mode before, in a documentary on Byron a few months ago, and while he can be insufferably irritating, I’ve always quite admired his consistency of personality, This was even more evident in this programme, where he was filmed wandering around Egypt, India and Goa among other places. Whether talking to old ladies in the Indian streets, bantering with nuns in a Goa convent or quizzing an Egyptian masseur on his sexual preferences, Everett didn’t substantially change his personality or delivery to fit in with his surroundings. Even when quizzing an imam on the position of homosexuality in Islam (unsurprisingly, verboten!), he was still himself, understandably a heavily dialled-down version for his own safety, but essentially unchanged. The almost jarring sight of a Western person just being relaxed and normal in foreign countries shows us how most TV presenters (and many travellers) take on a fake, simplified persona to interact with ‘natives’. Does this spring from lack of confidence in one’s own personality, or a persistent Western concept of darker-skinned people as eternally ‘other’? Probably a bit of both.

Somebody like Everett, who is clearly an unapologetic egoist, simply doesn’t think to behave any differently – he does not seem hamstrung by post-colonial guilt, which ironically causes many British travellers to be more condescending to their former subjects than if they weren’t plagued by it. The only other TV personality I can think of who displays the same unselfconsciousness is Hector Ó hEochagháin, who shares Everett’s qualities of being intensely annoying and deeply engaging. I remember seeing him in a travel programme where he crossed part of the Sahara, and was struck by the ease with which he interacted with the men accompanying him, drinking and bantering around the campfire. It shouldn’t be striking to see a group of people from different countries interacting normally, but western attitudes and the disparity of wealth between the First and Third Worlds usually places a stranglehold on normality.

Burton found it very easy to interact in the various countries he lived in, mainly due to his skill in assimilating. Local prostitutes (male and female) and mistresses taught him about a world of sexuality miles away from the whalebone corsets of his upbringing. However the key issue of sexual relationships between people of vastly differing wealth appears to have changed little since his time. In the documentary, an unnamed Egyptian masseur gave insight into this as he tried to entice Everett into a ‘hard sex’ or ‘soft sex’ massage. Politely deflecting the proposition, Everett asked the man if he liked men or women, who replied that he preferred women. When Everett asked how he could perform sex acts on men if he was not homosexual, the man seemed confused and replied ‘it’s my job.’ Therein lies the key issue in relationships that cross these kinds of boundaries. Even outside the world of prostitution, how often do the people from the poorer countries actually love their richer partners, and how much of the attachment is driven by monetary need? Is their even a division in the mind of a very poor person between loving attachment and financial security? How much does the richer partner even mind if their lover really cares for them or not? Is a separate homosexual identity a purely western invention, when a married man with children living in a poor country sees no discord in performing sex acts on other men for money?

There’s no doubt that some cross-cultural relationships work very well, but it seems that in many of them a certain amount of delusion is required on the part of the richer partner that they won’t be abandoned if the money runs out. This sounds like an offensive cliché, but I don’t mean it that way at all – primarily it’s not cultural reasons that lead to this disparity in expectations, but simple economics. It’s impossible to underestimate the effect poverty has in shaping personality, and the same for wealth. Coming from a middle-class background, there are dozens of things I used to take for granted – the idea that people can follow any career they wish, that the norm for romantic relationships is financial and gender equality, that only ‘bad’ people commit violent crime – but these assumptions are founded on the comfortable base of coming from generations of professionals who worked hard to give me such an easy view of the world. There’s no shame in coming from such a background, but it’s crucially important to recognise that our views on life are often hopelessly narrow and things sometimes assumed to be universal are impossible for thousands of people, due to the financial inequality of the world. I could be biologically the same person but I would have vastly different views of the world, life, work, marriage and my sense of self if I had been born in Calcutta, Burundi or even deprived parts of Dublin.

The scandals involving the poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh and his Nepalese boyfriends showed how little has changed since Burton’s day. From watching the documentary, it seemed fairly obvious that few, if any of the young men would have identified as homosexual in the Western sense, but they were happy to play that role (and the role of obsequious, shoe-cleaning servants) for their rich white benefactor. Again, the lines between avarice and affection seemed blurred – the men were not in love with Ó Searcaigh, but they had affection for him nonetheless. From the poet’s point of view, it didn’t seem to matter a great deal to him whether they cared deeply for him or not. The documentary on Ó Searcaigh was keen to portray the Nepalese boys as helpless victims of an evil predator, but this was simplistic and condescending – it seems unlikely they were not at least partly driven by personal gain. The relationships were essentially exploitative, but not hugely more so than many so-called ‘equal’ Western marriages. Maybe the real scandal should be that an economic situation still prevails in the world that allows such relationships to thrive.

