No. 46 has been cracked, but it’s slow going, at the moment, with occasional bursts of activity interspersed with occasional sloughs of, well, not despond, no, not exactly, but not exactly exuberant, either, and all the while the draft of no. 45 ferments in its fallow. —No. 45, which, as I’ve noted elsewhere, is or was or will end up having been a much more straightforward tale, a take on that basic plot-kernel in which a stranger comes to town; no. 46 is intended to be or at least it will maybe have been a rather more relaxed and (seemingly) shapeless affair, a hang-out, I believe, is the term of art—an aimless stroll through thirty-two short films, though, in retrospect, it might well turn out our flâneur was rather more slyly pointed that perhaps, at first, it had seemed. But aimless strolls are, well, aimless; difficult as it may be to know where they might end up, no matter how pointed they end up having been, it can be just as difficult to know where, exactly, to begin them, and sometimes precisely because one wished to engineer the point.
But that’s a me-problem, I suppose. Otherwise? I still haven’t managed to do what justice I owe to Spear Cuts Through Water; I got distracted, I admit, by re-reading Lud-in-the-Mist, which has been—instructive? —And also Empson, on the pastoral, yes, of course, as always, and, but, what else? I’ve watched the Pitt, we’ll probably finish that tonight, and I’m intrigued by the notion that it’s a DS9 show, at heart, but that all has little enough to do with what’s going on here. Andor next, but also ditto, and anyway, I need to get back to work.
Posted 8 days ago.
