Tomorrow Can Pay The Rent

Flannery O’Connor

2012-01-28T17:16:00.000+01:00

I have just been mesmerized by the short stories of FlanneryO'Connor. I laughed out loud while being unsettled to the core, like watchingan episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, times a thousand. Thedark comedy in The Enduring Chill forexample with its perfect circle of events is one of the best things I've everread.

A friend describedher as 'in some odd ways truly strangely innocent.' Author Elizabeth Hardwickdescribed her as 'a plain sort of young, unmarried girl, a little bit sickly.She had a small-town Southern accent . . . whiny. She whined. She was amusing.She was so gifted, immensely gifted.'

She went to bed at 9 and said she was always gladto get there. She gave her mother a mule for Mother’s Day. She created many matriarchs that resembled her motherand killed them off in viciously creative ways. She collected ducks, quail, mail-order swans and... peacocks. She was attracted to the bird by 'instinct' and would send peacock feathers to correspondents and friends.

She was a devout Catholic, andread a lot of theology, she believed it made her writing bolder. The brutalviolence that simmers and erupts in the stories is always surprising.

Like her father she died of lupus, she'd hide herstories from doctors and write when they weren’t looking. She was forced to spend the last 13years of her life at her mother's farm in Milledgeville, most of them oncrutches, her bones and joints ravaged by the disease. She took huge amounts ofcortisone, a drug that possibly influenced her work, she said it 'makes youthink night and day.'

Describing herself-portrait with a pheasant cock, she wrote: 'I very much like the look ofthe pheasant cock. He has horns and a face like the Devil. The self-portraitwas made . . . after a very acute siege. . . . I was taking cortisone whichgives you what they call a moon face and my hair had fallen out to a largeextent due to the high fever, so I looked pretty much like the portrait. When Ipainted it, I didn't look either at myself in the mirror or at the bird. I knewwhat we both looked like.'

Her writing life existed within narrow borders, 'betweenthe house and the chicken yard,' not much for a writer much to work with. When asked why she wrote, she replied, 'Because I’m good atit.' She found sickness 'more instructive than a long trip to Europe.'She attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop and studiously acceptedadvice on her work, revising and rewriting. In the archives of Georgia College there are 378 pages of a novel Why Do the Heathen Rage including 17 versions of a porch scene.

Biographer Brad Gooch said: I think the discipline of her writingbecomes ... almost inspiring. She developed lupus when she was 25, she liveduntil she was 39. And in that period, she kept up this regimen that she hadbegun at the Iowa Writers' Workshop of writing every morning for three hours,even if it meant sitting in front of a blank page. ...
When she was forced by lupus to move back to the South andlive on a dairy farm with her mother in Georgia, one of the first things shedid besides getting very serious about working on her stories was to order apeacock.

Eventually she had 39 peacocks. ... And I think that she wasvery conscious that the peacock was this gawky, comic bird. I think sheidentified with the peacock for that reason. The peacock squawked all night andannoyed people, ate her mother's flowers, and yet, at this certain wilfulmoment, opened its tail and revealed what she called this 'map of theuniverse.'
So, I think it really stood in a way for this kind oftransfiguration that would take place for her spiritually but also in the beautyof her writing. ... She definitely made an effort to make the peacock her ownpersonal logo.

She was considered a minor writer at the time of her death. Her Collected Stories was published in the early 1970s and got aposthumous National Book Award.

Inspired by how she dealt with her illness, Gooch says: shefinally was nobody's victim. ... Everything we think of as a Flannery O'Connorstory came after she had been diagnosed as having lupus and settled in to lifein the South. You get the sense that this was almost a magical thinking, whereshe thought that writing these stories was keeping her alive.

Hundreds of doctoral dissertationsand critical analyses have been written as well as many dozens of books parsingher every line and ruminating on grace, redemption, evil, love, transcendenceand apocalyptic power. She has become, as Gooch points out in his biography, 'aone-woman academic industry.'

The Joy Of The Black Crowes

2012-01-22T19:26:00.000+01:00

The Black Crowes talk about the joy of their music and criticise Woodstock '99, where hate mongering bands inspired scenes of violence, rape, fire and an abrupt ending of the show. (footage is of a Black Crowes gig, not Woodstock '99)

D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider

2012-01-15T14:43:00.003+01:00

A dissident, an outsider, and the subject of a very good biography by John Worthen.

I’ve never been able to read much D.H. Lawrence.I’ve gotten halfway through the odd book, and though the short story Daughters of the Vicar wowed me, theother short stories with their mix of nature-wonder and sense of soap operalost me.

An ambiguous figure, he cuts rather pathetic, having to benursed by those he took advantage of when falling ill, and his writing wasbased on his direct experience which offended those he portrayed. On the otherhand, Ican only be in awe at how determined he was to resist conformity. Thoughliterary London was impressed by his potential and ready to take him into itsbosom, he rejected them in his single-sighted ambition to 'break himself offfrom his fellow man and write about instinctual senses, which took him away fromthe land of chill winds, boiled puddings, and coal mines for countries wherelizards basked in the sun, where he hoped natural man - naked, uninhibitedprevailed. He travelled with a restlessness that ought to have killed him andeventually did (at 44).' (Anthony Burgess)

He had a severe hatred of

England

and couldn’t wait to getaway. He was forced back during the war and due to these emotions he wassuspected of being a spy, in the words of Anthony Burgess again, Lawrence felt that, ‘England had betrayed herself. Sheturned herself into a pewing, dribbling monster of sanctimonious commercialism.

England

had become a lion among nations, a roaring beast, theEngland of Chaucer and Shakespeare, of Fielding and William Blake, that now shouldbecome dead mutton.’

Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be Keith Richards

2012-01-09T00:24:00.002+01:00

‘Life’ is an amazing read

… that’s actually already been accepted

… universally.

On writing songs…
I neverfeel I write them, I'm just an antenna and the songs are already zoomingthrough the room, and I hope to pick up something. I sit with a guitar or atthe piano and play my favourite Buddy Holly or Otis Redding songs and, with abit of luck, something happens and you're off on your own track.

It’s great that the inspirational Otis Redding covered their namemaking hit Satisfaction with soulful horns and Otis’s unmistakably black voice.Keith heard it and thought that was how he actually wanted the song to sound,that’s how it was in his head. It was the same thing when other soul legendsdid Stones songs. All the Stones wanted was to be the best blues covers band inLondon - recreating the sound of Chuck Berry or Muddy Waters as best they could. It wasonly ever about the music – and that’s why they’ve gone longer than anyoneelse.

In order to make the band more than a flash in the pan whose popularity would fizzle out after a couple of years, their manager insisted theyneeded to write songs and randomly picked Keith and Mick to be the songwriters.They were literally locked in a room overnight until they produced something. Randomnesslike that is a beautiful thing.

The Painted Veil

2012-01-03T22:48:00.002+01:00

I came across a review that read: ‘Was there ever an author so forgotten...? Why have we forgotten Somerset Maugham? The themes here are really very contemporary and the style is anything but dated…’

I felt ignorant on learning about Maugham only recently - but then I've learned that many English people don’t know him. He teases in his work that English literary society discarded him as a lot of his writing was 'entertainment'. I get the impression he's better known in America, perhaps because he lived there for a while and became a popular figure in Hollywood, many of his stories were made into films with him doing an introduction at the start.

Edward Norton and Naomi Watts
in a recent mmoovie adaptation

The Painted Veil is an exquisitely told story. Themes of love and beauty, nature and nurture, charity and society twist and pull the lives of a set of tragic characters, and in doing so I was reminded of 'Cyrano de Bergerac' (my favourite story!). It seems to me that the best kind of story isn't moved along by some accident like a driver losing control of a vehicle or a badly timed phone call interrupting an important conversation, but when an impossible situation is brought about by the irrationality of human nature, you feel for the characters and want the story to work out some other way but however you work it, there can be no other outcome.

This just ain’t rock n’ roll

2011-12-29T11:32:00.000+01:00

Rounding off the year with a seasonal rant. A nine-year-oldrelative of mine now has a kindle (she also has a digi-cam, an iphone and otherthings I don’t know what they’re called). She also has a room full of books.What is the kindle for? ‘Everyone else in school has one.’ Are nine-year-oldsreally doing so much travelling and having such a problem with transporting alltheir reading material that they have kindles? Something is getting lost. Savethe children!

I’m just a little irritable after the Christmas period with allthose TV adverts I was subjected to – ‘You know what it’s like when you’reon the road without the net and the kids are going crazy wanting their facebookand youtube videos…’ That was actually said on a mobile phone advert. You’re without the net and the kids wanttheir youtube videos ?? It reminds me that I gave a friend a beloved bookof mine recently and she was enjoying it but had to skip to the end to find outwhat would happen. ‘It was a shame,’ she said, ‘because I was really enjoying itand now I’ve spoilt it for myself.’ It’s these five minute youtubeentertainment fixes rewiring our brains!

This year I worked for a holiday home agency, and we bustedour arses making everything perfect and clean so people could come to London and enjoy aholiday, and they would call up to say the wifi connection wasn’t working. I'd go to see them and the whole family, kids n' all, were sitting there with their laptops. You’re on holiday! Go to the goddam British Museum! We’ve stolenstuff from all over the world for you to see!

Don’t worry, I’m not really ranting, or if I am, I’m goingsomewhere more interesting now. I just read the groooovy autobiography of KeithRichards. Here was a boy with nothing. Without those electronic-gadget distractions hedeveloped a love of music and went to a shop everyday to play on a guitar thathe yearned to own.

Does that not tie in well at all? Think about it. On the onehand you have that. On the other you have a little girl in a room of videoplayers and electronic games. Keith wouldown that guitar one day dammit, and when he did, he would cherish it likeit was an extension of himself. He's a soulful guy, it's good to yearn sometimes.

Keith and Mick Jagger met each other because Mick had an old bluesrecord under his arm at a train station and they got talking. Imagine that, oneof the most important meet-ups for twentieth century music and it was becauseone saw the other holding a piece of music. Could that happen today? Like-minded people these dayshardly have a record shop or bookshop to meet in.

I recently discovered an old bookshop on Archway Road near my place. It looked like a nasty old thrift shop from the outside. I poked my nose in and it was beautiful, packed to the ceiling with antiquarian hardcovers and walls of classic pulp fiction... I picked up a lovely old James M Cain penguin and couldn’t wait to read this old dusty thing in my hand. I like the thought of all those great minds and writers sharing space and having their work in an old second hand bookshop. If their works are taken from our sight with no where to go but to float in cyberspace becoming more and more hazy we move closer to a world with no soul.

