#and i also like on a beach at night by walt whitman | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

esperwatchesfilms · 3 years

Text

Dead Poets Society (1989)

John Keating: O Captain, my Captain. Who knows where that comes from? Anybody? Not a clue? It's from a poem by Walt Whitman about Mr. Abraham Lincoln. Now, in this class you can either call me Mr. Keating or, if you're slightly more daring, O Captain, my Captain.

John Keating: I was the intellectual equivalent of a 98-pound weakling. I would go to the beach and people would kick copies of Byron in my face.

The above gif is misquoting a bit here. It annoys me, so I’m providing the proper quote:

John Keating: Because we are food for worms, lads. Because, believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold, and die.

[after hearing "The Introduction to Poetry"] John Keating: Excrement! That's what I think of Mr. J. Evans Pritchard. We're not laying pipe! We're talking about poetry. How can you describe poetry like American Bandstand? "I like Byron, I give him a 42 but I can't dance to it!"

John Keating: This is a battle, a war, and the casualties could be your hearts and souls.

John Keating: We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering; these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life.

John Keating: Beauty. Romance. Love. These are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring, Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish ... What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here -- that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

McAllister: "Show me the heart unfettered by foolish dreams and I'll show you a happy man." John Keating: "But only in their dreams can men be truly free. 'Twas always thus, and always thus will be." McAllister: Tennyson? John Keating: No. Keating.

John Keating: Language was developed for one endeavor, and that is... Mr. Anderson? Come on, are you a man or an amoeba? [Todd stays silent] John Keating: Mr. Perry? Neil Perry: To communicate. John Keating: No! To woo women!

Todd Anderson: YAWP! John Keating: There it is! You see, you have a barbarian in you after all! Now, you don’t get away that easy. There’s a picture of Uncle Walt up there. What does he remind you of? Don’t think, answer. Go on. Todd Anderson: A m-m-m-madman. John Keating: What kind of madman? Don’t think about it! Just answer again. Todd Anderson: A cr-crazy madman. John Keating: No, you can do better than that. Free up your mind. Use your imagination! Say the first thing that pops into your head, even if it’s total gibberish. Go on, go on! Todd Anderson: A-a-a sweaty-toothed madman. John Keating: Good God, boy, there’s a poet in you after all! There. Close your eyes. Close your eyes! Close 'em! Now, describe what you see.

Todd Anderson: Uh, I-I close my eyes. John Keating: Yes. Todd Anderson: Uh, and this image floats beside me. John Keating: A sweaty-toothed madman. Todd Anderson: A sweaty-toothed madman with a stare that pounds my brain. John Keating: Oh, that's excellent! Now, give him action; make him do something! Todd Anderson: H-His hands reach out and choke me. John Keating: That's it! Wonderful, wonderful! Todd Anderson: And all the time he's mumbling. John Keating: What's he mumbling? Todd Anderson: Mumbling truth. John Keating: Yeah, yes. Todd Anderson: Truth like-like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold. John Keating: [some of the class start to laugh; Todd opens his eyes, Keating blocks them to get him to close them again] Forget them! Forget them! Stay with the blanket. Tell me about that blanket! Todd Anderson: Y-Y-You push it, stretch it, it'll never be enough. You kick at it, beat it, it'll never cover any of us. From the moment we enter crying t-to the moment we leave dying, it'll just cover your face as you wail and cry and scream. [Todd opens his eyes, there’s a long pause, then the class applauds] John Keating: Don't you forget this.

John Keating: Even though others may think them odd or unpopular; even though the herd may go, [imitating a goat] John Keating: "That's ba-a-a-a-ad." Robert Frost said, "Two roads diverged in the wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."

Neil Perry: [finds Todd sitting alone on the roof] Hey! Todd Anderson: Hey. Neil Perry: What's going on? Todd Anderson: Nothin'. Today's my birthday. Neil Perry: Is today your birthday? Happy birthday! Todd Anderson: Thanks. Neil Perry: What'd you get? Todd Anderson: [indicating the desk set lying beside him] My parents gave me this. Neil Perry: Isn't this the same desk set... Todd Anderson: Yeah. Yeah, they gave me the same thing as last year. Neil Perry: Oh. Todd Anderson: Oh. Neil Perry: [laughing] Maybe they thought you needed another one. Todd Anderson: [laughing] Maybe they weren't thinking about anything at all. The funny thing about this is, I-I didn't even like it the first time. Neil Perry: Todd, I think you're underestimating the value of this desk set. [picks it up] Neil Perry: I mean, who would want a football or a baseball or... Todd Anderson: Or a car. Neil Perry: Or a car, if they could have a desk set as wonderful as this one? I mean, if-if I were ever going to buy a desk set twice -- [both boys chuckle] Neil Perry: -- I would probably buy this one. Both times! In fact, its shape is... it's rather aerodynamic, isn't it? [walks to the edge of the roof] Neil Perry: You can feel it. This desk set wants to fly! [hands it to Todd] Neil Perry: Todd? The world's first unmanned flying desk set. [Todd throws it off the roof, giving a yell (or a yawp!) - papers fly everywhere and things crash and clatter to the ground while the boys laugh] Neil Perry: Oh my! Well, I wouldn't worry. You'll get another one next year.

Charlie Dalton: [answering disconnected phone] Welton Academy, hello. Yes, he is. Just a moment. Mr. Nolan, it's for you. It's God.

John Keating: There's a time for daring and there's a time for caution, and a wise man understands which is called for.

John Keating: Phone call from God. If it had been collect, that would have been daring.

The above is also not what is said in the film. “Tell me what you feel!” is the actual line.

*didn’t put us *up* to anything - these gifs misquoting are killing me.

ESE: 120/100

50 +5 for young Ethan Hawke +10 for Robin Williams +4 for the alternative four pillars: Travesty. Horror. Decadence. Excrement. +5 for Kurtwood Smith -10 for Neil’s father, Mr. Perry +5 for Keating walking straight out of the classroom on day 1 +5 for Carpe Diem +5 for Keating instructing the boys to rip the shitty introduction to poetry out of the book +2 for Keating’s whistling -5 for Cameron being a little wussy boy +2 for “rude squeak” +2 for sneaking out to read poetry +10 for the centerfold with poem written on the back +10 for the Congo creeping through the black, cutting through the forest with the golden track -10 for calling Todd out in front of the class +5 for the bed chase that finally gets Todd involved +5 for Neil getting the part of Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream -10 for students like Hopkins +15 for Keating helping Todd to find his voice +5 for saxophone -10 for the same desk set -5 for bringing the two girls to the DPS meeting -5 for kissing the forehead of a girl you barely know while she’s asleep -10 for the over-reaction of Chet -10 for corporal punishment +10 for “Nuwanda” not breaking -10 for Neil’s super-unreasonable father +15 for Keating’s advice to Neil -5 for Knox’s persistence -5 for Neil lying to Keating about talking to his father +10 for Neil’s performance as Puck +5 for the amount of praise Neil receives for his performance +10 for Keating’s concern -10 for suicide aftermath -15 for Cameron being a fucking fink +20 for Nuwanda (Charlie) punching Cameron in his stupid face -10 for the school using Keating as a scapegoat +20 for Todd’s show of appreciation and those who joined in solidarity on their desks +10 for Hopkins joining and standing on his desk, too

68 notes · View notes

tragedygroupie · 4 years

Text

all of the references Lana Del Rey has made in her songs

1. Tomorrow Never Came- the line “lay lady lay on this side of paradise in the tropic of cancer” is a double literary reference to This Side of Paradise by F Scott Key Fitzgerald & Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller as well as a reference to the Bob Dylan track Lay Lady Lay. the lyric “you would always stay & be my tiny dancer” references the Elton John track Tiny Dancer. “you said you’d meet me up there tomorrow” is a reference to the Beatles track Tomorrow Never Knows.

2. Burnt Norton- first poem of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets

3. Lust for Life- the line “we’re the masters of our own fate/ we’re the captains of our own soul” is paraphrasing the last two lines of Invictus by William Ernest Henley. “my boyfriend’s back & he’s cooler than ever” is a direct reference to the Angels track My Boyfriend’s Back. “they say only the good die young” is another direct reference, this time to Only the Good Die Young by Billy Joel. “blue skies forever” is actually the title of a track by Frankie Miller. the title “lust for life” is a reference to the Iggy Pop album of the same name.

4. Body Electric- the line “I sing the body electric” is a Walt Whitman poem & an episode of the Twilight Zone

5. Ride monologue- the line “relying on the kindness of strangers” is a reference to the character Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire. "when the people I used to know found out what i had been doing, how i had been living, they asked me why" echoes a line from Wuthering Heights, where Catherine is referencing Heathcliff

6. Religion- the lyric “ypu’re my religion” is a quote from Catherine in Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms

7. Lolita- the whole song is paying homage to the book by Vladimir Nabakov

8. Off to the Races- the line “light of my life, fire of my loins” is a direct quote from the intro to Lolita

9. Music To Watch Boys To- the lyric “nothing gold can stay” is a line from Robert Frost’s poem Nothing Gold Can Stay

10. Gods & Monsters- the line “life imitates art” paraphrases a line line from the Decay of Lying by Oscar Wilde

11. Born to Die- the lyric “take a walk on the wild side” references Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed. the line “lost but now i am found, i can see once i was blind” paraphrases lyrics from Amazing Grace

12. Million Dollar Man- the line “one for the money, two for the show” is a line from Elvis Presley’s Blue Suede Shoes

13. Summertime Sadness- the lyric “I'm on fire baby” is a reference to the Springsteen track I’m On Fire

14. Carmen- the title is also a song featured in Lolita; the line “relying on the kindness of strangers” is a reference to Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Called Desire

15. This is What Makes Us Girls- “drinking cherry schnapps in the velvet night” is a reference to Lolita, velvet night is when Humbert’s journey with Lo begins

16. American- “my my my, oh hell yes, honey put on that party dress” is a reference to the Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers track Last Dance with Mary Jane

17. Cola- the line “Harvey’s in the sky with diamonds & he’s making me crazy” is an allusion to the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

18. Ultraviolence- the line “he hit me & it felt like a kiss” is a direct reference to the Crystals’ track He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)

19. Sad Girl- the line “he’s got the fire & he walks with it” references Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

20. West Coast- the line “you’ve got the music in you, don’t you” references the New Radicals track You Give What You Give

21. Terrence Loves You- the line “ground control to major Tom”, is a reference to the Bowie track Space Oddity

22. The Blackest Day- the line “got you where I want you, I got, I got you where I want you now” references The Flys track Got You Where I Want You from the soundtrack of Disturbing Behavior.

23. God Knows I Tried- the line “drink it like tequila sunrise” is a direct reference to the Eagles track Tequila Sunrise

24. Love- the line “don't worry baby” is a direct reference to The Beach Boys track of the same name

25. Coachella (Woodstock On My Mind)- the line “I'd trade it all for a stairway to heaven” is a direct reference to the Led Zeppelin song Stairway to Heaven.

26. Cherry- the line “I fall to pieces when I’m with you” is a direct reference to the Patsy Cline track Fall To Pieces. the lyric “my cherries & wine, rosemary & thyme” references a line from Nancy Sinatra’s Summer Wine. the line “parsley sage rosemary thyme” references Simon & Garfunkel.

27. Get Free- the line “I want to move out of the black into the blue” is a reference to the title of Neil Young’s track Out of the Blue.

28. In My Feelings- the line “I’m smoking while I’m running, on my treadmill but I'm coming up roses” is a reference to the title of the Elliot Smith track Coming Up Roses.

29. Black Beauty- the song shares its’ title with the Anna Sewell classic.

30. 13 Beaches- 13 Beaches opens with dialogue from Carnival of Souls.

31. Hope is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me To Have But I Have It- the line “hope is a dangerous thing” is a quote from Shawshank Redemption.

these are all the references i can find !! please update if you can

#lana del gay #lana del rey #lust for life #born to die #body electric #13 beaches #hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have but i have it #get free #in my feelings #cherry #coachella #love #god knows I tried #the blackest day #lana del rey lyrics

101 notes · View notes

pressedinthepages · 4 years

Text

Vorfreude (Part 4)

Fandom: The Witcher

Pairing: Jaskier/Reader

Word Count: 2438

Rating: M

Series Masterlist

a/n: Oh my goodness, this little series has gotten to be so much more than what I thought it would be! So many of you sent me wonderful ideas for this chapter, and I hope that I tied it all together with my own little twist nicely :) Also, the song/poem that Jaskier sings is an excerpt from "On the Beach at Night" by Walt Whitman.

(There is a link on my page where you can be added to my taglist :D)

Warnings: fluff, childbirth, oh shit we have a kid, eskel is a BAMF

As the end of a long pregnancy nears, a few new faces find their way to your home.

“Oh, dear Gods…” you groan quietly, running your hands over your belly. Everything is swollen and sensitive; your stomach, your ankles, your fingers, hells, even your elbows don’t feel quite right. You are laying on the bed, one pillow shoved between your legs and another under your back, trying to finagle a way to get comfortable. You may have finally found it, settling down gently into the comfort of your bed and letting your eyelids drift slowly closed.

And then...the baby hiccups.

Your eyes shoot open, suddenly wide awake once more as your stomach jumps and churns. You sigh, sitting up and propping the pillows against the headboard behind you. “Hmm, you poor thing,” you hum, rubbing little circles over your belly in an attempt to soothe the child. You call quietly for your husband and he comes bounding into the room, his chemise hanging off his shoulder and hair all disheveled.

“Everything all right, my dear?” Jaskier’s eyes, previously filled with worry and unhinged anxiety, visibly calm at the sight of you, relatively comfortable and healthy.

“Baby has the hiccups, love.”

Jaskier hums sympathetically, moving to sit next to you at the edge of the bed. His hand joins yours on your stomach, resting lightly over where the baby jumps. “Is there anything I can get to help?”

You shake your head with a sigh, resigned to spending the rest of your days as a human punching bag. “We’ll be alright, but would you stay and lay with me?”

Jaskier smiles, still as vibrant and bright as the sun, shifting to rest at your side. You lay back down as well, Jaskier’s head resting on your chest. He begins to sing softly, shocking no one, his hand resuming the careful circles over your belly. You let his voice soothe you as well, but you recognize the song as the one that he has been working on for your child.

On the beach at night,

Stands a child with her father,

Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,

While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,

Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,

Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,

Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,

And nigh at hand, only a very little above,

Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades…

The baby has settled, allowing you to finally do the same. As Jaskier finishes singing his hand drifts further down, kissing your tender breast as he moves.

“You know,” his hand trails up the inside of your thigh, “I’ve heard of a way that we might be able to speed things along…”

“If you touch me right now Jaskier, so help me Gods you will not live to see the morning.”

“Fair enough.”

