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livI didn't post anything for 3 weeks and now there's too much, which is a silly pattern to get into. But let me talk about a few cultural experiences from recently and hopefully that'll get me unblocked.
In reverse order:
Today jack and I went to Subject, a tiny but perfectly formed exhibit of five pieces by Anthony Gormley currently showing at Kettles Yard. There are three Gormley self-portraits, and two abstracts; across the five, he's doing something really clever with gridlines, like Mondrian but in 3D. There's a figure made of rusting metal (like his famous Angel of the North, but life-sized rather than colossal) and 'levitating' supine about a foot off the ground. One made of lots of square cross-section metal rods, and one made of hoops of wire just barely tracing the shape of a human figure, but confusing to the eye because it's in a cage made of similar hoops. The first abstract is just a couple of thick metal wires traversing all the bare white rooms of the museum, perpendicular to eachother. Which I found amazingly brain melting; when the rooms were empty, it was like being in a sort of giant Necker cube. And the second is a large cube containing LEDs and one-way mirrors which really looks as if it goes on forever in all directions. I thoroughly recommend it if you're anywhere near Cambridge and have any interest in modern art; it's free, it's very small, probably about half an hour of sculptures even if you stop and meditate on each one. And it's some of the most exciting contemporary art I've seen in a while.
Last week our date was a lovely little am-dram production of HMS Pinafore which one of my fellow Sunday school teachers was directing. It was really just perfect; technically very polished, and a lot of fun. And I grew up on G&S as well as dating someone very heavily into their music in college, so any production taps directly into nostalgia. I really liked the decision to set it 100 years ago at the end of WW1; it made something poignant out of the necessity that most of the cast are retired people, you had this crew of older men plus a few women, and could easily imagine the gaps caused by the war. They cross-cast the boatswain and had the romantic lead tenor Rackstraw actually twice the age of the leading lady Josephine (the ages in HMS Pinafore don't really make sense, but that's probably the best interpretation).
ghoti_mhic_uait introduced me to the new Queer eye. I never watched the original because even though in the abstract it was great to have gay characters on TV who weren't in a terrible tragedy, I am not that interested in makeover shows. This new version has a bit more depth to it, and now I've seen three episodes of season 2, I'm blown away. The opening episode, God bless Gay is an incredible piece of TV. It deals with racism and bereavement and has a really emotionally intense and yet nuanced take on being gay in a conservative Christian culture. I was in tears through much of it, but it's a very uplifting story about familial love triumphing over all the horribleness.
We also saw S2:E2 A decent proposal, which is more standard Queer Eye fare, getting a middle-aged, socially anxious man to up his style game in order to propose to his girlfriend. Not as groundbreaking as E1 but really sweet, and I liked the respectful way they helped the man to express a sharper version of himself rather than trying to change him radically.
We then skipped to 2:5 Sky's the limit, which is about a trans man trying to build a reasonable wardrobe immediately after top surgery. I didn't love this episode as much as 2:1, partly because fashion advice for an already flamboyantly queer man is somewhat less dramatically interesting than fashion advice for an African-American Evangelical Christian woman and her gay son. Also because they kind of glossed over, but did mention, that the subject had experienced major complications from the surgery due to the fact that the barbaric American healthcare system failed to take into account that redheads have weird reactions to some anaesthetics; the bit where he nearly died and ended up with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt due to medical incompetence is hard to make into an uplifting story about finding his true self. I did like that they were thoughtful about queer masculinity and helping Skyler express all aspects of his gender and personality, rather than trying to make him pass as a cis man. And that members of the crew spoke to camera about how they hadn't really been good allies to trans people in the past and they'd learned something from working with Skyler; it gave the audience someone to relate to and created an unthreatening way of educating us about trans issues.
I don't have a lot of time for TV at all but I'm hoping to catch more Queer eye at some point.
In reverse order:
jack and I went to Subject, a tiny but perfectly formed exhibit of five pieces by Anthony Gormley currently showing at Kettles Yard. There are three Gormley self-portraits, and two abstracts; across the five, he's doing something really clever with gridlines, like Mondrian but in 3D. There's a figure made of rusting metal (like his famous Angel of the North, but life-sized rather than colossal) and 'levitating' supine about a foot off the ground. One made of lots of square cross-section metal rods, and one made of hoops of wire just barely tracing the shape of a human figure, but confusing to the eye because it's in a cage made of similar hoops. The first abstract is just a couple of thick metal wires traversing all the bare white rooms of the museum, perpendicular to eachother. Which I found amazingly brain melting; when the rooms were empty, it was like being in a sort of giant Necker cube. And the second is a large cube containing LEDs and one-way mirrors which really looks as if it goes on forever in all directions. I thoroughly recommend it if you're anywhere near Cambridge and have any interest in modern art; it's free, it's very small, probably about half an hour of sculptures even if you stop and meditate on each one. And it's some of the most exciting contemporary art I've seen in a while.ghoti_mhic_uait introduced me to the new Queer eye. I never watched the original because even though in the abstract it was great to have gay characters on TV who weren't in a terrible tragedy, I am not that interested in makeover shows. This new version has a bit more depth to it, and now I've seen three episodes of season 2, I'm blown away. The opening episode, God bless Gay is an incredible piece of TV. It deals with racism and bereavement and has a really emotionally intense and yet nuanced take on being gay in a conservative Christian culture. I was in tears through much of it, but it's a very uplifting story about familial love triumphing over all the horribleness.We also saw S2:E2 A decent proposal, which is more standard Queer Eye fare, getting a middle-aged, socially anxious man to up his style game in order to propose to his girlfriend. Not as groundbreaking as E1 but really sweet, and I liked the respectful way they helped the man to express a sharper version of himself rather than trying to change him radically.
We then skipped to 2:5 Sky's the limit, which is about a trans man trying to build a reasonable wardrobe immediately after top surgery. I didn't love this episode as much as 2:1, partly because fashion advice for an already flamboyantly queer man is somewhat less dramatically interesting than fashion advice for an African-American Evangelical Christian woman and her gay son. Also because they kind of glossed over, but did mention, that the subject had experienced major complications from the surgery due to the fact that the barbaric American healthcare system failed to take into account that redheads have weird reactions to some anaesthetics; the bit where he nearly died and ended up with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt due to medical incompetence is hard to make into an uplifting story about finding his true self. I did like that they were thoughtful about queer masculinity and helping Skyler express all aspects of his gender and personality, rather than trying to make him pass as a cis man. And that members of the crew spoke to camera about how they hadn't really been good allies to trans people in the past and they'd learned something from working with Skyler; it gave the audience someone to relate to and created an unthreatening way of educating us about trans issues.
I don't have a lot of time for TV at all but I'm hoping to catch more Queer eye at some point.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-06-23 09:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-06-23 10:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-06-24 04:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-06-30 08:47 pm (UTC)I'm a redhead but I've only had dental experiences with anaesthetics - which were not great. :/ That's really scary stuff.