So the same woman who gave me the plot for my new novel (girl X in the previous post), today told me about a little party she's having this weekend...she's going out to lunch with "only" (I kid you not) about 100 friends. And they're all women friends. Normally a classic party can have 600 people, maybe 1000 if it's a biggy. And they're all good friends.
We Brits are friggin introverted.
Saturday, 28 February 2009
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Book idea; inspiration mexico style
OK, so this is the plot for my novel I'm going to start writing.
It's 1962, and Fidel Castro and Che Guavara are invading Cuba from Mexico's gulf coast. (Was that 1962? I can't remember...) There's a thirteen year old girl (call her X) living in Oaxaca, Mexico. She receives a postcard that's part of a chain message, designed to get young people writing to each other around the world. She starts writing her own postcards, and one of them arrives in the hands of a young woman (girl Y, say, about 19 years old) recently moved to Havana from Mexico with Castro's revolutionaries, a member of the cultural corps. She's passionately dedicated to the communist cause, and works hard to establish cultural exchange programs around the world on behalf of the new Cuban government.
Girl Y replies to girl X, who also replies. Their letters become more frequent. Over the years they tell each other about their boyfriends, their husbands, their work, their homes. They are best friends and they've never met. Finally in 1982, Girl X goes to Cuba. They meet, deeply moved by the power of their friendship. The meet in Cuba three more times. Then in 1995, Gild Y's son who is now a famous salsa musician moves for a year with his band to Mexico, thus enabling Girl Y to get permission from the government to travel abroad to be with her son. X and Y live together for a year, and Girl Y gets to explore Mexico, the country of her childhood and of her dreams.
In 2008, Girl X, on a whim, googles the name of Girl Y, to whom she now writes emails every day, instead of letters. Turns out that girl Y is a famous writer, public figure and general philanthropist, known for her patronage of charitable works, her colour poems and her unwavering support for the Castro regime. Girl Y had never breathed a word of her fame to Girl X.
Presumably with the end of the Castro government, the friendship is somehow broken (I may have to wait till Castro dies to write this book...).
And where did I get this idea? It's a true story, recounted to me just a few minutes a go by a charming Mexican lady who is currently hosting me here in Oaxaca. W.O.W. Didn't I tell you inspiration can come from the most amazing places!
Talking of Mexico and inspiration....I've had quite a few 6th gear moments here in the South of North America.It's a pretty incredible place; lots of good thinking opportunities. ¡Hasta luego!
It's 1962, and Fidel Castro and Che Guavara are invading Cuba from Mexico's gulf coast. (Was that 1962? I can't remember...) There's a thirteen year old girl (call her X) living in Oaxaca, Mexico. She receives a postcard that's part of a chain message, designed to get young people writing to each other around the world. She starts writing her own postcards, and one of them arrives in the hands of a young woman (girl Y, say, about 19 years old) recently moved to Havana from Mexico with Castro's revolutionaries, a member of the cultural corps. She's passionately dedicated to the communist cause, and works hard to establish cultural exchange programs around the world on behalf of the new Cuban government.
Girl Y replies to girl X, who also replies. Their letters become more frequent. Over the years they tell each other about their boyfriends, their husbands, their work, their homes. They are best friends and they've never met. Finally in 1982, Girl X goes to Cuba. They meet, deeply moved by the power of their friendship. The meet in Cuba three more times. Then in 1995, Gild Y's son who is now a famous salsa musician moves for a year with his band to Mexico, thus enabling Girl Y to get permission from the government to travel abroad to be with her son. X and Y live together for a year, and Girl Y gets to explore Mexico, the country of her childhood and of her dreams.
In 2008, Girl X, on a whim, googles the name of Girl Y, to whom she now writes emails every day, instead of letters. Turns out that girl Y is a famous writer, public figure and general philanthropist, known for her patronage of charitable works, her colour poems and her unwavering support for the Castro regime. Girl Y had never breathed a word of her fame to Girl X.
Presumably with the end of the Castro government, the friendship is somehow broken (I may have to wait till Castro dies to write this book...).
And where did I get this idea? It's a true story, recounted to me just a few minutes a go by a charming Mexican lady who is currently hosting me here in Oaxaca. W.O.W. Didn't I tell you inspiration can come from the most amazing places!
Talking of Mexico and inspiration....I've had quite a few 6th gear moments here in the South of North America.It's a pretty incredible place; lots of good thinking opportunities. ¡Hasta luego!
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Cosmic coincidences
So I recently went to the site of a once-mighty Mesoamerican capital, complete with massive pyramids, arenas and ridiculous amounts of staircases. This empire, it turns out, started as a small village in about 600BC, rising to become an important city by about 200BC, reaching its zenith as an Empire in about 400AD, eventually falling into ruin in about 700BC, largely as a result of corruption and invasion. Remind you of anyone? This timeline is almost identical, give or take a few centuries, to that of the Romans, several thousand miles away, two empires that were massively important and basically contemporaries, that didn't even know of each other's continents.....
