#thealienlives

[1esknineteen]

thealienlives replied to your post:i haven’t got the update yet how long can i hold...

SAME IM DREADING IT SO MUCH

i keep whispering to myself “maybe i’ll be the one who slips through the cracks... maybe if i keep my head down...”

[sandovers]

thealienlives replied to your post “okay it's been two years since i was ever really into les mis in a...”

yes!!!! it also raises super interesting questions (imo) about the idea of BLOOD as something present in both structures/concepts/spaces, but in really different ways, & violence in french revolutionary culture in general -  like, blood as chaos and t(/T)error vs blood as necessary sacrifice or a kind of votive offering to the future - which is how the Terror was justified anyway, PLUS like fear of 5th column traitors, bad blood within the new nation

also the marseillaise!!!! okay i am a bit drunk and it's been a long day so these aren't thoughts that have been really articulated but yeah, man, i love this shit 

yesssss absolutely all of this!  i’ve never really thought about blood itself before (violence, absolutely, but physical blood, how absolutely fascinating and visceral and perfect).  but yes - the dichotomy between the violence chaos and new tyranny and the necessary violence of martyrdom.  enjolras is terrifying on the barricade but enjolras is also strangely and almost inhumanly pure, too.

[sandovers]

okay it's been two years since i was ever really into les mis in a "yelling about 19th century political culture" way but if u want to talk about the guillotine and the barricade, er, u know where i am

OKAY martha, seriously, i always want to talk about the guillotine and the barricade (also paves!!! soemily heeey), both in general and in les miserables in particular, and how the book opens with this overwhelming physical presence: 

In fact, when the scaffold is there, all erected and prepared, it has something about it which produces hallucination. One may feel a certain indifference to the death penalty, one may refrain from pronouncing upon it, from saying yes or no, so long as one has not seen a guillotine with one’s own eyes: but if one encounters one of them, the shock is violent; one is forced to decide, and to take part for or against. Some admire it, like de Maistre; others execrate it, like Beccaria. The guillotine is the concretion of the law; it is called vindicte; it is not neutral, and it does not permit you to remain neutral. He who sees it shivers with the most mysterious of shivers. All social problems erect their interrogation point around this chopping-knife. The scaffold is a vision. The scaffold is not a piece of carpentry; the scaffold is not a machine; the scaffold is not an inert bit of mechanism constructed of wood, iron and cords.

It seems as though it were a being, possessed of I know not what sombre initiative; one would say that this piece of carpenter’s work saw, that this machine heard, that this mechanism understood, that this wood, this iron, and these cords were possessed of will. In the frightful meditation into which its presence casts the soul the scaffold appears in terrible guise, and as though taking part in what is going on. The scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated by the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to live with a horrible vitality composed of all the death which it has inflicted.

this haunting, menacing thing; this thing that is twinned for us, now, with the french revolution.  and why is that our first thought?  why the swift fall of steel, the rivers of blood, the sudden halt?  mass executions are hardly a march towards the future, and a guillotine is defined by its inalterable slicing motion.  there’s also the way that it forces a reckoning - hugo flat out says it’s not neutral. 

the barricade, though, and the word itself, occur throughout les mis, in the long waterloo section and elsewhere, as well as some mentions of historical barricades (1848 in particular), as well as during valjean and cosette’s nighttime flight, which leads them to the safety of the garden:

Jean Valjean grasped her, put her on his back, took her two tiny hands in his large left hand, lay down flat on his stomach and crawled along on top of the wall as far as the cant. As he had guessed, there stood a building whose roof started from the top of the wooden barricade and descended to within a very short distance of the ground, with a gentle slope which grazed the linden-tree. A lucky circumstance, for the wall was much higher on this side than on the street side. Jean Valjean could only see the ground at a great depth below him.

He had just reached the slope of the roof, and had not yet left the crest of the wall, when a violent uproar announced the arrival of the patrol. The thundering voice of Javert was audible:—

“Search the blind alley! The Rue Droit-Mur is guarded! so is the Rue Petit-Picpus. I’ll answer for it that he is in the blind alley.”

The soldiers rushed into the Genrot alley.

Jean Valjean allowed himself to slide down the roof, still holding fast to Cosette, reached the linden-tree, and leaped to the ground. Whether from terror or courage, Cosette had not breathed a sound, though her hands were a little abraded.

[Chapter Break]

Jean Valjean found himself in a sort of garden which was very vast and of singular aspect  

and then comes the other great structure to dominate the novel physically, the barricade at le rue chanvrerie, which then multiplies throughout out paris; the barricade splinters and grows, moves throughout the city like a rhizome.  and at its heart is enjolras and his speech:

“Citizens, the nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth century will be happy. Then, there will be nothing more like the history of old, we shall no longer, as to-day, have to fear a conquest, an invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of nations, arms in hand, an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage of kings, on a birth in hereditary tyrannies, a partition of peoples by a congress, a dismemberment because of the failure of a dynasty, a combat of two religions meeting face to face, like two bucks in the dark, on the bridge of the infinite; we shall no longer have to fear famine, farming out, prostitution arising from distress, misery from the failure of work and the scaffold and the sword, and battles and the ruffianism of chance in the forest of events. One might almost say: There will be no more events. We shall be happy. The human race will accomplish its law, as the terrestrial globe accomplishes its law; harmony will be re-established between the soul and the star; the soul will gravitate around the truth, as the planet around the light. Friends, the present hour in which I am addressing you, is a gloomy hour; but these are terrible purchases of the future. A revolution is a toll. Oh! the human race will be delivered, raised up, consoled! We affirm it on this barrier. Whence should proceed that cry of love, if not from the heights of sacrifice? Oh my brothers, this is the point of junction, of those who think and of those who suffer; this barricade is not made of paving-stones, nor of joists, nor of bits of iron; it is made of two heaps, a heap of ideas, and a heap of woes. Here misery meets the ideal. The day embraces the night, and says to it: ‘I am about to die, and thou shalt be born again with me.’ From the embrace of all desolations faith leaps forth. Sufferings bring hither their agony and ideas their immortality. This agony and this immortality are about to join and constitute our death. Brothers, he who dies here dies in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn.“ 

and the barricade, which too is built by men, and which is another kind of stoppage, and even another site of execution, becomes also a meeting place and a threshold.  the guillotine separates, and the barricade brings together.

[1esknineteen]

thealienlives replied to your post:trying to decide which albums to sync to my tiny...

best coaaaaaaassssssstttttttt

i’ve DEFINITELY been meaning to listen to more of them for ages i’ll check em out now thank you!

[sandovers]

Candle ❧ / Doll ❧ !

candle - what is your favourite scent?

rain on concrete; ocean air; fresh-peeled oranges; juniper; basil leaves; grapefruit; bergamot; baking bread; cardamom; evergreen forests, especially after the rain; freshly cracked peppercorns; any tea but especially earl grey and masala chai; spearmint; pineapple; brewing coffee

‘scents’ as in scents to wear, as in perfumes: penhaligon’s juniper sling remains my forever-love and the closest thing i’ve ever had to a signature; tokyo milk dark’s la vie la mort; guerlain’s shalimar and all five of their acqua allegoria scents, but especially herba fresca and limon verde; elizabeth and james’ nirvana black; annick goutal’s les nuits d’hadrien; juliette has a gun’s calamity j

(i am obsessed, i know)

doll - do you collect anything?

hand-held fans!  i have since i was about ten or so.  also books, though i don’t know if they count

[1esknineteen]

thealienlives replied to your post:what’re your favourite albums at the moment?

new speedy ortiz is amazing!!!

oooh i haven’t listened! thank you martha!!!

[sonnywortzik]

thealienlives replied to your post: also this resignation is just in time because...

lord save us from Gay Men Who Are Having A Great Time Of Things

renfields replied to your post: also this resignation is just in time because...

gay men need to fucking leave omg

like ideally having other LGBT+ folks in the workplace should make us feel safer/like we potentially have some support system, but. fuckin nope

[urie]

thealienlives replied to your post:no offense but why am i seeing people who ship RPF...

i get yr point but i feel like there is a difference between people quietly reading about stuff they know is fictional and people making posts like “gerard way literally identifies as (x), it’s official, that’s his gender”

by shipping RPF i dont mean people being like, "this is fictional but i like it anyways" but rather people like me for instance who totally believe that ryden and petemikey were real. and the person im responding to believes petemikey was real and that pete is writing songs abt mikey but then someone tries saying "gerard is trans" and they're like "wow what an invasion of privacy" 

idk i just dont like that concept