Wish you were here

Dear [your name here],

As you can see from the front of this card, [placename] is a veritable Topsy Turvey world compared to home. Yesterday I sang with an elephant and strummed a lute; today I ate crickets with Conan Doyle and rowed a river of thickened cream to a walnut grove populated by dancing thornbills. You'd love it here. The air is clear and warm most days and there is a pool outside my room that burbles constantly, permeating my sleep and aquifying my dreams. Tomorrow I hope to climb a mountain to attend a festival of fabricated gods. I'll have to rise early, so I really must finish.

Hope you're well and happy. I'm thinking of you,
Alida

Wish you were here #2

WIP

You won't believe what I've been working on. I wrote this last week, and even now it makes me cringe. But I thought you'd be ... well, horrified, actually, and cry bitter tears of commiseration with me:

"In the new musical, RAIN, Australia’s most powerful women go on strike to protest climate change. ‘Not tonight,’ they advise. ‘We have a headache.’ But – wouldn’t you know it? – the high-profile partnerships of Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd and Therese Rein remain unfazed by the putting-out drought, and storms start brewing… This cheeky, irreverent political satire is bound to ruffle more feathers than the ETS. Get your giggles before the next leadership spill!"

Link text? Why, I'm glad you asked. It was: Bring your brolly. Take that, usability advocates and people actually using screen readers! Good freaking luck. In case you're wondering, the ruffled feathers were entirely mine. Putting-out drought? Where do I get this stuff?

I also wrote the sentence, "From king fish wings to octopus dumplings, Tomodachi will take your tastebuds on a tantalising journey through Japanese cuisine" which, clearly, exemplifies my broader copywriting philosophy: if in doubt, employ alliteration and rhythm until your readers' eyes water.

Slightly frustrating

Slightly frustrating things about my contract workplace include:

• Nescafe Blend 43
• all the fucking people on the streets at lunch time for Christ's sakes
  
• Windows
• absolutely no web mail; Twitter and Facebook, however, deemed not to pose a problem
  
• Windows
• the world's weirdest document management system
• being able to get shirty because someone asks you to do something that is not actually writing, such as sourcing content or chasing up inputs from colleagues
  
• Windows, people, Windows
• no thesaurus

That last one's a bit weird and may take some swift remedying.

Word re-engineering and the subconscious

When overstimulated or under pressure, my subconscious has an embarrassing habit of re-engineering words. I'm not talking about typos. I'm talking full-scale augmentations and automatic amendments that convey a similar (or opposite) meanings, using phonetically or conceptually complementary terms. The more pressure there is, the more re-engineering takes place.

Example: last week, when trying to type the word question in the midst of prose, I produced the previously (and thankfully) unheard of whatstion.

"Well," I thought. "That certainly came out of nowhere" (which, incidentally, I just typed as knowhere. Jesus H. Christ.). Here are some others that have recently surfaced:

• denomalies
• outercontinental
• delucidate
• neveryday
• dischordinary

If you ask me, the ordinary is most commonly dischordinary. If words are our means for making sense of the world, then the likes of neveryday and dischordinary speak volumes. And denomalies says something -- something extremely damning -- about fluctuating exchange rates and my invoices.

Incidentalities

Sometimes, while researching the number 20,000 or Beatles songs co-written by McCartney and Lennon, or contemporary art fairs, as one does for, you know, work, one comes across some rare gem that requires pencils to be put down, pauses to be taken, thoughts to be stilled.

Today it was this short quote from a doomed man, a wash-up, a broken, beaten, down-hearted traveller at the end of an epic journey whose finish had not been heralded by fanfare, nor accolades. He'd tried to write the tale of his adventure many times over, but failed, saying:

"I wrote it sweet enough but it came up sour."

Perhaps these words struck me purely because this week I came up against so many creative dead ends, points at which I knew my heart wasn't sweet or buoyant or optimistic enough to give the delightful edge required to the copy I was writing. It's not the first time. Like George Beck, I've tried over and over to write a story as beautiful as the things I've seen, and though I have the words and the images, it keeps coming up sour.

