Sheesh.
I learned something depressing today.
>DEEP BREATH<
Turns out my occasional recreational toke on a shisha pipe is going to kill me after all. And as punishment for my smugness about its 'practical harmlessness', rather faster than a cigarette, apparently.
Great. Spent my life walking the remarkably high-minded line between having never smoked and being socially unphased by the idea of people smoking, and then it turns out my multi-cultural affectations are going to punch me in the lungs for being a pretentious arse. Fair enough I suppose.
A study by the Department of Health and the Tobacco Control Collaborating Centre – you know them, right? – has revealed some allegedly shocking levels of Carbon Monoxide.
>SIGH-COUGH!<
Turns out half an hour on a hookah is, at its measurably very best, significantly worse for you than a fag. In fact, in many instances apparently, an average shish sesh outstrips a ciggy by factors in the hundreds for CO levels.
And to add cultural insult to circulatory injury, a London shisha bar owner mentioned that he doesn't ever inhale when he's using one. Like you're not supposed to.
So I should stop filling my lungs with this stuff, then? You tell me this now?
But it's so sociable. I really enjoy breaking out the pipe occasionally. Never put anything more relaxing in it than humble oriental apple resin, you understand, but it's a nice thing to hand round the table after you've mopped up the last of your baba ganoush and your lamb tabouli, don't you think? Right?
Oh fine. Right. So don't break out the hubbly bubbly.
---
I can hardly have any complaints otherwise today, though.
I've spent half of it sifting through the schedule to construct various strata of To Do lists from the chaotic debris of a busy couple of weeks. And I've been doing so after a weekend that was a much looked-forward-to long one that's subsequently etched its blatant idleness all over my face. Really. I have stupid ski-jock panda eyes from staring at the skies in sunnies.
After a few days of shamelessly lounging around the vast front lawn of Laura and Chris's place on the Westcliff, sipping champers and nibbling strawberries, while tracing the lazy arcs of various acrobatic aero displays over Bournemouth's fairly amphitheatrical bay, I feel nicely head-cleared again. Gorgeous weather for four days, basically, while a selection aviation engines purred and roared their poetry over the seaside atmosphere. Lovely. These are the days, and all that.
The ones that will help you say: "meh – fair enough" when it all goes belly up.
The secret to switching off in such a Carefree Git-like manner though, is tying up loose ends before you clear off. Wiping the ol' slate. Putting out the mental moggy and leaving a note for the mental milkman. Clunking the door closed on a clean house as you leave with a full case.
I managed to push the wraparounds up the nose and fold the hands behind the remarkably successfully disengaged bean as I did for three whole, luxuriant days purely thanks to the number of serendipitously positive notes on which last week was mercifully ended – the most significant and serenading of which being the pertinent one. The one you need to take note of. The album.
The album.
Yes. Really.
If I could relax on the lawn at all for a couple of precious days, it was partly because I could bask a little in the mental warmth of having posted a complete pre-mastered version of The Golden Age to Jamie on Saturday morning. Yes, again, really.
No, really.
Ish. The 'ish' being that it's not completely right, of course. So just hold your horses.
It's not a version I'll be putting in anyone else's hands until I've heard his immediate verdict and given him my lengthy Well Obviously It Won't Be Like That list. Various levels are off and numerous details are not quite right and a session is missing... but, ah, it is in shape. It does exist. ..I can now hear it from start to finish.
There is now no smoke to hide behind.
>DEEP BREATH<
So now, back to work, I have to start resolving what the hell to do with it.
Sheesh.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
"The Golden Age of Explora –
>SHUFFLE<
>HORN SQUEEKS<
(Ready, everyone?)
>AHEM!<
"The Golden Age of Explora –
– whuh?
Oh bugger. What, still?
Right. Well so it's too soon to do the big fanfare (sorry chaps – see you at Tuesday practice) but The Golden Age is none-the-less very close.
No, now less of that attitude. It IS nearly done.
Currently, these are the headlines:
• all horn sessions are done and edited into shape.
• cello sessions are done and awaiting mixes.
• almost all tracks are creatively finished.
• problem track Just passing through is almost on the mat but still slugging it out with me.
• awaiting strings for Waiting is a bit like being on holiday.
• we still have no opening micro track.
• we still have no album cover, but the cover artwork style is all together and looking fab.
So it's, y'know, almost there. 'So near', etc.
---
It's been a mammoth weekend. I've barely left the house. Between this and a fairly monsterous pitch for Typo, I've been bending the bean and the eyesight rather heavily.
But the end is in sight on both counts. If I dare believe it.
Now, clear up this tinsel and put away the chairs. Someone else needs the hall.
>HORN SQUEEKS<
(Ready, everyone?)
>AHEM!<
"The Golden Age of Explora –
– whuh?
Oh bugger. What, still?
Right. Well so it's too soon to do the big fanfare (sorry chaps – see you at Tuesday practice) but The Golden Age is none-the-less very close.
No, now less of that attitude. It IS nearly done.
Currently, these are the headlines:
• all horn sessions are done and edited into shape.
• cello sessions are done and awaiting mixes.
• almost all tracks are creatively finished.
• problem track Just passing through is almost on the mat but still slugging it out with me.
• awaiting strings for Waiting is a bit like being on holiday.
• we still have no opening micro track.
• we still have no album cover, but the cover artwork style is all together and looking fab.
So it's, y'know, almost there. 'So near', etc.
---
It's been a mammoth weekend. I've barely left the house. Between this and a fairly monsterous pitch for Typo, I've been bending the bean and the eyesight rather heavily.
But the end is in sight on both counts. If I dare believe it.
Now, clear up this tinsel and put away the chairs. Someone else needs the hall.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Welcome to the weekend.
Welcome to the weekend.
I guess all things must change.
I just sort of periodically hope that this doesn't apply to all things. Y'know?
There is one thing in particular that I didn't dare contemplate would change any time soon. Just because it would be so, well, wrong. But it has changed. Or will be changing. And I have mixed feelings about it.
Because, from September, Pete Tong will no longer be welcoming us to the weekend.
Ee-GAD.
---
The thing I love about radio generally is how it gets in your head. It moves in with you and follows you around the house – though not in a creepy lodger kind of way. In a comfy chum kind of way. Or a learned chum kind of way. Or a groovy, energetic, well-connected, Will Make The Effort To Go Clubbing For You chum kind of way. I like that guy. All these guys. And, as any entrenched Radio 4 listener will tell you, these broadcast backdrops to your life can become part of the very fabric of it – the mucking about with of which is potentially upsetting.
Witness my month of measurable grief when Mark and Lard split. Those bastards left me all alone. With Steve Wright.
---
Now, the Radio One Friday evening schedule has been as much an irrational comfort to us as any nerve-steadying shipping forecast or gentle willow-crack heart-warming conjoured by cricket coverage. Just knowing it's there is nice. It makes it Friday. Pete Tong makes it Friday. Moving him is like, I dunno, moving the Today programme to a timeslot after everyone's gone to work.
>shudders<
My mixed feelings about his sacred show being moved are as they are because jolly good taste-setter and all-round radio poppet, Annie Mac, is swapping slots with him – he takes over the Mash-up slot at 9.00 on a Friday evening, and she will be booting up the weekend for us at 7.00.
Now, we've famously loved young Maccers' little electro-beat show from the beginning. Even memorably starred in it once. ..Slash, momentarily wrecked its credibility. She is, I guess, as worthy a successor to the Essential Selection as you could wish for really – in fact, hearing bits of her sitting in for Zane Lowe this week, I can't help feeling that most of the country would feel pretty happy about her being on the wireless every night of the week.
..But, isn't the Mash-up's music more of a 9.00pm thing? More quirky and varied; Pete's slick grooves just feel more early evening chic, somehow.
Ah, well. I shall tune in to both and be thankful for each show's different comfort appearing out of the unique funding of my license fee. Hadn't planned to redecorate my Fridays but we shall bravely adapt. And really, you couldn't wish increasingly legendary status on anyone more deserving than the blessed Maccers. So toot that air horn someone.
But.
Hmm.
Just perhaps...
..if even the most immovable things can yet be moved, when least expected, upsetting everyone's comforting frame of reference... could that even include something as ludicrously unlikely as the blatant unfinishedness of Momo:tempo's debut album? More even than that, it's wanton ignominy?
Surely not. Some things DON'T change.
..Unless this weekend does what it's supposed to.
---
Pips, sirens, beats – "Welcome to the weekend."
It's 7.00pm on a Friday as I type now and Pete is kicking things off noisily around the flat. I'm sipping a cream soda but plan to turn it into a G&T shortly, to go with my aim of actually working up something cool and definite for the album artwork tonight.
You see, I'm working to a bit of an actual deadline on all this now. Stalwart, long-term TC Peach supporter, Jamie Lee, has become so insensed at the number of years he's had to wait for an original recording from said obscure artist, he's promised some kind of record store rage if he returns from his family's extended break in France at the end of the week to not find a preview copy of The Golden Age of Exploration sitting on his mat.
Thing is, as one of fewer long-term fans than I have digits, Jamie represents a percentage mailing list loss I can ill afford. True, he's hardcore – he doesn't count Chaser or Beyond the storm as legitimate albums and claims to have been therefore waiting since 1997 and Worship the system for a proper pop record from me. But he did direct my first pop video – Thunder in the hills, which for my hair alone should never make it to YouTube – and does genuinely seem to actually like the music itself.
For this reason, I am entrusting the first ever preview listen of the whole new tune fest to him – to tell me straight what he's been prepared to tell me in the past. Namely, when he thinks I'm embarrassing myself.
---
Think about it. I need someone to do this. I can't see anything about The Golden Age straight anymore. I have no idea if I'm some mad Victorian barron, spending a fortune on an elaborately inept invention that high society will have to humour me about, even as it titters in ever-more to-my-face ridicule about it. I need someone to hear this rubbish and warn me off.
I already know it's a music album bereft of proper credibility, in Essential Selection or Mash-up terms. It's too much of a process of exploration – partly hence the name – to be undone and made 'cool' by a berk like me.
Yet, is it still legitimate? I think – no, I suspect, – it... is. But I could do with at least someone else thinking so too before I press the button on a thousand hard copies of the blasted thing.
---
Brekkers with Gel in the Cali this morning saw us lingering an extra ten to chat music. I shared with him my inordinate excitement – eclipsing quite predictably the reasonably full-on workload in the Typo studio at the moment – about doing something I've dreamed of for years.
Putting real strings on a piece of music.
Yes, this is very normal for many musicians with a budget, but this week I could hardly contain my Bless Me enthusiasm at finally getting a simple little CD in the post for three tracks to have a cellist and violinist session on.
I spoke with Simon the cellist tonight and his solo work on Identity and Duality respectively is all but done. And frankly, I can't wait to hear how this makes these two distinctly thoughtful chapters of the new album sound.
But more than this, I've decided to put my hand in Momo's pocket for something rather special to end the whole long-player with – strings on Waiting is a bit like being on holiday, the album finale. It's such a sun-drenched kind of refrain, it would just be such a classy way to leave the musical moment. If any potential listener can get through all the fannying around and stupid shenanigans before that, anyway.
Sadly, I have to wait until the end of the month before the violinist is back from holiday. But I am fully prepared to. I AM SO EXITED.
Gellan, on hearing this, was a total mate and simply said he couldn't wait to hear it all.
---
I don't know. I've operated in such comprehensive musical obscurity, unable to pull together all my musical experiences and explorations before now, the idea that me and my natural naffness might make a record that can almost stand up in the arena of credibility – or even get a couple of people to listen to it – well, that seems too much to imagine. Doesn't sound very Real World to me.
Yet.
I'm getting one or two more people around me give me that look. That look that I'd get just very occasionally from a single very timely person, telling me that they totally loved what I'd done. Just when I was about to give up.
Bloody thanks, single timely person.
Like that one lass running across a field to me just as I was leaving another essentially-empty gig at a small local music festival, some dozen years ago. Or that one bloke asking for a CD just as I was packing up from a sparce show at The Gardening Club on some nameless Wednesday. Like, thanks. For sharing our madness, just when I was on the cusp of sanity.
But now I'm getting more unhelpfulness. The sort of little things that I am powerless to resist.
Simon's growing interest in it from one cello session. The affection from Gel, Zo and the Thinking Juice gang about it. The sudden online airplay from one unknown DJ last month. The out-of-the blue contact from a young chap last week saying he's 'never been more excited about waiting for a new album' than since discovering it. Mark the drum's fantastically encouraging excitement about forming the live band for it. John the horn's professionally experienced keenness this week to stay involved and do more sessions.
It.. it sort of feels like I should still, insanely be doing this. I told Gel I couldn't really put all this out there, but I'm... darn it, it's out there. I'm feeling it.
Now. I realise that all that this massive response so far adds up to is just a tiny group of positive friends sincerely wishing me well and a couple of possible random nutters, I know. Yet, tiny world as this may be, it's very nice. And it's been steadily increasing my tempted sense of excitement.
---
Don't get me wrong – this record won't be properly right. Take heart – remember that I simply don't know what I'm doing enough. I am, lest we forget, just some chap making music that's not very hip, simply to please himself. And that's not going to change, of course.
So you won't have to redecorate your life's frame of reference any time soon, I shouldn't think.
But it's all rather good fun, isn't it?
---
So, after a week of bending my head around website structures and pitch strategies and brochure copy and emailers of news, I am staying at the Mac and shipping in the pizza and turning up the dance music tonight, to see if I can make a credible brand for The Golden Age out of the print making session that the creative superforce Sarah G-H kindly helped me with in her studio a couple of weeks back.
Then I have two days to wrap up all the edits, sessions and unworking bits of Momo:tempo's debut album musical creative, in order to actually, definitely, possibly complete it.
I guess all things, even this, must change eventually.
Maybe.
I guess all things must change.
I just sort of periodically hope that this doesn't apply to all things. Y'know?
There is one thing in particular that I didn't dare contemplate would change any time soon. Just because it would be so, well, wrong. But it has changed. Or will be changing. And I have mixed feelings about it.
Because, from September, Pete Tong will no longer be welcoming us to the weekend.
Ee-GAD.
---
The thing I love about radio generally is how it gets in your head. It moves in with you and follows you around the house – though not in a creepy lodger kind of way. In a comfy chum kind of way. Or a learned chum kind of way. Or a groovy, energetic, well-connected, Will Make The Effort To Go Clubbing For You chum kind of way. I like that guy. All these guys. And, as any entrenched Radio 4 listener will tell you, these broadcast backdrops to your life can become part of the very fabric of it – the mucking about with of which is potentially upsetting.
Witness my month of measurable grief when Mark and Lard split. Those bastards left me all alone. With Steve Wright.
---
Now, the Radio One Friday evening schedule has been as much an irrational comfort to us as any nerve-steadying shipping forecast or gentle willow-crack heart-warming conjoured by cricket coverage. Just knowing it's there is nice. It makes it Friday. Pete Tong makes it Friday. Moving him is like, I dunno, moving the Today programme to a timeslot after everyone's gone to work.
>shudders<
My mixed feelings about his sacred show being moved are as they are because jolly good taste-setter and all-round radio poppet, Annie Mac, is swapping slots with him – he takes over the Mash-up slot at 9.00 on a Friday evening, and she will be booting up the weekend for us at 7.00.
Now, we've famously loved young Maccers' little electro-beat show from the beginning. Even memorably starred in it once. ..Slash, momentarily wrecked its credibility. She is, I guess, as worthy a successor to the Essential Selection as you could wish for really – in fact, hearing bits of her sitting in for Zane Lowe this week, I can't help feeling that most of the country would feel pretty happy about her being on the wireless every night of the week.
..But, isn't the Mash-up's music more of a 9.00pm thing? More quirky and varied; Pete's slick grooves just feel more early evening chic, somehow.
Ah, well. I shall tune in to both and be thankful for each show's different comfort appearing out of the unique funding of my license fee. Hadn't planned to redecorate my Fridays but we shall bravely adapt. And really, you couldn't wish increasingly legendary status on anyone more deserving than the blessed Maccers. So toot that air horn someone.
But.
Hmm.
Just perhaps...
..if even the most immovable things can yet be moved, when least expected, upsetting everyone's comforting frame of reference... could that even include something as ludicrously unlikely as the blatant unfinishedness of Momo:tempo's debut album? More even than that, it's wanton ignominy?
Surely not. Some things DON'T change.
..Unless this weekend does what it's supposed to.
---
Pips, sirens, beats – "Welcome to the weekend."
It's 7.00pm on a Friday as I type now and Pete is kicking things off noisily around the flat. I'm sipping a cream soda but plan to turn it into a G&T shortly, to go with my aim of actually working up something cool and definite for the album artwork tonight.
You see, I'm working to a bit of an actual deadline on all this now. Stalwart, long-term TC Peach supporter, Jamie Lee, has become so insensed at the number of years he's had to wait for an original recording from said obscure artist, he's promised some kind of record store rage if he returns from his family's extended break in France at the end of the week to not find a preview copy of The Golden Age of Exploration sitting on his mat.
Thing is, as one of fewer long-term fans than I have digits, Jamie represents a percentage mailing list loss I can ill afford. True, he's hardcore – he doesn't count Chaser or Beyond the storm as legitimate albums and claims to have been therefore waiting since 1997 and Worship the system for a proper pop record from me. But he did direct my first pop video – Thunder in the hills, which for my hair alone should never make it to YouTube – and does genuinely seem to actually like the music itself.
