Stuff and Moonshine

Just before waking, I dreamt I was traveling through a downtown neighbourhood, buildings in ruins. A lone woman in a building (sort of deco/neoclassical bank-building style) whose entrance was now a vertical crack shouted something at me.

I was walking, thinking to myself “politics-formal politics-is granular”— and a bunch of stuff about why you have to start at the local level to influence things. I came to another building site where the whole superstructure was gone. The same woman asked me if I’d seen any squatters in it lately. Obviously no. She cackled something about how nice and quiet the neighbourhood was now, and how maybe the building would learn to be a good building and be allowed to have tenants again.

I’m afraid the best retort I could come up with was “fuck you, lady.” The past few years have made me much swearier.

I climbed across the building’s site— there was a deep crack in the ground and I approached with caution to look over the edge to see how deep it was. The crack had exposed a cliff face of what looked like cuneiform that went down into the ground.

“Do you have any silver paint?” Inside the crack, I think on a sort of scaffolding, there was a woman with short white hair and a hawklike profile, very dark eyes, who was painting a silk banner that hung down into the depths. I wondered how she managed but realized she must pull the sections of fabric up towards herself. The thin fabric was covered in a grid of little multicoloured squares and triangles and it seemed to me she’d have an easier time painting it if she used an embroidery hoop to hold the fabric taut.

I now remembered an earlier scene of the story in which the painter had attempted to kiss me, but I’d fled and she’d kissed a (male) police officer instead, leading to some kind of transference— she was using that power to make this banner, with protective but ruthless intent.

“Perhaps it’s better I kissed Officer [name],” she said to me. “The [name of ancient civilization we were dealing with] approved all sorts of couplings for pleasure; but for inward journeys, they were more conservative.” (Not the word she used, been trying to think of something not quite as slangy as “normie.”]

“And what happened to Officer Name’s mind?” I asked.

“There is something in there now. A substitute. The difference is hardly noticeable.”

“Then you’ll pardon me if I’m happy, too, that he was the one you kissed.”

I thought of offering to get her an embroidery hoop for the fabric, but i wasn’t sure if I should be helping her.

This dream was probably influenced by having watched the Dr Phibes movies back-to-back before bed.

Lying awake, I started thinking about mini-goncharovs— stories by single authors that create movies that don’t exist in reality. I’m sure I listed four, but at the moment I can only recall three:

Hyperboloids of Wondrous Light 

The King In Yellow (1949) 

You’re Wrong About Misericorde 

My office periodically gets calls where I can’t hear anybody on the other end, and the screen just gives a town name rather than a caller ID (I hate our phone system). But a bunch of them are from Anzac, AB, which is an unusual enough name that I finally looked it up just now. Turns out it has a population of 506 people, as of the last census.

Who the hell is calling us from Anzac? Which of its 506 inhabitants is so desperate to talk to a hardware-supply company three provinces away? And why can they never get through?

Sunday I watched One For the Pot -- this is the Shaw Festival production from, I think, the late ‘eighties-- there was a revival at the Shaw in the mid-‘90s, but I seem to remember seeing this tv broadcast as a middle-schooler. Or rather, I caught the third act, was able to tape it on the family VCR, and watched it over and over.

Seeing the entire play for the first time, I’m struck by how provisional the set-up actually is. Oh, Mr. Hardcastle wishing to find Billy Hickory Wood, the long-lost son of his late friend and business partner, and settle part of his fortune upon him, makes sense enough. And Billy having a separated-at-birth twin, Rupert Hickory Wood, raised with a posh accent and little else—well, that’s just the rules of comedy. But half the cast have no real reason to be doing what they’re doing. Jugg the butler cheerfully demands bribes for each assist; but Rupert seems to just get caught up in the inertia of mostly-innocent Billy and his scheming boss Charlie. And there’s no reason for Hardcastle’s arty daughter Amy to fall in love with Rupert at first sight, except that she does.

It helps if you regard it all as not so much a farce plot as a parody of one, with all the tropes amped up. Identical twins raised separately? Let’s throw in a third as the curtain comes down on Act II. There are walk-on characters, offstage characters, and a running gag where one or another of the party guests is always wandering by in search of the ballroom. There are so many plot threads some of them have to be thrown away as soon as they’re introduced: Clifton’s blackmail scheme is foiled almost without effort, because  he's made the mistake of being a genuinely unpleasant villain in a story full of loveable comic rapscallions and they have the power of slapstick on their side. This is, after all, a play written in 1959 but set in a vaguely-Wodehousian, vaguely early-1930s country manor. Will somebody get doped up? tied up? forced to don drag in order to seduce a myopic family solicitor? Damn right they will.

By the third act (the part I saw as a kid) the whole thing has achieved escape velocity and everybody’s slamming doors too quickly for the audience to worry about whether any of it makes sense. We’re not watching it for sense, we’re watching for the pleasure of seeing the late Heath Lambert be a human shell game, swapping out accents and ducking into doorways so he can pull a Texas switch with one of his body doubles. Logic is for murder mysteries.

