SSM: FRIENDSHIP. This is the last SSM post for today. Like I said in the "setup" post below, today's posts are long. None of the later posts will be as long as these--they'll be paring knives, not broadswords.
So: Why do I keep talking about friendship when I talk about same-sex marriage?
Unqualified Offerings, in an understandable but way off-base interpretation, writes, "Eve says, 'marriage is not friendship' and 'marriage is about sex,' but this is only relevant if she is also saying, sotto voce, gay people who say they want to marry someone they love and sleep with are really just friends with that person. I personally have no reason to be sure that gay people who want to marry are that confused."
This signals to me that I haven't been clear enough. So let me try to crystallize:
1) We as a society need to stop thinking everything is eros or it's crap. I want to renew and strengthen our appreciation of philia.
2) I also, though, want to point out the ways philia is different from marriage. And this, I think, is directly related to same-sex marriage. (Point #1 may or may not be indirectly related to SSM.)
Philia is a form of love. It is often accompanied by a deep, abiding commitment to be there for the friend in his or her time of need. It is often accompanied by an extraordinary emotional intimacy. It's forged through experiences of joy, hardship, and just plain hanging out and supporting one another through thick and thin. It's generally, though not always, a relationship of people who view one another as equals. It's often at its best when the friends are engaged in some common personal project. In some societies (and even to this day), it has been solemnized by religious vows and ceremonies.
Now do you see?
I think friendship is huge--for the friends involved. I think it is beautiful. But I think it is much more relevant to the friends themselves than to the wider society. It does some good for society simply by making the friends happy. They take care of one another, relieving some of the burdens that would otherwise be shouldered by the individual and society (including government).
But friendship doesn't do nearly as much for society as marriage. Nor do same-sex unions, even if you think they are morally peachy-keen. (For more on that, see the posts below on "my basic position" and "Boyz II Men," and this piece by Maggie Gallagher.)
I want society to honor friendship more than it does. I don't believe the same thing about homosexual relationships (for more, go here and here), but I understand that others do. In comparing homosexual relationships to friendships, I'm not trying to say that the former is "really" the latter. I'm trying to point out that you can want society to be more solicitous of your closest chosen relationships without thinking that entitles your relationship to the special status, the "special right," of marriage.
I'll be writing more on this tomorrow-ish, since both halves of the argument(friendship should get more honor from society, and both friendship and same-sex unions do not earn the title "marriage") are things I'm passionate about.
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
SSM: BOYZ II MEN. Another long piece, about how making marriage unisex will change the male quest for masculinity:
A good friend tells this story from his college days: He and several guy friends were drinking pitchers of beer in a local bar. They had one too many, and the leader of their intrepid band devised a challenge. Hoisting his glass, he declared, "Whosoever is a man will bang his head on this table three times!"
You can guess what happened next: All the heads around the table went bang, bang, bang. The leader upped the ante: "Whosoever is a man will hold his hand over this candle for one minute!" And several masculine hands began to burn.
I know what you're thinking. If you're a woman, you're thinking, What possessed these people? And if you're a guy, you're acknowledging, ruefully, that you've either done this kind of jackassery or known many men who would. These are the lengths men will go to prove their masculinity.
Men go farther than that, actually. While girls have several biologically-determined markers of womanhood, from menarche to first childbirth, boys must rely more on culturally-defined rituals to ease them into the responsibilities and habits of manhood. This makes manhood an even more fraught category than womanhood. How can a male prove that he's a man? He can do all kinds of things, some deeply destructive, some fruitful and loving. He can join a gang (fatherlessness is a major recruiting tool for gangs). He can join the Army. He can express his hatred of men he deems insufficiently masculine, harassing or even attacking "queers" in order to prove he's not like them. He can impregnate many women to prove his potency, becoming a "player." Or he can marry.
Humans seek out gender. We want to be, not just "people," but men and women. Every culture develops its own ways of distinguishing the sexes, so that they have their own clothes, habits, in-jokes, customary gathering places, heroic figures, and, most importantly, rituals of adulthood. All those gendered activities are meant to prepare us for the most gendered roles of all: mommy and daddy.
Marriage has served to "genderize" men for centuries. The wedding ring is the sign that the careless kid has finally grown up, become a man with a man's responsibilities. Males who become husbands also become, in their own eyes and society's, men.
And this is where same-sex marriage comes in. Same-sex marriage is unisex. Marrying a woman is significantly less proof of one's manhood when a woman can do it!
When cultural signifiers become unisex, men move away from them fast. Because men's uncertainty about gender is greater than women's, they work harder to establish their gender. Thus women can be named Mackenzie or Ryan, but you'll be hard-pressed to find any newborn boys named Leslie, Evelyn, or even Madison. Once a masculine name becomes a "girl's name," parents of boys drop it fast.
In a country like ours, where one third of all births in 2000 were to unwed mothers, men don't need any additional reasons to forgo marriage. Making marriage unisex will make it less attractive to men and, therefore, less effective in forming families. Men won't consciously think about their decisions in terms of gender. But the desire for gender drives many of our decisions, somewhere just below the surface of thought.
We've already managed to make marriage less attractive to men by pretending that men are expendable, that fatherless families are just "alternative family forms." Same-sex marriage will enshrine that gender-neutral understanding of marriage in law. This is certainly not the only reason to oppose same-sex marriage; but in a time when masculinity is (even) more contested than usual, and men's ties to their children and to the women they sleep with are (even) shakier than usual, "de-gendering" marriage is a terrible idea.
It will take a while for the consequences of unisex marriage to sink in, but eventually, men can be expected to realize that this avenue to manhood has now been closed. As that realization hits home, males who want to become men will seek out the other classic roads to masculinity--none of which are as universal and beneficial as marriage.
A good friend tells this story from his college days: He and several guy friends were drinking pitchers of beer in a local bar. They had one too many, and the leader of their intrepid band devised a challenge. Hoisting his glass, he declared, "Whosoever is a man will bang his head on this table three times!"
You can guess what happened next: All the heads around the table went bang, bang, bang. The leader upped the ante: "Whosoever is a man will hold his hand over this candle for one minute!" And several masculine hands began to burn.
I know what you're thinking. If you're a woman, you're thinking, What possessed these people? And if you're a guy, you're acknowledging, ruefully, that you've either done this kind of jackassery or known many men who would. These are the lengths men will go to prove their masculinity.
Men go farther than that, actually. While girls have several biologically-determined markers of womanhood, from menarche to first childbirth, boys must rely more on culturally-defined rituals to ease them into the responsibilities and habits of manhood. This makes manhood an even more fraught category than womanhood. How can a male prove that he's a man? He can do all kinds of things, some deeply destructive, some fruitful and loving. He can join a gang (fatherlessness is a major recruiting tool for gangs). He can join the Army. He can express his hatred of men he deems insufficiently masculine, harassing or even attacking "queers" in order to prove he's not like them. He can impregnate many women to prove his potency, becoming a "player." Or he can marry.
