Last two on the Personal Canon meme & a question for the LJ-mind about host servers
Joe Dawson:
1) History is a lot more fun when it's not dates but who did what why, and how, and for how long, and when did the new styles make it where, and what did this catastrophe do to that culture.... For himself, though, history is for learning from, not strengthening grudges with.
2) Music in general and the blues in particular are about now, about how a melody makes you feel now and what memories the lyrics stir to the top today. In the best performances, it's Joe and his guitar, the band and their instruments, and a whole crowd living in the now of moving music, moving fingers and arms and legs. That feels as good as the practices where he surfaces from the music at last without being sure how long he was playing, the ones where he finds himself humming phrases and singing choruses hours later.
3) Immortals are the best part of both of those worlds (with some of the adrenaline of his Marine Corps days thrown in, and sometimes some of the loss, too). They're history running back and shaping people like water shaping stone or stone shaping earth -- 'then' sliding under 'now' and tinting current camouflage or forcing them to shed old skin for newer. The new immortals are like rehearsals: playing part of one song and then another, with scattered notes and discords between as they switch, adapt, change, try to learn themselves and the world. Working out survival note by note, the way a musician sounds out a new instrument. The old immortals, however, are jazz -- sometimes slowed, sometimes sped up, familiar melodies riffed off of, adapted to new keys, new back-up or new acoustics, but always fugueing back to themselves, if sometimes by way of a melody he'd have never expected to see wound in through there, like hints of "Caravan" and "Yes, I Have No Banana" showing up in Dueling Banjos." He loves it when they surprise him like that.
Joe has the best damn job in the world; don't bother trying to convince him otherwise.
Mandisa
1) It's not even that she holds Var (and Damien, and Ish) stable. (Or Kyra, and Bridghe, and Duathor, when they're near enough.) It's nothing as dynamic as her balance to their counterbalance. It's as simple as listening to them as carefully as she listens to herself when she meditates, as she listens to the world around her after she's prayed. She listens until she's the clear pool they're dropping problems into as well as the perspective they needed to see the problems differently. Sometimes it's as simple as being the quiet they needed to hear themselves think, or the reflection that shows where they've warped from true.
At least, Disa thinks it's simple.
2) Reconciling Chirstianity and immortality was difficult. So hard to mesh 'They keep challenging' with 'Thou Shalt Not Kill,' 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' and 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.' She couldn't go to Holy Ground. Holding still for so long would kill her as surely as any challenger. She has to run, the way she has to breathe, if not quite as often.... She finally settled on works and deeds to salve her conscience (her occasional assistance to Cory still makes Var nervous) and a judicious application of the Golden Rule to the Game. She never challenges first, and those who challenge her generally get a clean fight and a clean death. Generally. Sometimes, however, they get what they gave.
3) Disa can't understand the questions about some of the immortal pairs (lovers or siblings, although she's noticed it's the siblings that seem to confuse more of her questioners). She and Var work together like gauntlet and hand, always fitted each to the other and shifting who's which without any confusion between themselves (although a great deal of confusion to everyone else, she's noticed). He's quickness and sharp changes of direction, she's speed and endurance; she's the slow surge of tide where he's the swift rush of individual flames ahead of a wildfire. She's reflective, he's deceptive, and they fit together like the teeth of matched gears. Time doesn't change that, nor distance -- it just leaves them wanting to talk and catch up and fit together again.
Really, what she doesn't understand is why people ask her about it instead of listening to others to see if there's someone who might lock into place with them. They're going to have to try it to understand.
And now I can go do the webpage for these, and update the index page, and start catching up on JiMpage363's site...
Raine_wynd, or anyone else who's changed host servers -- can you drop me a line about how hard/involved this is/isn't? Thanks!