This Is Beautiful: Getting Cast

 Last weekend were auditions for this year's installment of Shakespeare in the Arboretum where I live. I did it last year and had such a fun time that I definitely wanted to audition again! I was much more anxious this time around though, now that I knew people I didn't want to not get cast and have to watch my friends perform without me. Which led to me being convinced that I didn't get cast after the call back where they said that they wouldn't be able to cast everyone, and only had me read for one part. I did get cast though! Very exciting. And it isn't even the role with the least amount of lines! Moving up in the world haha. There's something really satisfying about getting cast, probably because it's such a shot in the dark. It's nice to know that other people think you'd be good in this role and that they want to do this project with you.

“Piranesi” by Susanna Clarke

As a huge fan of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell as well as The Ladies of Grace Adieu I was so pumped when I saw that Clarke had a new book out. (Posts on the previous books here and here.) It took me a while to get to it because my life sucks (lol) but I finally read it! And it is very good, definitely worth the wait while she was writing it.

The story follows an individual who lives in a huge house with many interconnected rooms. Each room also has a unique set of statues. And there’s tides that sometimes rise into the lower rooms, so there’s a body of water nearby. This person regularly meets with the Other, the only other living human nearby, to talk about the Other’s quest to unlock some great Knowledge that is inside the house. However the Other warns that another person might come and try to make the protagonist mad. Around this same time, the protagonist realizes that they have been forgetting things, there are journal entries from years ago that they don’t remember writing and things like that. When this person comes though, they manage to leave a message to the protagonist that just reads “are you Matthew Rose Sorenson?” That triggers the protagonist to find the torn up journal entry that details how the Other tricked the protagonist and trapped them in this other world that the house is in. It ends with a great flood that kills the Other and the protagonist returning to our world with the other person (who is a police officer investigating Matthew’s disappearance).

It's a relatively simple plot, but there are a lot of details there that I glossed over. One thing is the title of the book, Piranesi is the name that the Other gives to the protagonist, even though that isn’t his name. It’s never totally explained in the book, but if you look up “Piranesi” you find an Italian scholar who would draw pictures of imaginary prisons. It is an appropriate thing to call someone that you’ve trapped in another dimension that consists of a labyrinth then.

What I also really liked about the book is how it handles identity and memory. The protagonist goes through 3 different identities over the course of their lifetime. They start as Matthew Rose Sorenson, a relentless journalist and writer. Once they are trapped in the House though, their memories start to fade and they become Piranesi, the Child of the House. But when Piranesi reflects on being Matthew, they don’t really regret the change or want to revert back to it. Of course they’re mad about it because they didn’t get a say in the change, but they value their life as Piranesi. As a reader, I guess I’m much more similar to Matthew so when reading about that I wanted Piranesi to become Matthew again. But it strikes me as much more realistic that Piranesi also likes their current self and doesn’t want to throw that away instantly. The way Piranesi describes it is that Matthew fell asleep and is inside them. And Piranesi now takes care of them both. The final change is when Piranesi returns to their original world and inhabits a sort of middle ground between the two. Not totally Matthew since they don’t have all of their original memories, but not totally Piranesi as they have to deal with the modern world.

I would like to hear from someone who knows more about mental health and things like that for their take on the book. It strikes me as a very kind book to people who might be seen as different, and whose grip on reality might not be seen as very stable. Piranesi is seen as very innocent and child-like (you have to have that child-like wonder to get to the House after all) but never is infantilized. Others who went to the House also aren’t looked down on either. Even when Piranesi returns to England he says that his family has him seeing a psychotherapist, but they’re ok without medicating him which implies that he had some say in his treatment.

I also have to wonder how much the pandemic played a role in this book. It was published during COVID, and so much of it is about isolation and exploration of an empty space that you’re trapped in. Did Clarke come up with this during quarantine? Or did it just line up serendipitously?

Loved this book, it is so well written it really sucks you into Piranesi’s home. I’ll read anything Clarke writes, but I hope the next one doesn’t have as long of a wait as this one.

This Is Beautiful: Ghosts

 This isn't really about ghosts, it's more an extension of last week's post about performing. There's about 3 different shows right now going up about ghosts: the one I was in, another one I did costumes for, and one more from the same theater group (surprisingly enough). And all of the ghosts are played by trans people. As strange as it is, I found this really affirming. Both because I'm playing the most genderless ghost which I love, and because it somehow came with a whole community of others. It's really strange, and I doubt that the other 2 feel this as much, but I like having these others I can point to and be like "oh yeah I did that too." It makes me feel like I'm part of this group! And we love feeling in community.

Station Eleven the tv show

Recently I finished both Station Eleven the book and the tv show. You can find the post about the book here. In general, I didn’t like the show as much, but it did have its moments and there were some interesting additions to the story that I definitely want to discuss.

I’ll start by summarizing the show, it follows more or less the same plot as the book, but again there are some changes. The beginning is the same with Arthur dying on stage, but Jeevan ends up taking Kirsten home with him and she stays with him for roughly the first 100 days of the collapse. I liked this choice a lot, Jeevan’s story line is less integrated than the others and this pulls him in more. Jeevan then gets a call from his sister (not his friend) who is a doctor in a hospital. She tells Jeevan to barricade himself in Frank’s apartment. This is so much more minor but I’m not a fan of it, her telling Jeevan exactly what to do just doesn’t fit with the vibe of how this pandemic suddenly sprung up and no one knows what to do. Oh and the whole thing is a lot more dramatic, there’s a plane that crashes into a ferris wheel and stuff like that. Episode 2 introduces the Traveling Symphony on their way to St. Deborah-by-the-Water. This is where things change quite a bit. Kirsten is close to Alex, who was born after the collapse and she’s portrayed in a really innocent and clueless way. Which I don’t love. Anyways during the episode the Symphony performs “Hamlet” and a work that the conductor wrote. This is also when Charlie and Jeremy decide to have a baby and stay at St. Debs. First of all, the baby is very conveniently born during the performance, which is a little too convenient for me. The decision to have them perform “Hamlet” I think is interesting, it’s definitely the most famous Shakespeare work. It also comes back later. There is a gorgeous sequence that intersperses Kirsten playing Hamlet and talking about his father being dead with a young Kirsten realizing that her parents are dead. It’s a lovely sequence, but I can’t help but think that having the fate of Kirsten’s parents be uncertain is much more interesting. Every story has orphans and dead parents, dealing with uncertainty is much more interesting. It ends with Kirsten confronting a strange man the Symphony met earlier and stabbing him when he threatens to make members of the Symphony disappear.

That’s the second episode, the show alternates episodes following the main cast and flashback episodes focusing on a single character. Episode 3 then is Miranda’s episode. She’s a Black woman and I love that choice so much! In general I liked the flashbacks much more than the other episodes. Her story sticks to the book for the most part, but one key difference is that Arthur is so much more of a dick to Miranda. He initially meets her by harassing her at a diner. She shows him the finished Station Eleven and he says that this book ruined his life. In the book he isn’t a great guy, but by the end of his life he is trying at least. But then in Miranda’s final days she’s in Malaysia and is offered a chance to escape on some boat that her boss conveniently (too conveniently) knows. She turns it down because she finds out that Arthur died and is heartbroken. Are you kidding me? This guy was a dick so you just want to die now? Also Jeevan isn’t shown as a journalist either outside their house or interviewing Arthur. Actually, the show doesn’t show anything of Jeevan’s day-to-day life before the pandemic. In Episode 4 we are back to the Traveling Symphony who have decided to head to where their old director is. While there, they find out that the Prophet beat them there and stole the children. He later on sends the kids back, but with mines strapped to them. The mines blow up the previous director.

Episode 5 goes to Clark at the Severn City airport with Elizabeth and Tyler. This episode is also very different. In general it’s less depressing than the one in the book, the people band together almost immediately under Clark, Elizabeth, and Miles who worked at the airport. There isn’t the teen who dropped off her anti-depressants and ran off into the woods to die. The ending is bizarre though, Clark sets up the Museum of Civilization as “something to aspire to” which is really odd to me since museums don’t do that, they’re just about remembering. Plus there’s a survivor of the infected plane that comes out and finds Tyler. Tyler presents him to the airport and the survivor is shot and Tyler and Elizabeth are put into quarantine. Tyler then gets out and burns the rest of the plane, faking his death. And it’s revealed then that he’s the Prophet. Episode 6 has Kirsten running after the Prophet while the rest of the Symphony heads to the Museum of Civilization. She finds him with a bunch of kids. How the hell Tyler is keeping all of these kids alive is beyond me. They head to the Museum as well (strangely enough they’re cooperating now) and get attacked on the way, Kirsten gets hit with poison.

Episode 7 is a flashback episode to Frank’s apartment. It’s cute seeing Kirsten with Frank and Jeevan. I have two main quibbles here, the first is that Frank is given a heroin problem that appears once and then is dropped. And then later when they’re about to leave, instead of Frank committing suicide a man enters the apartment and stabs Frank. The only purpose of this man is so that Frank doesn’t commit suicide, it’s never talked about how Jeevan had to murder the guy or that they left the apartment unlocked or something. It’s straight up “well we didn’t want to show a suicide” and that’s cowardly. Anyways then episode 8 is back with Kirsten in the woods. They eventually get to the Museum and have to go through a quarantine as well to make sure they aren’t sick. Tyler is eventually found out, and he blows up the museum.

Final section here, penultimate episode is around Jeevan and Kirsten living in the woods together in a cabin. Jeevan is playing with a radio and eventually gets kidnapped and thought to be a doctor. So he’s forced to help a bunch of women give birth in a makeshift hospital. First of all, it’s ridiculous that so many women are due at the same time, and I really don’t like that it’s not his choice to go into medicine. In the book he knows after trying to save Arthur that this is what he wants. Jeevan in the show just kinda drifts into it. Final episode now, we are at the Museum and Jeevan is called in to help with the conductor who is dying (not specified what of, she suddenly collapses). The Symphony puts on a performance of “Hamlet” with Elizabeth as Gertrude, Clark as Claudius, and Tyler as Hamlet. Which is a cool portrayal of how art can be ancient and comment on modern interpersonal dynamics, and be super powerful. But we only see the one scene with the whole family, and I want the rest of it, not just the part that is a direct application to what’s happening since that doesn’t really expand on it. It’s also revealed that Miranda called the plane that was infected at the airport and convinced the pilot to quarantine the passengers, saving Clark in the airport. This is cool because it elaborates on her backstory in the process and has us reckon more closely with the humanity of those passengers. But she has no guarantee that there wasn’t another infected plane, she’s doing this on a whim. Which is weak, I am willing to overlook it in this instance. Finally after the performance of “Hamlet,” Jeevan and Kirsten reunite. Alex disappears into the woods, I’m not sure why she doesn’t stay at the Museum like she wanted. And Elizabeth disappears with Tyler and a bunch of kids into the woods. Which I’m still confused how he takes care of all of them or how he explained that to Elizabeth.

This post is already ridiculously long but I want to comment on some themes. First is that there is so much more technology and things saved in the show. There are plenty of places with electricity or batteries or other things that were just so rare in the books. It feels like a representation of how it’s easier to show the end of the world but not the end of technology that we take for granted. And that just feels lazy to me tbh, find a different way to light the scene or whatever. Along with this is that the phones work after the collapse for much longer than in the book, so people are able to call each other and confirm that people are sick/dead or alive. There is much less uncertainty as a result over characters’ fates. Kirsten’s parents are the most obvious, but it’s also confirmed that Clark’s boyfriend is sick among others. I mentioned this earlier, but I think it’s much more interesting to see people deal with uncertainty when going through loss. Grief is difficult to portray effectively though, so I guess I understand why they would shy away from that. It’s still disappointing though.

What I really like about the book is that they talk about the benefits of many different forms of art and human culture when looking at how they get preserved and remain after the pandemic. There are the obvious ones like theater and music with the Traveling Symphony, but there’s also the Museum of Civilization and a newspaper that a librarian starts up. And none of them are held above any of the others! They all show something about art and culture. That isn’t really the case with the tv show. In the show, the Traveling Symphony still performs plays and symphonies, but the newspaper isn’t mentioned and the museum gets destroyed. This implies that somehow the museum is a “lesser” form of art, that it isn’t as worthy of preservation as the others. Which I don’t agree with, museums show art as well and are certainly worthy of sticking around. I think the show is making the point that museums only look backward, not forward. But that isn’t necessarily the case either, artists go to museums all the time to be inspired. I don’t like it, I love museums and I think they’re a great source of culture.

While on the subject of art, what is cool about the tv show is there’s a number of performances that we watch. There’s multiple performances from the Traveling Symphony of “Hamlet,” but Kirsten does an adaptation of “Station Eleven” as a child and as an adult. Every time, the characters that are being portrayed comment on and reflect on the characters acting them out. There’s the family dynamics in “Hamlet” and the grief that Hamlet feels at his father’s death, this reflects Tyler refusing to speak to his mother and his grief for his father as well as Kirsten’s grief for her parents. The “Station Eleven” scene is similar as it portrays Dr. Eleven carrying on after the death of his mentor, which then reflects on Jeevan carrying on after Frank’s death or Tyler carrying on after the death of his father. I think more could have been done here, it really just reflects what the characters are feeling and doesn’t day much more, but it is a really cool portrayal of how powerful art can be. And this is missing in the book, we don’t see many performances and the ones we do see are shorter, just snippets of scenes.

