Spring Has Sprung
Thing that are inspiring me lately
The calendar says it’s Spring. But Mother Nature is cooking up snow for this weekend, so…?
Anyway, here’s an assorted list of things inspiring me, in no particular order:
From The Vine: I queued this one up on a whim a few weekends back. What a gem of a film. The story revolves around an Italian-born, Canadian businessman who chucks it all in to move back to his ancestral home and make wine. Straightforward enough, right? But the film takes liberties with reality and fantasy: vines talk, statues grimace and gargoyles roar. That thin line between fact and fiction reminded me of the early 2000’s short-lived series, “Wonderfalls” (still bitter about that cancellation). The dialogue ping pongs between Italian and English with characters speaking in one language, responding with another, a modern-day Tower of Babel scenario that it takes you about a half hour to realize. But what I loved most about this one was the way it explored identity and ancestry.
Ainsley Durose’s Instagram: This account features the daily adventures of a young pastry chef, living in Paris. Full disclosure: if I’m having a rough day, I pull up one of Ainsley’s videos and *poof* instant delightful distraction. Lovely photos are great (the world needs more of those), but what really sold me on Ainsley’s account was her inspiration for starting: looking to fall back in love with a city that had become quotidienne to her. And that got me thinking about how I view the ordinary, day to day in my own life. Understood through another’s eyes, what story was there for the taking?
Ludwig: I have a soft spot for underdogs. I have a weakness for production design that doesn’t slot neatly into a clear time period (think: “Pushing Daisies” or “Queens of Mystery”). And I am a huge, huge fan of quirky crime shows. So with all those boxes ticked, Ludwig neatly delivers.
The Word is Murder: I’ve been consuming Anthony Horowitz creations since high school. I fell in love with “Poirot” as a teen. I think “New Blood” was criminally cut short. And I will never, ever, get the sunflower scene in “Foyle’s War” out of my head. But switching gears to books, I didn’t care for Moriarty. But I did give Magpie Murders a try a few years back and realized I shouldn’t have written Horowitz’s novels off quite so quickly. That said, when I read the blurb for The Word is Murder I was skeptical. It seemed, well, bombastic for an author to write themselves into a story. But it works. And again, like “From the Vine” or “Ludwig,” it blurs the line between reality and fiction adroitly. Horowitz name drops Michael Kitchen and assorted publishing houses. But he solves the crime alongside a fictitious detective. Where fact stops and the imaginary starts is squishy and, in turn, delightful. And that sort of writing made me wonder about storytelling in general, how we understand narrators and characters and the way it all gets spun out.
Alrighty, enough about me. What’s inspiring you?
Thank you for all the intriguing breadcrumbs here. We really liked Poirot and Foyle's War, too.
We are also enjoying Ludwig, though the over arching story is much stronger than the episodic ones. Great main characters and settings.
This winter, this year, has been a struggle. I've been reading some of the lighter, second-tier British women novelists from around the inter-war period. Miss Mole (E.H. Young), Susan Settles Down (Molly Clavering), High Rising (Angela Thirkell), The Lark (E. Nesbit).
Reading bits in a tired state at bedtime, I was surprised by how funny I found them. (Hat tip to Miranda Mills' booktube for putting me onto them.)
Home and community are outlined in their particularities. Individuals matter.
I once saw a video of the artist Makoto Fujimura talking about the loss of images of home in our culture. We have many images of exile, but have lost the way to depict home.
Home making is a high calling. You can look for shades and shadows of how it's done, in the old books.