COMMUNITY #15 - EYN

This is a manifesto:

EVERYTHING YOU NEED
IS HERE

Unfortunately modern life has become more complicated that it ought to be. Deciding upon a definitive list of things in life one should seek in order to have ‘Everything You Need’ is a complicated process. As far as I’ve managed to figure out, everything was never intended to be this way.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t think we can try pretty hard to make the most of it.

At Everything You Need, we will help you to help yourself. We will provide support, encouragement, resources and organisation so that you can do that more effectively. We will build up a community of like-minded individuals who will participate in and contribute ideas towards various activities. These activities will help us all to find out exactly what we need in life and exactly how to get it.

I hypothesise that this is necessary. That this is what we need. By which I am predominantly referring to this community and this organisation. However, I ultimately hope to prove the necessity of this education, this development, this ethos and this awareness.

Of course we don’t exactly understand what it is that everyone needs. Our primary objective is to build a community of people who care. People who would like to make effort to move in the right directions. People who want what they need. We are currently organising a book club and a football group. We also run a monthly clubnight that will eventually be a regular celebration of the progress we make in each of the groups. We have plans and ideas for many more clubs and groups which will become a reality once we have plenty of interest and support. 

Our next and possibly most important project is to start a discussion/conversation group. We will invite community members to discuss a certain statement regarding a certain aspect of human needs and well-being. We hope to keep documentation of our activities, experiences and development so that at some point we can begin to produce various creative media, performance and communication raising awareness of our findings and ideas. In such cases we will endeavor to exhibit work around the city and consider innovative ways to deliver our productions to a wide and varied audience.

COMMUNITY #14 - Save The Forest Cafe, Edinburgh

I don’t know enough about The Forest or its history, but through the few experiences I have had with it, I can tell it is a brilliant community-centric space, operating on a uniquely inclusive level. You only have to look back through its event archive to see quite how much it achieves on a regular basis. From writing and craft groups to meditation classes to free/not-for-profit gigs, to a poetry night about the world cup to free Gaelic workshops.

This is from their website:

“For over a decade, The Forest has provided a free arts and events space in an Edinburgh increasingly given to supporting hotel chains, mutliplexes and glass-fronted superstores. We are one of the few truly autonomous arts and cultural spaces in Edinburgh and have hosted thousands of free events, exhibitions and straight-up parties, put out acclaimed books and records, given grants and studio space to struggling artists, hosted award-winning theatre programmes and much much more.

Now, in order to carry on, we plan to raise £500 000, buy the building, and continue doing what we do in Edinburgh’s historic centre forever.”

These kind of spaces are, sadly, few and far between. Raising this amount of money may seem like a tall order, but if you donate even the smallest amount it will inch them towards their target. I really, really hope they can do it. Please help! Donate here!

Cardboard Communities!

NNF10 Home Sweet Home

COMMUNITY (or ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF LIVING) #12

Video games are not something I claim to know anything about, I haven’t played one since Jazz Jack Rabbit on my huge whirring PC back in 1998 or so. I seem to remember a feeling of intense panic coupled with a fierce determination to do everything in exactly the right way. I didn’t particularly find it that enjoyable, although I did have an odd compulsion to keep trying. Despite my lack of empathy with those who love to game, when reading about Jason Rohrer and his tireless mission to take computer gaming where it has barely gone before, I feel hopeful that some day I may understand.

This Esquire article was passed on to me, and despite its slightly bile-enducing strapline ‘Jason Rohrer’s solitary and stubborn quest for a future in which pixels and code and computers will make you cry and feel and love’ it is a really, really good read. Since then I’ve been sucked inexorably into his world - the aims of which are so simple and the execution so beautiful and logical that it’s hard not to be charmed. As you can see above, his aesthetic is somewhat lo-fi. And his explanation for this is simply that if he makes something on a computer, it should look like it was made on a computer - he doesn’t want to immitate other art forms.

His games are all available for free download (as far as I know), and are innovative in the true sense of the word. They play on and react to fundamental aspects of the human psyche. Rohrer simply makes games from things he’s been pondering - a thought about a passing emotion.

“Tuesday, there’s an idea on a scrap of paper: “Mistakes you make, early on, haunt you through some game mechanic later.” Thursday, there’s a map of a maze. Later that day, the maze is populated with bunnies and squirrels; in the game, you have to feed the animals from a pouch full of different foods, and if you feed them the wrong food, they die, and you “regret it.” Rohrer adds some additional texture; the dead animals come back as “ghosts,” and you can either feed them or avoid them. If you feed them, they just come back later. Lesson: Regret is pointless. Move on. Friday, there’s a nearly completed video game. It doesn’t give an inch. It doesn’t tell you how to play it, how to get a high score, how to win. You have to figure that out for yourself. The game, in its own small way, is trying to reverse decades of infantilism in video games and culture, in which you get coins for doing stupid shit. It’s not going to coddle: awesome job!

And when you do figure it out, it’s a tiny epiphany, and maybe you understand something about regret that you didn’t understand before. You’re seeing its inner workings laid out before you, yet you still can’t figure out how he’s doing it.”

Within these games you are given responsibility and choices. Of his own game Sleep Is Death - in which one player creates the game in real time for another person to play - he says “It’s quite a bit more like theater or a puppet show or paper dolls than it is like an RPG. There’s no map or travel or party or any traditional RPG elements. Instead, just a stage with objects and actors on it.” And I don’t think it matters that I’ll probably never bother to find out what an RPG is. His hopes for putting art into games are tangible enough.

