Your future life's a silicon beach.
Except it's not. It's a real one.
And you have sand in your socks.
I'm going to take a gigantically presumptuous, judgmental leap here. One that will hardly widen the gene pool of cultural references among most bloggery mediary types. Because I'll just bet you've seen more than one episode of the Channel 4 TV programme, Grand Designs.
Of course you have.
We took a spin down to Spain with good chums a few years ago. Fine, thoughtful, caring, intellectually engaged people to chew the philosophical cud with. And sure, on this trip, we belted across Granada at one point to marvel at the Alhambra – a gently awe-prompting piece of distinctly 'cultural'-sounding Islamic history in Europe.
But the event we probably put most practical enthusiasm into, with watch-glancing and meal-prepping and the like – all the while we were in this vastly diverse, culturally rich foreign land – was the screening of a new EP of a certain aspirational home build telly show on the sat feed. Got so excited we smashed some decent glasses of wine, as I recall.
My point may be that a lot of folk don't half like to gawp at beautiful design. And at someone else carrying the emotional and – pointedly – financial can for it.
Is it a dream of a better, cleaner, finer, more Germanically-engineered, more smoothly-plastered life, in a doom-tottering dirty world?
Or do we just enjoy hoping to see especially uptight fellow middle-class people melt down in public? Artisan bread and circuses, mate.
Well, the rich, gutsy, pushy, uptight, visionary people always get the posh house and gliding crane shots in the end. And I rather think that that's the point.
A point highlighted by an episode I watched last night, that made me think of the end of civilisation as we know it.
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It didn't make me think of the end of civilisation as we know it. Not exactly. It did make me think what a fantasy a designer home is for most of us, especially after Prime Minister Cameron's lectern-gripping speech about make-or-break Britain at the Tory party conference on Wednesday. Is George Osborne's social care-killing future really the only one ahead of us all? Is it time to start learning some rat recipes from Nigella and Jamie?
(I probably also thought this a bit in light of also watching sci-fi blunderbuster Looper at the weekend – which, although enticingly promising a near future with airships in it, also deftly painted a hellish, steam-Dickensian life of addiction and vigilante dodging for all of us living below them. ..Yes, do you have it in hand-thrown, sun-weathered terracotta, please?)
What it more precisely made me think of was… the challenge facing us. All of us. Now. What shape it really is, In the middle of a hugely destabilising period in history. And how the creative industries may be at the forefront of helping us meet it.
Techcitement.
Our freak-scary challenge is an imperative of economics – obviously, because everything is. Especially if you're trying to build a home on a goopy riverbank on one of the most expensive domestic stretches of the Thames. But it's tempting to say that the challenge is really one of technology. Especially if you've just been to a 'digital' creatives conference. Which I have.
Silicon Beach is the sort of thing that people all over the south coast should be talking about. Especially people in business. It should be a four-page pull-out feature in the Bournemouth Echo. It should be at least the subject of a news item on BBC South Today. Or Heart FM. And there should surely be a bumper sticker campaign about it. It should, in short, come to people's attention through all the distinctly old-world, un-digital media channels we're all very comfortable with thankyou.
Why? Because it's brilliant. Because it's more akin to a TED conference than a bunch of provincial advertising types getting together over home-made soup and branded cupcakes.
Organised chiefly by founding member of creative network Meetdraw, Matt Desmier, SB is about bringing together digital creatives and advertising biz people with some of the coolest leading edge thinkers in the industry – to simply share stuff. It is an open-handed proposition, designed to help everyone raise their game. Or to put it a little more humanly, get inspired. Excited, even.
New tech is exciting. It promises solutions to things we currently live with as immutable. Mutterings are often made about building a new Green Economy in the UK, for example – not simply rebalancing the currency of our sustainability, as it were, but investing in clever tech ways of overcoming pollution and waste and power needs. But much more importantly, of course, new technology also promises fun.
As coding wünderkind Syd Lawrence, founder of Winchester's We Make Awsome Sh.It put it on the second day of SB: "Digital is our playground".
Thinking problem.
At any business-related conferency thing, you're likely to hear a lot of 'strategic' words. Words like Strategy. And Delivery. And Budget. And at a conference for advertising types, you can add words like Audience. And Platform. And Type. And Ad Words. It's confusing. It's boring.
I expected lots of references to otherworldly things that pen-and-paper layout pad huggers and piano botherers like me find a little unnerving – "HTML5" and "Applet" and that kind of thing. To my uncoded delight, the conference largely operated in the space that most creatives most want to work in – an emotional space.
The business truth of most advertising businesses is that any kind of financial stability you can manufacture for your team, you will. Steady income flows keep the ship stable. Ruts steer the truck for you. 'Creatives' can be very un-risky thinkers quite easily, especially if a tent-pole client is regulating the type of work coming through their studio. Thinking hurts. And can get you in trouble fast.
As conference host and founder of industry challenger, Additive, Dave Birss, put it: "Creativity makes people uncomfortable – because it means that people will have to think".
Your client doesn't really want to have to think. They have enough to think about. And so does your boss. Everyone wants results. And champagne. Everyone wants champagne. Who really wants to try something outside their normal frame of reference? Especially when there's a whole champagne lifestyle riding on your damn-fool, hair-brained, new-spangled 'idea'.
Well, the issue facing us all, perpetually, is sustainability. And that relies on nature's greatest, most instinctive trick. One we humanimals reflect cunningly.
Evolution.
New ideas.
Only adaptation ensures life. To a business. To a society. To a life. So ideas may be the 21st century's new currency, some say.
Yeah well they're idiots. Try popping to the bank and offering them some good ideas in exchange for an extension to your credit limit.
And how many truly great ideas have you ever had, eh? Enough to survive armageddon?
No, me neither.
Prophet warning.
Ideas are essential. And Lord knows that some brains are far more shaped to pop them out of nowhere than others. But if you really think that creativity is all about prophets sharing gifts from God, your job is clearly so boring I want to cry big hearty man tears for you. Leave it now. Because creativity is not simply about toiling over an idea to make it workable – deliverable – it's about people. Team. Sharing.
Who is doing the prophet's laundry while he or she is pontificating, hmm? And who manufactured the pants that need scrubbing after a hard day's inspiring, eh?
As Steve Taylor, CEO at The Neighbourhood, put it: "The idea that only some of us are creative is stupid. Everyone can play an active part in problem solving – if the processes they find themselves in facilitate it."
The problem we're all finding, everywhere it seems, is that we're all working in processes that don't facilitate it. That almost seem designed NOT to get the best out of each of us.
Alan Moore, founder of SMLXL and author of No Straight Lines, put it simply, as he flashed up a big image of a colossal rusted super-freighter on a beach: "Industry actually served us well for a time. It built amazing things, in fact. But big industry is no longer fit for purpose."
Applause and reflect.
There were, for me, three words lurking under all the different talks and conversations at Silicon Beach 2012. Three words that point to one word that really sums up both the challenge and the leading edge solution to it that we have at hand.
For the challenge facing the marketing industries is one facing, well… the world: How to make sense of change, and survive. More than that – thrive. Profound changes are happening all around, and old norms are morphing. ..Again. Cuh. BORing.
