simonbrind | Reading

July 2024

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Been whirling through my garden tearing the oriental poppies. They look weirdly excellent on it, elegant and gothic.

The last couple of days we took advantage of the sunshine and went walking, first day through a little woodland near by and the next through... another little woodland nearby :-)

First was in mid Calder, a walk that goes over bridges, beside a stream and under ancient trees. The scent in the warm sun was rich, wild garlic mingling with the last of the hawthorn bloom, pepper-fresh, alive.

Yesterday's walk was with a couple of friends. We went to Ravencraig and lost ourselves trying to find the cairn. I like to think this was because everything's so overgrown rather than the fact that trapped in a bag I couldn't find my way up. What's needed is a Lidar scan of that craig because it really does have the vibe of ancient earth works. Older references have a different spelling of its name, Reaven or Reaver craig, which would suggest the presence of dangerous bandits once upon a time. It would have been a great look-out spot over the salters road where farmers and traders travelled. Perfect is the poetic sense that this is where the silver man was seen, and long before him, witches were said to perch high in the trees across the way for their sabbats.

We enjoyed ourselves, had lunch, came home. The South West Wind grew stronger, turned light and sky into epic foreboding beauty. Came the night I dreamed of an old semi-squeeze who shared a surname with one of the most infamous Reaver families of the Borders, a bunch so terrible the archbishop of Glasgow cursed them. Unfortunately, his name was the most interesting thing about him. In my dream I had borne his child long ago and told him nothing of it but now he wanted to know.

He didn't get his wish. By morning, dream Not-A-Reaver was still thwarted, and like the South West Wind I had moved on.

Got up and suddenly felt everything spin around, faint, nausea etc. All morning. Always had low blood pressure, but this is insistent and often. Is it the blasted Letrozole?

Letrozole's reputation is for sending blood pressure up so if low blood pressure is an issue, this drug might actually help. I had so much difficulty with it in the beginning they were up for experimenting with other hormone suppressants, but as the drugs are all in the same chemical family it seems unlikely that matters would improve. Tamoxifan has its own spicy rep.

Still, these symptoms are weird AF, am very tempted not to take this stuff at all. Supposed to keep this up for 3 years, then if necessary 5, then up to 10. But it's not great, feeling so muggy headed and exhausted all the time. Am I up for a decade of this? What would happen if I stopped?

Docs go Noooooo! Don't do it! But eh, this feels so very uncomfortable.

There was The Last of Us; beginning with the computer game, where a particular event turned players right off. If that particular event is repeated in a TV setting, who wouldn't expect viewers to react the same way players did? Bad storytelling when it happened first time, bad storytelling now. I am amazed at content creators blaming 'audience toxicity,' but then I guess folk must cover their bums. The question remains though, if you believe in the malignity of your audience, how the hell can you connect to them, more, why would you want to?

Meanwhile there was 1883. This was great. Not perfect, but sufficient in itself, poetic, heartbreaking, raw. Does it make me want to watch 1923 or Yellowstone? I don't know, I'm not quite ready to leave feral Elsa and the empty seeming land.

It reminded me to my trip to the West Coast back in the 80s. That was a strange dusty year in the city of angels. Decades later I could probably handle LA but for then I ran away, unimpressed by Hollywood and Rodeo Drive, on to San Francisco, to San Diego, out to Arizona and Monument Valley, eventually finding my best place in Yosemite, which brought me so much happiness I spent most of my holiday there. The very first beastie I saw was a bear, and much later strolling along the trails, I walked parallel to a mountain lion carrying a bird in its mouth. This was one place I couldn't wear perfume because all I wanted to smell was the warmth of land and trees, I loved it so much I never wanted to leave. But in 2015 when R suggested we get married there I demurred, practical reason being because it felt odd to ask friends to spend so much on our wedding, but also because I was afraid Yosemite might have changed beyond my memories.

One thing I learned long ago about stories is that they should make sense alone, but it's often their way to sprawl out, to spiral into connection. Would I love Grand Teton or Yellowstone as much as Yosemite? How would it feel to redress my one regret about California and go spend time in Joshua Tree? Would I find myself facing that sense once again, that there is so much more, further up or in or down, more and more to be found across that strange continent? And then the travellers voice warns me that yes, all this is true, but it applies to everywhere. Wherever I go I'll find more. Stop falling in love it laughs at me.

I am no Elsa Dutton, but I feel for her, and her story brings me a never known, half glimpsed landscape. I'm glad I stayed with her to the end. That's the power of great storytelling.

In the end I bought 50, because aphids have overtaken both sides of the garden. Followed the instructions, though the advice about using a pencil to place them on the infected plants is just nonsense. They determinedly ignored the pencil in favour of my fingers, hands, arms. One gave me the teeniest bite so I found it a big plant stuffed with snacks to make up for it being slightly freaked.

Today, no ladybirds. No aphids either.

It's uncanny, positively eerie in fact. The ladybirds will have flown off but maybe they'll stay in the general vicinity, cos I inevitably have merry legions of thrips for them to pursue later in the year, not to mention returning aphid armies determined to avenge their fallen comrades. Apparently though, mine has not been the most efficient approach; voracious as ladybirds are, their larvae leave them far behind in terms of appetite, plus they cannot fly away yet. Next time maybe I'll get some larvae. But ladybirds are so much prettier!

I may consider a ladybird house to help them over winter.

Phoned mum last night. She said she could not text/reply to messages over the past three days because she has been very tired, but I could hear the sore throat in her voice and asked her about it. She will not take a covid test, will not get vaccinated, and has no idea how she can possibly have a cold because she follows all the advice she finds on Youtube about how to avoid such things, and she never shares space with people if she can help it. Nonetheless, I hope I have convinced her into monitoring the situation carefully, not just telling herself she is better. This is the first time I have ever used the phrase 'you are of an age' to her. She was able to hear that without any emotional difficulty because she used to nurse people 'of an age,' and however she may discredit covid, remembers well the power of pneumonia. She asks me if I remember her ever having a cold when we were at home and the truth is I don't. She says her throat feels hot, and it feels like there is something in it when she swallows or speaks.

The easiest way I can monitor this is to speak to her every day. This is difficult for two reasons; eventually she cannot hear me, on account of the 'hooligan' who does strange things to her phone. Also, she insists on having no electricity in her home so relies on batteries, which magically run out of power very quickly. Getting these recharged entails her going to the shop. I am very worried about her facing difficulty and not being able to phone for help. It uses up less power if we text but then I can't gauge her voice. In any case - I have only realised this just now - my mother will never enter a hospital willingly.

Maybe it's just a cold. I must speak to my brother about all this.

[Edited to add a reminder of the glorious sunset last night. No photos, cos cameras almost never catch the feeling.]

Sense of change right now. Friends having their lives upturned, some dealing with divorce or illness, one facing the demise of their partner. Much happening that is sombre or painful.

For us? Not hard really though that tone plays throughout, that sense of change coming, perhaps slow, perhaps not. Looking at the cats, recognising the inevitable, which is just my code for yes but not yet. I am Miss Instant Gratification, if it isn't happening now, it isn't really happening. This gets me into a lot of trouble, but it also stops me from catastrophising - mostly.

Mostly. Ten minutes ago I heard the most devastating thud from upstairs, and ran to it, thinking R had fainted or worse. It was almost nothing, an accident befalling my bit of plaster from Egypt, bought when I was there long ago. I called him Ramose of Thebes, and made up stories about him. The window in that bedroom was open and the wind blew him right off his shelf. Ramose is damaged, but he's been that way for decades, still cheerful, now residing in the safety of the front room.

I hope he's not trying to tell me I should return to Egypt, even though I should definitely return to Egypt. But Ramose, there are so many other places to see! And it won't be the same, nothing ever is, which is why I am so much better at going than coming back.

I don't know about using AI text to video prompts. The conflict for me is that while I can see how the use of AI may steal professional opportunities from writers and artists, I am not sure if it will do the same for film because no-one is ever going to make the little film clips that I would want to make. It's not the Greg Rutowski problem... is it? Not convinced at all, uneasy. But until there's a conclusion about this in my head, I won't damn myself for play.

So I tried.

For one I did use an image, the one discussed in my earlier post. The result was this.
https://www.vidu.com/share/2789332262460476/587502

For the second I did not use an image, and this is what I got:
https://www.vidu.com/share/2789340278447518/591624

This last I like, because I never asked for the wind, and it works. Of course it's nonsense; I am very lazy with prompts. I don't get exactly what I ask for because I don't really ask for anything. But that may be what makes it interesting. I don't need to create the eagle of my dreams like this because I can do that with words and trust people to see the eagle - my own personal sense of the perfect. But the gap between what one writes and what appears is exciting, as well as sinister and ridiculous. To put in something, get something uncanny out, add to that with the next prompt until one has built a whole narrative/piece of music out of a game of consequences, that's fascinating. Or less coherent than Wonderland. Or both.

Once again, for me it seems AI's most likely creative use is really about developing old principles of surrealism. Interesting. But I think it is fair to say I'm never going to be a Fellini.

It isn't deja vu; I remember seeing it and trying to copy it from memory when I was a girl. I only saw it once and never again until right now when it appeared on my FB feed in full glory, title and name supplied: Mystery and Melancholy of a Street by Giorgio De Chirico.

Mystery and Melancholy of a Street - de Chirico

I never knew the name of this piece, nor anything about it, but the image haunted me for a long time alongside a couple of others easier to trace. This painting, this yellow road right here is a place I can understand and almost recognise as a suburb of Carcosa. This is where Cassilda sent her daughter when she finally understood the Yellow King. I remember yellow light and roads of yellow dust mixed with that light, Singapore, Spain, brilliant beautiful years before I could speak. But I am not caught in some allegory of my past made up in a half dream. For once I can be definitive; I saw this landscape long ago, only once, but I remembered it and tried to recreate it. My moment in the kitchen is as real a memory as my sight of the painting.

But when did I see it? Impossible before I was seven, when there was neither school nor TV around. And afterwards I don't recall watching art programmes at the time even assuming they existed and interested my parents. I never saw this at home, never learned of it in school, so where do I know it from? And when did I try to make my own version of it?

Maybe the painting I need to create is one of me sitting at our old kitchen table trying to reproduce the above. Or if I really want to be clever, a portrait of now me trying to paint a picture of then me trying to reproduce Mystery and Melancholy of a Street . If that doesn't get me on Portrait Artist of the Year, I'll hand back my pseud's membership card.

Meanwhile, I am getting over having another tooth out (eh, they did warn me re the radiotherapy) fortunately the damage is mostly at the back. I have spent days on a combo of bloody powerful painkillers, wandering around the house like a stoned elephant. It is, in fact, the perfect point at which to bump into a painting I know, like an old friend who's crazy-lucid but tells great stories all the while insisting they are true.

Simon Brind

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July 2024

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The South West Wind

Think on it

The Way of Stories

Ladybirds, Mother, Sunset

Closing Doors

Attempts

I have seen this painting before

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