kate wehwalt

@katewagner

Unheil-bringer. lithium prince. architecture critic @thenation.com my blogs are , and mcmansionhell.com she/they

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kate wehwalt@katewagner· 9d

they also did enari together and the pics are insane

kate wehwalt@katewagner· 14d

my half sleeve tattoo of dante and beatrice among the stars

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Jun 13

who is this for

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Jun 13

we need to talk about the ceiling fan situation on wayfair

kate wehwalt@katewagner· May 12

My illness, despite its reputation for extremes of irrationality, has, in a backwards way, made me wise. Many people seem to trust themselves implicitly, to believe that they know themselves. This is not the case for me. Everything I do and feel is done and felt interrogatively, in a suspended state, because I have no other choice. The condition of absolute doubt is a powerful critical and creative tool when applied to anything else, to one’s moral choices and to art and to the political world, but to be forced to apply it ceaselessly to the way one is, to what one is, to what and how one feels, over the days and weeks and years, becomes wearisome and hopeless.
Am I happy or is this something else, something that could harm me?—that is not a thought normal people have on repeat. Nor: Am I sad, or is this the return of some kind of embodied haunting that will push me into the darkest corners of myself?

kate wehwalt@katewagner· May 10

happy Mother’s Day

kate wehwalt@katewagner· May 6

There are three in a line on my tummy but nowhere else. I have a mosquito bite on my knee. Blood looks like this if it helps

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Apr 27

For your consideration: Siegfried Labubu

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Apr 23

It’s so over dawg

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Apr 22

this is such an amazing book

the age of diagnosis how our obsession with medical labels is making us sicker by drsuzanne o'sullivan

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Apr 20

new in this edition is something else I basically think about all the time which is: what is the right way to portray the wronged woman

One of Wagner's most progressive choices in Die Walküre is his wholistic and sympathetic depiction of Sieglinde as a victim of rape. Not only does he openly make equivalent arranged (i.e. forced) marriage with the stark reality of sexual coercion, he situates her rape within the systemic injustices
- the feudal structures of honor and shame - that facilitate it. His refusal (contra Brünnhilde) to both equivocate on the morals of the situation and to depict the rape itself, to instead make it a largely psychological affair, not only decenters the man involved, it insulates his heroine from a kind of secondary violation, that of the spectacle of violence and the subsequent albeit unintended libidinal gratification of the audience which is all too common in depictions of rape in opera - including, of course, Wagner's earlier work, Götterdämmerung - or, for example, the rape scene in Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth.

However, in lieu of a story of pity and revenge, Wagner chooses one in which the pursuit of compassion and personal freedom despite such devastation, and the belief, albeit imperfectly realized, in a kind of better, more collective after - is indeed a heroism of its own. Even now, this is a profoundly radical choice. But one of the many tragedies of Die Walküre is that Siegmund, like most men in his situation, does not know how to respond to this outpouring of grief. In visible distress, he can only vow to destroy the evil man who has done this to her.
Only after Sieglinde is asleep and no longer able to hear him can Siegmund find the right words to convey what he really means, not only with regards to what Sieglinde has just revealed to him in her moment of agony, but his feelings for her as a whole -- that he understands the high stakes of' their quest for another life, that he is thankful to have her by his side and can recognize the sacrifice she's made for him, but most of all, that the hero in him recognizes the heroine in her, and in this recognition, he is seemingly alone. He says to her

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Apr 19

this is a ludicrously stupid analysis. imagine not mentioning, among other things, the soviet union and the cold war culture wars

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Apr 19

photographed the building today

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Apr 7

look what I just saw

big semi truck with tiny truck affixed to the back

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Apr 7

bleak

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Apr 7

telling my kids this is the Centre Pompidou

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Apr 4

how life feels after recovering from a mysterious disease

Goodtime Jesus
Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dreaming so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it? A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled back, skin falling off. But he wasn't afraid of that. It was a beautiful day. How 'bout some coffee? Don't mind if I do.
Take a little ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.
James Tate (1979)

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Mar 31

what the hell we can tack on the last bit too

Startlingly, as though remembering that she is indeed telling a story, Sieglinde gathers herself and brings Siegmund rhetorically back into the room. “Da wusst ich, wer der war / der mich Gramvolle gregrüsst” -- I know who he was / who consoled me in my grief, she tells him, as the fragments of the story begin to gather around her and pick up like a storm – the father, the sword, the father who I know you might know – from major to minor to major key – and then, with sudden, utter clarity, there is Siegmund standing before her and with Siegmund the possibility, fervent and graspable now, of being free. All this in just a few minutes of music!

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Mar 31

Even a handful of bars later, when Sieglinde is describing Wälse’s mighty thrust of the sword into the tree accompanied by all the masculine bombast of horns– this, too, becomes a moment of utterly unspeakable sadness. Suddenly whole score is evacuated and the theme of the sword has, with the line “Keinen Zoll entwich er den Stamm” – not an inch it stirred from the tree -- rings stalwart and lonely out into the empty hall because for Sieglinde its arrival is not a moment of triumph but one of sorrow. Alone is the voice, almost from a distance, of the young woman in white facing the bedroom door, for whom, in such a short span of time, both love and heroism have failed.

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Mar 31

actually i do have some notes on this passage if you want to follow along (the musical patronymic being the Walhall motif that lets us know Sieglinde's father is Wotan)

In between the musical patronymic and the revelation of the sword, is a passage of music just for Sieglinde. As she describes first the fear in the hearts of the other guests (Angst schuf es allen /traf die Männer / sein mächtiges Dräun) E-flat opens big and wide into F-sharp minor, which passes searchingly and incompletely into D major like an excited gasp of recognition only to, in the next second, diminish, literally, into the small, sparsely orchestrated agony of the gaze between father and daughter.
The mournful chromatic half-steps down to “süss schnenden Harm” (sweet, sorrowful joy) describe the human being who has been recognized but to no end, that of the little girl who is still searching for her father even though he is right there in front of her. All of it is sung by the woman who must live with the fact that this man elected neither to fully reveal himself nor intervene directly in sparing her from devastation. All there is, in the exchange of those half-steps, is the reality of one man passing her off to another, and this is an affect that can only come through in music.

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Mar 31

instantly wrecked by this six bars of music every time

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Mar 31

pov: you are a stupid fucking robot

claude saying the adjacent passage in e major is the key of the Wälsungs

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Mar 31

the reviews are in

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Mar 30

weather nice twins out

gremlin woman with sick internecine ring cycle tattoos

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Mar 29

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Mar 28

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Mar 26

like he just sent me this

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Mar 19

today in Twitter

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Mar 19

kate wehwalt@katewagner· Mar 18

My absolutely disgusting copy of the ring libretto