Saturday night fever...

An extended episode of fever this week, while thoroughly mundane and inconvenient, presented the intriguing possibility that I might access an as yet untapped state of the subconscious that would illuminate my writing. Bouts of delirium springing forth untold sapience and literary genius. Rather like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, lolling about under his lime tree bower in 1797, conjuring up poetry that lives and breathes in line and verse today. Although his ingenuity was possibly induced more frequently by opium than febrile disease.
Whether it was partly due to professional hazard (years of rejection, self-imposed seclusion, substance abuse, complex and clandestine personal relationships - some of those dudes make contemporary man look saintly) or they were just plain unlucky, it's curious how many poets through the ages have met an entirely hapless end. I made a list once.

• Euripides, the Greek playwright, was mauled to death by a pack of wild dogs in 406BC.
• According to Pliny the Elder, Athenian poet Aeschylus was killed by a falling tortoise dropped by an eagle in 456BC.
• Italian poet Dante Alighieri fell ill and died just as he completed The Divine Comedy in 1321. Doh.
• Christopher Marlow, rumoured to be an Elizabethan secret agent, was killed in a pub brawl in 1593.
• Sir Francis Bacon died in 1626 of suffocation caused by a severe chill, after stuffing a chicken with snow to test his theory of refrigeration.
• Having given away his entire fortune, Leo Tolstoy froze to death in a railway station in 1910.
• WS Gilbert drowned in an English lake trying to save a damsel in distress in 1911.
• In 1932 Hart Crane, a 'pederastic alcoholic' in love with a Danish merchant mariner, drowned himself by jumping off a steamboat into the Gulf of Mexico.
• William Burroughs accidentally killed his wife when he tried to shoot an apple off her head in Mexico in 1951.
• Hilaire Belloc died in 1953 from burns he sustained after stumbling into a fireplace.
• American Surrealist poet Frank O'Hara was killed by an errant beach buggy in 1966.
• Playwright Tennessee Williams was at home in New York when he choked to death on a bottle cap in 1983.

I'm sorry to say this persistent bout of fever has not conceived anything close to a blinding flash of brilliance. All it's produced so far is sweaty hair, a clammy glow and endless spontaneous rounds of rug-up-strip-off-rug-up-strip-off. 
And a frustratingly lean word count for this week.

Cautionary Tales for Children by Hilaire Belloc. Hmmm. "Don't stand too close to the flame" ?

Pondering Le Pétomane...

Last night on Spicks and Specks there was a question about a famous 19^th century French performer with a most unique skill set.

It made me think how true it is that fact is so often stranger than fiction, and that drawing from real life characters can bring colour and life to novel writing. Had history not proven this story true, one could be accused of conjuring up a ridiculous - albeit imaginative - outlandish tale.

French flatulist Josef Pujol (yes that’s his real name) was born in Marseilles. In the 1890s he became the star attraction at the Moulin Rouge, known by his stage name as Le Pétomane, translation: ‘fart maniac’.

As a schoolboy, Pujol discovered an extraordinary talent for contracting his abdominal muscles and expelling air in musical tones that rivalled the finest of wind instruments.

In adulthood, casting aside his job as a baker, Fujol took his fantastical talent to the stage. Some of the highlights of his act included sound effects of cannon fire and thunderstorms, and even the sound of a dressmaker tearing two yards of calico – a full 10 second rip. He played ‘O Sole Mio and La Marseillaise on an ocarina connected by a rubber tube to his bum. He could blow out a candle from a distance of several yards. And his audience included Edward, Prince of Wales, King Leopold II of Belgium and Sigmund Freud.

Le Pétomane became one the highest grossing acts at the Moulin Rouge, raking in around 20,000 francs for each performance, well above the 8,000 francs famed stage actress Sarah Bernhardt regularly brought in at the peak of her career there.

Who would’ve thought it? Le Pétomane proves that everyone is a star and can shine in their own right, and everyone has a story to tell. And that’s what I love about people.

Week 1 writing wrap...

