The Lost Generation

Generation Z. Ah yes, the much-maligned Gen Z, always on their phones, work shy bums, the lost generation. But also… saviours of cinema? Beginning with Talk to Me, through to Back Rooms opening this weekend (budget $10m, box office $118m in the first three days) it’s been a joy to see young filmmakers (properly young – Kane Parsons, the director of Back Rooms, is 21) coming up making online skits now getting cinema releases for their exhilaratingly fresh horror films.

Mark Edward “Markiplier” Fischbach, who made it rich on YouTube, self-financed his Iron Lung (budget $3m, box office $51m) and Obsession was made by twenty-six year old TikTokker Curry Barker. As I sat in the packed cinema watching the latter effort (budget <$1m, box office $148m and rising at time of writing) this weekend I was astounded not only at how fresh and new it felt but also how assured. I hadn’t felt so entertained since, well, Talk To Me (budget $4.5m, box office $92m) by the Philippou brothers four years earlier.

Not since Hollywood’s artistic heyday of the 70s have we seen a movement of such young filmmakers – all of whom were in their twenties when their debuts arrived, apart from Fischback, early thirties – put such a dominant stamp on the industry. Hollywood producers are already paying attention, and slackening the creative reigns usually applied to debutants in the same laissez-faire approach used by the 70s producers who knew they were onto a winner with their stable of creatives.

And if searching for the lost generation perhaps the government would to well to look towards the multiplexes because that’s where they’re going in their droves. In a US-based survey by Fandango, Gen Z now make up the market share of cinemagoers. 58% of baby boomers have seen at least one film in the last twelve months, 70% of Gen X have arrived at the popcorn stands, 82% of millennials have perused the hotdog heaters whilst 87% of Gen Zedders have communed in the dark chamber of stories since the earth was last in its current position in relation to the sun.

Social media has caused earthquakes across all generations. For boomers its tentacles have effectively ended democracy and yet they are the first to cast stones at the generation who refuse to get jobs just so they can pay extortionate rents to parasite landlords or to have their labour stolen by bosses for an extra bedroom on their tiny-mortgage houses. But social media – especially TikTok and YouTube – has created in the young a generation of filmmakers that have quietly emerged unnoticed by the wider, squabbling world.

They themselves call it doomscrolling but for me it’s joyscrolling. Seeing so many people stitching together their skits using Capcut and posting them online brings me enormous joy. My friends make fun of me for having a TikTok account but I laugh much, much more at TikTok sketches by people like Jack Joseph, Italian Bach, Imogen Andrews, Al Nash or Isaac H.P than I do watching anything on TV (which I still enjoy, don’t get me wrong).

Possibly the single most the most joyful experience of my life was making stupid little films with my friends when we were young. But there weren’t many people doing what we were doing. We had to go to the local art college to edit our films. Nobody had access to that kind of thing. Now everybody does, and it’s life-affirming to see so many kids experiencing the same pleasure me and my friends used to enjoy, learning the techniques of art, undoubtedly falling about laughing in the failed takes, and executing their new skills whilst everyone else online rips each other’s throats out.      

But most excitingly, they’re still young – younger than Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola and Scorsese were when they came up. I can’t claim to know what these creatives will make when they reach their late twenties but I can imagine something truly original emerging from just over the horizon in way that hasn’t been seen for fifty years, an expression of life in the capitalism gone haywire world that anybody over the age of thirty can’t really comprehend. And best all of it will be created by humans, and have nothing to do with AI. See you at the movies!

The excellent turn of the century indy SF films

I just finished watching the excellent Cube – the first time I’ve seen it since I rented it on DVD from Starlight Video around the turn of the century, and it reminded me of the raft of talented young science-fiction-philosophy filmmakers and films that sprang up at the end of the millennium, spilling over into the next, with a preoccupation with technology paranoia.

The human genome was on the verge of being decoded, the Internet was just coming through, emails were stealing time and there was widespread, genuine fear around the Y2K bug – how funny we were. It was arguably the biggest technological leap humankind has ever taken, and it seemed the very nature of reality was in question. The tech was new and worrying in an esoteric, existential, unknowable way not that different to how we now view AI.