Humans seek out gender. We want to be, not just "people," but men and women. Every culture develops its own ways of distinguishing the sexes, so that they have their own clothes, habits, in-jokes, customary gathering places, heroic figures, and, most importantly, rituals of adulthood. All those gendered activities are meant to prepare us for the most gendered roles of all: mommy and daddy.
Marriage has served to "genderize" men for centuries. The wedding ring is the sign that the careless kid has finally grown up, become a man with a man's responsibilities. Males who become husbands also become, in their own eyes and society's, men.
And this is where same-sex marriage comes in. Same-sex marriage is unisex. Marrying a woman is significantly less proof of one's manhood when a woman can do it!
When cultural signifiers become unisex, men move away from them fast. Because men's uncertainty about gender is greater than women's, they work harder to establish their gender. Thus women can be named Mackenzie or Ryan, but you'll be hard-pressed to find any newborn boys named Leslie, Evelyn, or even Madison. Once a masculine name becomes a "girl's name," parents of boys drop it fast.
In a country like ours, where one third of all births in 2000 were to unwed mothers, men don't need any additional reasons to forgo marriage. Making marriage unisex will make it less attractive to men and, therefore, less effective in forming families. Men won't consciously think about their decisions in terms of gender. But the desire for gender drives many of our decisions, somewhere just below the surface of thought.
We've already managed to make marriage less attractive to men by pretending that men are expendable, that fatherless families are just "alternative family forms." Same-sex marriage will enshrine that gender-neutral understanding of marriage in law. This is certainly not the only reason to oppose same-sex marriage; but in a time when masculinity is (even) more contested than usual, and men's ties to their children and to the women they sleep with are (even) shakier than usual, "de-gendering" marriage is a terrible idea.
It will take a while for the consequences of unisex marriage to sink in, but eventually, men can be expected to realize that this avenue to manhood has now been closed. As that realization hits home, males who want to become men will seek out the other classic roads to masculinity--none of which are as universal and beneficial as marriage.
SSM: MY BASIC POSITION. This is long but I think it's pretty plain-spoken:
Americans still think the debate over same-sex marriage is about gay people. We still think it's about your best friend who's just said she's a lesbian, or your son who's just come out. We still think it's about whether homosexual acts are sinful.
It's not.
The same-sex marriage debate is about marriage, above all else. It's about a view of marriage that was first promoted by and for heterosexual couples.
I used to dream about same-sex marriage. In high school I was in love with a girl who was the marryin' type. I used to think about the future, when we'd be married. We joked about how my parents would be her in-laws.
So I think I have some grasp on why gay-rights activists are pushing for marriage. Homosexual couples love one another dearly, and they want recognition of this love. They want to feel like society honors their emotional commitments. They envision marriage as a kind of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
But there are all kinds of intense relationships that society does not honor the way it honors marriage. There are best friends (which many women will recognize as the closest relationship they've ever had); mentors; grandmothers; beloved teachers.
Why do we give marriage more societal honor than we give these other, often deeply important, relationships? Because we recognize that marriage has evolved to do more than these other relationships do for society. These relationships do less (not nothing, just less) to nurture children; to bind the young to the old; to corral the often destructive forces of desire into productive and loving channels; to bring people from youth to adulthood; and to align the interests of parents and children, rather than forcing tragic choices between the two. Marriage gets "props" from society because it does all these things more than any other institution does, or could.
Marriage developed over centuries to meet several specific, fundamental needs: children's need for a father. A couple's need for a promise of fidelity (and consequences for breaking that promise). Young people's need for a transition to manhood or womanhood. And men's (and women's, but mostly men's) need for a fruitful rather than destructive channel for sexual desire--a way of uniting eros and responsibility. In other words, marriage developed to meet the needs of opposite-sex couples. Why would same-sex couples expect that this institution would meet their very different needs?
At best, marriage only addresses one need of homosexual couples: sexual fidelity. Even there, it should be obvious that same-sex couples will be less likely to insist on physical fidelity than heterosexual couples. If your man might make babies with someone else, you're more likely to see the point of restrictions on male sexuality. If you can get pregnant, you're more likely to see the problems that might result if the father isn't legally tied to you. So the connection between sexual fidelity and the institution of marriage is a basic consequence of the fact that when men and women--but not same-sex couples--have sex, babies often result. When the institution is no longer responding to opposite-sex couples' needs, we can expect the emphasis on sexual fidelity to weaken.
Canada has already legalized same-sex marriage. A case now trudging through the Massachusetts courts could ultimately do the same for this country. It may seem like we're stepping into an unknown world.
But it's not so new. Same-sex marriage is the next step in the long process of thinning and weakening marriage. Marriage is narrowed from a complex institution serving a variety of needs--focused on the needs of children--to a contractual arrangement between two adults to validate their romantic desires. In this "thin" notion of marriage, children are not the greatest fruit of marriage, the preeminent sign of a couple's union; they are at best optional extras.
For several decades now, we've been watching the unfolding consequences of the "thin," individualist concept of marriage. Those consequences include broken families and fatherless children. Heterosexual couples have begun to reject this model of marriage--the divorce tide is ebbing, and most Americans now realize that children do best when they're raised by their married parents.
Same-sex marriage would revive the mistaken view of marriage that spurred the rise of divorce and family fragmentation--and more than merely reviving this mistaken idea, would enshrine it in law. While the heterosexual world is waking up to the problems caused by the adults-first, individualist version of marriage, same-sex couples are pushing for that vision to become the law of the land.
Same-sex marriage is about marriage.
Americans still think the debate over same-sex marriage is about gay people. We still think it's about your best friend who's just said she's a lesbian, or your son who's just come out. We still think it's about whether homosexual acts are sinful.
It's not.
The same-sex marriage debate is about marriage, above all else. It's about a view of marriage that was first promoted by and for heterosexual couples.
I used to dream about same-sex marriage. In high school I was in love with a girl who was the marryin' type. I used to think about the future, when we'd be married. We joked about how my parents would be her in-laws.
So I think I have some grasp on why gay-rights activists are pushing for marriage. Homosexual couples love one another dearly, and they want recognition of this love. They want to feel like society honors their emotional commitments. They envision marriage as a kind of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
But there are all kinds of intense relationships that society does not honor the way it honors marriage. There are best friends (which many women will recognize as the closest relationship they've ever had); mentors; grandmothers; beloved teachers.
Why do we give marriage more societal honor than we give these other, often deeply important, relationships? Because we recognize that marriage has evolved to do more than these other relationships do for society. These relationships do less (not nothing, just less) to nurture children; to bind the young to the old; to corral the often destructive forces of desire into productive and loving channels; to bring people from youth to adulthood; and to align the interests of parents and children, rather than forcing tragic choices between the two. Marriage gets "props" from society because it does all these things more than any other institution does, or could.
