I’ve not been attentive to this blog lately but will make it much more of a priority when I get back from vacation.
My wife and I are cycle touring around Denmark. I’ve set up a tumblr to chronicle the trip. If you’re interested in following our adventures, check it out by clicking the link below.
We Must Go To See For Ourselves
I’ll be back on this space in a couple months.
Issue 4 ended on something of a cliff-hanger. Xander looked as though he’d need some serious help from his crush, Buffy. However, #5 picks up the story of everybody’s favorite Scooby-gang, in a dire state, both thematically as well as (and I’m sorry to say) creatively.
Issue 5 picks up a few days after the last installment. It’s a strange choice to have gap-time between issues, as #4 left Xander in such a tight fix. Then, suddenly, Giles is adamant that Buffy comes to his home. Since she lost her phone some issues ago, he sends Willow to wake Buffy up before sunrise. Some sequences of what happened to Xander and how he came to be at Giles’ house rush by in exposition. But it all feels perfunctory. The pacing, a strength of the first four issues, seems nonexistent, the voice of the characters seems to blend together, and the clever storytelling mechanic of character narrated issues was dropped for a much more straight forward approach.
Read my full review on Sequentialplanet.com
What is glamorous? What is glamour?
A glamour or glimmer.
In fantastical worlds, a glamour could obscure from what is truly there. What the reality a situation really is.
Glamorous.
Certain arts are glamorous. Others, I dare say, are not. A musician has moments of glamour. Performances are glamorous. The run time is set. The crowd is locked at least for the first song and it is up to the musician to keep them locked with that first song. Song lists have never seemed so important.
Visual artists sketch and doodle. Some of these may blossom into larger, more intricate works, but the beginnings are often just as beautiful. An image takes no time for an audience to take in, judge, like or dislike. There is a split second time commitment. A split second judgment.
Writing has no such luxury. There are time and care taken both by the writer as well as the reader. To judge a book one must dedicate at least some hours. This is typically a sufficiant time to pass judgment. For many, this is too long. Not when an image, a song, a movie, a Netflix, fulfills a much more satiable human urge for fulfillment. Then the urge is fulfilled and nothing is fixed or learned or better.
The film has the power to change people’s lives, as does visual art, and music. But the sad lack of audience participation lessons the depth at which these mediums touch the deeper workings of the human experience.
If there is no human experience, then what are we doing?
Living in our own world in our own heads. Believing we have the right of it. That we share anything? But in truth, there is nothing to share. Nothing to connect between the dots and claims of existence.
What can be said about art if not that it connects people for a multitude of reasons? Why are the lessons of Shakespeare as relevant now as they were when written? Why do Bob Dylan’s protest songs still touch a cord today? Speak to the issues humanity faces on racial inequality as, justice, just as MLK Jr. also did.
