Way back in 2017 I shared a story about a marvelous art and design project that creates faux-magazine covers called , The Tokyoiter, and was reminded of it by a recent post in a blog that I follow. The concept, originally inspired by magazine covers from The New Yorker, invites graphic designers and illustrators from all over the world to share their unique vision of Tokyo through the lens of New Yorker-style covers. Check out some recent editions below.
Sunrise
by Louise Glück
This time of year, the window boxes smell of the hills,
the thyme and rosemary that grew there,
crammed into the narrow spaces between the rocks
and, lower down, where there was real dirt,
competing with other things, blueberries and currants,
the small shrubby trees the bees love—
Whatever we ate smelled of the hills,
even when there was almost nothing.
Or maybe that’s what nothing tastes like, thyme and rosemary.
Maybe, too, that’s what it looks like—
beautiful, like the hills, the rocks above the tree line
webbed with sweet smelling herbs,
the small plants glittering with dew—
It was a big event to climb up there and wait for dawn,
seeing what the sun sees as it slides out from behind the rocks,
and what you couldn’t see, you imagined;
your eyes would go as far as they could, to the river, say,
and your mind would do the rest—
And if you missed a day, there was always the next,
and if you missed a year, it didn’t matter,
the hills weren’t going anywhere,
the thyme and rosemary kept coming back,
the sun kept rising, the bushes kept bearing fruit—
The streetlight’s off: that’s dawn here.
It’s on: that’s twilight.
Either way, no one looks up. Everyone just pushes ahead,
and the smell of the past is everywhere,
the thyme and rosemary rubbing against your clothes,
the smell of too many illusions—
Between them, the hills and sky took up all the room.
Whatever was left, that was ours for a while.
But eventually the hills will take it back, give it to the animals.
And maybe the moon will send the seas there,
and where we lived will be a stream or river coiling around the base of the hills,
paying the sky the compliment of reflection.
I went back but I didn’t stay.
Everyone I cared about was gone,
some dead, some disappeared into one of those places that don’t exist,
the ones we dreamed about because we saw them from the top of the hills—
I had to see if the fields were still shining,
the sun telling the same lies about how beautiful the world is
when all you need to know of a place is, do people live there.
If they do, you know everything.
The hills are terrible, they hide the truth of the past.
Green in summer, white when the snow falls.
The tourism organization VisitScotland has announced that 2022 is a “Year of Stories,” and has launched a project called Braw Beginnings (braw meaning fine, good, or pleasing) which translates the first lines of iconic books inspired by or written in Scotland into Scots, a language that is experiencing a revival of late.
“This project sees some of the world’s best-known books with Scottish links translated into Scots as a way to showcase the language to an even wider audience. We hope it will encourage visitors to try speaking some Scots and find out more about the language when holidaying here, especially during Scotland’s Year of Stories,” said Marie Christie, VisitScotland’s head of events development. “Scots and the country’s other languages are all part of our unique culture which can only truly be experienced in Scotland, strengthening the experience we know means so much to visitors.”
They have teamed up with Scots language expert and writer Alistair Heather to translate the first lines of some of the world’s most popular books into Scots. It’s estimated that the Scots language has 1.5 million speakers – a number which is growing all the time. Not only is Scots the most widely spoken indigenous Scottish language, but it is also the largest minority language in the UK. From Robert Burns to Scottish Twitter, Scots is spoken with verve and passion across the country and beyond.
The translated passages come from books such as Dracula by Bram Stoker. While the Dublin-born Stoker is more often associated with Ireland, he is thought to have drawn inspiration from Slains Castle in Aberdeenshire for Dracula.
Stoker’s novel opens with:
“Left Munich at 8:35 p.m., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late”
Which in Scots, becomes:
“Gaed oot fae Munich at 8:35p.m., on 1st May, intae Vienna early the follaein morn; shouldae arrived at 6:46, but train wis an oor late”
One of the featured writers is the great Ian Rankin who was born in the Scottish town of Cardenden and has since gone on to grip the world with his thrilling crime novels. Knots & Crosses introduces Rankin’s famous character, Inspector Rebus. It tells the story of the Edinburgh cop as he tries to put the pieces of the puzzle together to uncover the maniac carrying out a series of murders in the city.
Rankin’s novel opens with:
“The girl screamed once, only the once”
Which in Scots, becomes:
“The lassie let oot ae skirl, just the ane”
Probably the most famous book series to have Scottish roots, JK Rowling’s Harry Potter novels have captivated the hearts and imaginations of children and adults alike since the first book came out in 1997. Rowling famously wrote the first novel in the series in a café in Edinburgh, which has already been translated into Scots.
Rowling’s novel opens with:
“Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive”
Which in Scots, becomes:
“No fir the first time, a rammy had brak oot ower breakfast at nummer fower, Privet Drive”
Sound clips of these translations and more have been posted online. VisitScotland’s artists have also reimagined what a scene from each book might look like, resulting in colorful illustrations that add a bit of whimsy to the literary initiative. All of it can be seen and heard here.
The TV DICTIONARY is a collaborative project with a very simple premise: each entry attempts to capture the essence of a TV series using a single word in a short video that combines the dictionary definitions of that word with a clip or several clips from the series. Created by Israeli filmmaker Ariel Avissar the TV Dictionary is a brilliant video project that uses a single word to summarize the general theme of popular television shows. The word is first presented during the opening credits, after which the word is defined using specific scenes from the particular show.
I have to admit that I was a poor student of William Shakespeare’s work while I was in secondary school. Over the years, I have come to appreciate the brilliance of his writings, but I was not aware of the many common expressions that we use in English that originated from his plays. The clever short animation below from Digg demonstrates the extraordinary range of colloquial saying derived directly from the Bard. Among those typically in use are “breaking the ice” (The Taming of the Shrew), “wild goose chase” (Romeo and Juliet), “out of the jaws of death” (Twelfth Night), “naked truth” (Love’s Labor’s Lost), and “knock-knock jokes” (Macbeth), just to name a few.
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“The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment…to put things down without deliberation…without worrying about their style…without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote, wrote, wrote… By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.”
Joing the likes of Ivanhoe, David Copperfield, and The Great Gatsby, a series of Marvel comic books have united with Penguin Classics family. The Marvel Collection retraces the origins of favorite comic book superstars. The collection of stories reintroduces The Amazing Spider-Man, Black Panther, and Captain America to readers while celebrating the impressive influence the comic books have had on popular culture. Initially there are only three volumes, but Penguin Classics intends to bring in more superheroes in the future.
The stories begin from the characters’ origins to adventures chronicled during the golden age of comic books. Penguin Random House has invited some exceptional authors, and Marvel fans, to write a foreword for the new titless. Each one expresses the personal impact the comics has made on them.
In The Amazing Spider-Man edition, bestselling author Jason Reynolds shares stories about his brother, describing the power of passing along comic book love. Writer Nnedi Okorafor’s foreword for the Black Panther speaks of a childhood where she couldn’t be herself in comic stores because she was treated as an outsider, being Black. The essay goes on to discuss the lack of representation of women or Black people on superhero comics. While in the forward to Captain Ameria bestselling author Gene Luen Yang writes about what the superhero meant to him as a child of immigrants.
The series includes both paperbacks and collector’s edition hardbacks. The latter books are decidedly more premium-looking; they feature solid backgrounds with gold foil artwork, and the sides of their pages are gilt.
Vincent Van Gogh was known to have painted over 30 self-portraits between the years 1886 and 1889. That is until this week when it was revealed that a hidden self-portrait by the artist has been discovered behind one of his paintings, covered by layers of glue and cardboard for more than a century. The image was found when art conservators took an X-ray of Van Gogh’s 1885 “Head of a Peasant Woman” painting ahead of a forthcoming exhibition. They discovered the concealed image at the back of its canvas hidden by a sheet of cardboard, according to a press release from the National Galleries of Scotland.
His collection of self-portraits places him among the most prolific of 19th century self-portraitists. Van Gogh used portrait painting as a method of introspection and a way of developing his skills as an artist.
In a letter to his brother Theo dated September 16, 1888, Van Gogh writes about a self-portrait he painted and dedicated to his friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin.
“The third picture this week is a portrait of myself, almost colourless, in ashen tones against a background of pale veronese green. I purposely bought a mirror good enough to enable me to work from my image in default of a model, because if I can manage to paint the colouring of my own head, which is not to be done without some difficulty, I shall likewise be able to paint the heads of other good souls, men and women.”
Travel Between The Pages 