Alasdair Watson

As I said the other day, I hate photos of myself, and I was going to dodge around this one by talking about something else entirely, but then I remembered that I do have a photo of me taken a bit over a month ago that I quite like. Yes, OK, I’m conveniently masked but it’s still me under the halloween costume. I was going as Auberon, aiming for a sort of ragged-king look, which Miranda was kind enough to put together for me. Unfortunately, I’m cunningly obscuring some of the costume’s better touches with my pose here, but you can’t have everything, I guess. So while the photo doesn’t show it off to best effect, I think it worked well enough that I’ve saved the costume to be used again in future, so this post probably qualifies as a spoiler for anyone that’s planning on playing in the LARP I’m running next year. It may not be Auberon that the costume gets used for, but I’m sure I can find a use for some strange sort of inhuman jester-king in something. You’ll all love it, I promise. Honest.

This one isn’t in-line with rest of the meme – it’s one of the days I’m opting out of, because I don’t have any photos of me that I like from 10 years ago on-line, or any practical means of getting them there. Instead, I’m doing a topic that Budgie asked for – what friendship means to me. There are a few more of these that I want to evade, so if there’s something you’d like me to waffle on about, do ask…

When I was younger, I was a boy scout. Stop laughing at the back – I looked good in a woggle. The scout master may have been a little archaicaly homophobic, but he ended every meeting with the words “You live as a result of your actions, and you are judged by the company you keep.” It’s something that still informs how I pick my friends.

So what does friendship means to me? Well, to state the obvious, every friendship is different. Some of my friends, I see once in a blue moon, and it’s like no time has passed – we fall easily back into our friendship, and the conversation flows freely. Other friends, I see regularly, and yet every time, there’s a certain hurdle of not really quite knowing how to start talking to be overcome – like we’re both looking for the level, and not quite sure where it is.

I’ve got friends where I feel like I put more effort into the friendship, and friends where I know they’re the one doing all the work (and I feel bad about that). There are people I’ve met in the last year who are close friends, and friends I’ve known for a very long time who I keep at arms length.

One of the ways people define friendship is how far you would put yourself out for another person. Like, I think, most people, I have a small group of people that could call me up at any time, and I’d drop whatever I was doing if they needed a hand. Except, well…

Everyone says things like that. The truth, I think, is more complex. Because it’s easy to drop things if they’re just things for me, but as soon as other people are involved, well, that changes the equation. And that’s where friendship comes into it. Because honestly, if any of my friends asked for my help, my time, and giving it wouldn’t interfere with any plans but my own, well, how could I refuse? But suppose that interferes with plans made with another friend? Or more complicated yet, what if it interferes with helping another friend. Or with plans with groups of friends?

It’s not just about how your prioritise your own time – it’s about how you prioritise other people’s time and needs. And honestly, that’s the measure I tend to use for friendship – I try to place the same importance on someone else’s time that they appear to place on mine. So that means there are people I see once in a blue moon who are still very close friends, because I know that while neither of us has lots of time to see the other, when we do make the time, it’ll be a solid priority for both of us, and if they called up needing a hand, I’d clear my calendar for them. And there are people I see regularly who clearly can’t be arsed to actually make time, who routinely show up late, or cancel at the last minute, and while they’re still my friends, they’re not people who I would cancel plans for except in direst need.

There’s a chance that that last line has stung a few people reading this. It’s happened to me a bit of late, friends not showing up when they said they would, so if you’re worrying that this bit was aimed at you, well, you’re wrong. It wasn’t aimed at all. I don’t like you any less, I’m not having a dig. I really am just answering a question, and explaining a bit about what friendship means to me. I am absolutely certain that I fall short of my own standards, and that I have friends who think that I’m unreliable, that I’m never around, or things like that, and I am sorry for that (but on the other hand – make actual in-the-diary plans with me, and you’ll probably find I show up). This is not about what anyone else does, it’s about what I try to live up to.

Ultimately, friendship means being someone that someone else can rely on. Common interests, a shared sense of humour, these are the things that start a friendship, and without them, there’s not likely to be one. But if I am to be judged by the company I keep, then I want the company I keep to be reliable. You don’t need to always be around, you don’t need to expend lots of effort keeping in touch, because god knows, I probably won’t. But you do need to be someone who can be relied on to hold your end up when it actually counts.

Yes, I know the first two were also photos that I took. This one, you can just think of as “A photo you’d like to post”. This one I’m not quite as happy with as I am the previous two – the picture is off enough in very small ways that it bugs me – the seagull, the lack of perfect alignment, the little toning dodges I’ve had to apply, and so on. But given that it was essentially a snap I managed to get on the off-chance, in a two second window before someone walking behind me came into shot, and spoiled the rest of the effect, I’m still happy enough with it. One day, I’ll get around to getting up at 6am on a Saturday, and getting up there before anyone else is around, so I can take my time over it, and retake the thing. But until then, this is the best version of the shot that I’ve got, and I for all it frustrates me, I’m very happy I managed to get it.

I did consider using some news photography here – a famous photo of some atrocity or other, something like that – and talking about how angry it makes me, and generally using to day to raise awareness of something, but to be quite honest with you, I’m just not in the mood to get that worked up at the moment about things I don’t have to.

So instead, here’s another old photo of mine. The photo doesn’t really make me sad in and of itself, but I think the narrative it suggests – someone stopping to reflect on a blue heart on a wall must have a reason to do so, surely – hints at a sadness. Again, I’m just generally happy with this shot – there’s not really much I would have changed or done differently now.

One of two of my own photos I have hanging in my office. I love this bit of sculpture, and when I bought my first DSLR, I knew this was a photo I wanted to take. So I went and took it. It’s not a flawless composition, but it reflects a lot about the way I see the world and I am as happy with the light, colours and treatment of the subject in this photo as I am in any photo I’ve taken, which, given that I took it nearly five years ago is astonishing – I usually can’t stand my work only a few days after taking the picture. That this one is still one I take pleasure in on a daily basis is something I am very happy about.

Well, today’s topic is “something that tickles your fancy”, and what tickles my fancy this morning is maps.

We’ll start with a quote that was very nearly the quote I used yesterday, and is something that I willl probably have tattooed on myself at some point in the not-too-distant future. “The map is not the territory”. That’s Robert Anton Wilson, talking there, and it’s a simple a pithy phrase that means in essence that just because we can model, explain, or illustrate something in a particular way right now, we should not confuse our current way of thinking with the truth. There is always more to learn, and if we accept that what we know now is that absolute truth, we run the risk of becoming dogmatic, and ignoring future discoveries.

Which is, of course, why fundamentalists always misunderstand science – they have confused their map with the territory, and have trouble the idea that the map science provides is subject to change – for them the very fact that it’s subject to change means that it cannot be true. So their faith tells them that X is true, while science asks them to give you the comfortable certainty of X for the more difficult uncertainty of any one of a number of other letters.

But I’m digressing. I don’t just like maps as metaphor. I like them as objects in an of themselves. The inamorata knocked it out of the park a couple of months ago, when she bought me a poster of an old tube map, from back before it was the tube, when there were only half a dozen short lines, and it was called “The London Electric Railway”. I went out and bought a frame for it the very next day, and it’s hanging in pride of place in my office. I think that anyone that knows me could instantly understand why it would.

I said a minute ago that I don’t just like maps as metaphor, and that’s true, but I think it’s more accurate to say that I love them because the are metaphors. Maps are a very human thing – a means to reframe the world in a different context, a means to make vast scopes smaller, and more comprehensible. I love them because they same territory can be mapped in hundreds of different ways, and each of them is true, and valid, and will show us something different about that space. Maps illuminate the real and the unreal with equal ease – chart territories both physical an imaginary, or, indeed, the intersection of the two in a marvellous manner.

