Written in September 2017. First published in News and Views newsletter.
Imagine sometime in the future where space travel is as
regular as air travel is today. Because of the distances involve they are space
ferries in operation between the planets. As everyone knows, it takes forever
to travel to Mars, so these ferries have facilities to make them as
self-sufficient as possible and the trip comfortable. Things like automated
farms, restaurants, a school, theatres, a library, a hospital and … a vet.
Yes, some passengers have bought their pets with them. On
one of these vessels at any given time they are probably a dozen animals at
these vet/kennel at any given time. A dozen animals, of all walks of life,
including fish.
Now imagine that something happened to one of these vessels.
Space can be dangerous, after all. What if an asteroid hit one of those vessels
and killed everyone on-board …. Except the animals? (One got smuggled on board
and was under quarantine, leading to the place been sealed off, saving their
lives.)
So, here’s the question. With an endless supply of food,
water and air, and no humans to guide them, how would they cope?
In an environment originally-built for humans, would these
animals continue been “animals?” Could curiosity eventually allow them to work
out how their life support systems work, and allow them to fix them if a fault
occurs? Could that later go further, maybe allowing them to read our books? And
if so, would they understand what they read? Would they learn from them? Would
they use the knowledge we had recorded to build a new civilization? A society
with laws and a culture like ours or something completely different? Something
unique. Maybe they’ll create their own stories and literature. Maybe in some
distant future, a descendent of a bird might be reading Penguin Island
with hands that were once wings. Just a thought.
The idea of
making a tribute to Sargent Pepper has been one I have had since I realized that
its 50th birthday was coming back sometime in 2016. It was a
backburner idea while I muddled with my Pokémon history tribute and my computer
book. Then I realized that 2017 was also going to be my fifth year as a blogger
(My first post on this blog was posted in November 2012) and the Sargent Pepper cover
provided a great way to celebrate that milestone.
I did want to start work on it as soon as 2017 began and
planned to have it done by June (when the original album was released in 1967).
But life intervened. It wasn’t until November when work on this tribute really
began. In the following weeks before Christmas on any free time I had I was
busy with a sketchbook and tablet/phone (for reference material). I admit that the drawings were done in a hurry, so its not my best quality.
Long before that, when deciding who to put in my version of
the cover, I asked a couple of friends for suggestions. It was one of them who
came up with the great idea of putting in every person who was a “Fifth Beatle.”
This idea probably filled up one third of the cover. The rest were a mix of
friend suggestions, links to trivial facts about the album, and personal choice.
An original plan I had was to have other artists to contribute
stuff to it and to have portraits of them as the psychedelic Beatles in the
centre of it. But this was scrapped when I decided to place the VW Beetle in
the centre of it. I did get two artists to make stuff for it. There was a third
I wanted to collaborate with, but he was too busy. I did consider using a piece
of work he previously made (and posted online) as his contribution. I found a
piece that would be a good addition and I asked him (UNLIKE SOME). He declined
to have it used and thanked me for asking.
I did get two unlikely people to make a thing or two for
this tribute. One is a student of my drawing classes and another is a friend
who only started taking art recently because of my work. Emma drew the Alolan form Exeggutor and Gary drew Alphonse Elric (I asked him to draw him with a cat
inside him. He delivered something way better than I imagined.).
It was in the final week before Christmas that the drawing
was done and scanned into Photoshop. It was challenge for my old laptop (the
same one I have used to post that first post back in 2012 when it was brand new).
It took until about 2am on Christmas Eve that the version you saw was complete.
I did think about colouring it in, but there was no time for that (and then I
thought about the craze for adult colouring books, so I figured that getting
you to add the colour would give you a means to explore the piece more closely….)
But for those too lazy to do that, here it is in full techincolor.
Work in progress.
(Posted to show that I am working on it.)
It’s another month and time for another mandatory monthly post. A lot has happened to me in the past month. Apart from my first days as an amateur art teacher and my long list of home improvements (which mostly involve building bookcases I bought from B&Q and moving A LOT of books), the 5th August 2017 will be remembered as the day of a significant milestone in my life … the day I first bought something on eBay.
Friends and regular readers will know that I have a thing for technology. I am fascinated by human ingenuity in all its guises. Gadgets, buildings, magic tricks, cons, works of art, special effects, music, movies, you name it. If a human made it, I’m interested.
This is why I’m kind of annoyed by some who believe the pyramids were built by aliens, and not fellow humans. Such thinking sells our species short, in the same way a lot of men claim the credit of work by women over the years. Maybe that’s why they are not many female conspiracy theorists and “flat-earthers.” Although I could be wrong about that, due to the stereotype (and a stereotype that is rarely bashed by the PC police, for some reason.).
Anyway, I find technology interesting. And not just the new stuff you find on sale
I find older technology more interesting, due to what people managed I to do with the limitations of their day. It’s not a surprise that high number of videos I watch on YouTube are of the subject of old devices and technology. I am a regular viewer of a number of channels that deal with this subject (Tech Moan, 8-bit Guy, Oddity Archive, Nostalgia Nerd, the teardown videos on the EEV Blog and Lazy Game Reviews, to name a few).
I find their videos easier to digest than dull technical text in old books, which makes researching for my computer book much easier (and fun).
For years (maybe since I discovered that book) I had always had the curious itch to take things apart to see inside them. I have always taken apart ballpoint pens because of this. Since then I have taken apart a few flashlights, two calculators, a radio cassette player, a VCR and (recently) my dad’s old PC from the mid-1990s.
For years I have developed ideas involving tinkering with such old devices, even using them in works of art. And in August 2017 the first step in those ideas becoming reality was made. On 5th August 2017, I bought my first piece of vintage technology on eBay… a typewriter.
(I actually bought an old Pentax SLR camera a while earlier through Amazon, but I call the typewriter purchase more significant because it was bought directly through eBay, starting the habit in bidding for other pieces of old technology. You be amazed at the price some people were selling stuff you might think be worth much more, especially as “job lots.”)
For a rough idea about the pricing of collectable things (and how things can change over time), watch this video from The 8-Bit Guy….
Are apple iBook laptops collector's items yet?
- 8-Bit Guy (2015)
His last point is one reason for my “madness.” This stuff my not stay that cheap for long. What may have been dirty cheap years ago could now be fetching prices of over $100… or even more.
By the time of this publication I have amassed a small collection of devices from the late-20th century. This includes….
For now, I’m going to stop using eBay for the time being, before I bankrupt myself and fill my home with old devices that have not much resale value to most people. My collect contains enough to satisfy my curiosity for a while.
So, why do it? Seeing pictures and videos of old things is one thing, but having examples I can play with is something else. Remember asking for an amazing toy you saw in a shop or on TV and asking your parents to get it for you and they say “no,” because it’s too expensive? Same thing here. And asides, how many can say they have in their procession a Betamax video recorder?
It was summer 2017. My mother wanted to take my nephew
somewhere for a holiday (or vacation, for the Americans reading this). I
thought about one day going to London to see the Science Museum. She used this
as an excuse for a trip to London for the three of us.
She asked a couple of parents while my nephew was in his
swimming club about holidays and how to arrange them. One day she came to my
place to get me to book the hotel and flight (They suggested flying there as it
was fast, allowing extra time in London.). I struggled. Found a hotel and
booked a room, but finding a flight was a nightmare. London has 4-5 airports,
with Heathrow been the most well-known. Naturally, we tried to get a flight to
there. In the end, she went to a travel agent and had the holiday arranged
there … six days before departure!
Because of her various hospital appointments there was only
one window for the trip. But to me it was too soon. A lot of pressures at my
end made the idea of going on a plane for the first time in ten years too
stressful. Just two days before the trip I told my mother I was not able to go.
But she still wanted to take my nephew on a trip so they went there without me.
They had a good time.
But here’s the thing – why do we do this? Why do many of us
(every year) go through the stress of finding brochures, trips to photo booths
and filling out forms for passports, looking up price-comparison websites,
buying new swimsuits, arranging taxis to take us to airports or harbours in
hours where milkmen and yokai roam the streets, and getting legally-sanctioned
harassed by guys in uniform because of a half-empty bottle of water that use to
contain over 100ml of liquid? Why all this annual collective madness every
summer (and winter, for the skiing)?
To be honest with you, I don’t find holidays that
interesting. I find them mostly as an inconvenience rather than a pleasure. I
really don’t like high temperatures. I don’t sunbath. I don’t dance in discos.
I rarely eat exotic food. In fact, the only thing I mostly do while on holiday
is draw or write stuff – mostly in the shelter of my hotel
room/cabin/tent/caravan. I could have just stayed at home and done the same
things, but other people insist I should “go out and explore.” Although the odd
experience has been great, such as Disneyland, but if I had a teleporter I
would use it instead of going through the hassle of navigating to an airport,
have my luggage inspected by strangers in uniform that actually give you the
image of exploding planes instead of safe flying and arranging a place to sleep
when I get there. I know some will say “the journey is the best part of the
trip than the destination,” and I agree with you, especially when it comes as a
narrative device in fiction. But really, have you ever had to look up the
timetables for flights to and from London?
I have been like this since I was a child and that is not
going to change anytime soon.
So why do we “go on holiday?”
With what happened recently with London I have been thinking
about all this.
I think one major component in our collective need to travel
is to do with “social bragging.” For a long time in history long-distance
travel was hard … and expensive. Naturally (until recently), only the rich
could afford to take such long trips for non-essential reasons, like sketching
the ruins in Greece and Rome or shooting a wild tiger for its fur and bragging
rights at the hunting lodge. Even though today a plane ticket from the UK to
Spain can cost as little as a large family’s weekly groceries the act of travelling
a long distance for pleasure still has a whiff of snobbery about it, even if
the destination is basically alternative version of home where the climate is
different.
But, of course, this snobbery has evolved over the years.
Back in the 18th century Londoners would have considered going to
Bristol exotic. But as transport technology improved, so did our ambitions to
travel further form home. In 1900, going to Paris from London was a challenge,
making the city a desirable location for holidays. Paris still is a desirable
location for a trip. Any grand tour of Europe demands at least one stop in the
city. But its desirability has fallen since the Channel Tunnel made the trip to
it a simple one-hour train ride from London. The Mediterranean also went through
this. Until the 1960s the only English-speaking people going there were rich
people, artists, and the occasional journalist. Since the package holiday
opened up the Med to many the only true way an Englishman can show off about
going there is buying a second home there (although Brexit may make such things
harder in the future). During my lifetime travelling from Europe to America or
the Far-East became more affordable. As a child, I went to Florida a few times
to go to Disneyland and Universal Studios. If I had been born a decade earlier
such adventures would have been just out of reach of my dad’s salary. Now I may
consider going to Tokyo one day - within the next decade or so.
It was a factor in my mother’s decision to take my nephew to
London. His friends have gone on holidays to various places, including Florida
(where she plans to take him in 2018), and she thought he was been deprived of
something if he didn’t go somewhere. She was taking me on holidays almost every
summer at his age, but her ill health in the past decade or so has prevented
that. This trip to London was his first proper vacation (He has been on
two-to-three-day coach trips to England and a week in a caravan park before, by
the way.).
But there is another factor in our desire to travel. And it’s
one that most people would say if you asked why they do it – to get away from
it all and try something new. Today many of us can expect to live past 70 years
(antibiotic-resistant bacteria permitting) and our world is a big place full of
interesting things and sensory experiences, like big canyons, underwater light
shows, and feats of achievement that have made people think “There is no ways
humans can build that on their own back then. They must have had aliens to help
them.” It is considered a massive shame for a creature that has a capacity to
wonder to be denied the chance to explore such a large sensory-scape. In fact,
it can be considered a crime to do just that.
Just over a century or so ago, not many of our ancestors had
that chance. Most spent their shorter lives mostly within the same dozen square
miles. Many things prevented them from doing so than just the cost of travel.
Today they are still things that prevent us from travelling, but the cost of
travel shouldn’t be. The only things that should prevent one from travelling
are bureaucracy and politics … and diseases.
Because of what happened I made a brave decision – I plan to
go to London …. by plane
… on my own!!!
November 2017 addition
I just found this interesting video from 1979, featuring the voice of John Cleese....
In the past two months they has been a noticed lack of new content on this blog. That is because of recent events in my life.
Back in December my father passed away. As anyone who has lost someone will know, when someone dies you tend to reevaluate your life to compare your life so far to the life of the person who passed away. And if you had a life that didn't exactly look "great" right now compared to the life of that dead person then you tend to feel pretty low. You may feel unaccomplished. It,s natural to do so, especially if that person happens to be a relative that appeared to have done a lot in one's life.
In March an aunt passed away. She wasn't that well known to me, but her death did awake feelings I had for my dad. I attended her funeral. Then an uncle of mine passed away. One I was quite close to (but not as close has I was to this one). Of course I attended his funeral. Then another relative passed away. An more obscure one. Didn't attend funeral. And then other aunt passed away. I had four relations die within two months. By May I had reevaluated my life too many times to be considered healthy. Admittedly, on the day when I was told about the last death I experienced the most severe bout of depression I had ever had. IT WAS AWFUL! I couldn't be bothered to watch TV! That is not normal for me.
I may have had some form of depression before this. Probably since my graduation in 2012. But this year's deaths in the family have pushed it to an extreme. So extreme that in April I was prescribed an anti-depressant. The leaflet that came with the tablets did say that it will get worse before it gets better - and they were right. That day in May was horrible. Fortunately, my mood improved soon after. In fact, since taking the tablets I have become more assertive. I am more eager to do things than before.
Recently I drew another pokehuman. A friend of my nephew asked for an Eevee.
And a parent has commissioned me help teach her kids how to draw.
20 years ago something happened that changed the world - a book was published. A book (to begin with) no one expected to have such an impact. In fact, the very idea that such a book could have such a cultural impact in the time it was published seemed laughable.
But it did, which was a good thing for the author. She spent years writing it, while raising a young child while on welfare. No one (not even her) could have predicted that within a few years of publishing that book, she'll become one of the richest authors in the world, becoming one of the great "rags to riches" stories of our time and (for the number of publishers who turned down the book) a cautionary tale in the history of business, along with similar ones involving The Beatles, Trivial Pursuit, and Chester Carlson's idea for a device that can copy documents in seconds.
Of course, I am talking about Harry Potter, the boy wizard that has given millions of children (and adults) fanatical joy.
Before I'll continue, I know some readers will be disappointed by my short tribute here. that is because...
I am not THAT into Harry Potter. (I have seen the movies and read a bit of the books and that's it.)
The experience of making my massive tribute to Pokémon last year has put me off the idea of doing such detailed well-researched tributes for a while.
So I got little to say about it, except that the books (from 2001) have spawned a franchise, featuring films, a theme park or two, a stage play, and countless toys. So "Is it worth the hype?"
"It's worth any amount of hype to get children to read again, and in these kind of numbers. And to have that kind of passion about sitting down in a corner turning pages of a book, instead of, you know, pressing on computer keys all the time and just playing PlayStations." - Alan Rickman, on HARDtalk just before the release of the first Harry Potter film (2001)
What made Harry Potter's massive (and fast) success a surprise to everyone back in 1997 was that back then everyone was thinking that kids were losing the ability to read books, because they were playing video games. In the year that Grand Theft Auto was introduced (and Pikachu was sending kids to hospital by epileptic seizure) if you read a tabloid you would have found stories with headlines that say "Video Games Linked to Illiteracy in Children" or "How Can We Make Kids Read Again?" The usual "this new thing is against the old order of things" nonsense. If the journalists who wrote such nonsense and actually listened to the gamers they talked to (and thought about there own experiences with media) they would find that people usually don't care what medium a story is told in... as long as the story is engaging. If a story is engaging for someone that person will endure anything to experience it all. This is why some will endure hours in the rain to see an outdoor performance. This is why many millions will stop what what their doing to watch a TV show every day or week. And this is why many kids back in 1997 played video games ... because they hadn't found a book worth reading ... let.
