Everything we do seems to be audience dependant

Well, maybe not dependant, but at least most things we do are aimed at an audience.

Think about it. We expend huge amounts of energy on becoming better at our jobs, our hobbies, our skills....most of which is aimed either consciously or unconsciously at impressing an audience of some kind.

If we become better at our jobs, we stand to gain a greater reward. In this case we are trying to impress the boss. In our hobbies we strive to please other people. Why would you write, paint, direct or sing unless at the end of the day you were trying to seek an audience to appreciate it. I'm sure there are people out there now muttering that performing said task could be done for one's own benefit, but that's still an audience of one, and let's face it, do you really want to create a piece of art and then stuff it in a cupboard for no one else to see - ever?

So much of what we do is aimed at an audience. Going out somewhere? Dress to impress! Got friends coming over? Tidy the house or what will said friends think? Going out on a date? Best come out with your best one liners. Dropping the kids to school? Best make sure they're looking their best.

Even some solitary experiences are probably done in the hope of entertaining some future audience. Say I watch a good film or read a good book; I'll want to talk about it to someone at some point. Same goes for computer games.

As so much of what we do is geared towards an audience, it's not surprising we can falter from time to time and succumb to feelings of anxiety and self doubt. Especially when it comes to expressing yourself.

On a bit of a side note, I was thinking the other day that if the creator of our universe was some unseen author, the only way said author could enter our universe would be through a sort of avatar declaring that he or she was our Creator.

Take my story universe for example. I was toying with the idea of writing a scene in which one of my recurring characters, Roxanne Helens, an author in disgrace, is sat with her agent one day who tells her there's a man in the waiting room out side the office claiming to be the original author of all Roxy's work. She storms out to confront the man, who is sat down on some faux leather seat, flicking through an old copy of Time magazine.

He looks up at her and says hello. She demands to know who he is and he replies, why I'm Sean Z P Harris, the creator of your stories....and universe.

I have now entered my own story world. Not physically, but via an avatar of my choosing.

With this in mind, if the author of our universe decided to drop in, who would he/she come as?

Also, if we are a creation of some mystic author, who is their audience?

Just a thought.

I was going to write a post on memory.....

But I went out for a few drinks with some old friends last night so now my brain is refusing to co-operate.

I was thinking about memory the other day and how our interpritation of reality really does depend on it.  This was something that was touched upon in the latest Dr. Who series.

However, I can't write about it at the moment as all I really want to do is sleep.

On a side note, I've just noticed that I didn't write a post on Monday, which is a bit dissapointing. Still, it's July now, so let's hope I write more posts than I skip.

When it comes to writing, what works best for you?

I think it's fair to say I'm easily distracted.

There are always a million and one things to do around the house (cleaning, fixing, washing, ironing - anything ending in 'ing') , and my brain always tricks me in to thinking that they need to be done first before I can sit down and write.

Then, when I eventually crack open the netbook, my brain tells me I simply must read my e-mails first, check Facebook second and then look up the query I thought of while at work (yesterday it was all about finding out about the yellow light of death for my PS3) third.  To be honest, this wouldn't be to bad if I only stuck to the first two as it only takes a few mins to read my e-mail and snoop about on Facebook. But the third....I almost always get side tracked by something else I see, so I start out looking up faulty PS3s and end up an hour later looking for cheep holidays to Tunisia.

And that's the thing about the internet; you can look something up as soon as you think of it. This, in turn lead to new thoughts being generated and before you know it you've done a complete 180 from where you began.

That's why I find that the best place to write is on the bus journey to work.  I pop on my MP3 player which acts as a barrier to the outside world, and then fire up the netbook.

I'm not sure if it's because I dislike my job so much, but even if I find the writing hard to start with, I always start to flow with more urgency the closer I get to work.

Also, being on the bus means there are virtually no distractions.  I can either sit there and do nothing apart from listen to MP3s and stare out the window, or I can write.

And that's what works for me.

I think I'll look into why writing whilst listening to music seems to help.  My first thoughts are that (a) it acts as a barrier to the outside world so helps you focus, and (b) music very often elicits emotion. Trance music gives me a feeling of excitement and movement. I sometimes listen to Mozart, too, which also seems to have the same effect.  Anything with lyrics usually distracts me.

I think that music raising emotion in me helps to get said emotion on the page.  I know Stephen King listens to music while he writes (rock I think) as does Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez (the former actually suggested it to the latter), so I know I'm not the only one.

Do you listen to music while you write?

Bad things come in...

First England loose, then my PS3 blows up on me, and then the guy I know who fixes them on the cheap is fired from his job so can't perfom said cheap fix!

Well, at least I managed to get a post in today, all be it a rather short one.

The football.....

Not the greatest day to be an England fan.

But as I sat there watching England being torn apart by our arch rivals the Germans, I started to wonder how a game that basically involves 22 men kicking a ball into a net can garner such passion in people, which in turn led me muse on whether there was any connection to our heroes on the pitch and our heroes on the screen.

The first thing that springs to mind is that the protagonist on the screen represents us, the audience.  We like to see what action they take in relation to the action we believe we would have taken ourselves if we were in a similar predicament.

The same could be said of football.in that we feel the players 'should have crossed the ball early,' or 'shot first time!'  So we see the players as representing ourselves on the pitch.  I guess that's why we get so frustrated when the don't play as well as we know they can.  If your team looses there's no cathartic release at the end of it, just frustration.

The best football matches are those in which the plucky under dog wins in the last moment, but how often does that happen?

In the end, stories are structured where as football matches are not, in the sense that no one knows what the end result will be.

Hmm....not the best post in the world, but it does keep my one-a-day intact.

A scary thought that could lead us all to a happier life (maybe)

I came across a thought the other day that scared me.  Said thought came in 4 parts.

1. What if determinism is true? If so, we really don't have any control over our actions.
2. What if the theory of the Big Crunch is true? The universe expands to a certain point and then contacts back to a singularity which itself leads too...
3. Another Big Bang.  The whole process starts again, but what if...
4. It expands exactly the same way as it did before?

If all the above are true, I may have already written this post billions of times.

However, this is probably not the case, yet it does lead me to ask myself this: if I am fated to repeat my life for infinity, do I really want to settle for second best? Do I really want to work in an office for all eternity, or do I want to peruse my interests in writing and creativity?

If I am - if we all are - to repeat this life forever,wouldn't it make sense to for us all to get along and be the best that we can be as a species?

Yesterday's post and an interesting thought

Yesterday's post was disappointing to say the least, but there was a reason for that: sleep deprivation.

Empty flat below us + fire alarm going off all night X council refusing to do anything about it = no sleep for me or the wife.

So, thanks to the above I was unable to bang out a post to my satisfaction.  Not sure if this one will be a winner either as I'm still feeling the effects, but the beauty of this blog is that no one reads it.

Now, I'm don't want this to the be case forever, but it's fine for the moment as it gives me a chance to experiment on the blogging front without people telling me I suck.

But getting back to yesterday, what I was trying to achieve overall with the computer game discussion was that people, since the dawn of time, have wanted to control reality and we're well on our way to achieving this (to a certain degree).

Is this truly what I mean?  It seems stupid now that I've written it down, but I thought about this over and over again on many an occasion.  Writing, films, games - they all create an alternative reality in which the creator can play around with these worlds and explore situations that effect them from the comfort of their own homes.

However, the above isn't completely true, well the comfort of their own homes bit at least, as there have been a number of books written whilst the author was in captivity.  But they were still creating a world they could explore so as to seek answers and solace in their own (Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes and Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy spring to mind).

So, I will go back to 1-UP Part 3 at some point and edit it.  Editing after all, is what writing is really about.

Another thing I wish to discuss is thought, especially this: if you take a moment to look around you right now, what do you see?  You may be at home so you'll see the contents of your room, or perhaps out and about, maybe even on a hillside over looking a city or something.  The point is, with the exception of naturally occurring events such as the sun, hills, seas, animals, etc., almost everything else you're looking at started off as a thought in someone's head; the screen you're currently looking at, the text you're reading, the chair you're sat on, even the building you're inhabiting at this moment - all of it started as a thought in a fellow human beings mind.

Why do I find this so interesting?  Well, for a number of reasons, but a thought struck me on the way home from work the other evening.  Here I am, Sean Z P Harris, and I have created a world in which my stories can take place. Now, even though these stories are quite unique, the elements that make them up are all found in this world.  I basically took elements from this reality and re-arranged them to create my own. Even if I was to write about a golden mountain, something that isn't found in our world, the elements 'gold' and 'mountain' are, so if I write about a golden mountain, most people will be able to picture it. I believe it was David Hume who first noted this in his theory on how ideas are created.

But getting back to that journey home, there I was thinking about stories and Hume's theory of ideas when a thought struck me: what if god was a kind of author who has used elements combined from his/her own world to create ours? It would mean that literally everything in our world started off as a thought in someone else's (maybe even a groups) mind.

Now, let's pretend that the worlds we create actually have an existence beyond that which we see. Say I wrote a sci-fi novel. Even though I've created this fictional world, what if I'm actually accessing an entire universe and I only get to report on small sections of it; that in actual fact it exists somewhere and the people who populate it create there own stories - they could combine the fantastic ideas I used to create their world (space ships and golden mountains) with their own ideas to produce even more startling universes whose unseen occupants could do the same.

Where would this lead?

I have no idea, but one things for sure: I'm having a lie in on Saturday.

1-up! Part 3

Film, books and art seek to create alternative realities in which we can explore issues and themes found in our own.

These computer generated worlds are becoming more and more sophisticated with each passing year. In 1983 we're Skiing with Horace, in 1997 we're wondering around the world of Gaia in Final Fantasy 7,  and now, in 2010 we have this...

Uncharted 2

If that's 2010, imagine what 2020 will be like.

1-up! Part 2

Yesterday I spoke of a computer game that made grown men cry.  What is the name of this game?

Final Fantasy VII.

FF7, dear reader, is a role playing game (RPG). It was the first of its kind I ever played and it changed the way I looked at computer games forever.

This game itself is epic.  It is basically an interactive story that takes 60 - 80 hours to complete, with you as the hero. You play a mercenary for hire named Cloud, an ex. elite solider who is hired by an old childhood friend, Tifa, to help a tiny rebellion group called AVALANCHE in their fight against the massive evil corporation Shinra who are literally draining the planet of its life force to use as a source of energy.

This may not sound like much but this is just the tip of the iceberg, with many a magical battle against man, machine and monster before the end credits roll. Oh, and also the occasional massive twist to boot.  

The reason I hold it in such high regard is this: it is a fantastic story. In fact, it's one of my favourite all time stories of all time.  As UK.Gamespot.com observed back in 1997, 'Never before [has] technology, playability, and narrative combined as well as in Final Fantasy VII. The culmination of Square Soft's monumental effort is a game that will enrich just as it will entertain.'

That fact that you control all the members of your party (up to 9 members, I think), and expend huge amounts of time and effort to help them grow through out the course of the story, you really, really care about them.

So if something bad was to happen to one of them.....you may find yourself reaching for your handkerchief

Why do I keep banging on about computer games?

1-up! Part 1

Computer games.

I loved them as a child.  I still recall the day in 1983 when my dad brought home our very first computer, the power house that was the 48K ZX Spectrum. We played Horace Goes Skiing. A lot.  You basically played a blob called Horace, and as I recall you had to navigate the blob across a road a la Frogger style to hire a pair of ski's before taking to the slopes, and by slopes I mean jerkily moving down a white screen through some poorly animated slaloms. It was a simple game with simple needs. And I loved it.

