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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Still not sure what to call this project. At first it was a poem, then a story, now something is nagging at me to think of it as a book, a novel! I wonder if there will actually be that much material in it...
Details of the work keep cropping up and interesting me and changing, I want to look at the project as a whole for a minute. The idea is that Peter, a conflicted youngish man with anxieties and a love of Spanish poetry and a love for his girlfriend, Laura, who also has some anxieties, though different ones; Peter is making a project of translating poetry from this 19th-C. Chilean poet Maximiliano Josner Ãvala. And woven into this is a back-story about Ãvala's work being mostly unpublished, and about Ãvala's life and work. Everything is still very unfocused; I'll be thinking over the next couple of weeks how to bring portions of it into focus.
So you'll be talking about mistranslation and shortcuts, in the back yard with Laura, drinking in the humidity and the bird calls -- you'll be sprawled out on the grass beside where she's sitting, effectively you are looking up at the fading glow of sunset and she down at the book she's reading -- she's already getting annoyed at the dusk and swatting at a mosquito, heading in.
Peter's in the back yard lying sprawled out on the grass and Laura's sitting by his side and reading Josner's thoughts on magic -- sitting listening with half an ear to Peter's rambling discourse, now he's stuck on mistranslation
The book of poems is Josner's writings, short melodic notes on magic, not allowed to quote them but I should quote Peter's mistranslations, also show him writing in the back yard with his insect noise cicadas larks and bumblebee and walking in the early morning down past Mountain Station and the park, he's fretting, brooding as the nighttime's dark and quiet ebb, he heads back home and goes to brew some coffee.
Maniapedia offers clients supervised, controlled "Mental Illness Experiences", in a variety of safe settings. Clients will have the opportunity to descend into the pit of schizophrenia/mania/psychosis and to emerge unharmed from its jaws after a set period.
Slogan -- some variation on "Abandon hope all who enter here" which makes it clear that Maniapedia is in the business of hope and growth. "Embrace hope all who enter here" possibly; or something a little faker, slicker. Possibly have the Hippocratic oath on the homepage somewhere, with a sort of implied self-consciousness of the irony/hypocrisy (There's a fine line...) in such a declaration.
Understanding of self. MIE and the experience of return to normalcy will provide client with a heightened understanding of his/her internal structures, needs, desires, fears (and, but, is that such a selling point?)
Conquering fear of illness. Fear of mental illness/breakdown is a neurosis* which can prevent the client from living an honest, non-repressed life. The controlled, supervised nature of the MIE allows the patient to confront and master this fear across multiple sessions. Here we will have to include some language about the low failure rate, and I'll note in passing that the sardonic tone does not quite ring true for a "business proposal", if that is indeed what's being proposed, and that the high negatives of the term "illness" may be a way of shooting yourself in the foot, it's becoming an inseparable core part of your strategy.
Vacation from self -- market this aspect of it to the "mental health tourists" segment of the client base mentioned above. (Strictly avoid, of course, too much time spent on this segment, this and the neurotic repeat business, would not be desirable -- we would like to try and paint a more therapeutically defensible picture of the business. But they have to be mentioned when they are, after all, such a key potential piece of our revenue stream.)
What motivation people would have for using our service is going to be a sticking point if you make it one -- on the one hand it sort of seems obvious to me that people would want to experience insanity if there was a safe out, but --
I know, not really, right? That would be difficult and unlikely to succeed, for us just to come out saddles blazing, "We know you want to go crazy, come on, give it a try," doesn't make much of an advertisement unless there is already a group of well-off people who want to go crazy and will seek us out -- and if we pitch it that way it will seem more like a form of entertainment we are advertising than a therapy. So instead of trying to justify it we take as read that we will be a success, that everybody's already on the same page... if we can get away with that...
*And of course a key to Maniapedia's success will be getting its client base to accept this formulation.
posted evening of July third, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Story ideas
Okay, who knew about this? I did not know about it and now I am blown away, stunned. This is the best thing ever. (Thanks for the link, Henry!)
