Well, it’s 2015, and I’m writing this as the fireworks are still going off around me and downtown; I didn’t go, I’ve been too busy working on all the tune parts for the live Bone Walker<\/i> release party\/concert at Conflikt at the end of the month.<\/p>\n
It’s hard work, too. I have a little secret that isn’t very secret: I am not a natural tunes player, and, this being the trad album, there’re a lot of tunes in it. They were by far the most difficult part of the album, and they’ll be the most difficult thing to perform live, and even though I’ll be kind of miked down a bit on mandolin, I still need to get it right.<\/p>\n
Seriously, though; rhythm parts: 10 minutes to learn. Melody on flute: maybe 20. Sung parts: 10-15 minutes, and I’ll make new parts. Tunes: weeks<\/em>. No idea why. It’s such<\/em> an outlier that Anna has incorporated it into the Free Court<\/i> universe, in the background, as part of the way magic works; traditional Irish tunes and the Sidhe magics don’t get along, and that’s on purpose.<\/p>\n But I’ll manage, I always do.<\/p>\n Perhaps coincidentally, the Space Needle is currently fireworking Newfoundland colours. I’m not even making that up. Newfoundland Liberation Army, represent.<\/p>\n I’ve seen people say that 2014 flew by; not for me. For me it felt kind of endless; 2013 seems so long ago. 2014 certainly had some personal lows; two more rounds of eye surgery, including – hopefully – the last one; way too much hanging out at home (recovering) and studio (recording). But it had highs, too – the most successful nwcMUSIC to date, actually finishing<\/em> the Bone Walker<\/i> project (preorder OK!<\/a>) and y’know what, I’m going to say it again:<\/p>\n Korrasami is canon and nothing hurts.<\/i><\/p>\n No, seriously, see… here’s yet another level of it. There\u2019s this longstanding trope of having queer couples who end up dead, or in tragedy. I mean, sure, mostly we don’t exist, but if we do: tragedy or death. Not cake or death; tragedy<\/eM> or death. We get one or the other, and sometimes both. Mercedes Lackey did it, for example; big three-book queer love story; one ends up dead, and gets reincarnated (without memories), so he can fall back in love with the survivor… who then dies<\/em>. Tragedy and death twice in one trilogy!<\/em> It’s amazing.<\/p>\n Similarly, as much as I love Revolutionary Girl Utena<\/i>, it did it too, more or less. Maybe Utena still exists; maybe Anthy will find Utena; we don\u2019t know. (In the manga, she doesn\u2019t, but the anime is different in many ways.) At the time, I was really angry about it, because it hit that same trope after teasing us with better; even though she\u2019s not dead (or so it\u2019s implied), they\u2019re still ending apart, as stories say you must<\/eM>, if you\u2019re queer.<\/p>\n Elfquest, too. Dart’s boyfriend Shushen? Introduced and dead in two issues. Boom.<\/p>\n Basically, as a rule, queers don\u2019t get to go off into the sunset together, in fiction. That\u2019s historically not for us. For us: tragedy and\/or separation, often through death.<\/p>\n Until now.<\/em><\/p>\n I can’t overstate how much that changes the world. It may not seem like much to people who are used to having it. But in a desert, even a teacup\u2019s worth becomes an ocean of water. And for that, I can forgive a lot about 2014.<\/p>\n We face 2015 with a whole new world. Gear up, everybody – let’s see what it brings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, it’s 2015, and I’m writing this as the fireworks are still going off around me and downtown; I didn’t go, I’ve been too busy working on all the tune parts for the live Bone Walker release party\/concert at Conflikt at the end of the month. It’s hard work, too. I have a little secret [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}