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ink_splotch1. I hate IKEA when I have no money.
2.
I'm kind of madly addicted to this clip, because that's me! Me with, you know, a twin sister and singing abilities, but still.
3.I've been reading In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason, which is...disturbing and excellent and exactly what I needed for my dissertation. And also has a million references to Bruce Springsteen and M*A*S*H, which makes me - not happy exactly, but it creates an area of empathy, which makes the protagonist, Sam, easier to relate to. It's an excellent book, and works well both as a period piece and as a greater story of human suffering and redemption. Which I believe shall be my theme for my dissertation: Redemption through the search for the self in Reagan-era literature. Except I need a snappier title. But it works, and it particularly works with A Home at the End of the World, a book I have a lot of issues with, but which works as a contrast, because In Country is a very explicit period piece with a broad, national gaze, whereas A Home at the End of the World is a period piece masquerading as an interior study of four people. And they both offer differing ideas of how to respond to a period which you don't feel like you fit into; both have a very strong sense of the sixties as a Utopia, but a false Utopia, or certainly one to which you can't return to. This also means I can reference a lot of music, read up on my 80s political science and history, as well as do some psychological analysis. Score.
3a. However, first I need to finish Middlemarch. 150 pages down, 700 to go.
4. I give you Glory Days, which apparently foregrounds [Bruce Springsteen's] elaborate homoerotic dances with Miami Steve Van Zandt, as Martha Nell Smith puts it.
4a. The essay that quotes comes from, Sexual Mobilities in Bruce Springsteen, is actually amazing. It combines a few of my favourite things: pop culture studies, Bruce Springsteen and queer/feminist theories. I actually squealed when she referenced Eva Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adrienne Rich. Time to go back to university, methinks.
4b. Also? This: the bond of "adhesive love" between Springsteen and Van Zandt became clear once one saw the two men together on stage. As Jim Cullen, author of Born in the USA: Springsteen and the American Tradition, noted, the two men "gazed" into one another's eyes as they sang and shared the microphone so closely their lips almost touched (Cullen 132). Even more telling, night after night on the Born in the USA tour, Springsteen dedicated another song to his absent blood brother, entitled "No Retreat, No Surrender." From here
Never stops being awesome. And also confirms my theory that No Surrender and Bobby Jean are a matched pair.
2.
I'm kind of madly addicted to this clip, because that's me! Me with, you know, a twin sister and singing abilities, but still.
3.I've been reading In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason, which is...disturbing and excellent and exactly what I needed for my dissertation. And also has a million references to Bruce Springsteen and M*A*S*H, which makes me - not happy exactly, but it creates an area of empathy, which makes the protagonist, Sam, easier to relate to. It's an excellent book, and works well both as a period piece and as a greater story of human suffering and redemption. Which I believe shall be my theme for my dissertation: Redemption through the search for the self in Reagan-era literature. Except I need a snappier title. But it works, and it particularly works with A Home at the End of the World, a book I have a lot of issues with, but which works as a contrast, because In Country is a very explicit period piece with a broad, national gaze, whereas A Home at the End of the World is a period piece masquerading as an interior study of four people. And they both offer differing ideas of how to respond to a period which you don't feel like you fit into; both have a very strong sense of the sixties as a Utopia, but a false Utopia, or certainly one to which you can't return to. This also means I can reference a lot of music, read up on my 80s political science and history, as well as do some psychological analysis. Score.
3a. However, first I need to finish Middlemarch. 150 pages down, 700 to go.
4. I give you Glory Days, which apparently foregrounds [Bruce Springsteen's] elaborate homoerotic dances with Miami Steve Van Zandt, as Martha Nell Smith puts it.
4a. The essay that quotes comes from, Sexual Mobilities in Bruce Springsteen, is actually amazing. It combines a few of my favourite things: pop culture studies, Bruce Springsteen and queer/feminist theories. I actually squealed when she referenced Eva Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adrienne Rich. Time to go back to university, methinks.
4b. Also? This: the bond of "adhesive love" between Springsteen and Van Zandt became clear once one saw the two men together on stage. As Jim Cullen, author of Born in the USA: Springsteen and the American Tradition, noted, the two men "gazed" into one another's eyes as they sang and shared the microphone so closely their lips almost touched (Cullen 132). Even more telling, night after night on the Born in the USA tour, Springsteen dedicated another song to his absent blood brother, entitled "No Retreat, No Surrender." From here
Never stops being awesome. And also confirms my theory that No Surrender and Bobby Jean are a matched pair.
