Start: 33250
Finish: 37018
Total: 3768 words, 232 short of daily target. Average 4170 and on track for 80,000 word target by October 1st. This includes research, fact checking, and editing for grammatical and spelling errors.
Not bad considering. Have just ratcheted the first Cerberus story on to the next phase with a bizarre and ritualistic double murder. One my hero has to come back from exile and not quite solve. Because there are some things beyond even his abilities.
Am resisting the temptation to read the newspapers, because bad news always takes my mind off what I should be doing; i.e. writing.
Late shift this evening, but I’ve been at Cerberus hammer and tongs today. The story is moving on, and I’ve spent a little time on an interlude for serious character development.
Beginning word count 28167
End session word count 32499
Close of play 4332 words
Averaging just over 4000 words per day excluding headings and formatting. Might have trouble keeping up the pace tomorrow as I have errands to run, but a break will give me time to think about how I link in the next story elements.
Update: Added a few more paragraphs after this evenings work shift. Final word count 33250. Total for the day; 5083. Birthdays and errands tomorrow, so I’ll be lucky if I make 3000 words. Time for bed.
Fell short of the four thousand word mark today at 3617. Close, but no cigar. Yesterday was 4212, so that averages out at a shade over 3900 words, excluding headings so far. However, the story is at a natural break part of the narrative with a nicely barbed narrative hook baited.
Tomorrow I move on to the next phase of the story which is mostly in note form, so cracking the 4000 might be a little easier.
Harper Vector are opening their books to new authors without agents for two weeks from the 1st to the 14th of October 2012. They are looking for new science fiction and fantasy authors for an assault on the eBook marketplace. I have a novel I’d like to submit, but the problem is it’s all notes and fragments, and there’s two weeks to go before the submission floodgates open.
No agent has seen fit to respond to my many missives about other work over the years, and I’m pretty sure my work has gone unread and straight into the shredder. No agent, and no publisher will even look at your work. Not even into their slush piles. However, there is a window of opportunity here, and I’m going for it. At a target of four thousand words a day starting yesterday.
Word count for the first novel in the Cerberus series started at 20338 16th September. Current word count 25982 Tuesday 18th September 08:40am Pacific Standard Time. 1500 pretty good words since 6:10am this morning. Another thousand before 10am when I go off to the day job, and another 1500 after I get home around 6pm. Add in cooking breakfasts, making tea and suppers for both Angie and I, cleaning kitchen, brushing dog, and acting as Angie’s home tech support, plus watching a movie with her, and I have a full day. Tonight’s movie fare will be the Bourne Supremacy.
I have to keep up this work rate for fourteen whole days. I’m currently out of my office and working in the kitchen almost full time. Which seems to work. Back in 1987 I put together a 40,000 word novella, ‘Machine’ from scratch in thirty days using an old Imperial Safari. So work rate isn’t a problem. Hodder and Stoughton did ask me about writing a series back then, but I felt the character of the ‘Machine’ didn’t have enough in him to justify extending the franchise. I still have the old MSS, and revisit it from time to time. Just to see if I can pick holes in it. Oddly enough, that was written in a kitchen too.
Right. 9am. Break over. Back to work.
The hardest part of bringing characters to light and bolting them into a riveting story is the opening and closing sequences. Those I have. The rest of the story is mostly a detective whodunnit with some serious sci-fi roots. I’ve also managed to get a handle on who Paul Calvin is. A psychic cop with a conscience in a crumbling society, but that is all I’m giving away on this blog.
A great rainbow watching day today. Especially down in Dodd Narrows. While I was preparing supper there was one full bow that was almost so bright it hurt the eyes. Then I looked to the right, there was a fainter but definite arc about eight or nine degrees away from it. A double bow.
Mostly at this point we switch off. Double rainbow, isn’t that pretty? Yet this afternoon I took time out to look more closely and discovered for myself the dusky but distinct bands of colour between the two bow shapes, faint and very smokey but most definitely real. A pity I haven’t a camera good enough to record them.
I know a rainbow is only a trick of angle and diffraction through falling rain, but to me there is something magical in these arcs of disassembled light. They tell us that no matter who we are or what we do there is always wonder to lift hearts from the sameness of the day to day. A Te Deum against tedium.
To notice these vague coloured shadows was something of a minor revelation to me, and just to check that my mind wasn’t playing tricks, while we were having supper, I asked Angie what she could see. She gave me an odd look, concentrated for a few moments and then the light of revelation shone in her eyes. “I’d never noticed that before.” She said.
“Well that makes two of us.” I replied. “Shadows between rainbows, who would have thought?”
Up until then we’d both been a bit crabby and not our usual cheerful selves, but that simple act of observation lifted the mood of the dinner table. Amazing what a simple trick of the light can do for the human soul.
They say all is fair in love and war. and the same rules seem increasingly to apply to publishing your own work. It appears some people think posting spurious negative reviews, under a spurious identity on Amazon and similar with authors in the same genre will boost their own popularity. Now it seems that what was only suspected is real, and more widespread even than previously suspected.
Anyone who publishes online, or puts their written work in the public domain is subject to criticism. Some justified, some plain mischievous, and also we find, downright malicious and dishonest. Reviews where the critical voice cannot possibly have read enough of the work in question to critique it properly, yet posts a one star or less review. Then posts a five star review on their own work under another user ID.
Personally, I rarely take notice of critics. Their world view is not often one that I share, and something that might wow them can leave me utterly cold and unimpressed. Some say the Brontes were literary classics. Like many others who trawled through their prose at high school, I would disagree. Most of Dickens leaves me quite unimpressed, but hand me Donne, Shakespeare, Kipling, or Chaucer and it’s a case of “I’m just slinking off for a quiet read – back next week.” I also prefer science fiction and fantasy authors like Heinlein, Niven, Pournelle Hamilton, Bear, Harrison, Barnes, Butcher, and Pratchett. They have an ease of reading that lets me immerse myself in their fictional worlds, almost too deeply to come up for air. Although even in that hallowed list there are some pieces of work I’m not too fond of.
Overall I’ve always tended to look at critics as a negative force, and now much less than trustworthy because anyone can be a critic, even competing authors. Online honesty in criticism, it would seem, is now at a premium. Cheap at that price too, as cheap as at $5 a time for ‘raves’. Apparently there is a modest buck to be made by freelance writers playing this deceitful game.
Such dishonesty often hides under the poisoned umbrella of ‘online relationship management’. Yet the problems demise, while not yet in sight, might be looking at a form of online Armageddon in the not too distant future. Software tools are becoming available to track and detect such spurious sock puppetry, and the battle against false reviewers, trolls and similar online pests will soon turn.
For my own part I find myself mostly flying under the radar of the fake reviewers. My sales are nothing to write home about; but then I do not write for critics. I write for myself.
Neil Armstrong, astronaut, one of my boyhood heroes is gone. Complications after bypass surgery so we’re told, but at the end of a remarkable life. One of only 12 people to ever set foot on another world. First man to set foot on the moon, test pilot, engineer and old fashioned hero.
This has saddened me deeply. I don’t feel much like writing today. Just editing, proofing and fact checking. That and an evening shift at work.
Angie is talking about a couple of days in Kelowna wine country and I’m inclined to go and leave the keyboard behind, although that might prove a little bit too much of a wrench. The first Cerberus novella is looking great, and Darkness is taking shape nicely. Must say I’m looking forward to completing the trilogy, as Stars is the result of eight years work so far. Eight bloody years. I could have done medical school or learned to play the saxophone, or perhaps not. You do what you do and that’s that.
Now stepping away from the keyboard. I need a break. A proper break.
Like most people who write, I have a day job. Not highly paid or high flying, but a job nonetheless. Mostly all the drama contained therein can be dealt with without too much ado. Keep your head, stick to the procedure, and ensure you have done your bit properly. Today, just as I’d logged on at my workstation, my cell phone rang; Angie was immobilised and concerned that her artificial hip joint had broken or dislocated. From the tone of her voice, she was obviously in a lot of pain. I rang her Orthopaedic surgeons office and they recommended she go straight to emergency.