***

The leaves have turned vibrant shades of red and orange, the eyes of the multiple Witchers around you blending right in. Apparently, Ciri had begun to turn a bit stir-crazy being stuck in Kaer Morhen for the past year, driving all of them more than a little mad. Finally, Geralt had relented to her ceaseless pestering for a change of scenery-on one condition. Yennefer, Eskel, and Lambert would join them.

They had all shown up at your little cottage a few days ago, having sent a letter with Yennefer’s familiar the evening prior. Upon your acceptance of their visit, Yennefer had opened a portal in the woods nearby and a veritable stream of mountainous men stormed through, followed by the palpable energy that both Ciri and Yennefer exude in their very bones.

“Oh, you are just going to adore them, my love. These men, no no, these magnificent heroes, they are just so wonderful and inspiring! Well, Lambert can be a bit of an ass, but can’t we all sometimes?” Jaskier wrapped his arm around your waist as he prattled on, the two of you having perched yourselves right outside of your little home.

All at once, you saw a blur of bright color and shiny silver hair burst from the treeline and sprint towards you. Jaskier laughed, stepping forward to catch the young woman in his arms. Ciri squealed in delight as Jaskier picked her up and swung her around as if she weighed little more than a toddler. “Jaskier, oh how I’ve missed you!”

You watched the rest of her entourage emerge from the cover of the forest, curious of these people that have claimed this young woman as their family. Geralt stepped out first, a stunning woman with dark black hair at his side. He looked infinitely more at ease than you had seen him in some time, and the woman moved with such grace and confidence that you had found yourself almost compelled to follow her every word.

As introductions were made for Yennefer you crooked an eyebrow at Geralt, wordlessly inquiring about the others. He grumbled, turning back to look where the gaps in the trees were swallowed by darkness. “They said that they didn’t want to intrude.”

You scoffed, walking (more like waddling, in your extremely pregnant state,) to the very edge of the woods. “You would not offend a woman so much as to refuse her hospitality, would you?”

You heard some brief scuffling, followed by the sound of someone getting cuffed on the back of the head. “Shut the hell up, if you want to stay out here in the fucking woods that’s your business, I’m gonna go get warm.”

A figure stepped out from the darkness, imposing with a cocksure swagger to his stride. He had a broad chest and a trim waist with the telltale pair of swords peeking out from behind his shoulder. His hair was dark and slicked back, his eyes the color of a light golden ale. A long, sharp scar cut through his right eye and down onto his cheek, two shorter ones accompanying it on either side.

“No, Lambert, wait, we shouldn’t-” Another man burst from the darkness, taller and broader than the other. He was large, about the same build as Geralt. He too had double swords strewn across his back, and his armor was dotted with studs and other pointy things that you had no doubt had protected him numerous times. His hair, lighter than Lambert’s, was floppy and hung just below his ears, and his eyes shone with a dark amber that was amplified in the light from the rising sun. He grimaced as he approached Lambert, a nasty scar over the expanse of his cheek pulling the corner of his lip in a gruesome fashion.

You knew that these two men could be very frightening to the wrong kinds of people, and would fiercely protect those that they love. Geralt had been easy enough to read, you just had to show him that you weren’t scared of him and wouldn’t walk on eggshells around him. You figured these two would be the same.

As they approached you had stood your ground, putting your hands on your hips and taking up as much room in the atmosphere as you could. Your belly jutted out, very obviously with child, and the two men looked you up and down before the second man moved to pull Lambert back into the cover of the forest.

“Ah, ah, no.” Your voice rang through the silence, both men freezing and looking back at you. “This is my home, I get to say whether or not my guests are intruding. I will not have you out here, freezing your bollocks off in the woods behind my home just because you would be so stubborn. Come.”

You turned and strode (again, waddled,) back to the house without a second glance behind you. You knew that they were following though, Jaskier nodding triumphantly before beckoning you all inside to a warm breakfast and a rest by the fire.

Now, as you sit and sort through the various herbs and other plants for the evening’s meal that you have all been in the forest collecting, you cannot ignore the feeling of something...off in your belly. However, you’ve been feeling some form or another of off for the past nine months, so you chalk it up to just another twinge of your pregnancy.

Ciri comes to sit at your side, passing you a generous handful of creeping thyme. “Thank you, Princess.”

“You know,” she murmurs, only barely loud enough for the Witchers to hear from where they are spread nearby, “you and Jaskier are the only people left who call me that.”

Her voice still has that strong, regal ring to it, but now it is tinged with an air of sadness and your heart breaks for her. You wrap your arm around her and pull her close, holding her against your shoulder. You would be more than happy to just sit and stay here for a while, letting yourself bask in the warm afternoon sun that peeks through the treetops.

Your baby, though, apparently has other plans.

Suddenly, you feel a warm wetness spread from your core. Just as that registers in your brain your body is wracked with pain as the most intense cramping you’ve ever felt burns through your entire abdomen and around your back. You cannot help the gasp that escapes your lips, gritting your teeth and pinching your eyes shut in an effort to quell the pain.

Ciri shoots up, calling out for help. Everyone comes running, all of the Witchers with a sword drawn, Yennefer with energy crackling from her fingertips, and Jaskier (bless him) with his precious lute brandished like a club. You try to bring your knees up to your chest to curl away from the intensity, but nothing helps. Jaskier is immediately at your side, his hands everywhere as he tries to figure out how to help you.

You can hear Ciri using her regal voice, commanding with just her tone. “She is in childbirth, we need to get her back to the cottage. Yennefer, can you make a portal back there?”

The mage nods, walking a few steps away and thrusting her arms open, a circle of energy opening in the air and leaving a void in the center. Geralt groans, sheathing his sword and running his hand down his face.

The pain subsides as quickly as it came, leaving you breathless in relief. You moan, tight and pinched as you think of what is to come. “Can you stand, my love?” Jaskier asks, his bright blue eyes shining with anxiety.

You nod, moving to push yourself off the ground. Geralt moves to your side, fitting himself under one of your arms as Jaskier does the same. The two of them support you as you approach the portal, bracing yourself for the yanking force of the magic.

***

Your screams ring through the darkness, only broken by the latent crackling of the fire. Your body quakes with the near constant cramping, only a brief reprieve every few minutes. Jaskier sits at your side, your hand in his, and Ciri rests at the foot of the bed, somewhat unsure of how to help. Apparently, the healer has ironically fallen ill, leaving you all to your own devices. As another wave of pain washes away for a moment, Eskel peeks his head through the doorway.

“I uh-everything going alright in here?”

You swear, falling back into the pillows as Jaskier dabs your forehead with a towel damp with cool water. Ciri tells him that while she can tell that you’re well on your way to delivery, she has no veritable idea of what to do to help you. Eskel nods, coming into the room to kneel at your side. He looks up at you, something intense and forlorn behind those striking irises.

“I can-I may be able to help.” You blink at him, your chest heaving with every breath that you take. “I’ve assisted with the animals when they would have babies back at Kaer Morhen, and I was actually with a healer when she helped a woman in childbirth too. It’s been a while, but it’s better than nothing…”

You nod, taking his hand in yours and gripping tightly. “Thank you, Eskel. That would be greatly appreciated.”

Fire licks along your skin as a new surge of pain burns through you. Eskel moves to kneel on the bed, resting his hand on your leg before Jaskier speaks up at your side.

“Are you sure, love? I mean, he’s going to see everything…” His voice trails off as you glare at him with the cool intensity of a thousand suns. “No, no you’re right, I’m sorry.”

Eskel’s voice is low and strangely soothing as he gives direction without a waver of room for debate, “Jask, go sit behind her and support her weight. Ciri, could you please grab a fresh bowl of warm water from the fireplace?”

You can feel Jaskier’s heart beating frantically against his chest where he sits at your back, his arms wrapping around your chest in a sweet embrace as his nose finds the crook of your neck. You sag into him, falling limp with exhaustion before the next bout of pain breaks through you.

***

The next few hours pass by in a blur, filled with sweat and tears and screams. Jaskier croons lightly in your ear, helping you drink water and doing everything that he can to assist. Eskel is a welcome presence in the room, a sanctuary of rational thought in the whirlwind of chaos that your mind threatens to spill.

Pressure in your abdomen builds and builds as Eskel instructs you to push, every muscle in your body tight and straining with each passing moment. Your nails dig into Jaskier’s thighs as you give one final shout, a sudden release of pressure following. You close your eyes as Jaskier holds you tight to his chest, neither of you daring to breath and break the fragile silence in the room.

And then, the baby cries. They cry, and you sigh and sob in the same breath. You can feel Jaskier’s tears on your shoulder as Eskel wraps a clean cloth around the child, bringing them up to lay atop your stomach.

Eskel smiles, the scar along his cheek endearing with the gentle expression. “Welcome to the world, young lady.”

You know that there is still much to be done to care for your newborn daughter, but you are content to stay in this moment for a while longer, with Jaskier’s arms around you and your daughter resting against your body.

#jaskier x reader #fluff #pregnancy #childbirth #softe

24 notes · View notes

hms-chill · 4 years

Text

RWRB Study Guide: Chapter 7

Hi y’all! I’m going through Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue and defining/explaining references! Feel free to follow along, or block the tag #rwrbStudyGuide if you’re not interested!

Crêpe-eating tourists (157): Crepes are a thin, flat pancake traditionally filled with sugar, but commonly filled with other toppings. They are an iconic French dish and are popular with tourists both for this reason and because they are typically inexpensive.

Place du Tertre (157): A square in Paris, it is in the Montmarte district, which is known for its art history.

Crusty baguettes (157): Baguettes are a French bread that is meant to be crusty on the outside and soft on the inside.

Le Monde (158): The most popular French newspaper.

Fromagerie Nicole Barthélémy (158): A famously wonderful cheese shop in Paris.

Parisian cheese shop (158): French cheese are known for being fancy and especially good.

Pisces (159): A zodiac sign known for being compassionate, artistic, and intuitive. (more)

NYU (159): New York University.

The Met (159): The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a famous art museum in New York.

Joanne (160): JK Rowling, who wrote the Harry Potter books, and has been pretty consistently homophobic and transphobic on twitter.

Freddie Mercury (161): Lead singer of the band Queen, Mercury never officially came out, but he had long-term relationships with both men and women and was known for his camp performances, and there are claims that he was “openly gay”. His flamboyance and camp performances, as well as his relationship with partner Jim Hutton, essentially demanded that people simply take him as he was. He died of complications from AIDS in 1991, one day after admitting openly that he had been diagnosed four years earlier. (More)

For context within the book, he wrote “Don’t Stop Me Now”

Elton John (161): A famous British musician. He came out as bisexual in 1976, then as gay in 1992. He and his husband, David Furnish, became civil partners in 2005, the day they became legal in the UK. They were officially married on the ninth anniversary of their civil partnership, the year that gay marriage was legalized within the UK. (More)

Bowie (161): David Bowie, who was a bi British musician and actor who, in 1976, described his bisexuality as “the best thing that ever happened to me”. His wife (who was also bi, and with whom he often shared partners) claimed that he had a relationship with Mick Jagger, though his bisexuality has been consistently erased, both during his life and since his death. (More)

Again for book context, Henry’s dog is named for David Bowie

Jagger (161): Mick Jagger, an English singer/songwriter and member of the Rolling Stones, known for his promiscuity. As mentioned above, he and Bowie pretty clearly had a relationship, though his Wikipedia makes no mention of queerness. (More)

Oakley Street (161): A street that runs through an affluent borough of London.

Stonewall (161): The Stonewall Inn in New York City is a gay bar. The riots against police brutality there in July of 1969 are heralded as the beginning of the gay rights movement.

SCOTUS decision in 2015 (161): The Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage across the US.

Walt Whitman (161): An American poet who wanted to become The American Poet and saw himself as the quintessential American. His poetry often deals with his queerness, and he absolutely slept with Oscar Wilde in the late 1800s.

Fun fact; he is celebrated in the movie The Dead Poets Society, which is incredibly popular with Sad Gay English Majors and which Henry would definitely have seen.

Laws of Illinois 1961 (161): In 1961, Illinois became the first state in the US to repeal its sodomy laws.

White Night Riot (161): A series of riots in San Francisco protesting the lenient sentencing of the man who killed Harvey Milk, the first openly queer politician. The riots were the most violent queer uprising since the events at the Stonewall.

Paris is Burning (161): A 1990s movie celebrating drag ball culture in New York. It celebrates in particular queer communities of color in the late 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic was at its peak.

“If I die of AIDS...” (161): This is a real photo; you can find it here. The man’s jacket could refer to a form of protest called “die-ins”, where people with AIDS would go to a homophobic politician’s office or another public place where they were refused treatment and simply not leave until after they died. (see it here)

Chop my own tit off (162): Fun mythology fact; the Amazons (warrior women from Greek mythology) actually did this to make themselves better archers.

H fucking W (162): George HW Bush, a former US president.

George (163): George Villers was the boyfriend of King James the I/VI, and Prince George, Duke of Kent, was rumored to be in a polyamorous relationship in the 1920s.

Edward (162): Edward II was a famously gay king. He was may have been "wedded brothers" with Piers Gaveston and may have also had a relationship with Hugh le Despenser the younger following Gaveston's death. (More)

James (162): The British king known for translating the Bible and being just... indescribably gay and very deeply horny. He promoted his boyfriend, George Villers, to the highest non-royal position in the UK within a few years of starting to date him. James’s friends actively tried to set him up with hot guys for their own political gain.

Alexander (163): Alexander Hamilton was an incredibly bi founding father. He’s remembered for founding our current national banking system, having the first ever American sex scandal, and for literally never shutting up or knowing how to stop being A Lot All The Time.

Catalina (164): Catalina is an island near Los Angeles. On a more meta level, St. Catalina was a respected writer.

June (164): June Carter Cash was an American singer/songwriter/director/comedian.

Tricky Dick (164): Richard Nixon, a president remembered for wiretapping his opponent.

Taft (165): 27th president of the United States.

Eisenhower (165): 34th president of the US.

Baby (166): this is what Henry’s mom calls him; I wrote a thing about it here.

Daily Mail (166): A trashy British tabloid.

Lollapalooza (167): A music festival in Chicago known for setting fashion trends and having lots of drugs.

Joni Mitchell (167): A singer/songwriter known for her innovative use of the guitar, including unique tunings, chords, and a unique fingerpicking/strumming style. (Listen here)

Cocaine (168): A highly addictive drug. It is snorted, smoked, or injected, and while it makes people feel more confident or forget their problems, the highs from it last only up to about 30 minutes, which often drives people to take it more frequently. Side effects (aside from addiction) include a loss of appetite, irritability, and increased mental health issues.

Spitfire (168): Someone with a quick temper or willingness to fight.

High as a kite (169): Someone who’s “high as a kite” is on a lot of drugs and is still enjoying the high.

Clean (169): Drug/alcohol free.

Stiff upper lip (170): Ability to seem determined or hold it together in the face of hard times.

