h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dear Journal,

I think I am in love with you, ,and therefore I wish to communicate with you on levels both deep and not so deep, like shallow.

That's not the best start, ,considering, this week, I am musing upon the subject of communication. I am hoping that this might lead me to the AWW or something. I can feel ideas crystallizing. Just checking out my crystals here, though.

Communication

In the 80s, there was this idea going around that the left side of the brain is to do with logic and language and reason and analysis and order and science and rational thinking etc and the right side of the brain was more about the non linear approach, the creative side, the emotional side, often associated with artists and dreamers and seers and such like.

Although I always wanted to be a right brained artist. A logical artist. Like learn maths and science and things. See the pattern of universe through numbers perhaps.

And then it was cool to be balanced. Good left brain, right brain balance, that was the way to health, if not wealth. .

I'm not sure about the left brain, right brain theory, but I am still into balance. Nothing like a bit of balance, that's what I reckon, when walking the tightrope of life. The what? .

So, with communication, be it through straight practical talking, or flaky spiral word paintings, I find that ...

....I find that I have to go eat lunch. Hey, guess what, journal, I've hardly started yet, so I will be back.

Not the journal, so . Listening at the keyhole, here.

Hope you're back soon Cactuscafe! I also often think of the tightrope walk as a metaphor for life. It's a balance but it is inherently unstable ... you keep having to re-balance yourself.

Hey brothers-in-art .

Yes, continuous re-balancing, in an inherently unstable circumstance, like Life.

Need coffee. .

So then one has to consider quote TS Eliot from Burnt Norton, which leads into incredible mystical inner things, for some, the heart of the matter .. and ..

. What? Inner things? . I wish I was an essay writer, who could write intelligent works of illuminating clarity and insight, all in amazing inky calligraphy, or even on a keyboard , but hey well ... ....

I just remembered T.S. Eliot's Burnt Norton which my Dad used to read to me, and which is just such an incredible poem to me that I think I might faint right now.

Dear Journal, I'll be back in a minute, or maybe tomorrow.

Dear Journal,

I started to think about Communication, and then I realised that it was a subject as vast as Life itself, in fact it might even be Life itself, unless it isn't, and I realised that even miniscule particles communicate with each other, and although it might not get as emotional and huffy as human communication, it is still communication of sorts, sort of like laws of nature and some other things.

Anyway, the subject became so vast that I was about to fry my brain circuits, but I love it anyway, so I will just deal in scraps and snippets.

Radio, ah radio. 1960s. Sounds from that other world, which made way more sense than the trauma of the world around me. Crackle crackle. Ah, there's the music. That music from America! whoah. And from places beyond America, maybe other galaxies! Like a postcard from home, that true home, that other world. Magic! Listening to Radio Luxembourg pirate radio, on a tiny transistor concealed under the pillow at boarding school.

Can I venture in here, because you inspired me this morning? (Apology for the intrusion. )

Your reference to the 'still pont of the turning world' set me off. Then when you talked about 'inky calligraphy', what sprang to my mind was this old song:

http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/l/o/loveofgo.htm

The writer of this hymn was inspired to do it because he found the last verse written in pencil - on the wall of a mental hospital. I've seen the pictures of Hellingly. I always thought of these words on the wall of a place like that, and, well, you see where I'm going...

It turns out the verse is from 'Akdamut', an old Aramaic poem that is recited by Ashkenazi Jews on the holiday of Shavuot. Shavuot commemorates the giving of the Torah.

You can listen to somebody read it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2jFt6kAl30

'Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made...
To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry...'

This image must really inspire all of us. It's in the Koran, as well, or so I read:

“Were the trees that are in the earth pens, were the sea ink with seven more seas to swell its tide, the words of God would not be spent” (Sura 31, verse 27)

I thought that was cool, and that maybe you'd enjoy knowing that. At least it means we'll never run out of things to write about.

Ah yeh oh yeh hah! The radiowave on butterfly wings flutters through the luminous night to speak to me! what?? ah yes, crackle crackle inspire inspire Hellingly?? incredible, that's the message, and those are the lines, and erm. thankyou.

Dear Journal, have you got any coffee? I approach a night of inky musing, lit by swirly sparklestar symphonic thoughtwaves.

.

Dear Journal,

For some strange reason , I have been writing a story about communication through art, especially art that doesn't really make sense in an obvious way hahah can't imagine why I am interested in that. .



Directions

My friend Jay is a musician and composer, who plays keyboards and a synthesizer.



He used to play in a band, but they parted company after he launched into a spontaneous fifteen minute synth solo during a show. One reviewer said it was like listening to an FM radio which had been dropped into a patchouli scented bubblebath.



However, Jay continues to compose his own music. His creations are guided by what he describes as a see-in-the-dark-creative-spark, to which he has an undying loyalty, untarnished by the lure of fame, or the risk of rejection.



His work is so obscure, and yet so disarmingly enchanting, that most people find it is impossible to endure for more than three minutes, without flipping into strange science fiction type daydreams or writing weird reviews about radios and bubblebaths or suchlike.



One time Jay said to me that he would rather his art held meaning for one person, rather than ten people, or even five hundred people. I was a bit confused by this at the time, but I think it was his way of being realistic.



The other night there was an open-mic themed arts event in town.

Contributors were invited to read a poem or a story, perform a theatre piece, or create whatever they had in mind, provided it was no more than seven minutes long.

The theme was Directions.



Jay had booked his slot, and had written a synth piece especially for the occasion.

I went along as audience.

There were some magical happenings on the stage that night. It seems that the theme of Directions strikes a chord deep within the heart of many an artist.



End of Part One

Part Two

I was a little anxious when it was Jay's turn to take to the stage. I was wondering what kind of chords the theme would inspire in him.



He switched on his synth, smiled endearingly at the audience, bowed, and introduced his piece.





And then he played his way through six and a half minutes of uncompromising sonic textures, which for some reason reminded me of walking around in the lurid light of a 24 hr supermarket late on Christmas Eve, with a headache, looking for throat lozenges.

Part Three

There is always that strange half hour at the end of an arts event, when everyone gets together for a drink. Once the spotlights are switched off, and the stage goes dark, it is as if a spell is broken, and you can begin to feel tired, wired, inspired or completely dejected.



Jay and I were standing on the edge of the room. He was watching a small crowd of people who were clustering around a couple of the star performers.

I thought I sensed the ghost of a deep yearning in him, but perhaps it was just my imagination. It is natural to want to be a star, even for one night, but I hoped that his see-in-the-dark-creative-spark wasn't going to fail him.



I felt the need to get out of there fast, and I wanted to take Jay with me. I began to look around for the exit.



said a voice to my left. .

An intense young man had approached Jay, and was speaking to him passionately.

he continued.


said Jay enthusiastically .




The young man looked confused. This part didn't seem quite as symbolic or deeply relevant to his life. He became even more confused when Jay asked him if he was planning to visit the Town Hall in the near future.

He shook Jay's hand and made a rapid exit.



said Jay.



I replied I said.

And we went out into the night.



I'm not sure how to conclude this story. Perhaps it has no conclusive direction, or, if it does, I am lost as to how to word it.

I am sure that Jay could show me the way.



The End

I love these h2g2 smileys. I had only learned how to use a computer a few weeks before I joined the site in 05, so I was amazed by instant access to computer graphics (still am).

Not only that, but I came to the site by an unusual route (The AWW was recommended to me by a writer friend, who reckoned it was my only hope and my only cure. hahah ) so, although I had heard of the late great Douglas Adams, I had never read Hitchhiker's Guide.

I read the five part trilogy for the first time last year, in fact, , and now have all the radio plays on CD...

.... but it meant that for my first five years on the site, the smileys, (which I now know have some relation to the books, at least some of them do, I think, ),were totally abstract creations!

Because I inhabit a rather erm .. abstract artistic brainspace myself, this was just up my street! yay! Fried egg piccies and biros , and cupcakes and tiny horses!.

I love them just as much as I ever did, and for me, of course, they will always be, first and foremost, marvellously surreal.

I like making pictures with them, that make sense to no-one, apart from me and random passing pugs. .




(heads off to check smiley index, to see if any new ones have appeared).

I still don't who who designed these wonders, but thankyou anyway, you have made an old lady very happy. .

If anyone reading this happens to know these people, could you pass on this message? Thanks.

