Cable TV

We've just got cable t.v. Never had it before, because I think it's best to limit the amount of rubbish you allow in your house. I mean, people wouldn't invite more junk mail through their letter boxes, so why would you want more crap beamed to you through the television? Five channels of trash is quite enough, thank you. Sometimes, watching t.v. is no better than watching a poo revolving on a plinth. Everyone knows this, of course; but they believe that watching poo-on-a-plinth t.v. is mesmerically relaxing after a hard day's work.

Oddly enough, it seems to me that most t.v. channels also know that they're just pedalling poo on plinths. Even on the part of the t.v. channels themselves, there's little or no pretence any more that what they do isn't anything but crap. You can see this by the utter contempt with which they treat their own programmes and films: they talk over the titles, "tempting" you with what's coming next; they have running banners on top of the programmes, again telling you what's coming next Wednesday week; they start a serial and then forget about it after a few weeks and substitute something else; they cut scenes in the middle, slicing speeches in half, with commercial breaks; they don't even bother to differentiate commercial break from programme with a title screen; and commercials go on and on and on. There's no pretence on the part of most t.v. channels that the programmes are there first priority. They are absolutely up-front that it's the adverts which matter to them: after all, they might slice film scences awkwardly in half, but they'd never do that with the adverts themselves. Oh no, we can't annoy the sponsors, can we?

None of this should surprise or even annoy us. None of this should even bother us. It's our own fault for swallowing the lie that watching the t.v. is easier than listening to music or reading books or (God forbid) going outside. And again, we don't swallow the lie unconsciously - we're all totally aware that it's a lie at the same time as swallowing it whole. So it's our own fault that we're condemned to a hell of watching crap revolving on plinths for ever and ever and ever.

A Mendelssohn kind of day

Today has been a Mendelssohn kind of day - lots of scampering about, but no real highs or lows. Okay, I know, that's unfair on Mendelssohn, whose music I actually think is terribly underrated. As normal, it's all Wagner's fault - most of the commonplaces people pedal about Mendelssohn come from him, despite Wagner's obvious debt to Mendelssohn. Wagner learned most of what he knew from Mendelssohn, but has since rather eclipsed his disavowed mentor .... Which is a shame, because I think we'd all be better off if our lives, our societies, our worlds were more Mendelssohnian, less Wagnerian - more Midsummer Night's Dream, less Gotterdammerung.

All of which is to say that a Mendelssohn day isn't too bad. I had far too many Wagnerian days earlier this year. But we won't talk about that.

Instead, we'll talk about diaries again. Walking home from work, I was thinking again about the connection between diaries and poos (in terms of web-logs). They have a lot in common: they're both generally things people do at the end of the day, and they're both seen as emptying, purging, cathartic acts. The diary is, in a sense, a way of excreting the day.

I can't promise to excrete this diary every day - I've managed two days in a row, which is a record since I was thirteenish. Back then, my short-lived, adolescent diaries would all have the same narrative structure: start diary when fancying a new girl; carry on diary whilst pursuing aforesaid girl; throw away diary when aforesaid girl told me she'd rather eat her own eyelids than have anything to do with me.

Given that I'm now married, that narrative structure is no longer open to me, so I'll be looking for different kinds of stories here.

So what was the story of today? Went to work, taught something or other, came home, had tea, couldn't find any beer in the fridge, excreted a blog entry, had a bath, went to bed. Not much of a narrative structure there. Rather Mendelssohnian, in fact. And that's just fine.

Anti-blogging (Jonathan)

Well, here I am, writing the first main entry in our "blog." What ghastly words: "blog" or "web-log" - they sound like an electronic poo, a log you do on the net. Nice. Bet that comment's been made a million times before, though: anything you say on the net has been said a million times before. The internet is a salutary and continual reminder that there is no such thing as originality. Anything you can possibly think of - and an infinite number of dark, grotesque, horrendous, bizarre, fascinating, sublime things you can't - have already been done a million million times on the net. So no point trying to be original in this blog.

Not really sure what the point of this blog is full-stop. I've never been much of a diarist. I'm with Philip Larkin, who once said (mournfully, no doubt): "I don't like going about pretending to be myself." I suppose that's odd for someone who's recently written a memoir, but maybe it's not so odd: I like looking back on happenings and turning them into stories, narratives or pub anecdotes, but don't feel I have much insight about my day-to-day life. When you're living day to day, there's not much to say. It's just a while later that you can start pretending it all fits into a pattern or story.

So what is the story going to be in this blog? No idea - will only know that when we've finished it, years on. I don't even know what the start of the story should, except that perhaps I should introduce myself to my "diary." I am Jonathan Taylor, and this blog is about me and my wife, Maria Taylor. I suggested to start with that I should write about her and her day, and she should write about mine. But then we decided that might prove a little divisive - my interpretation of her day might not be the same as her version, and vice versa. Such things are rows made on. So I'll just introduce myself.

I am the author of Take Me Home: Parkinson's, My Father, Myself, which was published by Granta this year: http://www.granta.com/shop/product?usca_p=t&product_id=3398

I am a lecturer in Creative Writing here: http://www.dmu.ac.uk/faculties/humanities/english/jonathan_taylor.jsp

And I am co-director here:

http://www.crystalclearcreators.org.uk/

.... Funny term, though, isn't it, "I am." We use it all the time without thinking about it. "I am" all of these things and none of them - especially this evening. Now all I am is tired. Technology has that effect on me. Good night.

Jonathan