Slumming it.

Slumming it.

So we finally made it to the cinema. For two apparent ‘movie lovers’ we haven’t exactly boosted the British film industry with our patronage over the last twelve months. What have we been watching all that time? Don’t tell me it’s Will and Grace.

Of course, everyone says they’re a movie lover. What they mean is they love being given largely mindless things that move for a couple of hours, to stare at from the sofa. Bloody proles, eh? Eh? Wouldn’t know a subtitle if it explained what it was in Hindi to them. Those saps.

Everyone also says they’re a lover of Oscar smash, Slumdog Millionaire. And who are we to argue with the masses? I love those masses – they’re right. For we have seen it at last and can verify, it’s fab.

It’s one of those dead simple ideas, like the perfect pop tune, that seems so obvious it must have always been around.

I think Caroline’s draining few weeks made her rather vulnerable to its triumph-over-adversity charms as we sat there hugging in the cinema, last to leave. The cleaner guy looked uncomfortable.
Now we can join the throng, Bollywood sequence dancing in the street over it’s loveability. Masses, shaking their asses.

And I have long wanted to do a Bollywood dance number for a video. Like I said on my Facebook status the next morning, Charminster high street – that’s the place to do it. Someone ring the council. Someone ring an Indian choreographer. Someone ring the camera track and boom rental people. Someone leaflet the shops.

And the guy who knows the guy at the Giant Silk Pantaloons R Us store – make the call.

Sunshine’s out this morning. Been a productive week in some ways; artwork to press and articles written. Even managed to get Slumdog into my e-mailer for Team this week: “The slums of Mumbai may be a long way from the semis of Corfe Mullen…” Almost poetry.

Ben and I had a good first chat around his shoot in Morocco and my first skits for the soundtrack. Think he digs it generally so I’ll be skitting some more as we tackle first edit next week – jeepers, all eight episodes have to be delivered by the end of March.

And now I have some brochures to put to bed. Not tucked up under a quilt, you understand. Just finished and sent to the printers. But my business needs all the cooler-sounding street slang for what it does that it can get.

I’ve put on Cafe Del Mar volume Seis and am in an officially summery mood ahead of the weekend. These little delusions are the fuel you need. They’re the little shiny moments to bask in while you wait in vain for the big gameshow win to set off the glitter droppers and change your life.

Ah, Dusty doing The Look of Love. Let’s go to work, people; the world can be made alright.

Networking.

Networking.

I have no idea how to do this. Never have.

You’re given a room full of people and a sticker with your name on it, and you have to just launch yourself in there and, like, talk to people. Say: “Hi! I’m Tim. I’m groovy and you want a piece of me. You do. You just didn’t know that you do before I sauntered over and finger pistoled you a compelling wink. Yeah. ..By the way, I should tell you that this kind of groovy does NOT come cheap…”

Right. Of course I’m comfortable doing that.

Mark took me to a fairly convincingly organised-looking affair at Landmarc lastnight; film students and, er, film students, I think. No sign of movie producers weeping for need of a really creative musician to bring their well-funded, starry-casted, lavish, big screen production to life.

So I killed time and my embarrassed Out Of Placeness by being a table whore.

Thank goodness there were some people who’d brought tables of leaflets. I sauntered around the gallery chatting to a nice succession of people manning various tables of leaflets and finding out what they do. Interesting things, it turns out. Could have chatted with some of them for longer quite happily.

But I was that awful thing at events – a chatty useless punter. I was no good to any of them for business. And none of them needed a groovy electro-beat score for anything. So I tried not to keep them for too long, and instead of networking, we just chatted and swapped branded material. It was nice. It was pointless.

It was my kind of business.

This morning, getting up early to get the latest Team e-mailer in shape, I found an e-mail from one Guru Josh Project (Official). Asking to be friends on MySpace.

Now, I don’t know if you know much about Guru Josh, he of the Infinity tune that was a smack-rave hit in the early 90s and has been again over Christmas, 18 years later. I didn’t. I only knew that the sax riff on that record is quite nice and GJ obviously knows this because he repeats the b’sheesh out of it for five minutes. Fair play. This creative attitute made a life-long career for Vangelis.

So I click to the page and find his biog.

OMG. As young MySpacers might put it. Which he clearly isn’t.

I couldn’t tear myself away from his story.

