woobiquity

Next week on The Episodics...

Consider your self. You know, ‘you’, however you choose to define that. Were you there, somewhere, in the past? Will you still be there in the future? What’s your story? Or don’t you give a damn?

These are questions posed in an essay by British philosopher Galen Strawson. ‘Against Narrativity’ first appeared three years ago, but it came up again in an interview with the novelist Vendela Vida, so I read it. You can too if you like.

Strawson says the fashionable view that people can/should/will define who they are by their life stories is wrong, or at least sometimes wrong. He sides instead with the episodics, or people who believe stories about their lives (“I was born on a ship, abandoned by my Eastern European parents, adopted by elderly American passengers, subjected to suburban hell, then rebelled by making weird art and wearing hats made from boiled sheep,” just as one example) are suspect, frequently untrue and may, in fact, be about someone else entirely.

Or I think that’s what he says. Much of the essay is, in Strawson’s own words, ‘luminously unclear’ (what a nice phrase; looking at it is like staring at the sun). My first impression was that if Strawson would get over himself and embrace storytelling his writing might be easier to follow.

But I would say that. And so, it seems, would Susan Sontag, whose posthumous defense of the novel (life stories told artfully) appeared in the Guardian last week. The piece might well have been called ‘For Narrativity’. Except that really Sontag’s last stand was a protest – against television.

“The so-called stories that we are told on television satisfy our appetite for anecdote and offer us mutually canceling models of understanding. (This is reinforced by the practice of punctuating television narratives with advertising.) They implicitly affirm the idea that all information is potentially relevant (or ‘interesting’), that all stories are endless – or if they do stop, it is not because they have come to an end but, rather, because they have been upstaged by a fresher or more lurid or eccentric story.”

Take that, epidosics! And when you put it like that, aren’t we all episodics. Shouldn’t we all be ashamed. Don’t we need the novelist to enlighten us with the bigger picture. Erm, maybe. But Sontag didn’t live long enough to see the TV version of This American Life. Stories with depth – on the so-called boob tube. Though I suppose she might have caught an episode or two of Project Runway. I fold.

'Parking Space', 2006

Larry ‘Bud’ Melman died this week. Or rather the actor who played him did. Melman was the odd creation of late night talk show host David Letterman. A lisping urchin in horn-rimmed glasses with no real message beyond a universal oddness, he was a character that only television could have given us.

The brief CNN.com obiturary quoted a newswire tribute from Letterman then ended with this: “There will be no funeral service for [Melman], who left no survivors.”

There’s a one-sentence short story for you. But isn’t its deeper truth more episodic? Gather ye rosebuds while ye may? I don’t know. My head hurts. I wonder what’s showing on Channel 4.

'Why do you want to write poetry?'

The Times (London) recently republished a grouchy, faintly misogynistic old essay by WH Auden, who would be 100 now if not dead. It said something nice, I thought, about the nature of poetry as opposed to, say, the words that appear on most blogs.

'A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. Whether this love is a sign of his poetic gift or the gift itself – for falling in love is given not chosen – I don't know, but it is certainly the sign by which one recognises whether a young man is potentially a poet or not.

'"Why do you want to write poetry?" If the young man answers: "I have important things I want to say," then he is not a poet. If he answers: "I like hanging around words listening to what they say," then maybe he is going to be a poet.'

"My they were a serious bunch with big ideas. And only in their 20s!" the consultant music therapist mused as we made our way through the Wren splendor and mock gas lighting of the Greenwich heritage site after an Auden birthday concert. Besides the music and youthful hairdos, we'd heard an odd and evocative lecture about the pacifist poet's collaboration with Britten at war-time, when they wanted to make words and music that would do injustice justice. With a few winking references to the poet's sex life thrown in for shock value (we were in a church).

O trumpets that unguarded children blow
About the fortress of their inner foe.

O wear your tribulation like a rose.

– Hymn to St. Cecilia, first performed on St Cecilia's Day 1942. (Sounds much better sung.)

PS – I'm told we're meant to be boycotting Murdoch outlets (whether because they're vile or mostly rubbish, I forget). So if you do click on the link above don't look at any of the ads, ok?

PPS – The writer does not, in any way, insinuate that he is a poet.

The Hunt for Red (Phoneboxes)

Cancel your summer holiday on the Italian riviera. Consider instead a design-lovers' scavenger hunt right here in Blighty.

The object? Red phone boxes. Not the beloved red phone boxes of the Miss Marple era, however, but the lesser known, far sleeker and now nearly extinct 1960s version, the K8. Before the director of the Twentieth Century Society made a Radio 2 plea on behalf of the K8 last week, BT only knew of 12 remaining in the country (out of an original 11,000). Listeners boosted the count to 18, with a number of other as yet unconfirmed 'sightings'. The campaign continues.

So why not make a game of it? (What not to do upon finding a K8 phone box...?) In fact, why not make a whole holiday of it? Just be aware that to raise your odds you may need to venture into some of Britain's less scenic destinations. (Four of the known 12 were in Swindon.)

In which case you might prefer to short-circuit the hunt and guarantee your own sightings by renting a few strategically placed K8s from these people.

(And cheers, Sarah, for the tip.)

Big Brother is a cookie monster

I’d only wanted to know the name of the canned, pre-cooked, perfectly round hams that used to be ubiquitous on Sunday lunch tables in North Carolina back in the 70s and 80s. What I got instead was a futuristic fright.

First the ham. It was called a Hostess Ham, and I speak of it in the past tense because apparently it is no more.

Perhaps that’s because recipes that called for them often started like this:

"Begin by removing the ham from it's can."

And continued like this:

"Pour Pepsi over ham until enough is in the pan to touch the bottom of the ham."

Or maybe it was because people were inclined to ask questions about them like this:

"I have a Swift Premium, canned, Hostess Ham, unopened, in the refrigerator and it has been there about 6 to 7 months. Is the ham safe to bake and eat now?"

At any rate, during my Googling I clicked onto this page on a website I’ve never visited before. “Cooking a precooked ham” sounds like a real party trick, but what really caught my attention was the banner ad greeting me by my first and last name. Which is just too spooky. Got an Amazon account? Give it a whirl. If it says "Hello Shirley" as does the 'personalized' newsletter I get from Ticketmaster every week (gets me every time), you may have a small identity crisis.

The future is blindingly bright. Any year now we’ll all be donning 3D glasses, as the futurologists predict, and will see versions of everything tailored to our likes and desires, from billboards to storefronts to foodie items. And when we do, just once for old time sake, I think I’ll set mine to make the organic roast look just like a factory flawless “Hostess Ham”.

Quark Spy Shop (Manhattan)

Captured from a moving, JFK-bound taxi a couple of years ago. From our 'Street Signs' series, or 'Another Excuse to Raid the Photo Archives'.

When the secret message is incomplete

Or, I mean, when it’s no message at all.

Just when I’d felt safe in remarking on the [ __ blissful, __dull, ] unchanging scenery outside my window, something else unexpected happens out there.

I’m minding my own business, writing stories, when something catches the light in my peripheral vision. It’s… a square of white paper wafting brightly over the neighbors’ roof. It somersaults and whirls through the air like a too-graceful prop in a movie with a tinkling soundtrack adapted from Liszt. And then, just when a wind gust might sweep the note into someone else’s garden a pocket of calm catches it, landing it gently in the lollypop-green chutes on the honeysuckle vines.

I smile. A piece of ‘found art’ has just found me. I run skip go outside to retrieve it. What will it be? “Park bench, 4pm”? Lewd doodle? Quirky grocery list? Will another waft down, and then another, until I’m standing there beaming in an un-forecast accumulation of Post-Its, like the blissed-out chump in a new Sony advert?

No. It’s blank.

Not a Lynne Truss fan, I presume

My phone just vibrated, and this message came through.

“Hi [name removed, but it’s not me] my mum said that she wonts me to stay in tonite and get myself sorted from my grandmas and help her out a bit tonite sorri hun will definetly c* some text missing *”

I dispare.

This blogging business

I wrote a short piece about business blogging for this month's Real Business, a magazine for UK entrepreneurs. In all honesty I started out from the point of view that blogging is bad for most businesses, not least because most businesses, especially large businesses, can't handle the truth! (Or think they can't.)

But I've changed my mind. The old blogging mystique doesn't hold up. In a world with 100 million blogs, clearly the medium has room for all comers. All that really matters is whether you have something to say. So much the better if some bloggers are saying it as workers, managers or entrepreneurs. And if some choose to speak as brands rather than as people, more power to them.

After a some searching I found a some pretty excellent business blogs right here in the UK. Paul Woodhouse's The Tinbasher is one of the best. It supports a small sheetmetal company in Lancashire (although Paul himself spends most of his time in Cleveland, Ohio, and blogs about everything from tornadoes to rusty art).

Paul's got strong and readable views about business blogging, and since there was only room for a couple of quotes in the article itself, here's more from our interview:

You mention on your blog that you decided to start a blog because you thought it would help with marketing your two companies. Has that turned out to be true? Is there – dare I say it – ROI?

Ha ha! To put it quite simply - turnover has doubled and 90% of new business comes via the web. I'm afraid I can't (or can't be bothered!) to funnel exact referrals, but the blog is the engine room. All that costs is the hosting, and my retainer and commission on web-generated sales. There are also the added benefits of the free publicity it's generated, natural organic linkage and the weird and wonderful other things that develop every now and again.

You blog quite often. A lot of potential business bloggers may worry about the time involved. How do you keep that balance? Assuming you do!

It's my job when all said and done. You'll hear plenty of people saying it only takes fifteen minutes a day and sometimes it does and sometimes it takes much longer. I'd hate to feel forced to start and maintain a blog for whatever reason. It all depends on how much you depend on your blog to promote your business. If you're blogging to relay news or keep in touch with customers then it's not as time consuming as having to trawl round other blogs and leaving comments to get you and what you do known. But, it's something you can share amongst those who want to do it in your workplace - from the tea lady to the managing director. If you're willing for your blog to be your organic seo department, pr department, customer relations department, networking hub and website all rolled into one and you're willing to bust a nut or have somebody else bust a nut on your behalf then it's a doddle. Even though I try my best to organise my blogging week, it never works out that way. Something (like this interview) always pops up. I prefer organised chaos.

The other big hesitation seems to be around fear of saying something one shouldn't say (that might damage the business in some way). Do you worry about that? Are there topics you won't touch?

This is where common sense comes into play. It's also where your own personality and comfort zone come into play. You hear a lot about a blogger's voice; and essentially this is the personality the of the person blogging. It's nothing more than an online equivalent of somebody popping into your office for an informal chat over a brew. I will touch any topic if it remotely relevant or can be related in some way to the business or even myself. There are those who maintain that a business blog should have a tight focus, but I tend to fail miserably on that score. I'm also quite fortunate in that I have free reign to do and say what I want so long as it keeps everybody busy.

What you can’t see from inside the glass

I spotted something new outside my study window yesterday. That almost never happens. And trust me: I spend a lot of time looking out this window. Actually, once, an amazing tie-dye moth landed on the window frame, but it flew away as soon as I put the camera up to the glass.

Anyway, this is what I spotted.

Trees and sky reflect in the skylight one story down. I thought it was rather beautiful in its ordinary way, so I took a picture. Try to imagine the branches swaying in the breeze like they’re wind chimes. It’s hypnotic. I can’t stop… (where was I?)… looking at it.

I went for a walk to pull myself together and got back to this.

Pretty kitties. Pretty kitties. But the sad fact for them, watching out wide-eyed for something interesting, is that the only thing worth looking at on this street today is two pretty kitties in one of the windows.

(And that's the last cat pic for some time, I promise. Especially since they won't stop weeing in all the wrong places, and frankly don't deserve the good publicity.)

Unforgettable images in adventureland

The children's book project has reached a kind of climax. What started three months ago with 40 pairs of writers and illustrators from 26 and LCC staring at blank notebooks has matured into 40 nearly-finished books, many of them as good as or better, in my opinion, than lots of the books on sale in the kiddie korners of bookshops today. By good in this case I mean: you see it and it's glued into the adventureland collage in your brain's imagi-nation.

Mihoko has done some amazing illustrations for our book, Tomo's Flight. Watching the story's alternative world congeal out of the initial sketches has been hugely exciting.

Here's a sample spread.

And here's the blurb from the hypothetical cover:

Maybe another kid has it. Maybe he swallowed it. Tomo’s imagination is missing, and without that life’s plain flat.

What’s he going to do about it? Climb into his friend Rena’s make-believe aeroplane and hold on for dear life. Then Rena parachutes out (“Have a nice flight!”) and Tomo’s alone at the controls. The propeller’s pointing towards strange and far-off places, and the ground is a looong way down. But make-believe planes fly on make-believe fuel, and to make that you need a big imagination.

Which brings us back to the thing that Tomo’s been missing…

Last night reps from various publishing houses (including project sponsor Faber and Faber) came out to take a first look at the project's results. Time will tell whether any of the books see the inside of a Waterstone's shelving unit. But there's talk of an exhibition in London in September. I'll keep you posted.