Now, marketing people purportedly know about audiences. How to build them, how to nurture them, how to keep them engaged and grow them. Audiences feed us, after all. Sometimes very directly, if they start throwing food at your rotten performance.
Engaging with an audience usually means… letting them in. Narcissism drives all of us to some degree – how can I better see myself in something? Reassure myself that I fit somewhere? Issues of identity and vanity merge in all emerging markets in some way. But in this regard, the creative work of much advertising is actually drawing heavily on art.
Spock and awe.
Believe it or not, and I have quoted this before, it was I think Leonard Nimoy who once said that art is itself a kind of loose-weave canvas, allowing and even requiring that the viewer puts themself into the gaps, making half the content of the picture.
If there is one tagline to 20th century art, it may well be: "New ways of seeing." This is, in truth, arguably all of art's defining purpose. It's meant to change you, add to you, not sell you anything. But it does so by drawing you into it, catalysing it in your own brain… with you. You're a catalyst, mate, just by turning up.
Advertising that invites people to get something of themselves back out of it always has a certain draw – especially if it promotes a new way of seeing themselves. But more than this, it's potentially the engine of development and progress itself. Deeper and truer than the lazily-quoted notion of 'crowd-sourcing'. It is conversation. It is ideas development. It is identity in the together.
Shane Walter, from the simply inspirational Onedotzero gave us a simple opener to the weekend: "Affect culture, and people will love you."
The whole point of brand campaigns is to create emotional connections. The problem with so many brand campaigns is that they try to create it, rather than inspire it.
Gimmick to win it.
We love new ideas, don't we? Newy newy new stuff – we want to live in the new. People want inspiring. Lords knows, I do. If you haven't seen the Popinator pop corn shooter thingy you'll want one once you have, let me say.
And if the fundamental systems of industry on which wealth has been built for nearly two centuries have ended up promoting a deactivating of imagination and a quashing of questioning, then we're going to need to shake things up pretty fundamentally. For the evolution of our economy. And our sanity. Or else we'll end up putting significant R&D hours into developing weapons-tech snack food delivery systems to divert us from the awfulness of our day jobs.
Ideas don't appear out of vacuums. They appear out of playing about. Of having the – dare I utter the notion – time to muck about. Time to think. And to not think, but do. To kinetically live with a problem and to try it out. And to go to the pub and chat about bollocks. And about ideas. And to read exciting sh.it.
And to develop pointlessly clever things just because it's fun to.
Co-lab.
It is no wonder that a phrase heard increasingly from the marginally hipper quarters of business is one that refers to beginning all over again – start-up. The agility of a smaller team as hungry and untrammeled and open-minded as a new business. More agile in their ability to respond, to think on their feet. I'm not so sure that every creative that claims this will be all that agile – they'll spend most of their time off their feet at a screen – but at least their minds are trying to set up a system of business that will promote a certain cerebral nimbleness.
Implying that most businesses – Mad Men advertising behemoths especially, perhaps – are not agile. They are very slow and cumbersome to turn. Like super-freighters about to beach.
It's a notion akin to another term I was surprised not to hear trotted out at Silicon Beach somewhere – lean. Lean really means in this context quickly getting to the trying-shit-out stage – and, crucially, being prepared to systematically work through mistakes. Ie: make some. Heaven forfend, eh?
But unless we try stuff, we never develop stuff. Development is the crucial component of this "innovation' stuff we hear about in every imaginable business sector. It starts with the human spark but leads to labs and test beds and boffins in tweed. Or it had better if you want to be sure it will not only sell at some point, but not explode messily at some point after that.
The point being, that unless we have room for sparks to fly in the first place, we will have no ideas to pursue. And if we then don't put systems in place that manoeuvre people into trying out hypotheses in an ego-free collaboration lab, we will have no innovation taking shape. Which means we will have no product. Which, if this is true in every organisation means we will have no economy. Which means we will have no disposable income. Or designer homes to build.
..Or healthcare. Or police. Or freedom to not feel sh.it-scared about eating without fighting ever again.
Sandpit your wits.
As macro markets fracture and disintegrate slowly, what do they fracture into? Micro markets, presumably. The sort that get stuck in the hoover, I'll bet.
But I wonder. What is a more micro market than… you?
The gigantic implication of the digital revolution and the fallout of a failing industrial economy is the power of the tiny. Of the individual. But don't get too excited, we're still trying to work out this sh.it. It's evolving as we speak, and the challenge is for you and me to find our places in it. But I hesitatingly say here's the good news – we surely have a place. We are needed.
Yep, you and me. Well, you much more than me, obviously. But me a bit too. Because we need to realign the way we do things, like, everywhere. Which means taking a new brain into everything we do. A bit.
Those three words I mentioned? We must disrupt. And we must include. And we must play. And we must not give up.
The cutting edge solution and the age-old challenge we are faced with is this one word: humans.
Grind in the willows.
I've often said, in unsubstantiated clever-dick fashion, that everything we ever do must be human-shaped. Every last thing a human society will ever make or manage will be governed by whatever humans simply WILL make of it. Not what we'd like them to make of it. The 20th century's grand legacy is the history-sweeping fallout of grand new designs on how to do things. Philosophies, strategies, technologies… ideas. And man, have we learned some Awesome sh.it from that unprecedented time in the human story.
But the key one is that we are human. And we need certain things, if we are to unlock the key to our own flourishing survival with each new historic challenge and potentially catastrophic turn of events. And last night's Grand Designs seemed to remind me of it.
The couple, Lysette and Nigel, were determined to innovate. To do something no-one else on that exclusive stretch of the Thames had dared to do – build a distinctly modernist style home, right on the water's edge, in amongst rows of 'Tudorbethan' pointy-roofed properties. And they were determined to pour however much concrete and pumping power it would take into pile-driving sure foundations into that sodden riverbank plot. The end results were a stunning testimony to vision and determination and a certain modern style.
The results were also a testimony to a very old world way of doing things. Ironically. For Lysette and Nigel were so set on their idea of living right where they wanted to, that they cared not one jot for pissing off every neighbour in the vicinity with their attitude and way of doing things. They were, in fact, perfectly happy to pointedly set out their twin loungers on their indefatigably well engineered balcony that jutted over the river further than anyone else's and live next to everyone who now hated them, forever more. In their forever house.
Had you seen the EP, you may point out that every person interviewed on the programme seemed in very bad need of a social shake-up and hoorah for someone managing it. The point is, that by focusing on themselves, they built a lot of very bad feeling in their new neighbourhood. Hardly a textbook brand campaign. Or a productive way to promote new ways of seeing things to conservative old inhabitants of where they were now planning to base their lives.
It was also a bit boxy and beige.
Make the platform.
We must disrupt. We must include. We must play.
It's the three together that may signal a sustainable direction for us. You, me, business stuff, society stuff. How are you helping to see such things wherever you are? How am I? All alone in my semi-tidy shed in my garden?
Open source. There's a fairly digital term for you. Shared code. Inviting collaboration.
The internet has revolutionised the way we do things more than any other bit of digital fallout. But you better believe that it's still governed by supremely organic principles – of evolution, of humanity.
What seemed clear to me is that old media isn't dead. It is simply having to adjust to a more diversified market. People still love the shared moments of TV. The feel of magazine covers. The crick of a new book. Or an old one. The miraculous burble of company through a speaker attached to a radio wave carrying someone talking about something randomly interesting.
People also love being identified with something. With others. With ideas. With something that says something about who they are. And tablets with WIFI enable them to join in a conversation with someone a thousand miles away while watching the same TV programme. Or while playing the same game.
We want to be involved. We want to feel secure. We want to feel purposeful. We want to feel valued. We want to feel excited about the possibilities of our ideas. We want to feel bold enough to take risk and achieve something. And we can only do all this in the right environment.
That environment isn't going to be found inside a computer. You can climb out of your neon Tron jumpsuit. Unless you're due at the same party I am.
The truth is, every platform you care to mention, physical or digital, is just another tool in your challenge of trying to reach someone. For help, for trade, for love.
Agencies are daft if they think only about mobile apps, or TV ads, or logo designing. They can specialise – this is an age in desperate need for specialists – but the successful specialist will be someone who knows exactly how to fit their bit of the jigsaw puzzle into place. We're making a bigger picture than ourselves always. Get that, and you're on Team Future. And yes, that does include the silver cap and matching boots.
So if the key to a sustainable future for, like, everyone is collaboration, conversation, ideas and developing new ways not only of seeing but news systems of sharing and finding… isn't it the digital creative roles that are at the very forefront of working out all this?
As Liri Andersson of This Fluid World said: "This is a very exciting time. Marketing has never been in a better position to help business develop ideas with their customers."
Check three of those key words: "Exciting", "Ideas" and "With".
So what platforms are you developing to help people participate?
Silicon reach.
The truth then is, you're sat on a real beach, not a virtual one. If you don't have some equivalent of sand in your shoes after your day's work, you may not be taking part in something fully effective. Meaningful enough to last.
As Alan Moore said: "True innovation is doing things for the collective good". If 10% of the British population currently has no bank account, what resources of humanity are we wasting? What people are we not including?
Who are we missing?
How are we undermining our efforts to build a sure future? One that will not only stand the currents of change, but be welcoming to live in, not just to photograph.
I've come way from the Beach thinking this: Our job is to reach each other. For our clients. For ourselves. Whether we work in a 'creative' job or not. That's how we'll activate the real power of the digital future.
And take heart – it's happening now. ..Wanna play?
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Thursday, October 11, 2012
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Closure.
Closure.
"I have seen the worst of mankind. And now I have seen the best."
Are you over it? Do you know what to do with yourself now? Have you cried with joy and, perhaps, grief? For whatever the net gain for Great Britain, we are surely looking at a loss this week – a great sense of something having left. Are those much-recorded moments that everyone says brought us together this unusual summer not really dead, but still living in our head?
It's hard to get over that quote from gamesmaker Andrew, isn't it? The doctor quoted by Seb Coe in his speech at the Paralympics closer on Sunday night – because the extreme drama of his words does not, for once, outstrip their truth.
As a medic on duty at 7/7, Andrew had seen first-hand the first-aid reality of the worst of mankind – a calculated terrorist indifference to suffering – just the day after London had celebrated winning the bid to host the Olympics. The shock, the proper horror, the life-changing brutality of those co-ordinated attacks on the British capital that summer created memories for people that are surely, we feared, graphic windows onto reality, of what life is really like on Earth for humans. They threatened our comfort. Our distance from trouble. Didn't they?
And yet.
It's not all of reality, is it? That seems to be what this summer has uproarously said to that one.
All attacks are a challenge. When someone calls me an idiot that clearly hasn't thought things through properly, for example, I have to pause to consider my response and explain why they're wrong. Which is why I try not to sit still long enough in a room to give anyone the opportunity of saying this in the first place.
But my guess is that nothing makes you question your values like conflict. Warfare. But the blistering brilliant, staggering reality alongside the worst of human experience is that we also can work together as humans and inspire and encourage each other and surpass our collective expectations in a way more profound and impossible to articulate properly than a modern, cosseted, cynical, uncertain, weary 21st century nation imagined possible.
Isn't it? It bloody is, isn't it. ..I mean, who knew?
And there again, our time's boring predilection for hyperbole is neutered by the sheer drama of the truth. I may be feeling a bit flag-wavey as the autumn starts, I'll confess, but the truth there is that my emotive words aren't overcooked. They are just describing fact.
Like, totes amazeballs. Is all I think I can say to that. What about you?
---
There's hardly a point in me emoting more, is there? We have recorded this fabulous few months so thoroughly, it is as if we are bunkering down for posterity, planning how to keep going on about this moment in our history for, like evaaah to future generations. Alright already – we know, grandpa.
So I don't need to record it here much more. You know it. And like me, you can't quite seem to do it justice when you open your mouth about it, because it just seems to… matter, somehow. Even though your finely-bred instinct for cynicism tells you it's just sport and nothing will change.
Well, you say that. And so do I, kind of. But the sort of spiritual sense of togetherness as a vaguely embattled-feeling collection of British-branded people this summer was palpable. And pappable – our sniping newspapers were all OVER the joys of it. And a good number fewer copies of them will have been pulped as a result.
What was it? That suddenly worked? That made London a place of relaxed joy and cordiality. That, as Borris put it, made people on the Tube actually talk to each other, for crying out loud?
I think it was simply a kind of therapy session for the UK – we held a mirror up to ourselves and discovered that if we actually get out of bed and shave and comb our hair a bit beforehand, we scrub up okay.
Well, get over it – we do. As a nation of pageantry AND an innate sense of fair play, we feel forever awkward about waving our flag. A flag itself built on unresolved injustices in many ways, but which represents such confidence. Such blatant self-aware identity. Purpose. Which we Brits wish we still had. But feel bad for it. Because of all the killing and that. And the not being able to talk about sex. And the weird anachronism of monarchy. And the gorgeousness of the Dutchess of Cambridge. And the guilt of Dianna. And the stark modern inequality. And the poverty. And the racial fears. And the cultural divides. And the bloody bankers. And the kids who can't bloody read who are too fat. And all the closures on every high street. And the inability to ever seem to do something truly visionary any more. Something that isn't crap. Something just single-mindedly f***ing amazing. ..Something aiming a bit higher than secretly being pleased we can say fuck on TV a lot more these days.
..And then we did. It. The amazing thing. And we are stunned by what it might mean. That Team GB is really all of us and we can do much better than we think if we all just GO FOR IT!
Which is where we will give up straight away, and for healthy reasons. Because one of our core cultural strengths is that we rightly mistrust the exclamation mark. Let's go to the pub.
---
The truth is, the cultural atmosphere in the British Isles is one that reacts badly to anything fake. Anything fake that isn't shamelessly parading its fakeness but actually trying to pass itself off as something it isn't. Which is a laudable instinct, don't you think? Not the parading bit, the listening out for truth bit.
And a nation that prides itself on dealing with drama with the unsurpassably withering contempt of humour, is not going to take most things at face value. Again, thankfully.
