reconditarmonia

Doubtful as it may be under present conditions to find encouragement in anything of military origin unless it's the USS Princeton in 1844, about twenty-seven seconds into the two minutes' patriotism of Warship Week Appeal (1942) I cracked up.

Two hundred feet exactly of no-credits 35 mm, the object in question is a trailer produced for the Ministry of Information, essentially the same concept as the film tags of WWI: a micro-dose of propaganda appended to a newsreel as part of a larger campaign, in this case a sort of public information skit in which it is supposed that Noël Coward on the Denham sets of In Which We Serve (1942) is approached by Leslie Howard, slouching characteristically on with his hands in his pockets and his scarf twisted carelessly label-out, anxious to discuss a problem of National Savings. "How do you think we can make an appeal so it won't quite seem like an appeal?" With limited screen time to realize their meta conceit, the two actor-directors get briskly down to explaining the mechanics of the scheme to the British public with the shot-reverse-shot patter of a double act on the halls, but the trailer has already dropped its most memorable moment ahead of all its instructions and slogans, even the brief time it rhymes. Diffident as one end of his spectrum of nerd heroes, Howard apologizes for the interruption, excuses it with its relevance to naval business, and trails off with the usual form of words, "I'm sure you won't mind—" to which Coward responds smoothly, "I'm delighted to see you. And I know perfectly well—as we rehearsed it so carefully—that you've come to interview me about Warships Week." He doesn't even bother to hold for a laugh as Leslie snorts around his unlit cigarette. It doesn't all feel like a bit. The interjection may or may not have been scripted, but Coward's delivery is lethally demure and his scene partner's reaction looks genuine; for one, it's much less well-timed or dignified than the smile he uses to support a later, slightly obligatory joke about the income tax, which makes it that much more endearing. It's funny to me for a slant, secondhand reason, too, that has nothing to do with the long friendship between the two men or further proof of Noël's deadpan for the ages: a dancer with whom my mother once worked had been part of the company of Howard's 1936 Hamlet and like all the other small parts, whenever her back was to the audience and the Hollywood star was stuck facing the footlights, she tried to corpse him. One night she finally succeeded. Consequently and disproportionately, watching him need the length of a cigarette-lighting to get his face back, I thought of her story which I hadn't in years and may have laughed harder than Leslie Howard deserved. If it's any consolation to him, the way his eyes close right up like a cat's is beautiful, middle-aged and underslept. It promotes the illusion that a real person might say a phrase like "in these grim days when we've got our backs to the wall" outside of an address to the nation.

Not much consolation to the MOI, Warship Week Appeal accomplishes its goal in that while it doesn't mention for posterity that a community would adopt the ship it funded, the general idea of the dearth of "ships—more ships and still more ships" and the communal need to pay down for them as efficiently as possible comes through emphatically. It's so much more straightforward, in fact, than I associate with either of its differently masked actors, I'd love to know who wrote it, but the only other information immediately available is that the "Ronnie" whom Coward is conferring with when Howard courteously butts in is Ronald Neame. Given the production dates of their respective pictures, it's not difficult to pretend that Howard just popped over from the next sound stage where he was still shooting The First of the Few (1942), although he is clearly in star rather than director mode because even if he's in working clothes, he is conspicuously minus his glasses. What can I tell you? I got it from the Imperial War Museum and for two minutes and thirteen seconds it cheered me up. Lots of things to look at these days could do much, much worse. This interview brought to you by my appealing backers at Patreon.

This administration has run so hard from the start on leaded fantasies, the presence of a fossil fuel in its latest scream for the headlines seems macabrely apropos. Oil is indeed a lucratively unrenewable resource, but aren't those equally heady fumes of the Banana Wars and Neptune Spear? In my own throwback to the twentieth century, I haven't been able to get Phil Ochs out of my head. It was in another of his songs that I first heard of United Fruit. I live in endless echoes, but I am tired of these threadbare loops of empire that were already sticky shed and vinegar when another fluffer of American exceptional stupidity hung out his banner of a mission very much not accomplished. Is it the Crusades this time or Manifest Destiny? War Plan Red hasn't panned out so far, but we can always rebrand the Monroe Doctrine. Colombia! Cuba! Greenland! Daddy's shadow and Deus vult. "Every generation of Centauri mourns for the golden days when their power was like unto the gods! It's counterproductive! I mean, why make history if you fail to learn by it?" I was thirteen when I heard that line and I understood the question. Who knew I was going to spend the rest of my life finding out just how many people were never even interested in trying?

The afternoon's mail brought my contributor's copy of Not One of Us #85, containing my poem "The Avalon Procedure." It is the Arthurian one, in debt to and argument with Bryher. It belongs to the outsider issue which kicks off the 'zine's fortieth year of alienation, characteristically incarnated by the short fiction and poetry of Steve Toase, Devan Barlow, Lauren Hruska, and Gwynne Garfinkle among others. The threshold shadow of the cover art by John and Flo Stanton is an excellent advertisement, or harbinger. Pick up a copy or contribute to the strangeness yourself. I remain so glad it sneaked into our reality.

"These clocks are like Time herself. Magnificent edifices, but secretly fragile. In need of constant attention . . . Forgive me. My pet subject, Time." I didn't realize until I opened the jewel case that Sigil (2023) was dedicated to the memory of Murray Melvin: it was his last recording for Big Finish, released posthumously. It starts like a classic M. R. James with a series of weird and hauntological misfortunes attending a three-thousand-year-old bronze bird ever since its ill-omened excavation in the Victorian era and then it twists much more cosmic, with a pure sting of Sapphire & Steel. I can't tell if it was designed as a farewell, but it makes a tantalizing final communiqué from Bilis Manger, a gorgeous, wickedly silken and knowing performance from Melvin whose voice caresses a stone circle because it's "an ancient timepiece" and can put a harvest-withering contempt into a statement like "I've never owned a scatter cushion in my life." There's a sort of promotional interview at the end of the CD, but it poignantly does not include Melvin. The last we hear of him is in definitive character, so much time echoing backward and forward in his voice that was then eighty-nine human years old and still made you think there could be younger barrows, meadows, stars. "What could murder a murder of crows?"

I had no idea about this historical reenactment at Prospect Hill, but I am happy to read of its turnout in the new snow. I have not gotten the sestercentennial onto my mental calendar. I am still not convinced of this decade at all.

That was the year that was no good. I kept up with my website and my presence on AO3 and slept terribly and spent six days in hospital.

I published one new piece of fiction, although a meaningful one to me:

"Hyperboloids of Wondrous Light" in Not One of Us #81, January 2025.

Very little new poetry:

"The Ghost Summer" in Weird Fiction Quarterly Winter 2025: Ghosts, April 2025.
"The Burnt Layer" in Not One of Us #84, September 2025.
"Below Surface" in Not One of Us #83, June 2025.

One reprint:

"Twice Every Day Returning" in Afterlives: The Year's Best Death Stories 2024 (ed. Sheree Renée Thomas), Psychopomp, December 2025.

Nearly as much fanfiction as all of the above, counting the fills I transferred to AO3 and the one I left in place:

"Fall from the Sky" (Repeat Performance), January 2025.
"Floriography" (M*A*S*H), January 2025.
"A Good Accountant, All Right" (I Walk Alone), January 2025.

Very much less than I had wanted for Patreon:

