April 27, 2012 by Cas
Boy is a beautiful short film, written by British Airways Great Britons winner Prasanna Puwanarajah, was inspired by the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. I challenge you not to get at least a lump in your throat.
(Could not get the bastard video to embed, hence having to use just a link).
Category General Musing | Tags: | No Comments
April 26, 2012 by Cas
I have just realised that I broke my #365 rules with that last post. See, I had already posted the one allotted WhiskeyCat picture for April on the 5th.
So, no WhiskeyCat pictures in May at all to make up for it.
(If you follow me directly on Instagram, or Flickr, or Twitter, you may well see other WhiskeyCat pictures – as well as many other photos of lots of lovely things that aren’t classed as “the picture of the day” – but only one cat picture will be posted here on Bright Meadow as a #365 picture each month. Dem’s da rules.)
Category General Musing, instagram | Tags: | No Comments
April 25, 2012 by Cas
There is always shaving foam around when you have half a leg to go and yours runs out.
Category General Musing, Mini Meadow | Tags: | No Comments
April 23, 2012 by Cas
They are helpful when you get the sudden urge to rearrange all the furniture in the house.
Category General Musing, Mini Meadow | Tags: | No Comments
January 28, 2012 by Cas
Category General Musing | Tags: | No Comments
November 17, 2011 by Cas
Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.
So very, very beautiful.
Category General Musing | Tags: | No Comments
January 20, 2009 by Cas
I do keep coming back to the problem of names and identity and authority, so forgive me if I am repeating myself slightly, but it is an issue that continues to run through my head at different angles. (these are just a few times I’ve approached it in the past).
Our names are one of the most intensely personal things about us. They can form the basis for our whole identity and people can get remarkably possessive over them. Names have magic and power. Cultures around the world have traditions of evil powers taking control over people by the use of their name – witches and wizards. Rumpelstiltskin was banished when his true name was revealed. To this day, many modern religions have taboos over the naming of god, thinking his “true name” is too sacred to speak aloud. Some feel it is considered bad luck to name a child before it is born, whilst in Christian traditions, children are baptised and formally made known to their god.
People often say “that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet”, but really, Romeo is railing against the inevitable: it is Juliet’s “name that is [his] enemy”. No matter how he might wish it otherwise, they cannot be together because of what they are called. (And part of me suspects that she wouldn’t smell so sweet if calling her a rose didn’t make her so unobtainable).
We obsess over genealogy and family trees and our ancestors. We spend our lives with the names our parents give us, some more fortunately than others. I kid you not, I went to school with a Neil Down and a girl called Muffin. All through my childhood I thanked my parents for giving me a name that could not become a nickname, despite people’s best efforts to the contrary. At the same time, part of me does think it would be nice to have a nickname because they are signs of affection. Someone did call me Mercedes and refused to explain when others got confused. It was a joke between me and him and it felt all the more special for that.
In the end, I have given myself a nickname of sorts – Cas. The first few times someone said “do you want a cup of tea Cas?” and used the name to my face, it felt slightly odd, but I like it. What started out as just a way of keeping my ‘real’ identity secret, has become something more. Something I am very, very attached to. It has become a concrete identity in the last few years, crossing over from online mask to reality, and a name with its own weight of Bright Meadow and whatever attached authority has accrued, behind it.
Cas and CLK are now firmly linked – google one and you get the other, something which was a semi-conscious decision on my part. As the online became so intertwined with my offline life, it became harder and harder to keep the two separate, so I gave in gracefully and claimed as much of the CLK identity online as I could. It is still something I debate constantly though, and there are instances where I wish it hadn’t happened. There are times I wish my father didn’t read Bright Meadow, but at the same time, I do not like compartmentalising my life to the degree it would have required to keep it all apart.
So I tread a fine line between Cas and CLK, online and offline. Most of the time the two aren’t even distinct entities. Cas wears jeans to the office and has awesome tattoos, but it is CLK who answers the phones, draws up the contracts and is a consummate professional.
Names are important, clearly. Names of people, names of things. Names become brands and authorities and you build trust in a particular name. Which is where I finally get to my (sort of) point:
If, and it is a BIG if, I do ever finish what I am writing and go down the path of publishing, do I want my author-part to be linked to the rest? Do I want the world and their shark to hop from CLK the author, to Cas and Bright Meadow and all the attached kit’n'kaboodle? Or do I want something completely fresh, without a history. Do I want to write under a pseudonym? Is publisher CLK compatible with author X? I can hear a future editor yelling at me for tipping a whole pre-built brand down the toilet here, but is Bright Meadow a legacy an author could be proud of? Note, I am not saying *I* am not proud of it, but would it help or hinder in that sphere?
I stand by everything I have said on this blog, but I can think of more than a few things in the archives which would get one audience or another hot under their conservative collars. As an author, would I not also be entitled to a part of the web where I *could* unload and talk about the price of tea, if I so wished, without feeling the pressure of my audience? If CLK was to get published, Bright Meadow would come out regardless. I am not ready to loose this place as my sanctuary.
But do I want to create a whole NEW identity for my writing? I want to talk about it, god damn it! If it were ever to happen, getting a book published would be like the biggest blog event EVA!!!!! and to not share it with you lot here? Unthinkable. I want to think that one day someone from school might see “CLK” on the spine of a book in a bookshop and be jealous/proud.
For now, my gut reaction is gurgling “pseudonym” but am I right? Am I being silly? Am I being dishonest to my family, denying them seeing Kemp in print, refusing to connect part of my (potential) accomplishment to the name they graced me with when I was brought into this world. To go for a pseudonym, is that not saying “CLK is not good enough”?
Category General Musing, Writing | Tags: identity | 15 Comments
November 5, 2008 by Cas
People I respect, trust and love in differing proportions have told me, many times, that they like how I write. I have a style, it seems, that is “lyrical, easy and a joy to read” (a direct quote from an essay/short story I wrote a year or so back). Welcoming; funny, others have said when grades weren’t riding on the product.
My own writing aside, for it is phenomenally hard to judge your own worth, I know that in turn there are writers who I like and writers who I don’t. I seem to innately know what makes a good sentence, though I am often times hard pushed to articulate and analyse precisely what grabs me about certain writers.
As an aside, given my line of work, I am fortunately getting rapidly better at this!
At a stab I would say it is the voice and personality good authors bring across the page. Words should flow easily and be a joy to read to the point you don’t know you are reading. Rather you are watching the story unfold in your mind with no conscious effort. Great authors take words and ideas and play with them till they make your brain sing. Each time you read them you get something different from the piece. From the comfort-blanket-fluffy of a decent chick lit, to the tense suspense (can I DO that to the English language?!) of a brilliantly plotted thriller…
There is no excuse for bad writing, as I frequently yell at a book or the TV screen at yet another awful offering with wooden dialogue and paint by numbers plotting.
People think it is hard, but it is not, is it? I just write down the words I hear spoken in my head. I speak, so I write. Moose mumbled that she couldn’t write like me. Who would want to? Surely it is better to write like yourself? In my last job I was the proof reader and copy editor of choice for the whole office, and a few heads of service from the next office over as well. I never quite understood why people felt they needed my help, but clearly the words just fit together for me.
But I am still not sure what makes a good writer.
It is not a strong adherence to grammar or rigid sentence structure; I certainly couldn’t pick an adverb out of a police line up. It isn’t even a varied vocabulary, though it certainly doesn’t do any damage. When I helped people do rewrites of their work, the first thing I always did was get them to put the pen and paper away and just talk to me. Tell me what they wanted to say. Once freed from the idea they had to sound “impressive” on the page, or be the next incarnation of Shakespeare, they would find their own voice. Their own pattern and what they then wrote invariably sounded true. My job was then nothing more than acting like a spell-checker with legs and a cute smile.
