A Day Condensed.

I can't even begin to think about writing anything remotely useful after the weekend. Shattered. A single day show can take the wind right out of your sails but work aside, there was also some fun to be had in the cracks. First of all, I had lunch with my buddy Mr Scott Cole (well, we sat in an area where other people where eating lunch and that's as good as it gets sometimes) and discussed things that should happen in the future if we can keep our eyes on a bouncing ball. Which is also as good as it gets sometimes. I'd have been happy to sit around and talk about cardboard boxes with jam inside them to be honest. It's always good to catch up with friends in the flesh. To mark the occasion, a self - courtesy Mr Cole. (Note to selves: Get some sleep). 

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Sometime later that same afternoon, we hooked up with my slightly newer friend Mr Wayne Simmons as arranged (it doesn't always work out like that) and found a quiet corner in which to make a nest and rustle up something of a podcast. It went on a little long - we know this for sure because the video camera we were using ran its battery out and then it got too dark for Scott to take any photographs - eventually, we were left sitting alone in the dark so figured we had best call it a day, but there was at least another six hours left in us. Content-wise, we talk tattoos and the four shows we have a year (natch), the tattooing scene (also natch) and then brought in some horror books/movie commentary (generally speaking and our own projects), shot the breeze about writing, editing and anything else that we came to mind. To be fair to Wayne here - he had a plan and came armed with a notebook. I think it was me that wandered off on the tangents. I think it's because I don't see many people on a day to day basis.

Here's what it looked like - colour commentary by me:

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When all of this will be available to listen to/watch, I have no idea - certainly not today or tomorrow so don't hold your breath... but soon. Definitely soon.

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Later still, I sat down with Mr Paul Sweeney (who apologises for the state of his site in advance and has promised to fix it real soon) to discuss some future plans we have talking about for ages. Maybe it's simply that January is here and everybody is keen to get along, but things are starting to come together all over the place. The plans concerning Mr Sweeney are good fun too. They involve funny people, a possible exhibition and some cross-pollination amongst friends. Hey - everybody else is at it. That seems to be the way to make things work around here. More on that much later (like weeks not days) as I need to organise some stuff at my side of things. I also found out that Paul's girlfriend, Hannah, is the agent for Emilia Clarke (Khaleesi in Game of Thrones) - after that my attention kind of wandered off.

Sorry chief. Girl who is mother to dragons beats anything we might have had cooking on the stove.

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Even later than that, I finally caught up with my long time buddy JJ who made it for a coffee and we talked about expanding on something that has something to do with 100 rock stars. I need to get this stuff uber-straight in my head before I attack it but it's always cool to have the foundations of a plan in place. More on this much later.

That's the top end of the interesting stuff - the rest of the weekends happenings will appear elsewhere in their own good time. Right now however, I have a teetering pile of emails to reply to, more words to string together than I know where to begin and I'm struggling to keep my eyes open. For once, I think I'm going to give in and hit the sack before midnight.

Just once though...

The Man Who Was Wednesday

If you've been hibernating for the last few months, you'll have missed the fact that we now have a dog. Time consuming? Hard work? Sure - but totally worth it. I even built him his own blog so that I wouldn't write about him too much here but it's very tempting all the same. There's a lot of things on the proverbial desk this week, let's see if I can make sense of it all. First of all, on the day job front, we have a show this weekend which is always good fun if not rather time consuming. I'm looking forward to this one because my buddy Wayne Simmons is coming up to work on some stuff, but we also have clandestine plans to do a podcast. Wayne figured it would be a fun idea to interview me about my 'career' in magazines (I'm sure he intended the term loosely) and then also about by books and writing - something that I'm really looking forward to because I've never been made to really think about it before. Back in the real world, I know I won't be able to help myself and it will transform itself into a two-way street pretty swiftly, so if you're a fan of his work, stay tuned for the results of that. I'll post them here and Wayne will do his thing with it as well. If the name is damningly unfamiliar to you, Wayne has written a good few books (or a few good books even) - all the info is over at his linked blog there, but the latest is called Plastic Jesus and looks like this...

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...and it's totally worth your time. Anyway, if it all goes wrong, the worst that can happen is that we'll have a "hair vs no hair" picture to post. Sometimes, that's as good as it gets. Mr Simmons (everybody should have a friend called Mr Simmons) also puts on his own show - Scardiff - in err, Cardiff (natch). With the wind in the right direction, I'm looking to release Turn The Lamp Down Low in time for it and launch it there, but that's months away (October) but it's a heads up for you all the same.

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I've been reading about.. hmm.. how can I put it... "making things happen when you're out on a limb" this week and came across some good wisdom along the way that I think is worth sharing. In Seth Godin's book The Icarus Deception, he puts it like this (and I paraphrase): Oprah (as a show) is dead and buried so you can't go on her show to get noticed, but YouTube actually wants you to host your own show and they will give you the space for free - but neither Oprah or YouTube will call you up. The record company's aren't looking to sign you but iTunes and hundreds of other places will be only too pleased to play host to you. Sadly, they're not likely to call you up and ask either.

The point of this section is that it's in our very nature to wait to be picked. To seek permission and authority for somebody to say you are good enough and that in turn, validates what you're doing - but the world only turns on that axis for a select few and who knows what's gone on behind the scenes in order to get them that far. Sometimes, the very thing going on behind the scenes is the very thing that's being suggested here - getting off your ass and making something because it's there to be made and only you can do it your way.

Later in the book, there's a great section about your audience. How you can read 24 good reviews and one bad one - guess which one you'll hold onto. That's right.. the bad one and exactly why you should never read any reviews - good or bad. Ignore them all. I need to quote this next part:

"After you've created your art, whatever it is, it's done. What the audience does with it is out of your control. If you focus your angst and emotion on the people who don't get it, you've destroyed part of your soul and haven't done a thing to  improve your art. Your art, if you made it properly, wasn't for them in the first place. Figure out who your art is for, get better at connecting with that audience, ignore the rest."

There's one final bit that hit home with me: he then describes how a big enough audience will destroy you because some of them will want what you do taller, shorter, wider, thinner, cheaper, more expensive... but (and this is the important part if you're still with me on this) it's only the mass marketers that need everybody. You do not. You only need to matter to a few.

Interesting trains of thought huh. The key is actually believing in it and living by it knowing that it's true no matter how hard it gets.

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Meantime, the best thing the web has turned up for me this week is this fine article on How To Make A Bone Chandelier over at Atlas Obscura. Take a look. What in the world could be simpler than this: