The GardenDespatches from The Satyrs’ Forest

Page 7

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XX

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlgcqWf6evk

I had a religious experience yesterday

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Viewers are kindly forewarned that this video contains flashing lights.

I had a religious experience yesterday.

It’s a common metaphor. A playful exaggeration of what happens when something goes beyond a mere dopamine hit and passes into complete shamanic bliss.

If most of the people in the crowd there with me had said that, they wouldn’t have meant it literally. They’re atheists. Christians. Muslims. “Spiritual, but not religious”. Either they see no point in all this God-bothering, or their spiritual needs are well accounted for.

As for your correspondent? Well, loud, boisterious ecstasy is exactly the type of old-time religion i’m after. Hundreds of sweating, screaming, beautiful humans, swimming in the sea of each other, without a care in the world, freed, just for a moment, from the stresses of their mundane daily life1 — and all led by a charismatic preacher front man. What else could you call such a thing?

When you’re a shy bairn who follows a dead religion, you take what you can get.

Also… about halfway through the show, the band put up a big caption on the side screens saying “guest starring Harry Styles”2 (greeted with rapturous applause). They then proceeded to bring out Lewis “iwa­geddi­canna­usti­bei­sum­wun­yu­luuuuuuh” Capaldi instead (greeted with considerably less rapturous applause), and have him sing the absolute holy grail of 1975 concerts: “Antichrist”, a song from their very first EP which the band have steadfastly refused to ever play live. Masterful trolling.

The 2022 Satyrs’ Forest Horny Awards™

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Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, but they both have ram’s horns crudely drawn on

Welcome, one and all, to the 2798th annual Horny Awards! Every year since humans figured out how to count them, the Satyrs’ Forest has presented hand-made, custom trophies to the best works of the year that was. It’s an astoundingly long-lasting tradition, and definitely not something i made up just now.

2022 was one of the years ever. Things, i’m told, occurred. People were born; people were taxed; people died. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard released several albums. It will go down in the history books as “the year between 2021 and 2023”. On with our show.

Film

The Laurel Wreath Award for Annual Achievement in Film

Our first category marks all the wonderful movies that were made in this past year — which is quite a lot, so my apologies to all those films who i either didn’t mention or didn’t have time to see!

There can only be one winner, but i’ll start off with a lightning round of honourable mentions. Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis was like being locked inside a room with an insane person for two and a half hours, and i loved every ridiculous, extravagant, kinetic minute of it. Tom George’s See How They Run and Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery were brilliant and funny throwback mysteries which really needed more time and appreciation in the cinema. And i dearly hope David Letich’s Bullet Train becomes the new Fast and Furious — 2Bullet2Train! Bullet Train 3: This Time it’s a Plane! Bullet ISS! The possibilities are endless.

An especially honourable mention goes to Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, a tender horror romance which almost made it to the main list before i realised that i hadn’t actually all that much to say on it. It’s a metaphor for something, i tell ya hwat…

It could have done with less of the hot-dog fingers, but anyone who would leave our first “official” runner-up off of their year-end list is a heartless bastard. On paper, Everything Everywhere All at Once is a recipe for everything everywhere to go totally wrong: a riff on The Matrix with a tenth of the budget, directors whose last work was a movie where Daniel Radcliffe farts a lot, and a sense of humour firmly dated to Reddit circa 2012. Yet it pulls it off.

This is a movie where people beat each other up with dildos, where a hallway of people literally explodes into colour and light, and where the equivalent of the Death Star is an everything bagel. It is also one of the only movies to have made me bawl like a baby in the cinema. Everything Everywhere is an anti-cynical, anti-nihilistic manifesto for our time. Yes, nothing matters! and yes, you might not write the next great American novel or paint a masterpiece! but the world has so much joy and beauty, so many minuscule details that you pass by every day, so for goodness’ sake, even if you’re just doing laundry and taxes, take your time to enjoy the little things in life.

I need to go hug my mum.

Blockbusters aren’t what they used to be, are they? Ever since Endgame, Marvel have been running on autopilot, releasing a steady stream of snarky CGI sludge made more out of obligation than passion. They don’t even work as escapism anymore — the fantastical isn’t fantastic when every billion-dollar release is set in a world of superheroes and sci-fi.

Like Everything Everywhere, our other runner-up is a prime example of a movie that just shouldn’t work. It’s a sequel to a 40-year-old film so mediocre i turned it off halfway through, made as a cynical cash-grab recruitment ad for the navy, with a topic and plot designed to appeal exclusively to Your Dad.1 Yet, through sheer dumb luck, Paramount hit the jackpot on Top Gun: Maverick.