...

...

...

...

(Two weeks later)... Wow, Serenade is a bloody amazing book! Those old penguins don't have a description on the back of the novel and I went in blind. I never had any idea where this story was going until literally the last shocking page. Brilliant!

Midnight Caller

2011-12-18T10:32:00.000+01:00

200th post! Aptly I’ll bewriting about something that’s been with me from a very young age I’verecently rediscovered.

All my life I’ve loved the noir genre. I saw The Two Jakes when I was about 10 and had no idea what washappening but thought it was great, the style, the delivery of darkly poeticlines, the way a dame emerges from the night and you know she's trouble... I went on to spend my adolescent years on a dietof James Ellroy novels and all the classic old films. One of my earliestenjoyments of the (neo) noir style was the brilliantly cool late night action dramaMidnight Caller.

Here was an ex-cop late night talk-radio DJ in Frisco who gotinvolved in the lives and dramas of the people who called in, and murder,mystery and romance was often on the cards for Jack Killian – ‘The Night Hawk’, played by the charismatic Gary Cole. At the end of each episode, Jack would talk into the microphone, cigarette inhand, about the events that had unfolded and what he had learned, and then saythe immortal words, ‘Goodnight America,wherever you are.’ What more could a 10 year old ask for? It was dark, moody,everyone had great hair, and the jazzy soundtrack was perfect.

Then it disappeared for 20 years. I was always looking around, butno DVD release, no repeats on television, no Midnight Caller. All I could dowas yearningly whistle its theme tune, there wasn’t much else to do in thesuburbs of Harrow.

But I recently found downloads on the internet. It’s greatnostalgia. Ok, it’s dated, but some of it is still very good. It’s a strange mixof styles – there’s great over the top noir drama, fun action episodes, heavyhanded social commentary, and some well delivered tragic drama.

A couple of choice lines, theme tune, and an ending monologue

Download links

The Burglar Who Entertained

2011-12-11T22:58:00.001+01:00

I picked up my first Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery a few years ago. Browsingthe crime section I came across these great eye-catching covers. I’d neverheard of Lawrence Block and gave them a go… and now I’m on the last one :(

Bernie Rhodenbarr is an antiquarian bookseller gentlemanburglar who usually trips over a dead body and becomes the centre of a wellwritten, twisty-mystery – though a couple of the stories are a bit formulaicwith an anti-climactic Columbo ending – ‘I will now tell you exactly whathappened. How did I work it out? I’m very very clever.’

What makes them fun and a little tongue in cheek is that Berniehimself is a fan of books and the crime genre, and the stories ofteninvolve uncovering rare editions of Raymond Chandler, the realisation ofthe rising value of early Sue Grafton, and what would happen next in an Agatha Christienovel.

By luck the first one I read was The Burglar Who Traded TedWilliams which paints Bernie in a more sympathetic light, he’s a reformed Burglar in this one who’s drawnback to the criminal life because it’s hard to run a bookshop these days and… he’saddicted to burglary. If I’d have picked up another one first I don’t know ifI’d have stuck with Bernie. Unless it was The Burglar Who Thought He WasBogart. Because it's my pick of the bunch.

There was one film adaptation, the gentleman burglar was played byWhoopi Goldberg in a whacky 80s comedy. Block was unimpressed and after this wrotethe stories in such a way that they were unfilmable – and they’re muchbetter for it, what a blessing! Now each book had a theme which added another layer ofquality – The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian, The Burglar Who Liked To Quote Kipling,The Burglar In The Rye…Block has done his research and creates clever histories surrounding well knownsubjects which makes you question what you thought you knew.

Back to the crime section then.

Those Good-Looking 90s Indie flicks

2011-12-03T02:31:00.004+01:00

Tim Roth in Bodies, Rest & Motion

I just re-watched an old favourite of mine: the not very well known Bodies, Rest & Motion (1993, starring Phoebe Cates, Bridget Fonda, Tim Roth and Eric Stolz), and thought I’d do a shout out to those Good-Looking 90s Indie flicks. That genre name I just made up is quite a vague one. Let me clarify. At the end of the 90s, a Vanity Fair article labelled the flood of Good-Looking Violent Hipster flicks that appeared after the success of Reservoir Dogs (True Romance, Killing Zoe, 2 days in the Valley and Kalifornia come to mind) ‘Scuzz’ movies; and the article also said something like, ‘If in these films, Good-Looking young Americans sit about smoking and shooting each other, then in films like Singles (1992), they sit about smoking and talking about relationships.’

Bridget Fonda in Singles

That’s what I’m talking about, they invariably had Bridget Fonda, Parker Posey and Eric Stolz in them, they had slow stories, cool dialogue and interesting characters. Singles was one of the best. I’ve been watching it since I was a teenager and I take something very different from it as I get older. It’s great when the films we grow up with do that instead of becoming dated and corny.

Other Good-Looking 90s Indie flicks that come to mind are Hal Hartley’s Trust, Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy, Jon Favreau’s Swingers, Beautiful Girls (1996), Sleep With Me (1994) (though I haven’t seen that one in years)… actually I can’t think of that many.

Jon Favreau with Vince Vaughn in Swingers

There were a few bad apples like Ben Stiller directing Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke in the bland and glitzy Reality Bites, which had the good-looking people but no script or heart.

The script for Bodies, Rest & Motion was written by Roger Hedden based on his own play, and has solid characters and a story that moves along unassumingly. Shame it’s not better known but quiet films usually aren’t. A nice piece of trivia is that there is a special thanks to Harvey Keitel in the end credits. He was not directly involved in the film but he called Tim Roth (who had just starred in Reservoir Dogs and was being offered big money for a big budget film) and told him not to take the money but make the film he wanted to make, so he stayed with the project. Another amazing bit of trivia I just discovered is that legendary easy rider Peter Fonda has a cameo, riding along the open road on his motorcycle and stopping to exchange a few words with Roth. Strange for him to be in a film where his daughter has quite a raunchy sex scene but that’s Hollywood for you.

I love Tina Fey

2011-11-26T16:52:00.001+01:00

NaNoWriMo day 20

2011-11-20T18:44:00.005+01:00

These are my NaNoWriMo stats. Not very impressive but I am determined to have written 50,000 words by the end of November. I will not fail 3 years running!

What I like about nanowrimo writing – writing as many words as you can in a day – is that you are unable to be a perfectionist, you cannot strive for the perfect sentence, you don’t beat yourself up about how bad something you’ve done sounds.

Encouraging pep-talks come throughout the month from a wide range of authors, here's part of Tom Robbins’ Pep Talk (whose book I've been mentioning in the last couple of posts).

(full pep talk is here and pep talk archive is here)

Dear NaNoWriMo participant,

When you sit down to begin that novel of yours, the first thing you might want to do is toss a handful of powdered napalm over both shoulders—so as to dispense with any and all of your old writing teachers, the ones whose ghosts surely will be hovering there, saying such things as, “Adverbs should never be…”, or “A novel is supposed to convey…”, et cetera. Enough! Ye literary bureaucrats, vamoose!

Rules such as “Write what you know,” and “Show, don’t tell,” while doubtlessly grounded in good sense, can be ignored with impunity by any novelist nimble enough to get away with it. There is, in fact, only one rule in writing fiction: Whatever works, works.

Ah, but how can you know if it’s working? The truth is, you can’t always know… you just have to sense it, feel it, trust it.

So you think that you're a failure, do you?

2011-11-13T22:09:00.003+01:00

...Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free

Dr Robbins

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

November: nanowrimo time

2011-11-08T18:11:00.002+01:00

It's that time of year again. Write a novel in a month month. Today I read a pep talk from NaNoWriMo participant turned best-selling author, Erin Morgenstern, and she talks about some of the advantages of the NaNoWriMo challenge.

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

2011-11-08T17:41:00.006+01:00

As the cold dark part of November creeps, I have been reading Tom Robbins' whimsically written Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, the story of Sissy Hankshaw, a hitchhiker with gloriously large thumbs.

Purpose? Purposes are for animals with a hell of a lot more dignity than the human race. Just hop on that strange torpedo and ride it wherever it's going.
Dr Robbins

Pearl Jam 20

2011-10-30T22:12:00.007+01:00

Cameron Crowe has made a great Pearl Jam film to celebrate the band’s 20 years together. An amazing story – they were thrown together by the tragic death of Mother Love Bone frontman Andrew Wood, recorded some songs and became an overnight phenomenon (a story that I presented to my English class age 16 – sigh).

I was a couple of years late catching on, but I remember a friend lending me his cassette tape so I could hear what all the fuss was about, and I still remember my reaction to those first few electric chords that bang out at the start of the Ten album – I’ve never been so impressed by any music on a first listen before or since. And I jumped on the bandwagon.

They looked great, they sounded great, and I always wondered why images of them disappeared and their sound became less easy on the ear like they were purposely stepping away from the limelight. There was actually an explanation for this. Even though they looked like born rockstars destined for superstardom, they were just ordinary guys expecting to play small clubs. The music was sincere and emotional, but after the attack of fame they stopped writing such revealing songs and wanted to become a more faceless band. Eddie Veddar explained, ‘This person loves your music, this other person hates you and your music, this other person loves you so much he wants to kill you…’ Fair dos.

Finally got to see them live last year. Good times.

Midnight in Paris - Pastime Paradise

2011-10-24T18:55:00.010+02:00

I'm so glad that Midnight in Paris is a great film. Everyone loves to critique Woody and his films, so that's not what I'm here to do. I love this guy, didn't much like anything he did in the last 5 years and thought his touch had gone, and I'm happy to be proved wrong.

A nice little story about dreamers who long for 'classic' times past, which I can relate to. I often think I should have been born in a time before traffic, TV adverts, X-Factor, jabbering radio DJs, Hollywood remakes, digitally-sampled synth music and Lorraine Pascale. But hasn't man always yearned for a more innocent earlier time?

I celebrate by listing my favourite 5 in no order:

Mighty Aphrodite (1995)

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Manhattan (1979)

Love and Death (1975)

Stardust Memories (1980)

(Oh... and Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989) and Midnight in Paris?)

The name's Maugham...

2011-10-13T00:23:00.011+02:00

One last post on what an interesting character this man is.

Maugham published Ashenden in 1928, a group of short stories based on his experience as a British espionage agent during World War I. For the first time, a spy was portrayed as gentlemanly, sophisticated, and aloof. Ian Fleming, later a friend of Maugham, said that Ashenden influenced his own writing of spy stories.

From Somerset Maugham - World Traveler, Famed Storyteller by Craig Showalter

So it could be said that James Bond is based on him! They're an enjoyable read. Just finished 'The Hairless Mexican', a particularly good one, and a great title.

You are more authentic the more you resemble what you’ve dreamed of being

2011-09-22T10:51:00.008+02:00

From The Yellow Streak, a short story about a cowardly act of a 'secretly-half-cast Englishman who hates half-casts':

He had been a success. He played games well, he was strong and a good athlete... He was an asset at parties and and his cheeriness made things go. He ought to have been happy and he was wretched.

Further reading of the master shows the wretchedness in only seeing the wretchedness of people. Whatever you're trying to do, its ineffectual without love, love for what you do and the people living their lives around you. And Maugham is a perfect example, I've delighted in dipping my nose into his pages every spare moment I've had lately, and what's blatantly obvious is his sheer love of the simple act of storytelling.

Pettiness and grandeur, malice and charity, hatred and love

2011-09-03T12:45:00.022+02:00

Came across this post on tumblr:

Ladies and Gentleman, the real Great Britain.

Can all of my overseas followers just look at this? This is the UK I’m a part of.

This is the human race I fucking believe in.

I saw those pictures today and they almost made me sob. This is highly touching wonderful to see.

I talked with my co-worker about it and we wondered if this would actually happen in Germany. If people would just gather to clean up their city’s streets. I highly doubt it, to be honest…

THIS!!!!

Another reason to move to the UK.

I love the pictures, but as for the quote above it, instead of admitting fault with the country, here appears that typical patriotic, ‘We’re so great and quirky,’ attitude, and the person manages to insult all of Germany in the process. ‘Would this happen in Germany? I highly doubt it.’ ?? How did all of Germany get involved in this? And how does what’s happened here somehow make England better? Anyway... it sure does encapsulate both sides of the UK.

With the looting happening in London recently, it’s hard to believe in the best of people. I heard this said recently... ‘Moliere loved people,’ and thought it was a lovely sentiment. To genuinely have a fondness for your fellow man, to love the people surrounding you. With a sentiment like that, you're sure to live your life happily and serenely. It made me sad that no one will ever say the same of me. I'd like to like people but can't accept the romantic way most of us choose to see ourselves.

This month I discovered the brilliant William Somerset Maugham, reading The Moon And Sixpence - a wonderful short novel - I'm now determined to devour everything by him, in this book is the lamentable conclusion:

…I think I was more disappointed in her. I expected then people to be more of a piece than I do now, and I was distressed to find so much vindictiveness in so charming a creature. I did not realize how motley are the qualities that go to make up a human being. Now I am well aware that pettiness and grandeur, malice and charity, hatred and love, can find place side by side in the same human heart.

An interesting aside is that this novel is loosely based on the life of Gauguin, the central character a man who forsakes his family and all of society's rules to pursue his art. However, I learned on the BBC's great show on The Impressionists recently, that the true life scenario was rather different. Gauguin's wife took her children away with her to Scandinavia to be with her family. Gauguin followed them and tried to be a tarpaulin salesman to support them, he failed at being a salesman and was told to leave. He returned to Paris in his forties, alone, but free to pursue his painting.

Posted by: Grumpy old git

Adaptation

2011-08-03T11:11:00.008+02:00

Saw Adaptation last night for the first time in years. I felt a strange sensation - I felt… proud that this is one of my favourite films. So good. Combining Susan Orlean’s wistful narration from her novel, The Orchid Thief:

There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.

… the fictional Kaufman’s musings on existence, baldness and writing:

To begin… To begin… How to start? I’m hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin. Okay, so I need to establish the themes. Maybe a banana-nut. That’s a good muffin.

…and ideas about fiction, films and adaptations, at the end the film idiosyncratically serves up a dollop of sex, drugs, violence, chases and popsong, which is probably how Charlie's brother, Donald, would end it. Isn't that what most film viewers want to see? On the other hand, Charlie asks for Donald's help because he doesn't know how to end it himself, I guess sometimes you just have to settle on any kind of ending because trying to complete some perfect piece of art that you want to be a microcosm on the universe will only drive you mad.

There are so many links and layers, each theme is like a tiny atom desperate to connect with something else. And it’s just fun - confusingly playing with fiction and reality…

(Below be spoilers)

‘The Orchid Thief’ is actually a best-selling book by Susan Orlean (who is made into a fictional character, becoming Laroche’s lover and partner in a drug production operation), the film is actually based on writer Charlie Kaufman’s struggle to adapt it; and fictional sibling Donald Kaufman was nominated for an Academy Award with Charlie Kaufman…

Brilliant.

A Writer's Life

2011-07-15T22:35:00.004+02:00

Recently read another two writers' biographies. And I'm wondering, why this current obsession? And I came across this old blog post:

I’ve spent my time

dwelling on the past

fretting over the future

moaning about the weather

I imagine myself

in another place

when sitting around

or falling asleep

i never realised where i was

savoured a gulp of fresh air

the crunch of autumn leaves

warmth under bed covers

There's meaning in the process

Less in worrying about the end result of things

...which could be why I'm more impressed by stories behind authors and ideas more often than the outcome. It ain't the thing you fling, it's the fling itself.

I picked up a glossy pictured, wax-paged book on Mary Shelley in one of those bargain book stores. I haven't brought myself to read the end yet. Her life was predictably tragic, the miscarriages and deaths-in-infancy, her husband blew up, and with the death of Lord Byron in Greece, all of her circle had deceased before her and she returned to England after living in many exotic locations abroad. I'm nearing the end of the book and thought this had all happened over half a century, when the author quotes Mary saying, 'And I'm only 26.' !

Hemingway & Gellhorn

Ernest Hemingway: A Writer's Life by Catherine Reef was a very interesting read (and a refreshingly straight forward one after all that Peter-Ackroyd-exuberance). And yes, this was ten times more fascinating than fiction. This guy was crazy like a rockstar. I won't list all the fascinating things he did and was in his life. Strangely enough, a more bizarre and relatively banal anecdote sticks in my head more than anything else...

His third wife, Martha Gellhorn, was a war correspondent and novelist in her own right. Hemingway was on a downer-period and she encouraged him to get off his arse and participate in war journalism. The paper she worked for could only afford to employ one war correspondent, so he approached that very paper and said, 'I'm Hemingway. Employ me.' So they did. And they fired her. Don't quite have the word to describe my reaction to that, naturally the marriage didn't last much longer afterward. Nice short tumblr-tribute to Martha Gellhorn: One hard-boiled lady, here.

Watching your eyes watching things go by outside

2011-07-10T19:25:00.005+02:00

Hannah & Gabi performed by Evan Dando. I love this song. Wanting to recreate that opening sliding chord was a big reason I learned to play the guitar aaalll those years ago

last word on realities

2011-07-06T10:58:00.024+02:00

The world is filled with invisible realities. But, if people do not see or hear, then these realities do not exist.

William Segal, a student of Gurdjieff, and later D.T. Suzuki

My Space

2011-06-24T01:34:00.004+02:00

We don’t need this!

We got pride!

We got dignity!

We got art!

We got... Flamenco!

Fantastic scene from Happy Go Lucky.

Send Him To Outer Space

2011-06-23T00:33:00.009+02:00

Got my first week off this year and had a very nice holiday. In space.
..enjoying the exotic landscape

...chilling on the black beaches
..seeing the National Park

Art pieces appeared that I saw recently in Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces. As it happens, this is where a lot of the film was shot. The artist is César Manrique, who was a big influence on the planning regulations in Lanzarote. 'He recognised its tourist potential and lobbied successfully to encourage sympathetic development of tourism. One aspect of this is the lack of high rise hotels on the island. Those that are there are in keeping with the use of traditional colours in their exterior decoration.' He died in a car accident near his Lanzarote home in 1992.

I love it when that happens

2011-06-23T00:25:00.001+02:00

Beauty of Humanity Movement

2011-06-05T12:48:00.014+02:00

Realities, realities…

(continues to be my theme as I read more at the moment than I have in the last few years - it's all those hours on the London Underground)

Read part of Ackroyd on William Blake - he did visions see

And some short stories by Hemingway. (though Hemingway blew his brains out, I think it’s too easy to class him as a suicide, his mental health and eyesight were deteriorating and he received ‘electroconvulsive therapy as many as 15 times, then in January 1961 he was released in ruins.’) Hemingway’s running theme in the short stories I've been reading seems to be isolation. I was especially impressed by Soldier's Home, about a boy returning to his family completely disconnected after war, Krebs' mother ask him, “Don't you love your mother, dear boy?” Krebs replies, “No.”

Who are all these people we share our day with? Smiling and frowning on the tube. The harder you try and understand someone the harder they are to understand.

I recently got around to reading Johnathan Franzen's The Corrections, it’s been a while since I’ve read a narrative with such a god-like point of view, telling you what the characters are made of and why they do and say things. I’ve never been one for this kind of style, because who are we to presume what goes on in people and their motives? Do we even know why we tell little white lies and have moments of Schadenfraude? But I did enjoy this read as it was a very well executed study of five family members and how they interact with each other on the outside, and all the workings on the inside, things that other people have no clue about, even if you spend your lives them.

But what a sweet fantasy it would be to bypass all that and truly connect with another person, to make The Connection

(I have a new book in my favourites!) It’s because of these kinds of thoughts that I was happy to discover Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb.

Fascinated with Vietnam and soup junky that I am, I had to buy this book after reading the tagline: They say that the history of Vietnam can be found in a bowl of Phở.

Gibb manages to get inside a culture and people that were so closed to me and seemed to live on another level of reality. ‘As (the character’s) stories gradually unfurl, each adds a new layer to another largely untold story: the story of a modern Vietnam.’ That may sound like a cheesy review, but I love a book that can tell a private story that is a microcosm of something so much larger

Can a lone writer capture a meaningful part of the universe?

Sometimes, I think, they can.

I just had a look at Gibb’s website and one of her Phở recommendations is Thanh Binh in Camden! I’ll be sampling this shortly, can’t think of a better way of honouring the reading of a great book.

...And just saw a very sweet youtube clip about Gibb being given funds quite randomly to write her first novel, and how she passed on the good Karma, providing funds to a young man to realise his dream of opening his own Phở restaurant.

Casablanca

2011-06-05T12:24:00.010+02:00

A random memory came to mind, just over a year ago I finally saw this classic on the big screen, a lovely little cinema in Prenzlauerberg called the Lichtblick-Kino. They would show it at midnight every Saturday actually. Good onions.

Genius

2011-05-11T00:12:00.009+02:00

It’s a few years ago now that I used to live with the Prof. One book that used to stare at me from his strained shelves was:

Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment by James Gaines

And just recently, thanks to my local library :) I finally read it. This book is wonderful and I’d recommend it to anyone. Music and history novices like myself included.

The premise is: one evening in 1747, King of Prussia Friedrich the Great invited 'Old Bach' to the Sanssouci in Potsdam, where he gave him a near impossible musical challenge in what seemed to be a sport in humiliating an old fashioned, out of favour has-been. Bach needed almost mathematical musicality to improvise the task successfully. Friedrich (the GLORIOUS hero philosopher King, as we learned to talk about him as Tour Guides) then asked of Bach for a piece even more complex, and Bach conceded that he’d have to get back to him. He went away and succeeded in writing 'A Musical Offering'.

Gaines spins the tale so well, narrating the lives of the two very different lives up to the night where the Philosopher King, proud member of the Enlightenment movement summoned a pious composer who believed was that music should be an expression of the love of God.

Friedrich’s life was stranger than fiction. As a child he loved the French language, poetry and playing the flute. His tyrannical father would beat him if he found him indulging in such activities, and after an attempted escape from his father's continuous beatings and public humiliations, he imprisoned him and forced him to watch the execution of his friend and accomplice. Friedrich was ‘born in captivity’, becoming a very elusive character after that event, pleasing his father into reaffirming his position as heir to the throne, becoming a successful soldier on the battlefield and building a cultural centre in Berlin for musicians, philosophers and the like; then claiming his miraculous victory in the Seven Years War was entirely cheerless and losing interest in music completely. He was a controversial figure after his death and the next king, his nephew, built an obelisk for the soldiers who served him so well, (commenting) ‘about whom his fucking memoirs say nothing.’

Cello Suites

Though Gaines says he was disappointed at what a ‘crab’ he discovered Bach was, Bach cuts a sympathetic figure, outliving a huge number of his children; and a romantic one too, without an education – he defied aesthetic theory and trends of the time, his music complex to the point of algebraic, challenging himself until his last day with musical experimentation.

When it came to music, Bach would deconstruct, throw different styles and cultures together, along with the kitchen sink. I wasn’t going to go into what this book was about, as it should be read, but what possessed me to write this post at all was the sense of Bach’s genius that comes through in one of Gaines’ final lines, where Bach is spoken of by one of his contemporaries. It takes me back to an old blog post when I was feeling very humble as a writer, feeling that we should stick to what we know, and that a need to believe that a genius like Shakespeare who could alone encompass so much on his own was vanity.

(paraphrasing)

‘In his last decade, he was pursuing more plainly than ever before, his ultimate goal for music, a demonstration of identity in variety that would embody insight into the depths of the wisdom of the world.'

Realities

2011-04-13T15:07:00.014+02:00

I do love my local library, something I missed while abroad - they just have everything, and if they don't they order it from another library for free, and apologise that it'll take a couple of days! I've been drawn in by writers' biographies. Finished Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte, and the brief lives of the Bronte family is more tragic than any fiction. Charlotte stoically outlived her other five siblings, dutifully looked after her ill father, visited London and modestly enjoyed the fame Jane Eyre brought her, she married her father's curate - and in letters sounded very content about the relationship - and died 9 months later while with child.

This week I saw Polly Teale's Bronte at the Tricycle, took a while to get going but became a very affecting drama, presenting the sibling-relationships as suffering, frustrating and frayed; very far removed from what Gaskell's choice of Charlotte's letters would have me believe.

As with Teale's take on Jean Rhys' life in her play After Mr Rochester, Teale mixed her subjects' realities and their fictional characters, exploring how the first possibly inspired the latter. One idea was that Jane Eyre's 'mad woman' locked in the attic was all the sexuality, yearning, madness and frustration that conservative Charlotte refused to let herself adhere to. That this character inspired Jean Rhys to write Wide Sargasso Sea, giving the woman in the attic a background and third dimension, is a wonderful notion of a great woman and writer inspiring another who had a completely different life and experience.

Bronte wrote to Gaskell: Do you, who have so many friends, - so large a circle of acquaintance, - find it easy, when you sit down to write, to isolate yourself from all those ties, and their sweet associations, so as to be your own woman, uninfluenced or swayed by the consciousness of how your work may affect other minds; what blame or what sympathy it may call forth? Does no luminous cloud ever come between you and the severe Truth, as you know it in your own secret and clear-seeing soul? In a word, are you never tempted to make your characters more amiable than the Life, by the inclination to assimilate your thoughts to the thoughts of those who always feel kindly, but sometimes fail to see justly?

Teale's Charlotte lamented, 'We write because we have lived so little.' The last two writers' biographies I read were on people whom - the biographers say - failed at life. Carole Angier's wonderfully in depth Jean Rhys: Life and Work describes Rhys as only successful in her work, failing to connect to her daughter, family and others in her life, and was also physically abusive to one of her husbands. Rhys explored mental illness in her work and the question was often asked in real life, it seems her family wanted to have her committed at one point.

Interestingly, Rhys's first husband - Willem Johan Marie Lenglet - a spy in the War, was caught by the Nazis, and not only survived Sachsenhausen concentration camp but also the infamous death march at the end of the war as the Nazis tried to destroy evidence of war crimes.

Peter Ackroyd's Poe: A Life Cut Short tells the dark life of Edgar Allan Poe, who was surprisingly calculating in his obsession with the macabre. He was said to know what sells, and it was strangely later that he began to imitate the crazed characters of his fiction, often found lying in the gutter by his endless string of reluctant and long-suffering employers.

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

Ulalume. Read by Jeff Buckley

His 'mysterious' death - where he disappeared for two days before popping up in a bar rambling in an alcohol induced madness and collapsing - doesn't seem so mysterious as the actions fit in with his crazy week-long drinking binges. His life though was theatrical and strange, and certainly wouldn't be out of place within the catalogue of his famous stories.

It all brings up thoughts of all the people and their own private realities, the different ways we all see the world while co-existing, most of us floating under the 'mad' radar.

Possible themes for next month's post: asparagus.

Brontë Country

2011-03-24T02:50:00.016+01:00

How can I be blogging? Because I'm on the Night Shift (sung to the tune of Liz Lemon singing Night Cheese)

Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall... classics from the library of English Literature. I'm in the middle of Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte (while I'm on the Night Shift), and was surprised to learn there were many more Brontes than the famous three sisters. The northern landscape was particularly grim, living conditions weren't up to much and all the siblings died of tuberculosis at a young age.

The oldest two sisters, Maria and Elizabeth died at the ages of 11 and 10 respectively. They suffered hunger, cold, and privation at Cowan Bridge School. The death of Maria inspired the part of Jane Eyre that absolutely broke my heart as a kid, the death of Helen Burns.

Liz Taylor played Helen Burns in the 1944 adaptation of Jane Eyre, with Orsen Wells

(Maria was) an object of merciless dislike to one of them (one of the mistresses)... depicted as Miss Scatcherd in Jane Eyre, whose real name I will be merciful enough not to disclose (Miss Andrews). I need hardly say, that Helen Burns is as exact a transcript of Maria Brontë as Charlotte’s wonderful power of reproducing character could give. Her heart, to the latest day on which we met, still beat with unavailing indignation at the worrying and the cruelty to which her gentle, patient, dying sister had been subjected by this woman. Not a word of that part of “Jane Eyre” but is a literal repetition of scenes between the pupil and the teacher. Those who had been pupils at the same time knew who must have written the book from the force with which Helen Burns’ sufferings are described. They had, before that, recognised the description of the sweet dignity and benevolence of Miss Temple as only a just tribute to the merits of one whom all that knew her appear to hold in honour; but when Miss Scatcherd was held up to opprobrium they also recognised in the writer of Jane Eyre an unconsciously avenging sister of the sufferer.
One of their fellow-pupils, among other statements even worse, gives me the following:—The dormitory in which Maria slept was a long room, holding a row of narrow little beds on each side, occupied by the pupils; and at the end of this dormitory there was a small bed-chamber opening out of it, appropriated to the use of Miss Scatcherd. Maria’s bed stood nearest to the door of this room. One morning, after she had become so seriously unwell as to have had a blister applied to her side (the sore from which was not perfectly healed), when the getting-up bell was heard, poor Maria moaned out that she was so ill, so very ill, she wished she might stop in bed; and some of the girls urged her to do so, and said they would explain it all to Miss Temple, the superintendent. But Miss Scatcherd was close at hand, and her anger would have to be faced before Miss Temple’s kind thoughtfulness could interfere; so the sick child began to dress, shivering with cold, as, without leaving her bed, she slowly put on her black worsted stockings over her thin white legs (my informant spoke as if she saw it yet, and her whole face flushed out undying indignation). Just then Miss Scatcherd issued from her room, and, without asking for a word of explanation from the sick and frightened girl, she took her by the arm, on the side to which the blister had been applied, and by one vigorous movement whirled her out into the middle of the floor, abusing her all the time for dirty and untidy habits. There she left her. My informant says, Maria hardly spoke, except to beg some of the more indignant girls to be calm; but, in slow, trembling movements, with many a pause, she went down-stairs at last,—and was punished for being late. Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte

The three remaining sisters and brother - Charlotte, Emily, Anne & Branwell - were very close and they developed their childhood imaginations through the collaborative writing of increasingly complex stories. The early death of their mother and siblings had a profound influence on their writing.

(at the end of the day) They put away their work, and began to pace the room backwards and forwards, up and down, - as often with the candles extinguished, for economy's sake, as not, - their figures glancing into the fire-light, and out into the shadow, perpetually. At this time, they talked over past cares, and troubles; they planned for the future, and consulted each other as to their plans. In after years, this was the time for discussing together the plots of their novels. And again, still later, this was the time for the last surviving sister to walk alone, from old accustomed habit, round and round the desolate room, thinking sadly upon the "days that were no more." Gaskell

Portrait of Emily, by brother Branwell
They wrote compulsively from early childhood and were first published, at their own expense, in 1846 as poets under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. (while they sought anonymity, the brother’s frustration at lack of fame or reward for his talents led to alcoholism and drug addiction). The book attracted little attention, selling only two copies. The sisters returned to prose, producing a novel each in the following year. Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey were released in 1847.
In 1948, Branwell's severe addictions was masking the onset of his illness. His family did not realise that he was seriously ill until he collapsed outside the house. Emily Brontë died of the disease in December of that year and Anne Brontë the following May.
Portrait of Anne by sister Charlotte
Their fame was due much to their own tragic destinies as well as their precociousness. Since their early deaths, and then the death of their father in 1861, they were subject to a following that did not cease to grow. The Brontë family can be traced to the Irish clan Ó Pronntaigh, which literally means 'grandson of Pronntach'. They were a family of hereditary scribes and literary men in Fermanagh. The Brontë Country is a name given to an area of south Pennine hills west of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England. The name comes from the Brontë sisters. (Wiki-p)

There is an interesting Bronte Blog, with many e-texts that include works of the lesser known Brontes.

