The Lady of the Lake, in her own words. Yes, I have been slow to get to this story - but tell me this is not the best plot bunny ever - Nyneve becomes an actor in Paris ...
Aieeeee! Stephen G. Parks has a writer's worst nightmare. Sigh - but he probably did the right thing.
Ahh, the beautiful standards of art - where a woman's nudity is all but mandatory, but a man's is the time for censorship. Imagine actually thinking, "Okay, now I wish I'd seen naked Batman."
Showing posts with label royalty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label royalty. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Monday, July 3, 2017
Collection
On the likelihood Henry VIII called Anne Boleyn a trollop when he was courting her - the messages within the song Greensleeves, and who probably would *not* have written such a song.
Multi-layered nerd link! James Marsters' Trek audition. Worth a click beyond for a bit of Tom Hardy, too.
For everyone who EVER didn't want to admit loving a show ...
SNL Drag Race from Nicola Mari on Vimeo.
A wee lexicon for your edifictation: "fish" is feminine beauty - beating your face means doing your makeup well - "beat for filth" is doing it so well you end up giving fishy realness, Erica Jane is a completely synthetic Housewife who also records club music, and Kenan Thompson just watching the competition here is hilarical. Enjoy!
Sigh. When this ↑ is radical thinking, no wonder we don't act in the immediate. On charity versus philanthropy. You know what? A bandage is a good idea when someone is bleeding.
Multi-layered nerd link! James Marsters' Trek audition. Worth a click beyond for a bit of Tom Hardy, too.
For everyone who EVER didn't want to admit loving a show ...
SNL Drag Race from Nicola Mari on Vimeo.
A wee lexicon for your edifictation: "fish" is feminine beauty - beating your face means doing your makeup well - "beat for filth" is doing it so well you end up giving fishy realness, Erica Jane is a completely synthetic Housewife who also records club music, and Kenan Thompson just watching the competition here is hilarical. Enjoy!
It turns out that the poor often know much better than outside experts how to improve their own condition.
Sigh. When this ↑ is radical thinking, no wonder we don't act in the immediate. On charity versus philanthropy. You know what? A bandage is a good idea when someone is bleeding.
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Eddies (Not in the Space-Time Continuum)
York Minster is home to a series of statues that have always arrested me outright. The effect on me is mostly with the earliest Edwards post-Conquest, we have Longshanks (I), Edward II, and III. Each of these portrait sculptures has always seemed to me among the most animated statuary I have ever seen. But there is something about the style of the art that demands questioning and study, and is for me an illumination of the reason we study art from bygone periods.
Longshanks in particular has an imperiousness that is powerful in the extreme. Pointing down at you, his forehead creased with the stress of some imperative or command, even his curling hair alive with motion and unspoken intent, his vertical stretch, his heavy but moving robes, everything about him (not least a weighty sword he carries as if it were a feather) demands not only attention but acquiescence.
The thing about the fact these were done centuries before my generation came to be (or indeed my country, for that matter) is that there are conventions in place in the creation of these images that I almost certainly do not understand.
A modern American, the very concept of autocratic kingship is a toughie.
Edward II, whose reputation has been reduced to his sexuality in modern times, appears less martial, but no less royal. His hair, like his father's and his son's, especially evokes a kind of intensity. I have to believe this is not intended to convey that these Plantagenets had hairstyles quite so specifically reminiscent of Roseanne Roseannadanna (though her intensity stands up next to the kings'!), but speaks to something other than feature-by-feature reproduction.
The portraiture, of course, comes from a single, briefer time frame than the Edwards' reigns; these images are not real time reflections, and would not have been taken as such. Rather, the features both individual and shared communicate something about kings in concept, and each of these kings' legacies in their particulars.
Edward II, not known as The Hammer of the Scots, nor for the long and prosperous rule of his son III, has a thoughtful mien about him. His left hand raised and wrist curving, his right holding NOT a sword. The lines of his height, his garments, are more broken, more complicated. He is belted, and he is draped in multiple directions. His head bows forward ever so slightly, and at a definite angle compared to his father. He appears to be contemplating something. Possibly, his thoughtful thousand-mile gaze could be seen as thought*less*, even stupid, the gesture of his hand equivocal, less strong than the others. What was I meant to see, looking at this figure? I may not see what was intended ...
Edward III, famed for a stupendously long reign, and often seen these days as having remediated some of the perceived sins of his father, looks almost as if he is answering someone. His brow is again furrowed, pressed downward, but his chin pointing upward. His beard is the longest and least curly; the lines of his garments, indicating his body beneath, are again long and straight, but like his father and unlike his grandfather Longshanks, he is belted. Girded. His mantle is thrown over his right shoulder, his arms free; again, he indicates motion. His hair may be the most startling of the three statues.
To III's right, the nearly beardless Richard II stands; the youth, the scion, the one who faced rebellions and a changing monarchy. His cheeks seem the faintest bit chubby. His forehead, his whole face indeed, is smooth and not caught in the extremity of expression of his forbears. His hair is almost horizontal. Richard's statue retains some pigment from its former painted decoration. Like his great-great grandfather, Richard bears a sword, its tip, strangely, lost in that hair. Like Longshanks and his grandfather, III, he is pointing at the viewer. Yet the impression is that we are looking at *youth*, looking at a king whose reign did not reach the maturity Edward III's long stint on the throne held and seasoned for England.
Richard II was the son of Edward the Black Prince, who did not live to ascend the throne. He was a boy-king, like Edward III had been before he overthrew the regency of his mother and her lover, Mortimer. Richard depended upon, and then fell out with, his uncle Lancaster and his cousin, the eventual Henry IV, whose son Henry V is reminding me for some reason of Martin Sheen in this link.
Henry has both hands full, and does not look to his viewers, eyes elevated, sword - we know - ever valiant. Ever more unto the breach, my friends.
Of all these figures, it is the Edwards who seem most alien to me, who arrest my attention. They are frankly ugly to my eyes. Startlingly so. Not as works of art, but as evocations of individuals, as portraits. The intensity is too much, the emphases uncanny.
To view the details of these statues closely, as is possible in photographs, was not the way they were made to be seen. Would have been inconceivable, when these were made. They reside, in physical reality, above the heads of anyone entering York Minster. And, for anyone standing in that consecrated place, it would even now be impossible to look at them with the care that we can in the reproductions and detail shots I have linked. It would in fact have been unseemly, in their day, to expend great attention on statues of kings - "what they looked like" - as a member of a religious congregation. And the multiplicity of these figures would have discouraged that sort of gazing.
The view when they were made did not allow the privilege of peering we have now.
As much particular attention as has been lavished on every one of the statues, the truth of the art was that they were meant to be part of a whole; elevated over the flesh-and-blood parishoners, but as much a part of the congregation gathered before G-d as lesser men. A mass of figures. These were statues glorifying the monarchy, certainly; even telling stories of each king's life and deeds. But they were ultimately part of the glorification of G-d - and the Church.
The potent energy of the Edwards may have been intended as part of a more en masse evocation of the intensity of worship, devotion, praise expected to be offered on this sacred ground.
Anyone who knows more of medieval art than I do - please disabuse me of any of these notions, or explain those aspects of what I am missing. I'd love to talk! These faces make me stop and stare every time.
All I can explain are those things I don't understand within the context of these works' creation - royalty itself; the finer points of Plantagenet politics or history; the specific legends of each of these individuals' reputations ... just how far these amazing portraits are even meant to be seen AS individuals. Allegorical implications. The filter of the history already passed between Longshanks and York Minster's decoration, so many generations later.
Longshanks in particular has an imperiousness that is powerful in the extreme. Pointing down at you, his forehead creased with the stress of some imperative or command, even his curling hair alive with motion and unspoken intent, his vertical stretch, his heavy but moving robes, everything about him (not least a weighty sword he carries as if it were a feather) demands not only attention but acquiescence.
 |
| Image: Wikimedia Commons |
The thing about the fact these were done centuries before my generation came to be (or indeed my country, for that matter) is that there are conventions in place in the creation of these images that I almost certainly do not understand.
A modern American, the very concept of autocratic kingship is a toughie.
Edward II, whose reputation has been reduced to his sexuality in modern times, appears less martial, but no less royal. His hair, like his father's and his son's, especially evokes a kind of intensity. I have to believe this is not intended to convey that these Plantagenets had hairstyles quite so specifically reminiscent of Roseanne Roseannadanna (though her intensity stands up next to the kings'!), but speaks to something other than feature-by-feature reproduction.
The portraiture, of course, comes from a single, briefer time frame than the Edwards' reigns; these images are not real time reflections, and would not have been taken as such. Rather, the features both individual and shared communicate something about kings in concept, and each of these kings' legacies in their particulars.
Edward II, not known as The Hammer of the Scots, nor for the long and prosperous rule of his son III, has a thoughtful mien about him. His left hand raised and wrist curving, his right holding NOT a sword. The lines of his height, his garments, are more broken, more complicated. He is belted, and he is draped in multiple directions. His head bows forward ever so slightly, and at a definite angle compared to his father. He appears to be contemplating something. Possibly, his thoughtful thousand-mile gaze could be seen as thought*less*, even stupid, the gesture of his hand equivocal, less strong than the others. What was I meant to see, looking at this figure? I may not see what was intended ...
Edward III, famed for a stupendously long reign, and often seen these days as having remediated some of the perceived sins of his father, looks almost as if he is answering someone. His brow is again furrowed, pressed downward, but his chin pointing upward. His beard is the longest and least curly; the lines of his garments, indicating his body beneath, are again long and straight, but like his father and unlike his grandfather Longshanks, he is belted. Girded. His mantle is thrown over his right shoulder, his arms free; again, he indicates motion. His hair may be the most startling of the three statues.
To III's right, the nearly beardless Richard II stands; the youth, the scion, the one who faced rebellions and a changing monarchy. His cheeks seem the faintest bit chubby. His forehead, his whole face indeed, is smooth and not caught in the extremity of expression of his forbears. His hair is almost horizontal. Richard's statue retains some pigment from its former painted decoration. Like his great-great grandfather, Richard bears a sword, its tip, strangely, lost in that hair. Like Longshanks and his grandfather, III, he is pointing at the viewer. Yet the impression is that we are looking at *youth*, looking at a king whose reign did not reach the maturity Edward III's long stint on the throne held and seasoned for England.
Richard II was the son of Edward the Black Prince, who did not live to ascend the throne. He was a boy-king, like Edward III had been before he overthrew the regency of his mother and her lover, Mortimer. Richard depended upon, and then fell out with, his uncle Lancaster and his cousin, the eventual Henry IV, whose son Henry V is reminding me for some reason of Martin Sheen in this link.
Henry has both hands full, and does not look to his viewers, eyes elevated, sword - we know - ever valiant. Ever more unto the breach, my friends.
Of all these figures, it is the Edwards who seem most alien to me, who arrest my attention. They are frankly ugly to my eyes. Startlingly so. Not as works of art, but as evocations of individuals, as portraits. The intensity is too much, the emphases uncanny.
To view the details of these statues closely, as is possible in photographs, was not the way they were made to be seen. Would have been inconceivable, when these were made. They reside, in physical reality, above the heads of anyone entering York Minster. And, for anyone standing in that consecrated place, it would even now be impossible to look at them with the care that we can in the reproductions and detail shots I have linked. It would in fact have been unseemly, in their day, to expend great attention on statues of kings - "what they looked like" - as a member of a religious congregation. And the multiplicity of these figures would have discouraged that sort of gazing.
The view when they were made did not allow the privilege of peering we have now.
As much particular attention as has been lavished on every one of the statues, the truth of the art was that they were meant to be part of a whole; elevated over the flesh-and-blood parishoners, but as much a part of the congregation gathered before G-d as lesser men. A mass of figures. These were statues glorifying the monarchy, certainly; even telling stories of each king's life and deeds. But they were ultimately part of the glorification of G-d - and the Church.
The potent energy of the Edwards may have been intended as part of a more en masse evocation of the intensity of worship, devotion, praise expected to be offered on this sacred ground.
Anyone who knows more of medieval art than I do - please disabuse me of any of these notions, or explain those aspects of what I am missing. I'd love to talk! These faces make me stop and stare every time.
All I can explain are those things I don't understand within the context of these works' creation - royalty itself; the finer points of Plantagenet politics or history; the specific legends of each of these individuals' reputations ... just how far these amazing portraits are even meant to be seen AS individuals. Allegorical implications. The filter of the history already passed between Longshanks and York Minster's decoration, so many generations later.
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Time and Chance (Neither Sharon K Penman nor Ecclesiastes)
It is perhaps not the sort of admission a writer should make; but more, I suspect, than would like to admit it may find what I'm about to post familiar ...
The WIP began, as many know, as an inspiration early in the research for The Ax and the Vase. I was fairly successful, during my work on Ax, in keeping the WIP on the backburner - not using it to distract myself from frustrations with the first novel - and not letting it steal me away on its own impetus either.
And so, the WIP has been in gestation for something like thirteen or fourteen years now.
It was brought to the front burner a year and a half ago or so, but this summer I have allowed the demands of work and life and other such silliness as that to keep me from dedicated writing.
Now and then, when we're not really working on them, writers do at least pull OUT our work (or pull it up, as on electronic devices). We look at it, we pat it on its evil/cute little plot-bunnied head, we expect it to speak, and often it fails to. For all works of creative writing have a habit of acting on their own, especially individual characters, running off and doing things we had no idea were in them, creating unexpected continuity issues to resolve - they have an even crueller tendency NOT to do this when we sit and look at them, bereft of active ideas or plans.
WIPs, when you pull them out and expect them to develop themselves, will stare you down like sullen teenagers. Mute, un-forthcoming, inert.
And so, it was a surprise to me, today, when the sullen thing spoke to me.
I pulled it up just now. Peered at it a bit. Scrolled to the end, because I don't really know where it needs to end, or why it seems to end so far beyond where it begins.
I would be hard-pressed, in short, to tell an agent honestly "what is the crisis here, what needs resolving?"
As a historical fiction author, I am inordinately attached to the idea that telling the stories of history itself is important, worthy, fascinating. But where the fascination lies, I seem to be very poor at defining. Why tell it? Um. It's cool. See? Where the king goes Catholic, instead of Arian, and the entire future of Christendom - and Western Europe - is decided? Neat, hm?
Ya gotta have an MDQ. History is great, but a story isn't just the litany events leading from point A to point B, where there's a new chapter or we lose interest.
And I had no idea why my WIP was going on into three generations of women I think are each a study in contrasts, and whose lives deserve to be shared. Three is a great storytelling trope, but why was I going into character #1's mom and daughter, when it was #1 who drew me initially? What has it been, all this time, telling me that mom is necessary, that we can't stop without daughter, that #1 should *not* stand alone ... ?
And what is the title of this thing?
Titles are hard. And hard-won. Authors can be extremely attached to a title, emotionally vulnerable to the idea of changing one. They're harder to write than poems, perhaps. Or they ARE poems, perhaps.
So today, scrolling to the end, and then back to the beginning, when I caught sight of that moment when the character has just opened up our action by giving birth to #1, and she realizes she has not born a son ... one phrase caught my eye.
But; there is no later.
And that was when it clicked.
What I am writing about - and THIS, I have known for a long time, is the events that lead us into that period so many historians used to call (and, gallingly, most of the regular populace still call) The Dark Ages.
I'm writing about dissolution.
I'm writing about the end of a dynasty, not only from the point of view of #1, the child who had the wrong genital equipment, but also from the point of view of #2 - a character more vivid than 1's mother and her daughter - the freedwoman who literally births the END of the dynasty; the midwife who, perhaps, has her hands not only on the labours of her noblewomen, but on the pangs of a new era emerging.
That part came just now, just writing that paragraph. Exciting stuff; bear witness, y'all.
So the working title (and I feel it perhaps bears the wrong tone; so this too may pass) has become, Time for Posterity.
And the question is: how does it end?
How does a dynasty end? How does an era end? How does darkness begin? (Do I even believe there was an age of darkness appropriately to be named The Dark Ages - well, no - but it makes a hell of a story, and it's been sucking at me like a vortex for thirteen years, I realize.)
So, yaaaayyyy!
I'm about to become the AUTHOR of the Dark Ages, and I don't even believe in them!
Neato-spedito, as my brother used to say.
The WIP began, as many know, as an inspiration early in the research for The Ax and the Vase. I was fairly successful, during my work on Ax, in keeping the WIP on the backburner - not using it to distract myself from frustrations with the first novel - and not letting it steal me away on its own impetus either.
And so, the WIP has been in gestation for something like thirteen or fourteen years now.
It was brought to the front burner a year and a half ago or so, but this summer I have allowed the demands of work and life and other such silliness as that to keep me from dedicated writing.
Now and then, when we're not really working on them, writers do at least pull OUT our work (or pull it up, as on electronic devices). We look at it, we pat it on its evil/cute little plot-bunnied head, we expect it to speak, and often it fails to. For all works of creative writing have a habit of acting on their own, especially individual characters, running off and doing things we had no idea were in them, creating unexpected continuity issues to resolve - they have an even crueller tendency NOT to do this when we sit and look at them, bereft of active ideas or plans.
WIPs, when you pull them out and expect them to develop themselves, will stare you down like sullen teenagers. Mute, un-forthcoming, inert.
And so, it was a surprise to me, today, when the sullen thing spoke to me.
I pulled it up just now. Peered at it a bit. Scrolled to the end, because I don't really know where it needs to end, or why it seems to end so far beyond where it begins.
I would be hard-pressed, in short, to tell an agent honestly "what is the crisis here, what needs resolving?"
As a historical fiction author, I am inordinately attached to the idea that telling the stories of history itself is important, worthy, fascinating. But where the fascination lies, I seem to be very poor at defining. Why tell it? Um. It's cool. See? Where the king goes Catholic, instead of Arian, and the entire future of Christendom - and Western Europe - is decided? Neat, hm?
Ya gotta have an MDQ. History is great, but a story isn't just the litany events leading from point A to point B, where there's a new chapter or we lose interest.
And I had no idea why my WIP was going on into three generations of women I think are each a study in contrasts, and whose lives deserve to be shared. Three is a great storytelling trope, but why was I going into character #1's mom and daughter, when it was #1 who drew me initially? What has it been, all this time, telling me that mom is necessary, that we can't stop without daughter, that #1 should *not* stand alone ... ?
And what is the title of this thing?
Titles are hard. And hard-won. Authors can be extremely attached to a title, emotionally vulnerable to the idea of changing one. They're harder to write than poems, perhaps. Or they ARE poems, perhaps.
So today, scrolling to the end, and then back to the beginning, when I caught sight of that moment when the character has just opened up our action by giving birth to #1, and she realizes she has not born a son ... one phrase caught my eye.
Time for posterity later.
But; there is no later.
And that was when it clicked.
What I am writing about - and THIS, I have known for a long time, is the events that lead us into that period so many historians used to call (and, gallingly, most of the regular populace still call) The Dark Ages.
I'm writing about dissolution.
I'm writing about the end of a dynasty, not only from the point of view of #1, the child who had the wrong genital equipment, but also from the point of view of #2 - a character more vivid than 1's mother and her daughter - the freedwoman who literally births the END of the dynasty; the midwife who, perhaps, has her hands not only on the labours of her noblewomen, but on the pangs of a new era emerging.
That part came just now, just writing that paragraph. Exciting stuff; bear witness, y'all.
So the working title (and I feel it perhaps bears the wrong tone; so this too may pass) has become, Time for Posterity.
And the question is: how does it end?
How does a dynasty end? How does an era end? How does darkness begin? (Do I even believe there was an age of darkness appropriately to be named The Dark Ages - well, no - but it makes a hell of a story, and it's been sucking at me like a vortex for thirteen years, I realize.)
So, yaaaayyyy!
I'm about to become the AUTHOR of the Dark Ages, and I don't even believe in them!
Neato-spedito, as my brother used to say.
Monday, August 17, 2015
SEXY SEX SEX SEX (... or, "Also, I Write")
For an author’s blog, there’s been precious little word around here lately about actual writing, and work in progress. Skipping over the inevitable excuses, I’ll admit there’s been LESS going on here of late, but thank goodness it’s not nothing at all.
Early in vacation, I was struck by some thoughts on the facts of life as it were; the expectations we place upon sex – today, or “in the past” – and how immutable these feel to us. Sex has always had a pretty high importance to human beings; at a guess, even before history got onto the subject, paternity and the apparent magic of a human being coming out of another one, seemingly out of nowhere. Its intensity of pleasure has long been tied to its importance in interpersonal politics, and perhaps the development of moral expectations was inevitable, given the esteem we place on lineage across all cultures.
These days, the idea of sex as a tool is generally considered rapacious beyond all sanction, and dismissed (again, across, at the very least, quite a *few* cultures) as immoral and crude. Bargaining for position by assuming certain - *ahem* - disreputable positions is, after first being offensive and manipulative, at bottom pathetic. It hardly fails to HAPPEN; indeed, some folks I've been aware of personally prove to me the phenomenon is not limited to the dregs of society. Entire industries and reality entertainment genres (*) thrive on the commoditization of "fairy tales" and wealth-as-romantic-glue, and there has been draconian conditioning, in the past thirty years, tying distinctly to certain gender roles/expectations and material outcomes. Hooray for marketing.
(*This, by the way, is not intended to refer only to romance competitions, but also to huge swaths of HGTV programming, mythologizing the importance of McMansions, settings, vacation stylings, and the types of couple-dom we should aspire to emulate; but at least they've embraced diversity in that last item, somewhat.)
American culture and pop culture have a uniquely slutty-yet-judgmental thing going on, wherein the increase in sales of lives for entertainment and prizes has produced that rarest of "guilty pleasures" - the right to judge others wholesale even as we simultaneously are enjoined to wish we had something we could sell for a good price.
"In the past", though ... transactional sex represented a wholly different market.
As was still true when I was growing up, and remains so for some today, girls and virginity were a whopping big deal. Speaking fundamentally to the importance of that lineage I mentioned above (read: PATERNITY, specifically), virginity took on an aura of magic which imbued it with an almost terrible power. To this day, PURITY is still subject to the curious confluence of desire and defense which mark something which is wanted precisely for the value in its own termination. Lifelong chastity may garner the golf-clap of social approbation. But it's the virgin on the marriage market who's long been an actual *prize* - sought for, competed over; her extinction the very highest tragedy and the greatest sacrifice to the gods.
Coming alongside paternity arise the subjective motivations - virtue and submission and status and all the tantalizing stories we've told, as humans, about the power and magic and pleasure of sex.
For a while there, the completely absurd working title for the work in progress was "Matrilineage" - not because even for a moment I ever thought that was remotely good, but because the WIP is a novel of women. Three generations, their experiences and their points of view. The midwife who spools from one of their lives to another has always been a prominent force, and she has begun seriously to develop. This is a woman whose life revolves around the reproduction of others.
The one male character who has developed any voice at all is: an illicit sexual partner.
Illicit sex had, fifteen hundred years ago in an Ostrogothic court barely a generation old, what you might call Serious Consequences. Particularly for a princess to be used in the marriage market by a king already proven canny in such alliances, and still in the process of using even chronologically advanced and legitimacy-compromised offspring in it.
Virginity was quite the big deal for a princess. Its being disposed of, deals still must be made; and advantages still could be constructed by marriage.
Many of the marriages in the WIP are matters of pragmatism, and some may have been more removed from romantic concerns than is generally popular to write about without the remediation of a little bodice-ripping on the side. The Ax and the Vase touched on this, and I even alluded to the ancient practice of a small country capitulating to the Roman Empire in order to get its protection, as a similar dynamic to certain marriages. In the WIP, the analysis will be much closer to my characters' hearts - and bodies - and I am intrigued not only by the possibilities, but by the implications. The perspectives are so necessarily unfamiliar, and I enjoy getting outside my own expectations (not only in my writing).
In Ax, this practical use of marriage as a tool got quite a light touch. To really explore the unpleasantness, though - and in ways it isn't always perceived by modern authors and audiences - excites my wee and paltry brain. It's bouncing around like Colin (if you aren't a Hitchhiker's fan, the link probably won't help, and if you are, you don't need it: so skip the click either way - it's Wikipedia anyway, and I know how people can be about the 'pedia).
Suffice to say: inspiration. It's happening.
So yay for sex!
Early in vacation, I was struck by some thoughts on the facts of life as it were; the expectations we place upon sex – today, or “in the past” – and how immutable these feel to us. Sex has always had a pretty high importance to human beings; at a guess, even before history got onto the subject, paternity and the apparent magic of a human being coming out of another one, seemingly out of nowhere. Its intensity of pleasure has long been tied to its importance in interpersonal politics, and perhaps the development of moral expectations was inevitable, given the esteem we place on lineage across all cultures.
These days, the idea of sex as a tool is generally considered rapacious beyond all sanction, and dismissed (again, across, at the very least, quite a *few* cultures) as immoral and crude. Bargaining for position by assuming certain - *ahem* - disreputable positions is, after first being offensive and manipulative, at bottom pathetic. It hardly fails to HAPPEN; indeed, some folks I've been aware of personally prove to me the phenomenon is not limited to the dregs of society. Entire industries and reality entertainment genres (*) thrive on the commoditization of "fairy tales" and wealth-as-romantic-glue, and there has been draconian conditioning, in the past thirty years, tying distinctly to certain gender roles/expectations and material outcomes. Hooray for marketing.
(*This, by the way, is not intended to refer only to romance competitions, but also to huge swaths of HGTV programming, mythologizing the importance of McMansions, settings, vacation stylings, and the types of couple-dom we should aspire to emulate; but at least they've embraced diversity in that last item, somewhat.)
American culture and pop culture have a uniquely slutty-yet-judgmental thing going on, wherein the increase in sales of lives for entertainment and prizes has produced that rarest of "guilty pleasures" - the right to judge others wholesale even as we simultaneously are enjoined to wish we had something we could sell for a good price.
"In the past", though ... transactional sex represented a wholly different market.
