wisdom

Wisdom is not a direct goal. You can't visualise it, it's almost impossible to describe in a way that satisfies for very long and what's more it's a word that has no positive referent for many modern people. Goals are static, whereas wisdom belongs to the range of things that occur in the dynamic of real rather than imagined life. Better to think of it as a byproduct of getting rid of the things that get in the way of wisdom.

judgement

Judgement requires courage but not as much as you might think.

Fame!

Do you know any famous people? If you have known them for a long time, since before they were famous, then you can probably have a half-good conversation with them…as long as you don’t ask for anything. It’s natural when someone you kicked around with hits the big time to want to cash in. After all, they owe you from earlier don’t they? Wrong. Once you are famous everyone wants a piece of you. That’s when you get the managers and agents to be the buffer. And it’s one reason why famous people like other famous people a) they aren’t after a piece you b) they understand the game and c)famous people are the biggest fans of other famous people.

David Giles’ book Illusions of Immortality is a good fame primer, another is Stephen Aronson’s Hype. Both miss the crucial connection between fame and attention. Since the western model of modern life leaves most people a bit starved of attention the hypertrophic solution – fame – is seen as a very attractive thing. But you only need a couple of aspirin to cure a headache- not a bottle full- and the analogy of the suicidal overdose is not out of place. Kurt Cobain and other famous suicides often kill themselves because they are nice people who feel they must reciprocate the attention bestowed on them. Think about it: in a tiny community of 150 people (the so called Dunbar number for the maximum number of ‘real’ relationships you can maintain) you can give back the attention you are getting. But when 150,000 are screaming your name you’ll feel nothing but revulsion- as Cobain did. Of course many successful pop stars are low empathy and see such adulation as their right and feel no compunction to give attention back.

If you need attention do something that gets it: wear jazzy (don’t check the etymology of Jazz though) clothes, look weird, talk loudly, do interesting stuff. And give attention- giving it is the usual way to get it back. Get involved with things- plays, businesses, art shows- as my good friend Ramsay Wood pointed out to me: involvement is the higher form of attention. Why do you think the arts council is so big these days on promoting community involvement in projects? - they know that people out there are not starved of artworks they are starved of attention.

Fame brings money. Fame brings attention. Fame brings people who want to suck up to you, help you, make you breakfast. Fame encourages idleness, and fame encourages people to only like a certain kind of non-abrasive interaction. Fame makes you weak, fame stops you from learning from others except on your own terms, so actually you don’t learn. One of the key ingredients of learning is abandoning your own terms. Sure, the money is nice, but you can earn money in lots of ways that are easier than becoming famous.

The worst part of being famous- from my observations of the few people I know who are- is that their time is taken from them in fending off people who don’t care about THEM. It’s a sad thing to see a celebrity being really nice and respectful to autograph/selfie hunters who don’t like or even know who the celeb is (I’ve been present three times where getting the autograph or selfie was a dare set to the person who least liked or didn’t even know the famous person involved). Now multiply that experience over days and years. You cease being able to deal with normal people. Every interaction is corroded by trancelike ‘niceness’ or paranoia. No wonder you want your private jet, your massive house, your park full of horses and quadbikes and other toys. Rod Stewart’s hobby is making model train dioramas, Beckham plays with lego. They have reverted back to childhood pleasures, it’s the only safe place to be.

I know only one famous person who had little interest in other famous people before achieving fame. Most idolise the famous from an early age. They're the ultimate fanboys. The method is secondary- music, acting, writing- to getting fame. It’s no surprise to me that failing at being a teenage rockstar is often the prelude to becoming prominent in some other field. If you are not that interested in other people as a reality rather than an image (famous people like to meet their idols yet keep them on pedestal at the same time) then being famous will be fairly easy. You can move like a sociopath through the world getting what you want. But let’s say you are normal and want to become a better and more evolved person, someone who strives to connect to the reality of the universe- then fame is your enemy.

I, like many writers, have done their own bit of striving in the fame game. And cursed my missed opportunities for ‘better exposure’. Now I revel in them, in every instance in which I have subverted becoming well known for one thing. This is the single best antidote to fame: do lots of things that confuse anyone trying to categorise. Oh, sure, make enough dough to pay the bills, maybe even court enough fame to be successful in a niche or a community, but actively subvert the fame process. Being able to interact normally with anyone you may meet can never be given back once you achieve a certain level of fame. It’s a one way street you don’t want to be stuck in. Lots of people like Cipher in the Matrix would probably say- no way- I want that experience- take the blue pill and live happy every after- but that will be at the expense of becoming a better human.