Maps exist at the point where art and science touch, a space for design and culture. And they’re ever evolving – there is no such thing as a completely finished map, because by the time a map is done, the thing it is mapping will have changed.

One of my favourite ever maps, in fact, is visible incomplete. My Dad owns two volumes of a three volume set of the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. If he had all three, in the same nick that the two he has are in, they’d be worth a grand or two. As it is, they’re worth about 20 quid each. But their worth isn’t my point, except perhaps to illustrate why I was allowed to handle them as kid, and have therefore seen the map of the world contained therein.

The first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was published in 1776. On the map of the world in contains, the coastline of Australia is incomplete, and it is not labelled as Australia, but rather “New Holland”. Absolutely bloody magic.

“I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I can bang on about this quote in any number of ways. And I’m going to, so settle in.

We’ll start with the most basic: answering a question about quotation with a quotation that proclaims my hatred of them is, well, I think anyone that knows me would agree that that’s very much in line with my sense of humour. I don’t intrinsically hate quotation, but the circular nature of that response is sufficiently pleasing to me that I Iove to use that quote.

But further: I do hate over-use of quotation. It can be used as a substitute for one’s own thought, creativity and self-expression. I would far rather hear someone restate an idea clumsily, but in their own words, than have them use the most perfect and elegant quote in the universe. I also dislike the traits in people that lead them to use quotes from literature, or from other people, all over their internet profiles. It reeks to me of a bad combination of some or all of insecurity, false modesty, self aggrandisement, and a poor capacity for self-reflection. If you can’t talk honestly about yourself in your own words, then there’s something wrong, in my view.

And even getting away from the use of quotation as a crutch for creativity and self-expression, I particularly hate the trick of quoting some other source to shore up a weak argument. Religious arguments are particularly bad for this, referring to their holy books as if those books carry some intrinsic weight, but it can happen in plenty of secular arguments, too. But it’s in the religious context that I particularly love the seldom-seen full version of this quote.

“Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.”

If your argument is weak, referring to another, older, or cleverer source who appears to be saying something similar may make it sound stronger. And frankly, that’s cheating. Now, I’ll grant that if you’re caught by someone who is more familiar with the work you’re attempting to (mis-)use, then you might well find your entire argument being knocked down at a stroke. But if you’re not, then well, being deceptive like that in an argument is pretty shitty, and drives me up the wall.

So, when do I like quotation?

Well, one of the reasons most quotations survive is that they’re pithy statements of interesting ideas. They’re generally quite simple, clear, and memorable. That can be good. They’re a good way to make a theme or idea clear, in support of one’s own words. And yes, properly used in a debate, they can add some useful weight. And, as was pointed out to me in conversation over breakfast this morning, quotation is the basis of all satire. And we all know how I love satire. (I also like remixes, re-appropriations and re-interpretations. Can’t do any of those without quotation…)

But there’s another reason I like them, and that is that I like context. I like the fact that works and ideas exist in a wider web of thinking, expression and human experience that has gone before, or come after them. Quotations can provide a sort of cognitive hyperlinking, a means to indicate that if you like a particular line of thought, you can see where it’s born from and what was born of it. And I think that context for one’s thoughts is one of the most useful things one can provide as one goes.

For example: one of the other reasons I like that quote is because it is Emerson’s. I quite like Emerson. I’m a lot more of a socialist than he ever was, but his lack of socialism comes from his strong belief in “the infinitude of the private man”. He, in this case, is talk about the single individual being more important, and in many respects stronger than society. I don’t believe that’s the case, but I do believe very strongly in both privacy and individuality of thought, and the power of the individual when they stand up for they have come to believe for themselves, rather than been taught by some outside force. My socialism, I guess, comes from the idea that society is the place where our individual selves, and all our private thoughts come together for the advancement of all, to enable us to all go off and better be our private selves. I don’t think he’d have had a problem with that.