The Drawing Board (blog)

The Tilly Report

Tilly will be four months old on Friday, and is doing very, very well, thank you. She now knows the "Come," "Sit," "Down," "Up," "Wait," and "Paw" commands, and she's learning to walk at heel both on and off the leash (or lead, as they call it here in the UK). This means we can take her farther afield -- to the woods behind us and (her favorite place) the fields of the village Commons nearby, where she's meeting other dogs...and has fallen in love with a border terrier puppy named Herbie.

Tilly loves to play -- especially with Howard -- and our house is now a minefield of balls and scruffers and and chew toys that squeak when you tread them underfoot. She hasn't quite got the rules for "Fetch" down yet. She runs for balls quite happily but has no interest in bringing them back again; it's far more interesting to rip them up. Thus we're working on the "Drop" command at the moment -- an important one for a puppy who puts everything into that toothy little mouth.

We think she's the cleverest, prettiest, sweetest, funniest dog that ever lived. I suppose everyone feels that way about their dog. Having lived only with cats since I was small, I'd no idea I could fall so hard for a pup -- though my fascination with coyotes might have been a clue. I expect there will be more of a canine presence in my art and writing in the future.

 

Dancing through hoops . . .

I've been out sick the last several days, so posting will be sparse while I catch up on work. In the meantime, I'm pleased to announce that Hoop Dancing, the new book by Tucson photographer Stu Jenks, is now available for pre-order. It'll be out by the end of the month...just in time for Christmas shopping....

Thursday's Song

This week it's "Into the Blue" by Scottish musicians Kris Drever, John McCusker, and Roddy Woomble (with lead vocal by Woomble and back-up vocals by Heidi Talbot), performed at Celtic Connection in Glasgow earlier this year. I'm a big fan of the Drever McCusker Woomble album "Before the Ruin," as well as Roddy Woomble's solo album, "My Secret is My Silence." (What a voice he has!)

The Tilly Report

From 9 to 14 weeks...and still growing....

Days of the Dead

Although most Mexican communities celebrate Dia De Los Muertos on the 1st and 2nd of November, in some parts of Mexico the festivities and rituals extend for a full four days...by which counting we still have one more day to go. The video above features a poem by Olivia Garcia and photographs by Carlos Puma. The poem is read by Carlos Puma.

For more information on Day of the Dead, Hallowe'en and other rites and tales of border crossing, go here.

The Tilly Report

Tilly and the Buddha

Thursday's Song

This week's tune is "Little Lion Man" by Mumford & Sons. The band, which consists of four musicians from West London, was formed in December 2007 and released their first album, Sigh No More, earlier this year. It's a terrific debut -- particularly if you're a fan of folk-inspired bands like The Decemberists.

You can also see a video of Marcus Mumford performing with last week's song-of-the-day musician, Laura Marling, here; and there's a live performance of "White Blank Page" here. For more information, and to hear more of their music, visit the Mumfords & Sons website and blog.

The Poem for the Day...

. . . is "The Girl Without Hands" by Debra Nystrom, from the Spring 2002 issue of The Virginia Quarterly Review. The poem is based on the Grimm's fairy tale of the same title, and -- unusually -- looks at this classic story from a parent's point of view.

I also highly recommend Midori Snyder's web article on the history of Handless & Armless Maiden folk tales, if you haven't read it already. At the end of the piece you'll find links to other poems that use the Handless Maiden motif.

The paintings above are "The Handless Maiden" and "Communion" by Jeanie Tomanek, one of my very favorite contemporary painters. You can see more of her exquisite work on her website and in the Endicott gallery.

Two quick recommendations...

1.  Welsh artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins has posted a fabulous new series of mythic maquettes (pictured above) among the other treasures on his website. And there's an in-depth interview with Clive on the Zoe in Wonderland blog. (With thanks to Midori Snyder for the link.)

2. Canadian author Charles de Lint discusses urban fantasy on the Publisher's Weekly website. (With thanks to Ellen Kushner for the link).

Autumn in Devon

So very beautiful this time of year. Above: a picture taken from the slope of our back yard, looking over the rooftops to the hills beyond, where the bracken has turned from green to rust. Below: more autumn color. All three photos were snapped very early this morning, which is my favorite time of day - that quiet hour shared only with the birds and Tilly before heading off to my office and my work....

Here's a Quote for the Day, from Katherine Paterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia, Jacob Have I Loved and other children's classics. It comes from Gates of Excellence: On Reading and Writing Books for Children, which I highly recommend:

"If we marvel at the artist who has written a great book, we must marvel more at those people whose lives are works of art and who don't even know it, who wouldn't believe it if they were told. However hard work good writing may be, it is easier than good living."  

More on "life in Devon" can be found on the blogs of two other artists in the neighborhood, Rima Staines and Danielle Barlow -- both of whom know a thing or two about creating lives that are works of art.       

The Tilly Report

She's gro-o-o-o-o-o-wing.... (Click on picture for larger image.)

Thursday's Song

The song I'd like to share with you this week is "Alas I Cannot Swim" by singer/songwriter Laura Marling. Marling hails from Hampshire, England and was just 18 when the video above was recorded. (And doesn't that fiddler look like he just strolled out of a Midori Snyder or Emma Bull story?) Marling's influences seem to range from Joni Mitchell to Johnny Cash, from Tori Amos to traditional bluegrass. Formerly a member of Noah and the Whale, her first solo album came out in 2008 and was nominated for a Mercury Prize.

Other great Marling songs & videos include: "Blackberry Stone" (performed with Marcus Mumford), "My Manic and I" (the animated video version), "My Manic and I" (a haunting, stripped-down version of the song performed on the Jools Holland show), "New Romantic,"  and the utterly gorgeous "Rambling Man," in the video below. 

The Writing Life

Fairy Scribe by Alan Lee

I recommend "On Becoming a Writer," a short piece by Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Diaz (with thanks to Ellen Kushner for the link). If you, too, struggle to complete things, take heart.

And then get back to work!

The Tilly Report

Tilly and the Lady (a sculpture by Wendy Froud)

Fantasy and Mythical Thinking

I'll be away from home and the office for the next few days,  but before I go I want to recommend Katherine Langrish's excellent post on "The Value of Fantasy and Mythical Thinking," over on the Awfully Big Adventure blog.

"The ‘mystery of existence’ is an artefact," she writes. "We choose to ask an answerless question, and that question is at the core of our humanity. The before-and-after of life is a great darkness, and we build bonfires to keep it out, and warm ourselves and comfort ourselves. The bonfire is the bonfire of mythical thinking, of culture, stories, songs, music, poetry, religion, art. We don’t need it for our physical selves: homo heidelbergensis got on perfectly well without it: we need it for humanity’s supreme invention, the soul."

You can read the full article here.

Katherine is the author of four mythic fiction novels for young readers: Dark Angels and The Troll Trilogy, all of which I strongly recommend. Her work has been compared to Alan Garner's -- which is high praise indeed, but entirely deserved. (I'd also compare her fiction favorably to Susan Cooper's and Nancy Farmer's.) I'm particularly captivated by the author's skillful use of mythic motifs and the interplay of light and shadow in her stories -- which are page-turners to be sure, yet are also deep and complex and utterly true inside their fantasy trappings. The Troll Trilogy draws on Scandinavian myth, Dark Angels on the legends, lore and history of the border region between England and Wales. Katherine, who lives in Oxfordshire (where, as it happens, I'm having dinner with her tomorrow night) is better known on this side of the Atlantic than in America -- but I predict that's going to change in the years ahead. Don't miss these books.

Painting above: the U.S. cover art for Troll Fell, Book 1 of The Troll Trilogy. Dark Angels is not yet available in the U.S., but can be ordered through Amazon.co.uk.

Autumn on Dartmoor

"Landscape with Hill and Apples"  (Viewed from the road near our front gate.)

"Still Life with Dog and Bracken"

From the sketch files....

"Bunnies for Charlie"

"Puppies for Howard"

(click on the drawings for larger versions)

Body and Soul

 

I've been re-reading the books of Thomas Moore recently (the contemporary writer, not the counsellor to Henry VIII or the 18th century Irish balladeer), and finding them even more intriguing the second time around. In provocative volumes like Care of the Soul, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life,  A Life in Work, Original Self, and Dark Eros, Moore blends Renaissance philosophies together with world myth, Taoism, Catholic mysticism and the psycho-mythic inquiries of Hillman and Jung to create a "soulful" and "enchanted" way of living in the modern world.

Many of Moore's ideas are rooted in the writings of Renaissance alchemists and philosophers such as Paracelsus, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and Giordono Bruno. These have become familiar names around my house -- not only because I re-visited John Crowley's masterful "Aegypt" novels earlier this year, but also because my husband is in the middle of a Masters program on the History of Western Esotericism in which such figures inevitably loom large. I studied alchemy myself (as a part of my myth and folklore studies) way back in my own university days -- but I'm not sure I fully got it back then. Now, with a few more decades under my belt, alchemical ideas seem richer, wiser, and more applicable to modern life than I'd previously understood  -- and have quietly permeated my work and world view more than I'd ever realized. 

I've also been reading The Alchemy of Illness, Kat Duff's meditation on the mythic, archetypal, and alchemical aspects of living with a chronic or life-threatening disease. It's a slim but fascinating volume, and although its brevity means that the author doesn't always follow her ideas quite as deeply as I personally would have liked, I've found much in the book to think about, chew on, and make me look at my own experience of chronic illness afresh. Which is all too rare.  

The picture above is "Woman Curing" by Oaxacan artist Fernando Olivera. It comes from the "Ilness and Calamity" issue of The Journal of Mythic Arts (Winter 2006).

Literary Pup

Tam Lyn Retold

Pure magic. (For more from The Imagined Village, go here.)