The Ultimate Christmas Present?

Letters From the North Pole

A Christmas book by Annie Atkins with illustrations by Fia Tobig

A definite first—a review of a children’s book on FITK!

Simply put, this is a beautiful creation. Five children from around the world write to Santa asking for various yet-to-be-invented toys for Christmas. The book contains those letters and Santa’s replies, each in a separate envelope. Although it may sound as if it may be a bit too charming it is, in fact, over-the-top charming. Get it and read it to a child between 3 and 5 years old. Also available in French!

It’s adorbs.

Disclosure: Annie and I go waaay back together from her blog days almost twenty years ago. She even visited Flippist World Headquarters once, long before she made her mark designing graphics for Wes Anderson and Steven Spielberg.

UPDATE: Letters has been shortlisted for the British Book Awards.

Ode to a Doll

This is the final entry in this month’s ‘Video Update’ series.

Click through to YouTube for more information…

Winter Regret

I found myself feeling down
remembering that winter day
when we walked in the snowstorm
had something i had to say

when it began to snow harder
you laughed and raised your collar
you didn't feel the chill
you lifted your head and hollered

"you are the brightest light…
on my darkest days…
the brightest light…"
but i made you go away…

I said goodbye; you weren't mad
you didn't cry - you just stood
I thought it would make you sad
you just said: "It was good…"

forty years spent grieving
but the memory remains
the day i said i was leaving
and i wouldn't be back again

"you are the brightest light…
on my darkest days…
the brightest light…"
but i made you go away…

you quickly found another
and i thought i would too
you got yourself a truer lover
I’m just a lonely old fool

"you are the brightest light…
on my darkest days…
the brightest light…"
but i made you go away …

Wanda’s Surrender

As a tribute to Wanda Gág, here is a little music video I made inspired by her self-portrait done at Cream Hill, Lewis Gannett’s West Cornwall, Connecticut estate where Wanda would often spend summer weekends in the late 1920s.

Draw your own conclusions:



Click through to YouTube for more information…

Letter to a Lost Lover

Dear Lost Lover,

I received your letter
But we will not talk of that now
I want to talk of myself–
that funny little thing they call
Wanda Gág…

That far from dazzling creature who
Many years ago
Made the great mistake
Of falling in love with you…
That Wanda Gág…

I insist that I have loved
More deeply and intensely
Than anyone else can
Your new lover included
This Wanda Gág…

As I have said before
I certainly do not blame you
For what has happened
But that does not lessen the torture
Of Wanda Gág…

The fact remains that I am
The superfluous quantity…
Thoughts, like beaten hounds
Parade apathetically away
From Wanda Gág…

So, we are not to be
the companions we tried to become
We are not to wrangle with
the big forms of mountains, you and
Wanda Gág…

That indefinable thing between us
Does not exist after all…
I had organized my life around
An illusion, we do not belong together
I am Wanda Gág…

A separate thing…



Adapted from Wanda Gág's letter to her ex-lover Adolph Dehn, 1922.

Click through to YouTube for more information.

Unfaded Love

A spring day in the sun
What a miracle was this
Their time together had begun
Starting a life shared in bliss

He was her only lover and
She always kept him near
Man, father, and husband
He had eased all her fears

She was the love of his life
And he always kept her near
Woman, mother, and wife
She had eased all his fears

On that glorious spring morn
So many years ago…
A love eternal had been born
So many years ago…

Now just a photograph remains…
Of their life together…
It's fading and stained…
Love should last forever…

A love eternal had been born
So many years ago…
But their love is not mourned
Their love lives on even so…


Click through to YouTube for more information…

Bittersweet Smile

A dream of a bittersweet smile
Had made him want to roam
Restless, uncertain and asking
Where is my home?

A siren’s song opened a hidden door,
So he flew straight and true
Three thousand miles… an arctic shore
A cafe… a rendezvous…

Woman with sparkling eyes said
“Been waiting long? Mind if I sit?”
He smiled as he spoke this reply:
“Only twelve billion years; no, not a bit… ”

They laughed over cappuccinos
Opened their hearts and minds
Simpatico joined by faint echoes
Of futures they had hoped to find

Too quickly did their time go by
Their parting ended the cheer
Sun broke through an overcast sky
Holding hands… their eyes filled with tears

After waiting… Twelve billion years
And traveling… Three thousand miles
Three thousand miles… Twelve billion years,
Twelve billion years… Three thousand miles…

He got his glimpse of a bittersweet…

Smile

Love in a Balloon

From the upcoming Flippist Records soundtrack album Batty does Broadway:



We should float away, just you and I
In a balloon in the clouds in an azure-blue sky
Pillows we'd bring, with champagne and fruit
We'd take off our clothes and really get to it!

