Russell Davies

The beach in Nice

ÉLIANE RADIGUE — "I have a bit of a story about the “Monotone Symphony.” It dates back to 1954. It was a birth for Yves Klein. At that time, I was pregnant with my son. I’m not very tall, but I was very much pregnant. At that time, pregnant women didn’t go swimming during the day — that would have been indecent, carrying things, and all that. We lived very close to the beach in Nice. At night, with the whole crew of us, we’d go swimming. And during that time, Yves was in Spain and other places. He came back that year from Paris, where he went every Monday to visit his mother, Marie Raymond, who was a painter, and his father, Fred Klein, who was a painter as well. At that time, Mondays were for Marie Raymond’s soirées, and people gathered at her place. That year, Yves met the Lettrists in Paris — François Dufrêne and Raymond Hains. And the game was to verbalize on the apostles of Pentecost using the spoken vocabulary of syllables from the “Ursonate,” by Kurt Schwitters. And so we went to the beach, and Yves, when he returned from Paris, had a lot of intellectual and cultural baggage with him. Since Nice was something of a cultural desert, Yves was trying to nourish us with these ideas that he’d brought from afar. And we began to speak in nonsense syllables on the beach. Arman said the idea to make a simple tone was mine, but I’m not so sure. The thing I am sure about is that it was my idea to harmonize the voices — to have everyone in their own register. So, we did the first monotone symphony on the beach, in a certain sense. For me, it was a game — nothing more. But Yves found it very interesting and asked me to write it down for him."

Nightshifting

This blog post from Dai is one of the clearest things you will ever read about the challenges of 'digital transformation'. 

It's good and interesting on the specifics at DVLA but it is, as you'll realise if you ever deal with computers, organisations and people, also UNIVERSAL.

 

Unoffice 1: what a joy

I did my first unoffice hours meeting today. An absolute pleasure. What a lovely way to start the week. (As Matt has said).

If you fancy a 30 min online chat, about whatever you like, book yourself a slot.

Pressing the down button

Lots of good bits in this feature on Caryl Phillips.

Phillips, 66, knew the loose ends demanded a novel “because the engine room for fiction, for me, is character. If I hear a character’s voice or if I can imagine what anxieties a character might have, then I figure I’m dealing with fiction. A piece of non-fiction can take a walk around a subject. But as soon as you start to do a deep dive, what I think of as pressing the down button on the lift, it becomes fiction.”

“The hardest thing about writing a novel isn’t telling the story; it’s how you tell it,” he adds. “Each story demands a different structure. There’s obviously some similarity, like with an architect. An architect doesn’t build the same building twice, but when you’ve seen enough of their buildings, you’re able to say, ‘I think it was built by that person’. Which is no bad thing.” 

 

James Baldwin — who Phillips remembers as an “open, friendly, incredibly generous” mentor (the pair met in 1983 when the BBC expressed interest in a programme on Baldwin that later went out on Radio 4) — observed that “people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them”.

...

 

“Nobody in Oxford understood my story: not just as somebody whose parents migrated, but as a northerner,” he reflects. “I used to take the train and come down here and in my mind try to stitch together the world I was living in with this world I thought I was about to graduate into, and I couldn’t see a bridge or a tunnel that connected them,”

...

 

Debates about which books should be on the curriculum have intensified since Phillips joined Yale, where he stresses to students that “reading is an act of empathy”. Dismissing claims that writers cannot voice the experiences of people of different identities, Phillips admits he can be “blunt” with young people who tell him they are unsure if they are allowed to tell certain stories.

“Your job as a writer is to imagine yourself into the lives of people who are not you . . . and, that way, provide a gateway for readers to also imagine themselves into the lives of others so that we can build up a community of shared understanding.’” 

Things about things

Phil has written about Things. I'm also a long-time Things user but have often been tempted by other ToDoErs. I like, for instance, the way that Apple Reminders will let you set a Reminder when you get to a particular location.

But I've decided to stick with Things because I think I'm going to need it to see me into the forgetfulness of old age. It's already almost reflexive for me. If I think of a Thing I need to do I stick into Things. I'm not quite at the stage of putting something in Things at the top of the stairs for when I get to the bottom, but I'm not far off. And I think that's a good habit to cultivate. My fingers know where to move, I don't have to think about it. I want adding a Thing to be as natural to me as opening a door, so I don't forget my way to remember.

Then you play Hey Jude

David Remnick writing about Paul McCartney:

“When I watch McCartney perform, I can’t help thinking about that Newport Jazz concert my father and I attended in 1973. When we were backstage, Gene Krupa, the drummer for Benny Goodman’s band, sat slumped in a chair, silent, staring at a space in the carpet between his shoes. He seemed racked with dread and very old. Then, onstage, he shook off whatever weighed on him and came alive to the sound of his old friends: Goodman’s sinuous clarinet, Hampton’s glowing vibes, Wilson’s liquid runs on the piano. Just before “Avalon,” the customary closer, Krupa had his moment, beating his mother-of-pearl tomtom to open “Sing, Sing, Sing,” a standard that Goodman and Krupa had made into an extended improvisational set piece. Krupa was a runaway train. The hall throbbed to his foot at the bass drum. There was something ominous, even frightening, about the spectacle of this sickly man, now come dangerously alive, at the edge of abandon. When Krupa was done, and the applause rained over him, you could see that his shirt was drenched.

After the show, we waited by the stage door on Fifty-sixth Street, hoping to see Teddy Wilson and thank him. The door banged open and an immense security guard burst onto the sidewalk. He was carrying an old man, seemingly unconscious, in his arms. It was Krupa, wrapped in towels. A cab pulled up, and the guard funnelled him into the back seat. Less than four months later, we read in the paper that Krupa had died, after struggling for years with leukemia. He was sixty-four.”

“Stevie Van Zandt, who has been playing guitar in Springsteen’s E Street Band since the early seventies, said, “The rock generation has changed the concept of chronological time. I personally know seven artists in their eighties still working. And the entire British Invasion is turning eighty in the next few years. Nobody’s grandparents made it past their sixties when we grew up.” He sees “the birth of something I call ‘wisdom art’—art that the artist could not have created when they were young . . . so there is a legitimate justification for continuing to create. You perform as much of your latest work as you feel like. Then you play ‘Hey Jude’ so everyone goes home happy.””

It has me thinking if I can call anything I do 'wisdom art'. Of course, it would help if I'd written Hey Jude.

Coffee morning: moving to Wednesday

I've had some feedback that Friday is a bad day for coffee. So, after detailed analysis of multiple datasets I'm plumping for Wednesday. 

So, I'll be at Caffe Tropea, Russell Square, London at 8am on Wednesday 8th January. Please come along and say hello. If you'd like to.

Hold me closer tiny podcast

Fans of my fragment-based micropodcast (hello Denise!) will be excited to learn that new episodes will be issued fortnightly from Sunday. Until they run out.

Previous episodes are on acast and there are very old ones at soundcloud.

The first series was called 41256, the second was 41233. The new one will be 4764, though I'm not going to change the URL stream etc because that's annoying. So if you were subscribed before it might just pop up. Who knows?

New episodes will be on the acast page and wherever you get your podcasts. Though maybe not Apple because they don't seem to like the plunderphonic nature of the content.

No coffee tomorrow morning

For the avoidance of doubt, there's no coffee morning meeting tomorrow. The cafe is closed.

Interesting 2025 - what's it all about?

It's time to start thinking seriously about speakers for Interesting 2025.

And this time, for a bunch of reasons, that means more than just asking people I know. And you lot. I need to start asking more people who've never heard of it, never been and who require some sort of explanation of what it's all about.

So I've got to write one.

I thought I'd put it here, then, if anyone has any edits, they can let me know.

The Interesting conference 2025

Interesting is a DIY conference of short presentations about things our speakers find interesting.

• It's not work, it's not professional, it's not networking
• Talks are 10 minutes
• You can use PPT or something else or nothing
• The speakers are paid. The audience is lovely. The venue is amazing

Would you like to speak? It can be about whatever you fancy. Something you're deeply into or something you'd just like to explore. The best topics are ones that give our speakers joy. Our audience is not looking for insights or life hacks or to be inspired. They want to see someone talk about something they're interested in. Perhaps with a couple of jokes. We cram a lot of talks into an evening so there's always something happening and there's not so much pressure on any individual speaker. Our unofficial motto is 'you're never more than 10 minutes away from something else'. 

Previous topics have included:

• How to split a log with an axe
• What makes a sex film sexy, a feminist perspective
• Knots
• A geophysical survey of World of Warcraft'
• Why horses are scared of crisp packets'
• The race to be the first craft to sail faster than 50 knots
• Stan Laurel's Dad
• How to make cheese
• 5 minutes of paper
• Guerrilla gardening
• Abrief history of the piano
• How to do Morse Code
• What's interesting about certain sports if you hate the actual game play
• Ponies I Have Loved; Both Real and Imagined
• Everything You Know About Nuclear Power is Wrong
• How to conduct a symphony orchestra
• 1970s UK girls comics, particularly the hilarious role psychological violence played in the genre
• Molecular gastronomy, wine tasting with actual wine
• A close reading of Julianna Margulies' hair and make-up in The Good Wife
• Swedish Rules for Sex and the Supernatural
• Why flyknit is the most revolutionary thing since sliced bread
• The importance of watching TV'
• What it feels like to preserve memories and talk about dementia and death on social media, whilst still occasionally making people laugh
• Hippies, synthesisers, giant squid and the military industrial complex
• The Sierra Leone National Railway Museum
• Tampons and Tampon Club
• Collecting the complete short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Sugar highs
• Logbooks: Collecting the uncollectable
• A Series of Tubes
• Shopping Lists: Finding the story in the everyday
• Pensions and the end of the world
• Simón Bolívar
• You seem nice, but I might have to kill you: Brief Observations on Misophonia
• Elsie de Wolfe: Optimism and white paint
• A systemic approach to coolness 1974-2024
• The Vernacular of the Spectacular
• The zoetrope turntable
• Ibsen and The Muppets

I'm especially keen to hear from people who don't normally do this kind of thing. The crowd is really supportive so it's a great occasion to do your first public talk. Lots of our speakers have never spoken from a stage before. We can help with prep, rehearsal, calming words and warm beverages. And if a different format would help we can do that too. You can present on video. Or bring a friend or a gang with you. Or get someone to interview you. Whatever you fancy.

Diamond Geezer summed up the 2016 version like this.

Over the years we've definitely over represented white men. We've had a lot. Bless them for always volunteering. But if you're not one I'd especially like to hear from you.

An ask: if you've spoken and you'd be happy to give me a quote about your experience please drop me a line