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 A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
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Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| Sara Jiménez I am no great fan of dancing but have always liked flamenco, the guitar playing, the singing and the dancing. It is so powerful a form of communication that one can hardly ignore it. Over the years of YouTube, I have occasionally discovered videos of flamenco in the streets of Spanish cities and in places where tourists gather. I thought I knew flamenco well and then, just recently, I came across the work of this amazing (and scary) lady who demonstrates that I had seen nothing yet. She expresses the ethos of the music so well that there is nothing to say but wow. In this first video that I urge you to watch, she is using the castanets which is fairly rare in modern flamenco as they concentrate heavily on the footwork. But it’s the completeness of her dancing that is so riveting. She can stand completely motionless, move in slow motion, strike poses so dramatic that we can hardly understand what drives her and then burst into a flurry of speed and sound that is breathtaking, and still we are transfixed. And, all the time her face says exactly what she is feeling - she is an accomplished actress as well as a dancer. Every movement evokes a response in us, even the barely discernible shake of her head at times and the brief flash of a softer expression at times. This is artistry at the extreme edge. The second video is closer to the kind of dance you can see performed by street artists in Spain but, when Sara shows how it’s done, even the most resistant of us must surely be undone. Never a foot wrong and pure passion from beginning to end. As I said before - wow. Note how she stays in character throughout. Even when the audience bursts out in applause at a particularly difficult section, her expression stays in the mood of the music. Only at the end when she re-enters for applause, does she allow herself a faint smile. And, when her hair begins to escape from its combs, she turns her back briefly while she adjusts them but never allows our attention to slip from her. We are totally hypnotised. Word Count: 379 |
Today I wrote a poem for myself, a rare occurrence these days, with all the contests that take up my time. Knowing that it could lie hidden in my portfolio for ages, I thought I'd advertise it in my blog, thereby killing two birds with one stone. Here it is:
Word Count: 50 |
| Worldly Wise I think I have figured out why I have been drawn into the horror camp in spite of not really liking horror stories and movies. It’s because there I can be in worlds other than this one. My main interest has always been fantasy (scifi to some extent) and there, again, is my dislike of today’s reality. The way I see it, reality is what we’re trying to get away from when we read. People who’re into it go to dinner parties, climb mountains and learn to fly small planes. The rest of us read to leave this world and go somewhere else. And, when you survive in WdC through the contests, you have to go where you know you can write. In other words, you look for the prompts that encourage the creation of new worlds and different situations. And guess who has the best prompts in WdC. SCREAMS!!!, Dark Dreamscapes and the like. It’s no wonder that so many of my short stories of late have been attempts at horror. And quite a few of my poems too. Understand, I’m not saying that everyone should feel the same. It’s just that it has long been strange to me that I write so much horror now, after never writing it before WdC. And now I understand why. I no longer have to worry about falling into the clutches of the dark side - I’m in control! Word Count: 236 |
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