Breathings of My Heart

A writer's blog, as much for writing stuff as anything else that I find interesting.

[exhaustedscreen-deactivated2019]

‘The grave of the Russian composer Alfred Schnittke in Novodevichye Cemetery in Moscow is surmounted by a stone on which is engraved a rest beneath a fermata with a triple forte noted at the bottom: A very, very loud extended silence.’

- John Biguenet, Silence (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), p.49.

[specificfuckery]

The fermata suggests the indicated notation (in this case, a rest) is to continue at the discretion of the conductor. When the chosen conductor arrives, Alfred Schnittke will rise again.

[spinningrims]

i’m seeing a lot of people reblogging suicide hotlines and this is just a reminder that this is a suicide help line that works like a text-based instant messenger for people who may need to talk to someone but have trouble/are uncomfortable making phone calls

[groovian-whovian]

Never don’t reblog this. There are so many people who have such bad anxiety about phone calls. This can save so many lives

[psychoplebalien-deactivated2024]

This is so so so very important. If you are struggling I want you to be safe, I want you to know that you are loved. I don’t like talking on the phone, sometimes I clam up and can’t talk when I’m anxious. So I’m glad that I found this to share. Spread the word.

[star-sstruck]

Holy shit thank you

[sandandglass]

Donald Trump gets attacked by an eagle.

This eagle truly represents America. What a majestic symbol.

[lukcskywalkcrs]

It’s only fitting that this gets reblogged today

[ambienne]

This tweet means a lot to me.

[ambienne]

It’s probably a really cool and good sign that this post I made in 2014 is going around again, right?

[sootchild]

Rewatching Team StarKid musicals today since the remount of TGWDLM dropped today on youtube. I got reminded of much I adore Bryce Charles' role as Cinderella.

[gallusrostromegalus]

Well. It's the Fourth Of July. Again.

For those of you who aren't familiar, I live in an exceptionally flammable part of the United States, and despite the fact that every goddamn year multiple parts of my state catch fire, destroy homes and kill people, the local assholes insist on getting drunk and setting fire to a bunch of illegal explosives anyway. In 2023, God granted me a Miracle that prevented my house from burning down.

Last year, I had to resort to Psychological and Chemical Warfare to keep the patriotic arsonists at bay.

This year is apparently An Important Birthday for the clusterfuck we have the nerve to call a nation, so despite the fact there is so much smoke in the air that the sun has literally been blood red for the last week, the pyrotechnic fetishists are out in force.

Last year, I hit upon the concept that if my neighbors were going to act like problem animals, it would make sense to use the management techniques on them that you might use on say, a Bear that was doing serious property damage. Thusly, I created The Stench, a nontoxic but FOUL smelling concoction that I could discretely spray around the flammable gatherings and render the area extremely uncomfortable to occupy for the rest of the night, forcing them to give up or move on.

If this seems harsh: There is no story from 2024 because a grass fire was started by fireworks less than 12 miles from me and the high winds put me in the evacuation zone in under an hour. Over fifty people lost their homes. Errant fireworks burning my house down is a very real possibility, and I pay the price in anxiety and insurance premiums.

The Stench is noxious but harmless, and also very effective at building a buffer zone around my home. But sneaking up to parties on foot in this heat is both exhausting and nerve-wracking. There have to be more effective ways to do this

-And there is! It involves Weeds and Business Cards :)

All of this spring, I've been battling Bindweed and my City Code Enforcement Officers.

The city code people have been professional, but the truth is that one of my neighbors is calling them on use because one of my housemates is transgender. It's extremely grating to get these notices, having to explain repeatedly that I *AM* working on the weed situation, I just have a heart condition and No Money. It's also deeply paranoia-inducing to know that the city is regularly coming by and photographing my house.

The Solution to the Bindweed is 1 gallon of high-concentration vinegar, half a cup of Borax, a quarter cup of salt, and a couple tablespoons of dish soap. Get one of those weed sprayers from a hardware store and mix it up in there. Spray it on your thistles, bindweed, kudzu, garlic mustard or whatever your local herbaceous invasive is on a day with bright sunlight, and in a few hours the entire part of the plant above the soil is Deceased. It's non-toxic to insects, pets and wildlife (just wait a few months before trying to plant anything in the area for the traces to wash out). The only real downside to this stuff is that it smells HEINOUS.

Sure, The Stench is nauseating, but WeedFucker 5000 is genuinely painful to inhale. Again, it wont hurt people- even my asthmatic housemates can use the stuff- but boy howdy it sure smells toxic. I've got the ingredients for about 40 gallons of WeedFucker 5000 prepared and ready to go.

I've also got a disposable hazmat suit, rubber boots and gloves, respirator, goggles and a shitty little golf cart from the free section of craigslist to haul my shit around in. I also have Business Cards!

See, the very nice officers from the City Code department left some Very Nice business cards so that I may contact them about "the fucking bindweed is gone, get off my back". So I scanned the business card into my computer, fired up Clip Studio, and made my own business cards. I've turned my City's Abstract Triangle Logo into an Eye of Providence and the slogan of "E Pluribus Unum" to "E Plurbis Anus", Changed my city's name to a dumb pun, and stated the card originates from "The Department Of Public Nuisances".

