Well my answer has three sharp prongs:

The first is because I can.
The second is because I must.
The third I can only explain in the form of dance.

The point is to leave a scratch in the silence. If you don’t write, paint, leave pieces of your soul laying around, when your gone, your gone. That’s enough. That’s everything.

The real question you should be asking is “Why don’t ‘you’ blog?”

Al ‘Astral Gypsy’ Davison was still doing his warm workshops nurturing embryonic artists, albeit with a slightly grander, greyer beard . Paul Gravett had become the Chargé d’affaires de Comics. ‘Comics’, I overheard in the darker corners, re-labelled ‘Sequential Art’, by these Old Street Acid Jazz guys called ‘Nobrow’. Scott McCloud smashed down doors with these two-words and pictures. But the ‘Graphic Novels’ were still always books…Comic Books.

Miracleman #15 hawked for £200 as was Issue #1 of Spiderman, the Todd McFarlane one, yes! That one-in-the-polybag-one they printed a gazillion copies of just a couple of weeks ago in my old world. £200 now! Two hundred pounds! The comics that I picked up just last week from Enigma in Croydon for a quid and still have stashed away in my loft for my children to discover. And what? This is Twenty Eleven – John Byrne’s finished Next Men!

Tables were manned (and womaned too) by young arriviste sophisticate comic book hipsters hawking their tight art wares, channelling the Clowes and Hernandez. Thick glasses frames and friendly faces…was this even the same planet? Surely not, when small press used to be a handful of scrappy photocopies hidden on the bottom shelf in the corner, round the back, on pink paper if you were lucky, (Jone-zee with his letra-tone’d be proud) in their place were cool-ass full colour perfect bound shiz. Stax-o-books, queues and this new thing: ‘Cosplay’, people channelling fiction- Batman beer drinking at the bar and Spider Grrrl with her visible pantie-line and pink bag stuffed with comic books.

This new species grown out of the start of a new comics fin de siècle. Brighter. Smarter. Sharper. “Manga schooled a whole new generation” remarked Kenny Penman of Blank Slate Books in a brief but hearty exchange. Giving ‘the kids’ the chops to grow in to the big-stuff. The new-gen: Leah Moore all growed-up, extending 19th century legends with Monsiuer Reppion, lover of zombie fare and husband of the aforementioned. Manga preacher, Emma Vieceli, her paw prints on all the cool breaking stuff (and My Little Pony too).

Too many things to mention and not enough money to buy everything. And I would have. How long has this party been going on without me?

Claiming the words ‘comic books’. Comic Books. Say it again. Take the words, (steel them) and scrape them from the juvenile stigmata. Comic Books! The sweaty dready air of the stuffy comic convention a distant distant synesthesia’d memory, did I dream it? The future of Comic Books smells so good. If this is how it is in this ‘What if?’ reality, I’m taking up residence.

Thought Bubble’s blown from a fresh smelling soap, shiny chrome spheres of magic, speed-balling out of the cultural subconscious, blowing the doors away.

My children have ‘Sway’, I see it when they dance. They are not planning their moves they just flow with the music, they feel the sound and it comes out in their movements. Uninhibited. We have to unlearn the form and structure that we use as a safety blanket, it can be more of a constricting scaffold. Picasso said “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

When I had the opportunity to meet Quentin Blake a few years back to video him for The School Children’s Book Awards, I quietly watched him manifest an illustration of a ditty I gave him and as he drew it he explained that for a book he would usually sketch something spontaneously then use a light box to draw more controlled lines over his original idea on a clean sheet of paper. It was in his relaxed spontaneous state that the marks he made on the first sheet of paper captured the character and essence of the piece and I believe this is visible in all his work.

In his book ‘Getting Things Done’ David Allen discusses a frictionless state called ‘Swing’:

“Recall the pure joy of riding on a backyard swing: an easy cycle of motion, the momentum coming from the swing itself. The swing carries us; we do not force it.”. I think creating or expressing oneself is a case of not forcing it, just letting it flow.”

I have a friend that has sailed since he was a young lad and I was on his boat a couple of months ago intrigued to learn about navigation and enjoying all the linguistic parallels with goal setting (especially enjoying The Circle of Uncertainty ). He showed me all the complicated instruments and sails and how to tack and ‘this’ and ‘that’ and I said it all seemed pretty overwhelming. So much information. “How do you actually control this boat? It looks so complicated”. “Well”, he said “You just get a ‘feel’ for it, its quite musical. You know how it is when you are driving a car and you take a round-a-bout perfectly, you just swing round it – when you’re sailing well, well its just like that!”.

In learning martial arts over the past 5 years I have come out of a training session least damaged when I’ve gone in relaxed and with a clear mind, not trying and not thinking every move. Block! Punch! No. Its best just to have an attacking defence, relax and just let myself respond instinctively. Trusting that the idea of which response is best will just flow is the hardest thing, letting go and swinging with it.

Learning style and technique is about shaping and tidying up the ideas but the most important thing is to just let the ideas flow. Tidy up later.

Dead Beat poet writer Jack Kerouac had his Spontaneous Prose, (which is defined in its entirety here) that is grounded on a Mental State which he describes in his own words :

“as writing “without consciousness” in semi-trance allowing subconscious to admit in own uninhibited interesting necessary and so “modern” language what conscious art would censor, and write excitedly, swiftly, with writing-or-typing-cramps, in accordance (as from center to periphery) with laws of orgasm, Reich’s “beclouding of consciousness.” Come from within, out-to relaxed and said.”

Neil Gaiman speaks about his role as a writer as being a bit like a brick layer, building a structure. I found this idea initially terrifying, not being a bricklayer! Writing as if laying words down like bricks seems too much like hard work. I thought he meant that each word laid down was essential to the structure and each of equal importance but I think my original interpretation was wrong. If you have ever sat and watched a bricklayer at work and seen the way they move not in separate mechanical movements but with ‘sway’, scrape the cement up, slap it on a brick, flip the brick down, position, scrape excess cement, tap tap with the trowel and on to the next brick, its all in one flowing motion, the bricklayer is in an almost trance-like state.

Einstein regarded  time and space as an undivided solid object, Alan Moore suggests our consciousness travels through this solid, “all time exists in a single infinite moment”, he says. If this is the case then Gaiman’s bricks become a flowing river and our words are the things we are travelling through. Creating and flowing is just a matter of jumping in the river and observing.

Three? Four years ago? I set aside 10 days of my life to volunteer at the inaugural Children’s Literature Festival in Bath. This was day nine, or night nine for that matter. After a long day running around delivering spare tickets to the variety of venues in central Bath I ended up in the Art Deco wonder of ‘The Forum’, a new age church, for one night only to bring the congregation of Neil Gaiman together in holy worship.

Moving furniture, stage setting, a smoke machine strategically placed, an armchair, a lamp, a small table and two pop up ad-banners with the festival logos and art at each end of the stage and a massive Daily Telegraph banner across the front. In front of the stage Waterstones were setting up their stall and myself and some other volunteers helped shift the heavy boxes of books.

That night was the main event. Everyone turned out, backstage, like a reunion of all the volunteers and authors from the other events of the day for a religious festival. I chatted with children’s picture book maestro Rob Scotton fresh from presenting his one-man show. Neil arrived in his trademark leather jacket looking chilled surrounded by a small entourage eating from the selection of Waitrose sandwiches and Duchy Originals I’d bought earlier that day.

25 years previous my dad took me to Crystal Palace Sports Centre to see the light heavyweight boxing champion Dennis Andries giving a public demonstration of his training, which basically involved him punching at his shadow and skipping skipping skippiing. We went, not because we were massive boxing fans but because the centre was just down the road from our house and it also happened to be that my grandfather, Sid Nathan, would be refereeing the title fight Dennis was training for.

My grandad was a WBA boxing referee and travelled all over the world wearing a white shirt and a big black bow tie, slapping the canvas and counting to 10. He was famous for stopping fights, ill-matched, eyebrow bleeding fights. I was quite glad as a child to have a famous grandad, famous as in ‘very well known’ in his niche – boxing. Then, fame seemed like a magic-halo that gave you a passport to respect and admiration and for little 7 year old me, anyone ‘off the telly’ made me feel as if I was meeting a super-hero.

As we walked to the sports centre with butterflies twitching in my belly I asked my old man if he was scared about meeting the great Dennis Andries? He said “Daniel, why should I be scared? He’s just a bloke that gets paid for punching people, and he’s good at that. That’s nothing to be scared about. He’s another bloke but a lot of people know him”.

When we saw Dennis in the gym bouncing around in his big white leather boots beating seven shades out of his shadow I saw a bloke that was good at punching. When he came over and said hello I spoke with him confidently, 7 years old and punching above my own weight, about my grandfather and how I would put in a special word for him. On the way home with my dad I said “He was a nice bloke who punches people!”, “That’s it” he said.

So 3 years ago when I found myself volunteering at the first Childrens’ Literature Festival, and Neil appeared in the Green Room, I didn’t jump up like everyone else did to take his bags or offer him handshakes and refreshments. I just carried on reading my Plastic Forks. People fussed. In our makeshift green room, surrounded by fawning fans that’d been masquerading as volunteers perfecting ‘micro-chitchat’. He was charming and patient with them, simultaneously weary and excited to get on with the show.

I recalled a scene from A Beautiful Mind where Russell Crowe’s character, the mathematical genius John Nash is in a bar with his friends and there is a group of women, he talks about Governing Dynamics, the ‘ignore the blond’ theory. For the best chance of success he advises his friends to do nothing. And in doing so they all end up scoring. I had no intention of scoring with Neil Gaiman but considering the number of fanatics present I thought there was little chance of having anything like a meaningful conversation unless I didn’t even try.

It was time for him to go onstage and everyone rushed off to get a good seat, I hung-back with my camera and like a lucky Peter Parker said “Hey Neil! Quick photo?” He stopped and said “Alright”. I passed over my sunglasses which he was missing and took the photo above.

It was a fine one-man show. The armchair was at the centre of the stage and John McLay introduced him through the cliched creeping dry ice. Neil walked on, sat down then proceeded to read from the first chapter of his forthcoming ‘Graveyard Book’ fresh from his brain.

Almost precisely 10 years previous I’d attended Waterstones bookshop in Hampstead, with a ticket purchased my estranged strange brother. Neil read from the first chapter of his debut novel ‘Stardust’. Introduced by Paul Gambaccini. Neil, much less confident then with a voice that did not carry the words with as much sincerity as he did now. He was reading from a page then but this time it seemed as though the hours upon hours of reading audio recordings and bedtime stories that, despite the thousands of people being in the room he was just reading to me.

It went to Q&A and then the signing. I don’t like the idea of Neil signing my stuff. The last time I let him at my copy of the first appearance of Death in Sandman. He drew silver pen over Dave’s cover. This time I knew better and preferred to hang about chatting to people, until it was time to pack up. It was good to hang out until after the events because some of us volunteers would go for a drink.

As the signing went on late most people dissolved away. John and I were left with Neil and his heavily pregnant publicist to escort them to the train station. Neil’s train to London was cancelled so I was charged with finding somewhere suitable to wait and grab a bite to eat. The pub nearby was open and had space at the back for us to rest up with Neil and the pregnant publicist. With a Ray Liotta  swagger I secretly slipped the landlord a folded up £20 note to reopen the pub kitchen and make us some sandwiches.

So there I was, sitting opposite Neil feeling a little bit bemused with myself at  just how effective doing nothing had resulted in this audience with a chap who’d created stuff that had a significant impact on my personal narrative, but with it all I was still quite tired, not feeling too much of a fanboy but still humbled all the same.

I just sat quietly, tired, and waited for the conversation to begin. Neil’d been making small talk with strangers for two hours and it would have been rude of me to drag him down that road again. I took out some comics from my bag that i’d been carrying around all day whilst marketing bubbles were being blown about. Issue 1 of Plastic Forks by Ted McKeever. These were the days before Abe Books and hunting for Plastic Forks and Rubber Blankets had been a part-time hobby of mine. I’d been fortunate to stumble upon a comic shop in Bath earlier that day between the Moroccan Cafe and the bakers that i got my breakfast croissants from.   The comic shop just so happened to stock those precious copies i’d been searching for and with that the ice was broken.

Neil asked what I was reading and I passed over one of the sealed issues which he carefully opened, without allowing the scotch tape to touch the cover and for the next hour or so Neil and I were shooting-the-breeze. With being so popular and so much travel I suppose he’s gotten used to these fleeting connections, conversations with the ether, we must become a blur, a kind of gestalt friend.

When time was up and no trains were coming, we said farewells and Neil and publicist got in to a taxi for the long drive to some far away hotel and I wandered home with tears in my eyes and a massive grin on my face, just as Neil had after meeting Ditko.

Then time resumed its shape and all was as it was before.

It was some time ago. I don’t remember the year but I was working at The Odeon in Camden Town whilst holding down a degree at London Guildhall University. The job was the best ever. Watching films and being paid. A strict diet of popcorn, washed down with coke followed by Haagen Dazs icecream was on the menu almost every night and when Wagamamas opened around the corner no appearance of James Lavelle or Jonathon Ross would tempt me away from the tub of Yaki Udon fat noodles for £5.65. For only a pound more than the local Chinese takeaway’s chow mein I soon spread this new habit amongst the rest of the staff.

But beyond the late night staff screenings, clocking-inout machines and high sugar low nutrition diet, I was attempting various forays in to the music scene. DJing, promoting, starting a radio station, writing for the university rag and College Music Update under the moniker D77. On reflection I don’t know where all the energy came from.

I’d befriended a handful of music-industry people through the relentless blagging and found myself one day outside the poster covered frontage of EMI records on Goldhawk Road. It was like some sort of magic doorway. The glass frontage was plastered with pictures promoting the next big thing. It seemed as though the only way to enter was if you wore rollerskates and sped blindly in to the wall. But I found the sliding glass pane and it opened for me.

I tried to act cool, like this was normal but it was the first time i’d been there. I was slightly awestruck by the Beatles platinum discs and huge TV’s with MTV silently playing. But ultimately it was an office building. Housed inside was an office that my music business pal walked me to. He had established a safe haven for artists to develop, something of an independent label but a smart venture that would negate the need to buy out an indie label for the sake of one cash-cow and all the expensive and inconvenience that would go with that. He called it Regal Recordings. Not boasting, just businesslike he said he’d just come off the phone from T-Love’s manager, arranging flights to the UK. He wanted to sign her to the label. I’d heard a the female MC, T-Love track just a couple of days before at Mr Bongo on Poland Street and liked it enough to ask who it was.

As I sank down in to the big black leather chair and noticed the stacks of CD cases on the desk, floor and various other surfaces. I became aware of how the room was more of a lounge than office and the separates sound system and little monitors were the centre pieces.

“Take a listen to this”, he said as he pulled a silver disc with blue marker pen out of its crystal case with three words scribbled in capital letters ‘PUSH IT OUT’. “They just biked it over”. Then the swirling heavy rain started landing on the cymbal and the room began to hum. I was all ears and electrified by the moment that I was one of the very first people to hear The Beta Band’s newest song. What did the lyric mean? “push it out” over and over again. The words repeated and lost their meaning then wove amongst the piano, cymbal, drum, growing layer by layer building something fantastic. A timpani drum now. Swirling and building up to an acoustic melody and more layers of vocals. The volume seemed far too loud for an office but this was the music by business. Music is supposed to be played loudly. You have to feel it. And it ended. I didn’t understand it but I knew I liked it.

Ah. The energy came from the music.

For posterity and fun I recount the interview right here!

It was my privilege to do the reveal, and peel back the curtain to the thundering theme tune of Doctor Who – with thick dry ice, lightening strobe flights and screams of delight from the kids… THE DALEK. “Exterminate, exterminate, we are the Daleks” etc etc.

But before the rambunction I was confined to actors left, backstage with my captive audience – who surprisingly, for a Dalek was quite friendly.

Do you ever worry about being typecast?
Well it does look good on my CV and thankfully I don’t get stopped in the street.

What’s your motivation?
Well, the way I see it is that it’s a rather confined space and quite uncomfortable and hot I take it as an opportunity to take revenge on the world.

How do you audition for this type of role?
Well about 12 years ago a friend of mine was on the crew and they needed an actor. Years later my name was discovered on a sheet of paper when they were starting the series up again and I got a call.

By this time nerves of my big role started to bubble I thought I’d leave the Dalek to get in to character. “I’ll leave you to meditate then”, “nah, it’s okay – I’ll just send some text messages”.

1. Cold Baths
1 Hour before bed take a 10 minute (time it) ice bath or freezing cold bath. Immerse yourself gradually – its uncomfortable to begin with but really really effective! Apparently a brief warm shower afterwards (as the japanese do) also helps but as we haven’t got a shower (yet) I missed that part out. The science  explanation is that it tricks your body in to releasing the right brain narcotic to knock you out. The first time I tried this I slept like a brick for just 4 hours and awoke revitalised.

2. Recognise Night-time Wakefulness
Realise that night-time wakefulness is actually a normal phenomenonononon. Some scientist somewhere (possibly writing for a Sunday newspaper supplement) coined the misnomer that we need at least 8 hours sleep. Fact is that 8 hours continuous sleep will give you the false guilty wake-time in the early hours. There is nothing wrong with waking up in the night. Nothing at all. All mammals do it, there is a hypothesis that suggests that night-time wakefulness evolved as a defensive reflex to guard against predators.The minute you get over the guilt that you should be asleep, the minute you get over forcing it. Get up for an hour, walk about, read a little.

3. Avoid bright lights in the evening
Don’t look in to bright lights, don’t surf the internet. bedside lights should have 40w or lower bulbs in them. Ideally, avoid switching on the lights altogether. Don’t watch TV after dark, most TV is rubbish.

4. Protect your senses
Wear an eyemask and  ear plugs. Noise and light stimulate the brain – protect against it.

5. Eating
A note on eating in the night. Don’t do it. The minute you start the habit, the minute to are setting your bodies alarm clock to wake the following day. I’ve read you can reset your body clock when travelling through fasting. This phenomena is called anticipatory waking. Some of us become alert 2-3 hours prior to eating. If you eat in the night your sabotaging your sleep. This was a big mistake for me as I find it hard to load up enough calories in the day time. Routine. Mealtimes at set times. Let the monkey brain know who’s boss.

6. Avoid stimulants & depressants
Speaking of calories. don’t eat/drink stimulants up to 6 hours before bed. Coffee addiction leads to withdrawal during nighttime fasting and twitchiness. Wine/Alcohol reduces the amount of REM sleep attainable so that rough feeling after a night on the town is also attributable to the low quality sleep even if you were comatose. This isn’t an issue for me because i don’t drink. And Im not telling you to become a monk. Just don’t binge out every night. Keep it down to less than 2 nights a week.

7. Waking up with a clear head
Have a small low glycemic index snack before bed. Some carrots or something. Not fruit, biscuits or sweets. Use an alarm clock to wake you in the morning. Go to bed when you feel sleepy at night – time may vary but listen to your body.

Your results may vary but please share anything else that works for you.

Sweet dreams….

It is a little known fact that the celebratory song sang on the anniversary of an individual member of a species’ orbit round the nearest stellar object shares the same melody anywhere in the galaxy and probably universe.

One particular planet of note is Jabar-el-tezz-E-79-Alphabeeta where the tune is sung through out the 482 continents, what is peculiar (peculiar in this instance as it was awarded ‘most peculiar fact of the year’ 18 consecutive years in a row at the Bejazzle Gamma Delta Annual ‘Interesting Facts About the Universe Awards’ for being the gross mis-understatement [sic] of the year) is the fact that none of the natives of these countries had ever made contact with the other due to the vertical acid seas unique to the planet.

The prize was not awarded a 19th time as an independent adjudicator of  the Universal Guinisss Book of Records noted that at the 18th Annual Awards a representative from each of the 482 countries’ national birthday song institute attended the after-show party at the Bejazzle Gamma Delta bi-centennial awards – united for the first time ever (through innovations developed by the Alkaline Interstellar Corporation).

All 482 representatives joined together in an impromptu rendition of ‘Harp-EEE-Beerth-Deayi-tewyoo’, at which time an accident involving a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, a bit too much Beerth-Deayi Cake and a hat led several representatives to experience temporal existential crises inextricably causing a local temporal event returning all the guest to their native lands precisely 482 years (years being relative in this context) prior to the date they left.

Guinness Book representative Nor-EEs MaRg+Wirrrrtah hypothesized that the origin of the anniversary melody coincidence was the after-show party sing-song. Though this does not explain why or how the tune has been observed on one spectrum or another on every single inhabited planet in the galaxy.

In addition, the melody has also been heard on uninhabited worlds such as Blarg-Tar-979 where it is generated by light refracting off the crystalline rock falls and Shamshal-Tello 4 and by the winds blowing through the 482 mile Glelty-Flarl canyon.

The significance of the number 482 is something that Intergalactic Orbital Anniversary Anthropologists do their best to avoid thinking about.

Apologies to Douglas Adams

This is a follow-up to a post I wrote 3 years ago entitled 7 Revelations of Being Caffeine Free.

Apparently it takes only 100mg per day of caffeine per day to become addicted (that’s about 1 cup of coffee or 3 bars of chocolate). Unfortunately I returned to the slippery black slope about 5 weeks ago in order to overcome a productive slump and hit some ridiculous self-imposed deadlines.

It took me 2 weeks and 3-4 cups a day to realise I was once again totally hooked and further 2 weeks to realise that I could not beat coffee on the head by gradually weaning myself off. The ceremony of preparation, sensory stimulation and buzz were all too alluring to stop gradually. And I knew I was postponing the pain whilst stealing from the future and developing a bad habit.

I love the taste of good coffee but the effects are poisonously tempting. It helps me write, lets my brain work on overdrive hosing words on to the page but the ideas I produce are not lateral, it is creativity on stabilizers. Ideas are two dimensional. Cogent and sharp but linear.

Coffee is wonderfully evil because like the bookmakers wife, lady luck, it flirts with you then when you’re addicted it fucks you in the ass – you have to dose up, drink more to get the same effects. Then. Oh god. Then you’re truly shafted.

Make no mistake. Coffee is a drug, albeit one that is well disguised and integrated with culture, economics and the industrial machine. If you dispute any of these facts you’re deluded, that’s the drug messing with your sense of reason.

If you need a coffee at the start of the day before you can face the world, you’re an addict, a drug dependant junkie. If you queue up at Starbucks for an overpriced fix of black hot water you’re a junkie, same as the Heroin addict queueing up for his fix of Methadone. Junkie queueing for junk!

Caffeine is a bitter, white crystalline xanthine alkaloid that is a psychoactive stimulant drug. Look this shit up.

Some lessons learned from this episode :

1. Deadlines are man made. If you can’t make them, reset them. Negotiate.

2. Taking stimulants is like having a credit card on your life. You pay it back with interest.

3. If you feel like you need a kick, take a nap. Drink water, look at your nutrition or perhaps get a full blood count done. You may be deficient in something.

4. Listen to your body. Sleep when you’re tired. Take naps.

5. When you choose food or drink don’t just look to feed your mouth or brain. Feed your body.

6. Chemicals are no substitute to pacing, sleep, exercise and healthy food.

7. Coffee will fuck you up in the end. Caffeine is naturally occurring in plants as an insecticide. Its a poison. Your bodies’ reactions are as if it was being mildly poisoned.

The bad shit will gradually overtake your mind and body like Spiderman’s Alien Costume.

Tribute Written on Iniesta’s Shirt in World Cup Final: “Dani Jarque siempre con nosotros” (Dani Jarque always with us)

Winning for its own sake is not enough to win the greatest prize in football. Everybody is playing to win so simply wanting to win is not enough. 2010′s World Cup winners seemed a little bit hungrier than everyone else – throwing themselves behind the ball and around the pitch with gusto until the final whistle. They consistently found that extra energy to quel their opponents until they finally lifted the coveted prize.

Spain’s secret weapon was having one extra player amongst their team – one more player than every other team is allowed. One their inspired manager placed on the field but who was invisible to everyone else, invisible that is until  Andres Iniesta, removed his shirt in celebration at scoring the winning goal to reveal a dedication to his invisible team mate, Dani Jarque. The 26 year-old Spanish captain who died of a sudden heart attack last year before ever getting the chance to play in a match to represent his country.

Dani Jarque, although not physically present at the World Cup matches had surpassed the power of his physical form of an individual player to become a potent idea to inspire his friends who wanted to honour his memory. Don’t be surprised to discover that each of the Spanish players secretly wore vests with the same dedication.

“We wanted to feel his strength. We wanted to pay tribute to him in the world of football and this was the best opportunity to do so.”
Andres Iniesta

These were the magic words which united a team with powerful drive to win for a greater purpose.

If you want to win find something greater than winning as your reason to do it. You will smash your goals and surpass your imaginary opponents. Winning will also mean so much more than holding a trophy above your head.

Eton has produced so many Prime Ministers because they teach a different curriculum to state schools. State schools’ purpose is not intellectual development but socialization in obedience and subordination.

Eton’s curriculum includes: literacy (public speaking and writing), study of law, literature, philosophy, theology, history, understanding the workings of government, independent work, physical sports, access to leaders, responsibility, personal code of standards, morality, an appreciation of music, design, literature, drama, art, observation and recording, ability to deal with challenges, a habit of caution in reasoning to conclusions and the constant development and testing of judgement.

These are not the skills required to fill the majority of jobs, such as shop assistants and nurses.

Derek Sivers recently gave a talk at the SxSW music conference called Successful SxSW: the Tao of the Conference. He fielded the question to his contacts ‘what advice would you give people attending’ and asked people to submit short videos with their advice and presented 20 of these at the conference. In all there were 60 videos submitted which he presents on his site.

Whilst a Tao is often referred to as ‘the nameless’, because neither it nor its principles can ever be adequately expressed in words. The Tao that Derek is pointing to is woven amongst the useful networking tips and strategies.

Instead of seeing people as contacts and leads that you want to exploit you should see people as the treasure; each person you meet will literally change your life, even a small change of course now can take your life in a whole new direction.

I ‘won’ a chance to strand  on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, London for 1 hour from 3am on Monday 12 October as part of Antony Gormley’s One & Other.

On 12 October in 1797 a famous Mackem nailed the Union Flag to the broken mast of the HMS Venerable. At the time Britain was at war with France, Holland and Spain. 212 years ago British and Dutch navies met in battle off the coast of Norway, near Camperdown, close to Bergen.

During the fierce fighting, HMS Venerable was badly damaged and the main mast was broken. Jack Crawford climbed the broken mast and nailed the flag to it, whilst under heavy fire. The Union Flag was the command flag of Admiral of the Fleet. In a time without electronic communication systems this flag was a very important identifier, and a proud symbol of British power. The loss of the flag could be a great blow to morale and could affect a battle. The phrases to “nail your colours to the mast” and “show your true colours” refer back to the original use and meaning of these flags.

After the battle there was a victory procession in London. Jack’s action was said to have helped win the battle. In 1890 a bronze statue commemorating Jacks deed was erected in Mowbray Park, Sunderland and unveiled by the Earl of Camperdown, the grandson of Admiral Duncan.

I applied to be involved in Gormley’s latest art attack as I thought it would be a good excuse to stand on the plinth and see things in the square from a new perspective. Its a silly thing to do and I love a bit of nonsense now and again. Since being selected the One & Other team have asked me what am I going to do on the plinth? Like I am supposed to attempt some sort of performance for the Sky Arts Endemolesque reality show.

Friends have suggested things, which in there own right would be quite fun to do anywhere – a Punch and Judy show, Nude Karaoke or something else to get a reaction.

Plinths in Trafalgar Square are reserved for monuments of monarchs or military heroes. Places where dead heroes disappear in to the landscape of myth, legend and bird shit. People like Jack Crawford.

So i’m nailing my colours to the mast: I’ve decided to boycott my slot at One & Other. The fourth plinth should not be hi-jacked. It denigrates the value of the real plinthers.

Real ‘plinthers’ make their actions on the ground (or in the air) and the lone and level sands stretch far away.

As the plane levels off at 7000 feet it feels like we’re slowing down. They open the transparent roller door and a guy in a blue suit turns his head to the right, looks at me but through me then he’s gone. If you blink you missed him. The girl with the purple malformed helmet for the built-in camera holds the bar above her head and peers out for a few seconds. The whiteness and windy exterior silhouettes her as she looks down and leans forward slightly, is she jumping after him? No. She pulls the shutter closed, my ears equalize and I can hear more.

“How was he?” My instructor yells.
She shakes her head.
“He spun out of control”, she smiles. I sense my instructor shake his head knowingly. She sits down.

I ask a couple of questions above the rumble. Everyone is nervous but acting cool. I hold my hand up in front of my face – it’s shaking. I breath deeply, aware of the physical sensations and press my other hand against the shaking palm. Looking round I see my instructor has his eyes closed meditating on his fate. I can sense his breathing is shallow and more rapid than mine. We are all bunched together sitting between the other mans thighs. The plane climbs higher above the clouds and the green squares of land fade behind them. Snaking in spirals. The flying dragon is waiting for us to ride it down.

Plane slows again. Things are in motion. There is not even time to think forwards or backwards. ‘Now’ is all there is. My heart thumping, drawing atttention to itself. I remind it that this is what it desires. Trepidation is not fear, just not knowing. I literally have to sit on the instructors lap. and he buckles us together. My flying cap is fixed on. Minor details, it is too tight. He notices and asks me then adjusts it. Details. “Are you wearing contact lenses?”, yes. “Okay, we’ll make your goggles a little tighter than normal.”

He shuffles forward. Others are also shuffling towards the open door and instantly vaporizing in to the whiteness. We are at the door, its quick. Good. Arms crossed, hands on shoulders. Knees back. Feet back more. Look left. Smile for the camera. Flash. The moment. The moment.

The moment. Cold thin air ploughs through my face. My arms are crossed, hands on my shoulders. Legs arching back like the videos. Two hands slap my shoulders. Look fowards forwards the camera. Smile. Its cold. There is a man 10 feet away waving at me and smiling at a hundred miles an hour – hands flapping happy dancer. The freefall is counterpointed by the clouds. We are falling through clouds. Grab two for Ella and Rosa. The plane gone.

We were always falling.

The earth appears again. Hello you. We spin counter clockwise. My instructor is gaming. He gets paid to do this! My 50 seconds at 55 meters per second is over now. The camera guy zips out of sight. The shoot is open and we slow. Fast. But we’re still falling. Only that’s under control. I feel elongated. Going over a hill and down. The rippling flapping of the £10,000 parachute comforts me. The wind snake hisses through the silk in awe. I can fill my lungs more easily, more full than ever before.

“Well done” my instructor says, “how was that”.
“Just brilliant” I say. We can talk. I equalise my ears, they crunch-pop like I used to do as a kid.

The Earth growing in my eyes. Looming like Google Earth on super-steroids. I say as much.

“I love Google Earth” he says.
“My favourite video game” I say.

He twists the shute, we arch around in a spiral, I can see straight down. The air is very cold, like the ocean. But thin. It is Air. Stupid. I look up and marvel at the technology and fleetingly, DaVinci’s genius. The view is crystal. The horizon connects all around, 360 degrees. I can see behind my head.

“How did you like that spin?” he says, rascal.
“Not really.” My organs aware of their freedom for the first time. Its falling but more.
“Again?”
“No thank you”, I say.

I can see other people falling. Small.
“Where’s our guy?” the camera man.
“Down there”.
I look down. Maybe 2000 feet, racing ahead.
“He’ll be on the ground to film us landing”, he says.

Up higher we rehearse the landing. As you do. Knees up, palms behind calfs. “Good”.

The air is very cold still but not as difficult to take Oxygen from. My lungs and face and spaces in my head fill like never before. Inflating with effort, they yearn for more oxygen. No worries. I’m enjoying this moment. Everything else is not there. My mind is only filling with the total moment. A field of microscopic cows. The green patchwork quilt growing. I wave. My instructor is manouvering us left and right. More spins.

“Where are we aiming for?” I say.
“See that patch of lightened grass over there?”. A secret message is scorched in to the earth with weed killer for us by some other rapscallion.

“How high are we now?”
“About 600 feet.” Its nearly over but it is enough.

Knees up. All procedure now. Danger time but i’m safe.
Down down down.
Gently.
“Okay, put your feet down Dan”.
Terra Firma.
I take my weight fully, its over.

Everything has changed.

Or is it just me.

photo credit: Afroswede

When I was 4 years old I used to tie a pink towel around my neck like a cape, put the Superman theme tune LP on my Dad’s dusty old record player and fling myself off the top bunk-bed in my bedroom just at the moment John Williams’ orchestra spoke the word ‘Superman’ with their instruments. For a few moments I was flying and it felt incredible then I would crash down and twist an ankle, or bump my head or knock the wind out of my chest with a thud. Once my knee somehow struck my chin and I bit my lip causing it to bleed. Always making that record skip. I’d hurt for a a minute or two then climb back up to that top bunk and jump again. And again. Eventually I perfected my landing but for some reason could never work out a way to stay in the air.

This coming Monday I plan to jump from a much greater height, 12,000 feet or thereabouts. The idea of a parachute jump is something that used to fill me with terror possibly up to a year ago until I faced much greater fears, now the fear of jumping is replaced with excitement. I’m ready for it.

A martial artist is trained to fall. If he/she doesn’t a hit the ground totally and tries to keep off the floor taking all of the impact on one point it will hurt a lot more than it needs to. Like Tom Watson said in his cardiac resuscitating statement for this once weary entrepreneur, you have to fail if you want to succeed.

The martial artist tries by every way not to be thrown to the floor but when it happens it doesn’t hurt in the sense that it doesn’t matter. Avoiding failure when possible but fully accepting it when it happens. When you fail, you learn. Like the martial artist you shouldn’t shrink back from disaster but get back up straight away (or as soon as possible) and continue the fight. Falling seven times, and getting up eight.

I still have that Superman record and it has a deep scratch right on the landing note.

Sometimes I think words are barriers to fully enjoying stuff. As humans some of us feel the need to compartmentalise stuff, its clean and makes the confusion and complexity of reality easier to comprehend – that’s a bat, that’s a dog, it’s an apple, the peach tastes sweet. They don’t convey the experience. Things become symbols and code which eventually become meaningless shapes that when connected in a particular pattern can be decrypted via lightwaves that bounce off our retinas transforming to electrons that stimulate a chemical reaction inside our heads. Words are the magic ‘spells’ that orchestrate our perception but the simplification of reality to simple shapes and sounds can prevent us from really seeing what’s out there. Some people see beyond these barriers. My mate Adam did.

By ‘limitation’ I mean that a word creates a defined barrier around something, that something starts and something stops. The label compromises the thing, if we want to truly observe ‘it’. Take the word ‘Sun’. The accepted definition is of that big hot yellow ball in the sky that spits out light and heat. But where does the sun start and where does it stop? Is it at the edge of the fire? the edge of the the heat? the edge of the light? If its the light then there is no boundary – this definition is too huge to fully comprehend but I think its the right one. We are inside the sun right now.

Where do people stop? Is it where their body exists in space? Do we occupy finite space or is the edge of us where the light that reflects off our physical form stops? I think we are endless. The ideas we impart, the noises we make, the impressions we make on cmos chips that are converted to binary strings embedded on to magnetic discs, the memories that we conspire in creating, the genetic code in our offspring and the love we create and share.

Adam Theokritoff, a true friend of mine died suddenly at the weekend and I am deeply sad for myself, his family and everyone who loved him that we will not be able to conspire in creating beautiful new memories with him – there were so many left to be created. There is a part of me that feels hollow but I choose to fill it with the joy that I got from being in his radiant bold generous fearless hysterically funny and inspiring company.

The characteristics that impress us of people we admire and love imprint on us and are woven in to our own patterns of behaviour thinking and character. The things he touched, created, and crafted impeccably, the memories created, the battles fought, and the love he generously shared are all things that radiated from Adam – those things still exist. He had an indelible character and made an impression on everyone that knew him.

People that think that the light goes out choose to live in the shade. Love is as endless as the light of the sun burning through space in to infinity.

Every evening they swim to the top right corner of their tank awaiting a few flakes of fish food and without fail we provide them. Twinkles has hardly grown since we bought her home from the local ‘Pets at Home’ depot, she swims about back and forth avoiding Rory and looks forward to the evenings and the flakes. Rory forages, sucks the cluches of food that have escaped the filter and spits them back out again. He swims at the gush of water sprayed out of the filter but every evening he is there at the top of the tank awaiting the delivery of tidbits. He’s a fat fish.

When you get your payslip this month take a moment to think about what is going on outside of your fish-tank.

I don't have thousands of favourites on Flickr. My conditions for starring pictures is not that I simply 'like it'. The images have to inspire me, they have to be good enough that I would spend money to see them.

I don't do this
This particular image I found so powerful and inspiring that I didn't just want it in my favourites, I wanted it on the wall in my home.

The bold brushstrokes look like they were created with the passion and energy of a samurai, spontaneous, confident, potent. Bam bam bam. I love it, it's inspiring. So I bought it from fellow flickr'er Snerdinski, a versatile artist from Boston. I promised him that I'd send him a picture of it framed but I think it deserves another outing on Flickr to be appreciated again. So here it is.

*sorry for the delay John, I've been a little out of sorts for a couple of months and the frame sat in the shop for far too long before I had the energy to bring it home to put on the wall.

But of course there is a serious message behind this post. You can make any noise you want. You can achieve anything you want, the only person standing in your way is you.

This is the view I saw as I opened my back door yesterday evening. Awesome. In the old fashioned sense of the word is all around us every moment of every day. You just need to open your eyes. We take it for granted but the occasional smack round the face with a big slice of awe keeps the door ajar.

Only in quiet waters things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.
Hans Margolius

They are the bestest of friends and I am their dad!

Rosa is 3!

We had a little party for her at the weekend. The theme was Fairies and Pirates. We assumed she was going to be a fairy. On the day she decided she was going to be dressed as a Pirate for the first 30 minutes then changed in to a fairy followed by a further 3 more outfit changes that Ella helped her with.