Why do libraries matter?

Yesterday morning I watched a feature about World Book Night on BBC breakfast TV in which the wonderful author Frank Cottrell Boyce was interviewed in the stunning new Liverpool library.  This passionate author, who I had the pleasure of seeing at a reading of his book Framed a couple of years back, rightly described the closure of 200 UK libraries  as “an act of cultural vandalism” and further “an act of mad draining of our mental capital.”

Knowledge is power and libraries make knowledge accessible to all, so closing a library is a political gesture.

 

Libraries are treasure troves. Libraries played a significant part in nurturing my lifelong love of reading.  As a child I devoured the resources of my school library and our local library.  When I had exhausted their shelves, I joined what we called the “big library” in the town centre. Not only were books available there, but also music scores and cassettes and records, (invaluable for a music student).  Many years later, whilst an undergraduate at University, the library became my second home, my favourite place on campus, a dazzling source of knowledge that satisfied my thirst for research. 

Since then, libraries have been forced to adapt and re-invent themselves to justify their existence, offering dvds, computers, free internet access and meeting facilities, and they continue to evolve.

Although I love the 24/7 virtual library offered by the internet, not everyone has this access, and as long as there are people, there is a need for physical libraries.  I can’t imagine a world without them.  Can you?

Related posts: http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/world-book-night.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/on-books-and-reading-and-pony-books.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/on-ways-to-read-book.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/a-library-in-my-handbag.html

Garrets and Gatekeepers in Creatabot

Really pleased that my post (or rant as my brother called it!) about the difficulties of visibility for creatives is in http://creatabot.co.uk/2012/11/01/garrets-and-gatekeepers-by-jane-ayres/

Do check it out as I would love your views.  And here is the cool pic taken in Tallin that my talented brother took which I used to illustrate the article. 

Photograph by Chris Ayres
http://scubabeer.uk.to/jalbum

Writers matter

Recent BBC 1 drama True Love, a series of 5 improvised interconnected stories with a stellar cast that included David Tennant and Lacey Turner, highlighted one issue for me – that writers matter.  A lot.  And what I noticed most of all in this series was the absence of a writer. The lack of a coherent and intelligent script really showed and resulted in a disappointing viewing experience. What it especially lacked was depth and pacing. It takes more than good acting to make a drama convincing. 

I also feel it made for lazy television, a trend that has been accelerating for many years now.  A kind of reality TV hybrid.  One aspect of this is the way the lyrics and music of popular songs are utilised to convey the emotions of the characters, functioning like operatic arias; the difference being that an aria is specially composed whereas the current method is to choose an off the peg song and shoehorn it into the drama.  Maybe I’m being harsh.  Sometimes this can work very successfully, but it’s a device that can be overused and intrusive,  as it was in this series. (Soap dramas Holby and Waterloo Road are both culprits, programmes I enjoy watching, but the ubiquitous pop song, used unsubtly, often grates….)

I wondered why True Love didn’t work for me, when I find Mike Leigh’s dramas, which also employ improvisation,  so brilliant.  Answers on a postcard please…..

Thinking....

I’ve been thinking a lot about the human brain.  I recently thoroughly enjoyed watching the BBC Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for 2011, a very entertaining and informative 3 parter that sought to explain and explore the mechanisms and processes of thinking, learning and being.  Apparently we are born with 100 billion neurons (brain cells), which then have to connect up.  Each experience we have forms the connections (dendrites).  The brain seeks out patterns.  Who we are - our identity - is a sum of our memories.  Fascinating stuff.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018l6vy

Connectivity and communion

After yesterday's post, I saw a wildlife film on BBC last night that featured wild Carmargue horses and I got to thinking - why horses?  What is it about horses that make us fall in love with them?  Aesthetically, they are beautiful, noble and powerful. Their eyes, their expressions, move us.  I plan to see the film Warhorse next week, and just looking at the horse on the film poster makes me cry!  

Then I thought about the deep seated need we have to connect and communicate with another living being, be that a human animal or a non-human animal.  It's all about communion.  Still doesn't answer the question about horses.  But  a profound spiritual experience occurs when we feel we truly know and understand another living creature, and that they know us. A mixture of relief, joy, calm - and acceptance that some mystery will always remain, and that is what makes it so special and unique. 