A levels (170): A UK test taken for admittance to college, similar to the ACT/SAT in the US

Henry V at RSC (171): Henry V is a Shakespearean history play about the life of Henry V, especially focused on the events of the Hundred Years’ War. RSC, or the Royal Shakespeare Company, is a Shakespeare theater company in London.

Travis County (171): The Texan county where Austin is located.

Surfside (171): A beach in Texas.

Adderall (172): A prescription drug taken for ADHD but commonly abused by students to help them stay awake for all-nighters or focused for unhealthily long study sessions. However, given McQuinston’s claim that Alex has undiagnosed ADHD, it likely helped him to be able to focus and helped his brain work the way it was expected to.

Almond milk (vs. dairy) (173): Texas has a huge dairy industry, and almond milk is not great for the environment.

The Gun File (173): American gun law is so deeply broken.

WASPy Hunter’s Harvard pencil cup (175): Harvard is a prestigious college in Boston; it has a reputation for being mostly rich white folks.

Iron curtains of gerrymandering (175): Gerrymandering is a form of drawing lines for voting districts to disenfranchise marginalized voters. It is a form of skewing elections to keep power in the hands of the powerful that divides marginalized votes, making people of color or poor folks the minority in their districts, therefore erasing their votes on a broader scale.

Vision-boarding his funeral (175): a vision board is typically made to inspire someone to pursue a goal.

Parks & Recreation (175): A popular American sit-com focused on the parks and recreation department in a small town in Indiana.

Leslie Knope (176): a Parks & Rec character. One of her defining traits is an aggressive, overwhelming love for the people in her life.

Mid-century rug (177): Mid-century furniture and style is characterized by lots of color and playful patterns (following the more reserved WWII period in the 1940s); it is rising in popularity again as a classy yet fashionable look.

J14 (178): A teen fashion/celebrity magazine.

Sacramento Bee (178): The largest newspaper in Sacramento, CA.

Southerness (180): In positive lights, the American South is known for its genuine, warm, unselfish hospitality.

Jane Austen my life (180): Jane Austen is a British author whose novels star lower/middle class women who fall in love with rich men. They typically try to avoid these men for large portions of the book, or at least have rather negative feelings about them due to a misunderstanding or other failure to communicate.

LSAT (181): the test taken for admittance to law school.

Carmarthenshire (183): A largely agricultural county in South Wales. As a tourist destination, it is known for its wide range of outdoor activities.

Llwynywermod (184): A royal estate in Carmarthenshire, the biggest building of which is a renovated three-bedroom farmhouse. It is surrounded by the rolling green hills common to south Wales.

Finals (in the US) (185): At US colleges, a semester’s final tests (typically worth up to 30-40% of a final grade) take place the week after classes end.

Stamp on his forehead at The Tombs (185): Tombs is a bar near Georgetown. According to reviews, and “Tombs Night” parties, where students celebrate their 21st birthday and get their foreheads stamped at the end of the night, are a Georgetown tradition.

Jumped in Dalhgren Fountain (185): Dalhgren Fountain is in the center of Georgetown’s campus. Swimming in it is a Georgetown tradition.

Summa cum laude (186): “with greatest honor”.

Ceviche (186): A seafood dish native to Peru that spread to Mexico, where it contains lime, avocado, chili peppers, onions, and cilantro.

Palm Room (187): The gateway to the West Wing, the area of the White House where most politics happen.

Hoe Dameron (190): A reference to Star Wars character Poe Dameron, a rebel pilot and the first Latino main character in the series.

Prince Buttercup (190): Princess Buttercup is the heroine/love interest in The Princess Bride,

West Hollywood (190): One of the most prominent gay neighborhoods in the US.

“Call Me” (191): The most popular song of 1980; it was originally written for the film American Gigolo and inspired by the film’s opening sequence of a character driving along the coast of California. (Listen here)

“So Emotional” (191): An absolute bop about enjoying being in love. (Listen here)

“Don’t Stop Me Now” (193): A Queen song where Mercury sings to both a man and a woman; it’s a huge bop. (Listen here)

In-N-Out (194): A fast food restaurant/burger chain native to California and unavailable in other states.

Animal style (195): Animal style burgers are an In-N-Out staple; it includes the typical burger toppings, along with mustard fried into the patty, pickles, onions, and extra spread.

French-fries-dipped-in-milkshake (195): a truly god-tier American dessert tradition.

“O captain, my captain” (196): A reference both to the idea of a lacrosse team captain and to Whitman’s poem, “O Captain, My Captain” (as mentioned above, Whitman was a deeply gay American poet).

Burberry (200): A posh British brand of clothing known for its classy, traditional pieces.

Cats that caught the canaries (200): A cat that caught a canary is a person who looks smug or satisfied.

Mother hen (201): A “mom friend” or someone who will do everything they can to look out for people they care about, sometimes to the point of it being annoying.

—-

If there’s anything I missed or that you’d like more on, please let me know! And if you’d like to/are able, please consider buying me a ko-fi? I know not everyone can, and that’s fine, but these things take a lot of time/work and I’d really appreciate it!

—–

Chapter 1 // Chapter 6 // Chapter 8

#rwrb study guide #rwrb #red white and royal blue #alex claremont diaz #henry fox mountchristen windsor x alex claremont diaz #henry fox mountchristen windsor #bea fox mountchristen windsor #june claremont diaz #nora holleran #pez okonjo #English Major Brain™#English Major Brain™️#rwrb analysis #red white and royal blue analysis #rwarb #rwarb analysis #rwrb fic ref #rwrb reference

19 notes · View notes

ruminativerabbi · 5 years

Text

Virginia Beach

Those poor people in Virginia Beach! They weren’t children. They weren’t soldiers. They weren’t young people dancing the night away in a cool nightspot. They weren’t worshipers in synagogue or people gathered in church for Bible study. Nor were they high school kids rushing from home room to their first classes of the day. In other words, they were just people—regular, grown-up, working people busily attending to their non-flashy jobs in a non-flashy office compound in a city known mostly for having a pretty beach. And now they appear actually to have met posthumous the fate that I feared—but also half-expected—would end up being theirs: front page news for a day or two, then the subject of a follow-up story buried somewhere in the back of the first section a few days later, then, depending on the newspaper and the politics of its editorial board, either forgotten entirely or followed up a couple of days after that with a human interest piece describing of some of the victim’s funerals and then allowed to sink into gun-violence oblivion.

Mass shootings are resembling more and more hurricanes in this violent land of ours: named in the first place to make it possible to keep them all straight in your mind, but mostly forgotten anyway as soon as the skies clear…other than by the people whose homes they ruined or whose livelihoods. Yes, everybody remembers Sandy…but mostly because it inflicted something like 70 billion dollars’ worth of damage. But what about Beryl, Chris, Florence, Helene, Isaac, Leslie, Michael, and Oscar—to name only Atlantic hurricanes that hit the United States in the last year? My guess is not so much. Unless you had to deal with the destruction these storms left in their wake personally, probably not so much at all!

People think about things in the abstract entirely differently than when they are asked their opinion about the very same issues not as pristine philosophical concepts but rather as nuts-and-bolts issues set into the real-life world of actual people. The most famous example, known to most from Philosophy 101 in college, is the famous “trolley-car problem.” It has a thousand different versions, but the basic concept is always that the same people who speak loftily and movingly about the inestimable value of human life—and who claim wholeheartedly to accept the corollary of that idea, namely that it is impossible (i.e., not only morally reprehensible but actually not doable) to place a specific dollar value on a specific human life—those same people when presented with the dilemma of a trolley-car driver having to choose between plowing his run-away vehicle into a crowd of thirty healthy kindergarten children or veering off to the side even though it will mean hitting a terminally ill centenarian who has just a few days left to live invariably say they would aim at the old man rather than take the lives of thirty little children. So much for the inestimable, thus uncalculatable, value of human life!

There are lots of variations. You may have heard the version featuring an individual standing next to a hugely fat man on a bridge and watching a train (not a trolley in this version for some reason) hurtling towards the thirty children. The only way to stop the train is to shove the fat man off the bridge onto the tracks below, which act will almost certainly save the children’s lives at the expense of the fat man’s. It’s basically the same situation as the one with the trolley-car conductor, yet whereas a clear majority almost always say that they would be okay about flipping the switch to save the children at the expense of the elderly sick guy, a majority almost always also say that they would not go so far as actually to shove the fat man off the bridge to accomplish exactly the same goal. (For a fascinating examination of these issues from a Jewish point of view by Tsuriel Rashi, a professor at Bar Ilan University in Israel, click here. You won’t be disappointed!)

To translate this into modern American terms is simple: we all say that we think that the loss of even a single life is tragic, but we have become so inured to gun violence in our country that we only respond viscerally when there is something particularly horrific about the incident: merely being shot to death by a maniac with a gun is nowhere near enough in today’s America to sustain the interest of the nation over more than a day or two. (Oh yeah? I heard that! Columbine is near Denver and Parkland is near Miami…but where exactly is Highlands Ranch again?)

The question, as always, is how we should respond to yet another of these incidents. I have to admit that I have trouble keeping them all straight in my head—and I’m guessing that that’s how we all feel. To militate for stricter controls on gun purchases, to insist that the government find a way to make guns useless other than in the hands of their legitimate owners (which wouldn’t have worked in Virginia Beach, since the shooter owned his guns legally), to push for more intensive background checks before people are permitted to acquire firearms—all these seem like reasonable steps forward, none of which would infringe on any non-criminal, mentally-stable citizen’s right to bear arms. But there’s also an attitudinal change we need to work towards and, at that, not one specifically related to the NRA or to the Second Amendment but rather to the way we think of the victims of these shootings.

They appear briefly on the front page of the nation’s newspapers for a day or two. If there is something particularly gruesome about the incident that took their lives, then their hold on our national imagination is stronger—and, indeed, the victims at Columbine, Orlando, Parkland, Pittsburgh, and Charleston actually have become part of our national narrative. But what of the rest?

I took note the other day of the two-hundredth birthday of the most original of all American poets and Long Island’s greatest son, Walt Whitman. I’ve been a fan for a long time—the boy in my story “Under the Wheel” who walks around high school with a copy of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in his knapsack was my adolescent self—and my admiration for the man has only grown over the years. I mention the anniversary of his birth on May 31, 1819, in Huntington, New York, however, not merely to take note of his bicentenary, but because he, of all people, suggests to me how to respond to the endless spate of gun murders in our nation.

If there was one thing Whitman stood for, and in every conceivable way, it was the sacrosanct autonomy of the individual. Over and over in Leaves of Grass the poet returns to that specific idea, but also to the one he presents as its corollary: the paradoxical notion that the justification for democracy itself rests in the core concept that the individual possesses an inviolate right to live free of the constraints of others and the restraints of society…and that the perfect nation (in his unabashed conception, our own) is one in which citizens band together to promote a society that promotes the inalienable autonomy of the individual.

In other words, the core concept that permeates all of Whitman’s work is that, unlike in the world of insects where the swarm is the thing and the individual bugs that make it up are basically indistinguishable from each other even in their own eyes, in the world of human beings the individual is not merely the building block of society but an entire universe unto him or herself, one that has no more need of the permission of others to rotate on its own axis and at its own speed than the Milky Way needs the permission of other galaxies to travel endlessly through the cosmos on its own and in its own way.

My proposal is that we honor Whitman’s memory by rededicating ourselves to the notion that each man, woman, or child killed in an act of senseless gun violence is best to be taken not a mere individual, but as the nation itself, and that the incident that took that person’s life is thus correctly to be understood as an act of aggression not against that one man or woman but against the American people itself. That core concept—that the individual is the nation and the nation is each of its citizens—is Whitman’s personal gift to the question of how to respond to gun violence in America.

A young man of eighteen, Kendrick Ray Castillo, gave his life on May 7 in the STEM School Highlands Ranch shooting in Douglas County, Colorado, while trying to disarm one of the two shooters who had entered the school building. (Two others joined him in the effort, both of who survived.) Kendrick was lionized in the national press briefly, particularly since the Highlands Ranch shooting occurred just a week after the shooting at the University of North Carolina Charlotte campus in which a different young man, Riley Howell, also lost his life while selflessly and bravely trying to tackle the gunman and thus to give his classmates time to escape. Both men were heroes and deserve to be remembered as such, but as the days pass and the stories of these two particularly school shootings—just two among eight shootings in American schools this year so far and surely not the last—join non-school incidents (148 this year so far and counting) in becoming impossible for any of us to keep straight in our heads, we need to resolve to consider each loss separately and to feel personally aggressed against whenever an innocent life is taken by some angry person with a gun. E pluribus unum does not mean that when we come together as a people we abandon our identities as individuals, but just the opposite: that, as Whitman wrote over and over, the republic exists as a monument to the supreme value of the individual and so, from membership among the many comes the strength of the one to endure….and to flourish unimpeded by the violent machinations of others. The attacks that took the lives of 6,027 Americans (not a typo: click here) in acts of gun-related violence so far this year alone are attacks against the republic itself because each American individual is the nation. That was Whitman’s greatest lesson and it the one I suggest we all take to heart as we attempt not to file Virginia Beach away as just one more tragedy to take stock of and then to move on from.

#Virginia Beach #Walt Whitman #Gun Violence #Kendrick Ray Castillo #Riley Howell

40 notes · View notes

lizardinaustralia · 5 years

Text

Week Two & Three

3/2/19 - 3/15/19

March 2nd: I spent the day in Sydney with Liv, Alyssa and Liv’s cousin Ana. We hung out at Ana’s dorm at the University of Sydney (which is way nicer than my dorm) and went to a glitter party. Later in the day we went into downtown for the Marti Gras parade but- get this- I didn’t see any of the parade. We got there way too late and there were hundreds of people all over. Even I wasn’t tall enough to see, unfortunately.

It was still a really fun night and I enjoyed being able to travel to Sydney and have a few drinks and then take the train all the way back to less than half a mile walk from my dorm. It’s great. (pictures here)

March 4th: My first day of classes! Class was pretty fun. My first Australian lecture was the best. My lecturer (he made it a point to make sure we knew he wasnt a “professor”) was hilarious and he swore a lot so I was entertained.

Oddly, at the UOW they don’t have passing time. Like, if you schedule your classes back to back you have no chance of getting to your next class on time. My first lecture ended at 12:30 and my next one started at 12:30. Luckily, “lecturers” are pretty understanding of this and they don’t lock their doors after class starts like back at home.

Overall, I like Uni so far. Having it only 2 days a week is great because it lets me chose when I do my homework and study, making it easier to do it when I’m feeling good and motivated. Not having work helps with that too. Going back is going to be hard, I already know it!

March 5th: Russel and Nicole got to Sydney! In the morning I traveled to the city for a meeting with an agency and then headed over to meet them at their Airbnb! It was very exciting to see familiar faces. We hung out and waited for Jake to get into the city.

When he got there I was really happy! I was already missing home, so they helped a lot. We took a ferry around Sydney Harbour to Manly Beach and had some weak drinks. My mojito tasted like lemonade. After that we decided not to go out in Manly beach anymore. We headed back to Sydney and all went out that night. It was fun just joking around with everyone! Here are some pictures from the day!

(keep reading for more)

March 6th: We had a fancy dinner! I can’t remember the name of the place, but we had a lot of great food. I had the best red wine I have ever tasted. Russel ordered the bottle, I really don’t know how much it costed but it definitely had to be really expensive. I had the fish special which was pretty good! That was definitly fun- and it was the first time I have had real food service since I’ve been here. Australia is more into counter-service than table service. Also, since they don’t tip, the service is really bad. Servers never come back to check on you becasue they don’t care if you order another drink; it doesn’t benefit them!

This trip will forever make me an advocate for tipped wages, without a doubt.

March 7th: We flew to Arlie and went to bed right after because traveling is tiring. Arlie Beach is amazing! Our Airbnb was on the bay and it was two story so the windows overlooked the water and there were mountains in the back. Wait- why describe it when I have a picture?!

March 8th: So this is the day I faced a crazy fear of mine. I WENT SCUBA DIVING!!! It was incredible. I wasn’t going to do it, but then everyone else decided to so I had to. I’m very glad I did. It was uncomfortable at first, the breathing part. And my ears felt really weird. Oh, and I was scared the whole time that my lungs were gonna collapse because apparently thats possibe- so I never fully breathed out a single time. I made it though!

The fish were very pretty, I wasn’t scared of touching them becasue I had a wetsuit on. Also, I never let go of the diving instructors hand once. But that’s pretty normal, I think,

All in all, it was a great experience.

I have a scuba vlog you can watch here (its an under-water vlog). A vlog of the Arlie Beach Day Cruise you can watch here. And Here are some pictures of me in scuba gear and being a weirdo.

March 10th: Back in Wollongong for classes! We read Walt Whitman “Songs of Myself” and it made me regret not bringing Paper Towns (they make a lot of references to that poem in that book).

March 12th: Lynch and I took the train back to Sydney to hang out with Nicole, Russell and Rita. We had conveyer belt sushi (which was amazing) and went to the aquarium! It was a very cool aquarium (would’ve been cooler if they had sea lions). I have a vlog of that too! Watch it here. We planned on going to the wildlife center as well but they closed before we went in.

That night we went out for drinks and I ended up staying out very late (3:30am). Unfortunately, I had to wake up at 7am the next morning. Me and Jake zombied to a McDonald’s and fell asleep at one of their outdoor booths (lol) and went to the wildlife center once they opened. I kid you not I saw the biggest crocodile ever- I had no clue they were so big. That thing is a superior being. Oh and quokkas are cute when they’re asleep but sadly I didnt get to see him awake and smiling.

March 15th: Today is the 15th, it’s been three weeks since I’ve been here. I’m having a great time! I’ve just beein hanging around with Jake, I think we’ve played 7 games of pool. We walked to the light house today and then just explored around “The ‘Gong.” I am definitely due for some relaxation. :)

#journal #march

2 notes · View notes

musicmixtapes · 6 years

Text

August 15th, 2018 Mix

Happy Thursday! I hope you enjoy this mix, I had a lot of fun curating a wide variety of songs that span over several different genres. Spotify Mix 1. Changes by Langhorne Slim - This songs moving acoustic sound and light hearted sound really correlates with the meaning behind it, the flowing feeling of life changing and the confusion of stepping into a new phase of life and being in the dark, but being ready for it at the same time. I think that this song really emotes the way that people grow apart during important shifts in life and how there is both beauty and sadness in this, it can be viewed as both because it represents growth and maturity. 2. Peach Scone by Hobo Johnson - Quite possibly the weirdest mix of musical genres in a song that is very strange but so much fun to listen to and very easy to sing along to also. Johnson combined a conversational spoken poetry and letter style message to someone he is in love with unrequitedly and adds a really cool guitar rhythm and beat to the back to turn it to a funny song. It makes you think about a first love or crush that you've had and for some reason can't let go of. I definitely never thought I would be into a song like this but the easy going vibe to it and the reoccurrence of the "maybe it's the thought of not being so alone" adds such a powerful to the center of the song. 3. The Record Player Song by Daisy the Great - The harmonies in this song immediately attracted me to this niche little artsy indie song that describes the ways that girls with a certain aesthetic try to portray themselves as being elusive and musically inclined, but in all reality are just misunderstood and a little self centered who don't really understand themselves. I think its so important that there is a song that pretty much outlines the "manic pixie dream girl" trope while validating that there is an issue with categorizing girls into one big lump even though they too are confused with their identity. 4. I Can't Tell What The Time Is Telling Me by And The Kids - I was so surprised to discover this perfect blend of rock and pop and that it was a sound that wasn't overplayed at all, mostly because, well, this band is pretty low key on the alternative rock scene. The musicians' proficiency is equivalent to the song's meaning which is always really cool to see with young bands. The essence of the song combines a person searching for deeper meaning with the current generation and the problems that lie within it concerning poverty and the epidemic sweeping the country; but it also talks about caring about someone while being unsure if they reciprocate feelings, smaller topics embedded within a bigger issue. 5. Bad Girls by M.I.A - This was a fun choice for me because I am in love with the show "The Mindy Project" and this song reoccurs in several of the episode when the main character, Mindy, is going to work and doing something that exemplifies strong female power, which we always love to see. I think that MIA the artist always adds a badass female persona to her music and opens up the possibility that not just male hip hop artists can be badass and have that gangsta style in their music. The beat along with the synth sounds is really catchy and great to pump up a night or a morning workout. 6. Art School Wannabe by Sorority Noise - I think the title basically sums up what the song is all about: basically the trope of having a tortured artist life and having to realize that maybe suffering doesn't always have to occur as much as artists think it needs to in order to create "good" art. I like the fact that a post punk garage rock band can laugh at their own perceived artist persona and that maybe life is a combination of highs and lows and the happiness can be portrayed within music too and can make enjoyable content as well. From a review of the song, a critic compared the song to the expression, "You can wear black on the outside and still be happy on the inside" which describes it quite well. 7. Hannah Hunt (cover) by I'm With Her - I am pretty sure I included the original song by Vampire Weekend in a past music mixtape, but my mom played this version in the car one day last week and I completely fell for this one. Something about the female take on this male to female love song made me think of it in a completely new light and the use of the mandolin and violin as well as the acoustic guitar completely transformed the song from a "feels" indie slow song to a folky indie song that breathes new life into it. The mandolin solo in the middle of the song combined with the violin solo made me feel l was kind of in the middle of an empty field listening to it. 8. This Is The Last Time by The National - Completely not acoustic or uplifting, in comparison this song is all about something ending and not wanting it to, but knowing it needs to because it is unhealthy and addictive. The National has come to my attention more and more recently because of their ability to include so many pieces of a band and make such simple sound at the same time, with such precise musical technicality. Berninger is such a proficient songwriter and is able to put a name and metaphor to feelings about relationships that us mere mortals are not always able to do. I think it's interesting that he has said in the past that he is very influenced by the writings of great poet Walt Whitman, as his influence is very clear in The National's song lyrics. 9. Table For One by AWOLNATION - This song comes from AWOLNATION's most recent album that was released a few months ago called "Here Come The Runts" which includes a lot of rock heavy ballads with very different storylines all centering around feeling like the smallest person in a group and being an underdog all the time, which I think is very relatable to a large demographic. I liked this song in particular because of the large swell of the chorus and it's sound shift in comparison to the very chill verses. The song's meaning is not that hard to understand from just listening to it once or twice, being that a summer love occurred and now one half of the equation is done with it, leaving the speaker at a "table for one". 10. Lady Grinning Soul by David Bowie - This romantically styled piano ballad is the last track off of Bowie's iconic album from his persona's Aladdin Sane perspective, which is a lot of people's favorite and has since then turned into kind of a cult classic in terms of music. The title, of all things, perplexed me the most and upon further inspection I discovered that a "lady grinning soul" refers to the feminine characteristics of a man's persona, which is so modern and ground breaking, especially for 1973 when this song was released. Bowie often talks about having a fantastical and idealized romantic obsession with people which didn't always pan out to be releastic, which totally correlates to the eclectic sounds of his music. 11. The Little Things That Give You Away by U2 - Taken from a commenter on Genius Lyrics this song is about: "Bono surviving an accident; a car accident it seems. He’s leaving clues all along the album about “a near death experience” that he has stated having no much long ago." This made me definitely think about the song in a different light and added much more depth to it for me. It has a classic U2 original sound that only the voice of Bono can give to a song, especially the deep writing that is focused in on a specific experience but can translate to much bigger world issues at hand, in this instance, communication and the trouble with people not being able to speak to each other normally. 12. Smoke Signals by Phoebe Bridgers - I could totally see this song being written as a poem first, being primarily that it follows like a storyline entirely and tells about a person reaching out constantly to the speaker in several ways in metaphor of a smoke signal on a beach. Bridgers voice is so soft and beautiful and makes you lean into the meaning of the song and listen carefully to every word there. I'd also like to point out the main use just of the bass guitar, a very quite additional guitar and the swell of string group that swells during the chorus which adds a very cinematic experience to the listener. She later revealed in an interview that this song was written to an ex lover and about their relationship and the complexities of it which is very heartfelt and personal. 13. Wes Anderson by Alex Lahey - Titled as the iconic director of our time who comes out with quirky adventure and life stories, Lahey created her one Andersonian love story within this song and brings us through a journey of her own with someone and the small things that one does with a lover can be the most special just because it's with that person who is held to such a high importance in our live's at the time. This song is just very simply written and laid out, not having to figure out that much to enjoy it because it's clear and concise about being a love song and it doesn't need to do anything more than that to be good and appreciated. 14. Big Sis by SALES - Very much reminded me of the beginning of Sonia Richardson's "Ruin Your Night" except instead of swelling and becoming a rock song, it was content with remaining a bedroom pop/dream pop style of song which I really liked hearing. I think the meaning behind the song can head in a few different directions but I heard it as being with someone who isn't content with themselves because they are trying too hard to be like someone else, most like their "big sis" which is well understood due to the repetition of that line which is pretty crucial to the song. But I think that the minimalistic style of song that is becoming popular in the indie world is really likeable. 15. Gap in the Clouds by Yellow Days - A singer and bedroom producer, artist Yellow Days came out with this song when he was only seventeen years old which is in itself impressive, but the fact that the music is so soulful and vintage sounding made me appreciate his youth behind the song even more. The artist explained about the song that, "It's about being in a depressed state for so long that your sky is full of clouds, but then that special someone makes a gap in those clouds and they can light up your world again" which is so beautifully put because it definitely describes love's ability to influence such a diverse range of music, even from someone with so little years on the earth. 16. Two Slow Dancers by Mitski - This track was released just a few days ago and I was so excited about more new music from Mitski, an amazing artist who is coming more and more popular on the alternative scene, having toured with Lorde on and off throughout the past year and doing shows on her own as well. This song lives and breathes nostalgia and the feeling of being young and slow dancing in a school gymnasium and wanting to recreate that feeling with a new love no matter what age you are. The feeling of being the only people in the whole world while in a dinghy school dance is so special, and as older people trying to stay the same is so difficult and sad. Needless to say, Mitski got it perfect. 17. 4am by girl in red - If a song were to correlate to anxiety and the overwhelming feelings one gets while trying to fall asleep, this would surely be that song because it's exactly what it is. Another great example of a young artist who is breaking onto the bedroom indie pop scene, girl in red describes how the feeling of thinking too much can cloud judgment and create this bedtime hysteria and creating an insomnia nightmare in such a short song. Songs like this are so good to listen to in order to gain the insight that music doesn't need to be seven minutes long to give a deep meaning into someone's emotions and thoughts. 18. Feeling Whitney by Post Malone - I'm not going to lie, when my little brother first put this song on in the car, I did not expect much from it because of his pension for heavy rap music that breaks the bass stereo system, but I was completely taken aback and completely shameful at my snap judgment just because of the artist that had created this song. Malone's completely unabashed story of his drug addiction and the struggle to try to find good influences who could help him get through a hard time in his life tugged at my heart strings so hard. The really interesting chord progressions totally impressed me along with his super folk inspired voice which rivals sounds that come from The Lumineers and Mumford and Sons. I would like to hear more of this from him for sure. 19. Someone Great by LCD Soundsystem - At first, I was convinced this song was about losing someone that the speaker was in love with but didn't appreciate fully and now wasn't able to talk to. In fact, it definitely could be perceived as a multifaceted song in terms of meaning, pertaining to losing someone and how everything that happens in life is colored gray by the loss of that person because it can't be shared with that person anymore. Upon research and reading I found out that this is actually about the death of James Murphy's therapist of all people, and then all of the details of the song really clicked into place for me and reached new levels of love for this track. I think it's so important to write about losing people that aren't just family members or loved ones, maybe just people you grow to care for platonically or professionally. 20. Los Ageless by St. Vincent - I have featured St. Vincent many times on my mixes by now because she deserves that and more at all times in her musical career. I believe that she has released this track as a single recently, as I have heard it a couple times on the radio recently and it has become one of my favorite car bops to dance in my seat to and then realize that the person in the car next to me is looking at me singing and dancing in the car. But although it is very much a dance electronic song, it still goes to the regular depths of meaning that all of St. Vincent's songs have, as it's about the complete juxtaposition from her other favorite city to talk about (New York). The you in the song can refer to losing a lover, a friend, a place, youth, fame, money, etc... I love this because the interpretation is left up to the listener. Thanks for tuning in, see you next week! Julia

2 notes · View notes

artpressing · 6 years

Text

Pretty. Odd. Literature Masterlist

Table of contents:

Quotes

Themes

Poets and Authors

Appendix

Used Quotes:

Track #3 She’s a Handsome Woman

“..Beat backbones Grazed the poem and made it strange I wasn't born to be a skeleton...”

This connects to:

Arthur Rimbaud: A Season In Hell: Delirium I: The Foolish Virgin

"...”I am a widow... - I used to be a widow... - oh, yes, I used to be very serious in those days, I wasn't born to become a skeleton!”... “

On the Quote and my additions:

A Season in Hell was a self-published work, that is in a way different from Rimbaud’s previous work. It is a also a bit harder to understand, so it’s worth knowing that he was under the influence of alcohol, hashish and possibly opium. It is more visible in some chapter than other.

The Foolish Virgin is about a girl confessing being charmed by the Infernal Bridegroom, who, as you might think does not come of as a gentleman.

“..."I listen to him turn infamy into glory, cruelty into charm.” ...” is what she says about him.

It might be a representation of the relationship between Rimbaud and Verlaine.

Not being born to be a skeleton speaks about being born and dying and putting an emphasis on the living in between.

Track #7 Northern Downpour

Hey moon, please forget to fall down Hey moon, don't you go down You are at the top of my lungs Drawn to the ones who never yawn

Jack Kerouac: On the Road

“...They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!..”

On the Quote and my additions:

The quote above is what inspired this post, and I ran into it before the tenth page. It is the most known part of the book and one of the most famous quotes of Beat prose.

I think that this quote is about appreciating strangeness the others might find unappealing, and chasing after it, even if that may cost someone ‘normally’ desirable things such as diamonds, luxury.

It’s appreciating simpler things in life, or the experience of life and filling it with as much as you can, going after the most interesting people.

On the Road is mostly Kerouac writing about things that are at least partially real, stories that happened to him, and you could also think about Pretty. Odd like a tour journal in songs.

Track #15 Northern Downpour

“... We must reinvent love. Reinvent love, reinvent love...”

In connection with:

Arthur Rimbaud: A Season In Hell: Delirium I: The Foolish Virgin

"..."He says: "I don't love women. Love has to be reinvented, we know that. The only thing women can ultimately imagine is security. Once they get that, love, beauty, everything else goes out the window: all they have left is cold disdain, that's what marriages live on nowadays. Sometimes I see women who ought to be happy, with whom I could have found companionship, already swallowed up by brutes with as much feeling as an old log. ...”

More to be added later.

Themes:

The Sun, the Moon and the Stars:

The Sun, the Moon and the stars were almost always been a common theme in literature in literature.

To name a few examples where they are used:

Shakespeare’s Romeo compares Juliet to all three things, but one of the most well known lines from the play is:

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the Romantics didn’t shy away from the sky symbolism either. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a great example. Not that it would be much of a surprise, the romantics were in a strong connection with nature.

All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the Moon.

Not that it would be much of a surprise, the romantics were in a strong connection with nature.

The Sun and the Moon and their contrast was also often mentioned in the works of the Symbolists. Here are a few lines from the recently mentioned Arthur Rimbaud, from the poem titled Eternity.

It has been found again. What ? – Eternity. It is the sea fled away With the sun.

Walt Whitman often described sunsets in several poems, one of which is titled On the Beach at Night, in which he also mentions a constellation.

Up through the darkness, While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky, Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east, Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter, And nigh at hand, only a very little above, Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.

I think it’s worth pointing out that almost all of the quotes I choose also mention the sea. In fact, these themes frequently go hand in hand.

But what is supposed to be the meaning of the Sun, the Moon and the Stars?

The Solar-Lunar polarity has roots in mythology and astrology, and they even appear in divination.

The Sun is traditionally masculine, while the Moon is it’s feminine counterpart. Most languages, such as French give them their pronouns accordingly. (This is what might explain the genders of the Sun and the Moon in When the Day Met the Night.)

They are the two sides of a spectrum, but usually neither of them represents negative things, even though the Moon is associated with darkness and mystery. Together they symbolize total balance.

Think about the stars as something in between, the lanterns of the night sky, often meaning hope.

Traveling:

On poets and authors:

The Beat Generation:

The Beat Generation was a literally movement after World War II, starting in the 1950′s. It borrows inspiration from jazz music, the works of Walt Whitman, symbolist poetry and romanticism among many things.

Some of its Key figures were Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs. Their most famous wokrs being Ginsberg’s Howl from 1955-1956, Kerouac ’s On the Road published in 1957 and Burroughs’ Naked Lunch that was published in 1959.

The movement's themes included, but weren’t limited to sex and sexuality, drug use, spiritualism and Buddhism.

Beat works influenced many musicians and postmodern writers.

Look at the word Beat for a second and think about music. What those that remind you of? The Beatles? Well, in that case I have news for you. There was a relation between the two groups, a friendship, even. Among many things it led to a collaboration between Ginsberg and Paul McCartney and some interesting stories such as Allen Ginsberg hanging a hotel’s ‘Do not disturb’ sign on his private part during his birthday party just before John Lennon and George Harrison arrived.

The two groups also mirror each other to some level in themes, the writing process and even in life style.

You can more about the similarities and the relationship between the Beats and the Beatles here.

The Beatles influence in Pretty. Odd. is obvious, and finding a Beat quote among the lyrics isn’t shocking.

You don’t agree with the Beats, you don’t necessarily like or understand them. they are controversial and play an important part in post-modern literature, and even music. And apparently even in Pretty Odd.

youtube

Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine and their relationship:

Appendix:

This list is incomplete and will be added to over time. It might be expanded while you are reading. I accept all unplanned quote additions and theories. (Even ones I don’t agree with)

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/art/Beat-movement

http://www.beatdom.com/the-beats-and-the-beatles-two-sides-of-the-same-coin/

#arthur rimbaud #jack kerouac #on the road #illuminations #a season in hell #beat #panic! at the disco #ryden

5 notes · View notes

maribeldultra-blog · 4 years

Text

Travelogue

A Trip to Malajog

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you”

-walt Whitman

I have found that travel has helped me become an optimist. The more experience I have, the more positive my life becomes. Malajog beach is where everyone goes especially during weekends. Its shore isn’t swathed with white sand but it definitely has sparkling blue sea perfect for your beach bumming adventure.

It was a cold and breezy Sunday morning, preparing my self for another once in a blue moon experience” for me” with one of my favorite group on earth my ‘‘Friends”. That was a very exciting day not just for me, but most especially to someone who’s going to celebrate for the day he was born. Lucky I ‘am who happens to be invited for an excursion that I will never ever forget, it was the day that I discovered one of my favorite places in our province, the Malajog.

As the sun rises from the east, it serves as our light and our guide aside from the head lamps light that comes from the multicab from which we are riding on. Certainly, you will notice the silence of the passengers inside the vehicle, the yawn of the sleepy driver, trying his best to stay awake making sure we will arrive safely to the venue. And all other weird and odd things and settings during our trip. As a person who grown in a province it was supposed to be normal for me to see a bunch of tall trees along the high ways, and small boats which seems like dancing through the glittering waves of the sea.

Something whispering in my ear and I couldn’t ignore it and I was like waking up from a very nice dream, realizing that one of my friends were saying something. I smiled silently in my mind knowing that I was mesmerized to those picturesque scenery. I even counted the bridges we had passed through until, our driver suddenly maneuvered the vehicle to a narrow street, I couldn’t help but to look up to an arch with a colorful welcome sign. Along the way you will see some rock formations and it’s been said that it was a big coral before and formed into a rock formation as the years pass by.

Big mangroves and several kinds of tall trees where prominent like it was purposely planted to every space of the rocks. Anywhere you look into the place you will surely see the falling leaves from those trees. The wind on that side of the malajog were totally different maybe because we are at the beach, the venue of the celebration and that’s made me more excited. If I ‘m not a human I would prefer to be a mermaid and that explains why I love any kinds of bodies of water. We run to a cottage made of bamboo and a nipa leaves, there were several cottages and some of those are also made in a concrete, with a cool and cute designs maybe in a few meters away from the sea water.

From the left side of the beach there’s a high cliff fall of tree and on the top there’s a zipline made by the local government as one of the attractions of the place, going down to a remote and small island. The island is known to be called the turtle island. It is because it looks like a turtle if you look at it on a top view of the island. Sadly, I was not able to experience to ride it because there’s a fee. I don’t have any idea that there such an activity on that place. Any ways, lets take a swift trip to the right side of the beach. There’s a full of surprises on this place I utter to my self as we saw a grotto, we certainly had a pilgrimage if it wasn’t because of our outfit. It looks so small from where we’re standing as we are walking along the sea shore. The sun was already up and the heat starts to burn out our skins, we don’t really mind the heat even you asked that to the children who were enjoying, going back and forth, running and playing with their friends and families who’s with them over the sea water.

The time passes through our chitchats, games and foods even the night time. We are that confident to stay that late because we have some colleagues who are working on a rescue team. During the night in malajog beach they made a bonfire and we continue the funny and full of jokes moments until at that very early morning we decided to leave the place and I whisper to myself that someday I will be back on this place.

Sources:

https://www.tripadvisor.com.ph/ShowUserReviews-g2046206-d2038266-r360490707-Malajog_Looc_Beach-Calbayog_City_Samar_Island_Visayas.html

http://www.traveltrilogy.com/2017/08/calbayog-city-samar-tourist-attractions.html

#Travelogue #CalbayogCitySamar

#MalajogBeach

0 notes

onelittlebookgeek · 4 years

Text

Book Challenge 2019 - I DID IT!

Hi guys, after tracking all the books I’ve read here from 2013-2016, I completely forgot this whole thing for more than 3 years! Sorry!!

No fear though: I’m back! Even though 2019 has almost ended, I’ll make sure this post correctly reflects the whole of 2019!

Since it’s already the end of October, I do feel like I have some hindsight vision into my reading pace this past year, but before I mention how it actually went, I want to explain my original expectations! So 2019 for me is the year I’m finishing my Classics Bachelor Degree in July and the year I’ll be studying abroad for one term from September to December (I’m doing two degrees, so I’ll still be doing my English degree after Classics!). So for my reading, I’d expected not to read a lot. Perhaps for my thesis some books on the subjects and of course for English my course work. So my original reading goal was 50 books!

Looking back on these expectations I must say I’ve read a great deal more than I expected! Writing my thesis did include reading a lot of books and other course work had more reading than I thought I would which boosted my challenge in the first half of the year! Of course, I’ve also read quite a lot during the holidays because what else is there to do in the holidays :D? Regarding my studying abroad experience, I’m reading more than I expected. This is partly because the course work is again much more based on reading books than articles or just parts of book. At the same time, I’m doing less studying than I used to do back home, so I have more time free to do some casual reading. On top of that - since I’m walking everywhere here - I’ve started listening to audiobooks which also adds a couple to the challenge.

So my challenge became 80 books! But I had already surpassed before November, so that’s great! I’d expressed my hopes to read 100 books this year as well, but out of fear of not making that I hadn’t changed my goals. Seeing as of now (mid-November), I’ve already read 93 books I feel confident I can read at least 7 more until a 100, so I’ve changed my goal to read 100 books

The crossed book is the one I’m currently reading, I’ve written reviews for books that have a (x) behind them; the (x) is a link to my Goodreads review!

Update: Today (December 31) I’ve read 135 books so I’ve finished my challenge!! Let’s see where the rest of this year brings me :D!

January

The Oresteia - Ted Hughes (4/5) (x)

The Sign of Four (Sherlock Holmes #2) - Arthur Conan Doyle (3/5)

The Suffragettes - Various (3/5)

The Poems of Phillis Wheatley - Philils Wheatley (3/5) (x)

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave - Frederick Douglass (3/5)

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself - Harriet Ann Jacobs (4/5)

February

Darius the Great is Not Okay - Adib Khorram (5/5)

A Disquisition on Government - John C. Calhoen (2/5)

March:

‘s Nachts verdwijnt de wereld - Jaap Robben (Dutch) (4/5)

Public Opinion - Walter Whitman (3/5)

Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives - David Eagleman (5/5) (x)

Zalig Uiteinde - Viktor Frölke (Dutch) (2/5)

Vampire Academy (Vampire Academy #1) - Richelle Mead (reread) (4/5)

Frostbite (Vampire Academy #2) - Richelle Mead (reread) (4/5)

Language and Power - Paul Simpson (3/5)

Language Change: Progress or Decay? - Jean Aitchison (3/5) (x)

Shadow Kiss (Vampire Academy #3) - Richelle Mead (reread) (4/5)

April:

Blood Promise (Vampire Academy #4) - Richelle Mead (reread) (4/5)

A Latin Lover in Ancient Rome - W.R. Johnson (2/5) (x)

The Waste Land - T.S. Eliot (5/5) (x)

Propertius: Elegies - Propertius (ed. Hutchinson) (2/5) (x)

Propertius: A Critical Introduction - J.P. Sullivan (3/5)

Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett (4/5) (x)

Lanny - Max Porter (4/5) (x)

Between the Acts - Virginia Woolf (5/5) (x)

Roman Propertius and the Reinvention of Elegy - Jeri Blair DeBrohun (1/5)

Yukon Ho! (Calvin and Hobbes #3) - Bill Watterson (4/5) (x)

Emancipating Lincoln - Harold Holzer (3/5)

The Lonely Londoners - Sam Selvon (1/5) (x)

May:

Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov (5/5) (x)

The Shadow of Callimachus: Studies in the Reception of Hellenistic Poetry at Rome - Richard Hunter (2/5)

Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome - Barbara K. Gold (3/5)

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America - Nancy Isenberg (2/5) (x)

Act of Justice: Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Law of War - Burrus M. Carnahan (3/5)

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America - Allen C. Guelzo (3/5)

June:

Apollo, Augustus and the Poets - John F. Miller (2/5) (x)

Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam #1) - Margaret Atwood (3/5) (x)

Circe - Madeline Miller (4/5) (x)

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson #1) - Rick Riordan (reread) (4/5)

Callimachus and his Critics - Alan Cameron (2/5)

July:

Elegies - Propertius (5/5)

Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson #2) - Rick Riordan (reread) (4/5)

Er was er eens en er was er eens niet - Judith Herzberg (Dutch) (1/5)

Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse (Percy Jackson #3) - Rick Riordan (reread) (4/5)

A Room of One’s Own - Virginia Woolf (5/5) (x)

Red, White and Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston (4/5) (x)

The Book of Extraordinary Deaths - Cecilia Ruiz (3/5)

The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Poems - Oscar Wilde (4/5)

The Epic of Gilgamesh (3/5)

Much Ado About Nothing - William Shakespeare (5/5)

Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson #4) - Rick Riordan (reread) (5/5)

Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian (Percy Jackson #5) - Rick Riordan (reread) (5/5)

The Peloponnesian War, Book 2 - Thucydides (3/5)

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde (5/5)

August:

A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses #2) - Sarah J. Maas (reread) (4/5)

Hold Your Own - Kate Tempest (4/5)

Slimy Stuarts - Terry Deary (3/5)

Orlando - Virginia Woolf (5/5) (x)

Silence of the Girls - Pat Barker (3/5) (x)

Songs of Innocence and Experience - William Blake (4/5)

Windharp: Poems of Ireland since 1916 - Coll. by Niall MacMonagle (4/5)

Kaas - Willem Elsschot (Dutch) (1/5)

Goblin Market - Christina Rossetti (4/5)

Brand New Ancients - Kate Tempest (3/5)

September:

The Fall of Arthur - J.R.R. Tolkien (3/5)

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (4/5)

The Bees - Carol Ann Duffy (4/5)

Poems - Allen Ginsberg (5/5)

Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy #5) - Richelle Mead (reread) (4/5)

Last Sacrifice (Vampire Academy #6) - Richelle Mead (reread) (4/5)

Callirhoe and Caereas - Chariton (3/5)

Bartleby the Scrivener - Herman Melville (3/5)

