Sunday, May 11, 2014

When the Bearded Lady Sings

The winner of the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest was the Austrian singer Tom Neuwirth in his alter ego of the bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst. We know drag, but millions of TV viewers wondered: what's with the beard?



The essay has been moved to my personal website:

When the Bearded Lady Sings

 

Friday, May 9, 2014

Life in the Shadows


I like to work with themes when I go around and take random photos with my smartphone. The paradox of a glimpse of order in chaos is inspiring. Here is a bunch of photos on the theme of shadows.

Shadows are intriguing. They form sort of mirror images, rather obscure ones, as if reluctantly revealing something essential about the objects causing them. The chaos hiding behind order, if you will. The yin accompanying every yang (the Chinese duality originally refers to the shady and the sunny side of an object).

Shadows also remind us that the universe is a dynamic relation between what is and what isn't. As Plato pointed out in the cave, sometimes we mix up the two. We come and we go, casting lots of shadows in between, tracks of the fact that we once were. But these tracks are as evanescent as we are. It all slips away into the void.

I started taking shadow photos in 2007, but the additions were scarce. A couple of weeks, though, I took a stroll in Berlin when the city bathed in splendid sunlight, creating lots of sharp shadows. So, I had a go on my theme again. After that, I thought I had enough for this little exhibition.

Click on the images to see them enlarged.



















Thursday, February 20, 2014

Chapter One, Two, Three...

Right now, I'm working on a new novel. For fun, and to trigger me, I post every chapter of it on my website, one after the other as they are completed (well, their first draft, anyway). Here is Chapter One:

 If you read it, please give me suggestions on any editing it might need.

I will not tell you what the novel is about. It's much better that you find out gradually, and probably more fun for you. At this point, I'ver reached Chapter Nine, and that's where things really start to unfold... ;)

English is not my native tongue, so it's not easy to write a book in this language - especially not a novel, where every nuance is so important. But the challenge is irresistible. Better to fail utterly than never to try.

I will tell you this much:
Actually, this story started as a screenplay, years ago. I completed it and it might be swimming around somewhere in Hollywood, if it hasn't sunk to the bottom of oblivion.

Anyway, I decided to make it a novel, but I want to keep as much as possible of the kind of straightforward storytelling of a screenplay. You may notice this in the style of the text and in the perspective of how the story is told.

I also found that I need to change the plot quite a lot from the screenplay version. There are some loose ends, to say the least. I'm in the process of that and expect to have several serious complications to sort out on the way. Wish me luck.