V is for Valiant

Week V | Thursday | A glory of glimmers ✨

My week of glorious glimmers has included finding this tremendous photograph, the delicious joke of which is that it has no actual balloon, but is a basket suspended from the ceiling of a photographer’s studio. Yet I do like to think of them imagining themselves just above the canopy of a forest, even if they’re nervous of caterpillars.

I encountered this poem by Emily Dickinson for the first time.

Stumbling across this made me snort and it’s a great lesson for life and creation.

Finding this by Langston Hughes made me gasp with delight. Viva la revolución.

As did this flashback to my beloved Colette’s birthday.

I always get a glimmer when I come across another introvert. I grew up in a world designed by extroverts in which it was somehow a shameful thing, and learned to pass. It seems better accepted and understood now, but still the knowledge of – ironically – the company of introverts comes as a pleasure and a comfort.

So it was a big deal for me to walk 15 minutes up the road last Thursday night to see Heaven 17 play. When I was 19 I had just moved out of home for the first time, into a strange and less than ideal living situation. I had a hot DJ boyfriend and a record store job, so life was cool in some ways. But I was feeling a bit lost, directionless.

My parents had offered no advice, or done anything to guide me towards university (they’d never been). It took nearly a decade of moving about and trying different but poorly-paid jobs to find a sense of purpose. It’s a strange age anyway, 19, isn’t it? You’re expected to be an adult but aren’t prepared. Anyway, this band was the soundtrack to that part of my life, I wore their cassettes out. It was wonderful and strange to see them live 40 years on. Glenn Gregory has an incredible voice. You tend to think voices were cleaned up for recordings. Is it live or is it Memorex? My friends, it is live. He did a few Bowie songs and [whisper it] did them not only justice, but better.

I like the intimacy of the front row but only got into the second. After a long wait for them to come on my back and feet were killing me, so it turns out that now I’m nearly 60 I have another reason to want the front row: there’s a barrier to lean on. After 7 or so songs I had to work my way to the back and sit down for a bit. And it was a lot to be crammed in with that many people for the first time in a long while, when a nastier version of Covid is on the prowl. Need to sort myself out a bit before Simple Minds in Glasgow in late June, then a train to Paris in early July. Ageing is one long surprise.

A few massive glimmers: an unexpected whip-round from the beloved job I had to resign from, and a generous grant from the Society of Authors to help me bridge between work changes and associated penury into new projects about which I’m hopeful but from which income isn’t assured. I’m speechlessly grateful and verklempt.

As ever, life is never more glimmery than when I’m making art or animating it. Plenty of both this past week.

If you tell me a quote you love and its author, I’ll add it to this and send it to you. What have your glimmers been this week? Share them in the comments. ✨

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