They were few new works of fiction in print that were very engaging for English-speaking children in the 1990s. This could be because Roald Dahl (my favourite author as a child) died back in 1990, creating a massive void in the new culture generator. With years of no one successfully filling in this void (and shelves full of new books that were not that engaging), much of the book publishing industry was thinking that there was little money in children's books. And with video games becoming a multi-million dollar industry (and the coming of the Internet), it seemed that the days of the book were numbered....
"...industry executives said the rise in children’s book sales was down to the wide range of choice, as well as fears among parents that their children are spending too much time using online social media and instead try to steer them towards traditional long-format reading.
“Parents have a general wish to see their children read print rather than spend too much time attached to their phone,” said Richard Charkin, executive director at Bloomsbury, publishers of the Harry Potter books. “There’s a slight fear of social media going on and people are saying ‘let’s get back to basics’.” " - Financial Times, 27th April 2017
And this was something people were noting even before the movies were made....
"In 1999, Harry Potter helped increase hardcover sales by more then 10%, and paperback sales by over 20%. The increase isn't made up only of Harry Potter books themselves, either--booksellers have noted an increased interest in other fantasy and in novels for children in general (For more on that phenomenon, see "The Harry Potter Halo" in the July 19, 1999 Publishers Weekly). And only eleven of the top 20 hardcover bestsellers in the PW list for 1999 were tied to a movie or TV show--thanks in part to Harry (April 10, 2000 issue). Things look good for the industry, but will this last?" - http://www.underdown.org/sales.htm
Yes, it did.
But the true legacy of Harry Potter isn't just in increased sales in books in the age of digital competition. Hogwarts' magic has also had a bewitching effect on the very brains of the people who read them ... literally.
But before I reveal why so, I got to address here the many people of fundamentally-christian faith who have branded J.K.'s work as "the work of the devil." Its easy to see why they would without actually reading them for themselves. Just the idea of a book about a kid learning to do witchcraft is enough to get them angry, especially if it becomes very popular. Even today they are some who still brand Harry as evil, but in 2017 these people are not only christian of the fundamental sense. They also share another trait ... they have voted for Donald Trump.
Many of you may think that this is because of their battle of words on Twitter. But that's the lazy answer. The true answer that only few actually are even aware of is what I said earlier.
"Hogwarts' magic has also had a bewitching effect on the very brains of the people who read them ... literally"
In 2016 a study published in PS: Political Science & Politics showed that after reading one Harry Potter book readers approval rating for Donald Trump fell by 2-3 points. And "for someone who has read all seven books, the total impact could lower their estimation of Trump by 18 points out of 100."
This is the main reason why people who brand Harry "evil" should be afraid of the books. They teach children, not witchcraft, but ideas of tolerance and the evils of prejudice.
This study also revealed something else. The measurable fall of Donald's approval rating only happened to people who read a Harry Potter book. When it looked at people who watched the movies their approval of Trump pretty much remained the same. This reveals something interesting....
Reading changes your brain.
For most of human history, people learned about their world by looking at scenes. Because of this our rains have developed specialised parts to process sound and vision. This is why movies and music have such primitive cultural power.
Reading, on the other hand, is a skill humans only required relatively recently, so our brain aren't naturally wired to read text. Instead of a single part doing all the work, your brain uses multiple parts to process the series of symbols you see into words and concepts you understand. This results in a form of synesthesia.
For example, if I were to write the word DOG just now, did the image of a dog just enter your mind? What about YELLOW. Did that colour just flash in your visual eye? And what about BARK. Did you just imaginary hear a dog bark just now?
This is why literature is considered the most powerful of mediums. This is why poets are considered as great as politicians in history, by changing the minds of millions.
"Politics is shaped by people. And people, sometimes, are shaped by the fiction they read," - Mohsin Hamid The New York Times, 2015
This is how Harry Potter truly changed the world. It has fundamentally made a generation of kids more emphatic to others. No wonder Donald hates Harry.
