Musings on Storytelling

I have in my mind a fancy. It is probably one of those passing whims which flicker into sight and dissolve as quickly as they came, and yet the idea has a simplistic elegance I cannot help but be drawn to. I should like to tell a story by guiding an audience through different forms of communication, as though the telling of the tale evolves through time in a way that mirrors the evolution of media.

This little journey might begin by a fireside, hearing an itinerant bard tell us of places and people, inspiring us with a sense of bold adventures in a world so very different from the room in which the tale is told. After this intimate introduction in the low, quick-flickering light, the scene would change, and the solitary story-teller would be joined by actors, performing their parts amidst scenery and props, ever-increasing in complexity and detail with the plot.

And then the format might again change, as the soliloquies of the characters transpose from stage to ink, and for a brief moment the audience is reading from a novel, learning from the words more about the characters than they could guess from the actors. In this period we have a window into the motivations of the players, and the message on the page is interpreted privately, in the sacred, solitary act of reading.

By and by, the actors return, but slowly diminish into the background as the pivotal final sequences are played out on a screen, with a scale and grandeur impossible to achieve in the confines of the theatre. The film concludes, the tale is told, and the lone story-teller returns to share a moment of insight with the audience. And he smiles.

The Idiocy of People, Part 94

I've said much over the years about the idiocy of the human race. Einstein's oft-quoted remark, "two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe", is a very good starting point for any policy towards your fellow man. The majority of my day-to-day experience of humans is with the better sort; with friends and Radio 4 presenters. But occasionally, for the sake of getting things done, we all have to talk to the outside world. Selling things on eBay to raise a few bob is just such an occasion.

It's generally a good idea to be as specific and informative as possible in your auction blurbs, to avoid confusion and excessive questioning. But on virtually every auction someone spoils this scheme. They will ask a question that is already answered in the item description. It is infuriating. Say, for example, that you are selling a screen for a specific model of laptop. One fellow eBayer asked me what model the screen was for (obviously this was mentioned not once, but twice, in the blurb) and whether it would fit another model. It is unspeakably irksome to be asked questions like this when a simple Google search will suffice. You are selling an item that you know will do one thing well, but one thing only. There is no need for you to say anything otherwise, but the plebeian masses seem to take pleasure in asking poorly-spelled, illogical questions.

Another question that routinely pops up is whether I have a "Buy it Now" price. Well, since I have chosen an auction format instead of the Buy it Now format, the answer should be obvious. If I intended to let someone walk away with something for a fixed price, I'd choose that option. In fact, simply by asking the question they have removed any incentive for me to sell early. If they ask the question and want an item now, then there's plainly demand. These items tend to fetch a price above my initial expectations . It is simply idiotic to ask, and a waste of everyone's time.

I apologise for the length of this rather esoteric rant, but I'm increasingly infuriated (after the scandal of the public's reaction to the MPs expenses scandal!) by the stupidity of my fellow citizens. I've never really liked them, but am now veering towards total revulsion.

The Benefits of a Scandal

Oh, it's all miserable isn't it? Some MPs have been naughty, the rest are unjustly hated, the Speaker's going, the papers have won... oh, and the economy's reliably awful. But, dear reader, fear not! Whatever your opinion on the cause of the problems, whether you agree or disagree with my left-field ideas about actually being "nice to people", we can all take some degree of solace from the proposed solutions.

Alan Johnson wants fair votes! David Cameron wants an end to the Royal Prerogative! Nick Clegg wants every change he can think of! And yes, Gordon Brown wants a revolver.

Even though the public fury leaves a sour taste in my mouth, proposals on this scale represent (pretty much verbatim) my political wish-list. Throw in Cornish devolution and more tax relief for small breweries, and you're almost there. As a constitutional geek, I have long held the belief that reform of the voting system in particular is not just desirable, but necessary in a "democracy". This should be where the grand struggle between my Old Tory heart and my Young Liberal brain begins, but it fizzles out into a consensus.... it's just crackers (and, well, almost underhand) to have a system whereby the number of votes cast doesn't closely correlate with the number of seats won.