Crucially, where the name and contact information of the real city employee has been replaced with the name and business email of the neighbor who has been bragging on facebook about calling the city code department on my home because he hates my housemate :)

It looks, at a glance, very much like the business cards of city employees. If you look at it for like 5 seconds though, there's no way it could be mistaken for the real thing.

I've printed out 500 of these bad boys and will have them on hand as I, an alleged City Employee, am forced to work overtime on a national holiday doing weed mitigation, because my boss can't manage deadlines for shit. You're mad about it? I've been out here since 5 AM! But I've gotta or the city will audit us and I could get fired. You know what the economy is. Here, this is my Boss's Business card- how about you send him an email about how this has ruined your barbecue?

It's golden hour now, so I'm Suiting Up and preparing to embark on some civil service in the form of Noxious Weed Eradication, and by coincidence, Fire Mitigation.

I'll report back later Tonight🫡

(If you'd like to support your local disabled storyteller in their Acts Of Public Service, please consider donating to my Ko-Fi or supporting me on Patreon)

[wups-up]

My theory on why Becky's monologue in Black Friday works.

I've been trying to put my finger on why Becky's monologue in Black Friday works so well. I know the obvious answer is "the writing is good" and "Kim Whalen acts her ass off," but I mean more why does Becky's monologue work so well in a *musical.*

I don't talk about anything that happened with Becky in specifics, but I feel like I should put out a trigger warning for abuse just in case as that is at the core of the scene I'll be discussing.

The genre is defined by characters talking about their deepest feelings through song. The suspension of disbelief created by musicals, along with the inherent efficiency and intensity of musical storytelling, means that you can get so much characterization in only three minutes if you want.

There is also a shared language in the background as you can pull on motifs from the music and echo blocking and dance moves. There is so much that can be echoed and called back to in musicals which is part of what makes them so demanding as well as again, efficient.

Becky's monologue strips all of that back. It's just her sitting there, talking to Tom. There isn't even background music like other intense dialogue heavy scenes will usually have. It's uncomfortable in how real and grounded it is. I'll also give props to the pro shot for this, as we get lots of close ups of Becky's face, and there are very few cuts as well. The slow zoom in on her when she describes her fight with Stanely in the witchwood is everything god.

All of this combined makes the scene intimate and visceral. You can hear her breathing with no music to drown it out, see the minute expressions on her face. The lack of back to back cuts means you're just looking at her uninterupted, like you normally would. You keep getting closer and closer to her, until Tom is completely cropped out of the shot. Becky isn't even looking at him, but rather somewhere else, into the memory of what happened.

It makes you feel like you're there. You're the one sitting next to Becky instead of Tom. You're not watching a musical, you're listening to someone open up to you about their trauma.

Now, I explained why the scene works, but I feel like I have to explain why this moment is *not* a song in a musical.

I fully believe that this moment could have been a song. We could have cut Take Me Back and given Becky ballad, and I think it would have worked. The criticism that musicals "don't make sense" is terrible and in bad faith because nearly all forms of story telling require you to suspend your disbelief in some way. The reward for suspending your disbelief in a musical is the experience of taking a concentrated emotional shot of story telling. It's precise and honest, and by god do we need some earnesty in our era of cringe culture.

I will say however, that there is a place for stories that ask you to suspend less disbelief. Some forms of story telling don't ask you to imagine as much, they come to you, they get down on your level, they imitate reality as closely as possible. This is also a valid form of communicating, and this scene does that.

You don't have to suspend your disbelief half as much when Becky starts talking about what happened to her. You don't have to act like it's normal to have background music. You don't have to pretend her singing and dancing is something regular people do when they have feelings.

Given the subject matter, this choice is very impactful. The abuse Becky went through isn't at all unrealistic. It's heavily grounded in reality. You don't have to suspend your disbelief at all to listen to Becky, and you don't have to suspend your disbelief to understand that this is a real thing that happens to people, and it's awful and horrible.

Again, I'm not saying that this *can't* be told through song, but rather the choice to not do so is also saying something important. When the storytellers break a pattern of the genre, they want you to pay attention.

There's a good chance you as a viewer have been in a conversation like that, as Becky, or as Tom, and you weren't singing. Her lines went through editing and re-editing and rehearsals and it was all crafted intentionally, but someone could very well say something just like that.

Black Friday is a musical about capitalism through the metaphor of a cosmic horror god. We see serious topics depicted in an absurd, extreme manner for the sake of communicated how capitalism absolutely fucking sucks and turns people against each other. All of this is also told through songs with varying levels of seriousness and comedy.

There is no tonal flip flop with Becky. There is no song. There is no metaphor and there is no allegory. If anything, it is to this scene's benefit that the rest of the story is a musical. The dramatic tonal and stylistic shift makes this moment stand out so much more in comparison.

