January 1 is Public Domain Day, and this year we got rather a windfall of books published in 1925, including F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Now, I really love The Great Gatsby. (Actually, I’ve loved nearly everything Fitzgerald wrote—he was an alcoholic asshole, but he sure could write.) I love The Great Gatsby, and I have very strong opinions about The Great Gatsby—and so, … Continue reading hey so Gatsby isn’t exactly celebratory
A long, long time ago, after Christianity came to the Isles and turned old gods into saints or devils or knights of a Round Table, a boy toy from the Scottish side of the borderlands had gotten himself into a bit of trouble. He’d gotten his lover, Burd Janet, into trouble too, but since she was ever so much smarter than he, one guesses she would, in the end, be fine. And so, whether he cared more about her or about his own hide, he told her: “‘But the night is Halloween, lady, / The morn is Hallowday, / Then win me, win me, an ye will, / For weel I wat ye may.'” The boy toy, who hung about Carterhaugh on the Scottish Borders, was, of course, Tam Lin; his words come from Childe Ballad 39A, verse 29—probably my favorite of all the many Childe ballad versions, though I do have far more than a passing fondness for them all. And the day on which he was to pay a tiend to what he called hell was our Halloween.
It’s taken me a bit to return to Juana Inés, mainly because I have been running largely on rage and when that is the case I turn, very decidedly, to The Last Kingdom and The Musketeers and Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and other violent period dramas (with an occasional helping of Wynonna Earp or Buffy the Vampire Slayer), because I am nowhere near as nice a person as folks seem to … Continue reading Para el alma no hay encierro: Juana Inés on Netflix
For once I’m really excited about an adaption! Continue reading Miradme Al Menos: Juana Inés on Netflix
Periodically, things go the rounds on social media, promising to break up the monotony of our dinners, or bad dates, or, now, our political postings, with art and music! Because who doesn’t want to see art and music in their timeline, amirite?! I mean, how could I argue with this? Art is beautiful! I have a degree in art history! I love early modern and colonial literature because the visual is so important!
But I can totally argue with it. Part of it, of course, is just that I’m a fighter, apparently, and arm myself with facts and data and critical theories to tilt at the windmills of bad and misleading information. (I often feel rather a lot like this and this, to be frank.) But the other part? It’s quite simple, actually: this is a bullshit theory. The arts are always political. Continue reading “Art & Politics: An Introduction”
Essentially a Nerd 
