Monsters
7 January 2008
Life is punctuated by visions. Novelists usually call them ideas. They are images that you see in your mind's eye that stay with you. They make an impression - resonant, connected, sometimes ambiguous.
Of course, everyday events do the same - I still have the image of Michael Buerk in Ethiopia crystal clear on the screen in my memory. How long ago was that? 20 years? 25?
In Slavenka Draculic's novel Holograms of Memory, Slavenka quotes a scientific paper on the structure of reminiscence within the brain's architecture. The paper argued that, because several separate areas of the brain are engaged in summoning a single memory, the vision that we call up out of the past must be created like a hologram - from the interference in 3-dimensional space between incomplete records of the event.
A good novel makes fictional ideas seem real. Many novelists find their inspiration in myths and legends. Is that surprising? Myths and legends are comprised of images - ideas - that seem real, convincing, authentic. And have seemed so for many years, many generations.
I remember - that word again - the red centre of Australia, where the creation stories of geologists and Aboriginal dreamtimers co-exist.
I've been looking into mythological creatures in response to an email I received about the pantheon of Pyrenean deities and demons that partly inspired Sepulchre. Having had a - delicious - month off, I'll be writing about them next week.
Somebody who hasn't had a month off is our friend C C Humphreys, a prolific novelist and actor, and a visitor to the first Chichester Writing Festival at West Dean College. His attractive and up-to-date new website is well worth visiting.
In the meantime, happy new year from the Sepulchre!
