Eight System Cards

One of the most interesting models that came up in my studies of grids and systems of thought remains the eight system model (eight circuit model) that came from Tim Leary and Robert Anton Wilson.

Antero Alli has contributed greatly to my understanding of the model, too - his online course encouraged us away from words and our computers, to explore these other realms - and part of the escape from words and concepts (System Three) involved making a set of 'tarot' cards of our own. I have posted these elsewhere on the blog (follow the System link) but came across them again while cleaning my hard drive, and quite like them...

Not having much 'artistic' talent I made 8 collages of images grabbed from the web, and my apologies for not crediting all the 'real' artists who drew and photographed these images.

I don't intend to wrap words around this right now, to try to explain it all - you can find versions all over the place out here, (check out some of the relevant posts on Only Maybe) but I will offer these collages I made on Antero's course, which captured at least some of my understanding of these mindbody (or bodymind) matters.

One of the joys of making up a set of cards remains the fact that you can shuffle them around, and play with layouts (like Tarot) and perhaps find new connections (like Mendeleyev and the Periodic Table)
Mendeleev loved chess and card games. He would write down the names and atomic weights and properties of all the known elements (about 63 at that time) on blank cards. He would shuffle the cards and lay them out in a thousand different patterns. He was trying to find a pattern in nature.

When he arranged the 63 known elements in rows of seven across, he noticed that the columns down always had elements that had much in common with one another. But occasionally there was a gap. He took a bold guess. "There is an element as yet undiscovered," he predicted.

In fact there were three gaps. He predicted three undiscovered elements. And he predicted boldly what they would be like once they were discovered!

All three were found, just as he predicted.

Make Up Your Mind

I don't live comfortably in this world. I don't share a lot of the values of my culture (this morning the papers seem full of shock/horror stories about Romanian gangs smuggling children into the UK to work as beggars and thieves, in a Dickensian tale - with the money going back to Romania to fund a high-living life-style for gang-bosses).

Well, duh - you offer poor people the capitalist dream, and then get horrified that they become opportunist (Romania recently joined the European Union). And just because we stopped most of our own 'Dickensian' behaviour a hundred or more years ago doesn't really put us in a position to judge, any more than the fact that we have now stopped putting children in jail or the workhouse for such behaviour.

The idea that we all live in the same period of time just doesn't hold water...

Some still live in 'medaeval' conditions by our standards, some in paeoleolithic or tribal situations, right now, right here on the same planet. To tut tut at people getting stoned to death for adultery (say) is to deny our own heretic-burning heritage, or our involvement with the slave trade, or the fact that the British government got the Chinese population addicted to Opium (not so long ago) by forcing cheap supplies on them (grown in British India), etc.

We air-brush embarrassing details of our own past out of the history books...so we can judge more harshly anyone passing through stages we have graduated from. This seems (to me) about as fair as telling kids to 'grow up!' or expecting of them the same sensitivity, knowledge, understanding, insight or self-control as you yourself may have acquired over a longer life.

You can see why I often hear cries of outrage when I talk to people. Many want the simple judgemental approach (I agree! I disagree!) not thinking about complex matters with fuzzy logic, exploring the grey areas, adding a touch of 'maybe' to narrow certainties.

I wonder how many people outraged that 'new' Europeans are coming over here to make money are buying up cheap property in Romania, as 'holiday lets'. Just a thought.

I don't like exploitation of children any more than you, but I do think we have to approach this stuff cautiously. Crime and exploitation of children is despicable wherever it happens (don't get me wrong!), but I don't like the witch-hunting attitude of some of our newspapers which can make life hard for law-abiding, ambitious and hard-working people who also arrive here, perhaps to offer a better future for their children...

Hey ho. Better drink my coffee...

PS: Here's Stephen Leather being interviewed four years ago, and it was all going on then. So why is this suddenly news in this morning's paper? Because they rescued some of the kids? Good news, of course, so long as we integrate them and make them happy...

The police are well aware of the mounting scale of the problem. Jamaican Yardie gangs run amok in south London, and have been for twenty years. Now they’ve moved into Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol and Nottingham. Turks and Kurds have been dealing drugs through London for years and are now moving into the Home Counties. The Albanians are the fastest growing criminal group and now control three quarters of the off-street vice in London, now challenging the Turks and Kurds for control of the heroin market. Bangladeshi gangs are moving into the cocaine business, Chinese Triads run Chinatown, people trafficking and drugs empires, and the Columbians traffic cocaine into the UK. The Russian mafia are major players in London, along with Kosovan and Romanian gangsters. All are jostling for position, and all are willing to kill for a greater share of the criminal profits.

