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riskeith · 3 years

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oo.. a read more.. how mysterious ;)

shsjjdhdjf hi! it’s pretty and fluffy yes ! some of it have melted away though sadly.. 🥺 how are you? hope your day has been amazing <333

i tried to go to dragonspine last night because albedo’s quest opened up for me a while back and it took me there and i failed like two seconds after so i just went to bed all angry shekdhskdbncj i kept thinking about how easy it would be if you had diluc, xiangling or klee on your team since they do ‘big’ fire attacks that would help with the frost... :(

have you decided that you want to build your whole team or just focus on 1-2 characters? i’ve heard some people say that it’s better to do just 1-2 but i’m hesitant over it... they’re your main team for a reason you want them all to be reliable yk..?

“LEGEND OF KORRA?” omg..... fun fact the first klance fic i ever wrote (never released it though since its still unfinished hskshdj) was a klance lok au! imagine the boys as rival probenders... 🥴 lance waterbender... keith firebender..... 🥵 but thank goodness you decided to give it a shot sjdkfjdk look where it lead us.

i meant that exactly! that’s not negative that’s just life because same here. i ended up just deleting everything when i started uni (the only thing i have left is tumblr) because it’s kind of hard keeping up with fandoms and stuff when the weight of the world is on your shoulders ... :/ even lost contact with practically all my internet friends lmao sheesh. do you still find it difficult to find motivation to write n stuff? (this is such a heavy topic soz)

us on our date.... chillin... suddenly hilichurls attack. incredibly romantic.... <3333 venti to your xiao i wish!!!!! #bringventiback2k21pls 🥺.. dude you reminded me!!!! i was on ao3 the other day (as one usually is) and did you know there are so many genshin fics? i was SO surprised?? kind of fun tho, have you checked them out?

no need to promise!! but you have my undying support <333

ohhh?? you wouldn’t? i mean your reasoning is absolutely valid!! the end was most definitely very disheartening in so many ways lol.... i probably would still tbh i just miss them a lot. like getting a chance to see lance and keith again with the same voice actors n everything??? i think i’d do anything for that LMAO when it comes to story though i have no idea... not really sure what they could do with it. maybe something with lotor?

YOU WATCHED SPIRITED AWAY????!!!?!? BABY I’M SO HAPPY FOR YOU!!!! i’m so so so so so glad you like it oh my gooooood this is the best news ever <333333333333333333 i take it you’re now finished with it; what did you think? 🥺 also howl’s... girl my heart is soaring. i just know you’re gonna enjoy it so much!! aaaaah, let me know when you check it out <3333

icb you’re teasing me like this....,,..... ‘just wait until you read the last section’ i’ll just go die then. that was already so beautiful and there’s more??????? let me go back to my original roots and ask; hand in marriage? 🥺💍 multiverse.... i have questions.... is it like, a one shot for each or is it like.. jumping between the universes? 🥺

stay safe, stay healthy mwah!! 🥰

hiyaaaa~

awww does snow not stay for long where you are? or is it not cold/thick enough to stay 😔 and i’m good! didn’t get as much done as i wanted but tomorrow certainly.. (i say every day FHSKFSD) hope yours is amazing as well <3 :*

FHSDKJFHSDKFHSJD omg ripppp im sorry 😭 but one day!!!! you will conquer dragonspine i can feel it. oooo wait do you not have xiangling yet? :o and also you mentioning diluc reminds me of this tweet i saw here, maybe he isn’t actually optimal for that enviroment AHAHA

yeah i agree with you! I kinda focus on building the traveller most bc i use him a lot of the time, but recently i’ve been trynna build everyone else up too and balance them out. like you said we want them all reliable and they all have different uses and functions, so.

PRO!!! BENDERS!!!!!!!!! omg wait were they gonna be... forced to work on the same team?? 🤪🥵 either way S tier concept. but also um excuse me?? you write fic too?!?!?! “first klance fic i ever wrote” implying there are more??? maybe published ones??????????? i won’t ask for links in case it like outs you LOL but omg??? excuse me?? how is this the first time i’ve heard about it >:(

shit that sucks :(( ugh im sorry you felt the need to do that! :( is it also kinda freeing and relaxing tho? that you’re not involved or have any connections or obligations.. idk sometimes all that overwhelmes me too. sometimes i have a really hard time writing yeah, but that’s also due to various other reasons unrelated to school. like twice a month i tell my friends i’ll quit FHSJFKDSHK but i never do lollll and then sometimes i’ll just get hit with such an intense urge to write and then im like?? i was so stupid for thinking otherwise? (and no worries at alll <3)

FJHSDKFS couples that fight together stay together 🤪 i think that was in one of my todobaku? fics LOL. okay but i saw some leaks (which i don’t condone but welp) suggesting that maybe... venti would return 2 banners after xiao or something so hopefully!!!!!!!!!!!!! i was looking at tier lists too and he was really high up so now im like fuuuuck maybe i can’t spend on my primogems for xiao i’ll have to save again FHSDKJFSD. ngl i was pretty surprised to see so many fics too! but nah i haven’t really read anything, hbu? also did you know there’s an official genshin impact webtoon? i haven’t read it but i am considering itttt

<33333333

AHAH yeah that’s fair tho. i think s8 ruined it so much for me that anything else would make me feel empty sighhhhh. but i was also gonna say something about lotor! honestly i feel like if they did make something else, it’d be a prequel or something, maybe even the prior paladins, so we wouldn’t even get to see klance at all fhkfhsksd.

i really liked it!! not sure if it was bc i zoned out towards the end tho, but i felt like the ending came pretty quickly? or maybe i was just so immersed i didn’t want it to end... ahaha. but i still stand by the fact i love haku sm..... i think i’ll watch howl’s tomorrow! i considered starting it tonight but i still wanna soak in spirited away for a bit so... we shall see <3 but ofc i’ll def let you know all my thoughts when i do

YOU ALREADY HAVE MY HAND BOO!!! you have my whole heart too just take it i’m giving it to you 😩❤👐. it’s one shot for each! I was actually considering making it a multichap with each chap as a new universe, but i have a horrible track record with those and idk that i could make each universe long enough fhdkfjs. ugh honestly i’m tempted to just like send you what i currently have anyway bc i honestly don’t think i’ll ever finish it fhskdf but there are some good moments in there that deserve to be Seen..

thank you!! you too, hope you’re all nice and warm 😘🤩

#marriage anon #wowclunaanswers #long post

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meta-squash · 4 years

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Journal For Plague Lovers & Modernist Literary Style

So I’ve had this theory/idea/whatever in my head for at least a year now about Journal For Plague Lovers and Modernist literature. (Note: I’m talking about the full, unedited lyrics available in the deluxe edition booklet, which you can find my scans of here.) Basically, my theory is that JFPL reflects and uses a Modernist style of writing in order to express feelings and experiences. The Modernist writers really started experimenting with form and meaning and how each dictates or manipulates the other, and there are certain stylistic choices that Richey made in these lyrics that are really reminiscent of the Modernist techniques and experimental styles.

To begin with, JFPL is a notably massive leap forward in lyrical writing for Richey. Which, frankly, is amazing if most of it was written between autumn 1994 when he got out of hospital and January 1995 when the binder was given to Nicky. That means that his lyrical advancement occurred in about 6 months, between the writing/recording of The Holy Bible and Richey’s release from hospitalization, which is incredibly fast. Nicky is always mentioning how Richey’s mind was in high-gear around the time of writing Journal For Plague Lovers, how he was unable to switch off or slow down, which probably accounts both for the advancement and the overwhelming overload of references in these lyrics.

Anyway, I’m just gonna go through some of the main characteristics of Modernist literature/poetry, and sort of look at how JFPL reflects that or utilizes it.