I was hooked on computer games from there on in. The Spectrum gave way to the Atari ST (1990), then the Amiga (1993).  The games on these machines, especially the latter, were about a billion times more sophisticated as far as graphics, sound and scope were concerned, but I also noticed something else, something that was reflected in world of films.

Although great in the main, some of these newer, better looking games were incredibly boring to play. The Spectrum was renowned for having awful graphics yet had thousands of games that were an absolute joy.  This was because the programmers for the Spectrum were all too aware of it's short comings, so concentrated on arguably the most important element of all - the game play.

What does this have to do with films?

For some reason or another, we humans love spectacle.  We actually crave being impressed (although I'm getting ahead of myself here - this is a topic for another post).  Hollywood recognised this years ago and so started to churn out tales that were all spectacle and special effects with no real consideration for the actual story.  They still do, because there is a market out there for that type of film.

What we really want them to do is concentrate on the story first, effects second. No tail-wag-dog, thankyouverymuch.

Now, the Amiga was finally retired and replaced by a Playstaion (PS1). Most games up until this point had been in 2D but we were now living in a 3D world (of course, the PC had been in said world for a bit longer than this, but as it cost around £1,000 to buy a machine capable of playing these games, I didn't really learn of their existence until a few years later).

It was on the PS1 in 1997 that I had my most powerful gaming experience to date; I played a game that made you care so much about the characters that it actually made gown men cry (I was not one of them, but I was deeply shocked by the event that caused said tears).

What game could possibly do this?

Alternate Realities

So, the thread that connects all of the previously mentioned subjects together for me is reality.

With the exception of philosophy (for the most part), all of the other subjects seek to create an alternative, structured, reality in which we can explore our own.

Where does classical civilisation fit in?

Greek myths, those exciting stories of gods, heroes and monsters, fascinated me as a child. Years later I decided to learn more about these fabulous tales, and discovered that one of the primary reasons for their creation was to explain how the world works (reality) and where man stood within it.

This, in turn, led to my interest in philosophy (why are we here?) and all things ancient Greek and Roman.

It wasn’t long after this that I realised that all good films, literature, and art sought to create credible and interesting realities that mirrored our own; realities in which we could explore certain issues and elements of human nature.

This need to create alternative realities seems to me to be ingrained in almost all of us, although it seems that most people only explore these worlds (TV, films and books) rather than seek to create them.

Why should this be?

And also, where do computer games figure in all of this?

So, what's it all about?

Now that I have started this blog, I have to decide upon what content should fill its pages lest it disintegrate into one, long continuous informal essay: The Not So Interesting Story of what I did Last [night/weekend/week/summer/holiday/Christmas].

While on occasion this may prove to be quite entertaining, I’m sure that most entries would basically wind up being; got home, ate, watched TV, and went to bed.

Not very rock and/or roll.

So, given that a blogs very nature is to communicate with people via the written word, I have decided to concentrate on exploring the craft of writing.

This topic, I believe, will become the main focus of this blog. However, I feel I will also explore the following subjects from time-to-time:

• Film making
• Philosophy
• Classical Civilisation
• Literature
• Art
• Computer gaming

Now, what do all these subjects have in common? What is the thread (for me at least) that ties all of these together?

Reality.

What on earth do I mean by this? Well, that’s probably a discussion for tomorrows post.

Hello there!

If you are reading this it is probably due to one of the following reasons:

1. You were looking for something else and ended up here completely by accident.
2. You are someone I told (whilst drunk) that I actually created a blog back in 2004 but have only just got around to writing something in it.
3. I have at last made it as a filmmaker - rejoice! You have scoured the interwebs to gain some insight into the fellow whose wonderful film you've just watched and came across...this.

In any case, I welcome you here with open arms and hope that I can be a pleasant distraction from whatever it is you really should be doing.