Maybe then it is the sense of flow and rhythm and a pattern to the words. I repeat: if you can speak, you can write.
I’ve been vocal in the past, and was vocal just last night, about my loathing for Dan Brown (he of Da Vinci Code fame). I shall stress once more for readers newer to Bright Meadow that I have no problem with what he wrote (unlike my Renaissance Historian landlord), rather my hatred is reserved for how he wrote. Or more precisely, for the execrable excuse for prose he vomited onto the page. Certain people should never be let in front of the word processor, let alone find an editor to take them onto their list. His writing is just so stilted, with a jerky rhythm, and dialogue that is the literary equivalent to badly dubbed Japanese samurai movies.
*shudder*
In contrast, a book I started reading last night: Crowboy by David Calcutt. From the first line I was hooked. I found myself speaking aloud in the character’s accent.
Whole chapters, the whole book, written in the accents, the very voices, of the characters themselves. That is hard to do. It is tricky enough to find your own voice in writing. It is that much harder to be consistent with the voices of others, especially in varied and non-standard dialects.
Maybe this need for a coherent voice is partly why I dislike so many first-person narratives. So few writers can pull it off, most of the time it just jars as I read.
I am becoming something of a writing snob. There are so many great authors out there, but they are drowning under the weight of the mediocre. Why should I waste my precious time on a sub-standard product? Quality speaks over quantity every time, or at least it should. I know a book is good when I find myself slowing down from my usual break-neck reading pace, to savour what is written. When I get to the end of the book and instantly go looking to see what else the author has written. When people have to throw things at me to get my attention. When I miss my bus stop because I am engrossed.
That is the sign of a good writer.
I just wish I could pin down exactly what they did and how they did it. Because it is more than just a “voice”, I know it is. It has to be. It can’t be that simple?
Category General Musing, Writing | Tags: | 14 Comments
August 6, 2007 by Cas
Perhaps there comes a time in every bloggers life where she needs to sit back and have a long, hard think about what she is writing and who she is writing for. I know I reached that point this past week.
I’ve said before that I don’t care about my audience, that I write for me and that still holds true. I say nothing on this blog that I wouldn’t say to someone’s face if I had to. What you read is what you get in any world, real or virtual (online I’m minus my planet-sized insecurity, but I have a crew of people offline doing their best to cure me of that).
And now I feel I have to hold my tongue.
I guess it had to happen. You get a readership that spans everyone from your father, your colleagues, your friends, to people you went to primary school with and others you have never even met, with a minister thrown in for good measure, not to mention everyone in between – commonsense dictates that you should pull a few punches. Not step outside the bounds too much. Play it nice.
Simply put, I’ve got to face the fact a fair few of the people who might end up reading Bright Meadow are going to think I’m a heathen sinner on the fast track to a firey place where all the sunblock in creation ain’t gonna help me.
Which actually is ok in a bizarre kind of way. So I’d rather not end up in whichever Circle is reserved for infidel bloggers, but I’ll accept I could be way off base with my lifestyle. I’m not going to call people on what they believe just so long as they return the courtesy and don’t outright preach to my face.
(If you just can’t restrain yourself on that score, please take it to email and not the comments – some things should be personal and telling me the way I live my life is wrong? That’s personal).
It doesn’t help that people who say I rock also think I’m going straight to hell, however they’ve made their choices along the way, same as I’ve made mine, and who is to say they are wrong? I try to live my life the best way I can just as they are living theirs. We’re just working off a different script is all.
But just because I don’t talk about my beliefs that often, it doesn’t mean I don’t have them. And at times it doesn’t mean I don’t want to reach into the computer screen and wrap my fingers round the throats of some patronising bigots who’s words I read.
But I don’t say anything.
Because I’m the friendly one.
There are times I am sickened by the people I am involved with, the people I spend time with and the things they say and do behind closed web-doors.
But I don’t say anything.
Because I’m the nice one.
My boss said it true when we were giving a presentation the other day about the work we do: it’s not the situations that get us down – it is the people who disappoint us. The narrow minded, the self absorbed and the ignorant.
Is it wrong for me to want at my little piece of the internet to be friendly, warm, welcoming, peaceful? To be a place where it doesn’t matter if you’re gay, straight, bi or interested in aliens covered in purple polka dots? Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Haven’t-Got-a-Clue, Couldn’t-Care-Less? Black, White, Purple-Polka-Dotted-Alien?
I really don’t care. Just so long as you have a nice word to say to your fellow readers, you are welcome. From the bottom of my heart I mean it. I truly cannot comprehend people who say hurtful things because they can. It escapes me. It depresses me.
Why it should be that the insignificant minority can trample my soul into the dust I do not know. The good should outweigh the bad, but it is the bad that keeps me up at night. I try to surround myself with people who make me soar and somehow the demons keep shouting down my better angels.
And I do not say anything. I do not rock boats. I sensor my own words that are screaming inside my heart because… It is who I am.
But I think there are times I should say things and I don’t because now Bright Meadow is what it is. It isn’t the place to unleash the sarcastic, vitriolic, seething beast within me. I don’t know where that place is, or even if it should exist at all, but I know it isn’t here. And just occasionally I wish that right here, right now, I could say some of the words I have bubbling up inside me.
I want to be able to fight back – to say I feel insulted, hurt, betrayed. Or to call people out for the horrendous things they say to other people – to say no, it’s not alright to say that, being a self-proclaimed cocky bastard is not clever, funny, or sexy. I want not to have to clothe my words in passive/aggressive ramblings written late at night when something has pushed me over the edge. I want not to try and say something nice about someone only to have it thrown back in my face twenty times over by the trolling element.
I want not to be in the situation where I type a response to something someone has said then hesitate over the ‘post’ button, and more often than not reach for the ‘delete’ button. Cas and Bright Meadow have built up a reputation, for better or worse and I don’t want to bring it all tumbling down around my ears because of something I said in an unguarded moment.
But why should I have to be the one who puts a gag on my tongue and my website?
We all choose our words for our audiences and the stages we talk from. It is part of being an adult and part of living in a society. Whilst I truly wouldn’t want it any other way, to borrow words from someone I’ve adored for a long time now – it’s my headspace people and I’m just letting you camp here a while. Just because I’m not saying something it doesn’t mean I’m not thinking it. And if I can restrain myself and refrain from ripping you a new one, why can’t you do the same?
Category General Musing, Grump | Tags: | 18 Comments
July 20, 2007 by Cas
I always used to be behind the curve with things. I never got things “first”. I put this down to not being one of the cool kids in school but, frankly, I never really gave a flying teaspoon for most things that were classed as cool. Still, it would have been nice to know things before other people…
Lately however, I’ve been privileged to start to drift into circles that are responsible for moving the shaking on a bit, instead of watching from the sidelines.
Take memes for example. It used to be that I’d only get tagged when something had been round the houses so many times it had blisters on its feet. Now I’m frequently in the first rounds of people to be tagged (that I’m aware of) and then I get tagged a few weeks later when it comes back round again.
And don’t get me started on Facebook games and the like. One week it’s zombies, then it’s pirates, then it’s vampires, then it’s zombies again, followed by vampires, and zombies, and – ooh! How about zombie-pirate-vampire-ninjas?!
What I’m trying, very incoherently to say is that I am fascinated by how these things travel round the Internet. On more than one occasion, I’ve stumbled across something and had a momentary “ooh, that’s cool” pause, only for my father or other individual who’s life is as equally un-involved in the internet to tell ME about it four or five months later.
There’s a research question in there somewhere I’m sure, not to mention cracking how ideas permeate the internet would make marketing people very very happy bunnies.
Me, I’m just sitting back and gazing at things with a bubbling sense of school-girl excitement.
Category General Musing, Research Ramble | Tags: | 7 Comments
