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Comparative Literature student who likes reading (obviously), Harry Potter, Stephen Fry, Arrested Development, Jane Austen, Game of Thrones, Muse, Gilmore Girls, Doctor Who, The Decemberists, Vlogbrothers, Andrew Bird, tea, Pushing Daisies, pocket watches, Sherlock, and general geekery.
I also run the-library-and-step-on-it.
The sidebar gif was made by eudaimonium.
Far away
This ship is taking me far away
Far away from the memories
Of the people who care if I live or diemusic I like → Muse - Starlight (2006)
My mum and dad went to a Muse concert this week, and my dad’s reactions were so cute.
They had gone to a Muse concert before, but they were sitting on the balcony that time, so that was a completely different experience. This time, they were standing in the crowd before the stage, and I hadn’t adequately prepared my dad for what happens there. When he got back, he uploaded a dozen pictures on Facebook, and sent me a really long e-mail, something along the lines of:
“People were standing really close to me, like, shoulder to shoulder. And then, everybody started jumping! Everybody! Except for me and your mother! And they were so close! It was a real experience, and I think that you need to experience this too as part of your education, so I’m buying you a ticket for the Muse concert in June!”
He was so excited that I decided not to tell him that I had been to plenty of concerts like that. Including a Muse concert.
FREE MUSE TICKET, YES.
You have a strange sense of humour, universe.
I’m not sure if I like it.
Ben Gibbard (feat. Aimee Mann) – Bigger Than Love
F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald
“I really fell in love with a book of letters called Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda that is correspondences between the two of them, beginning in their courtship and ending at the end of their lives when he was out in Los Angeles working as a screenwriter and she was in Asheville in a mental facility. … There are moments that I took from some of those letters, like [one in which] they had fought and broke the bathroom door — these very jarring images where, even if you don’t have any other context for why they were fighting, why the bathroom door is broken, you can still see the two of them. You can see this event happening. I found it really moving.”
Patrick Watson - Where The Wild Things Are
Where The Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak.
“It was my favourite book as a kid — I grew up with that.”
The Road, Cormac McCarthy.
“It’s the idea of two people running away from a Kafka environment, or an Orwellian thing.”
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams.
Please could you stop the noise, I’m trying to get some rest
From all the unborn chicken voices in my head
What’s that…? (I may be paranoid, but not an android)
What’s that…? (I may be paranoid, but not an android)
Muse - United States of Eurasia
1984, George Orwell.
And these wars, they can’t be won
Does anyone know or care how they begun?
They just promise to go on and on and on
But soon we will see there can be only one
1984, George Orwell.
“I read once in school about 15 years ago it was all about the politics. But when I read it this time I was much more taken with the love story in the book between Juliette and Winston.”
The Smiths - Shakespeare’s Sister
A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf
“….the title was an extremely clever lateral reference to Virginia Woolf’s 1928 feminist thesis “A Room of One’s Own”, in wich she argues that if Shakespeare had had a sister who was every bit his creative equal, her sex would have denied her the privilege of his education.”
Middlemarch, George Eliot.
The opening was adapted from a line in George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch: “To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular”.
The Police - Don’t Stand So Close To Me
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov.
He starts to shake and cough
Just like the old man in
That book by Nabakov
The Rolling Stones - Sympathy For The Devil
The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov.
The song’s opening — “Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste” — parallels the beginning of Bulgakov’s novel, in which a sophisticated stranger, who turns out to be Satan, introduces himself to two gentlemen sitting in a Moscow park as they’re discussing whether Jesus existed or not. (“‘Please excuse me,’ he said, speaking correctly, but with a foreign accent, ‘for presuming to speak to you without an introduction.’”)
Oedipus Rex, Sophocles.
My mom had been a rather crazy queen
But not at all a sex machine
She liked to keep her body clean, clean
Thought the world to be quite obscene
But she retired to her chamber
And we remain quite strangers
The myth of Icarus and Daedalus.
Hi, I’m Icarus, I’m falling
Down on this day of tears and mourning
From the dust of earth returning
Man for judgment must prepare me
Spare, oh god, in mercy spare me
Samson and Delilah, Hebrew Bible.
Samson went back to bed, not much hair left on his head
He ate a slice of wonder bread, and went right back to bed
And history books forgot about us and the Bible didn’t mention us
And the Bible didn’t mention us, not even once
Sylvia Plath.
I wish I had a Sylvia Plath
Busted tooth and a smile
And cigarette ashes in her drink
The kind that goes out and then sleeps for a week
Broken Records - If Eilert Loevborg Wrote A Song, It Would Sound Like This
Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen.
Come on Hedda, you know you made your bed
You claim a bleeding heart, but stone doesn’t melt
Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More
Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare.
Sigh no more, no more
One foot in sea and one on shore
My heart was never pure
And you know me
You know me
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë.
But I came and I was nothing
And time will give us nothing
So why did you choose to lean on
A man you knew was falling?
Any more suggestions?
I was curious about the Muse cover art for the 2nd Law. Turns out it’s an image of brain pathways from the Human Connectome Project. (Linked to the photo.)
Follow Me by Muse
