What I’ve Squeezed Out of 2017

Posted on December 31, 2017 by Teodor Reljic under Life

Though in some ways it’s become little more than a social media habit at this point, I think good habits which have some value become rituals, and I like rituals very much.

So despite the fact of it all being something of a knee-jerk thing that “everybody’s doing”, I’d like to do my own take on some of the most significant things that happened to me and around me in 2017.

Got married

This may be the logical “big one”, if only because others may expect you to elevate it into a ‘Life Event’, perhaps one of the very few Ultimate Life Events that you get to savour and be honoured by.

Needless to say — for the sake of those who know us quite well, at least — neither V. nor I hold all that much earnest faith in the Institution of marriage per se, and would, to mention just one example, count our respective writing-based milestones (novel in my case, PhD in hers) as being the more important moments worth truly celebrating.

Nonetheless, it does feel great to be “tied” to someone like V., whose values and way of life not only match but also enrich my own with each passing day. Plus, both of our wedding parties — the official ceremony held at a distinctly unofficial venue, and the more full-blown party at the idyllic family vineyard in Monterotondo — made for truly memorable funtimes for all involved, so that has to be worth something, surely.

Got to WorldCon

The gods of both speculative fiction and state financing smiled upon me this year too, and my new wife and I jetted off to Helsinki soon after that latter celebration in Monterotondo to experience both the city itself and WorldCon 75.

I got there in large part thanks to a grant from Arts Council Malta which aims to help out local “creative practitioners” to travel to relevant places to attend relevant events that could, ostensibly, help them sharpen the tools of their trade and/or aid them in their careers.

While the organisers were also kind enough to put me on a couple of panels, the real upshot of all this was being able to meet some people I truly admire face-to-face. Talking shop is one thing though, and that’s all good stuff, but the best thing about it all was to discover just how generous and pleasant to be around they all were.

Then there was Helsinki itself. It’s the furthest north I’ve ever been, and the perfect August weather, coupled with the more socio-aesthetic balm of the city’s clever architecture, wide open spaces and efficient transport system felt like a break in more ways than one.

Got to deal with disappointment

Having aspirations of pursuing a creative writing career also means fielding disappointment and dealing with rejection on a regular basis.

This year has also been something of a whammy in this regard; as a short film we hoped to get made didn’t get through to the desired funding stream, an enthusiastic-at-first literary agent didn’t bite once they processed a full manuscript, and the comic book series I’m currently working on with a pair of kick-ass visual artists — MIBDUL — didn’t make it to our desired deadline (for very legitimate reasons, I hasten to add).

Pictured: Kick-ass collaborators

While I won’t deny that some of this has hit hard initially, with mild aftershocks coming back to haunt me every now and then, I’ve also accepted that this is par for the course for the path that I’ve chosen.

And in addition to all of that, it must also be said that each rejection came with its own caveats. We are re-applying for that short film because it’s a project we truly believe in. The literary agent’s rejection letter was actually a beautiful — even poetic — personalised missive that extolled the intrinsic value of the work, and I’m far from discouraged in continuing to pursue not only other agents, but the project in question (expanding an earlier work into something larger). And MIBDUL remains on track, with the added edge that it’s do or die at this point. And we have absolutely every intention to “do”.

Got to freelance for another year

We’re constantly being bombarded with the notion that ours is a time of endemic instability and chaos; so much so that choosing a freelance lifestyle may seem counter-intuitive, if not outright self-destructive.

But another way to look at it would be to celebrate the fact that, despite everything, one can survive without being tied of a larger organisation for an inordinate amount of time, and that you can in fact face the turbulent economic waters armed with just your skills and come out of it all, if not all-out-triumphant, at least only mildly scraped.

Pictured: The real freelance perks

Over the past year — my first official one as a freelancer — I’ve learned to calibrate both my rates and my time, learning from my mistakes and hoping not to get burned again, as has tended to happen. All of this while acknowledging that the opportunities given to me during this period would not have been possible had I not “apprenticed” myself in a more stable working environment for long years beforehand.

And perhaps the two biggest freelance coups of the past year were taking on the role of editor for Encore Magazine, as well as being given the privilege to teach a bit of Creative Writing at my alma mater. These feel like ‘vertical’ achievements (as opposed to the more ‘horizontal’ accumulation of same-ish jobs that one sometimes has to take on) and I hope they lead to good stuff in the future.

Got to ditch nihilism

Because devaluing the best things in life is stupid

A sort of pre-resolution resolution, this one. Owing to a number of things, 2017 could also be marked as the year during which I’ve entirely separated myself from anything remotely to do with the fetishisation of nihlism. This counts double for the New Atheists and all that they “inspired”.

While it’s unlikely that I’ll ever fall in line with any established world religion (monotheism feels entirely separate from the way I view things, for one thing), I value my wellbeing too much to submit entirely to total existential relativism.

Some kind of internal coherence is important — to remind yourself of what you need at a deeper level, to remind yourself of your ‘values’ and to build up necessary defences against the very same chaotic world that appears to be pushing you to believe in nothing but your basest needs.

Featured image by Paolo Scippo

Have an excellent new year, all.

April Update | Censorship, Near Future SF & Campus Book Fest

Posted on April 22, 2017 by Teodor Reljic under Films, Storytelling, Writing

April got underway to a head-start as I finished up my soujourn at the Kinemastik Film Club by screening the both beloved and reviled cult classic The Fifth Element to what seemed to be a pretty nostalgic and misty-eyed audiences.

The film was certainly a lot of fun, but it also felt a bit patchier than a lot of us remembered; with a jokey mess of a plot and visuals that were — yes — stunning in parts but hardly had enough ‘wow’ set-piece moments to justify the cult status Besson’s space opera still enjoys (as bolstered by both the Moebius inspired settings and Jean Paul-Gaultier costumes).

Milla Jovovich in The Fifth Element (1997), dir. Luc Besson

It was still somewhat heartening to see all that taking place on the big screen at the British Legion in Valletta, as I’m pottering away on my own piece of decidedly ambitious but also — one hopes, as a check on said ambition — silly and satirical slice of sci-fi. But soon after that, I was invited to participate to a project that teased at the more sober qualities of that same genre…

Archived Futures Harvest: Near-future SF writing in Rabat (sort of…)

Last week was in fact a pretty hectic one for this exact reason, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t rewarding. While details remain under wraps until the first week of May when the exhibition is set to open, what I can in fact tell you is that my friend Glen Calleja of Studio Solipsis invited me to do some writing for him at his Rabat studio, and that it was a great — if rather exhausting — time.

A studio in Rabat is a great thing to have

The extended exercise took its cue from a workshop organised some months back, and focused on a collective imaginary of the future. The content I was creating channeled paranoia about surveillance and smart technology, and took the form of fabricated (not ‘fake’!) news articles, surveys and the interpretation of surreal prose texts — or are they coded messages by underground movements?

Even apart from the coolness of working in Rabat and Glen’s zen-like demeanour and keen intelligence — and, of course, the project’s own rich potential, which runs on the intriguing paradox of mixing futuristic speculations with the instruments of the archive — gave me ample opportunity to flex some storytelling muscles.

I’ve always been one to work to limits, but being told to write something creatively based on a fabricated news report, or culled from — also fabricated — surveys and coded messages, gave me a special kind of frisson. I will definitely be applying some of these devices to my own writing in the future.

The Archived Futures Harvest exhibition launches on May 5 and runs for two months

Talking in public: Campus Book Fest, ACM Lab

Speaking about writing at the Campus Book Festival, April 4. Photo by Rik Van Colen

As it happens, Glen Calleja was a stall-mate of my dad’s at the Campus Book Festival which ran at the beginning of the month — book-binding is one of his many skills — and it was after he heard me speak at the event that he proposed we collaborate on the Archived Futures project.

The talk — which took place on the bright and sunny morning of April 4 — went reasonably well, I felt. The original idea was to do something about MIBDUL together with Inez, but she happened to be in London for a workshop at the time. So instead of a visually-enhanced guide of how we’re slowly putting the comic together, I decided to speak about how my first novel kicked my ass into submission and taught me that structure is a very important thing indeed — and not, as I had foolishly assumed, the provenance of those who lack verve and imagination.

Some audience interaction proved that I was not alone in these concerns, and it’s always nice to find real-life correlatives to conversations you would normally have online — which lend a disturbing patina of anonymity even to your closest friends.

Arts Council Malta Head of Strategy Toni Attard and intellectual property lawyer Jeanine Rizzo at the ACM Lab on censorship/self-censorship in Malta, April 21

Arts Council Malta Head of Strategy Toni Attard and lawyer Jeanine Rizzo at the ACM Lab on censorship/self-censorship in Malta, April 21

More recently, I was asked to participate to the latest edition of the ‘ACM Lab’, which are public talks organised by Arts Council Malta on various issues germane to Maltese culture. This time around it was all about censorship and/or censorship, with lawyer Dr Jeanine Rizzo breaking down the new laws pertaining to freedom of expression, which led to a debate with theatre-maker Adrian Buckle — who bore the brunt of the law as it previously stood — and Mario Azzopardi of the Film Classification board.

The discussion was polite enough, with all of us agreeing that transparency is key in age classification — citing the BBFC as an admirable benchmark — but that when it came to theatrical productions in particular — whose producers are now free to self-classify in Malta — an element of risk always remained.

ACM’s head of strategy Toni Attard asked me whether I think Malta’s artists were ready to take full advantage of the newly relaxed laws, and whether evidence of this can be found on the ground. As ever, I believe that the ‘slow’ approach is necessary to all of this; we should keep our eyes peeled on what’s happening, but also be patient enough to wait until enough evidence has accumulated before making our final analysis.

And in our spare time…

Beyond all that, it appears that science fiction is something of a running thread this month. I’m taking steps towards making a trip to WorldCon 75 at Helsinki possible right now — read: assessing the financial viability of it all — which has motivated me to pick up a couple of Hugo shorlistees.

I’ve started with Ada Palmer’s ambitious and, let’s be frank, pretty fucking dazzling Too Like Lightning, which I can only describe as far-future SF written by a member of the Enlightenment literati from the 18th century. I’m only about a quarter of the way through and I’m not sure I’m quite getting all the nuances of the labyrinthine world that Palmer — a 35-year-old professor of history from the University of Chicago — plunges us into, but I’m also hooked.

Easier on the intellect but no less engaging is The Expanse, which I’ve finally gotten to after stalling for a few months and following a slew of recommendations. It certainly doesn’t disappoint: the world-building (!) is tight, controlled and crisp, the characters are richly but clearly drawn and the political intrigue is on the right side of soap opera.

Sure, Fifth Element it ain’t. But I’m looking forward to burning through the rest of it.

Fringe & Con | Edinburgh + London break

Posted on August 21, 2014 by Teodor Reljic under Travel

Visiting the Edinburgh Castle too touristy? FUCK YOU, IT’S A GODDAMN CASTLE.

I’ve taken a bit of a break from the blog over the past few weeks because I’ve taken a break from life in general.

To wit, I’m newly returned from a two-week trip to Edinburgh and London, as I embarked on a mission to escape from the Heat & Humidity combo that characterizes the Maltese Islands during this time of the year, while also taking in two major cultural events I’ve always wanted to check out but have never really had the opportunity to until now, namely the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and LonCon (aka WorldCon, aka the World Science Fiction Convention aka The Geek Convention That Clearly Suffers From An Identity Crisis).

Having these big events as bookends to the holiday was useful, because I’m a pretty shitty traveller, by all accounts.

I’m certainly not an experienced one: having been stifled by a Serbian passport for the longest time, I’ve only been freed to embark on the kind of heedless global traipsing a lot of my peers take for granted after I was finally granted a Maltese passport.

And that was only two years ago.

So I’m an inexpert and often flustered map-reader, an inexpert and often nauseous train-traveller, and a persistent shyness (coupled with the fact that I’m socially spoiled by Malta’s insular and rapidly-mushrooming social circles) makes me hesitant to meet and mingle with locals unprompted.

But as luck would have it, I have friends in both Edinburgh and London who were – once again – more than willing to open their doors to me and let me crash at their respective abodes, which automatically calmed any Nerves of Displacement I may have had and allowed me to enjoy the stuffing out of my stay.

So I’ll be posting about some highlights from the trip in the coming days. Expect a few capsule reviews of Fringe Festival stuff I got to see, as well as some observations from LonCon.

Beyond these often wonderful ‘distractions’, you may catch hints of my total and complete love for Edinburgh: a gem of a city that somehow manages to be both cosy and cosmopolitan…

It’s also gorgeous at dusk.

Soft Disturbances

by Teodor Reljić

Tag Archives: WorldCon