I have been distracted by research. I am wasting hours on pinterest, pinning pictures of ships and fishermen, of water creatures and sea-myths. I am browsing through word lists of Celtiberian and Proto-Celtic, and one very odd one comparing the very few surviving words we know of Galatian, with similiar words in Irish and Turkish. (Yes, I know, but there are a surprising number of words with similar meanings and spellings in those two languages. Now I know, and so do you.) I am looking up articles on commercial fishing communities of coastal California... in the 40s. I have a burning need to know how far north the Spanish settlers managed to get up the US west coast, and how far south the Russians came. I am reading Atlantis-type stories... I would not exactly be lying if I said that I have been writing - some writing has indeed been accomplished in the wake of all of this disparate reading - but it is slight. A distillation, labouriously extracted, and not yet fit for human consumption.
I have also been doing the occasional doodle. There is this:
which has nothing whatsoever to do with the back-history I am giving my story. It is merely because I re-watched Gladiator recently, and I love the quote. I was pretty satisfied with it when I was done... and then, I accidentally got a fingerprint on it, so this is a slightly cleaned-up version of the one that is hanging about the old hobbit hole. And, since I was busy fiddling with the picture anyway, I tried some of the fun effects picmonkey allows, and got this too:
Which I found oddly pleasing to look at. It is not at all how the original looks... but I like it, so you are getting 2 version of a doodle this time.
This one, however, sort of has a vague tie-in the what I am working on:
I call it Our Lady of the Heroes, and will hopefully turn into a full picture, not just a study-sketch, to illustrated a poem entitled Homecoming. It exists, at present, only theoretically, a poem-seed in the soil of my mind. I water it and incredibly delicate green tendrils are beginning to curl up from the ground, but I do not dare to rush the process for fear of killing my wee plant before it has a chance to live.
I have recently had the chance to watch the Irish music group The Gloaming in concert, and it was a grand experience. Two fiddlers of impeccable skill and delicacy of touch, a guitarist who drives the music but does not overwhelm it, a pianist whose playing is an addition to the music, and not merely a back-up, and the sean-nós singing of Iarla Ó Lionáird. It was not traditional in the sense that is usually used to describe that particular type of Irish music, but one got the feeling, listing to them playing together, that they were somehow more traditional in their experimentation, than most traditionalists. They clearly delighted in the music. They loved every note and harmony that they were putting out for us. Sometimes, the music was so spare, it was like being in a medieval hall, listening to a wandering songster. Sometimes, there was a sweet wildness to it - the sort of fairy-music that beguiles the unwary away from their own lives. Sometimes it was just a cèilidh, and incredibly fun. They played in long sets, that made you feel, while you were listening, that the music had been going on since the dawn of time, and that it would continue on forever. And when they finished, you felt as if they had only just started. It had the same sort of effect on me that the World Pipe Band Competitions have - it inspired me, and made me want to be so much more of a musician than I am.
Here is one of the songs:
I remember reading a poem a very long time ago, featuring, in some manner I cannot recall, a salmon, the the refrain for the poem was the same as the refrain for this song: thugamar féin nn samhradh linn, it is the summer we have brought in. I took great delight in recognising the words here. For the last few days, it keeps popping into my head - very unfortunate in mid-November, especially as I am tired of summer, and would prefer some to sing that they are bringing winter in.
I realised, after seeing The Gloaming, that in all my world-building, I have neglected music. I go to remedy that.
I have also been doing the occasional doodle. There is this:
which has nothing whatsoever to do with the back-history I am giving my story. It is merely because I re-watched Gladiator recently, and I love the quote. I was pretty satisfied with it when I was done... and then, I accidentally got a fingerprint on it, so this is a slightly cleaned-up version of the one that is hanging about the old hobbit hole. And, since I was busy fiddling with the picture anyway, I tried some of the fun effects picmonkey allows, and got this too:
Which I found oddly pleasing to look at. It is not at all how the original looks... but I like it, so you are getting 2 version of a doodle this time.
This one, however, sort of has a vague tie-in the what I am working on:
I call it Our Lady of the Heroes, and will hopefully turn into a full picture, not just a study-sketch, to illustrated a poem entitled Homecoming. It exists, at present, only theoretically, a poem-seed in the soil of my mind. I water it and incredibly delicate green tendrils are beginning to curl up from the ground, but I do not dare to rush the process for fear of killing my wee plant before it has a chance to live.
I have recently had the chance to watch the Irish music group The Gloaming in concert, and it was a grand experience. Two fiddlers of impeccable skill and delicacy of touch, a guitarist who drives the music but does not overwhelm it, a pianist whose playing is an addition to the music, and not merely a back-up, and the sean-nós singing of Iarla Ó Lionáird. It was not traditional in the sense that is usually used to describe that particular type of Irish music, but one got the feeling, listing to them playing together, that they were somehow more traditional in their experimentation, than most traditionalists. They clearly delighted in the music. They loved every note and harmony that they were putting out for us. Sometimes, the music was so spare, it was like being in a medieval hall, listening to a wandering songster. Sometimes, there was a sweet wildness to it - the sort of fairy-music that beguiles the unwary away from their own lives. Sometimes it was just a cèilidh, and incredibly fun. They played in long sets, that made you feel, while you were listening, that the music had been going on since the dawn of time, and that it would continue on forever. And when they finished, you felt as if they had only just started. It had the same sort of effect on me that the World Pipe Band Competitions have - it inspired me, and made me want to be so much more of a musician than I am.
Here is one of the songs:
I remember reading a poem a very long time ago, featuring, in some manner I cannot recall, a salmon, the the refrain for the poem was the same as the refrain for this song: thugamar féin nn samhradh linn, it is the summer we have brought in. I took great delight in recognising the words here. For the last few days, it keeps popping into my head - very unfortunate in mid-November, especially as I am tired of summer, and would prefer some to sing that they are bringing winter in.
I realised, after seeing The Gloaming, that in all my world-building, I have neglected music. I go to remedy that.