the issue with 2:15 is thats already 4 pm

Sugar Street

My Goodreads review of Sugar Street, the third in the Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz (Black Swan edition, translated by William Maynard Hutchins and Angele Botros Samaan)

Two main things struck me while I read Sugar Street: firstly that while I don't know Arabic, I got a strong sense of the elegant economy and poetry of the written language from this translation. The second thing was how much traditional Egyptian middle-class life in the 1920s and 30s as depicted in the book reminded me of Irish culture up until relatively recently. While on the surface there wouldn't seem to be many similarities, the conservative, family-focused, deeply religious patriarchy in which mothers dominated the home felt very familiar. Even the way religion infused the language and thinking of the characters, even the nonbelieving ones, was very like the way Irish culture was for much of the 20th century a Catholic culture. Like in Ireland, families observed religion, gossiped about neighbours, argued about the politics of a young nation and mothers hoped for a civil service career for their sons and a good marriage for their daughters. 

The story covers a long period of time and is a little episodic - there were many subplots that could have been explored more, and some main plots that could have been trimmed. I had limited patience for Kamal's endless romantic vacillating, but was engaged by his nephew Ahmad's adventures working for a Marxist magazine and trying to break free of the constraints of traditional middle-class life. 

Politics runs through the story constantly, as the characters debate and wonder where the new country will go once the double-crossing English are finally gone. It might be advisable to have a wikipedia entry on pre-war Egyptian history open as you read as the various parties and individuals are mentioned without backstory (and there's no reason why they should be, considering the novel was written first for an Egyptian audience.)

This line is so funny. Soccer mom that just gave herself a pelvic injury by doing crescent lunge pose too enthusiastically.

It makes sense that Little Lamb Dragonfly, a certified j/p pining tune, contains a musical echo of a Beatles song.

It's considerably less clear why the song in question is..... Rocky Raccoon

If you could instantly be granted fluency in 5 languages—not taking away your existing language proficiency in any way, solely a gain—what 5 would you choose?

Have One On Me review

In anticipation of Tuesday’s gig, here (finally) is my review of Have One On Me:

It’s been over three months of gradual (gradually becoming constant) listening and finally I’m in a position to deliver a full assessment of Have One On Me, Joanna Newsom’s latest album. My initial reactions were not very favourable – I found her newly softened voice somewhat insipid and the exhibitionist sleeve pictures off-putting – but a lot of this negativity is part of any reaction to a new work from an artist I hugely respect. When faced with change in our idols, we tend to stubbornly retrench, refusing to see anything good in the new. I was similarly cool towards Ys at first, before the spell was cast.

And this spell is the secret to Newsom’s talent. She can conceivably be compared to some contemporary singers, writers and composers, and certainly has drawn inspiration from a huge variety of sources, but like all the best artists she creates a world that is entirely unique and that can only be appreciated on its own terms. Throughout her three full-length albums she has maintained certain thematic consistencies, such as immersion in the natural world, a love of wordplay and elaborate language, a kind of timeless musical dreaminess, acute observations on key philosophical questions and an unapologetic celebration of femininity. Despite the different musical styles of the three works – The Milk-Eyed Mender, Ys and the current album – the continuity and development of these themes mark each one out as uniquely Newsomesque. This is her world, and the listener is a guest in that world.

It’s impossible not to be drawn into this world once you take the time to listen closely to her words and harp playing. Like many who inhabit a heightened, mysterious artistic sphere, Newsom seems quite normal and placid in real life. The songs on Have One On Me are more emotionally direct than anything she’s written before, and clearly inspired by real-life events, but it would be simplistic to take them as a straightforward commentary on Joanna Newsom the person. Instead they are a kind of alternative reality, where the songs’ nameless narrator sings of grandiose love, cataclysmic betrayal and the joy of sheer existence, occupying strange liminent spaces between solidity and air, music and silence, dreams and reality.

The songs vary from heavily orchestrated epics to almost silent, harp-driven elegies. There is a huge variety of instrumentation running through the album, to the point where it almost seems distorted and confused, but Newsom knows what she is doing – a complete listen, though time-consuming, reveals that not a note or a line in this work is accidental. (Headphones are also recommended for listening, part of the reason it underwhelmed me at first was the way much of the musical complexity was lost through traditional stereo speakers.)

Newsom has alluded in interviews before to her albums being inspired by a different element, and she returned to that theme in a recent interview with the Times when she said of Have One On Me that it is “earth and dirt, very grounded”. Certainly, themes of home, while strong on all her previous work, are the carrying force of this triple-CD opus. She returns again and again to the theme of pastoral home, whether in the form of an allegory like in ‘81′, or directly, as in “Occident”, where she sings ‘to leave your home and your family/for some delusion of property – well I can’t go…’.