Probably the most obvious is the “cut-up” word/writing style of most of the songs. The Beat poets took cut-up and really ran with it, but it kind of started during the later modernist period. Cut-ups are where a text or texts are cut up and rearranged to make a new text.

I don’t think Richey was literally cutting up texts, but the way certain songs, like Me & Stephen Hawking, Peeled Apples, and Journal For Plague Lovers leap from subject to subject or POV to POV very much seems to emulate that cut-up style. Me & Stephen Hawking is a really good example. In an interview about the album, someone mentioned the weirdness of the lyrics to the song and James responded, “Seriously, you haven’t seen the rest. Seriously, you wouldn’t fucking believe them.” The lyrics clearly have an ongoing theme, but it’s hard to make out at first. They’re very cut-up style, random and almost unintelligible:

Queen mother stuffed for exhibition Three strikes yr out – execution – pizza 2/ Dante III, spider robot, Mount Spurrr Increased plastic surgery for pubic hair Sanitation police, crime of proportion.

Peeled Apples, while clearly political, and Journal For Plague Lovers, clearly personal, also really use the cut-up style. Peeled Apples slams together political/history references with images of personal suffering and popular media as well as just plain bizarre phrases like “Canaries are always behind bars the day of deliverance lied.” Pretension/Repulsion also does this, as it’s just single seemingly unrelated words clustered together separated only by commas. The cut-up sort of style allows a ton of words to be put together where it might not have been so easy before. It’s hard to follow, but it manages to pack a LOT of information into a small amount of space, and creates a sensation of overwhelming reality and/or unreality.

Which brings me to another characteristic of modernism, which was the destabilization of reality, the realization that there is not central truth and that truth is provisional and reality is constructed by the “writer” and the “reader.” Jackie Collins Existential Question Time really utilizes that, as it warps reality into this bizarre sort of talk show asking relationship questions– but you don’t know if you’re the audience or not, or where you/the speaker is, or what the conclusion is meant to be, or what the questions really mean. It’s silly but also serious and you’re not really sure how to take it because it’s so weird. You get a sense of place, of what’s going on, but not enough to feel like your feet are on solid ground and that you’re understanding anything.

Facing Page: Top Left and Virginia State Epileptic Colony do this as well, but in very different ways. In Facing Page, you get the sense of a hospital or institution, flashes and fragments of moments and images from within, but there is never any clarity about what is going on, and the world constructed by the words is obscured from any conclusion or truth or central point, since images of institutionalization are interspersed with phrases like “The scum as jewellery,” “Pig bargaining,” “Christian fraternity meeting Pagan idolatry,” and of course “This beauty here dipping neophobia.” It’s comprised mostly of collections of short phrases, and none of these phrases coagulate or combine to clarify anything or to give the listener-reader any sort of intended message. Virginia State Epileptic Colony also presents a hospital scene, but it is much clearer. Instead, the destabilization of reality comes from spaces in the text, and the repetition. We only get about half an image in 13 lines of text– people (patients) sitting at tables drawing circles in chalk, given medication by doctors, waking to strange lights and being told that they are independent because they are allowed to learn domestic tasks. We have the repetition of “Piggy” (and those double asterisks) 5 times in the chorus, with no true explanation as to what it means, and with two verses, a repetitive chorus, and a two-line bridge, there is so much space in this song, so much emptiness. It is up to the listener to fill that space, that reality, making it something constructed not by the words, but by what isn’t there, the information that the listener has to create for themselves out of the half-image that’s given.

