It was V. that brought me to Thrice, actually, and not the other way around. I distinctly remember having read V. already, and then, not that long after, being in a Wal-Mart in Bedford, PA and seeing Vheissu, their then-most recent album. I was stunned to see such an obvious reference to a novel I had first heard about from my father, who basically only remembered chapter 3, in which a character named Stencil does several “impressions” of not-himself, with each section of the chapter narrated by the person he’s pretending to be at the time. Also there’s like, robot secret agents or something, and everyone’s in Cairo in the late 19th century.

"Those Breakdown Days Are Done": Growing Up With the Bands We Grew Up With (The Nostalgia Trap, Part 3.)

That line hits me like a ton of bricks every time. I have cited it to therapists in outlining my goals. And it seems to be a theme of some of the music I’ve enjoyed the most recently, and about which I have complicated thoughts. (Content Warning: Discussion of Eating Disorders.)

Edgar's Book Round-Up, April-June 2019

First of all, I realize June is not yet over. But I have read fifteen of the thirty books on my Goodreads goal, so it seemed like a good time to do another book round-up. It’s been a bit of an odd go, for reasons that will hopefully become clear, but we’ll see. Also worth noting is that most of the links do go to Goodreads pages; they are not subsidizing me, but it seemed more useful than anything else. (Image is The Magician King by Lev Grossman, which is mentioned but not pictured in the piece.)

Let Us Not Disappoint Mr. Waters: Sartorial Decision-making

Full disclosure: I grew up with, and continue to have in my adult life, an emphasis on clothing as something important, something to be considered — though obviously, not to the point of vanity. But I worked for Gap, Incorporated for many years (and actually I’m still on the books there, but given that I have another full time job, I am not there frequently anymore), and besides that, my mother was a fashion illustrator and is still a gifted seamstress; my father had the singular experience of being explicitly taught how to dress by an older man when he worked for, I think, the International Herald Tribune.

Written by: Edgar, AnalysisMaggie BoylesMay 29, 2019aesthetics, Analysis, Clothing, John Waters, John ConstantineComment

Some Notes on Aesthetics

We have been taught, in a variety of ways that aesthetics are bullshit: in part, and not unreasonably, because what do Truth and Beauty (yes, with title caps) mean to a world that had, y’know, the whole twentieth century, and has so far made a fucking hash of the twenty-first?