Alphabet City: what the letters really mean to me...

[rhythmaning]

Whilst I was thinking of my response to the standard ABC that has been going around – I took it from f3f4 - I kept thinking of other associations that particular letters had for me; so here is my freeform alphabet…


A - well, I am an accountant (though I no longer do any accountancy); but I am also really interested in art in many of its guises – mostly paintings, but music and dance and …
B - has to be for books; but also for botany, which was my undergraduate subject; and also for bracken, which I spent four years studying in detail (cyanogenesis, if you are interested); and for beat, which is compulsive, and neverending
C - is for cameras – I have used cameras for over thirty years, and I probably feel most at ease with a camera in my hands
D - is for drums: I have played in bands for years, too (though not for the last few years…) – the rhythm is generated…
E - is for Edinburgh, where I studied and have lived for the last twelve years – it is a wonderful city, the only place I think I would want to live
F - well, friends I guess – few but valuable, scattered around the world
G - is for gonzo; and for Greenland, where I was desperate to go for many years after we flew over the island on the way back to my first visit to the States: we crossed Greenland as the sun was rising, and it was intensely beautiful. I visited a few years ago, on a walking holiday
H - is for Hampstead, the part of north London where I grew up and where I later lived for a few years – a pretty good place, for London…
I - could be for innovative, but that sounds far too smug; or for interesting, which is what life should be, and invariably is
J - is undoubtedly for jazz: I grew up listening to jazz mad didn’t really like; it wasn’t until I left home that I realised that this music was deeply engrained in me; a wonderful sound
K - who am I kidding? K has no meaning for me I can think of
L - is for lighting, which I did for several years when I was a student; but more, much more, it is for left handed, for I am part of an oppressed minority: I am significantly left handed, and it determines the way I look at the world
M - is for music – all sorts of music, though mainly jazz and rock (but a growing appetite for classical – mainly 20th century), and also for munros - those Scottish mountains over 3000 feet high – which I endeavour to climb – and the maps that go with them: I do like maps
N - is for New York, a wonderfully vibrant city which I love to visit; I still crane my head to look at the skyscrapers (and lament the hole in the ground)
O - is for Oxford, where I went to university and where my mother now lives
P - is for photography, with those cameras; an art form, I believe. And for pteridophytes - that is ferns to you; the only things I am good at growing
Q - do me a favour…
R - is for rainforest: an amazing environment; I have spent a fair bit of time in rainforest, and it is always a humbling experience – trees 100 feet or more tall, hundreds of years old – rainforest makes one feel quite insignificant, but part of the world (not separate)
S - is for shiny saxophones that sing so beautifully; and for Skye - ‘nuff said
T - is for Torridon, another lovely part of the Scottish north west, home to some wonderful mountains and brilliant single track roads where you can get up to 70 with ease…
U - is for the London underground which I love and hate; when we were children – aged seven or so – we would by rover tickets and spend the day riding the tube, seeing how many stations we could go through – riding from one end of the line to the other; or racing round the Circle line in opposite directions. They’d probably lock the parents up if they let their seven year old son do that today…
V - is for Venice, a really fun city; we had our honeymoon there (cliched but true!)
W - is for a wealth of things: for wine and whisky and women and walking and words - all really important things in my life
X, Y and Z - - oh well, I think I’ll admit defeat and go back to W for a drink.

Comments

[frankie-ecap.livejournal.com]

Oy. F is for Frankie.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

So you're not a friend, then?

I thought friends would be more inclusive. I am all for inclusion.