craft bizarre

too zero one won!

2011: reading list

mario vargos llosa - 'the notebooks of don rigoberto'

i loved this book. my notes were as follows:

erotic cat fantasy, skin dipped in honey crawling with kittens licking with rough tongue files. the stepson obsessed with egon schiele: his models; their poses; his ladder; his mirror; his dislike of his thumbs.

an amazing form of storytelling! provoked by a dream, a theme, a character, a reference, don rigoberto's wife lucrecia would recount a story, of fantasies and sexual encounters.. erotic and filled with quotes from his notebook, historical and magical characters alongside whom he is transported, into his wife's tales, into his own fantasies..

in reading this i found that a night's entertainment can very well be a book. pages post tea time, before bedtime, interspersed with bath time. in the mornings i think about the dreams i had. at night i can read.

Films

have just seen danny boyle's 127 hours at the cinema.

i liked: the canyons
the style: jumpy. feels like a number over 2000.
the drama made me cry, for 3 seconds, without my knowing

altogether more bizarre than seeing a man cut off his own arm with a pen knife, was burlesque. it was amusing to imagine the cast were all smoking crack throughout filming. particularly the scene where cher, upon returning from a meeting with her bank manager, spends what feels like a lifetime trying to articulate the word for 'name plate'.

'he spent the whole time playing with that little thing.. you know that little thing.. the thing on the desk.. the long thing on the desk, wooden...' 'name plate?' 'yeah.. name plate'

(would like to see this remade with jackie stallone.)

at home

this morning my phone rang and i woke up while i dreamt i was on the apprentice, working for lord sugar, developing a shaving razor. i was project manager and had just arrived at the scene of the shoot for the advert we were making. i watched on the test screen as the actor (who looked to be made out of playmobil) stroked his cheek, 'ooh smooth like heaven'. i say "i did not give the green light on the use of that phrase", i swish my coat and turn towards lord sugar. he says that the next point we are to consider is advertising - 'now, think about it carefully' he says. 'TOP GEAR.... we'll advertise on top gear' i say, and i know that i have cracked it. i've done it, i've got the golden ticket, i am Stella.

i answer my phone, it's 9am. i awake straight into an interview for a job as a recruitment consultant. i have actually already been interviewed by this man about eight months ago. that time i didn't get beyond, 'so tell me what makes you want to get into recruitment', i said that i didn't want to, that i didn't know anything about it, and that the idea of working in sales made me want to cry even though i didn't know what it was. i still feel vaguely the same. i would like to have gargled my answers RECRUITMENT CONSULTBLEEEEEH! but my dream had made me think that perhaps i was the apprentice. i brushed the crumbs of my bedclothes and thought, what would stella do.

deeply immature but keeps having deja vu, which makes me think - older than i am? i have just made christmas biscuits. last night i watched the elephant man. i can see over five different types of bird from my window. does the blue tit wish he had a hat. integrity? where is my integrity. where are my sequinned pants. where is my storyboard. where's my silky tights.

a bizarre creative malaise. x

MUSIC

a musical renaissance.

new discoveries;

MR MEEBLE 'until i grasp the second'



YES!! :-)

4 year old twin led gospel... triumphantly oddball!



Spike Jonze directed.... the pharcyde - the drop

The Owl and the Pussycat" by Edward Lear

ee cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

POEMS

the charge of the light brigade
by lord alfred tennyson


Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
'Forward the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Some one had blundered:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre-stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!