Charcuterie of Written Words
Charcuterie of Written Words
A lunchtime selection of things I read this month that are not books. These things caught my attention and might catch yours too.
The Vogue UK profile on Rihanna
I found Rihanna’s halftime show to be somewhat lackluster - at least on the visual level. No costume changes, no crazy choreography, no literal jumping off of the roof. I get it, though - she’s pregnant. In fact, aside from thinking, “wow she really only releases absolute bangers,” every time she switched from one song to another (what felt like every 20 seconds), I spent the entire halftime show trying to figure out if she was pregnant or not. She is.
I had already determined that she was in fact pregnant by the time the Vogue article came out, but still, my main motivation in reading the lengthy profile was to find out what she has to say about her second pregnancy - so quick after baby number 1! The answer there was nothing because she didn’t know she was pregnant at the time of the interview - not that she would have told the interviewer if she did. My other motivation was to hopefully find out if she ever plans on releasing more music. On that front, I was satisfied - she will eventually release music again, hopefully this year.
However what’s really stuck with me is a realization that I had about halfway through my reading: it’s BIZARRE that my main motivation for reading a celebrity profile is to find out more information about a stranger’s baby who isn’t even born yet. Inducing this realization was, of course, not the author’s goal. She describes quite in earnest a scene from the photoshoot where unauthorized paparazzi are spotted in the distance and Rihanna and A$AP Rocky must spring to action to protect their son (the one who is born) from being photographed. They wanted to introduce their son to the world on their own terms.
Setting aside the complex irony involved in the fact that the paparazzi interrupted them while they were taking pictures of said son for the cover of VOGUE, there was something about the way the interviewer described this situation that made me scratch my chin and wonder, “how has this become normal?” I get it. We as a society now have a weird parasocial relationship with Celebrity (big C) in general. But why is anyone introducing their baby to the WORLD? Loving Rihanna for her music is one very sane and reasonable thing, but being genuinely invested in her pregnancies, babies, babies’ names, etc. is strange.
I’m not immune - I find it as fascinating to watch the lives of celebrities play out in real time as the next gal. But then, I often catch myself wondering…wait why do I care? Why are we making this type of interplay a normal part of our society, where a singer (albeit a very talented one) announcing a pregnancy can take up the news cycle for days? Where I end up spending my time deep diving on something totally inconsequential in the scope of my actual real life? It creates a sense of false intimacy that must, in some way, mess with my brain’s normal function when it comes to interpersonal relationships. I don’t know, I’m not an anthropologist or a scientist, but I get the sense that this trend of celebrity obsession - exacerbated as it is by social media, etc. - can’t be good for us.
“A Drinking Song” by W.B. Yeats
In the spirit of the Season of Love™, I’ve read a number of love poems this month. For those of you curious if the Season of Love™ is ending next week, I am pleased to inform you that it actually runs until the spring equinox (March 20th). Anyway, this poem really struck me because it’s like a coin - one thing with two sides. Is the sigh a sigh of contentment or a sigh of displeasure. Maybe even resignation? Contentment, methinks.
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
I planned to make this recipe on Valentine’s Day for my lover. What’s more romantic than a ragu?? Though he had the foresight to ask if it would take too long for a weeknight, I did not have the foresight to read the recipe in its entirety until I was walking home from work circa 6:20pm on the Tuesday that was St. Valentine’s Day. Which is when I learned that this ragu has to cook for 3-3.5 hours. I wish this particular piece of reading had caught my attention just a little bit earlier than it did.
Alas, we made something else on Tuesday night and made the ragu on Friday. A Valentine’s 2.0 if you will. It was one of the best things I’ve ever cooked. And aside from the whole 3-3.5 hours requirement, it was a breeze to make.
About 7 different obituaries for Jim Ford trying to figure out who the hell he was and why I didn’t know who the hell he was, which finally led me to this article about his life & music
My Spotify knows me really well, and last week it delivered to me, on the sliver platter that is my “Discover Weekly” playlist, masterpiece of a song by Jim Ford: “She Turns My Radio On.” UMMMM this song is so good. As are many of his other songs - the vast majority of which were released posthumously. “Whicha Way” is my other current favorite. Why didn’t I know Jim Ford existed?!?!?!
Here’s the story - Jim Ford was born in Kentucky, and shortly thereafter embarked on the life of a rambling man. He finally made his way to Hollywood and got himself in with the crowd there. If you think I’m being vague, it’s because I am - there’s really not that much out there about this guy! Anyway his first taste of fame was writing “Niki Hoeky” for Aretha Franklin in 1968. The following year, he cut his own record, “Harlan County.”
It didn’t do terribly well (despite being fantastic IMO), and Jim never cut a record again. However, he didn’t stop writing, and he didn’t stop recording. During his decades of severe cocaine addiction, and later near-total seclusion, he wrote songs for Sly and the Family Stone and Bobby Womack, among others, and he wrote the entirety of “Wings of Love” for The Temptations.
He beat his coke addiction in 2004, and in 2006, this Swedish guy named L-P Anderson tracked him down - and found him, along with a large collection of already recorded, unreleased songs in a trailer in Mendocino, CA. The two formed a friendship and then a deal with a German label called Bear Family Records to release those songs. One album, “The Sounds of Our Time,” was released while Ford was still alive, but the rest came out after his untimely death in 2007. This story is fascinating! And the music is GOOD!
At least 7 more articles (which mostly all repeated the same information) about Puffin Books’s decision to rewrite Roald Dahl
I started here, then went here, then here, then ended up here. That was all on the day the news came out. Since then, there are about 700 more articles to read if you’re so inclined - just google Puffin or Dahl.
UGHHHHH. What in the fresh fuck is going on. Puffin announced that they had made changes to much of Dahl’s catalogue in an effort to make the language more inclusive so that young readers for generations to come can enjoy his work. Okay, whatever. That doesn’t sounds so bad in THEORY. However, when you drill down into it, there are some major issues with this move.
First, the changes that Puffin made are IDIOTIC. There’s gender oriented changes (i.e. mothers and fathers becomes parents, ladies and gentlemen becomes folks), and there are descriptive changes - Augustus Gloop isn’t fat anymore and The Trunchbull no longer has a horsey face. On the racial side, tractors (inanimate object) can no longer be described as black, and characters must turn “pale” instead of turning “white.”
Puffin has defended their changes by saying that it’s common for publishers to “review and update language” as the meaning of words changes over time. I guess…except Dahl wasn’t writing in the 1500’s. The last book published during his lifetime came out in 1990. We are very much still speaking the language that he wrote in, so Puffin’s defense rings false. Besides, they didn’t just “update language,” they also made full blown cuts where they felt it necessary. That, ladies & gentlemen, is censorship!
Since I read this news I’ve been trying to figure out what the counterargument here would be - the one for why it’s okay that Puffin did this. The best I can come up with is that it’s not a big deal because they’re just children’s books, and the changes are mostly kind of silly anyway. Or maybe it’s okay because it’s not like you won’t be able to get a hold of old Dahl books if you want them. Both of these arguments blissfully ignore the simple fact that if you give a mouse a cookie…sorry, I mean if you give a publisher the power to fundamentally change the words of an author (yes even a children’s author), who is not here to approve or deny said changes, you just might have a really hard time stopping them when they go after someone else’s words. After all they did it to Roald Dahl back in 2023, and after a couple weeks of fuss, everyone forgot all about it and adjusted to their new normal, slightly censored life.
And yes, I am aware that Roald Dahl was a self-proclaimed anti-semite - the fourth “here” linked up above addresses this unfortunate fact at length. We can talk about separating the art from the artist some other time.
Costar Astrology’s dos and don’ts for sun in Pisces
Happy Pisces Season! See u next month - xx