circelily

I'm beginning to emerge from my Normal People bubble, having binged both series and book repeatedly, glutted on social media and re-read Conversations with Friends.

It's real lightning strike stuff. Or maybe my personal concept of perfect sex is apposite: a spiralling circuit where each touch, sound,taste from one ratchets the arousal of the other expressed as an increasingly arousing touch, taste, sound intensified by smell until our sight blacks out. That Sally Rooney's novel inspired such emotional and intellectual resonance that the most talented and influential screen talents across every aspect of filming, from commissioning and directing, through casting and intimacy coordination, locations, music, costume came together with perfect casting, writing and acting to produce a programme that rather than being lesser or greater than the book, engages with it to a whole greater than both great parts. Which often leads to love and in turn feeling loved and therefore worthy of love and therefore someone whose desire and love can improve someone else's life in turn.

( Spoilers obviously. So many spoilers. )
So I will take the same lesson. This programme soothed a quarantine pain, of missing touch and craving intimacy. But the bubble itself is now the concern, and I need to slough it in turn, while keeping the gifts it has given me these past 2 weeks. Time for birdsong and sunshine, new books and new conversations.

I'm not crying, you're crying. Shut up.Love

Eta I then binged the rest of the episodes yesterday, and possibly connected, had a weird crying jag this morning toting groceries. I suddenly and intensely miss human touch.

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Squee!

https://thenestcollective.co.uk/artists/the-nightingale/

Current Mood: jubilant

There are many things about the Emma score and soundtrack to love, and of them all, the most profound to me would sound trivial to most: it makes me giggle. That triangle, Elton eyebrow wiggle combo? Makes me yelp and shake helplessly. The Peter and the Wolf instrument/opera/folk characters? Inspired; they convey different blends of affection and mockery for each with sophistication non-pareil and simultaneously conjures the careering pace of great animation There was such an Aristocats country sequence feel. Staid and Autumn will clearly never make acquaintance. Unlike the sympatico bond she's clearly found with Isabel Waller-Bridge, who has shared her mindset and brought it to glorious life.

Plus it perfectly lands the febrile, gossipy energy of Highbury society, straining at the corsets and collars of etiquette. And, beautifully it frames and highlights the servants and serfs, and equally highlights the wilful blindness of the gentry who are raised up on their backs.

Then of course there is Johnny' s closing song, whose lyrics are layers of love, and mischief and callouts. Queen Bee does truly pay seasonal, sprightly, bantering tribute from Mr Knightley to his adored alpha lady, as Benedick to his Beatrice, but also of Johnny to his childhood sweetheart wife, Beatrice. Not neglecting his skipper and new friend Autumn. Fruitful indeed!

Current Mood: chipper

My most recent obsess of desire is Johnny Flynn. And obsessions are particularly virulent paired with quarantine.

So I turn to near anonymity to excise my compulsive thinking. In no particular order:

In my particular crush history, Johnny treads in the steps of River Phoenix, James Spader late 80s/early 90s. Preternaturally youthful, mesmerising gaze and layers of intelligence, mischief, darkness combined with weapons grade sex appeal.

So much so that I spent a pleasant Easter hour casting a remake of sex,lies and videotape. Johnny as Graham of course. Idris Elba as John. Dervla Kirwin would rock Cynthia. And Jessie Buckley as Ann. In Belfast instead of Baton Rouge. Mmm.

Oh Jessie and Johnny. Oh Beast. 2 years after being blown away by their explosive chemistry, I still am transported by it. Quite simply the best portrayal of falling in love since Before Sunrise, encased in a most fairy tale headfuck. James Dean Johnny and Red Riding Hood. Unbelievably, it was the director's first film, and Jessie's too.

There will never be a more hilarious title for a show than Scrotal Recall, made even funnier by how sweet and friendly the comedy inside is, without gross out antics or malice. Johnny as Dylan is as floppy as a catnip ragdoll, and as potent, turning everyone who encounters him, including many viewers - ahem - into tripping kittens. I fear Netflix, but even so, them making 2 more series and rechristening as Lovesick was some excellent decision-making.

The recent version of Vanity Fair was splendid for its venomously glorious anti-heroine, Michael Palin openings and fab Isabel Waller Bridge score with hilarious cover versions on end credits, and Johnny Flynn subverting Dobbin from ostensible hero to the self-righteous, vengeful prick I'd always found him to be on the page. The best period drama of the decade, up there with Alex Kingston's Moll Flanders of yesteryear.

