November 8, 2010
Elvis a dilemma
The I love Elvis tee-shirt is a bit over the top. You know it will cause people who love Elvis to talk Elvis with you and since you don’t love Elvis what are you going to say?
I could say, the truth, that I found it and liked the shape of the arms and the goofy pink heart and purple letters.
That isn’t going to cut it for people who actually love Elvis.
Well I could offer the only Elvis story I have, you know the one about the woman who worked in the newsagents in Las Vegas, the dancing and the horses out the back.
No one who loves Elvis wants to hear about horses out the back.
She did say he was a gentleman.
Nah. Won’t cut it. They’re tired of the gentleman talk.
I could say I saved Elvis from the landfill.
Nah.
What do you suggest then?
Wear the tee shirt inside out. Loving Elvis is not something you can fake.
November 7, 2010
Today’s variety of sunshine is in the “definitely not the dining room light dimmer switch” category. It’s full on pixels. Leaves bright mustard a la Blackpool illuminations.
Did I mention that my favourite weather forecaster ever is filmmaker/artist/woodwork maestro David Lynch? His weather forecasts are sporadic, atmospheric and he has a lovely gravelly delivery, but he only forecasts/reports LA weather. I wish he’d set up a channel and weather station and go international.
November 7, 2010
Dream machine iii
So …. as we say in Hiberno… from my question yesterday about whether a reading of a particularly particular prose might produce the same flickering as Gysin’s invented Dream Machine I had an incidental experience.
The evening unwound with a three hour reading of Sandor Ferenczi’s Clinical Diary — luvly bit of light Sat night reading (!). Rather than requested entranced flickering I found myself thrust into a more potent variety. I read the word matricide early on and it induced the feeling of being repeatedly dropped off the back off a moving train and from then on, whilst it was certainly deeply engaging and entrancing, it was consistently like bouncing along an iron railroad on a bungee cord.
Rather than the flicker of light through a tree, it was a full faced open-mouthed wolf snarling between the trees.
And it reminded me never to wish for any such thing again from prose. Such an experience might be better sought in a vat of gin! It’s why we have psychedelic drugs!
But on a last note: it’s Beckett’s How it is? that was the text that didn’t come to mind when I was trying to think of them yesterday.
November 7, 2010
Rhotic 2.10
I actually resolved I was finished with the tumbling strip while lying on the ground that occurred therefore during It.
Not after it.
Did I really crumple to the ground or was it more of a drop? Did I dive or collapse? Or just simply reach. Drop then reach.
What was I thinking then as I walked to join those two women? Did I spot them and move towards them? Or was I just ambling any old place?
Where is the clock on the wall? I can’t remember.
November 7, 2010
Rhotic 2.9
It wasn’t just lying on the floor. It was a specific moment. Something came before it. Something came after it.
Before it, I crossed the floor from the tumbling strip, reached for a bottle, swigged and crumpled.
After it, I crossed the floor in the opposite direction, resolved I was finished with the tumbling strip, approached two women and entered into a discussion about what?
During It ….. I’m undecided.
November 6, 2010
Hari Kunzu on Brion Gysin in this month’s Frieze Magazine.
***
A visit to the dream machine plans booklet and reading the above article makes me think of how the experience of looking into the dream machine in action (trance) might possibly be replicated in the reading of prose. Could prose be written in a density and rhythm (pedantic ?) that permits flashes to come through (that create flickering,) and offer what this unit did. There must be examples of this out and about there. But likely more of a 45rpm than a 33rpm. Gertrude Stein, Beckett’s Worstwood Ho (a better example no doubt abounds, but this springs obviously to mind). It could be fun to construct a Dream Machine and then in parallel create a reading of some writings and record both and see whether a parallel can be drawn. Can we be intoxicated aurally — akin to this visual?
Je ne sais pas.
November 6, 2010
Achluophobia – Fear of darkness
Ancraophobia – Fear of wind
Anemophobia – Fear or wind
Antlophobia – Fear of floods
Astraphobia – Fear of thunder and lightning
Astrapophobia – Fear of thunder and lightning
Brontophobia – Fear of thunder and lightning
Ceraunophobia – Fear of thunder
Chionophobia – Fear of snow
Cremnophobia – Fear of precipices
Cryophobia – Fear of ice/frost
Cymophobia – Fear of waves or wave like motions
Eosophobia – Fear of dawn or daylight
Heliophobia – Fear of sun/light
Homichlophobia – Fear of fog/mist/smoke/steam Keraunophobia – Fear of thunder
Lilapsophobia – Fear of tornadoes and hurricanes
Lygophobia – Fear of darkness
Nephelophobia – Fear of clouds
Nephophobia – Fear of fog
Noctiphobia – Fear of the night
Ombrophobia – Fear of rain
Pagophobia – Fear of cold, ice and frost
Pluviophobia – Fear of rain
Psychrophobia – Fear of cold
Scotophobia – Fear of darkness
Thermophobia – Fear of heat
Tonitrophobia – Fear of thunder
November 6, 2010
I should note that yesterday at 9am was one of my favourite varieties of weather. A bit of bluster, a pause in the rain, but still the threat of more. I call it the smell of washing that’s been out on the line weather. Freshen the eyebrows weather.
Today, tho’ we’re now in the middle of the same weather system and it’s moved to a damnit I left the washing out and now it’s completely sopping wet weather. My fringe is in my eyes weather.
November 6, 2010
Breaking news …. tune in
Fascinating program on weather forecasting and weather on BBC Radio 4 right now!!
Our Obsession With Weather
Iain will ask what role the weather plays in our culture – any writer purposefully tuned to the language of the moment will be obliged to employ the weather as a moral sub-text, a framing device, a ceiling of depression – weather as prediction. Weather as a liquid mirror in which the writer, reads our future.
The above link will work for 7 further days — pop on over for a listen. I loved the program, esp the description of forecaster as having control of the weather … and being viewed as the demon who didn’t deliver!