Learning to Write Again

Last week marked the first 2017 meeting of the Oxford Writing Circle. We discussed our writing resolutions and inevitably they were often something like “I want to write and read more!”

Writing more and reading more are my writing resolutions too — and old readers will know I like resolutions. Yet in 2016, I intentionally gave up freelance writing to focus on Five out of Ten and my latest adventure, Reasonably Vegan. So these resolutions raise a couple of questions: what kind of writing do we want to write, and given the fact that everyone in the Writing Circle has the same resolutions — and the same as last year’s failed promises — how can we turn our desires into virtuous habits?

Note: this essay discusses techniques that personally work for me. If you require a disclaimer that they may not work for you, consider an alternative website that treats you with less intelligence. Read more →

Review, Resolve

It’s 2016! Where’s my flying car? 2015 was a great year for me: I achieved a lot of personal and professional goals. Unfortunately none of those were part of my New Year’s resolutions. Time for a post-mortem… Read more →

Alan’s Favourite Music of 2015

2015 was an exciting year in music, not just because of the launch of Cast Iron. As with last year’s roundup, the usual caveats apply: I generally (but not exclusively) listen to rock, metal, and punk, I didn’t listen to every album that came out this year, and this isn’t a list of the best albums of the year – just my favourites.

Read more →

Five out of Ten Design Walkthrough: Seeking Solas

A design timelapse of a Five out of Ten article. Read more →

Human Resource Machine

Boxes and Arrows

I think I think like a programmer.

I take a very systematic approach to everything, because ultimately everything is a system. And every system can be described in terms of boxes and arrows. There’s a TED talk about How To Make Toast which explores this point brilliantly but it might as well have been called How To Make Toast & Also This Is A Schematic for Craig’s Thought Process. Read more →

Random Record Review: Platinum Hook

The Rules

I put the needle on the groove and type out the review of a band I’ve never heard before.

The Random Record

“Platinum Hook” by Platinum Hook.

Another find in the Oxford Music shop in Stockbridge, Edinburgh.

The Reason

The Review

Side One / Track One: Bittersweet (Greg Wright-Ronnie Vann)

Yes. Those synths sound like those moustaches, for sure. This is like going to Sonic the Hedgehog’s uncle’s wedding reception in both sound and embarassment at quite enjoying myself.

“Stick this in your ear, baby”

Subtle opening line.

Yeah I like this. The bass has a cool chirpy wah effect – it’s like a blippy, happy little scooter chugging its way through the song. Look, I’m not a music journalist so you best get used to phrase like that.

Crickey, there’s some pretty egregious synths on the go here. The keyboard player spent a lot of money on that synthesiser and dammit he’s going to twiddle all the knobs whether the song needs it or not.

Ok so reading the credits this song isn’t written by anyone in the band. Perhaps leading with a song they didn’t write is a bait/switch tactic? Let’s see…

Oh there’s a very gospel-tinged organ creeping into the outro. It’s a pretty colourful collection of sounds that sits nicely together. Busy instrumentation but not too overwhelming.

Side One / Track Two: Hotline (Wuilliam Talbert-Tyrone Steels-Edward Lattiomre)

Oh that’s a harsh transition considering this is the smoothest of smooth intros. I feel a sax is about to enter the story… Oh but I do much prefer this instrumentation.There’s space in the song to actually hear the instruments.

Here’s a fundamental truth of the universe: The fewer elements happening at the one time, the better. When applied to music the fwer number of sounds, the bigger they sound If you want to make an instrument sound impressive, give it space to sound impressive.

Oh wait I’ve read the credits properly: “PRODUCED AND ARRANGED BY GREG WRIGHT.”

I totally can’t tell what the backing singers are singing though. Might just be the vinyl which is pretty worn. Somebody spun this over and over and over.

Ah I like the descending bridge: simple bass stepping down the scale and pianos tinkling away at the top end.

STAND BACK!

SEXUAL GUITAR SOLO INCOMING!

PULL YOUR “O” FACE!

BITE THAT BOTTOM LIP!

HIPS ARE THRUSTING (presumably)!

Yeah I like this track too. It’s got a slower rumbling beat and has a cool (80s walking around a city at night in the rain) cinematic quality to it.

Another fade out… I should really research if fade outs are more prevalent in vinyl recordings due to space constraints.

Side One / Track Three: ‘Til I Met You (Robert Douglas-Stan Foster)

Oh hello, Mr Sax. I thought you were showing up in the last song. Oh yes, Mr Sax, I see you there, you can stop doing that now…

Ugh.

This song feels generic in every way. Like you could buy it out of Disco/Soul Ballad IKEA and assemble it yourself. There’s no real dynamic or control. No real craftsman skills required. It’s a slush of bits of music happening in sequence.

Ugh.

I’m bored.

Ah, I see this song was written by the keyboard player. Though I don’t really hear any keyboards… Maybe he wrote this one so he could leave the stage and comb his moustache.

I reckon he’s the second from the left.

Oh finally this turgid track fading out…

Side One / Track Four: Standing on the Verge (of Getting it on) (George Clinton-Grace Cook)

Funk yeah! Super Tight brass opening! Tightly syncopated lyrics to the brass section with some subtle chicken-scratch guitar and bass/synth to back it all up.

Oh god this so much better. A nice showcase for the horn section and a chunky riff that reminds me of the main theme to Cowboy Bebop (cos I am nerdo).

The title of the song does sound — hang on a woman just said something in a southern cowboy accent — anyway, the title sounds like a Blood Hound Gang title. Relevant 90s reference.

Hmmm… do something different now song, you’re basically repeating the same 40 seconds and getting looser each time…

Ok this is moving “There’s a song(soul?) out tonight, yo, c’mon”. It’s won me back. Apparently I’m really fickle and you can lose this *points to booty* if you get lazy.

Yes, finally some quality funky giutar and bass “me time”. Oh and really nice subtle flanger effect on the guitar too.

Aaaahhhhh, this song was written by George Clinton. That explains why it’s so good. This makes sense.

Ok fading out on Side 1… Bittersweet and Standing on the Verge were good. I’ve already forgotten Tracks 2 & 3. Good work, brain, thanks for not cluttering up the place with the non-essentials.

Side Two / Track One – Hooked for Life (Robert Douglas)

Ok I won’t lie. I’ve not gone immediately onto Side Two. I fell down a brief YouTube hole culminating in this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkBSOapmJpc). So yeah, enjoy that later. Some great Star Wars facts in there. The Machete Cut is the way forward.

Anyway, onto Track One!

Side Two / Track One – Hooked for Life (Robert Douglas)

This sounds like a rubbish Children’s TV Show intro; something about a group of kids who fight bad guys in space with their dinosaur friends by playing stodgy music.

Very similar vibe to Track 1, Side 1, to be fair. It’s still too busy but I am enjoying parts of it. Parts. Not the whole.

Ha. Totally arbitrary stop/start after the chorus there. Why not? Well it totally gutted the flow. Silly choice.

Yeah I think my opinion of Platinum JHook is that there are too many people in the band and the songs are too busy as a result. It’s well performance but there’s no sense of purpose/direction.

Ha. I though it was fading out but it was me only me yawning and stretching.

Side Two / Track Two – Lover What You’ve Done (To Me) (Tina Renee Stanford)

Oh good grief. Am I playing Side 1 again? This sounds like the other smooth nonsence  I’ve already heard.

Ok the chorus with the big bass/piano has it’s moments. Ugh, but the rest is the usual wash of strings, tinkling piano doodles and meandering acoustic guitars.

Yup this song has one good riff in the chorus. Again, it’s because the riff is a few instruments playing together with purpose. The rest of the song is people filling space with sounds.

Side Two / Track Three – Gotta Find a Woman (Stephen Daniels-Victor Jones-Robert Douglas)

Why is this song starting with jungle sounds? Are those vocals sounding like a monkey? I’m intrigued.. kind of. It’s slightly odd and sci fi- oh no wait, it’s some kind of funk/calypso?

“Gotta Find A Woman,

Gotta Be a Lady”

Quite right.

The lyrics are rubbish but at least I can understand them this time.

Yes this is getting closer back towards the better tracks I’ve heard so far although I feel like I’m still exploiring the lows of this record.

“Sunshine is you.

Sunshine is you.

Sunshine is yoooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuu BAH!”

I think Platinum Hook might be my example of a band who can play their instruments but can’t play any songs. Soul music with no real soul.

I’m drifting off and thinking about other things now… I might go see the new Bond film later.

Oh no, jungle sound bit, don’t play again and think I care. I don’t care anymore.

Side Two / Track Four- City Life (Greg Wright-Karin Petterson)

Electro-Motown. Ragtime piano intro and shouty vocals. Promising start… Don’t screw it up now…

And again we’re off and running into a cluttered arrangement of everyone play something at the same time —

Actually the verse is holding back. Rolling bass lines and synth stabs. I like it.

Goddamnit, Platinum. Keep it tight! This chorus is sloppy. or maybe it’s the pre-chorus.

Haha. No idea what that build/climax was meant to be. But we’re back into the verse which I dig.

I feel like a Dance Instructor – bear with me – standing at the side of a stage watching dancers who I now can dance flail their body parts around the stage ignoring me while I yell “KEEP IT TOGETHER! NO! IN TIME TO THE MUSIC PLEASE!”

The Research

“Minor hit”. Sounds about right.

The Result

Platinum are best when they’re playing very little. Sadly their best just isn’t very good, and the best tracks weren’t written by the band. Best feature of the band?:

Five Years Later

Split Screen is five years old today! Help yourself to a cupcake and a glass of champagne.

New Stuff

Toy Stories – the best gadgets don’t just facilitate memories; they are memories themselves.

A New Podcast – coming as soon as Craig gets it edited!

Five out of Ten: Control – hot off the presses. If you like what we do, pick up a copy!

Old Stuff

The Best of Us – Our favourite features of the first five years. The jokes that survived the test of time.

Why do you guys keep this thing going? – See Existence, and The Spark.

Will there ever be a Bit Socket vs. Split Screen rematch? – I can’t believe you would bring that up on our birthday.

Toy Stories

Some people treat gadgets as interchangeable lumps of technology. A mobile phone or a laptop is a means to an end, like a utility knife or a bicycle. But I treat electronics as something special: not just the tools for enabling the creative process, but a part of that creativity. I think about the way they feel in my hand, they way they were designed, how they work, and how that changes my relationship with them. They don’t just create memories – they are memories themselves.

These stories are personal, self-indulgent, barely edited, and I make no apologies. Well, maybe some apologies, but you’ll have to read on to find them.

Mojo

In my last year of high school, my friend Tom was the first person I knew to own an iPod. Your teenage years are a time of musical awakening, and his tastes differed wildly from mine. I was into Maiden and Millencolin, he favoured Doherty and Dylan. We’d sit in Politics class listening to Steely Dan, Buffalo Springfield, and Jefferson Airplane. While everyone else talked about football, we’d discuss literature: A Clockwork Orange, One No Many Yeses, anything that felt vaguely countercultural or iconoclastic

Coming from a portable CD player that stretched my blazer’s pockets, the iPod was a revelation. Although it wasn’t technically more advanced than rival products, it was on an aesthetic and functional level all of its own. It was easy to sync with iTunes, unlike my brother’s clunky Toshiba Gigabeat. You didn’t have to arse about with Winamp playlists or burning a mix CD that pushed the limits of the Red Book format. Your whole (illegally downloaded) music library just a swipe of the thumb away.

That it was my friend’s iPod made it even more exciting. This small box contained a world of unknown music ready to be discovered. In the summer we went on road trips across Northern Ireland with my friend Steph, watching the fog roll across the Mourne Mountains while Jim Morrison’s haunting croon filled Tom’s Seat Ibiza. In those days you had to beam the music from iPod to car stereo via an illegal FM transmitter, and the flaky connection made those musical moments all the more magical. It was your own personal pirate radio station.

Then the last summer ended and we went off to university. Steph and I to Edinburgh, Tom to Exeter. On our first day in the city, we had lunch in Kilimanjaro Coffee – still my favourite coffee shop in the world – and across the street there was an Apple retailer. Not long after, I bought myself an iPod, and it was amazing. In my first year I commuted between Kings Buildings and George Square, walking along to L.A. Woman or the Mars Volta’s Deloused in the Comatorium. I loved my iPod, but I kept it a secret from my family, because its retail price matched the living allowance my dad gave me every month and I was a little ashamed. That Christmas, dad asked if I wanted any particular gift. “I’m alright thanks, I’ve got everything I want, I think”, I said.

You can see where this is going, right? I received a 30GB video iPod with an engraving on the back. I sold the old iPod, christened the new one ‘Mojo’ in reference to L.A. Woman, and fell in love all over again. A decade later, when even my watch is a small iPod, Mojo marks the point in my life when I fell hopelessly in love with music. From time to time I like to sit with my old iPod and a block of paper, disconnecting myself so I can be alone with my old thoughts while making new ones. Now we’re in an era of streaming music that old Mojo can never understand, but as long as I’ve got Razorblade Romance stored somewhere on my Mac, there will always be a place for that iPod in my life.

Katana

This might surprise some of you, but I used to hate Macs. My first experience of the Mac was in primary school when one lurked in the corridor. It was weird, different, just wrong. Every time I tried to use it, it would protest, barking Sosumi at me. For my twelve year old self, that settled it: Macs were shit.

But in those days, all computers were shit. I remember when my dad and I stayed up all night trying to reinstall Windows 95 onto a blank hard drive. I remember this terrible scanner we had that daisy-chained onto a printer parallel port and never, ever worked. I remember when our new computer arrived with Windows ME installed. I remember IRQ conflicts, corrupt registries, corrupt Zip disks, Internet Explorer 4, and the endless, endless fucking drivers. And I hope that at least one of these things makes you recoil in horror, because that pain wasn’t worth it unless it’s a pain we all shared. Modern computers are incredible, bulletproof devices. We’ve never had it so good.

But anyway, Macs were shit. Then I went to university with a cheap Acer laptop – the only one I found within budget that had the graphical horsepower to run Half-Life 2, a game that now runs on mobile phones – and within a year the thing was falling apart. It had a fatal design flaw where the display hinge gradually stiffened over time until the hinges snapped off the display, exposing ugly bare wire. I used it for three years. All the while, little Mojo was sitting next to the knackered Acer, beautiful stainless steel with flashes of white.

I started lusting after the Powerbook G4, but there was more chance of me picking up a Bible than a laptop that couldn’t play games. The university library had a few token iMacs – for ‘design work’, of course – and I loved using it, even for things as basic as writing documents and surfing the web. I learned to use Command in order to take control, and it no longer barked Sosumi at me. It was a fun distraction until Apple transitioned to Intel processors and released Boot Camp with OS X Leopard. Then it became an obsession. Of course, students don’t have any money, and Macs require a lot of it. So I worked all summer in a Belfast call centre to save up for my first MacBook Pro.

It turned up at my grandparents’ house in a huge black case, like something from a spy novel. From the iPod to the Watch, the Apple unboxing experience is second to none: they put more thought into the packaging than some companies put into their product design. Great design matters, but great packaging design matters too. It’s part of the ritual, part of the feeling that you have purchased something special, and that feeling makes you treat the device as special.

We crowded around the aluminium monolith. I snapped in the magnetic power connector, turned it on, heard the soothing chimes, then the delightful video. It was worth every penny I had spent and I hadn’t done anything with it yet. My grandparents didn’t have an internet connection so I spent the rest of the summer learning how to use the Mac with David Pogue’s Missing Manual – that book got me where I am today, and I was later able to personally thank Pogue for writing it – and occasionally dipping into my Windows Vista install on Boot Camp to play Unreal Tournament 2004.

Katana changed my life, first in small ways, like messing around in iPhoto or having enough horsepower to work on page layouts at the Student. Then it began to fundamentally change the way I approach computing and even my thought processes – not to be confused with a reality distortion field. The differences between Windows and OS X are somewhat exaggerated, but the Mac just matches the way I think better. I appreciate the purposeful nature of design, Apple’s attention to detail and their willingness to change things. Even if they don’t always get it right first time, they’re usually close enough. In contrast, Microsoft’s design process is a largely additive one: see the Windows 10 start menu, which slaps the tiles from Windows 8 onto the start menu from Windows 7 in an unholy union that most people know how to use, but no one really loves.