I have one word for you:

Mammoth

Fine mammoth

Mammoth?????? I don't have a mammoth in my smiley index animal section. This is most worrying. Help! An un-indexed mammoth smiley just arrived on my screen. Perhaps it has escaped from another index, although I don't think there are any other smiley indexes on any other planet. .

I just read all the write ups for every smiley. I never read all the write ups before. . What a literary masterpiece.

I think I might give up everything and pitch a small tent in the smiley index, living on and s and pulling Christmas s with -hallucinations, while I am waiting for the to show up.

Park here: 84?thread=8414980" >F22114980?thread=8285435&latest=1

Dear Journal,

I miss you so much. I have been camped here in the smiley index for just over half an hour now, waiting for the mammoth . I have just been having a Christmas party with a snowman who keeps telling me he knew my cousin at college, which is weird really.

Things can get weird here, in the smiley index.

Wait! A sighting! .

Oh no, it was just the shadow of a passing idea.

I will keep in touch, if I can .....

Dear Journal,

While I was writing to you, something weird happened. Sort of like a strange communication from this person that I know, who might know people who know about the mammoth , and maybe hamsters s also, so now I have to go.

hah! and hah! again.

Dear Journal, I have learned many things about many things in my wayward, yet hopeful life, but now I know the history of smileys which makes me very happy. Was the history of smileys always there in the smiley index area (where I am currently living, in a tent), or has it just appeared?

Sometimes I feel as if I am possessed by the spirit of a tiny horse , which is irrelevant.

I have no time right now to explain this paragraph, but it all makes much more sense than you might, or might not, think. . A lot of it is to do with a mammoth that escaped.

Dear Journal,

I have returned to you from my camping holiday in the smiley index, and brought back with me some , some s and an almost-authentic b/w photo of a mammoth-footprint in the snow. I think I might go back tomorrow, on another holiday.

I am being quite stupid at the moment, in case you hadn't noticed, but I am deepdown inspired, and marvelling at marvels, and marbles, and candles and tree roots, and eyes and skies and momentary moon whispers.

I am still considering the subject of communication, although right now I appear to have broken out in completely unintelligible prose poetry, all about patterns and blue and the way to you, all about smiles and starlings and risks and kisses, and silhouette dancers on the edge of the world.

Dear Journal,

Sheesh! Now I'm all of a steam in the dreamstream, ,and I wish I hadn't written Directions now, but I'm glad I did, and the AWW is so great, I love it even more now, even though I got a bit heated.

So now, dear Journal I am going to write my kind of prose poetry all over you, within the bounds of artistic and site integrity of course, just because I have to believe in my art, against the odds. hmm. I'm not trying to impress anyone though, or be a great writer, or be part of a movement to produce groundbreaking new writing. I don't do pressure.

Wah, I need a mammoth to sing me lullabies. .

Ah yes, and to me the moment is a painting, with all its glory and its silhouette, all its strange derangement and rearrangement, all its beauty and mirth and worth and senseless idiocy,

And I will walk those flickering neon avenues of moment, where the brokenhearted poets whisper their proud poetry from the cracks in the rainbow, and create new words for new colours.

exit pursued by a . (I can still laugh, , even when I am being incredibly intense about everything)

Dear Journal,

If you will be my canvas, I will pay your taxes, and your taxis.

I like that line I wrote yesterday. Something about a crack in the rainbow, and poets finding new words for new colours.

Hmm, now I want to share that line with my h2 writer friends. I love the idea of us trading ideas, and sparks, and inspiring each other. I'm such a pain in writing circles. I don't mean to be. Perhaps I just get spooked by circles. Maybe I should change the shape of things. Writing spirals. . Welcome to my writing spiral. That would be a good story. The Woman from the Writing Spiral. .

Sounds like a Leonora Carrington painting. I wish. Ah Leonora I love you. .

I had another idea also for a story. About a weird plant called Song of my Soul. That's a funny character. I like having a laugh about all my intensity. hmm. . Grows in a garden with Forget-Me-Nots and Love Lies Bleeding. This weird plant. What does it look like? Keep it out of flower shows. . Oh no! Its the Song of my Soul, with its peculiar blue flower and lime green leaves with caterpillars on them, and tangly roots, and ....