Tell Me What It's All About*

Monday. So far this Monday has brought me blue skies, sunshine, absolute silence, an important letter and a book which I finished in less than two hours. I like this sort of Monday. The book was Scarlett Thomas's Going Out which easily summed up as a light UK version of early Douglas Coupland novels. I do not know why I've read three Scarlett Thomas novels because if you take away the colourful packaging of a) metafiction ("The End of Mr Y"), b) anti-consumerism ("PopCo") and c) popculture ("Going Out") you get pretty much the same novel.

New Age health solutions? Check. Schrödinger's cat? Check. Main protagonist being into her math puzzles? Check. Slightly deviant sexual orientation painted in a fairly vague way? Check. C-category drug use? Check. Vegetarianism or some variant upon it? Check. Internet featuring heavily? Check.

But I still like her novels - particularly PopCo - even if they feel like a Linda McCartney meal. You know, easily digested vegetarian fare with a touch of celebrity to it? Perhaps it's just because I can see myself being firm friends with the people populating her novels. Perhaps I just want to go for (organic, herbal) tea with Ms. Thomas?

Next on the reading list: I need to finish Iain Pears' An Instance of the Fingerpost (which isn't a chore to read, it is just really long) and then Andrew Sean Greer's The Story of a Marriage. I also have a strange longing for something non-fiction.

* title taken from Supergrass's "Going Out" (which I bet Scarlett Thomas has heard once or twice).

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On Speeches and Speech Acts?

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So Obama is betting on the word's enduring power as a reformer of American life. Historically he has good reason for, from the beginning, words and texts have constructed American realities, not the other way round. The spell cast on Americans by the mantle of words goes all the way back to the first Great Awakening in the 1740s when flocks thrilled to Methodist preachers such as George Whitefield. Evangelical passion remains a brilliant strand in the weave of American discourse, but when it made way for the reasoning of the enlightenment deists and unitarians who made the revolution, another element of American speech-power sounded loud and clear: the reverence for classical oratory. The Republican bet is that all this is a thing of the past; that, self-evidently, we live in the age of images, and words are just the add-ons to the beguilement of the eye; that all we have are soundbites. Obama's is the more stunning gamble; that so far from the digital age killing off the reign of the word, it has actually given logos a whole new lease of life.

Simon Schama on Barack Obama's acceptance speech, August 28, 2008.

Unsurprisingly my brain went 'ping!' when I realised Schama was trying to make a point about the performative and transformative powers of language. Always nice to be thrown some discourse analysis over breakfast. Even more unsurprising: the comments to the piece are almost all uniformly refusing to take up Schama's gauntlet.

Tracks, Trails and Tribulations.

Let's be frank: I am a process knitter. When I choose to knit something I go for patterns that will a) challenge me, b) make me count every single stitch and c) see me collapse into a broken heap at some point. And so I enjoy knitting lace shawls even if I rarely wear them. My current pet peeve/project is Evelyn C. Clark's Heartland Shawl (link goes to another knitter's version). I've nicknamed my version "Tracks and Trails" to reflect the patterns used. I am about halfway through the repeats of the second lace charts and I'm yet to find my rhythm. Usually I have my 'collapse into a broken heap' moment fairly early on and then I come out on the other side to work the stitches in a fairly fluent manner. But this? I still need to shut out the world and count, count, count. I'm using Design.club.dk's Duo merino in a petrol colourway. And I'm not sure about this yarn either as it compares unfavourably to other fingering weight merinos I've used. It is splitty and rather stiff.

Could this be the project that will make me become a project knitter instead? Seeing as my other project is an actual wearable garment - the ubiquitous February Lady Sweater in nice, tweedy Scottish organic wool - I fear this might just be the case. Will I ever knit another lace shawl? Ask me once I've completed the Heartland/Tracks & Trails shawl.

Holyrood Letter

And so my brief liaison with Scottish politics continues today with a letter asking me for my vote in the Scottish Labour Party leadership face-off. Seeing as I am not a member of Scottish Labour, receiving an actual, real ballot is slightly .. surprising.

It reminds me that I am an expat. I know my Danish Parliament/Folketing. I know exactly who I will be voting for come election time (for, lo, I retain my general election voting rights in Denmark). Scotland? I'm not able to vote in the British general elections, but I will be voting come next Scottish parliamentary election. The Scots have fewer parties than the Danes, but that does not make it any easier to decide. Au contraire. Thankfully it seems as though I will have some time to figure things out as the next election is about three years away. I have adjusted to the fact that I am now living "elsewhere".

And, no, I don't think I'll be casting my vote in the Scottish Labour leadership face-off. I can't think of any good reasons to do so.