Beautiful Hannah! ( by the way, great peek at your excellent mani in your photo😂
Lovely reading as usual. I we t to Aix with Kate when she was a teenager and even then she was telling me all about the impressionist painters and the particular light that drew so many of them to the South of France. I remember Aix fondly as a very very hot town full of delightful fountains and gorgeous honey coloured buildings. And the ethereal but noisy Cicada singing away.
Its very very encouraging and exciting for women of my generation to be listened to, dare I say enjoyed as equal as Artists and writers.My husband Michael, asked me recently if I had a cooy of " The tenant Of Wildfell Hall" a favourite. Bronte story and profound social observation of the struggles of being a single mother in 18 th century.
I was so surprised as he had heard a long discussion on Radio 4 about it and really was interested in the whole Bronte clan and the experience of the struggles women had to be taken seriously in their era.
It was sad that , I felt the need to explain the depth of skill , intellect and Artistry it takes to write a novel. He told me that, as a male in a public school English literature was exclusively about Male writers. From Shakespeare to Graham Green and all in between. No boy would have been seen dead with a novel by Austen or Bro te sisters .. perhaps Virginia Woolf would be touched upon but as a passing nod to getting on with the serious stuff of Lytton Strachey .
The times they ARE a changing darling Hannah and about time.
“I remember Aix fondly as a very very hot town full of delightful fountains and gorgeous honey coloured buildings. And the ethereal but noisy Cicada singing away.”
A wonderful sentence! …thank you for the image.
“From Shakespeare to Graham Green and all in between. No boy would have been seen dead with a novel by Austen or Bro the sisters…”
I know for certain that I never gave the author’s gender a bit of recognition for any novel that I was ASSIGNED to read…I was just upset that I had to read it! (Senior year, age 17 in HS, I somehow was placed in an honors class, College English, and we were assigned novels to read OVER SUMMER! Grrrrrr! However, the novel(s) that I was upset about the most was John Galsworthy’s “The Forsyte Saga.” My gawd it was almost 1000 pages!! BUT I have read it often as I age, with anticipation and joy. Makes me feel 17 again!). “Irene Heron Forsyte” was a true feminist who refused to be a man’s possession…though I recall that the paper I wrote took a position of empathy towards grasping, old Soames Forsyte…
As long as we’re on the subject, what about female bands or bands with female leads??!! My all-time favorite French rock band…The Prototypes! https://youtu.be/C9dttkVA2zU
Soames! Oh my that Soames... he was such a pitiful figure I thought. So desperately in love with the rather complex Irene but unable to communicate or understand at all the effect of his behaviour toward her. Brilliant choice as a book to discuss Roy Bean!
I was a sorry Boffin literature wise from a precocious age and would read anything at all that I could get my hands on.
I did have books that just drove me mad Middlemarch was one and as I said ,anything 1950 s " Angry young man" lind of literature. I have come to appreciate the spare and atmospheric heat and pain in Brighto Rock as I have matured but the sheer seediness and furtiveness and indulgent depressive plans are most uncomfortable. I do appreciate that its a work of Genius just not my literature of choice.
Ahhh interesting about so called " female " bands. Excellent choice yourself thanks for the clip.
Again, being female , its an interesting concept that music should be thought of in terms of gender. I love mosst music even adore the rap scene as the lyrics are so often brilliant ( if a little edgy)
Stinky rock bands always been my go to choice. Led Zeppelin being right up there.
Black Sabbath , Thin Lizzy etc etc.
Women in pop and rock of course, subject to the same horrible sexism as ever, having attended and reviewed many gigs with " female" leads or all female bands it was comically apparant that the music they created was secondary to the eye candy which leering , heckling often dead drunk guys deemed sexiest.
I will name but a few from our day up to the present, which I love as you kind,y asked
Blondie, Patti Smith, The. Bangles,PJHarvey, The Supremes, Tina of course,
Nina Simone, Kate Bush, Bjork, Chrissy Hind, Karen O. Annie Lennox, liv Moynahan,
Susie Quatro. Susie and the Banshees, Dusty Springfield.
Aka Twigs.
Beyonce.and so many others.
The best live performer who happens to be female in my humble opinion is Shirley Bassey
She blew us all away. Sexy to everyone, powerful, talented, and a consumate entertainer.
Have you seen her perform?
