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:

Icarus skywriting # 17

Phew

Man alive, what a time, last Monday Middlesex, Tuesday and Wednesday York, Saturday Norwich, Sunday Keele, Monday Winchester and tomorrow, Wimbledon in London, Friday, Saturday and Sunday Nottingham, I am a travelling man, yes I am, oh yes I am... So I am taking this opportunity to get my feet under my own desk, after a day of writing reports and filling in forms, what a place to be, with your knees under your own desk. And today I was thinking about rock and roll and writing a chorus:

She was a roller-coaster baby

loved the highs and lows alike
a roller-coaster baby
on a white knuckle ride
no time to slow down
running fast into the night
And I was wondering, can a man my age get away with singing something like that. Damn right he can but I also leant on Rilke today as I ventured into another elegie:

Here is the time for the sayable, here its homeland.Speak and bear witness. More than ever the Things that we might experience are vanishing, forwhat crowds them out and replaces them is an imageless act.

Sometimes when your favourite players and singers get together you get magic like this. I love these guys and this track:

Icarus skywriting # 16

Achilles

On a long train journey to York and back I did the most sensible thing - I read a book. Lovely, 352 pages of verbal jouissance and storytelling bliss. It was called, The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. In some ways I regret having read it because I wanted to keep it for a hot summer holiday, but once I had begun reading it I couldn't put it down. I even read it at breakfast in the Churchill Hotel, York (nice place to stay). But the narrative voice of Patroclus is quite superb, Briseis is wonderful and the portrayal of Icarus as the hero but a bit of a popinjay is wonderful. There is a nice take on the story, where Patroclus as the 'better man' has to die before Achilles can re-enter the fray and the battle. But apart from the evil Pyrrhus I felt the ending slipped into sentimentality. Of course we as readers crave that ending but Thetis changes character too easily for me and we don't really see her development. So that is my cultural event of the week, that and taking some pictures of the beautiful York St John campus - oh to work there, so beautiful and nice people too. And I ate the best steak dinner ever, there, ribeye, with salad and freshly made chips, washed down with a glass of Montelepuciano d'Abruzzo and a slightly sparkling water chaser. And on the way home I also listened to this as the train chugged along, listen to the guitar chug slowly in the background as the voices weave themselves around the song, it is an Achilles and Patroclus coupling: