I need a plan for doing daily blogs. The task gets harder as my capacity for invention diminishes.
Verses about how the daily blogs started
‘A blog a day Keeps blues away’. At first it was a need To find in chaff a seed Through diversion of that rumination Into futures planned by my creation.
The hassle to find items for that plan To soothe to sleep ‘S’-word ideation. Accept that loss, finding reparation In thinky sludge not that chimeric man. Empty space there still- but a crevice blooms Between dead bones. It’s time to sing again Our plainsong now, my all-enduring love Who waited while the fever raged. Now when Our life in its established grooves resumes In flight tween olive groves, there shines a dove.
The problem from now stated:
But crisis averted, I still need a plan that makes me write each day and it gets more difficulty.. At first I followed Word-Press prompts but now I have exhausted all those prompts they wish to offer me and the lists each morning repeat the old themes and deny my access to rethought of them.
My plan has always been to harvest art for topics to keep my brain alive. Hence I even more than normally want to experience theatre, concerts, art exhibitions, opera, ballet or reading texts – poems, plays and novels, art monographs and even non-fiction when I can manage it, beyond the obvious artistic and literary lives that help with the latter. I read just as I have always done but more so, and now I write up my reflections, giving some solidity to them and helping me to understand what I see, hear and read.
This will continue. Here’s the schedule of events from my diary for instance that might be called ‘shows’:
| Date | Events to write-up |
| 29th September | The film of The Outrun 2.30 Metrocentre with Geoff |
| 4th October | Othello Elysium Theatre Co. at Bishop Auckland Town Hall with Geoff, Rob & Linda, 7.30pm |
| 9th October | Lux Muralis stage light-show SPACE in Durham Cathedral with Geoff 7.00pm |
| 10th October | Forward Prizes for Poetry, Durham Gala Theatre with Geoff |
| 11th October | A dramatised reading of Pat Barker’s The Voyage Home, Gala Durham with Geoff. Pat Barker interview follows. |
| 12th October | 11.30 Edith Hall on her book Facing Down the Furies. Gala studio 7.00 pm Alan Hollinghurst on All Our Evenings Gala Durham with Geoff |
| 25th October Trip to London. Train at 10.40 – 13.41 | 2.45 National Gallery Van Gogh Poets and lovers Exhibition 7.30 pm. Waiting for Godot, Haymarket Theatre (with Ben Wishaw). BIRTHDAY PRESENT: Staying Travelodge Elephant & Castle |
| 26th October Return Kings X 6.30 p.m to 9.28 | Morning to choose event 3.oo pm Danez Smith Bluff reads at Southbank Centre. |
| 9th November | The Cramlington Train Wrecker at Bishop Auckland Town Hall with Geoff, Rob & Linda, 7.30pm |
Books that I read are no longer as scheduled as when I worked through the Booker Longlist and the Forward Prize shortlist, but at some point I will read Richard Powers’ Playground (out today and to arrive tomorrow)
The first book blog will be on Garth Greenwell’s (2024) Small Rain. Just working up to that after finishing reading today. It is a stunningly beautiful book.
The only other reading awaiting(apart from texts in event above) is Ekow Eshun The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and The Worlds That Made Them
Looking forward to Ali Smith Gliff, out 31st October.
I am more than happy to receive ideas – as much as feedback. If you want a topic exploring, try me. I can’t promise to do it justice to your standards but it will keep my synapses humming at least.
All love
Steven.
But, TBH I am probably just sitting on my ideas. And that’s not how you best see what these ideas are!
Steve_Bamlett_blog 