PS, it's 2.30am and I'm hitting the Night Shift wall

Poetry & The Stiff Upper Lip

2011-03-05T15:58:00.006+01:00

The most widely popular writer of the early years of the 20th century was arguably Rudyard Kipling, a highly versatile writer of novels, short stories and poems. To date the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Kipling's novels include The Jungle Book, The Man Who Would Be King and Kim, while his inspirational poem If— is a national favourite. Like William Ernest Henley's poem Invictus that has inspired such people as Nelson Mandela when he was incarcerated, If— is a memorable evocation of Victorian stoicism, regarded as a traditional British virtue. (wiki-p)

Rudyard Kipling, If

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same:

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

At the age of 12, William Ernest Henley fell victim to tuberculosis of the bone. A few years later, the disease progressed to his foot, and physicians announced that the only way to save his life was to amputate directly below the knee. It was amputated when he was 25. Victorian text-books professing stoicism were popular in English public schools, and in 1875, the Stoic ideal of indifference in the face of suffering inspired Henley to write his famous stiff upper lipped poem 'Invictus' (Latin for 'Unconquered', first published in 1875) from a hospital bed. Despite his disability, he survived with one foot intact and led an active life until his death at the age of 53. (wiki-p)

William Ernest Henley, Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbow'd.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

Londoners make do taking shelter in the London Underground during the Blitz (1940-1941), though they weren't able to take a direct hit. 20-30,000 Londoners were killed by Luftwaffe bombing.

Wilfred Owen wrote Dulce et Decorum est in 1917. It was published posthumously in 1920. He was killed in action a week before the First World War ended.

'My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.'

Dulce et Decorum est, Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

The title was taken from a poem by Roman poet Horace:
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:
mors et fugacem persequitur virum
nec parcit inbellis iuventae
poplitibus timidove tergo.

How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country:
Death pursues the man who flees,
spares not the hamstrings or cowardly backs
Of battle-shy youths.

These words were well known and often quoted by supporters of the war near its inception and were, therefore, of particular relevance to soldiers of the era.

Men besieging the recruitment offices in World War I

The National Gallery

2011-03-05T12:24:00.009+01:00

Unlike the Louvre or Museo del Prado - formed by nationalising an existing royal art collection - The National Gallery came into being when the British government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of insurance broker and patron of the arts John Julius Angerstein in 1824.

The first suggestion for a National Gallery on Trafalgar Square came from John Nash (who in the 1820s redeveloped the area - as London is so cramped its hard to see anything, the point was to be able to look up and have a view). The present architecture of the square is due to Sir Charles Barry and was completed in 1845 - he created an elevated front to the Gallery, dealing with part of its criticism), but the commission was awarded to William Wilkins, who was involved in the selection of the site and submitted some drawings at the last moment. Wilkins had hoped to build a "Temple of the Arts, nurturing contemporary art through historical example", but the commission was blighted by parsimony and compromise, also the site only allowed for the building to be one room deep and there was a public right of way through the site; the resulting building was deemed a failure on almost all counts. Apparently William IV in his last recorded utterance called the building a 'nasty little pokey hole'. Lack of space led to the establishment of the Tate Gallery for British art in 1897.

Seems alright to me

The Battle of San Romano, Paolo Uccello (1397 – 1475) was an Italian painter and a mathematician who was notable for his pioneering work on visual perspective in art. Paolo worked in the Late Gothic tradition, and emphasized colour and pageantry rather than the Classical realism that other artists were pioneering.

The Baptism of Christ is a painting by the Italian (Early) Renaissance master Piero della Francesca (1397 – 1475).

Venus and Mars is a painting by the Italian (Early) Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli (1445 – 1510). The work shows the Roman gods Venus and Mars in an allegory of Beauty and Valour.

The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist, sometimes called The Burlington House Cartoon, is a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519, often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination")

The Entombment is an unfinished painting of the Entombment of Christ attributed to the Italian Renaissance master Michelangelo (1475 – 1564)

Portrait of Pope Julius II is an oil painting attributed to Italian painter Raphael (1483 – 1520), Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.

Bacchus and Ariadne by Titian (1490ish – 1576, born in Veneto in the Republic of Venice, an important member of the 16th-century Venetian school)

Boy Bitten by a Lizard by the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio (1571 –1610)

Rubens (1577 –1640) - Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality, well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. The Judgement of Paris is a story from Greek mythology, which was one of the events that led up to the Trojan War. Hermes bringing to Paris the son of Priam the goddesses of whose beauty he is to judge, the inscription on them being: 'Here is Hermes, who is showing to Paris, that he may arbitrate concerning their beauty, Hera, Athena and Aphrodite.

The Rokeby Venus by Diego Velázquez (1599–1660), the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age. The work depicts the goddess Venus in a sensual pose, lying on a bed and looking into a mirror held by the Roman god of physical love, her son Cupid.

so this was going to be a little 'history of art' assisted by pics from the National Gallery but I can't see it being finished

Shoemakers and Green Knights

2011-02-26T15:48:00.012+01:00

So, on literature... in the early Middle Ages, oral traditions were very strong and literary works were written to be performed. Epic poems were thus very popular and many, including Beowulf, have survived to the present day in the rich corpus of Anglo-Saxon literature that closely resemble today's Icelandic, Norwegian, North Frisian and the Northumbrian and Scots English dialects of modern English.

From the 12th century, Middle English emerged (the earliest form of English literature which is comprehensible to modern readers, albeit not easily). The most significant Middle English author was Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 – 1400), best known for The Canterbury Tales (still a very entertaining read), regarded as the father of English literature. The Canterbury Tales was the first of a kind, written in English rather than French or Latin, demonstrating the legitimacy of the English language.

His name is derived from the French 'chausseur' (shoemaker). In 1324 John Chaucer, Geoffrey's father, was kidnapped by an aunt in the hope of marrying the twelve-year-old boy to her daughter in an attempt to keep property in Ipswich. The aunt was imprisoned and the £250 fine levied suggests that the family was financially secure, bourgeois, if not in the elite.

Chaucer was buried in what became the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, but just because he was local. Edmund Spenser was buried there in 1599, starting the tradition of it being the resting place of most of the countries great writers and poets. Ben Johnson (1572–1637) rests there in an upright coffin to save on costs of the plot.

Incidentally, Edmund Spenser (1552 – 1599), best known for his epic poem The Faerie Queene is the man believed to have crafted the phrase "without reason or a rhyme". He was promised payment from Queen Elizabeth II of one hundred pounds, a so called, "reason for the rhyme". The Lord High Treasurer, however, considered the sum too much. After a long while without receiving his payment, he sent her this quatrain:

I was promis'd on a time,

To have a reason for my rhyme:

But from that time unto this season,

I had neither rhyme or reason.

She immediately ordered Cecil to send Spenser his due sum.

Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey

Back to the middle-ages: a lot is known of Chaucer compared to other authors of the time. William Langland's Piers Plowman is considered by many critics to be one of the early great works of English literature, which contains the first allusion to a literary tradition of Robin Hood tales: Sloth, the lazy priest, confesses: "I know not perfectly my lord’s prayer as the priest it singeth, But I know rhymes of Robyn Hood."

The "Pearl Poet", or the "Gawain Poet", is the name given to the author of the poem Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (an Arthurian tale – of which there’s a fantastic little animation of on youtube).

The last man who can’t be ignored in this amateurish chronicle of early literature is William Caxton (1420ish – 1492), an English merchant, diplomat, writer, the first English person to work as a printer, the first to introduce a printing press into England and the first English retailer of printed books.

Caxton worked in Bruges, and produced the first book to be printed in English in 1473, his own translation of Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye. It became popular in the Burgundian court and demand for copies was the stimulus for him to set up a printing press. He brought his knowledge back to London and established a press in the grounds of Westminster Abbey in 1476. The first book known to have been issued there was an edition of The Canterbury Tales.

Caxton did not begin printing until he was in his mid-fifties, so he was only able to print for 20 years before his death. In 1485, he published Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur (Middle French for 'The Death of Arthur), perhaps the best-known English-language literature about the legend of King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot and the Knights of the Round Table.

Looking Up

2011-02-22T09:45:00.012+01:00

So after a couple of months feeling very unsettled on the return to my hometown, I’ve become completely absorbed in London, the buildings, its literature, the history (sorry, the last two are more of an England thing than a London thing), and as I love little (his)stories, I’m going to blog a few.

Perhaps the first thing that opened my eyes to this was reading the line: ‘When in London, look up.’ It’s hard to see beyond the concrete, traffic, crowds, grey sky and the gaudy chain store/ restaurant/ café signs; but when you look above all that there are beautiful buildings housing all this, medieval to modern with lots of Wren cathedrals dotted around everywhere. It's amazing what people race past, everything being so busy and cramped - I have to admit I actually walked past Wren's 202 foot Monument everyday for two years before someone pointed it out to me.

Ok, to be cynical, I always found it frustrating that in central London, we knock things down and build a new again and again to show off to the world what a great impressive city London is while the suburbs where everyone lives are neglected, but hey – we’re being positive. And the museums are free!

Jean Rhys

2011-01-26T22:13:00.006+01:00

The first novel to really impress me this year is the intimate, modernist novel Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys. Ahead of its time, it's a small slice of life with a few flashbacks where the female protagonist deals with depression and alcoholism.

This is a few years before JD Salinger wrote the classic Catcher in the Rye, and Midnight is more affecting in its themes of alienation, angst and the underdog. Yet Rhys' book didn't get any recognition until years later - and not much at that.

Rhys had disappeared from public view and fallen into obscurity shortly after Good Morning, Midnight was published in 1939. In fact, many believed that she was dead as a result of the seeming end of her literary career.

Selma Vaz Dias adapted the novel for theatrical presentation in 1949, her husband had to place advertisements in the New Statesman and the Nation to find Rhys in order to gain her permission, which she gave enthusiastically. Rhys credited Dias for reawakening her literary inclinations, stating in November of that same year that Dias had "lifted the numb hopeless feeling that stopped me writing for so long." In 1957 Dias's adaptation of Good Morning, Midnight was performed on BBC radio. (wiki -p)

If she'd have had earlier affirmation, would her output have been different? Would she have written Wide Sargasso Sea? In a brief interview shortly before her death, Rhys questioned whether any novelist, not least herself, could ever be happy for any length of time. 'If I could choose I would rather be happy than write ... If I could live my life all over again, and choose ...'

I'm happy to say i was introduced to Jean Rhys in school through her magnum opus Wide Sargasso Sea (1966 - written as a prequel to Jane Eyre, giving life to the faceless Creole 'madwoman in the attic') and i read her very interesting eventful biography. I'm less happy that i didn't read her again for so long becuase my english teacher dismissed the rest of her work, 'basically the same novel over and over but without a gimmick'. it's hard not to let such comments sway you.

One book we didn't do in school was Catcher in the Rye, so i only got round to reading it this month. i know it's typical to say, 'what's all the fuss about?' but i'd go so far to say that i found Holden Caulfield a very sympathetic character. is that weird? he's young, and understandably horny, a good listener, patient, shows room for growth, refreshingly careless about money and doesn't take a disliking to anyone who's undeserving. a deserved classic anyway. i heard Salinger's short stories are great and often overlooked - it's just occured to me to get them. i also purchased and can't wait to read Jean Rhys' collected short stories - though that has to be shipped over from the States for some reason.

Akira Kurosawa

2010-12-08T17:45:00.003+01:00

The characters in my films try to live honestly. They do the best with the lives they've been given. I believe you must live honestly and develop your abilities to the full. People who do this are the real heroes.

In order to write scripts, you must study the great novels and scripts of the world. You must consider why they are great and where does the emotion come from as you read them. What degree of passion did the author have to have in order to portray the characters and events as he did. You must read thoroughly to the point where you can grasp all these things.

A Short December

2010-12-04T14:51:00.011+01:00

I only managed half a nano this year. 25,000 words or so. Didn't have the discipline to move out of second gear but in what I did do, there were wonderful moments of ideas growing out of ideas and things fitting together. I took a tip from Sarah Quigley's Write, which I need to rethink next time. you do not need to think about writing until you are sat in front of your computer. This method has worked in the past, but as I didn't think ahead or plan at all, the nano-story took a long time to get going.

Another thing I can blame is the beautiful animation you can see on youtube.

For Alexander Petrov's animation, The Old Man And The Sea (based on the Hemingway story), for each frame he finger paints on glass then photographs the results. this film is made from 29,000 takes

Tale Of Tales, animation film by Yuri Norstein (USSR, 1979). In 2003 at Laputah Animation Festival in Tokyo 140 directors and critics from all over the world called it the second best film of all time. I'm guessing Akira was the first?

The secret of Kells

The Sandman (1992), this Oscar-nominated short film is a chilling interpretation of an old European folktale.

On the longer pieces, I recently saw the excellent Coraline (which didn’t appeal to me because i didn’t think the book was that great), I rented the film for a friend and it was an excellent surprise. Also, The secret of Kells, by the producers of Belleville Rendez-vous was so good that i had to watch Belleville Rendez-vous again.

Tim Burton's Vincent. And the wonderful When The Day Breaks.

I met the walrus. in 1969, a 14year old Beatles fanatic snuck into John Lennon's hotel room and convinced him to do an interview...

Townes (nanowrimo 2010!)

2010-11-10T13:28:00.005+01:00

It's day 9 of my favourite creative time of the year, nanowrimo! Where 100s of 1000s of people around the world attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. That's 1677 words a day, and more if you miss a day. It's a very good creative experience for many reasons, which I'm too tired to go into at the moment. Man, I remember it being intense and that I go slightly mad every November, but this is near impossible. It takes hours to write 1677 words!

The first couple of days I battled a blank computer screen. Being back in the suburbs of England didnt help.. the grey skies, the cream walls, the endless row of house-boxes that all look the same. I'm empty! I don't have any more stories to tell! I started to write a little in a notebook, and used some workshop exercises to create something.. think up a person and a colour, draw a mind map and create some sentences from this. I managed to force out my first day's worth of writing (on maybe day 3), on day 5 I was writing again and something clicked, the character (who had so far been doing nothing but sweeping leaves and having random thoughts) started moving on his own, and told me that his name wasn't Billy, but Townes. It was one of those moments of satisfying creative bliss that don't come along very often.. I'm writing a story and it seems to be working :)

This will be my sixth attempt, but unfortunately not one of my official successes, as I'm having some kind of computer block, it's all going in a fancy blue notebook in fancy blue ink. It'll be my 4th success if I manage. Does Townes have 50,000 words in him?

First day of a marathon

2010-10-12T14:40:00.008+02:00

Was everything here made of sand? Big events bring out big truths about people, and my decision to go to London resulted in B ousting me from the sand journal project: 'You're leaving Berlin? You're leaving sand. You have no choice.' I was saddened as we became very close doing the project together... starting it... from nothing. It's bad treatment for a so-called friend but enough has happened in recent years for me to brush this off as small stuff. My wise friend from Kazi-stan has a belief that this all happens for a reason and it's a real closing of a door and chapter. It's looking like a good decision to be leaving Berlin and 'the artists'.

Hey. I'm not that zen. It's irritating to now see the manoeuvring that's been happening recently.

I edited my September sand event post instead of deleting it as I'm so proud of my Evan Dando tribute/ moment of stage fame. As I suddenly have more free time before I head back to London and have recently got lazy trying to finish the Meatball story, today I will start to concentrate my efforts on writing 1677 words a day, finishing one story and starting another.

Salad and sushi

2010-10-05T15:30:00.004+02:00

I read on a mug in a sushi place today... ways to stay healty
Less meat, more vegetables
Less eating, more chewing
Less worry, more sleep
Less talk, more action
Less anger, more laughter

Also came across this, someone made a blog of photos of salads they made. Nice to see someone take pride in what they.. eat.

writing.com

2010-09-29T22:58:00.005+02:00

Dear Jason,

You opened your Writing.Com account 5 years ago, on September 21st, 2005... which makes today your very own Writing.Com Account Birthday.
So, from everyone at Writing.Com...Happy Account Birthday!

I'm a way too sentimental, nostalgic soul and will work on being lighter in the future. But as it's my 6th year in Berlin and I'm heading back to London, getting the above email made me go... awww. As someone who writes and wants to be read, I was pretty clueless about how to go about it 5 1/2 years ago. I started a blog without (still) having much to say as a kind of website/ reach out... then 5 years ago I stumbled onto writing.com which has writing forums, competitions, and opportunities to give and receive feedback on work... and most importantly, brought nanowrimo to my attention!

photo credit

When the entertainment doesn't turn up

2010-09-26T13:32:00.010+02:00

...you got to step up. SAND issue 2 was released on Thursday at the Berlin Literature festival.

When told the musician wasn't there, I - perhaps too enthusiastically - jumped onto the stage and played a short set of Evan Dando songs. I knew all the years of playing them alone in my room would pay off one day. I'm a star!! Ok, I'll get down now.

Evan Dando - Stop My Head

New Poetry

2010-09-26T13:09:00.000+02:00

...from Michael Haeflinger

http://www.towerjournal.com/fall2010/index.html

A few words inspired by a kiss on wet glass

2010-09-04T19:46:00.005+02:00

I’ve decided to leave Berlin
There were no fireworks
The day I decided to leave
I thought about ending the blog
But instead I painted it black
I think it’s looking pretty good
At the end of October
I’ll have been here for 5 ½ years
I acquired countless bicycles
And a few special people
Said goodbye to some too
Watched two World Cups
And a bad Champions League final
Welcomed a lot of people
‘To the biggest city between Paris and Moscow’

I spent half my adult life here
Procrastinating
Singing the blues
Writing about it too
Learned it’s not the thing you fling
But the fling itself
Grew 5 ½ years older
Watched kids arrive
Bruise their knees
And grow older too
And discover who they are
I found a voice
And made a choice that’s surprised a lot of people
Myself included
And became an almost-believer
That the universe knows when and how
To give you a nudge
Who am I without Berlin?
Jasoni
Catching the next bus home

Short Summer of Inspiration

2010-09-04T18:04:00.003+02:00

No blog post in four months
I'm not sorry
I got a little preoccupied
By a short summer of inspiration

The East of Eden Letters

2010-04-27T20:26:00.002+02:00

'I have not worked today because I was afraid my book would take on the quality of my sadness. So far I have been singularly free of personal feelings and emotions which can so easily taint a book.'

Goth-lit

2010-03-27T13:11:00.008+01:00

Nice post on Gothic literature by a Scandiberian Londoner in Berlin.

Seen, heard

2010-03-27T11:31:00.005+01:00

There’s nothing sexier or enticing-er than a bit of mystery. I took this philosophy too far in the past, not wanting anyone to know the real me. Blogging openly and honestly is a way to break free from that though it is unnerving when someone I just met immediately facebooks me and sees embarrassing old school photos that friends are scanning in. But – legendary cherry-eater – Sherilyn Fenn’s blog shares the same idea. Which is nice. I’m sure we’d have loads in common.

After years of hiding and trying to be pretty, smart, famous...... I have never been more seen, heard and accepted. As I expose all my warts as honestly as I can. What an amazing verification. And how it flies in the faces of all that other bullshit. It is a sad when ones life is built with a house of cards. I build mine now brick by brick. I fear not the big bad wolf anymore, my house is almost complete.

Yet, the old order will fight as it is doing. It will fight to not be exposed. To keep its mask firmly in place. To hide all its ugly parts that are more human than the ones they elevate to mythical proportions. To legends.....in their own minds. I am not this. Just a girl/woman from Michigan doing the best I can. Sometimes failing miserably, sometimes not.

Do You Like Coffee?

2010-03-07T15:13:00.005+01:00

Just rewatched all of Twin Peaks. That was a good show.

Some Required

2010-02-28T20:20:00.002+01:00

The Jaffa Cake Issue

2010-02-12T02:24:00.009+01:00

Wiki defines it as a biscuit-like cake in the UK and Ireland. McVitie and Price introduced the Jaffa Cake in 1927. Its creation is largely credited to John Langlands, a director of McVitie and Price. The cakes were named after Jaffa oranges, sweet oranges native to Jaffa in Israel.

