As the title suggests.
Albert Camus's The Plague contains many sharp and relevant passages to the present-day scenario, even though it would've been of course impossible to predict the coronavirus pandemic, and one of the most relevant, at least for today, is the observation that the townspeople of Oran, starting letters, would find themselves with very little to write because very little had happened.
So it is with I and my life and these blog posts.
I am still reading, of course. I'm coming up to the close of my reread of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, and maybe halfway through my reread of the Gormenghast trilogy. These are as completely different from each other as you can get -- excepting, I suppose, that the prose of both could be described as verbose, even if they're verbose in very different ways -- but they are both masterpieces.
It took a week but I finished Roger Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October, a delightful read which takes as its viewpoint character Jack the Ripper's dog. It's quite charming, but I think I enjoyed Lord of Light more.
Am also currently reading A.R. Moxon's The Revisionaries, a marvelous novel taking place across several planes of reality and three (or four) typefaces. Again, quite verbose, but it's a pleasure to read. (There's nothing wrong with purple prose.) I suspect that this is a novel I will be able to reread in a few years with increased pleasure, too.
Alix Harrow's new novel The Once and Future Witches also came out a week-ish ago, and my Library's copy arrived the very same day it came out. I was the one to discharge it, and, voila! Hold slip printed out for yours truly and I checked it out. I'm enjoying it so far. The three central characters are each distinctive and the prose is, of course, heartbreakingly gorgeous -- I almost think excessively so, sometimes, the prose equivalent of Debbie Wiseman's Wilde soundtrack. Having adored The Ten Thousand Doors of January, I fully expect to derive just as much satisfaction from this one.
I've found myself enjoying films and television more. I've been watched Hayao Miyazaki's films with my little brother, watching documentaries with another friend of mine, and watching Russell T. Davies' series Years & Years in my own time. It's an excellent television series -- incredibly well-made and performed. For my money, it was the sort of well-made that totally obliterates whatever other ostensible issues one might object to.
(Death Note falls into this same category for me. It's a philosophically misanthropic series, and it is deeply sexist. Yet its central story is so compelling that these flaws are, at least during the viewing experience, obliterated. This is personal experience and subjective opinion, mind, and I do not mean to imply that those flaws don't exist or aren't worthy of thinking about. [Worth noting that Ohba and Obata's next manga, Bakuman, did not have such a brilliant concept, and had much more prominent roles for its female characters, and the sexism is deafening.])
I am listening to more different kinds of music than ever. I have been a fan of Seeming for years; now I enjoy ThouShaltNot as well. King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard is magnificent as well -- always, always stretching to find new things they can do. Even when I don't fully love what they do the craftsmanship and skill with which they do it is so evident that it's impossible not to appreciate it.
And I am enjoying also what I have enjoyed from the beginning: videogame music, and film music. And a renewed appreciation for classical music. (Random recommendation: Henry Hadley's Symphony Nr. 4 "North, East, South, West" is very good.)
I've discovered my control over my creative instincts is partial and incomplete. I begin to understand why artists sometimes see themselves of transcribers. It's art that emerges from so deep inside that it seems as though it's coming from outside. It's a strange, and new, sensation.
Poetry, and song lyrics. The poems arrive effectively complete and need only to be revised for word choice. The songs on the other hand arrive as a handful of lyrics, and to actually finish it will require thought and actual work. (I don't know what to do with the songs once they're finished. Maybe learn to sing.)
As for the creation of music? That proceeds. A little faster than before, and lately I am feeling more enthusiastic about composing than I have in a while, so hopefully it'll come faster still. Maybe I'll relaunch my Patreon.
And stories? Ah, well... the procrastination remains well alive there. Oh well!
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