Alexander Stuart

Our American Eskimo, Stoli (newly trimmed for summer), by the lake. One of the reasons I have been so silent on this blog for so long is that our family has made a fairly radical move north in California, from Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles to Sonora, an historical former gold rush town situated between Yosemite National Park and San Francisco (closer to Yosemite). Prompted in part by our young children's wish to live somewhere even more rural than Topanga - and somewhere with snow in winter and more horses close by - we chose Sonora for its stunning natural beauty, its proximity to Yosemite, its warm and welcoming local community, its fascinating gold rush history, and the fact that there is an excellent Waldorf/Steiner school nearby. 19th Century gold mining equipment at neighboring Columbia. We found a house by a lake that offers a beautiful setting, plentiful ducks and geese (we already have our own baby duckling), hopefully the occasional loon (I am pretty certain tha

It has been a long time since I posted to my blog - I'm not entirely sure where the time has gone but I have moved through it, or it through me, in the usual fashion! Soon I will be back posting more regularly. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this photograph of a beautiful and very peaceful dawn, taken with the iPhone Hipstamatic app. I love the dawn and am usually around to see it, especially in summer. It's such a quiet, reflective yet hopeful time of day - and another reminder of our place in this extraordinarily beautiful cosmos.

Theresa Russell and Art Garfunkel in Nicolas Roeg's Bad Timing I look on British film director Nicolas Roeg as many things: a friend, a mentor, almost a second father to me, but also the filmmaker who had the greatest personal influence on opening my eyes to what film could do. His films, not least Performance, Walkabout, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Don't Look Now and Bad Timing, had the greatest individual resonance for me, because they changed the way I looked at identity, sexuality, death, loss, attraction and both the nature of time and the nature of film - and how all of those are intertwined. I was a fan of Nic's long before I met him and was lucky enough to work with him in the most astonishing way. Through Nic, I was able, as a young screenwriter and novelist who had never produced anything, to negotiate the screen rights to a remarkable play I had seen and loved, about Marilyn Monroe meeting Albert Einstein - and to become, with enormous help from the unique

<p><br><br>I <br></p> I first heard Ghostpoet's Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam on Mathieu Schreyer's amazing show on KCRW , and loved it instantly. This musical/video mashup previews the whole album.

I was trying to find something to post in response to the astonishing natural disaster in Japan that wasn't simply more images of the earthquake or the tsunami - and I thought of the music of Ryuichi Sakamoto , which I have always loved. This video is of Sakamoto's SILK: Love Theme II , which seems perfectly fitting in mood and beauty. I wish Japan a graceful and safe recovery - and wish well to everyone there, especially the families of the many victims. If you click on this link, you will find various options to give donations and support to the rescue and recovery efforts in Japan, courtesy of the Huffington Post.