inspiration

David Bowie’s 100 Favourite Books

21 January 2016 by villia Leave a Comment

As the fallout from Bowie’s death settles, we collect our thoughts and try to make sense of his life and legacy. As I mentioned in my previous post, I fell in love with him in my teens. He was larger than life and he sang about feelings of isolation and anxiety. Something I was only too familiar with after the death of my father.

I believe what turned me onto him wasn’t just the music, the costumes and whatever doomsday thoughts he dabbled in. I have always been curious about life, the universe and everything. Bowie was extremely well read and seemed to share this curiosity. In fact, I think his curiosity far exceeded mine. His ability to express his findings in art certainly did. He opened up strange doors that would never close again. My life was richer because of him.

Having been a fan for more than 30 years, I know his music inside and out. All periods, also the incredible and overlooked 1990s. I could go upon a stage and give an unprepared lecture about his life and influences. I have all his records and a few books on him and his art. While the world scrambles to get to know him – Blackstar is no 1 in 69 countries and his album sales rose 5000% in the week after his passing – I can sit back and enjoy what I already am familiar with.

So how can I get to know him better without reading another biography? How can I get into his mind and tap into that universe of his? The answer is, get to know his influences. As mentioned above, Bowie was extremely well read. There are countless photos of him reading through the decades. He posted his top 100 books on his Facebook page in 2013. I have read a couple of them, but most are a mystery. Many I have never heard of.

So here is how I’ll commemorate David Bowie in the coming year and beyond. Read the books he loved. Let him continue to expand my mind and horizon. His music may just take on a whole new meaning.

Only question is, where to start?

David Bowie 1947-2016

11 January 2016 by villia Leave a Comment

I wasn’t going to write about this. I was going to lie down with headphones on like I did in my teens. The way I heard “Heroes” for the first time. Listen to the album he released last Friday. The album that was a part of his death. But I can’t. I can’t put it on. Not just yet.

It all seems so clear now. He looked old and frail in the videos to Blackstar and Lazarus. Unlike the videos he made three years ago. Subconsciously, I wondered how it could be. Consciously, I ignored it. Avoided the subject.

It’s a wonder, really. Even his death was art. He had been ill for a year and a half. He went into the studio, knowing what was to come. He created a masterpiece, a record that surpasses everything he’s done since the 1970s. Yes, it’s better than Scary Monsters. He released the album on his birthday, giving it no chance to be a “dead man – huge hit” thing. It was a regular release on Friday. A baffling album that so painfully, makes perfect sense now. Two days later, he goes. Last single he released was Lazarus. Look up here, I’m in heaven. I have scars that can’t be seen. What did we know?

David Bowie was in control. He even designed our experience of his death.

My first real encounter with David Bowie was in 1983. I’m a Let’s dance kid. I heard the singles on the radio because they were the biggest thing around. My uncle borrowed the album and the Best of Bowie (the original 1980 K-Tel release) as he was learning the guitar. I don’t know if he ever played them, but I was hooked. Played Let’s Dance until it was engraved in my being. Then the Best of… realised his earlier stuff was way more interesting. The rest is history. I was a fan for life.

Me finding Bowie coincided with the passing of my father. I have always believed that it had something to do with it. He filled the void. Became so much more than just a rock idol. I felt like I understood him. I was relieved when he released Tin Machine. I remember listening to it, thinking “yes, you did it”! I followed his experimentations throughout the 1990s. Saw him numerous times live in the 1996-2004 period. Every album reinforced his genius, or our connection. I recognised passages from my 2013 novel in one of the songs on his new album. Did he read it, or had he influenced me to such an extent that I was thinking and writing like him? It’s bollock, obviously. I don’t believe he never knew I existed, but we spoke the same language. We were on the same page. He was always a step ahead, but I felt like I caught up with his thinking. I always understood him, or so I thought.

But this isn’t about me. This is about a legend. The man who fell to earth and sprinkled us earthlings with stardust. He is gone now. He will never surprise me again with his wit and he will never infect me again with his sense of wonder for the world and the odd things in it. Except when I go through his awesome catalogue and rediscover the gems he left behind.

A legend is gone, but he will live forever.

Everything has changed.

Butterflies

7 June 2013 by villia Leave a Comment

I have been thinking about a new novel, now that Under the Black Sand is complete and online. All kinds of ideas fly in and around my head. But the moment I sit down at the computer, they vanish. Like the screen was radiating some erazor beams from space.

So I need to find a way to capture the butterclies before they get shot down.

Out of Sync

4 June 2013 by villia Leave a Comment

We live in an ever changing world. We can never stay in one place, because standing still is losing out to others that keep moving. We are losing if we are not winning.

This mentality is destroying the future. Our one planet is being exploited on a scale never before seen. We are genetically modifying plants, risking whole ecosystems. We are peeling layers of the earth, whole forests, to get to whatever resources lie underneath. Tar sands that help us fuel our cars that could have run on different energy if we’d been interested in researching alternatives. Bauxite to make aluminium to build weapons and cola cans, because we can’t be bothered to recycle.

But it’s not just the future we’re destroying. We are so focused on progress and profit that we won’t hesitate to destroy the past if a few bucks can be earned. Inner cities are neglected, left to degrade and are then sold to developers that bulldoze the whole thing and build luxury apartments for the few that can afford them. History and identity makes way for profit.

I just finished editing a video I shot on Saturday with the great singer-songwriter Rik van den Bosch. His message is so relevant, so strong, that I have decided to share the video here and now. It hasn’t been made public and I hope he will forgive me, but with Istanbul in the grips of massive riots because the government is out of sync with their people, I feel that this needs to be heard. They started out protesting against a public park being destroyed to build a shopping mall. Rik sings about his old neighbourhood being erased and the people having to relocate. We were standing in his old streets, looking at the boarded windows and graffiti. Him telling me about how his grandparents had met on that spot and about the old lady that used to… you get the idea. A street full of memories, waiting for the bulldozers.

Here is the first verse, and the video:
“I’m living on the ghost side of town
They’re turning everything upside down
They tear it down to the ground, when I’m not around
and the people they keep moving out, to the outskirts of town”

The Glorious Problems of Rewriting

3 February 2013 by villia Leave a Comment

After the great eruption in 1783, everything was gone. The sky had turned dark and they hadn’t seen the sun for weeks. Black ash and lava covered their fields and the tiny cottage was buried underneath. The animals were all dead. Many of the people the knew were dead. The land was dead. Black, like an eternal night in hell.

The church doors were locked, but hell invaded through the windows. The priest said his prayers, his voice rising above the volcano and the rain. As the little church shook with the earth, they all embraced death. But death wouldn’t come. Not today. The lava stopped just before it reached them. They had been spared.

But the eruption continued for months. The rain burned the skin and ground. Livestock died, the winter was cold, dark and bitter.

The above text is brand new. It was not a part of the novel I intended to publish. It is now, and it plays a major role in the development of the whole thing. Oh, and the mass described really took place and the lava stopped just a few meters away.

As I’ve said before, Under the Black Sand is being completely rewritten. The original screenplay had the story play out in Iceland. When I wrote the novel in English, I moved it to the UK. I beefed up the back story be making Peter a nineteenth century industrialist. Now that the story is back where it always belonged, in Iceland, massive rewriting and rethinking was necessary. Iceland had no industrial revolution until after the second world war. We never had railways to speak of. Peter needed something else to catapult him from a poor peasant to a business prodigy.

Instead of an incident with a laird, the earth itself changed the course of history. A previously unknown volcano erupted in June 1783. It would go on for eight months and produce the greatest lava flow on earth since the end of the last ice age. It devastated farmland, leaving 50% of cattle, 60% of horses and 80% of sheep dead. Famine followed, killing 10.000 people, almost a quarter of the country’s population. Climate was altered for two years. Fjords froze solid and what crops that survived the fluoride, failed because of harsh weather.

Introducing this turning point to the story is a major operation. Many scenes need major revisions, while some have to be cut altogether. I did not write this post to plug a software, but I have to say that without Scrivener, I probably would have given up on the whole thing. Without the overview and structured workflow, such a massive rewrite would be all but impossible.

So there you have it. What would have become a tedious and probably impossible task, is now fun. The new story flows and excites me. No small feat after such a long writing process.

Discoveries

25 October 2012 by villia Leave a Comment

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I am humbly following the advice of a couple of readers and relocating the Under the Black Sand novel back to where it started. To Iceland. Now that the protagonist is no longer living in an unspecified city in the United Kingdom, but a very specific part of Reykjavík, I felt I needed to research the history of his part of town.

As always, the Internet is your best friend. I stumbled upon a university essay from 2008. Read if from start to finish. Learned about a book by Guðmundur Hannesson, published in 1916, and how his visions influenced the city planning of the 1920s and 30s.

He understood that sunlight is precious in the far north. The arctic winds needed to be tackled and that aesthetics were just as important for people’s health as closed sewers. It wasn’t just about bacteria. A pleasant city would make the inhabitants happy, and therefore healthier.

His guidelines were simple. To maximise sunlight, the distance between houses should be twice the height of the surrounding buildings. Streets should be relatively short and angular to tackle the wind. Never be straight east-west or north-south, as that would create wind-tunnels in winter.

The planning went as far as deciding that living rooms and other areas used during the day should face south, while kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms should be at the north end of the house. Houses built at the south side of the street would be right off the pavement with a sunny garden at the back. Those at the north side would have a deep garden in front of them.

It is the kind of attention to detail we hardly ever see in newer neighbourhoods.
I remember loving walking the streets built just before the war. I never knew what it was, why I loved this part of town so much. As it turns out, it is no coincidence.

Writing novels is great fun. You get to explore human emotions and their reactions to all kinds of situations. But research can also lead you to things you never expected. I’m totally loving my hobby.

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