Marriage developed over centuries to meet several specific, fundamental needs: children's need for a father. A couple's need for a promise of fidelity (and consequences for breaking that promise). Young people's need for a transition to manhood or womanhood. And men's (and women's, but mostly men's) need for a fruitful rather than destructive channel for sexual desire--a way of uniting eros and responsibility. In other words, marriage developed to meet the needs of opposite-sex couples. Why would same-sex couples expect that this institution would meet their very different needs?
At best, marriage only addresses one need of homosexual couples: sexual fidelity. Even there, it should be obvious that same-sex couples will be less likely to insist on physical fidelity than heterosexual couples. If your man might make babies with someone else, you're more likely to see the point of restrictions on male sexuality. If you can get pregnant, you're more likely to see the problems that might result if the father isn't legally tied to you. So the connection between sexual fidelity and the institution of marriage is a basic consequence of the fact that when men and women--but not same-sex couples--have sex, babies often result. When the institution is no longer responding to opposite-sex couples' needs, we can expect the emphasis on sexual fidelity to weaken.
Canada has already legalized same-sex marriage. A case now trudging through the Massachusetts courts could ultimately do the same for this country. It may seem like we're stepping into an unknown world.
But it's not so new. Same-sex marriage is the next step in the long process of thinning and weakening marriage. Marriage is narrowed from a complex institution serving a variety of needs--focused on the needs of children--to a contractual arrangement between two adults to validate their romantic desires. In this "thin" notion of marriage, children are not the greatest fruit of marriage, the preeminent sign of a couple's union; they are at best optional extras.
For several decades now, we've been watching the unfolding consequences of the "thin," individualist concept of marriage. Those consequences include broken families and fatherless children. Heterosexual couples have begun to reject this model of marriage--the divorce tide is ebbing, and most Americans now realize that children do best when they're raised by their married parents.
Same-sex marriage would revive the mistaken view of marriage that spurred the rise of divorce and family fragmentation--and more than merely reviving this mistaken idea, would enshrine it in law. While the heterosexual world is waking up to the problems caused by the adults-first, individualist version of marriage, same-sex couples are pushing for that vision to become the law of the land.
Same-sex marriage is about marriage.
SSM: THREE TYPES OF ARGUMENT. Throughout these posts, and previous posts on this site, I've been making three different kinds of claim:
1) Marriage was not designed to respond to the desires of and pressures on same-sex couples, and we shouldn't expect it to do so. This is at once the strongest and the weakest claim. Strongest, because it strikes me as glaringly obvious! As Maggie Gallagher has pointed out, even societies that accepted or valorized (male) homosexual conduct did not institute same-sex marriage. But it's also the weakest claim, because of the obvious objection: If same-sex couples want to put on the yoke of a relationship model never meant for them, well, is that really my concern?
2) Marriage is an honor certain kinds of relationship earn from society because of what they do for society. Same-sex marriage would do far less for society than regular-old-marriage does. Marriage is, inherently, a "special right"--something a relationship earns because of what it gives society.
3) Same-sex marriage is likely to actively harm heterosexual marriage and family-making. Thus it will knock the wind out from the current renewal of marriage, undoing a lot of the gains we've made in areas like unwed childbearing and fatherless households. This is obviously the claim with the sharpest edge.
Let me prevent one misapprehension at the start: I am not claiming that the day California passes a same-sex marriage law, Mr. and Mrs. Skylar Moonbeam will decide to abandon their kids to go take poppers in a bathhouse and join a lesbian vegan commune (respectively). I'm not sure why I have to make this point, but I've actually seen people say things like, "Canada instituted same-sex marriage months ago--and hey, Canada's still there! Where's the breakdown of the Canadian family? What, do you really think people are gonna leave their spouses just because Bob and Tim get hitched?"
We've heard that line of argument before, of course. What, do you really think making divorce easier will make happy marriages fall apart? No--but it made good-enough marriages harder to sustain and harder to form. (For more, read The Abolition of Marriage.) As with the rise of unilateral no-fault divorce, the effects of same-sex marriage will be generational, gradual--and very hard to reverse.
Here's a list of my previous posts on SSM. I'll point out the places where I make arguments of types 1, 2, and 3.
"Abolish marriage"? At the end of this post I gesture toward argument type #1.
Civil unions? arg. #1.
Review of AFF same-sex marriage debate. Toward the end of this, I call for more discussion of what makes best-friendship different from marriage, and why marriage is a sexual relationship and not just an emotional commitment. (Relates to argument type #2.)
These three posts give a quick overview of argument #2, and the discussion of friendship in the last post gets into arg. #1 as well.
How can a minority affect a majority? (prerequisite for making arg. #3)
This post at Gideon's Blog goes into several areas of argument #3. My response to him is here (scroll down).
This piece by Maggie Gallagher hits arg. #2 hard, and makes arg. #3 as well. Similarly but faster here: "Marriage is the place where we think it is a good idea to have children. This is no longer written anywhere in the law, when we got rid of provisions restricting the sexual license to marriage and also giving special privileges to children born within marriage.
"But regardless of whether or not the law is articulate about this purpose, it is still one of the things that marriage is (marriage not being the sum of its legal incidents).
"Therefore, in giving marriage to unisex couples, we are saying that we think it is a great idea of unisex couples to acquire children. We are saying children do not need mothers and fathers.
"None of that is true with any male-female union."
1) Marriage was not designed to respond to the desires of and pressures on same-sex couples, and we shouldn't expect it to do so. This is at once the strongest and the weakest claim. Strongest, because it strikes me as glaringly obvious! As Maggie Gallagher has pointed out, even societies that accepted or valorized (male) homosexual conduct did not institute same-sex marriage. But it's also the weakest claim, because of the obvious objection: If same-sex couples want to put on the yoke of a relationship model never meant for them, well, is that really my concern?
2) Marriage is an honor certain kinds of relationship earn from society because of what they do for society. Same-sex marriage would do far less for society than regular-old-marriage does. Marriage is, inherently, a "special right"--something a relationship earns because of what it gives society.
3) Same-sex marriage is likely to actively harm heterosexual marriage and family-making. Thus it will knock the wind out from the current renewal of marriage, undoing a lot of the gains we've made in areas like unwed childbearing and fatherless households. This is obviously the claim with the sharpest edge.
Let me prevent one misapprehension at the start: I am not claiming that the day California passes a same-sex marriage law, Mr. and Mrs. Skylar Moonbeam will decide to abandon their kids to go take poppers in a bathhouse and join a lesbian vegan commune (respectively). I'm not sure why I have to make this point, but I've actually seen people say things like, "Canada instituted same-sex marriage months ago--and hey, Canada's still there! Where's the breakdown of the Canadian family? What, do you really think people are gonna leave their spouses just because Bob and Tim get hitched?"
We've heard that line of argument before, of course. What, do you really think making divorce easier will make happy marriages fall apart? No--but it made good-enough marriages harder to sustain and harder to form. (For more, read The Abolition of Marriage.) As with the rise of unilateral no-fault divorce, the effects of same-sex marriage will be generational, gradual--and very hard to reverse.
Here's a list of my previous posts on SSM. I'll point out the places where I make arguments of types 1, 2, and 3.
"Abolish marriage"? At the end of this post I gesture toward argument type #1.
Civil unions? arg. #1.
Review of AFF same-sex marriage debate. Toward the end of this, I call for more discussion of what makes best-friendship different from marriage, and why marriage is a sexual relationship and not just an emotional commitment. (Relates to argument type #2.)
These three posts give a quick overview of argument #2, and the discussion of friendship in the last post gets into arg. #1 as well.
How can a minority affect a majority? (prerequisite for making arg. #3)
This post at Gideon's Blog goes into several areas of argument #3. My response to him is here (scroll down).
This piece by Maggie Gallagher hits arg. #2 hard, and makes arg. #3 as well. Similarly but faster here: "Marriage is the place where we think it is a good idea to have children. This is no longer written anywhere in the law, when we got rid of provisions restricting the sexual license to marriage and also giving special privileges to children born within marriage.
"But regardless of whether or not the law is articulate about this purpose, it is still one of the things that marriage is (marriage not being the sum of its legal incidents).
"Therefore, in giving marriage to unisex couples, we are saying that we think it is a great idea of unisex couples to acquire children. We are saying children do not need mothers and fathers.
"None of that is true with any male-female union."
SSM: THE SETUP. This is the start of a series of posts in which I'll lay out my reasons for opposing same-sex marriage, and answer other people's objections. I'm not sure how long it will take, so feel free to jump in whenever you want.
Today's posts will probably be among the longest in the series--I hope to keep most of these bite-sized, but today I'm laying out my own position and that takes more time than a FAQ-like reply to objections.
There will also be times when I reuse phrasings that I've said before, either on this blog or at MarriageDebate.com, though that shouldn't happen super often. It'll happen because a) I'd like to place my previous comments in a clearer context, and/or b) I think a particular formulation is much clearer than anything I could come up with from scratch. So basically, any repetition is in the service of clarity.
Sorry about the whole Blogger thing where the series starts at the bottom and you have to scroll up! But since I don't know how long this will be or how many posts I'll do each day, I can't get around this difficulty.
Okay, on with the show.
Today's posts will probably be among the longest in the series--I hope to keep most of these bite-sized, but today I'm laying out my own position and that takes more time than a FAQ-like reply to objections.
There will also be times when I reuse phrasings that I've said before, either on this blog or at MarriageDebate.com, though that shouldn't happen super often. It'll happen because a) I'd like to place my previous comments in a clearer context, and/or b) I think a particular formulation is much clearer than anything I could come up with from scratch. So basically, any repetition is in the service of clarity.
Sorry about the whole Blogger thing where the series starts at the bottom and you have to scroll up! But since I don't know how long this will be or how many posts I'll do each day, I can't get around this difficulty.
Okay, on with the show.
POETRY WEDNESDAY: From John Donne, "A Lecture Upon the Shadow." It's not one of my favorites of his, but I like the second stanza and the end a lot. Sorry about the lack of formating.
Stand still, and I will read to thee
A lecture, Love, in Love's philosophy.
These three hours that we have spent,
Walking here, two shadows went
Along with us, which we ourselves produced.
But, now the sun is just above our head,
We do those shadows tread,
And to brave clearness all things are reduced.
So whilst our infant loves did grow,
Disguises did, and shadows, flow
From us and our cares ; but now 'tis not so.
That love hath not attain'd the highest degree,
Which is still diligent lest others see.
Except our loves at this noon stay,
We shall new shadows make the other way.
As the first were made to blind
Others, these which come behind
Will work upon ourselves, and blind our eyes.
If our loves faint, and westerwardly decline,
To me thou, falsely, thine
And I to thee mine actions shall disguise.
The morning shadows wear away,
But these grow longer all the day ;
But O! love's day is short, if love decay.
Love is a growing, or full constant light,
And his short minute, after noon, is night.
Stand still, and I will read to thee
A lecture, Love, in Love's philosophy.
These three hours that we have spent,
Walking here, two shadows went
Along with us, which we ourselves produced.
But, now the sun is just above our head,
We do those shadows tread,
And to brave clearness all things are reduced.
So whilst our infant loves did grow,
Disguises did, and shadows, flow
From us and our cares ; but now 'tis not so.
That love hath not attain'd the highest degree,
Which is still diligent lest others see.
Except our loves at this noon stay,
We shall new shadows make the other way.
As the first were made to blind
Others, these which come behind
Will work upon ourselves, and blind our eyes.
If our loves faint, and westerwardly decline,
To me thou, falsely, thine
And I to thee mine actions shall disguise.
The morning shadows wear away,
But these grow longer all the day ;
But O! love's day is short, if love decay.
Love is a growing, or full constant light,
And his short minute, after noon, is night.
HAPPY ENDING: Or something. I've posted the entire rough draft of "What You Can Do for Your Country." You can read the whole thing in order here; or just get the last segment here. Note the big gap in time between the last segment and the previous ones.
As always, your comments and (especially) criticisms are welcomed. This is a rough draft, which means that I already know I didn't nail it, so please don't hold back if you think something's wrong!
Soon, maybe tomorrow, I'll start posting the next story, "Getting Fired."
As always, your comments and (especially) criticisms are welcomed. This is a rough draft, which means that I already know I didn't nail it, so please don't hold back if you think something's wrong!
Soon, maybe tomorrow, I'll start posting the next story, "Getting Fired."
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
EXISTENTIAL CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS: Motime Like the Present is a wiggy blog dealing with, um, Calvinism, antinomianism, and Silver Age Marvel comics.
In other words, he's insane in a way that I deeply respect.
I find Calvinism wildly awful and distressin', and I don't rightly buy much of MLTP's analyses of superhero comics. Nonetheless, he is a worthwhile theological-superheroic test-your-strength machine. Good stuff. Blogrolled tonight.
In other words, he's insane in a way that I deeply respect.
I find Calvinism wildly awful and distressin', and I don't rightly buy much of MLTP's analyses of superhero comics. Nonetheless, he is a worthwhile theological-superheroic test-your-strength machine. Good stuff. Blogrolled tonight.
RENE MAGRITTE, MASTER OF HORROR: Me and my big mouth. I was really psyched that Sean Collins decided to dedicate his October blogging to horror-related posts, and fired off an email in which I asked whether he was a Magritte fan, and, if so, whether he'd be interested in blogging about the Belgian surrealist's use of horror imagery.
Like so many people to whom I shoot oblique, half-thought-out one-liners, he replied, "Hey, intriguing! Why don't you do it?"
Um, because I didn't know what I was talking about? My muse is intermittent at best, babe.
Nonetheless, I'm right. Magritte is a horror artist. I'm going to try hard to explain what that statement means, but be forewarned: This post is even more scattered than usual, and I'm not going to spend my time looking up pictures on the Internet (too late at night), so, um, the big book o' Magritte I'm using is Magritte, ed. Sarah Whitfield, South Bank Centre, 1992. I'll describe the pix, though that's nothing at all like seeing them, and I'll also be dropping several general comments about Magritte and horror that should be of interest even if you don't have the paintings in front of you.
