miscellany

on input mode, with music

I have been meaning to post this for ages, but here is a link to the beautiful music Aby Wolf did for my Talking Volumes event in Minnesota:

Isn’t it pretty? I am delighted beyond measure that the circus is inspiring such loveliness.

This post started as a random collection of things I’ve been listening to & watching lately but then it started wandering into thinky thoughts about input mode versus output mode which is something I think I’ve blogged about before, and I am still very much in input mode right now. So here’s a bit about the stuff I’ve been absorbing.

I have seen more movies this month than I did total in the previous year or so and I will tell you about them! Briefly.

First there was Cloud Atlas which I saw almost immediately after finishing the book so I was likely better prepared than most and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. (I enjoyed the book, too, though not quite as much as I’d wanted to. Partially because I liked the middle bits more than the outside bits.) It’s pretty and I liked the choices made with the story structuring. Also the china shop dream sequence bit was worth the price of admission it made me so happy. That said, I worry it would make absolutely no sense to anyone who didn’t read the book. And I’m looking forward to watching it again on dvd because I’m almost more interested in hearing people talk about it via commentary than the actual watching part.

This past weekend I saw Life of Pi which I read ages ago when the book first came out and I thought the film was lovely, the visuals were gorgeous and I was glad they stuck so closely to the narrative of the book, particularly at the end.

In non-book adaptation movies, Skyfall was awesome. I’m not a huge Bond girl but I loved Casino Royale and I really liked this one, too. Particularly the opening credits.

(Now I’m patiently and somewhat skeptically waiting for The Hobbit.)

In other media, I’ve been playing video games. I am not much of a gamer but in the last couple weeks I got vaguely obsessed with Portal & Portal 2 and they made me happy, because they are the thinky sort of puzzles that I love and also the writing is fantastic. Also they gave me an excuse to have cake.

I find sometimes more than movies certain games get my story-brain going more, maybe it’s the decision making part or the unexpected dragons. (I may have a mild Skyrim addiction.)

I’m finally getting better about acknowledging the fact that all this is productive, even though it doesn’t seem like work. I’ve spent a lot of the last year and a half in circus promo mode and it’s hard to crawl back into the writing cave. Well, no, crawling back in the cave is easy, the difficult part is writing and not just curling up with the bats and taking a cave nap. So I need to wander around outside the cave for a bit and see what there is to see, to get my brain re-acclimated to being creative.

And I like finding those things in non-book forms, I find sometimes stories in film or tv or game or theatre or painting or song form spark ideas just as much if not better than reading other books does. They stretch the imagination in different ways.

I think it’s a Julia Cameron Artist’s Way thing about “filling the well.” About taking time to see and enjoy and absorb new stuff to get your creative brain going. That’s mostly what I’m doing at the moment when I’m not stressing about moving and catching up on life and wondering how it is tipping into December already. Absorbing things and drinking tea and letting my brain soak up the good bits. Sooner or later it’ll bubble over and then we’ll tip back into output mode, I’m sure.

Since we started with music we shall close with music, too. Things I’ve been listening to beyond the mentioned-in-Toronto Andrew Bird include the new Bat for Lashes album and the constantly-in-my-head Adele Skyfall theme, but mostly I’m totally late to the party getting into Of Monsters and Men and I cannot stop listening to this album.

By erin, ago

PSA regarding blog comments

Considering the fact that a comment I received on the blog yesterday reduced me to a sobbing mess for a good hour (it was not just the comment, the comment was the back-breaking straw on a terribly stressed camel of a day) I feel it would be wise to disable comments on the blog for a while. I have been historically lousy about replying to them anyway.

I am terribly fond of the internet but I am also a sensitive person which is not always the best combination for being a fairly public figure on said internet. And the most hurtful things seem to reach me via blog comments.

(I also tend to think of my website as my personal corner of the internet, like my own little virtual living room where I serve several varieties of tea in non-matching cups and tell small stories and try to keep the artwork dusted. I think I take things said here more personally than I might on Twitter, which always seems like Someone Else’s living room.)

This particular comment (which I did not approve for posting) derided me for sounding like an over-excited schoolgirl on NPR, going on at length about my repeated use of the word “like” and other such evidence and mainly, I think, implying that I should be able to speak as well as I write.

In thinking about it now that I am slightly more clear-headed, I am (and have always been) wary of expecting someone who can express themselves properly while typing to be able to accomplish the same feat with their tongue with similar ease, especially on the spot.

I am more skilled with my fingers, at least in that capacity. I wrote a flax-golden tale about it. I have social anxiety that ties my tongue more than might be considered normal.

Sometimes I am reduced to making wordless noises and I end up sounding something like a baby bird in order to express myself properly vocally though I try not to do that in interviews.

And the commenter did not mention this, but I giggle. Shamelessly. Whenever I can. Sorry.