However, home is not a place of unambigiuous peace. ‘In California’ – placed pointedly at the dead centre of the album – presents the narrator fleeing the ‘trouble and sorrow’ of the world by resolutely ‘abandoning the thought of anywhere but home’. This flight is not joyful, rather it is a denial of life’s fullness, emphasised by recurring references to loss and heartbreak and the statement ‘I am no longer afraid of anything – save the life that here awaits’. Even the most stalwart homebirds can’t hide away forever, and must face the confusion and strangeness of the wider world. The narrator loves her home, but comes to understand that: ‘I am native to it, but I’m overgrown’.

An elusive man is the next most important character in this work, after the constantly present narrator. He stars in the opening track, ‘Easy’ where the hazy joy of lying in bed with a lover is tainted by the narrator’s knowledge that her all-consuming love is not fully returned. The beloved’s ambiguity leads the narrator to ever wilder declarations of undying love ‘I was born to love, and I intend to love you’, ‘Pluck every last daisy clean, till only I may love you’ and so on. Themes of self-effacement in the name of love pop up again and again in the album, most notably in that track where she declares ‘you must meet me to see me, I am barely here’. Similarly, the narrator frequently refers to herself as a fragile creature, a ‘little clock that trembles on the hour’ in ‘In Califiornia’ and ‘your little nurse’ or a ‘princess of Kentucky’ with ‘ankles bound in gauze’ in ‘Go Long’. Yet the album as a whole does not reveal a personality that is likely to to be swallowed up by another, and sharp irony and wit, as well as affection, come to the fore in other songs that dissect that unhappy relationship.

Towards the end of the title track, after the section told from the point of view of 19th-century courtesan and dancer Lola Montez (another creative woman trying to find a balance between self-expression and love), the song swings back to the present-day narrator’s point of view, listing moments from the past that have leapt into sudden relief in her memory. She repeatedly maintains that she was ‘helpless as a child’ when her lover held her in his arms. This helpless longing is expressed musically in a gorgeously swooping vocal arrangement, the very power of which reveals to us, more than any lyrics could, that the narrator has mistaken great sex for great love, and is suffering the consequences of that mistake.

But the narrator has not lost her sense of humour to heartbreak, admitting frankly in the wonderfully rollicking ‘Good Intentions Paving Company’ that ‘I knew right away that the lay was steep, but I fell for you honey, easy as falling asleep’. She is a winning mix of sardonic and sweet in the line ‘I know you meant to show the extent to which you gave a goddang, you ranged real hot and real cold but I’m sold’. The impermanence of the love that she has banked so much on is revealed when she refers to it as ‘this thing we’ve been playing at, darling’ which will only work when the beloved is wearing his ‘staying hat’.

Later in the album,’Soft As Chalk’ looks at the affair with the wryly detached eye of someone who has realised she spent a great deal of time falling in love by herself, as the narrator frankly admits that back in the heady days when she and her man would ‘talk as soft as chalk till morning came, pale as a pearl’, ‘time was just a line that you fed me when you wanted to stay’. That song ends with her calmly wishing her old love well, but acknowledging that her own life must move on:- ‘I have to catch a cab and my bags are at the carousel – and then, lord knows, time will only tell’.

In all these tracks wonderful tunes, arresting lyrical imagery and intriguing musical arrangements breath new life into what is probably the oldest of poetic themes. The only track that could be considered anything resembling a classic ‘f**k you’, is the spooky ‘Go Long’, where frightening images of broken ankles, rooms made of ‘the gold teeth of the women who loved you’ and a burning river are offset by perhaps the most heartbreakingly direct admonishments of the whole album: ‘Who is going to bear your beautiful children…Who will take care of you when you’re old and dying?’. Musically, that track pays homage to the West African influences of Newsom’s early work with a pitch-perfect collaboration between her harp and the Malian kora.

The main story arc of this album is the tale of this ultimately unrequited love, and it’s fitting that the last track, ‘Does Not Suffice’ closes the book on that story. The narrator catalogues the possessions she packs up as she leaves the home she and her man have shared, the ‘pretty dresses…sparkling rings….coats of boucle, jacquard and cashmere’ – a veritable junk-shop of belongings that remind her lover of how ‘easy I was not’  (a line that ties in nicely with the opening track). She goes on to imagine her newly freed lover ‘stretching out’ on a ‘boundless bed’ and sadly tells him ‘everywhere I tried to love you/is yours again, and only yours.’ Sad, but not despairing – the narrator may have initially wanted to immolate her identity and replace it with that of her beloved’s, but has come to learn that real love is the meeting of two equal individuals, not the absorption of one into another.

The narrator’s sense of self is reaffirmed by her celebrations of home, friendship and her femininity. Newsom celebrates motherhood, both that of others and her potential own – the latter in ‘Baby Birch’ a beautiful hymn to a dreamed baby daughter, and the former in the exquisite ‘Esme’, a celebration of the joy a child brings to everyone. She links themes of motherhood, home and creativity together in a way that seems both ancient and thrillingly new, in a piece of art that is firmly, unselfconsciously female in its aesthetic. Newsom’s artistic world does not and cannot define itself in relation to a male prototype. She sings on Go Long  of ‘the loneliness of you mighty men, with your jaws and fists and guitars and pens, and your sugarlip – but I’ve never been to the firepits with you mighty men’. It’s clear that that the world of the ‘mighty men’ is a different world to hers, with a different aesthetic, and even the narrator’s love for one man does not cause her to turn her back on or lose pride in her femaleness. She does not criticise or denigrate the male world, but simply takes for granted that it is different, and not suitable to her mode of creative expression.

The musical feel of this album is quite different to the medieval-style arrangements of its predecessor or the minimalism of her debut, though it shares the common Newsomian themes of rich instrumentation and experimental tunes. Newsom has said of this album that its sound is supposed to evoke a hedonistic, 1920s atmosphere, but the musical styles are broader than that, taking in 70s Californian rock, 60s folk, avant-garde composition and any number of other influences. Colloborators Ryan Francesconi and Neal Morgan bring wonderful warmth to the string and percussion arrangements respectively. Francesconi contributes guitar, banjo, mandolin and the beautifully rich-sounding Bulgarian tambura, used to great effect on the title track. Morgan’s clattering drumwork provides the backbone to some of the best tracks, including ‘Have One On Me’, ‘Good Intentions Paving Company’ and ‘Soft as Chalk’, but his percussion is more than just a backdrop – he plays the drums as a fully realised instrument. Combined with Newsom’s harp – more accomplished than ever – her increased use of piano, and the talent of the many other musicians playing on the album, the informally named ‘Ys Street Band’ are the heart and soul of the most soulful of Newsom’s albums to date.

At over two hours long, naturally not all tracks are top-drawer – the recorders on ‘Kingfisher’ are a little too reminiscent of Pentangle for my tastes, and Newsom has always been prone to cringey lyrics – the title of Good Intentions Paving Company being the most obvious example, though the song’s charm more than makes up for that. Newsom needs to be accepted on her own terms or else her music can be difficult to understand, but the extra effort required pays off enormously. This is a magnificent piece of art, encompassing enormous themes of life, death and meaning, but also small celebrations of the joy of everyday existence. ‘Ribbon Bows’ explores the eternal question ‘God – no God?’ without coming down conclusively on one side or the other, but a powerful sense of transcendence and faith in humanity permeates this whole work – even in despair, the narrator is never nihilistic. Perhaps Newsom’s spiritual beliefs can best be summed up in this wish-blessing from ‘Esme’:

‘May kindness, kindness, kindness abound’.

The more excerpts I read from that Ian "Monstrous Terf/Zionist" Leslie book the more I see that he just rewrote a bunch of tumblr posts. His contextual knowledge actually seems quite shallow - he just writes in the style of "anecdote we all know + reference to much-shared photo + oft-repeated quote" - a style directly lifted from tumblr. And his apparently not knowing abt the beetles photo on RAM from that talk he did with (puke) Tom Holland is a real tell as to the limits of his knowledge. I wouldn't be surprised if most of his research is posts rather than books/primary sources (whatever his bibliography says). His only original writing seems to be some psychology and some song analysis (tho he's stolen a lot of that too eg In My Life trutherism, originally promoted by OSD.)

It all paints a picture of a grimy little opportunist deliberately queerbaiting to sell his book made up of other people's uncredited or barely-credited research. The text I've seen presents that research without sufficient rigour and puts the book in the same category as all the other sloppy, fanfic-y beatles bios. And some fans are falling all over his grotty transphobic ass bc he's "making McLennon mainstream". With friends like that, who needs enemies? There's a better, non-derivitave, non-sloppy J/P book waiting to be written by a decent person. Ian can go back into the hole he crawled out of and take his chickenshit book with him.

Chapter 3: Rulers make bad lovers

New fic: Under his carpet

Under his carpet: Linda Eastman McCartney reflects on the ups and downs her marriage to Paul in a series of snapshots between 1968 and 1990. Chapter 1 of 5 posted.

Plinda fans/Paul superfans dni (JOKING! No sugarcoating, but not a hatchet job on either. Most of it is based on fact, but plenty is invented - speculative fiction an' all that.)

While not shying away from the darker sides of the marriage, this story is primarily intended as a character study about flawed individuals, none of whom are villains. It also explores the tension between visually appearing liberated, as many Boomer women did, and the reality of their domestic lives. A tension which is still relevant today.