July 17th 2022

Music of Time

    I'm reading A Dance to the Music of Time. It comes in 12 (yes, twelve) volumes. Each of these is a deceptively slim paperback of between 250 - 300 pages, so manageble that you tend to overlook you're reading a novel that's 3,300 pages long—give or take—something I'd never think of tackling if it were printed in one or two or even three 1,100 page-volumes.
   I must break off here to quote in a jokey way Jorge Luis Borges: 'The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes!'
   This is right out of context and I owe it to Jorge Luis to let him complete his thought: 'A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary... More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books.'
   Back to 'Music of Time', it is utterly extravagant. For all that, it is utterly superb. Not a book for everyone, I admit, it's what my ol' ma (rest her soul—116 last March11th) would have called 'ighbrow. Utterly so. But the play of Donnish language, the strutting on stage, the wafting around and falling off of the players, the intricate observation of their humanity is, for me at least, a joy not to be missed. I read it, a handful of pages only, at night before I sleep. No hurry.
   All this began years ago when, by chance, I picked up a paperback: Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, book 4 in the series. With my tast for whimsey, the title was irresistible. Add to this the cover illustration by Marc Boxer and... perfect: like Rould Dahl and Quentin Blake. I eventually did read it. It did not take me prisoner at once; it was years before I bought the entire out-of-print series (Alibris, never Amazon). I'll treat you to just one sentence: 'Henderson? Yes, yes he invented a cocktail, he named it "Death came for the Archbishop"'.
    And why am I telling you this? Well, if you follow ark2020, it won't have escaped your notice that the drawings trickle in evermore slowly. What is going on? Or not going on? And why? Well, about nine months ago, updating and reorganizing a lot of old files, I opened an ancient hard-drive (2002) and found a screenplay I’d forgotten I'd written. I began reading it; did I write this? not half bad. The result of this? I've been converting it ever since into the definitive 21st century psychological action thriller.
   Then, last week, big epiphany: I work like crazy on everything I work on, become disheartened and (like Mr.Toad) move to the next wonder, until—lo and behold—I rediscover the abandoned project, as explained above, and... Big Cycle. It’s not an epiphany, though. I’ve known for years how I operate and apparently I just don’t care enough to change it. Sorry, I apologise.