THE MAPMAKER: Research Item #55

I want the review of Book 2 in thesis to be partly formulated in terms of a battle between Teddy Seddy (Edward Said) and Bernie Bush or Bernie Bastard (Bernard Lewis). They hit one another with shit sticks while wrapped in copies of the New York Times and Washington Post.

THE MAPMAKER: Research Item #54

Once the voyage commences, and al-Idrisi is on board his ship, he will undergo adventures by passing through a door at the end of the corridor. On one of those adventures, I want him to have a conversation with a pig, who claims all pigs are intelligent but refuse to talk to humans because they're boring. The pig then elucidates on his interest in mathematics.

THE MAPMAKER: Research Item #53

Possible draft (Chapter 1, intro):

As-salaamu alaykum and ahlan wa sahlan. My name’s Yakoub Islam and I be a Muslim Anarchist. The Mapmaker, this work, is part of the final act of resistance. Resisting what? -- you may ask. Islamist art such as this is celebrates the infinite possibilities of rebellion against the Imperium and neoliberal catastrophe. Call it a continuation – just don’t mistake this for a beginning, plus I don’t want to hear splat about duodecimal narrative or Chekhov's scimitar or any of your nasalised literary cobblers. What I have here is a spoon of coke shoved up the president’s sneck live on l’vision. That’s right: fuck power! Second, yer ars might not know it, but there’s a sizzling burger-meat penis inserted right up yer tush, whoops! Yessir!! You have been created, Mister ‘n’ Missis Wiggly Quigly, so that we merry cunts might go forth and trade freely...

THE MAPMAKER: Research Item #52

Writing about rooms:

Falling within the core geographical concept of "place", I would have thought "room" would have inspired more academic geographical texts devoted to exploring the concept. There are plenty of such texts on the concept of "home", including Blunt, A. & Dowling, R. (2006) Home (London: Routledge) - even that doesn't index "room" as a specific topic.

Why "room"? What I'm coming to realise in creative writing is the pre-eminence of personal imagination in directing what I write about and indeed how I write about it. I suppose, like almost everyone - or at least like most creative writers -- my personal imagination's landscape is inextricably interlaced with who I am. The idea of "room": the spaces inside houses, is one of the key features of that landscape.

There are other features, concepts, places that dominate my imagination's landscape, reoccurring in my writing repeatedly over the years. I use to dismiss the feelings of joy and intensity common to writing about them as an irrelevant childish pleasure, but I'm coming to understand both my feelings and the places linked to them are central to defining the landscape of my writing space.

So can I list them, these features:

THE MAPMAKER: Research Item #51

Also in tabulated form. Reminds me of Earth, Fire, Air, Water.

I also like the idea of galaxy lick maps.

THE MAPMAKER: Research Item #50

The neo-geographic concept of 'expedition' and my notion of cultural evolution would seem to be echoed in phenomenon of medieval neoplatonism. I'm reflecting on this at present, while reading A. W. Hughes' The Texture of the Divine (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2004). More to come...

November 2009 | ScribbleWiki | January 2010