Painting from life?

December 31st, 2009 elsewhere, radio

Listening to Van Gogh: Seeing Red on BBC it occurred to me how different his paintings were to his life. Van Gogh lived an isolated life and his intense relationships with Theo and Gaugin hinted of loneliness yet his art was not lonely. They were complete and happy to me.

Hopper who was not lonely, had friends and a supportive wife in Jo knew loneliness so well.

Barbara Novak tells a story about a party she and O’Doherty threw in the Sixties, towards the end of the Hoppers’ lives. Edward and Jo were the first to arrive. They sat down next to each other on a settee, and as the other guests – many of whom were the most successful artists of that new generation – piled in, they thought the Hoppers seemed happy and left them alone. Halfway through the party Novak turned to look at them and saw that a large empty space had been left around the Hoppers’ sofa. It was an image straight out of one of his paintings: even in a crowded room, they radiated isolation – together.

‘We don’t know what she died of,’ Novak says when I ask about Jo. ‘I think she died for lack of him. And,’ she adds, ‘he would have died for lack of her. It really was a folie à deux.’

From here

Chestnuts Does Christmas – Like A Hard Candy Virgin

December 31st, 2009 theatre

The first time I saw Johnathan Lim was in 42 Waterloo Street Emerald Hole and after that brilliant performance, I attended almost everything he was in. Most times, I’ve come away thinking he was so underused in the shows  – he could do much more. At the end of tonight’s Chestnuts, I finally figured out why. In those shows, he was just doing one person. His talent is his ability to rapidly change from one person to another. That’s why Chestnuts is brilliant for him. There could be a thousand other people onstage and he still owns Chestnuts. Nobody could do what he does onstage.

Most of the references were brilliantly put in. I’m quite happy that this year’s show is not only laughing theatre and movies. Including theatre/movie references makes it feel exclusive especially when there isn’t time to explain – I don’t like comedy to be full of in-jokes, even when I get it. That said,  I very much enjoyed and admired Scrooge (excellently done by Tan Shou Chen – how come I’ve never seen him in anything?) being warned by Pineapple Tart King Wee Bak Chuan in his yellow pajamas (how on earth did they get the golden pineapple?). The language jokes were well delivered and the comedy never stops to let the audience catch their breaths. (It must be one joke per line in the script!)

The musical numbers were extremely well done. I was worried about Pondon News Asia – I never liked the two characters very much – but I absolutely loved Judy Ngo as the civil servant and later as the chinese waitress who could only say ‘Yes’ ‘No’ ‘Merry Christmas’. The lines in the civil servant bit were not as funny but Judy Ngo delivered superbly. It’s an awful pity the next thing she’s in is a Goh Boon Teck show – I would love to watch her act. Judee Tan as Ris Low brought the house down when she sang her version of 12 days of Christmas. The audience was roaring with laughter. She deserve a prize for this bit and Jonathan Lim a prize for writing it!

I love the musical parts that came later. Although the sketch portion of the Chinese waitresses was overlong, it more than made up for it by having the two break into song (龍的傳人) to counter the influence of Western caroling (God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen). The last sketch featured Madonna heavily in the Nativity play (heh). While I love recognising Madonna’s songs, I thought the intermingling of 龍的傳人 and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen much more enjoyable.

Chestnuts, when it is good, is brilliantly funny (yes, there were some average years). When it was mainly a two man format, I didn’t mind at all if there was not a lot of acting. It wasn’t that kind of show. This year, a whole lot of actors were involved, that’s when I thought that the comedy made it very hard to appreciate the acting. I like to watch good acting so I’m quite happy that there were tickets for me to watch it again. I am looking forward to watching Judy Ngo, Tan Shou Chen and Judee Tan in other shows.

~*~

Ris Low’s version of 12 days of Christmas:

12 months probation
11 day Safari*
10 ad sponsorers
9 English Lessons
8 khaki jins
7 credit cards from 6 different people
5 leopard preens
4-giveness
3 piece bigini
2 polar disorder
and a [thinking pause] diploma in hospitality.

*thanks to commenter ‘ris low’

Effect Enid Blyton had on from former British colonies

December 29th, 2009 elsewhere

Could it be Blyton’s fault that I’m always tweeting about food? The children in Enid Blyton were always eating delicious spreads – whether at tea, supper or at midnight: ham, boiled eggs, tongue sandwiches, fruitcake, pound cake, tea,  scones and jam, muffins with so much butter they run down your chins, apples, treacle (sounds absolutely delicious), eclairs, ginger buns, ginger ale, biscuits, jellies, eggs, bacon, milk, fresh bread. She could make boiled egg and sardines sound delicious. So if I had not read Blyton when I was a child, I wouldn’t be obsessed about food, I wouldn’t have the problem of love handles and I won’t be self-conscious about being in a sari for J’s wedding.

Science of Romance

December 29th, 2009 popscience

Romance may be nothing more than reproductive filigree, a bit of decoration that makes us want to perpetuate the species and ensures that we do it right. But nothing could convince a person in love that there isn’t something more at work–and the fact is, none of us would want to be convinced. That’s a nut science may never fully crack.

Read more: Science of Romance

Instructions on how to fall in love:

Find a complete stranger.

Reveal to each other intimate details about your lives for half an hour.

Then, stare deeply into each other’s eyes without talking for four minutes.

Beautiful Bodies

December 28th, 2009 Uncategorized

At the museum on Saturday, looking at mummies, it suddenly struck me that the pictures of the Kings and his slaves are all beautiful. They are somewhat muscular, have great cheekbones and all clean shaven. Not one picture of slaves or royalty showed them with underarm hair. Not a single fat royal. How did they do it?

On Chain Reaction (series 3 ep 3)

December 28th, 2009 radio

Phill Jupitus to John Lloyd on Stephen Fry:

PJ: I love Fry so much. The fact that you let me, take the piss out of Stephen on that show quite relentlessly [Laughs]. I’m like an oik to that man. He could crush me like a bug. But he doesn’t. Why not? Do you think he fancies me? [Crowd laughs] Come on, tell me. Is that it? A sexual thing? Did you just get me on to pacify him? [Crowd is helpless.] Is it like (mimicks Fry perfectly) “Well, don’t you forget to book the man Candy John … Maaaah…Where’s Pip? Maaah……”
JL: Have that font washed and sent to my tent.
PJ: Oh no, I’m just a boy whore!

Wicked wicked wicked impression of Fry. Does he really go Maaaah?

On The Psychology of Social Status

December 28th, 2009 elsewhere

A report found on SciAm talks about gaining better social standing makes the brain go mmmmm extends the topic further in another report (also found on SciAm) on the protection of social standing.

Henry took on the traditional Culture of Honor hypothesis to suggest instead that differences between herding and farming cultures in violence actually stem from differences in status. His theory is based on a considerable psychological literature demonstrating that individuals from low-status groups (e.g. ethnic minorities) tend to engage in more vigilant psychological self-protection than those from high-status groups. Low-status people are much more sensitive to being socially rejected and are more inclined to monitor their environment for threats. Because of this vigilance toward protecting their sense of self-worth, low-status individuals are quicker to respond violently to personal threats and insults.

The interesting bit about this article is that it includes a short mention of another study where it is found that generous and helpful behaviour improves social status – that is, the aggressive behaviour employed by persons trying to protect their status is not a successful strategy.

Why is this strategy pursued continually if it is not effective? One answer is that the aggression is innate – it becomes an expression of persons being protective of their statuses, so the aggressive behaviour isn’t a strategy, it is an outlet. Within the a particular status group, there will be persons who can, through generous and helpful behaviour, rise to the top of the group. Social status is tied closely to economic status so jumping status group could be hard without the money part. Even with the money, jumping status group is probably rather difficult.

On Failures

December 28th, 2009 Uncategorized

I spent Christmas eve at Z.’s playing pictionary. (”Show me your nuts!” she shrieked in my ear when I complained about her drawing.) Sex In The City ran in the background. Women friends in movies are so open, so confiding. We would hardly air the failures – not fearing judgment but that they are too heavy, too difficult, too embarrassingly common, but it was the hour of confidences. Struck by all the sadness, I tried to tell them to someone, who poo-pooed the commoness of the stories. As if Grief could tell the difference. So I’ve stuck them all together on this paper doll woman.

The child did not arrive
Not easier third time gone
Yet another who left
work is his way of escape

A midnight christmas toast
for success et cetera
as if it could cancel
secret failures much like
a well-balanced ledger.

~

Glad to be watching Chestnuts this PM.