Today must have been the shortest shift I have ever worked. About two minutes and sixty seconds to be precise. Knowing my two work buddies had been earwigging on my cell call I said; “Sorry about this guys, but I have to bug out. Angie’s hurt and I have to get her to emergency.”
To which the answer was a simple “Go Martyn, just go.” Bless their cotton socks. Even if it does cost me a shift’s pay. Family is more important.
Ran headlong down the back stairs and remotely popped the car door just as I shouldered the basement exit door open. After leaping into the driving seat and gunning our little Subaru’s engine, I cussed and fumed at every daydreaming driver in front of me on the way home. Glorious, blazingly sunny day, but I was on a mission, with no time for sunshine, lollygaggers, or the directionally challenged.
When I got home, Angie was sitting on her work chair looking slightly pained, with Joanna sitting on the bed, trying to keep her Mother’s spirits up. My dog, Amos, thought it was a great game and Jo, bless her, held him by the collar while Angie wrapped her arms around my shoulders and I half piggybacked, half guided her down stairs, while she tried not to panic about falling. My dearly beloved is no lightweight, and I haven’t done any weight training for years, so I hung on to bannisters and uprights firmly with one hand while pulling down on her left arm to ensure she didn’t let go of my shoulders, just to take her weight off the afflicted hip. Managed to stagger the twelve paces or so to the car in this fashion and gently swung her into the passenger seat. Thence followed a brisk but fairly uneventful twenty kilometre drive to the hospital.
A note about Emergency rooms, everywhere. Unless you arrive in an ambulance, you immediately become a ‘not so serious’ case, taking second place in the queue. Fortunately it was a quiet morning, apart from one poor chap who was groaning like one of Torquemada’s tormented in a nearby treatment side room. Whatever they were doing to him, he wasn’t enjoying it one little bit. We borrowed one of the shopping trolley like wheelchairs, and squeaked and rattled Angie into Emergency. Second in the queue, we were admitted in jig time. Then settled in to wait our turn.
It is written that “They also serve, who only stand and wait.” and this goes triple for Hospital Emergency departments all over the world. After three hours quietly talking and holding my wife’s hand in the bland walled alcove marked Triage #2, the Emergency Physician got time to see her, and half an hour later Angie was wheeled into X-Ray by a blonde haired trainee technician who looked no more than sixteen, but acted with the friendly professionalism of someone ten years older. While Angie was having her however many micro-sieverts worth, I busied myself with a few story notes, tried not to chew my fingernails, buying a cup of coffee which I never drank.
Half an hour later Angie was wheeled out of X-ray to be dispatched back to Emergency by a solid looking lady who had to take her instructions via a heavily padded looking mobile phone device. I looked at the device and wondered idly how many times it had been thrown across a room. Which was probably the reason it was so tough looking. She pushed Angie’s wheeled treatment bed back to Triage #2 where the physician returned, and after a modicum of judicious prodding and joint manipulation, pronounced Angie’s artificial joint still sound, leaving us with the diagnosis that she had probably only suffered a groin strain. Which was a relief. Ten minutes later, I’m supporting Angie on a short controlled stumble back to the car, and thence home after a couple of minor shopping errands.
As kind of a finale to the days alarums and diversions, we pulled into the front yard to see our landlord, Mark, lying on a blanket and cushion in the shade of the house, ankle bound up in a splint after taking a tumble at work. Did the decent thing and offered to make him up an ice pack, but he said he’d got plenty of ice and could do it himself. The man is a trooper.
Amos, my pet trip hazard, dashed out as soon as the door was opened and fussed everyone, but calmed down after his scheduled feed. He’s a gorgeous dog, lovely temperament, but no brain whatsoever. Just a big old excitable puppy. A Black, brown and white bundle of fruit and nutcase. Wouldn’t have him any other way.