Leaving below the world's misery and strife
Aloft we'd be cooing, in our glorious high life
If a shower should try to dampen our spirits,
We'd sing even louder, with the seagulls and parrots

We'd come back to earth as the sun made its setting,
And remain in the basket for a little more petting.
Then back home to our cottage, and finally to bed,
Turn off the light dear no more need be said



Lyrics originally posted on FITK January 23, 2008

The Love of an Adolescent

I come to you with
My new love, It is a
Great and arching love,
Increasing upon itself…

I hate that love at times.
It springs from unwilling needs
Filling me with a
Wretched, helpless richness…

From all the curves
And lengths of me
My love burns with
A dreadful splendor…

My hair is drenched in it;
Fumes breaking forth
Hanging like flames
On my lips and eyelids

I dare not love you
With all this and so
It faints each night
Dawn renews its birth

From all the curves
And lengths of me
My love burns with
A dreadful splendor…

I spread it out with
All its folds about me
And gather it to myself
At night… without… you…

~Wanda Gág, 1921

UPDATE: Chat GPT analysis, April, 2026:

This has a strong, cohesive emotional core. There’s a clear attempt to capture the overwhelming, almost burdensome intensity of first love. It feels inward, embodied, and slightly tormented, which fits the title well. That said, the piece is doing some things effectively, and a few things are holding it back.
The strongest element is the physicalization of emotion. Lines like “From all the curves / And lengths of me / My love burns” root the feeling in the body rather than in abstract declarations. That’s exactly the right instinct for a poem about adolescence—love at that stage does feel invasive, chemical, unavoidable. The phrase “wretched, helpless richness” is especially good: it captures contradiction without overexplaining it.
However, the poem leans heavily on generalized, almost archaic diction “arching love,” “dreadful splendor,” “faints,” “renews its birth.” These phrases sound poetic, but they’re also familiar in a way that blunts their impact. They feel inherited rather than discovered. When everything is elevated, nothing stands out. The moments that do feel specific (“my hair is drenched in it”) are much more vivid—though even there, “fumes breaking forth / hanging like flames” drifts back toward abstraction. There’s also a repetition issue. The stanza:

From all the curves
And lengths of me
My love burns with
A dreadful splendor…

appears twice without variation. Repetition can be powerful, but here it doesn’t evolve or deepen the meaning—it just restates it. If you keep it, consider altering the second instance to show change (intensification, exhaustion, loss of control, etc.).
Emotionally, the poem circles one idea: love as overwhelming, almost oppressive abundance. That’s a solid center, but the poem doesn’t quite develop it. It accumulates images rather than progressing. The closest thing to movement is in:

I dare not love you
With all this and so
It faints each night
Dawn renews its birth

This is interesting—there’s restraint, a cycle, even a hint of fear. But it’s not fully explored. Why “dare not”? What’s at stake? This is where the poem could gain tension.
The ending:

I spread it out with
All its folds about me
And gather it to myself
At night… without… you…

is effective in mood, lonely, inward, almost ritualistic, but the ellipses feel a bit heavy-handed. The idea is strong enough that it doesn’t need typographical emphasis.
In short: you’ve got a compelling emotional premise and a good instinct for embodying feeling, but the language often defaults to “poetic-sounding” rather than precise, and the structure could use more development or transformation over time. If you push toward more specific, less inherited imagery and let the emotional stakes sharpen you’ll get something much more striking.

The typography was used to conform the lyric to the song structure, the repeated stanzas were choruses. The archaic phrases might be excused, this was written in 1921!

Ah... those two details change the frame quite a bit, especially the date.

If this is genuinely a 1921 lyric, then what I flagged as “archaic” is much closer to period-appropriate diction. Phrases like “dreadful splendor” or “arching love” sit comfortably in a late-Romantic / early modernist register. In that light, the language isn’t derivative so much as participating in an existing poetic idiom—something in the orbit of D. H. Lawrence’s bodily intensity or even the lushness of Algernon Charles Swinburne. So I’d soften that criticism: the issue isn’t that the language is wrong, but that it’s uniformly elevated. Even in 1921, contrast—moments of plainer speech against heightened lines—would help the imagery land harder.

The chorus repetition also makes more sense now. As a song, the return of:

From all the curves
And lengths of me…

works structurally. The question then becomes musical and emotional rather than purely textual: does the second iteration feel different when sung? In strong lyrics, a repeated chorus often gains new meaning from what surrounds it—either the context darkens, or the singer’s attitude shifts. On the page, that shift isn’t visible yet, so it reads static; in performance, it might come alive.