As was still true when I was growing up, and remains so for some today, girls and virginity were a whopping big deal. Speaking fundamentally to the importance of that lineage I mentioned above (read: PATERNITY, specifically), virginity took on an aura of magic which imbued it with an almost terrible power. To this day, PURITY is still subject to the curious confluence of desire and defense which mark something which is wanted precisely for the value in its own termination. Lifelong chastity may garner the golf-clap of social approbation. But it's the virgin on the marriage market who's long been an actual *prize* - sought for, competed over; her extinction the very highest tragedy and the greatest sacrifice to the gods.
Coming alongside paternity arise the subjective motivations - virtue and submission and status and all the tantalizing stories we've told, as humans, about the power and magic and pleasure of sex.
For a while there, the completely absurd working title for the work in progress was "Matrilineage" - not because even for a moment I ever thought that was remotely good, but because the WIP is a novel of women. Three generations, their experiences and their points of view. The midwife who spools from one of their lives to another has always been a prominent force, and she has begun seriously to develop. This is a woman whose life revolves around the reproduction of others.
The one male character who has developed any voice at all is: an illicit sexual partner.
Illicit sex had, fifteen hundred years ago in an Ostrogothic court barely a generation old, what you might call Serious Consequences. Particularly for a princess to be used in the marriage market by a king already proven canny in such alliances, and still in the process of using even chronologically advanced and legitimacy-compromised offspring in it.
Virginity was quite the big deal for a princess. Its being disposed of, deals still must be made; and advantages still could be constructed by marriage.
Many of the marriages in the WIP are matters of pragmatism, and some may have been more removed from romantic concerns than is generally popular to write about without the remediation of a little bodice-ripping on the side. The Ax and the Vase touched on this, and I even alluded to the ancient practice of a small country capitulating to the Roman Empire in order to get its protection, as a similar dynamic to certain marriages. In the WIP, the analysis will be much closer to my characters' hearts - and bodies - and I am intrigued not only by the possibilities, but by the implications. The perspectives are so necessarily unfamiliar, and I enjoy getting outside my own expectations (not only in my writing).
In Ax, this practical use of marriage as a tool got quite a light touch. To really explore the unpleasantness, though - and in ways it isn't always perceived by modern authors and audiences - excites my wee and paltry brain. It's bouncing around like Colin (if you aren't a Hitchhiker's fan, the link probably won't help, and if you are, you don't need it: so skip the click either way - it's Wikipedia anyway, and I know how people can be about the 'pedia).
Suffice to say: inspiration. It's happening.
So yay for sex!
Sunday, April 26, 2015
It's the Bit About DNA Testing ...
... that really makes me curious about this story about Henry VII and Elizabeth of York's marriage bed ...
Being a product of my generation and my culture, this is going to give me nightmares about black lights and gross hotel rooms.
Being a product of my generation and my culture, this is going to give me nightmares about black lights and gross hotel rooms.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Collection
Mojourner left me a present, so he heads up today's festivities with the best pun I've seen in ages. Bonus points for English history nerdlery! OSUM.
Good laws, I typed 65WPM last time it was tested over a decade and a half ago, and it's taken me 60% of THAT time to get ONE novel done. Donna Everheart is seriously brave and ambitious and talented and stuff, y'all. Also: yoiks!
I've been meaning to link this for a while now - Jessica Faust (and another link from there, if you like) looks at *just* how much of our communication is spent complaining.
Open forum for grammar kvetching at Tom's blog! Go, have fun, comment - knock yourselves out. :)
Finally, The History Girls take a peek at the tattoos of sailors and princes. Neato-spedito - and I had no idea any English king ever had a piece! Click through to find out which one, and what famous lady of society had one of her own.
Good laws, I typed 65WPM last time it was tested over a decade and a half ago, and it's taken me 60% of THAT time to get ONE novel done. Donna Everheart is seriously brave and ambitious and talented and stuff, y'all. Also: yoiks!
I've been meaning to link this for a while now - Jessica Faust (and another link from there, if you like) looks at *just* how much of our communication is spent complaining.
Open forum for grammar kvetching at Tom's blog! Go, have fun, comment - knock yourselves out. :)
Finally, The History Girls take a peek at the tattoos of sailors and princes. Neato-spedito - and I had no idea any English king ever had a piece! Click through to find out which one, and what famous lady of society had one of her own.
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Collection
Geez, I skip reading The History Blog for a few days, and look what I missed!
... and </scene> on Richard III (for now ... ?). The History Blog's post - and, of course, well-chosen links on the funeral last week.
Talk about VINTAGE jewelry - turns out we've been adorning ourselves since Neanderthal days. 130,000-year-old baubles!
And more treasures - two cels from What's Opera Doc? will go on the auction block on April 9. I'm not sure these aren't just as culturally important as the Neanderthal adornments; talk about a treasure!
... and </scene> on Richard III (for now ... ?). The History Blog's post - and, of course, well-chosen links on the funeral last week.
Talk about VINTAGE jewelry - turns out we've been adorning ourselves since Neanderthal days. 130,000-year-old baubles!
And more treasures - two cels from What's Opera Doc? will go on the auction block on April 9. I'm not sure these aren't just as culturally important as the Neanderthal adornments; talk about a treasure!
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Collection
It's been some time since I linked any updates on Richard III's exhumation and reburial and so on, so here's The History Blog's latest on this week's upcoming (Thursday, 3/26) ceremonies for those who've also been somewhat sporadic in keeping up. As always, good links included, and nice details.
Medieval People of Color looks at (please pardon the pun) a different kind of diversity in this post, with well-known paintings recreated for the blind . This is the sort of idea that begs the question, "How come we never did this before? Have we done this before ... ?" And it's true - sometimes the fascination and beauty in art are in the small details. An interesting exhibit not only for the visually-challenged; looking at classics in a new way.
The British Museum (and its blog) examines nudes in ancient Greek art "as an expression of social, moral, and political values." Today, it's covering nudity that perhaps most reflects my country's and culture's social, moral, and political values ...
Kim Rendfield hosts Marina Julia Neary, who tells us about life behind the rusting curtain, and whose title alone, "Saved by the Bang" (for a novel touching on Chernobyl) has me itching to see just how much I can balance on the TBR pile ... Oh dear! Side note, the discussion of spelling of her given name is a neat look into
Passion of Former Days has French kisses (vintage (not scandalous!) French postcards). With original notes, as sent at the time. Ooh la la!
Keep an eye peeled in 100 days for Tom Williams' next outing, Burke at Waterloo!
Medieval People of Color looks at (please pardon the pun) a different kind of diversity in this post, with well-known paintings recreated for the blind . This is the sort of idea that begs the question, "How come we never did this before? Have we done this before ... ?" And it's true - sometimes the fascination and beauty in art are in the small details. An interesting exhibit not only for the visually-challenged; looking at classics in a new way.
The British Museum (and its blog) examines nudes in ancient Greek art "as an expression of social, moral, and political values." Today, it's covering nudity that perhaps most reflects my country's and culture's social, moral, and political values ...
Kim Rendfield hosts Marina Julia Neary, who tells us about life behind the rusting curtain, and whose title alone, "Saved by the Bang" (for a novel touching on Chernobyl) has me itching to see just how much I can balance on the TBR pile ... Oh dear! Side note, the discussion of spelling of her given name is a neat look into
Passion of Former Days has French kisses (vintage (not scandalous!) French postcards). With original notes, as sent at the time. Ooh la la!
Keep an eye peeled in 100 days for Tom Williams' next outing, Burke at Waterloo!
Saturday, March 14, 2015
#WeNeedDiverseBooks
There is a movement in publishing which has gathered a great deal of momentum just in the past six months, and which is gratifying to see - and which I have DECIDEDLY failed (with The Ax and the Vase, that is) to participate in. Ax is not only about a royal white dude, but it's self-absorbedly told in first person POV, *and* includes a long and inextricable subplot about, essentially, hating and punishing homosexual behavior.
I've talked about it before, and don't defend these things in their essence. Ax is the story that made me tell it, and (failings and all) it still captivates me, and it's a great novel. I didn't think, when falling into the story, about its demographics, and have wrestled with my own culpability as an author since.
The WIP happens once again to be about a royal princess, but (a) this novel will be told, at least, from the point of view of a woman, and (b) takes place in world by far more cosmopolitan than an ancient Frankish stockade. At least two major characters are people of color, and the issue of how one of these must die is one I am dealing with at great mental length these days, because it echoes, for me, the insensitivity of a White Dude King killing off the gay man in his ranks, and there is concern not only for my ethical expectations, but also the genuineness of the world. I shy away from political correctness in dealing with any story, and yet there is a definite need to "redeem" myself from some of the constraints my original first-person novel brings with it, no matter how good it is.
There is also the concern of my being a white person of undoubted privilege and freedom, and the extent to which I exoticize diversity, as opposed to presenting it properly. I couldn't even bring myself to add to the community response at Janet Reid's recent post about diversity; they do too good a job there for me to improve on it. I just know I want to participate in #WeNeedDiverseBooks - in the right way for who I am and what we all want to accomplish.
How to do that ...
The WIP is bringing with it, every day, more exciting opportunities in its story, its research - its *characters*.
Wish me luck ...
I've talked about it before, and don't defend these things in their essence. Ax is the story that made me tell it, and (failings and all) it still captivates me, and it's a great novel. I didn't think, when falling into the story, about its demographics, and have wrestled with my own culpability as an author since.
The WIP happens once again to be about a royal princess, but (a) this novel will be told, at least, from the point of view of a woman, and (b) takes place in world by far more cosmopolitan than an ancient Frankish stockade. At least two major characters are people of color, and the issue of how one of these must die is one I am dealing with at great mental length these days, because it echoes, for me, the insensitivity of a White Dude King killing off the gay man in his ranks, and there is concern not only for my ethical expectations, but also the genuineness of the world. I shy away from political correctness in dealing with any story, and yet there is a definite need to "redeem" myself from some of the constraints my original first-person novel brings with it, no matter how good it is.
There is also the concern of my being a white person of undoubted privilege and freedom, and the extent to which I exoticize diversity, as opposed to presenting it properly. I couldn't even bring myself to add to the community response at Janet Reid's recent post about diversity; they do too good a job there for me to improve on it. I just know I want to participate in #WeNeedDiverseBooks - in the right way for who I am and what we all want to accomplish.
How to do that ...
- Avoid exoticization - turning someone's entire culture into a Hallowe'en costume (or, even worse, a sexy Hallowe'en costume) to dress up my book.
- Avoid appropriation - imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery; sometimes, it's just a reductive presumption, and can lead to a loss of perspective. Not good for writing about something.
- Don't impose myself on a character or a culture - researching a world to build it, without demolition in order to reface it. Storytelling is not a wasteful home design show out to impose a fresh new face on an old house, it's an exploration of structure and style which should be true to intent. I don't jam 21st-century feminists into my works, and I don't fetishize the worlds into which I want to bring my readers.
- Follow the story. If the characters are allowed "their own truth" so to speak, everything will work better. I love to be led, as an author.
- Keep #WeNeedDiverseBooks and the great diversity and voices *in tune* all the time. I find inspiration in Twitter all the time for this, connections and perspectives not only keeping me honest about my privilege, but affecting the way I live and write, and how I think about approaching everything.
- FIND THE HISTORY. There are more and more people every day seeking to illuminate sources beyond the powerful white men. Researchers are amazing people, and they share - it would be madness not to take advantage of that, as a writer.
The WIP is bringing with it, every day, more exciting opportunities in its story, its research - its *characters*.
Wish me luck ...
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Collection
The generous and talented Elizabeth Chadwick had a post (with great excerpts!) wishing Henry II a happy birthday. Good reading, go enjoy ...
The Arrant Pedant is staying busy on the blog these days - today, we have another deconstruction of grammar itself, but also an extremely illuminating look at the careless use (and production of) statistics. On online grammar errors supposedly exploding by 148% in under a decade. This is an excellent look at something way beyond grammar - it's how businesses and special interests create a scare for their own benefit. We should never forget just how many sources have reason to manipulate our expectations. And anyway - Arrant Pedant makes for more good reading, so again, go enjoy ...
The History Blog's own post and, as always, its well chosen links to other articles and sources, takes a look at the stone tool found in Oregon under sixteen millennia of ash. This is the New World, y'all. Exciting! (Also featured - an archaeological selfie. Those guys really like shots of their left hands holding things ...)
The Arrant Pedant is staying busy on the blog these days - today, we have another deconstruction of grammar itself, but also an extremely illuminating look at the careless use (and production of) statistics. On online grammar errors supposedly exploding by 148% in under a decade. This is an excellent look at something way beyond grammar - it's how businesses and special interests create a scare for their own benefit. We should never forget just how many sources have reason to manipulate our expectations. And anyway - Arrant Pedant makes for more good reading, so again, go enjoy ...
The History Blog's own post and, as always, its well chosen links to other articles and sources, takes a look at the stone tool found in Oregon under sixteen millennia of ash. This is the New World, y'all. Exciting! (Also featured - an archaeological selfie. Those guys really like shots of their left hands holding things ...)
Thursday, August 7, 2014
The Thing About Salic Law
One of the little excitements people indulged for a little while before a certain little British George was born just over one year ago was the idea that a female child would become heir to the throne. Murmers have arisen in Europe, over time, about royal inheritance along feminine lines, and many contemporary stories and essays on the topic recall Salic Law.
The lex salica laid down by Clovis between 507-511 CE is NOT the law referred to, not honestly. For one, the original code is lost to us, the earliest translations dating over two centuries later (indeed, possibly nearly three). For two, even the earliest transcriptions to which we can look display enough differentiation to indicate a departure from original texts, if not outright error or scholastic – or even possibly individual - interpretation.
The tenet most often invoked by the modern phrase Salic Law is that no inheritance is for a woman, and even this title is not available in its original form. And even if it were, law is not definitive. This is why we have the term “interpretation” so closely associated with the term “law” – fortunately or not. The one essential understanding we can glean from what remnants DO exist of the lex salica is that a woman was barred from the inheritance of land.
In England, this issue (though, to be clear, *not* this particular law) came to a head during The Anarchy of the twelfth century, when Henry I’s daughter Maud was in hopes to reign, and found herself double-crossed by her good cousin Stephen. This led to damned near two decades of family quarrel on the scale of civil war – and, thanks to at least one certain convenient death, the reign of Henry II. Let this be a warning: Don’t drink and boat. (If you don’t get the reference, look up “White Ship.”)
It took until the fourteenth century for England and France to really get the ball rolling and come up with what many now think of when they hear “Salic Law” – when, oft-intermarried across the Channel as each royal party had been for so long, the French had to come up with a reason to keep their throne out of the hands of the English king. And thus they barred inheritance even through the female line - a neat trick intended to rebuff Edward III, and resulting in The Hundred Years’ War.
All this is to say, the codification of traditional tribal custom as laid down by the “Barbarian” Clovis bore little to no concern over swatting crowns off of girls’ heads. To be frank (har), the idea of a queen regnant was likely illusory to the man himself and to the rather smaller society of his time. Kings were still elected, at least in name – and by the time Clovis’ abundance of boys came to inherit, the substantial kingdom amassed by their father was their patrimony – in essence a single domain, but subject to joint kingship … and we all know how that went for the Merovingians, over time. (Okay - for those new readers who actually don’t: well, it lasted nearly 300 years, but involved rather a lot of betrayal and sibling rivalry at the point of many swords.) Kings were also bound to their thrones by military success and the charisma of the blood. A Frankish woman might indeed have charisma, and to spare (and, at that, one or two have been said to have wielded a blade, at least for legendary purposes) – but none has been recorded as a war leader, and even Clovis’ niece, who became queen regnant over the Ostrogoths, did not do so in Gaul, and didn’t do so with what could be called the overwhelming support of the male nobility surrounding her. She was murdered in her bath in 535.
So, so much for even the idea of a woman as king – and yet, still, Clovis’ law was not laid down to make sure no occupant of the throne ever had matching chromosomes. For that to come about, the code disappeared, morphed, and waited 80% of a millennium, for the occupants on either side of the Channel to get good and intermingled – and nicely paranoid about each other and the very inextricability of their links.
It is (not) a funny thing about humanity, that where we forge the tightest bonds, we also foster the greatest of our fears. The major problem with power, and money (if we consider these different things; and I for one must, to remain sane), is that in gaining them pretty much everyone so “blessed” spends all their time concerned with losing them again. And those who can use the law to defend themselves, if not as flat-out offense against even those who may or may not even wish to make incursions against them.
I wonder whether anyone reading might recognize *that* scenario.
The lex salica laid down by Clovis between 507-511 CE is NOT the law referred to, not honestly. For one, the original code is lost to us, the earliest translations dating over two centuries later (indeed, possibly nearly three). For two, even the earliest transcriptions to which we can look display enough differentiation to indicate a departure from original texts, if not outright error or scholastic – or even possibly individual - interpretation.
The tenet most often invoked by the modern phrase Salic Law is that no inheritance is for a woman, and even this title is not available in its original form. And even if it were, law is not definitive. This is why we have the term “interpretation” so closely associated with the term “law” – fortunately or not. The one essential understanding we can glean from what remnants DO exist of the lex salica is that a woman was barred from the inheritance of land.
In England, this issue (though, to be clear, *not* this particular law) came to a head during The Anarchy of the twelfth century, when Henry I’s daughter Maud was in hopes to reign, and found herself double-crossed by her good cousin Stephen. This led to damned near two decades of family quarrel on the scale of civil war – and, thanks to at least one certain convenient death, the reign of Henry II. Let this be a warning: Don’t drink and boat. (If you don’t get the reference, look up “White Ship.”)