Lessons learnt during my first week of book writing:

1. Glue your bum to the chair and just start writing. Cleaning light switches does not get words on the page. Neither does polishing the leaves on my ficus. Although the house looks fabulous.
2. Research days and writing days work more effectively when separated.
3. Fast flow writing is a great technique for getting the pen (fingers) moving and it’s mindboggling the memories and images that spring forth from your subconscious self.
4. In high school it was really neat handwriting but now it looks more like hieroglyphics…hmmm.
5. Writing is really, really hard! One of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It’s also liberating, exhausting, frustrating and intoxicating! 

Today’s musical inspiration – an all time favourite song by The Helio Sequence – Shed Your Love. Best enjoyed on the couch with a deep glass of Shiraz, a comfy pen and a fat notebook with textured pages to let loose the creative spirit… Do it do it!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOcEYc7DIBI

A word chiefly used for the weather...

Last night my friend Sam asked me to blog about the rain. 
Given the darkening thundery sky and violent flurries of stinging raindrops marching like frenzied tin soldiers out of kilter across the roof, she may have imagined poetry.

But it made me think about weather reports. And more specifically the question: Do you ever hear the word ‘chiefly’ used anywhere except in weather reports?

“A trough sweeping across the east is generating areas of rain and storms over NSW and southern QLD. A high is pushing cool southerlies and a few showers into the southeast, chiefly along the coast. A trough over the west is generating rain patches and a few storms.” News.com.au

That happy gas bloke who reads the weather on Channel 10 often says it too.

“It’s gonna be drips and drops across rooftops chiefly up and down the beaches tonight folks, so if you’re heading out on the town to flick a hoof don’t forget your brolly!”

The Bureau of Meteorology website has a page called Weather Words where it carefully and specifically outlines conditions that require particular word usage.

For example: ‘Drizzle: Fairly uniform precipitation composed exclusively of very small water droplets (less than 0.5 mm in diameter) very close to one another.’

In the absence of direction on when to use the term ‘chiefly’, I’ve concluded that this word is a throwback from the days when the Queen’s English was the common vernacular in the Commonwealth. Before newsreaders started joking about what they had for breakfast on the 6am national broadcast and kids created an entire new electronic language where digits and consonants jockey for position and vowels have been excluded all together.

I quite like it. ‘Chiefly’. It has a ring of authority and confidence despite, or perhaps in spite of, the BOM’s inability to predict the weather with regular accuracy.

Conviction is key when imparting important information. Whether the weather is written or spoken it’s all, chiefly, in the delivery.

Hungry beasts...

There’s a moment in the movie Julie and Julia (a story of two lives intertwined by cooking and blogging) when, in a fit of frustration Julie’s husband accuses her of being a narcissist who thinks she’s the centre of the universe because she’s so committed to her blog.

“What do you think all your followers are going to do?” he fires. “Commit mass suicide if you don’t blog for one day?”

Apart from making me really, really hungry, the film pinpointed one of the reasons for this blog’s being.

When you set out to take on a huge, personal challenge, tapping into the energy and the confidence that the people around you have in you and your aspirations, is like plugging in to a metaphysical generator that propels you forward.
It helps you to believe that you can actually achieve what you set out to do, be it murdering lobsters in a raging pot of boiling water, de-boning duck and stitching its flaccid belly together with a skewer, or writing a book.

Each time a comment appears on your blog it gives you a lift, a small surge that reasserts your conviction when self-doubt rears its bothersome head.

So while yes, of course this blog is all about me, essentially it’s just as much about you.

Today's musical inspiration...

Love love love this song! And the video is cool too - best pilot porn ever ;-)
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/200325/760975

Which way does the ballerina spin?

I tried something different this morning. It started out as a simple Fast Flow writing exercise but I ended up feeling like I was refereeing a biffo between my right and left brain inside my cerebral boxing ring.

Fast Flow writing is a great way to get the pen moving on the page. Start with a few deep breathing exercises to clear your mental slate, then start writing. Hand over to your subconscious mind and let words fall out of the pen.

It requires a certain discipline to be so free. That is, to let the words flow with complete disregard for structure, grammar or punctuation for 20 minutes straight, no stopping. At least it does for a self-confessed Sheriff of the Grammar Constabulary.

Grammar, spelling, vocabulary, punctuation and structure are all left brain tasks, and the more you worry about them the more your right brain, your creativity springboard, will be stifled.

It doesn’t matter what you write, or if it’s relevant to anything, its value lies in opening up the mind to access information that is deep within you. A means through which you can be open and spontaneous, liberating and authentic, and out of which you may just find a few gems to carry on with.

It often takes me a couple of false starts (rude interruptions from my left brain) to get going, but once the pen is in free flow it seems like the most natural state of being. I wondered about this right brain left brain conflict so I did a little research and stumbled upon a visual test.

At first the ballerina spun clockwise, then faltered and turned anti-clockwise. Then clockwise. Then anti-clockwise. Then I got dizzy and had to stop. Giving both my right and left brain their time in the sun seems to be my challenge.

Give it a go. Which way does the ballerina spin for you?

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/wacky/the-right-brain-vs-left-brain/story-e6frev20-1111114577583

Image above by Petty, chrysalis.com.au

On first lines...

In Perth last week I was telling my good friend Rowan that I’m not really sure how one should start to write a book. 
A patient smile, then: “It’s easy isn’t it? Don’t you just type ‘Once upon a time’ and go from there?”

He’s got a point. Just start writing.

It made me think about famous first lines and the enigma of how to hook your reader with a single sentence. 
The old cliché is not reserved for Golden Books alone. James Joyce began his ‘practice run’ to Ulysses with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and this pearler: “Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo…” No, apparently it didn’t suck me in either, judging by the dog eared bookmark that’s been stuck on page 83 since time immemorable.

For its slightly shady mystique (say it out loud with an accent) I love: “Call me Ishmael”, from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

For its irrepressible visual image: “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump bump bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin.” AA Milne, Winnie the Pooh.

Because it makes me giggle: “James Bond, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death”. Ian Fleming, Goldfinger.

And Nabokov has to get a mention for: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”  Brilliant. But it’s a fine line between provocative and just plain creepy if you’ve seen the movie and can hear the salacious strains of Jeremy Irons’ Humbert Humbert breathing that opener. Err.

Waiting to dream up the ultimate line smacks of pure procrastination. It’s got to be a cracker though.

So while I get started on the plot I’ll put it out there – do you have any opening gems to share?!

On dreaming...

dream /drim/ n: A vision voluntarily indulged in while awake; Daydream; Reverie; A wild or vain fancy; A hope that gives one inspiration; An aim. - Macquarie Australian Encyclopedic Dictionary.

Not sure which one of those best describes my dream - maybe all of them! - but I do know that when your dream starts pounding ever louder in your head it's time to start listening.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post was onto something when he wrote of the Kalahari Bushmen: "Only a fool ignores the tapping within". (A Conversation with the African Bush; Wilderness and the Human Spirit, 1996.)
Living a nomadic and stark existence on the world's oldest continent, the Bushmen were way ahead of their time. Van Der Post recalled an incident just after WWII when he was on an exploratory mission in the Kalahari Desert for the British Government. 
One day his Bushman tracker broke apart from the group and parked off under a thorn tree. Impatient to continue, the intrepid adventurer asked his interpreter to get the man moving.
"No," he was told. "I can't do it. He is doing very important work. He is listening to his tapping." He went on to liken the Bushman's tapping to a white man's telegram.
"Don't you know we Bushmen have telegrams inside ourselves. This tapping tells us of things that are still to come, things so far away that we cannot see them yet, and that man there is listening in to his tapping to see where he must take us today. Only a fool will not listen in to his tapping when he hears this tapping starting up inside himself."
Here hear.
I'm hoping the tapping of my dream will match the tapping of the keyboard over the next 12 weeks as I try to give voice to my dream of writing a book. This blog is more of a self-motivator than anything, to track the process of writing. And maybe, just maybe, it might even be a story in itself... Wish me luck! R

9.20am today: my writing room, engine room for my dream. 

9.21am: watching from the balcony as 16 yr old Jessica Watson sails away on her dream voyage around the globe.