For this reason, I am entrusting the first ever preview listen of the whole new tune fest to him – to tell me straight what he's been prepared to tell me in the past. Namely, when he thinks I'm embarrassing myself.
---
Think about it. I need someone to do this. I can't see anything about The Golden Age straight anymore. I have no idea if I'm some mad Victorian barron, spending a fortune on an elaborately inept invention that high society will have to humour me about, even as it titters in ever-more to-my-face ridicule about it. I need someone to hear this rubbish and warn me off.
I already know it's a music album bereft of proper credibility, in Essential Selection or Mash-up terms. It's too much of a process of exploration – partly hence the name – to be undone and made 'cool' by a berk like me.
Yet, is it still legitimate? I think – no, I suspect, – it... is. But I could do with at least someone else thinking so too before I press the button on a thousand hard copies of the blasted thing.
---
Brekkers with Gel in the Cali this morning saw us lingering an extra ten to chat music. I shared with him my inordinate excitement – eclipsing quite predictably the reasonably full-on workload in the Typo studio at the moment – about doing something I've dreamed of for years.
Putting real strings on a piece of music.
Yes, this is very normal for many musicians with a budget, but this week I could hardly contain my Bless Me enthusiasm at finally getting a simple little CD in the post for three tracks to have a cellist and violinist session on.
I spoke with Simon the cellist tonight and his solo work on Identity and Duality respectively is all but done. And frankly, I can't wait to hear how this makes these two distinctly thoughtful chapters of the new album sound.
But more than this, I've decided to put my hand in Momo's pocket for something rather special to end the whole long-player with – strings on Waiting is a bit like being on holiday, the album finale. It's such a sun-drenched kind of refrain, it would just be such a classy way to leave the musical moment. If any potential listener can get through all the fannying around and stupid shenanigans before that, anyway.
Sadly, I have to wait until the end of the month before the violinist is back from holiday. But I am fully prepared to. I AM SO EXITED.
Gellan, on hearing this, was a total mate and simply said he couldn't wait to hear it all.
---
I don't know. I've operated in such comprehensive musical obscurity, unable to pull together all my musical experiences and explorations before now, the idea that me and my natural naffness might make a record that can almost stand up in the arena of credibility – or even get a couple of people to listen to it – well, that seems too much to imagine. Doesn't sound very Real World to me.
Yet.
I'm getting one or two more people around me give me that look. That look that I'd get just very occasionally from a single very timely person, telling me that they totally loved what I'd done. Just when I was about to give up.
Bloody thanks, single timely person.
Like that one lass running across a field to me just as I was leaving another essentially-empty gig at a small local music festival, some dozen years ago. Or that one bloke asking for a CD just as I was packing up from a sparce show at The Gardening Club on some nameless Wednesday. Like, thanks. For sharing our madness, just when I was on the cusp of sanity.
But now I'm getting more unhelpfulness. The sort of little things that I am powerless to resist.
Simon's growing interest in it from one cello session. The affection from Gel, Zo and the Thinking Juice gang about it. The sudden online airplay from one unknown DJ last month. The out-of-the blue contact from a young chap last week saying he's 'never been more excited about waiting for a new album' than since discovering it. Mark the drum's fantastically encouraging excitement about forming the live band for it. John the horn's professionally experienced keenness this week to stay involved and do more sessions.
It.. it sort of feels like I should still, insanely be doing this. I told Gel I couldn't really put all this out there, but I'm... darn it, it's out there. I'm feeling it.
Now. I realise that all that this massive response so far adds up to is just a tiny group of positive friends sincerely wishing me well and a couple of possible random nutters, I know. Yet, tiny world as this may be, it's very nice. And it's been steadily increasing my tempted sense of excitement.
---
Don't get me wrong – this record won't be properly right. Take heart – remember that I simply don't know what I'm doing enough. I am, lest we forget, just some chap making music that's not very hip, simply to please himself. And that's not going to change, of course.
So you won't have to redecorate your life's frame of reference any time soon, I shouldn't think.
But it's all rather good fun, isn't it?
---
So, after a week of bending my head around website structures and pitch strategies and brochure copy and emailers of news, I am staying at the Mac and shipping in the pizza and turning up the dance music tonight, to see if I can make a credible brand for The Golden Age out of the print making session that the creative superforce Sarah G-H kindly helped me with in her studio a couple of weeks back.
Then I have two days to wrap up all the edits, sessions and unworking bits of Momo:tempo's debut album musical creative, in order to actually, definitely, possibly complete it.
I guess all things, even this, must change eventually.
Maybe.
Monday, August 03, 2009
Eighteen and expecting.*
Eighteen and expecting.*
Just over a week on from an old friend's happy wedding and from happily making jokes at his expense in front of all his other friends, I find myself looking at today's date in the diary and remembering a similar day a couple of worlds away.
Eighteen years ago, Caroline and I demonstrated our decision to stop mucking about and step up.
For, betrothed by our villages as a peace accord I think, our childlike selves took vows to laugh at eachother's jokes and to inspect eachother's unmentionable ailments until one or both of us dropped with the emotional effort of looking interested.
To her eternal and almost saint-like credit, eighteen circuits of the Earth later, Caroline still lets slip the odd unguarded titter at my shrinking gene pool of jokes. Which might have been reason alone to keep me interested all that time, clever girl.
But the truth is, of course, when someone consistently impresses you with who they are, it's hard not to stay interested.
And if, on top of this, they're consistently nice to you… well, the shoes are staying off and under the table, aren't they?
..Though I would say it turns out that this happy equilibrium depends rather on you giving them as many reasons as you can humanly think of for them to be nice to you. One of which might be pretending to play it cool at a very early stage – something which can for a while take the kind of herculean creative effort of a hormonal young man that could alternatively have been very usefully channeled into a career or something. Sure – tell 'em you've fallen in love. But not every ten minutes from about half an hour after meeting them. Not if you want it to last, loverboy.
---
Approaching life's middle eight, I marvel at anyone's ability to find someone who can keep time and tune with them. To find someone who's willing to join the band at all seems remarkable, but to find someone who can stick with the piece through numerous time signature and key changes and still have intuition enough to improv a little before coming back in on cue for the big refrain together at the end seems too much to ask. Not least of all because it sounds as if you're asking them to marry a jazz musician.
No, to have survived so many over-stretched metaphors, flowery language and inexplicably stuck drum machines on stage and to still be arsing about enjoying ourselves as ever we were is something I don't really know how to say thankyou for.
But the fact that my long-suffering wife would, if made to read this, simply sigh and get on with something useful rather than carefully packing a case and leaving without a word is something you should show her some reverence for.
I do.
---
When I think of the different relationships around us during those eighteen years – or twenty-one really – I think I'm mainly thinking that no marriage survives in a vacuum. It needs relational air to breathe.
For those whose paths have had to separate during that time, I pause with some reverence. And for those who have helped us build something consistent through changing circumstances, by being consistent with us and eachother in all their different shapes of relationship, I simply mumble a thankyou prayer.
Because, just over a week on from Julian's wedding and remembering my own, I can picture that he, for example, was at both. And interestingly, from a different but distantly related social family, so too was Mikey – Best Manning at the first, creating a party atmosphere with decks at the second. ..As too was his wife, then girlfriend, Emma.
I think, when friends demonstrate that they think it's worth sticking around – at least, those that are somehow able to – you get to see over time why commitment is really so groovy.
Without the cloud of people who were there in August 1991, tripping over Caroline's beautiful long train in the barn dance, and who weren't there but who I can't somehow believe weren't, and who were but aren't around with us now – and even those who never joined us at all, though we hoped they might – without them and the thought of them, I might not be still coming home to this remarkable woman's embrace every night.
(..Except, she comes home to me. But, y'know. Don't pick at the mood.)
So I'm thinking, here's to the next eighteen years, gang. Wherever we find ourselves on this particular Monday, whatever has or hasn't happened to us as we'd hoped, whatever is present, whoever is absent, when it feels things should really be somehow otherwise... I'm still expecting all kinds of good things. You've shown us an uncountable many already.
xxx
*Don't get excited. Read to the end. It's a play on words thing.
Just over a week on from an old friend's happy wedding and from happily making jokes at his expense in front of all his other friends, I find myself looking at today's date in the diary and remembering a similar day a couple of worlds away.
Eighteen years ago, Caroline and I demonstrated our decision to stop mucking about and step up.
For, betrothed by our villages as a peace accord I think, our childlike selves took vows to laugh at eachother's jokes and to inspect eachother's unmentionable ailments until one or both of us dropped with the emotional effort of looking interested.
To her eternal and almost saint-like credit, eighteen circuits of the Earth later, Caroline still lets slip the odd unguarded titter at my shrinking gene pool of jokes. Which might have been reason alone to keep me interested all that time, clever girl.
But the truth is, of course, when someone consistently impresses you with who they are, it's hard not to stay interested.
And if, on top of this, they're consistently nice to you… well, the shoes are staying off and under the table, aren't they?
..Though I would say it turns out that this happy equilibrium depends rather on you giving them as many reasons as you can humanly think of for them to be nice to you. One of which might be pretending to play it cool at a very early stage – something which can for a while take the kind of herculean creative effort of a hormonal young man that could alternatively have been very usefully channeled into a career or something. Sure – tell 'em you've fallen in love. But not every ten minutes from about half an hour after meeting them. Not if you want it to last, loverboy.
---
Approaching life's middle eight, I marvel at anyone's ability to find someone who can keep time and tune with them. To find someone who's willing to join the band at all seems remarkable, but to find someone who can stick with the piece through numerous time signature and key changes and still have intuition enough to improv a little before coming back in on cue for the big refrain together at the end seems too much to ask. Not least of all because it sounds as if you're asking them to marry a jazz musician.
No, to have survived so many over-stretched metaphors, flowery language and inexplicably stuck drum machines on stage and to still be arsing about enjoying ourselves as ever we were is something I don't really know how to say thankyou for.
But the fact that my long-suffering wife would, if made to read this, simply sigh and get on with something useful rather than carefully packing a case and leaving without a word is something you should show her some reverence for.
I do.
---
When I think of the different relationships around us during those eighteen years – or twenty-one really – I think I'm mainly thinking that no marriage survives in a vacuum. It needs relational air to breathe.
For those whose paths have had to separate during that time, I pause with some reverence. And for those who have helped us build something consistent through changing circumstances, by being consistent with us and eachother in all their different shapes of relationship, I simply mumble a thankyou prayer.
Because, just over a week on from Julian's wedding and remembering my own, I can picture that he, for example, was at both. And interestingly, from a different but distantly related social family, so too was Mikey – Best Manning at the first, creating a party atmosphere with decks at the second. ..As too was his wife, then girlfriend, Emma.
I think, when friends demonstrate that they think it's worth sticking around – at least, those that are somehow able to – you get to see over time why commitment is really so groovy.
Without the cloud of people who were there in August 1991, tripping over Caroline's beautiful long train in the barn dance, and who weren't there but who I can't somehow believe weren't, and who were but aren't around with us now – and even those who never joined us at all, though we hoped they might – without them and the thought of them, I might not be still coming home to this remarkable woman's embrace every night.
(..Except, she comes home to me. But, y'know. Don't pick at the mood.)
So I'm thinking, here's to the next eighteen years, gang. Wherever we find ourselves on this particular Monday, whatever has or hasn't happened to us as we'd hoped, whatever is present, whoever is absent, when it feels things should really be somehow otherwise... I'm still expecting all kinds of good things. You've shown us an uncountable many already.
xxx
*Don't get excited. Read to the end. It's a play on words thing.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
After-dinner chocks.
After-dinner chocks.
Today is the centenary of Louise Bleriot's powered flight across the English Channel – his first, and everybody's.
Looking at the faithfully restored replica of his flimsy, wing-warping, stick-string-and-oil-gauge monoplane, I am moved into an instant and unsurprising Edwardian reverie. How I have always wished I could have been one of those magnificent men, etc. Without the inevitability of fighting in the Great War, obviously. But with the aviation fashion. Obviously.
Msr B's little aircraft is also, it must be spelled out, not sturdy looking. Flimsy, even.
Which brings me to my Best Man's speech.
---
Today is also Julian and Angela's wedding. And looking at the picture postcard perfection of the setting lastnight, with the almost hand-painted cloudscapes sliding over the undulating crop fields and verdant woods, little chapel perched on the hill against the sky behind the playful country marquee... I did think: "Shame I'm going to ruin all this pastoral ambience with desperate bum gags or similar...".
I won't. Of course.
I think the speech is pretty tame and only titter-inducing at best. But I'd better get my hairy ass in the shower and get bibbed and tuckered pronto, and try not to think about whether the jazz band will ever find this random field on the Sussex/Hampshire border.
Should be a very special occasion. But I'll be relieved when we've finally survived all the up-tiddly-ups and dumped it on the deck in one piece.
After-dinner chocks away then.
Today is the centenary of Louise Bleriot's powered flight across the English Channel – his first, and everybody's.
Looking at the faithfully restored replica of his flimsy, wing-warping, stick-string-and-oil-gauge monoplane, I am moved into an instant and unsurprising Edwardian reverie. How I have always wished I could have been one of those magnificent men, etc. Without the inevitability of fighting in the Great War, obviously. But with the aviation fashion. Obviously.
Msr B's little aircraft is also, it must be spelled out, not sturdy looking. Flimsy, even.
Which brings me to my Best Man's speech.
---
Today is also Julian and Angela's wedding. And looking at the picture postcard perfection of the setting lastnight, with the almost hand-painted cloudscapes sliding over the undulating crop fields and verdant woods, little chapel perched on the hill against the sky behind the playful country marquee... I did think: "Shame I'm going to ruin all this pastoral ambience with desperate bum gags or similar...".
I won't. Of course.
I think the speech is pretty tame and only titter-inducing at best. But I'd better get my hairy ass in the shower and get bibbed and tuckered pronto, and try not to think about whether the jazz band will ever find this random field on the Sussex/Hampshire border.
Should be a very special occasion. But I'll be relieved when we've finally survived all the up-tiddly-ups and dumped it on the deck in one piece.
After-dinner chocks away then.
Monday, July 20, 2009
"Cheese so strong, it'll blow your head off".
"Cheese so strong,
it'll blow your head off".
There is a reason some creative friends call on Momo's services.
While trying to deliver some sensible things, like designs for a little DM campaign and the build artwork for a couple of websites for a couple of Momo's clients, I dropped into the groovy offices of Thinking Juice this time last week to chat through a pitch idea with Gellan.
"I've got you in for this," he said, uncovering some scamps for a TV storyboard.
"It's a singing inanimate household item I can't identify for confidentiality reasons." I said.
"That's right," he replied simply, "and if we win an award for most annoying advert this Christmas, I will feel we've done our job properly."
He paused. "That's where you come in."
---
It goes without saying I suppose, that I subsequently found myself somehow squeezing in the time to write a 30-second demo of an unrestrainedly cheesy 70s Soul Group-style finger-clicking seasonal exhortation to buy certain retail goods. You're not surprised, I can tell.
Tired and marginally deadline-pushed one evening, I found myself sitting in front of the mic at some 9.00pm, directly over the heads of the undoubtedly relaxing neighbours downstairs, feeling a bit grouchy, and having to loudly croon about 'super-dooper savings' or similar in four-part harmony through a forced grin. They can hear if you're grinning or not, you know.
Gellan had the decency to play it in his packed pitch meeting a couple of days later.
If it's had the same effect on them as it's had on me every damn day since I released it into the wild, it will have blown his chance of ever getting to work with these people. They will be cursing him regularly for haunting their eternity with the damn thing. Some of them may even have ended it all, who knows.
Last time he briefed me to be even cheesier than normal – designing the packaging for Wyke Farms' TNT cheddar, 'cheese so strong it'll blow your head off' – we won an award. And had security advisors tell us it should be pulled from all supermarket shelves.
Don't dare brief Momo:fromagio – I'll give you exactly what you ask for every time.
it'll blow your head off".
There is a reason some creative friends call on Momo's services.
While trying to deliver some sensible things, like designs for a little DM campaign and the build artwork for a couple of websites for a couple of Momo's clients, I dropped into the groovy offices of Thinking Juice this time last week to chat through a pitch idea with Gellan.
"I've got you in for this," he said, uncovering some scamps for a TV storyboard.
"It's a singing inanimate household item I can't identify for confidentiality reasons." I said.
"That's right," he replied simply, "and if we win an award for most annoying advert this Christmas, I will feel we've done our job properly."
He paused. "That's where you come in."
---
It goes without saying I suppose, that I subsequently found myself somehow squeezing in the time to write a 30-second demo of an unrestrainedly cheesy 70s Soul Group-style finger-clicking seasonal exhortation to buy certain retail goods. You're not surprised, I can tell.
Tired and marginally deadline-pushed one evening, I found myself sitting in front of the mic at some 9.00pm, directly over the heads of the undoubtedly relaxing neighbours downstairs, feeling a bit grouchy, and having to loudly croon about 'super-dooper savings' or similar in four-part harmony through a forced grin. They can hear if you're grinning or not, you know.
Gellan had the decency to play it in his packed pitch meeting a couple of days later.
If it's had the same effect on them as it's had on me every damn day since I released it into the wild, it will have blown his chance of ever getting to work with these people. They will be cursing him regularly for haunting their eternity with the damn thing. Some of them may even have ended it all, who knows.
Last time he briefed me to be even cheesier than normal – designing the packaging for Wyke Farms' TNT cheddar, 'cheese so strong it'll blow your head off' – we won an award. And had security advisors tell us it should be pulled from all supermarket shelves.
Don't dare brief Momo:fromagio – I'll give you exactly what you ask for every time.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Fruit Bastilles.
Fruit Bastilles.
Bon quatorze juillet!! YAY!
Les bollox รก la bourgeoisie! Eh, mes amis?
..er... eh? Hoh-heehoh!
..Qwuh?
..Hier?
>SIGH/SHRUG<
Naturellement.
Dak. Or.
>DROPS BAGUETTES IN BIN, FLOUNCES OFF, WITH A QUICK SMEER OF DRAWN-ON TWIRLY MOUSTACHE ON CUFF OF STRIPED JERSEY<
>KICKS OLD BIKE<
>THROWS ONION AT KID<
Bon quatorze juillet!! YAY!
Les bollox รก la bourgeoisie! Eh, mes amis?
..er... eh? Hoh-heehoh!
..Qwuh?
..Hier?
>SIGH/SHRUG<
Naturellement.
Dak. Or.
>DROPS BAGUETTES IN BIN, FLOUNCES OFF, WITH A QUICK SMEER OF DRAWN-ON TWIRLY MOUSTACHE ON CUFF OF STRIPED JERSEY<
>KICKS OLD BIKE<
>THROWS ONION AT KID<
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Tour de force.
I guess you could say that a little sign of having at last begun to leave emotional kindergarten on your journey to Actual Adulthood is when you realise that romance isn’t just about emergency Valentine’s cards.
If you’ve only recently twigged that 'romance' is a code word for two very different things at once depending on which side of a relationship you’re on, I must point out that this doesn't count. Grasping the fact that the word can mean 'chocolate' to one of you and Special Occasion Sex (SOS) to the other doesn’t qualify you as an emotional mentor. It just means you might understand your disappointment better. But, y'know. Perhaps even that's a start.
No, the truth of the word romance is that it isn’t restricted to relationships at all, of course.
..Though, I should also point out that saying this in lofty tones on the morning of a significant birthday/anniversary/Valentine's day, imagining the assertion to be your new style of gift to the occasion, still means you're an idiot. Don't ask why, just go buy some chocolates now.
Div.
---
But, ah – romance.
Romance is, of course, all at once a wildly flimsy, silly thing and a captivatingly wonderful, energising thing. You usually get it into your head in the absence of hard facts – often despite them, which is how robust this flimsy thing is. In fact more even than that, romance is rarely the friend of logic.
The magic of it is that, once you’re past the I Really So Love You Darling stage and have moved on to the Who’s That Bigger Person I'm Sure I've Seen Sharing The House With Me And My Kids stage, you can adapt the afor-mentioned silly flimsy feelgood to work on a place or a thing or an idea or... anything. It is, after all, an idea – a jolly scrummy, possibly fwuffy, undoubtedly impractical, proudly unempirically-appealing idea of something. And don't it warm your cockles?
Of course, I can work it up about almost anything.
I'll even get nostalgic for Charlie Brooker's acidic, billious moaning, after he's finally locked away for walking into Trafalgar Square with a flamethrower and red-eyed tears of regret for humanity's lostness. ..See? I feel lump in my throat about it already. I love that man. That nearly broken man.
But right now, I am feeling it for a bike race.
---
We used to dream about driving the support cars in the Tour de France. Years ago, when we watched it after school. We used to turn up Pete Shelley's strangely affecting theme tune to the Channel Four coverage and wish we were chasing the peleton across the swooping Gallic countryside for three weeks of the summer. Or even better, driving the motorcycle cameras.
For me, the romance comes in a kind of crossing of romantic lay-lines, converging on the world's most iconic cycle fight. It's the Wimbledon or World Cup of cycling. But without the BBC coverage. Or any upper body mass index whatsoever.
Really, think about it – what's not to love? Almost a month of constant evolving road shots and helicopter shots of the French countryside, from coastal plain to mountain peak. A final stage that stops Paris for a day, as the measurably superhuman madmen still pedaling chase eachother over the cobbles of the Champs Elysรฉs and round the Concorde.
And what superhuman madmen. An entire working day in the saddle almost every day for over three weeks. 3,500 KM. Just try to imagine that kind of endurance. Doing ONE day at thirty to forty KPH for over six hours would kill most of us. And then there's the sprinting. The whole concept of actually racing each other. Knocking time off. ..Knocking time off? Off your life, mate.
And people do die on the TDF. If you've seen the speeds they come down the mountains on two very very skinny wheels in nothing but body paint, you'll know why these chaps with Spielberg-alien stick-thin arms are Herculean bloody demi-gods of courage and physical achievement.
Freaks, in other words. And who doesn't love a bit of mawkish freakshow? Really?
---
I think I could watch it on a three-week loop in a womb tank. What with Phil Leggit's soothing tones – as synonymous with cycle TV as Motson to footie, or Walker to F1 – and all that road movie footage, sweeping past the poplars and swooshing past the streams of people delirious with joy at seeing this legendary, chain-shlinking titan reesh past their noses in under an Earth second. Well worth the enormous car park fee that second.
But also, I love it because it is an expression of that idea of Europe that I've manufactured for myself and insist on cherishing.
That silly, romantic idea, largely removed from reality's brutal drudgery, of a sedate melting pot of intense historic culture, of cafรฉs and quirky TV, of slick logos and rank oddness. Of groovy accents and fantastic food. Of... Europe. A collection of countries and outlooks that together create something wondrous in the bosom. At least for me. A great comfort of possibilities and fine living and just ponsing (or possibly pensing) about in an endless succession of spankingly lovely, uplifting places.
A comfort that dare not look upon the ugly truths of division and corruption and bureaucracy lest it forget itself and spend not its euros on holiday there every year.
---
Any notional love I profess for the Tour de France is not borne out by knowledge or commitment, of course. Don't be silly now.
I still have no idea what consitutes tactics in cycling. Not Dying should be enough.
The bloke who crosses the line first on any day... wins? Right? Well no. Well, yes – he wins the coveted green jersey – given to the bloke who does indeed cross the line first to win that Etape or stage and get the most points. Fair enough – wheel on the French trophy birds, he's less Not Dead than 150 other blokes that day.
But he could be nowhere in the actual race – the race for the sacred maillot jaune – the yellow jersey.
I know, I don't really get it.
I always fancied the King Of The Mountains title. Not because I'd contemplate cycling those tarmacked cliffs in the Alps instead of nipping off to a cable car, but because the jersey is a very confident polkadot pink on white. Properly cool graphic style.
But if I am that extra bit taken with the romantic idea of this gruelling, bespoked madness, it is for one extra reason. Little did Gรฉo Lefรจvre – lunatic journalist with L'Auto magazine in 1903 who's deranged vision the French frenziedly bought into – realise that his work would inspire another very firmly European idea, eight decades later. Electronic music.
Every time I watch the TDF, I think of Kraftwerk. A formative musical love for me that, as you know, provokes a particularly comforting, if inexplicable, swell in my bosom.
As the peleton morphs and flows through the rolling French scenery, I think of four German blokes and their seminal electro-pop 12" Tour de France. And then I think of their love of cycling – and the fact that they buggered off from the studio for years, not for beer, bongs or birds but bikes. To go cycling.
And if that doesn't make your warm little heart beat a bit faster, you have no romance left in you.
I guess you could say that a little sign of having at last begun to leave emotional kindergarten on your journey to Actual Adulthood is when you realise that romance isn’t just about emergency Valentine’s cards.
If you’ve only recently twigged that 'romance' is a code word for two very different things at once depending on which side of a relationship you’re on, I must point out that this doesn't count. Grasping the fact that the word can mean 'chocolate' to one of you and Special Occasion Sex (SOS) to the other doesn’t qualify you as an emotional mentor. It just means you might understand your disappointment better. But, y'know. Perhaps even that's a start.
No, the truth of the word romance is that it isn’t restricted to relationships at all, of course.
..Though, I should also point out that saying this in lofty tones on the morning of a significant birthday/anniversary/Valentine's day, imagining the assertion to be your new style of gift to the occasion, still means you're an idiot. Don't ask why, just go buy some chocolates now.
Div.
---
But, ah – romance.
Romance is, of course, all at once a wildly flimsy, silly thing and a captivatingly wonderful, energising thing. You usually get it into your head in the absence of hard facts – often despite them, which is how robust this flimsy thing is. In fact more even than that, romance is rarely the friend of logic.
The magic of it is that, once you’re past the I Really So Love You Darling stage and have moved on to the Who’s That Bigger Person I'm Sure I've Seen Sharing The House With Me And My Kids stage, you can adapt the afor-mentioned silly flimsy feelgood to work on a place or a thing or an idea or... anything. It is, after all, an idea – a jolly scrummy, possibly fwuffy, undoubtedly impractical, proudly unempirically-appealing idea of something. And don't it warm your cockles?
Of course, I can work it up about almost anything.
I'll even get nostalgic for Charlie Brooker's acidic, billious moaning, after he's finally locked away for walking into Trafalgar Square with a flamethrower and red-eyed tears of regret for humanity's lostness. ..See? I feel lump in my throat about it already. I love that man. That nearly broken man.
But right now, I am feeling it for a bike race.
---
We used to dream about driving the support cars in the Tour de France. Years ago, when we watched it after school. We used to turn up Pete Shelley's strangely affecting theme tune to the Channel Four coverage and wish we were chasing the peleton across the swooping Gallic countryside for three weeks of the summer. Or even better, driving the motorcycle cameras.
For me, the romance comes in a kind of crossing of romantic lay-lines, converging on the world's most iconic cycle fight. It's the Wimbledon or World Cup of cycling. But without the BBC coverage. Or any upper body mass index whatsoever.
Really, think about it – what's not to love? Almost a month of constant evolving road shots and helicopter shots of the French countryside, from coastal plain to mountain peak. A final stage that stops Paris for a day, as the measurably superhuman madmen still pedaling chase eachother over the cobbles of the Champs Elysรฉs and round the Concorde.
And what superhuman madmen. An entire working day in the saddle almost every day for over three weeks. 3,500 KM. Just try to imagine that kind of endurance. Doing ONE day at thirty to forty KPH for over six hours would kill most of us. And then there's the sprinting. The whole concept of actually racing each other. Knocking time off. ..Knocking time off? Off your life, mate.
And people do die on the TDF. If you've seen the speeds they come down the mountains on two very very skinny wheels in nothing but body paint, you'll know why these chaps with Spielberg-alien stick-thin arms are Herculean bloody demi-gods of courage and physical achievement.
Freaks, in other words. And who doesn't love a bit of mawkish freakshow? Really?
---
I think I could watch it on a three-week loop in a womb tank. What with Phil Leggit's soothing tones – as synonymous with cycle TV as Motson to footie, or Walker to F1 – and all that road movie footage, sweeping past the poplars and swooshing past the streams of people delirious with joy at seeing this legendary, chain-shlinking titan reesh past their noses in under an Earth second. Well worth the enormous car park fee that second.
But also, I love it because it is an expression of that idea of Europe that I've manufactured for myself and insist on cherishing.
That silly, romantic idea, largely removed from reality's brutal drudgery, of a sedate melting pot of intense historic culture, of cafรฉs and quirky TV, of slick logos and rank oddness. Of groovy accents and fantastic food. Of... Europe. A collection of countries and outlooks that together create something wondrous in the bosom. At least for me. A great comfort of possibilities and fine living and just ponsing (or possibly pensing) about in an endless succession of spankingly lovely, uplifting places.
A comfort that dare not look upon the ugly truths of division and corruption and bureaucracy lest it forget itself and spend not its euros on holiday there every year.
---
Any notional love I profess for the Tour de France is not borne out by knowledge or commitment, of course. Don't be silly now.
I still have no idea what consitutes tactics in cycling. Not Dying should be enough.
The bloke who crosses the line first on any day... wins? Right? Well no. Well, yes – he wins the coveted green jersey – given to the bloke who does indeed cross the line first to win that Etape or stage and get the most points. Fair enough – wheel on the French trophy birds, he's less Not Dead than 150 other blokes that day.
But he could be nowhere in the actual race – the race for the sacred maillot jaune – the yellow jersey.
I know, I don't really get it.
I always fancied the King Of The Mountains title. Not because I'd contemplate cycling those tarmacked cliffs in the Alps instead of nipping off to a cable car, but because the jersey is a very confident polkadot pink on white. Properly cool graphic style.
But if I am that extra bit taken with the romantic idea of this gruelling, bespoked madness, it is for one extra reason. Little did Gรฉo Lefรจvre – lunatic journalist with L'Auto magazine in 1903 who's deranged vision the French frenziedly bought into – realise that his work would inspire another very firmly European idea, eight decades later. Electronic music.
Every time I watch the TDF, I think of Kraftwerk. A formative musical love for me that, as you know, provokes a particularly comforting, if inexplicable, swell in my bosom.
As the peleton morphs and flows through the rolling French scenery, I think of four German blokes and their seminal electro-pop 12" Tour de France. And then I think of their love of cycling – and the fact that they buggered off from the studio for years, not for beer, bongs or birds but bikes. To go cycling.
And if that doesn't make your warm little heart beat a bit faster, you have no romance left in you.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Venus thigh-strap.
Venus thigh-strap.
I am blogging at quarter to three on a sunny Saturday afternoon for one reason: that headline.
The Mss Williams are slogging it out in amazonian fashion in the women's final at Wimbledon and Venus has some supportive webbing all the way up one leg. Hence: well, see above.
And that's it.
Read it again. It's still good.
I am blogging at quarter to three on a sunny Saturday afternoon for one reason: that headline.
The Mss Williams are slogging it out in amazonian fashion in the women's final at Wimbledon and Venus has some supportive webbing all the way up one leg. Hence: well, see above.
And that's it.
Read it again. It's still good.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Open window playlist.
Open window playlist.
Here's an original idea. On heatwave days like these, open all the windows in your flat and... don't turn on any music.
Try it.
..See? Or rather, hear? ..soothing isn't it?
Just the sounds of birds twerpling and people pottering along the road in flimsy footwear. Quietly. Contentedly. Peacefully.
Ah, summer.
Of course, I've just spent the last hour working with headphones on, listening to old 80s disco records very loudly and singing along in my famously-black-soul-sounding voice – very loudly. It's a wonder I can write articles while doing this. It is.
However, much as that disco euphoria seems universal when you're lost in it, I suspect the summer would appreciate it very much if I closed all my windows.
Hmm.
>PAUSES<
"..Miss Frisky Lady, take me awayyy – she's fresh! (FRESH!) excy-ding... (do-do-do-do-doo)..."
>GETS UP AND CLOSES WINDOW WITH LITTLE SIGH.<
Here's an original idea. On heatwave days like these, open all the windows in your flat and... don't turn on any music.
Try it.
..See? Or rather, hear? ..soothing isn't it?
Just the sounds of birds twerpling and people pottering along the road in flimsy footwear. Quietly. Contentedly. Peacefully.
Ah, summer.
Of course, I've just spent the last hour working with headphones on, listening to old 80s disco records very loudly and singing along in my famously-black-soul-sounding voice – very loudly. It's a wonder I can write articles while doing this. It is.
However, much as that disco euphoria seems universal when you're lost in it, I suspect the summer would appreciate it very much if I closed all my windows.
Hmm.
>PAUSES<
"..Miss Frisky Lady, take me awayyy – she's fresh! (FRESH!) excy-ding... (do-do-do-do-doo)..."
>GETS UP AND CLOSES WINDOW WITH LITTLE SIGH.<
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Norway, Jose.
Norway, Jose.
As stag dos go, this one could easily be described as having taken a proper stab at the idea.
Though introducing sharp objects to this particular weekend might have tipped the balance of our actual survival.
Julian has, of course, already had a stag do. The one I arranged in London. The one where I enjoyed myself enormously by dressing up in tweed and hoping for boyish larks tipping Bobbies' helmets off with my brolly and that kind of thing, while wondering innocently why everyone else in said stag do was looking at me expectantly by 1.00am with very clear 'And...?' expressions on their faces. Like they were expecting something else or something. Like a nice meal and a few spirited hijinks with voddy glasses didn't constitute the full stagging monty or something. The stag do where I did an uncomfortably good impression of Will from The Inbetweeners, in fact.
Yes, well apparently these larks weren't quite enough. Not for an international chap like Jules.
I can picture us talking about it now. As light dawned, I had said, crestfallen: "I'm sorry, old thing, I don't think we have time for a whole Grand Tour of southern Europe and the Latin peninsular."
To which he had replied: "Get on the plane, doofus."
---
He hadn't, obviously. It was a made up scene. Plus, I've never once heard Julian say the word 'doofus'. And anyway, the second gig was always planned because there was always a second Best Man.
A man who had, I understood all too well as the date loomed, a secluded house in the wooded, wild countryside of Norway.
---
Angela had once recently said to me with an unnerving amount of gravitas: "I'm relying on you to keep Julian alive in Norway." As well she might have done it seems, for she has met Anders and been to Norway and seen what happens there.
In the event, however, Anders himself wasn't the primary protagonist Story Creator. All great stag dos – in fact, all great memoirs – need at least one good Story Creator. Someone so unpredictable, energetic, creative and oblivious to appropriate times of day for being sense-spankingly pissed that Things Simply Happen.
Yeah.
Enter John-Magner, stage left. Wheelying quadbike. Wearing permed wig. And Russian General's hat. Waving beer can like World Cup. Doing big thumbs up.
---
I can offer some advice when it comes to the safe operation of a quadbike for the very first time: have a fair bit to drink first. Everything subsequently happens in slo-mo; gives you more time to think.
You might want to check with your own GP first, however.
As you may know, I'm not a big drinker. That is, I reach for the red grape fairly often in social circumstances these days, but only a toddler's tinkle of it is needed for my child-like constitution to start warping my vision warmly. I am, it must be said, a very cheap date.
So it was hardly a surprise that, having as we did about a thousand cans of beer piled on the deck, by the time John-Magner was enthusiastically talking me through the controls of his 50cc toy, I was comfortably soft around the wits.
I should explain that Anders' fairly beautifully-restored pine-panelled house sits on the edge of a stunning, wide valley of woodland and is surrounded by a useful amount of land for the primary use of buggering about. But take an extra mental beat to consider the topology there – the edge of a valley. Slopes. And rocks. And trees – which also means terrain-ambiguizing grass.
As I flew through the warm evening air, I was thanking the Lord in soothingly detached fashion for my weirdly natural ability for Driving Stuff – still there, it seems, when sober – without which I knew I'd have been bucked over a boulder at 50kph at the touch of the throttle that night. That, coupled with a lot of very dumb luck.
Naturally, John-Magner had a second quadbike down on his farm. Appearing with it not long after we'd eaten the evening's multifarious barbequed meat, he pointed out casually: "Iss bedder. Smaller. Bigger engine. Brakes fakked."
Chasing eachother around the hillside in a hastily-prescribed relay course was then the work of mere moments, as you'd expect. One of us throwing a bike too enthusiastically into the steep run around the bottom of the house and flipping it against a rock and splitting a head open was the work of not many more moments.
Given that Anders grew up riding quadbikes around the stupidly unpredictable landscapes of Norway, he must have been a bit peeved that it had been him. But, as a local friend turned up a short while later to give him a lift to an equally amused local doctor to sew up the hole behind his ear, we concluded quickly that the best thing we could do was finish the nice Bordeaux and really see what the bikes could do.
Yes, I didn't know the course at first. Yes, I thought I stood a good chance of getting four well-treaded wheels to climb the wall back onto the gravel track. Still do. But yes, thankfully small quadbikes aren't really so hard to push off when they fall backwards on top of you. Not if you use both feet. And have plenty of time to think.
As Jules and I chased each other in muddy circles around the top field, I then remembered that we really could keep doing this all night if we wanted – Norway knows no night at this time of year.
---
In the event, by half midnight, when Anders still hadn't returned, John Magner said: "I know a pardy. D'you wanna pardy? I call a texi, yeah?"
We looked at eachother. I casually dusted some crumbs of earth from the sleeve of my smart cream suit shirt, ignoring the grass stains across my back.
"Sure" we all said.
---
The pardy had ended some time ago, as we stood with a crate of beer in the town square, a 20-minute, bass-bin-propelled Mercedez drive later. By the time we made it back to Anders after an hour-or-more's essentially pointless but entertaining round trip, we were ready for whisky.
John-Magner said: "Let's go into Lillehammer. There'll be some other pardies." We actually contemplated it at 2.00am, but eventually retired to cards for an hour or so.
I had survived Day One.
---
Day Two dawned in different ways for us all. For Julian, it was with a playful amount of hangover and John-Magner appearing from a night in the barn with the words: "Hair of de dog, men – whisky." For me it was with a blind stagger to the shower, followed by a deafening banging on the bathroom door and JM's enthusiastic voice shouting: "Beer, men! Start de day wiv a beer. I heff it out here for you, men." For Sebastian, slumbering still, it was with said Norwegian force of nature shaking him awake and pushing a beer can into his vision; "You need BEER, men!"
Now, I don't want you to think that the group was intoxicated all weekend. Contrary to myth, most of us are essentially sensible chaps of a certain age – young enough to still wheely a quadbike, but old enough to avoid hangovers. But after JM had disappeared and Seb and I had been enjoying a highly civilised conversation about music and theatre or somesuch, out in the lazy sunshine on the deck, I did find myself wondering if I should give into the enthusiastic pressure to steady the nerves with something – as JM reappeared with an ominous rumble, eventually bursting into the balmy peace with the full roar of his 150hp, large-framed, John Deere tractor.
I can't say what we all found ourselves doing next, naturally. I leave the picture with you. But it was a step up from quadbiking. Hypothetically, you understand.
Which left us with a dilemma by lunchtime: where to take things from there?
Which, in turn, presented the only obvious conclusion. Bob-sleighing.
---
Like so many former Olympic sites, the bob complex near Lillehammer looks a little sad out of season. Without the snow, it had the faint air of Mrs Havisham's home, a faded memory of former glories.
None the less, as the five of us, plus Lush the enthusiastic, short-haired pointer, arrived at the run, we still felt the effect of the safety signs, doing their best to put you off going any further.
"No one with spinal problems or heart conditions can ride" said Linda, Norway's only female bob sleigh driver. "In the corners we pull about three gs or so" she added calmly.
We stood there and blinked. But the point, I should point out, was this: It was a stag do. And Linda was Norway's only female bob sleigh driver. There was a combination of reasons why there would be no way any of us would be backing out.
I should say simply, by way of avoiding dragging it out, that they wouldn't let us employ John-Magner's hearty suggestion that we drive their van down the bob sleigh run. They simply put us in a little cage on little wheels with little Linda and before we could consider the possibilities of this, pushed us off a very smooth cliff.
I did wonder if my little arms would simply snap half way down. I really wasn't sure what their braking and/or breaking tollerances were.
Yet, after a few faintly horrific seconds of rocket spine compression, neck jerking and barely holding on, we rolled to a halt.
"You boys should come back when there's ice" Linda said flatly as we peeled ourselves off eachother and crawled back to the car.
---
I thought we might go shooting. There was also talk – serious talk, it seemed – of dynamite. There was also talk of other things even more creative and unwise. But as the afternoon waxed into the humid evening, we walked around the rocky tree line for a while and then went back to cook moose burgers. We then, despite the colourful ideas, essentially just played cards, drank affordably nice wine, moved onto Anders' very expensively nice congnac and cigars, played cards until about 2.00, when we turned in. Light still in the sky.
John-Magner had turned in – that is, climbed onto the sofa with a blanket – at about 8.00. We left him sleeping there like a baby.
I had survived Day Two. But who knew how.
---
I shall conclude it there. We laughed a lot and enjoyed both the grape and the grain and overall I think Julian had a blast. We learned all kinds of things about driving, hunting and first aid and left with some profound gratitude to Anders for his calm generosity.
I also wanted to thank John-Magner for being the Story Creator. There was, under the unnerving lack of inhibitions, someone there that some instinct in me – some essential genetic survival aerial – had told me I could trust. I certainly don't know anyone else who would still know what they were doing under similar circumstances. But those Norwegian guys are tough as Vikings. And JM seems especially loved for it.
Traveling back on the train through the incomparable countryside of lake and wood, I was grateful for japes together. The random madness of it.
Yet I couldn't help feeling a good deal of relief at the idea of getting back to the studio and back to work, doing something where I at least knew my arse from my elbow. Not to mention the idea of seeing much-loved chums without being expected to drink my body weight in meths and perform vehicle circus tricks.
No way, mate. On yer bike.
----
As stag dos go, this one could easily be described as having taken a proper stab at the idea.
Though introducing sharp objects to this particular weekend might have tipped the balance of our actual survival.
Julian has, of course, already had a stag do. The one I arranged in London. The one where I enjoyed myself enormously by dressing up in tweed and hoping for boyish larks tipping Bobbies' helmets off with my brolly and that kind of thing, while wondering innocently why everyone else in said stag do was looking at me expectantly by 1.00am with very clear 'And...?' expressions on their faces. Like they were expecting something else or something. Like a nice meal and a few spirited hijinks with voddy glasses didn't constitute the full stagging monty or something. The stag do where I did an uncomfortably good impression of Will from The Inbetweeners, in fact.
Yes, well apparently these larks weren't quite enough. Not for an international chap like Jules.
I can picture us talking about it now. As light dawned, I had said, crestfallen: "I'm sorry, old thing, I don't think we have time for a whole Grand Tour of southern Europe and the Latin peninsular."
To which he had replied: "Get on the plane, doofus."
---
He hadn't, obviously. It was a made up scene. Plus, I've never once heard Julian say the word 'doofus'. And anyway, the second gig was always planned because there was always a second Best Man.
A man who had, I understood all too well as the date loomed, a secluded house in the wooded, wild countryside of Norway.
---
Angela had once recently said to me with an unnerving amount of gravitas: "I'm relying on you to keep Julian alive in Norway." As well she might have done it seems, for she has met Anders and been to Norway and seen what happens there.
In the event, however, Anders himself wasn't the primary protagonist Story Creator. All great stag dos – in fact, all great memoirs – need at least one good Story Creator. Someone so unpredictable, energetic, creative and oblivious to appropriate times of day for being sense-spankingly pissed that Things Simply Happen.
Yeah.
Enter John-Magner, stage left. Wheelying quadbike. Wearing permed wig. And Russian General's hat. Waving beer can like World Cup. Doing big thumbs up.
---
I can offer some advice when it comes to the safe operation of a quadbike for the very first time: have a fair bit to drink first. Everything subsequently happens in slo-mo; gives you more time to think.
You might want to check with your own GP first, however.
As you may know, I'm not a big drinker. That is, I reach for the red grape fairly often in social circumstances these days, but only a toddler's tinkle of it is needed for my child-like constitution to start warping my vision warmly. I am, it must be said, a very cheap date.
So it was hardly a surprise that, having as we did about a thousand cans of beer piled on the deck, by the time John-Magner was enthusiastically talking me through the controls of his 50cc toy, I was comfortably soft around the wits.
I should explain that Anders' fairly beautifully-restored pine-panelled house sits on the edge of a stunning, wide valley of woodland and is surrounded by a useful amount of land for the primary use of buggering about. But take an extra mental beat to consider the topology there – the edge of a valley. Slopes. And rocks. And trees – which also means terrain-ambiguizing grass.
As I flew through the warm evening air, I was thanking the Lord in soothingly detached fashion for my weirdly natural ability for Driving Stuff – still there, it seems, when sober – without which I knew I'd have been bucked over a boulder at 50kph at the touch of the throttle that night. That, coupled with a lot of very dumb luck.
Naturally, John-Magner had a second quadbike down on his farm. Appearing with it not long after we'd eaten the evening's multifarious barbequed meat, he pointed out casually: "Iss bedder. Smaller. Bigger engine. Brakes fakked."
Chasing eachother around the hillside in a hastily-prescribed relay course was then the work of mere moments, as you'd expect. One of us throwing a bike too enthusiastically into the steep run around the bottom of the house and flipping it against a rock and splitting a head open was the work of not many more moments.
Given that Anders grew up riding quadbikes around the stupidly unpredictable landscapes of Norway, he must have been a bit peeved that it had been him. But, as a local friend turned up a short while later to give him a lift to an equally amused local doctor to sew up the hole behind his ear, we concluded quickly that the best thing we could do was finish the nice Bordeaux and really see what the bikes could do.
Yes, I didn't know the course at first. Yes, I thought I stood a good chance of getting four well-treaded wheels to climb the wall back onto the gravel track. Still do. But yes, thankfully small quadbikes aren't really so hard to push off when they fall backwards on top of you. Not if you use both feet. And have plenty of time to think.
As Jules and I chased each other in muddy circles around the top field, I then remembered that we really could keep doing this all night if we wanted – Norway knows no night at this time of year.
---
In the event, by half midnight, when Anders still hadn't returned, John Magner said: "I know a pardy. D'you wanna pardy? I call a texi, yeah?"
We looked at eachother. I casually dusted some crumbs of earth from the sleeve of my smart cream suit shirt, ignoring the grass stains across my back.
"Sure" we all said.
---
The pardy had ended some time ago, as we stood with a crate of beer in the town square, a 20-minute, bass-bin-propelled Mercedez drive later. By the time we made it back to Anders after an hour-or-more's essentially pointless but entertaining round trip, we were ready for whisky.
John-Magner said: "Let's go into Lillehammer. There'll be some other pardies." We actually contemplated it at 2.00am, but eventually retired to cards for an hour or so.
I had survived Day One.
---
Day Two dawned in different ways for us all. For Julian, it was with a playful amount of hangover and John-Magner appearing from a night in the barn with the words: "Hair of de dog, men – whisky." For me it was with a blind stagger to the shower, followed by a deafening banging on the bathroom door and JM's enthusiastic voice shouting: "Beer, men! Start de day wiv a beer. I heff it out here for you, men." For Sebastian, slumbering still, it was with said Norwegian force of nature shaking him awake and pushing a beer can into his vision; "You need BEER, men!"
Now, I don't want you to think that the group was intoxicated all weekend. Contrary to myth, most of us are essentially sensible chaps of a certain age – young enough to still wheely a quadbike, but old enough to avoid hangovers. But after JM had disappeared and Seb and I had been enjoying a highly civilised conversation about music and theatre or somesuch, out in the lazy sunshine on the deck, I did find myself wondering if I should give into the enthusiastic pressure to steady the nerves with something – as JM reappeared with an ominous rumble, eventually bursting into the balmy peace with the full roar of his 150hp, large-framed, John Deere tractor.
I can't say what we all found ourselves doing next, naturally. I leave the picture with you. But it was a step up from quadbiking. Hypothetically, you understand.
Which left us with a dilemma by lunchtime: where to take things from there?
Which, in turn, presented the only obvious conclusion. Bob-sleighing.
---
Like so many former Olympic sites, the bob complex near Lillehammer looks a little sad out of season. Without the snow, it had the faint air of Mrs Havisham's home, a faded memory of former glories.
None the less, as the five of us, plus Lush the enthusiastic, short-haired pointer, arrived at the run, we still felt the effect of the safety signs, doing their best to put you off going any further.
"No one with spinal problems or heart conditions can ride" said Linda, Norway's only female bob sleigh driver. "In the corners we pull about three gs or so" she added calmly.
We stood there and blinked. But the point, I should point out, was this: It was a stag do. And Linda was Norway's only female bob sleigh driver. There was a combination of reasons why there would be no way any of us would be backing out.
I should say simply, by way of avoiding dragging it out, that they wouldn't let us employ John-Magner's hearty suggestion that we drive their van down the bob sleigh run. They simply put us in a little cage on little wheels with little Linda and before we could consider the possibilities of this, pushed us off a very smooth cliff.
I did wonder if my little arms would simply snap half way down. I really wasn't sure what their braking and/or breaking tollerances were.
Yet, after a few faintly horrific seconds of rocket spine compression, neck jerking and barely holding on, we rolled to a halt.
"You boys should come back when there's ice" Linda said flatly as we peeled ourselves off eachother and crawled back to the car.
---
I thought we might go shooting. There was also talk – serious talk, it seemed – of dynamite. There was also talk of other things even more creative and unwise. But as the afternoon waxed into the humid evening, we walked around the rocky tree line for a while and then went back to cook moose burgers. We then, despite the colourful ideas, essentially just played cards, drank affordably nice wine, moved onto Anders' very expensively nice congnac and cigars, played cards until about 2.00, when we turned in. Light still in the sky.
John-Magner had turned in – that is, climbed onto the sofa with a blanket – at about 8.00. We left him sleeping there like a baby.
I had survived Day Two. But who knew how.
---
I shall conclude it there. We laughed a lot and enjoyed both the grape and the grain and overall I think Julian had a blast. We learned all kinds of things about driving, hunting and first aid and left with some profound gratitude to Anders for his calm generosity.
I also wanted to thank John-Magner for being the Story Creator. There was, under the unnerving lack of inhibitions, someone there that some instinct in me – some essential genetic survival aerial – had told me I could trust. I certainly don't know anyone else who would still know what they were doing under similar circumstances. But those Norwegian guys are tough as Vikings. And JM seems especially loved for it.
Traveling back on the train through the incomparable countryside of lake and wood, I was grateful for japes together. The random madness of it.
Yet I couldn't help feeling a good deal of relief at the idea of getting back to the studio and back to work, doing something where I at least knew my arse from my elbow. Not to mention the idea of seeing much-loved chums without being expected to drink my body weight in meths and perform vehicle circus tricks.
No way, mate. On yer bike.
----
Friday, June 26, 2009
Julian's reasonably pointless, impractically timed, but in-the-event rather fun second stag do.
Julian's reasonably pointless,
impractically timed, but in-the-event
rather fun second stag do.
Gorgeous Norwegian valley – check.
Alchohol – check.
Quadbikes – check.
One of us in hospital before the first evening's out – check.
Don't ask. We're all fine.
This is surreal. And wasting time. But bonkers fun.
Wish Caz was here.
You should see Norway in the sunshine, by the way. And it doesn't go down at this time of year; it's gone 11.00pm. We could do this all night.
impractically timed, but in-the-event
rather fun second stag do.
Gorgeous Norwegian valley – check.
Alchohol – check.
Quadbikes – check.
One of us in hospital before the first evening's out – check.
Don't ask. We're all fine.
This is surreal. And wasting time. But bonkers fun.
Wish Caz was here.
You should see Norway in the sunshine, by the way. And it doesn't go down at this time of year; it's gone 11.00pm. We could do this all night.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Momo:Typo's Top Five Rules of Creative.
Momo:Typo's
Top Five Rules of Creative.
Found myself leaving this sage advice on Gellan's wall this morning, following his Facebook status about doing a very important photoshoot today.
That is, I left point one as sage advice, and when this was so earnestly received by his creative team, I felt it might be useful for everyone to have these essential five core principles of Momo's brand communications to hand, to guide them into the fearsome blank page.
Feel free to select as appropriate at any given creative crisis point.
When engaging in design work or advertising communications, always frame your approach around these five key rules, to guarantee strategic effectiveness:
1: Don't muff it up.
2: Make it dead good.
3: Make the depth of field still narrower (..to photographers).
4: HEADLINES MUST HAVE PUNS.
5: Try adding an arrow.
And remember, don't forget to finger pistol often. They'll think you're being ironic, but you'll know you're just being cool.
..I mean, who knew that Momo had a formula?
>Cuh<
Top Five Rules of Creative.
Found myself leaving this sage advice on Gellan's wall this morning, following his Facebook status about doing a very important photoshoot today.
That is, I left point one as sage advice, and when this was so earnestly received by his creative team, I felt it might be useful for everyone to have these essential five core principles of Momo's brand communications to hand, to guide them into the fearsome blank page.
Feel free to select as appropriate at any given creative crisis point.
When engaging in design work or advertising communications, always frame your approach around these five key rules, to guarantee strategic effectiveness:
1: Don't muff it up.
2: Make it dead good.
3: Make the depth of field still narrower (..to photographers).
4: HEADLINES MUST HAVE PUNS.
5: Try adding an arrow.
And remember, don't forget to finger pistol often. They'll think you're being ironic, but you'll know you're just being cool.
..I mean, who knew that Momo had a formula?
>Cuh<
Monday, June 22, 2009
Momo:Ricoh.
Momo:Ricoh.
I'm no photographer.
So I wouldn't want to push myself forward in this particular creative area.
>DEADPAN PAUSE<
..But this 20' print behind me, next to the similarly large portrait of me, is a humble snap from my latest collection of monochrome observances of the Middle East.
I am but a refractor of light.
Momo:Ricoh Gulf Art Guff on Facebook.
I'm no photographer.
So I wouldn't want to push myself forward in this particular creative area.
>DEADPAN PAUSE<
..But this 20' print behind me, next to the similarly large portrait of me, is a humble snap from my latest collection of monochrome observances of the Middle East.
I am but a refractor of light.
Momo:Ricoh Gulf Art Guff on Facebook.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Possibility overload.
Possibility overload.
So technology has never given the average Joe more opportunities, right? We're living in an unprecedented time of user-driven, user-generated content.
And are you excited about it yet?
---
Sitting around everyone's favourite kitchen table this evening, Mark and Sarah's, we wished good chums Jon and Lyn a heart-felt bon voyage as they continue to pack to leave UK shores for Canadian ones. It's been years of on/off drama for them, before the visas finally came through last week and they knew their new chapter was finally opening across the Atlantic.
Saying goodbye, I knew none of us felt the full pang of parting, however – because of Facebook. And Skype. And blogs. We're in eachother's daily community more than ever, thanks to these people-connecting online apps. It's revolutionary. And it's human-minded tech. ..If you can see past the dog-awful, geek-up design of most of them, that is.
It connects folk, that's my point – bringing the miles together so we can all bore eachother stupid with buh-uh-LUDDY quizzes.
It's no substitute for having Jon and Lyn just over the road. I might be able to make my avatar take them over a little brick-edged wok of curry in Yoville, but it won't be the same as dashing through the rain with it to their flat, just outside the studio window.
But the tech still keeps us in eachother's lives. And this is something I'm very grateful for.
---
Tech connects us like never before, in fact. So they tell us.
My business knows this well, I should testify. How could Momo:typo have existed in a modest home studio without iStockphoto? Or just e-mail?
But all this burgeoning community media brings with it the pressure to seize emerging opportunities. And I don't know about you, but I'm as able to seize emerging opportunities for innovative business solutions as I am able to say things like that to clients without wanting to punch myself clean in the face. The truth is, all this gabble about Talk Tech appeals to another very human instinct. The instinct to quickly feel hopelessly left out. And generally inadequate.
Social media is a mad faddy dash to feel involved.
Great. It's picking football teams all over again.
---
I've often thought that, as much as I like the pleasure of using Macs, for example – stroking them, hugging them, telling them I love them and other perfectly normal, right and proper expressions of gratitude to lovely design – I can't really get excited about technology for its own sake.
I dig the daydreams of Tomorrow's World for sure, and I want to live in space in the future – don't get me wrong.
But please. Don't drool too much over the tech – drool over what it can help you DO.
---
The soul-destroyingly dull-sounding EOS 5D Mk II. It has me a little worked up tonight.
Why?
Find a picture of one, and you won't be enlightened. It looks like a camera. Just another pretty boring-looking SLR digital camera. And not a cheap holiday toy – some £2000's-worth of SLR digital camera. A professional's plaything.
So why the passing excitement? Because this thing takes HD video. Through those gorgeous Cannon lenses. For less than half the price of a video camera that can use any kind of half-way decent lens.
It makes home videos look like ads.
I won't bore you with talk of F-stops and depth of field. Partly because photography still feels like a bit of a black art to me – despite years of photography lessons at art school. But I know what I want to achieve – and it's idley cool, smart-ass, slick-shiny pictures of stuff. And this ruddy Cannon upstart can do it on a whim.
Now, trust me when I pause to say that if there's one sure-fire way to kill a worthy creative idea, it's to ignore the delivery. The style. The vital thing you can sense instinctively from about the time you develop language until you draw inevitably nearer to adulthood, at which point it becomes ever fainter and more alien to you – cool. I'm talking about Cool.
On the evening of the premier, there ain't no use whining about the budget restraints of your film – like some architect, while we all stare at the dogs' dinner you built and got paid for and that we now all have to live with on our high street. No. It takes a viewer marginally longer – sometimes a LOT longer – to work out that a film or a pop video is actually crap – a badly-directed bad idea – when it's shot on really expensive gear, than to spot a terrific bit of visual creative hidden in a rubbish bit of production.
Appropriate style gets you through the front door. It's body language. It's brand, baby.
And if I'm going to do any dead-groovy pop videos for Momo:tempo – with no hint of irony – ...man do I want them to distract you from the basic lack of ideas with some dead cool styling.
---
But I'm wondering more generally at the moment, can a techy dimwit like me – that is, a moderately capable modern creative, with not enough time or inclination to become a true social media bore – can even someone not grown in a Twitter In-vitro Tank with synthetic parts turn an unknown brand into a well known one? In, say, just one year? Using all the tech that's out there to create an audience out of thin air? All by themselves?
It will depend, like everything in the end, on your idea. What are you wanting people to buy into? The smartest online strategy in the world won't disguise a bit of pseudo-eighties synth pop keyboard music that no-one would want to be seen dead listening to. If you see what I mean.
Still, if you can get people to buy into a brand out of pity... it might still have legs, people.
---
It sort of sounds like a specific challenge. I love the connecting with people bit of tech today. But I think I hate the collective Twitterati. Not the good people individually having fun with something new and significant – but the uber-Twit, the Twitgeist, that barks at us all from the background noise of everything to get on board before train leaves, doofus. Next stop, the future, Twitketeers! Hoowah!
Because the possibilities are endless, I find all these worthy possibilities collectively daunting.
But still. There's no membership. There's officially no Ins or Outs to the brave new world of socal media. We are, technically, all invited. So could even a very human-shaped person like me make effective sense of it? Find a real use for it? ..Other than just pleasuring my self-expression all alone in the blogosphere?
Hmmm.
...More to the point, can I be ARSED?
So technology has never given the average Joe more opportunities, right? We're living in an unprecedented time of user-driven, user-generated content.
And are you excited about it yet?
---
Sitting around everyone's favourite kitchen table this evening, Mark and Sarah's, we wished good chums Jon and Lyn a heart-felt bon voyage as they continue to pack to leave UK shores for Canadian ones. It's been years of on/off drama for them, before the visas finally came through last week and they knew their new chapter was finally opening across the Atlantic.
Saying goodbye, I knew none of us felt the full pang of parting, however – because of Facebook. And Skype. And blogs. We're in eachother's daily community more than ever, thanks to these people-connecting online apps. It's revolutionary. And it's human-minded tech. ..If you can see past the dog-awful, geek-up design of most of them, that is.
It connects folk, that's my point – bringing the miles together so we can all bore eachother stupid with buh-uh-LUDDY quizzes.
It's no substitute for having Jon and Lyn just over the road. I might be able to make my avatar take them over a little brick-edged wok of curry in Yoville, but it won't be the same as dashing through the rain with it to their flat, just outside the studio window.
But the tech still keeps us in eachother's lives. And this is something I'm very grateful for.
---
Tech connects us like never before, in fact. So they tell us.
My business knows this well, I should testify. How could Momo:typo have existed in a modest home studio without iStockphoto? Or just e-mail?
But all this burgeoning community media brings with it the pressure to seize emerging opportunities. And I don't know about you, but I'm as able to seize emerging opportunities for innovative business solutions as I am able to say things like that to clients without wanting to punch myself clean in the face. The truth is, all this gabble about Talk Tech appeals to another very human instinct. The instinct to quickly feel hopelessly left out. And generally inadequate.
Social media is a mad faddy dash to feel involved.
Great. It's picking football teams all over again.
---
I've often thought that, as much as I like the pleasure of using Macs, for example – stroking them, hugging them, telling them I love them and other perfectly normal, right and proper expressions of gratitude to lovely design – I can't really get excited about technology for its own sake.
I dig the daydreams of Tomorrow's World for sure, and I want to live in space in the future – don't get me wrong.
But please. Don't drool too much over the tech – drool over what it can help you DO.
---
The soul-destroyingly dull-sounding EOS 5D Mk II. It has me a little worked up tonight.
Why?
Find a picture of one, and you won't be enlightened. It looks like a camera. Just another pretty boring-looking SLR digital camera. And not a cheap holiday toy – some £2000's-worth of SLR digital camera. A professional's plaything.
So why the passing excitement? Because this thing takes HD video. Through those gorgeous Cannon lenses. For less than half the price of a video camera that can use any kind of half-way decent lens.
It makes home videos look like ads.
I won't bore you with talk of F-stops and depth of field. Partly because photography still feels like a bit of a black art to me – despite years of photography lessons at art school. But I know what I want to achieve – and it's idley cool, smart-ass, slick-shiny pictures of stuff. And this ruddy Cannon upstart can do it on a whim.
Now, trust me when I pause to say that if there's one sure-fire way to kill a worthy creative idea, it's to ignore the delivery. The style. The vital thing you can sense instinctively from about the time you develop language until you draw inevitably nearer to adulthood, at which point it becomes ever fainter and more alien to you – cool. I'm talking about Cool.
On the evening of the premier, there ain't no use whining about the budget restraints of your film – like some architect, while we all stare at the dogs' dinner you built and got paid for and that we now all have to live with on our high street. No. It takes a viewer marginally longer – sometimes a LOT longer – to work out that a film or a pop video is actually crap – a badly-directed bad idea – when it's shot on really expensive gear, than to spot a terrific bit of visual creative hidden in a rubbish bit of production.
Appropriate style gets you through the front door. It's body language. It's brand, baby.
And if I'm going to do any dead-groovy pop videos for Momo:tempo – with no hint of irony – ...man do I want them to distract you from the basic lack of ideas with some dead cool styling.
---
But I'm wondering more generally at the moment, can a techy dimwit like me – that is, a moderately capable modern creative, with not enough time or inclination to become a true social media bore – can even someone not grown in a Twitter In-vitro Tank with synthetic parts turn an unknown brand into a well known one? In, say, just one year? Using all the tech that's out there to create an audience out of thin air? All by themselves?
It will depend, like everything in the end, on your idea. What are you wanting people to buy into? The smartest online strategy in the world won't disguise a bit of pseudo-eighties synth pop keyboard music that no-one would want to be seen dead listening to. If you see what I mean.
Still, if you can get people to buy into a brand out of pity... it might still have legs, people.
---
It sort of sounds like a specific challenge. I love the connecting with people bit of tech today. But I think I hate the collective Twitterati. Not the good people individually having fun with something new and significant – but the uber-Twit, the Twitgeist, that barks at us all from the background noise of everything to get on board before train leaves, doofus. Next stop, the future, Twitketeers! Hoowah!
Because the possibilities are endless, I find all these worthy possibilities collectively daunting.
But still. There's no membership. There's officially no Ins or Outs to the brave new world of socal media. We are, technically, all invited. So could even a very human-shaped person like me make effective sense of it? Find a real use for it? ..Other than just pleasuring my self-expression all alone in the blogosphere?
Hmmm.
...More to the point, can I be ARSED?
Monday, June 15, 2009
The One Upman Shop.
The One Upman Shop.
You did sort of imagine this would be how you'd work every day. You know, in that bright future you forsaw would have you legitimately, professionally based at home – sunshine on the keys, wood pigeons coo-rooing, breeze rooshing the trees.
Yes.
>BREATHES IN DEEPLY THROUGH THE NOSE WITH FLINTY CONVICTION<
..Ruddy hot, bright and noisy out here, isn't it?
The weefee's only conviction this far from the house is that it exists somewhere. Somewhere much nearer the house, evidently. I can see it's there, but I could probably draw the BBC News homepage in felt tip pens quicker than it loads. Including the scrolling live feeds.
So I'm doing this on Blogspot's load page but will have to go back upstairs to actually publish the discovery, mooted on Twitter just now, that perhaps I can't in fact finally enjoy the psychological one-upmanship of working in the garden over lunch.
But really, why did I think I should? I can't see the keys, builders are machine-gunning concrete all the way to the centre of the earth somewhere in the street, and a sunbathing neighbour is trying to have a comfortingly banal private conversation on the phone mere feet from me beyond the sound-reinforced security boundary of a slat fence.
Just think how easily I could live broadcast this to the entire world, and that fence would mean she'd never even know I'd made her private revelations global. If anyone at all actually read my blog, of course.
I've got money spiders climbing around the flush keyboard, my hair's having a particularly whispy day in this irritatingly balmy breeze, and I've only just realised half of what I've typed is demented. What, for example, is a 'one-upmanshop'? Somewhere I'd like to open an account, I think.
Oh this blasted gorgeous sunny day without the gloomy pressures of an office!
I'm going in.
Leaving the neighbour to her own home-based profesionalism. Film reviews and gossip columning, apparently. Same as every other creative freelancer.
---
Now, from in here – relocated to the lounge bay, avoiding the studio as part of this mobile social media experiement – perhaps I could imagine that the vouchers from The One Upman Shop have been cashed in after all.
I can see it's sunny and beautiful out there. But I can also see what the beggary I'm typing. I can, as well as this, listen to Jobim, to help nature create a more convincing summer atmosphere. Plus, I don't need to wear my sunnies, so I can use them as a pretty fetching alice band to keep foppish whispy flops out of my eyes during very important social media comment blogging work.
All that and the kettle is much much nearer. Although I'm putting off caving in to casual caffeine today, as I think encroaching middle age – still so very far off, I'd like you to bear in mind – is telling my body to go to bed at sensible hours and not just say yes every time someone offers it a glass of something made from very heavy Shiraz grapes.
---
I bazzed up to the capital on Saturday tea time to see Ben and Marnie for the first time since we completed Sophie in the souk. Wrap party at producer Jennifer's. Except, it was only by late evening I began to slowly come into focus on the whole wrap party status of the soirรฉ, due largely to the absence of anyone even vaguely connected to the production of the programme.
"Ah" I think a distant secondary internal voice must have mumbled eventually, as someone poured me another little top up of heavily fermented Shiraz grape juice drink, "this is just a party."
Adding a few minutes later: "Huh."
But, hey. Meeting people is meeting people – old gags become new gags, however the new audience got invited. I was happy to meet them, happy to shoot my entire bolt of impressive sounding interest in world affairs, and happy to not have to demonstrate how little I could back up this heavily implied but heavily vague clever knowledge at a second social get together. Plus, I wouldn't want the nice Persian Brit I lectured about the Iranian elections to have to nod politely for another evening.
---
It was good to see Benny boy. Seems everyone likes the show. Kids in particular, I hear. They get the hidden subtexts, obviously.
Ben's created a real editorial integrity to the production. A clear bit of brand work, really. We'll have to see what the Travel Channel really makes of it.
But in some delightfully north London dinner party lines that I seemed to slip into effortlessly that night – but which were undoubtedly bought from the Basics range at The One Upman Shop – the subject of the show did allow me to say things like: "Oh I've always found Moroccans to be charming people. You really must go." And: "So I asked myself what the defining character of truly Moroccan music was, as opposed to other North African and pan-oriental influences..."
Nob. Got a few laughs though.
---
Also, of course, I made sure I used the belt up and down the M3 to audition new edits of the album. Car journeys are useful cocoons for this kind of creative analysis.
And after all, The golden age of exploration is, I should say, just two weeks from its studio deadline now.
Breakthrough moment before I left was getting the first final running order of it all crammed onto an eighty-minute CD. This was basically momentous, as it was the first time I could hear how it would work. ..Or rather, IF it would work.
And?
..How the f*** should I know? I'm writing this tripe – I love it. Never been right before though, have I?
It works, I should say. That is, it seems to fit together, on its own terms. And with a couple of sessions and some additional editing tweeks, it'll be done. Actually done. Spot of singing, couple of cello parts to record, few more horn spots. And done.
..Then what the sweet arsing fate I'm supposed to actually DO with it, I don't know.
Try and get it listed at The One Upman Shop, obviously.
You did sort of imagine this would be how you'd work every day. You know, in that bright future you forsaw would have you legitimately, professionally based at home – sunshine on the keys, wood pigeons coo-rooing, breeze rooshing the trees.
Yes.
>BREATHES IN DEEPLY THROUGH THE NOSE WITH FLINTY CONVICTION<
..Ruddy hot, bright and noisy out here, isn't it?
The weefee's only conviction this far from the house is that it exists somewhere. Somewhere much nearer the house, evidently. I can see it's there, but I could probably draw the BBC News homepage in felt tip pens quicker than it loads. Including the scrolling live feeds.
So I'm doing this on Blogspot's load page but will have to go back upstairs to actually publish the discovery, mooted on Twitter just now, that perhaps I can't in fact finally enjoy the psychological one-upmanship of working in the garden over lunch.
But really, why did I think I should? I can't see the keys, builders are machine-gunning concrete all the way to the centre of the earth somewhere in the street, and a sunbathing neighbour is trying to have a comfortingly banal private conversation on the phone mere feet from me beyond the sound-reinforced security boundary of a slat fence.
Just think how easily I could live broadcast this to the entire world, and that fence would mean she'd never even know I'd made her private revelations global. If anyone at all actually read my blog, of course.
I've got money spiders climbing around the flush keyboard, my hair's having a particularly whispy day in this irritatingly balmy breeze, and I've only just realised half of what I've typed is demented. What, for example, is a 'one-upmanshop'? Somewhere I'd like to open an account, I think.
Oh this blasted gorgeous sunny day without the gloomy pressures of an office!
I'm going in.
Leaving the neighbour to her own home-based profesionalism. Film reviews and gossip columning, apparently. Same as every other creative freelancer.
---
Now, from in here – relocated to the lounge bay, avoiding the studio as part of this mobile social media experiement – perhaps I could imagine that the vouchers from The One Upman Shop have been cashed in after all.
I can see it's sunny and beautiful out there. But I can also see what the beggary I'm typing. I can, as well as this, listen to Jobim, to help nature create a more convincing summer atmosphere. Plus, I don't need to wear my sunnies, so I can use them as a pretty fetching alice band to keep foppish whispy flops out of my eyes during very important social media comment blogging work.
All that and the kettle is much much nearer. Although I'm putting off caving in to casual caffeine today, as I think encroaching middle age – still so very far off, I'd like you to bear in mind – is telling my body to go to bed at sensible hours and not just say yes every time someone offers it a glass of something made from very heavy Shiraz grapes.
---
I bazzed up to the capital on Saturday tea time to see Ben and Marnie for the first time since we completed Sophie in the souk. Wrap party at producer Jennifer's. Except, it was only by late evening I began to slowly come into focus on the whole wrap party status of the soirรฉ, due largely to the absence of anyone even vaguely connected to the production of the programme.
"Ah" I think a distant secondary internal voice must have mumbled eventually, as someone poured me another little top up of heavily fermented Shiraz grape juice drink, "this is just a party."
Adding a few minutes later: "Huh."
But, hey. Meeting people is meeting people – old gags become new gags, however the new audience got invited. I was happy to meet them, happy to shoot my entire bolt of impressive sounding interest in world affairs, and happy to not have to demonstrate how little I could back up this heavily implied but heavily vague clever knowledge at a second social get together. Plus, I wouldn't want the nice Persian Brit I lectured about the Iranian elections to have to nod politely for another evening.
---
It was good to see Benny boy. Seems everyone likes the show. Kids in particular, I hear. They get the hidden subtexts, obviously.
Ben's created a real editorial integrity to the production. A clear bit of brand work, really. We'll have to see what the Travel Channel really makes of it.
But in some delightfully north London dinner party lines that I seemed to slip into effortlessly that night – but which were undoubtedly bought from the Basics range at The One Upman Shop – the subject of the show did allow me to say things like: "Oh I've always found Moroccans to be charming people. You really must go." And: "So I asked myself what the defining character of truly Moroccan music was, as opposed to other North African and pan-oriental influences..."
Nob. Got a few laughs though.
---
Also, of course, I made sure I used the belt up and down the M3 to audition new edits of the album. Car journeys are useful cocoons for this kind of creative analysis.
And after all, The golden age of exploration is, I should say, just two weeks from its studio deadline now.
Breakthrough moment before I left was getting the first final running order of it all crammed onto an eighty-minute CD. This was basically momentous, as it was the first time I could hear how it would work. ..Or rather, IF it would work.
And?
..How the f*** should I know? I'm writing this tripe – I love it. Never been right before though, have I?
It works, I should say. That is, it seems to fit together, on its own terms. And with a couple of sessions and some additional editing tweeks, it'll be done. Actually done. Spot of singing, couple of cello parts to record, few more horn spots. And done.
..Then what the sweet arsing fate I'm supposed to actually DO with it, I don't know.
Try and get it listed at The One Upman Shop, obviously.
Monday, June 08, 2009
On the job.
On the job.
In the words of Adrian Chiles, next spring seems like an awful long wait.
Not for Yasmina, of course – she's arrived. She has a new job and a whole new identity.
But for the rest of us? Somehow, I'm sure we as a proud nation will push on and pull together and muddle through until the next series of The apprentice is aired. I'm going to miss Srallan, though – he'll be Lawdallen by next year.
One thing that lastnight's finale demonstrated along the way was borne out by the boss himself on the after-show – brand is what people buy. Yasmina's Coco Electric was basically cute; the chocolates themselves you can get right with an extra couple of days. But who'd know Kate's Choc D'amour were extra scrummy from their pregnancy test type box?
I think Coco Electric should be a club night too, by the way.
The idea of something – the instinctive, emotional response, however small – is what we all reach for on the shelf. That's a brand; what people feel about a product, or a thing. Or you.
And so I can't help feeling, where might this be more relevant to this morning's news than in the jolly world of politics?
---
The world IS politics, of course. How people interact with eachother, how they get along, work together around differences, work around competing outlooks. Everything is politics – how we navigate eachother determines how 'successful' we are. Which I put in quotes there to let you decide what the word means.
So personal 'brand' is pretty vital, huh?
Right. In response, however, I'm personally just thinking of printing up more Momo tees – they're cute. Do yourself a favour – do yourself a logo, I say. Though I'm now thinking of adding a pink lightning spark to mine.
The professional party politician can't do that, however.
..No, I mean they can't – have you seen the design of their leaflets? Shocking.
Which is interesting. The very people who usually feel drawn to step up to public office are usually not creatives. Yet the subtle nuances of expression and emotional awareness are everything to a politician's success.
Ah.
---
BNP.
Thoughts?
'New suit, same old Nazis' was one amusing ad headline for them this week. They say we've got them wrong – they're not racists, they're standing against the systemic racism of the The Liberal Elite, directed against the Indiginous White Population Of Britain.
Which might just be a plea to keep things simple; the English are already German-Nordic-French with a twist of Italian. Invading bastards. We should really give the country back to the Welsh and the Cornish, of course. But we certainly can't incorporate any more ethnic identity into our great collective mongrel brand any more.
Last thing we want to do, for example, is become a massively sea-faring and trading nation, extending our influence and enlarging our outlook to a truly global scale, bringing back prosperity and people alike to our meagre shores and... ah.
I, ah.
But here's the thing to remember with your brand, if you just joined the class – it ain't yours. It's almost like art – you make the marks and the perciever of your work makes the connections. It's in their head. So they can make whatever connections they damn-well please.
So what should be done when people percieve their country to be against them? When their connection with Britain feels increasingly like a disconnection?
It comes down, as I think everything on the political news does today, to leadership. Right now, people are percieving no proper leadership in the UK.
Uh-oh.
---
Well, I say 'uh-oh' to create a dramatic pause, but it's all part of the natural ups and downs of professional political life. Things go stale and we want something fresh.
But, like a teacher in an unruly classroom, the minute the little tykes can smell fear – you're dead.
Once kids – or let's call us voters – get it into their heads that you don't know your arse from your elbow when it comes to authority or direction, your brand is a bad one. You've got to do something to correct their impression of your authority.
Rolling tanks into the shires and squares of this fair isle would be a way to look tough, of course.
It's the I'll Bloody Show You Who's Strong, Yeah tactic of choice for many world leaders. And these guys have often been great with creating brand – cute posters, nice uniforms, consistent brand collateral. Beatings for deviating from the brand book. My kind of marketing department.
We don't kind of do that here. Not really the UK's style. We fawn and bitch, depending on the weather. Which might make the UK sound a bit, well, gay. But I'm all for it – the catfights can sound pretty nasty and will involve a lot of meladrama, but no-one's blood will actually get spilt on the chiffon/leather/ermin and it will be mere moments before someone says: 'BORED. WHO TURNED OFF THE DISCO?' and we're all cheering and fugging again.
I realise this reduction of a particular sexual identity to a kind of colourful character part in the story of our community is not helpful. But's let's face it, the colourful ones are always our favourite ones in the film. The white/straight/thin heroes we cast in the central roles are so dull. And England can, after all, be pretty gay. I blame our butch Viking heritage. In fact, I thank it.
England: Putting the pink spark back into British politics.
---
My distracted point, pulling it back, is that leadership is the most vital brand we create – and Gordon's lost it.
Doesn't matter that we still think he's a massive politico-financial brain – he seems like a man driven by blind vanity, rather than simple dedication. If he'd been content to serve his country in Number 11, instead of CONSTANTLY pushing to be Tony Blair, we might be remembering him as an economic titan and hero of all our prosperity. Instead, his free markets became rather too free and unregulated as he turned is piercing eye on the house further up the road in Downing Street.
People didn't turn in droves to the BNP last week. The European elections showed that much of the continent mis-trusts the idea of lefty bananacrats, same as us. And here in the UK, people are fed up with the culture of Westminster, giving it up as a lost cause, I think – 33% turn-out, or something? People just didn't vote.
It's not just that, though. People still haven't a strong enough idea of what the hell the European parliament does, for one thing. Where has been the ad campaigns and information on that? Nationally, internationally or locally? We went into our booths at the top of our road and more or less closed our eyes and stuck the pencil in.
But also, it's the fact that Brown is the opposite of Tony Blair, who was a gifted communicator. His skills and his words are always lost behind his gruff personality. Which would have been endearing and respectably honest, had he not insisted so forcefully on being the voice of the UK.
As PM, Brown is in the wrong job. He's creating the wrong brand for Labour and for the UK. He's just not up to the particular job of articulating the fundamentals of leadership – where we're going, how we'll get there and who we are.
And crucially, our idea of who we are is perhaps the most potent force in politics.
In the words of Adrian Chiles, next spring seems like an awful long wait.
Not for Yasmina, of course – she's arrived. She has a new job and a whole new identity.
But for the rest of us? Somehow, I'm sure we as a proud nation will push on and pull together and muddle through until the next series of The apprentice is aired. I'm going to miss Srallan, though – he'll be Lawdallen by next year.
One thing that lastnight's finale demonstrated along the way was borne out by the boss himself on the after-show – brand is what people buy. Yasmina's Coco Electric was basically cute; the chocolates themselves you can get right with an extra couple of days. But who'd know Kate's Choc D'amour were extra scrummy from their pregnancy test type box?
I think Coco Electric should be a club night too, by the way.
The idea of something – the instinctive, emotional response, however small – is what we all reach for on the shelf. That's a brand; what people feel about a product, or a thing. Or you.
And so I can't help feeling, where might this be more relevant to this morning's news than in the jolly world of politics?
---
The world IS politics, of course. How people interact with eachother, how they get along, work together around differences, work around competing outlooks. Everything is politics – how we navigate eachother determines how 'successful' we are. Which I put in quotes there to let you decide what the word means.
So personal 'brand' is pretty vital, huh?
Right. In response, however, I'm personally just thinking of printing up more Momo tees – they're cute. Do yourself a favour – do yourself a logo, I say. Though I'm now thinking of adding a pink lightning spark to mine.
The professional party politician can't do that, however.
..No, I mean they can't – have you seen the design of their leaflets? Shocking.
Which is interesting. The very people who usually feel drawn to step up to public office are usually not creatives. Yet the subtle nuances of expression and emotional awareness are everything to a politician's success.
Ah.
---
BNP.
Thoughts?
'New suit, same old Nazis' was one amusing ad headline for them this week. They say we've got them wrong – they're not racists, they're standing against the systemic racism of the The Liberal Elite, directed against the Indiginous White Population Of Britain.
Which might just be a plea to keep things simple; the English are already German-Nordic-French with a twist of Italian. Invading bastards. We should really give the country back to the Welsh and the Cornish, of course. But we certainly can't incorporate any more ethnic identity into our great collective mongrel brand any more.
Last thing we want to do, for example, is become a massively sea-faring and trading nation, extending our influence and enlarging our outlook to a truly global scale, bringing back prosperity and people alike to our meagre shores and... ah.
I, ah.
But here's the thing to remember with your brand, if you just joined the class – it ain't yours. It's almost like art – you make the marks and the perciever of your work makes the connections. It's in their head. So they can make whatever connections they damn-well please.
So what should be done when people percieve their country to be against them? When their connection with Britain feels increasingly like a disconnection?
It comes down, as I think everything on the political news does today, to leadership. Right now, people are percieving no proper leadership in the UK.
Uh-oh.
---
Well, I say 'uh-oh' to create a dramatic pause, but it's all part of the natural ups and downs of professional political life. Things go stale and we want something fresh.
But, like a teacher in an unruly classroom, the minute the little tykes can smell fear – you're dead.
Once kids – or let's call us voters – get it into their heads that you don't know your arse from your elbow when it comes to authority or direction, your brand is a bad one. You've got to do something to correct their impression of your authority.
Rolling tanks into the shires and squares of this fair isle would be a way to look tough, of course.
It's the I'll Bloody Show You Who's Strong, Yeah tactic of choice for many world leaders. And these guys have often been great with creating brand – cute posters, nice uniforms, consistent brand collateral. Beatings for deviating from the brand book. My kind of marketing department.
We don't kind of do that here. Not really the UK's style. We fawn and bitch, depending on the weather. Which might make the UK sound a bit, well, gay. But I'm all for it – the catfights can sound pretty nasty and will involve a lot of meladrama, but no-one's blood will actually get spilt on the chiffon/leather/ermin and it will be mere moments before someone says: 'BORED. WHO TURNED OFF THE DISCO?' and we're all cheering and fugging again.
I realise this reduction of a particular sexual identity to a kind of colourful character part in the story of our community is not helpful. But's let's face it, the colourful ones are always our favourite ones in the film. The white/straight/thin heroes we cast in the central roles are so dull. And England can, after all, be pretty gay. I blame our butch Viking heritage. In fact, I thank it.
England: Putting the pink spark back into British politics.
---
My distracted point, pulling it back, is that leadership is the most vital brand we create – and Gordon's lost it.
Doesn't matter that we still think he's a massive politico-financial brain – he seems like a man driven by blind vanity, rather than simple dedication. If he'd been content to serve his country in Number 11, instead of CONSTANTLY pushing to be Tony Blair, we might be remembering him as an economic titan and hero of all our prosperity. Instead, his free markets became rather too free and unregulated as he turned is piercing eye on the house further up the road in Downing Street.
People didn't turn in droves to the BNP last week. The European elections showed that much of the continent mis-trusts the idea of lefty bananacrats, same as us. And here in the UK, people are fed up with the culture of Westminster, giving it up as a lost cause, I think – 33% turn-out, or something? People just didn't vote.
It's not just that, though. People still haven't a strong enough idea of what the hell the European parliament does, for one thing. Where has been the ad campaigns and information on that? Nationally, internationally or locally? We went into our booths at the top of our road and more or less closed our eyes and stuck the pencil in.
But also, it's the fact that Brown is the opposite of Tony Blair, who was a gifted communicator. His skills and his words are always lost behind his gruff personality. Which would have been endearing and respectably honest, had he not insisted so forcefully on being the voice of the UK.
As PM, Brown is in the wrong job. He's creating the wrong brand for Labour and for the UK. He's just not up to the particular job of articulating the fundamentals of leadership – where we're going, how we'll get there and who we are.
And crucially, our idea of who we are is perhaps the most potent force in politics.
Monday, June 01, 2009
Orders from the frontier.
Orders from the frontier.
Back. Back in Bomo.
And after a couple of days in the verdant bends and bumps of Cornwall, back in the sunshine; I think I have as much colour from various people's back gardens over this last weekend, as I do from the sunbaked Middle East.
Summer is evidently here. I can feel it with the studio window open. The question is, as I go through my emails and post and phone messages, what will the summer bring?
---
We've managed to see some of the gang since getting back, with afternoon teas and barbecues and the like. Melly and Bobs were down and I made him go through my photos from the Ricoh and tell me how to use it better. But, uncharacteristically, I also suggested we do some work in our own garden, and set-to yesterday, clearing the front driveway of brambles.
I must have sunstroke.
Interestingly though, back from hols and evidently raring to go, I'm wondering where to put all that rare stuff.
After wrapping up so many things before leaving, I've returned to an unusually blank canvas for Momo. Various projects on the go, of course – and I have yet to discover whether there are various disasters on the go, hidden from view – but my agenda is open. Perhaps more open than it's been in years.
Still, it's not nine in the morning, yet.
The main thing on Momo's agenda is, of course, the bleedin' album. And knocking on a few doors on the back of Sophie. The point is, I guess, I may have something I've been hankering for for a long time: some space to direct the business. Chase some work I actually want to do.
But the frontier is a weird place. You have to have a pretty sure idea of your direction when carving roads into virgin land; it's much easier to be told where to go.
I may yet be, before the day's out.
Back. Back in Bomo.
And after a couple of days in the verdant bends and bumps of Cornwall, back in the sunshine; I think I have as much colour from various people's back gardens over this last weekend, as I do from the sunbaked Middle East.
Summer is evidently here. I can feel it with the studio window open. The question is, as I go through my emails and post and phone messages, what will the summer bring?
---
We've managed to see some of the gang since getting back, with afternoon teas and barbecues and the like. Melly and Bobs were down and I made him go through my photos from the Ricoh and tell me how to use it better. But, uncharacteristically, I also suggested we do some work in our own garden, and set-to yesterday, clearing the front driveway of brambles.
I must have sunstroke.
Interestingly though, back from hols and evidently raring to go, I'm wondering where to put all that rare stuff.
After wrapping up so many things before leaving, I've returned to an unusually blank canvas for Momo. Various projects on the go, of course – and I have yet to discover whether there are various disasters on the go, hidden from view – but my agenda is open. Perhaps more open than it's been in years.
Still, it's not nine in the morning, yet.
The main thing on Momo's agenda is, of course, the bleedin' album. And knocking on a few doors on the back of Sophie. The point is, I guess, I may have something I've been hankering for for a long time: some space to direct the business. Chase some work I actually want to do.
But the frontier is a weird place. You have to have a pretty sure idea of your direction when carving roads into virgin land; it's much easier to be told where to go.
I may yet be, before the day's out.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Sinbad and the Muscateers.
Sinbad and the Muscateers.
Ever read Treasure Island?
If you like a good yarr-n, this is the buccaneer of them – Bobby Louis Stevenson's efficient masterpiece of pirate duplicity and buried dubloons. It's fab.
Of course, the date palms I must confess to have been lazing under while reading it are half a world away from young Jim Hawkins' Carrabean adventure. More than half, if you're counting cultures and centuries. But it's still a ripping good tale for a holiday read, I must say.
Not that we've been on holiday, you understand. We've been fortifying friends in foreign climes with the hearty encouragement of contact with home. A kind of solemn missionary trip if you will. Until this evening after dinner anyway, when we fly back to the UK and I have to give up the mango guzzling and daytime snoozing and casual afternoon G&Ts.
>takes a clinkly sip<
---
Now, if you like lands of adventure and swashbuckling tales of history, let's face it – you really ought to be at least intrigued by the Middle East. It is, in a way, one enormous, exotic yarn – repleat with fables and heros and ancient peoples and lost treasures and the kinds of utterly serious human struggles we might only be able to comprehend in colourful, posterised, simplified storytelling.
From the Atlantic coast to the silk routes into China, all the great civilisations of formative history played out their evolving naratives somewhere here. And their various intertwining plots spider across the world political map today.
The little island of Bahrain is certainly a real crossroads of many routes and a crucible of many stories. People find themselves here for all manner of reasons, like so many islands. But it can feel a little unreal, like an airport lounge.
The mix of ex-patriate business life – with the comings and goings of G&T-clinking westerners posted to the regional arms of big financial businesses – and local Islamic life – where Bahrainis and Saudis retain an apparently unchanging and graphically different social outlook – is the macro juxtaposition here and it makes for a lot of fuzzy logic. Things work, even though they sound like they shouldn't, and even though they may not work with planned efficiency.
But both of these worlds can independently seem suspended somehow, accademic, against the realities of heat and work and place.
A mosque tract can read as smartly optimistic and ordered, as neat and tidy, as a business brochure. Both paint a positive picture of humans in a can-do world, placed into their rightful setting where everything makes sense and we all operate in predictably purposeful ways.
And in the Gulf in particular – where international business is really seated for the Arab world – the glossy stock imagery that these two outlooks market with seem to come very smoothly together.
---
It does work. The human level wins out and makes things work; Saudis stream over the Causeway to watch movies in the cinemas and to go to bars, and westerners learn a bit of respect and perhaps glimpse another way of life beyond the office. And everyone gets to trade.
It's all largely thanks to the largely friendly, easy-going approach of the Bahrainis – the sons and daughters of traders and pearl divers.
Yet, the country that's struck me as the most realistically positive on this trip to the GCC is one that sounds the most evocative – the land of Sinbad himself, Oman.
---
I won't give the details of the Chedi Hotel in Muscat. Suffice to say, it is the most decadent stay I've ever found myself having and the most creative deal I think Julian could posibly have blagged for us to get away with enjoying. I was sure they began to suspect we shouldn't have been there by day three.
It's a luxury oasis that is as unrealistic a cocoon from ordinary life as you could wish for on a break. And, like all international resorts, almost totally unreflective of it's geographical location. Could have been anywhere.
But it wasn't anywhere. It was in Muscat. And the glimpse we got of the city, walking through the spicy, aromatic heat of the forty-two-degree evening waterfront or cruising along the sweeping efficiency of its mountain roads out of town, we found ourselves talking to elegant, friendly people who seemed charged with identity and purpose, even in the humid blast of southern Arabia.
It's largely thanks to Sultan Qaboos ibn Sa'id, a dashing figure in his youth who took over the country the year I was born and immediately rebranded Oman to a more open and perhaps poetic sense of identity; building roads, instigating greater trade and tourism, inculcating real pride in his people. He reigns still. And Omanis seem to act like real sons of Sinbad – dashing, in their crisp, tailored, white thobes and neat, patterned, circular kuma hats. Muslims, but with a sense of some extra adventure about them.
We joked about the possible collective noun for people living in Muscat; sea port stretching along the coast against the mountains, overlooking the vital straights into the rest of the Gulf. And they really are known as Muscateers.
I can only say this as I finish my lazy gin and tonic and prepare to leave: if Oman isn't currently on your map, mark it on there now. From my flying visit I feel sure it is a land of many buried treasures.
Ever read Treasure Island?
If you like a good yarr-n, this is the buccaneer of them – Bobby Louis Stevenson's efficient masterpiece of pirate duplicity and buried dubloons. It's fab.
Of course, the date palms I must confess to have been lazing under while reading it are half a world away from young Jim Hawkins' Carrabean adventure. More than half, if you're counting cultures and centuries. But it's still a ripping good tale for a holiday read, I must say.
Not that we've been on holiday, you understand. We've been fortifying friends in foreign climes with the hearty encouragement of contact with home. A kind of solemn missionary trip if you will. Until this evening after dinner anyway, when we fly back to the UK and I have to give up the mango guzzling and daytime snoozing and casual afternoon G&Ts.
>takes a clinkly sip<
---
Now, if you like lands of adventure and swashbuckling tales of history, let's face it – you really ought to be at least intrigued by the Middle East. It is, in a way, one enormous, exotic yarn – repleat with fables and heros and ancient peoples and lost treasures and the kinds of utterly serious human struggles we might only be able to comprehend in colourful, posterised, simplified storytelling.
From the Atlantic coast to the silk routes into China, all the great civilisations of formative history played out their evolving naratives somewhere here. And their various intertwining plots spider across the world political map today.
The little island of Bahrain is certainly a real crossroads of many routes and a crucible of many stories. People find themselves here for all manner of reasons, like so many islands. But it can feel a little unreal, like an airport lounge.
The mix of ex-patriate business life – with the comings and goings of G&T-clinking westerners posted to the regional arms of big financial businesses – and local Islamic life – where Bahrainis and Saudis retain an apparently unchanging and graphically different social outlook – is the macro juxtaposition here and it makes for a lot of fuzzy logic. Things work, even though they sound like they shouldn't, and even though they may not work with planned efficiency.
But both of these worlds can independently seem suspended somehow, accademic, against the realities of heat and work and place.
A mosque tract can read as smartly optimistic and ordered, as neat and tidy, as a business brochure. Both paint a positive picture of humans in a can-do world, placed into their rightful setting where everything makes sense and we all operate in predictably purposeful ways.
And in the Gulf in particular – where international business is really seated for the Arab world – the glossy stock imagery that these two outlooks market with seem to come very smoothly together.
---
It does work. The human level wins out and makes things work; Saudis stream over the Causeway to watch movies in the cinemas and to go to bars, and westerners learn a bit of respect and perhaps glimpse another way of life beyond the office. And everyone gets to trade.
It's all largely thanks to the largely friendly, easy-going approach of the Bahrainis – the sons and daughters of traders and pearl divers.
Yet, the country that's struck me as the most realistically positive on this trip to the GCC is one that sounds the most evocative – the land of Sinbad himself, Oman.
---
I won't give the details of the Chedi Hotel in Muscat. Suffice to say, it is the most decadent stay I've ever found myself having and the most creative deal I think Julian could posibly have blagged for us to get away with enjoying. I was sure they began to suspect we shouldn't have been there by day three.
It's a luxury oasis that is as unrealistic a cocoon from ordinary life as you could wish for on a break. And, like all international resorts, almost totally unreflective of it's geographical location. Could have been anywhere.
But it wasn't anywhere. It was in Muscat. And the glimpse we got of the city, walking through the spicy, aromatic heat of the forty-two-degree evening waterfront or cruising along the sweeping efficiency of its mountain roads out of town, we found ourselves talking to elegant, friendly people who seemed charged with identity and purpose, even in the humid blast of southern Arabia.
It's largely thanks to Sultan Qaboos ibn Sa'id, a dashing figure in his youth who took over the country the year I was born and immediately rebranded Oman to a more open and perhaps poetic sense of identity; building roads, instigating greater trade and tourism, inculcating real pride in his people. He reigns still. And Omanis seem to act like real sons of Sinbad – dashing, in their crisp, tailored, white thobes and neat, patterned, circular kuma hats. Muslims, but with a sense of some extra adventure about them.
We joked about the possible collective noun for people living in Muscat; sea port stretching along the coast against the mountains, overlooking the vital straights into the rest of the Gulf. And they really are known as Muscateers.
I can only say this as I finish my lazy gin and tonic and prepare to leave: if Oman isn't currently on your map, mark it on there now. From my flying visit I feel sure it is a land of many buried treasures.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Archepedalo.
Archepedalo.
If there's one thing we can attest to, it's that Bahrain is not for the pedestrian.
This isn't news. Most emerging cities in the Middle East are built on a very twentieth century principle, and for a blindingly obvious and unassailable reason – the car and oil. Duh.
To underscore it, I'll say simply that when I filled up our modestly-powered runabout just before we left our windy-wet shores, it cost me fifty quid. Julian mentioned casually as we were cruising through the shifting shining panorama of Manama yesterday that he'd just filled his umpteen-litre gas guzzler for less than a tenner.
So pavements lead nowhere, buses are a kind of parked billboard system and people in coffee shops in the more exclusive island developments have no concept of where to find a number for a taxi here.
---
We do this everywhere we go. We wander instinctively and end up always at some point in some nameless back road with locals leaning in doorways casually eyeing the purposeful and conspicuously English-looking couple striding confidently towards the iron smelting plant/canal/industrial car park. But we feel we've seen the real wherever as a result. The unromantic, boring, foot-wearing, passing-pity-inducing real wherever.
But, there's nothing like treading out the real footprint of a place. Which I do largely mean. Now that I've made it back and had a shower.
Given that our trip out here is more of a visit to chums than a dreamy holiday, we're pretty happy to wander between places with no real itinerary. Although it's a bitter irony to Jules that he's landed a lot of all-hours appointments with work the very moment his chums arrive to see him, having had rather more space to be sociable up until now.
Still, work is work and Bahrain is intriguing, whoever we're with.
Plus his 'work' is directing photo shoots of F16s, Gazelle helicopters and the King's eye-wateringly luxurious personal 747s, so I'm not sure his feelings are single-mindedly missing our company. Jammy swine.
---
What we can also attest to after today is that Dilmun was a trading nation for some three thousand years, its paraditical identity surviving the influence of pushy investors no less significant than the Assyrians, the Babsters and the Messy-potamers, until self promotion monster Alex 'the just great, y'know' rebranded them to Tylos, about three hundred years before Christ. And he didn't even go there. Those Greek egotists. Bet he'd had his teeth done.
Anyway, modern Bahrain owes a very great deal to the black gold discovered only eighty-odd years ago here. And to the shadow of the great Arab homeland looming behind it. But despite the now-physical connection to a giant desert land with no cinemas or alchohol, thousands of weekend visitors from Saudi stream over the causway because of its decidedly laid-back approach to its Islamic identity.
As a result, the country has become a centre of international business in the region and some 40% of Bahrain's population is ex-patriate. So bars and cinemas and Innocent smoothies in local supermarkets are all a normal part of life here. Just like the motor car. Plus the American fifth fleet is based here, so Blackhawks shuttle to and fro along the shimmering coast every day. No idea what they cost to run. Perhaps cheap enough for anyone to rent one.
But the cheapest way to get around would have to be one of the most practical too, and one suggested in an unintentional malapropal moment by Caroline.
"Bahrain is an archepedalo, isn't it?" she said, when we arrived.
"That's right, " I nodded knowingly, "everyone wisely shuttles between the islands by self-powered pleasure boats."
Having found ourselves whisked off to the water's edge outside Julian's flat, the night we arrived, bobbing around in the middle of the glass-flat lagoon being assailed by flying fish a mere hour after landing in the balmy darkness, I can attest to the sense of adopting padalos or kayaks as a means of getting around here.
It took us a brisk 25mins to cross to the neighbouring island for a Costa Americano this morning, striding through the seering heat and brickdust of a building site residence; it took us a casual five minutes to cross the water to it at drifting speed that first night.
Not sure anyone would listen to us, however. Think if we approached the security men on the gates at Tila island with kayaks and said: "You chaps should really TRY these babies..." they would look no less incredulous than when we asked them if they could point us to the nearest public transport.
My feet hurt.
If there's one thing we can attest to, it's that Bahrain is not for the pedestrian.
This isn't news. Most emerging cities in the Middle East are built on a very twentieth century principle, and for a blindingly obvious and unassailable reason – the car and oil. Duh.
To underscore it, I'll say simply that when I filled up our modestly-powered runabout just before we left our windy-wet shores, it cost me fifty quid. Julian mentioned casually as we were cruising through the shifting shining panorama of Manama yesterday that he'd just filled his umpteen-litre gas guzzler for less than a tenner.
So pavements lead nowhere, buses are a kind of parked billboard system and people in coffee shops in the more exclusive island developments have no concept of where to find a number for a taxi here.
---
We do this everywhere we go. We wander instinctively and end up always at some point in some nameless back road with locals leaning in doorways casually eyeing the purposeful and conspicuously English-looking couple striding confidently towards the iron smelting plant/canal/industrial car park. But we feel we've seen the real wherever as a result. The unromantic, boring, foot-wearing, passing-pity-inducing real wherever.
But, there's nothing like treading out the real footprint of a place. Which I do largely mean. Now that I've made it back and had a shower.
Given that our trip out here is more of a visit to chums than a dreamy holiday, we're pretty happy to wander between places with no real itinerary. Although it's a bitter irony to Jules that he's landed a lot of all-hours appointments with work the very moment his chums arrive to see him, having had rather more space to be sociable up until now.
Still, work is work and Bahrain is intriguing, whoever we're with.
Plus his 'work' is directing photo shoots of F16s, Gazelle helicopters and the King's eye-wateringly luxurious personal 747s, so I'm not sure his feelings are single-mindedly missing our company. Jammy swine.
---
What we can also attest to after today is that Dilmun was a trading nation for some three thousand years, its paraditical identity surviving the influence of pushy investors no less significant than the Assyrians, the Babsters and the Messy-potamers, until self promotion monster Alex 'the just great, y'know' rebranded them to Tylos, about three hundred years before Christ. And he didn't even go there. Those Greek egotists. Bet he'd had his teeth done.
Anyway, modern Bahrain owes a very great deal to the black gold discovered only eighty-odd years ago here. And to the shadow of the great Arab homeland looming behind it. But despite the now-physical connection to a giant desert land with no cinemas or alchohol, thousands of weekend visitors from Saudi stream over the causway because of its decidedly laid-back approach to its Islamic identity.
As a result, the country has become a centre of international business in the region and some 40% of Bahrain's population is ex-patriate. So bars and cinemas and Innocent smoothies in local supermarkets are all a normal part of life here. Just like the motor car. Plus the American fifth fleet is based here, so Blackhawks shuttle to and fro along the shimmering coast every day. No idea what they cost to run. Perhaps cheap enough for anyone to rent one.
But the cheapest way to get around would have to be one of the most practical too, and one suggested in an unintentional malapropal moment by Caroline.
"Bahrain is an archepedalo, isn't it?" she said, when we arrived.
"That's right, " I nodded knowingly, "everyone wisely shuttles between the islands by self-powered pleasure boats."
Having found ourselves whisked off to the water's edge outside Julian's flat, the night we arrived, bobbing around in the middle of the glass-flat lagoon being assailed by flying fish a mere hour after landing in the balmy darkness, I can attest to the sense of adopting padalos or kayaks as a means of getting around here.
It took us a brisk 25mins to cross to the neighbouring island for a Costa Americano this morning, striding through the seering heat and brickdust of a building site residence; it took us a casual five minutes to cross the water to it at drifting speed that first night.
Not sure anyone would listen to us, however. Think if we approached the security men on the gates at Tila island with kayaks and said: "You chaps should really TRY these babies..." they would look no less incredulous than when we asked them if they could point us to the nearest public transport.
My feet hurt.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Arse and soul.
Arse and soul.
If you spend any of your time mucking about with matters creative, even as a self-confessed amateur, enthusiast or garden shed hobbyist, you will sooner or later be tempted by the demon of derision.
Taste is a matter of taste. But if you consider yourself to have it, you will also be very aware of who doesn't.
As you develop any kind of confidence at your craft – by week three of your pottery class, for example – you will begin to feel an instinct to voice the odd confident remark. The remarks of judgement. Things like: "That pot's crap, Dave. What were you thinking, you idiot. Looks like a child did it." And so forth. You've been there.
And so have I. I have to rein in this veritable beast of momentary certainty every day. I can't helping looking at, well, everything, and trying not to despair that I wasn't consulted. It's such a burden being a creative sometimes, it is.
Of course, it's one thing to rediscover disbelief and incredulity at the Eurovision song contest each year, or to wonder how no-one in this week's losing Apprentice team couldn't see how risibly poor the layout of their posters was. The maddening propensity of local British business to reach for the typeface Brush Script when designing a shop front is something that gives me indegestion and migrane from grinding my teeth… but most people are largely unaffected by these things. Beyond the scope of their respective creative jobs, these items are largely – dare I say it? – cosmetic.
But if there's one thing that to me rather matters, one creative medium we should all be pressuring our councils and our friends who are developers and our blummen' MPs more about, if I had to sacrifice my Lyn Truss Mega-Wedge-Tip Emergency Apostrophe Maker for one truly worthy creative critical cause... it's archetecture. Buildings. Your very environment.
For, the canvas of the archetect is the rest of your chuffing life, mate.
We have to LIVE with the epic lack of wellbeing created by most of the business compromises dotting our high street. Walk past them, around them, under them – dear Lord, into them – every day of our lives. Their massive brooding presence creates just that – presence in our outlook. Casting shadows or light. Making our journey to here and there easy or hard, uplifting or depressing.
Buildings won't go away. You're not allowed to just blow them up. I've asked.
And so it is in this high-minded spirit of condecending frustration, utterly un-schooled or qualified but bloody right, obviously, that I share this link with you. I am not proud that this will take you to a page of the Daily Mail. I will attempt to apologise for this another time. But look at the pictures and weep. If your soul can stand it:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1180949/From-bargain-bin-store-bingo-hall-sad-fate-Odeon-popcorn-palaces.html
The vein in my head is throbbing again, dear.
I think it means that another tiny but important part of me has died.
If you spend any of your time mucking about with matters creative, even as a self-confessed amateur, enthusiast or garden shed hobbyist, you will sooner or later be tempted by the demon of derision.
Taste is a matter of taste. But if you consider yourself to have it, you will also be very aware of who doesn't.
As you develop any kind of confidence at your craft – by week three of your pottery class, for example – you will begin to feel an instinct to voice the odd confident remark. The remarks of judgement. Things like: "That pot's crap, Dave. What were you thinking, you idiot. Looks like a child did it." And so forth. You've been there.
And so have I. I have to rein in this veritable beast of momentary certainty every day. I can't helping looking at, well, everything, and trying not to despair that I wasn't consulted. It's such a burden being a creative sometimes, it is.
Of course, it's one thing to rediscover disbelief and incredulity at the Eurovision song contest each year, or to wonder how no-one in this week's losing Apprentice team couldn't see how risibly poor the layout of their posters was. The maddening propensity of local British business to reach for the typeface Brush Script when designing a shop front is something that gives me indegestion and migrane from grinding my teeth… but most people are largely unaffected by these things. Beyond the scope of their respective creative jobs, these items are largely – dare I say it? – cosmetic.
But if there's one thing that to me rather matters, one creative medium we should all be pressuring our councils and our friends who are developers and our blummen' MPs more about, if I had to sacrifice my Lyn Truss Mega-Wedge-Tip Emergency Apostrophe Maker for one truly worthy creative critical cause... it's archetecture. Buildings. Your very environment.
For, the canvas of the archetect is the rest of your chuffing life, mate.
We have to LIVE with the epic lack of wellbeing created by most of the business compromises dotting our high street. Walk past them, around them, under them – dear Lord, into them – every day of our lives. Their massive brooding presence creates just that – presence in our outlook. Casting shadows or light. Making our journey to here and there easy or hard, uplifting or depressing.
Buildings won't go away. You're not allowed to just blow them up. I've asked.
And so it is in this high-minded spirit of condecending frustration, utterly un-schooled or qualified but bloody right, obviously, that I share this link with you. I am not proud that this will take you to a page of the Daily Mail. I will attempt to apologise for this another time. But look at the pictures and weep. If your soul can stand it:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1180949/From-bargain-bin-store-bingo-hall-sad-fate-Odeon-popcorn-palaces.html
The vein in my head is throbbing again, dear.
I think it means that another tiny but important part of me has died.
Friday, May 08, 2009
No jokes. Seriously good.
No jokes. Seriously good.
So, I won't labour the point. All you need to know is... it was worth the wait. The long wait. It was very much worth it.
At one point, half way through, I thought to myself: "Cripes, it's actually even better than I hoped it could be."
Really. Ish.
Ish?
Well, the impact in the cinema is a mighty wallop.Most pleasingly, Mr Abrams makes a point of frequently teaching you his new language for Star Trek – that it is a new one. The way he'll scrape a camera along a spaceship or zoom in on some battered shuttle skid or a let the kitchen spot lights all over the bridge of the Enterprise bleed atmospherically all over the lens – he's saying very pointedly: "This is visceral, mate, innit?"
Lots of nice touches everywhere. Lots of details to bring it to life and to nod to classic Trek. Lots of entertaining amusing things and entertaining exploding things and a whole heck of a lot of trying to make it feel more like Star Wars. And no one lets down the cast. Even Scotty's accent.
I cheered at Bones. He was the star of the characters for me. But Spock's wig didn't detract in the end and Kirk is completely likeable as a lead; not annoyingly pretty. Though he is.
Of course, the end is usually a let down from the beginning. It all got a little too neatly wrapped up and Getting The Gang Together – almost too hasty an edit, to ensure it was punchy. And they did a clever amount of stuff in two hours. But it really could have been an extra ten or even twenty minutes long and left a couple more thoughtful emotional transitions in it. In the cold light of day, forced to criticise it, I'd say that. Simply because it was so chuffing GOOD. It's own bench mark was very high.
Of course, it's still Star Trek. It's brilliant fun. But does the Star Trek world still make sense now? Not 100% sure. ..But, like, who cares?
The way they literally 're-boot' things is jolly clever for all the writers, but it might grate with fans once they calm down. But it makes sense.
And my final actual criticism – perhaps my only one – is the score. Very Saturday morning picture show. And as romantic as that description sounds, the music is simply unsubtle. Not nearly as subtle as the film. It lacks emotional nuance – and there are no beautiful set themes. It's bordering on the poor, in the context of this outstanding film.
James Horner's work for the second two Trek movies, back in the day, is the very best of cinematic space music – vast, but intimate. Poised. Downright moving in places, without being obvious or hokey.
I feel a heel saying it, but Michael Giacchino's score is emotionally flat. Which is a great shame, as his work on Lost is classy stuff – stylistically distinctive and a perfect fit for the show. This did all the competent orchestral stuff but was wallpaper. Sorry, Mike – JJ might have over-directed you there.
The piece of music they used on the third outstanding trailer was less intricate than Horner's work but as an emotional motif that simply built up, it was great – but it didn't seem to appear in the film. It was very direct emotionally and would have been a good take-home musical connection.
But for example, when we saw the Enterprise for the first time, there was no romance, no mystery, no otherworldlyness, no... wonder. Just wallop. Just Ooh Isn't It Dramatic This Big Spaceship stuff. Music I've forgotten.
So, a gripe. But only because the film sets such a high standard.
Can't wait to go see it again, obviously.
So, I won't labour the point. All you need to know is... it was worth the wait. The long wait. It was very much worth it.
At one point, half way through, I thought to myself: "Cripes, it's actually even better than I hoped it could be."
Really. Ish.
Ish?
Well, the impact in the cinema is a mighty wallop.Most pleasingly, Mr Abrams makes a point of frequently teaching you his new language for Star Trek – that it is a new one. The way he'll scrape a camera along a spaceship or zoom in on some battered shuttle skid or a let the kitchen spot lights all over the bridge of the Enterprise bleed atmospherically all over the lens – he's saying very pointedly: "This is visceral, mate, innit?"
Lots of nice touches everywhere. Lots of details to bring it to life and to nod to classic Trek. Lots of entertaining amusing things and entertaining exploding things and a whole heck of a lot of trying to make it feel more like Star Wars. And no one lets down the cast. Even Scotty's accent.
I cheered at Bones. He was the star of the characters for me. But Spock's wig didn't detract in the end and Kirk is completely likeable as a lead; not annoyingly pretty. Though he is.
Of course, the end is usually a let down from the beginning. It all got a little too neatly wrapped up and Getting The Gang Together – almost too hasty an edit, to ensure it was punchy. And they did a clever amount of stuff in two hours. But it really could have been an extra ten or even twenty minutes long and left a couple more thoughtful emotional transitions in it. In the cold light of day, forced to criticise it, I'd say that. Simply because it was so chuffing GOOD. It's own bench mark was very high.
Of course, it's still Star Trek. It's brilliant fun. But does the Star Trek world still make sense now? Not 100% sure. ..But, like, who cares?
The way they literally 're-boot' things is jolly clever for all the writers, but it might grate with fans once they calm down. But it makes sense.
And my final actual criticism – perhaps my only one – is the score. Very Saturday morning picture show. And as romantic as that description sounds, the music is simply unsubtle. Not nearly as subtle as the film. It lacks emotional nuance – and there are no beautiful set themes. It's bordering on the poor, in the context of this outstanding film.
James Horner's work for the second two Trek movies, back in the day, is the very best of cinematic space music – vast, but intimate. Poised. Downright moving in places, without being obvious or hokey.
I feel a heel saying it, but Michael Giacchino's score is emotionally flat. Which is a great shame, as his work on Lost is classy stuff – stylistically distinctive and a perfect fit for the show. This did all the competent orchestral stuff but was wallpaper. Sorry, Mike – JJ might have over-directed you there.
The piece of music they used on the third outstanding trailer was less intricate than Horner's work but as an emotional motif that simply built up, it was great – but it didn't seem to appear in the film. It was very direct emotionally and would have been a good take-home musical connection.
But for example, when we saw the Enterprise for the first time, there was no romance, no mystery, no otherworldlyness, no... wonder. Just wallop. Just Ooh Isn't It Dramatic This Big Spaceship stuff. Music I've forgotten.
So, a gripe. But only because the film sets such a high standard.
Can't wait to go see it again, obviously.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Space and time.
Space and time.
So here's a genuine question. Why does time slow down when you exercise?
I don't just mean, why does an hour in the gym seem like a lifetime? I mean, why does your – or at least my – perception of time literally, well, slow down?
Know how I know?
Because I know that iPods don't run down amusingly like old Walkmans.
It's something I've actually noticed many times after doing a circuits class; you get to the car, purple and dizzy, trying not to clutch your chest or fall over before you close the door, the track on the CD picks up where it left off and... it's playing slower. Except, it can't be – it's a CD. Isn't it?
Lastnight, this phenomewhatsit struck home as I limped home from a run. Mad, flab-chap that I am. The tunes on the iPod were beginning to run so much slower in tempo I could almost drive a bus between the BPM. ..BUT IT'S A CHUFFING iPOD!
How much gravity am I displacing when I try to move my bulk? Am I bending Mr Einstein's continuum that much with a bit of tummy chub?
---
Of course, if I'm going to get all exercised about the space/time wotnot today, it's for a good reason. For today is... T-day.
Trek day.
..STARTREKDAY!
At last. And I should be more excited than my capitals and exclaimation mark imply I am. And I am, obviously; I'm expecting the world from this flick. But when I shook the To Do list earlier in the week, lots of annoying little bits fell out all over the desk. And I'm trying to clear them up before going boldly out.
..Oh dear. You see, that's how it starts. One little Trek slip; one little reference to some part of this brand's gigantic cannon of cultural references. And before you know it – you're falling back on some of the most tiresome jokes in newspaper review history. Shan't be doing that.
Not until tomorrow, when I write my review, anyway – when we shall see if the franchise re-boot really is set to stun.
I.. I need a sit down.
So here's a genuine question. Why does time slow down when you exercise?
I don't just mean, why does an hour in the gym seem like a lifetime? I mean, why does your – or at least my – perception of time literally, well, slow down?
Know how I know?
Because I know that iPods don't run down amusingly like old Walkmans.
It's something I've actually noticed many times after doing a circuits class; you get to the car, purple and dizzy, trying not to clutch your chest or fall over before you close the door, the track on the CD picks up where it left off and... it's playing slower. Except, it can't be – it's a CD. Isn't it?
Lastnight, this phenomewhatsit struck home as I limped home from a run. Mad, flab-chap that I am. The tunes on the iPod were beginning to run so much slower in tempo I could almost drive a bus between the BPM. ..BUT IT'S A CHUFFING iPOD!
How much gravity am I displacing when I try to move my bulk? Am I bending Mr Einstein's continuum that much with a bit of tummy chub?
---
Of course, if I'm going to get all exercised about the space/time wotnot today, it's for a good reason. For today is... T-day.
Trek day.
..STARTREKDAY!
At last. And I should be more excited than my capitals and exclaimation mark imply I am. And I am, obviously; I'm expecting the world from this flick. But when I shook the To Do list earlier in the week, lots of annoying little bits fell out all over the desk. And I'm trying to clear them up before going boldly out.
..Oh dear. You see, that's how it starts. One little Trek slip; one little reference to some part of this brand's gigantic cannon of cultural references. And before you know it – you're falling back on some of the most tiresome jokes in newspaper review history. Shan't be doing that.
Not until tomorrow, when I write my review, anyway – when we shall see if the franchise re-boot really is set to stun.
I.. I need a sit down.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Souk du jour.
Souk du jour.
Well, I may be sitting here listening to some marvelously noodley Bach harpsichord concertos, but as this short working week begins I should probably be listening to something Moroccan – for our quirky little TV show, Sophie in the souk, is now being trailed by the Travel Channel and is confirmed as being aired on Monday nights at 9pm, from the 18th May.
And to celebrate, you can visit the Momo:tempo website and hear a whole selection of tunes from the score.
That's right – NEW MUSIC FROM MOMO! You might want to sit down.
http://www.momotempo.co.uk
And, I noted too, a reasonably prime-time slot for the show. I've not spoken with Ben yet, but the Travel Channel people apparently love it. Huge props to Ben for making something with such a strong identity for such a stunt budget – it's been great fun to be a little part of.
On the Promo pages over there, there's a little news item about it all which includes a link to the TC's site where you can check out some trails and info.
---
Of course, there's a reality check for the almost single handful of you who care. Yeah. I know.
Sorry.
As a result of all these durbeck pop larks and shimmy-shingling, I've not been working on The Golden Age for, well, ages.
I KNOW I KNOW already. I'm back on it this week. Promise. In fact, we're working to a deadline of the end of June for it. Really. Schedule's in front of me.
In the mean time, if you're new to Momo:tempo, there is a new mix of Momo:radio on the Demo pages over there, which is a jolly little introduction to what it/we/I does/do, and there's also the promotional tunes from the album currently on the Electro pages. Oh it's all such good fun – go see for yourself.
..Go on, don't just be polite. Pop the kettle on, make some fresh mint tea, turn up your computer speakers, get your bendir out and join in the Yey-Heys.
Shoukran et merci.
Well, I may be sitting here listening to some marvelously noodley Bach harpsichord concertos, but as this short working week begins I should probably be listening to something Moroccan – for our quirky little TV show, Sophie in the souk, is now being trailed by the Travel Channel and is confirmed as being aired on Monday nights at 9pm, from the 18th May.
And to celebrate, you can visit the Momo:tempo website and hear a whole selection of tunes from the score.
That's right – NEW MUSIC FROM MOMO! You might want to sit down.
http://www.momotempo.co.uk
And, I noted too, a reasonably prime-time slot for the show. I've not spoken with Ben yet, but the Travel Channel people apparently love it. Huge props to Ben for making something with such a strong identity for such a stunt budget – it's been great fun to be a little part of.
On the Promo pages over there, there's a little news item about it all which includes a link to the TC's site where you can check out some trails and info.
---
Of course, there's a reality check for the almost single handful of you who care. Yeah. I know.
Sorry.
As a result of all these durbeck pop larks and shimmy-shingling, I've not been working on The Golden Age for, well, ages.
I KNOW I KNOW already. I'm back on it this week. Promise. In fact, we're working to a deadline of the end of June for it. Really. Schedule's in front of me.
In the mean time, if you're new to Momo:tempo, there is a new mix of Momo:radio on the Demo pages over there, which is a jolly little introduction to what it/we/I does/do, and there's also the promotional tunes from the album currently on the Electro pages. Oh it's all such good fun – go see for yourself.
..Go on, don't just be polite. Pop the kettle on, make some fresh mint tea, turn up your computer speakers, get your bendir out and join in the Yey-Heys.
Shoukran et merci.
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