When you’re writing, designing, or cutting a video, using that computer you love is creatively stimulating. You can focus on the possibilities of what you can create, rather than the technical hurdles you must overcome to achieve it. With Katana, my creative barriers dissolved, which led to things like Alan for President. When I graduated in 2009, I applied for thirty jobs in thirty days, and the only place that got back to me was the Apple store where I’d purchased Mojo’s predecessor four years ago. I then used Katana to build Split Screen and record our first podcasts. I was trained in Final Cut Pro through my day job, taught evening classes in it, used the knowledge to apply for a job in Oxford and uproot my whole life.

After four years, Katana’s graphics processor died while designing the first issue of Five out of Ten. I removed the hard drive, precariously hoked it up to my work MacBook Air, and travelled to Portsmouth to finish the design with Craig. Following a protracted conversation with Apple tech support, they fixed it for free, and I replaced it with ‘Katana 2’ – the first model of MacBook Pro with a Retina display. I needed a good retirement home for Katana, so I sold it to my brother. It’s now living the good life as a recording studio and recently produced the theme tune to Cast Iron. I love my new Mac, but I’ll never forget the first one and how it changed my life.

Fucking Macs though, eh? They’ve got the same specs as PCs half the price! What a rip-off. They can’t even play games.

The Long Run

I’ve had to make the difficult decision not to run the Frankfurt marathon at the end of the month.

On 19th September, I celebrated my birthday with a 29km run (one kilometre for every year) around Oxford as part of my marathon training plan. It went well, and although I was tired and sore that evening, it was to be expected over such distances. However, the next day my right foot felt terrible and I could barely walk. I spent Sunday afternoon with a bag of frozen peas on my foot. I assured myself that it would be fine. I’d recover and be up and running again soon.

Three weeks later and it was still fucked. I had a steady ache on the outside of my foot that wasn’t getting any better. I visited a physiotherapist who diagnosed me with tendinitis, gave me a sports massage and fired ultrasound at my foot – pretty cool, eh? – with some remedial stretches and exercises. He reckoned it would get better in a week, but two weeks later, I’ve not fully recovered. I went for a short one mile run last Thursday, and my foot was OK at the time, but painful the next day.

I’ve now missed a month of my training and am unprepared for the race ahead, risking permanent damage if I try to run on my injury. All of the sporting sentiment about Never Giving Up might work in Hollywood, but in real life, sometimes you’re just not ready. Never Giving Up can be stubborn and stupid, and I am often both those things, just not this time. I am gutted that I’m going to miss the race after putting all that work and money in, but it’s better to admit defeat this time and live to run another day.

The good news is that in the long run, I am Not Giving Up. Once I’ve recovered I will start running again, and am thinking about where to attempt my first marathon next spring . If you’ve sponsored my fundraising efforts, thank you so much for your support, and thank you for being the first to sponsor my next run – the funds will carry over.

Our Story

Episode 21

Alan and Craig play a videogame for once – Sam Barlow’s Her Story. This podcast discusses the game in detail, including the ending – please play the game first!

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iTunes

Right Click Here and ‘Save As’ to Download!

(Fifty three minutes of detective work)

Your Questions, Answered

1. Frankfurt, at the end of October. 

2. Have you tried restarting it? Seriously, that will probably work.

3. Helvetica.

Daily Bread

Wheaten bread – ‘Irish soda bread’ for readers outside Norn Iron – has a special place in the pantheon of Irish breads. Soda bread and potato bread are integral to the Ulster Fry; barmbrack and fruit loaf are sweet and sticky teatime companions; Veda is this strange malted loaf lurking in bread bins around the province, begging to be toasted. But wheaten is my favourite: a bread of real character, a centrepiece rather than a side dish, as essential as the soup or cheese next to it. It must be nutty and flavoursome to hold its own against the tangy cheddar, moist enough to linger in the mouth without sticking to it. Wheaten bread has a presence. Eating it should be a respectful ritual.

My housemate bought a loaf of Paul Rankin supermarket wheaten to accompany soup, but it was offensively bad: a dry, bland substitute for the taste of home. The Rankin bread wasn’t just a rank loaf: it was baking blasphemy. So I searched for a recipe: real wheaten, not some adulterated American junk filled in seeds, honey and god knows what else. Some recipes benefit from innovation, but others call for tradition.

I weighed the dry ingredients into a bowl, rubbing butter into them until they resembled fine breadcrumbs. After adding buttermilk, I kneaded the dough on the kitchen counter, driving my knuckles into it. It was relaxing, almost meditative. Once it felt consistently strong and sticky, I shaped it into a round and dropped it into a floured cake tin, slashing a cross into the top to form the four farls, sprinkling with rolled oats.

After waiting for half an hour in nostril-teasing agony, the bread was ready. It lasted five minutes cooling, both of us on different racks of a sort. I cracked into it with a knife, cut the loaf clean in two between the farls that were now small peaks of crust, and watched the steam drift out for a little while. It was beautifully moist inside, dense and perfect. It took me back to the wheaten from afternoon tea in my granny’s sitting room, piled high on a tray, spread thick with butter and jam.

Butter couldn’t wait to slide off the knife and soak into the bread, followed by a thin layer of jam – anything beyond that would have been sacrilegious, would have spoiled the sanctity of the culinary pilgrimage.

I enjoyed my daily bread for the rest of the week; the trespasses of the supermarket loaf were forgiven.

Love Metal

“If you love videogames, you already love metal – you just don’t know it yet.” I returned to VideoBrains to spread the love about heavy metal. If you enjoyed this talk, you’ll love my new podcast Cast Iron.

 

Ka

The wheel of fate is turning.

Dad kept his Stephen King collection in the dining room. It was a cold, unwelcoming place, rarely used for its designated purpose, still dark and freezing even now as the spare bedroom I use when I visit home. The horror books made it a place that genuinely frightened me as a child. I hating going into that room to retrieve food from storage, hate hate hated it. The faces of Cujo and IT watched me from the spines of the hardback horrors. There were also paperback copies of the first three Dark Tower books: the cover of The Waste Lands was enticing, daring me to unleash the (presumed) horror within. I dared not.

One summer, after my parents had separated and the King collection had been dumped in the garage to rot, I was vacationing with dad and my stepmum at a caravan site on the Causeway Coast. Dad had brought The Gunslinger, the first book in the Dark Tower series. I borrowed it, and it was like nothing I had ever read: a curious, delightful mix of fantasy, science-fiction, western, and a pinch of horror. I devoured it in a weekend. And then… that was it, really. Roland of Gilead and his adventures stuck in memory, but it wasn’t the right time to continue the quest for the Tower.

Do you ever think that there’s a right time in your life to appreciate a certain book? I’m not saying it’s fate – or as Roland would put it, ka – but sometimes your knowledge and understanding needs to catch up to the book to properly do it justice, and that can take many years, but you know when you’re ready.

Many years later in Edinburgh, I bought my own copy of The Gunslinger, fell in love all over again, wrote about it in the style of a videogame review and began to read through the series. Five years later – or over a decade, if you count from the first reading – I finished the seventh book, The Dark Tower, during an interval at an Elvis Costello gig. I was almost scared to begin it, my unfounded childhood fears now replaced by a real one: with most of my adult life spent reading or ruminating on these books, I’d lose my literary compass once it was finished. I squinted at the final pages in the dim lights of Oxford’s New Theatre, a world away from where I had started. I had come as far as the ka-tet had, far beyond what seemed possible. The world has moved on since Roland’s introduction in the “apotheosis of deserts”, all those years ago.

The Dark Tower is a divisive work, for good reasons. I loved the ending: King remarks that good stories are about the journey rather than the destination (which is what you’d expect from the author of The Stand, do ya kennit) and I agree. The final book isn’t just a great novel: it’s a powerful insight into fiction itself: what part of a story is under a writer’s control, and what’s the product of accumulated experience and unquantifiable forces – ka, if you will. It examines what it means to be a writer and what it means to develop a legacy: the last Dark Tower rewards the dedicated reader with a unique and vibrant tapestry of language, references and in-jokes. Yet at the end of such an exceptionally long journey, it was always going to be bittersweet. There are other worlds than these: I’ll read The Wind Through the Keyhole, the ‘eighth’ Dark Tower book. I’ll read Dune. I will no longer prohibit myself from starting A Song of Ice and Fire.