It took until the fourteenth century for England and France to really get the ball rolling and come up with what many now think of when they hear “Salic Law” – when, oft-intermarried across the Channel as each royal party had been for so long, the French had to come up with a reason to keep their throne out of the hands of the English king. And thus they barred inheritance even through the female line - a neat trick intended to rebuff Edward III, and resulting in The Hundred Years’ War.
All this is to say, the codification of traditional tribal custom as laid down by the “Barbarian” Clovis bore little to no concern over swatting crowns off of girls’ heads. To be frank (har), the idea of a queen regnant was likely illusory to the man himself and to the rather smaller society of his time. Kings were still elected, at least in name – and by the time Clovis’ abundance of boys came to inherit, the substantial kingdom amassed by their father was their patrimony – in essence a single domain, but subject to joint kingship … and we all know how that went for the Merovingians, over time. (Okay - for those new readers who actually don’t: well, it lasted nearly 300 years, but involved rather a lot of betrayal and sibling rivalry at the point of many swords.) Kings were also bound to their thrones by military success and the charisma of the blood. A Frankish woman might indeed have charisma, and to spare (and, at that, one or two have been said to have wielded a blade, at least for legendary purposes) – but none has been recorded as a war leader, and even Clovis’ niece, who became queen regnant over the Ostrogoths, did not do so in Gaul, and didn’t do so with what could be called the overwhelming support of the male nobility surrounding her. She was murdered in her bath in 535.
So, so much for even the idea of a woman as king – and yet, still, Clovis’ law was not laid down to make sure no occupant of the throne ever had matching chromosomes. For that to come about, the code disappeared, morphed, and waited 80% of a millennium, for the occupants on either side of the Channel to get good and intermingled – and nicely paranoid about each other and the very inextricability of their links.
It is (not) a funny thing about humanity, that where we forge the tightest bonds, we also foster the greatest of our fears. The major problem with power, and money (if we consider these different things; and I for one must, to remain sane), is that in gaining them pretty much everyone so “blessed” spends all their time concerned with losing them again. And those who can use the law to defend themselves, if not as flat-out offense against even those who may or may not even wish to make incursions against them.
I wonder whether anyone reading might recognize *that* scenario.
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Looking Into Richard
The saga of the bones of Richard III will not end any time soon, and the latest is a 3D print look at that remarkable spine of his. The History Blog has an excellent .gif of the bones as they would have been in life (inside the late king), along with some thoughts and good links to further discussion.
This is a use of 3D printing that offers a look (if you will) at tools for both discovery and conservation. The study of Richard's actual bones must be limited by their age and delicacy - and, of course, the fact of their uniqueness. As artifacts go, the skeleton of an individual could not be more scarce: there is only one Richard III.
We've seen mummies taken to pieces and study methods of the past which have damaged and even destroyed human remains and our ancient creations and possessions. We've seen a hundred means by which the material of history can be lost forever - warfare, natural disaster, the simple accident of losing track of things through centuries. We've seen false artifacts, hoaxes which sometimes drew into question the value or even the reality of those items of past times which have been misunderstood or subject to the varying value systems of prejudice.
Being able to study Richard's bones thanks to replication opens a wide array of possibilities. Perhaps not all of them are positive, but this one is a little exciting. The .gif, to be fair, might ook some folks out as it were. But for me it's just a neat example of new technology with quite intriguing new uses for an area of study which might not have seemed obvious when 3D printing was developed. Thanks again to The HB.
This is a use of 3D printing that offers a look (if you will) at tools for both discovery and conservation. The study of Richard's actual bones must be limited by their age and delicacy - and, of course, the fact of their uniqueness. As artifacts go, the skeleton of an individual could not be more scarce: there is only one Richard III.
We've seen mummies taken to pieces and study methods of the past which have damaged and even destroyed human remains and our ancient creations and possessions. We've seen a hundred means by which the material of history can be lost forever - warfare, natural disaster, the simple accident of losing track of things through centuries. We've seen false artifacts, hoaxes which sometimes drew into question the value or even the reality of those items of past times which have been misunderstood or subject to the varying value systems of prejudice.
Being able to study Richard's bones thanks to replication opens a wide array of possibilities. Perhaps not all of them are positive, but this one is a little exciting. The .gif, to be fair, might ook some folks out as it were. But for me it's just a neat example of new technology with quite intriguing new uses for an area of study which might not have seemed obvious when 3D printing was developed. Thanks again to The HB.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
All Richard, All the Time
As the review begins regarding the reinterment of Richard III's bones (I did not find a resolution, if there's been one on this since 3/11 here is a timeline), so recently unearthed ... the questions begin. What color were his hair and eyes? Where was his chapel?
... and, inevitably ...
A poll to determine who believes it's really RIII they've found (to heck with science, let's vote! ohhh do I love contemporary "journalism") ... and the matter of doubt itself.
... and, inevitably ...
A poll to determine who believes it's really RIII they've found (to heck with science, let's vote! ohhh do I love contemporary "journalism") ... and the matter of doubt itself.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Collection
HAPPY NATIONAL GRAMMAR DAY! Also, hurrah: Arrant Pedantry has a new post! "Good writing breaks (the) rules all the time, and following all the rules does little if anything to make bad writing good." What an extraordinarily intelligent, generous-minded, and useful blog this is.
The History Blog takes a great look at what it takes to conserve The Staffordshire Hoard. Thorns and puffs of air, along with other non-damaging methods, as it turns out. As innovative tool-choosing goes, the idea of eschewing modern blades for a precision point found in nature excites me - what a marvelous idea! Click through for more detail and photos of the exquisite workmanship of these treasures. Mmmm: foiled gems.
Is it too late to say, "But wait!" ... ? Ask Richard III's bones - and Dr. John Ashdown-Hill, who would like to see a stop put to their destruction and testing. Now that he's gotten the answers he wanted out of the testing ...
And finally, a quote:
The History Blog takes a great look at what it takes to conserve The Staffordshire Hoard. Thorns and puffs of air, along with other non-damaging methods, as it turns out. As innovative tool-choosing goes, the idea of eschewing modern blades for a precision point found in nature excites me - what a marvelous idea! Click through for more detail and photos of the exquisite workmanship of these treasures. Mmmm: foiled gems.
Is it too late to say, "But wait!" ... ? Ask Richard III's bones - and Dr. John Ashdown-Hill, who would like to see a stop put to their destruction and testing. Now that he's gotten the answers he wanted out of the testing ...
And finally, a quote:
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.
--Emile-Auguste Chartier
Monday, February 3, 2014
Three Links
The latest find in British bones, Blanch Mortimer - there was a coffin in her tomb, and she was in the coffin (although, gruesomely "there wasn't much left" ...). It is interesting, reading about multiple exhumations, reburials, cenotaphs, and lost remains, how unusual this actually is. Click for a vid of the vicar of St. Bartholomew's discussing the surprising find.
The latest find in German psychiatry - Mad King Ludwig, not mad after all? Might the monarch have been a victim of homophobia? Conspiracy? Poor diagnostic method?
Finally: courtesy of The Rags of Time, a martial arts demonstration, circa 1919. Exceptional!
(The hair product here alone is made of the sternest of stuff ...)
The latest find in German psychiatry - Mad King Ludwig, not mad after all? Might the monarch have been a victim of homophobia? Conspiracy? Poor diagnostic method?
Finally: courtesy of The Rags of Time, a martial arts demonstration, circa 1919. Exceptional!
(The hair product here alone is made of the sternest of stuff ...)
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Alfred or Edward - the Events Thus Far
With the "discovery" of a fragment of hip bone which has spent some years in storage since its excavation, focus similar to that given to the skeleton of Richard III has proceeded apace. Here is a nice, and brief, summation of this progress.
These ongoing stories have been a fascinating study in our attitudes toward royalty, death, human remains, our concern for those gone - and, probably, our concern for our own eventual material fate.
These ongoing stories have been a fascinating study in our attitudes toward royalty, death, human remains, our concern for those gone - and, probably, our concern for our own eventual material fate.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Bones, Baubles, Irrelevancies
The interest we’ve seen, during the past year, in bones of centuries-gone kings such as Richard III and now that possible fragment of Alfred the Great – and, indeed, the perennial interest humankind has in the remains of our dead, has had me thinking about this most singular form of artifact. One of the most influential religious faiths history has ever seen has institutionalized the reverencing of dead martyrs’ bodies, from proposing incorruption and corpses’ divinely sweet fragrances as evidence of saintliness to prayers offered before knucklebones and holy f*reskins. It is not merely the entombment, nor even the spiritual care, of the dead which seems to drive us, but that ineffable affinity humans have for transforming the material into the mystical.
Our attraction to “things” and “stuff” has always been a double-edged sword. There are epochally powerful religions formulated *against* attachments to the material world, warning against earthly attachments. And yet, even those faiths have yielded art and artifacts throughout history; indeed, the destruction of Buddhist statues can be decried as a crime even as the veneration of relics may be derided as idolatry.
