As I asked yesterday on The Other Place, if you miss seven days of your daily blogging project, does that mean it’s over? It was a rhetorical question as I’d pretty much decided. Without going into tedious details (I only do that when I haven’t already decided) the 365 project was designed to get me writing again in a loose and enjoyable way. And it worked. My writing here and elsewhere improved and I got less precious about what I put out there. But occasionally I’d slip up and miss a couple of days and for some reason I had a rule that they had to be written sequentially, which makes sense but wasn’t particularly practical. And in the end the project that was supposed to help me write was just filling up my todo list and holding me back.

So there’ll be a change. If I have something specific to blog about, something that lends itself to a descriptive title, I shall blog about it in the traditional way. If I just feel the need to splurge about the day, in a 40/365 style, I shall do so and use the date as my title. And having imported all the old ASH-10 blog posts in here I hope to get back to writing in earnest about that stuff, whatever it is these days.

Some days I shall write a lot, sometimes I shall write very little or not at all. And that is how it should be.

And with that, we begin again.

It is very very cold indeed.

Went to Wolverhampton Uni today with Fi to give a talk to a group of Creative Writing students. It was a favour to Fi’s old tutor there (she was there 6 years ago) and a potential hook into some new work but pretty much covered the usual areas. They’re looking to make a living from their writing but are confused by the hype and fright spouted by people who should know better about what the Internet will do to their precious words. I was there to do the broad strokes stuff while Fi, as someone who has adapted her career to making words work for her online, did the practical stuff. It went pretty well, I think, and was a nice reminder that stuff me and my peers take for granted is still an issue for most everyone else. It always astonishes me that people who haven’t even published anything yet are worried about piracy and copyright. As I said at the end, if piracy becomes a problem then you’ve already won. Worry about that if and when you’re lucky enough for it to happen.

Afterwards we went to the pub and drank much booze. Wolverhampton has cheaper booze than Birmingham. And that is why I don’t have much more to say. Head still hurts.

Last year TEDx Birmingham emerged as a thing-that-actually-might-happen (after a couple of false starts over the years) and they put out a call for submissions. Like most sane people I like TED talks and the notion of doing one, even one of the not actual TED but in the style of talks, was rather tempting.

The theme for TEDx Birmingham is “The Next Revolution”, although I haven’t found anything to explain what that actually means. I assume it’s a play on Birmingham being (one of) the home(s) of the Industrial Revolution, or something. Maybe it ties in to the digital revolution or whatever what we’re going through at the moment will be called in retrospect. It’s all very unclear. Maybe that’s the point.

When I sent off my submission I wrote something or other but because it was in a web form and not an email I don’t have a copy to hand. In essence I said I’d figure it out nearer the time, as I often do with public speaking. I don’t like to prepare too far in advance because it’s very likely I’ll change my mind by the time the event happens so I tend to write stuff the week, or the day, or the hour before actually standing on stage. (My favourite ones are when I don’t prepare anything at all and just react to stuff that’s thrown at me by the audience, but they make whoever’s organising the event nervous for some reason.)

Somehow this vagueness got through the submissions process and I got an email last week saying I’d been shortlisted. Which was nice. The email was a bit weird though. Because it’s a TEDx event and because TED is very particular about things that happen under that brand, a certain number of hoops have to be jumped through. There’s an audition next week for the shortlisted folks, followed by a tutoring session on the phone to ensure we do things properly. Then there’s a rehearsal a week before the event itself. That’s four things spread over about 6 weeks.

When I saw all this my first instinct was to throw in the towel. But then I thought, maybe this is something I need to work through. If I’m resistant to the process it’s likely me that’s at fault in some way. And it might be interesting to push myself through that. After all, if we just did things we enjoy all the time we’d never learn. Or something like that.

So I decided I’d do it. Which means coming up with something to talk about for circa 15 minutes related to The Next Revolution. Something that in 2 months time I won’t be bored of thinking about. And, if we’re looking for pressure here, something that I’d be proud to have videoed and uploaded with the TEDx logo on it. (I’m not under any illusions here – there are hundreds of thousands of TEDx videos floating around now – but it’s still a thing.)

Here’s what I’ve got so far.

• Can you have “revolutions” in a fragmented world?
• All revolutions tend towards mediocrity given time. A revolution is simply a niche becoming mainstream. Therefore revolutions are boring.
• Whatever the next revolution is, we won’t see it coming.

In other words I’m dissecting the theme. Which might be what I do but it’s not very interesting beyond the phenomena of “Pete doesn’t understand the theme”. But I’m kinda stuck. I’ve just been through this Social Media Revolution, apparently as one of the key players in the city, and while it was sparked by something genuinely interesting most of it was empty bullshit. Revolutions, to me, are just annoying people blowing stuff out of all proportion, usually so they can sell something. What matters are interesting people doing curious stuff. What really matters are the things that aren’t revolutionary.

Fuck revolutions. They’re a distraction from the important things in life.

Maybe that’s the topic of my talk.

