Myth & Moor

Tunes for a Monday Morning

Today's music is from The Staves, an alt-folk trio of sisters (Emily, Jessica and Camilla Staveley-Taylor) from Watford, Hertfordshire. All three songs come from their debut CD, Dead & Born & Grown.

Above: "Winter Trees," with an enchanting video from Aardman Animations in Bristol.

Below: "Mexico," another magical video -- in a dreamlike, Tord Boontje kind of way.

And one more...

Below: a (mostly) a capella song, "Wisely and Slow."

Guarding the egg

“Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have 'essential' and 'long overdue' meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it. Some people do not seem to grasp that I still have to sit down in peace and write the books, apparently believing that they pop up like mushrooms without my connivance. I must therefore guard the time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its firstborn egg.”  -  J.K. Rowling

This applies, I think, not only to writing, but to all creative work, and to working from home in general.

Your thoughts?

Images: The illustrations at the top of this post are "Working from Home" and "Dragon Pest" by the London-based illustrator & animator Carmen Bromfield-Mason, whose work I love. (The first drawing is a self portrait, with the artist's cats Kimberly and Titan.) The little sketch at the bottom is by me.

Ira Glass on storytelling

Tunes for a Monday Morning

Three spooky, atmospheric videos for Halloween week...

First: "My Manic and I," by the brilliant young singer/songwriter Laura Marling, who hails from Hampshire, UK.

Second: Cold Bread," by Marling's occasional collaborator: the fabulous Johnny Flynn, who is based in London.

The third video:

"Me Over You" by Lucia, a 17 year old singer/songwriter from Bucharest, Romania.

Tune for a Monday Morning

This week's tune is from the incomparable Kate Bush (with thanks to Ruthie Redden for reminding me of it). The song is "Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe" (from her 2011 album Fifty Words for Snow), and the video was written and directed by Kate herself.

Tilly is a particular fan of this one....

Tunes for a Monday Morning

Both tunes today are by singer/songwriter Jeremy Messersmith, from the Twin Cities in Minnesota, with animation by Eric Power. Messersmith has three albums out to date, all available on his website as pay-whatever-you-want downloads.

Above: "A Girl, a Boy, and a Graveyard." (A live performance of the song is here.)

Below: "Organ Donor." Both tunes are from the most recent CD, The Reluctant Graveyard.

Tunes for a Monday Morning

Today's tunes are from First Aid Kit: Swedish sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg, who sing like angels. (Their songwriting skills aren't too shabby either.)

Above: "When I Grow Up," with a fabulous animation by Rachael Greenfield.

Below: An atmospheric video for "The Lion's Roar."

If you'd to listen to a couple more songs this morning, try "Waltz for Richard," filmed in an alley in Melbourne, Australia, and "Emmylou," performed on Swedish tv. You'll find an interview with Klara and Johanna here, in Rookie Magazine.

Tunes for a Monday Morning

Today's tunes come from Matthew and the Atlas, a British alt-folk group from Aldershot, Hampshire. (Many thanks to Jennifer Ambrose for her recomendation earlier this year; I'm now deeply in love with this band.)

Above: "Within the Rose," a magical video featuring paper-cut animation by Neil Coxhill.

Below: A live performance of the beautiful song "Come Out of the Woods."

Want more? Have a listen to "I Followed Fires" and "Fisherman's Wife." A free download of the latter (in exchange for joining their mailing list) is available here.

Tune for a Monday Morning

Today's tune  is "Love is Making its Way Back Home" by Josh Ritter; the wonderful video is a stop-motion animation (made with over 12,000 pieces of construction paper) by Erez Horovitz, Sam Cohen, and Sarah Graves of Prominent Figures.

I'm actually writing this post on Sunday (it's scheduled for automatic posting tomorrow), because by Monday morning I'll be in London, en route to the airport, then New York City. I love New York, where I lived in my twenties as a young book editor, and where I still have many good friends and colleagues, so I'd normally relish a trip back to Manhattan -- but this particular journey is a daunting one, necessitated by the difficult Life Stuff that my family and I have lately been dealing with. Howard, meanwhile, remains in Devon, looking after the pup and the homefront.

I don't know how long I will be in New York, and I don't know what this blog will be like in the days ahead. The blog, like my creative work, is deeply rooted in my wanderings through the leaves and brambles with Tilly and the rhythms of my quiet rural studio...but now my Country Self must be set aside while an older, sharper part of me, the Urban Self, comes to the fore. The road ahead leads into Uncertainty...which is another name for Mystery, and therefore (I remind myself) not always a terrible thing. I'm uncertain of what the coming weeks will bring; I'm uncertain of how my work will progress or of how this blog will function. I'm uncertain of many things, except for the need to be strong and go forward.

Maya Angelou once wrote: “Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure....Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative, and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.”

And so here is this morning's prayer, offered to the rising sun from the crest of our hill, sweet Tilly perched on the rocks beside me:

May I see every journey, no matter how daunting, as a mythic adventure, a quest, a story unfolding, a fairy tale in which even the smallest of heroes finds her way through danger and the dark of the forest...and faces down dragons...and wins love or treasure...and then goes safely home once again.

Today's tune goes out to Howard.

Tune for a Monday Morning

To start off the week with a bit of pure magic: "Bubble" by King Creosote & John Hopkins, from their CD Diamond Mine, with an animation directed by Elliot Dear @ Binklink. (I'm grateful to Julia for recommending it in last week's comments.) In some areas of viewing, this video comes with an ad you have to skip through ('sorry about that), but I promise it's worth it. It's a beautiful song, a beautiful animation...and I love the black Tilly dog....

