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Hermit is on a creative break today… I have to organise the last bits and pieces for the launch tomorrow night, like building puppet stands.
I’ve also got the first books from the bookbinder yesterday, hurrah. They are looking great… But there are only 14! so far. I will get another installment today and one tomorrow afternoon.
I love the loneliness and calmness these images exude. The walkers appear to be lost in their own thoughts.
Devil is into Detail
Got a bit side tracked lately – back to the Dedes.
There are a couple of puppets missing on the Cast page. Detail is one of them. I want to make good for this ommission now.
Hermit’s other friends pretend to love Detail, but be aware…. she is a difficult one. If you don’t pay her enough attention, it will be very obvious to the entire world. You of course, my friend, will be the last one to find out.
The other trait I dislike about Detail is her hunger for more and more information before she can make up her mind. Can she ever decide? She never seems to get all her facts together. Maybe Procrastinator would be her dream partner (but I haven’t started working on him yet).
She is of course a fantastic worker. Give her a job, and she will finish it brilliantly.
A good friend of mine gave me this minature bottle as a prop for the puppet show at the book launch. Pig likes it’s tipple – now that sounds like an old lady, I should say it like it is – Pig likes to booze!
It is quite funny, my friend is a New Zealander, but she bought this bottle a good thirty, fourty years ago on her OE. And it says on the side of the bottle Produce of Germany. She bought it at a time when I didn’t even know New Zealand existed. The alcohol has long evaporated out of the bottle through the unbroken seal. When we talked about the puppet show she immediately thought of the bottle as the right prop for Pig and digged it out. I wonder what kind of memories she has, when she looks at the bottle.
It is amazing what people keep as mementos. I have a box full “useless” stuff. I started to photograph the items, as each of them conjures up lost friends and time past. I am not lamenting the loss by any means, I just know that every person along my tracks has added to who I am now.
That is what I really wanted to say yesterday about the hammer: we look at the same thing, but we interpret it differently depending on our previous experiences. For me that is the reason why people can never see things quite the same way.
The finished french artist
Here he is: the finished L’artiste. The puppet I showed last week in progress.
I am pretty sure Deutsch Fraulein will fall in love with him when she meets him. (I will have to say something about her, but this post is about L’artiste).
He doesn’t appear to be unhappy, but when one looks closely at his neck, there are little fish visible (you can’t really see it in this pic, it is too small). In German we have the saying that “somebody is up to their neck in water” (“Das Wasser bis zum Hals stehen”) if somebody is in trouble. Having the fish around his neck says it all, but he seems to care little about it. This saying, I think, is pretty much the same as “being in deep water” in English. Sink or Swim!
But as a second language speaker, you have to think much more careful about proverbs.
I have written the book in English and wasn’t thinking about the German translation at all at the time. There are a lot of similar sayings in both languages. But one in particular will cause me a lot of trouble, should I translate the book. In English you have “skeletons in the cupboard”. (In the book I moved them to the wardrobe – as my cupboard is too small to accommodate my huge family of skeletons). The Germans have a “body in the cellar”. I had totally forgotten until my brother pointed it out.
Of course a skeleton looks different from a body. Maybe I could get away with it, by saying that my bodies have been in the cellar for a very, veeeery long time.
Philosopher and Deutsch Fraulein are the poster couple for the launch invite
Now this went wrong. I accidentally posted it before I was finished.
I managed to finish the printed Launch Invites before the weekend and started to hand them out. They are little bookmark sized glossy cards. Two joined together an perforrated. The idea is to tear them off and give one to a friend. I hope that everybody brings a friend along, because that’s what the book is about.
Now that I am at this stage, I get a bit worried about the event, and whether I manage to get everything organised in time. Easter is in between as well….
On to the launch.
I wanted to deal with it yesterday, but I do have a day job too and I had to attend to the small detail of earning money.
The launch is still about six weeks away. I haven’t set the final date, as I have to find a venue first. Then I have to confer with my support crowd (consisting of precisely two people) when it best fits into their time-table. This morning I trotted up to the library. As I mentioned before, there are two types of spaces I deem appropriate for the launch: either the library or an art gallery.
The library can only accommodate 50 people max. At this stage I am hoping for a number between 50 and 100 people to attend, so that rules out the library. I sent off an email to a local gallery and on second thought, I even believe a gallery would be the better option anyway.
I came up with a little show for “two hands and one voice”. After all, the Dedes are puppets and they want to be used. The piece is for Mouse and Pirate and the voice, I guess, will have to be me. If I get round to it on the weekend, I will film it with my D60. I knew, there was a reason for me spending all that money on an SLR with a movie function, but actually doing it is yet another first for me. Maybe I change the script and make it a silent movie.
If I don’t manage to film the little puppet show this weekend, my next cast member will have to be Procrastinator.
I think it is about time that I talk a little about the story of Hermit’s Web. It is quite amazing how the whole thing fell into place. I started making these puppets on a rainy day. While I was unsure what I was going to do with them, I had them sitting in a vase – stuck on the end of chop sticks – on my dinner table. My bunch of new friends.Originally I though I would sell them, and tried to figure out what the best way would be: either through a local gallery or via Trade Me. In the meantime I love them so much, I am not ready to part with them.
The book idea popped up, when I took photographs of some of the puppets to send to the German newspaper they are made of. When I looked at the images I thought photographs are indeed a very good way to share the puppets with my friends. At the same time I found an email in my inbox, somebody wanted to be my friend on facebook. The list of people who want to be my friend is steadily growing, but I don’t have a facebook page. I have thought about it… and decided against it, for various reasons. It is not a matter of not liking people or not wanting to have friends, but I have enough to do with my real life friends.
But this particular email started the Hermit story…. The narrator admits to being an online hermit and then goes on to tell us about his circle of friends. He observes each and every one of them and shares his thoughts with the reader (not unlike a blog really).
I did a small print run of just 30 copies and got them bound with a hard cover. These books I gave to my real life friends and they absolutely loved it. Now, they are my friends… and I gave them a present… of course they won’t say: yuck, don’t like it… but my friends passed their copies around and even their friends gave positive feedback. Everybody seems to recognise people they know in the observations. It’s really like facebook as a puppet show.
Yesterday I put up the cast of the Hermit’s Web book on the Cast page. These are basically the first puppets I made. Detail is missing, though. She wasn’t one of the initial lot. I only added her after I had written the story. I had one blank puppet head left over (one without face and skin) and I didn’t want this head to go to waste and therefore created her part in the story.
So, Friday I’ve sent the replacement pages and the new cover file to the printers. The day was pretty hectic and at night I had to go to a meeting as well. When I finally sank on my sofa at 9:30pm or so, I had a melt-down… Realising that the new title isn’t at all what I wanted.
This sounds now as I can’t make up my mind. No, honestly, I am not the one who is always last to order, because everything on the menu sounds delicious. I am usually very good. Chop, chop, chop, get on with the job! But the title of a book is sooooo important. If you don’t get it right, it can be indeed very costly. Once it is out there, you can’t change the title easily. Even if the story is great. If the title doesn’t fly, you are sort of stuffed.
Sitting on my sofa, pondering about where I am in regards to the project, I realised, that my entire strategy of the project is build around the hermit narrator. Who in the world knows what dede puppets are? Nobody… but everybody knows what a hermit is. In two sentences I can explain the content of the book, when I am asked what Hermit’s Web is all about. While if I call it Dede Chums, I have to start by describing the type of puppets first and by the time I get to the contents of the book, the listener has fallen asleep.
However, my friend who commented on that the book gives the impression of being a children’s book has heaps of very valid points. After thorough consideration I don’t think Dede Chums gets around this issue, though. I still like the word, but it is so quaint and old-fashion, that I might now attract little old ladies to buy the book for their grandchildren. After all it is about puppets. There is nothing in the book that is not appropriate for children, but it is not directed at children. It is aimed at people with a little bit of life experience, who will recognise their own friends in the descriptions of the puppets. And it is a stage for my puppet art.
So back to the original title – Hermit’s Web it is!
I will have to eat a little humble pie, when I write to the printers, but it is better to change the name now. My reasoning is, if I change the name and it doesn’t take off, I would always wonder if it was the title. While if I stick with the title Hermit’s Web and it becomes a sitter, then I know there is something wrong with the book as such, eg others don’t share my sense of humor or don’t take to the puppets.
I had another idea to position the book more precisely. Another friend of mine suggested to just print on the front of the book that it is not a children’s book. But instead of saying what it is not (a children’s book), I now clearly state what it is (an art book). I have added a line at the top: dede puppet art book.
dedepuppets 