Death, Me & Creativity - Hanging Out At The Border.

A familiar and murderous paradox of agony and ecstasy hangs heavily in the air. The tumbleweed of thoughts fly by and get stuck – but only for a second - on the petrified tree of the task at hand.

Last week my specific creative challenge changed for a third time in 24 hours. The brief was the same but the space and time available to do the work altered. It became uncertain, unknown and unspecified. That may sound simple but imagine designing the Louvre but getting told halfway through that it needed to fit in your back yard.   

How to solve? What to do? How will this work? Can I find that clever fix in my stupid head? Can I do the right thing? Something that nails the challenge facing me? An idea that will work with all this uncertainty? Well can I?

Trying to be a creative person involves balance alright. Living with that dull ache of potential failure and the thrill of firing that gun. Snipers forever sitting and waiting - watching me walking the tightrope of melancholy and orgasm. At the same time the evil twins - 'ho' and 'hum' - sitting on my shoulders twiddling their thumbs - argue a while and them sum it all up for me in two words. Useless Cretin.

If you have ever had a good idea have you tried to recall how it came about? Even writing about the process of creativity baffles me. I've tried but it's not really a topic that can be explained. Developing an idea is about making all the right choices. To get to the right thing – a brilliant idea. And I've realised I don't actually enjoy explaining what I am doing or how I got there. It just gets in the way and it's the wrong thing to discuss.

What are you doing?

As it is every day riding on the plains - no matter what gun-slinging town I'm in – people are always firing off irrelevant questions about the wrong thing. Why? What and How? demand answers. I am beginning to think I am not wired to answer questions like these sometimes. Questions about the wrong thing.

I do try hard to answer everybody politely but some things quickly tip me into a kind of defensive sarcasm and derision. It's unintentional but I can lose patience very quickly amid the need for explanations. It reminds me of my pet hates – the TSA, stupidity and neediness. They don't deserve the respect of an answer. They are all about the wrong thing.

My body language is probably deeply objectionable to many people when they talk about the wrong thing - but I'm simply not interested (capable) of explaining my reasons to people anymore. It just is what it is. Get over it. 

Anyway back to the point…

I have decided to share my principles instead. If you want to ask questions about being a creative, ask me something about these. They are my principles of creativity.

Principle 1. French Kissing The Artful Dodger.

Figure out how to lie, cheat and burn the evidence. I have long held that when it comes to creativity you have to be completely happy with the idea that you may actually be a complete fraud. I'm utterly convinced that luck and practice (mixed with serious theft) are the raw materials of 'being' creative. Don't ask me how you get to learn luck.

Principle 2. Eating The Twilight Trash.

If you're not a voracious 'rat' sniffing out brain food then it's going to be hard for you. Without the primal hunger for edgy stuff that others would question then consider quitting now. The more people frown at your habit the more likely you are that you are onto something. You have to snuffle, harvest, grab, snap, graze and glimpse with equal measure. Use whatever capture tool you have to hand – but make sure you store the stuff for immediate recall. 

Principle 3. Emptiness is Your Nature.

Your normal habitat is solitude on a Sunday. Your home terrain is sparce - a cold expanse of zero. An ice field in Winter. You wander around the streets early or late - but always on your own. Definitely on your own. As you crawl emotions are shooting through thick and fast through your veins. This is bad heroin but you are good with it. When your mind is that blank and running on empty it will work on its own. You will get that nudge. - "Psst. What about glass walls?"

Principle 4. '10 Easy Steps to Creativity!' - Get the Fuck Outa Here!

No. There are no steps and it's not easy! Creativity drives me crazy. It needs to drive YOU crazy too - or it isn't real. Creative things happen in the penumbra. You will never know where the idea really came from or why. You just have to try to get the majority of conditions right. For me that means (A) Quality of Input - Trusting the source and the context you are working in. (B) Splendid Isolation - Being left alone to 'be' but in good company. (C) Coordinated Chaos - Managing the time for distraction within messy dynamics. (D) Publicly Pressured - Knowing that I'm accountable - on point for a result. Pressure is the framework. Always.

Principle 5. Be annoyingly connected to everything.

Making connections between (and amongst) weird - ostensibly unrelated stuff seems to me to be at the root of it all. That grape, those cars, this axiom, the idea of Giraffes, that political movement. That would make a great opera. If you are not making these connections then you are probably not made for the high wire. The air is a bit thinner too so make sure you fully understand the idea of Giraffe.

And…

In order to maximise the 5 Principles - stop the existing soundtrack of your life. Stop being the same person you were last week. Change yourself and your dopey habits, be different. Learn a different accent - use different words. Download new music. Change your bugbears - they define you. Get a life. Get a better camera. Write a protest song. Eat an eel. Don't remain that boring, sad unhappy idiot. Get out. Look at yourself and remember you are one day closer to death. I try. It's hard.

What did creativity do to deserve me?

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

The Instant Message Is The Media.

Scapegoat Alert!

No surprise that the media 'system' is feverishly reporting on how the leaderless Police Force (back in the UK) are failing to stay even one step ahead in the riots. 

1000's of teenage rebels without a cause but with a 'smart-phone'.

"The mad are happy, the sane ignorant; those of us stuck on the sane side of madness or the mad fringe of sanity are in a purgatorial cage." - Anonymous  

Telco's and Device manufacturers the world over are probably laughing all the way to the broken bank. They couldn't have paid for this amount of promotion. Priceless! 

You can hear the sound of countless 'groups', 'lists' and Sid Vicious (Google+) 'circles' being clicked - then split seconds later angry hordes of tech savvy, smart-phone wielding 'hoodies' hell-bent on tearing up their own 'hoods are mobilised. At the same time PC plods around with out-dated technology – 'systems' built for far quieter times wondering WTF.

Designed to cope with more sedate times, the police operate a system that teeters comfortably on the precipice. Nervously observing a low bandwidth - mostly obedient public living within a simmering, variously sick and certainly cynical system - that doesn't really give a damn.

Now everyone is blaming this on their favourite issue.

That we are now shocked to find that the young people are up fo it! - looting the shops - pretty pissed off with their lot - no services, quality of life, parents who care or futures - the shock is that it's a shock! What do we expect in such a stupid self serving system.

IM - A system of Instant Messaging.

Yep. - 'Get down here - set fire to the Town Hall and bag some cool MP3 players - right now please.' I'm able to report that I have no idea how they would actually phrase the command.

150 people on your list multiplied by 1000's, then 1000's more - all eager and bored recipients. All that energy in pursuit of a quick hit. This is a system that works. It knows its function. It's designed perfectly to do what it has done.

Where is the surprise in all this - this unrest within the system of society? That it didn't happen sooner? This has been coming for quite some time. Well before 2008 but that was certainly the big catalyst.

As George Friedman suggests - "After 2008 a sense emerged that the financial elite was either stupid or dishonest or both. The idea was that the financial elite had violated all principles of fiduciary, social and moral responsibility in seeking its own personal gain at the expense of society as a whole."

I doubt whether the people on the streets of London are complaining about the recent demise of their Sunday paper, nor the sovereign debt crisis - they are simply having a laff at the expense of a now underfunded Police Force. But systems are always subject to insidious shock. Always.

No question either that we ain't seen nothing yet. It's all very much a foretaste of things to come. All the intertwined and self-serving systems, for the benefit of the 'elites' of business, politics and other big systems now find themselves on very rocky territory indeed.

Do they get it though? And what are 'we' doing?

Where is the vital dialog taking place? Is the truth being drowned out by talk of Blackberry's Instant Fucking Messenger System? Just another way of diverting us from talking about the bloodsucking systems that we have to live within to the benefit of these 'elites'? A few days ago the Murdoch's were an elite, as was Gaddafi, Bashar al Assad, Laurent GBagbo - days ago.

Profit From Gloom or Prophet Of Doom?

Is anyone surprised by the riots and weekly diet of doom and gloom in the systems? - Really? I'm not and an I doubt those of you who are bothering to read this. Given the intense and cynical conditioning we've been subjected to for years within a (any) Nations system I am continually surprised this hasn't all kicked off earlier.

Unless you are lucky and are borne into money you are -

1. In a crap shoot that requires either courage and determination and a huge slice of luck or -
2. Have great parents who know how to keep you safe, courage and determination and a huge slice of luck.

The system isn't on your side unless you are buying into the systems money machine.

It's an economic machine designed to keep the Nation going and you are a cog. 

Unless you conform to playing nicely and living the lie. Unless you sign up to the tacky celebritized world machine. Unless you are prepared to turn a blind eye to the minority of scum bags laughing all the way to their own banks or the corrupt politicians and business people who are keeping it all in place anyway.

The issue has to be what takes the place of the system as we know it? We can see the alternatives in the extremists and terrorists. Not much fun going there right? So where is the caped crusader, the masked man - the new Robin(s) of the Hood.

This is probably the biggest question and fear for any thinking human. Because there is no WE - we are are not represented other than in our small communities - by ourselves. There is no grand system that represents a fair alternative the sewage and rat infested system we live amongst. The system we live within knows this and tries to defend itself but as we can see it is perilously close to tipping.

"The Police Are Outnumbered and are giving up." - Twitterer.

Just different rats prepared to become a new form of elite. Is that true? Well if it's worth putting all our collective brain power into one thing it would be hard to imagine anything more vital at this critical time.

A final Instant Message:

"The real problem is that, while the challenge to the elites goes on, the profound differences in the challengers make an alternative political elite difficult to imagine." - George Friedman  

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Pretty Awful!

Awarding a place the title of 'Nations Prettiest Village' is the kiss of death.

I'm sorry - here's a rant!

I recently drove through one of the most stunning villages on the planet. A lofty spectacle, a jewel in a beautiful land.

An impressive 14th Century castle breaks into view as I round yet another mountain hairpin. You begin to make out the scale of it and then marvel at how it could possibly hold onto its perch. Part miracle, part magnificent ostentation - all hard work.

There it is high above its very own village - built impossibly by hand straight from the rock. As we all like to say (and sadly most likely true) - 'We just couldn't make one of those these days!'

The indescribable impressiveness of it all stays - but thankfully us humans come and go.

And so it remains 700 years later looking down on its precious, ornate houses where servants and merchants once lived. In its glory days this place was the focal point of trade for miles around.

As if to underline its impeccable positioning there is a mighty teeming, steaming river bending around its base.

The massive rocky edifice with its impeccable testimony to bygone times is a powerful picture. Dark green trees and the baking hot sun filling in the rest.

Inglorious Basterds.

As I drew closer I began to recoil with horror. I can't recall being as sickened by a sight quite so much as this. The disparity of the place and the cynical stupid commercialisation of it. Just plain wrong.

The village and humanity have both paid a high price in my mind. Who is responsible for this?

I'm sure I had been here years before so maybe that's what bought on the nausea. I couldn't get away fast enough. Boiling oil, a storm of arrows and cannon shot would not have made my retreat any speedier.

Apart from there being no place to damn well park, without paying large sums, (that turned out to be a plus) there seemed to have congregated a type of humanity, so incongruous to the idea and tradition of the place, that I'm still shocked as I write about it days later.

Even the 700 year old castle seemed to be shrugging its ramparts at what was going on down here.

The expensive shops and tacky (and expensive) restaurants that lined the river all competed to sell the same junk. Plastic beach-balls, cheap postcards, every gaudy colored children's fishing net you could envision, over-priced pots and figurines of donkeys with breasts - made in China. Souvenir shop upon bloody souvenir shop! Queues outside every one. I cannot do justice to putting into language the disgraceful tack on display. I was able to observe this diabolical spectacle as I was forced to crawl through the village in what was now a 30 minute tailback.

This is so not progress.

This jam was caused by thousands of super-sized tattoo bearing '7 Children Families' presumably up for a wander from their despicable trailer park. A trailer park that had hijacked (officially it would appear) a sleepy farmers meadow by the side of the river. Redefining the word blight.

These lager bearing hordes were now making their way to a bizarre fun-fair! In the midst of all this medieval beauty a violently loud-musicked, neon-lighted series of horror 'attractions' was dragging them in. All of this vile pointlessness in what used to be a reasonably useful car park under shady trees.  

The smell was all too memorable. A deeply unpleasant mixture of fake-tan, Chanel V0.5, turd-burgers and cheap cigarettes.

The river itself hasn't got away with it either. Hourly trips on fake pirate ships. The jostling of hundreds of canoes painted bright lemon yellow and angry red - everyone fighting to ram each other - to capsize and drown an unsuspecting enemy - each canoe kitted out with three or four screaming, oar-flailing obnoxious sun-burned fat kids with headphones - their ugly fat faces badly grease-painted.

It truly was a Lord Of The Flies moment!

I just can't imagine where 'civilisation' goes from here but I am either too old or still not ready for dealing with what we are becoming as a society.

Sorry Castle. Sorry Village.

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Don't!

Francisco Perez : Acido Lisergico

Don't you think we should be in better shape by now - with all our so called civilisation?

• Don't we deserve more honesty from those in power? Honesty about the system that controls us? The dirty (no-longer) secrets of how the system works to the advantage of a few?
• Don't you think the mountains of plastic in the ocean are big enough now?
• Don't you think it's time we told the trash TV channels that we don't want to turn our kids minds to mush anymore?
• Don't you think it's time we asked the really tough questions - encouraged the real debate? EG: Too many people on the planet? Who actually cares whether products are killing us - the food that causes obesity - the entertainment that causes school shootings? Don't we get it yet? - it's only about the economics? Why do we keep the sick - who should have died - from dying?
• Don't you worry that all the things that individually frustrate you has literally no recourse - nobody's listening?
• Don't you think the politicians would be braver now - and actually talk the truth - since they are mostly outed as liars?
• Don't you think it's a shame we can't speak about the massive disasters that the last 2000 years following religion has caused and continues to cause?

Don't you think? Or Don't you care!

From the League of 'Democratization Of Next Thinking!' (Don't Ever Abbreviate Dialogue)

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

iCloudius - Entering an Arena near you very soon!

Imagine The Power. 

You get to kill millions of 'Subjects' with a single decision. You choose to 'Save' only those who serve your immediate need. 'Delete' or 'Trash' those that displease you at a whim. No Attachment. The joy of slashing burdensome systems at the downturn of your stubby thumb! No-one dare stop you, indeed you will be encouraged! It is blood-curdlingly good.

Like all distant nieces, cousins and nephews of Caligula you can now jive with equivalent power. 

Emperor of all you curate! iClaudius we praise thee. You bring awesome freedom to each of our crusades. 

It will be a great feeling (and one I thought impossible to repeat) some 2000 all bar 30 years on! Crazy revolutions on top of crazy revolutions further along and nothing short of Epoch making. Every bit as meaningful for the citizens of today as the sinew extracting excitement of the earlier Emperor!

As well as conquering much of England - with only 40,000 troops – the Big 'C' did his bit for the world by building Roads, Canals and Highways (taking a few souls with him as he went) as is Cupertino Steve. With the same number of people he has put Roads, Canals and Highways in the sky just so that we can move all our shizzle around.

So alright, I can't wait, my thumb is up. (Yes I know it used to be down! - you crazee history buffs.) Whatevs!!

Just imagine our new found 'Power' and domination! 

The whole back catalog of The Beatles, Neil Young or The Stones just waiting on your prompt. Ready to enter the amphitheatre and perform whenever the mood takes you! AND on all your devices. John Mayer, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Mozart or Massive Attack's bootlegs - no problem - unrestricted playlists. 

DJ Konka, Seasick Steve - mixed with Neko and all your Album Art - wherever! Check! 

And that’s cool because typically these are not on your 'iThing' because you are too cool and currently packing Ed Sheerin, Mount Kimbie and the Fi-Tones - 'Cos you can right? - Well in 'Cloud Future Land' you can juggle all this like Anthony Gatto!

Just think! All those images you've got - that you know one day (yeah right) you would sort into 'Drunk', 'Not So Drunk', 'Odd', 'Whacky' and 'NSFW" - well now an App will automatically take the whole lot and give you them in beautiful arrangements that are designed - in various degrees of - 'breathtakingawayness'.

Making you feel ever so clever. It's all sorted out for you!

But wait! Surely the iCloud has more to offer! You bet.

Although not immediately - we can expect a whole new array of lighter-weight devices - devoid of defunct storage devices. Apps that bring complete archives of everything and anything from any source right into your Ray Bans.

But the really big thing has to be this - the seamless juxtaposition of 'ALL YOUR STUFF' and all your 'platforms' that manage 'ALL YOUR CONNECTIONS'. 

If you like me are totally ridiculous when it comes to collections of things that 'will-come-in-handy-one-day' then that day is surely near. Don't expect it immediately but the perfect 'App' that arranges things you already own and know in a brilliant display. Alongside whoever you want to connect with. The world if you like. Things that are no longer strewn all over sprawling folders, devices, hard drives and 'other' computers! Arriving at an App Store near you very soon!

Fancy That Emperor? Persecution of the PC's anyone? Lugula. Lugula. Thumbs UP!!!

You can hear the roars of approval from the Clouds already!

Posted via email from Just Thinking!