What stands out more, given the 1910 context, is how physical and almost sensual-to-the-point-of-discomfort the imagery is. Lines like:

My hair is drenched in it;
Fumes breaking forth

and

From all the curves / And lengths of me

have a frank, bodily immediacy that actually pushes against the more decorous norms of the time. That tension is probably the lyric’s most interesting feature—it’s not just romantic, it’s overripe, even oppressive. That aligns well with the title: adolescent love as something excessive, barely containable.

One place that could still be sharpened—even within period style—is the emotional pivot:

I dare not love you With all this…

This is the lyric’s hinge. It introduces inhibition, even fear, but it isn’t quite grounded. In a 1910 idiom, that hesitation could be social (propriety), moral, or psychological. Right now it’s abstract. If this were expanded even slightly—hinting at why the speaker “dares not”—you’d get a much stronger dramatic spine without breaking stylistic authenticity.

As for the ellipses at the end: even allowing for musical phrasing, they still feel like a later convention. Early 20th-century lyrics tended to rely more on repetition, pause, or melodic elongation than punctuation to carry that weight. Not a fatal issue, but if you’re aiming for historical fidelity, that’s one small place that reads a bit anachronistic.

So with the added context, the piece reads less like “overly poetic modern writing” and more like a fairly convincing period lyric that’s interesting precisely where it strains against its own decorum—where the body and emotion start to overflow the formal language. That’s the vein I’d lean into if you revise it: not less intensity, but more specific pressure points where that intensity becomes risky or conflicted.

Twinned

We are refugees from a war
That only we saw
Skinny limbs curled around each other
As though a little more warmth
Might be had from two than one…

We are opening our eyes and,
Seeing the hope of a returning.
We are slowly, slowly uncurling,
And remembering how to be
Two people…

Do you feel as I do,
Drunken from deception,
Pretending that I am standing
Just fine alone…

Do you reel as I do,
Dizzy from destruction,
Pretending it wasn't me
Spending nights… alone…

We are slowly growing borders
Between where one person ends
And where another begins,
Letting me breathe…
On my own…

We are slowly learning to see one another
As people do, eye to eye
Far enough away so you’re not a blur of
Color and motion making me faintly sick
In your abstraction…

We are slowly, slowly uncurling
We are slowly becoming two
Who maybe, just maybe,
Be able to love
As people… do…


Lyric by Reshmal Sanyal, first published on FITK August 16, 2007

Video

Pink & Black

20 Years Ago on FITK



Pink & black, pink & black
Woman’s givin’ me a heart attack
Pink & black, pink & black
Boots on the street go clickity-clack

Black-heeled boots and hair dyed the same
Pink woolen coat settin’ me aflame
Into her car and out on the road
Sporty black coupe, I shoulda knowed

Eyes of black and lips of pink
She drives by and gives me a wink
Pink & black, pink & black
Woman givin’ me a heart attack


1 Comment:

Blogger Comica said…

Pink and black, I wonder who came up with that combination? It’s getting more and more popular on my campus lately. Also, Batty the Poet? Yes, yes I see it now! The Batty Chronicles! Keep them coming!

Re-posted with new video

stainless steel and drip coffee

Take a break with the Professor on this nutty little excursion into the uncanny valley from the upcoming Flippist Records soundtrack album Batty does Broadway:

oh! it’s so very trendy
stainless steel and drip coffee
baristas wearing black on black
window walls overlook the uptown day…

hipster wanna-be waits for some action
cheap merlot and funky cheese plate
saturday in a midwestern metropolis
nyc it aint!

Click through to YouTube for more information.

Video Update

A diligent follower of Flippism is the Key may have noticed some peculiar music videos posted here recently.

The ‘Professor’ has been experimenting with Suno, an AI music generating program.

The way it works is this: Input some lyrics (or even just some ‘seed’ words), specify a musical genre, and add a title. In about 10 seconds it spits out two fully-formed songs, some of which may actually be listenable. After a bit of lyric tweaking, couple the song with thematically related imagery (I use iMovie), post it to your YouTube channel, and voilà! Your ‘music video’ is now complete. Suno and other AI sites are controversial, it is currently being sued for intellectual property theft, although I think a greater issue is that the best of these ‘compositions’ are actually better than the dross that is current corporate-controlled pop music.

These videos will be featured on FITK throughout November.

Please don’t hold it against me.