Random Memeage

[danieldwilliam]

I asked for and was given 7 topics by alitheapipkin

After some delay here are my responses.

Edinburgh,

I feel at home in Edinburgh and it’s difficult to imagine living anywhere else.  Certainly, I’d want to live somewhere very similar. Its virtues are remarkable but its vices oft unremarked.

The place has some problems to address.

A lot of Edinburgh’s housing stock is old. A lot of central Edinburgh is some form of conservation zone. We can’t (or won’t knock them down) and they are nowhere near as energy efficient as they need to be.  So we’re going to have to find a way to make buildings built in the 18^th and 19^th centuries have the same energy profile as buildings built in the 21^st century.  I think the danger of not solving this problem is that we turn central Edinburgh into a slum, which we can’t knock down, where only those who are transient or too poor to afford to buy a house live and everyone one else moves to the fringes of Edinburgh to live in zero carbon, low energy new build housing.

Edinburgh also has a greater income disparity than Glasgow. Whilst Edinburgh appears prosperous there are some quite concentrated areas of poverty.

music,

I wish I were more musical.  I like music. I’m not particularly good at it, either listening to or performing.  I have a strange relationship with singing. I can only carry a tune if no one else is singing and there is no other accompaniment.

I know some people for whom listening to music is a passion. People whose lives were changed or saved by music. People who carry an abiding love of music. I wish I were one of these people but I am not.  Music, for me, is more of a vehicle for the lyrics.

That said I do have periods when I take more of an interest in music.  I have a Napster subscription and I sometimes stay up late listening to a new band or the back catalogue of an old band. My current musical enjoyment is to find songs with a few cover versions and see how different people have performed a song differently. This interest was triggered by one of my favourite television programmes as a teenager. The show, a satirical comedy programme, used to close with a different version of Stairway to Heaven each week. Responsibility for Rolf Harris’ cover of Stairway to Heaven lies with Andrew Denton, the host of the Money or the Gun.  I do think Rolf’s version is one of the most joyous things I’ve ever heard.

I also quite like the history of bands. The combination of artistic influence and personal and business relationships I find interesting.  I’m currently investigating all the bands all the members of Cream were in.

If I ever were stranded on the famous Desert Island I’d much rather take books than music. I’d rather take plants.

But music is an important part of my life because My Lovely Wife is very passionate about music. She sings and plays and is about to step down as Chairqueen of her choir.  My home is filled with music. Music I’d never heard or heard of before I was 30. For someone who isn’t particularly keen on music I know more than most about renaissance music.

gardening,

I do love my garden. I have a small garden at the front of my ground floor main door flat. It’s about 4 meters by 8 meters and divided in the middle by a path.  My flat overlooks the Meadows in Edinburgh so the garden feels more roomy that it actually is. When electric self-driving cars are the norm in about 20 years I’ll be able to sit out in the garden.

When we bought the flat the front garden was not just concreted over but covered by a foot deep layer of bouncy rubber coating.  I like the fact that every plant, insect and bird that lives in my garden is there because of work that MLW and I have put into encouraging them there.

I know that my mental health would be much improved if I spent more time gardening.

I’m looking forward to spending more time in my garden this summer. Now that the Captain is old enough to help and old enough follow instructions MLW and I can spend some time in the garden.  I’m planning to plant lots of flowering perennials to jazz things up a little and I’d like to add a herb garden.

Wider than my own personal love of my own garden I think gardening is probably one of the most powerful community activities.  Creating a shared space together and working together I think are very good for communities. Also good for communities are having to make shared decisions and then deliver on those decisions.

I look forward to the days when my personal circumstances allow me to take a greater role in community gardening.

I think my experience of gardening underpins a lot of my thinking on structures of politics.

holidays,

People who complain about the cost of holidays during the summer holidays should have a really good think about economics specifically the effect of supply and demand on prices and the cost of infrastructure and how that is shared out.

A plane or an airport or a hotel or a cottage that sits empty during the winter so that you can have access to it during the summer is going to have to be paid for.

Of course businesses who produce holidays are profiteering during the summer holidays.  Are you slipping them £50 a month during the winter? 

On the subject of economics and holidays I’m looking forward to some very cheap holidays in Greece once they leave the euro.

sea,

I like to live near the sea. Living where I do in Edinburgh I find I miss the sea.  I grew up in Aberdeen and my parents would take me to the beach often. I remember long walks along Balmedie beach (still, thanks to Donald Trump, free of windfarms off the coast but destroyed, thanks to Donald Trump, by a golf course.)

I’ve lived near the sea for most of my life.  I used to sail.  If I don’t live near the sea I feel diminished in some way. If I could afford one I would have a second home by the sea.

seasons,

One of the strangest places I’ve ever lived was Darwin in the Northern Territory. By our way of reckoning things the place only has two seasons; Wet and Dry. During the Wet is it 30 degrees and it rains heavily just after the sun goes down. During the Dry it is 30 degrees. The aborigines who live in the Top End have dozens of seasons. They are partly meteorological and partly game seasons but they also include seasons in the sense of Ecclesiastes 3.1, a season to do certain things.  Many of these things were tied to the meteorological and game season. Aborigines live very very close to nature.

games.

I wish I played more games. I’m currently playing a fair bit of Civilisation III on the PC but I’d like to play more social games.

I used to play Warhammer and D&D.

Games are one of the casualities of responsibility.

Games are also part of the lexicon of Improv.  Personally, I think Games are a sub-set of Handles but others use them interchangeably. They are wrong. A Handle is the specific set of rules that provide the structure for a piece of improv.  Handles include Games, Exercises, Warm Up, Long Forms. They are called Handles because they give you (or the audience) something to hold onto.

A Handle might give you then number of characters in a piece, how they will access inspiration, settings, use of equipment, restrictions on language use or physicality.

Inspiration for example might come from having the audience shout out suggestions for setting and character relationships or you might use the concepts of Laban on movement to inform characters and then let them get on with it.

A Game, as a subset of Handles, tend to be short-form (5 minutes or less, one scene). They tend to be suitable for performance in that they begin, expand and conclude a narrative – even if that narrative is just a joke.

Comments

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I think my experience of gardening underpins a lot of my thinking on structures of politics.

Oooooh. Say more?

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Firstly, one of my earliest set of political revelations was whilst visiting a Capability Brown garden.

The main thing that struck me was that, in order to create the aspect desired from the main house, Brown had moved a whole village over a hil so that all that could be seen of it was the spire of the church poking picturesquely over the brow of said hill.

A whole village, full of people, moved out of their homes to improve the view.

To be part of the view.

Hey ho democracy and socialism.

Secondly, gardening takes times. Quick solutions to big problems are rarely available. If you want an avenue of oaks you need to have had grandparents who planted an avenue of oaks just where you wanted them. If you don’t like your soil balance or composition you can change it slowly over time using compost, additives, microbes, minibeasts and fertilizer (maybe) or you can dig up the entire garden and truck in a load of soil over night but you can’t change the soil overnight by adding compost etc.

Gardening requires attention to detail and a view towards the big picture. It requires good things now and good things in the future and the future is constantly reseting itself as you reach it. Gardening requires periodic maintenance to get things right and keep them there. Big stuff is hard work and will cause destruction and disharmony whilst you do it. Pulling something up is easier than growing it. Rooting out weeds is harder than anything.

Etcetera etcetera so on and so forth and so on.

Basically, gardening is a big metaphor for politics.

(It is why at heart I’m in favour of electoral reform and localism – because governments promising radical top down “reform” are probably just digging a pond in the wrong place to satisfy they 25% of the population they represent and wil be howling impotent when the other side fills it in in 5 or 10 years.)

Thirdly, I think there is something about the way community gardens (including any family garden) are designed, created and maintained that talks about the way people can best interact.

Fourthly, gardens speak to me of the dignity of work. Work is only dignified if the worker has a share in the outcome.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I think there's a huge amount in this. Placeholder (possibly for when I visit in April): difference between gardens and political systems is amount of complexity. Put differently, changing a plant on the patio does not in general affect the ecology of the walled garden, whereas in social systems this is routine and hence understanding it is critical to successful steering.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Re plants on patios – I might disagree with you on the actuality of this – see last point of this response but not important to the discussion of political metaphor.

Gardens are plenty complex – I have hundreds of plants in my small one, thousands of worms, millions of bacteria. It’s just difficult to see and appreciate and work with the complexity.

I think the plant in the patio is perhaps the wrong comparison.

Think about introducing a new species of insect to the garden (or a plant on which new species of insect lived). I think that’s the metaphorical comparison I would use a warning for those who would tinker in social set ups.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

As an ecologist, I can attest to the fact that changing one plant on a patio can in fact, have a pretty big impact depending on what that plant is.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

When I first read this comment I read it as this


As an ecologist, I can attest to the fact that changing one plant on a patio can in fact, have a pretty big impact on what that plant is.

And was about to loudly applaud your sarcasm.

I like what you actually wrote too.

I'm trying to increase the number of bees and other pollenators in my garden at the moment and struggling to find plants that bees like and which don't die.

I did have some success fending off an infestation of aphids by introducing marigolds.

Shame actually because they were being farmed by ants and the rose they were on hasn't done anything worthwhile ever (probably as a result of a viral infection caused by aphid infestations.)

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the Bumblebee Conservation Trust's info on gardening for bees?
http://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/gardening_for_bumblebees.htm

They are the 1st source of info that sprang to mind 'cos a friend used to work with the folks that set it up and I've met them all.

Roses can be very fickle things, it could be the aphids or it could be your soil, or both.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link.

Roses can be fickle.

The soil was brand new and other roses in the same soil are flourishing. So, I'm blaming the aphids but to be honest - the rose has failed me for the last time mwhahahaha - it's coming out over one of the long weekends.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I'm happy with either metaphor. For me, the important point is that you can't predict the outcome of pretty much any intervention, so you have to plan accordingly. I'm not completely convinced that this is true for gardening in the way that it is for sociopolitical systems, because people routinely seem to plan gardens effectively, but I could be convinced otherwise.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I think the difference lies in people's tolerances when planning gardens.

An apple tree that produces a good crop of apples is not scrutinised in as much detail as a railway system.

A plant that dies and is replaced is not viewed with the same dismay as a riot in an inner city.


If you want an award winning garden then you probably have to pay attention to the complex underpinnings.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Plausible but still not intrinsically convincing to me. More data needed.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

For example...

...There are something like as many known species of soil bacteria in your common or garden soil as there are vertebrates.

There's such a lot going on that we don't pay much attention to.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I'm not being clear. I do not doubt that gardens are complex systems. I doubt that their complexity is sufficiently comparable to sociopolitical systems for the metaphor to be *sufficient* - this is the key thing - to form good principles for political design.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

For example, I do not believe that the characteristics of a good gardener are isomorphic to those of a good political theorist.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

It's more about attitude and approach for me than a close match of the detailed theories.

For example.

Don't expect to be able to grow oak avenues overnight; don't expect to be able to build functional higher education overnight.

You can prune but things will grow back the way they have before; you can't expect hacking bits in and out of the NHS to change the what medics believe about socialised medicine.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I wonder if we're defining gardener differently? I don't think most gardeners are looking beyond five years max into the future. Oak avenues not so much of an issue.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Perhaps most gardeners aren’t but then most politicians aren’t* – which is why they have such difficulty with the energy industry.

*they claim to be but they aren't.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I think that what this and our other recent conversation come down to is that you and I use metaphor in different ways.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Looks that way.

but say more?

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

You like having one. I like having lots.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I'm efficient that way.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I think you value efficiency of communication over precision of analogy, and I do the reverse.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I think this is likely to be the case.

Do you spend most of your time communicating with people who are

a) experts in their field or in yours

and / or

b) skilled at communicating

and / or

c) prepared to communicate in an open, exploratory and effective way

and / or

d) bothered enough about the outcome and the relationship to engage with you and the detail of what you are saying

?

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Rarely, which is precisely why I fear imprecise metaphor. The above conversation re vision span of a gardener is a great example. This metaphor isn't going to get me very far with the 95% of people who are using the short timeline.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Perhaps not, but then it’s not really meant to talk to people who are intent on inhabiting a timeframe that is too short.

It’s more a guideline for me, to remind me about timeframes and the wasteful effort of radicalism and the need to start from where you are.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Then whence the question? Sounds like I misinterpreted it.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I was asking more generally re the apparent difference between your many and precise but expensive to communicate analogies and my less precise but cheaper to run system.

I was wondering if you spent more time talking to people who were more willing and able to engage in the conversation than I did. You appear to be saying not really.

So I wonder then if the difference is that I use metaphor to talk to myself more than you do and I’m able and willing to compensate for the lack of precision of my own metaphor when using them as models to think with.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I don't know what you're doing, baby, but I can tell you what I am. In essence, it's rejecting the use of one metaphor because every time I've tried, the costs have exceeded the benefits. I can post-rationalise it and have done in this thread, but the real answer is that I just don't think it works, either inside my head or in conversation.