Wyrd Sisters as a play was pulled off with astonishing flair by superiors and contemporaries on Saturday afternoon. And it's little to do with the fact that Terry Pratchett is difficult to screw up in the entertainment zone, because the book was simply not as good. Actors (who by the way have no professional training whatsoever) found two or three jokes in lines in which I hadn't even detected one. Even minor roles were sparkling and sometines momentarily stole the show, in particular one of the guards and a certain chambermaid. The witches were more than characters; they were people, brought (to use a cliche) in all their earthy jaggedness and charming eccentricity properly to life.
Something about taking on the roles in a story, however, which does seem to tap into some spiritual essence even more than a book. This is exactly one of the central themes of the play itself, and it is worthwhile to consider the perils of a realm not so easily designated.
And while you're doing that it'll also be worth your while to get hold of the song 'Is She Weird?' by The Pixies, which played with characteristic spunk as the actors took their last bows. As it did I sat on the edge of my seat, a rapt smile on my face, thinking that in some untried but not unimagined physical way, I'd been to the Perilous Realm and felt story with my skin and blood. Now that's weird.
Wednesday, 13 June 2007
Thursday, 31 May 2007
A Comedy of Contacts
The most recent post on my sister's blog, appropriately (rather cleverly I thought) entitled 'Networking', is what provided the impetus for this train of thought. I won't spend time, however, clearing up the story, although that was my original idea, because as I considered with immense amusement the prospect of taking different sources and putting them together I realized something. Essentially, this was that the story didn't so much as show up the value of itself on face alone, as both my sister and I presumed, because not everyone saw the value in it as we did. And that taking the extra effort to piece together the story would either baffle most of the people involved or strike them as a ludicrously trivial waste of time.
That said some offering of the occurence from my point of view will serve as useful. I was sitting with a friend in a restaurant when she got a call from another friend of mine, one who she knows only artificially. The event essentially circles around my sister losing her phone, and although most of it seemed to have been managed by my other friend, who phoned the friend I was sitting with, the 'network' of people who were roped in to facilitate its return to its owner was amazing to us. Most of these people had only the barest connection to each other, and yet for a single afternoon they were drawn into the accomplishment of a single goal. They ranged from the secretary in the University department where I work as a tutor, to a boy in Jo'burg whose connection to my sister through my other friend was itself obscure. It involved another tutor in the English department who had studied with my other friend and who used to work as a tutor in the department where I was now working. It criss-crossed from my school best-friend's little sister to Jo'burg, to another girl who had studied with my other friend, who was also a friend of the friend sitting across from me, and who also worked as a tutor in the same department.
It is striking to me that so many people in the department where I work on campus got drawn into the task of helping my sister's phone get back to her, since she has nothing whatsoever to do with any of them, and not very much to do even with me. It is striking that it drew into contact a boy my sister was studying with (who found the phone) with a boy she was friends with in Jo'burg, striking that my friend sitting with me in a restaurant in Menlyn had cause to say my best friend's little sister's name, via a childhood nickname given to my best friend, who she will probably never meet in this lifetime.
It is striking not because of how far we have come with technology, or because the world can be so amazingly small. It is striking because my sister and I have a peculiar way of being moved by every single person that touches us in our lives, whether it reaches her only through her connection to me or vice versa. We are amazed every day that there are so many, that those people are so different, and that we all cherish them on some level in a truly personal way because, even the most random mundane incidents show how they are in some way part of us.
That said some offering of the occurence from my point of view will serve as useful. I was sitting with a friend in a restaurant when she got a call from another friend of mine, one who she knows only artificially. The event essentially circles around my sister losing her phone, and although most of it seemed to have been managed by my other friend, who phoned the friend I was sitting with, the 'network' of people who were roped in to facilitate its return to its owner was amazing to us. Most of these people had only the barest connection to each other, and yet for a single afternoon they were drawn into the accomplishment of a single goal. They ranged from the secretary in the University department where I work as a tutor, to a boy in Jo'burg whose connection to my sister through my other friend was itself obscure. It involved another tutor in the English department who had studied with my other friend and who used to work as a tutor in the department where I was now working. It criss-crossed from my school best-friend's little sister to Jo'burg, to another girl who had studied with my other friend, who was also a friend of the friend sitting across from me, and who also worked as a tutor in the same department.
