Category: On writing
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Writing and hearing
Working on a presentation about Derek Jarman's last films, for Wednesday. After much procrastination, aided by the calm, dull backwaters of the Easter holiday. And, amid brief frustrations as to exact dates, processes unrecorded, I realize I am enjoying myself: while making dinner in the kitchen, I say aloud to no one: But this is…
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… among artists
I am too sleepy to write much, or entirely coherently, after a long bath, bath oils, relaxed. Until the water is not very hot. Gerhard has been here for three days, then two days more, working on the book about him and his work. And Kunsu's work floats around with it of course, his ideas…
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Things that are easy
After months of moving from anger to exasperation, through guilt and a sense that I was holding out on him too long (and thereby being petty, etc.), I finally texted Patrick tonight, and we Moved On, which took a total of four text messages. So utterly easy, as it always is in these things once…
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Transitionals
The unhappy weight of guilt around productivity has let up somewhat: since Mitchell has kindly started giving me my marching orders – literally telling me what chapter to draft next, and send it to him – and Melinda, going a bit outside the normal range of activity for a therapist, has chimed in asking for…
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Wind, rising
Here in northeastern England, a few miles from the North Sea, the winds of March – and of course of a number of other months, depending – can go on for days, even for weeks… at night gusts constantly tear at the chimney, and the faintly white clouds of the night sky, broken by a…
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Density
With Strauss’ Metamorphosen playing: a long, dense contrapuntal work, complex and final – one of his last. Coward used to complain that critics called his work ‘thin’ – he would make fun of them, as though the adjective was meaningless; but of course in most of his work one can easily understand the criticism –…
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Sitges X
Words Hmm. Over 6,000 words in the past ten posts, since coming to Sitges on vacation. That’s the equivalent, or nearly, of an academic article… okay let’s say one a bit on the short side, 7,000 is perhaps more normal. And only about 300 words of musicology written in that time. Now I know that…
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Wrong mountain
David Hirson has written two plays – and only two: La Bête (1991), an extraordinarily peculiar tour de force in rhyming verse that actually reached Broadway before flopping and is often done by the braver regional theaters, and Wrong Mountain (2000), a bitter but brilliant piece on devoting your life to the wrong goals (i.e.…
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Borges: Blogger
It’s going better now; several hours of successful work last night, the end is in sight. Some blogs keep returning to the subject of blogging as though they need to justify it: I have certainly spent time trying to get it exactly right, but justifying it seems unnecessary – why should any kind of writing,…
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Aaargh
Almost nothing done for nearly thirty-six hours. Puttering, cooking, washing dishes; walking around the books on the floor… as far too often I am working against myself and what I need to do, in the most strenuous manner… ridiculous. Master of the dilatory, consummate connoisseur of avoidance, lord of laziness, powerful proponent of procrastination…. Aaaaaaaargh.
Paul Attinello 