San Adrián de Olloki
Ayer tarde volví a tener el placer de escuchar a Emilio Quintanilla en una charla en la iglesia de San Andrés de Olloki, una de las pocas románicas del Valle de Esteribar.
Ayer tarde volví a tener el placer de escuchar a Emilio Quintanilla en una charla en la iglesia de San Andrés de Olloki, una de las pocas románicas del Valle de Esteribar.
The blackletter style of lettering, used famously in the Gutenburg Bible, has always been one of my favorites. During my "medieval period", I studied calligraphy and attempted to reproduce the beautiful look of Medieval manuscripts, mostly using early versions of the blackletter style. But, I wish I had had this excellent article by Jennifer Farley to better understand the varous types of blackletter styles, such as Textur, Rotunda, Schwabacher, and Fraktur. Learn about the history and unfortunate controversy about using these beautiful fonts. The article has many helpful illustrations and also links to some free examples of blackletter fonts. Also, you might be interested in two blackletter (Textur) fonts in the CastleType collection: Goudy Text (my very first attempt at creating a digital font) and Cloister Black.
Another great article, Blackletter: A history of the beautiful script has even more information and illustrations, with more of the history of blackletter, and more terminology, such as Old English and Gothic.
Medieval fun for all
Here are a couple quick sketches for my "real" (private) journal. Reminds me of my "medieval period" in my twenties when I was performing Medieval music and doing blackletter calligraphy with illuminated initials. Lots of fun, but messy (compared to digital "calligraphy"). I still like this style very much, and have often thought I would eventually design a font that would make it easy to create initials like these in two or more colors. Lots of decisions to make, though: whether to replicate the early Medieval look as closely as possible, or do a "modern" interpretation, or something in between, etc. And, of course, then I'd need to design a Medieval-style text font to go with the initials, and so on. Let me know what you think. There's no point in putting hundreds of hours into a font if nobody is interested in using it. Well, I admit I usually design fonts just for the fun of it. But, it's still nice when people buy the finished product.
By the way, speaking of journals, if you want to see how beautiful and creative a journal can be, check out Carl Jung's "Red Book", his private journal which has finally been published after being locked away in a safe deposit box for decades: Amazon.com: The Red Book (9780393065671): C. G. Jung, Sonu Shamdasani, Mark Kyburz, John Peck: Books http://bit.ly/Tacv7Two beautiful photographs of the church by @make5028
The second of my promos for Far Black Furlong. This is a hell of a lot better than the first one, I think I caught something of the ambient floatiness of it all. Just about.
(listen to Far Black Furlong's music here)
Far Black Furlong are an ambient/chamberclassical/medieval/drone/folk/electronica band based in Bishops Castle, Shropshire. Hear them here.
I've forgotten one dream since I last wrote here. Let's see how well I do at recalling the last three days' dreams.
Sat 23/5/09
In some amazing house that had four wings (not the flight kind!). Some Filipino family friends were invited around and they proceeded to leave a mess everywhere - I recall most keenly that there was mud and fried chicken remains ground into the floor. There were food bowls (or trays, rather) for cats. Apparently, 2-4 cats would decide our modern mansion was their home and eat from them.
There were water bowls next to them and they had orange blobs floating, not unlike fish roe. They would jump out of the bowl and explode, leaving orange goo-mess on the floor.
Another part of the house: we were fiddling with the blinds and curtains. In another room, I drew the curtains to shield an old Nintendo and TV from the sun. There were Rumpole books around and I knew these belonged to my father.
* * *
Another dream, same night. My obese friend-bully in high school was humiliating me again. We had to do some dance for school. Some band musicians played music, and all of a sudden we were on a float and they were outside, running along. As they ran along, other regular people would pick up their instruments and jam with them. I was talking with my brother about a week-long debutante and felt it unfair that the men could wear the same suit the whole way through whereas the females had to change dresses - one new one for daytime, one new one for the evening.
Previous to this, my brother and father and I were in a house and I was threatening to kill myself because both were driving me insane in that I could not be my true self whenever they were in the same room, which was all the time. I could not even sleep alone. I was so angered by their presence and felt quite homicidal towards my brother, but eventually began dangling myself on a balcony.
Fri 22/5/09
I was an onlooker - some sort of medieval fairytale setting. There was a beautiful woman - sometimes I was her, sometimes not. Our army had captured this stunning centaur and tied up all his legs. The beautiful woman wanted to have sex with this creature. I was then watching our army wade through icy water - how it managed not to freeze them, I don't know. Somehow the troops floated despite donning light metal armour. Then we were at some sort of castle and things became bloody as people were slaughtered - of course the beautiful women were not slain.
* * *
In some strange open sort of room with a gorgeous indie comic artist who was apparently famous and regaling all on stories of her fame. These extremely attractive men would come and entertain this girl (who was me, but not really me) who was planning to go on a trip to explore the life of the indie comic artist. She had newspaper articles and maps.
Thu 21/5/09
There was this amazing lipstick that instead of being solid looked like a spring when wound out of the tube. It had been given some exotic-sounding name similar to "farfalla" (as in the pasta!)
I had another main dream this same night but I am struggling to recall it now.