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View My Stats From Bath to Cork with Baby Grace :: November :: 2008
Politics, Work & PlayNovember 30, 2008 2:02 pm

Until a few minutes ago I thought my secret was safe.

I thought my conviction for chaining myself to the radiator in the Department of Foreign Affairs was buried in the past. Today I rudely discover that it’s still on my record here.  In UK, my other conviction is ’spent’.  Under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, I don’t have to declare that I was fined for behaviour at a political demonstration in 1970.  I can declare that I don’t have any criminal convictions.

But, if I apply for a job with the Irish government, I have to reveal my criminal past - even though it happened 35-ish years ago.

Tis a good thing I’m 58 now and virtually unemployable by Cowan’s government.

Depression & Health, Politics, Work & Play, Customer service, Food & DrinkNovember 29, 2008 9:08 am

Last Saturday, I met them both by chance in the Cork English Market, after I’d bought olives and humous.

One of them looked bemused at me, showed no sign of recognition - even when I shook his hand.  That’s what I call confidentiality.

Five minutes later, the other greeted me smiling broadly, told me he’d been on the march against Batt O’Keefe’s education cuts and introduced me to his wife who also smiled.  That’s what I call service.

I bet you all know who was who. (I know that’s a bit nasty.)

I’m off in to the English Market now (0908).  I wonder whom I’ll  meet on this frosty day.

Depression & Health, Politics, Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Children, Blogging & Media, Food & DrinkNovember 28, 2008 9:08 am

Now it happened to be that at this time the Arts Council of Ireland issued an invitation that all should consider New Media.  The conference - the first in Ireland - took place while Mary Cloake was director, and many registered from Kinsale to Iontas.  So a three-headed person, in the form of a Blogger, set out from Dublin, Cork and Galway to the capital, since Dublin was the centre of the known universe, in order to be registered together with David Leadbeater, Andrew Keen and Andrew Taylor, fellow debaters of the virtues of social networking. 

The three-headed Blogger was great with child, and needed a room within which to give birth to new life.  Calling at the first inn door, the Blogger was answered by a woman in a power suit.  "I’m just in from the corporate coalface of the new artistic reality" she said with a frown. "Can’t you see I’m worn out from the struggle to make ends meet.  It would cost me too much to put you up.  I have hardly any budget and times are getting tighter. Please go look else where."  The Blogger smiled: "I come for free.  I won’t charge you for room in your inn.  I’m on your side.  I’m a relative of Mulley." The crumpled power suit shook a head. "I’m sorry I can’t believe you’d stay in my room for little more than a glass of water.  That’s too good to be true.  Anyway I’ve too much on my plate right now.  Sorry, I’m sure there’ll be room for you in another inn."  The Blogger smiled, turned a back and moved on.  The Blogger was bigger with child.

The second door the Blogger knocked at was opened by a man in an open-necked shirt and thread-worn jeans. "What do you want?" he said.  "It’s late, and I haven’t time for visitors.  Can’t you see that?" "I am big with child and the child needs a place to be born.  I saw only your warm light through the window." "I haven’t time to be going round turning off the lights.  Can’t you see I’m overworked and haven’t time for any of those new-fangled sustainability ideas." "I won’t take your time away from you.  I’ll give you time for nothing.  You can just let us in and we’ll find our own way." "Look, simply letting you in would take time, not to mention introducing you to all the other overrun, time-deprived people that make up this company." "We’ve been there and we know a way to rest in your inn that will give birth to new times for you and all your charges. It’s  been said we are the way, the truth and the light.  Let us in and you lose some of that stress."  The man rustled his depleting hair and scratched his unshaved bristles. "Sorry I haven’t any spare time for new things.  It’s hard enough already.  Go find room in another company."  The Blogger smiled and moved on, even greater still with child.

Outside the town called Artsville, there is a small barn with cows, sheep, horses and donkeys crowding into the little room.  The Blogger called there.  As soon as the door opened, the person inside breathed a huge sigh of relief.  "Oh thank goodness.  Another human being.  Come in, come in.  I’m in need of more humanity surrounded by all these animals." There was no room free but together the person and the Blogger pushed their way through the full in-trays of animal food and litter trays.  Together they made space.  The animals moved over and let the child be born among them.  The person smiled. "It’s been worth it, to welcome you into our buzzing inn.  We can always do with new ideas because the longer we live by the old ones, the longer it takes us to change.  To keep this barn going has been a struggle.  It’ll always be that.  That’s why I work here, a real lover of struggle me.  I call all these animals my human resources, my touchstones, my artistic licence to be, my raison d’etre.  And we’re here to open our barn to passing strangers.  Every new person who crosses our door may leave an evalgelist.  Would you mind spreading that message."  The Blogger smiled, the baby swaddling now.  There was a huge star in the sky over Artsville. "People will be watching that star.  I have friends out there in the great beyond; they’ll spread your message.  You just carry on.  I have one of the cows queuing up for a photo on the blog, and a horse dieing to be interviewed about what happened yesterday afternoon when the pebbles came blown in the door.  I see you don’t have any boulders in your house."  "We got some nice travellers to move them ages ago.  Nowadays we’re like nomads in the desert.  We move on all the time.  And we love fellow travellers."

The child was smiling now.  There were three wise men on their way.  There would never be enough room or enough time and money.  The roof would always be leaking but the water that would come in would bring new life with it.

The three-headed Blogger slept.  The animals slept too, but the person in charge blogged the night away and woke refreshed, ready for the next budgeting meeting, ready for the coming strategic planning session with a smile on the face, sure that there were friends out there about to knock at the door.  That person loved their job and loved the Blogger for calling by.   The blogger was living the dream.

Depression & Health, Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Blogging & Media 8:11 am

Friday, 28 November 2008.  The kitchen stool @ 0609

It  is indeed early.  The pages are running out.  I’ll be opening a new journal book tomorrow - and I don’t yet have one.  Talk about just-in-time.

 

The tea is to hand and the body is willing. Although I went to bed late, and was done out of my place in the bed by Grace, even though I read a bit of the book about writing a hit song, I still feel I’ve not done too badly last night: I am not exhausted.

I’m energised but I know I need another long sleep. I may well feel energetic and awake, but I know the whole body is a different instrument from the head. The head is the part of the body which can lead the rest the most astray.

 

I am still  thinking about the Arts Council of Ireland conference - my flurry of live blogging.  My excitement.  The way I have been able to hold back from attacking …  I got up … goat.  … was angry with me.  I even suspect … of sending in an email under a pseudonym. (Hello paranoia.  How you doing today…) But I’m not letting those feelings of excited attack get set in me.

They, like all thoughts, will pass.  Feelings never come undressed into the fray - they always come dressed in thoughts, even if it’s only the underpants of thoughts they’ve had time to put on. Thought-feelings are what I experience with the feeling have wordform.

Entirely inchoate feelings are reflexes.

As soon as the feelings hit the part of the brain which is above the reflex centre, they assume the structure of thought-feelings.  

And I can take a hold of my thinking mechanisms and use that to make feelings more or less threatening.

There is never such a thing as a thoughtless feeling.

 

Oh, this is beautifully counter-intuitive.  Obviously some feeling come to my mind through the prism of thoughtful appreciation.  They are the most reflective feelings.  But other feelings are passionate, wild, angry, funny, and it is often, always even, hard to see those feeling for what they are.

If I experience a flash of anger, I also experience myself at the mercy of that sudden immediate rush of emotions. I feel out of control.  I feel my self having a spontaneious feeling: it is as if I am completely taken over  by stuff like rage, resentment, crossness…

Easy to feel justified in that emotion - to feel and think that those completely genuine flashpoints have an independence fom my daily process of living through thought.

But they trick us.  They put across the thought that thought is helpless in the face of such ‘natural’ free emotions.

However, I’ve been shocked, and suddenly faced with an abrupt end of a preconception.  I’ve been confronted with an unpleasant reality. and seen myself react powerfully in a surge of being swept away.  And other times, I’ve seen myself take the surprise in my stride and immediately begin processing the experience, being in charge.

 

This is profound and important.  I’ve captured the gist of it, and written down a thought map of the mind.

I’ve achieved a breakthrough in thought/feeling action. I’ve seen how it all fits together.  There is a lot more to write if I’m to spell it all out but I think the readers don’t need me to spell it out.

They have their own journey over this landscape.  I have no business joining up all the dots or filling in all the colour.

 

If I filled in, or tried to fill it all in, my picture would still be put in its proper secondary place by the other person’s experience of living out their own snowflake-like story.

Story tellers leave space for listeners to write the story that means most for them.

Brilliant, wonderful thought.  It’s been a great start to today, to my daytime thought-awakening cup of tea.

Work & Play, Blogging & MediaNovember 27, 2008 8:50 am

Listing most mentioned websites by bloggers, globally.

Useful to know this for the kind of work I do…

Useful for pub quizzes too.

Depression & HealthNovember 26, 2008 11:04 pm

Useful to have this on one page….

Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Customer service 10:50 pm

The shop in Douglas, Cork, is open again.  I hope it survives. I don’t mind that there hasn’t been a sale.

Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Blogging & Media, Customer service 9:45 pm

The Arts Council of Ireland New Media Day @ Dublin Castle on 25 November 2008

Following the conference, there have been blog posts:

Detrius

Damian Mulley

Eoin Kennedy

Conor Lynch

Interactions (Annette Clancy)

Arts Management Ireland

Bodies and Buildings(Feargus) 

The Model and Niland Galleries

Arts Council of Ireland

Dermod Moore

I was expecting more. Right now I’m forming a hypothesis: that the Conference (or Working seminar) was premature, that the audience weren’t ready for it, weren’t ready to take up the challenge of engaging with the ‘new media’ - for whatever reason.

Someone chairing a big session asked "How many of you have a blog?"  I thought I saw at least 60% of hands in the room go up.  It looked to me as if there were plenty of bloggers at the event.  Now I wonder if I was mistaken. Bloggers blog.  They put something out there fairly quickly.

Maybe the event will be a catalyst that releases pent up interest?

Maybe this time next year I’ll be proved wrong.  I certainly hope so. But I have a gut feel, an intuitive view.  Maybe it was very enjoyable and satisfying.  Maybe it stimulated the imagination, intellect and thinking processs. Maybe that is enough.

But there is an audience out here that’s growing up and taking all this so-called ‘new media’ in its stride as normal hat, I  think.  

I’m one of those voices that’s often urgent, and difficult to find relaxing, when I have a bee in my bonnet.

It’s probably too late to be heard as a grateful person who loved the day. It’s helped me sort out my priorities.

 

Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Blogging & Media, Customer service 7:19 pm

Dear Emily Mark FitzGerald,

You write an interesting blog about the Arts in Ireland... Thank you for it.


Thank you very much for your post [on the blog today]. It’s great to tap into how you found the day [at the Arts Council of Ireland working seminar on New Media..]. I’m surprised and sorry you had difficulty finding my blog. It comes up if you put “Arts Council of Ireland conference on new media” into Google.

You make a great point I think: it could be distracting for people to have someone sitting next to them who is blogging the event live. I’m going to think more about this. I admit I didn’t give it a moment’s thought yesterday. So I could have been more considerate.

I bet someone out there has developed some ‘rules of engagement’ for live bloggers. I’ll google that.

Yesterday was a trial run for me:

I have a bigger ambition - to work with a team of bloggers to produce a virtual ‘conference’ alongside the concrete event - a bit like the blogfringe festival. This would be a space where people displayed their response to what’s going on live, and created the space where people could casually drop in with a comment on what they’d just been to - a kind of sophisticated notice board I suppose. I’d envisage there being photobloggers, and podcasting bloggers, sketching bloggers (cartoonists), alongside the more conventional writerbloggers (including old-fashioned pensmiths).

Forgive me going on at such length [on your blog, where I wrote the first draft of this.]  It’s a bit indulgent but I’ve been carried away with the spirit of adventure.

I would love to know what you think of these ideas, please.

With best bloggernal greetings,

inviting all readers to comment,

Yours sincerely,

Omaniblog

 

PS It’s been good to read Damian Mulley’s piece on the day, and I’m too tired now to check back and insert links to the few other blogs that have already published something of their reaction.  I’ve read all those that Irish Blogs.ie picked up.   THE MORE THE MERRIER…

Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Blogging & Media 5:45 pm

"Others appeared to be blogging the conference live, but I haven’t yet found their sites or responses… in principle it’s an interesting idea, but sitting next to a blogger furiously tapping away during a presentation (or indeed surfing the web or checking email) reminds me of the kind of things we kick undergrads out of lecture for doing! A bit irritating, to be honest…."

Well said.  At least it was only a bit irritating…

I’d hate to think  my behaviour was universally approved of.  Go help the poor undergraduates…  I think lecturers are lucky undergrads bother to go to lectures at all …

______________________

Annette Clancy @ Interactions says…

"… And during the keynotes earlier in the day a delegate challenged Keen to stop being a critic and propose a way forward’ – Keen replied he would when he had one.

These types of comments really depress me – it feeds into this profoundly anti intellectual space we’re very fond of occupying in Ireland. It’s as though ideas for their own sake are useless unless they have some utilitarian function. Beauty, intellect, creativity, emotion – can’t be good unless we have a plan for how to use them. What’s profoundly depressing to me is that these comments should arise at a conference stuffed to the gills by artists and creatives – if the rule is that creativity, ideas, beauty and the intellect have to be useful before being conceptualised then I think we’re in bigger trouble than we imagine…"

Omaniblog was the "delegate".  That’s what I call serious criticism -  from one of the most rigourous intellects I know on the Irish blogging scene.   And I’m grateful for it.  It’ll help me grow more aware of my surroundings, I hope.  Adversity is sent to strengthen us all…  It’s a pity Omani become a delegate who didn’t deserve a hyperlink that day.

Blogging & Media, Food & Drink 5:24 pm

This is my sort of blog…

If you too believe "WoMan cannot live by words alone, but by every food that’s made" …

Enjoy…

Blogging & Media 5:20 pm

At 1710 on 26 November 2008…

 

Arts Council New Media Conference
psychiatrist in limerick
babies born in october 1993 in cork
top 10 musical composers
baby grace verdict
aer lingus sales
instant confidence paul mckenna review
irish times 22nd of april 2006 munster leinster
breda o’brien
paul o’mahony omani & co
o’mahony blog arts council
at the funeral of the marriage - paul durcan
barclays bank customer service email
omani blog
charles leadbeater in ireland 2008
omani blog poet
Depression & Health, Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Blogging & Media 4:47 pm

On to the stage come two men, one in a pink hood with eyeslits.  The other one is the straight one.

Hoodie: "Hi there…   Do you  come here often?  …  Come on, come on, hands up all of you who’ve ever said to yourself ‘I wish I’d spent my life with another crowd.  I’d have been a better person if I hadn’t wasted my time with that fuckin squeeze…

"OK, now hands up all those who are here with one of the old crowd…?  All of you who wish you were here with someone else…?

"Well I’ve got news for you, and it’s taken me ages to work this out, hasn’t it GG [the straight guy’s name] ?

GG"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"You don’t know what I’m talking about, of course you don’t know what I’m  talking about.  You don’t know what anyone’s talking about.  That’s why I’m so fond of you.

"OK, this is the truth.  This is the story I’ve worked out and that I’m prepared to share with you tonight, and that I’m even willing for you to take it away from here and pass it on… until the people you tell have passed it on, and on and on… until it reaches His Holiness… President Baracade… President McAleese… until it finally gets to Cowan, wakes him up and cuts  some of that fat off his face….

"You ready for it GG?  Come on man.  I know you don’t understand.  I know you hear voices.  I’ve no idea how many of me you’re hearing now, but I’m certain I’m more than one person in your head.  You might even experience me as a multiple ego - just like yourself.  Is it any wonder you find it hard to align yourself with the stars…

GG: "What the fuck are to on about, dickhead… You always were a heap of shit.  I have go.  I’ll be late for work.

"I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date…  Hare today, here tomorrow… Good old GGs.

"Listen up you crowd.  You got your tickets cheap.  If fact they were free to you.  After this, you’re going to owe GG here a shitload of money.  This is going to change your life and happiness.  And who here is a seeker after a new life and true happiness?  Hands up all those who want it all?…

GG: "Wankers…"

"Will you shut up.  You’re compromising the Reverend Mothers.  And your blessed father, Lord have mercy on him…

"The truth is… the truth is… I can hardly say it…   [planted shout from the audience:  "For god’s sake spit it out!"

"OK god… It’s just that I’ve spent my whole life procrastinating and you’ve spent your whole life procreating…

"The admission I find it so hard to make is that THE BEST COMPANY IS THE COMPANY OF THOSE WHO’VE BEEN MENTALLY ILL…

"Like GG here….

___________________________

There it is: the first draft of the start of a certain person’s new routine.  (And before you guess it, it’s not the Full Shilling club, "Mad Pride" John McCarthy.) He asked me if I’d mind putting it up, to see if it would get the same reaction as my usual posts get: silence.  He wanted to find out what it would be like to do a pastiche of Twenty Major, without any of the cunts. So, being a decent blogger, I agree to post it on the understanding that I didn’t have to like it.

He’s welcome to whatever comments he gets.  I’ve told him he won’t get a single one, and he better stick to his day job as a psychiatrist with a warm office in the winter.

Depression & Health, Politics, Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Blogging & Media, Customer service 9:37 am

I blogged the conference live.

You can find the 19 live posts between here and here.

Now, back home in Glanmire, after a full night’s sleep and pint in Mulligan’s bar in Dublin with my good friend Philip Byrne, it’s time for a reflection on the experience of live blogging that event.

(1) I’ve never done it before.  It was great practice.  There’s no better way to find out what it’s like to do something than to simply do it. [I’ve just read it all for the first time: I’m proud of what I’ve achieved.]

(2) I’d do it again.  I’d do it differently.  I would like to do it with a few other live bloggers operating as a loose team.  It was a lot to take on and I think the blog would be so much more interesting if it was made up of different voices.  What sort of person would want to read all that stuff I wrote.  Isn’t it much too much from one person? Anyway, I’d like to be able to compare the individual experience with an experience of blogging together.  I remember wanting to do this at Listowel Writers Week after 2007.

(3) Live blogging kept me occupied, doing something, when I’d have been daydreaming otherwise.  Listening and writing notes on the laptop isn’t hard for me.  I wanted to catch ‘key’ points and respond to them by recording them and adding sometimes comments as it went along.  If I hadn’t been live blogging what would I have done?  I’m too old to simply sit taking notes.

(4) Live blogging is risky.  Inherently risky.  You write thought quickly, without the time for full  risk analysis.  Who  might you upset?  There are a lot of egos in the room, including my own. I wrote stuff from the heart, often not from the head.  I was always a bit careful but not always.  At times I let my feelings run their way through me.  I felt frustrated and cross, I let that show.  But I didn’t let that bother me until I got a rude awakening: someone important came up to me and said they were disappointed I wasn’t enjoying the day.  That was far from the case but it made me realise that my perception and the way I expressed it was being read by others and their reading must be different from mine.  They are the other to my self.  I write for my self in the context of others. Others have feelings, can be hurt, cross too, might even be furious at me.  That is their right.  I can live with that, but yesterday I was distracted after receiving that intervention.  Whatever I wrote after that was influenced by that huge boulder was dropped in my pond. (The use of the word ‘boulder’ is an in joke: during the conference people spoke of pebbles and boulders…)

I haven’t yet fully processed the feelings conjured up in me from that moment.  The face to face confrontation (a very polite confrontation, I hasten to add) was followed soon after by a comment on the blog - the only comment on the day.  The comment was critical of me for the way I behaved in the forum with Andrew Keen.  Because the two came so close together, they had greater force than they would have had if I’d experienced them well spaced out.  I got very sensitive but I clung to the mantra: people are entitled to think and feel whatever they like… they have their right to be angry.  My job is to be curious about how they take me and to continue to strive to be myself.

(4) It was a great networking event.  The fact that I knew very few people there and didn’t talk to all that many doesn’t change that.  I’d love to know how the networking went and what it might lead to. But I’ll simply trust that it worked.  There seemed to be a great buzz in the rooms all day.  Great energy.  Even a few people asked me for how they could find this blog.  I loved being asked that and wished I had a blog card.  I’m going to get a blog card designed and printed quickly, before xmas.  Different from my business card.  So I won’t be writing on the back of my business card ‘OMANIBLOG’ - google it to find the blog.  When people find it’s called ‘From Bath to Cork with baby Grace’ that must be a big surprise, maybe even confusing…

(5) The  talent there was in that room…  the potential too.

(6) Why did I publicly offer to help people as a blogger?  Why did I offer the services of omaniblog to publicise your art events?  I’ve learnt over the years that an unrequested offer is almost never taken up.  So why did I passionately offer my blog in the cause of art organisation?  None of the people who heard me offer will contact me, and I may even have come across as a sort of nutter, an exhibtionist nutter, someone with no manners.  What are Irish people like? I wasn’t in America you know. However,  I’m glad I made the offer.  It was itching to  come out of me.  At least I lanced the boil - rather than sit on it and suppress it.  It’s good to let your self out to play and work.

(7) Would I go again? Yes, certainly.  Would I expect it to be different? No.  Would I anticipate better the likelihood that I’d become frustrated at the tiny bit of communal interaction at conference sessions?  Yes.  I’ve always found conferences frustrating, ever since university, when I found lectures so frustrating that I stopped going to them altogether (except Damian Hannon).  Every conference, without exception, that I’ve been to has stimulated feelings of frustration in me.  They are never run the way I’d like them run.  It’s not such a bad thing to experience anger alongside the huge satisfaction of simply being there.  Maybe I gain most when I have different feeling vieing for space? But, no.  I’d like the next one to be much more open to the floor, to bring people down from their platforms… Amen.

(8) Will I do anything differently, or anything different?  Yes and no.  There’s no point in spelling it out again.  Better to write a note to self shortly before the next such communal event.  I live a pretty singular life, a pretty familial life, only rarely do I go out in such a vigorous society.

(9) I’d like to thank the conceivers, planners, designers, and all those who made it happen on the day (the behind the scenes team).  I wasn’t expecting a free lunch: that was great.  I’d like you to accept that I got a great deal from the day and that I’d recommend others to be there next time too.

(10) I’m not going to alter a jot of the raw posts I did yesterday.  They are untidy, all the better for that.  If anyone wants to send in a comment to clarify something or correct the posts, I would love that.  Blogging is a communicative act.

It’s time to attend to other matters, like finishing the income tax return and sending it on line.  Like going to my conselling session in Cobh, and getting the oil leak in the car stopped.

Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Blogging & MediaNovember 25, 2008 5:24 pm

Mary Cloake:  Thanking people… the conference went well… will be available in podcast… we’ll keep the website live over the next few weeks until the conference output is loaded up. We’d like you to send us stuff to put on the website.  [I wonder if I’ll do that?]

A learning experience for me… energy enthusiam and intellect of people impressed me.  We have a policy context into which this fits.  The expertise is not in the Arts Council, it’s here in the room.

Meaning is co-created.

Thanks to John Kelly.

Arts and enjoyment….. I hope you enjoyed it.  Thank you very much.

Wow it’s over.  That was some experience.  Now I need a drink and some reflection.

 

Poetry, Art & Science, Blogging & Media 5:18 pm

(3) Question for a woman:  what would you want to do with the content? 

Damian Mulley: I don’t want control of the content.  I want different curators.

Why?

Because I want opinions.  Everyone should have the right to content paid for by tax payer. Amateurs and professional opinions. Amateur opinions is way better, in my opinion.

