Category Archives: Media
Into the Empty Quarter
Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands was one of the first true-life adventure books I remember reading, about thirty-five years ago. The book was published in 1959, and collected Thesiger’s notes about his travels in the Empty Quarter of the desert of Arabia between 1945 and 1950.
The book is apparently on the Excluded Products list on Amazon, so while you can still buy the ebook through this link, I won’t see a single penny for the sale. But I don’t give a damn – this post is to recommend a fine book, not to make money. And screw Amazon.
And as I am at it, here’s the short version of the movie of the expedition Alistair Humphreys and Leon McCarron undertook in the steps of Thesiger a few years back.
The Earphones Diaries are back
I am pleased to announce that The Earphones Diaries, my daily unrequited and mostly unwanted reviews of the records I am listening to, is back online after a two-weeks hiatus due to somebody signalling my Instagram account.
You can find The Earphones Diaries here, or down at the bottom of the sidebar.
It’s music.
Maybe music you don’t like, maybe music you don’t know, maybe music you’d like to check out.
Writing to make sense of the world – Bella Hardy in Yunnan
Here’s an interesting by-product of my continued exploration of what music can be found out there (and of my currently-on-hiatus Earphones Diaries).
Bella Hardy is an award winning British folk singer, and I do listen to folk music, so I was interested in checking out her recordings. I became even more interested when I discovered that Hardy’s 2017 album Eternal Spring was written and recorded in Yunnan Province, China, and included English lyrics set to traditional Chinese music.
Then I found a short documentary about Hardy’s Chinese adventure – it’s called From the Mountains to the City Lakes, it is extremely on topic here on Karavansara, and here it is, for your enjoyment.
Action sequences, Indiana Jones-style
Nice overview of how it’s done…
Killer Crisis – an idea for a story I’ll inflict on my Patrons
When I was young and foolish, I used to write short stories based on a picture, a photograph or a song, as a form of exercise. I would hammer the story out on my mother’s Olivetti typewriter, and see what I was able to put together. I had read somewhere that pulp writers in the days of the magazines often wrote stories to the cover (typical example, Fritz Leiber’s Schylla’s Daughter), and I thought it would help me develop my writer skills.
The first story I actually finished was based on an illustration by Boris Vallejo (hey, it was the 80s! I was 16! Give me some slack!)
This one, to be precise…
Sometimes I still do, in a way: I use photo references and a soundtrack for my stories. But a story directly inspired by a painting or a song? That’s a thing I have not done for a long time.
But then…
John Carter in Cinemascope
As Blondie used to sing, dreaming is free…
Karavansara 