My Creative Week: 9th - 15th September 2023
What I've been reading, watching, listening to and up to lately.
In my ongoing and, indeed, endless attempts to live more intentionally and creatively I intend to document what I am reading, watching, listening to and up to on a frequent, albeit irregular, basis.
This will be something of a bumper edition as, in the fervour of starting something new i.e. my new website and this newsletter, I have much to say. Whether future editions are so abundant we shall see but, then again, I keep hearing we all have the attention spans of goldfish these days so brevity is probably best.
We start with creative actions; last Saturday my partner in Pretty Neat Productions and I finally made it into the recording studio with some fab actors to record scenes from our forthcoming audio drama ‘Calyptra Morteferum’, the first in an anthology of creepy stories called ‘Shivers’.
After months of planning and writing it was great to finally hear the words come to life. Unfortunately, immediately after the session my partner got a chest infection, which has put paid to this week's session but we shall soldier on and hope to have the first episode out in November at least. By the way, if you are not familiar with audio dramas and how they differ from audiobooks check out this explainer on the Pretty Neat Substack.
The rest of the week was largely filled with business-as-usual, which is fine because I run my own business but I bumped into an old industry friend who is new to my neighbourhood so had brunch with her at a local spot and caught up over a couple of hours - which is the joy of being self-employed of course!
We bitched about the state of creativity in marketing, which has become overrun with accountants, and swapped articles including this fantastic antidote to the AI utopianism you’ve probably have seen all over LinkedIn: https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/will-ai-become-the-new-mckinsey.
In addition to reading news to fuel my anxiety I am currently 3/4 of the way through ‘Money’, the first in Martin Amis's so-called 'London Trilogy'. I've always struggled with literary fiction which is generally character rather than plot driven because, well, not much happens. But with age comes patience and sticking with this book has been worthwhile. The main character is utterly reprehensible - a philandering alcoholic junkie film director - but the world he inhabits, filled with money and glamour and deal-making, is seductive though it was written in 1980 when the film industry was even more corrupt than it is now. From the vantage point of 2023 the main character's sexism, misogyny and homophobia is even more shocking but serves to shine a light on the kind of cowboy operation Hollywood was then and, in the light of Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement, continues to be.
In addition to my usual diet of podcasts (‘The Rest Is Politics’, ‘The Rest Is History’, ‘Page 94’, ‘Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast’, ‘Made by Music’ - yes I am a centrist dad!), I've been listening to ‘War of The Worlds’ by Bromley's own H.G. Wells read by David Tenant which comes included in your Audible subscription if you have one. I've never read it before but what's extraordinary is a) how a Victorian could imagine a techno-sci-fi with robots and laser beams in, and b) how he lands them in suburbia where they are juxtaposed against sleepy villages of ordinary commuter rather than Presidents and Prime Ministers. Gorgeous language too.
Musically there were two huge releases in the last few weeks; the first new music from the Rolling Stones for 18 years and the first new music from Guns ‘n' Roses in...well it depends what you consider actually constitutes the line up of Guns ‘n’ Roses but either way both tracks are better than almost anything else in the charts.
But I'm not all about the big names and just ordered a handmade box set of CDs from 'There Is Another System' a British ambient electronica outfit from Leeds who, in their own words, 'soundtrack the lost Sci-Fi films of 70's French cinema' - as you do. I heard about them because they just collaborated with Singapore's own Analog Girl (also worth checking out) on new single 'No One Is Coming For Us':
Hear/buy their new album 'Le Mal Céleste' from Bandcamp now:
I'm not watching much at the moment but I did just replace my Disney+/HBO subscription with a subscription to Mubi, which is described as 'a place to discover ambitious films by visionary filmmakers. From iconic directors to emerging auteurs.' I'll let you know what I find on there over the coming weeks.
And finally, I've been booking up as many concerts as I can afford in Singapore, which due to the eyewatering ticket prices is not very many but still, Weezer are coming to town on October 11th and Britpop icons Suede and Manic Street Preachers are co-headlining a gig on November 22nd.
Now I'm off to try and finish a film treatment, but more on that soon. Nx