Experiences Archives - Page 7 of 10 - Los Cuadernos de Julia

Things to Do Before You Die? Waterstones Can Help!

During my journey to Liverpool in early December I went in Waterstones where I was instantly greeted by this display. Christmas time undoubtedly brings with it thoughts about both life and the end thereof, so the prominence of stuff “to do before you die” should not be surprising. Yet the titles of the books do not cease to strike me. Nor their potential content.

Things to do before you pop your clogs: ideas from Waterstones

Earlier this year I compiled a list of books of things and places to “cover” “before you die”, having goldmined Amazon: 1000 Things to Do Before You Pop Your Clogs. But following my Waterstones’ walk-in I decided to check whatever their online outlet had in store. I wasn’t disappointed, to say the least. As if we didn’t think this could be so, there was a book literally on every subject of one’s life, including the most intimate moments. And so, I collected the most jaw-dropping titles, although not omitting some conventional ones, like “Classical Recordings“. A lot still remained behind, so jump to Waterstones’ list to plough through.

For the purposes of the post, let’s imagine you’re planning to travel somewhere. You may refer to my original post, or you may opt in for a more structured compendium: 1001 Places to See Before You Die: Page a Day.

Thinking of what you may be doing in all the places? Legion is the name to your choices. To help you cope, here are 1001 Paintings you must see and 1001 Classical Recordings you must hear before you die. Add to this a touch of luxury by choosing from 1001 Wines and 1001 Foods.

A nature lover? Here is 1001 Gardens you must see before returning to the Garden of Eden. You can go birding, although the authors of the book only scratched some 50 places for that. However, if you are seriously after “1000 things” and birds, why not scoring a birdie at any of 1001 golf courses? Prefer fishing rods to golf clubs? I am sure some of 1001 places to see will have fishing facilities where, with any luck, you will catch one of sought-after 50 fish.

Shopaholics can spice things up with 101 Things to Buy and 52 Things to Do in a Car. The latter may particularly be useful for those who have exhausted the repertoire of Crash the movie and got enough of Roxette’s antiques. Beer lovers aren’t forgotten either: there are a book about 300 Beers and then a special book on 100 Belgian Beers. Absolutely to die for, I say.

Your curiosity will be tempered by Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die. And if you ever exhaust any one thousand of things, try 2001 Things to Do Before You Die. Never forget: the proverbial perpetuum mobile is you, so keep going.

The younger generation may refer to 10 Things to Do before they turn sweet sixteen, and 1001 Videogames to play. (You can refer to the latter book, too, if you are their parent).

Understandably, carrying the world on your shoulders while also trying to do all those things may be difficult. If you can’t be arsed, then you can surely sod that; I am sure there will be no harm in doing so. However, you may just make an escape to one of the unforgettable islands.

Whatever takes your fancy – paintings, shopping, videogames, one hundred or two thousand of those – there will always be a moment when you crave the most natural and intimate experiences. And sometimes you will have obstacles in your way. To help overcome them and to sparkle your imagination, there are 1001 places to pee and 101 places to have sex. Before you die, of course.

How I Write: Proofreading

I previously discussed briefly how structuring the narrative works. Editing is a creative process, so I will be back to it next time. But recently I looked at the problem of proofreading, and this is something that has long intruiged me, especially since I can compare results in at least two languages.

As I stated elsewhere, there is nothing pedantic in my attention to grammar. Although I do occasionally make typos and miss commas, my Russian texts are usually grammatically impeccable, and it comes naturally. On the one hand, I have always read a lot; on the other hand, I know the Russian grammar rules well. When I put a comma somewhere in the sentence, it is both because I know the rule and because I can give an example of the placement in other texts.

With English, I think I can safely say that the articles no longer freak me out. To some extent, the understanding of how to use the English articles was facilitated by my studying of French. At the same time, back in 2003 I found a website that stated that “even native English speakers don’t use articles correctly all the time“. This statement helped me to relax and to start using articles better.

The very first fairy tale I composed was written in a sketchbook; although it was my first, it comprised about 10 pages, written mainly in prose, with a couple of poetic intermezzi. It’s long been lost, and I cannot tell you how good the grammar was. I suspect, though, it wasn’t good at all: I was 6 years old. Just two years later I wrote another fairy tale, this time entirely in prose, and it was co-authored with a classmate over the phone. The story was basically Andersen’s Mermaid, but with the happy ending. When I found it 7 years later, I was so mortified to see how bad the grammar was that I threw it away.

