The artist Godmachine - who I interviewed in this book right here - posted this on Twitter a few nights ago and I wish I had said it. It goes:
@godmachineuk: the best thing about the original star wars is that we didn't have the internet.
There's an awful lot of truth in that short sentence, but I'm not going to elaborate on it. Instead I'm going to roll down a parallel track and suggest that a lot of things were a whole lot better when we didn't have the internet.
I don't know if I really mean this. Being one of those who spends too much time on it, I'd like to test the theory by removing myself from it for one whole calendar month. This might prove awkward with the day job but I have some time off soon - almost the whole month that I need and even though I'm going to have to work some of it just to keep things moving, if I plan carefully, I might just be able to carve out a fortnight without switching on the machine.
With the assistance of an old Sony slider phone, the iPhone can go in a drawer too. It will be a great experiment because although I'm sure I used to have a much different life to the one now spent in front of a keyboard, the one thing I had and valued was a huge range of 'stuff' that was not necessarily fed to me based on something I once looked at and now an algorithm thinks I may want to spend money on.
As much as I love technology, I need to commit to this - I need to get back to a place in which I'm not hyper aware of what everybody is doing. A place in which I more regularly slip some vinyl from its sleeve, sit down with a book and chew some things over in my own little world. These things happen now for sure but the first sign of a buzz from this slab of glass in my hand and I'm gone. That's not the way I want to live, but it's become the way I do and that's not right.
How will I blog? I guess I won't but I'll sure as hell stack up a lot of material to kick off the new year.
I invite you to join me... but not just yet. Best get Christmas shopping and some work out of the way first.
Then we can party like it's 1976.
•••
In other news, Hector is booked in for a very 'manly' operation a week today. That's going to be fun (fun: hard work) keeping him calm for a few days. It would keep me calm but him, I'm not so sure. I don't think I stand much chance of keeping a cone on him that's for sure...
