Month: August 2021

I’m not a musician but I wonder about playing music, and what I might play if/when I take up an instrument. Everything I imagine myself playing is slow and sad. It clicks with the fact that music is perhaps the most emotionally resonant form of expression for me because it comes from a wordless place of feeling and mood. As someone who’s lived in a world of words like these almost my entire life, music seems to be the outlet that gets at something that I only occasionally tapped into with words. That gut place that tightens up to prevent intrusion. I got there sometimes, but now I reflect on those attempts with awe. How the fuck did that happen?

If I play music, and it does open up that spot in the center, I wonder what that’ll be like. Will it be welcome? A horrible mistake? I think my instinct will be to shore up that weakness. But if it’s not words, just sound and mood, perhaps it’ll be alright be just dwell in it for a while without a sense of coming apart at the seams.

I’m not a musician but I wonder about playing music, and what I might play if/when I take up an instrument. Everything I imagine myself playing is slow and sad. It clicks with the fact that music is perhaps the most emotionally resonant form of expression for me because it comes from a wordless place of feeling and mood. As someone who’s lived in a world of words like these almost my entire life, music seems to be the outlet that gets at something that I only occasionally tapped into with words. That gut place that tightens up to prevent intrusion. I got there sometimes, but now I reflect on those attempts with awe. How the fuck did that happen?

If I play music, and it does open up that spot in the center, I wonder what that’ll be like. Will it be welcome? A horrible mistake? I think my instinct will be to shore up that weakness. But if it’s not words, just sound and mood, perhaps it’ll be alright be just dwell in it for a while without a sense of coming apart at the seams.

bythebigcoolingtower:

Grade School Confidential [S8 E19] (dir. Susie Dietter)

Although Bart doesn’t care for it, this might be the sweetest moment in the entire series.

Generally speaking, the show didn’t do character arcs. It’s deliberately episodic, resetting events to make sure there aren’t long-term ramifications.

For Skinner and Krabappel, we watched as love evaded them both. ‘Principal Charming’ and ‘Bart the Lover’ showed us well-formed characters with hopes, dreams and vulnerabilities. Those vulnerabilities reappear here; Skinner’s socially awkward nature, exacerbated by his domineering mother, and Krabappel’s loneliness, a symptom of her deep-rooted depression.

These aren’t two people looking for one another. The opening illustrates the more outgoing Krabappel finds the fastidious Skinner boring, but outside of work, they find a commonality, shared isolation from a lack of social group.

The spark of why they ended up in that playhouse may have been pity that a grown man cannot escape his mother, but it gives rise to a chance, a moment where the two are on an equal footing and can find in one another what they might be missing in their own life. Skinner sees a woman free of control, allowed to be herself; Krabappel, a man with no airs or graces, someone with an innocence that had seemed lost to her.

Romance blossoms in the spectre of judgement and punishment. Once again, happiness threatened to be taken away by something out of their control. Bart’s lack of respect for authority, perhaps for the first time, proves an asset. Skinner and Krabappel take a stand, fight for something more than themselves, and lead us to this.

For a few sweet moments, they’re free, happy, dancing as if there’s no one else in the world and it’s absolutely beautiful.

bythebigcoolingtower:

Grade School Confidential [S8 E19] (dir. Susie Dietter)

Although Bart doesn’t care for it, this might be the sweetest moment in the entire series.

Generally speaking, the show didn’t do character arcs. It’s deliberately episodic, resetting events to make sure there aren’t long-term ramifications.

For Skinner and Krabappel, we watched as love evaded them both. ‘Principal Charming’ and ‘Bart the Lover’ showed us well-formed characters with hopes, dreams and vulnerabilities. Those vulnerabilities reappear here; Skinner’s socially awkward nature, exacerbated by his domineering mother, and Krabappel’s loneliness, a symptom of her deep-rooted depression.

These aren’t two people looking for one another. The opening illustrates the more outgoing Krabappel finds the fastidious Skinner boring, but outside of work, they find a commonality, shared isolation from a lack of social group.

The spark of why they ended up in that playhouse may have been pity that a grown man cannot escape his mother, but it gives rise to a chance, a moment where the two are on an equal footing and can find in one another what they might be missing in their own life. Skinner sees a woman free of control, allowed to be herself; Krabappel, a man with no airs or graces, someone with an innocence that had seemed lost to her.

Romance blossoms in the spectre of judgement and punishment. Once again, happiness threatened to be taken away by something out of their control. Bart’s lack of respect for authority, perhaps for the first time, proves an asset. Skinner and Krabappel take a stand, fight for something more than themselves, and lead us to this.

For a few sweet moments, they’re free, happy, dancing as if there’s no one else in the world and it’s absolutely beautiful.