Alasdair Watson

“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.

I’m going to be really quite glad when this “favourite” slew of topics is done, because I am a fully rounded human being, and have trouble with this sort of pick-one nonsense.

On the bright side, though, I am not a well-read man. Oh, I’ve read a lot of books, but I’m not well read. I’ve read vast piles of nerdy crap, and an awful lot of non-fiction, but I’ve ready very little serious or weighty literature. I have a go at things like Ulysses and Infinite Jest about once a year, and give up on them, and I’ve read fuck all Dickens, very little Shakespeare, and generally my attitude to 90% of everything published pre- about 1960 can be summed as “only relevant in as much as it informs more contemporary works”. Which to be clear, is not to say that they’re unimportant or bad, just that my personal tastes mean I prioritise reading more recently published stuff. Nor am I holding up being thinly-read as a good thing. I would dearly love the time and attention span to be better read. The only reason that it’s a bright side is that if I were better read, it would be even harder to chose.

As it is, there are strong contenders in Sherlock Holmes, Winnie-the-Pooh, The Illuminatus Trilogy, something by Hunter S. Thompson, or maybe Alan Moore or Bill Drummond.

So how to pick just one book? Well, it’s got to be profound, it’s got to be moving, and it’s got to be something that rewards re-reading. That seems like a good baseline to me. But all of the above do that. So I need some other means of refining it. By genre? Or should I be expressly looking for a non-genre work? Do I include book-format editions of comics as part of my considerations?

Hang on, though. This is the digital era, and I’m being asked a format question. (Yeah, you’ve worked out how I’m going to do this, haven’t you?) I’m not being asked about my favourite content. I’m being asked about my favourite book. That makes it a lot easier to decide, because while I love a lot of the content I’ve named above, the actual editions I own are unremarkable. As far as actual books that I love simply for their form factor as books, that number is a lot smaller. Actually, I can narrow it down to less than half a dozen.

Heston Blumenthal’s The Big Fat Duck Cookbook is available these days in a smaller, regular format, 20 quid cookbook. I won’t say that I don’t know why anyone would buy the smaller format – I might pick up a copy myself, for ease of readability – but the edition I’ve got, the 100 quid beast of a book, the one I honestly put my back out lifting, well that’s an thing of serious beauty. Designed by Dave McKean, beautifully laid out, lavishly illustrated and with photos documenting everything – the content can be read without the form factor, sure, but the form factor makes reading it a (slightly awkward) pleasure.

Bill Watterson’s The Complete Calvin and Hobbes is similarly impractical. 3 Beautiful hardbound editions containing exactly what they say they do. The whole set weighs in at about 10kg, and it’s worth every gram. And if you don’t love Calvin and Hobbes, then there is probably something wrong with you.

Bill Drummond’s 17 is also utterly, utterly lovely. Hardback, bright red, with while lettering in a simple, ultra-clear font. No clutter, just the important stuff. Plus, it’s a bloody good book.

For a while there, I though I’d be smug and clever, and my favourite book would actually be a Black and Red or Moleskine or a Field Notes notebook, because yes, I do love them. And I could waffle on about the potential of the blank page, and how the best books are unwritten. And I’ve left this bit here, because yes, I do really like them as objects, but honestly, most of my notes are scribbles that are dumped onto computer ASAP. I love the form factor of the books and yes, the potential of a new notebook is nice, but once they’re done, they’re done, and I don’t keep them around for anything. I like them more in abstract than I do in reality.

But in fact my favourite book is, as ever, Winnie the Pooh. Some years ago, I acquired a beautiful hardcover slipcase edition containing both the Winne-the-Pooh books, When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six, with lovely colour versions of E. H. Shepard’s illustrations. It is both a beautiful object, and a fantastic work of fiction for children of all ages – even if one were to outgrow the narratives themselves, the writing will always be some of the finest in the English language, and even the most jaded adults should be able to take pleasure in that, at least.

The West Wing.

Hands down, no contest. It’s the only show (to date) that I’ve watched when it aired, from first season to last (I admit, it took until midway through season one for me to start watching it, but I did watch enough of it) actually making time to watch it each week as it aired. It was the only show which was destination TV for me the whole way through. Everything else I’ve watched on DVD or otherwise time-shifted. The West Wing, I made time for.

I will admit that some seasons are stronger than others – 1, 2, 6 and 7 are particularly good, and 5 particularly bad. But it never went below “worth making time to watch” for me – it was getting very close by the end of season 5, and I started season 6 thinking I’d give it a few episodes and see how I felt, but that season started strongly, and just got better throughout, so I kept on watching. That’s a feat few other TV shows have managed – House is looking like it would be another similar show, but even that, I’ve started time shifting to more convenient points, and honestly, it’s not the same sort of thing. The West Wing, I started watching because the whole show was astonishingly good – the writing, the scripts, the direction and the acting are just superb. House, on the other hand, has consistently superb work from Hugh Laurie, whose charisma carries the show. In every other regard it’s a very variable programme.

But back to The West Wing. It’s not just unusual in that I watched all of it, it’s also not the sort of show I normally go for. I prefer shows that are self-contained within episodes – House, CSI, that sort of thing. I don’t want the full on Star Trek dictum that any given episode should be viewable out of order with all the others, but I do want to watch 40 minutes of TV, and go away feeling like I’ve seen a complete story, even if I perhaps didn’t understand the wider arc plot bits fully. 24, Heroes, Lost, these shows do not generally work for me – they’re all arc, and no self-contained narrative. The West Wing sits somewhere between House and the Heroes, in that for 90% of the episodes, they do tell a complete story, it’s just that there will be references back and forth to earlier or later things, but most crucially given my normal viewing habits, because it’s an ensemble piece, they do not have the time to spend introducing the characters in any given epsiodes, so you really do need to watch a few episodes to get that hang of everything, particularly because they all (walk and) talk very quickly. So it’s a measure of the quality of the characters and the actors that it got me to overcome my usual allergy to shows you need to follow closely.

Yes, it’s absolutely a liberal wet-dream of a show – it posits a full 12 years of a Democratic White House, for one thing, and the president in it is positively communist by the standards of real world American politics (even if you can practically see the show’s runners and writers backing away from their own instincts about two thirds of the way through the 1st season, around the time Bush got elected). That’s no bad thing – it was never going to reflect the absolute reality of American politics, not least because if the journalism I’ve read is to be believed, you have to be a particularly unsympathetic sort of personality damage case to get involved in that particular circus, and if it’s not going to reflect reality, it might as well reflect aspiration.

And to cap it all off the entrance of Martin Sheen, as Jed Bartlet at the end of the first episode is one of the greatest bits of TV I have ever seen. I could watch this again and again and again.

Well, this one is a little awkward, but only from the point of view of anyone who is reading back through the archives of my blog, because I talked about this film only two posts ago.

It’s Pixar’s Up. I loved it. Simple, plain, uncynical, sense-of-wonder stuff that made me laugh and cry. Beautiful animation, excellent writing, and a marvellous cast. Proof, if proof were needed, that you don’t need explosions, tits, or anything remotely dark and gritty to make a truly superb piece of cinema.

That’s quite a short post, for something that’s meant to be an exercise in encouraging me to write regularly and write more. But I’m loathe to talk about the details of the film, because there might be people reading this who haven’t seen it yet, and they really need to see it, unspoiled, at the first opportunity. Plus, as I say, I’ve already written about why I love Up before, and don’t really want to repeat myself.

So here, in no particular order are some other films I love, and a few reasons why. I’m not sure that these are my favourite films, they’re just films it occured to me to mention when dwelling on the subject.

The Matrix – just the first one, you understand. Pop-gnosticism is something I love, and The Matrix is a particularly shiny, impressive and exciting varation of the species.

Sunshine – I know a lot of people don’t like it, but it’s an extended meditation on heroism and glory using one of the most effective metaphors I’ve seen, and seen in that light, it has a very tight script, even including the slasher-SF monster figure.

10 Things I Hate About You – Equal parts Shakespeare and teen romcom, with a remarkably good cast. It’s just daft fun. Plus, it has Alison Janney, and I’ll watch anything she’s in.

The Ninth Gate – Barely connected to the book, I am a sucker for a well done occult conspiracy thriller. This is exactly that. It works according to a logic all it’s own, and the is-it-real-or-not nature of the movie probably puts a lot of people off, but I really enjoyed it.

Adaptation – Simultaneously a refutation of, and a strict adherence to all the rules that Robert McKee lays out in his book “Story”, simultaneously an deconstruction of the art of writing for film, and an emotionally gripping story, this is the sort of film that I imagine other screenwriters watch and cry into their beer, because they’ll never be as good as Charlie Kaufamn.

Preface: I thought I’d make an effort to dust my “writing” blog off a bit before the end of the year, as much for the discipline of getting something written every day as anything else. So I’m going to do that 30 Days meme that’s doing the rounds, but there are 5 days that I don’t want to do – the topics are not something I can easily talk about, mostly just for practical reasons. So the first five people to pipe up get to pick (non-fiction) topics for me to write about. Anyway, back to “my favourite song”:

God, I hate it when I’m asked questions like this. I always worry that my answer is going to come across as “I’m a pretentious music nerd snowflake who couldn’t possibly pick just one song because I’m sooo eclectic”. But on the other hand, half my friends probably say the same. So y’know, whatever.

For now, let us simply accept that it is actually impossible to have a single favourite song. Music is a thing of emotion and mood, and humans are mercurial creatures. My favourite song to listen to when lying in bed alone at 2am is not going to be my favourite song to dance to in the middle of a nightclub at 2am.

So: it is a bright and sunny December afternoon. The first frost of winter showed up last night. What do I listen to at at this time of year? There’s a handful of albums I regularly reach for when the nights draw in – Firewater’s “The Man On The Burning Tightrope”, Tom Waits “Real Gone”, The Pogues “The Rest of the Best” (I prefer it to “The Best Of”), The Tansads “Shandyland” and The Sisters of Mercy “First and Last and Always” are all regular winter listening.

But the winter also tends to make me want to reach back to older music, or modern reinterpretations of same. I’ve a CD called “Vox Humana: Ancestral Voices For A Modern Europe” that gets played a lot. As do choral workings of Christmas carols. Recently, Miranda has been playing me various bits of medieval polyphony, and that’s definitely going to be part of my winter playlist from now on.

But that’s not getting me any closer to talking about today’s favourite track. After some thought, it’s this little beastie:

That’s Beef Wellington’s inspired remix of Bing Crosby’s “Happy Holidays”. Enjoy.