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Sunday, July 6th, 2008
ellen_datlow
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3:49p
Thomas M. Disch RIP
I've just found out that Tom Disch committed suicide in his apartment on July 4th. He was found by a friend who lives a few blocks away.
I'm shocked, saddened, but not very surprised. Tom had been depressed for several years and was especially hit by the death of his longtime partner Charles Naylor. He also was very worried about being evicted from the rent controlled apartment he lived in for decades.
I last visited with him about a month ago, when I ran into him shopping at the Greenmarket across the street from where he lived (he rarely went out because he had trouble walking). He invited me up for cheese and bread which we bought together at the market and I visited for an hour or two. He seemed more optimistic about his work than he'd been for at least a year as he had three books/novellas coming out over the next year.
Tom wrote wonderful stories (I only read one or two of his novels but kept meaning to read more) and if you haven't ever read the collections Getting into Death or Fundamental Disch you need to find and read them.
Tom, as much as you were a bitter, sometimes mean curmudgeon--I'll miss you.
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jaylake
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11:52a
[help] Clarion West is back on beam
Per kate_schaefer’s post at clarionites:
Due to the swift and generous response of the SF community, Clarion West has now received nearly enough money to replace the four student laptops stolen July 4 from rooms at the workshop residence. Clarion West staff, volunteers, and students all express their thanks for your very timely help. They especially want to thank BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow, Jay Lake, and many more for their generosity and for alerting others to the need for money and laptops. Donations began coming in from around the world just hours after the theft.
“If we collect funds that are much in excess of the cost of replacing the stolen computers, we will return them proportionally to the donors,” said workshop administrator Leslie Howle. “The use of PayPal makes this relatively easy to do.” She added, “We are all overwhelmed, and the students are immensely grateful. They were devastated by this theft, and it’s been amazing to see the community rally to support them.”
I am very pleased to see them on course, and the losses made whole. While I appreciate the shout-out, all I really did was pass along a message from albionidaho. A perfect example of our field’s networking and mutuality at its finest, and my congratulations to all concerned.
Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.
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ysabetwordsmith
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10:18a
The Words of a Scribe
A random phrase today reminded me of something I did long ago, that I think you'd enjoy hearing about.
When I was in high school, I went to a summer camp that recreated ancient lifeways. It was one of the coolest experiences I've ever had. Among the many fascinating things we did was working with clay and cuneiform.
First we went to the clay mine by the creek and dug the clay. There we learned how to recognize clay in its natural state. We spent hours hand-cleaning it to remove tiny pebbles and stems and other trash. Clay is silk-fine stuff, its particles the size of powder, wet and slippery. Imperfections leap out at your fingertips.
We made the usual things, pinch-pots and coils and slabs. We learned how to make an oil lamp by shaping a round shallow bowl and then folding in two edges to make a sort of point to hold the wick. Not squeezing in the sides to make a channel: it won't burn that way. You have to fold the edges from the top inwards. I also made the donii goddess figure that still graces my altar. She is simplistic in form but the veracity of her creation gives her much power.
Then out came the book of Sumerian liturgy, in original cuneiform, the likes of which I didn't see again for a decade or more until people started releasing the hymns of Inanna in commercial form. Old words for old ways, in a form of writing as old as civilization itself. There were dried reeds for us to cut into triangular styli. Official documents were written on large slabs, decorative ones on vases and beads ... an apprentice simply learns to copy lines on a palmful of clay pressed flat. It took some time to discover, or perhaps remember, the way of holding the stylus and the delicate motions of pressing the sharp tip into the soft wet clay to make the several particular types of mark combine into the specific shape of a given word. One word at a time, phrase by phrase, copying out the lines in praise of an ancient goddess.
We weren't allowed to settle for less than a perfect copy. Mistakes meant smoothing out the clay to start over. Only when the writing on the small round of clay matched the writing in the book was it approved for firing. But I loved it, the clever dense writing like the tracks of birds on the shore, so deep with meaning. So familiar, my hands wrapped their way around it in a summer afternoon, dancing their way across the clay the way the hymn danced across my heart. Words. Prayers. The water-laughter of reeds and the patience of clay.
Once my teacher paused at my shoulder, approved the piece I had just finished and said in his rumbling voice: "One day you may be a scribe, and the people will read your words."
And those words settled into my soul like bones, to be covered by the soft silt of memory and turned by time into fossils at the bedrock core of my identity.
The firing, too, was a complicated thing: the shallow firepit kiln had already been dug and could be reused, but we had to gather wood and pile it carefully with stones to make a sort of enclosure. The dried clay went inside: bowls, oil lamps, figurines, cuneiform and all. The fire burned all day and all night. Eventually we dug through the ashes, carefully unearthing our objects. They were colored the deep buff of baked clay, patched with soot-black and iron rust and other strange colors given by the heat and the minerals. Old magic from the dawn of time -- our first magic, fire, used to turn mud into stone. The wonder of it never really fades.
I have some of those things still. My hands recall the quick strange steps of reed over clay. When I see in another world a ceramic slab dented with half-circles and odd lines, I know it for writing. My shelves these days hold a few books on Sumerian culture and religion. Inanna walks softly through my inner spaces, her sandaled feet leaving a trail in the sands of my spirit. And there are no ruins here, only the bones of memory worn smooth by time and lives.
I was and will always be a scribe. Perhaps not in every life, but enough that it runs through my soul like a river from which fish are forever leaping to flash their silver sides in the sun. I could climb out of a starship onto a strange new world, and slip on the edge of an alien river ... and my fingers would touch the silken clay, and something in me would stir and remember. Words. Prayers. Of such things we all are made, pressed by the gods into the clay of time.
current mood:  thoughtful
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oldsma
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9:00a
Live Long and Marry!
