Some of my closest friends are Scriptwriters...

...I just don't want them living next door to me, the old saying goes. It is one of those sickly truisms that they say 'writers write more about the process of writing than actually writing', and ever since George Orwell's 'Why I Write' we've all had a tipple of it, haven't we?

Well I have been reluctant, much as I am reluctant to most things, but it has been a growing trend amongst acquaintances to blog about their craft. They read up on their Little Miss Moffat and St. Tony of Jordan, and the occasional Matryr La Plante, and the others, too too many to mention, and they just gobble it up, delicious sustenance, all in the quest to get better at the type type, space, space, delete, delete.

I don't want to run that odious risk of sounding like some Sunday Tabloid Columnist that have regular opinion pieces, and when they are asked to write on subjects they don't care about, they trot of witticisms and cynical twat-tropes galore.... and I shan't, it just feels like it from where I am sitting, but hopefully I can mould this clay, some other way... and the cut of my jib Isssss..... well its rather simple....

To me, there seem to be two schools of thought, both valid, 1. The technical script-writer; this breed hones scripts based on a formula of what works and invest in stories that enthrall and capture the imagination on a limitless scope, providing it is commercial, viable and appeals to a mainstream audience; they can write sports-management epics even though there background is computer engineering in New Delhi. 2. The vocational scriptwriter - feels they have a self-righteous scribe, this mode is highly laughed at by the former school for fact that writers whose backgrounds are computer engineering in New Delhi will more likely focus their narratives on computers, engineering and um... New Delhi... their work builds into an oeuvre, in an almost literary fervor, with motifs, preoccupations about class or personal narratives, autobiography, they don't conform to the mainstream, they break conventions, they behave erratically...  and so it goes on...

The two schools of thought can overlap, but where was I going with this? I was pointing something out, yes, ironically for scriptwriters they cease to function as happy consumers of others work, they become critics of it, analyzers and they'll pontificate on a particular scripts merits and pit-falls, without a hint of irony, that even though they may be aware of the studio systems ability to piss all over work, directors realize scripts badly or are hacked up in the editing room or countless focus rooms and test screenings, they'll go head-first into a locked-horned battle of scripty supremacy....

For my own sake I did a Scriptwriting course on a whim, I do have writing coursing through my veins, but I learnt from the master in this field that words belong to everybody, we don't get to decide where they have been, we just try to steer them into some sort of cohesive direction.... and it's rather difficult because words never behave the way you want them to, they are the bastard ADHD children of our thought....

The problem (and delight) is that writers think they are special, and they are, they all are, when it goes wrong is that one writer may go 'well I am better than this writer' which isn't playing the game, as is my mantra anything creative isn't bad even at its worse its better than destruction and the detracting of things. The cynicism and cruelty of writers is silly but sometimes fair, the Wildean idea of criticism 'I see for others to see' can be justified if you've been in the bizz 20, 30 , 40 years... but you can tell when it is borne out of jealousy that so and so got the BBC1 Primetime series and you didn't.

Lastly, no matter what happens, there will be the inexorable passing of time, and when we are in our thirties, fourties, fifties, sixties, you will look back at your younger self, full of self-righteousness, and go pink in the cheeks and your throat will go croaky and you will see the utter contemptible O.T.T., sometimes unpleasant shit you used to come out with, 'the lording it over' tosh and you'll think, what an insufferable oaf I once was....

...Oh shit! Hello Simon in thirty years time, at least your still fit ;) x

POSTSCRIPT: (the irony) Just to say, I don't know if I agree with half the stuff I have written, so if you don't we're in the same boat, secondly I know I am not really helping in that spirit of script blogging, where scripters blog about the construction of scripts, which is really rather top-notch, and yes, oh these industry vultures that jump on internet opinioning... ugh, I shall have no part of it, here is hoping this blog entry is consigned to oblivion like the rest :D

HOW TO MAKE THE MUNDANE MOMENTS OF YOUR DAY FEEL MORE SIGNIFICANT

An Instruction Manual

For the everyday person wishing to add a dash of the bohemian into their lives.

Why YOU Cannot Be Without This Manual               ^!

No matter how significant a person you feel you are, you will undoubtedly be pedestrian. It is a statistical fact that at any one moment, even if you project the most fantastical of personas, you run the hazardous risk of mundanity.

 No-one wants to get caught looking mundane, believe you me, and they will always catch a glimpse and will be cast asunder.

Mundanity is an action, more specifically a dull or anaesthetically pleasing one.

For example sleeping in peculiarly unseemly, the laying on the back, the amplification of your gurgling mucous through the nostrils. Activities in the lavatory is another.

Shopping!

Shopping is the sterilized conclusion of the hunter-gatherer.

Ladies and gentlemen your fabulousness has been castrated by a clawed, winged and fanged beast SOCIETY! But you can be saved, saved from this, if you heed the words of this instruction manual closely.

Original thought has never been fashionable, emulating others that have gone before you is the key, they are the tried and tested method, the theorem.