And how about, overall, immigration is good for Britain?

Will you listen to this?

Last night I managed to get Skype working again (in spite of a dodgy headset) and took part in an interview with Brandon Phillips over at the Rebel Trading Post.

I have done some written interviews with Star Wars guys...but this is the first 'radio' interview I have done online. Excellent! Thanks Brandon...

I think it comes out on Friday, as a special...go to The Sarlacc Pit.

I sincerely apologise for the popping and crackling, fading in and out (my dodgy headset) I should get myself set up properly for Skype...

A New Arrival

My nephew Duncan, and his partner Fiona have just had a new child - Thomas Padraig Dacombe. Welcome to the planet!

That makes my sister a grandmother (which I am sure she loves), and turns me into Great-Uncle Toby, which I kind of like...

Rain

It rains in Wales. It rains a lot. Even with Irish ancestors from the Atlantic Coast (where it rains pretty heavily, I am told) I find it wet around here. Well, OK, the Irish lot moved to England at least a couple of hundred years ago...

Now we are up in the hills, it seems to rain all the time. We have reached day four, and haven't seen the sun, or even a dry period. Sometimes you can see the hill on the other side of the valley, and sometimes you can't (depending on the mist). I still go out (Dandy dog insists on it) so I know that the paths are streams, the streams are rivers, the river is a torrent and all the waterfalls have become quite spectacular!

Fortunately it hasn't been too cold, and the wind hasn't been to bad, so I just wander around feeling a bit forlorn, with hat pulled down over my eyes, and water slowly climbing my trouser leg (in spite of the long coat) purely by osmosis. At least my wonderful boots have kept my feet dry...

It doesn't really look as though it will change much in the next two days, either.

Julie has lots to DIY on the house (plenty of indoor jobs) but I just want to sloth about...now I did the walk thing.Then there's the light the stove thing, and the write a book thing, and the learn a new card trick thing, etc....before it comes around to taking the dog out again before it gets dark (around 4:30 or 5:00).

Toby as Online Tutor

Moving into the hills, and not driving, has made me think of what I could do with myself, not only to pass the time, but to earn some money without having to commute all the time.

I don't kid myself about writing for a living. Sure, if you get really lucky, but I don't have the popular touch at the best of times. Most online writing jobs that I stumble over involve either writing "Readers' Letters" and winning a tenner, or working in the writing equivalent of a call centre - trolling around in forums, posting hype for products as if it was your word-of-mouth recommendation, or creating click-through lenses, or dense webs of self-referential websites, etc. All modern equivalents of ancient scams (pyramid schemes, multi-level marketing, chain letters, etc). The casual mention of a product is a kind of viral marketing - or do they call it guerilla marketing - either way, it would prove as soul-destroying to me as cold calling trying to sell insurance.

Although I understand the insurance concept (everyone chips into the kitty, so that the few unlucky - some would say lucky - people to whom the unexpected happens get helped by the community). I like Bucky's definition of an insurance firm as a bunch of people who are betting something will not happen to you, but try to convince you to bet that it will!

Anyway - looking at my limited talents and resources, I decided to consider online tutoring. I have just compiled a list of my relevant experience, and suddenly that seemed at least feasible, and with a least a possibility of working.

Toby's teaching cv (resumé).

Notes on websites and writing

I have used a Google Lab website to list what I have done, and what I might prove capable of...I felt quite impressed myself! Did I really do all that AND the performing? Amazing.

If you have any comments or connections for finding online work, please add notes in the Comments field.

Thanks!

These pix? The top two date from 2000, when I was training staff remotely, and trying to liven up the forum, 'humanise the tutor', silly poses, etc. So was the bottom one, although the pic dates from 1986, when I had just hit 40...with my City Lights T-shirt on (after visit to The States) and sitting in Spain, taking a picture of myself....ah, those were the days, with film earnings!

In my own words

I don't update my tired old website, because Front Page is no longer supported by Microsoft, and I don't intend to go out right now and spend lots on a new bit of software for web-building.
(oh, and it contains hundreds of pages!)

Apart from running (at least) 3 blogs, moderating a website, etc I prefer to move on, and to that end I am experimenting with something from Google Lab - much like a blog it creates a quick website.

http://jabbahutt.googlepages.com/home

Although I should do something about my scattered experiments, I guess. I hate dead projects on the internet, but I guess it is full of clutter. Every gmail address (and I have a few) seems to come with a blog, etc.

http://bogusmagic.blogspot.com/

And then I wanted to try WordPress

http://bogusmagus.wordpress.com/
http://tobyph.wordpress.com/

And so on. NO, No! There's no content worth clicking through for!