Great to enjoy our pen pal chats... look what Hannah's substack instigates each Sunday!Good wishes my friend
“I did have books that just drove me mad Middlemarch was one and as I said ,anything 1950 s " Angry young man" lind of literature. I have come to appreciate the spare and atmospheric heat and pain in Brighto Rock as I have matured but the sheer seediness and furtiveness and indulgent depressive plans are most uncomfortable. I do appreciate that its a work of Genius just not my literature of choice.”
I have lived 70 years and never written a paragraph so well constructed and flowing as that! You have great taste in music as well! I joked that playing “Stairway to Heaven” was my romantic, power move during the height of my dating years in high school and college…LOL
I was in my 5th year of pharmacy college when I got a note from the Dean of Men that I didn’t have enough English credits to graduate. I’d been able to skip a course my freshman year but received no credit. So I had to scramble to take an upper level writing course Winter Quarter. Of course I was overmatched but I did get introduced to “On The Road,” by Jack Kerouac, kind of about “Angry Young Men.” I made one quote my mantra, ““A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.” Leading me to meet three outstanding young women in a matter of one week during Spring Break 1976…all too good for the likes of me…one of the three agreed to marry me...the best one
Are you familiar at all with the writer, Caroline Gordon? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Gordon She was a contemporary of Flannery O’Connor and wrote about the Old South. She has a haunting style that is mesmerizing. She wrote a book of short stories called “The Forest of the South.” The namesake story in the compilation is especially haunting and worthy of analysis from a person like you.
As for Shirley Bassey, I never had the opportunity except for the James Bond movies. Powerful voice!
Or imagine me thinking I was so cool in college, putting on "Stairway to Heaven" and sitting down next to my date (who I presumed was in my power by that point...most often a wrong assumption) on an orange sofa, with a fake fireplace in a room with deep orange plush carpeting and plastic, fake-wood beams across the ceiling of a trailer?? Talk about a "passion-pit," emphasis on "pit!!" Hahahahaha....youth is wasted on the young!! https://youtu.be/X791IzOwt3Q
Thoroughly enjoyed the you tube ,thank you very much.
I dont think one could use Robert Plant as a sort of musical Cyrano de. Ergerac these days! Lolo! Bless him, great great artist but time really IS a thief!
Sounds as if you definitely got the right love in your bumper three weeks of woman baiting during Spring break all those years ago!😂❤️
Definitely was cool to sit in your yellow pine clad environment ( brilliant image... why were we obsessed with pine in the 1970 s?) cant go wrong with a bit of Zepp playing in the background.
Hahaha!!! You reminded me of one last story...that H.S. honors, College English" class, was renown for doing a one act scene from Cyrano each year...the balcony scene where Cyrano is feeding lines of romantic poetry to the tongue-tied Christian in order to woo Roxanne...myself and my best-friend, Sergio, were co-directors, (we were the class-clowns so the teacher thought that might occupy us) though we did very little; the cast did everything and we just joked around. Although, using wisecracks and jokes, we did get the reluctant leads to rehearse "the climactic kiss," as our major contribution.
The teacher, a gruff old curmudgeon schooled in the classics at Stanford, gave Sergio and I one hundred dollars to get costumes at Masters Tuxedos downtown...they supplied the area stage companies...naturally we were tasked with getting a gown for Roxanne and musketeer costumes for Cyrano and Christian, and a monk's outfit...
HOWEVER, we spotted this FANTASTIC gorilla costume that rented for $75!!! Our swelled heads as directors and our predilection towards mischief caused our imaginations to run wild; a gorilla could climb the trellis up to the balcony and claim Roxanne much as King Kong claimed Anne Darrow?! Or instead of the monk, we have a "monkey" as a bit of comic relief?! The salesman was familiar with our class production and would have none of it, so the one act play went on to rave reviews, sans gorilla...all thanks to the diligence of the cast and crew who independently made the stone-soup-balcony-scene with nothing but wisecracks and jokes as contributions from the directors. https://youtu.be/DAspao06VsA
Ah, all sounds lovely. Congrats on the commission! The French Riviera? What a horrible place to have to be forced to travel to write about ;) Hope we get to see some pics from there. It's all gloomy-grey and cold here, so I will accept vicarious enjoyment of other parts of the world 😄
Beautiful Hannah! ( by the way, great peek at your excellent mani in your photo😂
Lovely reading as usual. I we t to Aix with Kate when she was a teenager and even then she was telling me all about the impressionist painters and the particular light that drew so many of them to the South of France. I remember Aix fondly as a very very hot town full of delightful fountains and gorgeous honey coloured buildings. And the ethereal but noisy Cicada singing away.
