my heart is a glorious machine;

I was actually joking when I commented on

ressie_noldo's Happy 2007 entry (dratted Indians, getting to the new year before us), but then I ended up having a go at it, so, um, I welcomed in 2007 in probably-predictable Banui style: sitting at the computer writing ballad-fic (yes, ballad-fic, it's for 'The House Carpenter'/'D(a)emon Lover', if you're interested, because it's one of my very favourite ballads and one I've had a very long relationship with; also, ballad-fic, unlike, say, Potter-fic, has a possibility of maybe making me money someday, except hardly anyone wants weird short stories, I reckon) and listening to Deb Talan, with the Black Death and my pocket Eliot (which is currently in the stage of Falling To Bits, held together with a hairband) beside me. Hopefully this bodes well for the upcoming year. Like, maybe someone will discover an Eliot epic in the vein of 'Prufrock' that never got published. And I will write fic about it. And maybe go on to write about my other very favourite Child ballad, 'The Grey Selchie'. And eat--well, ack, that doesn't bode well for my weight-loss hopes. (I say hopes, not plans. Plans and I do not go together well.)

Speaking of selchies, the family and I watched The Secret of Roan Inish last night--before midnight; after midnight we were engaged in some very, very trippy early cartoons (some of them kind of reminded me of Terry Gilliam's animated bits in Monty Python's Flying Circus, except his stuff was better, and it wasn't supposed to, somehow, make sense, which meant that you weren't terribly, terribly afraid that everyone involved wasn't also heavily involved in, say, opium)--um, anyway, it's a very good film, and I really loved it, but the main point of talking about it is because it reignited my interest in the selchie legend, which I've always been fond of on account of being very intimately in love with Solas' eerie version of 'The Grey Selchie' since the age of twelve. Also, Jane Yolen's retelling in The Book of Ballads is rather good. What I'm saying is...actually, I don't know what the real point of this is. Selchies are nifty, and I want to write about them. Which sounds really shallow when you put it like that--the really interesting thing about the selchie tales, I suppose, is all of the motivations and reactions which are typically left out. Would a selchie-wife really love the husband who held her in thrall, and if so, how and why? What about someone attempting to gain control over a selchie for nefarious reasons? What sort of fellow would marry a seal-woman he knew nothing about, and what would village gossip say? What about the children of a selchie? I mean, really, what about them? It's all very fascinating, I think. (And, maybe this is completely out there, but are there any traditional ballads with vampires in? Not that I would want to incorporate one into a current project, mind. I would never do that.)

 

Well, yikes. Why am I suddenly realising that no-one is going to read this straight-through?