14 July 2008
l is for light
Now this one really is bad, but being an occasional fan of self-referentiality, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a picture of one of the lights I fixed up for the lightbox. The use of only one light explains the shadow on the left side...
Despite being a fully paid-up member of the 'external world...what's that?' club, I am nevertheless quite handy at building things, fixing things and hanging out in DIY warehouses. I even have powertools. In the past couple of months I have fixed a record player using a rubber band, unblocked a sink and put these 500w security lights together, which included cutting and stripping cable and wiring plugs. I'm like a poster-girl for proper feminism, ha ha ha. And I can't cook! Pass the jack-hammer and call me Rosie the Riveter...
I originally wanted proper work lights for the lightbox, but they use a voltage far too great for domestic electricity, and would have required a transformer which would have cost £70. So I bought these £8 security lights instead and put them on their 12 minute setting so I don't have to keep waving anything in front of them. They are clearly very much not designed for indoors usage and they get unbelievably hot, so I rest them against little wooden boxes I also designed for the task (this is thrilling, isn't it?).
On the topic of referentiality, I used to have a big thing for Nabokov's Pale Fire. I learned the first two lines by heart, but turns out Carl learned four.
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff -- and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
I probably would still like Nabokov if I could get round to reading it again. Because I am currently feeling, how shall I put, a bit fragile, I have returned to a certain kind of novel. That is to say, the oversexed-middle-aged-American-male-writer. It used to be Updike, now it is Roth. This has absolutely nothing to do with the light, I realise, but the whole object series has moved rather unevenly between thing and concept anyway. I've got to get some sleep: last night I dreamt I was trying to get to sleep in a dark cave which harboured a giant monster. One shouldn't dream of trying to get to sleep, it seems counter-productive. Nor of giant monsters, for that matter.