Human beings are a fascinating lot – and so many of us contain both these impulses: the resistance to materialism we think on one hand ought to guide us … and the pathological desire to collect possessions and experiences with objects, which sometimes also takes on a moral overtone, or gains traction with sentiment. How many families have we seen, who come to blows over who-gets-what when a loved one (or, at least, a family member) dies? How many secrets have been kept, protecting some line of inheritance or material “equality” in division of such spoils? My brother and I both have had conversations with our mom, about concerns she has that each of us should be treated equally. We might have cared about that when we were kids (or perhaps it was only me …) – but as we’ve grown older, we’re just grateful she’s with us. In the end, his daughters will get it all anyway – heh. Much as I love my pets, they won’t do any good with the perfectly baffling array of vintage costume jewelry I’ve amassed in my lifetime (and, indeed, I imagine my nieces won’t have much use for many of the bits, bobs, and baubles of my estate, when it comes to it). My mom might fret about who will get what, or perhaps what the fate may be of things she has strong emotional associations for, and wants to see those emotional value-settings continued – “this was a ring your grandfather gave me” or “this was your great-great aunt’s piece of farm equipment” and so on – but our family may not have the stamina for attaching the same values to things that were held before us.
One of those things I know we do hold onto, though – is my father’s remains. This is not a single body in a casket, but a parcel of ashes – each of us has a small amount, and the rest we entombed in a columbarium. Dad has graced, since his death, the waves off a sacred parcel of coast in Hawai’I, a certain place where his sister lived, my grandmother’s casket, a few baggies, a box with a dragon on it, and whatever sacred vessels my mom and my brother have found for their concrete memory of his person. I once defiled a piece of furniture owned by my beloved Jewish cousin, my best friend, a table given to me by her and now rather un-kosher, having had a dead man’s ashes sitting on it. She suggested that the ritual with a spotless red calf would be a bit much to “cleanse” something merely touched by a Gentile she loved so much herself – and yet, even our awareness of this symbolic uncleanliness speaks again to the stuff of death, its ceremony, its – please pardon me, I don’t mean to make a joke – undying presence for us all.
There is a Donald Harington character, Eli Willard, who lives long, long – beyond the normal expectations of our lifetimes – and who, after he passes on at last, is preserved and enshrined in a glass casket. For the century after his death, Willard’s body is variously exhibited, hidden away, lost, found, treated as a curiosity, as a talisman, and – at long last – he is put to rest. In that earth to which so many of us expect to return when we die. Eli’s material presence is thematically, philosophically powerful; magical.
My dad’s presence is closer to the ground, for me – I don’t pray to him; I don’t pray through him. And yet, the day he died, I came instantly to understand and appreciate many cultures’ practices of ancestor worship. I pine, sometimes, for the hope he could even only intercede in my life, if we may no longer participate in it together. But that is selfishness, and vain magic at that. I don’t turn to his little dragon box when I am in confusion, nor sit with it to the strains of Important Music and tears and candlelight.
But I have that box.
I have the painting of Einstein one of his students once gave him, too. There are objects, important objects – throughout my life and home – born of the relationships in my life, and born of their own relationships, inherited by me. My grandparents’ wedding portrait (two separate photos actually, merged and softly hand-tinted, framed, and so long a part of my family I hardly know where all it has hung and hidden), the pictures drawn and painted by my mama’s mother, the furniture which dates back, some of it, something like ninety years. We are all artifactories, and not least of those Things we leave behind is our bodies themselves. Even things left long before we die – that box with my hair in it, from when I was a little girl – and some of my mother’s. Baby teeth, kept in little keepsake boxes. Fingerprints, baby footprints, plaster casts, bronze baby booties, the lines on a wall showing what child was how tall, when.
We record and enshrine our bodies even before our souls depart them. We even entomb spirit without body; empty, and false, graves abound around the world, throughout history.
But it is the stuff of death we protect most fiercely. The furore over Richard’s authenticity, the deep excitement over Alfred’s purported hip … we don’t care because we care so much about the royals themselves. We care because our stewardship of the dead, itself, never dies. How many nobles the world over have been buried, exhumed, and reconsecrated unto the ground centuries later? Why is it Oliver Cromwell’s decapitated noggin has its own Wikipedia page? Because we use these bodies – these parts – both to mark our care and disposal of those we feel matter for good or ill; and we use our observation of their deaths to mark how it *is* we feel … and how we felt before. Veneration comes and goes. Our need to reflect that veneration – or desecration (read that article on Cromwell’s head to understand the power of vengeance, even upon the dead) does not.
I am interested to find out whether the hip bone might be Alfred’s. Not because of the artifact’s eventual fate (still, intriguingly, unfolding before us, a thousand years and more since his life expired), but because its PATH is itself a fascinating story. As Eli Willard’s life after death is. As the paths, and analyses, of every mummy we’ve ever disturbed and peered at with questions beyond the relevancy of those who preserved the remains. The story of Otzi is riveting, compelling. It’s science, but it only matters to us because we reach out to Otzi as humans – as those seeking to understand what went before, to reassure ourselves of what may come after.
There are those of us who might relish the idea of being found in a thousand – in ten thousand – years from now, being able to tell, by our persons, something of who we were, of where we lived and what mattered. There are those for whom the idea is blasphemous, anathema. Our own studies of the ancient dead are hardly beyond ethical questioning – no matter how fascinating I find these inquiries, I still know what it means to disturb those who should be at rest (to disturb cultures, and dust long settled – the dust to which we all will return). I would not mind, myself, being the subject of such curiosity. But I will perhaps leave no anatomical artifact behind – as someone dear to me once pointed out, it’s not like there’s anyone to visit my grave. And graves themselves are a real estate issue in our world, with implications and ethics all their own. It might be nice to have myself buried biodegradably, and make such questions moot. But I may become ashes myself, eventually invisible and un-study-able. Perhaps I can convince myself there is inscrutable power in being thus ineffable, heh.
What will become of that little dragon box with my father in it.
What will become of me.
When it comes down to it, I’m not sure I care very much at all. Even vain as I am, it’s not like I’ll be here to enjoy any fate – or revile it – my earthly remains may come to. The idea of occupying a little clay box, unregarded, at one of my nieces’ homes, seventy years hence, doesn’t appeal to nor revulse me – it just seems irrelevant. (What THEY need of me, they have always had, and that has nothing to do with Things and Stuff.) I don’t even think about what my books will mean to anyone, once my body and my estate dissipate and fade away. Immortality means nothing to me – if it did, I would have had children, I imagine. (And yet … here I am, blogging my blithering brains away …) The stuff of my death, as much as the stuff of my life, may go where it will and I’m not going to fret now nor in the hereafter about that. If there is a hereafter, I’ll hope to see those who may dispose of that stuff, when they are at the point of their own disposal. I am flotsam, and this doesn’t bother me – it’s as much an irrelevancy as Things and Stuff are supposed to be, according to certain philosophies. I contain multitudes, but nothing fools me into ascribing immortality to that – and no amount of collecting, holding on to, and curating the artifacts of my life makes me honestly believe that what I imbue with meaning contains that meaning in its own right. I’m content with my earthbound avarice – and will be just as content, when relieved of the condition, to know it will not survive me.
Our attraction to “things” and “stuff” has always been a double-edged sword. There are epochally powerful religions formulated *against* attachments to the material world, warning against earthly attachments. And yet, even those faiths have yielded art and artifacts throughout history; indeed, the destruction of Buddhist statues can be decried as a crime even as the veneration of relics may be derided as idolatry.
Human beings are a fascinating lot – and so many of us contain both these impulses: the resistance to materialism we think on one hand ought to guide us … and the pathological desire to collect possessions and experiences with objects, which sometimes also takes on a moral overtone, or gains traction with sentiment. How many families have we seen, who come to blows over who-gets-what when a loved one (or, at least, a family member) dies? How many secrets have been kept, protecting some line of inheritance or material “equality” in division of such spoils? My brother and I both have had conversations with our mom, about concerns she has that each of us should be treated equally. We might have cared about that when we were kids (or perhaps it was only me …) – but as we’ve grown older, we’re just grateful she’s with us. In the end, his daughters will get it all anyway – heh. Much as I love my pets, they won’t do any good with the perfectly baffling array of vintage costume jewelry I’ve amassed in my lifetime (and, indeed, I imagine my nieces won’t have much use for many of the bits, bobs, and baubles of my estate, when it comes to it). My mom might fret about who will get what, or perhaps what the fate may be of things she has strong emotional associations for, and wants to see those emotional value-settings continued – “this was a ring your grandfather gave me” or “this was your great-great aunt’s piece of farm equipment” and so on – but our family may not have the stamina for attaching the same values to things that were held before us.
