Aye Write ’09
The Aye Write literary festival lineup is pretty good - and for the first time since I moved to "Glasga", I can actually go!
I have booked tickets to see Jonathan Coe and Andrew Crumey in conversations with Rodge Glass and I'm rather excited. You must understand that I've been used to the Copenhagen Book Fair where we got celebrity chefs and D-list reality stars flogging their books (with the occasional AS Byatt thrown in for good measure). Aye Write! is considerably more my thing. Coe is one of my favourite contemporary authors and I'm in the process of becoming a Crumey convert.
Also, a big thank you to some of my Glasgow friends who floored me the other day with their kindness, thoughtfulness and generosity. You guys rock. You really do.
Still Coughing
Meanwhile, British steampunk enthusiasts are now hiding their retro-styled reinventions of common househole items under their brass beds for fear of being visited by the long arm of the law themselves
io9 looks into a British newsstory about a rogue terrorist who turned out to be .. well, a LARPer with a steampunk bent?
Meanwhile, my Doctor Who prediction turned out to be a load of codswallop. Whoopsie.
Hogmanay Etc
This is my favourite photo of 2008.
I shot it in early August when we went to Sweden for a day. The weather was incredibly hot (although not particularly sunny) and all these tanned, long-limbed Swedish teenagers were hurling themselves into the Øresund from various cliffs and balconies. I don't know who this boy was, but I am very happy that I decided to take an impromptu photo of him.
I have frequently said that 2008 was an annus horribilis. Looking back, there were some good bits.
The Obama win.
Our trip to Denmark and Sweden was a great success.
I rediscovered my creative side and did so many strange, wonderful things that my head is slightly reeling.
I met some fantastic people: Ellie, Kathleen, Kippen, Anna (who has the best blog title evah), Paula, Angela, SoCherry, Lilith and Kirsty (and the rest do not have easily accessible online profiles) to name but a few.
My Alasdair Gray fangirl-ness reached a new height.
And I managed to remain alive with all my bits and pieces intact which is a bit of a triumph all things considered.
I don't really do New Year's resolutions because I know I will fail horribly if I set myself goals like "I need to lose ten kilos" or "I will watch Kieslowski's Dekalog without falling asleep." However, knitterly resolutions feel different.
I have signed up for a "Twelve Projects in Twelve Months" challenge and I would like to get back to doing stranded knitting (which I did when I was a teenager). I want to use more local wool instead of tricking myself into thinking that US brands are way superior. I want to knit down some of my laceweight stash. And I want to knit a Faroese-ish shawl with my Faroese laceweight to celebrate that I’m partly Faroese on an obscure side of my family.
And I'd quite like to read a bit more too and watch some of the DVDs that we have amassed recently (in particular Brief Encounter, In Bruges and Juno).
Happy new year to you all. As we say in Scotland - Happy Hogmanay! - and in Denmark - Godt nytår!
Comfort Reading
The last Christmas present has been wrapped (Misty Garden by Jo Sharp in Rowan Damask), I have had a lovely pre-Christmas get-together with friends and I 'just' need to pack my bag now.
Yes, that was a slightly hysterical 'just' there. Christmas stress has finally set in and I'm getting slightly frayed at the edges. What do you mean that I 'just* need to pack? Don't you understand how that means I need to find matching socks, clothes that match and a suitable knitting project?!
Thankfully I have enough time to sit down and think to myself: "Yes, TS Eliot has wonderful sentence structures" which automatically means I am less stressed.
The child wonders at the Christmas Tree:
Let him continue in the spirit of wonder
At the Feast as an event not accepted as a pretext;
So that the glittering rapture, the amazement
Of the first-remembered Christmas Tree,
So that the surprises, delight in new possessions
(Each one with its peculiar and exciting smell),
The expectation of the goose or turkey
And the expected awe on its appearance,
So that the reverence and the gaiety
May not be forgotten in later experience,
In the bored habituation, the fatigue, the tedium,
The awareness of death, the consciousness of failure,
Or in the piety of the convert
Which may be tainted with a self-conceit
Displeasing to God and disrespectful to the children
Eliot's "The Cultivation of Christmas Trees" is rather obscure as Eliot poems go. It is a continuation of the mystical-religious poetry he wrote in the mid-1930s to late 1940s - the poetry that hardly ever gets anthologised and only occasionally gets taught. I am not a religious person myself, but I derive much comfort from Eliot's poetry (both the heady early Modernist period and the mystical late years).
Today it was a pleasure and a respite to sit down with "The Cultivation of Christmas Trees" and just let myself drift into the convoluted-ness of it all. A pleasure.
Oh, and happy birthday to my mother who is ever-young. I don't know how she does it but I suspect she must have a portrait hidden away in the attic..
Joss Whedon Is Crafty
It's an age-old war. Like the werewolves and the vampires. I think Underworld was actually originally about crocheters and knitters but they thought it would be too controversial so they changed it to vampires and werewolves.
Buffy, Firefly, Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog and Angel-creator, Joss Whedon opens up about his crafty side.
As a huge Firefly geek, it's particularly thrilling to hear Joss Whedon explaining Jayne Cobb's hat .. but the entire interview is awesome..
Like I'm saying, the sort of people who understand the DIY mentality are more about the doing than the having. So I think that ultimately, my advice is what my advice always is: Make stuff. You know. Right now, because of digital technology, you can make crafty little movies, you can make crafty little things that go up for millions of people to see. You can sort of combine the two ethos-ethoses-ethosees... And grab a video camera, tell a story. Be stupid, be something, just ... It is no longer the time of sitting around and thinking about doing something. If you're going to do that, you can, you know, crochet, and you're already doing it.
.. yes, awesome. Joss Whedon is awesome. Yes.
Notebook
I have ideas.
PS. I have also had the great pleasure of being referred to as a "filthy-minded dog" by the good Mr Stephen Fry on Twitter. It's an honour, sir.
The Next Doctor?
Philip Rhys - a UK actor starring in BBC's new adventure series Survivors with Freema "Martha Jones" Agyeman and Paterson Joseph - had a little slip-up during an interview on BBC News 24 tonight: “Yeah, we have a great cast. Max Beesley, Freema and Paterson Joseph .. y’know, the new D.. potentially the new Doctor.” And then the good Mr Rhys looked mortified and the interviewer quickly changed topic.
Potentially? Let the speculation continue, although I suspect this might be confirmation enough for a lot of people.
Addendum: Behind The Sofa picks up on the potential slip-up. They've posted a link to a youtube clip of the interview.
Rules and Regulations
I like that Rufus Wainwright attempts to get on the radio. I am not sure it is the best format for him, but bless him. His latest studio album, Release the Stars, was said to be his most accessible and mainstream album to date. I adore that in Rufus' head that translated into "a huge wave of German romanticism" and songs about Prussian rococo summer palaces and a dramatic spoken word segment performed by Siân Phillips. I just feel like ruffling his hair, I do.
So, this is Rufus Wainwright's second single off Release the Stars, "Rules and Regulations". The video is absolutely barmy as you might expect and it's possibly the funniest thing I have seen all year:
The Conversation
How did I miss this? New Tim Finn album, woah. And, potentially even more intriguingly, an album filled with rarities available to buy online via the link above.