(4) Thanks for today.  A woman with a northern accent… will there be a forum be set up? 

Reply Arts Council:  not decided.  Nothing gets done… we went this to be the start of discussion.  We want dialogue to continue… (Is she serious?  She stressing this is a "very genuine" intention.)

[But will the Arts Council come on blogs and say something?  I’m going to ask that question.  But maybe I should shut up.  Who would be authorised to say something from the Arts Council? ]

(5) Statement: audiences neglected today… individually people in the arts trying to do something, but have you anything to say about how the Arts Council will take a lead.

Arts Council: we’re absolutely committed to finding out about the audience… we are in an information vacuum [Wow, this is extra-ordinary admission.]

I don’t agree that little is know about the audience.  I bet plenty is known and ignored, and easy to get at.

Audience: how do we think of the audience?  Arts Council: we need to look beyond the traditional view of audience - people who have stuff done to them…

(6) Congrats to Arts Council for today.  Stay in touch.

(7) Legacy: we can’t look to others for following this up.  Bulletin board.  2006 census.  31% under 24.  If we don’t embrace new media, we’ll lose future audience.  The live experience has a new premium attached to it.

(8) Please address POlicy in the new paradyme… please cultural hierarchy… serious ask for fundamental thinking.

Andrew Tayler: lacking… very stuck in mechanics… how a blog works… policy defines the world we’d like to exist…  How do we create a space within which people can eat and create…

(9) Omaniblog: What difficulties will it create within the Arts Council if you go back and suggest that the Arts Council come on to blogs and contribute

Art Council: I don’t think that sort of idea is antithetical to our approach.

(10) Question: how do we involve the older person, the over 55? Are they in danger of being left out?

John Kelly:  How do you get that other voice represented on the panel?

Andrew Taylor: if you draw your circle larger you’ll get more people involved.

Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Blogging & Media 4:56 pm

John Kelly in the chair…

Question to David McKenna RTEdoes RTE still see itself as Andrew Keen described the BBC ?

Never did.  This is a small country, listeners and viewers.  They feel they own the space we work in.  The stories we tell are their stories.  Very important we have that relationship.  New media is qualitatively different.  Ideas of judgement and expertise come from the Web (eg Trip Adviser) What could this mean for the Arts? There is no lack in freely available opinion.  It’ll be the interaction between the panelists.  And the conversation could continue afterwards. 

Curation of a public space: not suggesting we hand over the space to the audience for the benefit of the audience.

Dance in the box website.  I’ve not seen it.  Daily dance blog. Not just a review.  Immediate opinion.  Combining:

what happened,

who was there,

and review.

Stephanie O’Callaghan, Arts Council.

We want to start a conversation today… aware of the potential of new media… artists using media to produce new work… really open up a discourse and dialogue among people working in the arts…

Has the AC got the expertise to sustain this?

We don’t have the answers… we’re keen to enter into partnership… we can lead… the discussion here today… 

Andrew Taylor, Bolz Center: are we having a conversation we should have had a long time ago?

No, this is the conversation I hear at conferences all over the place. A great time to be having it now. Extraordinary opportunity Ireland has: a small market… a few major funders, boulders.  You could become a hothouse for innovation if you wanted to be… Less could be more…  now everyone has to have a blogger on the staff… (no one suggested the blogger should be on the staff)… we should be doing this, but nothing getting done… Systemic blockage…  Pull some levers and see what happens…

Open to the floor:

(1) Man, question: Arts Council needs to lead and to fund…If we delay, will be miss it all.

Artists act and then think about what they’ve done: act first, reflect later.  In other words, do it now, and think about it as they are doing it. Reflective practice. An art organisation should focus with extraordinary clarity on what it can do best…. Tiny interventions that change the systems: pay a blogger a penny for each ticket bought.

(2) Damian Mulley: could I have my content back… hand it over to people who would look after it… put up all your archives… more people would become interested in art… you have to give it out to them… you can’t download it… and it’s shit quality.

RTE response: let’s park the archive thing.  Legal issues.  Beckett experience was so hard for us to use the archive material.  Resources involved in clarifying the legal situation,

Andrew Taylor: release all right to future content… a new contract… a fair use agreement…

JK: I wouldn’t resist.

RTE: we’re setting up systems… Issues around revenue: the content we have is worth money on the internet… impediment: if there’s any possibility of getting revenue from it, they won’t agree to this idea.  arts@rte.ie: move to centralise media and data… our use of it could be more sophisticated

Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Customer service 3:41 pm

Someone’s saying RTE is a very good place for conversations on the arts and music.  But it’s not doing enough.  Whether Arts organisations need to take their lives in their own hands and relate to their audience.

Free events newsletter: anyone heard of it.  I haven’t.  I will see it.  11 A4 pages long.  Free.  Talk about what you’re doing.  I’m on line most of the time, I’m not watching TV.  

Contact the bloggers.  Ask them to turn up

Hurray.  Some good advice from a blogger to arts people.

Invite those amateurs in.  Haarness them.  Get their chatter going.  Diary every day.  Rehersals.  Dermot Moore is so right.  It as simple as that.

Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Blogging & Media 3:39 pm

One panelist is saying that art organisations in Ireland are not using the power of the new social networking tools.  You get hairdressers if you google "arts".

There is a comment on one of the earlier pieces.  I’m criticised for the way I spoke to Andrew Keen.  Even though I’d have loved to get a comment saying ‘I agree with you.  I like your style…’  I m fortune that the person who commented say what was on her mind here.  She was certainly thinking it and I had no idea how this blog on the conference would be received.  She could easily have stayed quiet and kept her counsel so I’m fortunate she thought it worth her time to send a comment.

 

This is in a room on the top floor.  It’s hot.  Another person is saying that not enough people from the arts are engaged in blogs.  Younger people are less afraid.  I’m so old here.  The Kilkenny blogger seems to be blogging a lot.  Ken’s blog.  Frank too and that’s it.  

Damian Mulley says there’s not a lot of people blogging about the arts in such a way that will hook young people.  So  is this a gathering of old fashioned people? That’s not meant to be insulting, but there’s a lot of talk here about a gap between the arts and people.

Imagination

Will

Resources

says Dermot McLaughlin.  That’s what’s needed.  I’ll keep quiet.  I’m not enough of an insider.  And I’m distracted by the thoughts about how I may have hurt people here.  I love vigorous engagement, too much.

Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Blogging & Media 2:37 pm

About 70 here…

Peter Fitzpatrick (Microsoft Ireland) is talking.  He’s a musician I think. He speaks softly and clearly. He’s showing products for CD Rom. He now supports product groups: script writers, Russian companies, Mexico - partnering with them. Regularly uses "LinkedIn" to find people.  Use MySpace to put his music out there. Real time encoding of surround sound….

Whatever you have now will be faster, cheaper… easier…

The best product is not always the one that survives… (Betamax)

I don’t know how these computers work…

We are all creative…. we are not all creating art…

Conor Mc Garrigle, a net artist since 1999.  It opened opportunities for me.  Founded stunned.org. He has an international arts practice.  My art career took off once I stopped making the objects.

Uses internet as a medium.  By-passes galleries. Festivals - works through them. I don’t see a distinction between the internet and real life.

Joyce Walks: re-enact Blooms day in any city in the world,  I must look at this.  Most of my work is done by walking on the street.

2008: 80 walks, 39 cities, 24 hours. Organised throught new media networds. Opened up access to a new audience.  Work takes place through the action of the participants themselves: I give them a framework. I research in the graduate school somewhere.  Is there a way to let participants in?

Fearghus O’Concuir (choreographer) ‘Moderator’ (his term) of the session - talks with a good feel for the theory of what is being done.  Optimism or realism? 

Fearghus O’Concuir (choreographer) responses: you have to use the opportunities that are there.

Conor McGarrigle: we can’t ignore the internet.  It exists and we must deal with it in a meaningful way.  Art has always reflected the social changes. I don’t think we have the options of ignoring it.

Peter Fitzpatrick: the glass is more than 3/4 full here. Internet is like all the others, print, radio …

Questions from audience (1435):

(1)  Access in rural areas. 23% of the territory covered in Ireland.  How lobby?

(2) How is your gallery funded?

(3) Do you get a lot of material sent in to you?  No, it goes on Flickr et al

(4) A comment: real time, very exciting… game development  Getlive.com (instant messaging, video editing, on line storage)  Livemesh.com

(5) Broadband:  via handset in India & china. 

Advice from panel:

Don’t be scared by technology.

The next trend: different voices, computers in the living room.  Laptop out of office.

Pen and paper will still be popular.  I’ll still use it.  You can feed back to developers of software what you don’t like and what you do.  Convergence is coming.  X-box game show: audience will be part of it.  You could be selected to be live on the show.  Sitting on a football forum talking about the match…

Will an audience be sitting there tapping on their computers?  My children don’t watch TV the way I used to.  They play on their laptop while watching.

Work where the audience becomes directly involved.  Art for arts sake that no one ever sees…  

A lot more stuff being done with maps. (I must use this in the PDF of Family Birthdates project)  People are now coming back into the traditional galleries. Convergence. Artists with a variety of tools available to them.

 

 

Depression & Health, Politics, Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Blogging & Media 2:13 pm

I love being here.  It’s so stimulating.  I’m getting all sort of ideas from the experience of meeting people, listening, and thinking.

Groundswell: read it.  Its about social media, people using it, Asian use patterns.  Lots of statistics there.

Nicola Brown a natural energiser.

I’m so impressed by what they’re doing in the South-East art office.

Someone just came up to me and fed it back to me that I’d given the impression of being dissatisfied with the conference.  I was taken aback.  Upset even.  Awful to be misunderstood.  I probably deserve it because I’ve sounded off about the process I’ve not enjoyed.

No process prevents me from enjoying myself.  I can draw value out of adversity.  The act of blogging a conference like this, is a great way to get out emotions with the force that they come first.  It also gives an opportunity for reflection and I’m processing it all as it goes along.

But I’ve been given a message. and the messanger didn’t stay long enough for me to let it sink in properly.  I’ve got a rude awakening.  There are people out there reading what I’m writing and they can be hurt by some of the things I say.  

I guess I’ve been like that as long as I remember.  Maybe it would help me to be aware of the huge hard work that’s gone into making this happen.  People are rightly proud of their achievement.

Time for a bit of calm and gentle writing from now on.  I hope that no one minds that I’ve written about receiving that message: it was sent to make me more rounded and aware of the outside world.

Maybe I’m just a cranky person and enjoy being a complainer…

Work & Play, Blogging & Media 1:58 pm

There is only one county arts website where blogs by artists are displayed.  That’s on Artlinks.

Fabulous to be hearing about innovation: the leader in the field…

We give bursaries, bit ones.

A Wiki-type art file… I may not have heard that right.

Why are they not all doing this?

Cost.  Their strategic plans.  I don’t know the full background. 

The arts officers seem to work in their own professional background.  Maybe it’s going to remain unusual.  Little local budget for marketing.  But I think this could be done at very low cost: there could be a local volunteer who draws no salary.  They could operate within a framework of policy and standards set down by the arts officers.  But volunteers could lift a load of work off arts officers.  Volunteers would have all the energy and enthusism of the enthusiast.  It could be a great project for a young person seeking to develop their skill at networking, community development… Or it could be done by a ‘retired’ person… Or it could be done by a consortium of bloggers.

The thing that gets in the way are 

(1) people protecting their professional area: you can only do this if you have the right background with relevant qualifications.  This helps reduce the pool of people who could take over parts of my job and I could continue to be indispensibe… It might help my job security.

(2) the belief that everythings costs money: we don’t have a budget for it, therefore we can’t do it.  Only things that cost get done.  But civil society does so much that isn’t paid.  Maybe there is a set of thoughts about how everyone should be paid for their skills.  That’s noble but that leaves the power to do in the hands of those that dispense funding.

(3) Inexperience: pure bloody inexperience - we have never done this.  This is scarry because it is new.  We are cautious publicly accountable people working with a mindset that does not reward innovation and experimentation.  We don’t punish conservatism.

(4) We are already overworked, therefore, by definition, we can’t give time to resourcing such a nebulous uncontrolled new project.  If we could take it on, that would undermine our case that we are stretched to the pin of our collars.  We need to look snowed-under.

(5) Outsiders within the system are hard to control.  We couldn’t manage them.  They might embarras us.  A rogue might get in and start following hobbyhorses.  Better to take leadership from people accountable to someone within.

 

 Rhymerag - see it.

Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Blogging & Media 1:36 pm

Artlinks

promotes artists.  A poet can register.  Can update their profile.  Arts curators can find artists at a click of a button.

She is showing us the website.  She’s from the southern hemilphere.

Amateurs and professionals showing themselves on the site.  Young people in their 20s.  

My job is to keep 18 year olds engaged

Their expressions, their events, their work… all visible on the site.

Artlinks aims to be the point where artists start: they find the Arts Council from the site. Constant conversations between her and the artists.

Younger people are more mobile: they can put themselves in several categories.  Links to Flickr.

Drama League of Ireland, 45 years established, full time office for only 4 years. 

How do you garner new audiences?

How long does it take you to do it? A few hours.  Users put us a lot of the content. I use a content management system.  I’ve a MA in media.  I’m a practising artist who uses the web tools.  I’ve upskilled myself. 

How do you deal with rogue artists?  When we put it together we made people have to log in.  Recently we decided to put the forum to the front.  I moderate the comments. People are saying this website is fantastic.  There’s a lot of fear of social networking. Its a huge challenge for people working in the arts who aren’t used to this way of doing things.  We have farmers putting themselves on the website. 

We put out a course brochure.  A monthly e-bulletin.  There is only me.

"Here’s how I did it in Wicklow…"  That man again from the Irish organisation.  We rang the travelling library, all the ladies would be there.  He’s talking as if we all knew each other.  How do we get to them?  My mother is over 70 and she has her own blog.

Sue Russell, Age and Opportunity, we run classes.

Arts review.com - look at it.  Ning.com a facebook that can freely be modified and used by groups.

She telling us a lot but not looking for questions round the group of 10.  More talking at us. 

980 in 18 months.  Most are visual artists.  Musicians use MySpace.  We are trying to involve others.  Writers engage less with the Arts Office.  We ran a course on beginners blogging.

This is all great stuff.  Pity she doesn’t enquire…

What are we interested in.   It’s now 1329.

For Writers: "Memoirs of Nepal" published by blurb.com written by Cathy Fitzgerald.  She is showing writers that they can self-publish at reasonable cost.

Man: I’ve been working with major companies in Ireland.  Why Bebo took off.  If I show you how others have done it, you will be interested…  It’s not complicated and expensive.

Poetry, Art & Science, Blogging & Media 12:37 pm

It’s 1156.  I suspect this event will continue in this vein.  And I’ll leave dissatisfied at how the talent of the participants is not utilised.

Assertiveness is tough.  People go so passive.  Sit as an audience.  Maybe taking time off, resting.  But they are not the authors of their own day.  They are recipients.

The panel know that young people today want to do, to make their own shows.  Apparently, without realising it, the panel disempower the audience.  Eoin began with several questions. he knew something was needed after the last slot.  He knows we need participation to bring this experience alive.  He has an intuitive grasp of all this.

Talking heads.  Listening heads.  If there was another blogger here, we could have fun between different rooms.  One blogger in one room and other bloggers in other rooms.  The laptop could be open with several windows, all there on one screen in front of you.  You could see what going on over there.

We could compare notes on the processes at work in each room.  Obviously there would be big differences in content but process is everywhere.  We can easily have dialogue around process.

I feel like putting a timer on each speaker.  I feel like screaming at Eoin.

He’s turning it out to us.  He’s said we are in the room.

The man in the audience asks a question.  The panel replies and we and we are back into the same dynamic.  I better think of something else to blog about…

How about having the panel in the middle of the room?