The precise identity of the Jaffa Cake as a cake or cookie (known as a biscuit in the UK) has been a topic of heated debate. In fact, McVitie's once found itself in court defending the identity of the Jaffa Cake as a cake, not a biscuit (as rates of taxation for cakes and biscuits are quite different in the United Kingdom!).

As it turns out, Jaffa Cakes are classified as cakes on the grounds that they are soft when fresh and they turn hard when stale. McVitie's actually brought a giant Jaffa Cake to the courthouse for the trial as a demonstration piece to defend the Jaffa Cake's honor. Despite the eventual court verdict in the matter, the debate still continues, with many people arguing that the Jaffa Cake is really a biscuit, based on its size and composition.

wahay, 150th post (though I did archive some from my being-very-open phase)!!!!!!zzzzzz

The Battle Of Cable Street

2010-02-09T00:29:00.004+01:00

Another great post from the Sensational London blog: the East End’s greatest moment, with this amazing video, what a voice the newsreader has. Moseley’s wish for a fascist march in London’s East End (historically the place with the highest concentration of immigrants – in the hope of intimidating the Jewish community) was granted due the Conservatives’ sympathies with Fascism.

‘the street battle in 1936 between Oswald Moseley’s Blackshirts (and) thousands of anti-fascists (which included local Jewish, socialist, Irish and Communist groups)… It ended up encapsulating the British fight against pre-war fascism – the political force that was marching across Europe in the mid-thirties – and realistically dealt the British fascist movement such a blow it never really recovered.’

The Spirit of the Beehive

2010-02-08T00:37:00.004+01:00

The Spirit of the Beehive, very quiet and slow-paced but there is so much to take from this story that weaves talk of monsters, beehives, train tracks & wild mushrooms through the mind of a small child. It was set at the start of Franco Regime, and made towards its end. Different people have said on just one of its subjects, ‘The monster is an allegory of the time and its politics’, ‘the monster is everything that is genuine and good in life’, ‘the monster is the forces of reaction, a choking alienation that is only kept at bay by the temporary innocence of childhood’, ‘man is the monster’, ‘the father is the monster’, a feast for thought.

Someone to whom I recently showed my glass beehive,
with it’s movement like the main gear-wheel of a clock;
Someone who saw the constant agitation of the honeycomb,
the mysterious, maddened commotion of the nurse bees over the nests,
the teeming bridges and stairways of wax, the invading spirals of the queen,
the endlessly varied and repetitive labours of the swarm,
the relentless yet ineffectual toil, the fevered comings and goings,
the call to sleep always ignored, undermining the next days work,
the final repose of death
far from a place that tolerates neither sickness nor tombs;
Someone who observed these things, after the initial astonishment had passed,
quickly looked away with an expression of indescribable sadness and horror.

Coco Chanel

2010-02-07T01:42:00.004+01:00

Saw the Coco Chanel film… because it had Audrey Tautou in it. I’m a small man. Then I started watching it and thought, what the hell am I doing? I hate biographies. It is a genre that baffles me. To read an article or book, or see a documentary about someone is so much more rewarding than a cheesy scripted version of a life, where thoughts and occurrences are sprinkled into mechanical conversations, like, ‘I’m so glad that five year relationship with an abusive woman is over, but I don’t regret all of it, because we did have two children and three top ten singles together, then she turned out to be a Nazi.’ ‘That’s true, and it did give you an idea for a song which turned out to be your biggest hit, launching your successful solo career.’

Man my eyes rolled at the formulaic childhood sequence at the beginning and all of these films don’t even talk about the interesting stuff. Films like Sylvia and Finding Neverland… give us the meat!

During Nazi occupation of France, the anti-Semitic creator of the little black dress took high-ranking Nazi officer, Hans Gunther von Dick-lage, as her lover. He arranged for Chanel to remain in her residence at the Hôtel Ritz Paris during the war. In 1943, Chanel contacted Vera Bate Lombardi (a member of English high society, Chanel's muse and liaison to posh people before the war), who was living in Rome, inviting her to Paris to renew their work together. This was actually a cover for Operation Modellhut, an attempt to make secret contact with Churchill to make negotiations of behalf of Chanel’s Nazi friends. When Lombardi refused, she was arrested as a British spy by the Gestapo. Chanel was later charged as a collaborator, but narrowly avoided trial due to an intervention by the British Royal family. Gotta love the Royals.

Sherlock Holmes

2010-02-06T12:34:00.002+01:00

The inhumane weather has resulted in a lot of staying indoors and film-binging, leaving me with a slight sense of depression and worthlessness. Though I can’t blame the weather, I feel that way in the summer too, even more so because everyone else seems to be so happy.

I did enjoy the new Sherlock Holmes film. It’s been ages since I’ve watched a film with a ticking-bomb in it, getting all tense, thinking, ‘Come on Robert Downey! You’re running out of time!’ Great sets, it was amazing seeing a half finished construction of Tower Bridge. At the same time I did identify with a review that said, ‘I liken this movie to a caramel chocolate amaretto pineapple peppermint latte with extra cream. Did the plot forget anything? Oh yes, cinnamon sprinkle!’ Hehe.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off his boxer-swordsman-cokehead detective, complaining to his mother that he was taking up too much of his professional time. Imagine that, ‘Mum! I can’t stop writing stories about one of the most enduring fictional characters ever, who I invented, that the public really love. It’s stopping me from being productive!’ Conan Doyle’s mother warned him what would happen, and mum was right, after public outrage, the author was forced to bring Holmes back to life.

Conan Doyle was a bit of a true life detective. He investigated two closed cases, which led to two men being exonerated, the case of George Edalji in 1906 (imprisoned for mutilating animals) actually led to the establishment of the Court of Criminal Appeal; and the case of Oscar Slater in 1908, who was convicted of killing a woman in Glasgow.

From wiki: After the death of his wife Louisa in 1906, and the death of his son Kingsley, his brother Innes, his two brothers-in-law, and his two nephews shortly after World War I, Conan Doyle sank into depression. He found solace supporting Spiritualism and its alleged scientific proof of existence beyond the grave.

His book The Coming of the Fairies (1921) shows he was apparently convinced of the veracity of the Cottingley Fairies photographs (which were exposed as a hoax decades later), which he reproduced in the book, together with theories about the nature and existence of fairies and spirits.

Writers eh, they’re fascinating people. Reading about them on wiki can be just as fun as the actual works.

Sensational London

2010-01-24T23:59:00.005+01:00

The coke dealer of Chinatown who inspired the character Fu Manchu, the sad last days of Judy Garland, the capture of James Earl Ray, murder at the Cafe de Paris... sensational stories in a great blog about 20th century London, its history, culture, music. I've been up all night reading it. Pea Soup - the terrible London fog which killed around 12,000 people over a few days during Great Smog of 1952.

Writing against what’s written

2010-01-13T22:23:00.003+01:00

I do not believe in monsters anymore, I only believe in the monstrousness of man.
Fransisco Goya (roughly)

A dangerous thing to say back in the day. The rational minority were once on the fringe and religious extremism was the mainstream, not confined to individual acts of terrorism. Studying science (or natural philosophy as it was called) was a dangerous thing, as the life of Galileo shows. He risked his life to publish his astrological findings for our benefit and died under house arrest. For most of the last millennium, European conceptions of knowledge have been defined by the authority of 'The Word'. All knowledge had to derive in some way to an existing written source, preferably the Holy Scriptures. To write of science was to be heretic, which resulted in a burning at the stake.

Writing against the sacramental belief in witchcraft was highly controversial in the 17th century. Believing in god went hand in hand with believing in the devil and witches, resulting in paranoia, witch hunts and the death of many an innocent.

In his Against Witches, Cyrano highlighted the infamous cases where truth eventually came out, incidents which had rational explanations – including sexual abuse carried out by priests resulting in young women (not ‘witches’) having nightmares for years to come (not ‘dark visions’). Cyrano said in his introduction that reason was his queen. He stated that priests had been wrong in the past and they would be in the future. Addyman attests that due to the likes of the humane rationals like Cyrano, the phenomenon of the witch hunt faded out though people continue to look to superstition for how to live their lives and for what can’t be explained. The last accusation of witchcraft in France was in the 1950s. Whose voice do we hear today? Cyrano's? Or the priests'?

On a lighter note, the comedy genius that is The Mighty Boosh did a sketch on ‘What is written’ when they get trapped in a box by an evil cockney.

- We’re trapped in a box / I thought you didn’t get trapped in boxes / That was metaphorical. This is an actual box
- We have been waiting for you. We are the people of the box. We have been trapped in here for many centuries. It was said that you would come and set us free and be our leader. Hail our new king!
- That’s really nice and all, but I’m not a leader, I’m just a man
- It is said that you would deny your role as leader
- A lot’s been written, eh, is it written how I’d sing this – I’m a Chinese dining horse
- Yes
- Oh
- King, how do you like your role as leader?
- Good, I mean, I haven’t done much yet, but I’ve got ideas
- Well, it’s over, I’m afraid. It is written that you would be king then for 1 minute then you will be killed
- Whoa, there! We’re trying to build here! Is it written that an innocent man should die?
- Yes.
- Is it written that a man with no knowledge of his crime, who came here through no fault of his own should die to reasons unknown to him?
- Yes.
- Let’s get out of here!
- There is no way out of the box
- What about this door?
- It is forbidden! It is written…
- Look, this is the way out, you idiot

The real Cyrano de Bergerac

2010-01-11T20:08:00.004+01:00

Edmond Rostand’s classic character and romantic play was based on a real man, a dramatist who died at the youthful age of 36. Not many people know that; of course, a fear among the academics over the last century was that - due to the play's notoriety - we would lose sight of the real life Cyrano. He has had no elaborate biography in English until Ishbel Addyman’s engrossing read: Cyrano. (and she’s a total babe)

There were no dramatically romantic events in the real life, but Rostand must have been attracted to the historical character for his sense of honour and reason. While the likes of Molière (who ‘borrowed’ from Cyrano’s work) made a career writing plays for the king, Cyrano was a controversial figure for writing against the mainstream (for example, against the sacramental superstitions that resulted in witch hunts) and the war-hungry establishment. The real life Cyrano – who died young, without due recognition, and probably because he had angered the wrong people – has become a strong symbol of the plight of the honourable artist.

Excerpt from play (on being told he should allow his work to be censored in order to gain a patron):

LE BRET:
Oh! lay aside that pride of musketeer,
Fortune and glory wait you!. . .

