Icarus skywriting # 20 in mandolin time

A new mandolin

And then sometimes you just have to post here because a new instrument needs to be revealed. This is my new, wonderful mandolin which is a step up from my other one and a seriously good instrument which I adore. And I have already written something brand new on it, which is great when it happens. A new instrument, a new tune and a new summer's day - oh yay. And here is a good mandolin picker in the middle of a great bunch of pickers.

FiftyFive ~ # 55 again

As soon as it fades into a memory back comes a photograph to remind me that I really was in Canberra, Australia. Participants and guests at the Making to Unmask symposium. Back row (L-R): Anita Fitton, Tanya Kiermaier, Andrew Melrose, Paul Hetherington, Tony Eaton and Matthew Ricketson. Front row: Jordan Williams, Jen Webb and Peter Copeman. And it is good to be reminded because it was such a good day, with some excellent papers on a wide variety of stuff which somehow all came together in a coherent whole. What is most remarkable, though is how we are separated physically by 15,000 miles and culturally (because Australia is a completely different culture - at no time did I ever feel I was in the UK) and yet thoughts and ideas have a universal currency. I had such a good time! But just to prove academics are not all Dr Dryasdust (thank you Sir Walter) - someone in the company above sent me this picture, which I rather like for obvious reasons (I am colour blind).

Skywriting # 19

Getting lost

balancing act

Sometimes I forget having written and even what I wrote before and so I end up repeating myself. For example, it may be I have written, 'In (Walter) Benjamin's terms, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.' Now I like that because I am writing creatively again and this gets my character square between the eyes. He is 'present' and 'uncertain of the mystery' at the same time. A bit of a balancing act. But I was reminded of the Benjamin idea when I was sent this picture (aside), which I also like. But this writing has taken a new lease of life because I realise I have a chance to develop a huge chunk of it next week and yet I already have loads I can cut in at a later date. The marriage of heart and head, as shown in the picture comes to rest in a para-vihara, the point of in-between a terra incognita in the hollows between the lands we know.... And that's what I am thinking about now. And I find myself writing lines I have read before but can't remember where, or indeed in this order. Its probably Pablo Neruda muddled up with some of my own distracted thoughts but I have misplaced my collection under a pile of paper somewhere so here is how it sounds in my head:

The night wind spins, 
snared between air and sea;
a vacant space in between there and here, opens

- and lovers share a cold night lullaby.

Time for the ballad of the snow leopard methinks, its been a long day:

Icarus skywriting # 18

Summer haircut

A new haircut is always a good time for a new post (even if laptop pictures are a little dodgy) and even though summer is still hiding behind April showers that came and never left sometimes you just have to hope that the sun will eventually warm the back of your neck. I live in hope. Yesterday I had a fine day in London with the very fine PEN folk who do a very good job supporting writers in oppressed situations.We are planning to bring PEN to Winchester and I know this will be a good thing to do. But this also brings me to an old friend in Icarus. I am planning an inter-continental book where we will consider myths olds hey fold themselves into ideas on intimacy, passion, jealousy, love, hate and so on. Of course biblical studies have been doing this for years but we will also be trying to understand 'mythical hauntings' and the reality of longstanding tropes and their contemporary manifestations as ways of revealing something significant about media, art and literature in the contemporary world. It is already looking to be an exciting project - and of course we began exploring intimacy here: http://www.axonjournal.com.au/issue-1/intimacy-and-icarus-effect And it takes research into strange territories, perhaps like Matthew Arnold's, 'science of origins' as a foundation of 'all real knowledge of the actual world' begging the question, is there any scientific explanation of origin, for example, there are many Icarusies (such an odd plural) by Ovid, Virgil, Apollodorus, Pausanias and Diodorus for example and the story flies unsteadily over Aegean seas, the boy, legs occasionally dangling in the water, as passing ships ignore him staring at them. And then there is Aristotle's proposal of entelechy to consider, the condition of a thing whose essence is fully realised, but is it really because the shadow of James Macpherson's Poems of Ossian's (though a damn fine hoax it was) looms over us - and the tale only has to tell what we will it to. But that is just the musings of a new haircut which are not yet making sense. I had a hankering to hear this, Toumani Diabate - Cantelowes live at El Real Alcazar: