“I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I can bang on about this quote in any number of ways. And I’m going to, so settle in.

We’ll start with the most basic: answering a question about quotation with a quotation that proclaims my hatred of them is, well, I think anyone that knows me would agree that that’s very much in line with my sense of humour. I don’t intrinsically hate quotation, but the circular nature of that response is sufficiently pleasing to me that I Iove to use that quote.

But further: I do hate over-use of quotation. It can be used as a substitute for one’s own thought, creativity and self-expression. I would far rather hear someone restate an idea clumsily, but in their own words, than have them use the most perfect and elegant quote in the universe. I also dislike the traits in people that lead them to use quotes from literature, or from other people, all over their internet profiles. It reeks to me of a bad combination of some or all of insecurity, false modesty, self aggrandisement, and a poor capacity for self-reflection. If you can’t talk honestly about yourself in your own words, then there’s something wrong, in my view.

And even getting away from the use of quotation as a crutch for creativity and self-expression, I particularly hate the trick of quoting some other source to shore up a weak argument. Religious arguments are particularly bad for this, referring to their holy books as if those books carry some intrinsic weight, but it can happen in plenty of secular arguments, too. But it’s in the religious context that I particularly love the seldom-seen full version of this quote.

“Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.”

If your argument is weak, referring to another, older, or cleverer source who appears to be saying something similar may make it sound stronger. And frankly, that’s cheating. Now, I’ll grant that if you’re caught by someone who is more familiar with the work you’re attempting to (mis-)use, then you might well find your entire argument being knocked down at a stroke. But if you’re not, then well, being deceptive like that in an argument is pretty shitty, and drives me up the wall.

So, when do I like quotation?

Well, one of the reasons most quotations survive is that they’re pithy statements of interesting ideas. They’re generally quite simple, clear, and memorable. That can be good. They’re a good way to make a theme or idea clear, in support of one’s own words. And yes, properly used in a debate, they can add some useful weight. And, as was pointed out to me in conversation over breakfast this morning, quotation is the basis of all satire. And we all know how I love satire. (I also like remixes, re-appropriations and re-interpretations. Can’t do any of those without quotation…)

But there’s another reason I like them, and that is that I like context. I like the fact that works and ideas exist in a wider web of thinking, expression and human experience that has gone before, or come after them. Quotations can provide a sort of cognitive hyperlinking, a means to indicate that if you like a particular line of thought, you can see where it’s born from and what was born of it. And I think that context for one’s thoughts is one of the most useful things one can provide as one goes.

For example: one of the other reasons I like that quote is because it is Emerson’s. I quite like Emerson. I’m a lot more of a socialist than he ever was, but his lack of socialism comes from his strong belief in “the infinitude of the private man”. He, in this case, is talk about the single individual being more important, and in many respects stronger than society. I don’t believe that’s the case, but I do believe very strongly in both privacy and individuality of thought, and the power of the individual when they stand up for they have come to believe for themselves, rather than been taught by some outside force. My socialism, I guess, comes from the idea that society is the place where our individual selves, and all our private thoughts come together for the advancement of all, to enable us to all go off and better be our private selves. I don’t think he’d have had a problem with that.

I’m going to be really quite glad when this “favourite” slew of topics is done, because I am a fully rounded human being, and have trouble with this sort of pick-one nonsense.

On the bright side, though, I am not a well-read man. Oh, I’ve read a lot of books, but I’m not well read. I’ve read vast piles of nerdy crap, and an awful lot of non-fiction, but I’ve ready very little serious or weighty literature. I have a go at things like Ulysses and Infinite Jest about once a year, and give up on them, and I’ve read fuck all Dickens, very little Shakespeare, and generally my attitude to 90% of everything published pre- about 1960 can be summed as “only relevant in as much as it informs more contemporary works”. Which to be clear, is not to say that they’re unimportant or bad, just that my personal tastes mean I prioritise reading more recently published stuff. Nor am I holding up being thinly-read as a good thing. I would dearly love the time and attention span to be better read. The only reason that it’s a bright side is that if I were better read, it would be even harder to chose.

As it is, there are strong contenders in Sherlock Holmes, Winnie-the-Pooh, The Illuminatus Trilogy, something by Hunter S. Thompson, or maybe Alan Moore or Bill Drummond.

So how to pick just one book? Well, it’s got to be profound, it’s got to be moving, and it’s got to be something that rewards re-reading. That seems like a good baseline to me. But all of the above do that. So I need some other means of refining it. By genre? Or should I be expressly looking for a non-genre work? Do I include book-format editions of comics as part of my considerations?

Hang on, though. This is the digital era, and I’m being asked a format question. (Yeah, you’ve worked out how I’m going to do this, haven’t you?) I’m not being asked about my favourite content. I’m being asked about my favourite book. That makes it a lot easier to decide, because while I love a lot of the content I’ve named above, the actual editions I own are unremarkable. As far as actual books that I love simply for their form factor as books, that number is a lot smaller. Actually, I can narrow it down to less than half a dozen.

Heston Blumenthal’s The Big Fat Duck Cookbook is available these days in a smaller, regular format, 20 quid cookbook. I won’t say that I don’t know why anyone would buy the smaller format – I might pick up a copy myself, for ease of readability – but the edition I’ve got, the 100 quid beast of a book, the one I honestly put my back out lifting, well that’s an thing of serious beauty. Designed by Dave McKean, beautifully laid out, lavishly illustrated and with photos documenting everything – the content can be read without the form factor, sure, but the form factor makes reading it a (slightly awkward) pleasure.

Bill Watterson’s The Complete Calvin and Hobbes is similarly impractical. 3 Beautiful hardbound editions containing exactly what they say they do. The whole set weighs in at about 10kg, and it’s worth every gram. And if you don’t love Calvin and Hobbes, then there is probably something wrong with you.

Bill Drummond’s 17 is also utterly, utterly lovely. Hardback, bright red, with while lettering in a simple, ultra-clear font. No clutter, just the important stuff. Plus, it’s a bloody good book.

For a while there, I though I’d be smug and clever, and my favourite book would actually be a Black and Red or Moleskine or a Field Notes notebook, because yes, I do love them. And I could waffle on about the potential of the blank page, and how the best books are unwritten. And I’ve left this bit here, because yes, I do really like them as objects, but honestly, most of my notes are scribbles that are dumped onto computer ASAP. I love the form factor of the books and yes, the potential of a new notebook is nice, but once they’re done, they’re done, and I don’t keep them around for anything. I like them more in abstract than I do in reality.

But in fact my favourite book is, as ever, Winnie the Pooh. Some years ago, I acquired a beautiful hardcover slipcase edition containing both the Winne-the-Pooh books, When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six, with lovely colour versions of E. H. Shepard’s illustrations. It is both a beautiful object, and a fantastic work of fiction for children of all ages – even if one were to outgrow the narratives themselves, the writing will always be some of the finest in the English language, and even the most jaded adults should be able to take pleasure in that, at least.

The West Wing.

Hands down, no contest. It’s the only show (to date) that I’ve watched when it aired, from first season to last (I admit, it took until midway through season one for me to start watching it, but I did watch enough of it) actually making time to watch it each week as it aired. It was the only show which was destination TV for me the whole way through. Everything else I’ve watched on DVD or otherwise time-shifted. The West Wing, I made time for.

I will admit that some seasons are stronger than others – 1, 2, 6 and 7 are particularly good, and 5 particularly bad. But it never went below “worth making time to watch” for me – it was getting very close by the end of season 5, and I started season 6 thinking I’d give it a few episodes and see how I felt, but that season started strongly, and just got better throughout, so I kept on watching. That’s a feat few other TV shows have managed – House is looking like it would be another similar show, but even that, I’ve started time shifting to more convenient points, and honestly, it’s not the same sort of thing. The West Wing, I started watching because the whole show was astonishingly good – the writing, the scripts, the direction and the acting are just superb. House, on the other hand, has consistently superb work from Hugh Laurie, whose charisma carries the show. In every other regard it’s a very variable programme.

But back to The West Wing. It’s not just unusual in that I watched all of it, it’s also not the sort of show I normally go for. I prefer shows that are self-contained within episodes – House, CSI, that sort of thing. I don’t want the full on Star Trek dictum that any given episode should be viewable out of order with all the others, but I do want to watch 40 minutes of TV, and go away feeling like I’ve seen a complete story, even if I perhaps didn’t understand the wider arc plot bits fully. 24, Heroes, Lost, these shows do not generally work for me – they’re all arc, and no self-contained narrative. The West Wing sits somewhere between House and the Heroes, in that for 90% of the episodes, they do tell a complete story, it’s just that there will be references back and forth to earlier or later things, but most crucially given my normal viewing habits, because it’s an ensemble piece, they do not have the time to spend introducing the characters in any given epsiodes, so you really do need to watch a few episodes to get that hang of everything, particularly because they all (walk and) talk very quickly. So it’s a measure of the quality of the characters and the actors that it got me to overcome my usual allergy to shows you need to follow closely.

Yes, it’s absolutely a liberal wet-dream of a show – it posits a full 12 years of a Democratic White House, for one thing, and the president in it is positively communist by the standards of real world American politics (even if you can practically see the show’s runners and writers backing away from their own instincts about two thirds of the way through the 1st season, around the time Bush got elected). That’s no bad thing – it was never going to reflect the absolute reality of American politics, not least because if the journalism I’ve read is to be believed, you have to be a particularly unsympathetic sort of personality damage case to get involved in that particular circus, and if it’s not going to reflect reality, it might as well reflect aspiration.

And to cap it all off the entrance of Martin Sheen, as Jed Bartlet at the end of the first episode is one of the greatest bits of TV I have ever seen. I could watch this again and again and again.

Well, this one is a little awkward, but only from the point of view of anyone who is reading back through the archives of my blog, because I talked about this film only two posts ago.

It’s Pixar’s Up. I loved it. Simple, plain, uncynical, sense-of-wonder stuff that made me laugh and cry. Beautiful animation, excellent writing, and a marvellous cast. Proof, if proof were needed, that you don’t need explosions, tits, or anything remotely dark and gritty to make a truly superb piece of cinema.

That’s quite a short post, for something that’s meant to be an exercise in encouraging me to write regularly and write more. But I’m loathe to talk about the details of the film, because there might be people reading this who haven’t seen it yet, and they really need to see it, unspoiled, at the first opportunity. Plus, as I say, I’ve already written about why I love Up before, and don’t really want to repeat myself.

So here, in no particular order are some other films I love, and a few reasons why. I’m not sure that these are my favourite films, they’re just films it occured to me to mention when dwelling on the subject.

The Matrix – just the first one, you understand. Pop-gnosticism is something I love, and The Matrix is a particularly shiny, impressive and exciting varation of the species.

Sunshine – I know a lot of people don’t like it, but it’s an extended meditation on heroism and glory using one of the most effective metaphors I’ve seen, and seen in that light, it has a very tight script, even including the slasher-SF monster figure.

10 Things I Hate About You – Equal parts Shakespeare and teen romcom, with a remarkably good cast. It’s just daft fun. Plus, it has Alison Janney, and I’ll watch anything she’s in.

The Ninth Gate – Barely connected to the book, I am a sucker for a well done occult conspiracy thriller. This is exactly that. It works according to a logic all it’s own, and the is-it-real-or-not nature of the movie probably puts a lot of people off, but I really enjoyed it.

Adaptation – Simultaneously a refutation of, and a strict adherence to all the rules that Robert McKee lays out in his book “Story”, simultaneously an deconstruction of the art of writing for film, and an emotionally gripping story, this is the sort of film that I imagine other screenwriters watch and cry into their beer, because they’ll never be as good as Charlie Kaufamn.

Preface: I thought I’d make an effort to dust my “writing” blog off a bit before the end of the year, as much for the discipline of getting something written every day as anything else. So I’m going to do that 30 Days meme that’s doing the rounds, but there are 5 days that I don’t want to do – the topics are not something I can easily talk about, mostly just for practical reasons. So the first five people to pipe up get to pick (non-fiction) topics for me to write about. Anyway, back to “my favourite song”:

God, I hate it when I’m asked questions like this. I always worry that my answer is going to come across as “I’m a pretentious music nerd snowflake who couldn’t possibly pick just one song because I’m sooo eclectic”. But on the other hand, half my friends probably say the same. So y’know, whatever.

For now, let us simply accept that it is actually impossible to have a single favourite song. Music is a thing of emotion and mood, and humans are mercurial creatures. My favourite song to listen to when lying in bed alone at 2am is not going to be my favourite song to dance to in the middle of a nightclub at 2am.

So: it is a bright and sunny December afternoon. The first frost of winter showed up last night. What do I listen to at at this time of year? There’s a handful of albums I regularly reach for when the nights draw in – Firewater’s “The Man On The Burning Tightrope”, Tom Waits “Real Gone”, The Pogues “The Rest of the Best” (I prefer it to “The Best Of”), The Tansads “Shandyland” and The Sisters of Mercy “First and Last and Always” are all regular winter listening.

But the winter also tends to make me want to reach back to older music, or modern reinterpretations of same. I’ve a CD called “Vox Humana: Ancestral Voices For A Modern Europe” that gets played a lot. As do choral workings of Christmas carols. Recently, Miranda has been playing me various bits of medieval polyphony, and that’s definitely going to be part of my winter playlist from now on.

But that’s not getting me any closer to talking about today’s favourite track. After some thought, it’s this little beastie:

That’s Beef Wellington’s inspired remix of Bing Crosby’s “Happy Holidays”. Enjoy.

I went to see Pixar’s new release, “Up” at the cinema on Friday night. II appreciate that my friends in other parts of the world will have seen it months ago, because Pixar are apparently the only studio left who like treating England like second class citizens when it comes to release dates, but there’s nothing I can do about that.

Like all right thinking people, I love Pixar movies. In fact, I strongly suspect that people who do not love Pixar movies may in fact be less than human, and I think we should perhaps organise some kind of cull. It’s certainly a yardstick worth considering when we finally decide to do something about this planet’s overpopulation problem, anyway.

I was a little tentative about Up in that the trailer gave away very very little about it – there’s a kid and a grumpy old man, in a house suspended from helium balloons. It didn’t have the immediate accessibility of something like Toy Story, The Incredibles, or even Ratatouille, which had high concepts that were clear from even the short trailer. I didn’t have a lot of idea what to expect, and well, while I don’t think there Pixar have yet made a bad movie, they have definitely made movies that are less good than their usual standard. (From any other studio, Cars would have been a perfectly OK movie. It just didn’t clear Pixar’s usual bar, that’s all.) I had, however, heard good things about Up from people I trust. So I went in with an open mind and some hopes.

I was utterly blown away. I do not mind admitting that they had me shedding a few tears within the first ten minutes of that film, a feat they then repeated at intervals throughout. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a movie with such a perfectly judged level of sentiment – it remains steadily touching throughout without ever tipping over into mawkishness. The film is an absolute masterclass in how to tug on heartstrings, and have the audience thank you for it. And yes, it’s still as funny as all the other Pixar movies. I really don’t know when I’ve seen the subjects of love and grief handled with such a lightness of touch.

Serious candidate for the best film I’ve seen this year. I’d love to see get a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars, because if ever Pixar have produced a film that deserves to break out of the animation ghetto at the those awards, then this is it. Go and see it.

So, I was on the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of One and Other last night. You all know this, because I’ve done nothing but bang on about it for the last week or so. What you may not know is that before people go up on the plinth, they are photographed and an interview with them is recorded, and I am no exception. The interviewer asked a number of questions about basically who I am, what I am doing with my life, what my hopes for the future were, and what I hoped to get out of my time on the plinth. Who I am, and my hopes for the future proved remarkably tricky. I think I may have muttered something vague about hoping to take more photos, and maybe one day even earn a bit of money from them. Really, I have no idea who I am, what I’m doing, or what I want out of life.

What I wanted from the plinth, though, that I was ready for.

I am a Londoner. It was one of the three words I used to describe myself on my profile on the One and Other website. I am also a terribly pretentious bastard. So I trotted out all the rubbish you’d expect, about getting the public involved in art, being connected to London, and that sort of thing. Said that while I know it’s hardly charity work, or anything worthwhile like that, it’s a little way of giving something back to the city I love. Blah blah blah, so far so boring.

That’s all by way of preamble. Because, you see, in all the media write ups, or blog and twitter commentary, whether they’re praising the project as a fantastic way to get the public involved in art, or damning it as revealing the banality of the British public, I have yet to see any one that stopped stroking their chin long enough to talking about what it’s like to be up there. So here goes.

I often say that I love London, and I joke about the fact that I don’t leave it much. This isn’t just a figure of speech. It’s not just a joke. I am absolutely head-over-heels besotted with the place I live. Even on the bad days, when it’s 35 degrees on the tube at rush hour, and I’m pressed up against a bloke who thinks that personal hygiene is something for girls and sissies, and the driver comes over the loudspeaker to tell us that someone’s just jumped under the train ahead, and we’re stuck here for the next half hour, there is still nowhere else I would rather be. I stand there, the sweat trickling down my back, and all I can think is “only in London do you get shit like this” and I smile, and relax, and I feel better. I am a full-on hopeless case for London, its sights, sounds and smells, its past, present and future. London is the place where the magic fucking happens.

And you can all stop looking at me like that, because I can now prove it.

Here’s the thing that the write ups of the plinth don’t tell you. It’s fun. It’s a little slice of sheer bloody London magic. There is nowhere else in the world where a night like I had last night could have happened.

I expected to get up there with my camera and tripod, and arse about for an hour. That’s exactly what I did. In any circumstance, arsing around with my camera for an hour makes me happy. I expected some of my family and friends to turn up, and they did. In any circumstance, my family and friends make me happy.

I am groping for the words to describe it. “Greater than the sum of it’s parts” is meaningless if I can’t adequately convey the parts.

So: there I am, a bloke in a white suit, standing spotlit in the middle of London on a summer night, clutching a camera. This was the least important part of the night – the silly outfit, and what I was doing didn’t matter very much to me. The absolute joy for me was seeing my friends turn up, whether they were in their regular clothes, or in a variety of weird and wonderful outfits, watching people who I know hadn’t met before, or who had only met in passing talking to one another and laughing, or getting texts, phone calls, and yes, twitter messages from friends who were watching around the world, watching the conversation that happened around the fact that I was on the plinth. That sounds kind of egotistical, I know, but it’s not the sense I mean it in – I’m not someone who is entirely comfortable being the centre of attention – but passing messages from London to Toronto was not something I’ll forget in a hurry. There simply was a really marvellously warm and friendly vibe about the whole experience – not just from my friends, but from the members of the public who were passing by who got involved, posing for photos and shouting up questions and comments – there was a lot of smiling and laughing going on in Trafalgar Square last night. Like I said: a slice of pure London magic.

I had hoped to come down from the plinth with a few good photos, and maybe some new thoughts on London and life in general. I come down with all of those things, but I did not expect to come off the plinth thinking “that was fun, I want to do it again”. And yet that’s exactly what I did.

So the next time you see someone spouting off about how the people up there are boring, or how the project isn’t really art, or anything like that, tell ‘em to fuck off. The experience made me think, and was emotionally affecting (it may not have been deep, but if it raised a smile, then that counts) not just for me, but for the other people in the square, and watching over the internet (at least to judge by the response I had had from friends), and if that’s not Art, I don’t sodding know what is.

Well bloody done, Anthony Gormley. And thank you for the opportunity. And, at risk of turning this into some ghastly parody of an acceptance speech, thanks to all the people at Artichoke, who made it happen, and most especially thank you to all my family and friends who turned up in person or on the internet, because it was absolutely you lot who made it a thing worth doing, and if I have learned nothing else from from last night, then I have been reminded how fortunate I am to know you all.

Shut up and listen to the clever man.

Via Phil’s always-worth-the-time Sleevelessness, this is the one of the cleverest music video’s I’ve seen in a while – both for the visuals, and the involvement of their fanbase. The bit with the cameras is particularly impressive, just for the careful planning it must have taken.