Reflection / Playlist / Perth / Door

Upon reflection: an update on Sunday’s braindump about new ideas

I feel compelled to open with a metaphor about the sudden flare of a sky rocket (and their unseen plummet back to earth) or the task of catching fireflies (and coaxing them to glow inside the mason jar).

One piece of context I did not mention on Sunday is that I had just been watching Justin Paton’s superb ‘How To Look at a Painting’ on TV1 (the series based on Paton’s book of the same name). The show had, I suspect, conditioned me to thinking, if not in two dimensions, at least in visual and static terms. The image of the New Zealander looking upon a ruined London could be taken up and expanded into a nice collection of images (kiwis in jandals and MacPacs looking at the bombed-out remains of Stockholm, an ivy covered Eiffel tower, the crumbling facades of Wall Street…)

(Even this seems rather obvious and laboured to me today.)

But to take this idea and make fiction… it’s just too static. Perhaps Prof. Blyde Muddersnook did it best 101 years ago?

Playlist for an elongated February

Sirius/Eye in the Sky – Alan Parsons Project

When I write my Masters thesis – John K Samson

Night Terror – Laura Marling

Witches – Low

Bizness – tUnE-yArDs

Tiny Dancer – Elton John (but only if you sing it: 'Hold me closer, Tony Danza')

Joey – Concrete Blonde

England  –  The National 

Mykonos  –  Fleet Foxes

Away in WA

This’ll be my last post before I fly out to Perth to attend their writers festival. I arrive late on Wednesday (it’s a pretty long way from Wellington: two x 3.5 hour flights) and am being taken to Rottnest Island to watch birds and snorkel on Thursday before Germaine Greer’s opening address.

I’m appearing in three sessions:

• Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary with Barbara Trapido and Arnold Zable
• Feast of Words with Barbara Trapido, Johan Harstard and Dennis O'Driscoull
• Short, not so sweet with Janette Turner Hospital and Amanda Curtin.

I’ve also got two days to explore around Perth after the festival finishes. If I can’t post during the fest, I’ll do a round-up once I get back to Wellington.

Until then, here's a photo of a door: