Filed under: Art, Augmented Reality, Bipolar, Blade Runner, Comics, Health, Humor, movies, Science Fiction, Writing stuff, YouTube
You know, this whole thing made a lot more sense at 3:43 this morning.
To quote from a favorite character*: “Let me ‘splain. [pause] No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”
I recently gave an example of the . . . creative froth, let’s call it . . . that I always live with. I think particularly when I am in the middle of a creative endeavor this stuff is a lot closer to the surface, as I am now with working out all the characters, setting, plot, et cetera for the prequel to Communion of Dreams. It’s like the barrier between the conscious and subconscious parts of my brain becomes . . . thinner. Connections become easier.
Here’s an example of what I mean:
A number of my friends are or were cops. Last week I was amused by the video going around which was a fan-made movie of an oddball webcomic called “Axe Cop.” Here it is:
Bizarre, eh? Most of my friends thought so. I thought it was hilarious.
Anyway, at about 3:42 this morning I woke up from a dream. Just *Boom* – wide awake. It’s the damned Prednisone (I’m taking another course of it for ongoing efforts with my rib/lung pain) – a common side effect, and one which seems to be hitting me harder this time around than previously.
I had been dreaming. About an “accidental cop.” Someone who had been a cop previously, but then had moved on. The situation developed that he was drafted back into being a cop. Think Rick Deckard being convinced to resume detective work in Blade Runner.
Well, upon waking, in just a few short moments, I developed a whole backstory to the dream, ideas on characters, plot for future development, et cetera. I toyed for a moment with the idea of pitching it as a screenplay, perhaps TV pilot.
Madness, of course. And I realized that when I woke up more completely. But thinking it through, I came to the conclusion that what happened was something of this kind of progression:
- Cop.
- Ex-cop.
- Axe Cop.
- Accidental Cop.
I blame the Prednisone. And a strong manic swing.
Jim Downey
*Inigo, of course, whom I have discussed previously in relation to my own history.
we’ve had such a hard winter this year, but I’m absolutely captivated by this guy’s videos:
Wow. All of it is like that.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Humor
It was a strange idea. A glorious idea.
As he stood by the stove, turning some leftover rice (Basmati rice, the good stuff, which came from the warehouse store in 15 pound burlap bags) from the previous night’s dinner into a munchy, crunchy breakfast, he tore open the little plastic packet of soy sauce that you always seem to get too many of when you order take-out Chinese food. Squeezing the soy sauce into the pan in a sizzling stream, the idea came to him.
You could never get all the soy sauce out of the packet. There was always some left.
But that wasn’t the idea.
The idea was that if we could recover all the leftover soy sauce, from all the packets, and collect it in one place, that it would be the perfect fuel for a new style fusion reactor…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Just a little insight into what happens in my head most of the time.)
Jim Downey
Love it: Impossible Motions 2
Heavy snow. And my Good Lady Wife and I both have the latest cold/flu thing going around. I need diversions. So take what you can get.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Art, Babylon 5, Ballistics, Bipolar, Failure, Harry Potter, Hospice, Humor, John Lennon, movies, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society
“Vir, do you believe in fate?”
“Well, actually, I believe there are currents in the universe, eddies and tides that pull us one away or the other. Some we have to fight, and some we have to embrace. Unfortunately, the currents we have to fight look exactly like the currents we have to embrace.”
Recently, I came up with an audacious idea. This is something which happens to me now and again. Most of the time, I chuckle over it, consider the possibilities, then let it slide back into the creative froth. But every now and again I get an idea I take somewhat seriously, and consider practically – not so much on whether I think it will work, but on whether I think I can convince enough other people that it will work.
Through the last couple of decades I’ve done better at this than you might think, batting about .500. Here’s a list of the big ones, along with a synopsis:
- Opening an art gallery. This *almost* worked, but remains my most expensive failure to date. It’s very sobering to lose money that belongs to family and friends who trust your judgment, not to mention all the work of yourself, your partner, spouses and employees.
- Writing a novel, and getting it published. Looks like this one will actually work.
- Paint the Moon. My biggest artistic success to date.