Will Self once opined on the difference between fame and success in your field. Success is a good thing, because the people who recognise it know what it entails, feel uplifted by association. Success in your field encourages others. But fame is crude. People don’t care about you or what you have done- they only care that you are famous. I think it’s essential to aim for some kind of success in what you are doing- but you can define that- taking a huge risk in an artistic venture that receives negative press can still be a success if you set out merely to take that risk. But to aim for fame is very silly. Find another way to get attention and money, and then cherish two extremely valuable gifts: the gift of owning your own time and the gift of being able to talk to anyone in a natural way so that you can learn from them. Paranoia and its opposite, trance niceness, blocks the super-subtle gifts of telepathy and near-telepathy we all can benefit from.

meaning based life

If you want to lead a meaning based life, break it up into meaning based units. I got this idea from prolific self-help guru Steve Pavlina and it struck me as very sensible. If you break your life into time based units they have no intrinsic meaning or value. So it becomes both boring and stressful (a lot of modern life if you aren't careful). But break your days into meaning units and it works a lot better. Instead of writing for five hours comeplete something that has meaning (a chapter, a certain number of words, an illustration). You'll be energised at the end instead of feeling stunned. Find out what is meaningful to you, divide up this meaningful task into meaning based units.

the 120 film I bought on ebay

Buying things on ebay is a cyclical process. Any period of three years or so will provide the DNA of my interests; and a man’s interests, or a woman’s, rather than their addictions, are supremely telling…in a way I would describe addiction as the condition of having insufficient real interests…and you could say life is the process of becoming interested and then losing that interest to find a new one…

These rolls of film were the beginning of a new phase that would culminate in many developments. I sensed as much as I tentatively went for a batch of 5 rather than a couple or even one. I was about to enter an INDUSTRIAL phase of art and photography and I needed supplies. Five seems pretty meagre when put like that but my thinking needed time to change, this was just the beginning.

HP5 has a long history. It’s a fast film – 400ASA- and is a competitor to Kodak Tri-X- and though like all films it’s changed since the film heyday of the 1960s and 70s (dyes have been added, silver content reduced, film thinned) it appears to have changed less that Tri-X has. Though you’ll find plenty of people to contradict that, film being, a very subjective thing and, in the hands of a capable darkroom technician, capable of being stretched to look like almost anything you want. Almost.

The main male perfumes, the cheap ones I knew from the 1970s, were Old Spice and Brut 33. Both contained substances that have now been banned. Both are still available but though bearing the same names and packaging are only a shadow whiff of their former selves…(after a long absence….[pause while I try to find some to buy- original ones on ebay- OK, found a gift pack of Old Spice from the 70s at £29.99, I put it on my WatchList. It seems that Old Spice stopped being old spice in 1990- or rather it was watered down by Proctor and Gamble who bought it. What’s odd is the internet is full of people saying the smell hasn’t changed when it very obviously has- A LOT. Original Old Spice was as pungent a waft as sea weed… ]

The parallel with film is obvious. When you look at and handle film from forty or fifty years ago it is more substantial and the blacks are blacker. It may have more range too and certainly was easier to fix if you over exposed it. But large companies like Proctor and Gamble step in and trim the costs to make even more money for their greedy selves. I have given a couple of talks to P&G executives and they were nice enough chaps etc. but their business is based on sucking up living brands and then extracting as much money from them as possible without a thought for giving people what they really want: value, the real thing, an honest transaction. There is a stench of ‘con’ about Gillette razors- priced way over the odds- I wonder if the hipster beard thing was an unconscious move against the corporate stranglehold on shaving…

Publishers, too, follow the P&G model. They buy up small publishers, liquidate the back list and keep the single bestselling author – often rebranding it a ‘Penguin Classic’ or some other guarantor of steady income. Of course they tell the publisher they will keep all their staff and books in print etc etc….Lies, all lies!

