Perfect Fourth

A Craigslist Date That's Not A Date

2012-02-14T16:15:00.003Z

I'm meeting a lady whose ad I replied to on Craigslist tonight in a bar in Dublin.

I trawl Craigslist for story ideas because man some of the things on there are priceless. I also get an altruistic zing! when helping people moving to Ireland - providing information, places to go etc. Hence the lady I'm meeting tonight.

I'll let you know how it goes. Judging by the emails back and forth and her knowledge of Scotch, I think I may have a new friend, found in the unlikeliest of places :)

****

Note on the whole 'Valentine's Day' thing: I was going to post a relevant image from memebase or something but I can't be bovvered.

EDIT: ...ah screw it. Nothing articulates emotion like posting something like this on your boyfriend's Facebook profile in front of the entire world.

A Poem on Fruit Cake

2012-02-13T16:59:00.000Z

Poetry Jam want recipes and/or seasoning.

I was going to write a recipe with three linked haikus, twisted about in photoshop ... but then I thought about it, and this photograph is my poem. It's my late grandfather's transcription of one of my nana's best-loved recipes. Note the careful handwriting and paper choice. What else says actually no, I really do care about you?

It's his 5th anniversary tomorrow. I hope he's somewhere good. Appropriation of found material counts as creative endeavour these days, yeah?

Found the Flow

2012-02-13T14:38:00.001Z

I love it when your mind kickstarts and makes all sorts of rapid, frantic connections and everything suddenly makes sense.

I would like to thank

instant coffee
little sticky bookmark things
my love for categorisation and organisation of documents
Bic pens
A certain mixtape (contains: the white stripes, midlake, the national, malajube, jeffrey foucault, spoon, okkervil river, vampire weekend, josh ritter, death cab for cutie...among others)

Here's some stuff that will never see the light of day:

Recipes, App(lications), and Owls. Oh, and some links.

2012-02-12T14:11:00.000Z

I love owls *a lot*. This picture comes from this website.

Word to the wise: making a mealplan is pretty scary.

Especially when the other person who'll be partaking in said plans is a pretty picky eater, and the mealplans will stick to the paleo diet.

It's interesting though that when left alone, I revert back to my own eating habits which basically involve a lot of museli and a lot of baked beans. I am a man of small needs.

It's also a sign of the times (or so I tell myself) that I was going to download an app(lication) to help me making the plans.

For God's sake, Jessica, just use a piece of paper and a pen. Yeuch. What would you do if the Internet broke and you were without your Android? WHAT. THEN.

And so, just some linky links for the moment, because I'm gonna go get food, and then come back and write that poem that you guys don't know about yet because I talk about it in the links:

Poetry Jam are suggesting a poem to do with food, cooking, recipes. I have a pretty cool idea that probably won't translate to anything good in real life.
Photoshop cheatsheets. I think I'll be needing photoshop for my poem idea, y'see.
Actually this might help with the meal plans: someone's done them for me. I find when you hold a task in your mind (like I'm doing now) and don't know where to start...it makes things way worse and the task assumes the shape of a monster. Zen tip for the day.

A Very Apt Package!

2012-02-09T14:36:00.000Z

dis.plac.e.ment.

Look what came in the post this morning!

I wrote this story based on advice I read in the Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, so I guess exercises can work?

This issue also features work by Noel Sloboda: he has a collection called Stages, which I reviewed a good while ago for decomP (here). It's pretty deadly to have our names together like this, I'm sure you'd agree.

Other contributors to this issue of Apt include people with cool names like Maureen Alsop and Philip Kobylarz. Woah actually checking out some of these other people they're pretty proper, aren't they? PhDs and professors and things.

such lovely justification

I saw there that the nice Apt people are running a competition where you have to record yourself reading a story from any issue, which sounds fun. If anyone wants to enter by reading my story, I can hook you up to the text.

If you'd like to order a copy of Apt Issue 2, you can do so here.

Apt, Issue 2

I Coulda Been Somebody

2012-02-08T12:41:00.000Z

Why do people feel they need to 'make something' of themselves? Something of what, exactly? Why can't they just be who they are instead of always trying to be someone who might never exist?

I mean, look at all the photos there are of you. Or videoclips. Or audioclips. Or albums, even.

It could be that that person frozen in time is the person who you always will be.

And say, right, that the videoclip in existence of you is of your Nobel prize acceptance speech. You'll have always been that person, and because you're preserved for all time thanking your mom and your agent and Jesus doesn't mean you're different now.

Does it?

I'm a Feminist Now. I didn't see that one coming either.

2012-02-03T02:25:00.000Z

Two pieces of dead-of-night advice I can give you?

Lego! Millennium! Falcon!

Read Room by Emma Donoghue. I know I'm about a year behind the curve but wowza.
Read Child of the Ghosts by Jonathan Moeller. No really. It has you turning pages like there's no tomorrow. And by turning pages I mean tapping the screen. Also it's FREE.

Oop, and another announcement. Well. Not announcement, more of a ... statement.

Drumroll.....

I put this picture in to highlight the whole
19th century man thing. I dunno. I
think it's the coat that does it. Also this
show is really weird.

I'm a feminist now.

It's because Lego are being sexist, and everyone who's anyone knows I have the entire Star Wars Rebel fleet (including the Millennium Falcon) in Lego in the press. So you don't mess with the Lego, and now it's undermined me :(

But yeah, I've always been on the side of the men. They had it so good in the 19th Century, and then they really dropped the ball on that one, and I feel bad for them. It's probably because I've read so many 19th Century books like Uncle Silas with the patrician of the household being respected yada yada waistcoats oh I love frockcoats so much. Like Lord Byron. My deep and abiding and slightly creepy obsession with George Gordon is another story. Suffice to say I named my cat after him (R.I.P. Byro, sadface).

However, the Lego fiasco has really changed my mind. I guess it (my mind) was waiting for something to make feminism make sense to me. And that catalyst was Lego.

It's all so clear now. The world wants me to keep my perfect brain but get a sex change. And stop being hysterical. I found a Current Conscience article by this guy called Yashar on how it's engrained in modern behaviour to make women out to be unstable. And you know what? IT RESONATED WITH ME. People are always going on about how I'm crazy when really they're being sexist and have also lived sheltered lives and wouldn't know batsh*t if it came and flapped in their faces.

Perhaps I ought to try and write something that's not horribly misogynistic.

Belated New Year's Resolution?

Tuck Magazine Has Some Things Belonging To Me

2012-02-01T14:51:00.000Z

And that was an official note from our sponsor.

Now with the main news again:

two poems of mine are in this month's Tuck Magazine.

Stay classy, planet earth.

Marking Up The Great Divide: The Great Textile Exodus of 2012 (and so many photos)

2012-01-31T17:25:00.000Z

There's these tasks that you leave off and leave off and not want to do until suddenly a fit seizes you, and you do it in the middle of the night with music blaring and a sense of purpose akin to that of a scientist finding the cure for cancer.

Clearing out your wardrobe is one such activity.

I'm not that into clothes. I'm a bit fashion colourblind. Most of what I know now, at my full 26 years of age, is something of a learned behaviour. There have been many times when I've come down the stairs to be greeted by another member of the human race, standing there with arms crossed and a blank face (it rhymes), suggesting that I turn right around, go back upstairs and change.

So yeah. Most of my clothes have been made by others (nana and her knitting) or bought for me (Christmas presents and the boyfriend), or are stylish hand-me-downs (mom's wardrobe shedding itself into mine), or are found in those bags that friends always have full of clothes they're clearing out. I bought these shoes myself, I'm proud to say. Shoes I can do. Not those fiddly stiletto Sex-and-the-City things, but boots (read: Doc Martens), and um, other shoes that don't end in 'oots'.... etc etc.

And so, I give you a little documentation:

bleugh

goodbye, shoes!

pile B

pile A

my beloved, beloved t-shirt. Oh how I will miss it. But
it's six years old now. Time to part. <3

Wasn't that exciting?

Seeing as we're in household mode, I'm afraid I have to tell you that my plants have died (surprise surprise), and so I re-potted mister strange-looking-forlorn-pointy-leaf-plant into the giant teacup and HE IS MY ONLY HOPE NOW.

please don't leave

Rain Vimeo, Accompanied By A Haiku

2012-01-30T23:41:00.000Z

Poetry Jam has demanded sensuousness. A very late entry, I know, and I almost didn't do it but here we go. I'm sorry if it doesn't make much sense. The haiku interests me, and I'm going to keep writing them until I can write one that is at least slightly coherent. I was stumped for an idea all week until the other day, when I did this:

Come Again Another Day from Jessica Maybury on Vimeo.

There's no milk for tea.

Rain is sharp, and tastes of tin.

...I can drink it black.

Over-Octave Leaps, A Piano Recording, and a Haiku.

2012-01-29T16:03:00.000Z

k here I give you

an account of the day thus far in haiku. I wouldn't say it makes very much sense at all, to be honest. Liberal poetic licence.
a recording of my mental and anatomical thrashings that are really an attempt to articulate the importance of the webbing between your thumb and index finger (the thenar space?).

Handstretch the morning

to break in the rain*:

walk to get

toothpaste, and air.

*except, on closer inspection of the view out of the window, I don't think I'll be going out in that. My boat isn't big enough.

Read Me Your Favourite Line {A Musical Interlude}

2012-01-29T11:28:00.001Z

This is for looking at and hearing while I get myself together for an offering to the PoetryJam. With the lashings of rain outside, it suits the day.

Bigger, Better, Faster, Forever

2012-01-28T19:53:00.000Z

It's been a slow incline, but I'm really sparking off the visual, pictures and textures colliding around in my head rather than words or punctuation.

The picture I'm including with this post is from The Architecture of Analogy. It's more of a discourse than a website. I can't really explain it in full sentences so we'll use tags: PhD, architecture, analogy, sketches, mixed media, Aldo Rossi. For some reason it reminds me of Gormenghast.

It articulates the current feeling that my work is getting larger, bolder. It's no accident that some people I know have me in their phones as 'Andy Warhol' rather than 'Jessica Maybury.' I have huge plans for the future, works to do that are on a scale I could never have imagined a few years ago - but, however, I need assistants, and thank God, I have them.

Of course there is always need for expansion.

I'm moving off the page and slipping onto walls, street corners, bus stops.

All of that, though, those enormous undertakings, they would never take the place of the semicolon, the half-written, the atmospheric, the unsaid.

Breaking out of one's physical confines is a difficult trick, though. I am not at all a person of boundless energy, or even temperament - hence the need for meticulous management of my time. It's a constant push to keep your vision fixed on, well, the vision.

2012, despite rather jagged beginnings, is going to be a very good year.

isn't life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves? - A.W.

Conrad Schumann, Iconic Photographs, Memory and Time.

2012-01-27T00:09:00.002Z

"Only since 9 November 1989 have I felt truly free."

Conrad Schumann and I are caught up in each other.

And by this I mean that I am caught up with him.

I do feel fastened to him, in some way that I can't pinpoint. For some reason.

The exact place of the leap? The co-ordinates? 52.539 , 13.399 - the corner of Ruppiner Strasse and Bernauer Strasse. Unfortunately I can't enter in the cool little S symbol that I love. Schisse.

He's been turned over and over in my mind. Not the jump, as such - but then, of course, if not the jump then what else? A leap was the fulcrum for his entire existence. His life before led up to it...and his life after, well, it led down, away from that exact spot where he would be frozen in a reflection of himself forever.

That's the thing about iconic photographs, isn't it? They end up looking at their own reflection for all time, a reflection that speaks volumes to the world, but other, quieter things (perhaps), to them.

I'm not sure if this post is making sense.

In trying to articulate my thoughts, however, well. I wrote 402 words today, in an hour. It's going to be a bit tough, getting it down, untangling my thoughts from each other.

It's good though that this piece will actually really be fiction, for keeps this time.

Willow Springs is a reference to a piece by Sean Lovelace, which is an exploration of the shooting of Andy Warhol.
The protagonist of the English Patient was himself also a real person, fictionalised then by Ondaatje.

News from the World of Irish Comics and A Request For An Animation Illustrator Type Artist Person To Realise My Dream of Being Awesome

2012-01-26T13:12:00.000Z

Woop woop!

I would describe myself as a mid-level comicbook nerd, in that I know where some of the quotes in the Batman movies come from (which comics, I mean), but I wouldn't be able to go into the nitty gritty like timelines and things. I've read the classics and a little random stuff and that's about it.

So yeah, I wrote a comic once, you know. I'll see if I can find the storyboard somewhere and photo it and show you in all its fantastically rubbish glory. I've always wanted to write comics but I have been led to believe one needs an artist for such things, and everyone I've talked to about it has said no. LOSERS.

It would be really cool in a gender-bending, transgressive fiction, genre-defying way. I don't know what it would be about or who the characters would be but that's what it would be like.

IF YOU ARE AN ANIMATION ILLUSTRATOR ARTIST PERSON WHO WANTS TO DO SOMETHING UNUSUAL FOR FREE, I'M READY AND WILLING.

Coming back to the point, there's a comic called Róisín Dubh, and you can buy both volumes here. It's published by Atomic Diner who are pretty cool if Freakshow is anything to go by. There's a review of Róisín Dubh here actually, at the Irish Comic News.

So yeah a SIGNING! I love signings. Like this: <3

And the day after this is EPIC CON!!

a misty swamp-river rivulet day

2012-01-25T23:09:00.000Z

A strange, drifting day, in which I cannot precisely account for the time. A Lady of Shalott day. In a ghastly way, I'm reminded that it's Virginia Woolf's birthday.

I was going to write a little poem about this dreaminess, but the rules of the haiku are too convoluted for my sluggish mind this evening.

All that I can do to convey everything I mean to say in this post is to play this song and have you lie down on the couch with your eyes closed and listen (maybe not on loop as I've been doing).

Cúirt New Writing Prize 2012

2012-01-25T13:54:00.002Z

Taken in The Crane Bar, Sea Road, Galway City
on my phone

Cúirt. It means visit.

What is it? An annual literary festival in Galway. This year it's the 24th - 29th of April, so one must get one's socks on, mustn't one (I think I meant skates?).

Categories? Fiction and Poetry.

Anyway, it's well worth it (€500 to the winner of each category, & a reading slot on the 25th of April), which is €10 per entry - does this mean per name or per poem/story? O woe my feeble mind.

Anyway here's some things to check out:

entry guidelines (you'll be needing that)
Cúirt on Facebook
Cúirt on Twitter
The Galway Arts Centre (I modelled there once. Also a lovely venue for readings and exhibitions)
Over the Edge Literary Events I think these guys are brilliant, to be honest. Run by Kevin Higgins & Susan Millar DuMars, who are warm & lovely people.

View Larger Map

The Unknown Theory Of Musical Scales

2012-01-24T14:50:00.000Z

WHAT does this even mean? I am filled with unease.

I've realised that I know nothing about the theory of scales.

Usually when I'm playing/learning scales I see the shapes of them, as in movements up or down semi tones are like traversing mountain ranges. Scales are like journeys.

Which means I actually couldn't tell you offhand how many flats or sharps a scale or key would have, but the trail of the journey would be mapped in my mind.

It's the same with keys. I'd have a certain feeling for each key, but wouldn't be able to think now what they were without looking at the notation on sheet music. They're also like little scribbled paintings at the start of each piece.

All of these things are contained in the anatomy of my hands. My hands remember feelings and shapes, and are ready to play a Dm scale without my mind being able to articulate or even understand the theory behind them.

Could this possibly be a flaw in the teaching of the untouchable (as far as my discipline and persistence would go) R___________? I remember that B__________ (my violin teacher) was appalled that I couldn't tell her the makeup of any scales.

For the record, they have different shapes on the violin.

Fumbling Through Minor Scales by vitamin C

Sentence Diagramming In My Sparky Brain

2012-01-24T00:39:00.000Z

Yes, this is what I've been up to all evening.

I have a project.

I'm going to spend tomorrow doing it.

It's going to be wonderful.

I'm rather too excited about this.

And am now going to sleep.

Deireadh.

I stole this image from a website and I do not understand what the website is talking about whatsoever, so if you want to find it, just look for this image and it will take you there. Like Neverland except without the mermaids.

"Things I've Learned to Do To Stop Procrastinating," by a Professional Procrastinator.

2012-01-23T19:25:00.001Z

Back in October, and a few times since then, I blogged about getting a chapbook together to submit to a competition that Rose Metal Press were running.

Needless to say, I didn't even get into the semi finals, but I never expected to. Getting the chapbook submission together was one of 4 things I was doing at the time to 'save myself from myself' - by that I mean my procrastinating ways.

Fact: excessive procrastination just makes things worse. The longer you leave something, the bigger it gets in your head until it's insurmountable, no matter how teeny the task actually is. I have lost more hours of sleep over ridiculous things than I'd care to try and enumerate.

If you look up procrastination on Wikipedia, the article is quite sobering, actually. I was going to elaborate on it and different sources, but I'll leave such elaboration to more knowledgeable people or to websites that deal with such things.

So, what did I learn from forcing myself into action, right then and there (always)?

Procrastination is the worst thing you can do when you're trying to decrease your stress levels. It makes things spiral out of control.
Making intensely detailed day-plans is key. A large portion of my procrastination was that I had so much to do, I didn't know where to start. Get all the productivity app(lication)s you want, but all you really need is a piece of paper and a pen to make a list.
If you're a creative person and you procrastinate, my advice to you would be to stop looking at what other people are doing, pretend Internet socialising doesn't exist, and live in your own space, in this world, rooted to the ground and your desk or wherever you might be. I liken it to a horse wearing blinkers: they can only see what is right in front of them. It makes you remember that you're doing what you're doing not for the admiration of the people you know, & not for money, but because you like it.
There's so much information out there that you can get pulled in so many directions at once, your headspace swinging from the past to the future to probable downfalls and tentative peeks at daydreams of success. Mindfulness meditation is the single only way I've been able to combat this. I have three sites to recommend: Susan Piver's wordpress, the aptly named 'How to Meditate .org', Tejvan Pettinger's blog about Sri Chinmoy, and the newest addition, A Daring Adventure, by Tim Brownson.

Ihat, priestess of the goddess Hathor, with a lotus flower. The meanings of flowers as symbols throughout the history of mythology is fascinating. The lotus is well-known as a Buddhist symbol for complete purification, but has been used in many cultures for similar ideologies. I had been looking for an image of the lotus to use with this post but couldn't find one I liked until this one. I um...have a giant thing for Ancient Egypt, especially the medicine. Not that I used to RP on a forum as an Ancient Egyptian slave turned doctor during an early invasion of Sinai, or anything.
More advice from me: do not fly out into the Sahara to Abu Simbel in July. It's just not cricket.

Various Literary Magazine Submission Deadline Details, and A Surpise

2012-01-23T15:37:00.000Z

Andrew Bird

So many, many exciting things today.

Here's some deadlines for ya'll:

PANK magazine is open for submissions now
8 days until wigleaf closes for submissions
8 days until the Stinging Fly subs for their Summer issue are closed
March 1st : Dancing Girl Press opens for their chapbook subs (women only, I'm afraid). I spent about 2 hours yesterday enthralled on their website. So beautiful!! My wishlist has been re-populated
June 5th : Horse Less Press might be open for subs by then
Plumberries Press looks nifty (no, that's not a deadline).

I'm still getting 'no's from publishing houses, which is fine (despite the very public freak out I had on Twitter *cough*). I found a really intriguing place called Lapwing Press, and I can't believe I haven't heard of them before because they're only up in Belfast. Places like these are slim pickin's on this god-forsaken rock.

And finally, have a listen to a song from Andrew Bird's upcoming album, Break It Yourself, which isn't going to be released until March 6th:

Eyeoneye by Andrew Bird

Sudden Blinding Flash of Awesomesauce

2012-01-21T01:05:00.002Z

This year, 2012, is the year in which I shall write a story that is longer than 1500 words. I shall commit myself wholeheartedly to this endeavour, and perhaps write this note to myself on a post-it and stick it on the wall so I see it all the time.
I really need to practice my scales every day.
I will not in any way compare myself to anyone at all, and will, in fact, pretend I am a horse with blinkers on like in Black Beauty and cannot see those horrible overachievers.
Scales are evil.
Shaky hands when taking photos are also bad but whatever it's 1.05 am.

>:(

Things You Remember People By

2012-01-20T20:36:00.000Z

picture of a picture in my aunt's

Today was up and down, and intensely frustrating. However, I stopped over at my aunt's and thought I'd put up the photo there.

I remember it always from being little, about 8 or 9, when I first noticed it in her house and it struck my fancy.

You know the way there's objects in relatives' houses that somehow speak to you of them in entirety, and articulate the sum of your life and times with them. That's what that photograph is to me. If you look at the one below it, from my Nana's house, it's the same feeling.

Will these be the things I remember forever, emblematic of life and love, of their smell and their way of speaking?

Nana's little houses

On my desk at the moment, for example, I have two wax seals (just took a photo. See below). One is mine, given to me on my twenty first birthday by a friend. The other is my late grandfather's. Before he died, he was moved into the downstairs room as he said he couldn't climb the stairs anymore.

The room was his den, and was filled with a lifetime worth of priceless treasures (junk).

In fairness, some of the stuff was cool. Hundreds of slides and a projector. Cameras. So many pens, beautiful ones. A pipe (which I have). Sketchbooks of life drawing. Paints, brushes...yards of string, a drawer of keys. It was like the Old Curiosity Shop. Most of it was thrown into a skip, by me and my cousin and his then girlfriend, but some of it was kept, on granddad's wishes, or because we fancied the look of things. I didn't know at the time that I was taking trinkets to remember him by, but that's what happened.

M is his, J is mine

On Manuscript Preservation & the Digital Age

2012-01-19T17:05:00.001Z

Anais Nin

I've been thinking more about manuscripts, preservation and the digital age. There was a verrrry interesting post on Wayne McEvilly's website about his correspondence with Anais Nin, and she herself describes how she preserved her own letters for prosperity. He has a PhD in Music & Metaphysics. How cool is that?

I read Delta of Venus when I was a teenager and was greatly disturbed, I suppose because of the time of my life I was at and what was going on yada yada.

Perhaps it ought to be dug out again....

And how do I preserve things myself? Letters: kept in their envelopes and tied with ribbons. Anything else is kept in binders and usually colour coded and carefully post-ited to hell. My notebooks are also full of keepsakes...train tickets, even, from London, Berlin.

A Confession of my secret fears. A photo of my new shoes. A poem.

2012-01-19T13:51:00.000Z

new shoes!!

Frantic activity today! I've stopped posting my plans to Facebook (I'm sure everyone's delighted). Also here's a photo of my new shoes :) :) :)

Getting to the point:

I have calls to make which I'm dreading (I really hate talking on the phone). Just about jobs and things. Would anyone like to pretend to be me? :D In fairness though, working in tech support really helped that, but it was DIFFERENT because those people were calling ME.

I'm really bad at selling myself, as in explaining why I'm good or what I've done, my achievements. Phone-calls, query letters, the dreaded contributor's bio, even my LinkedIn title. It feels like boasting. I get shy. It's all very well and good to answer the 'why should we employ you' with I'M AMAZING but like I'm well able and trained to do these things I'm applying for, and I just need to tell them that. Or pitching my novel. Why should anyone want it? Ummm.

If anybody's interested, actually, here's my LinkedIn profile. It makes me look good doesn't it? I should stare at it while on the phone or writing query letters.

Actually, making phonecalls is not unlike public speaking, which is something I think I'd be good at, despite the fact that when I express myself with my voice, I generally sound ditzy (at best). My writing voice is so much better than my speaking one. If my speaking voice was my strength, I would've been a lawyer. Could I hand people notes?

picture of my dislike of all this

God I'm sorry, this is turning into rather a confessional post. I should write a confessional poem about it shouldn't I? Em. Here we go, rough, ready and off the top of my head:

A Poem About Myself In the Confessional Style

I'm a 12 year old in a

developed body.

At 26 I'm not old enough to

have children. I'm not a

grown up, silly. How dull are

they. They're not the sort to have

adventures.

Admission:

I am afraid

of the formal, the professional;

a tiny place in me shrieks

and feels a faker. I was assured by a

friend that that's all grown ups ever

are: fakers in suits.

The Cat's Table

2012-01-18T06:35:00.001Z

Apologies, Mr Ondaatje, but just over halfway through your latest novel, I lost interest.

Is there a subtle structural flaw? Is it too long? Maybe it would have worked better as a novella? Or was it just...dare I?...dull?

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.3

Are blogs the new diaries?

2012-01-17T21:41:00.000Z

Spent the day very productively ordering my facebook photos according to location.

Listened to Azure Ray and Armin Van Buuren's stuff on the state of trance (I wouldn't usually listen to trance but I liked these ones).
I also listened to podcasts of the John Murray Show which is a radio show on RTÉ 1. The postcasts were about diary writing, and it made me think of blogs (because an account of being in the trenches in WW1 does that to people).

The first paragraph of this entry was not unlike a diary entry, no? And I've seen that kind of thing on many blogs. People write blogs for different reasons. They're going through physical/spiritual/mental journeys. They're recovering from cancer. They write. They draw.

Really it's either

people hypermanically promoting themselves or
people just talking about their lives

My notebooks do turn into diaries sometimes, admittedly. I'll start a tirade about something or other amid story/book/shopping notes.

This is all very interesting to me, because I've been worried lately about a minor and rather stupid thing, but nevertheless it's assumed an importance in my mind.

JG Ballard, original manuscript of Crash

We have such a wealth of documentary material from writers in the past. Diaries, letters, manuscripts edited and reedited and scored out. And now in this virutal age, with writing especially there's going to be very few edited-by-hand texts like that about. You want to delete or alter a line, you can do it immediately in a word processor without having to print anything.

I have a physical copy of a manuscript here now, and it's being slashed apart by hand. When I'm done do I keep it and lug it around forever along with all the other trash I own or.....what.

In years to come we'll have nothing for the people who will emerge as the shining (literary) lights of my generation, and then nothing from any subsequent generation. Just slick, polished, public-facing writers. We won't really know what they thought or felt or what they loved.

So maybe blogs will help that? Because it'll be all there for anyone to see.

Maybe forever, but probably not.

Is my plant dead or not dead, asked Geeshie Wiley, glancing around in despair at the untidy kitchen.

2012-01-16T20:44:00.000Z

dead or not dead?

plan

Let's play a game.

Is the mint plant in the giant teacup dead or not dead? It's the long stringy one. It's almost dead at the roots but not in the middle and the top is ... the jury's out for the top of it.

Here also is a picture of my plan (see below) for today, and then a glimpse of what the state of my house was like before I came up here, due to the plan. I realise now that I must schedule breaks. Breaks are important.

messy Jess

I did get through it, however, and practised the piano until my right hand hurt. Stupid male composers with reaches that I have to stretch up to. Also my scales are really very awful, but it'll be okay. Just rusty [I keep telling myself that].

I also re-ypted the novel. See. Well. There's two novels. From now on, the one from 10 years ago is going to be called The First Novel and the one from 2 years ago is going to be called The Second Novel.

So I had scheduled in a retype of the whole, slashed up and edited to be-jaysis thing, from 12.30-15.00. I still haven't finished the first chapter.

It's a long chapter.

Anyone out there have any editing woes they'd like to share?

I leave you with Geeshie Wiley. This is a spooky song: the feeling it gave me as I listened to it still hasn't left yet. Also there are no photographs of her at all. Spooky.

A Series of Unfortunate Events...But proof that SoundCloud finally worked.

2012-01-15T15:56:00.000Z

So a lady called Catherine Shefski (who has a blog called All Piano) offered on Twitter to be my practice buddy in an attempt for us to conquer procrastination together. Yes. I live on Twitter now. I'm so grateful though, genuinely, to have a practice buddy, as well as people to banter with.

The thing about Catherine is that she's a piano teacher and fairly Twitterly herself now, so between her and the always helpful Dominic Rivron, plus my friend from Greendrop, I might actually be okay? Thank God for such lovely, supporting people. Honestly, I've never found any people other than my school friends that I can really get into discussions about the nitty gritty of playing the piano.

As regards beating the procrastination, I was supposed to post up the sound of the completed piece today. Three things came happened to make this not happen (NO it wasn't me procrastinating):

I went to see The Artist in the IFI with my friend Eileen. It was great, and well worth the watch. I have an IFI membership now and clearly that makes me awesome.
Another friend of mine (yeah I decided to revive my social life after the wasteland of the last few months) called over and we henna-ed my hair, breaking the kitchen sink in the process and flooding the kitchen. My hair looks great though.
I slept for 12 and a half hours last night, and only woke up at 2.30. Seeing as I have to go to mass with the young adult ministry of Malahide at 5.....a full piece isn't going to happen.

TO THAT END

I give you me practising. It'll probably make for tedious listening, but isn't the recording quality from my phone pretty kickin'?

when you feel like you know someone intimately, and all you have of them is a word or two gleaned from censored sentences

2012-01-15T01:24:00.000Z

wandered on wine

A short post before bed: a poem caught my eye.

It's by a lady called Helen Vitoria who I really should have heard of before because we have 51 mutual friends on Facebook, which says it all, I suppose.

That was sarcasm.

When I read the poem I realised why everyone knows her.

That was sincerity.

Check 'Vagabond' out - clic anseo.

The Best of the Best of Online Places

2012-01-13T23:11:00.001Z

Found on StumbleUpon

I can't stay away. Must. Blog. Must.

To that end, I'm posting a teeny post because I have some surprises for you this weekend and shouldn't post them juuuusssssssst yet.

AND SO LADIES AND GENTLEMEN I give you -

The Best of the Best Of Online Places

The Cupboard. I mean, come on, how adorable and moreish are these? You know you want one.
The Top 50. A friend of mine scared me with this the other day. Apparently he's submitted to all of them at least once and probably more? WTF?
Belletrist Coterie. I don't know what the name means but it sounds good so therefore all is well. They're all about the craft and all.
Neon Literary Magazine. A UK-based magazine? Are you kidding? Wooaaahhh. Yeah I should really bring myself back to this side of the water. Hello England, I'll say.
The Cross-Eyed Pianist. This lady helps me on Twitter. A lot. God bless her.
Dominic Rivron. A music man; he offers advice frequently here and is worth watching out for in the comments.

FIN

Editing Fatigue, & Some Notices (did you see that, that right there was an Oxford comma, the most pretentious of all commas).

2012-01-13T16:49:00.000Z

And to your right you will notice the plan that I made out for today. Ambitious? Certainly. Doable? Why of course. By me? Certainly not.

Note to self: don't be as zealous with tomorrow.

The editing sucked me out and I didn't even do that much of it. God, I'd forgotten how intense it was. Seriously, my hands are shaking and I have a sudden agonising need for pizza.

What are you editing, I hear you cry. Why, the novel I wrote as a teenager, which is currently in 9 different drafts and is a healthy decade old.

Why am I working on something so woebegone? I think, seeing as I mostly write flash fiction these days, that novels require a long view. I need to be able to step waaaaaay back in order to get a good look at them. Ten years back, as it were.

I hadn't thought of the manuscript(s) for years, and then the other morning, I was standing at the bus stop, and it hit me that that's what I should be working on. That Celtic Tiger excess novel that I didn't even realise I was writing until the recession.

In other news:

On Twatter, Catherine Shefski and I made a sacred bond to be piano practice buddies. We're going to be both uploading something short onto this thing called Soundcloud which I've vaguely heard of but never used before, by next Sunday.
Soundcloud may be the answer to Blogger's not supporting audio files *shakes fist*
I reinstated my LinkedIn account. It validates one.
Two of my poems have been accepted for Tuck Magazine! They were hailed as 'phenomenal' and 'the best I've (the editor, Val Russell) read in a long time'. Excitement!!
How completely adorable are these Origami Cat Bookmarks?

Rejection Can Be A Good Thing (Sometimes....)

2012-01-12T17:16:00.000Z

the remainder of my books are still in mom's

So yeah it's obviously not a good thing most of the time, but seeing as today in the world of J.M.P. Maybury is about 'the silver lining' and all, I decided to post up a letter that I received from Dzanc Books in March last year (I actually can't believe it was so long ago. I haven't submitted the novel anywhere since then. Moral of the story: react to disappointment better).

On her blog, the Irish writer Nuala Ní Chonchúir posted about rejections, the Kindle and her ideal dream agent, among other things. So in response to that, I decided to post up the email.

Perhaps it's timely to be reminded of this email at such a rudderless time in my life?

Anyway, there was a bit of confusion about my not receiving the rejection & I waited until March to query it:

The rejection would have been a standard no thank you but with the confusion caused, I've taken the time early this a.m. to go back and dig into our reader notes to see what specifics I could find. While there were some things that we enjoyed about the excerpt--some of the quirky details you work in nicely, not obtrusively, the beginning of the novel was cluttered--names and characters hitting the reader a bit too fast and in a way that made it difficult to keep track of who was who and why they were being mentioned. Some of the dialogue later in chapter one seemed to be pushing the quirkiness a bit.
All in all, the writing was pretty solid, no readers quit on the manuscript really early because of that. The most common comment was that after reading the first two chapters, there wasn't a real interest in asking for the rest of the novel.
I hope that these comments might help a little bit more than a simple No thank you email, and while the novel didn't hit us here at Dzanc in just the right way, we do wish you well in finding that publisher that loves it and can't wait to have you send them the rest of your manuscript.

Good luck,

Dan Wickett

Treat Me Daughter Kindly

2012-01-11T18:50:00.002Z

This Poetry Jam poem, suggested by the lovely Chris, is in response to the photo there.

I often have unexpected emotional reactions to the Poetry Jam prompts, and end up writing difficult poems when I could have scrawled off something that says little and means less.

I could see this spawning many poems. Suffice to say I think this one is trite and clichéd - but sure we'll see what you think.

The two people in the photograph remind me of Uncle Benny and Auntie Hilda. They belong to an Ireland that no longer exists.

Posted below the poem as well is a version of the song that was Uncle Benny's party piece, and the title is taken from that. Also, James Fennell has a gallery of images he took for the bestselling Vanishing Ireland on his website, and it's well worth a gander, if you've the time.

All The Little Chickens

They didn't have therapists or

Valium

botox in the Ireland in which

you had a sofa in the garden, in front

of the long rows of greenhouses,

for sitting in the sun, on the Thursday afternoon

that we still hail as

Summer.

So, no, come wrinkles or disease

or helpless constriction of the chest

in hours of darkness -

even, especially, at funerals -

there was

that inappropriately timed giggle

that comes from nowhere,

just at the precise moment

needed.

Wanted: Black Marker [a writing exercise]

2012-01-11T01:09:00.000Z

Time: 8am

Place: a city park

Soundtrack: Hitchcock Starlet

photo taken with this thing as has been usual of late

A breakthrough about procrastination. This is hopefully the last post I'll ever write on this subject.

2012-01-09T10:13:00.001Z

I'm posting this because I've suddenly realised why I'm procrastinating to such a reckless extent.

I'M TRYING TO DO TOO MANY THINGS.

So I've stripped it down. Piano & writing. That's it. What's important is progress, not perfection. But what I always strive for and demand is perfection.

It's unnecessary. I'm only one person.

The photo of the pencil case is meant to imply work and timetables.

You'd procrastinate too if you were overwhelmed by all this -

Finishing reviewing
Reviewing zines
writing short tiny stories
writing longer stories
submitting stories
editing the novel
yoga
walking
eating properly
learning about biochemistry
and quantum physics
and typography
while exposing my blog
playing the piano
sitting my piano exam
watching Band of Brothers
watching Romeo & Juliet
talking to my friends
seeing enough art in exhibitions
seeing lots of films in the IFI
learning to drive
get my driving licence
speak Irish without getting really nervous
reading all the books that I haven't had time to read yet
applying for a PhD? Or not?

Enough.

Master Procrastinator Strikes Again

2012-01-06T12:13:00.000Z

I have a flickr page! It'll take a few days for my photos to go public, but I figured people on facebook would be getting annoyed with my uploading random stuff all the time with no explanation.

My art needs no explanation, damn it!

Update on the organising: I am halfway organised. This weekend is going to be very packed with slots of things I need to do (aren't my weekends always like that). Mommy dearest bought me a Moleskine day planner for Christmas and it's being put to good use. I was against Moleskine for ages because, well....y'know. Hipsters and all. But in fairness, they make good stuff.

Flaneur and decomP will finally be hearing from me (if they remember I'm alive. I need to ponder the books and zines I read.).

In my search to increase my energy levels so I can get more work done, I found stuff on yoga poses you can do while at your desk at work so you'll feel kind of more alive during the day I guess or whatever yoga is meant to do.

Also can I say, the 100 push ups programme is just way too hard. Either that or I'm lazy (don't offer suggestions on that one). Maybe I should tone it down a bit and work up....

I hope this isn't me being all gung ho about the New Year and all that malarkey.

Jessica the Fembot

2012-01-06T08:21:00.002Z

The first week back at work is over! And man was I tired. Suddenly jolting back into getting up at 6.30 am when you've been going to bed at 4 am is really hard, let me tell you that for nothing.

I am the reason God invented coffee.

A good friend of mine once told me that you have to turn your body into a machine. He was on his university's rowing team at the time and was talking about excerise, but I think it could apply to me too.

For the next week I'm going to pretend that I'm a disciplined person, and make a timetable and stick to it...and see how I feel at the end. I bet I'll feel amazing because I'm always afraid that life is passing me by & that I'm not doing/feeling/being enough.

Procrastination is a hard mistress.

The photo is one I took this morning in Fairview of a building that I pass every day and I've only just wondered today what it actually is, because it looks pretty old.

Fact: it's near Bram Stoker's birthplace. Maybe that's what made the light red. Taken again with Retro Camera.

I'll Bach your Schubert so long as you Shostakovich..

2012-01-04T22:05:00.002Z

portrait of the artist as a twat. My hair
is nice sometimes, I swear.

Christmas seems to be still upon us here in the Maybury household. There's the wilting tree, the baubles, the angel, the giant mess from me and my...whatever it is I do.

I wish I had a Mary Poppins.

I'm waiting til the weekend to straighten everything out though because frankly, I am a tired Jessica.

But in the Christmas holidays, however, I've submitted stuff to EVERYWHERE and also decided (da da da daaa) which piano pieces I shall play for my long-stressed-over exam.

You might remember I said I had to pick one from lists A, B & C, so here we are:

JS Bach - Fugue in B flat BWV 866 (I find Bach very calming to listen to. My piano teacher of 10 years, Rita Thomas, had a little bust of him on top of her piano. Seriously though look it up and bask in fabulous symmetry.).
Schubert - Andante from Sonata in A, D 664: 2nd Movement (people always say that you need to play Schubert and that at some time in their piano-lives, they'll have loved Schubert. Personally I find him a little bland, but I found a young chap on youtube (Thomas J Bromley), who seemed to be really in love with this piece, coaxing the music from the instrument with a tenderness that's rarely seen, and I want to play this for him).
Shostakovich - Allegro Vivace from Prelude op 34 no 5 (1: it sounds impossible and 2: because of Claire Kilroy's Tenderwire and for Aileen Armstrong of my MA in Writing class). Yes that's right, I'm not playing the Chopin. Because it sounds like elevator music.

HOW CRAZY EXCITING IS THIS.

In lacking the sheet music for these pieces, I'm warming up by fiddling about with Mr Crish's request of I Giorni (not my favourite piece by Einaudi but okay) and also some free sheet music that I received as a present from Piano Street - Liszt's Consolation No 3., and his Nocturne No 3.

um yeah so here's an umbrella, God knows why. Also it's wonky but we like it that way don't we. Oh yes we do. Yum.

Flash Fiction is a State of Mind

2012-01-02T12:23:00.002Z

a pretty picture of a robot because man will I need to never stop

And as such I think I'll be moving away from it for a while. I'm all shorted out, as it were.

Obviously I won't be going that much longer, maybe up to 2,000 words longer, but that would be long enough, I think. There are things I feel like exploring that I think might take a little more time. Whether or not I'll be able to move out of the 700 word bracket after flailing around in it for over a year, however, remains to be seen.

Writers have lengths that suit them, I think, or genre - like poetry vs the novel, for example. In this way words are like clothes. You can try on whatever you want but you know what you like.

Some places I'd like to go? Steampunk, sci-fi, memoir. I know that it's a fact that most of the stuff writers go on from is themselves, but I dislike writing about myself and would try to divorce myself from my writing as much as possible. The piece in issue 2 of apt though, is entirely true, although I submitted it as fiction (you can pre-order it here).

I'm going to be submitting quite a bit in the next while, though. I realised during the holidays

that I've got loads of finished stories, suddenly, in my documents folder.

I'm going to be moving back over this side of the water, as well. Not entirely, of course, my personal history has ensured that I could never take one foot out of America. It's the cute pseudo Hemingway thing they have going over there at the moment in America though that I'm getting away from, in case it infects me.

Get ready for the rejection letters, people.

So here's a list of places I like:

Prick of the Spindle
Belletrist Coterie
Hobart (o look is that Alex Lumans I see? blogged about him before)
Fictionaut
Ambit
The Dublin Review
Neon
Monkeybicycle
Moloch
Wordlegs
Juked
The Molotov Cocktail
Moth
The Irish Pages
Salamander
Granta (dream on)
Word Riot
Nth Word
SteamPunk Magazine
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet
the Diagram (as we all know)
robotmelon
Specter
Pank
elimae
Kill Author
Crannóg (Lord do they need a new website)

Poetry Jam! Joseph Spece! Angus & Julia Stone! The Alt Lit Gossip Awards!

2012-01-01T18:12:00.001Z

the idea for a poem this week on Poetry Jam is to write something inspired by music. The idea was Dani's. The poem's below.
xTx and Frank Hinton were accoladed for being awesome. Clic anseo for Safety Third Enterprises' blogpost about it.
Joseph Spece has some intriguing poetry up in Diagram 11.6. He's new to me. I wish us wed. Quote of the day, from 'Astride the Sunken Mare':

I've kept the love
soft and full for you
as flowers or red melon
on the verge of spoil.

!***Onwards to the Poetry Jam Poem!***!

The Song: Paper Aeroplane, by Angus and Julia Stone. Check out their website, because it's darn purdy. Becca De La Rosa told me to listen to them, and seeing as she always has good stuff, I did.

The Lyrics: clic anseo.

The Video: clic anseo.

The Poem:

A PAPER AEROPLANE WON'T TELL YOU WHAT I MEAN

Folding paper isn't my forte,

and writing notes to pass to you [in secret]

in public places

has never been something I've mastered. When I

speak, the words never come out right,

and I sound like a child [at best].

Instead - !

I'll think

of you while writing poetry or short stories

and dedicate everything to your name

either out loud or in

private

[so I at least will know

that I've never stopped]

And now for something completely different -

2012-01-01T16:50:00.000Z

Starting 2012 as I mean to go on, I'm hungover Internet window shopping.

You might be able to tell that I like certain movies and that I need t-shirts.

What did I do last night? I drank absinthe while watching Lock, Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels, and then Batman Begins and the Dark Knight.

Anyway. Here's the best of the best.

Let Retro Camera distract you while I go have a nap

2011-12-31T14:42:00.002Z

[all seeing eye]

[little houses]

[the yellow arrow, Stillorgan]

[the view from Urban Outfitters, Temple Bar, Dublin]

all photos taken by the Android app(liction) Retro Camera, developed by the nice folks at Urbian.

Why I don't make New Year's Resolutions

2011-12-31T10:41:00.000Z

What I wanted for 2011 was to start a long-lived art project with my friends. That project is now called ESC, and the website for it is here. So it's pretty deadly to think that I actually did what I wanted with the year, just because I could. If even I can finally get something done, so can anyone.

Coming to a new year is like climbing a mountain in that the climber, at the bottom, imagines how they'll feel at the top, and that's what sustains them. In the same way, the new year stretching ahead of you is a dream, or an idea of what your life can or will be like; the feats you could achieve; the people you could reach out to; the personal growth that lies in store.

I've never been that big on the new year's resolutions, but rather just have thoughts or wishes for the new year - things I'd hope to do, or things that would make me feel good to have done. Looking over my list now, though, I can't see losing 2 stone anywhere on it so you're gonna have to just pretend that one is there.

Have a good one!

I am wildly happy.

2011-12-29T14:38:00.001Z

That's all I wanted to say today.

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.2

'Unneccesarily Grim' is Available for Your Kindle-y Delectation

2011-12-27T13:47:00.000Z

This being the official announcement.

I'm not entirely sure if it's formatted correctly. Nobody who has it has said anything though.

It's a collection of four stories written as a birthday present for my cousin Rita, whose parents bought her a Kindle for her birthday.

Click the ghost. You know you wanna.

yum

Nollaig Shona duit

2011-12-24T16:08:00.001Z

Have a good one.

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.2

Dos and Don'ts of Kindle Direct Publishing

2011-12-22T18:07:00.001Z

This post is longer than intended. Apologies.

DO OR DO NOT

Do make sure that your word document has all the margins and indents set as per standard, & that you have the basics of formatting down
TAKE SCREENSHOTS OF TEXT BOXES and insert them into your document as pictures (if you're using text boxes), because my text box kept coming up strange and eventually I just deleted it
When you've uploaded your document file and it's been converted to Kindle format on the website (which is the easy part, believe me, you just click a button), I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH: mess about with the font size as you preview your newly-converted document. I didn't do this and therefore edited my document about 7 times before I realised it was just the view settings and not my layout. I've lost easily 2 hours of my life
USE 'INSERT PAGE BREAK' COMMANDS instead of just jumping to the next page when you're laying out the document. Kindle understands this. The keyboard command is ctrl + return
Word can automatically generate TABLES OF CONTENTS. This is very handy, as it can turn the contents titles into hyperlinks rather than displaying the page number. Apparently this is good for Kindles. Read about it carefully before you do it. I've done it and it's done and online and everything but I still don't entirely understand what it is I actually did. Do you want to feel this way? No you do not
I know it's tempting to rush on and be all omg it's online it's online but seriously, once it's set to Kindle format, PREVIEW PREVIEW PREVIEW. Maybe I'm overly anal about formatting (because I can't do it), but stuff like this matters

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT MY WRITING AND HOW I DO IT

I cannot format properly and never could. I overcompensate for this drastically by messing about with settings that should never be touched
I cannot stay in the correct tense. I'm always wandering about in the past or the present. Or even in the 2nd person
Anything I write in the 2nd person is usually autobiographical
The prompts generator I used is too mundane for my tastes
Other creative types on Twitter are very supportive and helpful when one whines extensively about editing
I am disorganised. Very, very disorganised
I'm not sure if there should be full stops in bullet points (.) (?)

So the present of an e-book for my cousin, Rita, who received a Kindle from her parents today (her birthday), is finished. It is currently 'in review'. I have blogged about it before, right here.

And Finally,

this whole affair has made me feel like doing what the angry gentleman is doing in this YouTube video (it's a clip from In Bruges).

The pieces on the syllabus for 2012-2014 Grade VIII have been announced. Let the choosing begin!

2011-12-21T08:25:00.000Z

The deal is that you pick a piece from each list, and play three then at the exam along with sixty million trillion scales, a sight-reading test and then the theory. Considering doing the theory exam before the practical exam though and getting it over with.

I've already baggsed the Chopin from List C so I just have the other 2 to pick. I guess I can't choose three Romantic pieces can I ... :D

I did play a 2 part invention at a competition years ago and there's one listed here in List A but man I panicked and slaved over it. Perhaps it would be different now that I'm older.

My strengths include things like Bach, then, and Scarlatti. Beethoven fits into my hands as well but I love Mozart, yet can't play him easily.

Choices choices.

Without further ado, gentlemen, ladies; the List:

LIST A

JS Bach Fugue in B flat BWV 866 Das Wohltemperierte Klavier Book I

(Henle)

Scarlatti Sonata in D minor K1Scarlatti Sonatas Book I (Editio Musica

Budapest)

JS Bach Prelude in C minor BWV871 Das Wohltemperierte Klavier

Book II (Henle)

Handel Sonatina in D minor HWV 581Easy Piano Pieces and Dances

(Bärenreiter)

Telemann Vivace from Fantaisie in G minor Keyboard Anthology Third

Series Book II (Associated Board)

Handel Prelude from Suite no 3 in D minor HWV 428 Klaviersuiten

(Henle)

JS Bach Two-Part Invention no 14 in B flat BWV 785 Inventions and

Sinfonias (Henle)

LIST B

Haydn Allegro moderato from Sonata in B minor Hob XVI: no 32:

first movement Sonatas Band II (Henle)

Mozart Presto from Sonata in F KV280: third movement Sonatas Band I

(Henle)

Schubert Scherzo in B flat D593 Leichte Klaviermusik: eighteenth and

nineteenth century Band I (Henle)

Schubert Moment Musical no 5 in F minor D780 Impromptus and

Moments Musicaux (Wiener Urtext)

Mozart Andante Amoroso from Sonata in B flat KV281: second

movement Sonatas Band I (Henle)

Beethoven Presto alla tedesca from Sonata in G Op 79: first movement

Sonatas Band II (Henle)

Schubert Andante from Sonata in A D664: second movement

Sonatas Band I (Henle)

Beethoven Bagatelle op 33 no 7 in A flat Bagatelles (Henle)RIAM Local Centre Keyboard Syllabus

LIST C

Smetana Polka Poetique op 8 no 2 Leichte Klaviermusik:: eighteenth and

nineteenth Century Band II (Henle)

Chopin Nocturne op 9 no 2 in E flat Nocturnes (Henle)

Debussy Dr Gradus ad Parnassum Children’s Corner (Henle)

Ibert Le Petit Ane Blanc (The Little White Donkey) (Alphonse Leduc)

Granados Oriental from Danzas Espagnolas Danzas Espagnolas (Union

Musical Ediciones)

Messiaen La Colombe Preludes (Durand Edition)

Shostakovich Allegro Vivace from Prelude op 34 no 5 Twenty-four Preludes

Op 34 (Boosey and Hawkes)

Turina Clowns from Circus Suite op 68 Circus Suite op 68 (Schott)

A Poem About the Occupy Movement, for Poetry Jam.

2011-12-19T22:34:00.001Z

I have removed As a Swipe-Card Slave to the Militant Unemployed, as it has been accepted for publication by Tuck Magazine.

as suggested by the latest Poetry Jam.

Getting guidance from the internet about piano practising when you don't have a teacher or anyone to consult with

2011-12-18T18:14:00.000Z

Trying to stay on track

I'm thinking of keeping a practice journal.

I have this thing in my life where time goes too fast for me and I want to grab it by the shirtsleeves and slow it down. Journalling and taking photographs is meant to help that.

But practice journals? To chart where you were in order to see where you should go.

If journals are a record of where you've gone, obviously you'd need a plan of where you're going. A guideline, rather.

Is there a point to planning your own lessons?

This is why I need a whiteboard.

Things I have found on the interwebs about practising the piano:

Keynotes has a list of tips. The top ten. One of them is about journalling.
Searching on YouTube brings up a good few video tips. Are they worth it?
Valentina Lisitsa hurts my brain. Particularly this video here of her practising Chopin's Étude Op. 10, No. 4 (sheet music is here).
There's an article on masochistic pianists here, which I found on StumbleUpon. This has nothing to do with practising, really; I just liked the headline & then the content.

Things I've found out about myself from practising the piano:

I shouldn't be afraid of practising for longer than I think I should. Human hands and brains aren't as fragile as I thought.
Breaking pieces into sections is something I noticed years ago that helps. Most pieces have at least 2 sections that are the same, and it makes you feel better to know that even though it's a 10 page piece, you only actually are learning 7.
Coming back to playing the piano after three months, I thought I'd forget what to do, but I didn't. It stayed in my hands.

Being teacherless is teaching me a lot about the meaning and organisation of practice, and of the different ways of practising. I'm moving away from the rigid form I have always used and it's turning practice into it's own kind of play.

I'll let you know if I still feel this way in three months' time though, when the novelty has worn off.

Graph of semiquaver motif, bars 1 - 4, Chopin's Étude Op.10, No. 4.

the desecration/glorious transformation of a work of fiction is completed. More anon.

2011-12-17T16:10:00.001Z

The Kindle E-Book Project of Utmost Secrecy

2011-12-17T15:44:00.000Z

So a certain person close to me is getting a Kindle for her birthday (which is on Wednesday).

I'm fairly sure she doesn't read this blog but clearly I'm not extremely worried if she sees this post. Because then she'll see how much effort I'm going to & be touched...or something.

Anyway yeah, I think someone else came up with the idea but I'm going to say it was me but what I'm doing, right, for her present:

writing four flash stories
using the writing.com prompt generator app(lication) to make these stories
self-publish these four stories on Amazon's Kindle Store (clic anseo)
give the certain person a card on her birthday with the web address

It was going to be a light-hearted affair, possibly fairy stories, but seeing as the first one in the little collection features a politician, a 12 year old and a Vegas hotel room, it's clearly gone in a different direction.

Of course, by my blogging about it, I'm sure you can see how productive I'm being on the project. Oh yes, friends, I procrastinate therefore I am.

There's even a manifesto now. Why do I get so involved in things.

MANIFESTO FOR THE UNTITLED WORK OF AWESOME:

Written entirely with the aid of theWriting Prompts Android App, from Writing.Com, to prove that good writing cancome from exercise.

IF ANYONE WOULD CARE TO SUGGEST A TITLE, IT WOULD BE APPRECIATED. I'M PLANNING ON USING A GENERATOR FOR THAT TOO, LIKE I DID WITH THE CHAPBOOK, WHICH, BY THE WAY, IS ENTITLED HELLO TO CREAMY MEDIA.

; and in a smile of peculiar meaning

2011-12-12T23:27:00.001Z

I was going to post a practice video but I'm posting this instead and there's NOTHING you can do.

One of my favourite things is the great Edgar Allan, and my favourite piece of his is Berenice. Read it. Puke in excitement and terrified awe. Read it again. Then go here for a while to calm down.

But I just read it again for the first while in about a year & I want to catapult around my room and trampoline on the bed (and a small thing in my brain already is) shouting

QUE TOUTESSES DENTS ETAIENT DES IDEES!

The Connection Between Flik Flaks, New York, Poetry and Time.

2011-12-11T09:45:00.001Z

The picture above is a snapshot of a spam email subject I got this morning. What matters is if you have hair. If you're young. Do people spend their lives past 30 mourning for the bodies of the past?

With that in mind, here is my poem based on the Poetry Jam prompt for today, which was to think about the past and the future [thanks Peggy!].

It's a clumsy effort at best, unfortunately, but it's hard to express this in words. I'm not even sure if the link between the spam mail and the watch is apparent to anyone else. Let me know if you get it.

FLIK FLAK

Simple with some quirkiness,
my watch was meant for a child,
for little boys
.

You bought it for me in a modish shop in Time's Square. I
have worn Swatch since I heard of time;
I have multiple Skins, and am known
for my Flik Flaks. (Am I still that

person I was in that shop in that
summer in those shoes and heat
and noise, the fury of that place,
(a place you hate), beside you choosing the future
in 2007?)

All these. The Flickr stream of
memory and consequence
and things to come,

caught
by the purity of Swiss
engineering.

ISSUU ESC 1 & 2

2011-12-11T01:25:00.001Z

Fabulousness made ~~flesh and dwelt among us~~ readable online.

And prettier.

But not more exciting or

amazing or

thought provoking.

I'm talking about ESC.

What is it?

It's an anonymously produced zine that's free around Dublin. It's art and words and poetry and photography and line drawing and illustration and everything you ever wanted and more! [I've been yammering on about it at length.] Are the doublepaged wings of glorified spreads below not good enough for you?

In that case email escpeople@gmail.com and we can arrange a package transfer.

ESC1

ESC2

Follow ESC @azinecalledESC or on facebook.

The Stats Department: Stumbling Upon Something That's DoublePlusGood.

2011-12-10T16:08:00.001Z

I love statistics.

By that I mean I love graphics and piecharts and ... all that. Is there a word for that? A quick scan of Wikipedia and I couldn't find one.

So in November of 2011, Perfect Fourth had the most hits it's ever had in the whole of it's [her?] epic 2 year history, by about 200ish people.

Thanks!

Let's face it. I'm really not sure how many people read this thing but I don't think it's very many, so really I'm chuffed that anyone finds it at all, even if by mistake (dia dhuit le mo chairde Rúisis).

Links for the bored or interested:

Central Statistics Office for Ireland

Google Analytics

Making Charts On Your Very Own

Beginner's Guide to Mindmapping

(a personal pastime of mine)

Easter Week Timeline

(the most stunning example of ... whatever the hell this is ... that I've ever found. I want it on my wall, in segments if necessary.)

I don't know what to title this post. Selection from Diagram 11.5, a poem by Joseph Chapman.

2011-12-09T10:16:00.001Z

I woke up to a standard rejection letter from Diagram magazine. I've gotten to the stage where when I get a standard rejection I feel insulted. How dare they not be intrigued. My earlier, not-knowing-what-I'm-doing work seems to do better with them. At least the rejections got comments. Maybe I'll post up some comments later.

If you search for Diagram magazine on this blog you'll find I posted about them a lot before. I myself was quite appalled when I realised that. I'm quite the ranter.

So here's something I found in the current issue of Diagram. To be honest I don't like much of what's in it right now. It goes right over my head. I scoured through it to try and see trends or patterns or just anything that would go into my brain to tell me what the hell they want from me [blood???!!!].

This is one of Joseph Chapman's three poems that appeared in 11.5. It's the only thing that sparked me in the current issue but I want to go over 11.5 again:

A FEW FAILED THEORIES OF KITSCH

If I hear Phil Collins once more in this dentist's office,
I'm going to shoot myself

The phrase is 'If thine eye offends thee'

, my body beside itself

I'm not sure you understand

This painting of a flower has no right to interpretation

Betty Superman is up at decomP! And some announcements.

2011-12-08T08:31:00.001Z

My review/tirade about the state of the publishing industry of Betty Superman is up at decomP magazine :) Clic anseo.

I have an upcoming announcement but I'm not sure whether I can post it up yet. The etiquette involved and all that.

Finally, you can contact me whenever you so desire at my shiny new email courtesy of Mud Luscious Press, here.

A Slip of Good News

2011-12-05T10:02:00.001Z

I had a story accepted for the Gods & Monsters zine (by Tinderbox) that I was talking about earlier!

Hooray! Chuffed altogether. It's great when you get something into a place you love.

Ah No Sure I Was Only Having A Laugh

2011-11-30T23:26:00.001Z

Well, not really but it's okay.

I was advised to donate in order to get around that whole pesky Europeanese thing, and the collection (adverb free since 2011) was safely and absolutely 100% submitted.

Good thing we're not the kind of people who lose our cool over nothing, ain't that right soldier.

That's right, sir.

A post about the chapbook competition, designed to alleviate tension (mine).

2011-11-30T22:57:00.001Z

11pm the day before the deadline for the competition.

I gave the collection a title by using a title generator I found online.

I MSNed the boyfriend (who's downstairs) and asked him to do the honours with the PayPal side of things (long story).

I was writing the email and attaching my manuscript when he MSNed back and told me that the payment options were limited to North American/Canadian dwellers only??!!?!!!!

So I've emailed them to ask if there's any way I can still enter. This is like one of those reality TV shows. Someone shoot me from my good side biting my lip and clutching the hands of the contestant next to me.

Aw man.

The Short Shorts Are Wrapped Up, Perhaps, But Where Does This Leave NaNoWriMo 2011? [feat. Sufjan Stevens]

2011-11-29T22:16:00.001Z

It's finished and formatted! (I direct you to my previous post for explanation).

I think.

I'm notoriously bad at formatting. I've been manacled to my desk for something horrendous like I dunno an HOUR now (2 and a half) trying to work the damn thing out. I don't understand paragraphs.

I'm going to have another couple looks through it, see if I can spy any adverbs, and then send it off to be free in the mysterious Cloud (or wherever).

Once I've sent it and paid for it and it's gone and there's NOTHING I CAN DO EITHER WAY TO TILT THE WHIM OF FATE I will pen a post on the ordering and re-ordering of a manuscript of short shorts, entitled '871 Things I Hate About Adverbs.'

In the meantime, where does this leave NaNoWriMo 2011? I'm finished, and I got there...but my mansucript is now a stunning 8,116 words, not 50,000+. Maybe I should never have signed up for NaNo?

BUT NOW LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE INTERMISSION

O Come, O Come Emmanuel is a hymn that's officially from the 12th century but the antiphons could be from the 8th century, and was translated from the Latin by these two guys, one of whom has a cool last name.

It's based on Isaiah 7:14, hence I snuck in the kickin' icon of the prophet himself up there.

Fun fact: when we were kids, my two cousins and I used to pretend the words were "and he shall send you a manual" instead of "and He shall send you Emmanuel." Yeah we were so smart.

This is my way of being Christmassy :)

Ready to Edit [?]

2011-11-27T12:04:00.001Z

RECAP: I've been gathering a story collection together to submit to the Rose Metal Press Annual Short Short Chapbook Competition. Deadline is December 1st [this Thursday]. Previous posts are here and here.

disclaimer: I'm not expecting to get anywhere, and that I feel I need to have something to show for this year so here it is.

I've also been using the collection in an attempt to finish NaNoWriMo for the first year ever. It's not going well. Previous posts on NaNoWriMo in this blog are too numerous for me to bother linking.

#######

The collection is complete!

[As in all the stories I want to include are included.]

Now for the editing and the layout.

As for length:

19 stories stand as flash already. They're under the 1000 words mark, and for the most part don't need any editing at all.

6 stories are possibly being cut from Section 1 (2000-2008) of the collection, because they're far too long. I wrote them over a decade ago and if I go in to edit them now, I'll probably be so irritated by them that I'll end up re-writing them entirely, which is not something I have time for.

7 stories in Section 2 (2008-2010) are too long, but as these are much tighter, I'll be cutting them down to size and including them. Most of these have been published.

1 story in Section 3 (2010-present) is too long, and then only by 100 words or so.

As for order:

They're clustered into sections, chronologically. The sections are labelled by the years they encompass, as well as the geocodes these years happened at.

I got the geocodes from an address finder online but I'm not sure how accurate these are, so I'll probably be doing it on Googlemaps manually. It would be easier if Ireland had postal codes. This is not me advocating postal codes in Ireland.

The very end:

The very last section is going to be an analytical one with stats about the progression. There'll be graphs. That's all I really care about. Graphs. Also there'll be a list of the most common things that turn up in my fiction. At the moment I've noticed computer standby lights, people who vanish, people who turn into other things, inappropriate stuff you think about when you're in a really serious moment. [I don't know if I'll actually include the analytics.]

the shortest review I've ever written, on Ghosts, by Paul Auster.

2011-11-27T09:25:00.000Z

Ghosts by Paul Auster
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I gave up. I love Paul Auster's work, but I just found this so very dull that I couldn't even finish it.

View all my reviews

Tinderbox; Making Your Own Books in Blurb; A Company That Puts Things I Like on Things I Wear

2011-11-26T15:12:00.001Z

TINDERBOX

Well? It's a creative networkbased in Dublin.

And? artists, animators, illustrators, craft people,writers, musicians, fashion designers ... anything else that I can't think ofor define right now.

So? Getting your work out there, generate acommunity that's living and real (because let's face it, Dublin is stagnant at best).

Current project: I got very excited aboutthis one and now know all about (a) radioactive decay and (b) how pretty great I am. It's called GODS AND MONSTERS OF TOMORROW and is a zine project initially inspired by Into Eternity. It's set to explore the implications of nuclear waste being hidden for 100,000 years. Their site is here.

BLURB

It's a site where you can make your own books and then order as many of them as you want. It's pretty and seems fairly simple to use, which of course is paramount as far as I'm concerned. Clic aneo for the main page. I found it on Tinderbox's site, where Dublin Graffiti Walk was made by Esther Moliné.

AND ATLAS SHRUGGED OFF OUT OF PRINT

Check it. Awww yeah, as Mark would say. I miss you Mark.

I wonder if you're still reading this.

If you are, you probably think I'm not talking to you because I don't think about you but actually I haven't really talked to you because with me changing jobs, its shifted people's relationships out of commiserating about work to talking about things you both love.

And I know stuff you love and ... if you're reading this say hi. I think I'll fb you now, but I won't tell you I posted about you on my blog just to see if you notice.

short fiction - in draft - for your eyes only.

2011-11-23T22:56:00.001Z

[ before we begin. Clic anseo for my cousin doing reviews really, really fast. ]

And so yeah I wrote the following scenario because of two things.

The first thing was Beckett's Come and Go, which is a 'dramicule' and which I've embedded below.

The second thing was an exercise I did for Adrian Frazier and which there had been a good response to. We had to write down a conversation exactly as it transpired - dialogue in real life and dialogue in books are not the same thing whatsoever. I decided to do a second one, except I don't think it turned out quite so well. There should be indents. There aren't. Mea culpa.

disclaimer: I just wrote it and I'm not at all going to be reading it over before I put it up here. So there could well be adverbs. You have been warned.

It doesn't have a title yet. So we will call it ... em.
Yeah. I can't think of anything.
Here it is:

Claire switched on the Dictaphoneand set it discreetly on the table. It lay there, innocuous, like a stillspider. Ostensibly she was recording to capture the idiom and speech patternsof the town she lived in. Secretly she was recording because she likedlistening to people’s voices in her bedroom, much later, in the dark.

“...and then he dropped dead,” AuntyHilda was saying, but Claire wasn’t listening. The kitchen was too warm, theday too heavy, the tea too hot.

Claire’s mother shifted in herseat. They continued to talk about their dead cousin, and Claire couldn’t thinkof anything to say. She excused herself and went to the bathroom to stare atherself in the mirror and touch her immaculate make-up with the palm of herhand.

In the kitchen there was asilence. Aunty Hilda stirred her tea, the clinking loud in the air and said,“You should tell her.”

Claire’s mother shook her head.

“If my husband was doing that kind of thing,”Aunty Hilda said, “I would want to know.”

“What if we’re just jumping toconclusions?”

“I know what I saw.” The oldwoman rested her head against the back of the chair and sighed.

They stirred their tea insilence, Aunty Hilda and Claire’s mother. They didn’t look up when Claire cameback in and, smiling, sat down.

The mad dash to completion begins

2011-11-23T08:01:00.001Z

About NaNoWriMo and the deadline on the 30th for the completion of the short short story collection. Which I'll be then submitting to Rose Metal Press's competition, deadlining on Dec 1st.

Clearly I work better under pressure? Becausssseee

There's now until the 29th.

7 days in total.

For me to hit the remaining 19,000 words (which I need to bring me up to 50,000) I need to write 2.7something flash stories a day. We'll say three.

And then ordering and reordering the collection.

Bring it.

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Has Evernote solved the Audio File Upload Dilemma?

2011-11-22T20:47:00.001Z

So... I somehow went in and updated an older post thinking it was a draft post but it wasn't.

Has Evernote saved us (it's certainly saved me over and over again)? If you click on this link you should be able to hear the sounds I recorded while standing in a bathroom at the Dublin Contemporary Exhibition in Earlsfort Terrace.

Let me know how it goes ...

In which I beg Blogger for audiofile upload support to facilitate caffeine-addled readings of Hooker Options

2011-11-20T19:12:00.001Z

I wrote a post following up on the video that Áine is making (or has made or will make) of my story, In The End You Go With The Hooker Option. The story can be found in issue 2 of ESC.

Remember me mentioning that before? No? Clic aneo.

So the post was going to be really cool and have audioclips that I saved of my messing up the recording and then finally recording it properly.

HOWEVER, MY FRIENDS

I found, to my dismay, that Blogger does not support audiofiles.

What the hell, I hear you say. I know, I say. I KNOW. It's odd really that this kind of sharing wouldn't be supported, which makes me think as to why that would be. Which leads to all kinds of wild speculation on my part most of which just return to Google Wallet for no reason whatsoever. And Google Goggles, which is a deadly idea but I don't know how to use it mostly because the only time I tried it was about 4.30 am on Dame Street and ... yeah.

Anyway. I was so excited. I was planning podcasts and everything.

There's different ways around it.

The videoclip way is too mindnumbingly irritating. The filehosting thing...I can only find sites that cater for mp3 files and the files I have aren't mp3 (two are .amr and one is .wma) and so I'd have to convert them first and ...

..........you can see where I'm going with this.

And so.

PLEASE BLOGGER CATER TO THE UPLOADERS OF AUDIO FILES.

I LOVE THE UPDATED INTERFACES, I DO, AND THE WAY YOU CAN CUSTOMISE STUFF, THAT'S GREAT TOO, AND SO PLEASE MAKE THIS EASY FOR MY TINY BRAIN TO COMPREHEND.

Or if someone feels like explaining it (maybe in a prettily done powerpoint presentation) that would be great. Pretend you're talking to a three year old who's been raised by wombats and you'll be on the right footing.

EDIT: yes I changed the look. The white was really blinding, wasn't it?

Still Life - ing at the very last minute for the Poetry Jam

2011-11-14T19:40:00.001Z

Tonight I am productively procrastinating by writing a poem for the Jammers over here. This week's suggestion is that we pen a verse on 'still life'. So my still life is the shopping trolley photo to the left there. Those were some tasty eggs.

To be honest I don't know if it even counts as a poem. It's kind of just someone talking, like a monologue. Do monologues with cool linebreaks count as poetry these days? Riddle me that.

So here's the poem:

BEING AN ADULT IS KIND OF ANNOYING SOMETIMES ESPECIALLY IF YOU DON'T HAVE A CAR TO TAKE THE SHOPPING HOME IN

My budget used to be

€18 a week and now it hovers around

60. We both have jobs now

and a garden

and we signed up for a milkman but I

think I might not go with that

because I'm the only one who drinks

milk but on the other hand

we must keep the economy going somehow...?

Anyway

I got a taxi home with the

peanuts and the rock shandys and the

eggs and mayonnaise and

envelopes and grapes and

milk and comfort

softener and lettuce -

which reminds me it could still be in the fridge.

It's an €8.45 I'm never getting back. Still.

We must

keep the economy breathing or god

knows what robotmonster from

Brussels will come and claim us.

EDIT having re-read, I should point out that Brussels in the poem refers to the EU headquarters and the EU hates us and therefore I am scared of them. And Nicholas Sarkozy as well, I'm scared of him too.

How NaNoWriMo is going, really.

2011-11-13T10:25:00.002Z

To read about what the hell NaNoWriMo is, clic anseo.

If you were to look at my graphs and all, I swear I'm not cheating. I'm just doing what people do during NaNo...you forget to update the stuff every day and then do it all in one day and now all of a sudden I've written 30,000 words in one day.

So yeah I changed what my novel was halfway through the whole thing. It's now a collection of stories (mostly very short ones) which I'm hauling together and making sense of in order to have something to submit to this. I'm not expecting to win, more just to have something together, a goal to go for, I guess.

I trawled through my Documents folder and my trusty USB and found a lot of things I'd forgotten about. Even completely polished, completed things that have been sitting there since 2009 or 2010, and are now in need of a serious blast of my evolved skills.

I'm not saying my skills are superior, I'm saying that in the passage of time they get sharper. Only if you keep using them though. There's a link to my profile page if you clic anseo.

There was a peptalk email (Nanomail) by Jonathan Lethem (clic aneo for his site - it's quite nice isn't it?) and he made the following observation which I need to stencil onto my wall in block letters (oh to own this homey house):

Raymond Chandler said that when he was at a loss for a plot development he'd have a man walk through a doorway with a gun in his hand. Good advice I've heeded a hundred times or more, but it wasn't the doorway, it was the gun that might solve your problem.

Audio clip of John Cooper Clarke's 'Hire Car'. Recorded in the Button Factory.

2011-11-12T16:34:00.001Z

Nov 11, 2011 9:30:54 p.m.

I have no idea how this works but sure whatever.

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Something small and stupid - an audio upload at last? testing testing 123.

2011-11-11T14:02:00.001Z

Two adults in the workplace making friends, like children.

If you click on it, you should hear my voice? Has Evernote solved the audio upload dilemma?

Let me know if this works for you.

Button Factory, tonight at 7.30.

2011-11-11T10:32:00.001Z

I'll be off to see John Cooper Clarke tonight here. A sound recording, methinks? Probably of what the bar sounds like but that in itself could be interesting.

I wish my hair was his hair.

Also my street cred has risen to a healthy 2.4. Performance poetry, people! Thank Christ I wore my converse. Left the wayfarers at home though.

NaNoWriMo 2011 - the wonders of the smartphones - ESC3 - battling procrastination

2011-11-09T23:15:00.001Z

Aston

Welly welly well. I've just sent my submissions for ESC3. And by that I mean of course I didn't, I don't have anything in that, I don't even know what it is.

There's a good few substandard photos wedged in with the submissions. I decided to expand.

You might have noticed that I've been taking an awful lot of photos with my phone (especially if you follow me on twitter). I took the one on the right this evening on my way to the IFI to see We Need to Talk About Kevin. The one at the bottom was taken at a party for my friend, and it's a cake of an Xbox controller (obviously). I ate lots of it.

I think it's amazing that I can do that though, just take a photo of whatever and put it up in the face of the world immediately, from wherever I am. I can remember a time when there were no mobile phones at all, nevermind ones that have GPS or whatever.

Things are getting together anyway though, which is a relief. I've been learning an awful lot about procrastination, in my struggles to escape from it. Incidentally, I'm reading Inner Productivity - my ongoing thoughts on it are here.

And FINALLY, yes NaNoWriMo. To be honest, again about technology, but this thing called Evernote is really good. I can save soundclips and photos and notes and things and just kind of bottle everything I can that gave me an idea for a story. So I have a good few clippings, and I find I've been writing faster and better than I ever have.

And it's all thanks to not being on Facebook right now.

A note on where I've been.

2011-11-08T14:28:00.001Z

So many things! Some are disastrous, some involve my hair looking great, some are to do with doctors not being able to find my vein for bloodtests for aaaaages.

All have been keeping me from blogging. And NaNoWriMo. And checking emails in general.

I shall post later with more positive news.

(The photo, by the way, is of the contents of my handbag. Chaotic, I know. Apt.)

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A test post from the aul android

2011-11-04T07:24:00.001Z

Hello?

Is this thing on?

I'm on the bus on the way to work listening to St Vincent. Dance and drown, she sings.

I don't know if my photo (proof of my commutingness) will upload or what it will look like if it does. LET'S FIND OUT, SHALL WE.

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there was a sunlit absence - I step back from social networking (again).

2011-11-02T15:21:00.000Z

A short update note -

I've slipped out of Facebook, Google+ and IM chat systems in general (ie my msn & gmail chat accounts) at least until the end of November.

You get the need now and then to cut the tendrils to the wider world and come back into contact with the here & now [especially for someone like me who talks so much anyway].

I feel that constant chatter is keeping me from more important things. I'll be blogging here (~~and on the ESC site~~) and I'll be around sometimes on Twitter, because Twitter is like talking to yourself.

So those with my email can email, those with my number can text and everyone else can tweet if they so wish.

He who does not know how to be silent will not know how to speak. - Decimius Magnus Ausonius

Time passes quickly. Also there were parties.

2011-10-31T18:57:00.001Z

baby Guinnesses

Google decorations

This has been one hell of a weekend. Up and down and out on the town. Baby Guinnesses, gin and tonics, Cava. Bumping into people I know, old friends, in the Dragon. Eating pumpkin soup and playing hectic drinking games in Howth with people I've known since I was 12.

We've reached the time of year that I can't stop thinking of other times. Other things that happened tonight in other places.

We spend all our lives in the past or the future.

Daniela, my new friend :)

Donal colour-codes his books.

Time passes quickly. There are little lines at the corners of my eyes when I smile now.

I wonder what I'll be like when I'm really old.

For the day that's in it -

Hallowe'en has changed since I was little, I think. I remember having to sing or tell a story to get sweets, sometimes. And being afraid of the thin veil between this world and the next, but that could have been the oddly pagan nature of my familial celebrations.

Hallowe'en is my favourite time, after Easter. I'm spending it this year hidden in my living room though with candles that smell like vanilla and a cup of tea, with the promise of bread-and-butter pudding in the offing. How pedestrian. No costume to be seen. Getting ready for the winter.

Éric Satie! Arthur Rubinstein! Jean-Yves Thibaudet! Frédéric Chopin! Rí-rá agus ruaille buaille!!

2011-10-25T23:39:00.000+01:00

So. The main thing is that I am now in possession of a recording of Rubinstein playing Chopin's nocturnes.

Rubinstein? you say. This guy, Harold C. Schonberg, thinks that he was the greatest Chopin interpreter of the 20th century. Whether you agree with this or not, it's fairly undeniable that Mr Arthur was one of the greatest pianists of the last century.

Nocturnes? you sigh. They're musical compositions inspired by or evocative of the night, or things of darkness and twilight. They were invented by John Field. That's not entirely true but it slightly is and I'm going to leave it at that, with one addition - John Field was an Irishman (so was Admiral Horatio Nelson).

They're good to listen to before bed. I love you so, Frédéric {I'd love you more if I could get past those stupid pirates in that goddamn anime game about you dying}.

Theme 2 of Nocturne No. 1 (op. 15) - F. Chopin.

The second thing is that I am also in possession of THE ENTIRE and COMPLETE forever and ever solo piano pieces by Satie. I love you also, Erik or Éric or however the hell you spell your name these days.

The ENTIRE and COMPLETE collection I have is played by Jean-Yves Thibaudet. I'm not even going to try and pronounce that. He's French. I am very excited. I wonder if he's sad that France didn't win the Rugby World Cup. There's a compendium of information about him here at the New York Times.

(Weird fact of the late, late night time: this picture of Thiabaudet looks really really like this picture of Francis Bacon)

I would be more excited if I had the entire and complete and every ever solo piano pieces by Satie in my HANDS that is inside my hands but what can you do.

There's an article on a very cool and eminently explorable site called My Big Gay Ears.

I'm going to go to bed now for I am a sleepy Jessica indeed.

I was very busy today. More on that anon.

xxx

A Chaotic and Unstructured but Impassioned Post on Book Reviewing

2011-10-23T19:23:00.001+01:00

So I was running through my review of a certain book that I'm going to be sending off to decomP sometime tomorrow, and a few things struck me (sidenote about decomP - their nominations for 2011's Best of the Web are up, clic anseo).

I think people need to play around with the structure of reviews more. What would an experimental review look like? And would people publish them? Wouldn't messing around with form and structure in a review bring the attention to the reviewer and not the book?

So many questions whizzing around. The photo is an expression of my state! of! mind!

...Moving on, there's a thing called the Book Review Index. Unfortunately you have to buy it (what is this 'buy' of which you speak...?).

There should be a conpendeum of reviews that are online in magazines. Do you hear me, people who do such things?

And another thing, do you think reviewers should read other reviews of the book they're reading to gauge the general mood and steal other people's ideas? If the authors of the pieces they're reviewing did it to write their book (and let's face it, everyone does it), why shouldn't the reviewers?

But do book reviews mean anything anymore? Do the opinions of the critics (the supposed 'experts' that people look to) really matter, in the face of things like Goodreads and the Amazon review function? An article from the Daily Beast on the future of reviewing, here.

I will leave you with what the font of all knowledge (Wikipedia) says about what it takes to be a reviewer, and the jobs they need to undertake.

I don't think I have any of these qualities or do any of these things. Does anyone? -

Book reviews require special skills and oblige the reviewer with precise responsibilities. The professional reviewer does not just have to read and scrutinize the text, but to realize concealed, implied meaning the author obviously had dropped hints about. Skilled book reviewers' explanations make the reader feel confident in their perception of the book or change it entirely.

4 Ways I'm Saving Myself from Myself & A Note on Julian Barnes.

2011-10-18T22:32:00.002+01:00

It's that time of year again and I'm making it official with an actual profile on the actual site and everything. What the hell am I talking about? The guilt-trip of guilt-trips - NaNoWriMo.
Those prompt things that I actually respond pretty well to (ie Poetry Jam and ... yeah, Poetry Jam). So the Field Guide is a must, and then this application for my android that just gives you prompts [I absolutely detest the word 'app', never use it]. Actually it's pretty kickin' [and I know, I'm a giant hipster vomit vomit].
Another android application, this one called Wunderlist. It emails me repeatedly when I don't finish things by the due dates I've set for them. I need constant slapping.
The annual chapbook contest by Rose Metal Press. I'm not expecting to get anywhere, but one needs goals, doesn't one. I'm a person who works with structures. Give me dates!

Finally, Julian Barnes won the Booker, on his 4th nomination. I always thought he looked like a sarcastic cat. In a good way, I mean. I bet he'd be good for a bitey laugh over dinner.

I wanted A.D. Miller to win though. As I'm sure everyone in the world knows by now, because I won't shut up about it, I reviewed Snowdrops awhile ago for bookmunch. It was his first novel. How cool would it have been to win the Booker on your first freaking novel?

Anyway just to finish off, here's an interview with Julian Barnes from the Paris Review, on the Art of Fiction [anseo].

[ I found fonts zomg ]

What Incessant Editing Has Taught Me

2011-10-18T15:09:00.002+01:00

An Appropriate Image

I'm rarely right the first time
It's a good thing I've never had a typewriter because I would be responsible for all of the rainforests being gone (meaning I can't think out a full sentence ahead of typing)
That there isn't enough time in the history of time for me to do all of the things I'm planning to do (unless someone invents some kind of über-awake-drug ... that's not speed)
I need an assistant. I am a messy and very disorganised person - oh wait that should really have a separate bulletpoint of its own
I am a messy and very disorganised person
Someone needs to either teach me discipline or just hold a gun to my head with the safety off until I move forwards instead of side-to-side

Fiction at Work's BioPage has something cool on it and ALSO I did things today give me a prize

2011-10-11T22:25:00.002+01:00

OK here goes:

I had a story in Fiction at Work a while ago, right. You can read it here. It's called On Materialism. It's awesome. They'll anthologise it for college students the world over when I'm dead.

Fiction at Work's contributor's page is here.

You might remember I did a review of Tom Mahony's Imperfect Solitude (you can read that here) for decomP magazine. If you don't, you should remember, what's wrong with you.

So. On that bio page for Fiction at Work, do ctrl + f and search for 'Tom Mahony', yeah?

See it?

Now search for me.

See me?

We were in the same thing! How cool is that! I'm a real person now!

And the thing I did today was submit a story (that had been accepted by Ghoti ages ago - RIP Ghoti) to Big Wonderful Press for their Voice Project.

Woah.

Zomg, even.

The End.

Love loves to love love - my response to my own Poetry Jam prompt

2011-10-09T20:27:00.002+01:00

I posted up a prompt on Poetry Jam - clic anseo - where I just asked people to write a love poem.

Nobody really writes love poetry nowadays. It's seen as a kind of cliché, & in most cases, it is.

But I think that sometimes there are things that really can be said about actual relationships that don't involve wisteria and Mr Rochester (I watched the new adaptation of Jane Eyre today). He's still as sexy as he was when I read the book when I was 12.

It has been quite a while since I've written anything about love so bear with me. I'm not a touchy-feely kind of guy.

I was going to be all romantic and do a sonnet but he's really not the sonnet kind of guy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure he'd really appreciate iambic pentameter if I made him, but that would kind of be missing the point.

I was avoiding this post entirely all week. It was one of those things that had seemed like a good idea at the time. And then I spilt some pizza sauce on his side of the bed. I eat pizza in bed now. How egregious.

So. Here's my poem.

And For This I Get Up Out of Bed

Lovers I know declare their

sentiments for each other on Facebook

for the eyes of the world. I

would think that the longevity of

our relationship, the places we've been together

and the ups and downs we've managed

would be testament enough to the fact

that although I vocally abhor mushy posturing,

I loved that bath you made me years ago

with the candles and I fully intend

to change the entire bed because I got a

pizza sauce stain on your side.

The Poetry Jam is MINE (again). You love me, really, don't you?

2011-10-06T20:41:00.002+01:00

Monday October 10th belongs to me, in that I will have control of the Poetry Jam for those 24 hours.

My wish for a poem is simple:

Not so bad, no? I picked it because it's the Boy's 26th birthday on the 13th and I thought it would be romantic. Because I'm clearly a charming romantic and not a horrible sadist at all.

When I asked him to take that photo, I requested that he "make me look nice." So he took this one:

I'm now intrigued to ascertain exactly which form my love poem will take.

Hm.

Baby Got Back - I jump back into the poetry jam. This one's about noses.

2011-10-02T20:28:00.001+01:00

Jumping into the Jam.

The prompt this week [which hasn't been taken up by many people - fear, maybe? :D ] is :

Do you have a physical or personality trait which once was seen as a flaw but has ended up helping you succeed in life? Or maybe it is the other way around. Perhaps certain physical or mental traits once seen as an advantage have hindered your life's journey.

I set out to write a silly poem about how my 'Jewish' nose got me a job on the Upper West Side in the summer of 2007.

Now it's turned into a serious poem about race, and bloodlines, and the nature of a collected people. My nana's family are Jewish, and some physical traits are passed down through generations.

Imagine being an Irish Jew in the 30s?

When I was 16 I contemplated a nose job.

It was too big for my face, and I was really embarrassed by it.

However, I was mistaken for a Jew by a lovely Jewish lady who ran a boutique on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. I'm not saying it was my perceived Jewishness that got me the job, but it's funny to think that it did.

This is only an early version. I've been kind of caught by the topic and want to rework it and write more about it.

Ethmos

A boy

once told me that the first thing he noticed about me apart

from my rack was my nose.

It always embarrassed me, preceding me into rooms

and parading in my peripheral vision.

At sixteen, I wanted it dismantled. I don't know how

they do it, but it involves knives.

The ageless lust for transformation.

When younger, and poorer, I enquired about

a job in a shop with no staff wanted sign displayed.

It was a friendly place. The people were

my kind of people.

I worked there for four months, and

it was mentioned that I was originally thought to

be Jewish.

Was I welcomed for mistaken identity?

Is my history proclaimed by my

grandmother's nose? These features go back

for decades - and I am unwittingly belonging

to a people, a family, a story of centuries.

We're getting deep. The water closes.

What I mean is that

I like to think

it got me paid in 2007.

On timetabling, on editing, on thanking.

2011-09-25T23:42:00.000+01:00

Seeing as I seem to be incapable of making order of my own life, I'm having someone else do it for me.

I don't know what form it will be coming in but I might post up a screenshot or something of the timetable tomorrow.

If this means that I will finally be organised and neat in my life it will be a Very Good Thing not only for me but for the people who have to listen to my whining (The Boy and Áine Belton). I added links for the someone else and for The Boy but they aren't working so you'll just have to use your imaginations.

Actually while I'm on the subject I'd like to thank everyone for helping me get this stuff sorted out and/or listening to me ramble on about it.

Oh, also, update - I didn't go to Culture Night and I can't really remember if I did anything else with my time that was interesting or productive.

I have added on a funny photo of my notes to myself during the recent (extremely tedious) editing. If my narrator was a real person I would punch him.

Finally, for your delectation, a blast from the past -