One of those things I know we do hold onto, though – is my father’s remains. This is not a single body in a casket, but a parcel of ashes – each of us has a small amount, and the rest we entombed in a columbarium. Dad has graced, since his death, the waves off a sacred parcel of coast in Hawai’I, a certain place where his sister lived, my grandmother’s casket, a few baggies, a box with a dragon on it, and whatever sacred vessels my mom and my brother have found for their concrete memory of his person. I once defiled a piece of furniture owned by my beloved Jewish cousin, my best friend, a table given to me by her and now rather un-kosher, having had a dead man’s ashes sitting on it. She suggested that the ritual with a spotless red calf would be a bit much to “cleanse” something merely touched by a Gentile she loved so much herself – and yet, even our awareness of this symbolic uncleanliness speaks again to the stuff of death, its ceremony, its – please pardon me, I don’t mean to make a joke – undying presence for us all.
There is a Donald Harington character, Eli Willard, who lives long, long – beyond the normal expectations of our lifetimes – and who, after he passes on at last, is preserved and enshrined in a glass casket. For the century after his death, Willard’s body is variously exhibited, hidden away, lost, found, treated as a curiosity, as a talisman, and – at long last – he is put to rest. In that earth to which so many of us expect to return when we die. Eli’s material presence is thematically, philosophically powerful; magical.
My dad’s presence is closer to the ground, for me – I don’t pray to him; I don’t pray through him. And yet, the day he died, I came instantly to understand and appreciate many cultures’ practices of ancestor worship. I pine, sometimes, for the hope he could even only intercede in my life, if we may no longer participate in it together. But that is selfishness, and vain magic at that. I don’t turn to his little dragon box when I am in confusion, nor sit with it to the strains of Important Music and tears and candlelight.
But I have that box.
I have the painting of Einstein one of his students once gave him, too. There are objects, important objects – throughout my life and home – born of the relationships in my life, and born of their own relationships, inherited by me. My grandparents’ wedding portrait (two separate photos actually, merged and softly hand-tinted, framed, and so long a part of my family I hardly know where all it has hung and hidden), the pictures drawn and painted by my mama’s mother, the furniture which dates back, some of it, something like ninety years. We are all artifactories, and not least of those Things we leave behind is our bodies themselves. Even things left long before we die – that box with my hair in it, from when I was a little girl – and some of my mother’s. Baby teeth, kept in little keepsake boxes. Fingerprints, baby footprints, plaster casts, bronze baby booties, the lines on a wall showing what child was how tall, when.
We record and enshrine our bodies even before our souls depart them. We even entomb spirit without body; empty, and false, graves abound around the world, throughout history.
 |
| The Cenotaph of Abraham Image: Wikimedia |
But it is the stuff of death we protect most fiercely. The furore over Richard’s authenticity, the deep excitement over Alfred’s purported hip … we don’t care because we care so much about the royals themselves. We care because our stewardship of the dead, itself, never dies. How many nobles the world over have been buried, exhumed, and reconsecrated unto the ground centuries later? Why is it Oliver Cromwell’s decapitated noggin has its own Wikipedia page? Because we use these bodies – these parts – both to mark our care and disposal of those we feel matter for good or ill; and we use our observation of their deaths to mark how it *is* we feel … and how we felt before. Veneration comes and goes. Our need to reflect that veneration – or desecration (read that article on Cromwell’s head to understand the power of vengeance, even upon the dead) does not.
I am interested to find out whether the hip bone might be Alfred’s. Not because of the artifact’s eventual fate (still, intriguingly, unfolding before us, a thousand years and more since his life expired), but because its PATH is itself a fascinating story. As Eli Willard’s life after death is. As the paths, and analyses, of every mummy we’ve ever disturbed and peered at with questions beyond the relevancy of those who preserved the remains. The story of Otzi is riveting, compelling. It’s science, but it only matters to us because we reach out to Otzi as humans – as those seeking to understand what went before, to reassure ourselves of what may come after.
There are those of us who might relish the idea of being found in a thousand – in ten thousand – years from now, being able to tell, by our persons, something of who we were, of where we lived and what mattered. There are those for whom the idea is blasphemous, anathema. Our own studies of the ancient dead are hardly beyond ethical questioning – no matter how fascinating I find these inquiries, I still know what it means to disturb those who should be at rest (to disturb cultures, and dust long settled – the dust to which we all will return). I would not mind, myself, being the subject of such curiosity. But I will perhaps leave no anatomical artifact behind – as someone dear to me once pointed out, it’s not like there’s anyone to visit my grave. And graves themselves are a real estate issue in our world, with implications and ethics all their own. It might be nice to have myself buried biodegradably, and make such questions moot. But I may become ashes myself, eventually invisible and un-study-able. Perhaps I can convince myself there is inscrutable power in being thus ineffable, heh.
What will become of that little dragon box with my father in it.
What will become of me.
When it comes down to it, I’m not sure I care very much at all. Even vain as I am, it’s not like I’ll be here to enjoy any fate – or revile it – my earthly remains may come to. The idea of occupying a little clay box, unregarded, at one of my nieces’ homes, seventy years hence, doesn’t appeal to nor revulse me – it just seems irrelevant. (What THEY need of me, they have always had, and that has nothing to do with Things and Stuff.) I don’t even think about what my books will mean to anyone, once my body and my estate dissipate and fade away. Immortality means nothing to me – if it did, I would have had children, I imagine. (And yet … here I am, blogging my blithering brains away …) The stuff of my death, as much as the stuff of my life, may go where it will and I’m not going to fret now nor in the hereafter about that. If there is a hereafter, I’ll hope to see those who may dispose of that stuff, when they are at the point of their own disposal. I am flotsam, and this doesn’t bother me – it’s as much an irrelevancy as Things and Stuff are supposed to be, according to certain philosophies. I contain multitudes, but nothing fools me into ascribing immortality to that – and no amount of collecting, holding on to, and curating the artifacts of my life makes me honestly believe that what I imbue with meaning contains that meaning in its own right. I’m content with my earthbound avarice – and will be just as content, when relieved of the condition, to know it will not survive me.
Monday, January 27, 2014
Dorking for Richard
I can't spend several days in early February geeking out on Richard III's archaeological redeemers (and this is a terrible thing). Who can do it for me?
Sunday, January 19, 2014
The Hip of A King?
As many who know me very well are aware, Parke Godwin is one of my favorite novelists, and his somewhat recent death was sad news for many of us. Godwin produced everything from absurdist science fiction to a very great deal of historical fiction, and for many years I wasn't even aware he was American, not British.
My recent lunch-read has been "Lord of Sunset" - the story of Harold, the last Saxon king of England, who lost the Battle of Hastings and his life in one fell swoop; and who held to Edith Swannesha ("Swan-neck" - a nickname actually not attested in contemporary sources, but arose generations later), his wife outside of canonical law, for all his life.
As I like to do, I read about characters from historicals, and often find myself bouncing from one article to another, and so I've also done a bit of reading here and there about other pre-Conquest kings, particularly of Edward the Confessor's line.
And so, this post about the possibility that one of the bones of Alfred the Great have been found naturally fascinates. Having grown up on Godwin, the Conquest still feels like a crime. It's hard not to speculate that Godwin - whose namesake, Harold's father, the formidable noble whom even the Confessor feared - looks at the ancient Godwin family as his own, because his stories turn and turn and turn upon the tragedies of the Conquest of England by the Normans. For him, in so many of his works, the injustice is still fresh as a bleeding bruise, and reading him when I was young even created in me some prejudice against the Normans.
Pre-Conquest Britain is a fascinating piece of history, prejudice or no. I'll certainly be watching to see if this comes across the Pond some time soon.
Click through for a better look at the find, and a couple more clips of the upcoming BBC special.
I get a tangential giggle out of the fact that the volume controls on these clips go to eleven.
My recent lunch-read has been "Lord of Sunset" - the story of Harold, the last Saxon king of England, who lost the Battle of Hastings and his life in one fell swoop; and who held to Edith Swannesha ("Swan-neck" - a nickname actually not attested in contemporary sources, but arose generations later), his wife outside of canonical law, for all his life.
As I like to do, I read about characters from historicals, and often find myself bouncing from one article to another, and so I've also done a bit of reading here and there about other pre-Conquest kings, particularly of Edward the Confessor's line.
And so, this post about the possibility that one of the bones of Alfred the Great have been found naturally fascinates. Having grown up on Godwin, the Conquest still feels like a crime. It's hard not to speculate that Godwin - whose namesake, Harold's father, the formidable noble whom even the Confessor feared - looks at the ancient Godwin family as his own, because his stories turn and turn and turn upon the tragedies of the Conquest of England by the Normans. For him, in so many of his works, the injustice is still fresh as a bleeding bruise, and reading him when I was young even created in me some prejudice against the Normans.
Pre-Conquest Britain is a fascinating piece of history, prejudice or no. I'll certainly be watching to see if this comes across the Pond some time soon.
Click through for a better look at the find, and a couple more clips of the upcoming BBC special.
I get a tangential giggle out of the fact that the volume controls on these clips go to eleven.
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