Archive of things to do with 'art'

• 03.22.08 Some reconsiderations:

  Well, that’s frustrating. I was going to write a post about the Kalevala poetic meter and illustrate its rules with samples of traditional songs performed by the Finnish folk group Värttinä, but I’ve just spent a couple hours looking, and I can’t seem to find a single stanza of theirs that doesn’t violate at least one of its rules. It must be said that the rules of the meter are really complicated, and in general, Värttinä’s songs do appear similar - accentual trochaic tetrameter, longer words tending towards the end of the line, no splitting four-syllable words across the caesura, end the line with a short vowel - until you look in detail. If you enjoy poetic meters, you can read about it here.

  But that’s the truth about inspection and consideration. You go in with an idea of what you’ll find, it looks like what it looks like from a distance, and sometimes your idea is changed, and sometimes you have to drop your idea entirely; it looks different from close up. I thought of even writing a post illustrating the rules of the meter by Värttinä’s songs’ departures from it. But that seems inappropriate or even ungrateful, and happily, there are other things to talk about. I was thinking last night about a novelist, I haven’t read too many of her books, and haven’t re-read any of the ones I have read, but she’s made a distinct impression on me, and there is a certain fundamental pattern that persists unchanged from book to book. I said: she is like a Dostoevsky or a Shakespeare crossed with a choreographer.

  
  Tags: writing, iris murdoch, art, pace, character, novel, style, dostoevsky, shakespeare.
• 03.25.07 On board ship:

  One of the things I like best about Tristes Tropiques is the pleasure it takes in getting the sensuous detail right. There’s a kind of knowledge muscle it likes to flex as well…

  
  Tags: reading, travel, detail, art, irritation, language, rhythm, levi-strauss, Tristes Tropiques, smell.
• 01.04.07 Similes:

  Composition: you suddenly, after looking out idly over a dark water, see a plastic milk jug bobbing on the surface, not far away. You row up to it, you tug on it, try to pull it into the boat. You notice motion out of the corner of your eye: another jug, floating nearby.

  
  Tags: shame, writing, philosophy, draft, art, composition, thinking, water, drained, sink, simile.
• 12.27.06 The immediate reason:

  “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all!”

  If I don’t say anything at all, I’ll never say anything nice. So, resolved: I’m reopening this blog.

  
  Tags: self, blog, splagkhna, reading, change, taste, writing, iris murdoch, art, irritation.