The best reaction, for me, came from five filmmakers: Andrew Niccol, Vincenzo Natali, Alex Proyas and the Wachowskis. All made films that straddled the millennium and dealt with the theme of technology and reality: Gattaca and Simone from Niccol, Dark City and I, Robot from Proyas, Cube and Cypher from Natali, and The Matrix and its sequels from the Wachowskis.

Science fiction has always dealt with new technology but another aspect that linked, and perhaps defined these filmmakers was an extraordinary skill for visuals. Everybody who has seen them very much remembers the look of all these films, the cool colour palettes, usually blue or green, light-polarising filters with wide-angle lenses and a symmetry to the composition with strong vanishing points; a sense of scale not only existential but visual, and on very small budgets given what came out on the screen. The Matrix was the first film where every frame was digitally graded (either green in the Matrix or blue in the real world).

All of these films broke ground not only thematically as these talented art school directors grappled with the alienating, disconnecting issues of the time but also with their visual flare. Seeing these films for the first time felt exciting and fresh – nothing like them had ever come before.

It is interesting that as the millennium ticked over the follow ups were visually lighter as the Y2K panic ebbed away. 9/11 gave the western world a new set of enemies and those 90s preoccupations of shadowy conspiracies, aliens, and tech threat we created in place of real enemies following the Berlin Wall coming down and the little window of Fukuyama’s End of History, seemed parochial as the western propaganda machine ramped up and gave us our new enemies for the new millennium (interestingly, Andrew Niccol would go on to make Good Kill, a film about a US airman dropping bombs on Middle Eastern enemies from a drone whilst he sat safely in a seat hundreds of miles away; reuniting with Ethan Hawke his tech threat worry continued as he focused his mind on extremely disturbing weapons that are not science fiction but which exist in the here and now).

But at least we got those films from those innocent times, as well as other honourable mentions from brilliant new visionaries who put out eyeball soothingly striking films with a spicy seasoning of millennial paranoia: Guillermo Del Toro’s Mimic (The Director’s Cut), Darren Aronofski’s Pi and Joseph Rusnak’s The Thirteenth Floor, for example.

The 90s wasn’t really a decade of peace in the world but it seemed it for many young, ignorant people in the west like me, though it is funny that even when there was no apparent need we had to have an enemy although, in hindsight, perhaps those artists worried about the abuse of tech were on the right trail all along and the real sideshow in the ensuing twenty years was the actual world.

Two films I saw, by Park and Östlund

It was really nice that Chapter Arts in Cardiff teamed up with the London Film Festival this year, screening films months ahead of Oscar season, and I was lucky enough to catch two showings: Triangle of Sadness by Ruben Östlund and Park Chan-Wook’s Decision to Leave.

Triangle of Sadness is very much a film of the times, with glorious depictions of how grotesque the super rich are. It was hilarious, riotous and beautifully made, with brilliant performances all round but especially from Woody Harrelson who plays a socialist sea captain on the super yacht where the first two thirds of the film takes place. It’s already won the Palm d’Or at Cannes and given the current climate I feel it’s a bit of a shoe-in for Best Picture at the Oscars, and well-deserved too because it is outstanding. My one gripe would be the ending, which I felt had a really good opportunity to hammer home its message but didn’t take it.

It’s a social commentary about the rich poor divide handled in a really outlandish way, much like the films of Bong Joon-Ho.

The two best Korean film directors working today are Bong and Park, both of whom conduct the symphony of actors, light, camera, sound, design and score on a level only achieved by the greats. The difference between them seems to come in their themes. Bong takes the wide angle view of society whereas Park zooms in on the minutiae of the darkness in human beings, and Decision to Leave is his most intimate film yet.

It tells the story of a detective following a case in which a woman is implicated in the murder of her husband, and he falls in love. Part crime thriller, part simmering romance, it is an extremely beautiful film to look at, with fewer audacious camera moves that in his Vengeance days, which means that when they happen they are all the more powerful. One shot at the top of a mountain is literally breath-taking. I don’t want to say too much about the story but although it’s superficially low-key by his usual standards I found it profoundly beautiful.

So, for the big rowdy social commentary Traingle of Sadness will be the go-to film of the year and for the beautiful intimacy of humans hearts it will be difficult to top Decision to Leave.

Bill Gates is… Satan?

The church where my strange encounter took place

I had to drop the offcuts of our new carpet to a fringing company because the cats absolutely love lying on it so we thought we’d get them some mats made so they can lie on them in the living room. Incidentally, the carpet is made from 100% reclaimed fishing nets and is excellent (it’s the Sedna range from SCS and half price at the moment). Anyway, I’m already off track.

As I drove home I decided to try a shortcut through some lanes, as I often do and it never works. After about twenty minutes of being lost I crested the top of a tall hill and came across an old church. How did a church like this get so far out in the wilds? I parked up and went to have a look around. The views from the churchyard were spectacular – all across the Bridgend region to the coast. The weather was warmer than it had been for months, with just a light breeze, and I felt extremely tranquil.

The view from the churchyard

I read a few of the tombstones in the graveyard and placed my hands to the church wall, which was warm to the touch. As I turned to leave a figure appeared at the entrance gate, and it was staring at me. It was a man, around sixty, thickset. He was leaning on the gate – the churchyard’s only exit – and his eyes were cold as they regarded me.

‘Is the church still in use?’ he said.

My heart rate increased. ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘There are signs to wear masks so it must have been used in the last year.’

‘It’s a beautiful building,’ said the man. ‘That church has stood there for the best part of a thousand years. But what’s Christianity now? It’s all Satanism these days. Like Bill Gates. If you have the vaccine – that’s the mark of the beast.’

Oh joy, I thought, I am in the middle of absolutely nowhere, penned into a churchyard by a psychopath. I looked at my car parked ten yards behind him. Could I jump over the wall and make a break for it?

‘People tell me I’m just a conspiracy theorist and you know what I say to them?’ I shook my head. ‘I say that’s exactly what people would have said to Noah.’ A faint smile cracked across his lips. He was looking for my approbation, for me to appreciate his intelligence.

‘That’s right!’ I declared. ‘They would have said the exact same thing to Noah wouldn’t they! I’d never thought of it that way before!’

Carpet

‘Yeah,’ he nodded enthusiastically. ‘I keep telling people, this vaccine, funded by Bill Gates, is a genocide. Research the – (he mentioned an organisation here, a secret cabal, but I can’t remember the name). They’re trying to reduce the world’s population.  There’s, what, eight billion people on earth? They want five hundred million. They did the first world war – that was a killing era – and they did the second war, which was also a killing era, but they can’t do world wars anymore because the weapons are too powerful. So what do they do?’

‘The vaccine?’ I said.

He nodded. ‘They haven’t even done real trails,’ he said. ‘I researched it on the internet – BBC and HTV (I enjoyed him using the old regional name for ITV) are owned by Bill Gates – and the results from the trials won’t be in until 2023. And all these millions of people are taking the vaccine. Not me. You won’t see me having it. Not after what happened with thalidomide and people being born with little arms and legs.’

A lot of the things he said were completely non-sensical but I’m recording them here near enough how he said them – I’m not going to write fake words to fit in with what he was trying to say. It’s was very garbled, his thread of thought jumping around all over the place, inconsistent and often contradictory.  

‘When you get home now look up Brand New Tube and look up these doctors.’ And he named three doctors, the names of whom I can’t remember apart from somebody called Dr Vernon Coleman.

‘Did you say YouTube?’ I said.

‘No, Brand New Tube. Because YouTube is so censored you need to go to Brand New Tube now to find the truth.’

(When I got home I did look it up – it’s a real site where people like David Ike now host their videos.)

My opinion of my new friend was changing. I was still worried about being murdered, sure, but I also kind of liked him. I liked how enthusiastic he was because someone was listening to him, even though I was only doing this because I was somewhat scared. As he spoke (and he spoke for about thirty minutes without a break) I remembered my own fascination with conspiracy theories around the turn of the millennium. I used to listen to Talk Radio when I couldn’t sleep, which was pretty much every night, and absolutely loved it when they had psychics on, or Ufologists or even a rare visit from the big man himself – the Ikemeister. This was around the time he believed the world was being run by shape-shifting lizards. Even though I desperately wanted something magical and mysterious ti be behind the shittiness of the world I didn’t actually believe the conspiracies of the time, but I found the people talking about them absolutely fascinating. There was something wide-eyed and innocent about them that I was attracted to. I used to buy books about conspiracy theories. Graham Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods was a favourite, along with Gods of the Dawn by Peter Lemesurier and Alien Base by Timothy Good. I even bought The Biggest Secret by David Ike, a book so impenetrably non-sensical that it’s impossible to read and which I had to give up on before I got to the bit about the lizards.

A selection of my conspiracy theory books

These were the days when conspiracy theorists were viewed as harmless nuts. They were independent people, forging their own path, in their minds the chosen few bestowed with a secret knowledge nobody else could see. In their minds they were the special ones. We all want to be special, we all are special, but if we don’t feel special enough sometimes we find our own ways of achieving this state of grace in peculiar places.

Brexit, Trump and the internet put paid to the harmless aspect of conspiracy theorists of course but here was a man who made me pine for the good old days. The salad days when reading about aliens and lizard kings was just a fun way to pass the time and maybe a chance to find ideas for novels. The rise of the conspiracy theory could be seen as the biggest disrupting force of the millennium, even more so than the internet if you consider the toppling of the political class an indication of true disruption.

‘I told my neighbour Kelvin not to have it and he said but I want to have it because I want to go on holiday so I need a health passport and I said to him that’s just another way they can control you. He had it and I asked how it went and he said he felt tired and achy. Anyway, six hours later in the middle of the night he’s being taken to hospital in an ambulance isn’t he. Alright, they released him the next day but he could have died. He’s about the same age as me – I’m sixty-one – a fit and healthy guy. I said to him, “are you going to have the second dose?” and he said yes! Crazy.’ He shook his head. ‘Crazy.’

He then went back to talking about the doctors he wanted me to look up on Brand New Tube. ‘I tell everyone about it,’ he said. ‘If I save just one life then it’s worth it.’

‘It’s certainly interesting,’ I said, using my old tactic of trying to buddy up to potential aggressors. ‘What was it called? Brand New Tube?’ I still wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t a murderer. ‘I’ll check it out! I haven’t had my vaccine yet so it sounds like I need to watch this.’

This was a lie. Not that I was going to watch Brand New Tube – I was lying because I have had my vaccine! It was a full on lie! I was lying to him partly because I was scared of being murdered but also, in truth, partly to humour him. He seemed so happy in his delusion that to burst his bubble or even gently prod at it seemed cruel and unnecessary.

His eyes lit up when I told him I’d follow his lead. It seemed to dislodge something in him. He threw his coat over his shoulder and stood up from the gate. By not challenging him (and, in fact, actively supporting him!) I had probably done some great harm to democracy but at least he was happy, right? Right?

‘And if you believe it,’ he called over his shoulder, ‘make sure you tell as many people as you can.’ And off he trotted back down the hill. As I watched him go I felt relieved but also regretful. I should have talked to him more but didn’t. I didn’t even get round to 5G! If only I’d had more time.    

Make sure you tell as many people as you can.

Well, my friend, here it is. I hope I have done you justice, and when you ultimately commit your massacre I hope you think of that man in the churchyard on the top of the hill who gave you the confidence to continue your quest just when you were losing faith.

The Greatest TV Show Ever Made (it’s The Sopranos)

Amy and I just finished re-watching The Sopranos and, for me, it’s the single greatest TV show ever created. I saw a Facebook post the other day saying The Wire is the most important show in television history and that’s hard to disagree with. The critic Mark Kermode made the point that whereas we watch TV to see the characters change The Wire is the only show where it’s the viewer that changes. But The Sopranos is just so good.

In this golden age of prestige TV I’m yet to find a show that comes anywhere close to these leviathans of artistic expression and social commentary. For me, it’s always been The Wire and The Sopranos duking it out for the top spot and after this re-watch I think it’s the Sopranos that nudges it.

The Wire is an incredible show with rich and varied characters, it takes us through the strata of Baltimore society from bottom to top, and that is why it’s so important.

But art isn’t only about importance. The Sopranos offers up social commentary aplenty, especially as a pre-cursor to Trump’s America – Tony’s crew would all want to Make America Great Again (at one point a character suggests the building of the wall) – but it’s The Sopranos that does the bigger themes of religion, family and betrayal bigger and better than The Wire. It’s also more intense for longer periods, and it’s funnier. One thing new prestige TV often fails at (but not always, for example Girls and Orange is the New Black) is humour, the writers forgetting that in real life people regularly makes jokes, do unintentionally funny things, and also find things funny, including their own tragic lives.

The Sopranos is also more cinematic. Whilst the Wire has those big industrial establishing shots, especially in Season 2 in the docks, as well as the unforgettable images of the red brick low rises in Season 1, the Sopranos directors screw in the wide angle lenses far more often and open up that grand bigness of the American landscape, be it countryside, city or industrial. They also use more cinematic techniques like push ins, vignette lenses to darken the corners of the screens, jump cuts, cross fades, and Scorcese-like sound mixes where moments of time are slowed down and plunged into silence before a dramatic moment, or an epiphany for a character. These often ostentatious flourishes help elevate the piece above the more gritty Wire and make for, overall, a richer, more sensory experience.

The Sopranos also has that final scene where every single element of the show is turned on its head, and that also demands the viewer to do some heavy-lifting – it does not patronise us.

But of course, the major component The Wire lacks is an era-defining central performance, which James Gandolfini delivers like a mountain above the foothills. His performance is absolutely enormous and incredibly nuanced all at the same time. He brings more to the character of Tony Soprano than any writer ever could. How does he imbue such a truly terrible person with such heart? How does he make someone so awful so appealing (even if we don’t like to admit he’s appealing?). How dare he get us to care about him so much? The acting in both shows is uniformly incredible (shout outs to Edie Falco as Carmella and Clarke Peters as Lester) but I don’t think anybody can argue that James Gandolfini is a colossus. It’s still absolutely gutting he died so young.

The Wire has no equivalent. This is in part the show’s intention with its Dickensian omniscience but it’s that central figure of Tony in the Sopranos that ties the whole piece together and makes it so satisfying: The individual of The Sopranos versus the abstract concept of society in The Wire – art vs message (although both have enormous amounts of both). As a human being I am of the opinion that whilst the head is important, it’s the heart that will always win out when it comes to art and, more often than not, life itself.

Some thoughts on Grand Hotel by Regina Spektor

I’ve always loved songs that are stories, and Grand Hotel is so evocative. The images Regina Spektor creates are so memorable – I often think unbidden of little devils lying on a misty lawn in spent ecstasy after a killing spree, a scene that takes place in this song. The hotel could be in New York – after all, I always see Spektor as being a bridge between Bronx cool and Manhattan loft studio culture – but for me it’s in Russia. This might be because I know Regina Spektor left the motherland during Perestroika and I think of her songs as falling into one of two categories – New York evocation or the epicness of the Russian mythos that stems from the country’s great size and extreme climate, and which is reflected in its literature.

I picture the hotel as the Hotel Metropol in Moscow, a building that kept up its appearances even after the revolution, mainly because Party leaders came to enjoy its offerings. There’s a funny legend that when the Bolsheviks stormed the building in 1918, rather destroy the wine in the cellar they removed all the labels to ensure egalitarianism amongst the vintages.

There are also devils in the story that emerge from hell via a spring beneath the foundations, a theme that follows in the tradition of Gogol, Bulgakov and Dostoevsky (although I’ve never read The Brothers Karamazov). I’ve listened to Regina Spektor so much during lockdown and the more I do the more I wish she’d turn her attention to the act of novel writing.

A soul made with the radiant warmth of human beauty

When my sister and I found out that my mother was going to visit our grandmother’s grave alone we changed our plans and decided to go with her to Bridgend – the former industrial town where she’d grown up. I can’t even remember the last time I’d been to the grave but it would have been my gramma’s birthday on 1^st March and my mum and auntie go once a year to leave daffodils.

I’d never realised how close the cemetery was to the two houses my mother had lived in until she got married. All three locations are within a stone’s throw of each other meaning that my gramma Chrissie lived most of her life and now rests forever in a space on earth just a few hundred metres across.

As per tradition my mother had brought a bunch of daffodils, which I clipped and placed into the little pot on top of the grave. It was a cold, blustery day but I cut the stems at different lengths so that the shortest would be at the edge of the pot and the tallest in the middle. Only just in bud, they should bloom beautifully by St David’s Day.

We wandered around the graveyard, past the pretty little chapel in the centre, before making our way across to Austin Avenue, the street where my mother had lived until she was fourteen. On the way she told us one of her classic childhood stories of poverty. According to her lore she owned one rollerskate as a child, on top of which she would place a book, and on top of which she would place herself so that she could zip down the hill towards Wildmill. This is a step up from another childhood tale where she purportedly wiled away hours of her weekends with, ‘just a stick and a leaf.’

