Story: Wordspace, III

(Part I , II , IV)

The mighty Cloud passed over the great plain of the Wordspace, gently swooshing from side to side to add effect to the passage. His letters slowly rearranged under Mystery as the collection trip continued until finally our gallant protagonist was sprawled syllable-length on the amorphous surface. Cloud slowed to a halt at the prearranged point halfway between Sea and Ocean and ascended to a quiet layer where the Council could meet in peace.

Around the circle, and not including Cloud who was an honorary member, the Council of Lesser Abstracts had been gathered to deliberate. Running clockwise around the Ring there were: Mystery, History, Deliberation, Revolution (always bumptious!), Curiosity, Regulation (armed with a clipboard), Wimsy, Speed, Innocence (reading poetry), Medicine and Playfulness. Those eleven were the current members according to the rotation and they would debate what to do with Revolution's news, once he had finally given it coherently.

Mystery was reminded of the last time that Incoherency had given a speech at the Council in his presence, a massive shambling effort on his part about the importance of maintaining a guard on the Zone of Dangerous Jargon which unfortunately segued into a long and rambling joke about the Large Numbers Reunion before falling apart into a broken apology about the loss of the punchline and having been trapped in a whatever all the night before. It had been rendered even more confusing by the presence of Night, who as a representative of the Greater Absolutes was rather confused by the whole sequence. Night really didn't like get involved in things when he could distilling down captured syllables from the Zone for analysis in his dark laboratories.

Revolution - who was surely up to something apart from the disaster - raised himself up and began to speak. "Reports are coming in from Scout and Explore that we are suffering some jargon-loss at the edges of the known Wordspace. They state that locals have seen unknown words swooping in from beyond the frontier."

Curiosity and Mystery rushed to get in the obvious question but Curiosity won out. "Could they describe the interlopers? How much of the jargon has gone?"

"Composition was out there and recorded a very lengthy description which boils down to 'Alphabet unknown, lexically incomprehensible'. They appear to be from an entirely different form of life. And we must mobilize to meet them should anything terrible occur!" Revolution threw his inevitable proposal upon the Council: "Who's for a new and totally benevolent tyranny until the problem has been settled!?"

The catcalls were sarcastic but once they were over and Revolution had settled down to a quiet haze in his part of the Circle, Wimsey suggested that Cloud take them to the scene of the action so they could observe awhile. Speed seconded and Cloud set off at a swift float towards the edge of the known Wordspace from whence the troubles had been reported. Deliberation, checking her own clipboard, revealed that she had agents in that region, namely the Kangaroo, the Dragon and the Quark, and that the Snaggle was on its way.

Cloud roared through the space that Sky left for him and reached the edge in record time. There beneath them, and around them, and above them was the edge of known space. And there was a hole.

To be continued...

Perturbation

So, you're stumbling through life and everything seems to be going fairly well, and then you get hit by news or change, and your being is... perturbed. And then everything seems to fall to pieces all around you. It's a curious thing when it happens, isn't it? It's happened to me a few times, that feeling of almost total disaster falling upon you and forgetting how to sleep, or how to know what to do all through the day, and a sudden loss of appetite for what is to come. A grand sense of dislocation as your place in the universe get shifted a little back and to the left.

The life of a solitary bachelor holds little perturbations of its own so mostly one gets hit by the changes in others, in the loss of things once thought possible, and the happinesses and tragedies of others secondhand. But this is merely self-indulgent folly. Back to the broader theme.

There are various ways to get through perturbations to your reality, but in general it's best to express your shock as fully and non-destructively as possible. Draw a picture, air conduct, distract your mind enough so that it doesn't get in the way of your heart and let the elation or the tears flow in great torrents of emotion. Mentality is a great tool for dealing with physical and political problems but it has no place in the mending of hearts or reconciliations with altered realities. So many people have tried that way, and so few have succeeded. Just let it out.

The association of the heart with emotion is one of those semi-puzzling links that have persisted through the ages. It actually seems quite clear in retrospect that the heart is associated with emotion because it pounds so much faster and harder when we're happy or upset, and so much more sluggishly when depressed or in some cases of shock. As a result peoples have assumed the heart to be one with the origin of emotion rather that its behaviour to be a symptom of those emotions. The brain as the seat of all consciousness is an idea that has been endlessly contested over history as it seemingly clashes with religious teachings, specifically that idea that the soul is an indefinable but separate entity from the more refined intellectual person, independent and living on after the brain has passed to a moribund state. What would Jung say?

The brain will win you through puzzles, professions and doctorates galore but it is the heart that sets you free to persevere against the perceived hardships and those endless perturbations in life when what you think is becomes what you thought was and everything to come takes on a slightly darker and more ominous cast.

Yes, this is a creepy looking week ahead already. Prepare the storm drains, and splice the mainsail, we're going in.

O.

Muffin Fodder

Question: What makes a good idea for an entry into the Quirky Muffin? Answer: Almost anything under the sun!

By now there must be an uncounted number of duplicate Muffins, repeating fleeting thoughts that have slipped through my mind from time to time quite regularly. (Yes, I am forever thinking about twirling and tilting at windmills, and the various ways to use cheese to power the great civilizations of the planet Earth.)

It's hard to say what goes on in patterning what pops out of the fingers, but in the most general sense it's useful to return to 'Rhapsody' and the ideas of irregular pieces of music that express great emotion. It's helpful that this is all intended to please no-one in particular. The Quirky Muffin can be literally anything within the confines of taste and decency, and if serves to express something in the meantime then all the better!

Note: There have been far too many self-referential blog posts here of late. Must stop wasting space.

The Winter Olympics opening ceremony of 2014 is going on as I write this, amidst all the scandals of homophobia, corruption and prejudice. The pavements all around the Arts Centre were chalked with protest slogans and solidarity slogans and it all seems somehow bizarre in contrast with the fact that this is going to be another one of the Olympics that I will see very little of when all things are considered. That's not to belittle the human rights issues at all - Russia is terrible on human rights especially with respect to homosexuals - but it's very much a problem with a group unconnected to me at an event I'm not seeing in a country far far away. In contrast the flooding and weather changes are far more important and immediately far reaching, except for the fact that Russia is that scary country off to the East that likes to glower and menace and so deeply dubious things while waving its missiles around.

It's a scary world. This was never intended to be a topical entry. The recurrent fears over flooding have spooked the town and all involved. There will have to be new segments of 'Wordspace' to cancel out the recurrent gloom and wonder at how oddly things are happening at the moment in this funny time of change and flux. 'Wordspace' posts an interesting question in whether to maintain Mystery as the sole lead character or add someone. The problem is that if the characters are words, and all stick fairly closely to their meanings, then everything that can happen is pretty much pre-determined and nothing can ever change (all of written literature). Essentially for a non-static story there must be agents of change, hence Mystery and perhaps others. Or is it intrinsically wrong to have a static story? In this type of conceit is every character an unavoidable archetype?

There is certainly much to think about. Not the least of which is writing lectures all through the weekend! Knock three times and ask for Svlad Cjelli.

O.

To Twirl

Life is like a sequence of twirls through the eddies of time. At the beginning we're sure and steady and at the end a little dizzy and wobbly on our feet but we twirl all the same in homage to our grand and stately world's dance around the Sun. The only question is perhaps whether we choose to twirl around events in an an accepted manner and do all the traditional things or strike out and do something different. I unwittingly chose option B but they both have merits. We continue to twirl anyway in order to maintain movement and avoid the ultimate boredom of being static in a world forever moving.

This semester my main twirling occurs on Tuesdays, when I give both my lectures in Llanbadarn and then collapse in a heap in the Arts Centre on my return from that fabled barren second campus, feebly crying out for food while the waitresses deftly step around and carry on their essential duties and chatting about boys. Well, it's never that bad but over-twirling can cause distress on top of a few hours of bus travel. And the waitresses are actually very nice. Especially the Mystery Blonde.

A Twirl is also a chocolate bar, but we dare not pursue that further as dwelling on the sugary chocolate... lovely chocolate... available in the chocolate vending machine downstairs is a sure path to sugar-reduction failure. Cut back on sugar people, it wrecks your skin makes all your special diets worthless. Except there is a chocolate machine downstairs...

Anyway, to twirl is one of those things we all do instinctively. In the most literal sense I used to twirl around lampposts walking home downhill from university in the rain (go watch 'Singing in the Rain' too) when here at Aberystwyth the first time and it was always exhilarating. Somehow it never felt so good in Nottingham, if only because it never blasted rained there. For rain you have to be here, in Aberystwyth, the sodden jewel of the Ceredigion coast. This town as home to thousands of bedraggled students every day, sends them out soaked to lectures and then home drenched in the evenings, only for them emerge again and return sozzled and inundated in the early hours. Aberystwyth fulfils a vital service, propagating colds and influenzas and occasional pneumonias the year round, and ensures the survival of the fittest in the best way as we watch the most inebriated get swept off to Ireland in the early morning tide. They often laugh as they go, or swear. Swearing is bad.

So, maybe it's good to twirl, figuratively dancing around our problems as we try to comprehend them, spinning madly around the little pockets of foamy time, looping around lampposts and twirling partners in dance. There's nothing wrong with a twirl at all, unless it's chocolate.

Oh blast you, chocolate machine!

O.


PS Ha ha! The pretentiousness is ramping up!
PPS Cancelling birthday this year. I don't want to be 35. I already look like a turnip.
PPPS Insert random message here. It can be about ibises if you like.

Movie: 'Cat Ballou' (1965)

It's probably extremely obvious by now that my fondness lies firmly with the underdog in practically everything. Am I devouring Agatha Christie novels from the Golden Age of Mystery writing? No, it's Dorothy L Sayers who's filling that role and wonderfully. Is it the incredibly overrated Tom Baker who is my favourite Doctor Who? No, it's either Jon Pertwee, whose era built the show up to such a healthy state that it could go to such excesses, or Patrick Troughton whose performance was excellent in an era of little variety in storytelling. And now, after writing up two lectures in a very short time today am I going to lavish praise upon a stalwart icon of a film legendary to all? No. I will talk about 'Cat Ballou', which hardly anyone seems to talk about ever, which is a shame as it's a hoot.

Comedy westerns are a thinly populated little niche of cinema, seemingly consisting almost entirely of 'Support Your Local Gunfighter', 'Support Your Local Sheriff', 'Four Eyes And Six Guns', 'Destry Rides Again' and this charming oddball effort starring Jane Fonda but really dominated by the massively talented Lee Marvin as a washed-up drunken gunslinger called Kid Shelleen. It is bizarre that Marvin didn't make more comedies apart from this and 'Paint Your Wagon' (a very odd movie) as he is pitch perfect, a performer without equal in the film. All the other actors are comically talented, even surprisingly Fonda, but it's Marvin's colossal charisma that takes us from his entrance through to the ending.

The story is simple - and throughout punctuated and narrated by the singing minstrels Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye - wherein Catherine 'Cat' Ballou returns home to her father's ranch after completing her schooling only to find him under horrific pressure from the nearby town to give up his water rights for an encroaching commercial development. The company hires a gunslinger and kills the father, Catherine crosses the line with some outlaws and robs the company's payroll in revenge, and Kid Shelleen bumbles around before cleaning up and falling for Ballou and then falling apart again in the rejection. It's really not about the plot, but more the sharp and punchy dialogue and crisp colours of the mid 1960s. And the minstrels who link the different parts of the film together. Told in flashback from just before Cat being led out to the gallows for apparently killing the company president, the pace continues briskly, before the small collapse that presages the common problem in comedies of having to have the story move in at some point. It's a lovely little movie.

This isn't an in depth review so I can just ramble on about the things I remember, which are a beautiful barn dance sequence amid the musical backdrop of the movie and the balance of a cast which is clearly and vainly trying to hold its own against the mighty Marvin. The latter defies description but the former is fascinating as the director builds a long single take version of the barn dance, moving up and down the structure with Cat and interacting with all the main cast - bar Marvin who hasn't arrived yet - before it finally breaks down into a massive brawl. It works magnificently, everyone strictly in place and ready to interact, even stopping off with Nat and Stubby as they perform with the musicians. It's the centrepiece of a film that isn't too afraid to do things that other movies won't and it elevates the whole thing not to classic status but to great status. It's the underdog of Westerns. The other thing to note is that is one of Nat King Cole's last movie appearances - he was already sick while filming - and that his and Stubby Kaye's interludes are perfectly judged, including some heart breaking moments as Cat rides away from the now-appropriated ranch and the sun sets.

'Cat Ballou' is slight in many ways, but it deserves to be watched and savoured. It's true that the ending is tonally strange as she seemingly (we don't see it) guns down the company president while disguised as a floozy, sitting uncomfortably with the rest of the film, before being rescued by her friends. The ending is offset though by Marvin, the magnificent stunt work of Yakima Canutt, Marvin again in a dual role, and a comedy horse. Oscars were won, accolades bestowed and the movie was quietly forgotten. I remember though, and so does the Quirky Muffin.

We like underdogs.

O.

Story: Wordspace, II

(Part I , III)

The Wordspace had always been there, as long as any of its residents could remember. The mightiness of Earth had always stood beneath them and the wafting Air had always seemed to waft around above them in a continuing dance with Sky, his lifelong partner. The Council Of Lesser Abstracts had settled long ago on meeting high up in Air's domain, on that most abstract landmark Cloud, who scooted around picked up all the members as and when required. Cloud's many letters slowly settled into place as each word boarded and then he moved on to his next pickup. On this occasion Mystery was picked up early in the run and quickly moved to the centre of Cloud's surface to see who was already there, Club following silently and somewhat on guard.