Benito Cereno - Herman Melville (4/5)

October:

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave - Frederick Douglass (4/5)

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself - Harriet Ann Jacobs (2/5)

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing - Hank Green (4/5)

Song of Myself - Walt Whitman (4/5) (x)

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson: Poetry of the Central Consciousness - Salsa Agnieszka (3/5)

A Thousand Ships - Natalie Haynes (4/5) (x)

Roderick Hudson - Henry James (4/5) (x)

All That She Can See - Carrie Hope Fletcher (3/5) (x)

The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon (4/5)

All the Crooked Saints - Maggie Stiefvater (3/5) (x)

Daphnis and Chloe - Longus (3/5)

The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett (1/5) (x)

November:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (2/5) (x)

Lily and the Octopus - Steven Rowley (4/5) (x)

First World War Poems from the Front (4/5)

If We Were Villains - M.L. Rio (4/5) (x)

The Republic - Plato (2/5) (x)

Observations - Marianne Moore (5/5)

Poems (1930) - W.H. Auden (2/5) (x)

The Professor’s House - Willa Cather (1/5) (x)

Becoming - Michelle Obama (4/5)

The Outsider - Albert Camus (4/5)

Three Poems - Hannah Sullivan (3/5)

Leucippe and Clitophon - Achilles Tatius (4/5)

The Book of Mirrors - Frieda Hughes (3/5) (x)

Sophist - Plato (5/5) (x)

Selected Poems - E.E. Cummings (4/5)

A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry (4/5)

The Beats (A Very Short Introduction) - David Sterrit (4/5)

The Cat Inside - William S. Burroughs (5/5)

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton (4/5) (x)

Kindred - Octavia E. Butler (4/5)

Remains of Elmet - Ted Hughes (3/5) (x)

Dear Boy - Emily Berry (1/5) (x)

The Merchant of Venice - Willaim Shakespeare (3/5)

Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov (4/5)

How to Be a Woman - Caitlin Moran (2/5) (x)

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America - Bill Bryson (3/5)

December

Tracks - Louise Erdrich (3/5)

Derrida (A Very Short Introduction) - Simon Glendinning (x)

Ariel - Sylvia Plath (5/5)

London Triptych - Jonathan Kemp (3/5)

Two Cures for Love - Wendy Cope (5/5)

Citizen: An American Lyric - Claudia Rankine (4/5)

Magnus Chase and the Ship of the Dead (Magnus Chase #3) - Rick Riordan (4/5)

The Vegetarian - Han Kang (4/5)

Selected Poems - Philip Larkin (3/5)

Kid - Simon Armitage (1/5) (x)

The Children Act - Ian McEwan (4/5)

On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan (3/5) (x)

The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (4/5) (x)

Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs (4/5)

Man met hoed - Lieke Marsman (3/5) (Dutch) (x)

Koffers Zeelucht: Gedichten - Hagar Peeters (Dutch) (4/5)

Selected Poems - Gregory Corso (3/5)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone - J.K. Rowling (reread) (5/5)

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (reread) (5/5)

Erotic Poems - E.E. Cummings (3/5)

Twelfth Night - William Shakespeare (reread) (4/5)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Edward Albee (2/5)

Carry On - Rainbow Rowell (reread) (4/5)

My 2016 challenge

My 2015 challenge

My 2014 challenge

My 2013 challenge

#2019 book challenge #onelittlebookgeek #2019 #book challenge

0 notes

theotherpages · 5 years

Text

National Poetry Month #20 - Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

4/20 is an unusual day in several respects. Some joyful anniversaries. Some infamous ones. And a popular culture focus on self-medication.

As a not-so-obscure play on words I decided to focus today on Walt Whitman and his now-famous Leaves of Grass. Whitman’s focus on personal identity and sensual topics was criticized heavily, but over time his writings became a very well established part of American literature. Leaves of Grass was also a very fluid work., published initially with 12 poems. and eventually including, many versions later, some 400.

Many of its pieces parts have become iconic to the point that their titles have been co-opted time and again for other uses. From I hear America Singing, to I Sing the Body Electric, to O Captain, My Captain. Since Leaves of Grass is a collection of all of Whitman’s poems, I will sample a few that I like. Perhaps you can figure out why.

--Steve

By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame

By the bivouac's fitful flame, A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow—but first I note, The tents of the sleeping army, the fields' and woods' dim outline, The darkness lit by spots of kindled fire, the silence, Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving, The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me,) While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts, Of life and death, of home and the past and loved, and of those that are far away; A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground, By the bivouac's fitful flame.

On the Beach at Night

On the beach at night, Stands a child with her father, Watching the east, the autumn sky.Up through the darkness, While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky, Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east, Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter, And nigh at hand, only a very little above, Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.From the beach the child holding the hand of her father, Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all, Watching, silently weeps.Weep not, child, Weep not, my darling, With these kisses let me remove your tears, The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious, They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition, Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge, They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again, The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure, The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.Then dearest child mournest thou only for jupiter? Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?Something there is, (With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper, I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,) Something there is more immortal even than the stars, (Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,) Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter Longer than sun or any revolving satellite, Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.

To a Locomotive in Winter

Thee for my recitative, Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining, Thee in thy panoply, thy measur'd dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive, Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel, Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides, Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance, Thy great protruding head-light fix'd in front, Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple, The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack, Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels, Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following, Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering; Type of the modern—emblem of motion and power—pulse of the continent, For once come serve the Muse and merge in verse, even as here I see thee, With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow, By day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes, By night thy silent signal lamps to swing.Fierce-throated beauty! Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night, Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all, Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding, (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,) Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return'd, Launch'd o'er the prairies wide, across the lakes, To the free skies unpent and glad and strong.

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts, the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the learned astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

#walt whitman #whitman #american #leaves of grass #locomotive in winter #on the beach at night #national poetry month #the other pages #theotherpages.org #poe #poet #poetry

0 notes

belovedexile · 7 years

Text

tagged by @lyannanicks thank u friend xoxox

rules: answer all questions, add one question of your own and tag as many people as there are questions

Coke or Pepsi: I don’t really drink either (I’m more of a sprite gal) but pepsi is obviously better Disney or Dreamworks: disney Coffee or tea: coffee 4 life Books or movies: books Windows or mac: mac DC or marvel: neither? Xbox or PlayStation: playstation Dragon age or mass effect: I know nothing about either of these Night owl or early riser: early riser for sure I can’t stay up past 10 Cards or chess: cards! Chocolate or vanilla: chocolate Vans or converse: this is so hard!!!!! cause like converse are just classic. but I also love vans. both. Lavellan, Trevelyan, Cadash, or Adaar: I’m ???? Beach or forest: BEACH!!! I wish I was at the beach right now Dogs or cats: I love both so fucking much but if I absolutely have to choose, it’s cats Clear skies or rain: clear skies Cooking or eating out: eating out Spicy food or mild food: mild Halloween/Samhain or Solstice/Yule/Christmas: christmas Would you rather forever be a little too cold or a little too hot: I’d rather forever be at a nice moderate 65 degree temperature with a slight breeze is that an option If you could have a superpower, what would it be: flight Animation or live action: I love both!!!! I think animation is really incredible though. especially stop motion. Paragon or renegade: I think this is a video game question and I’m confused Baths or showers: on a regular basis, showers. but there are few things I like more than a hot bath honestly. Team cap or team ironman: I almost killed myself during captain america because it was so boring so I guess iron man Fantasy or sci-fi: neither really Do you have three or four favourite quotes, if so what are they: I have a million favorite quotes and I can’t definitively choose favorites, but here are a couple I really love:

“people act according to the way they experience the world. if you can understand their experience, you can understand their behavior” -r.d. laing,

“these are the days that must happen to you” - walt whitman

”I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. the main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. if you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? what is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. the game is worthwhile insofar as we don’t know what will be the end” -foucault

“I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people” - van gogh

Youtube or Netflix: netflix Harry Potter or Percy Jackson: harry potter When do you feel accomplished: when I make it to the end of a day and I can just sit back and feel content with who I am and where I am Star Wars or Star Trek: star wars I guess Paperback books or hardback books: paperback Horror or rom-com? rom coms 4 life To live in a world without literature or music: both of these would be absolutely horrible I can’t even think about it Pastel colors or dark colors: pastel Tv shows or movies: tv for sure. I watch like 2 movies per year City or countryside: city If any other zodiac sign could describe you, what would it be: cancer I think. I’m a sagittarius sun/cancer moon and have a lot of cancer traits. like cancers are super moody and emotional and ruled by the moon and also really empathetic, intuitive, and generous, which are all ways I tend to think of myself to varying degrees. if you look up the sag/cancer combo it’s literally me to a tee. like ??? http://universal-tao-eproducts.com/mp/files/sun-moon_sagittarius-cancer.pdf ME If you could only listen to one album for the rest of your life what would it be? ahhhhhhh no this is too hard. fleetwood mac’s self titled album maybe? or bella donna by stevie nicks. Cinema or theatre? theatre If you could be any fictional character’s best friend, who’d you be? holly flax because I love her. Smiling or smirking? smiling? weird question. Playlists or your whole library on shuffle? generally I put my whole library on shuffle but I have some playlists like, by mood. which mostly means I like to group all my really sad music in one place so I can conveniently torture myself when I feel like it Traveling or staying at home: traveling! Would you rather listen to only one artist for the rest of your life or read only one book for the rest of your life? ugh I guess only listen to one artist. favorite flower: sunflowers! but also tulips and hydrangeas

I am absolutely not tagging as many people as there are questions but @maggysawyer @ophelia-stood-tall @verafarmiga @evolhasmorepower @cateblnchettes @cobie-smulders @kopiva @liaratsoniii @michellepfeiffer @natalie-wood @benfeldman and anyone else who feels like doing this consider yourself tagged

#tagged things

9 notes · View notes

phillymakerfaire · 5 years

Link

https://ift.tt/2NZuvIC

Break Through:

A NextFab Made Series

Break Through is a series about making. Making discoveries, making a difference in the community and making the world a better place. It’s the stories of startups and inventors who are developing products that have social value by solving real world problems. It’s about artisans and entrepreneurs who have broken through the mold to live their best lives.

Episode 1: Mark Brandon, Destined Goods

In our inaugural episode we speak with Mark Brandon, founder of Destined Goods, a custom drink-ware company based in Philadelphia, PA. Mark is a NextFab member that runs his business completely from a private project space on site.

Mark Brandon: I’ve been a member at NextFab since November 2013. However, I just started this venture, just about the beginning of 2018. I had been working on some prior projects. One of them was a party game, called Slushin’ Roulette. I did a Kickstarter and then ended up putting that on the bookshelf, and reorienting my time. So with Destined Goods, what I make and design and produce – home goods, specifically drink-ware; everything I design and make is here out of NextFab. The two components I primarily work in, right now are ceramics. So I do all this slip casting next door in my studio, which is also part of NextFab. It’s a warehouse space that they run out. I also do leather work, as well, so I have some equipment for that that I do out in my space as well as utilizing the laser engravers.

Ron Bauman: What did you do before you started here at NextFab and making things?

Mark Brandon: So I’m a mechanical engineer. I went to Drexel University. Graduated in 2013 with my mechanical engineering degree. All three co-ops as well as four, five years after graduation I worked in the petroleum industry. So I was a retail engineer for Sunoco, and then actually at the beginning of 2017 they did some restructuring of the organization and so,

Ron Bauman: As corporations want to do….

Mark Brandon: Yeah, correct. Exactly. So there were some re-locations. So some of the regional departments end up getting dispatched, including the engineering department that I was part of. So I was ready to get another job. I was networking and working with different vendors and clients that would get me back in the industry basically, just so we can keep that steady income and whatnot. In the meantime, I was already moonlighting, I guess you could say working on this at night, between here on the engineering design part of the products, as well as at the Clay Studio on 2nd and Race and Old City so I could get that straight weeks experience.

Mark Brandon: So as it was getting to the point where they were letting people know, “Hey, you’re laid off, thank you for your time basically.” My wife said, “Hey, instead of getting another job, you’ve wanted to have your own company since the end of college basically. But why don’t you take this as a sign to go head first into it and do it full time. We’re at a good position in our relationship where we’re already married. You just have rent. We don’t have kids. We have the financial flexibility to take this risk.” So it’s not the sort of thing I would have volunteered us as a couple to do, but having her support really, just knowing that she was confident enough in my ability to do it, made me confident in myself to try it out. So that’s how I started doing it full time.

Mark Brandon: So my last full day at Sunoco was my first full day at Destined Goods.

Ron Bauman: So you’re just done with Sunoco and on to Destined Goods? How did you come up with a name for Destined Goods? Was it destiny?

Mark Brandon: Yeah, that’s exactly it. So I really wanted to come up with something that conveyed the message that I wanted behind the whole thing, which is interacting with your favorite people, your friends and your family. So I was thinking things along the lines of heirloom and legacy. And then it was a shower moment. We were talking about how the whole layoff process and the way I got into this full time. I was kind of destined, to get something to push me into entrepreneurship full time. So Destined Goods just ended up making sense.

Ron Bauman: Do you feel like you always had an entrepreneurial sort of bone, like bug, or?

Mark Brandon: So I think the maker bug was always an innate partner with me for sure. I was always making stuff. I guess to use the cliché, I was that lego kid. I was always doing designs and whatnot as well with different product ideas and character ideas. But as I got into college, I started getting that entrepreneurship bug as shark tank was getting popular. I’m a huge fan of the profit now as well.

Mark Brandon: So as I saw the opportunity and commercialization, and as I was realizing with my corporate job that I’m not the biggest fan of reporting to bosses. I like to be able to make the shots. Not that I can’t work in a team situation. But when I can’t agree with, the decisions coming from the top, it’s difficult to go nose to the grindstone on something. So being able to get that opportunity really drew me into the entrepreneurship field.

Ron Bauman: To sort of be your own boss, sort of that characteristic is very and probably the most common trait of entrepreneurs.

Mark Brandon: Absolutely. At the same time I feel like my head’s always spinning with different marketing ideas and different creative partnerships that are not only for my own business, but for other companies just from hearing a few minutes of what they do. And so having the design and the marketing aspects, it just made sense to jump into entrepreneurship.

Ron Bauman: Are you from the area?

Mark Brandon: Greater Philadelphia area. I say South Jersey and then people try to correct me, even though there’s really only North and South Jersey ’cause it’s not the beach South Jersey, it’s Autobahn. So, I was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but we moved to South Jersey, my parents and I when I was less than one year old. And then I grew up the rest of my life and Autobahn, New Jersey, which is right over the Walt Whitman Bridge. So, 15 minutes away. Both, I have two younger brothers, they grew up in Autobahn as well. My parents still live there. Both my parents went to Drexel for chemical engineering.

