Oxford

We’ve been to Oxford today [Monday], in spite of having to struggle our way through yet another traffic jam. The town is everything you’d ever heard about and much more. It’s full of delightful buildings from a number of eras, and decoration abounds. Once you’re in the centre you can’t help but stumble over history at every point. We sat for some time in a church - the University Church of St Mary Virgin, if I remember rightly - where John and Charles Wesley preached, and where John Henry Newman rattled the rafters.
We went to a free exhibition of books related to Plutarch and Dante and Boccaccio. Some of the books had belonged to Plutarch himself, and had his notes very tidily written in the margins. (Making comments in the margins is nothing new, obviously.) Some of the books had the most glorious paintings alongside the text (and more comments from the owners). The colour was as fresh as the day it was done. There were all sorts of editions of Dante’s work, and a number of pictures and cartoons and drawings connected to that great tryptich. (I once had an edition of Dorothy Sayer’s translation of the book, which I think I must have left behind last time I was in England. Unfortunately, along with a trunkful of other books that we left in the care of a family member, it’s never been seen again.)
Oxford is curiously busy in certain streets - chock full of mostly young people speaking other languages - and then suddenly quiet in another street. Bicycles abound (their riders inconsistent in their use of helmets) and students are everywhere, debating on the street, striding along listening to ipods, walking seriously from one famous building to another, or laughing and having the time of the lives in a place they can barely comprehend the history of. Who can? Trying to be aware of the fact of the famous people who’ve trod these streets is nearly impossible; even in the church I could only think that the people listening to Wesley and Newman were no different from me: they ate, drank and slept as I do. They were privileged to hear men I’ve never heard, but I wonder if they considered it a privilege at the time.
In these church buildings you keep walking over memorial stones set in the floor. I’m not sure how many people are normally buried beneath these stones, or whether anyone is at all, but the memorials are a distinct reminder of our own mortality. One day, in a sense, people will walk over our graves too, careless as to who we are and what we did or didn’t do, incapable of appreciating our tiny role in the history of the world. It’s awfully sobering. Thank God we matter to God and to those close to us, otherwise it would be very depressing.

Drifting away

My wife, still searching for the best options internet-wise, while we’re overseas, checked out wireless hotspots last night, and came across The Cloud. We discovered, after some digging, that it would probably be more economical to sign on with them for a year, even though we’re only going to be there six months, than to buy cards for limited times. As far as we can make out, if we sign on, it’ll only cost us 144 pounds, compared to 180 pounds for doing something different over six months. I can’t remember now what the something different was, as I was becoming a bit boggled by that time.
So I think we’ll go for that approach. There are plenty of hotspots around the country, though it might cost us a bit in coffees! But we’ll have access at relatives’ places, I imagine. If not, we’ll be out and about looking for hotspots a good deal of the day. Interesting way to spend a holiday!
Someone at work said, but why would you want internet access a lot of the time? I should have said: why wouldn’t I want to breathe, but I refrained from such sarcasm. There’s enough of it in our office already.

More on Writing

Finally Sanchona, the writer from Australia whom I've had a lot of contact with by email, after 'meeting' on the writers' list, has got in touch with me again. I left a note on the writers' list itself in the end, as it seemed to be the only way to contact her (my emails to her address were going nowhere, bouncing back). It worked, because she has a second email address that was accessible, when the main one wasn't. She claims since then that I then wrote to her normal address, but I think she's confused about how the email got to her. Although anything is possible, since my work emails were coming to my home address on Friday morning, I discovered.

On the research side of my writing, I re-discovered the news groups the other day, and spent a good deal of time copying material on memorizing...both play scripts and poems. It's the sort of thing I hadn't been able to find just on ordinary searches before. So it's obviously a place to keep an eye on. I'm in the process of checking out the subject of steganography again, because an article has turned up in the the Wired News by Farhad Manjoo (there's a name to grapple with!). In the Google search of the newsgroups, there's even a steganography list, but there are also several other lists where steganography is the subject under discussion. That's the intriguing things about these lists: they began kind of in a wide format, and then suddenly hone in on a topic - and veer grandly off it too! The rec.photo.digital group has a longish discussion on steganography, but much of what's there is stuff I've already picked up (with comments) from the Net proper. Another group started a discussion earlier than Sept 11th, on three combined (apparently) newsgroups: comp.security.misc, sci.crypt, talk.politics.crypto, and wound up with 74 entries, many of them veering off the track. There's also discussion on a hackers newsgroup.

Like all conversations between a group of disparate people with a moderately common interest, these discussions on the newsgroups are only marginally useful. There are some very knowledgeable people out there, but also the usual bunch of know-it-alls who don't know-it-all. And whether I can be bothered to track my way through all that stuff for a bit of useful material is another question.

Off that subject entirely, I managed to both go to the movies and watch a DVD today: both comedies and both a lot cleverer than they first appear. The DVD was Best in Show, a film I'd had a hankering to see for a while, though Celia wasn't keen. (She sat through the DVD without enthusiasm, although she did give the occasional laugh - but ceased when we got to watching the deleted scenes. some of which were definitely verging on the not funny.) The sense of improvisation came through quite startlingly, and some scenes had the wonderful overlapping of conversation that you only get when the actors are playing with the idea of the conversation rather than working on a received text. Equally, some scenes, particularly the deleted ones, had a touch of the 'we don't know where to go next' feel about them. This afternoon, Ben, Stef and I went to see Ben Stiller's Zoolander, and absolutely crazy piece of nonsense, that works, in spite of itself. Stiller presents a simple-minded character with a voice verging on the unbroken, and a host of equally off-the-wall people who stroll in and out of the film with no comprehension that the rest of the world isn't anything like this. The only sane character, Zoolander's girl-friend, played by Christine Taylor, sees something in this lunatic that appeals. Of course it helps that he becomes an accidental hero in the end. It just goes to show that when you're on the 'in' side of film-making, you can present a crazy idea and get it to come off...and get the dollars to make it work too. Best in Show probably didn't cost a heap of cash, but Zoolander must have. The great thing about both movies is that everyone has got in on the idea, seen the potential for outrageous humour and gone all out for it. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Times has some strong words to say about it, not positive, and he's right. However, he does miss saying the positive things about it: that it's full of wit, in spite of the fact that the main character is a dummox.

Writing novels

It occurs to me that rather than beginning yet another novel, I should put the one I was writing on here, improving the draft version as I go. That would be a useful exercise, and would perhaps give me some inspiration to get a move on and make something of the thing. Of course, I could be ambitious and write two novels simultaneously - again, my great mentor, Dickens, did precisely that with Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby as I recall.

I've just downloaded a copy of the first section of the novel onto this computer, and even reading the first few sentences, I can see the need for tidying up. Even the original quote I took from Fleur Adcock's poem, (the first in the book of NZ Contemporary Poems) needs adjusting - the language, while useful in the poetic format, and as a starting point for my inspiration, needs now to leave its seed and move on.

I finally caught up with Sanchona, too, by putting a note on the main writers' list - probably totally non U but I couldn't think of any other way to contact her. She has another email address which I've written to. Hope she checks it, as she doesn't use it so often.

Blog-novelling

Had this idea of writing a novel on the Blog, adding not so much as a chapter a day, but a chunk a day, or thereabouts....although with Opera Alive going full-bore at the moment, writing anything is getting to be a major achievement. I've just wiped a whole screed of the writers' list emails because I just haven't had the time or energy to work my way through them. And of course I haven't heard back from InfoTech, so I can assume that Adrienne Perry wasn't excited about my latest query.

But if I was to write a 'novel' on here, even as a kind of draft version, it would sort of commit to presenting it in serial form, as though that was the final form, rather as they did in the 19th century, when Dickens and co wrote their novels as they went along - genius of course could achieve such a task.

Not on this subject at all, I've just come across a (rather badly designed in terms of colour) site called The Desertlight Journal, which focuses on the distress many men are caused through divorce, through non-access to children and so forth. Interestingly enough in their latest newsletter they mention the outrage that New Zealand lawyer Denise Ritchie caused from men's groups when she allegedly said that men should regard Father's day as a day of shame and should see it as a day to apologise for all the sex abuse of children that goes on. Her original comments aren't as provocative as subsequent responses made out. A supreme example of the ability of people to jump the gun by not reading what the person said. However, the responsees were right as well. In a sense it isn't fair that innocent men should be lumped together with those who are guilty in order to apologise for the actions of all men. This is a typical PC approach to problems: blame everyone and make everyone feel guilty. It applies across the board to the way law is now made, as well, with the innocent being forced to deal with the problems of the guilty because the law doesn't seem to be able to discriminate being right and wrong parties. It's what has happened with the Maori situation in NZ: everyone who is descended from those who were here in the 19th Century is somehow at fault for the sins of their forebears. In fact, it doesn't matter whether you had forebears here in those days; if your skin colour is not black (and of course, brown counts as black these days) then you are to blame. The Chinese even get lumped in with the whites in this approach.

I thought there might be a reference to the men's shame thing on Soapbox, but I can't see anything. Perhaps I should write up some of the thoughts above, and post them there.

Well, all this is a far cry from starting a novel...so maybe that will have to wait for another day!

Geeks have their uses

My tame geek has finally conquered the wide yellow column down the left side. First we tried to do it off-line, by downloading the page and re-hashing it. This appeared to work until we posted another column at which point the great yellow slab re-appeared. Finally the tame geek had a go at the Template section and did something that has now made the page look like it belongs to a normal blogger (if such a thing exists and not to a mad artist from the fifties).

I'd like to continue the vein of Mike Crowl's Scribble Pad and write about writing and the arts generally in this blog - give it some focus, so that it's not just a blob (as opposed to a blog - the blobber has a certain valid ring to it too, especially in regard to some of the blogs I have read).

Of course, if I'm going to write about writing, I'd have to start with the frustration of having sent off another query to InfoTech only to have them ignore me again. But then I expect instant reaction from emails - though don't know why I should, as obviously there are plenty of people out there who regard emails as some kind of mysterious creature that you should never reply to on the same day as you receive it. That gives it a sense of being real post as opposed to this fancy electronic stuff.

I guess I'm also frustrated at being on this writers' list and hearing of the successes people on it have, while I'm struggling to get one piece off the ground. Of course, I do have to take into consideration the fact that at present I'm also trying to produce/musical direct a show of just under two hours which is badly in need of being further forward than it is, and that there are only so many rehearsals in a week, and so many days to rehearse in. Nevertheless, the people in Opera Alive are doing well all things considered.

I keep feeling as though I should be adding links here, left right and centre and upwards and downwards probably too. But nothing so far that I've written appears to need to be linked to anything, so blandly unlinked it all remains.

I am going to do an article about being bored with the Net, though I find it's not a frequent occurrence with me. But certainly I can see the possibility of such a thing, even if I don't quite appreciate how it could be. There's a great tendency to spend your time not actually surfing, but paddling. It's easy to stay close to the shore and not get into those shoals where oddball creatures lurk ready to corrupt your brain with their conspiracy theories or pervert your morality with their ugly views on life, sex and more sex. And if you stay close to the shore where the little waves are, it's unlikely you'll have that kind of serendipitous experience that the Net can give. So much of the oddball lies quite close to the shore in fact - you don't have to be a good swimmer to get to it. Put a word or phrase in the average search engine and all manner of strange things turn up unbidden (well, in the sense that you never expected to come across them while you were searching for something straightforward, like how many other people have the same name as you). There's a quirkiness about the Net - it's one of its greatest features. I don't know how many times I've gone searching for a basic bit of background material to a fairly ordinary idea and wound up discovering stuff I never knew people thought about, let alone experimented with - and I don't mean in the sex and more sex area, either.

I've learned more on the Net in the last few years than I ever learned in school (which doesn't say much) or more to the point, in my normal researching over the years via the paper media. The Net has the ability to pull together all manner of things that lie hidden from your normal daily routine. It's a way of tossing the world around like a salad and coming up with not only the vegetables that were hidden below, but a couple of caterpillars that had made their way in, as well.