Obviously, Tom Cruise is an absolute charisma magnet and the best part of every movie he’s ever been in. But that seductive Scientologist smile only goes so far (just look at The Mummy), and that’s where our director comes in. Joseph Kosinski doesn’t have a particularly long track record; it would be easy to mistake him for a typical director-for-hire. His dialogue scenes don’t stand out from the pack, and he’s not particularly creative with the camera, but that doesn’t matter. What he excels at is spectacle.

2010’s Tron: Legacy is a profoundly middling film in terms of its plot and characters, but it gained a cult following thanks to the delicious combination of Daft Punk’s killer score with Mr Kosinski’s brilliant visuals and action. He took that computerised world of bits and bytes and gave it stakes, weight, and a sense of scale, where a Marvel hack would have told the VFX guy to just press render and go with whatever comes out.

So you take a director whose most known work is a spectacular CG effects-fest and a lead actor famous for his insistence on doing all of his own stunts, and what do you get? The best blockbuster film of the decade, that’s what. The original Top Gun’s plane scenes drag and drag with no real purpose; in Maverick, every flight has something at stake, with non-stop action — but the film still knows when to pull back and take a breather to give its characters heart. My icy, cynical heart knew that i was being manipulated every step of the way, knew that every pull of the strings was planned out in advance, knew that this film was made for money and nothing else… but i’ll be damned if i didn’t start crying at that Val Kilmer cameo.

Go and see Top Gun: Maverick on the biggest screen you can, whether that’s a 1080p computer monitor or an Imax cinema. You won’t regret it.

Our two runners-up were films that i would recommend to anyone, anywhere, of any age, and at any time. They have something for everyone. First place, on the other hand…

If you believe the lame-stream media, our winning film was the result of arthouse horror hero Robert Eggers being given a blank check by Universal to make a big period action movie. This is false. It was created by scientists in a lab in Durham to appeal to me and me specifically. (You can tell because i was the only person who actually went out and watched it.)

Based on the Norse legend behind Shakespeare’s Hamlet, The Northman is an epic following Large Scandinavian Man as the viking Amleth, son of a deposed king, on his journey to avenge his father with the power of Odin and testosterone2 on his side.

When i call Amleth a viking, i do not mean that all-too-common sanitised Hollywood depiction of a 20th-century Christian in pagan clothing. No; his society and its ways are portrayed as they were, warts and all, regardless of what the audience might feel about it. The vikings of this film keep slaves, burn down houses, consult witches (memorably played by Anya Taylor-Joy, Willem Dafoe, and Björk, in decreasing order of screentime), mock Jesus, and pray to Gods as a fact of life. (The film never particularly demeans them for the latter three, which i found a welcome reprieve from paganism’s usual relegation to the villains of horror schlock.) The only concession to modern mores is the absence of polygamy, because splashing people with period blood and cutting off heads is okay but good heavens a second wife?????

Mr Eggers and his crew schlepped all the way to Iceland for filming and made good bloody use of it. Whether its long shots are focused on nature’s rolling fields and bursting volcanoes or humanity’s flame-lit funerals and grimy oarsmen, the result is consistently one of the most beautiful things of the year.

It’s not for everyone. It’s long, and those just there for the action will find themselves asking when they’re going to get to the fireworks factory. It’s gory. It’s grim. But it’s definitely for me.

The Zoetrope Award for Classic Cinema

Hey, did you like the Matrix sequels? Do you want to watch a three-hour-long film where every character is played by the same six actors? No? Well, too bad, because the best film i watched in 2022 that wasn’t released that year was the Wachowski sisters’3 Cloud Atlas.4

There was a point, about 60% of the way through this three-hour-long movie, where i started to wonder if it was all worth it. I’d seen Tom Hanks attempting a Cockney accent, Hugo Weaving in unconvincing Asian prosthetics, and a lot of people saying “tru-tru” a lot of times. Surely it was impossible to tie this all together into a satisfying conclusion.

I started having flashbacks to The Matrix Resurrections, an endlessly creative film plagued by its own self-obsessions and Lana Wachowski’s inability to not put the first thing that came into her head into the script. Was this going to be the same? Are the sisters trapped in an endless cycle of almost-but-not-quite?

And then there was a point, about 90% of the way through, where i started crying. They’d squared the circle, tied all six stories up into a neat bow; an epic told on the scale of centuries, where actors cross boundaries of time, nationality, race, and gender; a film that would be their magnum opus were it not for the long shadow of The Matrix. I don’t know how they did it, but they did — and thus nudged their record of hits against misses slightly to the positive side.

The Pebbledash Dildo Award for Cinematic Disappointment

2022 was a good year for bad movies. Moonfall was the peak of so-bad-it’s-good Emmerichian excess. Morbius morbed all across the internet. And the usual Marvel schlock was even shlockier than usual. But nobody thought those films would be any good anyway — it’s hard to be disappointed when you don’t have any expectations in the first place.

