Dancing in Bugtown
Jan. 8th, 2012 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greygirlbeastChoice comments to recent entries. First, regarding the accelerating acceleration of life at the dawn of the Twenty First Century ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lady_tigerfish writes:
You just can't Tweet Big Thoughts; they take more than 140 characters. I resent any format that demands my thoughts be small.
– and also –
Making the time--for anything--seems to be a thing of the past. Nearly everyone I know describes themselves as lazy, but as far as I can tell, "laziness" seems to translate to nothing more than "not spending every waking hour doing something." There's an almost Puritanical bent to the way we seem to need to be busy every hour of ever day, to the way stillness is demonized as sloth. Like if we stop moving for two seconds, the devil himself will descend to make use of our idleness. We certainly treat each other that way whenever one of our own dares to step outside the regimen and, say, turns off the cell phone for awhile. Funny, since (as other commenters have pointed out) this pace actually makes us less productive in the long run.
Andmrs_ralph writes, of writing and this blog:
I don't think that's what people are looking for when they follow a writer. I can't speak too much for other people but I think I was looking for the deep, dark secret of how to. Turns out there is no deep, dark secret or if there is one it is 'nose to the grindstone, shoulder to wheel and get on with it already!' or as so many writers say 'just write.' The magic isn't something you can beg, borrow, bottle or steal, it is what happens when a person with a unique mindset and a way with words sits down, writes a story and then lets the rest of the world read it.
Thank you both.
---
Yesterday, I wrote 1,608 words on the piece that is still called "Blast the Human Flower," but which really needs a different title. I wrote 1,608 words, and found THE END sometime after sunset. It's the sort of story I think of as the biological equivalent of "nuts and bolts" SF, that manly technopron that puts me to sleep. A couple of years back, I was on a panel at Readercon that asked why Darwin has been less of an inspiration to science fiction than, say, Einstein. Or, put another way, why sf authors are usually more concerned with, say, astrophysics, engineering, and robotics than they are with zoology, botany, and geology. It was a good panel. Dune was offered up as an especially good example of science fiction in which biology is the cornerstone of the tale. The sort there needs to be many more of, stories at least as concerned with life and earth sciences as with technology. Oh, and there's the matter of anthropology/sociology/psychology, too – which also seem frequently ignored or frowned upon by the self-appointed gatekeepers of the genre. I could get into the whole Apollonian sf vs. Dionysian sf thing, so-called "hard science" vs. so-called "soft science," writers and readers who don't have the stomach for flesh and sex (sex being, after all, the driving force of evolution)...but I won't.
In the end, of course, it's all matter, viewed at different levels and in different states and configurations, perpetually recycled. So, there. Science fiction, like all literature, is the literature of matter. Distinctions dissolve, as well they ought.
---
Since late Friday afternoon, a migraine has been eating at me. I can't tell if the anger's still here, or if my awareness of it has been eclipsed by the headache. Sometimes, my mood swings and chains of angry days would portend a seizure. Now that the meds have those in check, for the most part, I begin to suspect the same anger and mood swings portend the headaches (there's a lot of interesting data drawing parallels between migraines and certain sorts of seizure disorders, and vice versa). Anyway, I think I like the anger better.
Today is an assembly day. I hope to have Sirenia Digest #73 out to subscribers before midnight. This month you get the new vignette I was just discussing, plus part one of "The Lost Language of Mollusca and Crustacea" (with a great Vince Locke illustration), and the second chapter of the original and eventually very reworked text of Silk.
Throbbing,
Aunt Beast
lady_tigerfish writes:You just can't Tweet Big Thoughts; they take more than 140 characters. I resent any format that demands my thoughts be small.
– and also –
Making the time--for anything--seems to be a thing of the past. Nearly everyone I know describes themselves as lazy, but as far as I can tell, "laziness" seems to translate to nothing more than "not spending every waking hour doing something." There's an almost Puritanical bent to the way we seem to need to be busy every hour of ever day, to the way stillness is demonized as sloth. Like if we stop moving for two seconds, the devil himself will descend to make use of our idleness. We certainly treat each other that way whenever one of our own dares to step outside the regimen and, say, turns off the cell phone for awhile. Funny, since (as other commenters have pointed out) this pace actually makes us less productive in the long run.
