lunarchy

Enthusiasm & Confidence

 Been thinking a lot about the importance and entymology of enthusiasm recently. In the Greek original, it had a sense of being possessed by god, inspired. Wikipedia points out that it wasn't fashionable to be enthusiastic post Glorious Revolution as it had been seen as being factor in the start of the English Civil War. I've also been thinking about confidence and the ability of some to trick others into feeling confident too. Mark McGuiness has a nice sequence of thoughts about the relativities of the two conditions Wishful Thinking » Blog Archive » 5 Reasons Why Enthusiasm is Better than Confidence

Almighty Father

Whilst watching a download of Jonathan Miller's brilliant Brief History of Disbelief on iMP (there's something to believe in ;-), I was struck by Freud's analysis of why we create gods and religion. God is a construct to fill the vacuum in our grown-up lives, left by adults from our childhood experience, who, towering above us, performed the role of all-knowing/wise/capricious/cruel/onmipresence. Freud observed that this is so literal that we even refer to God as "father".  This segued into an edition of Radio Four's Thinking Allowed which discussed John Lennon, celebrities and role-models. Again, here were analogous, externalised constructs which we create to fill gaps; psychological needs for figures to aspire to, emulate: gods. Indeed, celebrity and its church; the mass media, has usurped less sexy spiritual theatres like the Church of England. But earlier that morning, I had attended my beautiful, local church, St Margaret's. There like the good father of a child who is a pupil at the affiliated primary school, I sang songs of devotion to the ancient externalised constructs of our culture, our patria. And we learnt about St Margaret, a twelfth century celebrity of faith. A figure to aspire to, emulate. But all these things are next to useless, just layers of complex metaphor for love. Love cannot be explained, abridged, abrogated or reduced. It is the beginning and the end. And it seems to dare not speak its name in the day to day traffic of society. I even feel mildly embarrased writing this. But it's late, I had to blog *something* after all this time and this was on my mind. Try reading this to Gary Bartz Celestial Blues (clip at track 10) the lyric of which has also been on my mind.

Oh Ipswich, you got me singing the Blues

I watched Ipswich Town beat Brighton & Hove Albion 1-0 on Saturday which meant for at least a week, my team were top of the Coca Cola Championship. Very much enjoying the season so far.

April Showers

Not a bad month. Feels like things have been piling up, so I've been on one of those cycles where I'm only dealing with about 10-15% of stuff. Probably just a perspective thing though. I'm sure I'm no more or less productive than normal. That is, pretty un! Top ten things that have been going on last month:

1. Penny went back to work last week (two days/week), Martha started playschool and Alfie started child minders. Penny tired but glad to be getting in swing, Martha mildly hysterical, Alfie growing teeth and pulling himself to a stand. Dad very proud of his brave clan.
2. Loft converted to a bijou new room. Loving the new staircase. Move office in there post decorating and carpeting next month.
3. Had lunch with Marc Prensky and heard Stephen Heppell talk on the topics of how games can help you learn and how technology could change education. All through good offices of Adrian Woolard, Olga Harrington and BBC's interactive Factual and Learning area. Very interesting.
4. Got a bit stuck with Taggers in that my producer and script editor colleagues had me return to do some grunt work on the characters. Spent a lot of time creating (wondering what one looked like) character arcs and backstories. Ask me what their most prized possession, happiest childhood memory, favourite song or haircut is and I can tell you. If you'll just let me check my notes.
5. Selected an agency to animate and make games for Taggers. RandomMedia. They cool.
6. Met Andi "Mr Top of the Pops" Peters to introduce him to Taggers as a potential late night BBC Three thing. He seemed pleased. We said we were making six episodes. He said he'd like ten. Said the scripts would need to rock for him to buy it. See 4.
7. Been immersed in 17th century via Pepys blog
8. Started volunteering at Ipswich CSV. Met young people who knew much more about Javascript than me and wanted to create anarchist local music venue in abandoned print works. Also housed there are Ipswich Community Radio whom I will try and help make new web presence with no resources and my understanding of Javascript.
9. Had a lovely Easter and made first annual 11 Gainsborough Road Egg Hunt, with pictorial clues for the literarially challenged. The target audience gave a generous approval rating.
10. Went to see Ipswich Town play for the first time in 5 years of living here. Lost to West Brom 3-2. Starting to learn the pain of being a real fan.

