"Art is my spatula!"

Said the magnificent Leah Bobet on the by-now legendary Readercon panel, "Shifting the Realism Conversation."  Bobet, Michael Cisco, John Crowley, John Langan, and Yves Menard.  Some panels are dazzling, displays of jugglery with knives, books, fire, fruit, imagination.  This was more like intellectual Alpinism:  the driving of spikes into sheer rock, the judging of fingerholds, the sidelong scrabbling, the swinging out over fathomless abyss—but O my! the outlooks, the sunlight on snow.  Being all on the same mountain, the climbers worked off each other:  there was collaborative effort even in their arguments.   And they made it all the way from base camp to a set of ledges, with no one falling off, taking over, taking flight, or quarreling. It was—no, not spectacular. Enthralling.

That could have been me up there, dangling from a rope, abseiling over nothingness.   I'm glad it wasn't, as I have no head for heights.

"O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall / Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed...."

This is me on panels:




Fortunately all of my own panels were a joy to be on.

Thursday night was Books in Conversation. I remember saying that Tehanu was the irk in the oyster shell that accreted Cloud & Ashes. I reverence Le Guin—but I so very much wanted Tenar to unfold her own new heaven and new earth before her, even if she couldn't live in it.  I wanted her not to be eaten.  And (later I think) I spoke of how in 1611 the two magian comedies, The Alchemist and The Tempest, were played in repertory by the King's Men.   The same player would be the cogging Subtle one night and Prospero the next, the same boy would be Miranda and Dol Common.  Both playwrights were at the the top of their games and at odds:  the lion and the unicorn.  Years later, Ben was still grutching at that "Servant-monster" of Will's.  How he hated the fantastic! and yet was fascinated by it.  He quoted Martial as an epigram to his Sejanus:

Non hic Centauros, non Gorgonas, Harpyiasque
Invenies:  Hominem pagina nostra sapit.

Here you find no Centaurs, Gorgons, or Harpies:  my page tastes of mankind.

Afterward, jinian drove me and rushthatspeaks safely home in the rain and dark, which was a blessing.

More to come.

Nine

P.S.  Up already!  Here's Where the Goblins Go.  And here's I Put Books in Your Books So You Can Read While You Read.  For heaven's sake turn the picture off, if I'm in it, and just listen.  The videos seem to be going up at a good rate, so I hope to have Sonya Taaffe's marvellous reading, and Lila Garrot's, and Elizabeth Hand's, and (with trepidation) my own—with all that wonderful stuff I couldn't get to!