Taking it back to the plot now, I think it’s interesting that the writers completely changed the Prophet’s message and goals. In the book, the Prophet says that since we survived the pandemic, we are morally superior to those that died. And he starts a cult where he amasses wives. In the show, Tyler treats “Station Eleven” as a prophecy and uses that to destroy everything, but especially anything relating to the world before the pandemic. And to do this he collects children born after the collapse. The book is more straightforward, you can see how he got this idea from his mother, and it also makes more sense. How would Tyler take care of all these children? But the tv show version is fascinating when you compare it to other characters. Clark is absorbed in the past, as represented by the museum (remember the show is quite negative about the museum) while the Traveling Symphony is shown as looking to the future and preserving the best of the past with new symphonies and plays. (This is different from the book where the Symphony doesn’t do new works.) The comparison is a little sloppy at times (museums are great, Shakespeare is still really old and could be seen as looking at the past, etc.) but it is trying to say much more and I give it points for that.

Finally, it feels to me like a lot of the changes made to the plot of the show tries to set up Kirsten as the factor bringing all of these people together instead of Arthur. In the book, Arthur is clearly the center. Kirsten doesn’t remember much of her life before the collapse (and she’s grateful for that) and didn’t meet people like Clark and Elizabeth. Jeevan also has a much stronger connection to Arthur in the book, while they never meet in the show. But in the show Kirsten remembers everything and not only knows everyone but she uses these connections to her advantage such as when persuading Clark to let them perform. It’s not a change with a ton of impact, but similar to the dead parents point, I just think it’s more interesting when it’s the memory of a person who died connecting all of these people instead of the protagonist.

This post got away from me and ended up being incredibly long, but as I think is clear, I did really enjoy watching and thinking about this show. And the book. By far the book is one of the best things I’ve read in a while, the show not so much. But it is still thought provoking and really well done. There are certainly aspects that I like more than the book, but overall if I had to pick one I would still go for the book!

This Is Beautiful: Performing

 I have talked about this so many times, but this past weekend I had the big show for the glowsticking group that I'm in (if you don't know what that is, we put glowsticks on strings and swing them around) and it was such a fun time! I am also physically drained, but I am so pleased with how it went. I forget every time the rush that I get from performing and from also having my friends come cheer for me. This was the first year I could hear a lot of the heckles and things like that, and it is such a great feeling to not only perform but know that people you care about came to support you. I love it so much, it's so sad that this group only has one big performance a year.

“When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain” by Nghi Vo

This is the sequel to The Empress of Salt and Fortune which I talked about here. My sister bought me a copy for Christmas which was nice of her. It’s also a novella, so about 120 pages, and it is a sequel but the only continuity is that the main character, Chih, stays the same. Other than that the book can be seen as a standalone.

The story follows Chih, a scribe, as they head up the mountain with a mammoth guide. When they get to a waystation though, the pair are set on by a trio of tigers. The tigers can change shape between the animal and a female human form, I don’t remember if that was in the other book but that’s how it works here. The tigers want to eat them, but Chih stalls for time by telling a story of an ancient tiger and how this tiger fell in love and married a human scholar. The tigers periodically interrupt and tell their version of the events, as opposed to the human version. By the end two more mammoth guides find and save them from the tigers.

Similar to the first book, a lot of this story has to do with storytelling itself and what version of events get remembered. The tiger and human version of events differ greatly, even though they can end up at the same place in the end. The human version also paints the tigers in a very different light, as savage creatures while the tiger version emphasizes their power and strength. It is also brought up that to the tigers, this is a romantic story, while to the human it is not obvious what the tiger marriage customs are until the end.

One exchange that I found really interesting is that there’s one section where one of the tigers actually prefers the human version since it involves more poetry. This is despite the fact that another tiger protests that the human version is not true, and therefore should be abandoned. Chih admits that the human version obviously has its flaws and was told several hundred years after the events, but there is still some beauty to this version of the events that can be preferable.

A third one did come out, I don’t have a copy of it yet. But this is a fun little series about stories and history, I want to get my hands on it!

This Is Beautiful: International Asexuality Conference

 This past weekend was the 2023 International Asexuality Conference as part of World Pride in Sydney! The prep was a bit of a ride, no one did anything before about 3 weeks ago, but it came together and was a nice time!

This year (related to no one doing things in advance) I ended up hosting and leading a ton of discussions. It was really great though to like make connections and meet people outside of my usual circles. I was also more or less in charge of a few panels, I was really proud of the Gender Diversity and Asexuality panel as well as the North American Aces panel. I thought those ended up nicely diverse, and as a result we had some good conversations!