These links are just for me to remind myself to tidy up...

And speaking of notes to self - I keep meaning to take a moment to explain why I called the blog a title that some might find off-putting (the word 'virus' isn't popular).

And why would a sweet innocent like myself quote an 'awful', misogynistic, gay junkie gun-freak? Well. I'll tell ya...

sometime.

Still Happy After All These Years!

Thanks to Julie's efforts to find a way to spend Christmas where I don't rant and grumble - I spent Christmas Day walking the Dandy dog in the wilderness...

It was still lovely to hear the tyres on the gravel outside, as she returned from commuting many miles to do Emergency Duty Team work, however, and still be here for us couple of dogs...

This coming year we will have been together for ten years...apparently that used to be tin or aluminium (flexibility) but the web suggests diamonds as a 'modern' alternative.

Uh, yeah. Um. Ethical diamonds I can afford? Gulp.

Let's see, pirate tin from Cornwall molded into Celtic designs. hmm. Maybe.

Um, aluminium! Causes Alzheimers' doesn't it, or is that just Food Reform propanganda from my (odd) childhood?

Ah, you can tell I arrived back in the city!

Happy Solstice!

Well, the shortest day in the Northern hemisphere again...

I just took the dog out for a long walk through the hills, with red kites soaring overhead, and robins rustling in the undergrowth...a bright, crisp, cold day.

An interview I did with The Bothan Spy has got published, and it looks pretty good to me...thanks, guys!

I completed a written piece, called "Magical Means" about a meeting between two magicians, for Maybe Quarterly, and that should go up later today (West Coast time).

I'll link to it when it comes online....

Well, from now on, the days get longer! Yippee!

A Pretty Good Year

It's a Dog's Life

I have enjoyed this year quite a lot. Dandy the dog (although tiring and demanding at times - like having a new baby) has just reached his first birthday, and turned from a cute little fluffy fellow into a small horse. He is great company for both of us.

We weren't going to let him on the furniture, but he talked us into it...now he thinks he owns the place!

A Place in The Hills

Well, actually, at this moment we have two places to live, though whether we can maintain both by sub-letting, etc, remains to be seen. Right now (to quote the Chinese proverb) we have one foot on the boat and one on the shore. We will spend a few days up in the hills now...sitting by the fire, and walking the dog.


Writing On!

I finished the novel like a marathon challenge, and may just treat it as a warm-up exercise for the autobiography, or perhaps go back and work over it. Right now, I have completed a 7,000 word piece to go in our quarterly magazine - for which Bobby is making graphics. I am quite excited about this piece. You can see it on The Solstice, when we publish the magazine.


Family meetups

My family have started linking up through MySpace, which is nice. I don't really play at social networking, any more than I go social drinking, bowling, dancing or anything else. I am more of an introvert, and doggy also has tended to get me home early rather than hanging out. Still, a virtual zone where widely separated family can cross paths seems nice. And I have plenty of online friends.

Online Friends and Colleagues

The Maybe Logic Academy still keeps me busy, and I guess most of my friends come from there right now. The Circus Arts Forum, however, keeps me loosely in touch with that sub-culture, and NoFit State have gone from strength to strength this year. We really seem to be on a roll...

I have almost stopped getting involved with Star Wars events for the moment. I haven't had any offers of adventure abroad (the most fun) and feel over-exposed in South Wales, and the UK generally - plus I need some time off (I get very little) and can't keep using up relaxation time to go off working. apart from wanting to keep the dog happy (!)

I myself end up dog-tired and bone-weary working without a break. I have just finished an online interview with The Bothan Spy, however, which I am pleased with. It will be published tomorrow, I think.

And Julie is also working lots of extra hours right now, so we both feel a little over-extended. Still, we are approaching a tenth anniversary together, so we must be doing something right!

Don't Ask Me That!

Well, I finished my novel a couple of days early (hate chasing deadlines in a panic) but now the official ending has happened, and we can all celebrate and move on to editing, I guess, in NaNoFiMo (National Novel Finishing Month).

Actually, I want to use my momentum to write a shorter piece for Maybe Quarterly, so I may well put it aside for a while.

Why tell you this?

Well, people I have told basically ask me two questions. Friends ask “When can we read it?” and I tend to reply “Er, um, I dunno, I haven’t even proofread it for the stuff spell-checkers miss, I haven’t read it myself” and so on. Although I did send the draft to a couple of fellow conspirators, who may sample it, cut it up, etc. But as we work on collaborative multimedia productions, we don’t have many secrets from each other…

I wrote it fast, as part of NaNoWriMo, precisely to get past the internal censor and critic who so easily stops us doing anything – but that doesn’t mean I feel proud or confident about it, yet. I don’t feel ready for any criticism or feedback either, and I certainly don’t want any ‘supportive friends’ saying “how wonderful” just out of kindness.

The other question, from friends, colleagues, even strangers, I have no answer to.

“What’s it about?”

A killer question, to which I “er, um” even more. I mean – what’s life about, for goodness sake?

If people asked me what kind of book I tried to write I would say something like ‘a philosophical novel’ – no guns, no car chases, no sex – talking heads and minor adventures – think “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” or a movie like “Dinner With Andre”. (not that I’m comparing it to those, of course.) I couldn’t choose a NaNoWriMo genre, so elected for ‘other’.

E-Prime

Without going into to my Maybe Logic Academy training too much (which might make it sound like a cult, or something heh heh) one of the basic exercises we use to clarify thinking involves expressing ideas in E-Prime. This simply involves using English without the verb ‘to be’.

I really don’t have time to deal with any readers’ internal cries of outrage, right now, because we have discussed it long and hard, many times, at the MLA.

Some people say they can’t see how such a simple change would change the way you think, others say they couldn’t do without the verb (and invent ugly convoluted examples of language to prove the elegance of needing to continue to use the verb, etc), yet others ‘prove’ to their own satisfaction that the whole exercise seems pointless to them, and archly continue to use it, but with ‘quotes’ signalled in the air, to highlight their awareness (see the title of this blog, for instance), without having to make the effort to rephrase anything.

After getting accused of taking it all too seriously (an E-Prime Nazi) many of us MLA students have tended to settle back into E-Choice, i.e. slackly allowing ourselves to employ the verb in casual conversation or writing, and only bringing out this ‘thinking tool’ when the language conjures up ghosts, illusions and spooks - like "Is There A God?", for instance, or "Are the Beatles better than Beethoven?" - where re-phrasing can remove dispute, or at least clarify that we can only describe what we see and believe, not what 'is'. But I refer you to the literature and debate on the subject (s) elsewhere. In my humble opinion, the E-Prime tool works very well to remove pseudo-objectivity, and reminds the user that opinions and observations remain essentially subjective.

Robert Anton Wilson whole articles on this subject which form good intros,(and he wrote two books entirely in E-Prime, but you wouldn’t notice - I like this piece from Quantum Psychology), or check out the General Semantics website.

So anyway:

“What ‘is’ it about?” appears like a meaningless question to me, which makes it difficult to answer.

Re-phrased as “How would you describe it?” or “What subject did you want to tackle?” or “what kind of characters do you use?” or “What time period did you set it in?” or “Do you hope people will find it amusing, enlightening, cheering, depressing, sad?” or “which point of view did you use?” etc. I might come up with some answers.

• I set it in the 1980s (before mobile phones and internet became widely available) .


• I set it in Spain (a country I love, which contains colourful stuff for writing - paradoxical contrasts between authoritarianism and anarchy, charm and ruthlessness, etc)


• I chose rootless and ‘on the road’ characters from several countries and cultural and religious backgrounds – outsiders, nomads, travelling players, artists, ‘gypsies’, immigrants, sailors, drug smugglers, etc. Some resemble me and my friends.


• I tried to express the possibility that such diverse people can get on with each other, in contrast to ‘settlers’ and ‘land-grabbers’ who seem to spend a lot of time fighting over territory – oh, and hating, or at least distrusting, low-life 'nomads', who don't want the same things that they do.


• I think of the south of Spain as the only part of Europe which didn’t spend two thousand years under Christian rule – and that, under Muslim rule, a period of time elapsed with relative tolerance. Tolerance among Muslims, Jews, Christians and Gitanos (Romany gypsies).



• Moorish Arabs brought all sorts of cultural benefits to our European civilization, which now seems air-brushed out of history, at least as it got taught to me. They translated the Greeks and Romans, worked with glass, chemistry, maths, astronomy, they encouraged learning, artists and scientists, etc. Their calligraphy also gave us the elegant and almost universal numerals - 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 - that work across language barriers.


• I think of The Alhambra as a perfect example of elegance, in contrast to the bombastic and bullying Catholic architecture, with doors so big to make you feel small (I guess, unless they expect visits from angels and Gods) and filled with ugly and terrifying images of tortured humans. Islam does not allow portrayal of real beings, or idols, so their beautiful tilework seems modern to my eye. I find the geometric shapes filled with stars very pleasing, and the Arabesques of calligraphy and vines and leaves satisfy my 'Irish soul'.


• By 1492 the Christians had not only destroyed the universities and libraries, but they drove the Muslims back to North Africa (or forced them to convert) suppressed Jews (equally in love with learning) and pushed Gitanos down to where they still find themselves even now – the lowest of the low – untouchables – Beneath The Underdog (to quote Charlie Mingus’ autobiog, a mongrel half-caste, himself). Oh, and they also went to grab America from the natives, of course, at the same time!


• I only hint at that, as a sub-text, of course. And relate at least some of it to the Cathar tradition, too (the first genocide, enacted by ‘Catholic Christians’), in the Provence and Barcelona areas (which links back to troubadours, Sufis, and another period of spacetime in which a cultured and democratic system thrived for a while, with a certain independence for women, a love of learning, a genuine modesty and gentleness among the religious 'leaders', etc).


• I am also aware that a period of culture like that relates to particular leaders, not to a religion. I have no desire to romanticise the Moorish culture. That modern radical Islamics like Al Quaida want to 'reconquer Spain' (considering it 'occupied Muslim land') just proves my point. Everyone rolls the movie back just far enough to justify their own claims to land...because the Moors arrived in 711 and left in 1492...so the previous owners also have a prior claim to the land in my eyes. When do we get the Visigoth resurgencel?


• Anyway - the Moors came in, then the Christians reconquered it, and now the Muslims want to reconquer it, and so it goes on. Hence my 'homeless and landless' characters...
• An old anarchist atheist like me believes we won't get any real peace until we 'strangle the last lawyer with the entrails of the last priest' (I forget who said that) but those supposedly peace-loving religious people would probably want to stone me to death, or burn me at the stake, for that kind of attitude.
• And I have nothing against individuals from these cultures - just the belief systems themselves, and the memes connected to them, which make me feel as though I live on the Planet of the Apes at times. That, of course, gets considered intellectual arrogance. So part of what I wanted to write involves the 'hatred of intelligence'...
  

Of course, by the time I’ve said all that I realise that my humble little book will need a lot more research and editing to tackle so many ambitious themes. And if you read this far, great! Most people wish they had never asked, or have fallen asleep by now, or glazed over at my ‘usual rants’.

I don’t know what it ‘is’ about…or to paraphrase somone (maybe Groucho?) “It is about fifty thousand words”.

For scale: you just read about 1600 words - roughly what I had to write each day.

Doggam, I did it!

I finished my 50000 word novel with three days to spare.

I actually hit 50050, as it seemed like a good idea at the time to hit 50/50, maybe.

Their word counter (after I scrambled it for their server) seems to think I did even more. Whatever.

It's called "Foolproof"

I have to thank my late (or parallel universe) friend Mick Swain, who would have loved this project.

He loved writing and always encouraged me to try - no, not to try, but to actually DO it, and regularly, routinely, habitually.

Half way through, when I was losing momentum, he turned up as a character, 13 years and one month after he left this realm - he died on October 30th 1994 - to write his own happy ending at long last.

Thanks Mick! Here to Go!

As I rolled up to the finishing line, and gave him the last word, XM Radio was cranking out Leon Russell and Joe Cocker's "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" - and the track that hit by chance was "Space Captain"

Once I was travelling across the sky
This lovely planet caught my eye
And being curious I flew close by
And now I'm caught here
Until I die
Until we die
Learning to live together
Learning to live together
Learning to live together
Till we die
I lost my memory of where I've been
We all forgot that we could fly
Someday we'll all change into peaceful man
And we'll return into the sky
Until we die
Until we die
Learning to live together
Learning to live together
Learning to live together
Till we die
Live together, yeah,
Learning to live together
Till we die
Learning to live together
Learning to live together
Learning to live together
Learning to live together

Till we die
Hum...Oh...
Ah... hum...
Until we die
Until we die
Learning to live together
Learning to live together
Learning to live together
Learning to live together
Learning to live together
To live together...
To live together...
To live together...

Harpo Speaks

Many years ago a very wise man named Bernard Baruch took me aside and put his arm around my shoulder. 'Harpo, my boy,' he said, 'I'm going to give you three pieces of advice, three things you should always remember.' My heart jumped and I glowed with expectation. I was going to hear the magic password to a rich, full life from the master himself. 'Yes, sir' I said. And he told me the three things. I regret that I've forgotten what they were.

--Arthur 'Harpo' Marx

Happy Birthday!

Just a cyberwave to my son, so far away around the planet, that he's almost on the way back.

Here's Pentaphobe on Wikipedia.

It has links to his website, tribal groupings, albums released, etc.

I hope you have a great day, mate!

You can't make this stuff up

Only recently I mentioned having a Gmail account hacked, and some consequences (not financial, fortunately!) on my eBay and Amazon accounts. Mostly hassle and paranoia.

Today I heard that the main ID thief seems like the government. I quote the shadow chancellor (who, as an opposition politician may exaggerate just a little)

"Let us be clear about the scale of this catastrophic mistake - the names, the addresses and the dates of birth of every child in the country are sitting on two computers discs that are lost in the post. The bank account details and national insurance numbers of 10 million parents, guardians and carers have gone missing,” said Osborne.

Full Story here

It appears that such a cock-up may delay the grand plan for a central database, and the whole ID Card fiasco in the UK. Most European countries have made citizens carry ID cards for years, but it has remained a slightly illusory freedom on this island to not have to carry an ID card.

Of course, as in the USA, many people now carry a driving licence in the UK, which works as the same thing, but people like me, who do not drive, do not have to carry proof of ID or address by law. A tenuous freedom, seeing as how any policeperson who suspects me of something can detain me until my ID is confirmed!

But anyway.

To paraphrase William Burroughs: 'They' can always find something wrong with your papers.

Life's Sentence

Ah me. Well, today I have completed ten years work for/in the local library.

If only round numbers let you off! But the 'lifers' here sneer at a mere ten years...

At least they are heading for a pension, for all the hard labour.

I fell behind on my NaNoWriMo wordage yesterday, but I figured it might have been inevitable, given the halfway point reached...and still no plot! Just a sequence of events.



But then again, that's how I perceive life. It doesn't seem to have a plot, either, nor an author (of course). I'm not so much an atheist, perhaps, as a non-authorist?

Anyway, on we roll.

And don't forget, if you like these sort of things, that next Saturday is Buy Nothing Day. Well, you can at least try...

She does it proud

I love my partner dearly, and we are coming up to ten happy years together, but I have to go off into my den if I want to crank up Dylan and play him (nearly peer group, and he always said what I wanted to say). If I tell her to listen to the lyrics it doesn't work, as she can't stand his voice and delivery (she's a singer). I point to Hendrix singing "All Along the Watchtower"...which she loves, and even Dylan does it that way now...but she didn't know he wrote that.

So when KT Tunstall came on at the end of a mostly drearily retro folky Dylan tribute tv programme - and blew the audience away with the first two tracks of Blood On The Tracks - I wanted to share it. Didn't have video recording access. On YouTube now you can see her doing the first track (did anyone record the follow up of "Simple Twist Of Fate" - please post it!) You can glimpse a clip at the BBC on the link above. Oh, and I liked Robyn Hitchcock doing Visions of Johanna, too. No disrespect to the folkies (I loved you once...)

YouTube has her doing it on Jules Holland's show, but you get the drift. Who else does write lyrics anything like this? Read this, maybe, but listen to KT's delivery at the same time...

Early one mornin' the sun was shinin',
I was layin' in bed
Wond'rin' if she'd changed at all
If her hair was still red.
Her folks they said our lives together
Sure was gonna be rough
They never did like Mama's homemade dress
Papa's bankbook wasn't big enough.
And I was standin' on the side of the road
Rain fallin' on my shoes
Heading out for the East Coast
Lord knows I've paid some dues gettin' through,
Tangled up in blue.

She was married when we first met
Soon to be divorced
I helped her out of a jam, I guess,
But I used a little too much force.
We drove that car as far as we could
Abandoned it out West
Split up on a dark sad night
Both agreeing it was best.
She turned around to look at me
As I was walkin' away
I heard her say over my shoulder,
"We'll meet again someday on the avenue,"
Tangled up in blue.

I had a job in the great north woods
Working as a cook for a spell
But I never did like it all that much
And one day the ax just fell.
So I drifted down to New Orleans
Where I happened to be employed
Workin' for a while on a fishin' boat
Right outside of Delacroix.
But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind,
I seen a lot of women
But she never escaped my mind, and I just grew
Tangled up in blue.

She was workin' in a topless place
And I stopped in for a beer,
I just kept lookin' at the side of her face
In the spotlight so clear.
And later on as the crowd thinned out
I's just about to do the same,
She was standing there in back of my chair
Said to me, "Don't I know your name?"
I muttered somethin' underneath my breath,
She studied the lines on my face.
I must admit I felt a little uneasy
When she bent down to tie the laces of my shoe,
Tangled up in blue.

She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe
"I thought you'd never say hello," she said
"You look like the silent type."
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century.
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burnin' coal
Pourin' off of every page
Like it was written in my soul from me to you,
Tangled up in blue.

I lived with them on Montague Street
In a basement down the stairs,
There was music in the cafes at night
And revolution in the air.
Then he started into dealing with slaves
And something inside of him died.
She had to sell everything she owned
And froze up inside.
And when finally the bottom fell out
I became withdrawn,
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin' on like a bird that flew,
Tangled up in blue.

So now I'm goin' back again,
I got to get to her somehow.
All the people we used to know
They're an illusion to me now.
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenter's wives.
Don't know how it all got started,
I don't know what they're doin' with their lives.
But me, I'm still on the road
Headin' for another joint
We always did feel the same,
We just saw it from a different point of view,
Tangled up in blue.
Copyright © 1974 Ram's Horn Music

Lord knows, I've paid some dues, getting through... (yeah, I was going through the break up of a long term relationship at the time, too) Duh

All the people we used to know, they're an illusion to me now. Some are mathematicians, some are carpenter's wives. I don't know how it all got started, I don't know what they're doin' with their lives. But me, I'm still on the road headin' for another joint. We always did feel the same, We just saw it from a different point of view...

Go score Blood On the Tracks and listen to the stripped down, original version, of Tangled Up In Blue..

My Desert Island Dylan (can I take Blonde on Blonde, with me too, please? And maybe Planet Waves, and uh, oh well, fuck it...)

This lyric alone kept me going all these years:

The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin' on
like a bird that flew

write on, right on, write now

So I plough on with my writing project - no idea where I am going, but NaNoWriMo say that's OK!

Curiously, doing a quick bit of research with keywords for 'the story so far' - Barcelona, street performers, reincarnated Cathars, 'coincidence', etc I found that someone had already written the damned book I had vaguely (very vaguely) thought of.

Google is a great humbler, when you think you have an original idea. The library I work in happened to have a copy, too, and I had to decide whether to read it and be influenced, or to not read it until December. I chose to read it.

What puts it into the synchronicity class (for me, at least) is that the author lives in the same city as me, and teaches creative writing at the Uni! He even put a dog in the title.... heh

The colour of a dog running away... Richard Gwyn.

Whether this will alter the course of my own piece I don't know,but I still have no idea what to do. I can't categorize it (they don't have Roman a clef in their choices, so I put Mystery and Suspense (it's a mystery to me what I am doing, and I can hardly stand the suspense of waiting to see if I fail), but I think that would draw me into the wrong group of people, as they seem to find murder interesting...

I could try to bring in a magician, I suppose...and maybe a robbery...

I feel more inclined to relabel it, although 'literary fiction' just sounds far too grand...the other labels seem too specific (Sci Fi, Romance, etc)

And I have opened a can of worms here (or a can of memes).

• NaNoWriMo asks you to start from scratch.


• NaBloPoMo asks you to write a blog post every day for a month (something I often do spontaneously, but not every month).


• nanofimo is set up to finish incomplete works (which may come from November's NaNoWriMo but could be for any unfinished written piece)


• NaNoEdMo is apparently for pieces completed, but needing editing, proofing, tidying, etc


• And there's 24 hour Comics for the graphic artists


• And, in June (but you can visit the site any time) there's Script Frenzy, for you playwrights and screenwriters

PS: my mate Sunshine Gray emailed me to tell me who the woman in that Gwyn book set in Barcelona might have been based on. (!) You can listen to some of Sunshine's stuff (including a comment about the Barcelona Chair (sic) on MySpace. Hi Sunshine!

Inspiring Creativity

As ever, the energy and enthusiasm of Star Wars fans astounds me. These guys have built their own Jabba that WORKS - with room for two people inside.

Go look.

Amazing.

We (the original crew) have met a static Jabba at CE
and Elvis Trooper tells me he has been working with one in The States


And, of course, there was the amazing life-size origami Jabba at C3, from Chris Alexander at Star Wars Origami.

So Far, So What?

I have kept my number count up for three days now, but the NaNoWriMo server seems swamped. I can hardly ever get into it...especially when America is awake! Like now - 7:30 pm on the West Coast, 10:30 pm on the East).

That's a shame, as I wanted to browse the forums, having hit my target for the day.

I thought the sluggish response could be caused by my PC, or my ISP, but when I did get in one time I could see they had had an unexpected number of hits on Day One, and admitted the server was struggling.

This evening I haven't even got close...

I did come across something more accessible, i.e. NaBloWriMo - which involves posting to your blog every day for a month. It seems weird to pick the same month, as I need to trim my 'other writing projects and exercises' in order to just hit the original target.

Hey ho.

Still, you can always go listen to CS&N on the old (ahem!) hippies page

Just write the damned book!