"Mystery, take care." Cloud's unexpected murmur caught the enigmatic Mystery off guard. "My parents say all is not as it seems and there might be danger." Cloud's parents, Water and Sky and Air were together very wise.

"Cloud, I'm always careful. The unknown is part of my trade, or at least I think it is." Walking on Cloud was always interesting as he was so malleable in in his form. His indefiniteness was one of the things the Lesser Abstracts liked about him. "And thank you. I wish we might have talked before for a better reason."

Cloud was silent for a long time before finally murmuring, "I speak when things must be said. Life is for contemplation." Mystery let the flying Cloud alone and settled his letters in a pose in the meeting area. Only Deliberation and History had been picked up apart from him and he had never got on well with either: Deliberation refused to commit to anything quickly (but often ended up right) and History just seemed to care about facts on every occasion. On the Horizon they could all see the mighty Earth flying by, all his many letters filling the horizon. Suddenly Cloud dipped and picked up someone else, the mighty Revolution it seemed, and moved off in a new direction.

"Did you know this is the fifth meeting we've had since Moon did his last run across poor confused Ocean?" History was trying to be social.


"Really? What confused him?" Ocean was always confused, never certain where to be or where to go. All he knew was to go and jump around in Water from time and splash. Sometimes he and Wave would clash and have a water fight.

Revolution interrupted what would have been a dismal exchange. "Welcome, good fellows!" He slapped Mystery on the back, who jumped up and down to settle his letters again and then settled the alarmed Club down, and then rounded on History and Deliberation. "There are problems afoot and plans to propose. We must go quickly and smoothly if the day is not to be lost."

"All things in due course become known. Why must you always hurry so?" History uttered grumpily. He deplored rash actions, sometimes even more than Deliberation.

"You may change your tune once I've presented the facts to the Council. A full conclave might be in order."

"A full conclave? What on Earth are you talking about, Revolution? You're always getting so mixed up."

"All in good time, all in good time." Said Deliberation, who was absently considering his latest holiday plans.

"All in good time, pshaw! The world is about to fall around us in unholy nightmare! We must act!"

Mystery thought that was quite interesting.

To be carried on...

Words

Once I tried to write here about reading and its importance through history, but it swiftly became twaddle and I abandoned it. A second time I tried to assemble something about the grand passage of knowledge and humour through time and history but that descended into a treatise on custard and its relative significance to puddings in the contemporary Western world. That never saw the light of day either and now it’s time just to flow a little on words in general.

Throughout all but the most recent part of history all progress was governed by words – and the mathematics behind projectile trajectories which we shall currently omit – instead of the numbers that govern science as we know it today. Words were what drove people on, and logicians were among the pre-eminent minds of their days. Is it possible that by losing that emphasis on words that we’ve lost something incredibly special, and that in pursuing numbers to their inevitable conclusion that we are pursuing quantity over quality in a bleak rush to survival?

You see, pretentious twaddle is never far away. I think there’s a special supply ready for bloggers and people with theses to their name; Double twaddle for the price here at the Quirky Muffin!

One of the interesting things about ‘Wordspace’ – my newest story – as a concept is that of distilling words down to their core values and then using them as the characters themselves. Even though I will never probably do that concept justice, it is in all likelihood an original one. If it’s not original then please tell me in the comments so I can give credit where credit is due. Indeed there is already credit due in part to the Bookworld of Jasper Fforde which is partly similar but also very different to what I’m trying to build in the Wordspace. An especially intriguing aspect is that of words whose meanings have changed over time, which has to have some potential!

Getting back to words in general, have you ever stopped to wonder at what must have been happening when that first primitive person scratched a symbol in the dust or on a wall to indicate the sun, or water, or poison and the incredible advancement that it represented? For the first time information could be written down and preserved, instructions for following days could be set out all at once. As much as timekeeping and counting allowed agriculture, so did written language. Great minds like Dickens, Shakespeare, Jung and Darwin all owe everything to the first few of our primitive forebears making their marks on the world. That is awesome and also frightening. In the beginning there was a word, but maybe not the one you were thinking of.

Words are powerful, great shackled realities and abstracts borrowed and translated in ink, stone and print for all to see and learn. Great assemblies of words get passed on forwards in time so that no art, no knowledge and no entertainment is truly lost. Even if our species fails, our words might yet survive and welcome travellers from far distant worlds with our follies, our lessons and all our worst jokes. Yes, even as Ziggy and his comrade Spottlab emerge from their ship, ready to look through our libraries and plumb the depths of humanity’s knowledge, there is a very good chance that the first thing they’ll stumble over is a joke book and a story about a man leading his horse to water but not being able to make it scuba dive.

So endeth the twaddle.

O.