Jenga

Oftentimes, you’ll read tweets in which people moot a particular grammatical faux pas they have had to commit in order to fit their message into 140 characters. Perhaps an apostrophe is removed, or ‘and’ is supplanted with an ampersand, or hyphens are disemboweled from their associated prefixes. It’s almost like we have a nervous tic, as if we have to ensure that everybody around us is perfectly aware that actually, we do understand the subjunctive and its proper usage, thank you very much.

Well I say bollocks to the lot of it.

Having studied both English and a number of its foreign accompaniments for the majority of the life that I can comfortably remember, and having lustfully looked upon the linguistic leadership of those more lexically periphrastic than me, you would think that I would be firmly and squarely in this puritanical movement. I am not. Whenever I hear somebody correcting somebody else on their incorrect use of a split infinitive, or a sentence that ends in a preposition, or indeed the omission of an apostrophe where there should be one (or more likely the addition of an apostrophe where there shouldn’t), I wince and cower and balk, hoping to Christ that the proselytiser isn’t going to draw me into their cult.

It shames me that we even debate language in this way. For some unfathomable reason, linguistic aptitude, whatever that means, has become yet another badge that we can pin on our uniform to distinguish us from them. If you have bad language, they cry, then you must be bad of mind, bad of talent, bad of bloody everything.

Well, it’s simply not true. Some believe that language is a constant, that its construction and its laws are potbound, immovable, ever-lasting, as if somehow languages are impervious to environmental and cultural change. If we can appreciate that everything else in the world is entirely mutable, then why do we have this misanthropic misunderstanding that language must be retained in its current state?

“We find it appropriate to introduce snipers, tanks and torpedoes to the battlefield, just in case anybody might actually be on for making it to the other side.”

At its base, language is the arbiter of communication. It allows Person A to infer a message to Person B, and for Person B to respond to that inference. And so, this leads me to my biggest stick in the mud: if both parties fully understand the interchange, what difference does it make that the words are in the wrong order, or spelled incorrectly, or lack grammatical coherence? What viable argument can there be to halt that communication, and point out the inaccuracy of how that message was relayed, if in fact understanding was retained?

English is a convoluted and pedantic language. It has peculiarities that to the uninitiated can be entirely inexplicable. The inscrutable way in which parts have been bolted on top of other parts, like a wavering tower of Jenga pieces, makes understanding its complexities as difficult as wading through treacle. And yet, as people attempt to traverse the minefield that is the English language, we find it appropriate to introduce snipers, tanks and torpedoes to the battlefield, just in case anybody might actually be on for making it to the other side.

Of course, language is about so much more than just communication. In whatever form it takes, it can be worked, much like anything else, into a beautiful, artful masterpiece. It allows us to inform others of our personality, of our idiosyncrasies, of our independent and unique perspectives. Debilitating and debasing those that use it in a different way to you, is like saying Beethoven was wrong because he didn’t play like Rachmaninov.

Language changes. It evolves. It moves with the times. And if you’re one of those that hates it when others drop aitches from the beginning of words, or use the imperfect past instead of the perfect, or don’t differentiate between the use of ‘less’ or ‘fewer’, ‘there’ or ‘their’, then seriously, ask yourself this: Why haven’t you changed too?

The yoyo

I love philosophy. You see, I say that, and actually, I have no idea what I mean by it. The first paragraph of Philosophy 101 is about as far as I’ve got. Watching The Matrix doesn’t make you an expert. Skimming Simulacra and Simulation doesn’t make you Plato. Being able to pronounce Nietzsche doesn’t connect you with the inner workings of the universe.

That aside, there’s some deep, deep questions within the subject that enthral me. Captivate me. Things I’ll always wonder. Things I’ll never understand.

There was a pretty dark period in my life, when I was doing stupid things, taking alarmingly unnecessary risks. To get away from the dementedness of it all, sometimes I’d find myself sat alone, literally trying to piece together the meaning of life. God only knows why. It never occurred to me that these sessions with myself were probably enabling rather than abetting, but that’s a story for another day. It was a battle with my own conscience, a fight that quite frankly, I was always going to lose. I was looking through some boxes full of old papers and notepads recently, and happened across pages and pages of insane notes. I clearly didn’t have a clue, but at the time I remember ‘discovering’ a theory I thought explained everything. That insatiable need to have meaning, reason, understanding; it was deafening. I look back and wonder why I put myself through it.

“I’m going to come away with more questions than answers.”

Ever since, philosophy has left an indelible mark on my mind. It’s fascinating to me that there are incredibly intelligent people on this planet that are still debating theories created thousands of years ago, theories that will never, ever, be proven. And yet, human nature continues to walk the line, pushing and pulling, like Houdini and his straightjacket. Only this time, there’s no escaping.

My thoughts on philosophy are primitive at best. But I have them, and every now and again, I catch myself running down the track, my mind unravelling like a yoyo, all the way to the limit of the string. And it’s at that point, when the string is taught and the tension unbearable, the yoyo spinning its incessant carousel, that I believe I’ve finally crossed the rubicon. And then, snap! The yoyo comes flying back, the tension dissapating, the thought gone, the meaning unexplained all over again.

I’m acutely aware that writing about philosophy is likely to be a death knell. I appreciate why it switches people off, why they back away from the nutcase dreaming about reality in the corner, why something that is largely unexplainable is too much for most to bear, why when there’s tangible problems to solve here on planet Earth dreaming about the cosmos seems like folly. But to me, it’s the greatest vortex ever created. It draws me in. Its allure is inescapable. I love going another round with a foe that is bigger and stronger and better than me, and knowing, all along, that it’s going to win. That I’m going to come away with more questions than answers.

That’s power. That’s insurrection. That’s beautiful.

Do something great

When you look back through history, who do you regard as heroes, idols, those that in your mind made something happen? Of course for everybody, the list will be entirely different; so many factors lay foundations for one individual’s perception of what ‘great’ looks like, it’s hard to make a list that in some way won’t be disputed by the person sat next to you. A disagreement ensues, where those who contend your assertions immediately look to the negatives, using them as an argument for why you are wrong.

Like everybody, I have those that I hold in high esteem, but actually, when I boil it down to the atoms of what ‘great’ looks like, it’s less about the people themselves, and more about the qualities that they imbue. For me, people carry too much baggage; undoubtedly every great person has a string of misdemeanours they would rather you forget. So to avoid falling into a lengthy debate over why your top ten is different to mine, here I choose to focus on one particular quality instead.

‘Modern management’ frustrates me with its constant reliance on committee. Whenever a big issue takes to the stage, it is a very rare occurrence when an individual stands up for that in which they believe, and asserts that actually, this is the way it’s going to be, no questions, no debate. Instead, you have stagnation, indifference, and back-pedalling, disguised and veiled as ‘an opportunity to let everybody have a voice’, to let the people speak, to engender community and social decision making, to get ‘buy-in’ from those the issue will affect.

The scenario is one of incentives: a decision needs to be made on how to get a workforce to be more productive. There are two possible approaches: in the first, the leader makes a decision, informs the troops, and onwards the team moves. In the second, the manager opens up the floor, gives time to debate amongst the troops, and a solution is collectively agreed upon. So what just happened? In the first instance, a leader earmarked a problem, applied a pathway to resolution, and informed his or her team of how to proceed. In the second instance, a manager earmarked a problem and then allowed every voice to interpret that problem for themselves, from their own perspective, before eventually resolving to solve an entirely different problem to an entirely different issue.

“How many committees do you revere? How many groups do you remember? How many congregations caught your attention?”

The disparity may seem inconsequential, but it can have huge effects on what happens next. The whole reason a leader is in place, is to lead. And the reason they are better equipped to do that from their position in the organisation, is not because they are in charge and you are but a minion, but because they see a holistic problem that needs a holistic solution. As soon as the gates are opened to everybody, that problem is lost as each voice decides for themselves what is important, and what would work best for them, as an individual. At that point, the leader is no longer a leader, they are but a manager. And to boot, they managed that situation badly.

Of late, waving it in on a ticket of improving staff engagement or reducing voter apathy, leaders think that should those ‘affected’ have an opinion, should they be heard, then they will feel more inclined to come on board. What they seem to forget however is the whole reason why they raised the issue in the first place. In the above example, worker productivity falls off the slate and instead it’s about how that individual can make their life easier, make their environment customised for their needs, how things can be better for them. Sure, that’s great for that person, but for that person alone. And to hell with the team, or the mission, or the whole reason why you’re there in the first place.

Now open your history books and decide who is ‘great’ to you. How many committees do you revere? How many groups do you remember? How many congregations caught your attention?

Who you’ll remember are individuals, single people who stood up for their values, took the initiative, and for better or for worse, moved forward on an issue. Most likely they were divisive, most likely they had as many detractors as they did supporters, but such is life. Leadership comes with a price: not everybody will like what you have to say, and not everybody will want to support you. But simply managing comes with an even bigger price: indecision, flatlining and a total lack of direction.

Yes, the former will likely cause you enemies, but nothing got solved by a committee.

People don't change

The desire to evolve, to change; I think it’s simply a part of me that I’m going to have to live with. Some people seem to be immune to the need to mix things up, swap things around, get a new perspective, yet I have never been good at staying in one place for too long. I guess that’s why an interest in technology is such a perfect fit for me. This microcosm is frentic, it doesn’t stand still for long, and that allows me to flit from one thing to the next without much friction.

What this type of perspective disallows me to do however, is develop something into a more longterm project. And that, that right there, can be debilitating. It’s not that I have a short attention span, far from it. What I do have though is an incessant need to learn something new, try out something different. If you’ve visited Do You Have A Mountain Bike? more than once within the last year, then chances are you’ll have seen at least two of the three redesigns. That’s not because I particularly disliked the ones that went before it, though I’m never satisfied, it has to be said, but rather I see something that looks incredible elsewhere and I want to adopt it, iterate on it, assimilate some of its beauty into my own work.

Do You Have A Mountain Bike? is probably a bad example, simply due to the fact that web design is relatively new to me, and I’m still trying to find a footing in terms of what I like and appreciate in modern web design. I’m still trying things out, I’m still trying to find a ‘style’, and of course that is a problem-layered-on-top-of-a-problem with a mind that wanders all too soon.

And then I realise that the all grown up part has already arrived, and nothing has seemingly changed.

So maybe the fact that I’ve lived in six different apartments in ten years is a better way to conceptualise what I’m trying to say. Maybe the twenty pairs of jeans in a bottom drawer that never see the light of day and have perhaps been worn once each, if that, would do it. There’s a chance the plethora of magazine subscriptions, or saved URLs, or unused notepads, or gigabytes of music that I hoard, hoard, hoard, only to drop in the next breath; maybe that illustrates what’s going on here. I could go on.

Whenever that spark of interest hits me, it seems that it has to be new and exciting and fresh. To some, that will sound trite, to others they’ll probably call me a hipster (and already have) and others yet still, they’ll see me as fickle or unable to make a commitment. I see it as something that gives me great pleasure. And something that makes ‘making a go of it’ really very hard.

If we skip back to Do You Have A Mountain Bike? for a moment, then at least that’s something that seems to be staying around. Although it is of course very new, it’s lasted much longer than I ever thought it would. And with a study wall affixed with mountains of sticky notes containing possible ideas for what to do next, and with a to do list overflowing with tasks that I need to complete to take Do You Have A Mountain Bike? forward, it’s both surprising, and pleasing, that at least for once, something is being sustained.

I always say to myself that when I’m all grown up, my focus will crystallise and suddenly, like the wool being taken off my eyes, I’ll look upon a landscape in which I finally want to build a house. And then I realise that the all grown up part has already arrived, and nothing has seemingly changed.

House always says that people don’t change. I tend to agree. If I’m stuck like this for the rest of my days, then at least one thing is for certain: I’m never going to get bored.

An innovative burrito →

Each morning, I pick up my iPad or switch on my Mac and head to a folder in my bookmark bar entitled ‘Pixie dust’. I also have a folder entitled ‘Dragon’s layer’, another ‘Refuelling strategy’ and a final ‘Stay hungry', but the etymology of each is a story for another day. What’s important here is that ‘Pixie dust’ contains five or six sites that for me, are de facto, my go-to sites that I read before heading anywhere else. I guess I’m probably not unique in this practice.

One of those sites is Tofugu. And having headed there recently, I stumbled across this particular article, which concerns itself on the face of it with finding good Mexican food in Japan, but more fundamentally, the notion of authenticity. And that got me thinking.

Hashi treats us to an anecdote in which, having just watched his friend eat a burrito, he tells him that he’s never eaten an authentic burrito. You would be forgiven if you assumed that in Japan, burritos are not easy to come by, that the food of the land of a country called Mexico may perhaps get ‘lost in translation’ or become something totally ‘other’ by the time it has triggered in the restaurant owner’s mind, been translated by the chef, and ended up on the plate in front of you. If your definition of authenticity assumes that to engender said authenticity, the food of the land of a country called Mexico has to be made by a person who lives on the land of a country called Mexico and consumed in the land of a country called Mexico, then yes, you’d be correct. But that thing that has just been eaten is still called a burrito. And the person eating it is indeed eating it rather than taking it back and demanding a refund. So surely it would stand to reason that the thing being eaten is actually a burrito?

In technology, ‘authenticity’ isn’t often a part of our lexicon. But, if we were to adopt such a habit, we could perhaps say that the iPhone is authentic, that the Mac before it was authentic, that the GIU before that. We could busy ourselves with theories about upcoming authenticity, rumours about the next big authentic offering, that something-around-the-corner that whips us into a frenzy because we know it’s going to be authentic, bedazzling, shiny and new.

“When we think of Japan [...] we think of a land not like ours, where unicorns roam the countryside and trees are made of candyfloss.”

In technology, we prefer to pseudo-synonymise, to innovate. And if a new offering doesn’t brush up to our community’s standard of what innovation should be, then we berate, discard, denounce. We embark on a bandwagon and damn it to hell. How can it be good, when it’s stolen from somebody else? How can it ever be taken seriously if it is indeed another person’s work? What were they thinking to bring out something so similar?

When we think of Japan, we think of shiny and new. We think of light years ahead, we think of the future. We think of a land not like ours, where unicorns roam the countryside and trees are made of candyfloss. We think of it as an innovative country, or an authentic culture. Of course, it’s none of those things. Hashi tells us that ramen came from China, tempura is Portuguese and sushi is southeast Asian. And we could also add the Japanese language, trains and computer games to a similar list of misnomers.

As a kid, I was always told that plagiarising was bad, that taking somebody else’s work and passing it off as your own would earn you a ticket to the rubbish heap of life, that being authentic was the zenith of individuality and credibility. But I’m also told to listen to others, to value their opinions, to take from them the good and use that to supplement my own thoughts and ideas.

So, my question to you is this: how can something be authentic and be based on everything else that went before it? Why do we suppose that something should just spring from the ether and yet be built on the foundations of a millenia of human history?

2007 was supposedly the two thousand and seventh year after the birth of Christ. Whether that is your belief or not, you cannot deny that many years had passed prior to the creation of the iPhone. Steve Jobs was a genius, but even he couldn’t feed five thousand from one loaf of bread. And so without all of those years before it, the iPhone simply would not have been.

I berate Samsung and Google as much as the next for ‘soulessly’ ripping off Apple. I revel when Apple releases the ‘next big thing’ and then poo-poo the others for releasing similarly-working or similarly-looking devices. I call out the copiers and idolise the innovators.

But actually, nothing is truly unique. Nothing is truly authentic. Nothing is truly innovative.

Japan would never have been what it is today without a little assimilation here and there. This article would never have been had I not read Hashi’s before it. And that burrito would never have been had Mexico not invented it. That said, Japan is still an amazing country. This is still an authentic article. And that is most definitely an innovative burrito.

Literature Thieves at Pretty Green, Manchester

Amy Clarkson, Angela Hazeldine & Cassie Elwood are Literature Thieves

On Saturday, Literature Thieves, a band comprised of Amy Clarkson, Cassie Elwood and my long-time friend, Angie Hazeldine, played their gig at Pretty Green, a fashion store in Manchester owned by Liam Gallagher.

Literature Thieves is a folk band. Now, before you immediately switch away, hold it right there. For some reason folk gets a bad press in the UK, and, to be honest, when Angie first told me about the direction that Literature Thieves were taking, my preconceptions took over: would folk be my bag?

Believe me, I was entirely wrong to doubt.

“What I do know for certain is this: the music of Literature Thieves is sublime.”

Before Literature Thieves, I'd never really considered folk, and it may be that should I listen to some other folk bands, I still might not like it. But, what I do know for certain is this: the music of Literature Thieves is sublime. Each song is beautifully crafted, gorgeously executed and, as on Saturday when the gig was entirely acoustic, it did nothing but irrefutably accentuate the talent that these fine ladies have.

Looking at the crowd that had gathered; some genuine shoppers, others having come in off the street to check out was going on; it was clear that Literature Thieves were a hit. Young and old gathered in the store to hear a little guitar and those enchanting harmonies; some snapped pictures, others recorded the action, yet others simply took it all in.

It seems like gigging in stores is becoming increasingly more popular, however it's still new enough that many won't have experienced live music in this way before. Saturday's gig was refreshing, modern and authentic, and the bright, dazzling light in Pretty Green suited Literature Thieves's sound down to the ground.

 

You can hear Literature Thieves for yourself by heading over to iTunes, Soundcloud, Instagram or Twitter for their music, and latest updates.

(And check out my new gallery for all the pictures I took at Saturday's gig.)

A brand new look. A brand new start.

So, my blog hasn't been updated in such a long time. And so, here's to a brand new look. And a brand new start.

And yes, there'll be more than one update a year.