Tag: reality

Writing about Writing (Again): A Slap of Reality in a World of Fiction

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On TV and in films, and even in many novels, writers are often – if not almost always – portrayed as high-profile media types, living the high-life, traversing here and there in sharp suits and fancy dresses, to interviews, readings, launches and high-profile media events. they’re inevitably best-sellers, and vaguely eccentric, and live in nice, even vaguely grand homes or apartments (if they’re American): they get stopped in the street (and, if you’re Castle, at crime scenes) by fans who simply love your books, live and breathe your characters and want to marry you., or at least have an affair.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that the literary circles I move in are toward the lower end of the industry. By which, of course, I actually mean they exist outside of ‘the industry’. They work regular jobs, have families and chisel out their works in stolen hours late at night and early in the morning. They do it out of compulsion, a need to purge and splurge, rather than for the money. It almost goes without saying I count myself amongst these. Writing isn’t some hobby or light-relief pastime.

The writers I know and associate with are, believe it or not, more representative of writers than the popular portrayals of writers. With a few notable exceptions – Stephen King, JK Rowling, for example – writers tend to be fairly anonymous. Unlike actors, writers don’t get their faces splashed over huge billboards. Writers aren’t usually the most photogenic of people, which is often why they’re writers and not actors. Do you know what E.L. James looks like? Dan Brown? John Grisham? Jodi Picoult? Donna Tartt? Toby Litt? And these are ‘bestseller’ list authors, not the majority of people who constitute the world of publishing in all its guises.

It’s ironic that actors get paid megabucks for playing out the scenes laid out in the pages of books penned by anonymous writers, and earn significantly more for doing so, given that without the writers, the actors would have no scenes to perform. it’s all about having a face and an image that sells. ‘Game of Thrones’ author George R.R. Martin didn’t get rich posting selfies and posing for Vogue.

Fiction is often escapist: it doesn’t have to be fantasy or sci-fi to take the reader beyond the confines of their hum-drum daily existence. And so it may be that even writers who earn royalties of pence and cents may portray high-living celebrity writers in their works. I have no gripe about that, per se, other than the observation that it flies very much in the face of the first principle of writing, which is ‘write what you know.’ This doesn’t mean fantasy and science fiction are out by any stretch, so much as that it pays to at least research scenarios that exist beyond your knowledge, because a savvy reader can spot a bluffer. Research plus imagination is, of course, another matter entirely and can be the very essence of creative genius.

As such, I resist the urge to yell at the TV when ‘celebrity’ writers are portrayed. Of course, my initial thought is ‘when do these people get to do any writing, given the time they spend travelling around to premieres and being famous?’, but the answer is obvious – namely, the rest of the time. Because unlike the writers I know, they don’t work the 9-5, and their maids and the like take care of the kids while they swan round in the name of ‘research’.

Recent research suggests that the prospects of a writing career are pretty dismal if you’re looking to get rich, even if you do achieve a degree of fame: Prospects.ac.uk report that ‘The median earnings for professional writers (those who dedicate more than 50% of their time to writing) was only £11,000 in 2013, and only 11.5% of professional writers earned their incomes solely from writing.’ The Guardian reports that ‘The typical median income of all writers was even less: £4,000 in 2013, compared to £5,012 in real terms in 2005, and £8,810 in 2000.’

This is nowhere near a luxurious salary. It’s not even minimum wage. It’s certainly well below the £16,850 figure the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says is needed to achieve a minimum standard of living. It means that writers don’t live in palatial mansion-type homes, resplendent with antique furniture (unless they’ve inherited it) or plush penthouse apartments. They may have heaps of books on their shelves (the majority likely either purchased second hand or sent to them for review or in trade) but the chances are most writers don’t rise around brunchtime and slip on a silk bathrobe before a serving of eggs Benedict and then chip out a page or so while sipping sherry or 50-year old single malt in their resplendent superbly plush leather-upholstered chair at a Louis XIV desk in the prime spot in a mahogany-panelled library. No, writing is work: hard work, even for ‘successful’ authors. And given that in the region of 99% of all books published sell fewer than 100 copies, what hope is there fore the rest of us to break through to the major league?

The rest of us – the writers who can’t even qualify as ‘professional writers’ and who are obliged to work for a living and write on the side, in their spare time… well, what about us? We may be by and large fringe producers of culture, but collectively account for much of the vital undercurrent that breaks new ground and ultimately inspires the commercial mainstream. We’re the lifeblood. We stay up late, typing with our eye bags instead of our well-manicured fingers, using stolen moments to render those ideas that poke and prod and gnaw at us during the ours of the 9-5 into words that will ultimately purge us of the torment of drudgery.

Some, perhaps maybe many, harbour ambitions of the palatial mansion-type homes or plush penthouse apartment with a capacious library suite and luxurious office. Maybe they’ve bought the fictional representation of the author, like the office temp I worked with once – a guy in his early twenties who was convinced he could pen a novel that would become lauded as a literary masterpiece, after which he would never have to work again. I didn’t delight in shattering his illusions, and equally, I don’t delight in the author’s plight, because it’s my plight as much as the next minor-league author’s. This isn’t about highlighting that plight, either. It’s not a grumble and grouse about how artists don’t reap the rewards they deserve, but a meditation on the vast disparity between the fact and the fiction. And what beggars belief is that the fiction, as presented in the media, of the wealthy, famous and esteemed author, is propagated by authors at all levels. After all, ‘big’ films, TV dramas, series and the like are as likely to be penned by breakthrough authors, who are accustomed to the real world rather than the privileged world of the top flight. Where do they get these ideas from?

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality. Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see… Originality is dead. Legend and myth isn’t the life of the author. You’re not Stephen King, you’re not Castle. This is not ‘Murder, She Wrote’. This is life. Now write it.

 

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Cramped, cluttered and anything but the image of a palatial literary person’s writing space…. the ‘office’ of part-time literary nonentity Christopher Nosnibor, today.

 

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Picture this…. and this… and this… and this…

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As someone who has a keen interest in visuals, I often feel frustrated by the limitations of my abilities as a photographer, and of my camera. As a music reviewer, I often like to take pictures of the bands I see, and while my images are often of a reasonable standard, I will confess to feeling somewhat embarrassed when standing in the front row with my £49 Fuji Finepix JZ100. The whole car / camera lens / penis extension analogy is entirely applicable, and the sneers at my diminutive kit aren’t purely paranoia.

Not everyone’s toting a £2,000 digital SLR with a telephoto they can rest between the monitors while lounging by the sound desk, of course. The vast majority of people snap away on their smartphones, which often pack cameras with insane specs. The Sony Xperia Z1 comes with a 27.1MP camera, and the Nokia Lumia 1020 not only has 41MP is advertised as a camera first and a smartphone second. And with a Xenon flash and Zeiss optics, we’re talking pro photography standard gear here. And again, these posers look down on my paltry 14MP cam with its mere 8x optical zoom and wonder why the fuck I’m not using flash. Granted, I do end up with more dark blurry shots than they do, but when I time a shot right, I do succeed in capturing the lighting as it is on stage, rather than a washed-out shot that illuminates the blank wall at the back of the stage. And I do think I have a reasonable eye for composition, something that the best camera in the world and all the Instagramming under the sun won’t give you.

But there’s something more than this that renders the current obsession with expensive, high-spec photography equipment utterly pointless, and that’s how we (that’s ‘we’ as in the techno-savvy mainstream populace) view pictures. There’s no question that we live in a visual age. As the Internet has evolved (back in the mid 90s content was essentially text-based) so the importance of visuals has come to the fore. We expect and demand good graphics, and lots of them – to the extent now that many gig reviews consist only of images, with no text whatsoever, and every fractional corner of our lives are documented in images. Millions of images. Over and over. A hundred pictures of every night out, several dozen snaps of ever day trip or walk in the park, every meal and drink meticulously recorded for posterity as evidence of the full and fulfilling lives everyone leads. People are obsessed with providing proof that their life is being not only lived to the full and jam-packed with fun and amazing experiences, but a reminder that they have the best device on which to capture all of these fantastic experiences in a quality that’s even more intensely real than reality itself.

Arguably, people are no longer really living ‘in the moment’ because they’re observing every moment through a display screen. Looking back at the images and video clips doesn’t recreate the moment, or facilitate a re-run of a pre-lived experience: it becomes the experience in itself, a second-hand version, a document that represents the moment never truly lived first-hand. Everyone’s a viewer, a recorder, a spectator. Where are the actual participants?

Above all, though, despite the fact screens on smart phones are larger than ever before and have higher resolution than at any time in the past, the fact remain that the bulk of images are posted to social networking sites or photo sharing sites, and viewed on smart phones or tablets. Real-life, shot in ultra-high-resolution, viewed on a screen 3” or 4” wide. What a waste.

 

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Fuck yeah! $32,000 well spent… check this awesome pic of my breakfast! That fried bread is so real-looking you could eat it off the screen!

 

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Overheard Dialogue: When the Context Isn’t All

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I’m not one for catchprases, by and large, although I suppose I do have a few, one of which is ‘the context is all’. I think it’s a handy line to wheel out when the occasion calls for it, even if I don’t necessarily agree with it. That I don’t always hold the opinions I express is something that some people seem to find problematic, but that’s a whole other issue. Anyway, one thing I really enjoy and collect avidly, is overheard dialogue. Some of it I’ve managed to use in my writing, although much of it I simply cannot imagine incorporating in a million years.

Perhaps perversely, it’s this unusability that appeals to me when it comes to overhearing fragments of other people’s conversation. Being fragmentary, the exchanges are received without any context, and often I’ll find myself wondering what possible context could ably and appropriately frame them. I find this game an amusing distraction when the mood takes.

Of course, sometimes, overheard snippets don’t need a context or are perfectly self-contained, and don’t require any kind of ponderance. They’re gems in themselves, and even if they can’t be used as material, they exemplify the absurdity of life. Take, for example, the two conversations I happened to overhear pieces of on Saturday night, on my way to and from the pub. It was a cold night, and snow had fallen heavily and was lying around four inches deep. A general quietness had descended as most had chosen to remain indoors, save for a crazy few – and myself.

The latter conversation was, by all accounts, grim, and pure Jeremy Kyle. A drunken not-quite couple of indeterminate age (somewhere between late thirties and early fiftes) were loudly parting company in the street. By which I mean they were involved in a lengthy slanging match. Both were equally vocal, with the woman informing the man that he was a ‘fucking scumbag’ and that she was going to report him for rape. ‘You’re gonna get ten years fer rape’, she told him – and half the neighbourhood, repeatedly.

‘You’re not worth a wank!’ he retorted. ‘And don’t try phoning me neither.’

‘’Ave you nicked my fuckin’ phone? You’re a fucking scumbag, a rapist and a thief!’ she hollered. By this point, a railway track divided the pair. Yet still they continued.

‘Aye, fuck off. So are you coming round later?’

Ok, so perhaps I might be able to use that at some point, and the context is more or less self-explanatory and doesn’t require a great deal of imagination. It is, after all, a pretty mundane scenario, sadly.

Conversely, the altogether briefer exchange I overheard on the way out was of an entirely different nature, and was a prime example of dialogue that one simply could not make up. In the driving snow, two voices came from behind me.

‘I’m freezing,’ moaned the female voice.

‘I’m not,’ replied the male voice bluntly.

As the pair of them cycled past, he more or less dressed for the weather, she without so much as a coat and the waistband of her CK undergarment riding high above her jeans, she called to him, ‘Yeah, but you’re wearing, like, three pairs of jackets!’

No wonder he wasn’t feeling the cold.

 

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A chav on a bike, before it snowed. He’s nice and warm. Must be all those tracksuit tops and the comfort of having a baseball bat tucked subtly inside his clothing.

 

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The Changing Face of Consumerism IX – Real, Real, Real

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Just as the nature of consumerism has changed dramatically during the course of the last decade – not to mention the last half-century – so the nature of industry has also metamorphasised. In so-called ‘developing’ countries (it’s a questionable term. Technological advances could be seen as development, but an exponential increase in fossil fuel consumption and an insatiable need for unsustainable resource is rather akin to ‘developing’ a 40-a-day smoking habit coupled with some heavy drinking), Industrialisation has caught on, dragging them into the global marketplace. By this, of course, it simply means that large corporations can circumvent domestic legislation in favour of giving workers rights and exploit an fiscally impoverished workforce even more ruthlessly. Driving costs down is good for business, as it increases profits, and the shareholders and the City love that.

As more manufacturing has been ‘outsourced’ to developing countries, the nature of employment in the ‘developed’ countries has moved toward tertiary service industries. Collar colours aside, the most fundamental difference between service and manufacturing industries is the tangibility or physicality of the product. The closest you’ll get to seeing or holding your insurance or shares, for example, is in the form of a certificate or other printed document. When you think about it, these objects which represent the thing in itself but are not in actuality the thing in itself – i.e. the signifier to the signified – you’re buying a concept more than an actual product. Of course, this is simply how money works: the ten-pound note in your wallet is not actual money, but a physical symbol of money. The balance in your bank, if you’re fortunate enough to be in the black, does not mean there’s really £500 that you own just sitting there. This is common knowledge, but it’s hard to separate the concept from the reality. You do not have any real money. No-one ever sees ‘the money’. Tom Cruise could yell till he’s blue in the face, he’s never going to be shown the actual money, just more printed paper that promises to pay the bearer a designated sum on demand. But try making that demand and all you’re likely to get another sign or representation.

We live in a virtual world. In his writing on ‘The Political Unconscious’, Frederic Jameson theorises that one feature of postmodernity is a reality that is infinitely deferred. This theory is now the reality as we exist in our virtual worlds projecting ersatz avatar versions of ourselves into the ether. It becomes impossible to distinguish the real from reflection, not only for others, but for ourselves. Do we become the identities we project, or do they become our real-life selves when the layers of the onion that is the multi-faceted personality are peeled back one by one?

On a personal level, my real-life self and virtual self are indeed separate but given to occasional and significant crossover. And so it is that we both like music and books with a passion, but struggle to get to grips with the modern trend for downloading. It’s ok: Deleuze and Guatarri convinced me I’m ok because a schizophrenic mindset is the only sane response to the postmodern, late-capitalist society I find myself in.

Stumbling around the house trying to avoid the partially organised and rather precarious stacks of CDs and books in the office and groaning each time I try to accommodate a new purchase onto the shelf or rack, I can completely understand why people would want to declutter, to reduce their lives. Yet try as I might, I find myself unable to separate the intangible – the music or the words – from the tangible, the physical – the record or CD or the book.

Nevertheless, I like my intangibles to present a physical form. The way I respond as a reader to words contained in the books I read is a complex process, which, while admittedly develop through conditioning and personal experience, is nevertheless intertwined with the act of reading. An audiobook may contain exactly the same words, but will not cause me to react in the same way. On a purely personal feel, the act of reading also entails the turning of the page, the look, feel and smell of the book. The quality of the paper, however poor, the print, the formatting, the cover, while peripheral, are all integral to varying degrees in combining to create the experience as a whole. Even the process of sourcing books is a part of the relationship I have with it: memories are made in the locating of a book in a little secondhand shop while on holiday just as much as they are of recalling where I was when I read the book, and how I was feeling at the time.

The same is true of music and many other objects – objects that now clutter my home, but collectively tell a version of the story of my life. This isn’t to suggest in any way that I am my possessions, or that my possessions own me and not vice versa. Nor would I really describe myself as a materialist in the conventional sense.

Perhaps it’s my age, but I want to feel as though I’m actually buying something when I part with my money. Yes, I know that in reality that it’s the production – the recording, the creative process – that is where the bulk of the cost actually lies. The physical object – the CD or the book – coat pence each to manufacture. A CD may cost in the region of 49 pence to produce, but paying the artist a wage of some descrption, that allows them to eat while they record the album, for which it’s necessary to hire (and pay for) a studio, engineer., etc., soon becomes a substantial expense, and one that must be recouped – usually before the artists gets paid, too. Then there are the designers, the PR people, and all the rest. So, the difference in production cost between a CD and an M3 version of an album comes down to the medium. However, this is only partly true: depending on the size of the manufacturing run, the cost of producing a CD is in fact negligible, and the same is true of a book. Yet as a consumer, I don’t really care about these matters: it feels like the difference is a yawning chasm that spans half the universe.

It’s not just the sound quality (I know the sound of Mp3 files has improved enormously in the last few years, but even if an MP3 isn’t compressed to fuck, it’s still inferior to the digital spectrum we were once sold as being the glory of the CD, which in turn lacked the vibrance and depth of vinyl. Forget clarity, that clinical crispness strips something from the recording that can’t be substituted or compensated, and the MP3 is the CD’s poor cousin, lacking the physical presence and lyric booklet in much the same way that a virtually turning page is not, however hard it might pretend to be, a fair substitute for an actual page.

