30 May 2009

Short Stories and Mashups

It's another reading week. Well, five days actually, because I've got a business meeting back in the UK next Tuesday. It'll be hard to leave this beautiful weather. I've been reading Maupassant and Chekhov in preparation for a few further thoughts on the short story - interspersed by a fairly tough techno-business study of mashups in the 'business enterprise' (if that isn't a tautology).

I check my emails in the morning, go for coffee chez José, then type up yesterday's writing. After lunch it's into the garden, by the pool, hoping not to be disturbed by too many topless Swedish girls breaking the rules of the Puebla. I would remonstrate with them severely, but my Swedish is a bit limited. More keyboard work when the sun drops, and all the time able to stay in touch with the important things of life via digital culture.

Tonight I heard Mel Tormés wonderful account of Donald Fagen's The Goodbye Look which I'd never heard before. Within a couple of minute's I had tracked down the lyrics, a YouTube video of the same performance, and got six hundred plus tracks from Mel lined up on Spotify.com - which is fast replacing Last.fm as my Internet music source of choice. Good wine; quality food; unlimited sunshine. How long can this last? But I was born in a paper bag at the bottom of a cesspit.

1 comment:

skipper said...

Roy
I think this is the most shameless post you've ever written! While we shiver under brollies back home you choose to gloat at your lotus eating life under a cloudless sky. Back home here, we wish we could scare up a really heavy downpour for you. Strangely enough, the weather is gorgeous here today...

Surprised you haven't been reading Alice Munro re your short story studies. I'm just reading 'Hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage, byt her and am beginning to see why she is so lauded.