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| A blink and you miss it pop up show in St George's Fields as part of my walk around the site that was part of the Jane's Festival nb no gravestones were harmed in the putting up of this show as they were either propped up against or hung with black ribbon - but my husband did get quite cold whilst keeping an eye on them for me. |
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| This months post it note - looking a bit empty but that's because I've been really busy at times.
So what have I been up to since I last updated three weeks ago? I've taken part in some academic research into gothic subculture and its origins, led people around St George's Field as part of the Jane's Festival and in the process ticked off one of the things on my bucket list - namely have a pop up show in a former cemetery - see image above, particpated in Reimagining The Gothic 2017 at Sheffield University (and somewhat stupidly forgot to take a picture of my pop up show there - doh!!) and so seen the fantastic film 'Gothic Heroines' made as a result of research by the Melodrama Research group at Kent University - you can see it here , been to the opening of the very lovely exhibition at Leeds College of Art which features Ann O'Donnells wonderful jewellery, sat through another Eurovision Song Contest (one of the highlights of the year for me) and delivered a paper at the Cemeteries Colloquium at York University.
So all in all - quite busy.....and I continue to be quite busy as I've got a paper to prepare for the Pespectives in History Conference at Huddersfield University in a fortnight, as well as trying to get in lots of reading before I formally start PhD studies in September. A thing that makes me feel a mix of eek and yay - yay continuing to outweigh the eek but the eek is there nonetheless. So it has been a mix of the P's so to speak - preparation, procrastination - usually in the form of pressing the refresh key on social media or getting distracted by trains of thought but also a little bit of painting too - I painted some plain wooden picture frames in two of the traditional colours of Victorian mourning - namely black and purple and I do find the application of paint to surfaces a soothing thing to do. I wish I could transfer what I see in my minds eye through my fingers onto surfaces using paint but I can't - hence my use of photography as a medium instead. Though as ever I am trying to show/create images in a way that isn't just the traditional two dimensional print on a wall in a frame. I've also been watching lots of films - The Cars That Ate Paris (1975) a beautifully sinister and disturbing film, The Legend of Hell House (1973) which was v good in places and had the most fantastic set design and a soundtrack recognisable in many a sample - most notably Orbital's 'I don't know you people' from 1999, Mindhorn (2016) which really made me chuckle, Dracula (1957) - an old favourite in which Peter Cushing is simply wonderful and I've been listening to/watching lots of interviews with John Waters - there's plenty about at the moment as he is promoting his latest book 'Make Trouble'. I adore him as much as ever, and he continues to be an inspiration. So there's been lots of food for thought - both in terms of learning new information/new ways of looking at things and in terms of presenting my research and arguments in as professional a manner as possible. One new way of looking at things has arisen from being asked my use of 19th century literary texts in my research - primarily Gaskells' Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1855) and I'm still mulling over this, another suggestion from the colloquium was there is a firm of undertakers in London who have a museum - I shall try and visit but in the meantime I have also emailed one of the oldest firms in Leeds to see if they too have an archive I could consult. I need to think about my methods of working - partly for the methodolgy part of a PhD but also in a how best can I work kind of way - I need to reorder my workroom to make it a bit more efficient and also get better at switching social media off whilst I'm working so I don't get distracted so easily. I'm still not listening to or watching the news - beyond looking at the front page of the BBC website and picking bits up from Facebook and Twitter and I am finding that much more conducive to working as it's doesn't have the negative impact it was doing on my mental health. One thing I am thinking about a lot is the creative writing class I'm going to and the fact that a lot of the language to describe writing - eg viewpoint, is the same as the language used in photography but I'm not sure which came first as a descriptor. I've also been doing some writing that is purely imagined - as opposed to writing up stuff that I've done like this, or notes or presentations and I've been really enjoying it - have even *gasp* managed to finish a couple of pieces. I like the way it's making me think - the same as I like conferences for meeting other people, hearing new approaches, honing arguments, and for getting research tips or feedback. Purely for pleasure I'm reading Music for Chameleons (1980 ed) by Truman Capote at the moment - I picked up a copy in Meanwood Community Shop a few weeks ago - oh it is exquisite writing. It's a collection of short stories and they are gorgeously descriptive and I shall be using this quote from the story Hidden Gardens 'the voice of the hour bell tarries in the greening air, shivering as it subsides into the sleep of history' - utterly wonderful stuff. I was reading it purely for pleasure but now it has become part of my thinking Right I'd best crack on with stuff - need to do a bit of tidying and a to do list......and as they kind of used to say on Sesame Street - todays blog post has been brought to you by the letters P and the numbers 1855 CE..... |
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