Last month I ordered a few sample sizes of classic perfumes (Mitsouko, Jicky, and Dolce Vita), so I could know what they smell like when mentioned in stories (well, and Dolce Vita because I *think* I know what it smells like and want to confirm. If I'm right, it's a scent I associate with a beloved person and place and I'd like to have it in a bottle).

The postal strike began a day or so after I placed my order, so the perfume samples arrived Dec 20.

Impressions so far:

Mitsouko (pre-reformulation 1998) EDT. Mitsouko (originally came on the market 1919) was one of the luxury goods Prof. Wolland’s crew conjured up at the theatre and which a few hours later turned back into trash. It’s more subtle than I expected. I’m not sure how I feel about it— it started as a very very faint boxwood scent, and eventually became something that’s… not really so much a smell as a vague sort of creamy vibe.

Jicky EDP. (originally introduced 1889) Another one that was fainter than I’d expected. It’s likely these are all more dilute than I’m used to, since they’re eaux de toilette or eaux de parfum. Jicky, to me, just smelled very slightly of licorice— at least I didn’t get any of the chicken-coop smell some people supposedly pick up. One thing about older perfume blends is that a significant number of the reviews contain references to sweat, dung, or cat pee. Presumably because they were originally created in a time when ambergris and civet were components, even if the modern product uses synthetic equivalents. Anyway, I eventually decided that Jicky, on me and to me, smells like a dilute version of a goth-y perfume I bought last year and can’t recall the name of or find where I stashed the vial.

La Dolce Vita EDT. (originally introduced 1994) The best so far, sweet, slightly metallic. Still doesn’t quite smell like 108 Albertus Ave, but I’m happy enough with it.

...as one of those Ghost Story for Christmas tv movies, and regardless of what time period they set it in, they need to play “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” over the end credits.

This would not only fit in with the [spoiler rot13] chapu-naq-whql frevny-zheqref theme, but would let audiences hear a Paul McCartney song in December that is not “Wonderful Christmas Time.”

Also it was Ugly Holiday Sweater Day at work today.

China mourns British man “Old Dry Keith” made famous by his bland sandwiches: This reminded me of Arthur Dent becoming “The Sandwich Maker,” although Keith’s fans appear to have regarded his sandwiches with horror, and him with mildly ironic affection. Thing is, I watched a couple of the videos and those are just perfectly normal sandwiches (albeit on whole-wheat bread). Everyone keeps treating this like a “ha ha British food is terrible” story, but I think it’s more a “everything is exotic to somebody” story.

Meanwhile, for an actual UK eccentric, Ivor Cutler: Whose works could also be quite beautiful. His fans included the Beatles, who cast him as the bus driver in Magical Mystery Tour.

a_t_rain, Ceremonies for Civil Wars 


A particularly delightful goth xmas tree.

The Kids In the Hall reunited for a series a few years back. I've only seen one sketch, but it's a sort of WKRP-scripted-by-Samuel-Beckett thing, so I'd say they've still got it.

I'd had no idea Tiny Tim performed at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival (possibly NSFW-- the footage of the festival includes some grainy low-res nudity)

Also at the Isle of Wight in 1970: Melanie, performing 'Look What They've Done to My Song, Ma.' This is one of those songs I only knew from parody versions, but the original sends chills down my spine. Additional context: this performance was at, like, four in the morning. The Who had just performed all of 'Tommy.' Melanie was the only artist brave enough to follow them (the Doors were supposed to, but they chickened out).

a_t_rain has written a story in which Chaucer's pilgrims pick up another character, whose storytelling abilities are...suspect: 'The Chatbot's Tale'

Yesterday I read Kipling's 'The Janeites' and oh damn it's good. I'm still unpacking it. (contains the usual quantities of gore and character death you'd expect in a story about WWI)

Now that I know Moyna MacGill is Angela Lansbury’s mom I can’t unsee the resemblance.

Are we supposed to think the family dog’s death was not natural, and that Lettie used the poison on him? Or did she just buy it from the drugstore, but the dog died of old age before she got around to using it?

I like how, without directly spelling it out, the film shows how carefully and subtly Harry--once he finds the poison in the desk and starts thinking about using it to revenge himself on Lettie-- makes sure everyone else knows that she’s the one who bought it. He also lets Nona sees him handle it so that if his fingerprints are on it later there’ll be a legit explanation. I assume his original plan is to try and make it look like suicide, though I wonder if anyone in town would buy that. After all, they all know what Lettie’s like, and that she’s just driven a wedge between her brother and his fiancée, restoring the family status quo—why would she kill herself instead of enjoying her triumph? When the cocoa cups get mixed up, they’re certainly all very willing to believe she murdered Hester.

Thatt last scene before Hettie goes to the gallows in which she exults in the fact that while she’s going being executed, Harry’s going to go mad with guilt-- beautifully monstrous performance from Fitzgerald.

OK so it’s not exactly an “it was a dream” ending, it’s an “I fantasized about killing Lettie and realized how horribly it could go wrong” ending, which—I can maybe live with? Harry thought better of it, and Deborah, at the last minute, thought better of marrying that other guy.