I’m aware of the issues of storage, perhaps more than most. 1,500 or so LPs and 12” singles, 600 7” singles and in excess of 2,000 CDs are a real bastard to house in a two-bed terraced property, and to move when it comes to relocation. But at least I know where my money’s gone and what I need to insure. Picking up a storage device no bigger than an audiocassette knowing that it contains not only my entire music collection, but also music to the value of something in the region of £30,000 is almost inconceivable. The same is true of a virtual library. The fact that a fire tearing through the house would – or could – have the same effect regardless of my choice of ‘file’ type is really beside the point.

It’s curious to note how times have changed: time was when an extensive library of books and an expansive record collection were perceived as accomplishments. They inspired respect, even awe. Now, the owners of large volumes of material possessions are considered to be simply behind the times, information dinosaurs plodding a Luddite land of clutter that’s cumbersome and difficult to navigate. Why would anyone want a 10-volume encyclopaedia when mankind’s entire learnings can be obtained on-line via Wikipedia (or other sites if more specialist knowledge is required, but why would you want that, really, unless you’re a real nerd)? In fact, what’s the point of a space-hogging PC base unit and monitor when you can have everything you need on a tablet? A music collection and library that not only occupies considerable space, but cost a fortune and took a lifetime to accumulate seems entirely redundant beside a small, flat piece of digital kit that costs around £300 and can be transported anywhere. And I suppose if you’re happy or able to accept a life of precarity, instability, endless mobility, that’s fine, but it’s not for me.

In fact, for many, owning music seems superfluous when you can stream it all via Spotify. It frees up funds to purchasing other ephemeralities and experiences. Again, the idea of a life recorded on Facebook is one that doesn’t appeal to me. The public nature of the medium aside, I struggle with the concept of a reliance on something that may disappear at any time. If there’s one thing we’ve learned in our world of rapid development is that technology attains obsolescence at an evermore speedy rate. There was a time, believe it or not, when the 8-track, the cassette and the videotape were all cutting edge. Betamax, laserdisc and minidisc were all the future, yet despite the qualities these media offered, early adopters were left out of pocket and out of style, not to mention out of the technology loop. CD was supposed to supersede both vinyl and the audiocasette – yet strangely, the MP3 killed both CD and tape while vinyl hangs in there, with a whole new wave of audiophiles sustaining a market that previously didn’t exist. I digress: the point is that Facebook could be next year’s MySpace, and a life on line is only a transient representation of real life: it’s a history that can not only be easily misrepresented and misappropriated, but one that could even more easily be erased. Obviously, nothing’s forever, but the physical – especially if backed up, duplicated somehow – has a greater capacity to be futureproof than anything that relies purely on the intangible (but then I find the idea of playing a virtual guitar while playing at being in a virtual band equally abhorrent and not just a little strange Step away from the console, pick up a real instrument, learn to play and form a proper fucking band if you have any interest in Rock Stardom!).

I’m not doing technology down as such – at all, in fact – but can you imagine future generations, instead of looking through albums and biscuit tins of family photos and shoeboxes of postcards and correspondence, gluing themselves to a screen and reminiscing about the day that prompted that romantic email, the wonderful day out to the coast captured magnificently in 6 megapixel digital colour, or even the idea of returning to that book you so loved in college and forwarding your friend or child the Kindle download to read and share the wonder? In all of the streamlining, the decluttering, something has been lost. An on-line playlist is not a direct or equal substitute for a lovingly-compiled mix-tape with lovingly-written, hand-scribbled notes on a piece of paper torn from an exercise book and inserted, tightly-folded, into the plastic case. If, as Marshall McLuhan suggested, the medium is the message, what sort of message is a medium that’s so theoretical say about our times and its users?

The bottom line is that if I’m spending money on something, I want something to show for it. I’m not suggesting that it needs to be big to justify the expense, but in a world where so little is fixed, stable, reliable, there’s a lot to be said for keeping it real as a means of keeping it grounded, and as a way of keeping it accessible in the future.