And demonstrating classy judgment now that he is in the privileged position of being able to pick his own roles, and continued great fortune at having such a plum of a role to choose, Johnny becomes to Mr Knightley what Colin Firth became to Mr Darcy: definitive for a generation. Landing an even more amazing first time director than Beast in Autumn de Wilde, who bottles the lightning to create the perfect ensemble across every aspect of production and performance. Then to cap it, they create a love interest of aching vulnerability but shimmering heat. I love how screenwriter Eleanor Catton (also first time!) has used the original text almost verbatim, but slanted it to transform a Higgins and Eliza dynamic (which I find distasteful) into a wholly Beatrice and Benedick vibe. Which defines romance.

In fact, though my gateway drug was Johnny, my 2020 obsession has mutated / expanded into an Emma fixation. And I can't blame pandemics because I saw it every week for a month at the cinema, a cinema I had nearly stopped visiting.

So, those are the topmost of my recent whirring thoughts. Rest now.

Current Mood: Obsessed
Current Location: She/her
Current Music: nothing to do but hang around & get screwed up on you. Therapy? Screamager

I seem to.remember Dreamwidth once a year. Quite literally 😀

2011
Gigs of special: Pulp (lots), Wild Beasts, Slow Club, Summer Camp, Neneh Cherry, Bellowhead, Jon Boden, She Keeps Bees, Aidan Moffat, John Cooper Clarke (15 surprise minutes), Belle and Sebastian, Tuung, Eddi Reader, Suzanne Vega.

Gogglebox addictions (some fleeting. Honest) Doctor Who, Greek, Spiral, Being Erica, The Good Wife, Archer, Castle, Fresh Meat, Campus, Nurse Jackie.

Author, author: Sarah Dunant, Margaret Mahy, Margo Lanagan, Stella Duffy. And always and forever, Pterry.

Theatre dahling: Much Ado about Nothing, Private Lives, Oddsocks. Hmm, bit rubbish this year.

Festies: Locals plus, Green Man, Wireless Pulp, Glastonbury, Primavera. Constellations

Obsession of the year thus far: Abbeydale

Film: bobbins year

2012

Gigs of special: Pulp - Royal Albert, Slow Club - Sheffield Homecoming in a social club with Francois and the Atlas - love, Magnetic Fields (at last!), Blood Red Shoes

Gogglebox addictions (ahem) Justified, The Good Wife, Scott & Bailey, Archer and TVD. Buffy rewatch seasons 5(of Death) and 6 (of sex, ~~drugs~~ addiction and rock'n'roll), Treme

Author, author: Accountancy test books :( and Elmore Leonard. And Margo Lanagan - she stops my breath.

Theatre dahling: Even more rubbish this year. Comedy of Errors, 13. Oddsocks will obv happen eta - glorious tagline: Rome's creaking coalition is under strain as the nation's sporting games is held to honour Emperor Caesar. Will the games be an expensive disaster? Will the liberal Senators succeed with their infamous assassination? Will Caesar's stinking plebs be revolting? Find out this summer with Oddsocks "Julius Caesar".

Festies: Truncated summer will see No Direction Home, Tramlines and Green Man.

Obsession of the year thus far: Many and various procrastination-bait. Exams, please may I pass you so I never see again KThanxBye

Film: better year. Yay - The Artist, Hunger, the 4 M girls, the April of Joss: Cabin in the Woods & Avengers, Two Days in New York
OK - Hunger Games, Mirror Mirror, One for the Money, Fast Girls

2016
Books: Among Us Jo Walton, more Margo Lanagan, everything by Kate Elliott

TV: The Out-laws, Crashing, Happy Valley

Theatre:

Festivals: Bearded Theory, Glastonbury, Tramlines, Green Man

Crumbs, that future date is fast approaching.

2019:

Books: Hugos eligible 2018 stuff, then Hugos finalists. With added Sally Rooney.

TV: Fleabag, Good Omens, Lost Girl redux, Years and Years, Superstore, Gentleman Jack, Lovesick, Big Mouth, Peaky Blinders next week

Theatre : Death of a Salesman, many Midsummer Night's Dreams, Waitress, Admissions

Cine: US, Beast (last year and this), Captain Marvel, Booksmart, Rocketman , The Fight

Festivals : Bearded,Glastonbury. Does worldcon count?

Because the BBC loves me really, it spared me from the terror of the Brexit cliff edge month by giving me Fleabag season 2. And I jumped into obsession with both feet.

PWB gave Fleabag a terrifyingly similar Jesus Year affair to my own. Except substitute marriage for priesthood for unavailability criteria. Which has shook me into reprising the love as well as the heartbreak, a year compressed into a month. Tears keep springing to my eyes in tandem with a smile to my lips.

And extreme over-identification aside, I'm in awe at the richness of interpretation she's allowed in the sparseness of the 6 episodes. And the intensity. I want to talk about the multiple simultaneous layers of the Hot Priest. I'll start with That confessional scene. Because.

