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Shutdown eye-brain interface
Going a bit loopy from reading two books and watching arguably five DVDs in three days. They're all lolloping around in my head and getting confused with each other. My brain fancies a bit of output as a change from all the input, or a walk, but I'm not getting anywhere in this snow.
Book-wise there was Simon Ings' A Weight of Numbers, which I bought some years ago because of a) the author and b) the title. Numbers! There are splashes of computation and number theory, but mostly this is a multi-generational story spread over 60 odd years (flash forwards, back, forwards again) - what people did in the war and its ethics and effects, how people get over things and live their lives, and make choices. The handful of characters link and touch each others lives at many points; I don't think I picked up the whole network but the characters are often unaware of the connecting moments too, and it doesn't seem to bother them.
One theme is the special moment (probably a better word than that which may come to me later), the tremble, the transformative shudder, of epilepsy, of orgasm, of ECT, or stroke, or someone walking over your grave.
There is some awesome writing, including the best nail bomb description ever.
I did feel the extent of connectivity went beyond what was reasonable, and the irony was not lost on me when I repeated this to a visiting friend of my lodger's that she'd met through the internet, who has a new boss, who used to be a lodger of mine.
On Friday I watched St Trinian's (2007 version, with Colin Firth striding round a country house in a wet shirt, and Paloma Faith almost unrecognisable as a 12-14-year old schoolgirl despite being 20-21). Then Caligula, 90 minute version! Which they wrote as if it was the unexpurgated version, but there's a 150 minute version available too and mine is tame in comparison. That Malcolm McDowell is a bit good at being mad/evil. Quite patchy, in dialogue, acting and film quality (some very good), but something to watch to see what the fuss was about rahter than to stand up today. It is the nudest movie I've seen since Prospero's Books (which also featured Gielgud). Last was Stuart: A Life Backwards, with the Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch fan clubs. So kind of a triple bill of films with varying degrees of abuse :-/ Cumberbatch's character threw me out on one occasion: a middle class Cambridge man, disposing of a load of leaflets, and he puts them in the black bin not the blue recycling bin? It can't be so!
Current watching is a set of five Werner Herzog films which are part fiction, part documentary. Very strange, and pretty hard going. I can admire them, but there is very little of heartwarming or entertainment in them. So, ideal material for when one is loopy.
Book-wise there was Simon Ings' A Weight of Numbers, which I bought some years ago because of a) the author and b) the title. Numbers! There are splashes of computation and number theory, but mostly this is a multi-generational story spread over 60 odd years (flash forwards, back, forwards again) - what people did in the war and its ethics and effects, how people get over things and live their lives, and make choices. The handful of characters link and touch each others lives at many points; I don't think I picked up the whole network but the characters are often unaware of the connecting moments too, and it doesn't seem to bother them.
One theme is the special moment (probably a better word than that which may come to me later), the tremble, the transformative shudder, of epilepsy, of orgasm, of ECT, or stroke, or someone walking over your grave.
There is some awesome writing, including the best nail bomb description ever.
I did feel the extent of connectivity went beyond what was reasonable, and the irony was not lost on me when I repeated this to a visiting friend of my lodger's that she'd met through the internet, who has a new boss, who used to be a lodger of mine.
On Friday I watched St Trinian's (2007 version, with Colin Firth striding round a country house in a wet shirt, and Paloma Faith almost unrecognisable as a 12-14-year old schoolgirl despite being 20-21). Then Caligula, 90 minute version! Which they wrote as if it was the unexpurgated version, but there's a 150 minute version available too and mine is tame in comparison. That Malcolm McDowell is a bit good at being mad/evil. Quite patchy, in dialogue, acting and film quality (some very good), but something to watch to see what the fuss was about rahter than to stand up today. It is the nudest movie I've seen since Prospero's Books (which also featured Gielgud). Last was Stuart: A Life Backwards, with the Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch fan clubs. So kind of a triple bill of films with varying degrees of abuse :-/ Cumberbatch's character threw me out on one occasion: a middle class Cambridge man, disposing of a load of leaflets, and he puts them in the black bin not the blue recycling bin? It can't be so!
Current watching is a set of five Werner Herzog films which are part fiction, part documentary. Very strange, and pretty hard going. I can admire them, but there is very little of heartwarming or entertainment in them. So, ideal material for when one is loopy.
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