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[May. 11th, 2012|07:35 pm] |
I just typed "a heavy focus" and didn't realise what a terribly mixed metaphor that is until I'd actually finished typing it out.
I'm losing it. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 11th, 2012|04:52 pm] |
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More thin, monotonous piping. It's been going on intermittently for four days now. I'm pretty sure it's the neighbour's air conditioning unit, but it'd be way cooler if it was Azathoth. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 9th, 2012|01:12 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | "Oh! That I on wings could rise" from Handel's Theodra | ] |
Telling a story is not the same as advancing the plot. If you have a story, then you probably have a plot and that plot needs to be played out to the end in order for the story to be told, but if you simply tell (or show, as seems to be the fashion these days) what what happens and rush into the end, you're left with a plot and no story.
For a story to be told, you have to actually tell the story the way the story wants to be told. Sometimes you have to stop and dwell on something. Sometimes the characters need to drop what they're doing and talk about something unimportant, because characters are people and that's what people do.
Sometimes you need an entire chapter about the colour white.
P.S. I enjoy reading well-written exposition, and one of the things I don't like about more recent novels is that exposition has fallen almost entirely from favour. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 7th, 2012|09:06 pm] |
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The thin, monotonous piping of the wind just added a fifth note; a very low, hoarse, tone about two octaves below the other four. It only makes the whole thing more obnoxious. |
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| Azathoth lives on my roof. |
[May. 7th, 2012|06:59 pm] |
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There's been a strong wind all day, and it's been making something on the roof make an obnoxious, whining, fluty sound. Four notes, repeated constantly and in no particular order and with no particular rhythm or duration, since this morning. The most interesting explanation is that on top of my house is "Ultimate Chaos, at whose center sprawls the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a demonic flute held in nameless paws." |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 2nd, 2012|11:09 pm] |
When I was little I was told that if I saw a brown spider with a "violin shaped marking", it was probably a brown recluse and I was by no means to chase it or attempt to befriend it, but I was to immediately tell my parents because a brown recluse's bite is worse than that of a black widow.
I don't think I've ever actually seen a brown recluse (I've since discovered that they didn't actually live where we lived, my mom just heard scary stories about a friend of a friend of a friend who had a backyard just like ours OMG maternal instinct panic), but I somehow got it into my head that brown recluses are "Sherlock Holmes spiders" and that idea became so deeply ingrained that years later I was surprised to realise I'd made it up and no one really called them that.
Recluse. Wears brown. Has a violin. Spindly build. How come no one else calls them that? the resemblance is uncanny. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 30th, 2012|11:40 pm] |
I don't remember the transition from reading aloud to reading silently, but I do know that when I was three I was sounding out diphthongs to show off, when I was four I was reading to myself for fun and looking for excuses to read to my parents and sister, and by the time I was six I was devouring the Hardy Boys series silently.
I learned how to read when I was four. I can't recall a time when I could see Latin characters and not be able to understand what sounds they represented. A good portion of my vocabulary was first encountered in print. I have been reading silently for literally as long as I can remember.
Reading aloud is simple. You see the printed representation of sounds, and you make those sounds; you can read aloud even if you don't know two words of the language you're reading. Reading silently is a little more involved, because it brings the meaning of the words into a closer relationship with the sounds.
When you read "dog" aloud, you imagine a furry, barking mammal while you hear the word you use to represent that animal.
When you read "dog" silently, you imagine the creature while you also imagine the sound of the word.
Spoken aloud, the word is a tangible thing and the dog itself is imaginary; read silently, both the dog and the word are equally imaginary (or equally real), the sound used to represent the concept is reduced to a concept itself.
Reading silently is the perfect marriage of everything a word can be. Sound, physical pronunciation, concrete meaning, nuances of usage, spelling, etymology; in short, everything we know or think about a word comes together as one imagined whole.
Of course, this isn't something we notice ourselves doing, it's something that sits in the background while we enjoy an exciting story, get outraged at the morons in the newspaper, bore ourselves with other people's blogs, learn how to change the oil in a motorboat, or whatever it is we do when we read.
And all this brings me to my point (I had one all along, other than bragging about my toddlerhood literary exploits). Poetry as an art not only of sound and meaning, but of ideas arranged in time.
Music is an arrangement of sounds in time. Poetry read aloud is words in time. Songs are a synthesis of the two, words and sounds in time.
Poetry read silently is concepts, ideas, imaginations, presented chronologically and with a metre to regulate the pace.
When I read a poem (which I read silently, as I read everything), it goes straight from my eyes to my mind. If the poem describes a nightingale, I imagine the nightingale itself while I imagine the sounds of the words. The sounds and the meanings present themselves to my mind in order, pauses and cadence in my thoughts (actual pauses in time, but not in sound, since all the sounds are imagined) are dictated by the structure of the poem, and I experience whatever it is the poet intended.
Silently.
I really hope this makes as much sense in print as it did before I put words to it. |
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| In which Rune blathers about hairstyles (or one particular hairstyle) |
[Apr. 30th, 2012|01:20 am] |
Late last night, in a depressive fit of maturity, I came very close to cutting my hair. Having long hair, especially hair as long as mine, is a sizable impediment to being taken seriously. It makes me look younger than I am (my age routinely misjudged by at least five years), and it makes me look "unprofessional" (whatever that is supposed to mean).
My hair is also just plain awesome, and anyone who thinks long hair isn't manly can go read a basic history book.
Last night I had gotten to the point where I was rummaging around the kitchen for the shears before I remembered all my reasons for growing it long in the first place.
Long hair is awesome.
If Average Bob thinks it looks unprofessional, why would I want Average Bob's profession?
People think long hair gets in one's way. It doesn't. Once it's a few inches past your shoulders it'll stay behind you even if you don't tie it.
If a strong wind kicks up or if you're doing something that could catch your hair, that's why we have elastic bands. It works for ladies, why shouldn't it work for dudes?
I'm not the sort of person who lets other people's opinions influence me. To some extent I do care what other people think (though more from curiosity than any real reason, and I want people to be impressed by my greatness), but I'm not going to dress a certain way simply because that's what people consider normal.
I've had long hair for years. I'm accustomed to it, I like it and the only reason I'd change would be to trick people into thinking I'm a responsible adult and not some sort of layabout writer with a cat and a blog instead of a social life, and that's a stupid reason.
I'm glad to say that those shears got nowhere near my beautiful golden locks. I do need a trim, maybe about half an inch off, but it's nothing urgent. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 29th, 2012|02:23 pm] |
McHat came by for lunch and turned on his wacky music via Pandora. I asked, "What on earth are we listening to?" He checks and then says, with a particularly inane grin, "H. P. Lovecraft".
He wasn't kidding, his Pandora station really had managed to come up with the band by that name. Needless to say, they aren't all that great. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 28th, 2012|05:39 am] |
A Summary of Poe's Ligeia
which, by the way, is one of my very favourites
Goth boy and goth girl fall in love and get married. Goth girl dies. Goth boy marries preppy girl and goths out. Preppy girl dies and goth boy continues to goth out. |
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