Don't talk to weblog

Must not get into the habit of talking ephemeral irrelevance to the blog. It's not a pet. So to redeem, I note that Penny and I started character work on our new sitcom creation Baby on Board this evening. You heard it here first.

Dammit

Just lost a long disquisition on the Sitcom Exchange in Typepad Preview mode. Dammit, dammit, dammit. Oh well, will have to rewrite offline as I've just used up all my pre-bed blogging time to no avail. And the dishwasher remains unstacked until the morning.

BBC - Celebdaq

Celebdaq just won a BAFTA. I can't believe it. I'm so proud. I'm in my hotel room, my department just won the biggest award in the industry, I'm having EQ peaking experiences every 3 hours and I'm feeling quite emotional.

I was in the rooftop pool this morning (did I mention I was in LA?) and I paused from my punishing regime of middle-aged aqua huff-puff when I spotted a hummingbird. It reminded me of Terry Callier's Ordinary Joe. There's a tune to make me cry. The hummingbird was totally free, in his element, moving effortlessly, doing what came naturally. It's a times like these when mere humans like me can glimpse that feeling. So then found myself listening to Moodorama's Sweet Toffee back in the suite, dancing for all I'm worth. It's good to be free.

The Parlour Club

The Parlour Club Just had a cracking night with my boy Piers. I did a 5 minute stand-up set at this club on Santa Monica Blvd, and it went well, considering I had no material on Sunday, and hadn't performed in a club for 9 years. It's a strong buzz. Top 5 news items from last two days:
1. Saw an episode of Will & Grace being taped and had a great meeting with the showrunner, Jeff Greenstein.
2. Saw the showrunners from Grounded for Life (Flash in a popup), who were all funny, genuine guys who had a really interesting show.
3. Had a script doctor session on my pieces Undercover Elephant and Collectibles with Ron Taylor from Fox. Really intelligent and insightful notes. He didn't think I was a schmuck, so the script writing dream lives on.
4. Went to some of the swankiest offices I've seen at Imagine TV and the Creative Artists Agency. The more plush the office the less inspiring the occupant it seems. Note to self: be happy that our office looks like a teenager's bedroom after the parents have gone on holiday. It betokens creativity at work.
5. Nearly busted for taking photos of a 40ft Lichtenstein original in the foyer of CAA and on the Paramount lot of a Frasier rehearsal.

So this leaves out drinks at the Mondrian's Sky Bar, visit to Kelsey Grammer's production company and nearly getting a preview of the US version of The Office. It will be mine. Oh yes. It will be mine.

It's been an absolutely mindblowing couple of days. Peace out. (Did I mention I was in LA?)

Improv - Hollywood

We went to a very good night at the Improv in Hollywood last night. It was "Urban" night and lots of material on race, gender-politics and dirty sex stuff. As a table of all white folks we didn't get as much joshing as I expected. I was pushed from my comfort zone with some challenging, but cartoonish, and utterly hilarious stuff on domestic violence and the lame way white people react to being stabbed. The venue was absolutely rammed and in a "someone's writing this" moment, the fire marshall closed the show down and everyone was escorted from the building. Much street-life outside with firemen, LAPD (with chopper) generally looking mildly disapproving. A great LA cultural experience.

A good day

A good day. One of those days where running so fast from meeting to meeting, switching from one persona to another by the hour, fuelled by TonyHeartMurmur quantities of Americanos - kind of passed through to a new, if modest level of understanding. Having felt a little introspective recently, kind of broke through today. Saw Gareth Edwards, a very nice comedy producer, my good friend Jess Cleverly - who is a great listener and even greater talker. Caught up with my lovely graffiti animation project Taggers. And topped off with a good catch up with Alice "Frag 'Em All" Taylor. One of those days where you realise everything's gonna be alright.