As you can deduce, I’m not that picky because I’m aware of my own faults. But these days we all too often come across the errors that make the author look truly dumb. This post by CopyBlogger dates back to March 2007 – Five Grammatical Errors that Make You Look Dumb. It’s received over 400 comments, and still counting. And yet the web is covered by the thick net of “you’re feedback”, “we may loose”, “this is effecting”… and I shiver each time I come across non-distinguishing between “they’re”, “there”, and “their”.

So, proofreading – how do I do it? You may be doing this differently, but here’re my bullet points.

1. Whether I write in Russian or in English, I don’t look at the keyboard. I was growing up in 1980-90s, so I even got to use the typewriter. Since 1997 I’ve been typing on the computer’s, and then laptop’s, keyboard. Regardless of what kind of “qwerty” I used, I always liked to look at what I was writing. To an extent, this feeds creativity: I am no longer just “hearing” a certain word in my head, I also see it on the paper or screen, and I may note something about it that can be further developed. But in terms of proofreading this saves me a lot of time because I often correct a typo or error as soon as it appeared. And I don’t use Russian stickers on my English keyboard.

How to master this: if you want to reduce the amount of time you spend proofreading, consider learning to type “in blind”. Open up a Word document, type there each key, row by row, CTRL functions including, and start memorising. There is probably a small text, maybe a tongue twister, that you know by heart and can use for training. In the same Word document, start typing this text. At first you will inevitably be looking for a key; but little by little you will begin to follow the keys automatically. When this is easy enough, start retyping short clippings from the newspapers, and eventually begin to type your own texts and emails, looking at the screen and not on the keyboard. Let me know how much your proofreading time has reduced. 🙂

2. Take your time. Don’t start proofreading immediately as you finished writing. Give it a day or two or even longer. If you don’t have much time, go make yourself a brew; if there still isn’t enough time, get up, have a stretch, and maybe have a quick walk around the room. When we write, we immerse in the process; occasionally this even results in minor “injuries” like the ache in your wrist or stiff neck (count those as the sacrifices for art’s sake). But to be able to proofread, we need to take ourselves out of this highly charged creative mood, and immerse in the more sober mood, to enable ourselves to be critical about our own work. So, take your time, take your mind off the text for a minute (or longer, if you can afford so), and come back to it as if…

3. …this is not your text. I absolutely believe that the writer must be their own most rigorous critic. However, many writers tend to like their own texts a lot. I like mine, too, but delighting in good grammar usually comes as an important part of this experience. How do you switch your thinking from writing (creative) to criticising (destructive to some extent)? This is precisely why the previous point was about taking one’s time. To quote O’Henry, a good burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else. When I start editing and proofreading my text, I am never in the same frame of mind as I was while writing it. The text may be written on my computer, in my file; it may be written by my hand. But because my emotional and rational relations to the text have changed, this means that I changed, too. I no longer relate to the text in the same way as when I was writing it, and, as a consequence, I don’t proofread my text. I’m no longer emotionally attached to myself as a writer, and instead I read the text as if it was written by somebody else. A comma in the wrong place? Of course, I shall correct it. An odd fact that raises my doubts? I’ll check it, no problem.

4. Read aloud. A Russian author Isaac Babel was known for writing fairly short sentences. When asked to explain, he said: “I suffered from asthma, and writing long sentences meant that I was out of breath by the middle of a phrase, when reading aloud“. I don’t suffer from asthma, and back in the day I was quite fond of periodic speech, those endless phrases popularised by Leo Tolstoy in Russia and the Modernist writers elsewhere. Two things made me reconsider this devotion. For one, a lot of Russian journalists began to write in this style, and then it spilt over to the popular cirlces, and everyone began to compose those long-winded sentences, with varying grammatical success. And secondly, I started reading my own texts aloud, especially prose. Eventually I got tired of following my own long thoughts, and by the same token came to understand that readers were probably having exactly the same problem.

Reading aloud will generally help you to notice if your sentences are too long; if they’re too cumbersome; if they’re difficult to follow and to understand. When you read aloud, again make every effort to detach yourself from your text. Imagine yourself as a reader who knows next to nothing about the writer and who will read this text on the train. Can they follow the text?

Reading aloud also helps to weed out all the grammatical imperfections you would otherwise not notice. When we speak we don’t use punctuation, but we “mean” it. When you make a pause during the speech, you probably mean a comma, or semicolon, or colon, or dash. To go from one sentence to another we use a full stop. You may skip some of these while writing, but when you read aloud you’re likely to notice these errors.

Lastly, reading aloud allows you to make your text a music to your readers’ ears – or to hear that it’s not quite musical yet. I cannot give advice on how to train yourself to do this because I have a good ear for music in general, so hearing that the text doesn’t sound right comes naturally to me. Still, the key point is listening to what you read. You often notice that two words form a strangely sounding combination; or that it is hard to make sense of what you’re written. I bet if you do this regularly, you will stop composing sentences like the one below (quoted from Brian Clark’s post):

After rotting in the cellar for weeks, my brother brought up some oranges.

I am sure you would hear that this doesn’t sound right.

5. Be attentive – but don’t be too hard on yourself. Back to the beginning of the post: we are not perfect, neither is our grammar. If we were perfect, grammar included, this would most probably mean that something isn’t quite right. That we probably keep ourselves too well in check, and that means in turn that we are afraid of not being as good as we think we are. Alas, the culture of being too opinionated and too critical influences the fact that, instead of constructive feedback on someone’s work, we end up labelling the erring author a “joke”, a “loser”, an “illiterate”, etc. I suspect if you’re influenced by this culture you may be labelling yourself precisely the same when you come across an odd error in your text during proofreading.

I’ll tell you what I do on such occasions, and you see if you can do this for yourself. Usually my errors bemuse me. There is at least one instance with reading a Russian poem aloud that made me look for a different word to describe the sound the dove makes: because the noun and the verb I used, pronounced together, merged to make funny sounding nonsense. If I do find a really stupid mistake, I accept it as a fact and make a note of it, so that I don’t run into the same error next time. But what really makes my day after I finished proofreading is that all those errors and typos remained unknown to the critic who would’ve loved to call me “illiterate”, to avoid paying attention to whatever else I wanted to say.

If you cannot motivate yourself to proofread, use this latter point as the stimulus. Chances are, you may discover that your grammar isn’t that bad at all, and this in turn will raise your confidence significantly. And go to the beginning of the post and read again about how I stopped worrying and began to love the English articles. Realising that I am no worse than those who must be perfect helped a lot.

Blackpool – The Walk of Faith

Blackpool – The Walk of Faith, originally uploaded by loscuadernosdejulia.

One of my Flickr contacts asked me if I felt dizzy, when making this photo. I didn’t in 2009, and neither did I in 2002 when I stood on it for the first time ever. To this day it is an interesting experience, especially because there are always a few people (usually ladies) who are mortified by the thought of taking to the Walk of Faith.

What they do not know, of course, is that this 2-inch glass is capable of withstanding the weights of 5 baby elephants. Therefore, I had no fear standing on the glass, and one of the visitors to the Tower this May has actuallty lied down on the glass.

In fact, do visit this page, to experience the Hitchcock-style, Vertigo-like, Flash version of the view down the glass when you “click if you dare”. But if you do come to Blackpool and climb to the very top of the tower, this is one of the views you are likely to see:

As befits an approaching full Moon…

They say that the full Moon and the periods that lead to it are the moments of heightened emotion and restlessness. Indeed, despite a heavy rain outside, I feel like I’d like to catch a train somewhere. Of course, “to catch a train somewhere” also entails taking a camera – but how much are you really going to snap, if it’s raining cats and dogs? I’m also waiting for a delivery from Graze – thanks to the amazing generosity of Paul who shared a promotional code and waxed lyrical about how good the products were. But now I have to wonder, of course, at what point during the day I am going to lay my hands on this natural goodness. On another hand, I’d feel immensely deprived, if the door bell woke me up at 6am. Yet if it woke me up at 7.40, I wouldn’t mind because I was already awake then.

So, as you can gather, I’m anything but certain about what to do, and the fact that I took a couple of days of holiday at work doesn’t help make things clearer. I also know that I need to buy a book for a good friend, although I could possibly do that in any Waterstone’s.

Perhaps, the best course of action forms itself as I drink my morning coffee.

Right now, though, I feel like reflecting on the fact that most of the posts – indeed, most of my texts, be they literary, scholarly, or professional – are not pre-drafted. Very often they’re not even preconceived. Which makes me wonder about the nature of literature, and from where we take our ideas about it. I am convinced – partly being guilty of this myself – that we often dance from a given image. The given image of an author, e.g., would usually be a guy in specs sitting in a room of his own; or someone enlightened by inspiration, as on this portrait by Fragonard. Then Woolf comes along with her essay – and if you visit Heaton Hall and observe claustrophobic boudoirs, you will begin to see why no Shakespeare’s sister could be an author.

So, gradually we begin to think of an author – or writer – as someone who must live in certain conditions, surrounded by certain things. Further, it begins to appear as if he also must write in specific conditions. Again, this may be taken from contemplating the 17th c. paintings (right) or photographs in modern magazines. And at the same time we absolutely love the fact that the poet Blok or the painter Modigliani were producing their masterpieces in a bar. Thus is formed the image of an inspirational setting. Add to this Henry Miller’s protagonist who composes his texts between having sex and looking for money – and the lovely image of a poor promiscuous artist is shaped.

There is nothing wrong with this image, as such. But there’s a rub, and I will illustrate it on a less demure example. Like many people out there, I am fascinated by the idea of sex on the beach. It’s awesome, and I can’t quite choose between the action taking place when the sun is in full blaze, or at the sunset. Either way, my ideal setting would involve some rocks in the distance, the gentle roaring of the ocean, the pleasant warm wind, seclusion, and the soft sand.

There’re soft sands, in Majorca, for example. But, minus this, the dream place could be found somewhere closer to home, and back in the day when I read the article that shattered the dream I was in Russia. One day I came across an article that unveiled the sad truth of life to me.

“So, you’re dreaming of sex on the beach?” – it read. – “Then brace yourself, for there is nothing romantic about it. The sand is nothing like that luxurious white powder you see on the screen. On a real beach the sand is coarse, and your skin will be burning, and your body will be aching, and there’ll be no pleasure or satisfaction – unless you lie on a big towel. But that isn’t remotely romantic“.

I said this article has shattered the dream. It hasn’t really; instead, it inadvertently pointed out to a gap between the ideal and reality. As much as we may question the reality, one thing is certain: the sand IS coarse, and if you don’t want your romantic time on the beach to turn into a nightmare of applying plasters, you have to take precautions.

Same with writing. Try and do some writing in a bar where you are deafened by music, laughter, and loud voices. What we probably don’t understand is that both the poet and the painter were eating, drinking, and meeting their friends at those bars. Writing came as a bonus; it was a natural consequence of a stimulus. I very much doubt that Blok would go to the bar with a precise idea of composing The Unknown Woman. The visits to the bar, however, made the poem possible.

And then there were Surrealists with their automatic writing. Everything you read in this post or elsewhere on the blog is automatic. The editing is usually minimal and mostly concerns the structure of the phrase, plus adding links, pictures and other media. At the moment, I don’t even know what it is that I’m going to write next. It is correct to say that I wasn’t even going to contemplate our understanding of writing in this post, but as I am contemplating it, I state that I didn’t have a precise idea of what I was going to write. This feels somewhat surreal, and the fact that it’s raining outside and I feel both relaxed and restless makes this post a strong reference to Surrealist study of dreams, hypnosis, and automatic creativity. Yet even though I don’t know what I’m going to write, I feel myself in control of the flow of the piece, even though there is no precise structure for this piece. As one of the speakers at Futuresonic said, blogging made him produce short pieces, half-related to one another, which in turn affected the fluidity and coherence of his oral presenations. For me, real-time blogging is a perfect illustration to the flow of thought, provided this is what you pursue and don’t mind sharing. Many texts were written on the subject of “how I write”, but little do we know, unless we go to the archives, about exactly how the process goes (check out Sholokhov’s draft of Quiet Flows the Don, for example). The beautiful thing about blogging for me is that it can show just that.

It’s taken me an hour to write this post. The delivery from Graze still hasn’t arrived; my slumberish yet creative state of mind is growing stronger; and by all accounts it looks like I’ll spend the day indoors. Although I may somewhat object to pre-writing blog posts, I don’t mind pre-publishing them. And I know that the mood like the one I’m in is precious and has to be caught and used to the fullest.

Illustrations:

Jean-Honore Fragonard, Inspiration (1769)
Jan Brueghel Younger and Peter Paul Rubens, Allegory of Sight (1618)

Drew Hemment: From FutureSonic to Future Everything

I didn’t give it much thought right after the event, but my experience of Futuresonic has so far appeared to always connect to some kind of a festival’s anniversary. Back in 2006, when I attended it for the first time, the participants were trailing the city, carrying balloons with the Futuresonic logo. In 2006, the festival was in its tenth calendar year, so there was a good reason to celebrate. 2006, too, saw the first Social Technologies Summit. I vividly remember Last.fm debuting there. Geolocation and mapping have already been in the focus, and Stanislav Roudavski, a Russian-born, UK-based architect, artist and researcher, shared the insights into what now seems to make Performative Places. In 2006, I was able to review Manchester Peripheral before it officially debuted during the first Manchester International Festival, and it was pleasant to see David Gunn returning to Futuresonic in 2009, with Echo Archive commission from Opera North. Back in the day, David was involved in Folk Songs project, particularly collaborating with Victor Gama, an Angolan-Portuguese composer, on two projects: Folk Songs for the Five Points (2005) and Cinco Cidades (2007). Victor himself, who not only composes music but also makes instruments, was exhibiting at Futuresonic 2006 with his Pangeia Intrumentos.

That festival alone orchestrated a major change in my life. I grew up without the Internet. I didn’t even have a computer well until I was 18. I never really prepared myself to the Internet-led future. Of course, I became proficient with applications and programs that were necessary for my work, but with Social Media still emerging in 2006, I was on the sceptical side. Yet the frustration from not being able to do everything I wanted in the radio environment was growing, and I had already started updating the (now discontinued AOL Homepage) website of a radio programme with short stories, links, poems, quotes… yet I was limited in space on the page, so I had to come up with another idea. The idea culminated in Los Cuadernos and in turn led to many happy, encouraging, amazing, unexpected, and ultimately enlightening, beginnings, meeting, and projects.

Three years later I returned to Futuresonic, this time primarily for Social Technologies Summit, granted I was a delegate. As a result, my impression of the festival is very different: it’s more about technology than art or music. I was more focused on the summit than in 2006; and in 2009, I was an active user of social technologies, hence Identity and Trust or Semantic Web talks were the ones where I naturally found myself actively participating – via Twitter, no less. I was also a more “engaged” or even “embedded” attendant, since I knew more people at the festival than in the previous years. And suddenly it turned out that Futuresonic was once again marking the anniversary: it was the official 10th edition of the festival, although it wasn’t celebrated. But it was also a goodbye to Futuresonic and a hello to Future Everything.

Is there a sprinkle of nostalgy in what I’ve written? There isn’t, and there is. Certainly, there is nothing that I regret, and I wholeheartedly wish that the festival continues growing stronger and even more creative under the new name. On Friday 15 May, I made several impromptu interviews at the festival, which will finally begin to appear here; one of them was with Drew Hemment, the artistic director of the festival, who kindly agreed to a quick chat after a long day at the conference. We talked in 2006, too, and on second thoughts I decided to make both interviews available. They were made in different times of the day: in 2006 we talked in the afternoon; in 2009, it was after 7pm. The changes in skills and voices is audible, too. But one of the questions I asked Drew in 2009 was about special moments, and how they all combined influence the person. For him as the organiser, there were many such moments, and ultimately it’s the journey that one makes that matters and that creates everything that is special about Futuresonic. So, in what I’ve written there’s not really any nostalgy… it’s just the desire and hope to stay on the road and to continue with the journey.

http://www.filefactory.com/widget/music.swf

Go To FileFactory.com

One last thing, which I can only see myself saying on this blog – not in Future Everything Community, for integrity reason… I’m not from Manchester originally, and arrived fairly late to be influenced by the late Tony Wilson. I know who he was, of course, and I’m aware that he’s often praised for pioneering many things, including the proliferation of the digital technologies in the city. As you will hear Drew saying in 2006, one of the reasons Futuresonic landed in Manchester, and not London or Glasgow, was the strength of Manchester’s music culture that had already had a digital/electronic dimension. But just last year at The Circle Club they were searching for the next Tony Wilson. As much as I’m not at ease with this (and any similar) quest, I can’t help thinking that Manchester is throwing away its own baby. Having emerged nearly at the same time as Hacienda vanished in the haze, Futuresonic has been around for over 10 years. Drew’s humility and passion for the festival and the projects he curates are admirable, and I hope he doesn’t lose that in the years to come. Maybe it’s good if Futuresonic continues as a fairly independent event, shunning away from the media hype, attracting the true enthusiasts, and subtly changing the lives of the new attendees. I only hope that, when time comes, Drew’s trouble-making skills will receive the recognition they deserve.