Taken as a whole, The Dark Tower is my favourite book, and that won’t change – I’ll set my watch and warrant on it. There are just too many great stories, too many personal memories that intertwine literature and experience: reading The Gunslinger in the shelter of a caravan while the Irish summer thundered outside; Wizard and Glass on a beach in Devon; Wolves of the Calla in a Montreal steakhouse, feeding the sparrows my baguette crumbs. I will remember Roland, Jake, Susannah, Eddie, and Oy forever, and they will influence the stories I write, just as Robert Browning’s Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came influenced King.

Right now, I’m thinking about a story a long way from beginning: one that begins with a child in front of my Stephen King collection, reaching for The Gunslinger, beginning their own quest for the Tower. Ka is a wheel, after all.

Long days and pleasant nights.

Coda: Ranking

When I mention The Dark Tower on Twitter, some people love it, while others gave up early in the series. I thought it was worth giving a rough ranking: I don’t expect anyone to agree with this list, especially my top pick.

The Dark Tower books were written over a twenty year period, with years between many releases: it’s one long story, but there’s a lot of variation (the last three volumes were written concurrently). I struggled with The Drawing of the Three, but I’d recommend the books to anyone. If you’re not enjoying the books after Wizard and Glass, that’s unlikely to change – but by that point, were I you, I’d stand true to the quest.

Anyway, here’s my totally subjective, best to worst ranking:

IV: Wizard and Glass
VII: The Dark Tower
I: The Gunslinger
III: The Waste Lands
VI: Song of Susannah
V: Wolves of the Calla
II: The Drawing of the Three

Forging

What would you choose if you had to pick one: music, or videogames? Games are obviously important to me and have changed my life for the better, but music is life itself. It moves me in ways that games and films can never match. A life without games would be dull; a life without music would be unbearable.

Cast Iron is a new podcast about rock and metal, hosted by Lewis Clark and myself. We’ve recorded three episodes now, two are out in the wild – you can listen online, or subscribe through iTunes. (Please subscribe on iTunes.) I agreed to take part for the fun factor, and obviously to spend quality time with a friend, but the more work I put in – designing the logo, listing the albums we could cover, planning the format and our special guests – the more excited I became. I’m still excited about it: the nervous thrill of releasing a new episode, the messages from my brothers saying they enjoy it, the joy of discovering new favourite bands for the first time. We get a real kick out of it, and I think it comes across on the show.

It is a rare privilege to be able to share the things you love with an audience, hoping that it moves them in the way it moves you. Split Screen and Five out of Ten have been fantastic vehicles for that, and Cast Iron is another car in the garage, so to speak. It deserves to exist. As I say in the second episode:

Otherwise, I’ve been under the radar lately, helping behind the scenes at VideoBrains and Critical Distance as well as Five out of Ten. You can find my writing hidden inside magazines like MacFormat, but most of my writing is in a private journal these days. In writing features and blogs for an audience, especially work that is deeply personal, I have lost sight of the fact that I was always writing for myself. I feel out of ideas and the energy to make them concrete, so I’ve mainly been reading and journalling while I restoke the fires of creativity.

To be honest, instead of writing, sometimes I just sit at my keyboard and watch the birds outside my window. Wood pigeons and magpies, gulls, the occasional red kite. I enjoy the carefree, aimless flying and birdsong for a while, then curse my lack of productivity later in the evening. But deep down, I know I’ve hit the natural limit of what my brain can actually do in one day, or even one week. My productivity and organisation are much better than they were last year, but the Getting Things Done method only informs you about the products, not the substrate – the need to creatively, emotionally nourish ourselves. The balance between the two is something you need to figure out on your own. That balance can be found – or perhaps, I have to believe it can be found.

My latest project is something personal, yet with an audience in mind. Yesterday I sat down at the desk, ignored the siren song of the birds, and the first few thousand words came naturally. One day I hope I’ll be able to share it (don’t expect anything in the short term). Whether destined for publication, or lovingly doomed to that folder of unfinished works I call ‘The Graveyard’, it feels good to be hammering away at the forge again, enjoying the creativity rekindled once more.