Bumping heads with Veronique
Nov. 8th, 2006 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceSometimes something nice happens, and I just forget to blog it; especially if it was one thing in the middle of a list of things that all called for blogging.
Sometimes it's more complicated than that. When I first started keeping a blog, lo, these many moons since, I was quite exercised about the morality of it all: who did one talk about and who not, what subjects were not blog-safe or just too private to me, or else too private to other people? Etc.
Usage tends to wear away anxiety; either you grow careless or you filter out the unbloggable automatically, so that one way or another I'm rarely angsty these days. Every now and then, though, up crops the question again. Usually in relation to someone else, who I don't know well enough to work it out, whether they'll be comfortable to be talked about.
As, for example, this. While I was in the Whipple Museum in Cambridge last week, having my really nice day out, I almost literally banged heads with someone else; and when I was writing up the day, I dithered over whether or not I should talk about her, just because the little time we spent together, I had the impression that she probably wouldn't much like being talked about.
On the other hand, she has a book coming out, and the wee advance mention never did anyone any harm (or, in other words, she'd better just get used to it). So I have crushed my doubts underfoot, at least to the point of this quick sketch:
I was there, as I've said, to look at the orrery. Naturally, I wasn't alone in there; it was half-term week, there were kids and parents and such. And the orrery is big, and central, and attracts attention. Or, in this case, distracts it: I was bending over to peer at some little detail through the leaded glass of the dome, and trying not to put my size-ten feet actually on top of a smallish child at the same time, and hence my head came perilously close to collision with someone bent on the same mission from the opposite direction.
We both pulled back, the way you do, and looked at each other and laughed; and she was sketching, taking visual notes, so I did that impertinent-stranger thing and looked over her shoulder at her work. By then there were kids all over the orrery, so we both stepped out of the way till the flood had subsided; and then, the way you do, we got talking.
Her name is Veronique Tanaka, and her book is apparently not so much a graphic novel, more a sort of graphic poem, though she talks about it in musical terms as much as literary. More; it has no words. And of course as soon as the conversation has got that far, I want to say "D'you know my friend Bryan Talbot?" (this being pretty much the sum of my knowledge of graphic novels, that Bryan is Best) and - small world! - she does indeed know Bryan, and he's been helping her find a publisher. Huzzah!
Sometimes it's more complicated than that. When I first started keeping a blog, lo, these many moons since, I was quite exercised about the morality of it all: who did one talk about and who not, what subjects were not blog-safe or just too private to me, or else too private to other people? Etc.
Usage tends to wear away anxiety; either you grow careless or you filter out the unbloggable automatically, so that one way or another I'm rarely angsty these days. Every now and then, though, up crops the question again. Usually in relation to someone else, who I don't know well enough to work it out, whether they'll be comfortable to be talked about.
As, for example, this. While I was in the Whipple Museum in Cambridge last week, having my really nice day out, I almost literally banged heads with someone else; and when I was writing up the day, I dithered over whether or not I should talk about her, just because the little time we spent together, I had the impression that she probably wouldn't much like being talked about.
On the other hand, she has a book coming out, and the wee advance mention never did anyone any harm (or, in other words, she'd better just get used to it). So I have crushed my doubts underfoot, at least to the point of this quick sketch:
I was there, as I've said, to look at the orrery. Naturally, I wasn't alone in there; it was half-term week, there were kids and parents and such. And the orrery is big, and central, and attracts attention. Or, in this case, distracts it: I was bending over to peer at some little detail through the leaded glass of the dome, and trying not to put my size-ten feet actually on top of a smallish child at the same time, and hence my head came perilously close to collision with someone bent on the same mission from the opposite direction.
We both pulled back, the way you do, and looked at each other and laughed; and she was sketching, taking visual notes, so I did that impertinent-stranger thing and looked over her shoulder at her work. By then there were kids all over the orrery, so we both stepped out of the way till the flood had subsided; and then, the way you do, we got talking.
Her name is Veronique Tanaka, and her book is apparently not so much a graphic novel, more a sort of graphic poem, though she talks about it in musical terms as much as literary. More; it has no words. And of course as soon as the conversation has got that far, I want to say "D'you know my friend Bryan Talbot?" (this being pretty much the sum of my knowledge of graphic novels, that Bryan is Best) and - small world! - she does indeed know Bryan, and he's been helping her find a publisher. Huzzah!