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I implore all of you who love art, and photography, and very unique uses of artistic mediums, and also things like urban fantasy or angel wings or fairy lights or powerlines or, you know, things which are meticulously constructed of pure unadulturated awesome, to take a look (or three) at the gorgeous and phantasmagorical photography of Kamil Vojnar. I've posted about him before, and made quite a lot of icons out of his art a while ago (not the best; they didn't come out as sharp as they ought to have), but there are quite a lot more of you lot now, and also he appears to have added more photographs to Getty Images, including a very splendid one of a woman on a glittering tightrope holding an umbrella (sort of steampunky, except without any machines or anything, I suppose), or this one of a child's dress floating through some sort of shed, or one of his many representations of flight, or this of a carousel horse on a lonely road. There are many, many more stunning and intruiging works of art that make me want to write (funny, this seems to be my reaction to all art that moves me). His official website seems to be flyingblindpictures.com, which is very nicely and minimalistically designed. If you click on 'art', you will be treated to some of his work; if you click on 'others', you can see what other people, namely designers of book and album covers, have done with it. (I have decided that if at all possible I would like to have his photography on the cover of whatever [livejournal.com profile] tuesday_skyline turns out to be -- there's lots of superheroey stuff in there, anyway.)

Blimey, I want prints of his work on my walls so very badly. If I had a writing room, I'd want this sort of thing everywhere; it's good for the muse and the imagination.


By the way, I am doing extremely well, and you lot are all just lovely. Really -- astonishingly splendid. ♥ I have more to natter on about, but that will have to wait.
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I'd never heard of steampunk before today (or, rather, I'd heard the term bandied about and didn't pay a great deal of attention), but reading some of the discussion over the really nifty thing that Neil Gaiman linked to in his Journal of Awesome piqued my interest, and off to trusty Wikipedia went I. Now, I am rather deleriously enthralled, and I must find some to read, or watch. Alternate history--I include in this alternate explanations of historical events--is also something that fascinates me endlessly (one of the reasons that Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell was so enchanting--did I never talk about that book? I didn't, and I ought to), as does speculative fiction, and, you know, that Victorian gothic aesthetic. 

The prospect more interesting than reading steampunk fiction is, of course, writing some, but the last thing I need is another novel to wrestle with, and I haven't got any ideas, anyway. It's really a pity that the Evangeline project can't be manipulated into a steampunk sort of universe, but, despite the plot being very vague, only one character having a name--I did settle on the surname Nox, by the by, for what it's worth--and the rest of the lot being twice as vague as the plot, it's settled its universe and aesthetics rather solidly already. I'm beginning to think of it in terms of, well, Anne Rice with a great splash of L.M. Montgomery. (You know, if Anne Rice wrote well.) Probably a few dashes of Gaiman and L'Engle for good measure, and hopefully a great deal of me, as it's my book and all and also all of these writers excepting Anne Rice are far, far more fantastic than I can ever dream of being anyway.


And. Um. Kind of odd specific-yet-very-vague music request, actually. Has anyone got moody, melancholy, atmospheric music that references the ocean, lost love, and preferrably both? I need a song about drowning, too. I'm particularly looking for music that sounds oceany, and a bit old, you know--not necessarily lacking in electronic instrumentation, but not screaming 'MODERN DAY!' at you in two-foot capitals, either. Currently I've got things like Dido's 'My Lover's Gone', Vienna Teng's 'Between', and some very awesome Solas songs that none of you except for [profile] lady_moriel is likely ever to have heard (and I don't think she's even got one of them). It's, er, for a mix. Which sprang out of nowhere because 'Between' was kind of perfect. It also happens to be a mix for an obscure branch of an obscure branch of the Tolkienverse (any 'The Mariner's Wife' fans out there? Hiiii...), and, um, yeah. I really do need a drowning song especially. 

Also, I made angelfood cake yesterday, and it was v. good.
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Here, have some overdue linkage. 

i. 20000-Names.com. I found this when Googling for the meaning of the name Nox (I knew it, but I wanted to be sure), and it looks to be an excellent resource, despite it sort of being Made of Banner Advertisements. You can search for names by nationality, which isn't anything special, as Behind the Name has, I'm sure, a vaster database (and is prettier and ad-less!), and, more interestingly, you can also search for names by particular categories of meaning--dark names, colour names, moon names, and various other sections with titles in varying degrees of silliness. What you get are names with meanings relating to your category from a rather decent amount of languages (depending on your category). So, 'dream names' gets me Ialu, an Egyptian name meaning 'field of dreams', Gaelic Aisling ('dream, vision'), and Hungarian Almos ('dreamy; sleepy' or 'the dreamt one'), among others. It's not always your best bet for things, but when you're looking for a name with a particular symbolic meaning (especially for minor characters, who I am rubbish at naming out of thin air), it's a rather nice source. (Also, there are, like, a billion 'wolf names'. That? Was me, stifling a chortle.) 

ii. International Children's Digital Library. I'm kind of fangirling this right now, actually. In a nutshell, it's got children's books from all over the world that are either in the public domain, or they've somehow got permission to publish scans online. Some of these books are gloriously, exquisitely old--I've been skimming this 1910 publication of Celtic Tales by Louey Chisholm with very 1910 illustrations by Katherine Cameron. There seem to be a lot of folktales and fairy tales and the like, now that I'm looking. It appears that a substantial amount of these scans comes from the Library of Congress. And, gorblimey, some of these books are age-spotted and weathered and they must smell magnificent up close. If you like old books or children's literature, you really ought to poke about and find something to read. 


I'm kind of not doing anything productive at the moment. Argh. Still trying to write and failing rather dismally. Oh, well, today was rather cosy, anyway.

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