Detail from letterpress Aisle One calendar (click for link)

So here we are in the future. 2001 may have been a year that resonated with sci-fi fans everywhere for obvious reasons, but in terms of actual futuristic shit going down, it was pretty much a disappointment. But 2010 is a different story.

 Not only do graphic design geeks love the fact this year’s digits look incredibly cool typographically (or written out in full as above), we are also living in a world which has changed dramatically from the one I grew up in. At the age of 32, it’s weird to be part of the last generation that grew up entirely without the internet in a world where it’s now so prevalent.

Poster by Paul Sizer (click for link)

 Ok, so we don’t have the jetpacks and the flying cars, but technology has already completely transformed the way we live. It’s hard to believe that YouTube only came into existence in 2005, and remember dial-up internet? How did we cope?

In the last couple of years with laptops, wifi and handheld computers (aka smartphones) becoming commonplace, if not de rigueur, the mainstream western world is now totally, totally wired (as Mark E Smith would say).

The Geeks Shall Inherit The Earth

 I’ve been described as a geek on more than one occasion, and even have the badge to prove it. But really, in a world where almost everyone uses the likes of Facebook and most have a phone that surfs the web, the only distinction I have is that I actively seek out the new stuff earlier (if I can afford to) and having lived without this kind of cool stuff for so long, fully appreciate it for the massively exciting opportunities it brings.

 Everyone except the most stubborn luddite now knows that newspapers and books as we know them now are on the way out sooner rather than later, as new contraptions such as Amazon’s Kindle and other ebook readers, the aforementioned smart phones (or superphones as Google would have it) and the new Apple Tablet, bendy Skiff and numerous other products make an early bid to becoming the new way of consuming content. Ok, these overpriced gadgets may only be adopted by the technological elite for now, but where they lead, everyone else quickly follows.

 The Web Is Not Enough

 But as excited as I get about developments in media and technology, there’s no doubt that the world is changing in other, more fundamental and terrifying ways, specifically with the threat of climate change. All of our incredible scientific and technological progress may be for nothing, if we humans destroy the very world we have been lucky enough to inhabit. If we don’t consider this seriously now, in 2010, it could well be too late.

Time Magazine: The New Age of Extinction

 Even our use of the web is contributing to this destruction, with every google search and every video uploaded to YouTube using up a lot more power than we assume – it’s not limited to the minimal impact on our individual electricity bills – there are massive server farms full of computers that power our online adventuring, and it’s ultimately as unsustainable as indiscriminate air travel and petrol-fuelled cars.

 Of course those who worship at the altar of progress believe we will find a technology to save us from the near-certain ecological doom of our own making, but too often their optimism is fuelled by personal/economic interest.

 The Copenhagen Climate Summit of 2009 proved one thing- the politicians aren’t going to save us. And it’s been proven time after time again that they aren’t going to ‘Make Poverty History’ or ‘Give Peace a Chance’ either. These are topics so overwhelming that to consider them fully leads to a feeling of deep powerlessness and despair. No wonder those of us who live in relative prosperity bury our collective heads in the sand, turning to the quick fix of entertainment and the heavily skewed/selective 24 hour news cycle. Or booze, or drugs, or sex & porn.

 Human nature can be massively positive, leading to amazing creativity, scientific and technological advancement. But our insatiable desires for more, more, more are also ultimately massively destructive. Trying to change the fundamentals of human nature may be a waste of energy, but those of us who have the luxury of free time, free choice and freedom of speech have to stop kidding ourselves  and face the reality of what’s going on in the world head on. 

 Here, now, in 2010, as we rush headlong into the cutting edge of the future, would be the ideal time for a massive ‘pattern interrupt’ for the human species. Whilst that would take a miracle, it is surely at least possible to take a look at our own lives and ask,

“if this year was our last chance to do whatever we could to help save the world, what would we do about it?”

Read part 1, part 2, part 3

A Novel Idea

In my final year of college I also started writing lyrics and other random stuff in a bit of a creative outpouring, due perhaps to the fact that I’d kept my creativity bottled up for so long (or drowned it in a sea of booze might be more accurate) and increasing desperation about what was going to happen when the student safety net was pulled away from beneath my feet. I also made some attempt to record some music to go along with these lyrics,  though without any of the skill required for such an enterprise. Also my personal life was in a complete and utter mess at the time due to my own stupidity, but that’s another story.

After full-time education ended, unemployment was inevitable. I had the same attitude as Morrissey towards work “I was looking for a job then I found a job, and heaven knows I’m miserable now..” However I suddenly found myself in a serious relationship so had a reason to make a bit of an effort.

 In the meantime I decided it would be a good time to write a novel. I spent my days wandering round second-hand bookshops and going to the library, and fixated on Hunter S Thompson. I would see his partner in crime Ralph Steadman’s illustrations everywhere I went – perhaps taunting me about my own childlike drawing skills, though I took it as encouragement to continue on my quest to be a writer.

The novel was to be called the Three Drink Rule, about a borderline alcoholic ex-student who is talked into making a pledge to never have more than three alcoholic drinks – but when he inevitably gives in to temptation, bizarre things happen.. it never quite materialised, though I was to revisit it from time to time, and still think about trying to rewrite it now and again.

STRUGGLING TO PAY THE BILLS AND STAY CREATIVE

After about three months on the breadline I applied for a couple of retail jobs – one in a health food store and one in HMV’s “flagship” music store on Princes St, which had been closed for refurbishment. I got turned down for the health food job and ended up wowing the manager of HMV with my enthusiasm for the Oasis album Definitely Maybe (yeah, I know..  I was young and naïve) though the way he ignored me once i was in the job suggested he later regretted the decision.