Its very very encouraging and exciting for women of my generation to be listened to, dare I say enjoyed as equal as Artists and writers.My husband Michael, asked me recently if I had a cooy of " The tenant Of Wildfell Hall" a favourite. Bronte story and profound social observation of the struggles of being a single mother in 18 th century.
I was so surprised as he had heard a long discussion on Radio 4 about it and really was interested in the whole Bronte clan and the experience of the struggles women had to be taken seriously in their era.
It was sad that , I felt the need to explain the depth of skill , intellect and Artistry it takes to write a novel. He told me that, as a male in a public school English literature was exclusively about Male writers. From Shakespeare to Graham Green and all in between. No boy would have been seen dead with a novel by Austen or Bro te sisters .. perhaps Virginia Woolf would be touched upon but as a passing nod to getting on with the serious stuff of Lytton Strachey .
The times they ARE a changing darling Hannah and about time.
Look forward very much to next weeks musings .xx
“I remember Aix fondly as a very very hot town full of delightful fountains and gorgeous honey coloured buildings. And the ethereal but noisy Cicada singing away.”
A wonderful sentence! …thank you for the image.
“From Shakespeare to Graham Green and all in between. No boy would have been seen dead with a novel by Austen or Bro the sisters…”
I know for certain that I never gave the author’s gender a bit of recognition for any novel that I was ASSIGNED to read…I was just upset that I had to read it! (Senior year, age 17 in HS, I somehow was placed in an honors class, College English, and we were assigned novels to read OVER SUMMER! Grrrrrr! However, the novel(s) that I was upset about the most was John Galsworthy’s “The Forsyte Saga.” My gawd it was almost 1000 pages!! BUT I have read it often as I age, with anticipation and joy. Makes me feel 17 again!). “Irene Heron Forsyte” was a true feminist who refused to be a man’s possession…though I recall that the paper I wrote took a position of empathy towards grasping, old Soames Forsyte…
As long as we’re on the subject, what about female bands or bands with female leads??!! My all-time favorite French rock band…The Prototypes! https://youtu.be/C9dttkVA2zU
Hi Judge!
Thank you for your lovely Pen pal letter.
Soames! Oh my that Soames... he was such a pitiful figure I thought. So desperately in love with the rather complex Irene but unable to communicate or understand at all the effect of his behaviour toward her. Brilliant choice as a book to discuss Roy Bean!
I was a sorry Boffin literature wise from a precocious age and would read anything at all that I could get my hands on.
I did have books that just drove me mad Middlemarch was one and as I said ,anything 1950 s " Angry young man" lind of literature. I have come to appreciate the spare and atmospheric heat and pain in Brighto Rock as I have matured but the sheer seediness and furtiveness and indulgent depressive plans are most uncomfortable. I do appreciate that its a work of Genius just not my literature of choice.
Ahhh interesting about so called " female " bands. Excellent choice yourself thanks for the clip.
Again, being female , its an interesting concept that music should be thought of in terms of gender. I love mosst music even adore the rap scene as the lyrics are so often brilliant ( if a little edgy)
Stinky rock bands always been my go to choice. Led Zeppelin being right up there.
Black Sabbath , Thin Lizzy etc etc.
Women in pop and rock of course, subject to the same horrible sexism as ever, having attended and reviewed many gigs with " female" leads or all female bands it was comically apparant that the music they created was secondary to the eye candy which leering , heckling often dead drunk guys deemed sexiest.
I will name but a few from our day up to the present, which I love as you kind,y asked
Blondie, Patti Smith, The. Bangles,PJHarvey, The Supremes, Tina of course,
Nina Simone, Kate Bush, Bjork, Chrissy Hind, Karen O. Annie Lennox, liv Moynahan,
Susie Quatro. Susie and the Banshees, Dusty Springfield.
Aka Twigs.
Beyonce.and so many others.
The best live performer who happens to be female in my humble opinion is Shirley Bassey
She blew us all away. Sexy to everyone, powerful, talented, and a consumate entertainer.
Have you seen her perform?
Great to enjoy our pen pal chats... look what Hannah's substack instigates each Sunday!Good wishes my friend
K
“I did have books that just drove me mad Middlemarch was one and as I said ,anything 1950 s " Angry young man" lind of literature. I have come to appreciate the spare and atmospheric heat and pain in Brighto Rock as I have matured but the sheer seediness and furtiveness and indulgent depressive plans are most uncomfortable. I do appreciate that its a work of Genius just not my literature of choice.”
I have lived 70 years and never written a paragraph so well constructed and flowing as that! You have great taste in music as well! I joked that playing “Stairway to Heaven” was my romantic, power move during the height of my dating years in high school and college…LOL
I was in my 5th year of pharmacy college when I got a note from the Dean of Men that I didn’t have enough English credits to graduate. I’d been able to skip a course my freshman year but received no credit. So I had to scramble to take an upper level writing course Winter Quarter. Of course I was overmatched but I did get introduced to “On The Road,” by Jack Kerouac, kind of about “Angry Young Men.” I made one quote my mantra, ““A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.” Leading me to meet three outstanding young women in a matter of one week during Spring Break 1976…all too good for the likes of me…one of the three agreed to marry me...the best one
Are you familiar at all with the writer, Caroline Gordon? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Gordon She was a contemporary of Flannery O’Connor and wrote about the Old South. She has a haunting style that is mesmerizing. She wrote a book of short stories called “The Forest of the South.” The namesake story in the compilation is especially haunting and worthy of analysis from a person like you.
As for Shirley Bassey, I never had the opportunity except for the James Bond movies. Powerful voice!
Don't overlook this one that they played live at Austin, Texas, most likely at SXSW:
https://youtu.be/KjNC0ZFr18s
Or imagine me thinking I was so cool in college, putting on "Stairway to Heaven" and sitting down next to my date (who I presumed was in my power by that point...most often a wrong assumption) on an orange sofa, with a fake fireplace in a room with deep orange plush carpeting and plastic, fake-wood beams across the ceiling of a trailer?? Talk about a "passion-pit," emphasis on "pit!!" Hahahahaha....youth is wasted on the young!! https://youtu.be/X791IzOwt3Q
Hi Judge!
Thoroughly enjoyed the you tube ,thank you very much.
I dont think one could use Robert Plant as a sort of musical Cyrano de. Ergerac these days! Lolo! Bless him, great great artist but time really IS a thief!
Sounds as if you definitely got the right love in your bumper three weeks of woman baiting during Spring break all those years ago!😂❤️
Definitely was cool to sit in your yellow pine clad environment ( brilliant image... why were we obsessed with pine in the 1970 s?) cant go wrong with a bit of Zepp playing in the background.
Bergerac not Ergerac!
Hahaha!!! You reminded me of one last story...that H.S. honors, College English" class, was renown for doing a one act scene from Cyrano each year...the balcony scene where Cyrano is feeding lines of romantic poetry to the tongue-tied Christian in order to woo Roxanne...myself and my best-friend, Sergio, were co-directors, (we were the class-clowns so the teacher thought that might occupy us) though we did very little; the cast did everything and we just joked around. Although, using wisecracks and jokes, we did get the reluctant leads to rehearse "the climactic kiss," as our major contribution.
The teacher, a gruff old curmudgeon schooled in the classics at Stanford, gave Sergio and I one hundred dollars to get costumes at Masters Tuxedos downtown...they supplied the area stage companies...naturally we were tasked with getting a gown for Roxanne and musketeer costumes for Cyrano and Christian, and a monk's outfit...
HOWEVER, we spotted this FANTASTIC gorilla costume that rented for $75!!! Our swelled heads as directors and our predilection towards mischief caused our imaginations to run wild; a gorilla could climb the trellis up to the balcony and claim Roxanne much as King Kong claimed Anne Darrow?! Or instead of the monk, we have a "monkey" as a bit of comic relief?! The salesman was familiar with our class production and would have none of it, so the one act play went on to rave reviews, sans gorilla...all thanks to the diligence of the cast and crew who independently made the stone-soup-balcony-scene with nothing but wisecracks and jokes as contributions from the directors. https://youtu.be/DAspao06VsA
"...I received a commission to write an article about the French Riviera..."
Getting PAID to write an article about the French Riviera; on site?! Mon Dieu!! My dream since puberty.
"But if I must be alone, I refuse to be alone as if it were something weak and distasteful, like convalescence."
M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating
Ah, all sounds lovely. Congrats on the commission! The French Riviera? What a horrible place to have to be forced to travel to write about ;) Hope we get to see some pics from there. It's all gloomy-grey and cold here, so I will accept vicarious enjoyment of other parts of the world 😄