The Word Cloud

Been thinking about blogs, how the experience differs for the writer and for the reader; how far they may end up from their original purpose and which ones fly.

To be clear, I’m not meaning the kind of blogs that are more like interesting essays or the kind designed to impart proper information. I’m thinking more of the interactive kind. The kind that doesn’t present a finished state, that initiates discussions, that welcomes a resolution.

Consider, if you will, the analogy of a dinner party. It’s made up of two words – dinner + party. i.e. the physical substance you eat in the setting it is, plus the company you dine with. It’s collaboration.

You need the starter fuel – the idea, the premise, the observation, the query, the food; then you need the people who will run with it: take it beyond what it was and morph it into something else, so that we’ve all learnt (been nourished), had engrossing conversations, and gone home sated with new understandings, new possibilities, new ideas and something to tell our friends.

If the host tries to control the event too much, the guests feel excluded, chat amongst themselves, make their excuses and leave (‘You must try this raw kidney and blueberry sauce – it’s divine; no, I insist.’ *slops it on*).

If the host makes no discernible effort, provides no stimulus or entertainment, then the guests can’t be bothered either and wander away grumbling (‘I schlepped all this way for some dinner, not a pot noodle and a peanut; I even had a bath.’).

Some meals may be more formal than others, the gourmet restaurant rather than the greasy spoon. Most of us would enjoy either at different times as long as they don’t pretend to be what they’re not. Hey, sometimes all we want is a plate heaped with cholesterol and calories, other times we appreciate the artistry of a matchbox-sized steak, a teaspoon of jus and four flirty chips nestled in a posy of exotic salad. Well, in the right setting, we might.

The spelling and grammar, structure and logical flow – that’s the courtesy we extend to our guests, to show we’ve made the effort, that we value their company. It’s finding the crockery that matches, putting out the best glasses, making sure there aren’t crusty bits between the tines of the forks and cleaning the loo. Oftentimes our guests don’t particularly notice what we’ve done, but they notice when we don’t.

Which isn’t to say that you can’t have a cracking party when the wine is served in coffee mugs, you’re eating charcoal and compost off a paper plate on your lap, and the host sits in their pyjamas as their cat’s sick in your shoes; it’s just a different type of party. You might grumble at a hair in your soup if dining Chez Heston, but shrug when round your mum’s.

It’s to do with authenticity, I think; and expectation. But above all, it’s about collaboration. It’s not about the host showing off their cooking skills (well, sometimes it is), nor the guests out to impress. It’s about tasting a morsel you haven’t tried before, getting involved with something that you don’t need to control, that will have a life of its own, that may grow up and leave you.

Without that give-and-take, that interaction, it’s hard to succeed. With it, it can fulfil all participants.

What leaves a nasty taste in your mouth? The person who won’t let others get a word in edgeways? The host who starts washing up when you’re still on the coffee and pondering a liqueur? The guest who doesn’t contribute very much and leaves with their pockets stuffed with your amaretto biscotti and takes away the unopened cheap wine they brought, having drunk all yours?

Despite what we think when we’re hosting a party, it’s rarely the food that people remember; it’s the company, the ambience, the expanding minds, the thoughts stimulated, the new understandings; the warm camaraderie, the mutual generosity, finding your secret worries aren’t so unusual after all; the surprises.

‘Thank you for having me.’

‘Thank you for coming.’

Like a good meal, a blog is more than the sum of its parts; it’s an independent entity, created by all. I think. And everyone goes home with a gift. Don’t you think?

Hi everyone! Kobal and I have teamed up to write a story together. To avoid messing up the Cloud with random ramblings, we have put the sections in our own blogs.

Kobal's is here, or:

http://cognisumpstories.posterous.com/tag/godsstory

Mine is here, or:

http://randomjaxx.posterous.com/

Mine won't be updated very often as I'm still busy with Southlander, but Kobal's section may be more productive.

**Feedback welcome!**

Thanks,

Jaxx & Kobal.

It was at some point, between the passing of the old year and the emerging of the new, that I overdosed on Jane Austen.  A week’s rural retreat would be of no avail, as I suspect  I might well be encouraged in the habit.   Self medication has been attempted, with doses of Simenon; Margaret Allingham, Caleb Carr a Study in Sherlock’  and the last work of Michael Holroyd which, unfortunately, resulted in a relapse.

But I feel that I am on the mend.

The cause  of my addiction has been a mention of ‘breach of promise’ in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ 

In previous blogs, I wrote  about a  ‘breach of promise’ case that I had been researching  and I contemplated some sort of drama in which the narrative is constructed out of genealogical research. (This is an an interest of mine and also, partly, a professional concern.)   This led me to consider a plot where an Australian couple discover they are descended from characters in ‘Pride and Prejudice’   I did see comic potential in this.  For example, a descendant of Darcy could have become a Basil Fawlty character, who is worried about the loss of silver plate, as visitors inspect Pemberley - now open to the public for a fee.

One of the progammes on TV was about a Jane Austen cult and the industry that had been built around it.  Another horrifying programme was about Janeites - a secret society with it’s own high priestess. I would be trespassing on sacred texts and, what is worse, I would have to write funny stuff too!  It is best left alone?  But once these things start?  

It is my day off work and I am going shopping in London for a digital camera.  I have never bought one of these.   I saw one that might do - in a sale - but I hope the sale is now finished, but the same camera is for sale at ‘John Lewis’ for about the same price.  I cannot make decisions, but feel I have to buy one, or I will spend the next year unable to decide.

It's called Weirdness and Cake and can be found at weirdnessandcake.blogspot.com

I will get around to posting some work on here but, for some reason, I cant just copy and paste, I have to use the HTML button and then the format gets all buggered up and I cant be bothered to unbugger it at the moment (been doing uni work and now my brain is all melty) xx 

(re; a previous 'blog')  There are 'Apple' computer users on 'Word Cloud.'   Is it possible to e.mail a self- created 'iTunes' file?   I don't have either a 'send' or export' command on my version of 'iTunes'.    (I do not use  'iTunes' to download music.)
As far as I can find out,  by browsing on the internet, there might be legal reasons why I cannot e.mail a file?  'Apple' do not want their downloads shared in this way?
It might not be possible to e.mail the files because an 'iTunes' file is too large?   I tried to move a file into e.mail and the computer froze.   I could e.mail a playlist but I suspect there is no music  in it?  ,
It is not a great issue,  in that I could burn the files onto a CD and send the CD though the post.   
There is one tune I would like to have e,mailed as the tune includes the chimes of 'Big Ben[ so it was suitable for New Year.  But I could not find a way of doing this.
 

 My creative project over Christmas occurred by chance.  A colleague at work, bought the wrong sort of cassette recorder.   She wished to use the recorder for recording speech, but all you can do, with the machine she ordered over the internet, is export cassette tapes to a computer.  I borrowed the machine and consequently sent round a CD Christmas card.   

Many years ago, I traced some music scores that had been composed by a grandfather, and my mother played them for me on her piano.  I recorded these on a cassette tape,   The years passed and cassette players have long disappeared and the tapes languished in a drawer. 

Over a frantic weekend before Christmas, I downloaded a programme called ‘Audacity’ and managed to transport the music into Itunes.   I found i could not send these files as an e.mail, but I  was able to burn the playlist to recordable CD’s.   Of course, there are mistakes.  The recordings must have been done with one microphone and have come out on one channel when you play the CD on a CD player.

However, the CDs have been sent off and some are being sent after Christmas, as the post office had been shut, (The cost of a recordable CD is less than the postage. Life is strange.  It might be cheaper for me to leave work because of the cost of my season ticket )

The CD is rather sad; not only because the participants are dead.  The music is a cross section of the sort of  music that was played and performed before the first world war and among the pieces, is a piano score for a military march - the composer’s speciality and a field in which he had some success.  Otherwise, the music of this period is seldom played and often parodied in Victorian melodramas.  It was a period before recorded music took off and music was produced to be performed at home.

There is a musical theme running though the scores I collected - a leitmotiv -and the mournful tolling of Big Ben occurs.  The collected works, put together, are  not unlike a theme by Andrew Lloyd Webber. (Also, some modern, female singers emote far more than would have been acceptable in the most OTT Victorian parlour ballad. Some things never change! ) 

Dear 'Word Clouders'
All the best for the coming year and success for your various projects.
 My highlight of the 'festive season' had been a visit to the 'Old Vic' to see a performance of 'Noises off' by Michael Frayn which I saw on a Saturday matinee on the weekend before Christmas.   If you get a chance to see this particular production, do go. 
 

Dear Word Clouders.

What are your feelings about class and England?  I would be interested in the viewpoint of someone not born in England - an Australian for, example.  How would an Australian react to being called “a person of the middling sort?”  It is a put-down.  Also, would someone  born in England be offended by this?  The term was in common use  during the Regency period.   In effect,  the term referred to anyone who did not belong to the aristocracy; the aristocracy being the Whig oligarchy of the time.  Darcy would have had no truck with the Bennetts.  He would have married someone as rich and disagreeable as himself.  (The truth behind ‘Pride and Prejudice’)

Now,  I got stuck with a ghost story.  It is dusk. The hero is seated at a pub in a historic village.  He has viewed a gravestone in a cemetery opposite the pub.   The gravestone commemorates someone who was born in the age of George 111.  But, in the shadows of the church, he has found two other gravestones. These are of the  parents of the gravestone he has first seen.  The comment is made that gravestones do not give up their secrets.   The hero opens up his laptop and ‘googles’ the names.  The ghosts of the machine  appear -  'facts’ which illuminate the buried father and indicate his role in the village.  But do these facts do this for many people?

One fact about the father is that  he was  among those challenged as a member of the jury for the trial of an Irish Catholic priest, James Coigly who had become embroiled in the French Revolution and, returning to England,  faced death for High Treason in 1798.  A book of observations on the trial comments on the members of the jury: “Of this list twelve are farmers, and six are gentlemen, that is men of middling condition,’

The second fact is  that the father was on the voter’s list for the area in 1805,  This is before the reform act of 1832.  ( I checked,  Only 10 people were allowed to vote.  The population of the area at the time was about 1,000.   Some democracy! And not much improved by the Reform Act!)

The third fact is a will.  The will is made out by the draper of the village.

The fourth fact.   The will indicates that the draper owned three farms in the valley and one farm is indicated as being a ‘freehold’ property.  (It was on this farm that the events leading up to the ‘breach of promise’ case occurred - previous blog)

Now, what do these four facts indicate to you?  Do they indicate anything?  Would everyones’ view of the facts be the same? For me, they do illuminate the buried father, and conform to the dictionary definition of a ghost.   Do I have to add a lot more research - background to these facts?  The language in which the facts  are expressed , does give a period feel but would many people know who ‘knights of the shire’ were?

I am a bit isolated and don’t socialize much, but I asked a historian at work and she said a friend of hers was doing a doctorate on the subject - the serendipity nature of internet research!

The hero who ‘googles’ feels that he has been ‘snubbed’ by the people in the inn - especially by the locals.   It is a National Trust’ inn.  They are ‘snotneuses.’  (Sounds better in Dutch than English)   The ghosts from the machine, make him feel accepted- ie, he belongs there.

Yesterday I saw ‘My Week with Marylin’.   I enjoyed the film and would be interested in discussing the plot.  But I will wait until the film is off general release before making a post as I would not want to give the story away.

Over the past month,  on odd days, I have been ambling around a valley in  Kent and the plot of a film has arisen out of my researches -almost as a by product.  I have been looking into a part of Kent that is well documented and, partly, mythologised.  This is the Kent of hop-picking.  Once upon a time, my hobby had been landscape photography, and the star of the film would be Kent.  This particular valley has been painted by a well-known, but forgotten painter. (I am not thinking of Churchill, though he is a major figure in the valley) There are  possible visual references - literally picture postcard Kent.  I could include this painter's best known painting in the plot - even as the first cause!

The Plot.   An Australian couple and their Republican daughter take a holiday in Kent, but the mother has another scenario. She wants to investigate why her great-grandmother emigrated to Australia in the 1860’s,  to begin a life farming in the Australian outback.  (Her grandmother had emigrated on her own and nothing is known about her until some facts appear on the internet.)  One story is set in the nineteenth century and the other in the twenty first century.

Can pop music be used as the sound track?   I was thinking of a group like ‘Fairport Convention.’  The folk songs of the nineteenth century could used to illustrate the ‘period’ and then ‘updated’ to folk/rock for the twenty first.  Mind you, I don’t know of any hopping songs.  Does this use of folk/rock make sense?  The two plots should  mirror each other.  But would the music alienate a possible audience - even though I am thinking of a 1960’s/1970’s ambience.

I can take this one step further and include a pop group in the plot.  I had been looking into what contemporary use is made of the buildings and countryside (the past being visible in the present)   One use of land is for pop-concerts, but what about pubs and village greens fairs, etc? Folk music would fit here. 

( The sub- plot)   The republican daughter, a Kylie figure, falls for an aristocratic, pop-singing rotter, a Hugh Grant figure, who is the son of a local farming dynasty.  As she travels around Kent, with her parents, the daughter continually sees him  singing at various events and falls in love.
  Her great-great grandmother had left for Australia out of shame for a ‘Breach of Promise trial that had been extensively reported in the ‘Times’   The ‘Hugh Grant’ figure would be a descendant of the defendant who was an absolute rotter and history might repeat itself.  ( I think The ‘Times’ has reported enough of the case for it to be dramatised in flashback and this would certainly bring the Victorian era alive.  I, and another relation, have been trying to research three generations of the farming community, so my family material should be authentic)

There is one flaw in my enterprise and that is, probably, me.  I am stuck with a short story. (the plot) Someone is seated at the pub in Chiddingstone (National Trust.)   He has discovered the grave of a great-great, great great grandfather buried in the cemetery opposite the pub (the church is also National Trust’)  Three castles are nearby.   It is dusk and he opens up his lap-top.  Along with the light ‘fact’s emerge about the buried figure.  These illuminate the surrounding area. (The ghosts of the machine)  We are back to the time of Jane Austen.  If you think the daughter of the local miller was of low descent, you might be mistaken. The ghost might be in Westminster Abbey.  I am still trying to research this, but the trails always peter out at about this period.  I am on strike at the moment and should be out picketing.  Not really, i am on leave, which i booked some time ago, and might go to Westminster City Archives, to see if they have anything about ghosts there.

The usual music score for this sort of film would be Percy Grainger or Delius as they used folk music for inspiration.  Folk songs are are sung by Kathleen Ferrier but she has no connection with Kent,

Never written a blog before, so this will be fun.  Little about me, damn, I hate the phone, forgot what I was gonna say!  Oh, yeah, I have no filter, what's in my head ususally will come right on out.  I'm very honest, if you don't like what I say, put on your big girl/guy panties on, it'll be alright luv!  If you don't like what I have to say, then don't read it.  Most people don't like truth, it makes them uncomfortable.  I'm gonna try not to be such a bitch, but this is hard for me....that's all for now!