Lost in Lualand

just a bit of this & that—

( Read more... )

also, shoutout and/or critical support to this madman who listened to all the scarlatti sonatas & ranked them. i don't 100% agree with all his takes (at least, on the much smaller subset of the sonatas that i listened to lol), but i DID find some p sweet sonatas i would've otherwise overlooked and the article's vibes are good!

When, in the course of human events, one reads a little bit too much of Marilynne Robinson's incredible prose, and then plays a little bit too much Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and thus gets the two very different types of work all muddled in one's head, and is thus seized with the need to go spit out many thousands of words of Clair-Obscur-fanfiction-in-the-style-of-Marilynne-Robinson, but becomes aware partway through the project that one's understanding of the culture and structure of the Paris Conservatory during the Belle Époque era is incredibly thin, and this lack of understanding is really becoming awkward given that one has gone and invented an entire subplot involving multiple professors at aforementioned conservatory in one's fanfiction based on a passing mention in canon that "oh such-and-such character went to conservatory" and literally nothing else—well, it thus becomes necessary to go read a well-regarded biography of a contemporaneous French composer to amend that lack of knowledge.

Which is how I found myself reading Gabriel Fauré: A Musical Life by Jean-Michel Nectoux (translated by Roger Nichols).

("You really have a knack for nerd-sniping yourself," a friend observed dryly when I explained my present pitiable state of affairs. Yeah I sure do, huh.)

As I've been reading this primarily for convoluted fanfiction research purposes, what follows should not be construed as a review or anything even approaching one (I haven't even finished reading the book yet!), but, more of a... thinking-aloud session? Because there's a great deal that's amused me, and also a great deal that's made me very ponderous, and also stuff that just straight-up confused me (recall my aforementioned staggering lack of historical/contextual knowledge)... and yeah the only way I know how to think these days is via blog posts, apparently.

( Read more... )

Oh, also, one last funny bit about the translation: there's a bunch of words that are left with the French spelling, for no particular reason I can discern? The funniest of these is "rôle," which is always spelled the French way, even though there is no semantic difference to be had there. Whatcha trying to prove with that little hat over the O, lol. Though I guess The New Yorker still spells coordinate and cooperate as "coördinate" and "coöperate" so. I guess we all have our little spelling hangups :P

I (finally!) got a chance to play John Company (2022 edition) with some friends last week :3

For those not familiar: Cole Wehrle is a very interesting board game designer who I've blathered about before; he tends to make board games with asymmetric gameplay and complex mechanics... but the complexity of the mechanics usually feel less in service to Making Stuff Hard and more in service of Providing A Nuanced And Detailed Experience. (The way Bird Guy described it was, "I feel less like I'm playing a board game and more like I'm engaging with some sort of... interactive art-piece-slash-simulation? in which I'm roleplaying something dictated by my position in the game?" And, yeah. That really is the best description of the Wehrle board game experience. This one included!)

ANYWAY. Jotting down some brief thoughts for posterity and/or anyone else curious about this game:

( Read more... )

Creating a new version of an older post because some of those recommendations were a little dated.

( Ballard )

( West Seattle )

( Fremont )

( Uptown / Lower Queen Anne / Downtown Kinda )

( University District-ish )

( Capitol Hill )

( Georgetown )

( Classical Touristy Stuff That Is Pretty Good Even Though It's Touristy )

( Miscellaneous Further-Afield Spots )