For the past couple of years, every time I've finished a book I've taken a photograph of it, maybe hoping that this will make me read
more. I took six photographs of books in January I see, and one in February. And none in March. Here's Holland Park. I'd get wheeled around here when I was one, so I've been told. I don't remember. Now it's just up the road.
Photographing Kensington was one thing I managed to keep up in February. Was I doing it hoping to feel more like a resident, or like a tourist? Did I want to feel more at home or the opposite? I still stayed sociable, although I stopped going to the BFI as much, another fad of January. But I still had spending money from my first two commercials shot at the end of 2021. I still met friends, and if I was twenty years younger maybe there'd be photogaphs of that too. Here's a concert I was invited to in February. I couldn't remember why I'd photographed it, until I looked closer and saw everyone's masks. Click to enlarge.
I met Gemma Brockis a lot. I could afford to go out for coffee. We'd knock ideas about, her teaching and seeking meetings, me working a couple of days a week at the Crystal Maze and meandering. She told me how as an immersive theatre veteran she'd also occasionally get approached by Virtual Reality Engines to participate in Research and Development. Intimacy was what they were after now. "Virtual Intimacy" was VR's philopospher's stone.
What does "intimacy" actually literally mean though, I asked? We talked about that a bit – Chris Goode used to ask it back when he still did the blog, and was alive – then I decided to just look it up on my phone. We all have an idea. What do you think it means? As far as I could work out, "intimacy" just means the opposite of loneliness. That doesn't seem to have much to do with Virtual Reality. I didn't think they were going to find it, and I made a note of that on my phone. That phone broke, but I remembered.
Here's my mate Neil Frost (and a reflection of Dan Lees) giving a hint of what clowns have been up to in the Plague Year. And, rounding off this review of my favourite or at least more conspicuous posts from the last twelve months, below is the door to my own socially-distanced December nonsense, and the last video I made this year. All things considered I've had a very lucky Twenty-Twenty, or as the French would say "happy", and regularly putting something out has definitely helped the happy happen so thanks, ole unattendees, for your kind attention, and here's to Twenty-Plenty-Fun. Party responsibly. Let's all keep behind our panels. Tomorrow there might be a quiz.
A nice plug in the Guardian yesterday for Gemma Brockis' Oddvent calendar, and thanks to Gemma for allowing me to grant all of you ole unattendees Very Important Person access, as we say in the threshold business, through today's door. Click here
to open it and witness my contribution – possibly inspired by the
Cosmic Shambles' many show-and-tells – there's more information about
the calendar here,
and if you need one the password for today is "help". (My first idea
was to giftwrap an egg, but I'm not doing that now, so giftwrapping an
egg is still going.) Enjoy!
UPDATE: Now the Calendar has vanished, my contribution's up on youtube.
... inasmuch as it's the apex of unadulterated fun and laughter in the dark times.
Hm, okay. I've been trying to write one post per day for a year now, and every single word is going funny on me at this point. Look at that sentence above. "Inasmuch"? Get a room, syllables. Also, exactly what does "adulterating" actually involve? And why does the word "adultery" feature so prominently in it? Come to think of it, why does the word "adult" feature so prominently in the word "adultery"? I'm going to look this up – Right, that has happened: Apparently, "adultery" comes from a word meaning "to spoil", and has nothing to do with the word "adult", which is actually the past tense of the root of "adolescent". So we're adolts once we're done adolescing.
I digress. But that's fine, because so does this video. And it is so wonderful seeing John Oliver (who hasn't done too badly in America either) catch up with Andy Saltzman since their last broadcast together five years ago, clearly relishing the chance to bollock on about inconsequential nonsense like the sex life of frogs, or the naming of snow ploughs, with no danger of any of it getting a sewage plant named after him. "Nothing's changed," he says, and that's what this feels like, and it's a lovely feeling for the end of the year. I've missed this sound.
Parenthetically, and tangentially – and I really don't know what words mean any more – over on f*c*book, I saw more love being shared for Stephen Oliver's brilliant soundtrack to the BBC's Lord of the Ringsas recommended in this post, and learnt that he was John Oliver's uncle...
This evening was the first time I'd been to the South Bank since lockdown, and dumb as it might sound, the first time the reality of these closed spaces really sunk in, taking me with it. I didn't often go to the National Theatre or the BFI, and I hardly ever went to the Hayward or Royal Festival Hall, but I went here all the time. Just to be here. A public space made possible by things that are no longer happening. The space is still there, but not the public, and I felt a bit awful. Speaking of awe, in this week's Ships, Sea & The Stars I got to read some Carl Sagan. Absolutely no one delivers Carl Sagan better than Carl Sagan, but it was still a joy. Ed Bloomer makes a beautiful point in the video about Sagan's writing that's often overlooked: "It's quite kind." I once looked up the derivation of "kind". Like "like", it means both how we'd prefer to be treated, and also "our type". We like our kind, and we are kind to those like us. Sagan welcomes us. Aw man, so did the South Bank Centre. I really look forward to the welcome resuming.
(Africa's actually much bigger in real life. How many more mistakes can you spot?)
Below is a terribly on-brand TED talk (painful intro, but good meat) delivering a potted literary history of some of the lunar fantasies that might have inspired space flight. Namechecked are Cyrano De Bergerac, and the Baltimore Gun Club, both of whom can be seen above toasting a cosmonaut alongside Baron Munchausen in one of my favourite films of all time. I'm a sucker for this kind of cataloguing. I love finding out where ideas come from – especially if the results involve illustrations of Jacobeans borne over a pointy island by a rig of geese – and, as long term readers of this blog will know, the historical symbiosis of stark pottiness and scientific innovation was a big influence on me finally rolling up my sleeves and writing a whole two episodes of "Time Spanner".
But...
There must have been a reason I made the narrator of that show a dead dog, and located its traditional alien planet tropes not in outer space, but "Heaven" – a dimension of things that don't exist – and with Extinction Rebellion taking so well to the streets, I've been growing more honest with myself about exactly what I expect
humanity to be able to pull off, reconsidering just how very big space is, and I reckon Alex McDonald's talk misses something very big, which is that Carl Sagan, who was right about so much, might not have been right about this. Guys... I don't think we're going into Space.
Sorry, but even if we survive for another million years I just don't think there's anything out there worth the intergalactic faff. I mean, it's really far away, and those tales we told ourselves of other worlds were hangovers from sea-faring days, the hopes of encountering higher intelligences a hangover from angels. So the idea that these exciting space adventures might have inspired billions upon billions' worth of scientific research seems more hilarious to me now than wonderful. Wasn't "flight" once synonymous with fleeing – hence "fight or flight"?* But we're never leaving home, not really. Earth is that home, and what's out there isn't Heaven. It's, at best, a well. And however deep we lower into it, if there is such a thing as human destiny, I'm pretty convinced now it will be played out on this pale blue dot. We need something else to explore, then. Which is good news, I think. I don't know what NASA should be doing in the meantime though – apart from splashing out on a few more lady space suits. Drugs?
You're welcome.
Actual size of Africa (from back when BBC1 was the whole world.)
* I also found out recently that "cope" comes from the French
"coup", so it's not a synonym for bearing at all, in fact, but for fighting. Like I say, I love finding out where ideas come from.
