Quotation: hands on

After three months of Zooming these words resonate:

A Hockney garden

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.

It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.”

(Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451)

Schema for Ulysses

To mark Bloomsday 2020 (or Zoomsday as it has widely become known due to Corona Lockdown circumstances this year) I’ve decided to publish Joyce’s 1921 schema for the novel (largely for my own convenient reference).

Title	Scene	Hour	Organ	Colour	Symbol	Art	Techniq-ue
1 Telemac-hus	The Tower (Sandycove)	8am	–	White & gold	Heir	Theology	Narrative (young)
2 Nestor	The School	10am	–	Brown	Horse	History	Catechism (personal)
3 Proteus	The Strand (Sandymount strand)	11am	–	Green	Tide	Philology	Monologue (male)
4 Calypso	The House (Eccles St)	8am	Kidney	Orange	Nymph	Economics	Narrative (mature)
5 Lotus Eaters	The Bath	10am	Genitals	–	Eucharist	Botany & chemistry	Narcissism
6 Hades	The Graveyard (Glasnevin)	11am	Heart	White & black	Caretaker	Religion	Incubism
7 Aeolus	The Newspaper	12 noon	Lungs	Red	Editor	Rhetoric	Enthymemic
8 Lestrygo-nians	The Lunch	1pm	Oesophagus	–	Constables	Architecture	Peristaltic
9 Scylla & Chary-bdis	The Library (National Library)	2pm	Brain	–	Stratford & London	Literature	Dialectic
10 Wanderi-ng Rocks	The Streets	3pm	Blood	–	Citizens	Mechanics	Labyrinth
11 Sirens	The Concert Room (Ormond Hotel)	4pm	Ear	(Gold & Bronze)	Barmaids	Music	Fuga per canonem
12 Cyclops	The Tavern	5pm	Muscle	–	Fenian	Politics	Gigantism
13 Nausica-a	The Rocks (Sandymount strand)	8pm	Eye, nose	Grey & blue	Virgin	Painting	Tumescence / detumescence
14 Oxen of the Sun	The Hospital (Holles St)	10pm	Womb	White	Mothers	Medicine	Embryonic development
15 Circe	The Brothel	12am	Locomotor apparatus	–	Whore	Magic	Hallucination
16 Eumaeu-s	The Shelter	1am	Nerves	–	Sailors	Navigation	Narrative (old)
17 Ithaca	The House (Eccles St)	2am	Skeleton	–	Comets	Science	Catechism (impersonal)
18 Penelop-e	The Bed (Eccles St)	–	Flesh	–	Earth	–	Monologue (female)

We had a three hour reading session on Zoom at sundown with a reading from each chapter, we being the Charles Peake Ulysses Seminar of the University of London/Senate House. I read a section from Ithaca in which our protagonists, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, have a piss out back of the latter’s house after a night on the town.

I re-started my third reading of the book today to mark the occasion. My plan is to keep reading it on an endless cycle until I drop into the black hole myself.

Then they follow: dropping into a hole one after the other.

[Hades]

A big chunk of my Ulysses library

A Canadian academy award for ‘Take Me To Prom’

‘Take Me to Prom‘, the glittery creation of Canadian director Andrew Moir, won the Best Short Documentary award at the recent Canadian Screen Awards run by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television.

I co-commissioned the film at Real Stories (Little Dot Studios, alongside my colleague Alex Hryniewicz) with Lesley Birchard at CBC (Canadian national broadcaster). The film is very much Andrew’s baby – he had a clear vision and he drove it through with absolute confidence in what was in his head.

The film revisits the iconic North American adolescent milestone of High School Prom through interviews with LGBTQ people ranging in age from 17 to 88, showing how things have moved on over seven decades (there is one representative of each decade).

It is currently Short of the Week (on Short of the Week).

We also co-commissioned the charming Finding Fukue as a CBC-Real Stories Original. I believe it holds the record for CBC Short Docs viewing on their YouTube channel (6.5M views and climbing). It’s a very different documentary to Prom but equally high quality – directed by Jessica Stuart.

