Gilded Gold: Poems to Make You Glow

Monday, Monday, why have you to be so miserable and mundane?? A dull start to the week after the flashing neon lights of the weekend. Well, have I the perfect anecdote: poetry of course. Poetry combats mundanity by making everything matter again. And what better poetry than Carol Ann Duffy's much-awaited new collection 'The Bees'?

Now before all you non-poetry people reading give up or doze off, or switch blogs - here, listen -  just for a moment. Carol Ann Duffy is the ideal poet to introduce to beginners. She's not at all boring or elitist  - two of the biggest criticisms poetry gets. Her poetry is so alive its cells are bursting from the pages and so exciting the words spark and glow and glide.  She is an all-inclusive poet, hence her UK Poet Laureate status. 

Carol Ann Duffy is one of my favourite poets. I love her muscular style of writing, full of metaphors and images, truth and a brutal kind of beautiful honesty, punctuated by musical lyricism and roll-off-the-tongue rhythm.  Her poems encompass all moods and themes; she can be wittily sarcastic, bawdy, funny and then lyrically romantic, straight-up honest, clever, mysterious and emotionally raw.

I stumbled upon this new collection in a bookshop surprisedly a while ago and finally got around to getting it last week. Oh and what a joy it is to encounter a poem in a quiet corner of a bookshop that makes you stop and muse and marvel upon its wonder and the wisdom it has to offer; it takes you away from the world for a moment and places you in a still quiet place of truth. While outside the city whirrs and spins and thrums in its incessant destination focus, inside all is calm. From being storm-tossed to being stilled. Poetry allows us meditation in the midst of the riot of routine and the chaos of busyness. It puts things into peaceful perspective. 

A good poem, I always maintain, has gold within it. A treasured nugget of wisdom, a warming richness of truth, a glinting sheen of worth. This is so true of this new collection by Carol Ann Duffy. Every poem gleams with treasure. Even the cover, designed like a honeycomb, glints gold enticingly. 

And every poem here is worth its mettle. Some of my highlights include: 'Gesture', 'The Bees', 'Snow', 'Virgil's Bees,' 'Atlas,' and so many more. The job of the poet laureate is to make poetry relevant and applicable to society again and Duffy does that brilliantly. From an ode to David Beckham's broken ankle 'Achilles,' to poems about the current political state of the world, Duffy's sharp and witty performance-like style is perfect for subtle criticism and her insights are accurately true - politics 'makes your face a stone/that aches to weep, your heart a fist/clenched or thumping, your tongue/an iron latch with no door.' In 'Miss Schofield's GCSE', a riposte to an English teacher who deemed her poetry unworthy to be on the syllabus, Duffy takes the high-ground praising poetry - 'explain how poetry/pursues the human like the smitten moon/above the weeping, laughing earth; how we/make prayers of it.' And of course, there's her signature humour. In 'Poetry' she makes fun of metaphor by stating: 'I couldn't see Guinness/and not envisage a nun' and a sarcastic ode titled 'Simon Powell' on the X-Factor's 'silver-smile' culture. 

And then there are the poems that give you shivers: 'Cold' written about her mother's death, a recurring subject throughout the book and 'Snow', which I've included below. It's a winter poem, a warning poem and a poem that hits you with  all the might of meaning and leaves a tingling tremor of truth, like so many of Carol Ann Duffy's. And then the glowing warmth of 'Gesture'. You can't help but smile and your heart swell at the last lines and infact the whole sentiment of the poem. That's what makes her a great poet. And that's what gives poetry its great power to change us, even for a fraction of a moment, into truth-seers and enlightened human beings at peace with the world and ourselves.

This is a book I'd urge all poetry and non-poetry lovers to indulge in.  Picking up a random poem can shed light on so many things, and better yet, can shed a golden gleam onto everything ordinary and break the muddy illusion of mundanity into shining golden particles. (Bye bye Monday misery!) 

In one of the best poems of this collection,  'Gesture', a poem written for the UK cancer survivors society, Duffy writes: 'Did you know at the edge of your ordinary, human days/ the gold of legend blazed?' and this is what this collection seems to echo over and over: the glinting gold of this human experience we call life.  As sweet and nutritious as honey, you won't be disappointed.

~ Siobhán

Here's three of my favourite from 'The Bees'. Enjoy.

The Bees

Here are my bees,

brazen, blurs on paper,

besotted; buzzwords, dancing

their flawless, airy maps.

Been deep, my poet bees,

in the parts of flowers,

in daffodil, thistle, rose, even

the golden lotus; so glide,

gilded, glad, golden, thus - 

wise - and know of us:

how your scent pervades

my shadowed busy heart,

and honey is art. 

Snow

Then all the dead opened their cold palms

and released the snow; slow, slant, silent,

a huge unsaying, it fell, torn language, settled;

the world to be locked, local; unseen,

fervent earthbound bees around a queen.

The river grimaced and was ice.

                                                           Go nowhere -

thought the dead, using the snow -

but where you are, offering the flower of your breath

to the white garden, or seeds to birds

from your living hand. You cannot leave.

Tighter and tighter, the beautiful snow

holds the land in its fierce embrace.

It is like death, but it is not death; lovelier.

Cold, inconvenienced, late, what will you do now

with the gift of your left life?

Gesture

Did you know that your hands could catch that dark hour 

like a ball, throw it away into long grass

and when you looked again at your palm, there

was your life-line, shining?

                                              Or when death came,

with its vicious, biting bark, at a babe,

your whole body was brave;

or came with its boiling burns,

your arms reached out, love's gesture.

                                                                    Did you know

when cancer draped its shroud on your back,

you'd make it a flag;

or ignorance smashed its stones through glass,

light, you'd see, in shards;

paralysed, walk; traumatised, talk?

                                                              Did you know

at the edge of your ordinary, human days

the gold of legend blazed,

where you kneeled by a wounded man,

or healed a woman?

                                   Know -

your hand is a star.

Your blood is famous in your heart.

*Read more on Carol Ann Duffy's The Bees in the Guardian Review here

November Moon & Poems

November is usually such  a dark month, the real 'bleak mid-winter' if you ask me. But as I write this I am contradicted by the gorgeous maple-golden sunshine outside and the cool blue sky nights this past week, owing to the bright frosty moon in the sky. 

Tonight will see the first full moon of November, the 'frosty moon' as it's known.  Apparently it gets its name from northern autumnal ground frost (- thanks Áine!) And you can literally see why its name is so fitting: the white frost-like brightness of it. I think it's the whitest brightest moon I've ever seen. And it's so high in the sky. All other full moons I can recall are usually lower. This moon is at a faraway slant, a contracted pupil staring down at us, a beady ball in the sky so circular and small it reminds me of the exact small circle of a contact lens everytime I look up at it. 

I really wanted to take a picture of it to post here, but unfortunately couldn't for several reasons: a/have a crappy camera b/don't have a lead to connect crappy camera with computer and c/I'm not a great picture-taker. So I had to do with a googled image instead (hmpf!) But, if any of you out there caught it, oh, I'd be so over-the-moon (ha) to see your attempts! But if you want to see some great photographs of it, check out Flickr. For now, I'll have to let words paint the picture.

What's great about this moon is the colours it lavishes upon the winter sky. Come 5 o' clock, the sky turns a clear ice blue with some pink blushes on the horizon. Later it's pure Arctic blue with the pink slipping into hazy lilac tones of twilight. It reminds me of those white snowy days and spider-web frost tendrils and the Northern Lights and all those great magical things about winter. 

Did you know that all the full moons have different names? There's the Pink Moon in April, the Honey Moon in June, Harvest Moon in September, Hunter Moon in October,  and the randomly occuring Blue Moon (when two full moons occur in one month - very seldom, hence the saying!) I have a soft spot for the golden harvest moon, but now here in the Frosty Moon I think I've found its silver companion, all sparkly and white and frosted as a diamond. 

While travelling by bus last week on a long journey, it was there; the whole way, a luminous companion as bright as any north star lighting up the dark outside (and inside). Not yet full, like some prelude waiting in the blue wings of sky. It stayed there the entire journey, at times to my left, to my right, and then right above me in the skylight, sometimes visible, sometimes not, but always there, throwing its light. Just as inspiration does.

I said I'd write about the moon in more detail before, so here I am. This November full moon has inspired me to.  And I'm thinking of a collection of poetry dedicated solely to the moon ' - 'To the Moon', edited and introduced by Carol Ann Duffy. A book that finally shows how much writers have been inspired by this white deity from as far back as Shelley to Carol Ann Duffy herself. There are poems here ranging fom many different poets and styles, but one thing they all have in common is their devoted and undying awe and inspiration of the moon. So if you're a lunar lover, you must check out this book!

And of course not to forget that it's a full moon, and all the connotations that go with that. Feeling emotionally overwhelmed or that certain emotions are magnified right now? You've got the moon to thank for that. I always seem to see things clearer when there's a full moon. Like its luminance offers perspective. And tomorrow being 11/11/11, it all seems very fortuitous indeed...

Now it's getting dark. But not dark; the sky  is a curious mix of green and blue, a turquoise on the horizon, Aurora-hued with  pink and lilac lavender tones beneath. There's my picture.

So I'll leave you with some moon poems I particularly like in honour of this full moon.  If you have some more suggestions please let me know!

moon musing still, 


~ Siobhán

'Moon Hymn' ~ Alice Oswald

I will give you one glimpse
a glimpse of the moon's grievance
whose appearance is all pocks and points
that look like frost-glints

I will wave my hand to her
in her first quarter
when the whole world is against her
shadowy exposure of her centre

o the moon loves to wander
I will go clockwise and stare
when she is huge when she is half elsewhere
half naked, in struggle with the air

and growing rounder and rounder
a pert peering creature
I love her sidling and awkward
when she's not quite circular

o criminal and ingrown
skinned animal o moon
carrying inside yourself your own
death's head, your dark one

why do you chop yourself away
piece by piece, to that final trace
of an outline of ice
on a cupful of space?

'The Woman in the Moon' ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Darlings, I write to you from the moon
where I hide behind famous light.
How could you think it ever a man up here?
A cow jumped over. The dish ran away with

the spoon. What reached me were your joys, griefs,

here’s-the-craic, losses, longings, your lives
brief, mine long, a talented loneliness. I must have
a thousand names for the earth, my blue vocation.

Round I go, the moon a diet of light, sliver of pear,
wedge of lemon, slice of melon, half an orange,
silver onion; your human sound falling through space,
childbirth's song, the lover’s song, the song of death.

Devoted as words to things, I gaze, gawp, glare; deserts
where forests were, sick seas. When night comes,
I see you gaping back as though you can hear my Darlings,
what have you done, what have you done to the world?

'Back Yard' ~ Carl Sandburg

Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.

An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion.
A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month; to-night they are throwing you kisses.

An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits in a cherry tree in his back yard.

The clocks say I must go—I stay here sitting on the back porch drinking white thoughts you rain down.

Shine on, O moon,
Shake out more and more silver changes.

~And a song - 'Pink Moon' by Nick Drake.  'Oh, it's a pink moon, pink, pink, pink....' Enjoy!~

Imagination Vs Reality: Feathers & Bricks

'They say that most of what happens to a writer happens only in their head.'

There's one occupational hazard about writing that affects me majorly in real life and that's imagination. 

Specifically, over-use of imagination, over-reliance on imagination. Which translates to unintentional illusions and alternative realities made of the fine fragility of feathers that collaspe under the weight of reality's bricks eventually, leaving me in a heap of broken-dream rubble.

See to create fiction requires a lot of imagining. Lots of wondering and pondering, fantasising and make-believing, using and over-using of this power. To live in the real world requires....a blocking out of that power? My real world, and probably that of many other creatives, is more than scaffolded with imagination. I imagine things better than they are at times. I add and embellish and decorate the bones of day-to-day life with ideas, visions,  reinvention of what-ifs and what could bes. I refuse the black and white platter we're offered and choose instead to paint scenes with the coloured palette of possibilities. I see things as I'd like to see them; I see things as they settle into mutable shapes in my mind, not as the sharp lines they actually are in reality.

I first became aware of this at a creative writing group once when a participant remarked to me after I'd read out some work 'how she'd love to live where I lived, with all the magical surroundings and people' - she was referring to all the moonlight vistas, emerald-green wonder and blue-eyed muses I'd charted in my writing. It occured to me then that this must be how I see the world; not how others see it, not how it actually is. I was telling stories to myself I realised. That's how I lived, through stories. Through stories I'd read, watched, and created myself. The fabric of my life was a narrative I was continually creating and re-creating.

So I've come to realise that I have the power to create my reality somewhat. Mythologize things  into magic. Like an alchemist, turn the cold metal of mundanity to shimmering warm gold, ordinary to extraordinary. It's like I'm pre-programmed; if I didn't do this, then the world would seem a very plain place to me. That's why I believe stories are so important to us. They have been since the beginning of time, since narrative first began with a few scratches on cave walls.  

We need stories. They are our way of making sense and meaning of this sometimes blank of existence. No one likes to be faced with a blank page after all, our instinct is to fill it. So we tell stories - to each other, to ourselves, to understand our world, but more so, to know that we matter, that things we hold dear matter, that everything has meaning beyond this sometimes bottomless insignificance that confronts us from time-to-time in the form of ennui and emptiness. 

One of my favourite books is Life of Pi by Yann Martel. In it the author chronicles a young boy's experience lost at sea, alone on a lifeboat, with only a tiger for company. (Yes, a tiger. Read it to believe...) Without giving the story away, the book highlights the importance of fiction in our lives, the vital necessity of it for our sanity, our survival, our sense of self.

So being able to tell stories is good, right?  In certain situations yes. In others,...  I don't know. I've gotten myself into tricky situations due to an over-active imaginative impulse... When it comes to matters of the heart for instance, how to know what's real and what's imaginary? How in the heck do you decipher reality when you spend all of your time creating an alternative one while in writer-mode??! You see my dilemma. Most people have 'common sense', a gut reaction, which is their foolproof guide. I do too, but it's just that imagination interferes, and I don't know which to trust, as it's usually imagination  most of my waking life.

And now I'm wondering if I'm destined to make the same mistakes over and over again when it comes to figuring out what's real and what's imaginary in that airy-fairy vague realm of love. Is the proof in the actions, the words, or how I interpret them? Is the truth in my head the pure unaltered version or has imagination enveloped it in a misty aura, tinting  it opaque? I can't decipher reality from imagination at times; and without that gift I wouldn't be able to sit down and write and create worlds out of my head and see life as great big coloured Wonderland full of possibilities and surprises.  But with it, my vision is obscured when it comes to calling it as it is. (Added to this I'm also a diehard Romantic; which results in a highly potent mix of misguided idealism, unyielding optimism and mighty misunderstanding!)

Like right now. Right now I feel stupid for having read signs wrong; putting two and two together and getting five; believing in a rainbow instead of a black and white reality. A Sylvia Plath poem is going round and round in my head which explains my state exactly, because yeah, it is enough to drive you mad! And the repetive haunting echo of the villainelle structure just goes straight for that silly soft part that actually was stupid enough to drop all defences and believe. Here:

Mad Girl's Love Song - Sylvia Plath        
         
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; 

I lift my lids and all is born again. 

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, 
And arbitrary blackness gallops in: 
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed 
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. 
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade: 
Exit seraphim and Satan's men: 
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said, 
But I grow old and I forget your name. 
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead; 
At least when spring comes they roar back again. 
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. 
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

They say that most of what happens to a writer, happens mostly in their heads.... Yes, I think I made you up inside my head. And that makes me wonder now -  what else did I make up? 

George Bernard Shaw once said: 'Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty.' And I'm starting to really believe that. That only in the hold of the imagination does perfection exist, in love, truth and beauty, the great grail trinity. Seems reality comes up second-best every time.

So I turn to the page, where it's perfectly acceptable to imagine, and be rewarded with the contentment of creation. The permanence and importance of it. Instead of self-doubt and recrimination.

The sobering thought of facing reality is a thorny one. But facing reality without the cushion of imagination, definitely worse.  In the coming barren days, it'll be imagination that tends to these raw wounds reality has inflicted. I need this trait to create. Without it, I wouldn't have  a hope in hell of ever filling a page. 

There you have it, another writer's dilemma. Has anyone experienced this occupational hazard? How do you deal with it? Is there a chance of reconciling the two? I'd love to know....!

 

But for now I suppose, if it came down to it, I'd rather be buried by feathers than a tonne of bricks. 

~ Siobhán. 

(And another poem, the medium where reality is tilted until truth glints off it. And apologies to Sylvia Plath for showing her gloomy side once again here, there is more to her than deadpan despair, will include more of her neutral poems in future..) But for now, here's an achingly accurate picture of regret:

Jilted - Sylvia Plath 

My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,

My tears like vinegar, 
Or the bitter blinking yellow 
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love, 
Gossips late and soon, 
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of 
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum, 
Puny, green, and tart, 
Droops upon its wizened stem 
My lean, unripened heart.

This blog was soundtracked by the magnificently morose, The National. A perfect pitch to match the notes of disappointment and disillusionment, for when the castles come crashing down: Fake Empire -The National

*images taken from weheartit

Vampires 101

Well here's my Hallowe'en contribution. I have a undying penchant for vampires, so here's where I'll indulge.  That is, vampires in literature and vampires in film, and long before they became popular in the public imagination.

In my opinion, vampires have an allure like no other fictional creation. In a word, they're cool. They're monsters for all intents and purposes, but they're not your usual kind of gooey claw-wielding monsters. They're beautiful, seductive, sexy, powerful and mysterious - the glammiest baddies ever. But they're also humanlike, incarnations of darkness just a step away from human nature. But I think why they're so popular is because of their ubiquitious natures.  They're not stapled ball-and-chain to the horror genre; infact, they easily transcend it into other genres such as romance, thriller, sci-fi, historical and allegorical.

See vampires are more than horror creations, they're metaphors. I was lucky enough to study a course on gothic fiction at college and came up close and personal with the figure of the vampire in literature. All the texts we studied had one thing in common: the metaphorical resonances. 

For example, did you know that Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' can be read as an allegory of the Irish/English political situation in the 19th century? Count Dracula being a personification of the English colonists sucking Ireland dry. Or vice-versa, the Count as a personification of the rebellious Irish, always a sore point for the English who found it difficult to quell rebel attacks (this is more obvious in 'Carmilla', a vampire short story by Irish writer of the time, Sheridan LeFanu). Also, Count Dracula not only represents fear of the foreign (the East) as noted by Jonathan Harker's superior notations of the country he travels to to meet the Count, but also fear of rampant and gluttonous materialism?  Count Dracula is a predatory land-owner, wealthy and powerful who comes to England to buy a new estate (and suck victims blood as a secondary pursuit - capitalism in its most rampant and figurative form).

Literary vampires were figures used to represent taboo  subjects of the day such as TB, Aids, (the blood symbolism), sex and war.  Many vampire narratives are set in times of war, an especially common one being the American Civil War. Seems supernatural narratives were popular in these times as a way of describing the indescribable reality of human depravity, the vampire being a convenient ghoulish figure to carry the weight of some of humanity's worst moments.

Vampires are the sexiest of the baddies  - after all, they deal in seduction and bloodlust. But did you know that this bloodlust represented sexuality back in the day when such an issue was a taboo subject? Sex and death, two taboo issues for Victorian society, and vampires were incarnations of both and how both were entwined. Vampires didn't attack their victims as per a normal violent ghoul, but seduced them on a romantic level. And blood drinking was akin to sexual intercourse.  The figure of the vampire back in the day was one of liberated sexuality. Vampirism was used to talk about sex, when sex wasn't allowed. And while there were mostly male vampires preying on women back in the day, today we have female vampires which  are the embodiment of sexual liberation (and feminism) - seductive creatures irrestible to their male victims - a vixen, a 'vamp' in other words, a femme fatale.

As well as representing  the obvious  good vs evil themes, vampire fiction also explores conflicting moral issues within vampire characters themselves, the stuff indeed, of what great literature is concerned with. For example, Anne Rice's iconic 'Interview with the Vampire' presents us with two very different vampire characters: Louis and Lestat; one good, one bad, one who struggles with his conscience, the other who  ignores it, the quintessential angel and devil on the shoulder, maybe even that great C19th debate of reason versus passion too.

Today vampire fictions have become especially adept at handling this moral aspect. The 'moral' vampire is a new construct and a pretty common one. Seems like you can't pick up a book or watch a show that doesn't have a repenting vamp, all tortured soul and wrecked with regret from centuries of blood-draining. This started with  Louis in Interview with the Vampire, found new notes in the brooding vampire Angel, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, whose spin-off series was based solely around his pursuit of redemption, and right on into the now infamous 'Twilight Saga'. Seems the figure of the vampire, a monster who is half human, half demon, is the perfect one to showcase this moral maelstrom.

Then there's the bad guys. The bad-ass kick-ass vamps. And it's true that the devil gets all the best lines when it comes these guys: they're all pros when it comes to the art of sarcasm and wit. "I can't help being a gorgeous fiend, it's just the card I drew... Rice's Lestat has to be top of this list, at turns vicious and vivacious, vain and arrogant and wittily dismissive of any morals: "Come on, say it again. I'm a perfect devil. Tell me how bad I am. It makes me feel so good!" played in the film to a fanged tee by Tom Cruise. He's obtained rock star cool staus within the vampire genre by now (as well as the books), proving that bad vamps make the ultimate cool baddie.

Running a close second has to be Damon Salvatore from new TV series The Vampire Diaries (my fave watch at the moment), who is deliciously  bad. Damon  enters the show as alter-ego to good brother Stefan,  a menacing figure dressed always in black, with piercing eyes and a merciless demeanour. He can go from a psychotic, bloodthirsty murderer to sullen and sorry, sharply sarcastic to heartbroken and deeply hurt all within a few seconds. His character is brilliantly complex with the eventual introduction of his human side, providing many emotional arcs to the storyline of the show. Ian Somerhalder is fantastic in the role (pictured). Yep, I'm a big fan of Damon and the like. The show is based on the series of books by young adult author L.J. Smith, who manages to explore all the potential we have for both good and evil and the precarious balance between both through this character, the vampire slant serving to heighten the fundamental message. 

 

Modern vampires have also come to represent the outsider's status in society, which has led invariably to vampires being equated with rebels. Vampires don't belong to the routines of society, they live beyond its rules and repressions, guided only by their bloodlust, which could be translated to a passion for living adventurously. Which could explain their popularity at the moment, especially with young adult readers who feel their individual personalities at odds with that of the collective. Vampire narratives elevate and celebrate the outsider's status, declaring it cool to be an individual who stands apart from the crowd.  

The classic 80s movie 'The Lost Boys' has made its way into the cult classic line-up of films mainly because of this. The social commentary plot sees the newcomers to town recruited into the local vampire coven, who are none other than the resident rebellious punks who stand outside of society's rules and regulations (characterised by their leather, piercings, tattoos, punk hair-do's, motor-bikes, delinquency etc). The movie celebrates the new teenage punk generation (it even has a punk rock soundtrack) who sleep all day and party all night,  effectively equating them with vampires and with the outsider rebel (rocker) status. Twilight also exudes this message somewhat; its vampires the Cullens, literally live on the edge of society and experience shunning and judgement from the townsfolk but don't seem to be bothered by it. Edward is regarded as a 'freak' by his peers at school, but remains unperturbed, as do we as readers/watchers. We know vampires are cool, so that fact trumps social exclusion issues. 

There's also the idea that vampires are representative of old traditional ideals and Romantic notions. In Anne Rice's short story, 'Master of Rampling Gate' the story revolves around a vampire trying to protect his home from being torn down and destroyed by the encroaching forces of modernity. The vampire is noble and honourable, old-fashioned and traditional and in complete contrast to the superficial preoccupations of the day. The narrator Julie is drawn towards him, as are we, and to all that he represents - the values of the past pitted against a vacuous future. Edward from Twilight is also quite an old-fashioned character: he reads,  writes, listens to classical music, upholds traditional views about marriage and chivalry and is morally upright, which may explain his popularity among readers - especially women! 

Vampires are appealing on many levels, but maybe mostly, because they exude power like no other supernatural character. Not just supernatural abilities (envious ones like mind control and immortality - what could be more powerful than the ability to outdo death?) but other more earthly kinds like wealth and status. Think of any vampire character in any book or film - they are always well-off powerful characters, their wealth accumulated mysteriously. They never have to want financially or materially. They are always well-educated too, extremely intelligent, even bookish (the thinking person's baddie of choice? Well, living for hundreds of years I suppose contributes to this). They enjoy high status in a community - Count Dracula was a Lord, Louis and Lestat, estate-owners. Vampires are not only powerful, they represent power as well, all kinds of it.

Think vampires are all about blood and gore, think again. Nowadays they've become more synonymous with forbidden love and romance than anything else. This is the whole premise of Twilight, the (inferior) vampire mythology coming second to the love story. This was previously and successfully explored in Buffy, where vampires took on the whole metaphorical weight of forbidden love with a love-story between a vampire and a vampire slayer. What could be more forbidden and heartbreaking than love between a vampire and a human?  Yet another example of fantasy literature being the perfect medium to delve deeper into a common theme. Teenage angst, lust and longing finds a perfect outlet in tales of forbidden love between vampires and humans, which explains why vampire fiction is the biggest selling Y/A genre at the moment. (Plus, it also appeals to all romantics out there, especially the tortured ones - myself included!)

Oh yeah, and another reason why I like vampires: they're not that scary. A must for me who swears against all horror films (yes, I'm that one behind the sofa with a cushion over my face while watching anything with a suspenseful score). Vampire fiction, when done right, causes us to ponder what it all could mean, not jump in fright. It throws up a whole array of themes and ideas through the mysterious and elusive figure of the vampire, who wanders these fictions 'cloaked in metaphor' - (the one quote I can remember from my winning essay on vampires as an undergrad...)

While I love the gothic escapism of a good vampire yarn, I love the underlying stories even more. I love the comment it makes on human nature in a very veiled and seductive way. It heightens emotions and truths and puts its message across in a way that will never get tired, never date, or diminish (or grow old.... maybe immortality is the chief lure of vampires...?)

Gosh, I  ramble! If you're still with me - you must be a vampire lover too! Let me know if I've left anything out - any themes, metaphors, films, books, characters....?? Would love to hear your responses and your views on the topic!

Happy Hallowe'en!


~ Siobhán.


Click to see a preview of: The Vampire Diaries Trailer

And instead of the usual creepy tunes, here's some spook-tastic ones that soundtracked this blog: (well, three spooky and one spine-tinglingly sad...)

Sleep Alone - Bat for Lashes
Enjoy the Silence  - Anberlin
Night Drive - Jimmy Eat World
Beauty of the Dark - Mads Langer

(And by popular demand, some more spooky tunes & videos: Red Right Hand - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds; People Are Strange - The Doors; Cold - The Cure; Lullaby - The Cure;  Translyvanian Concubine - Rasputina; Running Up That Hill - Placebo; Closer - Kings of Leon. That's all I can think of for now...! Any more  ideas let me know...)

Midnight in Paris

What a perfect way to spend a Sunday night.... humming along to whimsical French violin notes and swooning thoughts of Paris, á la 'Midnight in Paris', the new Woody Allen movie, which is utterly and deliciously delightful. 

Paris, I love. Je t'aime, je t'aime, je t'adore. And this movie is yet another love letter to the city from the kooky director, but also a swansong to art and its 1920s heyday in Paris, when the city was a mecca for all the great artists and writers and musicians, the creative thrumming hub of the world. 

'Midnight in Paris' is a quirky, comical and magical tale, almost bordering on the fairytale-esque.  The main character is Gil (Owen Wilson), a Hollywood screenwriter/wannabe novelist who is holidaying in Paris with his incompatible girlfriend. He is a nostalgic romantic who hankers back to periods like the 1920s when the golden age of Paris was in full swing. And  so, his nostalgia is indulged at midnight every night when he is transported back to the 1920s and gets to rub shoulders with the likes of Hemingway and Gertrude Stein and Picasso, just like that. See, Paris is magic - winks the underlying theme, and anything can happen here, especially at night. In the realm of Paris, every dream and dreamer is embraced.

I'm not usually dying about Owen Wilson in films, but here he does an excellent job of an unassuming, stuttering, unsure-of-himself writer. Especially when he comes face-to-face with Hemingway and F.Scott Fitzgerald and the likes! And giving his manuscript to Gertrude Stein to read, ha, priceless! He is endearingly comic. One funny moment is when he pays hommage to the French practice of mistresses, telling tour guide Carla Bruni, that the French are more highly 'evolved' than Americans when it comes to this taboo of love and romance. The encounter with Salvador Dali in a café with his comparison of Gil to a rhinocerous was crazily accurate and funny. And I can't help but be impressed with Gil's earnest love for the city and openness to the inspiration it offers.

And what really struck me about the time period was how easy it was to declare yourself a writer or an artist. You were welcomed with open arms into the burgeoning community indeed as Gil was. Paris was (and is) unique as a community for the arts; it revelled in art, embraced it, was committed to the pursuit of it, valued art above all other things. Art and everything that went with it: love and passion, truth and freedom and living life to the full, the essence of la joie de vivre.  

Artists and writers were the celebrities of the day in 1920s Paris, not seeking fame, but excellence in their own genre. Take Hemingway for example. He is portrayed in the movie true-to-form as an extremely intense and devoted writer. One piece of advice he doles out to Gil goes along the lines of not letting other writers read your work, because they'll hate it if it's bad, and they'll hate it even worse if it's better than their own. Writers are competitive. Point taken like a bullet!

Paris of course, is the film's main star, spinning scenes into  wonder-filled whimsy. What the film does is capture that 'je ne sais quoi' element of Paris that is so hard to describe in words. The opening montage offers a luxuriously long take of Paris in all its glimpses: Eiffel tower with trees in foreground, sidewalk cafes with red brassieres, and black-tie waiters, cobblestones, rain lashing on streets, the lanterns, the steps of Montmartre, the many bridges,  the magnolia banks of the Seine, the Eiffel tower with twinkling lights at night. 

One of my favourite moments in the film is when Gil tries to describe the allure of Paris - how the fact of its very existence makes him happy, that everywhere in it is somehow a piece of art, a scene and a story, a poem and a painting. (See clip below).  And it's not as if he's star-struck, it's real, this love and awe for Paris. It gets in the heart like no other city, no other place. Especially if you're a creative person, and for most it's love at first sight, first visit, first postcard reverie, first black-and-white picture, first midnight musing.

At the beginning of the film, Gil dreams of living in Paris, which is deemed a 'fantasy' by his oh-so-down-to-earth-and-practical girlfriend, but becomes a reality at the end by way of magic and mischief and musing, and a realisation that although there are some people who live in reality and some people who live in dreams, there are also some people who turn one into another, and in Paris, this is exactly the thing to do. And art, art is a catalyst in this change. As Gertrude Stein comments to Gil who is beginning to despair about his 'perplexing' situation and the rewriting of his novel - 'artists don't despair, their purpose is to find the antidote to the emptiness of existence.' And this is what Gil is in the pursuit of and does, and what Woody Allen has done with this film.

And you would think it, but 'Midnight in Paris' doesn't require a suspension of disbelief, it was in its own right, believable. As well as being heartwarmingly humorous, endearing and witty, this offbeat and upbeat film will delight and inspire too. When the clock strikes midnight, who knows where you'll end up (in your head of course, but better still, in your heart....and what better place to be than in Paris???)

~ Siobhán.

*And if you like this movie and the 1920s era - you'll love Ernest Hemingway's memoir of the time in his book  'A Moveable Feast.'

'Midnight in Paris' Clip

 Movie trailer
 

Word Up: Blocks, Jolts, and the Big Blue

And now a sort of cheat post. I know I should be posting more regularly, but what's that they say about the best-laid plans and all....never work out do they? So here I go  - no plans, just some dive-in ad-libbing. Brought about by a finger-tapping frenzy to get writing something!!  (You got it - block is back -boo-hoo!)

The urge to write has been buzzing around me for days now, like an annoying turbo-powered blue bottle. But now finally I'm swatting it! Here's how:

Admitting the problem: I find that I seem to be doing what the bible of writing proclaims you should NEVER do: sit around waiting for inspiration. Well, not technically.  Not necessarily sitting, just waiting. Waiting for the right frame of mind to write, the right idea to burst into a bright bulb above my head, waiting for the right time.  And I know what they say: inspiration doesn't come to you, you've got to go out and chase it down with a club, writing is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration and all that, but... I know, I know! (Knuckles rapped already.) But see here's the thing -

Knowing the cause: Ideas do come to me at the strangest times. Like the other night when I was washing my face, right there, in mid-splash, something hit me out of the blue (and I am so intrigued by this blue - where and what is it exactly? The blue-sky space I talked about before? Infinity's ink well? Imagination's unending ocean? Inspiration manifested in cerulean swirling electricity?) Well, there it was, a line, a bolt from the blue, and these bolts, I've come to recognise them as otherwordly. Creatively ethereal. And good. Exceptionally good. So good it's hard to equal them with long-staring ordinary labour at a computer screen, when each word comes at a sweat and a struggle. These 'floaters'  from somewhere in the Big Blue, are like a heaven-sent typescript. They can either open up a whole piece of work, be the missing piece of the puzzle that just makes the whole thing perfect, or a flash of an idea, an aha kickstart to a whole new writing project, be it poem or prose, feature or blog, or nicely-nuanced new notebook scribble.

Problem: And I'm so thankful for these little wonders, I rejoice in them. But problem is they don't come all the time. Just now and then. Just as the voiceover goes: when you least expect it. And let me repeat, that's not all the time, unfortunately. And so, in the absence of these electrifying blue jolts, it's very easy to fall into a fallow writing field, a blocked binge. You feel your own mundane words don't live up to the jizz of the jolts, won't capture the fizzing excitement of them.

Consequences: This is when block can set in (I have duly noted and experienced), like gangrene, eating away at imagination and all your best-laid plans and ideas. Your own words seem like stick-men scrawls now, useless gibberish, and the block, personified as a huge grey cloud-type monster, smothers you with its doubt and almost finishes you off.

Rescue: Until it happens again that is. Another little zing from the well. Another blue stab of inspiration, firing you up, setting your mind racing again with ideas. An electric resuscitation, just like in hospital ER rooms. Suddenly, asystole, back beating and breathing! 

Ongoing Solution (Hurray!): But here. Let me share with you some kind of daily miracle-enhancer. A tool to administer this first-aid when there's no cosmic defibrillator around: www.oneword.com It's simple. You're given a word and a minute and you write. Block unexplainedly disappears in this kind of pulse-thumping setting. You write for the buzz of it, the electricity flowing back into your fingers. I don't know why or how exactly, but it really does work!

And now, in a 'heres-some-I-made earlier' gesture, here's some one word renditions I made earlier. In times of great blank block I might add, a saving proof of ability.  Infact, just a few moments ago, I was sober-stoned-silent, my mind a mute blank , words a sanskrit I couldn't read. Now, one one word, later, I'm back in blog business! It's a key I tell you, a key that unlocks all those shut doors.

So next time you find yourself staring at a blank screen, a blank page and whiling away the minutes with worry and doubt - get active word-wise instead and slay that beast of block. Go to one-word and write, for fun, for a kick-start, for an electric blue jolt. 

(Now, to put this damn buzzing blue-bottle out; no metaphor intended, this is real! This bedamned blue-bottle gave me my metaphor at the beginning, but the stupid thing keeps flying against the glass of the window now, unable to get out (in the words of Emily Dickinson - 'with blue, uncertain, stumbling Buzz')  I feel kind of sorry for it - myself well-acquainted with this kind of action against  brick walls. Not anymore though, well for the time being, anyway. To  freewriting and the infinity of beyond!)

Beating the block!

~ Siobhán.

- Some I made earlier: -

'Suppose'

Suppose I knew you. And you knew me. A pursed lip wondering, a surmising. Brain blowing bubbles of maybes that burst leaving water-stains of tears. Suppose that we’d met before now. Long ago. BC: before complications. Suppose love was easy. Suppose that love is easy. Suppose that we admitted this. I blow a pink chewing-gum bubble and it bursts. You daydream a bright bulb idea and it breaks. Suppose we stop supposing and try it out.

'Crouch'

Crouching tiger, hidden dragon. Crouching is not hiding; it’s waiting, whiling time, waiting to pounce on the right moment, the right possibility, the right prey. It’s a comfortable and crafty patience. Muscles bent ready to spring into action. Crouching is being ready.

'Missed'
Missed out. Missed the boat. Missed like a missile pinned to an ed wall of obstacles, and me in between. Missed like a ghost wearing a white sheet. Missed like almost rhyming with kiss, or ill-ness.