i've only been a couple of times and slightly dread it, largely because we've been going on holiday near hay-on-wye since before the festival began so, despite all the manifest economic benefits to the town, it always feel slightly invaded during the festival week. in the event it was wonderful.
never, i think has the sheer sullen tedium of the life of the 15 year-old smalltown metallica fan been captured this well. this is rather beautiful. and daniel's friend ky is glorious...
[disclosure: we share an editor - dan franklin - who is a man of taste and discernment]
just back from another wonderful week teaching creative writing with william fiennes for the arvon fouindation at totleigh barton (during which the red house happily entered the world under its own steam). at the risk of saying this for the 652th time, it is a fine institution doing a fine thing with fine people.
http://www.arvonfoundation.org/
but it is also very hard work and it is fantastic to come home and be able to draw / paint without having to think about any words whatsoever.
... from the top of the galata tower.
... by david eagleman (he of the wonderful and sui generis book of short stories, sum, about 40 different versions of the afterlife).
dolphins alongside the ferry to kadikoy / cups of hot salep with cinnamon sprinkled on top, made, it transpires, from the tubers of wild orchids, whose subsequent decline has led to the banning of their export, so that drinking it is like a very mild version of eating panda burgers / the perfect stillness and proportionof the library of ahmed lll in the topkapi palace / in the archaeological museum, the most beautiful tiny clay tablets covered in hittite cuneiform inscriptions and slipped inside slightly larger clay envelopes also covered in cuneiorm script / the vertiginous panoramic view
... in the emerald city, by rajiv chandrasekaran, who is currently national editor of the washington post. not the essiest read but important and quite astonishing in parts. it's the story of the american occupation of iraq told from the point of view of the green zone, the highly guarded enclave in baghdad from which the whole operation was run.
well, well, well... i was leafing through wittgenstein's lectures and conversations on aestehtics, psychology & religious belief the other day. as one does. when i came across this page, which i had read a year or two before writing curious... and about which i'd completely forgotten. i think sometimes that i just wander around the world pulling a rag & bone cart, filing it with stuff and waiting for a book to dump it all in.
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