Tag: Trump

Word processing.

I’m sitting drinking a shit coffee in the sunshine. I can say the coffee is shit, but that doesn’t make the coffee shit for you. If I gave it to you, you might love this shit coffee. But by describing it repeatedly as shit and writing that down I have power over your perception of the coffee. If I then tell you it’s from “Al’s Coffee London” then you might object. “I love the coffee from Al’s Coffee London,” you might think. But you might not post it in the comments. Because the article holds more authority than the comments. If you do it just looks like trolling unless you can gain momentum with it. Even then – you might have seen the comments after virtually everything Trump tweets. And people still believe that shit. The proprietor of Al’s Coffee London might get stuck in. Their tone is likely to be propitiatory at first, trying to limit damage: “We are so sorry you find our shit coffee unsatisfying. Have you tried our new range of crap tea?” Why do they feel the need to go to that effort? All I’ve done is write an opinion in a frame. Why does that carry weight? Simply because I built it from nothing and here it is with a title and a photo? They’re making the stuff. I’m just consuming it.

In truth, I’m liking this coffee. I’m just thinking about creation vs consumption. I’m in the sunshine in London Bridge. But I’m not going to tell you who sold the coffee to me. With all that preamble you might still think it was shit.

People want control over how they are perceived, just as companies do, just as coffee makers do. I broke a rule last week and it got me into trouble. I usually check with people before I put photos of them up, or I try to. I put up a photo up without permission because it was late and I was tired and I thought it would be okay. I got hauled out multiple times. Because I was taking image-control away, which is unfair, particularly in an industry where image-control can directly affect our chances of work. We’re in an environment where someone with very little skill might be preferred for a job because they have millions of Instagram followers. Just because I’ve not given a crap about my face for too long doesn’t mean other people shouldn’t give a crap about theirs. The only other time I put a photo up that was unwelcome it was because of a misunderstanding. But that misunderstanding drove a wedge in a long established trust with an old friend. We care about how we are perceived, and people that make things with words can subtly alter our perceptions, as can a picture

Journalism is a good example of words bending perceptions. Look at the Daily Mail and the way their articles employ assumptions and adjectives. Like Donald Trump hammering the nail of “crooked Hilary” – (he may seem oafish but he’s a master at this) – these things can drip into our consciousness until, with repeated exposure, we can forget that it’s not fact. I am convinced that Paul Dacre (editor of The Daily Mail) had a hand in killing my mother, by dripping poison into her ear daily – she subscribed. “Everybody is on the make, nobody has altruistic motives, watch your back, they’re waiting for you to slip up.” She lost trust in the world and that contributed to her early exit. Bear in mind this is me, dripping poison about the Mail and Trump. Filter everything you consume, people. It’s rare there is no agenda. Even here, unless I’m hammered.

Ursula le Guin has it right when she teaches, in The Earthsea Trilogy, that to have power over something you must know its true name. I’m trying to discover the names of things as I go along. Sometimes I get it right, sometimes I get it wrong. But in the same way I’d never paint a word picture of someone and deliberately misrepresent them, so I should not put a bad picture of someone up and say “This is exactly what they always look like.”

An image is not a true likeness. But it has power. For years after their death, I only pictured the sick versions of my parents. Now with time those images have been replaced by happier ones from happier times. But pictures, images and memories can stick around in your head for ages.

When we make something and put it out there, we run the risk of it being unwelcome. I might buy a coffee and then send it back because I don’t like it. I might take a picture and someone might object. But it’s still important to make more coffees and take more pictures. We are all consuming more than we generate, and yet we have so much choice in what we consume that we can say “this coffee is shit.” or “This blog is rambling and overlong.” And we must too, otherwise everything ends up shit or overlong or Starbucks or Daily Mailish.imag25101313724835.jpg

The things with the most power at the moment seem to be the things with the least depth. I don’t know how this happened but I want to believe that people are going to start noticing that they’re being drip fed crap and demand better coffee, better blogs, better journalism, better leaders. Or, better yet, people will start MAKING better coffee, WRITING better blogs and journalism and BECOMING better leaders. Roll on the next generation. Can’t be worse than these clowns.

