Gillian Polack's Blog, page 271
February 7, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-02-08T10:29:00
I took a half day off yesterday and caught up with a good friend. She took me to see the Ballets Russes exhibition. If you're able to get to Canberra while it's still on, you should see it. It's absolutely amazing. I'm still thinking about it. I'm thinking about the backdrop for the first BR Petrouchka performance (the whole thing on display!), about standing very close to trunks worn by Nijinsky (there were several costumes worn by Nijinsky - it was the trunks from Giselle that brought it home, though), about costumes designed by Bakst and Matisse and other amazing artists. As I entered a new hall I would stop and stand and look and see the amazing life ahead. Every set display was a pageant, with its own colours and textures and tale.
Seeing the designs as art on the wall and the costumes as art near each painting showed me a bunch of things I hadn't known about costume design.
What I love is that all of this material lives permanently in Canberra. We have about 300 Ballets Russes costumes here, and they're not all sad remnants of the Australian tours. In fact, most of them come from the original productions in Paris and London. I don't know who it was who decided that we needed this collection, but I am very appreciative of their work.
We also checked out the changes to the NGA and the foyer is now accessible and right round it is artspace. Some fabulous new work. Suddenly we have a world class art gallery in Canberra. We've had a world class collection for a while, but we now have the proper space to show it.
The rest of the day I'm in catch-up mode. I have a very big list and I need to decimate it, because tomorrow my Wednesday teaching begins and so does CSFG. Bascially, my workload will be about 15% heavier. All stuff I want to do, but still, it would be helpful to have more than decimated my list. I don't want one item in ten done - I want all the items done. It's about 12 hours work. The clock starts...now.
Seeing the designs as art on the wall and the costumes as art near each painting showed me a bunch of things I hadn't known about costume design.
What I love is that all of this material lives permanently in Canberra. We have about 300 Ballets Russes costumes here, and they're not all sad remnants of the Australian tours. In fact, most of them come from the original productions in Paris and London. I don't know who it was who decided that we needed this collection, but I am very appreciative of their work.
We also checked out the changes to the NGA and the foyer is now accessible and right round it is artspace. Some fabulous new work. Suddenly we have a world class art gallery in Canberra. We've had a world class collection for a while, but we now have the proper space to show it.
The rest of the day I'm in catch-up mode. I have a very big list and I need to decimate it, because tomorrow my Wednesday teaching begins and so does CSFG. Bascially, my workload will be about 15% heavier. All stuff I want to do, but still, it would be helpful to have more than decimated my list. I don't want one item in ten done - I want all the items done. It's about 12 hours work. The clock starts...now.
gillpolack @ 2011-02-07T19:12:00
The January Aussie Blog Carnival is up. Talie has done a lovely job - go and check it out: http://www.horrorscope.com.au/2011/02/australian-speculative-fiction-blog_07.html
gillpolack @ 2011-02-07T12:32:00
I'm seeing my dentist on February 14. Just as well neither of us is Christian...
My other dentist has left suddenly and they were going to give me over to the care of someone I had never met - I insisted on the other dentist because he is the one of whom the peridontist spoke in awe (and he terrifies me, but teeth are important and it was all kinds of wrong to be the only person in my crowd who *enjoyed* going to the dentist*). Since I've been going to this dental practice for 20 years, they were really nice about it.
*childhood memories are everything. Give me charge of a child at the dentist's and they'll be as happy as me about going. Or as happy as I was. Why am I so intimidated by the new guy? He's a brilliant dentist, though, and my teeth are problematic, so I'm happy to have him.
My other dentist has left suddenly and they were going to give me over to the care of someone I had never met - I insisted on the other dentist because he is the one of whom the peridontist spoke in awe (and he terrifies me, but teeth are important and it was all kinds of wrong to be the only person in my crowd who *enjoyed* going to the dentist*). Since I've been going to this dental practice for 20 years, they were really nice about it.
*childhood memories are everything. Give me charge of a child at the dentist's and they'll be as happy as me about going. Or as happy as I was. Why am I so intimidated by the new guy? He's a brilliant dentist, though, and my teeth are problematic, so I'm happy to have him.
February 6, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-02-06T13:13:00
This morning's work was much thought and a mere morsel of writing. The thought was on gender as performative and how thinking of gender as performative really does shape how we write our novels and who get to play what part. This fits in nicely with the discussion on Mary Victoria's blog this week (and I really need to give you a link to my post there) where the big question (to my mind) is what roles women are permitted to play in what literature. Add in the notion that one can be ungendered in terms of public role (while still having a gender in private life) and the roles women play in fantasy novels are suddenly much more interesting to look at.
I translate the private into the public and get my strong women that way. Glenda Larke initially gave them heroic stature (male performance) and is now finding other solutions. Nicole Murphy used romance as a background and writes the most purely gendered narrative in standard terms. The bottom line is that we're all trying to create women who play real roles (hence the performative link - although today I was looking at Medieval masculinities and how to effectively translate Medieval concepts of the heroic) and are neither passive nor 'men with breasts' (the discussion on Mary's blog keeps returning to that phrase - I get the feeling that people are enjoying it).
What I'm doing today is a kind of backwards translation. I've worked out the performative aspects of an ideal knight's tale - now I want to have it cause him problems as it conflicts with his reality. This really means that this morning was about sorting a plot arc. It's done, though and I have written up half the discussion.
For my next trick (and just for fun) I shall extrapolate performative aspects of gender for the lives of Canberrans. This is because the discussion on Medieval masculinities that I was re-reading this morning talked about widows as being effectively not female. It struck me that if gendering is partly performative (and includes linking back to ideas of femininity and masculinity) then there are a whole bunch of us who shift our roles and an interesting aspect of our everyday lives is a slight degree of gender confusion.
None of this is new in any way. It's just that I was writing it into my novel this morning and had to document some of it for my dissertation and so I'm blogging it as well. I always do this kind of thinking for my novels - this is the first time I've had to articulate it as I go, though, so it's the first time that it's been accessible to anyone else. If you call this accessible. It's really just public note-taking. If I do my job properly, readers enjoy the characters and the choices they make in the novel (at the end of the day) and are not bogged down in cultural contemplation. This doesn't mean I don't have to think it through, however. In fact, I get to explore these ideas for my fiction far more than when I write an article. Which is why I'd rather write a novel than an article.
If your eyes lit up when you saw the phrase 'Medieval masculinities' here is a good place to start.
And now I must go. My next three hours are devoted to Conflux, heart and soul. Then I return to my Medieval masculinities for the evening.
This is a very good day.
I translate the private into the public and get my strong women that way. Glenda Larke initially gave them heroic stature (male performance) and is now finding other solutions. Nicole Murphy used romance as a background and writes the most purely gendered narrative in standard terms. The bottom line is that we're all trying to create women who play real roles (hence the performative link - although today I was looking at Medieval masculinities and how to effectively translate Medieval concepts of the heroic) and are neither passive nor 'men with breasts' (the discussion on Mary's blog keeps returning to that phrase - I get the feeling that people are enjoying it).
What I'm doing today is a kind of backwards translation. I've worked out the performative aspects of an ideal knight's tale - now I want to have it cause him problems as it conflicts with his reality. This really means that this morning was about sorting a plot arc. It's done, though and I have written up half the discussion.
For my next trick (and just for fun) I shall extrapolate performative aspects of gender for the lives of Canberrans. This is because the discussion on Medieval masculinities that I was re-reading this morning talked about widows as being effectively not female. It struck me that if gendering is partly performative (and includes linking back to ideas of femininity and masculinity) then there are a whole bunch of us who shift our roles and an interesting aspect of our everyday lives is a slight degree of gender confusion.
None of this is new in any way. It's just that I was writing it into my novel this morning and had to document some of it for my dissertation and so I'm blogging it as well. I always do this kind of thinking for my novels - this is the first time I've had to articulate it as I go, though, so it's the first time that it's been accessible to anyone else. If you call this accessible. It's really just public note-taking. If I do my job properly, readers enjoy the characters and the choices they make in the novel (at the end of the day) and are not bogged down in cultural contemplation. This doesn't mean I don't have to think it through, however. In fact, I get to explore these ideas for my fiction far more than when I write an article. Which is why I'd rather write a novel than an article.
If your eyes lit up when you saw the phrase 'Medieval masculinities' here is a good place to start.
And now I must go. My next three hours are devoted to Conflux, heart and soul. Then I return to my Medieval masculinities for the evening.
This is a very good day.
February 5, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-02-05T22:32:00
I'm a bit tired of living in interesting times, so today I laid a curse. I have wanted to lay this curse for a long time, having all the right techniques at my disposal. And it is done. And my novel is the better for it.
Question time!
Enough interest in questions eventuated, so questions are welcome on this post until Wednesday. The usual rules apply. This means that personal questions are fine (but I may or may not answer them seriously) and historical questions for writing and other purposes are fine (but I spend no time actually researching - if my current knowledge doesn't cover it, I'll try to refer you somewhere useful) or you can ask frivolous questions (but not 'how long is a piece of string' - been done) or, well, almost any question.
Question time was originally for writers who wanted Instant Medieval Answers. I get more non-Medieval questions than Medieval these days. It's only a matter of time, in fact, before a Medievalist asks me a writing question...
Update: Did I forget to say that you don't actually have to know me or read my blog to ask questions? I guess I did. This means that bashfulness is no longer an excuse.
Question time was originally for writers who wanted Instant Medieval Answers. I get more non-Medieval questions than Medieval these days. It's only a matter of time, in fact, before a Medievalist asks me a writing question...
Update: Did I forget to say that you don't actually have to know me or read my blog to ask questions? I guess I did. This means that bashfulness is no longer an excuse.
February 4, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-02-04T15:53:00
I remember what I forgot the other day! Does anyone want an open post for questions? I can't remember when the last one was, so I thought I should ask.
gillpolack @ 2011-02-04T15:34:00
I'm still full of woe, but my computer is surprisingly full of words. I had completely forgotten that when I get woeful I pull concepts to pieces* and when I pull concepts to pieces I get words. What this means is that I feel as if I've done nothing but complain and play mahjong-solitaire on my computer recently, but somehow I am ahead of where I meant to be with my dissertation.
Not that I am not complaining about being ahead! I'm complaining about the Weather (so many sequential thunderstorms make me swell up like a balloon and right now I look fantastically strange, but I am not comfortable) and I'm complaining about Things that Won't Go Right.
Also I'm complaining about thunder. Because it's there. And it is related to the Weather that makes me look so oddly dwarven.
*You so don't want to argue with me when I feel woeful. The more I hurt physically, the faster I lose the sweet parts of myself. I don't say nasty things, but I cut to the core and demolish arguments. I first discovered this when I did competition debating, a lifetime ago. When I was a happy little bunny, I was ineffective and charming; but when I was really upset or when I hurt, I was a force to be reckoned with. Which reminds me, I need to email a friend from my team. I owe him much communication. He put up with me as captain for three years, 32 years ago. For that he gets me forgetting to reply to his emails. Life isn't fair, is it? And now I have a footnote that's longer than the text. This means that I am fully-functioning academic (temporarily).
Not that I am not complaining about being ahead! I'm complaining about the Weather (so many sequential thunderstorms make me swell up like a balloon and right now I look fantastically strange, but I am not comfortable) and I'm complaining about Things that Won't Go Right.
Also I'm complaining about thunder. Because it's there. And it is related to the Weather that makes me look so oddly dwarven.
*You so don't want to argue with me when I feel woeful. The more I hurt physically, the faster I lose the sweet parts of myself. I don't say nasty things, but I cut to the core and demolish arguments. I first discovered this when I did competition debating, a lifetime ago. When I was a happy little bunny, I was ineffective and charming; but when I was really upset or when I hurt, I was a force to be reckoned with. Which reminds me, I need to email a friend from my team. I owe him much communication. He put up with me as captain for three years, 32 years ago. For that he gets me forgetting to reply to his emails. Life isn't fair, is it? And now I have a footnote that's longer than the text. This means that I am fully-functioning academic (temporarily).
February 3, 2011
Happy New Year and please say hi to Adar.
Last year (Chinese year) I gave you many versions of the New Year song. This year I sang it at my desk, instead. My singing is very croaky and off-key right now, so if you want various clips from you tube, let me know and I shall find them again.
This is a calendrically interesting week in all sorts of ways, because Adar I starts tomorrow. This means that Purim Katan is not so far away. It also means that I kept getting tangled between the Chinese New year song and one of the tunes to Shir Ha Ma'alot (not the 'Waltzing Matilda' one - my brain is tangled, but not *that* tangled). Also Smetana's Moldau. At least when I sing the chorus of "Gong Shi ni" it's boppy and it repeats and so that bit, at least, I get right. Well, mostly.
The big Purim isn't until March (leap year - lots of Purims!) and it's on a Sunday. Anyone who wants to come and drink my alcohol (I have no money, but I still have alcohol!) and dress up and create a Purim spiel should remember March 20. They should also invite themselves, because I am hopelessly absent-minded right now and am highly unlikely to remember the invitation thing. It'll be late afternoon/early evening, BYO food. RPG friends particularly welcome. If there are no RPG friends we shall use my venerable (21 years old) script. The first non-locals who invite themselves get my library floor to sleep on.
This is a calendrically interesting week in all sorts of ways, because Adar I starts tomorrow. This means that Purim Katan is not so far away. It also means that I kept getting tangled between the Chinese New year song and one of the tunes to Shir Ha Ma'alot (not the 'Waltzing Matilda' one - my brain is tangled, but not *that* tangled). Also Smetana's Moldau. At least when I sing the chorus of "Gong Shi ni" it's boppy and it repeats and so that bit, at least, I get right. Well, mostly.
The big Purim isn't until March (leap year - lots of Purims!) and it's on a Sunday. Anyone who wants to come and drink my alcohol (I have no money, but I still have alcohol!) and dress up and create a Purim spiel should remember March 20. They should also invite themselves, because I am hopelessly absent-minded right now and am highly unlikely to remember the invitation thing. It'll be late afternoon/early evening, BYO food. RPG friends particularly welcome. If there are no RPG friends we shall use my venerable (21 years old) script. The first non-locals who invite themselves get my library floor to sleep on.
gillpolack @ 2011-02-03T21:49:00
Canberra has the draggled tag ends of Queensland weather. Melbourne has the draggled tag ends of Canberra weather. I spent today filling in forms and grouching. And I wrote most of a paper. By 'most', I mean that it's now at the stage where it needs to diet rather drastically.
Also, I shopped. My favourite papercraft shop has moved to within a block of my place. I spent a very happy half hour in there, when I was supposed to be filling in forms and grouching.
I came online to tell you a bunch of things, but there must be more thunder on the right, for they have entirely escaped my mind. I possibly wrote them into my novel, by mistake. It reached forty thousand words yesterday, probably also by mistake. This is one of those manuscripts that's going to grow furiously and then sulk until I cut it down to size and then sulk all over again until I create sense from it.
The characters are becoming interesting, though. A group of them insisted on karaoke in a cave in 1305, just yesterday. I sincerely hope there will be consequences from karaoke - there ought always be consequences from rash undertakings. What I don't quite understand is how other peoples' rash undertakings in fiction are vast battle scenes and saving the universe, while mine are a group of time travellers singing karaoke... Other writers have strange minds.
I'm throwing my plans for the rest of the evening out the window and I'm going to write up some of my dissertation. I realised that I've been thinking about Chapter Four all wrong, you see, and what I really need to do is talk about the Miracles of Nostre Dame for three, maybe four pages. I haven't actually suggested this to my supervisor, of course. Nor have I told him about the karaoke. If he reads my blog, I'm quite possibly in trouble...
Also, I shopped. My favourite papercraft shop has moved to within a block of my place. I spent a very happy half hour in there, when I was supposed to be filling in forms and grouching.
I came online to tell you a bunch of things, but there must be more thunder on the right, for they have entirely escaped my mind. I possibly wrote them into my novel, by mistake. It reached forty thousand words yesterday, probably also by mistake. This is one of those manuscripts that's going to grow furiously and then sulk until I cut it down to size and then sulk all over again until I create sense from it.
The characters are becoming interesting, though. A group of them insisted on karaoke in a cave in 1305, just yesterday. I sincerely hope there will be consequences from karaoke - there ought always be consequences from rash undertakings. What I don't quite understand is how other peoples' rash undertakings in fiction are vast battle scenes and saving the universe, while mine are a group of time travellers singing karaoke... Other writers have strange minds.
I'm throwing my plans for the rest of the evening out the window and I'm going to write up some of my dissertation. I realised that I've been thinking about Chapter Four all wrong, you see, and what I really need to do is talk about the Miracles of Nostre Dame for three, maybe four pages. I haven't actually suggested this to my supervisor, of course. Nor have I told him about the karaoke. If he reads my blog, I'm quite possibly in trouble...
