According to Tom Waits there are three ages of man: youth, middle-age and “You’re looking good‘”.
I fall comfortably into the third category.
What have I learnt from 67 years on the planet?
Something and nothing.
I don’t believe that getting older automatically makes you wiser but it does give some perspective.
For what it’s worth, here is a list of ten random tips that I can pass on:
Continue reading“True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.” – Karl Popper “Ever tried. Ever failed. Try again. Fail again. Fail better” – Samuel Beckett, ‘Worstword Ho!’
We all learn from our mistakes, or at least we should.
Matthew Syed shows that human psychology gets in the way of putting this basic principle into practice; he writes: “The basic proposition of this book is that we have an allergic attitude to failure.” He shows how failure to learn from mistakes discourages innovative thought and stifles creative ideas.
Using well-chosen examples from medical practice, the aviation industry, vacuum cleaner design, teenage delinquency, business practice, soccer and formula one racing, the author shows how we need to redefine failure as a learning opportunity rather than a source of shame or blame.
Intuitions need to be tested and inbuilt biases recognized. Altering long-held beliefs goes against the grain even when the evidence shows that this is the logical and correct thing to do. Syed explains that cognitive dissonance is the process by which we make intellectual contortions to justify erroneous actions.
Critical thinking is not helped by the way the media favour simplicity over complexity, assigning blame without fully considering the context and examining all the salient facts. Syed advocates the use of randomised control trials (RCTs) to test out theories and says “to generate openness, we must avoid pre-emptive blaming.”
Above all, this book has serious implications for the way we teach and assess children and evaluate working adults. Education and instruction is conceived on the basis of providing a body of knowledge as though this was fixed and infallible. Failures are punished. Exams are too often a process of regurgitating information.
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LOCKE directed by Steven Knight (UK, 2013)Locke is Samuel Beckett in a BMW X5. From the creator of Peaky Blinders. A riveting one man show. Tom Hardy brilliant as Ivan Locke. A Welshman who works in construction. Concrete is his speciality. He’s good at his job. A fixer. He gets things done. He knows that details matter. A huge Chicago contract is worth millions. Everything depends on him. Everything must be in place. He knows one mistake can be catastrophic.Sooner or later cracks appear if anything goes wrong. Even the most stable structure will eventually fall.
Locke is driving from Birmingham to London. On the motorway he makes calls by speakerphone. To business associates. To his two sons. To his wife. To Bethan. Locke is the only face we see.
Ivan Locke’s life is built on firm foundations but is falling apart. His job and marriage are on the line. A one-night stand was all it took. An error of judgement. A moment of weakness. The woman is no oil painting. Not young either. Bethan.
She was lonely. He was too that night. He felt sorry for her. He still does. They drank wine. They had sex. One time only. Enough for her to get pregnant. She decided to keep the baby. It could be her last chance to be a mother.
Locke is a father already. His sons are home watching a big match. He is supposed to be there watching with them. But Bethan’s waters have broken. Two months early. He is the father. He feels responsible. He is not her partner. She is nothing to him. But he caused the situation. Now he needs to fix it. To make it right. He will be with her when she gives birth. His father abandoned him. He will not do the same. He imagines his father in the back seat of the car. Mocking his predicament.
Locke is not a bad man. He has everything to lose.
His son has taped the match. He says he they will watch pretending not to know the result. When he comes home. But life has no replay options. We live with the choices we make. What is done cannot be undone.
Owning up to the truth means confessing to infidelity. It means risking the Chicago contract. He could lie. He could say he’s sick. He does neither. Fuck deception. Fuck Chicago.
Ingres – Luigi Cherubini & the Muse of Lyric Poetry (1842)
“Habit is a great deadener” wrote Samuel Beckett in Waiting For Godot.
But establishing a set routine doesn’t always have to be mechanical or tedious.
There’s a difference between a habit that is imposed upon you and one that you have some control over.
I have learnt the truth of this from setting the modest goal of keeping this blog alive. It’s not that I always have a brilliant idea or endless flashes of inspiration (chance would be a fine thing!) but I’ve come to recognize the value of simply putting something down.
Unexpressed thoughts have a nasty tendency to fester like untreated wounds – it’s best to get them out in the open even if in a relatively crude form.
Most writers of substance advocate the practice of setting aside some time on a daily basis and to go with the flow. The point of this is not that it will necessarily produce great art on a regular basis but it’s a habit of being which acknowledges the need to keep the creative juices flowing. Quality is not the goal. Ruthless editing comes after.
Unless you follow this advice, you can easily waste a lot of precious time procrastinating or waiting for inspiration to come. The muse is notoriously elusive and is not a friend of the desperate.
The right attitude and a trained mind do not supplant raw talent but habit sharpens the intellect and strengthens the mind’s capacity to put in the work necessary to complete anything of substance.
CLOTHES, CLOTHES, CLOTHES. MUSIC, MUSIC, MUSIC. BOYS, BOYS, BOYS by Viv Albertine (Faber & Faber, 2014)I started this autobiography expecting a fun but frivolous account of the punk era. It is all that and more.
Viv Albertine was at the heart of the heady period in the late 1970s when the British establishment were running scared. The Slits were one of the many bands that were inspired by the so-called ‘filfth and fury’ of The Sex Pistols; four feisty females who were not about to let a lack of musical expertise hold them back.
Albertine was the guitarist in that band’s early years. I regret to say that I never did see them play live but I treasure the memory of first hearing them on a John Peel session – four tracks recorded in September 1977 that captured their ramshackle brilliance.
The book contains plenty of fascinating insights into the ordinary world that preceded and followed the extraordinary explosion of rebel yells. Continue reading
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