Perhaps if we had some power to actually elect our representatives, the current sense of disconnectedness wouldn't be as acute. My Young Liberal brain tells me this should be the case, but my Old Tory heart knows that it won't be. There must also be a Tory portion of my brain too, because apathy seems pretty entrenched in Scotland and Wales, where they have PR. Thankfully for both of my political identities (the sneering Hay Festival Ponce and the goading Edwardian Port-Swiller) this can be reduced to my usual maxim: people are stupid. People in England are stupid to not realise how jolly lucky they are to have this chance to change things, and people in both Scotland and Wales are stupid for not realising how much more power they have and how much contentment this should bring.

Oh well, best not fret over it. If people will be stupid, leave them to it, eh?

A Rage Too Far

Hot on the heals of Nadine Dorries's comments on the mood of the Commons and her fears for a suicide (in the current climate these concerns are apparently "zany"), Joan Smith writes today in CiF that she is sick of her country for despising all MPs. The comments section at the bottom of the page, never a place for rational thinking, shows an ignorant population foaming at the mouth.

"They're all at it! How dare they! You parliamentary apologist! "

I don't have to tell you how unhelpful this kind of thing is. Here are two sane people, trying to protect the dignity of those honest and hard-working MPs (you know, just like the mythical "honest, hard-working people" they're supposed to represent), and all they get is abuse. Likening the current climate to McCarthyism has its merits. The public are after The Enemy and anyone speaking up for The Enemy is a Commie pig. Or, conversely, compare the current climate to Mao Zedong Thought... the apologists are Class Traitors, Capitalist Roaders.

Despite the public's self-righteous fury, these apologists are actually the only ones left with a moral compass. They are wise enough to see that the court of public opinion is not the highest authority. They are willing to brave vilification to stand up for a basic moral ideal: that the innocent shouldn't suffer. The tabloids can rant on about how the traditional British sense of fair-play has been lost, but the populist rags are most to blame for this. Every media outlet in the country has piled unbearable pressure on so many politicians who simply do not deserve the abuse. These are people who have devoted their lives to serving you and I. They deserve to be treated humanely.

Intermittently, people like Dorries bravely put their heads above the parapet and do exactly what is required: they speak up for decent people, and against the mob. They in turn suffer. I, for one, commend their bravery, and will continue to support their efforts as best as possible. At least one member of the public is actually detached enough to see the issues clearly. As Stephen Fry said, there's simply too much else wrong that's more important. Stand up and be counted. Make a difference. Hate the public. Hate stupidity. Love fairness.

Playing with Wolfram|Alpha

I must admit that Wolfram|Alpha takes a while to get used to. You have to go through a small language barrier to talk to it, and for most of its calculations you have to simplify your language into something less vague than English grammar provides for. Having said that, once you learn its ways, it is an utter, fascinating delight.

After calculating the entire nutritional content of my dinner, I went scouting for some more fascinating gems. The computational engine has an amazing ability to tell you things you never thought you wanted to know. The current position of the moon and planets, for example.

Aside from this more useful-seeming information, it also provides some delightful answers when you ask it simple questions. It will quote Dylan or Shakespeare back at you. It will tell you a little about itself and gives the obligatory answer to the meaning of life. It knows about music, nature, names, everything!

Oh, and if you're interested, find out what your birthday was like, or how old you were on momentous days...

P.S. Just as a measure of how addictive this thing is, here's what the weather's been like for most of my life!

After the Party, Into the Rochester

After any pleasing night out, such as tonight with both James and Pip, there is the moment when one comes home, prepares a simple meal, and retires to the world of pyjamas and t-shirts. These last few weeks I have been immersing myself in the world of 19th Century romantic literature, and it is with great pleasure that I return of an evening to the delights of Jane Eyre or Far From the Madding Crowd. But it is not simply the reading that pleases me, not simply the worlds of Gothic literature, but the comfort of enjoying said works in my pyjamas.

Without the company I so crave, I have retreated into a world of Radio 4 and books aplenty, but beyond this there is a greater pleasure; classic literature has the ability to elevate the mind and put one into direct contact with a society long-gone. Without these books, without the films of said books, I would be just a lonely man living from day to day in a fantasy of current affairs and trivia. But with the classics, I have the power to be enlightened at the very same moment as becoming isolated... my loneliness becomes my salvation. For in Hardy, in Brontë, in Daphne du Maurier, there is a higher calling. The Geek can be called to Linux in such circumstances, into the esoteric world of computer hell, or he can be transported into a world of diverse pleasures. In essence, he can learn. And this, my dear fellows, is what I do with my spare time. I absord great works of fiction. After all, whatever QI might purport, fiction is the finer art. Fiction is the breeding ground for fiction. Fiction is where Art lives.

MPs' expenses: What's the fuss is all about?

Tax-payers' money has been wasted on frivolous claims for moat-cleaning and light-bulbs. The Daily Telegraph is drip-feeding a seemingly endless stream of embarrassing news to an enraged public. I feel it's important that I display some sort of cognizance of the problem and why it makes people angry. MPs are our employees, say the press, and should only claim for what they can justify to their electors. But I think this is a naive and overly-simplistic perspective. We are not their masters. They are ours. The entire point of representative democracies is that our law-makers govern us; rule by the mob is an idea that sickens most sane people. The public, after all, are idiots. Voter choice is a charade; your pencil mark has been guided to make that cross in that box by a series of intricate subterfuges involving business, media outlets and our governing elites. Plus a little help from dear mother "events". If politicians genuinely thought that we were their bosses, they would rescind the entire elections experiment and get on with governing the country unhindered. Make no mistake: these days, your vote matters only in that it might help substitute one governing elite for another.

The Telegraph's "Matt" cartoon puts it very succinctly: "I went into Politics to make my living room a better place". Given the quality of most living rooms, I think this is a very noble ambition. It's much better than, heaven forbid, someone in politics actually trying to make a difference. Having ideals in government is about the least desirable trait. For evidence, I cite the 1980s. Sensibly, New Labour has abandoned ideals and continued along a journey begun by John Major: one of light-handed, pragmatic non-intervention. Real change is a divisive and terrible thing. The beauty of our political system is that Ministers can let the country evolve in its own way, and then claim credit for it. Their pomp and procedure is a clever veil for the truth: in a democracy, power is unreal.

But I digress. In an age where the liquid lunch is disappearing, when the corporate ethos and efficiency-savings are leaking into every sphere of society (this is, remember, to be blamed on whatever vague societal nonsense drives Meme Theory, and not on policy-makers), I think it's time for somebody calm and informed to write a paean to the Frivolous Expenses Claim. I must possess at least one of those qualities, so I will try. On a basic level, especially in a recession, these claims are a very Keynesian priming of the economic pump. Without the allowances, perhaps MPs would be more frugal with their spending. I think only a fool would deny the positive effect on the economy of this intervention. Perhaps this could be supplemental to the Government's economic strategy: rather than investing more billions in propping up banks, perhaps we should be grateful for the much-needed cash boost for moat-cleaners and light-bulb retailers.

My other reason for defending frivolous expenses is simply one from the realm of personal aesthetics. It has always pleased me that somewhere in this repugnant, barren Isle there was one last refuge of extravagance. Grace and favour homes, grand Parliament buildings, banquets with visiting dignitaries; all of it seemingly designed to inspire an other-worldly aura of elegance and solidity. The trappings of the myth of power. It is romantic, whimsical, and therefor meritful. In the public's rage, they may be about to destroy some of the finest ornamental remnants of our profligate past.

Much of the controversy seems to have centred around the idea that useless, untrustworthy politicians are pocketing vast sums of public money. If anyone maintains the same train of thought as myself, they will see that these sums are not only minuscule, they are also essential to maintaining the illusion of Parliament's importance. If you remove the benefits, the perks and the pomp, the public may wake up to find that their politicians are spending a lot of time frenetically getting nothing done, and may demand a more direct say in the governance of "their" country. That, dear readers, would be a sorry day indeed.

Samhain Progress

I thought I'd just give a little update on progress with the novel. I managed to lose some of my work when I dropped my laptop (clumsy error) but have since discovered many of the missing pieces. In the end I'm only a few hundred words behind, which is better than it could've been!

I'm still writing the difficult middle passages, during which my heroine is subjected to quite a lot of abuse and tragedy. I've never had so much empathy for a character, so putting her through so much is very difficult for me. It feels utterly cruel, but I have to distance myself from that feeling as much as possible, as the entire point of the book is to explore what happens to people in times of hardship. With these moments of terror and crisis, I think it's going to be important to introduce a motif of some sort, which I have borrowed from a much older dream, and the painting it inspired. This will hopefully fuse her experiences together into a coherent menace, whose eventual consequences will now make more sense.

The third half of the book, which is a little lighter in its tone but answers many questions about my harsh alterworld, now has a greater degree of focus. I've been trying to avoid a picaresque structure with the action moving too quickly from place to place, so some of my new alterations to the final acts are designed to put definite purpose behind movements and motivations.

I have always been tempted to introduce a character for an element of comic relief during the middle of the novel, who would then become central to the events of the final act. But I haven't been able to satisfy my desire not to disturb the overall tone of the book with this character, so he will essentially be removed for good. This is a shame, and many may find the idea of the book's bleakness overwhelming, but I have to emphatically reassure people that there is a positivist message behind the story as a whole. This will now be more difficult to achieve, but I can't risk interrupting the more sombre, lyrical flow of the book for turns of comedy. It's just not what Samhain was conceived as.

Now, all I have to do is write more of the damn thing. I've resolved not to keep re-writing what I have, but to press on into virgin territory with every new press of the keyboard. That way the novel grows faster and seems somehow nearer to completion, despite the amount of heavy editing then required, and the sheer bulk of notes required to maintain the integrity of so many new plot details! Writing onwards has a habit of exponentially increasing the amount of revisions required...! But one day it will be done.

Just as a note, Samhain is the Gaelic harvest festival, signalling the end of the year at the coming of winter, which I've used as an emotive descriptor to set an Autumnal tone. It's apparently pronounced "Sow-win".

Wolfram Alpha, the Future of Search?

Stephen Wolfram's new search engine has been all over the web this weekend, touted as a "Google-killer" and much-hyped by the media. This unlikely and clumsily-named little piece of web gadgetry has the potential to revolutionise the way we find information. The "Computational Knowledge Engine" is ground-breaking because of the way it can "understand" and manipulate the data you search for. It is even heralded as a step towards artificial intelligence, because of its ability to take complex questions in natural language and compute a relevant result. By comparison, Google starts to look worryingly like a list of the dead. The sheer amount of irrelevant information on most web search results pages is often enough to make you cry into the collar of your Star Trek T-shirt. Wolfram Alpha will change this. It will be captivating.

All of which is why I'm now so frustrated that the damn thing, despite having been publicly lauded with such energy, is not actually usable yet. It is still in closed BETA-testing mode. So we're left with a situation where one of the most important leaps forward in computer science is just around the corner, but with a vague "it'll be open some time in May" caveat.

That's simply not cricket! I want to play with it now! I want it to be hard at work calculating the distance to Mars in sound wavelengths of D Minor. I want it to be telling me how many times I can listen to the Flight of the Bumblebee before the 2012 Olympics. I want it to confirm the correlation between the decline in Piracy over the last century and rising carbon dioxide levels. I want it to wrestle for milliseconds over the complex question of whether more money has been made from selling coffee or gold in the history of man. It must be straining away under the weight of such problems as how many average-weight thoroughbred horses the Space Shuttle can carry into low Earth orbit, or what the capital of Somaliland divided by the capital of Rutland is. Wolfram Alpha is capable of answering these questions and more. So why is the world left in the unenviable position of knowing about its potential for surreal time-wasting, but not able to use it?