Idk, I feel like a broken record throughout this, and maybe I was just talking in circles. I genuinely don't want this to come off as though I think musicals inherently can't handle serious topics. Like, I get so emotional listening to certain songs and I cry all the time watching them or listening to their soundtracks.

I just believe there's something to be said about when storytellers break the convention of the genre they're writing to elevate their story.

I mean we see this in tgwdlm for sure. Emma and Paul have their heart to heart, and we also get Not Your Seed. Both of these moments are emotionally impactful, and one scene is through song and the other isn't. I guess it's a bit different as it would break the rules that guy establishes to have paulkins sing to each other. Who knows. I'm rambling.

[autistic-girl-academic]

4th of July

The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals remount posted free to Youtube

[cozy2000]

time to post my favorite far side comic of all time

[yorgen-sh]

The Chinese shoe manufacturer decided to demonstrate the indestructibility of their shoes

[scarlettohairdye]

And also the indestructibility of that woman's ankles

[darael]

"Buy our shoes or She Will Find You"

[queen-breha-organa-archived-dea]

This Fourth of July, I ask that you support Native Hawaiian independence.

The Kingdom of Hawai’i was illegally overthrown with the help of American businessmen and we have suffered under the iron grip of America.

Our land is simply seen as a vacation spot, my people are simply seen as tour guides and hula dancers. We have had our culture, our history, and our people turned into a commercialized joke by America.

The rampant tourism kills our islands with endless hotels, attractions and overcrowding. The housing and living costs are out of control because of the false “paradise” narrative. The Navy poisons our water and destroys our land. Covid has killed so many of my people due to the reckless and selfish nature of tourists. I have lost loved ones to this virus, because tourists “couldn’t stay away”.

My people have suffered. I have suffered.

We are more than your vacation. We are more than an aesthetic.

We are a sovereign nation illegally occupied by the United States of America.

Restore Hawai’i to Hawaiians. End the American Occupation.

See the links below to learn more and to read up on your Hawaiian history.

Americans overthrow Hawaiian monarchy | HISTORY

What Is the Hawai‘i Sovereignty Movement?

Hawaiian scholar Dr. Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwoʻole Osorio explains the movement asking the United States to return the lands taken during a 18

‘Āina Momona is a Native Hawaiian led community organization dedicated to environmental sustainability, food security and resilience, and so

Red Hill and Kahoʻolawe: A Legacy of U.S. Terrorism

The United States Navy has a history of terrorism in Hawaiʻi (and throughout the world). In 1940 the Navy started to build the Red Hill Fuel

Hawaii reports more than 5,000 new COVID cases, 15 additional deaths in past week

The latest number brings the statewide total since the start of the pandemic to 308,695.

[victusinveritas]

The Illustrated Book of Manners: A Manual of Good Behavior and Polite Accomplishments, 1866

"If the amount of happiness, immediate or ultimate, is increased by any costume, it is right to wear it."

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

i do think a lot of implausible medieval plot devices make more sense when considering the fact that these people simply did not have glasses

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

like the king arthur problem of how were these people always accidentally sleeping with the wrong person? well 1) no glasses 2) no lights and candles are so expensive 3) royal couples didn’t even sleep in the same bed a lot of the time anyway 4) arranged marriage how much do you really know your spouse anyway? maybe not very well a lot of the time 5) people are drinking a lot idk. maybe not as absurd as one might think

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

this post is brought to you by the one time i woke up at a sleepover and realized that without my glasses i could not distinguish one friend from the other. haunting. all of arthurian literature was unlocked to me at that moment

[ontopofgravity]

I asked one of my (male) friends to stop using the phrase “man up” and he has been using “fortify” for the past two weeks instead and it’s just a little thing but honestly it makes a difference

and tbh it’s also pretty funny when I start to deflate in the library and he leans over and goes “FORTIFY”

[teakayblog]

Dude, fortify is bangin’. That makes things like you’re some kind of RPG character. Fortify is way better than “man up.”

[auspiciousleader]

Happy 10th anniversary to Fortify

[tomfoolerytotality]

Looking back on 2020, I think it's hilarious that Wellerman of all shanties is the one that blew up online. It's not a song about life on the high seas or adventuring

It's the "Where the fuck is my delivery" song

[stevishabitat]

[afeelgoodblog]

Why hasn’t this been done before?

[autisticexpression]

You know why.

[petrosapian]

Mind the Gap: a handbook of clinical signs on black and brown skin

Second year medic, Malone Mukwende, has been working with staff members as part of a student-staff partnership project looking at clinical t

[missmixx-a-lot]

Cause racial health disparities…

[xmagnet-o]

I hope this gets published

[algorizmi]

It is available for download as a pdf from their website. www.blackandbrownskin.co.uk/mindthegap

[imperatorsapphiosa]

Hey, if anyone’s curious, this IS making a serious impact — this handbook was taught as standard practice for my EMT license course, as well as several other programs. A lot of new providers are being taught this as a matter of course.

[lesbianano]

No more limits, no more hiding 💗💜💙