To Blog or Not to Blog

I’ve opened a second blog at WordPress and at first was quite excited.  Now I’m at my …ah…wit’s end (since I’m The Wit Continuum I hate to say it) as to whether I should keep this new blog site or delete it.  I can’t find the time to keep it up and have changed its format so many times the site managers are probably laughing hysterically (if anyone monitors this stuff).  In any case I’m curious if anyone out there felt the need to “second blog” and then found themselves in a similar “I just don’t know” situation. 

What should I do?

Peace, from the wit continuum.

Pottermania Rocks On – We Are Wizards

Amongst all the hype of the Twilight movie release this weekend I came across an interesting flick for those who don’t want to wait in line for the vampire romance.  If you like documentaries and you like Harry Potter this may just get you an hour or two of entertainment.  The filmmaker Josh Koury has produced an enlightening look at the “extreme fans” of the Harry Potter world in the film “We Are Wizards”.  And they are cashing in on their fan-o-mania.

       The film features two “geeky guys and two adorable tykes who, performing in so-called wizard rock bands like Harry and the Potters, the Hungarian Horntails and (my favorite) Draco and the Malfoys (“My dad is rich and your dad is dead”), thrash and warble noisily and sometimes pretty comically about all thing Harry Potter.  (“You messed up in potions yesterday, but everyone still thinks you’re really great, except Snape,” the Malfoys taunt Harry elsewhere.  “Cause we see you for what you really are…And it’s O.K. It’s really great.  Because I hate you.  And so does Snape.”)”

Sounds like lyrics that Pink would write if witchy-ness would strike her.  Can’t wait to catch this strangely packed portrait of obsessive subculture created inadverdently by J.K. Rowling.  Fans are fascinating, especially obsessed ones.  We wonder, too, about the followers of these bands based on Potter. 

We Are Wizards open Friday in Manhattan.

Quotes are from Even After the Books, Pottermania Rocks On by Manohla Dargis. Check out trailer and full review here.

Plath Still Haunts Ted Hughes

This past Sunday I came across the article Love, Your Ted, a review in the New York Times by David Orr.  “When gossip grows old,” the Polish writer Stanislaw Lec said, “it becomes myth.” In the case of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, the myth made by gossip has long obscured the art made by a couple of poets.”

Orr talks about the new Letters of Ted Hughes as “illuminating aesthetic record” or, of course, the second way to view it as about the “swirling, decades-long hoo-ha brought about by his relationship with Sylvia Plath: their brief, difficult marriage; their separation due to Hughes’s affair with Assia Wevill; and Plath’s suicide shortly thereafter.  “It” ultimately involved a series of bitter clashes over Plath’s legacy, the occasional illicit removal of the surname “Hughes” from her tombstone (by aggrieved “Bell Jar” fans), a series of disputed biographies and “at least one lawsuit”…

It is unfortunate that the art of late Ted Hughes will continuously be haunted by his dead wife, but then in my “hell hath no fury over a woman scorned” way it seems justly so.  Hughes was no saint of a man.  Assia Wevill committed suicide in the same house that Sylvia Plath lived with Hughes, in the same kitchen, in the same gas-induced way Plath had used to end her life (sadly Assia took her and Hughes’s child with her) after finding out Hughes was also cheating on her.  The fragility of these women was paramount.  Ted knew what to look for and he sucked them dry.  It is only appropriate that we see their names along with his.

Le Chat Noir

Le Chat Noir is the 19th Century cabaret in the bohemian Montemartre district of Paris.  It was opened on November 18, 1881 at 84 Boulevard Rouchechourart by the artist Rodolphe Salis, and closed in 1897 much to the disappointment of Picasso when he visited in 1900.

In its hey-day, Le Chat Noir was a bustling nightclub – part artist salon, part rowdy music hall, partially due to an illegal piano.  The cabaret published its own journal Le Chat Noir.  It was here that Salon of Incoherent Arts, the “shadow plays” and the comic monologues got their start.

Above is the famous Theophile Steinlen poster, Tournee du Chat Noir (1896)

Source: Wikipedia

The Real Snow White

The poignant tale about a beautiful young woman whose life was cut mysteriously short may have been the inspiration for the folktale Snow White, written by The Brothers Grimm.  Scholars have uncovered parallels between the legendary Snow White and Margarete Von Waldeck (1533-1554).  Countess Margarete was the daughter of Philip IV, Count von Waldeck-Wildungen.  Like Snow White, Margarete had tempered relationship with her stepmother. 

