When there are writers like this in the world. People, thinkers, feelers. Why bother interjecting, commenting, writing.

This is what there is to say. And this is how to say it.

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I’ve been a bit slow and thin on the posting of late. Things are a bit busy and hectic around here. I hope to be more settled soon, and back posting.

In the meantime, I’ve got a story coming out very soon in Aeon Press’s Box of Delights anthology, alongside a whole bunch of other wonderful writers. The book has gone to press; here’s a sneak peek at the cover:

Launched! http://johnrichardkenny.com/2011/11/09/launch-of-box-of-delights/

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Sometimes, I love reading the weekend paper. This is from an article by Lance Richardson in the travel section of SMH. The article is about visiting a working ranch in Montana:

Later, recognising my struggle to fully command the horse, a fellow rider pulls up beside me and says in that vague way of the cowboy: “There is a void between a man and a horse. That void will be filled, either by the man or by the horse. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

 

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The best thing about being a chair at a writers festival is that free books arrive in the post. That, and the opportunity to talk to some wonderful writers about their craft, and participate in one of the friendliest writers festivals in Australia.

In the last week, the following lovely books have arrived in my inbox, and I’m busily reading them all and taking notes in preparation for the panel in the early evening of Saturday, 10 September.

Kate Morton The Distant Hours

Nick Earls The Fix

S J Watson Before I Go To Sleep

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If you want to eat cupcakes, first you must learn to bake cupcakes

Chocolate cupcakes, of course!

Then, you must eat them by the fire, while playing war games involving the constant battle for the territory of Greenland, and sipping tea.

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Svanhamnen by Jon Bauer, 1908

This image is one of five illustrations Jon Bauer did for the 1908 publication of Helena Nyblom’s Svanhamnen. Bauer was a wonderful Swedish artist and illustrator, best known for his illustrations of folk and fairy tales. His detailed, imaginative and emotionally engaging compositions influenced other artists working on children’s illustration, notably Arthur Rackham, Kay Neilsen and Edmund Dulac.

I adore this particular image – the story is similar to that of the selkie; the swan maid has lost her swan skin, which allows her to transform into a swan and fly with her sisters. The autumn leaves fall like tears around her as she stands on the hilltop – as close to the sky as she can be – watching her sisters strike out across the sky. The opposing directions and movements are suggestive: The swan maiden is tied to the earth; her sisters free to fly away. The heavy black brocade of her dress in stark contrast to the pale, slim shapes of her swan-sisters. Do swans migrate in the autumn/winter: certainly the illustration seems to me to suggest a leave-taking. The sister left behind alone to mourn for her old form, and her old life.

Esther Ellquist & Jon Bauer

The image seems, to me, imbued with delicacy and sadness. Bauer’s wife, Esther Ellquist, who was also an artist, was the model for many of his paintings and illustrations – the illustration of the svanhamnen seems, I think, to be modelled on her.

Bauer was a prolific, though short-lived, artist. It’s a shame his work isn’t better known in the English-speaking world, though it has made some surprising inroads. The aesthetic of the Jim Henson/Frank Oz film The Dark Crystal was inspired by his work, particularly his illustrations of trolls (an influence that extends, too, into the later film starring David Bowie as the Goblin King: The Labyrinth). Bauer also influenced modern artists and illustrators of the magical realm, such as Brian Froud.

Bauer died very young – at 35. It was 918: the world was at war, and things were difficult at home, too. Bauer and his wife had come close to divorce. Bauer was struggling with depression and self-doubt. He and his family decided to move to a new home, to start afresh in Stockholm. He booked passage on the Per Brahe ferry. Bauer, his wife, and their three year old son, Bengt, were all drowned when the ship was wrecked and sank in Lake Vattern.

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Sunday was a lazy day: the first we’ve had in a long time. We stoked the fire, read the papers, indulged ourselves in a long breakfast of conversation. And later, I baked cupcakes. I used to bake cupcakes every week, for the children. It was a ritual I loved. Something simple and domestic and almost meditative in its ease. As a child, cupcakes were only for birthdays. And for me they still retain all the glamorous associations of birthday parties. Polished shoes and ribboned dresses. Coloured paper napkins, festive paper ribbons and balloons. Party games and sparklers.

Today’s cupcakes were made with tangelo, to satisfy a craving and fill our kitchen with the scent of baking. Ever since we moved to citrus road we’ve had an increased delight in growing, cooking and eating citrus.

Tangelos are sometimes also called honeybells: I like the sound of a honeybell cupcake. They’re a hybrid of tangerines and either pomelos or grapefruits. They’re a fairly modern invention: said to have been first produced in 1911, in the United States. Before the first world war; when oranges, and other citrus, were one of the primary crops in Southern California. Theywere shipped in wooden fruit crates with beautiful paper labels: colour lithographs pasted onto the crates that had to be used to ship the fruit across the continent on the new trans-continental railroad lines.

Tangelos are very juicy, with very little flesh. Like a pocket of fruit juice. This makes them perfect for cupcakes – I used the juice and rind to flavour the cake, and the cream cheese frosting, and decorated the tops with a final few ribbons of rind.

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We went back, on a quieter, cooler day, and with beautiful boy in tow. Here we are contemplating the horizon. Boy, ever the gentlemen, is the one with the backpack.

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Next year my novel, Rupetta, will be released through Tartarus Press. It’s been a long time coming, which is a story all on its own. The novel’s main character is a four hundred year old mechanical woman – not a robot – who comes to life/consciousness in 1619. I chose 1619 – November 1619 to be precise – because it’s when Descartes had the dreams that inspired his life work. Descartes being both the author of the infamos Cartesian cogito and, reputedly, the owner of an early automata: a little girl perhaps constructed after the death of his daughter.

Descartes' "Wooden Daughter." Illustration for Newnes' Pictorial Knowledge (1932).

After his death, a rumour arose that while travelling by ship to Sweden at the behest of Queen Christina, Descartes had told the captain and crew that he was travelling with his daughter. No one aboard ship, however, had heard or seen her. This is hardly surprising since, by the time Descartes set sail for Sweden Francine had been dead for nine long years. She had died at the age of five from scarlet fever. Finally, overcome with curiosity, and on the night of a terrible storm, the sailors entered Descartes’ cabin and discovered a cabinet, inside which was a living doll: a replica of his dead daughter. The sailors – superstitious by nature as sailors are in stories of this kind – took the mechanical Francine up on deck and threw her overboard. Did the storm abate? Were the sailors fears assuaged by her sinking into the sea to become a rusty hulk on the ocean floor? Who knows: the story is almost certainly apocryphal, though does appear to have had an interest in automata. One of his correspondents – Poisson – asserts that around 1619 (but before he had his dreams) Descartes planned to build automaton driven by magnets. Specifically, he had envisaged constructing a dancing man, a spaniel chasing a pheasant, and a flying pigeon. Whether the mechanical daughter was the cause of the storm, or her sacrifice appeased the gods of the sea or not, the ship sailed safely to Sweden, where Descartes served as a kind of personal tutor/intellectual companion to Queen Christina for six months: until his death on 11 February, 1650.

It’s a fitting myth for a philosopher who argued that, though everything else could perhaps be false, created and presented to him, perhaps, by a demonic other the one thing that could not be doubted was that he was a thinking being: even if he was deceived, there was a ‘he’ that was being deceived and that that ‘he’, when all else was stripped away, had one essential characteristic. It was able to think. Descartes, therefore, was an instance of something – some creature, some consciousness – who engaged in thinking.

I find stories such as this, and the provocative images they conjure up, fascinating. While I was writing Rupetta, I kept a scrapbook of automata: both people and animals. Fakes and myths, rumours and realities. I thought I might open up a new thread/series of posts to share that research/interest (both complete and ongoing). As personal, peripatetic, and idiosyncratic as it is/was. ‘I think’ is true, even if everything I think is false: Cogito ergo sum. The mechanical Francine – whether a true or false story – is a riddle of consciousness like the writing automata who scrawled the Cartesian cogito on tablets for admiring audiences in the 18th century. Was she alive? Was she thinking? Did she dream of mechanical sheep? Was she, like her father, a thinking being? If so, then Descartes (like the inventors of other automata) was guilty of a strange and magical feat: he had usurped the role of the creator.

To begin, then, a couple of curiosities.

From 'Brought to Life' the Science Museum of London's History of Medicine Website

First, an artificial arm, manufactured somewhere between 1850 and 1910. The arm is made from steel and brass, with a leather upper arm. The arm was made for an amputee; probably a result of a wartime injury. Although the science museum curator’s notes call its appearance ‘sinister’, I think it’s rather beautiful in its slim, spare aesthetic. The back and palm of the hand are both decorated with a filigree pattern, and the fingers, with their long, curved fingertips, are – to my eye – strangely lovely.

The arm is quite flexible, with a spring at the elbow, a wrist that has some rotation as well as flexion, and fingers that curl and straighten.

The second of today’s curiosities is a karakuri ningyō (からくり人形): a Japanese mechanical puppet based on those first made during the Edo Period about 300 years ago. Below is a video made by Matthew Allard showing Hideki Higashino making and modelling contemporary karakuri ningyō. The video features a tumbler, an archer, and a lady-writer. (Writing is a consistent trope of automata across time and cultures, signifying as it does the performance of intellectual activity and calling into question the state of consciousness of the figure. Other common intellectual activities include performing music, and playing chess or other games requiring intellectual dexterity). Traditional karakuri were Butai karakuri (used in the theatre), Dashi karakuri (used in religious contexts, where they acted out traditional stories), and Zashiki karakuri (smaller automata used in the home). Karakuri were often powered by wound whalebone springs, weights and pulleys similar in appearance to those inside a large case clock, and cams and levers which were located either inside the karakuri, or concealed in a desk, cabinet or other piece of furniture.

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Damn! Why doesn’t music – or any other artfrom – truly sustain and nourish those who love it?

RIP Amy Winehouse.

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