And
mrs_ralph writes, of writing and this blog:I don't think that's what people are looking for when they follow a writer. I can't speak too much for other people but I think I was looking for the deep, dark secret of how to. Turns out there is no deep, dark secret or if there is one it is 'nose to the grindstone, shoulder to wheel and get on with it already!' or as so many writers say 'just write.' The magic isn't something you can beg, borrow, bottle or steal, it is what happens when a person with a unique mindset and a way with words sits down, writes a story and then lets the rest of the world read it.
Thank you both.
---
Yesterday, I wrote 1,608 words on the piece that is still called "Blast the Human Flower," but which really needs a different title. I wrote 1,608 words, and found THE END sometime after sunset. It's the sort of story I think of as the biological equivalent of "nuts and bolts" SF, that manly technopron that puts me to sleep. A couple of years back, I was on a panel at Readercon that asked why Darwin has been less of an inspiration to science fiction than, say, Einstein. Or, put another way, why sf authors are usually more concerned with, say, astrophysics, engineering, and robotics than they are with zoology, botany, and geology. It was a good panel. Dune was offered up as an especially good example of science fiction in which biology is the cornerstone of the tale. The sort there needs to be many more of, stories at least as concerned with life and earth sciences as with technology. Oh, and there's the matter of anthropology/sociology/psychology, too – which also seem frequently ignored or frowned upon by the self-appointed gatekeepers of the genre. I could get into the whole Apollonian sf vs. Dionysian sf thing, so-called "hard science" vs. so-called "soft science," writers and readers who don't have the stomach for flesh and sex (sex being, after all, the driving force of evolution)...but I won't.
In the end, of course, it's all matter, viewed at different levels and in different states and configurations, perpetually recycled. So, there. Science fiction, like all literature, is the literature of matter. Distinctions dissolve, as well they ought.
---
Since late Friday afternoon, a migraine has been eating at me. I can't tell if the anger's still here, or if my awareness of it has been eclipsed by the headache. Sometimes, my mood swings and chains of angry days would portend a seizure. Now that the meds have those in check, for the most part, I begin to suspect the same anger and mood swings portend the headaches (there's a lot of interesting data drawing parallels between migraines and certain sorts of seizure disorders, and vice versa). Anyway, I think I like the anger better.
Today is an assembly day. I hope to have Sirenia Digest #73 out to subscribers before midnight. This month you get the new vignette I was just discussing, plus part one of "The Lost Language of Mollusca and Crustacea" (with a great Vince Locke illustration), and the second chapter of the original and eventually very reworked text of Silk.
Throbbing,
Aunt Beast
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 06:38 pm (UTC)When someone asks me to repeat a single orignal tweet word for word, of any tweets ever, I've got nothing. Not just of favorites. I just don't remember any tweets at all.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 06:41 pm (UTC)When someone asks me to repeat a single orignal tweet word for word, of any tweets ever, I've got nothing. Not just of favorites. I just don't remember any tweets at all.
I don't think tweets are meant to be memorable. They are, by default, unmemorable.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 06:43 pm (UTC)The only person I follow who tweets memorable tweets is Kristin Hersh, but that's mostly because she's quoting her hilarious and smart kiddos. Also, as a songwriter, I think she has a way with single lines.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 07:03 pm (UTC)Sometimes, William Gibson says something that sticks with me. But yeah, Kristin, too. Caveats.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-09 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-09 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 06:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 07:05 pm (UTC)So, I don't know, but it's nice to know there are others who "resent" such short character limits.
In these contexts, they are anathema to any thought beyond the most cursory, casual of communications.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 07:40 pm (UTC)Always hoping to soothe you,
Nothing short of opiates soothes this.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 08:48 pm (UTC)I've had a nasty headcold the last four days, complete with a headache that feels like an incredibly thin knife blade's been inserted into my temple, and then is being ever so slowly and methodically twisted a few millimeters, at an interval just irregular enough to be absolutely infuriating. Headaches suck.
