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gregor

@mothwater.bsky.social

35 followers 36 following 570 posts

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gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 2d

I'm playing it so I can claim Gilmore as deserving all the awards, as far as I know, and be truthful about it. Sandler needs his Oscar.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 2d

My 2025 list so far.

I might be falling behind just a wee bit...

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 2d

@ngrl.bsky.social did you post this before? It seems like I recognized it, but it didn't fully stick until I heard it on earphones.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 2d

Damn, birthday boy Mathias Spahlinger killed it with this piece. Listened twice, now I have to check out his other works.

youtu.be/T2VQmnHq1IY?...

Mathias Spahlinger - Passage/paysage [w/score]

YouTube video by Four-hobbies-man

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 5d

Ooh, how was the production? I mean any chance to see a Beckett is worth taking, so it's a relative thing.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 5d

Exactly! The glut must be attended to all the time lest one miss out.
One of the devious tricks of capitalism is in precarity forcing institutions towards concern over their own existence, so they seek out more attention from the masses in hopes of staying relevant & in doing so lose their purpose.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 5d

The nature of engagement, both with the arts & each other on social media vs the era of curation and limited, local engagement is profoundly different in ways that almost no one now would think of changing, for understandable reasons, but where what was lost was of some major significance too.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 5d

To me, it kinda goes with this one from yesterday, where the question isn't a bad one, but looking at it from a pre-vcr, & streaming era, it's almost impossible to convey how much things have changed by the terms offered, because it isn't in the who or what, but the how of it all that's significant.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 5d

Yeah, I appreciate his work to a fair extent, but his tweets are tough to take for so frequently being either engagement bait & thus disingenuous, or for wanting criticism to be Hitchens/Armondesque contrarian takes because he gets bored easily. 'True' doesn't rank. Very of this short attention era.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 5d

That, of course, isn't really an answer to the questions of "good" for writing or taste, other than suggesting strong personal conviction for the latter, which makes criticism just a manner of flexing muscle & preventing boredom by novel contrarianism, which is the true good of writing too I guess.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 5d

Some mad skills in engagement bait. Creates a weak dichotomy between 'good' taste & writing, which doesn't really make sense on its face, how can writing that's "crowdsourced" & incurious be good? Then flips the construction to say incurious isn't good, denying the viability of the initial claim.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 6d

Case in point

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 6d

This is the kind of counterintuitive reporting that keeps The Economist one big step ahead of their competitors in the marketplace of non-ideas.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 14d

Swiftdom's obsession over their queen's proclamations is itself such an unusual extreme that Swift plays with/has to account for in the songs & everything public she does, but it does lead the fans to literary devices & a kind of invested reading, but only of Swift, its weird, but not nothing.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 14d

Where is this commentary coming from? I hope it isn't the physical copy of the album, cuz no matter how much you like TS, that's gonna get annoying eventually.
I listened on youtube, where the album has a special tracker & no commercials between tracks, special treatment stuff, but no commentary.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 14d

I sympathize. Never fun to be subjected to something you don't like. I think the album & Swift are interesting, poptimism being very similar to vulgar auteurism, but exceeding it in the appeal & reach of their 'auteurs'. Swift's huge fandom lends some unusual concerns to her work that intrigue me.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 17d

Young cinephiles today would be absolutely ill to hear how cheap & easy to get original release posters were back in the 80s. I mean, partly it was just a lot closer in time to the original release dates, but movie history just wasn't yet a big thing then.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 17d

Would have had count? Not up right now. (Adding an associated window card to boot, just to show I was an OG Tourneur guy.)

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 19d

And, for good measure since I've gone this far, here's a portrait of Lucas himself, once attributed to him as a selfie, but now attributed to his son, Lucas Cranach the Younger.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 19d

in his religious/mythological works. Multiple versions of Judith & Salome with the fruits of their beheadings presented almost serenely. The feeling of sexual allurement in the images is continually, well, cut short by both the subject matter & the manner of knowingness that forestalls that desire.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 19d

but I think I prefer his portraits of women. With the men, there is a sort of bulky immobility to them that gives weight of importance, while with the women there seems to be a sort of slightly aloof awareness with them that the portraits of the men don't share, which comes out even more...

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 19d

Judging by nothing other than likes & reposts of the artbots, it seems as if Cranach isn't all that well regarded now? That would be a melancholy thing, He's a favorite of mine. Thinking he might make my top ten of artists I'd choose for a portrait...

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 19d

Spending the evening on the important business of deciding which of Lucas Cranach's paintings of Melancholia is most true. I lean towards the first one, but wouldn't argue with opting for the third either.

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 22d

Heh. Of course not! I mean who would dare bring up Mieczyslaw in your presence?

gregor @mothwater.bsky.social · 22d

To be honest, part of probably just comes from how his career was fraught with issues of personal/professional complication over what & how he wrote, so the music becomes more interesting for that. But I do dig his arrangements of sound & conceptual elements So a Shosty softy me I guess.