Last year a fellow student at MLA told me about writing a novella in a month...a small community project has grown to a gigantic web event, with thousands of participants, so this year I decided to kick in and start, at least...

To write 50,000 words in 30 days means 1,666.666666 words per day...

I have done a set for Day One (so far so good) and you can find me over at NaNoWriMo under my avatar name of BogusMagus.

I suspect my lack of invention, and the fact that I have found my life stranger than fiction means that I probably will end up writing a roman a clef (a thinly disguised set of autobiographical events, and real people) but that may come as no surprise if you realise how much I enjoyed Henry Miller when younger. He, rather than (say) the mournful and forlorn Kerouac, gave me the courage to cheerfully plunge into poverty and insecurity in pursuit of a creative life. Miller didn't have a mum to go home to (like Kerouac) or a small allowance arriving every month (like Burroughs) but had to scrounge, beg, borrow, hustle and steal to get by. Actually, he probably exaggerated his lowlife credentials, in fictionalising his life, but there remains the ring of truth (even if Feminists destroyed interest in his work in the 70s, by putting him down as a male chauvinist). Actually, (apart from mistaking the character for the man), they seem to have missed his role in getting rid of censorship, which began the process of truly debating in real language about people's needs, and made honest writing possible. But hey, I don't want to start all that here.

Don't think of it as too late to start, or plan ahead for next year. Why not register anyway, to get access to the support, advice, forums, etc? I intend to give it a try, at least - and with no judges, no cost, etc - what's to lose?

Who The Hell Am I?

Identity Theft. Over there, until it happens to you. One co-worker used a cash machine and ended up with her account emptied in Italy. Another had an enquiry about a purchase on a credit card, to find someone was cheerfully buying things with his card.

I went offline for these few days, only to find that someone has posted some mixing desks on my eBay profile, presumably by hacking the Gmail address that links to the profile. I think that was the bad security (feeble password) because when I went into that particular Gmail account all the controls displayed as little square boxes.

I thought it was corrupted so it took me a little while to figure out that someone had been reading it in a font that I don't have loaded on my PC.

So whatever alien lifeform hacked my feeble password, and then used the account to post some items on eBay, doesn't appear to have gained anything. But I don't feel certain of that. :-(

If anyone bought the item (s) how would they pay? I'd get it if they did it through PayPal and the eBay account. I don't mind receiving £13,000 in error! :-)

eBay caught it real quick, and cancelled the items, etc - and say they returned any fees deducted (!) - which must have only been in the form of an invoice, because they don't seem to have gone into PayPal to take money from my card without my agreement. (!)

Weird shit, but I think (crossing my fingers) that changing the passwords, and so on, will suffice. I don't particularly want to cancel or delete the accounts, but would happily do so...

Talk about picking pockets... Unsafe wherever you go!

Off the radar

Just a quick update for anyone who wondered where I vanished to - outside the Blackberry signal range, and the BB battery died, so I can't even just walk to the top of the nearest hill, etc.

We did just get internet on in the cottage, and I've been here most of a week. Wonderful place. Birds galore, and I eventually found a place I can walk the dog off the lead (far too many sheep, ducks, goats, etc around to let him run around free like a city hooligan).

I have done a little work, but not much. Julie hammers on with DIY jobs, and we had her sister and two nephews here as well, so (with some huffing and puffing and sighing) some stuff got done. Unfortunately I don't just count as lazy and impractical, but also as on my first holiday of the year, so I have tried to get some chilling time in around all the 'stuff to do'....I have never been much of a car polisher on a Sunday...I have little vanity of possessions (beyond washing my clothes) and so don't have any desperate drive to make the place rentable/habitable. Despicable of me, I guess, but I prefer the idea of spending November trying to write a book.

Each to their own, and mine has always been to let other people do the work, in exchange for 'owning the place'.

Rent a place, and the landlord has to unblock the drain (in theory, although some act rather slowly) - own it, and they're all your problem (s)

I used to trade more energy in these situations, (always volunteered to help people move stuff, etc) but I got a bit old and lame in the last couple of years...and the RSI (or whatever it is) in right shoulder puts me right off jobs like painting and scrubbing. It hurts, and doesn't seem to get any better, and I guess I should find a physio ASAP - then I would have no excuse.

How feeble is that? I am typing here, as Julie scrubs the bedroom floor with something, before adding anti-woodworm something (yup, we got woodworm, apparently), and all that. I have lit the fire. And changed a light bulb, and emptied the vacuum cleaner and fed the dog and stuff. I don't just sit here watching tv and applauding. But I feel I may never live up to expectations, really.