As an extension of the above, the use of stream-of-consciousness (and first person) writing became really popular during the modernist era. Most songs are sort of a form of stream-of-consciousness, but the lyrics on JFPL seem to do it more on a literary rather than lyrical level. More than any of the others, William’s Last Words does it best. It’s literally a Faulkner-style first-person prose monologue without line breaks or a verse/chorus/bridge structure. The original version is clearly a drunk character leaving or attempting to leave a party or show of some sort. It’s sad and nostalgic and self-deprecating but it’s all one unbroken monologue-scene of stream of consciousness speech. This is just a small chunk of the page and a half of text:

Goodnight all, you’re all my friends…remember my wedding day, should’ve heard ole Bill singing, we’ll have a good old ding dong tomorrow, you’re lovely all of you, goodnight godbless I’ll always remember you, hope you liked the concert. I’ll go nice and quiet, I’ll just say cherio, here I go on my way, till we meet again, wish me luck as you wave me goodbye. Yr the best friends I ever had, yes, no, no I’m not a clever chap, I made a balls up again, first, second, third time but not on your time I hope, you’re a part of the world….oo be quiet old Bill, no applause, sleeptight, isn’t it lovely when the dawn brings the dew and I’ll be watching over you. It was lovely singing to you, I won’t forget you.

It’s full of commas and run-on or unconnected sentences, but it is prose that connects to itself rather than lyrics. Still, it seems to start in the middle of a scene and fades away into not much of a concrete conclusion, so we get a moment of consciousness– perhaps the most emotional moment– before turning away. Facing Page: Top Left and Marlon JD do stream of consciousness to some degree as well. Facing Page is not a typical stream of consciousness, but more like a list of things or experiences or associations. In some ways again it makes me think of Faulkner, of the way he writes characters that don’t really know how narrate their thoughts/experiences in words. It never leaves its institutional location or changes the subject to something else, it just rambles about the situation it’s in through fragmentary phrases. Marlon JD is also very stream-of-consciousness, but because it’s already based on a monologue from a film that’s kind of to be expected.

Modernism was also characterized by a sort of “what’s becoming of the world?” reaction, in response to the speeding up of technological advancements and scientific discoveries etc etc, as well as the consciousness of the changes that came from the end of the 19th century and how the new 20th century was shaping up to be. Something that the band specifically notes in interviews about the Journal For Plague Lovers album is the emphasis on information overload, of the speed of technology and information/media consumption, as well as concerns about things like the environment, religion, and global politics/history and the end of the millennium.

Me & Stephen Hawking is the clearest example of this “what is becoming of the world?” anxiety, and the focus on information overload. The main body of the lyric –the verse(s)– never actually made it onto the recording, which just uses the bridge and the chorus. This is probably because the verse(s) are just jumbles of references to history and media and events and ideas. It’s also characterized by swaths of blacked-out lines. Whether the Richey did that or the band did it posthumously, we don’t know. If Richey did it himself, it certainly changes the interpretation of the lyrics, as it adds another layer of “information” (censoring) overload. But the words trip over each other, so many different references all piled in one spot:

2/ Dante III, spider robot, Mount Spurrr Increased plastic surgery for pubic hair Sanitation police, crime of proportion. 3/ Paisleyism and ecumenism and cenotaph bombers [blacked out] wearing policing Soviet labour medals sold for Coca Cola 82 million watch Gorilla Meets Whale

Peeled Apples does the same thing, piling political and historical and emotional and media references in one place until they’re so jumbled it’s hard to make sense of them, showing the anxiety of that information overload and speeding up of communication, creation, knowledge. I’ve always thought that All Is Vanity is a kind of reaction to that reaction, putting the anxiety succinctly into “It’s not whats wrong it’s what’s right / Makes me feel like I’m talking a foreign language at times” and the desire for control or some semblance of order and calmness in “I would prefer no choice / One bread one milk one food that’s all / I’m confused I only want one truth.” Which, again, goes back to that Modernist realization that truth is provisional, reality is constructed, and there is no central point because not only is it all relative, it’s also always moving and changing and growing and shrinking and twisting.

