Icarus in ellipses # 9

And I am still not sure I really have anything to say this year, so the blog is still slow. But I am doing things, researching, reading, a bit of writing and playing my guitar a bit too - even did a one-off performance at my friend Malcolm Floyd's leaving do - which was nerve wracking, but I played a bit of slide and sang a bit and that was good so I am more determined than ever to do something more constructive on that side of things this year. But goodness, this year, February has arrived and January disappeared without casting a backwards glance. So what does February hold in store - well my sabbatical starts officially on Monday, and so too my new fitness regime - I have such a bad cold and aching joints that only that drugs are pulling me through. But hey, who needs to know that. What inspired me to write this was not a what really but a who - Kit Holmes, my muse for the week and such a delight she is too - watch this space, but just as I was writing this I decided, nope Icarus in ellipses is not working as a blog, I miss my old one and so I shall return to it. If anyone is interested, FIFTYFIVE@FIFTYFIVE is back in business at: http://fiftyfive-fifty-five.blogspot.com/

Icarus in ellipses # 8

I wasn't sure I was ever going to blog again, it is so last year (laughs - as if I would know that). But since January 2011 is about to leave me behind and so many things need to keep me on the straight and narrow I figured, why not. The last one http://fiftyfive-fifty-five.blogspot.com/ was such a blast at times. And while it served its purpose - and kept me in touch I am not sure this one will be any different. Some pictures, some thoughts, some ideas, some musings, rants and rumbles. The year has been slow to start for a number of reasons and I have been generally reading and researching for the two books I have to write this spring - yikes. Still better that than facing the government cuts that are affecting so many. So I will start this up again. In the meantime - something wicked - smooth criminal:

Icarus in ellipses # 7

Setting the tigers free... the clip (below) reminds me of someone I knew forty years ago because its like looking at my former self as I was when I was 16-ish, where I would kick up in some folk club somewhere and do a drop in spot (a floor spot, usually egged on by friends but I needed little persuading) - it was usually three numbers. And isn't it strange how so little moves on - the chords he uses are similar to one's I would have back then - and the shirt, goodness, I still have some of them. Indeed I was given a nostalgic version as a Christmas gift. But the subject matter too, I would write and sing about love without knowing what it was - or indeed having experienced it and I suppose it still is the strangest thing and best not analysed. Its odd seeing this clip just as another year gets ready to become past tense - where did they go? Setting the tigers free, reminds me of a book I read back then, called Setting Free The Bears, and I remember it being one of the books that suggested I too could be a writer, but jeez that was forty years ago - forty years away in a flash... though the way things are going, the idea of writing a book becomes more and more futile. Our glorious government have just announced they are going to stop supporting the Booktrust charity - that is almost as bad as the cuts in education. The coalition's new slogan is "Keep Them Dumb" soon to be followed by "Ignorance is Bliss" and "Can't Read/Don't Read" the book being written here has just been rejected on the grounds of it being literary and therefore hard to sell - sigh. let's set the tigers free...

Icarus at Christmas

This the view outside my house right now - 23.49, Christmas Eve, 2010 - am off to my bed! Happy Christmas, isn't it it great! I love it!

Icarus in ellipses # 5

I was thinking how the time of year, the weather, the seasons, the state of our love lives sometimes fill us with the wrong kind of messages. I have been driving all over today, shopping for food in over-crowded supermarkets, food halls and the like. But how much of it matters? Sometimes we have to give into the Christmas spirit, let it run and ride over us. I did something good today, well say I but it was a we. We being Jen Webb, Jeri Kroll, Steve May and I who finally put the writing collectively called, Icarus Extended to bed, topped and tailed it, edited it and soon all can be read in the TEXT journal. SO yay to that. Therefore I intend to embrace frivolity and topical songs with this song coming up. The old guy and the young woman - it needs no explanation but in some ways its pop Mme Butterfly, only she has the edge! The sheer pantomime is irrepressible! Indeed his rakish baritone and her being that wonderful oxymoron, the coy minx, is such good entertainment that I can't resist it. Let every office party bore see himself in his true light, we should all be able to laugh at ourselves, as Tom does here. In the spirit of the season and weather, Baby Its Cold Out There - enjoy:

Icarus in ellipses # 4

The weather is a bit of a British obsession. I guess that is because its always changing. We had snow heralding in the year and now we have it cheering it out, auld lang syne and hoots to all that. But I am fine here, today I pushed 3 cars out of the snow for neighbours and feel righteous in a neighbourly, Christmasy way. Much better than sending Christmas cards which I haven't done this year on account of the fact that I lost all my addresses and besides I only send emails now, and double besides the post is ridiculously slow. I did a wee job for Hampshire County Council who sent me a cheque on the 8th December. Where is it I ask though do I really care - nope, had intended signing it over to Crisis at Christmas anyway and they will get it in time. And in the meantime I am trying to decide what this blog will really be for - what will it say and reveal and will it be worth writing? Because writing has to be worthwhile, does it not? I was thinking about this and re-reading Bertold Brecht (pictured here looking a little like Marx - Groucho that is) on György Lukács and thinking about him saying, "Even the realistic mode of writing, of which literature provides many very different examples, bears the stamp of the way it was employed, when and by which class, down to its smallest details. With the people struggling and changing reality before our eyes, we must not cling to 'tried' rules of narrative, venerable literary models, eternal aesthetic laws... Our concept of realism must be wide and political, sovereign over all conventions... Reality changes; in order to represent it, modes of representation must also change. Nothing comes from nothing; the new comes from the old, but that is why it is new." And of course it was good old Jacques Derrida who said the future is not some distant horizon but the a trace of the past being reformed in the present (well paraphrasing a huge idea). Although Walter Benjamin wrote a Brechtian Maxim, which was, "Don't start from the good old things but the bad new ones." Which I rather like. So here is my starter: we need to rescue liberalism from the SDP, they are the bad new ones in government and they represent the need for change! Here endeth the first lesson - the blog may be getting political - yay! Maybe its a "midlife life thing" - time for some chocolate cake in that case and singing liberation songs...

Icarus in ellipses #3

Now I used to sing this song in a dive called Nicky Tams in Edinburgh when I was young enough to do such things - Fire!

Icarus in ellipses #2

I never felt more like singing the blues...in this picture I swear I look as though I am auditioning for Avatar. Nevertheless it does reflect the Christmas look in my living room, even if the laptop camera has saturated everything with an unrealistic hue. It is 6.15 in the morning here, its dark and cold and winter is announcing that a white Christmas is a possibility. The radio is playing Christmas carols and the whole atmosphere is beginning to change. Now that is curious! For most people that has been happening all December (I guess) but I have only just noticed. Now I reckon that is because when I was a child Christmas was never allowed to begin until the 13th of December, when the "huge" birthday treat was my being allowed to turn the Christmas tree lights on. I confess, I used to sneak down in the mornings, early and in the cold and dark to do just that. Small pleasure as it was I loved it and still do. Curious that, how small pleasure bring such heartfelt joy. I should probably say something much more profound about it, but I prefer not to, I just send it out here in its blueness, with a smile and endless ellipses...

Icarus in ellipses # 1

Some things change and some things stay the same, or do they? Probably not, all things change, surely, and so too does the nature of blogging but these pictures remind me of the last time I blogged when I was younger than I am now. Today is my birthday and I am not sunning myself in the way this picture suggests - and its blooming freezing here in Brighton. But I will be playing this new "resonator" guitar very soon indeed and later I might read Winterwood by Patrick McCabe or even Without Alibi by Jacques Derrida - I am especially interested in the essay, "Le Parjure" Perhaps: Storytelling Lying". But forget lying, who can predict the future, reading or otherwise, and who would want to? Not me, I live for surprises and am never disappointed by life's ability to do just that! Opening this new blog (like the last)with some new music is a challenge but this is Idir & Karen Matheson (from Capercaille) with - A Vava Inouva:

I ask you father Inouva, open the door

oh daughter Ghriba, shake your bracelets

I fear the monster of the forest father

O daughter Ghriba, I fear him too