David Suchet narrates latest vid: God Sends Help

Posted via email from jsb

scary horror eagle

adding + subtracting + sculpture + writing

(I don't usually like anything to do with adding and subtracting--but for anyone else who is allergic to math/maths, keep reading--happily this post has nothing to do anything of the sort.)

The novelist Jonathan Safran Foer was interviewed by Vanity Fair recently and said something interesting about sculpture and adding and subtracting. In answer to the question: "In cutting away are you creating something. Do you see parallels to this in your fiction writing?"-- Safran Foer says:

"I don't think so. Look at it this way: There are two kinds of sculptures. There's the kind that subtracts: Michelangelo starts with a block of marble and chips away. And then there is the kind that adds, building with clay, piling it on. The way I write novels is to keep piling on and piling on and piling on."

A English professor I was speaking to once said poetry, like Michelangelo's sculpture, is paring away and distilling down, whereas novels are building and enlarging out.

Two quotes from Michelangelo that are true of writing too.

"Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it." 

And my favorite of all:

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."

What a great view of the job of the artist: setting angels free.

woman goes back to work after 30 years...

(it's only 4 seconds and incase you didn't see it yet... it's FUNNY)

women laughing alone with salad

salad is hilarious

via kottke

animal voiceovers...

very silly and very good for a monday back to work...

so you want to write a novel

oh dear. so painful. so true. (my favorite is the bit about her throat closing up and the gun...)

 

New York Blizzard time-lapse video

in case you didn't see this... it might make you feel like you were there

(If you were sorry, you don't need reminding)

I managed to totally miss the entire storm--just back from the UK (aka The Frozen North) where I was snowed in for over a week (handily along with lashings of the best Christmas cake ever made and strong cups of tea and friends and family)

but I've made it back OK through the chaos at JFK last night and the ginormous taxi lines via subway and bus