It is fiercely hot. I won’t be heading out for a while. I also have a mead delivery on the way from Horns Of Odin. Hopefully it won’t boil in the van. Did I mention it’s FUCK OFF HOT?
I joined the BFI, because I’ve decided I should go to London and watch more films.
The mead has arrived!
STATUS: Tropical nights mean poor sleep even with a fan and a standing AC unit blasting. READING: THE KILLER’S MARK, MW Craven (UK) (US+)
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We stood outside on the street and watched the eclipse. We were the only ones out there. It was glorious. That moment when there’s a crescent sun. We talked about going to see eclipse totalities and finding dark towns to watch meteor showers from. Some of the best things we’ve ever done were free.
We made one half-arsed effort at photographing it. But were really more invested in just watching it.
Not free: sending her off at the weekend to buy two cases of wine from Flint Vineyard. After I ordered four bottles of mead from Horns Of Odin because they are having an event overstock sale. But fuck it, we have to live.
For the record, I have one or two glasses of wine a day and occasionally another drink in the evening. But I’ve been thinking I need to get into the habit of aperitifs and digestifs.
Figs for breakfast. I once read that Keith Waterhouse always started the day with a glass of champagne. He died quietly in his sleep at the age of 80, so it clearly didn’t do him any harm. I think about that a lot. The champagne, not the dying. Champagne at breakfast sounds life improving, which must surely be life extending.
OPERATIONS: TOO MUCH: roughing to the end of a script, I need to pull out some new ideas STATUS:
I only meant to have lunch and one glass, but the owner and I got talking, and then other customers started talking to me, and therefore I learned about Bremont Watches, and suddenly I’d been there nearly two hours. And was slightly pissed.
So I stopped off at the coffee shop for espresso and water on the way back, and a neighbour passed by and shook my hand, and we had a coffee together.
READING: finished MAIGRET AND MONSIEUR CHARLES, Georges Simenon (UK) (US+), and how lovely it was.
Also: disconnecting means returning to print.
INTELLIGENCE IS THE ART OF REMAINING FAITHFUL UNDER SHIFTING CIRCUMSTANCES, Alexander Kluge and Anselm Kiefer (UK) (US+)
Kluge’s final book.
LISTENING: OCEANINE DRINK: Amaretto with a few dashes of orange and cinnamon bitters. The bottle comes with a dropper in the cap!
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Spent last night reading a stack of issues of the TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT that had piled up over the last few months.
As I said in the newsletter the other week (Unphoning), I have been disconnecting from as much of the internet as I can. Yesterday I forgot to post here because I was hanging out chatting at the coffee shop and then had to bang out nine pages of work before cooking dinner because herself caught a bug at Bloodstock. Today I hope to see an eclipse.
My connected devices are off. Unmonitored. Most notifications off. Selectively informed. I was almost tempted to get a few daily newspapers, but that really wasn’t realistic. Today I saw an article in the WSJ about “datamaxxing,” people shoving the take from as many connected devices and inputs and possible into AI chatbots. There was a time where that would have made me curious.
I was at a gig a few weeks ago and partway through I realised I’d stopped listening because I was actually being left alone and there weren’t floods of parallel input and so my brain was just pouring out all the thoughts that had been dammed in by all the noise of my life. That was bad, and also fixable.
OPERATIONS: turning notes into scripts STATUS: maybe I should become an eclipse chaser READING: I wanted something simple and fun, so it’s MAIGRET AND MONSIEUR CHARLES, Georges Simenon (UK) (US+), the 75th and final Maigret book, which I’ve been saving for a few years. LISTENING:TIDE REQUIEM FOR THE LOW SEA, Zake
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Very quickly filling up a notebook with bad ideas. Which is the only way I know of to get at the better ideas.
Blew through my to-do list. Blasting through some script now. Ganzeer sent me an email the other day headed “Going Hard,” and that’s what’s happening until now and December.
Apparently smoking is cool again. Emily Sundberg has been reporting on US events over the last year or so where cigarettes have evidently been handed out as treats.
OPERATIONS: Amending the boards, just sent a pitch and checked on the status of an upcoming project, ideally I’ll have 8pp script down by EOD and then it’s into story development STATUS: I texted the deli and they ran out of meat so I am indoors sulking READING:PROTO, Laura Spinney (UK) (US+) LISTENING:BE HUMAN, Violeta Vicci & Bruno Bavota
I am resting my brain and conducting a managed retreat to the outside world. Except, of course, I’m not actually resting my brain, I’m trying to supercharge it in the right direction.
I briefly looked at Threads, out of pure curiosity after reading an article, and that application is deranged. Apparently it doesn’t matter who you follow or how many people you follow, the feed is entirely algorithmic, shifting constantly depending on what you read on it, and is therefore a nightmare stream of late-stage machine-curated entertainment for human victims.
OPERATIONS: clearing up the boards, rewriting an old pitch document, assembling the shape of everything I have to get done before the end of the year and putting a list of every artist who’s asked me to write something for them up on a new board. Also digging out the notebook for PROJECT ROANOKE, because it sounds like the artist will be ready to get back to it in six weeks. STATUS: Grey linen trousers, shirt and jacket, and a breathable shoe – I actually got summer right this year.