Mark Brandon: So we’ve got that engineering bug in our genes. So that’s where they met. So they say that we had a choice to go somewhere else, but we all ended up going to Drexel. ‘Cause it just makes sense. It’s a good level-headed university. If you go, you get a really good batch of people that are well rounded, which fit well with my friend group from high school. So, I felt comfortable there. And then the co-op opportunities are just fantastic as well.

Ron Bauman: Yeah, the Co-op is great there. So did you do the two-year four-year internship?

Mark Brandon: I did the five year program with three, six month internships. So all three of those I did at Sunoco in their Engineering Department.

Ron Bauman: So I was going to ask what drew you to mechanical engineering, but I think you already answered it at least with __.

Mark Brandon: Well it’s funny I say that.

Ron Bauman: Sounds like it’s in your blood, in your genes a little bit.

Mark Brandon: Sort of is that, I say that my parents had the reason I didn’t do chemical engineering, but that’s just me being a brat. So really the mechanical engineering is because it’s really diverse. You get a taste of all of the different fields, which works well with me because I sort of have, like topic ADD. So if I tried to focus on just chemical engineering and just refining or processing of that, I would get bored. But with mechanical engineering, like Destined Goods, is also an example of the fact that I could take a five year degree from a university, and apply it to an art form. Because I use the CAD and the CNC experience and thinking through the material science that I used. So, that’s really what drew me to it is the diversity of it.

Ron Bauman: So, you go through Drexel, you end up at Sunoco for a few years, not really digging the corporate thing. You start to have these ideas, and you ended up … What was the root of that inspiration that said, “I’m gonna start, making these other things, and I’m going to start making these products that are potentially bringing friends and family together,” talk about that inspiration.

Mark Brandon: So I think it all kind of exploded in my senior year. And maybe that’s because it was the culmination of where I was actually at the point that I was comfortable enough to make the products. I had had an idea to do an automated drink dispenser, like an automated bartender or robotic bartender.

Ron Bauman: So I’m sensing a theme with your products.

Mark Brandon: I guess as my wife puts it, if I had two products senior year that I was working on. My senior design project, which was in an automated bartender, and then the party game, which was called Slushin’ Roulette. I think it was the second term of working with senior design I started jumping into Slushin’ Roulette and working on that as well. And that incorporating electronics also. So I basically shoved in Arduino into a shell that looked like a revolver chamber, like Russian Roulette.

Mark Brandon: So I started developing that product. That’s actually the first product that I worked on when I joined NextFab. I try to Kickstarter and then a bookshelf that, like I mentioned earlier. So that’s really where it all just started to kick off because, I felt really confident in my ability of fabricating, and I proved to myself, “Hey, I actually can make these things that I think up. What’s the next thing I can do?”

Ron Bauman: What is the next thing?

Mark Brandon: Well, not to jump the gun. I actually worked on Slushin’ Roulette for several years, did the kickstart in 2016 here, and then took a little bit of time off. I also had my wedding coming up in 2007, 2016.

Ron Bauman: Gotta get that right.

Mark Brandon: Yeah.

Ron Bauman: It’s also documented.

Mark Brandon: Yeah, she’ll kill me. So that led me into joining NextFab. I joined here and basically my routine was wake up in the morning, go to work as early as possible, get here at like six or seven, stayed till they were closing. They usually kicked me out the door. 10 o’clock at night they were like, “Come on, we want to go home too.” And then sometimes I’d stop at the gym if it was open late enough and then I would go home and just continue that rotation as much as possible. And it was good because I didn’t have any external pressures to do anything else. I could really dive into the project. But it also gave me the opportunity to learn a lot of different skills, that helped later on with this venture. Just soft skills as well as software skills with illustrator, web development, things like that. 3D printing laser cutting, CNC, all of it kind of came together to help out big time with this one.

Ron Bauman: So you have this side, that dedication to being here and you’re here from open to close at NextFab, you had a site there. Talk to me about really what’s driving that passion? Is it just that urge to make it and work with your hands? What’s really driving that dedication and that passion that you have?

Mark Brandon: Yeah, that’s exactly what it is. So I think just as much as I love to design products and iterate my products. At the same time, I want to see the fulfillment part of it. I want people to own them, enjoy them, and love it to a point that they become an ambassador. So until I get to that point, and I won’t stop at that point, that’s really that driving factor. And I continue to want to make my product better and better. So that on the tail end of it, on the consumer usage part of it, it just becomes even more of a wanted product essentially.

Ron Bauman: So tell us a little bit more about how NextFab has sort of helped you get to where you’re at right now with Destined Goods. And we know that you’re one of the members and companies here that use more than one department. So talk to us about the integration of the different departments and how NextFab helps you sort of navigate through and kind of charter help, charter success.

Mark Brandon: There are two big things that NextFab provides that really make this a much faster, experience for me. The first one being, the person, part of it. So all of the different experts in all of the different expertise that would take me four or five lifetimes at a minimum to attain. If there’s a particular skill set that I want to use, there’s at least one or two people that are near expert level if not expert level. And so not having to take several months, but several hours to get to something that I want to do. It makes the design and iteration process so much faster.

Mark Brandon: So it helps with time and money. Obviously. The other thing too, the cost prohibitive part of all of the tools. If I wanted to start my own shop, and I’m sure I would come up with something, but I don’t know. Like off the top of my head I really don’t know because it’s such a unique space. Having all of these tools that cost tens of thousands of dollars to obtain. It would really be prohibitive to do it on my own. So having access to them on day one, just affords me the opportunity to design and produce at a level that would take much longer. So it really is a competitive advantage from that standpoint.

Ron Bauman: So we know about all of the making that happens here, we know about the product-ization of somebody that can come in and with a project, make a coffee table or you could build an automated robot. Tell us about the entrepreneurial aspects of what happens here at NextFab.

Mark Brandon: So I know, for me the biggest benefit of the entrepreneurial aspect and having other companies that are incubating here are working their day jobs here is, the motivating factor. So if it was just me and the rest of the place was, or if I was in my own place, let’s say, and it wasn’t a community space. Admittedly it would be a bit harder to motivate myself to be just pounding out work all day long and then possibly all the way until midnight. But knowing between 2019 and having other businesses that are producing and manufacturing.

Mark Brandon: As well as upstairs in the community space and even in the metal shop, in the wood shop. Seeing people that are working just as hard, makes you not necessarily muster up that competitive spirit, but at once you to be your best entrepreneur. Because you see other people doing it as well. So that really helps. Also from a networking standpoint, there are so many people that know people, that it grows your networks so quickly.

Ron Bauman: Yeah. And I think you have that, you still have the common, at least for the time being, you have that commonality of the small batch manufacturing that you hear about so much. And you know with making making a comeback and bringing manufacturing back to the United States, and to this region in Philadelphia specifically. Which, we were the wood shop of the world, Philadelphia was referred to at one point. And it’s great to see all of this, reemergence, of people making things again. And I think, with the small batch manufacturing allows for a lot more customization.

Mark Brandon: It does.

Ron Bauman: So talk to us about sort of how that plays into to Destined Goods and the things that you make.

Mark Brandon: Yeah. So it’s funny that you say that. At first when I started Destined Goods, the idea of it came from, we did a destination wedding slash honeymoon in Cancun, Riviera Maya Mexico. So when we were at the first resort, we sell these random bottles. I didn’t know what they were, I thought they were vases or something. Come to find out it tequila tasting at the Cantina. It was Tequila decanters. I’m like, “Those are cool.” Come the honeymoon. They were pitching them to every couple. They are like, “Hey, do you want to try some? Don’t you want to buy one?” And then finally by the end of it I said, “That would be a really cool memento to commemorate the wedding.” And it being in Mexico and the honeymoon and everything else. And the thing was super ornate. It was beautiful. And, the whole week of the honeymoon my wife and I were talking about how do we get a passive income lifestyle so that we can do what we see other couples doing here.

Mark Brandon: We were talking to one couple, they were a cold cut distributor from New York. And they were like, “We come down here three times a year.” And we said, “Man, if we come down here once every five years I would be fantastic. So good for you.” And so when we came back and we’re looking through the thank you notes and everything else and opening up cards, I look at jokingly put it at the top of our entertainment center like a trophy. The bottle, and I said, “I’m going to keep that forever because I’m going to remember the wedding.” Although the Tequila is going to be long gone, within a year. But at least I’ll have the bottle to remember it forever. I’ll keep filling it with the other tequilas.

Mark Brandon: And then I thought, I’m sure there are millions of other couples out there want something that could commemorate their wedding, commemorate their first child, commemorate a promotion, anything like that. Even if it’s not necessarily a Tequila, it could be some sort of a spirit. So it got me thinking on the decanter style. And I didn’t want to do what everybody else does, which is crystal and glass decanters. I wanted it to be more ornate, like a vase. So I was thinking, maybe wood turning. And then I looked at that company I got the decanter from, and they said it on their website they do slip casting ceramics. So that’s how I got into the idea of slip casting.

Mark Brandon: Pivoting back to the Slushin’ Roulette idea, I did a Kickstarter. I didn’t raise enough money. The difficulty was not that the product costs a lot. It wasn’t, it was 80% margin if I sold it. The difficulty was the minimum order quantity that, resulting we needed me to raise $70 thousand to make zero dollar. $30 thousand for tooling and molds for the injection molded parts. And then $40 thousand for the cost of goods, to get that minimum order quantity. And then you come up with $70 thousand. So that’s obviously what the Kickstarter is for. And that’s make zero dollars, basically. Obviously to have some extra inventory to make money off of, cause it’d be 100% profit, at that point. But still that’s a big nut to crack. So when it came to Destined Goods, I wasn’t integrating that lesson learned. But what I was trying to do was, because the inspiration was make it passive income. My priority was make it outsourced as much as possible.

Mark Brandon: So I was using crowdsourcing for logo generation. I found a guy on Kickstarter that makes ceramic plates. I asked him how he gets them made. He said, “Here’s a guy I talked to, he’s a broker for a Chinese manufacturer.” So I just said, “Hey, I have this idea for bottles. What would the cost be?” He said, “It’d be a few dollars each. How many do I have to buy? 2000.” So not that it’s a ton of capital, but it was an idea. I had no idea if anybody wanted to buy it. So for a little less, but still $10 thousand dollars I could end up just sitting on ceramic bottles forever to garage. I didn’t like the idea that, I said, “You know what? I’m getting that bad taste in my mouth just like I did with the Slushin’ Roulette Kickstarter and overseas manufacturing.”

Mark Brandon: And then the maker in me started coming back out and I said, “You know what? For less than what that inventory costs could be, I could buy all of the equipment to start my own ceramic shop.”

Ron Bauman: Let’s talk about some of the people in your life that have inspired you, that have helped you get to where you’re at today.

Mark Brandon: Yeah, absolutely. My dad was always a hands on guy. Maybe not necessarily a master carpenter or plumber or anything else, but he was able to get the job done. So, I was lucky enough that he would always allow me to help him out with it. So I could at least get that experience of seeing what you can do with your hands.

Ron Bauman: Did you work on projects together when you were a kid?

Mark Brandon: Yeah. We worked on a lot of different projects. They got me the 30 and one radio kit from radio shack. So they quickly and kind of like,

Ron Bauman: Nudge you that way?

Mark Brandon: They sort of tried to nudge me into the engineering realm and an electronics realm, which I’m really appreciative of. They were random things. They would start getting me soldering kits. So, there was like a little robotic spider you put together, you solder the board together, to get everything to work. Just so, I didn’t know what I was doing. They read the instructions, but at least they kind of introduced me to the concepts of it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t know what it was. But I think one of the larger projects that I took on was when I got into wood shop in high school, that’s when I really had a love for making things. So, at first it was basically, “All right. Everybody makes a shelf.” It’s wood shop one intro to wood shop, you’re making a shelf or you’re making a paper towel dispenser. And then you get into wood shop two and three where you make your own things.

Mark Brandon: So, I was able to start pulling from the project books. I could make a really cool revealed dovetail table with an ash top and walnut legs. That came out awesome. I was starting to incorporate different finishes, so using India ink to do a cherry finish. So, I think that’s when I started getting an appreciation for sort of a modern blend of matching. Not stark contrasting materials, but different type of materials without making them look super embellished, letting them be their own material. But by combining them, getting the cool sense, and I think that came back with Destined Goods with the ceramics and the leather and the wood and the metals. But my wood shop teacher, Mr Loughlin, was really cool sounding board.

Ron Bauman: I was just going to ask, did you have any teachers that specifically influenced you?

Mark Brandon: Yeah. Absolutely. He did big time. But my first project that I ideated from scratch and created with the help of my wood shop teacher and then actually help with my dad as well, was in sophomore year I wanted to make my own basic guitar. Worked out really well. It didn’t sound the best, because I’m not a luthier. But it worked.

Ron Bauman: Do you play? Are you a musician as well?

Mark Brandon: I haven’t touched it in a couple of years. I’m just a hobbyist. I don’t know how to read music or anything. I more so liked making it. I like playing it as well, but just as a hobby when I can.

Ron Bauman: Who else do you draw inspiration from?

Mark Brandon: So from a working standpoint, my wife is a huge inspiration, and she didn’t pay me to say that.

Ron Bauman: That’s a good answer. I was going to say cause this will be made public at some point. Exactly.

Mark Brandon: That’s the opening line of it. But she’s probably the hardest working person I’ve ever met. But, for me, even though if I get home and I’m exhausted and I don’t want to do some of the administrative stuff. When she’s on the couch next to me, and she’s got her laptop open til 10 o’clock at night, and it’s hard for me to say, “Hey, I’m going to turn the TV on even though I have stuff to do.” So it just keeps motivating me.

Ron Bauman: Sometimes it’s like another competitive theme that’s emerging here.

Mark Brandon: Yes. I mean it’s a little bit of that, live to work. And we both want to have more of that work life balance lifestyle. But, at the same time, it’s kind of integrated into our bones because we do enjoy what we do. And even though sometimes we do need a break here and there, it’s hard for us to not do that around the clock.

Ron Bauman: Yeah. I think one of the most important things for entrepreneurs is to really be able to connect their passion, to what they’re doing and to their purpose. And really infusing that, not only into your business model, but into your brand and everything that is involved with what you’re doing and what you’re making. So, we find that passion really becomes, what are you good at? And how do you want to spend your time? Where do you like to do? And what are you good at? And then that at that intersection is where you find passion. And then that’s what, if you can connect that to, your life’s calling and make that your life’s calling, then you know what better way to spend your days and your time. So that’s awesome. What’s the future look like for Destined Goods?

Mark Brandon: I want to grow from a talent acquisition standpoint. As well as I guess you could say, a fabrication warehouse standpoint organically, as the business finds the need for it. So, as I start getting larger orders, and it makes more sense to me for me to have laser independence, and buy my own laser cutter because if I have an order that is tens of thousands of dollars for our corporation as I’m working towards. It makes sense to get a laser cutter that’s a couple thousand dollars because the ROI makes sense. And then it helps me grow. I have different product ideas that the cost is a little bit high because I have to use a community laser cutter where I’m paying for the machine time. But if it’s a machine that’s already buried into my overhead costs, I can get the product costs down as well. So then I can start expanding my product offering as well.

