Strings attached

When I was a child, I wanted to play the piano. My father was a fairly good pianist (he also played the accordion in a morris side when I was very small) and I was encouraged to take piano lessons as soon as my hands were big enough to manage the keys. I kept trying, I kept getting a little way and no further. The lessons continued for years, but despite all the encouragement I could wish for, all my genuine desire to play, all the practice that I put in and all that the music-teachers could do for me, I was unable to master the instrument. I would get reasonably fluent with one piece of music, and then have to start again, from scratch, with the next one. It was utterly, utterly frustrating. Everyone assumed that I simply wasn’t trying or didn’t really want to get anywhere – phrases which I heard in many classes at school: sport, dancing, anything involving much writing. I was told these things so often that I assumed that they were true and that I really must be lazy.

By the time I’d been in secondary school for a few years, I was starting to see some patterns in the things I couldn’t do. (Spotting patterns and grasping systems is something I’ve always been good at.) I could tell that I wasn’t ever going to win with the piano, but I had some hopes for being able to do a bit better with a guitar. It was less ‘two-handed’. I’d recently managed crochet although I’d totally failed with knitting, and I felt that the difference between the guitar and the piano was rather similar. My parents didn’t want to waste money on a guitar, thinking that I’d give up on it soon after I got it. So I borrowed a ukulele from my best friend’s brother, and struck a deal with Mum and Dad: if I could manage to get a few tunes out of it before my birthday, they’d buy me a guitar as a present. I did, they did, and the nylon-strung, student-size guitar became a huge part of my life and a good friend for the next thirty years.

Now, I don’t want you imagining that I was ever much of a guitarist. I was not. I quite soon hit a plateau and stayed there, but I was happy. Meanwhile I’d finally been allowed to give up those endless frustrating piano lessons. Oh the relief! And I’d also proved something important to myself about my odd limitations, even if I didn’t understand what caused them. Whatever it was, I was sure that it wasn’t ‘just laziness’ or a lack of interest.

When I got to the age for driving lessons, soon afterwards, I didn’t even bother to start learning. I already knew that I’d be in for more tears and frustration and could never drive without the same constant, intense concentration I needed for writing. I would never be safe in traffic: a distraction would render me helpless. People nagged me about not driving, too, especially after the family moved to the country, away from frequent buses and trains, but I wasn’t going to waste money finding out something I was already convinced of.

For some reason (possibly not unrelated to buying a word processor - which turned writing from a slow, painful chore into a newly discovered joy), I stopped playing the guitar regularly in the late Eighties. And twelve years ago I realised how rarely I’d touched the strings since then, realised that there were enough other things in my life now: things that I could do better, could even do well, and gave the battered old thing to a charity shop. End of guitar playing. End of an era.

Except that, recently, I’ve too often felt the lack of something to strum when I’m thinking about tunes, or I have wanted a bit of backing when I’ve been sitting here singing to myself. (Be glad it is just singing to myself – my singing is even worse than my guitar playing. But it makes me feel good to sing, and I live with songs and tunes constantly twirling around in my head, wanting out.) So last weekend I gazed into the window of the nearest music shop and saw something calling out to me. A tiny guitar, a guitar so small that it looks more like an overfed ukulele, but with the proper number of strings. So small that it is almost too small for my fingers, but not quite. So small that it has a quiet voice, a good thing for a flat in a shared block with poor sound insulation. So small that its price tag was within my reach. The last kitten in the rock shop, it looked at me, I looked at it, and I knew that it would follow me home.

I have a guitar again. In the meantime I’ve learnt a new word. The word is ‘dyspraxia’. I first heard it a couple of years ago. If I had any suspicions that I had really been that lazy child who wouldn’t do anything that she wasn’t interested in, if I had still harboured any lingering thoughts that maybe I just didn’t try hard enough to learn tasks, the new word wiped them away. I already knew the way I differed by then, I clearly recognised my inability to automate tasks that most people find easy, but I had never had a simple name for the difference, never had a name to use to explain it to others. Learning the word ‘dyspraxia’ was another moment of sudden and very deep relief.

Reading this back, I hope I haven’t made you think that I am angry about not having my dyspraxia spotted when I was young. (It still rankles a little: the evidence seems clear to me now, and I wonder if my school teachers were not too eager to help because I was so often ahead of the rest of the class in those things that didn’t involve writing or other coordination tasks.) I can’t help wondering what turns my life would have taken had I been given some help – or at least some understanding. But there are no counterfactuals in this life. The person I am now is a product of all that I have been through, good and bad. I like being me, so how can I complain about how I got here? Besides, I’ve had to find my own ways to do things, often found ways to do them quite well. I might never have tried so hard if I’d known that I couldn’t be expected to do them. (I even managed to knit, slowly, when I worked out a method based on the German way of holding the yarn. I’m wearing one of my hand-knitted jumpers as I write this.)

Here I am with sore fingertips again, gradually recalling all those chords left unplayed for over a decade, getting the old red song book out from under the bed (an ancient, battered notebook which lost its red cover in the sixties), working my way through things left unsung for many’s the year (perhaps wisely in some cases) and smiling. Oh yeah!

The Apophysis Conspiracy

When I joined Flickr in 2007, I thought that the photo-sharing website was only for photographs. But I found that it inclued thriving communities of people making other kinds of images, and among these, a good number of fractalists. The fractals were interesting, some of them breathtakingly complex and beautiful, but most of them did not make me want to have a go for myself.

And then I saw some pictures that were different. I discovered that the program used to generate them was called Apophysis. I learnt that it was possible to use it without either a very powerful computer or very much mathematical knowledge. Most of all, something about the look of Apophysis fractal pictures was ‘me-like’: friendly, urging me to come out and play with them. I still don’t know quite what it is about Apophysis that attracts me, but it was love at first sight.

Apophysis is a fractal flame generator. This makes a particular family of fractals images, some of which do resemble the pictures one sees in flames or veils of smoke. You can download the program from www.apophysis.org – where you will also find links to experimental and alternative versions on Sourceforge, links to tutorials and other useful resources. Oh, and it’s free. (It’s purely a Windows program. There is a fairly similar fractal flame program available for Macs. It is called Oxidizer and is also on Sourceforge.)

Some people approach fractal art in a very top-down, organised way, telling the computer exactly what to create and remaining very much in control of the design process throughout. What I particularly like about Apophysis is the way it allows me to work alongside it. We collaborate. The program takes a random starting image and offers me a batch of mutations and variations on it. I select from them, and it offers further variation until I come across an image that I want to use.

It’s not purely selective breeding. I can limit the available options, make alterations and adjustments, and run subprogram scripts to change the picture. After I have the rendered image, I can add further processing in an art program, to bring out what attracted me to that image. But however much of my own creative input I add to the final result, my best work feels like a productive conspiracy between myself and Apophysis: the love affair of two years ago turned into a very fruitful marriage.

We have several thousand children so far.

Unnaturally quiet

Back to work today, but a lunchtime start. I went for an early walk. Cold police officers, on cordon duty around the scene of yesterday’s explosion, were patiently answering questions and redirecting people. Half of Mardol is without power, a large area around the Welsh Bridge is still sealed off and gas and electricity workers are busy. There’s a lot of rubble to clear before roads can be reopened.

I was at home at the time of the blast yesterday morning, a quarter of a mile from the place that blew up, but the flat shook as if a car had rammed the corner of the building below me. I put my head out of the window, surprised to see nothing untoward. A few minutes later, when I went out for groceries, I found the town gridlocked and emergency vehicles trying to get through. People in the street said it was a gas explosion and that half the Shrewsbury Hotel had collapsed and the police were evacuating the area. Keeping well out of the way, I went into the Riverside Shopping Centre where I found many shops were in the process of closing. My grocery shopping became a quick dash around Wilkinsons, with a chat with the worried staff who were unsure if they too should be closing. They were waiting to hear either from the centre management or the police.

By the time I returned home, there were air ambulances arriving, many more emergency vehicles, and still traffic at a near standstill. I was listening to Radio Shropshire, which did a good job of sorting fact from rumour as the story emerged. Gradually the traffic chaos cleared leaving a very quiet, very shell-shocked town. It is still unnaturally quiet this morning. Traffic is being kept out as much as possible. I will have a half-mile walk to get my bus to work.

The great relief here is that more people were not injured. The corner where the building blew apart is often busy with pedestrians and cars. Especially on a sunny Sunday morning when parents take their children to the park.

A strange start to the New Year.

In-Between Days

This is a strange time of year. Christmas is over, the New Year not started, and I’m finding it hard to summon up the energy to do anything much. (I’m also worrying about a friend who is having a major operation this week, and wondering how soon I’ll hear how it went.)

The weather’s not been conducive to doing things. Cold and damp. But I had a very pleasant day in Welshpool yesterday, lunching with friends, eating very nice trout with roasted vegetables, and playing Jenga while the rain poured down.

I guess I will be back in the usual weekly routine all too soon. It’s back to work on Monday. But for now I feel up in the air and unsettled.

Christmas Greetings

Time to put this one up, I think. Picture is based on one of the windows at Shrewsbury RC Cathedral on Town Walls. The greeting and good wishes are for you all, whether you celebrate Christmas, Yule, Martian Glimfrogga or some other midwinter festival (or mid-summer festival for the Antipodes, of course). Have a good one! I’ll be offline for a few days, but I’ll be back before the end of the year.

Shining Gently

The Christmas tree went up today. I’ve had this one for ten years, since my first Christmas in the Tortoise Loft.

Letters

According to the stats for Tortoise Loft – The Blog, yesterday was the busiest day ever with 130 views. But not one comment: no opinions, no conversations started, no ‘that reminds me’, no ideas thrown out and picked up on, nothing. A few people do occasionally comment, for which I am grateful, but there’s no to-and-fro, little feedback.

So try this:

The ability to read alters the way we see the world.

Discuss.

Please.

An Early Start

It was a cold and frosty morning this morning. Despite the temptation of my warm and comfortable bed (I’m not at work today), I got up and dressed and took my camera to the park before the frost melted. It was worth the effort to see the sun come up over the still-swollen River Severn. The comorants were fishing, there were two grebes swimmming about by Shrewsbury School’s boathouse, and the air felt clean and fresh. By the time I came home, just after nine, the sun was sulking in grey cloud and the frost had melted.

I am not often good at getting up and out when I don’t have to, so I promised myself a bacon and egg MacMuffin on the way home. An incentive that obviously worked. (Very good it was, too. The best thing MacDonalds does.)

This picture is simply the negative of one of my sunrise shots. I looked at the original and wondered how to bring out the wonderful patterns in the tree-branches. Sudden inspiration: try the negative version. Worked even better than I hoped. I wish all my bright ideas were as effective.

Light and Water

 

Shrewsbury’s late-night shopping started on Wednesday night, with the switching-on of the town’s Christmas lights. Now the three green-plastic trees strung across the road outside my window are full of twinkly little blue-white lights. I didn’t go to the Square to see the lights turned on, but I did start making my Christmas cards – choosing and printing-out the pictures.

On Thursday I had my first day off work this week, and the sun shone for much of the morning. So I took my camera down to the Welsh Bridge and Frankwell to look at the river level before I went on to do my shopping.

The Severn is over its banks and spread out across the cricket pitch and part of a car park, but the flood barriers are doing their job, and emergency preparations are in place. We’ve seen much worse than this in Shropshire in many recent years.

With a bit of sunshine on it, the flood water looked quite pretty.

It’s been a while

Sorry, I meant to write again before this.

Novacon was a pleasant convention. Fairly low-key, as most recent Novacons have been, but none the worse for that. The new hotel proved friendly and eager to please – they seemed a little bemused at first, but they soon got used to us. And we’re welcome back there next year. I sold enough stuff in the Art Show to cover my train fair and most of the food bill, so that was okay. (The food was good.) And I enjoyed some good talks and panels, caught up with old friends, and met some new folk. Which is why I went. That’s the good bit.

I didn’t get my nose outside the hotel once I’d arrived, as the weather was so grim – rain, more rain, with showers for a change now and then. Perhaps it’s not surprising that a head cold followed me home. With all the Worse Things about, I feel strangely proud to have succumbed to a perfectly ordinary English winter cold. Mind you, it’s been necessary to keep explaining that it’s just a cold. People look at you as if you should be locked up if you happen to cough or sneeze within ten foot of them, even if you turn away and you catch it in a tissue.

When not sneezing, I’ve been spending too much time watching the rain again. The camera hasn’t had an outing for a fortnight. I’m getting tired of getting soaked when going to work or nipping to the shops, and bored with listening to the wind slamming against my windows. Please can we have some settled sunshine for a bit, to dry things out? At least Shrewsbury hasn’t had the catastrophic flooding that Cumbria and other parts of the country have had to put up with. But this grey damp is depressing me. I want to have something more upbeat to write about than rain and sneezes.