5 mixed things on a Sunday

[truepenny]

1. RIP, Robert Holdstock. (via Ansible)

2. Tobias Buckell has a lovely thoughtful essay on Rastafarians and dreads.

3. mirrorthaw and I went to see Hayward Williams last night (blues-country-indie rock and a voice you can wrap around yourself like deepest, darkest velvet). He was excellent, as always.

4. 67,500 words on The Goblin Emperor.

5. Pat Rothfuss previews Worldbuilders, the Heifer International auction that will eat feed the world--the official unveiling is tomorrow. (Reminder: I am donating items for the auction, (1) a complete signed set of Doctrine of Labyrinths hardbacks and (2) The Bone Key with mss of the uncollected stories, all signed.)

Comments

[heresluck]

Haaaaaayward! That boy needs to head back up to my neck of the woods sometime soon. Also, I want the new CD *now*. I assume he played a bunch of songs from it? And how's his stage presence coming along?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes. And yes.

And his stage presence is improving by leaps and bounds. I gather from things he said that he's been touring a lot

[steppinrazor.livejournal.com]

I can't help thinking Tobias Buckell is attaching more mystique to a hairstyle than is necessary.

Rasta isn't the origin of locks. The wiki entry where he found his picture in the first place even states as such. I get rather itchy and twitchy when I find people attaching notions of condescension to things like this - everyone who chooses to let their hair lock and knot has their own reason for it, and looking at white folks with locks, or college students, etc. etc., as if they're ignorant and disrespectful to the "origin", is, in itself, disrespectful in my opinion. I respect his experiences, but I fail to see why his personal reason NOT to lock his hair should be some declaration on the subject.

I just felt the need to comment on that, as a burgeoning knothead, myself. Apologies if I'm intruding.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

No, you're not intruding, and I think your point is a perfectly reasonable one. I'm not going to presume to speak for Mr. Buckell about what he did or didn't mean. But for me, what I liked about his essay was that it was about his own intensely personal experience as a child and how that experience informs the choices he makes as an adult. Also, it taught me more about Rastafarianism than I knew when I got up this morning.

[tobias-buckell.livejournal.com]

I'm not attaching mystique. The sole reason people in the US lock their hair was inspiration was due to the lock-wearing publicity of rastamen via reggae music. It wouldn't exist here if not for that. Prior lock pride in Europe was eradicated due to its association with disease in the European mind. You can't deny Reggae took this to public consciousness.

My statement was only on why *I* don't lock my hair. Because i grew up around the people who popularized what many in the US then ran with. I never said no one should lock their hair, you impute and got that out of your own defensiveness. Had you even bothered to read my comments where I point that out repeatedly, and that most of my lock wearing friends aren't rasta, you'd see that.

Lastly, how on earth can you choose the name Stepping Razor for your LJ handle and not even understand that religious implications of that?

[steppinrazor.livejournal.com]

It's hardly the "sole" reason, and that's precisely my objection. I don't believe I was nearly as aggressive as you're taking me to be.

User Info can be incredibly informative, as well. And since you chose to follow me to the dread community, clearly you must have read mine. I've said my piece there, so I'll refrain from furthering the discussion here anymore. Your story was nice, and I'm sure you're a great person, but you shouldn't make so many assumptions about people you don't know.