First off: Magritte is not a horror artist just because he's a surrealist. Lee Miller--possibly my favorite visual artist of all time ever--is also a surrealist, and her photographs give me none of the haunted, creepycrawly, horrorshow sense that saturates Magritte's work.
In part, that's because Miller moved out of her own head into World War II. In part, that's because she was presenting the wreckage of a beautiful order--there's a far greater sense of wrecked beauty in her works than in Magritte's, where the emphasis is more on lost meaning.
Both emphases seem to me to portray a world that is neither good, nor bad, but Fallen; but Miller's work is much more obvious about that than Magritte's. It's possible, although I don't think this is the right interpretation, to come away from Magritte's work thinking it portrays a world that is intrinsically, essentially absurd, that there is no hope for a recovery of meaning or a redemption. It's a lot harder to come away with that view from Miller's pictures, especially her WWII period, when she was doing her greatest work.
For me, the classic Miller picture is her photograph of the soprano singing, silhouetted, in the ruins of the bombed-out opera house. Nothing in Magritte's work relies on the same sense of a preexisting order, and nothing in his work relies on the same charged, obvious, exquisite beauty among the ruins.
So okay, it's not just his surrealism, although doubtless that helps. Surrealism provided a genre in which he could work out his obsessions and anxieties--basically, it did for him what suspense did for Hitchcock. Here's my partial list of Magrittean obsessions, themes to which he returns again and again (often returning, as well, to their characteristic images):
--loss of identity... inability to view or understand oneself... something usurping one's identity. You see this everywhere in his work--all those mirrors that reflect the back of the head that faces them, so the viewer never gets to see his own face (check out the title of one of those paintings, La reproduction interdite--this guy is being specifically denied his own reflection by some outside, unknown, almost bureaucratic, impersonal force). All those headless torsos, scuba-divers whose heads have been replaced by blocks of wood, lovers kissing with their heads wrapped entirely in white sheets, a woman's face with a jagged strip ripped off and floating in space.
Two of Magritte's most famous paintings put an even more bluntly horrific spin on this idea: Le viol and Les jours gigantesques (The Rape and The Titanic Days). In Le viol, a woman's facial features are replaced by her sexual organs--her breasts replace her eyes, her pubic mound her mouth. Les jours gigantesques (which serves as the cover image for Whitfield's book) shows a man clad in a suit attacking a naked woman as she tries to fend him off. Well, sort of. The man can only be seen in the places where his body overlaps with hers. Here, let me try to find an image of it so you can see what I mean: here.
In both of these paintings, identity is defined through sexual violation. In the first one, a woman's identity is defined by the way her viewer reduces her to her sex organs; in the second, a man's identity is reduced to his act of violation. Both of these pictures strike me as haunting, true, frightening, and sad.
--threats from the everyday. The sky is one of the big culprits here. "The muscles of the sky" pulse menacingly onto a wooden stage; a host of butchered birds, thickly coated with crimson blood and pulled gray feathers, hang in "The murderous sky"; a picture of a bright blue expanse with pretty white clouds is titled "The curse." (In this last painting, as in several other Magritte pieces, the title functions basically like the music in movies, sending an opposite emotional charge to the one set up by the imagery in the painting, and thereby complicating the picture and putting the viewer on edge, apprehensive.)
I note that this sense of being attacked by something that should be utterly normal and familiar is what Stephen King does best. It's the whole idea behind Cujo, and in that book it's mirrored in the subplot about the Sharp Cereal Professor. It's the reason King's use of pop culture ("Oz the Gweat and Terrible" and the Ramones' "Hey, ho, let's go" in Pet Sematary, for example) is so powerful.
Similarly, lots of Magritte's paintings deal with violations of the normal. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that lots of his backgrounds, e.g. skies and beaches, were painted from picture-postcards; they're aggressively everyday. His houses, similarly, always look like they'd be right in place in a children's book or a realtor's brochure. Except for the, oh say, giant gray alien jingle-bells hanging over the house. Or the fact that the house lives in a lamplit nighttime, while the sky above the house is sunny day. Magritte renders textures (wood, fur, fancy suits, skin) very carefully--and then rips off strips from his figures, or melts their edges, or (often) takes their heads off, or parks them sideways on the canvas. This again is much like Stephen King, a relentlessly tactile, specific writer. (On a good day, anyway. Both Magritte and King have produced a big ol' pile of not-so-much, too.)
--a variant on both of these ideas: the truly creepy blending of organic and inorganic, human and environment. For example, a table with one leg that's, uh, leg-shaped. Battered, broken boots that melt into hard-worn feet. An eye in a pancake (although I still prefer an "Eyeball in My Martini") or a block with eyes.
One of the weirdest, niftiest Magritte paintings is Grelots roses, ciels en lambeaux (Pink bells, tattered skies). It's divided in half. On the left is a standard, bland Magritte blue sky with clouds. On the right it's kind of like a psychedelic photo-negative: It's hard to tell which is sky and which is cloud, but one is electric blue and the other is an electric salmon pink (good grief is that a weird color!), and there are those enormous alien jingle-bells again. To me, this painting feels like blinking: Eyes open, everything's normal, then you blink and everything's insane--which is real? Why do you have these hallucinogenic, apparently meaningless images trapped behind your eyes?
It's one of the most cinematic paintings I can think of; or, if you take my "blink" interpretation, you could consider it sequential art--comics. Except that it's not. It's a painting. And so its two images draw you, not forward into a narrative (as a movie or a comic would), but back around to the first image, in a cycle that traps you in a mystery with no solution. Is this just a pretty blue-and-pink picture--or is it a hallucination, an invasion by the irrational?
Magritte even rings his own changes on that classic nightmare/"monster under my bed" image: the door that Something has broken through. His "La reponse imprevue" (The unexpected answer) shows a normal, ordinary, Stephen King wooden door through which something mostly-human-shaped has... melted. And vanished. It either disappeared into, or (worse!) came from, the deep shadows behind the door. That's basically night-light territory, right there. Yet by melting the door, rather than breaking through it, the Whatever It Is adds an element of mystery and organic-ness--merging with our everyday environment, not destroying it--that's even eerier than our childhood bogeymen.
I've gone on too long already. There's more to say: reading Magritte's antiwar paintings, esp. Le survivant, in light of the "Horrors of War" chapters in David Skal's Monster Show; talking about the childish and/or fairy-tale creepiness of many of Magritte's fauve paintings; talking about the way that even Magritte's absurdities rely on an underlying logic, meaning, and language of physical objects, even a "language of the body" (easiest example here is probably the various paintings in which an egg replaces a bird, but actually I think you can make this case for almost all of his work). But I'll leave that either for you all, or for later days.
