Archive for the ‘mexico’ Category

Posted on March 29, 2008 - by MG

Papers Please…

 

Going to Brazil requires proper foreign stuff like getting a VISA (for me as a Mexican national) and an International Driver’s License based on the 1926 treaty. It’s all prewar and all, a little cardboard booklet in Pre-War Government Grey.

I have papers! Like you see in films when they say ‘Ihre papieren, bitte…’

Some exciting news re sales of “Invisible City” - the Nielsen BookScan data has been crunched and it’s officially the fastest selling UK children’s debut so far this year! Congratulations to Scholastic for their brilliant work selling and promoting the book and many thanks to everyone who’s read it, blogged about it and given it a terrific review on Amazon or elsewhere. Guys…it’s working!

see Pedro Almodovar Blog

Meanwhile I have found a way to fangirl one of my favourite movie directors, that Castilian genius, Pedro Almodovar. He has a blog where he’s blogging about making his forthcoming movie, “Broken Embraces”.

I almost swooned with pleasure to read that he’s been writing in the ‘Las Mananitas’ hotel in Cuernavaca and to see from his photos that he’s been to Tepoztlan. Both are small towns outside Mexico City, around a hour’s drive away through tree-covered mountains, and both places where we’ve spent wonderful times with friends and family.

I was also delighted to read about his recollections of “Night of the Iguana”, a film I also admire. Of the monologue at the end where Deborah Kerr’s character movingly and naturally speaks of the one moment of (questionable) intimacy in her entire life, Almodovar writes:

“When a character has captured our attention and decides to tell us something intimate, something he has never confessed to anyone, there’s nothing better than letting the actor act. There are no digital effects, no frantic editing that can compare to the intensity of an actor’s face.”

I always try to achieve that cinematic moment in what I write. Robert McKee said that if there’s one message he’d telegraph to movie producers it’s this: MEANING produces EMOTION.

As in; not explosions, special effects, car chases etc; but that moment where you see on the actor’s face the sudden tumbling of the lock’s mechanism, the realisation, admission, confession.

Now in my case I’d like the car chases and the visual thrill too, thanks very much, but when the moment of meaning arrives, what I’m thinking about is the look on an actor’s face.

So - another blog to follow. Yay!

Posted on March 22, 2008 - by MG

Looking for inspiration: Remedios Varo

Some writers like to have a vague idea where they’re going when they write and make it up as they go along, some writers like to spend a great deal of time with the plotting and planning.

I’m one of the planners. I’ve tried it the other way - with me it tends to produce plot structures that lack sufficient impact at the key points. So now, I plan.

But a story also has needs to have some magical, organic quality; something that feels as though it crept in by itself, wasn’t calculated into the mix from the start. Even if actually, it was…

Every writer has their own way of factoring in that magical bit. I suspect we all discover it on our own. Mind-altering substances might do the trick, but that’s a bit risky…

My own ‘method’ came from the realisation that even working to a structured plot, there was still room for movement. So even my ‘finished’ plot plans are in fact only about 85% of the way there.

The last 15% has to be found during the writing. And with me, it is always inspired from outside.

It seems to be something about understanding what makes you tick and connecting something in the story with that.

Without getting too psychoanalytical, we all have something deep down that we really care about and drives us.  Some people are very self-aware; they know what this is…the kind of people who care deeply about politics or religion…are probably going to write books that reflect their thoughts on that.

But if lie me you’re generally vague and mixed-up, it’s a bit more complicated!

However, by accident, I did find the way to extract this magic final 15%. And so far it has worked every time.

I’m not telling though! Nope; that’s going to be my secret.

Here’s a clue though, one thing that inspired me today, in finding the some of the magic 15% for Joshua book 3.

It’s a picture by Remedios Varo, a Mexican artist, a surrealist painter of fantastical works. A close friend of mine in Mexico City introduced me to her work when we were teenagers. I remember a very happy afternoon we spent together in the Museum of Modern Art in Chapultepec looking at these paintings…

The painting above is called Naturaleza Muerta Resucitado which translates as ‘Natural Death Resuscitated’.

Posted on March 19, 2008 - by MG

With the Bohemians - A huevo!

Alonso, Mario, Hector and Pablo of the OU Mexican Society

After Mass last week I overheard two people talking in the shop near church. Their accents gave them away as Mexicans, so I introduced myself as a fellow Mexican. Oxford has a few Mexican graduate students nowadays and over the years I’ve got to know a few of them, which has been a wonderful way to meet Mexican people who are a) much younger than me and b) not related to me!