Another characteristic is that of an emphasis on the sexual (in the form of fetish or obsession, usually), and the visceral or grotesque. While JFPL doesn’t really have much of the former, it certainly has plenty of the latter. The most obvious are Journal For Plague Lovers and She Bathed Herself In A Bath Of Bleach. She Bathed Herself really contains the most visceral image in the title, which is, as Nicky calls it, “quite a shocking title.” Aside from the title, the more intense lines are “She thought burnt skin would please her lover” and “Love sat her in a bath of bleach / But salmon pink skinned Mary is still caring.” Even so, the title kind of dictates where the listener’s mind goes with these words, and so with the suggestion from the title, the imagination goes to more grotesque places that the words actually literally contain. On the other hand, Journal For Plague Lovers has some really grotesque imagery. The band sort of cherry-picked lines to record around the more intense parts of the verses. The verses altogether seem to be an image of a rotting self, whether physical, emotional or mental, especially when combined with the “dying relationship” of the bridge.

These perfect abattoirs these perfect actors Babies bones, dustbinned, shorn

Oh such love smeared stimulus Vacuumed pain slow suck luck Wake in hell murder one Troughs o’ bones wade in gore

Weep helpless skewered flesh Milky teeth soured and fetid PG certificate all cuts unfocused Sick in skin embarrassed within

The imagery is really intense but non-specific, creating a reaction of disgust and fragments of gross images without really knowing what we’re looking at or what we’re supposed to be disgusted by. It’s a shock factor that transitions into the bridge, which is a scene of a failing or failed relationship, so that the gross images overlay this moment of romantic collapse, making it even more visceral and pitiful.

Modernism also started really focusing on the meaning and history of words, and how they could be used to create an image without blatantly telling a story. Pretension/Repulsion is the best example of this, especially because James Bradfield specifically noted in an interview that the way the song was laid out meant it felt like Richey was telling him “Look at the words, James, look at the words.” Which makes sense, as it’s just a bunch of individual words divided by commas:

Explored, inclos’d, amaz’d, perturb’d Assum’d, annoy’d, ceas’d, unhinder’d Burden’d, gather’d, agonis’d, lock’d Mix’d, sear’d, receiv’d, unclaps’d

Instead of focusing on a story, the listener-reader is paying attention to the sound of each word and thinking of the meaning behind it. Instead of a narrative, we get flashes of image/emotion for each word. Peeled Apples also relays on knowledge of words and historical references, with lines like “In SB’s Cistine Chapel inabilities wither / Boy smoking cigarette infront of Himmler’s painted ether” and “Nutrition is neuroses for a maelstrom of inadequacy.” Doors Closing Slowly relies on religious knowledge, and its references go very deep. It twists biblical stories and references, and expects the listener-reader to understand the origin and therefore the modified version:

I want your sin third day perfected Lazarus burning Jerusalem Blaspheme, cut dead, Isiah One day birds of prey Israelite

But, like the Modernists, each of these lyrics uses an emphasis on the expectation that the listener-reader will have the literary or historical or vocabulary knowledge to understand the meaning/origin of the reference in order to create a specific image through the twisting or reinterpretation of that reference. It wants the definition and history to expand the story, so that it’s the effort of the listener-reader and not the speaker that will expand the story into something fleshed out and recognizable. Despite the cuts that were made for the studio recordings it’s clear when you read the full versions of the lyrics that every single word is important and researched and meant to be included. There is a history and meaning infused in every reference, and Richey’s brain was going so fast that some of the lyrics feel like they’re piled on top of each other, but at the same time, they seem to build on each other, each reference allowing the listener-reader to glean more meaning the more history or definitions they know.

What I found most telling was seeing the quality of modernist literature that my professor really drilled into us: that modernist lit (especially prose, but also poetry to a large extent) was not necessarily about the plot, and the plot was not the most important thing. Instead of a specific narrative, what was important was the impression or emotion evoked by the words. I always think of the novel Nightwood by Djuna Barnes when it comes to feelings/impressions being more important than the plot; there is a plot, but it’s just a scaffolding or a base for the emotion to build off of, for the reader to interpret and feel from. It’s basically what all of the above is driving to create and express. Instead of having a direct narrative within the lyrics (like 4st lbs or La Tristesse Durera or even, to some extent, PCP or Intense Humming…), it relies on fragments of scenes or references to create an impression or an emotion on the listener-reader. Faster and Of Walking Abortion do this as well, but JFPL manages to take it to another level.

The band, when being interviewed about Journal For Plague Lovers, often talk about how much this album seems simultaneously “of its time” and strangely fitting for the present. In his very last television interview, Richey mentioned that his dream was to “write a lyric which I think is flawless, that makes sense to me, not anybody else. That I think in 15-20 lines sums up exactly how I feel about everything, not just how I feel today, how I’ve felt all my life. Everything I’ve read, everything I’ve seen, everything I believe, that in those 15 lines you just say it all.” Considering the sheer amount of knowledge and imagery and information packed into just the 13 songs on the album (not to mention the 20 or so more in the binder that have never been published), I think that’s partly what Richey was trying to do with these words. We’ll never know if he thought he succeeded, but instead of being left with a clear-cut picture of his opinions (or accusations) like THB, instead we are left with impressions of experiences, feelings, and events created through the fragments of information all slammed together– everything, all in 15 lines.

Aside from one or two songs, the tracks on JFPL don’t really have a defined narrative. Instead, they rely on fragments of images, emotions, references, and ideas to form an impression in the listener’s mind. For example, Peeled Apples, the most reference-filled track on the album, doesn’t actually tell a straightforward story or clear opinion the way the more political tracks on THB did. Instead we get an opening line that is clearly political followed by a much more personal line: “Riderless horses, Chomsky’s Camelot / Bruises on my hand from digging my nails out,” and the rest of the lyrics that follow are a mass of references, from the bible to Japanese post-Hiroshima films to the Birdman of Alcatraz to George Orwell, intermingled with lines that are abstract and emotional. Yet somehow what the listener-reader gets out of is an impression of frustration, political anger, and historical/political/personal entropy. Me & Stephen Hawking is similarly reference-packed, and out of that comes the impression of overwhelming technological/information enhancement and concern for the survival of both the environment and the self.

Doors Closing Slowly is full of religious references, and leaves us with an impression religious and personal doubt, and the overwhelming feeling of rejection and dejection towards both. And they’re so twisted together there are some lines, like “Love the soul not the body / Let me forgive the word ruins / I wanted to kill but my tears love,” where you don’t know if it’s a personal reference or a religious one.

There’s a sense of desolation and loneliness, of overwhelming exhaustion at the uncertainty of truth. William’s Last Words, on the other hand, feels desperate, lonely but wishing not to be alone. As a prose monologue, it is more personal-sounding, able to sound rambling and drunken because of the amount of space the words are allowed to take up. Within the words there’s the impression of nostalgia and a sort of rainy quietness, a mental fading, and a sort of muffled personal mourning.

In All Is Vanity, there is a sense of desperation. For control, for understanding, for being understood. Especially in “I’m confused I only want one truth / I really don’t mind if I’m being lied to,” there’s an impression of simultaneous frustration with monotony and a desire for it, a frustration with and desire for beauty, love, a non-existent central point, a conflict of interest on the personal level. This Joke Sport Severed feels bleak, an impression of rawness or over-sensitivity being dealt with through rejection and repression, hiding or turning away from everything that hurts. It includes the odd bridge, “Repress yr emotion / Repression yr revenge / Stoic shitter nerve end,” which radiates anger as well as dejection and frustration. The song leaves an impression of being curled in a corner somewhere, barefoot, confused, frustrated and lost and nursing wounds and pretending nothing outside of your little corner exists.