The house on Austin Avenue where my mum lived until she was fourteen

Austin Avenue wasn’t that familiar to us as kids because gramma had moved to Coity Road around the corner by the time we came into the world. My sister couldn’t remember ever having been there but I recall visiting my gramma’s friend as a child for tea and cakes. It’s a small street of small terraced houses – unassuming, sleepy, almost as if it’s jutting out of the world into a lacuna of calm. It’s funny how certain places have a soothing effect on the soul and this small patch of earth – even though I very rarely go there, and even though it’s not particularly attractive – does it for me. Perhaps the place itself fuses with those memories of a happy childhood to become an anchor of safety in the heart. There was a chip shop just off the junction of Cemetery Road and Coity Road where we used to buy chips to take to gramma’s house, where we’d eat them with Daddy’s tomato sauce. I distinctly remember it was Daddy’s because I hated it. The chip shop is still there, as is the tyre fitting place opposite the house on Coity Road where we’d stay on weekends and play bagatelle, toast bread over the fire with a toasting fork and walk down the main road (even though we were only about eight) to buy Beano comics.

This strange gap between two houses on Cemetery Road is a public footpath. It turns right at the end and runs behind the houses on to Austin Avenue.

My gramma Chrissie was an incredibly kind person, the archetype of the sort of grandmother everybody wants in many ways. Hers was a soul made with the radiant warmth of human beauty. Around her I felt safe and loved. In the last few months of her life she came to live with us and then, right at the end, she was cared for in hospital. I still remember the day she died, when I was twelve. It was the first death I had known. We were being looked after by a neighbour and I had a vague feeling that something was about to change, and also a sensation of acceptance even before I knew for sure – my soul trying to cushion the blow before it struck. My parents came through the front door and I asked how gramma was and my mum told me – this I remember most clearly of all – that, ‘She’s gone with the angels.’

Although it’s a cliché I went to my room and started punching the boxing ball I had up there. In my defence I was far too young to know this was a cliché. I was so close to my gramma that the situation felt impossible, that this couldn’t happen. My mother followed me up and threw her arms around me and that safety which had passed from my gramma to my mother put its arms around me too. Because this happened to me at such an important developmental age I sometimes wonder if the effect of her death, the way it split me open, was the acute sensitivity I have towards other people’s feelings that has both plagued and beautified my whole life.

On the way home I drove into the back lanes behind Coity Road and found the park we discovered as children. At the time we’d been visiting my gramma for years so the discovery of a hitherto unknown park within walking distance was an almost magical event. I got out of the car. After the heavy rains of the last few weeks the clear skies and biting wind were a welcome respite. And when the wind died down the sun was finally warm on my body.

Why is the Book Better than the Film?

The unique relationship between the reader and the writer

A friend recently pointed out the fact that no-one ever says, ‘Did you see the film? It was much better than the book.’ Undoubtedly true (let’s ignore The Shining and other notable exceptions for now) and it got me thinking about why this might be the case. Why is the book always better than the film?

Consider the following passage:

The man walked into the room with his little brown dog running in circles around his legs. The room was sparsely furnished with just a red chair in one corner and a potted tree in the other. The walls were painted brilliant white and from the ceiling hung a single modern light-fitting.

This is how a scene may begin in a novel, or in a film. But there is a difference. In the film the viewer would see the room exactly as it is. A red armchair chosen by a production designer would be right there, unequivocally real, as would the potted tree and the light-fitting. An aesthetic choice has been made by the designer and the director and presented to the viewer. The man would have been cast by the casting director and the dog chosen by an animal trainer. The viewer knows what the man looks like with his aquiline noise and thin face; they know he is wearing a white suit with a brown greatcoat on top. In short, as far as imagery goes, the viewer has no autonomy over the scene – all the work has been done for them[1].

