Chapter 1 translated into French

When I got up this morning and settled down to the first part of my shift (before breakfast) I found a piece of junk mail in my inbox from my blog on the Tribune de Geneve, a blog I started after I got back from Geneva this time last year. This was the first response I had ever had.

It prompted me to visit the blog and see if I could delete the rubbish. After all, it’s easier than writing. Anything is easier than writing. I then decided that this little vandal had done me a favour. This blog (in the main Genevan newspaper) was an ideal opportunity to make contact with Genevans who might be able to help me with my research and also improve my French. I listen to FranceInter these days instead of the BBC, but I never get to speak or write any French.

Why bother with French? Well, when my characters to home they are living in a French environment. Within CERN they are often meeting French, even if many of them usually speak English. Most of the staff are French speakers, those in the shops and administration offices etc. For them it is the primary language, although many scientists speak English. So by listening to French I’ve got the sound of it at the back of my mind somewhere as I write. It probably doesn’t actually make any difference to the writing, but it makes me feel somehow more authentic. And, of course, I miss Geneva, especially at this time of year (Crystal day is 4 April 2012).

The original posting had been in English. How wonderful it would be to write something in French! Good practice! So I re-wrote the introduction in French, with the invaluable aid of Babelfish. Spurred on by this success, I decided to be really ambitious (I’m nothing if not ambitious) and translate the whole of the first Chapter into French. It took an hour or two, and I don’t know how good it is, but it’s there, waiting for the Genevans to fall over themselves to read it.

And it was worth the effort. Within a few minutes I got a reply from Silvie advising of articles about black holes being created in CERN. Vivre le Tribune de Genève!

 

Lessons from Geneva

What I learned from my trip to Geneva was:

• What the inside of a hostel room looks like
• What a tour of the UN shows
• That the Cafe de la Douanne has been demolished (good job I found this out!)
• Where Alex and George land
• How to get arrested by the French border police (nearly)

But so far I’ve received absolutely no feedback from the students in the group.
Might mean they think TC isn’t worth commenting on. Or maybe (as I’d prefer to believe) they’re just very busy. I gave them a copy of the first six or so chapters.
I think I’ll send their teachers a reminder!

 

Going Home

I can’t believe it! I’m going home on Monday.

Geneva isn’t home. Of course not. I’ve never lived there.
I’ve never had a house there, or even a flat. I couldn’t afford one!
So why do I feel like I’m going home?
Why does my heart well up when I think of the city, the Saleve
towering in my mind’s eye, St Pierre Cathedral casting a shadow over
Lac Leman?

How can an author invest so much of his life in an imaginary place,
real and yet unreal, imaginary yet true?
Why give yourself to your dreams so completely that the real world
melts before your hopes?
Is this the artistic spirit?

No! Surely not. There is no one artistic spirit.
Every creative person has their own view of creativity.

In my case it is creation from nothing. I hack the concepts, the
characters, the scenes, the dialog out of nothing, out of pure
research and imagination. Other writers crystalise their emotional
lives into words.
Yet we all have to find that emotional crystal that encapulates our dreams.
That is what I have learned this week, thanks to Chris Hoskins.

The first question for the wriiter is: What is my point of view
character feeling at this moment? What is at stake, from his point of
view?

If I can answer this question at every line in Time Crystal then I
have done as much as any writer can hope to do.

I’m going home with a bunch of 17 year old young people.
When they’ve left I’m driving up into the Alps to find the spot where
Alex and George finally come to Earth.
It’s costing me a week and 500 dollars for perhaps one paragraph in
TC. Is it worth it?

Of course. I’m going home! That’s worth any cost. It’s holy ground!
I’ll stay in a CERN Hostel room for a week. Maria and other characters
stay there. What authentic materail I can gather, even it if is only a
single true word. I’ll pick up all sorts of details that will add to
the credibility. Truth is beyond cost.

That applies to writing in general. The cost is irrelevant. All that
matters is the outcome. If it’s good then it’s worth whatever it
costs. If it’s bad then forget it. I’ve spent my life on this project.
Not just my life, but that of my wife and family too. Compared to that
sacrifice, money has no meaning.

 

Geneva, Upton on Severn, Stratford and WS

Last friday was the 31st of August. On that day in 1969 I painted a not-very-good picture, infatuated with a married girl called Pam and waiting to go to Nottingham University where the not-very-good picture was subsequently shown in a student art exhibition. The key feature of this picture, as I recall, was the hard circle of paint skin lifted from the surface of an old oil-paint tin which I had found in the garage (which I had helped my father build) and stuck to a piece of hardboard. All pretty grimy.

Last Friday was much brighter. I took my wife to Upton on Severn, Worcestershire. It’s a pretty and undeveloped town with a tower that still bears the scars of the 1660 Civil War when Oliver Cromwell took the town. She found a charity shop open so she was happy.

We went because I wanted a map of the Pre-Alps and there is a wonderful map shop there. The walk I had planned along the River Severn was disappointing. We didn’t go far upstream along the Severn from the rusting bridge. The walk is un-used, barren and sterile. We went back over the bridge and walked downstream but, apart from the magnificent views of the distant Malvern Hills and the evidence of the recent flooding caused by global warming there isn’t much to see.

We came back to Coventry via Stratford and we stopped off the Dirty Duck for a plate of chicken salad and chips. Afterwards we walked up to the The Courtyard Theatre where they were playing Twelfth Night and the interval drinks were set out all round the bar waiting for anyone who cared to drink them. I bought a copy of the BBC DVD of the play in the shop and tried to watch it on Sunday evening.

For these past many years WS hasn’t communicated with me. The effort of understanding him never seemed rewarded. I couldn’t see the point of studying him. After watching the DVD three times I’ve changed my mind. I think his plotting is interesting although of course it’s all very dated and driven by unlikely character motivation. Why, for example, would the Viola pretend to be a eunuch and serve the Duke? Such a high-risk strategy is unexplained yet it is key to the plot. If I’d been writing it I would have found a more plausible explanation, perhaps the Duke’s eunuch had just died and there weren’t any more on the island or whatever.

When I was seventeen I spent a lot of time studying King Lear when I should have been learning physics. Anyway I was sufficiently impressed that I’ve ordered all the BBC DVDs, 37 of them for about US$6 each, so I can finally work my way through them when I’m cooking dinner.

He also has the asset that he has the same initials as me! WS.

 

Riots in Geneva

Nearly just had a heart attack. There was a feature on LeMan Bleu TV about a riot in the streets of Geneva. People where throwing stones at the police who were firing tear gas and wearing helmets. The Chief of Police was being interviewed. I just couldn’t believe it. It was totally un-Genevan. The only thing that would make the Genevans riot would be if somebody wore 1950s clothes at a fashion show or their team lost at ice hockey. It was all totally out of character. A panicky few minutes of research followed. LeMan Bleu’s web streaming is of such low bandwidth that you only get half the story. Most of the time the images are frozen and there are big gaps in the transmission. I checked with the Tribune de Geneve but they had nothing about riots.

Eventually I found that there had been riots on 1 June 2003 when the G8 meeting was held in Lausanne and the leaders had left Geneva. Presumably LeMan Bleu was playing the story because of the G8 meeting and riots in Germany last week.

I can do without this type of panic. I’m just rippling through the changes from Catty going down the tunnel. To find that the Genevans had behaved totally out of character would have ruined everything. Luckily it’s all worked out right in the end, no thanks to LeMan Bleu!

 

Leman Bleu

I have the Geneva TV station Leman Bleu on line in the kitchen so I can watch it while cooking.
It’s usually a bit out of date but it gives me the atmosphere of Geneva.