You have my whole heart…

Cormac McCarthy’s awesome 2006 novel The Road is my favourite novel. I relish the day that I might read something more powerful, moving or memorable, but I can’t see that happening any day soon. A film is due out soon, directed by John  Hillcoat (who made The Proposition, a great pedigree for tackling this) and starring Viggo Mortensen. I have high hopes for it but, again, I struggle to see how it might create the same devastating impact as McCarthy’s words.

A tag cloud for reviews of this book would centre on things like bleak, harrowing,terrible, haunting. But they’d also include intimate, beautiful, poetic, humanity.

In a post-apocalyptic landscape, an unnamed father and son travel towards the coast, fleeing the onset of winter. They move on foot, pushing a cart, scavenging empty houses and destroyed towns, desparately eluding gangs reduced to cannibalism. Everywhere is burnt and grey, marked with ash. In fact, the world has become like a sensory deprivation tank. Monochromatic landscapes are flattened and matt. Silence reigns, indeed any new noises represent a threat. Other people represent a threat. There are few smells, there is no sun, no weather to speak of, except an unremitting, damp cold.

He tried to think of something but he could not. He’d had this feeling before, beyond the numbness of dull despair. The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colours. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true.

Within this the plot is relatively thin, but McCarthy maintains pace by keeping each scene barely more than a paragraph long. His dialogue says more in a few words than other writers manage in a whole chapter. The relationship between father and son is both tender and heartbreaking. The boy serves as his conscience, a feeble shaft of light in all the ash and blackness. The father likewise preserves something in the boy - his humanity, his capacity to love.

SPOILER ALERT… if you haven’t read the novel yet, and are thinking about doing so, you should probably stop now.

McCarthy’s spare, mesmerising prose forces you onwards, clinging to the possibility that the coast may offer some kind of relief. But there is none.

Out there was the grey beach with the slow combers roliing dull and leaden and the distan sound of it. Like the desolation  of some alien sea breaking on the shores of a world unheard of. Out on the flats lay a tanker half careened. Beyond that the ocean vast and cold and shifting heavily like a slowly heaving vat of slag and the the gray squall line of ash. He looked at the boy. He could see the disappointment in his face. I’m sorry it’s not blue, he said. That’s okay, said the boy.

The final pages are both terrible and beautiful. The simplicity of the language strikes all the more immediately into the reader’s heart and soul.

I cant. I cant hold my son dead in my arms. I thought I could but I cant.

You said you wouldnt leave me.

I know. I’m sorry. You have my whole heart. You always did. You’re the best guy. You always were. If I’m not here you can still talk to me. You can talk to me and I’ll talk to you.You’ll see.

I dare anyone with children to read The Road without running to them and holding them close. I dare anyone to read it without a worry for the world they inherit. To my mind it’s a brutal warning of how much good there is in this world, how much we have to lose, and how far we may fall (and how fast) in its absence.

If you like what I reckon, please share it…

Read Full Post »

Take a step outside…

It’s barely 8.30am, and the rain is lashing down, again; stair-rods spearing out of a leaden sky. Twelve of us are squeezed into a minibus, already steaming through waterproof jackets & trousers, boots not quite dry despite the drying room’s best efforts.

Soon we will arrive at Tarn Hows, the astonishingly lovely yet largely man-made lake above Hawkshead. Hopefully the rain will have stopped, or we’ll get even wetter. And we will load up with tools and enter the woods that cascade down from Tarn Hows towards Coniston Water, all part of the Monk Coniston estate, managed by the National Trust. We are a volunteering party. We have chosen to be here, we have paid for the privilege of being here. And despite the best efforts of The Weather in July in The Lakes, we’re having a terrific time. We spend the week removing old unwanted fences, rolling up yards and yards of chicken wire, seeding new grass and protecting paths that shouldn’t be paths, hacking back and removing Rhodedendrons from the native woodland, laying new gravel paths in the Monk Coniston gardens, planting trees and constructing protection for them.

We age from 18 to (ahem) over 60. Some of us (like me) are novices, some are completing their Duke of Edinburgh Awards, others are seasoned ‘professional volunteers’, with tales from Lundy and North Wales, from The Peak District or Dorset. We muck in to cook and clean, we sleep in rudimentary dorms, we take turns to shower.

And mercifully, on our day off mid-week the weather clears. A group of us march up The Langdale Valley, climbing the Pike o’Blisco and across the Crinkle Crags. It is a glorious experience, and one I will not forget. In the evening we get fish and chips and a couple of beers.

Thanks to Adrian Porch from eee.bham.ac.uk for this image

That was 2008, and this Spring I revisited The Lakes, where in the woods around Tarn Hows I noted the absence of several fences and rhodedendrons. I admired the completed gravel path and was slightly underwhelmed at how patchily the grass seeds had taken. And I sat once more on top of the mound above Tarn Hows, drinking in the 360° views down the lake, South towards The Old Man of Coniston, and across to the Langdale Pikes.

I’ve done a few days volunteering at Westonbirt Arboretum since then, and want to do more. It’s a good feeling to be doing something active, physical and practical, in the outdoors. I’ll wager that hardly anyone notices paths are no longer crowded or overhung by hazel saplings. But however seemingly unimportant, it does make a difference.

Read Full Post »

The Show Goes On…

Queen were brilliant – at one time the best and biggest band in the world. On the other hand, there are plenty of reasons to scoff at Queen. The NME infamously ran a scathing interview with Freddie Mercury in 1977 at the height of punk, exclaiming “Is this man a prat?” And for all the spite in the article, they had a point.

• The utter lack of fashion sense among at least three out of the four band members, and then there was whatever Freddie Mercury decided to wear.
• Pompous pseudo-Jimmy Page riffs and bizarre operatic vocal harmonies.
• Bonkers lyrics – “She’s a Killer Queen, Gunpowder, Gelatine, Dynamite with a laser beam” … what was she going to do, blow me up with some jelly?

I was introduced to Queen when I was 7 by my Dad, who bought A Night at The Opera around the time Bohemian Rhapsody went to No.1 for about 4 months. It was an oddly decorated gatefold sleeve with ornate script and even more ornate lyrics.

It’s the perfect Queen album, covering all their bases from hard rock (that riff, Sweet Lady), gorgeous love songs (Love of my Life, You’re My Best Friend), quirky genre-busters (Seaside Rendezvous, Good Company) and cod-opera (The Prophet’s Song, Bohemian Rhapsody, Death on Two Legs), I was hooked by the musicality, the skill and vision, the sheer unapologetic energy of it all. And in the end, I wasn’t the only one.

Noone sings like Freddie Mercury. The only half-decent attempt at a Queen song was George Michael’s performance at the FM Tribute concert, and that was a straight-up imitation with the orginal band and a choir of backing singers.  Queen created a unique sound that was based around Brian May’s homemade guitar and Mercury’s flamboyant style. Oh, and they were bloody good musicians.

Their live shows were amazing. The Live Killers album from their pomp at the end of the 1970s is still my favourite live album by any band. They paved the way for countless stadium bands to follow their lead, and their 20 minutes at Live Aid still lives long in the memory. They played to 150,000 in Hyde Park in 1976, and for 10 years commanded the largest concert audiences all over the world.

And all over the world, noone could lead an audience like Freddie Mercury.

Read Full Post »

I’ve come to look for America…

I seem to go on a bit about people connecting with people. Understanding each other better by simply taking time to listen, observe, learn. It was the theme of my first post, about being stuck on a motorway, and it was also the theme from earlier this week, about my concerns for real communities under the indirect onslaught of virtual worlds…

Anyway, this morning I was reminded why I think ‘connecting’ with others is important, and ultimately rewarding. “This American Life” is a terrific show on the fantastic WBEZ Public Radio in Chicago (which incidentally is also home to many BBC Radio programmes and the most excellent cinematic marvel that is Filmspotting). I listen to the podcast, as each week they take a theme and explore different stories about This American Life.

The latest episode is “Rest Stop”, in which their team of reporters hang out at the Plattekill Rest Stop in New York State for a weekend in August. Apparently it’s in the middle of nowhere, but you wouldn’t know it. This really resonated with me, reminding me of conversations we had on the M6 on our way to Pilling.

As with every show, the team talk to people, listening to their stories. And, er, that’s it. No agenda, no moralising, no platform. Just wonderful, compelling human stories, that celebrate the diversity and importance of all aspects of our society.

This American Life – Episode 388 / 4th September 2009 – Rest Stop

I can’t recommend This American Life highly enough.

Read Full Post »

It’s a town full of losers, and I’m pulling out of here to win…

Earlier this year Rachel and The Boreas Wind Quintet played at a concert in the small Lancashire town of Pilling. We stayed in a farmhouse B&B on the outskirts of the town, run by a wonderfully down-to-earth, nothing-is-too-much-trouble lady called Beryl. We were late arriving, having been delayed on the motorway, but Beryl immediately provided copious quantities of tea and cake, and then after the concert a vast platter of late-night cheese and crackers. Wonderful, unpretentious, spontaneous unconditional hospitality.

Pilling and the surrounding countryside is pancake flat, so that church spires are visible for miles, it reminded me of The Low Countries. When we were chatting with Beryl about the area and that Pilling seemed like a lovely and lively community, she commented that

We’ve got the river on one side, the sea on t’other, and the moors on t’other, so it used to be that people didn’t go too far…

Local communities are more fragile than ever. Greater access to information and the world beyond our immediate neighbourhoods, plus the mobility to explore and experience that world means that more and more people aspire elsewhere from the town in which they grow up.

To some extent virtual communities are creating new alternatives to The Old Ways, connecting people and opening up communication and opportunity. These shared interest groups bring individuals together across geographical and social divides, and can be the source of terrific forces for positive change and personal fulfilment.

However, I can’t and don’t want to see them as a replacement for real communities. For me a real community has bigger stakes than those beyond the chatroom thread or online poker hand. There are shared vested interests, a common sense of purpose, of being and a shared trust borne out of  personal contact. There are all sorts of communal benefits beyond the immediate self-interests of each member.

In 1987 Margaret Thatcher declared on Woman’s Hour that ‘There is no such thing as society.’ In the context of her interview, she meant that it should be the responsibility of each individual to look after themselves, rather than expect the Government to provide. Now while I’ve got some pretty fundamental concerns with that in itself, my bigger lament is that this soundbite has become the permission for individualistic isolation and blinkered self-interest through every level of the Western capitalist world.

There is such a thing as society. It’s really really important. It’s the feeling that other people near you would look out for you in a crisis, that (like you) they want to live in a safe, happy community with things like pubs and markets and churches and schools and sports teams and so on.

I’m not saying that online communities are selfish or trivial or irrelevant – far from it. But in our headlong rush towards virtual worlds and networks, I fear we are neglecting the rewards and depths of personal real-world contact.

Read Full Post »

Pieces of me you’ve never seen…

Alan Mitchell has written a nice piece on his Brand Republic blog about the myth of the Single Customer View. Or rather, that companies and especially their CRM teams like to believe their Single Customer View is sufficient, when in fact it’s usually myopic, narrow and lacking in any nuance or insight. It focuses on the company rather than the customer, and simply pretends that what it doesn’t know isn’t important. It uses militaristic, controlling language (acquire, recruit, lock in, own). Companies do this because it’s easier, because the world is really complicated and trying to deal with that is, you know, hard. And because they can. Because we let them.

Two examples of the inadequacies of the Single Customer View…

First, when I worked in Financial Services I loved the wealth of customer data we had. Across everything you can possibly spend money on, we knew about you. If we wanted to, we could see how far in advance you booked your holidays, how you pay for groceries, what sort of restaurants you like, how you shop on- and offline. But we never did that. Instead we focused  primarily on the very narrow approach of how you managed your account: did you pay in full, how often did you pay late…

This is easy, short-termist, and ultimately of hardly any interest to the customer. As such, it doesn’t do much for ‘loyalty’ or long-term value and relationships.

Second, I love films. I review them often on my Facebook page, around 10 each month. I also rent DVDs from LOVEFilm, but only around 3-4 each month. But because I haven’t made the effort to copy my reviews and ratings over from Flixster/Facebook, LOVEFilm aren’t aware of this, and they continue to recommend films I’ve either already seen or declared I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than watch. And Amazon continues to believe my favourite genre is Charlie & Lola, as I once bought a series of DVDs as presents for my daughters and assorted friends. Have they considered looking at my LOVEFilm lists, or even asking me if they can? In the last couple of months, they could see that I’ve rented and rated all of the following at 4**** or better: Milk, Mad Men (Season 1), Do The Right Thing, I’ve Loved You So Long, and Man on Wire.

To be fair to LOVEFilm, they at least let me create multiple film lists, so I can choose what sort of thing to rent next (family-friendly, J-Horror etc…). ING also do this with ‘named’ savings accounts (new car fund, Christmas, Holiday etc). But neither of these seem to use this information to any great effect. And there’s very little out there that actually asks people what they want, and how their relationships with individual brands and companies could be improved by sharing and learning about my preferences across different brands.

Last example: newly pregnant mums often join many different ‘Baby Clubs’ to get advice, support and free stuff. Each one will then send them a series of emails about their pregnancy, mostly containing the same sort of information (“your baby is the size of a grapefruit”, “your baby can hear your voice”). And each brand will think they are creating a meaningful relationship through their chain of emails.

Urgent Bulletin for (virtually) all marketers: most people spend 99.6% of their time NOT thinking about your products.

The current implementation of CRM in most instances makes all sorts of assumptions, based on what I am able to tell you, which is in itself controlled by what you think is important enough to ask me. Have you ever thought that I might want you to treat me differently?

Supplemental Bulletin: most of your products can be easily and instantly substituted for a functionally similar alternative. Don’t forget this for a moment. What are you going to do to be different?

Phew. And by means of light relief, a short moment of joy from the aforementioned Lola Summer and her Best Friend Lotta.

Read Full Post »