Working with words in writing is a different animal than working with them in conversation. I also have a lot more practice with one rather than the other.

Yes, this is one comment in a sea of lovely comments (though there have been other upsetting ones in the past) but I think my initial stressed-out reaction is a good enough reason to suspend blog comments for a bit.

I am almost always reachable on Twitter for any blog comment-esque thoughts you might want to express and I might re-enable comments at some point in the future.

For the moment I’m going to stick to comments I find unexpectedly in my wallet.

By erin, ago

parenthetical-laden post of not-terribly-thinky thoughts that amount to the erinland state of the nation

Hi internet, I avoided you for a little while and I forgot to tell you first. Sorry about that.

I’m also sorry I am still lacking in time for proper blog posts that involve thinky thoughts and not just quick updates and occasional kitten photos (warning: this post will not contain kitten photos as kittens are currently being kitten-sitted because I leave tomorrow for a week or so of travelling). I feel bad about that and I hope that this winter that shall henceforth be known as The Winter of Writing Hibernation involves proper blog writing as well as novel writing, which is of course the main point of the Hibernation.

Also my brain is not so good at thinky lately. I suspect it is still quite tired from being so busy over the last year and a half. I find when I am not actively busy with something that requires immediate or time-sensitive attention my brain says “can we sleep now? or at least not think?” regardless of time of day. I’m trying to be nice to it and feeding it books and avocados and other brain-happy things. I suspect it will still need some time to recover from the whirlwind, not that the whirlwind is completely non-whirly yet. Off to Minnesota tomorrow, Toronto next week and then after that the travel will be finished but then I need to move, trying not to think about that too much just yet.

For the moment, I am sitting on my couch in my Bon Iver hoodie and comfy pants, drinking dark roast coffee and wondering if the rain outside my windows is going to turn to snow. Here, have photographic evidence that includes a plushy white lion in the background, which is sort of like a kitten:

I’m happier than I look, I just feel strange smiling at the computer. I’m particularly happy about a lot of last night’s US election results, and probably tired-looking from staying up to hear them. I did drink a lot of really nice wine while watching & compulsively twitter refreshing and this is currently my favorite thing on the internet: isnatesilverawitch.com

I’m reading Cloud Atlas right now (not very far through, hopefully I’ll finish it in time to go see the film while it’s still in theatres) and I really will post a proper long blog post about Books sometime… let’s not say soonish, but definitely before the end of the year. Possibly I will roll it into a 2012 Favorite Reads post. (Hibernation time will also include lots of Reading, I hope.)

I just picked up my mail and had two galleys (one unsolicited, one expected) to add to the unmanageably tall pile of quote-requesting galleys along with a package from Random House that had my name misspelled on the label. In email mail I have a not-yet-completely-final schedule for Minnesota.

I should probably pack. I will likely wait and pack in the morning. I should do my nails today, though. First I need to finish this post and also finish Friday’s flax-golden tale and possibly figure out dinner. Oh, and laundry.

This turned into a non-thinky stream of consciousness post, didn’t it? Ah well. Haven’t done one of those in far too long, either. Let’s make it extra random, here is a photo of the vintage 40s evening bag I bought last week that is one of my new favorite things:

The top slides up the handle to open and it’s in really good condition. Also, I love having an evening bag that doesn’t fall over when I put it down. Also also, sparkly.

It’s practically dark outside even though it’s not quite 4pm as I type this and it reminds me why I hate/love this time of year, with its early darkness making me sleepy and cold. I want to curl up with warm beverages and tall socks. It’s starting to feel like winter already, you can smell it in the air. I will like it better when there is proper snow and twinkly lights on strings.

I suppose this is enough babbling for now and I should get to the non-babbling things on the to-do list. I’ll try to babble more coherently relatively soon.

I hope your days are merry and bright, even if it is early to wish such things.

By erin, ago

autumn!

Autumn is my favorite. Apples and cinnamon and scarves and crispy leaves crunching beneath boots.

I wish you a glorious autumnal equinox, pumpkin-flavored & sweater-cozy.

The black & white renders them slightly incognito, but that field is indeed full of pumpkins:

By erin, ago

two things with links

First thing: I wrote this brief, passionate yet ill-fated romance for Stylist magazine. I wrote the story and then they styled the photo shoot based on what I’d written and I love what they did with it. I tried to keep it a bit open-ended and vague so they’d have room to play with the images and I really think the end result is splendid. (I’ve seen a digital copy of the print version, which is even cooler.)

Second thing: I pulled out my tripod to get some proper photos of my very dark office in order to do this Write Place, Write Time feature on my writing space. It is extremely difficult to take photographs of a small windowless room with a lot of stuff in it, but I think you can get the general idea and also there’s a bunny in a raven mask.

By erin, ago