displacement

Life Predictably I spent most of the day trying not to feel so conspicuously single. Although philosophically I know that today is really just another marketing push for card shops and Woolworths, when you've visited the local library to pick up a dissertation related book and an Arriva bus pulls up outside with the words 'Joanne -- will you marry me?' on the front instead of a destination, it's really difficult to think of it as just another day.

Amongst the displacement activities was actually finally getting myself a Young Person's Railcard at the age of thirty-one because I'm a full time student. It's actually a liberating experience because places which seemed massively expensive to get are actually less so. I also began work on my dissertation research outline -- I'm focusing on metafiction in key Woody Allen films and the process is really in discovering what that means and what I can add to research and writing which has already been carried out.

This evening there was a visual dialogues seminar with Hugh Brody, the film director and author and husband of actress Juliet Stevenson. The interview/talk focused on his early work with the Inuit people of Canada and Native Americans. He began as an anthropologist before moving into filmmaking as a way of expressing and addressing some of the political and sociological issues he saw in his work. Since then he's moved into fictional film, although his most recent film was developed in conjunction with the sculptor Antony Gormley as the artist put together his 'Inside Australia' work. A transcript of this seminar will apparently be online soon, so I'll link to it when it appears.

It's still raining. It's a good thing.