but it’s too late, it’s over now.

Celebrities, like kings, have two bodies — the body natural, which decays and dies, and the body politic, which does neither. But the immortal body of the ‘image’, even though it is preserved on celluloid, on digitalised files or in the memory of the theatre-going public, always bears the nagging reminder of the former (‘She looks great. Isn’t she dead by now?’) As their sacred images circulate in the demotic swirl of the profane imagination, celebrities foreground a peculiar combination of strength and vulnerability, expressed through outward signs of the union of their imperishable and mortal bodies. Let those marks of strength be called charismata; the signs of vulnerability, stigmata. They work cooperatively, like muscles in opposable pairs, and their beguiling interplay, now widely heralded among acting teachers, has a long history as well as popular currency as the source of public intimacy.
…
When stigmata so far overrun charismata, the embarrassed celebrity becomes too available to the identification of the audience, and that special quality of apartness, which Glyn describes as ‘unbiddable’, disappears, taking ‘It’ down with it.
…
The publicity department at Paramount arrounged for Bow and Glyn to spend time together and to be seen in public doing so. To that end, striking redheads both, they sped around Los Angeles together in a large Packard, accompanied by the actress’s great red chow dog and a redundant driver provided by the Studio. Bow, who at best regarded speed limits and traffic lights as advisory, insisted on taking the wheel, while Glyn kept her upper lip stiff in the passenger’s seat and the terrorised chauffeur wept and prayed in the back. What inter-societal connection opened up between these two women in their work together cannot be rationally specified, but one did, and it must have had to do with ‘It’, which for both of them, in their different genres, meant the ability to stand as if naked in the middle of a crowded room as if alone.

- Joseph Roach, “Public Intimacy: The Prior History of ‘It’”

not just paper and ink.

I remember telling someone recently that I had to hunt up a lot of books in the library. After switching modules, I returned the ones I didn’t need anymore to Amazon, and then decided that buying almost 15 different Jacobean revenge plays would be quite expensive (this decision made me feel a lot better since right after that I had to pay for a whole bunch of gig tickets). So off to the library I went.

I still remember that Saturday vividly for some reason. I spent an hour or so haunting the Renaissance/Shakespeare shelf — instead of my usual Victorian shelf — and when I sat down at one of the desks to sort through books, I was completely overwhelmed by this feeling of pure, absolute glee washing over me.

People, I was high. From hunting up books in the library. I am in love with my 20 book limit and ability to hog a book for ten weeks. Life will never be the same again with the NLB’s paltry 4 book limit at home.

mentally swamped.

I don’t understand Marx, I don’t understand Derrida, I don’t understand Stallybrass. I haven’t thought of a topic for the Christmas essay, I haven’t scheduled a slot with John to discuss the essay. No idea what to write for the Christmas exchange, and what I do have to go on with I don’t want to write, and it’s due in less than two weeks. And for the cherry on top of my Overly Ambitious Sundae, I keep on getting ideas for Grand Plans to be put forth into motion, ideas for new playlists that would hopefully up my productivity, or endless, endless lists of Things that Have to be Done.

(I am also simultaneously happy and annoyed at La Timberlake getting five Grammy noms, three two of which weren’t even from his album. The level of guanxi associated with Timbaland and his little circle is disgusting, and he has five noms also. Vile, vile, vile, and yet I still think What Goes Around is a fucking good song no matter how you look at it. Seriously, you were from a boyband, and that will never be erased from your dossier no matter how many Cry Me A Rivers you write.)

disconnect.

Huh. There is something inherently wrong with listening to the Backstreet Boys while reading Derrida’s Marx biography.

empire.

In an unprecedented show of nationalistic sentiment, in the midst of doing my readings on imperialism and the idea of empire, I can literally feel the anger building up in me as a response to the blatant Christian Victorian condescension about educating the natives. Because as we all know, Educated Englishmen have their duty be the light that shines on the rest of the damn world.

See, this is why I’m not doing the post-colonial MA.

ten thousand ways.

Never in my entire life have I enjoyed a class as much as my weekly Dickens/Collins seminar. Every Wednesday is a reminder why I love Lit so much, why I decided to pursue it for one more year, why I’m so glad I chose this uni again to do my masters. It’s intellectually stimulating discussion with a group of people just as into it as you are, being alternately thoughtful and incredibly silly, and my tutor is just super knowledgeable, funny, and incredibly encouraging. He never makes you feel like your point is stupid. God, this is what academic life should be like. I love this group, I love this tutor, and I cannot believe I only have three more weeks of this.