But what we saw in the mirror of the Olympic opening ceremony was an honestly brutal and poetic portrait of a nation of poets and engineers and builders and articulators and… dreamers? That was the shocker. We are still dreamers.
And look at how we get on and build those dreams. Resoundingly, these games have been about our whole culture, not just about competition. Music and art and lyricism and ideas flow out of the British Isles today like a rainbow font of creativity. In four Olympic ceremonies, we STILL didn't mine every seem of British pop and science and literary culture – we're up to our necks in modern iconography here. Here at this crossroads of ideas in the north Atlantic.
And as the paralympians then took us all to school, what they showed us was that our flag really is a crossroads – an iconic meeting place of different ways of seeing, where we can none the less agree that together we're stronger. Bigger. Better. Funner. And we already trying to do it.
It feels like these are universal human values, demonstrated to everyone here in our grubby, industrious capital city. That's why it seems to matter. We're saying: the attitude of the Taliban, or of Islamists in northern Mali, or of anyone who hides in a mental cave and won't come out to play can go fuck itself. Because that attitude is death for us all. Here, we want to do better. Here we have a MUCH bigger vision, mate.
Here we think it's bloody brilliant that a young man who stepped up to serve his country and paid for it with part of his body can stand next to a person born with Cerebral Palsy and next to an old musician and next to a superstar and next to a mum cleaning the local caff and all can cheer each other on and, in very British fashion, lose themselves in a social loop of "No, after you" "No after YOU" "No, YOU're brilliant" "No it's YOU" "Well I think we're both idiots" "So do I! Brilliant really, eh?" "Yes, but calm down" "Give me a hug you stupid bastard…"
Brings a tear to the eye, doesn't it?
---
I shouted and cheered and stood beside myself at Danny Boyle's opening ceremony. Suddenly loving that Union Flag's explosive, colourful crossroads. But however fun the pop culture here, I think there is one serious challenge we are all left with. One that sounds hyperbolous but is one, really, of our very survival, if GB is to be open for business.
We need to do all we can in everyday life to be a nation of champions.
Yep. Understanding the essential strength of diversity so well that each of us feels the responsibility to champion the needs of others enjoying less equality than maybe we do. And ignoring all pretense, aiming as high as we personally can; to push our personal limits and lead by example.
That's our challenge, gang. Aim to work hard and push yourself and overcome the worst that happens to you, whether people watch or not.
Because when you do that, they ultimately will be. We all will be. Cheering you on, you down to earth legend.
Closure? I hope never.
Thankyou, London. Thankyou, UK. X
---
"I have seen the worst of mankind. And now I have seen the best."
Are you over it? Do you know what to do with yourself now? Have you cried with joy and, perhaps, grief? For whatever the net gain for Great Britain, we are surely looking at a loss this week – a great sense of something having left. Are those much-recorded moments that everyone says brought us together this unusual summer not really dead, but still living in our head?
It's hard to get over that quote from gamesmaker Andrew, isn't it? The doctor quoted by Seb Coe in his speech at the Paralympics closer on Sunday night – because the extreme drama of his words does not, for once, outstrip their truth.
As a medic on duty at 7/7, Andrew had seen first-hand the first-aid reality of the worst of mankind – a calculated terrorist indifference to suffering – just the day after London had celebrated winning the bid to host the Olympics. The shock, the proper horror, the life-changing brutality of those co-ordinated attacks on the British capital that summer created memories for people that are surely, we feared, graphic windows onto reality, of what life is really like on Earth for humans. They threatened our comfort. Our distance from trouble. Didn't they?
And yet.
It's not all of reality, is it? That seems to be what this summer has uproarously said to that one.
All attacks are a challenge. When someone calls me an idiot that clearly hasn't thought things through properly, for example, I have to pause to consider my response and explain why they're wrong. Which is why I try not to sit still long enough in a room to give anyone the opportunity of saying this in the first place.
But my guess is that nothing makes you question your values like conflict. Warfare. But the blistering brilliant, staggering reality alongside the worst of human experience is that we also can work together as humans and inspire and encourage each other and surpass our collective expectations in a way more profound and impossible to articulate properly than a modern, cosseted, cynical, uncertain, weary 21st century nation imagined possible.
Isn't it? It bloody is, isn't it. ..I mean, who knew?
And there again, our time's boring predilection for hyperbole is neutered by the sheer drama of the truth. I may be feeling a bit flag-wavey as the autumn starts, I'll confess, but the truth there is that my emotive words aren't overcooked. They are just describing fact.
Like, totes amazeballs. Is all I think I can say to that. What about you?
---
There's hardly a point in me emoting more, is there? We have recorded this fabulous few months so thoroughly, it is as if we are bunkering down for posterity, planning how to keep going on about this moment in our history for, like evaaah to future generations. Alright already – we know, grandpa.
So I don't need to record it here much more. You know it. And like me, you can't quite seem to do it justice when you open your mouth about it, because it just seems to… matter, somehow. Even though your finely-bred instinct for cynicism tells you it's just sport and nothing will change.
Well, you say that. And so do I, kind of. But the sort of spiritual sense of togetherness as a vaguely embattled-feeling collection of British-branded people this summer was palpable. And pappable – our sniping newspapers were all OVER the joys of it. And a good number fewer copies of them will have been pulped as a result.
What was it? That suddenly worked? That made London a place of relaxed joy and cordiality. That, as Borris put it, made people on the Tube actually talk to each other, for crying out loud?
I think it was simply a kind of therapy session for the UK – we held a mirror up to ourselves and discovered that if we actually get out of bed and shave and comb our hair a bit beforehand, we scrub up okay.
Well, get over it – we do. As a nation of pageantry AND an innate sense of fair play, we feel forever awkward about waving our flag. A flag itself built on unresolved injustices in many ways, but which represents such confidence. Such blatant self-aware identity. Purpose. Which we Brits wish we still had. But feel bad for it. Because of all the killing and that. And the not being able to talk about sex. And the weird anachronism of monarchy. And the gorgeousness of the Dutchess of Cambridge. And the guilt of Dianna. And the stark modern inequality. And the poverty. And the racial fears. And the cultural divides. And the bloody bankers. And the kids who can't bloody read who are too fat. And all the closures on every high street. And the inability to ever seem to do something truly visionary any more. Something that isn't crap. Something just single-mindedly f***ing amazing. ..Something aiming a bit higher than secretly being pleased we can say fuck on TV a lot more these days.
..And then we did. It. The amazing thing. And we are stunned by what it might mean. That Team GB is really all of us and we can do much better than we think if we all just GO FOR IT!
Which is where we will give up straight away, and for healthy reasons. Because one of our core cultural strengths is that we rightly mistrust the exclamation mark. Let's go to the pub.
---
The truth is, the cultural atmosphere in the British Isles is one that reacts badly to anything fake. Anything fake that isn't shamelessly parading its fakeness but actually trying to pass itself off as something it isn't. Which is a laudable instinct, don't you think? Not the parading bit, the listening out for truth bit.
And a nation that prides itself on dealing with drama with the unsurpassably withering contempt of humour, is not going to take most things at face value. Again, thankfully.
But what we saw in the mirror of the Olympic opening ceremony was an honestly brutal and poetic portrait of a nation of poets and engineers and builders and articulators and… dreamers? That was the shocker. We are still dreamers.
And look at how we get on and build those dreams. Resoundingly, these games have been about our whole culture, not just about competition. Music and art and lyricism and ideas flow out of the British Isles today like a rainbow font of creativity. In four Olympic ceremonies, we STILL didn't mine every seem of British pop and science and literary culture – we're up to our necks in modern iconography here. Here at this crossroads of ideas in the north Atlantic.
And as the paralympians then took us all to school, what they showed us was that our flag really is a crossroads – an iconic meeting place of different ways of seeing, where we can none the less agree that together we're stronger. Bigger. Better. Funner. And we already trying to do it.
It feels like these are universal human values, demonstrated to everyone here in our grubby, industrious capital city. That's why it seems to matter. We're saying: the attitude of the Taliban, or of Islamists in northern Mali, or of anyone who hides in a mental cave and won't come out to play can go fuck itself. Because that attitude is death for us all. Here, we want to do better. Here we have a MUCH bigger vision, mate.
Here we think it's bloody brilliant that a young man who stepped up to serve his country and paid for it with part of his body can stand next to a person born with Cerebral Palsy and next to an old musician and next to a superstar and next to a mum cleaning the local caff and all can cheer each other on and, in very British fashion, lose themselves in a social loop of "No, after you" "No after YOU" "No, YOU're brilliant" "No it's YOU" "Well I think we're both idiots" "So do I! Brilliant really, eh?" "Yes, but calm down" "Give me a hug you stupid bastard…"
Brings a tear to the eye, doesn't it?
---
I shouted and cheered and stood beside myself at Danny Boyle's opening ceremony. Suddenly loving that Union Flag's explosive, colourful crossroads. But however fun the pop culture here, I think there is one serious challenge we are all left with. One that sounds hyperbolous but is one, really, of our very survival, if GB is to be open for business.
We need to do all we can in everyday life to be a nation of champions.
Yep. Understanding the essential strength of diversity so well that each of us feels the responsibility to champion the needs of others enjoying less equality than maybe we do. And ignoring all pretense, aiming as high as we personally can; to push our personal limits and lead by example.
That's our challenge, gang. Aim to work hard and push yourself and overcome the worst that happens to you, whether people watch or not.
Because when you do that, they ultimately will be. We all will be. Cheering you on, you down to earth legend.
Closure? I hope never.
Thankyou, London. Thankyou, UK. X
---
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Sunshine.
Sunshine.
I'm sitting here thinking of sunshine. And not having to think very hard about it because it's all around me. And I am wondering if this is the end.
Well, you know. We've had so much apocalyptic rain since March, the idea of clear high skies and Chillax music and the sound of gently calling gulls and faintly bobbing summer blooms and dappled light on the terrace all seems too much like the end of some budget cod-spiritual sci fi flick now. If the credits roll shortly and I haven't woken up face down in a puddle in the rain then I think I may be too late to put my earthly affairs in order. Sunshine can be creepy.
The alternative – that this IS a full-on summer day and I really DO essentially work in the garden – is, I think you'd agree, a tad unrealistic. Even with the affordabilty of great CG these days.
No, of course I'm glad it's sunny. And perhaps even more glad to see Liam Dutton's face on the Channel Four News weather bulletin last night at finally being able to deliver such a forecast to the nation. I thought he'd cry. I thought he'd set us off.
Sunshine does restore the soul kind of magically. If you're British and not used to it, certainly. Then there are days when you can't even notice it.
---
I remember one particularly sunny memory. A holiday, a thousand years ago. 1993, to be exact. When we were young enough to clear off for a month with nobody minding.
We cleared off to Switzerland. Which I'm hoping you are now picturing in manner of the Stella Cidre ads, in manner of 60s aspirational-chic travel lifestyle, complete with lounge music. Which is how I try to live and operate everywhere, obviously.
But no. The lovely first lady of Momo and I had both just graduated from various things and were, essentially, a bit wiped out. ..YOU might not think a graphic design degree would take it out of a lusty young chap like my 23-year-old self, but I shall simply look flintily into the middle distance at the traumatic memory and say nothing. Nobly. The point is, we were offered an almost free trip to go stare at some mountains for a month and we jumped at the chance.
---
The mountains in question were backdropping the Zugersee, a lake on which sits the pleasant Swiss town of Zug. We never went near them that I remember, we just bobbed about on the water in an inflatable dinghy every day and most nights in sweltering-still mountain valley summer heat looking at them. When we weren't sleeping. Or watching a Michael Palin travelogue box set we found on video in a cupboard.
The cupboard in question belonged to my aunt. As did the cat called Pussy. The cat called Pussy that we'd been left to look after for that month, and who had been trained by my aunt to come from the farthest hinterlands of cat adventure at precisely 5.30 in the afternoon upon calling of his name. Yes. Calling of his name. Out of the kitchen door, to the neighbourhood. ..You can imagine how I handled this every night, I'm sure.
The reason my aunt had left us a cat, a few video box sets, a telly to watch them on and a whole nice Swiss apartment to go around them, complete with inflatable dinghy in the adjoining garage, is because she and my uncle and my young cousin were spending that month in the UK, looking for a home to relocate to, rather closer to British family than the drive from beyond the bottom of Germany that they were getting used to performing. And they'd kindly offered us the house-sit. With the Pussy-calling duties.
My aunt was my Aunty Sheila, my dad's next sibling. And these acts of generosity and innocent sillyness were typical of her. And of what made my dad and all her brothers shake their heads with a muttered: "Oh, Sheen…" often.
I'm not sure any of them would have coo-eeed "PPPPOOOOOSSEEEEEE!" across the Swiss neighbourhood with such camp aplomb as I did for four weeks that summer.
Actually, that's so not true of my dad, is it.
---
Aunty Sheila has always been herself everywhere. I'm not sure there's a more complete way to complement a human being. So long as the human being in question is, like my Aunty Sheila, generous, caring, quick to laugh and dotty as a cherry cake.
If you mention my Aunty Sheila's name, the first word to come to mind is not 'streetwise', however.
The way it would with me, say.
Something innocent has always remained about her somehow, as much as she has been old-school mum to many beyond her own kids. ..Including foreign students.
So imagine the response from her family when, a little while after her first marriage broke down, she brought home a foreign student. "Brought home" if you know what I mean.
Yes. Imagine what her brothers made of THAT. But it was okay. She hadn't just dragged some cute young man with an accent in off the street, no. Don't be silly. ..No, she'd bagged one of her students from her English class.
---
Young Peter was a little over twenty years Sheila's junior when she introduced this shy, funny young Swiss man to the rest of them. I wish I'd not been only eight or something when this happened - I'd have loved to have been fully in the room to watch everyone's reactions.
"It will never last" was the main theme, distilled quickly. And then she moved to Zurich with him.
---
Aunty Sheila's older son, Jeff, decided to stay with his dad here in the UK. But her younger daughter, Melanie, went with her, relocating her whole young eight-year-old life to the middle of Europe, making me and, I think, all her cousins very sad. Melanie was lovely.
A few years later, though, I can still remember mental pictures of clearly. A seminal moment for young Timmy. For somehow, my cash-strapped parents found enough loot to get me and my sis and my mum on a plane to Switzerland. And visiting Aunty Sheila and Uncle Peter and lovely cousin Melanie became my first ever foreign trip, aged 13 or something. And between hearing Mum and uncle Peter swap dirty English jokes over fags, and feeling kinda funny around lovely cousin Melanie, my young mind was being exposed to the subtle new visceral truth of Europe.
And so a cultural love affair began – with odd cheeses, and lifts with no doors, and smart square buildings, and recycling bins, and cool three-wheeler supermarket trolleys, and supermarkets that smelt wonderfully different to Richways in Tuckton, and TRAMS. I listened to Jean Michelle Jarre all the way there and all the way back on the plane on my Walkman, gazing out of the window. And that was the beginning of me, I think.
Peter and Sheila and young cousin Jeremy, the cutest new addition to their family, were to stay in Switzerland until the call of Sheila's English family - and of Peter's longing for English breakfasts and humour – became to strong and they began the process of looking to migrate back, at about the time our own little family was looking for a very cheap student holiday.
---
Visiting lovely cousin Melanie those years later in '93 was splendid. She'd grown into quite the European woman - an easy sophistication in style and language, but with her mum's huge warm-heartedness. We watch fireworks from a boat over lake Lucerne on Swiss National Day and marveled at how the explosions cannoned around the mountains.
The fact that I still have an email on my Mac here from Melly, from only six years ago, weirds me out a bit. Because it was not long before her cancer reappeared.
Aunty Sheila, in the last months, nursed Melly at home – here in the UK. And she didn't let anyone else really see what happened to her lovely daughter in the days before her death, aged 36. She just got on with it. Her and Uncle Peter.
---
As I stood looking down at the wreaths outside Poole Crem, a handful of Melanie's Swiss friends stood nearby staring down at the neat blooms even more stunned. They looked completely lost. Like a key flywheel from their navigation apparatus was missing and they were adrift, not sure which way was up.
They looked like someone had turned off the sunshine abruptly and they could make no sense of it. And they were right.
As I looked up from the wreaths on this particular day, Melly's Swiss friends were suddenly gone. Because they were just a memory. And I realised I was standing in the exact same spot as before, wondering what to do next, as before, this time having just said goodbye to Melly's mum.
Aunty Sheila died a few weeks ago. And in the middle of the stupid things that Momo gets me doing, I simply scheduled it in and went along to the service and looked at my family and made jokes and ate the buffet. And thought again just how much Dad's brothers remind me of him. And then I raced off to the next thing.
But the truth is, Aunty Sheila was like sunshine. You can't imagine a world with out it; it's a constant, whether it's behind the clouds or not. And it lights up a room and brings warm comfort. And Jeff and Jeremy and Peter have seen it switched off inexplicably fast for a second time.
The truth is, though, I suspect the sunshine of Aunty Sheila's life was kept shining by one key chemical reaction – her marriage to Peter.
Marriages are personal, private affairs. But they have very public effects. And more than thirty years after it started, Aunty Sheila and Uncle Peter's unlikely love affair was still radiating. One of the great love affairs of history, getting on with life. Often despite it.
The sun continues to shine. Out there in the middle of our solar system. And sometimes here on the terrace. It feels reassuringly warm.
But it's a pale imitation of the real thing.
I'm sitting here thinking of sunshine. And not having to think very hard about it because it's all around me. And I am wondering if this is the end.
Well, you know. We've had so much apocalyptic rain since March, the idea of clear high skies and Chillax music and the sound of gently calling gulls and faintly bobbing summer blooms and dappled light on the terrace all seems too much like the end of some budget cod-spiritual sci fi flick now. If the credits roll shortly and I haven't woken up face down in a puddle in the rain then I think I may be too late to put my earthly affairs in order. Sunshine can be creepy.
The alternative – that this IS a full-on summer day and I really DO essentially work in the garden – is, I think you'd agree, a tad unrealistic. Even with the affordabilty of great CG these days.
No, of course I'm glad it's sunny. And perhaps even more glad to see Liam Dutton's face on the Channel Four News weather bulletin last night at finally being able to deliver such a forecast to the nation. I thought he'd cry. I thought he'd set us off.
Sunshine does restore the soul kind of magically. If you're British and not used to it, certainly. Then there are days when you can't even notice it.
---
I remember one particularly sunny memory. A holiday, a thousand years ago. 1993, to be exact. When we were young enough to clear off for a month with nobody minding.
We cleared off to Switzerland. Which I'm hoping you are now picturing in manner of the Stella Cidre ads, in manner of 60s aspirational-chic travel lifestyle, complete with lounge music. Which is how I try to live and operate everywhere, obviously.
But no. The lovely first lady of Momo and I had both just graduated from various things and were, essentially, a bit wiped out. ..YOU might not think a graphic design degree would take it out of a lusty young chap like my 23-year-old self, but I shall simply look flintily into the middle distance at the traumatic memory and say nothing. Nobly. The point is, we were offered an almost free trip to go stare at some mountains for a month and we jumped at the chance.
---
The mountains in question were backdropping the Zugersee, a lake on which sits the pleasant Swiss town of Zug. We never went near them that I remember, we just bobbed about on the water in an inflatable dinghy every day and most nights in sweltering-still mountain valley summer heat looking at them. When we weren't sleeping. Or watching a Michael Palin travelogue box set we found on video in a cupboard.
The cupboard in question belonged to my aunt. As did the cat called Pussy. The cat called Pussy that we'd been left to look after for that month, and who had been trained by my aunt to come from the farthest hinterlands of cat adventure at precisely 5.30 in the afternoon upon calling of his name. Yes. Calling of his name. Out of the kitchen door, to the neighbourhood. ..You can imagine how I handled this every night, I'm sure.
The reason my aunt had left us a cat, a few video box sets, a telly to watch them on and a whole nice Swiss apartment to go around them, complete with inflatable dinghy in the adjoining garage, is because she and my uncle and my young cousin were spending that month in the UK, looking for a home to relocate to, rather closer to British family than the drive from beyond the bottom of Germany that they were getting used to performing. And they'd kindly offered us the house-sit. With the Pussy-calling duties.
My aunt was my Aunty Sheila, my dad's next sibling. And these acts of generosity and innocent sillyness were typical of her. And of what made my dad and all her brothers shake their heads with a muttered: "Oh, Sheen…" often.
I'm not sure any of them would have coo-eeed "PPPPOOOOOSSEEEEEE!" across the Swiss neighbourhood with such camp aplomb as I did for four weeks that summer.
Actually, that's so not true of my dad, is it.
---
Aunty Sheila has always been herself everywhere. I'm not sure there's a more complete way to complement a human being. So long as the human being in question is, like my Aunty Sheila, generous, caring, quick to laugh and dotty as a cherry cake.
If you mention my Aunty Sheila's name, the first word to come to mind is not 'streetwise', however.
The way it would with me, say.
Something innocent has always remained about her somehow, as much as she has been old-school mum to many beyond her own kids. ..Including foreign students.
So imagine the response from her family when, a little while after her first marriage broke down, she brought home a foreign student. "Brought home" if you know what I mean.
Yes. Imagine what her brothers made of THAT. But it was okay. She hadn't just dragged some cute young man with an accent in off the street, no. Don't be silly. ..No, she'd bagged one of her students from her English class.
---
Young Peter was a little over twenty years Sheila's junior when she introduced this shy, funny young Swiss man to the rest of them. I wish I'd not been only eight or something when this happened - I'd have loved to have been fully in the room to watch everyone's reactions.
"It will never last" was the main theme, distilled quickly. And then she moved to Zurich with him.
---
Aunty Sheila's older son, Jeff, decided to stay with his dad here in the UK. But her younger daughter, Melanie, went with her, relocating her whole young eight-year-old life to the middle of Europe, making me and, I think, all her cousins very sad. Melanie was lovely.
A few years later, though, I can still remember mental pictures of clearly. A seminal moment for young Timmy. For somehow, my cash-strapped parents found enough loot to get me and my sis and my mum on a plane to Switzerland. And visiting Aunty Sheila and Uncle Peter and lovely cousin Melanie became my first ever foreign trip, aged 13 or something. And between hearing Mum and uncle Peter swap dirty English jokes over fags, and feeling kinda funny around lovely cousin Melanie, my young mind was being exposed to the subtle new visceral truth of Europe.
And so a cultural love affair began – with odd cheeses, and lifts with no doors, and smart square buildings, and recycling bins, and cool three-wheeler supermarket trolleys, and supermarkets that smelt wonderfully different to Richways in Tuckton, and TRAMS. I listened to Jean Michelle Jarre all the way there and all the way back on the plane on my Walkman, gazing out of the window. And that was the beginning of me, I think.
Peter and Sheila and young cousin Jeremy, the cutest new addition to their family, were to stay in Switzerland until the call of Sheila's English family - and of Peter's longing for English breakfasts and humour – became to strong and they began the process of looking to migrate back, at about the time our own little family was looking for a very cheap student holiday.
---
Visiting lovely cousin Melanie those years later in '93 was splendid. She'd grown into quite the European woman - an easy sophistication in style and language, but with her mum's huge warm-heartedness. We watch fireworks from a boat over lake Lucerne on Swiss National Day and marveled at how the explosions cannoned around the mountains.
The fact that I still have an email on my Mac here from Melly, from only six years ago, weirds me out a bit. Because it was not long before her cancer reappeared.
Aunty Sheila, in the last months, nursed Melly at home – here in the UK. And she didn't let anyone else really see what happened to her lovely daughter in the days before her death, aged 36. She just got on with it. Her and Uncle Peter.
---
As I stood looking down at the wreaths outside Poole Crem, a handful of Melanie's Swiss friends stood nearby staring down at the neat blooms even more stunned. They looked completely lost. Like a key flywheel from their navigation apparatus was missing and they were adrift, not sure which way was up.
They looked like someone had turned off the sunshine abruptly and they could make no sense of it. And they were right.
As I looked up from the wreaths on this particular day, Melly's Swiss friends were suddenly gone. Because they were just a memory. And I realised I was standing in the exact same spot as before, wondering what to do next, as before, this time having just said goodbye to Melly's mum.
Aunty Sheila died a few weeks ago. And in the middle of the stupid things that Momo gets me doing, I simply scheduled it in and went along to the service and looked at my family and made jokes and ate the buffet. And thought again just how much Dad's brothers remind me of him. And then I raced off to the next thing.
But the truth is, Aunty Sheila was like sunshine. You can't imagine a world with out it; it's a constant, whether it's behind the clouds or not. And it lights up a room and brings warm comfort. And Jeff and Jeremy and Peter have seen it switched off inexplicably fast for a second time.
The truth is, though, I suspect the sunshine of Aunty Sheila's life was kept shining by one key chemical reaction – her marriage to Peter.
Marriages are personal, private affairs. But they have very public effects. And more than thirty years after it started, Aunty Sheila and Uncle Peter's unlikely love affair was still radiating. One of the great love affairs of history, getting on with life. Often despite it.
The sun continues to shine. Out there in the middle of our solar system. And sometimes here on the terrace. It feels reassuringly warm.
But it's a pale imitation of the real thing.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Chronomomomania
Chronomomomania.
The best plans go backwards.
No, sure. They do. Even the few that look pretty good going forward.
I mean, most great plans look so rubbish going forward that >CHUCKLES< you'd hardly think they were plans at all. It's only through the all-revealing prism of hindsight that you can see the genius at work. Yeah. Obvious as black and white.
So let's get straight to the cake and take Momo's latest creative collaboration.
I don't wish to bore you about such things, but I suppose this is the nearest thing to a press release my offices will be issuing directly on the matter and, well, today we're kind of launching it so this is good timing, I guess.
And timing is my point.
---
Looking forward, I couldn't see it. Looking back, I trust I increasingly will. That the timing of catching such an enormously fun collaborative swerve ball is actually perfect. Because I wouldn't have chosen now to sprint off on a sudden creative tangent. Especially such a whimsical-seeming one.
Not when I'm trying to weave an elaborate myth around the idea that I'm some debonaire highly credible fringe electro-cabaret whizz-chops.
And don't waste both our time sniggering at the word 'credible'.
You see, the thing blatantly is that all that wasn't accounting for a particular creative force, introduced to me a little while ago by a good number of good folk, I think. A creative force known as Hazel Evans.
Lighthouse Poole's current visual artist in residence approached me a mere handful of weeks ago to moot the idea of a little playdate. To see if I would be at all interested in helping her bring a simple sonic element to her work. Record a couple of her poems, that kind of thing.
Today, I am tweeking final mixes of our shared genre-hopping prog-synth quirk-fest concept soundtrack album, Adventures Into The Monochronium.
I haven't slept much this week. ..Meh.
---
Her six-week installation in what I guess must be the central south's most notable arts venue, last summer, seemed a very interesting affair, from afar. Following shots of it on friends' blogs and The Book of Face and so on, the intriguingly black & white-themed Monochronium seemed hard to catagorise, but it did seem to be one thing in particular – definite.
I mean, when you first hear about it, you might not be sure what it is. This Mono-whatsit. You might still not be sure how to sum it up after going to see its imminently-opening successor this summer. But you may well soon get the nagging feeling it does all seem suspiciously like the woman had some sort of prophetic vision and simply wrote it all down.
An illustrator, writer and performer, Hazel appears to be as at home making marks as she is making funny words and funny voices. But perhaps key to her being known by so many people around Bomo is that she is just as at home with an idea that many artists recoil at the sound of. Product.
Which is really just a professional way of saying: 'Actually finishing sh**.'
Hazel Evans isn't just a multi-talented creative person. She's a logo on a stamp. She's an evolving, exploring artistic body of work, sure. But she's a… show. In the minds of many of her friends I suspect, she's… an idea. She's a ruddy brand, mate.
Having now fairly suddenly worked with her a lot, I can say she manages to cultivate the very interesting evolution of all this while also being, dare I say it, a complete professional.
Which is really just a professional way of saying: 'Completely fab.'
