wytchcroft

Oddly enough - and unexpectedly - i've nearly done scribbling a new quick fic;
a mock 1920's thing (so, yes, fresh from the pastichery but so it goes) that i owe in equal measures to (over-reading) Katherine Mansfield, the vintage bits and bobs in the shop and to my friend Sarah.

It's called 'Something Blue' and is about a station waiting room.
i hope to post it up here as soon i've finished the redraft.

It's supposed to be funny - but i can never tell about these things...

when people talk of plot bunnies, i often wonder; what are the other literary-labelled animals there might be roaming about or kept in jealously guarded hutches or to be spied from the corner of the mind's eye sneaking in through cat flaps and disappearing up trees or jumping onto the band wagon hitched to a rough riding train of thought and away across the hinterland and into the dusk..?

koff! carried away, there! um, lit-critters then, anyone know of any?
seems probable the topic has been thrashed out before somewhere, manywheres even.

i have a few fanciful notions. e.g. "i have an awesome character monkey to go with my plot bunny, will you read it and be my guinea pig?"

"Not bad old man, but i think your thematic kangaroo is punching below its weight."

"Ah! Narrative bats - i see narrative bats everywhere!"
- "Shhh! you'll scare off my plot bunny!"

"I'm not saying you're garrulous but you do let the dialogue dogs off the leash don't you? As for your ideas, wow, you certainly can't be accused of putting all your eggs in the one basket now can you? Some may find your notions confusing but i like to think of it as allowing the chickens of your imagination to roam free-range... before you farm them out to the all consuming reader."
- "That's nice but what the fuck are you actually talking about?"

Hmm.. maybe it's a flora and fauna issue; i mean people talk about editing as 'pruning' right?
so i guess that makes words and sentences the grass and carrots for plot bunnies to chomp on?

maybe so, but i prefer wildlife.
"The text flows like a herd of wild geese taking to the high heavens whilst the lemur of your prose relaxes in its... tree?"
- "You're saying it stinks, right?"

"Elephant shanks, my boy - elephant shanks."

and if a note to self goads me to scribble on, is this not a goading note or goat in fact?

it is important to think deeply about these things.

so i was thinking about dance and how it often strikes me as human language, body language, the body singing and shouting and stalling and squawking and expressing and refusing to express and all the wonderful and frustrating contradictions and frictions and fictions it can weave - and basically wondering why it is i don't respond to the contemporary work of la la la human steps in the way i used to.

the more recent work of Edouard Lock is undeniably beautiful (and exquisitely performed - in their way the soloists are as fierce on it as ever), and yet...
what has happened?

is it just me that sees a glassy kind of narcissism in the very introverted and tastefully rendered pieces?

is it just my fear of the bourgeois that causes me to regret the neo-classicist reworking of the Lou Reed piece Waiting for the Man, used in the film of Amelia? Music that strikes me as designed to impress documentary makers.

The use of traditional motifs such as the marionette v. svengali may after all be genuinely reflective and expressive of Lock's own experience...

...but it is shuttered, and there's a certain kind of preciousness that is suffocating.

( the steps go under here )

Reconstruction, Reconstruction, Reconstruction!
The three R’s – as Peter Cook would have said it.

A Phase two production whereby the Valley shifts from a budget version of D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow (or possibly Dagobah for any Yodalings out there, we don’t go much for yodelling round here though) to a be-splattered building site or quarry... of the sort found in mid 1970s Dr Who.

The good side being the sense of repair, the stubborn bloody mindedness of the luminous jacketed workforce has become a welcome trait rather than... whatever - and the general sense of looking for the next phase, Recovery. More R’s.
( Read more... )

Today was... well actually it still is....

Yes dear friends, this excited and exciteable reporter can inform you that our hero Wytchcroft
survived the floods outside to travel for one final mental dental appointment...
(remember the dentist's tower of fun?)
which, the weird part, turned out to be the high point of the day...!

Oh indeed, since elsewhere there was 24 bug lurgy fun (not swine flu, don't get carried away people!) but it did cramp my bohemian style (snort!) somewhat but not as much as having my house flooded.
( Read more... )

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It's a very interesting thing language - when exactly did we start using the phrase power outage?
Common enough now of course and the question above correctly notes that power outages are what cause blackouts but still, i can't help wonder if it's a shift in terminology - i've come across this many times in the press and so forth.
( Read more... )