Entries tagged with the falling woman [So you filled your hands]

I am taking a break from a serious apartment-scouring, which is revealing two things to me: one, I have an inane number of weird little things that don't really go anywhere, and two, I cultivate dust bunnies like nobody's business. I have to do this now, not only because the marvelous

oliviacirce is coming to visit in a few days, but this is essentially my last chance to do a thorough clean before December, because God knows when I'll make myself do it during NaNo.

I'm really enjoying ramping up into this endeavor: I find I've been doing a lot of notebook scribbling, and while I'm aware that I'm pretty firm on the beginning of the story and most of the end (though not the very end), there's still this big blank spot in the middle labeled "QUEST" in my outline. I like to think that if I world-build well enough, this will work itself out. (Or I can just fill it all in later: after all, I seriously doubt I'll have a satisfactory middle section on the first draft, when I want to write what I know.) Fingers crossed either way. I see this project as much bigger than 50,000 words.

Every so often, I'll be messing around and realize something. The ghosts, for instance, aren't traditional looks like the person in life but translucent. They're masked; they're disguised; they've been made into symbols. I got this because of happening on Betsy Walton's work on Etsy. Her prints look like something from a mindmeld between '50s and '60s surrealist animation (you know, like the hyper-abstract backgrounds from shorts about spacemen or Precambrian science) and William Blake.

( See what I mean? )

Mood::

cold

Music:: "Giants Orbiting," Ian Ballamy, Mirrormask soundtrack

There are 9 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Last night I finished the reread of Macbeth that I started in July (oops). I think I understand part of why I'm so drawn to writing Lady M. Think about this: how many times have you seen a production of the play, onstage or on film? How is Lady Macbeth's madness always portrayed? It comes on very suddenly, mysteriously appearing between Macbeth's dinner party and the "Out, out, damn spot!" scene in Act 5. And she's alway so goddamn pathetic: she whines and weeps and mewls and cries.

I'm sorry, what? Why would this brilliant, amazing woman, this woman who asks for her blood to be made thick, "that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose," be brought so low and so passive?

Think of how much more terrifying and fitting this scene is if Lady Macbeth is dangerous, if she's frustrated and snarling and predatory. She wants to control the narrative, and no one can control her. She's a danger to the handmaidens, she's erratic and angry at her husband, she's watching all her work and deeds be lost. Think of it!

The thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now? — What, will these hands ne’er be clean? — No more o’ that, my lord, no more o’ that; you mar all with this starting.

That's what I'm hoping to capture with Gruoch. This is someone who won't go down without a fight. Watch out.

There are 2 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Dear Australia,

Never stop having strange and interesting birds.

I am beyond entranced. It's like an Edward Gorey drawing come to life!

Fondly,
Esther

There are 2 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Today is Mexican Independence Day, and in the little outdoor area across the street from work a mariachi band with six dancers gave a concert. It was wonderful. (To the person behind me who said that if this was a real party, they'd be doing shots right now, screw you for missing the point and being a jackass.) The costumes were incredible, with red sashes and gold embroidery and silver coins on black costumes for the men, and intense, full skirts and incredible hairdos with ribbons woven in for the women. The women wore purple, green and orange, and all six dancers as well as the singers yelped and trilled and sang and stomped.

The woman in orange took over: she would dance because she wanted to, by God. She flirted and mocked and grinned and talked back and swayed her hips, and she was so in control and mighty. The only time she was quiet and more reflective-seeming was during the second half of a love song, this gorgeous, full-throated serenade by one of the male band members. It was amazing to see. I want to know more.

Music:: "Catfish Blues," Robert Petway

There are 4 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Very abruptly last night, just after my last post and before I was trying to get to sleep, I came to be at peace with something I've been struggling against for several years.

The Falling Woman is a graphic novel. It just is. There's no way around the fact that almost everything I know about this story is deeply visual and cinematic. It is a Vertigo-style epic starring Lady Macbeth and a host of other characters. I need to stop fretting about trying to work around this and just write it as a script. (Even if I decide otherwise later, a script is as good a draft as any to revise.)

Never mind that I've never written a comic script before. I've done plays and screenwriting, a little, and I've read The Sandman and Lucifer and Y: The Last Man and Promethea and many others enough to have an idea of what's what.

Did I just make a terrible spirituality pun in the subject line?

In less groundbreaking news, this looks like a terribly fun exercise. I'm already scribbling what I hope are non-obvious choices for words that rhyme with "nine": midline, pseudospine, Levantine, alkaline...

Mood::

calm

There are no comments on this entry. (Reply.)

It's one of those days. My boss is out today and there's very little to do (two 200- to 300-word articles for my NPO's magazine and a draft of a blog post for our website). The only creamer that's communal is this ghastly powdered kosher stuff, which means I've only been here a little over ninety minutes and I'm already contemplating a trip to Caribou Coffee. ( Read more... )

Music:: "Wireless," Imogen Heap/"The Water Jet Cilice," Andrew Bird

There are 3 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

( There have to be many of these freakouts before any progress can be made. )

Mood:: neurotic

Music:: "The Song They Were Singing When Rome Fell," Anais Mitchell

There are 4 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

How's that for a name?

Soren Macbeth, founder and chief executive of StockTwits, a service that lets investors trade news and information about companies, said his service, which is built on Twitter’s infrastructure, was offline Thursday and still hadn’t fully recovered Friday.

“Having the service be intermittent is almost worse than having it be totally down,” he said. “It makes it seem more like our issue, a problem with our service.”

Mr. Macbeth said the service, which receives as many as 10,000 postings a day, had been at Twitter’s mercy since its inception. “It’s very challenging to run a business on top of Twitter,” he said. The difficulties of working with Twitter had already prompted StockTwits to begin developing a stand-alone platform, which the company plans to introduce on Sept. 1.

Music:: "Trou Macacq," Squirrel Nut Zippers

Mood::

hungry

There are no comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Someone went to Hecatia and took pictures.

Also, not Midwestern mythic, but post-apocalyptic Americana all the same.

I found some original fiction I wrote once during a "sit down in a coffee shop with

lindensphinx until something comes out" session. It's two years old, and most of it I'd discard now, but there's also this:

All the families in this town have photographs of their relatives from 1906. That year, a traveling man came through with a horse and wagon, and a set of lights and a camera. He lived in the wagon, and slept in attics and barns and bedrooms abandoned by dead relatives when he could. His darkroom was also in the wagon, all its chemicals and washes in scavenged metal jars. People wrote in their diaries of the vapors that clung to that man, even out here in the good fresh open air.

He vanished three towns over from here. Somebody found the wagon abandoned, intact, by the creek. All those jars were open and spilled out on the ground. They’ve said ever since that you can learn what happened to him if you can see the shapes of photographs dimly printed on the rocks.

Music:: "Secretariat," Jeffrey Foucault

There are 2 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Note to self. And more, with better picture and actual information!

Music:: "Candyman," Christina Aguilera

There are no comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15 1	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

So you filled your hands

Did "The Minister's Black Veil" stick in anyone else's head in high school American lit?

Here’s the smell of the blood still

Currawhatnow?

Picture for color and cut, little else

Don't fear the reaper -- or, well, in this case, the medium

And a nifty outfit today too

Neuroses, self-doubt and other games writers play

Don't mess with StockTwits, clearly.

My tags are getting so obscure even I can't remember what they mean.

A new bird species called the

Links

July