So, by God, was i disappointed in Nope. From Jordan Peele, critics’ favourite rising star, this sci-fi Hollywood horror brims with so many creative ideas and metaphors that they all boil over and don’t go anywhere. I can only imagine that a quarter of the script got sucked up into a UFO and they decided to just keep shooting. There are so many great ideas in this film, and it’s a darned shame they wound up such an anticlimax.

The Comfy Sofa Award for Peak Television

I don’t actually watch much television; i’ve always found it hard to get invested for the “long haul”. Ben Stiller’s Severance, made for Apple’s floundering streaming service, is a slow burner, the sort of thing i despise — but its slowness is methodical, carefully drip-feeding you bits of information whilst never wasting its time on fluff and filler.

It’s strange. It’s puzzling. It’s brilliant. And the final episode is some of the best TV i’ve ever seen. If i could, i’d sever myself — just to watch it all over again.

Music

The Golden Lyre Award for Excellence in New Music

It’s The 1975.

Well, no point in dragging that out. They may not be the best band in the world, but they are my favourite band in the world; their eclectic pop-rock sensibilities are what got me into music, and i’ll always appreciate them for that.

This isn’t just a sentimental pick. Being Funny in a Foreign Language sees the band trim away the fat and bloat of their previous works and hold back on the eclectic experimentation of the Music for Cars era, settling on a distilled, refined version of the sound that defined their first record. There are no bloated instrumentals, no experimental noodlings; just, as their international tour proudly suggests, The 1975 At Their Very Best.

No album came close to blowing them out of the water — because i’m a soppish fanboy — but to whet your appetite, here are some more of my favourite songs of 2022. (In no particular order.)

The Hurdy-Gurdy Award for Enduring Musical Resonance

It was with some trepidation that i typed the word “Pagan” into RateYourMusic’s charts function, knowing the reputation that explicitly religious music has. The words “Christian rock” have always been accented with a sneer, and the most well-known Pagan musician of the modern age is an unrepentant church-burning neo-nazi.

Right at the top, after i’d filtered out all of the metal (apologies, metalheads; it just isn’t my bag), sat XTC’s Apple Venus Volume One. You won’t find it on streaming — frontman Andy Partridge has few kind words for the likes of Spotify — but i made do with a pirate Youtube playlist until i tracked down a physical copy at the shops.

Apple Venus is the group’s penultimate album, and even knowing nothing about them, I could tell. It drips with aching sincerity, the kind that dips into corny pastiche, in that particular way that only happens when a band who have spent their whole career dripping with snark and cynicism realise that they’re getting too old for this shit.

And that’s all i wrote.

Some other favourite old songs i discovered this year:

The Sad Trombone Award for Most Disappointing Music

I’ve been getting into post-rock recently, and there are a few albums which seem to be near and dear to fans’ hearts. Sigur Rós’ Ágætis byrjun, a surprisingly accessible masterclass. Godspeed You Blank Emperor’s Lift Your Skinny Fists, the best soundtrack for a movie that never existed. Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden, a bit too jazzy for my tastes. A few more that i’ve yet to listen to.

Then there’s The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place.

Explosions in the Sky’s third album is widely beloved. It tops lists with the big guns. It often shows up on genre “starter pack” lists. There is a teensy, tiny problem with this: it’s shite.

Well, alright, i thought, two tracks in. Maybe it picks up by the end? Everyone is raving about that closing track, “Your Hand in Mine” — and then that was shite too!

This is music for a car commercial. It is the Imagine Dragons of post-rock. It’s the sort of music a TV network might play as inspirational backing for their Paralympic coverage. It is sappy, insipid, and uninspired dross of the purest and vilest sort, and it boggles the mind to think how it ever got the reputation it now has. See me after class.

The electronic arts

The King’s Dice Award for Interactive Entertainment

Just one game found its home amongst my digital shelves this years, and i have yet to find the opportunity to complete it. Lucas Pope’s Return of the Obra Dinn wins by acclimation — so far it’s stylish, intriguing, and fun to solve, but again, i’ve not finished it! We’ll see if it sticks the landing.

The Broken Link Award for Best Use of Hypertext

Homestuck isn’t very good. It has an undeniably appealing cast of characters and charmingly naïve art — you don’t get millions of fans without doing something right — that are sadly weighed down by its author’s baffling decision, faced with all the sprawling multi-media possibilities of the web, to tell its story entirely in walls of unreadable monospaced text.

