Uncertainty

The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”

– Seneca

Things are weird and getting weirder. It can be oppressive sometimes and the uncertainty can be challenging. Easier to say than to do, but a focus on the present is good for staying more zen and using your time more richly.

Freedom

“The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.”

—Aung San Suu Kyi

Fear and anxiety are major blockers to living your best life. Both on a basic quotidian life level and on a creative level. It’s impossible to innovate or break significant new ground without being bold and feeling unconstrained (beyond any limits you chose to set yourself as a frame like the three unities in classical drama).

Richie Havens opened Woodstock with an improvised rendition of ‘Freedom’ on 15th August 1969

Pretty perfect

To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, painter

The Gust of Wind (Fitzwilliam Gallery, Cambridge)

Sometimes prettiness is enough. Sometimes a sparse fleeting moment is enough. Sometimes an impression is enough.

Two Sisters (on a terrace)

Craft & Calm

You can’t do traditional work at a modern pace. Traditional work has traditional rhythms. You need calm. You can be busy, but you must remain calm.

Bill Buford, Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave

Another quotation drawing attention to artistic and life rhythms. Adrenaline-fuelled creation is not as profound or satisfying as finding the calmness of flow.

Train of thought

I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I am going.

Anna Funder, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

en route to Bristol

There’s something about trains that is very conducive to both thinking and writing. Clearly connected to rhythm.

Essential

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

Philip Pullman

Does water count as nourishment? What about air? Companionship is a bit insipid. Connection is better. And purpose is right up there.

‘Stories’ includes mythology and scripture – things that help us understand, and come to terms with our mortality. That’s why they are so high on the essentials list.

Three-act story structure

A survival mechanism orders the world into cause – effect – conclusion.

David Mamet – Three Uses of the Knife

I’m reading ‘Trip to the Moon’ by John Yorke, my old commissioning colleague at Channel 4. He actually used this quote from American playwright David Mamet in his previous book, the excellent ‘Into the Woods’, and includes it again in this new book about “understanding the true power of story”. He uses it to show how the three-act structure is central to the way that humans naturally think and deal with the mess of everyday life. Yesterday I delivered a lecture at the request of the International Emmys about story in factual programming and documentary. For that I went back to the principles of why we tell stories at all and included the central need that we as humans have to impose some kind of order on the chaos of our existence, spinning on this piece of rock through the universe. That’s much in line with John’s central argument – I actually wrote the material my lecture of yesterday was based on several years ago for an MDes (Master’s) course I was commissioned to deliver at Ravensbourne (film school) – to write that course I went back to core principles over that summer and enjoyed thinking through why we tell stories. I opened yesterday’s lecture with a clip of storytelling round a campfire: Joe Strummer of The Clash, who loved a good campfire, at Glastonbury telling the story of a pet chicken who almost got torched on a giant wooden cross (how Joe became a vegetarian). John’s entertaining new book and putting together that lecture, which was called The Power of Story, are a welcome reminder of why what we do in telling stories is so useful to ourselves and others.

highly recommended!

Here’s something I wrote on this topic seven years ago – reason No.3 for telling stories is the countering chaos one discussed above https://aarkangel.wordpress.com/2018/12/24/story-structure/

Good Prince Bad Prince

“I make music because if I don’t, I’d die. I record because it’s in my blood. I hear sounds all the time. It’s almost a curse: to know you can always make something new.”

Prince [1991]

It’s always fascinating to encounter an artist who needs to make art to live. The most successful documentary of last year, the excellent ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’, showed Robert Plant to be such a person, all the more striking as it is in contrast to the great musicians who are Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham. Dedicated and talented as those three are, Plant is qualitatively different. You can see that music is the air he breathes. He recently performed in Eastbourne with his new band and, whilst he performed a couple of Led Zep songs to please the crowd, he was trying new things, singing with Suzi Dian and their band Saving Grace, playing folk and Americana, still exploring as a 77 year old. Like a shark who needs to keep moving forwards to live.

The Future

When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?

Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

Back in the 60s kids were excited by things like space and science. Now they are waiting for World War 3. Of which Einstein said in 1949:

Craft

“First learn to be a craftsman; it won’t keep you from being a genius.”

Eugène Delacroix

There’s a lot to be said for thoroughly learning your craft – whether it’s filmmaking or painting or maintaining car motors. Malcolm Gladwell proposed the 10,000-hour rule in ‘Outliers’ – contending that some 10,000 hours of focused practice are required to achieve mastery in a field. Not sure he’s got the number spot on but the notion is convincing. Innate talent alone is not enough, we’ve seen that time and again. The film and TV business is full of such masters from Johnnie Burn, Sound Designer of ‘The Zone of Interest’ and more recently ‘Hamnet’, to my old boss DoP Roger Deakins.