The Long Now

The highlight of my week (in fact, the high light of my year so far) was seeing Brian Eno, one of my all-time heroes, speak at a conference on the reform of the financial system.

The Long Now Foundation has started a Long Finance project to look at long range planning and investment. Someone who is twenty years old today, can expect to live until they are 95. So at the very least, we need a financial system that looks seventy-five years ahead. And that's only one generation.

I was very encouraged that 400 people, mostly from banking and investment, turned up for the day, and took the ideas very seriously.

Brian Eno managed to make U2 interesting. Compared to that, reforming the banking system should not be especially difficult.

Song From Under the Floorboards

I saw my friend Amy the other day.
Amy is good with naked women.
We talked about Dostoevsky.

Amy is an artist, but she had never shown me her portfolio before. She is very good at life drawing, and has a real eye for the female form. She had several nude studies on her iPhone, and even on the small screen, the curves of her figures were beautiful and involving.

By coincidence, Amy mentioned that she wanted to read some Dostoevsky, the Russian author I alluded to the other day. I mentioned this book, and the song that Howard Devoto made of it. Devoto restored the original Russian word the translator rendered less poetically; the anonymous narrator addresses the reader from between the floorboards of his apartment.

I am angry, I am ill and I'm as ugly as sin
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it

1982 was a year when I was not good with naked women, and everything in my life felt crooked, rather than curved. "A Song from Under the Floorboards" was an existential crisis you could dance to, with an insistent opening riff that moved harmonically and went nowhere melodically. I was angry, and I felt ill and I felt ugly. These last few months, I have felt it all over again.

This is a song from under the floorboards
This is a song from where the wall is cracked
By force of habit, I am an insect
I have to confess
I'm proud as hell of that fact.

I know the highest and the best
I accord them all due respect
But the brightest jewel inside of me
Glows with pleasure at my own stupidity.

This is a song from under the floorboards ....

I was never stupid at school. Stubborn, yes; lazy, distracted... and afraid to speak out. But I did not manage to be stupid. (Yes, dear reader, I knew too much.) And I knew a good thing when I saw it.
I knew beauty, but it was not the involving kind.

I used to make phantoms I could later chase
Images of all that could be desired
Then I got tired of counting all of these blessings
And then I just got tired

This is a song from under the floorboards ...
MAGAZINE

The Place Where It All Falls Apart

I set out to tell a tale on this blog, and it keeps getting stuck, like an old record on a jukebox in a cafe that needs kicking (you see, I can't even order my subordinate clauses properly.) The needle gets caught in the groove.

(Younger readers, something similar does happen with CD's, but it doesn't sound anything like as funky. And we all bought our record collections again on CD because Tomorrow's World lied to us and said they were so robust you could fry eggs on them and they'd still work. )

I began with the tale of The House on Sandygate Lane, and that ground to a halt after two instalments. I started to map the Seven Ages of Gordie, and got as far as seven years old. I declared a Solstice of Sexuality, and still never got around to saying what that was all about. Then I started quoting chunks of Astral Weeks by Van Morrison. And I got stuck every time.


Confused? You will be... (once I get started)

Writing and Honesty

I haven't blogged much recently, I know. I have felt like blogging, but have been preoccupied with writing and honesty. It's a hard topic to explain, but I can share this:

1. Writing honestly frees up my insides. It clears all the accumulated nard down there and releses energy, so that I can be creative again.
   
   
2. Writing honestly involves writing as though there wasn't an audience. Writing proper sentences, not just scribbling rough notes. Doing real writing, not a rehearsal for writing. But writing as though I didn't care what my audience thought about me.

I do care what you think about me. (I don't mean you, per se, I mean whoever reads me.) I also care about what I have to say. And communicating ideas requires some compassion, and some persuasiveness... but also, I've realised, a readiness to step back from both of those qualities. To step a little further away from you, and closer to me.

Normal

There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world.

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.

[DOUGLAS ADAMS]

I'm still feeling foul and filthy today, but not downhearted. I am a nice man with dirty things inside of me. I have resolved to call my doctor first thing on Monday morning.

I am ill. It is normal. Six weeks of it. It bores me.

Happy New Year: It's 2009

And I will never, never, never grow so old again.

The Queerness of Everything

I wrote back in August about meeting the universe halfway and my unexpected discovery of the application of Queer Theory to science, technology and innovation.

Since I grew up as the child of someone who was very preoccupied with being normal (whatever that was) and nowadays I try to earn a living encouraging clients to subvert hierarchies, change the rules, and turn (selected bits of) the world upside down (in a responsible manner), this speaks to me on several levels.

It's probably the beginning of an answer to the question "What do you do?" I hate it when people ask me that question, because I find it very difficult to answer honestly.

This morning, somebody by the name of Sarah Dopp showed up in my RSS feed, talking about gender and menus.

There’s a longstanding argument that “male” and “female” are a biologically-defined and relevant way to split our population in half. But if you’ve ever met a feminine man or a masculine woman, you know that these categories are way too rough to mean anything more than a stereotype sometimes.

It goes deeper than that... you may have noticed this in cities and among young people — there’s also a growing presence of folks whose genders you just can’t identify. Some of them, if you ask them respectfully, will tell you they feel like both genders. Or neither gender. Or a gender that needs a new name. They might answer to both “he” and “she,” or they might prefer something different. They’re in-between, and that’s where they belong.

Just for a minute, try to imagine yourself in the shoes of someone who has spent a lifetime feeling just as uncomfortable in the men’s locker room as in the women’s locker room — for whatever reason. Imagine having to dress in clothing that just feels wrong to you, everyday, because you know it means you’ll be treated better than you would if you wore what you like. I

magine walking through the world knowing that everyone’s first assumptions about how you see yourself, who you love, and what feels right for you are completely wrong. Now imagine signing up for a cool website, and then being required to select an option from a drop-down menu that doesn’t include anything that represents you.

If you don't know what this means, don't worry. I don't either. But it's a comforting un-knowing that I'm going to sit with over Christmas.

You Can't Judge A Book By Its Cover

Well, can you?

You can't judge an apple by looking at a tree,
You can't judge honey by looking at the bee,
You can't judge a daughter by
looking at the mother,
You can't judge a book by looking at the cover.

Oh can't you see,
Oh you misjudge me,
I look like a farmer,
But I'm a lover,
You can't judge a book by looking at the cover.

Oh come on in closer baby,
Hear what else I gotta say!
You got your radio turned down too low,
Turn it up!

You can't judge sugar by looking at the cane,
You can't judge a woman by looking at her man,
You can't judge a sister by
looking at her brother,
You can't judge a book by looking at the cover.

Oh can't you see,
Oh you misjudge me,
I look like a farmer,
But I'm a Lover,
You can't judge a book by looking at the cover.

You can't judge a fish by lookin' in the pond,
You can't judge right from looking at the wrong,
You can't judge one by looking at the other,
You can't judge a book by looking at the cover.

Oh can't you see,
Oh you misjudge me,
I look like a farmer,
But I'm a lover,
You can't judge a book by looking at the cover.

BO DIDDLEY
Words and Music by Wille Dixon