It is striking to me that so many people in the department where I work on campus got drawn into the task of helping my sister's phone get back to her, since she has nothing whatsoever to do with any of them, and not very much to do even with me. It is striking that it drew into contact a boy my sister was studying with (who found the phone) with a boy she was friends with in Jo'burg, striking that my friend sitting with me in a restaurant in Menlyn had cause to say my best friend's little sister's name, via a childhood nickname given to my best friend, who she will probably never meet in this lifetime.
It is striking not because of how far we have come with technology, or because the world can be so amazingly small. It is striking because my sister and I have a peculiar way of being moved by every single person that touches us in our lives, whether it reaches her only through her connection to me or vice versa. We are amazed every day that there are so many, that those people are so different, and that we all cherish them on some level in a truly personal way because, even the most random mundane incidents show how they are in some way part of us.
Friday, 25 May 2007
The Beautiful Realm
Of course our stories must be beautiful, and what follows necessarily is that our heroes must be too. The very act of this, poetry-writing, story-telling/writing, is the production of 'aesthetic'. This, I find, applies even to those explosively vulgar creations so common of our age. In fact such creations, it may be argued, deal more dishonestly than Romance with life's ugliness, taking the ugliness itself and lying with it. These creations are fond of disguising their Romance with raw, honest, meaning-making. What is more Romantic than presenting excessive filth as 'art', insisting that there is value in confronting those most bestial aspects of the human condition without shame?
My question, then, does not attend to whether or not stories are about the beautiful, for there is no question about that. The Realm of Art is perilous for precisely that reason. All is faerie within. Even the raw, gritty, supposedly honest stuff. My question is about the role of meaning in all this, now the revelation has descended. For when we extract the moral of the tale, once we have caught the abhorrent message within what we inexorably must denounce as propaganda afterward; what is the value of such art except to feel beauty, what is the function of those creations which deliberately set out to not do so, except to make us feel beauty. Feel, not see, because to be true such things can only be true to something in us, something which after all, is not spirit, but still within.
My question, then, does not attend to whether or not stories are about the beautiful, for there is no question about that. The Realm of Art is perilous for precisely that reason. All is faerie within. Even the raw, gritty, supposedly honest stuff. My question is about the role of meaning in all this, now the revelation has descended. For when we extract the moral of the tale, once we have caught the abhorrent message within what we inexorably must denounce as propaganda afterward; what is the value of such art except to feel beauty, what is the function of those creations which deliberately set out to not do so, except to make us feel beauty. Feel, not see, because to be true such things can only be true to something in us, something which after all, is not spirit, but still within.
Tuesday, 08 May 2007
Of Capes and Cartoons
I recently read a book which referred to the narrative craft of comic books as 'urban fantasies'. Although no doubt a term which thinly disguises its apologetic stance (not unlike 'graphic novels'), I like it. I can attach it to a genre I have come to know and love through years of afternoon cartoon adaptations and have come to respect through a recent boom in Hollywood exploitation and hours of window shopping on the pavements of the information residential areas of Wikipedia. I can locate it in the vast multiverse of the Perilous Realm, not as it turns out, all elves and nymph-spun moors.
I loved watching Spiderman and X-men as a kid. I remember they gave me my first liberating inkling that fantasy and growing up need not be mutually exclusive. I remember the thrill of seeing magic at work not in a Romantic pseudo-medieval past or high tech imagined future, but right here, right now. I remember feeling exhilarated at the thought of those tremors collapsing the real with the wonderful.
I love the breakdown in our time between the so-called poles of High culture and Low culture. I love that they are melting and pouring into each other, so that more of fiction can be enjoyed on a more intellectual level if we choose. I love that we are truly free in the Perilous Realm.
I loved watching Spiderman and X-men as a kid. I remember they gave me my first liberating inkling that fantasy and growing up need not be mutually exclusive. I remember the thrill of seeing magic at work not in a Romantic pseudo-medieval past or high tech imagined future, but right here, right now. I remember feeling exhilarated at the thought of those tremors collapsing the real with the wonderful.
I love the breakdown in our time between the so-called poles of High culture and Low culture. I love that they are melting and pouring into each other, so that more of fiction can be enjoyed on a more intellectual level if we choose. I love that we are truly free in the Perilous Realm.
Thursday, 19 April 2007
Concerning Others, Selves and Stories
I recently had cause, although certainly not for the first time, to wonder again about the role of the familiar in the Perilous Realm. Granted, what constitutes the 'familiar' is different to every individual, and in a postmodern world, the 'familiar' is also fraught with ambiguities and politics when it comes to those still forced to negotiate the post-colonial identity. Such as us, or to use Queen Lestat's terms, Blaaaahnians. We, it seems, are in a continual state of conflict with our 'Selves', our projected selves, our given selves, our spontaneous selves. And in that, when it comes to fantasy, there is curiously something both soothing and defeating in the pages of the classics, to cite a notable example, The Lord of the Rings.
