Timed Writing: Beginning my book...

 Monday 

Oh the misery! another day seeing my dreadful students in the Philosophy 101.  These students, I don't think they have ever had a single thought about anything that is outside of themselves.  I could cry thinking about the future of Philosophy itself!  Aside from it being Monday and having the worst class ever, my stomach is still playing up and Doctor Smallback is sending me for 'further tests'.  There should be dignity and grace in old age but it seems there is only humiliation, indignity and memory loss!

I did not think the memory was that bad, and I can recite Hegel at will and consider deeply his idea of the actualization of the will, but I can never find my glasses, the book I was reading yesterday or where I left my keys.  I wish Hegel could explain these things to me, I think I would be better here at thinking of the philosophy of Montaigne, I remember clearly he said; ‘to learn that we have said or done a stupid thing is nothing, we must learn a more ample and important lesson: that we are but blockheads… On the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our arses.’ And, lest we forget: ‘Kings and philosophers shit, and so do ladies.’ - he was not afraid to face our bodily functions and I am starting to think we should focus more on how our bodily functions really affect our thoughts..

Damn it all, I also met with Dean today, he is a new appointment and is a pompous ass!  He obviously has been educated at one of these new universities and kept talking about meetings and how they should be more 'experiential' worse, so much worse than that, he started going on about a 'team building day trip', I would rather eats maggots...why in the world do I need to get know people I work with better!  I frankly see quite enough of them each week and I really don't want to know or see anymore of them, or listen to them, or have to interact with them 'socially' - my god, what a bore! 

Tuesday

Had a terrible dream/nightmare that I was stuck in a lift with my work colleagues, the Dean and the student that smells of garlic constantly.  I was screaming to get out in the end, the lift got hotter and hotter, the phone was broken in the lift and the smelly kid had started to touch me.  I woke up sweating and hyperventilating.  I think my blood pressure is too high, I need to see Doctor Smallback again, I am afraid he thinks I am a hypochondriac and I hate the smell of his rooms they remind me of death.

A small pleasure I have in life is smoking - I do love a cigarette, the post-prandial cigarette is truly a joy, the meal of course has to be good for the cigarette to be perfect.  I digress after my terrible dream I went outside onto the porch and sat on the steps it was early and it was quiet, then I look over to my neighbour across the road (another single man) and he appeared to be digging in his garden, I could only see the spade moving back and forth and the earth flying about, the small fence covered the area itself.  Very odd man, 

The Chapbook: Planning

 

The Smoking Diaries (2008) By Simon Gray

• What is your final idea?  Please explain in two sentences the theme and the form your writing will take.

I will create the diaries of Professor Zimmerman, a character from The Story of Honey. The diaries will work on characterisation, a narrative that brings pace and there will be remarks related to 'Honey' to bring this piece together with my two previous works.

• Considering the form, how do you intend to layout your book pages?

This will be in the form of a diary with a short introduction. I may do this over months or it could be snapshots from different years..

• How many pages do you expect there will be?

30-40 pages

• Are you going to use images?  Are these your own images (illustrations/photographs) or copyright free images that you will source? 

I want to use images like in Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald where they relate to the event or a memory

• What is the plan of your time and how much you will need to spend on this?

Remember writing is something that you will need time and concentration without disturbance - you must make sure that you plan time to do this.

I will spend 8-10 hours, writing, drafting, rewriting and proofing this book and with additional hours spent on image sourcing, front cover and completing publication

• What do you imagine the final book will look like?  

I am hoping it will look a little like The Smoking Diaries or Austerlitz.  Beautiful wring ad images that excite the senses and the memory and create connections for the reader. 

• Have you considered the cover page/contents page/back cover with blurb?

I will create this on Blurb and I will source a suitable cover image or I will take it myself - at the moment I am nort sure what that will be.

• Drafting and redrafting will need to be done?  Who would you get to proofread your work?

I will ask my partner to proofread this work

Write down any other thoughts or comments related to your plan on your blog post.

I will be working on researching other diary forms to consider how I will structure my own to make sure that this will make sense to the reader and will really get the elements I discussed earlier through to the reader.

Creative Writing: Introduction to the Chapbook and Ideas

 Another term and I will be creating another chapbook.  This small book of joy could follow on from my previous two books or could be something entirely new!

