Eighty-five quid spent on five series of The Wire was a wonderful investment. Great three-dimensional scripts, if not for the faint-hearted. Plus a revelation that computers can be used by non-experts for Identikit work.
But how good are we at describing – even remembering – faces? Right now I’m trying to remember my own. As a conceit I say it’s gaunt but that’s vanity. Lengthy, cylindrical and lugubrious are better.
The ears were taped flat to my head when I was a baby. This has streamlined me for swimming but the ears don’t work well as sound collectors. Bags under-identify those hanging gardens beneath my hazel (Hard to live with that adjective at school) eyes. A long forgotten author, John Lodwick, used “cement sacks” in painting a debauched character’s face and that phrase does the job.
My hair went grey in my twenties but it stayed put. It’s now white and is deliberately left uncombed to cultivate the hand-on-the-tiller/spume-in-the-face look. It is merely untidy. The mouth? Here objectivity begins to fail. The lower lip has links with that of Oscar Wilde. It could be described – by someone without my interests at heart – as that of a sensualist. From the West Riding?
Let’s finish upbeat. The nose is a success. Straight, incisive, right off the face of John Neville. Women have praised it, though possibly in default of anything else. Have you got all that? Combine the details, create a sketch and I’ll publish the one that comes closest.
Note. No help from the inset. I chose it because of its inappropriate name – Dudeman.
But how good are we at describing – even remembering – faces? Right now I’m trying to remember my own. As a conceit I say it’s gaunt but that’s vanity. Lengthy, cylindrical and lugubrious are better.
The ears were taped flat to my head when I was a baby. This has streamlined me for swimming but the ears don’t work well as sound collectors. Bags under-identify those hanging gardens beneath my hazel (Hard to live with that adjective at school) eyes. A long forgotten author, John Lodwick, used “cement sacks” in painting a debauched character’s face and that phrase does the job.
My hair went grey in my twenties but it stayed put. It’s now white and is deliberately left uncombed to cultivate the hand-on-the-tiller/spume-in-the-face look. It is merely untidy. The mouth? Here objectivity begins to fail. The lower lip has links with that of Oscar Wilde. It could be described – by someone without my interests at heart – as that of a sensualist. From the West Riding?
Let’s finish upbeat. The nose is a success. Straight, incisive, right off the face of John Neville. Women have praised it, though possibly in default of anything else. Have you got all that? Combine the details, create a sketch and I’ll publish the one that comes closest.
Note. No help from the inset. I chose it because of its inappropriate name – Dudeman.
5 comments:
You sexy beast you!
Apart from his wonderful wrinkles you could almost be describing W.H.Auden! (although you may have forgotten to mention the wrinkles?)
I see in "Master and Commander" that Barrett Bonden is described as "a fine open-looking creature, tough without brutality, cheerful, perfectly in his place"
So that takes care of the looks and character - why did you choose that nom de blog BB?
Nobody responded to this post for several days and I wondered whether the portrait I'd provided was just too rebarbative. (ie, "His prose is uppity and now it turns out he looks like Charles Laughton. Who wants him?")
Lucy: Thanks for your deeply felt insincerity.
Avus: Auden had a square face and flat-topped head. In some circles he was regarded as a poet. My face is, as I say, cylindrical, it is also unwrinkled, the top of my head is conical, and I've been trying to write a poem since June.
As to the blogonym may I refer you to my July 12, 2008 post, "Those than can, do; those that can't, blog."
Thanks for referring me back to that 2008 blog. (Before we "met").
Apart from explaining the name, it also gave me the opportunity to read some of your very interesting past blogs.
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