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 |   Maybe meandering, possibly peripatetic and indisputably irregular. |
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So here it is.. a blog. Repository of some of my present musings and interests. Sometimes things pop into my head that should probably stay there - it is possible I shall share at least some of them here. (Naturally I shall filter out the ones about my sordid obsession with the culinary dark arts, one has to protect the innocent!) Please feel free not to take this too seriously, much of it could wind up being snippets of things that amuse me. Yesterday I came up with this: Few politicians can be considered first class, but not a few are number twos. What can I do with it? Nothing springs to mind, except perhaps blog it. Perhaps in some other life I'm a failed stand-up comedian. I have the beginnings of an idea to introduce another player into the Mr Moonlight story, a nice visual has occurred to me, and a summoning gone wrong seems appropriate. When I finish up here I shall literally put pen to paper. I find writing at least initially longhand helps my ideas flow. When I type up what I've written, I give it a first revision at the same time, and as a bare minimum check my spellings and grammar . I do want to keep tabs on my current reading here. I usually have several books on the go at the same time. Currently I am working through 'Pyramids' by Terry Pratchett. I reread Pratchett's books over and over - usually at work where they provide much needed amusement whilst I eat breakfast. 'The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle', by Stuart Turton was loaned to me by a friend who shares a love of murder mysteries, (especially Agatha Christie's works). It is a new take on the genre and very very clever. The protagonist occupies different bodies - a selection of the guests at the house where Evelyn is murdered. Each day he spends in a different guest, and he has been tasked with discovering the murderer - or maybe saving Evelyn from actually being murdered, it is hard to tell. The book twists and turns and is quite intriguing. 'New Science - Principles of the new science concerning the common nature of nations' is an English translation by David Marsh of 'La Scienza Nuova' by Giambattista Vico, published in 1725. Not far into this yet, I had to find a copy of the frontispiece online, as it wasn't included in the Kindle edition. The first part of the book explains the idea - and uses a detailed description of the frontispiece to convey this. So being without it would have made things somewhat harder. 'The Complete Works of Michael De Montaigne' is again a translation, this time by Donald M. Frame. Montaigne's Essays are famous, I kept reading about them, so treated myself to a nice hardbound copy to dip into - usually just before bedtime. So there we have it - a blog entry - enjoy! (whispers almost inaudibly 'Bon Appétit). |
Some time ago I blogged my intention of writing a poem called 'A Love Song To Whoever'. "Love song for whoever"  The idea behind it is that somewhere in the world's ten billion odd people there is one that is the best possible match for you and vice versa, (i.e. you are their best match). Of course it could be that they are your childhood sweetheart from the same small town, and lucky you if that is the case. It is perhaps much more likely that the two of you will never meet. In a small burst of synchronicity, which I am well used to, there was a post in the WDC Newsfeed a couple of days later asking about perfect partners. I posted something to the effect that I thought they were out there, but that most people made do with who they got, and that loving someone dearly who wasn't your perfect partner was the common state of things. This wasn't phrased or meant as a negative, love doesn't require perfection, indeed love exists in spite of their, AND YOUR faults, and making allowances for each other is one of the manifestations of love. Recently I finished reading Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse. I thoroughly enjoyed it, so much so that, when I'd done I reading, invested in the 1974 film based on the book. The film I think was one that you couldn't possibly understand or enjoy unless you had read the book, and perhaps not even then. It had some elements I liked. One of the key points of the novel is that the eponymous Steppenwolf thinks of himself as a hybrid of man, who likes literature, classical music and fine art, and a wolf, who despises the bourgeois life and all it's trappings. As the book progresses, he learns that he isn't just two conflicting personas, but in fact a multiplicity of souls, thousands of them, in various states of neglect or development. He learns that he can disintegrate the personality and rebuild it re-arranging the mix. He is immortal. The book reminded me of another, The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart, (the pen name of George Cockcroft). In it Luke, a psychologist realises that the idea of us being one is a nonsense, and that we suppress all sorts of facets of our potential personality. His solution is to start playing a 'game' where he assigns different actions or expressions of potential a number and using a dice to decide which actions he takes. Naturally his family, friends and colleagues are horrified. The Dice Game plays out with most of them gradually becoming converted to his ideas. Do not however imagine that in writing about this I am suggesting we should all start destroying our personalities, this is decidedly NOT for everyone. However if your inclination is to alchemy you will already know the significance of the idea. One of my favourite authors/poets is Raymond Queneau, (1903-1976). A French encyclopedist, who worked as Director of the French Encyclopedias l'Encyclopédie de la Pléiade. He was a co-founder of the Oulipo group, which explores the structures and patterns of literature and poetry, and explores new ways to utilise them, producing some very interesting works. For example La Vie mode d'emploi, (Life A User's Manual), by Georges Perec is based around an apartment building and the lives of those who live and lived there. The chapters are not random, but based on a chess knight's tour as it moves around the building. The book as a whole does have a plot, but some single rooms could have easily been expanded into another separate novel. I digress. One of the ideas that Oulipo uses is that of restriction, or if you prefer structure. As a man who had a wide and indeed literally encyclopedic mind, with many interests, Queneau knew that exploring all of them was impossible in one lifetime. The secret to getting anything worthwhile was structure. The limitations might be arbitrary, but they enabled him, and the other members of Oulipo to create some quite fascinating works. |
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). I mostly reject that. I'm eating rice with an egg this morning but Pannya just brought me chocolate milk from 7/11 (bless him; I really don't need it).
