“What Time Is It?” “Time to Wish You Were in Prague.”

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Per Eileen of Speak Coffee to Me, this awesome* video of a projection on the Prague Orloj, an “astronomical clock tower.” “The 600 Years” refers to the number of years since the clock was first built — years which pass by as you watch the video:

It’s the handiwork of a project known as The Macula, “dealing with the relationship between image, sound and audience.” If you follow that link to their site, be sure to nose around some to view more of their other work… including similar projection-on-buildings pieces.

The logistical problems they had to solve to make this overwhelm my brain. Just getting the perspective right had to be a matter of a lot of experimentation and calculation.

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* The word is here no cliche.

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Is It Love? (Local Edition)

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Among the valued newcomers to RAMH‘s roll of occasional commenters, you may have encountered one “Ashleigh Burrows.”

(I use the quotation marks there because that name, as I understand it, is a nom de plume. Which makes it interesting that she calls her blog The Burrow: it’s an eponym for a pseudonym, and how many times can one claim to have seen one of those before?)

a/b, as she styles herself in her comments here, there, and elsewhere, is (like many of us) a writer still unconvinced that simply writing well is enough. When not actively fretting along those lines, she fills in the blog with, well, good writing on a wide variety of topics — provocative questions, political commentary, accounts of daily life with a cast of bizarrely nicknamed characters (The Big Guy and G’ma, sure, got them, and the Big and Little Cuter I pretty much understand to be her kids — but Amster? Aged Parm?)…

Anyway, I direct your attention to a recent post at The Burrow, “Is It Love?” It’s full of the sort of nagging, not-quite-rhetorical questions which some of us (yes) love to chew on:

  • Can one look at another with devotion and desire, knowing that the feelings are not returned, and still call it love?
  • Is there a cognitive component that is necessary for love to exist?
  • Can you love someone you do not need? If the loved one were to vanish and you felt no pain, did you really love at all?

And so on. She sums up:

Many, many questions. I’m not sure the answers are available. I’m not sure that your answers would be mine (or [jilted lover of Aeneas] Dido’s). I just know that love is strange.

Aye. That it is… strange, and troublesome as hell. Even more than “the sex talk,” I wonder how parents manage “the love talk” for their blossoming charges. I don’t have any kids myself, of course. But if I did, what follows would be how I might try to explain it to them — in hopes of arming them before the first thunderbolt hit.*

[Read more…]

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Marching in Place After My Own Hat

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Would I like to report that I’ve been so busy and preoccupied with my writing recently that I’ve skimped on blog posts — and comments on your blogs — for the last couple weeks or so?

Boy, wouldn’t I. But no. I’ve been so busy and preoccupied with everything else that I’ve been cutting corners online. Still, I thought you might appreciate a couple of items in the meantime, not that you need me to entertain you:

First, I’d never have guessed that enough “backwards music videos” have been made that someone reflecting on the matter could actually come up with a list of the top ten of “all time.” (By the way, the backwards here refers to the direction of motion — people running in reverse, fruit falling up into trees, and so on.) So I was surprised that Jason Newman, at the Urlesque site (“Exposing bits of the web”), could post just such a list. His number one selection interested me, all right: a “champion eater… unstuffs his face,” over a song called “From Your Mouth” by a group called God Lives Underwater. But my favorite — the only one I wanted to watch more than once — placed only third in his estimation:

Cibo Matto’s “Sugar Water”

One of Michel Gondry’s best videos involves split-screening Cibo Matto members Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori, running one member forward and the other backward before they meet and switch positions halfway through. Yeah, it’s complicated. Just watch.

What they said.


Alternatively, if you’ve got a little more time available, I highly recommend this hilarious (and ultimately sobering) account by Jo Walton of an entity she calls the Suck Fairy:

The Suck Fairy is an artefact of re-reading. If you read a book for the first time and it sucks, it’s nothing to do with her. It just sucks. Some books do. The Suck Fairy comes in when you come back to a book that you liked when you read it before, and on re-reading — well, it sucks. You can say that you have changed, you can hit your forehead dramatically and ask yourself how you could possibly have missed the suckiness the first time — or you can say that the Suck Fairy has been through while the book was sitting on the shelf and inserted the suck. The longer the book has been on the shelf unread, the more time she’s had to get into it.

For those of you who are writers, I don’t have to point out that your personal Suck Fairy especially loves exsanguinating your own work.

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The “Thud” of Adult Cool

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Once, when I was teaching, I had this fabulous idea for a series of lessons. I just knew it would be a hit with the kids. I just knew I’d love teaching it. It would dazzle my peers. And quite possibly I’d get written up in the local paper — in a, y’know, good way. I could even imagine the headline: Local Teacher “Rocks” Poetry.

Yes. I cringe with you.

Especially do I cringe in memory of some of my selections. This was the mid-1970s, for gods’ sake. It’s not like there wasn’t any, y’know, actual rock music to choose from. So what did I think would happen when I played for my high-school juniors and seniors the Kingston Trio, performing “MTA”? If you don’t  know the song, its lyrics, in part, go like this (and by the way, “MTA” is an acronym for Metropolitan Transit Authority):

Let me tell you the story
Of a man named Charlie
On a tragic and fateful day
He put ten cents in his pocket,
Kissed his wife and family
Went to ride on the MTA

Charlie handed in his dime
At the Kendall Square Station
And he changed for Jamaica Plain
When he got there the conductor told him,
“One more nickel.”
Charlie could not get off that train.

Chorus:
Did he ever return,
No he never returned
And his fate is still unlearn’d
He may ride forever
‘neath the streets of Boston
He’s the man who never returned.

…

Charlie’s wife goes down
To the Scollay Square station
Every day at quarter past two
And through the open window
She hands Charlie a sandwich
As the train comes rumblin’ through.

Yes: a socially-conscious folk song, accompanied by banjos, about a long-forgotten political issue in Boston, of a nickel increase in subway/train fares… in a well-to-do suburb in New Jersey with absolutely no subway/train service of its own.

When it finished playing through, I lifted the needle from the turntable (!) and said something like, “So…” (I had no idea what to say.) “…What’d you think?”

The quick-thinking football player a couple rows back, sprawled carelessly at his desk, growled: I thought it sucked.

I couldn’t help it; I burst out laughing. “What… sucked about it?”

Football Player: Why’d she hand him a sandwich? Why’n’t she just hand him some more money?

And thus ended that lesson.

[Read more…]

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Unbanning Books Month

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Miriam Forster, of the charmingly monikered Dancing with Dragons is Hard on Your Shoes blog, has issued a challenge to writers (and readers!). It springs from an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association, called Banned Books Week. From the ALA site:

Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Intellectual freedom — the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular — provides the foundation for Banned Books Week.  BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.

Here’s Miriam’s call to action for the month of September:

Since 1990, according to the ALA Challenge Database, over ten thousand books have been challenged in our country. These include The Diary of Anne Frank, The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien,1984 by George Orwell, the Bible, and the dictionary. [JES: ?!?]

The last week in September is Banned Book Week, a way to celebrate and highlight these and other censored books. In honor of Banned Book Week, a community of writers and readers have decided to be part of the Banned Book Challenge.

The Challenge is simple: Read one or more banned or challenged books during the month of September, and post reviews  of them. The reviews will be collected and posted to a central site so that people can find out more about these books.

The above comes from the official invitation at the new Banned Book Challenge site which Miriam has set up.

So how do you participate?

[Read more…]

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Monday Bounce

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I’m pretty sure I posted a link to this on Facebook and/or Twitter a couple months ago, when I first encountered it. For some reason it’s found its way back into my head today, and has been positively ringing there for the last several hours. When a song will simply not leave me alone, my solution is to just, well, listen to it. It goes away immediately. So, as much for my own sake as for yours…

Here’s “Don’t Worry, I’m Yours” — DJ Dain’s ingenious mashup of Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” and Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours.” (The ukulele accompaniment, as I understand it, actually makes this a three-way mashup: it came from a recording called “Wonderful World,” by the late Hawaiian musician Israel Kamakawiwo’ole.)

Lyrics to both songs are below, displayed side by side so you can (if you’re clever and, unlike me, somehow able not to get lost in the catchiness!) follow along with the interleaved audio.

Don’t Worry, Be Happy
(by Bobby McFerrin)

Here is a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don’t worry be happy
In every life we have some trouble
When you worry you make it double
Don’t worry, be happy

Ain’t got no place to lay your head
Somebody came and took your bed
Don’t worry, be happy
The landlord say your rent is late
He may have to litigate
Don’t worry, be happy
Look at me I am happy
Don’t worry, be happy

Here I give you my phone number
When you worry call me
I make you happy
Don’t worry, be happy

Ain’t got no cash, ain’t got no style
Ain’t got no girl to make you smile
But don’t worry be happy
Cause when you worry
Your face will frown
And that will bring everybody down
So don’t worry, be happy (now)

There is this little song I wrote
I hope you learn it note for note
Like good little children
Don’t worry, be happy
Listen to what I say

In your life expect some trouble
But when you worry
You make it double
Don’t worry, be happy
Don’t worry don’t do it, be happy

Put a smile on your face
Don’t bring everybody down like this
Don’t worry, it will soon past
Whatever it is
Don’t worry, be happy

I’m Yours
(by Jason Mraz)

Well you done done me
and you bet I felt it
I tried to be chill
but you’re so hot that I melted
I fell right through the cracks
Now I’m trying to get back
Before the cool done run out
I’ll be giving it my bestest
And nothing’s going to stop me
but divine intervention
I reckon it’s again my turn
to win some or learn some
I won’t hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait, I’m yours

Well open up your mind and see like me
Open up your plans and damn you’re free
Look into your heart
and you’ll find love love love love
Listen to the music of the moment
baby sing with me
I love peace for melody
And It’s our God-forsaken right
to be loved love loved love loved

So I won’t hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait I’m sure
There’s no need to complicate
Our time is short
This is our fate, I’m yours

Scooch on over closer dear
And I will nibble your ear

I’ve been spending way too long
checking my tongue in the mirror
And bending over backwards
just to try to see it clearer
But my breath fogged up the glass
And so I drew a new face and laughed
I guess what I’m be saying is
there ain’t no better reason
To rid yourself of vanity
and just go with the seasons
It’s what we aim to do
Our name is our virtue

But I won’t hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait I’m sure

Well open up your mind and see like me
Open up your plans and damn you’re free
Look into your heart
and you’ll find that the sky is yours
Please don’t, please don’t, please don’t
There’s no need to complicate
Cause our time is short
This oh this this is our fate, I’m yours!
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Super Powers for the Rest of Us

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[‘Super Powers,’ by Mark Stivers. Click to view the full set of six.]

Given a choice, I think the caption below my portrait — in ten words or less — would say something like writes brilliant stories one hour at a time*. (My Kryptonite: the Internet.)

Yours?

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* Edit to add: Just to make it plain — this is not a super power I have. (The operative words above: given a choice.) God, no. It’s a super power I’d love to have — a super power I’d have if I were my ideal superhero.

Edit to add, 2: Now that I’ve read all these other great ideas, I think maybe the super power I already have is something like: can spot important trends with 20/20 hindsight.

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BlogIt

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Every year around now, a large chunk of blogosphere real estate is turned over to posts, tweets, Facebook status updates, and Flickr albums about a gathering called BlogHer. As the conference title suggests, the focus in on women who blog — it’s apparently attended by a number of guys, as well — and for the several days of BlogHer, attendees take in workshops and panel discussions, attend parties, and go out with friends to take in the sights of that year’s city. (This year, earlier this month, it took place in New York City.)

I’ve never gone to BlogHer, and never expect to, although I follow and admire the bejeezus out of maybe a half-dozen of the BlogHerers (?) with wide name recognition (Maggie, The Bloggess, Kelly…) and make occasional trips through the takeout windows of another half-dozen or so.

There are a few reasons while I’ll probably never get there:

[Read more…]

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Book Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

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My review of this book is now up over at The Book Book.

So is another reviewer’s, as of yesterday — and we’re just following on the heels of the first, from a year ago. Clearly a book that draws reviewers like flies!

I liked the book very much although (as you can see from the review) just why sort of escapes me. You’ve got to get out of the gate fast with a grabber of an opening, we’re told, or no one will buy your crime story/mystery/thriller (and probably your collection of baby names). This one doesn’t start that way; nor, throughout, does it share the sort of propulsive arc which the vast majority of such stories have.

In a way, it’s something like being at the ocean shore, watching the waves. Those six were sort of interesting, weren’t they? And then, oh boy, here comes the seventh!…

…and then suddenly you notice the water is being drawn away from you, towards the horizon, and waaaay out there is a narrow line growing gradually thicker, and then you remember what all these symptoms mean and you think:

Holy crap, a tsunami!

At which point you start looking around frantically for an exit which, alas, does not exist.

If you think you can get used to this rhythm, absolutely give Dragon Tattoo a try. Even if you think you can’t, well, if you’re comfortable with crime stories/thrillers/mysteries/baby-name books in general, it still might be worth a look. It might catch you by surprise, as it did me.

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