Category Archives: conversations with myself

Vale, Steve Jobs

Posted on by
Reply

I was at work, browsing idly on my iPhone when I stumbled upon the news, linked to a short news blast from the AP. This wasn’t fake: it was a statement by Apple, and the language was solemn.

Man oh man, the shock froze me for a minute. As though I was searching for a clue, somewhere in there, that this wasn’t real. But it was, and the Apple homepage spoke volumes in its simplicity, their tribute as minimal as could be, befitting the man.

The amount of coverage Jobs’ passing has received is off the chart. I thought that perhaps this matched the level of Michael Jackson’s passing, but the sordid circumstances surrounding that doesn’t hold a candle to what I’ve seen in the media today. It may well be the technology focused echo chamber I live in, but it certainly felt like everyone was talking about it.

At lunch, outside the Apple store in Sydney, three bouquets lay on the pavement. Five minutes later, another had joined them. Astonishing.

it would seem a day for reflecting on Jobs and his way of thinking, and the most intimate view you could have of his thoughts and philosophy seems to have come from his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address (available on Youtube):

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Perhaps the most eloquently put epitaph for Steve Jobs today comes from Barack Obama:

Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last.  Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world. The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.

Vale, Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011.

November

Posted on by
3

It’s November 2010.

Motherf—-

No, time to ease up on the swearing, and admit that this year got out of hand. Hell, these last 18 months have just been a bit of a rollercoaster ride, ever since that fateful day when I was dunked in the cold shock of finding a job you love is not forever, even if you’re doing the best you can.

That as far as I can tell was the last time I was blogging with any regularity, and after that, I had to force myself to blog, to try to justify having this site. I remember looking at this site just earlier this year and noting the only reason my archive list hadn’t faltered in getting links for each month in 2010 was because I hit one post a month, sometimes only by the skin of the month’s last day. And yet here I was with 4 drafts in various states of polish or indeed finish.

And then we hit September, and things got a little more crazy in the real world, and I neglected this place altogether. Not even a traditional birthday post acknowledging a vaguely defined milestone of sorts in ages could swing me to post here.

Maybe I can’t blame all of it on the job. Hell, I probably can’t even blame more than 20% on it if I’m being honest with myself. Between Facebook sapping my time and attention in 2009, to my weaning off it and diversion to Twitter in 2010, particularly with the Australian election being so fast moving in news stories this year, I pretty much lost the habit of posting anything long form. Emails to friends turned from lengthy tracts to short bursts as an effort to condense and consolidate information became the overriding goal.

All this while I had what might generously be called a bit of spare time. My job over the last 18 months was quite possibly the most relaxed I’ll get this side of retirement, but if anything, that sapped the creative energy out of me and I wandered, undriven towards an indeterminate future.

Already I’m wondering the point of this post, other than to bemoan the lack of recent posting beyond thoughtless rants on a few simple topics that have grabbed my attention, and I wonder: if I’m having this thought, then what is my dear reader thinking? (I would be surprised if I still had regular readers given the paucity of content provided here).

But perhaps that’s what I was going for all along – a semi-private, semi-public space to have an open conversation with myself. Mostly because conversationswithmyself.com is a bloody pain to remember. I like the idea of having more space on the web to fill in with words than the 140 characters I’m limited to in Twitter, and I guess that’s what this here is for.

I also don’t really have a point here, despite inching closer to something which feels like a conclusion. In any case, here is hoping this time is different, yo.

The Thriller

Posted on by
Reply

If there was one bit of news I didn’t expect to wake up to yesterday, it was that Michael Jackson had died.

At first, I heard that “reports out of the US” were saying he died, or was in a coma. I didn’t want to believe it, but over the next half hour, the news was confirmed by more reliable sources, and so it was that a special artist’s life ended.

Michael Jackson was many things to many people, but it was his Black or White that was my very first pop song; it was the first one I can recall being a fan of, of racing to the radio to listen to. I had a tape of the album, Dangerous, that is probably one of the world’s most worn tapes around, particularly around the Black or White part. I watched the video clip a hundred times, as it stayed in the charts for weeks on end. Saturday mornings finished with Video Hits showing Black or White, and on Sundays it was up early to see it again on rage, which usually showed the whole clip, not just the music.

In short, I thought he was a genius, and given the outpouring of grief, emotion and the reactions of the last two days, I don’t think I was the only one. Jackson’s active career spanned 4 of his 5 decades, and at his height in the 80s the monkier “The King of Pop”, first said by his friend Elizabeth Taylor, stuck, and there are no heirs to the throne. From his start in the Jackson 5 to his best-selling solo album Thriller, and even to the mixed Invincible which never the less contained the hit You Rock My World, Jackson did what a performing artist should do best: entertain and thrill the public.

The name Jackson lives in the same echelon as Presley and Lennon, a genius in the musical world, as a singer, songwriter and perhaps foremost as a dancer. MJ’s sublime ability to control his body made perhaps his signature move, the moonwalk, somehow magical and special; no-one quite does it like he did.

I guess I was too young to know what was going on during the first accusations of child molestation levelled against him, but I certainly did when the issue reared its ugly head again in the early part of this decade. You got the feeling watching the documentary that raised the issue that Michael Jackson was really just a bit lost outside of the music world, never having grown up or being allowed to do so in a normal manner. It was the ultimate Peter Pan complex – he wanted to be a kid forever.

Whether the accusations were true or not, acquittal not withstanding, the damage to Jackson’s reputation and his continual strange behaviour led to his fall from grace, as seems inevitable for all child stars. For many though, as is abundantly clear today, this did not diminish his achievements as an artist, and so I would represent him – one of the most brilliant performers we had for years. It is a pity that his life should end so early.

I don’t know whether we’ll see the like of Jackson ever again – the celebrities with a genuine reason to be celebrated, the entertainers that achieve so much on a global scale; one would hope that perhaps someone will be inspired enough to produce music that appeals to so many. It would be a pity too if his music were to be overshadowed by his later days, and I would sincerely hope his music is held up as a shining example of popular entertainment.

Vale, Michael Joseph Jackson, 1958 – 2009.

Jon Stewart Explains to Congress

Posted on by
1

Jon Stewart is still in fine form:

Growing Up

Posted on by
5

“Yeah, I’m looking to buy a place.”

Holy shit, did I just say that?

I think I did. In fact, I think this is the beginning of the end – the end of pretending like I can get away with doing just the minimum.

There’s a couple of factors that have prompted me to start looking, not least of which is $17,000 on offer from the Federal and state governments for a first home buyer, plus stamp duty waiver for a place under $500,000. The likely bottoming-out of the market and sufficient savings means it’d be on the foolish side not to take advantage of this confluence of timing.

But that doesn’t stop me being scared out of my mind at the idea, or thinking it is pretty much the end of any idea that I’m still a kid.

Trying not to bang on about it

Posted on by
7

As much as I have been mentioning what today is all about, it’s even less online than it is in real conversations around the office. There’s been nothing else which has been a consistent topic over the last month at least, save perhaps considerations of the future beyond today.

Today also marks my 2 year anniversary at work, which is kinda scary in itself. Sure, actual date might be the 6th, but it’s the same week, the same first Monday of February, and that counts more for me.

But back to the topic at hand. Why the constant attention? It’s all about what it means. It’s like report day back in school – it’s a reflection of how your year went, and what you got as a result. As a ‘graduate’, the number is partially arbitrary, but today is also promotions day, which is just as relevant, if not more so. There’s talk from many of quitting if various parameters aren’t met, but that’s got to be a scary step to make.

It’s not like school, where you’ll just be graduating at the end of a fixed term. It’s not like uni, where you have to tick all the minimum requirements boxes to cash in. It’s so much more vague and undefined, just as you need someone to point the right way.

Maybe it’s just me.

This time

Posted on by
Reply

It’s something emepheral, almost. Our relationship is defined almost entirely within the confines of the darkness and the music, the undercurrent of alcohol and the late night, the unsteady beat driving our actions and defining our interaction.

It’s hard to have a moment of intimacy when you’re surrounded by strangers at close range. Any such moments must be stolen, and undeclared, lasting mere seconds while the gaps between the moments stretch out, time’s elastic nature playing its usual trick. The music’s volume precludes anything but the eyes conversing, though at this stage it’s still early enough in the relationship that all the common phrases have not been defined in the language of the eyes.

Politeness demands you engage others, but your eyes are drawn back, searching for contact, unacknowledge or otherwise.

Finally, you find yourself outside, the chill night air refreshing after the stale heat of the dancefloor. Another night is over, and each of the group will find their way home, to wake tomorrow, some basking in the aftermath, others holding a head of regret. The moment passes, and you wonder if it’ll occur again.

You cross your fingers and wish upon a star. Maybe the old tales do come true sometimes.

This shit just got real

Posted on by
3

(It’s inevitable, isn’t it? As soon as I say “I’m on hiatus,” I think of something to write)

I think what’s got me in a bit of a zone is the fact that suddenly, things are real. I don’t know why it hasn’t felt like that until just recently; maybe I’m finally getting out of that age range where you’re expected to goof off, and hitting 22 suddenly sounds very much like “Ok, you’re supposed to be grown up now. Get on with it.”

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m in London and suddenly I’ve realised that, wait, I’m actually here for 7 whole months. Not just two like last time, most of which was spent larking about. Maybe it’s my flatmates – they’re all much, much older, and while they are students, it’s something they’ve come back to.

Maybe it’s that others are talking of careers, and homes, and lifetime partners, and I’m not thinking of any of that, because… well because I’m not sure that I should. That’s Scary Stuff, don’t you know? The grad program I’m on is a nice feather-bed to land on on my way into the workplace, because for the first year at least, it certainly felt like I was just out of uni but not really, and it was all a bit of a lark. And then London happened, or at least kicked off, and it still felt like it was just going to another semester.

But then I got here, and found a place to live, and suddenly… it’s all too real.

Whatever the reason, it’s like I’m finally realising I’m out of uni, and way out of school. The work I do day-to-day affects other people in their day-to-day world, even if just slightly. In some cases, there are people praising my work, and that drives an intense sense of satisfaction. In others, there are those who criticise and point out how it gets in their way. And all the time I’m watching them thinking “hang on, you use this for real?“, as if I’d always considered that this was merely an exercise like at uni, and I was being trained for the “real thing”. But now I’m here, I’m called on as a subject expert, having worked on it for a year and a half (and still knowing all too little).

It’s not too early for a quarter-life crisis, is it? When the hell did life become real?!