Some authors say they write in order to know what they think, but sometimes it seems more sensible to keep those secret thoughts hidden. Sometimes it's better to think what we wish to, rather than to know, for certain, what the insides of our minds are like.

The content machine

It feels a bit like I've become the content machine. At any point at which my hands are not otherwise busy -- driving, cooking, lighting the fire, plucking a cockerel -- they are typing.

The cause of this status is a new, short, contract. It starts tomorrow, and will take up my every working hour. The remaining waking hours will be spent producing content for the charming individuals for whom I usually produce content. Sometimes, I may sleep. But there will be no time for anything else.

I will be the content machine, slamming out the text, auto-spell-checking, ALT-TABbing to my dictionary, reaching for Fowler's like some kind of obsessive automaton. Like something Huxley or Burgess would have dreamed up. Like a person composed entirely of letters -- ells for limbs, a capital H for the torso, a big fat O for a head. Little ps for feet and full stops for my joints.

You can see where this is heading. I'm losing it already. In eight weeks' time I'll be little more than a puddle of parentheses and paper cuts. But, blood-bespeckled fingers crossed, it'll be worth it.

An inauspicious commencement

Have you read Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall?

I've had it on the list for a while, but I got distracted with other things. Then, on the weekend, I thought I'd give it a try. It was a sunny morning. The birds were atwitter and I had coffee, so the book-starting signs were all good.

I don't know what happened, but two pages in I was crying. Sobbing, really. Maybe it was three pages. I had to close the thing before I got to the page number. But it was no more than three.

Everyone's talking Toy Story Three tear counts at the moment. No one who's read Wolf Hall has mentioned anything to me about the start, about page 2, about the crying. I avoid reviews, but I haven't heard anyone mention that, you know, The Age's review of it was muddied with bitter tears or anything. God alone knows how the Man Booker people got to the end of it with enough presence of mind to give it the award.

Anyway. When I get the guts to try it again, I'll let you know if I get beyond page 3. In the meantime, if you've read it, and can warn me of any further bawling-sessions-in-waiting, that would be appreciated.

(Not you?)

More to come on this. But for now, all we need to know is that whoever designed this "secure service" has so little faith in their abilities that they view (Not you?) as an essential UI element.

On the other hand, perhaps s/he's just some smart-arse PhD developer who's trying to fuck with my head via subliminal existential messaging.

Whatever. I'm sure my precious data will be safe here. Unless I'm not actually me. Which happens all too often, apparently.

Night changes

Some nights are completely uneventful. You turn out the light, roll over, and wake up at cock's crow, refreshed. Other nights, you regain a blank, black consciousness to find yourself holding someone else's television, or standing by an open window on the first floor.

But some nights are deceptive. You dog-ear the page you're reading, close your eyes and drift off to sleep happily enough, but when you wake up, the world has shifted slightly. A small, almost imperceptible change has taken place: you are no longer who you were.

Last night, the sky was clear and pin-prick-holey with points of cold light. The Milky Way surged eastward and all around, leaves rattled dully in a crescendoing breeze. The trees waited in the dark as if nothing made any difference to them. So did I.

But something did make a difference, and when I woke, I knew the night had changed me. A flame had been extinguished; something had been stilled. I was not displeased with these results. Trying to be my old self has proven pointless. The old tracks had buckled and rusted in the space of hours; there's no way back now.

It's The News, Fucker

I know. I keep bitching about the media, mostly about The News.

Well, here's the solution to that dream I had about making my own newspaper. I am pleased to present to you, It's the News, Fucker, which is the news roughly as I would have it.

Actually, I'm not sure whether that's actually true (I'm already alarmed by the content under the heading "World Politics"), but I intend to find out over the coming weeks.

[so bad after all]

[I let go of the scaffolding and stepped forward. Behind me, Dan was silent. Gareth let out a mirthless "Ha." My eyes were on the far end of the plank, where it crossed the roofline again: safety. I took another step, expecting the plank to bow, but it didn't. It didn't even move.

This isn't going to be so bad after all, I thought.

I took another step, glancing down to make sure my feet were in the middle of the plank. I blinked and kept going, my hands lifted from my sides for balance. I took another step, then another.

The breeze chilled my face again. My eyes began to water. I looked down, trying to clear my vision, but everything was a blur. My sneakers, the plank, and the grass far below all merged; they slopped and surged sickeningly.

Then: dizziness, and the sense that my feet were no longer on the plank. I straightened out right before I hit the ground.

"Shit! Shit!" I could hear Dan squeaking from far away. When I opened my eyes, he was racing back along the roof edge toward the ladder we'd climbed from the balcony. He was petrified: I could see it in the way he moved, his knees bent, head down, those clammy hands wrapped tight around the scaffolding.

Gareth stood where I'd left him. He was leaning on the scaffolding, looking down on me from that great height. I couldn't see his face, though: the clouds reflected the light behind him, and he was black. A wraith, a lanky silhouette, my friend now nothing more than a dark figure against the sky.]

Bosh

Five minutes into today's "market research", a cynical task at the best of times, I came to the sorry conclusion that to publish a business book, all you need is a dynamic, one-word title.

Like these:

• shift
• sway
• influence

I know, you think I'm kidding. But I'm not even warmed up yet.

• nudge
• fish

Yes, I'm still 100% serious. Nudge isn't a typo. It's a title.

• socialnomics
• fascinate
• yes
• engage
• buyology
• different
• free

I gave up at this point. I also found a book called Purple Cow, but that was two words, so I decided to omit it from consideration at this time.

My point is, when you come across books called Yes and Free, you have to start wondering what happened to the concept of imagination in business publishing. Yes. YES, for God's sake.

Personally, I don't agree that a book's title should depend on its subtitle. If I were to publish something, I'd endeavour to give it a half-decent title. One that spoke to people off the bat, whether they bothered to read the subtitle or not.

It's reassuring to know, though, that if I run out of ideas, I can choose something like UnSame or Consume or Bosh and, if it's published, Amazon will gladly list it.

Old books; old friends

Since not-so-recent events unfolded, I've found myself reading only new material. People loaned me books and, contrary to my usual modus operandi, I read them.

I still am. But more and more I find myself longing for the familiar landscapes that lie waiting in the pages of my favourite books. Clay's LA, Richard's Hampden, Betty's Vashon, Pete's lonely Uruguay, Querry's desolate Congo, William's rocky, bitter England.

But perhaps the most pervasive longings at the moment are for Joel's silent southern mansion and Colin's breezy treehouse.

I don't know what it is about Capote. I'd like to have met him. Perhaps he'd have dropped over sometime in summer, on one of those warm days when the dragonflies make flickering shadows on the grass and I spend the afternoon in the hammock with a book and a icy gin, reading and napping and looking through the leaves at the sky.

I'm sure he'd have been out of place in his nice suit and good shoes, but I'd make him a drink and he could sit in the old folding canvas deck chair watching the dragonflies, and we could talk in low voices punctuated by somnolent pauses and the clicking of ice in our glasses. I don't know what we'd talk about; I'm sure I'd mistake him for his own characters.

Other Voices and The Grass Harp make me feel like I'd be happy to live in Capote's head. Sometimes, in parts, they make me feel like I already do. It's not just the sense of being a figment of someone's imagination; it's the deep unspoken parallels that exist between this reality and those stories.

Perhaps that's why they're so alluring: they suggest that things here can be taken in hand, constructed and ordered, operated through introduction and buildup to climax and denouement. That or the simple fact that it's winter here, and Capote's south is ever balmy.

See the big men fly

In inspiring news belatedly in, Advertising's Jesus-Elvis, having changed the face of the industry, has had a crisis of conscience and seceded his position at the helm of MDC, the world's mostest* ad agency, to a "twenty-four foot tall wooden box of Kraft Mac & Cheese".

I love the way the press is writing this up, like he's Thoreau gone to Walden or something. "By God!" the journos bleat. "He's all successful-like, and undoubtedly raking it -- positively raking it -- in, and now he's left the world-beating empire he's created! Maniacal! Crazy! This is just the mostest!"

