Week Notes // 29th January
Work continues to pick up. New briefs are landing and in the next week I’m due to deliver three workshops. Planning these is quite an underaking. Am reminded of Dan Hill’s observation that a big part of ‘strategic design’ is concerned with managing the ‘dark matter’ - the 95% of stuff that could probably be called the ‘culture’ of an organisation. How it does things, as much as what it does.
So all in all, quite a bit of work stuff going on. As a result, another week where I’ve not given the preparation of this note as much thought as I would have liked. But, some stuff to note, namely:
Went to see Oppenheimer on Monday evening at The IMAX in London. I’d missed it at the cinema first time round and had watched at home. As a result, don’t think I’d really been able to appreciate it fully. It’s really quite brilliant. Everything about it benefits from viewing at the Cinema. In particular, the scenes in New Mexico were particularly beautiful. Nolan gives a big interview in the most recent issue of Sight and Sound. He talks about Tacita Dean’s concept of the ‘resistance of a medium’: essentially how the qualities of a particular media impact it’s usage with the a creative process. Ate at Kolae in Borough Market before hand.
Attended Life Sentences, an event for ‘strategists who write’, which was organised by James Caig. An enjoyable way to start Friday. Some notable parallels with the stuff Heidi, Phil and Mark told the audience and the instruction from Richard Skinner during the Faber course the week before. In particular was the idea of an ending being both ‘accidental and inevitable’.Enjoyed Heidi' Stephen’s advice to ‘get the fuck on with it’.
More newsletter testing. More head-scratching. Whilst the testing element of the project wasn’t meant to be the primary goal, I’m finding it the most interesting. Slowly we’re starting to get a sense of what drives readership and what factors might help us vs. the various algorithms that govern the social media channels we use to promote the articles. Makes you realise how ‘un-open’ the web is.
Finished Claire Keegan’s Small Things like These in a day. It’s close to being the most perfect 100 pages of prose I’ve ever encountered. It could quite happily work as the first chapter of a much longer novel…. or it could just stop, as it does.
Have parked To Paradise. Not sure I can be bothered with the last part, especially as friends have advised against it. Instead reading The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro. A big big departure from his usual style. Was prepped to find it difficult and unusual. So far though, it’s enjoyable.
Played Golf on Saturday morning having not hit a ball for the entire month of January and most of December. Need to get my backside into gear ahead of trips away in April and May.
Went to see The Zone of Interest. Having been a big fan of the Amis book on which it is based, I was interested to see the film. Especially given the trailer. It was remarkable. Not exactly enjoyable, but a fantastic achievement all the same.
