small book pages
This has been a fairly good reading year, so far. I set myself the challenge of reading forty books and have now achieved this with weeks to go until the end of 2021! Forty is of course a modest number, but when you factor in all the things I do (full-time artist running of a household for three adults, carer for an adult child with special needs, serial maker of crafty things and I write this each week) I think I am happy with forty so far this year.
So now, do I set myself a new challenge target? I won’t. I will simply enjoy the rest of my reading year. I have discovered several new-to-me authors but have also re-read quite a few favourites. You can see my reading notes over on Goodreads.
**
I have recently gone back to using Flickr. It has been a few years. If you don’t know it, Flickr is a photo storage/sharing website and has been around for many years, before the likes of Instagram dominated social media (before the stranglehold of SM) . There was a time when Flickr was a happy, busy space filled with artists and makers sharing their work. There were groups and exchanges, and friends were made. Then Facebook etc… happened and we all became very distracted by the next shiny thing. So why go back to Flickr? Well, for one thing it is a quieter space and the pressure is off. I like looking at a far more leisurely pace. Instagram makes me anxious - the need to keep up, the feeling that I don’t want to miss someone’s ‘important post’.....
Flickr is a different kind of space. With a paid account there are no ads. There are no flashing, fast-speed videos and dancing kittens.I really cannot be doing with the clowning side of Instagram.
So yes, I am back to using Flickr. I am just finding my way around the place again. Despite following many people there I know many people have abandoned their accounts and are unlikely to return. No matter. There are still plenty of interesting photographs to look at. If you care to follow me please do. I have already started to share work over there before I post it on IG, so you may see things ahead of others - and you may very well see a lot more.
Instagram, as frustrating as it is, for now, still has my (divided) attention.
**
small book pages
Yesterday I was looking at photos on Flickr and came across a beautifully photographed still life of ‘happy mail’. There were various objects including a book. The book was titled: The Vintage Futurist and other stories by an author named Elizabeth Liebeskind. I saw that it was a Penguin Classic. The cover showed a stack of old books. Of course this book sparked my interest and I went looking - because of course it being a Penguin Classic it was going to be worthwhile finding out about……. I Googled but quickly hit a bit of a wall. I could not find the book online. So, a bit flummoxed, I told my daughter about it and Emily started searching for the book online also….. Can you see where we might be going here? The book, as wonderful as it sounds, does not exist.
I had this later confirmed by the photographer of the ‘happy mail’ and the person who had sent the mail to her. Turns out I had glanced at a postcard of a collage of a book! Now I look at it and can see it is not a book. It is a collage. But you know how it is, first impressions etc… And quite possibly I just wanted that book to be real.
But happy connections have been made and the collage artist has very kindly offered to send me a copy of the ‘Vintage Futurist’ postcard (we will make an exchange).
So what would The Vintage Futurist and other stories be about, I wonder? Possibly the title story could be: a woman finds a notebook of futurist hand written poems and original drawings in the wall cavity of her being-renovated home and she attempts to sell the book to a dealer. Only thing is: the dealer tells her the artist died five years prior to the dates scribbled in the book. So the book must be a fraud. But why would someone make a fraudulent notebook belonging to a minor figure in the futurist movement? hmmm
Any ideas? Nanowrimo is next month (write a novel during the month of November - a big online annual event). I know many people bend the rules a little and choose to write a collection of short stories instead. Will I write The Vintage Futurist and other stories? Or, seeing that I did not come up with that title myself, something else with equal appeal.
Answers on a postcard…..
Thanks for reading. Please subscribe to receive these studio notes via email each week.
I very much want to read The Vintage Futurist. I have just rejoined Flickr, I never really used it because Instagram was great before the videos and filters and celebrities and ads. I’ll stick with Instagram too but I need to get out with my cameras and start taking photos again and start putting them on Flickr. I’ve just been thinking about Instagram and what really annoys me about it is that something so good has become so trivial, pointless, irritating, in general it is like so much of modern life, what is so good is brought down to the lowest common denominator, dumbed down and monetised.
How interesting that you have returned to Flickr! I have thought about this many times recently, having one of the ‘abandoned’ accounts you speak of mainly because I forgot my login and couldn’t save it before it was deleted. I completely agree that it was a quieter site to spend time on, far more relaxing, and yet I stayed with IG because I feared that’s where everyone had gone. I grow more and more disenchanted with the algorithm/mind control of social media, not to mention the bot accounts that try to follow me, and yet do not want to lose track of the wonderful friends and artists I commune with there. I will reconsider.
I do hope you will consider writing the short stories, perhaps interspersed with some of your poetry? One of my favorite acquisitions of yours is the stitched book of poetry from years ago— it hangs on my studio wall and is so unique and one off! It delights me always! These efforts would also make a magnificent collector zine. You know that I am wild about your zines, as many of us seem to be! 😉