It's a crime against my manic over-active imagination. I need it now. Otherwise, I may explode from daft inquisitiveness.

Alone with the Moon

Save for a brief period of long-distance intimacy this winter, during which I was content to think of the girl in question and myself both staring up the starlight in silent contemplation, the one for the other, it's been a lonely year. During the harrowingly damp summer of 2008 I began to feel, for the first time since my adolescence, that all-too-familiar emptiness gnawing at my gut. This inspired me to write one of my better songs, Professional Jealousy, about the missed comforts of company (See here). The song-writing process seems to fulfil its purpose for me in this respect. It's a cathartic act, allowing me to succinctly express my grief and recall the wiser words at times of crisis; in the slough of despond.

Similarly, Darkness Falls provides a trite few lines about having faith in providence and the ability of the world to surprise and delight you. But the song's essential promise, that time will provide, grows ever more hollow. My best efforts at friend-finding, those frequent and exhausting exploratory sorties into the world of people, seem substantially in vain. The circle of friends I rely on for my daily dose of sanity simply can't cope with the level of communication and succour I require. I am the ringer, the harasser, the constant botherer of innocent contemporaries. I am needy.

This bit of self-awareness, seeing that I am so dependent on so very little human contact, has forced me into a new goal in life: emotional self-sufficiency. In practise, in my situation, this essentially means giving up, going mad, and being "fine" with my isolation. I have toyed with this. I've given it a go, more or less, and my conclusion is that it's a path to destruction. The eventual destination of that particular yellow brick road is becoming the sort of socially inept person one finds at the local Library midday on a Wednesday. Another result is a general slide into rudeness and inconsiderateness. Now, my antennae on this particular set of social principles have never been that well honed, but I have noticed a definite downward trend. I will say virtually anything these days. Profanities gush far more readily from my mouth than they once did, and there is a growing contempt for people of all hues. I distrust the world.

Now, all of this seems utterly lamentable and desperate, yes, but even with this understanding of the problems, I'm truly at a loss for finding a remedy. Moving seemed to be an obvious answer, but it hasn't exactly done me much good. If I'm lucky, I might see humans once every two or three days. Go me. And obviously the depression deepens with solitude, making it harder to contemplate yet another (inevitably doomed?) expedition into the wider world in search of someone, anyone, to have a conversation with. And even then, I'm so desperate for the conversation that it never really goes well. I can sometimes muster that elusive blithesome nonchalance so important in the social world, but it's a struggle.

Volunteering may still provide some sort of route into the world of bonhomie, but it's an exhausting process introducing yourself to new people and situations all the time, with your hopes high and then dashed by other peoples' sheer indifference. I'm pretty sure it was never this hard before. Is it the weary, bitter me that people see? I'd like to think that in person I'm still jolly and talkative enough for most people, but they never actually seem remotely interested in anything as bothersome as being friends. A group of passing acquaintances is about all I seem to be able to hope for, but you can't build a life on that.

So in the solitude, in the grips of depression and a desperation to give up on it all and join some sort of cult, where is solace to be found? The only answer I have found for that is simply ideas. Learning old ones and thinking of new ones. Becoming a vessel for all of the ideas you can possibly imbibe. This seems to have a certain charm to it. So, in lieu of anything else, I shall become the latter-day personification of my adolescent self: a thinking recluse. Willing or no.

Not Another Online Project

Well, this isn't quite true. I've had many websites and different online projects over the years, but no real personal blog. Other people seem to have them and enjoy the process. So I have decided to take my own slice of the interweb cake, with this crumbly bloggamy-jig. Like all good cakes, I hope it delivers on the promise of jam and dusted icing sugar. In the end, that's all we can ever ask for.

Overt and out,

Shrubs.