AND I’M TRYING HARD TO FIT AMONG YOUR SCHEME OF THINGS [89]

I showed 2017 the back of my hand months ago. Events, days, news cycles and realities changed multiple times daily, and questioning it drained us. Rather than try and make sense of it one more time, I offer below the choicest sentences from my last year. Happy with appearing to know what I was talking about, I hope 2018 is the peaceful and brilliant year we need – if it is not, we’ll build that lunar colony together.

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It is not enough knowing where you can go, it’s making sense of what you find… Anyone who thinks they have it all worked out should be checked to see if they are already dead… Everything bubbles to the surface, and what a surface to pick from.

If you can put aside the usual attempts to find a rational, objective, absolute truth, and think about how truth and knowledge are constructed out of all the discussions and interpretations that led to it, then you will understand it more than just having it handed to you on a plate.

We must now also contend with the new term “alternative facts,” i.e. facts that counter the facts most unhelpful to your own cause… Failing to inform the public could even be considered as anti-social… If there is a moment to be seized, you have to make a persuasive argument. If it has been made before, then it has to be clear why it is worth making the case again.

George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” gave us the idea of “Newspeak” as a way of restricting the population’s ability to articulate itself, allowing the rulers to control them more easily – but what if the head of state does it to themselves first?

When the on-off-volume switch fell off, it was replaced by the end of a used chapstick, jammed into the hole to serve for nearly a full decade.

We rely on “Big Data” to anticipate our needs, demands, and wishes. What that means, however, is that companies can no longer be in a position to guess what people might need.

You may have always identified as a Range Rover driver before you could own one, or it could be something you have only recently recognised about yourself… My view of Range Rover drivers, and their cars, has come from prejudice, and that is only because I don’t know enough about the subject… I should be more open-minded and respectful about the life choices people make, and learn more about what leads to people wanting to drive a Range Rover.

For many, libraries are still a valuable resource that are too useful to lose, even if I find it harder to find a use for mine. Even for something delightfully obscure, knowledge should not be made harder to find and, if we going to stay online instead, nothing can be left behind.

This is not the first time I bought something because the packaging made me laugh.

If you were in a society that only spoke Newspeak, the need for slang would arise very quickly. Just as the secretive lexicons of Cockney rhyming slang and Polari arose within London in the last century, being able to speak openly is essential to be able to live, and if you need different words to achieve that, you will find them.

Freedom of speech is paramount in this world – all opinions should be able to be heard, then we can decide on their merit. I am not the type of person who tells people that the truth is being kept from them, or that they are blind to it, because I would need to have concrete evidence to prove that, unless I wanted to engage in conspiracy theory. When certain voices think they have been silenced, because one outlet decides they don’t want them there anymore, they should think whether that place has its own voices to protect, or whether they might have been in the wrong place to begin with. Every voice has its own place and, if requires, what it says can be tested, in a court of law.

I think Nick Knowles was there too.

Good debate needs everyone to speak the same language to each other, and good society allows everyone to participate without pissing about over using language to exclude people.

Donald Trump uses “fake news” like the main character of J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye,” Holden Caulfield, calls everyone “goddam phoneys.”

Does this mean that any attempt that writing something that is deliberately nonsense is doomed to be made sense of by the next person to come into contact with it? Possibly, so long as there was a reason to do it.

People can believe whatever they want, but if you do want to cut your nose off to spite your face, don’t be surprised if people happy with their own noses decide to offer you a scalpel – and if you think this will work instead, trying to sound reasonable will not work either, especially if the words are not there.

The dream that gave me the name “Dancing with the Gatekeepers” was my having recorded an album, rock and/or electronic in nature, in which one song led to my shouting “all you have are words” over and over again. Despite what others may choose to do with their words, they are all I have too.

IF YOU’RE NOT THE ONE [36]

The first act of 2017 appears to be replacing circling hippos with an aerobics class. After ten years, BBC One has replaced its channel idents, themed around “circles,” evocating the globe logos it used for many years, in favour of snapshots of groups of people, directed by photographer Martin Parr, themed around the idea of “oneness.”

So far, we have just four idents, out of a promised twenty-four – the aerobics class, a group of sea swimmers, and a slightly different version of each one. They are a bit sparse, with no music or sound apart from what is in the scene, and too mundane when compared with what they replaced. There are also too few idents available right now, risking outstaying their welcome by the time the next ones appear.

I thought that enthusiasm for TV idents was just an online pursuit, where you can go into as much detail as you want, but I am no longer sure. I really should know, as this happened before.

The first time I appeared on the radio, said in anticipation of a next time, was on Monday 29^th March 2002, when I called Nicky Campbell’s morning show on BBC Radio 5 Live. Earlier that morning, BBC One switched its globe-shaped hot air balloon for “Rhythm and Movement” - groups of people dancing.

One of the idents, filmed at the Minack Theatre in Porthcurno, Cornwall, featured ten ballerinas performing a graceful dance, to the sounds of a string quartet that was led by a cello. This particular ident was described as being “too middle class,” and I called up to point out the sole point is to tell you what channel you are watching. It did sound a bit naïve at the time, but I was let onto Nicky Campbell’s show to say that – I think Nick Knowles was there too.

After making the point that, when I was born, BBC One’s single ident was a turning lime green globe on a blue background, I was thanked for my comments, and the show moved on. They did not discuss the ballet any further, my appearance having killed that conversation stone dead.

TV idents were borne of a time when you physically had to tune your TV to the correct channel, and even then, you were just as likely to have programmes introduced by someone appearing on screen to talk to you. BBC Two continues to show why logos and branding is important, as people are still enjoying watching their older “2” idents, made as early as 1991. Radio jingles fall into the same nostalgia, hoping you remember their frequency – all in the south of Hampshire sing with me now: “One-oh-three-point-two, Power-F-M!”

However, on digital TV, radio and online, where you can simply scan your receiver, and select your viewing from a list, idents are no longer needed – you are already where you need to be. You see more picture postcard-style idents, like those on ITV, and now BBC One, because they reflect their audience, and are easier, and cheaper, to produce.  In addition, getting audiences to programmes do not rely on individual channels so much, unless you count the BBC iPlayer or Netflix as a “channel.” For the BBC, Martin Parr’s new idents may be more important for the “BBC” on screen, rather than for the “One.”