Icarus at home # 17

Professing...

I have been writing the Bogeyman book all day and am fair puggled but the word count is slowly rising - although I will rewrite today's in a more approachable style because i have been trying to get the critical ideas down. It's the Paul McCartney, Yesterday idea, when he wrote it the original words were, ‘scrambled eggs, oh my baby, how I love your legs,’ which he thought, maybe not. That's what I think, I have the melody and the structure and the idea, its just that, not all of the right words are in the right order, yet. But hey-ho, the first month of the sabbatical has gone and how scary is that? March is marching round the corner and it will soon be spring, then summer then ooh, life goes so quickly. I never heard this version before but used to play this, circa 1970 (blah) on the southbound train going home, 'what will the passenger do when he hears...' sigh, its been such a long day:

Icarus at home # 16

Thinking too hard makes you grey

I recently wrote about a James Joyce anecdote and since then I have been thinking about it some more... let me repeat it here because I am trying to work stuff out. In response to Yeats' father's suggestion that if he gave him money he would only spend it on drink, Joyce replied: ‘We cannot speak about that which is not.’ It is Joyce’s reply which is of interest to me. Why indeed should he confirm the suspicions of a man whose question was rhetorical and was not going to indulge him in the first place? Sometimes writing about writing for children is seen to be just like that. As adults, we ask of children that which we have no right to receive answers to because the question is always rhetorical and the answer always already presumed, and thus always assumed that the child does not have an answer to give which we do not already know... It is almost a Wittgensteinian idea, is it not? Viz: ‘Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.’ Trans. ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Sometimes it just does your heid in trying to get the sense out. Why are there so many words to clutter up our brains - that's what I want to know. Och, its Sunday, let's give it the elbow and go out to play on a day like this - "throw those curtains wide... " and crank it up

Icarus at home # 15

 

...up... up


Abbi Poem

and away...



My baby, wee Abbi,

wings waxed

in full

flight and sigh,

flying high,

not so wee now

I guess, but

cute as a button,
and oh so (so, so) very young...

Icarus at home # 14

A cart, indeed...

A friend of mine is playing Gloucester in King Lear and I was telling him about the time I saw Anthony Hopkins play Lear at the National, when he dropped Cordelia on stage. He wrote back saying, "Our Lear realised a few weeks ago that carrying Cordelia in his arms was not going to be an option, so he wheels her in on a cart...." Oh, the indignity for poor Cordelia the strong, truly the moral hero of the play, sacrificing all and transcending the traditional female role for the sake of loyalty, love, and truth... stuck in a wheelbarrow. This is for all the unreconstructed men out there who never knew Lear, or Tony Blair, or David Cameron or Sigmund Freud, Elvis, Mick, Cat... oh the list, the list - I had some dreams they were clouds in my coffee... though actually if you listen carefully you will hear Mick singing backing vocals (such sweet irony).... and such fun!

Icarus at home # 13

At this precise moment in time, 18.21 on the BBC website, 300 people are still considered to be missing because of the Christchurch earthquake in NZ. Last time I was in Australia I met some New Zealanders and indeed know others independently. It is selfish but human to hope they are among the safe, though thoughts go out to those who are not. We live in a wonderful world full of sound and colour and sweet tasting morsels and poetry and singing and things we can touch and smell with pleasure but oh, it does have its prices to pay - such an oxymoron. Time to post this and reflect, methinks - the beauty comes with such joyous melancholy...

Icarus at home # 12 again

Writer's angst

And just as you post one thing about writing another comes along to tease the senses. This picture was sent all the way from Australia at the same time as I received an invitation to be on the Editorial Board of: Axon: Creative Explorations, which will be published out of the University of Canberra, Australia. She has got that Roy Lichtenstein anguished look down to a T which I like very much. Though I have been re-thinking my book this morning and have finally cracked "the order of things" as they should be presented - at the moment its a bit of a blancmange, wobbling all over the place and screaming to be put back into the mould. Or maybe I should just rely on a simple twist of fate...

Icarus at home # 12

Klark Kant

The trouble with writing academic books is the "muddle" which is the scholarship that comes before. Indeed in my field they are messy and complex precisely because of the study - ie the field has been muddied not tilled and left for sowing. And in thinking, well things could get better, they don't. The most recent critical material to arrive 2008-10 just turns the hose onto the morasse, to start all over again - jeez. Recently Perry Nodelman said,

The confusions make the genre seem impossible only with the assumption that the differing definitions must be mutually exclusive and that one must be right in ways that makes the others wrong, which makes them all mutually defeating. But what if the contradictions of the definitions suggest some part of the more complex truth? [...] What if children’s literature as a genre represents the complex field of shifting position-takings of the field that engenders it?

So I have to try and unpick it, let's see: a "genre" is defined as, a category or sort of literary or artistic work; and a "field” is defined as, an area of human activity – such as a division of knowledge interest which we are currently engaged in. Therefore if I am writing a book about writing for children and the study of children’s literature I am being faced with the chicken and egg question. It is this: are we, as writers, writing in a "genre" and being addressed by critics in a "field"? Or is our writing "genre" defined by the complex "field" of study of children’s literature, which our writing has engendered? And as a creatively critical and a critically creative writer of both, where does that leave me? I mean, does the field feed the genre or the genre the field; or is it all just lumped together in the meadow? Here I am, on the cusp of a humpbacked bridge going slowly round the bend... its time to dance, up you get, one, two, buckle my shoe... tekere

Icarus at home # 11

The Professorial Suit

Today I am wearing the professorial suit because I have been professorial all day - writing and writing and writing, which is as exhausting as it is exhilarating (well something like that). But I was thinking about probabilities and how language works for and against us. Richard Ellmann's biography of James Joyce tells several amusing anecdotes of life at the Tower; among them is this account of Joyce and Gogarty strolling the shore on their usual search for money and an opportunity for wit. One day they saw Yeats's father, John Butler Yeats, walking on the strand, and Gogarty, prodded by Joyce, said to him, "Good morning, Mr. Yeats, would you be so good as to lend us two shillings?" The old man looked from one to the other and retorted, "Certainly not. In the first place I have no money, and if I had it and lent it to you, you and your friend would spend it on drink." Joyce came forward and said gravely, as Gogarty afterwards recalled, "We cannot speak about that which is not." Exactly, why indeed should Joyce confirm the expectations of a man who was not going to indulge them in the first place? Sometimes writing about writing for children is like that - as adults we ask questions of children which we have no right to receive answers to and thus assume they don't have an answer to give, when perhaps they just don't care to give one unless we ask the question the right way. If I gave you a fiver i suspect you would just spend it on drink, hmm? Well give me one first and I'll tell you (maybe). But as you will have realised, all this is just pissing in a pond in trying to get it out of my head... for tonight there will be a full moon over Joyce's Tower and we also know who it brings - ah hooo - I'd like to meet his tailor!

Icarus at home # 10

Blue Jumper

Madonna lily

According to the Bible, petals of white white  lily signify virginity, purity and the radiant soul of the Virgin Mary. This notion of purity has been around a long time, though. The Greeks said the white lily signified purity, borne out of the breast milk of Goddess Hera, but the Romans give this honor to their Goddess Juno.  To the Chinese, its a sign of motherhood, so the circle is squared all round really. But what does juxtaposing a white lily with a blue jumper signify? This piece of film is the perfect piece of YouTube art - made for the medium - wonderful live (I guess) but see how it transfers into being - perfect, an almost perfect piece of conceptual art which I adore - And what flower expresses days go by, and they just keep going by, endlessly pulling you into the future... days go by endlessly... endlessly pulling you into the future...

Icarus at home # 9

The Pontification Chair

Egélaste is a Rabelais word derived from the Greek  γέλως and it means a man who does not laugh or has no sense of humour. And I know this because I have been reading Milan Kundera's "Jerusalem Address" where he repeats the old Jewish proverb, "When man thinks, God laughs..." and he says it pleases him to think that the art of the novel came into the world as the echo of God's laughter and we do all need to retain a certain amount of humour (I guess). Egélastes, Kundera suggests,  "are convinced that the truth is obvious, that all men [and women] necessarily think the same thing, and that they are exactly what they think they are. But it is precisely in losing the certainty of truth and the unanimous agreement of others that man becomes an individual." Yay to that - but this enquiry all came about because I was looking for a quotation, which is this, "[writing] is the territory where no one possesses the truth... but where everyone has the right to be understood..." Because this all fits neatly into my book on writing for children (believe it or not) - yay!

Icarus at home # 8

Balancing Act

Sometimes you just have to get a another post out there too, even on the same day, because it needs to be written - like when another song grabs you. This picture and this song get to the heart of things for me. Life is a balancing act and sometimes we just fly too close to the ground - as Willie Nelson knows to well. So this post is just a reflection of this idea.

Icarus at home # 7

Sometimes a posting just has to happen because you hear a song, somewhere in a quiet place and I can't resist this one. Strangely I never saw the film that made it famous, just never got round to it but I do love this song, country at its very best. All this week I have been doing research for my book, and what a joy its been and during that time I was reminded of Althusser's autobiography, L'Avenir dure Longtemps (The Future Lasts a Long Time) and I love that notion. In it he wrote a great description of my view on bloggin, it is not "a diary, not my memoirs, not an autobiography... My aim is not to confuse matters; on the contrary, I wish to highlight the crucial and marked similarity of those emotional experiences which occurred at different parts of my life and made me what I am." Yay! You're the one who taught me after all - how to find a soft place to fall...

Icarus at home # 6

Having finally finished Freedom by Jonathan Franzen early this morning it occurred to me that the entire novel, all 562 pages could have been summed up in a single song. A bit like John Grace's Digested Reads (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/sep/07/bookscomment.digestedread). But of course the song is a bit special and so I am posting two versions here - for gender balance and because it involves three of my favourite pop singers - you see the novel is just another Tennessee Waltz:

Icarus at home # 5 again

I know, two in one day but this morning I received a gift of a book from my friend H. its called feathers & lime and its such a delight because its a fold out book and a piece of art in its own right. Inside is a series of German poems translated by my countryman, Ken Cockburn. But why the picture left, you might ask, well that's because there is an Icarus poem inside. Written by Rudolph Bussman and I had never come across it before. So despite all the copyright problems with such an exercise I am posting it here - maybe we could all buy a copy of the book and pass it on as compensation - its the boy as an asylum seeker:

Icarus

He carried to the mountain
A rucksack filled with feathers and
A bucketful of lime.
When the wings had dried
He pushed off from the face
How far the land stretched out
That wasn't his

Between heaven and earth
A body.

He saw men and women set foot
In the houses of strangers
Seeking a home
Pull aside border-fences, exchange bread and wine
For guns. He heard them in the midst of song
Interrupt each other.

He flew calmly between heaven and earth
Like a poem.
He had to
Tell people about flying
About living above the houses.

It's not true that he fell to earth
He landed safe and sound between the walls
Before a door
Or behind one
He starved to death

And this is Idir & Karen Matheson (from Capercaille) with - A Vava Inouva because I really love the fusion sound:

I ask you father Inouva, open the door
oh daughter Ghriba, shake your bracelets
I fear the monster of the forest father
O daughter Ghriba, I fear him too

Icarus at home # 5

Wouldn't it be wonderful to be called something as interesting as Yo-Yo Ma, what a great name, it sings at you, a bit like F. Scott Fitzgerald or W.B. Yates and I was thinking about Yates because I had just read He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven which I found on a card that I had slipped into a book. Isn't it great when that happens? I keep most postcards etc that are sent to me and I have books all over the house just storing them for me - waiting to surprise me. I found it in a 1974 copy of The Great Gatsby and so now I have F. Scott, W.B. and Yo-Yo Ma all in one posting out of sheer coincidence - my what decedent delights. But I found something else today, you can get my book, Write for Children on Kindle! Nobody told me that - I only know because I have to buy myself a new copy of my own book. But when I searched Amazon I also saw this review that I never knew I had: 'This is a handbook for those who aspire to write for children, for experienced writers who wish to understand the different requirements of different readerships, and for those who simply wish to learn more about the books they, their children or young library members are reading ... This practical up-to-date guide for writing for children, illustrated by a wealth of published and tailor-made examples, should find a place on library shelves and those of many a writer and reader.' - Orana, Australian Library and Information Association - such delightful chaos! Perhaps I already have the cloths of heaven:

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with the golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams...

Yo man!

Icarus at home # 4

I am embarrassed, I don't even know the title of my own book, which is actually not as stated in the previous posting - sigh, how sad is that? In fact it is actually called, Here Comes the Bogeyman: Exploring contemporary issues in writing for children. It is not surprising, then, that I omit stuff I shouldn't. In the last posting I was talking about Derrida (Duh - Duh.... Duh... Duh... Duh... Derrida - who is not as hard to read as some may think - once you get him you can see what he says) but I am ashamed to say I omitted to include this because its not my thinking, though the thinking of someone I work with. She says, "...over the past two millennia artists and writers have been moved to fill the gaps in the story of Icarus, and to tell and retell it in line with contemporary axiology and epistemology. Such intercessions can work as devices that allow us to articulate Foucault’s insistence that anyone’s life can be a work of art. But art is created only with effort, and with a conscious decision to intervene in the present. This involves several epistemological acknowledgements. One is to confirm that we are indeed dependent upon intimacy, and that it is incumbent upon us all to nurture such relationships. This is at the heart of the African philosophy of the self, ubuntu, the humanistic ideal that can be loosely translated as, ‘a person is only a person in relation to others’. It is also at the heart of the communicative mode known as parrhesia: free speech, or openness; the speech that is about intimacy, honesty and truth. Intimacy is about communication with the other, and parrhesia is a form of intimacy that requires courage because there is risk involved in it: the risk of offending those to whom we are attached, the risk of hurting those we love, or those who love us, the risk of damaging our own reputation." And then we were thinking, ubunto, we are only here in relation to the "other" and then we spin all the way back to ideas on the consequence of real, true stories which become more fiction than history. Our imaginations, shaped as they are by the twin impulses to connect, and to detach, fill in the gaps. The Icarus story, like our own biography too, is one whose bigger story lies in the ellipses, lurks in the unsaid, and loiters in the silences as hypothetical postulates which exist in and around the story itself; in and around the story of the other and otherness... and this makes perfect sense to me. But I remember this boy, I met him a couple of times and he lived in Brighton and was such a darling - don't look but listen, Gary Moore was 58 when he died yesterday - shit, such an Icarus boy - and what a player, listen live - I can play this but only as parody or pastiche and not like the man who wrote it and plays it here or indeed the man who sings it - and he is dead too - oh:

Icarus at home # 3

Sometimes only talking will help! I have been reading and reading and reading to try and get a perspective on the book I am writing, Here Comes the Bogeyman… (writing for children in creative, critical and cultural context) (terrible sub title huh, but needs must). And I read something written by a UK professor which just defied all sense of logic. He wrote: "Derrida pointed out no term is fully meaningful in itself; words only mean in relation to other words which, through their contrast, hold meaning in place (male being the opposite of female, adult of child etc)..." but Derrida would never have said that. Male is, as is female, identified alongside each other as different from each other but not "opposite" surely? I sent this to two people, one a postgraduate student in the UK the other a professor in Australia, both said the same thing, has he never heard of différance? It is a french term coined by Jacques Derrida, "différence" plays on the fact that the French word différer means both "to defer" and "to differ". Where does "opposite come in? I suppose physically I can see the attraction, back to back, front to back, front to front etc... but I sigh at the way such bad ideas are written because the book it comes from is directed at university students - and this quotation was included in a glossary on Derrida. Unfortunately he makes similar mistakes with Freud and Foucault. I despair of it! But I have decided that such rants will be accompanied by this picture of me since its me sitting in the pontification chair - I wonder, is there a Professor of Pontification anywhere in the world now that Schultz is dead? Bring back the logic of Lucy van Pelt, like, "I never made a mistake in my life. I thought I did once, but I was wrong." or "Happiness is a warm puppy." or "I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building." You see, real logic out of the head of a very wise woman! Time for some music methinks, Sierra Hull singing about love at the tender age of 16 - but a very good bluegrass mandolin player - out of the hands of babes:

Icarus at home # 2

I have been thinking about St Augustine again and especially in relation to the internet because the big bad thing that is happening in the UK right now is libraries are being closed all over the country. As I sit in my own study, surrounded by books, I am torn between the idea that I could store then all on a Kindle or iPad and the real idea of books, where I can browse and shuffle my way through and pick up at random. Can you imagine St Augustine contemplating the world from behind a Kindle, some how I can't. Though I don't want to be a Luddite. I mean I think they may have their place - like on the beach. Then again I was always a beach reader but never read beach novels. Still, I do rather like this paining of St Augustine. Its by Vittore Carpaccio, 1502. This morning I reached up onto the shelves of my own library and caught a book I haven't read yet. Even though I bought it some time back - time has no way of offering itself back when it has been lost and that lost time might have been a time to read but no longer. But the book is called, Without Alibi, by Jacques Derrida and its not so much a book and more a collection of translated essays. But when I did dip in I was struck by something that brought my boy Icarus tumbling back, or at least the Ovid version of what was being said in his version of the tale and indeed the ellipses (that I like to think about). In "History of the Lie: Prolegomena", Derrida says, "No more than myth, fable and phantasm are doubtless not truth or statements as such, but neither are they errors or deceptions, false witness or perjuries... what matters here, in the first and last place, is thus the intention. Saint Augustine also underscored this point: there is no lie, whatever one may say, without the intention, the desire, or the explicit will to deceive... "He who does not know that what he says is false does not lie if he thinks it is true, but he does lie who tells the truth when he thinks it is false, because persons must be judged according to their deliberate intention." (St Augustine, "On Lying" p.60) - would I have managed to glean this from surfing the web or reading my Kindle? Rivers flow and rivers run though words and books and ideas, through whispered utterings and mutterings in the places where words are stored in order to break free in the shape of ideas and thoughts of life and love and ... rivers flow and rivers run... in ellipses...

Icarus at home # 1

I am back. I flirted with another site and another blog, http://icarusinellipses.blogspot.com/ if you are interested, though no reason why you should be. But it just didn't feel like home so I have fled and here I am back with ecriture and pensive thoughts and staring black eyes (see left). Time was when I would muse and genuflect but I just couldn't do it on a strange site - odd that, its a bit like writing or reading and needing to sit on the same comfy chair, bed, sofa to do so - odd indeed. And indeed reading I am, I have just finished Freedom by Jonathan Franzen which is strangely satisying, even if it is the American middle class at their most self-regarding - which of course Franzen displays with a wry wink, even if he too can be a little self-regarding. I also acquired The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason and it reflects much of what we have been trying to do with the Icarus story and so that is another thing that will be developed come the summer - a co-write with JW which I am looking forward to immensely. Watch this space, Icarus is about to fly again - now where did I put the wax... but for now I will post the same track as I did on the other (yah boo sucks) site - sigh, its good to be home again: