NaNo-Update

National Novel Writing Month November 2009 is coming to a close. Yours truly has called it a writing day already a week ago, not minding the fact that he did not reach 50k. Around 30k I realized: what had started out as a collection of 'fragments & anecdotes' had taken on a subliminal logic that reached a peak just then – and suddenly I found myself tying in some loose ends, finding a conclusion, and smoothly shifting into edit mode.

What NaNo can do for you it surely did; helping along by daily word counts on your profile, encouragement by pep talk emails, and forums for the outcries and ideas you would like to share during the writing effort – still safely withholding most of your actual 'novel' to decide later, during the editing process, what is to become of those writings you did while your inner editor was on a vacation, hopefully.

Great project!

Tom Cruise, anywhere?

Somewhere round here, maybe right on the rusty tin roof front right, there was filming with Tom Cruise this week, for an action comedy with Cameron Diaz. Local media played it big; on the spot things weren't quite as excited. Driving by I mostly noticed the thick power cables for lighting, generators, camera equipment, lots of trucks, and a lot of security. The two stars aren't among my favorite actors, but to be near filming is something fascinating knowing a little about the complicated process. Now people are wondering how much of Salzburg there might to be seen in the final production. A few seconds? With a panoramic view, or just very realistic rusty tin roofs?

Coming up soon in a theater near your: buggers, I forgot the title ...

In memoriam Dieter Feichtner 1943–1999

This is in memory of Dieter Feichtner, Salzburg pianist and pioneer of synthesizers. The bass-speaker underneath the designer lamp is dedicated to him, a great musician who went to the borders of the bearable even for good-willing listeners time and again.
Just discovered that beyond the wonderful ECM-Album by Barre Philips, Mountainscapes with Dieter Feichtner as co-composer and player of synthesizers, there is a whole musical legacy to be found at the small label canto crudo. Check it out!

Hoping for a 'live' performance of those direct recordings by Günther Rabl in Salzburg soon.

Doctor in the house?

Good to know there are always doctors around, in this neighbourhood with so many small businesses, many of them run by families of Turkish origin. The parents or grandparents started out as construction or industrial workers – they were called into the country by the government in the 1960s and 1970s when there was actually a lack of workforce in Austria. Now these families are here to stay; they have their own shops, there is Sunday shopping for groceries around, and quiet, peaceful streets on weekend nights: never seen drunk, rowdy Turkish fellas in the streets here.

Greetings from NaNo-Land, Web

Oops,

while I’m getting carried away with a lot of philosophy our NaNo regional manager for Germany & Austria has asked us to do a little writing exercise; to introduce a new figure in our story: Den Weisen aus der Küche. – Thank you! In my story this wise man from the kitchen has been there all along, only hardly noticed yet. It is our novel hero, my father. You have not seen him yet by the big cook-pot where there is something strange simmering; it could be bone glue for making your own paper or binding your own sketchbook, it could be dog food cooked from a butcher’s ‘wastes’, it could be lard that will get transformed into some very fine breadspread: Grammelschmalz.

The raw material is always something that is regarded as useless waste nowadays. Yet as the Wise Man from the Kitchen has maintained there is no such thing as waste if you know what to do with it. The little philosopher in your NaNo here in Salzburg, Austria will immediately elaborate about Newton and the second law of thermodynamics.

Oh my goodness! Couldn’t anyone knock that guy out for a while? And much rather try to remember father's very own and highly unique recipe for Grammelschmalz? Short intermission – please stay tuned for the recipe after a word from our sponsor, Life & Death Thermodynamics®, based in Universe. Thank you.

An excerpt from a piece of bio-fiction currently under costruction here.

NaNo craze

Hey there, this is wemo, blog editor and current NaNo writer speaking. Just reached 14k. This is 14,064 words, and 78,688 chars in my word processor's count. Back in my daily goal, but contented: as I'm writing as I go along in my biographic fiction I need time to remember as well as to transform my memories. It takes time, it takes 'emotional' energy, so what?

Gone writing

Blog editor gone writing; so somebody has got to upload a stock photo, while that guy is taking his note-book everywhere and leaving his camera at home. Best regards from the back office crew – having an eye on him; slightely back back on his NaNo word count, that fella! Keep going!

Ehrenplatz für Ines

It is a small acrylic on paper, quite an expressive abstract study for a painter whose work at those times combined constructive elements with nature study in her larger paintings. A work she presented to me many years ago; I valued it highly, but never had it framed or displayed in any way. I came back to it recently, had it framed and put it on a shelf with some memorabilia; and managed to have an email with a Thank you & best regards forwarded to her by her gallerist. Thanks again.

"It's all over my head …

… and everything's alive with moths". – Werner Otte, Gouache 1990.

Es wächst mir über den Kopf - Die Motten wimmeln
Medium		Gouache
Size		13.4 x 18.1 in. / 34 x 46 cm.
Year		1990
Misc.		Signed, Inscribed
Sale Of		Dorotheum Salzburg: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 [was not sold at that auction]

found at artnet.com. Hoping for kind permission to use the reproduction.

Phew, just googled for picture results of that late, great artist that one of the blog crew is writing biographic fiction on currently – and isn't that something: it is a piece of painted autobiography that I came across first. No matter, if the repro is out of focus; the picture is alive with Otte's colours of this period; it may be 'a mess' at first sight, and the title is a shoutout – yet it is form, it is work, and it is not despair or giving in to what seems to be all over your head. And that is what art is about, at times, isn't it?

Father and a stag

1982 father and I did one last hike together; in Rauris in the central range of the Salzburg province alps. Both of us did not have any serious hiking gear, so we just followed a side valley uphill, not even trying to climb a peak. Yes, it was fall, the days of Rauriser Malertage, a painters’ annual ‘convention’ – artists of all styles willing to react to sublime mountain nature, draw, sketch, or paint with an exchange of results in the evenings.

For a nature loving person that my father never ceased to be this was also the time to hear stags belling; no, no, he never was a hunter; his was not to listen to the creatures of mountains & forests in order to shoot them. His was just to listen, and maybe to see – if you managed to be so quiet and peaceful as not to shy those animals away. And I had never heard a stag belling, so my father wanted to present me with this experience, and we had found a pretext to stay off one of those informal evening meetings at the local Kirchenwirt. Well, it’s been 27 years now, and I can’t seem to remember if we actually heard a stag belling; I do remember a feeling of connectedness with my father that strikes me as a rare gift in hindsight; it took me a long time to realize just how much the two of us have in common, for better or worse; and this little story is definitely part of the better.

This is an excerpt from a piece of biographic fiction currently under construction as a part of the international network of National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo.

In case you're among those who always wanted to write that certain piece of prose, maybe an outright novel – come on in and join fun, excitement and the suspense if you manage to finish November as a 'winner' with 50,000 words written, no matter what.

If your Inner Editor is just getting the screaming fits – send him/her on a four weeks' vacation!

This is a blog here; there are editors and theorists: so there's a disclaimer to the excerpt above: 'sublime' would never ever have been used as a term for mountain landscapes by that fictional father.

Nonnberg Abbey & "Bürgermeister"

One of the best known views of Salzburg, Nonnberg Abbey with its red spire roof left of the fortress. To be seen as a detail of the fortress: "Bürgermeister", the mighty tower that was used in 1511 to imprison the Salzburg mayor and most of his council for alleged conspiracy against the prince archbishop. The real reason: old privileges of the city council granted by the emperor to the annoyance of the local ruler.