Through the Keyhole
Momus talked recently about the benefits of renting rather than owning. According to Nick, those who rent are more radical, better looking, sweeter smelling and generally more Momus-like than those who buy. All the cool kids live in Geneva, apparently, where renting is up to 85%, whereas in staid, grey London only 41% rent.
Tom Hodgkinson has also noted in his last book, How to be Free, that a mortgage is a ‘pledge to the death’, grinding you down with anxiety, forcing you to work hard 40 hours a week to pay it off, rather than idling.
These things spring to mind because, on Tuesday, Laura and I are going to buy our first house together and are both rather excited.
Having spent the past seven years renting, it will be nice to be able to truly inhabit our space and turn it into a proper home. In all our previous residences, we have shirked the urge to personalize and have rather lived as though we were in a rather crappy hotel: the posters and bourgeois art of the previous owners remained on the walls, the sofas exuded an inevitable beigeness; we adapted our lives to the circumstances we found ourselves. Now we will be able to make of it whatever we want, whether Gothic folly or minimalist studio, without having a landlord to deal with.
Walking around our current flat this morning, I tried to imagine what Loyd Grossman would say if I was featured on Through the Keyhole. What identifies the flat as mine? What red herrings would Grossman use to throw Eve Pollard off the scent?
The fact is, that very little indeed identifies the flat as mine. You could go through the books and notice the combination of James Joyce, Dr.Johnson, Franz Kafka and Tony Robbins.
You could try to distract them by looking at Laura’s objects:
But apart from these things it is really without personality. Hopefully this will change with the new place.
For me the problem isn’t being either a buyer or a renter, it is the modern habit of moving house too often. Surely the ideal is to buy a house good enough and adaptable enough to live in your entire life? I can’t think of anything better than laying down roots and seeking Epicurean contentment. Can you?
Sunshine
I am fairly sure that I became myopic shortly after the eclipse of 1999. At that time I was doing a summer job as a home help/carer for various old folk around Sheffield. It was a grim job whose many unpleasant moments are seared in the memory, but interesting all the same. That day I was helping a one-eyed, alcoholic old women called Virginia (a name whose obscene variations she exulted in). Tasks included going to the supermarket to buy her four cans of Special Brew, a packet of Superkings, a loaf of cheap white bread and a slab of lard, making her cups of tea and talking to her.
Virginia was a disgusting and unfortuanate person. She had a nasty habit of coughing up phlegm into whatever bowl or cup was handy. She frequently swore. She was paranoid about the council (upon whose support she relied). She used kitchen roll for toilet paper. She was bitter about every thing and every one. She had panic attacks when going to the shops. She loved Ainsley Harriot
The morning of the eclipse Ready Steady Cook was on and Ainsley was in fine form, at least I think he was given the poor reception on her black and white TV. He made way for Jamie Theakston and the damp squib of Eclipse Live. Ginny wasn’t interested in the eclipse, she preferred discussing all the places where she’d be hiding if “they” (I don’t know who) ever tried to get her. So when it came to the actual eclipse, I just ended up staring up at the cloudy sky through her lace curtains, thinking: “has it happened? was that it?” Foolishly, I hadn’t worn sunglasses, and felt a niggling eye strain later in the day.
I was thinking of this moment whilst watching Sunshine, a claustrophobic sci-fi thriller, which features an onboard psychologist who is obsessed with staring into the sun. Sunshine depicts the final stages of a 16 month journey from Earth to deliver a load of nukes into the centre of the sun in order to reignite it and save humanity. An international crew psychologically unravel as they go through the torments that accompany such a strange journey. All this is superbly done and is brilliant if you enjoy feeling uncomfortable long into the night. Only the ending lets it down: nothing really coalesces or makes much artistic sense. Apart from that, it’s pretty good. Not as interesting as Virginia, but still . . .
Robbins and Nietzsche
Tony Robbins is a figure of fun, condemned by the cynics for his tacky book covers, his outlandish dress and his hooting vulgarity. He is the very embodiment of the over the top American self-help guru with his 10 ways to do this and his 7 tips for that. Of late, Robbins has been criticised (as of 7 April 2007 site has now been taken down) for his ruthless moneymaking, his dysfunctional family relations and the alleged side effects of his live sessions.
Scepticism is a valuable human trait. It is what prevents us from signing up for pyramid schemes and giving in to snake oil salesman (although I could not believe the amount of people duped into playing the shell game in Berlin). And sceptics — a clearly identifiable type — do valuable work: being like modern pit canaries that sneer instead of snuffing it. According to sceptics, unless what you say can be scientifically verified then it should be held at arm’s length. No matter if it has practical benefits or accords with common sense, value comes only from being verified.
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Science of Sleep
Science of Sleep was one of those movies where I entered the cinema feeling grumpy and sceptical, determined not to enjoy it after having had an argument with my girlfriend, but which charmed me from the first frame.
Michel Gondry isn’t a director whose films I would go out of my way to see —
Human Nature was dull, Eternal Sunshine ropey — so that this was so inventive and true was a surprise. Of course, it could be that I don’t like Charlie Kaufman, who wrote the script for the other films but not this one.
I suspect the reception of the film depends largely upon the nature of your dreams. Some people’s dreams are directed like David Lynch, others like they’re Michaelangelo Antonioni. Mine are more like Gondry’s Science of Sleep — with flight a swimming motion, stardom a given, and frustration everywhere.
The film presents a couple of months in the life of Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal), an illustrator from Mexico who has come to Paris for work and to be near his Mother. Stephane’s difficulty in separating his dreams from reality drives the plot and although there is no real narrative, the story presented is very engaging. Does there need to be a purpose? Are dreams less satisfying because they don’t mean anything or have any purpose. Do we have to assign Freudian meanings in order to validate them? I think not. And the same applies to film.
The Science of Sleep is one of the few films where gentle whimsy and the struggle against bureaucratic order doesn’t mean tedium.
Design Basics Index
The design autodidact constantly fears being found out. Unlike those who have been taught, they cannot afford to be complacent. Every day there is a popular article on del.icio.us outlining some design tip or typographical technique that will help prevent you appearing gauche in your work. But whilst these tips are great in the long term, in the short term they only serve to increase the anxiety. What you need is a firm grounding, a complete overview, preferably without the expense of going to college.
Jim Krause’s Design Basics Index aims to provide just such an overview, tackling all the practical problems of graphic design and outlining all the places where you can go ‘wrong’. It is both an introduction and a reference work, asking questions of the designer on every page. It even comes in protective rubberized covers, easily robust enough for frequent browsing or holding open to flatten the spine.
As with any book that focuses on such topics as colour and photographic texture no expense has been spared. The full colour printing is crisp and it is bright to the point of garishness. Indeed, at first blush, it feels rather badly designed and out of date, as though it came from the early Nineties (it says (c) 2004), but don’t let that put you off. Krause doesn’t limit himself to any one fashionable aesthetic and, of course, by criticizing his work you can start improving your own.
The book is divided into three sections: Composition, Components and Concept. 1) Composition is all about the way layouts fit together, why some integrate better than others and how to situate graphical elements; 2) Components concentrates on the graphical elements themselves — from typography to illustration to photography; 3) Concept brings everything together through theme, mood and idea.
Of the three, I found the Conceptual side the most useful; largely because Krause is very good at introducing concepts that prick one’s creativity. And it is through feeling creative that the designer — whether or not they are an autodidact — feels confident and assured.
Animal Rights
In 2004 I was converted to Feminism after seeing a version of Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children in Bilbao. Despite it being in Spanish, all the oppression and stupidity of male dominance was revealed with chilling clarity.
In a similarly damascene fashion, last Friday I was converted to the cause of Animal Rights after visiting Berlin Zoo. It is surely impossible for any semi-sensitive soul not to be scandalised by the desolation in the eyes of the Zoo’s mammals.
My Mother had told me that it was “a bit sad” to see the animals all caged up when I suggested visiting Zoos in the past. She wasn’t wrong, but annoyingly you need to see them for yourself to get the full shock value. Photos and videos don’t capture how unrelentingly bleak their lives are. It is not difficult to find a Gorilla or an Orangutan that will spend hours not moving, staring at the camphone-wielding public with a beseeching sadness.
Even worse than seeing the big cats and intelligent primates curled up in their confinement, was hearing the cretinous whoops and sneers of the humans who had come to gawp. It is a stark reminder of the inherent cruelty of most humans, who are largely content to ignore animal suffering.
It is with a melancholy picture of an Orangutan that I started my new photoblog (which you can currently only get via the feed). It is now three years since I began a photoblog on an old livejournal — taking one photo every day for a year — but the time seemed ripe to start snapping again. Quite where I’ll find the time to take photos is a moot point, but that in itself will encourage me to get out of the house/city on weekends.
Either way — and despite my earlier caveat — I hope these pictures add at least some weight to the case to have Zoos (or at least those with primates, big cats and other large mammals) shut down.
Seven Inch Singles
Between 1995 and 1997, I managed to buy around 200 seven inch singles. With no financial responsibilities and a disposable income from washing dishes two nights a week, I was able to get the bus into town every Saturday to go to Rock-a-boom and pick up the latest releases. Most new singles were 99p and as such it was a very sustainable habit.
I became a collector and by collector I mean a person who feels incomplete without a certain possession. Collecting goes deep into the soul. Your collection fits the absence you have in yourself. A non-Collector is someone who is satisfied with themselves, a person without obsessions, who doesn’t want to eclipse the boundaries of their self. Collectors are interesting characters, but sometimes their collection can get out of hand. When the collection becomes more important than what it represents, then you are in serious trouble.
Looking back, I guess that this is what happened to me. I stopped buying singles because I wanted them and started buying them for the sake of completion. Some of the ones I bought – for as little as 20p from charity shops – were so bad that I don’t think I even managed to listen to the whole thing. But they went into the collection, alphabetised then chronologised.
When I went to University I could only take a small cassette radio and my collecting habit turned to books. The records lived in a couple of shoeboxes in my parents’ house, dusted down on holidays to be spliced into compilations. Eventually I recovered them, listened to a few and then put them up in our loft. And now I am going to sell them. I hope I don’t regret it.
Already I took my vinyl albums to a Mixed Up records on Otago Lane, receiving a paltry £20 for twelve really good records. I felt like I was being diddled, but perhaps the cost of being the type of person who is forced to care about such things is worth being diddled.
To me, the records are deadweight, despite the numerous curious memories between their grooves. They tie me down, tie down the personality to a conception of self that is no longer relevant. The person I was then doesn’t live here anymore, to persist in the lie would be dishonest.