Pictures and words for another Finn & Finnegansfolk

In the part of Finnegans Wake we are currently studying in our seminar group at University of London/Senate House (online at present in the era of the new spunnish grippe) there is a reference (p.548) to the Isle of Eigg in the Inner Hebrides.

With Impress of Asias and Queen Colombia for her pairanymphs and the singing sands for herbrides’ music

When I first arrived at Channel 4 I was tasked with establishing IDEASFACTORY, a talent and creative enterprise development initiative. The person hired to run the Highlands & Islands region of the network lives on Eigg (Population: 110). I am in the habit of sending her literary references to the island when I come across them.

The first I stumbled across was in Evelyn Waugh’s Officers & Gentlemen. [Oct 2018]

The second was in Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. [Oct 2018, Rome]

James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is the third so far. [May 2020, Lockdown London]

Lucy, my old colleague, has kindly sent some information from Eigg (where her emails are @eiggbox.com and @isleofeigg.net) about these “singing sands”:

The Singing Sands are on the far north west coast of Eigg, looking out towards the Isle of Rum. They are named the Singing Sands because they squeak when scuffed underfoot; although only on dry sand. The sand is quartz, eroded from the Valtos Jurassic sandstone the north end of the island is made up of. Apparently, the grains are very even shaped, making them more squeaky!

The long straight formation in the pictures I sent [see below] is a basalt dyke. The basalt is harder than the sandstone which was eroded by the sea to create the dykes. There are a lot of these dykes stretching out from the shore between Singing Sands and Laig Bay to the south.

One thing I find amazing is that sometimes when you go down there, there’s no sand at all, just rock. All the sand has been swept out to sea. It must sit just off the beach on the seabed to be swept back up on the beach at the next high tide. Laig Bay beach is just half a mile or so to the south of Singing Sands. It’s the most photographed beach on Eigg. At low tide the sea goes right out, making the long beach even more impressive. The sand on Laig beach is a mixture of quartz black basalt and white shell, leaving distinctive fern and swirl patterns as the water recedes. Two beaches, very close together, but completely different sands. I don’t know if the Singing Sands sand falls down into a deep trough and so doesn’t move south, but that’s how I imagine it.

Singing Sands have two other names – Camus Sgiotaig. Camus means Bay, but the meaning of Sgiotaig (prounced Ski-Tig) is unknown, probably an Old Norse word. There are a lot of Norse words used in and around the Small Isles of Eigg, Rum, Muck and Canna. Singing Sands are also known as Tràigh na Bigil which means chirping beach (Tràigh = beach), but most folk here just call it Singing Sands, or (less so) Camus Sgiotaig.

Beach is one of the words in my very limited Irish vocabulary – in Irish Gaelic it’s Trá. Trá – Tràigh clearly close cousins. A lot of Norse words are also used in the Wake because of Dublin’s connection with Viking invaders.

Lucy made a special trek to the Singing Sands for our group and made this video to demonstrate the ‘singing’ Play Video [11 secs]

She also send this video for us to see the beach and hear the wind and birds Play Video [20 secs]

And she kindly took&sent these photos too:

Camus Sgiotaig

the singing sands for herbrides’ music

a basalt dyke

Lucy also sent me some singing sands sand through the post – it hasn’t yet arrived as it’s dependent on the ferry service which is reduced due to the plague.

Lucy is involved with Eigg Box which supports artists and creative entrepreneurs living on or visiting the Isle of Eigg.

Eggs are significant in the Wake as Finnegan died falling off a ladder and is frequently compared to Humpty Dumpty who fell off a wall and was equally fucked.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

Lucifer had a great fall (The Fall of Lucifer – Gustave Dore)

Adam & Eve had a great fall (from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Fresco)

More people who had big falls.

Pictures for Finn

After Lunch (1975) by Patrick Caulfield [1936-2005]

Foyer (1973) by Patrick Caulfield

The Splash (1966) by David Hockney [1937- ]

A Bigger Splash (1967) by David Hockney

California Bank (1964) by David Hockney

Ed and Mariane (2010) by Julian Opie [1958- ]

Graham Coxon (2000) by Julian Opie

Darcey Bussell (1994) by Allen Jones [1937- ]

Coincidence No. 545 – Jackals

I am out running in St Pancras & Islington cemetery, listening to an Audible podcast about writer Robert Harris. He says:

“it’s like coincidences, which happen all the time in life, you can’t have them in fiction, they just don’t work…”

Just before this bit he was talking about how you can write novels about things where we know the ending and gave as his example The Day of the Jackal.