Of course we may argue, we know that the values embodied by the narrative are not alien to us, not alien to the values which we grew up with, in the stories we were told by our teachers or our parents or our books. Even if they might have come to contraries when it comes to the actual practice of some of our illustrious elders. For the themes are the same, war against tyranny, the unexpected heroics of the meek, the lights of faith and kindness in the darkest of hours. The ringing of elvish laughter, which is to say laughter which was sad and thus most true in its joy, wise laughter, silver with moonlit nights of yearning for a better world. But then I have to remind myself that the very act of arguing brings into conflict those stories, whether they in nature, are in fact the same. Why do we need to argue, I need ask, why is the familiar always strange, always in conflict with the beautiful?
Perhaps we lack the metaphors which would have brought our own beauty to the familiar, to the strange. Perhaps we lost the sense of the beautiful in our Selves, oh, far too long ago now for the reaches of the memory or the heart.
Of course we may argue, we know that the values embodied by the narrative are not alien to us, not alien to the values which we grew up with, in the stories we were told by our teachers or our parents or our books. Even if they might have come to contraries when it comes to the actual practice of some of our illustrious elders. For the themes are the same, war against tyranny, the unexpected heroics of the meek, the lights of faith and kindness in the darkest of hours. The ringing of elvish laughter, which is to say laughter which was sad and thus most true in its joy, wise laughter, silver with moonlit nights of yearning for a better world. But then I have to remind myself that the very act of arguing brings into conflict those stories, whether they in nature, are in fact the same. Why do we need to argue, I need ask, why is the familiar always strange, always in conflict with the beautiful?
Perhaps we lack the metaphors which would have brought our own beauty to the familiar, to the strange. Perhaps we lost the sense of the beautiful in our Selves, oh, far too long ago now for the reaches of the memory or the heart.
Friday, 06 April 2007
In Which the Formidable Lobelia, Herself, figures
Identity is a magical, arcane business, fraught with illusion and prone to treachery. I know this when I write here, know that a projection of myself gets flung to the mystic highways of knowledge dissemination, so that that part of me will never be in my control again, will morph and mutate into a monster that might devour a Selfness I might fail to rescue should it be not so carefully alienated from itself. Forgive me while my head spins and I channel Derrida.
I think this in particular in connection with one Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, whose code-name many will know is derived from an exceptionally unpleasant character in the otherwise idyllic Shire in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and whose icy tyranny wields its poisonous tentacles in my identity with rather callous explicitness. I think this when I meet my esteemed Teacher, the formidably unpleasant Lobelia herself. I think this when I confront the theatrical elegance and pungent dislike which inspires the terror I feel whenever in her presence, and ironically, but perhaps with poetic justice, informs my rather conscious sense of Self-construction.
For we all construct our Selves, and to an extent, we all leave parts of ourselves lying around for others to pick up and twist and display. With particular reference to those who write blogs, I have to think our time allows for a dissemination of Self that is not even hardly within our control. Too many of the inventions used for social projection - cell phones, T.Vs, blogs - allow for a projection of evident self that exists, separate and concrete, indefinately, outside ourselves.
Recently my chosen name has risen behind me with some of the wily motives described above. Lobelia's Student, while projecting some of the predominant tensions in my life into the Perilous Realm, could hardly have done better than getting shortened, rather well-meaningly, into Lobelia. Now I found my tensions merging, so that Lobelia's student, a self-perceived victim of Lobelia's tyranny, becomes Lobelia, and the Student being both victim and student, must be the tyrant in some form or other.
I wonder if Lobelia herself, should she read this, would mind much the notion of existing in me. But I can't guess, looking at this mergence the wrong way up. From the bottom, I have to say I am only Lobelia's unfortunate student, NEVER Lobelia herself.
I think this in particular in connection with one Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, whose code-name many will know is derived from an exceptionally unpleasant character in the otherwise idyllic Shire in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and whose icy tyranny wields its poisonous tentacles in my identity with rather callous explicitness. I think this when I meet my esteemed Teacher, the formidably unpleasant Lobelia herself. I think this when I confront the theatrical elegance and pungent dislike which inspires the terror I feel whenever in her presence, and ironically, but perhaps with poetic justice, informs my rather conscious sense of Self-construction.
For we all construct our Selves, and to an extent, we all leave parts of ourselves lying around for others to pick up and twist and display. With particular reference to those who write blogs, I have to think our time allows for a dissemination of Self that is not even hardly within our control. Too many of the inventions used for social projection - cell phones, T.Vs, blogs - allow for a projection of evident self that exists, separate and concrete, indefinately, outside ourselves.
Recently my chosen name has risen behind me with some of the wily motives described above. Lobelia's Student, while projecting some of the predominant tensions in my life into the Perilous Realm, could hardly have done better than getting shortened, rather well-meaningly, into Lobelia. Now I found my tensions merging, so that Lobelia's student, a self-perceived victim of Lobelia's tyranny, becomes Lobelia, and the Student being both victim and student, must be the tyrant in some form or other.
I wonder if Lobelia herself, should she read this, would mind much the notion of existing in me. But I can't guess, looking at this mergence the wrong way up. From the bottom, I have to say I am only Lobelia's unfortunate student, NEVER Lobelia herself.
Tuesday, 27 March 2007
On Elves and Bloggers
I have to begin by apologizing for my first post, since so many people honoured me by reading it thus utterly nullifying the intention behind such verbose unforgivably bad writing. I began within the vortex of mental rambling, and somehow, though intriguingly this manifested as an actual blog in the virtual world (something I have till now avoided for fear of embarrassing myself), I never made it out of the spiral. I was both moved and dismayed, therefore, to find evidence of the attention of no less than four people on my newly birthed comments page. No doubt this is all due to my associations with a certain Queen of Noteworthy Lestatness, but I was humbled all the same. Thanks to everyone and their glaringly unearned notes of welcome.
'The Perilous Realm', as many probably will know, is a phrase from J.R.R. Tolkien, a term used by him to designate the 'shadowy marches' of the 'faerie story'. Anyone who knows anything of high fantasy will not attempt to affect an alienation from that country; they know its winds and the strange sun that reveals the treacherous potential for witchcraft beneath the thoughts of the most mediocre personalities. They know its wonder and its striking capacity for the ordinary, for the factual and for truth, something else entirely. It is, simply put, the mental landscape of our best and worst, floating within the gossamer veils that keep humankind, whether in conflict or harmony, in intimacy. The only place where culture, our most revealing inner demon, walks naked and unshamed. It is where I spend most of my worthy unwaking moments.
Recently, I have had a dangerous merging of the two worlds, which led I suppose inevitably to the uneasy creation of this blog. I registered for a preparatory Masters degree in children's fantasy literature, presuming both that I could wield the funny sword in the strangely invincible realm of postmodern academia and that I was ready for it. Let this be a warning to those who get into closets, pass through looking-glasses or simply sail into the western seas on undying ships and take with them the wily weapons of Literary Theory 701: this world is not is not for the faint of imagination. Your grasp of the Romantic and capacity for the wonderful must be truly strong.
A couple of days ago blogs seemed to answer my present need for the unwinding of spiralling thoughts of fancy. On the contrary, it would seem that I have to make sense.
'The Perilous Realm', as many probably will know, is a phrase from J.R.R. Tolkien, a term used by him to designate the 'shadowy marches' of the 'faerie story'. Anyone who knows anything of high fantasy will not attempt to affect an alienation from that country; they know its winds and the strange sun that reveals the treacherous potential for witchcraft beneath the thoughts of the most mediocre personalities. They know its wonder and its striking capacity for the ordinary, for the factual and for truth, something else entirely. It is, simply put, the mental landscape of our best and worst, floating within the gossamer veils that keep humankind, whether in conflict or harmony, in intimacy. The only place where culture, our most revealing inner demon, walks naked and unshamed. It is where I spend most of my worthy unwaking moments.
Recently, I have had a dangerous merging of the two worlds, which led I suppose inevitably to the uneasy creation of this blog. I registered for a preparatory Masters degree in children's fantasy literature, presuming both that I could wield the funny sword in the strangely invincible realm of postmodern academia and that I was ready for it. Let this be a warning to those who get into closets, pass through looking-glasses or simply sail into the western seas on undying ships and take with them the wily weapons of Literary Theory 701: this world is not is not for the faint of imagination. Your grasp of the Romantic and capacity for the wonderful must be truly strong.
A couple of days ago blogs seemed to answer my present need for the unwinding of spiralling thoughts of fancy. On the contrary, it would seem that I have to make sense.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)