…but I just had to share this. It’s suspenseful, in a humorous way. And it’s funny — in a suspenseful way. Or maybe it’s just me.
(Discovered at the Out of Character blog.)
Bowery Bums and Bag Ladies… But Writers, by God
Ah, the writing life. We know it’s a stereotype, (almost?) never true, but the image remains skulking around our collective unconscious:
The disheveled hair. The soulful eyes, staring out the window of an upper-floor barely-furnished apartment in which the heat has been turned off, a “scarf” — fabric torn from the edge of a bedsheet — collaring the neck, the fingers poised above they keys of a typewriter into which one has not yet bothered to insert paper because nothing is coming, dammit, nothing even resembling the first word, let alone sentence, and accomplishing an entire paragraph feels like something only gods can pull off. Meanwhile, the landlord is banging on the door demanding at least token attention to seven months’ back rent; food molders in the lukewarm fridge; and yet the Muse — the Siren — still sings to one from nearby rooftops and trees…
Glamorous, eh? No wonder so many (as it seems) want some of it.
This blog post was inspired by and involves, but is not actually about, the author A.L. Kennedy. On the off-chance she’s new to you, you may want to know something of her before we proceed. Says Wikipedia, she:
…is a Scottish writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction. She is known for a characteristically dark tone, a blending of realism and fantasy, and for her serious approach to her work as well as a passion for the art of yodeling. Alison Kennedy lives in Glasgow with her pet Luwak.
Night Plus Light Makes Right
From the toxel.com design blog:
Light writing is a form of stop motion animation wherein still images captured using the technique known as light painting are put in sequence thereby creating the optical illusion of movement for the viewer.
Two examples:
Impacto Criativo (Creative Impact)
Created by Propague and MidiaEffects with 2 cameras, 1700 clicks, 18 people, 20 nights, 35 flash lights, and 234 batteries.
…and:
Light Paint Piano Player
Created by Ryan Cashman with a small green LED keychain light. The frames were photographed with a Canon Rebel using 20-30 second exposure time.
See them all. (Warning: visiting the toxel.com home page can be hazardous to one’s productivity.)
Of Time, Things Small, and Things Green
From whiskey river:
The Moment
Walking the three tiers in first light, out
here so my two-year-old son won’t wake the house,
I watch him pull and strip ragweed, chicory, yarrow,
so many other weeds and wildflowers
I don’t know the names for, him saying Big, and Mine,
and Joshua — words, words, words. Then
it is the moment, that split-second
when he takes my hand, gives it a tug,
and I feel his entire body-weight, his whole
heart-weight, pulling me toward
the gleaming flowers and weeds he loves.
That moment which is eternal and is gone in a second,
when he yanks me out of myself like some sleeper
from his dead-dream sleep into the blues and whites
and yellows I must bend down to see clearly, into
the faultless flesh of his soft hands, his new brown eyes,
the miracle of him, and of the earth itself,
where he lives among the glitterings, and takes me.
(Len Roberts)
Not from whiskey river:
Department of Barely Restrained Comment
(Jane Austen Desk)
From Variety (courtesy of The New Yorker‘s “The Book Bench” blog):
Rocket launches ‘Predator’
Clark to direct aliens vs. Jane Austen pic
By MICHAEL FLEMINGElton John’s Rocket Pictures hopes to make the first Jane Austen adaptation to which men will drag their girlfriends.
Will Clark is set to direct “Pride and Predator,” which veers from the traditional period costume drama when an alien crash lands and begins to butcher the mannered protags, who suddenly have more than marriage and inheritance to worry about.
[…]“It felt like a fresh and funny way to blow apart the done-to-death Jane Austen genre by literally dropping this alien into the middle of a costume drama, where he stalks and slashes to horrific effect,” [Rocket Pictures’ David] Furnish said.
What’s in a Song: I Get Along Without You Very Well
(Part 2)
[This is another in an occasional series on popular songs with long histories. Part 1 — on the song itself as finally recorded by numerous artists — appeared on Tuesday.]
Hoagy Carmichael published “I Get Along Without You Very Well” in 1938. (The copyright date was November 18.) But the song’s history stretched back over 15 years earlier, and the sheet music as published bore two signs of this past:
- The full title of the song included, at the end, “(Except Sometimes)” — a phrase which appears nowhere in the lyrics.
- Following Carmichael’s name as the songwriter appeared the note, “Words inspired by a poem by J.B. (?)”
Why “Except Sometimes”? Who was J.B.? And why that trailing question mark?
Too Much Time on Your Hands
(and Something to Do with It)
The Short Films of Canada, O Canada
Short films — say, 40 minutes maximum, tops — remain one of the great blind spots of most American audiences. After all, shorts don’t fit into the format of movies (80- or 90-minute features and up) or television (30-minute multiples on PBS, 20-some minutes elsewhere to allow for the paid filler). You can see animation and short-film festivals in larger cities or the art cinemas in smaller ones, but you’ve got to know what you’re going to spend ten bucks on or you won’t spend it, eh?
Aside: Yes, of course Pixar does wonderful short animations, and packages many of them to be released with feature-length films in theaters and/or on DVD. I’m just saying that in general, short films — those by film-school students aside — don’t have much of a noticeable profile here.
So our understanding here of what to expect from short films is shaped by what’s delivered in cartoons, or in fill-in-the-gap documentaries like those on Turner Classic Movies — keeping the audience in their seats until the next feature rolls around at the top of the hour. It’s as though short stories had very few outlets (well, okay, that’s not much of a stretch) — and for the outlets which existed, all stories had to be exact multiples of 3,000 words in length.
Naturally, since American audiences won’t ask for something they scarcely know exists, media outlets don’t provide it, so audiences remain ignorant, and then those audiences won’t… and so on. Less a vicious cycle, than a pernicious one.
Elsewhere, short-film traditions (like other kinds) have evolved differently. Which kinda makes sense, from a story-teller’s perspective: you tell the story completely, and when it’s done you stop, hmm?
Quote of the Day
From S.J. Perelman, born on this day in 1904:“Shoulda Thoughta That.” And the Worst. Songs. Evah.
One of The Missus’s ongoing laments involves the infamous curve, which she seems forever ahead of. “Did you see,” she’ll say to me, “that [insert name of formerly unknown person] just made [insert some number which includes many zeroes and a currency symbol] from [insert random clever idea here]? I can’t believe it. That was my idea!”
Over at the Writing Well Is the Best Revenge blog, a recent post starts out by touching on a similar phenomenon: encountering ideas they’ve never had, but wish they did. Specifically, they talk about the Publisher’s Lunch e-newsletter, which provides reports of recent book deals. BIG book deals.
I know it’s, what, masochistic? Not because I begrudge anyone the fabulous deals they made–oh no way! If books are getting purchased and publishers are humming along, I’m all for it.
No–what’s masochistic is the constantly recurring thought that I am unable to suppress. And that is: oh–I should have thought of that.
Or worse: Oh, I COULD have thought of that.
We won’t even discuss “I DID think of that, years and years ago, but didn’t do anything about it” [Ed. note: viz., The Missus’s lament] because that way lies true madness. (Two little words: Animal Planet.)
Which leads them — gotta love it, someone else is easily distracted, too — to consider the announcement of the sale of Christopher Bowles’s book, Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart:
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