doctor who

Am feeling very behind the times in only just discovering that David Tennant is leaving Doctor Who. This makes me a little sad. When I first heard someone call Tom Baker, or Peter Davison, or whoever, "their Doctor," I was perplexed. It is only a tv show, I thought, and it's the same tv show, with the same sort of stories, and same blue telephone box, and the same wonderful, ridiculous adventures. Except now I completely understand and I can't imagine the Doctor without the manic energy, absurdly fast soliloquies, and (my favorite thing of all) the enormous and good-natured enthusiasm that Tennant is so good at doing.

However, he's going to be in a movie with Bill Nighy. I adore Billy Nighy. Except as that elderly vampire in Underworld, where he looks like someone who needs extensive dental work very badly and is in a very bad temper because of it.

on reflection...

This sign is from the airport, international terminal. Something--probably the pictures of the Olafur Eliasson exhibit I'd just seen in the MOMA store--made me think of a room with a giant, still pond in it, fathoms deep and smooth as glass. Or a room panelled in mirrors with different colored lights reflecting in all directions. Unfortunately, I think it's actually a politically reworked word standing in for "chapel" or somesuch. But since I didn't actually go and check, I can pretend that through a little corridor and up some stairs is a magnificent Room of Reflections whose beauty will make you fall on your knees, like that little person icon there, in wonder.

Am tired of writing today. I've done perhaps 1500 words and things were humming along nicely, but I'm at one of those getting from here to there moments and I just want to skip over it and go on to the next bit which is going to involve bright lights and nightmares. It's the pyrotechnic bit of the chapter. There are just all these details that need setting up and they're feeling a bit sluggish and dull. However, I've found out what a ghost machine does and more about Agatha, so that's good.

I watched the "Utopia" and "The Sound of Drums" episodes of Doctor Who and was happily astonished by how fantastic Derek Jacobi and John Simms are. There's a moment when Jacobi just looks into the camera and goes from being an affable professor to a very dangerous maniac. It's chilling and wonderful. There are moments of sci-fi apocalypse that seem a bit ridiculous (though still much enjoyable), but having a character who is quite like the Doctor yet so horrible, driven mad by the same powers that make the Doctor wonderful, is brilliant. Typical archetype stuff, I guess, but really solid nonetheless.

Bought three new cds: Muswell Hillbillies by the Kinks, End of History by Regan Fionn, and Hilary Hahn's Bach Partitas for Solo Violin. Self-indulgent, I know. I went in planning to get the Bach because I think the partitas are glorious, but then I wandered into the music section and was lost for an hour or so. How could I resist an album with songs titled "Hey Rabbit" and "Abacus" (the Fionn)? Or one called "Muswell Hillbillies"? There's a song on that album called "Have A Cuppa Tea," which made me laugh because I went into a coffee shop the other day and said, "may I have a cuppa tea?" and the girl behind the counter said, "huh?" Hopefully the music will live up to my enjoyment of the titles, and if not, at least I have the Bach to console myself with.

Obviously, I haven't been working too hard if I've had time to watch Doctor Who and buy music and take pictures in airports, but I still haven't found the stamina for writing again. It's odd, because I don't know the details, sometimes even the big obvious chunks of "what happens next?" until I'm writing them, but once I do see them in my head, I get impatient about turning them into words and just want to dump them out and carry on to the next bit. Lazy.

blood and guts

This, obviously, is why I fancy Doctor Who. Just look at that charming face.

Tonight I feel oddly bloodthirsty. Having spent most of this afternoon thinking about stories in general and particular, I'm a bit disturbed to find that when I ask myself, well what happens next? the answer tends to be: somebody dies.

What? Why does somebody die? Have I been reading too many murder mysteries? Is it because someone dying is a handy little plot mechanism that shoves some energy into a story that is getting overweight and picturesque? The most recent book that I abjectly admired is ATONEMENT by Ian McEwan. People die in this story, but their deaths don't serve to create plot. The hugeness of the book is interior. Events happen, but what I care about is what Cee and Robbie and, most of all, the magnificently frustrating Briony are thinking. There is no clumsy: he walked into a room with a gun.

Things people feel: LOVE, JOY, GUILT, SORROW, RAGE, APATHY, DREAD, TERROR, ANTICIPATION, HATRED, ADULATION...

The fictional dead don't feel (unless you make them, but that's different).

I took barre today and had moments when I felt like my knee was strung together with rubberbands. Stretched out rubberbands, not the nice taut new ones. Now it's gone a bit puffy and squishy, probably full of what Dr. Bost cheerfully refers to as "blood and guts." I think he actually relishes saying that.

Why does 50,000 words suddenly seem ridiculous?