Alain de Botton (2005) On Seeing and Noticing

My last two books were the story of milk and honey but there was a character I created called Professor Zimmerman who I really wanted to explore more.

I want to write his story this term and I thought about maybe the diaries of Zimmerman or it could just be a chapter of his life.  While I was think of this I thought of Nabokov's Pnin - this book of the professor who is always out of place is a beautiful characterisation of a man that is touching, deep, funny and engaging. 

Vladimir Nabokov (1957) Pnin

Charles Poore of the New York Times described Pnin as; 'a comedy of academic manners in a romantically disenchanted world.' (Poore, 1957) This would explain why I am drawn to this book, written in 1957, however that same disenchantment comes to every academic's life.  But this is a book about the society that produced him and through his eccentricities, you come to love this character.

Evelyn Waugh (1928) Decline and Fall

Also I thought of Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall - again a comment on academia, society and a very British class system exposed.  The idea as well that failure leads to teaching...

References

Poore, C. (1957) Books of the Times: Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov, The New York Times. The New York Times. Available at: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/lifetimes/nab-r-pnin.html (Accessed: May 1, 2023). 

Creative Writing Exercise One: Disgust

 Lydia scanned the dank, damp and flea ridden kitchen that she shared with her two housemates; Ron and Emma. The fleas had come in after Emma had started to feed the stray tomcat, who they called Ginge with left overs and gone off milk.  The place stunk of old food and rotting vegetables and eggs in the overflowing bin.  Lydia threw herself onto one of the broken wooden chairs that sat with their equally horrible table that they used for house meals.  Lydia wished to God, prayed to God, that one day she would be freed from the hell of house sharing but with cost of living crisis and the fact that she had no savings and no family that could support her she knew that the chances of every getting out of this vile hole were slim to none. Lydia scoured the room to see if there was any chance that there might be a relatively clean bowl to eat some breakfast cereal out of then she realised there would not be any milk and anyway she had suddenly lost her appetite. Lydia pulled her old green cardigan close around her and closed her eyes, perhaps if I just imagine hard enough a miracle will save me, she thought.  She imagined a clean white modern kitchen with shiny marble tops, an American two door fridge that smelled fresh and clean and had beautiful fresh food inside.  She imagined the sun shining through french doors and her walking out into the beautiful warm sunlight.

Reflection: Solace in the City

 This term I was considering the work of Wim Wenders and Atget when completing my urban landscape image.  I found the quiet and strange places of Wenders photography emboldened me to create more colour images as otherwise I am always tempted to complete everything in Black and White.

I was pleased with the colour here on Revolution Red, the colours are rich and deep and the triangular shapes and arched windows really do make this image work.

With my other images in black and white I was thinking of Atget and wanted my images to exude some of that poetic beauty however here I don't think I quite got that, there are some abandoned places and I like the idea that they are just awaiting for human touch again 

Final Destination has a rugged grimy city feel to the scene but I would not say it was poetic, perhaps I do need to work in the dusk light and create a little more atmospheric shots.  However, I do like how this image works with the shadow play of the trees on the ground which does draw your eye to the wall and then you glance over to see the abandoned trolley.  There is always a sort of sadness for abandoned shopping trollies.   

Eugene Atget: The beauty of architectural photography

 Eugene Atget  (1857-1927) was an architectural photographer who was never recognised in his own time. In the 1920s Atget work would be well respected and the surrealists held his work in high esteem and popularised his work.  The Surrealist;  'found his pictures of deserted streets and stairways, street life, and shop windows beguiling and richly suggestive (these were published in La Révolution surréaliste in 1926.' (Moma: Eugene Atget 2023).  Atget used a bulky view camera and large (18 x 24 cm) glass plates despite advancements in photography and produced an archive of thousands of images of Paris its building, architectural details and events of the time.

Ruines de l’ancien Hôtel de Ville de Paris après l’incendie de 1871, Eugen Atget 

Atget's images are documents of place and how it changes over time and, at this time, the beginning of industrialisation and modernisation Atget's photographs now are valuable historic documents;
'Around 1900, Atget’s focus shifted. The city’s urban landscape had been recently reshaped by the modernization campaign known as Haussmannization—a necessarily destructive process led by (and named after) Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann' (Moma: Eugene Atget 2023).  In 1968 the Museum of Modern Art purchased Bernice Abbott's✱ collection of Atget's work which consisted of over 1000 photographic plates and at least 10,000 images making it one of the largest collections of his work. 

Eugene Atget (1906) Saint-Cloud

The above image of Saint-Coud exemplifies the beauty of the photographic work that Atget produced. Here is the perfect use of the rule of thirds with a leading line that makes your eyes follow the steps through the image, and arrive up in light above with the tall trees and lone bench looking out probably onto a Paris boulevard. This image was made in the; 'formal gardens of the royal palace at Saint-Cloud, laid out in the seventeenth century by Louis XIV's landscape architect André Le Nôtre.' (French, 1921) These later images were more personal to Atget and there is a haunting poetic beauty to the prints which invite the viewer into the frame to share in the experience of the image.  

Eugene Atget Versailles (Faune), 1901

This image of the faune I also enjoy very much, I am very fond of statues in images, the appeal of these stony representations I think is that you want to touch them and feel that they do hold some soul (I am sure that Theophile Gautier believed they did).  In this frame the central position of the statue draws the viewer to look up at the faune's quite angry-looking face, the trees surround the creature and he does seem to belong amongst them.  
 

Maybe my next project in the city will be all the statues I could find in Leicester, I would begin with Reverend Robert Hall (below)!

Reverend Robert Hall, De Montfort Gardens 

Statue of Sicilian marble on a high Cornish granite pedestal.

Sculptor

John Birnie Philip (1824-1875)

The statue was unveiled on 2 November 1871 by the sculptor.

✱Bernice Abbot was an assistant to Man Ray and was a 'central figure in and important bridge between the photographic circles and cultural hubs of Paris and New York' (Encyclopedia Brittanica 2023)

References

Brittanica (2023) Eugène Atget, Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eugene-Atget (Accessed: April 26, 2023). 

Eugène Atget: Moma (2023) The Museum of Modern Art. Available at: https://www.moma.org/artists/229 (Accessed: April 24, 2023). 

Museum of Modern Art (2023) Berenice Abbott: Moma, The Museum of Modern Art. Available at: https://www.moma.org/artists/41 (Accessed: April 26, 2023). 

French, E.A. (1921) Eugène Atget: Saint-Cloud, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Available at: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/285845 (Accessed: April 26, 2023). 

Completing the Collection: Urban Landscape II - Finding Solace in the City

I finalised my thoughts on my collection and will put this together on Photoshop with an introduction on my website on the gallery.

I will begin by creating a canvas, I did this by clicking on 'New' then 'Print' and in the dialog box I chose A3, I the chose landscape and checked that it was 300dpi.  I the chose a very slightly off-white tone for the canvas.

I then added my images by selecting and then going to edit and then copy, then returning to my canvas and the edits paste I adjusted the size to the canvas and lined this up correctly using the guidelines and then added a title on each using book antiqua font at 36pts

I then saved this in a new folder as both a psd and jpeg file ready for my website and so I could make any adjustments if I needed to.  I had this folder on my desktop and when completed I added to my Google Drive and as a back up added this to an external drive.

I checked this worked in Black and white with the same background.

I completed all the images like this and then I opened my website on wix and went to the editor. 

I began by going to the menu and creating a new page, I renamed this and then opened the new page, I chose a gallery that I thought would be suitable and the uploaded my images.

I chose a slider gallery with thumbnails and added my title and a paragraph space so I could write an introduction.

I then uploaded the images here and added them to the gallery I edited the title of each one to ensure this came up when you clicked on the image.

As my computer was being a little slow I took this time to consider the introduction I would write.

Solace in the City 

There is comfort in living in the city, at every time of the day there is noise, people, something happening, the city has a hum that is always there.  However, finding the places that are quiet corners, the places that have the traces of human life, yet remain almost dormant, waiting for renewal, there is a beauty to enjoying this solitude in the metropolis.  These places need someone to look at them kindly again.  This ancient city has many such unloved corners and my camera is drawn to memorialise them.  They will evolve and change over time, people will impose upon them again, but for now they are still and quiet in the frame.

Finally they uploaded and after adding all media to the correct gallery and adjusting the order I previewed the gallery page.

Lastly I added buttons on the portfolio page and a back button the gallery page and then I republished, I then checked the mobile view and rearranged this to work with extra links and republished again

Now you can check this out on my website zoevan-de-velde.com