now and then

I once had one of those old fashioned Walkman music players.

It was bright yellow, had "Sports" written on the side and it played those tapes that come in large rectangular cartridges.

It was temperamental if I took it on a plane. The 'Sports' housing was waterproof and it somehow depressurised so that the tape wouldn't play until it had been opened again after landing, like a fresh pot of jam.

I stopped using it ages ago, but then once found it whilst tidying some stuff away. I casually flipped it on and ba-blam, a little blast of an old tune that instantly took me back to the exact beach where I'd last been listening to it. Like the little scene had been caught in another form of pressure bubble. It was one of those moments of quick joy, vivid recollection and was totally unexpected.

That's why I sometimes use old tickets and receipts as bookmarks when I'm reading.

Yesterday, I innocently restarted a book I'd put down for a while. One I'd taken for granted and half thought I'd finished except I couldn't remember the ending.

There was a prominent tell-tale red 'Priority Handling baggage tag' used as bookmarker part way through, which allowed me to pick up the thread, but then 20 minutes later a similar time-capsule from the past fluttered to the ground reminding me of languid times in faraway mountains.

I enjoy 'now', but sometimes a quick excuse for 'then' can be good.

tonto in London Fields

I was talking with an occasional marketeer about poetry earlier this evening.

I'd been drinking tea and he'd been out to a pub with a client.

We both agreed that it was often easier to come up with the bongo ideas at the start of the day before all the other stuff sloshed in for attention, after which it all became rather difficult to remember. He's going to try to write some of it down on the tube.

I may need a new notebook.

lounge lizard?

Sometimes the gryphons start to creep out of the reptilian cortex, mainly in fairly predictable circumstances.

I was at the airport yesterday and, as usual, put myself into a transcendent state where 'they' cannot irritate me. Many around were less fortunate as the flight schedule collapsed because of the weather.

Fog is bad for flying and by the time one bad aircraft had been thrown into the mix requiring a return to the gate and another one cancelled completely, the schedule was becoming irrecoverable. I do what I usually do in these circumstances and don't follow everyone else, because that will result in a big and usually somewhat tense bundle queue.

Instead I found a helpful person who managed to jig me onto a late flight, so that I returned several hours later than planned, unlike the 150 people from the broken flight who I hear were placed in a hotel, due instead to fly the next day.

Guardian picks up on devoted and disgruntled

Just spotted the lively thread started by Lyn Gardner from the Guardian related to last weekend's devoted and disgruntled discussions.

I think Lyn has captured the spirit of the event rather well and its great to see some motivated additional comments appearing.

maelk

An interesting hotel room this evening; I'm across the way from Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, in a sort of triangular shaped room.

They've had to fit it with a single bed because I don't think a double would squeeze in. I feel like I'm on a ship in an inside cabin. I wonder if that's why the mini bar is free?

Foggy picture from my stroll to buy milk in the nearby 7-11. Harder than it sounds because there are so many types.

Sødmælk frisk leveret fra Arlagarden was my eventual selection - Bjork has even sung a short song about it.

damp

Heathrow and onwards today; luckily I took waterproofing to handle the rain, fog, sleet and snow. More when I'm not posting from a clockwork computer.

John

devoted

Devoted and disgruntled continues tomorrow, but I can't make the Monday sessions.

I'm sure I've been the right person at the right time for this and that the right people will be there tomorrow.

I've added some pix to my flickr from event - more than I usually do when I take a camera to something, but for this I'll hand over the main set to Improbable to use on the D&D ning.

Meantime, here's the slideshow of some of what was happening

devoted and disgruntled

Breakfast in Hackney this morning before heading to the York Hall for the first day of Devoted and Disgruntled organised as an Action Space by Improbable. I'd guess that between 160 and 200 people showed up to talk about the future of theatre, driven as a grass-roots generated agenda.

The way it works is that at the beginning there's a big wall of empty space where the agenda for the event is formed. Everyone is encourgaged to contribute ideas to the wall and they are assigned physical spaces to convene groups interested in the topic. Its a very 'in the now' process and has some simple guiding principles as well as the law of two feet - to move along if one session is no longer appropriate.

The workshop-based process works very well and we were soon all in groups talking about a huge variety of topics related to theatre; jobs; recession; funding; audiences; production; fun; politics; venues; fringe; performance types - I just scratch the surface.

There's a power to the confidence in having no initial agenda and the conviction that the right one will emerge. Judging by the motivated debate, it certainly seemed to, and the sessions were given longish time slots but many continued into the erstwhile coffee breaks.

Of course, outside of the more structured aspects, there was plenty of idea and card swapping; I suspect a whole series of new networks are being born during the weekend. I'll be back on Sunday and I know that whoever is there are the right people; whenever it starts is the right time and of course, we all make a difference.

East pole

Tonight's venue is across the way from the pole dancing club and Juicy Handbags.

Despite all mod cons, I'm seriously thinking about watching a few episodes of Black Books on my iPhone (no iPhone is complete without all 18 episodes)

black cab sessions

A bunch of the musicians I sometimes blog about have made it to the great heights of the black cab sessions and I thought a quick reminder would be useful. I see the sessions are mentioned in this week's Time Out too.

The process is simple enough. Get a band, hail a London black cab and ask the band to play in one take whilst on a journey - oh, introduced by the cab driver.

So top of this post its the Smoke Fairies.

...then Amanda Palmer playing Radiohead's Creep on Ukelele

...and to round it off, there would have to be something by Death Cab for Cutie (Geddit!)

There's another forty or more over at the black cab sessions site.

Social Media Jungle

As Mr Ross illustrates above, there's a sudden flurry of interest in 'Social Media Jungle' #smjces and Twitter.

The @rashbre twitter account has been running since February 2007 although in the early days it was like having the only telephone in the village.

Nowadays, it blends some news tickers and general chit chat amongst an entertaining group of people, although self discipline is required to avoid following off along every semi interesting story. I can see that my average posting rate is 1 or 2 posts a day over the last 2 years, but with some increase in recent months.

Because of its speed, there can be a fascination with breaking news stories although realistically a wait of a few hours can often bring a journalism based consolidation. A simple example was yesterday's Apple news. People followed the story in real time but as soon as it finished, Apple loaded their new pages with all of the content directly to their website.

I'm a great believer in 'wide time' (lots of things happening at once) but the compensating 'looking for the long waves' is need to detect any real patterns or stories.

We are also seeing a few of show-biz turning up in these streams now, with Stephen Fry as a fairly long term user and more recently Jonathan Ross (@wossy) appearing along with chit chat about whether his return to television (with Fry) will somehow feature the twitter idea.

Whether these facilities emerge as a sustainable snack-based form of connectedness remains to be seen; I know in my professional world its still relatively uncommon, although I hear that 'www' prefixes were also rare, once upon a time.