Piano Hands

Those are not your hands that play -
they say things that fingertips could not say.
Dismembered, they are spiders
that frolick, scatter, crawl
as you sit upon your piano stool
and watch the worms that wriggle
down the throat of a black and white bird
that sings the most beautiful song I have ever heard.

AR

Soon to be ...

... published! Yay! :)

Okay - so I'm perhaps making it sound more glamorous than it is, but a short story (if 300 words warrant a term that implies any kind of narrative or structure) and my art work are going into a magazine, that will be SOLD. Which means I'm practically a professional. Scoreage. It's going to the print in two weeks - if I'm honest, I haven't actually done the illustrations for it as of yet - but maximum yay. :) I'll maybe scan in some pages when it's done.

Here's la new camera. Am off to the botanical gardens on valentines day to have much fun with it. I have such a patient boyfriend.

Standing Female Nude.

A beautiful thing - "Standing Female Nude."
You sketch, paint, carve - capture every curve.
She is not naked - do not be so crude!
She is simply bare - a body to serve
as Muse for man, and food for eyes so lewd
that trap her shape in cold, stagnant preserve
of cosmetic gloss, veneer and ink
and conceal her soul in black, red or pink.




Miss Reynolds.

Tower

Some good news. I'm hopefully an artist for The Tower - the Girton creative writing magazine. Yay! :) At least - that's what I'm taking being told to turn up to the meeting means. Would be pretty cruel otherwise. Good good good. Has been a most artful week. Artful in the wrong sense of the word. Full of Art. Got my SLR camera :D Most excited. But the weather's been awful, and I've had no time to go out and play with it, and it's hard and confusing. But I will be a near professional photographer in no time. A friend and I are also planning to re-begin the Girton Art Society (GAS) that fell into disrepair this year. Good times ahead.

O Rose, thou art sick!

I'm really struggling right now. The nature of my studies provides daily offerings of inspiration - thoughts and words are stacked up to the ceiling of my mind - but the nature of my studies provides with no time in which to drain this fluid. Last week, as I sat an listened to the Czech recital of song and piano in Newnham's Old Labs, and gazed upon the warm black and white photographs of beautiful women (whose grey hairs and worn faces spoke of a beauty of mind and strength), words ebbed and flowed as Virginia Woolf's waves. But instead I must sit and rigidly adhere to the constraints of time and subject of my course. Instead, this week I must perform the fourth draft of an essay on Milton (the sight of which now makes me feel sick), and on Johnson and Empson and Freud. I dream of the time (that is always summer) that I will lay and read and write and read as I please.

Democrat, great lover of mankind, and athiest.

The words of Mr Percy Shelley. Last weeks lecture on how we have an over-romanticised and melodramatic view of the Romantic poets, just made me fall deeper into an excessive and sentimental love, and a desire to be just like them. You can't help falling head over heels for the people that rejected the religion, convention and style of their time - replacing the detached voice with the personal outpouring. The scandalous heresy and rejection of society is undeniably romantic - who can resist the words of Blake - "the true poet is of the Devil's party."

On that note - here's a seemingly inoffensive piece of Wordsworth -

A simple child, dear brother Jim,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?

I met a little cottage Girl,
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.

She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad;
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
--- Her beauty made me glad.

"Sisters and brothers, little maid,
How many may you be?"
"How many? Seven in all," she said,
And wondering looked at me.

"And where are they, I pray you tell?"
She answered, "Seven are we,
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.

Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother."

"You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven; I pray you tell,
Sweet Maid, how this may be?"

Then did the little Maid reply,
"Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
Beneath the church-yard tree."

"You run above, my little maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the church-yard laid,
Then ye are only five."

"Their graves are green, they may be seen,"
The little Maid replied,
"Twelve steps or more from my mother's door,
And they are side by side.

My stockings there I often knit,
My 'kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit ---
And sing a song to them.

And often after sun-set, Sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.

The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.

So in the church-yard she was laid;
And all the summer dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I.

And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side."

"How many are you, then," said I,
"If they two are in Heaven?"
The little Maiden did reply,
"O Master! we are seven."

"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
'Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, "Nay, we are seven!"

1798 - Lyrical Ballads

Everyone should buy the 1798 book of poems by Wordsworth & Coleridge. :)
Anyway - if you reread the poem, with the social position of the questioner and girl in mind, and think about the year as that leading to the first English census (and the u/c obsession with counting the poor - reducing humans to statistics) - and you might want to read it as showing the ambiguity of something that appears as fact, with the forcing of one definition on the poor. Interestingly - take away the first stanza (contribute by Coleridge, not Wordsworth) - does that change the way the reader approaches the poem. The interpretation isn't prescribed. Thankyou Mrs Glen - you do say such wonderful things. :)

Well - that's far too much practical criticism for me today. Trying pretty hard for this weeks essay - most likely to be on the presentation of the savage/savagery in Gulliver's Travels and Robinson Crusoe. Trying to broach away from the text book feminisim essay - but it shall no doubt result in another text book essay on the corporeal body. As ever. (No philosophy or high thoughts for Anna - all I care for is sexuality, skin and excrement).

I have also decided on a life plan - which will hopefully provide a definate structure for at least 3 more years. Thinking - history of art MA (fingers crossed at UCL), then teaching (either PGCE or Teach First) - so I could teach art and english. :) But now I need to massively brush up my art knowledge - I suppose the interview would be sometime at the end of the year.

Hoorayforme.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

"She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing." — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)

Rather morose, yes. But the most beautiful things always are.

I really don't feel up to saying anything intelligent or deep. Cambridge fries my brain. Term started today. Reunited with the wonderful Dr. Wakelin for some medieval revision. Yummy. Made a start on my dissertation draft yesterday, currently 1500 words in with 3500 left. Progress is SO slow, and it's due on monday, with another essay (for which I have done no work yet) is due wednesday. So time is a pressure. Luckily I've chosen an awesome topic, but I'm finding structuring so hard, that every paragraph is such a push, I'm constantly worrying that I'm missing things. ARGH. I do, however, get to include photos in it. Hell yeah. :)

Well, I've used up all my brain power for essays.