As I mentioned before, Facing Page: Top Left absolutely leaves the listener-reader with an image of hospitals and institutionalization and the monotony of that existence. It also gives an impression of discomfort, a body seen in fragments rather than as a whole, and a loss of agency. It feels frustrated, searching, but also pointedly disgusted both with the self and with others. The final two lines, for me, pack all of those feelings in a short punch packed with words and images: “Dipping neophobia. Gillette Cuticura. Flak. PS. Recovery. Huh / Central dissolves. Exceed dosage. Subscribed. Cleansed. Boring.”

Journal For Plague Lovers also reflects that disgust, to a much higher degree. The grotesque imagery gives the listener-reader a distinct feeling of uneasy revulsion, but also a sort of pity or helplessness, both for the self and for others that seem to exist in the song. Especially because it’s difficult to make out who the speaker is and what they feel– which puts all the interpretation on the listener rather than the speaker. It makes the listener-reader feel conflicted, uncertain whether they should feel horrified or sad.

Again, most of the songs don’t really have an obvious narrative, just images you can kind of construct meaning out of. But on the off-chance we do get a narrative, it is left so vague and open-ended it’s barely a narrative at all, but a fragment left open at both ends. In Virginia State Epileptic Colony, we get a momentary picture of a hospital scene, but we leave it before we get anything but an impression. She Bathed Herself… gives an incomplete narrative of a mentally ill woman and her views/attempts at romance, a fragment of her thoughts and feelings and experiences, and a fragment of the speaker at the bridge demanding “Brush her hair, no one else will / Don’t hurt her anymore, stop hurting her.” Marlon JD is also fragmentary, but some explanations can be found in the film it references, because most of the lyrics are a monologue from Reflections In A Golden Eye, or descriptions of scenes from the film. William’s Last Words starts abruptly, practically in the middle of a sentence, and peters out into nothing without the narrator going anywhere or doing much. It’s a long, sad, drunken ramble with no central point (as there is no set or stable truth), in which the narrator seems to circle around whatever it is he wants to say without really saying it, and loses steam before he gets to it. Instead we’re left with this strangely contradictory set of ending sentences, (and, apt for the album and its circumstances) a conclusion without any real meaning or conclusion:

“If I sing a song I’m down a scale or up a scale. I’ve come a long way, really, even for a tone deaf singer, if you want to know.”

Nicky also tends to mention how the binder was filled not only with lyrics, but with paintings, scans of other authors’ literature, collages, drawings, prose, journal entries, and other sorts of clippings. He makes it clear that the binder itself was meant to be a work of art. Again, this places emphasis on the form and the importance of references and of the whole being seen to create an impression rather than each little piece being interpreted. This does make me wonder how much more to the lyrics and art within there really was, and if within the whole thing as a work of art Richey did somehow reach his goal of writing the perfect lyrics or the perfect album or the perfect piece of art expressing himself. Either way, I think the inclusion of Richey’s art and non-lyric writings and things in the booklet are a sort of attempt at allowing the whole to give an impression, because the inclusion of the drawn-upon diagrams of Dante’s Infero with the lyrics to Journal For Plague Lovers, or a Christ figure with Marlon JD, or Richey’s notes from therapy with Pretension/Repulsion, flesh the piece out into art as a whole, in which the visual aspect also informs the creation of the impression upon the viewer (or listener-reader).

In Journal For Plague Lovers, modernist style is used and reflected to talk about Richey’s own experiences and thoughts, but also to capture and express a very specific moment and emotion and idea without saying it outright. There is never any mention of that information overload, of apprehension about the coming millennium, no outward or straightforward reference to his time in hospital or his views on relationships or the self. Instead, each song leaves us with an impression, a feeling rather than a clearly defined narrative or message. There’s an internalization of meaning, of imagery, so that it must be sensed and pulled out of all the jumbles of words and emotions; this time, it isn’t the plot or the message that is important, it’s the impression and feelings of an experience and a moment in time that is simultaneously constant and passed, intensely, vividly present and faded away like a memory.

#manic street preachers #msp #journal for plague lovers #richey edwards #manic street preachers meta #jfpl #old meta repost

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