Hello, readers.
It’s a sunny Saturday in Saigon, and I didn’t really mean to alliterate so early in this post, but there you go. Around me, the mise-en-scene includes: a vase of flowers, a boy in an orange shirt, a tiny hat, yellow sunglasses, hipster lightbulbs, a circulatory system of streets pulsing with motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, and cyclos.
This morning, I wrote a bit about a girl who keeps mermaids in jars. At school, I’ve started running a creative writing club. It’s fun. The members are all 6th and 7th graders who are in love with imagination and words and dragons. Well. They probably don’t all love dragons. That would be expecting too much, I think.
Here are some things I’ve come across of late.
1. “The Essence of the Japanese Mind: Haruki Murakami and the Nobel Prize” by Amanda Lewis. It concerns, among other things, individualism, banality, and the souls of history.
2. Ray Bradbury on the way lists empower creativity and reveal ourselves.
3. “The Witches of Athens” by Lara Donnelly, friend of the blog and dancer with fire.
4. IU, K-pop idol and frequent releaser of videos whimsical, precise, occasionally TARDIS-y, and terrifically nostalgic, released a new album a week or so ago. This is a song called “Red Shoes”, live or in a glorious, weird, Chaplin-esque, MV. There’s also this and this, which is a lot of the same songs and people dancing with umbrellas, bowler hats, and black-and-white striped shirts.
That is all.
For now.
Happy Saturday, readers.
the magnelephant review 