Mark Brandon: I could start doing some cutting boards, and coasters, and some other home goods. I want to do wall furnishings as well. And then things that are outside of home goods. But I could go on and on about it. I have to stay focused a little bit on what I’m offering for the time being.

Ron Bauman: That’s great. So where can we find Destined Goods?

Mark Brandon: So Destined Goods I sell on my website @ destinedgoods.com, and all social media. I guess the popular ones, Facebook and Instagram, I have Destined Goods as well. So that’s the easiest way for people to find it and that’s where the store is as well.

Ron Bauman: Awesome. Any other favorite Instagram accounts?

Mark Brandon: I like following NextFab because I get to see what people are doing.

Ron Bauman: Good answer. Good answer.

Mark Brandon: I think it’s #NextFabMade.

Ron Bauman: Yes, that is the primary hashtag. Well it’s great to see how NextFab has played a role in your success. Last question, what’s the best advice you can give to budding entrepreneurs?

Mark Brandon: So if there are things that you don’t feel competent in, don’t feel like you have to be turning your wheels and figuring it out yourself. Feel comfortable reaching out to other entrepreneurs. Rather makers or there kind of one in the same most of the time. Because a lot of the time, they know where you’re coming from, they’ve learned those lessons. It doesn’t have to necessarily be an investor or a coach. It could be somebody who has their own business. That’s kind of the best source. And that’s what really helped me out. Is just reaching out to other artisans and other people who started their own company.

Ron Bauman: That’s awesome.

Mark Brandon: Yeah.

Ron Bauman: Well, Mark, thank you for your time. We wish you the best of luck with Destined Goods. We look forward to seeing you around the shop here at NextFab and until next time.

Mark Brandon: Thank you very much.

Ron Bauman: Alright. You got it.

Ron Bauman: Thank you for listening to this episode of Break Through. I’m your host, Ron Bauman, serial entrepreneur, founder of Milk Street Marketing, and NextFab member. To learn more about how NextFab can help you make your ideas come to life, visit nextfab.com and be sure to follow #NextFabMade on social to see what our members are making!

The post Break Through: Mark Brandon appeared first on NextFab.

#IFTTT #NextFab

0 notes

limejuicer1862 · 5 years

Text

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger. The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

L.B. Sedlacek

is an award winning poet and author with poetry and fiction appearing in many different journals and zines. Her latest poetry books are “The Architect of French Fries” (Presa Press) and “Words and Bones” (Finishing Line Press.) She is a former Poetry Editor for “ESC! Magazine” and also co-hosted the podcast for the small press, “Coffee House to Go,” for several years. She teacher poetry at local elementary and middle schools and publishes a free resource for poets, “The Poetry Market Ezine.” In her free time, LB enjoys swimming, reading, and taking guitar lessons.

Here’s her website: http://www.lbsedlacek.com or http://www.thepoetrymarket.com

The Interview

1. When and why did you start writing poetry?

I started writing poetry when I was living in Washington DC. I wrote song lyrics as a kid. After moving to DC, I tried writing short stories and poems. My first poem I wrote was called “Melancholy.” Not sure what happened to that poem, but that may be for the best, lol.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

I guess I first learned about it in middle school. The famous Paul Revere poem comes to mind.

3. How aware are and were you of the dominating presence of older poets traditional and contemporary?

I didn’t become too familiar with Poets until I started studying poetry on my own and then later on in graduate school. My favorite poet I discovered at that time was Rilke and then later on there were several more. I bought a book of Rilke poems – one I don’t have – at an independent bookstore last night. I have always been a Shakespeare nut too. I’m reading Walt Whitman currently – his story of becoming a writer & poet to me is interesting ….a self made poet. For the most part I don’t care for his poems. I do like William Carlos Williams very much. I find poetry in most everything now that I’m looking!

4. What is your daily writing routine?

I write almost every day for a 2-3 hours in the evening. By writing I mean writing poems or stories, editing, submitting or updating my websites or social media or publishing the occasional blog post. I take time to read someone else’s poem every single day – sometimes more than one. The first thing I do every weekday is to read from a book on writing poetry, 1 or 2 books of poems by other poets, and then anything else poetry or writing related. I think it’s very important to read as much as possible as this helps to improve your own craft as well as to support fellow authors. I try to write 3-4 poems a week depending on whatever project is taking priority at the time. On weekends I’m more likely to spend time on submissions or practicing my guitar or ukulele. Music to me lends a hand in my creative process.

5. What motivates you to write?

Usually an idea. It can be just something I’ve though of and wonder how it would turn out or based on a true story or one of my own experiences. I’m very fluid with my process as I work on several projects at a time which is how I read books too – several at a time.

6. What is your work ethic?

These days I tend to write for a very general G rated audience. One of my poetry books was added to the local 3rd grade school curriculum so those poems have to be readable for anyone more or less. With poetry I never use extremes in language like cursing or sexuality – I don’t write love poetry and I don’t read it either as it’s just not for me. I keep my poems basically clean. I enjoy writing Sci Fi poetry the most and sometimes Horror type poems but those poems of mine tend to focus on the psychological types of suspense and not blood and guts. I don’t watch or read Horror so I don’t try to write it either. For Fiction, I take more latitude with my work with some despicable characters making the pages. For my new psychological thriller book coming out soon (it will probably be a one and done because I don’t know if I can manage these characters again) there’s a lot of questionable characters, awful things they do to each other, language etc. For non-fiction, I try to write to a general audience with articles that can be published every where read by anyone. I tend to cater my writing ethic, I suppose based on what I’m writing. I’d say its most flexible with me with Fiction.

7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

Today, I admire them, their careers and try to keep persevering more or less as they did. I read JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and mysteries by anyone. Funny thing I never dreamed of being a writer when I was young – I wanted to be a singer!

7.1. How have they influenced your work?

I would say they’ve inspired me as a writer – I don’t write the same kind of books but their work and originality gives me hope and inspiration for my own works.

8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why

Dani Shapiro is one of my favorite authors – she started out with fiction and now does memoirs. I really liked her style of writing – the way she’d weave narrative with prose in her books. Ted Kooser is one of my favorite poets. He can take the most ordinary thing and turn it into something amazing. I also like to read the poetry of local poets and/or attend their readings to get a different perspective on how someone else’s process works.

9. Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

I write because I must – even if no one else reads what I write I still have to write or some form of writing. Writing for me is akin to breathing. I feel that way about swimming too – that’s probably why I’ve written several things about water. I’ve tried other things and I’ve found I’m just not that good at anything else.

10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

I’d tell them to 1) read 2) read some more 3) read in the genres they’d like to try writing in, 4) attend readings and author events, 5) join a writers group online or in person, 6) buy or check out from the library books or ebooks on writing – just one at a time, 7) check reference periodicals, 8 – search online for articles on writing, 9) talk to writer who has been published- they don’t have to write in the same genre. There is an educational aspect to it – study form, structure, grammar, vocabulary , all those things schoolteachers make you do when you take an English or Reading class. Also you can try an online or local college writing course as well. After you learn about writing, practice writing. After you practice writing, read your works out loud for others. After you share your writings, share them again on paper or online – don’t share online if you plan to actually submit that piece so you don’t run into “no previously published submissions” when submitting. Next re-read, edit, re-draft and read again. After that try submitting to a zine or journal or your newspaper. You can start with a simple Letter to the Editor or post in an online writers forum to get a feel for it.

11. Tell me about writing projects you’re involved in at the moment.

Sure! I just recently had 2 chapbooks published: “The Architect of French Fries” from Presa Press and “The Adventures of Stick People on Cars” from Alien Buddha Press that I’m currently publicizing. I have a new beach poetry chapbook coming out soon. Plus I’m working on a sequel to my award nominated mystery “The Glass River.” I’m also editing a prose poetry book written over an entire year broken out by month. It seems I always have a lot going at once!

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: L.B. Sedlacek Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

0 notes

vitalmindandbody · 6 years

Text

Poet’s Pacific paradise: Pablo Neruda’s homes in Chile

As a brand-new cinema about Pablo Neruda gets a UK release, we call two of the Pacific-facing dwellings where the poet found inspiration: beachside Isla Negra and the crazy port of Valparaso

If we march up and down all the stairs of Valparaso well have walked all round the world. Poet Pablo Neruda was alluding to the cosmopolitan vigor of Chiles second metropoli, premier port and more romantic and likeable metropolis. He might also have been referring to the workout you get hiking around Valpo as locals dub it. Spread over 42 mounds, its manors, rooms, shanties and steep, cobbled streets are a sea-facing sprawl. When you get lost and hot, its a succour to stumble on one of the four ascensores funicular heaves which cut out some of the climbing.

chile map

Id been to Valpo before, to devour ceviche and experience fine wine-coloureds from the nearby Casablanca valley, but this time I chiefly wanted to explore the relationship between the city and Chiles Nobel prize-winning poet. A new film, Neruda, starring Luis Gnecco and Gael Garca Bernal, goes on general UK release on 7 April. That and a brand-new direct flight this year from Heathrow to Santiago international airport( an hour or so from Valparaso) is bound to revive interest in Chiles second city.

I began my mini-pilgrimage 84 km south of Valparaso, at Isla Negra. This is not an island at all, but a stunning beach spot where, in 1944, Neruda started building a house where he had been able to work on his masterpiece, Canto General, and throw defendants. It took two inventors, with their demanding purchaser advising, around 20 times to ended the house. Neruda jaunted around Chile and overseas as senator and producing communist party member. He was also exiled for several years in Buenos Aires and Mexico. But, as Neruda put it: The live preserved growing, like people, like trees.

La Casa de Isla Negra, the poets beachside home. Image: Alamy

Every 10 minutes, up to 14 beings are allowed into his Casa de Isla Negra, which they tour with an audioguide. The commentary is academic in detail and, if unavoidably positive about Neruda, still enlightening. The residence is a marvel, with chambers embellished according to the writers affections. One front room is shaped like a vessel, another like a qualify cab. Huge figureheads jut out at every turn, and ships in bottles fill windowsills. Neruda was an avid collector, of bottles, eggshells, insects, butterflies and, from the seems of his wardrobe, tweed coats, ponchos and hats.

With its ship-like narrow passageways and steep staircases, vivid paintwork, and mismatched and modernist furniture, the members of this house doesnt gaze dated at all. It rekindles a Neruda who was playful, whimsical and for a communist a lover of luxuries. To entertain pals, he had a large bar constructed, and he liked his clients to come in fancy dress, on themes he dictated.

Immature? Perhaps, but as Neruda said: The human who does not play has lost the child within him.

Luis Gnecco as Pablo Neruda in a still from the cinema.

Outside the house is Nerudas tomb, and below it a impressive rocky beach. Even on a era of low-pitched jazz, channel-surf was gate-crashing, turquoise with suds grey surfaces, and the light magical. I expected a Brazilian lady to take my photo and, unbidden, she ran forth her experiences for Neruda. Ive been in tears. This is such a mystical plaza. Ive been wanting to come here for years.

Im not sure any European poet has fairly this impact on parties. Nor can her heat be written off as typical of Latin Americans. A little afterwards, at the cafe( where Neruda-label wine was on offer ), a neighbourhood lady, when I mentioned my Brazilian acquaintance, witheringly declared, Que tontita ! How silly! Neruda segments opinion, particularly in his house society. One neighbourhood was just telling me at least a third of Chileans are pro-Pinochet, which induces them anti-Neruda.

After lunch at a roadside restaurant, it was on to Valparaso to visit Nerudas hilltop house, La Sebastiana( named after its original proprietor, Sebastin Collado) where he accommodated a big housewarming defendant in September 1961. Neruda liked to celebrate New Years Eve there and, taking in the view from the top floor, I could understand why. By era, you check Valpos colourful wooden houses and cabins toppling down to the port; by night, they become a emcee of tiny sunlights, mirroring the Milky Way above.

Pablo Neruda in 1952. Photograph: Allstar Picture Library

This less cluttered, more sophisticated live( another good audioguide was supplied) advocates farther areas of Nerudas personality. Antique maps and artistry, and screens from Asia, tell of his exotic travellings. A big description of Walt Whitman honours a major influence. Another, of Lord Cochrane, reminds us of Scotlands associated with Chiles independence conflicts. An antique merry-go-round horse stimulates the child again, or the nostalgist. The walls are painted in lively off-colors and pinks, to form them dance, according to a poem about La Sebastiana.

Sunshine pours into the higher floors, and the eyrie-like tone of his working space his chair discoloured with light-green ink prompted me of Dylan Thomass shed in Laugharne. Both husbands were hedonists, womanisers, socially extrovert; both necessity hideaways to get down to writing.

I detect the tiredness of Santiago, he wrote. I want to find in Valparaso a little house to live and write calmly. It must meet certain conditions. It cant be located too high or too low. It should be solitary but not too so.

La Sebastiana, Nerudas house in Valparaiso. Image: Alamy

His makes nailed it. La Sebastiana is the eventual metropoli home: quiet and aloof, but boasting a position of Valparaso. And its a convivial, colorful lieu, extremely. But, as anyone will tell you, Valpo needs major museums and other attractions. As well as being enormous merriment and quite inspiring, Nerudas poetic pads are obligatory stops for anyone keen to understand Chile and its recent history. It was at Isla Negra that his poetry and politics came together. It was in La Sebastiana that “hes come to” global prominence. The residences speak to their defines, incorporate with them, reshape them in their window frames.

I love Valparaso, wrote Neruda. Queen of all the worlds coasts ,/ True head office of curves and carries, I love your criminal alleyways.

I loved it extremely. From La Sebastiana, I obliged my space back to my hotel on foot downhill via lanes and staircases, past walls exploding with street prowes, via minuscule tables and shadow-filled plazas. The crazy port constituted more feel now; Neruda did too.

Isla Negra and La Sebastiana are not the only Neruda-linked places in Chile. Santiagos Bellavista neighbourhood boasts a third house, La Chascona, likewise worth a inspect. Neruda was born in Parral, in the wine-growing Maule region, and brought up in the southern municipality of Temuco( which has a dedicated amble ). As foreign diplomats, “hes spent” time in Mexic, Catalonia, British-ruled Burma( I still detest the English, he wrote ), Ceylon, Java and Singapore. The eventual globetrotting troubadour, Neruda exerts a potent appeal for travellers. But do go and call his two favourite seaside lives, and his beloved Valpo. Even if you dont seem youve fairly circled the globe, youll have read something of his poetry-filled world.

Ch $7,000 (8. 65) per person per mansion; audioguides in English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. More info at fundacionneruda.org

Neruda is released after UK cinemas on 7 April