 

Vinyl

 

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Liberator! Part 5

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Tim rose at 6:30am and was at his laptop, set up on the rarely-used dining table, working, by 6:45. Still in his dressing gown, with a strong coffee, he sat blearily in front of the screen. He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. His skin felt rough and dry, his eyes sensitive and watery. He was exhausted, and this was reflected in his sallow appearance. The text was beginning to drift before his eyes as he read it again and again. The text was beginning to drift before his eyes as he read it again and again.

It was after 11pm when he finally called it a night. He felt exhausted, yet his mind would not cease in its cogitations. Around midnight, after a large glass of wine, Tim retired to the bedroom and snuggled up beside his recumbent partner. He closed his eyes but behind his eyelids images flickered like a cut-up reel of cine film. He turned over and over as his mind turned his list of tasks for the next few days over and over. His heart rate began to increase, until it almost reached the point of fibrillation and sweat was running in rivers from every pore. It was no use. Tim simply could not sleep. Gingerly, he slipped from under the duvet and stealthily made his way back downstairs. Amy continued to sleep soundly.

Arriving in the living room, Tim did not turn on any lights and instead made his way silently to the window and stood behind the crack in the curtains. The street outside was dark and silent, yet unexpectedly bright, illuminated by the bright orange sodium haze of the street lights, one of which was in front of the house directly opposite. The curtains of the house were open, and there was a light in the upstairs window. He watched as a figure entered and exited the room. In shadow, he was unable to observe their features. It felt strange to be alone in darkness and at this time of night: Tim usually remained in bed, lying stock still so as not to disturb Amy, while him mind raced. Here and now, alone in the darkness and silence, with only the breathing of the house for company, his mind wandered. He projected himself outside into the long, anonymous, rectilinear street lined with almost identical red-brick terraced houses. He traversed the street like a ghost. His mind played in a flash a world in foment, in tumult, as rabid dogs and vigilantes prowled the alleyways. His heart raced with a heady blend of fear and excitement, the likes of which he hadn’t felt in years.

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Tim retreated into the darkness and brought himself back to the reality of the here and now, his interior world. Pouring himself a shot of rum, he spotted the rather dubious pamphlet he had pickled up the other day lying on the coffee table. He didn’t recall placing it there, but nevertheless, he switched on the standard lamp and read as he sipped at his drink and waited for its soporific effects to take hold.

A recent survey found that people working from home work the equivalent of an extra 20 days a year, which almost counters their holiday entitlement. The technology that has facilitated what would first appear to be the perfect working solution and the best way to obtain a more comfortable work/life balance is thus a double-edged sword. Small wonder people don’t all want to rush home and check their inbox.

Be honest: how many times have you been gripped by fear at the prospect of logging in and checking your email, because of the idea of dealing with hassling correspondence from the bank and a slew of messages from people you can’t face replying to is simply too much? Email and mobile communications technology was hailed as a great means of keeping people in touch with one another. But how many proper emails do you send or receive?

Tim shook his head. He hated to acknowledge the fact, but this tract resonated with him. The way he spent – and wasted – hours trying to keep in contact with old friends and former colleagues, even more peripheral family members. He had the niggling feeling that life was too short to expend time and energy on people who couldn’t be bothered, but then, all too often he failed to respond to messages and emails from his friends. He felt like a cunt for doing so, but what could he do? He was busy – busy chasing his tail as he raced like a hamster on a wheel on the treadmill of life.

Tim was exhausted, but read on, slowly. He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. His skin felt rough and dry, his eyes sensitive and watery. He was exhausted, and this was reflected in his sallow appearance.

To reclaim your life and liberate yourself from the tyranny of technology, and at the same time, take the following simple steps.

1: Do not log into Facebook for a week.

2: Stop sending emails, especially forwards and links.

3: Do not send any text messages.

4: Do not make any non-essential phone calls.

It seemed a bit extreme. On the other hand, Tim reflected for a moment just how much time he spent checking into Facebook and reading endless reams of status updates that were ultimately pointless. He didn’t need to know that Neil was tired after going to the gym, or how sick Jonathan had been after his brother’s stag night. More to the point, he simply didn’t have the time to become mired in the vapid empty existences of others. He had his own empty, vapid yet insufferably hectic life to live. What could he possibly learn from a pamphlet that he hadn’t already read and discarded from countless self-help manuals, forums and television programmes?

 

 

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…. And the Point Is…?

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I’ve never really been big on computer games. When I was a child, there weren’t any. Not really. I was seven then the first Spectrums came onto the market, and no-one I knew had one. Home computing was simply not mass-market in the way it is today. My sister, five years my junior, got a second-hand one, and while I spent the occasional half hour playing flight simulation games, I much referred, well, most other activities. Reading, drawing, making things. I even used to play sports, despite being hopelessly crap at all of them. I liked being outdoors, although preferred quiet, indoor solo pursuits. So why didn’t gaming appeal? I suppose I couldn’t really see the point. It didn’t feed my imagination like reading, wasn’t productive like art.

I did, much later, while at university, discover the joys of Mario Kart, and purchased a second-hand N64. The other games that came with it, I didn’t dig. FIFA Soccer was really difficult to play, and Goldeneye gave me motion sickness. It didn’t help that I’d keep dropping my weapons and spend half the game bitchslapping my assailants.

I did also waste many hours playing Jimmy White’s Whirlwind Snooker and a game called Ascendancy in the mid-late nineties, particularly during a fortnight-long bout of very heavy flu. I couldn’t leave the house, had no energy, there was nothing on television and so I sat, in my dressing gown, playing computer games.

When I began writing seriously, I found that all of my spare time – and even time that wasn’t spare – and all of my energy was occupied with the outpouring and arrangement and rearrangement of words. I soon forgot about playing games on the computer. I had a better use for it, and it was impossible to do the two things at once. Gaming very soon struck me as a terrible waste of time: there was nothing remotely constructive about it, and ultimately, it was not particularly rewarding.

Sitting at work the last few weeks – well I have to pay the bills somehow – I’ve been bored half to death by a couple of guys who sit nearby, talking endlessly about computer games. Well, specifically, console games. Having both rushed out to purchase the latest version of FIFA Soccer, they’ve begun arriving at work and recounting the games they’ve played in the minutest of details. The sliding tackles, the headers, the goals, the fine tuning alterations they’ve made to their players strength, weight and agility ratings, comparing notes and exchanging advice on how to improve their rankings.

I couldn’t care less about football to begin with. Actually, that’s not true: if there’s one thing I care less about than football, it’s fantasy football leagues, and if there’s one thing I care less about than either of those things, it’s virtual football.

More recently, the morning’s topic of conversation was different. The two mind-numbingly obsessive gamers sounded like they’d taken a night off gaming to look at cars. For three hours straight they discussed the different dealerships they’d seen and what cars, makes and models they were each stocking. From the sound of it, they’d even test-driven a few cars, detailing to nth degree the BHP of each vehicle, the handling, the brakes, the overall performance, and what upgrades might be done to improve aspects of the performance. Christ, it was tedious, but a made a change from the usual gaming bollocks. Their moronism remained unchallenged as one bragged about taking a corner at 70mph, while the other boasted of pulling off a risky move to overtake (or ‘take over,’ as he put it) another vehicle. Dangers to society they may be, but at least they’d left the house. Or so I had thought, until I eventually discovered that they had both left work the night before and headed straight to purchase the eagerly-anticipated new version of Gran Turismo, released that very day, and had proceeded to stay up until after 2am playing the game, trying out the different cars.

Picking my jaw off the floor, I began to wrestle with the levels of pathetic non-existence these guys are clearly scaling on a nightly basis. They’re actually reasonably popular, and have more friends than I do. Friends who stop by their desks, email, phone and text them… usually to discuss football and gaming, but still. By contrast, I go out several nights a week, either with company or without, to pubs, gigs, comedy and spoken word events. Meanwhile, they stay in six nights a week, are ‘too busy’ for social networking because it interferes with their gaming and football watching. I contribute in my own small way to the world with my reviews, my writing and so on. And yet it’s rare for people to stop by my desk, email, phone or text me to discuss music or literature or the state of the world. I’m not actually complaining, but, well, how can this be?

More saliently, how can these people – who seemingly represent the majority, and are thus considered to be fully functional participants in society – not realise that their behaviours are unfeasibly sad? Do they not miss real life? Or even the interaction that social networking and on-line chat facilities afford, which can often provide a fair substitute, while offering the means of connecting with like-minded individuals who may not reside locally, or even in the same country? Surely these are not only more useful, but more exciting applications of technology? Or could it be that virtual life, as represented by gaming, has evolved to replicate the reality so well that reality, with its inconveniences and unpredictable elements, seems like a rather poor second?

This seems to be a very real possibility. For a start, one of the gaming buffs actually drives. I mean properly, a real car. He goes places in it. He then drives the same vehicle while playing ‘GT’, and apparently, it’s amazing how realistic the handling is. His virtual car is just like the real thing! Ok, but to me, that sounds very much like going home from work to play a game where I do my day job, only without getting paid for it.

In recent months, the ad breaks on television have been taken over by plugs for the latest Wii games and controls, the X-Box Kinect (what’s with the ridiculous spelling?) and the ‘brain training’ games for the Nintendo DS. All very commendable: they’re actually helping the nation to get fit and for idiots to sharpen up and be slightly less retarded, and even helping the elderly fend off Alzheimer’s by keeping their minds occupied. Brilliant! But aren’t they simply providing so-called ‘solutions’ to problems they perpetuated in the first instance? Much like McDonald’s adding healthy options to the menu, it’s a win-win situation for them, and while such steps could be seen as a positive move made as a response to the enormous backlash, they’re certainly not doing it because they’re philanthropically motivated.

Putting to one side for now the suggestion that these innovations are nothing to do with the nation’s wellbeing and are instead merely new ways of making vast quantities of money by tapping into the zeitgeist and the widespread paranoia concerning our collective health, there remains one glaringly obvious question: why? As in, why the need for all of these things that replicate that which already exists? So, there are puzzles and crosswords and Sudoku and the like on the DS, are there? Ok, so why the need for a digital version? The originals were perfectly adequate and have been around for a long time. When did you last hear someone on a train or sitting at a bus-stop complaining that the battery had run out on their pack of cards, or that the screen on their word-search had broken while in their pocket?

The same arguments are equally applicable to the Kindle. ‘But it’s just like a book! You can turn the pages just like a real book! And no trees died to make a Kindle!’ the device’s advocates proclaim with glee. A book is also like a real book. You can turn the pages of a book just like a real book, too. Because it is a real book. And once manufactured, a book requires no power and is a lot easier to reuse and recycle than a Kindle. There will be ancient, leather-bound tomes in existence centuries after the Kindle has been extinguished and superseded, we can be sure of that.

Some will no doubt accuse me of churlishness, and argue that I should be pleased that there are now devices in so many households that encourage fat kids to do aerobics, to run, jump, dance and swim. Ok, but whatever happened to actually doing real aerobics, running, dancing, swimming? Football, cricket… Look, I hate to put a damper on things, but it’s all just another fad. Rubik’s Cubes were great brain-trainers and Space Hoppers made people bounce around, and outside, too. Ok, so it was safe to go outside back in the 80s, before paedophiles had been invented, but really, where’s the perspective here? How can virtual sports, sports simulations, be as good on any level as real sports? I’m speaking as someone who hates sports, and was rubbish at sport as a child. But I still got out there, and I still walk between places now. It’s free, and it’s a way of incorporating exercise into my daily routine. Believe me, it’s not difficult. It makes a lot more sense than driving to the takeaway for my tea, then coming home to play a virtual cooking game, followed by a game where I can pretend to drive the same car I just got out of round a digital replica of real streets, before finally moving on to a game where I walk on the spot, encouraged by a digital replica of a real-life personal trainer or celebrity.

What’s next, I wonder? I can just about see the point of The Sims, but lately it’s all become a bit too, well, realistic in its detail. Your characters have to interact and go shopping to remain happy and healthy, and you need to empty the bins and so on. And then of course there’s Second Life, where you live out an alternative life in the virtual world. How far will it go? Will people experience virtual (or real) depression when they are made virtually redundant from their virtual jobs that are so realistic you feel like you really could be in the office, shuffling papers and taking calls from complaining customers? Having been virtually sacked, you lose contact with all of your virtual friends, run out of virtual money, fall behind on the virtual rent and find yourself on the virtual streets… you’re so down you’re contemplating suicide and accidentally kill your real self because you’ve lost the ability to differentiate.

Real life may be grim at times, but replicating it is surely the most pointless of all things. Whatever happened to using one’s leisure time constructively, productively, or even  indulging in a spot of escapism? After all, escapism doesn’t have to be mindless, and surely even mindless escapism has to be better than mindless realism and living in a mind-draining facsimile of real life.

 

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