Bid my little one farewell the other day and now there's a big gaping hole in my heart. He's halfway across the world now and it'll likely be quite a while before we see each other again. Two foxes quenching their thirst from a watering hole in Namibia keep me company while I sulk.
Will spend the day cleaning and getting the place in order. Hermit mode begins tomorrow.
Israel Discovers that Bombing Hospitals is a War Crime — Novara Media
5 Books that Dive into the Drug-Fueled Darkness of the Club Scene — Ivy Pochoda for CrimeReads
Dark Retreats: several days alone in a room in complete darkness and silence. Participants are delivered three meals through a hatch that maintains the darkness in their dwellings, which also each contain a bed, bath, and flushing toilet. They can leave simply by opening the door, and they can also break their silence to chat with the facilitators at two intervals throughout the day when they come to the door to check on them and bring the food. Electronic items like phones or tablets are not allowed inside dark rooms, making it perhaps the ultimate dopamine fast. — Wired
19 films that explore art and erotica:
1. The Dreamers — Bernardo Bertolucci
2. La Belle Noiseuse — Jacques Rivette
3. The Pillow Book — Peter Greenaway
4. Camille Claudel — Bruno Nuytten
5. Henry & June —Philip Kaufman
6. Portrait of a Lady on Fire — Celine Sciamma
7. Caravaggio — Derek Jarman
8. Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus — Steven Shainberg
9. A Bigger Splash — Luca Guadagnino
10. Artemisia — Agnes Merlet
11. The Artist and the Model — Fernando Trueba
12. Anatomy of Hell — Catherine Breillat
13. Lust for Life — Vincente Minelli
14. Surviving Picasso — James Ivory
15. The Libertine — Laurence Dunmore
16. Goya's Ghosts — Milos Forman
17. The Dying Gaul — Craig Lucas
18. Factory Girl — George Hickenlooper
19. Claire's Camera — Hong Sang-soo
Some of these I've watched and loved, some I have yet to see. For future reference.
Smearing Writers and Artists with a Red Stain — The Daily Heller
A Writer For Our Time: Why John Le Carre's Work Remains More Essential Than Ever — Rav Grewal Kok for CrimeReads
Israel Tells Airlines Not To Let Israeli Citizens Leave — Haaretz
Come next week, I shall be entering full hermit mode for a good month in an effort to finally bring THE SOLAR GRID to a close; only inks, letters, and some colors remain on the final chapter. Without a kitchen though, proper hermit mode can be difficult to pull off; it kind of necessitates a great deal of meal prep. I've got my microwave, kettle, minifridge, and grill outside, so I think I can make it work.
Bout of insomnia gave me enough of a window to pencil through the remaining pages of the final chapter of THE SOLAR GRID the other night. Despite having thumbnailed the entire thing prior, when it came to work on the actual artboards it became evident that a couple extra pages were necessary to allow a particular sequence to breathe. That happens sometimes. Especially vital when closing a story. You don't want things to feel too rushed. Or drag on forever either, it's gotta be just right.
Ottmar Leibert on culture and its fringes.
Warren Ellis on Jesse Armstrong's MOUNTAINHEAD
“Hollywood assignments had already kept him from new fiction for nearly a year and a half. Since then, Leonard had devoted himself exclusively to screenwriting, considering penning a film’s companion novel—or 'novelization'—only if the money was right. As a result, Leonard had little time to experiment with his fiction, to apply the lessons learned from his year and a half toiling with The Big Bounce. He expressed his growing concerns on the matter to Swanson. Leonard later recalled, '[Swanson] called to ask if I’d read a recently published novel called The Friends of Eddie Coyle. I told him I hadn’t heard of it and he said, ‘This is your kind of stuff, kiddo, run out and get it before you write another word.’ Leonard took Swanson’s recommendation and breezed through George V. Higgins’s critically acclaimed 1970 debut in one sitting, later claiming '[I] felt as if I’d been set free, [thinking] so this was how you do it.'” — COOLER THAN COOL: The Life And Times of Elmore Leonard by C.M. Kushins at CrimeReads.
Went to the Grand Egyptian Museum with my little man who I am blessed to have spend some time with me in Cairo these days. Playtime of course is kind of all the time, which I am taking full advantage of while I can.
Little time for anything else so inbox has climbed to 216, and RSS reader is at a whopping 1898.
Life away from daddy mode to resume next week.
“In fact, Ecological turmoil might endanger the survival of Homo Sapiens itself. Global warming, rising oceans and widespread pollution could make the earth less hospitable to our kind, and the future might consequently see a spiraling race between human power and human-induced natural disasters. As humans use their power to counter the forces of nature and subjugate the ecosystem to their needs and whims, they might cause more and more unanticipated and dangerous side effects. These are likely to be controllable only by even more drastic manipulations of the ecosystem, which would result in even more chaos.”
The premise of my graphic novel THE SOLAR GRID in a nutshell basically, courtesy of Yuval Noah Harari's SAPIENS.
“Many call the process 'the destruction of nature'. But it's not really destruction, it's change. Nature cannot be destroyed. Sixty-five million years ago, an asteroid wiped out dinosaurs, but in so doing opened the way forward for mammals. Today, humankind is driving many species into extinction and might even annihilate itself. But other organisms are doing quite well. Rats and cockroaches, for example, are in their heyday. These tenacious creatures would probably creep out from beneath the smoking rubble of a nuclear Armageddon, ready and able to spread their DNA. Perhaps 65 million years from now, intelligent rats will look back gratefully on the dissemination wrought by humankind, just as we today can thank that dinosaur-busting asteroid.”
Future graphic novel premise?
SAPIENS by Yuval Noah Harari.