It's got me thinking about central american ancient civilisations. For example, why does no one point out that it's a miracle that they even exist? For there to have been people in America before the European discovery, humans must have crossed over from Russia. Now, forgive me for thinking this, but even if this was physically possible because the two continents were connected by ice during the last ice age, what the hell were people doing in the remotest regions of Russia in the first place? Why would anyone ever think it was a good idea to cross hundreds of miles of barren ice? How could they even have survived this? Before the ancient civilisations arose, people didn't even come in groups of more than 30. How could such a tiny number of people have made it into America? It's the same in Africa: humans originated in the tropics of middle-Africa, so in order for them to have populated the rest of the world, they must have at some point crossed the Sahara desert. How did they know how do survive in such conditions? What are the chances that DNA was ever created in the first place?
Anyways, back to Mesoamerica. It strikes me that European civilisations have some of the least developed scientific cultures in the pantheon of ancient civilisations. Look at the Mayans, the Persians, the Chinese - all of them were fascinated with cosmic occurrences, with the greater significance of life, with interesting images and motifs that are subconsciously at the heart of everything important for humans. Whereas in Europe, all anyone cared about was wealth and machines. Artwork is for aesthetic sake only, it doesn't attempt to put humanity in perspective or challenge our imagination in any way.
Perhaps this is why European-based art (and music and literature etc etc) is probably the best in the world....but it's probably also why we're so damned greedy and capitalistic. There you go.
It's got me thinking about central american ancient civilisations. For example, why does no one point out that it's a miracle that they even exist? For there to have been people in America before the European discovery, humans must have crossed over from Russia. Now, forgive me for thinking this, but even if this was physically possible because the two continents were connected by ice during the last ice age, what the hell were people doing in the remotest regions of Russia in the first place? Why would anyone ever think it was a good idea to cross hundreds of miles of barren ice? How could they even have survived this? Before the ancient civilisations arose, people didn't even come in groups of more than 30. How could such a tiny number of people have made it into America? It's the same in Africa: humans originated in the tropics of middle-Africa, so in order for them to have populated the rest of the world, they must have at some point crossed the Sahara desert. How did they know how do survive in such conditions? What are the chances that DNA was ever created in the first place?
Anyways, back to Mesoamerica. It strikes me that European civilisations have some of the least developed scientific cultures in the pantheon of ancient civilisations. Look at the Mayans, the Persians, the Chinese - all of them were fascinated with cosmic occurrences, with the greater significance of life, with interesting images and motifs that are subconsciously at the heart of everything important for humans. Whereas in Europe, all anyone cared about was wealth and machines. Artwork is for aesthetic sake only, it doesn't attempt to put humanity in perspective or challenge our imagination in any way.
Perhaps this is why European-based art (and music and literature etc etc) is probably the best in the world....but it's probably also why we're so damned greedy and capitalistic. There you go.
Sunday, 8 February 2009
Film idea #2
A parallel world where everything is the same, except for people can't show emotions. They have the same emotions, but haven't figured out facial expressions 'n' all that....
Monday, 2 February 2009
New cool bands, #s 5-7
This Town Needs Guns, Joni Mitchell, Mimas
The first is a blippy, very-fast-indie-guitar-plus-techno math-rock type affair (Norwich, I think), the second speaks for herself (widely known to be among the greatest song writers ever - though more striking to me is her sublime proficiency on piano and guitar), and the third is a post-rock oceansize-meets-radiohead-meets-hope of the states, loud v soft thingy (UK). All well worth taking a peak at.
The first is a blippy, very-fast-indie-guitar-plus-techno math-rock type affair (Norwich, I think), the second speaks for herself (widely known to be among the greatest song writers ever - though more striking to me is her sublime proficiency on piano and guitar), and the third is a post-rock oceansize-meets-radiohead-meets-hope of the states, loud v soft thingy (UK). All well worth taking a peak at.
Sunday, 1 February 2009
The philosophical plane
One of the feelings I love most is when my brain clicks into 6th gear. I may be going along at a respectable 3rd or 4th, maybe contemplating a run to 5th if I'm feeling ambitious; sometimes I'm just in neutral when it happens. But suddenly I start thinking like crazy. It's like my brain is full of different colours, a weird surreal landscape where thoughts that belong in no sane thought-pattern maraud around and get taken seriously. It's a nice buzz, really.
This different plane of brainwaves normally has a little overlap with the normal dimensions of thought in which I had been existing previously. For example, just now I was thinking about the inspiration stuff from my last few posts, and also about another little thesis I'm planning to add to these records soon, when suddenly I thought: if we could harness philosophical or academic thoughts and employ them in real life, how would we live?
Or rather, I had an instantaneous explosion of synapses and so on that cannot be expressed in a satisfying way through words, such is the complexity and bizarreness (bizarrity?) of the phenomenon. Often, stretches in 6th gear can be partly translated into normal-sounding ideas, such as the one I just had (this particular idea will be the subject of the next entry), but most of the time they are extinguished at their demise, like a dream you thought was really good/interesting but cannot remember for the life of you.
