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My Favourite Books of 2014

I only read 60 books in 2014, compared with 95 in 2013 and, apparently, 166 in 2012. My favourites, in alphabetical order were:

Broken Summers / Henry Rollins I’m not a fan of Rollins’ music, so I’m not sure why I picked this up. I love the energy of his prose though, and it leaves me feeling inspired.

Explore Everything by Bradley Garrett While this is a fairly self-aggrandizing account of urban exploration, it’s absolutely fascinating and contains some amazing photos. The achievements of Garrett and his colleagues would sound preposterous were it not for the images.

Fluent in 3 months by Benny Lewis The men who taught me languages at school were vile and trash; and, despite doing well in exams, I’ve always thought that I could never speak foreign languages. This book suggests learning techniques and encourages the reader to quickly learn useful useful words and phrases. Since reading it, my confidence about trying to learn Hindi has increased significantly.

Jacques Derrida by Benoit Peeters Derrida worked hard to hide many of the details of his life so I wasn’t sure whether to read this biography or not. It turned out to be interesting, with the details of Derrida’s terminal illness being incredibly sad. “Always prefer life and never stop affirming survival.”

Layla by Nina de la Mer Layla is a second-person point-of-view novel about a lap-dancer trying to get enough money together so that she can go back to her young son. It’s a desperate, enthralling novel, currently 99p on Amazon.

Power Trip by Damian McBride I’m not sure how reliable the accounts of events in this book are, and McBride’s alcohol intake is terrifying. But this is a compelling account of the Brown government and has made me reconsider my opinion of it. It also includes some scurrilous stories. The sort of political book that I love.

Swenglish / Louise Halvarddson Discussed here.

Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society An amazing coffee table book on the exploits and adventures of the Cacophony Society. I first encountered the Cacophony Society via Chuck Palahniuk’s writing. Their legacy includes SantaCon and Burning Man, but some of their less well-known events are equally interesting. I occasionally find myself thinking I should say ‘Fuck it’ and use this book as a template.

U2 at the end of the world by Bill Flanagan I find Bono as loathsome as any other decent person does, but Zooropa-era U2 fascinate me. One of the biggest bands in the world, experimenting with their music and ripping off Jenny Holzer. A 500 page book on their early-nineties tours should not have been so fascinating.

Working effectively with Legacy code by Michael Feathers This book is very different to the others! Very few people talk about the realities of software development, which is dealing with other people’s code and making quick fixes. Feathers’ book lays out techniques for changing legacy code and has proved invaluable over the last year.

Swenglish

Back in October I visited my friend Louise in Sweden. While I was there, I read her book Swenglish (which I was supposed to have read before the trip, but many things had got in the way).

The idea for Swenglish was an interesting one. Lou was coming up to her 30th birthday. She’d achieved her ambitions and wasn’t sure what to do next. She had to either change things by moving back to Sweden, or commit to being English. She came up with a novel way to investigate the two options.

Lou wrote to 120 people, some English and some Swedish. The time she’d been away from Sweden meant that many of the Swedish ones were older friends spread about the country. The English friends were centred on Brighton, including a lot of mutual acquaintances. She then chose fifteen English people and fifteen Swedish, spending a week shadowing each of them and writing about the experience.

(I was one of the people approached initially but didn’t make the final list. Louise was worried that I would be too interested in asking questions about the underlying project. She was probably better off not including me, as I’d already started preparing a serious of bizarre incidents to occur while she was shadowing me)

As a portrait of two countries the book is interesting enough. The Swedish find the English habit of carpeting toilets to be disgusting. And, despite Sweden having colder temperatures, Sweden is warmer than England, since our houses tend to be draughty and badly insulated. However, the thing I like most was the way the book sketched its characters.

Back when I was in Umi Sinha‘s classes, she told us an important rule for critiquing people’s work. Even if a piece is written in the first person, you shouldn’t talk about the actions “you” did, maintaining a separation between the narrator and the author. In a book like this, where the characters are so tied to real people there is a similar separation. The ‘characters’ are Lou’s view of people, distorted by what she brought to the experience and what she was looking for. At least one was unhappy with their portrayal but I felt that the portraits were positive and well-intentioned. I can’t speak for how these people should or did feel, but I felt a compassion towards each of Louise’s portrayals.

For me, the book was one about choice. Several portraits focussed on decisions that the subjects had made. Others had not made a choice, seeming to endure. Reading about thirty lives in quick succession made me think about my own choices, both those I was making and the ones I was ignoring. Interestingly, few people regretted their decisions, even when they involved a massive change.

A good book produces some sort of change in the reader. After reading Swenglish I’ve taken time to think about the choices in my life (including seriously considering moving to Sweden in the next year). Louise is planning to self-publish this in early 2015, with a launch in Brighton, and I’m looking forward to more people getting a chance to read it.

Season-notes 2: What I did in the Autumn

Three months ago I wrote a set of season notes, and it’s time for another. Three months seems a good period of time to stop and reflect on. Some things change, some things don’t, but you can see the patterns.

At the end of September I was worn out by work and organising events. I have now cut down on my commitments, which turned out to be a good move. I took the Facebook and twitter apps off my phone, and I’ve missed them less than I’ve enjoyed the feeling of additional space. I’ve also stopped keeping to-do lists, and my life didn’t collapse. I still find myself falling back into the habit, but I’m now more comfortable with letting my inbox fill up.

Lots of things that happened: Apple Day was a glorious end to the summer. I gave a talk, ‘The Internet is Haunted’ at the Phoenix Gallery and Eastbourne’s Towner. I saw the Nordic giants and watched the Manic Street Preachers play The Holy Bible – a cathartic experience. The MechaPoet performed with the Lovely Brothers then, as Chris writes, “was nearly washed away in the thunderstorm but we managed to dry her out in front of the radiator”. I went to a talk by John Lydon, attended MuCon (1, 2) and the LJC OpenConf; rounded off the 2014 season of Brighton Java; went on a trip to Sweden and visited Canterbury and Margate. One of my stories was discussed in a university English lecture. I watched 20,000 days on Earth and The Punk Singer, both of which were very inspiring. I was published in the Guardian blogs, with a piece co-written by Sophie Turton (I’ve not dared look at the link myself yet because comments). And I bonded with my family over Christmas food poisoning.

Work continued to be a drag and I drafted a resignation letter after returning from Sweden. But a couple of friends advised me to hold out, and that turned out to be a good decision. I still think the work I’m doing do is important and worthwhile and it’s a shame when distractions get in the way. Things have improved, and I’ve learned a valuable lesson in patience and forbearance. I’m currently working away at some personal goals and, once those are done, I will think about what I want to do.

One of those goals is to send out some of my creative work. I’m still not interested in being ‘a writer’; but dealing with rejection is a skill I’ve never developed. I finished a book, Everybody Hates a Tourist, back in October, and I’m going to send that out to a few places. Another goal is losing the weight I’ve put on since starting at Crunch. I’m still not able to run, so fixing my hip will be a good place to start with this.

Last time I said I wanted to get more from the books I’m reading. I’ve made some improvement on this. I read 15 books, my favourites being Head On by Julian Cope, and Black Summer, a collection of Henry Rollins’ journals (interesting that the films and books I enjoyed most were about musicians). I also loved Louise‘s book Swenglish, which I will post about tomorrow. I’m trying to read more consciously, to ask why I’m spending time on a particular book. To quote Warren Ellis, “If we’re not doing something with the information we’re taking in, then we’re just pigs at the media trough.”

The best nightmare I had featured me as the only survivor of a plane crash where there were no bodies in the wreckage. The dream plagiarised James Herbert’s The Survivor when the twist was that I was dead too. The best dream featured someone opening a window at work and the office being flooded by crows. What can that mean?

I’ve been in Brighton for twenty years now, and I sometimes worry that I’ve settled into too many habits. But things do seem to be shifting and there’s a lot to look forward to in 2015. I have a visa for India. Slash/Night is being repeated, this time under the auspices of Mathilda Gregory; I’m also doing some sort of technical/programming thing for her performance How to be Fat. And I’m reviving Not for the Faint-Hearted, my anti-creative writing sessions. Should be fun.

New technical weblog

I’ve started writing a new weblog at jamesburt.me.uk. This is where I’ll be writing about technical subjects: Java, Microservices, open streetmap etc. This blog will continue with the usual mix of what I’ve been up to and general strangeness.