He’s hustled and blagged and worked his way through so many mad tales and bank accounts, I had to keep reading. Fortunes made and given away repeatedly. Sometimes intentionally.

Read it, you’ll see what I mean. His straight-talking yarning reminds me of friends I’ve known who’ve lived on the street – which he kind of has, I suppose, working it. It’s fascinating, and it’s under About Guru Josh:

http://profile.myspace.com/gurujoshmusic

Wish I had a story like this. Though I suspect the loved ones around me are glad I’m a little more predictable…

This morning, however, the only person I really want to network with is one of my oldest chums and fellow musical explorers, Kev.

I’m turning off Skype for a couple hours, pausing the studio’s deadlines, to go have a nice chat with my mate. Doubt it’ll make either of us any money. It’ll just be great to see him.

That’s my kind of networking.

Moroccan role.

Moroccan role.

So I’ve been immersing myself in North West African beats and flavours for the last few weeks. Amazon have been helpful, as has a very informed chap called DJ Umb, who has been chatting to me on MySpace. After which, I coincidentally found he’d compiled one of the albums I’d had delivered, Experience Morocco – a great contemporary spin around this fabulously groovy country.

Also been chatting with a chap based out there called Steve. A Canadian musician who’s fallen for the vibe. And a girl, I think. Who can blame him for moving into it all.

I contemplated blowing some of Momo’s moola on a plane ticket out there, especially as Ben is still shooting this week. But, though I asked myself seriously ‘why’d you always choose Sensible, Tim?’ I did eventually conclude that Sensible had a point – spending rather than making on the project is not the smartest use of the Mo machine.

So here I am in Southbourne still, working through some early versions of vaguely oriental sounding things that don’t yet approximate anything properly Moroccan. The sketches I have together so far sound more like the score to a Middle Eastern political thriller.

Which is, of course, what I really want to be scoring. Might need to dial it down a tad for a cookery show.

Had a bonkers kind of few weeks, with odd experiences littering the normal itinery as casually as scientists now seem to be talking about alien life and the God Particle and Earth Like Planets. Will go into all that one day over coffee, perhaps. But I’ve been forcing myself to finish reading the intriguingly thought-out but risibly written out Alastair Reynolds book, Revelation Space, while also watching Around the world in 80 faiths and Battlestar Galactica, on again tonight. So once again, Real World and Play World are getting badly blurred for me.

I like it.

Would like to blur the Real Wallet and the Play Wallet enough to get on a plane to Marrakech and go record Gnawa zither music and Bedouin Chaabi for two weeks, mind. Think I’d like to put weird robot love aside for rocking the Casbah. WIth Caz, preferably.

Snow further.

Snow further.

So, I’m standing in the bay window of the studio, pouring a coffee. I’m looking out at a Christmas fairy cake icing version of the street outside, made by what I can only assume is a gigantic foam spewing machine somewhere behind the house, and I’m wondering where to start with my Moroccan TV score.

In a surprisingly rare clash of car itineraries this morning, I found myself walking to Boscombe to visit a very nice hygienist lady, who very nicely told me that I clean my teeth too well.

“Are you saying I shouldn’t be using the belt sander?” I asked incredulously. “Either you’re impressed with the lack of tartar or you’re not, lady.”

No, it is remarkable how nice going to the dentist is these days. Apart from the dental horror snaps they slideshow past you on the plasma telly while you wait in the very expensively slate-tiled reception area.

Anyway, the walk up there was a sort of biting wet one, made essentially pleasant by the genius addition of an umbrella and some rush mixes of the new Momo:tempo album.

But by the time I’d been in the waiting room, avoiding eye contact with the gum gore and teeth fear scrolling overhead, the wet stuff had turned distinctly to white stuff. With cold air reeshing around my shot blasted smile, some time later, I found myself walking back to the flat in a snow flurry.

The bakery at the top of the road always looks so inviting on days like this, doesn’t it? So naturally I popped in for a giant comfort bun, while there were still so many plump specimens lolling against the glass at me.

Now?

Jeepers, how does it do this so fast? This week-long, country-wide, weird weather? The crossroads outside looks like a seasonal greetings card. Snow has flumped over everything and the world is white again.

Which makes for a nice Friday feeling, for sure. Not due anywhere else today or tonight, so I think I might work on into the evening pizza zone. Which is also the disco zone, I believe.

All this warm lighting and work feels increasingly like some strange privilege at the moment. It’s the simple cutting edge of being homeless, this kind of weather. And with the scrolling list of businesses going under and people losing work, even my jolly stoicism is just beginning to get wary.

But busy I currently still am, for as long as I can avoid being a professional bumhead, as my Advertising Guru, Gellan, might put it.

The trick is working out how to spread any of this around. It all kind of needs my brain. So little of what I do is hand-overable artworking, or easy to brief work. It’s something I’m still thinking about, when thinking of other creative friends.

I can, though, make my own schedule sound fun, even if the reality isn’t the kind of swaggering money pump that some city agencies have the giant snowballs to charge. Ask Lorraine and Vernon what we were talking about on Wednesday evening. Sheesh, I need to get a London postcode…

Still, down here at the wintery seaside, do you fancy a glamorous peek at what a real-world idle creative gets up to? If you’re interested in a snapshot of a typical Momo To Do list, then I can tell you that I’ve pushed through some core brand material and web art for one client this week, signed off some scary-smart print for another, made a start on some cute folder pack for someone else, chewed around some reasonably clever-sounding headline creative for a charity campaign in the last couple of weeks, written a series of convincing articles about the local area for Team’s weekly e-bulletin and come up with a very cute brand for a chain of local fish and chip shops that will have all Momo afficionados scorning my One Design FIts All approach to creative. Not that I care here – it’s so jolly friendly. And ‘typical Momo’ was exactly what the client asked for. ..I DO have more than one typeface installed on this thing. I DO.

I’m now about to sit down with the layout pad for the start of something else new. ..Come on brain, stop staring out of the window at the snow. It’s just snow. ..Lots more fairy-pixie-playful but oddly portentous-seeming snow. ..Nothing to see here.

I suspect, however, that the real challenge this weekend won’t be messaging a new electronics testing business – it’ll be how to create a hazy North African vibe for a TV score filming in Marrakech next week.

I’m not sure gazing out of the window for inspiration will help…

Fill you in on that random addition to the schedule later. But if you happen to have an authentic raita reed horn somewhere – pleeeease may I borrow it?

Snow time.

Snow time.

You’d think there was nothing else going on in the world.

I don’t know which is more annoying – the country-wide, pigeon-stepped chaos of a bit of winter weather, or the flurry of news reports trying to tell us this is what’s happened. Is it more pathetic that we are now apparently coping with snow even less well than we did in the 1980s – or that we feel the need to fill airtime proposing such an idea?

With the hefty homework of the Children’s Society report this week also slamming my generation for being too damned selfish to bring up its kids properly, you wonder whether to just reach for a Daily Mail and start flagellating yourself with the Family supplement and be done with it. Give in to the simple comfort of The Fear. Is there anything we can organise confidently?

Well, possibly. Apart from all the snowball fights and bon homme in the parks of London and the B roads of the South East that seemed to cheer everyone’s stress-sapped souls on Monday, you only had to catch a little of lastnight’s Comic Relief prelude to think of Britain as a sometime-genius crucible of humanity. Who else would have thought of celebrating sillyness as a way to confront some of the most brutally dehumanising experiences of people miles away? It’s very very British to do that. As British as still being surprised by a temperate climate.

And it’s a relief to have a reason to muck in and muck about in the streets with eachother.

My generation probably suffers from living in its own little world too much.

Working for yourself at home can shrink your outlook too – even as it grows it in some ways.

My list of things to do is a mix of things to get done, but it has no time for just mucking about with the neighbours. Or sitting on the pavement with the bloke in the Grove down on his luck. Or tramping the streets in a giant banana costume to raise money for him. Or getting over to my own mum’s place to finish decorating her bedroom.

Or just having coffee with friends… for the sake of it. Not just because so many of them seem to be fighting fires of one kind or another this week.

No, I have things to get done. Thoughts to get blogged. Frustration to feel, as the things I really want to do don’t get done.

The thing that cheers and challenges me, as I sip fresh coffee and look out over a winter wonderland (with Vangelis’ Antarctica filling the house, funny man that I am) is how many people in this stressed, chilly island still DO make the time to wear pants on the outside for a day or dye their hair red nose red, or chase eachother around with buckets of custard in order to help us all get serious about each other’s real needs.

I sit and wonder about that. Wonder how to get off my bloody arse.

..Though I shouldn’t think too big, right off. I should probably start with wondering how to get time for a shave and a haircut.