- Glass Canopy. This caught the imagination of a number of people, and generated a lot of discussion locally. Now such structures are used elsewhere for exactly this purpose. A failure, but not a total one.
- Nobel Prize for JK Rowling. A debacle, in that so many people hated the idea. But perhaps I was just premature.
- Ballistics By The Inch. A huge success. This was in no way just my idea, and I only did part of the work, but I think the vision I had for how the project would be received was largely mine.
- Co-authoring a care-giving memoir. Still early in the evaluation period on this, so can’t say whether it is a success or not.
And looking over that list, thinking about it, one of the clear things I see which helps make something a success is the amount of work I (and others) put into it. When presented with a zany idea, most people will be amused, say why they think it is crazy, and then more or less forget about it. But if confronted with the fact of an idea made manifest, a lot of that skepticism disappears (or never occurs to people in the first place.)
This isn’t very profound, of course, and certainly isn’t at all new. But I am still somewhat surprised to see how much it actually operates in the real world. It’s like imagination is so difficult for people that they just can’t get past their initial dismissal. I asked for comments on my latest idea, and so far have only heard from one person, who pointed out potential problems with it (this was actually a very helpful response). I can only guess that most other people consider it too nutty an idea to even bother with – but in my gut I’m pretty certain that if this resource existed it would be hugely popular and widely used.
But who knows? Was the voice a ghost or just hallucination? Do you embrace the current or fight it? Failure is real – both due to risk as well as inaction.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Apollo program, Arthur C. Clarke, Astronomy, Humor, movies, Neil Armstrong, NPR, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Writing stuff
What topic could possibly warrant being the subject of post #1,000?
None.
I have no big announcements to share, no news, not even a scrap of intelligent musing on something obscure. Things are pretty much just what passes for routine here currently: getting conservation work done, waiting to hear from the publishers/agents, going through the day-to-day of life.
So, I’ll just break the tension (well, *I’ve* been feeling tension over it) and share this amusing item:
Neil Armstrong Talks About The First Moon Walk
Well, this doesn’t happen every day.
In yesterday’s post, I talked about Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s walk across the lunar surface back in 1969 and wondered, how come they walked such a modest distance? Less than a hundred yards from their lander?
Today Neil Armstrong wrote in to say, here are the reasons:
He also posts the entirety of Armstrong’s email. It’s not often that you get to read history from one of the men who actually made it – it’s worth a look.
So, on to 1,001: A Blog Odyssey.
Jim Downey
Sometimes hard work is more satisfying than other times:
That’s what I just did. It’s my form of getting even with the damned wood that just about killed me a year ago. Took two hours to split it all, using a maul and a star wedge. That’s not quite 5′ tall, about 10′ wide. And yeah, I hurt, and will probably hurt more later once I cool down.
But damn, that felt good.
Jim Downey
is the symbol for random force or Brownian motion. I did not remember this, if I ever actually knew it. So, score one for this Sixty Symbols video.
And I’m not sure whether it was intentional or not, but the actual video has echoes of randomness that are kinda funny. Some of the cut-aways to show a little bit of styrene bouncing along on a vibrating bed of small brass spheres seem pretty random, and the person doing the narration ends with a recap of what he’s just said, then sort of turns from the camera and asks “Have I finished?” I like that kind of structural consistency and ambiguity.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Failure, Health, Humor, J. K. Rowling, Publishing, Science Fiction
The last couple of days have been a bit busy, a bit rough (some residual annoying pain from the pneumonia getting in the way), so apologies for the light posting.
I did just put up a post about the infinity symbol video at Sixty Symbols. But I am rethinking whether I want to continue the project of writing about each of their videos – we’ll see.
No news to share on the book fronts. Neither word from the publisher about when they’re going to print Communion of Dreams, nor any positive responses from agents about Her Final Year. Feel like I am in something of a holding pattern, and it’s frustrating.
As I have listened to the news of the different Nobel Prize announcements, I did have an odd thought: what if someday they do indeed award the Prize for Literature to J.K. Rowling? If so, I bet in the web searches that news reporters would do, my spectacular (but fun) failure to campaign for that would probably pop up. That’d be amusing. Good thing I can laugh at myself.
And so it goes. I think I’ll give the dog a bath.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 