Tune for a Monday Morning

My friend Helen Mason, an ex-dancer turned designer in London, sent me a link to the lovely dance animation above: "Thought of You," created by Ryan Woodward. The music, serendipitously, is by The Weepies, whose cheerful smooching-and-dancing-in-the- streets video I posted as last week's Monday tune. This one is in a very different vein: it is a beautiful evocation (through music and animation both) of what it's like to lose someone you love. Please visit Ryan Woodward's Conte Animated website to see more of his graceful figurative works and experimental animations.

I'm back in the office, in a shaky and slow kind of way, and not yet entirely over the flu...but there's no sick pay for the self-employed so I'm back to work anyway (ah, the glamorous writing life) -- armed with tissues, ginger-and-lemon tea, paracetamal, and a trusty hot water bottle. Somehow in-between coughs and wheezes the mail will get answered and Work Will Get Done.

I have a few recommendations to pass on this morning:

First, there's a fascinating interview with the French illustrator Didier Graffet over on Howard's John Barleycorn blog this week. It's part of the "Around the table with...." series of chats that Howard and his comics-partner, Rex, are running every third Friday. The table in question is our kitchen table...so as you read the interview, imagine the smells of woodsmoke, croissants, Devon blackberry jam, milky English tea and strong Italian coffee...with Tilly lying under the table looking up at Didier in adoration. (She definitely had a little canine crush.)

Didier is one of the most highly regarded book illustrators in France today; and a visit to his website will quickly show you why. He's perhaps best known for his Jules Verne art, which ranges from paintings and drawings to a model of The Nautilus (Captain Nemo's submarine), the plans for which are pictured below. Didier stayed with us in early December, braving the icy Dartmoor weather to attend the opening of the "Sir Lanval" exhibition, to which he'd contributed beautiful work. If you'd like to see more of Didier's art, it's been collected into a handsome volume titled Mondes et Voyages -- available here through Amazon France, and well worth tracking down.

Second, my good friend Miriam Boy, a jewellery designer here on Dartmoor,  has a lovely new website up which she's calling silverandmoor. You may remember the picture of Miriam's atmospheric workshop  from the "On Your Desk" photo series last month. Her jewellery is gorgeous, and she takes commissions, so please go over and have a look.

And here's one last recommendaton for you, tied in with the mention of Jules Verne above : "The Sultan's Elephant" (below), a little film I first learned about from my friend Danielle Barlow. Those of you who follow Danielle's rich treasury of a blog, Notes from the Rookery, will have seen this one already...but nevermind, it's an astonishing video and worth watching again.

Created by the Royal de Luxe street theatre company of France, "La visite du sultan des Indes sur son éléphant à voyager dans le temps" ("Visit From The Sultan Of The Indies On His Time-Travelling Elephant") was commissioned to celebrate the centenary of Jules Vernes' death. The elephant debuted in Nantes and Amiens in 2005, then traveled to various locations around the world. In the film below, the elephant and his companion take a stroll through London back in 2006. (How in the world did I miss it at the time?) Magical art like this fills the world with wonder, and just makes me glad to be alive.

You can find more pictures and more information on the Royal de Luxe website, and on the Sultan's Elephant in London website. Also check out the Machines of the Ilse of Nantes website for more cool stuff. They just do these things better in France.

Miwa Matreyek in Motion

 

 

Above: A Miwa Matreyek performance in Oxford, filmed for the TED Talks series. It's a beautiful piece -- and becomes truly amazing about one third of the way in, so stick with it.

Here's the description: "Miwa Matreyek creates performances where real shapes and virtual images trade places, amid layers of animation, video and live bodies. Using animation, projections and her own moving shadow, Miwa Matreyek performs a gorgeous, meditative piece about inner and outer discovery. With music from Anna Oxygen, Mirah, Caroline Lufkin and Mileece."

The link comes from William Todd-Jones (thanks, Todd!), who creates this kind of cutting-edge performance work himself ("The Virtual Cellist," for example) and ought to have a TED Talk of his own. Are there any TED execs out there listening...?

Today's poem is "Instructions" by Neil Gaiman, which was first published in A Wolf at the Door, co-edited by me and Ellen Datlow (more info here), and which has now been turned into a beautiful, magical children's picture book illustrated by Charles Vess. I love this.

You can listen to Neil read the poem in the lovely video above, or you can read it here, in the poetry archives of The Journal of Mythic Arts.

"Salad Days" is the latest in a series of fabulous creations by my favorite young animator, Carmen Bromfield Mason. (If you missed my previous post about her work, her YouTube page is here. I particularly recommend "How Much Do You Know" to all you book lovers out there.)

I'm pleased to report that these fine little films, created at Chelsea College of Art & Design in London, have earned the artist a place in the prestigious animation program at Bournemouth University. Good news indeed!

I love the gorgeous, thought-provoking animation above, about the power of the written word and the media environment we live in. It's by my friend Carmen Bromfield Mason, who is currently a student at the Chelsea College of Art & Design in London.

For the shorter piece below, the students were ask to record a small child explaining how something works and then to animate the explanation. Carmen asked 7-year-old Ely Todd-Jones (who is the daughter of puppeteer William Todd-Jones, and my god-daughter) to explain what color is.... The explanation is priceless, and the animation is charming. 

You can see more of Carmen's work here.

Also, please note that an update has been added to the Ravens in the Library post (January 6th), below.