Margarete grew up in the town of Bad Wildungen where small children worked in copper mines owned by her brother.  The children became known as dwarfs.  They were bent and crippled from malnourishment and the terrible working conditions of the mines.  Most died before reaching the age of 20.  Another parallel is that of the man in Bad Wildungen who was caught poisoning apples in order to get even with children who were stealing from his property.  This poison apple story made it into the fairy tale.

At the age of 16, Margarete was sent to live at court in Brussels.  There she attracted the attention of a young prince, Phillip II of Spain.  It is said that Margarete had intense beauty and that she had blond hair.  The tale of Snow White, of course, expounds on her black hair, but the earlier version of Grimms book (in 1808) states that Snow White’s hair was “yellow.”  The young Spanish nobleman and Margarete fell in love, much to the anger and fears of her stepmother who hated her and the King of Spain, Phillip’s father.  A plot was made to end the relationship.   It is believed the Spanish secret police were ordered to poison Margarete, making it look as if she had fallen ill, in order to put an end to the political inconvenience the marriage would have created.

Margarete died at the age of 21.  The handwriting of her will, written shortly before her death, show evidence of tremor, no doubt caused by the poisoning.  The perpetrator was never exposed, but it could not have been her “evil” stepmother, who was already dead at the time.

The tale of Snow White has always inspired me – the Disney version, which I do not like, is plumped with fun and happiness, but the real tale is sad and poignant, riddled with mystery, and I believe probably shouldn’t end with the happy ending that fairy tales demand. It is more a tragic myth, a girl who can’t escape the immence ambitions of a powerful and psychotic woman.  Elements of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy may apply here also. 

Artwork: by illustrator Angela Barrett for the beautifully designed book, Snow White, by Josephine Poole.

Sources: Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia and Hartforth.com/Snow White

Black Dress II

 

Madonna in Dior.  Iconic always.

Emerson’s Bit of Wisdom

“Do not go where the path may lead,

go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

                                     – Ralph Waldo Emerson

King Once Again

      

The reading of Stephen King’s Duma Key has done what the Continuum wanted it to do during the Halloween season:  Give us a good scare.  How the main character’s supernatural and powerfully chaotic art work cures his friend still astounds me–more by the fact that I believe that something similar to this is possible.  Spontaneous healing and the powers of intention are the goodies of the spiritual world…King’s world is more spooky, of course.

Favorite line:  “Be prepared to see it all. If you want to create-God help you if you do, God help you if you can-don’t you dare commit the immorality of stopping on the surface. Go deep and take your fair salvage. Do it no matter how much it hurts.”  As writers, we relate.

My Duma Key “fair salvage”:  Can’t forget that old psychotic lady in the wheelchair wearing Chuck Tailors and that vintage Mercedes that takes the characters on their final voyage to the creepy remains of a dilapidated mansion.  Unique death devices: silver harpoons, salt water, murderous paintings (which can heal too).  Red-hooded death spirited away in a china doll. Blood–”It was red!” (The red theme had me trying on a red coat at the mall-don’t ask me why?).  Persphone, the ship of the dead, anchored in the bay, waiting (all are welcome).  I was mystified by the upside-down flying birds (not too scary) and the 80 year old bones in the underground cistern.  The walking dead ghosts “wif teef” made me turn on lights in the kitchen before entering and that possessed doll that tells an old story, well, you know…(talking, moving dolls, next to clowns, are the scariest things on this earth.

In the end, we are drawn to a satisfying conclusion.  Losses are suffered but everything is tied up quite neatly.  No catches at the end (like in Pet Cemetery-wigged out at that one). 

What I can’t give back in my fair salvage is the shells.  The ocean tide sweeping in those shells under the big pink house the main character lives in on the key.  The shells clicking together as they roll in and out with the waves…whispering those haunting words…I can still hear them and probably always will.

That, my friends, is the power of words.  Really, really good ones.

Now, Finally…Hope For America

Congradulations to our friends and everyone out there who “Rocked the Vote” yesterday.  Be proud of taking part in an outstanding moment of history.  It wasn’t difficult, was it?

“Out of many we are one.”

-Barack Obama

Rock The Vote – 2008

            Have no doubt, The Wit Continuum has been out expressing the right to vote.  The polls have been busier than ever, as predicted, which we think is a good sign.  Continuing to purvey for more thoughts, ideas and images to blog in the future.  Without mounting the podium I have one more thought to express:  If you’ve not been out there to vote yet stop playing with the computer and go.  Remember, if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain, not that you would want to…. Peace