My collaboration with Quentin Blake(’s book entitled Drawing for the Artisically Undiscovered!)

Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” I have a new understanding to this belief (let’s call it Morelle’s Interpretation) simply goes “stuff expands as much as it can”.

I discovered this when confronted my the shambolic state of my garden shed. Overflowing with tools, pots, children’s toys…stuff. It was unworkable, unsightly, unmanageable and irritating. The shed sits to the side of the house not doing very much but if you ever wanted a light bulb, screwdriver or lawn mower you’d have to clamber over half filled paint pots, bang your knee on the edge of a rusty old bar-b-que and probably hit your head on a mop bucket daringly hanging from a nail. Its just something small like a screw driver, did it require a big tidy up? The mess in the shed was an irritation. Small things make a big difference.

Our loft was creaking with more stuff. Old schoolbooks, baby toys we won’t be needing again. Remnants of fabric. Records that haven’t been played for 5 years (I sold my turntables 2 years ago!) and more, and more and more….stuff accumulated from 30 years of my life and inherited from my own parents loft.

Just a few bits and bobs from our loft

Our loft was full because that’s how much space we had to fill. A friend recently said to me ‘if it goes in the loft, it means you don’t need it’ I had to pause and think. Its true, if you don’t use it you don’t need it. Someone else can use it. The only value would be sentimental. Mental attachment to inanimate objects.

To the lounge. Probably over 700 compact discs gathering dust, unplayed. We use iTunes. Even my 6 year old Ella knows how to search for music using iTunes. We don’t need the CD’s and the space they take up unbalanced the room in a way we never realised until they were gone. What were they on display anyway?

The dining room. We had a nice old upright piano that our neighbours gave us for ‘free’ when they moved. It was good to begin with, we got some value from it but the cost was a low level amount of irritation - the piano had to accommodate the only space our bookcase the bookcase was meant to be. Any sound noise including traffic sounds would resonate and that monster was brewing decades of dust inside. So the bookcase went in to my bedroom.

The book cases and some other stuff…

I think a bedroom should be a place to relax. Under the bed we had a table, an ironing board and some other unused junk. Stuff that we ‘might’ have used one day. First off, the ironing board is a work tool, I think work tools should be banished from a place of rest. Stuff that we might use is the problem. You hear yourself saying ‘I could use this one day - keep it’. Before you know it your house is crammed with junk you might use one day, if, when that day comes about you actually remember where you put it! Your head is filled with remembering you’ve got this junk some place. A bookcase along one wall. An Ottoman at the end of the bed – that I would always walk in to in the dark. Low-level irritants.

Removing hooks on the back of doors was surprisingly a major breakthrough overcoming clutter. Those little buggers attract much more that they were intended for. ‘In the wardrobe! You can’t expect me to put my dressing gown in the wardrobe!’ said my wife Susannah. Moments later she was in hysterics after realising what she had said. The hooks are gone and funnily enough the stuff has gone with them.

We moved in to our house 4 years ago with the contents from a 1 bedroomflat. Our stuff expanded to fill the space available.

The problem as I see it is that people get seduced by storage. ‘Storage Solutions’ IKEA call them. I say that storage is the problem . Remove the storage and the stuff has to dissipate to another storage receptacle. Preferably a charity shop or a dustbin.

Throwing stuff in the dustbin gives a good sense of closure, the mind can focus on the present and future. I realised I had become the family archivist carrying a tonne of baggage and that was weighing me down.

We overcame the hoarding and scarcity mindsets we’ve inherited from our parents (who lived through rationing) we became like bulldozers. Piano gone, skip filled, 700 CD’s given to Barnardo’s disc drive, friends with children or expecting, or neighbours who are grandparents gratefully accepted our stuff - to them its gold. To us, its just stuff. They wanted to give us other stuff in reciprocation but we politely refused.

I tried this new philosophy of removing the storage on the micro level of my desk. I got rid of the pen tubs and shelving from my desk and the stuff had to find somewhere else to live. Like Parkinson’s Law states I had to distil what was essential and clear away all the useless pap. Ultimately I intend to get rid of my desk and just have a comfortable chair.

Its the small irritants that cause the greatest aggravation, drip drip, like Chinese water torture until its unbearable. Now there is a sense of calmness in our house which is very unusual especially with two young children.

Of course, all our bins are filled to the brim, they always are. Why don’t you check your pockets now? Are they filled with stuff? Will you really use all that stuff today?

Why not spend a couple of days getting rid of your mosquitoes? We shape the world around us, from then on it shapes us.

]]> http://www.danmorelle.com/2008/04/storage-the-problem-not-the-solution/feed/ http://www.danmorelle.com/2008/04/people-of-flickr-introducing-interviewr/ http://www.danmorelle.com/2008/04/people-of-flickr-introducing-interviewr/#comments Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:34:15 +0000 Dan Morelle http://www.danmorelle.com/blog/?p=34

Flickr is a thriving hub of creativity and instpiration. With this new site I intend to explore flickr and have conversations with some of the brains behind the pictures.

The idea is to introduce a spirit of endlessnessism to the site and get each interviewee to interview their favourite contacts so a big tree of conversations opens up.

Drew Anderson is my first victim. Read the interview here: http://www.interviewr.net/

Last week I travelled to London to attend the London Book Fair with the main intention of seeing my friend Drew Anderson’s sketchbook that he’s been laboring over for almost a year. I’ve been watching Drew fill the book on the Buy My Sketchbook website where I’ve also been known to show a few pages off.

Moleskine’s celebrity endorsements are from the greats: Van Gogh, Chatwin, Hemingway, Matisse and Céline all apparently used the books at some time in their life. The attraction to the Moleskine is not that it is the new cool (though it very much is) but that it is well crafted and at the right alchemical proportions for people to catch their creative spirit within.

If you search the internet you will see thousands of artists catching their ideas and creations, scanning and photographing and sharing them with their clustered groups of other users for commentry, feedback, praise, promotion and a little friendly competition.

With their popular exhibit at the London Book Fair Moleskine quite accidently stumbled on a new way of opening up this new form to the masses, each book tethered by a thin wire of indestructible adamantium thread to a central spire and an etched chrome name tag adorned the books so the creator could be identified. Visitors had to wear white cloth gloves to handle the books otherwise a guard from the stand would hit you with 9000 volt a cattle prod.

I loitered around the exhibit for almost an hour pouring over the books and taking the odd photo of a favourite page. Like the effect of a street hawkers mate, what started as a quiet stall magnetised almost 15 people who all relished the awesome work on display.

In addition the the multitude of flickr groups and satellite websites I can see a new path to expose these wonderous books off in full-on human dpi to the world. Moleskine themselves are shining the light in the direction we need to take.

I used to often hit a dense wall of fog when I tried to move forward with my goals. Feeling drowsy and un-motivated, irritable and un-focused. Coffee had a lot to do with this. Its short term effects were great but regular cold-turkey was required or I had to increase the dosage. At one point 4 years ago and after a heavy bout of overwork, over-stress and pneumonia leading to coughing blood I decided to turn my back on the wicked black stuff (even though I loved it) and search for the natural energy and power to break through the walls.

Finally after searching and testing I discovered my 7 components to achieving mental focus consistently and with very little effort. Here they are:

Hydration
Drink plenty of water. Its essential for every function in your body. About a cup every hour.

Visual Acuity
Get your eyes checked out, wear some contact lenses. See clearly. Try the Bate’s Method for size if you are cynical about the billion dollar spectacles industry. Balance and clarity are important - everything else will follow.

Meditation
Empty your head of all the daily white noise and reboot refreshed.

Exercise
The more you do the more energy you have.

Sleep
My mum used to say: ‘early to bed, early to rise makes a boy healthy, wealthy and wise.’ Give yourself a break and go to bed early and don’t be afraid to take cat naps when your body tells you to.

Diet
Eat fresh food, lots of fruit and kick out dairy - that stuff will drag you down and fill your lungs with mucous.

Jala Neti
Wash out your head of fuzz and built up grime - let your personal air conditioning system work to its full potential. Nasal irrigation sounds disgusting to a lot westerners but is been done for eons in other cultures to recognized health benefits.

Carnegie Mellon University Professor Randy Pausch was diagnosed with terminal cancer in August last year, Doctors said he had only 3-6 months of good health left.

Happy Halloween from me and the girls!
Oh, and Jack!

I’m a Governor at Ella’s school in Newark and I approached the Head Teacher and tabled the idea of a book awards ceremony as a good opportunity to talk about books and have an assembly some time in the future - a mock ‘Oscars’ type ceremony with envelopes and speeches. It was a pretty vague idea but he liked it and asked me to come up with a proposal. Which I did and he got enthusiastic about the idea. Then it was the summer holiday. So I had a phone and made a few calls.

Over the next few weeks the idea evolved in to something that excited me more and more. I grew more cynical about other so-called book awards that were ’substantially’ selected by children. I spoke to children’s librarians who indicated to me that an award winner did not necessaerily mean a popular book. The idea evolved. What about an award selected by school children. Shortlisted by school children. From ANY book ever published. Not just ones a publisher wants to push - there’s enough of those already. I wanted to get 3 authors or illustrators at the school but they are very busy people and Newark not a great destination to get to for these metrocentric artisans. A plan. How about a video. A video that I could share with other local schools. Quentin Blake liked that and I was invited to his studio in London on August 7th at 2pm.

I met the alchemist and he created a magic picture for the school and recorded a wonderful video. This picture really did have magical properties - it opened doors. Its not quite so simple but over the next four weeks I got another two videos from Nick Sharratt and Michael Rosen(which was infinately more difficult since he was made the Children’s Laureate)! Yes. All incredibly warm and generous people

I asked WHSmiths to give 10% of childrens books in Newark - which they did and the independent book shop Strays gave 10% of the nominated books and a further 50% off an additional purchase by a nominated author.

Equipment was all favours from friends and editing facilities from a wonderful company I met in Manchester two days before the ceremony. The strange coincidence there was that on the delayed train home that night some lovely people sat opposite me - it turned out they were from teachers.tv - I showed them the video and the camera man I met will help me collect future videos. Its fate.

The Friday assembly came around and everyone at the school was dressed as their favourite book characters. One as a Wally and we played real life ‘Where’s Wally’! I had to give a 10 minute talk about how I got the videos (simply persistence and a little experimentation). I’ve never spoken to 400 people before. But dressed as Cat in the Hat it was a lot of fun. The children saw the video and gasped at the giants from their stories, and I squeezed in some Mozart in to the soundtrack for good measure.

Children cheered for their favourite books.

So after so much excitement what happens next? Well. We intend to run a pilot School Children’s Book Awards with 50 schools in March 2008 with a website that shares video content, guideline lesson plans for a themed week of events preceeding the big day - put together by a leading educationalist. The website will also be used as a hub for children to review books, upload video reviews and enter their votes. Teachers can also use the sites admin centre to process votes and produce ready formated certificates and there will be resources for parents to help the with exiting their children about reading and books. And its all free.

I believe the whole awards thing ticks a few curriculum boxes but really I hope it can all help to ignite and nourish a passion for books. There are so many ideas. And all it costs is a few phonecalls, a bit of time and some train tickets.

I’m asking Jacqueline Wilson and other luminaries of Childnren’s Literature to give half an hour to record a video. And in October 2008 or March 2009 we can have a national awards ceremony that collates all the votes from all the schools around the country!

We did it in Newark, the authors loved it, the kids loved it, the teachers loved it and the shops loved it. Rosen was right, let’s do something about it. www.schoolchildrensbookawards.org

I’m in that podcasting mood again. Here’s a little mix i’ve assembled with a bit of randomness in mind. Its not shuffled but the links are pretty abstract. I’ve been observing a lot of freaky coincidences lately and felt this a good opportunity to celebrate it. Chances are, if we’ve not met yet, we will. And if we don’t you probably know one of the songs from this playlist and we can all draw connections between you, me and a song. And you’re thinking I’ve gone totally bonkers right?

1. Orbital - Attached
2. Blur - Tender (Cornelius Remix)
3. Blackalicious - World of Vibrations
4. The Kleptones - 1150 Closer To The Boxer
5. Ray Charles - I Got a Woman
6. Olo Worms - Tortoise Shell
7. Count Basie Orchestra & Tony Bennet - Ol’ Man River
8. DJ Shadow - Hindsight
9. Herbert - The Audience
10.Radiohead - Everything In Its Right Place
11. Pulic Enemy - Louder the a Bomb
12. Mandy Patnikin - Alexander’s Ragtime Band

Check this awesome lady out, she’s got a big idea - I hope it goes round the world: