April 18, 2010
Single view
Increasingly I have been thinking of the single reader in the last year: if thoughtful literary criticism has little place in our medja then where is it to sit. We can tell such criticism no longer has much if any place because of the obvious “life-span” of a book. The book is of interest when it is released. Sometimes it is not of interest at all when it is released.
This week it came to me on Friday that one solution could be to consider such pieces as photographs and to frame them for mounting and sell them to a single reader rather than a newspaper. Thus the single reader would be assured an exclusivity to your thoughts and considerations and may very well appreciate them sufficient to continue collecting them paying the same fee (v poor) that a newspaper pays. This could alleviate some of the frustration that I experience in taking time to write about books (outside the current conception of lifespan) only to find a newspaper decides they’re not in the national interest and some other old purposeless waffle is.
April 15, 2010
The backflip has progressed. I am now doing it unassisted on the trampoline. There’s a moment before I throw it that is identical to moments that strike me sometimes if I think about the book I’ve just written.
The impact of the mind on an acrobatic move is massive. And can destroy it. Yet the mind has to be engaged to remind the body. The challenge is for long over high, straight arms, an arch, lift the hips with the legs straight, the push off against the floor from the shoulders for the final snap of the legs. The second part is crucial because that will give you the impetus to follow with more of them eventually.
I think of good tumbling like a sentence.
April 12, 2010
Cleo 4-6
Cannot sleep between 4am and 6am. Very odd altogether. What’s happening between 4am and 6am that so appeals to my brain? I must have a chat to the birds and find out.
I wake with astonishing ideas in mind on completely useless things like how impractically to build a bookshelf. Or how to invent a bed that keeps the body only in one position (mousetrap bed) and other pointless entities that belong in outer space. Like visions of a garden I have not grown or sporting rebellion.
Last week I invented (realized after the fact) a completely new graveyard that I could practically plot and draw for you in this city … so vivid, utterly disappointing it does not exist. And it’s not exactly easy to just rustle up your own graveyard. A pumpkin pie maybe. A salad perhaps. …. but a graveyard on an average Monday. All a bit Charlie Brown.
April 10, 2010
There is a particular tone on the D string of my son’s violin that is pure lovely. A certain timbre. The odd thing is the string is old and should be replaced, so it suggests the timbre is coming from his bowing and playing of the string.
Another peculiar thing is how the ear can be attracted to and isolate the sounds it likes and yet for whatever undulating mishap in my brain I cannot read the notes very well on the D string, better than the G string which I cannot read at all. By rights my ear should be nesting with A or E sounds since I am familiar with them on the score.
There’s something “tunnel” or cylindrical is about that rich tone of the D string.
April 10, 2010
10.59 I am not reading Cortazar. I may be too tired to read Cortazar. This is a terrible pity. But I am keeping company with Mme Agnes Varda this late evening. And I may spend the rest of my life reading that Cortazar book. It’s the kind of piece it is. There’s a lovely biting cold in the wind this night. Sharp. The temperature has dipped and the daytime highs are daytime lows. I like it when the high becomes a low. The variety keeps me pondering. Plus there have been some good old gusts. The other night I woke in the middle of a moderate storm, but it being moderate failed to keep me awake, which is very unusual for a committed storm stirrer.
April 10, 2010
I ask about Asbestos because it is likely what killed Malcolm.
Basically it was a vicious substance that also killed Christie Hennessy the singer. It was ubiquitous in garage roofs when I was a child. I remember my mother commenting on it. She was terrified of it. I can’t visualize the actual roofs anymore. I think they were slanted. I can’t recall whether you could visually identify something as Asbestos by looking at it.
It will have killed many more than Malcolm. Anyone working on building sites or demolition may have been exposed. Asbestos became dangerous when disturbed.
April 6, 2010
3.41am Reading Cortazar. Hopscotch. Between segment 6 and 7 there is a shift in perspective to the I. There may have been one hitherto, but I never noted it the way I noticed this one. My head is full of rolling Philip Glass notes. And Cortazar’s words (another book theory/ all books were one-book-less) strangely or otherwise fit his notes, strangely in that they rose me from sleep at this early hour. Outside the rain is falling in a persistent rhythm. P’haps it was the rain that roused me. I always wake if there’s a weather event. I consider this a great achievement.
I was just noticing the journey of the two book marks in this book and how the one at the back travels further than the one at the front which tiptoes.
April 6, 2010
Philip Glass just put me on the moon. I went to see him with my favourite person in the world and was transported into the outer echelons of something, some other.
Thanks to Gma for the tickets, without which I never could have lifted off.
I wonder if he realizes that small ten year old ears were listening to him. Small ears that are distinguishing their own notes in the world right now. And middle aged ears that can no longer distinguish so much, but are available and up for and very much need transportation.