Amber has posted an item in the ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) livelongnmarry auction to raise money for the fight against the California initiative which will legally destroy existing same-sex marriages and ban any further ones. If the initiative passes, it will write discrimination into the state constitution, annull existing marriages, and make Mr. Sulu cry. You can specify that your bid will go to a group from their list or suggest one of your own.
Amber has offered a custom playlist to your spec. This will include tracks purchased for you, a playlist, and complete album artwork.
This is a good cause and a good offer. There are many other even better offers posted in the community, so go have a look.
MAO
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matociquala
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7:19a
in the desert love waited, licking salt water from her skin
Due to an embarrassment of riches caused by seriously underestimating the size of the internet, we're stepping up the release schedule for the over-hiatus Shadow Unit content. Rather than twice a month, we will be posting new content twice a week, because it seemed like making everybody (including us) wait through December for the last of the content was silly and mean (in both senses of the word).
So from tonight through the middle of August, we'll be posting new content twice a week: a new scene every Thursday night and Sunday night.
As Emma says, Are we crazy? Crazy like a platypus, baby.
current mood:  hyper
current music: WNPR - Live Stream
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annathepiper
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12:44a
Proto-filk in progress
This doesn't happen to me often; I don't write songs nearly as much as I write fiction. However, I've been known to generate a filk or two.
This one, however, appears to be storming up out of nowhere in my brain. Well, not nowhere--part of this is because of ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) solarbird and I being at the Tall Ships festival in Tacoma yesterday. While we were there, I saw both magnificent tall sailing ships on the water, and military planes screaming by overhead. The contrast between archaic sailing vessels and modern aircraft was a potent one; it made me think of timelines colliding. I had the lyric "tall ships on the water, swift planes in the sky" pop into my head pretty much right then and there.
And on the way home, I thought, yeah, this is a Doctor filk. As of tonight I have a chorus, and I know what it's supposed to be about. It's from Rose's point of view, and if you haven't been keeping up with the current season, it'll be quite spoilery. I know it'll be in a minor key, though I don't have a melody line yet.
( Here's the first bit... )
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ellen_datlow
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2:40a
A Public service reminder
For anyone attending the World Fantasy Convention in Calgary this October, be aware the Election Day is November 4th and you may not be home to vote in time....so remember to apply for an absentee ballot. I don't know about other states or cities, but in NYC you can apply for an absentee ballot by printing out a pdf file from here:
absentee ballot NYC
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fjm
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7:31a
On creativity and essay writing.
Every so often, someone posts a query about how to write an essay without killing one's creativity. I struggled with this for years, but it came eventually. However, I have little faith in the "keep struggling" advice. Some people work hard and still never get there.
Then I picked up Diana Wynne Jones's Year of the Griffin. A "university story", it contains within it some of the best descriptions of bad teaching I've ever come across, but more important, it also contains one of the best descriptions of how to think about essays, and what essays can do, that I've ever seen.
You can go read the book, or you can just read the excerpt. It's posted on my website with DWJ's permission here.
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ellen_datlow
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1:45a
Theater/movies/netflix
I forgot to mention that I saw The Adding Machine by Elmer Rice, produced as a musical last week at the Minetta Lane Theater--a small venue in Greenwich Village. I'd never read or seen the play before and knew very little about it but that a friend of mine who had seen it a few months ago hated it. But because it won some awards and it was cheap (through TDF) I decided to take a chance. I enjoyed it. It's dated, but as a snapshot of boring, numbing, bookkeeping work in the 20s it was interesting, and I liked the production. Middle aged guy with horrible screeching, complaining wife goes to work daily and does numbers with a woman helper who obviously is interested in him. Boss fires him, guy murders boss and ends up on death row. Dies and instead of the Hell he expects he ends up in what seems like Heaven, a place he can do whatever he wants. Freedom. Plus, the co-worker (who he was interested in) kills herself because with him gone she has nothing to live for--and she ends up where he is. They CAN live happily ever after, but he freaks out and would rather go back to being a cog in the machine...
Today I went to a matinée performance of Clifford Odets' The Country Girl, with Morgan Freeman, Frances McDormand, and Peter Gallagher. Directed by Mike Nichols. I thought I remembered the play getting mixed reviews --I'll have to check--but it was brilliant. Great performances (some of you might have seen it as a movie with Grace Kelly --who I'd think would have been totally miscast--, William Holden, and Bing Crosby. I've never seen the movie). Once good actor who has been a lush for at least ten years is given a chance by a producer to star in a new play. The actor's wife, the "country girl" of the title, is either a support or hindrance, depending on who you believe.
The last two episodes of the first season of Deadwood--and yes, it keeps getting better and better; I Can't Sleep, a thought-provoking French film by Claire Denis about several "outsiders" in Paris whose lives connect interestingly--told against the background of a series of murders of old ladies based on real murders in the early 1990s.
And Swimming With Sharks, with a vicious Kevin Spacey as a movie executive, Frank Whalley, as his green put upon assistant, and Michelle Forbes (who I'd never seen before but has apparently been on a lot of tv series including "Lost" and "In Treatment") as a producer who is trying to get a deal for her script. Nasty nasty film.
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ysabetwordsmith
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12:06a
Bloggers to AP: You're Dead to Me
Bloggers Blog has a fascinating article about the Associated Press and its attempt to thwart fair use. I'm pleased to see that many other bloggers -- including some very high-profile ones -- have taken the same stance I have and simply boycotted AP. There are even hints that AP may back off.
current mood:  busy
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(comment on this) Saturday, July 5th, 2008
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whoa