An hour at the coffee shop and I had the story title I was looking for.
I saw Teresa Hackel and Eiko Yamada play at the Fishermen’s Chapel last year. Turns out they recorded an entire album while they were there, FISHERMEN’S SOUVENIRS.
Adding up the numbers on the track listing, this could well be the actual performance I saw. I have had to order it from Japan, but what the hell.
My brain has been entirely empty and useless for the last ten days or so. Actually, it’s worse than that – I haven’t had a single good idea in two weeks and I keep losing things. Radical steps must be taken. Aside from messages and emails, I’ll be offline for the rest of the week.
Apple has reportedly considered… a version where the cameras can analyse the surroundings but cannot record photos or video. Such an approach could still support object recognition, navigation, Siri, calls, and music playback.
Hook that into Contacts and Calendar as well as Maps, say, and you finally have a use case for smart glasses that isn’t capturing for “content.” That is the actual assistant-with-eyes that people have been writing about for thirty-odd years. Which is why it probably won’t happen.
STATUS: heading out to a gig in London tonight. The weather can’t make up its mind as to whether it’s 28 and sunny or 21 and windy, so fuck knows what I’m going to wear READING:LOST LAMBS, Madeline Cash (UK) (US+)
Remedios Varo Uranga was one of the few acknowledged female surrealist painters of the first half of the 20th century. She defied the male dominated artistic world of that era through her unique and peculiar approach to Surrealism. The stepping stones for her original form of Surrealism were set early in her childhood and adolescence, fuelled by a multicultural background and upbringing.
morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.
Press the floating Subscribe button to have these notes sent to you.
Wearing a Victor Victoria shirt from the Nineties and a Swatch Metropolis from the Eighties and accepting that all this is “vintage,” not “last year.” Julbo don’t even make those shades anymore. DEPRESSING
ACCESSIONS:
While I was reading PHENOMENA by Annie Jacobsen (click this link and scroll halfway down for my initial notes), which is in large part about remote viewing used by the US military, I kept being reminded of this book I read when I was a kid. Written in 1973, FLIGHT FROM TIME ONE was about a cadre of military remote viewers sending their “astral bodies” out into the world, and I remember there was a bit about sliding into an alternate reality termed Algeria-A, or Time Two. So I hunted a copy down on eBay for a whole one pound plus postage. I’m going to be very curious to see how it reads to me, more than forty years later.
OPERATIONS: This week is a bit of a sprint – essay for a reprint collection, story solve, generate two new projects – but hardly the worst. STATUS: attention reclamation attempt once again READING:IF RUSSIA WINS, Carlo Masala (UK) (US+) LISTENING: SEA SWALLOWED WANDS DRINK: Boulevardier, amended – half-shot Campari, half-shot red vermouth, one shot whisky, dash of orange bitters. Victory.
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
I grew lilies. I have a whole new, and hopefully long-term, plan for the garden, and am looking at an autumn/winter of being outside with implements of destruction. The raspberries have been great, I have some blueberries coming, and it looks like I may get figs this year.
I decided I couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to go and see THE ODYSSEY. That last trailer removed any wish I had to go and spend three hours of my life in front of it without access to cigarettes and alcohol. I’m sure it’s the sort of film that can only be appreciated properly on a decent big screen, and whatever enjoyment I might get out of it eventually will be diluted by a small-screen viewing. But, frankly, not every Nolan film hits for me. Which is fine. Nobody’s oeuvre should be for everyone. And I’m in the odd position of being, evidently, one of the few people who enjoyed TENET.
It’s turned a little colder, after the blazing weeks – wearing a old John Varvatos cotton snap-front henley over a grey Carhartt chambray shirt. Timex Expedition Scout watch for a no-nonsense day.
I spent a chunk of yesterday looking at the new functions offered by my newsletter host, beehiiv. I really don’t need the majority of them – I’d rather die eaten by dogs than run an online community again. Their hosting podcasts is interesting, but the idea of doing one more thing as a one-man band is just exhausting.
STATUS: Putting myself back together after a goblin week. Apparently it is now impossible for me to remember to eat breakfast. READING:IF RUSSIA WINS, Carlo Masala (UK) (US+) LISTENING:SOUND HOARD, Laura Cannell
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
Are people really using AI to text friends and family? Is that something people would actually do? I said to a friend last night that when I go to the mainstream internet these days it makes me feel sane, ordinary and normal.
My previous digital copy of this was bootleg: a proper copy showed up in an Amazon sale, and I decided a legit and decently formatted version was worth the 99p.
OPERATIONS: finalising solicits text for a graphic novella, getting into a large client project, clearing space for a four day crash on the unfinished prose novella. Updating the boards today. STATUS: 45 minutes at the coffee shop with a notebook and a digital audio player that isn’t my phone, with a watch on so I don’t have to look at the phone to check the time.
READING:PHENOMENA: US GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATIONS INTO ESP AND PSYCHOKINESIS, Annie Jacobsen (UK) (US+) LISTENING:THE GODS LAUGH, Alison Cotton
DRINK: a Manhattan with two dashes of cold brew coffee liqueur instead of bitters. Excellent.
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
