Change

A lad himself

Without further ado, straight to a bit of Bowie


Change is tricky, isn't it? Stepping into the unknown with no guarantees. Yet if we don't change we die.  Kipling has just popped into my head.

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it

I always pretend the last line doesn't exist. I quite like the idea of pretending that parts of works of art don't exist. Unsatisfactory bits of songs, poems; an annoying part of a painting, the part of Blogger that decides to make copied-and-pasted text AND EVERYTHING THAT COMES AFTER IT look weird.

I've not been blogging for ages, as I've been somewhat bogged down in Life and Academia. Academia has finished for now, Life continues to be boggy, so I thought I would make it bloggy as well. Hello!

One of the things I did this year was an art challenge, where I created a small piece of art on a 3"x5" card each day for the months of June of July. The challenge was invented, and is hosted by Tammy Garcia and is explained in her Daisy Yellow blogpost here. It was a great thing to do and I recommend it as an exercise in creativity, exploration, and acceptance. Here are my 61pieces:

A little hat-raising here to Butterfly, who got me started on the whole art/craft journey - thanks!

Time for some more music? I've been watching Peaky Blinders, about which I could write much, but won't. One of the things I loved about this and the previous series is the use of music.

The Bad Mr Cave and his Bad Seeds

The "theme tune" is the sublime Red Right Hand by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

Ms Harvey. Possibly also Bad. 

Covers by two other artists have also been used in this series - Arctic Monkeys (bleh) and the superb, wonderful, brilliant P J Harvey:








So here is the original and here is P J Harvey's version. Enjoy!

Thanks for popping in - the salon is open...

Spiders

Halloween is here, and spiders abound. Check out the fabulous Halloween art from Words and Pictures here.

I used to be terrified of spiders. I think it's the speed at which they move. Or I might have caught the fear from my sister, who remains terrified. Many years ago, my sister was at home from college, and Sleeping In. My younger brother decided it would be a wizard wheeze to creep into her room and place his huge black plastic spider on her knees as she slept, so that it would be the first thing she saw when she woke up.  I can still hear her screams. Younger brother went into hiding for some days. Shortly after the Tate Modern opened, I went with Sister and there was a large (and I mean massive) Louise Bourgeois sculpture of a spider.

Spider!

Sister was prepared - we knew it was going to be there. We could not refer to it as a spider, only a spiderous thing, and she managed to get past it without screaming. I'm not sure how.

Spider song number one - from the great and glorious Who - here

I stayed terrified of spiders until I did NLP training, when I chose that as my phobia when we did the phobia cure. I wouldn't say I grew to love arachnids, but I'm not running-around-the-room-screaming-when-I-see-one-scared and I've even managed to catch a few with a card and glass, in order to free them outside.

Some cats that I've had have enjoyed catching and eating spiders. That's an unpleasant sight - a cat with spider's legs waving around in its mouth as it chomps happily. At least the cat didn't emulate the Old Woman and then swallow a bird. Oh wait...

And spider song the second, from the ineffable Bowie - here. I went to see Bowie on his Ziggy tour in the early 70s (gosh, we're back there again). I was 14 or 15 and sitting right in the front stalls of the Colston Hall as Bowie gyrated his way through thrilling music in brief and glamorous costumes, I began to suspect that there was indeed more to life than the nuns were telling us...

Thanks for popping in - and watch out for the ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties. Not to mention things that go bump in the night...

Mondegreens

I promised more about these in a previous post. Well, here we are.

A mondegreen is a mishearing of a phrase - often a song lyric, but not originally. I used to have terrible trouble remembering the word  - how bizarre, I would think, but how excellent that the phenomenon has a proper name. I must remember it. Remember it? Did I heck as like (I live in the north now. It rubs off.) Then I found out (through the miracle of the interweb) why it's called that and now I can remember it because it's linked to something, not floating untethered in the wordsphere.

In November 1954, Harper's Magazine published an essay by Sylvia Wright called The Death of Lady Mondegreen. (As befits a masters' student, I tried to check the primary source. I found this. Those of you with powerful eyesight will no doubt be able to read it. I would require a subscription (or a prescription) in order to do so. Well, pooh to them. Have you read The Belfry Witches? If you have, you'll recognise the reference. If you haven't, what are you waiting for?)

I am indebted to Wikipedia for the following quotes from the essay:
“When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,

Oh, where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl O' Moray,

And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green". (Wright explained the need for a new term: )

The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original.” (My underlining)

The concept has been extended, but sticking to Ms Wright's original definition,  I don't think I have any personal mondegreens. The only genuine mishearing I remember is thinking Elvis Presley was singing "Don't be cruel to a hard-backed stool" which is clearly not better than the original. Or is it? And I was singing all kinds of nonsense to Life on Mars, but I think we all were. Including Bowie. (I seem to have angered the gods of Blogger by copying from Wikipedia and now I can't get my font right. Well, pooh to them.)

At a singing workshop once someone introduced me to the wannabe Lady Nerth  which I think does qualify. 

I don't seem to have a relevant picture to post, so here is an irrelevant one. Go on, take the weight off for a few minutes.

Thanks for visiting - see you soon. Look - the font's back!