During my time spent in America - my solo Stateside odyssey - I spent a large amount of solitary time in bars, cafes and in restaurants. Anyone travelling independently for a considerable length of time can't really avoid such situations even if they want to. For a lot of people the prospect of being alone in such situations may seem unpleasant or undesireable, somehow outside of 'acceptable' social conventions even. Personally, I've grown to enjoy it.
It is strange how so readily people who travel alone are prepared to latch onto another, with a persistancy that I find beguiling and often an unwelcome irritation. Not always of course, it pivots around the twin determinants of mood and circumstance. That said, I would always be much more content by myself, if the alternative were to be cemented in the company of people with whom conversation is stilted, perfunctory and awkward. Laboured company for the sake for alleviating solitude is not something I'm interested in.
It is interesting to observe though, the obsessive-compulsive attachment people have developed to new technologies as a means of suppressing self-conscious feelings that would otherwise seep awkwardly to the fore. Watch next time when one half of a couple in a restaurant or bar rises to go to the toilet or to get more drinks. Within a matter of seconds the tragic victim of this desertion will have sought easy refuge with their phone or iPod; checking messages, posting tweets or updating statuses. What is it about the psychology of those in public environments that gives them cause to delve into the safe realm of the online world as soon as they become marooned in its physical equivalent?
The same thing happens in other social situations. When two strangers enter a lift for instance, or when waiting at the same bus shelter. Such close proximity breeds self-consciousness and it is only a matter of agonising microseconds before one of them will elope into the alternate ether of connectivity.
'So what?' you might ask. Surely its better than just sitting there twiddling your thumbs or looking gormlessly around at your surroundings? I'd argue not at all. Next time you find yourself in a situation like this - a friend or colleague has to dash away early from the coffeeshop or a partner attempts to shuffle his or her way through to the bar - fix yourself with mental sturdiness and refuse to give in to that technological habit, however niggling the urge. All it represents is a social crutch, the same as smoking used to be - the preoccupying ritual of holding, lighting and smoking a cigarette.
I'm reminded of a quote by a French intellectual - I don't recall precisely which one - who said, "what's the world coming to when an afternoon spent staring out of a window is considered a waste of time?" It might be argued that a whole afternoon is slightly unnecessary, but I recommend next time you are alone in a public place, taking a handful of moments to glance around at your surroundings. Pick at random something completely incongruous or banal; something thriving along unnoticed in its ordinariness; it could be a coffee machine or ceiling fan, 'Exit' sign or wall panel. Stare at it and try, maybe for just half a minute, to devote all your concentration on the observation on it. With an open mind you might just glimpse something, some fresh angle or nuance, that with increased effort begins to bleach away the inherent mundanity to offer a clean interpretation that had hitherto remained concealed.
I do believe that from time to time we could all benefit from a concerted re-engagement with our fundamental realities instead of succumbing to the compulsive habit of technological distraction. Sometimes its easy to suspect that the more reassuringly connected we are with the online landscape, the more readily psychological barriers are erected between ourselves and genuine human connection.
Thursday 15 December 2011
Wednesday 7 December 2011
Books with the greatest impact
These are a handful of the books that have had the greatest impact on me during my life. All of these have played a substantial part in inspiring my own literary aspirations.
Roald Dahl - 'Charlie & the Chocolate Factory'
As far as I can recall this was the first 'novel' that I ever read, at the perhaps precocious age of 4 (speaking somewhat immodestly), and in the following formative years I must have revelled in it time and time again. The sense of magical adventure brims with a relentless energy, it races along like the sugar longboat down the chocolate river with Dahl's fervent imagination flailing off into countless avenues that you long for him to stop off at and develop further. The boyhood ecstasy at discovering that mythical 'Golden Ticket' - essentially an exit, an escape route from harsh reality - surely must speak profoundly to everyone.
Stephen King - 'The Shining'
Whilst not being the first King novel I read - that was 'Insomnia' - this was the horror hook on which I was ensnared around the age of 14 until eventually managing to wriggle free almost 2 years later. In the interim period I must have read almost exclusively Stephen King. The film became seared into my brain after being scared senseless by it at age 11 - to this day no film since has had such a profound effect on me. The book had a lot to live up to therefore, and King's constantly imaginative prose and vivid character portrayals didn't disappoint. Indeed the two versions, book and film, are such different entities that each have their merits over the other. Whilst the film is, in my view, a flawless achievement by Kubrick, what I enjoyed about the book was the much more forensic examination into Jack Torrence's troubled past (aggression and alcoholism, essentially human, issues) and consequent damaged psyche that result in his gradual unravelling at the hands of the Overlook Hotel's equally disturbed history.