Pablo invited me to listen to him and some friends playing ‘trova’ at a ‘Bohemian Night’ at Exeter College MCR. ‘Trova’ are soft, latin-american modern folk songs, often with political sentiments. So I sneaked out of the house last Saturday and joined the Young People in the MCR.

Listening to them play, I was transported back to my childhood when my  uncle Jose Luis (’Pepe’) and some student mates (my mother called them ‘the boys’) of his came to Europe travelling, back in the 1970s. Like Pablo and his pals, they also brought guitars and songs from old Mexico. I was a very impressionable young girl at that time and decided that an intrinsic part of being attractive as a latino male was undoubtedly the ability to sing and play guitar.

I was glad to see that these guys lived up to that stereotype. Like Pepe and ‘the boys’ back in the day, these guys had an impressive command of old Mexican songs by Agustin Lara and Jose Alfredo Jimenez, rancheras, trova songs, ballads…and that was before they began riffing with the audience in English, covering the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, The Eagles,  Don Mclean and Radiohead.

(A highlight was when they played “Twist and Shout” by the Beatles and then without changing the guitar riffs at all - because it’s exactly the same tune - went straight into the older Mexican jarocho song ‘La Bamba’.)

Very bohemian! And quite satisfyingly Mexican, too. Viva Mexico!

I might be going to talk to the Oxford University Mexican Society about ‘The Joshua Files’. Yes, I did tell them, many times, that it’s a children’s book…

 (NB ‘a huevo’ is Mexican slang for saying ‘too right’. And like most Mexican slang, it is probably rather crude…)

Posted on December 7, 2007 - by MG

Gigantic bug in Campeche

Gigantic bug in CampecheOriginally uploaded by mgharris

Ah the good old days when I could blog via email from me BlackBerry.

I’m testing it again. The photo is of some giant beetles that some guys showed us in Mexico, on the road from Chetumal to Becan.

One of the two is dead. Can’t tell which…
Emailed from my BlackBerry®

Posted on December 3, 2007 - by MG

From Mexican masked wrestlers to Batman

On the left: my sister (in the pretty dress) and I (in the Batman costume) dine out with clowns at Mexico City’s Mauna Loa restaurant. I’m probably 7 years old here.

On the right: our six-year old daughter as Mistico, the masked wrestler, taken a few weeks ago by new friend via Flickr, Alejandro.

Our six-year old daughter has a thing for Mexican masked wrestlers. I’ve seen it all before and I know where it leads.

I became fascinated with Batman via a fascination with the masked wrestlers who were and are still such big heroes in Mexico. When I was little it was Blue Demon and El Santo. These days there are others, like Mistico.

Truthfully I had no idea that the costumes I saw being sold all over gaudy stalls in Mexico’s Chapultepec park were anything to do with wrestling. I thought they were caped crusaders. And that was cool. So when our little daughter begged us to buy her a Mistico mask in Playa del Carmen recently, I knew just how she felt.

Somehow that fascination turned into a full-on obsession with Batman (that I’m not really over to be honest…). My Uncle Johny, a childhood pal of my father’s was always crazy for comic books and ‘pulps’. So naturally his boy, my cousin Juan Fernando, had the best batman suit money could buy. How I envied Juan Fernando that suit. I coveted it something rotten, so when Juan grew out of it, my uncle and aunt kindly gave it to me. The true owner! Only I truly loved that suit.

I wore it everywhere and all the time. I wore it to the university where my grandfather worked and the students would ask ‘Hey Batman, where’s Robin?’ until I actually got fed up.

There wasn’t always a Robin, yanno…

I wore it to restaurants. There was no point arguing with me on this. Thank goodness there were no family weddings or christenings that summer or I’d have worn it to them too.

My Uncle Johny had a library that was to me, basically like a temple. It was full of book shelves and cases of precious sci-fi books, adventure stories, comic books and collectibles. He used to lend me his Ellery Queen books and his Batman paperback versions of the comics. It was in Johny’s library that I first read the Batman origin story, the most impressive one, I believe, for any caped crusader. A rich, privileged boy sees his beloved parents murdered in an alleyway by some thug, all for a string of pearls. And that’s it: over. His life of privilege and all his riches can never replace what he loses right there - his childhood. Bruce Wayne spends his whole life trying to put back something that can never be fixed. And he’s never content - how can he be? No bereavement counselling for Bruce - just a premonition in a bat cave and a life of violence and vendetta against the breed of scumbag who destroyed his life.

Gosh it’s cool.