What fascinates me most is the fact he can be called up for consultancy work on a new game created by Steven Spielberg and EA games and yet live hand to mouth in a run-down house surrounded by his purposefully cultivated meadow, and survive on donations made through his website.

Reading about the cultivation of natural lanscape on his meadow blog Nature On Trial is truly touching. This man could become a pioneer of something we don’t even know how to quantify yet. Displaying a healthy attitude towards transparency, community and other human beings and their complexities - he can quietly lead by example and provide a counter to a lot of the world’s bad habits.

“Our meadow is filling in nicely, with beautiful tussocks of grass here and there, many now over two feet tall.

I planted sunflower seeds in a few places along our street frontages.

To my delight, we have several great mulleins that have sprouted up in the front yard. We had many in the back yard last year, but those did not come back.

The white clover that we planted is taking over in certain spots, forming dense green blankets.”

COMMUNITY #10

Last weekend I went to Durham to stay with my spectacular friend Tom, and whilst I was there I met a touring band called Imperial Can. As I found out more about them my respect for them grew and grew. They were part of starting a record label called plan-it-x which hosts a mass of amazing bands, and has been showing us how to say ‘up the punks’ since 1994. So here’s what Chris and Adrienne did next. I’m presenting this in their own words, as there’s no way my interpretation could express it any better:

If you have ever ordered a CD, record or anything from PLAN-IT-X, then I’d like to say thanks and let you know that you played a crucial role in our latest attempt to make the world a better place. What you helped create is called, ACE OF CUPS. Last summer, PLAN-IT-X packed up and left sunny, cultured, punk as hell Gainesville, FL. for the down on its luck river town of Cairo, IL. Cairo is a unique city at the meeting point of the two greatest rivers in the country, the Mississippi and the Ohio. It was the place that Huckleberry Finn and Jim where trying to make it to. It’s a place with a great history and a long history of bad luck. Most people haven’t heard of it. We came here to get away from McStarMart and drunken college kids who don’t really care about anything. We also came to do something to make Cairo a little better. We decided, It’s better to do something in a place that has nothing like what you are trying to do, than to simply add to the coolness of an already cool, and often jaded, punk town. So, we opened a Not-For-Profit community space and fair trade coffee shop. We also sell used books and records. We are the only place in town for things like this and so far it’s working out very well. We also host various community events like, crafts for kids, openmic nights, art shows, bingo, movie nights and of course, live music. The thank you starts here. You see, the whole thing was funded completely by PLAN-IT-X. So, that means YOU! THANKS.

After the Imperial Can leg of the tour (it’s happening now! Check their myspace for shows in a town near you!) they will seamlessly morph into Chris Clavin and the Flies. And Something Good are going to welcome them to the fold on the 20^th April. Details coming soon. Come and say hi.

‘THE TRUTH WE ARE NOT A MIRACLE NO WE ARE JUST AN ACCIDENT BUT THAT IN IT’S SELF IS BEAUTIFUL IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT WE SHOULD NOT FIGHT BECAUSE THERE IS NO WRONG THERE IS NO RIGHT THERE IS NO MEANING TO THIS LIFE WE LIVE UNTIL WE DIE WE LIVE UNTIL WE DIE WE LIVE UNTIL WE DIE’

We are visitors on this planet. We are here for ninety, a hundred years at the very most. During that period we must try to do something good, something useful with our lives. Try to be at peace with yourself and help others share that peace. If you contribute to other people’s happiness, you will find the true goal, the true meaning of life.

- The Dalai Lama

Community # 9 Jason Anderson

Where did he come from? The genuine enthusiasm and unashamed joy shown in his live shows is so inspiring. Many people, myself included, are scared to be so unrelentingly encouraging. Here are my favourite bits of this interview just to clear up any misconceptions:

What inspires the intense optimism you display at your shows?

Friends and life, mostly. Loving both those things. Wanting to make people happy, wanting to have fun. Wanting to communicate and connect and share. It’s time to remember how powerful, joyful and inspiring music can be. And even more so than music, just how powerful friendship and community can be, and getting a bunch of people into the same space and sharing something. My goal is to pump people up, to make them happy, even if it’s just for the hour of the show, for all of us to connect, to sing and dance and just feel in love with life.

Do you ever feel inspired to express the down times, the negatives, in your music?

I would never want to be blindly happy. Ignorance is not bliss. At the same time, I don’t think it’s healthy to linger in the negatives, when there is always positivity to be found. But it’s not like everything has to be full-tilt enthusiasm and hands-in-the-air frenzy to be legitimate. That would be silly. What I’m attracted to is sincerity, enthusiasm and from-the-heart passion, and that can manifest in many different ways. In fact, the overarching emotional content of most of my songs is one of yearning, melancholy, and wistfulness. The live shows are a celebration of the feeling that says, “We want this, we want to do or to have or to be this, and we are waiting. And yet, we shall rejoice, we shall be free!”

Do you believe in God, or a master plan, or that everything happens for a reason?

I definitely believe that there is an energy in the universe, that things do seem to happen for a reason and that some coincidences seem too magical to be mere chance. But this debate has plagued philosophers for ages. I’m not a psychologist or, by any means, an expert on life. My beliefs are still being formed and reformed. I try to see the good in people, in this human experience and in the life I live. Like anyone, I do my best every day and simply try to go to bed happy, with no regrets. I also think guacamole and limeade are awesome.

Now watch this video all the way through. And this one.