CYRANO:
Ay, and then?. . .
Seek a protector, choose a patron out,
And like the crawling ivy round a tree
That licks the bark to gain the trunk's support,
Climb high by creeping ruse instead of force?
No, thank you! What! I, like all the rest
Dedicate verse to bankers?--play buffoon
In cringing hope to see, at last, a smile
Not disapproving, on a patron's lips?
Thank you, no! What! learn to swallow toads?
--With frame aweary climbing stairs?--a skin
Grown grimed and horny,--here, about the knees?
And, acrobat-like, teach my back to bend?--
No, thank you! Or,--double-faced and sly--
Run with the hare, while hunting with the hounds;
And, oily-tongued, to win the oil of praise,
Flatter the great man to his very nose?
No, thank you! Steal soft from lap to lap,
--A little great man in a circle small,
Or navigate, with madrigals for sails,
Blown gently windward by old ladies' sighs?
No, thank you! Bribe kindly editors
To spread abroad my verses? Thank you!
Or try to be elected as the pope
Of tavern-councils held by imbeciles?
No, thank you! Toil to gain reputation
By one small sonnet, 'stead of making many?
No, thank you! Or flatter sorry bunglers?
Be terrorized by every prating paper?
Say ceaselessly, 'Oh, had I but the chance
Of a fair notice in the "Mercury"!'
Thank you, no! Grow pale, fear, calculate?
Prefer to make a visit to a rhyme?
Seek introductions, draw petitions up?
No, thank you! and no! and no again!

(damn, the post was called The real Cyrano de Bergerac, and I still reverted back to the fictional)

Off The Rails...

2009-12-09T16:18:00.002+01:00

music by the notwist

I just wish the night away

2009-12-08T16:44:00.002+01:00

Song from Twin Falls Idaho

Things We Say

2009-12-08T16:40:00.001+01:00

A laughing stock (The Merry Wives of Windsor), A sorry sight (Macbeth), As dead as a doornail (Henry VI), Eaten out of house and home (Henry V, Part 2), Fair play (The Tempest),
I will wear my heart upon my sleeve (Othello), In a pickle (The Tempest), In stitches (Twelfth Night), In the twinkling of an eye (The Merchant Of Venice), Mum's the word (Henry VI, Part 2), Neither here nor there (Othello), Send him packing (Henry IV), Set your teeth on edge (Henry IV), There's method in my madness (Hamlet), Too much of a good thing (As You Like It), Vanish into thin air (Othello), It’s Greek to me (Julius Caesar), Fair play (The Tempest), All that glitters isn’t gold (Merchant of Venice), Break the ice (The Taming of the Shrew), The lady doth protest too much (Hamlet), Clothes make the man (Hamlet), Too much of a good thing (As You Like It), countless! obscene! homicide! leapfrog! gust! cranny! fragrant! submerged! dwindle! frugal! excellent!

November excerpt

2009-11-27T00:01:00.005+01:00

At eleven thirty, Harry suggested walking to the Babylon as they both had umbrellas and hadn’t breathed any fresh air all day. Andrea smiled at walking through an eerie fog to see a film about the Devil. She had to slide her feet along the pavement to avoid tripping. She took hold of Harry’s arm. Despite his alcoholic breath, he had an impressive air about him outside of the pub, like a quirky millionaire who chose to dress casually and walk to places instead of taking his limo.
F.W. Murnau’s Faust had been UFA’s most expensive production at the time of its creation, taking six months and two million marks to make. It would be surpassed a year later by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. With careful attention paid to contrasts of light and dark, it told the story about a bet the Devil makes with an angel that he can corrupt the elderly Doctor Faust. The Devil brings a plague to Faust’s village. Faust prays to Heaven for the misery to cease but when nothing happens he makes a bargain with the Devil, the Devil as his servant in exchange for his soul.
The grainy picture and misty images struck Andrea as fitting to the evening as they left the Babylon and descended down the grim Portswood Road to her bus stop. ‘Do you remember the summer?’ she asked Harry.
‘Vaguely.’
‘Thanks for the invitation. Nothing like a darkened cinema to de-stress. God, I am going crazy. I shouldn’t let a review get me so worked up. But now there’s an expectation. I could do whatever I wanted before. If I tried a new recipe and it turned out badly, it was no big thing. Now as soon as I screw up everyone’s going to know about it…’
‘Critics are a fickle bunch,’ Harry interjected, ‘Spirits preying on the dreamers.’
Andrea glanced sideways.
She said, ‘Bloody Simon Ra.’
‘Simon Ra?’
‘He wrote the review, quite a name in the restaurant business. I hate to be one of those people who complain when they get what they want. I always dreamed of a Simon Ra review.’
‘Well, dreams are never quite as we dream them.’
‘When you sit in silence all day are you actually thinking up these platitudes?’
Harry grinned.
She studied his face. ‘Why do you do it? Sit in the same chair all day everyday. Life is so short.’
The echo of a tin clattering against the concrete sounded ahead and a shadow descended upon the wall to Andrea’s side. A dark shape revealed itself and she gripped the completely unmoved Harry. Harry put his hand on hers and said, ‘It’s just the cat.’
‘The cat?’
‘From Andy’s place.’
‘I’ve… never seen it outside the pub before.’
‘Cats are nocturnes. Who knows what it gets up to every night?’
It circled them, its shadow growing and falling against the wall. ‘It’s acting strange, like it’s going to pounce on us,’ Andrea said.
‘There’s nothing strange about it.’
Andrea was breathless, was glad not to be alone. She thought up a pretence to retreat back up the street, asked Harry, ‘Are you hungry? The Botiburpi’s not far if we go back the way we came.’
‘If you’re recommending a restaurant, I’m very game.’
They turned and walked. Andrea didn’t look back, turned a corner and her composure eventually returned.
She said, ‘I liked the film, nice and dark. I love film noir, which was borne out of those early German films, I’ll have you know.’
‘Well a lot of those directors fled the Nazis and ended up in Hollywood.’
‘It’s hard to believe it was made in the twenties. It must have blown people away back in the day.’
‘It wasn’t successful in its day.’
‘Really? Maybe too much for them to handle.’
‘As far as the Germans were concerned, Faust was a play by Goethe. Say otherwise, it’s blasphemy.’
‘Oh, so what we just saw wasn’t Goethe’s Faust?’
‘It draws from Goethe’s version and older versions of the tale. As far as my memory serves, Geothe was the one to make Faust an intellect, and create the idea that he’s first tempted to sell his soul to cure the sick. In actual fact, John Faust was an ordinary guy in the fifteenth century who lost his soul to the Devil over a game of bowls.’
Andrea laughed. ‘Truth is never as dramatic as the myth. So that’s your thing, is it?’
‘What?’
‘You’re a film nut?’
‘Oh, well, isn’t everyone these days?’
‘Well I’m nuts on thrillers. At home I’ve got hundreds of paperbacks, Chandler, Hammet, David M. Cain… when it comes to the films, I’ve got all of them on VHS. I used to trawl through TV guides checking for film noir and I’d set the video recorder, got some really obscure ones.’
‘What’s the appeal?’
Andrea ruminated, ‘The stories are so sad. One of my favourites is On Dangerous Ground.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘There’s a callow detective who’s been ground down by the gloom of the city, he’s beating suspects to a pulp, and his partner has to take him aside and say: What’s the matter with you? You have to put something into this life to get something back. Then he falls in love with the blind sister of a murderer he’s after and there’s this wonderful sweetness that’s completely unexpected, even though the brother gets killed.’
‘Thanks, I love it when people tell me the whole plot of a film.’
‘That’s the appeal. That gentleness can suddenly appear out of bleakness. The deeper it’s hidden the more special it is. Problem is, I watched all my favourites with my husband, so they’re too hard to see now. They’re connected to him.’
‘You have to be careful what you share.’
‘When I was a girl I wanted to grow up and look like Barbara Stanwyck. Look at me. Can’t imagine a man committing double indemnity for someone who looks like a primary school teacher.’
‘I can imagine you on the silver screen.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Your face has something that’s classic. Maybe that’s why you relate to those times.’
Andrea studied Harry’s expression, nothing as always. ‘Thank you,’ she said as the light of the restaurant appeared before them.
Harry didn’t reply.
‘That was a nice thing to say.’
Nothing.
‘You’ve had a hard time, haven’t you?’
Harry grinned bittersweet.
She pressed his arm. ‘Speak. I want to know about you.’
Harry looked at her. Finally she could see something. ‘Do you?’
‘Yes.’
The city slept but for the faint clinking of cutlery from the restaurant. ‘I’m a jealous evil man,’ Harry said.
‘You were, or you are?’
‘I’ve seen the most beautiful thing in this world. And I destroyed it.’ Harry suddenly looked exhausted. Andrea put her arms around him. He stood as stiff as a rock. She held him tightly and felt him relax. He gently placed a hand on her shoulder and the other on the small of her back. It had been a long time since she had been held. She had no idea how long it lasted.
Youths fell out of the restaurant yelling and a bottle shattered on the pavement. Andrea broke the embrace. She put her hand on his heart. ‘You didn’t destroy anything, Harry. These things happen by themselves.’
‘No, I really destroyed it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was in love with a woman. I had her killed.’
Andrea tried to guess the film reference. ‘Johnny Rocco in Key Largo?’
‘She left me. I paid for one of those hired guns to track her down. The best money could buy. But he fell in love with her too. That’s how special she was.’
‘Er… Raven in A Gun For Sale?’
‘She was good at hiding. I had to pay another guy. He found her in Knightsbridge, chased her onto the London Underground and shot her.’
Andrea tried to read him. ‘That’s not funny.’
Harry shrugged.
Andrea, quite the expert on crime trivia, recalled, ‘The Columbian girl, thirteen years ago, shot dead by a professional hitman in Green Park Station.’
Harry smiled. ‘That’s the one.’
‘You had her killed,’ she mimicked. Harry stared expressionless. Andrea searched for a trace of humour in his dark eyes. She shook her head in the hope that everything would start making sense. ‘You had someone killed!? Were you in prison?’
Harry shook his head.
‘Why not?’
‘I’m a powerful man.’
Andrea laughed contemptuously. Harry’s quietness suddenly chilled her and she stopped. There was a ruckus behind them as the restaurant staff shouted at the youths. Andrea was thankful not to be alone in the street with Harry. ‘I want to go home,’ she said. She realised she was crying.
‘I’ll get you a taxi.’ Andrea yelled, ‘No!’ but Harry already had his hand in the air. A taxi stopped in front of them and he opened the door for her. She got in and slammed the door closed herself. Harry watched her disappear into the fog. He touched the place where a smiling Andrea had put her hand, before he had been too honest. He smiled at a realisation, there are other pairs of shoulders.