365 Ways With Words

East Meets West

East meets West – a cliché, yes, but it still bears relevance; there is something in the mind that discerns and separates things of one side of the world with things on the other. It would be a fool’s errand to attempt to methodically list the characteristics of the West and their counterparts in the East, particularly in the 21st century wherein all things global are tending to carry the same flavour, however, there are still definite spikes in those flavours that make life the other side of Suez interesting. Vive la difference!

Outside our Bangkok apartment can be heard the shrill whistling of the police/parking attendants/taxi fetchers/road or site construction workers, each with fluorescent jacket, and each in tight uniform or some semblance of authority. This, along with the accompanying motorcycle/moped engine acceleration noise is the consistent background chorus to any city-based life. There is something peculiarly local about the urgent Bangkok traffic whistle; an urgency concerned less for public safety than for individual job security, self-importance and sheer boredom. Single souls in a sea of humanity they may be, and these men and women are paid a pittance, but they add something to the cultural experience of Bangkok, albeit an annoying one at times.

Depending on experience and skill, manual work in the West can command high wages. Although something can be said for factory and site work, the same cannot applied to cheap labour in the East. There are some exceptions, such as in southern China: despite the massive population, general increases in levels of education and in popular lifestyle expectations have meant factory owners cannot find workers to put on their production lines – the people will not work for low wages or in uncomfortable conditions any more and shop around for the better jobs, jumping ship whenever the fancy takes them. In a country with good transport infrastructure, and where money talks loudest, the workforce is now a selective, mobile army. And although China may still account for the majority of the world’s manufacturing, the consequences of rising wages alone may result in massive changes to production in other parts of the eastern world with their respective cultural values.

The hungry attitudes of skilled Vietnamese, Indonesian, Thai and Indian workers that are willing to take up the tasks of their Chinese counterparts, combined with new transportation infrastructures, means that these countries may be where the money goes in the early-to-mid-century. The diversified economies of the East are based in centuries-old cultures. China may still be just about cheaper, and worries not a jot about aping current trends to get a product out there, but the cultural dynamism of the nations of emerging manufacturers makes things interesting.

The East is as much the monks walking down the early morning Laotian streets, the mid-morning call to prayer from the Malaysian mosque, the Thai dancers that grace the reception area of the conference, the sunrise view from Mt Fuji as it is illegal garment sweatshops and dangerous back-street factories. These positive cultural images represent something deeper in the soul, as much as a joyful degustation at a Languedoc cave manifests French viniculture. They are much-loved snapshots of a cultural value as much celebrated from within as from without.

So, why take an interest in adding culture of the East to products? It could be argued that it represents added value. At the moment, we buy iPads put together in southern China, but there is nothing southern Chinese about it. By its very nature, the product must homogeneously fit in with Apple culture and, if current trends continue, as long as Apple culture is hot the iPad remains hot. But perhaps there is something beneficial in adding cultural value to a product. Perhaps Eastern products will contain a beneficial uniqueness as yet unrecognised or valued.

We visit the East for the reason it is called the East – it is different and our perceptions of it are flavoured by the very air that breezes through it and the waters that wash its shores. The same could quite feasibly be added to the products produced there, not merely tacky touristy rubbish, but domestic-minded items. At the moment the very idea of a culturally endowed product epitomises detraction from overall value, but perhaps in time, when manufacturing is identical all over the world, then the converse will become true. Vive la difference!

An Exercise

Here's a game you can play, either by yourself or with like-minded friends. You need only an open mind. It has two variants, short and long, and can be applied to almost any endeavour to which you aspire. The beauty of this game is that the more you play, the better you should get at playing it. The benefit of this game is that the more seriously you take it the more you should improve in whatever it is you are doing.

Variant A, 10:1 – for 10 seconds the player is to focus on an idea, an image, a tune, a speech, etc. It could be the first thing that pops into the head, or something already prepared. Then for 1 minute the player is to relate, draw, sing, play, talk or do whatever they have decided to do.

The important thing is that after the 10 seconds prep there should be no hesitation for the rest of that minute. This is difficult at first, particularly if the player is shy or has little faith in their abilities. When they inevitably break down into stuttering, repetition or embarrassing shoe-staring they are to be congratulated on what they have done and given encouraging and helpful suggestions for improvement: faltering can be overcome with dedication and more practice. It is really an exercise in creativity.

Variant B, 30:5 – this is simply an extension of the former, but because the time is longer the valuable 30 seconds thinking time must go beyond the initial idea onto considerations about how to extend it for the full five minutes. This might be easier with something like drawing or speaking, activities that usually take as long as needed to conclude, yet therein lies the discipline – the topic/subject must be suitably concluded within that time, no more and no less.

