Veggie Tappers #2

I was watching the documentary at the end of the special edition of Dumbo last night (long story) and I was delighted to discover that the crows in that film were based, in part, on those great dancers The Jackson Brothers. The animators filmed the Jackson brothers doing their stuff and then used those movements in the crows' dancing to When I See An Elephant Fly. Cool, eh?

Alas, I can find no footage of The Jackson Brothers due to the overwhelming and inexplicable love of Michael Jackson's dance steps that take up the first 8000 google results, so I'll show you a little bit of The Nicholas Brothers instead.

The Nicholas Brothers were better known than the Jackson Brothers. They were unbelievably fit. Their routines are so energetic that after you've watched one you want a lie down and cup of tea. And they performed throughout the decades, from starting out as children in Vaudeville, making it big and appearing with acts like Cab Calloway and Dorothy Dandridge, to royal variety performances in the 1960s, right up to the 1990s.

Here's a routine from a film called Stormy Weather. Fred Astaire called it the greatest dance routine ever caught on film.



The leapfrogging over each other on the way down the stairs was kind of their trademark. Fabulous.

Engineering Paradise

I'm part of an online story workshop called Storyshed. It's a small group and we're pretty keen on honest criticism, which is something that's not always easy to come by as a writer.

Although it's mainly about short stories we did recently read and comment on a new novel by David Gardiner, because he's one of the members and we wanted to see what he was working on. Engineering Paradise turned out to be a mix of love, dreams and destruction in Northern Ireland in the 1960s. I thought it had some very interesting things to say about how terrorism sneaks into the hopes of the young and turns idealism inside out.

The book's title comes from a quote by Stafford Beer:

The Holocaust has shown us that the creation of hell
on earth is just a matter of engineering. The creation of
an earthly paradise is an engineering problem also.

Engineering Paradise has been released as a paperback and e-book by Merilang Press - I definitely recommend it, if you like thought-provoking and intelligent reading. 

Been Around the World and Eye Eye Eye

This year my resolution is to watch more World Cinema.

I know it's not your usual resolution, but I don't really believe in promising to make changes that you know you really won't stick to. So far, however, I'm doing incredibly well at watching more world cinema. I watched quite a lot anyway, so it wasn't as if I was starting out at zero. But I felt I was starting to lean in the direction of American film because it was easy. No to ease! Yes to subtitles! Yes to long pauses and character development and murkiness!

So here's a few insights into what I've watched so far.

It turns out I like Michael Haneke films. The main thing I like about them is the way I always go, 'WHAT?' when the credits roll. What happened next???? What happened about the couple who were being video-taped in Hidden? Did The Piano Teacher kill herself once she'd realised that sado-masochistic sex hurt quite a lot and wasn't her bag after all? What happened to the entire village after The White Ribbon??? I do enjoy knowing that all of my questions will not be answered. I've found the same is true of Tarkovsky films. The trick is not to expect to be told stuff, which is quite a difficult task for a child of the 1980s educational system.

I already knew that I love Luc Besson, but The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc Sec has reminded me of that fact. It's got mummies in it. Egyptian ones. I'm sure I've posted on this blog before about how much I love mummies.

Goodbye Lenin is awesome. So is Downfall. And Das Experiment. And Grizzly Man. And The Lives of Others. Basically, modern German cinema is brilliant.

And there's a great Korean monster film called The Host, which all lovers of monster movies should see.

That's about it so far. Looking forward to seeing more, particularly contemporary stuff. I have a pretty good grounding in world cinema up to the year 2000, and then I got out of practice. All recommendations gratefully received.

The Princess and the Petals

I've just finished Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White. What an amazing book.

But this post isn't about that book, or my jealousy at his incredible writing. It's about where the title comes from. It took me ages to remember, but after searching through my poetry books I came across the collected works of Alfred Lord Tennyson, and that wonderful partly comic ode to the days that are no more, The Princess.

The Princess tells a tale of a medieval princess who founds a university solely for women, and of her betrothed who sneaks inside, dressed as a woman, to find out exactly what's going on in there. It's a great poem, with a message that smacks of Victorian concerns about the role of women - how different are they from men? Can a man really understand a woman? Perhaps not, if William Rackham represented the typical Victorian male. Luckily, I think things have improved somewhat since then in terms of male/female relations.

Although, of course, you're free to disagree with me.

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The fire-fly wakens: waken thou with me.


Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.


Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.


Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.


Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.

Veggie Tappers #1

Okay, so it's not strictly related to either vegetables or literary endeavours, but I fancy sharing a long-term passion of mine, and that is tap dancing.

I love tap dancing. It seems to me that Hollywood was a much better place in the thirties and forties, where someone could communicate their inner angst or burning happiness by bursting into a tap routine. Cinema used to be so much more expressionistic, didn't it? So I'm going to do a series of posts about my favourite tappers. And first up is Eleanor Powell.

