bookmark_borderVoices in my head

How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not “the thing with feathers.” The thing with feathers has turned out to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich.

From Woody Allen, The Complete Prose

And so I sat there, chuckling to myself whilst my fellow commuters stared obstinately out of the train window. At least I hoped that’s what they were doing given that my involuntary giggles were at times quite loud and mostly sudden.

Now I’d warrant that you, dear reader, have heard Mr. Allen speak. You’ve heard the tones and inflections he imparts on his words, the stresses and strains he places on the punctuation, and the stuttering pause ridden asides that you realise are faked as soon as he starts to eloquently pontificate on whatever it is that currently irks – and here I’m thinking specifically of the Marshal McLuhan scene in Annie Hall, you know the one, where he breaks away from the cinema queue to berate the amateur film critic and people like him.

Must watch that movie again, it’s wonderful and probably has had more impact on modern cinema than a lot of people realise. I’m not a die-hard Woody Allen fan, he has produced a few duds in his time, and these days he is in severe danger of becoming a parody of himself, which in turn is probably a sign of his success and fame (and notoriety?).

I digress.

As mike noted a few weeks back, the written word can take on a whole new realm if you are aware of how the author uses phrasing and rhythm. The word patterns and movement that are created when speaking aloud offer a much deeper understanding of the words as they leap off the page and through your eardrums.

The spoken word goes back a long way, yes even before blogs or *gasp* the internet was invented (honestly, there was a time when there weren’t even computers, how did we manage?!), and it’s little wonder that it still carries the most impact. However I wonder if, given the rise in “personal publishing” in the past few years, there isn’t a requirement for a separate set of Writing Style Guidelines aimed solely at personal writing, where the writer is free to punctuate in a way that enforces the pauses and inflections they naturally use?

And no, I’m not talking about any free-form punctuation nonsense, but surely within the strict rules of grammar to which we all *coughs* adhere there is a little wiggle room for some artistic expression?

Or am I… you know… talking rubbish again?

Onto deeper matters then, why doesn’t Woody (Allen to his friends) have a blog? The one thing that hits me whilst reading his Complete Prose is how suited it would be to a blog format. Most of the pieces are short and punchy, and only really suit a compiled print publication. Ohhh sure he could write for a magazine, granted the bulk of the pieces in the book featured in New Yorker, but admit it, you’d LOVE a Woody Allen blog. Admittedly the fact rumour that he doesn’t own a compuer and still uses the manual typewriter on which he wrote his first screenplay might put the kibosh on that idea.

Mind you, thinking about it, a Woody Allen podcast would be much better.

bookmark_borderSummer

Finally thoughts turn to summer as the sunshine holds and whilst it’s still a few weeks away the holiday is already beckoning. Of course there are some priorities to sort out, namely which books to take and what music to fill the iPod with.

I’m driving down to Torquay on my own, Louise, her sister and the kids are taking the train, so I’m gonna go overnight I think. I have the iTrip working, a car charger and so just need some good driving tunes. I’m also gonna make up a “summer” playlist – suggestions welcomed.

Book wise I’m going to take some classics with me I think – Counte of Monte Cristo for example – as well as some easier to read stuff. The list so far is as follows:

  • Complete Prose – Woody Allen
  • Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
  • Lanark – Alasdair Gray
  • Don Quixote – Cervantes
  • Count of Monte Cristo – A. Dumas
  • Labyrinths – Borges

Doubt I’ll get through them all though.

In other “news”, we’ve finally been allowed to enter the Big Blogger house, my introduction has been made and I await the first task with some trepidation.

bookmark_borderThis Site

1. OK OK OK !!! I won’t redesign. I’ll content myself with restyling instead. Difference? Re-design includes re-architecturing the layout and underlying HTML code. Re-styling only applies to the elements controlled by CSS which may include changing the position of things but is less invasive.

2. The Site Feed was broken. It was St. Patrick’s Days fault. More accurately it was the fault of “Lá Fhéile Pádraig” which is a known bug.

3. Thanks to everyone who commented on the Introspection post, a lot of great suggestions. Still not sure how I’m going to tackle the Asides but will probably head down the category route. And for those who aren’t the slightest bit interested in this kind of thing, scroll down to the next post (should’ve said that first though, shouldn’t I!).

UPDATE

Forget all those thanks. You lot are useless. Where were you when I needed you? Eh? EH!!!! Nowhere to be found. Abandoned I was, left to the mercies of my materialistic self. No-one shouted “STOP!” or “Remember what you said!”, no-one tried gentle persuasion, nor did they try to physically restraint me. Where were YOU?

I had no-one to try and divert my mind as it wandered easily from:

“Ohh look, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, I like his stuff, number9dream was good, and I’m reading GhostWritten at the moment, I’ll just nip in and see what it’s about…”

to:

“Ohhh 3 for 2! Excellent, I wonder if there is anything else worthwhile…”

which easily lead into:

“Look, The Complete Prose by Woody Allen, that should be good!”

and left only a small leap to get to:

“Well I’ve got two so any other one is free.. ohh A Million Little Pieces has a pretty cover, that’ll do!”

Next thing I know, my card is swiped, my account is £20-odd lighter and I have three more books to add to my list.

And where, pray tell, where YOU ohh helpful reader?!!!!