Meira Eliot

The way we do things is what we are doing

2010-08-02T09:33:00.000+02:00

We tend to think of the message and the packaging as two different things. We even argue about whether the form or the content is more important (we do this a lot in teaching). And yet a few hours spent in any family or workplace are enough to show us the truth: the way the message is delivered is often the most important part of the message. Was there ever a great parent or teacher who talked to children as if they were idiots or wastes of space? How many rebellious teenagers have you known who rejected their parents' politics or religion, only to adopt a substitute ideology that perpetuated the same patterns they were trying so hard to escape from? More and more I am convinced that the way we do things is actually what we are doing.

The 'Paperback' Kindle is here!

2010-07-31T15:52:00.003+02:00

So Seth Godin was right, as usual! The new Kindle Wifi is about to launch, retailing in the UK at just 109 smackeroos. So what are we waiting for! I can't wait to have my own portable library in my coat pocket. Bliss!

July is my Golden Month!

2010-07-22T22:00:00.002+02:00

July is my favorite month of the year as a writer - it's the one month I can concentrate completely on writing and nothing else! I am really pleased with myself this month, because I have just finished Book Two of Moldavite: it's called IL Filo, the thread, named for Leopold Mozart's term for the theme in a musical composition.
Now that the text is finished, I am planning to publish the expanded version of the novel on My Ebook, and maybe Lulu. So I still have plenty to keep me busy! I have also started compiling a series of short pieces about Bohemia and Moravia, one or two of which have been published elsewhere, such as Words Without Borders. These are mainly short stories about real-life characters and daily life. Have a good summer!

Nine

2010-05-21T10:24:00.000+02:00

Funny, Nine has always been my favorite number. And I love musicals. So when last weekend turned out really wet, I thought to myself "What a perfect late afternoon for the big screen." I went expecting to be musically entertained, and I certainly was. What I wasn't expecting was a work of art on the level of the "first things", a masterpiece about the creative process itself (shades of "This is It") and the pressures of life in the spotlight. It was moving, it was illuminating. It is not to be missed.

Heidegger and all that

2010-04-20T10:24:00.001+02:00

Sometimes one just stumbles on the most interesting things....

Self-Published Titles Topped 764,000 in 2009 as Traditional Output Dipped

2010-04-15T10:44:00.000+02:00

Self-Published Titles Topped 764,000 in 2009 as Traditional Output Dipped: "A staggering 764,448 titles were produced in 2009 byself-publishers and mic..."

This is a very interesting development indeed, showing that readers (and writers) are starting to dominate the market, as are niche interests. All of this is no doubt giving the traditional publishing industry serious pause for thought.....

The Secret Inner Life of Alzheimer's Disease: A Spiritual View

2010-04-09T11:10:00.000+02:00

The Secret Inner Life of Alzheimer's Disease: A Spiritual View
I stumbled on this amazing article about Alzheimer's while doing research for something I am writing at the moment. Not only is it full of inspiring and comforting insight about an increasingly prevalent disease, but it is also beautifully written. I pass it on as my thought for today.

eReading Devices | eBookGuru.org

2010-04-06T16:48:00.000+02:00

eReading Devices | eBookGuru.org
I am eagerly following the current discussion about e-readers since the unveiling of the iPad, which I am sure will oust the overpriced one-stringed instruments out there.
Aside from the technology used to deliver ebooks, the future of ebook publishing seems to be rather more difficult to predict. The industry is undergoing a revolution, putting authors and readers in the driving seat of what is being written and read, but throwing up a plethora of new issues about how livings are to be made (what will happen to agents? to publishing houses?) how authors are to promote their own work and what is to be done about such bastions of the publishing industry as copyright. Will we see a return to the pre-Enlightenment era of no intellectual property rights, only skilled developers and deliverers of the written word or melody?
It's an exciting time, for sure.

Riemann for Anti-dummies: introduction and critique

2010-04-03T12:12:00.001+02:00

Riemann for Anti-dummies: introduction and critique
You know how you sometimes get an apparently random idea in your head while you are working on something, and it doesn't seem to make any sense, but it just won't go away? Well while I was working on Moldavite, the first part of my novel (downloadable from www.meiraeliot.com) I kept thinking of Mozart, again and again. I kept thinking about the wit, brilliance and lightness of touch in his music, the pace and the elegance of his composition - the way his melodies seem both simple and complex at the same time. "Now that is how I want to write," I kept thinking. It may be because I was raised in a musical family - my mother was a professional soprano - that I have always found musical analogies meaningful. When I am editing my writing I also read the text out loud at least once and take anything out that trips up the flow of natural speech.

I am now several chapters into Part Two of the novel. This part is called Il Filo, or 'thread', which was the term Mozart's father Leopold used to describe the motif developed in the various parts of a musical composition. Mozart learned this art in Vienna by making a detailed study of Bach's fugues, which astonishingly from our present perspective were virtually unknown in Austria at that time. After the event, genius always seems to have a kind of inevitable quality about it, a sense of natural evolution, but on the ground and at the time it is usually acquired by hard work, study and practice. If the 'thread' did not have enough mileage in it for development and counterpoint, then this was usually a reason to abandon the composition, as numerous abandoned works by Mozart testify.

Riemann for Anti-dummies offers a fascinating journey into the often hidden connections between apparently unconnected things - time-space, the audio-visual, the architecture of creation and the thought processes, mathematical and philosophical, that underpin it.

Moldavite

2009-10-04T18:27:00.004+02:00

The full version of Moldavite, Volume One of my novel, can now be downloaded at Obooko. Just sign up and download as many ebooks as you want! Browse fiction and non-fiction categories in the left hand margin. Moldavite is listed under General Fiction and Poetry.

The Economy of Attention

2009-08-11T15:27:00.005+02:00

A very interesting clip from bloggingheads tv here about autism and the "economy of attention". The economy of attention is understood here to mean an economy running parallel with the fiscal economy. Martin Cowen himself has cognitive characteristics associated with the autistic spectrum. He has some interesting things to say not only about what such "diagnoses" may mean, but also about the implications of certain cognitive traits for the way our culture of information functions. So his book is not only about autism and economies, it's also about stereotypes and diversity. Really thought-provoking.

The 10 best book websites - Times Online

2009-08-09T11:20:00.002+02:00

The 10 best book websites - Times Online

Shared via AddThis

Through the Sonia Sotomayor Looking Glass

2009-08-08T08:18:00.006+02:00

Matt Semino hits the nail on the head in his article about Sonia Sotomayor and the effect of race and gender issues on the judicial system. Western culture still has a long way to go before it reconciles itself to the dismantling of a male-white-dominated perspective in its key institutions. The important thing, however, is that the debate should be out in the open, and conducted with honesty.
Through the Sonia Sotomayor Looking Glass
These issues, and the denial, hypocrisy and cultural angst they have engendered, are woven into the fabric of our everyday life and institutions. Britain made a fortune out of the slave trade, and exported it to the United States, where it continued to live on despite, or perhaps even because of, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". The man who wrote these words, some of the most inspiring in the English language, fathered children by a slave who was his wife's half sister. Thomas Jefferson. Over two hundred years later, a Michael Jackson or a Sonia Sotomayor still find that their faces don't fit, and Jefferson's own grave misgivings about where this institutionalized denial would lead have been proved more than justified.

E-publishing: To E or not to E?

2009-08-06T09:25:00.006+02:00

The new permutations of writing and publishing made possible by the internet are exciting, confusing and distracting all at the same time. Knowing what to invest time and energy in, and how, and above all why, calls for great creative self-confidence, skill and discipline on the part of writers. Some interesting perspectives on some of these issues can be found at Books Ahead.
The recently retired General Manager of Microsoft Prague, making a keynote speech at the school where I work, in my view made the point about technology and all forms of work:
Content is King! What applies to the world of education - where we have a tendency to forget that the effective classroom does not revolve around interactive white boards and other bells and whistles - applies to the world of words. It's so easy to get carried away with the buzz of communicating that we can neglect the art of good content.
How we express ourselves is also part of the message: the music industry, for example, has worked itself into a cleft stick of creative rigidity, devoid of experimentation with instruments and arrangements. Hey, I live in Moravia in the Czech Republic, where ethnic folk musicians are trained in classical music at conservatoires and think nothing of experimenting with jazz and other genres. This is high quality art that is alive!
The real creative potential of the internet for authors is the opportunity it provides to break free of rigid institutional hierarchies and inject something fresh, trenchant and playful into the world of letters, without the constraints imposed by having to reach a wide enough audience for commercial viability. Not that there's anything wrong with being commercially viable! It's just that the dog should be wagging the tail, not the other way round.
This is a cultural vicious circle that runs deep: once the tail starts wagging the dog, art becomes a production line trundling out what will sell. Tastes, in turn, are shaped by what makes it out of the culture factory, resulting in a culture of sound-bites, cliches and lowest common denominators. This state of affairs is not just artistically lamentable: it's positively dangerous. We are human: our wits have always been the only thing that stand between us and extinction. If we allow our wits to grow dull, we're finished.

Celebrate MJ's Birthday 29 August 2009

2009-08-05T18:45:00.002+02:00

Click on the Youtube link below to see how MJ's birthday is going to be celebrated around the world on 29 August 2009:

See also MJ's charity foundation healtheworld

Not such a freak after all?

2009-08-04T23:22:00.010+02:00

I am fascinated by mystical traditions and hidden schools, but I used to think these interests made me a bit of a freak! My novel Moldavite deals with these themes, among others. I am currently writing a novel about the discovery of hidden mystery traditions in Prague and the Middle East, going back to Egyptian star maps.
If you like this kind of thing as much as I do, check out the Tarcher Books (a favorite of mine for publishing my role-model Julia Cameron) Book of the Month by Graham Hancock: Occult America. This promises to be a fascinating read. Being a social scientist by training, it is my "tick" to look for the cultural connections here. John Dee lived in an age when arrant mumbo jumbo flourished side by side with extraordinary scientific discoveries and scholarship, sometimes in the same individual. Perhaps it is no accident that we are rediscovering these mysterious undertows in our own culture now? Happy reading!
And before I head off for beddy-byes, more tomorrow on the planned event for Michael Jackson's birthday on 29th August.

Michael Jackson the "Wounded Messenger"

2009-08-04T15:47:00.013+02:00

Matt Semino's piece The Wounded Messenger
is the best review of Michael Jackson's life and work I have found. At last a review of his life and work that is worthy of the name. Matt Semino is an international corporate lawyer and legal commentator who advises clientele in the entertainment, media, fashion, real estate and private equity industries.

For those interested in a blow-by-blow comparison of the media distortion and mudslinging surrounding MJ, watch the TV program put together by Maury Povich using the footage that didn't appear in the infamous Martin Bashir documentary about MJ. Here is the first of a series of clips:

Michael Jackson and the Black Heart of Music

2009-07-31T15:30:00.011+02:00

Even people who were not fans of Michael Jackson would have to concede that he was uniquely original and innovative, as a composer, a vocalist and as a dancer, not to mention his pioneering work in video clips. He sometimes kept us waiting a while for a new album, but the wait was always more than worth it. His was no cardboard cutout, formulaic musical entertainment for people with two brain cells or less. It was the real deal, on all levels and across several genres. Surely this is how he would want to be remembered.

Anyone who has ever striven for excellence in any field knows that once it is attained it becomes a double-edged sword. One of the first things it breeds is envy. The good is the enemy of the best, and mediocrity can be surprisingly vicious. MJ was not the lowest common denominator. He was the yardstick. The black yardstick.

Surely breaking the music industry records of such icons as Elvis and the Beatles makes MJ the best the industry ever had. But this is an industry that throughout its entire history has taken the best of black music – blues, jazz, R & B, soul, you name it - and rehashed it with white faces in front of it. Without black music, white music would be as dead from the neck down as it all too often is from the neck up. And then along comes Michael Jackson and reinvents all the categories and ups all the benchmarks. How very inconvenient.

The fact that this is nothing new does not make it any less true. The history of western culture is strewn with examples of black culture being bleached out of sight – going right back to black pharaohs of Egypt and the Sudan. Our cultural roots, black and white, lie there. Anything, if suppressed for long enough, will eventually turn into a monster. Here perhaps lies the key to the black heart of the music industry - and the demise of its king.

Michael Jackson - Moonwalking with Dionysus

2009-07-29T12:38:00.010+02:00

An obsession with trivia at the expense of essentials can be the mark of a mind out of its depth. While the concept of a media mind can often prove to be a contradiction in terms, where MJ is concerned it is a mind in need of a lifejacket before it drowns in its own sleaze. Rarely has a celebrity been the target of such vicious or gratuitous mudslinging, whether regarding his appearance, or his sexuality. I would suggest that these aspects of his persona were not just plucked at random out of the air, but rather represent unresolved issues in our culture that we have projected on to him. At was as if he lived out a dynamic reconciliation of opposites – black/white, male/female - that our culture, often hypocritically, insists be kept separate. The most problematic of these was the polarity between sexual magnetism and innocence. In a society where sex sells and is for sale, it must of necessity be perceived as diametrically opposed to innocence. To the pure all things are pure. To the corrupt all things are corrupt. If we really find it so difficult to believe that a man can be both sexually magnetic on stage and innocent at the same time, does this not say at least as much about us as it does about him? By the same token, underneath the relentless, morbid obsession with his face lies perhaps the uncomfortable truth that his face would never have fitted, no matter what he did with it. It was as if his body became a battlefield for our mainstream culture, a culture that has a notoriously ambivalent relationship with the body.

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Michael once described himself as a ‘force of nature’. In his work he seems to have tapped into primordial energies that for the most part lie dormant in our post-modern culture, which is crudely cerebral and cynical, yet oddly puritanical. In ancient times, Dionysus, often also equated with the god Pan, was of all the gods the only one who had a human mother. He was described as eternally young, fully male yet with an androgynous mystique, dual-natured, enigmatic, a god of many faces. A master of performative intoxication, he was beloved of women, the powerless and outsiders, but viewed with suspicion by the establishment. I find this analogy resonant.

Every society has its blind spots and hypocrisies. Where these lie can usually be gauged by the amount of venom unleashed when they are exposed. For example: if skin color were really no longer an issue for us, why would a pale-skinned Michael pose a problem? Does an African American cease to be an African American when his skin lightens beyond a certain shade? And who decides what that shade is? We are talking here about the first ever African American to be “allowed” to perform on MTV! Am I the only one who detects a touch of paternalism here? Why would the color of his skin deserve more media attention, say, than the fact that he burst through the cultural frontier between ‘black’ and ‘white’ music? Were we not through this media pre-occupation with his skin in fact displacing an anxiety that we were not prepared to admit that we still had? We so love to believe that we are tolerant and egalitarian, but when the chips are down what we really want is for everybody to conform. It is perhaps because of our closet obsession with conformity, wrapped in the rhetoric of tolerance and freedom, that we crave, and devour, our celebrities to the extent that we do. We want to benevolently bestow our tolerance on people of all races, creeds, sexual orientations, etc., but we are only willing to do this as long as we keep control of the categories and the yardsticks. And we let the media do our dirty work for us. They have this power because we let them have it.

If Michael reclaimed and lived out the Dionysian mystery for us, he paid a tragically high price for it, both in life and in death. His message of reconciliation was dearly bought. Paradoxically, in the mystery tradition of Dionysus, for all its compelling, hypnotic music, the most reliable sign of a person inspired by him was, we are told, a melancholy silence.

Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.
(Lao Tzu)

I'll be Home Late Tonight: We're Having a Revolution

2009-07-24T12:26:00.007+02:00

A new book of essays by writers from central and eastern Europe, called The Wall in My Head, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, is due to be published in November. See here for my own essay (published under my other name!). Like other contributors, I can't believe that this was already twenty years ago! We knew at the time that we were in the middle of history, but we didn't expect the history part to come so soon.... Humbling.

Where did February go?

2009-03-07T14:50:00.002+01:00

Well I know that most of my February went in a two-week bout of flu, but even so I managed to finish a translation of African Tales by O.D. West, which is soon to be published by Triton in Prague. We are doing the proofs this weekend.
Then a lot of time and energy went retrieving my lost bank and ID cards after the theft of my handbag late January. In addition to that, all has not been plain sailing at work.....
But good things are happening this week for readers and the planet! Check out Ebook week and gogreenreade.com to find out more.
And don't forget to download the first two parts of my novel Moldavite!
If you like online novels, check out the blog online-novels, which has an impressive and eclectic list of free online reading!

Nursing the flu, fighting crime

2009-02-15T14:18:00.002+01:00

Apart from finishing my article on Bohumil Hrabal for Words without Borders, I have been out of action with flu for a few days. The financial crisis is hitting street level in the form of increased pickpocketing and burglary. I had my bag stolen in a store, my mother had her house burgled. Still we have a lot to be thankful for.

Online Novels

2009-02-08T18:04:00.006+01:00

Yesterday I was contacted by Susan Crealock of Online Novels to post my novel Moldavite on her blog.

Back in Moravia

2009-02-07T20:01:00.003+01:00

After a hectic but enjoyable few days on an education conference in Prague, I am at last back in Moravia to relax and write for a few days! Am currently very interested in Words Without Borders and Online Novels and looking forward to more comments from new readers of the first few chapters of my novel Moldavite on Smashwords. There is just such an exciting world of reading and writing out there. What fun!

Moldavite

2009-01-17T13:34:00.003+01:00

A lot has been happening since my last post to this blog (too long ago!). Have been having some technical hassles with widgets on this and one of my other blogs. Those darn widgets and templates!
Before Christmas I finished translating African Tales by O.D. West from Czech into English (published by Triton in Prague) and this is now at the publishers.
I am also about to publish my own novel Moldavite. This is an exciting time for me!

Unlocking Shakespeare

2008-10-16T19:45:00.004+02:00

On Monday I managed to make a rare connection between my day job as a teacher and the writer alter ego (or is that the other way round?) by attending a one-day workshop by Guy Roberts called Unlocking Shakespeare. What made this so great was that it appealed to me equally as a teacher and as a writer/wordsmith. Greatly to be recommended for erudition, inspirational value and incredible value for money. I have already started using the material I gained at the workshop for my English classes at school, and even seem to have convinced the sceptics among my students that Shakespeare is NOT an instant sleeping tablet, but a vibrant and thrilling opportunity to explore the heights and depths of human experience through the performed word. Can't wait to get my teeth into some more of those iambic pentameters.......

Vacation

2008-07-31T09:58:00.002+02:00

Finally I surface again after a hectic summer term in the day job, during which I was promoted to head of department, and have had a major family crisis to deal with. I have spent the last month re-editing my novel, PRAGUE EQUINOX, and am translating a children's book called AFRICAN TALES by O.D. West (from Czech into English). So although out of the blogosphere for a while I have not been idle. I have still found time to spend a few days in Moravia, go to the opera (Don Giovanni at the Estates Theatre in Prague) and have some pleasant walks in the park at Pruhonice, just outside Prague. I am off to Moravia again for the weekend tomorrow. Oh, and today I get the key to my new flat, so I can start moving!

The Story of Stuff

2008-03-26T12:58:00.006+01:00

Somewhere it all has to hang together. There is a connection between what we feel and how we live, or at least try to live. After a long time of not writing at all, mainly because I was too exhausted and stressed to, I found myself writing poetry. Even I was surprised at how vehement it was. The Story of Stuff is telling a story that needs to be told. In my novels I find myself writing about individuals and communities who have lost their sense of connection with their past and with their surroundings.

Poetry

2008-03-17T22:25:00.002+01:00

Click here to read some of my poems. Lately I seem to be thinking quite a lot about identity under siege in the workplace, and about the way language is used for content or for packaging.

The Ghost Muse?

2008-03-16T11:56:00.013+01:00

I am writing a book called Numinosity. It is about how we enchant (and disenchant) the places we live and move in, and how relationships with places affect our growth as people. Prague Equinox, Volume 1 of Numinosity, is now complete. I am now writing Volume 2, On the Bridge. The bridge referred to is the Charles Bridge in Prague, one of the most enchanted places in Europe.
........... It all started when I was staying at a hotel just near where this picture was taken. As I was dropping off to sleep I was visited by a ghost. It did not "appear", but rather made its presence felt. It was quite scary . I did not know then that Lilliova Street, near the Old Town Square in Prague, is said to be haunted by the ghost of a barber who abandoned his wife and daughters to become an alchemist. After a rather troubled night's sleep, I was browsing the next morning in a nearby bookshop when I found the fascinating book Praga Mysteriosa, which mentions this ghost story. That was three years ago. The Barber-Alchemist, is evolving, it seems, into a trilogy!