Wired Sound for Wired People isn’t my thing. It has undeniably mastered a medium: its flickering pink pixels and eerie soundscapes build an unmistakable mix of intrigue and unease, beckoning you to follow it down the rabbit hole. But it lacks a message to go with it — there’s no story to speak of, just a collage of strange and trippy scenes.

So what if someone were to combine the best bits of both, and undo their shortcomings? Idiosyncratic, eerie audiovisuals, with relatable dramatis personĂŚ, and a compelling story which uses the power of hypertext to its fullest?

Enter Corru.observer. Linked to me by someone whose homepage i’d complimented — with no other comment than that it was a friend’s “personal site” — Corru puts you in the seat of an archæologist(?) some decades(?) in the future(?), trying to piece together the memories of an alie… i’ll let you find out the rest. There’s only an “episode” and a half out right now, and i can’t wait to see where it goes.

The Fred Figglehorn Memorial Award for Online Video

2022 was not short of epically un-short videos. Internet Historian put together a fully animated retelling of the story of Floyd Collins, a 1920s farmer who found himself stuck upside down in a treacherously narrow cave. It clocks in at an hour and ten minutes. Kevin from Defunctland’s weirdly emotional investigation into the Disney Channel theme runs an hour and a half. Stuart Brown’s Xcom retrospective? 1:40.

But in the age of Tiktok and Vine, it pays to be succinct. Our winner by no means reaches the six-second nirvana of those two platforms, but at 25 minutes, it would fit comfortably into a half-hour broadcast slot on telly — not bad on a site increasingly dominated by 7-hour videos about people watching sitcoms for children.

That winner is Michael Stevens’s video on the origin of selfies. In it brief runtime, it answers every question i never knew i had about the selfie, while spinning in a number of fascinating tangents and eyebrow-raising questions (in the typical Vsauce house style). It even got me to renovate the gallery just to add that photo by Anastasia. Cheese!

The real world

The Spruce Panflute Award for Outdoor Splendour

I perused many places during my walks out and about this year, but none so consistently provided me with so many new sights as the Ouseburn, a small but mighty stream which winds its way in the east of Newcastle from suburbs to leafy woods to industry to hipster vegan cafés. Every time i thought i’d seen it all, the Ouseburn revealed a new cranny, some quirky establishment or warp in the city’s fabric, something different to explore.

Dusk falls on the river Tyne as all five bridges which span it are seen in the background
This is what we in the industry refer to as “the money shot”.

The Crackling Heath Award for Indoor Wonder

Affleck’s Palace is the beating heart of Mancunian counterculture; a labyrinthine maze of shops which across their three floors sell everything from rose ice cream to bath bombs to incense to Hatsune Miku–themed fizzy drinks… and i can’t tell you any more than that, because i haven’t finished my post about it yet!

Really, though — Affleck’s has it all and more, and i’ll be sure to stop by next time i go down south.

The Hubert J. Farnsworth Award for Good News, Everyone!

Day in, day out, we are flooded with the latest news of disasters and terrors from around the globe. It gets the views, it gets the hits, and it gets the clicks; it’s no wonder journos love to accentuate the negative.

The Hubert J. Farnsworth Award is an antidote to doom and gloom, honouring the best thing that happened in 2022. It was a late entry, but it could hardly be anything other than…

…The National Ignition Facility, the U.S. government lab who reported that, for the first time, they’d gotten more energy out than they put in via fusion power. There are hiccups, of course; the facility’s magnets guzzled dozens of times more power than the reactor itself. But every stepping stone has its imperfections, and this is the first great step to a truly prosperous future — where energy is too cheap to meter, where power is so abundant that there will be hardly a grain of economic sense in the idea of tapping any more of Gæa’s precious little black gold.

Happy belated new year, everyone. And as always — may it be better than the last!

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XIX

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A slice of apple pie and ice cream in a bowl

I found out that Mark Toney’s1, in Newcastle, serves Dutch-style apple pie, and it immediately gave me flashbacks to my childhood like the critic in Ratatouille. I honestly started crying. Delicious stuff. …Sorry, what’s that?

Apologies for the interruption; my legal team have informed me that i have to actually put links in my link roundups. Who knew‽

A despatch from Ashington

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I’ve been hammering away at a big ol’ 2022 recap post, trying to get it ready before it’s irrelevant. It seemed cruel to leave you all with nowt over the new year, though, so i thought i might send you some photos from a recent evening walk.

A quixotic signpost for the National Cycle network, done up in rainbow colours and pointing towards destinations in elaborately decorated lettering

Ashington1 is a poor erstwhile mining town at the very tip-top of the local conurbation, Newcastle’s last gasp before coal and collieries give way to princes and pastures. It takes pride in two things: one, its mining history, and two, the fact that two Ashingtonians delivered England the world cup in a final remembered by ever fewer people.

The moon glistens over a large pond in the evening sky; to the right, there's a lifebelt in the foreground and a strange purplish pinprick of light in the background

This is the Queen Elizabeth II Country Park — not to be confused with the Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park down in that London — a marvellous regeneration project which has turned a spoil heap into a lovely lake complete with a Premier Inn. That purple light off in the distance is the Woodhorn Colliery Museum, a whistle-stop tour of Northumberland’s mining history which apparently fancies itself the Blackpool of the North.2

A closer look at the museum reveals that a cutter-like building is lit up in purple, while two old mining rigs have their spokes illuminated as if they were neon

And that’s all i wrote. Tune in next time for either another bashed-together filler postcard (by Gods, am i going to have to make Blyth sound appealing next?), or the first annual Horny Awards™. We’ll see how far the Procrastination Monster lets me progress. :‌-)

And this is where i’d switch to a Marshallese web host, If I Had One

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Rage comic with a kid riding away on a trike overlaid with the words "Goodbye Mom!" and the Marshallese flag

Today i learned that the Marshall Islands have almost no copyright laws. Since the U.S. handles most of their foreign affairs for them, they’ve slipped through the cracks of international treaties: per Wikimedia Commons, the only restriction is that you can’t directly copy/rip/transfer/sell/publicly perform another citizen’s work and try to make money off of it. (Which i think is quite sensible — even as someone who opposes the whole idea of copyright as a nasty intrusion of people’s freedom of speech — so long as we live in a capitalist society.)

Good on you, Ṃajeḷ. Now if only they had decent internet…

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume X(mas)VIII

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A dirt path by a farm lightly covered in snow

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, and good tidings to everyone else — my gift to you is one last sack full of links to send off the year. Mx Tynehorne’s Link Roundup®™ will return in 2023.

Lords of Misrule 2022: Waves, by RĂŚl H. Bishop

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Our final submission of the season comes from one Ræl H. Bishop, a dear friend of mine. Thank you so much for all the entries this year — it’s a lovely thing to have a tradition continue, especially when i’d worried you’d all forgotten i existed. And as always, please leave all your comments on the main site.

This past summer, I lived in a big coastal city. After two months, things took a turn for the worse and I had to move out. I found the city plastic and frustrating anyways. During my time there, I would go to the beach quite often. But not to swim or make sand castles. In the mornings, I’d walk with a book and a bottle of water and watch the sun dance over the horizon. In the evening, I’d find a vacant spot and watch the cargo ships sail over an increasingly indigo skyscape. It was very cathartic. I feel it’s the same feeling all cathedrals, mosques, and mandirs try to cultivate: a sense of awe and serenity that lets our minds meld and our troubles wash away.

I have a very beach-y metaphor for your consideration. The emotions we experience in our lives are like waves lapping onto a shoreline. All emotions are found in these waves. We get caught up in waves of anger, of depression, of pride and lust, of sorrow and shame, greed and jealousy, euphoria and ecstasy. They are strong, powerful waves. We all stand on these shores, but most folks spend their lives getting tossed and turned by these waves, smashed into the undercurrent and washed up to repeat the process the next day. What we need to do in the face of these waves is not to get knocked over by them, but to hold steadfast and let the waves pass. We observe the waves as they emerge, not “pushing back” and not “falling in”, but noting as they come and noting as they pass. The waves leave, and more take their place, but they’re all transient nonetheless.

I’ve tried taking this notion to heart since I realized it. I hope you can find use of this. The next time you’re caught in a slump, or a fit of rage, or in some all-consuming obsession, just remember that it’s another wave approaching from the distance. You have the power, the strength, the will to keep standing in its wake.

You are not these waves, these fleeting emotions. You are yourself. γνῶθι σεαυτόν. तत्त्वमसि.

Lords of Misrule 2022: Three poems

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Today’s post(s) come to us, in no particular order, from three different people, because like buses, good things come in threes. As always, please leave your comments on the main site.

child meets Cernunnos
B.

i met Him in the woods and He told me to hold my chin up His

skin black as ash shining

hunt-drunk

blood in the snow, He gave me a bow fitted for me and said to shoot

i said what for, to shoot what, i don’t want to hurt a creature

and He said the cycle of life requires death, if you reap then you will sow, to kill a crĂŚture is

to give it back.

i said alright but i was scared and He said what if the other hunters come not my Hunters the other ones

man-shaped and hunting crĂŚtures like you

and i shot

the arrow fell through the shadow, spilling, and i said to protect i would do anything

and He said now you understand what this is for. and He said daughter, your destructive anger

can construct mountains and miracles. don’t listen to those as say death and life and rot and growth are anything different from each other. look at the berries grow through the snow. it kills the snow, the snow feeds them, they are not beautiful in this way without the snow.

i said, i understand i am an arrow and a Hunter and i am not yours i am my own and i protect

and like this is how my i became an I

two months later i called for Him

with my head in a bush

because the other ones had taken away my I again

and he said take it back and this time He gave me a knife

and I stole nothing

but I held the knife and sat with Him and remembered that i am I.

Listen to Hanif Aburraqib who says

“I don’t know if I believe in rage as something always acting in opposition to tenderness. I believe, more often, in the two as braided together. Two elements of trying to survive in a world once you have an understanding of that world’s capacity for violence.”

and go lightly but know yourself Leave a comment

sinxelo, lost
Sent in by an anonymous reader from Santiago

know true, feel feind

creer, pensar
concocer,
enamorar;

se

estou na miĂąa lengua perdide
non coa morriĂąa, ni pobo.
pobre.

lellos turn, so they wanted

perdĂŠronmenĂłs
beg, simple:
Âż Leave a comment

Untitled
Fidomanin

I’m a poet of the future
poet by mission
With pen in hand
I let any dick hard

Strong Viagra is my verse
Fills souls with lust
blowjob by passion
To all subverse morals

I open the gates of hell
Like a lady’s legs
For I am invited to both

May this verse last forever:
I feel sorry for those who love
destined for sadness.

Lords of Misrule 2022: Art, by Ariel

¡ Leave a comment

Today’s post comes to us from one Ariel, of the Library Phantasmagoria. I highly recommend looking at the version on the main site, because it’s done up with its own custom styling, per request of the author — and that you direct any comments there for the sake of consistency. Anyway. The post.

I’ve been slowly taking up drawing as a hobby. I wouldn’t consider myself a very artistic person. In school, I was more math and science oriented. Now I work in computer security. But I want to share some of what I’ve learned.

One of the first things I learned when I started is that using a pencil is hard. When you write, you can have some variation in the angles and curves of your letters while still maintaining “good form”. An “E” still looks like an “E” whether you write it with curves or corners or one stroke or three or squared-off or angled. Contrast this with something like drawing a circle or a 3D box. Even a small variance in curve or angle will turn your perfect drawing into something that looks wrong.

There are tricks you can learn to making more accurate circles or boxes. For example, the lines going out from the corner closest to the viewer on a box need to have obtuse angles between them. If an angle is perfectly 90°, then the viewer will have to be looking at a side straight-on. If the angles are acute, then the box will look skewed. Drawing boxes doesn’t get easier just by knowing the rules, though.

Even though I’ve come up with how every angle and line relates to every other angle and line, I still draw skewed boxes. My hand just doesn’t know how to control the pencil properly. The solution is simple: the knowledge must be applied - a lot. That’s the idea behind Draw a Box’s lessons. (No, this is not an advertisement for DaB.) I think that’s the idea behind a lot of art lessons. Hell, it’s probably the idea behind most things you can learn.

A long time ago, I was browsing a forum thread on a fairly unpleasant website. The forum thread had something to do with programming, and someone was asking about learning programming. I don’t remember the programming language in question, the person in question, or anything else. But I do mostly remember the response.

It was a well-formatted, but very sarcastic paragraph about the “greatest developers”. These “greatest developers” would spend years studying the fundamentals of the language. They learn the nuances of the compiler. They learn the most efficient algorithms for every problem. They read books and watch tutorials and browse forums until they understand the language better than the people that created it. And so on and so fourth. But one line from the paragraph summarizes the idea and stands out most in my mind: "The greatest developers go years without writing a single line of code." (And in case it wasn’t clear, the post was satire.)

I don’t think I appreciated that line at the time, but I find myself thinking about it more and more lately.

I’m one of those people with a tendency to “learn” more than I practice something. I’ll watch hours-long YouTube videos on obscure topics, and my favourite podcast(s) came from the How Stuff Works group: Stuff You Should Know, Stuff You Missed in History Class, etc. I’ve read books on the history of tea, the book index, and capital punishment in France. It’s knowledge that can’t really be applied in my life, or is only applicable to hyper-specific niches. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with this - it’s a form of entertainment for me.

Yet, learning as enjoyment and learning to apply are two different things. Returning to the art topic: I’ve spent more time watching the Draftsman Podcast, browsing r/artistlounge, and similar activities than putting pencil to paper. I - like many in my position - justify it as time spent learning, and there is value in learning from others. (“Don’t reinvent the wheel,” as they say.) But that time is really more entertainment-learning than applied-learning. It’d be better spent putting pencil to paper and improving. Using the pencil is hard, though, because it means having to face failure when the boxes don’t look right despite my best effort.