After I’d accepted the HMV job, the health food store manager came back and said the job was mine after all, if I wanted it – it was too late though. I wonder how different my life would have turned out if I’d been given that job first, given the people who I met at HMV were to lead to me joining my first band and continuing my heavy drinking habits..

 * Note: For more info on this and the various soul-sucking jobs that followed, my recording of the song Columbo & Coffee and my adventures as part of an unpopular comedy band, you’ll have to read my in-depth tale about it called ‘I Was a Swivel Chair’ which I’ll be republishing on this blog soon.

During the Edinburgh Festival that year I managed to get some ‘work’ writing for the Evening News. I covered a variety of comedy, theatre and music but I was also working full-time.

Just to give you an idea how old I am, this was in the days before everyone had a laptop and email and free broadband in cafes etc so I had to run up to the fringe office on the Royal Mile on my lunch to arrange tickets for the events, and then after the event I had to go home, write the review and then call it in so that it could be published the next day.

My friend Dougie’s mum was one of the people at the Evening News who took these phone calls and transcribed the copy – I was quite embarrassed when I had to read her my review of ‘Sexual Perversity in Chicago..’

 This ridiculous ritual soon led to burn-out, and worse, I wasn’t getting paid for the pleasure, mainly due to my own deeply embedded reluctance to ask for money. Then I saw an opportunity to take part in a music video course with Roman “don’t mention my dad” Coppola as part of the International Film Festival, and applied.

Coppola was a really nice and surprisingly humble bloke and had made quite a few music vids including helping Spike Jonze out on Fatboy Slim’s Praise You and Mansun’s Tax Loss video (see his Reel). He guided us through the process of making a music promo from idea to final product.

We had to pitch an idea to someone at Skint Records  - he didn’t think much of mine, and we ended up going with another guy on the course’s idea which was to have a guy in a pink panther suit walk backwards around Edinburgh. After it was filmed we reversed and sped up the footage so it looked like everyone else was going backwards and the panther was strolling about leisurely. It turned out not bad and was apparently shown on MTV and BBC2 – but I couldn’t find it on the web when I looked.

So it was a great course, but had meant I gave up prematurely on being a full-time professional arts journalist. I did go back and write for the Evening News again a year later, and managed to get paid, but that fizzled out as I spent more and more time doing Swivel Chair stuff – including a string of “groundbreaking” music videos…

I don’t think I realised what an opportunity I had at the time to get paid writing work, something which on the whole still eludes me now. Clearly there are limiting beliefs at work in this old gaseous brain of mine…

 Next: The Final Part. Probably.

They Live – John Carpenter

As a self-styled “creative person”, how can I get a balance between the amount of media I consume on a daily basis, and actually producing something creative myself?

I’m an avid reader, whether it be ye olde fashioned tree-books or ye new fangled blog posts via google reader, or various magazines and newspapers. Working as a media monitor I go through all the daily papers most days and then there’s the other media I consume – TV news all day at work and then all the people I follow on tumblr when I get home, plus the odd TV programme that I enjoy.

But I consider myself a creative person – so how can I find time to actually be creative rather than just a giant media sponge? We are living in the information age, where it is quite literally EXPLODING in our faces everyday as we log onto the infinitenet. We now have the knowledge that it took Doctor Who (albeit a fictional character) lifetimes to acquire, at our slightly calloused fingertips. We can be sucked in by images, videos, music – all an incredibly strong draw to our unconscious minds which like nothing better than feeding on visual and audio stimulus for it’s own, often unclarified ends. And as we forge connections online, we also become involved in a competitiveness to find the next best amusing link, the killer photograph on flickr on weheartit, the blog post that explains the meaning of life itself in ten perfectly crafted bullet points or the mac application that’s going to change our lives – and to find it before everyone else.

There is no doubt in my mind that internet addiction is a serious, and growing problem – it’s something I think I may be suffering from myself as I struggle to achieve other goals such as keeping fit or learning the guitar because I’ve spent so much time keeping up with ‘the netbours’. And very often, it’s the most creative people who are drawn to it. Blogging or tumbling that reacts or recycles already produced images/music etc has a creativity to it of course, but it’s lower on the scale than actually producing original content yourself, just as there can be an art to journalistic criticism of music, films or books when done well – but it’s hard to hold it up there with the art of crafting a song or a film or a novel. Even when those things aren’t done particularly well, there’s still a stronger flame of creativity at work in producinig something original, in my opinion.

The problem is that consumption is EASY.

There are few barriers, apart from abject poverty, to getting hold of information in our culture. You don’t have to set aside time to read a blog, you just do it at some point throughout the day at work. You can pick up a book anytime. Most of us have an ipod or mp3 player crammed full of music which we can use anytime. And the TV, well that’s always on in the corner of the room, right?

To produce something creative, whether it be writing, music, film, or photography, you have to set aside the time for it. You have to do this in advance, and you have to make sure you stick to that plan.

The same goes for achieving anything worthwhile, whether it be learning a new skill, getting fit, or even maintaining friendships or contact with your extended family. Unfortunately this is a discipline I find extremely difficult – it’s so much easier to distract myself with endless information/entertainment. But.. I’m trying.. and that’s why sometimes my online output is erratic – because I’m not sure how beneficial it all really is. I love making connections with people, and that’s what keeps me doing it, but Im wondering if there isn’t a less time consuming way of doing that than what I’m doing now..