Tweeji: How Afterlife Embraced the Virtual World

As we know, celebrities flock to Twitter to avoid the middle men, be they tabloids or paparazzi. Presumably, they want to speak to their audience directly. But it looks like even the Heaven is eagerly embracing the idea of social interaction and microblogging. Welcome Tweeji, the place where you can meet the dead celebrities who tweet.

Ever wondered why you send your prayers to Jesus with no avail? You may ask him this question directly, but chances are, right now he’s very busy recording a CD with Tupac Shakur. Oscar Wilde is contemplating life in his famous witticisms. Dante Alighieri, the author of The Divine Comedy, is travelling with Virgil somewhere in the Inferno’s bowles, which may explain why he is yet to notice Jesus. (I am secretly waiting to see his beloved Beatrice making an entry). Martin Heidegger is immersed in Hoelderlin, but tells Hannah Arendt that she is ever so close to him. Henry Miller is his usual sexual inspiration, while Confucius spreads the common wisdom in short rhymed messages. And Samuel Johnson, in the 195th year since his birth, revealed himself as an acquaintance of The Stone Roses. (I am sure The Stone Roses fans are pleased).

In all time of Twitter being around, this is surely the most daring addition to the myriad of Twitter-based fun applications. Tweeji certainly takes things to a totally new level where reality and virtual existence blur to the point of creepiness. Or maybe it just reminds us that there is life in the upper spheres. The strangest thing may be, of course, that Jesus and Buddha are considered “celebrities”… but they did have a human side to themselves, after all. And in the age when Beatles and the like have evidently been more popular than Jesus, isn’t that a call to leave the Church behind and speak directly to the “fans”?

The Ode to Memory (And Other Thoughts)

The poem A Thank You to the Wonders of Photography is currently one of the Challenge Poems during the National Poetry Month celebrated in the United States throughout the month of April. It could not escape my attention for a number of reasons. It celebrates memory, and it celebrates photography, but above all, the author mentions the “erasable” state of modern incriptions, which is what I found the most valuable. Now, when I write this blog, I usually do so through a platform’s interface. But when I write poetry, it best comes out when I am out there with a pen and paper. This is not to say that I do not organise my writing with the help of a computer program; or that I never edit my writings once they were transmitted to a Word document. But when I said what I said in this post about Petrarch’s lamenting the state of his manuscripts, I meant just that. And what saddens me the most is that with more and more people using word processors to compose works there is little room left for palaeography or in depth literary criticism – precisely because we cannot see and review the editing process.

Click on the link to read Ode to Memory — a Challenge Poem for National Poetry Month by Sheri Fresonke Harper.
A poem about the way photographic memories have been and will be stored and praising the technology.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1690448/ode_to_memory_a_challenge_poem_for.html

I reacted to the final stanza:

The future is calling with memory sticks
and all worry erased with many neat tricks,
will I haul on my neck more memory so slick,
that never will I doubt a thought arrived with a flick,
of a switch and all sorrow will diminish in time,
as set into blocks more rigid than lime,
my words and my touches my senses sublime
can compete with the fading marches of time
for memory will never fail and arrive so quick.

It brings to mind many thoughts and references. First, of course, is Barbra Streisand’s Memories: “can it be that it was so simple then, or has time rewritten every lie?” While we undoubtely capture a moment with the help of a camera, one cannot fail to agree with some photography critics that the art of photography is the art of choosing. The choice may not be seemingly affected by any rational effort, but it still manifests itself in the choice of angles, models, lighting, etc. So what gets stored on our memory stick is the history of making choices, and it may be particularly interesting to ask ourselves: how do we choose what to remember, when it comes to capturing a moment on camera?

