The Royal Museums Greenwich's weekly webcasts are back, with an episode on the newly reopened Cutty Sark (or "Skimpy Skirt" if you don't speak Scottish). The glamour of pineapples is discussed, traders who still sail are buttonholed, and Helen Czerski is on hand as usual to ask every question playing on your mind as if by magic. I give a couple of readings too, including a dramatic account of a storm at sea for which I had to repeatedly say "poop" with a nautical accent and a straight face. And in other news...
God, I'd have loved to seen Gene Wilder play Richard II, but in his absence I've decided I myself shall take on the role of that most pineapply of monarchs as well as every other role in Richard II of course as I return to Simon Goes Full Shakespeare next week. I know I said I'd do the War of the Roses next, but this play comes earlier historically even if it was written later, and has far fewer characters than Henry VI, far fewer explosions, and far more sadness, self-indulgence, and sass, so seems the more comfortable choice. Also I've got the hair. I'll save further spoilers for next week, but here's where I found that painting of Richard looking like a pineapple, andhere's where I found that pineapple that looks like Richard II.
Colours aren't reflected light in the concept art of Mary Blair, they're light sources. The Disney films she worked on were nocturnal fairy tales, intimately sunless and perfect for dark rides. There were concepts in her concept art too, like filling Wonderland with signage for example.
That seems apt. If Carroll's stories had a villain it was probably words. Tangentially, it's possible that I've been misusing the word "liminal". I've used it describe the location of an act of the imagination, but strictly speaking it doesn't mean pretend-y so much as between-y, coming from the
Latin word for threshold.
It was the video below that brought this to my attention. I know nothing about the contributor but my algorithms made a hell of a recommendation because Solar Sand's search for the fabled "backrooms" is absolutely packed with potential rabbit holes: "noclipping", kenopsia, the actual length of a fire hydrant, what kind of rooms inspire nostalgia in Russian millenials... Wait. What does the word "threshold" come from?
"Lose the mask."
"Mm?" I had earbuds in.
"Lose the mask, man" said the passerby yesterday at the top of Mount Vernon before collapsing in a heap immediately, blood falling out of his ears in clots, probably, I don't know, I didn't look back but probably. That evening, to signify the risk of my days becoming more structured I not only chose a film but attempted to make popcorn, and with every window wide open finally sat down to watch A Quiet Place.
Peter had recommended it. He and Phil had picked it for the third episode of their new podcast Horror Movie Maniacs, with no idea that when they would finally come to record it the whole world would be self-isolating. You can hear it here, and there are also spoilers below, but I love Ryan George's hair-splitting Pitch Meetings. And I love having horror fans as best friends. We follow the rules.
I'd never picked up a book by Schuiten or Peeters until today, but my excellent sister gave me Samaris for my birthday back in November, and finally reading it has felt a lot like nostalgia. These are the dreams I'd had as a nineteen-year-old, of being assigned to investigate a city and finding only scenery, something to climb or climb into, whose passages and ledges might take you to a roof from where you could finally see it all. Kafkaish adventures where the twist was that nothing will happen, that the city is ultimately unvisitable, these were fairy tales of tourism, and although I may have forgetten how big a part they played in my adolescence, I still find it hard to know how to engage with a place beyond just heading to its highest point.
I've just finished watching Don't F*** With Cats on Netflix. It wasn't what I expected, and I think I might have hated watching it. This is not a recommendation. But I wanted to see how it ended, and as someone who's worked with both Jack the Ripper and Shakespeare I felt maybe I should keep abreast of contemporary developments in self-mythologising monstrousness. One of the problems of course is that everyone always joins in with the mythologising, and this documentary confesses to being as guilty of that as the next ghoul, but in its adoption of horror tropes it brought to my attention one I'd never considered before, even though I as a writer have also used the trope (and I can't find it on tvtropes.org either), namely that of the Scary Number.
A camera cranes in onto the "19" on the door of an apartment in Paris for example, or an internet café owner in Berlin will point to a stall and say "This is it. Number 25." The cliché is that certain numbers have a power, but they all seem to, just the fact of them - the factiness even. 10 Rillington Place. Room 237. Inside Number 9. Arithmobia is a fear not of specific numbers, but of numbers in general. And that's what I can't work out - whether the Scary Number is simply a horror trope borne of True Crime, or whether it speaks to something more primal... The Matrix.... The Prisoner... Like shadows, snakes and skeletons, have we always just, secretly, found numbers inherently evil?
Because if we have, I can see that becoming a problem.
Something about the light on Hackney Marshes reminds me of Seurat. I'd walked here from Camden, invited to a picnic, and for the first time in four months spoke with strangers. There were teachers and doctors and musicians, one of whom pointed out to me that I wasn't wearing walking shoes, which is something to consider. It was midnight by the time I got home.
Before I headed home though, I took a detour up the Lea, past the filter beds, to visit what I think must have been the marsh office described by Ken Campbell in The Furtive Nudist. Here he'd sit beneath a fishing umbrella, pockets stuffed with stationery, and await "a commission". The last time I came here was in 2016 just after the first recording of Time Spanner, possibly also awaiting a commission.
Happily this detour also took me past a friend, Mischa from shunt who was standing at the bend in the river. I wasn't expecting to bump into him, or anyone. It's nice out, I suppose is the moral, but I know nothing's changed. I wore a mask. But also I showed my face.
I love my fortnightly quiz companions so much but my only interaction with them for the past three months is framed around an activity where I'm at my worst and most competitive. My worst is probably tolerable though because we've done another. This time my round was just an excuse to look at some nice pictures. I posted examples of early concept art, they had to name the film, and there's a bonus not film above. Answers in the comments.
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9. (The name's not a clue. I think they changed it.)
