Let Us Not Disappoint Mr. Waters: Sartorial Decision-making

Full disclosure: I grew up with, and continue to have in my adult life, an emphasis on clothing as something important, something to be considered — though obviously, not to the point of vanity. But I worked for Gap, Incorporated for many years (and actually I’m still on the books there, but given that I have another full time job, I am not there frequently anymore), and besides that, my mother was a fashion illustrator and is still a gifted seamstress; my father had the singular experience of being explicitly taught how to dress by an older man when he worked for, I think, the International Herald Tribune.

Written by: Edgar, AnalysisMaggie BoylesMay 29, 2019aesthetics, Analysis, Clothing, John Waters, John ConstantineComment

Some Notes on Aesthetics

We have been taught, in a variety of ways that aesthetics are bullshit: in part, and not unreasonably, because what do Truth and Beauty (yes, with title caps) mean to a world that had, y’know, the whole twentieth century, and has so far made a fucking hash of the twenty-first?

New Music with Edgar

So, last year, I did something possibly very dumb, and joined a group dedicated to emo music on facebook. I say “possibly very dumb” because the group has metastasized wildly, with spin-off groups proliferating like spider plants. But joining this group did have an unintended side effect: for the first time in years, I felt compelled to keep up with new music releases. And it was fun! It’s still fun! It even lead to me making a list of my favorites from 2018 (though somehow in writing the list I super forgot to even mention Cursive’s Vitriola, which I loved very much, and, of course, the fact that I only heard about some great 2018 releases after the turn of the year).

Edgar's Book Round-Up, January-March 2019

I haven’t been reading as much this year, or at least not as many books. I think I’m still reading with the same frequency, but this year I decided to dial back my Goodreads challenge number, because I wanted to read some denser, odder stuff. I found that in trying to read many books (last year I hit 45, which I think is pretty good considering I periodically do other stuff), I was privileging briefer ones. That’s no bad thing — efficient style is nothing to be sneezed at, and frankly I think we should all be reading more poetry — but I had been eyeballing a few longer and more intense pieces for quite some time.

"This Ain't Catholic": Cassandra's Magic

In Episode 8 of Perdition’s Teeth, the characters veer from the highway and into the home of Cassandra, a mountain-dwelling fortune teller. In many ways, this episode was my baby (and, again, props to Moe A. Barria, who did a phenomenal job of bringing Cassandra to life), and not least of those was the way it finally foreground people actually doing magic, instead of finding only its remains, or worse, having it done to them.

Written by: Edgar, Analysis, Perdition's TeethMaggie BoylesFebruary 6, 2019Process, Writing, creativity, Gothic