Which makes this a fitting post to reflect on the recent Capture Manchester competition and exhibition at the Cube Gallery. My personal “problems” with the entries have been, as follows: 1) digital art not being distinguished from photography; and 2) the truly narrow focus of entries. The competition invited the photos of any area in Greater Manchester; on display, there were innumerable captures of Manchester’s Town Hall, the Manchester Eye, and other well-known city centre locations. Among the winning entries, the majority were collages or artwork – quite against the suggested focus on photography. But what this ultimately illustrates is how people understand and respond to their own city. As a cameraman myself, I cannot disagree that the Town Hall is an enviable spot to commemorate on film. So is the Manchester Eye. But what about the University? Or Bridgewater Hall? Or indeed, many smaller and less media-savvy areas of Greater Manchester that are poetic in just the same way as the better-known locations? Is Manchester’s best asset in its Edwardian Gothic edifice in Albert Square?

This may have to do with how we understand Beauty, Art, and Poetry. Apparently, as the Textfestival website tells us, in Britain “art” and “poetry” are often considered two different entities. I can relate to that, having once confused an academic with my all-embracing usage of the word “art” in a talk about an individual’s response to an artistic exercise. But we actually deprive the language and our understanding of things by lumping “art” and “painting” together, or by extending the notion of “fine arts” on Art as a philosophical category. We also miss out on an important link between Beauty, Poetry, and Art, thus ending up asking questions whether a mathematical formula or a programming code can be a specimen of Beauty. The title of the film, A Beautiful Mind, is a good insight into if, and how, something seemingly unpoetic can be beautiful and have the state of the art. I am sure many mathematicians and scientists would agree.

I am hoping to visit Textfestival this Saturday, but just for now it is really striking to see how we select places to remember (=capture on camera) and how we then proceed to explain our choice. And the choice seems to be more often described in such terms, as “dazzling”, “lasting”, than “poetic”. We therefore seem to attribute a quality to an image’s impact – but not to the image itself. Undoubtedly, not all is gold that glistens, so a visually impressive (and maybe digitally processed) image is by no means a good image, let alone a poetic image. The question that rises from the above is: can it be that our choice of what to remember bedazzles us and confuses our actual memory? How much are the angles from which we look at different objects belong to our own vision and how much – to what we have seen before?

Below is a slide show of my photos of Stockport (which is to this day a disputed area for Greater Manchester and Cheshire). For my photos of Manchester, visit this link.

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649

A Day at Heaton Park

You know that it took me six years to get to Urbis. Well, it took me seven years to visit Heaton Park, despite the fact that for 4.5 years I lived in Clifton which is only 15 mins by car from Prestwich and the park. Perhaps, these are just some of the most unexplainable things that can happen in one’s lifetime.

I wasn’t planning to go anywhere this Saturday. My week at work was substantially busy. I’m doing basically the same thing as I have been doing since 2006 or even prior to that date – blogging, writing a copy, producing Social Media coverage of events, and also looking into how businesses can incorporate Social Media and Networks in their business routine. So, with a plenty of research, presentations, proposal writing, and even one business meeting the week was busy enough for me to almost forget about St George’s Day.

On Friday evening I relaxed with a glass of German wine. A ‘glass’ is an understatement, really, but then I don’t want to make a bad impression… Nevertheless, I still woke up at 8, and by the afternoon I was wondering if I should stay home or go out. I was well tempted by the sunny weather… and then I remembered that I never yet went to Heaton Park.

Rather than taking a Metrolink tram, I went by bus, and in some 20-25 mins I was near the park. A friend of mine went there before me and found the park mildly disturbing, mainly due to the relief of the land. Indeed, the hills and heaps of trees that conceal ups and downs can produce a weird effect, and as I said, the park would be a perfect place for a Surrealist study of space and our psychological response to it.

The park previously belonged to the Egertons, the wealthy landed aristocratic family. Sir Thomas Egerton, under whom the Hall enjoyed the first phase of its flourishing, was elevated to the peerage by the turn of the 18/19th cc with the title of Baron Grey de Wilton (1784) and then 1st Earl of Wilton (1801). Heaton Hall that is presently enjoyed by thousands of visitors each year was designed in the 18th c. by James Wyatt (British architect) and bears some distinct Italian traits both in outside and inside decor. The orangery that on the day of my visit hosted some private function was added to the house in 1823.

The considerable part of family’s income came from coal mining in North West of England, particularly Radcliffe and Siddal Moor. Sir Thomas purchased many of the paintings we see on display at the Hall, while on the Grand Tour in Europe in 1787-88. His own records indicate that he was collecting English contemporary paintings and the copies of Old Masters in Italy. In Paris, as well, he purchased large quantities of furniture, clothing and porcelain and brought it back, to adorn the Hall.

