Thank you, Jane!
Jane is co-author on this one for very good reason—as in she wrote some of it….line by line. When we collaborate, even we don’t know who did what.
CHERNEVOG IS UP!!!
by CJ | May 1, 2012 | Journal | 37 comments
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Russ was home for a few days and we spent (seriously) nearly every cent we had to get things fixed up here. As soon as some income comes in again, I’ll be leaping over to buy this one and Lynne’s books. Yay! Good work to all of you!
And while writing is my basic creativity, I do also adore photography. I did one the other day I really love. The original is in color but I’m learning to do black and white via computer programs. I am really happy with this Chinese Crocodile Lizard:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zettepics/6990982598/
CJ, I feel better knowing that. I grew up in a home surrounded by music and singing. Classical, show tunes, jazz, big band. My brother has perfect pitch (a violinist). I played guitar, piano, and used to sing a lot more than I do now that my asthma is catching up with me. (I can still whistle, though!) My brother and I were singing songs we heard on the radio before we could even talk intelligibly. I can see how ice skating would reinforce your sense of rhythm. I loved roller skating to music back when we used to go to the roller rink as little kids. That’s been a coon’s age ago. (No, I did not roller disco!)
As for you going nuts if you can’t write, good! Bring it on! The day I can’t read, I’ll go nuts!
BTW, today is Star Wars Day. May the fourth be with you.
Groooooan!
Re: art and creativity. I think it’s significant that one of the defining attributes for being considered “human,” i.e. Cro-Magnon and (to an extent) Neandertal, is the ability to create art. Tool-use isn’t enough. I seem to recall it required the discovery of bone flutes and maybe carved items, as well as burial rites which indicate an ability for abstract thought which moved Neandertals from “too primitive to be human” to “maybe they were human after all.”
Art strikes me as being the only thing humans create with the potential to last forever. Political systems change, languages change, tech changes — everything changes — but cave paintings can still communicate to us and emotionally affect us. From some civilizations all we have are remnants of architecture, and if you count those as art, as my college art history classes did, then art is the only thing that truly lasts. It amazes me how much it’s devalued by society, and how so many artists are looked at askance.
The most unusual and interesting thing about those cave paintings? Even the oldest known examples show both representational, fully developed realistic portrayals, and the use of abstract symbolic portrayals, imagination and spirituality. So even the earliest cave paintings were fundamentally, in that most important way, as “human” and “modern” as we are. When those are depictions in carbon black, chalk white, red ochre, and other earliest pigments, of wooly rhinos, wooly mammoths, horses, cave bears, cave lions, humans, hands, birds…that is remarkable. Equally remarkable when the technique rivals modern master painters and sculptors, or the finest works of the classical Greeks and Romans.
I read recently that there were two things they’d found go all the way back to Homo erectus: A few Homo erectus have been found with red ochre pigment and flowers and grain spread over the bodies, placed often in fetal position. Purposeful burial with symbolic, spiritual intent and an attempt at making the ugly and sad into something more beautiful. Homo erectus did have some primitive stone tools and possibly (maybe) fire. — Both Cro-Magnon (us) and Neanderthals (us or nearly us) definitely did all those things. Apparently, though, Cro-Magnons (our brand of humans) were better at technical skills, language use, and offense-defense. The jury’s still out on whether Neanderthals were absorved through interbreeding, or died out from rivalry, but there seems to be some indication at least some Neanderthal genes made it in, at least into the Europeans. (I don’t understand how far Neanderthals were spread outside Europe and the Middle East.)
The huge mental/intellectual step required to see a curved line as a representation, a symbol, of a bird or beast or next door neighbor. To use these lines to communicate an idea to someone else; to have someone else interpret these symbols. Amazing feat, when you think about it!
Creativity — making and reading those curved lines — should be everyone’s birthright, but so many people are afraid of it, of the kind of off-the-road around-the-corner thinking that makes it possible. They limit their own thinking to the “correct” paths, where they feel safe, and fear the creative who challenge this.
And about Chernevog — the magic is powerful. I was only going to peek at the first few pages; I was half through another book and had just received a book I had on hold at the library, so I wasn’t going to read Chernevog just yet. I was only going to peek — and the next time I looked up, I was into the fourth chapter. It’s good. It’s very good. It may even be better than Rusalka.
Oh, yes. TabCat2. I hear you! I tell myself I’m only just going to read one chapter before I go to sleep, and I actually put my book marker there so I’ll know I have to quit, and the next thing I know, I’m turning the last page of the book and it’s 4 a.m. or 6 a.m., and I’ve got to go to work on hardly any sleep! I have a list of authors about whom I’ve made a hard and fast rule never to even open one their books unless I have enough time to read the whole thing, cos 9 times out of 10, that’s what I end up doing. Guess who’s #1 on that list!
Bought it yesterday. Just getting started.
I was *so* pleased with the Rusalka e-book… I enjoyed it in paperback but it seemed slightly disjointed (altho some of that, I’m sure, was getting used to the Russian setting/mythology). The e-book made a much better read, IMO.
So I’m very much looking forward to this re-read of Chernevog. THANKS, ladies!
OT but related: How do you pronounce the name of Dubhain, from Faery in Shadow? I know it’s not “doo-BINE” but I haven’t found the “right” way yet.