People need to know that big business is not on their side. Small business may well be, but a big business in the business of ‘brand management’ is simply in the business of extracting money from the mugs and the suckers- you and me. Is that too on the nose? Too broad and let’s face it, whine-ee? Is it the eternal whinge of the man with not enough cash and a chip on both shoulders? Shouldn’t we just accept the fact that big bizz is amoral and that it is our job to place our business with small bizz? Yes but by shifting the conversation as they say, to one where the default reading is that big bizz is NASTY, we may slowly cause it to wither away like Marx’s state, a topic I am sure I shall return to.

So, HP5, Ilford in 120 roll form for my 6x6 Mamiya C3 camera, a twin lens reflex camera made in 1964, the year of my birth. I am as old as my camera and it’s a very fine camera too- massively heavy as over 2kg, solid as hell but also not indestructible. On my previous birthday I had gone off to photograph a pillbox on Chesil Beach and the wind had blown the tripod over denting the side of the camera back. I was able to straighten it out but I fear the back isn’t exactly flat now. I’ve not produced many good photos from this camera – which I bought using part of the $600 I found in my paypal account in 2015- but the pictures have all been original in some way, low key, maybe even boring but still original- I’m thinking here of my rubber glove shots, the warehouse that looks like an American Barn of the Midwest and the shot of man who looks like a psycho in a college movie…just rereading that indicates what role photography plays in my life, how it allows me to explore the left brain, not entirely wholesome, mechanical, death impregnated side…the side that likes bunkers and abandoned cars and buildings. But art makes it sort of semi-legit, at least I think or hope it does.

120 roll film rather than the commoner 35mm in a cassette is my preferred sort of film to use. I get 12 pictures 6 cm square and these are big enough to print by contact rather than enlargement. The size means dust and micro hairs are less of an issue and I like the less fiddly aspect of moving them around. Anything that gets me away from the tyranny of digital. Anything that gets me away from a computer keyboard…

I know that the pictures I will take with this film will be different than previous ones as I have embarked recently on a stripped down and standardised attempt at photography. In the past I tried all kinds of films and developer chemicals, now I’m only using those that are very quick and easy to work with. I’m fed up of messing around in the darkroom with complicated chems but I still want that old school film experience.

cruel people and sentimentality

One way cruel (ie. sadistic) people and destructive people live with themselves is to be sentimental- about old friends, past times and family. They do nice things for these people and get a nice warm feeling thinking about that because of its connection to their fondly imagined past. Perhaps they can be manipulated if you know their sentimental buttons. Those who are also paranoid as well as cruel may chose to direct their sentiment towards animals, inanimate things. A person who eschews all sentimentality is unusual. Sometimes a kind person is also sentimental, but kind, unobtrusive, actions tend to not go with the showy necessity of being sentimental (though some are secret sentimentalists). Politicians who imagine they can 'win over' a tyrant by connecting to his sentimenal side are usually wrong. Perhaps someone whose self image is "I'm basically a good guy" can be won over by such a connection. If the tyrant's self-image is "I am a hard man and I do whatever it takes" then only if he makes a fetish of loyalty can you connect with him. If a tyrant has no loyalty then only exteme intransigence will work. Co-operating with a disloyal tyrant will always be read as weakness.

On acquiring a Rotring Isograph Pen

Ah, at last a Rotring pen that worked. I had read about Rotring pens being the pen used by Robert Crumb and so I wanted to use one. What is that about? Why copy the tools used by an artist you admire? I had been desperate to own (well, fairly darn keen) a Ricoh GR1 film camera when I read that Daido Moriyama used one (later I discovered that many of his earlier photos were taken with different cameras). I wanted a Leica like the one used by Cartier Bresson and Lee Friedlander and Gary Winogrand. When I took up painting I found out the kind of paint used by Van Gogh (you can still buy his favourite brand) and Philip Guston. It is the oldest kind of superstition. It’s kid’s stuff. And it never works, not really.

Often the practitioner has arrived at that particular piece of kit by accident or by a process that is less about seeking perfection and more about settling for what works and doesn’t break. In the long run the best car is the one that starts every morning. The fact is, when you are good at some art you can force a good performance out of most tools- think of Keith Jarrett and his Cologne concert played on a knackered grand piano.

When I think of the one job I really SHOULD know about- writing- my own piece of kit- a reconditioned Mac Laptop has been arrived at by a process of elimination. I was recommended to buy a Mac in 1991 (which I did- a five year old one- for a $1000!) and then in 1995 I bought another used one because by then it was obvious Macs were way more user friendly than PCs and I’ve continued ever since- bar one short book written on an IBM laptop- a right pain that was too.

I don’t think Macs are very special or even helpful, they just don’t get in the way of my writing. I imagine Moriyama feels in a similar way about his camera (which he was borrowed I think at first).

Which makes me think: borrowed or hired kit often become kit of choice. Because it’s the first thing you use, it works, so you like it. Kind of like ducklings ‘imprinting’ on the first thing they see – be it human or duck- as ‘mother’.

But why does the superstitious need persist even when it seems quite obvious? I am not superstitious: I touch wood even though I know it cannot possibly influence events. I do it because in my mind I have rationalised that ‘touching wood’ brings the subject to mind and means I may, just may, pay a bit more attention when I do something and therefore not have an accident. But I’m still touching wood. I could abandon touching wood and not walking under ladders (some rationale here too, danger of things dropping etc) but I don’t want to. I want SOME superstition in my life but not too much. To completely eliminate all superstition would be cold, boring and scary.

If touching wood really worked in some causative way our entire picture of the way the universe worked would be wrong. Explaining that view to others (a world controlled by subjective impulse) would bring me into conflict with others and of course many times it would be plain wrong. If I tried to ‘touchwood’ my way into a lottery win then it would fail. But that’s when the finetuning starts, which is what the naysayers don’t understand. And the model here is Pre-Copernican navigation. Keep that in mind.

In Ptolemeic navigation the earth is the centre and the sun moves round the earth. This means its central modelling principle is 100% wrong. It’s like having a map with North at the bottom but calling it South. But when you have such an egregious error the workarounds are quite easy. Which is why the egregious error persists for so long by the way. By going from observable data (in this case star positions) to your map and back again using maths bolt-ons to account for anomalies in planetary movement and so on, the Precopernican system was MORE ACCURATE at predicting astral conditions than the 100 times more correct Copernican model.

The wrong map in the right hands is better than the right map in the wrong hands.

Therein lies the whole mystery of scientific revolutions, paradigm thinking, maths modelling and, why not, climate change too!

The map is not the main thing- but our culture says it is. I once navigated across Bristol using a map from 1972- a map over 40 years out of date. And I was more successful at getting us to where we wanted to go than my friend Chris who was using his Iphone google map. Why? Because I had more context, I was viewing the whole city on my map whereas he was viewing just the few blocks around us and when he made a mistake there was no way for him to understand it was IMPOSSIBLE what the phone was saying. He had to rely on the answer the machine gave.

I have navigated across parts of the Sahara using a blank section of map – 100 square miles with nothing in it AT ALL. I could have used blank paper. But it was enough because of all the context you bring to a map when you use it.

Just as the Pre-Copernican navigators brought a whole mass of lived experience to the use of the wrong map- and therefore made it work.

And just as the subjective impulse view of the universe may be wrong, with enough workarounds I can actually live more efficiently or shall we say ‘better’ than someone who insists the world is a random place where shit happens and that’s that.

Or maybe, and this has just occurred to me, the rationalist-darwinian view of the world is what is wrong, and yet we all have enough workarounds to make it seem pretty good, actually more accurate than the sloppy actions of the magician who lives according to a belief in a subjectively controllable universe. Or maybe both models are wrong and what looks like subjective control is really interconnectivity mixed with a permanent present.

The map is not the issue. It’s who is using the map that counts.

Probably I should end on that portentous note, but I thought maybe the conventional trick of bringing it back to the beginning might have a place too. Crumb used a .30 version of this pen and when I got mine I LOVED it. The line is thin, but not so thin that the nib digs in. One charge of ink lasts WAY LONGER than any other pen I have ever used. If you store it upright it never dries out- unlike the cartridge based versions of the Rotring. The pen is so nice to use you can just let it lead you into doodling over an entire page. There is almost nothing wrong with this pen.

But I still use the old disposable plastic Sakura when I am doing an illustration. Why? Probably because it was the first pen I used and I retreat to that as some kind of certainty seeking guard against complete failure, eviction from the nest, from the trail, left, deserted, alone, humiliated. Face that with only a pen in your hand: you’ll wish it was a sword.