The rooms that are open to the visitors comprise, on the ground floor: a hall with sculptures in the four semispheral niches; an ante-library and library; the sumtuously decorated Music Room with a Greek harp, a harpsicord, a square piano and a Samuel Green organ; a billiard room; a saloon; and a dining room; and on the first floor: a master’s bedroom; the Cupola Room; the Pink Bedroom; and the Yellow Bedroom. The Cupola Room on the first floor was decorated by the Italian master Biagio Rebecca, but throughout the Hall the technique of grisaille is used extensively.

It is interesting to note the engravings and paintings in the room. In the dining room, for instance, one would be expected to stare at the sad, if not rather gruesome, demise of Dido. A copy of Giercino’s (left), the painting depicts a dying Dido, but what one notices instantly is the wound on her chest and the sword on which she thrusted herself. Arguably, this is not the most fitting painting for the room where people were expected to thrust knives and forks into meats, although the masters of the house had evidently had a different view. On the other hand, the upstairs boudoirs are all decorated with reproductions from the paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds and some contemporary artists, depicting children or mother with a child. And in the library one can see an engraving “The Birth of Shakspeare” where the English Bard is shown greeted by Mother Nature and Passions.

The Hall was sold to Manchester Corporation at the very beginning of the 20th c., and in the recent years was managed by Manchester Art Galleries. Photography is not permitted; apparently, some visitor made the photos and then sold them off, so a snapper is now a no-no, and for the most intrepid of us there is a CCTV in every room. I have to say, though, that a good colour catalogue of the Hall is very due… and I would be up to participating in making it.

The park’s grounds were visited by the Duke of Wellington and recently – by the Pope John Paul II who spoke the Mass. The place is now marked by the so-called Papal Monument. And the Old Town Hall Colonnade (left) is the remaining piece of the town hall that stood in King St in Manchester’s city centre before the new building was erected in Albert Square.

After four hours of walking and talking photographs I was obviously too tired. At one point, as well, I walked up the steep hill, only to find myself within the limits of a golf course, and there I had to make an uneasy choice about climbing over the fence. The uneasiness was in that I was afraid I could fall over, since I haven’t done this kind of exercise for a good number of years. I managed OK, though.

Some information was taken from Peter Riley’s book, Heaton Hall and the Egerton family.

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=70933

René Magritte Revisited… at Heaton Park

René Magritte, Man with a Newspaper, 1928, originally uploaded by The Whitworth Art Gallery.

René Magritte’s Man with a Newspaper (Tate London, 1928) is currently exhibited as a part of Subversive Spaces at Whitworth Art Gallery. The exhibition ends on May 4th, and is the celebration of Surrealist legacy, on its own as well as the influence on contemporary art.

As you already know from my feed, I went to Heaton Park yesterday, and, being my own cameraman, I used this small gallery at Heaton Hall to make some pictures. I took a photo of the bench, as well, but it wasn’t until later on that I realised that altogether the photos could be a kind of subversive version of Magritte’s painting… so, with the kind help from my friend, I put the photos in a collage.

On an interesting note, a friend of mine went to Heaton Park long before me, and told me that he was found the park somewhat disturbing. The hilly relief, the vast grounds, and the heapes of trees produced this kind of effect on him. Personally, I was delighted by the very same features, but at the moment an idea for a thrilling ghost story is boiling in my head, which story would most certainly have a generous sprinkle of Surrealism in it.

Latte Art

Update: When I wrote this post at the end of September 2006, just over a month after I started blogging, I wouldn’t know that in nearly three years time it would have become one of the most read posts on the blog. In fact, as of now, it is just inside the Top 15 at #13, and is usually found in Google Images. I’m obviously tempted to think that the post, as well as the Coffee Art site, have been the orchestrating forces behind the surge in Latte Art in Russia, as the TV report from Russia Today channel well illustrates.

And if you’re up to trying your hand at drawing with milk and chocolate, to adorn your latte with exquisite designs, here’s something to help you get started, from Vinko @ Hong Kong and Toronto.

Original post from 26 September, 2006.

For one of my projects, I’ve been researching into coffee, its origins, sorts, etc. On the way I came across an intriguing term ‘latte art’ and went on to look for images. Well, this is a 3-page gallery of latte art images, which, despite being generally similar, sometimes are real gems.

Also, check out another fantastic website, Just Coffee Art, where art images are painted with coffee.