Well, I claimed that I got a lot less done this past summer in terms of my writing than I’d hoped — since I’d been hoping to draft a novel — but in fact, I did pull off something in my writing that I’m very pleased with: a script for a short Korean film adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zann.” I’ve reflected in the past on how challenging it is to adapt Lovecraft to a Korean setting, but it’s less so with a story like this one, since the horror is more simply existential; there is, of …
Month: August 2011
Writing About What You Love
Notice, it says “what” you love, not “who” you love, which is another kettle of… well, fish? Hops? I am working on a short story about homebrewing, brewing, yeast, beer-mythology (there’s a lot of it), art, transformation… well, and finally I’ve come to think of it as my attempt to write something Zymurgico-Lovecraftian. (Zymurgy is the fancy-dancy word for the branch of applied chemistry related to fermentation — making beer, mead, wine, and the like using yeast. Lovecraftian is a term I expect I won’t have to explain to anyone reading this blog.) Anyway, I’m busily revising the story now …
And by the way…
School has started again. Apparently the start date was changed from Sept. 1st (which is what is has been for the last however many years) to the week of Sept. 1st, which this year began on August 29th. For some reason, not one of the foreign teachers I know (except one) was told about this, so when we got the text message on Friday — yeah, on Friday — we were all shocked. I’m sure it was on a calendar somewhere — in fact, I’m told it was — but as for actually communicating the change, well: communication is not …
Something Cheerful, and my Mazing Plans
Both of the other posts I drafted today were about gloomy things — bigotry, on a Korean bus and in an American TV show — but I figured, since it’s the first day of semester, I’d post something cheerful. Miss Jiwaku and I stumbled on something pretty surprising in the Hyundai Department Store tonight, on the way home from dinner: Yeah, that’s three Rogue brewery beers — Dead Guy Ale, Amber Ale, Mocha Porter — and three Lost Coast brewery beers — Indica, Great White, and Tangerine — shelved in the beer section of a department store in Bucheon. Yes, …
Back to the Primeval Forest of Story
I took music lessons from about the 8th grade on. For a long time, it was just saxophone lessons, but when I was a high school senior, I started taking jazz theory lessons as well. I had a friend or two who’d done so — a pianist and a guitarist — and they both recommended the local freelance jazz pianist, a guy named Bill Richards (who I see is still playing and composing, happily). Bill was an excellent, thoughtful, and engaging teacher, as well as a genuinely good person, and I got a lot out of our lessons. I remember …