Cover Up (1949), January 2025.
Decoy (1946), January 2025.
Grand Jury Secrets (1939), February 2025.
Lost Boundaries (1949), February 2025.
A Bomb Was Stolen (S-a furat o bombă, 1962), February 2025.
Black Kitten Micro-Thon 2025 [Final Offer (2018), "Come Back Mrs Noah" (1977), "Contact" (1981), Other Other (2024), Once in a New Moon (1934)], February 2025.
"Poison" (Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 1958), March 2025.
No Publicity (1927), April 2025.
A Bell for Adano (1945), May 2025.
City of Fear (1959), June 2025.
Ladies (2024), June 2025.
The Sea Wolf (1941), July 2025.
None Shall Escape (1944), July 2025.
I Won't Play (1944), August 2025.
The Gaunt Stranger (1939), August 2025.
The Perfect Murder (1988), August 2025.
The Hot Rock (1972), September 2025.
The Innocents (1961), September 2025.
Heat and Dust (1983), September 2025.
The Immortal Story (1968), October 2025.
Marooned (1994), October 2025.
Girl Stroke Boy (1971), October 2025.
Fear in the Night (1972), November 2025.
Enys Men (2022), November 2025.
Blind Spot (1947), November 2025.
Defence of the Realm (1985), December 2025.
A View from a Hill (2005), December 2025.

My major achievement of the last twelve months looks like not dying. More than one member of my family could say the same. Happy New Year. A healthy year, a more than endured one. Mir zaynen af tselokhes.

Out of intolerable exhaustion, I may have slept close to twelve hours last night. The dreams I can remember were banally about a T station that does not exist in the middle of a salt marsh, much less have a sort of ferry situation for cars. Less fortuitously, our kitchen was abruptly deprived of water this weekend and the property manager has not yet sent a plumber to take a look at it. We have kept the taps faithfully dripping through the well below freezing temperatures, but as we have no control over the state of the pipes in the still uninhabited upstairs apartment, we are concerned. The last time something went wrong with the kitchen sink, half our pantry got ripped out. Have some links.

1. Following that meme about random geographic coordinates which assumes instantaneous transportation to the location with nothing but the objects currently on one's person, I rolled 28.36967, 80.57272 and seem to have been dropped in the middle of the Sharda River closest to the village of Majhaura in Uttar Pradesh. The good news is that it's south of the whitewater rapids and the rumors of man-eating goonch and when it's not monsoon season, it seems to have a relatively placid flow, albeit to the detriment of the surrounding communities it's been changing its course onto for decades. It's overcast, in the Fahrenheit forties, a little past seven in the morning. I am going to vote that I will be cold, exhausted, annoyed, and lose my shoes, but probably not drowned. As I know an extremely small number of words in Hindi and none whatsoever in Bhojpuri, it may take me a little while to explain the situation.

2. I had never heard of the Television Village:

This lack of formal training came back to bite the presenters multiple times. Hornby remembers being chastised by a producer for ruining "continuity" after getting a perm; Terry Jones of Monty Python fame tried to eat the studio's pet goldfish during an interview; and the whole production was put at risk when a Weetabix box that was being used as a prop to hold up scripts out of sight of the camera was accidentally broadcast, potentially breaching advertising rules. Numerous people involved with the station recall the broadcast being interrupted, only for it to turn out that a sheep had chewed through cable wires.

spatch who did public-access television and college radio in the Pioneer Valley around the same time nodded in enthusiastic recognition as I read selections out to him. I am hoping that my keyboard survives the spit-take of the Weetabix box.

3. I had no idea that steak tips were specific to New England. I wonder if that means my parents only started making them after moving to the Boston area. They always seemed to occupy an intermediate niche between kebabs and London broil.

4. Intrigued by a photo of Neal Ascherson, I vectored through his aunt Renée and discovered that a film I have wanted to see since grad school was rediscovered this summer. I had not been aware that The Cure for Love (1949) had actually ever been lost: I just knew it as the sole film directed by co-star and producer Robert Donat which never did me the courtesy of turning up on any of my streaming services or the free internet. If it made it to TPTV, fingers crossed for TCM.

5. How did I miss the existence of The Vatican Stole the Menorah and We're Going to Steal It Back (2025), a one-shot, dreidel-powered TTRPG complete with a Player's Guide for the Perplexed? Obstacles include some schmuck and the Popemobile, allies include space lasers and the Golem of Prague. I hope they make their end-of-year goal for the print edition.

P.S. I have just been informed of the existence of a bilingual Sanskrit–Greek stele from the third century CE. This is such a neat planet. I wish people would not make it so difficult to inhabit.