Another question: I make a programme.  How do I use the web to enhance what I do.  I don’t know.

Answer from Eoin: You may have to cede some control.  Conn chips in with his experience.  Let it expand organically… Let people call in…

RTE project: Storylines from drama dept.  Scripts collected, broadcast, public vote.  Reality show.  One winner.  Depending on the quality of the product, they’ll be funded to produce it professionally.

 There are a lot of people who don’t have original ideas.. says RTE. Blogs are there, useful

I am given the microphone:

I don’t have a question, but a fundamental philosophical psychological difference with the last speaker.  I make an impassioned plea for a different point of view. I try to say I differ. I try to say ‘you’re wrong’ without saying ‘you’re wrong’.

The panel speak as if they know.  

Conn isn’t interested in authority.  He’s staking out the consumer’s point of view.  I’m a consumer.  I quit the media, because the authority of editors, and managers.  Their concerns were making enought money to pay everyone’s mortgage.  That authority restricted me from producing the kind of programmes I wanted to produce.  

Now the panel have taken it back, the authority to speak.  They privilege their own talk from the platform above the 100 people sitting here watching them.

The room is full of watchers.  The few doers who do the talking have the floor, and I made myself one of them.

What I said was too complex to be coherent.  I wasn’t clear enough yet .

Briefly please, the chair says.

The internet provides an opportunity….    You can find an audience for your film.  I remember what it was like in the 1990s.  We made our own videos.  It was so exciting.  Now another speaker from platform.

No one has responded to what I said.  But I’m glad I said it.  There may well be someone down here who has heard me stuggle to express my dissatisfaction.  I remember how I went to other conferences, what it was like at UCD in 1968-71.  How we protested at being lectured at.  We could go into the library and read the books.  What we craved was dialogue.  Full on engagement.  We hated being traditional students.

How little things have shifted over the years.  I thought the sixties would revolutionise the relationship between people so that the future would be multi-voiced.  There would be a breaking down of traditional authority-filled discourse.  Out would come a more exciting cauldron, a steamy flow of cut and thrust.

They would be better to be in a circle and the audienc could listen in and watch what they are doing . The audience could have their own computers and could blog their impressions, responsed, reactions, feedback, resolutions.  Their comments could be recorded.  And there could be a follow-up session where the panel gather knowing what the audience have been thinking.  How different would Act 2 be?  Imagine convening a conversation after you know what your audience starting point is.

This model of a workshop is workshoping in the dark, being clueless as to what non-talkers are thinking.

A woman on the stage says ‘twitter is really good’, followers on twitter.  

Conn: that’s cultivating…

I love the energy that flows through that word ‘cultivating’.

How many people here would call themselves ‘artist’?

How many here would call them selfs ‘not creative’?

My gut feel is that there must be people here, who have said nothing, who are checking out what sort of ideas are flowing around.  A small ‘not-yet-a-band’.

"That’s marketing".

To which I say "marketing" is such a limited word.

The question we haven’t answered or asked is can these tools be used to create.

Poetry, Art & Science, Blogging & Media 11:55 am

include Conn O’Muineachain.  I told him I’d been depressed for over a year and that I’m well now.  He said he liked my question to Andrew Keen.  That was good to hear because even thought my main reference point for whether my action is good lies deep within my self, I still value what others think.  If he’d said that was a rubbish question, I’d have taken that as telling me something new about him.

Eoin Purcell, Mercier Press I met too.  Great to run into him because I ran a training course on strategic planning in about October 2007, after I got depressed.  First met him there.  It was good to tell him about my depression because I was bothered by whether I’d been awful that day.  Explaining how I was now better, and asking him if he’d like to meet up for coffee in  Cork, helped me too.

Otherwise, I met a pleasant guy from UCD who teaches on the MBA course there.  He’s dipping his toes into the blogging water.  I offered to help him if he wanted another sounding board.

Next, I’m at the workshop "New Media in Practice".  Most of the people here, about 100, are bloggers.  A small number of ‘twitters’.  Lots of ‘Facebook’. 

"Anyone live-blogging here?" asked Eoin Purcell.

One, yours truely…

On this panel:  Conn O Muineachain (New Media Specialist and Blogger)

Sheila de Courcy (Head of Young People’s Programming RTE)

She’s speaking now:

text doesn’t work for youngsters

they like being first, so they can show their friends

something slightly different and strong

four different age groups

know your audience.

Maura McHugh (writer and blogger)  talks about what she does.  Her remit is to deliver a limited range of info to members.  (What members?)  Newsletter email as well as the blog.  There are writers who don’t use computers. ‘Text is dead’ is not right.  A lot of places pay authors for their work.  Social networking sites can be very good.  Electronic submissions make it easier these days.  You used to be a loca artist.  Now you can relate to a much wider arena.

Nicky Gogan (Film maker, Darklight Film Festival) talking about a model of collaboration between teenagers: videos on U-Tube.  We pick the ones we like - we go run workshops for them.  The final ten films are there now.

Why isn’t there a lot more engagement with us the audience.  We seem to be using the most traditional  model of relationship between panel and particiapants. Now we view a funny film probably made by teenagers.  Funny.  Laughs in the audience.  A spoof programme.  Good fun.  Light relief.  We need it because this is so wordy.  The panel of 4 go on and get to talk.  What are we to do sitting here.  At least I have this tool for screaming out how  much better this could be.  The audience sits here, translating everything into its frames of reference.  We are incredibly active as listeners.  But we are treated as passive. 

Eoin turns and brings the audience in.  Thank goodness.  But we are quickly into question and answer mode.  Question followed by another long panel spiel.  I’, being very critical but I do know they are doing their best - within an ancient paradigm.

Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Blogging & Media 11:04 am

Andrew Keen: "When I’ve figured it out?"

Omaniblog  :  "Then you’ve passed your sell-by date."

That was my best shot at a pithy question to put to the panel.  The chair asked for short questions.  The panel gives long answers.  So there can be few questions.  

The BBC developing a Wikipedia would be very exciting.  Professionals using the tools.  My book was written for an America audience.  More state finance is my way forward.

Credible news resources.  Otherwise it’ll degenerate in America.

We’re nearing a break now.  About time.  Charles Leadbetter hasn’t given us enough on little pebbles.  But there is the day to come.  There is plenty of time to go.

Perhaps I’m the oldest person in the room.  Great.  This is a young person’s world.  The future is young.

We ask too little of the web… said someone.  

The web is extremely conventional.  We need Web 3.0.  We need to fight back against the democratising oligarchies.

Claps….

Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Blogging & Media 11:01 am

(1) People who have jobs, create viable business models.  Not-for-profit newspapers.

(2) Hammond wasn’t square. Collaboration, communication, community.  No such thing as collaborative art…  

I wish Andrew Keen would shut up now.  He’s simply repeating his book. He’s boring me, and I’m on his side.  I see him as a valuable pimple, a cold bath, needed to put down the excess of the quanitative movement, the one that values hits on web sites more than quality of product.

Rubbish squared.  Andrew loves his own voice, badly needs someone to say ‘you’ve said that, now what else do you have to say…’

Seamus Heaney on the web.  Pat Cotter is here.  Wopee.  An intelligent voice in the audience.  Relief to hear him speak.  He knows what he’s talking about.  A community of peers.

Poetry, Art & Science, Blogging & Media 10:46 am

Self promotes brilliantly.  The person of talent who is shy, what happens to them?  Shy eccentric.  Fine for a type of artist.  Marketing means everything.

But it’s always been hard for the shy artists.  

 

Uncategorized 10:30 am

American accent. 

 

I was the one who wrote ‘utopian cretin’…  Another open shirt.  Cocky north Londoner.  He does have a north london  twang…  Everyone’s a Jew, including me. I didn’t have Charles’ Songs of Praise experience.  Leadbetter’s point is a product of his difficult youth.

52m views: how much money has he made out of it?  That’s not the question says Charles.  It’s I want to be a better guitarist.

