Icarus flying ~ 1

Not sad - I just look like this

Sometimes pictures just catch you the wrong way, this has me looking like a sad-eyed laddie of the lowlands, but I am not. Its just that as I get older my eyelids droop, which is a strange thing indeed. I have noticed it in my peers too. Maybe from now on we should not photograph faces but belly buttons - I mean, have you ever seen a sad belly button? Now if that seems a little irreverent well then so be it, for I have found even in my academic life that taking things too seriously can be detrimental to our well being. Encouraged by my editor, I made my Bogeyman and Monsters books speak in uncharacteristic tones about serious issues - and why not, who says writing has to be inaccessible and reminiscent of Dr Dryasdust. But I guess there is an older academic generation out there who demand it, until it becomes dull for dull's sake. Ho-hum, writing should be fun, even when saying serious things. Jonathan Wilson is a singer who reminds me a little of myself thirty-five years ago, indeed the first line of this song sounds just like I did once and I hear my own, younger voice throughout this song - how uncanny is that, Dr Freud? Its a 'gentle spirit' a ghost of my own past, haunting my new haircut (above - why do they cut hair so short - my barber isn't cutting hair any longer).

Icarus at home # 8

1992

In And our faces, my heart, brief as photos, John Berger writes: ‘That a poem may use the same words as a Company Report means no more than the fact that a lighthouse and a prison cell may be built with stones from the same quarry, joined with the same mortar’. By the same token this picture might be of me but not, it was built with stones from the same DNA but time has passed, adding lines and wrinkles and wisdom (oh yes). I can still do the pose but not the hair, I fear. But this links me back to Baudrillard on time and how it creates this twofold illusion of what is real. This picture is really me, as I feel, and even then I could have been thinking about now, just as I am thinking about then. I know where I was when this was taken, the south of France, Villefranche-sur-Mer to be precise and it was a time when you could ask, is the blue sea really blue without really caring for a reply because it just was and is and this was an act of free will, captured in a photograph which can never be anything but a snapshot of the temporal - this is a Villefrance-sur-Mer song, it has that feel to it, like a Woody Allen film: dance me to the end of love.

Icarus at home # 8



Watching the webcam



Living in a different time zone from my daughter and catching her on skype and via webcams as she plays tennis has a strange effect. In the past I have been writing with an Australian and that was strange, she would write in my night and I in hers, 10,000 miles apart. And sometimes we would cross simultaneously, with me at porridge for breakfast and her drinking champagne, or even the other way around. And then I wondered if its 'time' or whether its just writers. My good friend Neil and I worked on a project where he was writing a novel and he wrote at night and I read it during the morning. Maybe he's really an Australian - got any roo in yah, mate? But I only began musing on this because the Australasian/UK paper was about narrative crossing centuries, how an Icarus idea met what we now call 9/11 and how story narrative travels, which fascinates me. Baudrillard once wrote:

Time itself, lived time, no longer has taken place. The historical time of events, the psychological time of affects and passion, the subjective time of judgement and will, are all simultaneously called into question by virtual time, which is called, no doubt derisevely, 'real time'... Nothing and no one is absolutely present to itself, herself or himself (or, a fortiori, to others)... real time does not exist.

And you know, I am coming to know what he means by this and I might, if I can link in Benjamin to this - just as a musing on sequences of cause and effect and reflecting on narrative, like Phillip Gross, reflecting on some petroglyphs:

Five thousand years from now

    will we have left one sign

        as plain as brave as these...

Its a brave new world, this internet one, and I don't even know what half of these new tricks will do - the same clown:

Icarus Flying Over Oklahoma





Can it really be
Abbi on TV



Boomer Soomer

Yesterday the miracle of the internet dropped into my lap and gave me such a buzz. I was alerted to an internet link of a tennis tournament taking place in Oklahoma - and sure enough, there she was, my Abbi, who I hadn't seen for 2 weeks, taking part in her very first US Colleges Tennis Tournament - wow! It was really her, she won 6-3, 6-0 and 6-1, 6-1 in the singles and 8-2 and 8-1 in the doubles. Such a blast being able to see her, I was sooooo excited - and she played sooooo well - and i know this is a boring old post but I am recording it for posterity because one day she will read it and that will be so cool. But here is something also quite cool - I took this picture while I was over 4500 miles away. How cool is that eh? Baudrillard, boy, this is the 'fringes of the real'. And doncha just love this song, done this way? Yabba Do!

Neil Young,Dylan... My Back Pages by ivaxavi

Icarus in 2012 # 1

At home 2012

Saturdays are writing days and today I am writing a paper which might be called 'Wunderkammer, Wunderkinder - the Hidden Adult and/or the Hidden Child' then again I may not. But its a nervous day because Abbi plays her first tournament for her new team in Oklahoma, aligned to the fact that her new US phone doesn't seem to be texting to the UK. So writing the paper is all about diversion therapy too, although, of course it needs to be be written - ah the life of an active academic, why couldn't that have been the active life of a footballer, or a guitar player, or a sex expert, engaging might have been more fun than sitting typing - how life distracts us from our chosen path. And this is how I am dressed while doing so, heating off though its winter, lots of clothes on, including the grey woollen hoodie and scarf, body warm, head cold to keep it working. I was up in Scotland last week to see my parents but it was good to see A. and R & A too. Nostalgia is death is a phrase I have used before but there is also something wonderfully warm about it too - and I am with Kundera on the 'grammatical future of nostalgia' for surely its the projected thoughts of a daydreamer and I do like to daydream (mostly about being a football and guitar playing sexpert - that'll do nicely). But the musing, Blake, in a very nice little collection bought for me some time ago, wrote:

I have no name

I am but two days old. -

What shall I call thee?

I happy am

Joy is my name. -

Sweet joy befall thee!

and I guess that pretty well sums the nostalgic up for me, its the projected thoughts of happy times and those yet to come - sigh. Nostalgia is this song:

Icarus Building a Rocket # 4

Neruda Rising

Yesterday I was in the company of two Australian women I have known for a while now. And over a glass of wine the issue of gender raised its head as they discussed what they would do if they had a penis - goodness, if they only knew. Neruda did when he wrote:

Comes a time when I am tired of being a man...

Comes a time I'm tired of my feet and my fingernails

and my hair and my shadow.

Comes a time I'm tired of being a man.



Yay!



I know just what he means but how do you explain that except as a song or a poem to two Australian professors who are a lot smarter than most and you are soon outspoken (ie they can outspeak you). And then I console myself by reading Neruda's TWENTY LOVE POEMS  and I think - hmm, its not so bad after all. Although instead of lingering on 'I can write the saddest verses' I might stay awhile with, 'I like it when your quiet'. But onwards, today another piece of magic, my first book of 2012 dropped on the mat - yay to it and to me. I guess its not so bad being a man sometimes. But then it cuts in again and there is always another book to be written, so I best get my (wee) buns in gear. And while I was writing this I found myself listening to this song - because my iTunes is on shuffle and it just popped up nicely - its a man song about a river which he sings with his wife.

Icarus Building a Rocket # 3

Hiding again

And then suddenly that old black dog hounds you through the night and you can't escape the thoughts it brings even though you realise that missing someone who is out making friends and having a laugh and re-naming herself Abz because there is another Abbi on her floor and she is out having fun with her new 'cool' chums the idea of it all should be so cheering but all it has done is rob me of my ability to punctuate to stop and take a breather which I need to do - hoo! That's better, heart to heartbeat, words to song, song to birds that cross the ocean to sing of the girl who has joined the sooners: http://www.soonersports.com/sports/w-tennis/spec-rel/111511aaa.html but so soon, so soon and dad so proud but did it have to be so soon. I guess it did. lippy kids all grow up sometimes to build a rocket:

Icarus Building a Rocket # 2

Nocturnal nights

These past nights have been odd because every time Abbi plays a match she txts me with the score - which is great, except they come around 2.15 am. And then I am awake, drinking tea and happy for her because the messages are so full of joy and achievement. She has landed on Oklahoma, moved into her room, hung up her clothes in her 'closet' as she now calls it, bought herself a new duvet and sheets and pillows and even gone out to dinner to celebrate her team mates 21st birthday. And life goes on without her here, peppered with facebook messages and skype calls and txt messages and all is good. And teaching begins on Monday for me and a couple of Australians are over and life moves into its next cycle, just as it should. Optimism is something I have always carried with me and so I have begun writing a new song on mandolin:

I was born north of the border
south of the river
and west of the sea
where we sang que sera sera, whatever will be will be... and I love the mandolin on this:

Icarus watching

Abbi now in Oklahoma

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. From The first elegy, RM Rilke

Its an empty house without the noisiest person. But we must look forward and maybe this is the way to go, Oklahoma style:

Icarus resolves...

New Year Resolutions

I have taken the unprecedented step (for me) to write a list of new year resolutions which I aim to stick to - and if I don't I will rebuke myself. And there is a good reason. Last year was an incredibly hard one, work wise, and this year I plan to work just as hard but to take better care of my well-being at the same time. Here is the list (with some space for the imagination).

1. I resolve to stop ...
2. I will no longer do ...
3. ... is bad for me so I shan't
4. I like ... but I abstain for the sake of my health
5. There is no number 5
6. I will do more ...
7. I will accept ... more often

There, I feel better already. Happy New Year, Suzanne's down by the river...

Icarus flying... 1 #

Counting the days...

The time of year has arrived when we get to reflect and genuflect and consider and plan for the future. My baby girl who isn't such a baby now (more of a babe) is fleeing the nest to take up her University place - but so far away, Oklahoma for goodness sake. And so as my picture reveals I am in cowboy repose. But last night as the bell struck 12 I had a good feeling about this year and a half full glass appeared in my hand - how cool was that. And I have been reading Ondaatje's 'Elimination Dance' (already this year) and I am not going to be eliminated, not yet, for I am not:

Any lover who has gone into a flower shop on Valentines Day and asked for clitoris instead of clematis...

Funny though that might have been, I know what he means by it. But I have to confess, 2012 already feels special. I wonder how that can be, it looks the same as yesterday, although in some ways not, so all I can hope for is that my hair turns whiter before it falls out for I have a feeling that everything else is going to be just fine. I might even write another book or two - though I have plans for three, which will do just fine for me. Happy new year! This Year I am going to do more Dad Dancing!