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ON APHASIA

Discover a modern take on mermaid-like spiritual beings from Western Arnhem Land.

CONVERSATION Sianne Ngai’s Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting is about aesthetic judgments: an inquiry into the terms and origins of taste. How do we decide what we feel about the latest Chantal Akerman film or the fiction of Javier Marías, an Alexander McQueen ball-gown or an episode of Breaking Bad? How do we …

Women have atoned for the sins of the archetypal first woman for millennia. More recently, Eve and her alter ego Lilith have been embraced.

#art x pop culture #julia wolkoff

Let’s revisit the real source material for “The Little Mermaid.”

#art x pop culture #jacqui palumbo

Long afloat on shipless oceans I did all my best to smile 'Til your singing eyes and fingers Drew me loving to your isle And you sang Sail to me, sail to me Let me enfold you Here I am, here I am Waiting to hold you Did I dream you dreamed about me ? Were you hare when I was fox ? Now my foolish boat is leaning Broken lovelorn on your rocks For you sing 'Touch me not, touch me not Come back tomorrow Oh my heart, oh my heart Shies from the sorrow' I am puzzled as the oyster I am troubled as the tide Should I stand amid your breakers ? Or should I lie with death my bride ? Hear me sing 'Swim to me, swim to me Let me enfold you Here I am, here I am Waiting to hold you'

A salute to the beginning of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti’s strange relationship

“Lynch wanted future girlfriend Rossellini to sing a version of Tim Buckley’s Song to the Siren, which was also covered by gothic dream-pop group This Mortal Coil on their 1984 It’ll End in Tears album”.

Isabella Rossellini’s Dorothy Vallens is clearly a “siren” in the obvious sense that she sexually seduces an unwitting man with the allure of her voice. If Lynch had been able to gain the rights for Rossellini to sing Song to the Siren, perhaps there would be more of a commonly well-known link between the film and the siren archetype. The close up of a disembodied ear as bookends to the film, and the firetruck too (at the beginning and the end) really anchor the film in relation to the aurality of the film/the dream..

I mean aurality re HEARABILITY of the film - its musicality; the importance of sound... interesting that “aura” is involved... Hallo Walter Benjamin... again.

~ She wore blue velvet ~

var infolinks_pid = 3064406; var infolinks_wsid = 0; //resources.infolinks.com/js/infolinks_main.js Tracing the sad medieval history of the siren and trying to understand where it all went wrong. B…

I’ve never seen anyone quote Dizzee Rascal before.

SIRENS’ LOCATIONS

1. Galli Islands ~pictured~ : http://wakeofodysseus.com/locations/sirens/

2. Sirenum Scopuli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirenum_scopuli

‘...warning him of the Sirens, whose “beauty [has the power] to bewitch men … [who] will sing his mind away / on their sweet meadow lolling”’

“Everyone knows the story of the Sirens from the Odyssey. They're the singers who tempt all those who sail past to listen to them forever, forgetful of their families. Odysseus, instructed by Circe, has himself bound to the mast so he can listen to their song.”

Illuminating twitter thread from a contemporary translator, who translated the Odyssey from Homeric Greek into English. Emily Wilson highlights:

“The seduction [the sirens] offer is cognitive: they claim to know everything about the war in Troy, and everything on earth. They tell the names of pain”

A new translation of Homer’s Odyssey corrects the record: The Sirens' seductive power lies with their otherworldly, avian knowledge.

Were sirens originally meant to be read as offering sexual temptations?

A new interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey points to sirens being bird-like creatures who tempted sailors with “knowledge”

*Why* did Sirens sing to sailors?

Those who have the most reason to speak up tend to be the ones told to keep quiet.

Medievalist, Book Historian, Broadcaster. Lost in the Fifteenth Century.

Mermaid blog

Our fascination with mermaids has spanned centuries and cultures. But lesser known are the ancient Indigenous mermaid stories from our own country.

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