Ruby Street

... write but prefer to feel as though you're doing something related? Start here . I admit to being a bit of a pen geek but pencils are fun as well. I still have some very old ones, wooden and mechanical. I remember when we worked in publishing using blue clutch pencils or chinagraphs for marking galleys and proofs. I even have a Hello Kitty propelling pencil (which works) and a nice old Faber Castell clutch, green with brass grip. Better get sharpened up.

Not up for much. I have a mind full of lists and needs, which are all necessary and quite boring in this context. Hoping to cross a few things off the list soon. Hard to write a lot at the moment. Juice is drying. I keep looking out the back window at the cherry blossom. It is about to flower, has been on the verge for a while. Maybe when it does I shall feel better. The Japanese maple at the front is just starting to get back its leaves after winter and the clivias are making their bright orange splash. There is a constant conference of the birds starting around 5am, with nesting magpies in the gums two doors up. It makes the mornings more pleasurable to hear them and the others warble and chirrup. I haven't had a great winter healthwise and suspect airconditioning as one culprit. I've been working in an office where the temps are often so cold I feel that I needed a nice knitted cardie to keep me warm. In fact, I was taking in my lovely silk and wool scarf I bought in Paris e...

I came across this article in The Guardian , about neglected masterpieces, you know, the stuff that’s as good as the ‘same old same old’ list but never gets a guernsey. You know, it’s always Beatles, Dylan, Stones or Mozart, Bach, Beethoven. Or Citizen Kane , You know what I mean. There was more discussion at The Observe. Some of it made me laugh, such as the folks that would say “if so-and-so becomes more famous I don’t want to like them anymore”. We want to keep out little secret corners of pleasure away from hyping eyes. As someone else said, look what they did to Nick Drake, after the fact. Indeed! I had a bit of a think about my private lists. So, in film, why not Jacques Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boating . I had assumed you couldn’t even get it on DVD but, hey, it does exist. I better track it down now. I saw it twice, late 70s and early 80s. Both prints not so good and only viewed in a mouldy old art house cinema, and when did anyone last mention it to you? To me, it was a ...

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Cute kitties on on Laura's blog . I'm not always serious, despite appearances. I had a cat once, and I hope he's still alive and a happy old grumblebum.

Seems my mention of Miles Davis's album, On the Corner , stirred up some echo in Chris and Kasey - see comments below the entry. Cool! Here's an excerpt from a Down Beat review of the album in 1972: "Take some chunka-chunka-chunka rhythm, lots of little background percussion diddle-around sounds, some electronic mutations, add simple tune lines that sound a great deal alike and play some spacey solos. You've got a 'groovin'' formula, and you stick with it interminably to create your 'magic'. But is it magic or is it just repetitious boredom?" Sounds like a kind of magic to me and miles ahead of its time, certainly in jazz, though maybe not in classical circles. It raises all kinds of questions about 'reception' and about 'genre'. Miles was supposed to be playing 'jazz'. It didn't matter if what he was doing was good, bad, interesting, whatever, it didn't fulfill the requirements of the genre 'jazz' and...

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