To put it in perspective, the lovely first lady of Momo has made it clear she thinks rather highly of Hazel and her fairly instant creative likeability. And who wouldn't. But, if you know my unpretentiously impressive wife, this is still praise indeed. We have enormously enjoyed opening our home to some gentle extra artistic insanity during the month of May, and I suspect we may not have all seen the last late-night sniggering in the Momo studio together.
Now, you and I both know how tedious it is to hear creative lovies extolling eachother's virtues, so I'll leave it there. But, as you might imagine, to meet a fellow creative who, while honestly just being themselves and following their artistic nose, also has a business that is somehow just a little larger than their own life, and who likes having fun while delivering some actual results, who also combines creative disciplines including a penchant for slightly posh spoken word and a dusting or two of theatrics, without being any kind of diva… well, it rang a bell. Apart from the diva bit, obviously.
It rang a few bells, in the end. As you'll hear on the album.
For Hazel Evans' Adventures Into The Monochronium opens an already extended eight-week installation at Poole Lighthouse from tomorrow night, Saturday May 26 2012, to coincide at some point with the esteemed Dorset Arts Weeks. And exclusive preview copies of the collaborative album soundtrack to it's evocative exploration of a monochrome timeline will be available right in the exhibition, from the private show on Wednesday 30th.
And then there's Friday June 22nd. For we are, allegedly, convincing a string quartet to join Mark from the Tempo Pops band and me and Hazel at an intimate sharing of some of the tunes. But more on that in the next couple of weeks. When I work out what to do with a string quartet.
---
If you're intrigued, you should be. As a soundtrack to Hazel's journey, the collection of pieces written together does have the heavy hand of Momo all over it. Tunes and whimsy abound in there. There are a few beats to be found too, and hopefully much colourful fun, to explore thoughtfully too. Plus, your kids will love bits of it. But it's certainly a little score to take you on a bit of a tangent for a while.
All I can say, as I look forward to other projects over the summer, is that I've hugely enjoyed the time. Slightly crazy as it's been.
Go see it. Just go see it and hear it.
Adventures Into The Monochronium, the title track on Soundcloud.
Adventures Into The Monochronium, at Lighthouse Poole.
Hazel Evans' website.
The best plans go backwards.
No, sure. They do. Even the few that look pretty good going forward.
I mean, most great plans look so rubbish going forward that >CHUCKLES< you'd hardly think they were plans at all. It's only through the all-revealing prism of hindsight that you can see the genius at work. Yeah. Obvious as black and white.
So let's get straight to the cake and take Momo's latest creative collaboration.
I don't wish to bore you about such things, but I suppose this is the nearest thing to a press release my offices will be issuing directly on the matter and, well, today we're kind of launching it so this is good timing, I guess.
And timing is my point.
---
Looking forward, I couldn't see it. Looking back, I trust I increasingly will. That the timing of catching such an enormously fun collaborative swerve ball is actually perfect. Because I wouldn't have chosen now to sprint off on a sudden creative tangent. Especially such a whimsical-seeming one.
Not when I'm trying to weave an elaborate myth around the idea that I'm some debonaire highly credible fringe electro-cabaret whizz-chops.
And don't waste both our time sniggering at the word 'credible'.
You see, the thing blatantly is that all that wasn't accounting for a particular creative force, introduced to me a little while ago by a good number of good folk, I think. A creative force known as Hazel Evans.
Lighthouse Poole's current visual artist in residence approached me a mere handful of weeks ago to moot the idea of a little playdate. To see if I would be at all interested in helping her bring a simple sonic element to her work. Record a couple of her poems, that kind of thing.
Today, I am tweeking final mixes of our shared genre-hopping prog-synth quirk-fest concept soundtrack album, Adventures Into The Monochronium.
I haven't slept much this week. ..Meh.
---
Her six-week installation in what I guess must be the central south's most notable arts venue, last summer, seemed a very interesting affair, from afar. Following shots of it on friends' blogs and The Book of Face and so on, the intriguingly black & white-themed Monochronium seemed hard to catagorise, but it did seem to be one thing in particular – definite.
I mean, when you first hear about it, you might not be sure what it is. This Mono-whatsit. You might still not be sure how to sum it up after going to see its imminently-opening successor this summer. But you may well soon get the nagging feeling it does all seem suspiciously like the woman had some sort of prophetic vision and simply wrote it all down.
An illustrator, writer and performer, Hazel appears to be as at home making marks as she is making funny words and funny voices. But perhaps key to her being known by so many people around Bomo is that she is just as at home with an idea that many artists recoil at the sound of. Product.
Which is really just a professional way of saying: 'Actually finishing sh**.'
Hazel Evans isn't just a multi-talented creative person. She's a logo on a stamp. She's an evolving, exploring artistic body of work, sure. But she's a… show. In the minds of many of her friends I suspect, she's… an idea. She's a ruddy brand, mate.
Having now fairly suddenly worked with her a lot, I can say she manages to cultivate the very interesting evolution of all this while also being, dare I say it, a complete professional.
Which is really just a professional way of saying: 'Completely fab.'
To put it in perspective, the lovely first lady of Momo has made it clear she thinks rather highly of Hazel and her fairly instant creative likeability. And who wouldn't. But, if you know my unpretentiously impressive wife, this is still praise indeed. We have enormously enjoyed opening our home to some gentle extra artistic insanity during the month of May, and I suspect we may not have all seen the last late-night sniggering in the Momo studio together.
Now, you and I both know how tedious it is to hear creative lovies extolling eachother's virtues, so I'll leave it there. But, as you might imagine, to meet a fellow creative who, while honestly just being themselves and following their artistic nose, also has a business that is somehow just a little larger than their own life, and who likes having fun while delivering some actual results, who also combines creative disciplines including a penchant for slightly posh spoken word and a dusting or two of theatrics, without being any kind of diva… well, it rang a bell. Apart from the diva bit, obviously.
It rang a few bells, in the end. As you'll hear on the album.
For Hazel Evans' Adventures Into The Monochronium opens an already extended eight-week installation at Poole Lighthouse from tomorrow night, Saturday May 26 2012, to coincide at some point with the esteemed Dorset Arts Weeks. And exclusive preview copies of the collaborative album soundtrack to it's evocative exploration of a monochrome timeline will be available right in the exhibition, from the private show on Wednesday 30th.
And then there's Friday June 22nd. For we are, allegedly, convincing a string quartet to join Mark from the Tempo Pops band and me and Hazel at an intimate sharing of some of the tunes. But more on that in the next couple of weeks. When I work out what to do with a string quartet.
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If you're intrigued, you should be. As a soundtrack to Hazel's journey, the collection of pieces written together does have the heavy hand of Momo all over it. Tunes and whimsy abound in there. There are a few beats to be found too, and hopefully much colourful fun, to explore thoughtfully too. Plus, your kids will love bits of it. But it's certainly a little score to take you on a bit of a tangent for a while.
All I can say, as I look forward to other projects over the summer, is that I've hugely enjoyed the time. Slightly crazy as it's been.
Go see it. Just go see it and hear it.
Adventures Into The Monochronium, the title track on Soundcloud.
Adventures Into The Monochronium, at Lighthouse Poole.
Hazel Evans' website.
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