Favourite thing drawn last year.

It made me a little happier.
I'm going to print it out and pin it above my desk, maybe.

What, what, where

Look, again i appear unexpectedly to say something about a comic book movie: Zack Snyder does not deserve to make a Watchmen movie. No, he does not. It is all about the letter, the filigreed, illumined letter, and not the spirit. (Speaking of, there is one person who deserves to make a Watchmen movie less, his last name is Miller and his first name is Used To Be A Good Writer.)

Look, i still hate the Comedian. The world hates me because it conspired to have Jeffrey Dean 'volcanically hot father of incestuous and lovable demon-hunting brothers on craptastic CW show' Morgan play him.

But such power, such obscene power. Of course i will run to see it. (Ha! Foiled your crude punnage!) I will be wearing my Nite-Owl shirt. I will be the only person in the audience wearing the super-awesome Nite-Owl shirt, make no mistake.

Is this all there is. I feel like something that just crawled out of Alan Moore's beard. Which is an interdimensional pathway paved with, i do not know, mind-altering substances?

Harder better faster stronger!

Whatever it is that is wrong with me, the doctors had better find out soon. I have plans to sketchcrawl, starve and soliloquise my way through unsuspecting foreign lands, I would really appreciate it if my mind and my body were on the same starting page.

Having written this, she sighed.

Well.

Down on life again. Listening to Karen Dalton. A dead folk/blues singer. This album is called It's so hard to tell who's going to love you. She sounds a bit like Janis Joplin, a lot like Billie Holiday, but, above everything, like herself. Please listen to her. My favourite is this moody little corner of a song called "Ribbon bow".

A least tomorrow is Monday, back to paper-writing and lecture-attending and... and i think Nadine Gordimer's gonna be in town. Now i am ashamed to admit this, but i must. I have only read one book by her. The Conservationist. I can never type 'conservationist' without typing 'conversationist' first. Gordimer is by all accounts a fabulously cranky, no-nonsense woman, and i do want to listen to what she has to say. O, that's it. I'm going. I half-want to take a good picture of her, but she'd probably slap me for my cheap insolence. On the other hand, how many people can say 'i went to a talk by Nadine Gordimer and all i got was a resounding public slap!' It would make a fine anecdote for sure.

In other news i have watched this video at least ten times. That sound effect there, the one that sounds like a glass tabletop being aggressively wiped with a damp bit of cloth, is so annoying and wonderful! I have also overthought those lyrics. Beyonce insists that she does not actually intend to rule the world like the insane diva she is: 'what i prefer, what i deserve is a man that makes me and takes me and delivers me to a destiny, to infinity and beyond.' Do i detect the easy confidence of a woman who knows she can have both, despite her words, or do i sigh and go back to wanting to bite her amazing thighs? No prizes for guessing. Hey, and because i'm incapable of turning off my nerdiness, i really want to see Beyonce as Starfire in a live action movie someday.

Always the first to stay gone.

I have only been to six cities so this may not mean much, but right now my favourite city is Mumbai. One morning i woke up to the smell of it,; it got under my skin and into the crumby, gluey corners of my eyes, and i realised that i wouldn't be able to stay away for very long.

In Mumbai i bought a copy of a book i hadn't been able to find/buy for two or three years, Michael Chabon's 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay'. I thought i'd read it slowly and savour it but that is not going to happen. I grip the book a little too hard and have to remember to breathe.

Good news things in the family. I am happy and worried and in an unhurried, indulgent way know how awesome i will be as an aunt, when eventually i become an aunt that is.

Very out of the loop books-&-music-wise. Especially music. Crowded House and Nina Simone, that's about it. And i should start a Shakespeare paper, but i only feel like writing about Middleton. Huh.

This is going to be the first pujo away from home in very many years. And then the growing up embarrassingly late (not that, not that). And the cat, it is out of the bag, and it has left its paws behind. Or its wits. Who knows? I have a list in my head of things i want to paint. Except that they aren't things, exactly. Also embarrassing: yes, there is a playlist for the journey. Music made with instruments i can only identify half the time, if at all, so that i won't follow the words. (A perfectly serene double meaning emerged. Good?)

Things i am (probably) going to read: a biography of Charlie Chaplin, a book on travel in the ancient world, Shakespeare textual scholarship (a guy forges a bunch of plays, letters, etc. claiming them to be by Shakespeare; another guy lays the smackdown on this shameless villainy; the manuscript for the second edition for the second guy's book is owned for a time by a third guy who, you guessed it, is notorious for Shakespeare forgery. Is this not a thing of beauty?), the first twenty-six issues of the lovesome Blue Beetle III (one more time).

But not when i am away. When i am away... Painting, yes. Sleeping sound and early. Self-possession? Yes. Something still, something distilled.

This is my song.

If there has to be just one, this is it.



I intensely love Rufus's cover of it - and in a meta way that one is doubly ironic and poignant - but Loudon's has a kick to it.