I don’t have any good words on failure or dealing with it. That’s another thing I’m still learning. But I don’t want to end on a sour note, so I want to highlight another thing I’ve learned through art: how to see it.

I know that sounds a bit pretentious, but hear me out.

I’m going to be using a digital painting by the artist “WLOP” as an example. It’s titled “Civilization3” and you can find it on his DeviantArt. (I’m avoiding posting it here directly because I’m unsure of his re-upload policy.) The art is of a girl playing a magical steampunk-esque violin with lots of floating gears. I think it’s a really pretty piece, and I’d probably be able to know it was one of WLOP’s at a glance (even if it didn’t have a big watermark saying so).

There’s a few things about the painting that I wouldn’t have noticed before I started learning art. For example, look at the part of the violin furthest from the girl. It’s only a few simple strokes and even has some bits randomly floating off to the side. The more you look, the more you notice things like that. The gear under her chin has misshapen teeth. The leaf pattern on her dress is just bean-shapes and circles with a few thin lines running through it.

I don’t say this to make fun of or insult the piece. It’s actually an amazing trick that I hope to be able to emulate one day! But it’s something that I wouldn’t have noticed before I started learning to make art instead of just looking at it. (I also apologize to the artists to whom I’m probably stating the obvious.) WLOP focused on the areas that most people would unconsciously notice the most flaws with (the face and hands) and let the viewer’s mind fill in the detail for the less important parts (the pattern on the dress).

Here’s another one to look at: Breathe by Yuumei. It’s another portrait. This time it’s a girl wearing a respirator of sorts with roses where the filters should be. One of the first things you’ll notice is the clear brushwork-iness of it and the lines again. But this one I point out for the colour. At first glance, she’s wearing a tan coat, but notice the left side: it’s blue. So is part of her hair and face. (Also, if you go back to WLOP’s image, you’ll notice the character’s hair is actually a bit green. Especially in the back.) Before learning a bit about colour, I’d probably have defaulted to a black or grey for shading.

I’m happy that I’ve learned to see things this way. It’s like I’ve learned a secret to unlocking a hidden part of the world.

Lords of Misrule 2022: The Gift of the Influencers, by Baki

¡ Tagged as Lords of Misrule, Lords of Misrule 2022 ¡ 1 comment

Iō Saturnalia! Just as last year, a month ago, i flipped the tables and invited you all to send me whatever you wanted and i would put it up on the site. I’m pleased to say that even more took up my offer than last year, and over the next five days, you’ll be seeing a variety of their works. Our first submission for 2022 comes from a reader by the nom de plume of Baki. Enjoy.

One thousand eight hundred and seventy dollars. That was all. She had put it aside, one dollar and then another and then another, in her careful posting of selfies and other online activity. Della counted it three times. One thousand eight hundred and seventy dollars. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was nothing to do but post an Instagram Story and cry. So Della did it.

While the lady of the home is slowly growing quieter, we can look at the home. A VW van. There is little more to say about it.

The engine had decided to finally stop working completely and needed replacement. In the back there was an area too small to hold a toilet. There was a bed, but it was not long enough. Also there was a barely functional kitchen with the names of the owners above the tiny window surrounded by little hearts, Della and James Young.

When the names were placed there, Mr. James Dillingham Young was being paid $300 a week via PayPal, Venmo, and Patreon from people supporting their #vanlife social media lifestyle. Now, when he was being paid only $200 a week, the name seemed too long and important. It should have been “Jamie Young.” But when Mr. James Dillingham Young entered the van, his name became very short indeed. Mrs. James Dillingham Young put her arms warmly around him and called him “Jim.” You have already met her. She is Della.

Della finished her Instagram Story and wiped the tears from her face. She sat by the window and looked out with no interest. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only one thousand eight hundred and seventy dollars with which to buy Jim a gift. She had put aside as much as she could for months, with this result. Two hundred dollars a week is not much. Everything had cost more than she expected. It always happened like that.

Only $1,870 to buy a gift for Jim. She had had many happy hours planning something nice for him. Something nearly good enough. Something almost worth the honor of belonging to Jim.

There was the interior of the van. Perhaps you have seen the kind of interior of a van that is created by two people living #vanlife on social media. There was wood. There were lots of fairy lights. There was a colorful blanket to tie it all together. It was very narrow and hard to photograph properly with an iPhone that was two generations out-of-date. However, if she were very patient and used a cheap five dollar fish eye lens attachment, she might be able to get a good pic of the interior. Della, being quite patient, had mastered this art.

Suddenly she stopped trying to film the interior of the van and stared at her phone. Her eyes were shining brightly, but her face had lost its color. Quickly she turned off her phone and set it down on the colorful blanket.