MORNING ARRANGEMENTS

The morning routine has become a chore. One that is rushed in favour of more lack of consciousness,

Socrates Saw the benefits of cheated the world of giving himself to it exclusively, in his prime, he managed to sleep twenty hours a day. In the modern world we oversleep on a regular basis, 

but how did this great thinker overcome the mundane aspect of his persona to the outside world.

THE SOCRATIC SLEEP FUNNEL[1]

For the ones that like to sleep more than their fair share, it is immediately important to say you are not oversleeping, you are to say you are part of an open consciousness, sometimes one desires no consciousness for a time. One can have one’s Madera cake and eat it by not being conscious and still contributing to the outside world. The Socratic Sleep Funnel is a plastic sleep-aid cone developed from the conch-shell Socrates held over his face whilst sleeping, his breathing would ‘aggravate’ the holes of the conch-shell and discordant sounds would emit, sometimes forming a pattern. Early dream analysis formed when the differing pitches of sounds or in the Latin: EX DUMO ES SNORPO; a primitive Morse-code, the sub-conscious communicating with the conscious world.  No longer screaming or drowning in its own face.

To create your own Sleep Funnel you will need

1.                A Hard Plastic Sheet. (^A4)

2.                A Hole-Punch

3.                String.

1.                TAKE THE HARD PLASTIC SHEET AND MAKE 16 HOLES IN THIS PATTERN:

2.    WRAP IT UP LIKE A CONE

3.ADD STRINGS

4. ATTACH IT TO YOUR FACE 

5.  SLEEP  AND YOUR SNOOZE-NOISES WILL BECOME EX DUMO

THERE ARE TWO DISTINCT SOUNDS YOUR SLEEPING FACE MAKES WHEN TRANMITTED THROUGH THE PLASTIC-CONCH. WHICH WILL BE REFERRED TO AS SYMBOLS IN THIS MANUAL[2]

   

    f g

 A CONVERSATION BETWEEN Two Subconscious.... JUNGS COLLECTIVE  UNCONSIOUS TO THE ‘WORLD-MIND’ OF FRENCH.... THE SOCRATIC FUNNEL MAY LEAD TO MASS COMMICATION OF THE SLEEPING WORLD. ORANGE AND T-MOBILE HAVE BEEN IN TALKS TO CREATE THE FIRST MOBILE PHONE YOU CAN USE IN YOUR SLEEP.

                               ^Joan Of Arc’s  

MORNING ROUTINE

Imagine what it is like to have the voice of God in your head as you do your morning routine, for this we acquire the use of tape-recorder. An actor of some gravitas to orate and narrate your morning process. this brings an element of urgency and divine importance to the proceedings. When in a loud booming voice comes “LET THERE BE LIGHT” as sun-rises, “GO FORTH NIGEL FROM STOCKPORT, TAKE THOSE HALLOWED FEET ACROSS THE SHAG-CARPETTING, TO THE BATHROOM. WASH YOUR SINS CLEAN, EMERGE RENEWED. PERFORM THE SACRIFICE OF THE MONOBROW AND THE SLOOSH OF THE INCISOR. PREPARE FOR THE FEAST OF THE RICE KRISPIE AND THE EUROSHOPPERCOFFEE AND THE GONE-OFF SKIMMED MILK’  (All Eyes on Joan (!946) by Meyrick Stapleglass) 

AFTERNOON ARRANGEMENTS

Consumerism has become the most mundane activity for the everyday person, that, and idle conversation this is how a majority of peoples existences are wasted, here is how to cure the two:

CONSUMERISM

                             FALLS INTO

      TWO CATEGORIES, OUTLINED

  BELOW

                        SHOPPING

                        EATING

                        (There is no third category)

  Samuel Pepys

With a novel way of getting the shopping done...

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAHH here is a new found fragment from Pepys’s London Diary.

Went out early, for the absence of my wife, by no instruction of leaving for that of maid, nor, servant, nor housekeep, nor Cook, it was I to London, to abate the supplication of the larder for the first in many a year. In my way met with Jennings, at an alehouse, where he showed me the device of a stick that cooled the brows of Poxy children, and indeed it was most fascinating. Jennings provided an admirable discourse on the problem of paying for the scullery. He posited slugs of drink to numb the process and render it a pleasure. Betimes came pints of wine then tinctures of a viscous balm, its derivation we knew not of, that made our heels light, we did float upon them to Market. Our hexed countenance took us along, all manner of vegetable, cheese, mineral, herbs were purchased no mind given to purported their purpose. Our curious manner overwhelmed patrons with our tempered ways. Thence we feasted upon onions from the boxes of goods as the cart took us to Westminster cooing the fermented songbirds we were.

You feel that the preceding text was mere frippery but I assure you that if you follow this manual in thought and spirit, that you unleash your minds to the restorative power of imagination you will find that you will transcend mundanity

F

[1] See video projection of ‘The Leamington Spa Solution’ where the Socratic Funnel was tested on Narcoleptics around the county in 2006

[2] Play recording of different noises the Socratic Funnel transmits whilst sleeping. Note that noises from infants and Welsh can vary hugely.