Because I don't understand the accusation of consent issues. And I'm a very loud feminist who with the opinion that anything less enthusiastic than yes, Yes, Now! doesn't count as consent.

Short version: it was the very best kind of mutual seduction. The sort that ramps up with every exchange.

It starts in the cafe, where Fleabag calls out Priest for playing away from God with her and sends him away. This confrontation flips both of them. Fleabag into processing the deaths of the 2 people she loved most, which drives her to the tipping point of rejecting her atheism by praying. The Priest into a drinking binge, losing his paternalist shield by aggressive by acknowledging her sexual desire " Fuck you, saying father like it doesn't turn you on". This and his castration tale, alarms and disarms Fleabag, culminating in their Piglet heart-slap.

He then seeks to find a way inside her head. And she is thrilled he wants to see her, so much that he breaks all sorts of sacred Catholic rules to get her into the confessional, snubbing God in order to know about her. And when she breaks down into complete vulnerability, he gives her his in return. She asks him to tell her what to do, to dominate her, and he obeys. He gives her desire to match her own, right in the heart of his God's most sacred space. When God drops the picture, he realizes just how many ways he's betrayed his vows and just how strong the urge is to leave them behind. And it scares him into abandoning Fleabag then.

Thank god the Devil's Pinnumber is over. To celebrate I have belatedly joined the LJ exodus to Dreamwidth. And also writing my first post in 3 years. There may even be some political ranting in future, but for now I'll start with the review of last year's music, theatre, books and telly. In the next post that is.

Current Mood: awake
Crossposts: http://circelily.livejournal.com/30473.html

I interrupt this summer of exam hiatus and TVD-centred procrastination to actually make a post.

Wow - isn't LJ a self-sabotaged shadow of its former self. I'm obviously out of the loop. Is Dreamwidth now the lively heart of fandom, or was that one fracture too many?

As for me, my trend of micro-obsessions continues, straddled as ever between stuff that more people MUST know about NOW and Guilty (Self-Loathing?) Pleasures.

In the former camp - No Direction Home was a perfectly formed baby of a new fest, even more pleasing for being on my doorstep. Richard Hawley, Euros Childs and Django Django all sparkled. Cold Specks, Wave Pictures and The Pyramids were smashing new discoveries. And I met the Lost Picture Show for my second time and fell even further in love with in its crimson plushness and mind-boggling programme. Seriously, I don't know how festies existed without it.

Two Day in New York is the first film that's made me hurt with laughter since Four Lions. Joss Whedon storming into the mainstream also made me happy. I just wanna squidge his chubby cheeks with joyous pleasedness, which is a very specific form of pleasure.

Treme reminded me that I need to go back to NOLA, and birthday plans flowered organically from there. Gobbled up all three seasons of Justified, which when it was good was all of the time and when it was season 2 it was searing. Talking of excellent season 2s, Episodes has been brilliant. And I couldn't get past 2 episodes in the first season. And The Good Wife sustained great characterisation over another 22 episodes.

But what has been sucking up my waking hours and diverting my processing power away from qualifications? Bloody Vampire Diaries. Argh. I have so much rubbish to spew about this programme, just in an effort to force it out of my head. I'll try for the short version. It's my latest Sunset Beach. I've been enticed by the pretty wise-cracking anti-hero and the frankly tumultuous fandom into a little bit of crazy. Despite the absolute rational awareness that this is a show that celebrates a messed up teenage girl falling for two paedophile serial-killing cannibals in a town that's convinced the Confederates won. And the writing is so on the nose it pretty much shrieks that nuance is nuisance and we won't be having any of that round here. So why am I formulating multiple season 4 scenarios and sucking up episode reactions and fanfic like there's no tomorrow?

My terribly weak thesis is that it's The X-Files all over again. The performances and scenarios are so vivid that rather than abandon it, its fans are driven into a creative frenzy to build webs over the holes and cracks with meta debate and fanfic. And they run the gamut from batshit crazies to academic theory application, from defensiveness to insight. It's just such a carnival.

I enjoyed re-reading The Changeover so much this morning that I am racking my brains for friends with teenage children to buy a copy for. Cos they're not getting my ex-library first edition. Isn't it lovely when books that made an impact on you way back when still hold up.

So much so, that decided to find out if Margaret Mahy ever travels abroad to sign stuff and receive adulation. But the answer is no. Mind you, she did nip off to Japan when she beat Philip Pullman to the Han Christian Anderson award in 2006. Which rocks in every way.

Unbelievably, that was my first ever protest since I reached voting age. And what a way for start. Babes in arms and children with whistles, firemenandwomen and barristers, librarians and nurses, accountants and drummers marching, wheelchairing and in one case, even tanking for 4, 5 hours through the corridors of power of the capital. Many first-timers, not really knowing how to chant, but knowing they had something to chant for.