Liberty and Trump

Day 7

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

130 years ago, a woman – Emma Lazarus – wrote that sonnet to help the funding of a pedestal for the new colossus that would welcome the dispossessed as they arrived at the land of the free. A colossus in the form of “la liberte”, a gift from the French, built by Eiffel. Marianne is her French name, Libertas her Roman. She stands for freedom, and for reason. She stands for the American dream. A welcoming and inspiring sight to immigrants, lighting the way with her torch, holding her book of law. Welcoming the disaffected to New York Harbour.
It seems strange that 130 years later, the same nation has sworn in a president who appears to have no concern for reason, and certainly none for immigrants. And as for his unquestioned thinking about women – to quote numerous overheard conversations today – “Just when we were getting somewhere…”

So across the nation today, and much of the world, there have been marches in peaceful protest. A chance for anyone who is concerned about the trickle down effect to mark a small statistic, while feeling a strength in numbers. If the one at the top has unexamined prejudice, will that trickle down through society and give permission for those with conscious prejudice to behave terribly? And if the one at the top has conscious prejudice, then should he be on top?
In Los Angeles, turnout was always going to be huge. I hook up with an old friend in the morning and she and I drive to Highland Park metro, knowing that driving into downtown would be a fools errand. The queue for the metro is round the block and every train that comes is packed. Which is a good sign. The atmosphere is still bright, the sun is shining, people are chatting, loads of people have brought their kids.

We queue for ages. We lose hope. We get momentarily fractious. We rejoin the queue. Eventually we decide to “London it”. There IS room in the trains, you just have to play the armpit Tetris that is played every morning across the tube network. I’m back to hapless Brit: “Goodness this is fun, it reminds me of being home in London, here if you put your elbow in my navel then I can fit the back of your head under my left knee, and if it stops suddenly just grab my beard.”
Once on the train we get to the thick of it super quickly. It’s not so much of a march by the time we’re there. More of a stand. We end up stationary at First and Broadway. Coincidentally there’s a stage right by the spot where we grind to a halt. We’ve hit the centre by mistake. A man called Charlie BeReal comes up on stage with a guitar and plays the star spangled banner. The word in the crowd is that he is one of the roadies and he built the stage. He’s just grandstanding to the biggest crowd he’s ever had. That would make sense considering he is followed by a steward making crowd control announcements too quietly, fruitlessly asking the marchers to keep moving. The crowd is not movable though. We have nowhere to move to. We have people coming towards us from 4 directions. We stay put. Chants bubble up and fade. I’m slipping in and out of American accent. Everyone is smiling. There is not a sniff of bad energy here, no impatience, no fractiousness. Lisa Marie says “That’s because it’s a women’s march,” which is a fair point. A number of speakers and activists hit the stage, as well as the mayor. There are a lot of people, and more coming all the time. It’s like being part of some huge friendly slightly geeky beast. Some of the placards are ridiculous. Lots of trumpvaginas. Lots of cultural references : “We’d prefer Joffrey” , Dumbledore quotes. A 12 year old has “I don’t want a cheeto for a president.” (Cheetos look like Wotsits.) It’s a creative, friendly, sparky, fun warm protest. And statistically there were 750,000 people in downtown LA for it.


That’s huge for such a friendly atmosphere. It felt like the Notting Hill Carnival with less beer, weed, music and stabbing. Actually, no it felt nothing like Notting Hill in the slightest. It was just lots of people. And no fighting. The poster in front of me read “Please put women in charge” and based on that protest, I’m in. If the symbol of “la republique”, the triumph of the republic, is a strong green woman that fairly welcomes the dispossessed and calls for reason and liberty, I’ll take that any day over this cruel, inward-looking, vain, entitled blustering hypocrite. With his small gropey hands and his orange sweaty face.

