belgianwaffle

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

I am the clouds
I am embroidered
Ich bin der Autor aller Felgen
Und Damast-Paspeln
Ich bin der Chrome Dinette
Ich bin der Chrome Dinette
Ich bin Eier aller Arten ...

Unusually chirpy this morning having listened to Martin Clunes on Desert Island Discs last night. Ever one of my favourite comic actors - not forgetting The Voice of Kipper - it transpires that his favourite composer is ... you guessed it ... Frank Zappa. In fact, he went so far as to say he'd trade in the entire works of Shakespeare for Zappa's back catalogue. Furthermore, he admitted that a desert island was probably the only place he could enjoy the music - his wife and daughter walking out of the room the moment a track begins. (Sounds familiar ...).

In celebration I bung You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore Vol. One into the car stereo and sail through the low lying stratus shrouding the Ring humming along to Sofa and The Mammy Anthem. I've probably said it before but I'll say it again, no one's music affects me as much as Zappa's - that immediate feeling of being plugged back in to whatever energy he was tapping into.

Have a listen to Clunes (you can track it down on the BBC Radio 4 website/archive). He's a Good Bloke.

(& Nelly - if you're reading this - I know I owe you an e-mail).

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

"Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:"

(Craig Raine, A Martian Sends a Postcard Home)

This has always been my favourite line by Raine - something to do with the sly name-checking of the band of the Sixties. Yet now I see that what had appeared mere poetic whimsy is - in fact - perfectly true. Good old stratus, as Gavin P-P explains. The clouds coming - literally - down to earth.

As was the case driving along the Ring this morning (7:55 am, a little later than usual on account of the holiday and a sneaky swim before breakfast). The road dips and there shrouding the trees and tarmac a band of obscurity.

Such mists! Such fruitfulness!

Monday, September 26, 2011

__________

& more just fiddling around ...

_________

fiddling about this evening

the sushi banquet

belgianwaffle

(learning to make California Rolls)

thanks for the photos to Yuko & Mark

2:50pm (now)

altocumulus stratiformis undulatus/ perlucidus.

7:30 am (this morning driving out of Brussels)

altostratus undulatus - beautiful bands of mauve & rose stretching out across the sky. I'd seen this for so many years but only now know the 'what' and a little of the 'why'. A good feeling to have.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

the sky 7:28

Stratocumulus ... " a patch of low clumpy clouds is just called stratocumulus" (p 94).

Noticing that as I write & break off to read a paragraph the mauve-grey mass is now lit on the top left edges. (Do clouds have edges?) Darkening below but gilding the top fringe.

Right now a faintly pink burst of white of one cloud framed by the darker masses above and below. & I think autocumulus forming higher up. A very, very slow ease leftwards towards the rising sun which is the source of light on the left edges.

Later, at breakfast, L. notices England passing by in the sky. Where did it go?

"The green leaves of the tulips on my desk
like grass light on flesh,
and a green-copper steeple
and streaks of cloud beginning to glow.
I can't get over
how it all works together ..."

(James Schuyler, 'February')

HAMLET: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?

POLONIUS: By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.

HAMLET: Methinks it is like a weasel.

POLONIUS: It is backed like a weasel.

HAMLET: Or like a whale?

LORD POLONIUS: Very like a whale.

HAMLET: Then I will come to my mother by and by. They fool
me to the top of my bent. I will come by and by.

(Hamlet, III, ii)

"I want to be able to draw clouds"

(John Ruskin) - see my post 17th August 2010

Jamie and Nina sitting at the window, staring up in the clouds, pointing out people. (Anthony Minghella, Truly Madly Deeply)

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Fnac is selling off a series of discs by Brad Meldhau - someone I'd never heard of either by name or sound. I take advantage of the offer and take three: Art of the Trio Vol. Two, elegiac cycle and this. The CD covers are perhaps a little too precious and insistent: Chet Baker ... Bud Powell ... Glenn Gould ... are names that spring to mind and the liner notes - by Brad himself - are dangerously close to Jarrett at his most posturing. However ... the music is spot on. In Vol. One I'm particularly taken with 'Blackbird'- his arrangement of the Beatles song.

cloud drawing (coming up to 9 a.m.)

Bands - no swathes - of cirrocumulus - looks high up - stretching far out across the city & overhead. A decisive line of jet stream* like a minimalist rainbow running from the roof of the apartment & arching over behind the roof of newt door. As I write it's beginning to dissolve, a slow white bleed into blue. In places the cirrocumulus is more weft-like - as if partially erased, suspended second thoughts, a hasty gesture of start again. Scrubbings out - where the eraser is the cloud itself. Self cancellation in mid-air.

& leaving the pool, I looked up & saw wefts : pulled apart fragments of Swiffer dusters. Looking in the book this might be cirrocumulus lacunosus?

* & I learn a new word: contrail for this phenomenon

For once the publishing cliche - "a book that will change your life" - is true. This is a precious volume. I'd heard about it from the Cloud Appreciation Society website but assumed (wrongly) that it was only available to members. In fact, a geographer colleague had a copy & graciously passed it on to me to read. I can't recommend it highly enough - well, up to at least 40,000 feet (round about the top of an angry cumulonimbus).

It's learned - but wears its learning lightly. There are lovely asides and digressions which make it clear we're talking about more than clouds: it's a way of looking and thinking about life. Taking time, changing the direction of vision, lifting the eyes above street level and mundane preoccupations. (And I notice that Pretor-Pinney is involved with The Idler).

The implications of this volume stretch far, far across the horizon. Simply look up and there they are - and you don't need an App.. How good is that?