John, John, John & John

Great Russell Street, London

John Lennon, for some reason, has been punctuating my life the last few days. It started when we saw a bloke taking a selfie with a statue on a bench at the top of Carnaby Street. He didn’t realise the person portrayed in bronze was John Lennon.

My last two posts have been about John & Yoko. Last night’s was written after watching Kevin MacDonald’s doc ‘One to One – John & Yoko’. Shortly after publishing it a producer I’m working with (who hadn’t seen my post) emailed me saying that she had been inspired by me talking about my small collection of music-related photos to buy herself a photo. She attached it. It was John Lennon!

backstage at Ronnie Scott’s

Tonight at Ronnie’s Sarah Jane Morris sang ‘Fragile’, a Sting song I used to play a lot but never realised it was to do with the murder of John Lennon, which SJM explained. Her version was brilliant – she really has a knack of making songs her own. We are currently working on a film project together.

And earlier this evening, on my way to Bar Italia & Ronnie’s, I took a photo of the Lennon quote above on the window of a 24-hour restaurant near the old YMCA. I actually spotted it a few days ago when I was sitting inside with a rainy view like Edward Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’ reversed.

A few days ago I was talking to a colleague about the lack of boredom these days and how important boredom is to youthful creativity. The Buzzcocks first single had (I think) their track ‘Boredom’ on the B side (it was certainly on their debut LP). Relishing wasting time and being bored are useful precursors to original thinking and innovation.

Present Tense

“There’s no other time but the present. Anything else is a waste of time.”

John Lennon, Melody Maker, October 1971

“Life is what happens to you, While you’re busy making other plans.”

Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy), 1980

Matching Yoko’s words from yesterday with John’s as they are one of the greatest of love stories and a fascinating creative partnership. Post-Beatles in particular John Lennon clearly made concerted efforts to understand himself better and exorcise his demons. Learning to live largely in the present would have been part of this – easy to say, really hard to actually do.

There’s a yin yoga class I like to do on Sunday evenings in Brighton. What always strikes me about that chilled hour is what an immense struggle I find it to keep my mind present in that room.

Reflecting on the past has its place. Envisioning the future too. But living the moment is the key and the place where most satisfaction is to be found.

A regret that’s easy to avoid

“The regret of my life is that I have not said “I love you” often enough”

Yoko Ono

directed by Kevin MacDonald – one of the best docs of 2025

Just watching ‘One to One’ documentary in time for 2nd round of BAFTA Film voting which closes tomorrow. Before settling down to viewing, I went for a walk & talk with an old school friend. As we parted at the gates to Cherry Tree Wood he embraced me and told me he loved me (in a friendly, platonic, hetero kinda way). It was a slight surprise but heartwarming and meaningful. Easy to do yet impactful. John would approve. So would Yoko. (And George. )

the final rooftop performance

Embracing uncertainty

We tend as humans to strive for certainty and definition, hard lines and comprehensible patterns, familiar routines and rituals. Life, however, is rarely certain or hard edged. We don’t know how long we have here on earth. Sometimes it’s tempting to follow a leader just to have some clear rules to obey. We may well want a rest from change. But change is the essence of growth and more often than not is complex, interdependent and not entirely predictable. What’s most interesting and inspiring in life is hard to pin down and fully define. You can’t draw in black lines the feeling of walking home after your first kiss. Uncertainty is full of promise…

Mental Radar

Phillips auction house, Berkeley Square

Our mental radars are fascinating. We can train our brains to notice certain things.

After spending 13 years at Channel 4 where issues of diversity were a thing long before the advent of DEI and where giving a platform for minority voices of all kinds is baked into the remit, a sensibility becomes instilled meaning that when I visited the Royal Opera House last week I quickly noticed there were no black people among the thousands of audience members (eventually I spotted one person plus one on stage (the maid of course)).

Many years ago I met a lovely eccentric woman called Karen. She used to find single gloves in the street and take them home and hang them over the bath. I think the idea was to reunite single gloves with their lost partners. I evolved this into a photo game when Insta came along (long before Tom Hanks got the glove-photo habit). After years of posting #onelostglove photos not only do I have a highly evolved capability for spotting single gloves, but also it has rubbed off on some of my friends and followers who now notice lone gloves and even send me their glove-pictures on the sly from all over the world.

Whole lotta glove

Trust in Nature

Came across this quotation on location in Morden Hall, South London this sunny afternoon. Olivia Hill was the Victorian social reformer who co-founded the National Trust (whose first building was  acquired in 1896 in Alfriston, Sussex). It acquired Morden Hall (built in 1765) in 1941. Hill was a friend of Henrietta Barnett, the fellow social reformer behind Hampstead Garden Suburb, the model for planned green suburban developments. 

Tranquility, fresh air, accessible and unhindered views of Nature remain key to mental health and contentment. In these screen-based, digital  times immersing yourself in 3Dness and natural variation with living complexity is more vital than ever.

Morden Hall Park

Get Lucky

“As the man once said, the harder you work, the luckier you get.”

Ted Lasso

Ted Lasso is brilliantly scripted television, as good as it gets. The main character’s optimism and homespun wisdom is just what our times need. Which “man” he meant in this line is unclear but it’s a thought worth acknowledging and absorbing. One man who did express this inspiring notion was French scientist Louis Pasteur, inventor of vaccination and pasteurisation. He said…

Chance favours the prepared mind

Louis Pasteur

The more you practise and prepare, the more chance you have of spotting something important or making a break-through connection, original/surprising connections being the essence of creativity.

Pasteur’s exact words were:

“Dans les champs de l’observation, le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés.”

Being sensible is overrated

“No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.” [WH Auden]

Just on my way back from my first ever visit to the Royal Opera House, London (for an opera – I saw President Clinton speaking there once). The plot of La Traviata has more holes than a magic flute. Auden’s reflection on opera reminds us that sensibleness, rationality, logic and seriousness are not the stuff of generating creative ideas. Playfulness, silliness, absurdity and irrational imagination are the essence of idea generation in creative thinking.

Inspiration & Work

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” [Pablo Picasso]

Photo: Edward Quinn. Picasso working on the ‘War and Peace study’ drawings on the wall of Chapelle de la Paix – Vallauris 1953

Picasso was nothing if not a hard worker. He created art works each & every day, well into old age. No doubt inspiration struck him from time to time, but he was always teed up to respond to it and concretise it. Other times he would simply produce whatever came to mind to see where it lead him. Like a football team grinding out a win, even when they are not playing particularly well or beautifully. So even when you’re not feeling especially inspired just working is the thing to do. It sets the optimum conditions for inspiration to happen and be turned into a creative result.

Spiral

I finished making this today – it took a couple of years to find the spherical stones, mainly on the Sussex coast

I first saw this table display when I was at university (by Jim & Helen Ede)

at Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge

“Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covered before, only higher up; as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive; we go both round and upward.” [William Butler Yeats]

Fellow writer Vladimir Nabokov saw similarly…

“The spiral is a spiritualized circle. In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled, has ceased to be vicious; it has been set free.”

Life as repetitious and progressive is an uplifting image. The repetition such as the cycling of the seasons or the rising and setting of the sun brings the comfort of familiarity, as well as reliability and connection to history. The progress and rising reflects the acquisition of wisdom and understanding.