Augurs and Antipodeans

Day 6 and the skies open. Sheets of hard rain batter the little hostel in Venice, shorting the fuse and killing the wifi. All the people in the hostel that were sitting around the table watching the news on laptops stand up blinking, unsure of who they are, and in hushed tones talk of leaving the building. But it’s raining. When it rained hard, one of my parents – I forget which sadly – would say “The Angels are Weeping.” It happens all the time in stories, when terrible things take place there’s a storm. I keep following the inauguration on my US phone and examine that unfamiliar word. In-augur-ation. An augur is an omen. “A putting-in under omens.” Trump is being put in. And it’s pouring with rain in California… At noon I check out the window for a flock of bats.
Today I’ve started to use an American accent when talking to strangers, so now there’s no more of the hapless Brit card to be played. My first conversation at the coffee stall goes acceptably even if I probably sound like Welsh Mexican. We talk about Revelations in light of the apocalyptic weather. I’m getting away with it right up to the end when having stirred my latte I ask “Have you got a bin to put the rubbish in?” “Whut?” “Oh … gosh … I mean Is there a trash can?”. Damn.
Shortly after the inauguration speech I get a message on Facebook. “Are you still looking for a room?” Boom. I say yes before I even look to see which of the million messages I sent bore fruit. It’s an antipodean couple, one Aussie and one Kiwi. I go to meet them in Larchmont a long way from Venice, 20 bucks in an uber. Screw that. Today is the day when I finally have to accept that I am going to need a car here. I really am. An hour and a half on the bus to meet them and their dogs. They are lovely. We get on really well. I’m moving in immediately. An hour and a half back to get my stuff. An hour and a half with my stuff back to their place. 4.5 hours on buses. I almost read a whole book. But now I have a big room with a door in it. I have a bed that is mine for 2 months. The room stinks of dog but I’ve been looking for an excuse to get an essential oil diffuser and I saw one for 15 bucks in TJ Maxx. And both Laural and Mark seem lovely. And the dogs!
They have three rescue dogs, Marley, Janey and Roger. Marley is my friend immediately. He has seen things. He was a bait dog in dog fights, and was left for dead in an alley. He’s covered in lesions and scars. He’s a survivor, and has the calm of one. Janey is alert but friendly, and only Roger is wary but I know it won’t take him long. In fact he just jumped up on the bed next to me, and is sitting on my leather jacket. Perfect photo opportunity. Laural gave me the beard kit in the photo, as she had forgotten to cancel a subscription when Mark had to shave for an audition. Ahh yes. Auditions. That’s part of why I’m here. And now I have a doggy launch pad…


I have the weekend to get my freshly edited reel on Vimeo, shots are in place, Monday is my first official day in Los Angeles.

The calm before the storm?

Day 5. In Santa Monica there is a mock Tudor building on the corner of a street that sells Heinz Tomato Soup for 4 bucks. You can get a bottle of Fairy for 7 or even a Yorkie Bar for too much. It looks like most of the shops in Stratford upon Avon in that it’s trying to look Tudor but isn’t, and it’s called “ye olde” something. In this case “Kings Head Shoppe“. It’s rather lovely to behold. I walk in and it seems to be doing a roaring trade. Santa Monica is where all the expat Brits tend to settle and I can see why. It’s got everything. It calls itself The City of Santa Monica and it sits on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. If you walk to the end of the pier you find a sign marking the end of Route 66. 2448 miles from Chicago, the road out west. You’ve made it pilgrim. This is the end of the road. Sit yourself down and have yourself a Jammie Dodger. That’ll be 4 dollars.
The town itself has a huge centre full of shops. There are pedestrianised boulevards, coffee shops, the first bookshop I’ve seen since I arrived, and chain stores. It’s like Milton Keynes with vomiting stegosaurus fountains instead of concrete cows. So I go shopping. There are no yoga mats for less than 50 bucks anywhere in Venice, but of course one for 10 in T (J?!) Maxx which I snag as I’ve taken to doing yoga every morning. When in Rome. Then I book myself a ticket for the matinee of Lalaland at 3.45. I call it research. And maybe it will cheer me up with the inauguration looming. Armed with ticket and mat I wander towards the ocean to prevent a shopping spree. The sun is blazing after a night full of rain, and I want to put my hand in the water. But I get distracted. There’s a bloody great big promenade with a funfair on it where Route 66 ends. Ferris wheels, roller coasters, fortune tellers, games. I burn 2 dollars in a ball shooting machine and get 500 tickets which nets me a vile fluffy pink tiger eating someone’s heart. Clutching it by the neck as a toddler would I become fascinated by the Pacific. I love the sea. Even in London I live by water. But this ocean… I can’t even contemplate the distances. I watch a man fishing at the end of the pier. He keeps pulling them in and chucking them back. Too small. But there are plenty of fish in this sea. My thoughts sink into it. I get out my phone and track ahead on the map. Page after page of scroll and then you barely miss New Zealand. I imagine striking out into it in a canoe. Vast.


Pulling myself away I go and immerse myself in Lalaland. I can tell you now after 5 days, it’s hard hitting documentary realism. Once again I’m lost in fantastic reverie. Here’s to the ones who dream. By the time I leave the cinema I’ve cried so much my beard is soaking wet. I was going to walk home, but I’m a wreck, and uber pool is 2.99. Trump gets in tomorrow. The cold is blowing in across the desert and tomorrow it will rain. My uber driver says “I honestly keep hoping I’m about to wake up from a terrible dream.” Ugh. Back to reality. What I wouldn’t pay for a comforting can of Heinz tomato soup.