If you’ve ever read my books, you know I maintain relationships merely because I’ve been lucky enough to find people who don’t throw me away when I reveal myself to be a complete and utter disaster who will sabotage everything we have if given half the chance. I’m a terrible person to give relationship advice.
So here, based on my own failings:
-Say you’re sorry. Mean it.
-But don’t say it all the time.
-Seriously, it loses all meaning.
-Even if you ARE sorry.
-No, sex with that other person isn’t worth it. Yes, I see how good looking they are. Trust me.
-Find ways to show love: notes, trinkets, kisses. Something to show that they are on your mind.
-But not gifts you’d rather just have for yourself, you idiot.
-Don’t buy them a house unless they asked for one.
-Don’t trick them into having children with you because you are afraid they’ll leave you.
-Don’t entrap them.
-Seriously, that one is never going to turn out the way you hope it will.
-Tell the truth. Even when it makes you look terrible.
-Trust them. Yes, especially when you don’t want to trust anyone.
-Tell them the things that scare you about yourself. If they are who you think they are, they can hold them for you.
-Know that they love you, even when they are so angry at you that they can’t bear to look at you.
-Say I love you. Yes, it’s going to hurt. Do it anyway.
“You forgot the most important point.
Allow yourself be loved. No matter how wretched and undeserving you feel.”
//Hey Guys! So, I have never, ever, EVER in my life self-promoted on here, but I’m in a position to need to do so and I figured I would just put out the feelers for asking–no pressure if you can’t afford to help right now!
So, as some of you who know me in real life know, I am a theatre director and artist. I run my own theatre company, InBocca Performance (you can find us on FB, Twitter, IG, and at www.inboccaperformance.com). We have been lucky enough to be chosen to attend and be a part of the Boulder International Fringe Festival this summer (in August). It’s our first time doing a Fringe that isn’t our local one (Cincinnati), and it’s a pretty scary adventure. I’ve done lots of international work, but I’ve never dragged 7 actresses across the country or world, so this is a whole new kettle of fish.
The show is Charlie’s Girls, and it is about the young women of the Manson Family who committed atrocities for Charles Manson, bringing about the end of the summer of love in 1969.
If you love weird art, dark art, scary and bleeding-edge art, please consider supporting us. Even $5 gets you a perk with our campaign, and I’d be eternally grateful for your help and support.
//Okay, so I find this all very interesting, so a few thoughts/canon/headcanon re: Lestat’s dialect in French and how his French changed/evolved over the years.
-Lestat is born and raised in the Auvergne, which means his French patois is ‘Auvergnat,’ which is a branch of Occitan, a dialect of mostly Provence. This dialect, if you’ve never heard it, is NOTHING like the Parisian French that most of us learn in school, nor is it similar to what would have been spoken in Paris at the time (18th century). Here is an Auvergnat lullaby, and here is what Auvergnat sounds like, around 4:17. Here is an example of L’Occitane.
-Lestat then moves to Paris with Nicolas, and spends quite some time there (I don’t have my book on me). His French of COURSE would have changed, as he’d have been mercilessly teased for his dialect, which would have sounded ‘country’ to the people of Paris. Personally, I headcanon Nicolas’ old Uni friends making fun of Lestat’s dialect and Lestat forcing Nicolas to help him with his Parisian French, but that’s not canon, just my thoughts.
-Lestat then relocates to New Orleans around 1791, a time when Louisiana actually belongs to Spain. The French that Louis de Pointe du Lac is going to be speaking here is a whole OTHER kind of French, probably colored by a number of things: Spanish colonists, French colonists, and the patois of the Haitian peoples who also live there. You can read more about Louisiana French here. I headcanon that Lestat definitely learned the patois of New Orleans, especially since he lived there for around 70 years. By the time he meets Louis, his French is an amalgam of at least two different dialects, though the French he’d speak to the Marquis would have been Auvergnat. It’s a testimony to the fact that Louis must have immigrated while very young (hilariously, Louis is NOT actually Créole), b/c I highly doubt he’d recognize the dialect.
-Lestat then learns English from, as he calls it, ‘flatboatmen’ on the Mississippi and comic books, which is hilarious, and pretty much accounts for his tone.
TL:DR; I just feel very strongly about language, especially the evolution of each of these characters, and I love imagining how their capacities for language and dialect have evolved.
226 years ago, I accidentally stumbled across you in a sordid little inn by the waterfront. Since that moment, my life has never been quite the same.
I love you. Stupidly, foolishly, against both of our better instincts. Thank you for ignoring your better judgement and coming back to me, again and again and again.
So…You wanted a bath? Let’s have a bath.
Ah, and so lucky for you, that I have such poor judgement. I love you too, mon coeur.
One could hardly turn down such a proposition, given the breathtaking view.
You even trusted me enough to have candles beside the bath. I am flattered.
Letters. Letters from everyone I have loved, of course, and I have many of them stored in a metal strongbox under the bed: Gabrielle, David, Armand, Marius, etc. Words scratched onto paper where no one can take them back, no one can accuse me of making them up or exaggerating the words uttered.
-pause-
But the real objet d’obsession?
There is a box that is…hidden from me, tucked under a floorboard in the office (remember, that room once was Louis’ bedroom). In it are letters to me from Louis. Written over a century ago, on parchment that might crumple in your hand had it not been sealed in a box for so long. His beautiful copperplate hand, neat as his tutors intended it to be, writing words meant for me. Letters never sent, if you will, letters I’m not meant to know exist. Love letters, letters written in a blind rage, sensual confessions, everyday observations.
I’m waiting for the night he chooses to share them with me, but I know it might never come. Does he even remember that they are there? It may be that he thinks them burned long ago–though if Claudia’s diary might survive, why not these?
When we’ve had a particularly cruel argument, when we’ve crawled our way to Hell and back again, when we’ve clawed each other down to the quick, I go and dig them out again. His centuries-old innocence is a balm to my heart.
-shrugs-
It’s stupid, and he’d be furious if he knew. He’d not speak to me for months, frankly, and I’d deserve it.
…But I do treasure them, especially when his voice feels far away to me, or when we are separated. There, contained in parchment, is the person Louis once was: a young man who was furious and confused and sometimes in love. And I’m so happy that he still exists, even if it’s only in a box under the floorboards.
I-want-my-IWTV 