Lost in Tranlston

So it turns out that one can make a pretty extensive start on a doctoral dissertation armed only with Google and some pretty obscure squiggles that may or may not be in German, written over 100 years ago. Anyone who can interpret the following will be awarded an amazing prize* because I have no idea:

I think it says ‘Aowiw lz Oardanier’ but Google Translate says no and I don’t think it means anything in English.

*Despair* Suggestions are welcome. That aside, being without means of creativity and in a small room with a big box of M&Ms, I delve once more into the realm of my previous artistic endeavours in a feeble attempt to keep this blog’s head above water in these turbulent times.

Thence introducing Hannah, the talented author of Not All Who Wonder Are Lost, whom I sketched about a year ago. For the first time ever (excepting that rather ineffectual effort with Ella Grainger) I decided to take regular photos during the process in order to make a time-lapse progression. Without further ado.

The final result being:

Ah. It’s nice to deal with a tangible art form for a change. Poor Etruscans.** The original title for this post was “Never Look a Gif Horse in the Mouth.” I’d always assumed the phrase was a reference to the Trojan horse legend: meaning if you looked inside the Greeks would know you knew they were there and attack at once. Apparently the actual meaning is much less violent in that horse-age can be determined by the length of their teeth, so if you looked at the mouth of the horse someone gave you as a present you were trying to determine/judge the value of their gift.

*Seriously.

**The Etruscans’ language is basically extinct as of over two and a half millennia ago, or something like that.

Two Hundred Words Under the Sydney

SydneyCityofLifeCityofColourSydney.

It is a total relief to be back where sunny days are considered normal, pedestrian crossings are much less harrowing/ambiguous to deal with, and if you want to get alcohol you get to go to a separate non-grocery store. I heartily apologise for the lack of updates – it has been more than a little hectic resettling back in Australia, and while there have been many stories accumulating as a result, they are unfortunately only self-interesting when placed in the context that most people experience them upheaving to a new (or old) place. As of now I am piano-less, ensemble-less and inspiration-less.

In other words, a musicologist. :O

I considered saying something about how I’ve been institutionalised by my time in the UK and I’d probably be swinging under a ‘Brooks was here’ etching in a couple of weeks, but it wouldn’t be true at all. Perhaps fittingly, my last artistic endeavour in the UK was a Matisse-style single-line drawing of the stodgy Postman Pat photoshop job from a few posts ago.

Utter crap.

But as they say in gay Paris; Cat haute vitesse vaut attraper ver tôt!

Nine more words bring the word count to 200.