Turn Turn Turn

The song, if you like, or the karmic wheel.

2007 is done now, and the long night is turning into day again for a spell. I was happy to achieve my goals for the year, even if a few came in past deadline. One such was a move back closer to where I was born, for purposes of helping birth new things, meeting recently-birthed things, and birthing one of my own (on paper, not in flesh). That latter is just about outta me now and into the harsh light of day, so it was time to shift the cycle from nocturnal back to diurnal and depart the lonely home/womb office (so essential to grinding out the novel) for one where a flux of people move all around me every day.

Last but not least (to the tune of 22 kilometers not least) was the half-marathon, which I've run three times now - not to my satisfaction, but run nonetheless. It took a year of training to get to that point in the first place, of course, and it'll take a year more, I'm guessing, to get the finish time I'm looking for. That's why, when I woke up this morning to the following animated .gif on Etherbrian's blog, I was tickled beyond 8-bit pink. It's a friendly reminder that it takes time to turn the wheel.

But if you keep moving, things do change.

To every season, then. Through every season.



P.S. Brian accomplished a goal of his own this month, too - breaking into the ranks of printed Threadless T-shirt artists. I've been a fan of Brian's for over ten years and was happy to pick up a design of his through Zazzle shortly ago. Now I'm even more thrilled to be one of the first to shell out for his Interloper From Beyond The Heavens on starburst orange. Join me!

I'll Never Be Yours

No better way I can think of to break my blogging silence than with the final official trailer for The Golden Compass, so close to release now I can almost feel the chill of the North biting my cheeks, and the swirl of Dust over my head:



Iorek and Iofur throwin' down at the climax really does get the heart going.

Bigger versions here: Yahoo
Best news always here: His Dark Materials

Spit and Vinegar

If I am a broken record, I'd like to think I play the good tunes.

And this, dear friends, is music to my ears...candy to my eyes...a balm to my soul: the new Golden Compass extended trailer from Comic-Con. Dear God Almighty I'm stoked.



Some half this year is yet to unfold, but come December, I'm hoping Weitz and co. send it out with a bang.

Bigger versions here: Yahoo
Best news always here: His Dark Materials

Clymonistra

If you're like me, your life was changed by an ambitious trilogy of fantasy books written by Philip Pullman and entitled The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass (together known as His Dark Materials). I fetched the first one from a shelf at my local small-town bookstore way back in 1996, then purchased it solely based on Terry Brooks's foreword promise that "You are going to love the Golden Compass."

It was a bold claim. And the chap was right, too.



A while ago, New Line Cinema optioned the rights to make His Dark Materials as their second big-screen fantasy adaptation (to follow Lord of the Rings, of course); and I say without irony, His Dark Materials is (while not a work without flaw - whose is, really?) the only modern fantasy epic worthy of succeeding Tolkien in a fictional milieu still cluttered with elves, orcs and evil Dark Lords.



Now. Less folk know about His Dark Materials, though the books sold very well and won multiple awards. Pullman's is also...weirder...and riskier...material than what Tolkien produced. Ergo, New Line's marketing department are going to have an uphill battle filling seats for opening weekend of The Golden Compass. And I wager there won't be a second or third film made if the first one doesn't turn a profit. These fantastical shenanigans always cost a pretty penny to visualize, as you well know.



For this reason, I want to show you one of the early advertising ploys they've cooked up to generate awareness of the property and also reveal a bit of Pullman's interesting cosmology. In his story, a given character's soul is externalized (and personified) through an animal totem who represents that individual's unique traits. For children, these "daemons" change shape and species to reflect the unanchored identity-wandering and soul-searching of youth. When we become adults, our daemons solidify into one animal form and remain as such until our deaths. It's a neat idea.



What New Line's done on the Golden Compass website is set up a personality quiz that results in a daemon being assigned you based on your answers. I think it's a brilliant gimmick to communicate one of the books' more memorable concepts and stoke excitement for the film. So, I invite you to take a look and meet your daemon (find the functionality under the DAEMONS menu).

Mine's a wolf, and her name's Clymonistra.

(Thanks to Bill for the link.)

Feelin' It

So today's the official Last Day of Winter.

And though we've still got some snow on the ground here, I sense spring coiled and ready to sproing.

My time away's left me refreshed, excited, and horny as all get out. Plus, my meaning-monger radar's up. Walking along the street to fetch ingredients for tonight's dinner, I eyeballed myself a sweet triptych of chaos magick underfoot to get the evening (and perhaps the season) started: a page of somebody's screenplay made with the Final Draft demo version (I bent over to read it and found properly formatted but BORING dialogue), a discarded elastic curled into what I can only describe as a double vesica piscis, and a single die rolled (out of a dumpster, likely) to its #1.

It was great visiting with the fam, the Mbut, and Gramps. I got caught up on my backlogged magazine reading, started three new books (yay Teresa!), and worked my way through the 13 Years of Wax Trax! boxset, which was wonderful and has certainly inspired some ideas for April mixes. In the meantime, now I'm home, I'll do up a couple more rock mashups to finish out this month's theme, and I can also say Blorthos has been making noises (rather moist and feral noises) about getting a post up here soon.

Me, I'm itching to get my bike off Tacx and onto pavement, it's so nice outside. But not quite yet...I'll have to settle for running tonight without so many clothes on. Who knows? I may not even need a tuque (not toque, as Gweinz has learned me).

No tuque?!

Ah, the possibilities.

And that, my friends, is what spring is all about.

YA YA YA ! ! !

This article makes me very happy:

The Golden Age of YA?

Byzantium Redux

Early this morning, I finally finished Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantine Mosaic (comprised of Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors, and foisted upon me by dear Drew).

So, that's what, three years to read two books?

Sheesh.

Possible: I was avoiding the ending because I didn't really want to leave my first experience of these characters behind forever.

True: Guy Gavriel Kay takes his sweet time, often. I skipped the first 50 pages of Sailing to Sarantium because I couldn't find a protagonist, only to realize, a book and a half later, that this is Kay's genius - choosing an event, then triangulating its meaning through the multiple and varied perspectives of a diverse cast.

He spreads the love, does the Kay.

Looking at his new one, Ysabel, I don't see a smidgen of the technique thus far, but the tone and approach seem more YA. Should be interesting to see where he takes it.

Anyhoo, thank you Drew, for introducing me to a talent I'd missed. A Canuck talent, at that!

And to Teresa, if she's reading: you may be right, about reading.

We Love Big Brother

George Orwell (mentioned here last month in errata) posited humans would hate the idea of constant surveillance.

Turns out, we dig it large - at least if it's "men", and not "The Man", who're watching.

Blogs are a fair example of how, given our own terms and voices, we love to splay open, sometimes messily, our inner feelings, aspirations, observations and creations for a theoretical (and theoretically vast - yet intimate) audience.

It seems facetious to quote Shakespeare, but life can be a stage.

Where I'll dare to expand the Bard's assertion is to say, within our roles and responsibilities as employees, family members, friends and lovers even (loosely, "official" capacities), the stage is much like that in the theater, where we exchange our tragic and comic masks (among others) to "put on the best face" for a temporally present and captive audience, as it were.

On the web, in the blog - I would suggest - we get a more direct link (har har) to someone's inner machinery, their more raw and unpolished cogs of personality.

Can I go so far as to say, if everyday face-to-face life is a "stage" (sometimes a "screen", if we aim larger than life and have decent eyes), words and pictures on a monitor (like words and pictures on paper, possibly) are a "book" (for lack of a corresponding physical setting where written narrative is staged).

By that I mean, rather than preoccupy ourselves with appearances, outer dialogues, visible actions in the "real world", here we're concerned with what some can't disclose in person: their unspoken secrets, cherished hopes and dreams, closely-guarded shames and hesitations...what they "really think".

Is the web the best way we've found yet to achieve that universal inner connection some folk have sought for centuries? Is it the killer app for shared consciousness?

I'm reminded of Dan Simmons' "datasphere" from the Ilium/Olympos cycle of novels, something a little juicier and more inclusive than William Gibson's earlier (and equally prescient) conception of "the matrix", or cyberspace (which seemed less about connecting people than it did making cold, hard information available to those with the skill to access it). The old ARPANET vs. the interweb?

Whatevah.

Our cyberspace of today, our datasphere, is more cluttered and searching, more base and primal, than either of the above fictional constructs. If we choose to engage on a certain level, it feels...human.

An old question, yes, but I'm still asking it. Though technology distances us, can it nonetheless facilitate an intimacy of mind?

You tell me.

P.S. The link that inspired this ramble just sort of mysteriously appeared one day in my Favorites list. I never put it there myself.

Thank you, Big Brother.

Be Your Own Big Brother