A lovely set up and punch line

December 3rd, 2009 radio

This is from Unbelievable Truth: On wooden postcards: Episode aired 2009-04-06

Lucy Porter: I once got a wooden Valentines’ card. I’m just showing off. I thought maybe someone did wooden postcards and they didn’t like it.
David Mitchell: Er, no, they didn’t. Sorry. But well done on the wooden Valentines’ card.
Chris Addison: Did you put out?
[A buzz from Graeme Garden. Interruption by Lucy.]
David Mitchell: Sorry, Lucy’s still boasting about her wooden post card.
Lucy Porter: I just want to make clear that I didn’t put out.
David Mitchell: You didn’t put out? Was it on fire?
Lucy Porter: No, it’s a term for having sexual intercourse.
David Mitchell: Oh well, that would explain why I wouldn’t know it.
[Laughter. Applause.]
David Mitchell: So you didn’t. Right. So it was essentially a waste of wood.
[Laughter. Applause.]

BRILLIANT.

Peter Carey’s Post-Event Pep Talk

December 2nd, 2009 elsewhere

This is Peter Carey’s pep talk for nanowrimo (not yet on the site)

Dear Writer,

Writing is the easiest thing in the world. Anyone can do it. It’s like hitting a tennis ball against a wall. It’s like swimming. Anyone can learn. You don’t have to be the best. You don’t need to compete in anything. On the other hand, you may aspire to be a celebrated star.
Like swimming, like playing tennis, there are people writing at all levels. If you just want to amuse yourself writing the weekends, just keep on keeping on. If you want to bash out a novel, you need no more advice than to keep on keeping on.

But if you dream of making something original and beautiful and true, if you imagine seeing your book reviewed, or in the window of a book store, you’re in the same position as the ambitious swimmer—you’ve got a lot of training to do, a lot of muscles to build, a lot of habits to start establishing right now, today.

If you know what these good writing habits are, there’s nothing more I can give you. Perhaps you know what I’m going to tell you—you have to write regularly, every day. You have to treat this as the single most important part of your life. You do not need anything as fancy as inspiration, just this steady habit of writing regularly even when you’re sick or sad or dull. Nothing must stop you, not even your beloved children. If you have kids you do what Toni Morrison did—write in the hours before they wake. If you wish to be a like the champion who swims for four hours every day of the year, you will need extraordinary will. You either have this or you don’t, but you won’t know unless you try .

Let’s say you (quietly, secretly) want to be a genius. Then you must teach yourself to be self-critical. Trust me—your own uncertain opinions are worth one hundred times more than the judgments of your friends. Your friends love you and are may be very smart. But they cannot imagine what you have not yet imagined. So don’t show them stuff you fear may not be right.

If you feel at all unhappy with your work, there is a good reason for it. Trust your judgment. Write the draft again, and again. This is the strength you must build—to work alone, in solitude, and write and rewrite and rewrite. Even when you finally succeed in making the original work you wished, you will still live with doubt and uncertainty. All writers learn to live with this. In this way you and I feel exactly the same about our work today.

If you ever read one of my books I hope you’ll think it looks so easy. In fact, I wrote those chapters 20 times over, and over, and over, and that if you want to write at a good level, you’ll have to do that too.

That is the first half of the good habits you must develop.

Here’s the second half.

First, turn off your television. The television is your enemy. It will stop you doing what you wish to do. If you wish to watch TV, you do not want to be a serious writer, which is fine.
But if you do pull that plug you’ve just created time for that exercise which is going to build up your writing muscles like nothing else. It’s called reading. Perhaps you are already reading good books for several hours a day, in which case you don’t need me to preach at you. Forgive me. I only mention this because I have met an extraordinary number of beginners who don’t think they need to read anything too much.

I don’t doubt these people enjoy their writing, and perhaps they will even get to publish something. But you can not play the top game without reading every day. There are so many extraordinary books waiting for you, some writing by living writers, the majority by those a long time dead. This is not because writers used to be better than they are now, but because a lot of generations have come before us and we would be crazy not to know what miracles they achieved.

Some of the great books are about people with lives just like you. Some will have characters you can ‘identify’ with, but some of the very greatest will tell stories you could never have imagined, were written in languages you cannot speak, and tell the stories of people like none we have ever known.

Now you’ve killed the TV, you should invest in a very good dictionary.

I know it is a major drag to stop reading and look up a word in a dictionary, but it is less of a drag than continuing to read not knowing what the story really means. No-one wants to do it. I never want to do it, but it is always worth the trouble. In my own case I often write the new word down, not because I am stupid, but because it helps me remember it.

So what books should you read if your greatest aim is to lift your game?

Clearly “Goose Bumps” is not going to help you in your ambitions, but where to start, where to continue the adventure you’re already on?

I’d suggest a wonderful new book by Francine Prose, “Reading Like a Writer.”

Go buy this now. You may already be a disciplined, talented original writer but you will not be sorry to read this for two hours tomorrow.

- Peter Carey