Tweets are almost the modern equivalent of telegrams - inherently limited to short essentials, but alas unfortunately not limited by exorbitant cost.
Tweets play into the general desire to know enough about what's going on with someone to feel informed, but not enough to be bored. And most people's boredom thresholds are quite low when it comes to details of other people's lives or thoughts. Besides, many just take the info and use it as an excuse to put it into the context of their own lives (see the first bit of this comment for a good example - I may be aware of the tendency, but unfortunately awareness doesn't equal immunity!).
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 09:26 pm (UTC)Tweets are almost the modern equivalent of telegrams - inherently limited to short essentials, but alas unfortunately not limited by exorbitant cost.
Not sure I can agree with that. Telegraphs performed a different and far less casual function. They tended to carry important news.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 09:51 pm (UTC)Telegraphs performed a different and far less casual function. They tended to carry important news.
Cost was, and is, the gatekeeper. Add that back to tweets, and the volume would drop and the information content would increase.
I wonder if this issue isn't an inherent aspect of communication forms. For all we know, the background radiation of the universe is actually a communications medium from higher-order civilizations, but we'll never interpret it because the vast majority of it is the alien equivalent of viagra and penis-enlargment spam.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 10:24 pm (UTC)I wonder if this issue isn't an inherent aspect of communication forms. For all we know, the background radiation of the universe is actually a communications medium from higher-order civilizations, but we'll never interpret it because the vast majority of it is the alien equivalent of viagra and penis-enlargment spam.
Brilliant!
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 09:04 pm (UTC)Thanks for the thoughts on SF. I'd put myself in the Dionysian/earth sciences camp, too - I'm not much of an SF reader now. Too much of it lacks awe or darkness or heart (and I cannot easily define these things that I look for.)
Wow, two parts to The Lost Language? Brilliant. I don't think I thanked you before - when you first mentioned this piece, you stuck in a link about Victorian flower language, and that's slowly sparking off something in my head. It may be a story. But cheers.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 09:27 pm (UTC)Oh, it's Bowie's 65th today!
How did I miss that!
Wow, two parts to The Lost Language?
It sort of got out of control and became necessary.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-09 05:59 am (UTC)Wow, two parts to The Lost Language?
I'm toying with doing illustrations for it when its done... Little ink drawings, maybe. Definitely the niftiest Cephalopodmas present ever.
And also, that illustration by Vince Locke is probably my favorite and may be destined to become a tattoo...
no subject
Date: 2012-01-09 04:21 am (UTC)Which is absolutely terrific.
Tweating
Date: 2012-01-09 05:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-09 03:32 pm (UTC)I worked in a fury, but I have nothing accomplished to show, just some progress on some fronts, and no progress despite effort on others. Toil is a good psychological defense against others, but not the self. I will finish a poetry review (maybe two) today, do a little game design, do my day job work and exercise and make an epic birthday dinner for
And so, the prescribed benzos and the blood pressure meds...
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 03:28 am (UTC)Bad metaphors.
By the way, it baffles me to see people "expecting" things out of an artist's personal matters. I understand when they look for an official statement or an analytic comment on some sort of situation, but when it comes to mundane subjects.. what is it that they really want?
Me, I'm after a good story. Stories are things made of life and death, with some wonder for extra measure. Real life, as they call, are made of fragments of stories. Each memory we hold dear not only is not entirely true (Time has his way of shaping the past to our liking), but also, if written into paper, would resonate with a reader just as a fictional account would.
The writing bits can become quite boring at times, but I never tire of your thoughts of wordly affairs, your lighthouse pictures or your comments on stories you find amazing. Those snippets of your life make you a real person, with fears and longings, and not some beacon of the writerhood.
PS: I did resurrect my LJ account just for the sake of this comment. I've been silently reading your blog for months now, and I feel sorry for not taking action earlier and being part of your reason to not post regularly as before. But I'm not leaving the ship anytime soon!