Not only that, but "These days he blogs and has a Web TV show called “Fearless TV,” in which he rails against genetically modified food and questions consumerism in general." I guess that's where Thoreau comes in. Wow. Crazy. This is positively off the wall. Is it a crack-up? A break-down? Has Jees-vis lost his mojo?

Business success seems to be the primary purview expected of every human being. How nice it is to see someone who's not a schmuck like me, but a big successful superstar with (I'm sorry) certified sick-making good looks and, one imagines, an entire planet of women, drugs, money and hard-earned fun -- plus no little talent, lest we forget, though it almost goes without saying -- at his disposal, say Sayonara to selling shit to people who don't need it.

In my books, this doesn't make Ad Elvis a weirdo, nor a hero. It merely suggests that he has a natural human capacity for common sense. In case you missed it, or thought I was kidding in that coyly offhand, overly casual way of mine, he was, effectively, replaced by a "twenty-four foot tall wooden box of Kraft Mac & Cheese." That is advertising for you. One day you're a deity; the next you're overthrown by a novelty-sized, ultra-processed-foodstuff mannequin.

Now, all eyes are going googly with wonder at what Jees-is Elv-us will do next. My hope is: sink into a decent and lasting obscurity. My expectation is: book deals and Oprah appearances and failed attempts to buy Congolese child-slaves to give them "a better life". At the very least, I expect he'll receive a personal invitation to propose a solution to the BP oil spill, to which he will respond with a blueprint based around a twenty-four-foot-tall wooden box of Kraft Mac & Cheese.

Only cynicism on a massive, almost unprecedented scale will allow us to avoid such atrocities. Maybe he's got it. I certainly hope so. For once, just once, I'd like to see a big man actually fly.

*New word, kiddo. Mostest is a catch-all for best, most talented, hottest, coolest, funkiest, swankiest, etc. Like any good conglomeration, mostest is far, far more than the sum of its parts, due mainly to its fluid indeterminability. What's that? Indeterminability isn't a word? Whatever. I'm not writing another footnote to this post. You'll just have to hack it. I know you can.

Something I've been wondering about Dali

Yesterday, while throwing out the three hundred magazines that had accumulated in a pile on my desk and rediscovering South America, the map of which had been obscured by said pile of said magazines, I came across these rather gorgeous postcards from the Dali exhibition which, unconscionably, was literally the last thing I saw.

I'd barely begun wandering the exhibition when I saw this arresting number, painted in 1923.
Ages, and many wild paintings, later I saw this amazing item from 1939.
And then, by some miracle, they'd made both images into postcards. Serendipity.

Putting aside momentarily what these images says about one human's creative development within a 16-year span, I would like to draw your attention to the echoes of the first painting that exist in the second. The rocky outcrops extending from the paintings' left-hand sides. The languid ladies. The arms raised in carefree greeting. The woman touching her leg and the melting piano. The dog and the tuba.

We could try to assign these parallels to a lack of imagination on Dali's part, but I don't think that particular mud would stick in this case.

From the first time I saw these two images, so many implausible visions apart in the art gallery, I wondered if Dali had seen those parallels. Surely he did. I'm no artist. Maybe it has something to do with balance or something.

But I prefer to imagine that the correspondence between these two images reflects something of Dali's subconscious and, therefore, something of humanity.

Perhaps we all go through life according to a vision or pattern that exists innately within us, and which we cannot avoid. Perhaps life is simply about fitting the inexplicable into a form that we can grasp. Perhaps the world can only be interpreted in light of certain visions, certain necessities, so that whenever we perceive a rocky outcrop, we start looking for some kind of fluid female form and dog that doubles as a tuba.

Can we overcome our initial repertoire of forms and patterns? Or are they simply reinterpreted into different visions along essentially the same lines as we fit more and more experiences into those same frames? The Dali exhibition failed to answer either question.

On the other hand, it could be that these paintings are completely different and I'm seeing parallels that do not exist. Which says a whole lot less about Dali, but probably explains why I enjoy going to exhibitions so much.