film still from Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders If films—as many have pointed out before—are an approximate for dreams, then Band of Outsiders is a dream in which the figures…
Culture
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ArtCulture
On Crafting Stories without Commas: Today’s Artisanal Writers
by Guest Contributor October 26, 2020scarf by Amy Sarig King The question before us is bread. The fluff of the flour and the crystals of salt. The warm-water yeast and the well into which she…
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Byodin Temple, Kyoto, Japan 1. Like a giant bird with nimble wings outstretched to catch the wind, the vermilion temple seemed to hover just above the surface of the water.…
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CultureLiteratureReview
Alden Jones’s The Wanting Was a Wilderness—A Review
by Guest Contributor September 20, 2020Both literary criticism and memoir, Alden Jones’s The Wanting Was a Wilderness serves to deconstruct the craft through Cheryl Strayed’s memoir, Wild, and to construct her own narrative. It begins…
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ArtCultureTelevision
Tears, and More Tears: Toward a Theory of the Crime-Show Mom
by Guest Contributor September 3, 2020Character Mitch Larsen, “The Killing” Sunday evenings in high school, I attended youth services at a local evangelical church. One Sunday, I tagged along on a post-worship excursion to the…
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Cold Light (detail): site-specific installation, hand-cut wallpaper, video by Summer J. Hart. Image courtesy of the artist, used by permission. Confined to my Bermuda home thanks to a deadly microbe,…
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CultureLiteratureReview
“To feel that close, when you’re not really close”: Notes on reading during a pandemic, reading as friendship, and reading as survival in Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s Sketchtasy
by Guest Contributor July 20, 2020In the beginning of Hervé Guibert’s autofictional novel To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life, he describes the book he’s writing as a “companion […] someone with whom…
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ArtCulturePerformance
“As If It Were Part of Breathing”: An Interview with Theatre Artist Leigh Kennicott
by Guest Contributor July 17, 2020Film and television dominate the arts in Los Angeles, but L.A. has a thriving theatre culture that hasn’t received the attention the New York stage commands. Even during the pandemic,…
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ArtCultureMusic
Sullen Girl: Fiona Apple and the Prism of Female Fragility
by Guest Contributor July 14, 2020I. You fondle my trigger then you blame my gun It is difficult to discuss Fiona’s craft without also discussing the unrelenting interest in her trauma, her mental illness, her…
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Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome A few years ago I discovered the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD and the Royal Opera House’s Live Cinema Season programs, which revolutionized my enjoyment of opera.…
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ArtCulturePerformance
No Touring the Provinces in This Plague: An Interview with Julie Jensen
by Guest Contributor May 20, 2020How has the pandemic has changed theater, aside from the obvious fact that live audiences are currently forbidden? At this point it’s impossible for plays to rehearse. People cannot gather…
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“Hands,” Leonardo Rizzi, Creative Commons When I attended Mass Before, the priest told us a few things: 1) If we were taking Communion, we could not allow the officiants to…
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ArtCreative Nonfiction / EssayCulture
My Arthur Russell and the Stigma of Loneliness
by Guest Contributor May 1, 2020“AIDS is not over, sickness will never be over, care will always be needed. Moving towards justice means learning how to care from the past and present going forward.” –…
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still from the film Rosas Danst Rosas, directed by Stefaan Decostere These days everyone in my life seems to have an obsession: wormeries, reusable tissues, queer Tinder bios in rural…