fackell

A Scottish cartoon, since I am back home for the holidays.

I'm well acquainted with the tune "Lord Lovat's Lament," since you hear it around these parts every time anyone has to pick up a fiddle and learn something. But you know, it's one of those tunes you know so well, you pay no attention to it, it's just there in the back of your head.

Then one day, I was looking up a bunch of works by Hogarth (the best) and came upon this portrait of 'Lord Lovat'. The lovely old tune and that devily face, they didn't match. So I wanted to learn more about him!

Lovat (Simon Fraser, born 1697 - there are about a million Simon Fraser Lord Lovats) really epitomizes how reading Scottish history can make you want to tear your eyeballs out, or laugh because it's nearly a farce it's so nutty. Either the people involved are disastrously loyal, or disastrously duplicitous. Everything is a disaster, but it's a hell of a ride.

Fromexceptindreams 

This evening I attended a reading by a woman who won an award from my university for the novel she published last year. There was a question and answer section during which someone asked if she ever had writer's block. Her response was that no, she never had writer's block, but she did have spells of depression during which she could not bring herself to work on her book. To combat those feelings, she wrote anything and everything. She would turn on movies and transcribe the entire thing or watch televisions shows and write down everything that happened and sometimes snippets of what she had copied down inspired her to write. I just found that interesting - that someone depressed could still work even if she felt she could not.

"I'm looking for poetry that doesn't taste of workshops or creative writing classes; that is not produced by a committee of academics and that exhibits some of the sudden music and unexpectedness of being fully alive." --Peter Hughes




From Rilke:

There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. Don't write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place.

Ellen West; Frank Bidart

January 21. Has been reading Faust again. In her
diary, writes that art is the "mutual permeation" of the
"world of the body" and the "world of the spirit." Says
that her own poems are "hospital poems . . . weak—
without skill or perseverance; only managing to beat their
wings softly." 



---


That is what my poems feel like, weak hospital poems. I'm not enough of that poet, Rilke. I have not that emotional richness to draw from, nor that depth; I am an escapist and I would rather indulge my extroverted self. It makes me happier, if that rush of adrenaline is happiness. If giving yourself up to the flow of life is happiness. Perhaps I am afraid of that depth. All I do is arrange words and never get near what is inside. (Perhaps I don't want to get to that inside.) Where am I going, what am I heading to? My professed curiosity scratches only the surface. Gaining all that breadth but fearful of that depth which a university course demands. Choose now, it says. Choose. 

1. It is gritty, as everyone says
2. It has the statue of liberty
3. Its traffic is crazy and it has yellow taxis
4. Um, eve dallas from JD Robb's In Death series loves it

Now in your imagination conjure an entire fictional universe about it and desire it with all your heart. Perhaps you can even write a book about how long you have stayed in New York and detail your everyday life from the necessary five tubs of coffee a day to your inventive and imaginative ways of hailing a yellow taxi. At the end of the novel include a postscript that admits you know nothing about that glorious city of freedom. 

Some holiday comics! The Kiss Elves return.

Oh and I am posting journal type comics on twitter sometimes. If you are on twitter I am @beatonna

Yesterday - HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIYI! ARSES outing at Sentosa, faillll because we had no balls, no cards, no picnic mat, and then it started raining. Ended up playing bridge in a not-so-secluded corner reminiscent of orientation times, not in a good way. We were so bored at one point we took the tram around the island in a loop. But awesome company ♥ And I finally got my 18th birthday present ... when my 19th birthday is in slightly over a month's time (Y) efficiency at its best LOL. Dinner @ Thai Express but I left early ):

Today - Watched New Moon. HAHAHHAHA. Cheesy ttm, and I still think Robert Pattinson is ugly. If not uglier than in Twilight.

NEED TO FINISH UNI APPS ASAP !!!! PROCRASTINATION HAS REACHED NEW HEIGHTS.

I saw a stage production of A Christmas Carol today. I love Dickens, I will always love A Christmas Carol. Even if they don't do smoking tricks in it.

What: Linus explains the true meaning of Christmas by reading from verses 8 through 14 of the Gospel of Luke in the 1965 Peanuts cartoon A Charlie Brown Christmas.

