Blackout

I had developed this plan to cut out online living, in the vain hope of productivity and creative glory. The goal was to disconnect and focus on writing a script about the lyrical themes that appeared in Freddie Mercury's earliest compositions. I took a stream of consciousness approach involving a Parker fountain pen, dark purple ink and a grey thatched square notebook from Bookbinders Design. Paragraphs were dense, clean and unrevised, reading more like an academic thesis than a script for radio.

I broke my commitment to the blackout constantly, simply because I wanted to see his name in bold in my inbox, I wanted to read another message. I'd give him reports of my progress: "I'm still in 1969." He jokingly remarked that he thought he was actually hearing more from me now since I'd made that declaration to refrain from contact. He mocked me gently for it, only to make the bittersweet remark: "There's something very painful knowing that you can't contact someone if you wanted to, even if you normally don't contact them all the time."

We shared this mutual sense of urgency, this heady sense that we not only had to share many millions of stories, songs and ideas, but we had to do it as quickly as possible. It's a dynamic that I've since felt at the hostel, this intense connection and desire to convey everything well before check out. Despite all that, I've always characterised myself as a person who has had difficulties in being present. I had always figured that joy comes with meaning and meaning comes with retrospect, away and alone, at a desk.

I had assumed that my in-house best friend had learned everything there was to know, but then it was revealed that he knew nothing about radio, nothing of the blog, nothing of the writing. I kept on thinking about how odd it was that he didn't know, that in spite of all our time together, that once central and obsessive feature of my personality was no longer apparent. I then remember being struck by the existential quality of that connection. I remarked upon it at the time, that I was filled by this sense that I would only ever truly appreciate that connection in that very moment: "I've never been able to feel so present..."

Ambition tends to fall away with people like that. Hopes, ideas and plans tend to get temporarily suspended in the shadow of such a connection and I don't think it's a bad thing, necessarily. I like to think that it is because we are already fulfilling a more innate ambition to connect. There are many reasons that we create, but there is an essential component of it that suggests that we create to be remembered. When you connect with people like that, you have this vague sense of hope that you might be remembered forever.

Experts

Whenever we would have guests around, my Dad would boast about my ability to identify the year of any photograph, film or song. I would be sheepish, downplaying my mad skillz, but I've always made a point to ask the year of everything. Whether it's a deteriorated red hardcover book by Arthur Mee or a DVD of a J. Arthur Rank film, I want to know where it all fits historically. I need to develop this narrative in order to make sense of the past.

When my Dad and I watch old 1950s English films together, he always remarks about how sad he is to learn that all these actors have since died. Together we contemplate what they would have been like in real life, whether the cast were friends with one another, whether they were warm, kind or funny. We often know that they led tragic lives. They were either alcoholic depressives or else closeted homosexuals who would later commit suicide.

His knowledge of this particular genre of film is astounding and whenever we sit together, I encourage him to document all his observations in a blog or even a zine. I urge him to get in touch with his old English teacher, who coincidentally has written two encyclopaedias about the history of British film. He puts it off, expressing anxiety that he needs to learn more before finally making contact. I tell him to hurry up: we don't have much time.

I suppose we share not only the desire to be experts, but also that fear that we may never know enough. I wonder if we'll ever be ready enough to reach out to the establishment. I wonder if we'll ever spar with those we admire, in such a way that might suggest that our views might even carry some kind of authority. I look forward to that feeling that might fill me one day, that satisfaction that would come from knowing enough to finally move forward.

Highly Dangerous

The Rules of Productivity

In my time as a procrastinator, I have become attracted to blogs and other websites devoted to the promotion of creativity. They offer boundless encouragement and guidance about how to go about tackling your next creative project. This is often delivered in the form of a list: "Top 5 Ways To...", "99 Excuses For..." and so on. All the relevant points are provided in bold text, so it's that much easier to run away with that positive message. In later times, I have been a bit skeptical of (but no less attracted to) these types of sites. I have recognised that I fit into their market of the creatively blocked. This disappoints me, as it would. Blockages are unpleasant.

What compelled me to write a piece in relation to these types of sites is one particular article I came across tonight: The 1-Step Plan For Super Productivity. In essence, the article maintains that the secret ingredient for productivity is getting up early. There are citations aplenty, from Ernest Hemingway to the Harvard Business Review, but how do 99% understand the nature of my productivity? I've maintained apparently dysfunctional sleeping hours for the best part of twelve years, what's to say I'll produce work of a higher quality if I go to sleep at 11pm, instead of 11am? I am unlikely to ever cease my consolidation naps, am I doomed to be creatively unfulfilled for ever, so help me gawd?

What these sites fail to acknowledge is that you, as a reader have developed your own individual coping mechanisms. Instead of encouraging you to understand and appreciate how you work, they offer rules. I appreciate the positivity of the message. I understand that they want their readers to go on to create wonderful work. The fact is that we place too great a reliance upon what they say, without acknowledging that we have solved it all before. We know what we have to do to be productive and it doesn't involve bookmarking a list of excuses. It's about a fundamental recognition: there is value in your expression.

So what the hell are you doing here? Get on with it. I'm going to bed.

Jan Pieńkowski's The First Christmas