I love asking people how their parents met. You always get an interesting reply. My best friend’s parents met on the relatively new internet in 1999. My other friend’s parents met at Burger King when one was the manager and the other was a regular customer. My parents met at the beach because they were neighbors in their rental houses, mom was on a church trip and dad was getting blackout drunk every night with his friends next door.
the number of times i think about the full body viking skeleton i saw in the museum is ridiculous like when i say it haunts me i mean it actually haunts me
every time i remember the questions are endless — what was his name? what did his mother call him? what sounds did he wake up to? what sounds did he die to? how old was he when he died? how old when he fell in love? how old when he first fell out? who cried with him and laughed with him? who cried for him? how many miles of separation can i draw between my ancestors and him? was he kind, serious, jokey? was he sombre or impulsive? was he chatty and good-humoured or a cantankerous asshole? like…i have never stopped thinking about this.
the fact that at one point in time this was a living breathing person. with memories and petty hates and the dumbest jokes. and friends he loved. and the fact that he probably at some point burst out into drunken song or punched someone in an argument or GOT punched in an argument or tripped into the mud while his friends pissed themselves laughing or or or or…countless or‘s into infinity
and the fact that before all of that this massive skeleton was tiny toddler (was he scared of the dark? did he squabble with his siblings? did he have siblings?) who may or may not have hid behind his mother or probably got hoisted onto an adult’s shoulders and in his little mind thought this person was the strongest human in the world and that he could hold the whole sky up just by standing there like that and as long as he was up there he was king of the world or could be.
like…what am i supposed to do with this? what does ANYONE do with this? how are you supposed to cope with the enormity of this while at the same time realising just how tiny and fleeting our lives are? there is literally more than a THOUSAND years between us & ALL of it has been pinched down to a glass case not even 2 inches thick like…i’m losing my mind.
So.... I followed you in the wee beginnings of my giant moby dick obsession and I've been avidly consuming your comic. But TODAY I found your writings on the musical and... oh my gosh that part with Fedallah . just. you make all the good points there! And its like... I saw it at ART before my giant obsession took root, but so much of it confuses me! and moby dick is a book with some pretty explicit sections about race (if not a big coherent Take) 1/?
so to take it and then make it all about how some white man is ruining the voyage (ahem, the US) is so strange to me!? Like there ARE sections about whiteness, and there are parts where Ishmael totally turns protestant evangelizing ideas on their heads (queequeg as being tainted by christianity, also the part where queequeg says something along the lines of ... poor ishmael, so confused). Idk maybe i'm just a purist. 2/?
I have to say though... the song version of the reverend's sermon at the beginning absolutely takes my breath away (and i'm sad that I don't have any audio version...). Do you have a take on all the prophet imagery/stuff going on in the book? (elijah, ahab, jonah &c).ANyways, I've been rambling. tl;dr: your comic is So Good and I have opinions about the 2019 musical. 3/3
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hhhh first off thank u for following & for ur kind words!! i’m so glad to be a part of Whale Obsessions & i’m glad you like my comic!!
& ohhh boy. the musical. the musical the musical. i actually have a more distilled, shorter post in my drafts about my problems w the musical bc my existing review is kind of long and unwieldy but YEAH, tl;dr a white man trying to take a story already very intrinsically about race and modify the racial aspects to make it “more relevant” to “modern america” is. dumb and shitty and not his place as a white man to do and i’m Not a Fan. you don’t need to try to make md relevant to modern day america! by virtue of the fact that it’s already about race and racialized dynamics in the 19th century US -- dynamics which still exist -- it’s already relevant to today! especially when he takes away a lot of the existing racial commentary in favor of adding his own lukewarm white takes on racism! like what abt the time ishmael learns he fucked up wrt queequeg on his own, without queequeg having to pull some bs “i’m just like you!!” moment like so many characters of color in white narratives are forced to? what about ishmael drawing comparisons between the pequod and colonialism/imperialism, and talking abt how the act of whaling at sea mirrors US colonialism on land? what abt the fact that all of the officers on the pequod are white and most of the sailors are poc (which is mentioned in a brief throwaway line in the musical but otherwise not meaningfully discussed bc the officers are played by WOC)? there’s like. so much to work with already that you can build off instead of just... eschewing that to insert your own opinions lmao. and it’s less work!! to just work with what already exists and build on it!!
and !! yeah the sermon song is absolutely fantastic. there are several really really good musical moments in the show (which makes the problems w it all the more frustrating imo). it’s a lovely lovely song sung beautifully and a really wonderful opener. psst if you want an audio boot of the show dm me i can link u to one that my friend took the night we went together
but yeah re: prophet stuff in the book-- i live for that shit. the sermon chapter is probably one of my favorites in the story, both for its beautiful language and for how much it foreshadows everything! something i think a lot of adaptations (not just the musical) get wrong about Moby Dick is the exclusion of the on land chapters. and, like, I understand why people do it -- they want to get to sea and the adventure as soon as possible -- but the problem is those first 20 or so chapters exist to frame the story in a way that we can’t really when we get to sea. there’s so much foreshadowing and tone-setting and groundwork that’s done in those early chapters that we miss out on if we just skip them (not to mention the adorable character interactions btwn Ish & Queequeg, Ish & Peter Coffin, & really just the only time we actually get to see Ishmael be a character).
putting the rest under a cut cause this is getting long lol
but yeah so much of what shows up in the latter half of the book is explicitly referenced in those opening chapters. aside from the obvious biblical connotations of the names (ishmael, elijah, ahab), connotations that the narrative itself is well aware of and comments on, there’s so many little things that just... really nicely hint at what comes in the end.
like, okay. ishmael getting saved by queequeg’s coffin at the very end? in what can easily be interpreted as ~divine~ or ~angelic~ intervention (esp if we consider the biblical origins of his name)? okay, cool, look at this line that ishmael yells when he first sees queequeg in peter coffin’s inn:
(ID: “Landlord, for God’s sake, Peter Coffin!” shouted I. “Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!”)
or how about the swinging lantern in Jonah’s cabin that shows up in the sermon?
(ID: “Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in Jonah’s room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all, though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance. But that contradiction in the lamp more and more appals him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry. ‘Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!’ he groans, ‘straight upwards, so it burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!’”)
that image, the rocking, swinging lantern, reappears again and again in Ahab’s cabin throughout the book! it’s there in the beginning when we see Ahab charting their course for the first time, it’s there when the ship sees the mysterious spooky Spirit Spout TM and Starbuck finds Ahab sleeping in the cabin, clinging to a rocking lantern, it’s there when Starbuck has his existential crisis over whether or not he’s going to kill Ahab (another Jonah parallel -- killing the captain would save everyone else).
or how about when queequeg saves that racist dumbass on the schooner to nantucket, and ishmael literally tells us queequeg’s going to die?
(ID: All hands voted Queequeg a noble trump; the captain begged his pardon. From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till poor Queequeg took his last long dive.)
there’s just a ton of really lovely little nods and details and symbols in the early chapters that lay down the foundations for what comes later. those chapters, and elijah and ahab and jonah and the sermon and peter coffin, have a job to do: they’re there so we know how this ends before we’ve even started. before ishmael ever sets foot on the claw-footed pequod, we know, at least on some level, she’s destined to sink.
remember, ishmael is telling us this story in hindsight. he knows how it ends. he doesn’t deceive us, doesn’t try to hide or avoid it. he makes it very clear from the beginning that this is a story where everyone dies.
sorry that got so long! thank you for the asks i always love an excuse to ramble about Dick
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