Related posts:

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/on-connections.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/running-writing-and-living.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/on-books-digital-landscape-and-bigger.html

More on journeys

I said in a previous blog that life is a journey.  I do believe this.  I feel it.  Not long after I had written it I started to read Super Sad True Love Story, a novel set in the future by Gary Shteyngart.  He was interviewed in the BBC documentary called Books - The Last Chapter (referred to in a previous blog) and this inspired me to seek out his novel.

The second paragraph reads, “Don’t let them tell you life is a journey.  A journey is when you end up somewhere.  When I take the number 6 train to see my social worker, that’s a journey.”

That made me think about my journey.  Where do I want to end up?  I don’t know the answer yet, although we all end up in the same place ultimately.  Journey and destination.  Both matter.

Train journeys and car journeys both provide great creative space, I find, whether I am driver or passenger.  Ideas fire off unprompted in a way that rarely happens if I am staring at my computer screen.

I’ve just read Rumblestrip by Woodrow Phoenix, a monochrome graphic book all about what happens when we get behind a steering wheel.  The layout cleverly simulates a car journey and as you read, you feel as if you are in fact on a virtual car journey.  I came across this book in a store in London at http://www.theschooloflife.com/

I keep promising myself I will go on one of their day schools some time.  Anyway, the book provides alarming statistics about deaths caused by driving and is thought-provoking.  I sometimes dream about driving a car, and when I drive at night, I sometimes wonder if I am dreaming.  Woodrow Phoenix describes it perfectly:

“There is a dreamlike quality built into the experience of driving.  A car windshield is a big window.  And also a screen….locations unwind on the other side of this rectangular glass almost as they do on a movie screen….you sit cocooned in your cabin….everything outside your windows is contained, the rest of the world an arm’s length away…..you glide through location after location as if they were erected just for you to drive past.  Every journey is a narrative with you at the centre.”  

I love that last line.

Related posts:
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/for-journey.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/footsteps-in-sand-guest-blog-from-jan.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/journeys-and-shapes.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/wheels.html

On books, the digital landscape and bigger stuff

Before Xmas, I watched the BBC documentary called Books - The Last chapter? in which Alan Yentob spoke to writers, agents, publishers and thinkers about the future of the printed word.  Or books to be precise.  I found it thought-provoking, disturbing and strangely moving.  I cried.  Then I watched it again and made notes because in June 2012 I will be organising a conference in Folkestone to explore and discuss the way that digital technology is impacting on writers and readers.

Some choice snippets from the BBC programme:

• Digital makes the private public. 

• Technology expands the mind but shrinks the world

• Technology offers a choice to broaden horizons

• Are we addicted to technology? 

• We are trading 24 hour global connectivity for privacy, individuality and ultimately humanity

• "The challenge today is to disconnect.  It takes religious conviction to say no to it, because everyone’s at the party, everyone wants your attention, everyone’s screaming for it.  The party’s everywhere.”   (writer Gary Shteyngart)

• We made the books, then the books made us

• “First we shape our tools, then our tools shape us.”  (Marshall McLuhan)*

• The internet is brain changing.  The way the brain experiences a book (printed) is different to a digital book. 

• “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_O._Hebb 

The last point interested me and a reference was made to Hebb’s Law.  If I understood it correctly, the assertion was that if you use a specific technology often enough (or undertake any highly repetitive action) neurons in your brain fire in a certain way and make strong connections so that the action we undertake becomes second nature.  This “rewires” the brain.  The conclusion being that as human beings, use of digital technology that encourages a short attention span could mean we are effectively rewriting or re-programming our brains and that this will affect our evolution.  Mind blowing (literally).

“Electronic media creates an oral culture - emotional, subjective, collective, irrational.”  Marshall McLuhan again.  

* Marshall McLuhan was a prophet in his own time. As early as the 1960s, he saw the powerful impact of technological change on the world and showed us a new way to explain our world and society. Today, such McLuhan phrases as "sensory impact," "the global village," and "the medium is the message" have become part of the language. 
http://www.mcluhanmedia.com/m_mcl_manmessage.html 

Related posts:
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/connectivity-and-communion.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/on-connections.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/running-writing-and-living.html