When you look around at any time, and find at least one banner to disagree with, then you realise that a true cross-section of the population is here, to be heard, adversaries allied against a government who has declared war on communities, while having the audacity to try to co-opt the phrase "Big Society" to mean Victorian values:- namely wealth is equated to virtue, and everyone else is irrelevant fodder.

It gave me a bubble of hope, to balance feeling of impotent terror that has built from the moment Condomhead first stepped into office. I want to be wrong about my pessimism, and I've found a shard of resolve that I will try my hardest personally, because every person can, and does make a difference. The business adage that no-one is irreplacable, is exactly, 100% wrong. Everyone is irreplacable. And communal assets that make us the country we are, such as libraries, drama, Citizens Advice and the NHS took decades to build, but will only take a few months to destroy.

Current Mood: passionate

Was absolutely gorgeous this morning. Stood in a hoar-frosted garden looking at the twinkle in a crystal clear sky as the the sun rose like a fire on the horizon.

In the sort-of style of some of Josie's characters but not Josie herself cos I don't really know her. Right? Fanks.

So I glanced at Fence last night and Pictish was supporting Josie Long in Nottingham the next night (tonight. Now last night). Got it? Right!

So It had to be done so after waking up at 6 (damn cat) and reading til 1 (good book) and then watching Before Sunrise AND Sunset (cos that. Right there. Best romance flick/s evah. I said EVAH. Oy you. Wanna have it? Wanna 'ave it? Cos I can take you. Down.

So laziest sunday ever as the snow melts then onto a bus and they have ten tickets left. Get in! Fanks. And Josie is not just drawing picshurs ( altho she had some and they were good and that. Fanks) but proper ranty angry. And feminist and socialist and everfing. It was brilliant and still silly funny which is the best type of funny. Right? Fanks.

And little Johnny Pictish, with fuzzy new beard and full-on Highland and Isles jumper unsuccessfully disguising what a genius polymath he is. He is. Organised Away Game 2010 - best festival there will ever be! Evah! Plus playing every summer festival as Silver Columns and 41 - count 'em folks -dates on Josie's tour as Pictish Trail. Absolutely shagged out genius, I'll give you, but aren't they the best kind. Fanks. And this is the last one. But I didn't stay for the aftershow because it's a Sunday night right, and school tomorrow and only just caught the last bus home. But they would totally have wanted a random stranger/stalker to have a totally banging party wiv. Alright? ALRIGHT? Fanks.

Hello. Still alive. well, at least about to resume life after exams finish nxt Thursday. Will celebrate with wine-tasting that evening, Bellowhead the next day and a surprise birthday party (not mine) the next night. Am considering sidling into London=town for Marc Almond on the 2nd. If I can wangle work.

And bouncing like a boing Sproing thing about Pulp. Much much Pulp. 2011 - shaping up to also be awesome. Except for the exams, o course

Spent 6 straight hours sat in a pub doing accounting coursework with the aid of a single half pint. After a reward of a stronger half pint, came home, uprooting the somewhat blighted tomato plant and now have my first attempt at green tomato soup bubbling on the hearth. As quiet yet bizarre Sundays go...

Eigg. Eigg. Glorious Eigg. Marvellous Fence. Pirate ships and sunshine for my first ever trip to the Hebrides, to dance, and sing and drink and talk nonsense round bonfires of wagon wheels and stages under evergreens and on the singing sands. A festival deserving of run-on sentences and lifelong love for the DIY scene in general and Fence in particular. Is it possible to be in love with 300 people at the same time? And Sweet Baboon and Slow Club and BSP and Malcolm and Johnny and Kenny and Daimh and Kid Canaveral and Meursault and Rozi and Withered Hand and Found and and and

In London on Friday? I'm not :(

But if you are - free mini-festival. In a mobile library:
http://www.fencerecords.com/news/roam-london-presents-a-fence-friday-picnic/

How awesome? None more awesome. If you can go, go, go and make me jealous

Mmmm Glastonbury. Yay, 6Music. Now for a Year 11 Disco in Brighton.

Mwah ha ha

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Recent Entries

Normal People - reflections

Normal People

Emma links - reviews and interviews

Coming on Wednesday - nightingales, Johnny, Jessie and Isabel

More Emma 2020 meta - music and shoutouts

6 degrees of Johnny Flynn

Annual post

Decade of formerly future listy-ness - the teenies.

Fleabag. Of course

2017

She's ba-ack

The Changeover

March for the Alternative

Solstice Lunar eclipse

Josie and Pictish Trail

Still alive

Strangely productive day

Scrumptious Fence on Eigg

In London on Friday? Free gig!

Happily recovered