The James Dillingham Youngs were very proud of two things which they owned. One thing was Jim’s VW van. It had been their reason for quitting their boring forty hour a week jobs so they could live their #bestlife. The other was Della’s iPhone, the only camera they owned which allowed them to document their #vanlife on social media so they could be influencers.

If a queen had lived in the campsite next to them, Della would have taken pics of her with the two generation old iPhone and posted them so the queen could see. Della knew that her pics were more beautiful than any a queen could have taken with much more modern equipment.

If a king had lived in the campsite next to them, with his fancy $200,000 RV with pop outs and self-leveling, Jim would have invited him over for a ramen dinner. Jim knew that no king had anything as wonderful as his VW van.

So Della stared down at her iPhone then picked it up again. She stopped for a moment and stood still while a tear or two ran down her face.

With the bright light still in her eyes, she created an eBay auction for her phone then announced it on social media.

“Will you buy my phone? Only two hours to bid!” Della Instagramed.

“Wonderful iPhone for sale. Only two hours to bid!” Della Facebooked.

“Get it while you can! #carpediem #2hourauction” Della Tweeted.

Two hours later, PayPal announced a four hundred dollar increase in their account.

Oh, and the next thirty minutes seemed to fly. She was going from online store to online store, to find a gift for Jim.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the online stores, and it was from a shop very close to them.

It was an original replacement engine for the VW van.

As soon as she saw it, she knew that Jim must have it. She paid the two thousand two hundred and seventy dollars for it. The owner of the shop was a fan, a subscriber to their YouTube channel, and promised it would be delivered within the hour.

What luck! To find the engine so close to their location and so close to Christmas!

Humming Christmas carols under her breath, Della quickly posted that “big things were afoot” and that she “might be off social media for a while” to her social media accounts then packed up her iPhone to be shipped to the winner of the eBay auction.

When Della had done this, her mind quieted a little. She began to think more reasonably. She started to try and cover the sad marks of what she had done. Love and large-hearted giving, when added together, can leave deep marks. It is never easy to cover these marks, dear friends – never easy.

Within forty minutes her head looked a little better and the engine had been delivered. “If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to herself, “after he realizes we can’t post to social media any longer. But what could I do – oh! What could I do with one thousand eight hundred and seventy dollars!”

At seven, Jim’s dinner was ready for him.

Jim was never late when he was out scouting new locations worthy of being photographed. Della held the colorful blanket that the engine lay on and sat cross-legged on the bed. Then she heard his step outside and her face lost color for a moment. She often said little prayers quietly, about simple everyday things. And now she said: “Please God, make him think the engine is nice.”

The van door opened and Jim crawled in. He looked very fit and he was not smiling. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-eight – and with only a couple hundred followers on Twitter!

Jim stopped inside the door. He was quiet as a hunting dog when it is near a bird. His eyes looked strangely at Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not understand. It filled her with fear. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor anything she had been ready for. He simply looked at her with that strange expression on his face.

“You’ve bought me an engine?” asked Jim slowly. He seemed to labor to understand what had happened. He seemed not to feel sure he knew.

Jim put his arms around Della. For ten seconds let us look in another direction. Two hundred dollars a week or a million dollars a month – how different are they? Someone may give you an answer, but it will be wrong. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. My meaning will be explained soon.

From inside the coat, Jim took something tied in paper. He threw it upon the blanket. “I sold the van to get the money to buy you the new iPhone.”

For there lay The Latest iPhone – the iPhone that Della had been reading reviews about for months. A beautiful iPhone with improved lenses and increased memory, perfect for taking selfies and pics of their van. She had known it cost too much for her to buy. She had looked at it without the least hope of owning it. And now it was hers, but the van was sold.

And then she cried, “Oh, oh!”

The magi as you know, were wise men – wonderfully wise men – who brought gifts to the newborn Christ-child. They were the first to give Christmas gifts. Being wise, their gifts were doubtless wise ones. And here I have told you the story of two influencers who were not wise. Each sold the most precious thing they owned in order to buy a gift for the other.

But let me speak one last word to the wise these days. Of all who give gifts, these two were the most wise. For when Della popped back onto social media that night using her new iPhone to tell their followers this story, Della and Jim went viral. Money and offers of sponsorship poured in. The lady who bought Jim’s van gave it back to him for nothing. The shop who sold Della the engine installed it for free. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are most wise. Everywhere they are the wise ones. They are the influencers.

#blessed #bestlife #vanlife

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XVII

· Tagged as links, Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup · 1 comment
A grainy picture of the Pleiades
It turns out astrophotography is not very convenient or good-looking on a smartphone. Who knew?

P.S. Lords of Misrule starts tomorrow. Hope you enjoy everyone’s submissions — i know i did! :-)