I'm a philosophy major turned journalist. In other words, a professional amateur, a committed dilettante. This is my unschooled, gut reaction to RM's pictures. I'm very, very interested in anything you people have to add, anything you want to contest or expand on.
"Belgium is an absence of identity."
--Belgian surrealist motto
Like so many people to whom I shoot oblique, half-thought-out one-liners, he replied, "Hey, intriguing! Why don't you do it?"
Um, because I didn't know what I was talking about? My muse is intermittent at best, babe.
Nonetheless, I'm right. Magritte is a horror artist. I'm going to try hard to explain what that statement means, but be forewarned: This post is even more scattered than usual, and I'm not going to spend my time looking up pictures on the Internet (too late at night), so, um, the big book o' Magritte I'm using is Magritte, ed. Sarah Whitfield, South Bank Centre, 1992. I'll describe the pix, though that's nothing at all like seeing them, and I'll also be dropping several general comments about Magritte and horror that should be of interest even if you don't have the paintings in front of you.
First off: Magritte is not a horror artist just because he's a surrealist. Lee Miller--possibly my favorite visual artist of all time ever--is also a surrealist, and her photographs give me none of the haunted, creepycrawly, horrorshow sense that saturates Magritte's work.
In part, that's because Miller moved out of her own head into World War II. In part, that's because she was presenting the wreckage of a beautiful order--there's a far greater sense of wrecked beauty in her works than in Magritte's, where the emphasis is more on lost meaning.
Both emphases seem to me to portray a world that is neither good, nor bad, but Fallen; but Miller's work is much more obvious about that than Magritte's. It's possible, although I don't think this is the right interpretation, to come away from Magritte's work thinking it portrays a world that is intrinsically, essentially absurd, that there is no hope for a recovery of meaning or a redemption. It's a lot harder to come away with that view from Miller's pictures, especially her WWII period, when she was doing her greatest work.
For me, the classic Miller picture is her photograph of the soprano singing, silhouetted, in the ruins of the bombed-out opera house. Nothing in Magritte's work relies on the same sense of a preexisting order, and nothing in his work relies on the same charged, obvious, exquisite beauty among the ruins.
So okay, it's not just his surrealism, although doubtless that helps. Surrealism provided a genre in which he could work out his obsessions and anxieties--basically, it did for him what suspense did for Hitchcock. Here's my partial list of Magrittean obsessions, themes to which he returns again and again (often returning, as well, to their characteristic images):
--loss of identity... inability to view or understand oneself... something usurping one's identity. You see this everywhere in his work--all those mirrors that reflect the back of the head that faces them, so the viewer never gets to see his own face (check out the title of one of those paintings, La reproduction interdite--this guy is being specifically denied his own reflection by some outside, unknown, almost bureaucratic, impersonal force). All those headless torsos, scuba-divers whose heads have been replaced by blocks of wood, lovers kissing with their heads wrapped entirely in white sheets, a woman's face with a jagged strip ripped off and floating in space.
Two of Magritte's most famous paintings put an even more bluntly horrific spin on this idea: Le viol and Les jours gigantesques (The Rape and The Titanic Days). In Le viol, a woman's facial features are replaced by her sexual organs--her breasts replace her eyes, her pubic mound her mouth. Les jours gigantesques (which serves as the cover image for Whitfield's book) shows a man clad in a suit attacking a naked woman as she tries to fend him off. Well, sort of. The man can only be seen in the places where his body overlaps with hers. Here, let me try to find an image of it so you can see what I mean: here.
In both of these paintings, identity is defined through sexual violation. In the first one, a woman's identity is defined by the way her viewer reduces her to her sex organs; in the second, a man's identity is reduced to his act of violation. Both of these pictures strike me as haunting, true, frightening, and sad.
--threats from the everyday. The sky is one of the big culprits here. "The muscles of the sky" pulse menacingly onto a wooden stage; a host of butchered birds, thickly coated with crimson blood and pulled gray feathers, hang in "The murderous sky"; a picture of a bright blue expanse with pretty white clouds is titled "The curse." (In this last painting, as in several other Magritte pieces, the title functions basically like the music in movies, sending an opposite emotional charge to the one set up by the imagery in the painting, and thereby complicating the picture and putting the viewer on edge, apprehensive.)
I note that this sense of being attacked by something that should be utterly normal and familiar is what Stephen King does best. It's the whole idea behind Cujo, and in that book it's mirrored in the subplot about the Sharp Cereal Professor. It's the reason King's use of pop culture ("Oz the Gweat and Terrible" and the Ramones' "Hey, ho, let's go" in Pet Sematary, for example) is so powerful.
Similarly, lots of Magritte's paintings deal with violations of the normal. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that lots of his backgrounds, e.g. skies and beaches, were painted from picture-postcards; they're aggressively everyday. His houses, similarly, always look like they'd be right in place in a children's book or a realtor's brochure. Except for the, oh say, giant gray alien jingle-bells hanging over the house. Or the fact that the house lives in a lamplit nighttime, while the sky above the house is sunny day. Magritte renders textures (wood, fur, fancy suits, skin) very carefully--and then rips off strips from his figures, or melts their edges, or (often) takes their heads off, or parks them sideways on the canvas. This again is much like Stephen King, a relentlessly tactile, specific writer. (On a good day, anyway. Both Magritte and King have produced a big ol' pile of not-so-much, too.)
--a variant on both of these ideas: the truly creepy blending of organic and inorganic, human and environment. For example, a table with one leg that's, uh, leg-shaped. Battered, broken boots that melt into hard-worn feet. An eye in a pancake (although I still prefer an "Eyeball in My Martini") or a block with eyes.
One of the weirdest, niftiest Magritte paintings is Grelots roses, ciels en lambeaux (Pink bells, tattered skies). It's divided in half. On the left is a standard, bland Magritte blue sky with clouds. On the right it's kind of like a psychedelic photo-negative: It's hard to tell which is sky and which is cloud, but one is electric blue and the other is an electric salmon pink (good grief is that a weird color!), and there are those enormous alien jingle-bells again. To me, this painting feels like blinking: Eyes open, everything's normal, then you blink and everything's insane--which is real? Why do you have these hallucinogenic, apparently meaningless images trapped behind your eyes?
It's one of the most cinematic paintings I can think of; or, if you take my "blink" interpretation, you could consider it sequential art--comics. Except that it's not. It's a painting. And so its two images draw you, not forward into a narrative (as a movie or a comic would), but back around to the first image, in a cycle that traps you in a mystery with no solution. Is this just a pretty blue-and-pink picture--or is it a hallucination, an invasion by the irrational?
Magritte even rings his own changes on that classic nightmare/"monster under my bed" image: the door that Something has broken through. His "La reponse imprevue" (The unexpected answer) shows a normal, ordinary, Stephen King wooden door through which something mostly-human-shaped has... melted. And vanished. It either disappeared into, or (worse!) came from, the deep shadows behind the door. That's basically night-light territory, right there. Yet by melting the door, rather than breaking through it, the Whatever It Is adds an element of mystery and organic-ness--merging with our everyday environment, not destroying it--that's even eerier than our childhood bogeymen.