Effectively I have until Thursday afternoon to decide. That’s when my audition thingy happens and I’m either rejected or locked in. If I’m still stuck by then expect another working-it-out blog post.

Popped in to today today to see Claire Farrell of EC Arts. Rather astonishingly it was the first time we’d met up since the exhibition at the library last year so it was well overdue. That experience was very important for me but not in the usual bright and shining positive way. I had a nagging feeling that while I was proud of what I’d done I’d fundamentally failed at something that I couldn’t put my finger on. That, combined with the need to earn some actual money over the summer and autumn, made me burry it to the back of my mind for a while. It was only when my camera died and the replacement didn’t work with my TTV contraption, giving me the realisation that I could put that whole thing to one side and completely move on, that I started figuring out what was going on. The revamp of Art-Pete was the result of that. It’s not about the work itself. It’s about my use of the work to say or do something.

So, anyway, much to catch up on with Claire, me on all the things I’ve been doing since the Library, her on her current project 48 Sheet where artists use billboards as canvases. Lots to process, which I did by pretending I had a billboard of my own to fill. I don’t – I missed the deadline and I don’t think my work is ready for one just yet – but it was a handy exercise. Must write it up for Art-Pete once I’ve done my diary.

Today I was working with Antonio on BYOB Birmingham a Bring Your Own Beamer night we’re doing for the Flatpack Festival at Vivid in March. Except I won’t be there because I didn’t put it in my diary and when Fi asked if we were free that week for a holiday I said yeah, I reckon so. But I’m still involved and it’s still our thing. What sort of thing it is exactly I’ll let emerge over time.

I like working with Ant on stuff. While he appears to behave like a rubber ball thrown down a well he’s actually very focussed and those two things combine rather nicely. I can be enthused by his scattershot thinking but his focus holds me on course.

Part of BYOB is going involve us creating a load of mini-artworks for the (currently empty) Tumblr to promote the thing and give a sense of where we’re coming from. So I’m going to be making lots of GIFs in my spare time this month. Here’s one I made this evening.

I fear have may have screwed the pooch regarding my attempts at beard cultivation. On the sides I have trimmed the cheeks too low and clipped the jaw too high. I have made the critical error of assuming that sculpting a beard is simple when, in fact, it is a skill.

While I can save the bit on the chin I shall have to cut the rest of it right back and start again. Still, plenty of time before Supersonic…

Other than a bit of driving and a walk around the park behind the swimming baths in Stirchley (yup, me neither) today was a lazy day. Didn’t do much and that was a fine amount of much to do.

Have been very heartened by the takeup of Photo School. Nine people booked and six of them paid. The last couple of days it’s seemed like every time I check my email they’re another enquiry. Now, if we can get the price right for the future (this month is at a major discount to get the word out) we could be on to a good thing here.

In a desperate attempt to Leave The House this evening we pondered going to the cinema. The Artist seemed like a good choice and it was showing at The Electric. The thing is, the last time I went to The Electric on a weekend evening the other cinema-goers were drinking and clinking and getting up and going for a piss all the way through which got kinda annoying. I get that The Electric do this thing as a differentiator from the other chain cinemas and I get that the bar is a necessary income stream and I get that people like this sort of cinematic experience and I know it’s not always like that in there, but I’m not going to risk it again.

So we went for a curry instead at the Kolkata Lounge, criminally my first visit for 10 months (FourSquare is rather handy for this kind of “oh my, has it really been that long?” stuff), where I was slightly shocked to see their refit had gotten rid of the little nooks and turned it into an open plan room. Still, we ordered and the food was, once again, utterly amazing. I cannot recommend this place enough.

Amusingly in the space on an hour I saw three people I recognised from the artyfarty scenes – a cameraman, a musician and a promoter – which reminded me of when I first moved to Kings Heath and kept seeing Custard Factory types in Somerfield. Stirchley really is up and coming in a major way.

Then we came home and watched a film on the tellybox. Lovely.

The Artist is showing at The Electric til the 2nd. Reckon we’ll go see it on a weekday.

Had a hack at the beard today. I’m currently trying to grow it into something I can be proud of at the Supersonic Festival in the autumn, so I’ve got a good 9 months to work with. For Christmas I got a beard trimmer which is great for getting rid of the sprouty bits up to a certain length and for tidying the edges but where I really fall down is actual shaping. I’ve never done anything creative with my beard – it’s always been the result of not shaving, a sort of anti-grooming – and I’m cack-handed as fuck.

It’s okay, but only just. The moustache, which I felt was getting a bit bushy, is now quite the opposite of bushy. The cheekbone areas where I’ve been shaping the edges are slowly getting larger. The sprout of long hair on the chin is most certainly not tapering into the rest of the face. And finally there’s a glorious bald patch right under my chin where I forgot to put the gradation whojamaflip on the beard trimmer and took it right down to the skin.

I kinda joked that I’d do something like this in the summer. Facially it’s looking less like a joke.

(Epic thanks to Fi for her assistance today, without which it would have been much worse.)