My life exists in two spheres. The normal one, where everyone exists, and the one where I have really crazy thoughts, sometimes about god and the significance of existence, sometimes about pure thought itself, sometimes about cups of tea, but always in a new plane of brain activity, the philosophical plane, 6th gear. Where I....philosophise. And I'm fairly confident that everyone exists in this plane too, not that I can test this theory.
Philosophy itself is an interesting concept. People tend to think of it as 'thinking about things' or trying to work out the answer to life's great questions. I used to be under philosophy's spell; I used to be adamant in my belief the most important thing in the world is that everyone has a good think now and again - and I still think this has a lot of truth to it. Philosophy use to be my god, I used to aspire to be someone who could think really well. But now in my old age (hur hur) I tend to see more of the pretentious and pointless side of things. Lots of philosophers are particularly arrogant folk, and their ideas seldom achieve anything or even have much interest. Nowdays I tend to think that you should think about stuff that interests and impacts you without giving it silly names. It's not exactly a change for the cynical - by any standards my beliefs are still very idealistic and don't look like changing in a hurry. But I do think that a lot of people need to realise that - while thinking for its own sake is more than justified - they shouldn't feel a requirement to be artificially deep. Life isn't particularly deep. But deep thoughts are great fun when they do come along.
So, I have my two spheres of life, as do (I believe) all people save the most crass (those who never think hard) and the most pretentious (those who always think too hard). When I have a good think, I will often find myself exploring ideas that have no bearing on reality, and this is all well and good. But when I'm living my life, I return to the all-familiar world of, to be honest, equal silliness - all the things you do and then regret, all the falseness and airs, all the glorious little sparklings of emotion. And while I do believe that it is important, if you are given to bouts of grandiose thinking, to be able to return to normality for most of the time (after all, this is where a huge number of the great experiences lie), I also cannot but feel a tinge of sadness at the thought that none of our great thoughts from the philosophical plane can be put to use in changing the normal plane for the better.
Or can they? That question was the subject of my last Big Thought, and of the next post.
This different plane of brainwaves normally has a little overlap with the normal dimensions of thought in which I had been existing previously. For example, just now I was thinking about the inspiration stuff from my last few posts, and also about another little thesis I'm planning to add to these records soon, when suddenly I thought: if we could harness philosophical or academic thoughts and employ them in real life, how would we live?
Or rather, I had an instantaneous explosion of synapses and so on that cannot be expressed in a satisfying way through words, such is the complexity and bizarreness (bizarrity?) of the phenomenon. Often, stretches in 6th gear can be partly translated into normal-sounding ideas, such as the one I just had (this particular idea will be the subject of the next entry), but most of the time they are extinguished at their demise, like a dream you thought was really good/interesting but cannot remember for the life of you.
My life exists in two spheres. The normal one, where everyone exists, and the one where I have really crazy thoughts, sometimes about god and the significance of existence, sometimes about pure thought itself, sometimes about cups of tea, but always in a new plane of brain activity, the philosophical plane, 6th gear. Where I....philosophise. And I'm fairly confident that everyone exists in this plane too, not that I can test this theory.
Philosophy itself is an interesting concept. People tend to think of it as 'thinking about things' or trying to work out the answer to life's great questions. I used to be under philosophy's spell; I used to be adamant in my belief the most important thing in the world is that everyone has a good think now and again - and I still think this has a lot of truth to it. Philosophy use to be my god, I used to aspire to be someone who could think really well. But now in my old age (hur hur) I tend to see more of the pretentious and pointless side of things. Lots of philosophers are particularly arrogant folk, and their ideas seldom achieve anything or even have much interest. Nowdays I tend to think that you should think about stuff that interests and impacts you without giving it silly names. It's not exactly a change for the cynical - by any standards my beliefs are still very idealistic and don't look like changing in a hurry. But I do think that a lot of people need to realise that - while thinking for its own sake is more than justified - they shouldn't feel a requirement to be artificially deep. Life isn't particularly deep. But deep thoughts are great fun when they do come along.
So, I have my two spheres of life, as do (I believe) all people save the most crass (those who never think hard) and the most pretentious (those who always think too hard). When I have a good think, I will often find myself exploring ideas that have no bearing on reality, and this is all well and good. But when I'm living my life, I return to the all-familiar world of, to be honest, equal silliness - all the things you do and then regret, all the falseness and airs, all the glorious little sparklings of emotion. And while I do believe that it is important, if you are given to bouts of grandiose thinking, to be able to return to normality for most of the time (after all, this is where a huge number of the great experiences lie), I also cannot but feel a tinge of sadness at the thought that none of our great thoughts from the philosophical plane can be put to use in changing the normal plane for the better.
Or can they? That question was the subject of my last Big Thought, and of the next post.
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