I’m assuming the question of how you are paid for your creative work is relevant.  How do you monetise your creative.  You need to be paid.  That is why CHarles is a utopian, idealising this culture.  

"The German Ideology" by Karl Marx.  Charles’s point comes from there.   Andrew is stuck in a British debate.  Defending artistic professionalism…

Cultural anti-authoritarianism… sixties.  eighties economic free marketism put those together and you get the internet.  How they destroyed authority.  This technology does not come value free.  The self-publishing internet intensely personalising culture… My son does the same as Charlie’s son.  Any one with a blog to become a cultural authority…  He’s repeating his book, giving us the generalisations, the conclusions.

Ideological struggle:  who’s camp are you in?  Cultural authority is one of the key issues of now.

Gramscian perspective of Charles.

I began life as a podcaster.  I interviewed people: I had to do it all.  I bought into the idea that we could dish the BBC.  Into that utopian notion.

The product I created was shit.

Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play 10:00 am

I wonder how many in this room are blogging it now?  How could I find out?  Maybe I could google the conference…

Obama is a boulder who talks pebble

Marvellous metaphor.  We need new ways of thinking about it.  Charles talks without notes, without PowerPoint.  He’s engaged me.

(1) experiences = enjoy experiences, intensely personal about them, engaged , absolutely absorbing, museum experience, very intense.  The role of the artist is to challenge the way we see the world.  Deiberately shocking to viewers.  Does things to you…

(2) experience = talk experiences… like football talk…I talk about it 3-4 hours with my mates on twitter, facebook.  the content is valuable.  Socialising points.  Talk is the point.  We talk our world.  Deeply social

(3) experience= deeply participative… creating culture… playing games… allow people to do rather than simply receive… Nicholal B relational aestetics… engage participants in the act

enjoy, engage, participate…  The best does all three.

The rub:  there are different ways of aligning things…

My parent 70 25 5

me 50 30 20

8 yr 20, 40,40

the enjoy better be good or he’ll be off.  Sunday night in our house: songs of praise, the thing that was between me and the coming week of school.  Now, i’m off to a web site where I can draw a picture.  Goes and does.  Does an animation  4 animations in an hour.  Read all the help.  Kid became an animator in an hour.

Wow

Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Blogging & Media 9:59 am

Tall slim, bald-headed with dark rimmed glasses.  Another open neck.  "You are a utopian cretin… Mrs Thatcher" - Charles jokes easily. 

He shows a U Tube video and asks us a question: a boy with electric guitar in his bedroom…  How many people have viewed that video?  An auction starts: 1 million, 5 million,  10 million, 50 million… anyone go higher… A guy on line: 52 million have seen that boy in bedroom.  Jerry Chan story, Tiwanese.  

Charles talks about the chain: no permissions needed.  What’s important is what the boy didn’t have to do…  Charles is inviting us to see a world in which the barriers are down; there is free access and fluid communication…  He paints a lovely picture of what the traditional set up would be: the jumps the author would have to make, the hoops, the phenomenal time it would take to get your video up…

I love his point… an entire genre on U-Tube.  No longer having to ask permission…

Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play 9:50 am

In an open-necked shirt.  I love his voice.  He’s an Arsenal supporter.  Someone else is a Spurs supporter.  Kelly leans on the podium, his weight on his left elbow.

He talk in a conversational style.  He’s just like he is on the radio.  An armchair of a man.

Politics, Work & Play, Blogging & Media, Customer service 9:46 am

I’m live at the conference.  The Minister of State is talking and he’s boring me silly.  He’s giving a speech that was written for him.  No clear main point.  He’s read from the conference agenda.  I think this is an insult to the audience who must surely be as bored as me.  What’s he trying to say?  Maybe he’s simply filling in time, standing up there on the podium making sure he goes on long enough to not have it noticed that he’s completely short-changed us.  He should be ashamed of himself.

On the way up I counted the number of men on the list of delegates: 1/3 men.  I picked out 6 people from Cork and 3 from Galway.  Ever the sociologist, I noticed how dominant Dublin is.  Easily known they began proceedings at about 0900, well before I arrived from Cork.

Great John Kelly is being introduced….

Depression & Health, Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Customer service, Photography & Travel, Food & DrinkNovember 24, 2008 9:36 am

Ballymaloe, "The Grain Store", the evening of Sunday November 2008 - a historic inauguration of a new concert venue.  An evening to savour, remember and plan to re-create.

 

[This is a long piece, so I’m going to break up the text with photographs without worrying about whether the photographs are in the most appropriate place. ]

 

I was invited by my friend, the sculptor, Lionel Powell (whose work you can see here). He said it was to be an evening of classical and traditional music, and that Micheal O’Suilleabhain would be playing.

 

 

 

There would be mulled wine before and nibbles after.  I was excited at the prospect of live music, and cautious about my ability to find Ballymaloe in the dark.

 

But what an evening!  What a place!  It’ll live in my memory for as long as that fragile instrument continues to perform well.

 

I better be succinct because I could easily go on at length about the hall which reminded me of the old Glyndebourne - its rectangular shape and almost churchlike atmosphere.  It also reminded me of Longborough - built by a farmer from an outhouse (a vernacular building), splendidly warm acoustics and an extraordinary transformation of use from the animal agricultural to the cultural spiritual.

 

I could wax on the fine music chosen by Sara Bryans (piano)

 

with Barbara Gisler-Haase (flute)

 

& Eva Landkammer (cello)

which set us off with Haydn, just to make us comfortable - and then took us into Martinu  [Poco Allegretto, Adagio & Allegretto Scherzando] and on to a composer I never heard of: A.F.Doppler ["Souvenir du Regi"]. This was a brilliant journey and I wrote this nonsense:

Sara, Eva, Barbara

A trio

on Martinu

High din

A F Doppler

Souvenir du Regi

After Scherzando

Melody for three

Friends

Jubalation… oration in a barn

Rory far Ming vase waltzing

 

in to an interval

in my life among the rafters 

Exquisite rapture

woken.

Rory Allen’s the farmer who made it happen

who brought it all together.  I met the man who put on the roof, did the brickwork and windows.  I met people called Adair and thought of my mother in Adare. I also met Andrea Jameson who has a painting studio in Capaquin. I saw men and women in hacking jackets and felt the warm buzz all round the walls of soft limewash.

While the trio were leading us on a flight of imagination, I drew my journey in my notebook.  So now I have an image of my imagination.

 

There was a break but no toilet in the hall, thereby giving people an excuse to nip over to Ballymaloe House.  I met two women, one from Georgia, the other Los Angeles.  It was great to hear a southern accent and to meet someone who knew about the Civil War, for whom it meant something when I said I’d been singing "Marching through Georgia" as I negotiated the country lanes to the big house.

 

O’Suilleabhain came on.  He needed no introduction.  I must have been the only person there who’d never seen him before.  He’s a giant in the field I know.  He’s a giant on the keyboard I experienced.  I thought of Keith Jarrett.  I let myself be roused to the march of a sterling player. He introduced his work with short paragraphs that whetted the appetite, that primed the ears.

 

I wrote in my intimate journal:

"The beauty of being able to say what’s on your mind about culture and all the tangents to that. To stand up and entrust your body with the job of being a way through for the unconscious transformations of thought.

Out come the words, the pictures, the stimuli to tickle the audience and bring life into the minds, bring the minds alive through setting  off little bangers in the brains.

Oh the joy of being me, loosening the restraints so that I flow out and on, swirl and twirl to the music within the soul

becoming a soul path, a boreen for the mind to play on…"

 

I can’t go on describing the proceedings.  There were the sons of Micheal, Rory Allen himself with his guitar, and the glorious voice of Orla McCarthy.  If she has artistic purpose and stamina (she has more than enough talent) she’ll become a star, and it was lovely to meet her parents who sat in the same row as me.  Frankie Lane, guitarist-singer, entertainer, performed "Ghost Riders in the Sky", and I wrote in bold capitals

GRAINSTORE WHAT A NIGHT!!

The drawback was that the evening was so packed with goodies that I had to be careful to stay calm.  I failed.  I went round meeting people - just like the hypomaniac I suspect I am. 

 

Today’s to be a calming day, a recovering day.  I’m to lay aside all those thoughts I had about this being the perfect venue for project one & project two - how I’d like to rush out and start filling the space with minds booked for journeys.

The food, nibbles after, was pea soup with bread and tomato sauce.  But what a pea soup - a Cully&Sully soup.  And bread I had to scoff as if I hadn’t eaten for days.

Suffice to say

CONGRATULATIONS RORY  YOU HAVE MUCH TO BE PROUD OF.  YOU HAVE DONE A LEGACY MATTER.  IT’LL LIVE AFTER YOU.  I THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

 

ps : If you’d like to see the whole set of photographs I took there, please let me know

Depression & Health 8:50 am

This blog is off the wall as far as I’m concerned.  It’s so different from my ‘normal’ way of thinking.  I put the link up, in case you are seriously into esotericism.  (That’s a made-up word, I think)

I’m going to give it a close read - to broaden my self.

Depression & HealthNovember 23, 2008 12:42 am

Found this late tonight.  I’m going to bed much too late….  I can’t keep my eyes open enough to read it carefully now.  It’ll have to wait a bit.

Poetry, Art & Science, Work & Play, Blogging & MediaNovember 22, 2008 8:53 pm

My first play, "The Stakeknife in the Graveyard" is being read in the Cork Art Theatre one-act play competition.  I’ll know in January how the judges rate it. 

I’ve had a review from someone who better remain nameless because he’s not given me permission to quote him. (See below for that review.)

My second play is much more ambitious. 

It’s a full length, three act number, with at least six important parts.  After you’ve been to it, you’ll have a great feel for America in the second half of the nineteenth century.

I’ve been building up the characters and making wonderful progress.  But not one line of dialogue was written, until yesterday.  That’s when I had the thought of writing the play on my mobile phone.

 

 

Nokia E51 has a notes function.  A place where I can jot down notes, fragments of dialogue, like…

"Did you know Abraham?"

"Who?"

"Abe Lincoln?"

"Now how could someone like me know the President of the United States?"

"I did."

"Oooh. The big double double-yous knows the big men does he?  Good for you darling."

"He was your Captain… your Captain.  You  must have know him.  I didn’t ask if you’d met him."

"Oh, all right.  Of course I knew him.  Wasn’t he the reason I changed sides in the Civil War…"

If I write another hundred or two such snippets, all I’ll have to do is glue them together. And Bob’s your uncle.  I wonder if anyone’s done it before? Written a play on their mobile? 

If I can think of it, someone’s done it. Maybe readers will enlighten me…

I googled "writing a play on my mobile phone" and this came up:

by Duncan Riley on December 2, 2007
 
and again
 

Tomorrow’s Rainbow: 86-year old Japanese nun writes cell phone novel

 
They even have a Mobile Phone Novel Awards - so it looks as if I’m simply catching up with the Japanese.

_____________________

First review of "The Stakeknife in the Graveyard" (after reading the script only)

"I read the Stakeknife in the Graveyard this morning which I am 
assuming is largely about Freddie Scappaticci, or the kind of men 
who end up torturing their own flesh and blood and the dehumanising 
effects of the sort of war fought in NI. I think the play expresses 
well the kind of isolation that is the inevitable outcome of a 
conflict where neighbours and families are thrown into conflict with 
each other, blurring identities, destroying personality, perverting 
normal human feeling and rendering loyalty meaningless. The location, 
the sparse dialogue - more internal than conversational - the 
innuendo, the hints rather than the revelations, all serve to veil 
full exposition and to heighten the sense of a pervasive unease and 
sinister occlusion. Aodh’s final outburst on page 33 goes some way 
towards a catharsis, but with the arrival of the shadowy overseeing 
figure in the graveyard, we are back to business as usual - the 
ongoing accounting and recording of the list of the dead and the 
undoubted grim promise of more.

It is bleak, and I think your use of a rather engaged/disengaged 
conversational style between Boyd and Aodh serves very well to create 
the kind of chill de-personalisation that surrounds their lives.

Fair dues to you Mahnee. A strong piece of work.

Now, where did I leave that whiskey bottle?!"

_____________________

I’ll be forever grateful to that author.  I couldn’t resist sharing those finely chosen words, that prose I admire so much.

 

Depression & HealthNovember 20, 2008 11:54 pm

A fine bit of personal stuff from a person who knows what she talking about:

bi-polarity, hypomania and depression, together with good thinking about schizophrenia.

She also seen the second half of the Horizon programme on BBC.

The blog’s called :  "The Secret Life of a Manic-Depressive.  - a guide to being mentally interesting".

Work & Play, Customer service 11:28 pm

The story so far:  Barclays Bank (UK) shut down my business bank account without telling me.  They are now frustrating my effort to get to the bottom of why.  Previous posts are here… You can read all the emails so far.

I got fed up.  I haven’t yet made a complaint. All I’ve done so far is try to find out why they shut the account without telling me.

I decided it was time to involve Barclays Bank senior management.  They needed to know what had been done.  So I wrote this email:

From: Omani
Sent: 14 November 2008 09:54
To: Moore, Paula : Local Business Network

Subject: RE: Closure of Business Account

Dear Paula,

May I please have the name and email address of the director in change of your area of Barclays Bank?

Yours sincerely,

Omani

I got this reply seven hours later…

Friday, 14 November, 2008 5:17 PM
From:
To: Omani
 
Hi Paul,
 
Apologies for the late reply but I have been engaged in a series of customer appointments all day today.
 
Please forward any correspondence to my area manager Helen Williams who will respond to you in the first instance and will be able to assist further regarding escalating this higher if necassary.
 
The address to write to her is 37 Milsom Street, Bath, BA1 1DW.
 
Have the compalints team been in contact with you? If not is this something I can help with on Monday?
 
Many Thanks
 
Paula  

 

I was shocked at the suggestion that I write a letter…
I thought it best to take my time before responding…  So I slept on it for almost a week…



Until today…
________________________________________________________________________



Thursday, 20 November, 2008 11:18 AM



From:  Omani



To:"Moore, Paula : Local Business Network"


Bcc:The Wiffe


Dear Paula,

I’d like to bring this matter to a speedy conclusion, without giving up in frustration or letting it take over my precious time.

(1) I asked you for the name and email address of the director in charge of your area.  I don’t want to drag this out by discussing it with every level in Barclays hierarchy, and I don’t want to go looking for the email address myself.

(2) In this age, it is ridiculous to suggest that I resort to ’snail-mail’, I think.  I won’t write a letter.

(3) I still haven’t heard anything from the complaints people.  You must know this already.

(4) I am Barclays’  customer.  I deserve world-class customer service.  If this goes on much longer the issue will no longer be why Barclays closed my  business account with telling me.  It’ll become why Barclays can’t handle a disgruntled customer and regain that customer’s confidence.

Yours sincerely,

Omani

My gloves are off… I’m still waiting for a reply… Maybe Barclays Bank are sleeping on it. If you put "Barclays Bank close my account" into Google, you find this blog on the first page.

 

Depression & Health, Poetry, Art & Science 11:13 pm

I bet you’ll also be impressed…  You’ll want a copy of the book too.

If the book is half as good as the graphics, it deserves to become a best seller.

Depression & Health, Politics, Work & Play, Blogging & Media 9:11 am

You never know when a new idea is going to strike you with the force of its attraction. 

The best you can do is ready yourself to receive it with open arms.

So it was this morning when the idea of writing The Depression Manifesto came to me.  

I copied Karl Marx & Friedrich Engel’s ideas into a word document, and inserted it into a table with two columns: one for "The Communist Manefesto", the other for "The Depression  Manifesto".

And then I began to write…

And then I thought of sharing the idea in its formative phase…

Maybe a reader of omaniblog would be willing to help write "The Depression Manifesto"?

For example:

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of how people have struggled with depression…"

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