But how can the people’s poet be dead when we still have his poems comedy?
Perhaps the best bit from Bottom:
The partnership between Rik Mayall and Ade Edmunson made their comedy:
Sandra’s favourite Rik Mayall scene:
Indestructable. Indestructable. Indestructable. Indestructable.
Somebody has uploaded a shedload of Russian airplane documentaries on Youtube, dubbed in English. A mixed bag so far, but interesting for the dedicated Soviet Military Power enthusiast.
Once you see it, it’s obvious you can read Frozen‘s Elsa as a trans symbol, as Aoife does here:
Let me first say that, as I propose to offer a trans reading of Elsa, I’m not claiming there is any intrinsic connection between my analysis and the Disney creators. Far from it. I’m also not implying the appeal of Elsa as a trans symbol is universal: my spouse, who is also trans, informed me that she hated Frozen decidedly.
However, when many of us reflect on the stressed, condensed condition of gender dysphoria, of being encased in a fraught awareness internally and a false presentation outwardly, Elsa suggests to our collective spirit of survival the joy of release. We always wanted to believe our lives would get better, that the empowerment of freedom comes from the beautiful truth of becoming. Yes, there are many costs associated with this act to “turn away and slam the [closet] door”, and Elsa must confront in the isolation of liberation. But the slow motion suicide of “conceal, don’t feel” attests to what is truly frozen — the state of denial that rejects the possibility of living free.
Tomorrow it will be exactly 21/2 years since Sandra died, so it’s no wonder she’s been on my mind the past weeks. It’s funny about grief, it stays away for days or weeks on end and then suddenly it stabs you in the heart again. in popular culture it’s supposed to be this massive, all overpowering emotion, something that hits youn in the guts and keeps you down for weeks, then mostly disappears apart from late nights spent with the whisky bottle and the handy portrait of your lover whenever it’s convenient for the plot.
Real life is different. What I remember emotionally from the weeks just before and immediately after her death was sadness, but also peace and even a bit of relief that it was all over. For three-four years we’d been living with her illness and the hope that finally her health would improve. When that hope turned out to be futile and Sandra choose to put an end to it, after denial came relief. An ending was better than more sleepless nights listening to her crying out in pain and anguish. The week after she died there still wasn’t that grief the movies had taught me would be there; instead I had to be relentlessly practical, set myself to tying off all the loose ends her death left behind.
It’s only in the months and years after that, when life had turned back to normal again that the emptiness hit. Four years fighting for Sandra’s health, always with that goal of getting her better in mind, not to mention over a decade of having been with her and suddenly it had all ended. Suddenly there wasn’t anybody I needed to take into account anymore, suddenly it was just me and the cats and being able to everything I want but nothing really to come back home for. I’ve never been as comfortable as i’m now, but what’s the point when you’re just living on your own, day in day out without purpose?
That’s how I feel whenever the reality of living without Sandra hits me again; late at night going to bed with just the cats, in the supermarket staring at the vegetables, every now and again seeing something she would’ve Had an Opinion About. That’s when the knife hits. It hits with the little things, remembering the small touches of living together, of having somebody other than cats to talk to.
(There isn’t much pop music that does well with grief, but Sinéad O’Connor comes close.)