The entirety of the broadcast can be found on ABC's site.

Why: What was Christmas like on TV in 1965? You could watch The Bob Hope Christmas Show, or, if you wanted a change of pace, you could watch The Bing Crosby Christmas Show. Or if you happened to catch it on December 9, 1965, you could watch the Peanuts gang in their first animated special. A Charlie Brown Christmas was about holiday stress, personified by a depressed Charlie Brown who rails—with sponsorship by commercialization king Coca-Cola—against the commercialization of Christmas. Sadly for Charlie Brown, his friends have completely bought into that commercial spirit. Even his dog Snoopy laughs at him when he buys a dinky Christmas tree. Throwing up his hands, Charlie Brown asks if anyone knows what Christmas is about. One person does, the wise philosopher Linus, who proceeds to quote from the Gospel of Luke on the subject of the Savior's birth. This inspires the gang to support Charlie Brown's woeful sapling with ribbons and ornaments, giving every child a counterbalancing lesson to the materialism around them this time of year.

Impact: CBS executives thought they had a disaster on their hands. They were horrified at Vince Guaraldi's jazz soundtrack ("Kids hate jazz!"), the lack of a laugh track ("Kids hate silence!"), and the child actors ("Kids hate kids!"). Most of all, they blanched at Linus's recitation of the Gospel, figuring kids hated Sunday school most of all. It turned out kids didn't hate those things, as almost half the televisions in the U.S. were tuned to the debut broadcast. It won creator Charles Schulz and director Bill Meléndez an Emmy and a Peabody, and has run every year since, now (despite some totally intolerable cuts) on ABC. This became the first of over 40 Peanuts cartoons, some good and some less so. This remains the greatest. It is now part of the commercial juggernaut of Christmas, making Schulz and his heirs so much money that they didn't quite catch the irony of licensing a plastic version of Charlie Brown's tree.

Personal Connection: This special codified my opinions on Christmas forever. I was raised Jewish, but I've ended up more of a Christian Without Portfolio—that is, except for the admittedly fairly important son-of-God thing, I'm down with much of the Gospels. The Seattle I grew up in wasn't exactly a hotbed of Judaism, so I spent more time with Christmas than the (at best) fourth most important holiday in the Jewish calendar. It has always baffled me, however, that real Christians let Christmas get away from them. The Santa half of Christmas has little connection with religion, taking my wife away every December to man the parapets of retail like a tower-defense game. It is unclear whether the true meaning of Christmas still has much to do with the guy it's named after. Once a year, though, Linus mounts his stage and undertakes a valiant if hopeless attempt to restore the equilibrium the holiday deserves.

Other Contenders: George offers to lasso Mary the moon in It's a Wonderful Life; the Old Man wins a major award in A Christmas Story; Scooter meets his ideal duet partner on A Christmas Together with John Denver and the Muppets, and David Bowie meets his on Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas; John McClane gets the perfect gift in Die Hard; Mister Grinch makes a reindeer in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, as does Jack in The Nightmare Before Christmas; Frank Constanza looks out for the rest of us on Seinfeld; Garmin gives us its annual rewrite of "Carol of the Bells".

Death of military personnel: my comics specialty. Anyway, I like Montcalm. He wasn't, I don't think, as talented as his young rival James Wolfe, but he was among the best they had and a well experienced, hard working man who did his job as best he could. Montcalm had a hot temper and didn't like Quebec, but he tried to save it, even though he was almost always at heads with Vaudreuil the Canadian born Governor- to whom he was supposed to defer. Vaudreuil was experienced in North America and cared passionately for Quebec, but had never really encountered modern European warfare, and didn't understand it. Montcalm hated the corruption in New France, thought the war was useless, and tried to leave but wasn't allowed. In his final letter to his wife he writes, "I think I should have given up all my honors to be back with you, but the king must be obeyed; the moment when I shall see you again will be the finest of my life. Good-bye my heart, I believe I love you more than ever." I like Montcalm.


Wolfe, of course got the most famous painting in this country's history done up for him some years after the Plains of Abraham. Montcalm got one eventually. It's ok.