Although this format is usually applied to things like slam poetry or rap lyrics, within the Toastmasters group this is an established discipline held at each meeting, but with a slight difference: each speaker is given 30 seconds and is supposed to speak for one- to two-minutes. It sounds a doddle, but the half-minute prep flies past like five seconds and the two minutes speech can seem an eternity. God knows I've stood up thinking I can easily put a speech together only to find all the ideas gone and a barely-coherent ramble ensue, yet on other occasions can put together an epic speech from nothing!

These games have an interesting heritage, particularly in the art world. Famously, the sculptor Henry Moore found the huddled figures hiding in the London Underground during the Blitz of 1940-41 of momentous emotional import. He would rapidly sketch the sleeping and sheltering figures, a necessity because he did not want to intrude on the privacy of the sleeping civilians. His quick sketches were to support imprints on his visual memory to create "volumes without the need to use shadows". Capturing the essence of figures without the artifice of setting them up in poses, he would later use the sketches to complete more dramatic and thoughtful compositions.

Below is a short on Henry Moore. The importance of the underground drawings is highlighted from about 1:50

 

This exercise is also a good game to try at the pub where each player will already be in a relaxed frame of mind. Give it a go with sketching, improvising, speech-making or anything else you might consider fun – stick at it and you will improve!

The Death of Poets

It took her a while to begin, to really get started. The ideas had been floating around in her head since she was a very youthful and inexperienced teenager. Floods of romantic poetry, righteous and pious, angry and venomous poured without end: first one exercise book, then another, and another. Her shelves were re-arranged and she began to get serious. To her delight her parents, recognising her budding wordsmith skills, bought her a newfangled word processor for Christmas.

And she read. First the school-recommended list, then the Victorians, then Blake, then…

Her first boyfriend was a bit of a disappointment: she liked his attention and his wandering hands, but he was a failure when it came to communication. When discussing anything at depth, even TV, Frazer would suddenly clam up. His moody silences would always end with her going home. Then after school the next day it would be as if nothing happened, he would find her and off they would walk home holding hands, kiss and say goodbye. Then he didn’t call one Saturday and by the Monday he was holding Kirsty Derry’s hand.

At first the pain of separation and betrayal was only slight and, after a shrug, she continued her reading, schoolwork and writing. In fact, it picked up a little having fallen off under Frazer’s gormless attentions. But just as she focused harder upon her task two crushing things occurred: her word processor crashed to a nonfunctionable death, and with it she suddenly felt complete and utter heartbreak, as if all her emotions had erupted at the surface like a wealth of painful, hideous zits.

She missed school for the first time. She cut her hair short. She watched a lot of TV. She ate. She ate some more and then found that the pain fuzzed a little when she was completely full and sleepy. Her 15 years had ill prepared her for these overwhelming feelings and now her poetry appeared ludicrous. A wet Wednesday one week later she took down her books from the shelves above her bed and boxed them, un-plugged the useless word processor to place it in the bottom of the wardrobe and sat motionless staring out of the window for hours until it became dark, truly lost in her dark, adolescent thoughts.

The rest of school, so promising at first, became a non-event. Although she went on to pass most of her ‘O’ levels and somehow found the energy to take three ‘A’s, her heart really wasn’t in it. For the first time in her life she became surly and even got into trouble with teachers. She found other sorts of boyfriends that liked or didn’t mind podgy girls and went off to party like the rest. Her busy parents tried not to be too worried. But something had died. Indeed, she saw its’ corpse every time she vacuumed her room and every time she wore a finely-ironed blouse or a jacket. In the end, she opted not to go to University and found a job in a local travel agency.

Five years of sending other people to exotic destinations finally took her to the end of this comfortable path. On a rather dreary October Friday when all her colleagues were busy, she finally looked around. A hen night had been planned for that Saturday for Kerry and all they could discuss was what to wear and where to go. But she suddenly felt like sitting at home reading a book. When she got home, Mum and Dad were both eating and watching the 6 o’clock News – they didn’t even turn around. “Ello luv, dinner’s in the oven.”

Without responding, she took off her coat and shoes, methodically pulled and pushed herself up the creaky stairs and after a quick wee sat on her squishy bed. She looked down and from beneath her legs pulled out a dusty squat box; on the top of the stack was her last exercise book. She took it to her desk which doubled as a dressing table, gently pushed aside some hair products and read the last entry.

            “…Tousled through the frost-nipped grip

            The singing, howling gale from ice

            Clawed unrem without let…”

She remembered: the telephone had rung and Frazer asked her out. Even though it was a Thursday and she had double French on Friday (and had not done her revision) she agreed. It had been a good long wet snog at the bus stop before he got on the 92. By the time she got back it was nearly 9.45 and she was tired… but actually happy.

The phone rang.

“Phone! For you!” shouted up her Mum’s voice.

Steve, who was in a pub, asked her to join him. She thought about him and his prior confessed eagerness to take her out, but told her Mum make her apologies for her, claiming a headache. She focused again on her book, this time with a biro in hand.

“The Death of Suzanna Greenwood” she wrote in slow cursive hand. She paused, turned around and pulled the box towards her. The dustcover names ‘Shelley’ and ‘Keats’ came to view, and with them a longed-for memory. Beneath them were more; ‘Byron’, ‘Yeats’...

She turned back and crossed out her name. It now read, “The Death of Poets” and, at last, the idea formed shape.

Blue Sky Thinking

The dream outcome is the same:

Long-term, unattached, pie in the sky

Beyond fingertips – gripped on the ether, the yonder

Only stars above, nothing below.

 

Astounding tales with no kite strings:

Submarines, rockets, nanotechnology, abstraction

Revealed resultless – a summertime harvest for next year, or the year after

Only stars above, nothing below.

 

Impossible form to possible structure:

Design, system, theory, innovation

Woolgathering for imagination strike – at any inconvenient, lumpy hour

Only stars above, nothing below.

Adolescent Poetry

I kept them. Most people throw them away, but I recently found a bulging folder of my squelchy teenage poems. These creative outpourings within can be described as a richness of embarrassments, a close encounter of the emotional kind, of sensualism represented in an outpouring of foolish, withering sighs:

• Love had a pure nobility that should not be assailed,
• The earth represented all good things – perfection
• It was 'us' and 'them', a myriad of enemies that sought destruction
• Lots of heavy weathery symbolism.

Some, however, are fairly good and reward re-reading, although a teenager's head makes most sense of them. I'm afraid they'll have to go back into the folder and be put firmly back on the shelf: so emotive of that time, it is a one-way conversation with my fresh-faced self, before the decades passed over to leave in their wake the me of now. It was all so much easier back then.

It begs the question, whether in thity years I will pull down a similar folder of creativity marked 'Mid-40s Misery'...

Below, then, is perhaps one of the least awful. If it takes your masochistic fancy, or perhaps you really are a fan of poetry of the most Vogon kind, then know that I have plenty more lurking about.

Peace, Under the Sink

 

        I know many spiders,

        Under the sink.

 

        They hang, wrapped in skeleton,

        Each far apart, waiting

        To swallow life.

 

        I cough,

        They remain motionless

 

        I blow the cobwebs,

        One moves a leg but tightens the grip.

 

        So I open my window

        And with a prayer

        Into the world

        Throw out spiders, web, death.

Living With Imaginary People

This post is about imaginary people – what they are, what they aren't and how imaginary people can help you.

First, what they are. Imaginary people are figments of the imagination. I live with imaginary people. In fact I work with imaginary people. I meet them every day, talk to them and listen to the conversations they have with other imaginary people. They have yet to talk back to me, and have not done so to anyone else I know for that matter, but that's OK: I think I'd be very worried if that actually happened.

My job, if that's what I should call it, involves the creation of people, complete with histories, mannerisms, motives, fears and delights. In fact, the name of the game is to make these people so convincing, so completely believable, that their existence does not come into question. Only then do the imaginary people really come to life.

So, for instance, I have made a relatively new acquaintance, Harvey Norman. He lives in Brisbane Australia, drives an ambulance for a living, likes to go bike riding and last saw his father the morning after he beat up his mum. He doesn't know it yet, but he's going to meet his future wife today on a beach. She will have a lot to say to him, once she works out he's not a total jerk. Not sure if he's going to be a friend yet.

As then there's the local Olomouc police Inspector who will investigate the brutal murder of two students on Franklinova. He must also work with a pretty, young graduate who has just become a deputy inspector, is half his age and has ideas of her own. Their chemistry may bring them together, but may also push them apart.

Other imaginary people may have lived thousands of years ago, watched sunrises over the African savanna before people lived in houses, or may not yet have been born because their cocoon is in stasis on their starship travelling towards Alpha Centauri at close to the speed of light.

Now, this might sound all fine and dandy to you ordinary folk that work for a living, but there is a problem: imaginary people don't go away. In fact, they are always there — when you wake up and go to bed, when you eat or go to the toilet, when you go shopping or have a drink at the pub. They sometimes appear when people are talking to you, or when having a drink with friends. They put in an awkward appearance at the most tender of moments and enjoy showing up for a laugh when life is intolerable. After a while you just can't stop them from turning up just about everywhere!

If you think that all this is reminiscent of a psychosis like schizophrenia or a disease like dementia, well then you're nearly right. Let me remind you that in order for imaginary people to be real they have to be believable, not just by other people but especially by the person who does the imagining. After all, Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter 'did not exist' until George Lucas and J.K. Rowling brought them to life. Their birth was essential – the creator had to make them walk, talk, have a reason to get up in the morning as well as save the universe and didn't stop until their imaginariness became a reality.  

Imaginary people should be lifelike and interesting, but they do not have to be your friends – in fact, you can do terrible things to them. There is a perverse pleasure in plotting someone's death or their descent into depression.

But there's a problem with imaginary people. Sometimes they are too normal. Real life is actually a bit weird, and sometimes completely unbelievable. Thus, and rather unfortunately, George Bush wasn't an imaginary person. He probably wouldn't have fulfilled even a single category on the 'believability criteria', even less so if you were to add all sorts of impossible details — for instance, that he couldn't spell but that he was elected American president – twice!!

The second point is what they are not: they aren't ghosts, spirits, aliens, spooks or things that go bump in the night. These may, or may not, be imaginary, but they have not been deliberately created by me. I have seen ghosts and strange things, but I haven't had any of them talk to me – at least not directly. If they did I think I might be a little scared. And if I wasn't scared then perhaps I ought to go to a local mental hospital.

They are also not the sort of imaginary friends that a child may have in his or her private imaginary world. These friends may be there to help the child cope with difficulties or loneliness and the child usually leaves them behind as they grow up.

The third point is how imaginary people can help you. If you have an imaginary character who is a little underemployed, then perhaps you can get him to do something for you. For example, use him to go through issues that you are facing now. Rehearse how the imaginary person would cope in that job interview you did badly at? How would he organise a holiday? How would he deal with your boss or lecturer or landlord? This has its risks – depending on who they are, they might resolve every problem with a punch on the nose, or by wetting their pants. On the other hand, they might resolve your problems through charm, excellent logic and satisfying responses to questions.

There you have it: imaginary people are completely believable living people, that are not ghosts, and who may be able to do some good in your life and help resolve issues. So, from all of us, thank you.

The Process

It starts from way down, not above – it's rare from above. The activity is usually a culmination and not a divine inspiration or God-breathed revelation or – less common still – a true epiphany. More normally it is a digging, or a sifting, or a whittling, or a distilling, or the end result of forced labour, or the final act of desperation that results from hours of pure frustration.

Being truly inspired is necessarily very rare: it is being woken during the night alarmed at the urgency of the new conception, or being struck dumb by a free and instant perception that will have suffered no parenting. Unlike Moses or Muhammad, it would preposterous to believe a life could be built ever waiting for those miraculous somethings to descend from the heavenly netherworld. As Picasso mused, 'Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.'

So there is a necessity to plough through the tedium of it, break up the long times staring at walls or out of windows, to forbid sitting idly with yet another cup of tea, to let it flow by dint of perspiration, to frog-march the entity towards some sort of reality.

And then there it is – formed, but not complete. The beret'd sculptor now sets to; chip, chip, chip... This is the dangerous bit. One too many hammer blows and a finger is gone, or an arm, or the whole thing collapses into a heap on intangible and intelligible minutiae that are best swept away.

From within is the raw power, from without is the stimulus; the craftsman puts both together using skills, experiences, intention and not a little luck. And, when it is finished? Ah, then it no longer belongs to him – the child is grown and gone without even a goodbye.

The Cloud Descends

• Well, here it is – a great agglomeration of nothing: staring into outer space, vacuous daydreaming, ill-mannered gawking. Of course, many associate it with a lack of imagination, or of being a lazy swine.

• Oh, were that the writer's/artist's/composer's mind always flowed with a fresh and vigorous cornucopia. Were that the pondering was ever productive. Were that the energy to complete rose spring sap-like upwards to the waiting fruit.

• Instead, useful thoughts take a break and wander off without so much as a by-your-leave. They leave behind an echoing skull through which not one atomised idea trundles down the track.

• On sunnier days thoughts tumble over each another with such alacrity that their catching is a near impossibility: beautiful butterflies scattered beside the motorway, drifting up and down with each current, to be netted before the inevitable splat on the windscreen of doom.

• But when the fog is about, there's nothing to do but not do.

• Discipline's friend may be a strong will, and fortitude steels the mettle, but if the cloud descends – so thick that sight cannot see even one foot ahead, let alone the knees – then tea, biscuits, a walk, a read and even a beer may still lead to nothing.

• But all clouds pass...

Inside the Mind of Gods

Seeing into the minds of other humans is impossible, isn't it? It's clear some of us have sufficient difficulty explaining the simplest of our imaginings, and the less communicative are hopelessly unable to bridge even the physical gap that separates each another, sometimes leading to arrest, serious charges and imprisonment – in my defence, your honour, I mistook the silence of the young lady listening to her iPod on the bus seat next to me as a clear invitation to remove all my clothes.

 

Well, that line may have worked for me time and again, but surely any attempt to understand the mind of another human and, more challenging, a non-human inhabitant of this planet is a fool's errand. How can we possibly know what's going on in the mind of Shep, Flossie, Beauty and Mortimer?

Thankfully, some of us appear to be are ahead of the game. The study of animal behaviour, that which is observable and interpreted in a natural setting, is called Ethology (let's not discuss lab-based behavioural science here at all). Animal A does X, then does Y – behaviours that, if repeated, may suggest a causal link between the two things. When humans observe animal behaviour they must attempt an interpretation based on previously observed and accepted norms. This is because Flossie is not very good at filling in elaborate questionnaires at debriefing sessions – sheep just can't do joined-up writing.

 

We've actually done this sort of ethological anaylsis for a long time, probably for about the same time we've been around observing animals, and have long-written up our findings for others to admire, such as at Altamira where pictoral forms of totemic animals clearly demonstrated an appreciation of animal spirits. Whilst our ancestors' conclusions may have been sometimes fanciful, we still perform this sort of behavioural analysis on our pets and on humans that are weak in language skills, such as babies, children, lawyers and politicians. This is justified pretty much because biological behavioural analysis is one of our only trusted methods. Whether it is always so accurate is a matter of much debate, results in a great deal of hot air and leads to the inevitable conclusion that the behaviour of the behavioural analysts analysing behavioural analysts analysing behavioural analysis should be analysed.

Quite why we should do all this ethology is fairly obvious – a correct observation and analysis of animal behaviour may by comparison shed light on our own. A great example is in the way animals react to death. Chimpanzees exhibit a peculiar behaviour over the death of one of their troop. That this behaviour constitutes a 'grieving' is a human interpretation that could help explain our behaviour when aunty Mabel keels over at the kitchen sink. Although we must be careful in analysis and in the direct comparison of any animal behaviour with our own, it may be more possible with chimpanzees than any other creatures because they are genetically closer to ourselves: perhaps less profitable conclusions might be drawn from a similar analysis of goldfish.

 

An ethological interpretation, however, isn't always applicable. We are unique creatures who do fairly bizarre things by animal standards. For example, we have inhabited nearly every ecological zone on the surface of the planet. It would have made more sense to stay on the warm African savannas, but we have sought out more and more divers environments and optimised the resources acquired in each. Humans, therefore, eat arctic seals as well as tropical spiders, and live in vast limestone caves as well as flimsy cardboard slums. In addition, our behaviour has been modified as much as our progress has been successful. We think it is normal rise and shine and shower in boxes, lock up our boxes and travel in boxes to then sit for hours in boxes communicating through boxes with others communicating through boxes, eat from boxes, defecate whilst sitting in little boxes, and finally doze off in our little boxes watching glowing little boxes.

 

We are also not content to be born, grow, eat, make other humans and then die. Our extraordinary creativity is perhaps our key attribute used in every aspect of our lives, and perhaps not all for the good. We are at the point where we are able to create our image in our own image, hitherto the role of ye gods. We fearlessly advance into this new realm of creativity like wide-eyed children on a magical mystery tour.

 

Is is possible then for homo 21st-centuriensis to properly understand each other's minds and even those of other creatures? Perhaps it is better to reverse the question. Have other creatures been able to fathom our behaviour? Obviously many of them have, and obviously many have given up in failure. Dogs have concluded that our smiling show of teeth is contrary to the usual threat gesture clearly demonstrated throughout the rest of the animal kingdom. They have also noticed that our good hunting skills are abundantly evident through the daily crunching of cornflakes and toasty bits, which must sound like the cracking of our victim's little bones. Cats, however, are infuriated with our utterly useless hunting skills and feel the need to prove the point by bringing home a headless bird, shrew or bat to show us how it's done – stupid humans!

What would a non-human intelligence from beyond make of our behaviours? Would they conclude that intelligence is clearly observable in our creativity, or shake their tentacles declaring that our minds are as inpenetrable as that of a long-toed sloth? Perhaps they've already done their ethological analysis and decided we just aren't worth the effort.