Tags
art, books on tyne festival, Chimamamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, David Batchelor, feminism, fine art, impulses, ironpress, Katherine Sully, meditations and other metaphysical writings, metaphysics, mimimalism, minimalism, nigeria, penguins, penguins can't fly, rebecca elliot, red squirrel press, Rene Descartes, short not sweet, visual art, we should all be feminists
This week’s books have been:
Minimalism by David Batchelor
Penguins Can’t Fly by Katherine Sully; Illustrator: Rebecca Elliot
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings by Rene Descartes
This week has been a shaky one. My head is pretty fucked, I can’t remember the last time it functioned vaguely normally. I’ve been forgetting things including to complete simple tasks, I’ve been getting killer tension headaches, and my dad shouted at me one single time and that was enough to make me want to top myself. On top of all that my bladder seems to have packed in. FUN TIMES.
Yet at the same time it has been a good week. I have been asked to read from my story IMPULSES at the Books on Tyne Festival a week on Monday. The story is to be published in a joint collection from IRONPress and Red Squirrel Press called Short not Sweet. The idea of this terrified me at first, especially as the way I read out has been slated by several writing groups, but now I have somehow summoned the resolve to read it and fuck what anyone else thinks.
I have also been to a meeting of playwrights (we call ourselves Playing Up ) and we have planned out our very own scratch night. We are aiming for March.
Yesterday I went to a workshop led by Jenn Ashworth, which was a fascinating look at novel writing. Her experiences struck several chords with me, especially when she spoke about having to be a different writer for each piece. As someone who has different factions and voices in my head anyway, that is exactly how I look at writing, and she summed it up very well. I will be reading her books sometime in the next few weeks (I had intended to read them before the workshop but time got the better of me).
Ahhh I’ve not even begun to discuss the books yet! Descartes was fascinating, I’ve read around his writing a lot, but never the real deal before. As usual I go for philosophy books because they calm my brain down. I find it reassuring when Descartes looks at the concept of God as well, although Catholics of the time hated his perception of religion, it really is comforting to me to see someone look at God so rationally. His discussion of fragmented identity was also useful to my psychological space right now, and the art project I am working on in college. I am aiming to paint external changes I have been through, and sculpt the internal processes behind each painting. I am doing this to show how I lack a cohesive identity. According to Descartes (similarly to Laing) we all do.
I also read the pamphlet “We Should All Be Femininsts” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Again it was fascinating- she makes a lot of points which should be obvious to us all, and yet we manage to ignore everyday.
I have almost no interest in Minimalism, and still don’t after reading David Batchelor’s book. It was on the reading list for my college Fine Art course, so I thought I would try it. The only artist I liked in it was Sol LeWitt, and then only his later works.
Penguin’s Can’t Fly was a purchase based entirely on the fact that I fucking love penguins. Luckily penguins seem to be in this year, so I will be adding to my collection (a true penguin army even at it’s current number). Maybe I was reading too much into it, but the two penguins in this story seem to have Autism and ADHD respectively.
LINKS:
I will be reading from my short story IMPULSES at this event: http://www.booksontyne.co.uk/fringe-events/item/join-iron-press-and-red-squirrel-press-to-celebrate-the-launch-of-short-not-sweet-new-writing-from-the-north-east (Only come if you are prepared to see me shit myself)
Review of Mermaids for Sabotage Reviews: http://sabotagereviews.com/2014/11/10/mermaids-ed-evangeline-jennings-lucy-middlemass/