In 1957, the Italian government commissioned Salvador Dalà to paint a series of 100 watercolor illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the greatest literary work written in the Italian language. The illustrations were to be finished by 1965, the 700th anniversary of the poet’s birth, and then reproduced and released in limited print editions. The deal fell apart, however, when the Italian public learned that their literary patrimony had been put in the hands of a Spaniard.
Undeterred, Dalà pushed forward on his own, painting illustrations for the epic poems that collectively recount Dante’s symbolic travels through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. After Dalà did his part, the project was handed over to two wood engravers, who spent five years hand-carving 3,500 blocks used to create the reproductions of DalÃ’s masterpiece.
Another stab at the story of Laura and Peter's day in the life.
Morning
Laura's wishing Peter would just
Drop this false persona, would just
Break this patterned silence
Where he's built a lonesome castle. Now she
Cries out in the morning when she
Wakes and finds him gone. She wishes
He'd reach out and touch her, wants
To hold him in his grief -- she wants to
Have back these long years that
she's been waiting for his voice. Peter's
Walking in the garden, where his
Winding paths are laid,
Blooming crocus in the springtime, blooming
Hostas in the shade, he wanders
Down the road to town, but nothing's
Open Sunday morning, now he
Rubs his eyes and wonders if he'll
ever find his home.
Expectation conquers knowledge and the
Evidence of senses; what I
see and hear and feel
I'll never grasp, I'll never find;
For all I cogitate and pray I'll never
Sit beside your bedside, seeing
Gauzy patterns traced out
On the page of wounded time.
She gets up, groggy, runs the water,
Steaming up the mirror, she hears
Peter downstairs in the kitchen,
hopes he's making coffee,
Laura's tired out, she didn't sleep well,
Combs her hair and squints and in the
Mirror she can see the look of
anguish on her face.
She's downstairs with a cup of coffee,
Looking quizzically at Peter,
Peter's solemn face that just
can't seem to meet her gaze.
A question's in the air and they both know it, but the
heavy silence keeps their lips held tight; keeps
Heavy thoughts drawn back to yesterday.
Peter in his sweatshirt and his
Groggy eyes, unshaven, takes the
coffeepot that's sitting
On the table, on the table.
He mumbles some reply to Laura's gaze, he smells the coffee,
Smiles weakly, frets; he says
The weather's beautiful outside this morning,
springtime Sunday morning, says
we ought to take our bikes up to the Glen Trail, take a ride.
 
Afternoon
Laura's in the garden, weeding,
Smiling, legs are aching
From the ride up Union Hill to Chester
fresh now in her memory;
She bends down, and the shadow
Of the mountain laurel's branches
Writes — asemic scripture sliding off her shoulder as she moves.
Peter's sitting reading in the sunshine, drinking coffee,
Now his book lies open on the lawn,
he's watching Laura working,
Dancing slow across the garden,
Yellow t-shirt smudged with topsoil,
Dancing slow across the garden
through the sunlight and the shade.
Evening
Laura's by the bedside, catches
Peter's eye, she smiles and asks him
what's he thinking, work tomorrow, ready for another week?
He yawns and stretches, smiles back, already dreaming some,
he mumbles, says let's take some time off in July, he'll maybe
take some days around the 4th... and fireworks already going
off in the air around them
"You'se a Viper" by Stuff SmithHarlem Hamfats [wow! I always thought this was originally a Stuff Smith tune! He was covering Hamfats] -- this is Dale Burleyson and the 4th St. NiteOwls performing a truly spectacular cover version. Dig the washboard, dig the pedal steel and clarinet solos -- fast forward to 20:30:
Or really, don't -- watch the whole concert, get a "Viper" treat midway in. This is the NiteOwls performing a year ago at Barbes -- tonight Ellen and I are going to see them at Tierney's. Can't wait! They are opening for Ruby on the Vine, whose new album is included in the admission.
posted afternoon of June 30th, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Songs