In the novel, however, this is not the case. The reader is given cues but the full picture is painted in by their own imagination. The red chair could be a plastic canteen chair, or a wingback, an easy chair, or an exercise in sleek Scandinavian minimalism. The plotted tree might be coniferous, a lollipop bay tree, or perhaps a Japanese acer. What breed is the dog? A Pomeranian? A terrier? Maybe it’s a young Labrador. The writer does not stipulate and yet there it is: a small, brown dog of the reader’s own choosing. There is no description of the light-fitting whatsoever. What does the man look like? Is he big or small? Lean or stocky? What colour is his skin? Even though the process is unconscious, the reader decides.

In a movie the director and their crew do the entirety of the work. What arrives in a viewer’s mind when watching a film is 100% the effect of the filmmakers. Aesthetically, nothing is left to the viewer. And it is commonly believed that in a novel the writer bears the same burden as the film director, but this in fact not true – a writer only brings the reader so far along the way. It is the job of the reader to complete the vision that arises in their mind. In short, the work is shared between the reader and the writer. The reader is required to add a part of their own imagination into the mix. Could it be that this dynamic is the reason reading affords such a rich experience? Is this why books are always better than the film?

The exercise of the human imagination is unique in the canon of experience. It requires real heavy lifting in the machinery of your brain, necessitating our neurons to fire signals along many disparate pathways of the brain to bring forth neuronal ensembles (one for a red chair, one for a dog, one for a man, and so on) which all have to be choreographed together without a visual cue, calling on parts of the brain far away from the region that produces the images, and having all these millions of cells and the chemicals and electrical signals zipping between them to come together in a perfect symphony of synthesis. The reader moves characters through a world that is entirely imagined inside their heads. It’s like an all-body work out, and, similarly to such exercise, it makes us feel good.

When a reader reads they exercise their imagination. They make their own aesthetic choices in every scene. The red chair in the corner of the room is precisely the type of chair they want to see, the tree is the exact species that needs to be there for maximum enjoyment of the scene. They are the film director, making these choices so that the vision in their mind is aesthetically perfect for them – something a film director can never do because people’s individual tastes vary. The reader has autonomy within the art – they are the artist. And that brings rewards.

Every book anybody reads is aesthetically perfect because they created it themselves based on their own tastes. There are undoubtedly many more reasons why reading provides such a singular depth of pleasure but surely the reader being included in the creation of the vision must play a part. There is a unique and intimate relationship between reader and writer and together, just the two of them, they create whole worlds.

[1] Of course, a viewer does do work – they interpret actors’ feelings, and think about the themes, they are left to deal with the emotional heft a director delivers, but this is also true of all artforms including the novel.

Grow a Climate Tree and Save the World!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we can make a difference on a personal level with climate change. It’s really difficult to get a message out there that can really work, because actually it’s a bit depressing for people to be told the best thing you can do is significantly lower your living standards. The best things any person can do reduce their carbon/methane imprint is fly less, give up meat and have fewer children. But I think people find it too bitter a pill to swallow. These options are not about DOING stuff, they’re about NOT DOING stuff.

So I thought about this, about DOING instead of NOT DOING and I came up with one thing that everyone can do, which is easy, cheap, fun, and which could save the world. And that is to grow a climate tree. Trees take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as they photosynthesise so if every person in the world added one tree to their garden, or farmland, or community space, or on derelict land, or in a pot in their flat, or if there’s an initiative in villages to plant a whole wood according to how many people live in that village, we’d have 7.3 billion more trees in the world.

The really good news is that young trees suck up more carbon than old trees so even though your tree might be small or in a pot, it will be doing its job very nicely. If you can plant a tree in your garden great, but if you’re worried it might burrow under your house then just stick it in a big pot.

Climate trees need to be grown from seed, or saved from death. Think of John Hammond in Jurassic Park who was present for the “birth of every little creature on this island.” You can take ownership of your tree. Not only is it fun, but also trees in garden centres already exist so we wouldn’t be adding new trees, if that makes sense. A climate tree needs to be specifically brought into existence as your gift to the planet. And you need to look after it no matter what.

I have this image of families having little pots in their gardens corresponding to the numbers of kids and parents in the house, maybe even with a little green bows tied around the branches to show they’re climate trees. Climate trees for loved ones no longer with us, or trees for our pet cats and dogs and rabbits and even the greatest animal there is – the capybara, if you happen to be the custodian of one of those guys.

Anyway, I’ve decided to start it all off by buying these dead looking acers, that were about to be thrown, and I’m going to post pictures of how things are coming along with them.

I’ve also ordered some seeds of a zelkova tree, because one of my favourite authors, Haruki Murakami, nearly always has a zelkova tree in his books. I’m probably going to post updates and more info about how good tree planting is later on as well so watch out!

If you think this is a good idea please give it a go and post about it to try and get other people involved!

This isn’t to say that doing other stuff isn’t important, planting your own tree is just a piece in a big, complicated jigsaw puzzle, but it is a statement that you care. And that tree WILL take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. If you have any doubt about the effect trees have on CO₂, take a look at the Keeling curve, which shows how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere.

Ignore the fact it’s going up and up and up! Instead notice how it goes up in a jagged line. Where it drops each year, that’s because it’s summertime in the northern hemisphere, where most of earth’s land is (68%). The extra leaves on all those plants takes a noticeable chunk of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere – that’s why that dip happens.

There’s also brand new science that has calculated how many trees we would need to plant to stop catastrophic climate change, and the GREAT news is that there is easily enough land on earth to do it, without negatively impacting agriculture. But that’s for a future post.

It’s very easy to think you’re too small to make a difference, that there’s no point so why bother, but I don’t believe that. I believe that everybody can make a difference and that nobody should give up hope or think that they’re hopeless, and you can make a difference. You might think one tree is just a drop in the ocean, but as the last line in my favourite book says, “what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?” You can make a difference with the simple act of growing a tree. So get planting! And then tell your friends.

 

Coconut Milk 69p

I was in Home Bargains the other day and they had tins of coconut milk for just 69p. 69p? I thought. I’ll have a bit of that. I bought four tins and went straight home to tell Amy. She didn’t care. Over the next few days most of the people I told about the bargain also didn’t care, or feigned interest at best. Determined to prove my point about how great a deal I’d got on the coconut milk we drove to Tesco for a price comparison this afternoon. (Amy didn’t realise we were going for a price comparison – she thought we were just getting cat food.)

I’m an “asker” in a supermarket. Not point in being a “looker.” Luckily, someone had just smashed a jar of bolognaise sauce and a member of staff was standing guard. He thought he was going to have a five minute break standing over that sauce. Little did he know that I was approaching him from behind.

‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Do you know where the coconut milk is?’

Here we go, I thought. Here we go. The staff member took me to the next aisle over, where the coconut milk was kept. Unfortunately Tesco had sold out of coconut milk this afternoon, but that was fine, as I could see the price,on one of the white price tags they slide into the miniature pricing hoarding beneath their goods. £1. Great stuff. Actually, this was cheaper than I thought – I thought they were more like £2, but I’d made a saving of 31p x 4 \ £1.24. I turned to show Amy, who had of course gone off down another aisle.

‘Ah, we haven’t got any mate,’ said the staff man.

‘Ah well, no worries,’ I said, grinning to myself.

‘I’ll just check on the system. I can get some from the warehouse.’

‘Oh, it’s OK. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Actually, we’ve got some in another part of the store. On that wall there.’

I didn’t even want any coconut milk. But this guy was determined to sell me some.

‘Excuse me mate,’ came a voice from behind.

I turned around to find a muscular gentleman leaning on his trolley.

‘Did you say you was looking for coconut milk? How many do you want?’

I looked into his trolley. He’d absolutely cained all the coconut milk. There were about twelve tins in there. He picked two out of his trolley.

‘Do you want one? Two?’

I felt the eyes of the Tesco staff guy staring expectantly at me. Here we were in a moment of camaraderie, the three of us. There was a real sense of bonhomie in the air, and how often does that happen in Tesco? Of course, one of we three knew the awful truth.

‘Honestly mate, don’t worry about it,’ I chuckled. ‘I’m alright.’

‘Go on mate,’ he said, holding out a tin.

I was thinking fast. I could have taken a tin off him and then got out of sight and dumped the tin on a shelf. But this guy obviously wanted the coconut milk and it wouldn’t be fair to do that to him. As we stood there I found myself thinking, what on earth am I going to do here? Was I going to come clean about the price comparison? I was not. The plan was already formed in my mind: I was going to walk away without saying anything. As I carried out my plan, feeling their eyes following me as I disappeared around a corner, I thought to myself, well, at least it wasn’t as bad as that time I got caught creeping across my neighbours’ lawn.