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Sep. 16th, 2019 06:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Started watching Ken Burn's, documentation extraordinaire, latest documentary Country Music last night on PBS. It's surprisingly good, even if you aren't into Country Music -- really shows how both blacks and whites had a role in its development, and how racial politics and slavery also played a role and not necessarily a positive one.
In some respects, it's an important and powerful examination of the racial and class divisions along with the politics intertwined within in US historically and how they came about and are reflected in music.
Peter Coyote is narrating it and he's excellent. It's VERY good and relaxing background television. Also a good reminder of where we have come from, and what has passed before isn't as great as our memories like to make it out to be.
2. Making my way through Wyonna Earp S3 -- and the character exploration of Wyonna and her friends is rather good, more in depth than expected. Also the horror elements are a little more innovative.
Including their off-beat take on vampires, which are depicted as sort of seductive prostitutes with fancy clothes and a pinkish purplish fog.
3. Making headway on the Book that I'm writing, finally got over a hump and got into the second bit. The big secret has been revealed, now we have the repercussions. Wrote about forty pages in the last five days, so not bad. I'm on page 670 at the moment. Yes, I know it needs editing. But I need to just get to the end of the story first.
I can't really discuss the plot until I finish it. And even then, I hate to give synopses or describe what books that I'm writing are about -- I'd rather the reader figure it out on their own -- interact with it. And I often don't want to know what they take away from it.
I read a tweet by Cat Sebastian -- who said that she writes scenes out sequence, and then pasts them into the story at a later point. Because often she'll come up with it in her head out of sequence. Which, I admit I do as well. My mind will skip around the story. But when I write -- I have to write it in order or I get lost. Scrivener does help -- but I can't write in Scrivener at work -- and it's hard to export content back and forth. Also Scrivener doesn't travel well -- I can't use it on computers which it's not installed on. So it's limiting. Unless I travel around with my laptop and that doesn't work for me. I did try the long-hand approach, which worked for a bit.
But often, it's better if I don't use the scene exactly as it played out in my head. It's better if I work it out or act it out in my head multiple ways before it lands on the page.
4. I want to see the Music Man with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, but alas, I'm not sure I'm willing to pay the high ticket costs. Which seems to be true of just about everything on Broadway at the moment, including the Peter Dinklage starring role in Cyrano De Bergec that's permiering at the New Public Theater.
In some respects, it's an important and powerful examination of the racial and class divisions along with the politics intertwined within in US historically and how they came about and are reflected in music.
Peter Coyote is narrating it and he's excellent. It's VERY good and relaxing background television. Also a good reminder of where we have come from, and what has passed before isn't as great as our memories like to make it out to be.
2. Making my way through Wyonna Earp S3 -- and the character exploration of Wyonna and her friends is rather good, more in depth than expected. Also the horror elements are a little more innovative.
Including their off-beat take on vampires, which are depicted as sort of seductive prostitutes with fancy clothes and a pinkish purplish fog.
3. Making headway on the Book that I'm writing, finally got over a hump and got into the second bit. The big secret has been revealed, now we have the repercussions. Wrote about forty pages in the last five days, so not bad. I'm on page 670 at the moment. Yes, I know it needs editing. But I need to just get to the end of the story first.
I can't really discuss the plot until I finish it. And even then, I hate to give synopses or describe what books that I'm writing are about -- I'd rather the reader figure it out on their own -- interact with it. And I often don't want to know what they take away from it.
I read a tweet by Cat Sebastian -- who said that she writes scenes out sequence, and then pasts them into the story at a later point. Because often she'll come up with it in her head out of sequence. Which, I admit I do as well. My mind will skip around the story. But when I write -- I have to write it in order or I get lost. Scrivener does help -- but I can't write in Scrivener at work -- and it's hard to export content back and forth. Also Scrivener doesn't travel well -- I can't use it on computers which it's not installed on. So it's limiting. Unless I travel around with my laptop and that doesn't work for me. I did try the long-hand approach, which worked for a bit.
But often, it's better if I don't use the scene exactly as it played out in my head. It's better if I work it out or act it out in my head multiple ways before it lands on the page.
4. I want to see the Music Man with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, but alas, I'm not sure I'm willing to pay the high ticket costs. Which seems to be true of just about everything on Broadway at the moment, including the Peter Dinklage starring role in Cyrano De Bergec that's permiering at the New Public Theater.
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Date: 2019-09-17 01:34 am (UTC)I can't write out of sequence either. I have to write things the way they will fall in the book. But then I have to go back and add to the book I have never had to cut. I've always had to add. I'm weird.
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Date: 2019-09-17 01:41 am (UTC)And yep, the problem with Broadway though -- is in some theaters, it's not worth it unless you get good seats. (I saw Cabret, Mac The Knife, and Wicked in cheaper seats -- and lost a good portion of it as a result.) Although other theaters, it doesn't matter.
The other problem with Broadway Theaters is they are not designed for large people. If you are over 5'8 and have long legs -- those seats are like being wedged behind a child's desk in Kindergarten for three hours. It's made me rather picky about shows as a result. I nixed Angels in America and Harry Potter for that reason alone. There's no way I can do two consecutive nights, with three and 1/2 to four hours each night. I'd hurt for days.
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Date: 2019-09-17 01:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-17 01:43 am (UTC)His partner has a documentary out now on the New York Prisoners trying to get an education in the prison system -- one of my co-workers met Burns in person while attending a special screening of the New York Prisoner documentary, which I think is going to Netflix, not positive.
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Date: 2019-09-17 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-17 04:06 pm (UTC)Not according to the documentary -- country actually started out as "hill-billy" music, which had more a connotation of classicism to it than race. The racial issues popped up shortly after or around the same time with "mistral or minstrel players" who where white men who performed songs in black face -- celebrating and romanticizing life on the Southern Plantations. (Examples. Camptown Races, and other similar tunes.) They were performed with an eye on nostalgia. There were also black performers whose music was "borrowed" by white musicians and turned into copyrighted songs. It was hard for a black performer to get ahead in the country music industry -- even though their music was often "borrowed" by white performers. So, black music found its way into and helped create country music, but was seldom credited or acknowledged.