Why is writ­ing so dif­fi­cult? Why is it so hard to arrange all those ran­dom thoughts that buzz around your head into some­thing con­cise that makes sense and res­onates with other humans? Well I don’t have the answer, but I thought I’d see what would hap­pen if I just wrote down exactly what was in my head and see where it lead.

Going Back to Analogue

I haven’t used iTunes in ages, absolutely ages, I don’t have spo­tify or Rdio (even though I know how good they are) I have thou­sands of mp3s on my com­puter but to be hon­est I never lis­ten to them. I used to lis­ten to music on my lap­top all the time but now it just doesn’t work for me. I’ve been steadily re-building up my 7″ sin­gle col­lec­tion over the last year or two and it’s become the only way I can lis­ten to music now. There’s some­thing that’s just more “real” about it, being able to feel, touch and see some­thing as well as hear it makes it more of an expe­ri­ence, some­thing to be savoured, some­thing with more longevity I guess. Maybe it’s just a metaphor for how instant every­thing is now, how easy it is to find and down­load any­thing, whether it’s music, images, books, what­ever, that joy of search­ing, root­ing out what’s good, sort­ing the wheat from the chaff, find­ing the unex­pected doesn’t hap­pen on the web (well not in the same way at least).

Hav­ing said that I am wary of turn­ing into one of those old codgers who can’t stop say­ing “of course it was all dif­fer­ent in my day” no-one like that guy, so I embrace the mod­ern, but try to bal­ance it up to main­tain some perspective.

I watched Get Carter (the orig­i­nal, not the shitty Sly Stal­lone remake) the other night for about the 8th time and though I’ve always enjoyed it, it wasn’t until now that I truly noticed all the sub­tle nuances that are scat­tered through­out the film. Strange that. Even though Michael Caine is famous for only ever using his own accent in every film he’s ever done (just like Sean Con­nery) in this movie he is truly excep­tional in his latent, men­ac­ing malevolence.

This film also con­tains a scene that con­tains some­thing that always fas­ci­nates me. In many films from the 60’s and early 70’s (Per­for­mance, Blow Up, Point Blank, Val­ley of the Dolls) there appears a scene where the main pro­tag­o­nist (usu­ally a well dressed and groomed tough guy/criminal) ends up in some acid-fuelled, psy­che­delic, love-in style night­club and although he has absolutely no place there he seems to fit in per­fectly. Maybe it’s the fact that he, just like the peo­ple in the club, live some­what out­side of reg­u­lar soci­ety and although their worlds are miles apart they have a cer­tain “counter-culture” that unites them?

This Shouldn’t Work

Speak­ing off oppo­sites com­ing together, that reminds me of Human High­way, Neil Young mak­ing a film with Devo, shouldn’t work (well not in 1982) which is exactly why it does.

I Love Autumn

Summer’s great and all but I’ve always loved Autumn much more, it’s still warmish, but cold enough that you can wear a suit or a nice jacket and not sweat to death. It also strangely enough feels more like a renewal or rebirth than Spring does (well to me any­way). Maybe it reminds me of being back at art school when September/October meant being able to get back into your work and expand upon all the ideas you’d had over the sum­mer, I don’t know.

The Joy of Reinvention

Talk­ing of rebirth makes me think of how refresh­ing it is when you get the chance to rein­vent your­self, whether it’s start­ing a new school or col­lege, start­ing a new job, mov­ing coun­try or start­ing a new career. I’ve done it sev­eral times, that is to say I’ve always stayed true to who I am (well hope so any­way) but you can leave all the crap things about you behind and make more of your­self, shed bag­gage. I’ve felt this since becom­ing a designer, I still keep hold of all the good things in my past, all the things I’ve learnt over the years and knowl­edge gained from mis­takes made, but hav­ing that clean slate is really liberating.

That’s it for now, can’t think of any­thing else to say. Bye.