Irvine Welsh - 'Trainspotting'
This was another book I gravitated to as a result of my fondness for the film adaptation, and again I found there was just as much, if not more, about the novel to appreciate. Given that I'd been gorging myself on Stephen King's often production-line ouevre for so long, first encountering Welsh's gritty, sardonic writing style was - pardon the cliche - a real slap in the face. Instead of ghouls, demonic forces and axe murderers, here was a writer who was seemingly writing from the very gutter; with all the filth and grime of degenerate reality embedded under the fingernails of the prose. Substance abuse, Scottish council estates, scummy pubs, prejudice and violence - it all burned from the pages with a vitriolic wit that I found almost as compulsive as the subject matter. After 3 or 4 revisits, I still find it just as entertaining and now credit it as being the novel that exposed me to harsh fictional realism, wrenched me from my King-induced apathy and made me passionate about literature again.
George Orwell - '1984'
I forget at what age I first read this book, having been pressured to by my father, but I'm certain I failed to understand it. Several re-readings later, I consider this book to be something of a sacred text for me; the sheer weight of the ideas and concepts that come tumbling from every page is staggering, and the pervading sense of despair and hopelessness is more palpable than any other book I can think of. The final 'interrogation' section is as disturbing and visceral as I believe fiction has achieved, and for a book to have had such a lasting impact on society is surely something all writers can only fantasise about.
JG Ballard - 'Crash'
Whilst I don't believe this to be Ballard's most ingenious work (that, for me, is 'The Atrocity Exhibition' or several of his short stories), it was 'Crash' that first introduced me to Ballard and is still perhaps the single strongest influence on my own writing. Indeed, as far as my relationship to literature (and perhaps outlook on society itself) is concerned there is my life pre and post 'Crash'. I can remember precisely where I was and what my frame of mind was as I sat down and began reading the first page. I recall closing the book at the bottom of the first page and sitting back swimming in a very odd sense of dual emotions. On the positive side - I knew just from a single page that I had discovered a writer who's fervent imagination and body of work would captivate and inspire me from then onwards. The same feeling you get when you see a great film or hear a musical artist's work for the first time; that striking sense that your life has just been enriched somehow by that discovery. The other sensation I felt however was a crushing sense of inadequacy - here was a writer who seemed to be saying everything I wanted to say only decades earlier and far better than I would most likely ever be capable of!
Roald Dahl - 'Charlie & the Chocolate Factory'
As far as I can recall this was the first 'novel' that I ever read, at the perhaps precocious age of 4 (speaking somewhat immodestly), and in the following formative years I must have revelled in it time and time again. The sense of magical adventure brims with a relentless energy, it races along like the sugar longboat down the chocolate river with Dahl's fervent imagination flailing off into countless avenues that you long for him to stop off at and develop further. The boyhood ecstasy at discovering that mythical 'Golden Ticket' - essentially an exit, an escape route from harsh reality - surely must speak profoundly to everyone.
Stephen King - 'The Shining'
Whilst not being the first King novel I read - that was 'Insomnia' - this was the horror hook on which I was ensnared around the age of 14 until eventually managing to wriggle free almost 2 years later. In the interim period I must have read almost exclusively Stephen King. The film became seared into my brain after being scared senseless by it at age 11 - to this day no film since has had such a profound effect on me. The book had a lot to live up to therefore, and King's constantly imaginative prose and vivid character portrayals didn't disappoint. Indeed the two versions, book and film, are such different entities that each have their merits over the other. Whilst the film is, in my view, a flawless achievement by Kubrick, what I enjoyed about the book was the much more forensic examination into Jack Torrence's troubled past (aggression and alcoholism, essentially human, issues) and consequent damaged psyche that result in his gradual unravelling at the hands of the Overlook Hotel's equally disturbed history.
Irvine Welsh - 'Trainspotting'
This was another book I gravitated to as a result of my fondness for the film adaptation, and again I found there was just as much, if not more, about the novel to appreciate. Given that I'd been gorging myself on Stephen King's often production-line ouevre for so long, first encountering Welsh's gritty, sardonic writing style was - pardon the cliche - a real slap in the face. Instead of ghouls, demonic forces and axe murderers, here was a writer who was seemingly writing from the very gutter; with all the filth and grime of degenerate reality embedded under the fingernails of the prose. Substance abuse, Scottish council estates, scummy pubs, prejudice and violence - it all burned from the pages with a vitriolic wit that I found almost as compulsive as the subject matter. After 3 or 4 revisits, I still find it just as entertaining and now credit it as being the novel that exposed me to harsh fictional realism, wrenched me from my King-induced apathy and made me passionate about literature again.
George Orwell - '1984'
I forget at what age I first read this book, having been pressured to by my father, but I'm certain I failed to understand it. Several re-readings later, I consider this book to be something of a sacred text for me; the sheer weight of the ideas and concepts that come tumbling from every page is staggering, and the pervading sense of despair and hopelessness is more palpable than any other book I can think of. The final 'interrogation' section is as disturbing and visceral as I believe fiction has achieved, and for a book to have had such a lasting impact on society is surely something all writers can only fantasise about.
JG Ballard - 'Crash'
Whilst I don't believe this to be Ballard's most ingenious work (that, for me, is 'The Atrocity Exhibition' or several of his short stories), it was 'Crash' that first introduced me to Ballard and is still perhaps the single strongest influence on my own writing. Indeed, as far as my relationship to literature (and perhaps outlook on society itself) is concerned there is my life pre and post 'Crash'. I can remember precisely where I was and what my frame of mind was as I sat down and began reading the first page. I recall closing the book at the bottom of the first page and sitting back swimming in a very odd sense of dual emotions. On the positive side - I knew just from a single page that I had discovered a writer who's fervent imagination and body of work would captivate and inspire me from then onwards. The same feeling you get when you see a great film or hear a musical artist's work for the first time; that striking sense that your life has just been enriched somehow by that discovery. The other sensation I felt however was a crushing sense of inadequacy - here was a writer who seemed to be saying everything I wanted to say only decades earlier and far better than I would most likely ever be capable of!
Tuesday 6 December 2011
Culture - December
Books Read:
Emily Bronte - 'Wuthering Heights'
Iain Banks - 'Espedair Street'
H.G. Wells - 'The Time Machine - and other stories'
Primo Levi - 'The Drowned and the Saved'
Mark Kermode - 'It's Only a Movie: Reel-Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive' (auto-biography)
Films Watched:
'Jacob's Ladder' (Adrian Lyne)
'Jeremy' (Arthur Barron)
'Che (Part 1)' (Steven Soderburgh)
'Che (Part 2)' (Steven Soderburgh)
'The Man Who Would Be King' (John Huston)
'Office Space' (Mike Judge)
'The Inbetweeners Movie' (Ben Palmer)
'The Graduate' (Mike Nicholls)
'The Last Detail' (Hal Ashby)
'On the Waterfront' (Elia Kazan)
Albums Played:
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross - 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' (OST)
The Kills - 'Blood Pressures'
Tune-Yards - 'W H O K I L L'
Bon Iver - 'Bon Iver'
Emily Bronte - 'Wuthering Heights'
Iain Banks - 'Espedair Street'
H.G. Wells - 'The Time Machine - and other stories'
Primo Levi - 'The Drowned and the Saved'
Mark Kermode - 'It's Only a Movie: Reel-Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive' (auto-biography)
Films Watched:
'Jacob's Ladder' (Adrian Lyne)
'Jeremy' (Arthur Barron)
'Che (Part 1)' (Steven Soderburgh)
'Che (Part 2)' (Steven Soderburgh)
'The Man Who Would Be King' (John Huston)
'Office Space' (Mike Judge)
'The Inbetweeners Movie' (Ben Palmer)
'The Graduate' (Mike Nicholls)
'The Last Detail' (Hal Ashby)
'On the Waterfront' (Elia Kazan)
Albums Played:
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross - 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' (OST)
The Kills - 'Blood Pressures'
Tune-Yards - 'W H O K I L L'
Bon Iver - 'Bon Iver'
Monday 5 December 2011
Students as Consumers - Guardian competition entry
This is an entry to a Guardian blog competition focussing on the idea that with rising tuition fees, universities will become overly consumerist.
Picture the university of tomorrow as being a realm of consumerism, a marketplace of education where everything is for sale. This university has, in essence, become less a sanctum of learning and self-discovery, and more a vast conformist shopping centre.
Forgetting for a moment tuition fees, the learning process whilst at university is intrinsically collectivist - everyone is entitled to and receives the same calibre of education as each other, leaving it to the students themselves to determine their level of individual engagement. Suppose then, that capitalistic tendencies begin to develop; slowly at first, like water seeping into cracks but, with similar alacrity, gradually exfoliating their way into the institutional core. Once this slow gain is fully established, universities will have become a true arena of consumerism.
Instead of, or perhaps on top of, tuition fees, there will be pay-as-you-go lectures; each student swiping members cards upon their entrance, the fee being debited accordingly before leaving. Cottoning on to the money-making potential for such pedagogic trading; learning materials, lecturer ‘face time’, and facilities will all be available on a tiered scale of quality to cost. More lucrative exam pointers? Pay this fee. Want your coursework assessed faster and with more detailed feedback? This is the extra surcharge...
Naturally, students will resort to means of avoiding getting caught in such a spider’s web of exploitative fees. In the same way that the digital era sent the creative arts industries into spasms of shock, so the next frontier of piracy will be education. Lecture attendances will drop as materials are redistributed illegally amongst the online fraternity. It will then be down to desperate sales experts to conjure up incentive schemes to entice larger audience numbers once again – bargain tutorials, 2-for-1 lectures, special discounts on learning materials, and so on.
Perhaps regimented degree courses will lose their foothold on the marketplace and instead, greater consumer choice will result in students being free to pick and choose from a whole spectrum of academia, as though they were passing from shop to shop on the High Street. A morning spent examining forensic samples could be followed by an afternoon analysing private company accounts. Indeed, why be confined by a single institution? With the adequate funds you could, for example, study English at Oxford for two days each week, coupled with three days of History at Durham, and then maybe the odd afternoon of Sports Science at Loughborough.
Of course with this tidal shift will come consumer’s rights. Students will develop expectations and adopt the indignation of disgruntled shoppers waving receipts in the air and demanding full cash refunds if they fail to be adequately met.
If students will inevitably feel disenfranchised by these developments then so too will university staff. They will be forced to enrol in swathes of customer services training, whilst sales teams will take up residence in the offices of professors, extolling the virtues of new marketing techniques. University deans will become slaves to charts and spend hours in boardrooms tossing forth strategies on how to escalate the sales figures of second year Anthropology modules.
No longer will lecturers simply be able to rely on their expertise within their chosen field; they will be required to possess a showmanship zeal for which they will be constantly rated alongside their rival colleagues. Instead of simply relying on tired Powerpoint slides, each lecture must be a performance, a revelatory experience captured on a hundred iPhones.
In the final analysis, the university of tomorrow will be the realisation of a revolution, whereby old-fashioned meritocracy is torn down by the almighty modern hands of purchase power.
Picture the university of tomorrow as being a realm of consumerism, a marketplace of education where everything is for sale. This university has, in essence, become less a sanctum of learning and self-discovery, and more a vast conformist shopping centre.
Forgetting for a moment tuition fees, the learning process whilst at university is intrinsically collectivist - everyone is entitled to and receives the same calibre of education as each other, leaving it to the students themselves to determine their level of individual engagement. Suppose then, that capitalistic tendencies begin to develop; slowly at first, like water seeping into cracks but, with similar alacrity, gradually exfoliating their way into the institutional core. Once this slow gain is fully established, universities will have become a true arena of consumerism.
Instead of, or perhaps on top of, tuition fees, there will be pay-as-you-go lectures; each student swiping members cards upon their entrance, the fee being debited accordingly before leaving. Cottoning on to the money-making potential for such pedagogic trading; learning materials, lecturer ‘face time’, and facilities will all be available on a tiered scale of quality to cost. More lucrative exam pointers? Pay this fee. Want your coursework assessed faster and with more detailed feedback? This is the extra surcharge...
Naturally, students will resort to means of avoiding getting caught in such a spider’s web of exploitative fees. In the same way that the digital era sent the creative arts industries into spasms of shock, so the next frontier of piracy will be education. Lecture attendances will drop as materials are redistributed illegally amongst the online fraternity. It will then be down to desperate sales experts to conjure up incentive schemes to entice larger audience numbers once again – bargain tutorials, 2-for-1 lectures, special discounts on learning materials, and so on.
Perhaps regimented degree courses will lose their foothold on the marketplace and instead, greater consumer choice will result in students being free to pick and choose from a whole spectrum of academia, as though they were passing from shop to shop on the High Street. A morning spent examining forensic samples could be followed by an afternoon analysing private company accounts. Indeed, why be confined by a single institution? With the adequate funds you could, for example, study English at Oxford for two days each week, coupled with three days of History at Durham, and then maybe the odd afternoon of Sports Science at Loughborough.
Of course with this tidal shift will come consumer’s rights. Students will develop expectations and adopt the indignation of disgruntled shoppers waving receipts in the air and demanding full cash refunds if they fail to be adequately met.
If students will inevitably feel disenfranchised by these developments then so too will university staff. They will be forced to enrol in swathes of customer services training, whilst sales teams will take up residence in the offices of professors, extolling the virtues of new marketing techniques. University deans will become slaves to charts and spend hours in boardrooms tossing forth strategies on how to escalate the sales figures of second year Anthropology modules.
No longer will lecturers simply be able to rely on their expertise within their chosen field; they will be required to possess a showmanship zeal for which they will be constantly rated alongside their rival colleagues. Instead of simply relying on tired Powerpoint slides, each lecture must be a performance, a revelatory experience captured on a hundred iPhones.
In the final analysis, the university of tomorrow will be the realisation of a revolution, whereby old-fashioned meritocracy is torn down by the almighty modern hands of purchase power.
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