I do need to learn my lesson to not do these big conference organizing roles in the middle of the academic semester. Thankfully last week was also my spring break but my goodness I could not have done that otherwise. But with that over with, should have a decent chunk of time until the next conference!

“Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel

This book has been on my list for ages, I first found it when a philosophy podcast I listen to brought it up as something that one of the hosts has been enjoying recently. Then then ended up doing a full episode talking about both the book and the HBO series it was adapted into. I haven’t seen the series yet, I’ll almost certainly write it up when I do, but first I want to cover the book itself.

The story takes place in North America around the Great Lakes region both before and after a fictional flu-like pandemic wipes out most of civilization. The story starts with the on stage death of Arthur, an actor playing King Lear in the Shakespeare play. The time line jumps around a lot to before and after the pandemic hits but it shows how all of the characters’ lives intermingle and where they all end up. The night of Arthur’s death one of the audience members, Jeevan, is a former paparazzi turned paramedic and he gets up on stage to perform CPR. On his way home that night, he gets a call from an old friend who is a doctor at a hospital and he tells Jeevan about the flu that’s come to the region and to get out. Jeevan proceeds to stock up on supplies and hole up with his wheelchair-bound brother, Frank. Also there the night of Arthur’s death is Kirsten, a child actor who has a non-speaking role in the show. Most of the narration after the collapse follows her as she performs with the Traveling Symphony, a group of actors and musicians who travel around performing symphonies and Shakespeare plays. Their whole philosophy is that “survival is not enough” (a line taken from Star Trek) and that you need preservation of art and culture too. The novel’s title comes from a pair of comic books that Kirsten has called “Station Eleven,” and it turns out that these books were authored by Arthur’s first wife Miranda.

The Traveling Symphony has a run-in at one of the towns they perform in with this guy called the Prophet who has formed a sort of doomsday cult around himself. They believe that since they were spared from the flu that they are better than the others that died and so on. The Prophet keeps several wives and believes in the divine purpose of his deeds so it’s pretty hard to argue with him. As the Symphony leave his next bride (a twelve year old girl) stows away in the supplies and they end up getting hunted down be the Prophet and his followers. They eventually end up at an airport, where a Museum of Civilization has been set up and is run by Clark, one of Arthur’s old friends. There they learn that the Prophet is Tyler, Arthur’s son. In the final conflict Tyler is shot by one of his own followers and it is further revealed that he has the only other copy of “Station Eleven.”

There is so much going on in this book, as you can tell from the summary. The timeline jumps back and forth and between characters as well. You hear from everyone, including Kirsten, Jeevan, Arthur, Miranda, Clark, and probably others that I forgot about. Somehow it doesn’t become confusing, which I think is partially due to excellent planning and how details come back and get mentioned multiple times. (How many ex-wives does Arthur have? Good thing they keep mentioning there’s three.) The author also keeps sliding in how long pre-pandemic the characters have so you can easily figure out the timeline before the collapse. All of which makes it relatively easy to follow along with.

Mandel also is not pulling any punches here. The book starts with a character dying and plenty more die along the way. There’s a global pandemic, many of the characters are doomed from the start or just disappear and we don’t know what becomes of them. Having now lived though the COVID-19 pandemic, she gets so many things right. I’m honestly amazed that this was written in 2015. The shock and not realizing what is happening until it’s too late is really spot on. All of the initial reactions of the characters to the disease hit so close to home I had to take a break at points.

There are sections that are so incredibly sad. But this really isn’t a sad or depressing book. If anything it ends on an optimistic note that human culture and human beings carry on and find a way through all of this tragedy. Shakespeare is still being performed, music is still made, people are preserving things of past lives in museums, and there’s so many people that band together to help each other. There’s one emotional passage where Frank is writing about immortality and how art can preserve people forever so they are never really forgotten after they die. And that’s what this book does both for its characters and for art as a whole.

This book was amazing, easily the best thing that I have read in a while. I’m going to for sure check out the tv series that was created based on it, and will probably come back with a comparison of the two, what one medium does better than another, things like that.

This Is Beautiful: Spring Break

 Spring break is finally here for my school and even though it's really more of a winter break because it's so early I'm still grateful for it. I have been in need of a break for a while to just rest and recharge.

I am running into this issue now where I feel guilty if I'm not doing work and things like that, but I'm hoping with this week off I can force myself to chill out and just rest. If I don't I'm going to have a rough semester. But such is grad school life, there are always things you can be doing, the key is to know when to do them. Here's hoping the week is restorative!