Following, Euclid and Writing

The weirdest thing.  I'm as egotistical as the next guy.  I want to be liked.  I want to be interesting. I want to be read.  I want someone, anyone to follow my blogs.  But I'll be the first to admit my sphere of writing is small, my ideas smaller, my voice, tinny.  No grand vision here although I do venture out on the metaphysical branch now and again until I hit the wall that words and my tiny little brain can't breach (as well as mix my metaphors).  So imagine my surprise when I found I had a follower.  No, not here.  Not where I do take occasional flights of fancy but on the Balthazar blog.  Even I don't find the Balthazar blog interesting.  It's a record of where we are in our training.  Balthazar, dear redheaded boy that he is, is a horse! 

Have gone to this chap's blog.  He lives in Manchester.  He's a bit of a philosopher, well read, writes a hell of a lot better than I.  Can't see what possible interest he's got in my horse.  Did he make a mistake?  Did he mean to follow this blog and push the wrong button?  Or, as I see he's listed The Dice Man as one of his favourite books, did he just roll it, and go with the outcome because that's what you do no matter how little sense it  makes at the time?  I don't know.  It's a puzzle.  Almost feel like writing him to tell him of his mistake but really in hopes that he'll explain what his interest is in an off the track thoroughbred of no particular distinction.

Here's another puzzle.  Was half watching an Alan Davies documentary on mathematics.  I know.  Mathematics, about as interesting as watching dog poo turn white (of which there's a word for that, dog poo turning white, but I can't remember what it is).  The only reason I had it on was I was working on the latest drawing (that's a whole 'nother post) and I like Alan Davies.  Anyway, this professor was enthusing about prime numbers and how Euclid discovered something really amazing about them.  Euclid devised this system to show that prime numbers are infinite.  The professor had Alan multiply 2 x 3 x 5 x 7 x 11 which comes to 2310.  Euclid adds 1 which makes it 2311 and a new prime.  Isn't that amazing?  Isn't that wonderful?  By adding 1 to multiplications of prime you get a new prime.  I think that's what he said, what he meant (otherwise what was the point?).  So I multiplied 11 x 13.  !43 + 1 = 144.  Wait a minute.  That's divisible by 2.  What have I done wrong.  Does it need to be more than two primes then?  No, that doesn't work either.  I think what was meant but not explained is that this equation always starts at the beginning, with 2 and goes on ad infinitum.  

Which just goes to prove my equation, me plus math equals mind numbing boredom.  Finer minds would say that what cannot be understood is bound to bore.   I agree.

Was a bit rough in my criticism yesterday of poor Gyles Brandreth and his Oscar Wilde book.  I haven't changed my mind but recall that old adage, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.  I wasn't in a foul mood or anything.  Wouldn't normally waste time reliving something, if not unpleasant, at least not memorable.  What's the use of that - rather like taking a fingernail to that blister on your heel just to check that it's still there.  Anyway, in a salve to my troubled conscience I vow never to critique, as in criticize, another book. 

Sometimes think about writing another book.  I'm not driven to write as I am to draw.  I wasn't one of those children who made up stories to entertain her friends.  I drew.  I wanted to learn to read and write so I could make the illegible marks my older sister made legible.  I loved the varied shape and size of them.   I used to pretend I knew how to write and would make lots of marks on a sheet of paper.  Found that if I lay my head on the table and looked at the scribblings from that angle they looked like real letters.  Once I did learn to read and write, the world of books opened and I soon forgot the magic of the making of letters.  Even so, every once in a while there's this itch, an idea, a vision.  The problem is that's as far as it goes.  Starting a book, having an idea, is easy.  Finishing, that's another story.

Not the Oscar Wilde

How can one body create so much fluid?  As a somewhat grosser reflection of the rain we're (finally!) getting, I am filling tissue after tissue with ... stuff.  But I wear this head cold proudly.  It's the first since I quit smoking 7 months ago.  I'm whizzing through the stages like greased lightning (or like a phlegm slick greasy pole); sore throat, done, sinus and dripping nose, in progress, congestion and coughing, got it.  If I was still smoking I'd be in real trouble.  As it is I'll have this sucker licked in a few more days.

Was pleasantly surprised to find yoga helps alleviate symptoms.  Maybe it's all the inversions that stir things up.  Haven't practiced today as I tackled the weekly verandah clean so feel a bit grungier and gummed up than usual. 

Must be easily bored in my old age.  Just finished reading a mystery with Oscar Wilde as the detective and found it wanting.  Stumbled on it in the library and thought, hey ho!  This should be a ripper but it was as dull as the daily bed making.  Managed to drag myself to within two pages of the end and then gave up.  Expired of boredom. 

So why?  Why did I find this book so awful?  The book is called Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile and the author is Gyles Brandreth.  I think it was awful because I didn't believe it.  They were like pawns being moved around the stage (and much of the action took place within the theatre) to advance the story but I didn't care.   They didn't elicit empathy or sympathy.  There were just there, moving here, moving there, saying this, doing that.  Even references to incest, opium, laudanum, hashish, Sarah Bernhardt and self flagellation couldn't whip this dead horse to life. 

Just looked up Mr. Brandreth and see he's very well known in the UK as an entertainer, politician, writer, broadcaster and one man show.  Well, gee.  I'm obviously out of step.  The reviews of his Oscar Wilde books are Wildely complimentary.   So pay no attention to me and my opinion.  I'm in the minority.

As a contrast, I finished Stephen Fry's The Fry Chronicles and loved it.  Funny, erudite, painfully honest (who admits publicly to picking their nose?) yet tinged with  melancholia that his humour can't quite hide.  I am prejudiced of course.  I've had a crush on Stephen Fry since his Blackadder days, notwithstanding his homosexuality (he did say in the book he was only 90% gay so there's always hope).  Last year the ABC ran Jeeves and Wooster, which predates Blackadder, and Fry as Jeeves was understated perfection. I was fated to love Jeeves and Wooster even without Fry as I discovered Wodehouse years ago. It's a love Fry and I share.  Isn't that touching?  Of course I'm happily married and he's (90%) gay so it won't happen but I still adored his book.