Questing Beast

Doctor

2011-05-19T02:19:00.002+02:00

I am watching Inferno - John Pertwee era environmental disaster tourism, rather lovely. I also watched the latest Doctor Who episode, The Doctor's wife, and need to watch it again, it was very good I think. Neil Gaiman and Steven Moffat - what a wonderful idea. If it weren't for my love of Moffat I'd be wishing for Russell T Davies. What's more, this season I've really warmed, finally, to Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor. The stories have been great, but more than that, he's done a stunning job of being convincing as someone who is 900+ years old. Ten is still my Doctor, but my heart is really enjoying the break from being run over by Russell Fucking Davies.

Rosemary

2011-05-06T03:45:00.001+02:00

Suzanne Vega’s music lives in my life, ever since I was a little girl, the soundtrack of being alone, and as such both melancholy and a little claustrophobic. Beautiful and unbearable, it sits there mostly unplayed amid my music like a loaded gun.

In the Carmen of the Martyrs,
with the statues in the courtyard
whose heads and hands were taken,
in the burden of the sun;

And I remember being there, Granada in September on the way to the Alhambra, that last summer of college. It’s a sun-warmed memory of a glorious summer, a perfect prelude, uncontaminated by any gloom. The song is perhaps her most heart-wrenchingly sad, all the more so because it denies none of the beauty of the moment. There is no anger in it, nothing but the shadows of trees, the loveliness of something lost and worth remembering.

those possibilities within her sight,
with no way of coming true.
Some things just don't get through
into this world , although they try.

As always, it is simple and perfect, complete in its solitude.

I had come to meet you
with a question in my footsteps.
I was going up the hillside
and the journey just begun.

If growing up is learning your mortality, it is also growing into the meaning of the world around you, and seeing the pain and loss in the world as well as its glory. It is realising that that glory is so often built upon the suffering, and no less valuable for it; perhaps more valuable. So here’s my modest aspiration: to live up to that ability to not let the good things be poisoned by the bad.

All I know of you
is in my memory
All I ask is you
Remember me.

And to remember.

Official

2011-05-01T03:16:00.003+02:00

Though I have finally scrubbed the last dirt from under my nails, I spent quite a bit of time today with my hands in a variety of soils; and another hour wandering through the neighbourhood looking at the glorious dogwoods and azaleas and tulips. First garden day - and lovely. I'll write better about such things when I am not so tired and not so busy trying to cram more hours into great days like this one. I am now going to read American Born Chinese to console me for the closing of a beloved bookstore.

Sunday, Easter, spring

2011-04-24T13:52:00.002+02:00

Next year I really need to pick something different for Lent. I did well enough, you see, with the whole being creative every day. Mostly I wrote, wrote quite a lot, and remembered that little humming noise my brain makes when I'm writing well. So today, the first day when I don't have to, I think - but no, I liked writing every day. I liked having the pressure, too, of a group of people and a structure to keep at it. I'm going to miss it. So perhaps I should go back to giving up chocolate and coffee and alcohol for Lent.

Writing has, in fact, gotten me through a few dark nights of the soul, in an unexpected way. It has set a standard for me that has been both higher (get out of your head, challenge yourself, try writing differently, and about different topics) and lower (write! just write. Worry about the rest later). I will have to keep doing it, and having the discipline to do so will be hard for a while. Still, I come back to it again and again. It reminds me of my guitar - a failed experiment - teacher's definition of musician. She said that being a musician is not about whether you have talent, or about what fame you achieve. It is about whether you come back to it throughout your life, work at it, and give yourself a chance to learn.

On how I hate intuition

2011-04-23T13:33:00.004+02:00

What I really want is insight, constructive understanding. This feminine business of intuition annoys me. It is like when I was in highschool and was terrible at Latin grammar and declensions, and yet did well in later years with translation. This makes no sense. Similarly, I can't remember any of basic grammatical analysis of English I was taught, but ask me to do final year process type analysis and I bet I can still do it. It vexes me to no end.

As the end of my writing experiment comes into view, an experiment which has at least yielded a short story, it occurs to me that in spite of a degree, well, two, in English lit, I can't analyse writing worth anything. Oh I can make stuff up, interpret away until I'm halfway through a Ph.D., but doing the truly writerly thing of looking a the cogs and wheels is very hard for me. Give me an exercise and I will write with a good understanding of what I am doing, but I am terrible at understanding other people's writing, and really even my own when I write freely, and am scrambling to acquire a vocabulary to do so. Yet I have control, I am confident in how I use the tools I have. My effects, for the most part, are conveyed as intended.

At the the end of the day I feel like someone in that episode of Blackadder with Tom Baker as the legless captain saying "My lady, you have a woman's brain!"

Alas.

See how easy it is to make me happy?

2011-04-22T03:51:00.001+02:00

Shiny.

Also, at the age of thirty-two, I realise that one meets people by stopping and talking to them. Go figure.

Rain

2011-04-20T01:53:00.003+02:00

It is rainy outside, and I love a good rainy day, love sitting and reading with a cup of tea while the rains ticks against the window.

You know what this needs? It needs a panda.

Hamlet, only cleaner

2011-04-17T04:16:00.001+02:00

see more Failbook

Rainy

2011-04-17T03:25:00.005+02:00

A rainy day - perfect for exactly what I did - eating waffles, watching Jim Henson movies, eating soup, and most of all, hanging out with friends.

Not bad at all.

Also

2011-04-15T04:03:00.002+02:00

Still writing! Every day too. Points for anyone who guesses the exercise I was attempting. Points earn you spiffy rewards like...er...spinach. Books? Yes, books are good. I can send those. So, here goes -

Ah yes, splendid. Guests. Jolly good. No eggs for breakfast. No matter. Yes, yes. Four, no, five. Not a problem at all. May run out of milk though. Yes. No matter. We’ll make do. Cornflakes. Must have cornflakes somewhere. Madeleine must have put them somewhere. Yes. She moves things, Madeleine does. Lovely girl. A little discombobulated. Yes. A trifle disorganized. But charming. Toast, surely there is some toast. Ho hum. Out of bacon, last of it sizzling. Cast iron pan. Gussie handling it. Not good with food, Gussie. Not so much. Charming chap though, positively charming. Better move those bottles. Might knock them over. Hm. Champagne. That was the last. Didn’t mind them drinking it yesterday. No, don’t begrudge it at all. Only that was the last. Did I get any? I believe I did not. Still, they were lovely company. A little loud. But lovely. Very spirited. Still, it was a jolly good time. Few stains on the carpet. It’s quite fine. Yes. Red wine.

Still, mustn’t complain. Wouldn’t do. Wouldn’t do at all. Better fetch some more bacon. Yes. Get some air. Get some fresh air. Bacon too. Perhaps some milk. A few eggs. A nice long walk. Enjoy the season. Top notch day. Sunny. Yes. A brilliant day. Wander a little. Bit of quiet. Wouldn’t do though. Wouldn’t do to abandon the guests. Not at all done. Not a bit of it. Still, a bit of quiet. Would be quite good. Quiet. Bit of silence.

Better get that bacon.

Give thanks

2011-04-15T04:01:00.001+02:00

I would just like to give thanks for I Can Has Cheesburger and Damn You Autocorrect.

That is all.

On attainment

2011-04-12T03:47:00.001+02:00

Intellect, rationality, is a wonderful thing. Like a tool, you can hone it, perfect its use, guide it, after much practice, with ease. It is a measurement. I have spent much time with people who believe in this tool, a very fine tool. I grew up in the belief that it – ratio, science – was the small light in a vast darkness. So it is. I had not fully grasped the meaning of that metaphor though, until I bumped up against it again and again for a long time.

In the dark, you must sometimes turn away from the light to see better. This does not diminish its value; without it you would see nothing at all. But sometimes it is best to keep it at your back, and let your eyes adjust to the dark to see more clearly. So reason lights up human nature, but cannot be used by staring into the light. Instead I have turned away from it, knowing it there in the background from the glow it cast, but looking out into the darkness.

I have worked hard, this last year, at moving rational knowledge into my heart, accepting that rational thought is not what directs my emotions. Unless I can understand with my heart as well as my head, my reason desintegrates into rationalisation. My intellect alone is easily confused, easily lost in the fray. Perhaps mine is simply not strong enough. So instead I have simply put in the dumb work of self-development – writing every day, regardless of inspiration, doing tai chi even when I don’t feel relaxed, going for walks when it’s cold. The road to personal progress for me has been to put in the hours (some of the time...) and not think about the outcome. I find it always pays off when I stick with it – but never when I expect it or how I expect it. Most often this practice helps when I fail most dramatically, or am most disappointed. It’s when I learn the most. Beckett was right – and thanks again to Evan for the quote – “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Funny how that quote become less depressing every time I read it, and every time I go through the same mistakes and learn a little more, and fail a little better.

The one where everything upsets me

2011-04-12T03:33:00.001+02:00

This weekend I finally made the link between Edgar Allen Poe and The Wire, that is to say, I visited the Poe House. The Poe House is located in a neighbourhood so bad as to be iconic. You see, it is right next to the Poe Homes, a social housing project from years gone by made famous by David Simon’s observation that why yes, there’s an awful lot of crime there. The Poe House – an impossibly teensy house closely guarded by the unnecessarily defensive curator – is a sort of marvel. A marvel of Baltimore-style loss of opportunity, that is, though there is some Poe-esque morbid charm to it. Surely someone, hell, why not David Simon, can do some bloody fundraising for this place, knock down some of the condemned houses, build a visitor center and bring some money into this godforsaken neighbourhood? Surely Poe is famous enough to deserve better than a badly edited snowy tape from the eighties? As it is, it inspires enough people to brave the area (on foot!), the erratic opening hours and the wait in front of the closed door. Surely Baltimore can do better, even in these dour times.

I propose a combo Poe/Wire tour. I think it’s a natural fit, I really do. Death, mystery, detective, work, suffering, drugs, crime – it goes down well enough round here. We have the crime and drugs anyway, why not make the most of it? Worked for David Simon. Who knows, we could maybe even spend some of the money on making some of these places safer. Let’s make it a goal – let’s aim to make drugs and crime the future tourist fallacy of Baltimore. Let’s aim to have well made-up actors posing as junkies for lack of real ones by the year 2024.

In other news, gorramit, I’m ignoring the news because it if so hatefully idiotic, and because the Dems are such gorram idiots. Someone hand me a wet towel please, I have some people I need to smack with it. This is making me nostalgic for when the other people were being the fools.

Yes, yes, I know

2011-03-30T02:47:00.002+02:00

I have been being creative, honestly I have, I finished my story, it is getting workshopped in two days (YAAAARGHL). It's just that there isn't time for anything, room for anything, it's stressing me out, which is a bit unusual for me. I'm tired now, thoroughly, wretchedly tired, but I'm writing, and I'm excited about that, very excited, if scared, but that's about all I have space for: work, volunteer work, writing and sleep. Food, yes, rather too much of it I believe.

Back

2011-03-21T23:13:00.002+01:00

Friends,

So I made it back from the Golden West safely - it was lovely out there, lovely to get a break from the thisness of life and do something else for a while. Even for the ten minutes at the end of the day spent walking by the water it would have been worth it. As it was, there were more merits to the trip, most of which are work related and obscure. Salient fact: I now somewhat miraculously have a very rough draft of an actual story. Not sure what to make of that,but one must suppose that it is a good thing.

It is spring. Chilly, but spring - my house is filled with hyacinths and peonies and there is nothing quite like coming home to the slight smell of hyacinths emanating from your front door.

Hope yours is nice too.

Dag vriendjes en vriendinnetjes

2011-03-15T02:36:00.003+01:00

Because it is never too late to introduce a creepy clown! That line is from the theme song of Bassie & Adriaan, which I loved as a child and which now simply bewilders me a little. Anyhow, I am off to the West coast tomorrow, for work, so if you don't hear from me, that's why. Cross you fingers for me, I'm presenting! And yes, the creative project continues, still writing silly stuff. Maybe I'll post some soon, just for kicks.

Anyway, off with me.

Sunday morning

2011-03-13T14:55:00.002+01:00

I am in Richmond, former capital of the confederacy, where spring has already started, and yes, I have been sticking to my plan of doing something creative every day. The creative thing has mostly been the same thing, which is a little dull, I admit, but it has been done - the project continues as I write. Slowly, slowly, a little to my dismay, but all the same, I now have five pieces of writing, however modest, however unfinished in some cases, as compared to the zero I had done in the n months before. It seems to involve a lot of food, and by that I mean a lot of writing about food. It is, I suppose, what comes to mind.

There hasn't been much time for other fun stuff, between the work travel coming up, general work craziness, the volunteer board work, and my standing commitments. I regret that, but it is nice to find that even so I can still find the time to do this, though it reminds me of Virginia Woolf and her room of one's own - I have the room, but so little time to myself that I end up writing in other people's rooms, like today with this guest broadcast from Richmond, where I am staying with a friend. It has blossoms and nice weather, and that has gone a ways in helping my obsessive mind leave well alone for a little bit. I needed it, though I really didn't have the time for it.

Really bloody hard

2011-03-11T04:10:00.003+01:00

Today did everything it could to thwart my creative project, but here I am, it's been a struggle but yes, I am writing! Right now! Yes, let me go do that.

Ash Wednesday

2011-03-10T03:00:00.002+01:00

"...
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us"

I can never forget T.S. Eliot at the beginning of this time of discipline and observance.

It will be hard this year to live up to my commitment. I have started. Just a little bit, a little tiny start of a story, a something, a small, curled up thing. But a thing, something of mine.

Fat

2011-03-09T02:18:00.002+01:00

I got a head start on my pancakes, so fat tuesday (evening) is for giving myself the evening off. Tomorrow the work, the creative work, starts.

Wish me luck, and industry.

Soon

2011-03-07T03:41:00.002+01:00

I will be writing more here. Soon it will be Ash Wednesday and the Project shall begin. Behind the scenes, I am already working on it. There shall be creativity! But first, sleep. No, seriously, I am going to bed now. Sleep well, kind friends.

The Road Less Plagued By Patronising Platitudes

2011-02-10T03:14:00.002+01:00

So far, what I am learning from The Road Less Travelled is that psychiatrists really are quite often pompous and self-absorbed. Also that self-help does not help the TDEC's self. Well, it was worth a try.

Finally, Eclipse would be quite funny if it weren't so annoying.

That's all.

Lent

2011-02-09T03:47:00.001+01:00

Folks, you know. I’m quite silly and discombobulated and ADOBSO (= Attention Deficit Oooh Bright Shiny Object – thank you colleague who shall be nameless for inventing the term). And yet, and yet...give me a specific set of instructions and I will make you origami. For years now I have observed Lent, on and off. Not because I am Catholic, which I most certainly am not, but because I think that making yourself do something for a fixed period of time every year is excellent practice. I learn a lot from it. So one year I gave up coffeecheesechocolateandalcohol and found out that alcohol was a lot more important to my social life than I would have credited. Who knew? Another year I got up early every morning to do yoga. It made me limber and awake, though not especially enlightened. Etc.

This year’s plan, which I have just decided on/stolen, is that from Ash Wednesday until Easter Sunday, I will take a leaf out of Wil Wheaton’s proverbial book and Do Something Creative Every Day. What’s more, I will do something creative every day, and I will tell you about it. You can be my unkind audience. If I am cooking/baking something new, I will share pictures; if I write I will let you know; if I make a diorama, I’ll be sure to post it. And it’ll be practice, it’ll be an exercise in challenging myself every day.

A thought

2011-02-08T03:09:00.001+01:00

It was something about today, something about the clarity of this day, that made me miss Stone Parliament of Art, so I wandered over there and found it as I left it, beautiful and forever a little melancholy. I hate it when the cliches and the self-help books are right –

“Life is difficult.”

It’s the first sentence of The Road Less Travelled. And it is, and the tool psychiatrist author is right when he says it is the making of us, any of us, that the difficulties and problem solving are what defines our discipline and courage.

I hate it when the self-help books are right. It is odd, I guess, for me to believe that T.S. Eliot’s poetry changed my life, but to find myself unable to credit any of the books intended to change lives with anything but quackery.

From yesterday

2011-02-02T02:15:00.002+01:00

Yesterday evening I was narcoleptic in spite of Cary Elwes. I blame Elvis. Elvis – it’s almost lonely now that I am back home from Graceland. I walked all over it wearing the Stitch hat I got for my birthday, and my only disappointment is that none of the million giftshops had Elvis underwear. I walked until my bootclad feet were tired, while everywhere played appropriate selections of Elvis singing. Upbeat in the morning, love songs in the evening as you walk back to the hotel with the inevitable yet well-chosen framed photos of a mostly young and deliciously glamourous Presley. The only thing I was tempted to steal was the leather wrist strap from the ’68 comeback special: the perfect accessory. But for all you fans, replicas are available at shopelvis.com.

Did I get saved by Elvis? Isn’t that why people go to Graceland? To be redeemed? I sat with him for a while, looking at all the birthday wishes. The house, after all this time, doesn’t feel lived in, but does feel like a real home, not a rich person’s megalomaniac imaginings. It was unexpected. Not redemption; but a break, a blissful interlude in the unseasonably warm weather. Reality is a little sharper afterwards – in focus and likely to give you cuts.

Oh Elvis, oh delectable Ten, love is not about being saved, extracted from the current mess. Love is about living the mess and knowing why, and trying to do it with grace, trying to learn, trying to love what you have here and now. But Ten, can we see the ’68 special close up? Reality is shored up by dreams after all, and the stamina is all in knowing when –and how - to take a break.

A Very Long Silence

2011-01-27T01:16:00.001+01:00

It’s been quiet – the snow muffles most sounds. I’ve been reading Susanna Clarke’s Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories. She writes so well, such perfect pitch, so meticulous; it all makes me wish she wrote more. She reminds me of what a good writer can accomplish – a good reminder at a time when I often just hunt for the kindest, gentlest books. Clarke is not exactly gentle; rather, she is exquisite and always walking the line between the bright, colourful fairytale and the sinister one. I love and respect fairytales, their variety, their subtext, their occasional brutality in achieving a happy end as much as in reaching an unhappy conclusion. I also love good nineteenth century fiction, and well-researched historical fiction, so Clarke, who captures those styles so perfectly, was always a likely candidate for my affections. She does her own thing with it, and I respect her for that too; she is never content just to be Austen or Dickens or Tolkien. Yes, it will do for a cold day, and I am sad enough to finish these stories that I may just start over right now, especially since they take a while to acclimate to. I might even take on Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell again; Clarke, like Oscar Wilde’s cigarette, provides the perfect pleasure – always unfinished, always leaving the reader wanting just a little more – and wanting tea and scones.

Free. Well, mostly.

2011-01-15T00:36:00.002+01:00

It is Friday, I am watching The Princess Diaries with a glass of wine and a peanut butter sandwich, and my goodness, have I ever earned it. My life sucks. Technically, my life sucked this week, and is now better. Hell, the Man with the Power even called to Make It So. It is a week gladly done, and reasonably well done.

So this is it, my evening off. Enjoy yours.

Barbarians

2011-01-10T02:29:00.002+01:00

I am a curmudgeon, and I want a British second-hand bookshop with a nice edition of Oscar Wilde's fairytales. Or his collected works. Possibly even De profundis. Is this too much too ask?

It would appear that it is. I must console myself with tea and crumpets, and maybe some Blackadder now that I'm through listening to Stephen Fry.

lalala

2011-01-07T01:57:00.002+01:00

I keep trying to write, write here, for all the little that it matters, and all I manage is labyrinthine thoughts and abominable abstraction. As I read about Oscar Wilde’s books and Stephen Fry’s life, I am reminded of something, someone I was (17 and 20 respectively) when these people were my heroes and it surprises me to find my beloved quiet hero in Fry’s narrative – E.M. Forster. I know I’ve written about Forster before, he of the Merchant Ivory melancholy films, but I hold him in high esteem as I do George Orwell for brilliant feeling rather than brilliant writing. E.M. Forster, not truly a brilliant writer, is enshrined – yes, enshrined, with his own set of lights and flowers – in my heart as the first person to show me what surviving your own confusion looks like. It was and is an inspiring feat. Maybe it’s time to re-read Maurice again. Whenever I see the old Penguin edition, which isn’t very often, I remember how it seduced me, and how I picked it up gently and took it home with me and read it in a night. It’s why I own multiple copies – it would be unkind to leave it there, stranded in a second-hand bookstore.

It reminds me of when I read Ruskin and Pater and J.K. Huysmans (oh terrible, painful) and Keats – oh I miss my little books of Keats – and all of the mixed bag of my love of 19^th century lit, which like an old habit I forget most days now.

(As I listen to Stephen Fry, it occurs to me that he uses a mechanism I know very well, a negative self-talk I recognize – did I really just write “negative self-talk”? – when he talks about cheating to pass exams. When he says “cheating” he really means “understanding exactly what is required, and then doing what is needed” which is surely a skill worth crediting? But like all people with low self esteem, the skill he has is always silly and trifling compared to the one he hasn’t got. He has intelligence, insight and excellent writing skills; but like all of us with low self esteem, he is only an imposter, never the real thing, compared to, oh, someone over there who looks like he really gets it.)

What? Muppets.

2010-12-19T16:40:00.007+01:00

I know I have posted this, but it's that time of the year, and it is made of win and awesome.

In other news, long walks are good, weather that is not trying to kill one is good, and, needless to say, coffee is good.

The face of the earth

2010-12-08T00:52:00.003+01:00

Is overrated. Personally, I would like to recommend a nice fallout shelter with food, booze, all those books I have but have not read, the collected Doctor Who and all of Shahrukh Khan’s movies. Give me the winter months and I bet I can come up with some really good crossovers (you know that RFD would have approved of a singing, dancing, besequined Doctor). Because really, what is winter but a succession of errands and obnoxious music followed by an extra dose of cold? (Why yes, I am all in black today. Black is what I wear on the outside because black is what I feel on the inside. With a purple cardigan and blue scarf I am managing to look both cheerful and bruised)

Also, I am old. I was just looking for a good picture of Shahrukh Khan in sequins* – surprisingly hard to find, given how many shiny, spangly costumes he wears – and happened across some fairly revealing shots. I made a little noise, covered my eyes, and thought, ah, my, that is quite indecent**.

*You're welcome. You now also have Deepika Padukone in a princess Leia bra
**And, frankly, a little gay, even with the women.

In the interim

2010-12-05T12:48:00.002+01:00

I briefly interrupt my regularly scheduled Bollywood to listen to The Great Gatsby, a book I read years ago and don’t remember at all, and which I took up again to prepare to a lecture that was, in fact, about Tender is the Night. Go figure. Mostly, I feel the same as I did when I first read the book – it defies me, like On the Road. I don’t get it. It faintly bores me. And yet...I read the end four times, the very end...

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we wi

ll run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning ——-

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

All by itself, that is some of the most beautiful and sad prose known to man.

By the way, Beirut’s The Flying Club Cup must be the perfect accompaniment: “a Sunday smile...we wore it for a while...”.

I may now go read that book about insanity and death.

What (not) to do

2010-12-01T03:29:00.000+01:00

What do you do with yourself when you get overwhelmed with the giant stack of things in front of you? I know what I do. When I was in college I would run off during study sessions for, say, English linguistics, to learn Latin grammar. I am not at all kidding. Today, freshly home from Thanksgiving travel and faced with a giant pile of things to do, I repress the desire to start learning a new language, though that would make me happy. I repress the desire to try catching up on all my podcasts. I repress the desire to run away and bake things. But I will allow myself to watch my new movies as I do all this stuff that I am supposed to.

So long, and thanks for all the pecan pie

2010-11-27T14:34:00.003+01:00

Post-Thanksgiving there is a brief lull which is mostly given to the eating of leftovers and pie. It is a lovely lull, perhaps even better than the excellent event itself. I have been long overdue for a break in the persistent cloud cover of crazy, so I am grateful, very grateful, for that. In fact, I have much to be grateful for - much love and support above and beyond. Yet today I am mostly grateful for the opportunity to sit down and do nothing. Play Robot Unicorn Attack -not even any reading of my Most Excellent and Learned Tome.

Inconvenienced

2010-11-18T13:12:00.002+01:00

One of the really double-edged swords of adulthood is a love of comfort/a dislike of being inconvenienced. Having the resources to achieve comfort is a wonderful thing, and I cherish it, but if it makes me reluctant to go camping or try something new, then all is not well. I hate changing plans (and planes, for that matter). South America seems too dangerous to me. Australia is very far. India would require too much language learning. Even Germany feels kind of bothersome. I am too young to be this unadventurous.

Time to bring out the old penguin trick:

Ramón: [standing ontop of a cliff, trying to get ready to jump off]
Ramón: I can do this, I can do this... I have to trick myself.
[points at something behind him]
Ramón: Boy, look at that!
[looks at where he's pointing]
Ramón: What?
[falls off the cliff]

Thank you, Happy Feet.

That said, I still love my only-mediumly-famous famous people; my days of standing in the rain for six hours for anyone (hello there Greg Dulli from the Afghan Whigs – not even that famous; or that attractive*) are most definitely at an end. Besides, the mediumly famous are usually nicer; and these days niceness in the face of fame seems so much more impressive to me than glamour**.

*Not to knock Greg Dulli, but he ain’t no (pre-cheese-farm-wedded-bliss) Alex James
**If I want glamour, there’s always Shah Rukh Khan’s filmography. Singing! Dancing! Political overtones! Why is it that Bollywood is so inherently more glamourous than anything else? It has an unabashed love of the kitschy-yet -pretty, the hackneyed-yet-charming that I find especially appealing just at the moment.

Field hockey

2010-11-15T12:52:00.003+01:00

Which I was offered many chances to play once upon a time. I don't regret not playing it; I seem to recall it involved rather a lot of bruised shins. Instead I watched Chak De India, a field hockey/Indian version of my beloved Bend it like Beckham, which is another movie about an underdog women's team in a sport I don't care about overmuch, sporting a coach shown to best advantage in white shirts. I recommend it. Especially to the Spouse, who wishes I played field hockey, and who will have to remain disappointed in that wish.

Overthinking

2010-11-12T00:10:00.003+01:00

Backstory: a few weeks ago, I wrapped up a crazy week by going to a Bollywood party some friends had invited me to. I had a great time, but spent far too much time being glued to the miscellaneous screens, trying to follow the movie. Upon investigation, it turned out to be Om Shanti Om, I netflixed it, and my, what a romp.

Dialogue:
Happy TDEC: *swinging happily to the freshly purchased soundtrack*
Reflective TDEC: It’s annoying that I can’t sing along. And that I have no idea of the background of any of this.
HTDEC: Mmm, sure, but think of the fun! The outrageous costumes! The dancing! The men whose masculinity is not diminished by shiny outfits and ruffles
RTDEC: Ok, sure, but what if some Indian person caught me listening to this. I’d look like a tool
HTDEC: RTDEC, who cares? Besides, what are you planning to do? Drive by Indian shops blasting Deewangi Deewangi?
RTDEC: I'd look stupid, wouldn’t I? Like a wannabe?
HTDEC: It’s a song, woman, not a statement
RTDEC: Can’t it be both?
HTDEC: You are being just like when we were fifteen and on vacation in the UK and you refused to speak English for fear of sounding foreign
RTDEC: I am self-conscious now
HTDEC: Will you just SHUT UP already? I am trying to enjoy the song. Look at the screen. The guy is wearing a pirate costume for no reason at all. Can’t you just be grateful?

More blood, please?

2010-11-04T01:54:00.003+01:00

It must be the time of year or the election, but it's Wednesday evening and I'm watching Being Human - a ghost, a werewolf and vampire combo deal - reading Sunshine in print - more vampires - and listening to The Eyre Affair. I'm trying to remember whether that last one has any vampires but I'm getting mixed up. Do you think there's a theme here?

Only Sunshine is really convincing me just at the moment, because it has vampires and cinnamon buns, and how can you go wrong with that? Being Human just kind of disappoints me, mainly because the vampire sort of looks like Aidan Gillen but isn't actually him. How very superficial of me, I know, but for now I have put my serious death and suffering (Under the Banner of Heaven) aside for some light death. The Eyre Affair certainly has plenty of that, vampires or not - and yes, I just remembered, it does actually have both werewolves and vampires, though not a lot of either. I swear I am not doing this on purpose. Well, it does make me forget about the Democrats for a while, and that must be good. The time travel/werewolf/vampire thing will distract you. You know what this evening needs? It needs a unizombie. I mean a zombie/unicorn hybrid, you know, undead, shiny, good hair.

Fuck, it's Edward Cullen, isn't it?

Epic fail

2010-11-03T12:06:00.003+01:00

You know, these days I am so careful about what I write on teh interwebs that I hardly get to write anything fun. This morning, however, I am too angry to care. Really, this country deserves better than this ship o' fools. I just watched the Democrats - the people who are quite as bad at living up to their supposed values as the Republicans - lose one of the biggest advantages in history, in spite of the best Republican efforts to shoot themselves in the foot (hello Christine O'Donnell!). I don't blame the Republicans. They do their thing. No; me, I am angry with the Democrats for failing utterly to make what is a pretty simple case, so that they could at least lose on merit rather than on sheer inanity. How about "we made it so that people can't be excluded from healthcare based on existing conditions" ? How about "we actually lowered taxes for the middle class"? But the Dems lived up to their rule of the last two years: all pussyfooting and lack of message. These are the same people who can't get out of their own way on popularly supported issues like the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

Sigh. What morans. For a moment there, they had a message. And then then they got distracted by a shiny thing.

Stupidhead

2010-10-21T01:51:00.003+02:00

I have at least four really great ideas for blog posts and not enough energy to do them. But here is one vague stab at one that occurred to me earlier. I was reading about the budget cuts in Britain. Now, I dislike a Tory government as much as the next person but while reading this made me angry, it also made me feel sane. It was, after all, what I would expect of a conservative government. It is consistent with conservative values: smaller government, cuts in education, science and the arts; most of all, they are actually trying hard to balance the budget. And I feel about that much like I feel about Margaret Thatcher - I disagree with the policy, but I value that it is, at least, consistent. No extra spending on defense, and yes, even a tax hike for some higher income families. So they can balance the budget. It's a close to respecting the Tories I have come in a long time. Except then I remember that they are after the BBC, and anyone who threatens the BBC will be slapped with a wet towel repeatedly. No, you may not.

I'm with Mitch Benn on this. Did I mention Doctor Who?

Practice

2010-10-06T00:51:00.002+02:00

My yoga teacher - when I did yoga - used to say that it was all practice. What he meant was that in yoga, as in life, it is more productive to work towards improvement than towards a fixed set of goals. Fixed goals do only limited good. They provide focus, but do not allow for the setbacks which all of us find every now and then. Not a very flexible model. Moreover, being goal-oriented draws attention away from the biggest part of the enterprise - the way in which you get there. Does it make you a happier human? A kinder one? A more fulfilled one? No? Maybe you're doing it wrong, if you'll excuse the lolcat reference. To quote a favourite obscure poet, "balance is the biggest part of movement"

Have a lovely evening.

Interesting

2010-10-05T02:26:00.003+02:00

As in: things you do to be interesting
Like read the New York Times, and Jon Krakauer books. Makes for good conversation. Making good conversation is important in life.

As in: raising one eyebrow. Fascinating...

As in: euphemism for you've bored me now I'm too polite to say something about it, to complain that I don't want to see any more pictures.

As in: no, really, it is interesting. I am interested.

I am mostly interested in tea, sleep and books this evening, and therefore of interest only to myself this evening. Have a lovely one, my friends. I am too incoherent to do more today.

The funniest thing since time began - for you lovers of Dr. Who, and or Tony Blair

2010-09-30T01:27:00.000+02:00

Infographic

2010-09-30T00:37:00.006+02:00

I would like to add that Optimum Jack = the guy on the left. Well, either one really.

Spread thin

2010-09-29T02:22:00.002+02:00

“One stomach flu away from my golden weight”

In the words of The Devil Wears Prada. It’s what I keep thinking, because people keep telling me that I’ve lost weight. They mean it as a compliment, so I try to be gracious, not one of my skills at the best of times. My feeble efforts are considerably preferable to saying what is in my head, which is approximately the following: yes, it’s my steady diet of misery, caffeine, stress and chocolate. Right now I’m nauseous and I’ve slept about four hours, and today is a pretty good day, because at least I didn’t lie awake because of anxiety.

It’s all both true and not true. On Friday I saw a debate on zombies versus unicorns, Saturday I bought books and barley tea with a friend, and Sunday was all about crepes and more books. How bad can things really be?

I’m listening to Beirut, and this music really does sound like Beirut Unvisited, like eastern Europe in the sixties, like memories of French beaches.

So much to be grateful for. So much to be haunted by. So perhaps this is the perfect song.

Darleks

2010-09-27T01:14:00.001+02:00

It is as good a way as any, I suppose, to end the weekend: with Daleks. Or Darleks, if you like.

Verboten

2010-09-23T00:39:00.003+02:00

Next week is Banned Books Week. Time to whip out Lady Chatterly at Tom Lehrer's advice:

But seriously, time to sit in the park, reading And Tango Makes Three. The world needs more penguins.

However you do it, celebrate your right to read whatever you bloody well like.

Literarary pondings

2010-09-20T03:18:00.002+02:00

A definition:

“It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable—when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us—that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.”

Oh George Eliot and her infallible understanding of human frailty. Apt, too, the speaker: I first heard the quote from a hamster of a man, my first English professor, a truly engaging teacher who was later quietly removed for indiscretions with a student.

Anyway, that is The Mill on the Floss.

Perhaps more cheerily, this gloomy day (in my head - it was a glorious autumn day in the outside world) reminded me of Shelley -

"If winter comes, can spring be far behind?"

It seems especially pertinent today. Potent? Pungent? Portentous perhaps...

Autumn/Fall

2010-09-17T12:57:00.002+02:00

Which it isn't yet officially, but you can smell it in the air, crisp in the mornings...
I may need to buy some cider this weekend, and plan a camping trip (not actually take one - I'm working tomorrow afternoon. Bleh.)
But first Friday, and the annual budget. The crazy thing? I actually kind of like doing the budget.

Have a good Friday!

Dickens

2010-09-11T12:57:00.003+02:00

I used to live in Portsmouth, where Dickens was born. The house still stands, in the little bit that remains of the old city - the rest of it is pretty ugly these days, not much helped by contemporary efforts. In the year I lived in Portsmouth, I visited the good ship Victory several times. I went to London and Brighton and Bristol and Cardiff, and loved it. Southampton even, though mostly for the shopping, and lovely Chicester and Winchester where Jane Austen is buried.

But Dickens now; I made a point of not visiting his birth house. I don't believe much in birthplaces, which are usually the crummy towns that motivate people to get the hell out. One could easily see Portsmouth that way, though I am very fond of it. It is not a highbrow place, and wouldn't have been in Dickens' time. Mostly, however, I just didn't care much for Dickens, the most commonplace of Victorian writers when I always loved obscurity & decadence. Oddly enough, that never stopped me from reading his books - I read The Pickwick Papers and Great Expectations, enjoyed the latter quite a bit, but stopped there. A few weeks ago, a colleague of good judgment and taste recommended the most recent production of Bleak House, the 2005 mini-series. I watched it all in one go before leaving for the heimat two week ago. It is quite spectacular, and I am wondering if I need to revisit Dickens. Wondering whether, after all the Nice Soothing books I've been reading, I should revisit Dickens' murky world. He has such great characters, and a sort of gentleness in subjecting them to misfortunes that almost reminds me of early Tennessee Williams. Peculiar. Perhaps adulthood is making me unafraid of conventional, and almost unfashionable, reading...

Prospect

2010-08-28T15:14:00.003+02:00

Tomorrow I am off to the heimat. As I finish Dorothy Sayers & Jill Paton Walsh's Thrones, Dominations on my walk to the market, I find myself reminded of a person I used to be, and used to like being. You know, I miss Britain. I kind of miss the person I was when I was there. As for the heimat, it will be good to be there. My plans are scattered at best, so I am hoping this does not lead to disaster. I just haven't had headspace to plan.

This is about all I have had room for:

Oh, and Shakespeare in the park, apparently. Hm. Picnic.

Books

2010-08-17T01:30:00.003+02:00

In a stack, beside the bed. Asimov, Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game, Arthur C. Clarke, and two Rex Stout books.

I just bought Philip Pullman's The Shadow in the North. Why? Maybe it was just Billie Piper being on the cover.

And yet instead of reading I am watching Perfect Strangers. Eighties comedy, stereotypes, and pink shirts.

Hamlet, sort of

2010-08-15T02:48:00.003+02:00

Hamlet. It’s been a while since I’ve thought about Hamlet, and what with Emilie Autumn and my renewed crush on Ten, hence also somewhat on David Tennant, I find myself contemplating the sweat prince (ah, obscure In the Bleak Midwinter references!) once more. Why Emilie Autumn? Well, because of Opheliac, song and album, which could with more justice be called Hamletiac, though I admit it doesn’t sound nearly as good.

“Doubt thou the stars are fire
Doubt thou the sun doth move
Doubt truth to be a liar
But never doubt I love”

she sings. Confessions of love from a mad prince are about right. I’ll need to rewatch it this weekend (right, TDEC, what you need at this critical and difficult juncture in your life is 500-year-old death and suffering, as re-enacted by Patrick Stewart and David Tennant. Just the thing, actually.) I wish I could watch Cambridge Spies:

Queen: "Never trust a man with a bad moustache. Homosexualists never have moustaches... Have you noticed? I think it's a signal... To other chaps... 'Look! No moustache! Come and get me!' Ponces and spies, Anthony. The people with the most to hide never have moustaches. So which are you, Anthony? Ponce or spy?"

Anthony Blunt: "Oh... A little of both... Aren't we all?"

There, just the thought of it makes me happy. And it would make for a perfect day-long escape into the world of lovely British drama. You know, I kind of resent my fetish for Tennant. Sam West is lovely, and kind of obscure, especially out here, and he loves poetry and cross-stitching and fencing and theatre. He wears hats. He’s lovely. But David Tennant? David Tennant is just some Scottish bloke. I would love to blame it all on my love of the Tenth Doctor, but I love him in a bunch of other things too, he wins me over every time, but I still resent it. I hate it when I get lured into a mainstream filmstar crush, and he’s as mainstream as you get in Britain. And for all my long-standing affection of all things Scottish, I don’t like his Scottish accent, and find it jarring; I find his real self jarring*. It’s the kind of thing I wish I could talk myself out of. Only then, when I’m not looking, I will find myself watching Human Nature again and...

Notice how I used my Misery Cloud as an excuse to go on pointless tangent about David Tennant and Sam West and the general atrophying of my brain?

I am pathetic, yet happy.

*Oh, who am I kidding. He does bedtime stories. He kissed John Barrowman. Surely that wins him some reality points?

Morning

2010-08-09T07:08:00.003+02:00

It's been a long time, and between the end of this season of Doctor Who and my abominable life, there hasn't been much to say. This morning I woke up from dreams of said Doctor (escapism? surely not!) and I thought - it must be time to make myself heard, even if it is early in the morning. I wish I had a whole morning to just sit and play Robot Unicorn Attack. Alas. Coffee and work will have to suffice.

(Maybe also that cardboard cutout of the Tenth Doctor)

So my dear and unfortunate reader, may your week bring, at least, a few hours of Robot Unicorn Attack and some silly eighties sitcom. Perfect Strangers? It'll do.

Change

2010-07-29T02:33:00.000+02:00

I’ll do this like This American Life, in three acts.

Change – plus ça change?

In French they say that the more it changes, the more it stays the same. Like most clichés, it is both true and false. I am the same person I was when I was twelve, essentially – silly, game for most things, obsessed with books and loveliness. These days I find that I am also different. The best way I can think to express it is that my hands are hard to relax. It becomes harder to let go – harder to be generous, open, honest, emotionally free. Circumstances teach secrecy and parsimony, and I resentfully learn.

Change – unlearning

Changing is like getting chicken pox – a real bitch once you’re grown up. And yet here you are with your nose to the wall, and clearly you didn’t get where you wanted to be, and suddenly change doesn’t mean moving again (oh the lovely drug of geography), it means sitting down and talking to yourself sternly. Like science, it’s often counter-intuitive, and you think of Elvis Costello again

“The truth can’t hurt you
It’s just like the dark
It scares you witless
But in time you see things clear and stark.”

Change – bumper stickers

I saw one the other day that said “CHANGE – all you’ll have left when Obama’s done.”

Which was funnier than conservatives usually are. I won’t blame Barry, because these days his sonorous audiobooked voice helps me sleep, but I sympathise with the sentiment – too much change will bankrupt the hell out of the best of us.

Sleep, SLEEP

2010-07-24T04:14:00.001+02:00

I need some. More than I have been getting. Also, pizza. No, wait, I just had some. Tony Blair? No, he's not very edible at all.

A small, well-loved thing

2010-07-21T00:54:00.001+02:00

Like this, for example

A Nice Cup of Tea

2010-07-15T00:44:00.002+02:00

As, this afternoon, I was trying to dispel one of those Eeyore personalised clouds, I got some tea. It was Lipton Decaffeinated, the only available option. When Douglas Adams wrote “almost, but not quite entirely, unlike tea”, decaf Lipton is probably what he had in mind. Foul, but ever so slightly better than no tea at all.

The other thing I think of is George Orwell’s eleven rules for making tea, and also of these buttons, which are a WIN. Actually, check out their Etsy store if you’re into Doctor Who, Firefly or the Hitchhiker’s Guide, they make great buttons and are very prompt and friendly.

Speaking of which, I love how tea is infused with obscure and near-magical properties in Doctor Who. (That’s my DW comment of the day. I had to make one.)

Such are small consolations. The other, by the way, is Billy Bragg – I was listening to him this afternoon, and as he sang

“One of them's off her food
And the other one's off his head
And both of them are off down the boozer”*

I laughed out loud.

Oh Billy, if I were single, and if you weren’t twenty years older with a wife and kid, I would throw my knickers at you.

*From Little Time Bomb. Mostly funny to me, and not nearly the funniest/best of Billy’s lyrics. My favourite, actually, is probably “if that face of yours could only talk, the stories it could tell” from Life With The Lions

What the body remembers

2010-07-01T04:10:00.001+02:00

Don’t be fooled, this is a Doctor Who post. With spoilers. There’s also some other stuff. With Jeremy Irons.

I was just thinking about Amy post Rory’s death, how she shows the grief she’s forgotten in her body. Though I don’t care much for her character, I find that both apt and affecting. We do keep all sorts of things in our bodies that our minds can’t handle. I have, on occasion, found myself crying at things I didn’t understand until much later. Maybe that’s just because I am getting to be such a sentimental one; but I find it oddly relieving to watch sad Doctor Who when I’ve had a bad day – something to have the emotions about in an impersonal, not about me sort of way.

Yesterday I watched the Jeremy Irons version of Lolita. Its arrival was badly timed, but I watched it anyway. The movie as a whole is inferior to the James Mason/Stanley Kubrick movie, I think, and a little too beguiling for my moral sensibilities – the first view of Lolita is just too much, the wet t-shirt thing... That said, Jeremy Irons lives up to the glory of his audiobook reading, with perfect pitch, humiliation, and warped grace. The smugness is a little absent, but I can’t say I mind. It’s a lovely portrayal, and as ever, the story is almost unbearable, both in its narrative and in its lyricism.

She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

And my body hurts.

Music. Stuff.

2010-06-24T01:28:00.002+02:00

I’ve always been fond of Moulin Rouge, and its brilliance in walking the line between the sublime and the ridiculous. By extension, I’ve always liked the music; but for some reason only bought the soundtrack a few weeks ago. This afternoon I found myself lying under a table, as happens frequently, disentangling cables (in skirt, pantyhose and heels mind you – dress code matters), and listening to El Tango de Roxanne. I’m sure some people hate it, I’m sure for some people it crosses the line, but it always did break my heart. I lay there for a minute, staring at the underside of the table.

It reminds me of Iris, which no, I won’t actually play that, that would be overkill. You bleed just to know you’re alive. No, instead I’ll follow the soundtrack to the sweet, quiet song – which by the way captures the era beautifully – Rufus Wainwright’s Complainte de la butte.

“princesse de la rue/sois la bienvenue/dans mon coeur brisé”

And I should be good and translate that, but frankly I’m out of poetic sentiment just at the mo.

Moulin Rouge feels just about right today. If only real life distress had such good costumes. Which in turn reminds me of Emilie Autumn’s rather amusing Marry Me.

Too many musical references, I know, but it’s all I’ve got today (yes we have no bananas).

Giving thanks

2010-06-19T01:45:00.002+02:00

That another week has been survived, and comes, at last, to a gracious end with Logopolis - the end of its era - and a glass of champagne.

And this is exactly how I feel:

When I was seventeen

2010-06-17T01:10:00.002+02:00

I was probably about seventeen when my friend over at Mirror Metaphysics was telling me about Kierkegaard, and the aesthetic, ethical and religious stages. It’s been a long time, forgive me if I misremember. But definitely Kierkegaard. (She was, and clearly is, that kind of girl – she read Kierkegaard and Shelley; I read Keats* and Wilde; but yes, we also listened to silly pop and discussed boys)

So she was relating his idea of the progression through the stages. It’s funny how these things sometimes stick in one’s mind. Years and years later I have not read a letter of his writings – philosophy and I, we are not friends – but every once in a while I wonder what sphere I am in. Clearly then I was all aestheticism, what with the knee breeches and pictures of a young Alfred Douglas. Later, when George Orwell took Oscar’s place as my point of reference, my compass, I thought – surely I am ethical now? And I left the Giant Corporation to work in non-profit. Surely I am ethical now? What’s more, I started going to Quaker meeting. Cue enlightenment?

Actually, no.

I sat in meetings feeling calm, and happy, but unenlightened. And then I got distracted by shiny things. So I stand on the sidelines, observing ethical organisations, giving time and even a little money, and abstractly admiring the only religious group I have considered joining. You know what I think of when I think of conversion? I think of Alfred Douglas’ City of the Soul. I love the Quakers and my favourite non-profit for the same reason – for being consistent, coherent, and true to their principles. How beautiful the simplicity.

*on a green hill in the English countryside. Really. In a 1920’s small bound edition.

Because swearing is funny

2010-06-11T02:41:00.000+02:00

4

2010-06-11T02:36:00.002+02:00

Years ago I got off a plane and then I was here.

On finishing The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

2010-06-09T00:43:00.003+02:00

I had expected to cry; but lunchbreaks are not conducive to weeping. Still, it is a book I will gladly recommend; and at least in part because it makes sense, unlike some Elizabethan plays I could think of. Oh, I do, finally, love Hamlet, but took two readings, two performances and two films for it to stick, for it to be meaningful and not just tedious and incomprehensible. That is part of why that other great Hamlet-inspired work, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, is so brilliant: it represents the audience’s failure to comprehend Hamlet. It is the only play I ever walk out of; because when done badly, it is the worst play in the world. But I digress – Edgar Sawtelle is not inscrutable. It is not a puzzle we seek to unravel; it is instead every bit of warmth and understanding missing from Hamlet. It is uncannily good at resolving the big puzzles at the heart of the play (at least for me!) and infusing them with meaning. It is almost too much. And it does all that with just text. No cheating and using David Tennant and Patrick Stewart (who are to plays what push-up bras are to small-breasted women), just really good writing. Kudos to Wroblenski.

On the topic of Patrick Stewart, let me just point out this one thing. You see, as pointed out here, in this very spot, I love Patrick Stewart. Patrick Stewart is lovely. He is also going to be at a convention this weekend in a place not very far away at all. And I was going to go. The Spouse and I were going to go. Only then a Pressing Engagement came along to take the Spouse away, and said Spouse now wants me to join him for the tail end of said Pressing Engagement. And it will be fun, and normally I would be very excited, except...well, Patrick Stewart. I am going to have to miss Patrick Stewart. This is very sad. And yes, I could probably blackmail the Spouse into letting me go but...I’m too nice. It’s a curse. So let me state this publicly to said Wedlocked partner: You owe me. No, really, you owe me, because I am also missing James Marsters. I love you, and you now know that I would gladly sacrifice my encounters with Patrick Stewart for you. You should take advantage of this opportunity to:

a) get my copy of Chicks Dig Time Lords signed when your path takes you thencewards (as it will)

b) take me to see the next play that Stewart is in at the next available opportunity (September!)

Feel free to throw in some gratuitous Sam West or James Marsters.

2010-06-04T00:56:00.002+02:00

I am just about losing my mind. Some weeks are like that, but I was kind of hoping that those weeks were all in the previous year. Thankfully, there is always the Doctor. I have been re-watching some of the RFD stuff, Nine and Ten, and it occurs to me that I am dense, or at least that there was too much time between when I saw Nine and when I watched most of Ten. I had forgotten that Ten is kind of a jerk (and for that matter, so is Four, venerable Four), and that where it not for the splendid Mr. Tennant, he would be wholly unlikable for most of his first season (I also forgot that I kind of lost interest for a while after I first saw that, and didn’t really warm to Ten till season two. As it is, School Reunion is a lot more annoying than I remembered. I love the moment where Ten first spots Sarah Jane, where he does the whole terribly-chuffed-and-trying-not-to-show-it thing, but then it gets all romantic rivalry-centred and...eh. Sarah Jane really is the only remotely adult person there. *sigh* And K-9 of course. Who doesn’t love K-9? And Rose is so much better with Nine. Speaking of Nine, and his tragically single-season-only ass, I also watched The End of the World and that, while not exactly good (very Voyage of the Damned-y somehow) is at least fun. Every time I see Nine I think “damn, if only we’d gotten to keep him for a little longer” – I guess I feel that way about Ten too, but less so. Mainly I wanted something a little less tragic for Ten, and think Moffat would have done that well. As for Eleven, well, I stopped watching the most recent episode because I was bored. This is new and shocking. Halp?

Stories

2010-06-03T02:11:00.000+02:00

I have been – at Sorcia’s recommendation – been reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, the retelling of Hamlet with a mute boy and dogs. I don’t know that I expected anything in particular of it, other than perhaps a chance to explore Hamlet further. It surprised me. I am about two thirds of the way through this enormous audiobook, and at one point had to stop reading it because it was unbearable. Imagine Hamlet – dense, bewildering, poetic Hamlet – as an intelligible book with backstory and insight in the characters’ emotions; because for all his talk, Hamlet never really gives any clear insight into his. Imagine Ophelia as a real character that you care about, and imagine understanding why Hamlet treats her as he does. That thing, that thing that the play when performed really well gives you glimpses of, imagine that you can see all of it. You lose some of the mystery, some of the complexity, true, but the heartbreak is suddenly real, and like a pantomime audience you might find yourself shouting at the protagonist to look behind him.

Schadenfreude

2010-06-02T02:38:00.001+02:00

"pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others"

It's not something I usually indulge in; but there are exceptions, and I enjoy those exceptionally. Take for example people who willfully mistreat my Spouse; they can go to whatever misfortune they choose for themselves. You see, the Spouse is a nice sort of person. He thinks the best of people, often overly so. Deliberately hurting him is like kicking a puppy, and doing so repeatedly for reasons that exist only in the perpetrators hyperactive imagination is worthy of more than a little anger. And yet poetic justice does exist. You see, social convention decrees that it takes a very special kind of person to be really evil to said Spouse; and while I would gladly cut them, I won't and, most importantly, won't need to. The special kind of person it takes to kick puppies, you see, is also the special kind of person that will antagonise everyone in a world that depends on collaborations; it is the kind of person who cries wolf, then shark, then t-rex, then pterodactyl. At which point they of course get eaten by the Torchwood pterodactyl.

It's a spectacle I will gladly sit back for with a bag of popcorn.

Weekend

2010-05-28T19:07:00.000+02:00

Oh, and also, the Spouse and I are going camping together for the first time this weekend. Cross your fingers that come Tuesday we:
a) have not been eaten by bears
b) are still married

Company

2010-05-28T05:56:00.000+02:00

Ok, you can kick me.

“Take home legendary Doctor Who with this life-size standup! The Doctor measures over 6 feet tall and is mounted to heavy duty cardboard. The standup comes to you folded and is easily assembled. This standup is great for mounting to a wall or door, or it can be displayed free standing with the included easel.”

*dissolves into helpless giggles*

WANT. If only for the pun-perhaps-intended explanation. And then I would have to buy a whole set (Nine, Jack, Rose and Donna perhaps? I wonder if they do Tom Baker ones? No, Tom Baker could, according to his wishes –really!- be a garden gnome lurking in the background) and then spend my days perfecting my skills as a ventriloquist and never leave the house EVER AGAIN. Except to get more yarn to crochet Benders. And maybe this.

Ramble

2010-05-27T01:16:00.002+02:00

Warning: Eeyore moment. Avert your eyes.

I’ve always had a knack for disappointment, in spite of a goodly store of innate happiness. Things let me down. People let me down. Life lets me down. It’s not that I wander around with a little dark cloud overhead, I just am apt to find the fly in the ointment. It’s unfortunate. Speaking of which, it looks like I’ve finally found the fly in the new Doctor, and that, too, is unfortunate.

Ah, the Doctor (from one to the next, I suppose? House, like the Doctor, is a crotchety genius. Well, like the second/third Doctor anyway.)

This is my plan for this evening: I will sit in front of the telly and re-watch Blink, and then some ninth Doctor. Or maybe the other way around. Speaking of which, I have also been enjoying our new Firefly box set. So good. It occurs to me that it is one of the few shows I know where I don’t dislike any of the characters. The only other one I can think of is Originial Series Star Trek/Reboot. Next Generation? Riker always annoyed me. Doctor Who? Any number of annoying companions. Firefly? Mal, who wouldn’t love Mal? Wash had me at the dinosaurs, and Zoe has such a great sense of humour. Kaylee is just...charming. Jayne is easily the funniest character. Inara’s all lovely and charming, and Simon is just the right mix of obnoxious and endearing. River’s probably as close as I get to disliking any character, meaning that I don’t bond with her.

Anyway.

My brain is clearly overwrought. And obsessed with celebrities. Last night I dreamt about Oscar Wilde and Bosie, Shaun White and Jessica Simpson. Yes, I know. Last night I dreamt about sinking ships (Ha! A metaphor the size of a ship) at which point my brain clearly felt it needed a certain...something. Cue David Tennant (not the Doctor, alas, just David Tennant, which is nice enough I suppose) in his blue pinstripe Doctor outfit. Which, kudos brain, was indeed enough to make me feel better about the ships.

Moral lesson: Brains can make you feel good as well as bad. Also, David Tennant helps.

A little too much

2010-05-23T13:21:00.002+02:00

One of the truly magnificent things about being grown up is that you do figure some stuff out. Like how if you spend three hours with your fair head in the sun planting stuff (clematis – lovely clematis) you will get sunburned. I love that there is always more to learn and more ways to put that knowledge to good use. Here’s one more thing I found out: the more information (especially challenging educational stuff) I put into my head, the better my recall is. Does that make sense to anyone? It doesn’t especially to me, but I’ll take it. So I’ve stocked up on iTunes U stuff, and off we go. I work best when I have a little too much on my plate, brainwise. When I have slightly more to accomplish than is technically desirable. Always did – when I was in college and studying for my exams, I would get distracted by exciting things like Latin grammar and the Divine Comedy. Very odd.

I am also reading Diana Wynne Jones, because I can’t live on intellectual pursuits alone, and she is, on a good day, as much fun to read (and as easy) as Terry Pratchett and yes, that is high praise when I think that Pratchett is the best craftsman in his bracket – like Douglas Adams writing fantasy, except a tad more intertextual.

Craftsmanship is underrated. Sometimes folks make it sound like an idea alone writes a book, thereby ignoring the fact that a book with craftsmanship and with grand literary idea (say, a Dorothy Sayers detective) is a better book and a grand idea without craftsmanship (ooh, best not name any names). I like craftsmanship. I like books written for entertainment, much in the way that I have deep fondness and respect for a good pumpkin pie. Anyone tried to make a pumpkin pie from scratch? See what I mean?

Living with the limits

2010-05-23T13:10:00.001+02:00

“In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister ”

(Goethe)

Which means something to the effect of “It is (working) within limitations that we first recognise the master"

I don’t think Goethe meant “working within the limitations of one’s own bloody stupidity” but perhaps he did. Or maybe he meant “it is working within the limitations of humanity and human politics, that we first recognise the Master.”

This day clearly needs some friendly (or at least goodlooking) aliens; instead it has a surfeit of technology and stress.

If you must

2010-05-19T06:12:00.002+02:00

It is early Wednesday and all that comes to mind is that I wish this day were over. I sit here with my bowl of cereal and my coffee and wonder what the point is. I also wonder how I got to be the responsible one, the reliable one. (The boring one. The one without fun qualifications.)

I sit here thinking of Eeyore because really that's appropriate. I am no good at this business of being a grown-up.

But of course, true to my token reliability, I will smile, cooperate, furnish information, thinking all the while that I wish I had a talent for crocheting Benders instead.

Now that the weekend is over, here is your early-morning flashback to Friday

2010-05-17T07:06:00.001+02:00

The voices in my head

It’s Friday and I can’t get my mind off sweet comfort – whatever form it takes in my funny, misplaced brain. The soundtrack is Bitter:Sweet and maybe some Goldfrapp – think Dirty Laundry and Black Cherry – music best heard over a cocktail in a blue-lit bar with an almost invisible dancefloor; the voices are your pick of Sam West, David Tennant when he does Shakespeare, or James Marsters. The images are from this isn’t happiness.

And the motto? The motto is Brel’s La chanson de Jacky: if I could be – for an hour only – beautiful and stupid both...

Shame that the odds of my going clubbing tonight are exactly zero, though it would be lovely to show up to work the next morning in smudged make-up and a slightly torn sequined mini-dress.

The end of civilisitation

2010-05-12T12:39:00.003+02:00

Waffles. You can’t go wrong with waffles, right?

Only you can. The AVAM’s only marginally edible waffles were bad enough – but making a lovely, delicious, authentic Liege waffle, and then putting brie, basil and bacon on it is wrong. Yes, I take issue with it morally. Especially when somebody the puts a teeny Belgian flag on this monstrosity*.

No. You hear me? I don’t care if you’re in Seattle, you will knock it off now. Do we understand one another? Yes? Good. Now give me a proper, unadulterated waffle. Maybe with chocolate.

*Sorry, no photo. Couldn't find it again. Hope this means they have burnt it.

More dusty old stuff

2010-05-06T00:53:00.001+02:00

Once upon a time when life was simpler, my bestest friend and I decided that all famous people were really only about five people and a bunch of cardboard cutouts. We had an elaborate explanation of who was who and why, which I won’t go into here. My point is: I blame this for my continuing desire for cardboard cutouts. No, I don’t own any, because they’re expensive and do not travel well but if I had my way, our apartment would be filled with them. That, and a full-size replica of the TARDIS. Ideally a working replica.

Anyhoo.

I was scouting on the interwebs for some Doctor Who related Things to stem my bleeding heart (because nothing heals the soul like shopping) and thought “someone is selling David Tennant! Is that legal?” but of course it was only a cardboard cutout; which is both better and worse.

Would I purchase David Tennant? Well, it’s a lovely idea, but not very practical. Where would I put a David Tennant? What if he didn’t like my cooking? Anyway, I would certainly buy a cardboard cutout of the 10^th Doctor. It would be fun to set it up in front of the door at night or when we’re away to creep out burglars.

Lord, time for the TDEC to do something useful, clearly.

Gay agenda

2010-05-06T00:40:00.003+02:00

You know, I am going to miss the Big Gay Agenda in Doctor Who. Steve Moffat, I love him dearly, but he is straight as a...well I can’t find a simile that doesn’t sound like a sexual metaphor, but you get my point. This is the man who made us all (well, at least me) laugh until we cried with the compelling drama of one man trying to explain his lesbian spank inferno video. He is five kinds of win, just not gay win. RFD, on the other hand, being about three kinds of win and two kinds of fail, was famous for, well, Queer as Folk.

So I was reading the delightful Chicks Dig Time Lords, specifically the essay about the companions from a feminist/queer point of view. It criticised the production team for making Jack omnisexual and then making the Doctor pointedly run away from all his advances. This made me laugh out loud, so that I looked like a happy lunatic on a park bench. Ok, so I guess that the essay was about the companions, but is the giant flashing sign above the Master’s head reading “most significant emotional, not to mention so sexually loaded that it only barely gets past the BBC censors, relationship the Doctor engages in the whole of the new series” not visible to other people? Is it not worth mentioning? We’re not talking TOS era Star Trek unintentional slash here, this is full-on bloody text. Let me demonstrate:

The Doctor: I'm here.
The Master: [the Master looks up from the speaker phone, takes his cell phone out of his pocket and turns it on] Doctor.
The Doctor: Master.
The Master: [smiles] I love it when you say my name.

The other reason I laughed, by the way, is because I can quite vividly imagine running away from Jack’s advances. He does have a lot of them.

Here, for your enjoyment, is the lesbian spank inferno, to demonstrate the benefits of Steve Moffat. Enjoy!

In other news

2010-05-05T02:12:00.004+02:00

I am reading Chicks Dig Time Lords, a collection of essays from all corners of Doctor Who fandom - and all by women. It makes for a nice counterpoint to the recent spate of mainly fanboys exclaiming how glad they are that RFD/Tennant are gone. Surely one can be enthused about the new Doctor without being rude to the previous one?

I also finally caved to the preposterous concept of Torchwood Babiez (I always hated those babiez versions of things) and found that it is actually quite, quite wonderful. Think I'm insane? Go check it out. Then we'll talk. My biggest disappointment is that there are no t-shirts. Speaking of which, let me add a picture of the t-shirt in question to my post from yesterday.

Toodle pip.

42

2010-05-05T02:06:00.002+02:00

Like 42, Hamlet is the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. We just don't know what the question is.

Every time you - the audience - fit something into place, something else pops out; the Ikea furniture from hell. So I return to it, obsessively, because this Ikea bookcase happens to be thinly disguised Chippendale, lovely in its every detail, and utterly befuddling as a whole.

I collect theories.

Tracking, finding, hunting

2010-05-04T12:49:00.001+02:00

Life is like MacGyver – you never know what you’re going to be using that pencil for.

I have a pencil, some paper clips, some chewing gum, three tea bags, an old record player and twenty-nine cents. What shall I make?

Well, I am going to start by making myself a cup of tea, because that is how most good things start. Someone’s left an Austin musical theatre camp 1993 mug, so let me rinse that out. Earl Grey, anyone? No? Ok.

That’s better.

Let me tell you a story...

Insert person from Porlock>

Recall (old stuff, newly posted)

2010-05-04T12:45:00.002+02:00

This week, I have been mostly listening to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy*. The original radio series, which is, I think, rather better than either book or move, and hasn’t dated a bit. Douglas Adams, if only we could work some time travel on you and bring you back.

Actually, I have been mostly buried in work and work-like extra-curricular activities, so I am a trifle fatigued, but how interesting is that?

In an alternate universe, I am wearing a shirt that says “the revolution is only a t-shirt away” and sipping a daiquiri while lying in a shaded lawnchair on the deck of a sumptuous yet nearly deserted cruise liner. Actually, perhaps I am lying on my stomach in the grass underneath a gingko tree, writing in a notebook. Either way, I am wearing that shirt. Some good company would be nice too, once I finish those notes and the daiquiri. A cocktail party, all summer slacks, shirts open at the neck, pretty cocktail dresses and high heels.

*Yes, that is a Fast Show reference.

One perfect

2010-05-02T15:02:00.002+02:00

This morning it is the Stranglers’ Golden Brown. I truly don’t care about the meaning; though I’ve heard the stories. It is only this: a perfect mood, self-contained and languid. The harpsichord is what makes it special, much like Ray Manzarek’s keyboard makes the Doors’s Strange Days, especially in the psychedelic version he did for the movie of the same name. I digress. Golden Brown, for your song-shaped Zen.

Speaking of perfection, it occurs to me that much of the miscommunication between those of us in long term relationships and those who misguidedly aspire to perfect bliss is because the smug marrieds are so incomplete in their narratives. Let me give the only example I know well enough. The Spouse and I can certainly pass as smug marrieds; one tries not to be, but fails some of the time. We are, after all, both married and pretty happy; worst of all, we are publicly affectionate. And yet...that is obviously incomplete. Here’s my excuse: to me, the narrative of our relationship really is a happy one. Marriage really is better than I thought it would be. And what happens is that because I do, the hard stuff, the complications and the arguments all seem relatively minor and not worth dwelling on. I never expected anything else. Thought I’d just point it out, in case anyone out there still needed disabusing. I suppose that if we didn’t have that positive narrative, the struggles would be insurmountable, not worth putting up with. It takes so much motivation to keep looking for better ways, little improvements; and I can’t quite explain why that isn’t tedious and awful.

(The trouble with relationships is that, like the TARDIS, they are bigger on the inside, and the outside doesn’t really tell you much about it.)

If I didn’t have a geeky reference somewhere, how would you know it was me?

Limitations

2010-05-02T14:56:00.002+02:00

Everybody’s busy saying how much they love Matt Smith and the new series and how Karen Gillan is wonderful and Steve Moffat is a genius and the new daleks are crap. And I agree with all of that quite enthusiastically. I do. Only then, right as I am in the midst of being enthused, I will catch a glimpse of Ten. Maybe an old review, or an old episode; or most heart-rendingly, I’ll catch a look, a sentence or a gesture of the Eleventh Doctor’s that references Ten. It shows how good both Smith and Moffat are, and yet it does nothing so much as make me homesick. It makes me miss Ten; it even makes me miss RFD’s forkstabbingworthy muscience* and emotional abuse. Sorry, Matt – Ten is, and always shall be, my Doctor.

*I am stealing from Hungarian. Hungarian, charmingly, has a prefix meaning “fake, artificial”, which I am rendering incorrectly accentless as “mu”

When I was a child, nobody died

2010-04-29T00:55:00.001+02:00

“Just this once, everybody lives!”

(Doctor Who, “The Doctor Dances”)

Death sneaks up on you. You grow up, and people do die, of course; but when I was little I didn’t take it so personally. Now, when someone dies – and yes, I hate the euphemisms – it seems like an omen, Damocles’ sword flashing in the dark. It is why I don’t like to leave arguments halfway; because you are never guaranteed the “to be continued.”

When my last grandparent – my dad’s mother – died, it didn’t occur to me to miss her until much later. I think I miss her more now than I did at the time. Funerals make me uncomfortable; I always feel like I should be displaying emotion. You can make me cry more easily with the Doctor than with a funeral. My first dead body; in Spain, they make sure to refrigerate them, and they bury their dead faster than anyone I know. My grandmother – my mum’s mother this time – was a matriarch, a formidable woman who died as decisively and swiftly as one might have expected from her, after a life of thoroughly robust health. She left things tidy. But my dad’s mum, a quiet and sweetnatured woman, lingered a little in life, and quite a bit in my mind. I miss her because somehow it was unfinished; and I feel that more now than I did then. And to say it in what is inevitably a spiritual/superstitious vocabulary, it always seemed like it took her much longer to find her way home. For years I dreamt of her, vaguely sad dreams, until finally she (or I) found her way.

These deaths are natural enough. When a death blows a hole in family, the hole never goes away. Friends of the family lost their daughter. No; losing sounds careless, if kinder; she was killed in a traffic accident. Yet when I dreamt of her shortly after, it was perfect. A single picture of a sunny afternoon’s bliss. She was happy, and she made it across easily enough.

Then I grew up and stopped dreaming about dead people, and started remembering that I too was mortal, and what I stood to lose.

After a glass or two of wine, I am actually quite boring

2010-04-24T01:34:00.003+02:00

Bernard Cribbins. I was wondering why I think Bernard Cribbins is so wonderful. Old British actors – why not just go for Jeremy Irons? Well, simple. Jeremy Irons isn’t really old; like Helen Mirren he is an odd fluke of nature and good fortune, looking like no old person you ever met. Bernard Cribbins, on the other hand, is easily anybody’s amiable granddad (says she without the grandfathers) and is extremely charming as just that. That, and his name sounds like when the wee free men in Terry Pratchett’s book say “crivens!” It’s good just to say Bernard Cribbins, you see? Moreover, no one with any sympathy for the Tenth Doctor could forget that Bernard Cribbens’ Wilf is just about the only one who shows poor old Ten some love. Wilf is the stand-in for the audience stand-in; he is not only our surrogate in being the Doctor’s companion and comfort, but also in reminding him of Donna, and how she really does get the short end of the straw. Personally, I have always thought that Ten should have given Donna the choice, forgetting or dying.

As I watch this new Doctor, I try to remember the last time I grieved over the loss of a Doctor, and how I saw The Christmas Invasion and thought why, why did you take my Doctor away and who is this girl pretending to be the Doctor? So I think Matt Smith is doing ok.

By the way, you may have, but probably haven’t noticed that House has completely dropped off my radar. This seems strange in view of how the series was finally taking some brave choices, but I warned everyone that I am fickle wench. Also, I got a little bored, and then when I was ready to catch up, Hulu did a number on me so...apparently I have only missed seven episodes. Hm. I shall contemplate catching up.

Week

2010-04-23T01:18:00.003+02:00

Tuesday:
Sometimes life is like one of those old dial-up modems, all dialing-beeping-static-ker-ping, a marker of success in its pattern rather than in any intelligible language. Yesterday contained much dialing, a sudden loud beep of understanding in the form of a large envelope full of white-and-dinosaur t-shirt, some static email, and finally a ker-ping of chocolate and pink cotton.

Wednesday:
I dream of hedgehogs.
Well, of small creatures generally. Hedgehogs are just particularly cute. There are also kittens, puppies, little totoros. Of the unobtrusive whooshing sound of the Tardis landing. Of deep blue tiled swimming pools and peach blossoms. On a good night. On a bad night, I dream anxious dreams about murderers and torturers, and board meetings. Not daleks, because daleks aren’t actually scary.

I finished reading The Book Thief, which while a good read doesn’t make me want to write about it. It doesn’t make me feel it like Maus or Catch-22. I move right on to Bulgakov, but I find myself wanting something to drag me out of complacency, to kick and bite, to provoke. A good argument with Christopher Hitchens would serve my purpose nicely, but no – I still have plenty of The Hitchhiker’s Guide left, and part of me just craves a nice comforting Doctor Who or Torchwood audiobook.

Thursday:
I am confirmed in my belief that under no conditions should Fox be allowed anywhere near science fiction. Especially queer science fiction. And with that, a sigh of relief escapes me, and I feel entitled to an extra Firefly t-shirt.

Friday:
The Spouse gets back and I get paid. Cue the weekend. Cue the farmer's market and an opportunity to wear my awesome new shirts, cue John Simm (here, but also perhaps here; John Simm is just that good), cue play reading and hopefully, hopefully, a very silly weekend.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2010-04-20T01:52:00.004+02:00

The new Doctor - so what does one think?

So far, good enough. Steve Moffat does nothing to lose my trust, and Matt Smith...Matt Smith is an odd fish. He has the face of a puppy, which makes it that much stranger when he acts and speaks like the damaged Tenth Doctor. I love him for also being Ten, and also Nine, for being the lot of them, but it is very disorienting, and I am not yet entirely convinced. No matter - there is plenty of time.

I am also watching Life on Mars (with John Simm, off of Life on Mars) and it never ceases to amaze me how much good tv Britain produces. How carefully it shies away from the easy and the obvious, from lazy writing and lazy acting. So good.

Yesterday I watched the Ninth Doctor again, in some of my favourite science fiction - The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances. So good as sci fi, as suspense, as action and as drama. And I just realised it references The Curse of Fenric, which I am watching at this very moment.

And yes, the tag is not idle, I had a bit of a squee at getting a virtual nod from the most Respectable Mr. Nimoy.

Finally, the changes may not just be in Doctor Who, but who knows (well, he does, perhaps).

And...action!

2010-04-14T04:16:00.002+02:00

A flurry of stuff and then – nothing. Well, how typical is that. It’s not that I haven’t been thinking about you, my dear readers, it’s just that I have gone right back to being useless and conflicted. For this I apologise. I should be prolific. I should be printing T-shirts with slightly dodgy Doctor Who quotes. That is what I should be doing. And then I should wear the damn shirt everywhere. Why? Because. Because it is something to do. Because.

And then I should email one of my friends and ask her about writing jobs, and ask one of my board friends about the same thing. Why? Because there is no reason not to.

Man, I need so much kicking to get into gear.

10:19 p.m.: hah! Foolish shirt expensively purchased. Then bought a shirt off of Leonard Nimoy too.

Early morning, no matter how charming, is early

2010-04-06T12:45:00.002+02:00

And like Julia Cameron's morning pages this will be a little messy. Speaking of which, maybe I should start doing those again; but I always hated having to get up early to do them, and was never fully convinced that they were useful. I know what I know, and not much else. For now, you may look at Mirror Metaphysics' shoes. She has such lovely typographical shoes.

Happy Apple day, folks

2010-04-04T01:46:00.002+02:00

And trust me when I tell you that you need to watch this video.

Because

2010-03-31T03:21:00.003+02:00

You had asked me a while ago "Why Hamlet? Why now?"
Why now is easy: I finally found a version compelling enough to make me really listen.
Why Hamlet? Why indeed...
Because it is all wrong. If you really pay attention, it is a play entirely about the why not, the absence of the usual response. Famously, why does Hamlet not just get on with it? Why does Getrude never act like a mother? Why does Hamlet have so many qualms about killing Claudius, and so few about killing Polonius? Why does he not regret being cruel to Ophelia? Why is he so sensitive and such a beast? Why does Hamlet speak so much of his father's affection for his mother, and yet himself only really shows fear?
And so on, like an infinite puzzle, forever drawing the eye.

Note

2010-03-31T02:10:00.003+02:00

Actually, while I gladly declare myself a fan of Patrick Stewart, the actual person, David Tennant is somehow just this funny, Scottish chap who looks like the Doctor. Whatever podcast I was listening to was right - when we look at Tennant, or Tom Baker, what we really want is the Doctor, though actors are a distracting enough substitute... And if Tennant is good at winning people for his characters that is mere coincidence.

More the fool

2010-03-31T01:49:00.003+02:00

Let it not be said, dear reader, that I am afraid to 'fess up.

I am re-watching Hamlet, and realised quite suddenly that I a fool. I quoted "Rule 1 of the internet, 'more honor'd in the breach than the observance': you should not write what you would not say face to face." and only now, in seeing the scene again, realised that what it actually means is "a custom better broken than kept" which was most certainly not what I meant.

As with Apple products, I ship with extra smug; my apologies, dear corner of the world. And take this as a an exhortation to see that most specific Hamlet - I promise it is not my Tennant/Stewart fangirl speaking when I say that, while flawed, it is quite lovely.

2010-03-27T16:10:00.002+01:00

It is 11.12 am and it feels like 6 am holding a frying pan in a threatening manner.

Yesterday I flew back from the Golden West, and then on to sushi, to nap, to concert. The concert was Skybox, Jukebox the Ghost and Tally Hall. Given that I was wretched and tired, I can perhaps be forgiven for skipping out after Jukebox, the folks I was really there to see. Both they and Skybox were quite good, and we had a good time. It is still odd, going to these concerts full of people looking almost, but not exactly, like I did an awkward ten years ago, down to the spangly tights and ill-advised shirts. No, they looked better, good thing too, and while they lacked some appreciation for New Order's Temptation, it occurred to me that I am glad that not all the people who are younger than me are like the shiny sleek San Diego women, and that my kind still exists.

The final...something

2010-03-22T23:58:00.002+01:00

Introductory note/disclaimer: all of the Shame in Shakespeare stuff was written without reference to any other sources (except Shakespeare, of course), and deliberately so. I will restate that this is a criticism of Fernie’s work, not his person; and apologise to my dear friend for having abused her most innocently given recommendation. It is important to me, and I do not do it lightly.

I haven’t forgotten Ewan Fernie. This weekend I finally finished Shame in Shakespeare. For a while there, it all went quite well. The book and I, we had a moment. We sat in the park together and it was lovely. We were starting to think about the future, and all the things we could apply this to. All such worldly victories are, of course, Pyrrhic.

At first, I thought it was amusing. Take the bit where Fernie dismisses the now classic interpretation of Gertrude and Hamlet’s relationship as oedipal: “It is true that Hamlet dwells uncomfortably on his mother’s sexual arrangements, but disgust in such matters is as obsessive as desire.” I am not being flippant when I describe this as amusing; he offers no substantiation for the statement, but what really makes me smile is the fact that obsessive disgust so often masks fascination and desire, and that Fernie seems to make the above statement unselfconsciously. Shortly after that he talks about Hamlet showing the right kind of shame, and I wonder again when he will explain what that means, and how it compares to the wrong kind of shame.

Yes, I admit that when the book, a propos of a critical description of shame as “penetrative”, describes Antony as “sodomized by shame” I giggled. But seriously, what is the point of using such an image? What does it do for my critical understanding of the text?

Oh well.

It wasn’t until I got to the conclusion, though, that you could start to see the smoke come out of my ears as Fernie relapses into his fun unfounded speculating. “Shamelessness is excellently natural: shame approaches the divine” is the last sentence of his text analysis. From the context, it is not clear to me that he draws this conclusion from the texts; but surely it is – ah, favoured critical adjective! – problematic in any Christian context, especially a Renaissance one, to say that nature and divinity are at odds?

On to the conclusion though. On shame after the Renaissance, following an overview of the literature and its mostly secular nature, he says this, somewhat out of the blue, though there is a cursory reference to queer studies (best field name ever, can I just say that?)

“And yet, recent history conspires to make it increasingly hard to turn aside from shameful truths. In the deforming and tragic face of AIDS it is difficult for at least gay male writers to deny shame and the bitter fragility of the self.”

This raises some of the same problems we have seen before. He fails to say why AIDS, more than any other disease, is shameful. He fails to explain why gay male authors should be more ashamed of AIDS than any of the millions of heterosexual suffers. If it is the disease that is shameful, then why AIDS, and not, say, cancer? But I think that the real source of shame here is supposed to be homosexuality. Why else ascribe a disease that in 2002 already affected more heterosexuals than homosexuals to gay men? Why else pick this disease over any other? Why not syphilis? TB? If that is what he was trying to say, I wish he had the gall to do it. Perhaps that will be my conclusion: if Ewan Fernie thinks that homosexuality, infidelity (Bill Clinton’s) and provocative/con artist art (Damien Hirst’s) is shameful, he should have the guts to stand up and say it, and bear the consequences. Instead he points, nods and winks, and wiggles his nose suggestively. This will not do. It will not do as scholarship, it will not do as ethical behaviour. I am ashamed – yes, us non-fundies do have shame – that this is a part of the discipline I devoted five perfectly good years to. I am ashamed that Routledge published it. And most of all, I am most crushingly ashamed that this is considered good work. It could have been so good; I think Fernie is absolutely right about the self-centredness of our society and the redemptive power of shame, of the mirror it holds up to us, and that makes it all the more excruciating.

I have more quotes and more points but I’m going to give it a rest. References available upon request. I invite whoever cares to disagree, and to prove me wrong. I hope that I am wrong. Think of me as Joe in In the Bleak Midwinter asking what the fucking point is.

This is where you say “Rachmaninoff”

If there is Rachmaninoff.

Here, without need for any comment or giggles from your host, are the last sentences of the book: “In spite of a desperate, delusive tendency to sustain the imprisoning idol of selfhood, we must let it explode from its own internal tensions and contradictions, and adventure beyond the self. The spiritual and political health of our species depends on it.”

Squirrel!

2010-03-18T02:46:00.002+01:00

Over lunch today I was going to be a good little nerd and read Shame in Shakespeare. I could have withstood anyone from Porlock, but squirrels...I am powerless against squirrels. You see, dear readers, I was munching away at my lunch when a squirrel snuck up to me. This is not unusual; the park is full of pretty tame squirrels. This one was eyeing some bits of apple I’d discarded on the grass right in front. It sidled up to them, and then proceeded to eats the bits, one by one, discarding the peel (smart squirrel!). It was unbearably cute even before the squirrel climbed onto the bench I was sitting on, quietly eating his bit of apple as my lunch buddy. When I finished my apple, rather than binning the core like the good citizen I am, I lobbed it onto the grass in front of me. In due time the self-same squirrel ran up to it, looked me in the eye, stuffed the whole thing in its mouth and then galloped off and into a tree. Insert heroic the-thump-the-thump noises, followed by faint crunching sounds from the tree.

I have yet to meet the Shakespeare scholar who can match that.*

*For some reason I instantly imagine the Shakespeare scholar who could beat the squirrel for cuteness as a Dead Poets’ Society era Robert Sean Leonard, all Bambi eyes and intensity, sitting on a bench by the Cherwell in Oxford, reading a Serious Book. Though the Serious Book may be upside down.

Continued

2010-03-16T00:05:00.003+01:00

I promised you that I would continue...whether you wanted me to or not.

So I am now almost halfway through Shame in Shakespeare. This is good news – it means that the introduction, rather than being a reflection of what was to come, as it probably should have been, was merely an annoying prelude*. The number of Greenblatt/Lacan/Kristeva etc quotes is now exceeded by the number of quotes from literary texts. Huzzah. No, really, I am excited about it. Fernie gets down to the business of examining shame in the Renaissance and in Shakespeare. Brass tacks suit him much better than general theorising, and I find that the book is pointedly excruciating in its subject matter as well as thought-provoking and interesting. Huzzah again. Consider this your halftime report then, and expect one more. For now, to borrow from Forster**, it is two cheers. Not quite three, but who knows what may yet happen. You’d be surprised at what denouements literary criticism can furnish.

What do you say? You want me to just shut up and quote the Tenth Doctor at you instead? All right then, anything to humour the people. I’ll just quote this – if only we could all handle our past so charmingly:

Tenth Doctor [to the Fifth Doctor]: You know, I loved being you. Back when I first started, at the very beginning, I was always trying to be old and grumpy and important, like you do when you're young. And then I was you, and it was all dashing about and playing cricket and my voice going all squeaky when I shout. I still do that, the voice thing, I got that from you! Oh, and the trainers, and [puts on his glasses] snap. 'Cos you know what, Doctor? You were my Doctor.

*Like some other annoying preludes I can think of. Norton edition of Wordsworth’s Prelude, anyone?

**See E.M. Forster’s Two Cheers for Democracy for unnecessary explanation of my gratuitous reference. Hey, it’s a blog, what do you expect?

Rage, rage

2010-03-14T02:28:00.003+01:00

Note: this post is to be continued; as I keep reading. I also rather hope to get a second opinion.

Anger can be a useful emotion. The title is of course a reference to Dylan Thomas’s Do not go gentle into that good night, which is in turn a reference to that other Welshman, our frenemy Russell F Davies. He quoted it at some point in reference to The End of Time: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”

It’s not the only use I have for rage. I revisited literary criticism yesterday. Well, I have been for days now, in the form of lectures, but yesterday for the first time in years I picked up an actual book of it. It was recommended by a dear, dear friend, and I’m not sure if she knows of this blog, but I will let her know. It seems unfair to talk behind her back about something she was sort of involved in. Rule 1 of the internet, “more honor'd in the breach than the observance”: you should not write what you would not say face to face. (er, sorry, that was not what I meant.)

Before I say anything, then, let me say this – none of this is personal. I am sure that this man Fernie is perfectly nice, and clearly my dear friend is a very dear friend, and I hope she will see this for what it is – a questioning of a discipline. Most of all, I hope she can prove me wrong.

Shame in Shakespeare, then, by Ewan Fernie. It fitted nicely with my re-examination of Hamlet. A Routledge book like many other Routledge books that I have read. Why should I find myself unable to finish a perfectly good book on a perfectly good topic? Is my brain just too rusty? Let me show, not tell – and this is from the series editor, not Fernie, which makes it both better and worse:

"The worrying truth is that nobody can just pick up Shakespeare's plays and read them. Perhaps - even more worrying - they never could"

It made me laugh out loud. It reminded me of one of my favourite XKCD comics: http://xkcd.com/451/

People who claim you need a mediator to access something which thousands of people access every day entirely without their or any other academic's mediation, performed as intended, do their field a disservice. For that matter, even the simple fact that he refers to reading rather than performance as a means to access plays is problematic. I almost stopped right there, and perhaps should have. I am ripping this out of context, and perhaps I am missing something; but that is exactly my point – reading this as a particularly well-schooled laywoman, I find no other way to read it.

I read the introduction by Fernie. Twenty-two and a half pages of philosophical quotes – but only two short quotes from Shakespeare. While I am, admittedly, more textually oriented than your average new historicist, I am open-minded; I am not averse to philosophical and historical contextualisation. But I do believe that you primary text should be allowed to function as such. So where is it?

It is hard not to see Fernie as a moralist. I really tried not to. Yet he spends so much time emphasising the necessity of shame of a particular kind. He cites Bill Clinton, Damian Hirst and Tracy Emin as shameless, but fails to say what they should be ashamed of, and more importantly, why. I am not judging whether or not they should be – but I do expect any academic to declare himself when making such statements. If this example illustrates shamelessness and revulsion from it, as he states, then it must be explained, not left to inference. Here’s a quote:

“No doubt sado-masochism appeals to a certain kind of shame-afflicted personality; to that extent it is a wholly understandable perversion. But it is a perversion nonetheless – and of shame as well as of love and sex.”

I’d give you context but there is none. No further elaboration is offered. It really is just a gratuitous value judgement. Yes, I think he protests too much too. What’s more, if this introduction serves as a philosophical framework, which seems to be its aim, then I cannot take it seriously as scholarship – it offers me no substantiation; a definition of shame, yes, but no justification for the instances given, no methodology, only this implicit delineation of what should constitute shameful behaviour in our society.

The rest of the book, which I may well read given that I am as stubborn as the next donkey*, stays closer to the text, which I am grateful for. I read a section of about another twenty pages, and I still can’t see it as anything other than a defence of a certain kind of morality. Here’s my point – it is no wonder to me that literary criticism is not taken seriously. I am beginning to believe (based on rather more than the one book) that perhaps it shouldn’t be.

This what I believe: I believe that if literary criticism does not teach us to think for ourselves and to love and try to understand literature, it doesn’t teach us anything. It should be the key, not the damn door. Certainly not a pretentious, judgmental door. As a discipline, I have lost faith in it. It breaks my heart, but I can no longer be sure that literary analysis is a useful pursuit. I love it, and I love literature, and I enjoyed it greatly; but what does it do? I used to think that the injection of agendas into criticism was the bathwater, and the honest, if inflected criticism that looked to better understand a text was the baby. I am starting to think that the baby is literature, and that it is high time to chuck out that bathwater.

So rage aside, let me return to the Doctor, because he is, as always, apt:

I'm sorry. I am so sorry.

*Hey, I have two donkeys now – the Catalans and the Democrats! Though the Democrats...they are such monkeys sometimes. I wish I meant that in a good way.

Booking

2010-03-12T02:21:00.002+01:00

It didn’t take Fahrenheit 451 to engender the idea of being a book, but it helped. Today, the book is The Master & Margarita; full of insanity, changes of tone, sudden inspiration and random failure. You have to fear the Hamlet days (when everyone dies and the Norwegians take over); so I’ll take M&M, one of my most loved books. The central idea of the book – maybe I’ve mentioned this before, but given that I usually get stuck at “fabulous”, it is unlikely – is that the devil, working evil, often ends up with good instead.

“I am part of the power which forever wills evil and forever works good."

I can’t render it well, but Bulgakov illustrates it beautifully. If I can convince one person to read this one book I will be happy. Here’s another recommendation: if you do read it, please obtain Gabriel Rios’ outstanding album Ghostboy. It is the perfect soundtrack, full of bones, upbeat rhythms, mermaids and voodoo dolls. Rios, for you non-Belgians* is Puerto Rican by birth, but in every other sense is ours. We are happy to have him. Actually, check out Broad Daylight or some such thing on the webs, and if you like it, read The Master & Margarita and buy Ghostboy. Deal?

*You know, those people who ask me at parties if I’m sure that there is no such language as Belgian. Yes. I am quite sure.