Icarus at Hogmany

Looking over my shoulder

Looking over my shoulder at the year, which some in the world have already left, I can say that life hasn't been bad at all (and its odd, don't you think that while I tease out the remainder of 2011 some are already celebrating 2012). But my time will come to open the new year, which will take place at a fancy dress party - dress as a movie star (why, why, why, why - I hate fancy dressing up). But I am entering into the party spirit and have teamed up with Dan to go as a 'couple'. The pair in the clip below, to be precise and so I will leave the philosophical musings for now, to say fuck art, let's dance...

Icarus at home # 6

De cluttering a life isn't easy when there are so many books. On the floor, at the moment, they are three deep and piled against the mantelpiece, about fifty of them. One of these days I am going to have to go through my study and tidy it properly. I mean, its all nice and neat but if I wanted a particular book right now I would have no idea where to start the looking. But I guess it could all be worse. And what's more I have more to add, Murakami's 1Q84; Ondaatje's poetry collection, The Cinnamon Peeler; Miller's Snowdrops... oh sigh, the time, where do we get the time to read them all because there are others in the queue, Joss; Orbreht; Jospovici; Franzen... I guess I better get on with it, but first this because I have no energy for anything else. A small head cold is a trifle against the ills of others I know of - but it saps the energy, so this afternoon I will eat chicken soup (well turkey) and sit down on the chair featured in the picture (above - the one with the Mexican wedding blanket on it) to read a good book and maybe listen to this - I do like this song but I am a bit of a kloot, 'The Moon is a Blind Eye':

Icarus at home # 5

And then sometimes a guitar player comes along and says hi, this is my rendition of one of the first songs you ever played as a young and callow 12 year old. OMG - that was 45 years ago - OMG - where did the years go. And what's more I still have the guitar I learnt to play this on - although not this version. My old guitar needs a wee clean up but perhaps I will after thinking this through.

Icarus in Australia

I have a fondness for Australia and having been there these past three years I look forward to returning. But today I was reading a poem written in Australia (if not Australian - for we are divided by a common language). But its curious because it is about a household - and one, I am assuming, where the writer is the parent and the teenagers are the others in the narrative, because its called, 'The people who live at the wrong end of the day'. But then it opens up to other possibilities and sometimes when I get emails from Australia it feels exactly like that, from people who live at the wrong end of the day; and they are twelve hours ahead which means if it is 12.15 here it is 0.15 there and so it is HappyChristmas to the Australasians, where you will be drinking chilled white wine in the sun (as I did the last time I was there - see picture above, taken at the Gold Coast) - take it away Tim Minchin, 'I really like Christmas...'

Icarus at Christmas

Red nose/Red Rose

As with many posts, this one is inspired by a piece of music from a band called the Anda Union. The track is called 'Give You a Rose' and so it is about gift giving and love and peace and joy at this time of year. Well that's how I interpret it anyway. And its nice and lively for this dancing time of year. But I was thinking about our old friend Rilke again and  his lines:

He who pours himself out like a stream is acknowledged at
    last by Knowledge;
and she leads him enchented through the harmonious
    country
that finishes often with starting, and with ending begins.

There is something about the contemplative at this time of year which makes me pull back from the seasonal excess to register the state of being. That is to say, what Rilke seems to imply here is that in seeking the true self it is at once made into a metaphor and truth and meaning is deferred and always inaccessible, and all endings are just new beginnings, so Christmas is  just the end of year signal for the new year to get ready - here it comes, resplendent in a flat cap, pink cheeks and ruddy breeks, offering a rose. Grasp it, thorns and all, for all being is a metaphor, 'that finishes often with starting, and with ending begins...'

Icarus at home # 4

Its that time of year

Today I lost my notebook then found it again - phew! Not that there is much in it, yet! But that is a big yet. I mean I might develop:

I've been working in the soul mine

strolling in the sunshine

walking the shoreline

taking in the night time

flying the time line

or

And I have been known to dream in the colour green

is it so unusual

to be a man in a foreign land

drinking beer in a bar

and then to come home in the morning

like a sailor in a port

without a boat

where i can smoke and lay my head

I don't know but such are the random notes that have appeared on the pages. I guess its that time of year when we all have to look at the list of things to be done and gauge which we will achieve before the year finally runs out of breathe. My list is scaring me because I had a big list from which came wee short ones and the time to do them all just isn't there. Still, I have accomplished some things I hadn't expected to do quite so well (like write two books) so we can't do everything. That might be my new year's resolution, though of course we want to do everything so its too difficult to organise doing nothing into a coherent plan. As Rilke said,

Voices, Voices. Listen to my heart, as only

saints have listened; until the gigantic call lifted them

off the ground; yet the kept on, impossibly,

kneeling and didn't notice at all:

so complete was their listening...

Maybe I should just spend next year writing some elegies, just for the sheer hell of it. Time for some of this methinks, rave on, rave on, rave on, rave on, rave on...

Icarus at home #3

Looking forward to hiding

What Ever Happened to Modernism, is a new book by Gabriel Josipovici, whom I had many conversations with as a young academic. We don't always agree but I love reading his work because he doesn't write like an academic. So I will be looking forward to reading it. Although the last thing I should be doing is buying a new book. I am sooooo tired, does life never let up? Gabriel writes that 'anxiety is the dizziness of freedom,' but I am not so sure - it is the dizziness of tenure at the moment, that and getting stuff done. But I never should complain. My birthday (I have had 57 of them which means I have been writing this blog for 2 years) passed to the tune of a new banjo being strummed as I nudged a glass of Bordeaux up to my lips - ah, the smack of contentment. And to cap it all the final, final, final proofs of Monsters was put to bed, so all is right there. Tomorrow I will say cheerio to Winchester. It can see the year out without me, I won't be missed I am sure. But before I go, I will play my mandolin and sing this song for anyone who will listen, but nowhere near as good as this - it's coming on Christmas:

Icarus laughing

If I laugh

I was in a club in Oban - north of Glasgow and getting ready to cross to Iona (which I didn't know at the time - and that is a long story which I have written short before - elsewhere). Anyway, there was this tiny folk club in Oban and I did a floor spot. When I came off, this guy ghosted over and said to me, 'I was going to do that last song, but you did it so well so I will do something else. I said, 'Shit, if I had seen you there I wouldn't have dared.' He had the most radiant smile and said (and I will never forget this), 'You have made my year, I really liked your bluesy interpretation.'  He was/is such a lovely man. And then wooosh - he was so brilliant, just him and his guitar. Even although it was a floor spot he played for well over an hour. He was going to Iona too - but hey, that's another story...

Icarus at home # 2

Still hiding

Saturday and the sun is shining but here I am still hiding from too much to do. The corrections from Monsters has to be attended to along with much muttering and tidying but the good news is the Bogeyman book arrived, which is nice. The keynote in Byron Bay was a good boost to the old ego - and it went well which is good. But I had such a good time there, even in the rain - why does it always rain on me (must be a song there). I am convinced it always rains in Australia but I did like it - especially Brisbane where we ate Thai food in a BYOB restaurant (bring your own bottle - which was  a nice crisp NZ Sav Blanc and it went very nicely with the sate and Thai fishcakes). This week I have been thinking about Icarus and Angels and flying and flight and flying boys in trying to get an idea settled. And I especially like Antonia Pont's 'Intimacy and Making' in AXON on Rilke's beautifully written The first elegy where he wrote:

Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic

orders? And even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I should fade in the strength of his
stronger existence. For beauty’s nothing
but the beginning of terror we’re still just able to bear,
and we find it so bewitching since it serenely
disdains to destroy us. Every angel is terrible.

And the wonder, could anyone withstand the embrace of an angel? Its just a notion, floating on the back of feather in a dry tempest (not in the Australian rain though - I don't think I have ever actually experienced 24 hour rain before, all day and all night - feathers could never float on that breeze). Sometimes Jan Garbarek does it for me - allows for contemplation and thought about angels and reckless flying boys: