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Recent Posts

Month: January 2020

Your place on the curve

Your place on the curve

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Timing, as they say, is everything…
To be ahead of the curve, in that curious English phrase, is never good; early adopters of new technology (and new products in general) tend to pay a premium for their feeling of exclusivity, and may also be plagued by performance and reliability issues in their role as (unpaid) market testers.
But to be ahead of the curve in the arts is worse…
I recently purchased the DVD of Martin Scorsese’s King of Comedy, a film which, while praised by most contemporary critics, was ignored by the cinema-going public and lost money, to the extent that the director considered giving up making motion pictures altogether.
From the standpoint of 2020 (the film was originally released in 1982) it looks prescient in its forensic examination of the relationship between celebrity and its often deluded fanbase. The film also explores the notion that any schmuck can be ‘King for a day’ providing they are sufficiently opportunistic, amoral and ruthless, something which the rise of social media in the decades following the film’s release has served to reinforce.
Re-viewing after a gap of probably thirty years, I found the film an uncomfortable watch, as it was all too easy to identify with frustration felt by de Niro’s protagonist, and with the hostility he feels not only towards those who are successful, but also to the army of facilitators who (to his mind) work to keep the successful in place, mainly by frustrating the attempts of new talent to gain a foothold.
Without labouring the point, anyone who is trying to break into an insanely competitive creative arts field probably feels like this, which doesn’t make them (necessarily) a bad person. It’s the nature of the beast. We have two consolations; at least we didn’t stoop to morally-reprehensible actions to achieve success (or end up in gaol!), and we are unlikely ever to be on the receiving end of the attentions of the Rupert Pupkins of this world.
Returning to the original theme of this piece, two years ago I completed a novel called After the Flood, set in London, twenty five years into the future, in which rising sea levels and a perfect storm of unfavourable circumstances combine to inundate London.
Back then, this seemed like a good original idea for a book, but now it appears everyone is writing (and publishing) this novel. There’s even one set in Birmingham, however unlikely this would appear, geographically speaking…
The Author January 2020
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‘The Roaring Twenties’

‘The Roaring Twenties’

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It’s New Year’s Day and what’s that sound filling the air? Well, if you’re in the Antipodes it’s probably the roar of bushfires as they consume your neighbourhood. A former friend moved to Australia with her husband a while back, and lives in Sydney, I’m wondering how she regards that decision today. I’m also wondering how much longer the television series Wanted Down under will continue to be made (or even shown), and I’m thinking that this may turn out to be a post-Brexit windfall for Boris Johnson and the Brexiteers, with a steady stream of skilled expatriates returning from the Southern Hemisphere to take the jobs recently vacated by those EU citizens heading back across the Channel. My niece is already here, and her parents may not be too far behind.
As ever, I feel like I’m in some way inextricably-linked to unfolding events, as no sooner do I write about something than life starts to imitate art. In a passage from my current novel …when you wish upon a star, I write about an Australia being consumed by flames, with a scene set in a gridlocked traffic queue inching its way to hope-for safety, beset on all sides by fire. This has now become a reality for thousands of unfortunate Australians in New South Wales and Victoria.
Although it’s gratifying on one level to be part of the zeitgeist, it’s not something I expected to be happening this soon. It all adds to the feeling of apprehension as we contemplate the 2020’s, a feeling that it may already be too late and climate change has become inevitable. In …when you wish upon a star I write about a world consumed by fire and flood, but I set the worst consequences of this comfortably in the future. But it seems that the future is only too eager to start early, like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse trying to crash your New Year’s Eve party, and guess what? They’ve brought a couple of extra friends, Fire and Flood, along with them.
In short, the coming decade is not filling me with a great sense of anticipation. Many people (I imagine) will be too lost in their personal orgy of unnecessary and conspicuous consumption to notice, and it may take something really ‘significant’ happening (like the World Cup or the Olympics being cancelled) before it registers.
However we have (very nearly) the worst possible set of political leaders in place at this moment, whose ‘strategy’ would appear to be denial, closely followed by lies and excuses. One can only hope that a new generation emerges, before it is too late.
Happy New Year
The Author January 2020