Quick june update

I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever have any time, ever again! What with moving home, growing children, and all the various ups and downs of life, I haven't had any time to write a single blog post, nor access to the internet for the past three and a half weeks. This was especially annoying as I kinda need the net to check my finances, communcate with friends, clients, the authorities etc.

We're now online again though, so maybe...

Artist of the Month; Ivan Bilibin

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Only ten days until we move to our new house, so blogging isn't much of a priority these days, not least with everything packed down in boxes. In the meantime however, there is time to wander the googlescape and find interesting artists, which I have recently done with Ivan Bilibin. I'd come across a few of Bilibin's works in the past but never learned his name until I happened to chance across his painting 'Firebird' (see first image above) whilst I was looking for references.

It took nano seconds to realise that here was a new source of inspiration. Bilibin worked in a similar style to many of my older favourites, but often with a greater clarity and a pleasing attention to deviant monochrome forms. Add to that his choice of subject and you get Carl Larson's style married to Alphonse Mucha's.

Bilibin worked as an illustrator and a stage designer. He studied under Ilya Repin (lucky man!) and he was the designer for the 1909 première production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel.

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Artist of the month; Egon Schiele, again

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April is almost dead now, but there is still just enough time to salute an old friend before we turn the corner to May. I've liked Schiele's work ever since I first encountered it in the early 1990's, and he was already featured as an artist of the month, back when I started this blog. I'm adding him again for the simple reason that I've been looking at his work a lot recently, and pondering upon its nature. I've always been a big fan of figurative art, and I feel like I may return to this avenue of personal exploration once we have moved (after I cross the event horizon of which I spoke in my last post).

I don't know when I first saw his characteristic, erotically charged work, but it will have been in the same time frame, and social context as Gustav Klimt. For what must have been extremely shocking when they were first painted, Schiele's work (and Klimt's also) has taken on the kind of socially acceptability that only time can confer. I guess the more you see something, the 'less' it becomes. Its a bit like rewatching the film 'Alien'. I was about ten when I first saw it and scared me half to death. When I watch it now, its almost with misty eyed nostalgia and the fearful tension which was once the film's underlying power, has long since evaporated.

To a not so insignificant degree, the eroticism of Schiele's work remains, but it is almost whimsical, clouded as it has become by the years of ever increasing sexual exploitation in the arts and media.When I look at these images, I doubt very much that I see what Schiele's contemporaries saw. Actually I don't know what they saw as the public keeps its opinions largely to itself and what we read today in art history lessons, is the accumulative criticism of the media. I see figurative art of the most appealling and beguiling kind. Certainly there is sexual tension involved, but the value of the images is in their descriptive nature, their exploration of colour and form and the informal character of their appearance. Many of Schiele´s paintings look more like playful telephone doodles than works of art. This lends them something which is lacking from other 18th century artist's work, even Klimt's. It keeps them fresh.

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Team Bravo Two

Without Oleg, and with changing circumstances for the three of us, Palle, Goeg and I have found ourselves left with fewer opportunities for wargaming and role playing. Currently I'm running a role playing campaign which is based loosely on the idea behind Takshendal, but more along the lines of 'The X Files' with a small team of detectives investigating strange, and/or paranormal mysteries. the title, Team Bravo Two refers to this group's radio call sign. The games are designed to be short, each taking place over just a few sessions, but possibly with several mysteries following each other, much like the episodes of a television serial. I'm not as good at the scientific or technical aspects of these games as Oleg was, so I tend towards vague, technobabble explanations. I try to keep as close to scientific understanding as I can but its not easy dreaming up new, plausible explanations behind idea's which have been used and re-used in popular fiction so many times.

It is fun, but there is always the nagging thought of what we might have been doing if Oleg hadn't died. So much has changed now, not least since we're moving on the 18th May. I'm fast approaching an event horizon in my life and I can't see what lies beyond it.

Test post

Day Sixteen

This is an update following the previous post regarding my balls.

The day after I saw 'Oblivion', I began to feel an increase in pain in my right testicle. Within twenty four hours I was in the hospital and my testicle had swollen to three times its normal size. The pain was unbelievable and stretched all the way up my body to my right hip bone and lower right side ribs. Walking became extremely difficult and as if this wasn't bad enough I blacked out whilst on the toilet. Luckily I managed to hold myself upright until the nurses came to my rescue.

I haven't fainted since I was a young man and the experience was both strange and disturbing. I had no idea what was happening at first, whether I was dying or just passing out from low blood pressure. At first I felt hot and uncomfortable, then came a wave of nausea. I pulled the emergency cord at this point as it was obvious something untoward was happening. I got up to unlock the toilet door and sure enough a nurse came running. She grabbed my arm and held me upright but at this point my vision was failing and my voice had become incomprehensible. I was still partially aware of my surroundings. I could hear the nurse shouting for help but my vision was a mass of inky black spots. I don't remember how I got to a bed so I think I must have passed out after this, though the nurse told me I'd walked.

After I got home, the fever began. Today is the third day and I'm currently in a hot and sweaty stage. I don't mind fever. It can even be a bit fun when the light headedness makes you dizzy, but I'd prefer to get this all over with. The doctor at the hospital told me to expect at least fourteen days of anti-biotic recuperation. So far there is no decrease in the size of my right testicle, but at least the pain medication is working so it doesn't hurt except in the early morning before my first does of the day.