In todays issue: Shopping and Library trip; "Look to Windward" review; discussion of allegory; The Film Project Google Is Advertising Everywhere It Owns i.e. Everywhere; Update on B7 Updates
I - Shopping and Library trip
Went shopping this morning, and accidentally stumbled across a sale.
I should add I have been swamped with vanity all week. I've started doing victory rolls for my job; they require time and effort to both create and maintain. For the first time in my life, I've actually worried about my hair for more than ten minutes a day. It's a curious experience, and very irritating; but like all things, a nice place to visit, though you wouldn't want to live there.
I love my new hairstyle, and have been leaving the fringe roll in even while not at work.
Anyway, in a rare show of actually buying new clothes from a mainstream store, I got myself a brilliant white lace shirt, and am the happiest dandy in town; I'm amazed I hadn't done something like this sooner, considering the heavyweight of frilly gents in my memory. I also got a little knitted dress, which is close to my dream-dress as worn by Jo in The Three Doctors (sorry, no photos). Though now I think about it, and my penchant for adopting the style of whoever is most in my brain, and how plain and grey and 80s it is, and how ludicrously huge the sleeves are...
I wonder if I haven't just committed my first Avon-related fashion decision. I know I do this all the time for people I adore - this just seems especially low.
The highlight for me was the library. Going to the library fufils all the fun of shopping - the thrill of the chase, the joy of something new, the thrill of posession - with none of the burdens - i.e. spending, and wondering whether your house can handle the crap-tonneage. Consequently, I always max out my card allowance - which today was 12:
I finished Look to Windward, but now I wonder (with my habit for forgetting blogs) if I ever told you about it in the first place? It's by Iain M. Banks, the man who wrote my once-favourite book Use of Weapons. I can't remember much about it, beside Staberinde, the chair, and enjoying it all very much. I never read one of his books since, because they are dense and I'm easily distracted. It was sheer force of will - and four days left to my own devices at work - which pulled me through.
Mr Banks is a sci-fi genius. He creates these technologically advanced worlds packed with ideas which are just part of the scenery. This one has behemothaus, which are kinda like starwhales with whole ecosystems living on their backs. Lesser authors would have written a book just about that. It makes his universe feel complete, and real; and I love the idea that for all these changes, human problems will stay the same - love, death. And his depiction of new social mores and expectations are just as thorough. His books are worth reading purely for the spaceship names, and, bless it, Wikipedia's got a list of the lot. Some favourites are Resistance is Character Forming, Very Little Gravitas Indeed and Nuisance Value.
I have some misgivings about the end, however. I read almost up to the climax, and I cared so darn intensely that I chose sleep over ending it. I had fantastic dreams in which I explored every possibility, watched it all go horribly wrong and then gave it a happy ending: I was that worried. It rather went pfut and fizzled when I read it again in the morning. Still, good up until the point I thought "...oh, that's it then?".
I'm still a little embarassed at my mind, however. The novel started in the first person, with a soldier in a battle trying to protect someone in a trench. On this basis, I assumed the narrator was male - including after the revelation that the second character was in fact the husband of the first. It was several chapters later, from the perspective of this wretched husband, that we established that actually our first narrator had been female - and I'd totally assumed it was a gay man.
I'm sure both parts of this suggest interest things about my priorities, prejudices and expectations.
Still, Banks will do that irritating modern novel thing of showing dialogue for ages but not clearly attributing it to any characters, so once you work out what's going on you have to go back and read it again with them in mind. Often, it's a deliberate point - and are there some convos in Windward which are never clearly attributed to anyone - but I hate it because then I get confused and make big, basic mistakes like the gender of key protagonists. And the worst thing is, I held it against Worosei for the rest of the darn novel.
Lesson of the day (facetious)
Never assume you know the gender of anyone real or imaginary unless clearly stated.
Lesson of the day (serious)
On the planet Chel, the name "Worosei" is feminine.
III- discussion of allegory
It also irked me during a big exposition chapter, where my mind glued what it was telling me about terrorism, vengeance and advanced cultures meddling with "underdeveloped" ones for their own good, to the dedication "For Gulf War Veterans". And I thought, "bastard - it's an Iraq allegory!"
Oh, how I loathe allegory, and hated getting trapped in one. I know its a sci fi staple, but I can't stand them. It's an position, not the position, and it lies in my specific literature uprbinging or whatever.
Deconstructing allegory was meant to be the whole point of this post; I've got kinda distracted, and now it's 12:30 in the morning. But in brief. If you approach both fiction and art from my perspective, then allegory has to be anathema.
My feelings on fiction are that it is real, or as good as real, if you are truly involved in it. This governs my attitudes towards how I consume it - I don't like eating while viewing, I don't like people talking, I'm not interested in continuity errors, blooper reels, or actors, I hate spoilers. And also governs my responses to it: it closely influences my real world views, and I tend to have emotional breakdowns when things inevitably get wrong, as they tend to do with a greater frequency in drama, because I'm always too darn involved. An interesting byproduct of this - I don't really enjoy parody, I can't help but take them deathly seriously. I'm like the bloody Thermians off Galaxy Quest.
As for art, well - Oscar Wilde got me young, and his philosophy I can't shake. A
rt for art's sake alone - not to push a point, not to describe life as it is but life as it should be - to be beautiful. I like my fiction wholly escapist - social realism is a dirty phrase. And while I'm interested in media representation, to be honest I'd rather oppression of minorities than oppression of artists. Yes, any or all of them; even the one(s) I count under. I rather wish I didn't; logically I don't. But in my heart, in response to say Disney's refusal to release Song of the South, I'm always with the product over the people. My justification is that these things are fascinating because of their offense value, and in context they are important historical documents. Maybe that's honest, I don't know. It's interesting that by undertaking a movement which believes morality has no place in art, you are taking perhaps the strongest moral stance of all.
You may disagree with both of these. Often, I do. Certainly I don't believe I'm "right" - although I am right for me. Allegory hampers enjoyment of both fiction and art for it's own sake. I love Animal Farm. It's my favourite book about farmyard creatures.
The irony of this whole thing is that Look to Windward was written a whole year before "our" Gulf War, before 9/11, before Afghanistan, the lot. Which isn't to say he couldn't have been inspired by similar activities in Gulf War One and Two, and creepy foreign policy pre-2001; but it did mean that the very specific meaning I saw in it was all in my own mind. I created the allegory. I think I hate it all the more for that.
IV - The Film Project Google Is Advertising Everywhere It Owns i.e. Everywhere
I meant to take part in this, and I feel less of a wannabie filmmaker for not having done so. The premise: film your day, upload it to the 'Tube and then real filmmakers will edit it together into a documentary of this day in history.
Call me pretentious, but I couldn't possibly think of portraying something in film until I've considered what it is I have to shoot. Cinema conveys what you see through indirect means. You see, say, two happy people - but the camera will be close to their smiles, the light will be bright. You can't make decisions like that on the fly.
And I've been thinking a lot about realism too - and the artifice of documentary. Did we have to prepare a special day, worth filming? What if I went overboard, and did something unusual - is that OK? Or overcompensated and made my day unusually dull? Is it possible to just film everything that happens - the camera's presence would itself make a difference to it's realism.
I know everyone feels their life is ordinary, but mine is not of itself worthy of cinema. I'm not struggling; I'm also not about to propose to my girlfriend, or give birth to my first child, or bungee jump for charity. Nothing outstanding, and easy to shoot. I feel my perception, my imaginative life, and my friends are the two things in my life which are truly extraordinary, and may be of interest to others; but that's not easy to convey on camera.
Now I've spent my day (but not recorded it), I know how I would have done so. I may still undertake it as a project, but it'd require a lot of patience from friends and family, more than I think any of them could give on an idea that may not ultimately work.
V - Update on B7 Updates
My Blake's 7 comments are itching towards spoiler territory. Or rather, anyone is who is interested enough to want to know how I feel about it, will not want me to talk about the things I need to say. Anyone who doesn't care still won't care. So I am saving them all in one post, which I will publish eventually, and then you can decide to read them or not as you will. Of course, when it's all over and done - and it will be, they all are eventually - with I'll be to embarassed by my old obsession to let them to the light of day. I'm keeping it with the sentence-long fic fragments, another two of which popped into existence today. It's such a bizzare unintended project. I wonder how long I've been having them for, and not noticing?
Or if I've ever had this before? This is the first time I've had my obsessive process under such close observation. I'm sure this will ultimately serve a purpose. I've got all the recogniseable stages down on paper. I wonder if I could force an obsession into existance? Or keep one going? Or make one die?
I - Shopping and Library trip
Went shopping this morning, and accidentally stumbled across a sale.
I should add I have been swamped with vanity all week. I've started doing victory rolls for my job; they require time and effort to both create and maintain. For the first time in my life, I've actually worried about my hair for more than ten minutes a day. It's a curious experience, and very irritating; but like all things, a nice place to visit, though you wouldn't want to live there.
I love my new hairstyle, and have been leaving the fringe roll in even while not at work.
Anyway, in a rare show of actually buying new clothes from a mainstream store, I got myself a brilliant white lace shirt, and am the happiest dandy in town; I'm amazed I hadn't done something like this sooner, considering the heavyweight of frilly gents in my memory. I also got a little knitted dress, which is close to my dream-dress as worn by Jo in The Three Doctors (sorry, no photos). Though now I think about it, and my penchant for adopting the style of whoever is most in my brain, and how plain and grey and 80s it is, and how ludicrously huge the sleeves are...I wonder if I haven't just committed my first Avon-related fashion decision. I know I do this all the time for people I adore - this just seems especially low.
The highlight for me was the library. Going to the library fufils all the fun of shopping - the thrill of the chase, the joy of something new, the thrill of posession - with none of the burdens - i.e. spending, and wondering whether your house can handle the crap-tonneage. Consequently, I always max out my card allowance - which today was 12:
- "Appointment with Venus" (DVD) - interesting! All about the Occupation, filmed in Guernsey. David Niven stars - as does my grandfather, who was a College Cadet at the time and drafted in to play spare Nazis or something.
- "Stalag 17" (DVD) - POW movie, all about manly men, stoicism and betrayal. Slashy, so LJ tells me.
- "Solaris" (DVD) - the remake of this movie was one of the most incredible experiences. Technically interesting, haunting and emotional, thematically rich and hyperbole inducing. When I started frothing about it online, I was barraged by people saying - "oh, but that's nothing compared to the original!". If they're right, then I should be in for a favourites-list rearranging treat.
- The Brothers Karamasov (Fydor Dostoyevsky), England Made Me (Graham Greene), Mr Pye (Mervyn Peake). Going on holiday next week to a house in the south of France. It's in the middle of nowhere, and people keep assuring me it will be tedium inducing - hence me glomming up books. I'll probably take the first two - I've tried reading the last before, and it didn't stick. There's something nice and clear about old fashioned books that lends them well to the bittiness of holidays, which in their turn provide the sort of desperate atmosphere required to get to the end of any novel heavier than a chichiwawa. I read Crime and Punishment in a French caravan. Quite a mistake - that book is excellent and intense, and I remember feeling intensely queasy. Perhaps that's why the "holiday novel" is so appealing - they are deliberately bad, because reading good books are a distraction...
- Fifty Key Television Programmes - a media studies textbook of sorts, listing contexts and questions. I already have the impression that I'll already know everything it has to say about any show I'm a fan of (Doctor Who, The Prisoner, Queer as Folk, Brass Eye and Twin Peaks are among those listed). But maybe not, and it might give me some new ideas.
- Postmodernism - incredible. It's a little illustrated guide, and before it gets to postmodernism it's describing all the other art movements it is post-. I suddenly understand art of all kinds in a deeper way than I ever have. It's amazing how small a nudge I need to start thinking critically about painting. Vincent and the Doctor was enough to point out what Mr Gogh was trying to achieve; this book has done the same for every major art movement since 1900. Goodness knows why I picked it up, but I'm glad...
- The Indigo Children - oh yes! Because the longer I have it out, the longer other people can't. I'll update you with juicy extracts, just as I will for...
- How to Survive 2012: Tactics and Survival Places for the Coming Pole Shift. I'd ask "WHO ON EARTH FUNDS THESE NUTJOBS?", but it's clear the answer is: Guernsey Library. Case closed...
- And my new favourite book - A Hairdresser's Guide To Period Styles, with tutorials from Prehistory right up to 1990s-Rachel hair. My poor hair has had a pretty free ride so far; it's about to get the whole flush of teenage vanity in one or two frenetic weeks as I attempt a decade a day. I'm particularly excited about the French Aristocrat.
I finished Look to Windward, but now I wonder (with my habit for forgetting blogs) if I ever told you about it in the first place? It's by Iain M. Banks, the man who wrote my once-favourite book Use of Weapons. I can't remember much about it, beside Staberinde, the chair, and enjoying it all very much. I never read one of his books since, because they are dense and I'm easily distracted. It was sheer force of will - and four days left to my own devices at work - which pulled me through.
Mr Banks is a sci-fi genius. He creates these technologically advanced worlds packed with ideas which are just part of the scenery. This one has behemothaus, which are kinda like starwhales with whole ecosystems living on their backs. Lesser authors would have written a book just about that. It makes his universe feel complete, and real; and I love the idea that for all these changes, human problems will stay the same - love, death. And his depiction of new social mores and expectations are just as thorough. His books are worth reading purely for the spaceship names, and, bless it, Wikipedia's got a list of the lot. Some favourites are Resistance is Character Forming, Very Little Gravitas Indeed and Nuisance Value.
I have some misgivings about the end, however. I read almost up to the climax, and I cared so darn intensely that I chose sleep over ending it. I had fantastic dreams in which I explored every possibility, watched it all go horribly wrong and then gave it a happy ending: I was that worried. It rather went pfut and fizzled when I read it again in the morning. Still, good up until the point I thought "...oh, that's it then?".
I'm still a little embarassed at my mind, however. The novel started in the first person, with a soldier in a battle trying to protect someone in a trench. On this basis, I assumed the narrator was male - including after the revelation that the second character was in fact the husband of the first. It was several chapters later, from the perspective of this wretched husband, that we established that actually our first narrator had been female - and I'd totally assumed it was a gay man.
I'm sure both parts of this suggest interest things about my priorities, prejudices and expectations.
Still, Banks will do that irritating modern novel thing of showing dialogue for ages but not clearly attributing it to any characters, so once you work out what's going on you have to go back and read it again with them in mind. Often, it's a deliberate point - and are there some convos in Windward which are never clearly attributed to anyone - but I hate it because then I get confused and make big, basic mistakes like the gender of key protagonists. And the worst thing is, I held it against Worosei for the rest of the darn novel.
Lesson of the day (facetious)
Never assume you know the gender of anyone real or imaginary unless clearly stated.
Lesson of the day (serious)
On the planet Chel, the name "Worosei" is feminine.
III- discussion of allegory
It also irked me during a big exposition chapter, where my mind glued what it was telling me about terrorism, vengeance and advanced cultures meddling with "underdeveloped" ones for their own good, to the dedication "For Gulf War Veterans". And I thought, "bastard - it's an Iraq allegory!"
Oh, how I loathe allegory, and hated getting trapped in one. I know its a sci fi staple, but I can't stand them. It's an position, not the position, and it lies in my specific literature uprbinging or whatever.
Deconstructing allegory was meant to be the whole point of this post; I've got kinda distracted, and now it's 12:30 in the morning. But in brief. If you approach both fiction and art from my perspective, then allegory has to be anathema.
My feelings on fiction are that it is real, or as good as real, if you are truly involved in it. This governs my attitudes towards how I consume it - I don't like eating while viewing, I don't like people talking, I'm not interested in continuity errors, blooper reels, or actors, I hate spoilers. And also governs my responses to it: it closely influences my real world views, and I tend to have emotional breakdowns when things inevitably get wrong, as they tend to do with a greater frequency in drama, because I'm always too darn involved. An interesting byproduct of this - I don't really enjoy parody, I can't help but take them deathly seriously. I'm like the bloody Thermians off Galaxy Quest.As for art, well - Oscar Wilde got me young, and his philosophy I can't shake. A
rt for art's sake alone - not to push a point, not to describe life as it is but life as it should be - to be beautiful. I like my fiction wholly escapist - social realism is a dirty phrase. And while I'm interested in media representation, to be honest I'd rather oppression of minorities than oppression of artists. Yes, any or all of them; even the one(s) I count under. I rather wish I didn't; logically I don't. But in my heart, in response to say Disney's refusal to release Song of the South, I'm always with the product over the people. My justification is that these things are fascinating because of their offense value, and in context they are important historical documents. Maybe that's honest, I don't know. It's interesting that by undertaking a movement which believes morality has no place in art, you are taking perhaps the strongest moral stance of all.You may disagree with both of these. Often, I do. Certainly I don't believe I'm "right" - although I am right for me. Allegory hampers enjoyment of both fiction and art for it's own sake. I love Animal Farm. It's my favourite book about farmyard creatures.
The irony of this whole thing is that Look to Windward was written a whole year before "our" Gulf War, before 9/11, before Afghanistan, the lot. Which isn't to say he couldn't have been inspired by similar activities in Gulf War One and Two, and creepy foreign policy pre-2001; but it did mean that the very specific meaning I saw in it was all in my own mind. I created the allegory. I think I hate it all the more for that.
IV - The Film Project Google Is Advertising Everywhere It Owns i.e. Everywhere
I meant to take part in this, and I feel less of a wannabie filmmaker for not having done so. The premise: film your day, upload it to the 'Tube and then real filmmakers will edit it together into a documentary of this day in history.
Call me pretentious, but I couldn't possibly think of portraying something in film until I've considered what it is I have to shoot. Cinema conveys what you see through indirect means. You see, say, two happy people - but the camera will be close to their smiles, the light will be bright. You can't make decisions like that on the fly.
And I've been thinking a lot about realism too - and the artifice of documentary. Did we have to prepare a special day, worth filming? What if I went overboard, and did something unusual - is that OK? Or overcompensated and made my day unusually dull? Is it possible to just film everything that happens - the camera's presence would itself make a difference to it's realism.
I know everyone feels their life is ordinary, but mine is not of itself worthy of cinema. I'm not struggling; I'm also not about to propose to my girlfriend, or give birth to my first child, or bungee jump for charity. Nothing outstanding, and easy to shoot. I feel my perception, my imaginative life, and my friends are the two things in my life which are truly extraordinary, and may be of interest to others; but that's not easy to convey on camera.
Now I've spent my day (but not recorded it), I know how I would have done so. I may still undertake it as a project, but it'd require a lot of patience from friends and family, more than I think any of them could give on an idea that may not ultimately work.
V - Update on B7 Updates
My Blake's 7 comments are itching towards spoiler territory. Or rather, anyone is who is interested enough to want to know how I feel about it, will not want me to talk about the things I need to say. Anyone who doesn't care still won't care. So I am saving them all in one post, which I will publish eventually, and then you can decide to read them or not as you will. Of course, when it's all over and done - and it will be, they all are eventually - with I'll be to embarassed by my old obsession to let them to the light of day. I'm keeping it with the sentence-long fic fragments, another two of which popped into existence today. It's such a bizzare unintended project. I wonder how long I've been having them for, and not noticing?
Or if I've ever had this before? This is the first time I've had my obsessive process under such close observation. I'm sure this will ultimately serve a purpose. I've got all the recogniseable stages down on paper. I wonder if I could force an obsession into existance? Or keep one going? Or make one die?
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