you know you've got at least an ankle still in fandom...

28/11/15 14:59
bronze_ribbons: yoshizumi flying off cliff (yosh37 yoshizumi off cliff)
... when you see a New York Times piece about the fish market's imminent move ...

... and your first reaction is, "Oh, saints and gills, that's going to complicate what I might yet get around to writing."

And your second reaction is to swat away the hordes of plotbunnies suddenly swarming around your ankles with each new paragraph.
  • Mood silly
  • Location Nashville
  • Music Max Richter deconstructing Vivaldi's Four Seasons
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"A Letter to John Donne" [audio]

20/6/15 18:07
bronze_ribbons: three daffodiles learning left (daffodils)
As I have indicated here before, C. H. Sisson's "Letter to John Donne" is a poem that is not in sync with my personal theology, and yet it grabs me by the collar whenever I revisit it. I happened to peer into my copy of Foster and Guthrie last night for something else, and ended up reading the Sisson aloud to myself.

And so, here is what a youngish Southern U.S. woman sounds like communing with the words of a Tory Anglican from a couple of generations ago:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0_yyKHZ5VqBdGQwUHFsQk9Ecm8/view?usp=sharing

And this link will take you to a recording by Sisson himself:

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poet/c-h-sisson

(Both the reading and writing keep hopscotching up the to-do queue. Ars longa, verse the twenty-first...)
  • Mood restless
  • Music Foster the People, "Houdini"
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ICYMT

7/8/14 12:40
bronze_ribbons: knife with bronze ribbons (Kuz kiss)
A couple of things that I just realized didn't x-post fully...

UUA Board apologizes to victims of clergy sexual misconduct

MFK Fisher and Betty Fussell (aka food-writing legends)

I'm wrapping up a big project today while scampering and scrambling after loose ends (at some point, there will literally be the sewing and/or the knotting of them). Tomorrow I leave for Ohio, where I'll be covering a tournament for Tennis Buzz through Wednesday. Then I head to a wedding and a couple of meals with beloveds I haven't seen in years ... and I tried to factor in enough time to get enough sleep and poke my nose into a couple of roses along the way and staying within posted speed limits, but we shall see. ;-)

Prepping for Cincy
Taking along twenty-four blank scorecards is probably overkill -- especially since I'll also have a proper camera around my neck -- but preparation is confidence, so.
  • Location Nashville
  • Music The Youngbloods, "Get Together"
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"our brains are constantly evolving"

7/10/12 13:54
bronze_ribbons: knife with bronze ribbons (DelPo on verge of oh smash)
Zachary Woolfe, to Philip Glass and Beck: What do you both think about timelessness and your work, and how things in your work feel dated or not dated?

Glass: It all sounds dated. Because I can't write that music again. I can't write "Einstein on the Beach" again. I played from it in a concert the other day, and it's like I never wrote it. My brain's been rewired. I don't think I've ever said this publicly, but I think that the music we write, it accurately reflects the way our brains work, and our brains are constantly evolving. Our brains are very plastic; they continue to grow.

Woolfe: How do you see the work that you did versus the work that you do?

Glass: I don't mean to give you a Zen koan, but the work I did is the work I know, and the work I do is the work I don't know. That's why I can't tell you, I don't know what I'm doing. And it's the not knowing that makes it interesting.


[A couple of nights ago, I revisited some of the fics I wrote back in 2008 and 2005. My head is indeed in a different country now (even literally speaking -- I drafted most of "Unspeakable Beauty" while in Japan), so yeah, it did feel like reading the work of someone I used to know. And right now the not-knowing about what will gel next is far more frustrating than interesting, but at some point skill and desire will click back into gear and getting the words down will once again be more compulsion than vexation. I do have faith in that.]

(I've been feeling crowded by iguanas for quite some time now, so it's just as well that the writing mojo's in hibernation. Whether it's gone dormant so that I'll deal with what needs doing or because what needs doing has been hogging up all the headspace, I don't know and don't much care -- my subconscious isn't always my friend, but it usually comes up with what I need. Off to the easel...)
  • Mood okay
  • Location kitchen counter
  • Music GrĂ©goire, "Danse"
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from Jane Hirshfield's "The Poet"

23/12/11 10:40
bronze_ribbons: knife with bronze ribbons (harpsichord)
Let her have time, and silence,
enough paper to make mistakes and go on.


(Cross-quoted at Vary the Line, which I am tugging out of hibernation bit by bit as I resume some semblance of writing and revising. Other recent posts there:

photos of Shakespeare and Company, and a bit of Yeats in French

Monika Transformer's purchase of piano literature for the left hand)

Also updated the front page of my website, in lieu of enclosing Christmas letters to my relatives and non-journal-reading friends. ;-) Need to do more work with the internal pages, but that won't happen (as with many other things) until after Epiphany. (On the upside, I just purchased two signature editions [On Cloud 285 and Common Symptoms...] with my Folded Word royalties, which goes to show that even the little pieces can lead to rewards. *cheshire grin*)

Also, from Brad Leithauser's review of Sondheim's latest:


...his care and punctiliousness are steadily inspiring. Here he is discussing a rhyme from Follies:

"I had a similar moment when I paired 'soul-stirring' and 'bolstering.' The rhyme is not perfect, of course -- the equal accents on 'soul' and 'stir' don't quite match the heavy accent on 'bol' and the lighter one on 'ster,' but I tried to mask that by leaping the melody up on each '-ing' to distract the ear."

In fact, I can't imagine how serious craftsmen in any field wouldn't find both books inspiring. The quilt maker fussing over which shade of red to employ as a highlight; the cook experimenting on how most appetizingly to glaze a plate of scallops; the automobile designer sketching a streamlined new speedometer -- all such people should experience a sense of kinship when reading Sondheim debating whether, when seeking a rhyme, he might fairly use "wood" rather than "woods":

"What justification was there to use 'wood' here (and in the 'Finale') and 'woods' everywhere else? I finally hit on an explanation: 'wood' sounded statelier and therefore suited a lyric sung by someone outside the action."
  • Mood nerdy
  • Location bed (bloody bronchitis...)
  • Music Jean Ferrat, "A La Une"
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