Eleanor Powell learned to dance in the clubs around Atlantic City, and then performed around the world as the queen of tap dancing before she was captured on film. She was never really a love interest, or a partner, particularly, although she occasionally danced with people like Fred Astaire. She didn't sing. She was always very direct, very punchy, and not particularly sexy because it was all about the rhythm of her feet. Unless you find tap dancing sexy, in which case she was extremely sexy. Here's an idea of what her famous stage routine looked like:
 

 And here she is with Fred Astaire, showing off why she was known as the Queen of Tap:

 For once Fred doesn't look bored by the routine. I love the moment half-way through, when they really step up a gear. Just incredible.

Matter, Antimatter, Creation Theory, and Brain-Octopi

Seeing your book in print - is that different to seeing it on someone's Kindle? Seeing it on Amazon, available in e-book format? I know some writers think there's nothing to compare to holding your hardback in your hands, with your words on the pages, but I have to say that's not the bit that really gets me. It's a step too far to think those words belong to me any more. I feel once-removed from the process - a feeling exacerbated by the fact that I usually wrote that newly-published book two or three years ago. And other people have put their hands in it, too. If it was cake-mix, lots of cooks could be said to have given it a stir before it rose in the oven. Or not.

Enough uncomfortable metaphors - here's what I'm thinking about today. I'm thinking that the best part of writing the book is writing it. It's the act of creation that's important, not the solid object at the end. The Munchie has taught me this. She loves to create. As soon as she could hold an egg carton she wanted to slap green paint on it and call it a crocodile. Our house is covered in penguins made from empty squash bottles, cotton wool and stick-on googly eyes, and plaster of paris mermaids, painted and dipped in glitter and pretty much unrecognisable to anyone as a mermaid unless you were there at the moment of inception. I keep them, of course. But she couldn't care less. Once she decides they're finished she never looks at them again. The fun part is over.

Of course, with a novel, it's a bit more difficult to declare it done. But I always reach a moment when I cease to care about a book. The fun is done. And there are new things to create. New crocodiles and mermaids, just waiting to be brought into being.

On to the brain-octopi.

I have this theory that the act of creation is actually more real than the finished object. That, on some level that human eyes are unable to see, when you create something, something amazing and beautiful is released. Not just writing. When you go to the theatre or the cinema and the audience feels united by what they're experiencing - do you know what I mean? When a three year old makes a crocodile. When you have a great conversation with someone.

It's like this - everyone has a blue octopus in their heads, and when they create a good feeling or a piece of music or have an interesting thought, the luminous blue octopus that lives in your head expands, stretches out tentacles, and waves them in a really amazing dance. If only we had the eyes to see them, and really appreciate them. Then we could stop worrying about whether the final object is good enough, in some indefinable fashion. That final object would be totally unimportant, next to the octopi, wouldn't it? Octopi thoughts holding tentacles, pulsing with light. Yeah.

Right. Well.

Just my personal theory.

Drinking at the Spaceport Bar cont.

You walk into a spaceport bar, a thousand light years from home, and meet four friends. The lights are low. Cutthroats and bounty hunters lurk in the shadows. The bar serves drinks from a hundred different worlds. You can buy almost anything here. You order a round of beers and look around the table at your friends. You’re glad they’re here with you.

But who are they?

Here’s the game: select four science fictional characters that you’d like to have a drink with, and place them around the same table. It’s a variation of the old “fantasy dinner party” game, only set in a tavern at Mos Eisley.

Thus begins Gareth L Powell's blog post. It's too good to pass up. Although the obvious choice for this scenario would be super-sexy Han Solo, I think the point of the game is to go literary, not cinematic. And since Gareth has picked the wonderful Halo Jones first and I'm determined not to replicate his answers, I've ended up with a right dodgy pack of marauders to hang out with. I bet it would be fun, though.

1. Gully Foyle from The Stars, My Destination by Alfred Bester

He's got really interesting tattoos, he makes up quatrains, his sole mission is vengeance. He'll be interesting company if he doesn't kill me first.

2. Gurney Halleck from Dune by Frank Herbert

Not too much fun when sober,but onve you get him drunk he's amazingly entertaining, playing his baliset, then getting me in a headlock and shouting, 'You young pup!' over and over in my ear before wrestling me to the ground and giving me a good scar to remember him by.

3. Jernau Morat Gurgeh from The Player of Games by Iain M Banks

He'll play a mean game of chess over a brew or two, and up my cool factor by three million. Let's gland.

4. Zaphod Beeblebrox.

No explanation needed.

So let's have a roaring night at the Mos Eisley cantina! It'll be the time of my life, but I'll either be broke, dead or at the end of the universe by morning.