Eureka! - shadows of echoes of memories of songs

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			Eureka! - shadows of echoes of memories of songs




			09:42 am April 11th, 2003

j4


	Eureka!
	A new and wondrous discovery, which has brought light to the darkest corners of my world: ginger nuts dipped in peppermint tea. ... I had a Great Insight the other night, which I thought I'd share with LiveJournal ("All the peer review that matters"): I was in the pub, and I wasn't drinking, despite having had a scary interview in the morning. Normally I'd welcome the chance of a few pints to dull the memory of my own uselessness; this time, however, I decided not to; and I think some part of me thought that by being virtuous, by not taking the easy way out, I'd just come to feel better about it naturally. It's just not true. Drinking to drown your sorrows does help. That's my great and sad insight: that everyday tragedies don't have neat endings with a moral. ... Currently waiting for the rejection phone call from the Refugee Council (they promised they'd phone between 9 and 12 today). When that comes through, I'll phone the next place and tell them I will do their interview, I will allow myself another chance to fail. (Everyday eclipses.) Update: As expected. <sigh> Current Mood: IW4 the phone to ring Now playing: Mary-Chapin Carpenter: "Come on come on"

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			Thread started by Alice Dryden

	From: huskyteer	Date: April 11th, 2003 04:26 am (UTC)		(Link)

Ginger biscuit and peppermint tea sounds like a folk remedy for indigestion. Can't say I fancy it.

Blah to the Refugee Council, who clearly don't know a good thing when they see it. It didn't sound a hugely exciting job, to be honest.

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	From: j4	Date: April 11th, 2003 07:31 am (UTC)		(Link)

Ginger biscuit & peppermint tea is great, but then I like peppermint & ginger tea. This is similar but with the added sweetness, and the slight soft crunchiness, of dipped biscuit.

As for exciting jobs, don't make me laugh. I just want something that isn't this place, and/or somewhere that offers me a higher price for my soul. Secretly hoping that the pr0n career will take off.

I'm thinking of throwing it all in and becoming a freelance writer of unconsidered trifles instead. I mean, let's face it, given a sample of house style and 10 minutes' googling time I could probably write an article on anything. (Is that conceited? It's about the closest I come to conceit, and then only because I don't regard it as a particularly worthwhile skill so admitting it doesn't feel too boastful... rather like confessing to my nearly-unrivalled skill at Tetris.) The only problem is, as ever, persuading other people of this; but at least as a writer I wouldn't need to be presentable or respectable, or indeed be able to talk nicely in interviews.

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	From: rysmiel	Date: April 11th, 2003 07:34 am (UTC)		(Link)

Secretly hoping that the pr0n career will take off.

?? *perk* ?

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	From: j4	Date: April 11th, 2003 07:52 am (UTC)		(Link)

Oh, of course, you haven't been reading my journal for that long, have you?

lnr and I are going to be pr0n stars. :)

We're going to have lots of photos taken for portfolios on the weekend after Easter. Then who knows... just depends what work we can get, I guess. Could be fun, anyway. Or could be awful, in which case write it down to experience & move on.

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	From: rysmiel	Date: April 11th, 2003 08:12 am (UTC)		(Link)

Oh, of course, you haven't been reading my journal for that long, have you? lnr and I are going to be pr0n stars. :)

We're going to have lots of photos taken for portfolios on the weekend after Easter. Then who knows... just depends what work we can get, I guess. Could be fun, anyway. Or could be awful, in which case write it down to experience & move on.

Luck with it; win lose or draw, I will at some point, if it is apt, ask to mine your experiences, as for once I have a perfectly valid project in mind for which this is research, and it will make a change from fast-talking my way into the church of St. Giles in Cripplegate, reading insane ideas about Hamlet, and trying to get some sort of plausible consensus out of the slow-motion catfight about Snowball Earth going on in the letters page of Nature this past year and a half or so, which have been all the directed research I have managed to do for a while.

[ I'd be interested in seeing the portfolio too at some point if it's apt, but that probably didn't need to be specified. It's my birthday the weekend after that, and all... ]

[ Underline "if it's apt" in both those comments. Do not wish to presume a millimetre more than you're OK with; nor indeed a millimetre less. Today only happens once, carpe diem, und so weit. ]

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	From: emperor	Date: April 11th, 2003 08:22 am (UTC)		(Link)

fast-talking my way into the church of St. Giles in Cripplegate

Oooh. What're you doing in there? I used to have organ lessons (no pred jokes, please) in St Giles...

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	From: rysmiel	Date: April 11th, 2003 08:45 am (UTC)		(Link)

What I was doing was getting specific details of the inside of the church and in particular of the location of Milton's grave and the exact wording thereon, for a scene I was writing set there. [ There was a rather nice young lady there who let us in even when the church was supposed to be closed, who will get an acknowledgement should that story ever see print; she got rather teary-eyed at my lying down falt on the ground in order to read the bit of the inscription that was under one of the benches, I think she may have thought I was kissing the ground. ]

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			Thread started by Kaet

From: kaet	Date: April 11th, 2003 05:45 am (UTC)		(Link)

everyday tragedies don't have neat endings with a moral.

Something like that was a big revelation for me, too. In effect it was that the logic of narrative is as flawed as a representation of and distant from reality as moral and deductive/inductive logics -- only more charismaric. I don't think there are everyday tragedies because life isn't as simple as the layout of tragedy.

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	From: j4	Date: April 11th, 2003 07:35 am (UTC)		(Link)

I don't think there are everyday tragedies because life isn't as simple as the layout of tragedy.

I was thinking of tragedies in the common sense of the word rather than Tragedy in the classical sense. Not in the Steps sense, not at all.

Narrative is the pattern that we attempt to impose on life. That's the real reason why fiction is escapist: not because it depicts different places and people from those we know, but because it offers development and motive and tying-up of ends, and -- most importantly -- a point at which to stop narrating. (Who was it who said that the difference between comedy and tragedy is just where you stop the story?) In real life we're more like Beckett's protagonists, doomed to tell our sorry circular little stories for all eternity. But even they have the luxury of the curtain. And who would have thought the old man had so much narrative in him?

(THIS IS NOT AN EXIT.)

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			Comment by Owen Massey McKnight

	From: addedentry	Date: April 11th, 2003 06:06 am (UTC)		(Link)

Bugger. Strength.

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			Comment by fivemack

	From: fivemack	Date: April 11th, 2003 06:33 am (UTC)		(Link)

I'm sorry about the job. They don't know what they're missing.

Best of luck with the next interview.

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			Comment by Teesside Snog Monster

	From: jiggery_pokery	Date: April 11th, 2003 07:13 am (UTC)		(Link)

Sympathies.

I wish you an excellent weekend full of ginger, peppermint and good company.

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			Thread started by Angelic Eye for the Gendered-Species Individual

	From: rysmiel	Date: April 11th, 2003 07:36 am (UTC)		(Link)

My sympathies, fwiw; very much their loss.

My only problem with alcohol is that it's such a bloody sledgehammer. Would that one could pick and choose a desired subset of its effects.

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	From: j4	Date: April 11th, 2003 07:56 am (UTC)		(Link)

I was saying roughly the same thing about alcohol yesterday, I think, in the pub (while drinking the Carlton's excellent hot chocolate). It would be wonderful if you could select the time to which you wished to apply the (for me, inevitable) memory loss; you could slowly edit out all the bits of your life you didn't want to remember, rather than merely losing trivialities like 20 minutes of "I have never".

On the other hand, when all you have is a sledgehammer, everything looks like a small, frightened hazelnut, cowering in dreadful anticipation of the final crunch.

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	From: rysmiel	Date: April 11th, 2003 08:13 am (UTC)		(Link)

IME, when all you have is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a rabid ferret. *sigh*

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