Steven Rodriguez

The eight-year-old says that I have too many books. He says that I can pick five to keep and get rid of the rest. 😱

Love this book haul that people brought for my birthday party!

(Other gifts not pictured: assorted beers, wines, cakes, and fried vegetables)

One of the incredible things about Springsteen’s “Atlantic City” is that the song could not exist without Bob Dylan, and at the same time it has access to entire worlds that Dylan will never know

Ok Dryden’s rendering of Dido’s lines in Aeneid 4 far surpasses any of the other translations I’ve read!!

Aeneas sees the "little Troy" at Buthrotum and thinks to himself...

We can make Troy into a FRANCHISE

"Now, by the pow'rs above, and what we share
From Nature’s common gift, this vital air,
O Trojans, take me hence!"

—Dryden's Aeneid

Dryden's Virgil has so many great lines of his own invention, as when he describes the Greek survivor of the Cyclops as "somewhat betwixt a mortal and a sprite."

Coming back to the Aeneid after this last time reading the Iliad, I am reminded that America is so much more Virgilian than Homeric.

You guys the new piece for guitar and cello sounds so great!!

I keep getting money from very random class action settlements and it feels like finding a $20 in my coat pocket and I love it

Cat food is a scam and cats can probably eat human food from the grocery store. Prove me wrong

I am only an amateur reader of Shakespeare, and I'm sure there are mountains of scholarly articles on this.

I'm more interested in why this racism in Shakespeare is not a part of the contemporary popular reception of Shakespeare.

So, I finished Titus Andronicus. And, I have an honest question. Why have I never seen anyone talk about how insanely racist the characterization of Aaron the Moor is?

I’m playing defense today

...Mexi-terranean-American?

might start calling myself Mediterranean-American

finished scoring the next batch of cello parts! This next piece is for cello and guitar. Excited to see what happens when she works on it and offers edits and improvements...

FINALLY rewatched Rogue One last night after finishing Andor!

omg I just correctly guessed that someone was Lutheran solely from their Facebook profile pic

Is there an Inside Out character for the emotion of Heidegger, standing in the doorway of his hut, staring into the mountains, contemplating Nothingness?

“Worse than Philomel,” “worse than Procne," “more stern and bloody than the Centaur’s feast.”

In Titus Andronicus, early Shakespeare seems content to merely amplify the figures of myth. It is later that he begins to subvert and complexify the figures (MND’s “the story shall be changed”)

When Titus sees through the disguise of allegory, is it shorthand for a growing early modern skepticism?

Starkly allegorical characters in Titus Andronicus: Is this moment in Shakespeare a vestige of medieval mystery plays?

Titus can see through their disguises. How common was it for characters to dismantle an allegory on the Elizabethan stage?

Me: Is Titus Andronicus about Catholic/Protestant violence in England?

Shakespeare: watch me put an anachronistic reference to the dissolution of the monasteries in Ancient Rome

VERY excited about the metric modulation happening in this music composition! Now I just have to figure out how the heck to notate it...

I turned to my friend and said, "So we're ending with Buddha in Hell?" and then the movie ended and were both completely blown away!!!

I cannot believe Kurosawa took out the Christian and pagan elements of King Lear and swapped in a Buddhist symbolic world for the secondary Gloucester/Edgar plot and it WORKED SO AMAZINGLY WELL.

What better way to celebrate the waning of my years

Celebrating my 40th birthday with a watch party with a friend... watching Ran, Kurosawa's King Lear adaptation

turned 40 today, doin my first ever AMA