I've gone on too long already. There's more to say: reading Magritte's antiwar paintings, esp. Le survivant, in light of the "Horrors of War" chapters in David Skal's Monster Show; talking about the childish and/or fairy-tale creepiness of many of Magritte's fauve paintings; talking about the way that even Magritte's absurdities rely on an underlying logic, meaning, and language of physical objects, even a "language of the body" (easiest example here is probably the various paintings in which an egg replaces a bird, but actually I think you can make this case for almost all of his work). But I'll leave that either for you all, or for later days.
I'm a philosophy major turned journalist. In other words, a professional amateur, a committed dilettante. This is my unschooled, gut reaction to RM's pictures. I'm very, very interested in anything you people have to add, anything you want to contest or expand on.
"Belgium is an absence of identity."
--Belgian surrealist motto
Oompa, Loompa, doopity-doo
I've got another blogwatch for you...
Amy Welborn: Possible hope for Terri Schiavo. Pray for her; go here for more info.
Sed Contra: Responds to my post on health insurance; Dorothy Day pickets Saint Joseph.
Thrownback: Amazing post on hearing confessions, from a blogging priest.
The Washington Post on the Kay Report on weapons programs in Iraq. Via Oxblog.
LaserMonks. As Mark Shea said, Only in America.
I've got another blogwatch for you...
Amy Welborn: Possible hope for Terri Schiavo. Pray for her; go here for more info.
Sed Contra: Responds to my post on health insurance; Dorothy Day pickets Saint Joseph.
Thrownback: Amazing post on hearing confessions, from a blogging priest.
The Washington Post on the Kay Report on weapons programs in Iraq. Via Oxblog.
LaserMonks. As Mark Shea said, Only in America.
"True 'compassion' leads to sharing another person's pain; it does not kill the person whose suffering we cannot bear. ...
"...The request which arises from the human heart in the supreme confrontation with suffering and death, especially when faced with the temptation to give up in utter desperation, is above all a request for companionship, sympathy and support in the time of trial. It is a plea for help to keep on hoping when all human hopes fail. As the Second Vatican Council reminds us: 'It is in the face of death that the riddle of human existence becomes most acute' and yet 'man rightly follows the intuition of his heart when he abhors and repudiates the absolute ruin and total disappearance of his own person. Man rebels against death because he bears in himself an eternal seed which cannot be reduced to mere matter.'"
--Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life)
"...The request which arises from the human heart in the supreme confrontation with suffering and death, especially when faced with the temptation to give up in utter desperation, is above all a request for companionship, sympathy and support in the time of trial. It is a plea for help to keep on hoping when all human hopes fail. As the Second Vatican Council reminds us: 'It is in the face of death that the riddle of human existence becomes most acute' and yet 'man rightly follows the intuition of his heart when he abhors and repudiates the absolute ruin and total disappearance of his own person. Man rebels against death because he bears in himself an eternal seed which cannot be reduced to mere matter.'"
--Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life)
Monday, October 06, 2003
SEASICK, YET STILL DOCKED: In a ragged mood. Not up for ramblin'. Lots of fun stuff for you, though, some of it written or mostly-written already. Coming distractions: horror imagery in Magritte; the happy ending of "What You Can Do for Your Country" (well, somebody's happy, anyway...); comics and The Spanish Tragedy; and a week-long series of brief posts on same-sex marriage that should give you a much more cogent picture of my position than I have heretofore presented, and will also reply to various objections I've read elsewhere, thus it should end up as a combination mission statement and FAQ. And did I mention, short. Anyway, all that and more will be yours tomorrow. No, really, I mean it.
Um, anyway, sorry for the limited blogging of late, but like I said, tomorrow is bonanza day here at EveTushnet.com. It'll be real. Check in starting... ohhhhh... let's say 5 or 6 PM, if it's sunny I want to spend the day writing in Dupont Circle and I don't have a laptop. See you then!
Oh--and to those who suggested haunted-ship movies, thanks! I've already watched "The Below" and "Ghost Ship," and have learned such fun facts as: When old-timey music starts playing on a device that definitely should not be playing it (e.g. a record player you've turned off, or a walkie-talkie), very very very not-good things are about to happen....
Anyway, feel free to keep recommending haunted-ship flix. Remember, they don't have to be good. They just have to be typical.
Um, anyway, sorry for the limited blogging of late, but like I said, tomorrow is bonanza day here at EveTushnet.com. It'll be real. Check in starting... ohhhhh... let's say 5 or 6 PM, if it's sunny I want to spend the day writing in Dupont Circle and I don't have a laptop. See you then!
Oh--and to those who suggested haunted-ship movies, thanks! I've already watched "The Below" and "Ghost Ship," and have learned such fun facts as: When old-timey music starts playing on a device that definitely should not be playing it (e.g. a record player you've turned off, or a walkie-talkie), very very very not-good things are about to happen....
Anyway, feel free to keep recommending haunted-ship flix. Remember, they don't have to be good. They just have to be typical.
Thursday, October 02, 2003
FOUNDING BROTHERS: This is not so much a history of the American Revolution as a series of instructive vignettes. As such, it mostly succeeds. Some thoughts:
FB starts out kind of gassy and repetitive. Stick it out, though--the repetition fades, and the book reads very quickly, so it's worth fighting through the occasional boring passages.
Ellis sometimes resorts to telling rather than showing. This is especially clear in his acid portrait of Thomas Jefferson, whom he views as a self-deceiving, Machiavellian, untrustworthy, brilliant but often plain wrong schemer. Now, I'm perfectly willing to believe this portrait! It happens to accord perfectly with my own view of Jefferson. But Ellis really does not make the sale, because he's too insistent, too unwilling to trust his readers with the raw evidence, too eager to thrust his own interpretation in our faces.
That said, and speaking entirely as a laywoman on these matters, I really enjoyed FB. It refreshed my memory on some subjects (Jay's Treaty, Madison as a Founder) and added to my knowledge on others (excellent, quick section placing Washington's Farewell Address foreign policy in its proper, continent-oriented context).
Ellis is acutely aware of the economic and political pressures on the Founders; but he is equally alive to their philosophical ideals. This combination is extraordinarily rare. I certainly can't speak as someone with intimate knowledge of the revolutionary generation, but as a regular old American, I have to recommend this book highly. It reads fast and fun, and it touches on subjects of which we all need frequent reminders.
FB starts out kind of gassy and repetitive. Stick it out, though--the repetition fades, and the book reads very quickly, so it's worth fighting through the occasional boring passages.
Ellis sometimes resorts to telling rather than showing. This is especially clear in his acid portrait of Thomas Jefferson, whom he views as a self-deceiving, Machiavellian, untrustworthy, brilliant but often plain wrong schemer. Now, I'm perfectly willing to believe this portrait! It happens to accord perfectly with my own view of Jefferson. But Ellis really does not make the sale, because he's too insistent, too unwilling to trust his readers with the raw evidence, too eager to thrust his own interpretation in our faces.
