5/4/2013 Press!My lovely friend at La Magicbox, a French music website for which I have been writing a lot since 2000, has done a little news flash about the publication of my book. It is in French, though... MAGICBOX NEWS They might even put a review on there next month...
I have actually started writing about music again, although it will not be as full on as it used to be... I have done a profile of the Alt-Fest festival, a fantastic new festival that will take place in Kettering in August 2014, and I have just sent in my first CD review in four years! I am rather rusty, but it's good to be back! ALT-FEST PROFILE ARTICLE ON LA MAGICBOX (in French and English). 24/3/2013 Muses, muses...Our day in London on Friday was all about books, writers, images, artists and muses. We basically went on a bit of a cultural binge. As you do. We started off with MURDER IN THE LIBRARY, THE A TO Z OF CRIME FICTION at The British Library. I drooled over the wonderful vintage tomes on display - ah, to possess a few of those! - and was pleased to see some of my favourites being part of the display: Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie... It is a small but perfectly formed exhibition and you have until May 12th to see it! Then we walked all the way to THE PIPER GALLERY in Fitzrovia - a part of town I have always neglected, somehow. There seems to be quite a lot of interesting little streets and corners and we will go back and explore in the Spring. The gallery is a sleek, brand new space with a strategically placed glass roof which allows in plenty of natural light. My decision to visit the gallery was taken on the spur of the moment (see my previous blog about it) and I am glad to say that I didn't get chucked out or sneered at when I explained the aim of my visit: to leave a copy of my book I Am a Muse for Megan Piper, the gallery owner. The gallery assistants took the book. Result! I would be genuinely interested in knowing what an art specialist thinks about my little novel. Of course, I might never hear from them and that is fair enough, but I think that sometimes you have to be slightly daring and not think about the consequences of your actions too much. Anyhow, I have discovered a new art gallery that is doing things slightly differently, and I am interested in knowing what they do next. The show that is on at the moment is Neil Stokoe: All Things Must Pass. Then it was off to the National Portrait Gallery where we managed to catch FRED DANIELS, CINEMA PORTRAITS - he worked extensively with filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger on the sets of their movies. MARILYN MONROE: A BRITISH LOVE AFFAIR is a delightful homage to the star made of photographs, magazine covers and lobby cards. Some cover her four-months stay ion Britain for the shooting of "The Prince and the Showgirl". I have always been intrigued by the human being behind the legend - I had posters of Marilyn on my wall from the age of 10! - and this exhibition was a real treat. MAN RAY: PORTRAITS is a fascinating exhibition. Together with Cecil Beaton, Man Ray has always been one of my favourite photographers. He did not only take photos, he experimented. He was part of the Dada and Surrealist movements, and was always mixing with writers, architects, composers, artists and other intellectuals especially during his time in New York and Paris. Of course, he took pictures of his numerous and illustrious friends - Duchamp, Hemingway, Stein, Cocteau, Dali, among others - but it is the images of his muses that have always striked me as positively magical. His images of the unusual Kiki de Montparnasse - the main muse of 1920s Paris - and the formidable and stunning Lee Miller - who would go on to have an important career as a photographer herself - are unforgettable. Another muse, Ady Fidelin, would share his life for a while before he met Juliet Browner, the muse and companion of the last thirty-six years of his life. I have always been wondering about muses.
Each time I go to an exhibition, my mind wanders beyond the images and I start imagining what the relationship between the artist and his muse could be like. And I wonder: What is their bond and how deep is it? What are the mechanics of such a relationship and what does each individual gain from it? How corrupted and alienating is it? This is what made me write I Am a Muse. I have found a lovely article about muses, entitled SEVEN MUSES OF PARIS. Go and have a read. And the pictures are wonderful, too! 20/3/2013 When reality meets fiction...In my debut novel I Am a Muse, the former artist's muse Alda Thunberg lives - or rather survives - in an old house too big for her surrounded by the remnants of her life before her husband's death. Herself an artist, Alda cannot create anymore. At 70, she is the shadow of her former self.
For more than 40 years, Alda was married to the painter and sculptor Alastair Maynard and together, they had acquired a certain enviable status, that of the golden couple of contemporary art. Now Maynard's art seems to be relegated to a few appearances into catalogues and not too much else. A mysterious American publishing magnate is going to change everything: he hires a New York gallery manager and instructs her to put on a major exhibition of Maynard's art in New York; he also commissions a biography of the author to be published at the same time as the exhibition opens. This is when the story of I Am a Muse starts... I have a strange habit of reading magazines as I spend time on my exercise bike - believe you me, in 30 minutes, you've got time to read quite a few articles. I read pretty much anything, usually magazines found in the Sunday papers and free commercial ones my boyfriend picks up on his commute from London. It's good to keep your fingers on the pulse of mainstream culture, especially if, like us, you write and sell books and create artworks to sell at markets and fairs. It's essential to keep an eye on trends and to know what people have been ordered to like on a particular week. Since we've started doing markets and such, we have noticed that people like the familiar, get easily unsettled by the unknown and need to get gently nudged into trying out different things they like but are not sure they should be liking. Hey, it's not on TV... To us - a debut writer and independent publisher and an artist, designer and stallholder(s), that kind of attitude - and the fact that people get bombarded with cultural references that only appear in the media because someone has paid for it to get there - represents a huge challenge. Anyway... All this waffling to say that while I was leafing through the pages of a free woman's magazine, I found a page about a new art gallery in London called The Piper Gallery. Located in Fitzrovia, not a million miles from Tottenham Court Road station, it was opened in June 2012. But there is a twist to the story: the gallery's 28 year-old owner, Megan Piper, showcases "the work of contemporary artists whose careers have spanned forty years or more. The gallery aims to present these artists to a new generation and to demonstrate both the strength of their lifelong commitment to their practice and the continuing dynamism of their recent production." Wow! Just like the story in my book, in which the career of a deceased artist (Ok, the artists at The Piper Gallery are thankfully alive and still practising!) gets resurrected and made relevant again! Reading the article and browsing the website genuinely made me smile. Strangely enough, I immediately started thinking about my characters and the life I have imagined for them... You can read the article on Megan Piper HERE. I have never worked in the art business or in a gallery and I am not an artist myself (although everyone thought I would be when I was younger. WORDS and BOOKS won the battle.) I do not know a lot about this world, and everything in the book has been inspired by observations, readings, visits to gallery and museums, music, films, a love of and obsession with art, imagination and creativity. I will be paying a visit to the gallery this Friday and I will have with me a copy of I Am a Muse and a print out of the press release. I'd love the gallery owner to read the book. If I get chucked out, at least I would have tried! The Piper Gallery is at 18 Newman Street, London, W1T 1PE THE PIPER GALLERY WEBSITE 4/3/2013 Amanda Palmer at TEDInspiration. What a wonderful talk! Thank you, Amanda Palmer... The standing ovation is very much deserved! There is a lovely entry on Neil Gaiman's JOURNAL about it...
A real Renaissance man and my dream library!!! Great video HERE, just simply amazing... So, so inspiring! That's exactly the kind of person I wanted to be when I was thinking about becoming a lecturer and academic (Yes, I almost did become one... But that's another story). And go and have a look at the article THE 30 BEST PLACES TO BE IF YOU LOVE BOOKS. I am drooling over it! This is one of the reasons why I can't do e-books. e-books are so incredibly BORING. We had a lovely evening on Friday in the company of journalist and broadcaster Mark Lawson, P. D. James, Jason Webster and Henry Sutton. They had a lively discussion about crime fiction, told us about their favourite crime fiction books and read from their own works. I love listening to authors talk about their work and reveal the ideas behind their stories, the way they work, their inspiration... The three authors had three very different personalities, styles, inspirations and ways of working... I love Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, Laurie R. King's Mary Russell Mysteries and Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May series. I also would love to get my hands on some Mrs Bradley Mysteries by Gladys Mitchell and learn more about The Detection Club... For me - and I was delighted when P. D. James mentioned this - the setting of the story and the characterisation are the important things: I like to get a sense of the era, a sense of the place - I am not very interested in contemporary detective works, apart from the Bryant and May series, but these have a lot of very original features you do not find in any other detective fiction. The actual detection work is of very little importance to me at all. I purchased P. D. James' latest book, Death Comes to Pemberley (very soon to become a BBC TV drama), and got it signed by the great Lady herself. I couldn't help being in awe of the lovely 92-year-old author; what a life she's had! The exhibition Murder in the Library, an A to Z of Crime Fiction, is on at The British Library until 12 May 2013.
There was an article in last week's local newspaper confirming that the second edition of the Shorelines festival of literature of the sea will indeed take place next autumn. It is rather nice to see this confirmed, even though it is months away.
We were told about it when we attended Metal Culture's Creative writing Lab last October - I was one of the lucky participants. You can find my blog about it HERE (pictures of speakers Christopher Fowler, Cathi Unsworth and Julie Myerson). I am a Muse should be out by then, and I know exactly what I want to do for this festival - if I am allowed... We will see... It will involve The Right Place, pictures of St Catherine's Chapel and PJ Harvey's The Wind. 17/1/2013 Ignite Books in LondonToday, I will be making my way to the Queen Mary, University of London in Mile End to attend a talk on independent publishing with Steve Pottinger and Joolz Denby from Ignite Books. Then afterwards, it will be an evening of poetry readings. And I am going to purchase some more books, of course! I am hoping to have pictures to post on here over the weekend.
29/12/2012 Mediaeval Baebes picturesBelow are a few pictures taken at the Mediaeval Baebes' concert at St Sepulchre-Without-Newgate, the musicians' church in Holborn, London. I had already taken some pictures of the place when I went to the Baebes' gig last year (HERE). The camera struggled a little bit with the lights (I didn't want to use flash), but I thought I would share the enchanting setting. It was, of course, enchanting, and my favourite song of the night was Jennet's Song - about the Pendle witches - which features on the group's sumptuous brand new (double) album, The Huntress. It took us a while to come back to reality... 14/12/2012 Meow Meow's Little Match Girl at SouthbankYesterday, we were off to the Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre to see Meow Meow's Little Match Girl, a cabaret show inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's tale. I personally loathe musicals (apart from the original movie of My Fair Lady) but I love cabaret (Meow Meow's own strand has been dubbed kamikaze and post-modern cabaret) and hope to be seeing more next year. Meow Meow is incredibly glamorous and charismatic, with a natural grace and edge without equal. The show is clever, poetic, bawdy, seductive, naughty, poignant, hilarious, teasing and ambitious. It is also much richer and complex than first appears: social and gender issues are buried just under the surface, poking their stubborn heads here and there under a shower of glitter. The show is full of references too: Flaming in my head I've had Austrian artist Irene Andessner's works on the Edison light-bulb-covered dancer Milli Stubel, Loie Fuller's experiments with light and shadow, John Donne's A Nocturnal upon St Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day, the women of Bratislava that Andersen encountered screaming through the burnt city looking for their lost children, Joan of Arc and the Catherine Wheel, Annie Besant, the Bryant and May match girls who went on strike in 1888, Moira Shearer and The Red Shoes, Jean Renoir's tin soldier, witches at the stake, global warming, "ice" addiction, exploring planets, fragile and naughty pyromaniac children. ... Meow Meow - real name Melissa Madden Gray, is an incredible individual. Read more about her background and experience in this excellent article HERE. Southbank is spoiling us in 2013 with an amazing festival, The Rest is Noise, "The Soundtrack of the 20th Century" (SATURDAY 19 JANUARY 2013 - SUNDAY 9 JUNE 2013) The programme is packed-full with events - some of them free and a lot rather affordable. We hope to go to some of them!
|
AuthorI think therefore I write. Archives
March 2024
CategoriesAll Art Books Cinema Culture Events Idea Ideas Inspiration Inspirations Literature Music People Places Promo Publishing Reading Reviews Self Publishing Self Publishing Self-publishing Society Theatre Thoughts Working Work In Progress Work In Progress Writing Writings |