Angie dug into her painkiller supply and, Ibuprofen comforted, settled into a few Learning Consultant tasks. Jo is on her final work shift before going back to the UK on Sunday, and I cooked chicken legs and prepared a salad. Sunset is painting the cliffs opposite a pleasing shade of stony pink. Angie is phoning an old friend to tell her about today’s misadventures. I have settled down with a large whiskey and want no more surprises. At least until tomorrow.
Not a good piece of news this morning. Another of the Science Fiction pantheon has passed from our midst. I grew up reading Harry’s work, and about the only thing of his I never read was “Make room, make room!”
I still love his short stories; especially a quirky little novel (Although all of Harry’s work could be described thus) ‘The Technicolour time machine‘ which I read until my paperback copy fell apart. Such was the fate of most of his work at my hands. The ‘Deathworld’ series, just about every compilation of his short stories I could buy, and of course the stories of James Bolivar DiGriz – The Stainless Steel Rat.
Harry will probably end up with a big fancy tombstone somewhere, but his real marker will be the very, very funny body of work he leaves behind.
Friday was a good day, despite a couple of hitches. The only Triumph dealership on Vancouver Island has no sales demo models of the type of sports tourers I’m looking at, and we had to go rushing around for an ATM at the Brentwood / Mill bay ferry, as they only take cash or prepaid tickets. No credit cards.
The majority of the day was taken up with an unscheduled side trip to Butchart Gardens, a gorgeous 55 Acre flower garden and Arboretum created in an old limestone quarry. Most of the blooms are typically North American, big, a trifle blowsy, but nonetheless quite wonderful. The air subtly scented except for the heady, musky sledgehammer between the sinuses that is the fragrance of a lily.
Angie and I continued one of our philosophical conversations about how to find what I call “Moments of perfect stillness” and their use in aiding the creative process. We walked barefoot on grass, simply stopped and looked, took pictures, and in between noisy knots of people tried to explore this notion. I feel the flowers helped her understand my occasional silences are never a rebuff, merely preoccupation.
For my own part I’ve always been concerned that the need to talk incessantly reveals a deep inner insecurity. A need for constant reassurance indicating that all is not well with them. For the interrupted, it breaks the flow of ideas, and can scatter the creative thought process like a thousand startled pigeons. It’s what I call being ‘Porlocked’ after Coleridges eponymous ‘person from Porlock‘.
When I feel sure of my territory, or need to test concepts out, I share them with friends, but not before. I’m also pretty careful who I share them with. There’s nothing worse than saying what’s on your mind when whoever you talk to isn’t in the mood, doesn’t take you seriously, and / or has a mind so closed it visibly clanks when the cogs start turning.
In seeking a ‘moment of stillness’, my way of ‘getting there’ is simply to focus on a sound or smell and close my eyes, or focus on a vague point in the middle distance. Then concentrate. What does your chosen sound or smell mean? What are its associations and how do you feel about them? There are a number of self help authors who recommend this approach, but I always found the superficial Mnemonics they recommend a little too flimsy for keeping stories about whole worlds in my head. Don’t get me wrong, they’re great for small stuff, but not so good for mentally bookmarking extended storylines and the ever branching tree of character development. I have to be able to see, hear, and almost touch these thought-avatars for this mental anchor to function.
What really works for me is to add layers of ideas until the base concept of the focus object / memory feels solid in my mind, and then use that specific memory as a kind of mental mooring post. From that point it becomes relatively easy to concentrate on other things because the moment centres your thoughts, not letting them drift aimlessly and lose the truly important stuff you wanted to think about in the first place. It’s a form of self hypnosis. One which seems to work when heavy duty cogitation is required, and especially in unknown or uncertain mental territory. An occupational hazard when trying to write speculative fiction.
Take this blog post. I started it on Saturday, and picked at it through multiple interruptions, my over excitable dog, a couple of domestic dramas, a heavy duty conversation about email functionality, impending flights, other peoples preoccupations, travel plans for the next five years, a reorganisation of my kitchen and telephone calls from friends, family and various automated autodiallers. Using the moment of perfect stillness that I constructed as an anchor point, I can still flip up the memory of Butchart Gardens. Amongst other things; including story lines and character trees.
I’ve even managed to keep up a consistent 1 – 2000 words per day on ‘Darkness’ and ‘Cerberus’. Rugged.
So far the MSL mission matches all of this eleven minute trailer. There is a shorter, one and a half minute trailer available on Youtube. Truly awesome.
Off to talk to motorcycle dealers today. If I’m really lucky, a test ride on (appropriately enough) a Triumph Rocket III.
Recently one of my acquaintances, who incidentally has never read any of my work, said this to me when I was showing off the cover artwork of ‘Falling through the stars’; “Science fiction, huh? Full of aliens come to eat our brains, yeah?” “No.” I replied, a little nettled. “All about how UFO’s built the pyramids?” “No.” Up until then I’d considered him quite level headed. Now I wasn’t so sure. “You say you got an interstellar war in this book?” “Yes, one earth based regime against another.” I replied. “So the aliens stop the war and make people live together in peace?” “Look.” I said, mildly annoyed. “There are quite a few non-human life forms described in my work, but there are no alien space ships and no super intelligent aliens who visit Earth. Read it for yourself.” As if I’d resort to some cheap Deus ex machina narrative device. “No thanks.” He replied. “I don’t like science fiction.”
At this point I made an excuse and left the coffee shop. I think he was just trying to rile me for fun. Needless to say, he’s currently off my greetings card list. At least until he actually bothers to read my work and apologise.
Okay, I’m going to nail my colours to the mast; I am a writer of science fiction who does not believe that hyper intelligent alien species visit our little home planet for the following reasons;
1. The odds are against it. While ‘life’ throughout the universe may not be as rare as we have previously thought; there being millions of worlds out in our galaxy alone that probably contain the basics needed to support life. The path of evolution required to produce intelligent, tool using life forms is overlong and fraught with pitfalls. See this Wiki page on the Fermi Paradox.
2. The ‘evidence’ for aliens is wafer thin. Blurry photographs, laughably inauthentic video / film footage. Reams of unverifiable ‘sightings’ found to be misidentification of planets, stars, satellites aircraft or cloud formations. (See items 5 & 6)
3. Lack of conspiracy. Governments are rubbish at covering up anything, never mind UFO’s. Remember that Government is made up of people. People are fallible, they make mistakes, they gossip and tell friends and family things they aren’t supposed to. They take short cuts when pressured. They get flustered when out of their comfort zone. Secretive or unusual behaviour is painfully obvious. In short; Governments leak like the proverbial rusty sieve. It’s why the Cold War went on as long as it did. If the Atomic secrets hadn’t been leaked, the USA, British and French would have been the only nuclear powers in the world and history would have been very different.
4. ‘Aliens’ have not made themselves known. Truly. All a real alien would have to do is land their starship on one of the many spaces perfectly designed for that purpose, like an airport. Besides, why cross hundreds or thousands of light years or more simply to hide in the bushes? Especially from a species supposedly fifty times less intelligent and technologically inferior.
5. We would have seen and recorded them. The skies are watched. Avidly so. Satellites, meteors and comets are tracked not only by multiple government agencies in multiple countries, but also by an army of amateur astronomers. People who can tell the difference between a planet and a star, a satellite and a meteor. For every sighting of a ‘UFO’ there are multiple sightings of the same phenomena from a different angle which identify said UFO as something terribly mundane and indisputably natural or human made. There are millions of people who can actually tell the difference between aircraft contrails lit by the setting sun and atmospheric tracks left by ‘giant meteors’. Or even UFO’s and pigeons.
6. I’ve seen so-called UFO’s. Then had a damned good laugh at myself for being foolish. My first sighting was at six years old. I was on holiday with my family in Devon, England, at the time. One evening we heard a report of a UFO on the car radio. We’d pulled over for a pub supper, and I was sitting outside in the pub gardens when we saw it; a dark red globe high up in the sky with something dangling below. “Is that a balloon?” I said, staring up at it. “It’s a balloon!” A few other people confirmed. After we’d eaten we heard on the radio that yes, the ‘UFO’ was a Weather recording balloon. During the 1960’s, and until the technology was superseded, such sightings were quite common. Since then I’ve seen lenticular clouds, light reflected off high altitude aircraft, and foil party balloons filled with helium high up amongst the clouds. No alien spacecraft though.
7. There have been no ‘Alien abductions’. Every single one can be more easily explained by sleep disorders, isolation, hallucination, and chemical imbalance. For example; look up ‘Sleep paralysis’ which is a condition known to produce hallucinations of ‘abduction’. That’s even without graphic hallucinations related to extreme celibacy (Incubi and Succubi)
8. Timescale; While there is a possibility that super intelligent species may evolve on other worlds, who is to say, considering that there are star systems many times older than our little home in the Orion spur of the Milky Way, that any alien or artefact has to exist within our time frame. We have only been doing powered flight for just over a century, and only fifty five years since the first satellites went into orbit. That’s a very tiny time frame, and it’s worth mentioning that the Universe operates on a timescale so vast that even Earth based geological time may be considered the barest blink of an eye. So any putative alien civilisation might well be separated from us by millions, even billions of years as well as light years.
9. Yeah, but area 51, right? All the UFO’s land there. No. Sorry. Groom lake, Nevada, USA or the ‘Box’ as it is sometimes known, is a secret experimental testing facility, and ‘sightings’ have been made, but; and this is a big ‘but’; what part of ‘secret and experimental’ don’t these ‘Alien’ conspiracy theorists get? Of course they will see unidentifiable objects as new military airframes are trotted out for testing. Some of these have been disk shaped, and what’s more have actually flown. Prototype disk shaped aircraft go back to the 1910’s (McCormick-Romme ‘Umbrella’ plane and others). Other sightings might have been down to dirigible prototypes. Northrop-Grumman and Boeing have a couple of interesting designs. Perhaps a ‘sighting’ might even be one of the big circular radar arrays seen on Sentry AWACs.
10. These ‘invisible aliens’ are also remarkably silent.SETI, active since 1951 with access to radio telescopes and a huge network of volunteer observers, has yet to turn up any proof of super intelligent alien life. Not an electronic peep. Which is strange, because everything that moves off a reaction. To adopt a Newtonian metaphor, even events at the quantum level alter the behaviour of more familiar phenomena. Everything creates a knock on reaction. Electron charges are altered, electron flows initiated, molecules moved, heat, sound or movement generated. Nothing happens in isolation and everything has an equal and opposite reaction. So if super intelligent aliens have visited we should have heard something by now. Inverse square law or not.
The only logical conclusion to draw from the above is that there never have been any alien visitors, benign or otherwise. No little grey skinned bipeds with big eyes or similar. No distant or even close encounters of whatever kind.
This being the case, for the moment I will be restricting myself to human house guests, not ‘My favourite Martian’.
The past few mornings, Angie and I have been having one of our philosophical conversations. About who we are, where we are going, what we really want, and about how to find the answers to these vexatious questions. Having made time to think about it for a few days I said; “There’s a one word answer to all of what we’ve been discussing.”
“What’s that?” She asked.
“Discrimination.” I replied. Which seems a bit glib until you actually put it in context.
One of the things I practice now and again is a little something picked up from Lyall Watson’s ‘Gifts of unknown things‘. Lyall described what some might describe as paranormal abilities displayed by the islanders he lived with at the time. He wrote about fishermen who could stick their head underwater to hear where the fish were, by ‘listening between the sounds’. As Lyall observed, the sea is a very noisy place, and understanding what each sound means is a complex business. Essentially what he described is an old hunters trick, which is to simply stand absolutely still and listen. Letting the consciousness spread. Paying attention to what can be heard, putting it in context. Applying a where, what and when to each individual noise.
For a city dweller, who hears mainly Traffic noise, the art is the same; to dissect and recognise sounds from a tumult. The bass rumble of a truck, the snap-snap-snap of a loose cargo strap in a vehicles slipstream. Shouts, horns, voices, snatches of conversation. The grumble-whoosh of the subway, grunt-squeal whistle and whine-thump of buses as they stop and their doors open. Snatches of sounds from open windows and shop doorways. The noise gravel stuck in tyre treads makes on ashphalt. How far away is it, what direction is it in? Which way is it going? Does it pose a threat? The same principle of listening applies. Hint; it is wise not to try this on pedestrian crossings at first until you can listen on the move and still pay attention to your immediate surroundings.
This is only some of the music the world makes all around us, all of the time. Like single melodies in an orchestral score, it takes an educated ear to separate them out. Where the uneducated can only hear the overall sound, the trained ear can pick up a dissonance in a heartbeat. At first, to be able to do this seems insuperable, the wall of sound is too high, too wide and deep. Yet to eat this metaphorical elephant simply requires a slow but sure ‘one bite at a time’ approach.
The good news is that people come with this ability built in as a feature, courtesy of several million years of evolution. The bad news is that like all vices, it takes practice and patience to perfect. Some people will never learn because they are afraid of silence, impatient with the enormity of the task, failing to appreciate is that there is no such thing as absolute silence. Others will pick up the skill without a thought and look surprised when others ask “How do you do that?”
All that is required is the motivation to sit quietly and open oneself up to the world, to drink it all in, take pleasure in learning a new ability. Learn that there is no such thing as silence. Even in the quietest moments your pulsing bloodflow thunders in your ears, breath rasps in your nose and throat. A leaf falls ten, twenty, thirty feet away. Air flowing makes noise, anything moving makes a sound, a tiny careening of air molecules spreading out to trigger a response. Caught by the pinnae, transmitted to inner ears via the tympanum and malleus, incus and stapes, tiny little bones forming a linkage to the inner ear and sensory nerves. So incredibly delicate and sensitive is this apparatus that anyone can train themself to hear all manner of things in the sounds between the noise.
Where to begin? With your favourite piece of music, your most loved sounds. Which bit do you like most? focus in on that one musical phrase. Which notes does it contain played on what instruments? How is it played? Now what are the surrounding musical phrases harmonies, beats and melodies? Once this is learned, moving to more complicated listening becomes easier. All it takes is practice.
The same principles can be applied to the other senses. Smell and taste can be similarly trained. Even sight. Being observant takes practice and time, but these are skills well worth developing, no matter what your time of life. Plato wrote in his dialogues that Socrates said; “the unexamined life is not worth living”. To examine life, we must practice sensory discrimination, like Lyall described in his book. This is the process I call ‘a quantum of Zen’, and oddly enough, anyone can do it. Anyone at all. No Zen master required.
We can all learn to discriminate, and in the process find out what we really want from life. I suppose you could call it part of the art of becoming truly human.
It’s down and transmitting. The aptly named Curiosity rover is down on Mars. Right on time and bang on target. Made me think about the heady days of the first manned moon landings back in 1969. I was only 11, but I watched them happen, and it planted my love of science fiction deep within me.
After all the excitement I sat up to see if I could see any early Perseid meteors, only to wake up at half past six with the sun in my face, having missed going to bed.
There are people who say the Moon landings were faked, but they never listen to anything outside the tiny echo chambers in their heads. I was there and saw it happen. I’ve seen faked coverage, and can tell the difference. Likewise, there was no fakery here. What would be the point of such a hugely expensive exercise, if not to explore?
Still think manned Mars landings are at least twenty years away. Mainly because there are too many political and economic issues. The technical stuff by comparison is relatively simple, but the politics? Now that’s complicated. Kennedy set out a clear vision for NASA back in 1961. Just over nine years later, Armstrong and Aldrin put boots on the regolith of the moon. Now the mission motivation is unclear. There is no clear driving vision like in the sixties. If I see a successful manned mars landing happen in my lifetime, I won’t be unhappy, but if not, I won’t be surprised.
Martyn K Jones 