That said, and speaking entirely as a laywoman on these matters, I really enjoyed FB. It refreshed my memory on some subjects (Jay's Treaty, Madison as a Founder) and added to my knowledge on others (excellent, quick section placing Washington's Farewell Address foreign policy in its proper, continent-oriented context).
Ellis is acutely aware of the economic and political pressures on the Founders; but he is equally alive to their philosophical ideals. This combination is extraordinarily rare. I certainly can't speak as someone with intimate knowledge of the revolutionary generation, but as a regular old American, I have to recommend this book highly. It reads fast and fun, and it touches on subjects of which we all need frequent reminders.
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
HEALTH CARE: Some links from Hit & Run: 1) Outsourcing socialized medicine,
2) Delinking health insurance and employment. As you all know, I've really started to notice this problem since I became self-employed. It's huge. It's important.
The comments sections to those posts, esp. the second one, are also well worth your time.
While we're on this subject, tonight I went to a happy hour sponsored by the Young Leadership Network. The speaker was Rep. Paul Ryan, R-WI. He startled me: I was very impressed. The guy's relaxed, passionate, and rhetorically stellar. Economic conservatism generally leaves me unmoved, but Ryan put it across. He's pro-life, but it sounds like econ, limiting government, and health care are his main focuses. Keep an eye on this dude. (He won in a Democratic, heavily unionized district, by the way.)
2) Delinking health insurance and employment. As you all know, I've really started to notice this problem since I became self-employed. It's huge. It's important.
The comments sections to those posts, esp. the second one, are also well worth your time.
While we're on this subject, tonight I went to a happy hour sponsored by the Young Leadership Network. The speaker was Rep. Paul Ryan, R-WI. He startled me: I was very impressed. The guy's relaxed, passionate, and rhetorically stellar. Economic conservatism generally leaves me unmoved, but Ryan put it across. He's pro-life, but it sounds like econ, limiting government, and health care are his main focuses. Keep an eye on this dude. (He won in a Democratic, heavily unionized district, by the way.)
GHOST SHIPS: I promise I have a reason for asking this: Can anyone recommend a movie about a haunted ship? This movie should be either a) really good or b) jam-packed with conventional accouterments of the genre. It need not be both. The absolute ideal movie would include every trapping of the genre, plus lots and lots of shots of the ocean, plus it would be easy to find on DVD at the local Blockbuster. I'm totally serious about this--it relates to a project I'm working on. Help!
POETRY WEDNESDAY: Traditional. I tried making it look all Spanish-y with accent marks and upside-down exclamation points, but for some reason they were all mangled except the accents over the "e"s. Sorry about that.... Anyway, this is a fitting song for the first day of October.
Salias del templo un dia, Llorona, cuando al pasar yo vi,
Salias del templo un dia, Llorona, cuando al pasar yo vi.
Hermoso huipil llevabas, Llorona, que la Virgen te crei,
Hermoso huipil llevabas, Llorona, que la Virgen te crei.
Dicen que el primer amor, ay! Llorona, es grande y es verdadero,
Dicen que el primer amor, ay! Llorona, es grande y es verdadero,
Pero el ultimo es mejor, ay! Llorona, y mas grande que el primero,
Pero el ultimo es mejor, ay! Llorona, y mas grande que el primero.
Ay de mi Llorona, Llorona, Llorona, llévame al rio,
Ay de mi Llorona, Llorona, Llorona, llévame al rio,
Tapame con tu rebozo, Llorona, porque me muero de frio,
Tapame con tu rebozo, Llorona, porque me muero de frio.
Dos besos llevo en el alma, Llorona, que no se apartan de mi,
Dos besos llevo en el alma, Llorona, que no se apartan de mi,
El ultimo de mi madre, Llorona, y el primero que yo te di,
El ultimo de mi madre, Llorona, y el primero que yo te di.
Ay de mi Llorona, Llorona, Llorona de azul celeste,
Ay de mi Llorona, Llorona, Llorona de azul celeste,
Aunque la vida me cueste, Llorona, no dejaré de quererte,
Aunque la vida me cueste, Llorona, no dejaré de quererte.
------------------------------------------
I couldn't find a translation on Google, so here's my rough high-school-Spanish effort:
You were leaving church one day, Llorona, when I saw you walking by.
You wore such a beautiful shawl that I thought you were the Virgin.
They say the first love, oh! Llorona, is great and true,
But the last is better, oh! Llorona, and greater than the first.
Oh, Llorona, take me to the river,
Cover me with your shawl, for I am dying of cold.
I carry two kisses in my soul, Llorona, that will never part from me:
The last kiss from my mother, and the first one I gave you.
Oh, Llorona, Llorona, Llorona of celestial blue,
Although it cost me my life, Llorona, I will never stop loving you.
Salias del templo un dia, Llorona, cuando al pasar yo vi,
Salias del templo un dia, Llorona, cuando al pasar yo vi.
Hermoso huipil llevabas, Llorona, que la Virgen te crei,
Hermoso huipil llevabas, Llorona, que la Virgen te crei.
Dicen que el primer amor, ay! Llorona, es grande y es verdadero,
Dicen que el primer amor, ay! Llorona, es grande y es verdadero,
Pero el ultimo es mejor, ay! Llorona, y mas grande que el primero,
Pero el ultimo es mejor, ay! Llorona, y mas grande que el primero.
Ay de mi Llorona, Llorona, Llorona, llévame al rio,
Ay de mi Llorona, Llorona, Llorona, llévame al rio,
Tapame con tu rebozo, Llorona, porque me muero de frio,
Tapame con tu rebozo, Llorona, porque me muero de frio.
Dos besos llevo en el alma, Llorona, que no se apartan de mi,
Dos besos llevo en el alma, Llorona, que no se apartan de mi,
El ultimo de mi madre, Llorona, y el primero que yo te di,
El ultimo de mi madre, Llorona, y el primero que yo te di.
Ay de mi Llorona, Llorona, Llorona de azul celeste,
Ay de mi Llorona, Llorona, Llorona de azul celeste,
Aunque la vida me cueste, Llorona, no dejaré de quererte,
Aunque la vida me cueste, Llorona, no dejaré de quererte.
------------------------------------------
I couldn't find a translation on Google, so here's my rough high-school-Spanish effort:
You were leaving church one day, Llorona, when I saw you walking by.
You wore such a beautiful shawl that I thought you were the Virgin.
They say the first love, oh! Llorona, is great and true,
But the last is better, oh! Llorona, and greater than the first.
Oh, Llorona, take me to the river,
Cover me with your shawl, for I am dying of cold.
I carry two kisses in my soul, Llorona, that will never part from me:
The last kiss from my mother, and the first one I gave you.
Oh, Llorona, Llorona, Llorona of celestial blue,
Although it cost me my life, Llorona, I will never stop loving you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)