A weekend away

I spent the weekend with my friends Katharine, Rob and Caroline in Canterbury. We booked an Airbnb place, which worked out pretty well. We had our own space rather than rooms in some grubby guest house. Canterbury is full of medieval charm and noisy drunks. The Canterbury Tales Experience was actually pretty good and the cathedral was impressive.

Katharine and I ate Saturday breakfast in Herne Bay, which was beautiful – I want to go back there in Summer. We also visited Margate on Sunday to see the Shell Grotto and the Turner Gallery. I was pretty excited to learn there was a Jeremy Deller show on at the Turner, English Magic. That was an impressive way to end the holiday.

IMG_20141212_151719 (copy) — This incredible origami artwork was by Esther Dreher

IMG_20141214_113508 (copy) — This panel from the Shell Grotto is said to be an image of Ganesh

IMG_20141214_121525 (copy) — Signs to the Jeremy Deller exhibition

20,000 days on earth

A month or two back, I saw the Nick Cave documentary, 20,000 Days on Earth. I’m a huge fan of Cave’s music, but I wasn’t really interested in him as portrayed by the film. But it was a great movie, reminding me of My Winnipeg, Guy Maddin’s ‘docu-fantasia’ about the Canadian city.

The film is particularly strange to watch as a Brighton resident. Having Nick Cave move to the city and seeing him about still seems weird – particularly when he’s doing things that seem out-of-character with his artistic persona. The editing of the film makes for some odd geography too. Cave spends much of the film as a sort-of mystic taxi driver, giving lifts to other celebrities. He’ll do things like drive West from the old pier and arrive at the Marina. Zenbullets had similar problems: “Watched (and loved) the Nick Cave film last night. Although as a Brightonian I was distracted wondering where he parks around Brunswick.”

(Back in 2004, The Argus had an article on “Rock king Cave” supporting plans to turn the West Pier into a jungle. His friend Doug Leitch was quoted as saying “Nick has this thing about wisteria but I don’t know if it would grow.” Cave was apparently concerned about any pier redevelopment opening the way for developers: “I watched my home town of Melbourne, which was designed on the Brighton model, destroyed in a few years“. It looks as if we will indeed be seeing a redeveloped, commercialised West Pier cultural quarter)

Much of the film is invention. The office Cave uses is, apparently, a set; the heavily-staffed archives of Cave’s life are a means of interviewing without a tedious question/answer format. The film’s makers said in interview that the movie was a fiction that aimed to produce deeper truths. At one point,Cave says about his songs, “It’s a world I’m creating… one where god actually exists,” and the film creates an interesting world around Brighton.

(The sort of imaginary worlds Nick Cave talks about are called paracosms, and there’s a lovely article on them in the NYT: “It’s a paradox that the artists who have the widest global purchase are also the ones who have created the most local and distinctive story landscapes“. One of Cave’s most peculiar works is Bunny Munro, a story set around the outskirts of Brighton. I never expected a character of his to utter the words “Is Newhaven a nice place, Dad?“)

Asked about why he is in Brighton, Cave replies that he used to visit from London. “It was always cold and it was always raining [but] you’ve got to drop anchor somewhere“. Nick Cave has an obsessive love of weather. As an Australian, he found himself upset by the “relentless miserable weather that England has”. Keeping weather diaries was a way of taking control of this, since bad weather is better to write about.

“The sky in Brighton is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Living by the sea and looking out of my windows, I feel like am part of the weather itself. Sometimes the sky is so blue and the reflection of the sea so dazzling you can’t even look at it; and other times great black thunderheads roll across the ocean… Funnily enough the more I write about the weather the worse it seems to get and the more interesting it becomes and the more it moulds itself to the narrative I have set for it. You know I can control the weather with my moods. I just can’t control my moods.“

(It was also funny to hear that Cave uses a similar writing technique to me: “Then you send in a clown on a tricycle. If that doesn’t do it, you shoot the clown“)

The Internet is Haunted

On Friday night I gave a talk at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne as part of their Ghost Worlds event. The night was inspired by both Mexican Day of the Dead and Halloween, featuring performance, music, crafts and a spoken word area.

The original talk, was part of a digital festival event and leant heavily on Ian Vincent’s research on Slenderman. This version was longer, and had more emphasis on Slenderman as a meme, and the way in which memes could be dangerous. I looked at examples of images and art that have harmed people, including fictional examples like Basilisks and The King in Yellow; and real ones like Slenderman and Gloomy Sunday. Or, possibly, the dangers of researching Statistical Mechanics:

400-Screenshot from 2014-11-17 08:10:56 — Click to see larger version

The best real-life example that I learned about was the McCullough Effect – which I find too disturbing to try for myself.

I enjoyed being in a gallery after hours as well as catching up with some old friends; Tara Gould read a creepy ghost story, which ended just as you realised what awful things were about to happen; and Umi Sinha did a great telling of WW Jacob’s The Monkey’s Paw.

I enjoyed giving the talk and wish I had more opportunity to do things like this, but I’m not sure where the audience is for such things. I could certainly have talked for much longer about the subject.

The Internet Will Destroy Us

This Friday (28th November) I will be giving a talk at Eastbourne’s Towner Gallery, as part of the Ghost Worlds event. “A nod to Dia de los Muertos and Halloween“, this includes a dance performance, salsa taster class, Latin DJ, bar, exhibitions and crafts. I will be part of the ghost stories section, speaking in a candlelit room about ghosts on the Internet.

This is an expanded version of a talk I gave back in September, at the Flash-fiction cinema event. The research for that talk gave me terrible nightmares and the research for the new version is much darker. Last night I dreamed I was the only person found alive in a crashed plane which weirdly contained no dead bodies; but it later turned out I’d died anyway. So, cheery stuff.

Tickets are £4-6. I really looking forward to this talk, mainly because once it’s done, I’m never again researching anything this disturbing.

What is digital photography for?

1 – On my hard disk there are about 17,500 digital photos taken over the last 15 years or so. That’s a lot of photographs.

2 – Would my life be any worse if I didn’t have these thousands of photographs?

3 – The eleven photographs that illustrate this are randomly taken from the directories on my hard-drive. Would my life be any worse if I deleted eleven random photos from that directory? Is my life improved by re-surfacing these images?

4 – I take photographs of things that catch my eye; as souvenirs of moments. But I go back to very few of the photographs I take.

5 – The closing chapters of Benoit Peeter’s biography of Jacques Derrida are incredibly sad. After a lifetime wrestling with his mortality, Derrida discovers that he has pancreatic cancer. “He’d open a folder, take out a letter, and tell me a bit about its context. He had long dreamed of rereading all his letters; he realized that he would now never do so…”

6 – The Roman philosopher and Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote: Mislead yourself no longer; you will never read these notebooks again now, nor the annals of bygone Romans and Greeks, nor that choice selection of writings you have put by for your old age. Press on then to the finish: cast away vain hopes…” Marcus Aurelius died in 180 CE.

7 – The irony of the quote from Marcus Aurelius is that his notebooks are one of the most precious pieces of literature our civilisation has produced. But I don’t think my photographs would mean much to anyone else. And I’m not sure how important they really are to me. Are they even worth the effort of maintaining backups?

8 – The photographs I like best are the sequences that tell stories. I’ve relived trips with companions, the photographs reminding us of stories, meals, the feeling of being lost. But they don’t mean much without us there to give them context.

9 – I do wish I had more photos of myself when younger. But that comparison between selves is of no importance to anyone else. But I keep these photographs in case I someday find a use for them, or a need for them.

10 – I worry about what will happen when I die. Will someone go through all that data I have kept just in case? Will they feel an obligation from it? My laptop and backups should probably be wiped once I’m gone. I’d hate for anyone to look at these photos and wonder why I took them, to wonder what they meant.

(if you hover over the images there should be some text explaining a little about them)

Twenty years ago today…

It’s exactly 20 years since I moved to Brighton. I’d grown up nearby and the idea of attending university here was irresistible. As it turned out, uni wasn’t much fun but, on the whole, this town has been good to me.

Brighton has changed a lot over twenty years. Most of the bookshops have gone, the pubs have smartened up, and the cost of living has soared (not buying a flat back in 1999 doesn’t look all that smart now). But it’s still home, and I can’t imagine being anywhere else.

I suspect the younger me would be disappointed with how I’ve turned out. But that’s all right: younger me had unrealistic expectations and very little experience of the real world. Personally I’m very happy with my life right now – and looking forward to another twenty years in Brighton.