I've always loved stories, ever since I was a little girl. I get sucked up in them. Utterly, utterly lost. I used to watch TV that was made for adults when I was very far from being one. I think the first "big people" show I watched was Showtime's The Tudors when it first came out, back in 2007, I think. I was about 8 or 9 when it was showing in Romania, and I freaking loved it. I don't think I've ever cried more than I did when they executed Thomas More. Ever. And I cry a lot at the TV. It sparked a love for history that stays to this day. I've always had a bone to pick with TV that's "kid-friendly".
Any book is a children's book if the kid can read.
I'm not sure who it was that said it, though I think it was George Carlin. Good old George. Was probably way too young to be watching him when I started, as well. Nah, just looked it up, it was Mitch. Good old Mitch. Anyway, I've always applied the same logic to both books and television. Any story can be a kids' story if you're a kid who likes stories. And I fucking devoured them.
Never read books "for my age". To this day, I get nauseous looking at them in the store. The infantilization, the talking-down to children seems unbearable to me. Sure, wouldn't you be better off assessing the child's ability to understand and follow complex (or less complex) issues?
I spent much of my 14th and 15th years in a state of infatuation with Sons of Anarchy. I wanted it to be my first tattoo. For some unthinkable reason, @ladyrebecca thought a teenager tattooing the word "murder" in a fairly conservative country wasn't a good idea. I listen to that song sometimes, I still want to tattoo something off it. Preferably all of it, but I would have to bulk up to make room for the lyrics. There's such a fantastic complexity to the lyrics, composed by the show's creator, betrays such intelligence. It's a very rare kind of song.
To be fair, the first tattoo I got, aged 16, did end up being quite closely related to this. This guy. This love. This era of my life. That's what I think you miss, keeping children inside the set boundaries of what's appropriate for their age, what stories they're supposed to be consuming. You rob them of the chance to explore (obviously, with some care on your part, some careful, unseen boundaries) and fall in love. And how are you ever gonna grow up to tell or make good stories, if you're not allowed to consume them freely?
When I was that age, I'd hear people tell me their kids didn't like to read, and I always thought well maybe they just never found the right book (and maybe, implicitly, you never gave them enough freedom in that department). I'd hear that from parents who, not big readers themselves, always whistled the familiar tune, encouraging (or forcing) their kids to read the school reading list (which is quite shit here). And then wonder why the kids don't like to read. I still think all that.
This show got me falling in love with Shakespeare back when I thought he was a pompous ass that they only forced you to read in school. To this day, it seems to me it's one of the most creative ways to tell Shakespeare to an audience and make them understand. 'Cause that's the hard thing (or it seems like it is, at least). You look at Shakespeare and think what the fuck did he mean. And there's some (few) actors who manage to convey that. Who maybe you don't really follow the dialogue, but by the time you get up from your seat, you know what happened. You feel it. If you still think Hamlet's some pompous asshole bitching about a skull, no one's ever done it right for you. What a shame.
So that's why we have adaptations. To tell old stories in ways that they might be understood now. And there's no better retelling of Hamlet than this show.
It's very hard to pick three songs from this show, as it's more or less seven seasons of fantastic music. But since I already put this one in the title.
Oh like a baby, stillborn
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me
I've always thought, as fantastic as Cohen was, that this line needed a woman's voice, and Katey Sagal delivers it perfectly. All the weight and grief of losing a life you've hoped for. There's something to recognizing in yourself the harbinger of death, yet continuing to hope.
I have tried, in my way, to be free.
Guess I'm on a more of a female-oriented bend here. After all, there's plenty of fantastic male songs in this show, as well. But this one's been a lot on my mind and in my bones. It's something that's been on my mind a lot, the storytelling value in Biblical characters and concepts. I suppose something ought to be coming from Peterson's excessive nauseating focus on religion, huh?
I like coming back here when I feel I need to, and I wonder sometimes if it's just nostalgia for that time. Maybe, in a way. I liked knowing you could fall in love with a story like that, that there were other universes out there and you had the option of inhabiting them. Isn't that the biggest, coolest richness in the world?
Thing is, I still do fall in love with stories and storytellers constantly. But maybe I'm not sure I could do that, had it not been for this fantastic story that someone decided to tell (or re-tell) and someone else let me hear it.
It's interesting, sometimes, walking down to the roots of the stories in your head. So that's what I did today for @ablaze's #threetunetuesday challenge.
😁
heey look who changed their picture. Nice! :)
i am not fan of changing profile pictures as i mostly recognize accounts by color patterns :) but the last one was probably from 2019 or something like that. I was testing a cheap light and i liked the Romanian yellow :D
That's why I don't change it either! I mean, to be fair I did recently, but only because @albuslucimus did this really cool sketch of my previous avatar so it looks the same :D
We feel honored. :D