Yesterday I go to my bookshelves to find two things: a crappy entertaining thriller to read again and my copy of Kafka’s complete stories – see Coincidence No. 544. In the pile of crappy thrillers is The Day of the Jackal. It is behind another pile of books and I haven’t set eyes on it in years. I think about reading it (asking myself have I ever got through all of it? maybe I only know the ending from the film) but in the end pick another book set in Berlin in 1963 which appeals to me. And I find the Kafka in an equally obscure spot where two shelves meet and overlap forming a sort of hidden compartment.

Last night I begin both books. The Kafka story I pick out to start with is called Jackals & Arabs and features an old jackal.

When I finish the short Robert Harris podcast I switch to an audiobook I’ve had for a while but not listened to yet – A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. In the opening few minutes it explains the terms Species, Genus and Family. In illustrating the biological Family it mentions, alongside dogs and cats, jackals. 19 minutes in, he explains early man’s position in the middle of the food chain by describing the scene of a giraffe being eaten by hyenas and jackals.

Coincidence No. 544 – Kafka

The day before yesterday I start reading Kafka’s Last Trial by Benjamin Balint. It is about the court case settling where Franz Kafka’s manuscripts should reside.

Yesterday I see that Facebook has added to People You May Know a certain Beverley Kafka. I don’t know her, it looks like she may be a friend of a friend of my mum.

Today I am walking in East Finchley Cemetery – it is perhaps only the second time I have been in here. (I am writing this in the shade of a spreading old oak.) At the turn to this side of the extensive mid-19C cemetery is the grave of Dorothy Kafka, born 1930, died 1988. The objective of my walk in the cemetery is to find a quiet spot out of the sun to read Kafka’s Last Trial.

I have never met or come across anyone called Kafka before.

In Your Face wins Best Documentary in Lockdown Showcase

As mentioned in the recent Teach us rightly to number our days post, In Your Face, a mid-form documentary I conceived and commissioned for Real Stories/Little Dot Studios, directed and produced by my friend & colleague Simon Goodman of Showem Entertainment who worked his usual magic on the format, won Best Documentary in the Lockdown Short Film Showcase run by London Short Film. The standard of the showcase was very high with such excellent films as The Call Centre and UB-13.

Here’s a short Q&A I recorded in lockdown for the showcase:

[8 min watch]

 

 

Wider Wake

I’ve noticed something reading Finnegans Wake for the first time – I call it ‘Wake Hang-over’. During the Corona lockdown I begin every morning by going out in the garden and reading. Latterly I start with a couple of pages of the Wake and then whatever book I’m reading, currently a light whodunnit by Anthony Horowitz entitled Magpie Murders, easy reading for hard times. When I go to read the second book I find that for a while I’m still in a different reading mode, hyperalert for word play, connections, double meanings; somehow floating a bit above the text; inhabiting a strangely comic world – or is it a comically strange one? That unique reading mode gradually fades but the overlap is interesting and enjoyable. As a linguist, it’s a bit like when you come out of a foreign language, back to English, and the shapes and dynamics of that other language are still what’s shaping your consciousness and thinking.

Picking up from my previous (second) Wake post I’m quickly going to update my lists:

HCE

• Harold or Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (p30) – see last post
• Howth Castle and Environs (3) = 1st line of the novel, a key location in both the Wake and Ulysses
• Haveth Childers Everywhere (a section published in 1930 as part of Work in Progress) = Adam, father of mankind
• humile, commune and ensectuous (29)
• Here Comes Everybody (32) = Everyman – “for every busy eerie whig’s a bit of a torytale to tell” (20)
• habituels conspicuously emergent (33)
• He’ll Cheat E’erawan (46) = a sinful fella
• haughty, cacuminal, erubescent (55)
• Humpheres Cheops Exarchas (62)
• Haveyou-caught-emerods (63)
• Hyde and Cheek, Edenberry (66)
• House, son of Clod, to come out you jew-beggar to be Executed (70)
• Et Cur Heli! (73)
• at Howth or at Coolock or even at Enniskerry (73)

On Mullingar House pub, Chapelizod, Dublin

Dublin

• Dabblin (p16)
• (Brian) d’ of Linn (17)
• dun blink (17)
• durblin (19)
• Devlin (24)
• Dumbaling (34)
• Poolblack (35) = Dub/black Lin/Pool : dubh linn (Gaelic) black pool
• Dablena Tertia (57)
• Doveland (61)
• Dulyn (64)
• Dubblenn (66)
• deeplinns (76)
• blackpool (85) Blackpool (88)

And I’m starting a third such list- variations on “Ireland”. There is a linkage between HCE and Ireland: HCE > Earwicker > Earlander > Eire > Ireland

Ireland

• Errorland (62)
• Aaarlund (69)
• aleland (88)

(So these are all cumulative lists.)

To round off this post I’d like to start highlighting some of my favourite neologisms and word-collisions. Like the lists above, these highlight the variety and persistence of Joyce’s ludic approach to language. Joyce is “a mixer and wordpainter” as he describes Hyacinth O’Donnell on p.87.

The playfulness and transmutation of language is the essence of the dream state and the act of “sewing a dream together” (28) which is this fluid, complex book. “intermutuomergent” (55) is a wordflow that captures the dynamics of the language of the Wake. This is the “meandertale” (18) to end all meandertales. (The wandering river, the Liffey, runs through that heart of it, personified in ALP. And the neanderthal is just beneath the skin of us hairless apes, we Chimpdens.)

• tellafun book (86) [telephone]
• lexinction of life (83) [lexicon/extinction]
• nekropolitan (80)
• timesported across the yawning (abyss) (56) [transported across time]
• to clapplaud (32) [clap]

BTW my favourite Wake website so far is From Swerve of Shore to Bend of Bay, a blog by Peter Chrisp.

Returning to lockdown, on the basis that the Wake touches on everything, this seems like a good Corona sentence: “the obedience of the citizens elp the ealth of the ole” (76).

 

 

Quotation: Teach us rightly to number our days

On holidays and such circumstances we have a conversation in my family about tattoos. I’ve made 51 tattoo films in my career including In Your Face for Real Stories/Little Dot Studios (100M+ views) and The Male Body Handbook: Tattooed for Channel 4. The conversation springboards from the question: If you were to have a tattoo, what would it be? I always end up saying the only thing I would want to see every day is something that was or meant “Carpe Diem”.

As I sit writing this at my desk there is a marble tablet to my right – a cheap bit of tourist tat from when I visited Rome a couple of years ago to speak at MIA – the Mercato Internazionale Audiovisivo film festival/market. The tablet, quite heavy, says:

CARPE DIEM

QUAM MINIMUM

CREDULA POSTERO

Quinto Orazio Flacco

So the phrase we are familiar with actually has a broader context: Seize the day, put very little trust in tomorrow. It comes from Book 1 of (Roman poet) Horace’s Odes (23 BC). Quinto Orazio Flacco in Latin is Quintus Horatius Flaccus, better known as Horace.

• 

I don’t really like the look of Carpe Diem. Carpe reminds me of carp, the fish that Eastern Europeans love to consume for some reason. Diem contains “die”. So I was pleased to find another quotation this week (at the funeral of my step-father) which means much the same thing. It is from the Old Testament, Psalm 90 (verse 12):

Teach us rightly to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

I read this as an exhortation to value each day and recognise that it is one of a limited number we are each allotted – through that perspective, brought to mind daily, we can become wise at heart (as opposed to at head).

The nearest tattoo I can find is Psalm 90:14, two doors down, nicely done but not at all the same:

• 

I am big on the word “joy” though – my daily mantra is “I will enJOY my day” – and I’m all up for being “glad all our days”, but it’s not for me.

However Psalm 90:12 is not quite snappy enough – it is great for an arch in a cemetery but not quite right for my arm.

Back to the fantasy tattoo drawing board…

In the meantime In Your Face has just been awarded the Best Documentary accolade in the Lockdown Short Film Showcase run by London Short Film, of which more tomorrow…