Mark Haddon's Blog, page 17

scienc e museum 2

science museum 1

red plenty

 

this is rather wonderful and wholly unexpected and not just in the sense that what francis spufford writes is always unexpected, but in the sense that you don't expect this much enjoyment from a collection of linked short stories featuring real and fictional people and real and fictional events, all bound together by the economics of soviet central planning during the khrushchev (with notes and appendices). It's history! says the dust jacket, It's fiction! It's a comedy of ideas! except that it's not in the least bit zany despite it's glorious refusal to recognise genre boundaries. it's rich and serious and deeply moving in parts. also you really do come out the other end understanding quite a lot about the disastrous economics of central planning.

dead dogs

trawling through some old artwork the other day i came across this little graphic from 20 or so years ago when i was doing lots of illustrations for magazines and children's books. i had forgotten it completely and consequently forgotten that curious was only part of a long ongoing obsession with dead dogs...

more flotsam

two more illustrations that won't get used in the red house, having ditched illustrations altogether

  

the fine picture of the nazi ogre being beheaded was drawn (to order) by my son

red house wordle

a wordle thereof to celebrate the finishing a full draft of the red house

from which, i realise, you can tell pretty much nothing except that it's neither crime, erotica or sci-if

http://www.wordle.net/

two prints

      

sad song                                                      nocturnal 

boots

 

whytham

sometimes you need to do something with the iphone to compensate for 7 hours of doodle jump

joanna macgregor

 

i saw her do a solo piano recital at the jacqueline du pre music room the other night. absolutely breath-taking. all contemporary stuff. adès, ligeti, howard skempton, cornelius cardew, charles ives (a piece written in 1905, but sounding like 2005, so i'm calling it contemporary). some really simple pieces that could be played by someone doing grade 4, and some pieces which require superhuman virtuosity. but it's not just her sheer skill, nor the quality of her interpretations, it's also the way she introduces and discusses the music, a real warmth and enthusiasm and approachability.

she ended the concert with an arrangement of astor piazzolla's libertango (a bigger, louder, wilder, more complex version than on the record play). then, as an encore, she played a tiny piece by george crumb which involved plucking and strumming and damping the strings inside the body of the piano. i had an actual tear in my eye at the end of it.