Greer Gilman's Blog, page 54

Tripping the dark fantastic

Cry Murder! In a Small Voice is up for a Shirley Jackson award!   I'm thrilled.  And as astonished as M. Jourdain to learn that I've been writing dark fantasy.  Who knew?

Congratulations to all the nominees.

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The seasons alter

Once upon a May Day dreary...






It was wet out there.  Not so cold, but wet.  As in dancing at Agincourt.  It splashed when we stamped.






So we segued into "Singin' in the Rain."













I always apostrophize the maypole with "Must I ravel out my weav'd up folly?"

This year I got to add "Withered is the garland of the war.  The soldier's pole is fallen," as footed in the mud, the whole erection toppled over.





This was our customary dancing floor.  I gave it:

And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;

And as much else of "the seasons alter" as I could recall at that shivering hour.

There we sang "Te Deum Patrem colimus" to the pitiless heavens, and slogged on.

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Geh, wilder Knochenmann!

Stephan Zick (1639-1715)
Anatomical teaching model of a pregnant woman
Nuremberg, around 1680

She seems to be with child by Edvard Munch.

And here's a couple:



And an eye!



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Mammoth!

My post-apocalyptic Cloudish story "Down the Wall" (the one about the city under godblitz) will be turning up in pretty swell company.  Thank you, alankria , for asking!





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Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere

Happy 450th birthday.

All our thanks.

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Will's Eve

Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to-morrow.

What have been your most vivid experiences, hearing, seeing, reading Shakespeare?

Among so many others, I remember an idyllic Edwardian Love's Labours Lost, on a lawn by the river Cam, under the willows (there were strawberries and cream in the interval); that black-and-white galliard at the close of Twelfth Night; that Macbeth in the mud in an abandoned church, for the witches in unsaintly niches and all the candles of Tenebrae.  And I remember reading straight through the Penguin Shakespeare, one cold wet Christmas in Wales, with interludes for stone circles.

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Ook!

The Librarian at ease in the Unseen University infirmary.



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Hwaet!

Just heard Benjamin Bagby give an astounding performance of the first third or so of Beowulf: a thousand lines, half spoken, half modally sung, to the harp.

Hwaet!

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A forest in the fog

"Pleasure is present at all stages: the fog of the first twenty pages, chilled and dripping and quiet; the context and accumulated knowledge that pierce the fog like sunlight, making rainbows between the trees; and finally the flashes of clear sky on a third reading, when memory finds the connections previously missed. Pleasure is also in the language itself, whether understood or not."

Sessily Watt considers Cloud & Ashes, over at Bookslut.

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Corvus corax

Ravencam!

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